Love Is Never Ugly

Chapter 29

"You know my mother is gone too." Charlotte finally said after spending an hour and a half in silence.

Alastor slowly moved out of her hold and turned around to look at her sympathetically.

"Oh...I'm sorry." He said. "How old were you?"

"Only a few minutes. She died giving birth to me so I don't remember her."

His sympathy grew.

"My mother had a very fragile and weak heart. The physician told her that it wasn't suited for over exerting actions such as child bearing. When she became pregnant he recommended that she take a drug that would cause her to miscarry but she refused. On the day I was born she was in agony for a day and a half, the physicians did all they could but it wasn't enough."

"Could they not have tried a cesarean?"

"By the time that option occurred to them I was too close for it to be done. If they took the time to perform a cesarean right then I would have suffocated in her uterus. But if my mother proceeded with the birthing process the pressure would probably cause her heart to give out. Still she begged the physicians to do whatever it took to save me and that's what they did. She was determined to see me into the world even if it cost her, her life and it did."

She looked down at her hands and knees in shame.

"So I guess you and I have something in common. We both inadvertently killed our mothers."

"With all due respect my dear I think you are mistaken."

"What do you mean? If had never been born then she'd still be alive."

"Charlotte what happened to your mother couldn't be helped. And you know she's not the only woman who's left this world while bringing a child into it. It happens very often actually."

"That doesn't change the fact that she could have lived if only she had decided not to give birth to me."

"That maybe true but that was her choice to make Charlotte. She wanted you to be born. She willingly gave her life so you could have one. It's what she wanted."

"But not what my father wanted I'm sure. He and my mother were so in love. So happy with each other. I killed my father's one true love. It would have been better if my mother had taken that drug and miscarried me."

"Did your father actually say that to you?"

"No but my stepmother did many times and occasionally my sister would say it. They would also talk another thing that made my mother's death especially tragic."

"And what was that?"

Charlotte gripped the skirt of her gown.

"My father said that as she was dying that night she looked over at the window sill and saw a rose growing from behind the glass. With her last breath she said this prayer, that God bless me with the beauty of a rose. My stepmother and my sister told me how tragic it was that her dying wish wasn't granted. How tragic it was that her child grew up to be such a homely thing with yellow hair like straw, sickly pale skin like milk, cheeks pink like a dead salmon, and lips disgustingly red like a fever."

She tried not to cry. She had already cried enough when those cruel words were said to her years ago but it still hurt. It still hurt because she believed their words. You see sometimes when people say things to you many times when you're very young it becomes true in your mind. So Charlotte could never see herself as beautiful because her stepmother and sister had drilled it into her head that she wasn't. However one's perception can be changed by the kind words of another.