But we never did have that conversation. No one ever caught me, and nothing new was ever put in that drawer. It wasn’t until her death that I realised I’d been looking in the wrong place. All those years of going through her things I had never made the connection of what I wanted to find. Everything I wanted to know was in the old brown leathery suitcase, tucked high up in the cupboard above her dressing table, pushed to the back, where I would find information on my adoption and letters, the saddest one of all from my mother writing to the adoption agency, asking them for a baby.
Dear Sir,
My Husband and I are professional people; we could give a baby a lovely home.
I have always read a lot of books and I would make sure this baby had all the education that it needed. I have wanted to become a Mother from when I was very young but sadly due to medical issues this will not happen for me.
I have had miscarriages and have been told that I will never be able to carry a baby to full term. My husband will do anything to make me happy. He is a judge, and would like to be a Father too.
I had never imagined this would happen to me and I cannot imagine a life without children. I am very good with children and have baby-sat from a very young age.
I am now thirty-three; I know I am older now as a woman to become a mother, but I am in good health. Please would you kindly consider me as an adoptive parent?
You can come over and look at our house, it’s very nice.
I will wait to hear from you.
Thank you for considering me.
* * *
I have very few memories of myself as a young girl. What I do remember quite clearly are the feelings, the fear, the clinging onto my mother’s hand in strange places. The way she walked so fast down the street that I could barely keep up with her. My heart bouncing and pounding in my chest if I was ever made to walk into a room with strangers and say hello.
‘Zara, run over and play with that little girl.’ My mum’s gentle but stern voice would say. But it only made me cling to her harder.
‘Zara, you walk inside first. You’re a big girl, you can do it.’
I knew my mother loved me but I also saw her irritation with me for being the way I was as a child: I was too shut down, too quiet, too sad. She could never understand why I was the way I was, and I could never explain.
And next came the broken-hearted memories. When for what felt like the millionth time my mother had to pick me up in the night from a friend’s house because of the panic and separation that I felt each time I was left apart from her. Or the time I went to Spain with my friend’s family and cried every single day, feeling such dread and fear that something was going to happen to my mother. Sometimes I still feel the embarrassment and humiliation within myself just thinking about it – I just couldn’t seem to do what other little girls so easily could.
‘I just don’t understand you, Zara. This is getting ridiculous. You need to stay away from home for one night, you’re not a baby,’ she said to me as I felt the instant relief of walking back into our house.
‘When are you going to stay away one night?’ she asked again, looking me in the eye sternly as I felt the panic rise. When she was angry I couldn’t speak. I was only nine or ten, but I felt shame seeping into every part of my body.
‘What a baby!’ my brother Gary chimed in. ‘Do you know how silly this is? How old are you, three?’
My mother did nothing to stop him that evening. I remember her drained-looking face in the kitchen and I knew that she had already grown tired of me, I was wearing her down.
I had stood quietly between my mother and my brother, unable to stop the hot tears falling down my cheeks at the shocking realisation that my own family could turn from me when I needed their comfort most. That’s when the longing really started, the dreaming of my birth mother. Some days she was as kind as my adopted mother could be, other days, just as cold.
* * *
I pick up the phone as I lay on the floor of my friend’s flat, curled up in a ball, foetal-like. I am a couple of months drug-free.
‘James, I can’t do this. It’s too hard.’ I hear the self-pity in my voice.
‘Sweetie,’ he says gently. ‘It’s okay, just for today, that’s all. Come to the lunchtime meeting, we’ll be there.’
‘I keep dreaming about things, it’s too much.’
‘Zara, God will protect you. You’re ready to feel it all now. Feelings don’t kill us. You know that, right?’
‘God is always your answer. I’m finding this all a bit too religious for me.’ I can hear James trying not to laugh. ‘I don’t know who I believe in, James, but I need the dreams to stop. How do I make that happen?’ I ask wearily.
‘You just need to trust, sweetie, and let them surface. This is the stuff you’ve been running from. I think it needs to come out, you have to trust,’ he repeats.
‘Trust, trust, trust… Is that your answer to everything?’
He lets out a thick laugh. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Just try it. Don’t give up before the miracle.’
Feeling myself smile at these trite words, I lie back, wrap myself in a soft blanket and let the dreams come.
3
North London, 1981
I hear a hammering on my bedroom door, revealing the growing desperation within my brother. We were late teens now. I hadn’t been home long from a late-night party. Sitting up in the early morning light, I can see my door opening and the shadow of my brother appear.
‘What?’ I half-whisper, ‘what do you want?’
‘I need cigarettes, you selfish slut! Where are they?’
I point towards my bag and he pounces on it, rifles through, his almost bare butt facing me. But I don’t grumble as he tosses my stuff around – I had finally learned in the last few months that it was wise to be quiet when he was like this, needing his drug. Cigarettes only dulled the craving for a few moments. I’d let him smoke the whole pack; as long as he didn’t touch me, I didn’t care.
My brother Gary was two and a half years older than me and also adopted. I knew he had struggled since he was young to cope with it from the way he would say in anger to our Mother: ‘You’re not my real mother!’ After these outbursts they would have long conversations locked in his room. I was never allowed in, it was private. Sometimes I would go and lie on my floor and try and listen through the vents to see if I could hear what they talked about. He had started stealing at a young age and I understood that need to steal. I felt ‘stolen’ too, just the way I think he did. For how do we know that we weren’t stolen away from our natural mothers? I had always worried about him, checking to see if he was still breathing, still alive after taking so many drugs, but my concern was turning to hatred.
‘I’m so glad we’re not really related. Your mother must have been the biggest whore in England. That’s why she didn’t want you, whore baby!’ he snarled as he left the room. The words barely stung, I was so used to them. He was by now a full-blown heroin addict. I don’t know who took the drug first but it seemed that a few of his friends were all taking it. They would all come to our house and sit in his bedroom, the burnt tin foil covering his floor. He had only taken a few hits for the drug to get a hold on him, a tight grip that now controlled him. But he didn’t believe that. I had learned that the hard way, thinking that pointing it out would make him stop. It never worked, of course, but what did I know at sixteen? His anger exacerbated the more out-of-control he became. A public schoolboy heroin addict who bullied everyone around him, I was his main target. I soon learned the best way to dodge a bullet was to be one step ahead and quick on my feet so as not to get too bruised. I would sneak past his door and stay away from him as much as I could.
* * *
I’m almost asleep again when Adam, my brother’s school friend, comes creeping in. He often sleeps over on the weekends and I’ve had a crush on him since I was twelve. None of my brother’s friends has ever shown an interest in me – I’m just the cute baby sister – until l
ast week when Adam and I found ourselves alone at a party after his girlfriend left. We were sitting on the sofa, both a little stoned, when he leaned over and we started kissing.
Adam stands by my bed. I can see his tall, slender outline.
‘What are you doing?’ I whisper.
Silently, he slides into the bed next to me and I begin to giggle.
‘Shhh…’ he murmurs. ‘You’ll wake up the whole house.’
‘You have a girlfriend,’ I say sternly.
‘Oh, but I like you, you know that. I’ve seen the way you look at me, I know you like me too. I really liked that kiss the other night.’
‘I’m way too young for you. You boys always tell me I’m just the little sister,’ I whisper back, feeling his body pressing against me.
‘But the little sister is growing up. You’re very sexy, did you know that?’ he says softly, sliding his hands under my T-shirt to brush against my breasts.
I feel a little afraid as he kisses me gently before quickly forcing his tongue in my mouth. Then I kiss him back. It was true I had a crush on him, but he is four years older than me – I’m not sure I’m ready for this.
He tugs on my underwear, his hands between my legs, and all I can think is how quickly he got to second base. My body responds in spite of my fear: it feels good, exciting. He won’t stop kissing me. He really wants me, I think. Then, without realising what he’s doing, I feel a searing pain. He pushes so hard, I cry out and he has to put his hands over my mouth to quieten me.
Did this mean he would give up his girlfriend and now be my boyfriend? It must. But why does it hurt so much? No one had told me it would be like this.
He pushes inside me again for a moment, the pain making me scream into his hands, my body trembling from all the confusing sensations. After holding me for a few moments, he clumsily gets up.
‘I need to get out your room before everyone wakes up,’ he mutters.
I lie frozen in the bed, not sure how I had allowed this to happen – I had thought we would just keep kissing. But I didn’t think this was actual sex. I’m dizzy, confused and slightly exhilarated. I know I can never tell any of my friends the truth of what happened – they would think I had given myself away too easily.
Adam did not become my boyfriend, although he smiled at me the next morning. A week later, he crept back into my room. I wasn’t sure how, but I had become his secret. Just like all those years before, I couldn’t seem to find the voice to make it stop.
* * *
I knew that to knock on my brother’s door was suicide but sometimes I was lonely and even though I didn’t mind my own company a part of me really believed I could make friends with him. Then maybe he would be nicer to me and living in this house would be more bearable.
‘What do you want, slut?’
He is sitting up on his bed, thick cigarette smoke filling the room. Blackened tinfoil is scattered all over the floor. He has just taken a hit, so his mood is calm – he’s always much better like this.
I perch tentatively on the edge of the bed.
‘Do you have any weed?’
He laughs. ‘Oh, Zara’s a little pothead now! Yeah, sure – little sixteen-year-old pothead.’ Coughing and spluttering, he rolls a joint and turns on the TV. We sit and watch a show, nothing I’m interested in, and for one small moment I feel his acceptance.
A few moments later, Adam shows up. I feel my insides shake with excitement.
‘Hey, Zara.’
I smile back, but as I shift on the bed to make room for him to sit, I momentarily block my brother’s view of the TV. Without warning, I feel a violent kick to my head. My skull slams into the wall.
‘Move out the fucking way, you stupid bitch!’ he yells.
‘Easy, Gary,’ is all Adam can say.
I stay for a moment, fighting the tears. All I can think about is the humiliation of Adam seeing me this way. My head is screaming at me to get up and walk out, but it takes another ten minutes for me to do so. As I open Gary’s door I meet my mother in the corridor, with her usual bubbly smile. I smile back at her and then as soon as she’s gone, I run into my bedroom and lie on my bed, pulling the blankets over me.
* * *
My brother is giving me a ride to work. I’m a waitress. I don’t know what else to do now that I’m out of school and he works behind the bar so it seemed to make sense. Mum thinks it’s safe for him to take me to work, but there’s always a detour on the way home.
‘I won’t be a moment,’ says Gary, pulling up the car behind a mass of identical concrete flats.
‘What number will you be in?’ I ask.
‘I’m not telling you. Stay here and wait.’ He gets out of the car, his jeans loose around his waist.
‘Please don’t be long. You always say you’ll just be a few minutes,’ I yell out of the door. ‘I’m tired, I want to go home.’
‘I’m just picking something up. You wanted a lift, didn’t you?’ he snarls back at me. ‘Stay in the car, you selfish little bitch, and wait.’
So I sit and wait, looking towards the flats every few moments, hoping he’ll come out any minute. I’m tired, thirsty, and getting angry.
Why do I fall for this every time? He wasn’t going to come out quickly, he was going to sit and use with his dealer. Why did I always expect him to do something different? He was always so good at convincing me. I shift in my seat. He has taken the keys. I don’t know where I am; there’s no payphone, and who would I call anyway? An hour drags by slowly.
What if he doesn’t come back? What if he’s dead? What if he’s left me here for the whole night?
I feel my anger rising, a rage that is getting harder to suppress. Why am I such an idiot? I hate myself for my stupidity; I hate him more and more every day. Another hour goes by with no sign of him. Would my mother be worried, I wonder. No, she thought I was safe with my brother. What a joke that was.
Opening the car door, I walk up to one of the buildings, but hearing voices and a door slam, I run back to the car. I’m afraid of what he would do if he caught me snooping. Sitting back in the car, my heart racing, I try to sleep. And then he’s back, opening the car door aggressively and swaying slightly; his eyes are red. I start shouting, a big mistake. ‘Where were you? You left me here for two hours! How could you do that to me? I know you were using again. I’m sick of you…’
He grabs me harshly and flings me against the seat, spitting in my face.
‘Shut up, you fucking bitch.’
My eyes are burning with tears. I want to get away from him, but I don’t know how it’s ever going to be possible.
‘Dinner’s ready.’ My mother smiles as we walk into the house. ‘You both hungry?’ She is prodding potatoes with a fork. I look at her and almost speak, but what would be the point? She won’t listen, especially when it comes to my brother. She can’t see it, or doesn’t want to; it scares her too much. One problem child is already enough. As for my father, he doesn’t even know us. He rarely even talks to us – he’s blind to everything that doesn’t involve being given dinner and a cup of tea.
* * *
I make it to the lunchtime meeting, squeezing into a seat between the ‘boys’ as I like to call them. I’m beginning to enjoy the meetings. This feeling I have inside of me, it’s something new, something I’ve never felt before. I think it might be hope, or at least a sense of being understood. The grip of needing the drugs is loosening. I realise that a whole week has gone past with no cravings. My thirst has become stronger, but it’s a thirst through relief at staying sober: I was doing it. My emotions, though still in charge, were being diffused as I talked. I was aware that I was feeling things at a new level as I hung onto every word I heard in the meetings; they were right. As corny as it sounds, their message was working.
‘Feelings are not facts.’
‘First things first.’
‘One day at a time.’
The slogans were printed around the room in every meeting.
> I still had trouble identifying with the old men who had drunk away their lives, but I identified with some of the younger people, with the inability to cope with their feelings, the depression, the constant insecurity. Wide awake now, it felt so good: I walked looking at the trees and the sky without being buried inside my own mind; I noticed life in a new way.
What was now surfacing and harder to push away was the longing, the hunger I’d had before I picked up that drug to bury it. I needed to know my truth; I wanted to understand why my birth mother gave me away. Was I an ugly baby? How could she have walked away from me? What was my story? I couldn’t live my life on Chapter Two anymore. To move forward, I needed my Chapter One. I haven’t yet shared this directly with anyone; instead I make the same jokes to my newfound sober friends that I had made all my life.
‘She probably won’t remember, she might not even care. What if she has her own life now? I don’t want to hurt anyone. What if she’s royalty? What if she’s a whore? Maybe I’m the product of rape? What if she says she doesn’t want to know? I can’t hurt my adoptive parents, my mother would be devastated.’
‘Have you ever thought, Zara that she might have spent her whole life thinking about you? Maybe you finding her will heal her,’ Terry tells me at lunch.
‘She gave me up,’ I reply sternly. ‘What kind of mother gives up her baby?’
‘A woman that has no support. It’s just a thought, Zara. You don’t know the truth because no one has told you, but maybe it’s time to find out.’
James has remained silent all this time.
‘You’re not very talkative for a talkative person,’ I tell him. I’m trying to be funny.
‘I’m a birth father,’ he replies quietly.
I feel my body tighten, part of me not wanting to hear this.
‘I had a little girl, but her mother was an addict and I was drinking. I ended up in prison, so they took her away,’ he adds.
Somebody's Daughter--a moving journey of discovery, recovery and adoption Page 3