Mine

by Susi Fox

‘The paediatrician said he’ll be fine,’ I say.

  ‘Such a pity he was born so early,’ Patricia says. ‘Still, at least he’s getting your breastmilk. That’ll help him get stronger, won’t it?’

  Mark rubs his nose.

  ‘Sasha can’t breastfeed, Mum.’ Finally, his attempt at a defence.

  ‘I see.’ His mother is the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, dressed as Grandma, licking her lips.

  ‘Ray and I were struck by Toby’s likeness to Grandpa Bob in those pictures you sent through, Mark. You met Bob, didn’t you, Sasha?’

  I shake my head. But then I do recall meeting him years ago, early in our relationship. He was living in a nursing home with end-stage Alzheimer’s. He had low-set, sticking-out ears, widely spaced eyes and a long nose. I don’t remember his earlobes.

  ‘Look, Ray.’ Patricia points to Toby. ‘They’re Mark’s pudgy toes. And the chin is yours.’ Her lips draw upwards, exposing her capped teeth, as white as a shark’s. ‘He’s the spitting image of Mark as a baby.’ She leans to me. ‘I thought Mark was a gorgeous baby. Everyone else thought he looked like a squashed cabbage. They didn’t tell me that until later, of course.’ She gives a clattering laugh. ‘When will you be released from that other place, Sasha?’

  ‘She’s not in jail, Mum,’ Mark mutters.

  ‘Not long now,’ I say. ‘Mark has promised he’ll get me out.’

  Mark won’t meet my eyes.

  Patricia’s gaze falls on Toby.

  ‘Sasha, dear, don’t worry if you’re not let out before Toby comes home. We’ll be able to help Mark out. We can even move in for a while, if needed.’

  Mark picks up my hand and squeezes it.

  ‘Thanks, Mum. Sasha and I will discuss it. We’ll let you know. I guess we’re going to need all the help we can get.’

  Mark, his mother picking over me like a vulture, his father ineffectual there beside them. The babies, judging me with their unfocused eyes, knowing how badly I’ve failed my child. Tears well in the corners of my eyes. I don’t want any of them to see me cry. I loosen myself from Mark’s grasp and head for the nursery door. I’ll retreat to the unit, have an early night. Patricia speaks from behind me.

  ‘The poor thing. She’s tired, I imagine. Goodbye, Sasha,’ she calls. And then, seconds later to Mark, ‘How are you coping with her?’

  I don’t wait to hear his reply.

  Day 3, Monday Morning

  With the sun already above the windowsill, I climb gingerly up on the chair underneath my window, heave open the curtains and rub a thick layer of dust from the glass. Spread out below me is a tiny garden backed by a wooden fence. A magnolia tree stands like a queen in the centre, mauve and white flowers bursting from buds. Jonquils break through the claggy ground in clusters. Sparrows pick at the bottle-green lawn, spotted with dandelions. I wish I could be out there, lying flat on my back in the sunshine. I sigh and unwind the window to the end of its cord. It doesn’t open far, but it’s enough to catch the scent of freshly mown grass.

  With my palm against the glass, cold soaking into my skin, I call Bec again. I simply can’t accept that she’s told Mark she doesn’t believe me. She’s the only person I can think of who might be able to help me now.

  ‘Sash!’

  Last night, in my dreams, I saw deceased babies lying on a concrete floor. I’m not in the mood for pleasantries.

  ‘Bec, is there any chance my baby might be dead? I still can’t find her. Do you think they could be trying to hide what happened from me?’ I clutch at the windowsill.

  Bec’s voice is slow and soothing. ‘You’re catastrophising. There’s no way a hospital could arrange a cover-up of those proportions. Everyone will realise there’s been a mistake soon and this will all be over.’

  ‘But I’ve looked, Bec. I checked the humidicribs again since I spoke to you. My baby’s not there, I swear.’

  ‘So, check again. She’ll be there. She’s got to be somewhere, Sash.’

  I shake my head. There’s no way for her to understand what it’s like here, where I’m supposed to be pretending to love a baby that isn’t mine.

  ‘The worst thing is they’re still refusing the DNA tests. Mark is agreeing with them. And they’ve coerced me into being admitted to the mother–baby unit.’

  Bec gasps.

  ‘You haven’t spoken with Mark?’ I say.

  She pauses. ‘Let’s just say we didn’t see eye to eye. I thought he’d eventually come around and take your side. I’m going to ring whoever’s in charge and tell them how fine you are.’

  ‘It’s okay, Bec. You don’t have to do that. Besides, I doubt my psychiatrist would listen to you either.’

  ‘Oh, Sash. This is awful. I just wish there was more I could do.’

  ‘Just having you believe me is enough.’

  I can feel her smile, her warmth and trust, down the line.

  ‘Give me some time, Sash. I’ll come up with a plan. And in the meantime, it’s in your best interests to get out of the mother–baby unit as soon as possible. So, while you wait, you might as well cooperate with them, do what they want you to do. Spend time with the baby they’re saying is yours. Make them think you’re getting better. You’re not going to be any use to anyone shut up in there. Just keep it simple and say that you now know that baby is your son.’

  ‘You think that will be enough?’

  ‘I hope so. As for your real baby – I know you’ll find her. I promise.’

  She sounds much more hopeful than I feel. Could her jealousy about my fertility affect her judgement? I decide not to tell her my DNA-testing plan. Best to keep the DNA tests to myself for now.

  Out the window, the wind thrusts dandelion seed heads high in the air. Spring has always been my favourite season. The promise of new life. Of hope.

  My mother loved spring too. She loved blossoming flowers, their perfumes and unfurling heads. It was springtime when she left us.

  After she’d gone, my father refused to talk about her. He would never mention her name in those days, even when my boyfriends showed up at the front door with bunches of roses on dates. ‘Nice … flowers,’ he would say carefully. Rose, Rose, Rose, I’ve wanted to scream at him over the years, just to get a reaction. Anything to have him acknowledge she ever existed.

  I wish my mother were here to support me now. It feels like she may be able to help me, know how to make this right. Maybe Bec can help me track her down. She knew my mother, too. And, unlike my father, Bec won’t lie to me.

  ‘Bec, I need to ask you some things about the past.’

  One of my earliest memories is of lying on my belly on the back lawn, inspecting a line of ants trailing towards my mother. She was seated on a garden chair under the hills hoist, smoking cigarettes even as raindrops started to fall from the sky. I was soaked through by the time my father scooped me into his arms and carried me inside.

  The knowledge I need the most is that just because my mother left me doesn’t mean I’m going to be an inadequate mother myself.

  ‘Of course. Anything,’ Bec says, her voice delayed down the line from London.

  ‘Did your mum ever say anything to you about why my mother left?’

  I clamber down from the chair and press the heels of one hand against my forehead, unsure if I really want to know the truth. I sense a slight pause. Bec’s reply sounds almost rehearsed. I wonder what she has to hide.

  ‘No, Sash. I don’t know anything.’

  I hadn’t expected any different, but it’s a surprise how disappointed I feel.

  ‘Nothing about where she went when she left? She never got in touch, did she? Or give any clues about where she might be now?’ Surely there must be some clue in my mother’s disappearance that could help me track her down.

  ‘Sorry, Sash. Mum never said anything.’ There’s a catch in her voice, as if she’s tearing up.

  It’s the seven-year anniversary of Bec’s mother’s death in a few weeks. At Lucia’s wake, I attempted to comf
ort Bec as stiff-lipped relatives in matronly black dresses clustered at the edges of the hall, biting into curried-egg sandwiches and exchanging whispered commentary on Bec’s lack of progeny. Mario, her father, didn’t attend. He had left Lucia when Bec was a baby and hasn’t been heard of since. Bec will never forgive him for that, she still says.

  As for me: I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive my mother for leaving me as a child, for not being here – particularly now, when I need her most. Heat flares in my chest.

  ‘You’re so lucky with your mum. She was perfect.’

  ‘Mum wasn’t perfect,’ Bec says. ‘Remember her squeezes?’

  Lucia would hug us until it was hard to draw breath. She smelt of olive oil on her apron, garlic on her breath, a hint of rose soap on her fingers.

  ‘My darlings,’ she would say. ‘Bellissime.’ It was just a word back then. It took many years before I found out she was calling us both beautiful.

  Lucia taught me to cook fresh tagliatelle from floured pasta dough bundling together on her warm fingers. She would place her hand on mine to stir the bolognese. When she slurped her concoctions from the edge of the spoon, she would purse her lips and wink at me.

  Bec’s mother was perfect enough. If only the same could be said for mine.

  ‘Can I ask you something, too?’ Bec’s hesitant tone pulls me back to the phone. She’s always been so strong, independent. She hasn’t needed me for anything and almost never asks for help.

  ‘Go ahead.’ I owe her the chance to ask me questions, even though it’s hard to imagine what she could possibly need from me right now.

  ‘Did you have a feeling when your baby was an embryo? Like a sense it was going to stick?’

  No.

  She continues without waiting for my reply. ‘Because we’ve tried everything. I don’t know what else I can possibly do.’

  There’s a pause as I try to craft an appropriate response.

  ‘I think maybe I was trying too hard,’ I say in the end. ‘Perhaps it helped when I stopped being so rigid about my diet and exercise and everything.’

  Bec sighs.

  ‘I have a confession. I might have started on some hippy-dippy stuff. Did you ever try that sort of thing?’

  I never told Bec, but I pursued every natural therapy around. After repeated failures to get pregnant, I had let go of my absolute faith in Western medicine. I would have tried anything, even standing on my head for a year if I’d thought it would have helped. I drank foul green spirulina that I vomited all over the kitchen floor; I allowed sticks to be burnt on my pressure points by a kind Chinese medicine doctor. I even visited a psychic in a caravan laced with crystals. Without prompting, the psychic deduced I’d suffered two miscarriages and that before the year was out I would give birth to a girl with golden curls and dimples. She gave me what no one else could: hope. Mark had frowned when I told him the story. ‘You’re becoming one of those people you make fun of. What’s next? Witchcraft?’ I didn’t tell him about the business card a friend had given me only the week before for a witch with a four-month waiting list who lived in the mountains.

  ‘What are you trying, Bec?’

  ‘Just acupuncture. You know, the stuff with a modicum of evidence.’

  As for pathology, it’s the opposite of hocus-pocus, a science that can be digested, memorised and regurgitated in a stable, unchanging form. I suppose that’s why I switched out of paediatrics after Damien. There’s an evidence base for pathology: reams of books, articles, research, enough to fill a whole university. But working in pathology has taught me a thing or two over the years that can’t be found in any textbooks. Such as we’re all essentially the same underneath our thin coat of skin.

  ‘Bec, just keep believing, okay? You never know when you might get there. You only need one embryo, after all.’

  Deep down, I suppose I knew that some of the natural fertility methods I used were ridiculous, without any grounding in science, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to pursue them because of the personal narratives I’d read online, or heard from my patients, the stories that tables and graphs couldn’t encapsulate, the cases that didn’t obey the laws of science. Those stories of hope were seared deep in my brain, reminding me of the limits of the scientific method I held so dear. I knew there were some things that couldn’t be easily explained away.

  ‘Thanks, Sash. You’re proof that it can work out even when it seems hopeless – you’ve had your baby. And when you find her, you’ll be so happy. Don’t give up.’

  Bec has always known the right thing to say. When my mother left, no adult would discuss it. My dad didn’t want to talk about it. It was Bec who explained it to me. She drew a picture of the world showing my mother on the opposite side of the globe.

  ‘Why did she want to go and live there?’ I asked.

  ‘She thought it was the best place to be.’

  ‘But she’ll be all alone.’

  ‘That’s the point,’ Bec said. ‘And then when she’s done, she’ll want to come back and see you.’

  I didn’t really understand it back then. I guess I still don’t. Part of me is the same child I was all those years ago, trying to make sense of it, wishing my mother would swing through the door, overjoyed to see me, happy to finally be home.

  Time to begin my plan.

  My suture line smarting beneath the bandage, I drag the chair into the ensuite and jam it under the door handle. I take a seat on the closed toilet lid. At 9 am sharp, I dial a DNA-testing company, DNA Easy, one I’ve just sourced off the internet. The online reviews, mostly from fathers confirming the paternity of their children, say it’s reputable. I’d thought about asking my old medical friend, Angus, for advice. He was a bumbling pathology registrar with thick glasses when I met him. Now he’s a multi-millionaire, heading up a private DNA-testing company in every state. I’d clicked on his contact number, still in my phone after all these years, but I just couldn’t press the call button. His questions would have been too hard to answer. Pathology is a small world, DNA testing smaller still. An anonymous DNA company will be far more discreet.

  My hands shiver as the dial tone rings. I feel like I’m calling to ask for a date. A young-sounding man answers. Jim.

  ‘I’m enquiring about DNA testing.’ I try to keep my voice steady. Proof is power, I remind myself, even though, rightly, knowledge should be enough.

  ‘So, paternity testing?’

  ‘No, not paternity. Maternity testing, I suppose.’

  ‘Let me see if we can do that.’ I imagine most of their calls relate to paternity testing, made by disgruntled men. I hear his muffled voice in the background before he’s back on the line.

  ‘Is it after IVF? Or is it for you and your mother?’

  I slide my palm over the shiny porcelain on the underside of the toilet, searching for something to grasp onto.

  ‘IVF.’ That must be one of the reasons people request maternity testing: to check the IVF clinic hasn’t pulled the wrong embryo out of the freezer by mistake.

  He details the process. They’ll send a cheek swab for the baby, the baby’s father and me. I’ll have to mail it back to them. If the baby’s father doesn’t agree, I don’t need his consent. A forensic sample will be fine.

  ‘A forensic sample?’ My voice rises. I wish our pathology training had taught us the realities of DNA testing, rather than just the molecular biology. I can’t believe I don’t know the practical details.

  A sudden knocking at the ensuite door makes the chair under the handle rattle.

  ‘Sasha, it’s time for your pills. Can you open the door?’ One of the nurses. Damn.

  ‘Out soon,’ I call. Then, ‘Sorry,’ I whisper into the phone.

  My heart loosens as Jim lists the pros and cons of various forensic samples. I scribble notes on the back of Dr Niles’ weekly schedule.

  ‘A used handkerchief yields ninety-five per cent success. Nails are good. Hair is usually the last thing we try because it needs to h
ave the roots attached. Blood is quite good – say if your partner’s cut himself shaving. Or else toothbrushes are very successful, but they need to have been used daily for two to three weeks.’

  There’s no point ordering a cheek swab for Mark. He’ll never submit to a sample voluntarily. His hanky? He often carries it around for his hayfever. I have no idea how I’ll get it from him. All I know is I’ll have to act quickly. Toby will be discharged and sent home from the nursery before too long. Then it’ll be that much harder to convince everyone he’s not ours.

  In the polished stainless steel above the sink, I am once again a sea of silvery waves, but with some imagination I can just make out a semblance of my uncertain face.

  ‘How long do the results take?’

  ‘Max of two or three business days. So, if you get the samples back in the next few days, you should definitely have the results by next week. Maybe Monday.’ Jim confirms he can mail two test kits and a sterile plastic bag for a forensic sample to Dr Moloney at the hospital’s address.

  ‘Can you send them Express Post? And could I have a spare kit – just in case?’

  Jim is happy with that. He takes my details, repeating each one after me. Fortunately I’ve memorised my credit card number. Billing address: my house, far away from here. He doesn’t sound fazed when he confirms he’s sending the test to the mother–baby unit – giving my name as a doctor seems to have done the trick.

  There’s another rap on the door. The chair slides away and clatters against the tiles.

  ‘I said, I’ll be out in a tick.’

  ‘No need to shout, Sasha.’

  It’s Dr Niles outside the door. I hang up on Jim without saying goodbye.

  When I emerge from the ensuite, Dr Niles is seated on my bed, tapping her foot against the thin carpet like a schoolteacher. Pain sears through my belly as I take a seat beside her. I try not to wince, reminding myself that this level of pain is standard for such an operation. I certainly don’t want any more painkillers dulling my mind. Dr Niles’ stare bores into me for the longest time, as if she can see my thoughts.

  ‘Are you feeling any better on the medication?’ she asks finally. She’s missed a spot with her foundation; a cluster of freckles is visible on the bridge of her nose.