I thought the hardest part would be believing Rebecca.
I was wrong.
The hardest part was beginning to believe her and realizing how much of my life I would have to look at differently.
I stood beside her in the church, still holding the letter.
Mama's casket was only a short distance away.
I couldn't look at it without feeling something I had never felt toward my mother before.
Suspicion.
I hated that word.
I hated that it belonged anywhere near her funeral.
But there it was.
I had been told my daughter died in 1971.
Now a woman who knew my nickname, knew what Mama had told me, and carried papers from her adoptive mother was standing beside me.
She was fifty-five.
She had the same small dimple in her chin that I had always seen in my own reflection.
And she was asking me to believe that she was the child I had mourned.
I looked down at our hands.
Rebecca hadn't let go.
Neither had I.
I was grateful for that.
Because every time I thought about what her story might mean, I felt as though I were losing my balance again.
"Rebecca?"
She turned toward me.
"Yes?"
"I need to ask you something."
"All right."
I looked at the letter.
"When your mother gave you these things, did she tell you everything she knew?"
Rebecca took a moment before answering.
"She told me what she could."
I nodded.
It wasn't the answer I had hoped for.
But it was probably the only honest one she could give.
I wanted every missing detail supplied.
Every year explained.
Every question answered.
And I wanted it without having to hear anything that might make me hate my own mother.
That wasn't possible.
I understood that much.
I looked toward the casket again.
For fifty-five years, Mama's words had been the beginning and end of my daughter's story.
Now I was starting to see that they had only been the beginning of mine.
Rebecca shifted slightly beside me.
"Are you all right?"
I almost laughed.
It was such an ordinary question.
The kind people had been asking me since the funeral began.
But now I couldn't even pretend to answer it.
"No," I said.
She looked down.
"I'm sorry."
I shook my head.
"Don't apologize for telling me."
I meant that.
Whatever had happened, Rebecca had not created it by coming to the church.
She had only brought me information I had never expected to receive.
I had spent the afternoon wishing she had chosen another day.
Now I understood why she couldn't.
Mama was about to be buried.
The woman who had given me the story of my daughter's death would never speak again.
Rebecca had wanted me to know there was another account before that final goodbye.
I looked at her.
"Did you think I would turn you away?"
She gave a small nod.
I felt ashamed.
"Well, I nearly did."
"You were surprised."
"That's a kinder word for it."
Rebecca's mouth moved slightly.
Not quite a smile.
But something close.
I held on to that small expression.
It was the first time I had seen her look less frightened.
I wondered how often she smiled.
Whether she laughed easily.
Whether she had the sort of laugh that made other people laugh too.
I had so many ordinary questions.
They seemed almost foolish beside the terrible one that had brought us together.
But perhaps they weren't foolish.
Perhaps they were the questions a mother should have known the answers to.
I looked at her face.
"Do you mind if I keep looking at you?"
Rebecca shook her head.
"No."
I studied her again.
Her chin.
Her eyes.
The way she kept pressing her lips together when she was trying not to cry.
There was something familiar about her.
Not enough to prove anything.
I knew that.
But enough to make me wish I had seen her face years earlier.
I wondered whether I would have recognized her then.
At ten.
At twenty.
At thirty.
Those ages came into my head one after another.
I tried to imagine her at each one.
I couldn't.
All I had was the woman standing before me.
The little girl was gone.
Not because she had died.
But because time had passed.
That distinction hurt more than I expected.
I had mourned an infant.
Now I was beginning to mourn a childhood.
A whole life I hadn't known.
I looked down at the letter.
"There's something I need you to understand."
Rebecca waited.
"When Mama told me the baby died, I believed there was nothing I could do."
I swallowed.
"I didn't think I had a choice."
Rebecca's fingers tightened around mine.
"I know."
"I didn't leave her somewhere."
"I know."
"I didn't decide I didn't want her."
Rebecca began crying.
I stopped.
I hadn't intended to say so much.
But once those words began coming, I couldn't hold them back.
For fifty-five years, I had lived with the grief of losing a daughter.
Now I was frightened of being seen as a mother who had simply gone away.
I couldn't bear that.
I looked directly at Rebecca.
"If you're my daughter, I need you to know I didn't know you were alive."
She nodded through her tears.
"I believe you."
I closed my eyes.
Those words had become precious to me.
I believe you.
Rebecca had said them before.
But this time I heard something different.
She wasn't only agreeing that I had been deceived.
She was telling me she understood I had not deliberately stayed away.
I opened my eyes.
"Thank you."
Rebecca wiped her cheeks.
I wanted to embrace her.
But I hesitated.
We had only just begun holding hands.
I didn't want to move faster than either of us could manage.
So I stayed where I was.
I looked at the letter again.
It had come from Rebecca's adoptive mother.
A woman who had died three months earlier.
I thought about how strange it was that two deaths had become part of this meeting.
Her mother had died and left papers behind.
My mother had died, bringing Rebecca and me into the same church.
I couldn't call that fate.
I didn't know what to call it.
I only knew that the timing had made the truth impossible to ignore.
"Tell me about the box again," I said.
Rebecca looked at me.
"The box?"
"Yes. The one your mother gave you."
She nodded.
"It had the papers she'd kept."
I looked at the old letter.
"And this was one of them."
"Yes."
I took a breath.
"Then those papers are where we should begin."
Rebecca seemed relieved.
I understood why.
I had spent most of our conversation reacting to what she said rather than listening.
Now I was asking to understand.
That was a change.
A small one.
But important.
I glanced toward Mama's casket.
I remembered the certainty in her voice when she told me my daughter had died.
I had never questioned it.
Not because the loss was easy.
Because the loss was so terrible that I had no strength left for questions.
I had trusted the person who told me.
I had let her words become the truth.
And year after year, I had repeated them until I could no longer remember that there had once been a difference between what I witnessed and what I was told.
That realization frightened me.
I looked at Rebecca.
"All these years, I thought I knew what happened."
She nodded.
"I understand."
"But I didn't."
I paused.
"I only knew what Mama said happened."
Rebecca didn't speak.
I was grateful.
I needed to hear my own words.
For the first time, I was separating the two things.
What happened.
What Mama told me happened.
They were not necessarily the same.
I had spent fifty-five years treating them as one.
I looked at the letter again.
The paper didn't tell me everything I wanted to know.
Not by itself.
It couldn't explain every decision made in 1971.
It couldn't restore the years Rebecca and I had lost.
And it couldn't make Mama answer for what she had said.
But it was something outside my mother's account.
Something I could hold.
Something that had been preserved by another woman.
That mattered.
I folded the letter carefully along its old creases.
I didn't want to damage it.
I held it toward Rebecca.
She looked surprised.
"Don't you want to keep looking at it?"
"I do."
I paused.
"But it belongs to you."
She accepted it gently.
For a moment, I felt an unexpected reluctance to let it go.
That old paper had become part of my daughter's story.
Or the story of the woman who might be my daughter.
I wanted to hold on to it.
Then I realized I was still holding Rebecca's hand.
That was enough.
The paper could return to her purse.
The woman was still beside me.
I looked at the purse as she put the letter away.
It was such an ordinary movement.
A woman folding something important and keeping it safe.
I wondered how many times she had done exactly that while searching for me.
How often she had taken the paper out and looked at it.
How many times she had wondered whether I would believe her.
I turned toward her.
"Did you ever think you'd find me?"
Rebecca considered the question.
"I hoped I would."
I nodded.
Hope.
There was a word I had avoided for fifty-five years.
I had never allowed myself to hope my daughter was alive.
To do that would have felt like refusing to accept her death.
Now I understood that Rebecca had been living with the opposite feeling.
She had hoped to find a mother she had never known.
While I had believed there was no daughter left to find.
That difference made my chest ache.
I looked toward the pew where I had nearly fallen.
The wood was still there.
Solid.
Ordinary.
I remembered how desperately I had held it when Rebecca told me my daughter hadn't died.
I had needed something to keep me standing.
Now I was standing without it.
I had Rebecca's hand instead.
I almost cried again.
"May I ask you something personal?" I said.
She nodded.
"Did you know what to call me when you found me?"
Rebecca looked at me.
"I knew people called you Doll."
I nodded slowly.
"That's what everybody calls me."
It was almost the same answer I'd given her when she first approached.
Only now I understood how much that little exchange had meant.
She hadn't come asking for a stranger whose name she might have confused.
She had been looking for me.
The name had been part of how she recognized me.
And I had heard it without understanding what was about to happen.
I looked at her.
"You called me something else too."
Rebecca lowered her eyes.
I knew she remembered.
She had called me Mother.
The word had frightened me so badly that I'd pulled away.
Now I wanted to hear it again.
But I couldn't ask.
Not yet.
It would have felt like asking her to give me something I hadn't earned.
I looked toward the front of the church.
Mama's casket was waiting.
There would come a moment when I had to leave the church.
When people would expect me to speak about my mother.
When the ordinary business of a funeral would continue.
I didn't know how I was supposed to do those things with Rebecca standing beside me.
I didn't even know whether I wanted anyone else to know what had happened.
Not because I was ashamed of her.
Because I couldn't bear to have strangers asking questions I couldn't answer.
I wanted to protect the little understanding we'd begun to build.
I turned toward Rebecca.
"I don't know how much longer we can stand here."
She nodded.
"I know."
"But I don't want our conversation to end when we leave."
Rebecca's eyes filled.
"Neither do I."
I looked at her for a moment.
There was something wonderful and terrible about hearing that.
I had never expected anyone to come looking for me as a mother.
Now someone had.
And she wanted to keep talking.
I took a breath.
"We can't learn fifty-five years in one afternoon."
Rebecca nodded.
"No."
"We might not understand everything right away."
"I know."
I looked at her.
"But I want to try."
Rebecca began crying again.
I felt my own tears coming.
I didn't stop them.
I had spent too much of the afternoon trying to behave properly.
Trying to be the grieving daughter everyone expected.
Trying not to embarrass myself.
Trying not to say anything that would make Rebecca feel worse.
Now I simply stood there and cried.
I was grieving my mother.
I was grieving the daughter I had believed was dead.
And I was grieving the years that might have been stolen from both of us.
All three feelings belonged to me.
I couldn't separate them.
I looked toward the casket.
For a moment, I wanted to speak to Mama.
Not to accuse her in front of everyone.
Not to forgive her.
Just to ask one question.
Why?
Why had she told me my daughter died if the child had lived?
I didn't know whether I would ever understand.
I didn't even know whether Rebecca's papers could answer that part.
But I knew I could no longer pretend the question didn't exist.
I looked back at Rebecca.
She was wiping her cheeks.
I reached for her other hand.
She looked at me.
This time, I didn't hesitate.
I held both her hands in mine.
"I can't give you those years back," I said.
Rebecca shook her head.
"I know."
"I can't tell you why this happened."
She nodded.
"But I can tell you something."
She waited.
"I never stopped loving the baby I thought I'd lost."
Rebecca's face crumpled.
I felt my own voice break.
"And if that baby grew up to be you, then that love didn't end when Mama told me she was gone."
Rebecca covered our joined hands with hers.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
I could hear the quiet sounds of the church.
I could see Mama's casket.
I could feel Rebecca's fingers against mine.
There were still questions.
Terrible ones.
But I had made one decision.
I would not let the absence of every answer become another reason to lose Rebecca.
I had accepted one story for fifty-five years because I believed there was nothing else to know.
I wasn't going to make the same mistake again.
I looked into her face.
"Whatever we learn, I want us to learn it together."
Rebecca nodded.
And for the first time since she approached me, I stopped thinking about how to end the conversation.
I began thinking about how to continue it.
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: My Mother Took Her Answers to the Grave, but the Daughter I Had Mourned for Fifty-Five Years Was Standing Beside Me
I Was Standing Beside My Mother’s Casket When a Stranger Asked for the Name I Had Used All My Life
Part 9 of 10
