The Unwelcomed Child Read Free Page B

there that were so obvious to other girls and boys my age, but to me, they were like things discovered in outer space. I was fascinated by signs and posters, especially those advertising concerts and films, the style of the clothing girls my age were wearing, the jewelry I saw on them, and, of course, the makeup. I had yet to hold a tube of lipstick in my hand, much less use one. Grandmother Myra never used any makeup, so I couldn’t even try something she had.
    When we walked through a mall and I was drawn to the covers of magazines to look at the beautiful women and girls, my grandmother would seize my head and force me to look straight, nearly tearing my neck. I moaned in pain.
    “Don’t look at trash,” she would say. “It will spoil your eyes, missy.”
    I didn’t have to ask if she was serious. There was never any question that evil was seen as a disease, something I could catch like a cold. My grandparents believed that because of what had happened to my mother and because I was the unwelcome result of it, I had a poorer immune system when it came to evil. I would catch it faster, and it would be far more serious for me. They also believed that was true for actual diseases and illnesses. Even though seemingly good people had terrible health problems, my grandmother believed there was something in their past or their parents’ past that caused it. It was one of her favorite biblical quotes: “You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children.”
    Even though I was very healthy and didn’t have to see a doctor much at all, the possibility of something horrendous happening to me always loomed out there. She had me expecting to be struck down by some debilitating disease. However, when they took me to a dentist twice a year, he would always remark about how perfect my teeth were.
    “She doesn’t eat horrible sweets or chew gum,” my grandmother would tell him.
    That wasn’t a lie. Except for the pie on Sunday, the sweetest thing I was permitted was a tablespoon of honey in a cup of tea. I had no cookies, soda, candy, or cake and had never tasted ice cream. My grandmother told me that the longer she kept me from indulging in the lust for overly sweet foods, the better chance I had to be pure of blood.
    When I was younger, I never understood what all the talk about my blood meant, but my grandparents made it sound as if there was something rotten or spoiled in my blood, and the whole purpose of how they were bringing me up was to purify it and destroy the strains of evil that flowed through my veins. In fact, whenever I cut myself, I studied the blood that came out, looking for something dark or ugly. When I asked her why it wasn’t there, she told me to stop being stupid.
    Gradually, I realized that in their minds, evil was something inherited, or, at least, the tendency to commit it was. This wasn’t so different from what I understood to be original sin. Everyone, they told me, even they, had that stain on his or her soul, but I had more of it, and deeper, so I didn’t have just what everyone else had. I had something extra. It did no good in my earlier years to ask what it was or why. I was told that it was there, and that was that. It was my grandparents’ burden in life to work at driving it out of me. If I listened and was obedient, it could happen, and then I would be able to be free. That goal they had set for me kept me at least a little hopeful.
    From the comments they dropped here and there like grass seed, I gathered that my mother was far from the perfect child in their eyes and that the man who had raped her was obviously pure evil, if not the devil himself. But if she were a better person, he wouldn’t have been so drawn to her. This was why I had inherited a tendency toward evil itself. Not only was I fathered by a rapist, but I also had a mother who was more evil than most girls her age. As long as I