The Orphan Part 1-

I was driving home yesterday with my three daughters in the car after a girls getaway. Along the interstate, tucked back between trees, is a little white house with broken green shutters. It is no bigger than a shed. I drive by this house a dozen times a year on my way to St. Louis. I pretend to not see it most of the time or look the other way when I pass by. Sometimes I wonder who lives there..if anyone does at all. After 18 years it still looks the same to me. A small white house along the interstate and in the middle of nowhere. A modest symbol of home to a girl who had nothing, but desired something. I moved into the little white house in the middle of Missouri with my boyfriend whom I had met while being homeless and working in a crack house in California. I had a dream. I wanted to leave all my past behind. The drugs, the prostitution, the heartache, the loneliness, the chaos...all of it. The little white house was to be my new start. A symbol of family. A few months later I ended up fighting for my life at what was suppose to be the symbol of new beginnings, family and hope. My boyfriend, in a violent rage attacked me. He beat me and didn't want to stop. I fled the house. I hid in the bushes. The blood running down my face blurred my vision, but I could still see my dream...the home....the symbol of family in front of me. He had a knife. He was stabbing at the bushes. He was screaming. He was taunting me. I sat there. I looked at the little white house and at that moment I turned my back and I ran. I ran as far away from the house as I could. I vowed to never look back. I called the only person I knew would not judge me. I called my big sister Kym. She picked me up on the side of the interstate. My trembling body covered in blood. I just wanted to go. Yet, she knew that back at the little white house was the man that did this and my two puppies. She drove to the house. Punched her hand through the glass, grabbed the man by his throat and said, "Give me the pups and if you ever lay a finger on my sister again, I will kill you". My sister drove me to her trailer. I don't remember much for the next few weeks until I ended up in the hospital. See, included in my dream of the little white house was a baby. I was pregnant. He did not kill me that night, but he killed our son. I was about 20, but looked 13. The staff at the hospital was cruel. I almost bled to death in their attempt to teach me a lesson. I did die that night though. Every dream I had died. Every hope for the white house died. I had nothing. No home.