Chapter Twenty-Four

Linda Wright, Yekaterina and Moscow

    Since we had been unable to talk privately before, Linda and I let it all hang out.  We spent hours talking in her hotel room about what had happened to us, during Daniel’s outing and his sickness. 

    Had anything this bad ever happened before? Had we ever heard of anything so horrible – babies dying, sick babies, poorly run institutions? 

    All we’d ever heard and read about over on APR, FRUA and the general media was great, without-a-hitch adoptions; healthy, thriving kids, wonderful agencies, caring Russians, great orphanages where “the staff cared so much about the babies!!”  

    Well, that may have been those happy folks and their reality; this was Cyril, Yekaterina and us. This was our reality.

    Linda related to me what had transpired the previous day with respect to her failed adoption attempt of Yekaterina.  In some ways, her story was much worse than ours. 

Yekaterina on Lena’s lap

    Previous to her leaving, Linda had hooked up with a woman from Maryland by the name of Kathy Kadow. They had been “introduced” on the APR list.

    Mrs. Kadow was adopting an older girl from the Perm region who was being housed in an “interim orphanage.” She had been placed with the Kadow family for the summer as part of a summer outreach program through the agency “Adoptions From the Heart.” She had lived a few weeks in the United States with the Kadows.  

    During that time, the Kadows had decided to go ahead and adopt the girl.  However, there were some problems with the girl’s biological father not relinquishing custody of the child and the girl’s adoption had taken far longer than it should have (of course, so many adoptions seem to wind up taking “far longer than they should have” that it’s impossible to say anymore, really, what “should have” is).

    Prior to Linda’s departure for Russia, Mrs. Kadow asked Linda if she could take some gifts over for her daughter. Linda said she would be happy to. 

    The gifts were to have been picked up the morning of Friday, Nov. 26, at the Hotel Nichols where Linda was staying. Linda was to give the gifts to a worker at the girl’s orphanage by the name of Angelika. 

    After her ordeal with us, Linda was driven back to her hotel where she promptly told Lena, Gennady and Sergei that she would not be adopting Yekaterina. She had asked to stay with us, as weren’t really up to the prospect of spending that night all alone in that same room Cyril’s death had sucked all the life out of.

    She was, however, told that could not be done. Linda spent the night in a cold hotel room all by herself and received a telephone call from her mother — who had also been given the runaround by Wendy Stamper at the adoption agency. 

    Linda’s mother had to call information, like my mother, to obtain the telephone number to the Hotel Nichols. Her mother told her that it was best that Linda come home immediately and forget everything about Russia.  

    She had not been a fan of Linda’s Russian adoption, and had felt that Denise Hubbard was a “shyster,” or a wheeler-dealer. So, like me, Linda lay awake all night.

    Early the next morning, Lena arrived for Linda. They went down to the hotel’s restaurant to order breakfast, for Linda was famished. Once food was on the table Lena and Linda sat down to eat. 

    Suddenly, the desk clerk appeared in the restaurant and motioned for Lena to come out of the restaurant and into the lobby. Somebody was in the hotel looking for Linda — Angelika, the worker from the orphanage. She was there to receive the gifts that Linda had brought over for Kathy Kadow’s daughter.

    But Lena pulled a fast one. She did not bother to inform Linda that Angelika was waiting for her in the lobby. 

    Instead, Lena simply told Angelika that Linda was back in her room sick, while all the while she was in the restaurant eating breakfast.

    Linda was not informed of this visit until Angelika had already left. Obviously, the powers that be didn’t want Linda and Angelika talking or even for the two of them to meet.

    The rest of that day brought even stranger tidings to Linda. Gennady and Sergei were in crisis overdrive over Linda’s rejection of Yekaterina. Not too many Americans come all that way to Russia to adopt the much sought after infant girl only to reject the baby on sight. 

    They began to grill Linda, pulling out all the stops — charm, guilt, begging. But the thing driving those two men was greed. It certainly wasn’t care or concern about Yekaterina.  

    Her rejection of Yekaterina or any other baby meant that Gennady, Sergei, Lena, the orphanage director and any other intermediary who had arranged the adoption would be out of the cash that Linda had strapped on her body ...  $5,600 plus $800. 

    That is a lot of American dollars to beg for in Russia. BBAS and Dmitri in Moscow had already received their cut from Linda, but the facilitators in Perm were about to be cut out entirely.

    It went transatlantic. A telephone call was placed to America with Denise Hubbard and Dennis Gornostaev. Denise too was in crisis overdrive.

    On the telephone Denise told Linda that if she took Yekaterina, then they could get the 10 days waived by the judge. Even if she didn’t take Yekaterina, she could receive another referral and still get the ten days waived by the judge — the very next day! Just go to the orphanage and pick one out.

    Linda, a dealer in “previously-owned” motor vehicles by profession, got the hardest of hard sells both in person and over the phone by Denise Hubbard, whose Russian program was now in more of a mess than either of us knew at the time.

    She had the most to lose out of all this, because if word were to get out about this when we all got back, her name would be tarnished forever in adoption circles. It was also the nail in the coffin for her relationship with Dennis Gorontsaev.

    Taking into consideration that Linda had not slept in almost a day, was coming off the stress of plane travel, making her fateful decision and meeting us for the first time over a dead infant added to the incredible stress that these entities were placing on her — all for the love of the almighty dollar (and ruble).

    First, she was given the usual line that she just couldn’t come all the way here, many thousands of miles, and just change her mind. She had a beautiful house in the Midwest with a lovely little horse and two dogs. 

    Wouldn’t that be a lovely place for little Katya, so much better than the orphanage? Didn’t she have such a loving family, and so much love in her heart?  

    Perhaps a legitimate point, but Linda believed the girl had issues she wasn’t able to deal with. Yekaterina’s medical and what the orphanage director had been saying didn’t stack up, and this was the most disturbing thing to her.

    The most awful thing about this ordeal was the lie about the promise of ten days being waived. Prior to both our departures Denise had told us that the judge in Perm was known for never waiving the waiting period. 

    So how was it suddenly possible that the same exact judge, especially given this situation that had just unfolded, would waive the ten-day wait? 

    We all highly doubt that this would be secured by any legal means.

    (Although, interestingly enough, Denise’s own brief account of her adoption of Emily indicates that the waiting period was waived in her case).

    Linda stood her ground. She is a strong woman, stronger even than we might have been. 

    She insisted she would leave with us when we left. And on that they relented.

    But, when she signed the papers withdrawing her application to adopt Yekaterina, she was also given another piece of paper to sign — one promising she would never again apply to adopt from the Perm region. 

    She signed it. She would never be stepping foot in that part of the world again.

    Then, she was also told that the judge had wanted to see her in person. So, she was packed in the car and driven by Sergey and Lena to the courthouse. 

    However, once they got upstairs to the court room, they were informed that the judge was not there, having unexpectedly departed.

    After hearing all this I again asked about Yekaterina. Somehow, her story didn’t surprise me in the least.

    “Elizabeth” she said to me, “something wasn’t right about that baby. She was too tiny! She was eight months old and she looked like a two-month–old! She wouldn’t even have fit into the car seat I bought for her.  

    “And her eyes were yellow – something wasn’t right about that baby. She wasn’t healthy. I am a single woman and I did not request a special needs child. I can’t handle severe medical and emotional problems.”

    This was true. Again, I will repeat, that we had all read up on the issues surrounding the health, weight and outcomes of these babies. We had done our homework, contacted people who had adopted from Perm. We had asked them about their children and how they were doing.

    Everybody we had contacted said that the children were tiny when they got home, but with some love and good food, all the kids were exactly where they should be developmentally only months after coming home.  

    Again and again parents told us to not take the size and weight of these children too seriously — to downplay the medical reports that the children came with. This was the knowledge that we came with, but we had not expected to encounter seven- and eight-month old babies looking and acting like newborns.  

    Nobody warned or told us about the appearance of babies with malnutrition. Once faced with those babies, it had been a harsh education.

    Linda and I discussed the doctors that we had used to have the videos and medicals reviewed. Linda said that she had sent hers to the late Dr. Downing’s people and two other specialists. The only thing that was flagged about Yekaterina was her small weight.

    Since we had been speaking about our medicals, we decided to pull them out and compared them. They were not exactly alike, quite contrary to what Denise Hubbard had told both of us. 

    Yekaterina’s birthmother had been 32, not 23. She had several children before and Yekaterina hadn’t been her first pregnancy. 

    And this again was a major sore point with Linda. Yekaterina and Cyril’s medicals were completely different.  Linda said to me, as she looked over Cyril’s medicals, “This is worse than Yekaterina’s! I don’t think I would have accepted this referral.” 

    I was filled with a great sadness and great admiration for what Linda had done. It took steel to reject that baby. 

    This was something that Linda would go over and over again in her own mind.  Had she done the right thing?

    In the end, she decided that she had. I told her that she shouldn’t worry about Yekaterina not being adopted by anybody. Since she was an infant girl, they’d have a whole new set of parents lined up for her in no time.

    They did, after all, have to recoup their loss from Linda’s rejection. Infant girls were worth thousands of dollars to the facilitators and the American agencies.  Yekaterina’s new referral video was probably being filmed right at that time.

    Then, curiously, I asked her if she had a picture of Yekaterina to show me. “Yeah, I do. I took it to a shop where they made a picture from her video. Here it is.”

    She pulled a full paper size photo of a big bald baby with blue eyes. She looked more like an “Olga” to me than an Yekaterina.

    Linda had drawn in some hair on Yekaterina’s head. “She was so bald, I wondered what she’d look like with hair!” And I laughed again.

    “I wonder if they used some sort of special lens on those video cameras when they take those videos. She looked so big and healthy in her video! Then they brought out that skinny little baby to me and she just didn’t look right.  

    “It was her, but she was so much skinnier than the baby in the video. Her eyes were yellowish and she was so pale.” I told her that most people look heavier on video.

    Then, I asked Linda if she would like to view the video that we had shot of Cyril and she said yes. I got the camcorder set up, rewound the tape and began to roll the video. 

    It showed us, the happy adoptive couple, the tiny baby and then, as the video continued to roll, the slowly dying baby over the course of a week.

    What is chilling to me now is that I ask quite clearly in the video “Is he going to die on me or something?” the day of his fever at the orphanage.

    “What do you think they are saying in Russian?” Linda asked.

    That was a good question, because there was an awful lot of chatter going on between Lena, Gennady, and the orphanage director that was not being translated for our benefit, and had passed by so fast we couldn’t really make it out ourselves.  

    Linda especially pointed out to me the great show that Gennady was putting on in cooing over Cyril in my arms. 

    “Look at that.” Linda said.  “Just hamming it up. He doesn’t care about that baby!  He’s just trying to come across as a real caring guy.”

    Later, we would later have the videotape translated and see how what had been kept from us about not only Cyril, but the true state of affairs in Russia at that time with regards to maternal and neonatal health.

    After viewing the video, I went to check on Daniel to see if he was still sick. He was, but he felt he could manage to get around OK.

    That evening we both took Linda to dinner at the hotel. We asked her if she would like to accompany Daniel and I on a walk to Red Square; she chose to stay back at the Hotel Belgrade.  

    Luckily, some of the medication that Linda had given Daniel was working somewhat, so he was able to walk around.

    We went to Red Square via the subway. On the subway ride, we noticed that there was vomit in the corner from where a drunk had gotten sick. We couldn’t quite remember what station was the best one to get off at, so after getting off at one of the Arbat stations, we blundered about the darkened blocks of central Moscow before finally catching a glimpse of the Kremlin walls.

    In the underground corridors leading up to Red Square, the youth of Moscow were partying down, looking like they were breeding up the next generation of orphans to be sold to Americans. Babushkas stood nearby, selling bottles of beer to augment their incomes.

    Red Square itself was all in darkness. A young couple approached Daniel to take their photo in front of Lenin’s tomb in the darkness.

    I couldn’t even look up at Saint Basil’s Cathedral without sobbing. One of the greatest hopes I had carried with me to Russia was to have taken a photo of Daniel holding Cyril in front of Saint Basil’s. 

    That, along with Cyril, had been robbed from me by the harsh reality of Russia. 

    When we returned, Daniel went to bed, but I still could not sleep. As the night progressed, Daniel made frequent trips to the bathroom that worried me. 

    Would my husband join our son in sickening and dying slowly? I couldn’t imagine what I would do if that happened. (He assures me he felt in no danger of that, though it undoubtedly was not your run-of-the-mill stomach bug).

    Around two a.m. I asked if he would like me to go down to the hotel lobby to get him some water for his diarrhea; he said yes and asked if we could also get some cola as well.

    As I was leaving our room, Linda, who obviously couldn’t sleep either, asked if she could join me; and we made our way down to the hotel lobby to get the water.

    And what a lovely sight awaited us there! Three hookers were sitting around the bar of the lobby, dressed in micro miniskirts and micro-short fur coats. 

    They glared at us as we approached. They appeared to have some downtime and were speaking with the bartender. I was lucky that I could remember the word for “water” and the request for “open the bottle, please” by this point. All we wanted to do was get the heck back to our rooms and out of the glare of the hookers.  

    Gee, I didn’t recall stories about the local hookers at the hotel being told on APR and FRUA.  Had we missed something somewhere by reading sanitized adoption stories?

    “Elizabeth,” Linda said as we made our way back up to our rooms, “it just dawned on me about Cyril.  Babies in Russian orphanages don’t wear diapers. Just something about the videotape and you talking about his diaper rash.”

    She went on to relate that when they brought Yekaterina out to her, the baby was dressed in a very tight outfit, tied at her shoulders. It was so tight, that the baby could hardly move her arms around.

    And, when they handed Yekaterina to Linda, the baby actually had a “wedgie” – quite clearly, Yekaterina was not wearing a diaper; Cyril had been all three times he was brought out to us as I have mentioned over and over again.

    I asked Linda how she knew this. I hadn’t seen that previously on APR or FRUA, or maybe I hadn’t been looking in the right places. “It’s on Denise’s website! Right there! She mentions that the babies in Russian orphanages don’t wear diapers!”

    I felt like I had been slapped. Once again, Linda and I made our way into her hotel room. 

    Sleep had long ago become a forgone conclusion. Even as I finally did close my eyes two days later, Cyril’s dead face replayed itself in my mind. His dead eyes forever staring upwards into nothingness.

    I gave Dan his water, for which he was immensely grateful. He returned to sleep.

    Our conversation then floated on to the agency and Linda’s growing disillusionment with Denise Hubbard. She said something I have never forgotten: “Denise lies.”

    When we look back on it, this was the moment that Denise’s credibility with us began its slow yet inexorable decline.

    We then began to discuss our Bulgarian adoption. She asked if BBAS had completed any adoptions from Bulgaria or not; I had to say no.

    She then asked me why, at that time (November 1999) that there were families — the Homeyers and the Patenaudes – listed has having adopted from Bulgaria, when, in fact, the photos on the website were clearly taken of the children in the orphanage.

    Was this not a fib — depicting children who were still in the orphanage as children who were successfully adopted? And that I knew for a fact were still in Bulgaria and not home? (Go here to see Denise’s lame attempt to deflect this)

    The mirror was beginning to crack and what lay underneath was truly unpleasant. Worse was yet to come.

    I asked Linda at that time what she planned to do once we reached the United States. 

    She was adamant that she had made the right decision by not accepting Yekaterina. Linda felt so exhausted and drained mentally, emotionally and more importantly, financially, that she said she would pursue a refund from the agency.  She did not feel up to any lengthy legal battles or mud slinging over the affair.

    Once again, the sleepless night gave way to dreary day. On this one, at least, we would leave for home.

    Daniel was the only one who wanted to chance breakfast, despite his ailment, which he felt he was getting over.

    But downstairs in the hotel cafeteria, it instead climaxed with Daniel, to his great embarrassment, throwing up while sitting at his table trying to eat a hard-boiled egg. In full view of everyone else.

    It was obvious from that, he said, that the bug had prevented the digestion of almost everything he had eaten, or tried to eat, over the past day. 

    That was how we realized Cyril hadn’t been getting anything out of what we had been feeding him. All the time he was with us, he had been doomed.

    There were, Daniel noted, some positive omens at the time that pointed toward a better outcome with Anguel.

    Due to problems with their stadium, we read in the Moscow News, the soccer team Spartak Moskva had to move the home leg of their UEFA cup qualifying matches against Leeds United to ... Sofia!

    We also saw, on the way to the airport to leave, a billboard advertising cheap flights to that city.

    We could only dream and hope it wouldn’t be too long till we brought that child home.

    The next morning, Julia, the Moscow translator, arrived at the hotel at eight to pick up Daniel, Linda, and myself to take us to the airport. 

    Dmitri was not with her; Julia informed us that he had “the flu” and could not come.

    This was unusually convenient, given that we had discussed a partial refund with him the day before. We all wondered what happened to the $1,200 that we had each given him for the “paperwork” for Cyril and Yekaterina in Moscow. 

    But it was safe to say that the money was now part of our pasts. Linda Wright, in particular, was taken as she had spent even less time initially in Moscow then we had.

    One last note on our flight: Linda slept through it, as did Daniel. 

    For me, it was the longest flight I have ever taken. We sat in first class, and there were no babies or adopted children on that “baby flight” that Delta Airlines always used to brag about.  

    If there had been, I would have lost it right then and there.  But there weren’t.  One thing I will never forget were the films being shown to first-class passengers: The Thomas Crown Affair, The Sixth Sense (a little too close to home), Lake Placid, Wild Wild West, (same film as on my trip to Bulgaria) and one that really haunted me, Deep Blue Sea, about a superhuman enhanced shark eating people – except Ice Cube!

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