Where I was conceived and born?
I didn't know this until I was nearly eight. Daddy tried to keep her from ever telling me, but my dear sweet A.M., as I often referred to her years later in my thoughts and when I spoke about her to Amou, had been permitting it to slip out in various innuendos and suggestions for years, until she simply sat me down in the living room one afternoon and told me.
"Pay attention!" she ordered. These were nearly always her first words to me, as if she were afraid I would fix my gaze on something else and ignore her completely, just the way Daddy often did. She wouldn't start until she was satisfied my eyes were directed at her.
"You should know how you came to be living here with us." she began. "Maybe then you'll be a little more appreciative and be more obedient and listen to me when I speak. for I am trying to help you." she added in a much sweeter, softer tone of voice. Even then. I knew enough to brace myself for some terrible aftermath whenever she was too nice to me.
She pulled herself up, staring at me a long moment, the dis
pleasure suddenly so clear in her face, in the cold glint in her otherwise beautiful blue eves, that I couldn't deny it even if I wanted, even if I could pretend she cared about me. She was the only one permitted to have illusions and fantasies in our house. My dolls weren't permitted to speak back to me; my toy teacups were forever empty.
After a short moment of hesitation, confirming her decision to do it, to tell me what my father had forbidden her to tell me, she brought her face close to mine and asked in a dark. Throaty voice. "Do you know how you were made? Do you have any idea at all?"
Of course. I shook my head. How would I know such a thing? My little body tightened with anticipation. It felt as if I had lightning inside my stomach and thunder in my bones.
"One of the assistants at your father's precious clinic apparently raped a patient. So much for his socalled exceptional professional staff." she said, her lips hinged at the corners with disgust. "Do you understand what I am telling you. Willow De Beers? You were born as a result of a rape!"
I didn't know what rape meant, but she was determined that I would understand.
"You're only in the third grade. but I know how street smart kids are nowadays. I know you know babies don't get brought here by storks or any other fairy tale. right?"
"Babies come from the hospital," I said.
"Normal women have their babies delivered in a hospital, yes, but first they are made at home or somewhere else convenient. Half the country was probably conceived in the back of an automobile," she muttered. She always tilted her head down toward her right shoulder when she said something that disgusted her. It was as if she were going to spit the period at the end of her sentence.
I was really confused now Why was she telling me all this? At first, I hoped she was just being a good mother, trying to get me to understand something important, but I soon realized she had a different purpose.
"The man through his pee-pee puts his part into the woman through her pee-pee, and there's an egg in the woman that grows into a baby. You don't need to understand much more than that to understand what I'm saying."
I know I grimaced. It all sounded awful. Why would a woman permit a man to pee into her? Surely, my adoptive mother was trying to frighten me again.
"When a woman doesn't want a man to do it and he does it anyway, forcing her to have a baby, that's called rape. Understand? Well?" she asked quickly.
I nodded, afraid to say no even though it wasn't all that clear to me yet, especially why a man would want to make a baby with a woman if the woman didn't want him to do it.
"This patient, this mentally disturbed young woman, according to your father, never knew what was happening inside her until she was quite far along in her pregnancy. How everyone could be so oblivious to it, even including that mental case, is beyond me, but what do I know about the inner workings of Dr. DeBeers's looney farm?" she muttered.
How strange it was to me to hear her refer to her husband and my daddy as Dr. De Beers, as though he were a complete stranger, but she did that often, including right to his face, especially at the dinner table. Why she would ridicule the clinic Daddy was so proud he had created was another mystery and surprise to me.
"Our Dr. De Beers is not permitted to talk about what goes on there. Everything has to be kept so secret. All that stuff about doctor-patient
confidentiality. If you ask me, it's because either the doctor is ashamed he is taking money for what he is doing, or the patient is ashamed of what she or he has been saying and doing. That's all there really is to that," she lectured as if there were a number of other people besides me in the living room. I didn't know it but Amou was just outside the door, listening and trembling for me.
"I don't know how I was so weak as to agree to permit him to adopt you and bring you here in the first place, but I did. Anyway, this is why I have to be so stern with you. Willow," she said, turning calmly reasonable again. Then she leaned toward me, her eyes widening. "You might have inherited some madness," she whispered, which left me so terrified that I couldn't speak or sleep for days. I might have inherited madness! Even then. I understood what that could mean.
On the few occasions I had been at Daddy's clinic up to that time. I had seen patients who looked so disturbed and terrifying to me even from a safe distance that I had nightmares about it. Was she right? Could I be like one of them? Would I end up in Daddy's clinic, too?
For days. I moped about, afraid to look at myself in the mirror and terrified of what everyone else saw when he or she looked at me. I felt myself shrinking more and more into that small hiding place in my brain where I could feel safe and unafraid, even if that place felt like a cage. The more introverted I became, the more mentally ill I appeared, especially to my A.M.
Daddy finally noticed and asked Amou why I was looking so unhappy those days. When Amou told Daddy what my adoptive mother had done and said, he was very upset with her and tried to reassure me that there was absolutely nothing wrong with inc. He called me to his office and spoke softly, reassuringly, to me, wiping away an errant tear or two with his soft thumb.
"Who should know better than I do. Willow?" he asked with a smile. "Evaluating people, judging whether or not they are sick, is my profession."
That seemed reasonable, but he wasn't with me that often. Maybe he didn't know enough or see enough. That seemed just as reasonable.
And then he told me a startling thing. "That doll you love so much-- remember I told you someone had made it for me to give to you? Well, your mother made it for you. Willow, and it's very pretty, isn't it? Someone who's so sick couldn't have done that."
That did make me feel a little better, but unfortunately, his being upset about what my A.M. had done didn't stop her from complaining about me whenever she saw something she considered wrong. She was determined to paint everything as evidence that I had indeed inherited a mental sickness. I didn't like listening to her. so I ignored her, and she complained that I had an attention deficit disorder, even though there was no evidence of that at school. She claimed the teachers were simply too burdened to notice or, worse, not qualified.