“I’ll go and get the box” she said, with a knowing nod in Mia’s father’s direction “would you two mind just clearing the table while I go and get it? We are going to need the space” she smiled again, as if to reassure Mia, and then walked out of the room.
“Come on then, Pumpkin” her father said, as he too pushed back his chair and stood up “better do as she - your mum - says”. He started gathering up the plates, and gestured to Mia to start tidying away the condiments and napkins. As she worked, Mia surreptitiously watched her father, wondering what box her mother had gone to fetch, and how her parents really felt about doing this.
The only thing that betrayed her father’s discomfort was his use of the name he had called her when she was a very small child, and the fact that he had qualified that he meant her mother when he said “she”. Other than that, he seemed to be very calm and collected and normal. He certainly did not look as though his only daughter had broken his heart, and Mia’s relief was palpable.
Mia and her father had finished clearing the table and were sitting in silence when her mother returned, bearing a plastic packing box which was covered in dust and more than a few cobwebs. Her mother set the box down on the table, then carefully removed the lid, screwing up her face in disgust as her hands got coated in a grimy layer of dust, and cobwebs floated off and clung to her clothes.
“This is everything we know, everything we have about your beginnings” she said with a deep breath “of course, we would have given it to you when you turned eighteen, your Dad and I agreed that when we adopted you. We also agreed that we would never withhold it from you if you asked for it, isn’t that right, Joe?” Mia’s father nodded, his eyes still focused on his daughter. Regardless of blood, she would always be his daughter, he thought to himself. It didn't matter that he and Mary were not her real parents. She was their little girl, and always would be.
“Well, come on then honey - come over here and go through this stuff with me. This is yours after all. It may not be much, but it’s all we have - I’m only sorry it isn’t more. I don’t think it will tell you much, but I’ll let you be the judge of that” her mother smiled.
Mia remained in her seat, and looked back and forth between the smiling faces of the people she had called her parents all her life. At that moment, she regretted asking. She didn't want to know who she might have been, in an entirely different set of circumstances. She wanted to just be her, who she was, who she had always been - she wanted to forget she was even adopted, she wanted to just be a family. But something within her told her she had to know. It was important for some reason, although the reason was not clear to her.
All this fuss and upset, over a stupid dream, she thought to herself harshly. Still, there was no going back now. She stood up slowly, and peered over the edge of the box and into it. Her mother had been right, there wasn’t much in there. Mostly it looked as though it was a collection of papers, a piece of fabric peeked out from beneath a newspaper cutting, it looked as though it might have been a blanket, but there was nothing else in there.
As Mia simply stood and stared into the box, as though the box contained a monster waiting to bite her hand off. Her mother took the initiative and began removing things from the box, one by one.
“This” said Mia’s mother, holding up one piece of paper “is your adoption certificate. That was undoubtedly the best day of our lives, Mia, the day you became our daughter” she smiled, and Mia could tell the smile was genuine, and returned it. But it was not information about after she came to be their daughter that she needed, it was before that she needed to know about, so she did not take the certificate when her mother offered it to her. Her mother lay the adoption certificate on the table, and moved to pick up another piece of paper from the stack. Mia seemed to wake from a trance, as her brain slowly clicked into gear and figured out that the adoption certificate may actually be all that she needed.
“Actually - can I…could I look at that please?” she asked
“Of course, honey” her mother passed the certificate over to her, and, unseen to Mia, exchanged a glance with her father. The both knew what Mia was looking for on the certificate, and they also knew that she would not find it.
Mia quickly found out too, and the disappointment showed on her face. It couldn't be that simple, could it? She had hoped, foolishly she realized, that her mother’s name might have been on the adoption certificate. Something stating that she had given up her rights to her child. A starting point for finding out who she was. But there was nothing. The guardian surrendering their rights to her and signing all parental rights over to the people who had raised her was listed as a social worker.
“Is there a birth certificate, amongst that stuff?” she asked miserably, but with little hope.
“I’m sorry sweetheart, but no - we don‘t have anything with your mother or your father‘s names on. We don’t know if your birth was ever registered - but in all likelihood it wasn’t. You were only a few hours old when you were found.”
It was pretty much as Mia had expected, but for one tiny moment, she had dared to hope. Miserably, and slightly disheartened, she turned to the other things her mother was pulling from the box.
“What are those?” she asked, leaning forward to peer over the faded and yellowing clippings.
“Newspaper cuttings, about you.” Her mother offered the small pile to her, and she took them dully. She doubted that these would hold any information of value, but supposed she ought to look at them.
The first was a front page news story, headlined “Baby Found Outside Local Church”. The information contained within it was basic, and pretty much what Mia already knew from what her parents had told her. A newborn baby girl was found abandoned on the steps of a church, the community was in shock, the child was being taken care of and seemed healthy. Nothing too detailed, but then, Mia supposed that since she had been found in the early hours of the morning, and became front page news the same day, that they did not have much time to gather details to report.
The clippings in the pile were in ascending chronological order, and Mia leafed through them with increasing curiosity. It was quite strange, to be reading details of her own life, and to know that thousands of other people in the city had read the same story and knew just as much about her beginnings as she knew herself. For a few days, she had been the front page news story - “Church appeals for information on abandoned tot”, “Police and Church appeal for mother of Church baby to come forward”, and other headlines in the same vein. Afterwards, she was just a column further in, with titles such as “ ‘Please come forward, we want to help you‘ - impassioned plea from pastor to mother of dumped baby”, “Police still have no leads on abandoned tot”. The columns got progressively smaller and then fizzled out altogether - the final report was entitled “Happy ending for abandoned baby” which was a report on her adoption.
The final cutting in the pile was a small scrap cut out from the personal announcements section, and it was a birthday greeting announcing her first birthday.
“Happy 1st birthday to our little Angel, Mia”
A lump formed in her throat then, and she felt tears begin to gather in her eyes. Again, she felt a twinge of guilt, as though she was betraying these people who had clearly loved her a great deal from the very beginning. If they felt any betrayal though, they certainly weren’t showing it on their faces. Both were watching her carefully as she sifted through the cuttings, and now her mother moved towards her and touched her arm gently.
“Oh sweetheart, don’t get upset! I know it all sounds bad in those stories honey, but you have to remember that wasn’t your life forever. You were found and you were safe, and that was all that mattered. You didn’t stay lost - you found your way home, it was just a slightly different home than the one you came from.” She smiled and Mia nodded, blinking back the tears. It was sweet that her mother had wanted to comfort her, and thought it was the tales of the family who hadn’t wanted her, the mother who had left her in a
cardboard box in the street like people abandon unwanted litters of kittens, that had upset her. When really it had been the fact that someone else had wanted her.
She looked down at the cuttings again, this time focusing on the pictures accompanying the stories, whilst she regained her composure. Her mother sat down beside her father and they both continued to watch her carefully. As she gazed at the picture on the first headline, the picture of the church she had been found outside of, she felt a jolt in her stomach. She picked the cutting up closer to her face, and squinted. In the background, she thought she could see…but it wasn’t possible. No, it must be her imagination. There was a person standing there, in the far background, but their face was nothing more than a blur. She frowned, and closely examined the next picture, this one of the press conference appealing for information and for her birth mother to come forward.
This time, there was no mistaking. He was standing there, in the background but close enough for her to make out his features clearly, and to know it was him. She stared at his face and frowned harder, wondering how on earth this boy she had dreamed about could have been there when she was just a tiny baby. In her dream he seemed a little older than her, but she would have guessed he was no older than sixteen or seventeen. In the picture, he was exactly as he had been in her dream.
She struggled to make sense of it, to figure out a logical explanation. Involuntarily, a voice slipped into her mind, Leonara’s voice, telling her that human logic was foolish and silly, that there was only Truth. She pushed the thought away, squashing it as quickly as it had risen up.
“What is it, Mia?” her father asked.
“Hmm?” she had almost forgotten they were in the room with her, they had been so quiet and so still while they watched “Oh…nothing I just…I thought I saw someone I knew, that’s all.”
Her parents exchanged a confused glance, which was not missed by Mia, who then felt all the more obliged to come up with a reasonable explanation.
“Who did you think you saw, honey?” asked her mother.
“Oh…no-one, really. Just a face I recognized. I meant I think I’ve seen him before, not that I really know him. Do you recognize him?” she asked, handing the clipping over to her father.
“Who?” he asked, scanning the picture.
“The boy - in the background.”
“What boy?”
“He’s right at the back, just in the corner.”
“I don’t see any boy, Mia - what are you talking about?”
Mia felt an irrational surge of annoyance, and shoved a chair out of her way with more force than was really necessary. She walked around the table to where her father was sitting, with her mother peering over his shoulder, squinting at the picture too.
“He’s right…” Mia jabbed a finger at the page, to point to where the boy was standing, but stopped midway when she realized he was not standing there. “…may I?” she asked, taking the clipping from her father and scrutinizing it closely. The boy, it seemed, had simply vanished from the page. She hastily leaned over the table to pick up the pile of other clippings, and found the one from the first day, the day she had been born. The person in the background, who had been too smudged to make out clearly, had vanished.
“Mia?” her father prompted.
“Sorry….I must have….I don’t know. My mind’s playing tricks on me or something.” she muttered quietly “Anyway, what else is in the box, Mum?” she asked brightly, dropping the cuttings on the table as though they had burned her.
“Just these.” her mother replied, pulling out a rough looking blanket, out of which a scrap of paper fell. “This is the blanket you were wrapped in, inside the box” she handed it to Mia, and bent down to pick up the scrap of paper which had fluttered to the floor.
Mia held the blanket and tested it’s weight. It was fairly heavy, and it was almost as rough to the touch as it looked. She turned it over and over, but it was just a blanket. It did not yield any clues as to where it might have come from, or where she might have come from. It certainly was not a nice soft blanket meant to wrap a baby in, of that she was sure.
“..and this” her mother said, straightening up and holding out her hand to Mia “is the note.”
Mia dropped the blanket onto a chair to free up her hands, and took the piece of paper her mother was offering to her.
“Note?” she asked, confused. She had never heard anything about a note before.
“Yes, when you were found, there was a note, in the box, just resting in the top fold of your blanket.”
She looked at the piece of paper, which seemed to be more smudge than writing.
“It got wet that night, everything was drenched through” explained her mother apologetically.
“Oh” Mia nodded absently, and returned her attention to the note in her hand once more.
The majority of the words, written in blue ink, had been lost to the rain. A few, however, were badly smudged but readable. Mia read the fractured sentences, scanning these too for any clue as to who she was.
This child….I give…she is…mia…forgive me
The only readable words on the page told her very little, but she stared in wonder at one particular word - Mia. She had always assumed that the people who adopted and raised her, the people sitting before her in this very room, were the ones who had given her her name. But now that she thought about it, no-one had ever told her that, she had simply assumed. Assumed that a mother who could not be bothered to raise her, or even take her to an orphanage or to social services, would have bothered to give her a name. But now it seemed that her mother had cared about her, at least enough to name her, and to ask forgiveness.
For a moment, all her anger at this woman slipped away, and she allowed her thoughts to run away with her. Perhaps her mother had been a frightened teenager, or in an abusive relationship, perhaps she had wanted Mia with all her heart, and it broke her to let her go. The words that popped out of Mia’s mouth next seemed completely unconnected to this train of thought, yet at the same time, very much connected.
“You didn’t name me.” It was not a question, it was a statement.
“Well, no, we didn’t. Not exactly. We assumed, from the note, that your mother had meant to name you Mia - it’s hard to tell, the whole thing was so smudged. We looked into names, we wanted to give you a very special name. We looked up the meaning of Mia, it was a pretty name and we thought we should at least consider honouring your biological mother’s choice. It’s a variant of Maria, and means ‘longed for daughter’” - it was perfect, so no, we did not pick out the name ourselves, because your birth mother had already picked out the perfect one for us - just like she gave us the perfect daughter.”
“I thought it was Italian. It means ‘my’, doesn’t it? …I Googled it when we did a school project” she explained, in response to the questioning faces of her parents.
“That’s true, it does also mean ‘my’ in Italian. I suppose in a way we were honouring your birth mother in that way too. You are hers, but at the same time, you are very much our longed for daughter” smiled her mother.
Mia nodded slowly, digesting this. Oddly, it helped to know that her adoptive parents had not been the ones who had named her. She felt as though a small piece of the puzzle that was the very beginning of her life had fallen neatly into place. She was Mia, and she always had been. It was as good a starting point as any, and having just that one little answer and piece of knowledge helped her to know this was not a complete wild goose chase. There was information out there, there were things she could learn about herself. She only hoped that she would not find out anything worse than she already had.
There was nothing else in the box, and nothing else her parents could tell her. She scrutinized all of the newspaper clippings, paying particularly close attention to the pictures, for any signs of the boy lurking in the background, but no - he was gone. Or more likely had never been there in the first place, her mind had simply played tricks on her. Sh
e wished she could shake off the memory of that ridiculous dream, and in truth was beginning to fear for her sanity. Seeing that woman everywhere was starting to freak her out, and now she was seeing the Dream Boy in old photographs? It did not look good, and if someone had told her they were experiencing things like this, she would have likely directed them to the nearest mental health care facility.
Something was still bothering her though, something at the back of her mind. Something the woman had said. Or was it something her mother had said? Or was it both? That night, she took a long time to fall asleep, after seemingly endless hours of semi-awkward silence and small talk with her parents which, for some reason, tonight felt forced and artificial. It never usually bothered any of them to be sitting in silence, but tonight it seemed as though everyone felt they ought to make a special effort to chat about “normal” things, the way they might do on any other night. As she slipped into a restless and dreamless sleep, she was grateful on some semi-conscious level, to just have silence and not have to think any more.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The night’s sleep, although broken and restless, seemed to allow her mind time to work through the details and process the information she had. The moment she awoke in the morning, she instantly sat upright and realized what had been bothering her the night before, as she tried to drift off to sleep. Of all things, it had been the note. She had known about the note, before she had seen it – even though it wasn't mentioned in the articles. Why that thought had not occurred to her the previous night, she didn‘t know. Now, she could scarcely think of anything else. How had she known?
Awakening (Children of Angels) Page 6