I grabbed my messenger bag from my bedside table and shoved inside it my old baby doll that my mother had sewn from a cloth glove. It was ratty, and the yarn hair was falling out, but it was all I had. Climbing on my bed, I slowly took down each piece of newspaper and stuck them all inside my purse. It made me feel safer knowing I kept the most important things by my side, since I hadn’t been able to pay my rent this month and I wasn’t on a lease. I left my bedroom, shutting off the light behind me. I had ten minutes before my shift started at Crowley’s Bar, and I couldn’t afford to lose my job. This was one of the few places willing to pay me under the table, enabling me to lie about my age. Locking the door behind me, I left my apartment and descended into the muggy night. I loved working night shifts. There was something anonymous about being cloaked in darkness, mingling in the shadows, never having to reveal your true self. It was freeing. I never craved to be center of attention, in the spotlight.
At the bar I was the fun girl who loved loud music and giving relationship advice to the sloppy drunks. They loved to flirt and tell me how pretty my smile was, none being able to see it was a façade. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a miserable person. I was just very focused and driven.
I lived only five minutes from the bar, so I didn’t need to worry about buying a car or wasting money on a cab. I could take the alleyway behind my apartment building and cut across Long Street to the back entrance. I had been in Orlando for nine weeks, but this place wasn’t home. Nowhere felt like home, and I knew that wouldn’t change until I found answers and could put my past to rest.
The alley smelled of urine and car exhaust, and I did my best to hold my breath as I slipped into the back door of the club.
“Cutting it close, Ella.” Maric shook his head as he wiped a rag over the bar, his thick, dark hair hanging down into his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I got held up. My cat was sick, and I had to clean up the hairball.” My voice trailed off as he stared at me. “Fine. I lost track of time.”
“You want to lose your job?”
“A dream job like this?” I rounded the bar as he glared at me and handed me the rag.
“A job is a job is a job, and my money spends the same as anyone else’s.”
“Yeah, but your money gets shoved into a disease-infested crotch first.”
“I’d shove a few bills into your granny panties if you get up on that pole.”
I grabbed a lemon and began cutting it into wedges. “Not a chance in hell.”
“Any new leads in the search for your mom?”
I smiled, genuinely happy that under the greasy hair and perverted comments, Maric was a decent guy. “Just more dead ends. The one person who might have answers seems to have fallen off the face of the earth,” I rolled my eyes and stuck a lemon in my mouth, puckering at its sour flavor.
“Give it some time. Sometimes when we stop looking the answers fall into our laps.”
“I have nothing but time. That’s for sure.”
“Time for a date?”
“Nope,” I laughed as I shook my head. The kind moment between us was over.
Maric winked at me before tapping his palm against the counter. “I like a girl who plays hard to get.”
“Ugh, you like anything with a pulse.” I joked as I dropped the slices into the plastic bin and grabbed another. “In fact, I’d bet money you’d hit anything before rigor mortis set in.”
“The offer stands if you ever change your mind about dancing.”
“This job is only temporary,” I mumbled to myself as Maric walked away.
* *
“It’s been five years, Leigh. You said this was only temporary, and now I’m raising your child.” My grandmother spoke into the phone as she stirred a pot of chicken noodle soup on the stove. I sat in the center of the living room floor trying to comb out my baby doll’s hair with my fingers. “I can’t send you any money, if that’s what you want. I am barely getting by on my social security. I can’t even afford my meds this month.”
There was a pause in the conversation, and I pretended I wasn’t listening.
“What sort of trouble?” My grandma put her hand over the receiver and called out to me, “Mikaella, go fetch me my glasses from beside my bed.”
I reluctantly got up from the floor and made my way to the stairs. I climbed them as fast as I could to retrieve her glasses, and when I returned, I crept quietly halfway down and sat on a step so I could listen to their conversation.
“School will be starting again soon. She needs shots and supplies.” Grandma groaned, and I could picture her shaking her head in disapproval. “What do I tell her when other kids bring up that her mother is a criminal? Or that her father is insane? What then? She is going to have to live with what you’ve done for the rest of her life.” She listened to my mother before responding to whatever she had said.