unhinged

by Johanna Klique

I gently slide my hand to sign my name on the paper that will confirm my daughter is their property, I hold back a sob when I make the last loop signaling the end of my signature. I look at what I have done with shame, but I know that it is what is best. At least that's what my husband said.

3. Denial

Chad (Her dad.)

I remember the perfect girl so many years ago, the little girl that would beg me to give her a piggy back ride, who would leave little thank you cards at random places, so we could find them years later. I can remember her little voice, sweet as honey, and the pink dress she loved so dearly. That little girl is gone now. Turned into a very,very, different girl. I see her and all the things she did wrong rush to my mind. The stress was overpowering, I couldn't look at her any more, the shame was to immense.

"My own DNA rushed through her veins," the very thought was sickening.

It's hard to think of her as my daughter. "How could my daughter be like this?, this is not my perfect little girl I once had" I had thought to myself. So it was easy, so easy it was disturbing. I signed the paper quickly, "I am giving a better purpose to my DNA" I thought. I couldn't possibly see why Melissa cried so hard about it. We are doing the right thing I convince myself. But deep within me there was a a little glitch and it irritated me, it could ruin everything if it became a larger error, it was my own thought, just a single one, it said; "Maybe this isn't right." I was terrified at even making such a suggestion to myself. So I buried it deeper and deeper in my mind so it wouldn't be able to rise again. I forgot it.

It was two days after the signing, I found it, lurking in a dusty old cupboard that looked as if it hadn't been opened in years. It was dusty, the envelope tinted slightly yellow from age. The front had little pink flowers drawn from crayon speckled all around her her kiddish hand writing that said: To Mommy and Daddy.

I opened the envelope and pulled out the white sheet with drawings of us together as a family, her little and holding both our hands. It had Flowers and stars drawn all around us and on the other side held her childish hand writing.

I didn't read it. I couldn't. I just couldn't. And yet, I held the paper with shock on my face, staring, just staring at our smiley faces. What we used to be. I folded it, gently slid it in its carefully decorated envelope, and put it back in the dusty cupboard. "I will forget it." I tell myself, but I know it will always be at the back of my mind in a ghostly way, trying to fight its way to the front of my thoughts.

---

Thanks (Once again.) for reading this chapter.