The Forgotten Daughter

by Renita D'Silva

  She had been unable to meet her parents’ eyes that evening at dinner. Unable to meet their eyes until the next report, and the next. All of them good. She never did badly again. Once was enough.

  It is a wide, comfortable room and it looks out onto the garden: a glorious early spring afternoon. The sun, having recharged its batteries all winter, is showing off. Golden rays, deliciously warm, snake in, making the top of the bookcase, which desperately needs dusting, shimmer and glow. Her father used to sit here, in that armchair beside the bookcase, his nose buried in a book while her mother worked with her, joining in their discussion every so often. When she was little, she had tried climbing up the ladder of his legs, slipping onto his lap, dislodging his book, ‘Whoops, daddy.’

  Outside, the grass, which desperately needs mowing, glitters, still wet from the mid-morning’s surprise shower, and the fat droplets that cling tenaciously to the blades sparkle. Yolk-yellow daffodils bow gracefully in the mild breeze. Crocuses the pale purple of a bruise wink in the dappled sunlight. There is a carpet of pink snow under the cherry blossom tree, which is in early bloom, pink buds bursting in glorious colour. A gust of breeze displaces them and they swirl in the air, an ethereal rosy cloud. Birds twitter and a magpie lands hopefully in the garden, fooled by the glittering raindrops. The air that snakes into the room smells of new life, of buds bursting and trees eager to flower. It tastes of hope, the exact opposite of what she is feeling.

  Spring has sprung, she thinks, without her noticing.

  She is putting off the moment, putting off opening the file labelled ‘Nature VS Nurture’ — a surprisingly slim one. She has seen some of her parents’ files on other projects. All of them thick, full to bursting. Why didn’t they submit this one? The project was a success; she is proof. So, why didn’t they publish the findings, keep this file in the lab with all their other completed projects?

  Proof. It is just as she thought: she was a project. She wishes otherwise, but here it is in black and white. Here it is and it is time to face the facts.

  Her mother’s handwriting, with her father’s notations in the margin. She notes the date of the first entry, makes a quick calculation. If her birth date is right, they started the project two years before she was born. She opens the file, flicks through the entries, each one meticulously dated until, aha, Case Study 24: Mangalore, India. ‘Trip to India planned to research the roots of subject C, an accountant of Indian origin who was adopted by a British couple in 1960.’ Did this give them the idea to do the same, she wonders? She glances at the date. When they travelled to India, she would have just turned three and a half.

  Couple more entries and then, ‘In Mangalore. Have heard of a curious case of twins, identical in every way except that one of them has a cleft palate. Find out if the twins could be part of our study?’

  Wait a minute, she thinks, wait a minute. Am I reading this right? Are they talking about me here? I am a twin? A twin? I have a sister? A sister who looks like me? A sister in India? My doppelganger?

  The next entry—the last: ‘We are going to take a break from this project and work in general—we are going to be parents!’ Exclamation marks in a project file—the equivalent of a string of jubilant swear words for her dry, officious parents.

  It was me, wasn’t it? It was. She runs to the bathroom, makes it just in time. She is sick over and over. She wobbles back on jelly legs, picks up the file, fingers trembling. Reads the last couple of entries again. Typical of her parents to not say much, as always so economical with words. She wants to know more, she wants to know if it was her they were talking about. But who else can it be? Dhonikatte is a village in Mangalore she knows, thanks to her research. How many children with cleft palates could there have been in Mangalore at the time her parents adopted her? And for the entry about them becoming parents to come just after the one about the twins… that cannot be a coincidence. So that means… she is a twin? But how? How can she not remember such a crucial part of her? How can she have blocked out the memories of the person she shared nine months in the womb with so completely? Proof. I want proof. I cannot just believe everything that is written here. If I was a twin, an identical one at that, I would have felt something; I would have had an inkling, wouldn’t I?

  She flicks through the pages of the rest of the file urgently, heart clamouring within the prison of her chest, her fingers shaking. Nothing. She is distraught, filled with a blinding rage. She flings the file. It collapses on the carpet, spine upwards, translucent innards sprawled messily, an orange pyramid spewing vomit-hued paper stained inky blue with her parents’ writing. But something is not quite right with the picture. An anomaly. She bends down, leans closer. A black card with grey edging peeking out of one of the sleeves of the file.

  She plucks it out. A photograph. Baby girls. Chubby arms and legs waving in the air. Identical chocolate eyes. Eyes she recognises. Eyes that stare back at her from the mirror every morning when she brushes her teeth, dresses for work. Identical high foreheads, identical wispy, coffee-coloured hair. Identical pointy chins. But the mouths, ah, the mouths: one with a grotesque laceration; the other perfect, sporting a toothless smile for the camera.

  There’s my proof.

  No baby pictures, her mother had lied. None.

  Emotions, twenty-odd years of repressed emotions, bombarding her. Nisha runs her finger over the image of the other girl. My sister. My sister. I have a twin sister. She slumps down onto the carpet, tastes grief, salty, swallows it down past the bitter lump of regret and guilt sitting heavy in her throat. Why don’t I remember you? Why do I have no recollection of you at all? We started life together from the same fertilised egg; we shared nine months in the womb and, judging from this picture, some months outside the womb together. How could I have forgotten you, lived all these years without knowing, sensing that a part of me was missing?

  Anger, raw, burning like a fire eating away at her innards. Why didn’t her parents leave this picture with the letter? Perhaps they forgot it existed. That would be like them, to completely block out things they didn’t want a reminder of, like they did their past, their Indian roots. But surely when they were writing the letter, they would have recalled the photograph? Perhaps they couldn’t find it and thought it was lost. After all, Nisha only found it when she flung the file and the picture dislodged from its hiding place amongst the sleeves at the back. But then why didn’t they tell her about her twin in the letter? Why?

  A memory. She is twelve years old, learning about genes and heredity. She comes home buzzing with questions, hounds her parents. Unlike other times, when her questions have been a source of joy, this time they are strangely reluctant, answering in monosyllables, trying to put a stop to her questions, changing the topic. It had seemed strange at the time, she recalls, and very unlike her parents…

  A picture begins to form. They must have written the letter to ease their consciences that summer when she kept asking question after question. They would have given it to the solicitor for safekeeping with their will, never considering the possibility that one day she might be reading it. They would have always meant to tell her in person and when they did, they would have shown her the file, told her about her twin and the photographic proof they had sadly misplaced. They would never for a moment have assumed that she would be finding out like this. That is why the letter was so lacking—they never really expected her to read it.

  Another possibility: Her parents did not mention her twin in the letter because there was no accompanying proof—they thought they’d lost the only piece of evidence they had. And so they gave her the number of the convent they had adopted her from and hoped, no, assumed that she’d find the rest, knowing her penchant for solving puzzles, finding solutions.

  A burst of scorching rage. This is my life, not some mathematical riddle.

  How can she know these people, the workings of their minds, so well when she doesn’t even remember her sister, her own flesh and blood, someone who looks exactly lik
e her except for the cleft palate?

  And now she understands why she was given away. A couple are blessed with twins, identical in every way except for their mouths. So they keep one, no points for guessing which one, and give away the other. White hot, scalding fury directed at the couple who gave her life. I know I was damaged, ugly. Perhaps you couldn’t bear to look at me, at my devastated face. She rubs a hand over her scar, a reflex. But you were my parents. You were supposed to love me, unconditionally, no matter how I looked… If my child was born with a cleft palate, I would cherish her, not discard her like used wrapping paper. If I hadn’t been adopted by people who cared for me, loved me—yes, they did—what hope would I have had?

  Or did you give her away too? My sister… Supposing you did, where is she? She could be anywhere, with anyone. Tenderly, she caresses her sister’s face. Were you at the convent with me? If so, why do I not remember, if these dreams I have been having are really repressed memories? Guilt. Hot, searing, ripping her insides to shreds.

  How could I forget my sister? How?

  Why didn’t my parents tell me? When were they planning to, if at all? What right did they have to keep this from me? All these years I have ached for siblings, lived a solitary life, numbers my only real companions—until I met Matt. She is angry now. Raging. The fire consumes her, makes her open her mouth, produce a mad keening. So loud she surprises even herself. What else have they hidden from her? How many more lies will she discover?

  I want to find my sister, I want to meet her.

  We could have grown up together.

  I look at her picture and yet, I cannot remember her. Why not? She has my eyes, my nose, my forehead, my hair. If not for the cleft, she could be me.

  Slowly, she picks up the file again. Slowly she opens it. Then she flicks through the pages, then she is shaking them, even as she is shaking with sobs, softly at first then hard. She wants more pictures, she wants a different life, one with her sister in it. She shakes and sobs and screams and cries. She hits the table, the wardrobe. She sends the bowl of potpourri—the only concession to aesthetics in the room—flying, purple, magenta, violet and red flakes spraying like confetti, smelling like grief, tasting of salt. She shakes it long and hard, wanting to know what she was missing, wanting to know her sister, wanting the lost years back, wanting.

  And then, all of a sudden she is spent. She slumps back down. The last entry was when they wrote, ‘We are going to be parents.’ A misunderstanding; that is all it was. She pulls out the letter they left her, reads it again: ‘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…’ They had found her while on the project. She wasn’t part of the project, even though they had initially visited with that intention. They must have seen her and fallen in love with her. Despite her cleft palate. Despite it. They took a break from the project when they adopted her, a break that lasted their entire lifetimes. That is why this file was not in the lab with their other completed projects, lounging instead in the study at home, a slim dossier of the one time they chose personal gratification over professional gain.

  They loved her. They did. That is enough. It has to be. Why didn’t they tell her? Why?

  And sitting there on the same carpet where she wet herself all those years ago, now littered with multi-hued potpourri flakes smelling of loss, a salty flowery smell, beside the ghosts of her father in his armchair, her mother on her desk, spectacles sliding down her nose, squinting at something, with the sun holding court outside to an audience of twittering birds on the glittering lawn, a picture begins to form. Lekha and Ravi, renowned scientists, are blindsided by emotion when they see a little girl with a cleft palate waving her gooey arms at them. Love with all its messy accoutrements snakes in, demands residence. They take the little girl back to England with them. They are amazed by the ease with which she takes to an alien country and culture, calls them Mum and Dad, starts school, allows herself to be subjected to the many operations to repair her cleft. They mean to tell her the truth, of course they do. But she’s forgotten her past, erased her memories, completely. How can they without sending this girl who has been through so much into turmoil? She is their daughter, she has accepted it—isn’t it better to let it be?

  I was not wanted by my birth parents. They didn’t want to tell me, hurt me. They were protecting me. Perhaps that is why they never visited India again, never took me there. But how could they keep the knowledge of my sister from me, whatever their reasons? They did not have the right to make that decision for me. They did not.

  A rogue thought insinuates: Where is all this coming from? I am becoming just the sort of person my parents scoffed at, a fanciful person giving in to whimsy, my head in the clouds.

  And, Good. Good on you, Nisha.

  She fingers the picture in her hand, feels the tug of loss, the tsunami of tears threatening again. Who is she, this sister of mine? What has she become? What has she made of her life? She caresses her sister’s face again. I hope you are happy, wherever you are. I hope you have had a good life so far.

  She clutches the file to her chest and then, being the person that she is, she cleans the study, chucks the potpourri in the bin, hoovers the carpet. And then, she searches the house, top to bottom, every nook and corner. Nothing more. So this was it.

  She watched a man being struck by a car once. He was walking across the road in front of her and this car came out of nowhere. The man was tossed into the air and in that moment of tossing, as he flipped like a coin, an acrobat, his eyes met hers. They were wide open, there was fear dawning and also surprise. Mostly surprise. That is what she feels. The man had escaped unhurt except for a few scratches. What about her? How will she be when all this is over? Is it finished? How much more to come? How many more secrets to uncover? How many more lies?

  She sits down and peruses the photo again, drinking her sister in. Then she opens her notebook and writes.

  This is what I know:

  1) My parents loved me. I was never a project. They loved me.

  2) I have a sister, a twin. Does she know about me?

  3) If I was to meet her, I would ask: Who are you? What is your name? How has your life been until now? Do you like maths and numbers as much as I do? Do you find difficulty experiencing emotions? Are you as hung up on facts as I am? Do you pull your left earlobe when you are nervous like I do? Now that I know of you, I miss you. I miss the shared past that we could have had, all the memories that we could have created together.

  She has to see her sister, the one other person who is blameless in all of this. She calls Matt, leaves him a message. It feels like ages since she left him the last one telling him she was going to search the house, see if there was a file. And then she collapses on the sofa, the very same sofa where she opened the letter that started everything, and closes her eyes.

  She is running, running as fast as her little legs can carry her, looking in all the rooms. Nothing. No one. The smell of burning candles, vast empty space, fear. She runs into the chapel. Empty. The slap of her bare legs hitting the stone floors, echoing eerily in the limitless silence. She crawls under the pews and from her vantage point, she looks to the altar, the statue of Jesus on the cross, blood dripping from his many wounds, the crown of thorns piercing his head like the stick piercing the foaming profusion of cotton candy she’s had at the parish feast. Where are they? Please, Jesus, Lord, let me find them. The Lord smiles down at her, his suffering face relaxing for a brief while.

  That gives her courage. She climbs out gingerly on legs that refuse to do her bidding, tired as they are with all that running. The soles of her feet are bruised and blistering. She has misplaced her chappals somewhere, in her mad rush to find everybody.

  She limps from the dark chapel into an abundance of frothy golden light that hits her pupils, makes her blink rapidly as her eyes adjust. The courtyard, with its lime tree and jasmine bush, the air fragranced with ja
smine and a hint of lime—tangy, slightly bitter. Deserted. Where have they gone? Where is Sister Priya who always sits here, at all times of day except when she is at mass, threading jasmine flowers into garlands? The sun beats down mercilessly, a punishing yellow ball. Sweat beads down her face, soaks her dress.

  A movement by the gates to the convent. She looks up. Nothing. But she thought she saw… something, someone familiar. A fleeting glimpse. Perhaps Sister Priya is locked outside? She runs to the gates. Peers out from between the bars. The iron smell of rust. She moves to the wall beside the gate, flattens herself against the velvet moss cushion and looks out sideways. A bulbous coffee eye raining tears like sparkly jewels. And another. Straggly hair, black as the soot collecting in the hearth after the conjee has been cooked of a morning. A face broken, compartmentalised by bars. A face awash, shimmering, crumpling. A face she knows… She opens her mouth to call out but just as suddenly as it appeared, the face is gone. As if she had summoned it into fleeting existence and then wished it away again. She runs to the gate once more. Nothing. She flattens herself against the wall on the other side of the gate and peers out. The mud road outside the convent gates is deserted, dust swirling in a sooty cloud in the lethargic mid-morning haze, no face framed in it. A queer feeling—part bewilderment, part upset, part fear—beating hard against her rib cage, manifesting in gasping sobs tearing out of her.

  She runs away from the rusting bars, away from the heat, the hurt; she runs as fast as her blistered weeping legs can carry her into the convent, runs straight into the arms of Sister Priya. ‘Baba, what’s the matter? Where were you? We were looking all over for you. You missed the Stations of the Cross up at Marybai’s house. Never mind.’ She buries her head in the crook of Sister Priya’s neck, where stray hairs escape her wimple, curly commas waving. Sister Priya smells of candle wax, of vanilla incense, of musk, of prayer. A familiar, soothing scent. Her thudding heart slowly resumes its regular beat, her sobs sputter, then die away completely. Silly me, she thinks. She forgot all about the Stations of the Cross. Her stomach rumbles. Sister Priya lets her hold on, carries her inside, ‘Time for lunch. Your favourite: fish curry and brinjal fry.’ She holds on tight, her legs crossed around Sister Priya’s back, her hands arched around her neck, revelling in the bounce, bounce as she is carried in Sister Priya’s arms, the thump, thump of Sister Priya’s heart, the wiggle of her footfall rocking her body, her warm breath coming in gasps of exertion tickling Nisha’s cheek. She is safe, not lost anymore.