I kept looking at Rebecca's face.
It was easier than looking at Mama's casket.
At least Rebecca could still speak.
I didn't know whether I wanted to hear her.
But she was standing there, waiting, and I could no longer pretend I hadn't understood what she was claiming.
“You need to explain yourself,” I said.
My voice came out sharper than I intended.
Rebecca nodded.
“I know.”
She didn't try to touch me again.
I was grateful for that.
I had pulled away from her once already, and I knew I would do it again if she reached for me.
I felt ashamed of that later.
At the time, I couldn't help it.
This woman had walked into my mother's funeral and called me her mother.
That wasn't something I could accept because she looked sincere.
I needed to understand how she had come to believe it.
“Who told you about me?”
Rebecca took a breath.
“My adoptive mother.”
I looked at her.
The word adoptive seemed to hang between us.
It was the first thing she had said that gave her story any kind of shape.
Until then, I had only heard an impossible claim.
Now there was another mother involved.
A woman I had never met.
A woman who, according to Rebecca, had raised the child I was told had died.
I felt sick.
“Your adoptive mother?”
“Yes.”
I looked down at my hands.
They were still gripping the pew.
I made myself loosen my fingers.
“And what did she tell you?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“She told me where I came from.”
I waited.
I could hear my own breathing.
The church seemed too quiet, even though I knew there were people nearby.
“Go on,” I said.
“She had kept some papers.”
“What sort of papers?”
“Things about my adoption. Things she had never shown me.”
I felt myself become still.
For years, all I had possessed was what Mama told me.
My baby had died.
That was the explanation.
There had been nothing for me to question because I had believed the person who gave it.
Now Rebecca was talking about documents.
Something that had existed outside my memory.
Something that might have been kept while I spent my life believing there was nothing left of my daughter.
I wanted to see those papers.
I was also frightened of what they might say.
“Why are you only coming to me now?”
Rebecca looked away.
I saw her trying to steady herself.
For the first time, I wondered what this moment had been like for her before she entered the church.
She had known what she wanted to say.
I hadn't known she existed.
That difference mattered.
She had walked in carrying a question she had already lived with.
I had been given mine without warning.
“My mother passed away three months ago,” she said.
I looked up.
“I'm sorry.”
The words came automatically.
I meant them, even then.
Whatever else was happening, Rebecca had lost someone she loved.
I knew what that felt like.
We were standing beside my own mother's casket.
It seemed cruel that grief had brought us to the same place.
Rebecca nodded.
“Before she died, she gave me a box.”
I didn't interrupt.
“She wanted me to have the papers she'd kept.”
“Did she tell you what was inside?”
Rebecca pressed her fingers against her purse.
“She told me the truth.”
I felt the words settle in my chest.
The truth.
I had used that word myself over the years.
I had spoken of what happened in 1971 as though I had witnessed every part of it.
But I hadn't.
That was something I understood only after Rebecca stood in front of me.
I hadn't witnessed everything.
I had been told what happened.
There was a difference.
A difference I had never allowed myself to examine.
I looked at Rebecca again.
“How old are you?”
She seemed to understand why I was asking.
“Fifty-five.”
I closed my eyes.
Fifty-five.
The same number I had carried in my head when I thought about the child I lost.
I knew how many years had passed.
I didn't need to count.
There are some dates a person never has to look up.
For me, 1971 was one of them.
Rebecca was standing in front of me as a grown woman.
Old enough to have her own history.
Old enough to have known a whole life without me.
I tried to imagine the baby I had lost becoming the woman I was looking at.
I couldn't.
My mind stopped at the night of her birth.
I had never allowed myself to picture the days after.
There hadn't been any days after.
Not for my daughter.
That was what I believed.
“Your mother raised you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I nodded, though I didn't know why.
“And she's gone now?”
Rebecca's eyes filled again.
“Three months.”
I looked toward Mama's casket.
Two mothers.
Both dead.
One had raised Rebecca.
One had raised me.
And somewhere between them was the story of how my child could have been alive while I believed she was buried.
I didn't know what to call that.
Not yet.
I could barely bear to think it.
“Was your adoptive mother certain?” I asked.
Rebecca looked surprised.
“About what?”
“About who you are.”
She answered carefully.
“She gave me information about my birth.”
I watched her hands.
She kept one hand near the opening of her purse.
I had the sense that something important was inside.
Something she had brought there deliberately.
I wanted her to take it out.
But I was afraid to ask.
I thought about my own mother.
About how confidently she had told me my daughter was dead.
I had never considered that confidence might not have meant certainty.
I had trusted her words because she was Mama.
I had been young.
I had been grieving.
I had needed someone to explain what happened.
And she had explained it.
That had been enough for me.
It hurt to admit that I had never demanded more.
I hadn't asked the right questions.
I hadn't known there were questions.
Rebecca watched me.
“I didn't come here to upset you.”
I almost told her she had failed.
But I stopped myself.
She was crying too.
Her hands weren't steady.
Whatever she had learned from the box, it had brought her into a church where she knew she might be rejected.
And I had rejected her.
Almost immediately.
“You understand what you're saying, don't you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You're saying I had a daughter who lived.”
She nodded.
“And that I never knew.”
Another nod.
I pressed my fingers against the wooden pew.
That little piece of wood had become the only solid thing I could feel.
I wanted to sit down.
I didn't.
I was afraid that if I sat, I wouldn't be able to stand again.
Rebecca's gaze moved to my face.
She seemed to be looking for something.
Approval.
Recognition.
I couldn't give her either.
Not yet.
“I need to know why you believe I'm your mother,” I said.
Rebecca lowered her eyes to her purse.
Then she opened it.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: Rebecca Reached Into Her Purse and Showed Me the First Thing That Made My Mother’s Story Feel Less Certain
I Was Standing Beside My Mother’s Casket When a Stranger Asked for the Name I Had Used All My Life
Part 2 of 10
