Sara PT 2

Sara, Part 2.

The light revealed two people before me. I wondered how they got there. Or if I was hallucinating. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hands, wiping off the tears that lined my eyes. I looked at the people before her. It was the woman on the TV and another man she had never seen.

"Wait, I know you."

"You are the woman from the TV. Stevie, yeah?"

"Yes, my darling. I am the one."

First, don't call me your darling. Second, how did you get here?

****

“Stevie tried to keep you away from us, and that she did.” Grandma was narrating the events preceding my birth. “Maybe she was afraid that her dad would find out and get angry, especially when we had never met her lover. Well, not the new one. The last lover we knew was a guy they were in a band with, and he made her do foolish things. That one. A very evil boy.

“So, perhaps she was afraid of being a disappointment to the family again, she decided to abort you at a late stage. I think it was about 8 months. She went to a hospital where they gave her some sort of drug. Well, I don't know the details, because I am no nurse. But what I remember was on that Sunday afternoon, when I and Tom returned from our neighborhood meeting, there was this sweet lady in her mid-forties, who was waiting for us on the porch. She said she was an attending nurse who helped Sarah when she came to the clinic for an abortion. She was concerned about her, so she waited. Although the abortion was successful, it was also not successful. That was how the lady said it.”

"What does she mean by that?"

"She meant although you were evacuated from your mother's body, successfully, she still couldn't get rid of you, because you were almost a baby. In fact, you would pass for one of the late preterm babies. So, this nurse said she was compassionate, and took you from the bucket where your mother dumped you.

“The Nurse whose name was Sara took you up from work and ran home to place you in an incubator. She said she had bought two sets of the second-generation preterm incubator, as she was hoping to start her own clinic soon. She had gotten the incubator alongside some other things. Bless her soul. According to her, she did it on a night shift, which was when issues like abortions are performed. When most people had gone and those on night duty were busy adjusting to work, she left the clinic, carrying you in a bag. She placed you in the incubator overnight. When it was morning, to her surprise, you were already mature like a day-old, term baby. So, she had gotten some milk from the milk bank at the clinic and brought you to us. Requesting that we pay for the milk.

“We had our doubts but she said she looked up her information and found out we were the parents. It used to be our family hospital. So, she thought if someone did not want her baby, then there was no point in reasoning with her. She decided to come to us, with the mind that if we also didn't want you, then she could dump you afterward.

"What could we do?

"Although we weren't read and didn't know if what she was saying was true, we decided to have you for a couple of months before doing a DNA test to confirm if we were related."

I sat put, listening patiently. My eyes gouged out, wanting my grandmother (or this grandmother) to drop everything at once.

"The results came out true." Your DNA matched ours up to about 45%, but it matched your mother's about 45% too. We guess you must have taken most of your genes from your father. As you grew to have the face of your mother when she was younger, there was no doubt that you are really her daughter.

"That is how you have been with us for so long." In fact, we did not give you a name until we had confirmed your identity. In honor of the lady who saved your life, we decided to call you her name. However, there was something spectacular about you; we found Stevie's diary 6 months after you were named. It says, "If I ever had a daughter, I'd name her Sara." Whether this was fate or some coincidence, we don't know.

"Although a child is a child no matter what fault she has, your mother had not come back home since she left with the boy in the band and posed nude for some magazines, and your grandfather forbade her from coming. So, she hasn't been a part of the family for a long time, and that is one of the reasons why you haven't met her."

Sighs.

"The other reason is that she doesn't know she has a daughter."

"What!? How is that even possible."

Because she aborted you, which turned unsuccessful anyway. And she had not been home.

"And you didn't tell her? Or hasn't she been calling?" I asked in a tone that is almost sarcastic and concerned, trying to believe grannie Harriet.

"Well, I have been doing. But you see your grandpa, he never did. He has a stubborn heart. He wouldn't even watch her perform when she is live on TV."

Well, I know grandpa is not as hard-hearted as she claims. I remember him in the basement listening to her music, even the bad ones. I remembered her other tapes in the car safe that was in the garage. But that is one of the egos of men, they don't want to break down and feel vulnerable in the face of the ones they love. However, I was not ready to have that conversation with Harriet. This is a self-discovery moment.

"He warned me to not watch her shows so that you would not find out. He warned me to stay away or to listen when I am alone, not when you are here. I never listened. I said no matter the disappointment, she is still my daughter. My failure to listen to Tom has left me doing this unveiling. I wish I had listened to him because... doing this. This. With you...alone...doing this alone is so hard for me right now." She sniffs, to hold back her running nose, and presses a napkin to her face to mop the tears.

She continues. "At the best, I wish he was here to do this with me. I wish we were doing this together."

"Just tell me everything!" I didn't want to fall for an emotional blackmail (just in case that was the stunt she was pulling).

"Yeah, I am getting to it." Sniffed. "So, since Tom died some years ago, she was supposed to come.

"By 'she' you mean Stevie?"

"Yea." She was supposed to come with her siblings for the very first Christmas we had after Tom died, but she didn't. She said she was on tour and her music was still gathering momentum."

"She didn't come for his burial too. I noticed."

"Well, she came, she only stood behind. She didn't stay with the family. She stood afar. She left almost immediately after. I couldn't speak with her. Only Clarissa, the last born who was her favorite, did. She would call me later to say she couldn't wait because she felt ashamed of what people would say of her and her late dad. I understood, so I let her be." Afterward, it had been one excuse or the other. In all fairness, she sent money. She called whenever she could, but she just was never around. Only she can tell the reasons that best suit her.

So, she hadn't known she has a daughter until today. She wasn't avoiding here because of you, she has been avoiding here for whatever nightmare her life is giving her."

"Well, I don't know if I believed you, but I hear you."

"I have nothing to lose anymore. I have no reason to lie. But I understand if you do not believe m..."

"You do not understand!" I quipped at her, cutting her short. Have you ever lived a very long life for you to discover that all you had believed about yourself is a lie?"

"I am sorry. Okay."

Just in that moment, I noticed an aura, energy coming from Harriet. I could sense it and knew what it meant. That she was being truthful. I wanted to convince myself otherwise that there was no reason to trust her, but what I sensed was an undeniable witness of truth.

And this was just about my third experience of some sort of out of the normal experience since I made the discovery.

"What about my father? Does he know?"

"We have never heard of him or from him. We thought maybe it was because Stevie thought we would never approve of it was why she wanted to abort. But again, I knew when they broke up, and when they went their separate ways, so, I don't think it is possible for the band guy to be your father. Stevie changed her name to Stevie Nicks, although it is a stage name, she holds it as her identity rather than the family name Stonemason. So, it is possible she adopted the name of the guy she dated last, or maybe not. I really do not know.

"Okay."

"I am so sorry you had to find out like this. I am really so sorry."

"Forget it, I will find out for myself. At least, you were not the one trying to abort me."

For the first time ever, I met my father that night. No, it wasn't like meeting him in person. It was a meeting in a realm that was outside the body. I saw him with another person, they were having drinks. He didn't speak to me, and neither did I, to him. I just had the sense of knowing he was the one. He was looking around as though he sensed someone was calling his name or looking for him. But I was just there observing him.

He looked nothing like anyone I had seen my entire life. Calm. Clean. Beautiful and reserved. Yet, he looked like someone who had seen a lot, who knew a lot. A lot more than what is expressed on his face.

"Dad?" I called out.

"Did you hear anything?" he asks the man seated across the table from him.

"Anything like what?"

"Like someone looking for their father."

"No. You can sense it?" He asks in a matter-of-fact way.

"Yea."

I stayed with Grandma, having my own adventures. Sometimes I stay away for days, but we were cool.

Years later, one day, I was thinking about my parents in the room, and suddenly, the room was filled with light, with the source being somewhere from my wardrobe.

The light revealed two people before me. I wondered how they got there. Or if I was hallucinating. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hands, wiping off the tears that lined my eyes. I looked at the people before her. It was the woman on the TV and another man she had never seen.

"Wait, I know you."

"You are the woman from the TV. Stevie, yeah?"

"Yes, my darling. I am the one."

First, don't call me your darling. Second, how did you get here?