All right, I think, no need to rub it in. I am their dirty little secret. Their. It sounds like Abi’s father is my father too. We are full blood sisters. They stayed together and got married. Had another child about ten years later. Forgot the child in the butterfly box ever existed because she didn’t fit into their cosy new life. I wonder why they left it so long? Maybe they kept trying and trying and it never happened. It might even have occurred to them after months and months of no joy that maybe they should have stuck with the one they had first.
‘I think I need to leave.’
‘What did you say?’ Abi asks.
My hands fall away from my face, trembling as I swivel slowly to look at her again. It’s uncanny – our features are arranged so similarly, I could be looking at a picture of myself from at least ten years ago.
Ten years ago …
Ten years ago Seth asked me if we could talk about having a baby. I’d stared at him for a long time, horrified at the suggestion. Yes, obviously we were together for ever as far as I was concerned, but a baby was the last thing on my mind.
‘Have I said the wrong thing?’ he asked.
‘I, erm, Seth, babies … I …’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I can.’
‘Not ever?’
I started to breathe deeply, I was about to start hyperventilating, panicking. ‘I can’t … I don’t know anything about where I come from, what sort of stuff is in my biology. What it would do to a child I have. I hate going to the doctors anyway because there are all these things they ask you and I can’t ever answer them because I was adopted and my mum won’t let me find my other parents, not even to ask about my genes, so I’ll never know. It’ll be worse with being pregnant, having a baby, that’s all about what can be passed on. And I won’t know. I’ll never know—’
‘Hey, hey, hey,’ Seth said and grabbed me into a hug to quell my panic. ‘Let’s talk about it another time. Or not. We’ll see how things go. It was a stupid suggestion.’
‘No, it’s not. We can talk about it another time, OK? Just not now.’
Ten years later, him mentioning that we might have made a baby was the start of the last conversation we had as a couple. Ten years ago there was so much going on, and I still looked as young and naïve as Abi.
‘I said, I think I need to leave,’ I reply.
‘Oh. Right.’
‘This isn’t … I’m not coping very well with this and I need to leave.’
‘Why don’t you come meet my parents? Maybe they’ll be able to explain all of this. You might be my long-lost cousin instead of, you know … Which would be mad, but kinda cool, too.’
‘Did you used to sleep in a cardboard box?’ I ask.
Abi frowns at me, her eyes darting up and down over me, checking me out again. ‘Yeah, why? Wait, how’d you know?’
‘I slept in one, too. It’s an old—’
‘Finnish tradition,’ she finishes. Her scrutiny intensifies.
‘Did she decorate it in butterflies? Your mum? I assume it was your mum who decorated it, and not your dad.’
‘No, I had hummingbirds. My eldest brother had eagles. My other brother had doves. Yes, Mummy drew them.’
Brothers? Brothers. I have a sister. I have brothers. They didn’t wait ten years to try again.
‘I really need to go now.’ My bag clatters to the ground when I stand and I immediately throw myself to my knees, gathering up my belongings, shoving them away because I feel exposed enough, I don’t need her to see anything else about me, to have something potentially negative to relay to her parents.
‘I seriously think you should come meet my parents,’ she says while I replace my bag’s contents and search thoroughly for anything I may have missed.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No, thank you.’ Am I simply turning down an invitation to tea or the chance to meet my biological parents, the people who gave me the blood that flows through my veins? ‘I need to go.’
‘But—’
‘No offence, but over the years I’ve imagined meeting the people who could potentially be my biological family and it was nothing like this. If you don’t mind, I’m going to leave now. I need to go home, sit down, start to get my head around it.’
‘What do I tell my mum and dad?’
My shake of the head looks more dismissive than I feel inside, and the up and down flap of my arms seems far more exasperated than I feel. ‘I don’t know,’ I tell her, earnestly. ‘They’re your parents.’
14
Smitty
My body is tingling all over. My body is numb. Both sensations are there and I’m not sure how I’m driving.
That automatic part of you that takes over when necessary must have kicked in. I half expected Abi to come running out of the building, trying to flag me down, stop me, talk to me. I’ve watched too many movies, I think. If I was her, I’d be turning myself inside out pretending that it was all a coincidence. That the woman who fled was a fantasist. Anything else passing through my brain would be admitting that there’s a possibility that my parents are liars. All parents are liars, of course. They tell you lies all time for your own good – ‘If you pull your face like that and the wind changes it’ll stay that way’, ‘The ice cream van plays music when it’s run out of ice cream’, ‘You were a good baby who never cried’ – but they’re not fundamental lies. All parents are liars, but they pray you never find out the truth about the lies of omission that are etched into the fabric of their personalities, indelible stain-like reminders that before they were parents they were human beings and made human mistakes. Some of those mistakes are stupid and pointless, like a tattoo of the name of the first person you ever loved; others are huge and life-altering – like surrendering your child for adoption.
I’ve done a bad thing to Abi. She will be turning herself inside out trying to pretend that her parents aren’t human enough to make such huge mistakes. She will have to go home and face them.
Red. The traffic light is red and I stare at it. Red for stop. Red for blood. Red for danger. Maybe I should go back. I can’t let her do that alone. She’s done nothing wrong. If I go back, though, go with her to her house, I’ll have to face them. I’ll have to speak to those people. The first thing I’ll do is blurt out, ‘Why?’ and they’ll say … They’ll say … What I always knew and this has confirmed: that it was me. It can’t have been about my mother being all alone. It can’t have been any of the reasons I’ve conjured up and worked out and come to decide were the truth over the years. If they are together, if they had more children, if they’re still living in the same house they did all those years ago, there must have been something wrong with me.
An orchestra of car horns penetrates my thoughts. Green. Green for go. Green for move. Green for pastures new. Green for emeralds, popular in engagement rings. My foot pushes down on the pedal, and nothing happens. Green for go. I push hard, the pedal is to the floor, and nothing. Green. GO!
The orchestra is loud, insistent, angry. The heat inside my head will melt me. I want to take off all my clothes so I can feel the air on my skin and it can cool me down. Other pedal. I need to push the other pedal to go. My foot moves, slams down too hard on the right pedal, Lottie leaps forward, jerking me with her. At least we’re moving now, at least all that stuff is behind me and I’m moving forwards.
The further away it is behind me, the easier it’ll be to forget. To pretend when I get home. The orchestra fades away, the echo of a memory of a stupid mistake I made at some traffic lights. The soundtrack I have now is nothingness. Silence. This is the silence of the lonely ones, of people like me – we who do not know how to talk, or to share, or to open up our truths to the people around us, for fear of how it will be used against us.
Mum is in. The television is telling her something about ruins in Turin. I’m sure she’ll be avidly watching that and doing her Sudoku with her glasses perched on the end of her nose, and tea cooling in the white and yellow mug she favours most.
I’
m not shaking. I am, but if I tell myself enough times that I’m not, it will become a reality.
‘Clemency, is that you?’ Mum’s voice calls. Today is a good day. The tentacles of pain and grief are not wrapped so tightly around her heart, its poison isn’t tainting her as potently. I know this by the volume of the television, blaring out enough to be heard throughout the flat; I can feel this by the calmness in her voice. If I was going to tell her – ever – today would be the day to do it.
‘No, Mum, it’s the milkman,’ I reply. I stand outside my bedroom, the wide corridor suddenly narrow and claustrophobic, not big enough for the secret I’ve hidden away in my heart and mind. The large honey-coloured wooden blocks of the parquet floor swim in front of me, their pattern suddenly a nauseating kaleidoscope of half-focused images and formations.
‘Clemency! Do you have to?’ Mum calls. ‘Can’t you just for once say, “Yes, Mum, it’s me”? Do you have to be sarcastic every time?’
‘Yeah, but— Yes, Mum, it’s me,’ I say.
‘That’s better,’ she replies. There’s no doubt a smile on her face, fuelled by the affection she now has for me because I didn’t argue with her for once, nor try to explain that saying things like that were just part of who I am. Instead, I simply did as I was told. Anyone other than my mother would be suspicious of why someone had suddenly changed a habit of a lifetime. But Mum doesn’t know because she always thinks if she tells me off enough, I will do as I’m told. If I were in Mum’s position, though, I’d guess without a doubt that I was being cheated on.
That’s what I’m doing. I’m cheating on my mother. Even though I didn’t mean to, and it really did ‘just happen’, I’m still cheating. Betraying her. Making her biggest nightmare part of my reality.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Mum asks.
I want to tell her. I want to throw myself on to the sofa beside her, rest my head on her shoulder and explain what happened. Then I want to explain about the cavernous hole that has unexpectedly, terrifyingly opened up inside me simply because of who I met today. The hole is always there, of course, and mostly I ignore it. Usually I replace the area where it is with the idea that I don’t belong anywhere and that I don’t need anything else to explain why I feel the way I do. Rarely, very rarely, I obliquely acknowledge the hole and feel for a little while that there is a part of me missing.
There is a part of me missing. I feel that now. It is huge and gaping and potentially unfillable. I want Mum to be able to listen to all that and understand without worrying about what it will mean for her.
I want my mum. My real mum, I mean. The mum who’ll be able to listen to all that and understand and put her arms around me and tell me it will all be OK. I want my real mum, except I don’t know who that is.
‘Clemency! Do you want a cup of tea?’ Mum repeats.
‘No, thanks. I’m going to get on with some work.’
‘Don’t work for too long,’ she calls back. ‘You know how involved you get.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ I say. It’s her of course; she’s my real mum. How could I, for even a moment, have ever thought otherwise? She’s my real mum. And I’ve cheated on her.
15
Abi
To: Jonas Zebila
From: Abi Zebila
Subject: NEWS!!!!!
Thursday, 11 June 2015
Are you sitting down?
I hope so. If you’re not and you’re reading this on your phone, SIT DOWN. You are not going to believe what I’m about to tell you.
We have a sister. Apart from me, you have another, real-life, full-blooded sister. It’s too complicated to explain all of it right now, but it was her that Mummy drew the butterflies for. This woman said when she was a baby, she slept in a box decorated with butterflies by her mother, who she never met because she was adopted as a baby.
All the while I’m talking to her, I’m thinking, this is mad, she’s not my sister, how can she be when Mummy and Daddy have been together since the beginning of time and have only done it three times to have us? And if she was really our sister then they would have … BEFORE marriage, and you know how much of a crime that is around here.
When I told her to come back to the house to meet Mummy and Daddy she got up and ran away. But butterflies. It all makes sense now.
All right, so by now I’m properly spooked. There’s some woman out there with my face and a sleep box like mine, so I leave work as early as I can. I come home, Mummy’s in the kitchen, Gran’s asleep in her room, Daddy’s still out and Ivor is on the computer in the living room with Lily so it’s safe to talk. I’m actually pretty impressed with myself that I didn’t think twice about going into the kitchen and shutting the door and fronting up to Mummy about it.
‘Abi, when you have washed your hands, wash the rice for me and put it on,’ Mummy said.
I went across the room and stood right next to her. ‘Mummy, do I have a sister that you had adopted?’ I said.
Yeah, all right, it’s not the most subtle or diplomatic thing to say but I had to get it out quick before I lost my nerve.
She was crushing big fat juicy plum tomatoes in her black mortar and pestle (you know the one Daddy brought her back from Nihanara the last time he went over there) and she just stopped. Only for about two seconds, then she started up again.
‘What foolishness are you talking now, Abi?’ she said. ‘Please, wash your hands and then put some rice on. Make sure you put enough on for today and tomorrow.’
‘I just met her,’ I said. ‘She looks exactly like me and she says she slept in a box covered in butterflies. I brought her home to meet you.’ Yeah, I know that last bit was mean but you know what Mummy and Daddy are like – they won’t admit to anything unless you have proof. As it turns out that was the worst thing I could have said because it shook Mummy up so much she knocked the black bowl off the worktop and it smashed on the floor and the tomato juice went everywhere.
Mummy looked really, really scared and said, ‘She’s here? You brought her here?’
I knew it was true then and I knew it was bad because she didn’t even notice about the bowl. I sort of shook my head, really nervous, and said that I’d wanted to but she ran away. ‘Is it true?’ I asked.
She still looked scared but she nodded. ‘You must not tell your father that you have seen her, nor your grandmother.’
‘Do they know about her?’ I asked. And she got angry! She’s the one lying all these years and now she was angry when she was caught out and I asked what I thought was a perfectly valid question.
‘Of course they know about her. Who do you think her father is? And you must not tell Ivor. None of them are to know until I’m ready to tell them, do you understand me?’ I didn’t say anything because what sort of a person would agree to something like that? ‘Do you understand me?’ she said again, more sternly, so obviously I’m the sort of person who would agree to that because I did. I sort of nodded and said yes, and I didn’t cross my fingers or toes. But she didn’t say I wasn’t to tell you, so I am.
Can you actually believe it? A sister. A SISTER. And I can’t tell anyone. Except you. I think Mummy wants to meet her, to see for herself, but after the way she ran away today, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
So there you have it. Big news. I’m typing this from Declan’s. I couldn’t trust myself not to shout something at the dinner table so I packed a bag for Lily and me and we’re going to stay here for a few days. Declan’s over the moon, Lily’s less than thrilled because I forgot her homework and I refuse to go back for it.
I don’t know how I feel about all this. I could scream at Mummy and Daddy, I really could. But on the other hand I know what good it would do me. I so want to see her again. A sister. I’ve always wanted a sister. (No offence.) I really hope there’s a way I can get her to talk to me.
Lots of love
Abi
xxxx
16
Smitty
Mum is sitting at the kitchen table;
she has a copy of Friday Ads spread open in front of her, a cup of tea in her hand. At this time of day the kitchen is a suntrap, light streaming in through the windows like water down a waterfall. Mum seems to be bathed in a golden glow because she is at the epicentre of the waterfall of light. She is dressed, hair done, make-up applied, ready for whatever the next few hours hold.
I struggled out of bed this morning after a sleepless night of replaying and reliving yesterday. It’s been a night of confusion and self-reproach and fear of what to do next. No matter which line of thought I followed, which path my fantasies led me, which way I tried to reason myself out of the mess, there really is only one thing to do next.
What I should do next is this: tell Mum.
Today is a good day and if I tell her now, it won’t set her too far back. In this light-drenched kitchen I should tell her and she can help me decide what to do next.
My fear, a visceral terror of her reaction, wouldn’t allow me to think of what to actually say, but it shouldn’t be too hard. ‘Mum, I met my biological sister yesterday’ would work. ‘Mum, I know this will upset you, but yesterday I met my sister’ that would be enough, too. ‘Mum, I need you to listen to me for a minute without saying anything. What I’m about to say will be unbelievable and really quite cool if you think about it but I’ve found my birth family.’ ‘Mum, I have a sister! I know! Isn’t that incredible!’
I clear my throat, which emanates from me as a small, choking sound. I’ll simply start talking. Whatever it is that comes out of my mouth, I will state it clearly and firmly, and I brace myself to face her response full on.
‘I’m going to buy myself a bicycle,’ my mother announces when she sees me.
‘Who with the what now?’ I reply. That, I was not expecting.
‘There are bicycle lanes all over Brighton, all down the seafront, I’m going to take advantage of them. I’m going to buy a bicycle.’
‘To ride?’
That Girl From Nowhere Page 9