If not yours, then who am I?

You were not mine. 

I stared at four words on a page.  Four typed words. While her body and mind crumbled, she hadn’t cared enough to hand write them.  Four words that caused my world to come crashing down around me and suck the air from my lungs. I stared blindly at the page for what seemed like hours, thoughts buzzing around in my head with the dull hum of hundreds of bees lazily floating through the patch of wildflowers in the backyard.  

I slumped into the nearest chair at the worn kitchen table, staring down at the rest of the letter.  I hadn’t made it past the opening sentence yet and I wasn't sure I wanted to read it. I’m not her daughter?  Leaving the letter on the table I cradle my head in my hands and let the memories swirl through my head in a dizzying rush.  

My sixth birthday party, I had a few friends over and the biggest cake my six year old eyes had ever seen.  Simple white icing with bright pink letters spelling Happy Sixth Birthday in big block letters sat before me, shining in the light of the single wax number 6.  I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing with all the might of a desperate child, and suddenly found my nose full of sugary icing. I lifted my head to the sound of hideous laughter from behind me.  My mother had shoved my face into the cake, thinking it a hilarious prank. I was humiliated. My friends cried because now they couldn’t eat any of the beautiful cake. The force of her shoving my head down had blown out the candle I’d so eagerly picked out at the grocery store that morning.  I stumbled down from the chair, running blindly for the bathroom. Through tears of mortification and sorrow, I locked the door and hid behind the shower curtain, listening to everyone leaving quickly while my heart shattered. The lecture later that night fell on sore ears as I tried to subtly rub away the lingering sting of my mom’s pinching fingers from when she dragged me out of the bathroom.  Dad never knew, he was at work like always. His lecture hurt worse, having been influenced by my mom’s version of events where I went crazy and smashed the cake and yelled at my guests until they left.

Absently I rubbed my ear as another memory crashed through me.  The day my little sister was born. I was 7. I stared, enamored, at the tiny bundle in her arms.  I reached out a hand to touch her small fingers, absolutely certain my heart was going to burst with the amount of love I felt for this little girl.   I needed to touch her. Instead of soft baby skin, my hand stung from the vicious slap of my mom’s hand on my fingers. Her “don’t touch”, whispered harshly at me startled me and before I could stop them, tears of pain, confusion and devastation coursed down my cheeks.  I had made sure to carefully wash my hands and not touch anything on my way into the room. As usual, dad’s attention was elsewhere. He frowned at me, told me to leave my mother alone and be good. He sent me from the room, left to sit alone in the waiting room until he was ready for the silent trip home.  

Memory after memory slammed through my brain.  I wasn’t hers. All those years of neglect, abuse and hatred finally made sense.  I wasn’t hers. I didn’t share blood with the vile woman who’d lived to make my life hell.  Mocking me when I went to her for help when I didn’t feel well, slapping me across the face when I tried to cry on her shoulder after getting stood up on my first date.  I learned to keep out of her way and keep my mouth shut. Dad worked insane hours and was never there for the abuse.  

I began to laugh.  Loud, borderline maniacal laughter.  Hysterical cackling filled the room. Deep, rough laughs that gave way to soul-wrenching sobs.  Who am I then? Who am I if I’m not hers?  

I let myself cry for a bit.  I cried, screamed, laughed, sobbed and ranted at the walls.  I cursed her, I cursed my dad. I questioned if he  was really my dad.  

With no regard for the time, I snatched up my keys, the letter and my phone and raced for my car. I needed answers.  Now. 

I pounded on his door fifteen minutes later.  He was still in the dark suit he’d worn to the funeral, a tumbler with his usual evening brandy in his hand.  He did not look surprised to see me. I held the letter out to him, silently demanding he take it.  

“If I’m not hers,” I nearly spat the word, “who is my real mother.”  

He took the letter, stepped back, led me through the echoing marble foyer and into his office.  I gripped the back of a leather facing his desk and watched as he sat, wrist moving slightly to swirl the liquid in his glass.  

The silence stretched for a long time.  I could wait. Finally, he began to speak.  His voice sounding every day of his sixty six years, and then some.  

“Your mother was my first wife. We eloped.  My parents had no idea she and I were together, no idea that I was so deeply in love with her that I was willing to walk away from them to be with her.  They couldn’t fathom it. Their marriage was for convenience, the merging of two empires to make a bigger one to take over more and more of the financial world.  They expected me to do the same. Instead, I fell in love with a girl I met at college. A girl studying whatever her heart desired. She had no ambitions beyond living a happy life and that horrified them.”  He paused. I could see the pain in every breath he took. Feel it in every word.  

He sucked in a ragged breath and continued.  Telling me that with her, he found meaning and light.  How she made him smile and laugh, made him want to do something more and better with his life than follow his parent’s plans.  He made her seem real. Like this free-spirited wood nymph would walk through the door and say hello. He rambled for nearly an hour, giving me details that filled some cracks in my soul and blew more wide open.  

“The day before I turned 30, my parents sat me down and told me they’d had enough of my antics and it was time to marry the girl they’d chosen for me.  I was expected to marry her, make heirs for their empire and raise them the same way I’d been raised. I did something they never anticipated. I said no.  I told them I was planning to propose the next day to the love of my life. They laughed. I’m sure they thought it was a joke and I’d see reason. I was serious.  The next day, I was about to walk into breakfast with them when I heard them. They were planning my engagement party. To the woman they’d picked out. I left. I went straight to your mother and asked her to marry me.  Right then. We’d leave for Vegas and come back as a married couple.” 

He stopped abruptly, set his glass down, picked it back up and tossed it back like a shot of cheap liquor. 

His voice rasped as he continued.  “On the way to Vegas, she told me she was pregnant with you.  We’d been careful but apparently not careful enough. I was ecstatic.  A wife and a baby all in one? I couldn’t believe my luck.” His hollow chuckle escaped and he rose to pour himself more alcohol.  With his back to me he told me how they came home, triumphant. Told his parents they were married, she was expecting and he was leaving.   Predictably, they disowned him. Told him to leave and never return.  

“Then, about a month before you were born my mother contacted me.  Said she’d done some soul searching and wanted to be part of our lives.  I was cautious but your mom, well, your mom had a forgiving heart. She welcomed the attempts at reconciliation with open arms.” 

He sucked down a deep gulp of more brandy, poured another before returning to his stately leather chair behind his desk.  I was so engrossed in his words that I had no care or thought for what my clenching fingers were doing to the seat in front of me.  I needed to hear more. Afraid that my mind had already guessed how this story would end.  

“The day you were born, my parents were both at the hospital.  I was still wary but thankful for the support. The hospital wouldn’t let me in the delivery room, so my mother went while I paced the floor as my father watched.  What seemed like ages later my mother and a nurse came out of the room. I stopped, stared at the baby in my mother’s arms. Stared at you. And barely heard them when they said your mother had died bringing you into the world.  I don’t remember what happened next. I just remember feeling like time had no meaning. That life went black and white and I couldn’t see anything clearly. I was drowning in pain. For weeks, all that existed was you and me. I was desperately trying to figure out what you needed while fighting for every breath.” 

I wanted to comfort him but my muscles couldn’t move.  How did he go from us-against-the-world, to leaving me at the mercy of the woman I knew as my mother?

“I finally gave in.  I went to my parents and begged them for help.”  He dropped the now empty tumbler on his desk and raked his hands through his hair, tugging hard at the dark strands. 

“They told me the only way to help you was to marry another woman, have her raise you since I was clearly so bad at it.  I believed them. I did what they said. I -” he paused and looked up, staring deeply into my eyes. “I stupidly believed that she would take you in.  Raise you like her own. I was wrong and I failed you.” 

I did go to him then.  Wrapping my arms around his shoulders from the side, holding him while his body shook from tears and sobs that he’d been holding in for far too long.  He reached out, pulling me onto his lap and hugging me close. We held each other and cried.  

After a long time I stood, sniffling in my search for tissues.  When I found them and returned with some for him, he was staring at the letter, a look of disbelief and shock across his face.  

I stood behind him, reading the words I’d ignored earlier over his shoulder.  

“You were not mine.  

You were hers.  You nearly took my rightful place, so I took her from you.  I was expected to treat you like my own but everyday you looked more and more like her.  I hated you. You disgust me. I was promised a lot of money if I made you miserable and I enjoyed every penny of that money.  I earned it.  

She’s still alive, as far as I know.  A few well placed bribes to hospital staff, funeral staff, reporters and a lawyer and your father, and his money, were all mine.  Like they were always meant to be. 

Your grandmother, may she rot in hell, helped me with this.  She got cozy with the woman who stole your father from me, waited until she delivered you then told her you’d died.  That your father wanted nothing to do with her and she needed to leave. The stupid woman believed it. She didn’t put up a fight but left silently in the middle of the night.  I hoped that if I ignored you long enough you’d go away but, your father loved you, so I allowed you to stay. After all, if he wasn’t happy, my money would disappear with him. I did what I had to. 

Even now, on my deathbed, I hate you.  You robbed me of years of life travelling without a care or budget.  

I regret nothing I did to you.” 

My father and I stared at the page, locked in on one sentence.  ‘She’s still alive, as far as I know.’ 

“I have to find her!” We spoke the same words at the same time, glancing at each other wildly.  He deserved this and so did I. I needed to know her. He needed to tell her it was all a lie. Everyone who’d kept them apart were dead.  The wife to cancer, his parents to old age. He was finally free to live his life.  

In the weeks that followed we spent every available minute looking for her.  He’d hired a private detective, and I spent hours combing social media and newspapers looking for her.  

Nearly six months later, we had an address.  One I knew well. The slip of paper fluttered in my hands, caught by the early spring breeze as I stared at the apartment building I’d lived in just after college.  The records we found showed that she’d lived there for years. I’d probably seen her in the elevator a million times and never knew it was her. My whole body trembled in fear and anticipation.   My dad and I had gone around and around, trying to decide who would see her first. He insisted I be the one to meet her first. She probably hated him, and who knows? Maybe she’d hate me too, but I deserved a look at her face, at the very least.  

I stepped into the elevator, heart pounding harder with each floor that passed.  My footsteps were muffled by worn but clean carpet as I made my way to her door, wondering fleetingly if this feeling of anticipation and terror at the unknown was what death row inmates felt as they began their last walk.  

I raised my hand, knocked on the door, waited an eternity to hear the bolt slip away from it’s lock and shook from head to toe as the door swung open to reveal a woman in her mid-sixties, dark hair long and a little frizzy just like mine, eyes a deep chocolate just like mine and a small tilt up to her nose just like mine. 

We stared at each other.  Neither one blinking for a long stretch of time.  Until finally, I croaked out, “Hi, mom.”