Another Interlude

I guess it ain't all that bad. Then again, when your mother was a crazy homeless person and your father was some pervert she screwed in the back of a pornographic theater, any change could be seen as an improvement. Maybe it just all makes sense in some weird twisted way, like a joke told by a man about to be executed or something. I was conceived in the Phoenix Theater, born in the alley behind the building and raised on the street it was on until the government came to the same conclusion anyone on the street could have drawn: my mother was completely and utterly batshit crazy.

Once my mother was deemed legally incompetent to raise a child, they put me in a foster home. I guess that was an improvement, considering I was touted as a "miracle child" who had survived on the harsh, cold streets. When it came time to name me, my foster parents thought that "Rose" was appropriate. Then again, once I had finally developed the ability to speak, one of the first full lines of thought I communicated was my hatred of my name. Perhaps I had developed a bit later than most, but at least I was still coherent. To think, the psychologists all thought I would be "developmentally delayed" or otherwise "mentally deficient" or whatever set of big sensitive words they use to just call me a dummy because my birth mother was too insane and poor to raise me "properly." After proving that I wasn't completely backwards, my "parents" decided that it would be best for me if they called me by my middle name, Mira.

Since I was so "precocious," it didn't take long for my parents to give me the long talk explaining about how I wasn't really theirs. For one thing, I didn't look a thing like them with their bland, nondescript faces almost completely devoid of anything resembling an emotion most of the time. That isn't to say they weren't happy. Even if I wasn't really good at the whole "being a daughter thing," they still prided themselves on the fact that they saved me from potential death or even a fate worse than death: i.e., ending up exactly like my birth mother, having sex with strangers and going completely insane.

Come to think of it, when I managed to track my "real" mother down, I saw little physical resemblance to her. Then again, considering the state she was in when I found her in the mental hospital an hour out of town, I don't think I would have wanted to associate myself with her in any way at all. After seeing her first mugshot with the bleached, fried-out hair and bloodshot eyes, I pretty much vowed to keep my hair dark and natural no matter what, even when it bleached in the sun over summers to an almost mousy-brown color. Maybe the chemicals she had scraped together to bleach her hair had seeped into her brain and contaminated her, completely pickling her brain or something.

I couldn't get much out of her. Then again, it wasn't like I was sitting on a couch with her over tea for this conversation. I was peering in through a rectangular hole in a door at a woman curled up in the corner of a padded room. Sometimes she's make noises. The one time she got up from her corner, she practically charged the door, pounding on it and basically scaring the ever-living crap out of me.

Needless to say, I decided not to visit her after that. It wasn't like we had bonded to the point where we were inseparable. I know for a fact that I really hadn't learned anything new or enlightening about myself. In all truth, I don't think I would have wanted to find out who my real father was, considering how I was conceived. Most likely, my mother herself didn't even know who my father was. I highly doubt she would have recognized me even if I was able to go into the room and talk to her face-to-face.

After I found out that my mother had died in the mental hospital not too long after my visits, I didn't feel too sad. If I was more like my foster parents, I would have thought that maybe seeing her daughter gave her enough closure to pass on. I didn't feel bad about her dying, not so much because I thought she could finally move on to a better place after living in a nightmarish hell for what could have been most of her life, but because I just didn't relate to her. It was almost like reading a story in the newspaper about someone dying in a country across the world from where I was. Sure, it's almost always bad when people die. It just seemed like I didn't really have much of an attachment, or any at all, to the person who died.

When I was a kid, I liked to run around a lot. I was never the type of kid to take the bus home or even walk. I always ran the whole way back no matter how far my school was. I was the best at all the running games like tag or even getting to the balls for dodgeball. Once my parents had loosened their rather tight, albeit protective grip, I got to run through various parts of my small town. One day, I came across the Phoenix Theater in the downtown area. It looked like someone was trying to fix it up. As the renovation progressed, I found myself drawn back to the back alley again and again, back to the rather unfortunate place of my birth. Sometimes I like to imagine my foster parents trying to fill out my medical paperwork for school and stuff with the question asking about the hospital of my birth. I'd like to think that they put "downtown alley" down on the blank or something like that.

That same year, I had made the track team. My parents saw this as a blessing, a "positive outlet" for something they had worried would become an "unhealthy obsession." My mother ordered several track t-shirts knowing that I would wear one out from running in it all the time. She found that out since I had a tendency to have one favorite t-shirt despite how many my parents had bought along with "nice clothes." On the one hand, I think my parents were glad that I wasn't on drugs or screwing around. On the other hand, they didn't really have child psychology books on "running addiction." They figured that the least they could do was be supportive, which meant buying me t-shirts, running pants and shorts, shoes, and my own walkman so I could listen to music while I ran.

One day I was running past the Phoenix Theater as they were finally ready for re-opening. This time, the sign read "Phoenix Ballroom." An older guy randomly stopped me and asked me if I wanted a job since he had seen me running by so often. He once told me that you can always trust someone with a set routine, and he even said once that he could practically set a clock to the time I would run by in the afternoon. So, that was the rather anticlimactic story as to how I ended up in the situation I'm in now.

I sweep the floors.

I mean, I sweep the floors whenever they get dirty, which is pretty often considering how often people come and go throughout the night. At first, my parents objected with the typical parent argument that I should concentrate more on my studies so I can get into a good college and not end up runing the risk of having to sweep the floors for the rest of my life. Part of me wonders if they really objected due to the rather unsavory history I had with the place, even back before I was even born. I hate to think that they'd punish me for something my crazy mother did.

I always thought it was interesting that the owner didn't bother cleaning up the floor and the stage, or hiring someone else to do it, at the end of the night. Instead, he pretty much waited after I got done with school and track practice to have me clean up in time for the evening crowd to come in and mess it up again with their dirty shoes and empty beer bottles. Sometimes I'd get to hear the bands warming up as I heard the clink of the bottles and "sh" sound of the broom against the floor. Granted, we never really had anyone famous come in, but some of the shows were pretty good...at least from what I heard. Even though I was allowed to work there and clean up other people's messes, I was always kicked out since I wasn't 18 or 21 or whatever yet and the owner didn't want to get in trouble. Still, I'm certain that most of the kids who went to those shows were just as young as I was, and I wasn't even drinking.

Once I asked my boss why he waited so long to clean only to have it messed up almost immediately after. It only made things harder to clean, after all. He once told me that the floor wasn't nearly as bad as when it used to have carpet over it. Lester's a nice guy, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if he's entirely there if you know what I mean.

You'd think that a job as mundane and slow as sweeping a large floor would drive me insane. After all, I grew up at the fast pace I had set for myself. Somehow though, the change of pace in this place was a welcoming one to me. Is it disturbing that I felt safe, almost like I was at home, in the place where my rather notorious conception occurred?

No, there's something comforting in keeping my eyes to the floor instead of trying to look for what's coming at me ahead. Even with the rather "young" smells of cigarettes and cheap beer lingering, I could breathe in and tell how old the place was. I'd even find myself losing track of time to the point where I'd come home to my worried parents who had called the cops and hospitals trying to find me. Still, it really doesn't take that long to sweep the place, especially since I had to be done by the time the bands started.

Yeah, the Phoenix Ballroom is an easy place to lose time in.