Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
I shrug. “Well, now you know. I have to cut through the voices, the images, the reminders of that life while trying to do my job, and sometimes it slows me down. But I do, in fact, get my job done. Well, not anymore because I don’t have a job. And that’s what brings me here. Without my job, I have nothing.”
“You have family. Friends. You’re getting married.”
“Let me rephrase. Without my job, I am nothing. No purpose. No identity.”
Dr. Byrd stares out the window for a second. It’s unusual for him. I’m used to his laser focus. “Sometimes, our identities and purpose in life change.”
“Terry, I won’t make it. I won’t make it another forty … sixty years with Winston Jeffries in my head. I don’t know if I’ll make it four to six months. Four to six weeks. You know this is a torture, not so different than ways that POWs are treated. And now I don’t have a purpose. Wife is not my purpose, even if it becomes part of my identity. I don’t believe it’s my purpose.”
Dr. Byrd stares out the window again. Even the “expert” has no solution.
And so … we’re done.
When I exit his office, Mom smiles at me. Mom, my babysitter for the day. Mom, my driver. I’m never alone.
“Would you be up for some shopping?” she asks. “I have a few gifts left to get.”
“Sure.” I search for a smile and find one that seems to appease her.
Over the next two hours, we file in and out of stores.
“What are you getting for Reagan?” she asks.
“I don’t know. What do young girls like?”
Mom chuckles while flipping through a rack of men’s shirts. “Need I remind you that you were once a five-year-old girl?”
“Need I remind you that I wasn’t a normal five-year-old girl? And now we know why. I doubt Reagan is into dead things, but I suppose we can see if there’s a zombie Barbie or a mortician Barbie.” I laugh. Then I laugh some more. “Mortician Barbie comes with a casket and a dead body.”
“Shh …” Mom glances around the store.
I press my lips together to compose myself, but in the next breath, I have a memory, but it’s not Winston’s life.
“I had Barbies and a few other dolls.”
Mom moves to another rack, but she doesn’t look at me.
“I cut off their hair. All of it.”
She ignores me.
“Mom, I cut off their hair. You knew this, but you didn’t remind me?”
“What would have been the point? I think your dad would like this one. Red is his color. What do you think?”
“I think when I’m dead, everyone will look back at so many things in my life and find it to be a goddamn miracle that I made it as long as I did.”
“Josephine Eleanor Watts …”
We have a silent standoff. What does she expect me to say?
“I’m getting your dad this shirt.” She turns and heads toward the checkout.
When we get in the car, she exhales and glances over at me. “I’ve talked with Colten. And we’re both in similar situations with you.”
“How so?” I stare out my window at the throng of people loaded down with gifts, congesting the sidewalks and gazing at the storefront displays.
“I chose to have you instead of aborting you. He chose to save you. You are so loved. And we hate what you’re experiencing. Even if we try to imagine, I’m sure it doesn’t even come close. I try to imagine what it would be like to relive the rape repeatedly. Or imagine what it would be like to watch him do the same thing to other women. And even if I could fathom that, I know it doesn’t come close to what you’re experiencing.” She reaches for my hand and squeezes it.
I glance at our hands before lifting my gaze to hers filled with tears. “I can’t undo your life,” she says. “I can’t undo my choice to bring you into this world. And I can’t unlove you. Neither can Colten, your dad, your brother, your friends. We can’t imagine this life without you. And maybe it’s selfish on our part if you are miserable every day and every night…” she wipes several tears that spring free “…but you can’t ask us to let you die.” With her next blink, all the tears escape.
I’m not a mother. I never will be a mother. So I can’t really understand how she’s feeling. But I remember how I felt when I lost Colten. I remember that feeling led to self-harm, compelled to cut myself by the debilitating pain.
And he wasn’t really gone.
He wasn’t gone, yet I thought about him every day for seventeen years. What if that day he broke up with me was the day he died? What if one of the times he felt his world crumbling around him, he would have decided to end his life, like his father did years later?