Tree of Strangers Page 12

  And yet, our crimes from high to low are explained by our inability to assimilate. By our rejection of the gifts adoption bestows on us. By our blood. Thus, deemed immune to nurture we are instead condemned by our nature. And because we do not share their genetics, our adopters are blameless in our dysfunction.

  The act of adoption itself is also exempt from criticism. Public discourse rarely describes adoption as detrimental to human development. We ignore and deny the primal wounds it causes. We do not dare challenge the narrative of the seamless exchange of a child from one family to another. Instead, we attribute positive outcomes to the wonders of adoption. Adverse consequences are all about biology.

  What if adoption is the spark that lights the possibility of being anything you can imagine? Good or evil? Because when you come from nowhere, you can become anyone.

  When I was growing up, Mavis assured me I was no different from a child she might have had. She would vocally deny her maternal yearnings at every turn. But I wonder at the impact of her lost fertility. I see now there was a fissure through her life. A dark place where she hid her true self. I saw it once as she held her niece’s new baby close to her chest. Years later I understood her eyes squeezed shut and the single tear that escaped.

  I want to believe that mothering was mothering to Mavis, no matter the origin of her child. But in her wider family there was a cold distance in the adults. And I took this feeling of unspoken difference out into the world.

  I packed the car early on Boxing Day to drive back to Auckland as the weather closed in. Mavis and Max always make a show of goodbyes, waving from doorways and pavements. But today they stayed inside. Thick mist clung to the trees as we drove away.

  As a child, I watched the TV series Longstreet. Bruce Lee telling James Franciscus to be like water. I thought of that as we drove down the cut towards the viaduct that swept over the Mohaka River on the Napier–Taupō road.

  ‘You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water, my friend,’ Bruce Lee said.

  And I realised then why that one scene had stayed with me. I had become like water to live as the child of Mavis and Max. I had tried (and failed) to take the shape of their world.

  I thought about the ways of water. I thought about the many forms I could become. I decided to defy Bruce Lee. I would no longer be formless. I would try to be like the Mohaka River far below. Relentless as snow melt, carving the rocks and forming the landscape on its way to join the sea.

  22

  The cloth mummy

  We spent the rest of the summer holidays around Ponsonby. I had a new job at Television New Zealand. All three girls were now at school. I would walk them to the gates each morning and catch the bus downtown in my business clothes.

  The silence from Napier sat behind everything. I wanted to call and tell Mavis and Max that I was head of contra on Sale of the Century, a new game show.

  Early one morning, a registered letter arrived. For a moment I thought it had come from Sweden — that finally my brother had replied. The girls were upstairs fighting over their clothes, so I made a coffee and went to sit in the sun on the front porch.

  Dear Barbara, we have come to a difficult decision. If you cannot accept our family, you cannot accept us. We, therefore, have no option but to dissociate from you.

  They had signed the letter mum and dad. And they’d added their full signatures.

  The word ‘dissociate’ was a stone in my mouth. For some reason, it brought back a memory of sitting with a glass of milk at the kitchen table in Westport. I was almost five. It was dark outside. Bedtimes were a strict routine, so something must have woken me. I drank fast and felt the rim of the glass against my teeth. At that moment, I wanted to bite down, to see if I could break the glass. There was a boom of sound and my mouth filled with the shattered pieces. The floor moved and the windows cracked. Mavis screamed and grabbed me. She pushed me under the table as the cupboards flew open and crockery fell around us: 7.6 on the Richter scale. For the next few years, I thought I’d caused that earthquake.

  The letter left me reeling. An intense pain radiating from my chest. As though my heart had knotted around itself. I sat on the porch and wondered what my life would be like without parents. I had my children, one good friend nearby and one overseas. I had a job and a secure home as long as I could pay the rent. But where would we turn if I was sick or ran out of money? I’d read about a family of four living in a car under the trees at Point Erin, a local park.

  I’d always known confronting Mavis would activate her fight or flight. I had broken the rules of the adopted daughter game. I had pushed us right to that invisible line and then stepped over it. I had caused the earthquake. I could not expect them still to play at being my parents.

  When psychologists talk about Adopted Child Syndrome, they miss the core of it. We exhibit those dysfunctional behaviours to find the line. The one you can’t cross over. The one where no matter how you behave, someone will hold you tight. It is an impossible task. Even when you are surrounded by unconditional love, abandonment folds itself into your helical heart.

  In the 1950s the American Psychological Association published parenting pamphlets. ‘When you’re tempted to pet your child, remember that mother love is a dangerous instrument.’ They said anything more than minimal affection would produce a dependent child. Rocking an infant was a vicious practice. Over-kissing (more than once a year) created weepiness.

  In response, renegade scientist Harry Harlow asked: What is an infant’s love for its mother? In 1960, the year of my birth, Harlow removed newborn rhesus monkeys from their mothers. He put them in cages with two robotic dolls. One was soft and cuddly, the other was ugly and made from wire. The wire mother had a milk nipple protruding from its chest.

  The baby monkeys would suck from wire mummy for less than an hour a day. For eighteen hours, they would take solace and reassurance from the cuddly cloth mother. Harlow went further. Once he’d established the pattern, he rigged cloth mummy so that spikes would shoot out. Or it would grab the babies and shake them violently. But no matter how extreme the abuse or rejection, the babies came back. And each time they would do everything they could to make cloth mummy love them again. They cooed and stroked and flirted. They even abandoned their friends to fix their relationship with cloth mummy. The rhesus babies were attached to wire mummy for physical survival. But they had bonded with cloth mummy for emotional sustenance. Despite the abuse, that emotional connection mattered more than food.

  Harlow showed that bonding and attachment are not synonymous. Attachment is socialisation into a broader family context. Bonding is the emotional glue that holds us together. As if our very existence depends on bonding.

  At work that day, the contra deals piled up as I sat at my desk above Queen Street. I pondered what it meant to be a mother. Could I disassociate from one of my children? What would they have to do to cause such a split? I knew it was not possible. And I understood then that it was adoption that had made me an orphan.

  Rachel’s birthday rolled around. Birthdays mattered to Mavis. She showed her love with pyjamas and skirts, T-shirts and chocolates. She added ribbons and bows to the wrapping. The children loved to receive their gifts. There was nothing for Rachel on her day. Or for me on mine. Or the other girls on their birthdays.

  More than a year went by. I was struggling to hold the pieces of my life together. After-school childcare had pushed me into debt. Every Monday I flew down to Wellington for the taping of the game show. I hated being so far away from the children. One evening my return flight was cancelled. It took hours to find someone to care for them. We were all stressed and miserable, and I knew I would have to quit my job and go on a benefit. The women in my office seemed understanding. But it was the late 1980s, and motherhood was not yet compatible with a c
areer. I also sensed their relief at having delayed their own childbearing.

  The first few days at home, I lay on my bed in the sunny house on Clarence Street and cried. Our lives had never felt so precarious. I would write to Mavis and Max. I would apologise. I would ask them to take me back. I would be like the baby monkey. I would beg to be their daughter again. I remember the sour taste in my mouth as I wrote the words.

  But then I saw Mavis and Max had given me a gift. They had done the one thing I had always feared. They had shown me where the line was, and there was a new freedom in that.

  I walked the children to school. They were joyous that I would be at the gate to meet them every day. I walked on to the Post Office and, dizzy with sadness, sent the letter. I wondered if I would ever recover. On the way home, I stopped in a café. It would be my last cappuccino for a while. I picked up a magazine and read an article about a man in Paris who had written a novel while running his magazine shop. I’d always wanted to write a novel. I know, I thought, I’ll set up a magazine shop. The border between thinking and doing is very thin with me.

  My neighbour, the graphic designer Phil O’Reilly, agreed to help. Between us we came up with a name. He drew up a logo and I wrote a business plan. Magazzino would be the only magazine shop in New Zealand.

  Two months passed before Mavis called. ‘We’ve had a think,’ she said in her warm voice. ‘How about a weekend away?’

  They booked a motel and we met in Rotorua. It was clear we were not to discuss the dissociation or my abject apology. The kids played on the swings in the grassy courtyard. I brought out the business plan. Costs and income and projections.

  ‘I’d like to borrow five thousand dollars,’ I said. I heard Max grunt. He would not meet my eye.

  Mavis’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘I know it’s a lot to ask. And I know I have no business experience, but there’s a gap in the market.’

  They were not risk takers, but they agreed to think about it. Max opened a beer and went to sit by the swings to watch the girls.

  ‘There’s a Valentines near here,’ Mavis said. ‘All you can eat for one price.’

  ‘That sounds great,’ I said.

  A few weeks later they had agreed to the loan. It came with a lawyer’s letter and a repayment schedule. I signed right away and went looking for a downtown location. I made a long list of every interesting magazine in the library and took down publishers’ details. I made a deal with a local distributor and within a couple months the store opened just off Vulcan Lane.

  The reality was not as exciting as the set-up. I sat behind my counter and plotted marketing strategies. I strung blow-up sex dolls in the window and hung a washing line of magazines over their parts. I balanced fishbowls on plinths with a goldfish in each. It took a while, but soon I was paying back the loan and making a small living. And meeting people as I grew into my life in Auckland.

  Six years on from my mother’s death, I’d almost put aside the search for my family when at last a letter came from Spain. From my mother’s husband. He told me about their lives, about my sisters’ schools and their sporting successes. He said how excited my mother had been to meet me. How disturbed she had become after my birth. ‘They bound her afterwards,’ he said.

  I imagined the surge of her milk, her body primed for motherhood, every nerve ending alive for her baby. I could see the stern matron pulling the bindings tight. And I could feel the ache in her breasts, her hope receding like the tide. ‘She always considered herself to be your mother,’ he said at the end. ‘Always.’

  I decided to go out that night. A neighbour would sit with the girls. A couple of women who’d come into the store had invited me to the bar at Hotel DeBrett, and I walked in and met a man.

  23

  Spooky action at a distance

  I was early, sitting at the bar nursing a chardonnay, when he pulled up a stool.

  ‘Have I seen you somewhere before?’ he asked.

  With the insight of that first moment, I felt his distance. There was detachment in the line of his mouth. He pressed my fingers instead of shaking my hand. I knew right away.

  I would go with him.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m the all-weather man,’ he said.

  It was a good line. It made me laugh. I thought only of sunshine and beaches. As if his presence banished all storms. When he smiled, his eyes seemed to track me, to glean the right emotion so he could imitate it. By the time my friends arrived, we were a couple.

  After, when I thought about that moment, I knew I felt safe with him, the distance cemented between us. In his world, you stood by decisions, outran them or faced them down. He was so sure of everything. I lay down in his pragmatism and certitude. And I got up refreshed, the knot in my heart loosened.

  Later J let it slip that he’d sat in the café across from my store and watched me. He was working nearby on a television show and he’d followed me. It made me feel special, chosen in the way adopted people are always told they are.

  He began to stay with us when he was in Auckland. He could be fun and the girls enjoyed having someone else around. Single mothering was intense and he offered a respite. He paid for basic things, food and clothing, and helped with the rent.

  ‘We need a bigger house,’ he said one morning. He’d joined me in the sun on the front porch.

  ‘This is my refuge,’ I said. The idea of leaving Clarence Street was unthinkable.

  ‘How about we take a trip to Sydney?’

  The girls went to their father for the school holidays and we went to Australia. J held my hand as the plane took off. We wandered through a downtown mall with gilded arches and designer clothing. We stopped in front of a jewellery store and he led me inside.

  ‘I thought we could get married,’ he said as we bent over a glass case of rings. It was more a decree than a proposal. I don’t remember agreeing. But I loved the ring. It was my first piece of jewellery.

  We married in a registry office a few months later, the girls dressed in blue. I gave him a weather house I’d found in an antique shop. A hygrometer. A woman in a bonnet popped out when it was sunny. Her other half, the rainy man, remained inside, his brolly at the ready. It seemed like the perfect gift for a man for all weather.

  J insisted on a bigger house and he wanted me to sell the shop. It was not making enough money. On the last morning at Clarence Street, I sat on the porch and cried. With the store gone, I was back to looking for work. Auckland City Council advertised for an event coordinator for Pasifika. The new, multicultural festival would be the largest of its kind in the world. They hired me. One thousand performers on five stages in a park in the middle of summer. The festival ran like a dream. The stress was more than I’d bargained for.

  When it was over, J took a short-term contract in London. I wanted to go too, and Mavis and Max agreed to come and take care of the girls. I didn’t mention my half-sisters in Spain. They were grown now. Rebecca lived in Madrid and worked for a film company. She’d sent her phone number a couple of years earlier, but I’d never summoned the courage to call her.

  I called Christine. It had been ten years since I’d seen her. ‘Meet me in Barcelona?’ I asked.

  She was at El Prat Airport when I arrived. We stayed in a small hotel on las Ramblas. We drank too much and wandered the busy streets late into the night and laughed as if we were still in our teens.

  ‘What time are we meeting your sister?’ Christine asked a couple of days later, on the train to Madrid.

  I confessed I’d not called her. Christine gazed out at the conical haystacks dotting the sloping fields.

  I knew my lack of action was inexplicable, mad even. We were on our way to Madrid, the city my mother had called home. I had flown across the world with a two-year-old phone number on a slip of paper.

  ‘But why?’ she asked.

  The adoption narrative says would-be parents long for and often pray for their child. They
tell their adopted children they chose them. That this choice makes them special. That being chosen changes everything.

  But, even back in a time of an abundant supply of babies, adopters had to prove they were suitable parents. Then and now they have to forge relationships with the fertility gatekeepers. With doctors and hospital matrons, with priests and ministers, and nurses. They have to open their lives and homes to the scrutiny of social workers. They must prove their parenting fitness.

  It is your adopters who are the chosen ones. You were the next baby on the adoption industry conveyer belt. You could be any baby, from anywhere.

  We use the word chosen to cover the entirely random nature of adoption. To brush over the reality that your legal parents are two people who did not know you when you were born. The only qualification you needed for adoption was your mother’s circumstances.

  I once brought up the idea with Mavis, that adopted people feel rejection at their very core.

  She shook her head. ‘You have no reason to feel that. We chose you. We wanted you.’ It was as if her desire to build a family with another woman’s child was her fundamental human right.

  And yet a profound sense of rejection is implicit within many adopted people. Every baby separated from its mother suffers biological, neurological and psychological damage. Even those of us who appear to have no problem with it at all.

  Dr Catherine Lynch, who runs the Australian Adoptee Rights Action Group, believes the compliant, well-adjusted adoptee has repressed their infant trauma. ‘They have learned to negotiate and secure their relationships within their adoptive families.’ They do this, she says, to avoid repeating their initiating experience of abandonment and rejection.21