Writing Camp Kella’s New Begining

Week 3 - Writing Camp - Chapter 1 - Kella

The doorbell rang and I knew who it was. It was only ever him who came around. I had pushed away all my friends years ago. Now there was only one person who lit up my life and it definitely was not the man incessantly ringing the doorbell. It was my sweet rosy-cheeked baby girl who ran over and wrapped herself around my legs. I pried those chubby arms open and swooped my baby girl up onto my hip. I reached the door just as Robby had started pounding on it.

“Geeze Robby give me a minute to get the damn door.”

“I just can’t wait to see my precious little angel.” He replied in an over-the-top kiddie voice. “There’s daddy’s angel!”

Dani tossed herself forward into her father's waiting arms. On the street, Robby was a horrible person. He was in more s**t than I even wanted to imagine. He ran drugs, roughed people up, and whatever else the bosses needed. But inside these walls, he was a good dad. He came once a week to play with Dani and while money was always tight, we hadn’t gone hungry yet.

I left them to play in the living room and headed to the kitchen to catch up on dishes. This had been our arrangement for almost two years now. The visits hadn’t been very frequent when Dani was a newborn but at about 6 months old Robby started coming every Wednesday. It had been steady for 18 months now. As I loaded the ancient dishwasher and began to wash down the faded counters, I tried to remember what I had ever seen in Robby to give up my whole life for. Call it temporary insanity or teenage hormones or just being a young dumbass.

The night I met Robby, my friend Clarissa had brought me out to a party. I was never one to get s**t-faced at parties but I was on my second beer of the night when Clarissa leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“That guy has been checking you out all night!”

I tossed my blonde hair over my shoulder and casually looked across the room. Leaned against the wall by the pool table was a guy in jeans and a white tank. He was talking with a group of guys so I took a minute to check him out. He was older than us so definitely a college boy. The way he stood, with so much confidence, drew me in. I found myself striding across the room before I knew what I was doing.

The game of pool had just ended so I joined the next round. I watched Mystery Man out of the corner of my eye as I lined up my shot for the solid yellow ball. I saw the moment his attention shifted from the group of guys around him. His gaze ran over me from my exposed cleavage to my ass bent over the edge of the table and I felt him approach.

“Do you need some help with that, doll?” Mystery Man asked as he pressed himself closer to my side. He didn’t know I’d been playing pool for years but I’d play into his ego for a minute.

I turned to him, batted my eyelashes, and said “Oh, would you mind?”

Mystery Man moved behind me to ‘help’ me line up my shot. He placed his hands over mine and pressed his growing hardness into my ass. I could feel the whisper of his breath on my neck and it made me wish we weren’t at this party anymore. As he shoved the pool stick forward he pressed harder into me. The table bit into my hip but I didn’t care. He sunk the solid yellow I had already lined up and whispered in my ear before pulling away.

“If you really want to play with a stick I’ve got a much better one you play with upstairs.”

Man, this guy was corny. But he was a college guy. And clearly into me, still a high school senior. So I turned in his arms and said “Lead the way.”

That was the beginning of my downward spiral. Robby was in fact a college sophomore though, looking back, I have no idea how he made it to his second year. He dazzled me with fancy dates and expensive gifts. After I graduated he moved me into his apartment, much to my parents and Clarissa’s protest. They told me Robby was too good to be true and that I was moving too fast. Robby said they just didn’t care about me the way that he did and that I didn’t need them in my life. So I quit talking to them. I stopped answering my mom's calls and stopped replying to Clarissa’s messages. Soon my whole life revolved around Robby. And he loved it that way.

I started to apply to college that fall. Robby told me that as long as I was with him I’d never need to work so college would just be a waste of my time. So I trashed the application.

Several months in the fancy dates dwindled and the gifts were rare. I started to realize what he’d done to me. He had manipulated me into being his b***h. Once I opened my eyes and saw what was going on around me I realized this was not the life I wanted to be a part of. The drugs had crept into the apartment and though I never used I had been tolerant of them. I realized one morning, walking through the trashed apartment, that I didn’t want to be here anymore. By that time it had been almost a year since I’d talked to my parents or Clarissa. And none of the other guys’ girlfriends could be considered friends. If I wanted out of this life, I’d have to do it on my own.

That day I went to the diner a couple of blocks down and put in an application. I didn’t have a cell phone at the time so I went back every day and asked if they needed help. Finally, I think they just got tired of me aggravating them and hired me. I worked every shift I could and scraped away every penny I earned.

At a month in, the money was finally steady enough that I could afford a cheap one-bedroom apartment next to the diner. So I rented it and moved out while Robby was passed out on the couch one evening. It looked like I might actually be able to do this on my own.

The apartment came with some very basic furniture, left from previous renters so thankfully I didn’t need to buy any furniture. My neighbors on the floor seemed to all be fairly decent. No loud parties or people coming and going all hours of the night.

Despite feeling safer than I had in several months, I was so sick the first week living there. I was sure it was just my nerves waiting for Robby to realize that I was gone. The fourth day that I'd stumbled into the diner barely holding down liquids, Brenda, a middle-aged waitress with a kind face steered me into the bathroom and handed me a pregnancy test. My eyes bugged out and I protested immediately.

“Honey, I’ve got four of my own. I know the signs when I see them.” She patted my shoulder and walked out. I stared at the test willing it to disappear. But when it didn’t I decided it couldn’t hurt to try it. When those two lines appeared five minutes later, I promptly lost the rest of my juice and crackers.

Brenda turned out to be one of the biggest blessings in my life. She helped me get set up at the clinic and get to my doctor's appointments. She even set me up with her babysitter in my same apartment building and was the only person at the hospital with me when Dani was born.

When word got back to Robby and his new girlfriend that the baby looked like him, he of course denied any possibility that she was his. As my sweet baby grew into her chubby baby body her dark hair and eyes were a dead giveaway that she was his.

I never expected anything from him but once Dani was about 3 months old he started coming around wanting to visit her. I’d told him no. That I didn’t want her exposed to his lifestyle. After that, I started finding envelopes of money under my door. It started with $50 here and there. But then consistently I’d get $300 at the first of the month. I figured if he was really trying to put in an effort, he should have some time with her. So I set up a visit at my apartment and told him he had an hour. Those first weeks he stayed maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. But as Dani got bigger and able to play more, he started staying longer. I expected him to fight and argue with me but he never did. He just showed up, visited with his daughter, and left. The money continued showing up every month. Occasionally there was more. But it was always on time.

I wanted to get out of this town. Away from the drugs that I saw on the street every day. Maybe get a nice little house in the suburbs with a yard for Dani. But as long as Robby was showing up for his kid, she deserved to know him. So I was stuck here, working my ass off just to make ends meet every month.

I checked the time and started getting ready for work. I threw my hair up in a bun and added some mascara to my lashes. My days of wearing full-face makeup were long gone. As a mom, I just didn’t have time for it and at the diner, I would just sweat it off anyway. I grabbed a polo and a pair of black pants out of my closet and checked the time again. s**t. I was gonna be late if I didn’t get out the door.

I walked through the living room and cleared my throat pointedly. Robby knew that was his signal to go and I grabbed Dani’s bag and her shoes.

“Are you ready to go see Winston baby girl?” I asked her. She squealed and ran to me quickly plopping down to let me put on her shoes.

“I see Win-ton. I see Win-ton” she babbled even though she couldn’t quite pronounce the S sound yet.

“Who’s Winston?” Robby demanded folding his arms across his chest.

I ushered him out the door, locking it behind me. “Goodbye, Robby,” I said, intentionally not answering his question. Had he paid attention to the meowing sound his daughter had been making he could have connected the dots but that was a man for ya. He huffed and strode down the steps as Dani and I walked down the hallway to Mrs. Anderson’s apartment.

Mrs. Anderson opened the door before I could even knock and Dani ran straight to the bench by the window where her favorite furry friend was sunning himself. She picked up the orange tabby cat and hugged him a little too tight. “Be easy Dani!” I yelled.

Mrs. Anderson just snickered.

“Oh, that cat wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head honey! Anybody else? He’d claw their eyes out in an instant. But that sweet doll baby could torture him without so much as a scratch.”

And it was true. Winston would hiss and arch his back if most people tried to pet him but my Dani Girl just scooped him up and he purred and snuggled in closer.

“I’m sorry but I’ve got to get going or I’m going to be late again.”

“Shoo Shoo. We’ll be fine, like always.” Mrs. Anderson took Dani’s bag and sent me on my way. I really was so lucky that Brenda had sent me to Mrs. Anderson. She was probably in her late sixties and lived on the same floor of our building. Her cat Winston had been her companion after her husband's heart attack several years ago. She loved Dani and me like her own kids and I loved her just as much.

I dashed down the hall and rounded through three flights of stairs before hitting the lobby. I took a moment to breathe so I didn't look like an unfit whale, although I could use some regular time in the gym. Just as I pushed open the main door, gunshots rang out. In this neighborhood that wasn't uncommon however, these were close, very close. I pressed myself against the building trying to remain unseen. My body froze. A man stood with a gun pointed at a body lying on the sidewalk. He pulled the trigger twice, quickly putting two bullets between the man's eyes then jumped into a waiting SUV.  Only when I heard a car door slam and the sound of tires peeling out, did I finally breathe again. People began to creep out of their houses to investigate and my eyes landed on a limp form on the street corner. Oddly enough with the same color jacket Robby always wore. Oh no. No. No. No. My baby’s daddy. Gone. How would I tell her? How would she understand? Damnit Robby couldn’t you just get your s**t together and be there for your daughter. A crowd began to form around his body. Blood ran off the sidewalk and out into the street. Sirens wailed as they drew closer to the scene before me. 

"Ma'am? Are you okay ma'am?" an officer addressed me. I nodded my head and dashed down the street to the diner. I was going to be seriously late now but I knew that Brenda would cover for me. Especially once she heard what had happened.

I darted through the employee entrance and zig-zagged my way to the break room to drop my things. I closed the door behind me, locking it for just a moment. As I dragged in a ragged breath, I packed up everything I had just witnessed into a nice little mental box and shoved it into the "To Be Dealt With Later" pile of s**t in my brain. Happy thoughts. I needed happy thoughts. I thought about my sweet precious baby girl and how my heart just melted when she looked up at me with those big brown eyes and said "mama". One more deep breath as I pasted a smile on my face then it was time to get to work. I was gonna need the tips tonight.

I slumped into a chair at the bar and sighed. The doors were locked and the last customer had finally left. Apparently, a shooting brings everyone out of their houses and into the diner for some gossip. But at least the tips were good tonight.

"Hey! Chin up buttercup." Brenda wrapped her arm around my shoulder. "Just think, this could be the new beginning that you and Dani need. You're not tied here anymore. You could go anywhere. Go back up north to your family. Go out to the coast and soak up some salty air and sunshine. Wherever your heart desires."

I wasn't trapped anymore. That idea began to grow roots. I wasn't trapped anymore. I hated for my baby girl that she wasn't going to grow up with a father but hey, tons of kids grow up just fine without their dads. I would just have to work twice as hard to show her that she's loved. Which would not be hard to do with that angel face of hers.  The idea of seeing my family though was not going to happen. I'd made too many mistakes and been gone too long to come crawling back now. No, from now on it was just me and my sweet Dani Girl. Maybe Brenda was on to something; heading out to the coast didn't sound like a bad idea. As I trudged back to my apartment my mind raced with ideas. Ideas of a little townhouse in a nice coastal town with a yard and a swing set and maybe even a cat of our own.