The backstory, the tale of how I have become a step-mother. Picture it, Sicily, 1912....Just kidding, if you get that joke you get extra brownie points from me. Okay, really it was 1995, I was 15 and it was 4 am and I get a knock on my bedroom window and hear a voice saying "It's Johnnie baby, I'm back". It was my best friend who had lived with me on and off who had taken a recent road trip to Florida, coming to wish me luck before having my tonsils removed that morning. Being that he lived with me he had seen me in my usual sleeping attire at that time, a tee-shirt and panties, so I didn't think anything of it as I ran and jumped into the side of his black van....at least until I seen this Cheshire cat grin on the most beautiful face I had ever seen. There he was, 18 years old, 34 braids in his hair (I counted many times over the next few months) and the best smile I had ever seen in my 15 years (Still is). His smile is electric, when he beams it at you, you can feel it, it does something to your soul that makes your soul happy, not just me, anyone that has ever met him says the same thing and he was shining it right at me. I immediately felt my face turn bright red and tried my damnedest to try to make that tiny tee-shirt into a tee-pee since my usual attire was extra large everything to hide my 100 lb body all while Johnnie laughed hysterically at my shock and embarrassment. If only then I knew how amazing my body was I would probably have walked around naked. Johnnie introduced us, this boy muttered "hello" with deep but quiet voice all the while smiling. I turned to Johnnie gave him a hug, thanked him for coming to see me and then ran back into my house as fast as I could, happy to see Johnnie, and embarrassed as hell that the most beautiful creature I had ever seen just saw me in my undies.
The first thing I remember after my surgery is getting home and telling my mom to get Johnnie and "That Boy" ( I never even got his name but knew he was meant to be in my life). She told me I needed to rest and I could see them the next day but I was persistent and she finally went and got Johnnie and "That Boy". The rest of the night was kinda fuzzy but I remember Johnnie making me a nest on the floor of the living room with every blanket and pillow he can find and in my drug induced haze looking up at "That Boy" (now known as Atticus) legs hanging over the arm of the overstuffed chair and telling him "You know, it would be a lot more comfortable down here next to me" (Still one of the best lines I ever used) and he happy flopped himself next to me and we didn't move for days. This became our routine whenever we were together at home, lay down, listen to music, talk about everything under the sun, me tracing his tattoos and make out a whole lot. When not at home we hung out together in the french quarter sometimes he would stay there in a squat, sometimes he would stay with me, we were never "officially" a couple but when I was with him we blocked out the world and no one else mattered. I was only 15 and had only ever had one boyfriend and was extremely inexperienced but Noah was a gentleman, he never tried to push me beyond what I wanted to do, we did try unsuccessfully once to "go all the way" when Johnnie who was extremely over protective came and basically broke down my door and was like "not on my watch! Keep the door open!" and that was the end of that. I know that when he wasn't with me he was being a wild 18 year old in the french quarter but we never really let that penetrate our world...not until the end...not until Storm.
Atticus was not from New Orleans, he was from right outside of St. Louis and was on the lamb because he went to a party at a old abandoned barn where a bonfire got out of control and burned it down which left him with a arson charge. He wasn't without his faults, he told me he also had a love for anything that sped him up or hallucinate, cocaine, meth, LSD whatever, but the thing was he never did them around me and he would never let me near anything besides LSD and weed which I was very familiar with both before he came around. He put me up on some pedestal to the point of sometimes I wondered if I was more of a sister who he got to mess around with at times or if he really had feelings for me. Again, we were 15 and 18. Then he met Storm.
To this day he doesn't remember how he met her, he guesses drunk at a squat one night, but there she was big brown eyes, shaved head, tiny and looking like she would break if you sneezed in her direction, the type of girl people more than happily gave their money to as they passed her panhandling on the street, the girl with the money, the girl with the speed, the girl with his drug of choice. I only met her once before he vanished, and the moment I knew she "won" (really the drug did) was the moment I asked him to come home with me and not stay with her and he looked at me and said "I'm sorry, I just......have a problem and I don't want you to see me like that" and he kissed me and walked away with her, the girl with the money, the girl with the drugs, the girl he could fuck. He came around less after Storm but he would still come a spend a few nights a week with me and we would go back into our own world just him and I and then one day he didn't come when he promised he would and he never broke his promises.
I went around looking for him and instead I found Storm, holding the leash to the dog I had given him, crying, the police finally caught up with him and he had been arrested. I remember being so extremely angry with her, how could she allow this on her watch, if he had been home with me he would be safe, he would still be here. I remember wanting to slap the shit out of her snotty little face for letting him get taken, for providing him with the one thing he couldn't say no to and using it to her advantage, for breaking my heart. Of course now I know it wasn't her fault, but at that moment everything was her fault. I remember he being upset that she couldn't even call the jail to check on him because she didn't even know his last name, I mean to her he was the love of her life and she didn't even know his last name? Being the person who no matter how much I dislike someone can't stand to see them that upset told her his last name, something in life I would later regret. Storm only stayed a week or so more before she called her mom to come and get her, I think she might have written me a few times because she felt we had so kind of sisterhood loosing the man we both loved.
I called the jail several times a day trying to get as much information as I could on Atticus which wasn't much, I tried to get a visitors pass but with me being only 16 by then that didn't work. It was maybe a month later when I called and they told me he wasn't there, they couldn't tell me where he was being sent or when he would arrive, he was just gone and my heart was broken. I remember just sinking onto the floor crying and calling my best friend.
Internet and home computers were nonexistent in my world in 1996, so in my mind I had lost him forever, and then the internet came along into my work in 1998 and one of the first things I did was get a list of Missouri prisons (I mean he had a arson charge, I knew he would be in there for a while) and I proceeded to call all of them looking for him never with any luck, I mean he said he was from right outside of St. Louis, I just never thought he meant he was from Illinois right out of St. Louis and I should be looking in Illinois prisons. Once I called all of them and he wasn't there I thought I would never find my heart, my soul again, I would just be in one bad relationship after another looking for someone that I had that connection with and I never would. At one point I conceded I would become the Goat Lady from the movie "Cold Mountain" if you don't know what I'm talking about click HERE, but basically I would move to a small shack in the mountains alone with some goats and be happy as I could be. But that wasn't my fate after all.....
