Find Me by Rosie O'Donnell - book excerpt

Chapter 2
© 2002 Rosie O'Donnell

Once a week, after my show, I have an adoption meeting. An intake counselor gives me a rundown: who called, who returned the necessary forms, any problem cases. That's where this thing with Stacie started, but not at all where it ended. One afternoon in May I sat down with Colleen, one of our counselors. It was pretty standard fare until she opened a blue folder on her lap. "Oh, God," she said, glancing over her words, remembering. "This one is so sad." Then suddenly Colleen bit her lower lip and started to cry. At that moment I remembered why I no longer talk to birth mothers. I can't stand the pain in their voices, the tenderness in their hearts, their struggling souls. Also, I become overinvolved. To put it bluntly, I have no boundaries. Zero, nada, zippo—none. The birth mothers who call are usually in crisis—scared, confused, and needy—and I am in constant savior mode. Like it or not, I hear their voices, I see their faces, I don the tights and cape. Here I come to save the day! It's not Mother Teresa.ish, it's not a calm centered giving, a planned Zen thing; it's a compulsion. I can't help myself.

Colleen told me the details of the case: "Stacie is fourteen. She is six months pregnant. Her mother, Barb, called the hot line. She got the number off the show. Her daughter Stacie was raped, get this, by a youth minister. The guy is in jail, the kid is in shock. They were calling for information only, they don't know what they will do. The mother is kind, well spoken, concerned for her daughter, feels the baby should be placed for adoption, but will do whatever the daughter decides. God, Ro, she sounded so defeated. I didn't know what to tell her."

Right then and there, for reasons I will never completely understand, I jumped in, headfirst. I broke my own rule. I picked up the intake sheet and dialed the number, a birth mother and a birth mother's mother. A double whammy. Two helpings of hurt. The phone rang. I got an answering machine. The voice on it sounded so confident and carefree, I thought it must have been recorded months before. I heard the beep, and left a message... "Hi, this is Rosie O'Donnell... You called our adoption line... the counselor told me about your daughter... If I can be of help in any way... questions you may have, anything, please call. We can provide financial help for counseling... I know this must be horrible for you and your daughter, and I am very sorry it happened." I left my office number.

Colleen went back to work, and I finished up my adoption stuff. I tried to find a parent for a two-week-old born in a hospital prison in Utah. I checked on the status of an eight-year-old HIV-positive black girl I had been trying to place for months, with no success. Difficult things, all of them. The afternoon was bright in a Crayola kind of way, simple blue sky, yellow circle of sun outside my window. But I couldn't see any of it. My mind, for some strange reason, was wandering back to the tale Colleen had told me, the tiny child carrying a child, like one of those Russian nesting dolls, babushkas you open up to find something inside, a child within a child. A mother and a daughter. My mind would not leave what it had only heard.

A mother and a daughter.

* * *

One day, before she got sick, my mother gave me my "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret" talk. I sat in stunned silence as she spoke of the wonders of being a woman. She showed me where her maxi pads were kept—in the top right-hand dresser drawer, under the fake Ming vase. She told me three times, because I was ten and not listening. I was in shock. I cried as she told me the details of tampons, cramping, and clots. I refused to believe my body would bleed monthly. Being a girl was horrible and gross. It was the end of the world as I knew it. First I found a lone strand of hair under my arm, and now this. I prayed it was all some sick joke mothers were forced to tell their daughters. Since she never brought it up again, I decided to forget the whole thing. Then she died.

I got my period when I was in eighth grade, during basketball practice. I went into the bathroom and saw my stained underwear, disbelieving. I was sure I had cancer, hepatitis, or diarrhea at least. I didn't know what to do or who to tell. I shoved some toilet paper into my shorts and finished the game. When I got home I took a very hot shower, scalded my skin, and wished my mother alive.

With no other choice, I snuck into my mother's room, which was now only my father's room. If anyone saw me, I was going to say I needed change for the ice-cream man. My dad had a pile of pocket coins on his dresser; I frequently helped myself to them. Once inside his room, I put a chair by the door so no one could get in. No one tried to. I saw myself in the mirror, above her dresser, a face full of want and need. I closed my eyes, so as not to see my own disappointment, and slowly pulled at the top right-hand drawer, under the fake Ming vase. My eyes opened to a blur of blue. There they were, a full box of Kotex Maxi Pads, right where she said they would be.

She must have known she was dying, that she would not be around when I needed her most. She orchestrated this comfort and care from beyond the beyond, before she left. I was fourteen the day I first needed a maxi pad. Fourteen, like Stacie.

* * *

Why this one girl, Stacie? Why did this tragedy, among all others, sit so stubbornly in my head? I'm not a naive woman. I've seen soul-smashing stuff before. Right from the start, though, Stacie stood out.

Why? Why this one kid, this particular story? I had spoken to pregnant teenage girls before. I had spoken to women who were raped. But never a child, raped, and pregnant, all at once. It was too horrible to imagine, too sickening to forget. And the tragic twist, the inedible icing on the corrupt cake—the rapist was a minister. A minister, a man society tells you is trustworthy, a man you are supposed to love and be led by. A man who should have been safe, a savior even. He was the virtuous villain. It was all too much for me. From the moment I heard the tale, I was hooked.

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