Mother Superior's Children
I hurried after Luca's birth mother into the building, only to find not her retreating back waiting for me inside, but Mother Superior herself.
Without so much as a greeting, skipping every courtesy, I asked,
"Is it her?"
"Yes."
Even now her manner was the same as always, and the fury that had been burning in me went ice-cold.
"…Back then, when you left Luca with me, you said you didn't want to send him far away—just in case his parents might come back."
"I did."
"Mother Superior… did you already know then that that woman… that she would return?"
"Yes. I didn't think that child would be able to overcome her situation on her own."
My heart hit the floor.
That child.
"Was she raised in the orphanage too?"
"Yes. She left before you ever came here."
"…"
Anger rose in me for reasons I couldn't name, but that wasn't what mattered right now.
"…Then you should have told me. That his parents would come back. That I shouldn't get too attached."
Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't fair. From the beginning Mother Superior had only asked me to look after the boy for the few months of renovations.
I was the one who had grown attached on my own. I was the one who had known the work was nearly finished and still never called.
"…I need to speak with her first."
Mother Superior said nothing and simply led the way.
The second floor of the newly renovated building was bright. Instead of the deep wood floors and walls I remembered, an ivory corridor stretched ahead, unfamiliar.
At the far end of that corridor stood Sister Greta, outside a door. She must have come up the opposite stair.
Even from the end of the hall I could hear the woman's sobbing.
Sister Greta stood outside the door with an expressionless face, watching whoever was inside; when we drew near, she stepped aside to let us through.
Luca's birth mother sat perched on the edge of the bed, weeping, shouting toward some empty place.
"Please—I know I was wrong! I know I'm going to hell. I know I'm a useless mother. Reni too—maybe I should have given up on Reni earlier, the way I did with Luca."
Was Reni Luca's older brother? What was this woman even saying?
"Luca won't even remember me now—but Reni, what do I do about Reni?"
Her hands clawed at the air.
"I never should have thought I could get better. I never should have tried at all."
Then her eyes met mine. Terror seized her; she cried out as if she were making confession.
"I was wrong! I failed again. I always fail. I'm not enough—I can't do it. The teachers said so, my friends said so—"
Her face seemed to collapse in on itself. I couldn't stand to look. The voice of a woman who no longer seemed sane sent a chill down my spine.
"Everything's a mess! You ruined it all! You—no, I did!"
She began tearing at her own hair in a frenzy. Sister Greta, who had somehow appeared at my side, restrained her without the slightest change of expression.
With a strength no one would have believed could come from that slender frame, Sister Greta lifted the thrashing woman from the bed and set her in the chair beside it.
I didn't know what difference it made, but the woman stopped hurting herself, curled into a ball on the chair, and sobbed.
She looked like an animal that had been beaten again and again and finally just huddled there.
"Kyle, Kyle… I ruined everything. I can't do anything alone… please save me, Kyle…"
I stood frozen, barely able to breathe, and watched it all. She was not in her right mind. She looked insane.
It was as if a child who had never grown up had simply aged in body alone, and the weeping of that aged child was so dreadful I wanted to look away.
I hated it.
That a woman like this—someone so shatteringly sad and terrible—that she was Luca's mother.
And suddenly I even resented Mother Superior, standing there watching that wretched sight with the same indifferent eyes she always wore.
Then an incomprehensible feeling surged up so sharply I wondered if I had gone mad myself.
To you, are she and I the same?
The question was far too childish to speak aloud. Of course it wasn't what mattered right now.
I turned on my heel and fled the building. I ran to the opposite side from where Greg's car was parked and gasped for air.
What is this.
What the hell is this?
I would rather she had been some heartless monster. Rather she had been shameless and thoughtless—!
I swallowed the shout I wanted to let out. If I raised my voice here, Luca would wake, and right now I had no confidence I could show a baby anything good.
I clutched my head and sank to the ground. Eyes burning, I glared up at the sky.
The weather was miserable. Clouds that wouldn't quite rain blanketed everything. The whole world was gray.
Round and round, and my world was gray again.
I wanted to scream once more, but I couldn't. I stayed there, head buried between my knees.
And in a voice shaking with rage, I counted under my breath.
"One, two, three…"
It was a method I had learned in the days when this kind of anger came every single day—a way to cool the fire.
The fury, the resentment, wouldn't settle. I felt as if I had been thrown straight back into adolescence.
"Four, five, six…"
Fortunately the method still worked. I managed to gather myself enough to speak without shouting.
Footsteps approached.
As if on cue, Mother Superior came to stand beside me. In that same indifferent voice she asked,
"Want a smoke?"
"…You left Luca with me because I don't smoke."
"I did. So I'll offer once more."
She held out a cigarette.
"Will you?"
"…Thank you."
I took the cigarette from between her rough knuckles, set it between my lips, and accepted a light.
Hoo.
I exhaled the gray smoke like a sigh.
I had smoked around twenty, then quit because the sight of myself working just to pay for cigarettes had been pathetic.
The long-unfamiliar smoke left me faintly dizzy.
When the cigarette was half gone, I asked in a rough voice,
"Why call me now, when you never called even after the renovations finished?"
Did you really have to show her to me?
I didn't say the real question, but I was sure she understood.
Mother Superior exhaled a long stream of smoke before she answered.
"At the time, I thought you wouldn't want to bring the child back. So I didn't call."
"…"
"If you hadn't had the boy, you would have moved somewhere modest on your own. But then I saw you take the offering money and go looking for a place the two of you could share, and I thought there was no need to contact you any longer."
"…"
I stayed silent. After a moment Mother Superior glanced toward where the woman would be and said,
"That child's name is Alicia."
"I see."
"And some children never manage to grow up, no matter how much time passes."
"…Is she borderline intellectually disabled?"
"She's right on the line. The kind of case that gets the least help from the government."
"…"
There was a great deal I wanted to say, but what came out was the most important question—or rather, the deepest of my resentments.
"How did someone like that end up having children?"
"Because even someone like that can love, and because someone loved her in return."
I didn't bother hiding the hollow laugh that burst out of me. As if I cared about other people's love right now—least of all the love of people who weren't enough.
"If you can't take responsibility, you shouldn't have them!"
Even at my thin, bitter cry, Mother Superior answered as calmly as ever.
"She must have believed she could."
"…"
"The boy she was calling for just now—Kyle—was one of ours too. Her husband."
"So where is he now?"
"At the Lord's side."
The two of them had been family from the moment they met here, she said.
"They loved each other with a love that left no room for doubt. They had been family since childhood, then friends, then lovers."
But before Luca was born, Kyle died in a sudden accident. After that, depression and panic disorder hit Alicia together, and she was in no state to raise a newborn.
"Not every mother is strong."
If she had known nothing of the world it might have been different—but Alicia already knew the world was a frightening place, and under the weight of loss and reality she floundered.
There was nowhere she could turn for help.
She knew that if she went to the people in suits, they would take her children somewhere her hands could never reach again.
So she ran to the house of God where she had grown up. She was not a devout believer, but she trusted that the mother and father of this place—Mother Superior and the Father—would not cast her aside.
"She was still able to think that her child deserved better. So Alicia came here carrying a newborn."
At first her condition had been better than it was now. She had still worried for her children as a mother.
"She said she was so afraid—if she herself died, who would feed them three times a day, bathe them, soothe them when they cried, give them medicine when they were sick… who would love them?"
But with every night that passed, she grew worse.
"At some point she began having fits whenever she looked at the newborn second child. The pressure of not being able to take responsibility for him broke her."
"…"
Understanding her heart was not difficult. Even people who were fine often found the world frightening.
Someone who could barely manage her own life was never going to be able to carry two children as well.
"…Then what happens to her? Does she stay here?"
"Yes. If that child can endure living, she will live here."
"…"
Mother Superior gazed into the distance and continued.
"If Kyle had lived a little longer…"
The deep lines at the corners of her eyes were dry as always, but the look in them was that of a mother mourning a child who had gone ahead of her.
"If he had at least lived until Reni and Luca were teenagers, they would still have been a whole family. The moment the children realized their mother had a borderline disability might have brought a little shame and resentment—but she would still have been precious to them, and even if it was heavy at that age, they would have stood in for their father and protected her."
But it hadn't happened that way. The father who had loved his wife and children had died first and become the one free of all responsibility, and the woman who might have simply grieved if there had been no children was slowly going mad under the guilt and pressure of what she could not carry.
"Kyle never imagined he might die first."
He had been so busy promising himself he would protect Alicia until the day she died that it never occurred to him he might be the one to go first.
With a wife who needed him and two children waiting, he never thought God would take his life first.
Why does life play such tricks on people?
It gives them love, hope, faith—and then, in a single moment, steals it all away.