Page 134 of Scars and Crowns

She keeps speaking. Her voice is so small that I almost miss it. "I wanted to terminate the pregnancy." My throat closes. She looks down at her hands. "I need you to know that too."

"Daisy . . . "

"I wanted to." There is no shame in the way she says it now. Only exhaustion. "I knew what being raised by a single mother looked like. I knew exactly what it cost. I watched my mother take every job she could get here, watched her come home exhausted, watched her hands crack and her back hurt and still get up the next morning because there wasn't anyone else."

She takes a shaky breath. "And I was terrified." Her eyes lifts to mine. "I was terrified that I would spend my entire life struggling the way she had. That I would look at my child and see him. That she would grow up with his face. That every time I looked at her, I'd remember that night."

I don't know how she managed to carry all of that and still smile at Sara the way she does. I don't know how she got up every morning. I don't know how she went to work. How she learned to laugh again. How she made a home. How she became the mother I have watched these past months with a kind of awe I never quite knew how to put into words.

"I had just lost my mother," she whispers. "I had nobody. No one in Mumbai. No one I could call and say, I'm scared. No one who would have come and sat beside me." Her fingers twist together. "And somehow, somewhere in all of that . . . I decided to keep her."

I close my eyes for a second. Not because I don't want to hear her. Because I am trying to keep myself together enough to hear all of it.

"I don't even know if I can explain why." Her voice cracks. "Maybe I couldn't bear losing another person."

I open my eyes.

She is crying quietly now. "When she was born, I thought I'd feel . . . " She searches for the word. "Relief, maybe. Like I'd survived the worst part and could finally put it behind me."

A sad little laugh escapes her. "But then they put her in my arms." She stops.

I see the memory cross her face.

"I looked at her and she was just . . . mine." Her lips tremble. "She was this tiny little person, and she needed me, and I loved her. God, I loved her so much." The tears come faster. "But sometimes . . . " She can't finish. I wait as I draw small circles on her back, in an attempt to soothe her, but can I really soothe her . . . after all she has gone through?

"Sometimes I'd look at her and remember." Her eyes squeeze shut. “And I'd hate myself for it."

"Daisy."

"I never hated her." She says it immediately, fiercely. "Never her. Never."

"I know."

"I need you to know that."

"I do."

"But sometimes I hated what had happened to me. I hated where she came from. I hated that something so horrible was the beginning of something I loved so much." Her voice breaks completely. "And then I'd feel guilty for even thinking that." She covers her face. "I'd think, what kind of mother feels that way about her own child?"

My heart breaks. It breaks quietly, somewhere deep inside me, because I can suddenly see the shape of the years I missed. The nights she must have sat beside a sleeping child and wondered whether she was allowed to feel anything other than gratitude. The mornings she got up anyway. The days she smiled anyway. The moments she must have swallowed her own grief because Sara needed breakfast, or clean clothes, or a story before bed.

She didn't need to be perfect. She needed someone. And there wasn't anyone.

"I'm such a fucked-up person," she whispers. "I loved her more than anything, and sometimes I still wished the circumstances were different. I don't know how both things can be true." Her shoulders shake. "I'm scared you think I'm horrible."

That finally breaks whatever distance I've been holding between us. I take her face in both hands. "Look at me." She tries not to.

I wait.

"Daisy." Her eyes meet mine. "You are not a bad mother."

She shakes her head immediately, tears spilling down her cheeks. "No."

"Yes."

"You don't understand."

"I understand enough."