19
It’s midday and unexpectedly warm. Ellie and I are weeding, making way for the rush of daffodils pushing their way up through the rich soil. Across the street, Michael Forster is busying himself with the edge-trimmer, making straight lines of his lawn borders. He is sweating. He leans on the fence post and I wonder if the action will leave behind a trace of his DNA, enough to prove whether I am the product of rape.
Part of me understands why Nina kept the secret, and resents Helena for telling me the truth. If I knew for certain that Ellie and I were related to Michael Forster, I am not sure I would tell her. Why should she be affected by a crime that preceded her by two generations? Still, I am afraid of not knowing, too. If I am Reginald Forster’s child, am I also my mother’s enemy? It is no wonder Helena could not raise me.
Ellie and I go into the cool of the kitchen, and I make us each a cordial from a bottle of elderflower syrup I found yesterday at the back of the laundry cupboard, behind a box of soap flakes. An idea presents itself and I take down a third glass from the overhead shelving.
‘Who’s that for?’ Ellie asks.
‘Mr Forster.’
‘But you said he isn’t very nice.’
She has me there. ‘His father certainly wasn’t, that’s right. And I don’t want you talking to him, but it won’t hurt for me to take this across. He lives on his own, so I’m sure he’ll appreciate some kindness.’
But I am not motivated today by kindness. I add some iceblocks to the drink and carry it across the road, the sides of the glass beading with condensation. If there was an advertisement for elderflower cordial, this would be it.
He glances up at me, surprised.
‘It’s a warm day. I thought you might like a cool drink. Elderflower,’ I say, handing the glass over the fence.
He regards me for a moment longer before reaching out and taking the drink.
‘How’s business?’ I ask, looking towards the framing shed.
‘Quiet.’ He holds the drink to his lips and tastes it. I get the feeling he hasn’t had something this nice for a long time. ‘Thank you,’ he says, drinking more.
‘You’re very welcome.’ I study his arctic-white hair and creased face. His stooped form. We do not look alike, although something about his nose is similar to mine. He goes to take a final gulp.
‘Oh!’ I say with false alarm. ‘Stop. Spit that back into the cup. I think I saw a wasp.’
He does what I said to do, and we both look into the glass, which I take from him, shaking my head. ‘Sorry, I must have been mistaken. Never mind.’
I take the glass back to the cottage and swab a cotton bud around the top where his lips were. I drop the cotton bud into a ziplock bag. I’m not sure what to do with the fluid in the cup. I phone Jude.
‘It’s me. Sara.’
‘Missing me already?’
I can hear the theme music for Midsomer Murders playing in the background.
‘Yep, can’t get rid of me that easily. Hey, I’ve got a forensics question for you.’
I hear the television volume drop.
‘If I have a sample of someone’s DNA,’ I say, ‘from saliva, a trace on a glass, some cheek cells from a mouth rinse, and I want to see if they are related to someone else, say from their saliva, what’s the best extraction method? We’ve only ever used blood in the lab …’
Jude hesitates before answering. ‘How old is the sample?’
‘Just taken today.’
‘You’re being very mysterious …’ She goes through the protocol she would use, the reagents and times. ‘You’ve made me very curious … Why are you asking?’
‘You really don’t want to know. I reckon I’ve bored you enough with my life story.’ The truth is I don’t want to tell her, not yet. I don’t know how I will feel if the results come back positive.
The sound of Jude’s television drops to nothing. ‘You can’t dangle a carrot in front of my nose and then whisk it away like that.’
‘A paternity issue, okay? I can’t say more now.’
‘Not Ellie’s?’
‘No! God, no. Look. Thanks, Jude. I’ll tell you more later.’
‘Have you run a paternity test before?’
‘No. And I’ve only got sibling DNA …’
‘That’s fine. You’ll need to compare microsatellite loci. There are labs that specialise in it, of course. Or you can buy a kit. Call me if you need.’
‘Thanks, Jude. It means the world to me.’
She laughs and I picture her rolling her eyes, thinking I’m crawling to secure her favours. ‘You might be overstating it now.’
‘No, not really.’
I split the samples across four small plastic Eppendorf tubes, so that I have two replicates of each, labelled Sara 1 and 2, and MF 1 and 2. I add the reagents and think of the cells splitting, their contents leaking out. I put the tubes in the centrifuge and spin them down, then open the machine again. I hold the clear tubes up to the light, marvelling at the tiny amount of salt-like precipitate – the DNA – that has collected in the base of each. Thank God for science’s capacity to amplify such small amounts of DNA.
I pause, considering what it is that I am actually doing: potentially discovering the identity of my father after forty-seven years.
Did Reginald Forster consider even for a moment that his actions could have such lasting consequences? That they may result in a child?
I don’t want to revive my mother’s trauma, or indeed to empower the dead man. I stop what I am doing. No, I tell myself. It is not the time. Not without asking my mother first. I put the four samples in the freezer, four samples that will reveal just two possible answers: yes or no.
There are lime-green buds on the elms as I walk Ellie to school the next day. A cluster of daffodils have broken through the soil, flowering at the base of one of the deciduous giants. In places, the white, round bulbs erupt like polished, round bones.
Ellie skips into the classroom and goes straight to Sally. Claire waves me over.
‘How’s Dale treating you?’
Given his history, it seems an odd question, and it occurs to me that she is subtly checking up on him. ‘Fine, thanks. I’m enjoying the job. Thanks so much for recommending me.’
She studies me. ‘Pleasure,’ she says and looks genuinely pleased. Even relieved.
‘Hey, that refugee boy who has started at the school.’ She looks around, searching for him now.
‘Mohammad. Yes.’
‘Ellie has taken him under her wing, it seems.’
‘Yes, they’re good mates.’
Claire is carrying her shoulders uneasily, a little too high for comfort. ‘I feel awkward asking this, but do you know if he has had all his shots? There’s a lot of polio where he’s from, and TB. Sally says you know them all pretty well. Is that right? You’re neighbours or something?’
I think over the question and all that it hides. I choose to read her concern as fear, a phobia of germs, rather than racism. What she needs is assurance, information.
‘Yes, I am sure he has. I am sure they are tested to within an inch of their lives when they arrive. You’re probably more at risk at the uni where people go backpacking to all corners of the world and come back home without anyone batting an eyelid.’ I give a small laugh to try to lighten things between us.
‘True, yes.’ But I can see she is not convinced. She adds, ‘I’m sure he has witnessed more than a young boy should, though. Is his behaviour okay?’ She hesitates, searching for the right word. ‘I mean, is it appropriate? Not rough or disturbed, I suppose is what I am trying to say. Does he talk about what he has seen?’ She winces slightly.
‘He’s a very sweet boy, Claire. Ellie enjoys his company a lot. I’ve never seen a hint of anything that’s a problem.’
‘Good. That’s a relief. Oh.’ She points behind me just as someone pokes my back. I turn to see Mohammad grinning up at me. I tickle his tummy and he giggles.
I call my mother o
n the bus ride to uni. I’d prefer to be at home, alone, but I can’t wait.
‘Sara, hi.’
So, she has stored my number in her phone contacts. ‘Hi. Listen, I just wanted to let you know … Can I talk now? Are you busy?’
‘Now’s okay. I’m in the middle of my ward round. Theatre’s not until this afternoon.’ She sounds uneasy.
‘I’ve got some DNA from Michael Forster. To check in the lab.’
My mother is silent for several seconds, and then I hear her footsteps clicking quickly on the hard hospital floor. A door opens and she goes into an echoey room. I hear a toilet flush. Another door shuts as someone, presumably, leaves, and I hear my mother crying softly. I think of all the times I cried as a child over my mother’s absence and, later, my dark wish to make my mother cry with regret in return.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I say. ‘I should have waited until tonight to phone.’
‘Have you tested it yet? After all this time … I still don’t know if I’m ready to hear the answer.’
‘No, I haven’t. I’m not sure I’m ready either. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ I wait a moment but she doesn’t fill the silence I’ve left for her. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I do. Okay? I mean, if you’re okay with me testing it.’
‘I think so. Yes.’ She pauses. ‘Those papers and things you found … I buried them after Nina died.’
‘You?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry you found out like you did, and that it’s been so upsetting. I couldn’t bring myself to burn them because I figured it wasn’t just my history. It’s yours, too. And Nina had kept them all that time, presumably still hoping to get some sort of justice one day. She took those black and white photos.’
‘Right.’ I pause.
Helena continues, ‘I was going to take them up to Sydney, but I couldn’t have all that history around me, and I didn’t want you finding out yet either. It was all such a rush, with the funeral and everything, that’s why they ended up in the vegetable patch. The soil was soft, easy to dig. It was surprisingly healing, actually. Burying them.’ She draws breath.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I needed to know.’
She sighs out.
‘And the other man ...’ I say. ‘Your old boyfriend, Uli. Does he still live here?’
‘Yes. He was at Nina’s funeral, actually. Even after how she treated him. After how I treated him. I left town as soon as I realised I was pregnant and he never even knew about you. I just up and left.’
‘He didn’t wonder if I was his child, living here with Nina?’
‘I think, like everyone else, he believed you were Nina’s. That she was an older mother with a secret lover, just as Reginald Forster had insinuated in the papers. She used up all her savings on my accommodation at the college so no one would be any the wiser. We all lost out.’
It seems wrong that we are having this conversation only now, after Nina has died, and I wish my grandmother were here to defend herself.
‘Did Uli ever marry? Does he have any other children?’
I hear the door open and more footsteps as someone else enters the bathroom. I hear my mother say hello.
‘Sara, we’ll talk more. I’d better go.’
She hangs up and I return my phone to my backpack. I feel for her, my mother, trying to hold herself together in front of a colleague in the hospital bathroom. Tonight she will go back to an empty house. If it had not been for the rape, she might have ended up with Uli, with or without Nina’s blessing. I can hardly believe he was at the funeral, and I try to picture the crowd, although I was too upset to take in much of what happened that day. I remember the old Russian Hydro worker and a few others from the camp. I remember some of the neighbours. Michael Forster. Sadly, not Abdhul and his friends. And then I recall the back door opening partway through the service and a man coming in and standing against the back wall. He was fair haired and broad framed. He arrived alone and left soon after. Was that my father? Had I seen him after all?
20
As Ellie and I cross through the park on the way home from school pick-up, Ellie spots a woman seated on a swing with a new baby. The infant is cocooned in a cloth tied to the woman’s front. Ellie runs towards them.
‘I’m getting a baby brother,’ she tells the woman, touching the newborn’s hand. The baby clasps Ellie’s finger tightly.
‘Oh,’ the mother says, looking up at me. ‘Congratulations.’
Her comment is so warm and heartfelt that I find it difficult not to smile back in thanks. Perhaps Sylvia’s pregnancy is good news, after all. Ellie, like me, always wanted a sibling. I should try to be happy.
Who am I kidding?
My phone rings. Ian.
‘I’ll be back in Hobart in a fortnight,’ he tells me. ‘Any chance of having Ellie?’
‘Sure.’ I say it easily enough, but it is anything but easy. I stroke the baby’s foot.
‘Thanks. Thanks, Sara.’ He hangs up.
I get a flash of memory from our wedding. My mother cornering me as I left the church with Ian, just as we reached the light. She framed us squarely with her thick black glasses, before first shaking Ian’s hand and then mine. She leaned forwards to give me a hug, but I moved sideways towards a guest who I have not seen since. I have been so cruel. Helena complimented me on my appearance and the dress, Nina’s handiwork, and said she was happy for us and hoped we would be very happy together. And then she left. I suppose she read my mind: Dr Helena Barsova, the renowned children’s heart specialist who abandoned her only child. The failure negating the success. Her response was to be absent again. In the years that followed, she tried again to start a dialogue with me over email and the occasional phone call, but I repeatedly shut her out. If only I had known then what I know now.
‘I’ll meet you outside the Red Cross office, in the carpark,’ I tell Abdhul. It’s the day of his appointment with the lawyer from the refugee advisory service.
We are met by a young woman with long red hair who explains she has flown down from interstate. ‘Your case has moved up the priority list,’ she tells Abdhul. She shows us into a small side room and scans the paperwork.
‘Your doctor says you have been getting headaches and are not sleeping well. Signs of depression.’
‘Yes.’ Abdhul looks down. ‘I have many tablets each day.’ He takes a plastic bag from his backpack and arranges the prescriptions on the desk. I had no idea he was taking so much medication.
‘I think that is why you have been put up the list,’ the lawyer says. ‘It’s a shame they wait until people get sick.’
‘He has been waiting for close to four years,’ I say.
‘I know. It’s really unfortunate. I’ll do my best.’
‘And the delay has been?’ It sounds harsher than I meant it to.
‘To do with the Department. Immigration. Abdhul has needed to wait for a letter from them, telling him that he has an appointment time.’ She appears exhausted, emotionally drained.
‘This appointment?’
‘No. Another.’ Her response is flat. ‘This is just so we can prepare his case for the department. I am not the one making the decisions.’ She doesn’t look at me or Abdhul.
‘Oh.’ Was it just me who had got this wrong, or did Abdhul also misunderstand? ‘But he has told his story. How long do you think today will take? I have to get my daughter …’
‘It normally takes about four hours. Maybe five.’
I am shocked. ‘Why does he need to do all this again? Don’t you have his records from when he was detained on arrival?’
‘It’s important that his statement is as accurate and complete as it can be. We can’t leave anything important out. He needs to meet certain criteria. If he doesn’t, I am sorry to say he will be sent to … I will have to check, there have been so many different policies with the changes of government. I suspect he would be sent back to Afghanistan. Most likely Kabul.’
‘Kabul?’ Abdhul says, his eyes panicked and con
fused.
‘Yes,’ the lawyer says, her fiery hair smooth across her shoulders.
‘But I left Afghanistan when I was a boy. I do not know it. Not at all. And never Kabul. My family –’
‘I know, but, am I right that you had no legal status in Pakistan?’
‘Yes. We were refugees there, too. We had to leave Afghanistan because my father and brother would have been killed. My father was in the army.’
‘Against the Taliban?’
‘Yes, of course.’ He tisks his tongue.
‘Have you got his papers?’
‘Yes.’ He passes them forwards.
‘It might help. And your own papers?’
‘Yes.’ Again, he passes a neatly kept pile across the desk. Evidence of his schooling, the names and photographs of his wife and children. I look at their faces, staring expressionlessly at the camera in some coldly furnished Pakistani office. My friend goes through the procedure patiently.
It reminds me of being in hospital when Nina was sick and had to repeat her medical history to each new nurse and doctor. It was difficult to have faith in the health system, just as it is now difficult to trust Immigration. How can it have taken more than three years to obtain his official statement?
‘How long before the real interview?’ he asks the lawyer.
‘It could be another year. Or longer. I am sorry, but that is my experience.’
I see disappointment wash over Abdhul. His posture shifts, curves forwards.
‘And then, my wife and family …’
‘No,’ the lawyer says. ‘Then you may be given a visa for five years, but you must intend to work or study in a regional centre. Tasmania is okay. Before the five-year visa expires, if you have met certain criteria, you may apply to become permanent. Then, we can make a case for your wife and children.’
I have no words.
‘My mother?’ Abdhul asks.
‘Potentially, but again there are criteria you would need to meet. And she could only stay temporarily,’ the lawyer answers. ‘If successful, the visas for your wife and children would be permanent, but, as I say, they won’t be able to come for at least five years. And then there are processing times and costs.’
Matryoshka Page 16