Dear Shoshana,
I met you in the spring of 1974. I was 20 years old, living in Jerusalem and volunteering in a Beit Tinokot, a residential institution for unwanted children. Some were offspring of Arab-Jewish liaisons which neither family would accept, some from families who couldn’t care for them for one reason or another. I remember one young teen, Aviva. Her mother, a prostitute, often stopped by to take her out on the town, each time returning her cheerfully bearing an armload of bling.
You sat in the large playroom where the toddlers spent their mornings. Two and half years old, with soft blond hair and dark brown eyes, rhythmically beating the back of your head against the wall. Your face devoid of expression and oblivious to the other children running noisily about. Each day you sat in the same spot, against the same wall, wearing a worn-out striped T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. Banging your head. A staff member said that your mother was remarried to a husband who didn’t want you, but I never knew the real circumstance.
I began calling out your name as I approached you each day and one day you looked directly into my eyes. And then it became a routine: I entered the room each morning calling your name, you looked up at me, we played and when I turned my back to leave, you masked your face with blankness and returned to the head banging.
Each volunteer was allowed to “adopt” a child to play with after work hours. I adopted you. We sat outside on the front lawn and sometimes you smiled or even laughed. One afternoon, I came to take you out to the yard but noticed from several feet away a small, dark-haired woman at the desk “signing you out” for the afternoon. She spoke in a soft timid voice and appeared furtive. I assumed that she was your mother and watched from a distance, but didn’t try to meet her. You were back in your usual spot the next morning. Same blank face, same head banging.
I worked at the Beit Tinokot for just 4 months, but had been volunteering in Israel for most of a year and it was time for me to return home to Portland, Oregon. I had left with a total of $500 and at this point, aside from the second half of my round-trip ticket, had barely a grush to my name. Nonetheless, I made an appointment with the director, Achot Rut (Sister Ruth). I sat across the desk from her and said, “I want to adopt Shoshana and take her home with me.” She looked at me, her eyes full of sympathetic understanding. “I would like for you to be able to do that,” she said, “but she has a family here, she is not available for adoption. I wish that she were.” I left without you.
My then partner, now husband, and I were in Israel four years later and we went directly to the Beit Tinokot, but found the building abandoned. We learned that soon after I left, the institution’s leadership decided that it was healthier for children to be placed in foster homes. Despite substantial perseverance, I couldn’t locate an office that had records of where each child had been placed. I found a promising lead but it turned out to be a different Shoshana. I searched in vain. Once again, I left without you.
You would be nearly 50 years old now and I’ll never know how your life turned out. I can only hope that you ended up cared for by others who loved you as I once did.
Love,
Carolyn
