Starchild

by Michaela Foster Marsh

  Poor Janet, I thought to myself. She really had wanted to keep Frankie. I knew it! I couldn’t imagine how she must have felt giving up her baby like that. She never got to know her own son, my brother. And the father! Getting her pregnant and then leaving her alone in a foreign country to have her baby and hide away in shame. Was she on her own? How lonely she must have been. Did she ever get over that loss?

  I started to think about Janet more and more, visualizing her and the pain she must have felt giving up her child. As the months went on I became ever more anxious to know who this Janet Wevugira was. Did she marry? Did she have any other family? Could I have brothers and sisters out there in Africa? But they wouldn’t really be my brothers or sisters! There seemed to be more missing from the jigsaw puzzle now that I knew her name and had read a bit about her. It felt like I really had opened a Pandora’s Box.

  I started to search the internet, but there were very few leads. Wevugira turned out to be a very unusual name. I found one Wevugira in Uganda on Facebook. I contacted him but never mentioned the full connection to protect Janet. I just said she had been in the UK at one point, we had lost touch and I wondered, if he was, by chance, a relation. It turned out he was no relation. However, he was very anxious to try to find Janet for me and I quickly realized it would come at a cost. Once I started to get a daily onslaught of his impoverished relatives and friends, I knew I had to block him. At that point, Rony was concerned I could be opening myself up to exploitation as I had no idea who or what I could be dealing with on the internet. Rony felt that someone could fabricate a story about Janet in order to extricate money from me and give me false hope. He was right, of course, and so I gave up my internet search for “family” connections.

  I did however manage to find Tanker Ha’ Children’s Home in Kilmarnock on the internet. I discovered it had been closed in 2008 and had been subdivided into six modern flats. Regardless, I wanted to see where Frankie had spent his first thirteen months of life, and so Rony and I took the twenty-mile drive toward the coast. I was so excited to see it!

  Finally, there it was—the place my brother had spent his first thirteen months of life. The place my parents first laid eyes on him was in this beautiful old Victorian mansion occupying a corner of London Road. I stood outside and thought about him as a tiny baby being taken from his mum to live in this children’s home—to live in a room crammed with cribs. I felt such pain for those abandoned souls who could not nurse on their mothers’ breasts nor feel their mothers’ heartbeat. The sheer terror of being so small and vulnerable to the mercy of strangers for your every need…God, I hoped they had been kind.

  I imagined my parents seeing my brother for the first time, the mix of emotions they must have felt and the hard decision they made to adopt a black child into a white family in the ’60s. I imagined the fears they must have had and their dreams for him, for our family. And of course, I thought about Janet. Did she know where her son had been placed when he was taken from her arms in Thornhill Hospital? I thought about the distance that was now between them. I felt I wanted to find her and reassure her that he had been adopted by a good family.

  There was no birth certificate in the files. I became fixated on getting a proper birth certificate for Frankie; he had a death certificate but not a birth certificate. I was told by the authorities that adopted people weren’t allowed to have their full birth certificates–only extracts–but I just wanted to have one for him, for me. A birth certificate would bring me closer to Janet, to his birth. It would also hopefully give me an address for Janet at the time of birth.

  I knew from the papers on Frankie’s adoption that Janet had been studying in Belfast. However, according to another letter in the manila folder from the Church of Scotland, Committee on Social Responsibility, Frankie’s birth had been registered in Johnstone, Paisley, just outside Glasgow, in Scotland. How on earth did Janet get herself from Belfast to Scotland? And why? Was she pregnant when she made the journey? Did anyone help her or did she make the journey alone in secrecy?

  I called the Johnstone Registry office in Paisley, and a lady answered. I explained that I was looking for my adopted brother’s birth certificate.

  “I’m afraid that I can’t give you a birth certificate for an adopted person.”

  “But he died in 1994. He’s not going to look for his parents. I just want to have one for him.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that but I still can’t give it to you.”

  I was so disappointed and it must have shown in my voice. I told her I had all the details from his adoption papers. Without waiting on her answer, I fired off the entry date, the entry number, district, year and the office the entry was made.

  There was a long silence.

  I broke it, “I know the mother’s name.”

  “What’s the mother’s name?”

  “Janet Wevugira. He was born in Thornhill Hospital.”

  “What is it you are looking for my dear? You seem to have all the information I have here.”

  “Oh, wow, so you have it. You have it in front of you!”

  “Yes,” she chuckled, “I can see it here.”

  “Do you know where his mum lived?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Somewhere …here in …Glasgow.” I said it with some uncertainty.

  “I think you mean Belfast.”

  “Oh yes! She was a student there. That’s in the adoption papers. But I thought she must have moved here as she had him in Paisley.”

  Luckily for me, this lady agreed to send me his birth certificate—well it was an extract, but it had all the information I needed! I will never know what made her agree to send it to me, but I was so excited. Thank you—whoever you were!

  Until I received the registration in the post, I didn’t have an address for Janet’s residence. As it turned out, at the time of her pregnancy she was staying at Queen Mary’s Hostel, 70 Fitzwilliam Street, Belfast. I felt a need to see where Janet had been living when Frankie was conceived. I decided to book a flight as soon as I could, hoping for more clues about Janet and my brother’s origins.

  The City that Launched a Thousand Dreams

  Belfast, 2011

  As I strolled along the dull pavements of Belfast, I was accompanied by the endless loop of the tune from the old tearjerker movie Born Free. I hadn’t seen it since I was a child, the vast golden plains of Africa set against a backdrop of blue skies and burning orange suns. My head filled with romanticized notions of where Janet came from, a land of lions lounging around in the heat and flocks of birds rising and landing on acacia trees in the African bush. The world of Born Free was so far removed from Belfast that I struggled to imagine how Janet must have felt when she came to this strange land of gray buildings and divided people.

  I started to imagine Janet trying to understand that strange Northern Irish accent. I could hardly decipher it myself. And the weather—I know Uganda has its rainy season, but I wondered if Belfast had any other season? It was as wet as Glasgow. But it wasn’t just the weather; the people seemed to be almost exclusively white, and everything else so gray.

  I remembered only too well how I felt when I left Scotland and immigrated to Canada. I had such a deep ache inside. Loneliness. A sense of isolation. No old Glasgow friends. No family. Nothing was familiar. It was overwhelming even though I spoke the same language and I had the same color of skin as most of the locals. Oh, how I ached for home! Homesickness is real, and it is awful. I wondered if Janet suffered from it, or had she embraced the excitement of this chapter in her life? Did she dive into the Irish experience or sit alone in a small damp room in the hostel in Belfast?

  The Queen Mary’s Hostel is now called The Queen Mary’s Hall. It is run by the Young Women’s Christian Association. I stood outside wondering if this was where Frankie was conceived. Just to be standing here set off my sparking imagination. I imagined her coming
home from her studies. I wonder what she was wearing. Did she dress like the fashion at that time or was she wearing wild African print dresses? I imagine her clicking her heels against the gray pavement while walking the two-minute walk from the University campus. How did she walk? Did she have that hip-swinging swagger that many African ladies have? I wondered if Frankie’s dad walked her home in the late evenings after study. In my imagination he was handsome, tall, and intelligent. He wore a suit. For some reason, I never imagined him in African dress but I did imagine him filling Janet’s head with romantic notions and basically seducing her.

  It was only a bus ride to the vibrant city center, now full of trendy shops, cafés and restaurants. I wondered if it was as cosmopolitan in the ’60s. I thought about them going into town together at the weekend. Was this African couple accepted in a predominantly white Belfast or was there a tension in the air when they walked into a bar.

  It started to rain again and Rony and I snuck under the doorway of the terraced house. I imagined her carrying an umbrella. I wondered if they used them in Uganda or if they just let themselves get wet knowing, unlike here, that the sun would soon be out again.

  The Edwardian gray terrace house was typical of the long leafy quarter. I managed to blag my way into the hostel and get a look at some of the rooms. As I walked through the door, I had this strange feeling that Janet was actually with me. The rooms were drab, musty, uninviting and cold. I’m sure the curtains hadn’t been changed since 1966, or even washed for that matter. The whole place reeked of the past, but not one I had pictured; there was nothing romantic about it. I had wanted it to be magical. I wanted the place that conceived the great Titanic and my brother to glisten like that big ship. I wanted to imagine Janet in love with her medical student, Frankie’s dad. But my illusions were sinking as fast as that ill-fated cruise ship.

  Perhaps I was doing the establishment an injustice. Perhaps in 1966 it was modern for its day. I’m sure it would have been much fresher in the ‘60s. I’m sure it was safe, comfortable and affordable. But it was tired now, run down. All I sensed was Janet as a frightened, lonely girl with a secret in her belly. My brother’s mother lying there curled up in one of those miserable beds beside a window with bars on it, trying to stay warm. All I could imagine was how she must have fretted about her secret, the questions that might have filled her head and given her nightmares. Actually, I was starting to become a nightmare for Rony with all my unanswerable questions. I was present, but I wasn’t. I was living with ghosts from the past, weighed down carrying a suitcase full of trauma that wasn’t even rightfully mine to carry. What was the best thing to do for her baby, for herself? Did she tell anyone? Did the father help her? Did anyone help? How on earth did this little Ugandan lady get herself from Belfast to Glasgow on her own when she was pregnant? She must have had to hide her belly while she was studying. I sat and worked out the months in my head. Frankie was born in late September. Schools would just be going back. She’d be at her biggest during the holidays. I hoped she didn’t have to hide away in one of these dreadful rooms. The rooms were holding onto that secret. I wanted answers. The walls knew what Janet was thinking but they gave over nothing, nothing but the smell of the past.

  Maybe my rightful place was to leave that past where it belonged. Take a step back. I had looked at the depths of Janet and Frankie’s pain and I felt it. If I had honored their suffering, maybe I should respectfully bow down to it and bow out of this desire to dig deeper into someone else’s past pain.

  I had never been to Belfast, but I had always assumed it would be much like Glasgow. And I found they were somewhat similar, perhaps because they were both primarily shipbuilding cities. The biggest difference is the fierce sectarianism between the Catholics and the Protestants that fueled the Troubles. Of course, Glasgow has borne witness to sectarianism, too, but thankfully it has never suffered the intense violence that Northern Ireland did. Prejudice, distrust, and fear on both sides were rife in Belfast in the ‘60s. Did Janet suffer from any racial abuse? I had heard about the ghetto—streets and roads and whole areas of tremendous discrimination—but was the tension internal or would Janet have found herself in a city where sectarianism spilt over to the treatment of blacks?

  In general, Frankie suffered very little racial discrimination in Glasgow, but there was always the odd occasion when someone would have a problem with the color of his skin. I remember a party Frankie and I were at with friends. It was one of the most terrifying nights of my life. The party was going full swing: underage teenagers drinking heavily, dancing, snogging and generally having a good time. Suddenly some bloke runs up to me yelling, “Quick! Someone’s trying to stab Frankie!” He grabbed my hand and we both ran out onto the street to see this group of thugs semi circling Frankie and one bloke wielding a small knife. It was absolutely terrifying. I was hysterical, in tears and ran to his side. He was calm and told me to stay back. I was yelling and sobbing. “Please, leave him alone!” Some of our friends tried to intervene, even the friends of the guy with the knife were shouting, “Just leave the black bastard alone. He’s not worth it!” Frankie was calm and said he didn’t want any trouble. It all happened so fast. A large group of our friends quickly appeared and someone pulled me back from the group trying to protect me. I actually can’t remember how it all seemed to calm down eventually. When the group of thugs left, I remember everyone let out the breath they had been holding and the party carried on. Frankie wanted to stay on and show a bit of bravado. All our friends were patting him on the back, “Well done, mate.” “You showed that wanker where to go.” I was scared the thugs could come back and I didn’t leave his side. I was so glad when we got home that night. We never told our parents. I knew how much it would worry them. My parents were always really cool about us going out but I knew it worried them. I was always nervous at clubs, pubs and parties that some trouble would break out because of color.

  Rony and I nipped into a traditional Irish pub for lunch. My fretting over the troubles of Belfast and racial tensions was quickly driven out by Irish hospitality. Everyone was having fun. It was Friday lunchtime. The chat and the drinks were flowing, laughter rattling off the antique tiled walls. The pub’s music reminded me that at heart, the Irish are Celts, just like the Scots. I reassured myself that Janet would have made friends without any problems. I imagined this young African lady learning Irish jigs, swirling and twirling, laughing and drinking something stronger than African tea—probably for the first time in her life.

  I began to think there would have been plenty of women in Ireland who swirled and twirled, laughed and drank and got themselves into trouble with men. I convinced myself that these women would have tried to help Janet with her little secret and would have understood her predicament, perhaps only too well. But then I frightened myself again by remembering those terrible convents that had been in the press recently, “the naughty girls’ homes.” Many described them as homes of horror. They were run by nuns. Most often parents sent their sinful daughters there for getting pregnant out of wedlock. Very few ever got out of the home—even as adults. The most infamous were the Magdalene asylums for ‘fallen women’ where young girls were forced to give up their illegitimate babies for adoption. Mother and child were separated, never to be seen or heard of again. Many had their babies simply taken from them and buried somewhere. The women and girls were ruled by prayers, chores, and all forms of cruel punishment and ritual humiliation. They were also forced to do hard labor in the laundry rooms of the convents and asylums where they washed clothes and linens for major hotel groups, the Irish Armed Forces and the brewer Guinness. Did Janet go to one of them? Was she sent there? Had she been told she must give up her child? Did she suffer their severe disapproval and condemnation of her sinful ways? Was she told a single mother was not fit to have a child and that she was a “fallen woman?” Did they turn her away because she was black? Is that why she chose to come to Scotland, to take that journey on the bo
at while pregnant? Was she alone?

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the moment in Thornhill Hospital in Paisley when Janet had to hand her baby over. I imagined her crying out, “Please don’t take my baby!” The scene in my head was gut-wrenching. Surely every fiber of Janet’s body was ready to receive Frankie as a baby—psychologically as well as physiologically. She must have been left with a dark void of despair and grief.

  The grief for any mother to lose a child at birth must be horrendous. For a mother to give away her living, breathing child she just gave birth to must also be horrifying. The grief of knowing her baby is out there somewhere in the world without her—perhaps forever—must feel overwhelmingly desperate. The child is gone, yet not. There is no grave to visit, no memorial to honor the child, no friends and family to mourn your loss with. In this case, all Janet had was a shameful secret to carry with her all her days. Perhaps she, too, made up stories to soothe herself in her darkest moments: a story that perhaps her son had been lucky and was adopted by a wealthy, kind family in the UK and was thriving in a Western world. Maybe at other times, her stories were not so sweet. Perhaps she feared he had been left in some terrible children’s home, the only black child which no one in Scotland wanted. I doubt she imagined he would ever turn up at her doorstep in Uganda for a warm reunion. Why was I so emotional about this woman who was not even my mother? Why couldn’t I let it go?

  Rony bought me another glass of wine and told me to try and enjoy the weekend, to stop worrying so much about something that happened in the past to a woman I didn’t even know. He was right, of course, but I still couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  Then Rony said, “Look, I don’t want to burst your bubble, babes, but maybe Janet didn’t care that much. Maybe she was happy to get rid of an unwanted burden. Why do you have so much sympathy for her?” It sounded so cruel, but it was a good question. What if she was only thinking of herself and making her own life easier?