Pamela Mcphearson She is a Devereaux who had been given up for adoption, her mother got involved with a poor mechanic and got pregnant, she died in childbirth and her father somehow disappeared. She was placed in foster care and had been taken up by a family in Atlanta Georgia until she was 21 and got funded for her art and setn to New Orleans to paint and such. She is into still life paintings and actually very good at it, and now in new orleans she is setting out, or trying to, find her roots and see what her real family was like and if anyone still remains. She pressed play on her small CD player alarm clock;Micheal Jackson: I wanna Rock with you. She grinned as she slid down the hall, dancing every few steps. She was always into the classics, despite what the news and tabloids remarked, she always said; classic Jackson was the best. Grooving at the kitchen counter she prepared her morning pot of coffee while she prepared her toast and cold cereal. She took her bowl of Lucky Charms and headed out on the balcony of her studio apartment. The morning sun warmed her face as she smiled into the breaking day, she swayed on her balcony and finished off her bowl of cereal, danced back in and was right in time for her coffee and the track switch from classic Jackson to the Prime Jackson 5: I want you Back. She filled her favorite mug, snatched up her slices of toast and headed into the living room that served as her main work area. Pamela had acquired this comfortable living through her art. What once was her favorite pastime, and still was, now gave her the monetary gain that many in her profession strived for besides the aesthetic appreciation for their craft. Still life was her specialty, and mostly what she was commissioned to do. Right now she prepared to paint her own piece for a local art gallery. She had to, by the end of next week, have four pieces prepared for an exhibit. It was small, she was by no means as renowned as Van Gough or even Seurrat but she had hoped for such recognition in the future. The room was littered with finished and unfinished canvases, with some new ones laid out on the tattered suede couch. Her easel was already set up from the night before, and already after a sip of hot coffee and a nibble of toast, she was already scrutinizing her work, contemplating starting over again. Taking a cloth, she whipped over the canvas with paint striper, and removed the canvas from the easel altogether, lifting a fresh one onto the stand. She sighed having only glanced at the drying canvas on the floor. Funny, starting over like that, it made her think of how she may very well be starting over here in NOLA, it was a perfect chance to find her birth family but, she had yet to decide whether or not she really wanted to. She knew her mother had died in childbirth, and her real family had shunned the babe that was Pamela away for the simple reason of her skin tone she had no real tag on who her father was and the information she was able to get when she was wondering about her roots back in Kansas City, she was only able to amass, in an email, that her father was an alcoholic and a mechanic. Whether he was dead or alive she didn’t know, nor did she care because he too had turned his back on his own child. Somehow she felt as though her mother had she survived would have wanted to keep her despite her families protests. And now in New Orleans she had the prime advantage to get some concrete answers, if any. But, did she want them? Sighing she shook her head as if that would clear all the questions swimming at a constant, like a backdrop of an aquarium in her head. She had already prepared her paint pallet, and as usual as she wondered about her past, she had also been able to pain the beginnings of a work in progress. At the moment, she had subconsciously settled on a bottle of wine next to a half eaten baguette of bread and an apple on a patterned table cloth. The lively music had also changed its mood to the bouncy tunes of the eighties to soft Damien Rice tunes which guided her every brush stroke as she colored a world on the snow white canvas. She could barely finish her work as her mind kept pulling her utmost attention back to what she was sitting on, stewing in; the prospect of finding her birth family. At lunchtime she barely ate sitting at the kitchen table with the portable in her hand, nervously tapping the antennae against her chin. All she had to do was call the local police station and ask around. Not that she suspected that anyone would have a record, the police station would have records of family members had they been dead or alive, someone could help her. She had been in the city for a month now, why not? Dinnertime came around and she couldn’t even look into the living room as she paced the balcony with the phone gripped in her hand. Why not just do it? I don’t know…It seems to quick too soon. What if they don’t want to see me or even know of me? What if they do? … Aggravated with her own debate she replaced the phone on the stand seemingly at a loss to make a choice at all but, as she grabbed her coat from the hall closet, it hit her. The community seemed rather closely knit. When she was looking for the art gallery, she stopped for directions here and there and got more than directions. These people seemed to know their back stories so…why not ask them? She had only intended to go out for a drink but, maybe she could start a little inquiry along the way….? Nodding positively, she smiled as she locked the door to her apartment. “Doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all” she mused as she hopped down the few stairs to the main exit. “Not bad at all.” She never liked to walk long along the French quarter at night, or rather when the sun wasn’t blazing. The place was built with buildings so snugly placed side by side that any shade from the sun made the place seem like dusk and now at night with only the illumination from a slip of a moon… It was almost pitch despite the streetlamps. Lucky enough she hailed a cab, and was off to the busier side of town with a small mission to attempt to pierce the skin of her origins. The ride was a blur, all she could think of was how to go about asking around. How was one supposed to say it? “Hey, I was adopted and my mother died, I only heard tell that I still have family living here. Do I look like anyone you know?” The cab crawled to a halt. “This is the strip, you can fahn whutevah you lookin fo’ ‘long dis road.” Pamela smiled and thanked the driver for getting her to where she had inquired. She still had yet to get to know the city and this time she asked to b taken to a place where she would not get bored and could get a drink and good music. The driver had done his job indeed. She paid the fare and tipped him handsomely, not that she always did, but this time she could afford the luxury. The night was warm and now seemed tinged with a frenzy of discovery, perhaps only for Pamela as she stood at the corner of a crosswalk, looking over the area as if she were already lost. “Where am I gonna start?” Again conversing with her own racing thoughts. This looked harder than what she had initially perceived. “…wow….” She ran a hand through her thick brown hair that was also politely peppered with the fading strands of white. People said it was good luck to have grey hair at her age, some people said it was a bad run of luck; Pamela didn’t bother with either superstition. Habitually shaking her fingers through to the ends; a stress reliever for Pamela. The light changed, she was allowed to walk but…she didn’t, she had no clue where to go She stood at a literal crossroads and well..yes, you get the picture. People maneuvered around her to get to the other side until she herself took herself out of peoples’ path, leaning against a lamp post. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea” she mumbled looking over the sea of people that had come out to enjoy the night as well. The night didn't bring with it any new discoveries. She should have known better than to take up her staiurday night fever to go and find out if anyone knew about her birth family. With a pounding headache she rolled over in bed, she had not had a drop of alcohol to drink, she never touched the stuff. The headache came from stress, so much of it that she had prescription painkillers to quiet the pounding storm at her temples. Groaning she lazily tossed the covers off of her and the bed, hefying herself up into a sitting position with the grace of a two thousand pound ballerina. Her head now rested on the cool bedpost, the pounding subsiding for a bit until her body temperatur warmed the cherrywood fixture. With a wobble quite like a barelle, she got to her feet, slightly opening her bloodshot eyes and truged towards the bathroom. Out of her room, standing in the hall she eyed the half finish cavas and, you guessed it, groaned. This would be the only means of communication that she could muster until the painkillers kicked in. Knocking back teo tablets, she took a cold glass of water back to her room, climbed back into bed when the phone rang and discordant grating tone to her ears. She looked at the caller I'd, taking the phone from its base and, pressed talk then, end, hanging up on the private n ame private number I.D. She tossed the phone on the pillow next to her, whimpered then let her head come back flopping on two of her four down pillows. Sleep wasn't comming back to her. Everytime this happened, she fancied that she would be knocked out cold by her good friend Slumber but, it would seem the intake of the meds upset her fleeting friend. She curled up i=under the covers, shivering from a slight chill when the phone rang again, and again the I.D registered both name and number as unkown and again, the hang up was repeated but this time, she had not the strength to even lightly toss the phone on the pillow next to her. She kept the white portable clutched in her hand as she tried to court and woo Slumber back again, with a pleading mumble of "Just ten minutes, that's all". She barely had the strength to review her night in her minds eye, only because her minds eye hurt just as much as she did. "Ok...five more minutes then..." Another unanswered plea. The phone. A mona and and agravated push of the talk button but, before she could hang up, she heard the warning. "Get out of here, before they find you, get out of here while you still can." a groggy and hoarse reply was all Pamela could muster in her confused and paindriven stupor. "Hello...?" This time it was the unkown who hung up on her. The dialtone rang in her ears making the pounding at her temples flare with heat. Her neck hurt to turn her head but, she did it anyway, leaving the dialtone to ring to its death. That was the only sound that filled the apartment for fifteen minutes straight. Pamela did not move, cough or blink. She lay there, under the sheets, her eyes closed, head pounding, waiting for the storm to pass. And, when it did, the only thing her artists mind went to was the half finished canvas in the livingroom. That is where we find our little painter now. In the studio/livingroom, putting a deaf shine on a bottle of wine before she finfished the almost living touch on the hanf eaten crust of bread on a ruffled picnic cloth spread next to a pond. Painting went slow today, not because she was suffering from the aftershock of her pounding head, now that it was clear, her mind kept wandering and she could not help but marvel at her fate. It was lucky enough that she got the job with the art gallery who was more than willing to exhibit her paintings and commission enough to keep her employed for the year but, this sweep of luck also brought her to the milieu of her vague beginnings. Beginnings...well that term was used lightly here. She could barely remember anything other than growing up in Atlanta Georgia, floating from family to family until at age thirteen she had found her place. The Macphearsons were good people, and honnest. When she turned eighteen, they did not hesitate to help her answer her questions about her blood relatives, as best as they could. All she was able to find out about was her mothers death, her fathers disappearance..and a last name;Devereux. Devereux...She nibbled on the tip of her paintbrush as she mused, whispering the name to herself. "I wonder what they're really like...?" She let her mind wander over such redicculous things, like what kind of car her grandfather might drive, assuming he was still alive, or what colour eyes her aunts had...had she had any to begin with. "What if mom was the only girl..?" That thought made her heart drop. She never figured that her mother could have been an only child either. What if she was..Her mother was dead.What if after all this she came up on a catacomb of markers at a cemetery..? "Come on Pam, get back into the game" she shook her head, doing away with such helpless thoughts and continued to paint. Back