Maybe if I wasn’t so cold and scared that night, I would have made a different choice.
Maybe if I wasn’t so sick in London . . .
I had hyperemesis gravidarum throughout the pregnancy. Vomiting twenty, thirty times a day. I got so skinny I was nothing but bones. The doctors put a permanent IV line into me, so I wouldn’t die of dehydration.
I was hospitalized in the second trimester.
The baby was born early in the third, at thirty-four weeks. He was tiny. God, so very, very tiny, only 5 lbs 2 oz. He didn’t cry as he came out. He looked blue and wizened. Barely alive.
The birth was nightmarish. They gave me nitrous gas for the pain, but I had a poor reaction to it. I started to hallucinate—I thought the nurses were demons, and they were trying to tear me apart. I thought the doctor was a monster wearing the mask of a human.
I thought Dante came to the hospital, but he only stood in the doorway, glaring at me. I begged him to forgive me for leaving. For not telling him about the baby. He wouldn’t speak to me—he only stared at me with a cold, furious expression.
After the birth, when I’m in my right mind again, I believe that was the one thing I saw that was actually true: Dante won’t forgive me for this, if he ever finds out. Never, ever.
My parents come to the hospital. They hadn’t known I was pregnant—I made Serwa swear not to tell them. Mama cries and asks why I kept such an awful secret. Tata scowls and demands to know if Dante is aware of what he did to me.
“No,” I whisper. “I haven’t spoken to him. He doesn’t know.”
Because the baby was small and having trouble breathing, they put him in the NICU, in an incubator. I’ve barely seen him or held him at all. All I know is that he had a lot of curly black hair and a tiny, limp body.
The nurses keep giving me drugs. I’m sleeping all the time. When I wake up, the baby’s never in the room.
On the third day I wake, and my parents are sitting next to the bed. There’s nobody else in the room—no nurses, or Serwa.
“Where’s the baby?” I ask them.
Mama glances over at my father. Her face looks pale and drawn.
They’re both dressed nicely—Mama in a blazer and skirt set, Tata in a suit. Not exactly formal, but the closest thing to it. As if they have an event to attend. Or maybe this is the event.
I feel disgusting by comparison—unwashed, unkempt, in the cheap cotton hospital smock.
I wonder if other people feel this way by comparison to their own family—unworthy.
“We need to discuss what you plan to do,” Mama says.
“About what?” I ask her.
“About your future.”
The word “future” used to have such a bright sparkle to me. Now it sounds hollow and terrifying. Like a long, dark hallway to nowhere.
I’m silent. I don’t know what to say.
“It’s time to get your life back on track,” Tata tells me. His voice is measured, but his face is stiff and stern. He looks at me not with anger . . . just disappointment. “You’ve made some very poor decisions, Simone. It’s time to right the ship.”
I swallow, my mouth dry.
“What do you mean?”
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” my father says. “Your sister is going to adopt the baby, privately and discreetly. She will present the child as her own. She will raise it as her own. You are going to Cambridge for the winter semester. You’ll get your degree. You’ll get a job afterward. You won’t tell anyone about your indiscretion in Chicago. This whole ugly chapter will be put behind us.”
I lay there silently, while those bizarre statements wash over me.
“I want to see my son,” I say at last.
“That’s not happening,” Tata said.
“Where is he?”
“You don’t need to concern yourself with that.”
“WHERE IS HE?” I shriek.
“He’s already at home with Serwa,” Mama says, trying to calm me. “He’s being very well cared for. You know how good your sister is with children.”
That’s true. Serwa loves children. She practically raised me.
But it doesn’t make me feel better in the slightest. I want to see my baby. I want to see his face.
“I’m not giving him away,” I hiss at my father.
He looks right back at me, his dark eyes matching mine in anger.
“You think you can take care of a child?” he spits. “You don’t have a cent to your name that I don’t give you. How will you feed it? Where will you live? I’m not supporting you in throwing your life away. And what kind of a mother would you be anyway? You’re a child. Look at you. You can barely get out of that bed.”
More gently, Mama says, “Simone . . . I know you care for this baby. More than your own selfish desires. You are not at a time in your life to have a child. Later, yes, but now . . . you’re not ready for that. It wouldn’t be in his best interest. And think of your sister . . .”
“What about her?”
“Serwa will never have another chance to have a baby.”
This is the first thing they say that hits at my heart. All their words up until then had been nothing but dust that I planned to brush aside. But that statement . . . it cuts me.
Mama looks at me with her gentle blue eyes.
“She loves him already,” she says.
“You must give her this,” Tata says. “Let her raise the baby. Let her have that one thing. You have the rest of your life ahead of you. Serwa doesn’t. This is her only chance.”
Of all the angles they used to attack me, this is the one that hits my most vulnerable spot.
Maybe I could have withstood the threats of disowning, or the fear of raising my son alone, in poverty.
“Look,” Mama said.
She holds up her phone.
On the screen is a picture of my sister sitting in a rocking chair, with a little bundle in her lap. I can’t see the baby’s face—he’s wrapped up in a blanket and a knitted cap, his head turned toward her.
But I can see Serwa’s face.
I see her looking down at my son with kindness, love . . . and pure joy. It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her look.
And I’m the most miserable I’ve ever been.
In that moment of weakness, still stitched and bleeding from the birth, head still swimming with drugs . . . I agree.
I sign the papers.
I give my son away.
And I fall down, down, down into a dark well. A depression so deep that I think I’ll never climb out of it again.
The sadness lasts for years.
