The Untitled Jessica Underwood Project

Six hours later I was finally alone. I was alone with my baby girl. I decided to name her Erica Rose Michelle. Although I’d fed Erica before, this time I really got to look at her. Her crystal blue eyes and soft light brown hair fascinated me. There was something, however, that was haunting about the way she looked. Something I remembered, but could not pinpoint.  It took a lot to process the events that had happened just a few short hours earlier. I remember my mother’s face, my stepfather’s rants, and my sister’s scream. It’s all so clear, yet all so vague at the same time.
The nurse came in to get Erica. I don’t want to let her go, so I told the nurse, “not yet”, only for her to return half an hour later insisting that I rest. I obliged, but did not sleep that night. I kept questioning everything from where my family was to why I don’t remember getting pregnant.
Here’s what I do know. My name is Alexandria and I remember a lot of people calling me Ally. I remember missing certain memories, yet my mother always tells me I have an almost perfect memory. The first moment I remember before seeing my mother, stepfather, and sister, is hanging out in Colorado with my friend Fay. We were at this party and there was a guy there and we went somewhere with him. Fay had told me to go ahead a go with him, I was bigger than him and there was nothing he could do to me that I couldn’t do to him. His name was Peter. Wait! That’s it! Peter was saying he was taking me to see someone, but we never made it to see anyone else.
The nurse came back. It’s around six a.m. and said Erica needs feeding. As I was looking into her eyes, so clear and blue just like my granddaddy’s, I see someone else…Peter. Her face is shaped like mine, but she has his smile. This doesn’t make sense. Well no time to figure it out now. Apparently, there are a lot of people in the visitor’s room to see Erica and me.  First was Fay. “There’s my girls!” she scrame as she walked in the room. “Shhhh! You’ll wake Erica and I just got her to go to sleep,” was my reply. After a lot of small talk about how everyone was and who was in the hall, which turned out to be my entire family, and then I shared my fears. I finally managed to say, “Where have I been since the night of the party?”
“Which one? The one Peter was at? In Colorado?” Fay was on a roll.
“Yes.” I answered.
“You’ve been in Colorado mostly, you refused to go home.”
“I did?”
“Yea, Ally, have you lost your mind or something? I mean come on. Did you forget everything we talked about or what?”
“I think I have,” and that was that. The nurse came in again and said her time was up. And like that, I had three times as many questions as I did before Fay came in the room.
Most anyone that came in did not have the answers to my questions, wouldn’t answer them, be shoved out by the nurse, or only wanted small talk. I heard from aunts, uncles, cousins, “friends” that have never said two words to me before. After the nurse ran my parents and sister out of the room, she must like that part of her job, she said I had three last guests and that they wanted to see me separately and then together. The first one was a huge shocker, my father. I hadn’t seen him in ten years. He looks different. I was holding Erica when he came in and sat on the bed with me. I traced the wrinkle lines in his forehead like I used to when I was little. We didn’t talk for a long while. After ten years of silence, you would think we have a lot to talk about. At first he tried the small talk, I stopped him.
“Dad, look, if you came here to see how I am then look at me and leave. If you came here for apologies, you won’t find them. You know I have a million questions to ask not only you but I have a million questions about the last 40 weeks. So what the hell do you want? Want to see your granddaughter, here she is. She was made from a rape, one that I cannot remember. So tell me what you came back for?”
After a long pause, and showing a look of amazement, he said, “I just want to know you. I want to know my little girl. I am sorry, but we can talk about this later when you’re up for it.”
“Daddy,” I said as he headed for the door, “you know me. You’ve always known me and you always will just like I’ve always loved you even though you weren’t there for me...ever. Go today, give me your number and I will call you and we can get through this.”
The next person to come in was my little half-sister, Jenny. She’s all grown up. I haven’t seen her since she was five years old. Now she’s 16 and about 6 months pregnant I guess. We talked the longest. She saw me at the party and said she knew what happened. Since, my nurse kept coming in and out of the room while we were talking; we decided to email and call each other and become actual sisters.
It was now around 5 in the afternoon and there was 30 minutes left to visitation hours. The next thing I knew I was feeding for the 4th time since the visitations started and while I was Peter walked in. The first thing I thought was “what in the heck is he doing here?”, then I looked into his eyes and I found my answers. “How are you?” Peter said.
“Fine” I replied.
“What did you have?”
“A little girl, see?”
“She has your eyes and my smile.”
“Glad you can see that.”
“Can I hold her?”
“She isn’t done yet.”
This small talk went on for a while. I knew Peter; I knew his agenda.
Finally, the pesky nurse came in and told Peter five minutes. That’s when he asked, “What are we going to do?”
Shocked I asked, “What do you mean ‘we’?”
“I mean you, me and our baby girl.”
“Until I figure out why in the heck this happened in the first place you, Peter Evans, are not touching a hair on her head, or mine for that matter. Just leave. Now!” And that was that. It was weeks before I saw Peter again.