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Can You Feel Me? : Chapter 15
Nick's shoulders heaved with stifled sobs, "My mothe........the woman who
gave birth to me."
Katya looked up in surprise, this is what he had been trying to get out when
he had fallen asleep. How could a mother tell her son something like that?
Sterling sat beside him on the bed and wrapped a fatherly arm around the
younger man, "You went to see her?"
Nick nodded, "I wanted to know why she didn't want me. Why I had been lied
to my whole life. She moved away years ago, got married and has kids. Three
of them, all boys. My half brothers, I guess."
Sterling nodded, "Understandable that you would want to know why. What did
she say?"
Nick sighed, "She wasn't happy to see me at all. I think she could tell by
the way I was looking at her that I knew. She wouldn't even let me in the
house. She made me sit out on the porch until she put the boys down for
their naps. When she came back out, I asked her point blank why she didn't
want me. She told me she was 18 years old, had her whole life in front of
her and didn't want a baby ruining it for her. I don't know what answer I
was looking for, maybe that she was a baby herself and that she thought Jane
and Bob could raise me better, but it was all about her and how much I would
ruin her life."
Sterling nodded, "As harsh as it sounds, maybe you were better off with Jane
and Bob, if that is the kind of attitude she would have had towards raising
you. That attitude could have led to abuse and neglect."
Nick stared down at his fingers, "I know. As much as I hate them right now,
they did raise me well. I was loved and protected and had everything I could
have ever wanted. But it was all lies. That's what I can't forgive or
forget, that my whole life is a lie."
Sterling squeezed the arm that was around Nick's shoulders, silently showing
his understanding of Nick's emotions. "What else did you discuss with her?"
Nick's look became more pained and Katya walked over to the two of them,
feeling Nick's torment as if it was her own. She knew it was painful for
him to relive all of this. She sat in front of Nick and placed her hands on
his, holding them. Nick looked up and his eyes held hers for a minute,
almost like he was drawing strength from her gaze. He looked away but kept
her hands on his, "I wanted to know who my father was."
Sterling nodded, "And did she tell you?"
Nick shuddered, "She told me everything I never wanted to know about the way
I came into this world."
"What do you mean?"
"She said that she couldn't give me a name. I took that to mean that she
did know, but she just wouldn't tell me. I said that he had a right to know
that he had a child out in the world. She just lost it. She told me he had
no right to anything. She said that the reason that she couldn't give me a
name was because she was raped and became pregnant. She told me that she
wanted to abort me from the minute she found out, that I was the spawn of
evil and now that evil was part of her body. She wanted nothing more than
to have an abortion but she couldn't. She would have to tell everyone she
had been raped and she knew that her family would believe she had somehow
asked for it. She said that they would believe she got knocked up more than
they would believe that she was raped.
When she told the family that she wanted to give the baby up for adoption
that they wouldn't hear of it and Jane and Bob basically forced her to give
me to them so I would stay in the family. She told me for the next nine
months she wished that she would miscarry or that she could somehow rip me
out of her body. She didn't eat right, she drank whenever she managed to
get by herself, she didn't take her vitamins, she even took medications that
would cause birth defects to try to get rid of me. But I just stubbornly
refused to die like she wanted.
She said that the sight of me when I was born made her sick. And that it
still did. That I was nothing but a mistake that was around all the time
and kept reminding her of the life she left behind when she left Jamestown
and the Carter Family. She said she was never more happy then when Jane and
Bob and I moved to Florida, because it meant she never had to see me ever
again.
But then I had to go and get famous on her and now she can't even watch TV
or listen to the radio without hearing or seeing me. She told me that she
wished I had never been born. She told me that right to my face. That I was
the biggest mistake God ever made on the face of the earth and that she
never wanted to see me again, never wanted to hear from me except for the
happy news that I had finally died and she could leave me as a worthless
memory where I belonged. "
Sterling looked at him, stunned speechless by the words his own mother had
hurled at him. "Oh Nick...."
Nick looked up at him, tears sliding down his cheeks, his eyes bloodshot and
it seemed like the life had drained out of him. It had been so hard to
force the words out of his mouth. Every single one of them ripped into his
soul. But when they were out a kind of relief came. Now that the words
where out there, now that they weren't bottled inside of him, he felt a
little better. But what little relief he had been afforded was eclipsed by
the pain of having to relive the memory of her, to see her face so cold and
vicious as she told him she wished he would die.
Katya was stunned by everything she had heard. She leaned forward and
wrapped her arms around Nick, feeling him lean into her and start to cry.
Harsh, heaving sobs left him as he crumpled before the eyes of Katya and
Sterling.
They could do nothing but hold him. Each one not aware of the other, but
both needed by Nick at this moment more than they could ever know.
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