Mother land

I want to adopt a child, an Indian girl. Having been one myself, I feel uniquely positioned to teach her the kind of independence and freedom of thought that I wish I had been taught earlier. So I went to India in December to investigate the process. I hadn't been to India--land of my birth, birth of my neuroses--in 13 years. In that time I'd married a man my father found for me and divorced him when I realized I was gay.

I'd stayed away from India because I hadn't wanted to answer questions from inquisitive relatives. But in the last few years I'd been dreaming about returning. In my dreams I never made it. I missed the plane, or I left my passport at home. Once, I got all the way there; I even saw the streets of Bombay, but there was a problem with a hairbrush, and I had to be sent back.

The original plan was for me to go to India by myself. But a few days before I left, I asked my girlfriend, Marina, to join me. I needed something to stand on while I was there, some reminder of my life back home.

I knew my mother wouldn't be happy about this, so I waited until the last minute to tell her. They wouldn't be seeing each other, as I was visiting my mother in Bombay and Marina would meet me later in Delhi. But we were staying with cousins and word would get back sooner or later. When I told my mother, she said, "I asked you to keep it out of India. Why do you have you bring her here?"

I said, "I don't want to spend New Year's alone."

She said, "You won't get your other work done if anyone finds out," referring to the adoption.

"No one will suspect. I'll say we're just friends, traveling companions."

"Do what you want," she said, her voice dull with angry resignation. "You always do anyway."

I spent the first few days in Bombay fighting to keep from being swallowed up by India--loud and crowded and brown with dust and pollution. Drawing from my mother's strength, I trekked with her from one adoption agency to another, always getting the same answer: I would have to work with a U.S. agency, have a home-study done, and then wait.

Because gays and lesbians are not allowed to adopt, I told them I was single. But hiding isn't in our nature for either Marina or me. The first day she arrived in Delhi, I drew close to her on the sofa and almost kissed her. She blushed me away, and by sheer coincidence my cousins had their backs turned (we hope).

After that, I closed off Marina in my mind, thinking of her as a friend, not a lover, so I wouldn't make the mistake again.

My cousins took us shopping, and I had to ask Marina nonchalantly what she thought of this bedcover or that painting, as if I was only getting her opinion, when in fact it was a way of discovering whether she would agree to my bringing it home.

Even in the privacy of the bedroom, we kept safely to our sides. We probably wouldn't have done anything anyway in my cousin's 14-year-old daughter's bed. It didn't seem polite. But even so, we were not the same with each other. It was easier to stay in the twilight zone of watchfulness than to jump out and back into the closet every five minutes.

The ironic thing is that I think my cousins would have been fine with us as a couple. I was only protecting my mother. She had asked me when I first got divorced not to say anything to our family in Miami, where we lived. But I was rabidly out. I even took Marina to Belize, where I grew up and where a lot of my family still live. We were fighting for the globe, my mother and I, like a game of Risk, and India was now her last bastion. I've let her have it so far, but only for my own selfish reasons.

Marina and I are both out with our families and our friends. But to start a family of our own, we were told we had to go back into the closet.

That trip strained us, drained me of any desire to go back. And yet I know we will return. We want to adopt an Indian girl. We want to raise her so that when she returns to the land of her birth as a grown woman, she doesn't feel she has to hide in order to protect her mother.

Bhojwani is a lawyer, writer, standup comic, and founding partner of MoneyPants.com. She lives in Los Angeles with her girlfriend, Marina.

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