I realized I had been picturing everything happening in the early 1900s, unconsciously filing excuses for the very existence of such a place because of the time period. But Julia’s time here was only seventy-six years ago, and now the past seemed suddenly even closer.
Ida flicked through some of the files. “1993,” she said heavily. “This place was still operating in 1993.”
Silence fell like a weighted press.
We opened the boxes, flicked through the files. They were invoices, accounts, details of the hotels, companies, and hospitals that used the laundry for their businesses. There was nothing about the women the laundry used as unpaid labor. Nothing about the children stolen from the women. No names, no details, no death notices.
Ida, her phone glowing, read with a heavy voice from the screen. “They didn’t keep records, and those they did were destroyed when the first investigations into abuse were called for. They didn’t want people knowing what went on here. They didn’t want the numbers getting out. The babies sold to rich couples in America. The illegal adoptions. The deaths.”
Finn whispered, “How many babies were buried in that garden since Nellie’s?”
I grabbed hold of the nearest hand without thinking and squeezed it. Somebody squeezed back quickly, before letting go.
Shock made my face sting. Tears pattered into the dust at Ida’s feet.
“Can we go now?” someone said. It could have been any of the four of us: me or Ida, Finn or Cale. It could have been somebody else.
“Yes. Yes. It’s over. It’s finished now. We can go.”
Retracing our steps through the building, between the imposing walls, Finn whispered, “Fuckers, fuckers, fuckers,” under his breath over and over.
“I was born in 1996. If I’d come along a few years earlier, this is where I could’ve ended up,” Ida said. “Unmarried mother, barely eighteen. They’d’ve taken Mandy in and then pushed her back out again. I’d’ve been raised by nuns and then shipped off to America with a new name.”
“Things were different back then,” Cale said, touching Ida’s shoulder gently, but I gave a hard, dry laugh.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
A seventeen-year-old girl in 1936 was still a seventeen-year-old girl, was still a whole person, regardless of her time. Her baby was a whole person too.
When I took a moment to consider the timeline of my family history, realization rose like steam. Dates shuffled in my mind. Julia gave birth to her son in 1936. The same year my father was born. Julia was my grandmother. My father was born in this place.
There’s a lot you don’t know about your sister, he had said, but clearly there was a lot we hadn’t known about him as well.
* * *
—
We walked to the nearest bus stop silently, and people appeared around us: old ladies off to hairdressing appointments, mums with babies in strollers, old men with dogs on leashes. The world had kept turning somehow. Did they know what had happened in the old crumbling building that stood, silently overlooking the town? Perhaps, if some people had known, they’d forgotten. Maybe even women who once were in there had forgotten. We do whatever we can to survive.
Ida held Mandy’s letter like she was afraid to lose it. The next address, as always, scratched hastily onto the last page, led us on, west, closer to the ocean.
“This was going on for so long,” Ida said, her voice strained. “Some of the girls who went through this place could still be alive today. Women. How do you live a normal life after something like that?”
Finn kicked a loose stone on the pavement, sent it scudding angrily across the road. “It’s all fucked up. All of it.”
“That Mandy sent us here?”
Finn looked up at me, surprised. “No. No. I understand it now, I think. Why she’d do this. Like Ida said back at the cottage, sometimes you have to feel the past to believe it.”
“It needs to be told like a story in order to be heard,” I said.
“Right. Exactly.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, shrugged. “It’s the story itself that’s fucked.”
I took my phone from my pocket, swiped away the three missed calls from Rachel, then called her back.
“Deena!” she said, relief in her voice. “Where were you? Why weren’t you answering my calls?”
Ida was typing on her phone, probably messaging her dad, who believed her to be staying over at her best friend’s. Cale called her grandparents. Finn was already talking to his parents, fast and somewhat frantic, offering love and reassurance that he was at my house with me, that we were both okay.
“Deena?” Rachel’s voice said in my ear.
“Sorry. Hi. Yeah. I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I’m in Finn’s house and just sort of couldn’t face talking to anyone else.”
“Deena,” my sister said again. She took a minute, sniffed softly. “It’s okay. It is. I’m glad to hear from you.”
My eyes prickled suddenly, my throat thick. “Me too,” I whispered. I turned my back to the broken hulk of the laundry building, took a deep breath. “Me too.”
Tears ran down Ida’s cheeks as she put her phone back in her bag. Cale’s lip trembled as she talked. Finn’s eyes were watery when he hung up.
There was so much I wanted to ask my sister. About Mandy, about our father. But if I talked too long she’d hear the sounds of the town around me through the phone. Suspect that I wasn’t three doors down from her, playing video games with my best friend. I was running out of time.
“I have to go,” I said finally. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” said Rachel, then her voice changed very slightly, perceptible only to somebody who had lived with her forever, who knew her better than anyone. She had somehow guessed that something was up. “Call me later. And come home for dinner. I know you’re having a hard time. I understand. But we need each other right now. And you need to be home.”
“Rachel, I—”
“There’s loads of leftovers from the wake, plenty of veggie options. You have to keep up your strength. I’ve changed the sheets on your bed and vacuumed your room so you’ll be nice and comfortable. There’s that program you like on the TV tonight, the singing one, what’s it called? Doesn’t matter. We can have dinner on the couch, just this once. You can even have a glass of wine.”
“But, Rachel—”
“This is not a discussion, Deena. I’ll see you at six. Okay, I love you, bye. Bye-bye. Bye.”