“No,” he pulls his hand from mine. “I will tend to it later. Keep telling me of your daughter…please.”
Your daughter…
Those words twist me up inside.
“She’s not my daughter anymore,” I sigh. Taking another calming breath, I try to explain it as best I can to the patient alien man sitting in front of me. “We were both young, and when you’re young you kind of… get carried away. Everything to do with…that kind of thingis all new to you at that age.”
Zyntarr nods solemnly. “It is all new to me, too.”
I don’t know why, but that makes my cheeks heat even further. “Well, when we did it… we made the wrong decision to not use protection. He told me it would be ok - that just one time would be alright. I remember a voice at the back of my head screaming that that was wrong, andone timeis all it takes.” I glance up to Zyntarr and it looks like he’s barely breathing, his skin-stars whirling and twirling at his temples as he concentrates on my words. “Well, I chose to ignore the screaming voice, and it just… got quieter and quieter the further we went. Until it was over.Really quickly, actually.”
I still remember the deflating feeling after my first and only time having sex. It was like there had been this huge build up of excitement for something like a parade and a firework display, but all it amounted to was one sad float and a single sparkler.
And a baby.
“My parents were very strict. When my mother found out about the-” looking down, I hadn’t even realized I’d started hugging my middle, my palms sliding across my belly where she once grew. “When Mom found out about the baby, she was so mad. She said I’d let her down, and shamed our good family name. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so angry, and especially not at me. I was used to being the good girl. Always doing the right thing.” That look of disappointment on her face where once there had only ever been pride is still burned into the back of my mind like one of those old-timey, little projector slides. Every now and again, my brain holds it up to the light, and there she is, ashamed of that one choice I’d made. “It really mattered to her that people from our community wouldn’t find out,” I continue. “So she sent me off to my Aunt’s house - a farm in the middle of nowhere really. And before the doctor had even seen me, my Aunt had arranged for friends of hers - a married couple - to come and visit.”
Linda and Stanley Fields. I remember first meeting them. He had the beginnings of a portly belly and a kind, round face. I recall thinking that he’d make an excellent department store Santa - just give him the suit and a fake beard. Linda was taller and slimmer, though she still looked like she was no stranger to the kitchen. Both of them were perhaps around their early forties. They spoke to me like I’d known them all my life. Stanley showed me photos of the baby changing table and crib set he’d made by hand. Linda made me a cake.
They had apparently just finished a stint of fostering kids of all ages - from newborns to teenagers. I was still young enough to potentially be one of their foster kids at the time. And I remember for a brief moment, feeling hopeful that they might take both me and the baby. But no. My Aunt knew they were thinking of adopting after too many short-term fosters. Sayinggoodbye to the little ones over and over must’ve been especially hard. They wanted a baby to call their own, and mine was a possibility. I don’t even think I was showing by then.
Over the next few months, I got to know Linda and Stanley fairly well. They visited often, and I was invited to see their pretty little farmhouse too. I distinctly remember thinking it was like something out of a picture book - one where all the animals can talk, and children go off on adventures to save the day. I also remember thinking that the Fields seem like the type of people who don’t make rash choices or wrong decisions like I had. Linda was clever enough to have been a teacher, and Stanley could make furniture with his own hands, for God’s sake.
“They were really nice - loving,” I continue after taking a sip of water. “The couple - they couldn’t have children of their own, but they really wanted one. When my daughter was born, she became their daughter.”
Zyntarr’s wings flare a little and his head jerks. “They stole her from your arms?”
“No,” I snort softly. “Mom didn’t really give me a choice. I had to give her away. I was only young myself. I couldn’t look after a baby alone.”
“Where was the male who sired your youngling?” Zyn asks, his good eye narrowing.
Shaking my head, I tell him, “he didn’t want to get involved.” Zyntarr’s brow furrows so deeply, it shifts his eye-patch a little. He frowns, his mouth opening to talk, but I beat him to it; “I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t expect anyone to understand. Things are different back home, and when you’re young. It… It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.”
I wet my lips, trying to ignore the echoes of my mother’s voice telling me what a stupid, lustful thing I am to have made such a choice with that kind of boy.
“Daisy, they called her. Daisy Fields,” I say, forcing a weak smile on my lips. Stanley had suggested the name, and Linda had pointed out how it went with their last name. They both got the giggles after that and dismissed the option. But they kept coming back to it - even asked me to suggest some names while I sat at the dining table Stanley made, eating Linda’s delicious pot roast. I couldn’t think of any - didn’t want to. And they just couldn’t let go of ‘Daisy Fields’. She even sounds like a character from a children’s book. Like she wasn’t even real at all - just a figment of our imagination or the star of a movie.
It had been the right thing to do for her. I know that. Linda, Stanley and their little Daisy. As much as it felt wrong to hand her over, it felt right to hand her tothem.
“If only I had listened to that screaming voice in my head,” I say out loud without realizing, my vision glazing over, remembering how I’d felt so numb when mom came to pick me up and take me home again. Just me. No baby.
Zyn is quiet like he often is. On the odd occasion I’d considered telling someone about my past, I’d always imagined that I would want them to rush to comfort me with their words. Console me that I was only young and I did the right thing for Daisy in the end. But I can tell by the way his skin-stars are swaying at his temples and how his scarred brow pinches that he’s taking his time to really digest what I’ve told him. I wonder if he sees it now - the way babies and pregnancies bring it all back for me. How I want to be happy for everyone - howI amhappy for them, but how it’s difficult for me, too.
Eventually, he breaks his silence with a grunt to clear his throat. “If you had listened to that voice, little Bea, then a ‘nice, loving’ mated pair of humans would not have their daughter to love,” Zyn tells me, accompanied by an upward swish of his tufted tail.
“I… I guess you could look at it like that.” They were so very… capable. And happy. They wanted hersomuch.
I still feel guilt over not really feeling the same. I’m sure that would have come in time if I had been given the support to keep her, but in reality, in those few moments I had with her in my arms after the birth, all I felt was fear.
Sometimes, when I look back to that time in my life, I think maybe I dreamt it all - just imagined the whole thing because it doesn’t feel real. But then I’ll look at the fading silvery stretchmarks on my stomach, and I remember that it definitely was. She was there. And those marks are like her own little graffiti tags - little scarred signatures to remind me of her.
Linda and Stanley would send me letters periodically as she grew. Sometimes there were photos. But then Mom found out about them, and she contacted the Fields to ask them to stop. The last one they sent was when she was two and a half. They told me she was developing an obsession with ponies and they were going to get her one for the farm.
Each letter had read like they were trying to prove to me how they’re being beyond perfect parents for their little Daisy - like they were trying to show me that I’d made the right choice for her. I don’t think they knew that I didn’t need much convincing.
“You weigh every decision as if the outcome could result in something such as this?” Zyntarr asks, his voice soft and low, like it’s rumbling straight from his chest. His tail flicks again as he waits for my reply.
“I…” my words cut off in a sigh. “It’s just better if it’s clear what therightchoice is. The right thing to do. Or better still, someone else makes the choice for me.” I glance down at where I’d been idly doodling lines in the sandy ground. I’d been drawing daisies without realising. “If it’s not clear what the right thing to do is, I just end up freezing. Doing nothing is better thandoing the wrong thing,” I say, wiping the sand-daisies away. “I don’t want to mess up again.”
