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I am adopted. My birthmother is/was Japanese. Sometimes I'm angry about being "abandoned", but most times when I am being more realistic, I realize there wasn't a goddamn thing she could do. We were both raped by the patriarchy.

I have been angry my whole life. I was born angry, jaundiced and yellow from liver poisoning. My rage is mammoth and genocidal. I get so deeply angry when I hear of innocent children being abused or killed that I want to personally destroy the offenders.

But a vigilante I am not, as I'm not stupid or foolhardy enough to feel I am above the law. The tragedy where the Amish girls were slaughtered? I felt it would be fair for the gunman's entire family should be executed, effectively wiping his entire gene pool from the planet. It's probably a good thing I'm not World Dictator, after all.

My sense of mercy applies to very few.

The Booth Home for Unwed Mothers in Chicago was part of a network of Salvation Army "Hospitals" that operated from the 1940's to the mid 1980's. I was born in one. Most women who entered the Booth Home were under the age of 20. My birthmother was 18.

If you went to one of these places, you were poor and went because your family looked down on you or rejected you. Girls worked odd jobs, cooking, cleaning, etc. Social workers who worked at these homes treated you and your pregnant contemporaries like breeding mares.

The primary objective was to convince you, the soon-to-be mother, that you were unfit for motherhood.

A two parent home would be superior to you, the unwed mother with your cruel, insensitive family.

The second tier was the baby broker, also known as the adoption agency. Your baby, once delivered, was sold for a dear price to adoptive parents, like mine.

Birthmothers were routinely drugged out of their minds during their labor to make them forget the events surrounding the birth. You were unceremoniously booted out of the Booth Home once you had "served your purpose".

Then, the records were completely sealed by the State. To add insult to injury, both you and your child would be told lies that once the kid hit twenty, he would be able to find you.

A virtually impossible task in the case of sealed adoptions; a bald-faced lie.

Your child probably did end up with better parents. I did, as did many of my adopted friends.

But not necessarily. I've heard stories of kids being adopted by religious Christian freaks who beat and torture them, I've seen the unhappily-ever-after what happens when a bunch of white trash adopts it's own second cousins.

Nothing changes in the world of adoption. Birthmothers are still treated like breeding cattle. Greedy baby brokers still dupe the confused and bereaved, all parties convincing themselves that they are doing something beautiful. If I were God, I would send anyone working for an adoption agency to Hell first. Tyranny flourishes. Injustices remain unpunished. Life is one hundred percent unfair. The world goes on.

The stories of birthmothers are similar in the way they share a common theme: the idea of a hole left in the heart, an incompleteness. I know what that is like.

Learn more about this author, Nariko Yamata.
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