The Secret Daughter (9 page)

Would she even have liked music?

Would
she
still have struggled to keep her curves under control? Had my biological family figured out the magic way to regulate their calorie intake and keep these food-loving genes in check?

Would she still have worn her hair long, or would she have dared to cut it short? I loved my hair, but I’d always taken the safe road with how I styled it, I’d never even coloured it, or worn a dramatic cut. I knew it was my best feature. Glossy and healthy, a beautiful shade of warm brown, my hair was straight and thick and bouncy, even if it was humid or if I’d washed it in terrible shampoo or on the very rare occasion that I had been exercising.

Mum’s hair was dark brown too, but beneath the dye it had long since turned grey. Her hair was wiry and untamed. At some point I’d assumed that the difference between my bouncy hair and Mum’s frizzy hair was the dyes she used for so many decades, and I’d shied away.

Would a Sabina raised with people who looked more like her have made bolder stylistic choices?

My voice was spectacular. Teachers had told me since I was a child that I was one of the most naturally gifted vocalists they’d ever taught. But I cruised through high school and university, putting in the minimum level of effort possible to gain a pass, and then I’d maintained that attitude throughout my career. Would that other Sabina have had more ambition, more drive? I had always been so content, there was no burning need within me to become more famous or to make lots of money, but maybe if I
had
possessed such a drive, the world would have been my oyster. I would surely have gone to another school, and what difference would that have made? Would I have gone to the same uni? Would I have gone to uni at all?

Would I have met Ted?

Would I still have loved him, even if I did?

Would we be pregnant now? Would we be pregnant with
this
child?

Or . . . would I have a brood of children already? I felt I’d left it late in life to start my family, but that had come not from some drive to build a career or wait for the perfect time, more a spoilt assumption of good fortune. My life had long since taught me that things would just work out for me, one way or another; why rush to have a baby?

Of course, the other possibility was that my childhood would have been awful, and that I’d have been damaged beyond repair if I’d not been relinquished. Would I have fallen into addiction? Would I have been depressive? Would I have made terrible choices with relationships?

And what about my stutter? I’d mastered it, but the truth was,
Mum
had mastered it. It had taken years for me to get to the point that I could confidently communicate, and I distinctly remembered fighting my mother through every step of that journey. I had wanted so badly to just give up; very willing to accept that I’d never speak clearly and to find other ways to live my life. As a child, usually sulking after Mum had physically locked me in the car to force me go to speech therapy, I’d imagine easier ways to solve the problem of my stutter. I’d just sing instead – all of the time. Or I’d write people notes, or I’d just find a way to avoid communicating with people altogether. Usually I imagined myself living isolated forever.

Would that other me, with that other mother, have ever crawled out from beneath the shadow of her stutter? Would she have even discovered that she could sing, fluently and with faultless perfection, every single time?

The thought of living with the choking unpredictability of the jerking speech I’d struggled through as a child was unbearable.

If
that
would have been my fate, I doubted that I’d have survived it intact.

It is a strange thing to know yourself, and to realise at the same time that you are merely the product of the nest within which you are raised – and that a different nest might easily have produced a different
you
. As I walked that day, I grieved and worried for that
other
me, and I missed and regretted not knowing her. She might have been a miserable failure. Equally though, she could have been fabulous, she might have been amazing, she might have overcome all of the flaws that I felt had held me back at one time or another.

I was about to turn into our driveway, to walk past the beautiful home of our future to the cramped reality of our present, when I stopped. Once I was inside, I would sit and ponder, and there was a long afternoon left to fill.

I spun back out into the street, and for a while, I let my feet wander like my mind. I looked forward to the day that I’d feel peace again, and until then, I’d need to give myself space like this . . . time to just feel the chaos of it all. I was already becoming used to the
idea
that I was adopted, but I knew instinctively that this phase of questioning was there to stay, at least in part because there were no answers to any of my questions.

This was the beginning of grief for me. I was grieving a version of myself I could never know, because she had never had a chance to
be
.

Sunday was a weekly punctuation point for my family. We stopped, we rested and we spent time with each other. When I lived at home, we'd often go bushwalking on Sunday. Maybe it was Mum’s not so subtle attempt at getting me to exercise, but I’d loved those long Sundays far away from the city. They were all about connection, stopping together to smell the proverbial flowers, or at least the eucalypts. In my two long stints overseas, Sunday was the day when I’d called home one way or another. I had never missed connecting with my family on a Sunday.

Our commitment to Family Sunday was one of the things Ted had found so startling when we first met. It was one of those key components which had defined my life to that point.

The sparks of anxiety I'd been conscious of all week mounted to a fever pitch as the weekend arrived. It was almost a relief, to stop thinking about what the whole adoption reality actually meant. Now all I could think about was that I didn't particularly want to see Mum and Dad, but at the same time, I didn't know how to avoid them. Family Sunday was more than a habit. It was a compulsion, and apparently that was the case for all of us, because Mum phoned our house on Saturday night.

‘Oh hey, Megan,’ Ted said, and we shared one of those meaning-laden glances that spouses sometimes share. She would be calling for me, of
course
she’d be calling for me. I could tell, just by how late in the day it was that she was nervous about speaking with me too, and I pictured her sitting in the lamp-lit sitting room playing one of those stupid puzzle games on her mobile phone, hoping the whole time that I’d call her and save her having to be the one to reach out.

I shook my head at Ted, then, just to be sure he’d read my meaning correctly, drew a slow line across my neck, shaking my head again. He gave me a helpless shrug and said, ‘Yes, she’s here. Just a second.’

I narrowed my gaze so much that I could barely see him as I took the receiver into my hand. Then, I cupped the mouthpiece with my other hand, so that I could hiss at him,

‘Why did you
do
that?’

‘You have to speak to her eventually.’

‘Shouldn’t
I
get to decide when that is?’

‘Bean, just talk to her. You have to decide now anyway, are we going to meet with them tomorrow, or not?’ He was whispering more than hissing. Damn Ted and his calm reasonableness. I groaned softly and lifted the phone to my ear. Just as the cold plastic hit my skin, I heard the softest of whimpers and my stomach sank.

Be angry, Sabina, you have every bloody right to be angry. Be strong.

‘Mum,’ I said, and I sounded mean and cold. Ted winced and I immediately felt ashamed.

‘Hello, Sabina. Dad and I were wondering . . . we were just wondering if you were going to join us tomorrow for a meal.’

Right up until that moment, I hadn’t made up my mind. If it wasn’t for the tremor in her voice, I think I’d have said no, and hung up the phone. I was so torn. Did I persist with things the way they were? Did I meet with them, carry on as if nothing had happened? Or did I take some time – the time I damn well deserved to take?

I closed my eyes and saw her patiently putting up with my adolescent angst, sitting in the front row weeping through her pride when I first performed in public, travelling halfway across the world to surprise me when I was particularly homesick on the cruise ship, and then taking a second trip for the same reason when Ted and I did our stint in Dubai.

‘How about brunch?’ I heard myself suggest.

‘At the café,’ Ted interrupted me suddenly. ‘Let’s go to the café.’

‘Yes, we were thinking the café.’ I said, as if we’d discussed it, which we most definitely had not.

‘Oh. How lovely, yes,’ my mother said, and the relief in her voice was palpable. ‘Dad and I will be there. Is 10.30 a.m. okay?’

‘Yes, that’s fine. See you then.’ I hung up, then slammed the phone onto the bed. ‘God, Ted. Why didn’t you just tell her I was busy?’

‘I panicked,’ he admitted, and at least he had the grace to seem sheepish. ‘Sorry, Bean. So, we’re brunching then?’

‘I can always call and say I’m sick,’ I muttered, but we both knew I wouldn’t. ‘Shit.’

‘I thought the café might be better because you’ll be in public. Your family would
never
squabble in public.’ He was trying to mock me, but I glared at him again.

‘Too soon, Ted.’

He rubbed my shoulders.

‘I know, Bean. But you
won’t
. You guys are so polite and civilised, I’m sure it will be a perfectly comfortable brunch and you’ll probably feel better about things after.’

‘I’m scared they’ll never really open up to me about this,’ I said suddenly. ‘It’s like they pulled the earth out from under me and they’re just going to leave me floating around in space forever. Do they really think things will just go back to normal? That we’ll carry on with Sunday brunches as if nothing has changed? I wonder if they have any idea how
maddening
it is that they refuse to just address this directly?’

‘They must still be getting used to you knowing too. They’re probably petrified that you’ll never forgive them, or that you will track your birth family down and replace them somehow. I think you just need to give them some time too.’

‘I don’t want to give this time,’ I whispered. ‘I want to understand it all
now
.’

‘I get that, Bean. I really do. And maybe they’ve had the past few days to do some thinking. Who knows, maybe tomorrow they’ll come more prepared for a frank chat with you.’

SIX

Lily—July 1973

Dear James,

It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote. I’ve been trying to adjust to the routine here.

It starts before dawn – well, it’s
supposed
to, but I often sleep in and I’m usually late before the day even begins. I’m
so
tired, but I find it so hard to sleep here. The mattress is old and uncomfortable and I’m so heavy now. And although I feel hot, so
very
hot all day, at night the rooms aren’t heated and I have only one blanket. I seem to fall asleep most often in the early hours of the morning and then I struggle to get out of bed when the others do, but even the few extra minutes of sleep I’ve been taking end up costing me my shower. That is a price I can’t really afford, because I desperately need one after spending all day in the heat.

Breakfast is at 6.30 a.m. sharp. We start by bowing our heads to say grace, although we aren’t allowed to actually
say
it, we just listen while the nurse on duty does the talking. She thanks God for the day, then usually she spends a little while telling God how lucky we are to be in the home, with a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs in spite of our sinfulness. At first, I thought about this a lot. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? Doesn’t God already know? Isn’t He the reason we’re in so much trouble . . . that what we’ve done has so offended him? Why remind Him
every single day?

I’ve realised now though that this whole ritual is not for God . . . it is most definitely for us, to make sure that thoughts of our transgressions are never far from our minds. The nurses always finish the prayer by almost begging God – and us – that we will
do the right thing
for our babies; that we will find a way to be selfless, and to make amends for what we’ve done to our families and our community.

I am sure that the nurses just
love
that our first thoughts for the day are of shame, but whenever I hear them praying for us to
do the right thing
for our babies, I wrap my arms around our baby and I agree with all of my heart.

I’ll find a way to do the right thing for him, James. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’ll get these letters to you sooner or later so that you can come and take us home. There is not a single ounce of doubt in my mind;
that
is the right thing for our baby.

After breakfast we go to work, and I’ve already told you what that’s like. Some days we work in silence, but some days there’s quiet chatter between the other girls. I haven’t really talked to them much yet, except for a few words as we walk to the laundry or as we sit to eat our dinner. At work, it’s just too hard to raise my voice loud enough to be heard over the machinery. When I try, I stutter so badly that I may as well not have bothered.

While I work now, I try to cast myself forward to the time after the baby is born, when we can all be together. My mind is back at the farm setting up our home in the cottage and raising our baby with you. That’s how I’m keeping myself sane.

I miss home, James. I miss it so much and that surprises me. You know how busy and chaotic my family is, and how frustrated I get with the younger kids. All I ever wanted was peace and quiet to read and study in, and now I’d give anything to hear the bustle of it all again. I even miss the way Kasia snores at night . . . it’s such a gentle little sound, compared to the way Tania’s snores echo around our room and keep me awake. I miss the scent of garlic and butter in the air whenever Mama is cooking. I even miss Tata. I miss the way he made
right
and
wrong
so crystal clear, and how safe I felt living under his roof. I miss that sense of Wyzlecki
common-ness
. Whatever that thing is that makes a group of people a family – and I feel it with you too, so I’m certain it’s more than just blood and genes – I’m missing it desperately now. Sometimes these days I wonder if the opposite of ‘home’ isn’t actually ‘away’, but ‘
alone’
.