I Knew You'd Have Brown Eyes (8 page)

10

Arriving in Sydney airport after the long flight from London was like being released from prison. I sat in the terminal waiting for my connecting flight to Brisbane and listened to people talking around me, just to hear their accents. I watched people greet each other with warm hugs and big smiles, and I reflected on the contrast with some of the people I had nursed in England.

One old lady had asked me where I was from and when I answered Australia she said, ‘You’re all mongrels, aren’t you?’ Another checked her fridge before I left to make sure I hadn’t stolen any food. And one man insisted I count the swans on his lake each morning. I didn’t belong in England. I belonged in a country where there was no aristocratic class.

Frank picked me up from the airport and we stopped in to see Teresa on our way to their home. She was in a psychiatric hospital, suffering from postnatal depression.

‘I don’t understand why I feel this way,’ she said. ‘I have three beautiful children. I should be happy.’

‘The main thing is you need to get better,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about your children. I’m here. I’ll look after them.’

‘They’re going to give me shock treatment tomorrow.’

‘What!’

‘The doctor says it will make her better,’ Frank said.

‘Over my dead body! It won’t make her better! You have to stop them!’ Looking at Teresa I said, ‘You’re not crazy!’

‘You haven’t been here, Mary, how would you know?’ Frank said.

‘I know my sister. Do you know what the side effects of shock treatment are?’

‘No, what?’ asked Teresa.

‘Electroconvulsive therapy – ECT – is for people who have severe psychotic disorders. I mean people who are really crazy. You’re not crazy, you’re just feeling down. It causes memory loss and you don’t want that! Didn’t you ever see the movie
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
?’‘

‘The doctors know what they’re doing,’ Frank said.

‘No they don’t, and they don’t know my sister. I do!’

Teresa didn’t end up having the treatment. She refused to sign the consent form.

I moved into their spare room and became a mother overnight.

‘Stupid,’ Frank yelled. We were sitting at the dining table, about to eat the spaghetti bolognaise I’d cooked, and Matthew had knocked his glass off the table. The glass shattered on the tiles and the water was spreading across the floor.

‘He’s just a child,’ I said. ‘Don’t move, Matthew. I’ll clean it up.’ I was at the kitchen sink picking up a cloth.

‘He should know better.’

Matthew began to cry.

‘It’s not your fault,’ I said. ‘And easy to clean up. Look, there, it’s safe now.’

He ran from the table to his room. I washed up the dishes. Frank, as usual, sat in front of the TV. After I cleaned up, I helped Adam clean his teeth and went to see Matthew. He was crying on his bed.

‘Hey what’s the matter?’ I said.

‘I’m stupid,’ he said.

‘No, you’re not!’ I picked him up and held him like a baby.

‘Look, you’re my baby.’

When Teresa refused ECT the doctors put her on medication for depression. She remained in hospital for another month. Each work day when Frank’s car pulled out of the driveway, I relaxed.

‘Come on, in the car, we’ve got to get you to school on time, Matthew!’ I yelled one morning. I was in the garage putting Naomi into her car seat.

‘Where’s Adam?’

‘He’s watching TV,’ Matthew answered as he pulled his seatbelt on.

‘Okay, hang on. I’ll be back in a sec.’

I found him in the TV room and as I swooped him up, he started yelling because he wanted to stay watching
Play School
, I realised he needed a nappy change. When we got back to the car Naomi was crying.

‘She needs a bottle,’ Matthew said.

‘Okay, I have one in my bag, but first we have to get you to school.’

By the time we reached the school all the car spaces close to Matthew’s classroom had been taken. I helped the boys out of the car and, holding Naomi in one arm, took hold of Adam’s hand with the other. With the hot November sun beating down on our backs we walked the five hundred metres to the classroom. Beads of sweat trickled down my face. We were late, again; the teacher had begun the class. Matthew waved goodbye. Some mothers were standing near the classroom door. I smiled. They were wearing colourful summer dresses, their faces freshly painted with makeup.

‘Morning!’ I said. They looked my way and in that moment I realised I hadn’t brushed my teeth or my hair that morning and was wearing the stained dress I’d quickly thrown on much earlier that morning. It was easy to see how hard it must have been for Teresa to stay on top of things.

‘Come on Adam, let’s go to the supermarket,’ I said, on another occasion.

Adam was almost two. If I didn’t hold his hand firmly he would run away, hide, and call ‘You can’t catch me!’ At home we played hide and seek but Adam didn’t know the difference between home and outside home. Home was safe but outside there were cars and places to hide that were interesting for him. I learned to keep him close to me at all times.

At the supermarket I put Naomi in the baby seat at the front of the shopping trolley. Adam stood in the trolley. There wasn’t much space for the groceries. At twenty-four I wasn’t used to preparing daily meals for a family. I’d moved from home to the nurses’ quarters, where meals were provided, and then to England to a house where dinner was part of our board. Spaghetti bolognaise was my standby. The night before I’d planned an elaborate meal from one of Teresa’s recipe books, but in my rush to get out of the house I had forgotten the shopping list.

‘Steak and chips it is!’

Adam could only say a few words but he knew what he wanted.

‘Peanut butter!’

Naomi had fallen asleep in the car after I’d given her a bottle of milk in the supermarket car park. When we got home I put her to bed and Adam tugged at my arm. ‘Play,’ he said, pulling me to the backyard. He was incorrigible. I loved his enthusiasm.

‘Let me put the shopping away. Can you help me?’

He pouted.

‘When it’s done it will be our special playtime, okay?’

That day, and many more like it, I didn’t bother with the dishes or the housework. We built cubbyhouses, played with trucks in the sandpit and chased each other around the backyard. If I did decide to wash the dishes I’d feel a pat on my leg, a huge burst of giggles and ‘Catch me!’ And as I turned around I’d see his tufts of blond hair disappear around a corner.

‘Steak and chips again. You get marks for inventiveness!’ Frank was sitting at the table.

‘Yeah I had intended making chicken pie, but I left my shopping list at home again.’

‘Well that was bloody stupid, wasn’t it!’ Frank often made this type of comment, his facial expression a mixture of sarcasm and condescension. I never knew how to respond.

Yeah, I’m really stupid, really dumb, just like my sister. In the safety of my room I would think up ways of answering his remarks. But I never found any; not that I would ever have the temerity to use them.

‘The baby needs a feed,’ Frank was standing at my door with Naomi in his arms. I glanced at my watch, 4.30 am.

‘She’s your child,’ I muttered to myself. ‘I’m not your slave.’

He shrugged his shoulders and went back to bed.

My freedom was the car. On weekends I visited friends and, unlike my student days in England, I could afford to buy a bottle of wine, no longer a poor mongrel.

When Teresa was discharged from hospital I was ecstatic. But my hopes faded when she spent whole days in bed. Some nights I would hear her in her sewing room, the machine pounding away, making another ‘Teresa creation’, as we in our family came to call the elaborate clothes she made and wore. Naomi’s wardrobe was full of tiny doll-like pink dresses with frills and lace. Teresa had spent nights sewing them before she went to hospital.

‘Aren’t you going to help with the kids?’ I was standing at the foot of her bed.

‘I’m sick Mary. Can’t you see that?’

‘Yes but lying in bed all day won’t help you get better.’

‘I’m trying Mary. I really appreciate what you are doing for me. You know that, don’t you?’

One evening soon after this encounter I was bathing the boys and trying to cook dinner at the same time and I stormed into her room.

‘These are your children,’ I said. ‘When are you going to be their mother?’

I returned to the bathroom.

‘Mummy, mummy,’ Adam shouted. I turned around to see her standing by the door in her dressing gown.

‘I’ll help them with their bath, since I’m their mother,’ she said.

‘Good!’ I stormed out and went to prepare dinner.

Teresa and I would laugh about that moment in the coming months. She was angry with me, she told me later, but it did the trick. After that day she got out of bed more often. One of her better qualities was that she could admit to being wrong. Soon we were operating as a team.

‘What medication are you taking?’ We were standing in the kitchen. We’d got into the habit of making coffee after all the housework was done. I was pouring it into our mugs when I noticed she was taking a pill.

‘Oh, just something the doctor ordered for me,’ she said.

‘Let me see.’ I snatched the bottle from her hand.

‘These are weight-reducing pills. What the fuck are you doing!’ I screamed at her.

She grabbed them from me.

‘It’s none of your business!’

‘Oh yes, it is my business. These are prescription drugs! What doctor prescribed them for you? You’re not fat!’

During our nursing training we nurses all had a MIMS – a book that provided information on prescribed drugs, indications for their use and side effects. We student nurses called it our bible. Soon after this episode I was at my parents’ home and picked up my old copy and looked up Tenuate Dospan. I confronted Teresa.

‘That’s why you don’t sleep at night, isn’t it?’ She was silent.

‘These pills stop your appetite and make your heart race. They keep you awake! What are you doing?’

‘Please don’t tell Frank.’

‘You have to stop taking them! What doctor prescribed these for you?’

‘A doctor in Loganlea. I told him I was a model and had to keep my weight down.’

‘And he prescribed them, when you’re already so thin?’

‘But I feel so good when I take them.’

‘Did you know that one of the other side effects of these drugs is depression?’

She looked shocked.

‘I promise I’ll stop. Just please, please don’t tell anyone.’

Teresa rallied after that. She became her old self again and we enjoyed time with her children. I took a part-time job back at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, my old familiar training hospital. I was assigned to a female orthopaedic ward. The work was hard, with a lot of heavy lifting, but it felt good to be working and earning my living. Teresa washed and ironed my uniforms, cut my hair and entertained my friends.

One hot humid evening we were sitting on the patio; Frank was at a work function. We put the children to bed, cleaned up the dishes and poured ourselves a glass of wine.

‘Do you ever think of your son?’ Teresa asked.

‘Of course I do Teresa, nearly every day!’

‘Do you ever regret the adoption?’

‘Sometimes, yes, but other times I feel sure I did the right thing by relinquishing him.’

‘You’re such a strong person, Mary. I could never have done that.’

Teresa always held me on a pedestal. I never knew why. I appreciated her asking me. I wanted to talk about him and this gave me a rare opportunity.

I was also beginning to get my personal life together. Some friends asked me to join them in a share house in Norman Park, on the north side of Brisbane. The house was a big timber Queenslander with a verandah and a large yard. I learned about sharing, cooking and cleaning, and forged long-lasting friendships. I bought myself a flute and took lessons, which was a great way to relax – frustrating at times, but I enjoyed the music. We built a vegetable patch that never produced much, owing to the couch grass that had such a dense root network that it took over the patch. I was trying to thrive too, but I still didn’t really know where I belonged.

Among these friends I began to slow down and think about where my life was heading. Being around people my age helped me to reclaim my own youth. I became more carefree, took a few risks, had a couple of affairs and enjoyed being irresponsible. I began to realise that, like the couch grass, my life too could become a dense complicated network if I did not untangle my past and make sense of what had bought me to this point.

Once again, I felt compelled to do more training and was accepted into the midwifery program at the Mater Mothers’ Hospital.

There was no knowing how I would cope with midwifery until I started. The first time I saw a woman give birth I was in tears. Helping women breastfeed reminded me of that pain in my own swollen breasts. The nursery was the hardest, especially looking after the babies for adoption. If I was rostered to the nursery when there was a baby for adoption there, I would manoeuvre myself to be around his or her cot when it was feeding time. When I was bottle-feeding the baby I would think of the mother, somewhere in the same hospital, in turmoil over whether she had made the right choice. Eight years had passed since Christopher’s birth and attitudes in Australia towards adoption were changing. One day I asked an older sister on my ward about babies for adoption. She told me that it was becoming less and less common.

I had to do a case study on a patient and I chose a young girl who was thinking of relinquishing her baby.

‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?’ I asked her one day after making her bed.

‘What about?’

I explained that I needed to interview a patient about their birth experience and the immediate period afterwards.

‘Do you know I’m thinking of adoption for my baby?’

‘Yes, that’s why I chose you. Do you mind talking about it?’

‘I s’pose not.’

We talked about her birthing experience and I asked her if anything could have been improved.

‘Did the nurses let you see your baby after she was born?’ I asked.