The Secret Daughter (15 page)

‘Even my birthday is a lie.’

‘It does seem as if that’s the case. And look . . . it’s not common, but this isn’t the first time I’ve come across this scenario. It was unfortunately not unheard of for the birth registration paperwork to be entirely forged to neglect the birth mother’s role altogether. For the right adoptive parents, sometimes staff would arrange this kind of thing . . . it kind of makes sense, given that Megan worked at the home.’ I was clutching the phone so hard that my fingers were aching. ‘It’s a complex puzzle, and there are too many pieces missing for us to really proceed anywhere at this point. I'm so sorry.’

The words swirled around and echoed in the sudden emptiness of my mind. All of my daydreams about finding
Her
, and feeling some cosmic connection to her, and learning and knowing
Her
. . . they disappeared in a single conversation.

‘So that's it, then. I'll never know?’

‘Not necessarily . . .’ I felt as if Hilary was with me one moment, and then gone the next. The professional tone was shifting, as if the sadness was overwhelming her too. I felt the extraordinary pity
she
felt for me. ‘But, well … from a
paperwork
standpoint . . . it really is like the adoption part of your birth never happened at all.’

Which, I suddenly understood, was exactly what my parents had wanted. They wanted to pretend I was really theirs, and then they did, for nearly four decades.

‘I can’t believe I hit a dead end already.’

‘It’s
almost
a dead end,’ Hilary confirmed softly. ‘But it's not
the
end. It just means you have to take a different route to find your answer.’

I laughed bitterly.

‘Mum?’

‘Well, there are DNA registries I can connect you with too. We take a swab from your cheek and it’s processed and compared with swabs from people all over the world, so it’s a
possible
route.’ I sighed impatiently, and heard Hilary’s answering sigh. ‘Yes, I know … it’s a long shot. But the other possibility is . . . if your adoptive mother would tell you even a first name or a real date of birth, I could probably take it from there. I just need some reliable link.’

‘Are you sure she even knows my birth mother's name? She says she doesn't.’

‘Look, maybe she's telling the truth. Maybe someone played intercessor, and maybe she really had nothing to do with your birth mother. But even if she could give us the name of the person who facilitated the adoption . . . we could potentially find a way to proceed.’

‘I just know sh-she’s not going to help,’ I whispered. My throat was tight and my words were jumpy. Disappointment sat like a heavy weight on my chest.

‘I'm really sorry, Sabina. I’ll keep digging, of course. But I wanted to let you know that at this stage, I just don’t know if we’ll find her.’

‘Thanks anyway, Hilary.’ The sinking disappointment in my stomach was there to stay, then. ‘Thanks for your call.’

I stood there for a while, beneath the canopy of oak trees that I passed through every day on my way to and from work. I realised that this closed door was probably the end of my search, and that simply could not be – I
couldn’t
allow it. I was overtaken by an urgency and desperation to
do
something,
anything
. I turned back towards school, then I changed my mind and turned towards home, and then I stopped completely and had to lean against a tree to hold myself upright.

Clarity came as suddenly as the phone call. I left the support of the tree and headed towards my house, my steps furious and fast, fuelled by a determination to force some justice for myself.

I thumped on my parent’s door with the metal knocker again. This time, I wasn’t unsure, this time I was there on a mission, and now letting myself in was actually a warning salvo. Dad answered the door, and I saw the joy that transformed his face when he saw me there. Even his affection infuriated me.

‘I need to speak to you both,’ I said. He sighed, as if I was already being unreasonable, and now I barged past him into the house. ‘Mum? Where are you?’

‘Sabina – hello, love! I’m in the bedroom,’ she called from up the stairs. I turned back to Dad.

‘Come with me.’

Dad followed me, but I could see that he was uncomfortable. When I stepped into the bedroom, Mum was carefully placing folded clothes into their chest of drawers. The happiness on her face when she saw me faded into the same wary confusion that Dad now wore on his.

I didn’t sit down. I stepped into the room and waited for Dad to join us. Then I broadened my hands and I said as calmly as I could,

‘I am
going
to find her. And if you won’t help me, you are going to lose me, and Ted, and your grandchild.’

‘Sabina, please—’

‘I’m
not
here to discuss this. I’m here to give you an ultimatum. I think you both love me; very, very much. But ever since you told me about this I’ve had a desperate, burning n-need inside myself to find her. It’s like she’s
calling
me and she has been the whole time, but I’ve only just realised. Do you understand how hard it is going to be for me to live with that?’

My parents looked shell-shocked. Mum was still holding a pair of Dad’s briefs. They stared at me in silence, even though my voice was wavering now and there were tears on my cheeks.

‘You won’t see me again, or hear from me, and I don’t want you to contact us; not if you’re sick, not when my baby comes.
Never
. I want her name, and I want my real date of birth, and until you give me those things, I don’t want
anything
– at all – to do with either of you.’

Finally, Dad cleared his throat.

‘You don’t mean this.’

‘That’s the best you’ve got, Dad?’ I hadn’t expected them to suddenly soften and help me, but Dad’s ability to resist being moved
at all
was shocking.

‘We’ve raised you better than this, Sabina. We don’t deserve this.’ Dad genuinely seemed to think that I
was being unfair. I laughed, but it was a sound of disbelief and of outrage.

‘Neither did
she
, Dad. I
know
that the maternity home forced those girls to give up their babies, and no matter who she was, or how I was conceived, or how this all happened, there’s no way she could have deserved
that
.’

I stared at Mum but I felt Dad’s eyes on me – they
both
stared at me. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I
needed
to get off my chest, so much fury and confusion and heart ache swirling around in my brain that I felt I had no chance at all of explaining myself. I started to cry, and Mum dropped the briefs and took a step towards me. I held my hand up towards her and forced myself to make one last attempt to speak my mind.

‘I can only assume there are ghosts buried in my adoption that you don’t want me to uncover. I know the paperwork was dodgy – I assume there’s more. I can’t think of any other explanation for why you would withhold the truth from me when I so desperately need it. Let’s imagine that I find her, and I discover all of your nasty secrets – ask yourself this question, are you any worse off than you are now? At this point, it looks to me like you lied to me for my entire life and you’re both still too cowardly to face the truth of what you’ve done.’ Mum was staring at me with visible distress, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. I still did not bother to look towards Dad. ‘Prove me wrong, Mum,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t forgive what I don’t know. Please help me find her. I’m
begging
you. This is the end of our family if you don’t.’

Once again I stormed away from them, and once again they did not follow me.

This time, it felt like the closing of a book.

I truly thought it would be the end of the first part of my life, and that I was walking into a second half – where Megan and Graeme Baxter were no longer my parents.

FOURTEEN

Lilly—August 1973

James,

I don’t understand why you haven’t come yet. You have to come
now
, do you understand me? This cannot wait – you must get in a car, or a bus, or start walking and you
have to do it now
. If you need to, borrow money off someone, or even – just this one time –
steal
it. You can’t wait any longer. I don’t know if you have exams or assessments due or you’re finishing out the semester, but whatever it is that’s holding you up, put it aside and
get here.

It is worse than I thought, James – it is so much worse than I thought.

I have realised something today, and it’s not even an easy thing to write, so you’re going to have to bear with me. There was a girl on my laundry team, her name is Anita. She disappeared today. That’s nothing new, because girls go to maternity all of the time to have their babies … but this was the first girl from
my
work team, and I was anxious to hear how she went. As the day went on, I was confused – I just didn’t understand why everyone was so quiet and sad. I figured that something terrible had happened to her, and I was waiting for a chance to ask someone at work, but we were so busy, and before I knew it we were back at dinner. When we all sat down, Tania told us all that she’d had her baby. That’s all that she said, and no one was celebrating; in fact, they were all even
sadder
than they had been all day and I was just
so
confused. Was Anita unwell? Had the baby died? Had something gone wrong?

After a while, after we all ate dinner in silence and no one so much as made eye contact with anyone else, I finally asked what sex her baby was. No one answered me, so I pushed a little harder, asking whether it was okay, whether Anita was okay.

I felt like Tania’s anger came out of nowhere. I just wanted to see if our friend was all right. But Tania stood, and she waved her arms, and she screamed at me and she called me stupid – and God, I
am
stupid, because in all of these weeks here I just didn’t understand how much trouble we are in.

The thing is, James . . . we don’t
know
what sex Anita’s baby is. We don’t know if the baby is okay.
Anita
doesn’t even know those things. They might have given her medicine so that she slept through the labour, or they might have held her down, or they might have just have put a pillow over her face so that she couldn’t even
see
the baby.

She will never know anything at all about her child – not even if the baby lives, or if it dies.

It is the policy of the maternity home that when we give birth, our babies are taken immediately, and if what Tania told me tonight is true, there’s no point even fighting – they will take our babies anyway. Pregnancy makes me feel strong, like a superhero, but the truth is, even the strongest of us is weak against the system.

The only thing that we actually
do
know is that Anita would not have had the chance to hold her baby to even say hello, let alone to weep her goodbye. She would never have had the chance to look down to find out its gender, or to count its tiny little fingers and toes, and inhale its sweet new scent.

And as unthinkable as all of that is, there is worse; because it doesn’t matter what Anita wants for herself and for her baby. This routine of taking babies away from their mothers doesn’t just happen to the girls who
consent
to relinquish. Tonight when I told Tania that I would
never
give my consent to such a monstrosity, one of the other girls quietly took my hand and led me from the room. I was raging – breathing so hard and fast that the cold air was like fire into my lungs – and she whispered to me that even if I want to take our baby home, and that even if I fight and kick and scream, I will
never
be allowed to.

That is not what this place is about. All of this pressure to relinquish our babies is like a formality . . . or maybe some added penance – just a way to increase our pain while we wait. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what we decide or what we want for ourselves. The social workers are not here to help us make a choice, they are here to find a way to take the choice from us, and to place our babies with more deserving families.

I hope you can read this. I know that my handwriting is bad tonight and I’m sorry. I am so upset that even hours after all of this happened, I am still shaking like a leaf. I am too upset to sleep. I can’t even sit still. I want nothing more than to sob and scream and rail against the unfairness of it all, but if anyone hears me awake at this hour, there’d be hell to pay.

Do you remember that hot summer day when we were maybe ten or eleven, and we wandered too far from the houses, even after Mama told us not to, and there were snakes
everywhere
in the long yellow grass? Do you remember how you sat me up on that rock, and you took both of my hands and promised me that everything was going to be okay because you would take care of me?

Until today, that was the loudest fear I’d ever felt. For years after I had nightmares about those snakes. If I woke up too early from the dreams I’d be drenched in sweat, my heart racing, convinced that I was going to die then and there.

But if I stayed asleep just a little longer, you did in my dream what you did that day in the paddock. You’d hold tight to my hand and lead me back through the grass, comforting me . . . promising me that we just had to keep moving.

I feel just like that again today, James . . . even worse, actually. This is a nightmare; the serpents are coming for our baby this time, and I’m trapped if you don’t come to take my hand. This is a different fear – it’s bigger and blacker, and I don’t even know how to deal with it.

I am looking back at these past weeks through sharper eyes tonight, and I finally realise that I am not only in the worst trouble imaginable, but that there really is
no
escape without you. There is nothing
at all
that I can do, James. I know you are probably wondering why I don’t just run away and find my own way to you, but it really is impossible. Not only do I not have a single dollar, but the doors are locked at night. There are rumours that when girls have broken out in the past, the police have been sent after them. What is happening here is not some under-cover baby-stealing operation . . . it is
organised
by the authorities, and if I did run away,
I
would be the one in the wrong.