Epilogue
Anonymous Post from IKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer.com
I have a secret.
Twenty-four years ago, I gave a baby up for adoption.
When I was eighteen years old, I won a contest to intern at a famous magazine in Europe. I was so surprised I won that it took me weeks to tell my parents. I’d lie in bed and stare and stare at the envelope, the letter. I read everything I could about the city. I bought tapes and learned the language. Actually learned it, not just the way you do in school. I loved the way it rolled off my tongue. The way it tasted.
My parents were strict, and I was a bit wild. I thought I was carefree, that they were too cautious. But I can see their point of view now. I was reckless. The kid who’d walk along the edge of the seawall. The one who didn’t listen when her parents told her to step away from the ledge. I scraped knees, broke a wrist, got a mild concussion. They’d frown while I laughed. The pain was worth the experience.
So this, I knew this, even though I was eighteen, would be a problem. I needed to show my parents I could be trusted. That nothing would happen to me. That I’d be safe.
Somehow I did. They hemmed and hawed. I begged and pleaded and promised.
And then they let me go.
I met him the third day I was there. I see the cliché now. An older man, my boss, married. The heedless, naive girl from North America. After, when it was over, I realized he’d manipulated it all from before I arrived. That he’d chosen me because he saw something in my essay. My photograph. Something pliable. Something broken that he could exploit rather than fix. That even the flowers he’d given me—marigolds—were part of the information he’d gleaned from my application. Was he a sociopath? Given everything, I’ve wondered. But then? I thought he was charming. Smart. The man for me forever.
Until the stick turned blue two months into the New Year.
Then he was cold, distant. More clichés upon clichés. I would have an abortion. He would pay, grudgingly it seemed. Of course he wouldn’t leave his wife. Had I done this on purpose?
It was nasty. I was afraid. I didn’t know how to tell my parents. I couldn’t bring myself to end the connection I had to him. I loved him.
I loved him.
I found a place to go. My parents weren’t expecting me back until the summer. I called them once a week with updates, fake stories. Even to me, my life sounded fabulous.
Then, in small towns, there were still places for girls like me. The nuns who worked at the place I went to were kind but censoring. As I grew larger and larger through the spring, I felt as if I was being crushed under the weight of their judgment. I craved my own language, food, city. I wanted to nest.
I wanted to go home.
That was impossible, but I found a place to go that was near enough. A sister organization the nuns approved of. I told my parents I’d been asked to stay on. The university would defer another year, and I could start my courses by correspondence. I made it seem as if it was their choice, and they agreed. They missed me, though. I said I’d call more often.
I flew home in my eighth month, the end of a hot August, passengers staring. I looked so young. A baby having a baby. I remember my hair sticking to my neck. How I could never get cool. How often I had to pee.
The nuns met me at the airport, drove me to Wisconsin. I barely remember anything of the drive, flat land flashing by. Then weeks staring out the window, feeling as if I was forcing myself to eat. Then pain. They never tell you about the pain. A conspiracy of women. I even found myself doing it, so much later, when I was pregnant with my daughter. I must’ve been exaggerating. It couldn’t be that bad.
It was. And then it was over, and I was holding this alien thing. I thought I’d love it. Her. I thought I’d love her because she was a part of him. Instead, I turned my face away. I couldn’t face this, not now, and so the choice was made for me. Forms were signed. The baby was whisked away. I went back to the nuns until the weight had slipped from my body.
The last month I was there, I read every issue of the magazine I was supposed to have contributed to. I made my weekly calls to my parents. I tried not to think of what I’d done. I surprised them the day before Christmas. Twinkling lights and a sprinkle of snow. My parents were delighted. I was so skinny, though—was everything all right? I nodded and brightened my smile and let my mother take me shopping for the college I would finally start in January.
At night I cried. Then I taught myself how to forget. Her smell, her face. I erased each memory one by one by one. The memories of him were the hardest. His laugh, the way he held me. The cold look in his eyes when I told him. But I did it. I did it.
I went to college. Every fall, around her birthday, the one day I couldn’t forget, a dark cloud descended. The fall blahs, I used to say, and take my medication. The clouds would lift, but I was a different person. Cautious. Lacking trust. Looking for security.
The man I married matched the new me. Or so I thought. I fashioned a life. The years rolled away. I wasn’t happy, but I was managing.
Then she came back. My daughter, the one I’d abandoned. She wrote to me. She wrote to me, and I was terrified. She wrote to me, and I was sad. She wrote to me, and I told her I wasn’t her mother. That she had the wrong person. That I never gave a baby up for adoption.
So many lies.