Home is Where The Heart Is
I woke up in the early hours of the morning on my
eighteenth birthday.
It was storming outside. The rain drumming against my bedroom
window was comforting, and I pushed myself deeper into the pillows and duvet so
that I was nestled enough to feel safe.
I couldn’t doze off again, because to me, this was the
day I would find out if I was really loved. To me, this was the day I would
find out if my foster parents ‘loving kindness’ was because they truly loved
me, or at least cared for me, or if it was all an act for the visits from the
social worker.
Besides my disappearing every Friday night, which they
seemed quite fine with, I was no trouble. I did as I was told, I assisted
wherever I could, I rarely asked for anything unless I desperately needed it,
and I did my best at school so that I got reasonable enough grades.
There was always quietness in that home. Dave and Sheryl
were both successful accountants, and they knew many people, both individually
and together, so they would go out on business dinners with clients fairly
often, but even when they were at home, they hardly spoke to one another, and
they hardly spoke to me. I never felt awkward about the lack of conversation,
because in all honesty, I preferred the calm and quiet; I preferred being in my
own little bubble, and them in theirs.
Sheryl couldn’t have kids. About two months after I moved
in with them – I was fifteen years old – Sheryl took me out shopping. We were
at the Waterfront, strolling from one shop into the next, always walking out
with at least one item (which was terribly boring and frustrating for me
because I despise shopping or being in busy places), and ‘enjoying some quality
girl time’ together.
We eventually sat down at an outdoors restaurant that
served ridiculously pricey foods and beverages, but that overlooked the
foreshore with ships and boats that pulled in and out of the harbour.
We didn’t speak much at first. I thought perhaps Sheryl
felt a bit uncomfortable because she kept herself rather busy on her cell phone,
typing away at god-knows-who, but after the drinks were served, she quickly put
her phone away, looked up at me, flashing her teeth.
“So, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine thanks, and you?” I replied, unsure of what to
say. We hadn’t really had time alone before then, so I was unsure of what she
was expecting of me.
She was comfortable, I could tell. She sat back, her
sunglasses hiding her eyes as she soaked up the sun, her lips curled slightly
into a relaxed sort of contentment.
I felt nothing. I was just sitting there. I always just
exist, rarely becoming involved in whatever is going on around me. I wasn’t a
ball of nerves, and I wasn’t content. If I felt anything, it would have had to
be inquisitive, not knowing what our random outing was all about. I knew that I
couldn’t have done anything to upset her or Dave, so she couldn’t have brought
me out to discuss boundaries, or all the other strange things foster parents
talk about to their foster kids, because like I said, I merely existed.
When the food was finally served, we started eating, and
that’s when she started talking. I never got annoyed but I was slightly
confused as to why she would choose to have a conversation in between mouthfuls
of food.
“You know, I always wanted to have kids,” she started off
after chewing and swallowing a forkful of smoked salmon, “Like, I always wanted
around four or five. I always wanted a houseful of noises and laughter and even
bickering.”
I put some pasta into my mouth, trying to meet her eyes
through the lenses of her sunglasses, not knowing if she wanted me to nod, or
smile, or ask her anything. I always wonder what people are expecting of me,
which is frustrating, because it’s like I have an inability to react naturally,
and a planned reaction based on expectation would only make me some sort of
human robot anyway. I could’ve kicked myself as we gazed at one another, and
for a moment, I contemplated saying something, just to seem a bit more social
or interested perhaps, but it passed when I saw that she was on the verge of
continuing.
“Dave and I were married for about four years when I
finally went to a gynaecologist to find out why I wasn’t conceiving,” she was
looking off somewhere to her left, staring at something, which made me remember
something I had once read explaining that when someone talks and looks left, it
means it’s a recollection, but if they look right, they are creating a story, or
in other words, they are not telling the truth; she was telling the truth.
“I was a bit angry for a long time when I found out that
I had, in fact, damaged myself,” she put her cutlery down, and looked at me, “I
had gone for some dodge abortion when I was younger, which Dave knew about, but
I had no idea that it had damaged my insides.”
I wished that I could take one of her hands in mine,
feeling compassion for her, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how to go about being
affectionate in gestures involving bodily contact.
“And so, we could never have kids,” she continued,
picking up her cutlery, and cutting herself another mouthful of salmon, “but
here you are, and I would love to be a mother to you, and have you be like a
daughter to me?”
She looked across at me expectantly, her eyebrows raised
above the frames of her sunglasses, and her lips spread across her face,
exposing her perfect teeth, waiting for me to say something sweet to confirm
that her life was becoming what she had always hoped it to be. I sat there,
smiling lamely back at her, wondering why she hadn’t chosen a younger child,
and why she’d chosen to foster rather than adopt.
Something that I couldn’t do then, and will always be
unable to do, is feel, or even pretend to feel, something that I am just not
feeling.
I guess I let her down, and my reaction wasn’t what she
had hoped it to be, because the excitement frequency level went immediately
down, and even more so when she saw that I was going to make no effort to
persuade her that it wasn’t that I wasn’t happy about her proposal, but more
that I really just couldn’t feel how she did.
She pressed for a bit, “Would you like that?”
I smiled, ever so slightly, nodding at her.
“No?” she leaned forward, sounding concerned.
“No, it’s not that, it’s just,” I was kind of stuttering,
making things worse – I could tell by the way she slowly started leaning back
away from me – the more I spoke, “well, I have a mother, you know? She might
not be a model mother, but I’m not a model daughter, and maybe I don’t deserve
this, but I can try to get into this? I don’t know…”
She was nodding slowly, and I saw the way she pushed her
half-eaten food away from her as if the thought of continuing with it made her
want to be sick, and the way she sipped at her drink as if she needed it to
survive an ordeal. I could see that I had disappointed what had been a huge
deal to her, and I wished that I could feel bad about it, for her, but all I
could feel was sorry, for me.
The life she was offering me was what I wished I could
have had when I was only a few years old, but it was coming too late; I had
waited too long, and the novelty of it had worn off completely.
It was best that I just lived, without trying to be, or
do, too much, because if I just did the bare minimum, then nobody would be
disappointed. I knew that I had done the right thing, because how could I be a
daughter to someone starting in my mid-teens? How could I be all she dreamed a
daughter would be if I hadn’t been brought up to be even slightly what she
might have pictured? How would it hurt everybody if I tried my best, to be what
she needed me to be, going against myself – hurting myself, doing so – and have
that turn out to be insufficient? How could anyone live with such pressure- not
only me, but her too? Because wouldn’t she also be trying to be a mother to a
child such as myself, not knowing what to do or say or be? For a brief moment,
I wanted to burst into tears at how frustrating the whole idea of it all was.
How could anyone set such high standards for anyone, and even more so, for another?
It was like a silent agreement as we finished off our
meal, that we would just go along with things, taking one day at a time.
Neither of us put in too much effort, only doing what had to be done, and
nothing more, but sometimes less.
Sometimes I could tell that she had a tiny bit of
resentment at having taken me in; that I wasn’t any trouble, but I wasn’t much
joy, either.
That’s another reason why I went back to that house every
Friday night. It never mattered what I was, I wasn’t a druggie, and that alone
made me a better bet than the inhabitants of that house, or so they would have
me know- the druggies.
As the rain continued to pour, and one hour crept to the
next, I contemplated on everything that my life had become, or had always been.
I was already eighteen years old; I could decide if I
wanted to just pack my bags that very second, and leave, but I didn’t. If there
was one thing I always knew, it was that I didn’t want to ever end up living in
that filthy house, and I knew that if I decided to leave then, that was the
only place I would go to. I also chose to stay because I wanted to find out how
my foster parents really felt about me.
I finally heard Sheryl’s alarm go off. It was 5am- an
hour earlier than her usual time to start the day. Immediately I knew that it
was a reminder, that it was my birthday.
I could hear movement in the room down the passage. I
pictured how she leaned across the bed to give Dave a kiss, how she turned on
her bedside lamp, how she shoved her feet into her evening slippers, going to
her en suite bathroom to empty her bladder, then brush her teeth and clean herself
up a bit. I heard her bedroom door open, before her attempt to tiptoe passed my
bedroom without me hearing her. I pictured her taking out the pans, the
ingredients, plates, cutlery and mugs as I heard the sounds of them being moved
around.
I knew that she was preparing me a surprise breakfast;
the gesture was nice, but I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the last meal
for me, the meal we would eat while they told me that I would have to find my
own way. I guess I’m pessimistic; perhaps even paranoid, with serious
abandonment issues. I read others better than I can read myself, or maybe I’m
afraid of what I might find within if I dared try exploring myself more deeply.
The noises in the kitchen – banging of cooking and eating
utensils, frying, pouring – suddenly became quiet, replaced by very faint
sounds of objects being placed on a surface, and then I heard Sheryl’s
footsteps, cautious, as they became more and more prominent with each step she
took closer to my bedroom door.
I shut my eyes quickly, wanting to be found ‘asleep’,
unsure of whether or not it was because I wanted her ‘surprise’ breakfast to be
a surprise (for the sake of her feelings), if she intended for it to be one, or
because I felt like it would have been rude if she saw that I had not been
sleeping, yet failed to get out of bed to come and help her in the kitchen when
I had heard that she was busy. The latter was a typical train of thought for
me, considering my constant feelings of guilt regarding everything, even when
they didn’t in the least bit relate to me.
She didn’t knock on my bedroom door, but opened it very
slowly, tiptoeing towards the desk that stood in the corner of my room. I was
peeking at her, watching her place a tray down and then pull a lighter from the
pocket of her fleecy, turquoise nightgown, to light a candle that I could see
was sticking out from some eatable on the tray.
I thought about how amazing she was, whether or not she
wanted to have me stay or go, just for the effort she had put into making me feel
special on my birthday. It didn’t matter whether or not she remembered out of
her own, or if she had put it as a reminder on her phone- the point was that
she had made sure not to forget, and had put an effort, not money, into making
sure that I felt like I mattered on my birthday.
I wished that my mother could have made that effort, even
if it was to just actually be a
mother for once in her life. Hell, any
effort would have been fine by me, not a breakfast per se, but perhaps just
being sober for one of my visits.
But it didn’t matter. The fact was that my mother loved
me, without a question in my mind.
I enjoyed my time with my foster parents. I enjoyed my
birthday. I thought that it was good, and kind, and noble of them to insist I stay
until I finished my final year of high school and then to finance an apartment
for three months, during which I would have to seek a job. However, they wanted
me gone as soon as they could feel content with having done their duty, with
the added boasting rights of having me finish my schooling first and setting me
up for life thereafter.
They didn’t love me. They didn’t want me.
But whatever! I knew where I was wanted.
