by Kim Lock
Something inside Jenna kicked. ‘I’m sure he’s fine,’ she said quietly.
‘You’re his mother.’
Jenna heard a serrated edge in Fairlie’s tone and rubbed at her forehead, searching for spots. Finding a clogged pore she dug her fingernail into the skin.
‘Jenna?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you want to see your son?’
‘It’s not that. It’s . . .’
‘What is it?’
Why was she looking at Jenna like that? Brows set firmly, pupils darting across her face, mouth a resolute line.
‘Stop judging me,’ Jenna said. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
Now Fairlie’s brows went up. ‘What am I thinking?’
‘That I’m a terrible mother. That I’m stupid for falling for him. That I should never have married him in the first place. That I shouldn’t leave my child.’ Yodel scampered from the couch.
‘Jenna, woah.’ Fairlie dropped her bag onto the table and lifted her hands. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have suggested it. I thought you’d be missing him.’ She kept talking, her tone infuriatingly placating. On and on she went, but her words were too sweet. They couldn’t be the truth. Jenna had abandoned her child. Only the lowliest of mothers would do that. And after all, why wouldn’t Fairlie judge her for that?
‘Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll go get Henry?’ Fairlie said. ‘And some of your stuff.’
Jenna stared at her, finally understanding. Fairlie had been abandoned by her own mother. Jenna could see that in her friend’s expression now – disdain and disbelief. How could she? What kind of a person selfishly forsakes their own child? This was a woman’s lot in life: paying the price of Eve’s sin. Life as a woman was devoted to what she could provide: legs to wrap about the thirsty hips of men. Legs to spread to reproduce, to increase the population who would do it all over again. Again and again.
Horror struck her then. She had become her own mother. Egotistical. Self-centred. Brutally arrogant.
Jenna shot to her feet. Kicking her coffee into a brown stain across the carpet, she snatched up her handbag and left, Fairlie’s voice trailing pitifully confused behind her.
15
NOW
The jewellery box snaps open.
Inside are four ID bands for newborn babies. Made of thin, pliable white plastic, they have handwritten labels behind a tiny, transparent window. They are secured on the smallest holes, and a long tail punched with a row of minute circles protrudes from each. All bands have been neatly sliced open for removal. In her palm the four circular bands are weightless, like air.
Fairlie frowns and picks up one of them.
Francis, Jenna, the name says. Sex: Female. DOB: 09/05/86. 3.05 am. Alongside Mother is printed: Francis, Evelyn.
The second band has exactly the same details. These are Jenna’s newborn ID bands. Fairlie imagines them curled around Jenna’s fresh new ankles, twenty-six years ago. But – Francis? Then she remembers that newborn babies, before officially registered with Births, Deaths and Marriages by the parents, are named and filed with their mother’s paperwork in hospital. It’s easier for record-keeping. Evelyn never took Jenna’s father’s name – Evelyn Francis and Stephen Walker were never married – so when Jenna’s birth was registered, she had been officially given her father’s surname.
Fairlie picks up the third band.
The name says Francis, Fairlie.
Fairlie blinks.
Sex: Female. DOB: 09/05/86. 3.17 am.
Francis, Fairlie?
She brings the band closer to her face, squints and studies it carefully. Rubs her thumb across the clear window; maybe she is reading it incorrectly. But she picks up the last band, and when she reads it the words are the same: Francis, Fairlie. Born twelve minutes after Francis, Jenna.
All four bands have listed – Mother: Francis, Evelyn.
Is this a joke? She scrutinises the handwriting again, looking for pen smudges, but it is neat, legible. Placing the velvet box on the floor, Fairlie spreads the bands out on her knees and reads the details again. Made out for two babies, born twelve minutes apart, with the same last name. With the same mother.
But one of them is named Fairlie.
A perplexed smile twitches the corners of her lips. Did Jenna make these up?
Gathering up the bands, she tucks them carefully back inside the jewellery box. She reaches inside the She’s Apples box and takes out the manila folder: I love you in the slanted loops of Jenna’s hand.
Inside the folder are three sheets of paper.
A photocopy of a birth certificate, a child now named Walker, Jenna Eve. Just like the ankle ID bands, the certificate lists the birth details as 9 May 1986. District Hospital of Mount Gambier. Under the section titled Mother, there is Evelyn Francis, twenty-six years old with occupation listed as Not recorded.
Fairlie smiles. Evelyn would hate that. Her job was her life.
And there’s Stephen, listed under Father. Thirty-eight years old. Attorney.
Marriage of parents: Not recorded.
Fairlie skims over the other details, taking in the official header with its spread-winged South Australian Government logo, the signature of the Principal Registrar.
She sets the sheet aside. Over the second sheet of paper, her brows knit. A cold flash pangs in her belly. Because she holds another official copy of a second birth certificate. With all the same details under Mother and Father and Date of Birth but this child is registered as Walker, Fairlie May.
Fairlie Walker.
Child of Evelyn Francis and Stephen Walker, twin of Jenna Eve Walker.
‘What the hell?’ Fairlie says.
Hastily, she flicks the certificate aside.
The third sheet of paper is a black-and-white printout from a Wikipedia website page. The text is cramped, minimised to fit onto a single page. The heading reads: Heteropaternal superfecundation: Mixed twins.
Mixed twins – biological twins of separate races.
Mixed twins. Fairlie races over the text. Her breathing is shallow as she turns the sheet over, finds it blank, swears and flips back to the front. Again, she reads over the text. And again. Dropping the paper, she fumbles open the jewellery box, fingers trembling over the soft, white bands.
Heteropaternal superfecundation: Mixed twins.
The article describes a biological phenomenon where two babies – fraternal twins – are conceived in the same womb merely hours apart. Sometimes it happens where the parents of both twins are mixed race – one twin is like the mother, the other twin is like the father. But sometimes it happens with different biological fathers.
Mixed race twins could mean one child of Caucasian descent and one child of Asian descent. Or one of Aboriginal parentage and one of European parentage.
One baby with dark skin, the other with light skin.
On the powder-cool concrete floor, Fairlie clutches at the paper as she re-reads the article describing the approximately twelve-hour window of ovulation, where the usually singular egg, ripe and eager, makes its short but hopeful journey down the fallopian tube in search of that single-celled sperm, the carrier of the other chromosome. Ordinarily, the woman would share the necessary sexual relations with a man and voila, the potential for a new life is sparked. Sometimes a woman might share those necessary relations with separate men, close together – perhaps even too close for her to feel confident about parentage.
But in some rare instances – heteropaternal superfecundation – two separate eggs are released, and – during that brief window – two separate sperm await.
Sperm from two very different men.
Could it be . . .?
‘It can’t be,’ Fairlie says, her voice brittle as blown glass. ‘Can it?’ She drops the paper and stares down at the ID bands.
; ‘Is Evelyn my birth mother?’ She picks up the birth certificate for Fairlie Walker and asks the empty storage unit: ‘Is Jenna my sister?’
Dear Jenna,
In those early months with both of you, the days and nights were a blur of exhaustion. Your shrill and insistent cries filled the nights.
I won’t lie – I often felt like your screaming was a protest, an accusation: that you took Stephen’s side, and reminded me that I was little more than a whore. When I patted your padded bottom and murmured for you to hush, that there was nothing to worry about, I wondered: could you hear the fraudulence in my voice?
And while your wails filled my life from one sunrise to the next, always from the second cot came nothing but silence. It was as though you spoke for the both of you – the selected member of the jury who announces: we find you guilty. When I woke to you during the night, I would think of Stephen: the sheets tucked tightly, stridently, around his shoulders as he closed himself off, locking away that caring part of himself that might prompt him to get up, to offer help to the woman he loved.
One day when you were about four months old, my boss dropped by unexpectedly. (You might not remember Jack – he left Channel 8 when you were only a few years old.) I felt humiliated by the mess in the lounge room; Jack had to move a pile of unfolded towels to sit on the couch. You began to cry. I willed you to be quiet – because often your screams would change the silence from upstairs.
Jack hadn’t been the first visitor since you were born, nor would he be the last. Bitterly I wondered, how long can we keep this up? I scalded my tongue on my coffee whilst Jack reclined on the couch and the insouciant drape of his arm on the cushions fed my irritation. You bawled on my knee as Jack waxed inconsequentially about my leave having only four weeks remaining, how the station had missed me, and what had happened to my housekeeper? If she’d quit so hastily, why hadn’t I found a new one?
Then, I heard a noise from upstairs. It wouldn’t be long before Jack heard it, too. I felt frantic. He needed to leave. So I unbuttoned my shirt, tipped you back in the crook of my arm, and fished my breast from my bra.
Jack leapt to his feet. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
And so this was my life, Jenna. Hiding away in the house like some hole-dwelling mammal; I had sacked the housekeeper and, of course, could not replace her – how could I have anyone else inside?
A strained, uncomfortable distance began to stretch between Pat and I. I feared she saw your birth as a reason for me to disassociate from her, as though her longing for children might have pushed me away. Week by week I watched her recede, and I don’t blame her. All the unreturned phone calls, the hastily terminated visits, the polite conversation and diverted questions.
Sometimes, when I knew Stephen would be working late and I would be alone, I brought her downstairs so she could crawl around the kitchen floor, fat little palms smacking the tiles. You would watch her from your mat, legs and arms stilled; sometimes she went to you and hooked her fingers into your mouth. Seeing you interact, to be able to hold you both together in my lap – those are the moments I felt like a real mother. The fragrance from the tops of both of your heads, the heft of you – one in the crook of each arm: everything made sense. I believed in those moments that we could make it work.
But then Stephen would come home and another day of my maternity leave would tick past on the calendar, and reality would come racing back. I argued with Stephen about going out; I was going stir crazy locked inside. But leaving the house was an impossibility.
Mostly, we argued about my job. Rumours were circulating that a new presenter had been hired to replace me – a ‘stunning’ young girl from Ballarat. I wanted to return, of course, but Stephen wanted me to quit.
‘How can we can go back, after this?’ he would say anxiously, sourly. ‘It won’t work.’
I would implore him: surely we could make this work? We loved each other, wasn’t that all that mattered?
‘No one can ever know,’ Stephen would say and I, despite my desperation, could not find it within myself to disagree.
Haunting me through all this time was him. I couldn’t see him, Jenna, and it was tearing me apart. Occasionally I would find these small reminders of him: the theme song to Days of Our Lives that reminded me of midday, the time we most frequently spent together; Stephen’s takeaway coffee cup in the bin, from the café where we’d first spoken; the crushed pine needles I found in the bottom of my wardrobe, shed from a shoe I’d worn on a stolen lunch break encounter.
He tried calling a few times and the sound of his voice felt like a fist in my stomach. I ached for him.
He didn’t know.
When he called me the first time after you were born, I told him about you. Only you.
And then one day Stephen came home early.
I had been obsessing over the rumours circulating about the new presenter who was to steal my job. People were saying that I’d had a dispute with the station, that Jack and I had argued over my maternity leave, that I’d had a nervous breakdown. Even caged in my house, I’d still heard whispers that I was being unreasonable – that I was being a bad mother by wanting to return to work. They said I should quit – that I’d had my time. That I was old news.
You were both downstairs when Stephen, without warning, arrived home in the middle of the afternoon. When I heard his car, I had to hurry you both back into the nursery; she had taken to screaming if I put her away without you. On this day, you both quietened quickly. Perhaps on some level you knew what was about to happen.
Returning to the kitchen, I found Stephen hunched over the counter, a tumbler of whiskey in his palm. When he lifted his head, I felt my body go cold. There was a gash on his left cheekbone, crusted purple, and his collar was torn. Drips of dried blood littered the front of his shirt.
He was crying. I’d never seen your father cry.
‘Daryl and Mark,’ he said, his voice thick.
I frowned. ‘Your brothers did this?’
Stephen took a swig of whiskey and winced. ‘No,’ he answered, ‘your boyfriend did this.’
I took a step back. The room went silent.
‘Daryl and Mark came into the office this afternoon. They said they had a surprise for me.’
There was a dull rushing sound in my ears. I didn’t want Stephen to go on, but his words continued to scrape out.
He said, ‘They wanted to pay him a visit.’
My knees buckled. ‘Is . . . is he okay?’
He snorted, swallowing the last of his drink. ‘I told them about it – about him.’ He was staring down into his empty glass. ‘It was a mistake to tell them, but I’m completely cut up. They asked what’s been going on, so I told them.’
‘Stephen?’ I could feel my heart in my neck. ‘What did your brothers do?’
‘They told me not to worry about it,’ he went on, ‘but I told them not to worry about it, you know? I should have been more insistent.’ When he looked at me his eyes were glassed-over, bloodshot. ‘I’m not going to say I’m sorry, though,’ he said, ‘because I’m not.’
Frantic, I tried to interrupt him, but he wasn’t listening.
‘You think I can just be okay with this?’ he asked. ‘Just be okay with the fact that you’re having an affair? I can’t, Evelyn. I’m not okay with it, no matter how much you say you love me. It doesn’t work that way.’
‘What did they do?’ I cried.
Stephen’s tone was flat. ‘When they first got in there, they were kinda roughing him up a little. Pushing him around.’ He sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I . . . I just reacted. Tried to stop them. But there were fists going everywhere . . . and I got in the way. He hit me.’ He looked up at me again, then. ‘He hit me. So Mark . . .’ His voice choked off.
‘Mark hit him with a piece of wood. I . . . I don’t even know where
he got it from. When I looked over after I was punched, Mark just suddenly had it in his hands. This piece of two-by-four. Brought it right down on his head and . . . he collapsed.’ He paused, lifted his glass, remembered it was empty and thumped it down.
‘Then they propped his legs up on the coffee table and jumped on his shins.’ Stephen’s body had gone completely still. ‘Both of his legs are broken. He’s in X-ray now, but they possibly fractured his skull, too.’
I slumped to the floor.
I didn’t cry. Not for a few days. But when I finally did, Stephen left the house and didn’t return until the next day.
Mount Gambier went nuts. The whole state was in a frenzy. The seemingly unprovoked assault of a police officer in his own home was a major offence. It was all over the news. Some were crying racism, others feared random gang attacks. One particularly opinionated individual quoted the attack to justify his assertion that all police officers should be white, eliminating any potential racially fuelled violence.
My lover claimed he couldn’t remember his attackers; he filed a statement that said his assailants had hit him from behind and the rest happened when he was unconscious.
He was lying. He was protecting me.
And it was all my fault.
I can only hope that the passage of time has made this easier to hear.
Because it certainly hasn’t made it any easier to remember.
Love, Mum.
16
THEN
Summer had arrived in full. Dry mornings, lingering afternoons. Grapes fattened beneath the sun’s rays. Jenna paid no attention.
Henry clutched Jenna’s hand and precariously navigated the three steps from the deck to the driveway. On the last step, he stumbled. Jenna observed his hands thrust outwards, his fall onto the gravel. His head bounced forwards, fluffy blond hair falling over his face. Almost instantly he began to cry.
