To Her, I Was a Sin Novel – I had a secret. Every year on my birthday, they’d take me to the blood donation room and drain almost a pint of my blood because my mother once said I carried a rapist’s blood inside me, and that was the only way to wash away my sin. For those words, at eighteen, weighing barely 110 pounds, I once again lay down on the phlebotomy chair.
But the moment I stepped out of the room, a piece of paper was thrown straight at me. Stunned, I looked up and met my mother’s cold eyes. “Sign it, then get out of my house,” she said. It was a disownment letter. I stood frozen in place, a chill running through my entire body. Mom… didn’t you say once I’d done it eighteen times, I’d finally be clean? *** I looked up in shock and met her cold gaze, but all I saw was eighteen years’ worth of hatred in her eyes.
My fingers clenched the hem of my shirt, my voice trembling. “Mom, didn’t you say that if I donated blood eighteen times, I’d be a clean child? Why don’t you want me even now?” The words seemed to ignite her fury in an instant. “Clean? What makes you think you could ever be clean?” She lunged forward, her nails digging hard into my forehead. “Those eyes of yours! They’re just like his—like that monster’s! Every time you look at me, it reminds me of how filthy, how disgusting that night was! Why won’t you just die? Why?” She shoved me hard and I stumbled back before I could dodge.
My back slammed into the wall, sending a sharp pain through my body. It hurt so much I couldn’t speak. My younger sister, Mia Collins, rushed forward just in time. Tears streamed down her face as she wrapped her arms around our mother, who lost it. She turned and snapped at me, “You’re so selfish, Amelia! You know you’re a stain that can never wash away, and you still had to push Mom like that? Are you trying to kill her?” A stain? I froze.
Fragments of the past occasionally surfaced in my mind, things my elders had once hinted at. Before I ever existed, my parents had been deeply in love, ready to walk down the aisle together. But on the night before their wedding, tragedy struck. My mother was dragged into an alley by a drunk stranger. When they found her, there wasn’t an inch of unbruised skin left on her body.
She was barely hanging on. From that day on, she fell into an endless abyss. To help her move on, my father did everything he could, taking her on trips to clear her mind, having her see a therapist, and trying every method available, until she slowly began to open up again. They finally had the wedding that should’ve happened long before. Later, my mother became pregnant, which should have been a joyful occasion, but it turned out to be twins.
The doctor gravely informed us that, based on the timeline, one of the babies wasn’t my father’s. It was most likely the rapist’s. It was a twin pregnancy, so terminating it would have endangered her life. She had no choice but to carry both to term. From that day on, I became the family’s eternal disgrace. My very existence reminded everyone that the nightmare they wanted to forget had truly happened.
Every night since I could remember, I would hear my mother humming soft lullabies from next door as she held my sister in her arms. And me? I could only curl up on the cold metal bed, holding myself tightly. I patted my back, over and over, just like my mother did to Mia, whispering to myself until sleep finally took me. I’d always known my mother hated me but I only now finally understood the real reason.
So my mother hated me just because of these eyes? As I watched her screaming and thrashing in pain, it felt like something tore open inside my chest, and the cold wind rushed straight in. “Sign it!” she shouted. “Sign it right now!”