why comma female?
my first name was a piece of punctuation.
i saw it for the first time in the genealogical section of the new york public library on fifth avenue and 42nd street, some time in the early 90s. you know, the one with the lions.
i have chosen a typeface, popular in the 60s, for the tattoo i'm going to get of my punctuation name. because that decade is one of the worlds i frequent in my time travels.
my adoption was private and closed. i knew nothing about my biological mother beyond three basic facts. jewish, healthy, "could not take care of a baby."
at my first and only ALMA (adoptees' liberation movement association) meeting they told us to ask relatives for intel. my maternal grandmother, far rockaway mae, slipped and told me my biological mother's last name. bang. just like that.
my adoptive mother, alice, had been pretending for 25-plus years she knew nothing about my birth mother or what "could not take care of a baby" meant. my mother was still connected to her mother by an umbilical, i mean telephone, cord so it was ridiculous to think this information had not been shared between them.
mae asked me not to tell alice. i promised.
i now understand that, after multiple miscarriages and at least one stillbirth, my mother would explode into a million suns if she knew i knew. a name would make my other mother real. alice had erased her.
i had the last name but not the spelling. i had a copy of my (amended) birth certificate. i headed uptown.
the ALMA information sheets explained that every birth in the five boroughs of manhattan is recorded in a set of volumes maintained in the genealogical section. the librarian showed me where they lived.
don't make copies, she said. there was an agreement between the library and another entity whose name i cannot recall, strictly governing their use.
some time later i was visiting the book, the only way i had to spend time with my first mother, who had by then made a habit of returning my letters unopened. i decided to photocopy the page. a friend ran interference by peppering the librarian with questions to distract her while i slipped it beneath the copy machine's hood. she ran over, grabbed it out of my hands before i could get quarters into the slot, and scolded me. i went outside, sat at a table surrounded by birds eating bread, and cried.
this time, though, she watched me from across the room.
the faux-leather cover was white and grimy. time was slowing. my hearing faded. i was dehydrated. it was hard to turn the pages because i was shaking.
there were multiple spellings of the name on the birthday pages. i compared the number on my birth certificate with the numbers listed with each entry for each variation of the name. then. i. found. a. match.
inside, it was like an old fashioned flashbulb went off.
poof. smoke. i exist.
just a comma.
like this:
, female
