AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I nodded, but as one too stunned to really appreciate what she was being told or what she was agreeing to by nodding. Amou held me and rocked with me. My little heart pounded, and then, afterward, when she went back to her dinner preparations, I ran off behind the house and hid myself behind the biggest oak tree. I remained out there for hours and hours. When Amou called for me. I did not answer, nor did I go back. I crouched deeper into the shadows, even though it was so hard to ignore her pleas.
I was more comfortable out here, bathed in the darkness. I didn't fully understand everything my adoptive mother had told me, but it was enough to make me feel so empty. It was as if my body had lost all of its substance, and if I didn't cling to something, I might get caught up in the wind and carried off.
The Doctor was away on a speaking
engagement. He was often on those, and this one had taken him clear across the country to California. He was gone nearly three whole days, and during that time I continued to mope and hide from my adoptive mother's suspicious and critical eves as much as I could. I spent most of my time wandering alone outside the house. When it was time for dinner and I knew my adoptive mother would be there at the table with me. I actually felt myself trembling. I had little appetite. too.
Before the Doctor returned. I developed a fever and Amou kept me in bed, bringing me my meals. My adoptive mother didn't think I was really sick, and Amou had to show her the thermometer. She drove her away by suggesting I might be coming down with something contagious. As it turned out. I never developed a cold or a cough, and as quickly as my fever had come, it was gone.
When the Doctor returned, he asked for me. and Amou told him what had happened. My adoptive mother was at a charity event. He came right to my room, which was not something he had often done. I thought he might be angry at me.
He never yelled at me, but whenever he spoke to me with my adoptive mother present, he always spoke firmly, sounding more like a schoolteacher than a father, adoptive or otherwise. With Amou at his side this time, he spoke much more softly, even lovingly.
He knelt down and took my hands.
""I'm sorry you heard that the way you did. Willow." he began,
"I'm adopted," I said, hoping he would deny it, hoping he would tell me my mother was simply alloy again and was saying something that wasn't really true, but he just nodded.
"Yes, you are adopted. Willow, but that doesn't mean you are less to me. You are our daughter and thi
s is your home. This room is still your room and all your dolls and toys are still yours. This is not any less your home than it was before you were told these things."
I wanted to ask him about the ward rape. I wanted to ask him if I was going to be a patient in his clinic, too, someday. but I didn't.
"I was planning on telling you everything someday. Willow. but I was hoping to wait until you were somewhat older, so you could understand everything easier." he explained. "I want you to know that nothing will change. Nothing is any different. You are Willow De Beers and you will always be, until you get married, that is," he added with a smile. "Although many women keep their maiden names these days," he said, more to Amou than to me. "Come, get out of bed, wash your face, and put on something nice. Then come on downstairs." he said. standing. "It's almost time for dinner, and then afterward, you and I can read your schoolbook together."
It was one of the few things he did with me on a regular basis.
While I was getting dressed, my mother returned. and I heard them talking, The Doctor didn't raise his voice, but he was getting her more and more upset. I could tell by the shrill sound of her replies and how she was getting louder and louder.
"I did what you should have done a long time ago." she concluded. "You're an expensive
psychiatrist. Claude, but you don't seem to know how to handle your own situations at home. and I warned you at the start that I wouldn't put up with anything that made me unhappy."
He didn't respond apparently, because I didn't hear him. I heard doors close and his footsteps in the hallway.
Later, at dinner, my adoptive mother-- as I could not help but think of her now-- acted as if nothing terrible had been said and told. She chatted on about her social plans, something new she wanted to buy for the house, and a vacation she was thinking they should take. It was as if I wasn't even there, as if her earlier words had made me invisible. I felt the Doctor's eyes on me from time to time, but other than that. and Amou's talking to me. I imagined myself drifting away, like an astronaut whose lifeline in space had been cut. I was floating into the darkness. helplessly.
At school I couldn't help wondering if I suddenly appeared different to my friends and my teachers. Did some of them always know the truth anyway? Was it something in my school records? There was one other adopted child in my classes, a boy named Scott Lawrence. For some reason his status as an adopted child was never kept secret. Of course, my adoptive mother had made it perfectly clear that I was a major embarrassment for the Doctor and his clinic, and so I had to be hush-hush. My very existence was a whisper.
Now that I had been so bluntly told the truth and left with the idea that madness could sprout in my face anytime, anywhere. I was sure anyone and everyone who looked at me instantly realized what I was.
At night I would lie awake and wonder what my real mother's name was and, of course, what she looked like. I would stare at myself in the mirror and study my eyes to see if there was someone crazy just waiting to pop out of me. And I would have terrible new nightmares about my birth.
I knew what someone in a catatonic state was like because I had wandered into the Doctor's office from time to time and looked at some of his
textbooks. I saw a picture of a woman who was catatonic. She looked like she was imprisoned in her own body. There were tubes connected to her, which was how she got food. When I asked the Doctor about it, he said sometimes people shut themselves up in their own bodies to escape from unpleasant things. They don't see or hear or even feel anything anymore.
A baby made in such a woman would grow like a plant, I thought. Her mother would not even realize she was in her until it was time for her to come out. The mother might have to be cut open and the baby taken out. Afterward, the sewed up mother wouldn't even know a baby had been there. Was that the way it had been for my real mother?
Maybe she didn't know I even existed, that a part of her was alive. She didn't name me or ever feed me-- she probably didn't so much as look at me and smile. I was just something that was, something without any history. My adoptive mother was right. I supposed. I should be very grateful for what she and the Doctor were giving me. They were giving me a name and a home.
I couldn't help but be more curious about Scott Lawrence now. What image did he have of himself? Did he wonder about his real parents, too? Did he especially wonder whether or not he had any brothers or sisters? Could I have any? Was my mother married before she went to the clinic and could she have had other children before she became mentally ill?
I couldn't really imagine Scott Lawrence being bothered by anything like this. Of all the boys in my class, he was one of the most outgoing, if not the most outgoing. There was nothing even to suggest he had any sort of inferiority complex. In fact, some of the boys thought he verged on the border of being a bully. He was hyper in class and loved to pull practical jokes on the girls, especially shy ones like me. Getting him or any of the boys in my fifth-grade class to be serious for a few minutes was as hard as keeping a fish out of water calm.
Nevertheless, one day shortly after my terrible confrontation with my adaptive mother. I decided to chance it. We had a forty-five-minute lunch hour, but most everyone gobbled down his or her food in less than fifteen minutes and then spent the rest of the lunch hour in the shady area just outside the cafeteria. Our teachers who were on lunch duty monitored it as well as the lunchroom. We were not permitted to leave the designated section of the school grounds. Outside, students could play radios or CD players if they did so at a decent volume. Ordinarily, the boys stayed apart from the girls. We would laugh at the way some of them showed off, their fooling around and roughhousing occasionally breaking out into a more serious fight.
