Page 86 of Soft Tissue Damage
He wouldn’t do that to me.
Hecouldn’t.
My aunts are wrong.
I feel myself spiraling. All I’ve been told for twenty-one years of my life is that unwed mothers are shameful and the whole world will turn its back on me for getting pregnant while I’m single.
I swipe the tears from my cheeks. I can’t let my aunts get in my head and distract me from my purpose. “Please can we talk about why I came here tonight. Now that I’m pregnant, I need to know who my mother is. She’ll want to know that I’m having a baby. Grandmothers love their grandchildren.”
Aunt Astrid scoffs at this, and the two women continue their tirade about how disgraceful I am.
I slam my fist on the kitchen table and raise my voice. “I have given you so much money. I have asked you nicely. Now I am begging you.Tell me who she is.”
The two women exchange a look.
From her prim perch on her chair with her hands folded in her lap, Aunt Frieda says, “We will never tell you who your birth mother is.”
“Why?” I cry, and when they don’t answer, I demand louder, “Why?”
There’s a cruel gleam in Aunt Astrid’s eye. “We couldn’t tell you even if we wanted to.”
“What are you talking about?”
No response.
As the silence stretches, I remember that there are no photos of me and my mother. No original birth certificate. No keepsakes or baby clothes that belonged to me before I entered this house. My aunts have referred to my mother as both Sally and Sybil, even though no one called Sybil is nicknamed Sally.
What if my aunts never intended to tell me who she is because they don’t know? What if they’ve been blackmailing me for money all this time, seeing how long they could keep it up before I caught on? For years I’ve been handing over every spare cent I have, scrimping and saving and going without in the hope that I would earn the right to know her name. Have they been laughing at me all this time?
“Do you even know who she is?” I ask faintly, hoping that I’m wrong.
The seconds on the clock tick by.
“Does it matter who she is?” Aunt Frieda asks. “We raised you. We fed and clothed you, and what a thankless task it was.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. All this time they’ve been lying to me and taking my money under false pretenses. The last scrap of hope that I’ll ever meet my birth mother bursts into flames and burns away. I’m all alone in the world without any family who cares about me and my baby.
The cruel gleam in Aunt Astrid’s eye grows brighter. “No doubt she was a disgraceful whore who spread her legs for a disgusting, unworthy man. Like mother, like daughter.”
Something deep inside me snaps. The insults against the two people I most care about in the world, my unknown mother and Cullan, drive a red-hot spike through my skull. The pair of pointed sewing scissors on the table glint provocatively at me. Rage at my aunts fills me from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes. Rage like I felt when I heard Cullan’s ex berating him and saw Leon happy and laughing with the woman who taunted me with his infidelity. Only this time, the rage is even stronger, coursing through me and electrifying my limbs. My hateful aunts have revealed all, and they’re both still yapping at me, denouncing me in the cruelest words. Telling me I’m filth. Telling me that I have to give my babyaway to a churchgoing, God-fearing household where they can be raised properly, as I was given away.
I picture it clearly, my mother standing in a house just like this one, pregnant with me and being berated and shamed and told that she must give me up. I can feel her hot tears. Her misery and confusion. She was forced to abandon me to this horrible fate, and now my aunts want me to do the same thing. My child, Cullan’s child, growing up in a house like this one, without love, or warmth, or one scrap of happiness in their lives?
That willneverhappen.
I snatch up the sewing scissors and brandish them point-first by the handles. Aunt Astrid’s lips are moving, but I can’t hear what she’s saying apart fromwhoreanddisgustingandshameful. I can’t take this anymore. I have to protect my baby.
“Shut up!” I scream, and lash out with the scissors. I just want her to stop. I plunge the scissors point-first into her heart. I stab her three, four times in the chest and throat, feeling something warm spraying over my face with each strike. Astrid’s eyes grow larger than I’ve ever seen them before, and a strange noise gurgles in her throat. All the cruelty in her face finally drains away. Her hands grasp at me, and I remember all those times she snatched my money out of my hands and greedily counted it. I haven’t got anything left for her to take.
Aunt Frieda cries out and leaps to her feet. For a moment, she’s frozen in horror as she stares at the bloodied scissors buried in her sister’s body, and then sheturns and dashes for the front door. She runs headfirst into an open cupboard door, her head slamming into it in her panic to get away from me. She’s knocked off her feet and falls backward, and cracks her head hard on the sharp corner of the kitchen table.
Her eyes are wide and staring. Her body is motionless as blood slowly spreads around her head.
Aunt Astrid’s hands loosen on my shoulders, and she slithers to the ground. Blood from both of my aunts spreads slowly across the kitchen floor, the two pools meeting each other and mingling.
I stare in horror at the scissors that are grasped in my bloodied fist.
What have I done?
