YOUR SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY COMES and goes without much fanfare. Just the way you like it. Apart from the fact you're still in the dog box, you've always felt uncomfortable around your birthday. Besides being achingly self-conscious and loathing the spotlight, it's also a really depressing reminder of the time you were born and given away. For the past few years, ever since Angela's mom died, whenever you blow out the candles on your cake, you make a secret wish your own real mother is still alive.
It dawns on you, in a year from now you'll be legally allowed to drink, and drive, and vote. But you'll still have to wait another three years after that till Child Welfare will unseal your adoption records at your request, without your parents' consent. Asking Mom and Dad for their written permission is not an option. You don't want to involve them in this deeply personal process. It's none of their business anyway. This is something you want, no, need to do on your own. Being forced to accept your origins are secret, guarded under lock and key, is psychological torture. There is, however, finally a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. The wait is going to be hard, but you know you can do it.
You've also made up your mind — you never want to have children. Not sometime in the near future, not sometime in the distant future, not ever. You never want to go through what you've just been through ever again. And you make a silent pact with yourself to be religious about contraception till the day you die. Well, at least till you hit menopause in, like, a hundred years from now.
YOU ARE READING
Umbilicus: An autobiographical novel
General FictionCharlotte van Katwijk guards herself like a secret. Kids are cruel, and she knows if they find out she's adopted, she'll be a bully's easy target. When they are fourteen, Charlotte's best friend's mom commits suicide. It triggers in Charlotte a se...
