Treva filled out the papers and wrote a check. Then we sat on a bench to wait.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I nodded.
“It’ll be over soon.”
After an hour or so, a nurse called out several names, including mine. Treva hugged me, and I walked with the other girls to another room. The nurse handed out small cups with pills in them and cups of water. I swallowed my pills and waited until it was my turn for an ultrasound. I turned my head away so I wouldn’t have to see the image on the screen.
After another long wait, a young nurse came and called my name. I followed her to a small room with a doctor’s table. I took off my pants and covered myself with a paper sheet. After a few minutes, the nurse returned with the doctor. He was an older man, with glasses and a stethoscope around his neck.
After he’d examined me, he nodded to the nurse. She leaned in close to me and started talking cheerfully, asking me about school and what movies I liked. She talked so that I almost couldn’t hear the vacuum sound coming from beneath the paper sheet ... almost.
It was over really quickly. The doctor patted my hand and left. I put my sweatpants back on and followed the nurse to the recovery room, where she had me lie down and handed me a glass of orange juice.
“Drink this and eat some cookies,” she said. “You’re going to be just fine.”
I lay there for half an hour, sipping juice and eating cookies and avoiding eye contact with the other women in the room. A couple of them looked even younger than me. I stared out a window and focused on just breathing.
Finally, the nurse reappeared and said I could go.
When I walked into the waiting room, Treva rose and wrapped me in a long hug.
“You okay?” she whispered.
I nodded.
The parking lot was empty when we left, thankfully. We drove home in silence.
“You go rest,” she said when we got home. “I’ll make us some soup.”
As I walked upstairs, I heard her dialing the phone. She was calling Daddy to tell him it was over. I put on pajamas and lay down on the bed. I felt a little spacey. Treva said that was probably from the Valium they had given me before the procedure. We ate chicken noodle soup and crackers. Then she left me alone, telling me to sleep.
I lay with my hand on my stomach, thinking about the tiny life that had been there just a little while before. In my head, I heard the vacuum sound again. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to ignore the sound. Finally, I put on the stereo. After a long time, I fell asleep.
When I woke up, it was almost dusk. Daddy stood in the doorway of my room, watching me. We had not talked much since I’d told him I was pregnant, and when we did, it was mostly about school. He’d told Mama that I was not going to see her while she was in town, and I was grateful for that. But he was mostly quiet around me. I knew he was really sad.
“Hey, peanut,” he said when he saw I was awake. “How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
He walked over and sat on the bed, brushing the hair from my forehead.
“I’m really sorry, Daddy.”
“I know,” he said. “Me too.”
He hugged me and I started to cry. I cried because I’d made him so sad. I cried because I felt like we would never be the same. I cried for the baby that was gone. I cried and cried and cried. When I had finally cried myself out, he kissed me and rose.
“Treva is making spaghetti,” he said. “Are you hungry?”
I wasn’t hungry, but I nodded anyway.
“Do you want to come down or eat in bed?”
“I’ll come down.”
“Okay.” He smiled at me. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
48
Life went back to pretty much normal. I had a checkup a couple weeks after the abortion, and the doctor said I was fine. She asked if I wanted to go on birth control pills and I said no. I thought I probably would never have sex again.
No one at school ever knew what had happened, except Lee Ann. She still fumed that I hadn’t made Patrick pay for the abortion, but I didn’t want him to know. I saw him at school sometimes and he always smiled and said hi. The whole sex/pregnancy/abortion thing started to feel like it was a dream, something that had happened a long time ago.
Matt never spoke to me at all. I passed him in the halls at school and sometimes saw him at the mall or the movies, but he never made eye contact, not even once. After a while, what had been a sharp, excruciating pain dulled to an ache. I still missed him, but I didn’t feel like I was going to die of sadness anymore, so that was a start.
In April, I got another letter from Mama. She was still in Los Angeles, spending time with Kamran when Navid allowed it. I wondered what Kamran thought about her. He was too young to remember her at all from before. Who did he think she was, this beautiful, funny, odd woman?
In the letter, Mama said she had been working hard to accept responsibility for the things she had done. Couldn’t she please come and talk to me? Wouldn’t I let her just apologize for how much she had hurt me?
I crumpled the letter up and threw it in the trash can. Then I pulled it back out and rubbed my hand across it, trying to press out the wrinkles. Finally, I carried it down to the kitchen, where Treva and Daddy were drinking tea.
“She wants to come see me,” I said, putting the letter on the table.
Daddy read the letter, then looked at me. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Part of me wants to tell her to go to hell.”
“What about the other part?” Treva asked.
I sighed. “Part of me wants to see her,” I said. “I want to ask her some things.”
“I think you should,” she said.
Daddy looked at her in surprise.
“She’s your mother,” Treva said. “You have questions and she needs to answer them.”
I nodded.
“So, are you going to write back?” he asked.
I nodded again.
“Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want to do, then that’s what you should do.”
I wrote a letter, then rewrote and rewrote again. Finally, I put it in an envelope and mailed it. A week later, Mama called.
“Judy,” she said, “my Sweet Judy, I was so glad to get your letter! I’m coming to Indianapolis next week. Is that okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
A week later, she pulled into the driveway. Daddy and I stood on the porch, his hand on my shoulder.
“Hi!” she said, walking up the steps and pulling me into a hug. “How are you? Oh my God, I’m so glad to see you!”
I let her hug me.
“Hey, Cassie,” Daddy said. “How are you?”
“I’m okay, Kirk. I’m really glad to see you.”
She looked a lot healthier than she had in December. She was tanned and had put on a little weight. She looked like Mama again, but older.
We sat on the porch swing and Daddy went inside. I knew he was in the living room. I could see him in the recliner through the open door.
“How are you?” she asked again.
“I’m okay.”
“How’s school?”
“It’s okay. I’m a pom-pom girl.”
I watched her face carefully, waiting for a rebuke, I guess.
“Really? A pom-pom girl? That’s ... that’s great, I guess.” She smiled.
“I’m really good at it,” I said.
“I’ll bet you are,” she said. “You were always good at dancing. Not like me.” She laughed. “You must have inherited that from your father.”
“I got arrested for selling pot.” I said it right out loud, watching her face again.
“What?” She looked startled. “When?”
“In November. My boyfriend broke up with me because of it.”
“Oh, honey.” She reached to hug me and I backed away.
“Then I got pregnant and had an abortion.”
She stared at me, her mouth open.
“Oh my God,” she finally managed. “I ... oh, Judy, I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged.
“Oh, Judy, I should have been here. I should have been here for you.”
“Treva took me.”
I watched that sink in.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Well ... I’m glad you had someone with you.”
She sat quietly for a minute.
“Do you hate me?” She asked it not looking at me.
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I haven’t been much of a mother to you.”
“Why?”
“What?” She looked confused.
“Why haven’t you been my mother?”
She looked at me, then looked away. After a long minute, she sighed.
“I guess I just thought I didn’t deserve it,” she said.
“Why not?”
She turned toward me again and took my hands. “It’s a long story,” she said.
“I want to hear it.”
Another long pause. Finally, she dropped my hands and rose, pacing back and forth across the porch.
“When I was sixteen, I was raped. It was at a party I went to with Karen. Some guy drugged me and raped me. I was your age.”
I nodded. I’d heard this before.
“And ... a few weeks later, I found out I was pregnant.”
I leaned forward. “You got pregnant when you were sixteen?”
She nodded. “That’s why ... oh, honey, that’s why I should have been here for you. I know what that feels like, how scared you were. How alone you must have felt.”
I nodded. “I was scared.”
“I know,” she said. “I was scared, too. I didn’t tell anyone at first. I guess I thought if I just ignored it, it might go away.”
I nodded again. I’d felt that way, too.
“Finally,” she said, “I told Karen. And she ... well, I guess she thought she was doing the right thing, but she told my mother.”
“Oh, God,” I said. I couldn’t imagine that woman being kind the way Treva had been to me.
“She was furious,” Mama said. “She slapped me and called me a whore and said I was a disgrace to the family.”
She sat down beside me on the swing and I reached for her hand. I didn’t mean to, I just did. I could picture her mother saying that, and I couldn’t even imagine how it must have felt to Mama.
“So, she sent me to a home for unwed mothers here in Indianapolis. Abortion wasn’t legal in Indiana then, so she just ... she sent me away like garbage. I lived in a house with a bunch of other girls who were pregnant. It was awful. The woman who ran the house was a bitch, not kind at all. When I went into labor, she drove me to the hospital and just left me there alone.”
She stopped and gazed past me.
“I was in labor for twenty-two hours,” she said. “I was so scared, I thought I might die. And then, finally, the baby was born.”
I stared at her. She had another baby?
“A little girl,” she said softly. “I only got to see her once, just for a minute. She was so tiny and pretty. She looked like you.”
“What happened to her?”
“A nurse came and took her away and some family adopted her. I never saw her again.”
I sat staring at her. I had a sister, an older sister. Mama had another daughter. It made my head ache, just trying to take it all in.
“What did you do then?” I asked finally.
“My father came to get me from the hospital, and he took me home. They all just pretended it never happened.”
She rose and began pacing again.
“I stayed another year and then I left. I came back to Indianapolis. I’d kept in touch with one of the other girls from the home, and I lived with her and her boyfriend for a while. And then I met your dad.”
She smiled at me.
“He was so great, so gentle and funny and nice. We got married a couple months after we met. God, his parents were so upset. I think they hated me at first. But then I had you, and ... well, they were nicer after that.”
She sat down again and took my hand.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of praying and a lot of reading,” she said. “And I think I left you and your dad because I felt like I didn’t deserve you. I’d let them take my baby, and I wasn’t good enough to be your mother. And then I met Navid and I thought I could make it work. I thought it was my second chance to prove I could be a good wife and a good mom. But I messed that up, too.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Sweet Judy. I have missed almost your whole life. And Kamran hardly even knows me. I let you both down. I screwed everything up.”
She paused, but I didn’t say anything.
“I’ve got an apartment in Los Angeles now,” she said. “I’m working in a restaurant and taking classes at night at the community college. I’m trying really hard to make a normal life, so I can be part of Kamran’s life again.
“And tomorrow, I’m meeting with an attorney to see if I can get any information about my daughter, the one I gave up. They have a registry now where birth mothers and adopted kids can sign up and find each other. I’d really like to know where she is and ... just know she’s okay.”
“Do you think she’s here in Indianapolis?” I asked. It seemed so weird that I had an older sister who might be right in the same city.
“Maybe,” she said. “I’m betting whoever adopted her lived somewhere in Indiana. Maybe someday we can both meet her. Would you like that?”
I nodded. I would like that.
We sat for a minute, both of us deep in our own thoughts.
“Do you think you can ever forgive me?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know.” That was the truth. I didn’t know.
“I hope you can,” she said. “And not just for my sake, but for yours, too. I’m taking a psychology class now, and what I’m learning is that forgiveness isn’t just for the person who needs to be forgiven. It’s for the person who’s been hurt, too. That’s why later this week I’m going to see my mother.”
I stared at her. “Why?”
“Because I need to forgive her, too,” she said. “Whether she wants it or not, I need to forgive her so I can move on and be sane. And maybe ... I don’t know, maybe she really does need it, too.”
She smiled at me. “So, I’m going to be here for a few more days. Can I see you again while I’m here?”
“Okay,” I said. I had a lot more questions for her.
“Good.” She took a deep breath and seemed to relax. “I’ll go now. I expect you’ve got some thinking to do, and so do I.”
We both stood and she took my face in her hands.
“You may not believe it, but I have always loved you. Even when I left, maybe especially when I left, I loved you. And if you can’t forgive me, I’ll keep on loving you anyway.”
She hugged me and kissed my cheek.
“Mama,” I said as she turned to go.
She stopped.
“I love you, too.”
She hugged me again, crying this time. Then blew her nose, got in her car, and left. I watched her drive away, wondering if this time she really could settle down and be happy. I hoped she could. She deserved that, after all. We all did.
Daddy walked onto the porch and put his arm around me.
“Did she tell you what you needed to know?”
“She told me she had another baby before me,” I said. “Did you know that?”
He nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t my secret to tell.”
“So, I have a sister,” I said. “I have Kamran and now I have a sister, too. That’s just ... weird.”
He laughed. “Yes, I guess it’s pretty weird.”
Treva came onto the porch, carrying a tray with glasses of lemonade.
“You okay?” she asked, kissing my che
ek.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have a sister out there somewhere.”
She smiled at me and then at Daddy. He grinned back at her and nodded.
“What?” I asked. They obviously had a secret joke.
“You’re going to have another brother or sister in a few months,” Treva said.
“Seriously? You’re pregnant?”
“Three months,” she said, patting her stomach.
“What do you think about that?” Daddy smiled at me hopefully.
“I think that’s ... I think it’s great!” I hugged him and then I hugged Treva.
“I hope it’s a girl,” I said. “Don’t you?”
“I just want it to be healthy and happy,” Daddy said. He sat down on the swing and Treva sat beside him, her head on his shoulder.
I sat on the step just watching them smile at each other. They looked like a real family.
And then it occurred to me, we looked like a real family. Daddy and Treva and me, we were a real family. And pretty soon, there would be a new baby. I could babysit sometimes, maybe. And I’d be the best big sister ever.
“You okay?” Daddy said. “You’re awfully quiet over there.”
“I’m just ... happy,” I said.
He smiled at me.
“I’ve gotta go call Lee Ann!” I said, rising. “She won’t believe it!”
I heard Treva laugh as I ran inside, and Daddy’s low voice talking to her softly.
Life was good.
Please turn the page for a very special Q&A with Sherri Wood Emmons.
Where did you come up with the idea for The Sometimes Daughter?
Several years ago I watched the documentary Woodstock—3 Days of Peace and Music. Sometime on the second day, I think, the announcer called over the PA system for a man to come to the medical tent, because his wife was having a baby. And I wondered, what would that be like? What would it mean to be born at Woodstock? And the first line of the story, “I was born at Woodstock,” just stuck in my head. So I had to write the story to find out what happened to the baby.
Did you know when you started how the story would end?
The Sometimes Daughter Page 34
