But real-life tragedy abounds in the ‘birth,
death and marriage’ scene.
Some years ago I sat beside an attractive young woman in her early
twenties who was trying to operate a microfiche reader in the State Library of
Victoria. She was very agitated, and constantly slid the reader tray in, out
and roundabout, so I asked if I could help. She replied ‘I can’t remember the order
of the alphabet.’
Astonished, I asked for the name she was trying to find, and
then noted she was searching the Inquests.
I found the surname instantly, and saw the verdict. ‘Oh’, I said,
‘Murder!’
She waved a photocopy of an old newspaper article at me. ‘My
sister. My mother murdered her.’ Around us, everyone’s ears pricked up. Her voice broke. ‘Until a few minutes ago I
didn’t know I ever had a sister.’ She was shaking uncontrollably.
Concerned, I said ‘Would you like to
come outside with me and have a cup of tea?’
We went to a nearby café. She talked. She cried. She’d been
adopted but had some contact with her birth mother’s family. She’d always
suspected something major was being hidden from her but she’d never been game enough
to try and find out what it was. She’d recently inherited an old house in a
desirable inner-urban suburb, the gift of a kind uncle, and didn’t understand
why. Pressure was being applied by greedy family members who wanted a share
of her windfall.
Today she’d summoned up the courage to come to the Library and
ask the staff to help her find newspapers from around the time she was born.
The duty librarian found the confronting details of her background – her pregnant drug-addicted mother had killed
her toddler sister. As a newborn she herself had endured drug withdrawal
symptoms and she was removed from her mother’s ‘care’ by the authorities.
I struggled to reduce her anxieties. ‘Am I going to turn out like my mother? I was born a drug addict.’ She sobbed again. ‘The worst part is the knowledge that I once had a sister. A sister. I’ve always wanted a sister.’ And so it went. I sat listening and talking with her for a long time, advised her to seek counselling and advised her not to sign any documents in her distraught state and never without independent advice.
I saw her onto the tram, on her way home to her boyfriend, returned to the
Library and approached the librarian who’d found this sensitive material for her and handed it over so matter-of-factly. ‘Didn’t you see how distressed she was when you found that article?’
‘Oh’, tossed off the librarian, ‘the things people find out here, we really
need to employ a full-time counsellor.’
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