“Just like its mother.”
I held Noah a little tighter and continued walking. At twenty-two, I was graduating at the top of my class, yet I had spent much of my life discovering that people were often more interested in deciding who you were than learning the truth.
The loudest laughter came from my aunt Marlene, the woman who had taken me in after my parents died. Throughout my childhood, she constantly reminded me that every meal, bedroom, and item of clothing she gave me was something for
which I should remain endlessly grateful.
Beside her sat her daughter Vanessa, proudly wearing the white honor stole that should have been mine. Just weeks earlier, Vanessa had helped spark a disciplinary investigation that temporarily removed that recognition from me and placed my eligibility for graduation under review.
Three weeks before the ceremony, my life had changed in an entirely different way. Outside St. Catherine’s Clinic, I discovered a newborn inside a cardboard carrier, wrapped in a hospital blanket and left with no one willing or able to claim him.
A social worker later told me that his mother had died shortly after giving birth and that no father or relatives had come forward.
