Good Girl

It was 4 am. I had tried to sleep but my mind was racing. I felt the crushing weight of fear on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. The gnawing emptiness in the pit of my stomach reminded me I had forgotten to eat again. The horror of facing my worst nightmare in daylight had turned me into a zombie, unable to sleep or eat, not able to do anything but unable to do anything, either. I moved slowly in the dark, towards my kettle and made myself a mug of steaming, strong, black coffee. Slipping on my jacket, I grabbed my keys and carried my coffee to my front door. I opened the door and walked across to the other side of the street. I ducked down an alley by the side of an expensive boutique hotel. I reached the end of the alley and found myself in the marina. I could breathe again. I made my way to a concrete bench and sat down, clutching my coffee for warmth.

As I looked out to sea, I could see boats on the horizon. My mind wandered back in time to the day I had been hospitalised. I had just found out I was pregnant and my grip on reality was loosening. I had become convinced my unborn child was trying to kill me. She was communicating with me, telling me over and over that I did not deserve to live. If I gave birth, it would kill me. This went on for several days until, sleep deprived, I ran out into the street in my night clothes, clutching a kitchen knife. I was going to cut my baby out of me and stop this torture once and for all. I regained consciousness in the hospital 48-hours later, under sedation. Still pregnant.

“Where is the father, Grace?” The midwife asked me, her brow furrowing in concern. I heard Hari’s voice echoing inside my head, eerily calm, measured, and felt myself inwardly shudder. “I don’t want you”, he had said before he left. “I am never going to want you”. “I see no future for us”. “I don’t want to know you.” “That child isn’t mine, who else have you been sleeping with?” I felt a lump in my throat as I remembered crying, begging, pleading. I told him I had been sexually assaulted, but I knew the child was his. He flew into a rage. Why had I not told him, he had said. “You could have given me an STI”. I turned to the nurses and lowered my eyes. “Dead”, I say simply. “The father is dead”.

I was forty years old when I gave birth to my only child. She had almond shaped brown eyes, a mass of jet-black curls and looked up at me with absolute trust. She had no idea I was about to betray that trust in the worst way imaginable. After it was over, I packed my case, and made my way to the station in a taxi. There is something strange about doing normal things, like catching trains, in abnormal circumstances. I stared at the other passengers, wondering if they could tell I had just done the most terrible thing. The woman with a thick layer of make-up, applied like a mask. Is that what enables her to face the world? What is her story? The slightly older, world weary, office worker, staring, transfixed, at his coffee cup. I wonder what their day has been like - Was it ordinary, or was it extraordinary? Finally, I had arrived home. Exhausted.

Good girls do not give their babies away.