The Ties That Bind

by Lexi Landsman

  Her mother had come home.

  49

  JADE stared in disbelief at her mother and was overcome with fragmented memories of a life spent waiting for her.

  She is six. She is fourteen. She is seventeen. She is twenty. She stops counting. She is ageless. She is motherless. She is still waiting.

  And then a memory washed over Jade, pushing her under its salty current, drowning her.

  Jade is five years old, following her mother through the bush that smells like licorice as she looks at the light dancing through the trees. Asha is humming to herself. They take off their shoes and walk over the rocks of a shallow stream. The water is cold; it feels like ice cubes curling over her toes. ‘Listen to the music of the water flowing,’ Asha tells Jade. Jade listens but all she can hear is the wind, and the birds and the splashes of her feet as she steps, careful not to fall. When they reach the other side, Asha points out the trees, telling Jade to remember their names. She walks briskly and Jade struggles to keep up.

  Jade spots a four-leaf clover. She bends down to pick it as a gift for her mother, only to realise it was two clovers, an illusion. When she looks up, she sees only her mother’s feet on pine needles as she disappears out of view. Jade runs after her but everywhere she turns looks the same. She calls out for her mother but her voice is carried away by the wind. She chooses one path and sprints down it until her legs hurt, until she is out of breath, until she can’t run anymore. She realises with a terrifying shudder that she is lost. The trees merge into a cavernous carpet of leaves above, shadowing everything below in darkness. Jade cries again for her mother who has left her there, alone.

  The sky becomes black ink. It is cold and Jade doesn’t have her shoes or a jumper. She hears the sounds of animals. She thinks of the fox that ate their chickens. Of the stories the kids told of dingoes. Fear consumes her. Hours pass. Day sinks into night. No one can hear her cry. No one will find her. She will die out here.

  Her body trembles with fear and her stomach grumbles with hunger. She loses feeling in her fingers and toes. Wind whips through the bush and makes haunting sounds as it catches in the hollow trees. She pinches herself to wake up, hoping that it is just a nightmare, but each time she opens her eyes she is still there, still lost in the dark wilderness.

  She lies down against a tree. Her eyes become heavy. Her body feels numb except for the sense of abandonment that stings her throat. She closes her eyes and gives in to sleep.

  Then there is a bright light in her eyes, but Jade can’t move. She can’t even form words. It is her YiaYia. Warm arms, skin that smells of dough and cinnamon. She is lifted up and carried to the house. Jade’s head feels foggy as if she is underwater. She can hear her father’s raised voice. ‘How could you lose your own daughter? She could have died.’

  YiaYia’s hands on her head checking for a fever, telling her to sip warm tea with mint leaves, drawing blankets over her to stop the shivering. Waking in the middle of the night to her mother whispering at her bedside: ‘I didn’t mean to leave you.’

  Jade pretends to sleep.

  But you did.

  Her mother’s voice brought Jade back to the present. It beckoned her. Hypnotic. Beautiful. Poison.

  ‘Jade!’

  And without realising it, Jade was running to the house.

  She felt like a child again.

  I didn’t mean to leave you.

  But you did.

  Courtney composed herself. It was late afternoon now and the light was fading. It had that beautiful autumnal quality, like looking up into the sun through a lens. She told herself that she had imagined any similarity with the young woman. Maybe she had seen what she had wanted to because if she hadn’t, she would already be driving back to the airport.

  As Courtney got out of the car she turned to see the girl running down the hill, reaching the house and slowing as she approached an older woman with long, wispy blonde hair.

  The two women walked towards each other and hugged. The men who were working on the house whispered to each other, before moving away and going to their trucks. The young man Courtney had seen earlier stayed a moment longer than the others. And then, seemingly with reluctance, he left too.

  Courtney sat back in her car, thinking it was not the right time to intrude on what appeared to be a private moment. She thought it best to leave – there was no way that girl was her sister. It seemed ridiculous to her now that she had even entertained the idea.

  Yet, if Doctor Harvey was right, these people could know something about her family. And given that her flight back home was the next day, there was no other time for her to approach them.

  So, Courtney willed herself out of the car once more to do what she had come there for.

  50

  HELENA had always warned Jade about the angel’s trumpet flower: it was beautiful but deadly. It could lure you with its sweet fragrance and the charm of its large hanging petals – but just one bite could kill. Every part was poisonous, from its seeds to its leaves.

  It was exactly how Jade thought of her mother. A beauty so compelling you couldn’t look away. But one that was deceptive, only skin deep. If Jade reached out to her, she would be left with more scars. She was thinking this as she took in her mother’s changed appearance. Asha was tanned and spotted with new freckles. Her hair was even blonder, with strands of sharp grey. She was slimmer but stronger. Dressed for summer, not the cool autumnal weather.

  Her mother stepped towards her, graceful as always, her feet light on the earth as if she were floating above it. Jade felt Asha’s arms close around her, tight and warm.

  This was how Jade always saw Asha’s homecoming: unexpected and unpredictable. Asha’s scent was different; she smelled like fireweed and beach salt. She seemed more subdued too. Something about her felt changed.

  When they pulled apart, Jade realised all the builders had left. Even Adam. It was just the two of them, by the house. Alone. Together.

  Her mother was staring intently at her, as if seeing Jade for the first time. Finally, Asha spoke. ‘I forgot how beautiful your eyes are. Like the gemstone I named you after.’ She smiled through watery eyes. ‘I’m home now.’ Her mother reached forward to hug Jade once more, but this time Jade stepped back. She wouldn’t let herself fall under her mother’s spell. Not this time. She saw Asha’s wounded face.

  ‘Look around, Mother. Home is gone,’ Jade snapped, surprised by the iciness in her voice. She sounded like someone else. ‘This house is not your home. Home is not a place you can go back to.’

  Jade began to cry too. Not like her mother, not with regret and guilt. She cried with anger and longing and betrayal. Her body shook. She felt like she had ingested the toxins of the angel’s trumpet, and they were seeping into her tissue, knitting to her bones, blinding her, breaking her body down. She wondered if this is what hate felt like.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know about the fires,’ Asha said gently. ‘I loved our house, my garden, the groves. I can’t believe it’s all gone.’

  Jade stared at her, daring her mother to look away. ‘Now you know what it feels like when something you love disappears.’

  When Courtney neared the woman and the girl, she could see that they were both crying. The girl gripped the ends of her plaited hair. She had soft features, butterscotch-brown hair and eyes that were impossibly green. Courtney could only see the older woman’s profile: her slim, toned frame, her long, wispy blonde hair, her poise.

  The sound of Courtney’s footsteps approaching made them both turn to face her. When their eyes met, the older woman froze. She studied Courtney, her eyes scanning over her. The girl looked at the woman’s face and then back at Courtney. They both stared as if she were an apparition.

  ‘Rose,’ the woman whispered, her voice cutting through the silence.

  Courtney looked closely at her face and saw how strangely familiar it was to her. Her hair was the same sandy blonde as Matthew’s. Her cheekbones were sharp like Courtney’s. Their ey
es were the same sea blue.

  ‘Are you …’ Courtney couldn’t finish the sentence. An overwhelming sense of disbelief made her body tense up and her throat tighten.

  The woman stepped towards her and pressed the back of her hand to Courtney’s cheek. She looked into Courtney’s eyes as if she could see through them.

  ‘I finally found you.’ The woman smiled and then she was hugging Courtney, her slim but strong arms holding her tight. Courtney couldn’t be sure whose heartbeat she could feel pounding like a drum.

  ‘Do you remember?’ the woman asked, her lips slightly upturned as tears fell down the sides of her mouth. ‘Banksianae, Laevigatae, Bracteatae, Synstylae, Gallicanae. The rose species.’ She paused and tilted her head. ‘Rosa, my Rose.’

  Courtney’s mind felt foggy. Clear thoughts wouldn’t form.

  ‘That was me, Mother,’ the girl snapped, her face full of anguish.

  The woman cast her eyes down as if gathering courage and then, with a deep breath, lifted them to meet her daughter’s cold, accusing stare. ‘It wasn’t always.’

  51

  THE MEMORY of the rose species was Jade’s. Her mother had to be having one of her vague moments, disappearing into the universe of her mind that was always so far from Jade’s reach. But Asha’s attention remained fixed on the woman, and Jade struggled to comprehend what her mother was implying. Jade looked closely at the woman now and took in her dark-blue eyes, her high cheekbones and sharp gaze. The similarity with her mother was uncanny. Suddenly Jade realised this was the secret that had been kept from her all her life. It stood before her in the flesh. A living, breathing secret.

  They’d had another child before her.

  Jade became dizzy and limp, as if her body couldn’t support itself under the weight of the staggering revelation. She felt like she was breathing in smoke all over again. It burned her chest, her eyes, the back of her throat. It burrowed into her skin.

  She had a sister. So Jade had always come second. Second born. Second to be loved. Even now as the truth was finally being revealed, a moment that should have been hers, Jade was second, a cursory glance, an afterthought.

  Her mother was fixed on the stranger once more. ‘I’ve finally found you.’ She smiled at the woman. ‘After all these years I’ve spent searching the world over for you, you’ve come back to me. I should have known he would send you home one day.’

  Jade leaned against a tree to steady herself. ‘Is that where you’ve been going each time you’ve abandoned me for months on end?’

  Her mother sat down on the wooden bench. ‘I didn’t abandon you,’ Asha said simply. ‘I always came back.’

  Jade laughed mockingly. ‘Is that all it was to you? Do you think as a child, I thought, “My mother’s left me again for months on end but she’ll come back, so it’s okay?” Do you really believe that each time you disappeared I didn’t feel abandoned? That it didn’t hurt me to know that you cared so little for me that you could leave without so much of a word of goodbye? And then you’d return, float back into my life as if nothing had happened. As if the months you were gone hadn’t left a scar on me.’ Jade stood there, letting Asha see her tears as each one struck her cheeks, the salt wounds inflicted each time her mother abandoned her.

  Asha stepped forward and wiped a tear from her cheek and Jade pushed her hand away forcibly. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she snapped. ‘So, is that where you’ve gone each time? Is it?’

  Asha closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

  ‘Answer the question, Mother,’ Jade pressed sharply.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly, opening her eyes. ‘I’ve been searching for Rose. Her father never told me where he was taking her. I hadn’t wanted him to.’

  The woman, Rose, finally spoke, her cheeks scarlet. ‘You mean that for the past thirty-six years you’ve been looking for me?’

  ‘I didn’t look for you at first. Not until after Jade was born. I thought having her would make me forget you, but it didn’t. It only made it worse.’

  Jade felt a pang in her chest as her mother referred to her as some sort of bandaid she could just rip off. ‘When I started searching for you, I went to places I thought your father might have taken you and travelled to almost every state in America. Then I went to Thailand, Cambodia and India, thinking that maybe he had decided to continue his veterinary aid work. And after a while, it became more of a routine. I would travel without really looking. I’d come home and get restless and pick a spot somewhere on the globe. Find work there in exchange for food and board. I felt like I needed to be displaced. That I was destined to wander. It became my version of home.’

  Jade ran her hand down the bark of the willow tree, feeling it splinter her fingers. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘But you had a child to care for. You had me. Wasn’t that enough?’

  Asha said nothing. She stared out at the olive groves as if she hadn’t heard Jade speak. Her silence said everything.

  It felt like a minute passed before Rose spoke. ‘But I was adopted. Why wouldn’t you just ring the agency and find out where I was?’

  Again Asha said nothing.

  Jade noticed for the first time that Rose had stepped closer to her and they both stood away from their mother as if she were poison. Asha moved towards Rose and ran her finger over the pearl necklace Rose was wearing. ‘This was mine,’ she said softly to her. ‘He gave it to me. I had wanted you to have it.’

  Rose jumped back and covered the pearl with her palm, as if Asha had tarnished it. ‘This isn’t yours. It was my mother’s,’ she said quickly, making it clear that the mere suggestion was hurtful.

  Asha studied her face and then softened her tone, a shift Jade immediately recognised. Her mother was the master of manipulation. ‘Is that what he told you? He was always trying to protect you. Always putting you first.’

  A single vein throbbed on Rose’s forehead. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘You changed everything,’ Asha continued. ‘I had always been on my own, since I was a child. I had never wanted children and suddenly I was pregnant. You were the curse of a weed and the blessing of a spring blossom. You were everything at once. I was so afraid. I didn’t know if I could be a good mother. I didn’t have a mother to learn from. I’d never been loved in the way I wanted to love you.’

  Jade watched, barely comprehending, as her mother’s confession continued.

  ‘And when you were born, I was scared. I didn’t think I could look after you. I was afraid I would hurt you or drop you. You were so small, so delicate. Like a flower. A rose.’

  Her eyes glazed over and Jade knew in an instant that she had forgotten Jade was there. ‘And then he kept on begging me to go with him. I said I would. He had the fake passports ready. Everything was planned. He took you first. I was meant to follow in a couple of weeks.’ She turned to Jade now. ‘But I couldn’t leave your father. It would have killed him.’

  Jade was confused, frustrated with her mother’s tangents. ‘Who was begging?’

  ‘Her father,’ she replied, looking at Rose. ‘And I couldn’t leave this land. This was everything to me. My life was here. This was all I’ve ever known. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to … to breathe without it. I just wanted everything to go back to the way it was before you came along.’

  Her mother looked out over the blackened hills, the burned trunks like the scars of memory. ‘I didn’t know everything would change. I didn’t know I’d hurt more here without you.’

  ‘Children are a gift. How can you be so self-absorbed, so selfish?’ Rose said sharply.

  Jade listened to the fierceness in the stranger’s voice. She wished she’d had the strength to stand up to her mother like that.

  Asha was stilled. She leaned against the bench as if suddenly unsteady on her feet. Strands of her hair caught in the wind like smoke plumes. ‘I’m sorry for it all, Rose.’

  ‘My name is Courtney. That name you gave me was never mine,’ she snapped. />
  Asha continued. ‘I was a different person back then. I’ve changed. I wish I could take it all back. I can only ask for your forgiveness,’ she begged. ‘I want you in my life. I want to be the mother I never was.’

  Jade felt like her mother had slapped her face. Did she not realise that she had never been a mother to Jade either? Did she not care about her at all?

  Asha stepped towards Rose and took her hands in her own, pleading. ‘I’ve lost you once. I can’t lose you again.’

  Rose’s voice was unfaltering and her eyes darkened. ‘You can’t lose something you never had.’ She pulled her hands away sharply. ‘Where is my father?’

  ‘With you,’ Asha said. ‘He’s always been with you.’

  Courtney was using all her energy not to fall apart in front of this woman who claimed to be her mother. ‘Who is my father? I don’t understand,’ she said.

  ‘I met him at a vineyard. He was there grape-picking at the end of his backpacking trip around Australia. We fell in love. But I was already married,’ she said, turning to Jade, ‘to your father.’

  Courtney felt like she was holding her breath. She gazed at Jade, knowing now that she too was discovering a secret past for the first time. Her face was so full of anguish it pained Courtney to look at her.

  Asha continued. ‘For a while I didn’t tell him I was married, and when I did, he was shocked, angry. But eventually that subsided and we were so in love that he stayed with me. I guess he thought I would eventually leave Paul. I didn’t want to hurt either of them. I’d had so much hurt in my life. But I couldn’t help it; I was in love with him. And when I found out that I was pregnant, I knew it wasn’t Paul’s. I didn’t know what to do. So I lied and told Paul we were pregnant. He was overjoyed. But of course, he didn’t know that you weren’t his child.’