Loving Sang

Chapter One: Family History

The day started like any other. I woke in my tiny bedroom in the hallway under the staircase, listening carefully for any signs of life. Usually, I wake several hours before anyone else within my household, but on the rare occasion that my mother is awake, I have to tread carefully.

Not hearing anything outside my door, I quietly open it, take a look around, and make my way out. My daily chores are what I always begin my day with, keeping in mind to not be overly loud, before I even think of doing anything else. If mother wakes to find the house a mess, though it rarely is, I can't imagine what she would do to me. It's safer to get them out of the way first thing. Getting everything finished quickly, I sneak away for a few hours and meet up with my only friend, Blake.

Blake is my everything. He's a few years older than me and treats me like how I suspect older siblings would treat their younger ones. I've only known him for a few short weeks but he is the only person to ever notice me. He acknowledges my existence in a way my family never has.

I was six when I learned that my mother was not actually my real mother. She let me know exactly what she thought of me and continues to show her true feelings about the issue. Blake is my escape. My release from this nightmare. I have a feeling he knows that something is going on at home but he never asks about it. For that I am grateful.

I just want to pretend when I'm with him. Pretend I'm a normal sixteen year old girl with a normal life. Not a girl that doesn't really exist. Hiding away in a cupboard and avoiding her mother's "punishments."

We live in a modest home isolated outside the city limits of Chicago, Illinois. I've lived here for as long as I can remember. It's a three bedroom home with two and a half baths. It's what people would probably consider urban chic but we have hardly furnished it. The house could be very homely if it wasn't my family that resided here.

My father works long hours and is very rarely home. I think he does it on purpose to get away from all the spiteful things my mother spouts at him. She became sick not long after we found out the truth of my existence. Sometimes I think I was the cause of her becoming that way. The stress of the situation festered up within her and took the form of cancer. However, I know that isn't the truth.

When my older sister, Marie, was born it caused complications within my mother and she was never able to get pregnant again. It caused other underlying issues, but my mother refused to seek medical attention, her agoraphobia enabling her to leave the house. It hadn't always been this way, but after having Marie things slowly started escalating, according to my father. That didn't mean that she was through having kids. No, she always wanted to have more children, so they looked into surrogates.

My father did all the research or so we thought.

He had told my mother he had found a well-established agency that would allow you the option of selecting from their clients who you would like as the mother depending on when you were wanting to conceive.

My mother wanted another child immediately, leaving only one girl available. She seemed perfect. Medium height. Blonde hair. Bright green eyes. Youthful appearance. The perfect picture of innocence. Mother's eggs had already been frozen after Marie so father just needed to do his part.

Which he did, just not in the sense that was expected of him.

My father had actually been having an affair with the young woman. We never learned all the details of what actually happened. Just how it ended. He would take pictures of the woman to show my mother the progress of the pregnancy. Let her know what was happening with the doctor's appointments. Never once did my mother question why she was not allowed to see the woman.

All the while my father had been keeping up with the affair. The birth mother found out the truth a few days before my birth. I don't know how my father planned to explain everything once I was actually born.

How would two women have one baby?

Mother would expect for the baby to come home with her and so would the birth mother.

It turned out he didn't have to worry. The woman committed suicide the day after my birth. Right there in the hospital room with me laying in the bed they wheeled in for me to sleep in. My father had been coming in to visit when he found her. He didn't know what to do, so he just took me.

He never told my mother the truth, just told her that things had gone wrong during the delivery and the woman had not made it. Mom took it hard. She hated that her desire for another child killed an innocent woman. However, this soon turned into a hatred that grew within her after learning the truth and whose child I really was. Anger she eventually took out on me.

The first few years my mother showered me with attention that slowly tapered off. The older I became, the less I looked like my mother and more like the lady who had been their surrogate.

My mother questioned my father endlessly but he never fessed up. It wasn't until the night of my sixth birthday when my father came home slobbering drunk that the truth was revealed. I had never heard my mother so enraged. She began hitting my father repeatedly and when that didn't seem to affect him, she found objects to hurl at him. Usually heavy or glass items. When the glass would impact him, they would shatter and cut into him. After several throws, my father responded. Calling her all kinds of hateful names and saying it was her fault he strayed in the first place.

I still don't understand why he never left. Why he continued to live with us and endure her wrath, but he did.

That very next day I found my new home in the tiny linen closet stationed underneath the stairwell of the hallway. It's a fairly large closet considering the location, but even my young mind understood the meaning behind her putting me in such a place.

The only belongings I was allowed to bring were my twin mattress, a pillow, and one blanket, along with a handful of clothes. From there things only progressed further into the realm of worse. It seemed every little thing I did was wrong and I needed to be disciplined. It wasn't so bad in the beginning. Sitting in the corner for long periods of time. Going to bed without dinner. Spankings, usually with a wooden spoon or whatever kitchen utensil she could get her hands on.

However, when mom became sick and had to start taking so much medication, things escalated. The spankings turned into beatings. Sitting in a corner turned into kneeling on rice grains for hours upon hours. Days would pass while I was locked away in my "room" with no food.

I learned quickly to stock up on crackers and water bottles so I didn't have to suffer that fate very often. It wasn't the most nutritional of meals, but it was the best I could manage. Trying to stay out of my mother's sight was something I'd become proficient at, not wanting to give her a reason to dish out a punishment.

The feeling of just wanting it all to end was overwhelming, but Blake provided an escape for me. A safe haven where I didn't have to think about every action or thing I said. Blake accepted me for who I was, or maybe for who I could be if I wasn't born into the life I was given.

After I quickly finish cleaning the house, doing a few loads of laundry, and put taco soup in the crockpot to cook for dinner tonight, I change my outfit and check to make sure mother is still out before slipping out the door to meet with Blake in our secret spot.