Chapter 3

I had become the sinner of the whole family.

From that day on, everyone shut me out, closed ranks against me, spat on me.

My parents turned cold. The silent treatment, the verbal jabs, day after day without a break.

My mother sighed and slammed things around the house all day long.

"How did I raise a heartless brat like you? Cold, unfeeling, ready to disown your own blood!"

"The whole neighborhood is laughing at us! Saying we raised a daughter with no conscience!"

My father wouldn't so much as look at me. I wasn't allowed to sit at the table, wasn't allowed to open my mouth.

The moment I dared say one word back, it was a screaming fit, sometimes his fists.

My nephew's illness, all of it, they laid at my feet.

As if the second I refused to donate my kidney, the boy was doomed, and that made me his killer.

The relatives went around spreading poison about me.

Told anyone who'd listen that I was selfish, cold-blooded, vicious, ungrateful.

I couldn't even go out to buy groceries without hearing them point and whisper.

"That's her. Wouldn't save her own nephew. Just stood by and watched her own flesh and blood die."

"Cold as ice, that heart. A girl that spiteful, who'd ever count on her later?"

No one knew what donating that kidney had cost me in my last life.

No one cared that with one kidney gone, the rest of my life would be nothing but sickness.

My daughter needed a healthy mother to raise her, too.

They only recognized one truth: I could save my nephew, I chose not to, so I was the sinner.

They carried on for three days, and when I still wouldn't budge, they got so furious they threatened to run away from home.

My mother said to me:

"If you won't give Percy your kidney, we'll go out there and die!"

They'd spent ten years at my brother's place, raising his child. Now that they were old and no longer useful, his wife shipped them off to me.

Dressed it up nicely, too: since my parents had lived at her house ten years, it was only my turn to take care of them now.

They ate and drank under my roof, and yet every month their five-thousand pension went straight to my sister-in-law, right on schedule. I never once complained.

I closed my eyes, drew a deep breath:

"Mom, Dad, I'm your daughter too. Couldn't you think about me, even a little?"

"If my body gives out from donating a kidney and I go down, will my brother and his wife take care of you in your old age?"

"Don't bother running away. I'll take you to a retirement home. Let's see if you can last a single month there."

In my last life, after I fell to my death, my sister-in-law put them in a retirement home.

Barely two days in, they couldn't stand it, wailing on the phone to my brother, accusing the aides of abusing the elderly.

And what did my brother say?

He said:

"I don't believe the aides would hit you if you'd just behave! You two get more impossible the older you get!"

My parents looked at how set my face was and argued back through gritted teeth.

"Your brother would never abandon us. Bad enough you won't donate a kidney to save Percy, now you're sowing discord too. Your conscience must've been eaten by dogs!"

With that, they walked out, not a look back.

I sat on the couch in a daze, until the preschool teacher called to ask why I hadn't come to pick up my daughter.

When she saw it was me coming for her, she lit right up.

"Mommy, can you buy me a candied fruit skewer? I want one so bad. Grandma buys them for Percy but won't let me have any."

Something twisted in my chest.

All their lives my parents favored boys over girls. As a child it was my brother they doted on, now it was my nephew.

I scooped my daughter up and let her pick the one she loved best, strawberry.

Knowing her grandparents weren't home, she was extra happy.

While I cooked in the kitchen, she'd run over one minute to call, "Mommy, is dinner almost ready?"

and the next minute run over to say, "Mommy, I love you so much."

Before, with my parents in the house, she'd sit quiet and good with her picture books, her building blocks.

Because if she got the least bit lively, my mother would say the girl made her dizzy with all that moving around, gave her a headache with the noise.

Only now did it hit me: their being here had been slowly smothering the child right out of my daughter.

At dinner, my husband, who had stayed silent through all of this, never once weighing in, suddenly spoke up:

"Honey, why don't you just give Percy one of your kidneys."