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Yzak Milov. His name rips through me as my mother continues, her face impassive.
“Ava, your father was a brilliant obstetrician, who was banned from practicing medicine in this country. Angry at the system, he took matters into his own hands and did some unscrupulous things. It was all in our best interest.”
Some things? Our best interest? The article I read replays in my head. The unsanitary conditions. The rats. The illegal drugs. The deplorable infant disposal. My father was a murderer! A toxic cocktail of shock and horror bubbles up inside me. I fight back the urge to vomit.
“Mother, how could you?” Not tell me. Not stop him. Not leave him. Not turn him in. The should haves, would haves, could haves spin around in my brain like the balls in a bingo hopper. Only one pops out. “How could you have let him?”
My mother remains as stoic as a soldier, not a morsel of regret on her face.
“Ava, your father lived a double life. Do you honestly think we could have lived on the measly salary of Isaac Miller, government-employed scientist? He had bigger dreams, and so did I.”
“Mother, how could you not have told me that it was all a ruse and that my father was arrested? Tried for murder? Sentenced for life for all the horrific things he did? You’ve lied to me all these years…you told me he was dead. That he was killed in a terrible car accident.”
She even kept an urn of his ashes on her nightstand though I always suspected it was filled with her cigarette droppings.
My mother’s eyes narrow to slits. “You were just a young girl. I didn’t want you growing up knowing your father was a criminal. Confined in prison.”
The vague memory of his arrest comes back to me. It was the night before she told me my father had died in a car crash. A night much like tonight. Storming. Lightning and thunder, a heavy rain. I’d just woken up from one of my nightmares. Whirling red and blue lights infiltrated the gap between my bedroom curtains. I heard voices below, but I was too frightened to get out of bed. Too scared to go downstairs. Not knowing what was happening, I shoved my covers over my head.
Wishing I could do that now. Block it all out. Make this all go away.
I can’t.
My mother snivels. “I suppose I could have told you a nobler lie, like he trekked to Africa to take care of starving, sick children.”
The ruthless baby killer? The bitter irony of her words makes me feel sicker than I already feel. “I—I don’t understand.”
She looks me straight in the eye. “My dear Ava, I did it for us. He did it for us. We lived in a beautiful house. We went on beautiful vacations. We had beautiful things. He gave us everything. Yes, I looked the other way…in more ways than one.”
My eyes, shocked wide open, beg her to go on.
“He was having an affair with his nurse. She got pregnant…”
Where is she going with this?
“…on purpose. It was a trick. A means to an end. Smartly, she didn’t let him deliver the child. After the shrew gave birth, she threatened him. Said she had evidence. If he didn’t take the baby and give her an absurd amount of money, she was going to blow his lucrative practice apart…tell the authorities what was really going on in the basement of our house. About the sordid conditions and unreported infant deaths.” She pauses. “Believe me, I never wanted children, never wanted to care for one, but I had no choice. So, I agreed to adopt the child.”
“It was a baby girl, wasn’t it?” I can’t even bring myself to say the word Mother. It dies on my tongue. Her confession hits me like a sucker punch to my stomach. My blood freezes over until I’m numb. The years of abuse and neglect, coldness and indifference become crystal clear. She never wanted me. She resented me.
No wonder we look nothing alike.
She isn’t my real mother.
“Why did you agree?” I can barely speak.
Her expression grows wistful, her eyes distant. “I loved your father despite his transgressions. And he loved me.” She lifts her head proudly. “That’s what loving, loyal wives do.”
“That’s what loving, loyal wives do?” Marley snickers while I process my mother’s shocking words. Her face darkening, the tone of Marley’s voice turns to venom.
“Fuck you, Renata! You were his accomplice! You’re as responsible as he was for killing my sister and her baby. I remember how you sat in the courtroom day after day in that prim suit of yours, not showing one tiny ounce of emotion. Not shedding one single tear while my poor, hardworking mother couldn’t stop crying. My mother loved my sister. She worked hard so my sister could come here to be an actress. And I know she would have become a great one if she hadn’t met that monster Ned, who knocked her up and abandoned her.”
What?! I feel the breath inside my lungs freeze. Ned knew Marley’s sister? Impregnated her?
While I process this new shock of information, Marley’s voice grows softer. “I loved my sister too. Worshipped her. She was my everything. Twelve years older than me, she called me little Em. And told me I was going to be the best auntie ever and could become whatever I wanted if I put my mind to it.”
For a brief moment, she casts her eyes on the Baby Reborn doll I’m holding and then looks back up at me.
“One of my mother’s compassionate employers gave her that doll hoping it would heal her. It was no replacement for the loss of my sister and her baby. It only made her sadder, but instead of throwing it out, she gave it to me. I loved it and took it everywhere I went.”
