The Forgotten Daughter

by Renita D'Silva

Genres: Literary Fiction; Sagas; General Fiction

Synopsis

"You were adopted." These three simple words, in a letter accompanying her parents' will, tear Nisha's carefully ordered world apart.



Raised in England by her caring but emotionally reserved parents, Nisha has never been one to take risks. Now, with the scrawled address of an Indian convent, she begins a search for the mother and family she never knew and the awakening of long forgotten childhood memories. The secrets, culture, and people that Nisha discover will change her life forever. And, as her eyes are opened to a side of herself she didn't know existed, Nisha realizes that she must also seek answers to the hardest question of all-why? Weaving together the stories of Nisha, Shilpa, and Devi, The Forgotten Daughter explores powerfully and poignantly the emotional themes of motherhood, loss, and identity-ultimately asking the question, what would you do out of love for your children?

Release date: February 25, 2014

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

My mother:

1. She bit her lower lip when she was thinking.

2. A dimple danced in her left cheek when she smiled. She was annoyed by it and would complain: ‘Why only my left cheek—why not both?’

3. She wore her hair in a bun at the nape of her neck. On the rare occasions she set it free, it tumbled down her back in a velvet cascade of curls.

4. She walked with a slight limp, a legacy of an accident when she was younger, which is why she never drove.

5. She hated cooking.

6. She loved crime novels.

7. She bought suits six at a time from M&S and wore them to the office, alternating between each. At weekends she lived in T-shirts and jeans. She never wore dresses or skirts. For funerals, weddings and other celebrations, she wore her suits.

8. She rarely laughed but when she did, it was a loud guffaw bursting out of her chest in a snort.

My father:

1) He was six foot six, tall for an Indian, and in my eyes a giant who could do no wrong.

2) He was a reserved man. But when I was little, he would carry me on his shoulders and from that vantage point, I imagined I could see the whole world. This is my only recollection of him physically interacting with me.

3) Whilst on his shoulders, I also had a bird’s-eye view of the ever-widening bald spot on the centre of his head, and he would ask me to tabulate the rate at which it was growing. We created a chart, drew a graph of the results. ‘So, how is the world looking today, Nish?’ he would ask every morning. ‘Fine, thank you,’ I would reply politely, snug on the throne of his shoulders, queen of all I surveyed. ‘And how is the bald spot?’ ‘Growing, Daddy.’ ‘Not good, is it, eh?’ he would sigh. ‘Well you know what to do,’ and he would pass me the tape. I still have the tabulated results with me.

4) He had Type 2 Diabetes and was not allowed sweets but would sneak them into the house and eat them when my mum was not looking. He was caught once or twice and tried blaming me, but that didn’t fool my mum any.

5) His favourite sweets were the Haribo eggs. I would suck out all the gummy yolk and put the creamy whites back into the pack to torment him.

6) He was a quiet, soft-spoken man, except for his snores. Booming bursts like the cannonball that fired once when I went to a castle on a field trip with my class. I was the only one who didn’t flinch. My mother slept with earplugs in.

7) He had a mole at the centre of his chin, in lieu of a chin dimple he always said, with a couple of hairs growing out of it. I chopped them off with scissors once when he was sleeping and watched with wonder as every day they grew back a little at a time until they were longer than they had been before.

8) He was always reading, never without a book. He loved nothing better than locking himself in the toilet with a tome on whatever subject he was into right then. He tended to lose track of time in there. My mother would bang on the door and yell for him to come out, wondering why the smell didn’t bother him; was something wrong with his nose?

Note to Self:

1) Thank-you cards—list of attendees in top drawer of desk in study.

2) Cancel Mum and Dad’s credit and debit cards.

3) Research the science of dreams—specifically significance of jasmine scents.

4) Review the paper on statistical analysis of risk in a volatile climate and make notes.

5) Pull yourself together—you are back at work in three days.

Nisha is unravelling. She is the errant thread poking out the edge of a splendid tapestry, tempting, tantalising. One yank creates an angry slash across the multi-hued drapery. A few more and the tapestry folds into itself, disintegrates into a chaotic jumble of yarn.

Two urns in her bedroom—all that’s left of her parents.

Her mother, crisp in her business suit, turning to wave goodbye, her features in silhouette, sharp, defined. Her mother’s rare, warm smile, a gift bestowed, her eyes crinkling upwards at the corners like lines radiating from the sun in a child’s painting. Nisha recalls the way a wayward wisp of hair escaped her mother’s bun and painted a question mark on her forehead when she got home from work, the suit just a bit crumpled, the shirt hanging out. Her smell: perfume intermingling with sweat, sharp and sweet and musty. Uniquely Lekha.

Her father, the way he combed his sparse hair carefully over his balding head, the way he threw his head back and laughed. The way his laughter started somewhere deep in his stomach, reverberating through his body in infectious waves that always started her off.

She shakes her head to chase them away, these images that sting her eyes, which threaten to combust into tears. This is not like her. She is competent, practical. She shies away from sentiment—the silliness, the luxury of mawkishness. And yet in the last week, she has been a mess of emotions. ‘Losing both your parents in one fell swoop would do that to you,’ her boyfriend, Matt has said. ‘Let go, Nisha, Give in. It’s fine, it’s okay,’ he has urged.

But she can’t. Not completely. She regards it as weakness. She doesn’t like the loss of control that giving in to tears would bring, doesn’t know how to deal with it. She doesn’t know herself when she is like this and it scares her. She wants the certainty of knowing herself in this uncertain, unexpectedly bereft world she finds herself in.

And this is what she knows (as is her wont, she makes a list. It gives her something to do, calms her down):

1. I am a statistical consultant. I love my job.

Her parents always told Nisha that their profession defined who they were and she feels the same. The thought of her job brings with it a measure of peace. At the funeral, when things got too much for her, when she was in danger of breaking down, she did mathematical calculations in her head and that saved her. Psychologists would have a field day analysing her, she knows. To each his own, she thinks. Some people have alcohol, tobacco, drugs. She has the soothing solitude of sums.

2. I have organised the funeral and it went according to plan. The crematorium was full to bursting. My parents would have been proud.

The stinging feeling at the back of her eyes again. Three days to go, she thinks. She will go through their effects and then she will go back to work, lose herself in the indulgence, the calming order of numbers, away from this mess of emotion. She is fine during the day; she soldiers on. What she cannot seem to control are the nights. She is awake for a long time and then she falls asleep and dreams, vivid dreams that she cannot quite remember, that stay just out of her grasp: elusive, enticing. She wakes with the smell of jasmine in her nose, overwhelming her, engulfing her with nostalgia and yearning—for something she cannot name. She knows it is the smell of jasmine, sweet and haunting, and yet she cannot remember ever having seen the flower. She has googled ‘jasmine’ and the images look vaguely familiar: pale creamy white like the essence of a dream you cannot quite capture. She googles ‘dreams, significance of jasmine’ and one site tells her it denotes ‘love, beauty, protection, happiness’. What a load of nonsense. Researchers disagree on the function of dreams; some say they serve no purpose at all, others that they help deal with trauma. She will read up on Freud, see why she is riddled by these particular dreams. Up until she lost her parents, she has always slept well, has never had a nightmare, her life proceeding on an even keel just as she had planned it in her many notes and lists. Which reminds her of one last thing she has to do.

The solicitor is short, squat and balding. She towers over him. He fiddles with his tie as if it is strangling him as he sits down behind the polished walnut desk and ushers her into the seat opposite. Sitting down, they are the same height and she wonders whether his chair is higher or if perhaps he is perching on a cushion or two and then mentally chides herself for entertaining an inconsequential thought at such a time.

He clears his throat, his watery blue gaze flitting this way and that like a startled fox picked out by headlights before settling on her. ‘Thanks for calling back and coming to see me,’ he says.

He had called the day of the funeral but she hadn’t had the inclination to return his call then. After the funeral, she had gone to the flat she shared with Matt and sat up in bed reading papers from work, the rows of figures, the precise array of mathematical calculations reassuring in their order.

He pulls at his tie again and she is impatient. For God’s sake, remove the bloody tie if it’s strangling you, she thinks, surprising herself. She is not normally like this. Is she—could she be nervous?

‘Your parents left everything to you—the house and its contents. All their assets and possessions.’

She nods.

‘And they also left you this.’ An envelope, the pale pink of the inside of a rose petal, taken no doubt from the top of the pile that always sat on her mother’s dresser: a sheaf of multicoloured envelopes in muted colours.

Her hand trembles just a bit as she takes the letter from the solicitor and she despises herself for this weakness. ‘Nisha Kamath’, penned in her mother’s slightly sloping handwriting, neat like her mother had been.

‘Thank you, Andrew.’ Her voice is brisk with the effort it takes not to tear open the envelope right there and devour its contents. What is happening to her? Who is this person who has taken over the cool, poised Nisha she knows? ‘Is that all?’

‘Yes.’

She leans across, shakes his hand, wet, slippery as a dream just beyond grasp. ‘Thank you.’

He smiles, a gash punctuating his plump face, looking relieved. ‘If there’s… um… anything you’d like to ask me…’ He pulls at his throat again.

‘Goodbye.’

The house reeks of the wilting flowers that dot the rooms in their multitudes, the orchids that her mother so loved: the purple of stormy seas clashing with the scarlet fury of a summer evening; the pale white and soothing yellow of sedate lilies, their heads bowed like nuns in prayer. The cloying smell she will always associate from here on with death.

The letter is a damning presence in her coat pocket, clamouring for attention. Her parents didn’t know they were going to die—she only fifty five, he fifty nine. Her mother was planning a big do for her dad’s sixtieth. They hadn’t foreseen that they would go together, in a car crash. What was it they had to tell her that was so important that they had penned a letter and left it with their will, just in case?

She pulls it out. She has made herself wait until now, until she got back to her parents’ house, driving with hands that shook as they clutched the steering wheel to punish herself for her uncharacteristic responses at the solicitor’s office. This is what her parents would have done. They would approve.

She remembers the time her mother bought her a toy, a doll she hankered after, with sapphire eyes that miraculously closed when the doll lay down and opened when she sat up. Her parents had promised it to her if she performed well in her exams. She had aced all her subjects and her mother had taken her to the toy shop and bought the doll for her. Nisha had been on tenterhooks all the way to the till, but once she’d paid for it, her mother had not given her the precious doll. Nisha had begged and begged until finally her mother had said, ‘You can hold it, but only open it when we get home, mind.’ Nisha would have promised her mother the moon right at that moment just so she could hold the doll she had coveted for so long in her arms. She sat obediently on the bench in the grocery store, waiting for her mother to finish shopping, cradling the box with the doll she had christened Lucy in her arms. Her mother was taking ages. Nisha waited and waited, trying to ignore Lucy’s urging: ‘Please open me. I am trapped here.’ ‘I have to wait for my mum, Lucy,’ she whispered. ‘Pretty please,’ said Lucy, winking, those gorgeous blue eyes smiling at her. By the time her mother called to her, Lucy was in her arms, the packaging discarded and forlorn on the bench. Her mother had not said a word, just held her hand out. Nisha had cried all the way home, silently—her parents did not believe in loud, messy sobbing—the tears snaking down her cheeks and staining her mauve top the inky purple of night. She had been convinced that the little girl who had been fortunate enough to walk past and be handed the doll by Nisha’s mother was, right at this moment, pulling out Lucy’s silky yellow hair, hitting her, hurting her. Nisha was convinced she could hear Lucy calling out for her.

‘There is a time and place for everything, Nisha,’ her mother had said softly that night as she tucked her into bed. ‘Good things come to people who wait.’

I waited and waited for Lucy, she had thought.

Her mother had read her mind. ‘You could have waited just a bit more, couldn’t you? If you had, Lucy would be right here next to you now,’ she had said, pulling up the duvet tight around Nisha’s chin, bending down to peck her nose. Nisha had waited until the door closed behind her mother before smothering the hiccupping sobs that arrived in unappeased waves with her pillow.

When she did well in her next set of exams, she did not ask for a reward. And yet a doll appeared, identical to Lucy, nestling by her pillow still in its packaging, there when she came up to her room to change after school. She had removed the packaging carefully, kissed it, rocked it, spent hours playing with it. But she did not name it, half afraid it would disappear. It was still there somewhere in the loft, her Lucy replacement.

The envelope is thick, stuffed full of paper. She runs her fingers over the writing, picturing her mother’s hand scripting her name with that precision she afforded everything, pulling back, scrutinising it critically, eyes scrunched, the way Nisha had watched her do a thousand times, blowing on it so the ink would dry. She strokes her name, knowing that this is the closest she will ever get to touching her mother again. Her parents left her a letter—that’s good, isn’t it? Then why is she so reluctant to open it, read what they have to say?

Because they were not the kind of parents given to sentiment, to elaborate avowals of love. She does not remember either of them ever saying ‘I love you’ to her, which is why she finds it so hard to say it to Matt, even though he tells her he loves her often and would like to hear it back at least once, she knows. Does she love him? She doesn’t know. What is love anyway? Is it the warm feeling she gets in her chest when she is with him, the ache to see him, talk to him when he isn’t around? It eats away at her, this not knowing. She knows she loves her parents, irrevocably—that is a fact, unshakeable, solid. But romantic love? Why doesn’t romantic love come with a set of ten theorems, say, that you can prove or disprove and, based on the outcome, decide whether you are in love or not? What she feels for Matt is special, that much she knows. She certainly hasn’t experienced that depth of feeling for the boyfriends that came before. But does that mean she loves him? And when she is this doubtful, how can she tell him she loves him? And how does he know he loves her; how can he tell her that every day, even sometimes minutes after they’ve had a fight? How can she believe him?

She doesn’t remember cuddles as a child. Whatever is in the letter, it is not a declaration of love; that much she knows. ‘Emotions are a waste of time better spent working,’ was one of her parents’ favourite axioms. There aren’t any pictures of her as a baby but there are several framed photos of her winning awards. Her parents paid for private schooling for her all the way through, always making sure she was aware of what they expected in return. ‘We want nothing less than the best from you, Nisha. We know you can do it.’

She slits open the envelope. Several sheets of paper, the pale lilac of an expectant sky hankering for a thunderstorm. Her mother’s handwriting, her father’s signature. A knock at the door. Oh, go away, leave me be. A series of staccato knocks, persistent, increasing in tempo.

She stuffs the sheets back into the envelope, tucks it under the cushion and goes to answer the door. The florist, face camouflaged by a profusion of cream lilies pale as dawn’s delicate brushstrokes lightening the drowsy night sky: delivery from a distant relative in Australia. She thanks the florist, shuts the door and leans against it for a brief minute, the wood cool at the back of her head like wet grass on a hot summer’s day.

She walks purposefully to the sofa and scrabbles behind the cushion. Nothing. No letter. Confusion, unease, grief. And then she realises it is the wrong side, the wrong cushion. She retrieves the letter, telling herself to get a grip and, with a deep breath, opens it, starts to read.

‘Dearest Nisha,’ the words swim before her eyes. She blinks hot tears away. ‘If you are reading this, darling, then that means we did not get around to telling you.’

Her stomach roils, the cereal she had for breakfast threatening swift exit. She presses a hand to her stomach, willing it to settle. Telling me what?

‘You are adopted.’

What? The words sway before her eyes. There must be some mistake. She squints at them again. There they are, solid as the wall up ahead, which is, unfortunately for her, oscillating dangerously, swimming, drowning. She closes her eyes, clutching the cushion to her stomach, which recoils in protest. She runs to the bathroom, makes the sink just in time, is sick, loudly, messily. Get a grip, Nisha.

She rinses her mouth, welcoming the stinging feeling of the mouthwash. Everywhere else is numb. She stares at herself in the mirror above the sink. Her hair stands in messy clumps about her face, most of it having escaped the clip fastening it up at the back. Purple circles frame huge eyes that dot a face bleached of colour, the complexion sickly beige.

Who am I?

She runs her fingers down the ridged skin above her upper lip, a relic of her cleft palate, drawing reassurance from the one thing that hasn’t changed.

She remembers asking her mother once, as she dressed for work, her hair in a bun at the nape of her neck, the syrupy smell of flowery deodorant, ‘Is this hereditary?’ fingering her scar.

Her mother had paused for a brief moment in the act of patting her hair in place. Her gaze, reflected from the mirror, had met Nisha’s. There was something in that look, something Nisha couldn’t quite understand at the time. Then her mother had turned away, busied herself with smoothing her trousers. ‘No. No, it isn’t.’ Her mother who had taught her the importance of looking right at people when talking to them, holding their gaze.

‘You are adopted.’ She whispers the words to the girl in the mirror and she stares back, shocked, her lips moving in a ghastly echo.

The mirror steams. She is aware of her naked feet freezing as the cold seeps in through the tiles. Perhaps this is my parents’ idea of a joke, she thinks, and her ghostly reflection, silhouetted in steam, perks up. Except, they didn’t joke. Ever. Her parents had no sense of humour whatsoever. Perhaps it is a forgery. Her reflection attempts a smile. She watches the edges of uneven lips, one slightly higher than the other thanks to the cleft scar, try and curl upwards. They don’t make it. Instead, they droop back down, defeated.

She hobbles to the sofa, circulation slowly returning to numb feet as they make contact with warm carpet, and picks up the letter.

Her mother’s handwriting. Not a forgery.

How could she not have known? How could she not have had a clue?

She will not believe it. Where is the proof? She is someone who will not accept anything without proof. Her parents would approve, having drilled this axiom into her from childhood. No baby pictures, the voice in her head whispers. There’s your proof. There is a reason for that, she thinks, indignant. Her parents are not sentimental. Were, she corrects herself, ‘were not sentimental.’ And anyway, she remembers her mother saying something about a fire.

Let’s assume for a moment that what is written here is true, the practical side of her blessedly takes charge. All this time, why didn’t my parents tell me? Why keep it quiet? They were scientists; they dealt in facts, numbers, the unshakeable proven truth. Then why didn’t they tell me?

The letter, words she cannot erase: ‘We could not have children. My limp: a legacy of that accident I had. Well, my uterus had to be removed then. We were resigned to the fact. And then, during a trip to India…’

India? Her parents went to India? Her Westernised parents who lived Western lives and had never been to India, at least not with her in tow? She has never been. And now, she’s finding out that they have.

She remembers coming back from school when she was seven, ‘Mum, am I from India?’

Her mother, tight-lipped, ‘We are of Indian origin, yes.’

‘Why don’t we go to India?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘There’s this girl at school who is from India and she goes all the time.’

‘Well, we don’t have any family there, no ties.’ Her mother had then proceeded to lecture her on roots and migration and they had spent the afternoon learning about immigration and the reasons for it.

As a family, they went to the US, to Canada, they toured Europe. But they never went to India on vacation. She has never thought of herself as Indian or even as someone of Indian origin. Yes, she has brown skin, but as far as she is concerned, she is English. British. She never fills those forms that ask her for her Ethnic origin. She feels she will be lying if she ticks the ‘British Indian’ box. She is not anything Indian. She is British and that’s that.

She did learn to read and write Kannada, though, along with Russian and Chinese. Her parents had insisted she learn these languages alongside the French, German and Spanish she was doing at school, painstakingly coaching her in their spare time, being of the opinion that mastering languages opened the mind, boosted brain development. ‘Why Kannada?’ she had asked, curious, having never heard of the language until her parents decided she learn it. And her mother, her face suffusing with colour, her voice brisk, discouraging further questions, had replied, ‘It’s our mother tongue, your father’s and mine.’

Nisha’s eyes drag back to the sheet of paper in front of her. ‘…we found you.’

What do you mean, ‘found me’? Found me where?

Facts. She wanted facts. Here they are in front of her. In black and white. She is adopted. A fact. Like any other. My parents are dead. A car crash. A lorry driver asleep at the wheel.

I am adopted.

‘We might as well tell you—we were involved in a project at the time, Nurture versus Nature. And we were in India doing research. And then we found you…’

I was a project to you? Is that all I was?

A project specimen like the rats in their lab, the rats they called by fancy names: Harry, Henry, Hubert.

She cannot believe it. She is reeling, she is lost.

The letter, the words written in her mother’s hand, swimming before her eyes: ‘Yes, you are adopted. But you are precious, Nisha. You are loved.’

She runs a finger across those words. The closest her parents have ever got to declaring their love. Here it is. Proof. Of their love. Or is it?

‘You are loved.’ You say that, Mum, in the same couple of sentences that also state I was one of your projects. So, how did you love me? Like you loved the rats who provided the proof for your theories? Or in my own right? For who I am?

What a fantastic lab rat I proved to be, eh? What a brilliant argument for nurture trumping over nature!

From the moment she started school, her parents had made it clear what they wanted of her: she was to be high achieving, to do well in everything she tried her hand at. Dancing, drama, debating, music, academics. She never questioned it—she assumed it was their Indian roots. She had done a little research of her own, read somewhere that Indian parents are ‘pushy’. The article said that because they had come out of hardship and poverty via education, they wanted the same for their children, if not more. The other Indian girls in her class moaned about their parents all the time. ‘Whatever we do, it is never enough,’ they huffed. ‘They are always comparing us to the rest of you, and if that is not enough, to cousins in India. They are always wanting more from us than we can give.’ Nisha had assumed that, even though her parents did not acknowledge their Indian roots, there was that ingrained fear of sinking back into bone-wrenching poverty, the worry of where their next meal was coming from (reasons gleaned from the article). In her more fanciful moments, which became few and far between as she grew older, she imagined it was because of this that they shunned their roots, because they did not want to be reminded of what they had been through to get where they were. They had got past it, they had survived. What was the point of ruminating? It made absolute sense for her no-nonsense, forward-looking parents.

There are a few more sentences: ‘You were adopted from the Sacred Heart Convent, Dhonikatte, India.’

She stops. She cannot read further. Not until she has processed this information.

India. I was adopted from there. Why don’t I feel any connection? Why can’t I remember anything at all?

There are pictures of her flashing her broken-mouthed grin (the operations to repair her cleft palate were still ongoing then), looking starched and stiff in her uniform—she remembers the crisp new smell of it—on her very first day of school. She had just turned five. Her birthday is in May, so… Or is it? Did her parents know her birthday at all? Or did they just make it up? Surely they wouldn’t? But if they had collaborated in such a big lie, kept this huge truth from her all this while, what else had they been hiding?

Her head aches. Her heart aches. She doesn’t know how to deal with this. She is rubbish with emotions. Why did she call the solicitor? Why? What wouldn’t she give to go back to when she knew for certain who she was, who her parents were.

She leafs through the notebook she always carries around with her, looks at the last entry, the list she made just that morning to calm herself down. The facts about herself: I am this, my parents are this…

I am not who I always assumed I was.

Matt. She wants to talk to him. He will ground her, he will talk her through the facts, he will sort this out. But he is at work, lecturing his class right at this moment, his phone switched off. Together he and his students will be working on a mathematical puzzle that at the beginning is just a muddle of numbers. Step by step, the numbers will be ordered, they will be multiplied and divided, added and subtracted and suddenly, the puzzle will make . . .