Page 23 of Unnatural
The woman gave Autumn a suspicious once-over. “I am. What do you want?”
Autumn mustered what she hoped was a disarming smile. The woman’s eyes narrowed with even deeper suspicion.Fail.Well, she was already off to a crummy start, might as well dive right in. “Hi, I’m Autumn Clancy. I believe I’m your daughter.”
Deborah’s face did a number of things, none of which gave Autumn the impression the news delighted her, but then she leaned forward, peering more closely at Autumn. “What do you want?” The news, apparently, made that moment no different from the previous one, given she repeated the exact same question.
“To ask you a few questions,” Autumn said. “That’s all.” She might have given an alternate answer had the question been asked differently, but it wasn’t.To know you.She gave herself a heartbeat, two, of disappointment, not delving into the depth of it right then. That was for later, perhaps to process with Bill or maybe alone. But she acknowledged it so she could temporarily tuck it away.
The woman gave one long-suffering sigh but stepped back, opening the door wider and allowing Autumn entrance. The room was just as neat and tidy as she’d expected it to be based on the woman’s appearance, which was to say it was an abysmal wreck. Autumn gingerly picked up some form of undergarment on the back of the wooden chair near the bed, started to wipe at the crustiness on the seat, thought better of touching it with her bare skin, and sat down.
Deborah sat on the bed, drawing one leg beneath her and peering at Autumn again for several long moments as Autumn peered back. Upon closer inspection, she recognized her own cheekbones and the shape of her top lip. Perhaps Deborah did too, because her next comment was, “Huh. Yeah. I see it. Hold on.” She stood, walking to a dresser and opening the top drawer. She took a pile of papers out, riffling through them, all the while mumbling what sounded like, “Thought it was in here.” After searching deeply in another drawer, she paused and looked at whatever was in her hand. She walked back toward Autumn, holding out what looked like an old, weathered picture. “That’s me.”
Autumn took it from her and stared at it as Deborah sat back on the bed. It was Deborah, only much younger, a brightness in her eyes that definitely wasn’t there now, her skin smooth and flawless, hair half up and half down, coincidentally the same way Autumn was wearing her hair now. She looked even more like Autumn in this picture, and a part of her wanted to ask if she could keep it, but some deeper part knew instinctively that it meant more to this person than Autumn herself did. The tangible reminder, perhaps, that she hadn’t always been an emotionally void old shrew. She handed it back. Deborah stared at it with a wistful look, reinforcing Autumn’s assumption from a moment before.
“I spent my first fourteen years at Mercy Hospital with all the other ADHM babies,” Autumn said, though Deborah hadn’t asked and likely wasn’t all too interested. She wasn’t sure of another way to start the conversation though, so she started there.
Deborah bit at her nail for a moment but then shook her head. “No. I didn’t take any Lucy in the Sky. I almost did,but he slapped me right before I was about to inject it.” She shrugged. “It was his stash, the dude I was with at the time, and he flipped when he saw me about to use it. He smacked me good and hard, and I was seeing stars for the next few days. I went to the free clinic about it. They told me I had a concussion, and I was pregnant too.”
Confusion overtook Autumn. “Wait…you didn’t take it. Ever?”
“Not the hard stuff. Not while I was pregnant.” Deborah looked away as though considering. “Just the thought of it made me feel like pukin’. It was the damnedest thing. Maybe I should have kept on getting pregnant. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up here.” She waved her arm around the sad, dingy room with stains on the exposed bedding Autumn refused to consider.
“How is that possible though? I was diagnosed as an ADHM baby.”I was sick for the first fourteen years of my life.
“Couldn’t tell you. Maybe the hospital staff looked at me and assumed.”
Autumn’s gaze flitted over her. The sores on her pallid skin, the old track marks on her arms. The way she kept itching and twitching. If she looked even remotely like this twenty-four years before, Autumn might have assumed the same thing. “The man who slapped you, he was…my father?”
Deborah shrugged. “Who knows.” She tilted her head, studying her again. “You look a little like him in the chin. Pointy little thing. Stubborn.” She paused, her shoulders dropping. “Mean. But suppose he woulda been that with any kinda chin, because you don’t seem mean.”
They were both quiet for a minute. Deborah’s eyes kept flickering toward the dresser as she scratched at her arms,making Autumn think there was something in it beckoning to her. Autumn waited for the woman to ask her something. Anything. But she remained distracted by the drawer.
She stood shakily, giving Deborah the only smile she could muster. “Do you, um, need some food? I could—”
“Money would be good.”
“For food?”
“Mm-hmm.” More scratching. A twitch and then another.
Autumn dug in her purse, taking out two twenties and placing them on the table. She knew this money wouldn’t be used for food, but maybe even a small amount of generosity—kindness—would change…something. Deborah just stared.
“I appreciate the time. I…ah, I’ll check in from time to time?” Autumn offered awkwardly.
Deborah waved her hand in the air, dismissive. “Don’t bother. But if you want to drop some money in the mail now and again, I won’t say no.”
“Oh. Ah, well, I’ll see what I can do,” Autumn mumbled. The last thing she wanted was to support this woman’s bad habits, but she was also her mother.A mother who doesn’t give a damn that you exist and never did.She wanted to lecture the woman. She wanted to spit at least a few ugly words at her, but as she stood there looking at the sad shell of a human, she had a feeling more than anything, the woman needed…a hug. Whether she realized it or not. And though she had hurt her, Autumn stepped around the side of the bed, bending down and taking Deborah in her arms.
Her birth mother tensed and then went kind of slack but didn’t move as Autumn held the embrace. When she stepped back, Deborah was looking up at her, blinking withsurprise.
Autumn headed for the door. Still, she couldn’t help it; she turned back. She might not see her mother again, and she had to know the answer to the question that had stayed with her as long as she could remember. “Did you name me? Did you pick out the name Autumn?”
Deborah stared at her for a moment as though she’d forgotten Autumn’s name entirely, that look of surprise still clear on her face. But for the moment at least, she seemed to have forgotten the drawer. “Uh, no. Nurse did.”
Well.Another mystery solved. No, her birth mother had not named her. A bureaucrat had given her a surname, and some unknown nurse had chosen Autumn. Maybe she could at least try to pretend that that person had tried to think of something beautiful for the sick, unwanted baby girl who would float by her, as fleeting as the falling leaves outside the nursery window. Or maybe it was random.
The truth is good. Even when it hurts.
“Thank you again. And…have a nice day.” Deborah remained seated, and Autumn pulled the door closed behind her. She called for the elevator, but when it didn’t come immediately, she opened the door to the stairwell, jogging down all four flights as quickly as her feet would carry her, the same way she’d done so long ago at Mercy Children’s Hospital, working her muscles strenuously for the first time in her life. When she made it to the lobby, she was winded, but the bout of exercise had mostly helped her recover from the exchange with Deborah Dunne.My mother.
