Ever since I was little, I'd always known I didn't have the mother I was born with. I don't know how my parents could have told me, but it was something that was always there in the back of my head. For some reason, it never used to bother me all that much when I was little. I guess kid's lives really are simpler when you're that age. You don't think about anything other than the fact that you can't wait to go to school, how red is your favourite colour, or how no one will let you cross the street on your own.

I don't know all that much about her, and I don't remember her, either. When I was born, the only time I'd ever spent with her was the day I came into existance.

The things I do know about her are just the things I've been told. Her name was Arlene. I looked exactly like her, which I'm proud of: we have the same olive skin, the same curly, mouse-brown hair. She was only twenty years old when she had me, which meant she was now about thirty-five, since I'm turning sixteen this year. I know all this because my parents met her before she handed me over.

My story—or my history, I guess you could call it—isn't all that out of the ordinary. At least, I don't think of it that way, not really. Though, the older I get, I find it sort of strange. Not many people I know are adopted, and it seems as though every story is different. Adults always say “special,” but I find that way too cliché. It makes me sick.

I wonder about her, all the time, my Arlene. I wonder if she has a family, maybe a husband, with a little son. Not my father, I hope.

I say that I hope she isn't still with my father, because my mom—my legal one, that is—told me about her situation once.



“It's funny,” I told her, “I never really thought much about my dad. Do you know if Arlene would still be with him?” I asked.

My mom was quiet. “...No, Amy, I don't think so. She...wasn't really living the Christian lifestyle, though she was being brought up with her Grandmother. I think there could have been a few...”



A few dads. My mom was the sleeping-around type.

My mother's parents—my Grandparents—weren't really around for her. I think her mom died when she was little, and her dad abandoned her, or something, so she lived with her Grandmother, and neighbour, Irene. They were Christians, or at least, my mother was brought up as one. She didn't have much of a childhood though, we guessed, and that was why she got preggers with a man she wasn't married to before she even had the chance to go to college or something. I guess my genes are where I get my rebelliousness.

I think the reason for her giving me away was because she wanted better for me. I don't know if she loved me, but at least she could give me that much.



“Why did Arlene decide to give me away?” I asked my mom one night. We'd been having another discussion about her, and we were both in tears.

“Well,” she told me quietly, “I think, with her living conditions...she probably wouldn't have been able to take care of you properly."

We both sat silent for a minute.

“Did I tell you that she specifically wanted you in a Christian home?”

Another hot tear rolled down my cheek. “But what about her 'living conditions' were so bad?” I asked, without any perticular need for an answer.



That was why I hated my dad. He left her—screw the fact that he was hardly with her in the first place—without even the slightest worry for me. Even if he hadn't known about it, he'd still had sex with her. He still got her pregnant, without any thought as to what he could do to her, or to me. It was like hitting two birds with one stone.

This is what made me glad to look like my mother. Even though there must be something I have of my dad's, whether it be the green of my hazel eyes, or something in my personality, I don't know what it is.

And I don't care to know, either.