Ted and I were seated beside one another on the sofa, watching a movie on the television late on Saturday night. I had a crocheted blanket over my lap, and I was trying to remember where it came from. I’d had it for a long time. Had Mum made it for me? I couldn’t remember her giving it to me, but she must have – why else would I have carted it onto the cruise ship, to Dubai, and back to Sydney twice? I felt a strange ambiguity enjoying the warmth of the blanket. I was furious with Mum, enough that if she had made me the blanket, I wanted to hide it away or throw it straight into the bin. At the same time, I already missed Mum terribly, and I was strangely comforted by the thought that the blanket might have been handcrafted by her.
The ads came on. Ted, as he always did, reached for the remote and flicked the channel over a few times, searching for something to distract us until the ad break ended. He stopped on a wildlife documentary. A turtle laid eggs on a beach and swam away, and the scene faded to black, then faded back in to show the turtle eggs hatching and the baby turtles stumbling around on their uninitiated legs.
‘. . . the babies are self-sufficient from birth, by the time the eggs have hatched, the mother is long gone . . .’ the commentator seemed to find this an unremarkable fact, but I was transfixed. I watched the tiny turtles stumble their way into the ocean. Maybe in the natural world it was an ordinary thing for a mother to leave her child behind sometimes.
I shivered, returning to that vision I’d had the first time I realised I was adopted, of myself abandoned on a doorstep in the pouring rain and driving wind. I knew it hadn’t been like that, of course, although I didn’t have an alternative picture for my overactive imagination as yet. The one thing that was most definitely accurate was that, in some way or shape or form, my biological mother had at some point left the hospital without me. I knew almost nothing about her, but that simple fact was heartbreaking enough.
I paused on that thought, and Ted flicked back to the movie, unaware that I was yet again having some kind of minor breakdown, right there in his arms. We were sitting in darkness but for the TV, our faces illuminated by the flickering light of the imagery. I had disconnected from the movie now. It seemed to take so little to trigger a return to thoughts of the adoption.
I reached my hand down to my stomach and rested it there, a flesh and bone protective shield over my own pregnancy. No matter where my thoughts on my parents wandered to, they always returned to my baby. I wanted to believe that my love for my own child was going to be big enough to protect it from any threat, but I was slowly, reluctantly realising that sometimes even the greatest love a person could feel would not be enough to outweigh the bad in the world.
I reached for Ted, pressed my face into his upper arm, and started to cry.
‘Hey! What’s this?’ he asked, automatically turning to me and pulling me fully into his arms.
‘Do you think those turtles miss their mother?’
‘What turtles?’
‘On the nature documentary.’
‘Oh, the eggs? Miss their mother? No, of course not. They’re born self-sufficient, that’s what the narrator said.’
‘I wonder why I didn’t miss my mother. Would our baby even miss me, if it wasn’t with me?’
‘We’re talking about babies, Bean. You don’t remember, maybe you did miss her. Maybe you fretted horribly and Megan just did a wonderful job of helping you to adjust. And you don’t need to worry about our baby missing you because you’ll be right here with it.’
‘But what if something happens to me? What if I couldn’t be with our baby?’
‘Sabina, where is this coming from?’
‘If we ever find my mother, I’ll bet she’s hurt that I didn’t miss her,’ I whispered.
‘Or, she’ll be delighted that you found a happy family, and grew up to be well adjusted and content.’ He was so patient with me, always the voice of reason. I extracted myself from his arms and he protested, ‘Where are you going?’
‘I think I’ll just go to bed.’
‘Bean . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know I’m c-crying because a turtle never knew its mother and that’s insane.’ I laughed, then sobbed again. ‘Ted, it’s just too horrible. It’s just too unfair, and too confusing. I can’t bear it.’
Ted sighed and flicked the television off.
‘You don’t have to c-come to bed with me,’ I said, through another sob that I could neither understand nor prevent.
‘Yes I do.’ Ted sighed, and pulled me close. ‘Because what you’re going through is awful, and the timing is awful, and it’s not fair so it doesn’t have to make sense. If you need to go to bed and cry over that poor lonely turtle, then I need to be right there with you.’
Less than a week after we met Hilary, she called me with an update. I know that a week doesn’t seem like a long time to wait, but the days had stretched and I’d thought about little else but that search for the whole time. I was walking home from school when the number flashed up on the display on my phone, and an instant adrenaline-high kicked in. I was shaking with equal parts fear and excitement.
‘I have some news,’ Hilary said, after she greeted me. I could hear the hesitation in her voice, and my mood sank with her tone as she added, ‘It’s not great.’
My footsteps slowed and then stopped.
‘Okay,’ I said.
Hilary started talking, but she was giving me too much information about legislation and too little information about my actual situation. Eventually, I wrapped my brain around the basic idea – her hands were tied.
‘. . . so you see, I can only release to you information which I’m sure is about your own birth. And I have reviewed the records from the hospital for the date on your birth certificate and there’s just no one to match you to. Whatever happened, it didn’t happen by the usual procedures.’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘There were two components to birth registration; each individual birth certificate which was submitted to the federal authorities, and then the hospital kept a record of actual birth. So, I can see on your official birth certificate that you were born on the 10th of October at the Orange hospital, but when I reviewed the files for all of the women in the maternity home at the time you were born, none of them gave birth on 10th October. So either your birth mother wasn’t confined in the home, or more likely, the date on your certificate is wrong.’
On the road beside me a push-bike rider raced past a tiny hatchback. They were going so fast – was that even safe? I breathed in the scent of exhaust fumes and tried to hold myself stiff against the coming pain. It didn’t work – the disappointment hit me. It slammed at my gut, the very same sensation a passenger feels when a plane hits unexpected turbulence.
‘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.