I don’t exactly know why I’m writing this, in all honesty. I have never been good at writing to tell the truth. My grades were all average. I am good at stalling, though. I should probably stop that. 

I’m sitting in an abandoned shack. With a baby. My baby, if you want to be specific. Her name is Lily, and she likes being held. And sleeping. Oh, and eating. Lots of eating. She doesn’t like much else, but it’s hard to have much of an opinion on things when you’ve only been alive for a few hours, so she gets a pass. I love her. I love her more than I’ve ever dreamed of loving something. So I suppose she is why I’m writing this. The same reason I brought us here in the first place, to give her a chance. Or at the very least, an explanation.

Lily looks like me. She has the same round dark eyes and crinkles her nose when she sleeps the same way I do when I laugh. She doesn’t look like her father, or maybe she does, in which case I’m refusing to see it. I hope she looks like me. I hope it isn’t the postpartum delusion or whatever they call it. Neither of us need any reminders of him. 

He was handsome. 

Did I say that I was good at stalling? I am. But Lily doesn’t deserve stalling. She doesn’t deserve a lot of things I have to give, but I’ll give her whatever good bits are left. So, to start, I got pregnant. I’m 17, and I was- or am- in love with a boy. A very nice boy. The handsome one, if you remember. Artie Torres. You could call him Arthur, if you wanted to get socked in the face. He didn’t like his first name, thought it sounded dorky. He was dorky, but cute. He did cute things, like buy me flowers, and write me little notes that he would fold into shapes and tuck into the corners of my books. He gave me a million and one little adventures; took me to concerts and state fairs, through beautiful wooded areas with natural water features, to cheesy movies and twenty-four hour convenience stores. And of course, just to prove he could top them all off, he gave me Lily. That would be just like him, always having to one-up himself, go out with a grand finale.

 I don’t mean it, though. We didn’t plan on that little adventure. I’d like to paint her conception as something magical and memorable, some little love affair on a warm summer afternoon underneath a willow tree. But in all honesty she came into existence the same way a sunset does- it makes perfect sense that it exists, but you’re still in awe when it does. We knew we weren’t exactly being careful, I wasn’t on birth control and our access to other contraceptives was limited. So if we ran out, we ran out. And Lily’s here, so I guess we ran out. The funny thing is, I think I knew I was pregnant before it was medically possible for me to tell. There was something gnawing at my heart, a distant tap that said ‘I’m here’. I have felt Lily from the moment she existed as nothing but a clump of cells, a notion of a life growing inside me. I love her. I’ve always loved her. Even when I was scared out of my mind, when I sobbed into Artie’s arms as he tried to hold me strong underneath his own shaking hands. He would have been a great dad. 

So, after that, I guess we just managed. I took a lot of sick days from school. Wore a lot of baggy clothes. Telling either of our parents was absolutely out of the question. And I don’t mean that in a typical teen scared-of-disappointing-my-parents-kind-of-way. I was hardly surviving at home as it was. My parents divorced when I was young, and Mom remarried when I was about ten. She didn’t love him. She always wanted me to marry for love. “Sometimes you have to do things, hard things, in order to keep going.” She said that to me once, when she was cleaning up her wounds in the bathroom and wiping tears from my eyes as my step father drove off after another fit of rage. I had asked her why she stayed with Frank, not understanding at my young age why we would need him. She couldn’t get a good job, she didn’t have a high school or college degree, and the divorce from my dad gave her a reputation in our small town that she couldn’t outrun. So when Frank, who owned a local car garage, showed an interest in her, she did what she thought was best and let him have her. He’s a cruel man, never satisfied and always taking out his frustrations on me and my mom. I’ve definitely had my share of cuts and bruises, but mom gets it the worst. I wish I had it worse. 

He gets to me in different ways too. Ransacks my room, screams in my face, withholds meals when he can. Cruel. I suppose where he comes in most importantly here is when I started seeing Artie. I didn’t want him to know, for obvious reasons. He would most definitely try and keep me away, or hurt me for seeing him. He’s possessive, claims he wants to “protect his daughter”, keep me “pure”. I’m not sure why, though I’ve always had a nauseating feeling that his motives were selfish. Anyway, I saw Artie in secret for a while. School was the easiest way to see him, though there were many nights he snuck over. He’d sit on my windowsill, holding me in the cool night air and singing an old Frank Sinatra song. 

The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red,

and, oh, the night’s so blue,

and then I go and spoil it all by saying somethin’ stupid like I love you

I like that song. It always makes me feel warm, like I’m somewhere else than I am. Like under that willow tree, on a warm summer afternoon. Worried about nothing but the beautiful, tanned boy laying by my side as my hands work through his inky black hair. Artie was wonderful. Maybe Lily looks like him, maybe just a little. 

Well anyway, Frank naturally found out. You can only hide things for so long. He’d told me, “That bastard better keep his hands off of you,” as he cleaned the dirt from under his fingernails with his pocket knife. “Come home pregnant and I’ll kill you and whatever… thing he sends you back with,” he pointed the knife at me, gesturing at my stomach. He was serious. I knew he was serious. I knew it. 

My stomach hurts. It feels like contractions. I guess I haven’t stopped having them since I had Lily roughly 40 hours ago now. I think that’s normal. Something about the placenta, I think. Yes, I think that must be right. 

My mom had an easy delivery, she said. Her water didn’t even break, she just walked into the hospital alongside my dad and they induced her then and there. They gave her medicine to help with the pain, and a few hours later there I was. I didn’t get medicine. I actually didn’t even go to the hospital. 

I’d like to try and keep this chronological, but it’s a bit hard. My brain feels really foggy, and I'm so tired. I have a lot of thoughts going on right now. I just want to get them all down. I want Lily to have something to make up for what I can’t give her. I wasn’t sure about adoption for a long time. I wanted to keep her, to raise her and do for her what my mom wanted to do for me. I wanted to give her a million and one adventures with me and Artie, to give her a life so full of love that she’d never even be able to think of horrors like I’d known. But after Artie was gone, I didn’t care. She couldn’t have what I wanted her to have, couldn’t have what she deserved. I wasn’t enough. In a million lifetimes I could never be enough, not without him. 

I guess she’d like to hear about her dad. About how wonderful he was. About a whirlwind romance that swept me off my feet and changed me forever. I can’t write about that. I want to give Lily everything I can, but this one thing is for me. What Artie and I had, what we shared, is ours. I can’t bring myself to give it up, or relive it in all honesty. But I’ll give what I can.

He was art. I don’t believe there are perfect people in this world, but Artie’s existence could’ve convinced me. He was radiance and the smell of coffee, the cool feeling of the sun dipping just below the horizon, and adventure in its purest form. He had kind eyes, and when I laid my head against his chest I could feel his vocal cords vibrate against me as he sang, holding me closer than I thought possible. He was simultaneously my escape and my home, saving me from the peril I lived in and taking me away if only for a few hours. I love him. 

When we found out I was pregnant, we recovered from the initial shock fairly quickly all things considered. It was necessary, we had to put our feelings behind us and plan how we were going to cover things for as long as possible. Telling my parents was obviously out of the question, but it was similarly impossible for Artie’s to know, either. They were loving, but extremely strict. On multiple occasions they had used the threat of sending him to live with an uncle a couple towns over. We thought that if they only found out once I had already had the baby, they wouldn’t send him off. He said they understood a parent’s love for their child more than they understood love like ours, and they would never take him from his baby. I believed him, but still some deep part of me tugged resistantly. Maybe that was Lily. Maybe she knew. 

Well they sent him anyway. Not because of Lily. His grades were slipping. He was spending most of his time caring for me. Coming to see me. Making sure I was eating, holding me when I broke down into sobs, bringing me my pregnancy cravings. We spent every moment together after we found out, comforting ourselves in the presence of each other. He spent all his waking moments with me, comforting me, supporting me. He was sent away because of me. Because I couldn’t handle the consequences I had brought on myself, and he had to be there to pick up the pieces. I got him sent away. I got him killed. 

I’m sorry Lily. I’m really, really sorry. I’m sorry that your dad isn’t here, I’m sorry that it’s my fault. I’m sorry I brought you into the world like this. I’m sorry you have to grow up in a home without his love, his light. I’m sorry you can’t live in a home where Artie and I dance in the kitchen and kiss so much that you’ll never question what love is, because you know from seeing it.  I’m sorry that I wasn’t enough to be your mom, and I’m sorry that one day you’ll read this, and you’ll hate me. I’m really sorry about that one. 

I’m sorry for getting sidetracked. I just have a lot to say. I’m not trying to stall, I promise. I said you don’t deserve that, and I mean it. 

Artie went to live with his uncle, and there were some guys at his new school that started kind of going after him. He ignored them, he was just trying to finish the school year and graduate so he could come back home to me. The guys found out he had a girlfriend back home, that he had me. They just made fun of him more and when that didn’t work, they started insulting me. Saying things like I was probably fat, or that I was sleeping with the whole school while he was away. He got angry, like really angry. He punched one of the kids really hard. He was defending me. They didn’t like that, and they followed him home one day and hurt him. Really badly. I don’t think they meant for his head to hit the curb, at least not as hard as it did, but they left him there. They ran. They left him there, bleeding. No one found him until it was too late. 

I’m really sorry Lily. I’m sorry I got him sent away, I’m sorry that I made him hit those kids, I’m sorry that I left him there bleeding. 

My stomach really hurts, so I want to lay down for a bit. I’m still really dizzy, too. I’m sorry. I want to give you more, but I’m not strong. I don’t know what else I can give you. 

Tomorrow, we’ll walk just a little farther to the next town over. It’s not long, I promise. Maybe 20 minutes. You cried a lot on the walk here. I kind of smiled, to be honest. I used to play here a lot, especially when Frank would get mad. I would slam open the screen door of the back porch and just make a dash for the woods. I found this little shack my second time coming here. I used to bring my dolls here and play house. I’d pretend I was cooking big meals, and we were waiting for their father to come home from work. A father that smelled of coffee and sang Frank Sinatra, one with inky black hair and a laugh that shook in his throat and kind eyes that only looked at me. And now I’m here with you. 

I hope you understand that I had to bring us here. I only had you a few hours ago, and Frank and Mom were going to come home and find out about you. I brought us here just for the night, just to hide out until the morning, when I’ll take you to your new parents. You wouldn’t like Frank, he’s scary. He would want to hurt you. I’m sorry that I have to say that. 

I think you’ll like your new parents. They’re good people, they have good jobs. They have a big backyard and a dog. I won’t tell you too much about them, they’ll be everything that you know and love pretty soon. Maybe one day you can tell me about them. If they baked you cookies and kissed you goodnight, if they showed you how to dance while you stood on the man’s shoes, if they held you when you got scared by thunder and brushed the hair out of your face while you slept. Maybe you’ll tell me how they really, deeply loved each other, and how you never doubted what love was because they showed you, and you felt it. I really hope you’ll tell me that. 

I love you, Lily. I hope the rest of your life is filled with adventure. I hope that you feel the warmth of the sun on your face as you lose yourself in the world of a book, and that you explore the world with bare feet and open arms. I hope you wake up everyday with excitement and a taste for adventure, and that you are met with the most beautiful sky to spend your day under, eating oranges and letting the juice drip down your chin. I hope you have a favorite color,  and you meet someone that radiates love, and light, and everything wonderful about being alive. I hope they make your nose crinkle when you laugh, and they make all the good things shine brighter, and illuminate all the bad things that don’t. I hope you feel love so deep, and real, that it is all that you can feel. Love that is so strong that it is all that you have to lose. And that you think to yourself how dangerous it is, to finally have something worth losing. 

I don’t think I can sleep. I’m scared. I’m still bleeding, like a lot. My stomach hurts so bad now that I don’t know how much longer I can go without closing my eyes, but I don’t want to. I want to stay here and look at you a little longer. I don’t think I’m going to make it to the morning. There’s so much blood. I wonder if Artie bled this much. I’m so dizzy, and I think I need to go now to give you a chance. If I don’t, I will lose you, and that can’t happen. Your new parents should be home. It’s almost dark but I can see enough to walk there. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, you won’t read this for years, if you ever read it at all. This can be the one strong thing I can do for you. I can walk with the blood, with the pain, with the dizziness and I can give you the life you deserve with the backyard and the dog. 

I love you, Lily. I love you more than I love Artie, more than I love books and Frank Sinatra and the color blue. My love for you is all that there is, and I will be strong, I will not lose you. 

We have to go now.

I love you,

-Mama