Awakening: Book 1 The Last Anakim Trilogy

by Janet V Forster

  Mum hated the idea that one day I might trace my birth mother. I worried about the upheaval such a development would bring to the delicate harmony which existed between Mum and Dad at home.

  Given her background, Mum’s devastation at my desire to discover my origins was understandable. My father and I were her purpose, her security, her everything. We proved that she was okay. Seeking my birth parents was like piercing her heart with a knife, mutilating her sense of self. It reinforced her feeling that she was deserving of abandonment and unkindness, feelings she tried to bury every day.

  ‘I can’t cope with it Kate, not with that. Anything else …’ she said, throwing the dough forcefully onto the floured counter, before wadding it back up into a ball and leaning firmly down on it. Home-made pizza from scratch. Who did that anymore? Not that it wasn’t delicious. Pizza infused with love and suffering.

  It was my turn to look away.

  ‘Tell me you need me to stand on my head for three days to ensure a perfect performance, I’ll do it.’ The dough was starting to look a little sorry. Sorry for existing.

  ‘I know Mum, but I want to talk to you about this. It’s important. Something I need to do and I don’t want to leave you in the dark.’

  ‘I can’t cope, Kit,’ Mum almost shouted, her voice breaking in desperation. She turned her back to me, flinging cupboards open and reaching for ingredients which arrived too loudly on the counter.

  ‘I’m sorry Mum.’

  ‘Don’t do it, Kit,’ she pleaded, coming to me and gripping my arms with floury fingers, beseeching me with such intensity that I didn’t know what to say. She was suddenly quieter. ‘I don’t want to lose you, Baby. Blood, suddenly you’ll have brothers, sisters … you’ll want to be with them.’

  ‘They’d be strangers, Mum,’ I said, taking her hand in mine.

  ‘That’s what you say now.’ She looked into my eyes, searching for a depth of reassurance which did not exist, and then turned back to the pizza bases, spreading the blood which pumped from her wounds across the surface.

  I looked down at the white fingerprints she’d left on my arms. ‘I love you Mum. I could never love them as much.’

  My curiosity was like a plague. It would not be denied. Damn inquisitiveness. Fantasy preoccupied me. I struggled with ambivalence. I wanted answers, but guilt loaded my shoulders thanks to Sam, the twisted serpent who personified my negativity and gave voice to my every insecurity. He would not be refused. He reminded me that every step I took towards discovery was a blow to them as real as any sledgehammer could deliver. He reminded me that I was selfish and I reminded myself that he was not real, but he would not be denied.

  He’d been around for too long. In the midst of the greatest turbulence at home, as my parents had separated, reunited and then separated again, I had become sad and they had thought it wise to spend large sums of money on a therapist. I had only gone to a few appointments. Sam was the lasting legacy, slithering through my mind and onto my shoulder.

  ‘Sometimes kids find it helpful to imagine a protector, someone or something you can carry within you that will help you feel safe, a voice which is positive and strong.’ The counsellor had been male, with curly brown hair and glasses. Call me Ted, not Mr Brown, he had said. His face was friendly, but I really wasn’t interested. Music was my therapy.

  After an awkward silence I had nodded and he had continued. ‘What do you think that voice might say right now, about what’s going on and about you, the way you are handling things, how you’re feeling?’

  That this is bloody stupid! The thought was so loud it startled me. Quite unlike me too, I wasn’t one for swearing or belligerence. I shrugged, but my face betrayed me.

  ‘And there’s the other voice, the negative one.’ I nodded eagerly.

  ‘And maybe it’s been there for a long time. Maybe it’s not just about what’s going on with Mum and Dad right now?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ I agreed, remembering the time I’d had a memory lapse in a concert at primary school and Mum had cried and I’d felt like such a loser. She’d cried because of Dad, he’d been cruel just before, but at the time I had thought it was me. I’d tossed and turned for weeks.

  ‘Maybe you believe that voice. Maybe instead of a belief that voice is more like a fact that sits inside you, like a reflection of reality.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I answered, knowing he was right but not wanting to make it too easy.

  ‘Think of something, an image you can connect with this negative self-talk, something you can pour the beliefs or thoughts into so that you can stand back and see them more for what they are … which is not always the truth, but rather deep-seated unhelpful beliefs. Sometimes that helps to make them more debatable.’

  And out of the blue, as the most ridiculous image took form and substance in my mind, I’d expelled Sam. He was like Kaa from the Jungle Book, all swirly eyes and slimy grin with just a flick of suave in the curl of his tail. The ‘protector’ never happened in the same way. I lied about the image of a horse, but I could never connect with it and it was always silent and disempowered. And now years later I still wasn’t quite sure how I felt about Sam. After all, he was rather pessimistic, but he was also a constant companion. We journeyed together, my externalised negativity and I.

  The thought that I might wait too long to find out about my biological parents haunted me, even as I too faced fears of abandonment, like Mum. Opening the door to reach out to the past didn’t mean that it wouldn’t slam shut in my face, or that monsters wouldn’t emerge from the shadows behind it. Finally, after much rumination, I made a decision. Swallowing hard I punched my details into an online contact form for FIND (Family Information Networks and Discovery), a service which helped adopted persons find relatives. After providing them with my mobile number I waited for a call. It came just as I was tip-toeing along the edge of the pool hoping to sneak in, and woke Noodle who leapt from her lounge and rushed at me like a rocket, howling until I stepped away from the water.

  ‘We can find out about past adoptions that are connected to Victoria and provide you with access to records and documents if they are available,’ the woman said, as I consoled my furry friend. ‘It’s best to come in and talk through whatever we find.’

  I travelled in to Bourke Street ten days later to meet with a counsellor who had retrieved some basic information. A few facts typed on a couple of A4 pages.

  She delivered it carefully, glasses on the end of her nose as she read the information to me, her eyes flicking up too often as she gauged my reaction. I was unmoved, disappointed at the scant, cold, two dimensional facts. Typed black words on flat white paper, removed from the warmth which might have made them real. I don’t know what I had expected.

  My birth mother was eighteen when I was born, my father twenty. She was fair-haired and blue-eyed. He had brown hair and green eyes. Her name was Deborah Brayshaw and her parents were Julia and David. He was Nicholas Edwards and his parents were Catherine (with a ‘C’ which was different to mine) and Albert. Under occupation, he was listed as a trainee pilot, she a student. I was born at a rural Victorian hospital and was ten days old when I was placed with my adoptive family. That was it.

  ‘It’s not a good idea to try and contact your biological parents alone,’ the counsellor warned, her chair scraping across the floor as she stood up. ‘Your mother was happy to have these details released if you ever asked for them, but she consented a long time ago. Rejection at a time like this can be difficult; the pain can be unexpected, even if you prepare for it. Counselling can provide support.’ I nodded and left, returning to the piano, my sanctuary.

  3

  KATE

  Christmas came and went and time seemed to loop back on itself as I found myself once again fretting about whether or not to find out more. I didn’t want to hurt Mum. I didn’t want to count myself among those who had let her down, but I was worried about leaving my search for too long and having the avenues, however meagre, available to me now b
ecome windswept and barren in the future.

  The Google screen flickered flirtatiously and I felt its call. I whipped back fingers which had already typed in Deborah B, gnawing on them for a few seconds before abandoning my better judgement and going the whole hog. Deborah Brayshaw. Enter. There was lots of photos and information, but nothing readily identifying any one specifically as the one who might be my birth mother, if she was even there. More than likely she had married and changed her name and my search was pointless.

  Widening my search I tracked down eight phone numbers Australia-wide for ‘Julia Brayshaw’ (Deborah’s mother’s name). I made a note of them and then moved on to my next search.

  Nicholas Edwards. Enter. There were loads, but one owned NE International Aeronautical Services, and I knew that my biological father had been a trainee pilot at the time of my birth. Surely it was him? His company was on social media. There were lots of photos of planes but only one of him. It looked dated and was strangely grainy, but he was big and handsome. My heart pounded hard in my chest. Could this be him?

  I did nothing further for days, afraid of doing something irreversible that I might regret. But eventually, after coming up with a weak cover story, I took a deep breath and began to call the numbers I had found for Julia Brayshaw. I was lucky. I got her on the second try and I needn’t have worried, she was totally at ease giving Deborah’s details out to a complete stranger.

  ‘I’m trying to track down Deborah for the school reunion, Mrs Brayshaw,’ I lied. ‘We don’t have any current details on file for her.’

  ‘Ah Deb,’ she said, and I kicked myself at the shortened use of her name. Of course, who was ever referred to as Deborah! Not unless you were six and Mum had just seen you step in a cowpat in your ballet shoes. Dead give-away, super-sleuth! ‘Surprised you found me,’ she continued, ‘I’ve been out of the area for so long now.’

  ‘Yes, well …’ I scrabbled for a good reason as to why I’d gone to this much effort to track her down, but she didn’t notice my discomfort.

  ‘Of course she’s married now. Traitor went off and married a Kiwi!’ Her laugh came from far back in her throat.

  ‘Oh ... err that’s nice.’

  ‘You don’t need to be polite,’ she replied, ‘but he is a lovely bloke, the sheep-shagger.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I clarified.

  ‘They live over there … in New Zealand. He’s a farmer, sheep. Not that they farm much else in cuckoo, sorry Kiwi, land. Anyway, they do pretty well. It’s a beautiful farm, green and lush, bountiful. You don’t see green like that over here. When it rains it sounds like thunder on the roof.’

  Nanny’s old house with the tin roof flashed into my mind and I felt a flicker of grief.

  ‘Any kids?’

  ‘Three. All boys. Big, strapping lads. They’re great on the farm. Riding horses before they could walk. Deb does the books, all of the administration. She’s made a good farmer’s wife. Surprised me at first.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I didn’t know how she’d go with the isolation. But then sometimes you make more friends in farming communities than you do in the suburbs.’ Her voice became wistful and I wondered whether an ocean of loneliness surrounded her. A quick impossible wish flitted in and then out of my mind as I cast it aside. I would never really know her. ‘We’re more than twenty a floor here,’ she continued, ‘but you wouldn’t know it. They rely on each other out there in the bush.’ A gentle miaow sounded through the phone and then the light thump of paws hitting the floor in the background. ‘Off you go Bernie, I’ll be there soon,’ she said, explaining, ‘It’s his feeding time. He’s my constant companion. Don’t know what I’d do without him … especially now that he no longer pees under the bed.’ She chuckled lightly, but I wasn’t sure whether that was just for my benefit.

  ‘Is she happy, Mrs Brayshaw?’

  She took a moment to reply, and I wondered at her hesitation. ‘Oh, I think so … yes, yes she is.’

  ‘Would you mind giving me a contact number for her, or an e-mail address?’ I asked hopefully, wondering whether I would need to provide some sort of proof that I was who I said I was.

  I needn’t have worried. ‘Let me get my book,’ she said immediately. ‘I’ve got all of that in there.’

  She returned, settling herself. ‘Ah here it is.’ I imagined her reaching for glasses and popping them onto the end of her nose.

  ‘E-mail will be easier for you, I suppose.’ She rattled off the address and I jotted it down, repeating it back to her.

  ‘Many thanks … and for filling me in on Deb’s news.’

  ‘Well I’m sure she’d like to hear from you, although she probably won’t be over for the reunion!’

  ‘No? Well, maybe I can do a paragraph on her for the newsletter.’ I swallowed hard and a wave of heat engulfed me. This was my maternal grandmother. I was speaking to her for the first time in my life, but the foundation of our conversation was all lies, and everything built on it was tainted by that, like a crack running through cement. I felt like a worm. Hopefully she would understand when the time came.

  We said our farewells and I locked away imaginings of a relationship with another grandmother.

  The suspense was hard to bear, but I felt too nervous to ring Deb up out of the blue. Would she tell me to get lost? Did her family even know that I existed? E-mail was definitely the alternative for cowards. I composed and deleted a few hundred before going for simple:

  Hi Deb,

  I’ve recently been in touch with your mum who provided me with your e-mail address. I’m organising a school reunion and just want to confirm that this would be an appropriate address to use to make contact with you. Kate.

  I paced, anxiously nibbling my nails and checking my e-mails every minute. Sam and I debated whether or not I was in fact a coward. Eventually I went for a walk, minus technology. I forced myself to make it a long one. Whether or not a tornado whipped beachgoers up into the clouds as I passed I cannot tell you. I was rewarded on my return with a response.

  Hi Kate,

  Sounds good. Keep me posted please. Deb

  I took a breath and typed.

  Deb,

  I’ve been wondering whether you can help me out.

  Do you know a girl with DOB 5/5/1989? I want to get in touch with someone who knew her. Kate.

  Maybe the date would jog her memory. At least if her husband read it, he wouldn’t get the significance. A confused e-mail arrived, but it was quickly followed by a second as she made the connection.

  Kate,

  I’m not sure if I’m on the right track here, but I recognise the date you mention. Can you provide me with more details? I’m very interested to learn more. Deb.

  Hi Deb,

  I confess. The girl is actually me. I was born on 5/5/1989 and placed for adoption. My biological father’s name is Nicholas Edwards according to information I obtained. Does this mean anything to you? Sorry to be so cryptic before, but I wasn’t sure how to approach this. Kate.

  I waited for her response. Suddenly realising that I was munching on my thumb like it was a chicken and bacon sub and I had last eaten sometime last month, I stopped. It gazed back at me reproachfully. I wondered whether Deb had any bad habits, whether she smoked, or whether she’d leapt out of bed this morning with every intention to quit. Hopefully if that was the case then the last of them was buried under fermenting fruit and mouldy bread at the bottom of the bin, and one remaining sad and rumpled packet wasn’t making faces at her from behind the tins of cat food.

  Kate,

  I am your biological mother. I cannot tell you what it means to me to hear from you! It’s like I can breathe at last. I am over the moon! I’ve wondered and wondered, especially on your birthday every year, what you’re doing, whether you’re happy, who you’re with. My prayers were that you were with a family who loved you and could give you the things I couldn’t. I’ve felt so guilty. Please send me a photo and your phone number. I can’t wait to
talk to you. Love, Deb.

  I almost knelt and prayed, but my initial insecurities were quickly replaced by others in a strange cocktail-mix which would never hit a bar. Apprehension, check; excitement, check; fear, check; guilt, double-check; crazy hyperactive fidgeting; check. I waited for her call, no more nails left to nibble, flicking my lucky red yo-yo instead.

  Believe it or not, at nine I was runner-up in a local yo-yo contest. The winner won a golden-coloured steel yo-yo and I won five cheaper plastic versions, which I handed out to my friends. Unfortunately the next-door neighbour’s son, Cameron, destroyed his mother’s inherited Limoges collection while executing a rather unsuccessful ‘around the world’ with a yo-yo I had provided him with and I wasn’t invited over again.

  One last flick and then I tossed it onto the desk and flopped onto my bed. The ornate ceiling rose regarded me. So much to say, but where to start? Definitely not, ‘I guess I didn’t keep you up much?’

  At last the phone rang. I couldn’t breathe. Barely managed to squeak a greeting. Deb, on the other hand, sounded warm and friendly; a lot like her mum but with a dash of Kiwi accent flattening her words.

  ‘Thank you for making contact with me, Kate,’ she said, her voice deep and slightly husky. ‘I can’t tell you how much it means. To know that you’re okay, to put an end to the questions. Questions which I could never answer.’

  I felt awkward, uncomfortable with her gratitude. To know that I had released her to some extent with so little meant that her suffering had been prolonged, because of me. Ridiculous of course. I was the one who had been abandoned.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to wait so long, Deb.’

  My bedroom door creaked open and I froze. The phone felt like a gun in my hand. There was nowhere to hide.

  ‘Please, don’t apologise!’ she continued, oblivious to my distress. ‘You don’t owe me anything. I’m just so happy that we’re talking now!’

  A furry maw appeared and nudged the door open further. ‘Noodle. What the …’ I scolded, covering the phone with my hand. She halted in her tracks and her tail crept between her legs. Slowly she turned to leave, her head mopping the ground.