For fifty-five years, I believed my daughter was dead.
I believed it because my mother had told me so.
And I never thought I would have a reason to question her.
Not until the day we buried her.
I was standing inside the church, trying to get through the last part of her funeral, when a woman I didn't recognize came toward me.
She didn't look like someone who had come to offer the usual condolences.
She looked frightened.
Her hands were close together, and she kept glancing at my face as though she needed to be certain of something.
I thought she might have known Mama.
That would have been ordinary enough.
There were people at the service whose names I couldn't remember, and I had been answering the same questions all morning.
Was I doing all right?
Did I need anything?
Was there somebody who could drive me home?
I had answered every one of them without really thinking.
Then this woman stopped in front of me.
“Do people call you Doll?”
I looked at her.
“Yes, they do.”
She pressed her lips together.
For a moment, I thought she might turn around and leave.
Instead, she told me her name.
“I'm Rebecca.”
I waited for her to explain how she had known my mother.
She didn't.
She just kept looking at me.
There was something uncomfortable about being studied that closely, especially on a day when I already felt exposed.
I had been crying.
My face was tired.
I didn't have the strength to make polite conversation with someone who seemed unable to begin.
“Did you know Mama?” I asked.
Rebecca's eyes filled.
She looked past me toward the front of the church.
I followed her glance.
Mama's casket was still there.
The sight of it made me feel the same dull pressure I had been carrying all day.
Whatever our differences had been, she was still my mother.
She had been the person whose word I trusted when I was young.
She had also been the person who delivered the worst news of my life.
I hadn't been thinking about that old grief when Rebecca approached me.
I had been thinking about getting through the funeral.
About standing when I was supposed to stand.
About saying thank you when people spoke to me.
Nothing more.
Rebecca looked back at me.
Then she spoke so quietly that I almost asked her to repeat herself.
“I think I've finally found you, Mom.”
I stared at her.
I didn't understand what she wanted.
For a second, I thought she had mistaken me for somebody else.
I pulled my hands back from hers.
“You've got the wrong person.”
She shook her head.
Tears started moving down her cheeks.
“I know this isn't the right time.”
I looked around, embarrassed and confused.
People were still inside the church.
Mama was lying in her casket only a short distance away.
Whatever this woman wanted, I couldn't imagine why she had chosen that moment to say it.
“Then what is this about?”
Rebecca looked toward the casket again.
“I couldn't leave here without speaking to you. Not after today.”
That answer didn't help.
I felt myself becoming impatient.
I was tired.
I had spent the day listening to people talk about a woman who could no longer answer for herself.
Now a stranger was speaking to me as though we shared something I had forgotten.
“What exactly are you trying to tell me?”
She swallowed.
“I'm the little girl you had.”
I couldn't speak.
Not immediately.
Then I gave a short laugh.
It sounded terrible inside that church.
I hadn't meant to laugh at her.
I laughed because the words made no sense.
The little girl I had.
There had only been one.
And she had died in 1971.
I knew that the way I knew my own birthday.
It was a fact that had stayed with me through every year of my life.
“No,” I said. “That isn't possible.”
Rebecca didn't look offended.
She looked as though she had expected me to say it.
“I understand why you believe that.”
I shook my head.
“You don't understand anything.”
She lowered her eyes.
I heard myself speaking again.
“My daughter didn't survive the night she was born.”
There.
I had said it.
The sentence I had carried for fifty-five years.
The sentence that explained why I had never watched my little girl grow up.
Why I had no childhood photographs to show anyone.
Why I had never heard her call me Mama.
I had spoken those words before.
I knew how to get through them.
But this time, the woman standing in front of me wasn't offering sympathy.
She was disagreeing.
“That wasn't what happened,” Rebecca said.
I felt a sudden rush of anger.
“Don't.”
She stopped.
I could hear people moving farther down the church aisle.
Somebody was speaking softly near the doors.
The ordinary sounds made what was happening feel even less real.
This was a funeral.
Not a place for someone to reopen the worst memory of my life.
I wanted Rebecca to apologize.
I wanted her to say she had made a mistake.
I wanted the conversation to end before I had to think about what she meant.
Instead, she looked directly at me.
“Your mother was the one who told you the baby had died, wasn't she?”
My stomach tightened.
I hadn't mentioned that.
I had only said my daughter died.
Rebecca had named the person who told me.
I looked toward Mama.
The casket hadn't moved.
Nothing about that room had changed.
But I suddenly felt as though I were standing somewhere unfamiliar.
“How do you know what my mother said?”
Rebecca wiped her cheek.
“Because that's part of what I learned.”
I stared at her.
I didn't want to hear any more.
That is the part I still find difficult to admit.
I had spent so many years grieving my child that I couldn't bear the thought of somebody telling me I had grieved for the wrong reason.
A dead baby was a terrible thing.
But the idea that my daughter might have lived somewhere without me was something I had never allowed myself to imagine.
I had built my life around the first truth.
I didn't know what to do with the second.
Rebecca stepped a little closer.
I moved back.
My hand found the wooden end of a pew.
I held it because my legs felt weak.
“Are you telling me my mother lied?”
Rebecca didn't answer immediately.
That silence frightened me more than her words.
I looked at her face again.
There was something familiar about the shape of her chin.
A small indentation.
I had the same one.
I noticed it and immediately wished I hadn't.
Plenty of people had dimples.
That couldn't mean anything.
I told myself so.
Then Rebecca said, “I'm telling you the child you were told was gone is standing here.”
I tightened my grip on the pew.
I wanted proof.
I wanted her to stop.
I wanted my mother to sit up and explain what was happening.
And for the first time that day, I understood that Mama would never answer another question.
Click here to continue reading: PART 2: The Woman Who Called Me Mother Knew Something About My Baby That I Had Never Told a Living Soul
I Was Standing Beside My Mother’s Casket When a Stranger Asked for the Name I Had Used All My Life
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