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Chapter 1
Ivy
The song lyrics that go something like lookin’ for love in all the wrong places, I’m pretty sure it’s an old country song, yeah that pretty much sums up my life. And yeah, I mean it’s like really old. Then again, I consider anything before the 2000s as old. I am a total 2000s baby. I was born exactly at 12:00 a.m. on January 1st, 2005, so I am now eighteen, on my own and currently heading out to find the one person I’m hoping will give me answers.
I grew up in foster care from the time I was an infant until I graduated high school, then I was shown the door. I wasn’t one of the lucky kids that got adopted although I was a baby. I wasn’t the blue-eyed, fair-skinned, blonde cherub everyone apparently wanted. I was, and still am, a green-eyed, golden-skinned, midnight black haired distrusting sort. I don’t know where I get my heritage really because from the picture of my ‘mother’ I found, she was blonde and fairly light toned if her fake tan was anything to go by, I mean it was really bad.
Me, I don’t have to go out for fake tans, my golden hue is me at my palest and if I spend any amount of time in the sun, I turn like a nut-brown. That with the dark hair makes me think of Latin or Italian heritage but without finding my mother I’ll never really know. Which is one of the two reasons I’m heading from New York out to California to find her. The other reason is to know why she gave me up. I mean, okay, apparently she was a stripper but there are plenty of others that keep their babies, so why me?
I’m desperate for answers because like that ancient song goes, I have totally looked for love in so many wrong places. I can recall being younger and wanting to cling to my foster parents, not go when I was forced to a new place. That’s why I was always being moved though, I was too clingy, too needy.
The first time I can recall being in love was when I was thirteen and I dreamt of my best friend’s father adopting me, bathing me with attention, and that is purely in a fatherly sense. I wasn’t a nympho or anything. I was just desperate for love and found full rejection from him and then my so-called best friend. I was turned away and thankfully, sent to a different home that time because it meant a different school as well.
I lost my v-card when I was fifteen, on my birthday actually at a party via a senior. Again, thought it was love and clung until he decided that even my apparent skills weren’t enough and he wanted more variety. I then went through several guys, not all of them I slept with, but I would do things for them. That stopped when I was sixteen going on seventeen, a junior, and fell for my chemistry teacher.
He was married but he gave me the attention I needed because his wife was pregnant and didn’t want anything to do with sex. Again, I thought it was love until his wife found us together one day and told the school board about it. They left my name out as I was just sixteen and no matter the fact that I’d agreed to all of it, they still filed charges against him. That was another time I was glad to be moved and move schools.
Since then it’s been one bad set of dates and hookups after another until I graduated. Then it was finding a room to rent and getting a job. I mean, you don’t come out of foster care with more than a good luck, get out sort of sendoff. I think prisoners getting out of jail are actually given more than we are, it’s like, you’re eighteen, you graduated, you’re no longer our responsibility so, bye now.
So, I got a job waitressing at an outdoor café and am now a very deep nut-brown color, everywhere because I hate tan lines. On my few days off I would go to the roof of my building and lay out topless, not caring who saw what or thought what. I mean it’s not like anyone cares about me and absolutely none of the guys I go out with are interested in anything more than hookups. I don’t want that. I want something that’s mine,someonethat’s mine, but I don’t even know where or how to start that.
I got access to my files when I was eighteen, and from there I learnt who my mother was and finally tracked her down in California. So that’s where I’m headed, to figure out if I could find something with her now that I’m eighteen and if not, maybe I’ll just turn to stripping too. It likely makes more than I do at the café.
The Greyhound bus dropped me off downtown and I am now taking city transport to get closer to the address I have for her. Heaven only knows what sort of response I’ll get from her but I have to at least try. I’m not afraid of failing, I’ve done it so much and so well, another will just roll off my back I’m sure.
The bus drops me off in a really nice neighborhood and my cut off jean skirt and low kicks are definitely going to be out of place here, but it’s nearly six and still a hundred degrees out here. I don’t want to cover up if I’m going to walk the last mile or so by the looks of the map I have. I can’t afford even a cheap phone, not on top of my room and then the ticket out here so I’m doing this old school with maps. Thank god for the confusing as hell subway system back home for making the paper thing make some sort of sense.
The house that I eventually turn up at is so not close to what I was expecting and I can’t help but stare at it as I move forward. It’s massive compared to the cramped spaces I’ve lived in in my life and I’m already pissy when I get to the doors of it to ring the bell. This is where my mother’s been living the last few years while I’m paying out the ass for a one room shit spot with a mini-fridge and a hot plate?
The door opens to a maid eyeing me closely and the look irritates me entirely. Her nose is turned down, blatantly telling me to leave but I am so not going until I have answers, especially now and they better be good ones.
“Hi, does Venus live here?” I ask holding onto my lone duffle bag that has everything to my name inside it tightly.
“Come in, I’ll tell her she has a guest,” the woman said, her tone scoffing on the word guest and that irritates me further. The woman is my mother, under any other circumstance this would be my home not merely a place where I was coming to be introduced as a guest to her.
I pick up arguing from the closed door as we reach it and then it’s thrown open a twenty-something man glaring at the maid then me before turning back to the woman in the room who looks just like the photo I have only several years older.
“Don’t even think you’re going to start bringing your friends around here, Venus. As soon as I get a court order, you’re gone. Dad left you nothing in the will thank god,” the man sneered towards both of us and I feel the slightest bit vindicated by that news.
“Who are you?” he adds my way and I look past him towards the woman who shows absolutely no comprehension of my relation to her.
“I’m Ivy,” I state watching Venus’ eyes widen with that information. “Venus is my mother.”
“I don’t have any children,” the woman returns as the man flips back her way glowering further as a feminine gasp slips from inside the room. I spot a woman a bit younger than the man who looks just like him, his sister most likely.
“No? That’s funny because my records list you as my mother and your face matches the photo I got when I went looking for you,” I tell her moving into the space. “You didn’t even bother to take me home from the hospital before abandoning me, classy but clearly, that’s not something you understand at all,” I add looking at her revolting outfit. I can almost see where she should have hair growing between her legs in the dress she’s wearing.
“What are you doing here? I didn’t want you period, you were just supposed to be a meal ticket, only your stupid father died before he got around to marrying me and his momma wouldn’t give me a dime for you,” Venus sneers telling me everything I need to know.
“Actually, that’s what I came for, part of it at least, to know if you regretted it at all and clearly you don’t. It’s no disappointment to me, I mean, I didn’t really want a stripper for a mother,” I muse certain these people here don’t know about that part of it. The widening of eyes proves it and I don’t feel the slightest bit of regret for outing her. I’m nothing to her like always, I’m used to that. It won’t break me to know there is not one single person on this earth that actually cares if I live or die.
“Jesus Christ…” the man curses downing a stiff drink quickly as Venus turns red with anger.
“The rest of it is just for my own knowledge, I don’t even care about his name, I just want to know the rest of my heritage,” I go on waiting for Venus to respond. “It’d be nice to know for certain, but I’d understand if you were just a slut that didn’t know the truth.”
“You have his vulgar mouth clearly, that Italian mobster thought it was so sexy but it’s also what got him killed you sniveling little brat,” Venus tossed back my way and I shrug with a laugh at me being vulgar just because I called her a slut.
“I’m a New Yorker, Momma, what do you expect?” I toss back at her before turning on my heel to leave. “Don’t worry; I won’t be sticking around for more of the story. I’ve heard plenty already and it’s more relief than anything,” I add, a bit of a lie because it would have been nice to find a woman filled with regret but I’ll deal, I always do somehow.
