Hidden Identities

It was a grey, cold morning. The kind of grey and cold you only have the miserable privilege of enduring when you live in a spectacular house on the lake. The winters here are beautiful, but miserable. A special kind of sarcastic fuck you from mother nature herself.

As she sat sipping her coffee, half consciously staring out the window with no thought in particular, her cell phone dinged. She rolled her eyes and sighed, as if the phone had done something egregious on purpose.

6-2-7-8. She punched in the pin code of her phone and saw, with annoyance, that she had a new voicemail.

It was dad. He had left a message to let her know that a package was on its way. He did this often, without consulting her first. As if she wanted every old trinket mum had left behind. As if she needed any more reminders of the ghostly shell of a mum who 'just couldn't do it' this go around at life.

She absent-mindedly wondered what might be in the package. Another afghan, perhaps? Or a fucking salad bowl that mum likely picked up at the flea market and actually had no sentimental value whatsoever.

She forgot about it as quickly as she typed an email to dad 'Voicemail received. Thanks! I'll let you know when it arrives.'

Last night had been a particularly brutal night with those dreams she often had. The ones that highlighted the hollow existence mum had lived when she was trying to hold on. This one was a doozy, and on repeat often. The one where she was all of about 4 years old again, standing at the edge of mum's bed holding her favourite childhood doll. Mum was lying there, in the middle of the day, for probably the sixth day in a row. This was typical.

'Here mommy, I brought you Holly to make you feel better.'

And there it was. That blank stare that haunted her dreams. That eyes-glazed-over, nobody's home, still face.

Mum never blinks. She study her face for some kind of movement, any kind of recognition at all, but it never comes.

Eventually, forlorn, her four year old self places the doll on the bed, turns and walks away.

She always wakes up just then. It's been over ten years. When will this stop?

A week goes by in a haze of day-to-day required tasks. Most days it's all she can do to get out of bed. Especially when the days are this short and it's so damn grey outside.

Today the package arrives. She's out for her daily, obligatory, 'must get some exercise for my mental health' walk. She nearly slips on the ice as she approaches the row of rural mailboxes. She swears under he breath and checks to see if Canada Post has delivered anything worthwhile. A package, from dad.

She slings the package under one arm, locks the box and descends down the hill, trying not to wipe out and break something on the way back to her impeccable home on the lake that she is oh-so-privileged to live in.

She drags her feet across the door mat and swears out loud this time at the discovery that the front door is locked. She goes around to the side entrance. She kicks off her shoes and reaches for the box cutter that's always sitting there, ready to receive packages.

As she tears off the excess tape and opens the box, the typical-of-dad note is lying on top of it's contents. 'Enjoy this quilt! I believe it belonged to your mom's birth mom or something. It was buried amongst some boxes in the old attic. Heather has asked that I stop being such a 'pack rat' and get rid of some old things before we move in to the new house. I thought you might like to have this.'

Fucking great, she thinks. As if I need another ancient quilt to gather dust in the closet. She makes mental note that it's time to take the stack to the second hand shop. Or maybe they're doing another one of those blanket drives this year for folks who find themselves without shelter?

She pulls out the quilt, prepared to shake out decades worth of dust. And as she does, something falls to the floor.

What the?

A little black book thuds on the floor beside her.

A journal? It's one of those soft covered ones made out of mole skin.

She tosses the sixteenth quilt she now has in her possession to the side and bends down to pickup the book.

As she opens the cover, that smell that you only get with a good old book wafts up to her nostrils. She takes a deep breath in. Nothing quite like that smell.

The front page has a single line intended for a name, and there it is. Judith Amberg. Mum's birth mum. Did dad know this was in here? Likely not seeing as the tape that sealed the box was like a thousand years old with its yellowing tint and brittleness. The box cutter had sliced through it like butter and it had flaked and peeled at the edges.

She flipped to the first page. It was dated August 26, 1952. The August before mum was born.

If anyone ever found this book, I would be in deep trouble. If HE found it, he would probably kill me. But I need to get these things out of my head somehow. I need a way to purge these horrible experiences. And I am so very afraid that I will end up pregnant. I am not ready to be a mother at fourteen years old. My family would disown me, even though it would not be my fault. It is not as if I can tell anyone. No one would believe me. Besides, if the child was born it would be poisoned by the memories of what he had done to me. I could not look at such a child, let alone care for it.

Shit. Holy fuck. Her too? My god, this shit is intergenerational. No wonder mum was so broken.

She brewed a fresh cup of coffee, put on her warmest sweater and those fuzzy slipper socks Heather had given here for Christmas with some bullshit cheery card. She pulled the cat onto her lap for comfort and began to read every entry spanning over the year leading up to mum's birth.

It was a teenage girl's diary, for sure. And it was horrifying and impossible to put down.

The entries swayed precariously back and forth between detailed accounts of her abuse, and regular teenage girl stuff. Like the boy in her class who she had a crush on, the pair of shoes and dress she was lusting over in hopes of impressing said boy, and her favourite new song, Blue Tango. And if only she could save up enough money to buy the record.

The last few entries were dark. She had missed her monthly courses for two months and was terrified about what to do.

Judith wrote how her family's religious customs would absolutely never allow a baby out of wedlock. And it's not like she could marry him. He was married first of all, obviously. And she could never. She would never. Having this baby with family support was simply not an option. Neither was telling anyone about it.

The last pages outlined an elaborate plan to run away from home, spend time in a convent until the baby was born, and then, Judith wrote, get on with her life far far away.

As she put the journal down, she let out a long morose sigh.

Wow. Well. This explains a lot, she thinks to herself. She strokes her cat and stares out the window at the waves placidly rolling by. The sky is as grey as ever.

She knew she had some family baggage, some intergenerational trauma to contend with, but this was next level. Two generations of the same story. Did mum know? She knew she was put up for adoption, but did she know why? And if she did, talk about a sure way of feeling unwanted in the world.

And apparently mum was Jewish? This was the first clue about her mum's ancestry she had ever known.

Maybe she'd do one of those mail-in DNA kits.

Maybe she could find some other distant relative that had done it too and connect with them. Maybe she could trace back to the fucker that was officially her grandfather. Maybe this would help her feel like she understood better.

And maybe then, she could feel not so misplaced in this grey fucking world.

After all, she had been spared the humiliation of the fate mum, and apparently grandma, had received at the hand of a family member. She refused to be a victim.

She would not end up the same way as mum: gone. And an empty shell of a human before that.

History would not repeat itself. She'd already gotten this far.

The unborn child she longed to have, but was terrified to have in case she passed on this darkness, deserved a clean slate; free from this madness.