Marley Rose Callahan was born to a sixteen year old Helen Marie Callahan on May 23rd, 1992. Her father was not present at her birth, which was fitting, considering he was also not present for the following twenty seven years that followed it. Marley stopped pressing for details about the man somewhere around the age of nine, though if she allowed herself to think about it hard enough, there was a faint memory at the age of five of an angry man arguing with her mother in the doorway of their Arizona home, demanding that he “deserved the right to see her.” Helen must have disagreed, for Marley has no memory of ever getting to meet the mysterious man, nor did she discover how exactly he grew to know of her existence.
Her relationship with her mother, despite the woman’s physical presence, was nearly as estranged as the one with her father. She couldn’t remember the years that they lived with her grandparents, but they must have been bad enough to drive Helen away from home at the age of eighteen. Though having gained independence, the stress of raising a child at a young age pushed Helen’s self medication into a full blown addiction. It seemed that as soon as Marley reached the bare minimum age to be able to take care of herself, the nights her mother spent at home were rare, and the mornings Marley would find her slumped on the bathroom floor grew more common.
And yet, despite her mother’s disinterest in taking care of Marley, when the blonde would stumble across her in the morning, she was unable to shake the part of her that felt as if she needed to take care of her. Pull her hair back, get her off the floor, into bed with a glass of water and some aspirin waiting. More than that, making sure the water didn’t get shut off, the electricity was paid, sometimes out of her own pocket. It was extremely conflicting for Marley, who resentment for her mother and desire to leave Arizona behind was growing, but was overshadowed by her inability to not take care of the woman who gave birth to her. Partly because Marley felt she was to blame for her mother’s condition.
Fortunately, this sense of guilt was not enough to keep Marley around past graduation. Almost as soon as the diploma was placed in her hand, Arizona became nothing but a distant memory, and her mother with it. It has been over nine years since Marley had last heard from her mother. Frankly, she didn’t even know if the woman was still alive, or how to get a hold of her to find out. Part of her thought that maybe without Marley to clean up her mess, Helen would have had no choice but to put herself back together, but frankly, Marley doesn’t care enough to get her hopes up for it to be true.
