Matt comes over and kisses the tip of her nose. Lemony smell of aftershave. Beard tickling her cheek. ‘Will you be okay, babe?’
She nods, already weary thinking about the day ahead. Was it just yesterday that she saw the solicitor, that the letter exploded like a bomb in her face? It feels like aeons ago. It feels like just now.
His face is so close she can see the small shaving nick on his chin sprouting a tiny bubble of dried blood. She touches a finger to the bubble.
‘Make your list. Then call me,’ he says.
She nods. ‘I will.’
He places a kiss on her lips like a gift and is gone, a whiff of citrusy musk all that remains of him.
She lies back, pulls Matt’s pillow over her face, breathes in the salty night smell of him, stretches, claims the bed, luxuriating in the space for a brief minute. Then she flings the sheets away, goes to the bathroom and stares at her face, trying to solve the puzzle lurking there.
When she was little and just beginning to understand the logistics of genes, she would peruse her face for hours on end, musing whether she got her huge wide-set eyes from her mother, whether her nose was her father’s. ‘Look at you, a copy of your mother,’ people would say and she would stand up straighter, the better to mimic her mother’s regal stance. Or, ‘You definitely take after your dad, don’t you?’ they’d say. Only once, a woman at a wedding (Nisha realises, in retrospect that she must have been drunk), had weaved her way to their table and squinted at Nisha with glazed eyes that had fascinated her, ‘So you’re the black sheep, then,’ she had said, waving a sharp finger so close to Nisha’s nose that she was afraid the woman’s pointy nail would poke her eye. Her mother had held Nisha close and said to the woman in a voice that reminded Nisha of the icebergs she had been learning about in geography, ‘I think you should leave now.’
I am; I was the black sheep, she thinks now, scrutinising her reflection. How could I have thought I looked like either of my parents? My mother’s eyes were nothing like mine, and my father’s nose was squat while mine is long, curving slightly at the end.
Tears sting her eyes and she blinks them away furiously.
Would I be different if I had grown up in India? She asks and, just like that, she is her childhood self again, balancing on the stool on tiptoe, wiping the steam off the mirror and studying the stranger staring solemnly back at her. More emotional perhaps? Able to cry and shout and rant and vent. Not so much in love with numbers. Free with hugs and kisses. Not standoffish and reserved. How much of my personality is taught? How much of it is part of my upbringing? I have questions enough to conduct a research project of my own. She watches the reflection in the mirror, familiar and yet inscrutable, lift the corners of her lips up in a wry, lopsided smile. In that dream, if those were my memories… I was so inventive, thinking prayers were making their way to God, fancying God was talking to me. If I had grown up in India, would I believe in God? Walk more gracefully? Laugh easily? Cook all those exotic dishes? Why, I don’t think I even like Indian food. How could I be Indian, then?
She shakes her head, decides that she will go for a walk to clear it. Within minutes she is clattering down the stairs, into the brisk freshness of a morning at the straggly end of winter, revelling in the feel of icy air caressing her cheeks, the smell of frying bacon wafting from the café, past the school where cars snake in an endless barely moving line, mothers struggling to park and drop their children off.
A woman wielding a walking stick hobbles to the bus stop, asks the teenage girl sprawled on the bench, taking up the whole seat, to move up. The girl pulls earplugs out of her ears and squints up at the woman. ‘Can I sit here, please?’ the woman asks. The girl nods, pushing the earpiece back in and moving her head to the tinny thump thump which reverberates out of the headphones. The older woman shakes her head, smiling. ‘Funny weather we’re having,’ she says. ‘Reckon it will brighten up later?’ Nisha realises with a start that, lost in thought, she has been staring right at the woman and that she is talking to her. She blushes, embarrassed. She is not one for small talk. Most people don’t get her—she has been told she is too reserved, too abrupt. She’s never had any close friends with the exception of Matt and her boss at work, Ross. No girlfriends. The few girls she invited back to the house when she went through the brief phase of trying to fit in at the start of her teenage years came because they adored her parents, the way they treated them as equals, the way they didn’t talk down to them. It made Nisha proud and, once in a rare while, when her period was due and she was achy and hormonal, it made her mad. Sometimes, just sometimes, she would have loved to have been treated as a child: given a cuddle and the false reassurance of saying everything was going to be okay—something her parents never did. They said it would be lying. Ha.
The woman is looking at her expectantly, waiting for an answer. Nisha has always found discussion of the weather pointless. Why not leave it to the weathermen? There is a whole science to it. What is the point of discussing it when you don’t have a clue? ‘Let’s hope so,’ she manages, pleased that her voice comes out sounding fine. She cannot believe she is having such an ordinary discussion when her world has tilted, making her lose her bearings.
A mother and child brush past, the mother cajoling the child along, ‘Come on now, you like school really. You’ll have fun with Reece and Ethan, won’t you, and play that pirate game you told me about?’ The child stops, refuses to move. His eyes overflow, silvery rivulets pooling onto his cheeks, sparkling in the desultory morning light. ‘I don’t want to.’ His mother squats right there on the pavement, folds the child into her arms. He buries his head in the curve of her shoulder, his little body snug in the shelter of her body while around them people rush past, on their way to work, to the shops, all in a hurry.
When she was little, Nisha had ached to be held. She would watch other mothers lift their children, twirl them around, pull them close, kiss them for no reason at all, say, ‘I love you’ with abandon. And every night before sleeping, she would wish that when she woke up, her mother would transform into one of those mums who cuddled their children, who cooked muffins and cakes, took them to the park and pushed them on the swings, not used the equipment for the purpose of a science lesson on pendulum effect and gravity. As soon as the reprobate thought dared flit into her brain, guilt would chase it away, and when her mother came to tuck her in, Nisha would hold her close, a moment too long. Her mother would gently release herself, put off the light and leave the room.
Her mother had never picked Nisha up from school; a childminder had until Nisha was old enough to walk home on her own—except the once, when her mother finished a project early. When Nisha came out of the gates and saw her mother standing slightly apart from the other mums looking desperately lost, she had rushed up to her and enveloped her in a hug. Her mother had blushed to the roots of her hair and gently disentangled Nisha. The slightly bitter tang of disappointment was forgotten when her mother had walked her home the long way, pointing out different land forms, picking up rocks and pebbles and explaining the striations in them. Other children had looked on curiously and disappointment had ballooned into pride. No, she had decided then, she would take her scientist mother over a mum who baked and cosseted any day.
Next to Nisha on the busy pavement, the mother picks up her boy, hefting his precious weight in her arms along with his schoolbag and lunchbox and makes her careful way to the school.
Would her birth mother have been free with hugs and kisses? Nisha wonders and just as quickly blinks the rogue thought away. Your birth mother gave you away to the convent.
No. Her mum will always be the tall, besuited woman who took great pleasure in imparting knowledge, whose eyes would soften when they looked at Nisha sometimes. She needs to hold on to all those memories before they disappear into ether.
Why are you thinking about what might have been? Since when did you start asking pointless questions, wasting time like this?
She realises she
has come to a stop in front of a familiar building. For the first time in what feels like forever, she smiles. Her feet, of their own accord, have conveyed her to her office. She is not due back for two days yet, but now that she is here, she is tempted to go in, lose herself in work, forget the tumult playing havoc within her for a brief while. There are decisions to be made, she knows. The letter, the phone number for the convent, the dream all vie for attention. But the pull of numbers, the ache for the soothing order of figures convinces her to push the revolving door open, nod at the doorman and make her way to the lift.
‘Nisha,’ her colleagues smile as she approaches her cubicle, ‘You are back.’ They do not meet her eye, worried that she might expect from them the comfort they are powerless to impart and for this she is grateful. They do not say, ‘You are two days early.’ They understand. They are like her: more at home in the world of figures than in the real one. Give them a complicated mathematical problem and they will solve it in minutes, but in the face of messy emotions, they are lost. At sea.
There is a card waiting at her desk. Signed by every one of her colleagues. ‘We are sorry for your loss.’ They knew and respected her parents. They had been round to her parents’ house a few times. Her eyes swim. My parents.
A memory: She is ill, burning up with fever, hot all over. There is an incessant pounding in her head. She wakes. The room is dark and someone, something startles in the corner. She yelps in fright, but the yelp comes out as a distressed whisper. The thing comes closer and it is her dad. He had been camping on the chair beside her bed. He touches her forehead, then leaves the room. Don’t go, she wants to shout. Don’t leave me alone. But her throat is hoarse and she seems to have lost her voice. He comes in a minute later followed by her mother whose eyes are sunken in her head. She is still in her suit, uncharacteristic for her. She bundles Nisha up, holds her close and they drive to the hospital in the night. She is in the hospital two days and they spend it by her side, not going to the lab, sponging her forehead with cool cloths, feeding her sips of sweetened water with a spoon.
If that is not love, she thinks now, what is?
Her boss, who has over the years morphed into one of the few friends she has, sticks his head round the cubicle door. ‘Nice to have you back, Nisha.’ His benevolent brown gaze holds hers. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ she croaks, managing to squeeze the word out past the frog in her throat. ‘Thanks for this.’ She holds up the card.
He waves his hand in the air, colour flooding his face. Nisha absently notes that this is the first time she has seen Dr Ross Cunnett—PhD, twenty five years of experience, unfazed by any work-related problem no matter how complex—blush.
‘They were amazing people.’ He manages at last, clearly lost for words.
And amazing liars.
‘Meeting in five minutes, board room,’ he says, and just like that they are back on normal footing, both equally relieved.
A discussion on a project to do with prime numbers. Prime numbers are solitary, she thinks, lonely. For the first time ever that she can recall, her mind drifts away from the comfortable camaraderie of the meeting, the place where she feels most at home. She remembers returning from school one evening, the question that had been burning in her throat all day bursting out of her as she stepped in the door: ‘Mum, why do I not have a brother or sister?’ Her mother had been chopping beetroot for salad, she remembers now. And the reason she remembers is because her mother’s face had flushed as red as that beetroot. ‘What is the matter, Mum?’ She had asked, ‘Are you ill?’ Her mother had turned to face her, her hands tinted pink, knife waving in the air. ‘Nothing, I’m fine.’ Now, in retrospect she understands. She had forgotten her question in the novelty of watching her mother turn a strange colour, worried that she might be poorly.
She has always secretly yearned for a sibling, has watched siblings curiously, the way they bond, the chemistry between them. How novel it must be to share the same genes with someone else, the same history, the same memories…
At least now I know why I never had any siblings. That piece of puzzle is in place, she thinks, and she puts it in a compartment in her brain and closes the door. The rest of her brain is in chaos but that little bit is in order and it makes her feel good.
‘Nisha?’ Ross’s voice intrudes, ‘What do you think?’ and her mind snaps back into the present, the snag the project is facing. She looks at the papers spread out in front of her, her mind working quickly, rearranging the numbers into workable columns. And, just like that, it is there, the solution, staring her in the eye. ‘If we do this and then this…’ she begins and realises as she explains the solution to her rapt colleagues that just now, she knows exactly who she is. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know who her real parents are, that she was given away like an item surplus to requirement. Mathematics, numbers, anchor her, define her. This is who she is.
‘We missed you, Nisha,’ Ross says warmly as her colleagues disperse to their respective cubicles and she smiles. ‘I missed work too.’
At 1:00 p.m., Ross sticks his head round the door. ‘Going downstairs for a sandwich. Want one?’ Soft butterscotch eyes crinkling.
She has been so absorbed in reading up on the project that she has lost track of time. She is aware, all of a sudden, of her stomach rumbling, aware that she did not have breakfast, and with that awareness comes the reminder of things she’d rather forget, things that need to be dealt with. ‘Ross, I… I just found out I am adopted.’ Somehow, the words are out before she can stop them, before she realises she has spoken out loud.
Ross’s head disappears and then reappears along with the rest of his body. The greying wise head, the kind face that is now looking at her with such tenderness. It is too much for her. Tears sting her eyes, threaten to overflow onto the landscape of her face. What has got into her? She is known for her famous reserve, the walls she’s built around herself. But since the letter, she’s been crumbling, disintegrating into a thousand pieces inside, barely holding herself together. And just now, when she saw this benevolent man who’s always reminded her of her dad, it just burst out of her.
‘Oh, Nisha, I am so sorry,’ he says, and in his eyes she sees such compassion, such understanding.
Now that she has started to talk, she finds she cannot stop. ‘I was adopted from India… I… I don’t remember, Ross. I don’t feel any connection at all to the place.’ Outside, someone laughs, the merry sound obscene in the angry quiet of the cubicle populated by her hurt, her grief.
Ross pulls up a chair beside her. ‘May I?’
She manages a nod. ‘I didn’t have a clue. I have been wondering if perhaps there were obvious signs that I missed along the way? If there were, they passed me by completely.’ She folds her hands on her desk, rests her head on the pillow of her arms. Hot tears inveigle out of her eyes, wet the thin fabric of the sleeves of her top.
‘It must feel like such a betrayal, especially after the shock of their loss…’ Ross’s voice is soft.
‘Why didn’t they tell me, Ross?’
‘I… I don’t know.’
I do. Because I would have stopped being an acquiescing lab rat; I would have asked questions, rebelled, perhaps even asked to go back.
‘I have had an upbringing where love was held at a remove. Would it have been different if I had been their biological child? That is one of the questions doing circuits in my head,’ she says softly.
A rhetorical question. ‘This is one which you will never be able to prove, so why ask it?’ her parents had said when she asked them something pointless without thinking once. ‘It is a waste of your time and ours. Remember, you will never get back this moment in time. Remember that.’ She learnt to think before she spoke, preferring sometimes not to speak at all instead of talking for the sake of it. This is one of the reasons I don’t get on with people; they say talking to me is like drawing water out of a stone. ‘I never know what you are thinking,’ a date said to her once. ‘I am wo
rking out puzzles in my head most of the time,’ she’d replied, the truth bursting out of her in an unguarded moment. She never saw the date again.
Her head on the desk, so heavy she cannot seem to summon the energy to lift it. The bitter, inky smell of words, of paper, soothing, comforting, mixing with the salty tang of tears.
Ross’s voice, ‘They loved you, Nisha. I know that. I saw it shining out of their eyes when I visited. They were highly intellectual people who did not know how to show love; the physical manifestation of it embarrassed them. I know because I am the same. My wife is always complaining that I do not show her any affection, even though, if something happened to her, I… I couldn’t function.’
Ross is right. My parents weren’t even affectionate towards each other. They never hugged or kissed or cuddled; there was always this distance, this barrier, even though anybody could see they cared for each other—or at least I could.
Her parents were not comfortable with words unless they were of the scientific kind, and neither is she. When her first ever boyfriend left her the day after sleeping with her, she had not been able to confide in her mother. She had not confided in anyone. She had gone to work and buried herself in numbers. (Yes, it had taken her that long to find a man she had liked enough to sleep with.)
Her head aches, it hurts, she wants it to stop. She is seized by the sudden impulse to make that list she’s promised herself and Matt, to put down in words all that information flitting around in her head, crowding it. She has been procrastinating—something she didn’t think she was capable of, a trait her parents always frowned upon. And now she realises she is just like everybody else. When something has the capacity to hurt, to pull the ground out from beneath her, she will put it off, will try and ignore it. She is human after all, she thinks, fallible—and that is not a bad thing, even though, had her parents been here, they would have convinced her otherwise.
The Forgotten Daughter Page 10