I Don't Know Who You Are

By BJ Post

This story has been released as fiction however it is based on actual events. I began writing the things that were happening to my friend, her family and our group of friends in my journal. Seeing it on the written page was as odd as the events itself. I continued to write in an attempt to make some sense of what was happening. Ive still not been able to completely come to terms with it. Our friend was special to us. We loved her, and we miss her. Many times we have commented that it would have been easier to deal with losing her if she had physically died and we were no longer able to see her. Having lost her as we did, and still seeing her around in the community is like seeing a ghost. She looks like our friend but she has become something else we do not recognize. Our hearts are broken and we mourn her loss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465377777

BJ Post

A Midwest native, B J Post is thrilled to present her first published work. Previously in print is “150 Years in America: The Reis Family History” her compilation of family stories released at the family reunion in 1996 for the 150th anniversary of her ancestors arriving in the United States. She is a single mom and entrepreneur, and loves her volunteer time at the local animal shelter.

Book preview

Prologue

1965

Roy, I’m pregnant, Sophie said meekly, not knowing how her news would affect him. It’s not that she was afraid of Roy. It wasn’t that at all. She knew she could handle his moods. It’s just that this was different. This was huge. This would change everything.

She was seventeen and Roy was eighteen when they met. Sophie, who had been totally dedicated to her studies and to her parents, nearly to a fault, had been completely enraptured when she first saw Roy leaning against the brick wall of the school one afternoon, one long leg crossed over the other, with his jeans tattered and stained from working on his dad’s ’53 Chevy, and a cigarette hanging lazily from his lips. His dark unruly hair curled around his ears and at his collar softening the tough look about him.

Sophie and her friends had walked around the building after school to the alley on their way to Sophie’s house to study together. She stopped dead in her tracks and her hazel eyes met his clear blue ones. She self-consciously tugged at and straightened her dress with her free hand, then nervously shifted her books to brush away a stray light brown hair from her cheek. Her friends had walked a bit further before they realized she was no longer with them.

Hey, he said to her, his gravely voice making her heart nearly leap out of her chest.

Come on Sophie, her friends called to her. She was torn for a moment. She glanced at the girls, then back at him.

Hey, she squeaked back to him, barely hearing herself over the pounding of her heart. After what felt like an eternity, standing there looking at him, she turned and ran to catch up to her friends where they began to rib and tease her about him.

Several days went by before she saw him again at the same spot behind the school. It was then she learned his name.

Sophie. It startled her when she heard him say her name. After telling the girls she’d catch up with them later, she walked over to where he stood.

Do I get to know what to call you? she asked.

Roy.

Roy, she repeated, slightly dreamily, then caught herself. Ahem, so, um, do you live around here? she asked.

Roy chuckled and answered her with a nod, knowing the effect he was having on her. She wanted to know everything about him and didn’t know where to start.

Nervously she asked, Do you go here? motioning toward the school.

Nope, graduated.

So, what do you do?

Work on cars.

You don’t talk much do you?

Nope, he said crushing out his cigarette against the brick wall.

Neither of them spoke for several long minutes, then Roy asked, Walk ya home?

And take me away with you and love me forever and ever, she thought, but she said, Yes.

Each school day ended much the same way. Sophie made excuses to her friends each afternoon and promised to meet up with them each day, but they knew what she was doing. They were happy for her and secretly wished they had someone who waited for them each day to walk them home, too.

At first, Sophie was cautious about telling her parents about Roy. He was much different from any of the other boys she had gone out with. It was her father she told first, she knew he’d accept him. She loved both her parents very much but sometimes she questioned whether or not her mother felt the same for her. One warm and sunny spring afternoon, Sophie invited Roy into their house. Her father was having an iced tea and cookies, his favorite after work treat when they came into the kitchen.

Pop? she said quietly stepping into the room. I want you to meet someone. Roy, this is my dad.

Mr. Eaker, Roy said as he put his hand out.

Sophie’s father shook Roy’s hand and said, Sit down, son. Sophie, you go on and put your books up. I’d like to get to know young Roy, here.

Sure, Pop, she called as she made her way up the steps. She caught Roy’s eye just before she disappeared beyond the railing and he winked at her. They both could hear her step lighten as she made her way down the upstairs hall.

Though Roy made a positive first impression on her father, her mother was a different story all together, as she expected.

She found herself lying to her parents about where she was going and where she’d been after her mother told her not to spend so much time with ‘that boy’.

Sophie graduated from high school that June and had dreams of becoming a nurse. She also had dreams of becoming Roy’s wife.

She loved him and he told her that he loved her, but the fact that she knew so little about him and his family that concerned her. She knew he had a brother or two and a sister. She had met his mom, but his father never seemed to be around. She’d learn much too late that his absent father spent most of his time drinking the family’s money away while ‘living’ under a bridge.

That summer in Springfield would prove to be much more than Sophie had bargained for. Apart from working at the card shop in town and volunteering at the hospital, Sophie was with Roy every day. She had lost contact with her friends and spent very little time with her parents anymore.

One gloomy, rainy morning, while working at the hospital, Sophie felt nauseous and weak. Though she insisted she was fine, her supervisor sent her home. This continued each day; she would feel nauseous and faint and she began to worry. She also began to hide her symptoms and when she missed her period, her worst fears were confirmed.

She was scared, ashamed, and confused. She was afraid to tell anyone, least of all, her mother. Roy was the first person she told.

He seemed happy and excited which boosted Sophie’s spirits. He does love me, she thought, he will love our baby, too. Everything will be all right.

She asked Roy to come with her to tell her parents the following day. A staunch Catholic family, her parents were appalled, and hugely disappointed in their only daughter. They told Sophie and Roy that in the Catholic faith, they had no choice but to marry and this was confirmed by the parish priest when they went to him for counsel. Roy and this situation certainly was not what they wanted for their daughter but it was the right thing to do so this child, their grandchild would be born into the proper family setting.

Because of her condition, they were not allowed to have a ‘regular’ wedding in the main church. She and Roy were wed in an office off to the side of the main altar of her church. A couple of weeks before the service, Sophie’s parents bought a larger home so that Sophie and Roy could live with them and have a good beginning to their marriage. All of this should have bolstered Sophie’s spirits, but it did not. She had another secret, something she had hidden from her parents. She felt like the bad one; the bad wife, the bad mother, and most of all, the bad daughter.

The pain and the shame she felt were weighing heavily on her. From the day she told her parents about the baby, she felt that her mother had been rightfully upset and disappointed with her. She again questioned whether or not her mother ever wanted a child herself, and somehow blamed Sophie just because she existed. She always knew that her father loved her and this became more evident with each passing year. Many years later, her cousin Sue was cleaning out her mother’s home after her death and found letters that Pop had written back in 1941 to his sister, Sue’s mother. He stated that he was anxious to come home from the service and wanted to start a family. Until his dying day, he was devoted and loving toward Sophie. In later years, after Pop had died, and Sophie became her mother’s primary care giver toward the end of her life. She never felt that kind of love and devotion from her mother. But Sophie always thought her mother’s life was joyless.

When she felt she had reached rock bottom she decided to tell her parents. She and Roy had moved out into their own apartment. Katrina, known as Kat had been born, and Connie, who would be only eleven months younger, was on the way. Sophie had been slapped, pushed down steps, kicked, and burned by cigarettes. She understood his game because all the marks he left were in places that were not visible. He would leave for days at a time and did not tell her where he was going, nor would he tell her where he had been when he finally returned. Her father had wanted her to come back home with the baby. Her mother told her she must be a good wife and be there for her husband.

Her day of reckoning had come. The rent was two months behind. There was no food in the apartment, and very little money in her pockets. Roy had once again gone off and was away longer than he had been in the past. Her only thought was that she needed something to feed her baby and to nourish herself for the sake of the child she carried within. Though she was pregnant, she took the last few coins she had to take a bus to a clinic where she was going to sell her blood in order to care for her and her daughter. As the bus pulled up near her destination, she pulled the rope and descended the steps of the bus to the sidewalk below. She walked the remaining block carrying her daughter and as she neared the clinic it became clear to her that the clinic was closed. How long did she stand there in front of the doors, minutes? An hour? She didn’t know. She knew that as she stood there with a baby in her arms and a child in her belly, she had no where else to go. She was empty; a shell of what she had been. She had nothing and lost everything. This man had slowly and manipulatively stripped her of all dignity and purpose. These were her thoughts as she slowly sank to the ground and let the feeling of complete and total devastation pour over her as the sobs and tears poured out of her.

Chapter One

February 2005

When the phone rang at ten minutes after seven in the morning on a school day, it could have only been one of two people. Usually it was Tina next door saying that she overslept, or needed to get to work early and ‘can you take my boys to school when you take Claire?’. This morning it was the other one.

I got something to tell you, Cara heard Kat say, as she juggled the phone trying to listen and get dressed at the same time. Cara and Kat had been friends since the day after Kat and her family moved into the neighborhood six years previously.

Cara had been walking around the block, working off the Thanksgiving feast from the night before, when she noticed Kat at her front door. Her short brown hair was windblown and her gray sweat-pants and sweatshirt, hastily thrown on, were short of impressive. Still, Cara walked up towards the front of her house and struck up a conversation.

Hi, Cara called from the street. Welcome to the neighborhood!

Hearing the warm greeting, Kat stepped out onto her porch as Cara made her way up the driveway. Thanks, Kat responded. I’m Kat. Her dark brown eyes seemed to sparkle in the morning light, as her dark hair fell to her shoulders framing her fair-skinned face.

Nice to meet you, Kat, I’m Cara.

Mom, where’s the box with my socks? screeched a little voice from inside the house.

It’s in your room, by the closet. Kat directed.

The little girl, also dark haired but with blue eyes, appeared to be Cara’s daughter’s age. How old is she? Cara inquired.

That’s Marissa. She’s eight.

Really! My daughter, Claire, is eight, too, and so is just about every other child on the block! Cara told her, naming off the three other girls and two boys on the street.

My son, Scott, is ten. Anyone around his age?

Yes, the boy right across the street here is that old or close to it.

Just then a few more neighbors began to stir about and Cara began to introduce Kat and Marissa, who had emerged from the house without her socks, to all of them.

Though Kat seemed hesitant to talk much, Cara hoped she helped to dispel some of Kat’s fears of being in a new place. Over the next few days, a new friendship had begun and was bonded with many morning chats over coffee in Kat’s kitchen.

What is it? Cara asked.

I’ll tell you on the way to cleaning.

Okay, she said, switching ears to put the other arm in the sleeve of her T-shirt. I guess it mustn’t be too important if she can wait until then, she thought.

As she usually did on their house cleaning days, Cara took Claire to school, came back home, put the car in the garage and walked five doors down to Kat’s house. Kat’s was the second house around the corner, and they could see most of each other’s houses from the front of their own. There was sort of an unspoken code that if Kat was home she had her front door open, with the glass storm door locked. Cara usually kept her garage door up. So, with one glance up or down the street, they could see if each other was home before they called to chat or walked down for a cup of coffee. It was much later that Cara found out that there were days when Kat would hide in her basement on three way phone calls with her other friends, Lizzie and Lynn, and hope that Cara would think that she wasn’t at home and would just go away. Lizzie told Cara much later that Kat would worry that she had left the door unlocked and that Cara would come marching into her house looking for her. Cara was much more tactful than that. When the door didn’t open to her, she walked home and had a cup of her own coffee!

This morning, though, Kat’s door was open and the kids were coming out of the house, heading for the car with their usual banter as Cara walked up. Scott, now 16, was grumbling because he had to sit by Marissa, now 14, who had a few choice things to say about it, herself. Seth, their 12-year-old cousin took his lashings, too. Kat’s sister, Connie, had relinquished custody of Seth, temporarily, to Kat and Matt while she enrolled in college, and worked to get her act together. Seth, Connie’s oldest, had younger twin sisters that lived with their father, a result of their divorce. Seth didn’t know his father, as he was the result of a relationship prior to Connie’s marriage and had never asked to meet him.

He’s a sweet, easy going, biracial child, and comfortable enough with his lot that he uses it for fun, sympathy, or a variety of other reasons. Just blame it on the biracial kid, was one of his comebacks this morning.

Cara tried to stay out of their conversations and arguments and to accept that all this bickering was ‘just their way’ and was usually able to tune them out. Instead of reprimanding them, and demanding mutual respect, as was done in Cara’s household, Kat usually goaded and provoked them.

Knock it off, you two, Kat hollered over her shoulder to the back seat.

Mom, he hit me!

Marissa, leave him alone!

But he hit me!

Scott, just ignore her and leave her alone.

"Now