Have you ever wanted something so much, it’s not a desire so much as a beacon? Have you ever prayed for it so hard, your fingernails curl into your palms and your eyes squinch shut and your whole body just hums?
My daughter is that simple, shining thing. Taken from me under bright lights in a white room, my stitches still raw. I fought so much they put me in hard restraints. I screamed so loudly they shot me up with sedative.
When I resurfaced, the blood had soaked through my hospital gown. I wanted to cry but couldn’t. It was as if my body was weeping for me. Just like before, only this time it wasn’t me who was making it happen. I felt floaty and exhausted. Closed my eyes.
“Come on, Les, stay awake.” Immi, shaking my tied-down arm from the left side of the bed. “Your solicitor’s going to ring soon.”
I opened my eyes again. Stared at the opposite wall’s watercolor portrait of a budding rose, its outlines like those of the mandala coloring book pages Clare and I used to fill in at the Phoenix.
Shit. Now I was crying, flapping my tethered hands in useless flail.
Behind me, I felt Gloria’s hand stroking my hair. “All right. Shh. Just try to stay calm, sweetheart.”
Yes. Calm. That was what I needed to be, so I could get unbound, so I could reach for the phone when it rang, hold it in my own grip. I’ve grown pretty used to extreme highs and lows in my twenty-two years of life, but that had to be the nadir: aspiring to have my restraints taken off in order to take a call from my solicitor to discuss my child protection case.
They’d just untied me when he came on the line. “It’s a temporary order, not a long-term arrangement. We’ll demand full visitation rights whilst she’s being fostered. Battle this all the way to the European High Court if we have to.”
Six months later, we’re still battling. In silence. I can’t say a word to the media now, no matter how much I might want to go back on breakfast TV, no longer mild-mannered and plaintive but a warrior mum instead. One public statement, and my face could wind up in a mug shot taken at a North London women’s prison. So I keep my mouth shut, and wait in drafty corridors, and scribble notes on my solicitor’s cast-off pads. Some of them are to him (Mention positive parenting evaluation? Ask for evening and weekend visit hours?), but most of them are for me, and for her. No sappy “Dear Daughter” missives, just fervent snippets: I want to bury my face in your fuzzy hair until the end of time. If I win, it’ll be for all of us phoenix-girls.
I hadn’t wanted to write this story down at first. Some of it I didn’t have words for, and other bits just made me convinced I didn’t deserve her. Hardly needed more fuel for that fire, right? So I stopped for a while. But then I thought (a tiny thought, dangerous but powerful): What if we go all the way to the European High Court, and they still shake their heads and say, “No, so sorry, birthday cards and photo exchanges once a year it is, thanks very much for playing, Miss Holloway”? What of the massive silence that will descend then?
Not just massive, but final. Either I get her back at our next hearing, or I lose her forever.
I’d like to think, of course, that her adoptive parents would be sensitive and respectful, but what if they aren’t? If they put on syrupy, rueful voices and sigh, “Oh, darling, your mummy loved you so very much. She just had some . . . well, some issues with her mental health, and couldn’t take care of you properly”? You’d best believe I’m sneaking a letter into the birthday card, just in case. Not talking smack about her new mum or dad, of course. I’ve been a team player all through this (not that it’s got me anywhere), and I’m not about to do anything that will make my girlie think poorly of me. I just want her to know someday, when she’s old enough, if it comes to that, that I was meant to be her mother. That, fully admitted “issues” aside, we were both robbed.