You ***ing Forced Me to Say Goodbye

Living in a one bedroom apartment alone is hard enough. Throw a baby and no job in and it’s a living hell. Jana had always been a party girl, until she got pregnant. It was then that she’d run away from home. Away from a good home with her mother. She didn’t want to put that kind of shame on the woman that had raised her and loved her.

She’d thought briefly about finding her father. She didn’t know much about him. Just his name and the few things her mother had told her. She eventually decided she couldn’t do that to somebody she hardly knew. How would it be to show up pregnant, claiming to be someone’s daughter? What would happen if he was some kind of high society respected kind of deal? She couldn’t do that to him. So instead she wandered the streets of Los Angeles, hoping to find a place to stay.

She was thrilled when she found a place. It was a group kind of home, a place specifically for young girls that had or were going to have babies. Reasons for being there included only being an expectant mother and having no other means of being safe. She stayed there until she had the baby, but once the child was removed from her body she fall into her old ways. Until finally the woman that ran the home pulled her aside and told her she couldn’t stay anymore. That she was too rambunctious and broke too many rules. Too many times she’d broken curfew, too many times she’d shown up in the middle of the night completely intoxicated, and too many times she’d left the baby unattended for the purpose of pleasure.

She left the group home without complaint. She went back to the streets, this time with a little baby and suddenly she realized she had to do something to keep that child alive. So she searched and searched for a place to take the baby. A place to shelter it, and finally she found a one bedroom apartment in the sketchy part of L.A. She went to to work as a stripper in a club, using a fake ID and all of her skills as a party dancer.

She loved that. It was what she did best. She literally found a way to party her way through life. Until she realized that her child was expensive and needed constant food and clothing and attention. Now she grew to hate the baby more than she had at the beginning. She hated everything about the brown haired girl. She never contacted her mother again. How could she put that kind of shame on such a great woman? A woman that had a baby at 17 and raised her alone with no help from the man that had done it to her.

Jana never knew her father. By the time she was born her father had been long gone. All she knew was his first and last name and that he was from Oklahoma City. Only once had her mother mentioned that he now was somewhere in the Los Angeles area of California. She didn’t even know how to go about finding him.

So she did the only thing she could think of to do. Men paid her every night to take her clothes off. The more they paid the more she shed. Finally she decided she had to feed that damn baby and she was going to do everything she had to to make sure she never had to worry about it again. The last thing she had left to shed, her dignity and her pride. It started with a couple clients at the club she worked at, and then it moved to men calling her and meeting her on street corners. Soon enough she could get money from men for anything. Men that were willing to pay her to cheat their wives and girlfriends. Men that wanted a cheap thrill. Men that wanted a quick get off. Men that wanted the thrill of sleeping with a girl that was no more than 16 years old.

Night after night Jana was locked up in hotel rooms with men. Trapped in their cars with their penises in her mouth. Men around her that didn’t love her, that hardly cared about the fact that she was a living human being. She had a few clients that came around often, but none of them loved her. None of them cared about her. They all just wanted something more exciting than their hands for the night.

Now she was standing on a front porch staring at the door with her teeth firmly in her bottom lip. Attached to her leg was her daughter. A child that was nearly two years old with dark brown hair and green blue eyes. A trait passed on from her mother, who had gotten them from her father. The unknown man. The air was freezing on Jana’s skin, and she was sure the baby was cold too. But God could she care less about that horrible thing! That little brat that sucked everything she had out of her and left her a scared empty shell of a person.

She took a deep breath and finally she knocked on the door. She was tired. So tired of trying with all her strength and effort to feed and clothe a child that she’d always hated. She wasn’t going to do it anymore. She was going to find a solution to her problem and she was bound and determined to make sure she wouldn’t have to deal with it ever again. She took another breath as she saw a figure coming towards the door and the handle turned.

It was quiet a frightening sight at first, to open the door to a girl standing on the front porch. The girl standing there looking back at him was rail thin with her eyes sunken into the sockets. She was shivering and dressed in a mini skirt and tube top that covered only her chest. On her feet she wore a pair of knee high black leather stiletto boots. He looked at her for a long time before he saw the child clinging to her, dressed in a little pair of shorts and a t-shirt without shoes.

“Can…I help you with something, honey?” he asked finally, once he got over the initial shock of opening the door to this girl. A part of him wanted to take the baby and wrap her in his jacket and set her in front of his fire place. The poor child was shivering violently against her mother with her hair in knots, and she looked like she hadn’t had much to eat in a while. Dangling from one hand was a tattered rag doll that looked like it had been across the world and back.

“Are…are you Austin?” Jana asked with a shaking voice. He looked at her with his eyes widened then and down at the baby again. She sniffed and looked up at him before looking up at her mother. There was a bruise on the side of the child’s face.

“How do you know my name…?” he asked with a little bit of caution. “Are you okay? Do you need anything? I…I can let you in if you want to warm up your little girl…I might have some food in the house.”

“You can have the little shit if you want her,” Jana snapped. Austin looked at her then with surprise.

“I’m sorry…” he said then. Jana rolled her eyes.

“God you’re no better than the fucking jerks that pay me!” she said.

“Look, honey, I don’t know what you’ve been through, but come in and warm up a little bit.”

“Like you really care about me at all! You never have!” she cried.

“I don’t even know who you are. But I’m offering to help you out, if that’s what you need. If you don’t want to come into my house that’s okay, but at least let me call someone that can help you. Your daughter doesn’t have any shoes…”

“She out grew them. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep shoes on a two year old on the money I make? To feed her and keep clothes on her and food and an apartment and toys and all of her shit?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t…” he said then. She looked at him and then down at the floor. Suddenly she realized he’d have no idea who she was. Even if what her mother had told her was true he wouldn’t know what she looked like now. The only image he’d have of her would be a baby.

“I got off track…” she said to herself then and looked back at him. “Are you Austin?” she asked again. He looked at her.

“Why?” he asked.

“I need to find Austin. Austin Winkler,” she said. He looked at her with wide eyes and he put his hand on the door handle to push it closed if the need arose.

“Yes, I am Austin Winkler,” he said then and cleared his throat. “Who are you and what do you need from me?”

“I’m Jana…” she said, and she was anxiously expecting him to realize who she was. But the time passed where he stared at her blankly and she was feeling terribly exposed.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know a Jana…” he said. She looked at him then with shock. Hadn’t he abandoned her and her mother 16 years ago? Was he really so concerned with getting away that he couldn’t remember his daughter’s name? “I wish I did…”

“You don’t remember me!?” she screamed. “You can’t honestly not remember me! I mean I understand that it was a long time ago…but my god!”

“Honey, honey, calm down. Just tell me…are you a girl from the road or something?”

“A girl from the road?” she asked then with confusion.

“Like a groupie?” he asked cautiously. She looked at him then with wide horrified eyes.

“You think…?! You think I’m some kind of nasty slut you slept with?!” she screamed.

“I don’t know who you are at all! All you’ve done in the last however the hell long is scream at me!”

“Because! I’m Jana! Your daughter!” she shouted. He stared at her with his mouth open then. Now she had tears in her eyes and she realized she was shaking with anger rather than just the cold. It was the middle of the night in December and she was standing on a door step of a man she didn’t know with a child in almost no clothes and she was crying.

“I’m sorry…I don’t…”

“Don’t feed me that shit!” she screamed. “My mother told me! She told me everything! She loved you in high school and she gave you everything and you just left us! You found out about me and you left us! Left us with nothing! And then what? You went off and got some kind of success and you never thought to check in on the kid you fucking abandoned!”

“How old are you?” he asked then with curiosity. She took a breath and looked down.

“Sixteen,” she said and bit her lip. She wasn’t used to giving her true age so quickly.

“In order for you to be my daughter I’d have been 17 when you were born,” he said then. “I wasn’t even out here when I was 17. I was still in Oklahoma.”

“I came to California when I got pregnant. My mom told me you were out here…and I didn’t want to fuck her up with a pregnant 14 year old so I left and I came to find you. But I got here and I chickened out. I did my best to take care of the little mistake, but I can’t do it anymore.”

“Jana…right?” he asked. She nodded. “I do not know you. I wouldn’t have had a baby at 17.”

“Maybe you’ll remember abandoning us better if you know my mother’s name,” she said. He stared at her. “My mother was Heather…”

“Heather? Heather James?” he asked with surprise. Jana looked at him and nodded.

“That was…fucking hell that was 16 years ago…or more,” he said.

“Yea, you know, 16 years ago when you abandoned your wife and daughter…” Jana snapped.

“Wife?! Heather wasn’t my wife. I was 17 when I was hooking up with Heather. She was a high school fling.”

“I don’t appreciate being lied too.”

“I’m not lying to you. And I’m pretty sure you aren’t my daughter. I never abandoned any baby.”

“You’re such a fucking prick! I’m fucking standing in front of you; I searched for you all over this fucking world! And what? You are going to lie to my face! My mother told me everything! So fuck you! I thought maybe you could help me out, take your fucking useless granddaughter and I’ll get myself out of your way. But fuck you! I’ll just leave the little shit at a fucking hospital or something!” Jana screamed and dragged the baby away from the doorstep.

“Look, Jana, please, at least stay here for tonight. Maybe we can figure this all out tomorrow. The little girl is freezing and I bet she’s hungry. Just please come in,” he said. Jana was silent for a few minutes and then she nodded. At least maybe this way she’d get a meal and a bed to sleep in. She walked into the house with the baby and watched as Austin closed the door.