From the Kitchen of Half Truth

by Maria Goodin

  “I kept asking where the baby was, but she couldn’t answer me. She just stared at the floor and hugged her arms around her body. So I started to search for you all throughout the house, and then it occurred to me that if you weren’t in the house, you must be in the garden. And there you were. Tucked up in a blanket, nestled between a bag of compost and a watering can.

  “‘I have to cook dinner,’ was all your mother would say when I brought you inside. ‘Mother and Father will be home soon, so I must get the dinner on.’

  “She was crazy, of course. Temporarily insane. She had managed to convince herself that none of it was real—the conception, the pregnancy, the birth—she had blocked it all out, and her brain clearly couldn’t make sense of your arrival. And I was no help, really. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. I’d never even held a baby before, and I remember wondering how long you would live without food.

  “‘You have to feed it,’ I said, holding you out to your mother.

  “‘Okay, okay,’ she said, flustered, flinging open the oven door. ‘Put it straight in then.’

  “‘No,’ I shouted at her, ‘feed it, not cook it!’

  “But your mother just looked at me blankly and started pulling pots and pans out of the cupboards. And then your grandparents walked in, looking rather startled, to say the least.

  “‘What is that?’ your grandfather demanded, pointing at you.

  “Your mother didn’t answer, so I said, ‘It’s a baby.’

  “‘I can see it’s a bloody baby!’ he snapped. ‘What’s it doing here?’

  “But even as he asked the question, I could see him looking at the blood on your mother’s clothes and piecing two and two together. Your grandmother, one step ahead of him, had already burst into tears and was wringing her hands and asking the Lord’s forgiveness.”

  “So they weren’t there when I was born?” I ask, finding it surprisingly hard to let go of the “truth” as I have always known it. “They didn’t help her through the labor?”

  “Gosh, no! I don’t think they could have coped with that. They both went into a state of shock as it was. I can’t tell you exactly what happened next, because it was all such a blur. I remember your grandmother becoming quite hysterical and your mother calmly asking her what was wrong, which made your grandmother wail even louder, because she thought her daughter had gone mad, which effectively she had. Then the gasman arrived at the back door asking to look at some pipes, and your grandfather, who was all worked up and in a temper, grabbed him by the collar so that the poor gasman had to defend himself with a nearby frying pan. And the next thing I knew your grandfather had snatched you out of my arms.

  “‘There’s no way you can keep it,’ he said. ‘It’ll have to go up for adoption.’

  “And that was the moment your mother suddenly came to life again.

  “‘No!’ she screamed, charging toward your grandfather and grabbing you from him. She clutched you so tight I thought she might kill you. I’m not sure she knew herself at that point what she was doing or who you were. I think you could have been a frozen chicken, for all she knew, but she was clear about one thing, and that was that you belonged to her and she was not letting anyone take you away.

  “‘Fine,’ your grandfather said, ‘you keep it. But you’re on your own. You can stay two months, and then I want you gone. You’ve disgraced me.’

  “He never spoke to her again. Even for the months you were living under the same roof, he completely ignored the pair of you. And your grandmother wasn’t much better, although I think she was mainly scared of getting into trouble with your grandfather. He was a severe man. Very religious, very concerned with what other people thought.”

  “So it’s true, then,” I interrupt, feeling disgusted by my grandparents’ behavior. “They did throw us out. I thought we lived with them. I thought—”

  “Gosh, no,” says Gwennie. “They didn’t lift one finger to help your mother out, not emotionally, not practically, not financially. She struggled terribly, as you can imagine. It took some time for her to fully accept that you were even her baby—I honestly don’t think she remembered giving birth to you—but once she did accept you were hers, she adored you from your little head down to your tiny little toes. I kept asking who the father was, because she had never once mentioned meeting up with her pen pal—with Don, I mean—but whenever I brought the topic up, she just looked confused and started to mumble rubbish. She seemed to think you were a miracle conception.”

  Gwennie takes a sip of tea while I watch her impatiently, wondering how on earth she can pause to drink tea when I have just been born.

  “As far as all the practicalities of motherhood were concerned,” Gwennie continues, “she was a disaster zone. With no one to help her, she was completely clueless as to what to do with you. I tried to help her, but it was like the blind leading the blind. We were like two little girls playing with a doll that had lots of working parts but no instructions. And the fact that your mother seemed to keep zoning out, going off somewhere in her mind, losing concentration, really didn’t help. I used to come around and find you in the strangest of places. She’d put you down and forget where she left you. I once found you in the water heater closet. And another time I found you on the windowsill. But whatever else was going on inside your mother’s head, the one thing she never lost was her spirit and determination, and she was going to build a life for you both, whatever it took, even if she had to do every step of it alone. But as it turned out, she didn’t have to be alone.”

  “But I don’t understand,” I say, getting restless. “How do you know he was my father, then? How do you know they ever met up if—”

  “I’m getting there,” says Gwennie, holding up a hand to stop me from talking. “After my exams, I decided I had to get away from home. I wasn’t getting on with my parents either, and one evening, after a blazing row, I decided I just had to get out. Your mother’s two months were almost up, and she was soon going to be homeless, so we decided to leave together. And there was only one place we could think to go.

  “A band called Chlorine had played a few times at the Forum, and on a couple of occasions your mother and I had gotten to chatting with the boys in the band. To be honest, I think we were just a couple of silly schoolgirls to them, but your mother and I thought we were the height of cool, knowing a real live rock band. Anyway, the boys were moving to London to seek fortune and fame, and they gave us their address, saying that if we were ever in London and needed a place to stay, we should call on them. So off to London we went. Except obviously when Wizz—the lead singer, who you met—obviously when he made that offer, he hadn’t expected us to turn up with a baby. He was good to his word and let us stay, but it was a nightmare. Everybody moaned about your crying, the place was filthy, the band was always practicing and making noise. Most nights they’d be drunk, or worse.”

  “And that’s when you got together with Bomb—I mean, Timothy?”

  “That’s right. Within days we were an item, which made the situation even more awkward, because I was trying to help Val look after you, but what I really wanted to do was spend all my time with Timothy. We started to bicker, Val and I, which didn’t help anyone, and then your mother decided it wasn’t going to work and that she had to move out.

  “She was so full of determination that within a month she had gotten herself a job as a waitress and moved out into a tiny studio. It was a miserable, dark, cold little place, but it was all she could afford. The landlord was always banging on her door demanding rent, the neighbors upstairs fought all night long, the babysitter was always letting her down, and when she couldn’t work she didn’t get paid…it was a hopeless situation. You were often sick. You’d been born slightly prematurely and you didn’t seem to be growing very quickly. Your mother was starting to look ill herself. It was all a dreadful mess, but your mother soldiered on, insisting she was fine an
d that she wanted to earn her own money and manage alone. Until one night when it all got too much, and she finally broke down in tears. And that’s when she told me what had happened with Don.”

  I lean across the table, hanging on Gwennie’s every word. We look at each other for what feels like a very long time, her eyes wide and suddenly anxious, mine glaring and impatient.

  “And?” I almost shout.

  Gwennie swallows hard. “He had been on a visit to Portsmouth—which makes me think now that perhaps he was in the navy, not the army—and he had asked your mother to go and meet him. She hadn’t told anyone, because she knew perfectly well her parents would never had let her go, and it was just bad timing that I was on a family holiday in Devon. If I hadn’t been on holiday, then I expect she would have told me and perhaps asked me to go with her, and then maybe things would never have happened the way they did…”

  Gwennie stares off into the distance, lost in thought.

  “What would never have happened?” I ask urgently.

  Gwennie tuts and looks pained. “He wasn’t what she imagined, Meg. He wasn’t the gentleman he made himself out to be. She was young and naïve…so, so naïve. She just didn’t have a clue.”

  I feel a sense of panic rising in my chest. “What happened?”

  Gwennie shakes her head despairingly. “They went somewhere, I don’t know where it was, just to be alone. Your mother was so innocent; all she wanted to do was talk and perhaps have her first-ever kiss, a romantic moment to remember forever, her first embrace with the man of her dreams. But what happened between them…she never wanted that. She never, ever wanted that. And she told him so, but he didn’t listen, or didn’t care.” Gwennie looks up and sighs. “She trusted him, Meg. He said he loved her, that he wanted to marry her, and she trusted him implicitly.” She shakes her head regretfully. “She was such a silly girl. Such a very silly girl.”

  I suddenly feel like I am going to be sick. “You’re lying,” I hear myself say angrily.

  Gwennie touches my arm gently.

  “You’re lying, aren’t you?” I accuse, snatching my arm away.

  She just looks at me sadly.

  Of course she’s not lying. I know that. But I wish so much that she was. I have never wanted someone to lie to me so much in my life.

  “She only spoke about it that one time, and the next day it was as if nothing had happened. She went back to acting as if everything was just hunky-dory, even though she was clearly sinking. I told her to go home, to ask your grandparents to take her back, to explain that it wasn’t her fault she got pregnant, but she was too ashamed to tell them, and she had too much pride to go back. They knew where she was, because my parents told them. They even sent her some money and a letter expressing their concern. But she had been far too deeply wounded by their rejection and refused to make contact. If they thought she had disgraced them, if they wanted her gone, then that’s what they could have, she said. She would make something of her life and show them. All the kids back home who called her names when they found out she had had a baby, all the neighbors who had whispered when they found out what happened, she would show them all. She struggled on for a year, but there was no way she could cope. At that point she may well have married anybody who offered. Unfortunately, the person who offered was Robert Scott.”

  “My stepfather,” I whisper.

  “Yes. Your stepfather. She met him in the café where she worked. He was a butcher by trade, up from Brighton for a few days visiting a friend in London. They struck up a conversation about the quality of the sausages, and six months later they were married. I should have stopped her. I knew there was something not right about him, but your mother couldn’t see it. Desperation made her blind. He offered her a home for you both, and he was attentive and kind to her, at least to start with. He was an awkward man with pockmarked skin and a stutter, and I think your mother mistook his shyness for gentleness. I don’t think she was attracted to him, but she was grateful, and that was enough.

  “They had a cheap wedding in a registry office in Brighton, just the two of them, and myself as witness. After that they moved into Robert’s little terraced house in the center of town. Your mother did her best to make it a home and did everything from the DIY to growing a vegetable patch, but things were bad right from the start. As I understand it, the beatings started within weeks of the marriage. Robert would fly into terrible rages, hitting your mother about the head, pushing her against walls and furniture, once even fracturing her wrist. She never told me any of this, of course. I had to piece it all together from snippets the neighbors gave away. By this point Timothy had split from the band, and we had moved to Oxford so that Timothy could pursue a master’s degree in law. We were penniless, and I only got to see your mother every so often, whenever I could afford the train fare to Brighton. Whenever I did see her, she seemed to have sunk deeper and deeper into denial, insisting that everything was fine when that was clearly not the case. She started cooking all the time, always having to be busy. I think it was her way of coping.”

  “Why didn’t she leave him?” I ask, unable to comprehend how she could have stayed in such a miserable situation. “Why did she let him treat her like that?”

  “I begged your mother to leave him, but she wouldn’t. In the end, I gave my telephone number to one of the neighbors and asked them to call me if anything happened. I was honestly scared for her life. The neighbor told me she had heard Robert threaten to track your mother down and kill you both if she ever left him. Your mother must have been terrified, although she completely denied that Robert ever said such a thing, of course. She denied everything. She was always telling me that she had fallen down the stairs or walked into doors. I think she even managed to convince herself. It was ludicrous.”

  “But surely the police—”

  “There was nothing they could do unless your mother made an official complaint.”

  I place my head in my hands. This is so much worse than I ever expected. Never in a million years could I have been prepared for this.

  “Although your mother seemed to spend half her time in a daze,” Gwennie continues, “she was always one step ahead of Robert where you were concerned. She tried to keep you well out of his way, and if ever he got angry because you were crying or had knocked something over, she would make sure she was the one to bear the brunt of his fury, not you. Generally, he just ignored you. You were no more than an annoyance to him. The tragic thing was that you so wanted him to love you. You tried desperately to get his attention, but it never worked, which was probably just as well. You used to call him Daddy.”

  I clutch my stomach, feeling sick at the thought of it. Daddy. I always wanted to say that word to someone. I just can’t believe I used to say it to such a monster.

  “Your mother finally summoned the courage to leave on the day of your fifth birthday,” says Gwennie. “The day he tried to strangle you.”

  I look up at her, my face expressionless, my heart numb. Her words are like waves washing over me, barely disturbing the surface. Nothing could shock me anymore. Nothing could be any worse that what I have already heard.

  “You had spilled paint all over something or other, and he had blown his top. He grabbed you by the neck and hit your head against a coffee table. Your mother tried to pry him off you, and when he didn’t let go, she pulled a knife out of the kitchen drawer and charged at him with it. She would have killed him, I’m sure of it, but he let go of you and grabbed the knife from her. I’m not sure what happened next, because your mother really wasn’t making much sense when she phoned me, but obviously it was enough to shock her into action.”

  I stare at the table, trying to imagine this scene: my mother charging at someone with a knife, clearly intending to kill him. My mother who won’t swat a fly and who apologizes to vegetables before chopping them up, who thanks each piece of meat for the life it has sacrificed and
who has started talking to trees to help them grow. She would have murdered him. She would have plunged a knife in his heart.

  “She left everything behind but the clothes on your backs. Robert called me, demanding to know where you had gone, and when I hung up on him, he drove all the way to Oxford and started banging on our door in a terrible rage. For a moment I knew what it must have felt like to be your mother. It was absolutely terrifying. To this day I thank heaven that Timothy was there; otherwise, who knows what he might have done? But the thing is, I couldn’t have told Robert anything even if I had wanted to. Your mother honestly hadn’t told me about her plans. She knew, I think, that if Robert suspected I had any information, he would have stopped at nothing to get that information out of me. It was too much of a risk. She was trying to protect me.”

  “So that was it?” I ask. “That was the last time you ever saw her?”

  “Yes. Until today. I waited and waited for news to come, but it never did. I even visited Val’s parents, but they didn’t know anything either. It was as if the pair of you had just vanished into the night, breaking all contact with anything and anyone from the past.”

  I stare into my mug of cold, untouched tea, my mind blank, my heart empty. I feel as if all the life has been drained out of me.

  “Was I…” Gwennie begins uncertainly. “Was I right to tell you?”

  I shiver, even though the kitchen is so warm that condensation mists the windows. I don’t know the answer to this question.

  “You did what I asked you to do,” I say flatly.

  There is a long and painful silence between us. I’m sure I should have more questions to ask, but I feel dead inside. My head aches and my stomach feels sick.

  “Why did you change your mind,” I ask, “about coming here?”

  Gwennie sighs and gives a listless shrug. “I suppose I needed to know the truth as well. For all those years I tried to believe that you had started again, that you were safe and well and happy. I liked to think that maybe your mother had fallen in love, become a cook, and traveled to all the places she dreamed about visiting. And that you had grown to a healthy size, were doing well in school, and enjoying a new family life. But I never knew. Not for sure. I suppose I had my own gap to fill.”