I smile now, thinking back, because there were specks of good moments in there too. Just the thought of calling her my stepdaughter felt like an honor. She looked like him. She was a beautiful creature to me, physically, and I accepted her before she ever gave me the chance to be accepted. I know, if she had, we would have been a great duo. There wasn’t a thing I wouldn’t have tried to give her, to make her future a little easier.
I was so anxious on that first trip to their country. Five years of yearning, and I was finally about to meet them. Then I was told she was sick, couldn’t come meet us at the pier. It landed like a blow. Still, I thought — there’s time. Maybe he’ll arrange a dinner, a stop by the house, a real introduction.
Two weeks there, and that hope never came to fruition. I explored the place mostly on my own while he said he needed time with his children. I asked him directly — when do I get to be introduced properly? Let’s have dinner, let’s do something. He said the kids slept late, didn’t care to do much. He dismissed it until I stopped asking.
We left his country with no explanation for why I was never respectfully brought into their world. I felt the weight of it. And then, right on cue, I talked myself into a delusion — maybe it just wasn’t the right time.
Back home, a phone call. He was talking to her, and I got giddy, asked to say hello. He reluctantly turned the phone. I gave her the warmest “hiiii” I had. She gave me a cold stare and a flat “hi.” I was so happy just to see her face that I accepted it anyway — “so nice to see you” — and she said, “ok.” Just like that, I was back in my own hopeful little world. She’s just a kid, I told myself. It’ll get better.
When he got off the phone, I tried to talk to him about it — told him the kids weren’t being taught to know me, that I was his wife, that this mattered. He said, “Don’t you think these kids know who you are?” I pleaded with him right then to stop playing with people’s emotions, especially the children’s, because whatever he was letting form in them wouldn’t disappear on its own. He told me I was making too much of things, that I needed to learn to stay quiet and let time tell.
And even after all of that, my hopeful self still found a way to make it worth hoping for. Give it time, I said. So I waited. I hoped. I kept pushing, kept building, for an “us” that was only ever really me.