My Last Breath

September 12th, 1876

I felt a drop of blood slowly make it's way from my widow's peak down to my temple, drawing a red line that would soon dry before dropping onto my silk gloves, staining them immediately.

Fear exploded from the pits of my stomach. It traveled in pairs, quickly making it's way through every crevice in my body. Not only were my wrists bleeding as well, but they were tied with rope so tight they were numb. Even though I couldn't feel the pain of my hands being trapped, I did feel some sort of wound on my head. A cut?

I was very exhausted and confused. Sitting on wood floor, in front of a crate it seemed. I began to feel dizzy. I started to stand up, even without the luxury of being able to balance myself, when it suddenly hit me that I wasn't in a building of any sort. I felt the chugging underneath my feet. I was on a train.

September 12th, 1863

"Happy Birthday, my sweet Abigail! The big double digits, my dear. It's amazing how fast 10 years can fly by. Your father helped me pick it out. I'm sure you will adore it."

My mother's smile melted me, like the sun turning a lagoon to bathwater. She handed me a rectangular shaped box that boasted lavender and white stripes, with a matching bow tied around it. I knew it was a new dress.

"It's.. beautiful, Mother," I wowed. The royal blue silk dress had a lace trimmed collar and came with a matching bonnet and ribbons.

"The ribbons will go wonderfully with your blonde curls, my love. I still don't know how you managed to acquire those. I wonder if the new baby will have them." My mother rubbed her ginormous stomach in delight. "He or she will be here any day now." She was so excited to have another child in the home.

I was too.

"Your father should be arriving home any moment. Maybe he had a last minute patient," my mother suggested. I watched her smile sink with uncertainty.

Father was never late.

September 12th, 1868

I wiped the dirt and leaves off of my Father's headstone and started a conversation within his late presence. "I'm sure you already know, but it's my birthday. Mother doesn't know. I don't think she even knows what year we are in. She hasn't gotten any better. I didn't think she could get any thinner, but she has. And, the bed sores have gotten worse. Her bones are too brittle to walk and she refuses any refreshments. I wake up in the middle of the night to her cries. They are always worse under the moon. It's as if the sun numbs her, and by night time she has thawed, and her emotions finally surface. If she's not yelling for you, she is yelling for the baby."

The baby. The baby came two weeks after my Father's accident. My Mother had been bedridden by choice for those two weeks, and in the middle of the night on the fourteenth day, I heard a terrifying wail which I immediately differentiated between her normal sobs and childbirth. I ran to her, followed by the maids and live in nurses. Sweat dripped from every pore she owned, and her mouth exhaled the loudest cries I'd ever heard.

"It's a girl!" The nurses tried everything to get my Mother to hold her, but to their disappointment she wouldn't even look in the babe's direction.

The next month, measles interrupted everyone's daily routines. Hundreds of people died from the disease in Philadelphia, including my baby sister who never got a name, a headstone, or an ounce of love from her Mother.

One day, several weeks after her death, my Mother asked to hold her. When I told her what had happened, she froze in time, and sank even deeper into the hole of despair she'd already been in for months.

September 12th, 1870

I decided it was time to visit my family in the cemetery before leaving for California.

I laid between my Mother and Father's graves as the leaves on the trees danced to the beat of the wind above me. The colors were starting to change, just like me. I felt different. Empty. Like each of my parents took half of my soul when they departed, and I was left to remain a vessel of unfortunate happenings.

My Mother had taken her last breath two months prior. I wasn't sure what exactly was the reason, but if anyone asked, I would simply respond "heartache."

Of course I mourned her passing, but it was hard to miss someone who became a stranger. In the previous seven years, she had completely lost herself in the sorrow of her sadness.

The maids decided to that it would be best if they started working somewhere else. The house was sold and they found jobs with other families. Families. With a Mother whose smile doesn't fade and a Father who comes home, and children who giggle and play.

For my seventeenth birthday, I headed to California to find a new life. With little money due to the fact that the funds from the house went to paying the rest of our debts, I was unsure of how I would manage.

Yet, nevertheless, I left my life in Philadelphia behind for good. The sorrow. The pain. The unforgiving aches.

September 12th, 1872

"Happy Birthday, Rose!"

A new place. A new name. Well, sort of. Rose was my middle name.

Josephine trolled into my room with a chocolate frosted cake. Nineteen candles stuck out of it, showing off their illuminating orange flare. The other girls followed behind her, still in their nightgowns. They crowded around my bed and began a very tune deaf lullaby.

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...."

It made me feel the love and companionship I needed, yet still wasn't enough to fill the void.

When I arrived in California two years prior, I spent my first night in Grass Valley, at an Inn above an extremely lively saloon. After packing up and getting ready to continue my new life's journey, I was greeted by a woman who introduced herself as Madam Mary Marie.

"My lovely, you are dashing. What is your name?"

"Rose," I quickly blurted. I don't know why I said that. It seemed like being in a completely new town called for a new identity. I wasn't however pretending to be someone I wasn't. My Mother always told me how beautiful my middle name was, and how she wished she would've put Rose in front of Abigail instead but it just didn't have the right ring.

"Simple. I like that. Are you from Grass Valley? I haven't seen you around here before Rose. I would've noticed you."

Her eyes cut straight through me. I felt like she already knew everything I would try to keep secret.

"No, I am not. I'm from Philadelphia. I just moved here. Well, not here. To California. I'm still in search of a place to settle down."

She raised her right brow.

"Just you?" Madam Mary Marie seemed extremely surprised.

"Yes, that's correct, just me."

A smile appeared on her heavily painted face.

"Come with me, I want to show you my business. I would love for you to be a part of it!"

That is how I ended up at the lushest building in the town of Grass Valley, wearing balloon ball gowns in the daytime for walks around the town, and dressed in silk shawls at night. Dozens of men would flock to us like peacocks.

After a night of favors and seduction, liquor and laughs, smiles and winks, closed doors and wet rags, I was left to feel the weight of thousands of pounds of shame, guilt, and sadness sitting on my shoulders holding me down.

A poet could have compared me to a bird with wings that were too heavy to spread, when deep down I longed to soar.

"Thank you guys, what a lovely breakfast in bed," I giggled.

The girls all sat around my bed while we each dug into the enormous cake, one sugary spoonful at a time.

September 12th, 1873

I laid in bed, still numb and in pain. The previous night had defeated me. My child was born very much too early for his own good. I watched the color disappear from his tiny body quite quickly. I had never screamed so loud. In my mind, every window in the town shattered, buildings shook, bones broke, glasses spilled, the earth ruptured. When I thought his heart stopped, so did time.

"It's okay, Rose," Madam Mary Marie pleaded as she took him from my arms.

I watched her wipe my tears off of his face with a handkerchief. He took my heart with him.

"Rose," I heard Josephine's soft voice as she opened the door of my bedroom quietly, but muffled voices from downstairs echoed their way into my mourning cave.

"I just wanted to say Happy Birthday. Just know that I am here for you," she whispered as she sat on the bed next to me.

"Thank you," I replied in a raspy, broken voice.

"The same thing happened to me, you know. Girls like us weren't made to be Mothers though. That's just God's plan. We were made to make men happy. Think about it, if you did have the baby, how would you be able to take care of him in this musty place filled with drunk men and strong perfume and no husband to provide for either of you?"

Josephine's words might as well of been knives.

September 12th, 1874

I stared in awe at the Family Medical Practice my father once owned. The building looked freshly painted and was swarmed with seemingly satisfied, smiling patients travelling in and out. It was bittersweet to see it once again. For the past eight months that I had been back, I hadn't been able to revisit any places that belonged in my childhood. I hadn't done anything special for the last few years for my birthday and I knew seeing the places I once bloomed in as a small child would bring me closure and peace.

The new life I had left for at seventeen was one that I lost myself in more than when I forgot who I was in Philadelphia. I ran away from my demons only to meet the devil.

Upon entering my late Father's once most prized, pride filled possession, I was greeted by a gentleman who looked like someone you might see in a painting.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Simmons. Can I help you Miss?"

His smile, it melted me. It melted me. He absolutely took my breath away. He was young. I guess I had expected an older man to be running the practice.

"Hi, actually I'm just here visiting. I don't need to be tended to. My Father, Dr. George Walter used to own this practice years ago. He passed away when I was little. I was just looking around, seeing what's been made of the place since I've last seen it. It's been.. awhile."

I stumbled over my words while he choked on his.

"You're Abigail Walter," he exclaimed.

I hadn't been called Abigail in years and I cannot express how great it felt.

He grabbed my hand and led me past the waiting room and into the main hallway near my Father's office. What I saw brought tears to my eyes.

There on the wall, was a portrait of my Father, Mother, and I taken in 1861. Our names were on a plaque below the portrait followed by a biography written about our family.

September 12th, 1875

I looked into Lucas Simmons eyes with the purest form of love having overtaken me as I said the words, "I do."

To be his wife was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me. To be loved so unconditionally despite my wounded past and heartbroken yesterdays, was more than I could have ever asked for from anyone or anything. Lucas Simmons loved every broken piece of me, regardless of how it ended up that way.

September 12th, 1876

"Do you know why you're here? On this train. Trapped. Unable to run away like you so desperately always did?"

Madam Mary Marie slapped my across my face and blood spat out from my cheeks.

"How.. did you find me?"

I was in shock. I had forgiven myself for all of the wrongdoings I had brought upon myself during my years in California. Seeing Madam Mary Marie's face introduced them back into my life. The strange men, the late nights, the drunk fights, the shame and guilt, the haunting screams when she took my son. It all came back.

The train moved on, chugging to the rhythm of the flashbacks of the past.

"Did you honestly think I wouldn't? You knew the deal. You were to stay and work for me until you were sick, too old, or dead. We had an agreement which you sabotaged. YOU STOLE MONEY FROM ME AND LEFT WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE! You abomination," she screamed in my face and spit at me.

"Money YOU owed me. I took money that BELONGED TO ME," I cried out. "I earned those dollars and used them to build myself a beautiful life away from everything I dealt with at the hands of you!"

I felt blood dripping from my nose.

"You would have gotten the chance to meet your son, had you stayed. I would have permitted it. I was going to allow it just for you because I knew how much he meant to you. You ruined it for yourself, Rose! Or should I say.. ABIGAIL!"

I felt my hands begin to shake.

"Meet my son? What are you talking about? You told me he was dead."

It all started to make sense. It wasn't that he had died, it was that according to her, he didn't belong to me since the moment he was born. I remembered when Josephine's words stabbed me. We weren't allowed to have children in the brothel. That was it.

"Your son let out his first cry the moment I got him downstairs before handing him off to one of the many wealthy families that have adopted out of the brothel. He was alive and still is."

Madam Mary Marie's words cut into me. I collapsed.

The air left my lungs, the beat of my heart subsided. I wailed.

The train started moving faster. Time sped up. The anger I felt was unreal. The pain and tears, the screaming, every emotion I had let go of in the years prior attacked me.

I lounged at her. I grabbed her throat and squeezed. She kicked me in the chin. I dropped to the floor again and grabbed her leg and pulled her down with me. She elbowed me in the face and started to stand back up again when I knotted her hair into my fist and dragged her back to the floor. I reached beside me where I saw the handle of the cart door. I grabbed on and opened it.

The train zoomed past the trees and the wind reached in and fought both of us.

I wrestled with her until we both ended up inches away from the opening of the cart door. We both looked out to see we were going over a bridge that ran over a river that seemed to be a hundred feet below us. The sound of the rocks bouncing from below us and off of the bridge was tormenting as we stared into each others eyes.

"I'm sorry," she let out. "For everything."

And as the regret in her eyes danced like children in the schoolyard, we both began to stand up again.

My dress caught the the heel of my left boot and I tripped backwards, out of the cart door entrance and off of the bridge.

As I fell backwards, I saw my entire life displayed in perfect picture slides in my head. I saw my Mother's melting smile, I felt my Father's everlasting love, I remembered my wonderful baby sister's giggle, I stared at my son's beautiful face, I embraced my husbands irresistible comfort.

I stared at the early morning sky above me and felt the fight I was losing against gravity as I sank in the wind towards what would be my last breath.

September 12th, 1906

Dr. Thomas Walter stared at the portrait of his biological Mother and Grandparents in the hallway of the practice he just bought.

"Happy birthday, I love you Mother."