"David Gerrold - The Martian Child" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

From the Sept. 94 issue of Magazine of Fantasy & Science

(r) copyright 1994, by David Gerrold. All rights reserved.

David Gerrold, CIS: 70307,544



THE MARTIAN CHILD
by David Gerrold

Toward the end of the meeting, the caseworker remarked, "Oh -- and one more thing. Dennis thinks he's
a Martian."

"I beg your pardon?" I wasn't certain I had heard her correctly. I had papers scattered all over the
meeting room table -- thick piles of stapled incident reports, manila-foldered psychiatric evaluations,
Xeroxed clinical diagnoses, scribbled caseworker histories, typed abuse reports, bound trial transcripts,
and my own crabbed notes as well: Hyperactivity. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Emotional Abuse. Physical
Abuse. Conners Rating Scale. Apgars. I had no idea there was so much to know about children. For a
moment, I was actually looking for the folder labeled Martian.

"He thinks he's a Martian," Ms. Bright repeated. She was a small woman, very proper and polite. "He
told his group home parents that he's not like the other children -- he's from Mars -- so he shouldn't be
expected to act like an Earthling all the time."

"Well, that's okay," I said, a little too quickly. "Some of my best friends are Martians. He'll fit right in. As
long as he doesn't eat the tribbles or tease the feral Chtorran."

By the narrow expressions on their faces, I could tell that the caseworkers weren't amused. For a
moment, my heart sank. Maybe I'd said the wrong thing. Maybe I was being too facile with my answers.

-- The hardest thing about adoption is that you have to ask someone to trust you with a child.

That means that you have to be willing to let them scrutinize your entire life, everything: your financial
standing, your medical history, your home and belongings, your upbringing, your personality, your
motivations, your arrest record, your IQ, and even your sex life. It means that every self-esteem issue
you have ever had will come bubbling right to the surface like last night's beans in this morning's bath tub.

Whatever you're most insecure about, that's what the whole adoption process will feel like it's focused
on. For me, it was that terrible familiar feeling of being second best -- of not being good enough to play
with the big kids, or get the job, or win the award, or whatever was at stake. Even though the point of
this interview was simply to see if Dennis and I would be a good match, I felt as if I was being judged
again. What if I wasn't good enough this time?

I tried again. I began slowly. "Y'know, you all keep telling me all the bad news -- you don't even know if
this kid is capable of forming a deep attachment -- it feels as if you're trying to talk me out of this match."
I stopped myself before I said too much. I was suddenly angry and I didn't know why. These people
were only doing their job.

And then it hit me. That was it -- these people were only doing their job.