Day 16) Write a monologue for the character you developed

If the name Clint Blackwell doesn’t sour your stomach, you must not be his daughter.

I should know. I am.

I wouldn’t have had to ever think about Clint Joel Blackwell again had it not been for needing to get my marriage license, which ended up being another mistake in its own right.

On a rainy Wednesday I had to take time off of work, which was pain enough because I was always short on hours, and head up to the ghetto social security office to change my name.

The middle class government worker didn’t even peel her Coke bottle glasses from the screen to look me in the eye as she interrogated me.

“Father’s full name?”

“Clint Joel Blackwell,” I spat out. My eyes like steel and my voice taunt.

“And your mother’s maiden name?”

“Leigh-Ann Rose Wood,” I said with a softer voice. My momma had such a pretty name – sweet like a flower, strong like an oak.

“And the name you’d like to change to?”

“Courtney Wood Montgomery,” my married name still felt strange on my tongue.

Moments later I emerged from the office with a green slip in my hand assuring me that my real social security card would be in the mail, but that I should treat this slip like the real thing in the meantime. I could have cared less about that green slip. My mind had long sense wandered into the past, where Clint Joel Blackwell was still very much a vivid figure in my memory.

It wasn’t a place I wanted to be.