‘Orphanage babies don’t cry’: My adoption journey

Hoping to give another abandoned child a home, Sarah Salmon visits an orphanage in Cambodia.

Idon’t want a biological child. Most people think that’s odd. In fact, they don’t believe me. But after three rounds of supposedly “non-invasive” fertility treatment, I am 100 per cent sure.

“You don’t want to try IVF?” my husband, Ben, asks regularly.

“Positive,” I say.

I look into my 18-month-old daughter’s black possum eyes every day – beautiful eyes gifted to her by her birth mother – and I am saturated with love. I squish Sophea’s Cambodian button nose against my pointy Caucasian one and I inhale her sweet scent. It’s an unbeatable high.

My awe and adoration of this perfect child couldn’t be any stronger with a genetic child. I want to adopt again and give another abandoned child a home.

So here I am in a Cambodian orphanage. Languid babies and toddlers sit at my feet. A young boy with scarred legs and tangled hair bounces over to me. He runs in circles around me and I smile as I try to catch him in my arms. When he darts away, his giggle fractures the quietness of the room.

“That boy three years,” says Vichet, the orphanage director, in a rough voice. He waves his chubby hand dismissively at the boy, as though he’s a product past its use-by date. “Italian family will adopt.”

The boy looks up at me and beams – a rare sighting in an orphanage. One of his eyes closes in a cheeky wink.

I lunge at him playfully and grab his waist, “Caught you!”

He tilts his head back, opens his mouth wide to laugh and reveals brown-stained teeth. His happy shrieks echo across the room’s ceramic tiles and ricochet off the scuffed walls, the lightness in his sound a stark contrast to the dark mood of this unhappy place.

Vichet points to a toddler standing in the corner next to a pile of bricks. Twig legs poke from beneath his pot belly like an M&M cartoon character. Yet, this child lacks the gaiety of those candy-covered chocolate guys. His expression is dull to match his brittle hair, its bleached colour a sign of malnourishment. The boy clasps a plastic comb; a toy of sorts in this one-room home devoid of playthings. “He free to adopt. Mother not want. She raped.”

My spine jolts and I look at the innocent child, a product of violence, discarded like rubbish.

His unwashed jumpsuit hangs loose at his knees, about five sizes too big, the buttons undone. One sleeve flaps at his elbow as it falls off his shoulder.

Vichet gestures to an infant cradled in the lap of a nanny sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“That boy also can adopt.”

A daunting feeling swamps me.

There is no point in crying; they know no one will come for them, so they shut down. They carry a morbid moroseness. It’s the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.

I glance over to Sophea, who sits balanced on Ben’s hip. Her fringe is stuck to her forehead with sweat from the humid air. I want her to engage with the children, to be drawn to one, to help me choose, but she’s busy tugging Ben’s earlobe as though she’s stretching Play-Doh.

I remember the day we met her in an orphanage not far from here, on the other side of Phnom Penh. Her orphanage had the same dormitory feel, the same silence.

Orphanage babies don’t cry. There is no point in crying; they know no one will come for them, so they shut down. They carry a morbid moroseness. It’s the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.

Sophea’s orphanage had similar dark, wooden cots pushed up against one another like a row of crates, but the cots in this building are used to store blankets and clothes instead of sleeping babies. The babies here lie in olive-green hammocks that look homemade; canvas sheets roughly assembled to bamboo sticks at either end.

An infant with a head like a bowling ball sleeps in one hammock, its disproportionately small body moulded into the curve of the hanging fabric.

“What about that baby?” I ask Vichet, pointing to the hammock. I immediately regret my question. It feels so coarse, so business-like … so wrong.

This is not what I envisioned when we booked our flights to Phnom Penh. This is nothing like our first meeting with Sophea, when my eyes welled with tears the moment I held her featherweight body; my voice cracked and a strong maternal spark ignited within me as I stared at her angelic face. Today, I am no more than a heartless meat-trader standing in a marketplace that has no room for emotions.

Vichet shakes his head and scrunches up his face like someone who has sucked on a lemon wedge. “Sick. Has deformity.” He nods to another infant lying idle in a green canvas cocoon that acts more like a cage. “That girl baby can adopt. Two month old.”

Mittens with cartoon bears cover the baby’s tiny hands. A bib, to catch the dribble oozing down her double chin, partially hides a raw rash on her neck that looks sweaty and sore. A red Buddhist thread is tied around her wrist, like the one Sophea wore when we adopted her. Sophea wasn’t plump like this baby. I remember her stick arms when I first held her; a frail bird fallen from its nest.

A small dog trots inside, its claws clicking the tiles. Ben puts Sophea down so she can pat it and his gaze moves around the room to study the children. Sixteen years as a couple have taught me to read his mind but Ben’s face is blank today, offering no hints to his thoughts. I too scan the faces of the sedate children around us, hoping I’ll feel a connection with one.

Sophea still shows no interest in any of them. She’s more enamoured with the white fluff ball she chases to the doorway. It’s unfair to expect a reaction from her that might sway me towards a particular baby, a job too onerous for a child. The scruffy dog rolls on its back for a tummy rub and Sophea chuckles, her joy lifting the darkness in the room.

The only other child to have made a noise since we arrived is the boy with the cheeky smile. He now sits sombrely, dragging his finger across the grey floor. Sophea was just as withdrawn as the kids in this home when we met her nine months ago, but we gave her the chance to escape the cage of her orphanage, to fly. These children are enclosed by flaking eggshell-yellow walls, jailed by security grilles on the windows. My stomach sinks. I need to free one of these babies, yet I don’t know where to begin.

Breathing in deeply to clear my head, I feel my chest rise. A drop of sweat runs from my cleavage to my navel and I pinch the front of my cotton dress, flapping it in and out to fan myself in this stifling room. I feel overwhelmed. Sick. Saddened by the crassness of Vichet and angry at the way we have fronted up to this place and flashed our privilege like peacocks fanning their tails.

Swallowing hard, I walk over to Ben and lean into his muscly shoulder. “It feels wrong,” I whisper. “Like baby shopping.”

He rubs my back. “Let’s get outta here.” Ben steps towards Vichet and extends his arm for a handshake. “Okay, thank you. We’ll have a think about it and call you tomorrow.”

“Okay, okay,” says Vichet.

“‘It feels wrong,’ I whisper. ‘Like baby shopping.’”

I smile at Vichet, thank him in Khmer – “Orkun” – and place my palms together at my face in the Cambodian sampeah.

Vichet walks us outside, the soles of his rubber sandals dragging, as if he can’t be bothered to lift his feet. The late morning sunlight makes me squint. I look at my shoes. They flatten the weeds as I step across the damp earth.

I wonder if the plants will bounce back from the damage I cause. Will the poor kids in the building behind me recover from the damage of institutional living? It’s my duty to help one of them.

Sarak, our driver, leaps up from a jade-green swing that sits under a mango tree. Its rusty hinges creak. He rushes to the car and opens the back door with a wide smile.

I take Sophea from Ben, lift her through the open door and strap her into her car seat, using the time to get my thoughts together. I kiss her forehead and breathe in the citrus aroma of baby shampoo in her hair before I draw away and look into her dark eyes – eyes once saturated with grief, that now shine like polished marble. Ill and malnourished after her birth mother died, we gave her a second chance at life. Our frail little bird has grown wings. Another child deserves that same chance.