My story really starts when I first met Quest, but you won’t
be able to understand any of it unless I back up to the beginning before my
meeting him. My friend Meryl says that beginnings are the hardest thing to
write about because you are never quite sure where the story really began. I
mean does my story begin at my birth or conception? Or is it even further back
with how my parents first met; do I look back to what made them make the
monumental decision to marry and have me? Someone could well go crazy trying to
figure out how far back a story goes. Of course, Meryl tells me from over his
forgotten spectacles, that the real stories start at the source. It’s like an
inside joke for us, knowing that the source is really The Source, but to anyone
else trying to write this, The Source has no concrete tangible meaning. It is
enough to know that I came directly from The Source, even though I was born
like almost everyone else from the coupling of parents.
My name is
Vanessa Isabelle Merce Masters, “Vimm” for short, the only daughter of Tybalt
Alexander Masters and Helen Maria Washington. I have a brother, Steven Richard. My father is
of African American descent and my mother is Caucasian, English and some Scot
as well. It is an odd mix even with my father’s light skin for a “black” man
and my mother’s paleness. They stand in contrast to each other. Tybalt is the
result of a mixed pairing as well which explains his complexion. His own father
was a college educated man who saw himself as an outcast from the rest of his
people because of his enlightenment and he met and married my grandmother Ridhi
while on his pilgrimage to Mecca when he got
sidetracked and ended up in Bali . That’s what
he likes to tell me anyway, he was trying out Islam and settled for Buddhism instead.
My mother
met my father at Harvard when he tutored her in Shakespeare, which has been a
family joke ever since. If you don’t see that irony, I am not going to explain
it. In fact, you had best just find another book to read since the wit continues
throughout. Anyway, mom fell for dad’s prose and charm. Her parents were at
first shocked and appalled when she first brought him home. But he grew on them
and they came to accept him and his parents as well. At least that is what they
chose to tell me about it, I suspect it wasn’t all that smooth a transition for
any of them. They all get along now, though sometimes it is just creepy how
well they do.
My parents
like to call me Merce (pronounced “Mercy”). Where they came up with that name
is beyond me, but they liked it as well as all the others. They would only use
my full name when introducing me formally at church or whenever I got them mad
or flustered. Then mom would yell my name while raising her hands to the
heavens as if pleading with God to come down and sort me out Himself. Religion,
by the way, is the one thing in my family that no one agrees on. Dad is an
atheist or agnostic whenever the mood hits him, usually when he is almost ready
to swear but isn’t alone. Mom is stuck between being an Episcopalian and a
universalist. Her parents are hard line Episcopalians while Dad’s are settled
on being Buddhists. So everyone puts a lot of pressure on me in assuring me not
to be pressured into one faith or the other or lack there of. Frankly I haven’t
decided yet.
I was born
in Queens, that’s in New York City
for those of you who are from around here. However, I only know of it from
visits there to see my grandparents on my dad’s side. We moved to Fall’s Creek,
Virginia when
I was two so dad could take up teaching at the university near there. Mom
became an editor for the Creek Herald newspaper shortly after arriving.
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