Dr Tracy L. Carlis, a clinical psychologist who specialises in adoption, says many of us suffer from Adopted Child Syndrome. We lie and steal and fail to bond. We are defiant with authority and commit acts of violence. Many studies reveal our over-representation in a range of negative statistics. From juvenile criminal systems, prison and psychiatric institutions, to drug and alcohol rehabilitation. We also have a greater chance of an externalising mental health disorder. Carlis says we are predisposed to become serial killers.
Whether or not we are good citizens, adoption unmoors us from our history and forces us to stand alone in the world. Dr David Kirschner says we live with sealed original birth records, and a childhood of secrets, lies and frustrated searches for birth parents. He says untreated, festering adoption issues of loss, rejection, abandonment, identity and dissociated rage are all normal reactions to adoption. No matter how well we have integrated into our new families, we remain ‘other’. We are cuckoos in the nest.
And yet, our crimes from high to low are explained by our inability to assimilate. By our rejection of the gifts adoption bestows on us. By our blood. Thus, deemed immune to nurture we are instead condemned by our nature. And because we do not share their genetics, our adopters are blameless in our dysfunction.
The act of adoption itself is also exempt from criticism. Public discourse rarely describes adoption as detrimental to human development. We ignore and deny the primal wounds it causes. We do not dare challenge the narrative of the seamless exchange of a child from one family to another. Instead, we attribute positive outcomes to the wonders of adoption. Adverse consequences are all about biology.
What if adoption is the spark that lights the possibility of being anything you can imagine? Good or evil? Because when you come from nowhere, you can become anyone.
When I was growing up, Mavis assured me I was no different from a child she might have had. She would vocally deny her maternal yearnings at every turn. But I wonder at the impact of her lost fertility. I see now there was a fissure through her life. A dark place where she hid her true self. I saw it once as she held her niece’s new baby close to her chest. Years later I understood her eyes squeezed shut and the single tear that escaped.
I want to believe that mothering was mothering to Mavis, no matter the origin of her child. But in her wider family there was a cold distance in the adults. And I took this feeling of unspoken difference out into the world.
I packed the car early on Boxing Day to drive back to Auckland as the weather closed in. Mavis and Max always make a show of goodbyes, waving from doorways and pavements. But today they stayed inside. Thick mist clung to the trees as we drove away.
As a child, I watched the TV series Longstreet. Bruce Lee telling James Franciscus to be like water. I thought of that as we drove down the cut towards the viaduct that swept over the Mohaka River on the Napier–Taupō road.
‘You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water, my friend,’ Bruce Lee said.
And I realised then why that one scene had stayed with me. I had become like water to live as the child of Mavis and Max. I had tried (and failed) to take the shape of their world.
I thought about the ways of water. I thought about the many forms I could become. I decided to defy Bruce Lee. I would no longer be formless. I would try to be like the Mohaka River far below. Relentless as snow melt, carving the rocks and forming the landscape on its way to join the sea.
22
The cloth mummy
We spent the rest of the summer holidays around Ponsonby. I had a new job at Television New Zealand. All three girls were now at school. I would walk them to the gates each morning and catch the bus downtown in my business clothes.
The silence from Napier sat behind everything. I wanted to call and tell Mavis and Max that I was head of contra on Sale of the Century, a new game show.
Early one morning, a registered letter arrived. For a moment I thought it had come from Sweden — that finally my brother had replied. The girls were upstairs fighting over their clothes, so I made a coffee and went to sit in the sun on the front porch.
Dear Barbara, we have come to a difficult decision. If you cannot accept our family, you cannot accept us. We, therefore, have no option but to dissociate from you.
They had signed the letter mum and dad. And they’d added their full signatures.
The word ‘dissociate’ was a stone in my mouth. For some reason, it brought back a memory of sitting with a glass of milk at the kitchen table in Westport. I was almost five. It was dark outside. Bedtimes were a strict routine, so something must have woken me. I drank fast and felt the rim of the glass against my teeth. At that moment, I wanted to bite down, to see if I could break the glass. There was a boom of sound and my mouth filled with the shattered pieces. The floor moved and the windows cracked. Mavis screamed and grabbed me. She pushed me under the table as the cupboards flew open and crockery fell around us: 7.6 on the Richter scale. For the
