Rip-wreck

Lola Come Home (Copyright UnlistedMuse, 2009)

Could you grab the door?
Thanks.

I guess you can say I was an accident.
When most people say “I was an accident” they chuckle and follow that with a remark like “They thought my Ma was sterile” or “The condom broke.” or “They

were messed up on cocaine and listening to Zappa.”
But no, I really was.
But it wasn’t in my creation. No not at all. But they sure screwed the rest up.

Some people live a lie- they grow up dressed in the wrong bones, the wrong sex, or in the wrong mind. Sometimes they get expensive operations, wind up on

graphic, reenacted prime-time television specials.

Not me.
I wound up in the pennysaver.

It was on the table with the milk, two weeks ago.
Two fucking weeks.
Do you know how old I am?
28. I’m effing twenty eight. And they waited that long….
or it took that long for them to figure it out.
Figures.

All it said was ” Looking for Lola Jones.”
Now…this could have meant anyone, really.
I mean, there are a lot of Lolas in the world. Maybe not as many as Jessicas. Or Ashleys.
Oh, I hate that name. Ashley. Never met a nice one…anyway, I digress.
I am a Lola- A Lola Jones to boot, and the paper, folded in two, on the damn table, was calling to me.
It was saying in a little 2D voice Lolaaaa . Looooolllaaaa. I did pick up the thing to see if there was anything else with it, but no. Just a phone

number.
And what did I do with it?
Like an idiot, I dialed.

Do you know what gets me every time?
The area code was the same. THE SAME.
28 years and we were living in the SAME TOWN.

He picked it up-and I swear it was like talking to a television set.
Please remember- there was no caption with this.
I don’t even know why I called- maybe it was what you’d call…Kismet? Karma? Fate? Bad shrimp?

The voice on the end of the phone was like paper- I don’t know what I was expecting…a radio announcer? An automated message.

“Hello?”
“Yes. Hi, Hello.”
“This is Lola.”
*Pause*
” Lola..Jones..From the. … I saw…the..your note. in the..the pennysaver.”
“Your birthday, please?”
“My…what?”
“Your…your birthday, young lady. what is it?”
“August 12th, why. Who is this? Why did you put my name in the paper?”
“Lola..I..well. We were looking for you.”
“…Hello?”
“Yes, I’m still here.”
“Who was looking for me?”
“Us. your parents. I’m your father.”
“But. What? I already have one!”
“I’ll give you our address. We’d like to meet you.”

Oh and I went. I went alright, and they opened the door. These strange, quietly kind alien people, and put me in their parlour. And we sat and drank tea,

with milk. It smelled like bookends and tasted like laundry. It was that kind of house.
It was them too, Really. I knew I belonged to them. Knew it was the truth they were saying.
I couldn’t have looked more like another set of people if I’d morphed my face with a celebrity and made one of those baby print outs. My mom had my green

eyes. My dad plays the cello. They told me everything. And I wanted to hate them. I think they wanted me to as well.

When I was little, I fervently believed all those silly lies they tell people about childbirth. Cabbage patches, birds falling from the sky with bundles of

gurgly legs and dimples and shit. When my old…my….not- mom was pregnant I used to go out in the garden with a flashlight after she went to sleep to

look for the baby so I could watch it grow, emerge from underneath those giant, blue green, rubbery leaves. I kicked and screamed when dad found me and

dragged me back in. Lying in bed, sniffling, with my mud boots still on, my cheek smudged with snot and sandy dirt. I would think to myself…I wish someone

else had taken me out of the cabbage patch. I hate this family.
A girl at school said she heard about a boy raised by bears.
After I waited in the fort in the woods for four hours, but no animals came to claim me. I eventually threw a rock into the bushes and went home. My

mother sent me to my room and told me to “NEVER DO THAT AGAIN, LOLA JONES. OR YOU’LL WISH YOU’D NEVER BEEN BORN.”
I already did. I would have rather been a bear anyway.

I wondered if they had always somehow known. That they knew I was their little ugly black feathered changeling. That they didn’t have to love me. I just wish

I had known. I would have gone back to the other ones. The …right ones? Tried at least. At least _I_ would have tried.

When you hear announcers on channel five talk about mis-identification of babies in hospitals and think…..is it really that hard? I mean, they label them,

don’t they?
You’d be surprised. All babies’ eyes are blue when they’re born. Two girls, right next to each other? Twelve-hour shifts? Exhausted, infinitely patient

nurses, on shift change. They’re out of there like a rocket. And so was I. Lena James and Lola Jones.
I would have loved to be called Lena.
That was supposed to be me.
A Lena for a Lola.
I went to the wrong parents. I was the wrong daughter.

What happened to the real Lena? I had asked.
Did she go home?

They had become quiet at this.
Car accident.

“What? You lost your old daughter so you thought you could just wrassle up the old one you accidentally LEFT AT THE HOSPITAL?”
It’s awkward to get lividly angry at strangers. Especially if you share their DNA. It’s not a situation that I feel that most people would often find

themselves in.
I wondered idly if a father under normal circumstances would have slapped me for my words.

“Do they know?” I had demanded.
“Who?” asked my green-eyed mother.
“My…the…her parents.”

The answer had been yes. They had been notified after the dental records confirmed a match, but not a DNA match to the parents.
I suddenly had felt ill.
I couldn’t spill my cookies on their rug.My…parents’ rug. My mouth had tasted like rotten apples.

They hadn’t known forever. My…Lena’s parents. They thought they had done something wrong. That I was just…different. I guess they had tried, in their

own way. Maybe a little less after …the little brother was born.

My  real mother  had looked into my face and taken my chin in her hand.
How could we come to your door and tell you we had made a mistake?  Tell them? And that we had waited so long? When we found

out… We didn’t want to have been the ones who made this mistake. It was so….big and ..uneraseable.

Could you blame them?

That was besides the point.
I had left that day. I don’t even remember what I said after that. To them. I had just backed out of my chair, down the hall, tripping over the rug by the

door. And out into the cold, the sunshine bursting through my tightly squeezed eyelids. They had said I could come back.
To what? I didn’t even know. My brain just couldn’t hold it.
I sat on the bench by the bus and cried and stamped on dry leaves, and kicked the rungs of the bench and cursed the pennysaver. Cursed myself, the table,

the milk, the two sets of stupid, lost, tragic parents. My parents.

And then I went home.
And baked a pie.
Played through an entire cello suite.
Drank 1/4 of a bottle of whiskey.
Time passed.

Two weeks. I just couldn’t throw it out.
So it just sat there.

And every time I got mail, it somehow sifted to the top.
Until today. It found my hand. Feeling brittle, cool to the touch.
And today maybe.. I thought..I should put it away.
…And throw out the milk.
I sat down slowly.

Maybe now… it’s
time to go Home.

A.N:  First in a series of monologues/ short stories I’ve been working on during train trips.

Love,

Muse

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