"A Carp in the Tub" is an artists' collaboration between Photographer Louise Hagger, Creative Director and Writer Victoria Granof, and set designer Jojo Li.

A Carp in the Tub
Victoria Granof

“What’s the matter with her?” Irving Penn asked his studio manager.

For the seven years since Vogue editor Phyllis Posnick had brought me on board to help Mr. Penn with his food pictures, I had procured a forty seven-year old lobster, scoured deepest Brooklyn for roosters, smuggled tropical fruit in my suitcase, tracked down square watermelon in Tokyo and maintained an appropriate aura of composure on set. But this day, on a winter Friday in 2005, I was not so composed.

I’d always assumed I’d be someone’s mother someday, but didn’t give much thought to when or with whom that would happen. Thinking back, it was just as well, since my tastes ran to married Sicilians and white-collar criminals. Great father candidates they were not and anyway I would have neither the patience nor inclination for long-term collaboration in the realm of parenting.

By the time I realized it was getting too late it was already too late.

My friend Tony who runs a bed & breakfast in the Veneto thought I should just stay there for the summer and find some hot young sperm donor on the beach in Jesolo. That could get messy though and my luck I’d probably end up having two mouths to feed instead of just a baby’s. I considered my options as a single parent who doesn’t love compromise and landed on international adoption. It appealed for its elegant simplicity; I would enjoy unilateral control and would not one day be faced with a birth mother finding me on Facebook or showing up to reclaim her child after I’d done all the heavy lifting and survived the kid’s puberty.

In parts of Eastern Europe and especially Ukraine the Aryan look is prized above all, and there are Aryan babies in abundance. The ethnic stain of gypsy blood exists as well but is largely ignored like a mole on your shoulder that doesn’t get bigger but doesn’t go away either. Until the laws governing intercountry adoption changed dramatically in 2008, Ukraine trafficked very profitably in blonde babies to white families in the U.S. and Western Europe. And Ukraine was more than pleased to offload the gypsy children onto single adoptive parents - so long as you weren’t gay. (I would have lied about that anyway)
I’d love a plucky little Roma baby, so Ukraine was where I’d go.
And then the fun began.

If bio parents had to go through what adoptive parents do, the U.S. birthrate would plummet.

To qualify as an adoptive parent, you must first fill out the longest form of your life. And get it notarized and apostilled. (I didn’t know what that was either) Then you need to be fingerprinted manually on forms that no longer exist. My local precinct was kind enough to call in a retired cop with a retired fingerprinting kit when it was clear I wouldn’t leave – or stop my hysterical sobbing - until they did. I had to also be fingerprinted at the State level and for a third time at Homeland Security because the federal and state databases weren’t synced.
I hope they are now.

Along with all the fingerprints, I filled out a very important form with the addresses of every single place I’d lived since the age of eighteen so they could run a background check for child abuse. Alarmingly, this would only apply in NY State so I suppose they don’t care what you’ve done so long as you don’t do it here. Additionally I submitted a medical exam, tax returns for the previous three years, three letters of recommendation - one professional and two personal, a letter from someone official (the super in my building) saying I was not gay, proof of life insurance and health insurance, a letter from my sister stating she and her husband would be responsible for my child if I suddenly dropped dead; notarized and apostilled copies of my driver’s license and passport and a home study by a licensed social worker who spent two hours drinking my coffee, grilling me on my upbringing, my parenting philosophy (my philosophy is to keep them alive until the age of eighteen and then off to college they go), my work, my support system, my childcare plans, where the baby would sleep, (under the sink?) and whether I’ve met any celebrity chefs in my line of work. Two weeks and fifteen hundred dollars later she sent me her multi-page report, the letter of approval and a recipe for lentil soup. Everything but the recipe had to be notarized and apostilled and the whole dossier sent by DHL to the National Adoption Center in Kiev.

Three months later I received an official invitation to appear at the NAC. With the invitation came instructions, the most important being the optional “expediting” fee. This I was invited to pay to avoid having to choose from the hundreds of adoptable children with minor correctable medical difficulties such as a missing leg, a cleft palate or a faulty aorta. This expediting fee ($7500) was to be tendered in uncirculated, non-sequential ten dollar bills. In person, when I got there, to a man named Oleg. Oleg.

Shortly before I was to leave I went to the Bank of America, with whom I banked, and requested the cash as specified. They would have to order it from the Federal Reserve and that would take a few days. No problem, I can wait. As if by divine decree, three days later I found myself with an assignment at Mr. Penn’s studio, directly across the street from my bank. LUCKY! During lunch break I popped into the bank for my cash only to be informed that they were unable to process it since tens came in bundles of $10,000 and they just couldn’t be left with the remaining $2500 laying around. WHAT IS THIS A FREAKING HOT DOG STAND??? I shrieked; You are the BANK of freaking AMERICA and you are supposed to have cash laying around! Lucky for you we have gun control laws.

Looking like a hungover raccoon from sobbing in the stairwell, I came back to the studio, enraged and helpless and wondering if I had it in me to raise a one-legged child.

What’s the matter with her? Mr. Penn asked his studio manager.

Both she and Phyllis had followed my journey from the beginning but it hadn’t seemed appropriate to share details with Mr. Penn and he never inquired anyway. But he knew. One well-placed phone call and fifteen minutes later I was exchanging a wad of cash for $7500 in uncirculated, non-sequential ten dollar bills with his personal banker.

From Mr. Penn I learned to see when enough is enough; I learned that there can’t be too many important things in one picture; that etiquette has a place on set, and that when I look in the eyes of my surly, ill-tempered teenager, I have Mr. Penn’s quiet generosity to thank.