Page 33 of Love Legacy

“Is that how you ended up getting your tattoos?” I ask, my thumb massaging soft circles into the clock face on her thigh.

“Yeah, I started doing my own research on scar removals, and I came across a tattoo artist in New Jersey that specializedin cover-up tattoos. The day I turned sixteen, Melody, Theia’s mom, took me to get my first tattoo,” she says, pointing to the floral mandala tattoo on her right arm.

“After that, I just kept getting more and more. I didn’t get my thigh tattoo until I was eighteen or nineteen. I think this one is my favorite. It was inspired by something that my therapist told me in a session.

She said, ‘remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.’ It was a quote by Dale Carnegie and it stuck with me. So I got the clock tattoo as a reminder that time is fleeting, but it does go on.”

“And the flowers?”

Sage laughs. “Everyone asks if there’s a meaning behind the flowers. Or if my flower choice was symbolic. I just love the look of floral tattoos, and Ryan, the woman that does my tattoos, specializes in florals. I usually just go in for my appointments with an idea of the central element, so the clock or the woman’s face, and then give her complete creative control over the surrounding elements.”

I scoot closer to Sage, wrapping my arms around her in a hug. I felt sorry for her. I didn’t pity her; Sage is such a strong woman. I don’t think many people could’ve gone through what she did and have come out the way she did.

But I empathize with the pain and loneliness that she endured. It’s hard to reconcile that the happy-go-lucky, wears her heart on her sleeve version of Sage I know was once a scared, lonely, broken-down kid.

“Sage…?” I start, unsure if the question I’m about to ask is one that should even be brought up.

“Yeah, Naomi?”

“How did you end up in foster care in the first place? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, I know talking about yourtattoos with me was hard. I don’t want to push you if it’s too much.”

She winces slightly, as if pained by the memory, and I immediately regret asking. She buries her face in the crook of my neck, holding onto me tight as she takes a few calming breaths.

I’m about to tell her to forget I even said anything when she speaks up. “My mom didn’t want me anymore,” she says in a small voice, barely above a whisper.

“My dad was in the army. While my mom was pregnant with me, he was deployed to Afghanistan. Shortly before I was born, he was killed in action. An IED took out him and couple of the other soldiers in his unit.

When I was born, my mom and I moved back in with my grandpa. My grandma had passed from breast cancer long before I was born, so it was just the three of us.

And for a while, things were good. Grandpa stayed home with me while my mom worked. He’d take me to the park, playdates, you name it. But then he passed away when I was six years old. Heart attack.

Then it was just me and Mom. I think the thought of being a single mom was too much for her. Especially now that she no longer had family to support her. She started drinking. A lot.”

Sage’s voice cracks as she retells her story, and I feel a tear of my own escape, falling down my cheek.

“We managed for a little. I had some friends whose parents would let me stay with them when my mom went on a bender. But she would clean things up, be back at work on a Monday with an apology to her boss, and things would be okay for a couple weeks.

But the problem with cycles is that they come back around again eventually. And after a few unexcused absences, my mom lost her job. We could’ve been fine. Between my mom’sinheritance from her parents and the death gratuity she received from the military, we had enough to get by for some time.

But when you factor in my mom’s excessive drinking, that money disappeared quickly. Then she started bringing home boyfriends, if you can even call them that.

They were guys that were also regulars at the bar she frequented. None of them signed up for a kid, especially not one that had the behavioral issues I did at the time. They’d put up with it only for so long, and then that’s when the verbal abuse started,” Sage says, her body trembling, her tears soaking my shirt. The memories still brought her so much hurt today, and I feel awful for bringing it up.

“After a little while, my mom would catch on to how they were treating me and kick them to the curb. But after boyfriend four, I think she just stopped caring herself.

Boyfriend number five was the first and only one that stayed around long enough to hit me. My mom didn’t do anything about it. No, mother dear scolded me for pissing him off.

So I ran away. I tried to crash with one of my friends I stayed with before. Her mom saw the discoloration on my cheek and finally called DCF, the department of children and families, to report the abuse and neglect.

They didn’t investigate for very long. We were overdue on all our utility bills, the bank was in the process of foreclosing on our house, and my mom was never around for the home visits. Add to that the reported abuse, they put me in foster care. And she never contested it either.

I bounced from home to home for a couple years before I ended up with Theia and her parents at fourteen. I had been with them for about eighteen months when they decided they wanted to adopt me.”

Sage sits up, wiping her now red eyes, the mascara streaked down her cheeks. I rub her back in soothing circles, wiping myown eyes with my free hand, and giving her a small smile. “Well that’s good, right? You were adopted into a loving family.”

She shakes her head. “I wish it had been that easy. When I was originally put into foster care, after six months, if my mom hadn’t gotten her act together or didn’t try to claim me, my case worker was supposed to file to have her parental rights severed, allowing me to be adopted.

That never happened. And we didn’t know that until the Davises tried to adopt me four years after I went into the foster system. After all this time, she was still legally my mom. So the courts tried to track her down, to give her the opportunity to voluntarily relinquish her parental rights or reunify with me.

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