Chapter one: Lola

Chapter One: Lola
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​ This place has a smell. It reminds me of all the other places I have lived. It reminds me of those places, because everywhere has a smell. It has a sound too. Everyone's voices settle together into a deep echo. The only one's that I can pick out are my adopted mothers, and my cousins.
My cousin, Steve, plays a gameboy. His hands fiddle ferociously, and his brow is furrowed. My adopted mother, Elsa, holds a piece of paper with a bus number on it. She smiles, and jokes around with my cousin and I. I cant hear a crack in her voice though, and it betrays her calm faccade. Her deep wrinkles seem a little deeper today, and her eyes are glossy with an emotion I could not place. It is teary, and vulnerable, but hopeful. Or am I imagining the hopeful feeling to help ignore the sad.
As one of the busses stop with a hiss, people pile out. Momma Elsa straightens her back and peers foreward intently. She double checks the paper with th bus number, and hold my hand.
"Here she comes". Mother Elsa walks with us a little closer, but still a polite distance for passengers to exit. One by one, they exit. I do not recognize any of them. I am picturing a small, but well built brunette. I am expected a pale woman with shiny green eyes that can light up a room.
"There she is", Momma Elsa exclaimed.
She began waving at a group of people exiting. In the front is an old man who clearly is not her. He is followed by a family, which also could not be her.
The only other person was an overly thin woman with dry blonde hair that barely reached her shoulder. She wore clothes that reminded Lola of the neghborhood women who tended to elicit whispers in the grocery line. She had blue eyes with specs of grey. She also had extremely thin lips that put Lola on edge.
The woman waves back. Lola feels something drop in her chest as she watches the woman strut over to her. Later, when Lola would look back, she would wonder how she had been so blindsighted. She should not have been so shocked that the mom who abandoned her when she was three would not be the vision Lola's young mind wanted her to be, and had pictured.
That would be later, though. Today, she feels a twinge of guilt for her dismay over the mismatch between the dream of meeting her biological mom, and the reality of the event.
She works hard to hide her dissapointement. She plasters a huge smile over her face and fakes it. She holds her biological mother for the first time since she was too young to remember. Too young to recognize her now that they meet.m
Her mother plays with her hair, and cracks jokes like we aren't suppossed to notice she was ever gone. Lola knows better, but is too grateful to acklowledge what Moms Elsa already knows- that her mom has not changed one bit since she left all those Febuarys ago.
​​​In the car on the way home, they all giggle over jokes​​ about Lola's childhood. She is reminded of the silly things she said, or silly things she did. Lola wants to laugh and smile too, but instead the stories burn her ears with embarrassment. She feel her cheeks are heated, and her stomach turnsr a little.
Lola has never met someone so wild. Everything about her mother is untamed. She should feel free, like this strange woman who birthed her. Instead she feel nausea, and she feels mortified. This woman is crazy and trashy. This woman is NOT my mom.
Her mom rolls her window down slightly, and lights ciggerrette. She boasts and speaks loaudly between puffs. She is talking about getting drunk and she is cursing more than anyone Lola has ever met.
Yet, in her disgust she feels something else that does not fit. She feels admiration.

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Author's Note

Will be adding a poem to the end.