Dear Lucy by Julie Sarkissian

Author:Julie Sarkissian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

MISSUS

It couldn’t be possible, what our daughter was trying to do, not after the love and comfort and understanding we had extended during these months that she had needed us so. We offered her compassion and care, and this is how she repaid us? Committing the ultimate sin, under our roof, in the only home she had ever known, and available to her only because we had taken her in when nobody else wanted her.

I brought up her breakfast, but her room was empty. Since she had stopped going to school, she had spent her days in her bedroom, curled up on the bed.

“Stella?”

No answer. I left her breakfast tray on her bedroom floor.

“Stella?”

She was in the bathroom.

“Stella, no! Give me that!” I wrestled it away from her and she collapsed on the floor.

“Stella, how could you?”

She didn’t say anything. She had no expression on her face. Her arms hung limp at her sides like vestigial organs.

I shook her shoulders. “Stella! Answer me! How could you?”

She pressed her lips together. “Okay,” she said finally.

“Okay, what?” I demanded.

“I’ll tell you how. Mom, I can’t have this baby.”

“Of course you can. You can and you will.”

“It isn’t right.”

“It’s the Lord’s will, how can you question that?”

“It’s not His will, Mother. Listen to me, I’ll tell you why.” She got up onto her knees. Her eyes were coming to life again, her voice was excited. “I’ll tell you why. Listen.”

I stood up, pulling her up with me.

“No, Stella, you listen to me. I’m your mother, and I will do anything to stop you from doing something terrible, something you will never forgive yourself for doing. But I won’t listen to your excuses.”

I tried to pull her out of the bathroom. She pulled back. She tugged on my arm the way she had when she was a young girl passing by candy in the grocery store.

“Mother, Mother, just listen and you’ll understand. I want you to understand.” She pulled my arm. The socket was burning.

“Stella, that’s quite enough. I won’t hear any excuse for sin.”

“But, Mother, please, it’s about that, that’s exactly what I have to tell you.” She pulled on me even harder. I yanked my arm free. The release of the tension that had built between us caused her to lose her balance and stumbled backward on the floor. She looked up at me, stunned.

Clearly I couldn’t leave her to her own devices. Things had to change, to protect Stella and the baby. When we slept, I locked the doors. In the morning I brought her breakfast. I made sure she ate all her meals. For exercise we took walks by the river. I explained to Mister she was sick. And she was. And that the pregnancy was a dangerous one. And it was. And that she couldn’t be alone outside of her bedroom without my supervision. I told it to him in this way because it would have killed him to know the truth about what she had tried to do and would have found a way to do had it not been for me.

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