Memoirs of a Reject

After rejecting her newborn child on 9.11.01, a new mother has no idea the crime she is committing when she abandons her baby in an NYC subway station. VERY OLD.

I’m sick of being me. I’m sick of waking up every day and seeing my ugly face in the mirror.

            I’m sick of wishing I were you.

            After all… we’re both rejects. Would it be so hard for us to just… switch places for a little while?

            I want to know what I lost.

 

 

 

 

Memoirs of a Reject.

 

When I was a child I told myself that someday I would grow into my big nose and little eyes. Someday, I would be beautiful. People would stare in awe when I walked by. I would have a nice husband and twelve children. I would live in a big house, work as a writer and sell millions of books. I had all these perfect plans, and I knew exactly how to see them through.

            Each year on my birthday I would stare in the mirror. Had my nose gotten any smaller? Had my eyes grown wide with time? When was I going to transform into the person I saw when I looked forward? Where was my nice husband, my twelve children, or my multi-book contract?

            At thirty-nine years old, I still have a huge nose, small eyes and a ton of plans. I just don’t know what to do with them anymore.

            I have no husband, and no book deal.

            I did have a child, though. But, I don’t really like to think about that anymore. After all, everyone has their regrets.

            But, I’m not here to tell you my life story. I’m here for very specific reason. There is something I did. Something that I need to talk about. If I keep it hidden much longer… I might explode.

            I suppose I should start at the beginning… It isn’t much of a story without a plot. As a writer, I know that.

            So, I’ll just tell you the story of that day back in September of 2001. That’s when it all started to go downhill.

           

Back in September, I was fat. Pregnant. I didn’t really want to be, but… I was. I had long ago given up on the idea of having twelve children. Back that September… even one seemed like a horrible idea.

            You see, I’m not a very nurturing person. I like to sit by myself and think. I don’t like distractions, or interruptions. I like solitude. Or at least… that’s what I tell myself.

            It was on that particular day in September that I learned just what solitude meant. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

            I woke up at midnight, fat ever and in grave pain. I knew what this meant, the goddamn kid wanted to be born. I told myself that I should call the hospital. Get in the car. Drive somewhere. Anywhere. Other people needed to be near me. I couldn’t do this alone.

            But�" Like I said�" I like solitude. So I stayed there, shocked and scared for eight hours and then… Just like that… I was a mother.

            People often say that when they look at their newborn baby, they instantly feel a connection. Not me… I looked at the thing and felt nothing but disgust.

            When I was a child, I knew a little boy who lived next door to me. He was the first person to ever call me ugly. He said I was so ugly that my mother must have rejected me as a baby. That’s why I didn’t live with her.

            I used to try and explain. I used to tell him that my mom left for work. She and my dad were divorced. She was going to come back for me some day. I just knew it.

            But, that little kid never listened to me. He just kept taunting me and calling me, ‘reject’.

            I think that might be why I rejected my baby. What other reason could there be? I had been surrounded by that word… Reject my entire life. Some little part of it must have sunken in. Because, I looked at this baby and only saw disgust. This… thing couldn’t possibly be mine. It just couldn’t be. It cried and cried. It wanted to be held. I could barely touch it. It wasn’t mine. I didn’t want it.

            This was not my child.

            I think it was then that I put on my coat and covered up the baby up with a blanket. I wasn’t really aware of that I was doing. I just knew I had to get out of there. I couldn’t leave the little thing alone. It would wake up the neighbors. My apartment had thin walls.

            So I walked down the stairs. Carrying the screaming bundle with me.

            The receptionist, Maria, saw me walking through, tears and blood on my face. She asked me what was going on. I ignored her, and kept on walking.

            I walked out into the street. New York City was always busy in the fall. The whole place was alight at only eight-thirty in the morning. I passed familiar storefronts. Places I went to eat. To write. Places I went for solitude.

            But, I didn’t even look at those places as I walked by. I didn’t care that people were staring. Asking if I needed help. I wasn’t thinking. All I could think about was the screeching bundle in my arms and how much I wanted to drop it.

            God, I wanted to just drop it. Anywhere. I couldn’t have this baby. This baby wasn’t mine! I didn’t want it. I didn’t even like kids. And, this one was just so… ugly. It screamed and screamed and eventually I started to run, not caring about how I jostled the baby around. To me, it wasn’t even a baby. It was a thing.

            I stopped when I reached work. I hadn’t been in the building since I went on maternity leave three months before. I didn’t know why I stopped there. I wish I hadn’t. Maybe if I had thought about it a bit more I would have decided against it but… I was in a rush. I couldn’t keep this screaming thing for long. It wasn’t even my own. 

            Something was drawing me towards the subway stop. People were everywhere. Staring. I was so strange, covered in blood, screaming. Something lying carelessly in my arms. I must have been so ugly.

            I ran down the stairs into the subway station, watching the trains pass by. I bumped into a man and knocked his briefcase from his hand, spilling its contents all over the floor. He shouted angrily and grabbed at my arm. The moment he saw my face, he let go. I must have been that ugly.

What mother isn’t an ugly mess when she thinks that her baby cannot possibly be her own? When she knows that she has to get rid of it, but she doesn’t know why? I didn’t know what to do with it. Should give it to someone? Just… hand it away? Where could I put it? How could I get it away from me? It. Wasn’t. Mine.

            I stifled a scream then, unsure of what to do. Where to go. Who would take this child from me? Who would take it away? I couldn’t look at it. I couldn’t listen to its screams.

            What I did next is the thing that I regret most in the world.

            I put the baby down. Right there on the cement. Surely, someone would pick it up. Someone had to want this baby. It belonged to someone. Just not me.

            People were still staring. Passerby were probably wondering what on earth I could be doing. I wasn’t about to explain. I didn’t understand myself. Never in my adult life had I ever really wanted to be a mom, but I never expected to feel this way. I was sure some small part of me still wanted a baby. And, one was waiting for me, right there. But, I just couldn’t feel the way I knew I should. There was no connection. I didn’t feel protective or maternal. I felt like a scared, silly, thirty-one-year-old woman who had run out of options.

            Someone would want this baby. Someone would have to.

            That’s when I ran.

            I ran so fast.

            Have you ever had a dream, where you run faster than imaginable? I ran exactly that fast. I pushed passed a couple holding hands and a woman standing alone.

For all I knew, one of them could be the one to find my baby. To pick it up and feel that connection that I never could. If that were the case, then…. Good for them. I didn’t want the baby to suffer. I just didn’t want the baby. Period.

I was screaming as I ran from the subway. Screaming and crying like the child I left behind. Part of me mourned it. I had waited nine months for a child that was not mine.

I told myself it didn’t matter. I could never have been that baby. It was better to let it go.

I was almost home when the first plane appeared. There was an audible roar of engines as it sped by overhead. It was too low. Too close.

I heard the explosion, loud and clear. I heard the millions of screams, all mimicking my own. But, for a different reason.

I didn’t look back.

I just kept walking.

            The screams didn’t stop. The sirens never silenced. They all just kept wailing on. Mocking me.

            Compared to the loss of everyone else, I suddenly seemed irrelevant.

            Once again, the reject.

 

Eight years have passed and I have thought a lot about what I did. No one knows. No one except you, anyway. I trust you wont tell. But… I wouldn’t blame you if you did.

            I know now what I should have done. Why didn’t I just put that baby on a train? That train could have taken it far, far away. And, it would have been okay.

            For years after that day, I would panic every time I heard a siren. I thought that they had finally found me, and I would ponder weather that was a good thing. I probably deserved to be locked away for life.

            But, they never found that baby. Amidst all the dist and debris I suppose it’s pretty easy to loose one, little reject.

           

           

           

Author's Note

Again, this is a very, VERY old story I wrote a few years back. Just wanted to get it online. Based on the song, "Marching Bands of Manhattan" by Death Cab for Cutie. PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS FICTION.