My name is lana I once believed that everything happens because fate wills it. Today I'm not so sure about it anymore.

My mother was HIV positive. I didn't know what that meant before, but one day when my mother coughed badly, I realized it. Her mouth was red. Her hands were red. Everything was red. AIDS in the terminal stages. The purple came straight from her mouth. She coughed up her life. Then she was dead. To me she would be forever.

However, my father saw it differently. He hardly cared about his or my basic needs - he made sure with his uselessly long fingers that we got nothing. Neither to eat nor to sleep - not to mention a place to stay.

The last neighbors, who basically did not like to be robbed - certainly not from a colored tramp and his underage brat - returned the favor by smoking out our hut, "the thimble", as mother lovingly called it. We were left with nothing but ashes.

I tearfully forced my father to disappear, to continue somewhere else, but today I think about what if I had just left him and laid me wrong. Would we be redeemed now? Would I be with my mother then?

I did not know it. Never. Neither when my father had a new wife to betray her in the same breath with dozens of women, nor when he narrowly escaped death in his last coup. With every step my father took after being my mother, I always thought: 'That's it - that's it'

My father was a rascal and looked at every woman with the eyes of an owner. He never showed them so much respect and affection as he did with my mother. I was lucky. I was wanted. I was a love child.

To live up to my name one day, Father had asked around the neighborhood. Money. Everything should take its regular course because of money, reputation, rum and long-term basic needs.

Everything - that was the arrangement with the present Don Karlos. I never found out his real name, but he spoke Spanish - always to. Mother had read from the book to me. The book about Spanish history. Don Karlos was the victim and mastermind behind it all. Although the author raised him to a higher podium than the other protagonists, he ultimately had to succumb to mortality - "tragic hero", mother called him tearfully on our last reading evening. Mother loved this book. Every night I wept for the ashes that the book had become. It was our most precious asset and a silent secret between mother and me. Father never knew of the existence of this book. He would have immediately degraded it to alcohol or jewelry, which made him want to appear well-heeled with the neighbors - wanted, but not able to.

Don Karlos of my time was supposed to shuffle the cards that fate had willingly placed in his hands. My cards.He was doing his job well when he came into town when he surprised my father in a meager coup and father finally came to our house with him. Father had actually wanted to steal from him that night, but Karlos wasn't a Don for nothing - the Don par excellence.

He beat Father at his own gun.
"Give me your daughter - or I'll tear your throat open."

I asked to suppress my whimpering. I crouched in my rags like an embryo, hoping the smell of urine and rubbish that prevailed in our humble, holey hut, furrowed by maggots and weather, would make me swoon, make me completely forgotten, block out that I was has only just stayed on earth for twelve lunar cycles and has been ostracized by a strange confidante and a familiar stranger for the benefit of the estate. If there was someone up there, why didn't he suddenly let the hut catch fire? Why didn't Don Karlos slip the knife out of his hand? Why did father lose his boldness at that very moment to laugh loudly in death's face?

How so?

Power and powerlessness.

My father lost the former that night. Power over me, over himself - over his life.
I succumbed to the latter until the end when Karlos took me out of the shabby hut, carried me like a bride through the tiny collection of much shabby huts and set me down on the ground in a dark corner. Gentle, far too gentle.

He looked down at me as if I were the pie on the silver dishes - as if I were lying on a silver platter and not on a muddy, rubbish and excrement-infested floor whose peat could only be guessed at.
Tears ran down my face and silently streaked my sooty skin.
"Don't - don't - be quiet, my lovely girl," he dared, with gentle certainty, forcing my heart to leap forward with joy.
As much as I feared this man, as much as I knew why he had taken me here, I couldn't be angry with the warmth and kindness with which he rewarded me. I was just a little girl after all. I was the child of love. The daughter of hope. I thought that if I shut my eyes tightly, if I thought of something beautiful and remembered the beloved and lifeless emeralds gently framed by the onyx-colored waves, then the goblet would surely pass me by.
'Everything is fine - everything will be fine. ', my mantra that night, in which Karlos' took his bride who never dares' the innocence and childhood.

Don Karlos made sure that I would never be "the child of love" again. He got what he wanted. He was ruthless and insatiable - harassed me more than this once. Then he ran away - left me poorer than ever. No money, no reputation, no fame for my father. Father had put everything on one card and he had lost heavily. He had failed all along the line. We switched roles.

On the first morning of my adulthood, I followed in the footsteps of my father, who no longer dared leave the house."Lost face", with that he talked himself out of the predicament - this impostor on two legs that were far too healthy. So instead of saving face, he was trying to clean up the mess - he was sorting out the mess; a pointless undertaking, but each his own. It was my destiny to roam the streets of Missionvales from now on looking for material that could keep us alive - at least temporarily.

After maybe a week - I had completely lost my sense of time - I turned out to be a real talent when it came to "stealing and robbing". I sowed discord between neighbors - friends for the purpose became bitter rivals to the blood; now "when two people quarrel, the third is happy", as is well known. I procured the necessary tools, associated with dodgy characters and even cut myself "the rays of the sun" - this is how mom always called my hair, which nestled in playful waves on my face, shoulders and back. I never gave out my real name. Better still, I mingled with underground society as a boy.

I soon made a name for myself. I was the phantom to everyone. Nobody knew who I really was or where I came from - but they recognized a connection between the shoplifter Josh, the thief Jerome and the great big Dan. They saw through me, but they couldn't prove anything, attach anything. I remained a riddle on two legs that merged with the shadows and swept away as fast as the wind.

I liked the feeling of control. The standards it brought with it - meals, sleeping space, order - too. I did not become more careful, but I became more comfortable. My doom.

"Who are you trying to fool, little girl?"

How many times had I wished to hear this question from my father's mouth? How much do I wish it was my mother who angrily wanted to know? How often have I wished it was the higher power up there caring about my well-being? But no parents, no impotent power from up there stood in front of me with folded arms and sparkling cat eyes. I was very surprised. I had never seen such big eyes in the opposite sex. It felt like after years of searching I had struck gold. The sight broke something in me.

A decision that had long since been made subconsciously ripened like the apple of discord.
Happiness and unhappiness sought their way out through the eyes and the lips.
I broke the years of silence through dimples and tears on my face.

"Your eyes are beautiful.", I whispered to my counterpart, stepping back further as he held the pale moon-lit blade to my throat for relief.

"Give me what I want - otherwise I'll cut your throat."
I smiled forgivingly. "I'm afraid you will be late. Don Karlos has already turned me into an adult - I can no longer offer you that privilege, as much as I wanted to." To confirm this, I held both of his hands, which were shaped like hollow bowls, opposite. Empty."Don't talk that shit! You damn dirty bitch! Don't talk! Silence! Do you hear? He was angry because I had thwarted his plans too often and too well.
I had always dusted off the best booty on the nightly forays - for him there was a meager side dish - the consolation prize. Who better to understand how he might be feeling than the arch-rival himself?
"I understand you. You have to ease this burden on your shoulders and in your soul." I raised my hands in a good manner. "I will help you with this if you allow me?"
He did not say anything. The knife hit the floor with a clang.
Here the light was dim. A garbage can bursting with filth supported my back. We were only a few centimeters apart. I carefully put mine in his hands.
"Do what you have to do - I'll keep quiet," I assured him.
After a little hesitation, he did. Without regard to losses. He branded me. He let out his frustration on me, drove me to the desperation he felt, he made his suffering mine and didn't believe in kid gloves or sensitivity.
Bleeding, drained and battered, he left me - the scum that lay before his throne - that was me in my last moments on earth in front of the garbage can.

For the first time I understood the hopelessness of my life. I suddenly knew that as soon as I was born it would lose its meaning. Nobody could save my mother. Nobody could cure my father. Nobody could purify me. But who had made me believe in a ray of hope?

Was it death who wanted to clear his guilty conscience because he knew from the start that he would be able to lay me in my cold clutches forever? The death that my beloved mother would bring back to