Mary’s infant sister, just six months old when a woman claiming to be a social services nurse took them from the family’s porch, would live in the TCHS facility for only two months.
“The babies weren’t given proper food or medical care,” said Mrs. Sykes. “I remember sitting on the floor in a room full of cribs, reaching through the bars and just patting my sister’s arm. She was too weak and dehydrated to even cry. No one would help her. Once it was clear that she was too far gone to recover, a worker put her in a cardboard box and carried her away. I never saw her again. I heard later that, if babies got too sick or cried too much, they’d set them in the sun in a carriage and leave them. I have children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren now. I can’t imagine how anyone could do those things to kids, but it happened. We were tied to beds and chairs; we were beaten, held under the bathwater; we were molested. It was a house of horrors.”
Over the course of three decades, children under the care of TCHS are reported to have disappeared en masse, their paperwork often vanishing along with them, leaving no record of their lives. If biological family members came looking for information or petitioned the courts, they were simply told that the children had been adopted and the records were sealed.
Operating under the protection of Boss Crump, Memphis’s notorious political kingpin, Georgia Tann’s network was seemingly untouchable.
The remainder of the article gives details about the brokering of children to wealthy parents and Hollywood celebrities, the grieving birth families left behind, the allegations of physical and sexual abuse. The last lines are a quote from a man who runs a website called The Lost Lambs.
“The Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society had scouts everywhere—at social services offices, at rural medical clinics, in poor neighborhoods and shacktowns. Babies were often given to social workers and officials who might stand in Tann’s way. Adoptive parents were sometimes blackmailed for more money, threatened with having their adopted children taken from them. Georgia Tann cultivated the protection of Boss Crump and the family court system. Ultimately, she enjoyed the freedom to alter lives at her discretion. She played God and seemingly had no regrets. In the end, Georgia Tann died of cancer before she could be forced to answer charges. Powerful people wanted to see the case closed, and so it was.”
“This is…” I pause to search for a word. I’m about to say incredible, but it isn’t the right term. “Appalling. It’s hard to imagine that something like this could happen, and on such a large scale…for years.”
“TCHS wasn’t forced to close until 1950.” Clearly, Trent shares my mix of horror, astonishment, and rage. Mary Sykes’s story of touching her dying sister makes me think of my nieces and nephews and the bonds they have with their siblings. Courtney used to climb into the triplets’ cribs and fall asleep with them if she heard them crying at night.
“I just can’t…I can’t imagine.” I’ve prosecuted abuse cases and corruption cases, but this is so large-scale. Dozens and dozens of people must have known what was happening. “How could everyone have just ignored this?”
It dawns on me then. I have family from Tennessee. They were political, influential. They held various state, judicial, and federal offices. Were they aware of this? Did they turn a blind eye to it? Was that the reason Grandma Judy involved herself with Trent Turner, Sr.? Was she trying to right the family wrongs?
Maybe she didn’t want it to come out that her family had cooperated with these monstrous acts, perhaps even supported them?
The blood drains from my head, and I reach out to steady myself on the wall. My cheeks feel cold despite the warmth of the summer day.
Trent’s face offers concern as he stands poised to open the door. “You’re sure?”
He doesn’t look any more certain than I am. We’re like two kids trying to dare ourselves into forbidden territory. Is he hoping I’ll change my mind and spare both of us whatever details await?
“The truth always comes out sooner or later. I’m of the belief that you’re better off knowing about it first.” But even as I say it, I wonder. My entire life, I’ve been so certain that we were above reproach. That our family was an open book. Maybe that was na?ve of me. What if, all these years, I’ve been wrong?
Trent looks down at his shoes, kicks a loose shell off the porch decking. It bounces against a red toy tractor that looks particularly poignant at this moment. “I’m afraid what I’m going to find out in here is that my grandfather’s adoption was something like the ones in that article where it mentions giving kids to government officials to keep them quiet. My granddad’s adoptive father was a Memphis police sergeant. They weren’t the kind of people who would’ve had a bunch of money to fund an expensive adoption….” He trails off as if he doesn’t want to put any more words to the story, but in his eyes there’s a mirror of my own fear. Do we carry the guilt from the sins of past generations? If so, can we bear the weight of that burden?
Trent opens the door and, perhaps, the mystery.
Inside, the cottage is low-roofed and shadow-filled. The white plank walls are crackled and faded, and window glass hangs crooked in the wooden frames. The air smells of dust and mildew and something else that takes a moment to register. Pipe tobacco. The odor instantly reminds me of my Grandpa Stafford. His office at the Lagniappe house always held this scent and still does.
Trent flips on the light, and the bulb flickers stubbornly in a Deco-era fixture that is out of step with the rest of the place.
We move into the tiny one-room structure. It contains a large desk that looks as if it could have been bought at a library sale, two file cabinets, a small wooden table, and a couple odd chairs. An old, black rotary phone still sits on the desktop. There’s a canister of wooden pencils, a stapler, a three-hole punch, an ashtray that hasn’t been cleaned, a gooseneck desk lamp, an electric typewriter in faded olive green. Shelves along the back wall sag under their load of stacked file folders, aging binders, loose papers, magazines, and books.
Trent sighs, running a hand through his hair. He seems too big for this small space. His head is only about six inches from the rafters, which I see now are hand-hewn with notches in them, most likely salvaged shipwreck timbers.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He shakes his head, then shrugs, indicating a hat, a vintage umbrella with a dragon carved into the handle, and a pair of blue boat shoes. All three wait by the coat hooks, seemingly in hopes of their owner returning. “It feels like he’s here, you know? He smelled like this place most of the time.”
Trent opens the blinds, illuminating the bulletin boards that line the walls.
“Look,” I whisper, dust catching in my throat.
There are literally dozens of photos, some bearing the bold colors of modern photography, some in the washed-out hues of old Polaroids, some in shades of black and gray with white frames around the edges bearing dates: July 1941, December 1936, April 1952…
Trent and I stand side by side, staring at the wall, each lost in our own thoughts, awed and horrified at once. I take in images—children’s faces juxtaposed with adult faces. The resemblances are evident. These are mothers and fathers and kids, presumably birth families who were separated from one another. The children’s pictures now hang next to more recent photos of the adults they became.
I look into the eyes of a beautiful woman, her smile vibrant, her hip jutting out as she rests a baby on it. An oversized dress and an apron hang loose on her frame, making her seem like a child playing dress-up. She couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen.
What could you tell me? I wonder. What happened to you?