When the Mirror Cracks

by Jan Coffey

  Tiam was raised by her, but born to another. Without knowing it, her sweet angel was extremely proud of an ethnicity that wasn’t hers. Of a history that she had no share in. But Zari had never revealed the truth to her daughter. She’d never said anything about their early years. About how her Tiam became Christina and Christina became Tiam. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she blinked them back as she continued to listen.

  Hatice’s questions shifted to pregnancy.

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  “Has anyone else in your family been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis?”

  Both sets of eyes turned on Zari. She rubbed her sweaty palms on her knees, trying to quiet her foot from tapping the floor under the table. “Not that I know of.”

  “Has anyone in the patient’s father’s family been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I see no results for a sweat test on Tiam as an infant. Was it done?”

  Zari nodded, then shook her head. She didn’t know. Her heart lurched to think a wrong answer could jeopardize what her daughter hoped to gain by this test. “She wasn’t born in a hospital.”

  But she was. Zari held this child in her arms for the first time when she was only a couple of hours old.

  “Let’s get a little more detailed information about the family.” Hatice paged down to a new form. “I’d like to get a list of all relatives on both sides, living and deceased, within a generation or two. And all their medical conditions and the cause of death, if possible. Shall we start?”

  Zari stared at the form, but she couldn’t see. Memories from the past were fighting their way through.

  Twenty years ago, misery found new meaning when she arrived in Ankara with her newborn baby. There was no sign of her husband. The address she had—an apartment complex where he also worked—was a dead end. The manager of the building knew him, but said Yahya had disappeared. The man had no idea where he’d gone. Another Kurdish immigrant had already taken the job and moved his own family in.

  The new people offered Zari and her baby a bed to sleep on in their crowded quarters for a few days. It was during that time that she found employment working for Elizabeth Hall.

  Her new employer was pregnant, but she didn’t show it during those early days. She lived in the complex and worked at the US Embassy. She offered Zari room and board and wages in exchange for doing all household chores and taking care of her child after she gave birth. Zari felt blessed, under the circumstances. Allah’s will at work.

  She never went with Elizabeth to the doctor’s appointments. She didn’t know what kind of medical issues the other woman had. Or her family. She had no idea who the father of the child was. She’d never seen Elizabeth with a man. She’d never even heard a name mentioned.

  “Let’s do the father’s side first. His name?”

  Hatice’s question tore Zari’s mind away from the past and forced her to pay attention to what was happening in this room.

  “His name?” the counselor asked again.

  The words wouldn’t make their way past Zari’s lips.

  Tiam answered for her. “Yahya Rahman.”

  “Living or diseased?”

  Zari couldn’t do this. Her heart was too heavy. She couldn’t lie. Yahya. Tiam. Neither of them knew what she’d kept hidden in her heart.

  It had been two years since Emine told her that Yahya was alive. But Zari had continued on as if nothing had changed. She still looked for him everywhere she went. And there were glimpses. The driver of a car that parked for the long periods of time at the end of the street. The shadow pausing outside the window of the pharmacy where she worked. Each time, her emotions got the better of her. But she couldn’t approach him, and she was thankful that he didn’t either.

  Tiam’s cold fingers reached for Zari’s under the table. “Missing. He’s been missing for my entire life. We were refugees. My parents came to Turkey separately. They haven’t seen each other in all this time.”

  Zari looked down and tears dropped from her chin onto their joined hands.

  “His age?”

  Forty-three. And he was out there on the streets of Istanbul. Watching over them, putting money in her account, buying a car for his daughter. Or rather, this angel that he thought was his daughter.

  “How old would he be now?” Tiam asked quietly.

  The lump in her throat kept getting bigger and bigger. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t breathe.

  “How about if I go get us some tea? My schedule is open for the entire afternoon.”

  Hatice’s chair scraped the floor. Her footsteps were light. She left the folder on the table. The door closed behind her.

  Tiam touched Zari’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Maman. I shouldn’t have brought you here. These questions bring back painful memories.”

  She used a tissue and wiped the tears off her mother’s face.

  “I know what you’ve done for me. How hard you’ve worked. How you’ve been both mother and father, sister and friend. You are my entire family. I know how faithfully you’ve supported me for my whole life. Through all these years of dealing with my sickness, you’ve been the bright light, the hope, the love that keeps me going.”

  Zari looked into her daughter’s face. Her angel. Her gift from God. For the sake of her health, for the blessing of Allah, this child deserved to know the truth.

  “I love you, Maman. We don’t have to stay. Let’s go. I can explain it to Hatice.”

  Zari shook her head and wrapped Tiam’s hands in her own. “No, my love. We’re staying.”

  “I won’t put you through this. I saw how you fell apart, and she’s barely even started with the questions.”

  Zari turned in her chair until she was facing Tiam. “I want you to have this genetic test. That’s why we’re here. Nothing makes me happier than to think of your future. But as far as these answers she’s looking for…” She shook her head. “If I were to tell her that my mother had high blood pressure, or my father died of a stroke when he was in his thirties, it wouldn’t mean anything. None of what I say will help them understand more about you.”

  “But Maman, the way the science of it works—”

  “The way the science of it works is that there’s a truth about me…about us…that you don’t know.”

  Zari pressed a kiss on each of her daughter’s cheeks. She had to make sure there would be no doubt of how she felt. A mother’s love required no umbilical cord. The love she had for this child transcended genetics and anything else they could test in this building.

  She couldn’t love Tiam less, cherish her less. She could feel no greater pride for her.

  “You are not Tiam.” Zari held her gaze. “I didn’t bring you into this world. You were born to another woman. Your name is Christina.”

  18

  Tiam

  Then

  Never in my entire life had I imagined that Zari Rahman might not be my mother. She took care of me. Loved me. Supported me. Encouraged me. She still does. She was the shoulder I cried on, the hand I reached for, the example I followed.

  As a single mother, a refugee, a Kurdish woman, she has struggled to make a life in a country that for years discriminated against even the language that she spoke. In the face of the hostility of a world that has persistently stood against her, she wrapped me in her protective arms. And I found my true home in her embrace.

  But, sitting in a conference room, Zari told me the truth and rocked my world. I’ve lived for twenty years as one person, but really I was another. The waves of shock and disbelief swept through me when she explained the horrifying circumstances when two toddlers had been swapped.

  The first reaction that rushed through me was fear of losing Zari. My heart ached to think she would not be part of my life from that day on. She’s everything to me, as I know I’m everything to her. But the worry dissipated like the morning fog on the Bosphorus. I’m twenty years old. No one can tell me where to go, what to do, whom to
love. Zari is my mother.

  Following that first day came resentment. But it is not directed at Zari. How can I understand a mother who leaves her child behind?

  I can’t help but think of the things that Elizabeth Hall deprived me off. Turks speak of America as the place of golden dreams. The land of infinite opportunity. The nation where the clever and the hardworking amass fortunes in an instant. America, the land of abundant riches.

  Would I have spent less time in hospitals if I grew up there? I’ve been sick every day of my life. I was sick when Elizabeth took Zari’s healthy child and left me behind. The United States is at the forefront of every medical innovation. Would I have new lungs by now to replace the failing ones inside of me?

  I was denied a life there. A different life from the one I know. Still, if this were an alternate universe where I had the option of going with Elizabeth or staying with Zari, the choice would not be difficult.

  I would stay with my true and loving mother. I would never choose another.

  Weeks went by before my turbulent feelings subsided. Now, curiosity has become the driving force in my existence. I’m on the Internet all the time. I search the web, combing through it, looking for Elizabeth Hall. She’s not difficult to find. And when I do locate her, I set up web tracking. Now, whenever her name shows up in any context, I know. She lives in California where the sun always shines, where the sky and the sea are blue.

  I pore over her pictures of a gallery opening in Los Angeles one day. She’s posing with a group of women. They’re holding a check that is being donated to some charity. In another, she and three other people wearing tennis outfits hold a gold cup. Everyone is fit and healthy. They all dress well.

  Her life is so foreign to me. I go to school and work, while Zari is at the pharmacy six days a week. We live paycheck to paycheck. Elizabeth is an executive for a big electronic company. On my screen, the plush world in which she lives is full of smiles and parties. I get no glimpse of the real woman who gave birth to me.

  I study the images, searching for other ways to connect with her. The color of our eyes, the shape of our face, the angle of our cheekbones, the quirk in our smile where the right side lifts a little higher than the left. Do we have anything more in common? Am I at all connected to her?

  I shouldn’t care. But I do.

  I don’t want anything from her. I can’t bring myself to contact her directly, but I still wish she could know that I’m here. That I have survived, despite rejection. Despite her.

  It’s during these endless hours of searching that something quite unexpected happens. Christina ends up accepting a friend request I send her.

  She is me and I am her.

  I follow every moment, every image, of the life that she shares with her friends. And she has no idea who I am.

  19

  Christina

  Now

  A daughter’s relationship with her mother can be a lifeline, a buoy that keeps her afloat as she weathers the storms of life. Or it can sink her like a stone. For all these years, I’ve been trying to decide which kind of relationship I have with Elizabeth.

  I’ve heard so many stories about my childhood. About how badly I treated my mother. The tales came from Elizabeth herself.

  I tested her, pushed her, misbehaved. I acted out. From the very beginning, she says, I was a very difficult child.

  When she tried to hug me, I became the classic stiff-armed baby, keeping her away. The next day, however, if she was busy or less inclined to offer affection, I attached myself like Velcro to her. I was clingy and afraid of being separated from her, inconsolable if I was left alone. My belief was that if she left me, she’d never come back.

  As I got a bit older, I grew more defiant. If she made cupcakes, I wanted cookies. If she made pancakes, I wanted cereal. If we went out for steak dinner, I’d suddenly give up eating meat. When she bought me gifts for a birthday or Christmas, I wanted them returned.

  No one is around to tell my side, if there is a my side. Elizabeth controls the narrative of those early years, and she says that I was difficult.

  There’s an incident I remember clearly. It happened when I was eleven years old. I overheard my mother talking to a friend.

  “I’m sure I’d be devastated if something tragic happened to Christina. But I’d recover.”

  I was stunned. Her words decimated me. To this day, I don’t know the rest of that conversation. If something tragic happened…I’d recover.

  I was not essential in her life.

  I was expendable.

  She didn’t want me.

  One would think that the mother-daughter relationship would be the very definition of unconditional love. But Elizabeth and I seem to lack the gene. There is a disconnect that has always existed between us. As I grew into adulthood, the childhood stories and Elizabeth’s constant reminders loaded me with feelings of self-blame and even shame. The difficult child has become a difficult adult. Every argument stabs and tries to draw blood.

  The truth behind our toxic relationship eventually came out, though, when I became pregnant.

  Before even telling Kyle about the pregnancy, I knew what his reaction would be. He didn’t want a baby, but once I was over thirty, that was all I could think about. He’d be polite, respecting my decision to keep the baby, but I couldn’t count on our relationship to survive.

  While I was making plans on raising a baby without a father, I found myself consumed with learning what I could about my own father. My real father, not any of the men whom Elizabeth had relationships with while I was growing up.

  Everything I read told me that my confidence, my feelings of self-worth, and my relationships with others were tied to knowing about him.

  More times than I can count, I’d asked her about him. It was important for me to know who he was. Where he came from and where he went. I wondered why he rejected me, if he did, or if he was aware that I even existed.

  When I was a child, Elizabeth told me I had no father…end of conversation. When I was twenty-something, she finally told me that she’d had some casual relationships with different men when she worked in Ankara. She became pregnant and decided to keep me. That discussion ended with no name. For a long time, I wondered if she even knew who my father was.

  There was a lot wrong with me, and it all pointed back to that slippery slope of identity. I was an outsider, uncomfortable in my own skin. My insecurities carried over into my relationships with my mother, with my boyfriend, with the handful of people I considered friends. Regardless of all my flaws, I believed my child would be a blank slate. I could give her or him the confidence that I lacked myself. I could show the child the love that my mother held back and made conditional. I told myself I would be a better parent than Elizabeth was.

  Like mother, like daughter. I was so consumed by what I was searching for that Kyle was left out of the decision-making process.

  Genetic testing was something my gynecologist recommended when I was ten weeks pregnant.

  “Some tests can check babies for medical conditions while they are in the womb. Others check their DNA for some genetic diseases.”

  I started the testing with my doctor, but I didn’t stop there. One blood test led to another. Forty dollars to learn a little. A hundred dollars to swab your cheek and find out more. A search for medical conditions turned into an extensive hunt to know who I was and where I came from.

  I’ll never forget the warm day at the end of March this year. I was sitting at our kitchen table with my laptop open. A new email had arrived with the results of my family ancestry search. Everything else prior to that, folder after folder of medical records, hadn’t brought me any closer to the answers I was searching for. That one page, blessed by the Mormons, the same test that millions of other people take, changed everything.

  I stared at the paper. My entire family tree was jammed into one oval section on the map. The area included parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria—where the four countries came togeth
er. Kurdistan.

  There was no indication of any connection with Elizabeth’s northern European roots. None.

  The world I knew exploded in my face. Everything I thought. Everything I believed. It was all gone.

  For all the years of not knowing who my father was, still there was a bond that tied me to Elizabeth. But that connection was now wiped out. My relationship with my mother, taut and frayed as it was, was severed with a suddenness that stunned me.

  The mirror shattered and fell away, and I was looking into an empty void. I went searching for one parent and lost the other. I was now adrift and in danger of going under.

  I clutched at that oval encompassing Kurdistan but repeated the test. It took long painful days and nights to confirm the results. And then, I realized my discovery was simply evidence of something I’d felt instinctively for my entire life.

  I wasn’t Elizabeth’s child.

  My research showed that all children who are separated from their mothers suffer trauma that will affect their bond with a new parent. This described us exactly: my difficulty living up to her expectations and her difficulty accepting me for who I am.

  But if I wasn’t hers, how did she get me?

  I wasn’t adopted. I had a birth certificate. A passport. A form that said I was born in a hospital in Ankara. The mother’s name was recorded as Elizabeth Hall. The father’s name was left blank.

  If my discovery shed some light on our relationship, so much more of the truth remained hidden in the darkness. Asking Elizabeth wasn’t an option. She was never forthcoming with information. The past didn’t matter.

  The truth, my truth, was a puzzle, and I had to find the missing pieces.

  Kyle was in Japan on business. I went to Jax.

  “I need a couple of weeks off.”

  He didn’t argue, didn’t ask me what I was going to do or where I was going. “Take as much time as you want. But come up with a good story so Elizabeth stays off your back.”