Twilight
Twilight was the very first person I spoke to for this project. I met her while she was sitting in front of the 99 Cent Store on Wilshire Blvd., just west of Fairfax. When I asked her if she wanted anything from inside, she was almost too humble and bashfull to say yes. But eventually she asked for 'just food.' I bought her some mixed nuts, granola bars, and cookies, and talked to her for about an hour.
Words and stories tumbled from her unprompted and disconnected in a delicate, kind, and yet eager demeanor.
She was a child of our foster care system, mostly in New Mexico, and seemed to still be searching for answers to why things are the way they are for her. She jotted down notes from our conversation, seemingly in hopes of pulling answers from them later.
Her logic, though, was impeded by childlike myths and half formed truths that lead her to believe that, among other things,
babies come from "cups of water."
Maybe someone shrugged her off with that answer many years ago.
“ Before they knew Cher and Hendrix they put two people that looked like them together and threw me in a little stroller and had me sit there, when I knew I was blonde and white
and had blue eyes.
I lost my blue eyes during that time period. It would’ve happened naturally if they’d loved me…
It happens because I didn’t have real parents. ”
“ When they started to grow me up I had whatever they had to spare. If they had long curls and didn’t want, I got long curls... So in my spare time I would look into where was my real locks? What color hair? Was it copper red?
What color hair am I going to get that nobody wants? ”
“ I always use the name Twilight ‘cause my dad was Scottish and the guy [my mom] picked for me had color. I didn’t get the color really from him, but it matched. And even his story is unique. He’s from Scotland, and a guy took a cup of water to the United States, and put it here in his house. It was an empty house, and he planned to go there someday when his wife wanted a child, and left color for me when he moved in. And they achieved a child and I achieved color through that a little bit.
Maybe it stays, maybe it doesn’t. ”
“ I chipped my tooth on a lollipop when I was here. With the homes I had, the insurance, I got to be her daughter only because they knew someone in the house that might chip their tooth on something. They didn’t know what the substance was and then they got rid of me because I would hurt their hopes of a real child.
And I still chipped their tooth when I thought about ‘who is my parents here?’ Like, I had to think of someone and I knew that I might get lost into their family if somebody thought about me… ”
“ You get things that don’t belong to people, you know. For real, you do, like a spare… You have to take up people a long, long time to get something really great.
I thought about my world like if it’s white, and if it should stay white, or if it’s black why should it be black. ”
" And I was really trying. I want to help someone achieve a goal like a wife, and kids, and family, and country without even knowing my own country 100% "
