BEING HALSEY

CHAPTER 56

I look at my birth mother.

She looks at me.

" Haille?"

Haille? who's she calling that?

We stand awkwardly in the room like two strangers waiting for the bus.

" How have you been, Haille?"

" My name's Hal."

She frowns. " Hal? for Halsey?"

" Yea."

She looks down at the floor.

" How have you been?"

" How have I been? For the last seventeen years after you dumped me off at the hospital you asking me how I've been? Oh wait, all my life I've been living a whole lie? That my mother died while having me? Fine woman, I've been FINE!"

She shrugs and looks over her shoulder. Then back at the floor.

" Sorry."

"Sorry?" I laugh. This is absurd. How are we supposed to talk? What are we supposed to do, discuss the seventeen years of my life and hers?

" You've grown so much. So beautiful."

I'm confused. My brain is a jumble of bits and pieces.

She looks up and meets my gaze. We're so much alike. Our hairs are both dark and the colour of our eyes are the same.

" I didn't know any other way," She says, her voice breaking. " I was afraid and I was going through so much."

" So instead you left me like a piece of trash?" I snap.

" No! It's just that we couldn't be together, you and I."

I shake my head. " What's that supposed to mean?"

" I was scared. I was so scared. I didn't know what to do...I could barely make a living. Those awful part-time jobs and men and I...I was lost, I was....scared,"

" You ran away because you gave up. You couldn't cope so you ran away and dumped me off and disappeared."

She makes a pained face. A self pitying face.

" I couldn't fit in. I had no place to go. So I left you at your dad's so you can get the life I didn't have. A normal school and family vacation...all that. That you'll finish highschool, go to college, fall in love, live a lavish life..."

I want to scream.

The story of my life was about her not making enough money? That was it? She just ran away so she wouldn't have to get a job? Bullshit.

I take a deep breath and try to slow the spinning in my head. I press my hands against my temples.

She's just a loser, a misfit and a selfish woman looking for an easier life.

" I...I had this whole thing built in my mind. That you were...you were this great woman...I didn't know what to expect."

My mother looks wounded. " I know and I'm so sorry."

" You're pathetic."

She blinks and takes a step back. " I know I haven't been there for you and I've missed out so much in your life. I denied you that mother love care, but Haille..."

" It's Hal!" I scream so loud and feel my eyes water. " That's the name I've lived with and that's the name I have. You dumped me like some bad first date and now after all this time all you can do is complain. It's all you, you, you!"

She looks at me confused. So far from being a real mother to me that she could only peer at me, half curious, half afraid.

I take deep breaths. My heart is going so fast I can't seem to get air. It's like the walls are closing in. I want to hit her, scratch her, anything to get her to simply feel what I'm feeling. To feel what she has done to me.

Pointless.

It doesn't matter to her.

I don't matter to her.

I never did.

That crying lost little girl without her mother is long gone. She died and got buried.

I'm me, Halsey Wales and she's nothing.

My mother tries to brush the hot tears from my eyes but I slap her hand away.

" Too late. Way too late."

***