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.’
‘I was not!’ Lilly called from inside the house, but there was a laugh in her voice. This was clearly a well-loved game between them.
‘Nee has kind of outgrown the game now, but sooner or later the twins will enjoy them so the concrete menagerie remains,’ James sighed.
The next bedroom had been freshly painted – very freshly, judging by the faintly lingering scent. The bottom half of the walls was a deep brown, the top half a more sober beige. There was an armchair and heavy wooden bed with an extensive array of pillows at its head.
The room looked suspiciously perfect – even the furniture seemed new. I wondered if Lilly had decorated in the four days between me agreeing to visit and my arrival. If the crazy, over-the-top spread in the kitchen was anything to go by it was a real possibility.
‘This is beautiful,’ Ted said as he looked around the large room.
‘It was Simon’s when he was a kid, now it’s our guest room, but we were thinking you two could take this room, this weekend, and of course if you ever want to visit again,’ James said, a little stiffly.
‘Thank you, James,’ I said softly. His more gentle hopefulness was easier to bear than Lilly’s over-the-top exuberance.
He showed us their bedroom and the bathroom, and then I finally realised how nervous he was when he lead the way into the laundry and then stopped dead.
‘Not much to show you in here. I don’t know why I brought you down here.’
‘We know where to go if we need to wash clothes while we’re here,’ Ted said, I suppose trying to make polite conversation. James laughed.
The hallway looped around to the enormous kitchen and dining room. Ted whistled when he saw the spread of food over the dining table. Lilly had set up a porcelain dinner set and formal cutlery layout, but the rest of the table was covered in mismatched plates and bowls.
‘Done,’ she said. ‘Are you ready to eat?’
There was a large, low feature light over the enormous table, the slightly yellowed shade throwing a warm light over the room and resulting in a surprisingly intimate feel. Ted and I exchanged a wide-eyed look over the sea of food before us. There were cakes and biscuits, slices and breads, soups and salads and a series of traditional Polish dishes that I’d never even heard of.
Lilly fussed about, loading up a plate for me to sample this and that, and James sat and silently watched her. I tried to make small talk, but for the most part, I was just watching them –her anxious busy-ness, and James’ concerned silence. There were tears in his eyes from time to time, but he did not look at me, he stared only at Lilly. I wished I could read his thoughts.
‘Try this one first,’ Lilly said, when she finally sat the plate before me. She pointed to a chunky dumpling, sitting in a little nest of bacon and onion. ‘That’s a pierogi.’
‘Pierogi,’ I repeated it as if I’d never heard the word before, trying to roll my r the way she had. I glanced at Ted, and he nodded at me. We were both thinking of Mum’s pathetic attempt at pierogi; burnt, chewy chunks of pastry wrapped around overcooked and under seasoned beef mince. Mum’s efforts suddenly seemed almost insulting, compared to these tidy little parcels which had been fried with bacon and onion.
I picked up the fork and awkwardly chopped the dumpling, then speared one side of it and stuffed it into my mouth. It was delicious – salty and hearty, the pastry smooth and soft – together the tiny package was a satisfying surprise. I made sounds of delight and reached for the second half, and Lilly squeezed her hands together in front of her chest and squealed a little.
‘I’ve always wanted to show you the food I grew up with. The original Sabina – Sabinka – she was my grandmother. She died in the war, so I never met her, but her pierogi’s were legendary. I can give you the recipe. I made you donuts too, the way my Tata used to at Easter time. See those there?’ She pointed to an awkward, crispy donut on the side of my plate near the cakes. ‘I’ve had those every Easter of my entire life. Sometimes I raised the batter by parking the car in the sun and letting it sit in there. And that fish is sledzi, it’s pickled in vinegar with onions and peppercorns—’
‘Lilly,’ James spoke softly. ‘Honey, please sit down.’
‘I just need to get Ted a plate first. He’s driven all that way. What’s your heritage, Ted?’
‘My family is ladled right out of the cultural melting pot, we’re part-everything,’ Ted said, and he rose, and reached to gently take the plate from Lilly’s hand. ‘I can serve myself, Lilly. Why don’t you sit down and chat with Sabina?’
Her eyes were still red. Lilly looked at me, and they swam again. She reached to take the plate back from Ted, then wrung her hands together, and nodded at me. Finally she rounded the table to sit beside me.
‘I can’t believe you’re really here,’ she whispered. I had a mouth full of donut and I mumbled something which hopefully expressed my happiness. ‘I had dreams like this sometimes. Only you’re even more beautiful in real life than you were in my dreams.’
‘You’re only saying that because I look just like you,’ I tried to make a joke when my mouth had cleared. She was eating me up with her eyes, savouring my presence. Of course she was. I’d expected her to be intense, given the situation. I just hadn’t really expected to feel awkward about it, but sitting there as the object of adoration, for a woman that I did not really know, had left me surprisingly self-conscious.
‘You really do look like me,’ she was still speaking in a slightly awed whisper. ‘I’d have known you for sure, if I passed you on the street. I always looked for you.’
‘This farm,’ Ted said suddenly, and I shot him a silent thank you with gratitude in my eyes. ‘How many generations has it been in this family?’
‘Four,’ James said, leaning back in his chair. ‘My great grandfather combined a number of parcels to create the property we hold now. And next door, Lilly’s brother Henri and his wife hold land that was in Lilly’s mother’s family for four generations too.’
It seemed strange that I was sitting on a place that had been owned by my family for hundreds of years. I thought that some part of me at least should feel as if it had come home, but I felt nothing so profound, only exhausted and nervous and uncomfortable. And, blessedly, hungry.
‘Did you come from big families?’ I asked.
‘I have one brother, he lives in Melbourne now,’ James told me.
‘I have seven siblings,’ Lilly said softly.
‘Wow.’
They both laughed at my surprise.
‘Will you two . . . do you think you’ll have more than . . .’ Lilly motioned now towards my stomach and I laughed.
‘A few, hopefully.’ Ted answered for me. ‘Not seven. We’ve probably left it a little late for that.’
‘We’ve been travelling so much, until the last few years,’ I explained, although I’m sure I didn’t need to defend myself. ‘Then we were setting ourselves up. The timing hasn’t been right until now. You have three grandchildren though?’
I wanted to use different words, and as I planned the sentence, I intended to. It was at the very last instance that I self-edited. Instead of asking them if they had ‘three other grandchildren already’, I just confirmed that they had ‘three grandchildren’. It seemed a little presumptuous to refer to my unborn child as their grandchild.
‘Simon and his wife Emmaline also took their time. He’s three years younger than you and they’ve just had their twins this year. Charlotte, on the other hand . . .’ James and Lilly shared a glance. ‘She married and divorced young. Neesa is twelve now, Charlotte is thirty-four. She told us she was pregnant the day she finished her apprenticeship. Then of course her husband left and she’s been on her own for the most part ever since. I can’t believe you’re a teacher too.’ Lilly grinned at me, then drew in a satisfied breath. ‘It must be in the DNA. Who would have thought?’
‘Not me,’ I laughed softly. ‘Mum and Dad convinced me to do a post-grad certificate in education, I had no intention of ever using it until I came back from overseas and realised that I needed to do more than just sing in bars one night a week.’
It was only when I finished speaking that I realised that I’d referred to Mum and Dad as such. I waited for them to react, but Lilly pressed on with the conversation as if she hadn’t heard me.
‘I’m sure you must have my mother’s voice, she never had any training but she sung all of the time. She used to walk around the farm singing. Usually we knew where she was by listening for her song.’
‘Were you close?’ I asked, and a sadness settled in Lilly’s eyes.
‘Things were complicated with my parents,’ she murmured. ‘We didn’t speak for many years once I finally left home. Just before she died, we made peace . . . but I so wish she could have heard you sing, she’d have been so proud.’
‘Are Charlotte and Simon musical?’
‘Charlotte takes after me, she can’t even play her iPod in tune,’ James chuckled. ‘Simon probably had some talent but no desire to develop it. Neesa, on the other hand . . .’
‘Yes, Neesa is quite the singer. She’s young, but she’s got a real passion for it. They’re all excited to meet you at dinner tomorrow.’
‘I’m excited to meet them too,’ I said. Excited, and petrified.
Somewhere in the house, a clock sounded a series of bells. We listened, each silently counting.
‘That’s eleven,’ James said, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. ‘Lilly, we’d better let these two go to bed when they’re done eating.’
I saw Lilly’s face fall, and I reached over to sit my hand over hers.
‘We’re here all weekend,’ I said softly, and I smiled at her. ‘We have so much to catch up on. Tomorrow, we can talk all day.’
She smiled too, then she turned her hand over to grasp mine and entwined our fingers; locking us together.
‘Come on,’ James rose. ‘I’ll take your bags through to your room.’
When the lights were out, and the house was silent, Ted and I were tucked up in the bed beside each other. I turned to him and whispered,
‘She’s so intense.’
‘No wonder.’
‘I know.’
‘How you doing with it all, Bean?’
‘Good, good. I’m glad we’re here. I’m hoping tomorrow is a bit less . . .’
‘Awkward?’
‘Awkward. I feel bad for even thinking it. She’s so wonderful . . . but I feel a little shell-shocked.’
‘They seem like nice people.’
‘I have so many questions for her. I wanted to ask her even just the obvious ones tonight, but she seems too fragile.’
‘I know. But doesn’t it make you wonder . . . God, what has that poor woman been through?’
I was still thinking about that question long after Ted had fallen asleep.