| They sat down in a booth in the back corner of the small café and ordered a cup of coffee. "So, you gonna tell me now?", Jeff asked as the waitress placed their cups in front of them. Sky had wished she had never said anything. She couldn’t figure out what had made her do it. ‘Why are you going to tell this man, who you don’t even know, all about yourself?’, she thought to herself. There was just something in his eyes that made her want to tell him everything. "I’ll spare you the gory details and give you the short version.", she said as she started, "My name when I was born was Midnight Sky Blackfoot." She paused as she waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t. "That’s not too bad. I thought you were going to tell me that your name use to be Grutilda or something.", he said causing them both to laugh. "So, why’d you change it? I think it’s a pretty cool name.", he said smiling at her. "That’s where you get into the long part of the story. Let’s just say that I got teased a lot when I was little.", she said trying to end the subject. "Come on, there has to be more than that", he said pleading for her to continue. "Why should I tell you, a complete stranger my life story?", she asked. "Do you often go to coffee shops with complete strangers?", he asked very seriously. That ‘something’ in his eyes was pulling at Sky, begging her to tell him about her past. She gave in and began to tell him everything, "My father was Native American and my mother was an Irish hippie, which explains the name." "And the green eyes", he said. She smiled as she continued, "My parents got divorced right after my little sister was born. I was seven. My poor sister." "Why do you say that?", he asked. "Her name was even worse - Josepa Stardust Blackfoot.", she revealed with a laugh. "Yeah, I like yours better.", he said. "Anyway, after they got divorced, my father disappeared from our lives. Mom tried to track him down, but gave up after a year or so. Mom struggled but she did a good job of raising us on her own." Sky’s face turned to sorrow as she finished her story, "Two days after my eighteenth birthday, my dad showed up again. My sister and I were at school. He had gone out of his mind and busted into the house. He pulled out a gun, shot and killed my mother, then killed himself." "That’s awful.", he said as he reached across the table and grabbed her hand. She pulled her hand away and continued, "We didn’t have any other family besides my Grandpa, who was too old to take care of us. I was legally an adult, but DHS was going to put my sister in a foster home because she was only eleven. I fought it and was granted guardianship of her. There I was 18 years old, still in high school and now had to raise a very confused, very traumatized pre-teen girl. We lived in a small town so everyone knew about what happened. Which made everything so much harder. So, I quit school and got my GED. I packed up everything we had into my mother’s truck. I took the $600 that my mother had stashed away for emergencies and headed here to Memphis. I rented a cheap little apartment downtown and got a job waiting tables. The longer we stayed, the more we never wanted to go back. I got a better paying job and moved into a nicer apartment. I saved up enough money and had our names legally changed, so we could put that part of our lives behind us as much as possible. I didn’t want to completely change our names, because as much as we hated those names, they were all we had left of our mother. So, I became Sky Black and she became Josie Star Black. And I’m sure you wished you’d never asked." Jeff sat there absorbing all that she had told him. "So, you gave up your life to raise your sister? There’s not many people that would have done that.", he said. "Well, she’s my sister. And I was bound and determined that no one else was going to raise her.", she said, "I can’t believe I just told you all of that." "Why?", he asked. "I’ve never told anyone that.", she said. "Well, maybe that’s why. Maybe you needed to tell someone. Maybe it was time.", he replied. "Why are you so interested in my life?", she asked very abruptly. "I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I just feel like I need to know.", he said with a confused look on his face. Sky completely understood what he meant because she too felt like she needed to know all about him. |
