A/N: I couldn't get this out of my head. Serena is such a fascinating character we know very little about and she always catches the short end of the stick in fics, even mine, so this is kind of my defense of her. The woman in the story cover is Faye Dunaway, which is how I've always pictured Serena.
I hope you enjoy. Thanks to Lindsey for all her help!
PS: Ten points to whoever catches the allusion to 'Florida'
Please review or run the risk of driving me bananas.
Look for updates of other stories soon.
cruel mothers are still mothers.
they make us wars.
they make us revolution.
they teach us the truth, early.
mothers are humans. who
sometimes give birth to their pain. instead of children
- Nayyirah Waheed "Birth Lessons"
-x-
Four and a half months is how long it takes you to finally gather the courage to tell your parents you're pregnant. The look of shame that passes across your mother's face, as you sit before her, knees knocking together on the sofa, burns into your memory forever more.
Your father sits, silent, fists balled at his sides. He looks like someone's punched him in the nose with his eyes scrunched, jaw clenching and unclenching. You know what he's thinking about you. It's the same thing everyone thinks about you when they find out you're having a baby and there isn't some magical gold band wrapped around your finger.
Slut. Whore. Easy. Tramp.
If they only knew. But then again they'd still blame you. The detectives did.
What were you wearing? Why were you alone? Why did you take that way? Why didn't you scream? Why weren't you paying attention to your surroundings?
"I told you she'd go down to that damn school and end up like the rest of these hippie dippy long haired vagabonds. Now look at her, Galina. Look at her! She's pregnant!" Dad shouts, and you flinch, sinking further back into the couch. He'd wanted you to stay near Westchester; go to Sarah Lawrence or even Sienna, but you'd insisted on Columbia. You'd been offered a partial scholarship and a job in the dining hall to pay your way through. Plus Columbia offered the opportunity to get away from your overbearing parents.
"Look at her! We sent her down there and she became a whore!" There's the sound shattering glass and your mother sucks in a breath. She's probably thinking of how to get you out of this mess. The joke's on her, though, because you've been thinking of how to get out of this for the last four months now.
Hell, you'd almost gone the coat hanger route. You'd sat in that dingy basement with a pipe dripping from somewhere for three hours waiting for your turn on the table with a woman who had a cigarette dangling from her lips and exhaustion etched into her face. Something about her made your skin crawl. So you ran, the hair slipping from the chignon you'd hastily piled it into to make it to the outskirts of East Harlem before night fall, flailing wildly about your face. You didn't stop running until you reached Morningside Heights and collapsed in front of Pupin Hall.
"We can fix this, Henry. We can. We'll just find the baby's father and start making the wedding preparations. It'll be fine." And there goes your mother with her feather-light voice trying to fix everything; trying to keep you and your non-existent virtue intact.
"Serena, who is this boy that you...when can we meet the baby's father?"
You burst into tears on the spot; the salt stings your chapped lips as your tears drip arrantly down your swollen cheeks.
Who is he?
He's the devil on your back you can't shake free. His body covers yours. He's everywhere. All over you. On you. In you. Pulling. Grabbing. Tugging. His hot breath on your neck, his hands hiking up your skirt. Pleasestopnopleaseithurts. He's the smell of raw fresh cut vegetables and grass; he's the feeling of your cardigan sleeves too tight around your wrists or the cool breeze against your bare legs.
He's - stoppleasestopnoi'mbeggingyou.
"Serena Sophia," your mother starts, her delicate fingers grip your shoulder and you shrink back, fighting the wounded animal-like scream locked in your throat. "Serena! Who is he?"
You have to say something; you have to say anything so they stop asking questions. You just want it all to stop. But sadly, the truth is stranger than fiction and harder to stomach.
So you lie.
"I -he - we were at a party and I was drinking and I don't know...I was...it was a party and…"
And it's partially true; alcohol had been involved. You had been drinking, but just a few glasses of wine to get you through the night shift at the dining hall. Definitely not enough to lie down on the cold wet ground in the denouement of April to let some stranger...
That's all your father needs to hear before he's storming about the house, the sounds of shattered glass following in his footsteps. You hear him scream whore every few seconds before he tears out of the house completely.
The shame blooms in your mother's hazel irises and fades into the whites of her eyes. She turns away from you, getting to her feet and walking away, leaving you to your demons.
If only your parents knew, but you're not going to tell.
/
You're at the beginning of your last trimester and the discomfort is real. It's almost as maddening as the stares you receive from the strangers on the street that judge your bare ring finger. Somehow you've learned to stiffen your upper lip and jut out your chin. After all, it's not as if you aren't used to people relegating you to social pariah. You're only one of five women in your graduate program and the only one aiming for your PhD. To some, a woman teaching English Literature is laughable, if not downright absurd. But you manage, reminding yourself and your naysayers of women such as Aphra Behn, Emily Dickinson, and the Bronte sisters probably received the same criticisms as you.
It isn't always easy to ignore the pointed stares and the invasive questions, however, especially when your nosey parker doesn't/can't/or won't pick up on polite social Q's.
In those instances you've taken to lying to quiet them, to quiet their concerns and fear of single motherhood because this is not Beowulf; you are not the devil's mother and your baby is not the spawn of Satan. Your status as a single mother will not automatically demonize your child; he or she will not tear apart all the townspeople and the king's men in bloodlust. They will be yours and yours alone.
So you spin tragic tales of once heroic men forced to fight Uncle Ho in the jungles of Vietnam; forced to leave behind a budding family to fight an unwinnable war. Your soldier, you always tell your prying audience hasn't been heard from in three months; when he was called away, you were only four months along and he's yet to see his child bloom in your belly. Somberly you'll hang your head and lowly whisper how you fear he may be dead. You'll grab the simple band of diamonds that hangs from a chain around your neck (your grandmother's wedding band), let a few tears slip from your hazel eyes, and then rub your protruding and ever growing belly.
You manage your most Pollyannaish smile at this point. You let your inquisitor know that you and your child will be okay. Your fictitious soldier will be home soon; President Johnson has made empty promises that the tide of war is changing; communism will not win. One day, you whisper, the three of you will be one big happy family.
They always gift you with the same reaction: a clutched hand to the heart, a contrite smile, and a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Thankfully, they're too lost in their own grief to question you anymore past this point.
You might be the biggest liar on the planet, but at least they aren't calling you a whore.
/
Your last trimester is the worst. Up until then, you've been relatively okay. Sure you'd been uncomfortable and everything you'd try on from your shoes to your hats, are ten sizes too small, but you've managed.
The incident, as you've taken to calling it, is a faint memory that rests in the back of your mind. You've been too focused on finishing your semester and achieving the right marks; besting all the boys even in your "fragile state." Sometimes you're still the talk of the town, but mostly folks have seemed to move on. For that, you're thankful. Stories of heroic soldiers only go so far.
Surprisingly enough, too, you've even managed to sort some things through for you and your baby. Once the baby is born, you're taking a leave of absence from your graduate program for a bit and once settled, you'll return. Speaking of which, too, according to your mother, you're having a little girl. Apparently you're carrying high; the baby is sitting right beneath your breasts, which is a sign of pink bows for years to come.
At first you weren't sure how to feel about that fact. You really haven't imagined the baby as male or female, more so this entity inside of you. But a daughter, a little girl? In this cruel world? A world that valued women less and hurt them more. A daughter you'd be taxed with protecting her when you weren't even able to protect yourself. There's a 50% chance your mother could be wrong, but you doubt raising a son would be any less worrisome. Especially not when he could very well be a carbon copy of his fa -
You don't like to ruminate on those thoughts for too long. You don't like to lend credence to the old adage of the sins of the father. They take you to a dark place; a place where you fear the very thing growing inside you, and the only comfort you find is at the bottom of the bottle of wine. Anyways, your mother is usually right about these things. She'd guessed that your cousin Maria Teresa was having a boy with just one glance at the sway of her hips.
So you plan for a girl. Well, somewhat-plan, in between your course load and assignments.
Matter of fact, you're waist deep in the middle of a paper, the end of your semester in sight, when you finally find a name for your daughter.
Olivia.
The not-so lead heroine in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Olivia isn't usually the type of character you're drawn too. She seems one sided and vain, that is, until you read further into the comedy. Like her male counterparts, she is self-involved and, at times, over the top, but you find her actions more sincere than the Orsino's or Mavolio's. Her self-determination is admirable and the fact that she's wry, smart, and sassy seals your love for her. You also enjoy the fact that she is the mouthpiece for Shakespeare's critique of clichéd love and love poetry. Plus, the name in itself is simple, beautiful, and elegant.
You write the name at the top of your paper, a scraggly question mark perched beside it, and gather your research notes and books. As per usual, the nearest person that catches sight of you struggling with your bags, books, and belly rushes to help you. You flinch as the back of the stranger's hand brushes against the inside of your wrist, and then pull away. Sometimes (most of the time) you still have a hard time with physical contact and you never walk anywhere alone at night anymore.
Olivia. The name makes you smile as you warily thank your unnervingly familiar, yet still foreign good Samaritan (you think you recognize him as a delivery man from the dining hall - Jim or Joe - something like that; he's helped you a few times now during your pregnancy) and then hurry, well attempt to hurry off, back to your apartment. You need to call your mother in Westchester to tell her the news: your child finally has a name.
Unlike your father who has been adamant that you marry the first man you find, even going as far as to provide you with options, your mother has been surprisingly supportive of your choice to be a single mother (for now). You suspect that her motives for wanting you to keep your child aren't as pure as she insists. She'd just about put her head in the oven when you brought up adoption. She always reassures you that your father will come around. Eventually. Probably after the first time he holds his granddaughter.
Olivia. It's the perfect name and the only name that somehow feels just right.
You're not sure what you'll do if your baby girl turns out to be a baby boy besides cry.
/
Fate proves once again that she isn't on your side the week before finals.
You're standing outside of Professor Nielsen's office, waiting for he and his current office occupant to stop stroking their oversized egos so that you can discuss a comment he'd made on your final paper.
The discomfort starts in your toes, inching its way up your legs until its gnawing at your lower back. You waddle your way over to a bench across the hall from Nielsen's office just in time to watch the water soak through your brown tights.
Your books and note sheets spill from your arms and the tears swell in your eyes as the pain hits you. You double over, clutching your stomach; the wind's been knocked out of you.
Your water's broke.
Nonononononononononono.
This shouldn't be happening. She isn't supposed to come yet. You have things you need to accomplish first. Stuff you need to finish before she barrels into your life without warning. Again.
Somehow you regain your breath and against better judgment, you try to stand. Your knees buckle and you hear someone gasp. A straggling undergrad student, probably no older than eighteen or nineteen, makes her way over to you. You sit back down; sweat forming at your brow.
"Your water broke!"
You roll your eyes at her observation of the obvious, gripping your knees as another set of contractions begin to wrack your body. You know you're supposed to keep count so you'll have a better idea of when the baby's on her way, but the pain is too intense.
"I'm going to go find somewhere to call an ambulance."
You nod, not bothering to point out that St. Luke's is barely a mile down the road and that calling an ambulance is absurd; you can just walk.
The muscles in your lower back spasm again and suddenly you feel like someone is hitting you in your knees with a sledgehammer.
Okay, so maybe you can't walk.
The undergrad with her bright green eyes and dull red hair puts a comforting hand on your back and try as you might; your first inclination is to pull away. You don't go far, however, because the pain is traveling up your spine. This kid is trying to kill you.
"Can I call your husband for you, too?"
She means nothing by the question and you have to remind yourself over and over again as you clench and unclench your fists. Tears slip down your cheeks and you shake your head no, your dishwater blonde hair sticking to your forehead.
"My mom, call my mom…"
You rattle off a phone number and from then on it's all a blur. Blood thrums heavily in your ears and there's the sound of shuffling feet and muffled voices.
Your slate eyes slide to the floor and in front of you rest your essay and notes, accidentally and haphazardly discarded. The last thought you have before you hear the sirens and your undergrad comes rushing back to your side, is about how irrevocably your life had changed eight months ago.
You'd been in denial for so long, only dealing with the bulge beneath your sweater when it suited you, and now that's no longer an option.
Olivia's here. She's coming. And she's yours. Only yours.
/
Twenty-six hours of labor leave you exhausted, your body stretched to its limit, but in all honesty, you're fine.
Really, you are.
Like any new mother, you fawn over your baby. Everything about her (your mother had been right) is perfect and brand new. She's a clean slate; the best of life with ten tiny toes and fingers. She has a head full of brown hair and skin as soft as silk or sheets fresh from the drawer.
But then she cracks her eyes open and suddenly she's a stranger, this isn't your baby; she's not just yours. He's in her, apart of her, like he is with you. Those eyes. They're black and piercing, and you remember them well. They're the same set that pierced you to cold concrete and held you still; the same pair that shoved into you and told you not to cry.
She yawns against your chest, her head bobbing up and down in search of your breast, and you freeze. You're pinned to the ground again, there's cold concrete beneath you and you can't move. She's suffocating you; hurting you.
Not again. Please no. Nonononono.
The scream that tears from your throat is something akin to a wounded animal. Olivia let's loose a wail of her own and then you're both crying. A nurse rushes into the room with your mother quickly on her heels.
"What's the matter; what's wrong?"
You look down at Olivia, stretched out on her back, haphazardly resting in your lap, unable to recall putting her there.
Again the nurse asks, "What happened? Is she okay? Are you okay?"
You tremble; your eyes well with tears, and you don't know what to say or do. She needs you, your baby needs you, but she's not just your baby, and it was foolish of you to ever think she'd be. And you don't know how to comfort her - you can't. You're frozen; pinned in place.
Your mother walks into the room and over to you, she scoops Olivia into her arms, her worn hands brushing along the swaddled newborn's dark brown hair. She hushes the baby – your baby – until she's sound asleep once more.
The tears flow freely down your cheeks as you clench your eyes shut, movement finally returning to your body, and shrink back against the pillows of the bed.
Your mom whispers something about being overwhelmed and afraid – the nerves of a new mother –but you hardly listen. Your daughter is barely four hours old and you've already failed her.
Some mother you are.
Some mother you'll never be.