Page 31 of An Immaculate Deception

“Sometimes it seems that you do.”

“But you did hit him.”

I reel back. I almost forgot about that.

It felt so right at the time. And I don’t regret it one bit. Maybe tomorrow I’ll regret it, maybe next week, or next month, but right now I only wish I could go back and slap him again. I want to slap Doctor Lobo while I’m at it, to shove him with both fists and back him against the wall. There’s a terrible pressure building inside my body.

“He rejected our baby. What am I going to do now? I am ruined.”

“It may seem that way,” he says gently, “but you can never be ruined.”

I look up at him. “What do you mean?”

“You are so much more than those things. A husband, a suitor, approval of your family, your church, society…When I look at you, Madalena, I see someone torn apart by the demands of the world around her. Someone who’s been living by external rules for so long, she no longer knows herself. She no longer remembers who she is or what she really wants.”

The words sink slowly into my bones.

After a moment I say, “A woman does not have the luxury of wanting things outside of what’s expected of her.”

“If you did have the luxury”—his voice lowers, as if he’s about to share a secret—“what would you want?”

Yesterday, I would have said I want Leandro to propose. But now I know Mother was right about him.

“I want to keep my baby,” I say, “and have a good life. Not the life of an ostracized woman, a woman who brings shame to her family, a mother without a husband. I don’t want my child to be called an illegitimate bastard and I don’t want to be at the mercy of my family…”

I run out of breath, suddenly realizing that he’s right: All my wants and fears are wrapped up in the world.

I sink onto the bed, and the mattress is soft. “I don’t know what I want besides that. There is no me besides that.”

“Of course there is.”

“If there is, then I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

He sits beside me. “It does matter. Knowing yourself is the most important thing of all.”

He looks so tender and thoughtful. Sometimes when he looks at me, his bright umber eyes bear into me in a way that makes me feel truly seen. I don’t know what he means by this, yet at the same time I do. I don’t think I have ever been asked what I want before, nor have I even asked myself that before. It has never mattered what I want.

What I want…

A thought slips through. I gasp and push it back down, back into the abyss from which it came and must never be allowed out. There are some thoughts that must never be permitted to surface.

I feel him watching me, and I get the sense that he can read my mind. That he knows even my darkest thoughts, the ones I dare not think myself. At times like this I can’t bear to look at him.

“Sometimes,” he says, “we censor a part of ourselves so severely that it becomes repressed in our minds, trapped in some deep crevice of our subconscious. This is our shadow self. Without knowing, we destroy our true spirit to become someone who is accepted, respected, and admired in society.”

“What about you?” I ask. “You are a man admired in society. Do you have a shadow self?”

His eyes widen slightly in surprise. “Yes.”

“You do?”

“To some extent, we all do, but…” He pauses for a moment, pensive. “Yes, I do.”

I smile at his honesty. I did not expect this answer. “So the person you are as you walk around in your daily life isn’t the real you?”

He considers this, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “I suppose you could say so.”

“Then how can I meet the real you?”