Bright are the Stars that Shine

Chapter 1

Disclaimer:  Bright are the Stars that Shine is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have some counterparts in the life and times of Paul McCartney, the characterizations and incidents presented are totally the product of the author's imagination.

  Accordingly, Bright are the Stars that Shine should be read solely as a work of fiction, not as biography of Paul McCartney or the Beatles as individuals or as a band. Nothing should be taken as fact. There is no intent to insult nor disregard the memories or lives of any individuals mentioned.

  This is complete fiction and should be observed as such.

*I'm rewriting this story and for those who read what was posted before, I highly suggest re-reading as I post along because it has been MAJORLY altered.

  
            Valentina's POV

My mother called me her hermosa Rosa. Because I was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and that I was just as lovely as my father's favorite flower.

  My father, well my birth father.

  A man I hadn't seen since I was six years old, but who had sent letters monthly, but only phoned on my birthday or holidays.

  My mother was a New Yorker, born in Queens to a Puerto Rican/African American mother and a Italian father, living in the city that never slept for twelve years until the family of six (including my three uncles) relocated to Los Angeles for a job opportunity my grandfather had gotten that improved their lives drastically.

   It was also a move that allowed my mother to freely peruse her passion for music that led her, when she herself was fifteen, to meet my father.

A man who gave me his beautiful eyes that were neither green nor brown but shifted in between when the lighting changed.

    As a little girl, I would beg her to tell me the story of how they met more times than that of a fairy tale. She finally told me a child-appropriate version when I was six, that she's been singing in a club when my father walked in, they chatted for a while, danced all night and spent ten wonderful days together.

It wasn't until after my father had returned to England did she discover that she was going to have me. But he needed to provide for us, and he worked tirelessly so one day he could come back. Much like how my own grandfather traveled during the winter to Alaska to go on fishing boats she'd explained.

As the years went by and I grew older, it was my grandmother carefully pulled me aside, shortly after I got my first period at eleven to tell me the truth.

   That my father, the man who I communicated regularly through telephone calls and letters-had no honor. That he took my mother's flower from her, something that could never be replaced, getting her pregnant with me but never marrying her as society demanded.

  After informing my father about her pregnancy, my mother was "rejected" because my father, simply "couldn't commit to us, that his band was getting popular, he didn't have a green card to stay in the USA. A "crock of shit" as my grandmother had spat.

   But my mother told me a different story, when I ran to her arms crying. She told me, that my father did want to do the right thing, but he knew that with his band heading the way they were- that things would be going great and he wanted to one day be able to support the three of us financially in a life we could only dream of. He promised he would take care of us from afar, until he could be reunited with us and we could be a proper family.

But although his band slowly became more popular, those early years of my infancy were a struggle. After serious threats of legal action from my grandfather, my father did send money every month, enough to help us get by until my mother got signed with a good record label and then it was just money spent on extra essentials for me.