Red Vinyl Ch. 01

Old pictures filled the every space inside. Women she didn't know from a time before she existed. Her father, younger than she ever knew him, next to many of them. She methodically moves them, one by one from the box to the floor.

The air leaves her lungs as she touches something different at the very bottom. Her fingers wrap around thick, expensive feeling paper.

Angel stares down at a birth certificate. Her birth-date emblazoned upon it: July 31, 1994. The names though, those were not right. Instead of Angel Lilianna Alvarez it read Baby Girl Jones. Her head swirled as she took in the rest of the words on the document. Mother Elizabeth Ruby Jones. Father Unknown. Location of live birth Memorial Hospital Jacksonville Florida. The information was coming into her head, but she was unable to process it fully.

She sat and stared for what may have been hours. Shook from her haze by the sound of the doorbell, Angel grabbed the birth certificate, leaving the box and pictures scattered on the floor and heads down the stairs to meet the realtor.

When the realtor and the charity people had left, Angel locked up the house and drove back to her hotel. Sleeping in that house was not an option.

Once inside the room, she placed the paper in front of her on the bed. She was not his. She had been haunted for years by the biological link to that man and just like that the link broke.

Adopted. Not his.

One layer of pain gone.

For the first time in her life Angel was ready to face her pain. Pills and booze had been her medicine of choice for most of her teen and adult life, it was time to change that. There was a person out there. A mother. Someone she could know-really know. Someone who could know her, see her.

Did she have red hair like herself? Green eyes? Did she come with a family?

Angel was no-one worth knowing, not yet, but she would be. She would put in the work and become someone.

~

The house sold, faster than she was ready for. Angel used the money to pay for twenty-eight days in. Mandatory therapy sessions fleshed out her inner demons. Inner demons don't fight fair though, they don't care about the rules of warfare. She was released raw and bloody, pain cascading off her. But she was ready. Ready to be someone new.

She started her twelve steps. Spent eleven months on their path. Traded dirty, drug infested apartments for church basements filled with coffee, donuts, and other warriors in the same battle. They told each other tales of battles won and lost, of the war they shared. Lies and truths and everything in between. They craved the small medals that told them they were winning their wars.

She fell down those steps more than once, the irony not lost on her. Climbing steps to live, to be ready for the mother that waits at the top.

Her sponsor told her to set little goals, a day, a week, two weeks. She wanted a year. A year of sobriety before she made the call. She got to two months. Then Olivia happened. Olivia always happens. She hadn't hidden well enough from her. She allowed herself to be seduced again by the sweet nothingness opiates bring with them. When the cold sweats and shakes had finally subsided, seven days lost never to be found again, Angel once again took her Chucks, her journals, clothing, and walked away.

She found a new apartment, in a new town, told no one. She went back to the task of removing the layers of shame and pain that controlled her every decision. Changing the voices in her own head, the ones that had been telling her she was not good enough, would never be good enough, proved to be the hardest task. One she still hadn't accomplished, not really. Her new goal was three months. That would get her to almost exactly a year since she found the birth certificate. Three months that had once seemed so easy, had alluded her with such intensity.

She used to fool herself and say she could stop whenever she wanted, she never knew how little she actually knew, until that was proven wrong.

As she got closer to that magical number, she found herself staring at the slip of paper she had gotten from the P.I., hired before she went into rehab. The slip that said: Elizabeth Ruby Jones. The one with the 315 area code phone number she would need every fiber of inner strength to call.

Slowly, piece by piece she undressed herself from her history, became someone new. Someone better. Shedding the ghost of a girl she didn't want to be was the hardest thing she had ever done, the hardest thing she would continue to do. This person had a future, a purpose.

The new coin firmly in her hand, she picks up the phone and dials.

A voice answers on the other end, "Hello."

Angel's heart seized up for a nano-second, leaving her with the inability to speak. In that split-second every fear that she could not speak of, clouded her thoughts.

Want. Need. Love.

Would any of these things be waiting for her at the end of this conversation? If she had not been wanted twenty-four years ago, had that changed? Is knowledge enough to force those feelings into being?

Slowly she pulled the words out of her throat. "Is this Elizabeth Ruby Jones?"

"Yes."

"The Elizabeth Ruby Jones who gave birth to a little girl at Memorial Hospital on July 31, 1994?" Angel asked.

Silence.

"Hello. Are you still there?"

"Yes." The voice was more hesitant than before.

"My name is," She paused for a moment, letting the realization she didn't have to say Angel sink in and then continued, "Lily, and I found a birth certificate with your name on it, I think you are my birth mother".

~

The clock ticked closer and to closer to 2pm, the time Elizabeth Ruby Jones was due to walk into the diner. Lily's eyes wandered from the window, to the clock to her cold coffee and back to the clock. Her left hand continued to twitch and scribble with a mind of its own, in the notebook next to her.

1:40 came and went and still she sat.

1:45 inched by and she remained glued to the red vinyl seat. She could feel the icy cold surround her as the black hole in her gut grew.

When the minute hand reached 1:50pm her phone vibrated. Olivia. She stared at her name a little too long, stood up, put a twenty-dollar bill on the table, grabbed her notebook and left.