Chapter 5

The next morning at breakfast, I couldn’t look my mother in the eye. She seemed especially cheery, which made it even worse since I could guess why she was feeling so good. Since puberty, I had fought the urge to do what she had done last night, and most likely many other times. If self-gratification was a mortal sin, why did she do it? The doppelganger was right. My mother was no saint.

“What’s the matter?” my mother asked.

My head shot up. “What? Huh?”

“You haven’t said two words to me all morning. What’s up?”

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

“Are priests always right?” I asked.

“Priests are men. Men are fallible. So I guess not. Why?”

“I don’t know.” I remained silent for a moment before asking, “So if Father Nico tells me something, he might be wrong and I don’t have to do it, right?”

“Emily! Did Father Nico tell you to—? Did he touch you?”

“What! No! Of course not!”

“Then what are you talking about?”

I wanted to shout out, “He told me it’s a sin to masturbate, but I saw you masturbating so he must be wrong and therefore I can do it,” but I chewed my bottom lip and remained silent with eyes downcast, sorry I that had brought the subject up.

“Well?” my mother asked, using that tone that expected an answer.

I looked up and stared at my mother. “Is it a sin for a woman to enjoy sex?”

A small smile formed on my mother’s face. “Not with her husband. Not if she loves him. That’s not a sin. That’s how a husband and wife make babies.”

“How come you only had me?”

The glowing smile on my mother’s face turned to gloom in a heartbeat. “What do you mean?”

“How come you only had me, one child?”

It was my mother’s turn to look down and stare at her lap. She wrung her hands and shifted in her chair. I felt awful for making her sad, and sad she was. Was my doppelganger inside me, making me do this? Was the doppelganger taking over my mind and body? Was it turning me into a bad person?

“I, uh, had a problem when you were little and decided not to have another child,” my mother said.

I turned to her not realizing I had looked away in guilt. Her eyes were watery and she looked like she had lost her best friend. My heart went out to her. I wanted to comfort her.

“Is that what you spoke to Father O’Malley about?” I asked.

My mother’s eyes narrowed and she glared at me. She clenched her teeth and her fingers curled into fists. She jumped up from the chair so fast it toppled over backward.

“Is that what this is about?” my mother shouted. “Are you prying? I told you it was private. How dare you! Get out of here! Get out of my sight!”

I had never seen my mother so angry. I bolted from the kitchen, flew up the stairs, and slammed my bedroom door behind me. I ran to the mirror.

“Where are you?” I shouted. “I want to talk to you!”

The mirror became wavy and my angry reflection was replaced by a smiling clone of me.

“You hit a nerve with your mother,” the doppelganger said.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m you. Well, I’m your twin. What do I want? I want peace. I want to be free.”

“So just go,” I said.

“I can’t. I’m tied to you until I’m free.”

“Then I’m setting you free.”

“Only your mother can do that.”

“How can she? She doesn’t even know you exist.”

“I do in her memory.”

“Why do you hate her so much? Why did you make me make her feel bad at breakfast?”

“I didn’t make you do that. That was all you.”

“I never spoke to her like that. I never made her feel bad like that. Am I changing? Am I becoming you?”

“I have some control over you, but I can’t be you. I’ll never know what it’s like to be in a body again. Those days are long gone.”

“So you were alive. You’re a ghost. But how come you look exactly like me?”

“I don’t.”

“You do. When I look at you it’s like looking at myself.”

“Then take a closer look.”

The image in the mirror moved a hand to her forehead and swept her bangs up to uncover her forehead. I gawked. My scar was not there. The doppelganger let the bangs fall back down.

“See, we are not exactly the same,” the doppelganger said. “I’m done talking.”

The image in the mirror became wavy. When it cleared, I was staring at myself. To be sure, I lifted my thick bangs off my forehead. There it was. The scar I hated.

I sulked in my bedroom, fretting over what I had said to my mother. Ever since the doppelganger entered my life, I was turning into a different person. A person I didn’t like. I went downstairs to apologize, but couldn’t find my mother. I ran back upstairs to her bedroom. The door was open, but she was not there. Now frantic, I ran back downstairs to the garage. Both her car and my father’s were there. My father was on a business trip. Where was my mother?

I had to speak to someone. Father Nico! I had wanted to talk to him anyway so I walked the few blocks to our church, went inside, and was heading to his office when I saw her. My mother sitting in a pew near the front. Her bowed head was leaning on clasped hands planted on the bench seatback in front of her. What was she praying about? Me? Was she asking God to look after me because I was becoming a monster? Or did it have to do with what happened years ago with that other priest, Father O’Malley?

I slinked down the side aisle toward Father Nico’s office, hugging the wall, not making the slightest sound, going painstakingly slow so not to draw attention to my movement. His office was all the way in the front so, when I was near the row my mother was sitting in, I stopped. She was on the other side of the church sitting near the center aisle that separated her rows of pews from the ones I was near. But it felt like I was standing close enough for her to hear my heavy breathing.

I studied my mother. Her lowered head rested on her clasped hands. Her lips moved in prayer so I was sure her eyes were closed. My mother had taught me that was the best way to “see” God. With my back pressed to the wall, I slinked crablike the rest of the way. If my mother opened her eyes she would surely see me.