- Barbara Lane spent decades looking for nine of her 10 sisters, who their mom abandoned.
- She called random numbers in the phone book and hired a private investigator as part of the search.
- Lane reunited with her siblings after 46 years. They had been looking for her too.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Barbara Lane. It has been edited for length and clarity.
These days, people tend to use at-home DNA kits from companies including Ancestry.com to trace their missing relatives.
But there were no websites such as 23andMe in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s when I was searching for nine of my 10 sisters, whom I'd last seen as a preschooler.
Instead, I went through the telephone directory and called people with my last name. I'd ask whether they had a Ruth, an Ellen, or a Laverne in the family.
They were the eldest of my sisters. I'd ask for the others in turn — Annie, Bobby, the twins Vicky and Micky, and Pamela. I always knew where Kay was because we were fostered together.
Unbeknownst to me, we had another sister called Cindy — our mother's youngest daughter. She was born after eight of us went to an orphanage. Our mother had left one day and never returned. The two older girls were married and no longer lived with us in the projects. One of my sisters, Laverne, ran away from the orphanage.
I really had no memories of my mother
I was too young to recall what happened to break up the family. But, at the orphanage in our home city of St. Louis, I remember a deep love. I had a strong attachment to my sisters. They'd sing to me, pamper me at bedtime, rub my back, and brush my hair.
A married couple fostered Kay and I in 1955. I hadn't experienced trauma when my mother left us; I really had no memories of her. My trauma was being separated from my sisters.
Our foster father sexually abused me from the beginning — I didn't know he was abusing Kay, too. We lived in a little two-bedroom bungalow. It's incomprehensible to think that our foster mother could not know what was occurring. She turned a blind eye and allowed it for her own benefit; her husband was calmer and less violent when he was "satisfied."
I thought of my other siblings every day. I leafed through phone books and dialed strangers on our old rotary phone. "When can I see my sisters?" I asked our foster parents. "Don't talk about that," they said.
My foster father had a gun. "If you speak out, I'll kill all of us," he'd say about the abuse. I believed him. I cared so much for my sister; I didn't tell anyone. I became sullen, depressed, and withdrawn. When I was 14, my depression was so deep I told him to go ahead and shoot me dead. I didn't care anymore. He lost his control over me, and the abuse stopped.
Kay and I left as soon as we turned 18. I got married a year later and had three children. But I struggled with unwanted memories. Then, after our foster mother died, I felt free enough to search for our sisters in earnest. This time, I began by looking through microfiche at a library. I hoped that, if something newsworthy had happened to my family, the newspapers may well have reported it.
I'd always been intuitive and sensed my sisters would find me
Instead, I found a picture in a newspaper of me and 10 of my sisters together. My mom and dad were standing next to us. We were photographed because there was such a large number of girls in one family — and no boys.
My desire to be reunited with my siblings consumed me. I searched adoption registries at Catholic Charities, which ran the orphanage. At one point, I hired a private detective. But he couldn't find them.
But a miracle transpired. I've always been an intuitive and spiritual person. One day in 1997, after my family had moved to the East Coast, I sensed that it would be my sisters who found me and not the other way around. My sister, Ellen, who had always known the whereabouts of my other sisters, had kept a newspaper clipping that she had framed. Kay and I were pictured in an article promoting foster care. Ironically, it was talking about the "wonders" of the system.
The article intrigued Ellen's friend, an amateur sleuth, and he went to a register office in St. Louis. He managed to look through marriage records in case he found a bride whose maiden name matched the one in our article. He found Kay's marriage license. And with that information, he found her number. My sisters reached out to Kay, but before she had a chance to contact me, they called me.
I flew to St. Louis the next day. Meeting Ellen and some of my other sisters was one of the most emotional moments of my life. I knew they would love me the way they always did. When we met, I just fell into their arms. It felt like we were glued together. I could hardly believe that we'd spent 46 years apart.
Each of my sisters recalls the past in a different way
It was a true sisterhood. When we were kids, we didn't understand what was going on around us. But we took care of each other.
As adults, each of my sisters recalls our past in a different way. One sister said that our mother never intended to abandon us. Another said that she disconnected the electricity and water and simply walked out the door.
I've recently published a memoir, "Broken Water," about each of our journeys. We'll always have a connection.
