The Secret Daughter (14 page)

‘Are you sure that’s what you want, Bean?’ I heard Ted’s hesitation, but I ignored it. I hit the ‘send’ button and tossed my phone onto the coffee table.

‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘But I
am
sure it’s what I
need
.’

TWELVE

Lilly—July 1973

Dear James,

I am watching the door all day and night, waiting for you to burst inside and run to me. I have thought long and hard about how everyone else will watch us, wishing it was
their
boyfriend coming to take them home. Will you catch the bus from Armidale, and come straight here? Or will you go home first, and break the news to your parents?

Any day now. You’ll come, and take me home.

The truth is, I have been trying to stay positive, especially in my letters to you, because I really don’t want you to think badly of me. I want you to be proud of how well I cope with everything, but . . . it is
beyond
awful. I am getting worn down by the sadness, the endless hard work, the constant reminders of how much I’ve ruined my life. Don’t worry, James, of course I do not believe the things they say – of course I am fit to mother this child, and
of course
it would never be better off being raised by someone else. How could I ever believe those lies? Her heart beats within
my
body. I am growing her. I am nurturing her already. She is me and you, and she
needs
us. It makes me angry to hear them say that handing her over to strangers would be for the best.

But James . . . that
is
what they say. They say it at grace at breakfast, they say it when they mark the roll of names at the laundry, they say it when they think we aren’t listening, they say it even louder when they know we are. It is the nurses, it is Mrs Sullivan, it is the doctors –this is their mantra; that we must relinquish, that it would be selfish to entertain any other possibility. They want us to believe that we can and must redeem ourselves and that the only way to do that is to hand over our children to a family constructed with better moral fabric.

It is an endless, repetitive theme of life here. The pressure to plan for adoption is constant, even from Mrs Baxter, although of course it’s delivered in her gentler way. She asks me almost every time we see each other what I will do if you do not come, and as much as I
like
her, I am starting to think that this is her more subtle way of trying to convince me to prepare for an outcome I
know
with all of my heart that I need not worry about.

I have heard the chatter among the other girls, and I know that most of them believe the lies. I wish I was braver, so that I could beg them to reconsider. I understand why it’s called brain
washing
now. We are bathed and basted in the negativity, every moment of every day.

I feel a love for this baby already, a bond with it that is stronger than anything else I’ve experienced, except perhaps for the love that I feel for you. I wonder . . . is this common to all women? If it is, then surely those who
do
sign away their children must miss them
forever
. Tonight, I heard Mrs Sullivan telling Tania that it will be as if the baby never happened and that after the birth she will be able to move on with her life as if she never made this mistake. That is
insanity
. It’s disgusting to even suggest such a thing. How could someone create a life and then forget it existed?

That’s what’s made me so upset tonight, actually. I was so confused by what Mrs Sullivan had said. To suggest that it would be as though we were never pregnant . . . well, that’s just idiotic. Don’t they know that our hearts and minds expand, just as our bodies do? I know that the babies will be born and the physical changes will mostly disappear with time, but no one could ever convince me that I could forget this child. She’s tattooed herself onto my spirit.

So when Tania came to bed, I actually tried to talk to her. Usually, I feel invisible to Tania – she doesn’t acknowledge me unless she absolutely has to, and so I’ve never tried to start a conversation. Tonight though, I desperately wanted to believe that
someone
else can see through the lies, and so I asked Tania what she thought about those things Mrs Sullivan had said.

Tania gave me that derisive eye roll that I know so well now, made some unkind comments about my naïveté, and then she told me the story of her baby’s conception. She didn’t love the man who got her pregnant. She has no interest in a future with him, and she really does believe that her baby will be better off without her. After that, Tania shut the conversation down with a few curse words and a tone that would terrify anyone. She is just so mean and so
hardened
.

I was too upset to sleep so here I am hiding in the toilet at midnight, breaking the rules in so many ways . . . writing a letter to you because again and as always, you’re my only comfort.

If I was in her situation . . . I mean, I would
never
be in her situation because I’d never be doing those things with someone I didn’t love.

Oh, James. As soon as I wrote that I felt sick with guilt, because I realised that I just did to Tania exactly what they are
all
doing to me. What right does anyone have to be so superior, heaping judgement here and there, as if
any
one of us is better than any other? That’s at the heart of all of the misery in this place, and maybe I am just as prone to it as anyone.

Is what she has done so different to what we have done? The only distinction is that you and I love each other, and apparently to the people who matter here in the home, that means absolutely nothing.

And I keep trying not to think about it, because I still am so sure that I don’t need to . . . but the truth is, James, I just don’t know what I’d do if you did
not
come for me. I would surely find
some
way to keep my baby, but if I
were
in Tania’s shoes, and there was no knight in shining armour on his way . . .

Well, I can almost understand it. Without you, I’d leave the home with the baby in tow, and I’d have nowhere to go. And even if I did find a house, I’d have no way to pay for it, let alone buy food. And if I found a job, who would look after our baby? Who would hire me, anyway – a woman with a baby but no husband? And how would I shield our baby from the whispers and the comments as she grew? Everyone would know that she was illegitimate, it would be her undoing before she learned to speak a single word.

I kind of get it … at least on a practical level . . . but the thing is, I love her, already, so much.
Too
much to just pass her over as if she was an unwanted
thing
. In spite of Tania’s anger, surely it’s the same for her, and for everyone else? This love I have for our baby is immense – so strong already that it makes me feel sick to even think about parting with her. I could just never do it. No one could ever convince me to.
Never
.

I’m getting upset again, so I’ll stop writing now because I know it’s all for nothing. I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about being left alone here. I know you’ll come – you’re probably already on your way, even while I’m writing this.

See you soon, my love.

Lilly

THIRTEEN

Sabina—April 2012

Ted and I were seated beside one another on the sofa, watching a movie on the television late on Saturday night. I had a crocheted blanket over my lap, and I was trying to remember where it came from. I’d had it for a long time. Had Mum made it for me? I couldn’t remember her giving it to me, but she must have – why else would I have carted it onto the cruise ship, to Dubai, and back to Sydney twice? I felt a strange ambiguity enjoying the warmth of the blanket. I was furious with Mum, enough that if she
had
made me the blanket, I wanted to hide it away or throw it straight into the bin. At the same time, I already missed Mum terribly, and I was strangely comforted by the thought that the blanket might have been handcrafted by her.

The ads came on. Ted, as he always did, reached for the remote and flicked the channel over a few times, searching for something to distract us until the ad break ended. He stopped on a wildlife documentary. A turtle laid eggs on a beach and swam away, and the scene faded to black, then faded back in to show the turtle eggs hatching and the baby turtles stumbling around on their uninitiated legs.

‘. . . the babies are self-sufficient from birth, by the time the eggs have hatched, the mother is long gone . . .’ the commentator seemed to find this an unremarkable fact, but I was transfixed. I watched the tiny turtles stumble their way into the ocean. Maybe in the natural world it was an ordinary thing for a mother to leave her child behind sometimes.

I shivered, returning to that vision I’d had the first time I realised I was adopted, of myself abandoned on a doorstep in the pouring rain and driving wind. I knew it
hadn’t
been like that, of course, although I didn’t have an alternative picture for my overactive imagination as yet. The one thing that
was
most definitely accurate was that, in some way or shape or form, my biological mother had at some point left the hospital without me. I knew almost nothing about her, but that simple fact was heartbreaking enough.

I paused on that thought, and Ted flicked back to the movie, unaware that I was yet again having some kind of minor breakdown, right there in his arms. We were sitting in darkness but for the TV, our faces illuminated by the flickering light of the imagery. I had disconnected from the movie now. It seemed to take so little to trigger a return to thoughts of the adoption.

I reached my hand down to my stomach and rested it there, a flesh and bone protective shield over my own pregnancy. No matter where my thoughts on my parents wandered to, they always returned to my baby. I wanted to believe that my love for my own child was going to be big enough to protect it from any threat, but I was slowly, reluctantly realising that sometimes even the greatest love a person could feel would not be enough to outweigh the bad in the world.

I reached for Ted, pressed my face into his upper arm, and started to cry.

‘Hey! What’s this?’ he asked, automatically turning to me and pulling me fully into his arms.

‘Do you think those turtles miss their mother?’

‘
What
turtles?’

‘On the nature documentary.’

‘Oh, the eggs? Miss their mother? No, of course not. They’re born self-sufficient, that’s what the narrator said.’

‘I wonder why I didn’t miss my mother. Would our baby even miss me, if it wasn’t with me?’

‘We’re talking about
babies
, Bean. You don’t remember, maybe you
did
miss her. Maybe you fretted horribly and Megan just did a wonderful job of helping you to adjust. And you don’t need to worry about our baby missing you because you’ll be right here with it.’

‘But what if something happens to me? What if I couldn’t be with our baby?’

‘Sabina, where is this coming from?’

‘If we ever find my mother, I’ll bet she’s hurt that I didn’t miss her,’ I whispered.

‘Or, she’ll be delighted that you found a happy family, and grew up to be well adjusted and content.’ He was so patient with me, always the voice of reason. I extracted myself from his arms and he protested, ‘Where are you going?’

‘I think I’ll just go to bed.’

‘Bean . . .’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know I’m c-crying because a turtle never knew its mother and that’s insane.’ I laughed, then sobbed again. ‘Ted, it’s just too horrible. It’s just too unfair, and too confusing. I can’t
bear
it.’

Ted sighed and flicked the television off.

‘You don’t have to c-come to bed with me,’ I said, through another sob that I could neither understand nor prevent.

‘Yes I do.’ Ted sighed, and pulled me close. ‘Because what you’re going through is awful, and the timing is awful, and it’s not fair so it doesn’t have to make sense. If you need to go to bed and cry over that poor lonely turtle, then I need to be right there with you.’

Less than a week after we met Hilary, she called me with an update. I know that a week doesn’t
seem
like a long time to wait, but the days had stretched and I’d thought about little else but that search for the whole time. I was walking home from school when the number flashed up on the display on my phone, and an instant adrenaline-high kicked in. I was shaking with equal parts fear and excitement.

‘I have some news,’ Hilary said, after she greeted me. I could hear the hesitation in her voice, and my mood sank with her tone as she added, ‘It’s not great.’

My footsteps slowed and then stopped.

‘Okay,’ I said.

Hilary started talking, but she was giving me too much information about legislation and too little information about my actual situation. Eventually, I wrapped my brain around the basic idea – her hands were tied.

‘. . . so you see, I can only release to you information which I’m sure is about your own birth. And I have reviewed the records from the hospital for the date on your birth certificate and there’s just no one to match you to. Whatever happened, it didn’t happen by the usual procedures.’

‘What does that even
mean
?’

‘There were two components to birth registration; each individual birth certificate which was submitted to the federal authorities, and then the hospital kept a record of actual birth. So, I can see on your official birth certificate that you were born on the 10
^th
of October at the Orange hospital, but when I reviewed the files for all of the women in the maternity home at the time you were born,
none
of them gave birth on 10th October. So either your birth mother
wasn’t
confined in the home, or more likely, the date on your certificate is wrong.’

On the road beside me a push-bike rider raced past a tiny hatchback. They were going so fast – was that even safe? I breathed in the scent of exhaust fumes and tried to hold myself stiff against the coming pain. It didn’t work – the disappointment hit me. It slammed at my gut, the very same sensation a passenger feels when a plane hits unexpected turbulence.