Page 66 of Pieces of Ash
I wince at this information. While at school, part of our service requirement was to participate in the annual March for Life rally in Washington with other Catholic girls’ schools. It was our biggest annual field trip and mandatory for every girl in upper school.
I have been taught that willful miscarriage is a terrible sin, but all I can think is that for Tig to resort to such measures, her life must have been utterly unbearable, and I feel more sympathy than judgment.
“How did you know?”
“She wrote to me,” says Gus, sitting down to roll and fold pink napkins into rosebuds.
“Email?”
“No, sugar. Pen to paper.”
“She did?”
“Started the third year she was married. Out of the blue. Then, once a month, like clockwork.”
“How?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Said she had someone on the inside who’d mail the letters for her.”
“You don’t know who?”
“Never asked.”
“Did you write back?”
Gus shakes his head. “Couldn’t.”
I have many unresolved feelings about my mother, but to think of Tig sharing her terrible life with an old friend who wasn’t permitted to write back—who wasn’t allowed to comfort her through all those secret losses—makes me so sad, I stop what I’m doing for a moment, hugging a plate to my chest. I close my eyes and breathe deeply to stanch the tears that want to fall.
“I would’velikedto write back,” says Gus, “but it would have made things harder for her.”
This is indisputable, and we both know it.
“I found her diary,” I say. “I took it. I have it. Now. Here.”
Now Gus looks up at me, his forehead creasing as he searches my face. “Tig had a diary?”
I nod. “She found it in her bedside table two years after she left rehab and started writing in it.”
“Where the hell did you find it?”
“She hid it under a mattress at her house. I…I found it in her room. At Mosier’s.”
“What does it say? Oh my god, Ash, what does she say?”
“I can’t read too fast, Gus. It’s…” I wince. “…hard.”
He’s holding my eyes, but now he rounds the table and pulls me into his arms. “Aw, li’l Ash.”
“She was so unh-happy,” I say, tears burning my eyes.
“Yes, she was.”
“I thought she hated me.”
“No, honey. She only stayed alive foryou,” says Gus.
“B-but all those b-babies.”
