Children Of Divorce

I put my hand against hers, seven years old, and entwined my fingers around the dark, ebony skin. My caramel skin didn't match it, but I was too naive to know what it meant. I looked around the market place, seeing all the children with two happy parents; a boy with white skin with two parents with matching skin, a little black girl with parents with skin of the same leather.

I caught my reflection in a tall mirror a man was selling. I looked up at my mother, who smiled down at me. Her wide nose and close-set dark eyes didn't match up to my narrow nose and green orbs. What did this mean? Why did we look so different? All I could remember is her being the only figure in my life, the one who would put me before her when we would have to stay at the woman's shelter. The one who would stay home and tend to me when I was sick instead of going to an important job interview.

My being at sixteen seemed to disintegrate. That man she married only wanted to drink and watch then game. All I wanted was answers. Who was I? Half of me was missing, and this woman who called me "daughter" was keeping secrets from me. There's a lightness to my skin that shouldn't be there. I was a mistake, and the idea that I wasn't planned was making it hard to live my life. Where would my mother be without me? Would she continue her career of being a singer, and would she have to keep bouncing from man to man to find a way to survive?

He was an aspiring musician, she told me. She met him while trying to get some money while playing guitar in Bryant Park. She had him at hello, and I was a little unexpected gift. Once they married, she didn't want him around me anymore. He had a temper, he loved her too much for his own good, and he was reckless, twenty-one. She walked out on him with me in her arms, and left him with divorce papers. She didn't tell me his name, because she had a feeling I knew who he was already.

This stranger that I would call my father could be anyone. I cut my mother out of my life. Somebody who found love in a disappointment of a step-father was hard to have in my life. I was on a mission to find my true other half, the one who helped create me. It was a lost cause, and I gave up. I was better off not knowing what could of been.

Eighteen. I get off the plane at the LaGuardia without any expectations. A few days off from upstate would make me feel better. I went to a hotel with my boyfriend, and he surprised me with tickets to see that new singer. I was tired, so tired, after another fight with my mother, I escaped with the first person I ever loved. I went to the concert anyway, so he wouldn't feel bad about my depression anymore.

I stand in the crowd, waiting for the artist to come onstage. When he does, he simply takes a seat on a stool, pulling the microphone closer to him, and begins to strum on the guitar. The girls and boys around me seem to be mesmerized as the one I love slips his hand in mine. He begins to sing, his voice sweet like honey, melodic like a bird's tune.

That narrow nose, those green eyes, that brown hair...it all reminded me of myself. I stood there, seeming to be the only person in the crowd to truly see him. The thought sent shivers up my spine, and he looked into the crowd, staring straight at me as he sang a few more sweet words.

I let go of my lover's hand and ran outside of the concert hall. I stood outside into the alley and started to cry. I use one shaky hand to take out my phone, calling my mother. I didn't give her a chance to say hello, her shaky voice that was damaged by Parkinson's Disease.

"I saw him," I said, my voice breaking. "I know who he is, Mom. I saw him..." I couldn't breathe, eighteen years of wondering has finally amounted to something. Was I supposed to feel this empty? Was I supposed to be happy?

"I know who he is."