A Letter to my Onlyborn

If you are reading this, it is proof miracles exist. You are alive and old enough to be asking questions about me. I pray each night you will grow up smart and bold, like your father. Although the idea of you growing up in this world also terrifies me. I want to shield you from it. In fact, if I had my way, I probably wouldn’t expose you to our story. It puts so much at risk, and there is barely enough time. But I promised your father I would write this letter. I owe him so much already, and I know it is wrong to keep the truth from you.

You were pulled out of me on the morning of 10 May 2055 in the undercroft of an abandoned church near the edge of New Palace. It is where desperate women like me have children. In fact, many of us have been hiding here, in this musty crypt, since our bumps began to show. It is the only safe place for us. You see, it is not legal for us to have you. No babies are legal, not for another eight years at least. The government says there is not enough unspoiled land to grow food to feed everyone, not since the poison bombings. They say you are a necessary sacrifice, yet they continue funding research into medicines that keep our elderly eating from the dinner table. They name you the ‘forgone generation’. But this isn't the name I chose for you. You are precious, and you are my child.

I have been in the undercroft for fifteen months, since my stomach began tying itself in knots. At the time, and even now, I embrace the sickness as a blessing. I have always wanted you, you see, ever since I was a little girl. I remember how my cheeks burned when I realised you were growing inside me. I had to physically stop my hand trembling when I told your father. I prepared our rations for when he finished his shift at the hospital, and I sat him down at a table set with candles. I wanted him to be as excited as I was, and his reaction was pure, momentary joy. The smile that burst across his face was like a masterpiece. I will cherish it forever, even if it only lasted a second before the colour drained from his face and the masterpiece melted under the candlelight. Of course, I had heard rumours about what they did to the infants. Everyone did. But it was not the kind of thing you spoke about publicly. Your father had witness it firsthand at the hospital and chose to hide the truth from me. He told me they sent the babies away to homes outside the city. The grief I read in his face revealed to me the rotten truth. I never did blame him for lying to me. It just showed me the lengths he was prepared to go to to protect our family, and I loved him more for it.

After two weeks of delicately posed conversations, and whispers in the wards, your father learned about Our Lady of Mercy, the abandoned church. One of the government midwives told him just enough details without incriminating herself and assured us we’d find safety there. “I can never ask Him for forgiveness for what they make me do to the children, but if I can help even a few families, I can try for His mercy”, she said. Your father recounted her words to me many times, and they have haunted me too.

So, we stole me away to the old church on the strength of the word of a stranger. We snuck through a crack in the rear wall, and knocked on the locked door at the bottom of the stairs. It was as the midwife told us. Voices on the other side of the door hushed themselves before it clicked open and a woman's face with mousy hair peaked out. The woman studied me and my belly. Once she was satisfied I was pregnant, she took me in. I had found safety.

When I say safety, I want you to know it is a relative thing. For those of us at Our Lady of Mercy, there are many risks. There are a dozen women living together. Some are pregnant and some are mothers. The children live in the undercroft too. Some women, like my friend Sue, have not been successful carrying their babies to term, but they stay anyway. We all hide here in the darkness, anxious about the sounds we hear upstairs. A creak is likely the weathered masonry, but could also be the police storming in to take us and the children away. We are particularly on edge when the children cry. Once one begins, the others start, like a choir of screams that could end everything. We have to hold their faces close to our chests to muffle their wailing, as we calm them. I’m always so proud of how quickly you settle. I hope you stay this calm; it will keep you safe.

Staying healthy is also tough. There is no running water here, not even for an hour like the high-rises get. This part of New Palace is mostly rubble now, since the bombs fell, and has been mostly uninhabited for years. To get water, those of us without obvious bellies take turns to collect buckets of water from the New Palace River. We must make the walk under the cover of night so nobody sees us return to the church. One night, a young mother, Lily, never returned from the river. We discovered the buckets discarded outside a boarded-up tenement on the route. I still get a deathly chill walking by that building at night. We boil the river water on a portable burner and let it cool. We each take turns drinking from the water and scoop some into small basins to clean ourselves.

Some of the men bring rations and supplies to the church. Importantly, they also forgo some of their allocated rations so the children can eat. They keep visits occasional, however, to avoid attention. Families meet in the nave of the church for privacy. From time to time, your father brings antibiotics and towels from the hospital and extra rations from patients who had died during the day.

The men have the important job of deflecting the nosey inquiries of neighbours and colleagues who ask our whereabouts and why they haven't seen us in a while. They never say we are dead even though it would be the easiest lie to tell. They can't claim rations for the dead. Instead, your father tells our neighbours I became chronically depressed and was committed for long term observation and therapy.

Very occasionally a woman leaves Our Lady of Mercy. Usually, it is one of the childless women. You see, pregnancy itself is not illegal, just the child. So the women without children are free to resume life in New Palace. It’s just that many choose to stay. My friend Sue, who I mentioned earlier, was such a woman. She left the church two months ago to find her boyfriend. She wanted to know why he stopped visiting, leaving her to rely on the kindness of strangers. Usually when a woman leaves, it is after she has given many assurances to the group that she'll keep the location of our church secret. In Sue's case, there was no doubt about her discretion.

Two days ago, your father visited us in the nave of the church. He told me Sue showed up at the hospital, scrawny and weakly. She told the nurses her boyfriend was taking her rations and selling on the black market. The nurses put her on a saline drip and gave her what food the hospital could spare, but your father said it was unlikely Sue would survive. That evening, he saw the government midwife sneak into Sue's room and put something into the saline drip. A small mercy, he was sure. The problem, he said, was that the midwife was seen by security. The police were called. As they took the midwife away, she gave your father a look of fear and inevitability.

So now, my Darling, I must tell you why you are reading this story, and why I am not telling it to you in person. Our Lady of Mercy will not be safe for much longer. The police are known to be ruthless, and the midwife is as human and fragile as any of us. There is no hope our secret will remain undiscovered. Tonight, your father will smuggle you across New Palace River and away from the city. He says there are farmlands outside the city limits in the Green Belt. They pump the clean water there during the day to irrigate whatever lands remained unspoiled by the poison, or so he says. He has compounds from the hospital to keep you asleep during the journey, but it is perilous all the same. The compounds might not work, you could be taken by bandits in the suburban wastes, and there are checkpoints on the major roads. When your father told me his plans, we argued because I have decided not to come with you. It breaks my heart to leave you, it truly does. However, I could not live with myself if I leave the other children behind. The babies of Our Lady of Mercy are as precious to the mothers here as you are to me. They are defenceless, and I am prepared to fight for them. Although I can never ask Him for forgiveness for leaving you, my Darling, if I can help even a few families here, I can try for His mercy.

I have given you a heart-shaped locket. It was my mother's gift to me, and now it is my gift to you. The photo inside is of your grandmother holding me when I was as new to this world as you. We look alike, your grandmother and I. I hope it satisfies whatever curiosity you may have about what I look like. Your father will tell you everything else you might want to know about me. The only important part is that I love you, and I would do everything again to have you.

Be kind to your father. I know he is upset now, but I hope one day he can forgive me for my choice. I love him as I love you. He will take care of you.

My last request is that you stay away from New Palace. Never try to find me. If our fears are unfounded, and the midwife stays silent, I will leave Our Lady of Mercy and come to meet you in the Green Belt. But otherwise, know that if you come here, you will never find me. I will exist only in these words and the heart hanging around your neck.

I love you always. Your mother.