“So you can forgive this?” I snapped.
Sadness fell over her face and I immediately regretted my outburst.
“I’m sorry.” I felt myself well up. “I found out today that my brother’s buried here. I’d only just discovered he existed and I was hoping to trace him.”
She turned and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” she said and I broke down at her touch.
To my embarrassment, minutes later I found myself sobbing and holding on to her hand, finding solace in the comfort of a stranger.
“Sorry,” I said when I finally pulled away.
“Not at all.” She handed me a pack of tissues from her bag. “I’m Louisa. Louisa Schulter.”
I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.
“Carmel Doherty.”
“You’re English?”
“My parents were from Mayo but I was born in Manchester.”
“We have a Manchester in Boston too. I really am so very sorry for your loss.”
I sighed. “My mother got pregnant by my dad when she was fifteen. She never told me or my brother anything about the baby. Shortly before she died she got hold of the list of children who died here and discovered he was on it. He was called Donal.”
“They never told her he’d passed?”
I shook my head. “I think she assumed he’d been adopted.”
Louisa Schulter frowned down at the rain firing on to the muddy lawn and tucked a stand of hair under her hood. “That’s terrible. When I eventually found my birth mother she told me she hoped and prayed every day of her life that I’d gone to a good family and had a happy life.”
“Oh. So you were in the home here? You’re a survivor?” I reddened, mortified at the way I’d spoken to her.
“Not here. I was born in the Bessborough home in Cork in 1952. When I was six months old I was taken to Boston to live with my adoptive parents.”
“So that’s why you’re here now?”
She nodded. The rain was starting to come down heavily and she moved her umbrella over my head.
“I guess I wanted to come here and pay my respects to the ones who didn’t make it. I don’t really think of myself as a survivor though. I’m one of the lucky ones. I can’t remember anything about my time in Bessborough and I ended up in a loving home in Boston.”
“Were you legally adopted, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Yes, I was legally adopted. But when I was searching for my mother I came across a number of people who weren’t. It was tough for them. I remember one woman finding out when she was fifty-seven years old. Her adoptive parents died without telling her – then one day she heard it from an elderly aunt during a family argument. And because it was done illegally her adoptive parents were named on her birth certificate, not her natural parents. So when she started searching for her birth mother she had no information to go on.”
“So what happened?”
“She lost hope in the end and gave up.”
I shook my head. “Imagine waking up one day and discovering that. You’d feel like your life had been one a big lie.”
“I know. I count myself lucky. I met my birth mother.”
She looked down at the ground.
“Do you mind me asking what happened?” I asked tentatively.
She shook her head. “Not at all. My adoption was easy. Dad was serving in the armed forces in the UK at the time and he popped over to Dublin to fill out all the papers. He collected me from Cork the next day.” She laughed. “Like collecting a parcel. I was ten when I found out. Mom and Dad sat me down after Mass one Sunday and told me. I’d always had this feeling I was different, though. Not because I felt unloved or unwanted. My family were Italian. Mom, Dad and Elena my sister were dark-haired and olive-skinned and I mean – just look at me.” She pulled her hood down to reveal a thick head of strawberry-blonde curls. “I always looked like Annie from the musical.” She smiled. “We had a lot in common, Annie and me. I could never put my finger on it, but it felt like I didn’t belong. When Mom and Dad told me, it was a relief.”
“But you had a good childhood?”
“The best. When he left the forces Dad started his own printing business and Mom worked part-time as a third-grade teacher. We had vacations by the ocean, a college fund, a nice home in a good area. My parents treated my sister and me exactly the same too.”
“So you think being adopted was a good thing?”
“In some ways, yes. I mean there was so much poverty here back then. People were emigrating in droves and everyone, the Church, the politicians, they all truly believed children like me would have a better life in America.”
“Everyone except the birth mothers. Most of those women wanted to keep their babies. I’m pretty sure my mum did. They were forced adoptions.”
“Most. But the way I see it, I was lucky. I could have ended up abused in an industrial school or washing priests’ underwear for forty years in a Magdalene Laundry.”
I laughed. I was warming to Louisa Schulter and I was sorry I’d misjudged her.
“What was it like, finding your birth mother?”
An unmistakable flicker of sadness crossed her face.
“Sorry,” I said, touching her arm. “I’m asking too many questions.”
“Not at all. I understand. It’s all new to you.” She looked out past the wall into the distance. “It took me ten long years but I finally found her in 1983. It was so goddamn hard. The adoption agency, the Boston charity who vetted the families, the nuns at Bessborough, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, they all shut the door in my face so many times they put my nose out of joint.”
“Let me guess. They all told you it was to protect the privacy of the birth mother?”
She nodded. “I’ve heard it’s easier now. It
