Immorality?

Sitting on the bus, I glanced at the people around me. Middle aged women with their hair starting to go grey, lively youngsters conversing at the back. Families: sweet young children giggling to their mothers and fathers while they gave them loving glances. Moments like these made me feel sick, a sense of emptiness that lingered in my stomach and brought tears to my eyes. It was like the grief you would feel from losing your most loved possession, but far worse. I focused my attention to the view outside the window and sighed at the pitiful rain, the streets of Manchester looked greyer than ever.

I pressed the stop button. The high-pitched bell noise sounded and I shuffled my way to the back of the bus giving the conductor a fake smile to hide my bubbling sadness. It was a few stops earlier than normal, but I couldn’t take the stifling atmosphere any longer. Stepping onto the pavement I allowed a few fraught tears to escape from beneath my eyelids. I felt pathetic, a woman of twenty two shouldn’t behave like this, but I couldn’t help it. I’d suffered years of secrecy, never knowing why I had nobody, why I had no relations to speak of and had never even received a birthday or Christmas card. Living with nuns I had been taught never to ask, to be grateful for what I had, work hard and behave well.

I walked down the cobbled pavement, appreciating the heavy rain which hid my tears and drove people inside their houses. Usually when upset I would comfort myself by singing or humming quietly, but the injustice of my recent discovery was too heart-breaking for my usual remedy. When I became an independent woman working as a nurse maid, I decided to search for my parents. My birth certificate stated my father as unknown but my mother’s name was Mary Hamlett. And so began my quest to find my mother. I wondered who she was. What did she look like? Did she have the same dark hair as mine? Where was she? What did she do? The question that floated through my mind the most though was why? Why did she leave me?

I needed to find her, my mother, the only relative I knew existed. So I visited the nunnery which I had so gladly left. I walked right through those encaging gates, through the hedged archway and knocked on the solid door. Sister Catherine came to see me first, she smiled and said “Hello Marie, didn’t expect to see you again. Can I help you?” I smiled at her too; she had always been kind to me. I replied “Yes, Sister, you can. I would like to know the reason for me being admitted to the convent.” “Well Marie, come inside.” She spoke in such a welcoming manner that confidently I walked straight in. She was the only nun I had ever known that actually seemed to have a godly presence about her, like she had been sent straight from God himself to do his good on earth.

I was taken to Sister Ann the Mother Superior. Sister Ann found the file, pulled it free from the others and shook the dust from it. She gazed at me sternly then sat across from me on the other side of the desk and looked over the information. “You were admitted because your mother was an imbecile, she showed behaviour of immorality.” “What?” I asked “What do you mean?” “She wasn’t married”, Sister Ann uttered “You were born out of wedlock.” She spoke hurriedly as if trying to move away from the subject.

I presumed from this that my mother had been carted away from me and sent to an institution. I had heard such stories before. And to my horror it was so. I found her in Prestwich mental hospital a few days later. Within its red brick walls, she sat wrapped in a blanket on a wooden chair. Her gaze withdrawn, it seemed as if her mind had left her body long ago. I’d waited to see her for so long; I couldn’t just give up on her. Maybe, just maybe I could spark some emotion from within her. She might awaken from this trance, if she knew her daughter was here. I ran up to her and cried “It’s me, your daughter Marie!” No answer. No flicker of recognition. It was as if I was translucent, no more colourful than the faded green paint on the ward walls.

I turned off Moston Lane, relieved to be nearing home. Before I unlocked my door I blew a kiss into the wind, and watched it ride through the air to my lost mother.