Or perhaps it was the matron, Brigadier Gladys Goffin, who took me away. She ran the Salvation Army Bethany home in Napier for twenty years. An article in the local paper described her as preaching hellfire and damnation that left you shaking in your shoes. ‘She could prompt soul-searching in even the most self-righteous’, and believed unmarried girls ‘drifted’ into pregnancy because of aimless lifestyles.2
It hurts me to imagine my mother condemned and shamed for getting herself pregnant, my father as blameless and distant as a deity. It’s easy to see how the pious doctor and the self-righteous Brigadier could destroy my mother’s hopes and dreams.
Twenty-five years later, in a heartbreaking letter, my mother’s husband described my adoption as forced. New Zealand was unforgiving and unrelenting, he said. Pamela was so confused by what had been done to her that she had a nervous breakdown following her loss. ‘The scars never left her,’ he said.
Under the Adoption Act 1955 a mother cannot consent to the adoption of her child until it is ten days old. Ten short days to decide to give away or keep your baby. For those days every mother in New Zealand, married or single, has sole legal custody of her child.
Every unmarried mother I’ve spoken to says her baby disappeared. Straight from her womb or shortly after delivery. From across the country, the mothers’ stories echo each other. Their babies taken and concealed in other parts of the hospital as they were readied for adoption. On day ten, the matron escorted the mother to an office where a lawyer read a general waiver out loud. With matron standing behind, they signed away their babies. Not one had legal representation.
I now think of the ten-day provision as the basis of the idea that mothers willingly gave away their babies. It was a whitewash. A way to hide the mechanics of the adoption industry in New Zealand.
Back in my living room in 1983 with Jim and Bruce, I scrambled up from the floor. My breathing was shallow with my mother’s pain. I am sure I saw the pallid curtains part. I am convinced she reached for me as a woman with black hair turned in alarm, the baby she held tight already hers.
Bruce put a blanket around my shoulders. Jim took up his guitar and began to sing.
Something beautiful, something good,
All my confusion He understood
All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife.
But He made something beautiful of my life.
The music woke Bonnie and Rachel, and they came and sat with me and we sang together. Ruth would be awake soon for her first feed of the night.
I thought about each of their births. I could pick their cries in a crowded room. I could sense every shift in mood, even a change in their body temperatures. Scientists say oxytocin, the motherhood hormone, causes this heightened awareness. Researcher Robert Froemke says oxytocin enables a mother to understand her baby’s needs ‘[b]ecause your baby depends on you absolutely to take care of it’.3
I know I am biologically wired to my children and that the wiring persists long past childhood. Now my daughters are adults with lives and families of their own. But I am still wired to them in ways that defy logic. Did my mother hear my cries from the distant nursery? I can hardly bear to imagine the pain she must have felt.
But then, so early in my journey, I remember how Bruce hugged Jim and thanked him. Jim smiled at me distantly and raised his hand. ‘I hope that helps,’ he said. I gathered myself and put the girls back to bed and washed the dishes.
Bruce returned to his chair. His face was already going soft. His halo of hair needed cutting. I was no longer mad at him. This was as far as we could go. We had found the outer rim of our emotional compatibility. I thought about the way time had rushed backwards beneath the men’s prayers. In some unspoken way I’d always felt that without a past I could have no future. ‘It’s like I’ve been paralysed my whole life,’ I said to Bruce.
He’d already opened his book. He looked up and nodded. ‘Do you feel better?’ he asked.
Strangely, I did. I felt lighter, with my mind resolved. Perhaps the spirit of harlotry had forsaken me after all. Without a past I only had now. I would leave in the morning. My mother was coming.
6
The changeling
Before the curtains bloomed with morning light, I had milked the goat and made sandwiches. While the girls ate their porridge, I filled the car with clothes, toys and food. Bruce watched in silence from the safety of his chair. Beneath the girls’ chatter, stillness settled over us. While the words remained unsaid, he was innocent. He’d done his best, even called in the preacher. He could live in the comfort of his wife’s betrayal. The act of leaving would be all mine.
I strapped the girls into their car seats. Bruce leaned in to kiss them. He cried and I touched his face. ‘Wait,’ he said, and went into the house.
He came out and held up my favourite, almost-antique platter. I had served countless meals on it, gravy consuming the faded blue patterns. It had been missing from its usual place. Now I understood. He had hidden it so he could present it now, a peace offering, a show of support, to win me back.
He opened his hands and the platter slipped from his fingers and shattered on the concrete. He looked right through me. I was beyond his redemption but not his retribution.
‘You can’t have them, or any of this.’ He swept his hand over the car, kissed my cheek and told me to drive with care.
‘Wave to Daddy,’ I said. But Bruce had already gone inside and
