are you, Pops?”
I never really called him or my grandmother my grandparents unless we were in polite company. For the first eight years of my life, they had been Ma and Pops to me. I didn’t even know I had real parents until I learned the woman I called Aunt Athena had actually given birth to me, and my father was her husband she’d finally tied down to marry her. That was explained to me a week before she and my real father had come to pick me up and take me to Los Angeles where I would have a rich and glamorous life.
My so-called life with my real parents wasn’t that great after all. I was surrounded by nannies and I rarely saw my parents at all. I went to the best schools but the kids made fun of my “strange” accent. It was miserable and I would have traded it in a heartbeat for the streets of Dorchester with Ma and Pops in a minute. However, there was no going back—not then and certainly not now.
I suppose Ma and Pops were pretty disappointed when I came to stay with them for the summer of 2007 and ended up preggers with my cousin’s best friend’s kid. If they were, they didn’t show it. They were nothing but supportive while my mother cried a lot, and my father tried to be “pragmatic” about the whole situation.
It all worked out in the end because Clara, Patrick’s wife, couldn’t have any children, and it was against church policy to try any “artificial methods of becoming pregnant.” Both my uncle and his wife were hard-core Catholics who followed the church’s teachings like the goddamn Holy Grail. They thought of me, an unwed, fifteen-year-old, giving birth to a child, was an anathema to the Church’s practices but my misfortune was their reversal of bad luck. It was decided they would adopt the child, and Father O’Malley oversaw it with a Church attorney.
When I gave birth, there was an announcement but it was that Patrick and Clara McKenna had welcomed a seven pound, two-ounce son into the world. They named him Kieran, and before I could get out of the hospital, Finn was gone. My mother had paid for her brother and Clara to take a long trip back to Ireland. At least long enough to get me away from Boston without seeing the man who had impregnated me and loved me more than life itself again before we left Boston.
I traveled back to Los Angeles with my parents and started school in late March, just a couple weeks after giving birth, and told everyone who would listen I’d been kicked out of one of the most prestigious boarding schools in Switzerland therefore no one knew the truth. Not even Monika was privy to the news and we didn’t keep secrets from one another but this was one I held next to my heart and never let go.
The following year was rough for me but I was safe with the knowledge Kieran was in the hands of a family who truly wanted him and would do anything to keep him safe.
Now that I was back, I was considered a threat but why would Patrick or Clara think I would want Kieran back? He didn’t know me, and the only parents he knew were them. What would I, as a nineteen-year-old who would be twenty in less than a couple of weeks, do with a preschool-aged kid? I wasn’t even sure I wanted children yet these two were somehow convinced I would sweep in and take their precious bundle? They were both delusional, and crazy as shit house rats as far as I was concerned.
I looked down and realized I was so angry my hands were shaking. Grandma grabbed one of my hands, and glared at Clara as if she should be ashamed before she sat me down at the breakfast table. She poured me a cup of coffee, and coupled this with a plate of sausage, two eggs over easy and two slices of toasted white bread. She set down her strawberry preserve in front of me and sat across from me.
All the sudden, I was transported back to my childhood and I smiled as I began to cut my sausage and took a satisfying bite before I buttered and covered my bread in strawberry preserve. The two over easy eggs were
I never really called him or my grandmother my grandparents unless we were in polite company. For the first eight years of my life, they had been Ma and Pops to me. I didn’t even know I had real parents until I learned the woman I called Aunt Athena had actually given birth to me, and my father was her husband she’d finally tied down to marry her. That was explained to me a week before she and my real father had come to pick me up and take me to Los Angeles where I would have a rich and glamorous life.
My so-called life with my real parents wasn’t that great after all. I was surrounded by nannies and I rarely saw my parents at all. I went to the best schools but the kids made fun of my “strange” accent. It was miserable and I would have traded it in a heartbeat for the streets of Dorchester with Ma and Pops in a minute. However, there was no going back—not then and certainly not now.
I suppose Ma and Pops were pretty disappointed when I came to stay with them for the summer of 2007 and ended up preggers with my cousin’s best friend’s kid. If they were, they didn’t show it. They were nothing but supportive while my mother cried a lot, and my father tried to be “pragmatic” about the whole situation.
It all worked out in the end because Clara, Patrick’s wife, couldn’t have any children, and it was against church policy to try any “artificial methods of becoming pregnant.” Both my uncle and his wife were hard-core Catholics who followed the church’s teachings like the goddamn Holy Grail. They thought of me, an unwed, fifteen-year-old, giving birth to a child, was an anathema to the Church’s practices but my misfortune was their reversal of bad luck. It was decided they would adopt the child, and Father O’Malley oversaw it with a Church attorney.
When I gave birth, there was an announcement but it was that Patrick and Clara McKenna had welcomed a seven pound, two-ounce son into the world. They named him Kieran, and before I could get out of the hospital, Finn was gone. My mother had paid for her brother and Clara to take a long trip back to Ireland. At least long enough to get me away from Boston without seeing the man who had impregnated me and loved me more than life itself again before we left Boston.
I traveled back to Los Angeles with my parents and started school in late March, just a couple weeks after giving birth, and told everyone who would listen I’d been kicked out of one of the most prestigious boarding schools in Switzerland therefore no one knew the truth. Not even Monika was privy to the news and we didn’t keep secrets from one another but this was one I held next to my heart and never let go.
The following year was rough for me but I was safe with the knowledge Kieran was in the hands of a family who truly wanted him and would do anything to keep him safe.
Now that I was back, I was considered a threat but why would Patrick or Clara think I would want Kieran back? He didn’t know me, and the only parents he knew were them. What would I, as a nineteen-year-old who would be twenty in less than a couple of weeks, do with a preschool-aged kid? I wasn’t even sure I wanted children yet these two were somehow convinced I would sweep in and take their precious bundle? They were both delusional, and crazy as shit house rats as far as I was concerned.
I looked down and realized I was so angry my hands were shaking. Grandma grabbed one of my hands, and glared at Clara as if she should be ashamed before she sat me down at the breakfast table. She poured me a cup of coffee, and coupled this with a plate of sausage, two eggs over easy and two slices of toasted white bread. She set down her strawberry preserve in front of me and sat across from me.
All the sudden, I was transported back to my childhood and I smiled as I began to cut my sausage and took a satisfying bite before I buttered and covered my bread in strawberry preserve. The two over easy eggs were
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