In 1979, Richard Miller’s life had been reduced to silence. At thirty-four, he was a widow; his wife, Aipe, had died two years earlier after a long illness. His house, once filled with dreams of children, now resonated with emptiness. The evenings were the hardest: Richard sat at the kitchen table under the yellowish light of a single bulb, staring at the peeling painted paper while the ticking of the clock told him to pass time. His friends urged him to remarry, to start over, to fill the emptiness. But Richard wasn’t interested in starting over. He was bound by the promise Apple had made him on the hospital bed: “Don’t let love die with me. Give me somewhere to go.”
That promise drove him on, because he had no idea where it would take him until his rainy, old pickup truck broke down near the Santa Maria Orphanage on the outskirts of the city. He went inside to use the phone, shaking off the wetness, but his muffled cry dragged him down the dark hallway. The narrow room, rows of boxes, were right next to each other. Inside there were two girls, all with dark skin, with large brown eyes, extending their fragile arms.
The cries were not at the same time, but superimposed: one whimpering, another licking, others moaning, forming a heartbreaking chorus. Richard froze. Nine babies.
A young nurse looked at her. She explained in a low voice that the girls had been found together, brought down on the church steps at night, returned to the same house. “There are only two of you,” she said in a low voice. “I’m willing to adopt you, maybe two, but all of them. She’ll separate them soon.”
That word, “separated, ” cut through him like a blade. Richard weighed Appe’s plea, his belief that the family wasn’t blood, but election. He choked up as he gasped, “What if someone takes them all?”
The nurse almost laughed. “The babies? Sir, no one can raise babies. Not alone. Not even. People would think you were crazy.”
But Richard couldn’t hear their questions anymore. He approached the houses, and one of the babies looked at him with surprised curiosity, as if recognizing him. Another grabbed his hand. A third gave a giggle. Something inside him broke. The emptiness that had been heavy became something heavier, but alive. Responsibility.
“I’ll take them,” he said.
The decision sparked a paperwork war. Social workers called her imprudent. Relatives called her a complete idiot. Neighbors were snorting behind their curtains: What’s a white man doing with black babies? Some people were saying even uglier things. But Richard gave in.
She sold her truck, Appe’s jewelry, and her own tools to buy formula, diapers, and supplies. She begged for extra work at the factory, patched roofs on weekends, worked around the clock at the restaurant. Every penny was for those girls. She built their houses by hand, boiled baby bottles on the stove, and washed piles of dyed clothes in her backyard like war tubs.
He learned that each touch calmed each baby. He learned to braid hair with clumsy fingers. He spent nights awake, catching his breaths in the dark, terrified of losing even his breath.
The outside world judged him to be tough. The mothers at school raised suspicions. The strangers in the supermarkets stared at him. Once, the man spat at his feet and jeered: “You’ll regret this.” But regret never came. Instead, it was the first time the two laughed at the same time, arriving at the music store. There will be nights when the storms cut the power, and he will hold them all until they fall asleep in his arms. There will be birthdays with crooked cakes, and Christmas mornings with pairs of hands destroying wrapped presents and old newspaper.
They became the “Nine Millers” to outsiders. To Richard, they were simply their daughters. Each became their own person: Sarah with the loudest laugh, Roth with his shy grasp on his shirt, Naomi and Esther with their cookie cutters, Leah with her tender kindness, Mary with her silent fortress, and Happiness, Rachel, and Deborah, inseparable and always filling the house with chatter.
It wasn’t easy. Money was tight, her body was worn down by endless torment, but she let her despair show. To her daughters, she was strong, and that conviction gave her strength. They withstood the test, proving that love—true love—was stronger than prejudice.
By the late 1990s, her hair had thinned, her back had become hunched, and one by one, the girls had become women who went off to college, to work, and to start their own families. The house fell silent again, but Richard knew the silence was different now. It wasn’t empty, it was content. The night the last daughter passed away, he sat alone with the scarred photo of the small pearls on her necklace and said, “I kept my promise, Appe.”
Decades passed. The women prospered: teachers, nurses, artists, mothers. They built lives, but always came home for the holidays, packing their house with so much heat and heat that the walls seemed ready to burst. Richard, once criticized and ridiculed, lived to see his promise blossom.
In 2025, 46 years later, Richard sat, frail but proud, in his graceful chair. Around him, radiant women in cream-colored dresses, their hands resting lightly on each other’s shoulders, their faces beaming with pride. Cameras clicked, headlines opened: In 1979, he adopted two black girls. See them now.
But for Richard, it wasn’t about headlines. It was about coming full circle. The babies no one loved had become women everyone admired.
Grace came over and whispered, “Dad, you did it. You made us happy.”
Richard’s lips trembled with a smile. “No,” he said. “ We did it . Love did it.”
For the first time in decades, she shed tears openly. Her promise had not only been kept, but had become her legacy.
