Bloodlines

Anne Rudig

After my wedding, my father pulled me aside and whispered, Be sure to take his name. Ours is cursed.

I knew what he meant: the toddler son who disappeared into the Sierra woods, the cousin drowned in grandma’s pool, the aunt who went up in flames while smoking in bed, the grandfather who’d thrown himself from a flophouse window. All of this as the family fortune dwindled to nothing and our once-grand tum Suden family name faded to obscurity.

I’d spent my life trying to become worthy of that family name. Well-off and socially prominent, my parents had adopted me seven years after they lost their young son. I’d been told my original mother was the unmarried daughter of a farmer and couldn’t afford to keep me. She remains unnamed, unknown, along with my original father, the two people with whom I do share blood. 

Blood was important because it established my adoptive family’s stature, laid claim to our part in early California history. My parents counted pioneers, miners, a Union army captain, abolitionists, ranchers, leaders of private universities, and prominent attorneys in their genealogy. Bloodline mattered to the family I was brought into, the blood of early builders of the American West.

I don’t know if my original family ever gave me a name. When I was adopted, I was given my father’s last name—tum Suden—the name he said was cursed. Mom always said I had no middle name because tum Suden was confusing enough as a surname; a one-syllable first name was all that was needed so I grew up as Anne tum Suden. But my sister, who came along four years after me, was Melinda O’Neil tum Suden, with the O’Neil family name from my mother’s side. The lost son also had a middle name and I wondered if Mom had made up that story about the need for a simple name. I understood I was different, and it seemed natural she’d think of me that way. 

I know nothing of my own ancestors—where they came from, when they arrived, what they have become. My birth certificate remains sealed to protect my adoptive parents’ desire for secrecy, although they’re both long gone. Their branch of the family and their name ended with me. So when I got married, I took my father’s advice—who wouldn’t?

Growing up, I felt the difference between my sister and me, but it wasn’t because I was adopted. It was because I was healthy. Naked with her in the bath, I tried to minimize my strong brown legs and broad shoulders. I turned away from the scar that traveled along her shoulder blade, under her arm, and across her chest—the cut that had allowed access to her heart. The youngest survivor of open-heart surgery at that time, Mindy was pale, her blue veins visible, arms and legs thin, knees and elbows knobbly. She was fragile and it frightened me. 

We never talked about the deep differences between us—she the sickly kid in and out of hospitals, me the picture of glowing California health. I worked hard at maintaining my sturdy identity, assuring the pediatrician that no, nothing ever hurt, and no, having strep throat wasn’t so bad. I’d get over whatever I needed to because I was the healthy one. This made my parents love me more because I was less trouble and expense. Or so I hoped. 

I would have done anything to make my sister better, but I secretly enjoyed my status as the kid who never got sick. I knew this made me a bad person, but it felt as though it was for a larger purpose. If I caused no worry, then my family wouldn’t fall apart under the stress of Mindy’s constant illnesses.

At the beginning of second grade, Mindy developed a cold that wouldn’t go away. She’d get a little better and then a new one would blossom. When I’d arrive home from school, she’d be in bed with a coloring book, her stuffed green bunny tucked under one arm, a vaporizer puffing nearby. After several visits to the doctor, it was decided that she should have her tonsils removed. In 1960, this was a routine operation; most of the kids in her class had already been through it. But I should have known it wouldn’t be routine for Mindy. 

        On our favorite TV show, The Doctors, the young girls in hospital beds always had plump, rosy cheeks and perfect pigtails. I didn’t expect that when I visited Mindy, but I wasn’t prepared to see her in the ICU either. Everything was a sad pinkish beige—walls, curtains, plastic chairs, and linoleum floor. My swimmer’s legs felt powerful beneath me, my healthy body out of place. Her tiny bed was covered in clear plastic that rose to a peak in the middle. Could that frail figure within the oxygen tent be Mindy? She moved like a newborn, her head bobbing as she pushed herself up with great effort. I was told I should not get close because I could be carrying a contagious disease, so I held my breath for as long as I could, exhaling in small, shallow pants. When Mindy’s weak smile appeared beneath a pile of curly auburn hair, I finally recognized my sister.  

I waved back as though everything was great, as if we were about to put on a show on the front lawn or run through the sprinklers. “Our dog misses you!” My voice was too loud for the ICU but I kept going. “So you better come home soon!” She seemed glad to see me, gladder than anyone before or since. But unable to hold her head up for long, she lowered herself down and went right back to sleep. 

During the tonsillectomy they discovered that Mindy lacked a clotting factor. She needed so many transfusions that Mom begged friends and neighbors to donate blood. The disorder might have been inherited from my mother, who had severe anemia throughout her childhood. Like many women of her era, she referred to her periods—which were heavy, prolonged, and sent her to bed—as the curse. 

The blood I wished was mine almost killed Mindy. I began to wonder whether it wasn’t such a bad thing we weren’t related, but the thought felt so disloyal I dismissed it as soon as I could. I desperately wanted to be Mindy’s real sister. And my family’s real child.

Mindy died two years later in the middle of another surgery to repair the leaky valve in her heart. It was a shock to all of us, although it had been right in front of us every day. Somehow she had always managed to come home from the hospital, and we figured that she’d simply pulled off another miracle. 

A few weeks after my sister’s death, Mom said to me, “I’m angry at God.” We were out walking the dog and her voice was barely above a whisper. 

I wanted to offer Mom comfort, but it was too hard for me. I was still wrestling with who I was without Mindy. “I can see why,” I said, matching my tone to hers.  

“The autopsy report said she would never have had children,” Mom said, her voice beginning to crack. “They didn’t have to tell me that!”

We walked in silence, and I realized that Mom was not only grieving Mindy’s absence, but also what would never be—Mindy’s wedding and her future children, the lengthening of bloodline, the hope of burying the curse with new life. Whenever we faced a difficult moment, Mom always invoked the memory of her great-aunt Mary, who crossed the Plains in a wagon train to California at the age of thirteen. With Mindy’s death, my parents lost the chance to add to the legacy of great-aunt Mary that made them so proud and gave them solace.

We all knew I wasn’t part of that. My parents had given me so much, and I’d always enjoyed the stories of their colorful family, but they couldn’t give me their bloodline; they could only pretend. Mom’s glorious family tree suddenly seemed fragile after God had taken away all her babies. All except the one who wasn’t really hers. 

The last time I saw Mom was in her tiny apartment in a strip mall outside of Sacramento, where she confided she was living on gin and chocolate. She pointed to boxes in her closet that she wanted to be sure I received after her death. Two weeks later she suffered a massive heart attack and eventually the boxes—full of family letters, photos, and documents—arrived at my home in New York City. I had little desire to wade into the curse in all its detail. But I also knew there might be traces of me in there. There was a map of the Brush Creek gold mine, where my father was manager until their toddler son wandered into the woods never to return. There were documents detailing the sale of family land on Venice Island where Dad had worked until a drought shut it down. A photo of sullen German POWs in the back of Dad’s truck, arriving to work on his farm during World War II. More photos of my grandmother’s gracious estate in Redwood City and its meandering gardens where I’d hunted for Easter eggs. Also pictures of Dad’s Pacific Heights mansion where he learned to ride a bike inside the ballroom. The clippings of my parents’ courtship and marriage from the society pages. Mindy’s stuffed green rabbit, Bugs. And a portrait of Mom holding a snoozing five-month-old me, gazing down with all the longing and love in her being.

Once I found the courage, I spent the next two years carefully researching, curating, and preserving the tum Suden legacy. I traveled to the Gold Rush town of Downieville where their son had disappeared, to the village of Volcano where the Union army captain had settled after the Civil War, to the Central Valley where the family had farmed and ranched. I searched, photographed, recorded, joined Ancestry.com and chatted there with one of Dad’s relatives. When he found out I was Dad’s adopted daughter, he told me about a college friend who’d accidentally married his own sister. Adopted by different families, they didn’t know they were related. He thought I’d find this amusing. Or maybe he was just making conversation with the only adoption story he knew. Dad’s relative had been unaware of Mindy and our lost brother so he promptly added them to the family tree.

He did not add me. 

I was not one of them, yet I still worked to become worthy of my father’s name by documenting all that had befallen the family. I became the careful keeper of the tum Suden secrets and achievements, putting the curse to rest in sixteen gray archival boxes. It was what I wished I could also do for my unknown, unnamed family, for my own grown children, and their children to come.