The Secret Daughter (20 page)

I finally feel something worse than unclean . . . after all they have said, and after all they have done to me, I finally feel
dirty.
Perhaps there
is
something fundamentally wrong with us that we’d wind up in this situation. Maybe they are right, and we deserve to be punished. Surely
no one could inflict a pain like this on another person unless that person was truly deserving of suffering.

The nurses have told me that I have to stay here in the hospital a few days. Mrs Sullivan will call Tata in to pick me up when I’ve had a chance to heal.

If they’re really going to wait until I heal, I’ll be in this bed until I die.

Every time I hear a baby crying I think it’s her. I feel ashamed that I do not know my own daughter’s cry. She needs me, and I’m right here but I can’t go to her. I went for a walk earlier today, hoping that I would find a way to see her, but one of the midwives caught me and helped me back to bed. Her new family could already be here. The nurse said it would be unkind to all of us if our paths were to cross.

So now I can’t bring myself to get out of bed at all, and I am lying here miserable and I don’t even know what to wish for. Do I wish them good thoughts, those people who will take my daughter and make her their own? Do I wish evil for them, so that she might somehow find her way back to me? Am I supposed to be
grateful
to them?

All that I want is our baby in my arms. She was made to fit in
my
arms.

Maybe you would be allowed to visit me now, if you happen to get this before they discharge me. And if you do come, they have me in the last room in the maternity ward corridor, the one with no windows, farthest away from the nursery.

But go to the nursery first. Stare at every baby and memorise them all, just in case she’s still there.

Lilly

TWENTY-THREE

Sabina—April 2012

I’d never been as nervous as I was that Friday. I’d taken the day off so we could leave early, and by 9.01 a.m. I was already regretting the decision.

There was no distracting myself. I sat at home and watched the clock, feeding my anxiety with junk food. I felt the same frustration an insomniac feels when sleep evades, except that instead of sleeping, I was trying to zone out in front of daytime television but I just couldn’t convince my brain to
switch off.

I had three outfits laid out on the bed – a funky red dress with a big black belt, sensible maternity trousers and a floral shirt, and a more casual set of elastic-waisted jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. I’d laid them out early in the day, then as I wandered the house like a ghost during talk show ad breaks, I’d walk to my door and stare at the outfits. The choice seemed life-changing. I didn’t want to seem too out there; I didn’t want to seem too conservative; I didn’t want to seem too casual; I didn’t want to seem too
urban
. Under all of those quiet thoughts was a much louder one – a horrifying one – which I didn’t give voice to until Ted finally came home.

‘You aren’t wearing
that
, are you?’ he said, when he stepped inside and saw me curled up on the couch in a tracksuit. I glanced down at myself defensively, then noticed the food stains on my chest. I sank into the couch even deeper.

‘What if she d-doesn’t like me, Ted?’

‘Seriously? She’s waited nearly forty years to meet you.’

‘Exactly! She’s waited nearly forty years to meet me. What if I’m a disappointment?’

‘Sabina, that’s ridiculous.’

‘It must happen all of the time in these situations. I’ll bet her expectations are
sky
high.’

‘She has waited a lifetime to meet you, honey. You could be a nose-picking serial killer and I’m sure she’d be at least glad to
see
you.’

‘I just want her to like me.’

‘She will, Bean. But if it’s too uncomfortable, I am going to save you and make an excuse for us to leave and come home. I
promise
you. Please, go get dressed, we really need to get on the road.’

I dragged myself off the couch, ignoring the shower of chip-crumbs that rained about my feet when I stood, and wrapped my arms around my husband.

‘Thank you.’

‘That’s what I’m here for.’

‘No, seriously Ted. I couldn’t do this without you.’

‘Of course you could.’ He kissed the side of my head then turned me towards the bedroom. ‘Go get dressed, woman! You’re going to make us late.’

We left right on time, just after 2 p.m. That would, by Ted’s exacting calculations, have us turning in James and Lilly’s driveway just after 6 p.m., in time for my first meal with my biological parents.

I had packed a bag for two nights, and Ted carefully sat the box of photo albums in the car boot. I wasn’t entirely sure if the timing was appropriate, but if it felt right, I’d give them to Lilly before we left.

I had never actually travelled to the west of the state before. I’d been as far as the Blue Mountains that served as a physical barrier between the city and the state’s rural side, but I’d never been past them. Ted knew the geography a little better, but he trusted the GPS – which is how we found ourselves driving down an isolated two-lane highway through dense bushland.

Initially, I was awed by the sights along the Bells Line of Road. There was lush greenery right to the very edge of the road, and immense views of the city and the valleys beyond to enjoy. I started to feel a little nervous when we passed a series of blind, sharp corners and found that the traffic ahead of us seemed to be backing up. Just after we came to an area where there was a high cliff-face above us on our left and a sheer drop on our right, traffic stopped flowing altogether.

After a while, I picked up my mobile phone to try to do a traffic issue search and figure out what the problem was ahead, and discovered that we were in a coverage dead spot. Ted tried to re-route the GPS, to see if we could avoid whatever the blockage was if we turned around, but we quickly realised that we’d need to go almost all of the way back to the city. Backtracking would add hours to the trip.

If I thought the earlier parts of the day had passed slowly, time seemed to freeze altogether now. Ted and I even managed to have a reasonably heated discussion about his choice of route, and I kept the argument going much longer than I otherwise would have, just for the distraction of the banter.

We’d been stationary for almost two hours when a policeman walked down the road, stopped at Ted’s window, and informed us we’d have to turn around. The road would be closed overnight. A semi-trailer had been involved in an accident several kilometres ahead of us, and emergency services were trying to figure out how to clear the road.

We were silent for the first few moments, while the GPS rerouted to the other main highway through the mountains. Our arrival time was now well after 9 p.m.

‘I think we should just go home. We can reschedule for another weekend.’

‘You can’t do that, Bean.’

‘It’s an omen.’

‘Oh, rubbish. Do you have phone service, yet? You’d better call her and warn her.’

I fiddled with my phone for a few moments, cursing my cowardice.

‘Sabina . . .’

‘I’m going to do it,’ I assured him. Then I sighed and dialled the number that I had learned by heart.

‘Hello, you’ve got Lilly.’

She was positively singing, and my heart sank like a stone.

‘Hi, Lilly. It’s Sabina.’

‘Oh sweetheart. Oh—’ Her joy disappeared in a single breath. ‘Oh no. You’ve changed your mind.’

‘No, no,’ I hastened to reassure her. ‘No, we’re just late – there was an accident and a traffic jam. We’re going to get in really late tonight, we were thinking we’d stop at a hotel on the way instead. Maybe we could arrive for breakfast?’

I heard her breath catch and felt a pang of guilt, but a big part of me was relieved to put the reunion off for another night. We’d be fresher in the morning, plus it would mean only one night at the farm instead of the two we’d agreed to.

‘Please come tonight.’ Her voice was small. ‘Please, Sabina.’

‘But it will be so late – maybe nine or even ten—’

‘I understand if that’s too much to ask.’ I could hear the tears in her voice now. ‘But if you could manage it, I’d so appreciate it. I know it’s only one more day, one more sleep, one more sunrise . . . but I’ve waited . . .’ her breath caught, ‘Oh, I’ve waited so many.’

It had been easy for me to forget how much this meant to her. To me, she was a curiosity. To her, I was a life-long dream.

And so I agreed that we would find a way to her homestead in the dark.

We could see silhouettes on the veranda, two tiny figures dwarfed by the vast emptiness of their property around them. Now I really was sick, my lunch was sitting ominously high in my throat. Ted stopped the car beneath a gnarled peppercorn tree.

‘You ready?’ Ted whispered.

‘How could I be?’ I whispered back.

We walked slowly down the path, towards the house. I was concentrating on my breathing, trying to push through the nerves and the excitement and exhaustion by focus alone. I quickly realised it was pointless. There would be no way to dampen these emotions, I was just going to have to live this. And then she broke away from the embrace of her partner and she ran down the stairs and across the lawn towards me, her step young and springy, like a child playing. As she neared, and I got my first glance of my first mother’s face and recognised myself in it, I also saw her intention. She would have run through fire to embrace me. She had waited a lifetime to do it.

She almost bowled me over. Lilly was not a tall woman, but she was curvy and strong, and her arms enveloped me and then squeezed me tight. In the near darkness I smelt garlic and herbs and soap as she pressed her face hard into my neck. I heard her shuddering, deep inhalation, and then the sobs started.

I’d never heard someone cry like that. She clutched at me and she pulled at me and she drenched my shoulder in her tears. It was like she was washing me clean, marking me as her offspring.

I cried too, because you just can’t stand within
a storm like that, and not be moved. I hadn’t even
known
about her a month earlier but I wept in sync with her. I wasn’t crying for my own pain – I was crying for
her
and for what
we
might have shared.

After a while, the other figure from the porch slowly came towards us and I saw his face in the moonlight too. He quietly shook Ted’s hand, introduced himself as James, and then tried to steer Lilly away from me. She’d have none of it, she couldn’t even calm herself enough to speak, and instead she waved furiously at him and then, with a squeeze of a strong arm, directed me towards the house.

‘I’m sorry.’ She was hoarse, and her breathing was ragged between the still-explosive sobs. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’ I tried to offer comfort. ‘I can’t even imagine . . .’

For all of the times in my life when words had failed me, this was by far the worst. What do you
say
to someone in that position? How
do
you even offer comfort, beyond platitudes? I felt like a bystander to a tragedy. I didn’t yet fully grasp that I was one of the victims.

‘I promised myself I’d hold it together. I
promised
myself, ever since you said you were coming,’ she laughed weakly. ‘But . . . not an hour went by when I didn’t think of you, Sabina. Not a single hour. And thirty-eight years is a lot of hours.’

My natural mother had baked all day for me.

She warned us that it would take some time for her to set the table up. She’d had the dishes waiting, either being kept warm or ready to be warmed, and while she did the work of preparing the feast, James gave Ted and me a tour of the house.

It wasn’t messy, but it was full and cluttered in a way that Mum and Dad would never have tolerated in my childhood home. There was stuff
everywhere
; there were jars and canisters full of supplies on top of cupboards and the fridge and even the benches, and the spaces which weren’t covered with such things instead housed little collectable figurines or knick-knacks. I could hear Mum tsk-tsking in my mind and motioning towards the benches to dismissively decry the stuff as ‘useless dust collectors’. Not that there was much dust, but that was probably a testament to Lilly’s cleaning effort, and I had a sneaking suspicion she’d been expending a whole lot of nervous energy over the days since I agreed to visit.

Every wall was like a mini-photographic exhibition with image after image of the family and grandchildren; some in frames, some just pinned right there into the wall. It struck me as I walked through the house behind James that in the Piper house, the décor
was
the photographs. There was no carefully selected artwork or cushions or rattan coffee tables like in Mum and Dad’s house. This was a functional house, with sturdy furniture and hardy wooden floorboards –the life and flavour of it was generated entirely by mementos from family life.

How many times had I agonised over my own lack of flair for setting up our home? In the end, I too had opted for function over form. The decorative pieces in my house I had selected with Mum’s assistance and never felt entirely sure of our choices. As much as I
wanted
a beautiful, stylish home like the one I’d grown up in, it had never been my forte.

Apparently it was just not in my blood.

‘This was Charlotte’s room growing up, and it had been my room too when I was a kid,’ James explained, pushing open a door to reveal a desk covered in paperwork and two armchairs. ‘It’s kind of my office now. Lilly likes to read in there, it gets a lot of northern sun and there’s a nice view of the front paddock.’

We walked across a sitting room with heavy leather couches, and James opened the door to the outside, leading us onto a veranda with a swinging chair and an extensive series of small animal statues.

‘Neesa used to pretend this was her zoo,’ James explained wryly. ‘These things seemed to breed for a while there, I think Lilly was buying them behind my back.’