=To Renata Now more than two millennia since that halo-crowned smiling babe was born, you would be turning eight years old... Don't ever believe for a moment I would lose track of you. No, my child, I could never do that. I've thought of you often, how you might have been if I had not been so afraid. If I had not been selfish and young and so very afraid, then you would have been born. You never should have been, but you could have been — were you it not for me, you would have been. You would now be a thinking, feeling child. But I was afraid. Forgive me this perverse transgression, but I named you then: Renata — It means reborn. Renata, you were me somehow being reborn — only the pure-filtered carefully distilled good, the very best parts in me. (If there were any, they came and went with you.) I had no doubt you were a girl — you were me reborn. Because I wanted to die then. Because you had to die then. And I wanted you to die. And I wanted you to live. I wanted you to be born. But I was afraid. Please forgive me. I knew you were with me — I would feel your presence fill me. I cried and smiled and spoke to you; A beautiful little girl I pictured you to be. I pondered you often, a golden child with shining strands of black silk, just very slightly curled, and laughing dark stars to serve as your knowing eyes. You'd be laughing, because that's what a better me would do — for real. Your skin would be golden like mine once was before I was blanched by sorrow, radiant peach fuzz or angellic down unmarked and glowing bright. Even if you had little beauty, you would be the most beautiful child. Like my mother said I was to her. And her mother said to her. You'll always be my first child. And maybe my only child — no other has followed you. I walked, knowing you were always with me — my closest, most intimate companion. How much closer can two ever be? I'd walk with my hand holding you through my flesh like I see other mothers do, my palm trying to protect you from me. But it did not succeed. Hell was knowing you were there, yet you couldn't live — because I didn't know how to keep us alive. I didn't know how to take care of myself, and if your grandparents knew, whether you lived or died, I would be dead to them. I don't know how to survive now — I knew even less then. I was young and afraid. You were an accident that I didn't know I wanted 'til you happened, but then it didn't matter, because I couldn't have you, my child who was and wasn't a child. I believed you as you were then did not comprise a person, and when I forgot, I was reminded. I knew how you looked in the science texts: A tiny, unformed lump no different than the fleshlings of any other spined creature — you needed my body to grow and become whole. But I banished you from me — I had you flushed away. You were only an inch long. Still, another part of me believed you were more. You were already somehow whole. I still remember now, almost eight years later, how I felt knowing you were there. A tragic accident. An unholy miracle. Oh, I wanted you, and yet I hated you. And I loved you. Can you understand? If we have souls, did you have a soul burgeoning in that never-formed body? And if you had a soul, did you go to Heaven? Is there a Heaven? Are you somewhere out there, Renata? Do you hear your mother's cries? Or did I erase you completely? No woman's a true mother if she wouldn't die for her children. I thought then that I wanted to die with you and for you, instead of you dying alone. We could die together, I thought — I would kill us both. We'd be together in the beyond when we couldn't be together here. It wouldn't be so frightening if we could die together. How perfect it had seemed. I'd already flirted with death, though it was only toying. I hated my life. I hated me. I thought of dying. But I didn't kill me. Blame that, too, on fear. You are my unfulfilled wishes, My dreams that never came true. You were potential, that I ended. Whether you were or weren't a person, I killed you, Renata. And later, I would say I was glad you were never born — you were a parasite. I thought of unborn babies as vile, detestable things eating the mother alive. You consumed me alive, in flesh and spirit. How I cried with you inside me — every night I dissolved. And yet those salted rivers don't even begin to atone. You were my creation and destruction. I made you and I killed you. And knowing I prevented the incredible mistake that was you from existing has stayed with me and destroyed me as much as I destroyed you. But to be fair, I was already a hollow shell. Now we are both ghosts. Your father became a doctor — he at least did well for himself. He couldn't have studied and succeeded if he had to take care of us. He would have been miserable, dour and frustrated. He said so, because I've asked if there was a choice. He says it was the only way. We spared him, you and I. And he's accomplished now. If I was troubled before, you've sealed my fate. You were a sacrifice I made to our lives — though one he wouldn't witness. He could not. It was a sisterhood that brought about your death. Doesn't that sound heathen? But think of it: sacrifice. You were a guiltless white lamb, Renata, like the kind God seems to like having killed. Your death had purpose — which is more than I can say for my life. Does it console you to know? Can you be consoled? Or are you really a ghost, a spirit angry and vengeful to have been denied this life by your own mother? When you were never born, into what could you have been reborn?