Emily's Daughter Read Free

the beach to make love and to be with each other. Jackson always used a condom. They knew it was important to be careful, but the night before he left, they made love more than once and used the same condom.
    She was so young she didn’t even realize how unwise that was. She only wanted to spend every possible moment with him. That night she cried because he was leaving, but he promised he’d call and he’d come back as soon as he could. Famous last words. She sighed in disbelief at her own innocence.
    Of course he never called and he never came back. Every day she’d rush home from school and wait for the phone to ring, but she waited in vain. By the end of January her body began showing signs of something she didn’t even want to think about. She bought a pregnancy test kit and her worst fears were confirmed—she was pregnant.
    She didn’t know what else to do, so she called the Talbert Hardware Store in Dallas. Jackson would help her, she kept telling herself. The man who answered the phone said Jackson wasn’t in and claimed he had no idea when he’d be back. She called again the next day and the day after that and always got the same answer. Finally the man, irritated with her many phone calls, told her Jackson had left and wasn’t expected to return. She got the feeling hewas lying to her and it hit her that a lot of girls probably called the store looking for Jackson. She realized just how stupid she’d been. Jackson wasn’t going to call and he had no intention of coming back. It was all a line—a line guys used on naive girls like her. Facing the truth was hard, and it was the first grown-up thing she’d had to do in her life.
    Her mother was having a difficult time with her pregnancy and had to stay in bed. Emily struggled with how to tell her that she was pregnant, too, but her mother noticed the changes in her. She confronted her one day in the bathroom and Emily admitted she was.
    Her mother yelled at her and called her stupid and ignorant, but in the end relented and said she’d take care of everything. Emily didn’t have to worry, she said; an unwanted child wasn’t ruining her life. She went on to say that Emily would have to give the child up for adoption. It simply wasn’t possible for her to keep the baby with college and med school ahead of her, and her parents wouldn’t be able to help because they had their own on the way. Emily had made a mistake and now she had to do the right thing.
    She was appalled at what her mother was suggesting, but when she appealed to her father he said she couldn’t upset Rose any more than she already had. There was a chance she might lose her baby. So Emily felt she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t cause her parents any more misery. Dealing with that cold, hard truth was the second adult thing she had to do. She thought of running away, but she’d heard horrible stories of what had happened to girls who’d left home on their own. She became like a robot going through the motions of everyday life and letting her mother take over completely.
    Her mother forced her to stay in school. With her grades she would graduate as valedictorian of her class and receive scholarships for college—and she did, just as her mother had planned. Even though Rose grew enormous with her own pregnancy, Emily gained very little weight and was able to hide her expanding waistline with loose-fitting clothes. No one guessed she was hiding a secret.
    After graduation, her father whisked her off to San Antonio to live with her mother’s aunt and to wait for the arrival of the baby. She wanted to stay home because her mother’s baby was due in a couple of weeks and she wanted to be there for the birth. But Rose said that Emily was getting too big and people would start talking and Emily needed to be in San Antonio where they’d arranged for the adoption to take place.
    She hated living with her great-aunt, who quoted scripture to her so she could see the error of her ways.