Tessie D

I suppose I need to finish the story. I haven’t read what I wrote yesterday, so forgive me if there are redundancies. I don’t want to re-read to make sure I’m not repeating myself. I’m just trying to tell the truth of it all and share the whole of it. But I just can’t go back and re-read it.

It started raining, and Angel and I were sitting in the living room with the bed waiting behind us. We’d never even made it there. We were still sitting on the couch staring at each other. And I could see just over his shoulder out the window that it started raining, and that lightning was flashing across the plane. I could see it striking from the clouds, deep, dark purple and ominous and zapping the ground with tinges of light. And I held my breath and waited for the boom to come. And it did. But then the lightning started flashing quicker, and the thunder started coming sooner. And still, despite the electricity in the air and Angel’s obvious anger, I felt better. I’d let go of the weight that I’d been carrying, and telling Angel the truth of these past three years felt like it had freed me somehow of this overwhelming burden I’d been feeling.

Still, as the evening wore on, Angel’s expression grew more withering, and the tension in the room increased.

“And the baby? Where’s the baby?” he asked. He was so angry.

And I could hardly get the words out. They were barely above a whisper. It broke my heart even to say it out loud. “She died.”

“And the guy, where is he?”

“I don’t know. He left town, moved to the metroplex. That was the last I heard.”

“And why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I tried to tell you so many times, but I just couldn’t.”

“And so the only thing I knew to do was just to keep rejecting your proposals.”

“Yep, you did.” He was looking at the fire. He was looking out the window.

“You’re mad at me? You aren’t mad at me, are you? I don’t understand. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

And Angel didn’t say anything. He just kept staring out the window. And the lightning was coming faster, and the thunder was booming more intensely.

“I don’t understand. How can you be mad at me? You seem so upset. I just don’t understand. A few minutes ago, you were confessing the exact same thing, and I didn’t hold it against you.”

“Yes, you did. Yes, yes, you did. But this time this is different. Your situation is different. What I did was one thing; we had sex once. But this is something entirely different. You had a baby, and you’re an entirely different person than I thought you were. You kept something so important from me.”

Even as he said the words, it didn’t make sense. We were so much more alike. I felt so much more connected to him than I ever had before.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am. You’ve been with someone else, and you had his baby. You can see, right, that that’s not the same thing at all as what I’ve done? That you kept something so much more important from me?”

And the words landed. I knew what he meant. That for him, it was a one-time mistake that nobody would know about, that nobody knew about. But a baby, everybody knew about her. Everybody had known what had happened. His secret was his own; it was kept from everyone else. But mine, my shame, was public for everyone to see. And he didn’t want to admit it, but it was different because he was a guy. He knew it, and I knew it. It meant something different that he’d done the exact same thing, but because he was a guy, it was somehow expected or less shameful.

And this realization came over me, and I could feel my jaw tighten. And I could feel myself almost going mute. I didn’t have any words. My silence seemed to almost anger Angel even more. He wanted me to fight back or to cry, but I didn’t have it in me to do either. I just sat in stunned silence.

“You’re not the person that I thought you were. I thought you were this jewel, this rare gem that only I’d been special enough to find.”

I wanted to be stoic and dignified. I wanted to sit there with my back straight, staring ahead. But inside I felt myself starting to crumble. He was saying the words, uttering the very shame that I’d been feeling for all these years, the shame of all of it. He knew that I’d been spoiled, just like I had. And he said all the things that people said about me and what they really thought about me—what they thought about girls like me, girls that were from the country and from poor country families, families that just get by. And I realized that he’d had so much disdain for my background. I’d been afraid to share this secret, but I’d been convinced—I’d somehow been tricked by his words of devotion, by his confession. But the intuition that I’d had all those months to keep this secret was right. I’d been right all along.

And that realization came over me, and I could feel the tears starting to pool behind my eyelids, and I closed my eyes, and I prayed and willed them to go away. My eyes burned, and the tears began to creep from the corners, and I couldn’t stop them from spilling over, however badly I wanted to. I looked down at my hands. I opened my eyes and looked down at my hands, and the tears fell, no longer even tracing down my cheek. They just fell from my face into my lap and dotted my fingers.

“I told myself that you were different,” he said. “You were different than the other girls I went to high school and church with. That despite your parents and your upbringing, you were special—that you weren’t like anyone else. That you weren’t a social climber using me for money or status, or trying to just claw your way out of poverty. I thought you wanted the same things in life that I did: a simple life on a farm with a family and children. But you weren’t even honest with me. How could you have really loved me and wanted to spend the rest of your life with me, all the while keeping something like this? Did you think I’d never find out? There’s an entire town that knows your secret, but the person you said you loved the most in the world, you didn’t tell him? Did you think that I wouldn’t find out sometime in the future—next month, next year, five years from now—that somebody wouldn’t say something? How could you keep something so important from me?”

“I know, I know,” I said. “And that’s why I had to finally tell you. I knew that I had to. And I tried—I really did try every day. But you do understand now why I couldn’t talk about it, why it was impossible to tell you. I mean, you just explained and said all of the things out loud that I’ve ever thought. How could I tell you? How can someone talk about the worst thing that’s ever happened to them?”

“So other people know what is supposedly the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, but your fiancé, now your husband, didn’t. What am I supposed to say to that?”

Angel stood up, paced in front of me, and walked over toward the window. I stood up and walked over toward him.

“I know,” I said, “but you have to have compassion and empathy for me. Say that you still love me, and that you’re so sorry that I’ve experienced something so terrible, and that you understand how I couldn’t find the words to even talk about it. Please say those things. Say that instead.”

Angel turned and faced me. He took my hands in his, looking down deep into my eyes. “I know that’s what you want to hear, but I can’t say those things.”

After a long silence, I finally asked, “So what are you saying then? What is it that you want? I can’t change the past, and trust me, nobody more than me wishes that I could.”

Angel paused for a moment and kept staring at my hands. “I don’t know. I just need to think.”

I took my hands out of his and reached for his face, trying to get him to make eye contact with me. I kept looking for his eyes—he had to see me. “You have to understand,” I said. “You have to forgive me for not telling you sooner, because you understand why.”

“I don’t know that I do understand, and I don’t know if I can forgive something like that. This isn’t a small thing that you kept from me.”

I was crying again. “But what do you want me to do? I’ll do anything, just tell me.”

“I think I need more time,” he said, pushing my hands away from his face. “I think I just need more time.”

He turned, left the room, and walked out the front door, closing it behind him. Through the window, I could see him standing on the porch, looking out across the land in front of us.

I looked around the room. What had been, just an hour ago, a happy cabin filled with food and wine—still sitting on the table untouched—was now empty and quiet. The rain had stopped, and the storm had passed, but everything felt cold and damp.