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Prologue
.
I walked hesitantly down the corridor to my
sophomore English class at the University of North Carolina as if I already knew the trouble that awaited me. I could actually feel the increasing trembling in my body, the quickening of my heartbeat, and the spreading of the small patch of ice at the base of my spine. The moment I had awakened this morning. I sensed something was seriously wrong back home. It was as if a dark storm cloud had floated by earlier and had paused overhead long enough to rain a chill down into my heart. Almost as soon as I opened my eyes. I wanted to call Daddy, but I didn't. My boyfriend. Allan Simpson, a prelaw student, was fond of teasing me whenever I had what my Portuguese nanny. Isabella Martino, used to call the dreads-- dark, ominous feelings that moved up your spine like mercury in a thermometer.
"I can't believe you let a superstitious old woman affect you like that," he said. "The dreads? The ability to feel trouble coming? Really. Willow, you're almost nineteen. You're not a child."
I knew I wasn't a child, but how could I not have been influenced more by her than by anyone else and carried that influence into my adulthood? Up until I was nearly seventeen, when she finally left us to return to her family in Brazil. Isabella, whom I fondly called Amou, had more to do with my upbringing than my own mother, who had leaped upon the opportunity to let me know I was adopted as soon as I could understand what the word meant. Afterward, she didn't hesitate to put the word in front of mother whenever she used it in reference to me. Other children my age had mothers, I had an adoptive mother.
My father never did that, and so I never thought of him as anyone other than my father. Daddy.
I began to call Isabella Amou just about the time I began to speak. In fact. I feel quite certain that I pronounced that word way before I said any other understandable word. Amou's eyes were always full of laughter when I said it, full of sparkling lights
"Amou. Amou," she would cry, and began to refer to herself the same way. "Do it for Amou. Willow. One more spoonful." she would urge. and I would eat one more spoonful.
She had been referring to me as Amou Una from the moment she had begun to care for me, to hold me in her arms and rock me to sleep as she sang one of her favorite Portuguese children's songs. In Portuguese, amou una means "loved one." and I simply echoed it back at her, only choosing to shorten it because it was so much easier for a two-year-old to do so. I insisted on calling her Amou despite my adoptive mother's always correcting me and lecturing me, sometimes quite emphatically, to call her Isabella and not Amou, especially if I did it in front of my adoptive mother's friends, who would grimace and ask. "What did she say?" It was practically impossible for any of them to understand, which made my adoptive mother angrier and angrier,
I can recall her seizing me by the shoulders when I was no more than three, three and a half. and shaking me roughly as she chastised me. screaming, "Are you an absolute idiot already, Willow De Beers?"
When my adoptive mother was angry at me, she always used my whole name. It was as if she were reminding me that the entire family would suffer for any mistakes I had made. reminding me that I carried the family name and I should consider it a greater gift than life itself. for, after all. wasn't it true that I had been born without a name, without an identity, almost without blood?
"Don't you understand what I am telling you? Her name is Isabella. Isabella. Say it. Say it she demanded. and I cried and pressed my lips together because I was terrified that somehow the word Isabella would escape my mouth and bring a stab of pain to Amou, who stood by, holding her breath and feeling guilty but too frightened to come to my defense. I'm sure.
"Willow De Beers, you say Isabella. Say it I want to hear that you can say it. Say it!' she insisted. She had her face so close to mine, I could see the tiny blood vessels in her temples. I remember thinking her blood was blue. Mine was red, but hers was blue. Why were we different? Did this mean something really was wrong with me. just as she often claimed?
She shook me again, and I stared with frightened eves at a woman I hardly recognized as my mother, adoptive or otherwise. It took my breath away to see that she could speak and look so out of control. How could I help but cringe and swallow back any words, much less say the one she wanted me to say?
"Say it. or I'll stuff you into one of my luggage trunks and send you away to one of those countries where other little adopted girls have nothing to eat and have to sleep on beds of hay. Isabella can tell you about that. Would you like that? Well? Would you?"
I started to cry softly, my body shaking almost as hard as it had when she had seized my shoulders.
Fortunately, my father was nearby, which wasn't often enough for me, because whenever he was home, he always came to my defense. He interceded in his calm doctor's voice.
"I'm afraid you won't get anywhere with her that way. Alberta. You are frightening her, and when an infant is frightened, she cannot accept information, much less imprint it," he told her.
"Please. Claude, spare me your psychiatric jargon. We are not all patients under your tender loving care in your mental hospital," she threw at him as if she were tossing a gift back in his face.
I can vividly recall the look on his face. I remember all of his expressions. but those he reserved for my adoptive mother were truly special. Now that I'm older and can put it into words and ideas, I realize he looked back at her that day and on many similar occasions afterward as if he really were looking at one of his patients. She either ignored it or didn't realize it.
She turned from him and glared at me. I thought she still might lash out and slap me, but she turned away and slapped at her own ankle-length flowing skirt, snapping the material as she rushed off, the heavy scent of her perfume lingering like a constant reminder of her fury.
I often looked back on those early days and thought that married to a woman like my adoptive mother, my father couldn't have been a happy man, despite her physical beauty and despite his great success and his national reputation as a psychiatrist with his own clinic, which he called the Willows and after which I had been named. My adoptive mother claimed she had nothing to do with naming me. She made that clear to anyone and everyone who remarked about it. I remember thinking there was something wrong with my name. It was probably why I was too shy to reply when anyone asked me who I was. That embarrassed my adoptive mother, who, ironically, was really the cause of it. However, she was not about to take the blame for that.
"Who would name a child after a nuthouse," she ranted at me one day. "even if it was where you were conceived and where you were born?"
