“My life after that was very melancholy. I trudged through high school, feeling enormously empty and filled with self-loathing. No longer had an interest in boys. I was too traumatized by the pregnancy to let anyone touch me. In fact, that continued up until you came into my life. But back then, while everyone else was going to prom and looking at colleges, I just stayed isolated. I couldn’t stand myself. This went on for years. You already know that when I turned eighteen, I used money that was supposed to be for college to run away to Detroit to get plastic surgery. Well, now you know that the reason wasn’t entirely just to improve my physical appearance so much as masking the old one. I was just so disappointed in myself that I basically wanted Rana to disappear.” My lip quivered.
Sympathy returned to his eyes, which were now filling with moisture, although he didn’t fully cry. I suspected he was struggling with his emotions, probably unsure of whether to feel disappointed in me or empathetic.
I continued, “When I came home after running away for the surgery, I expected my family to disown me once and for all. But I got the opposite reception. The compassion they showed me during that time was beyond anything I ever expected. When I left, they’d thought they lost me forever. So, it was only upon returning home that I realized that, even though I didn’t have a mother who gave two shits about me, I had a dad and two grandparents who loved me very much. They never questioned why I ran away. They seemed to get it completely. They knew that my surgery had little to do with what was on the surface. Unfortunately, there isn’t a surgery for a broken soul.”
There it was. A teardrop fell from his eyes. He was truly pained to hear me say that. This was the moment that I really needed to try even better to make him understand.
Placing both of my hands around his face and wiping his tears with my thumb, I looked deeply into his eyes. “I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, Landon, that your birth mother may have given you up, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t love you. She just truly believed that you were better off without her. And I want you to know that I fully understand if you can’t accept the fact that I made the very same mistake that she did. I don’t want you to look at me and see all of the resentment that you have for her. So, I’m going to ask of you the very same favor you asked of me back in California. If you can’t see past this, if you can’t be with me without being ashamed, then I would rather you not pretend.”
He wiped his eyes. “Do you know where she is?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know about you?”
“No.”
“What’s her name?”
Here it comes.
That was the other part of the story. Perhaps, the biggest part.
“Her name is Lilith.”
SAY SOMETHING
It took a while for the name to register in his mind.
“Lilith…isn’t that the name of the—”
“Yes. The girl I visit every week. Yes.”
“It’s her? Your daughter?”
“Yes.”
Landon got up from the bed and walked toward the window.
He paced for a bit before turning to me. “She has no clue?”
“No.”
He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I’m confused. Explain it to me.”
“Alright.” I stood up from the bed and walked toward him. “You remember how you said you woke up one day and realized the life you were living wasn’t the one you wanted? Well, that sort of happened to me around the age of twenty-one. I had worked really hard to turn my life around somewhat, repair my relationship with my father and grandparents. But the one thing I couldn’t seem to get over was the lingering need for the baby I had given away. It was like I finally woke up and saw what I had done. But it was too late. It just hit me that there was a part of me out there somewhere and that I hadn’t so much as seen her once. My giving her away was never about not loving my unborn child. In a sense, I didn’t even allow myself to feel things long enough at the time of the birth to even realize that I loved her. I was in this perpetually numb state the whole time I was pregnant and after. It had nothing to do with a conscious lack of love. It was about hating myself and not wanting her to hate me like I hated my mother. I didn’t want to be the kind of mother mine was. I wanted better for her, but at fifteen I wasn’t smart enough to realize that as long as I loved her, I could’ve made it work somehow. I may not have had money, but I would’ve given her an abundance of love. My mother never had that in her. But I did. I realized my mistake too late. That didn’t change how I felt, though.”
“How did you end up finding her?”
“It wasn’t that hard. It wasn’t a closed adoption per se. I always had the name and the address of the family. The adoptive parents didn’t think I wanted to be involved, so there wasn’t anything put in place to prevent me from going back to find her. Perhaps they never insisted on anonymity because they suspected I might change my mind someday and would want to know her. I always had their names, address, everything. It seemed ironic and a little fateful that they lived not far from where we grew up. It was the reason I moved back to this part of the state.”
“So…what did you do…go to their house?”
“No. I never wanted to drop any kind of bomb on them. I handled it very carefully. When she was about seven, I called her mother privately and asked if there was any way I could get to know Lilith. Beth is a prominent attorney who works a lot. I assured her that I respected the fact that she’s Lilith’s mother. Like it or not, I gave up my rights—as painful as that is. I understand that.”
“What did she say?”
“For many years, she refused to let me see her. Beth thought it was too soon. But I persisted. When Lilith got to be around nine, her mother finally agreed. We came up with a plan for me to volunteer once a week. Lilith is under the impression that her mother just brought me in to pass the time with her after school. We even set it up through the Big Sister Program of Michigan. She also has a nanny who watches her while her parents work. They both work a lot of hours. So, for the past year, I’ve been getting to know her in the only way that I can—as her Big Sister.”
Landon was still absorbing it. “My God. How are you able to pull that off? It has to be incredibly difficult for you.”
“I know this is going to sound strange. But Lilith makes it easy to forget the pain. We truly have become friends, connecting with each other on a human level, regardless of the roles we play in each other’s lives. She is amazingly smart…witty…and mature beyond her years. I’m extremely grateful to Beth for giving me the opportunity and not shutting me out because she very well could have done that. Perhaps I even deserved that.”
“So, you agreed not to tell Lilith your identity? Are you ever going to tell her?”