Page 42 of I'm Not Yours
“What . . .” His voice was strangled. “What happened to the baby?”
I let out a small cry.
“Oh no, Allie, you didn’t—” he whispered, eyes anguished.
“No no, I couldn’t do that, Jace. Never. I didn’t abort it, but I caused the baby’s death.” I started crying, interspersed with choked, anguished gasps. “It was my fault. All my fault. Sometimes I think I can’t live with this—it’s haunted me forever, followed me around. I am so sorry, Jace. So sorry.”
“What happened?”
I tried to pull myself together, but it didn’t work well. “In the fall, after you left for medical school, I found out my dad had had a heart attack. I knew what it would do to me, being back in his trailer after five years, but I thought maybe he had changed, that he would be kinder. He was all I had left. My mother was dead, and I felt guilty and ashamed for not seeing him. I don’t know how to explain it, but I wanted . . .” I tripped over my words again. “I wanted my dad to love me. He never had, and I wanted it.”
He groaned. “Oh, Allie.”
“It was hopeless, I should have known that. I dropped out of school, went home, and stayed in his trailer. I tried to get him healthy again. When I arrived he was in terrible shape, on oxygen, medications. He told me that I was a bad daughter, that I’d abandoned him. From the moment I walked into my dad’s trailer I felt like trash again. It was like he took over my mind and I turned into that same kid, lost and lonely, devastated, missing her mom, not knowing what to do. I was young, Jace, only twenty-one . . .”
It was dark and dismal and dirty in my dad’s trailer. He was dark and dismal and dirty. He was unemployed. I took care of him. I had always battled low self-esteem, and my dad crushed what I’d managed to build up while I was away. He was demanding and critical, lying there in bed, hardly able to breathe. He’d added about eighty pounds.
“Why did you abandon me? You’re exactly like your cheating mother. You lied to those people from children’s protection services so you could get yourself emancipated when you were sixteen. Your mother lied to the police about what I did to her when the neighbors called them . . . You’re both ungrateful, and look at me now. You caused this heart attack with how much I’ve worried about you . . . Got your mother’s big nose and skinny hips, don’t you? Hopefully you don’t have her brains, apple-seed brains . . .”
It was ludicrous. It was relentless.But I didn’t leave.
I felt trapped by him again, like a tortured rat, my mind a mental morass of sludge and guilt. He was critically ill and I was afraid if I left he would die and I would be responsible for his death. In fact, he told me that many times. “If you leave, I’ll die, so get your butt in here and help me.”
I was young, missing Jace, and exhausted from the first day on. Soon I could hardly think, my dad’s mind manipulations working so well on me, his medical needs enormous. I went into self-protection mode, duck and dodge, survive. I even started hiding in the apple orchard again, eating apples when I was hungry.
I had morning sickness. I passed it off as the flu at first. My cycle had never been regular, but soon I knew, and so did he. He wasn’t that stupid.
“You whore.” The scars on his face seemed more pronounced to me. “You’re exactly like your mother. She got pregnant beforewe were married; that’s why I had to marry her. What poor sucker are you doing that to? Where is he?” It went on and on.
“I’ve got a pregnant, unmarried daughter on my hands. I’m so humiliated.”
Three nights later, under constant pressure, I told him I was in love with Jace, that he treated me well and was going to be a doctor.
“A doctor is never going to marry someone like you, trailer park princess,” he scoffed, beer heavy on his breath. “You were his summer fun. He’ll find a doctor to marry. You’re a fool. You’re candy to him—that’s it.”
He threw a beer bottle at me. Then an ashtray. Next a plate came flying at my head like a saucer. I dodged all three, then managed to grab my bag and purse and fight my way out of the trailer. He slung out a thick arm and I hit the side of the trailer and then pushed him away. He kept swearing, calling me all sorts of names.
I shoved my way past his bulky body, tripped off the steps and started running. It was black and moonless, slippery and wet. I sprinted down the road, my dad actually tottering after me, gut over his pants, hollering at me. I thought he would probably die trying to catch me, but I was running for my life. I could hardly see with the tears in my eyes, my breath coming in gasps. All I knew was that I was out of the trailer. I was out, and so was the baby.
In my blind panic, I did not watch where I was going. I tripped and went flying over a hill, rolled straight down, and landed on my stomach on a rock.
The blood flowed out like a river.
Jace cried; I cried with him.
“I sat in that hospital bed and I cried for the baby. I thought the tears would never stop. That baby has never left my heart,ever. I kept thinking about you, Jace, and how our baby,our baby, was gone, because of my recklessness, my stupidity. I never should have gone back to that trailer.”
“This didn’t happen because of you; it happened because of your father.” Jace swore; he was so furious with my dad he was shaking. “You should have told me you were pregnant. I would have come for you.”
“I felt awful for not telling you, Jace, but you were in med school and I was afraid that you would leave med school because you would feel obligated to take care of the baby, and I . . . I knew you wanted to be a doctor more than anything. It was your dream.” My hands fluttered. “I also worried that you would marry me, but it would be out of obligation. My self-esteem was so low then, it could not have gotten lower if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, and my dad’s words were ping-ponging back and forth in my head: I was nothing, you were a doctor, you would never want me.”
“I have always wanted you, Allie, always. I have never wavered. Were you even going to tell me about the baby? Was I going to have a kid in this world and I wouldn’t have even known about it?”
I could tell the thought infuriated him. “I was going to tell you after I gave birth to the baby. I thought I’d have the baby, graduate from college, get a job, then tell you, so you wouldn’t feel like you had to take care of me; I wouldn’t be a burden. I grew up poor, Jace, and being a burden to someone else made me feel ill. My dad had always told me I was a burden, that my mother was a burden, and I could tell he hated me for it. I didn’t want you to hate me.”
“I would never hate you. Do you honestly think you and our baby would be a burden to me?”
“At that time, in that chaos, yes. I had no money, no degree yet, no job.”
