Discovering Us 5: Perpetuity

I’m standing on a platform in front of a wall of mirrors in the dress I think I’m going to get married wearing.

It is made with mixed floral detailed lacework that is truly one of a kind. It covers my chest and arms, stopping with a loop around both of my middle fingers. It forms a wide V-neckline with floating lace to create a traditional-looking wedding gown.

There are also delicate sequins placed throughout the lace on the bodice and over the top layer of the full skirt, which is crafted with multiple layers of tulle.

There’s volume. So much volume that it resembles a ball gown. For the boys, it has an open V-back framed by floating lace elements, adding the perfect amount of skin but also keeping it classy by covering it with a continuation of the see-through lace bodice.

The lady asks if she could suggest a hairpiece, bringing out a matching lace veil that leaves at least a meter and a half of material on the floor behind me, creating a train of lace that matches the dress. This is the hundredth dress I’ve tried on in the eleventh store in three months of looking.

Tears stream down my face, and I’m helplessly soaking them up with Jerry’s handkerchief while Carla, Liz, and Lynn are all blubbering on the sofa not that far behind me.

“You look beguiling, absolutely gorgeous, darling,” Jerry smiles at me in the mirror, standing not so far away from me with one hand sitting on my back as he smiles on at me in the mirror.

I’ve chosen for him to be the person to give me away. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father, so it only seemed right.

He took both of my hands in his, pulling me so that I was standing before him and leaving me no choice but to look up and into his eyes.

“I agree. You look like a princess,” Lynn tells me, making that voice surface in my head at the name. I don’t have uncontrollable flashbacks anymore, but it doesn’t mean I don’t hear him when one of my triggers is used.

“The boys are damned lucky to have such a beautiful bride,” Carla smiles over to me while Liz is just sniffing into a tissue with the hugest grin on her face. She tries to talk and flaps her arm one too many times before giving up to shake her head at me while showing me the scrunched tissue in a sorry.

“I think this is the one,” I tell the lady, who is standing beside me, beaming with happiness.

“We will need to take it in. I’ll pin it and send it off to the seamstress to be altered. Then we will get you back for a refit in a few months,” she tells me, wheeling over a little cart that holds pins and a tape measure.

She goes about her business measuring my arms, breasts, waist, and height.

She jots things down on one of those forms, the ones that have multiple pieces of paper. Then she starts pinning the dress so that it fits snugly.

I’ve been working out, trying to tone up my body, and packing on muscle in places I never knew I could.

She cinches the waist so tight that the tulle literally flows out at my hips, making the dress look even more like a ball gown you would see in the Disney movies the girls love watching.

By the time she’s finished making her alterations, I’m more in love with the dress than I was not twenty minutes ago.

She helps me down from the platform, and I walk gingerly back towards the changing room, where she helps me out of the dress, making sure to take care of the pins that still live in the material.

“Thank you so much,” I tell her once I’m dressed and walking towards the desk up front so I can pay for the dress, veil, and the white Louis Vuitton heels she recommended.

My heart palpitates at the thought of how much money I’m about to spend.

I ended up relenting on accepting the bank accounts from my mother and grandmother when I read a letter in that pack of paperwork from both of them.

My grandmother, I can forgive.

She literally had nothing to do with the sale of myself, and in written form, she seems heartbroken to have missed out on having me around. She went on about how sad she was that my mother had fallen down such a deep rabbit hole of addiction. That she should have been a better mother to her own daughter to have saved me from what she deemed a catastrophic decision her child made for me.

And she’s right. My mother’s decisions led me to lead a gruesome life for seven years of my life, which led to Zach being taken and used and my firstborn child dying as a fallout of her decision.

I can’t say that my heart has opened up to accept my mother’s apologies. There are over thirty letters, of which I’ve read two.

The first letter, in honesty, was not addressed to me but to Henry. She was begging to have me back not six months after she had decided to sell me. She begged and pleaded and even agreed to give him more money than he gave her in the first instance.

She repeated how stupid she was to think that money and drugs could hold any worth on my life, to my custody.

The following letter I read was for my thirteenth birthday, exactly one year after we moved to America.

It was addressed to the house in America that I lived in, leading me to believe my mother knew of my whereabouts this whole time. Yet she never came to the house, never came to find me or tried to get me back.

That letter was addressed to me.

The first half of the letter explained what she did and why she did it. Then she explained the steps she had taken to get better and told me about her mother making her see the errors of her ways.

The letter went so well until she told me she had made a deal with the devil and knew what he wanted from me.

She knew but still sold me to him anyway.

Apparently, Henry had been a family friend for many years, my birth father’s friend.

He knew my mother long before she introduced him to me and had seen me grow up.

He had always shown an unhealthy obsession with me, but my mother ignored it because he was the person feeding her addiction. In other words, he paid for her addiction.

I couldn’t make myself open another of the twenty-eight letters after that. They all lay in the drawer in the closet, piled neatly and unopened.

My mother knew Henry was a bad person. She experienced his abuse firsthand in the form of enablement, yet she allowed him access to me from babyhood until finally, he convinced her to marry him.

I wonder if he ever touched me in those years I have no memories of. Whether his sadistic tendencies started long before he faked my mother’s death.

I worry for my child, Ella, who is the spitting image of myself at that young, tender age of nearly three.

Well, that is based on the photos from my childhood. That was in a small photo album Jerry’s team had found in the home back in London.

My daughter. Besides her eyes, of course. She looks just like I had, and the fear I used to have for myself has now conformed into fear for her future safety.

He’s still in prison for now, but what about a year or two or maybe three? Will his unhealthy obsession with me transfer to my defenseless daughter when he is released?

My anxiety knows no bounds when it comes to my three children. I can’t even let them play in our yard without wanting one of Sense with us.

I fear Henry will eventually get wind of Ella and want her because that dream way back before she was born surfaces every night in a nightmare, but now it’s morphed and changed.

He’s running with her while we run behind them, trying to get our baby back.

I wake with nightly sweats and often sneak into her room to sleep in the armchair to know she’s safe.

It’s stupid, really. Our house is one of the safest houses around. No one can get past the fences and security system or the six guards we keep on the grounds... or Lola for that matter, but my brain doesn’t take comfort in any of those things.

The lady rings the till, telling me the amount I have to pay for my dress and accessories. Every word she says floats over my head. I didn’t quite catch the amount I had to pay, but I didn’t hesitate to reach into my purse for the bank card from England.

“Absolutely not. I want to pay for this,” Jerry says, pushing my hand and the card away from the lady, passing her his own with a deep smile.

“Jerr—” He shakes his head at me, smiling a soft smile that I’m not used to seeing him wear.

“I don’t have a daughter of my own to do this for. Please allow me to pay for your wedding dress. It means more to me than you will ever know,” he asks, using a thumb to push away tears I hadn’t noticed running down my cheeks.

I reach up to hold his hand, pushing his palm to my cheek before I close my eyes and take a deep breath to calm my anxiety.

“Thank you, Jerry, that means so much to me.”