Free Best Girl by Sylvia Warsh Page A

trusted to do hers. She liked to change her hair color with the season. I dyed it a streaky blond for the summer.
    Then I pulled the rug out from under her feet. Without telling her, I registered for an apprentice job at a salon in Yorkville where the customers had style. I had to take classes in a hair school for a couple of hours a week too. The boss liked me and printed out some business cards with my name. Shelley was mad, but impressed with the cards and the snazzy address.
    I hadn’t told her ahead of time because I knew it would be a hassle. She’d yell and call me ungrateful. Maybe I was. But I wanted more than Shelley’s salon. She was really mad when I moved out—but hey, I was twenty-three! Now that I was making my own money, I could afford a studio apartment near the subway. I was so out of there. Couldn’t live with her anymore—she was a control freak. Okay, so we both had control issues. Even so, last month I came to her shop on a Sunday to dye her hair mauve-red for the fall (her choice). She was almost fifty but looked good for her age.

    But back to the phone call. A woman named Diane called, asking for Amanda Jane Moss. That was me.
    â€œYou don’t know me,” she said. “I was a friend of your mother’s. She was a good person.”
    â€œHow do you know Shelley?”
    â€œI mean your real mother.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œShe asked me to give you something. Can I come by this afternoon?”
    â€œThere’s some mistake. My mother died twenty years ago.”
    â€œIs your birthday December third, nineteen eighty-six?”
    â€œHow d’you know?”
    â€œYour mother told me. Her name was Carol Allan. You were born Amanda Allan. You were adopted by Shelley and Stephen Moss. Carol…your mother and I worked together. We were friends.”
    I was speechless. This was the first time I’d heard my birth mother’s name. Shelley always said the agency wouldn’t tell her who my parents were, only that they had died in a crash.
    Then she said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you—Carol died last week. It was cancer. I’m so sorry.” There was a pause. “Please tell Shelley.”
    In a daze, I gave her my address. Why did my mother give me away? She was alive all this time! It was like a knife in my chest. I could’ve met her.
    It was Monday, so I had the day off. I stewed for half an hour, getting madder and madder. Then I called Shelley.
    â€œYou liar!”
    â€œWhat’re you talking about?”
    â€œYou lied to me! About my mother.”
    I felt the shock over the phone. I knew her too well. After my father left for the last time, there were just the two of us.
    â€œWho told you that?”
    â€œNobody you know.”
    â€œYou talked to someone…”
    â€œShe was alive all these years and you didn’t want me to meet her.”
    â€œNo, no, that’s not true. You don’t understand…I…I was trying to protect you.”
    â€œWhy did you lie to me?”
    â€œThere are some things…better not to know.”
    That was just like her. “I’ll never meet her now.”
    â€œWhat’re you talking about?”
    â€œShe’s dead.”
    A long pause. “It’s better that way.”
    â€œThat’s a horrible thing to say.”
    â€œBelieve me…”
    â€œI’ll never forgive you.”
    I heard a sharp intake of breath. Good.
    â€œI didn’t tell you because—she was evil.”
    I slammed down the phone.

    Diane showed up at my door, a worn-out woman around forty who must have been pretty once. She wore a rain jacket over her jeans and carried a black canvas tote bag in one hand, her purse in the other. Nice hair—kind of a pageboy dyed chestnut. She stared at me as if she’d seen a ghost.
    â€œWow, you look just like your mother. When she was young, I mean.”
    I asked her in, nervous and excited