VENUS ; benny rodriguez [EDITING]

one

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i guess you could say i'm lucky. my pop is one of greatest centre fielders of all time. i mean what were the chances my dad would be joe dimaggio? my ma was a greek-english actress, but she split before i could get to know who she was. she and my dad never married, so i'm considered a love child by the press.

i was just six when my dad remarried. he eloped to the greatest women both he or i could imagine. little did I know at such a young age, that this sweet blonde bombshell was one of the most famous actresses of the time.  of course, i only knew her as my daddy's wife and my stepmother. we always called her marilyn or norma. they'd been together since i was four so i'd practically known her for most of my memorable life. my dream-occupied head never noticed the looks we'd get when we'd go out to dinner or do anything in the public eye.

i didn't even know what made our family so "special" until i was seven, when i went into school and heard the older girls holding a picture of some women and talking about her new movie. so, me being the curious little thing i was and still am, i asked to see. they showed me this beautiful picture of norma in a white dress, over a subway grate which blew up the skirt so gracefully.

i immediately responded, laughing at their supposed ignorance,  "that's not an actress, that's my step-mom." innocently looking up at the girls towering over me, i shook my head as if i was wiser than this pair. 

"what are you? stupid? that's marilyn monroe, the actress. she just got married to joe dimaggio, that hot baseball player. god, do you, like, live under a rock?" my seven year old self was at that moment the definition of confusion. all this information i'd heard but just couldn't comprehend.

"but that's my step-mommy. you just said it, her name is Marilyn. and you just said yourself she's married to my daddy."

"you're dreaming." the girls scoffed and walked away, leaving me to contemplate my entire life for about 5 seconds before moving on and wondering what was for lunch. (it was macaroni and cheese)

this encounter caused me to run up to my father the minute I got home and tell him about my confusing experiences. and so he explained everything. why she was away sometimes, what she did for a living, what he had done for a living and how everything came about. 

so i got used to it. i got used to those staring cameras i'd always wondered about - constantly pointing at daddy, marilyn and i. we were a happy family for a while. broken maybe, because of marilyn's interrupting work schedule and dad's dislike of her absence. it just got to be too much for both of them. to this day, one of the worst feelings I've ever experienced was when marilyn announced she was divorcing my dad.

only nine months after they'd eloped, and eight months after i'd found out who she was, marilyn told me the news as she was putting me to bed. stroking my brunette hair and holding my little, calloused bat-holding hand, she told me. she told me that even though she loved me as if i was her own daughter, she couldn't love daddy anymore. and i understood. as i got older, marilyn would still call me, ask me how i was, tell me about her life. she was one of the rare mother figures i had in my life, and she still looked after me as if she and pop had never fallen apart. 

no one, save my daddy, could love me as much as marilyn did. at least, that's what i thought until the summer of sixty two.

*:･ﾟ✧