The Birth of Elizabeth

Elizabeth was adopted into the Johnson’s house. The Johnsons before the time of her birth, pledged until the day they die to take care of this beautiful little child forever. Elizabeth's birth mother was of a lower socioeconomic status, had struggled with substance abuse and had lamented when becoming pregnant with one of her former physical abusers. Marcus was no longer in the picture, but left an indelible mark on the world which pained the heart of Elizabeth’s mother Mary, but delighted Sylvia Johnson’s. Once Mary gave birth, she refused to hold her baby because she knew it’d be too painful to see her and then let her go. She asked that Sylvia be in the delivery room waiting, so that she could take her daughter with her immediately. Though Mary went into labor without having named her daughter, she found the strength in the middle of all her pains and sorrow to grab ahold of Sylvia‘s hand and tell her to name her child after one of her most favorite gospel characters, St. Elizabeth, the mother of St. John the Baptist, the cousin of the Virgin Mary and the wife of Zechariah. It was a story that made an impression on her as a child. The pastor had given a monotonous sermon that day about anything being possible, which oddly enough Mary stored safely in her heart. Even the pastor would have been surprised if anyone had approached him saying that his message had changed their life and even more shocked if anyone had remembered it for as long as Mary had. Never having told anybody this, it arose in her mind during the birth of her daughter as she concurrently thought, “Can I really give my child away? Can I ever come clean? Will my daughter ever become anything? Who am I but a constant screw up! Maybe if St. Elizabeth was here the impossible could be accomplished!” In that moment, she made eye contact with Sylvia and confidently put her daughter on the path of carrying the impossibly great responsibility of lending to the world this most monotonously—even more so than Pastor Nigel’s sermon—important message. Hope is near, do not abandon it, and in all things be still knowing that I am God here with you my wonderful children. Mary couldn’t bear to share her heart with anyone again, even Sylvia at that time, but she prayed then and forever after that Elizabeth could set out to be the answer to her hopeful prayer. As Sylvia held sweet little Elizabeth in her hands, with her mother‘s nose, dark brown features, beautiful tight little smile, and which she assumed to be her father‘s eyes before she could even attempt to give Mary the opportunity to know her perfect child, she had covered her eyes and wailed. “Leave! Get out of here! Do not allow me to love my sweet little daughter, she’s in your hands, I know you will help her accomplish the impossible!“ Sylvia held Elizabeth tight to her warm bosom, walked outside with the doctor sobbing while attempting to sign the paperwork, and sat in the hospital lobby for an hour prayerfully considering what those words meant. Since Mary had kept all those things hidden, Sylvia knew that since she was never gonna see her again, it was up to her to figure out how to form Elizabeth to be the kind of daughter Sylvia would one day be proud to see or hear about.

The police arrived much later than anticipated. Mrs. Johnson was bleeding profusely, Elizabeth was in handcuffs and the last thoughts running through her head were, “I failed you, Mary, I failed God, may the heart that lived in her mother, that no one ever knew—except me for that brief moment—from the depths of her marvelous soul spring forth as it does in children of parents who as Elizabeth was to her mother in all things except for this.” Elizabeth unrepentantly pleaded not guilty, claimed a patently false insanity, and indifferently sobbed to gather sympathy for a lighter sentence. Her lawyer had encouraged nothing but assigning abuse, negligence, and malevolence to the deceased plaintiff Sylvia Johnson. None of it was objectively true, Elizabeth knew that, but she was numb, and had been for years.

Elizabeth found out in third grade that Sylvia was not her birth mother. This did not bother Elizabeth, but it had opened an opportunity for her friends who were all things wicked, to encourage a malformation of her beautiful conscience. A conscience which she inherited from both her mothers. Both who wanted nothing but good for her and poured out all the love they could for her. Elizabeth’s resolve for her adoptive mother Sylvia positively intensified when she found out, but overtime her friends scandalized her. Mary had given her daughter all that was good in Sylvia and Sylvia had given her daughter all that was good in the promise she had made to Mary. As cruel as children can be, they bullied her consistently, ferociously and unwaveringly. Elizabeth had about one teacher who would step in from time to time. Most of the other teachers hadn’t seen the depth of hell she was walking through day by day. There is something about being so young, there are certain moments, whether one in the moment thinks they’re insignificant, others think it’s insignificant, the moment has high emotionality attached to it or even a strong negative emotionality attached to it, there is a picture perfect memory that follows us for the rest of our lives disallowing disobedience from the lesson experienced. For Elizabeth, every day beginning in first, second, third grade all the way throughout high school she took all of that with her into this moment. Her heart was hardened, numb and callused, leaving a receding tenderness. This was never without hope though. No matter how bleak things would get, all which was stored up, that was good in the heart of Mary would eventually find its way into the heart of Elizabeth. This was the unceasing hope of Sylvia Johnson. Losing control was nothing like Elizabeth. It all came bursting forth, with her mother as the humble recipient. Someone she needed now, more than ever, was gone at the peril of her own hands. Her face was straight, her countenance unshaken, and her soul empty with the hole left by all her friends, the death of her birth mother, and now the death of her adopted mother. She reeked of bourbon, a drink nobody had ever seen her consume, yet that was all it took. Another picture, perfect memory cemented, and laid up as an antagonist in the heart of Elizabeth leaving even less space for the treasure her mom hoped she would one day possess. 

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. She had been pretty much forced by the only friend she had made in jail to attend the Bible study they hosted every Tuesday night at 7 PM. She hadn’t really grown up with religion. There was no mention of religion from Sylvia and her adoptive father Tom who had left when she was seven. So, attending one of these Bible studies was just never something she grew up on and was dreading the idea of even talking about it. She had kind of heard about the gospels, so when the volunteer – not even a pastor – Said to open up to Luke one, she didn’t even know what that meant. They got through the Bible study and it was exactly what she expected. Boring. Not really much she got out of it. Didn’t really say much when they asked her, “ What struck you?“. They ended with a prayer, and in her opinion had way too many, “Lords“ mentioned it. She felt like this guy whose name she thought was maybe Marcus or something like that, was really drawing it out just to get people to think that he was super holy. Boring and annoying, but not enough to the point that she avoided it. She really did enjoy spending time with her friend. It was the first friend in such a long time that she felt had nothing to gain from being friends with her, so she had an arms-length but sincerely deep trust with her.

Only the priest and the two boys whose job it was to lower the casket, attended Sylvia‘s funeral. Despite it rousing extensive gossip with the neighbors, all they sent were their condolences. Tom had heard about it, but was, “busy, really way too busy“ to be able to attend his ex-wife‘s funeral. Obviously, Elizabeth was not allowed to attend, though she had a faint pull or tug on her heart which pained her when she was told she couldn’t, although she expected it. Sylvia was born to a young mother who reprimanded her, abused her physically, emotionally, verbally, and as she came of age, she vowed to do her part in her little corner of the world to protect one child from that same fit. She’d gone through years of rejection from the adoption agency. Every time they would come by and check out the house, Tom would have just drank enough beer bottles to find himself face planted into the sofa. He was excited about adopting, but could not pull his life together enough to be ready for that responsibility. The sour taste left in people‘s mouths takes a painfully long time to leave, especially when the bureaucratic institution knows you have something that they want that only they can give you. She had finally received the news that there was a struggling mother who just needed somebody to take her daughter and rapidly, Sylvia leapt at the opportunity. The adoption agency had gone through numerous applicants, going way down on the list with nothing but rejections for this little girl. The mother and her history–as they had to be upfront about what the situation was–it was too much for the high class peopl wanted to do a, “good thing”, but had never gone through devastation such as that, so didn’t feel like they could offer the little girl the kind of support she would eventually need. Sylvia instantly felt as if this was her daughter. Her only panic was not knowing what she should name her. She had no respect for her mother, had never been given siblings and was left even more friendless than Elizabeth. So, there was no one she could choose to even give the girl as a middle name. Nothing but a trail of constantly being stabbed in the back, from the very people who were supposed to love her and now she was left alone to ride into that grave and be buried with no one missing her. Sylvia knew Elizabeth felt overwhelmed by her love, but she knew That Elizabeth had at the very least would never have felt abandoned by her mother.