“Nothing. We just ignored them.”
“Well, I wish I could say the same about the young boy who called me a bastard at school. I think I left his face rather deformed.”
Frankie looks up from his plate. “Why would anyone call you a bastard?” I can tell Frankie’s enjoying the freedom of being able to use a bad word.
“Because, my dear children, I didn’t know who my father was either.”
I stop eating and look at Dad. “What do you mean? Grandpa’s your dad.”
“Yes. But he’s my adopted dad.”
Frankie swallows his food. “You mean you’re adopted too, like me?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I don’t understand, Dad. Why did no one tell us? That means Granny and Grandpa Marsh aren’t really our grandparents.”
“Of course they are. That’s like saying we’re not really Frankie’s parents.”
“No. I don’t mean that. I know they’re your parents but who are your real parents?”
“To be honest sweetheart, I’m not sure who my dad is, but maybe your aunt Sissy could answer that.”
“Aunt Sissy. Why would Aunt Sissy know?”
“Because she’s my real mum.”
Frankie and I both look at each other, eyes wide open. Mouths agape.
Aunt Sissy is my favorite. Everyone tells me I take after her because I can sew. I make all my own dolls’ dresses. I even make tops for myself and soft toys. I’m good at those. But Aunt Sissy can make anything. She makes all her own clothes. She’s even made me a long skirt with fancy gold buttons which I love. I’m thinking, if she’s Dad’s real mum, that must be why I can sew so well. But surely Aunt Sissy wouldn’t have given up my dad.
Frankie laughs. “You’re joking us now, Dad.” He rocks back and forth on his chair.
“No. I’m not joking son. Your aunt Sissy is my mum.”
“Wow. Really?” Frankie is still rocking back and forth in his chair—with even more enthusiasm. He’s enjoying this story much more than I am.
I feel confused. I need to ask more questions. “So, that must mean that Uncle John is your dad?”
“No. I told you, I don’t know who my dad is and to be honest, I don’t much care to know. As far as I’m concerned, Gran and Grandpa Marsh adopted me and they are my real parents.”
Frankie shrugs his shoulder as if to say fine and carries on eating. I’m confused as to why he seems to be taking this so well, and I’m feeling distressed. I like my aunt Sissy. This doesn’t add up. “I don’t understand, Dad. If Aunt Sissy is your mum, why did Gran have to adopt you?”
“I’m not sure sweetheart, but I guess Aunt Sissy had her reasons for not wanting me.”
I feel tears welling up. How could she not have wanted my dad? My dad is the most amazing dad in the world. Until a few minutes ago, I thought Aunt Sissy was amazing too but she gave up my dad. Why? What would make her do such a thing to my dad?
Frankie asks, “Did you do something bad, Dad?”
“No, I didn’t. Just like you didn’t do anything bad either. I wasn’t born and your aunt Sissy had already decided she didn’t want me. That’s why your Gran and Grandpa stepped in and adopted me. I was brought up to believe your aunt Sissy was my sister, until I was about fourteen years old.”
“How’d you find out?” Frankie asks.
Dad pours himself another cup of tea. “Well, I was on my way for my first job interview and my well-meaning brother told me the truth…just in case the employer asked why I had the same name as him. That’s when I discovered that Willie wasn’t my brother. He was actually my uncle.”
Frankie nods, fork in hand. “How’d you feel when he told you?”
“It was a bit of a blow but I always knew something wasn’t right—that there was a secret surrounding me. Suddenly things started to add up.”
I start sniffing. I’m not sure if I’m upset for Dad or myself, but I think both. There is a crack in my family that I wasn’t aware of ten minutes ago. I thought I took after my aunt Sissy but right now, I don’t understand her giving up my dad. I don’t think I take after her at all. We might both like to sew but that’s it! That is where the similarity ends. She hurt Dad. My ten-year-old sensitivities are strong. In fact, it all adds up now. All those times she was drunk and started cuddling Dad and calling him son. Dad always seemed annoyed when she did that and like a fly bothering him, he’d shoo her away. Now I know why. I always wondered about that. Why did I never ask?
Dad puts his arms around me. “Aw twinkle toes. Don’t be sad sweetheart. I know it’s a lot to take in, but loads of people have family secrets. I’m glad this isn’t a secret anymore and you both know the truth. Besides, I kind of like the idea that I don’t know who my dad is; I can imagine him as anything I want. That helps me imagine I can be anything I want to be…including a great singer!”
Dad starts singing Scarlet Ribbons to me. Then he stands up and puts on his comical thespian delivery. “You know my young fledglings, mythology abounds with adopted children. One of the most famous adoptions was Moses—the Ten Commandments were received from God by an adopted child. In Roman law, the royal bastard was even given special privileges, and England’s first Norman king was openly known as William the Bastard.”
Frankie laughs. “William—that’s your name!”
“Hey,” I pipe up having just seen Star Wars. “Luke Skywalker was adopted, too, and he didn’t know who his real dad was either.”
“Indeed,” says Dad. “And there are many fine examples of the historical, social status of the adopted child. And scores of world achievers and leaders have been adopted or spent their lives as orphans. So if anyone ever calls you a bastard again, Frankie, and you feel like punching them, you’ll be able to give them a history lesson along with your left hook.”
With that, Dad takes to his feet and starts shadow boxing. He loves prancing around, pretending to still be in the boxing ring of his youth. It makes us laugh, especially as he gets Frankie up on his feet and shows him a few bobs and weaves.
Later that evening Dad calls us both to the living room. He has a manila folder in front of him. Dad says that perhaps we would like a wee chat about Frankie’s adoption and his African parents.
It feels a bit like I’m getting ready to hear a fairy tale. We’re going to find out who Frankie’s real African parents are! I mean, there was never any point in anyone trying to hide the fact that Frankie was adopted.
One time, when we were in the bathtub, Frankie said to Mum, “If I scrub really hard Mum, will I become white like Michaela?”
Quick as a flash, Mum said, “No, because you have special skin. You have African skin.”
Just the way she said African made it sound exciting to me. I knew my parents had never been to Africa because Frankie was born here.
“But why have I got a different skin color?”
“Well, as you know, your first parents came from an exotic country far, far away and it’s very hot there. Because your skin is dark it is protected from the sun. Not like Michaela; we have to cover her in sunscreen lotion when the sun is out, otherwise she burns. And the sun brings out all her freckles, doesn’t it, Michaela?”
“I hate my freckles! I wish I could scrub away my freckles.”
“I’ve told you before that freckles are a sign of beauty. You’ll both wish your life away. God made you who you are and you’re both special and unique. The only thing you both need to scrub away is the dirt—especially behind your ears.”
But now Dad is opening the folder.
Frankie’s mum and dad might be some kind of African princess and prince. I’d seen that kind of stuff on TV with all those fancy costumes and headpieces. This is exciting! Maybe we’ll go to Africa together! But they’d better not want him back. Oh, no…he’d better not want to go back. Oh, no…what if he wants to go meet them? Bette
r not go there…keep that folder shut, Dad! I want to keep my brother! I love my brother! No one is taking him away from me!
“I am sorry to say we really don’t have very much information to go on.”
I suddenly feel relief. I look at Frankie; his right knee is shaking up and down, the way it always does when he’s anxious.
Dad looks at Frankie too, “I’m sorry Mum’s not here tonight, but I think now might be a good time to at least share with you the information we have about your birth parents and the days before you came to live with us.”
Frankie’s looking down; knee going like a jackhammer. Dad says, “You know Mum and I love you very much. We just don’t want you to feel we know any more than you do about your African parents or that we’re holding on to some big secret.”
Frankie lifts his head. He is close to tears. “But you’re my parents. I don’t want to know anything about my other parents. They didn’t want to know me, and I don’t want to know them! I don’t want to know anything about Africa either! I’m Scottish!”
No one would deny it. He loves his Rangers football team. He speaks with a strong Glaswegian accent and is proud to wear the kilt.
Dad calmly closes the folder and pushes it aside. “A day might come when you change your mind. Just know that if you ever want to know anything, anything at all, it will not change the way your Mum and I feel about you. We love you and always will. I promise we’ll do our best to help you trace any information. The information we have right now is limited, that’s the way adoption was when you were born, but it’s in here, in this folder. It’s here for you, if and when you’re ready.”
As it turned out, Frankie wasn’t ready until just months before he died.
Pandora’s Box
Scotland, 2009
There is a lot to be said for not opening Pandora’s Box. But I was always a curious child and, by the age of forty-three, I was still just as curious.
After both my parents died, that same manila folder loomed large with its penciled heading, Frankie’s Adoption. It sat in a pile of paperwork I had inherited. As a child, I had often wondered about the information it contained and, probably like Frankie must have done, imagined who his parents were and the circumstances surrounding his adoption. Were they villains or heroes?
All through childhood it had been Frankie’s decision to open or not open that folder. Now it was mine. I can only say I was as curious and apprehensive to open that folder as if it had been my own parents I was about to find out about.
I hate secrets. They’re like shadows over everything. Maybe it goes back to the family secret of Aunt Sissy. The fact that my brother’s life had this adoption secrecy surrounding it since childhood bothered me.
By the size and weight of the folder I knew I would be lucky to find five pages in there, and for all I knew it could be social work jargon. But this was the folder Dad had offered Frankie all those years ago, so there was a good chance that at least some information about his parents was still in there.
I wanted an ending to the endless stories I had created about his parents. But deep down I knew I wouldn’t get an ending. What I would most likely get is another story. But what if I didn’t like the real story? Wouldn’t it be easier to keep my fairy tales and keep that folder shut? The truth can often hurt.
I sat looking at the thin, musty folder, wondering if his parents’ names could be in there. To even know their names would be fantastic. A name could tell me so much, but what was I thinking, an African name wouldn’t give me any background clues—at all. It wouldn’t be like discovering my grandfather was a MacDonald and all the clan history that went along with that and the all-important difference between McDonald and MacDonald. I remember my mum telling me someone gave my grandfather a check with the name McDonald on it and he wouldn’t cash it. It was an abomination to call him a McDonald.
I suspected Frankie’s parents had most likely lived through turbulent times. What if there were some gruesome details lurking inside this folder? Frankie was a branch from an ancestral tree that got cut off and blown into the wind. Far off in a distant land he was disconnected from his roots, yet the memory of all who had gone before must have somehow been contained in my brother. I had developed a curiosity about the trauma of our ancestors, their spiritual and emotional legacies and how much of that affects us. I knew I was unlikely to garner that kind of information in this small folder but I was frightened that I might discover something sinister about his parents. I also knew they could have done anything, and it wouldn’t have changed my love for Frankie.
I wanted his mother to have wanted him. I wanted the circumstances to be such that she couldn’t keep him. That was the story I had created. Well, it was the story my parents told us. Titbits of sugar-coated information got mentioned from time to time, and I feasted on them. However, I was never sure if it was the truth or if my parents were trying to make it easier for Frankie. What if I discovered otherwise? What if she hadn’t wanted him? I believed the hurt would be as painful as if it had been my painful rejection. The reality was I could be left grieving a false tale. But it felt as though something supernal wanted me to uncover these childhood secrets and find Frankie’s roots. It was almost as if I, too, was disconnected from those roots. And so, forty-three years after Frankie’s adoption, I decided to open the manila folder.
On top of the contents, I discovered a letter from Dad to Frankie. Dad photocopied everything he ever sent to anyone. This was before email and computers and Dad always said it was safer to have a copy of any correspondence with everyone. From the date of the letter, Frankie would have been about twenty-six years old. What I discovered from reading it was that Frankie, who was living in London at that time, was now curious about his birth parents and had wondered if Dad could give him any information. That frightening curiosity and emptiness had finally gotten the better of him.
Frankie had moved back to Glasgow shortly after the letter was written, and died tragically in a fire in his flat. The original documents were all still in the manila envelope. I wept.
He had left this earth with a gaping hole in his heart—a void he had not been able to fill. He had an ever-present ghost of parents he was part of, yet wasn’t. Oh, how I wanted to talk to him and ask if he was at peace now. Had his spirit been able to fly to Uganda and find his mother? Or was he where I imagined him, in her arms on the other side of a thin veil where life still goes on.
What a waste of years, I thought. He could have done what I was doing now! What took him so long to ask to see that folder? Had he been afraid of hurting our parents or had he been afraid of finding out the truth? Would finding his family have helped him understand the amalgam that he was? Would it have taken away his fears, his sense of being alone in the world, even when he wasn’t? He had us. But it wasn’t enough. We all knew that.
I wondered if it was just as well he hadn’t found out any information and gone on some pilgrimage to find his family. Maybe it would have led to disappointment and hurt. He might have looked African, but he was Scottish. But perhaps he had been deliberately or unconsciously in love with Scotland out of loyalty…or was it fear? I remember a distinct uneasiness when people would ask him where he was from and his slightly defensive response, “What do you mean? I’m from here. I’m Scottish.” Could he have really found a sense of belonging in Africa that he couldn’t here? I doubted it, but I understood his longing to know, for I did too.
The next page in the folder read:
Francis Kaggwa Wevugira.
Born 22/9/66 at 9.35am at Thornhill Hospital.
Mother: Janet Wevugira. 28 Yrs of age. Student Teacher, having trained in Uganda and Belfast. Her father was a Minister in Uganda. Four sisters and five brothers, cousin a Doctor in Belfast. Height 5’3’. Dark skin.
P.F. (putative father) Gedion Kaggwa. 30 Yrs of age. Student Doctor from Uganda. Height 5’ 8’. Dark skin. One sister. Said
he went to U.S.A. prior to the placement.
Janet Wevugira. The name rolled around in my head and then my tongue. It was like eating a sweetie. Janet Wevugira. I said it out loud as best I could, trying to get the pronunciation. So, you were my brother’s mother. I began to wonder what this small woman named Janet looked like. I wondered about everything to do with this woman; I had always wondered. In my imagination, she had been about 5’5”, shapely, exotic, and beautiful. She was warm, affectionate and had this huge smile—just like Frankie. I had always thought she had been around twenty years old when she had given birth to him, and she had stayed that age. I never thought of her as aging. But I did think about her at some of his birthdays and wondered if she quietly thought about him from Uganda. But was she even in Uganda? I remember that, sometimes if an African woman got on a bus or was walking down the street near us, I would wonder if perhaps that was Frankie’s mum. Maybe she never went back to Uganda. Perhaps that titbit of information about her having to return to Uganda was to protect him or even her? I never vocalized these thoughts about her—not even to Frankie. But then Frankie always seemed oddly incurious. I think I knew better than to go there and so my bright imagination was left in the dark to gather dust—just like this folder.
I read on through the letter headed from The Church of Scotland Committee on Social Responsibility.
2nd April 1968
Little Francis had been placed directly into the Tanker Ha’ Children’s Home on the 30th September. Francis’ mother and father are from Uganda. They were both students in this country; she, as a student teacher and he, a medical student. The mother wished to keep Francis and hoped to take him home to Uganda after her studies. The father, however, would not marry her and he left for the United States, insisting upon his son’s adoption. The mother returned to Uganda after her final examinations and decided it was impossible for her to take the child there without being married to the father. Pre-marital pregnancy would be totally unacceptable and, in addition, she feared for the effect this would have on the health of her father, a Minister of the Church of Uganda and an elderly man.
Starchild Page 2
