Everyone says that Santoria Junior looks just like me. They're right, she does. She looks just like me in every way, from her toes to the top of her head. And when people say this I understand that they are asking why, but all I do is reply, “She is my daughter.”
The Lie
The truth and the lie can be found in ones definition of daughter. Santoria Junior is my daughter in that I am the only mother she has ever know. She is my daughter because I gave her life. She is my daughter because I look after her and care for her well being, but most importantly, she is my daughter because I love her. The only way that Santoria Junior is not my daughter is that I did not conceive her. She is not of egg or sperm. I did not carry her in my belly for nine months. But still, she is my daughter.
The Truth
When you become a mother, you learn patience and giving. Which is why it was not hard for me to wait for Marco Junior, he was my second child, my “natural” child. But when the urge to reproduce first came I did not have the patience that I have now, and all I could think about was myself. I had begged Marco to give me a baby, but all he could see was an interruption to his video games. That is why I have never been able to tell anyone the truth. How I spent days in the laboratory manipulating DNA and forcing life. I stayed up for days and still in the end, Santoria Junior was just a mistake. She was a mistaken mix of corn seed and my own DNA. I did not begin to know what I had done until a week later I found a strangely thick stock of corn amongst some experimental corn I was growing in the basement for a hair care line I was working on.
My first thought was to cut it. It was instantly obvious that there had been some sort of contamination. I thought back to the late hours I had worked just days before, when creating a baby was all that was on my mind. So, without another thought I cut the stock and threw it into the compost pile. Not wanting to pill back the gigantic husk, almost certain that I had created some sort of abomination, I turned my back and spent the rest of the day trying to keep it out of view.
After lunch I returned to the lab to find that the stock had certainly moved. It was all the way on the other side of the pile and when I approached it I couldn't keep my hands from shaking. All I could think is, “please, don't let it be a monster.” I knew I couldn't deal if it were a monster and I cursed myself for even thinking I had the ability to dabble in human genetics. So against every fiber in my body I reached across the compost pile and grabbed the stock. I held the gigantic husk between my legs and nearly crying I slowly pulled away the leaves. What I found, I could not have prepared myself for. It... She! was a perfect baby girl. Ten fingers and ten toes, with skin yellow as corn and a smile just a bright when she opened her eyes and looked at me for the first time.
I claimed her right away. I didn't bother to explain to Marco why we had a corn yellow baby girl or where she had come from. In the beginning he would look from her to me at meals not saying anything with questions obviously fresh in his mind. Then finally, after days of cautious silence he spoke five words of his acceptance, “I don't want to know,” and so, began our family.