Chapter 2 - Building a Fortress of Strangers
As my pregnancy progressed into the third trimester, my parents escalated their campaign of quiet erasure. They didn't scream or curse; they simply acted as though my existence had become an embarrassing clerical error.
Raquel brought Sawyer to my Church Hill studio for his two-year portrait session. While I adjusted the studio lights, she stood near the backdrop, casually dropping conversational hand grenades. “Mom isn’t being cruel, Imagin,” she said, smoothing Sawyer’s overalls. “She’s just protecting the family.”
“Protecting the family from what, Raquel?” I asked, holding my heavy Canon camera steady. “From a baby?”
“From explaining you,” she replied, as if reciting a textbook definition. “Church. Aunt Teddy. People ask questions, and Mom hates lying.”
“The truth is I’m having a baby,” I said, my voice tightening.
“The truth is you’re having a baby with no husband and no father,” Raquel countered, her tone sickeningly reasonable. Then, without missing a beat, she asked, “By the way, are you still doing Sawyer’s birthday party photographs for free?”
Of course she did. To my family, I wasn't a daughter or a sister anymore; I was a freelance service provider who happened to share their DNA.
Two weeks later, my father paid a rare visit to my studio. He sat in the old wooden Windsor chair that always squeaked whenever anyone shifted their weight. He didn't look at my maternity prints on the walls. He kept his baseball cap pulled low over his forehead.
“Your mother’s worried about how this looks in the community,” he said, staring at the floorboards. “Wait before telling people. And when she’s born, don’t give her our last name.”
I lowered my clipboard, my heart pounding against my ribs. “It’s my last name, Dad.”
“Use your mother’s maiden name. Anything. People at church won’t have to ask uncomfortable questions.”
“You don’t decide my daughter’s name.”
“I’m not talking legally, Emmy. I’m talking about family.”
That was the exact moment I realized I held all the cards. For over a decade, I had been the unofficial family historian. I had photographed every milestone, every anniversary, every holiday card that sat on my parents' mantelpiece. They took my talent for granted because they assumed familial obligation trumped professional self-respect.
“Then you need to find someone else to photograph the Christmas card this year,” I said evenly.
Dad blinked, his head jerking up in genuine shock. The possibility that I would cut off their precious holiday tradition had clearly never crossed his arrogant mind. “You’d stop doing the family card over this?”
“I’d stop doing a lot more than that, Dad.”
He stood up, his jaw tight, his boots scraping loudly against the studio floor. “You always have to make everything so damn complicated,” he muttered, shoving his cap down and walking out the door.
The old wooden chair kept squeaking for several seconds after he left.
With my family systematically cutting ties, my world began to expand in unexpected, beautiful directions. My neighbor Zora Peton, a retired seventy-two-year-old postal worker with shoulders built like a bricklayer and a glare that could curdle milk, became my guardian angel. When she saw me struggling to drag a heavy crib box up my front porch steps during my thirty-second week, she marched across the street with a heavy-duty hand truck.
“Put that box down before you deliver this baby right here on the concrete, Imagin,” she barked, taking command with absolute authority.
She hauled the box inside, set it in the nursery, and looked around my house with a critical eye. “Who’s your hospital person?” she asked bluntly.
“I have a plan. My best friend Yara, and Sunny, a labor-and-delivery nurse I know.”
“A plan isn’t a person, girl,” Zora said, pointing a finger at my chest. “My porch light stays on until eleven every night. If you go into labor and your fancy birth plan falls apart, you knock on my door. You hear me?”
For the first time in months, a hot tear slipped down my cheek. I nodded. “I hear you, Zora.”
By thirty-eight weeks, my hospital bag was packed by Yara and Sunny with military precision. Every onesie, every tube of lanolin, every phone charger was categorized and zipped into a neon-pink duffel bag that Sunny insisted on placing directly into the trunk of my car, rather than the hallway closet, warning me that babies have a wicked sense of humor regarding timing.
And then, the phone rang. It was Eleanor.
“Come to dinner Sunday,” she commanded. “Your father wants to see you before things change.”
Yara shook her head violently from across the kitchen island. Sunny crossed her arms, fixing me with the stern, unyielding gaze of a nurse who had seen too many women walk into emotional traps.
“Just family,” Eleanor continued smoothly, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “Nothing heavy. A normal Sunday dinner.”
May you like
Stubborn hope—that pathetic, resilient little ember inside my chest—flared up one last time. I wanted one normal Sunday. I wanted my parents to look at me and see their daughter.
I went anyway. I packed my hospital bag into the trunk, kissed Zora’s porch goodbye in my mind, and drove back out to Midlothian.
