The Secret Daughter (8 page)

‘Did you take me the day I was born?’

‘The day after.’

I was suddenly deflated, thinking about the speed of that and the implications of the timing.

‘So . . . she relinquished me within a day of my birth?’ I whispered. ‘She must really not have wanted me at all.’

‘That’s not really how it worked, Sabina,’ Mum said.

‘Well, explain it to me, Mum. How
did
it work?’

‘She was a minor, so her parents would have made the decision for her. A long time before you were even born – when she was first admitted to the home.’

‘So
did
she want me?’

I wasn’t sure what was worse; the idea that my birth mother might not have wanted to keep me at all, or that she might have
wanted
to keep me very desperately indeed, but had no way to achieve that.

‘We told you,’ Dad interrupted suddenly, but I saw his warning glance to Mum. ‘We don’t even know
who
she was, let alone what her private thoughts about the matter were. Mum is talking in generalisations.’

I turned my gaze to Mum but she was staring at the damned tea cup again.

Dad was
lying
to me?
Still?

‘They don’t sound like generalisations.’

‘No, Dad is telling the truth,’ Mum whispered. ‘We had no idea which resident gave birth to you.’

‘So how do you know she was sixteen?’ I asked Mum softly.

‘That was a guess,’ Dad answered for her. ‘Most of the girls were teenagers.’

‘So why did you say
six
teen?’ I kept my gaze on Mum.

‘It was just a general—’

‘Dad!’ I turned to him, impatient with the game. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to buy that!’

‘You’re focusing on the wrong things here, Sabina,’ he said, with barely restrained impatience of his own. ‘Sixteen, eighteen, twenty – what does that minor detail even matter? What
matters
is that you had a home to go to and you weren’t lost to the system. God only
knows
what would have become of you if we’d allowed that to happen.’

I laughed then – a cynical, derisive snort that instantly drew narrowed gazes from both of my parents.

‘So what you’re saying is, you’re the
heroes
in this story, and I’m being an ungrateful brat?’

‘You know life isn’t black and white like that. It was a complicated situation and we found an outcome that worked for everyone. For you
and
for us.’ Dad was becoming increasingly impatient. He was tapping his forefinger against his thigh, and his foot against the floor. He had no sense of rhythm at all and the fact that he couldn’t even manage to tap nervously in time was suddenly incredibly irritating. I glared back at him. The tension in the room was mounting very quickly now, almost beyond what I could bear.

‘But what about
her
, Dad? What about my . . .’ I stopped. The words
birth mother
were on my lips, but I couldn’t bring myself to say them. Mum tensed, and I knew she was thinking the words too. She didn’t want me to call this other woman
mother,
and I didn’t want to assign that term to someone other than Mum, but there was no other way to say it. I tried desperately to find other words,
any
other terms. I resolutely promised myself that I would go home and Google search the language of adoption, to somehow arm myself with the vocabulary of this horrible new world. But for now, this other woman, the invisible party in the room, deserved a name and she deserved to be acknowledged. And maybe Mum had hurt her, and maybe – just
maybe –
my Mum deserved to be hurt anyway. I stiffened my back and I fixed my gaze on her, focusing past the plea in her eyes. ‘You say you found an outcome that worked for everyone. But what about my birth mother? What
became
of her?’

‘We just don’t know, Sabina.’ Mum was defeated again, just like she’d been at my house. She pushed a lock of hair back from her face and sat the teacup on the table opposite mine, her hands trembling. ‘I wish I could take you
back
there, so that you’d understand what it was like. But I can’t. You just have to trust me that we really had no choice.’

‘
Trust
you? No
choice
?’ I couldn’t hide my incredulity. ‘
She’s
the one who had no
choice
, Mum!’

‘Sabina, it was 1973,’ Dad was outright snapping at me now, unable to hide his irritation at my questions. ‘Doctors smoked
in
the hospital for God’s sake. The single mother’s pension seemed like a pipedream, especially out there in the country. Suppose she
had
taken you home with her, what then? No one would have employed her, or given her housing. The stigma attached to being an unwed mother would have ruined her life. Society offered those girls
no
positive alternative. This was
for the best
.’

I was still staring at Mum. She had been the one
in
the system. If anyone had answers, it would be her.

‘And you, Mum?’ I murmured.

‘And
me,
what?’ She was on guard, and she glanced to Dad. Was there some magic question they didn’t want me to ask, something I could say that would bring the house of cards crashing down? Why were they so on edge?

‘Did
you
offer her a
positive
alternative
?’

‘That wasn’t my job, Sabina.’

‘What
was
your job?’

‘I told you, I found families for the babies.’

‘So you played no part in forcing these young women to give their children up?’

‘Why would you think that I did?’

‘Because I know how to read, Mum. This is all over the news and the internet, and every article I see mentions social workers.’

Mum lifted the tea cup to her mouth. She took a slow, civilised sip, swallowed it, then lowered her cup again. I saw her lips twitch, as if the words were
right there
, like they were for me sometimes, but she just couldn’t form them. Then I saw the tears well, and trickle down her cheeks, and she met my gaze again.

‘Sometimes . . . helping that decision along was a part of my job.’

The admission landed heavily. My throat felt tight. We stared, neither one of us willing to look away. I felt that if I let myself break the eye contact I’d never stand to look at her again.

‘That’s enough, Sabina,’ Dad said, and he rose, as if he was going to escort me to the door. I saw him only out of the corner of my eye, though, because I still did not look away from Mum.

‘Mum . . . did you . . . did you
take
me away from her?’ It took me several breaths to get the entire sentence out, and then once I’d said it, I held my breath. Another tear ran down Mum’s cheek, and I heard the sob that she tried to muffle.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ she whispered.

‘Well, what
was
it like?’

‘No, I did
not
take
you, or force her to give you up. But yes, Sabina, I was a part of the system that did. Is that what you wanted to hear me to say?’

‘I want you to be honest about all of this, Mum,’ I was pleading now. ‘
How
can you not know what her name was? Do you really expect me to believe that you have no further information, other than her age? That I can never know
anything
about the woman who carried and gave birth to me?’

‘We’d just
love
to tell you who she was, or how to find her, and to help you facilitate a beautiful reunion where you could lament all of the things that were lacking in your upbringing.’ Dad’s words were delivered with that strange, stiff awkwardness that seemed to linger around this subject. The song of our family conversation was now entirely staccato, jarring and abrupt, and I desperately missed the rhythm we’d once shared. ‘We just
can’t
.’

‘Is that what you think this is about?’ Now I looked to him, incredulity colouring my tone.
Dad
was insecure, about me? The thought was mind boggling, and I didn’t know how to begin to tell him how crazy he was being. ‘The only thing lacking in my upbringing, Dad, was honesty. I’m not looking to replace you or even to supplement you – I just need to
understand
. If you could give me her name, or something about her circumstance, or if you could
really
tell me why you kept this a secret for so long . . . it would just help me so much.’

‘We’ve told you everything we know, Sabina. We’ve explained this as well as we can.’ Dad’s words were calm now, but he was still standing by the door, and as he spoke he offered me a heavy shrug. ‘Beyond that, we can’t tell you anything further.’

I sighed and rose, and Mum shot me a panicked glance and reached to catch my hand.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I can’t sit here and talk around in circles with you. You’re either ready to tell me the truth, or you aren’t.’

‘That
is
the truth, Sabina. There’s really nothing more to say. Please, stay and we can talk about something else.’

‘I-I’m
pregnant
, Mum,’ I whispered, and I was so frustrated that I clenched my fists in her vague direction. ‘I’m about to become a
mother
. I’m going to spend the next seven months carrying this baby, getting ready to bring it into the world. I don’t
want
to spend that time wondering about the woman who carried me, and what became of her. I want to deal with this and process it and get on with the business of being happy before my own baby comes. Can’t you understand that? We
can’t
talk about something else. If you guys can’t talk to me openly about this, I don’t think I want to talk to you at all right now.’

I waited a moment, and when neither of my parents spoke, walked from the room and down the long hallway back to the front door. Mum was silent, although she followed me all the way, hanging a few steps behind. I paused at the doorstep.

‘Please, Mum. Think about it. I’m not even sure I want to track her down. I just want the chance to decide for myself.’

She was staring at the floor in her lobby.

Again I waited, and again she failed to be moved even a little by my pleading and so I left. As I drove home, I thought about the values they’d raised me to be loyal to. Truth, integrity, honesty – honesty almost above
all
else, to the point that I struggled to keep secrets even as an adult.

Clearly those things had meant nothing to Mum and Dad, or perhaps they’d been overcompensating because of the dark history of our family which they were so desperately trying to hide.

In any case . . . there was a particular bitterness to the irony that I had struggled to keep my pregnancy a secret for even two days, only to have it bring all of
their
lies out into the open.

I knew I would have to go back to work some time. As I lay in bed the next morning, I toyed with the idea of a third day at home, but the endless emptiness of unfilled time seemed a curse. So I dressed, and I returned to my classroom, and I threw myself into my lessons with over the top enthusiasm. We played music games and I took one class out to the oval and had them form an orchestra of shouting. I revelled in the children’s laughter and the sunshine on our faces, and in the perfect distraction of the scent of freshly cut grass in the air.

When lunchtime came and I checked my phone, I was rewarded by a voicemail from our doctor. My blood tests had all been clear, my hormone levels were absolutely perfect. It was somewhat less surprising now, but still a relief.

It was a good day, in the end, and as I packed up to leave I was so glad I’d convinced myself to get out of bed that morning. It was only as I walked home that my mind wandered back to the mess of my family life. I dawdled – I’m no speed walker at the best of times, but that day, my thoughts drifted so far away that I was barely strolling. I pushed earbuds into my ears and turned on my
manic jazz
playlist on my phone, inviting the perfectly ordered chaos of Miles Davis and John Coltrane to keep me company.

For a while, I let myself daydream. I thought about how one single piece of information had changed the way I viewed my past and my future. I had been so proud of the life I’d built and my personal series of humble achievements; I had a wonderful marriage, we had paid off our house, we were going to build a family. I’d travelled the world, and although it was by the skin of my teeth, I’d finished a university degree.

But now, now that I
knew
, I wondered: who else could I have been? Would that
other
Sabina have been raised with siblings, and if so, would that have changed her attitude when it came to friendship? I’d lunged from one extreme to another even as an adult. At uni and in my cruise years, life was one endless party. For a while, I’d even shared a berth on the cruise ship – there were months where I had no private space at all, and it didn’t bother me one bit. I made friends easily and I could have them live in my back pocket, back then.

Until, I suppose, I reached saturation point with that lifestyle and I moved back to dry land. As I’d put down roots, I’d naturally retreated into myself. In recent years, my social activities revolved around music. Most nights, I wanted to be at home, in my little nest with Ted. He really was enough for me, I never tired of his company at all.

There were times, at least in recent years, when we’d get around to organising that dinner party we always talked about, and 9 p.m. would come, and I’d run out of energy for entertaining. Ted could tell hilarious anecdotes for hours and our guests would settle in for a late one, but I’d gradually fall quiet and then fade to silence. I’d learned to quietly exit, to apologise as politely as I could, and to take myself off to bed, recognising that I had nothing more to contribute to the conversation, and no more energy to maintain my part in it.

I knew this was rude. I knew that it was confusing for our guests, and it was probably lazy and selfish too. Ted
hated
it when I did it. Would that
other
Sabina have been more consistent with other people? Would she have been kinder, or gentler, less self-centred?