Somebody's Daughter--a moving journey of discovery, recovery and adoption Page 7

  ‘She looks very nice. And this is your sister?’

  ‘Yes, Mum – Roberta.’

  ‘Well, obviously you want to be in touch with her. Your sister is much more important to have a relationship with than that woman.’

  I do what I always do, without faltering: ‘Of course, Mum, she’s more important to me than Pat.’

  ‘And the father?’ Mum questions.

  ‘Just a first name, Mum, nothing more. But I’m Italian.’

  ‘Yes, dear, we knew that. But I wouldn’t give it much thought.’

  My stomach has tightened in disbelief: they knew. They had always known… The time when my mother was upset with me for bringing a cross back from the Vatican now made sense; as a little girl being talked to in Italian by people on holiday. Was that the reason why? Did she somehow think my Italian side would overshadow my Jewishness?

  My father still stares at the ground. He has still not uttered one word. I leave, apologising for the way I did this.

  I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

  * * *

  A couple of days later, I’m calling my birth mother.

  ‘Pat, I need to know who my father is,’ I say. My voice is shaking as I hold the phone.

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know. Why do you care about him? It’s me that went through it all, he didn’t care about you.’ She is angry, but I can’t stop pushing.

  ‘I need to know, Pat. It’s important to me.’

  ‘Why? Other adopted people don’t care, I know many who are satisfied with finding their mothers. Am I not enough for you?’ She’s furious.

  I’m struggling, in a state of shock. I hadn’t anticipated this – I had thought that after meeting one’s mother, they would support you.

  ‘Zara, you’re triggering her past,’ my adopted friend from the 12-step meeting said. ‘She’s struggling too – you need to be patient.’

  But I’m not feeling patient; I’m back battling with that familiar rage. It burns inside me. I feel out of control and I want to use something. I’m tired of walking on eggshells, I’m tired of protecting everyone. There is a handsome man at the meeting, and he is perfect for me right now.

  * * *

  I receive a letter from Pat, saying she can’t deal with my anger; that I need to accept that she doesn’t know anything more about my father, and that it’s not her place to try and find him. I write hurriedly that I have had enough of her blaming me for her past. We are both spewing venom, the honeymoon period over.

  My anger about my childhood has erupted. I know I blame my birth mother for what happened in my home. I want her to say she’s sorry that she gave me away. I want to hear the words, but the more I push the angrier she gets. She does not want to understand my childhood, it’s too painful for her. She refuses to see me and writes that if I won’t accept the situation the way it is then I cannot see her children either. I’m trying to explain that I don’t want to argue, that I just need some time, but it’s all or nothing: we don’t speak for a couple of years.

  * * *

  I have my first using dream. I’m in a dark room, lying in a bed naked with a man that I don’t recognise. The sheets are stained a dull red, but I know it’s not blood. I’m burning cocaine on tin foil, or is it my brother’s heroin? I inhale a large amount and feel it burning in my chest. The man offers me a joint and I take it hungrily. Dull, grey smoke fills the room. My head is swimming. I fall back onto the bed as he moves on top of me. I wake up…

  For one small second, I’m not sure if it’s real or not. The relief when I realise it was a dream is palpable. I turn on my bedroom light and ring James.

  ‘I had this awful dream, it was so real,’ I tell him before I even say hello. ‘I felt that I was using, that I was back there. I can’t seem to shake it off – I had sex and everything.’

  ‘Sounds marvellous,’ he responds, laughing.

  ‘James, it was insane. Why am I dreaming about this?’

  ‘It’s just a reminder, girl. It’s a drunk dream, that’s all. Just get to more meetings and share about it. I would say that you need to get laid, but I think you’ve had your fair share of that for a few years.’

  ‘James! Me? I’m pure as the driven snow, you know that.’ I’m laughing again, back in the moment. ‘But what do I do about Pat? It feels so awful, I feel so rejected again. I don’t know how to move through all of this.’

  ‘Zara, you have to trust. Give her space, give yourself time. Patience is what’s needed. You’re doing well, girl. That’s all you need to worry about right now.’

  I’m still split. I feel the impossibility of living two lives, having two identities.

  ‘You must feel relieved, you must feel whole again, complete,’ people say to me and I find that I have no words, no answers. It’s just like when I was a small child and people used to tell me how lucky I was to be adopted. I still don’t feel lucky, and I don’t know how to answer them.

  But I’m managing to disassociate myself from Pat not being in touch with me. I go back to a time before I knew her; I find myself saying I could cope back then, and I can cope just fine now. I pretend that I still don’t know who she is, but it’s hard to close that door completely. I’m floating in the wind, grabbing onto a man to fix me, to anchor me, but none of it works.

  My adopted mother and I are arguing even more. Is it sobriety that’s making me so unable to accept who they are? I’ve lost my tolerance for the fact that they choose to bury their heads in the sand. I’m angry that I have to look at myself, I’m angry at who they are, and who they’re not.

  I know I want her to carry it all. I have always wanted her to know what the weight feels like, the way it presses and weighs down on me like a huge grey ship carrying its heavy over-spilling cargo to the bottom of the ocean. But she has always been unable to be my safety net, or carry much of this burden for she has had her own.

  ‘Why me?’ I say, full of self-pity.

  ‘Because it has to be you. Your life depends upon it,’ I am told.

  ‘Fuck that!’ I snap back. But I know they’re right: no matter how much I bitch and moan, I’m feeling stronger.

  I dive into singing more. I have another gig, this time with David Essex, a man that I used to have a poster of on my bedroom wall. I’m back on Top of the Pops. This time I have a clearer head and I enjoy every moment. I write songs, I sing, because it helps me cope with my emotions. I’m so grateful for this gift. I know now that it didn’t come from my birth mother, so perhaps it came from my father?

  My fantasy mother that I had thought about all my life had been turned to reality. The nurturing woman who would love me completely is not real: she has her own pain and I’m a reminder of it. All I can do is focus on myself, I can’t change the pain that happened to us. I’m not religious, but I’m finding comfort in sources outside myself.

  A handsome man in AA has my attention. He’s American. We start to date, and for once I don’t have sex immediately, I get to know him first. Then I realise how much I want to be a mother, but he’s not ready and leaves. I’m catapulted backwards into that sea of separation and panic; I can’t do this anymore.

  * * *

  It seems to take months of soul-searching to find that peaceful place within myself, the one that always seems slightly out of reach.

  ‘Just think of yourself as a big onion,’ Terry says. ‘Layer after layer unravelling. That’s what this is all about, getting to know ourselves.’

  ‘You and James seem a bit obsessed with this onion analogy. Will I end up smelling like one too?’

  ‘You already do, Zara – didn’t you know? Everyone in the meetings always comments.’ He always makes me giggle, no matter how silly our conversations are.

  I have a ticket to go to LA for a week and visit a sober friend who just moved there. I’m excited as I get off the plane.

  America, here I am.

  Everything looks so different; the sky feels vaster. There seems to be more
space to breathe. I feel the weight fall away. I feel a sense of freedom. The time is good for me to absorb all that has taken place.

  I head to a 12-step meeting and meet a group of young people. They are warm and welcoming, amongst them a handsome, clean-looking man. He is sober; he has a sparkle in his eyes and a kindness to his outgoing personality. I’m drawn to him, but curious. We spend a few days hanging out. I feel quite shy around these people – they ask so many questions and as I tell them a little of my story I can feel the build-up of tears, but I push it down, surprised by my vulnerability.

  ‘You met someone,’ Cassie says, the day after I get home. She’s sitting on my floor, drinking tea. ‘Hold on, let me tell you what I get.’

  ‘What you get?’ I answer. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, what have you been doing while I was away?’

  ‘I’ve been doing some psychic training with this incredible man.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what you’re calling it, are you – psychic training?’ I laugh.

  I almost roll my eyes when she stands up, stretches her arms out wide, looking to the sky. But my mouth is wide open.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this,’ Cassie replies.

  ‘Kevin does that all the time – he trained as an actor. It’s an exercise from some famous teacher, Chekhov, he showed me this exercise one evening. Bloody hell, I can’t believe you got that!’

  ‘You’re going to marry him,’ Cassie says, smiling.

  * * *

  Kevin writes and calls me often. He’s quite a serious guy, very committed to his recovery, and I like that about him. He seems so grounded that I open up to him. I feel like I’m on this rollercoaster ride and I can’t get off. The universe is urging me, pushing me to go to LA – I stop fighting it.

  Within six months I know I have to get away from here: I need space from my two families. I need to find myself again and find out if what I have with this man is real. So I write to Pat, who I still have not heard from, to tell her I’m leaving. She calls me and we say nothing about the time spent apart. I feel better knowing we’re back in touch. I tell my adoptive mother and she encourages me to go to LA – we both know it’s the only way our relationship can work, it’s not that we don’t love each other.

  I book a one-way ticket and head for Los Angeles, holding in my hand the most beautiful letter my adoptive mother has ever written to me.

  7

  Los Angeles, 1996

  ‘Hey, pretty lady! What you got in that big old belly of yours, a boy or a girl?’

  His accent is thick, southern, which is unusual in Los Angeles. He’s a handsome stranger, smiling at me in the bookstore.

  ‘I don’t know, I didn’t want to find out, but my sense is it’s a boy.’ I rub my stomach automatically.

  ‘The father is a lucky man. You’re a pretty one and I love your accent, so delicious!’

  I find myself blushing at his frankness, surprised that any man would be looking at me in that way right now. These days I can barely see my feet and I move awkwardly between the bookcases, trying to judge the distance. I spend hours here, trying to pass the time. Mostly I look at pregnancy books, enjoying seeing photos of the stages my baby is progressing through. I cannot work – my immigration papers are still not finalised. I have few friends as I have only lived here less than a year.

  After meeting Kevin I had decided to stay in Los Angeles to really give it a go. I knew I wanted a family, and he did too. This was my chance and I wasn’t going to let fear stop me, I felt. Kevin was different to the other men that I’d been wasting my time on: he had a steady job and he wasn’t a womaniser the way my previous boyfriends had been. I felt safe with him and he seemed to take pride in looking after me and being the stable one. He liked being in control emotionally and so far it worked for me. I still felt so unsure of myself. I knew that I was dependent on him, but it felt lovely to have a man who genuinely cared about my wellbeing; we are starting a family together.

  We had gone back to England to get married. My adoptive mum was finally proud and excited that I was doing something all her friends’ children had done. I wasn’t allowed to invite Pat to the wedding but I didn’t fight it – I was more than ready to move on with my own life. Six weeks later, I was pregnant.

  ‘Goodbye, English lady. I hope I see you again someday.’

  I have made some new friends in my pregnancy exercise class. I love being around all these women – we make fun of each other as our bellies grow and it’s harder to get up off the floor.

  I have never been around pregnant women before, nor had any real conversation about what it means to be pregnant. As far as I can remember, my adoptive mother never had any pregnant friends. I have rarely been around a newborn baby. That does not scare me, though. I have always loved babies; drawn to them like magnets, and them to me. I’m the one they wave at as I walk past them in a restaurant.

  After smiling back at the man, I then walk outside into the hot LA sunshine. I slide into my car and drive home.

  As I nap that afternoon, feeling my baby moving inside me, I dream. I’m in a hospital, no longer pregnant; I walk steadily up to the reception desk.

  ‘I’ve come to pick up my baby. I gave birth to him last night.’

  The nurse looks at me quizzically. As she reaches for the phone, I wake up.

  The dreams continue as I get closer to my due date: I’m always going to collect him, I never give birth in my dreams. The dreams seem to be getting more intense and I worry that Kevin is finding all this too much. I’m being woken up in the night now by what I can only describe as a great big boulder in my stomach that’s trying to escape. My emotions are so tangled and huge that they feel like a separate entity. No longer able to contain the grief anymore, I wake up and start to howl. In many ways it’s a relief. I see myself whizzing down a tunnel, further and further. I stop myself by jumping out of bed.

  ‘Zara, I think you just need to keep going, let the feelings out,’ says Kevin. ‘Then maybe it will stop.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I don’t understand why this keeps happening, I want it to stop,’ I insist.

  ‘Let me hold you,’ Kevin says kindly.

  ‘No, I can’t. Thank you, but no.’

  He looks sad – I know he’s trying to help me.

  ‘I think you sound like a baby when you cry. This is connected to you being given up. You know that, right?’ he says. ‘You need to talk to your therapist about this.’

  I knew he was right, but I was feeling angry again – I don’t like being under a microscope. I do call my therapist, though. Also an adopted person, she explains to me about cellular memory.

  ‘The body remembers before there are words. It’s just your body letting you know it’s time to release all those feelings that you have held on to for so long. It won’t kill you, Zara, just let it happen. I promise you it will pass.’

  ‘I’m worried about my baby feeling all of this,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Talk to your baby, tell him what’s going on,’ she says reassuringly.

  She believes me when I say it’s a him. I don’t know how I know, it’s a feeling inside. I know his personality already; I know my baby and I can’t explain how.

  Did my mother know me?

  So I run myself a hot bath. My ribs are sore from this little person moving and stretching inside me. I feel him move again, seeing the shape of a foot or a hand pressed against the inside of my stomach.

  ‘Hi, little baby. It’s me, your mama. I’m so excited to meet you, I can barely wait, but listen,’ I whisper, ‘Mama had a weird start. My mother had to give me away after she gave birth to me and for some strange reason I’m feeling it all and acting a bit crazy emotionally. Or it could just be my hormones.’ I rub my belly gently. ‘But I want you to know that you will never ever be separated from me. I’m going to probably drive you crazy and when I cry it’s not about you, my darling. You’re already filling me with so much joy, so please be patient.�
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  As I close my eyes, I sink deeper into the bath. I feel pure excitement rise in my stomach at the thought that this little person would be with us very soon.

  * * *

  I push through the ring of fire; I burn inside. I’m amazed at what my body is capable of. The pain spirals throughout me. I’m focused, in the moment, giving everything I have. I’m pushing, but he won’t come out. The doctor is worried, I can tell. I push harder. I’m exhausted, sweating. Finally, with the doctor yelling at me to keep going, I push this little boy into the world. He’s so beautiful, I can’t take my eyes off him.

  ‘Don’t leave him with anyone,’ I tell my husband as they go to bathe him. ‘Do you understand? No one can take him out of the room. You hold him.’

  I haven’t slept, but I feel awake, already getting used to the feel of my body without the baby inside.

  Kevin beams proudly and walks off with the baby as if he’s been holding him for many years. I’m anxiously waiting for him to return as soon as they’ve left. When they do, I hold this tiny little boy in my arms and immediately he nurses – I have never felt so much love for anyone in my life.

  I think about Pat, and how she never got to say goodbye to me when I was born. I can’t let the thought linger, it makes me want to vomit. So I hold my baby tighter. I realise then the only way that a woman can truly survive in that situation is to disassociate herself far away enough to cope. My heart is wide open. Every wall that I have so tirelessly built around me crumpled the moment he took his first breath; I feel a new strength within me. I have created a life – I gave birth the same way millions of women have done before me. I feel a connection to the ghosts of them all. I stay awake all night, staring at him.

  * * *

  Kevin and I are both exhausted. It doesn’t help that the nightmares have now started again. I try to sleep, but my dreams are filled with visions of my baby disappearing, someone trying to steal him. I have not told Kevin as I worry he will want to have me locked up, but it all just reinforces how little he really knows about my inner life. I’ve never allowed anyone to truly see it all.