It wasn’t always mansions and hot cars and partying with the “it” girls and boys. Before all that, I was about as white trash as it got, living in a trailer with my mom and sister, barely getting by on food stamps. Well, to be more precise, it was my mom, my sister, and my mom’s string of shitty boyfriends she paraded through the trailer, the ones that beat up on her, beat up on us.
A few of them did more than just beat up on us.
Not that she was any better. If anything, she was worse than any of them, at least to me. I was the scapegoat.
And she was still part of my life, out in Malibu, living in a place I paid for.
Fate is sometimes cruel, but not to the people it should be cruel toward.
Everything changed when I was discovered, sitting on a curb in my tattered sundress, with my skinned knees and bruised arms, my limbs browned from a mixture of sun and dirt. I was barefoot not because it was summer, but because someone had stolen my shoes at school and we couldn’t afford another pair. My sister and I had been looking for loose change on the sidewalk, scrounging around to see if we could get together enough for a soda after school, but really just buying time away from the trailer because mom was inside with one of her boyfriends and it wasn’t safe to go home.
~
He pulled up near the curb, in a shiny black car that looked like it belonged to a millionaire. He stepped out, and when he paused as he walked by me, looking down at me over the edge of his sunglasses, I thought I was looking at a prince or a king or something. This man was someone important, someone special.
And, as it turned out, he wasn't a prince or a king. But he was someone special.
He looked at me for a long time, my face reddening under his gaze, then squatted down to look me in the eye. “Is this your sister?” he asked me.
I nodded, too shy to speak.
“You’re going to have to say something,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“River,” I said.
He smiled and nodded. “It’s perfect,” he said, and stood up. “You’re perfect. Abso-fucking-lutely perfect. Where are your parents?”
“My mom’s at home,” I said. “Her boyfriend’s there.”
He just nodded, didn’t say a word for a minute, and I sat there on the curb, rolling a pebble around underneath my foot.
Then he cleared his throat. “When’s the last time you kids ate?” he asked.
I shrugged. I was used to being hungry. Had I eaten breakfast? I couldn’t remember. “Last night?” I asked.
“Where do people eat around here?” he asked.
~
The rest was history. The man was an major Hollywood producer and, cleaned up, I became the darling of one of his films. The first of many films. And my life became a carefully crafted Cinderella story, one that glossed over the more sordid details of my childhood, at least in the more reputable magazines. Every so often, the tabloids tried to dredge up details of the past-to interview one of my mom’s old boyfriends or talk to someone from my hometown. But mostly, they let me play the role of fairytale princess, the girl who was plucked from obscurity and swept up into Hollywood glamour.
It was supposed to be roses and sunshine, designer shoes and expensive champagne for the rest of my life. That was the fantasy. That was what people wanted when they looked at me-they wanted to believe in the power of fate, in the suggestion of possibility-that they too might be whisked away from their lives into the castle to live with a prince.
It was the reason that my wedding, the live broadcast to millions of viewers, was such a big deal. I’d grown up in front of cameras-and now I’d be married in front of them too.
Inside the hotel room, I opened a box of hair dye, a dark brown color I selected at the drugstore where I’d made a pit stop to buy pajamas and toiletries, my fingers lingering on the box of fuchsia I’d briefly considered, my whole body longing for a change. I wanted to be something else, someone other than the person I had become.
But in the end I chose sensible brown, something that wouldn’t call attention to me.
I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing, here in a hotel, dyeing my hair like I was some kind of fugitive. I needed to turn around and face things. I needed to go back home. I just wasn’t sure where home was anymore.
After I finished the dye job, I raised the scissors to my hair, snipping at the long tresses, now brown instead of blonde, a huge part of my identity.
My image was polished, classic-the past few years, I’ve been compared to Grace Kelly. The thing was, I'd always empathized more with Marilyn Monroe. She was tragic, her demons so much a part of her that they eventually destroyed her.
That was something I could understand.
The pieces fell into the sink, curling at the ends, scattering on the flat surface of the countertop. I chopped with the scissors until I resembled something I hoped was more pixie-punk than cut-by-a-lawnmower.
When I was finished, I surveyed my work in the mirror. The girl looking back at me, all big eyes and suddenly prominent cheekbones, looked nothing like the “me” I knew. At a glance, I was starkly different. I thought I would be able to pass undetected in a public place.