The Forbidden Heart (6 page)

Prologue

My mother wasn’t supposed to have me. She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant again.

Nearly nine years before I was born, she gave birth to my sister, Roxy. Her pregnancy
with Roxy was very difficult, and when my mother’s water broke and she was rushed
to the hospital, Roxy resisted coming into the world. My mother says she fought being
born. An emergency cesarean was conducted, and my mother nearly died. She fell into
a coma for almost three days, and after she regained consciousness, the first thing
her doctor told her was never to get pregnant again.

When I first heard and understood this story, I immediately thought that I must have
been an accident. Why else would they have had another child after so many years had
passed? She and Papa surely had agreed with the doctor that it was dangerous for her
to get pregnant again. Mama could see that thought and concern in my face whenever
we talked about it, and she always assured me that I wasn’t a mistake.

“Your father wanted you even more than I did,” she told me, but just thinking about
it made me wonder about children who are planned and those who are not. Do parents
treat children they didn’t plan any differently from the way they treat the planned
ones? Do they love them any less?

I know there are single mothers who give away their children immediately because they
can’t manage them or they don’t want to begin a loving relationship they know will
not last. Some don’t want to set eyes on them. When their children find out that they
were given away, do they think about the fact that their mothers really didn’t want
them to be born? How could they help but think about it? That certainly can’t be helpful
to their self-confidence.

Despite my mother’s assurances, I couldn’t help wondering. If I wasn’t planned, was
my soul floating around somewhere minding its own business and then suddenly plucked
out of a cloud of souls and ordered to get into my body as it was forming in Mama’s
womb? Was birth an even bigger surprise for unplanned babies? Maybe that was what
really happened in Roxy’s case. Maybe she wasn’t planned, and that was why she resisted.

Wondering about myself always led me to wonder about Roxy. What sort of a shock was
it for her when she first heard she was going to have a sister, after having been
an only child all those years? She must have known Mama wasn’t supposed to have me.
Did she feel very special because of that? Did she see herself as their precious golden
child, the only one Mama and Papa could have? And then, when Mama told her about her
new pregnancy, did Roxy pout and sulk, thinking she would have to share our parents’
attention and love? Share her throne? Was she worried that she would have to help
take care of me and that it would cut into her fun time? Although I didn’t know how
she felt about me for some time, from the little I remembered about her, I had the
impression that I was at least an inconvenience to her. Maybe my being born was the
real reason Roxy became so rebellious.

My mother told me that my father believed her complications in giving birth to Roxy
were God’s first warning about her. However, despite her difficult birth, there was
nothing physically wrong with Roxy. She began exceptionally beautiful and is to this
day, but according to Mama, even when Roxy was an infant, she was headstrong and rebellious.
She ate when she wanted to eat, no matter what my mother prepared for her or how she
tried to get her to eat, and she slept when she wanted to sleep. Rocking her or singing
to her didn’t work. My mother told me my father would get into a rage about it. Finally,
he insisted she take Roxy to the doctor. She did, but the doctor concluded that there
was absolutely nothing wrong with Roxy. My father ordered her to find another doctor.
The result was the same.

Roxy’s tantrums continued until my mother finally gave in and slept when Roxy wanted
to sleep. She even ate when Roxy wanted to eat, leaving my father to eat alone often.

“If I didn’t eat with her, she wouldn’t eat, or she’d take hours to do so,” my mother
said. “Your father thought she was being spiteful even when she was an infant.”

According to how my mother described all this to me, Roxy’s tantrums spread to everything
she did and everything that was done with her or for her. My father complained to
my mother that he couldn’t pick Roxy up or kiss her unless she wanted him to do so
at that moment. If he tried to do otherwise, she wailed and flailed about “like a
fish out of water.” My mother didn’t disagree with that description. She said Roxy
would even hold her breath and stiffen her body into stone until she got her way.
Her face would turn pink and then crimson.

“As red as a polished apple! I had no doubt that she would die before she would give
in or get what she wanted.”

I was always told that fathers and daughters could have a special relationship, because
daughters often see their fathers as perfect, and fathers see their daughters as little
princesses. My mother assured me that nothing was farther from the truth when it came
to Roxy and my father.

“
Mon Dieu.
I swear sometimes your father would look at Roxy with such fire in his eyes that
I thought he’d burn down the house,” my mother said.

Although she was French, my mother was fluent in English as a child, and after years
and years of living in America, she usually reverted to French with my father and
me only when she became emotional or wanted to stress something. Of course, I learned
to speak French because of her. She knew that teaching it to me when I was young was
the best way to get me fluent in the language.

“Your sister would look right back at him defiantly and never flinch. He was always
the first to give up, to look away. And if he ever spanked her or slapped her, she
would never cry.

“Once, when she was fourteen and came home after two o’clock in the morning when she
wasn’t even supposed to go out, he took his belt to her,” my mother continued. “I
had to pull him off her, practically claw his arm to get him to stop. You know how
big your father’s hands are and how powerful he can be, especially when he’s very
angry. Roxy didn’t cry and never said a word. She simply went to her room as if she
had walked right through him.

“She defied him continually, breaking every rule he set down, until he gave up and
threw her out of the house. You were just eight and really the ideal child in his
eyes,
une enfant parfaite
. Why waste his time on a hopeless cause, he would say, when he could spend his time
and energy on you instead? He was always afraid she’d be a bad influence on you, contaminate
you with her nasty and stubborn ways.

“Your sister didn’t cry or beg to stay. She packed her bags, took the little savings
she had, and went out into the world as if she had never expected to do anything different.
She didn’t even look to me to intercede on her behalf. I don’t think she ever respected
me as a woman or as her mother, because I wouldn’t stand up to your father the way
she would. Sometimes she wouldn’t even let me touch her. The moment I put my hand
out to stroke her hair or caress her face, she recoiled like a frightened bird.

“Maybe your father hoped she would finally learn a good lesson and return, begging
him to let her back into our home and family and promising to behave. But if he did
have that expectation, he was very good at keeping it secret. After she left, he avoided
mentioning her name to me, and if I talked about her, he would get up and leave the
room. If I did so at dinner, he would get up and go out to eat, and if I mentioned
her when we were in bed, he would go out to the living room to sleep.

“So I gave up trying to change his mind. Sometimes I went out looking for her, taking
you with me, but this is a very big city. Paris is a bigger city, but more people
live here in New York. It was probably as difficult as looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Didn’t you call the police, try to get her face on milk cartons or something?”

“Your father wouldn’t hear of it for the first few months. Later, there were newspaper
stories and a magazine article about lost girls, and your sister was featured. Nothing
came of it. I used to go to other neighborhoods and walk and walk, hoping to come
upon her, especially on her birthday, but it wasn’t until five years later that your
father revealed that he had seen her. He told me only because he thought it proved
he was right to throw her out.

“He was at a dinner meeting with some of his associates at the investment bank. After
it had ended, one of them told him he had a special after-dinner date. They walked
out together, and a stretch limousine pulled up. The man winked at your father and
went to the limousine. The chauffeur opened the door, and your father saw a very attractive
and expensively dressed young woman inside the limousine. At first, he didn’t recognize
her, but after a few moments, he realized it was Roxy. He said she looked years older
than she was and that she glared out at him with the same defiance he had seen in
her face when she was only five.

“Later, he found out she was a high-priced call girl. She even had a fancy name, Fleur
du Coeur, which you know means ‘Flower of the Heart.’ That’s how rich men would ask
for her when they called the escort service.

“
Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!
It broke my heart to hear all of that, but I didn’t cry in front of him.”

Even now, talking about it brought tears to her eyes, however.

My mother told me more about Roxy after my father had passed away. I was devastated
by my father’s death, but now that he was no longer there to stop it, I wanted to
hear as much as I could about my forbidden sister, the sister whose existence I could
never acknowledge.

I had no trouble pretending I was an only child. Since the day Roxy had left, I was
living that way anyway. My father had taken all of her pictures off the walls and
shelves and dressers. He had burned most of them. Mama was able to hide a few, but
anything else Roxy had left behind was dumped down the garbage chute. It was truly
as if he thought he could erase all traces of her existence. He never even acknowledged
her birthday. Looking at the calendar, he would do little more than blink.

He didn’t know it, but I still had a charm bracelet Roxy had given me. It had a wonderful
variety of charms that included the Eiffel Tower, a fan, a pair of dancing shoes,
and a dream catcher. My mother’s brother had given it to her when my parents and she
were in France visiting, and she gave it to me. I never wore it in front of my father
for fear that he would seize it and throw it away, too.

Of course, I could never mention her name in front of my father when he was alive,
and I didn’t dare ask him any questions about her. My mother was the one who told
me almost all I knew about Roxy after she had left. She said that once my father had
seen Roxy in the limousine, he had tried to learn more about her, despite himself.
He found out that she lived in a fancy hotel on the East Side, the Hotel Beaux-Arts.
I had overheard them talking about it. The Beaux-Arts was small but very expensive.
Most of the rooms were suites and some were full apartments. My mother said that my
father was impressed with how expensive it was.

“The way he spoke about her back then made me think that he was impressed with how
much money she was making. Before I could even think he had softened his attitude
about her, he added that she was nothing more than a high-priced prostitute,” she
said.

She didn’t want to tell me all of this, but it was as if it had all been boiling inside
her and she finally had the chance to get it out. I knew that she went off afterward
to cry in private. I was conflicted about asking her questions because I saw how painful
it was for her to tell these things to me. I rarely heard my parents speak about Roxy,
and I knew I couldn’t ask my mother any questions about her in front of Papa. If I
did ask when he wasn’t home, my mother would avoid answering or answer quickly, as
if she expected the very walls would betray her and whisper to my father.

However, the questions were there like weeds, undaunted, invulnerable, and as defiant
as Roxy.

What did she look like now?

What was her life really like?

Was she happy? Did she have everything she wanted?

Was she sad about losing her family?

Mostly, I wanted to know if she ever thought about me. It suddenly occurred to me
one day that Roxy might have believed that my father risked my mother’s life to have
me just so he could ignore her. He was that disgusted with her. Surely, if Roxy thought
that, she could have come to hate me.

Did she still hate me?

The answers were out there, just waiting for me. They taunted me and haunted me.

I had no doubt, however, that I would eventually get to know them.

What I wondered was, would I be sorry when I did get to know them?

Would they change my life?