I Grieve for Audrey June (1996)

The Participants: Zillah, my birth mother, deceased Audrey June, Faith Mum, my adoptive mother, deceased Dad, my adoptive father, deceased Edward Albert, Zillah's father, deceased Alice May Bell, Zillah's mother, deceased Beulah, Zillah's sister, deceased Bill, Beulah's husband, deceased Aunty Bell, Zillah's youngest sister Aunty Grace, Zillah's aunt, deceased Sylvia, Zillah's niece, my new cousin In 1985 I received a letter from the New South Wales Department of Youth and Community Services giving me non-identifying information regarding my adoption. I had no proof of having been adopted and I had applied on the 'off chance.' Surprisingly the letter was addressed, not to Dear Sir/Madam, but to 'Faith' and informed me that my mother, who came from a 'New South Wales country town,' was eighteen and unmarried when she gave birth to me at Bethesda Private Hospital. Mother's name was Zillah and she called me Audrey June. Apparently all traces of my inauspicious arrival had been destroyed. This destruction had taken place in 1947, presumably to accommodate the records of post-war 'baby-boomers.' From the events that followed I came to realise that I had constructed an elaborate mythology concerning the family that I had been separated from before I could remember. 'She called me Audrey June'; but it had never occurred to me that I may have been named. Surely babies of relinquishing mothers were anonymous. I had heard that Catholic orphanages called such baby girls 'Mary,' just like Aboriginal babies removed from their mothers. I was not happy about those names. Nevertheless, Mum and Dad could have left me with one of them, a sort of thank-you to Zillah for giving them a baby. I began to wonder whether I had actually passed by Bethesda Private Hospital. However, on discovering that it was at Marrickville, I thought it most unlikely. Marrickville was one of those suburbs that Mum and Dad called 'seedy'; worse still, the inhabitants were usually 'common.' I had led a comfortable childhood with over-protective parents whose only form of discipline was the awful threat that I would be sent to the local public school. This school, called by the local kids, Lady 'ayses, was decidedly 'common.' Being 'common' also covered those girls who attended the Sisters of Saint Joseph's domestic science school. These 'Brown Joeys' were renowned for teaching poor girls all the skills required to be good domestic servants and, ultimately, equally good Catholic wives and mothers. I was spared the burden of these skills by attending something called a 'Ladies College.' The irony was that the 'Brown Joeys' had a saint resting peacefully in the convent grounds. Nevertheless, I had not been spared the harsh realities of the 1930s. Mum and I regularly visited her sister, poor Hilda who lived in a dilapidated tenement in Darlinghurst with a drunken husband and two sons who had not worked for years. They survived by Hilda cleaning other people's houses and letting the 'top floor front.' I loved Aunty Hilda, she was more motherly than Mum, the only problem was the entire house reeked of Penfolds Purple Para Port. 'Your natural mother's name was Zillah. She was single and eighteen years of age when you were born.' I felt sad when I read those lines in the 'Dear Faith' letter. Sad, not only for little unwanted Audrey June, but also for heartbroken mother, Zillah. My Zillah, in my mythology, was small and slim, she wore a cloche hat pulled well down over her face to hide her tears. Her dress was one of those bias-cut slinky styles reaching to mid-calf; her shoes had instep straps and cuban heels, rather like Helen Morse in the film Caddie. Even now that is my image of a youthful Zillah. Zillah would have seen Audrey June for a fleeting moment before the baby was whisked off to an orphanage. I knew about orphanages. Each year my school was taken to a fete conducted by the Sisters of Mercy at an orphanage. We were allowed to walk along the verandah of the Home and peep through the nursery windows; there were long rows of cots containing babies from six to eighteen months of age, all waiting to be chosen. …