I told my wife she was drawing our baby’s face wrong. She looked at me and said, “This isn’t our baby.”

She pulled out a crispy Polaroid picture she had drawn all over. I could see the shapes of two eyes, a nose, and a mouth beneath the red crayon lines. I piss her off when she’s painting and I critique her work. I did it again that day and she screamed at me, “I’m just trying to draw our baby, stop criticizing everything I do all the time.” I told her she was drawing the baby’s face wrong. She looked at me and said, “This isn’t our baby.”<br><br>She pulled out a crispy Polaroid picture she had drawn all over. I could see the shapes of two eyes, a nose, and a mouth beneath the red crayon lines. I had no idea who or what it was. When I looked closer at the photograph, horror shot through me. I recognized the woman holding the baby. It was my mother. I looked at the baby’s face again after registering what was happening. It was my face. The baby was me. And who held me? Some woman I had never seen. A woman who was not my mother. My wife’s hand trembled as she handed me the picture. It shook so intensely I had to wrap my fingers around hers to hold onto it. The panic became too much. I sat down. <br><br>“Who is this?” I asked.<br><br>“Before you were born, your parents were told you wouldn’t survive. You wouldn’t make it to term. You would die.” She paused to catch her breath. “They gave up on you. They moved away. Your birth mother was heartbroken. She was young. Your parents made her give you up for adoption. She was too poor and too young to fight back. She was told it was for the best.” <br><br>I sat silently, taking this in. <br><br>“Your birth mother was devastated. She was never the same after you were born, after you were taken from her. She wrote letters to you every day and put them in a shoebox under her bed. That’s how I found you. One day, I was looking through her attic. I found an old photo album. I opened it and it was full of pictures of you. Pictures of how you took your first steps. Pictures of your first day of kindergarten. Pictures of your sweet sixteen. Pictures I had taken. I had no idea how my mother got them. I didn’t understand. But I felt a connection to the boy in the photographs. I made it my mission to find you.” She paused again. “Then we met, here, in this house, at this university. That’s why I moved here. I had to find you. And then one day you smiled at me and I knew in that moment that I had found you.” <br><br>I stood up from the couch and walked out of the house. I walked across the street and hacked up bile into the bushes. How could this be my life? My parents had given up on me? The woman I called my wife kidnapped me? I felt like I was living in some sort of fever dream. I walked back to the house. We sat there in silence for what felt like an eternity but was only minutes. <br><br>Finally, I spoke up again, “What happened to my birth mother?”<br><br>My wife looked at me with tears in her eyes, “She spent every day of her life waiting for you. She died waiting for you to come home.”<br><br>I stood up from the couch, walked to our bedroom, and slammed the door. I cried and I cried and I cried. I mourned my birth mother. I mourned her in a way I couldn’t mourn my wife. A woman I no longer even recognized. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t live with her. I called my mother and weeping I told her what my wife had told me. She confirmed it. I packed a duffle bag and left. I never went back. I never saw my wife again. I never lived in that house again. I never loved again. I left. And I never looked back.