Discovering Us 5: Perpetuity

I find myself standing on a platform, surrounded by mirrors. I’m wearing the dress I think I’ll be married in.

The dress is a unique blend of floral lacework, covering my chest and arms, ending in loops around my middle fingers. It’s designed with a wide V neckline and floating lace, giving it the look of a traditional wedding gown.

Delicate sequins are scattered throughout the lace on the bodice. They also adorn the top layer of the full skirt, which is made from multiple layers of tulle.

The dress has so much volume, it’s reminiscent of a ball gown. For a touch of allure, it features an open V-back framed by floating lace elements, revealing just the right amount of skin while maintaining elegance with the see-through lace bodice.

The saleswoman suggests a matching lace veil. It leaves a meter and a half of material trailing behind me, creating a train of lace that matches the dress. This is the hundredth dress I’ve tried on in the eleventh store over three months of searching.

Tears start to flow down my cheeks, and I dab at them with Jerry’s handkerchief. Carla, Liz, and Lynn are all crying on the sofa not too far behind me.

“You look beguiling, absolutely gorgeous, darling,” Jerry tells me, his reflection smiling at me from the mirror. He stands close by, one hand resting on my back.

I’ve chosen Jerry to give me away at the wedding. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father, so it feels…right.

“I have a question but don’t feel obligated to answer,” I asked him in his home office a few months ago.

“What is it, darling?” he responded.

“We’ve decided to get married finally, and I would be honored if you could give me away…to the boys?” I had asked, interrupting him from his paperwork.

He smiled at me before standing and walking around his desk to where I was standing, my hands wringing with anxiety.

He took both of my hands in his, pulling me so that I was standing before him, forcing me to look up into his eyes.

“Darling, I would be honored to give you away. Yes, of course, I will.”

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

“Princess.”

“The boys are damned lucky to have such a beautiful bride.” Carla smiles at me. Liz is just sniffing into a tissue, grinning widely. She tries to speak and flaps her arm one too many times before giving up, shaking her head at me and showing me the scrunched tissue in apology.

“I think this is the one,” I tell the saleswoman, who is standing beside me, her face 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 begins to measure my arms, breasts, waist, and height.

She jots down notes on a form, the kind that has 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 building 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 toward the changing room, where she helps me out of the dress, taking care to avoid the pins still in the material.

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

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

I ended up 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 had nothing to do with the sale of myself, and in her letter, she seemed heartbroken to have missed out on having me around. She wrote about how sad she was that my mother had fallen into such a deep addiction. She felt she should have been a better mother to her own daughter to have saved me from the 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, which resulted in 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 over my life, 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 first-hand 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 were in a small photo album Jerry’s team found in the home back in London.

My daughter. Besides her eyes, she looks just like I did, and the fear I used to have for myself has now transformed 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 the Sense staff with us.

I fear Henry will eventually get wind of Ella and want her, because that dream from 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 saleswoman rings up the total for my dress and accessories, but her words float over my head. I didn’t quite catch the amount I had to pay, but I don’t hesitate to reach into my purse for the bank card from England.

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

“Jer—”

He shakes his head at me, smiling a soft smile. A smile I’m not used to seeing him wear.

“I don’t have a daughter of my own to do this for. Please, let me buy your wedding dress. It means more to me than you could ever understand,” he pleads, his thumb brushing away the tears that I hadn’t even realized were streaming down my face.

I lift my hand to his, pressing his palm against my cheek before I close my eyes and draw in a deep, calming breath to soothe my nerves.

“Thank you, Jerry. That means the world to me.”