The Unwelcomed Child Read online

  If I believed what they said, or at least what my grandmother said, most of the time, nothing had gotten better with time. Progress seemed to undermine the important and especially the moral things in our lives. One of her favorite expressions was “I wish I could turn back time.” Sometimes I thought she prayed for it. Her refrain at the end of grace was always “and spare us from the new horrors outside our door.”

  The way she said that made me think that monsters were camped on our front lawn, especially when I was younger. I was so frightened that I repeated her refrain almost as loudly as she did. I accepted the power and the hope that prayer provided. What else did I have?

  There we were on Sundays, the three of us, holding our Bibles in the living room in front of a large crucifix, singing. Grandfather Prescott would read a passage, and we would then do a silent prayer. We would have something special to eat for lunch that day and maybe a homemade pie with an infinitesimal amount of sugar. It was the only highlight of the week.

  How dreary their lives were, I thought when I was old enough to understand it all and could look back with clearer eyes. I even found myself pitying them, as much as or more than I pitied myself. In many ways, they were just as caged up as I was, except that they had crawled in of their own volition and then willingly locked the door behind themselves.

  Before my grandfather had retired, he at least had his successful mattress-manufacturing business in Lake Hurley. That gave him more contact with the world, with other people, and therefore, I thought, more pleasure. Any real socializing they had done came out of his business connections and associates. From what he told me, at the high point of his enterprise, he was employing fifty people, including salesmen who sold his product in three different upstate counties.

  Despite how well he did, he and my grandmother never lived more than modest lives. They still drove the same car they had bought ten years ago. They never went on any vacation, nor did they buy anything anyone would call luxurious for their home. My grandmother didn’t buy new clothing for herself until something had been washed so much it was close to falling apart in her hands. Whenever my grandfather mentioned that he might buy a new pair of shoes or some clothing, she told him he didn’t need it or simply asked, “What for?” Usually, that was enough to stomp his urge to death the way she would stomp on an ant that had begun a foray in our kitchen.

  After they were married, my grandmother had worked for the mattress company, overseeing all the finances. She had left teaching but was so good at math she had been hired as an assistant to the accountant my grandfather had been using. During one of the infrequent times he talked to me about their courting and marriage, he told me that the first time he met my grandmother, she made some very sensible financial suggestions to him.

  “I knew I had a blessing in disguise when I met her,” he told me.

  I wasn’t too young to think that he must have been blind. Was that really a reason to marry someone, her skill at seeing a wasteful expenditure? However, when I did get the opportunity to look at some old photographs, I was surprised to see how naturally pretty Grandmother Myra was. She was much thinner now, and her facial features were sharper, her skin spotted with age and her hair a dull gray with just a touch of her once dark brown shade in places. She kept it so tightly knotted behind her head it pulled her forehead and thin cheeks as firmly as a drum skin. She was about my grandfather’s height, with surprising strength in her long, thin arms.

  My grandfather still had a very handsome face, with a strong, straight mouth, bright blue eyes, and a full head of still thick light brown hair. Grandmother Myra was always after him to go to the barber, but he avoided it for as long as he could, until she would threaten to cut it herself while he was sleeping. I had no doubt she would, and neither did he. She always cut my auburn hair to the length she thought proper. It was years before I even knew what a beauty parlor was, and only then because she ranted on and on about how wasteful an expenditure that was, especially “women having their toenails cut and painted.”

  When I was twelve, my grandparents began to take me on occasional shopping trips. Many times, they made me stay in the car while they went into stores, and when they did bring me into a store to buy some clothes I needed, my grandmother hovered over me, forcing me to concentrate only on what I had to buy and not look around, never attract any boy’s attention, especially, and never, ever speak to anyone except the saleslady, and that was just to say, “Thank you.”

  “You never talk to strangers,” she warned, and since I knew practically no one, everyone was a stranger. How would I ever have a conversation with anyone?

  When we drove, my grandmother would periodically look back at me and say, “Don’t gape out the window. You look like a fool.”

  Of course, that was exactly how I felt, like a fool. There were things out there that were so obvious to other girls and boys my age, but to me, they were like things discovered in outer space. I was fascinated by signs and posters, especially those advertising concerts and films, the style of the clothing girls my age were wearing, the jewelry I saw on them, and, of course, the makeup. I had yet to hold a tube of lipstick in my hand, much less use one. Grandmother Myra never used any makeup, so I couldn’t even try something she had.

  When we walked through a mall and I was drawn to the covers of magazines to look at the beautiful women and girls, my grandmother would seize my head and force me to look straight, nearly tearing my neck. I moaned in pain.

  “Don’t look at trash,” she would say. “It will spoil your eyes, missy.”

  I didn’t have to ask if she was serious. There was never any question that evil was seen as a disease, something I could catch like a cold. My grandparents believed that because of what had happened to my mother and because I was the unwelcome result of it, I had a poorer immune system when it came to evil. I would catch it faster, and it would be far more serious for me. They also believed that was true for actual diseases and illnesses. Even though seemingly good people had terrible health problems, my grandmother believed there was something in their past or their parents’ past that caused it. It was one of her favorite biblical quotes: “You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children.”

  Even though I was very healthy and didn’t have to see a doctor much at all, the possibility of something horrendous happening to me always loomed out there. She had me expecting to be struck down by some debilitating disease. However, when they took me to a dentist twice a year, he would always remark about how perfect my teeth were.

  “She doesn’t eat horrible sweets or chew gum,” my grandmother would tell him.

  That wasn’t a lie. Except for the pie on Sunday, the sweetest thing I was permitted was a tablespoon of honey in a cup of tea. I had no cookies, soda, candy, or cake and had never tasted ice cream. My grandmother told me that the longer she kept me from indulging in the lust for overly sweet foods, the better chance I had to be pure of blood.

  When I was younger, I never understood what all the talk about my blood meant, but my grandparents made it sound as if there was something rotten or spoiled in my blood, and the whole purpose of how they were bringing me up was to purify it and destroy the strains of evil that flowed through my veins. In fact, whenever I cut myself, I studied the blood that came out, looking for something dark or ugly. When I asked her why it wasn’t there, she told me to stop being stupid.

  Gradually, I realized that in their minds, evil was something inherited, or, at least, the tendency to commit it was. This wasn’t so different from what I understood to be original sin. Everyone, they told me, even they, had that stain on his or her soul, but I had more of it, and deeper, so I didn’t have just what everyone else had. I had something extra. It did no good in my earlier years to ask what it was or why. I was told that it was there, and that was that. It was my grandparents’ burden in life to work at driving it out of me. If I listened and was obedient, i
t could happen, and then I would be able to be free. That goal they had set for me kept me at least a little hopeful.

  From the comments they dropped here and there like grass seed, I gathered that my mother was far from the perfect child in their eyes and that the man who had raped her was obviously pure evil, if not the devil himself. But if she were a better person, he wouldn’t have been so drawn to her. This was why I had inherited a tendency toward evil itself. Not only was I fathered by a rapist, but I also had a mother who was more evil than most girls her age. As long as I was with them, I had no choice but to accept their view of me. I could look at myself in a mirror for hours and not see any good in my eyes, which had tiny black dots swimming in the blue, according to Grandmother Myra, another sign of something dark inside me. I tried to look at myself as much as I could to see if there was something inside me I could see. I couldn’t, of course, and looking at yourself in mirrors for longer than a few seconds to check something on your face was forbidden anyway. It led to narcissism, she said, which was the main fault of Lucifer in heaven.

  I had no mirror in my room, and when I asked for one, she said, “It’s enough to look at yourself in the bathroom to see if you’re clean. Why else would you look at yourself?”

  Did I ever dare say or even think, to see if I was pretty?

  Seeing what was available out there when I went on the shopping excursions inevitably made me ask for more and complain about how little I had. My grandmother’s reaction was to shake her head and tell my grandfather, “We have given her a taste of the apple. It can lead to no good.”

  What apple? Where was the snake urging me to defy God? Was it living inside me? Why was wanting nicer clothes and pretty things going to lead me to no good? It was all so confusing, so frustrating. If I complained too much, the periods between shopping trips would grow longer. I had to learn to keep my thoughts all bundled up inside and never look at anything with any special desire or admiration. In many ways, I was my own jailer, slapping down my hands if they reached out for something new, shutting curtains if I looked at something exciting.

  Sometimes I would study a fly caught in a spider’s web. I watched how desperately and futilely it struggled. I imagined the spider was sitting off to the side somewhere, enjoying the sight. Usually, I would destroy the web and set the fly free, because I was like that fly.

  Someday, I thought, someone will tear apart the web I’m in, and I will be just like everyone else. That thought gave me hope, but it was easy for a young girl like me to lose her optimism. There were many times when I thought about running away, of course. I dreamed of finding my mother and hearing her say, “Oh, I’m so sorry I was selfish and left you with them. Forgive me. Now we’ll be a real mother-daughter team, our own family, and I’ll buy you nice things and get you into a school where you can meet other girls and go to dances and have a boyfriend and not feel guilty about it.

  “I’ll show you how to wear makeup, get you a decent hairstyle, and buy you fashionable clothes. I’ll drive the horrid memories you have of your terrible childhood out of your mind so that it will be impossible for you to recall anything. It will be as if I was able to get into your head and wash your brain.”

  And then she would hug me, and we would go to a fun place to eat and laugh, and she would tell me things I longed to know, not just about her but also about the world out there, things like how to find a boyfriend and what to do when he began to hold and kiss you and touch you in places you were afraid to touch yourself. At least, I was afraid, thanks to my grandmother’s warnings, which would all have something to do with how I came into this world.

  My mother wouldn’t tell me about the rape right away. I would understand how painful it was for her to remember it, and I would think that wasn’t so important now anyway. Eventually, though, I would, as I did often now, wonder about my biological father. Did he just come out of the night, a dark shadow raging with lust, and overwhelm her? Did she get to see his face or hear his voice? When she looked at me now, did she see him in me? Were my grandparents right after all? Was there something sinful embedded in me? Did I have to be extra careful? Would she tell me the truth?

  But in my dream scenario, even that would be pleasant. “No, no,” she would say. “There is nothing significant of him in you. You’re all me. Don’t give it a second thought. I tell you what,” she would add, laughing, “think of yourself as an immaculate conception. That’s what my parents should have thought. If they trusted in their God so much, why didn’t they trust in you, in the wonder of you?”

  How wonderful she would make me feel. I could go to sleep, snuggled up comfortably with her nearby. I would hear music, see movies, read magazines, and eat sweets and fun foods like pizza. The invisible chains that I had felt wrapped around me would be gone. It would be as if the whole world had opened up to me. I had gone through a door, fallen through a magic hole, like Alice, and entered the wonderland I envisioned in my lonely, dark moments shut away by not only doors and windows and walls but also my grandmother’s angry glare. It was like looking directly at the sun. I had to turn away and seek the cool darkness.

  But all of that was over now that I was older and stronger.

  They could take away my freedom for now, I thought, but they couldn’t take away my dreams.

  Could they?

  They seemed to be able to take away so much, even from themselves. This fantasy I had about my mother was nothing more than just that and never would be, I thought. What I realized from reading between the lines of what they told me about my birth and my mother’s horrible victimization was that she didn’t want to give birth to me. If she didn’t want me then, why would she want to see me now?

  When she realized the rapist had impregnated her, she had come to her parents, expecting that they would arrange for an abortion, but they wouldn’t hear of it. I gathered that once my mother passed a certain point in her pregnancy, she was unable to end it, especially since she was practically kept the way I’d been, a virtual prisoner in her own home.

  “It was too late already when she came home,” my grandmother told me. “It was just like her to ignore something wrong.”

  So I understood that they had forced her to go through with it. Later, my mother would tell me she assumed they were going to give me away, get me out of everyone’s life, but they felt they had to do something else, too: they had to atone for the evil that my mother had invited into her life.

  I learned bits and pieces of the story as I grew older and asked more questions. I hoped I would learn it all someday, but for now, that was all they would tell me.

  It was only recently, in fact, that they even permitted me to see a picture of my mother. Right after I was born and my mother literally fled her home, they hid any pictures they had displayed of her. It took me years to learn that my mother’s name was Deborah Ann Edwards. My grandmother was always angry at her, it seemed, especially when my mother began to permit people to call her Debbie instead of Deborah. If someone called and asked for Debbie, she would say there was no one there by that name and hang up. I would later learn from my mother that when she had a friend over and my grandmother overheard the friend call her Debbie, she would ask the friend to leave. She even bawled out one of her teachers who casually referred to her as Debbie.

  Grandmother Myra had given birth to my mother late in her marriage to Grandfather Prescott. She was thirty-eight years old. Again trying to read between the lines, I understood that they had tried earlier, but she couldn’t get pregnant and certainly wasn’t going to take any medication or do any procedure that might heighten her chances for pregnancy. From the way Grandfather Prescott described it once when my grandmother wasn’t nearby to hear him, it came as a total surprise to them when she had begun to develop the signs of pregnancy. Back then, before my mother had disappointed them, they believed an angel had come into the house and touched Grandmother Myra in her sleep.

  They told me my mother was a beautiful, perfect-looking infant, so much
so that the nurses in the maternity ward called her a cherub.

  “I should have known she would turn out to be anything but,” my grandmother said bitterly. “Right from the start, she cried too much, demanded too much, almost sucked my breasts dry.”

  The image of that widened my eyes. Rarely, if ever, did my grandmother refer to her own body as anything but a vessel for her soul. But the feminine journey all girls travel made it impossible for her to keep me innocent and asexual. She didn’t have to prepare me for my menarche because one of the science books I had to read included some basic human reproduction facts.

  The day it happened, she made me stand in a hot shower, almost too hot to bear, and recite a prayer asking my guardian angel to keep me from succumbing to the temptations of the flesh. I babbled the words as quickly as I could, not understanding all of them. When it was over, she told me never to mention my monthlies to any man, even my grandfather. She told me to care for myself in silence and never complain about any cramps to anyone but her. Then she went into a long explanation of why women were punished with this biological event, tracing the blame back to Eve in the Garden of Eden.

  Whenever she spoke of these things, she was the most animated. It was as if everything to do with sex was an affront to our spiritual well-being, at minimum a test God threw down upon us to help him choose those of us who deserved to be in heaven and those who deserved to be embraced by Satan and suffer in hell. Years later, when I told my mother about all this, she shook her head and told me she used to imagine my grandparents making love.