Tiara for a Harlot

I can almost remember what tenderness felt like before last autumn. They say the seasons change with each passing day, to me that was Clayton Merrick. He was a gentleman and somewhat of a timid soul but he seemed to change so much that even the person he knew himself to be was unrecognizable. I was a mere seventeen years old when I met him, he was spry and wholehearted in his demeanor but he had different ideas of fulfillment than I did. We both seemed to find a certain glint of bliss in each other and when he began to court me I had no real sight of his intentions. The days had gotten shorter and at the time, I was painfully oblivious to the world around me. My mind was nothing short of a midnight summer’s dream, I saw the center of my world revolved around one single person and the cruel fate of my holiday was surely in no hindrance of what was to come. I was raised in the small town of Richfield, but despite its disingenuous title, it left much to be desired. There was nothing rich about it, other than the fact that my great-grandfather spent every last laboring minute he had building the house on Nicollet street with his two bare hands. When he passed the house was given to my Mother, although it was small it fit all of us just fine for quite a few years. My Father was an Army man, and because of his duty, it was called upon that we move to Atlanta Georgia. I was too young to understand what leaving something behind truly entailed. In my many years of settlement of the south, I became a regular southern belle, I didn’t care much for men at the young age of thirteen when I left my little town in Atlanta to come back home to the land of the pines, Minnesota. My Parents took up residence in a wealthy neighborhood just outside of east Saint Paul. I continued my studies in a large school where one could seem to get lost in the woodwork. Late fall of my third year of high school I went to a football game against another local high school team. A group of friends and I walked across the field to the opposing team's bleachers because we had been struck with a sense of boredom with the stale faces we had come to know. I found myself a seat next to a young man that I found to have a lovely smile and long brown hair that overtook most of his forehead. That night I would never have expected a romance so fond to blossom between us that it had come to be the sense of purpose in my life. I called upon him many times after that night, we chatted for hours upon hours without a stale word. It wasn’t until much later in the season that we agreed upon our status and he began to call me his girl. The title of belonging to such a gorgeous man was flattering and I had given up whatever dignity I once had to surrender myself fully to him. Our love was like that of a newlywed couple on holiday and was for many months after. I felt carefree, I felt secure and I felt like for once I hadn’t picked up a “sick birdy” as my grandmother used to call previous needy men I had fancied. I had a habit of picking those “sick birdies”, men that had bigger problems than I and would give me unhealthy fulfillment by exhausting myself in trying to mend their problems rather than my own.

Shortly before Clayton and I became lovers I had taken to another man and it trapped me into a whirlwind of chaos and turmoil I shall never misplace in memory. It had been several years after my friend Dottie had left our school and went west for a better life. One late night it came upon me to call her up and to my surprise, she was four months with child and engaged. She requested I speak to her fiancé Peter, and he took to me fondly over time by mistake. Soon Peter and I spoke every day and somehow I felt something for him as well. He proposed to me after a mere seven days of knowing one another, and in his love-struck delirium, he planned his escape from Dottie. He planned to wait until the child was born and take it from her and bring it up north to Evermoore, outside of Saint Paul and have the two of us raise the baby together. He was deluded beyond repair and to my own two cents, I wasn't ready to raise a child, let alone one that belonged to a dearest friend of mine. I wasn't entirely sure I truly loved him either. I heard the way he spoke to Dottie when I was on the line, he was cruel and bitter to her and sweet and loving to me. And I had taken it upon myself to find out the reason he no longer loved her anymore. He took a very sharp inhale in and out of his mouth came the words