I can still remember how the doorbell ripped through the silence at dinner that night. It had become somewhat of a tradition that we would all eat at Mum and Dadâs on Sunday nights, the only mandatory interaction required. I didnât have any issues with going, I just had better things to be doing. I was glad I went that night, though.
âIâll get it, donât worry,â Dad said, pushing his chair from the table and limping toward the door. Dad was reluctant to admit that his hip had never fully recovered from his surgery. When he finally reached the door, I heard the clanging of the chain as he opened it but I couldnât make out the muffled conversation afterwards.Â
Dad popped his head around the doorway a few minutes later. âIrene, are you able to come to the door please?â Something was wrong. He had suddenly become very sombre and almost worrisome. Mum went to the door to see what was wrong and my siblings and I all stared at each other in silence.
Adam was sitting closest to the doorway, most likely to have heard anything that was happening. âAdam, who is it? Whatâs happening?â Claire whispered at him. She was demanding in tone, with a natural sense of elitism as the oldest. Adam waved his hand to silence her as he tried harder to listen to the conversation.
âFuck this,â I said, swiftly pushing my chair out and making my way through the living room to the front door. A man was standing outside. He looked almost identical to me except for a few scars and a fuller beard. It was like looking in a mirror.Â
âJamie, go back inside now!â Dad raised his voice at me. Dad never raised his voice at me.Â
âJamie, please just listen to your father, please Jamie just go back inside,â my mum was begging me now. I knew that it must have been something serious if they both wanted to keep this from me, whatever it is.Â
âWho are you?â I queried, stepping past my parents and closer to the door. The man looked frazzled. He was just as nervous and awkward as I.
His hand shot out toward me. âIâm Jonathan, youâre Jamie I suppose?âÂ
âJonathan who? Who are you? Are you a friend of my parents? What are you doing here?â Jonathanâs name only left me with more questions. My parents didnât know anyone called Jonathan, not as far as I was aware.Â
âLook, youâve interrupted a family dinner and I think weâd all appreciate it if youâd come back at another time. Iâm sorry, you really must leave now,â my dad attempted to close the door before I pried it back open, determined to discover who this Jonathan was.Â
Jonathan stood there just staring at me, and I at him. Both attempting to figure out what was going on.
When my mum gave me the papers, I didnât believe her. What sort of parent tells their son that heâs adopted when heâs 26. I was sure that my whole world would fall apart, but it didnât. It split right open.
I didnât speak to them for a week after they had told me, I was still processing the news myself and to their credit, I got the space I needed.
When I went to see them after a week, we talked about the whole thing. âYouâre a twin. Your birth mother wasnât able to raise two boys,â she had said, tears welling in her eyes as she spoke. âYou have to understand, she wasnât in a good place. She could barely afford to live herself. She hadnât a job. She couldnât have done it with two of you.âÂ
My knee was shaking with anger, but I couldnât stop the tears from streaming down my cheek. Mum placed her hand on my knee and looked me in the eyes. âYouâre still my son.â Her words were sincere but at that moment, they meant little. I brushed her hand off of my knee and walked toward the back door.
I reached up to the cupboard above the sink, moving bottles of bleach and washing up liquid out of the way until my hand touched the cardboard packet of cigarettes that I had hidden in the back. I took out a single cigarette, placed it between my lips and lit it from the stove. I opened the back door and stood outside, taking long inhales and longer exhales.Â
Mum went and stood by the back door, waiting for me to react in any way. She had always been like that though, she was always there to hear my side of the story whether it was good or bad or morally ambiguous.Â
âI just donât understand why youâd keep it from me. I deserve to be told, I have a right to know.â The cigarette was shaking between my fingers at this point, and my knees were struggling to keep me up. I knew that it was just a natural shock to the situation. I couldnât help but feel overwhelmed by the rage that she had kept from me. âYou should have told me!â I screamed at her. I immediately regretted the tone, but not the words. She was crying silently now, and I felt terrible for both the way I was reacting but also the way my reaction was making her feel. âYou should have told me,â I said again, softer now, whilst walking in and wrapping my arms around my mother as she holds me tight.
âI know, Iâm sorry, I know,â she said calmly into my ear as I sobbed louder, all of the anger and shock flooding me in waves of tears.
I knew that dad wouldnât be happy when I invited him in, to this day I think that perhaps thatâs why I did it. Jonathan sat on the sofa opposite me whilst Mum and Dad went to make teas, and no doubt gossiped about the situation and how my barging into the hallway was going to negatively affect their life.Â
âSoâŚâ Jonathan said as we stared at each other in silence for days. He hunched over on his knees. I almost took pleasure in his discomfort. It mirrored mine but I hoped only that it exceeded it. If I had to be in shock, pain, and awkwardness, I was sure that whoever this man was deserved to feel it tenfold.
âDo you want money? Is that why youâre here? Are you running some sort of scam? Because theyâre old but theyâre not that old and theyâre not going to fall for it. You wonât con them out of anythingââ
âI donât want your parentâs money, Jamie. I just want to know them.â
âWhy would you want to know them? Theyâre strangers? As far as I know, theyâve never met you and donât know who you are so unless youâre going to explain somehow who you are and what you are trying to do to my family, I suggest that you get up and leave right now because you are not welcome here!â I was screaming so loud that I didnât notice that my siblings, who had been sitting at the table the whole time, had stood up and were ready to step in. I was never going to become physical with this stranger. I had an urge to hit him though, I had a fire that was ripping through my body and culminating in my fists to throw my whole force at his cheek.Â
I didnât though. I couldnât. My parents ran in when I was shouting and started to fuss. âJamie! Jamie! Jamie!â They made feeble attempts to calm me down but ultimately the room remained silent, I didnât say anything more to him and he said nothing more to me.
I walked out of the room and out through the front door. The blood pulsing in my ears, I could only hear my heart. I shouldnât have shouted. Thump. I should go back and apologise. Thump. They should have told me who he was. Thump. Why does he look like me? Thump.Â
âJamie!â I heard someone shout.
I turned around and without even a glance at who it was, I had balled my fist and punched the centre of their face, causing them to stumble and fall backwards with a groan and a thud.
It took me a minute, but then I realised that it had been my dad. I had punched my dad and he had fallen onto the pavement.
I looked at him at that moment, lying on the floor with his eyes closed and his blood collecting beside his head.
âAre you sure that you want to go? You could always write them a letter,â Mum said. âI donât even know that they still live there. They might have moved.â
She wasnât keen on the idea of me showing up at their house. She thought that it would seem invasive and rude. She had never been a fan of getting off on the wrong foot.
âEven if they havenât moved, what if theyâre busy? You might interrupt something really important. Itâs going to be a shock any time, you should really try and make it easier on all of you and do it at the best time. Small steps, donât you agree?â Mum was scared, I could tell. She somehow still had a fear after all of these years, that they were going to change their minds and take me back and steal her baby from her. I understood where she was coming from, I just didnât like what she was saying.
âI get that it might inconvenience them, but it is a little inconvenient for me to find out that my whole life has been a lie, donât you think?â I knew that it would hurt her, I shouldnât have said it.Â
In the days since sheâd told me, I just couldnât stop thinking about what my life might have been like. I had looked them all up on social media and tortured myself with thoughts of the life that I missed out on, all of the memories of having brothers and sisters and having a father. I could have avoided the grief and the trauma of losing him if my birth mother had just decided to keep me.Â
âYouâre a grown boy and itâs your choice Jonny, I just want you to make sure youâre doing this the right way,â she was holding my arm now, pleading with me to reconsider but by this point, my mind had been made.
I had written a letter to give to my birth parents, laying out my feelings about their abandoning me all of those years ago and how I wanted to reconnect with them. I was firm in the letter, theyâd never be my parents. They had sacrificed that opportunity all those years ago.
I was ready to leave the house later that afternoon. I had dressed in my best clothes, wanting for some reason to impress these people who didnât want me. My stomach was somersaulting as I waited for the taxi. I was so unsure of myself and my actions that I didnât trust myself to drive over there, I knew Iâd flake at the first service station and that I was too awkward to tell a taxi driver to turn around so Iâd continue in the car until the journey was complete.
The taxi took well over two hours, driving at first through many rural parts of the country admiring fields and barns. I noticed a considerable amount of livestock. Iâd never thought of it before, but most of these animals had been ripped from their parents and sold off to the highest bidder to be used for meat, milk, wool and whatever other commodities were needed.
I was no different to these animals.
The ambulance had taken longer than I thought it would. I sat on the brick wall next to Dad for the whole time that we waited. I couldnât say anything. Everyone came and checked on me but I still sat there, just staring at him. I was watching the blood spread, slowly filling the cracks between the slabs on the pavement. It wasnât as red as it should have been. Whenever I thought of blood, I thought of a rich velvety crimson but this was darker, closer to a scarlet tinted maroon. I remember thinking it meant something about the state of Dadâs health and telling myself to make myself bleed later on to compare.
When the paramedics finally did arrive, they hoisted Dad up onto the stretcher and he started to regain some consciousness and my stomach started to unfurl itself. I will never forget the way that Mum looked at me as she got into the ambulance. It was as though she was looking at me and didnât see her son but instead saw a stranger.Â
The way she spoke to Jonathan before the ambulance departed angered me. I wished that it was him, not Dad, being driven away to the hospital. I found myself wishing I had punched harder. I found myself wishing I had punched him again and again again.Â
He walked over to me as the ambulance drove away and he sat down next to me.Â
âI probably shouldnât have shown up the way I did tonight,â I didnât like the way he spoke to me, as though we were friends. We had been nothing to each other before and I wanted it to stay that way.
âSmoke?â he said, pulling out a carton of cigarettes and holding it in front of me. I silently took one, placed it between his lips and took the lighter that he offered me.
We sat there for what must have been ten minutes, smoking in silence. My thoughts spun and spiralled to the thought of Dad lying in hospital and then straight back to the anger of this stranger sitting next to me.
At some point as we sat in silence, it all became too much and the faucet of tears opened and I started sobbing. Jonathan reached over and put his arm around me and I found myself comforted by the silent embrace of this man.Â
âHeâs going to be okay, you know?â he said as my sobs quieted.Â
âI thought it was you,â I spoke finally, standing up on the pavement only a foot or two away from the spot where my Dad had laid.Â
âI know,â Jonathan responded. âAnd I donât blame you. Iâd have done the same. I doubt Iâd have been able to give that good of a punch thought, it seems as though I got the scrawny genes.â
I chuckled faintly then. My fears and worries and images of Dad in the hospital disappeared and finally, I was fully present in the moment.
I had been surprised that Jamie agreed to get a taxi with me to the hospital. I offered to order him one, not expecting to accompany him but his siblings had already gotten one up and his Mum travelled in the ambulance and it probably wasnât a good idea to leave him alone.Â
I thought that the taxi would be a journey of silence but Jamie was a fountain of questions. It was the first time that night that I had felt anything other than hatred and disdain from him. I knew it was the stress and panic and shock of what had happened to his Dad, but trauma response aside it felt good to finally lay some pre-foundations for bonding and actually getting to know each other.
Our conversation was interrupted about twenty minutes away from the hospital when his sister rang him, asking where he was. âWeâre about ten to fifteen minutes out, can you meet us by the taxi rank?â he spoke in a hurried rush and then hung up the phone after a series of âOkay, yeah, sounds good, okay bye.â
When we arrived at the hospital I remained in the car initially, unsure as to whether or not it was appropriate for me to go up with Jamie or not. âCome on dude, we havenât got all day,â he said through his open car door. The invitation was appreciated and so I stepped out of the vehicle.
The minute I caught the attention of Jamieâs sister, my presence invoked guilt within me.Â
âWhat is he doing here?! Mum explained everything. They didnât want him then, and after whatâs happened tonight, I doubt theyâre going to want him now!â she spoke in a deceptively calm manner but the words of this stranger/sibling stung like a wasp.Â
âStop it!â Jamie responded, his voice raised significantly louder than hers. âHeâs our brother. Thatâs his dad in there too, we can sort out the arguments and the history later. We all need to be up there right now, by dadâs side. Thatâs the only thing that matters.âÂ
Jamie and his sister looked at me then, as though waiting for my input into this conversation as though I hadnât appeared within their family within the last few hours.
âI agree,â I said, shrugging my shoulder.Â
âGreat, letâs go then,â Jamie took the lead, walking into the hospital.
âIâm Amber, by the way,â Jamieâs sister finally extended what had looked like the seed to an olive branch.
âHi Amber, Jonathan,â I responded, now walking alongside her. âIâve never had a sister before.â