A small framed picture of Mom, Bennett, my newborn baby sister, and me. In the picture I held out the stuffed velveteen rabbit that my dad had given me when I was first born, now out there somewhere in the world keeping my little sister company. She would be seven years old now. I wondered if she still had the rabbit, or if it had ended up in a landfill somewhere. I wondered if Bennett wondered about her every day like I did, or if Mom guarded her from heaven.

Thoughts of reconnecting with my sibling, of finding Felicity Portman, flittered in and out of my head often. Just to see my sister. Just to make sure she was okay. Every day I resisted it. Every day I shut off the voice. Every day the voice reminded me that it would only cause more devastation than good if I sought her out.

Sometimes I wasn’t so good at listening to that voice.

Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Marin

Five years ago…

Los Angeles, California, chewed me up and spit me out like a wad of tasteless gum. It was mortifying, going on endless dehumanizing casting calls and being treated like a piece of meat, getting rejected over and over because I wasn’t the right type—too young, too old; too cute, not cute enough; and yeah, even too Black, not Black enough. One callback for a speaking part as a police dispatcher wouldn’t pay the bills, but that two-line role at least earned me a lone credit on IMDb. Even the competition for background actors was fierce. After getting a handful of jobs as an extra—and pay bumps for providing my own clothes and, a time or two, miscellaneous props—I couldn’t pay my astronomical rent. Reality set in. The dream popped.

I hadn’t expected instant fame, though maybe deep down I had. Every wannabe actress clung desperately to the fantasy of being discovered, of basking in the limelight. We expected the unexpected. I fantasized about seeing my face thirty feet tall on the silver screen. My name above the title—that’s how you know you’ve really made it. The press referring to me as the next Kerry Washington. Entertainment Weekly calling me for an interview and photo shoot—talk to my people, ha ha! Except I never got discovered. I never got my limelight. I had wanted it hard, but not hard enough.

I returned home to Pennsylvania with my tail between my legs and only one person on my mind. The baby who was no longer a baby. My sister.