16

A couple of the encounters stick out at me, from today.

The first girl I saw - little thing, couldn't have been more than nine, ten years old - came in a few minutes after Lauretta left.

She took the doorway one step at a time, leading with her left foot, then bringing her right and her left even, then taking one more reluctant, terrified step with her left. I froze up, for a second. Her eyes were straight down at the floor, and she wasn't even looking at me - not even in my direction.

I took a breath, and asked the ubiquitous first question. "Hey there," I said, "what's your name?"

"Grace," she mumbled.

Oh, lord.

"Well, Grace," I said, glancing around - no bowl of candy, I'd have to fix that - "how about you sit down on the couch, huh? We're just going to talk for a little. Nothing bad, I promise."

"'kay," mumbled Grace, and she glanced up, just for a second. Then she looked up again, her eyes widening, and she made this noise, like a little cry, and ran up and threw her arms around me, before I had the chance to react.

"Whoa, hey there." I pulled her back a little. "You all right?" - because she was crying.

"Mommy said that when I'm in trouble I go to the gray and red," she told me, sniffling. "No one wears gray and red, here."

I almost smiled, at that. "Your mother's a smart woman." I patted the chair, in front of my new desk. "How about you get up here, and we get started, huh?"

There was another one, too - a boy who didn't say a word, the entire time. Just sat there, with his arms crossed. By the end, I got him to nod or shake his head a few times - enough to answer the first few sets of questions. After Lauretta ushered him back to the common area, she came back, leaned against the door of my office.

"He's been here three months," she told me.

"Three months?" The forms said that the usual adoption period was more along the lines of three weeks.

"None of us could get him to talk," she said. "And families don't want an adopted child that isn't grateful."

"That's optimistic," I muttered, under my breath.

"It's human nature," she returned. "There are a few families here. Want to get started on them?"

"Why not."

- there was one family - a couple, a dark-skinned woman and a light-skinned man, both dressed well, clean-cut. Nice shoes. Good annual income. In application, they had all the qualities, I assumed, that earmarked them for perfect candidates.

They looked at my uniform like it was slime. Looked at me like I was {two words, crossed out, illegible} the enemy.

It's hard, to act professional, in front of hostility like that.

"What sort of environment would you provide for the child?"

"The right kind," the woman hastened to say.

"We've been unable to conceive on our own," added the man. "We would love to raise a child, and these orphans - these children, I mean - have been - um. They've been in the wrong sort of environment."

"By wrong," and I stressed that, gently, "do you mean war-torn and exploited, or do you mean Martian?"

There was a pause.

"Well," started the man.

"Application denied," I said.

Lauretta confronted me alone, after that one. "You can't deny applications."

"Then why am I here?"

"We don't have enough families as it is!" she snapped. "Do you think anyone out there wants to adopt Martian kids? It's a stigma, on them, on the children."

"I'm not going to have a child raised in an environment that defames their heritage."

"Then you're dooming another child to be raised in an environment where there's barely enough to eat. Where they're living all together, crowded and lonely, and utterly homeless-"

I turned away. At that second, that instant, her words, her expression, her body language were horrific, to me. I wasn't sure I could control my actions.

"I'm just trying to take care of these kids," she said, finally.

I was silent.

"We'll deny their application," said Lauretta. "Try not to do that too much."

I nodded, once.

"Right." She sighed, softly. "Right," and I heard the door shut behind her.