Did I ever tell you how I was defiant?
It started when I began to feel different in the Hoffman family home. What was my home. The one I grew up and was raised in.
I was about ten.
I wasn't the type to be defiant. I was raised to be a nice girl. Correction, I was raised to be nice Jewish girl. The rules were strict: like no having a glass of milk when meat is served at dinner, nor could wash my hair more than twice a week or the dye would wash out and my mother secret would be spilt.
But I knew I was telling myself a lie that I wasn't the type to be defiant. I was raised to not be defiant, yet I was more trouble then they had been able to handle. Adopted children do that, you know? It's proven that adopted children are more likely to lash out and become trouble makers.
Instead of robbing a bank, I got married to my best friend to get away from them since I felt like I was smothered, yet unwanted.
For years I was their golden child. I was a good listener, followed the rules and even enforced them upon my brothers. I wouldn't talk about how mum was dying my hair again or how I could swear I had a red eyebrow hair.
But you can tell in the family photos. Each year we took one. I was so small and with such a big smile. I always had been smaller than my brothers, looking like the runt of the litter by that standard.
When I turned ten, you can tell in the photos that my smile begins to fade. The sparkle in my eyes began to dull and I wouldn't stand so close to my brothers or parents. It was because I knew the truth.
By the time the sixteenth family photo I was in was taken, I wasn't even close to smiling.
My defiance wasn't life threatening. It began with tiny simple acts. Refusing dinner or annoying my brothers. Then it wasn't listening and coming joke late from school. Soon it was scrubbing my hair until the dye would wash out or giving it back to the hair dresser. Sometimes I even would pour it down the drain.
But what boiled my parents rage most was when I was silent.
I gave them silence because all I could say were horrible things about my fears of being adopted and being forced to change to fit into the family.
The Hoffman family.
The Hoffman family never lets a woman work. My mother, Mable, she never had worked a day in her life. She never had to do more than accept cash at the deli on rare occasions when father would have to step out.
It was why I didn't tell them how I was working in the factory just outside of town.
Broderick, my true father, he would drive me each early morning since he worked there too.
Maxwell wasn't making nearly enough money to cover the costs of the house and food for me. The check he left only covered a month. So, since I was tired of sitting alone in that little cottage every day and needed the money, I began to work at the factory putting together bullets.
I was horrible at building bullets.
I had small, nimble fingers and small hands. I couldn't get a great grip on the large press handles to try and put a bullet together.
It was day three of my employment at the factory and the inspector was walking around, checking in on everyone.
Their tall slender frame and thin handle bar moustache made him a bit intimidating to me. Maybe it was the clipboard of names and positions that made me nervous. He was sending home anyone that wasn't doing a good enough job.
