Prologue

PROLOGUE:
Grace what a delusion! Or maybe it was called Praying Hands, you know the classic painting? The old man sitting at a table with a loaf of bread with his hands pressed together in prayer. She sat under that. That was her position at the dinner table. On the other wall was the picture of all the fruit sitting on a table. That one was called Half Bushel. She always thought it would be more appropriate if she had sat under that since she felt like such a basket case. Their wallpaper was the old stuff, ya know actual paper. Also with the fruit on it, gold fruit with pristine gold stripes. That helped add to the illusion that everything was as perfect and polished as the pattern itself, even though its hue was tainted yellow and peeling, caked with years of lingering smoke that never found an escape except to seep into the walls, stuck in time. Locked in the particles of the paper until released and replaced by a new modern décor. It fit the criteria for a typical Midwestern dinette in the 1960’s. Only problem was they had an atypical house and the wallpaper stayed until the late 1990’s. Stripping that wallpaper off was difficult at best, because it was the real stuff. The kind that actually stuck once hung. It was as if that paper was trying just as hard as she was to hold on to everything that it has seen transpire there through the years, like that same prayer before dinner. They said it so fast that she did not even realize what she was saying until years later when she slowed it down in her head and tried to figure out what the words were she was saying. The unsullied ornamentation of that house was nothing more than an aberration. All the crystal, china and silver in the world would not make up for the secrets that encamped in the thick stale atmosphere that only an inhabitant knew existed. It hung in and around everything. Permeating everything it came in contact with, nothing was immune. Yet if it were mentioned it was quickly extinguished and passed off as a selfish, disconsolate, emotionally aggrieved child. It was unseen except by the wisest spectators. She would silently pray, the only way she knew for that audience member to appear, to rip off the veil. Expose the murky shadows that only linger in corners or under stairs as seen on movies or read about in books, except in her case that was all there was. The sunlight that would shine in through the huge bay windows in their should have been plastic covered living room, the ones no one ever really sat in unless there was company over. It was also primped with gold paint and yellow gold shag carpet. The sun would break into tiny particles and fall dead just as it hit their window sill. It was incomprehensible to her that anybody had a different life or existence than she did.
She often looks back and wonders how she could have ever arrived at this point in her life. Her journey here was as they say an uphill climb both ways in the snow. Clichés are too passé’ even for the most experienced adventurer. Every detail was as clear as if it were lying just on the other side of a two way mirror. Touchable on the surface but anything more would have killed her she was sure. Her own parents are amazed at her memory. It is all Technicolor in her head, but it has the feeling of a monochrome plain. Don’t get her wrong, it’s not all bad. Maybe it is just exacerbated because it is her life and not that of a television sitcom character. Every problem solved in 22 minutes, 30 with commercials. In her case she knew she was born but for the life of her could not figure out why anyone much less God would have wanted her here, and grace from a seen or unseen force was something far beyond her since she never knew it from any human.
The year was 1969. A terrible mistake was made and in august of 70, the faux pas was born. She was given a name but nothing formal, lasting or grounding. She had a case number assigned to her and was put up for adoption and sent to a foster home until someone wanted her for good, and for bad for what it’s worth. If she had known then what she knows now would she still have come forth? She often wonders.
So her life began. She came to know in her late 20’s that it all happened in a motel room in a small Kansas town half way across the state from where she was born. She wasn’t even good enough then to get at least a middle class HOTEL. No she got a neon flashing, psycho looking, just off the highway MOTEL. There is a difference between the two.
Let me recede for a moment. The first few days of her life she was in a maternity home with the woman who gave her this life. She was told that she was a fairly content baby. However, there were times that she was inconsolable. Usually this happened at night. There was a nice young nurse who after trying to comfort her with no success, would take her to her mother so she could hold and feed her. At that point she would instantly quiet. Her name was none other than baby girl J, as in Jane Doe, no identity but a case number. She was still a nobody. She was then placed in a foster home. There they considered adopting her themselves, because they said “She was such a happy, content baby girl, who smiled and gurgled a great deal. One of the best foster babies they had ever had.” They were told that she was most likely spoken for. Most likely being the operative words.
Fast forward to the day in the MOTEL. She was taken by a social worker to this hick motel and placed in the custody of two people who had never laid eyes on her before, for two hours to decide if they wanted her or not. The social worker didn’t stay she did a drop and leave. Maybe she needed to get something to eat. After all what was more important than the safety of a defenseless child or her own grumbling stomach. Well the grumbling won out. She did nothing but cry and scream the whole time in what her parents described as “a blood curdling cry.” Interestingly enough from the moment her conception was known a social worker was involved in her life as they would be again later on. The worker returned and the people decided why not, we’ll take her. What a great way to make a lifelong commitment. They took her the rest of the way across the state to her 3rd new home, all the while she continued my whaling at which point her new mom asked her new dad if he thought “this was an omen of things to come”. “Oh Elizabeth she is just not sure what is happening.” “Ok Albert but if she does not stop this soon no one will have any peace.” Already she was to blame for something else. They changed her name to Amy and a completely new beginning as they say began. Or should she say a completely new person was born that day. No one understood that to change a name even as an infant changes so many things inside little minds that it sends everything in them into warp speed. So she was referred to by friends and family of her parents as “special”, or “chosen”, she love that one. However, she must have known that something was not right. The new voices were not the ones she had heard before; the touch was different and things did not feel right. In a matter of hours those changed as did everything else. She went from happy and smiling to crying and screaming. Somewhere in those few hours she got lost and some people lost her. She would not know until later if the wrong path was taken. Yet, somehow an innocent, infantile mind knew that things were going to be severely veered off the intended or not so intended natural course of human beginnings.
Oh to be alive in such a time. Childhood escaped her. She did not feel like a quote normal kid, but more a mini adult. She learned very young that to pretend to be stupid was beneficial to her. Little was expected and trivial things were enormous victories. Yet, she observed everything in the seen and unseen realms. To grow up in the smoke tainted house with people who had no genetic connection to anyone and survive defied all means. She knew at a young age that there was something missing from her life – what? Some said God; others thought that she was just an emotionally disturbed child. She could not figure out what was absent even with earnest thought through a young mind. She urgently needed answers to a vast number of questions. No one had them; she had to find them on her own. At least that is what she thought. What she really needed to know was that she mattered to someone somewhere. She thought “what is my reason for being here in a world where the one who birthed me didn’t want me and the ones who brought me home seemed to want to blame me for all and any problems anywhere?” In her mind it came down to what she called the dreaded “L” word, love. Was she still loveable even though she was damaged goods? Was she worth anyone’s love even if no one seemed to want her? She decided that she wasn’t but yet kept trying to find and get it.
Her journey began as another one always ended.