She was pulled screaming into the world, slapped into hysterics. Her eight-pound existence was notated in weights and measurements and names carelessly scribbled and then carefully locked away. Shannon squeezes her wet eyes shut, and instinctively wishes this new world away. She listens for the voice that had swum around her, that voice that whispered, “You are Shannon Pedroza. Always Shannon.”  

 I am Shannon Pedroza, she thinks. 

Her world overflows with isolation. She wriggles in silence, her heart leaping with every footfall. Is that her? Hope floats further away with each new voice, every return voice, another wrong voice. She pines for the lost voice that promised forever, that said, “always Shannon.” I am Shannon Pedroza, she repeats to herself. Shannon! she screams to the keepers of her, but the smiling faces and wrong arms cuddle and coo, then blur back into the shadows.

Minutes meld into hours. 

Days dissolve into weeks.

Shannon screams in silence, and reaches for a phantom hand she can never hold.

Shannon Pedroza is disappearing.

She senses a sort of slipping away and watches wordlessly. A freckled face appears above her. Chicago disappears behind her. 

“We’re your new family, Hannah,” freckle face says.

“No. I have a mommy. My name is Shannon Pedroza,” she says with what seems to her polite insistence. If only she could convince them that this is all some sort of terrible mistake. They will right this wrong. But, Shannon’s language is foreign to the figure above her. Shannon knows words, but cannot make her voice say them. All the faces above her hear is garbled cries.  I will tell them, she thinks, I will make my words work, make them understand who I am … I am … and she repeats her name to herself, like a mantra. 

Strangers calling themselves family engulf her in smiles and songs, some sort of something they call homecoming. 

Shannon sucks down formula and plans her escape.

But as Shannon grows new words come. “Mama, Da-da,” she utters and her new family fawns. She repeats the names of the giant boys Mommy and Daddy call her brothers. Applause erupts. Shannon knows better. She was her mother’s firstborn — an only, not a third. Always Shannon, she sings hopefully to herself, but it fades into the backbeat of her off-key remix. New words pile up inside her head, pushing down all she’d ever known but couldn’t say. Nothing adds up. Shannon gums at her pureed carrots and swears off math. 

“I am,” Shannon pauses. A name bubbles to the surface, but sinks in sadness, as her fairy tale family sings Happy Birthday to someone that used to be her on the anniversary of the day that she lost everything. A day they dare to celebrate. Shannon seethes but settles in, for what else can she do?

Without her prologue, there is no longer a past. 

“Happy Birthday, dear Hannah,” they sing.  

“Hannah,” she finally repeats. 

And the crowd goes wild.

“Happy Birthday to you.”

A tear crawls down her cheek, but her new mommy wipes it away, and places a smidge of sugary sweet icing on her tiny lips. 

Hannah smiles.

Shannon Pedroza has disappeared.