The Girl Behind the Door Read Online Free PDF Page A

nervous.”
    â€œRight.” I clasped her hand. It was cold and damp.
    The door opened and we both turned around, expecting someone to come in with Joanna. Instead it was the young woman from the photograph we’d gotten in the FedEx package. I recognized her immediately as the staffer holding Joanna. She was very pretty and every bit as friendly as I imagined her from the photograph.
    Erika chatted with her, pointing at herself and then me. The woman smiled, nodding at both of us knowingly. Erika turned to me. “Her name is Karina. She said Joanna will be here in a second. She’s getting her diaper changed.”
    My nerves on edge, I jangled a handful of coins in my pocket, double-checking the video camera to make sure it was recording, imagining the disaster if I’d missed this precious moment. Somewhere a child let out a bloodcurdling scream.
    â€œMaybe that’s her,” I said to Erika, a nervous joke.
    Our tea had been set down on the table but we never touched it.
    Another woman in a lab coat appeared. She was older, perhaps in her sixties, with a thick build, pale skin, crooked teeth, and white hair. She carried a quiet infant girl.
    It was Joanna.
    The white-haired woman held her up to us, smiling proudly as if she were presenting a champion show dog.
    I was mesmerized.
    Joanna looked just the way she did in the picture, but this time dressed in a pink T-shirt and shorts with dirty white socks on her feet, a size too big. Danuta and Karina perked up and smiled when they saw her, winking and blowing kisses. Everyone seemed especially attached to her.
    Erika, Renata, and I crowded around the white-haired woman holding her. She gently passed her silent charge over to Erika, who cradled her in her arms while Joanna remained passive, as if trying to understand the significance of the handoff from her familiar caregiver to some stranger.
    Erika cooed kohana , “sweetie pie” in Polish, and gave her the pink squeaky doll, which Joanna took and clutched in her chubby little fist. Renata stood back, hands on hips, nodding at Joanna as if to say, See, isn’t she magnificent? She looked like a proud godmother. I just gazed at Joanna.
    She’d changed a bit from the picture we’d received in March. Her head was rounder, with the same turned-up nose, a high prominent forehead, full pink cheeks, and thin red lips. Her eyes were a bluish gray and her sparse blond hair was very fine. If her T-shirt had been blue instead of pink, she could’ve been mistaken for a beautiful boy. She appeared to have all of her fingers and toes. Nothing looked misshapen or out of place.
    She was perfect.
    Erika held Joanna in her arms, speaking to her in a Polish baby voice, bouncing her up and down. She seemed to know intuitively what to do as I stood by, feeling a bit shy and self-conscious. This wasn’t how I’d imagined it—no beam of light, no blubbering; in fact, nobody shed a tear. I should have felt something but, strangely, I had no emotional sensation at all. It was surreal, like a dream or a movie scene.
    Joanna looked to be in as much of a daze as I was. That was understandable, considering that she’d just woken from a nap. She was suffering from a cold and had just been thrust into the arms of two foreigners. Silent and lethargic, she showed no emotion, no smiles or giggles as I’d imagined. She appeared physically fine but her silence worried me. Was that normal?
    Joanna stared at me as if I were an alien, her wide eyes following me everywhere as I circled around her like someone inspecting a new car. Wherever I stood, her head turned to follow my every move, still emotionless. Maybe she’d never seen a man before. The orphanage staff seemed composed entirely of women. As we watched each other I let out a nervous laugh. What was she thinking as she kept her eyes locked on me?
    Everybody around me talked excitedly, laughing. What were they saying? I felt as if I