I sink into the abyss.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
Sirens.
Beeps.
Unfamiliar noises reverberate in my ears and thoughts. There’re ones that don’t fit, ones I can’t identify. Wakefulness comes in small snippets, each time a bit longer, until the world outside my body makes itself known.
I try to move, yet I can’t. I’m no longer floating in someone’s arms but tethered to the earth.
Time means nothing.
An hour.
A day.
A week.
Pain remains my complacent companion. Present yet satisfied to simply be.
Dreams like memories fill my thoughts. I’m a voyeur, unable to stop what is about to happen.
My period is late.
I’m never late. I confide in mybest friend.
With my graduation approaching, I go to someone else, the one woman who was always there for me and my siblings, completely judgment free, our grandmother.
Grandma Sue hugs me, encourages me to follow through with the pregnancy and consider adoption.
I don’t want that, not at first.
She sits me down and holds my hand. We talk...and as we do, she too confesses a secret.
I didn’t know, but now I do. I’m watching and I can’t make her stop.
I want to shout, “Stop, Grandma.” But the words don’t form.
We’re being overheard.
My father is listening.
Nearly half a century old, Grandma Sue’s story is of a young girl facing a similar yet different situation. The result was the same, a surprise pregnancy. Times were different over fifty years earlier; abortion wasn’t an option, not in Michigan. Her answer came in the form of a good friend, not the baby’s father but a man who loved her and whom she grew to love.
I stare helplessly at the face of my father. His emotions have never been so obvious. There’s hurt and anger. He’s been deceived for all his life. In that moment he learns that the man he knew, loved, and respected, the one we buried a decade earlier, wasn’t his biological father.
Tears form as I watch my father storm out of his mother’s home, knowing what the future holds. I reach out, but I’m not there.
This was long ago.
Grandma Sue tells me she loves me. She tells me that times have changed. She believes in me. I can follow through on my college plans, give birth, and ensure my child a home with someone as good and kind as the man she married, the man I knew as my grandfather.
I fight the scene, the memory, as life and pain return.
The sensations return.
