For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,5

from the bathroom to find her way to her bedroom.

Life might get harder; Shelly would be hurt that her father didn’t want her. But no one must ever know.

* * *

THE DREAM CAME EVERY NIGHT from then on. She was searching desperately for someone. For her little girl. First she was on the beach, and she’d been reading her mail, and the fog had rolled in, and she looked up suddenly and realized she couldn’t see her.

"Shelly!" she began crying. "Shelly, where are you?" She leaped to her feet and spun in every direction, crying over and over, "Shelly!"

She began stumbling toward the water. Boulders reared from nowhere, tripping her. The roar of the surf filled her ears, and she knew with sickening certainty that Shelly had been caught by a wave.

But, no, she wasn’t on the beach at all. She was in a city, although the fog still played tricks with her eyes. The sound was from traffic. Oh, no! How could she have looked away, even for a moment? The sea was merciless, but cars were deadly.

She searched the sidewalks frantically for a bright chestnut head. People passing ignored her. Then she saw her, out on the median, cars racing by without slowing at all for the toddler who teetered there. She wore rags; she looked like Cosette in Les Misérables, wretched and unwanted. Brimming with tears, her bright blue eyes met Lynn’s momentarily through a break in the traffic, but without recognition.

My daughter doesn’t know me, Lynn realized with horror.

"Stay where you are!" Lynn screamed. "Wait! I’m coming!"

But her voice meant nothing to this child, and with greater shock Lynn discovered she didn’t know her own daughter’s name.

Sobbing, the little girl stepped from the curb.

And Lynn awakened, as she did every night, her screamed "No!" trembling on her lips and tears running down her cheeks.

With a moan she curled into a ball and shuddered. At last she went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, then stared hopelessly at herself in the mirror.

Of course she was having dreams; their content was hardly subtle.

Somewhere out there was another little girl, one she’d carried in her womb. How many promises she’d made to that baby as she dreamed of the future! She sang to her and laughed and tickled her own belly when a tiny toe or elbow surfaced. She played music and danced and read aloud, just so her child would know her voice, would know she was loved.

But, through no fault of her own, she hadn’t kept those promises. Her baby had never heard her voice again. Someone else had taken her home. Did these other parents love her and sing to her and tickle her toes? Or had she gone home with a teenager who hadn’t really wanted to get pregnant? Perhaps she was in a foster home, or had an angry father who shook her when she wouldn’t quit crying. What if she was slow to develop, but nobody was patient? Or what if they loved her, these parents, but they were raising her the only way they knew how, by spanking her when she got cranky or broke something, by screaming at her with the anger of their own childhoods in their voices?

"If only..." Lynn breathed soundlessly. If only she could know. See that this other little girl was loved and cared for, read to and hugged, that her artwork was on the refrigerator for all to admire.

If she knew, the dreams would go away.

But how could she ever find out without contacting the hospital and telling them? Without taking the chance of losing Shelly?

That was the torment. Risk the little girl who was the center of her life, who meant everything to her, for the sake of one who couldn’t possibly remember her voice. Who would have forgotten her songs and the stories she’d promised to finish someday, when they could giggle together.

She crept down the hall like a ghost to her daughter’s room, hovering in the doorway because the bed nearly filled the space, which in a house of this era had probably been meant as a sewing room or a nursery. Sunny yellow and black cats frolicked among sunflowers on the wallpaper that climbed the slanted ceiling. Yellow curtains covered the tall sash window. Under a pale lemon-yellow and white comforter, Shelly slept peacefully. Lynn could just make out her face in the glow from the hall, and thought, Ruth is right. She looks like a Celt from