The Forgotten Daughter

by Renita D'Silva

  She doesn’t remember cuddles as a child. Whatever is in the letter, it is not a declaration of love; that much she knows. ‘Emotions are a waste of time better spent working,’ was one of her parents’ favourite axioms. There aren’t any pictures of her as a baby but there are several framed photos of her winning awards. Her parents paid for private schooling for her all the way through, always making sure she was aware of what they expected in return. ‘We want nothing less than the best from you, Nisha. We know you can do it.’

  She slits open the envelope. Several sheets of paper, the pale lilac of an expectant sky hankering for a thunderstorm. Her mother’s handwriting, her father’s signature. A knock at the door. Oh, go away, leave me be. A series of staccato knocks, persistent, increasing in tempo.

  She stuffs the sheets back into the envelope, tucks it under the cushion and goes to answer the door. The florist, face camouflaged by a profusion of cream lilies pale as dawn’s delicate brushstrokes lightening the drowsy night sky: delivery from a distant relative in Australia. She thanks the florist, shuts the door and leans against it for a brief minute, the wood cool at the back of her head like wet grass on a hot summer’s day.

  She walks purposefully to the sofa and scrabbles behind the cushion. Nothing. No letter. Confusion, unease, grief. And then she realises it is the wrong side, the wrong cushion. She retrieves the letter, telling herself to get a grip and, with a deep breath, opens it, starts to read.

  ‘Dearest Nisha,’ the words swim before her eyes. She blinks hot tears away. ‘If you are reading this, darling, then that means we did not get around to telling you.’

  Her stomach roils, the cereal she had for breakfast threatening swift exit. She presses a hand to her stomach, willing it to settle. Telling me what?

  ‘You are adopted.’

  What? The words sway before her eyes. There must be some mistake. She squints at them again. There they are, solid as the wall up ahead, which is, unfortunately for her, oscillating dangerously, swimming, drowning. She closes her eyes, clutching the cushion to her stomach, which recoils in protest. She runs to the bathroom, makes the sink just in time, is sick, loudly, messily. Get a grip, Nisha.

  She rinses her mouth, welcoming the stinging feeling of the mouthwash. Everywhere else is numb. She stares at herself in the mirror above the sink. Her hair stands in messy clumps about her face, most of it having escaped the clip fastening it up at the back. Purple circles frame huge eyes that dot a face bleached of colour, the complexion sickly beige.

  Who am I?

  She runs her fingers down the ridged skin above her upper lip, a relic of her cleft palate, drawing reassurance from the one thing that hasn’t changed.

  She remembers asking her mother once, as she dressed for work, her hair in a bun at the nape of her neck, the syrupy smell of flowery deodorant, ‘Is this hereditary?’ fingering her scar.

  Her mother had paused for a brief moment in the act of patting her hair in place. Her gaze, reflected from the mirror, had met Nisha’s. There was something in that look, something Nisha couldn’t quite understand at the time. Then her mother had turned away, busied herself with smoothing her trousers. ‘No. No, it isn’t.’ Her mother who had taught her the importance of looking right at people when talking to them, holding their gaze.

  ‘You are adopted.’ She whispers the words to the girl in the mirror and she stares back, shocked, her lips moving in a ghastly echo.

  The mirror steams. She is aware of her naked feet freezing as the cold seeps in through the tiles. Perhaps this is my parents’ idea of a joke, she thinks, and her ghostly reflection, silhouetted in steam, perks up. Except, they didn’t joke. Ever. Her parents had no sense of humour whatsoever. Perhaps it is a forgery. Her reflection attempts a smile. She watches the edges of uneven lips, one slightly higher than the other thanks to the cleft scar, try and curl upwards. They don’t make it. Instead, they droop back down, defeated.

  She hobbles to the sofa, circulation slowly returning to numb feet as they make contact with warm carpet, and picks up the letter.

  Her mother’s handwriting. Not a forgery.

  How could she not have known? How could she not have had a clue?

  She will not believe it. Where is the proof? She is someone who will not accept anything without proof. Her parents would approve, having drilled this axiom into her from childhood. No baby pictures, the voice in her head whispers. There’s your proof. There is a reason for that, she thinks, indignant. Her parents are not sentimental. Were, she corrects herself, ‘were not sentimental.’ And anyway, she remembers her mother saying something about a fire.

  Let’s assume for a moment that what is written here is true, the practical side of her blessedly takes charge. All this time, why didn’t my parents tell me? Why keep it quiet? They were scientists; they dealt in facts, numbers, the unshakeable proven truth. Then why didn’t they tell me?

  The letter, words she cannot erase: ‘We could not have children. My limp: a legacy of that accident I had. Well, my uterus had to be removed then. We were resigned to the fact. And then, during a trip to India…’

  India? Her parents went to India? Her Westernised parents who lived Western lives and had never been to India, at least not with her in tow? She has never been. And now, she’s finding out that they have.

  She remembers coming back from school when she was seven, ‘Mum, am I from India?’

  Her mother, tight-lipped, ‘We are of Indian origin, yes.’

  ‘Why don’t we go to India?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘There’s this girl at school who is from India and she goes all the time.’

  ‘Well, we don’t have any family there, no ties.’ Her mother had then proceeded to lecture her on roots and migration and they had spent the afternoon learning about immigration and the reasons for it.

  As a family, they went to the US, to Canada, they toured Europe. But they never went to India on vacation. She has never thought of herself as Indian or even as someone of Indian origin. Yes, she has brown skin, but as far as she is concerned, she is English. British. She never fills those forms that ask her for her Ethnic origin. She feels she will be lying if she ticks the ‘British Indian’ box. She is not anything Indian. She is British and that’s that.

  She did learn to read and write Kannada, though, along with Russian and Chinese. Her parents had insisted she learn these languages alongside the French, German and Spanish she was doing at school, painstakingly coaching her in their spare time, being of the opinion that mastering languages opened the mind, boosted brain development. ‘Why Kannada?’ she had asked, curious, having never heard of the language until her parents decided she learn it. And her mother, her face suffusing with colour, her voice brisk, discouraging further questions, had replied, ‘It’s our mother tongue, your father’s and mine.’

  Nisha’s eyes drag back to the sheet of paper in front of her. ‘…we found you.’

  What do you mean, ‘found me’? Found me where?

  Facts. She wanted facts. Here they are in front of her. In black and white. She is adopted. A fact. Like any other. My parents are dead. A car crash. A lorry driver asleep at the wheel.

  I am adopted.

  ‘We might as well tell you—we were involved in a project at the time, Nurture versus Nature. And we were in India doing research. And then we found you…’

  I was a project to you? Is that all I was?

  A project specimen like the rats in their lab, the rats they called by fancy names: Harry, Henry, Hubert.

  She cannot believe it. She is reeling, she is lost.

  The letter, the words written in her mother’s hand, swimming before her eyes: ‘Yes, you are adopted. But you are precious, Nisha. You are loved.’

  She runs a finger across those words. The closest her parents have ever got to declaring their love. Here it is. Proof. Of their love. Or is it?

  ‘You are loved.’ You say that, Mum, in the same couple of sentences that also state I wa
s one of your projects. So, how did you love me? Like you loved the rats who provided the proof for your theories? Or in my own right? For who I am?

  What a fantastic lab rat I proved to be, eh? What a brilliant argument for nurture trumping over nature!

  From the moment she started school, her parents had made it clear what they wanted of her: she was to be high achieving, to do well in everything she tried her hand at. Dancing, drama, debating, music, academics. She never questioned it—she assumed it was their Indian roots. She had done a little research of her own, read somewhere that Indian parents are ‘pushy’. The article said that because they had come out of hardship and poverty via education, they wanted the same for their children, if not more. The other Indian girls in her class moaned about their parents all the time. ‘Whatever we do, it is never enough,’ they huffed. ‘They are always comparing us to the rest of you, and if that is not enough, to cousins in India. They are always wanting more from us than we can give.’ Nisha had assumed that, even though her parents did not acknowledge their Indian roots, there was that ingrained fear of sinking back into bone-wrenching poverty, the worry of where their next meal was coming from (reasons gleaned from the article). In her more fanciful moments, which became few and far between as she grew older, she imagined it was because of this that they shunned their roots, because they did not want to be reminded of what they had been through to get where they were. They had got past it, they had survived. What was the point of ruminating? It made absolute sense for her no-nonsense, forward-looking parents.

  There are a few more sentences: ‘You were adopted from the Sacred Heart Convent, Dhonikatte, India.’

  She stops. She cannot read further. Not until she has processed this information.

  India. I was adopted from there. Why don’t I feel any connection? Why can’t I remember anything at all?

  There are pictures of her flashing her broken-mouthed grin (the operations to repair her cleft palate were still ongoing then), looking starched and stiff in her uniform—she remembers the crisp new smell of it—on her very first day of school. She had just turned five. Her birthday is in May, so… Or is it? Did her parents know her birthday at all? Or did they just make it up? Surely they wouldn’t? But if they had collaborated in such a big lie, kept this huge truth from her all this while, what else had they been hiding?

  Her head aches. Her heart aches. She doesn’t know how to deal with this. She is rubbish with emotions. Why did she call the solicitor? Why? What wouldn’t she give to go back to when she knew for certain who she was, who her parents were.

  She leafs through the notebook she always carries around with her, looks at the last entry, the list she made just that morning to calm herself down. The facts about herself: I am this, my parents are this…

  I am not who I always assumed I was.

  Matt. She wants to talk to him. He will ground her, he will talk her through the facts, he will sort this out. But he is at work, lecturing his class right at this moment, his phone switched off. Together he and his students will be working on a mathematical puzzle that at the beginning is just a muddle of numbers. Step by step, the numbers will be ordered, they will be multiplied and divided, added and subtracted and suddenly, the puzzle will make sense, the solution obvious. Matt will turn to his class and beam, ‘See, I told you so. Every problem, however complicated, has a solution.’

  ‘What is the solution to this, this mess I find myself in, Matt?’ she will ask.

  ‘Nothing. There is no mess. Let’s approach this logically,’ he will say. ‘What has changed, Nisha?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ He will smile, the left side of his face lifting upward in that lopsided grin she loves so much. ‘Really? You are still you: brilliant, stunning, perfect.’

  And he will hold her close and she will rest her head against his chest, the bulk of him reassuring in its solidity. She will breathe in his smell, musk and soap, and she will feel safe, the turmoil inside her easing a little.

  Thinking of Matt calms her; her heartbeat decelerates, resumes its normal rhythm.

  I was adopted from India sometime before I started school, before the age of five. A human being starts retaining memories at the age of three. Why don’t I remember anything? Has my subconscious repressed all those memories? Why?

  When she and Matt first started going out, he’d said, ‘Nish, shall we go travelling round the world? We could start with India. I cannot believe you’ve never been there.’ She had been adamant. ‘Why should I go there? Just because I am of Indian origin? I do not feel Indian, I am not Indian. I am as British as you are.’ She has felt no connection, no pull to the place. Never wanted to visit. And now, knowing what she does, she wonders, why not? Why didn’t I feel anything? And where is Dhonikatte anyway? She needs to check, find out. Or does she?

  She reads the sentence again. ‘You were adopted from the Sacred Heart Convent, Dhonikatte, India.’

  Sacred Heart. A picture of a benevolent Jesus, his clothes parted at the chest to reveal a heart pierced by arrows, red drops dripping onto white cloth, that she had seen somewhere once. Does that mean I am Christian? Rubbish, Nisha, you know who you are. You do not believe in organised religion. Your religion is Mathematics; you worship at the altar of numbers, proven facts, solvable theorems. A piece of paper does not change anything.

  An echo of the dream that has dogged her these past few days: the smell of wet pews and sweat, camphor incense tinged with jasmine; the whisper of hymn books; the plaintive voices of nuns rising in song.

  Why does she suddenly remember more of the dream? Is it a dream or her subconscious memory manifesting itself? Or is it her imagination, skewed and distraught by trauma and revelation? What’s happening to you, Nisha? How did the cool, practical woman come to be hijacked by this fanciful creature?

  ‘The phone number for the convent is 08202367867. In case you want to find out. Research your roots.’

  Research. That word. I am the living proof of the research project of two scientists.

  She flings the letter. It doesn’t land far, collapsing with a soft sigh on the carpet. The oppressive smell of wilting flowers nudges in, engulfing her nose, making her want to gag.

  A memory: coming to in hospital after one of the many operations she had to endure to fix her cleft palate. Groggy with pain, the faces of her parents swimming before her eyes. Worried, pale facsimiles of their usual brisk selves. ‘Mum,’ she says. And her mother beams. Absolutely glows. She bends down and kisses Nisha, and Nisha breathes in her mother’s smell, that tart, sweet smell that is pure Lekha. Are those tears shining in her mother’s eyes?

  They loved me, they did.

  My parents. The man and woman who gave me life. Who are they? She fingers the ridged skin above her upper lip. Did you give me away because of this?

  ‘I am adopted.’ She rolls the words around in her mouth, the fat syllables reverberating with shock, her murmur loud in the empty room, ricocheting off mourning walls dotted with drooping flowers.

  Stop this nonsense, Nisha. This changes nothing. You are still you. And then, another part of her, ‘Are my birth parents still alive? Why was I adopted from the convent? How did I end up there?’

  She pictures an alternate life, growing up in India, the India she has seen on television—bustling, colourful, noisy. A snort of startled, slightly hysterical laughter escapes her as she pictures herself in a sari, tall and willowy, waist peeking out of the red-and-gold folds draping her body, hair bunched back in a silky plait. I am going mad.

  She pictures herself telling Matt, ‘I am afraid I am finally giving in to whimsy.’

  She throws her head back among the nest of cushions and laughs, and somehow the laugh morphs into a sob and Nisha, unflappable, unruffled Nisha who did not cry at her parents’ funeral, who has kept herself together until now, gives in to the sobs which rend her slender body, reverberating through her like waves building into a tsunami. She is not a machine anymore; sh
e is human, torn apart by feeling, by the fear creeping up her spine, destroying the certainty that has always been with her, the knowledge of who she is, as she gives in to the chaos, the incompetent messiness of tears.

  Chapter 2

  India

  Devi

  Cod Liver Oil

  Ma,

  It starts with a phone call—as these things do. A number is dialled, a number known by heart. A familiar voice is expected to pick up at the other end after which cheery hellos, how are yous and confidences will be exchanged, news will be bartered and gossip swapped. Instead, the number rings and rings, each subsequent ring more ominous than the first. Weight is shifted from foot to foot as slivers of unease worm their way up the spine. And then there is a sound at the other end, the thunk of the receiver being lifted, positioned in that snug space between one’s ear and shoulder. The blur of static. A heartbeat of silence, a crackly hiss, then… a breathless voice mouthing hello, not familiar at all. ‘Come home at once. Your mother is sick.’

  At first, I do not believe the woman on the phone. I think this is just another of your ruses, Ma. Then, in a sudden flash of recognition, it dawns on me that I know those long drawn-out vowels, the way she says ‘Deeeeviiii’. Shali the fisherwoman. She tells me she came up to the house to check if you were okay when you did not turn up at the market for a week. She saw the dog whining, his head cowering in a defeated pose by the front door, guarding something, a dark shape—was that a head? She squinted, moved closer and spied you, a slip of a woman lying unmoving on a worn mat by the open door—an invitation for the stainless-steel-utensil burglar who’s been causing havoc in the village. She thought you were dead. She ran all the way up the mud path to the road, down the road to the rickshaw stand and begged one of the drivers lounging there smoking beedis to take you to the hospital. The rickshaw driver carried you, carefully navigating the slippery mud dislodging in clumps off the rain-drenched path, your body so hot it felt like he was handling lightning. Shali tells me that she came back to get some things for you to use in hospital and picked up the phone that kept on ringing and ringing. A petulant note creeps into her voice and I bite back the urge to apologise. Why should I? You are my mother; I will call you a hundred times if need be. The accusation implicit in Shali’s tone is ‘Bad Daughter.’ Pah, I think, what does she know?