The Bohemian Diaries

Chapter 2

Melody

Sixteen and some years ago my mother, Melody, graduated from high school and took a road trip with her two best friends (the other two of my only friends, Sunny and Abigail). They were planning to finally get out of small town Georgia and have some fun on the road and, eventually, in California, where they planned to stay. However, as they're small town nickname "The Trampy Trio" implied, they had a little too much fun. They got as far as New Mexico when my mother met a beautiful native American man named Ahanu while skinny dipping in a mountain stream with her friends. Ahanu was bathing in the stream one night and was seduced by Melody, as many men, still today, are. She says they talked about nothing, yet they talked about everything. She asked for his phone number but he claimed he didn't have a phone, it was the 90s, I guess the age of technology hadn't hit as hard yet. So they wrote letters for a month, she would write where her next destination would be and he would write to it just in time. In his letters he claimed to love her, he talked about tribal love stories and soul mates. They got as far as western Utah when my mother started getting morning sickness, she wrote to Ahanu telling him she was pregnant with his baby and to contact her as soon as possible at the motel her and her friends were staying at in Utah. She waited for 4 weeks, no letter. But she continued to write to him, in hopes that possibly the other letters had gotten lost in the mail or maybe his parents read them and hid them, so that he wouldn't get himself into trouble with her. She wrote to her parents saying she had gotten a job as a waitress in California and wouldn't be back home for a while, too afraid to tell them that she had gotten pregnant on the road. Despite what Melody would say to convince them otherwise, Sunny and Abigail refused to leave her, so they stayed for 9 months in that motel, until she had me...

She knew that Ahanu was the father as soon as she saw me. I have his dark eyes, his thick, dark hair, tan skin. So a week after I was born, the four of us were back in that 1971 VW van, the van I spent my first 2 years, on our way back to New Mexico. When she found the tribe, it wasn't difficult to locate him, it was a small tribe and there was only one Ahanu.

She found his house, it was huge and by far the biggest house on the entire mountain. So, carrying me, she knocked on the door, and was answered by a large woman, about 22 or so. It was Ahanu's sister, she said that Ahanu had gotten married last month and they were still on a honeymoon. She then noticed the baby in Melody's arms (me) and admitted to her that Ahanu had only met his new bride but a few months ago, he didn't really love her but she had gotten pregnant as well and they decided to get married. Amitola, his sister, apologized to Melody and gave her sack of 40 gold coins worth roughly $4000, "for her troubles". She told her that, if she would like, she would tell her brother and his new bride about Melody and I as soon as they got home. But Melody made her promise not to speak a word of her arrival to anyone, ever. She figured Ahanu had probably already forgotten about her and didn't want to trouble his life as he had the rest of hers. She was also a strong believer in karma, she knew that Ahanu would get what he deserved, as would she. So Ami promised to keep me a secret and kissed my forehead, and then Melody's. She apologized one last time and Melody left in shambles, holding me tightly.

According to the story she used tell in 3rd person every night, Melody cried all of that night, so hard that Abigail and Sunny tended to me throughout the next week, for fear that Melody would fall apart for good. But it was the next morning, as she was making her eggs, she was coming up with a plan for the rest of her life, and mine. She planned all of the next week as Sunny and Abigail held me and fed me, etc. First Melody went to a pawn shop at the bottom of the mountain and got $3000 for 30 of the gold coins Ami had given her. She kept 10 (all of which she still has) for possible upcoming rainy days.

She then called her parents to tell them what had really been going on for the past 10 months. As she predicted, they told her not to come home and that they had already thrown away all of her belongings. She hasn't spoken to them since.

Sunny, Abigail, Melody and I traveled around the country for the next two years in the van. Sunny, with her dreams of being a teacher taught me my ABCs, numbers, words, you name it. Abigail went to real estate school to get her real estate license, but, with her voluptuous, flexible body she worked as a stripper at night, bringing home hundreds of dollars cash every night. Melody was also in real estate school but she was clumsy and not as into dancing naked onstage in front of a bunch of strange men. So she went to night school to get her license and helped out at "home" by stealing pretty much everything we ever needed. If she ever got caught, she must have sweet talked her way out of it, because she's never gotten into trouble for it.

By the time I was 5 years old Sunny had married Greyson, a very kind, handsome, filthy rich man, and moved to the Florida Keys; Melody had become a real estate agent, her position requires her to travel all over the country every year or so (she decides when and where, lucky for Remax, she has a gypsy soul). Abigail was a very successful real estate agent in New York, she made plenty of money, but her wild heart still desires being the star of a pole dancing competition or strip show every now and then.

Nowadays, Melody and I are still moving about. Since I was 4 years old we have lived in Philadelphia, Myrtle Beach, DC, the Florida Keys (with Sunny and Greyson), New Orleans, Atlanta, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, Ashville and then in St. Pete, FL, which was only a few days ago.

Seems like a crazy life, but my mother is actually a very smart lady. You see, we have a set system that she came up with that morning as she was making her eggs, and has enforced throughout the last 16 years. When it's time to move again, Melody sells all of our belongings; furniture, old/unused clothes, even leftover food, and were left with thousands of dollars, she then sells our current house, finds a good house for a steal in our next location, she is a real estate agent after all, and moves us there, sometimes the day of. Once we get off the plane, we've made it a tradition to, after claiming our bags and Huffington, go straight to Orange Julius and get Strawberry Smoothies. Then we pick up our old, blue Jeep Grand Cherokee, and move into our new house.

It used to get really hectic, back before I really understood her system. Like, I would come home from school one day and our house would be completely empty! She would say, "Hazel, I've packed your clothes and stuffed animals, get your things together, we have to make a flight to ____________ in two hours!!" And I would, because while it was hectic and confusing sometimes, I never doubted my mom, under all the wild child-free spiritedness, she's pretty brilliant.