Cards

Makaela sat at the table with a Mother’s Day card from her only child spread flat before her; a child she had given up for adoption twenty-eight years ago.

At first, when she had returned with the Friday morning’s post, consisting of junk, overdue bills, and an “invitation” from the Department of Social Protection to attend a mandatory meeting, she thought there had been a mistake as she came across a lilac envelope with only her name on it. It looked like a birthday card, or belated Valentine’s card. When she had opened it, her suspicions were only further encouraged by a rather underwhelming Mother’s Day card; a subdued pink background with a contour-drawn illustration of a rose in a sleek flute vase.

Flicking to the back of the card as she re-entered her tower block flat overlooking the train tracks between Connolly station and Croke Park, she wondered who she may know who shared her name. It’s not a difficult name to mistake, not like wee Sarah who’s only a pudgy newborn one floor down, still enjoying the fawning attention from everyone who meets her cooing grin, and Sara, without a H, the older but just as beautiful Iranian girl on the top floor who’d be doing her leaving cert this year, hoping to get enough points for Trinity. Makaela checked the envelope again, thinking she had misread it. But no.

Exhausting all reasonable ways of avoiding reading someone else’s post, Makaela accepted she’d need to check the inner contents and hope there was some clue of who this card was really for.

However, Makaela’s brow bunched under her dark, stringy strands of hair as she was assaulted immediately by a barrage of words spanning the entire breadth and length of the card, written clearly by hand. Makaela fluttered her eyes from word to word, not ingesting any of it in her dazed state. The card didn’t have a printed platitude, affording this puzzling sender the space to say as much as they wished. They had a lot to say, evidently. Makaela looked to the envelope, then to the front of the card, then the back, and then the inside of the envelope for anything that would excuse her from having to wade through this deluge. Sadly, no merciful reprieve was found. Makaela returned to the card, resigned to reading.

Silently, she read the first line. Then the second. By the third line, recalling back a still painful memory, a short, stinging inhale forced its way past her lips, chilling her insides. By the seventh line, what little hope this was all a terrible mistake, amazing coincidence, or disturbing joke was wiped away by the accuracy of the details; the dates, the hospital, the age her daughter would be now. By the twentieth line she had to start over, as she was struggling to fully digest everything through the watery distortion of her remorseful tears. By the final forty-sixth line, Makaela was left drained, dabbing her ducts, and quietly considering the words she’s just endured.

Her daughter was alive. Her name was Caoimhe. Caoimhe Erskine. She is twenty-eight. Her handwriting was neat. She found Makaela’s address through a freedom of information act request from her orphanage. She apologised for the intrusion, insisting she had grappled with this decision for the last six months. She was reaching out for two reasons; she wanted to get to know her, and she wanted to invite her to her wedding in August.

Makaela sat at the table with the card still lying flat before her as the steam from her tea rose and intertwined with the coiling smoke of her slowly disintegrating cigarette. Both helped her think. She reread the message for well over an hour. Several trains rumbled past in that time, but she paid them little mind, less than usual. She had a decision to make.

For an unwed teenage mother, Makaela’s pregnancy with Caoimhe was relatively fortunate, considering how badly it could have gone. She was thirteen, barely a woman herself, when she and Seán Burke who lived with his uncle down by Christchurch made a very stupid decision. Not many teenage mothers were lucky enough to make the very stupid decisions consensually. Ireland back then was only beginning to get a taste of liberalism. Talks of S-E-Triple-X were still taboo in ninety-nine, especially for Makaela’s parents. To their credit, there was never a mention of laundries of any kind. Another stroke of luck sadly not afforded to many. Of course, talks of England were also out of the question, as well as any expectation of Seán making things right and marrying Makaela.

Nonetheless, the timing was apt; she would be due at the end of the Summer holidays. As long as a new, looser school uniform was bought for the second term, and excuses were made for any weight gain, no one needed to know. Her parents waited out the last three months with a cousin in Kerry. Caoimhe Erskine, then “Baby Joyce”, was born and left in a hospital in Kerry. No one, besides five people, knew of the baby. No one, besides one, knew what Makaela had gone through.

Makaela had never forgotten Caoimhe. She had forgotten Seán Burke, who lost interest soon afterwards. She had forgotten the sneering remarks of the schoolgirls who were too young to play pretend like all the adults. She even forgot the hospital staff, a hazy mess of scrubs and masks, who helped deliver her baby. But she had never forgotten the child she never knew. In all those twenty-eight years, she could still summon to mind the mewing groan of the newborn suckling her first breaths, or how those thin, delicate fingers curled, straightened, and spread with amazing dexterity. Even now, as Makaela tapped her ashes into a crinkled, Chinese take-away tray from the previous night, she can still remember the rapid, pounding thumps of Caoimhe’s heart against her bare chest. Why the nurses insisted on skin-to-skin, Makaela would never know.

She sat there, looking down at those words and thought how could she. How could she make up for twenty-eight years of absence? How could she ever make it right? Yes, Caoimhe wanted to meet and get to know her, but she, Makaela thought, would have every right to rage against her, to scream, to demand an apology. And what if she disappoints her? From the card, she gathered Caoimhe was kind, educated, well-off, and had a sense of humour about delivering serious news. It wouldn’t even be Mother’s Day for another two weeks. Caoimhe’s address, should Makaela wish to respond, was in Dun Laoighaire. By the sounds of it, she’s done very well for herself, especially with a wedding on the way.

As Makaela looked around at her squat flat, at what little light was coming through the smoke yellowed window lace, at the lack fixtures gently swaying from the vibration of the eleven-twenty-three Maynooth train, late as usual, she thought perhaps it was a good thing after all that she had given Caoimhe up. She had a life Makaela could never have provided for her. That was still true. What could she offer her now? Why would she want to stain Caoimhe’s idyllic life, ruin her wedding day, and show herself just as incapable now as she was then of being a mother?

…

Ji sat at the table with wedding invitations sorted into designated stacks; immediate family, extended family, friends, co-workers, and neighbours. Ji by far had the most extended family to invite, though he was sure they were unlikely to make the long trip from Shanghai. They would be sure to send generous wedding gifts though. Generosity is a national sport in China, he told his fiancé, Caoimhe, the evening they were compiling the list of invitees; the same evening she told him about her biological mother.

Ji had met Caoimhe studying public relations at DCU eight years ago. They immediately bounded over their shared inability to pronounce each other’s name correctly. It was this charmingly bumbling misunderstanding, along with a shared love of spicy food, dance music, and Game of Thrones, that acted as the foundation of their relationship. A relationship full of romantic get-aways, long conversations, cultural exchange, and shared milestones, like moving in together to a fabulous Georgian house overlooking Seapoint Beach Howth just visible in the distance as a sliver of myopic navy. The nearby train station was barely an irregular hum. But the highlight, without a doubt, was Ji proposing twelve seconds to midnight on the thirty-first of December last year. Caoimhe said yes with just two seconds to spare. Ji felt like the entire country was celebrating with him.

The last few months had been nothing short of a whirlwind of disorientation. There were congratulations and handshakes. There were enquiring questions about themes, venues, menus, and music. Flights and hotels needed to be arranged. Registers and the honeymoon. And in all this, during a discussion about who to invite Caoimhe, sensing now was as good a time to broach the subject as any, mentioned how she had been looking into her biological mother. What should have been a quick chore before bed turned into a late-night confessional.

This was a long time coming, according to Caoimhe. She had known she was adopted since she was ten, and spent the last seventeen years in quiet apathy over who her mother was. Yes, she had been upset. Depressed. Resentful. Angry. Even sorry for the circumstances that led to the decision. But Caoimhe was never interested in Makaela’s life. It was a kindness to both herself and her mother that she accepted their estrangement, lest she ran the risk of dredging up some horrible history. But, she told Ji, with the development of the life they were building together, a life sure to be filled with love for their child, secretly growing in her womb, Caoimhe imagined her mother, a woman she’s never met, deserving the right to see the results of her decision. Did she not deserve to know the woman her daughter had become? Did she not deserve to see her own grandchild? Did she not deserve solace, after all these years?

But, despite finding Makaela’s home address, and writing her a message wishing to see her, Caoimhe admitted she couldn’t bring herself to send it. While she called it apathy, what she really felt all these years was fear; fear she’d be rejected once again, only now old enough to feel the string and appreciate the lingering hurt.

Unbeknownst to Caoimhe, Ji had hand-delivered her message to Makaela’s letter box, much like the envelope that had just been slotted through the front door that very instant.

Ji looked up from the invitations he was writing for his guests. The landing floor of the house was an open plan with the front door visible from the far side of the kitchen, passed the sofas and armchairs in the living room. Ji hesitated for a second as he ran through his mental encyclopaedia of everything he’s learnt about life in Ireland, making sure his initial thought was correct; there’s no post on Sunday.

He got up, approached the door and, before pulling it open, with his fingers squeezing the latch, froze, staring down at his fiancé’s name in a scrawled, unfamiliar handwriting on a lilac envelope, about the size of a Mother’s Day card. As realisation washed over him, his heart hammering, Ji flung open the door, finding, startled in place, with her hand on the garden gate, about to close it shut and leave, Makaela.

#HI