Rosie ODonnell - Find Me

Rosie O'Donnell's profits from the sales of this book are being donated to charity.

The names and some identifying details of a few individuals in this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

Copyright 2002 by Rosie O'Donnell

All rights reserved.

Warner Books, Inc., Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

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The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-0-446-54884-7

Book design by Giorgetta Bell McBee

Endpaper design and photos by Rosie O'Donnell

E3

For Teach the Peach

Thanks to:

Lauren Slater for convincing me I could, then showing me how.

Binky, Kim, Jamie, and Larry for working it all out.

Anne Lamott, Nora Ephron, Dave Eggers, Fannie Flagg, Pat Conroy, and Anne Rice for writing as they do.

Kelli for putting up with me as I got it all down.

C ome on, Bessie! she'd say while tenderly tapping the dashboard of her rusty blue station wagon. Come on, Bessie! every time, without fail, urging the old car up a steep hill. I would lie in the way, way back, all alone, listening over the ever-present din of sibling arguments and wait for it. Come on, Bessie, I'd mouth along with her. A secret ritual, a way to connect.

My dad sold Bessie sometime in the winter of 1973. I came home from school and the battered blue wagon was gone. I didn't expect an explanation, I didn't ask for one. I missed that car, full of memories, full of her. After she died, I would curl up in the way, way back, close my eyes, and search for the Mommy smell that still lingered inside. A scent that would carry me off to dreamland.

I met Stacie for the first time in May. Her voice was meek and flat on the phone. She wasn't crying, but I heard it, the unmistakable sound of desperation. That was the first call, the single call that would change my life, and hers too, probably forever.

I work with a nonprofit adoption agency in New Jersey. I fund their operation and provide outreach services; they do the work. Finding families for kids who need them is beyond fulfilling, it is addictive. I like to help. I need to help. I help a lot, sometimes too much.

This is a true story about a girl named Stacie who called the adoption agency with a terrible problem. A lot of it won't make sense, at least logically. But sometimes sense runs deeper than logic. Nothing happens by chance. The events that follow, some dark and painful, changed me absolutely.

You have been warned.

O nce 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, zipponone. The birth mothers who call are usually in crisisscared, confused, and needyand I am in constant say for 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 Teresaish, 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 keptin 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.