“Oh, Jonathan! Oh my God! Jonathan, she’s beautiful!” These words marked the breaking of a family, and a mind.
     Jonathan Ferrelli and wife, Allison, had just completed the nine-month journey from conception to parenthood, and never had a couple finished with such love in their hearts for each other. They inspired a healthy jealousy from their friends, who used their relationship as a template for what love and marriage should be. Along with the coming of their first child, tenfold quantities of smiles, hugs, kisses, caresses, and longing looks made their way into the lives of Allison and Jonathan.
     That all ended when little Rebecca peaked out of the womb, blonde-head first. This came as somewhat of a shock to Jonathan, whose dark features and black hair were part of the reason he had won the love of Allison. Allison, herself, had chocolate brown eyes, jet-black hair, and Italian features, which earned her a speaking role in an upcoming mafia movie.
     Allison was correct about Rebecca; never had such a beautiful babe been delivered into existence. The child did not squint or cry when it came into the world- instead, she released a tiny yelp, opened her icy blue eyes, and smiled at her mother and the rest of the adult world. The light from Rebecca’s smile outshone the white walls and fluorescent lights of the delivery room, and the intense blue of her eyes forced the doctors to squint.
     “Jonathan, just look! So, so… she is so beautiful!”
     Allison difficult to speak, tears drowning her eyes and happiness clogging her throat. Unable to control herself, she started sobbing and laughing, never taking her gaze from the angelic view of her baby.
     “Oh my God… just look at how beautiful…”
 Many of the doctors and nurses were also teary-eyed, for never had they seen an object of such grace before. Monet, Van Gough, and Michelangelo could work together for a hundred years, and never create anything as glorious and awe-inspiring as the creation that was just removed from Allison Ferrelli’s uterus.
     Jonathan, too, was unable to utter a coherent syllable, but this was not for the same reason the rest of the room was spellbound. Granted, Jonathan was captivated by the all-encompassing brilliance of his new daughter as well, but something else was not right. Rebecca’s features did not add up to what should have been the sum of two dark-skinned Italians. Of course, he knew Allison hadn’t cheated on him; many babies are born with light features that turn dark with time, but nonetheless, this little bundle of joy made him feel uneasy.
     Jonathan, a good man by nature, put this feeling aside, chalking it up to the first-day-father nerves. Down to his soul, he was grateful to have this gorgeous baby with his gorgeous wife, and he loved them both very much.
     They went home soon after, days turned into weeks, and Rebecca only became more fair-skinned and more beautiful. One day the Pullmans, close friends of Jonathan and Allison, came to visit the new child. Prior to their visit, not a word had been spoken between Jonathan and Allison concerning Rebecca’s blonde hair, and few words had been spoken between them at all. Spending the day with the Pullmans would be a good way to ease any tension, allowing them both the comfort of company.
     Vanessa, Mrs. Pullman, was the first to see little Rebecca, and she took one nervous step back after looking into the crib.
     “She looks just like…” Vanessa started, but looked to Jonathan before she could finish. “Uh, just like… a little angel! You two must be so proud!”
     Steve, her husband, leaned over Vanessa to look into the crib. Before he said anything, he glanced at Jonathan, his brow furrowed. Jonathan had to turn his gaze away from the Pullmans, a wave of guilt flooding over him despite the fact that he had committed no crime.
     “That must be the most beautiful baby I have ever seen.” Steve agreed. He then turned and directly addressed Rebecca, “And you are lucky to have the world’s best mom and dad.” This comment put a legitimate smile on Allison’s face, and a forced one on Jonathan’s face. It was then unanimously agreed upon to go back downstairs and let the baby sleep.
     After another two weeks of silence, Allison’s mother came to visit from Georgia; a four hundred mile journey made light by the knowledge that it was to see her first grandchild. When she arrived, barely a word was spoken before she rushed up the stairs as quickly as her arthritic bones would allow. She opened the door and gave a playful warning, “Here comes Grammaw! Here I come Rebec-“ She was stopped short by the sight of the child. “Oh, dear…”
     “She knows too.” Thought Jonathan. “She knows very well that something is wrong.” Jonathan took three steps forward, now uncomfortably close to his mother-in-law. She looked at him through awkward eyes, then wearily smiled and looked down at the smiling child. Jonathan inched even closer to Grammaw, not daring to miss a single facial gesture that might clue him into the nature of this mystery.
     “What do you think?” Jonathan slowly asked.
     Grammaw looked in the doorway to Allison, who is leaning against the frame and smiling. Allison had made it a habit, be it intentional or accidental, of keeping an unusual distance between herself and Jonathan. This distance was not limited to the physical world; emotional and intellectual distances were also included in the bundle package. “She looks like a baby Grace Kelly, doesn’t she?” Allison asked, oblivious to the shudder her question had sent coursing down Jonathan’s spine. Grammaw looked back at Jonathan, who was still staring hard at her. She drops her gaze through the baby, straight down into the floor. “She’s lovely.” was Grammaw’s reply.
     Soon after, the trio left the baby’s room and descended the stairs, to converse for the next hour about weather, politics, and other bits of conversation to avoid the topic of Rebecca. Unless spoken to, Jonathan remained silent, wondering about how such light, Scandinavian features can hold onto their baby, when his wife almost certainly didn’t cheat on him. “Perhaps a chromosomal oddity, easily explained by any self-respecting scientist? Maybe a long lost relative of ours was from Sweden, their long lost genes finally resurfacing in their new child? Oh! Or maybe she has a pigment disease! That must be it!” By the time Jonathan had come to this conclusion and looked up, his wife and mother-in-law had already gone inside, and dusk was beginning to settle. “How long have I been…” he started to ask, but then decided that it did not matter.
     Jonathan moved up the stairs into Rebecca’s room, and stood above the crib. Rebecca was awake, and stared up at him through her beautiful, yet pigmentally-challenged face. Poor girl. Jonathan continued staring, trying harder and harder to force himself to believe the story he had created, but it would not take. She knew it too; knew it better than anyone. Rebecca, only four weeks old, looked up at Jonathan with eyes full of pity. This infant felt so sorry for Jonathan that she couldn’t even hide it in the deep recesses of her glacier-like eyes. Jonathan came into the room with the intention to pity Rebecca, but instead he found himself blushing with shame. He was so embarrassed, all he could do to prevent himself from crying was to run out the door and take a hard shot of some drink to calm his nerves. So he ran out the door, hit the bottle six times, then went to sleep on the couch, two flights below his bedroom and his slumbering wife.
     Jonathan skipped work the next two days, and instead became good friends with the bottle. Of course, he faked leaving for work to fool Allison, but he drove, instead, to a local junkyard. In the junkyard there were no eyes to judge him, and with the bottle there were no children to pity him. On the third day he gave no pretenses to his wife; he only sat in the basement with his drink. She did not ask him anything, and he was not surprised.
     “She is too busy tending to her sweet, beautiful, perfect, Aryan child, and quite possibly thanking whatever god created this little angel. Maybe thankful that I am nowhere near it; that I can’t dirty it…” These thoughts and others of a more graphic nature entertained all of Jonathan’s time, causing him to tighten his grip on the bottle, and vice versa.
     It was the fourth night that the drink, accusations, dirtiness, self-pity, darkness, and solitude grabbed Jonathan, and dragged him up the blurry stairs. En route to Rebecca’s room, stumbling like a newborn giraffe, Jonathan managed to get his hands on a pair of scissors and a black magic marker. Jonathan foolishly tried to navigate the stairs without the aid of the railing, but changed his strategy after the bottom three stairs threw him to the ground in under eight seconds. After much labor, he found himself in front of Rebecca’s door, which seemed so angular and disproportionate that it could have been drawn on by a child. Nevertheless, he threw the door open and stood in silhouette in the doorway, facing the crib.
     Jonathan fumbled his way to the crib, and looked down to find Rebecca looking up at him. Her eyes and hair must have grown even brighter, for he could see them perfectly without even having turned on the lights. “She certainly knows the secret, but won’t tell. She knows I am a fraud; knows I don’t belong here.” Jonathan thought to himself. Then he heard something come from the crib. He inched closer, and Rebecca began to whisper to him, “Why are you so black and dirty?” He did not know how to answer, but swayed back and forth trying to make sense of himself. She then spoke to him again, “Look at me. I am beautiful. Look at my eyes, traitor. You disgust me.”
     Jonathan, so terrified and shamed by his daughter’s whisperings, could no longer hold back his tears. He wanted to run away, back into his basement, but his body would not allow it. Her eyes sliced through him with the intensity of their scorn and shame, having him claim to be her father. She whispered to him one final time, “You are no man. You are nothing. I get sick to look at you. Look at how beautiful I am.”
     In an instant, Jonathan’s tears of pain transformed into tears of rage, He dizzily leans forward, through his shame and her disgust, into the crib, scissors first.
     At the same time, two doors down, Allison’s sleep was stirred by muffled sounds coming from her angel’s room. Happy to have an excuse to look at the brilliant ray of light that is her daughter, she put on her slippers and a smile, and headed for the door. As she entered the hallway, two sets of tears were heard escaping two people: one a grown man, and one a child. Both came from Rebecca’s room, whose door was left wide open. Frantic, she rushed to the door, losing both her slippers and her smile in the process. She threw open the door and turned on the lights, unsure what was happening. The lights illuminated a horrible scene…
     Both Jonathan and Rebecca were crying as Jonathan, inside the crib, held her in his arms. Jonathan dropped the scissors, and Allison screamed as loud as the night would allow. Rebecca’s head, once boasting flowing lochs of golden hair, now sprouted up scattered patches of hair amidst thick layers of magic marker combined with small amounts of blood. The blood and marker had spread down the baby’s sobbing face, and was also smeared around Jonathan’s mouth. Allison screamed again, this time overpowering the power of Jonathan and Rebecca’s cries. Jonathan dropped the marker, shrieked, and allowed himself to lose consciousness inside the crib, still cradling his bloody black baby. For the first time, Rebecca’s eyes were closed, and instead of hiding arctic blue wonders, her eyelids only hid warm pools of blood and magic marker.
 
 

THE END