Mr. Green

Short Story

Since my childhood, I have never known who I really was.  Being told at such a young age that the children you call brother and sister are not blood related at all can have some damaging effects.  So I wasn’t a Green.  “Now what,” I thought.  “Do I embark on some journey to self-knowledge?”  It wouldn’t have done any good.  What I learned today clearly proves that any efforts toward finding my real family would have ended in me being just as lost as when I started.

            The social worker looks at me right now and smiles a pity smile, one that I’m sure she shows many orphans; but sitting here with a 35 year old man seems out of her comfort zone.  She wears her age on her face; I can almost see all of the disappointed faces of orphans, a career’s worth, in her tired eyes.  “Mr. Green,” she begins. “I’m sure your parents had good reason for not sharing this information with you earlier. I’m sorry it had to come from me.”  I shake her hand and leave before the tears. 

  I step outside and light a cigarette, I begin walking.  Not sure where to, just walking and noticing different things and people I had never noticed before; a little girl with her mom crossing the street, so eager to get to their destination, the famous ice cream shop sitting on the northwest corner of the intersection.  I think to myself, “I wonder if giving birth to that little girl had killed her mother if the little girl’s father would have given her up for adoption before they had ever gotten a chance to leave the hospital.”  I sigh; that’s what mine did. 

I learned today who I really am, at the age of 35.  Paul Green, or Paul “Williams”, murderer of his own mother and abandoned by his father.  I can’t say I blame him for not wanting to take me home and raise me himself.  I would have been a constant reminder of his wife and how I had killed her during my birth.  Why hadn’t my parents shared this information with me the day they had told me I was adopted?  I was 15, not so much a child.  Instead I find out 20 years later after doing so much hoping.  It was all a waste, my life just feels like a huge waste. 

            The sound of a long horn reminds me that I’m standing too far into the street.  I hop back just in time.  I take a piece of paper out of my pocket, Charles Williams, I say aloud; my birth father.  All I know of my blood line is on this tiny piece of paper.  What now?  I put out my cigarette and flick the butt in the gutter.  Slipping my hands in my pocket, I head back to my car.  This piece of paper could help to fill a very large void in my life, or it could derail my every attempt to find the answers I so clearly need for my own sanity.  I start the ignition and I drive.  

Reviews

[Summer'sBreeze]

oh, this is really good.
It sounds like a start to a great noval