“Justin.” Her voice is muffled because her hands are back over her face. “I can’t believe you let everyone believe those lies. Foryears. Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?”
“Why bother when everyone had already made up their mind about me?”
I want to tell her that those who knew me best didn’t believe the bullshit, but I can’t, so I just sit in silence. Her eyes are roaming my face, like ants crawling under my skin. Does she believe me? Is she searching for signs that I’m lying?
She might feel like she needs to be able to trust me, but nowhere near as much as I wish she did.
CHAPTER25
Savannah
I’m pacing back and forth in Athena’s living room while she hides out in another room, giving me space to have this monumental showdown with my parents via phone call. I’m far enough post-op that I can pace, but not far enough that I don’t feel it with every step, but this brewing storm in my chest needed to break free either way. So I’m pacing.
My parents have been great for the past week. Too great. They’ve checked in every day, sent food to Athena’s apartment, they even offered to come back to Iowa and spend the weekend. But it’s too nice, it’s too civil, and it’s far too much avoidance for my hurt and angry self.
So I kind of lost it.
And now I can’t put the toothpaste back in the freakin’ tube. I’m not sure I even want to.
Mom’s crying, Dad’s shushing her and telling her it’ll all be okay, and so far, all they’ve given me is that they weren’t sure what to say, and they kept my adoption from me for my own good. No matter how much I rack my brain I can’t figure out what that good might have been.
“Are you ashamed of adopting me? Or of me being adopted?”
Mom hiccups, and Dad shoots me down right away. “There’s nothing wrong with adoption. It bears no reflection on you, or your birth parents for that matter.”
“I know that. I was just checking that you guys know that.”
“We just wanted to protect you.”
“From what? Feeling unwanted?” I smack my thigh with my free hand clipping the table and making my phone judder against the wood. “Not telling me I’m adopted cements the idea that I was unwanted by my birth parents, like it’s some dark and dirty secret. How many times have you guys told me that the best way to deal with something is to work tirelessly to normalize it?”
Tears stream down my face. The facts in front of me—that my amazing, supportive, accepting parents kept this from me—don’t line up. There has to be a why. There has to be a reason they kept me in the dark.
I move my phone from my ear and pull up a website where I read how important it is to tell your children they’re adopted.
“Many adoptees who found out they were adopted as adults feel betrayed and lied to by their adoptive parents.No shit.”
I turn on my heel and walk back over Hen’s plush cream rug, still reading.
“Talking to your child about adoption from an early age will help them trust you and feel that they can come to you with their feelings about adoption. Keeping their story a secret from them will only hurt them.”
It’s hard to put into words exactly what I’m feeling, but if I don’t try to do it now, this conversation will have to happen again, and I’m not sure I can make Mom cry like this again. Hurting her is hurting me even more, and while I don’t understand their decision to keep such a huge thing secret, I may have to accept that I’ll never understand their decision.
But I’m not ready to accept that just yet.
“Being adopted isn’t my whole story. I know that. It’s not all that I am. But it’s still a big part of me, and you still withheld a vital piece of information from me. I had a right to search for my birth parents if I wanted to.” I sniff, my tears coming faster than my words. “I had the right to grieve my adoption if I needed to. You made this huge choice about my life for your own benefit, when I deserved to know who I was and process that however I needed to.”
Silence.
I guess there’s not much they can say to that because I’m right. I knew that already, but my righteousness doesn’t begin to undo the hurt that’s engulfed my entire being.
I’m sobbing now—heaving, shuddering, ragged breaths being sucked into my body but I’m not feeling the benefit of the oxygen in the air.
“You had no right to keep this from me. I don’t know how she died. I don’t know what illnesses ran in her family. Did she leave any other family? Did she leave a diary with my birth father’s name on it? I… I thought I knew all this stuff about myself, my past, my potential future, and I don’t. You took that from me. You kept it from me.”
“Honey…” Mom has stopped crying now but she’s still sniffing. I’d guess between us we’ve used more than a box of Kleenex on this call alone.
“No!” It’s possible I’m screaming now. Athena has burst into the living space, her face pale and her brows pinched into a frown.
