Growing up, I never had a proper father figure. My mom would bring home guys and none would stay for more than a week. They were just casual hook ups and one night stands. My mother's lack of love didn't only affect her, but it affected me as well. She was an independent woman, but I wouldn't call her strong. Because she never tried. She lived as if she didn't have a child. I recall being left home alone as young as four years old, and I know most people don't remember a lot of things when they were just toddlers, but with so few memories of my mother, the worst ones seemed to stick. She was careless and at times, shameless. She was always the other woman and she always expressed pride because of it. Bragging that she was, "a better fuck".
Her reputation has caused all the struggles in both our lives. She was never taken seriously and has never had a stable job because of the constant drama that her life had strung up which followed her, and I had been bullied relentlessly, with parents telling children that I was a daughter of a whore. I had been labeled at the very young age of six, when a disheveled looking woman came up and slapped me as she called my mother a slut, in front of everybody, outside of my school. My baby blue eyes just stared up at her. I recognized that word as innocent as I was, and while I never knew what it meant, it still stung. But that was when I cared about my mother. I was a little girl alone in the world, who'd grown up watching movies about loving mothers, but my mother was the latter. She was the ugly wicked witch.
No family was as dysfunctional as ours. Hell, our names were probably another word for Dysfunctional. Evelyn and Dahlia Mason. Evelyn was the town whore, and Dahlia was the one who tried so hard to live a fate different than the one which seemed written in stone. A fate which followed her mother's. That was our sad story.
We were a normal family once. A memory that I was too young to even recall. But when my mom is sober and not high out of her mind, she would tell me about my father. Oh, how he was dashing. How he was rich. How amazing he was. Every time she spoke his name and spoke of how great he was, made the anger that was boiling inside me, flare up. I hated him. If he was so amazing, why did he leave us?
That was a question I had never asked my mother. I doubt she would have answered anyways.
A faint ringing interrupted my train of thought as I slowly came back to my senses.
"Oh shit!" I spat as I realized that my phone had been ringing for quite some time now.
I have one of those free Express Mobile phones that the company provides when you make a service contract, and it was absolute shit.
I repeatedly pressed the green button, cutting my finger since my phone screen was covered in cracks.
"Hello?" A slightly distorted voice called out.
Finally.
Caller ID: Samantha
"Hey Sam," I replied with a great big sigh, satisfied that my phone finally worked "sorry for taking so long to pick up. My phone was being an assho-"
"It's fine," she interrupted "I've got some work for you to do. Are you interested?"
Having been unemployed for six months, I was jumping at this opportunity.
"Hell yeah! I've been waiting for you to call with something."
"Okay, prepare your pen and paper. I've got a lot to say." She said as I fumbled around to get a notepad and a pen.
-----after the conversation-----
"Alright, got it," I said, after writing down the storm of information she fed me.
"Be there tomorrow. DON'T BE LATE," Her voiced was booming through the phone.
"Got it Sammy, thanks ag-"
She hangs up. Bleh.
Yes! I finally got a job!
I jumped and danced around the room as I reviewed the details on the pad.
xxxxx St, xxxxxxx, 000000, CA. Clean the WHOLE house, the guest house, the greenhouse, AND the dog house. DON'T go into the back room on the second floor. Do ALL the dishes, they are scattered EVERYWHERE, find them all. Clean ALL the bathrooms, ALL the toilets, ALL the sinks, and ALL the tubs. Make ALL the beds and ONLY clean the master bedroom. DON'T TOUCH or MOVE any single piece of paper in the master bedroom.
She didn't tell me anything about the employer. All I know was that this was a big freaking house.
I began rummaging through my closet for comfortable clothes to wear tomorrow. I knew this was going to be a heavy duty job. I gathered all the necessary items: some rubber gloves, a brush, some generic cleaning spray, and a couple of sponges. For my outfit, I just picked up some casual pajama shorts and a tee. I was going to wear a black jumpsuit over it, for cleaning and stuff.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead as I packed all the items into one proper sized bag.
Phew. Tomorrow is going to be a LOOOONG day.
-----Next Day-----
I couldn't sleep.
The idea of a job excited me to no extent. After six months of filling up nonsense applications and handing out a pretty long resume, a job finally came my way. I started working as soon as I graduated from high school. I had aspirations to go to college, but it all ended when my mom got into some legal trouble and spent all my college funds that I had saved. Me. ALL ALONE. Without her help at all. I will never forgive her for that. I started out working at different fast food chains, spending about three months at five different chains. Then I started hopping around, job to job. Wherever the job wind blew, I went. I was and I am a lot of things. My mind was restless and the bustling sounds of life in poverty didn't help me go to sleep either. So I just stayed awake. My mind wandered, until I began to wonder. Who was it, that I was going to work for, today?
Staring at the clock, it was 5:00 AM. Samantha had demanded, not told, me to be there at 9 o'clock SHARP. I decided to get out of bed.
A quick bathroom session and a quick breakfast of oatmeal and I was ready to go.
Not knowing how to drive, I took the public bus as means of transportation. I had made friends with the people who were frequent passengers. Leilani was a hairdresser and she had her own salon (which I go to, and get cuts for free.
