Inside the envelope Jamal knelt and handed me at Table 14 was a court document from Shelby County Probate Court, a petition for adult adoption, granted, dated two weeks before. Jamal Banks. My son, in the eyes of the law at last, after twenty-four years and two sets of paperwork the state had lost.
But the part that took my breath was the witness signature on the second page. It was the name of the woman who left him on a church step in 2000.
Jamal had found his birth mother. She was not a villain, just a girl who had been seventeen and out of options, and she had spent twenty-four years wondering if the baby she left had been loved. Jamal told her the truth. That a foster mother named Loretta had made him pancakes the first morning and never let him go. And he asked her to witness the adoption, so that both the woman who gave him life and the woman who gave him a home would be on the same page.
Mrs. Caldwell said only real family sits up front. My son crossed an entire ballroom to kneel by the kitchen doors and show everyone what real family means.
He walked me from Table 14 to the head table himself, past Mrs. Caldwell, and he sat me in the chair with my name on it, and he gave his toast with his hand on my shoulder.
Mrs. Caldwell did not say another word about caseworkers. By the end of the night she asked, quietly, if she could call me Loretta. I said she could.
Twenty-three foster children came through my house over the years. Jamal still calls every Sunday. He signs his cards the same way now that he said his first word to me, all those years ago. Love, your pancake boy.