Am I blessed or cursed? 

I mean, on one hand, I’m an orphan who knows absolutely nothing about the world or my family, but on the other hand, things aren’t half as bad as they could be. I don’t have an ordinary lifestyle, but I’m a strong believer that everything happens for a reason. Of course, that’s only because I haven’t fallen into the clutches of Evil yet, and so I’m content with the bad things that haven’t happened. 

That is unless you count Her. I mean Her as in the woman who follows me around but never shows up in my face. How do I know she follows me? I know that because I always catch a glimpse of her on windows or glass doors when I’m strolling around the city. But she’s just part of my strong imagination, right? I mean, she has to be since she isn’t ever there when I turn around...

My name is Adiliah Adarah Valda. Very, very few people know my name. I’m twelve and I live in San Francisco, California. I’ve been an orphan since I was a mere newborn. I don’t even know if I’m a true Californian. I’m 5’2, slim, and a great swimmer. I have olive skin and brown hazel eyes, straight, caramel hair, naturally perfect eyebrows, and long, thick eyelashes. People are always staring at me, which is a problem when you don’t want anybody to notice you. 

The adults at the Blue Ripple Orphanage told me that I was found when the custodian was taking out the trash one night when he heard a baby crying. He looked around, and he eventually found baby me, swaddled up in a blanket under a tree by the parking lot. I couldn’t have been more than a week old. The parking lot was empty, and I was raising hell, so the custodian took me inside the orphanage, and all of the caregivers and everyone else who worked there welcomed me to my new “home”, and by the time I was two I was sent off to my first foster home. When I turned seven though, I ran away.

Yes, I ran away even though I didn’t have a plan. But I couldn’t stay in the Blue Ripple Orphanage forever, and I couldn’t stand the idea of being sent to yet another foster home. 

No.

Orphanages struggle a lot with providing each child everything they need, so orphans usually end up in foster care, which is more economical, but it’s not necessarily better. I was in foster care with five different families by the time I was six. 

The reason why being in foster care can be very unbeneficial is because some social workers don’t work hard enough to place the kids in happy, healthy homes, and thus it is not strange for foster kids to experience physical or sexual abuse, as well as neglect, and they don’t report the abuse because they are too scared or guilty, even though they shouldn’t feel that way. Even when abuse is reported, sometimes those poor kids have to stay with their horrible families because their social workers always tend to have more important things to do.

I was one of the lucky kids who didn’t go through the horror of all that. Sure, my foster parents weren’t exactly attentive, but after hearing the stories of the other kids every time I was brought back to the orphanage, I’m lucky to simply be alive. 

I never came close to being adopted, which shouldn’t have been a surprise but it hurt because I couldn’t help but glow with hope all the time before I ran away. Alas, I had been so little, so ignorant about everything, and my naive wishes had only led to disappointment in those first six years. 

Some of the other kids were adopted, however. Some were younger than me, and others much older, but they either went to good homes or something happened to them because they never came back. 

I figured a female seahorse had more chances of giving birth than I had of getting adopted by any family at all, especially because the adoptive process isn’t a piece of cake, so after I was forced to return to the Blue Ripple Orphanage like I did at some point every year, on the night before I turned seven, I gave myself a gift: an opportunity to not cry for the first time on my birthday, unlike every other year when I got my hopes up and got excited whenever I thought about permanently living with a happy, caring family in their nice home, but got slapped with more proof that that wasn’t going to happen as another year passed and I was still right where I had started. 

     I didn’t sleep at all on That Night. 

After one of the caregivers came to check up on us younger girls to make sure we were okay in the little dormitory we shared, I "fell asleep", for a tedious amount of time. Once I was confident that everybody else was asleep, I slowly and quietly opened the window that was about a foot above my bed and glanced around. 

The older girls shared another room, and the teenage ones another. The same thing went for the boys. Thankfully, my dormitory wasn’t half as crowded as the other dormitories were, and by any standards, we were all lucky to have our own, separate beds, unlike in some other orphanages that forced the kids to share crowded rooms filled with bunk beds or made them sleep on the floor. 

    When the window was fully opened, I quietly climbed out of bed and pulled out my backpack that was under it. My backpack was filled with only my clothes, which wasn’t a lot. We all kept our clothes in our backpacks, but I was the only one that kept it under my bed because I didn’t want people snooping through my stuff. 

 I climbed back in bed, stood up, and tried not to breathe as I scanned the room with the help of the dim moonlight coming in from the windows to make sure nobody was awake. I probably only waited a minute or a little more, just long enough for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but it felt like an eternity.

When I was more or less sure that nobody was awake and would rat on me as soon as I left, I slowly began climbing out of the window. I held my backpack in one hand and tried to not make a sound-or tremble so much. 

Finally, with both my legs hanging out the window and me sitting on the windowsill, I reached down to grab my little stuffed penguin which was laying on my pillow, with my free hand.

And then, without hesitation, I jumped down on the grass and I looked up. On my left, the San Francisco skyline glowed beautifully in the dark, as well as the Golden Gate Bridge.

The security at the Blue Ripple Orphanage wasn’t amazing, but I knew they would discover I was gone by morning, so I slung my backpack over my shoulder, and clutching my stuffed penguin, I sped into the streetlight-illuminated, deserted unknown.

Perhaps you wonder why I didn’t pack my other pairs of shoes. That’s because I didn’t need to. I only had the ones that I was wearing. Orphanages are poor you know. 

Anyway, my seven-year-old, little self survived outside the building and houses I had ever known as “home”, only because luck became my bodyguard. 

The Footsteps followed me around too.

The “Footsteps” started following me on the night when I ran away years ago. I was terrified then, but I stood my ground. I wasn’t about to let my first few moments of freedom be ripped away from me, even if someone did want to hurt me. I guess you could say I was bold for my age, but to me, it wasn’t courage. It was more like a survival instinct. I didn’t want to go back to the orphanage or drift from foster home to foster home. I knew that if I stayed, I definitely would’ve grown up to become an angry and stupid female thug, wasting away on cigarettes, wearing dirty clothes, and selling weed, because that's what became of some of the older children, (the ones that survived the foster homes.) I knew this because I heard the adults at the orphanage talking about it plenty when they thought none of the kids cared to listen.  

But I wasn’t going to turn out like that. 

I was free, and I didn’t want anybody to take that away from me, ever. I didn’t want to follow anybody’s rules except my own, and I only had one, which was to simply not get caught.

In the end, nobody came out to kidnap me or anything. I don’t remember if I slept at all that night, but when I woke up in the morning, I was still in one piece, curled up under a big tree at the first park that showed up.

After That Night, the Footsteps didn’t follow me again, and so I convinced myself that perhaps if someone had been following me, it wasn’t on purpose, or that perhaps I had been more on edge that night than I had let on and no one had been out there but me. Thing is, once I began to walk around the city on my own, I began noticing a reflection of a young, pretty woman staring intently at me, whenever I passed by some window or glass door, and I never failed to hear the Footsteps, but when I turned around, I was never surprised that nobody that looked like that lady was ever there except tourists and native Californians going on about their day. 

 I grew a habit of walking up and down the streets, parks, school playgrounds, alleys, and parking lots I came across once I was allowed to explore my city without supervision. I could go just about anywhere I wanted to, whenever I wanted to, as long as I was careful and avoided everyone. I became very street smart, and I could run very fast when I needed to escape any potential and unfriendly dangers. 

I couldn’t even do online school, but I honestly didn’t mind. I had no friends, and of course, I accepted the fact that I would never have a true family. But I wasn’t homeless. Or guardianless. 

***

Mrs. Kopp is the one that has given me permanent hospitality all these years. She is a white, seventy-year-old, nice woman who recently started suffering from memory loss. I remember the day that she found me like it was yesterday.

She found me the morning after I ran away when I had woken up and walked to the other side of the park, down the hill, and sat near the lake. 

Nobody was at the park except me.

It was barely dawn.

Mrs. Kopp liked to wake up early for no reason but to go to the park and watch the sunrise, as the early birds tweeted their morning songs around her because she had nothing else to do. Her favorite, sky-watching spot was at the edge of the lake.

And so, on that fine morning, while I was rubbing the rest of the sleep from my eyes and shivering from the cool morning breeze, I heard a stick snap in half, and I immediately looked behind me.

I watched as Mrs. Kopp made her way down to the bottom of the hill to where I was. When she saw me, she waved in salute and smiled, but I didn’t wave or smile back. I was trying to figure out if this woman represented a danger, and in which direction I should run if I needed to. 

Mrs. Kopp got to the bottom of the hill and smiled at me again before sitting down almost right next to me. She wore an orange sleeveless shirt, blue jeans, and nice shoes, like a young mom.

She looked up at the sky and didn’t glance at me, but I kept looking at her from the corner of my eyes. She didn’t do anything threatening, however. She just watched the hues of the early sky get lighter and lighter.

A little while later I sneezed and Mrs. Kopp smiled down at me.

“Bless you,” she said.

“Thank you,” I responded. My voice sounded like a frog with the flu had learned how to talk. I felt my throat starting to hurt from the chill breeze. I glared at the fog that had come along with the cool, crisp air. 

Mrs. Kopp returned to her sky watching, but after a few seconds, she looked down at me again. “What’s your name darling?” She asked.

I hesitated before saying, “Adaliah”.

Mrs. Kopp nodded and said, “That’s a very pretty name. I had never heard of it before.”

Before I could respond, she said, “Are your parents here at the park?”

I sneezed again before answering. “No, I don’t have parents”.

Mrs. Kopp wrinkled her forehead. It reminded me of a Shar-Pei.

“What do you mean? You’re here by yourself? Do you not have any family?” She asked.

I glanced up at the sky. It was mostly blue by now, with a few small clouds here and there that were beginning to turn a rich white. I could hear the roar of morning traffic coming from everywhere.

I pulled up my legs and hugged them to my chest. I looked to the side, opposite Mrs. Kopp, and looked down at my little backpack laying in the grass, which was filled with hardly anything.

“No”, I mumbled. “I don’t have a family or home”.

Without her asking me to, I told Mrs. Kopp my entire life story, up to how I had just run away the night before.

When I was finished, I kept staring at my backpack, and then my eyes burst with tears. I tried to cry quietly, so Mrs. Kopp wouldn’t notice, but she scooted over right next to me, and then she gently hugged me.

“I don’t have any family either”, Mrs. Kopp said to me, “but I do have a home, and I would be more than happy to take care of you. I promise I’m not a bad person, and I won’t take you to the cops or back to an orphanage. I’ll be your new foster parent. No one has to know.”

I sniffed and wiped my tears away. “You don’t have a family either?” I croaked. 

Mrs. Kopp shook her head. “My parents died from the flu when I was a teenager, so I went to go live with a cousin who was an adult already, but then she died in a car accident once I started to work. About a year later, I met my soulmate, but my husband died in the Marines, and a few days later, I...I had my little boy, but he died before I could name him”. Mrs. Kopp looked so torn apart, I stopped crying.

“I’m sorry”, I said, as I put my little hand on top of hers.

Mrs. Kopp seemed to be daydreaming but then her vision focused on me and she gave me a small smile as she squeezed my hand.

“So how about it?” Mrs. Kopp asked me. “Will you accept my invitation?”

My heart started beating fast. Not from fear, but because this couldn’t be real. Me, who was never adopted while I was at the Blue Ripple Orphanage, living with a seemingly nice person who was a tad like me?

“Would you really let me live with you even though we’re strangers to each other?” I asked Mrs. Kopp with big eyes.

Her gray eyes shone with an intensity I hadn’t understood at that time as they lingered on my brown ones. I got the strange notion that I was kin to her somehow and that she was thinking the same thing. 

Salty, ocean wind punched me, danced in front of my nose, and raced off before I had time to react. 

“Of course,” Mrs. Kopp said softly. 

She gave me a big smile as she stood up and extended her hand out to me. I stared up at her for a moment before grabbing my backpack and grabbing her hand with my free one. She pulled me to my feet, and then she smiled down at me again as she led me away from the lake, the park, and towards my new life.

I looked up at the sky again. It had turned completely blue with a few puffy, giant cotton balls gliding quietly above the Californians that had already begun their day.

Nobody paid much attention to Mrs. Kopp and me, as we made our way down the palm-lined street. Everyone was busy doing something. 

Mrs. Kopp led me across the street, another two blocks down away from the park, and then we turned right and into a beautiful neighborhood. 

All of the houses had big, lush, green front yards, with palm trees decorating their properties, and there was a generous amount of space between each house, making them look like mini-tropical mansions. 

Mrs. Kopp led me inside the first house. I watched as she pulled the blinds to let in the little sunlight that got through the morning fog, and then I began eyeing everything in the house. Mrs. Kopp seemed nice, but she was still a stranger and I needed to know her better to know what kind of person she was. I hoped she was a good person, so I could stay. If she wasn’t, I needed to immediately start planning how I would escape.

Mrs. Kopp told me she was going to make breakfast, and that I could watch TV while I waited.

Breakfast was served shortly after that, and after I had washed my hands, Mrs. Kopp picked me up and placed me on top of the tall bar stool that was in the kitchen, so I could eat on the counter since she didn’t have a dining table. 

Mrs. Kopp had made strawberry cheesecake pancakes, which I had never had before, with a small glass of orange juice. After the first bite, I wolfed down my pancake, and when Mrs. Kopp asked me if I wanted more, I gladly ate another one. It was a simple breakfast, but it tasted wonderful.

By the time we were done eating, I had a big smile on my face and so did Mrs. Kopp. 

She cleared our dishes and put them in the sink to wash later, and then she walked me to the bathroom, where she fished around for a brand new toothbrush and toothpaste for me to use.

At the Blue Ripple Orphanage, everybody used one of the three tubes of toothpaste there was, but at least we all had our own toothbrushes, but living with so many kids, some of them probably used my toothbrush a bunch of times and I never knew.

After I was done brushing my teeth the best I had ever brushed them, Mrs. Kopp taught me how to use a floss pick to gently floss my teeth. This was new to me. I don’t think my teeth had ever looked and felt this good. I smiled at myself in the mirror.

I walked back to the kitchen where Mrs. Kopp was washing the dishes. She told me to go ahead and walk around the house and explore.

I nodded and walked down the bland, white hallway to the first room I found. Inside there was a big bookshelf on the far wall, a small round table and a chair by the window on the left of the bookshelf, and an even smaller desk on the opposite side of the room, with a computer on top, and a low but long drawer next to it. I opened one of the drawers and inside were a bunch of newspapers. I opened another one and there was what seemed to be Mrs. Kopp’s receipts. Another drawer was full of magazines, another one with coupons, and the rest were filled with papers that I did not care to read, for I couldn’t understand the big and complicated words written on every page.

It was obviously some type of workroom, although study room was a more accurate term. Since Mrs. Kopp was an old woman, I didn’t think she studied anything, but maybe she wasn’t retired yet.

I walked out and into the next room. This one was Mrs. Kopp’s bedroom. I could tell, because it had a king-sized bed, a closet full of female clothes and shoes, and it even had a small bathroom next to the closet. No bathtub, of course.

I liked how all the rooms, even the bathroom, had short, but very soft, gray carpet. I reached down and rubbed my hand against the floor. It was like stroking a fluffy animal.

The last room was empty, but unlike the rest of the house, which had white walls and ceilings, this one was cyan all over, which happened to be my favorite color. It was beautiful.

I got teased plenty of times by the other girls because my favorite color wasn’t pink or purple. They said I was a tomboy. They said girls shouldn’t like hues of blues and greens, and such, that only boys liked them.

The first time I was called a tomboy, I cried. I didn’t like to be teased. But as I grew a little older I realized that I shouldn’t be ashamed that I wasn’t all that girly. Society, I observed at my young age, was judgy and dumb. They always made others feel bad for no good reason, and that just made them ugly people.

I looked around at the empty room and touched one of the cyan walls as if trying to feel a heartbeat. I closed my eyes and sighed. I eventually made myself walk away.

The bathroom I had already seen, but I went inside anyway. It was nothing fancy but I breathed in the good smell coming from the rose soap and shampoo.

I had also already seen the kitchen and the living room. The kitchen was very ample, and it was clean and organized, (I hoped Mrs. Kopp could cook other things as tasty as this morning’s strawberry cheesecake pancakes) and there were little objects everywhere in the living room. I assumed Mrs. Kopp just wanted to make it more interesting. I picked up a small glass dolphin and smiled. 

Right then, Mrs. Kopp came out from the kitchen, drying her hands, and smiled at me.

“Are you done exploring, sweetie?” She asked.

I put the dolphin down, looked out the window, and then back at her. “Yes, ma’am”. “You have a nice house”.

“You haven’t been back out yet, have you?” Mrs. Kopp asked.

“Nope”, I responded.

She led me to the far side of the kitchen, slid the glass door open, and I walked into a paradise.

Mrs. Kopp’s backyard was dotted with beautiful flowers. There was a pool in the middle, and a pool chair next to it, under a big beach umbrella. There was a small vegetable garden in a corner, with a decent-sized flamingo fountain next to it. Water gushed out of the flamingo’s beak. Diagonal from the vegetable garden, next to the house, there were two palm trees, with a hammock between them. Mrs. Kopp’s house was probably considered average, but she sure did have the prettiest backyard, and it seemed very big because of the fountain and pool.

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “It’s all so pretty!” 

Mrs. Kopp laughed. “Yes, this is where I spend most of my time, nowadays, because I like to tend to my vegetable garden”, she said. 

A golden retriever pup, which I hadn’t noticed before, got up from its spot next to the flamingo fountain, bounded over, and sat in front of me.

After Mrs. Kopp reassured me that it was okay to pet Sunny, I pet Sunny and she licked my hand.

I giggled.

“I like your dog”, I said.

“Why thank you”, Mrs. Kopp said. “I actually got Sunny about a week ago because my first dog died from old age and I was feeling very blue”.

My first dog died. Just like her husband, her son, her parents, and her cousin.  A widow with no family but a dog. At least now she had me as well.

“I’m sorry”, I whispered.

Mrs. Kopp didn’t respond. She just stared at the horizon with an empty look on her face.

     Later that day, Mrs. Kopp took me shopping, but not before I had a makeover, and it wasn’t until it was dusk that we went back to her house. 

     I had told her that she shouldn’t buy me so many things, that I didn’t deserve it and everything, but Mrs. Kopp told me that she had saved a lot of money over the years and that she didn’t know how to spend it, since she had always lived with only a dog as company and didn’t travel anywhere, so she was more than happy to buy me what seemed more than necessary.  

    I was to have the cyan room as my bedroom, which was awesome and everything, but I was worried about making Mrs. Kopp sad since this was supposed to be her son’s bedroom, God rest his soul.

     Late that night, after we ate dinner and I had brushed my teeth again, and flossed, I hugged Mrs. Kopp in my brand new pajamas, thanked her, and cried as she held me to her chest. 

     We went to my room, and she read me one of the books she had bought for me for my bedtime story. 

     After Mrs. Kopp had left me, supposedly sleeping, I stared at the led lights that Mrs. Kopp had hung up around my room so I wouldn’t be scared to be by myself in the dark and cried again. 

     I had never felt so happy and comfortable in my life before. I did a good job of not crying too loud, as to not wake up Mrs. Kopp, but I cried for a while. All of this felt like a fantasy. I just hoped this sudden good luck of mine would last for as long as possible. 

As I grew older, I got a ton of freedom, peace, and love. Mrs. Kopp was the biggest blessing of my life. I felt like she truly was family after just a matter of days. Of course, because Mrs. Kopp had not actually adopted me, I could not go to school, or register for one online. Adoption papers were a long and tedious process, and I didn’t want to risk getting Mrs. Kopp in trouble for not turning me in right away, so I was more than okay about living with her in secret. 

     Her neighbors never seemed to be home,  but Mrs. Kopp kept me inside the house or in the backyard at all times after the second day of me living with her, because we knew the cops were on the lookout, trying to find me. We saw it on the news. It’s not like I never went out, but both Mrs. Kopp and I kept a low profile whenever we did go out together. 

My favorite place to chill was in the pool, not in the morning, but at night, long before curfew passed, when a few stars would poke out and twinkle their hellos down at me. I would always make sure Sunny was laying in the grass next to me, because it was not uncommon for crocodiles to place their big, ugly, selves in the front and back yards of Californian houses, or at least in the ones that had pools, and if I unfortunately ever met one up close, Sunny would at least raise hell so Mrs. Kopp would know that we were in danger.

Mrs. Kopp made sure I was always entertained, fed, happy, and safe.

Her doorbell rarely rang.

It wasn’t until I turned twelve that I was allowed to go anywhere I wanted by myself because by then we were completely sure nobody would recognize me as the little girl that had disappeared from the Blue Ripple Orphanage, years ago.

The cops gave up their search for me after the first year. 

Oh, I know what you’re thinking, “this girl is a liar, she didn’t go to school and she lived with a stranger in secret for six years?”

Yes, but the truth is, I did go to school. Sort of.

Mrs. Kopp did her best to homeschool me, and I read books and did math problems every day to keep my skills sharp. She even taught me how to type like a pro. I wasn’t sure how Mrs. Kopp knew so much, but I was grateful nevertheless. We usually used her workroom as my little, private classroom.

With Mrs. Kopp’s computer and books, we covered history, math, science, geography, literacy, music, and art. I mastered many skills in no time. Mrs. Kopp praised me often, telling me that I would be the best student in my class if I had gone to school. 

Over the years I grieved and grieved for my parents, no matter how many times I told myself that I was stupid. Whoever they were, they had left me in a parking lot like I was trash. Like seriously, who throws their baby away? No doubt Karma would pay them a special visit eventually, and then they would be so sorry they ever left me. I wondered if they were dead, or where they were, or if they ever thought about me, but I bet they never did. 

And that’s pretty much how I spent those six years of my life. In some ways, everything was a little too perfect, as if God was keeping an eye on me at all times. Mrs. Kopp never did anything threatening or creepy, and ever since the day she found me, we formed a strong bond.

Nobody would ever take us away from each other. Each other was all we had in this big, unjustified, world.