My name is Lucrecia Borgia but I tell everyone to call me “Lucy” because of all the bad publicity my infamous forebears made with their devious ways. In fact, I don’t even think of myself as being Italian because my mama is 100% Puerto Rican and she speaks Spanish much better than English.

I don’t feel too bad about having a disastrous name because when I get married I will have a regular last name like other normal people and I will just say my first name is “Lucy”.

I was the butt of a lot of “poison” jokes in school and it really rankled me having to defend my family’s honor all the time.

I think because of my long black hair and the fact that I tended to adapt a sort of Goth style persona that others were put off from getting very close to me. Despite my brittle exterior, I was really a very sensitive female with some very challenging esteem issues.

In my senior year, we moved to another city because my mom lost her job at the manufacturing plant downtown. She worked as a “secretary” but I think she was more of an office organizer making sure everyone was paying attention to the right things. The fact that she was fluent in Spanish made her important to the management because she could relate to all of the workers out on the work floor.

My dad was still in a prison in another state for being involved in a gambling operation that spanned several states including the District of Columbia. He could have gotten a reduced sentence if he “ratted out” on other participants but he kept his mouth shut. Mom was sort of ticked off but she got the job at the plant and things stayed pretty normal. She visited him once a month but it seemed like she was always a little bit sadder after the visit.

I really liked the new city and the new school.

I removed a facial piercing and cut my earrings down to just one in each ear and started wearing a bit more colorful clothing. I felt that I was “fitting in” a lot better now and was able to converse and laugh with other boys and girls my own age. Everyone called me “Lucy” and they pretty much didn’t have any idea about the old time “Borgia’s.”

One boy in my new school was called Tomas with the emphasis on the second syllable because he was mostly Mexican with a little Indian blood on his Mama’s side of the family. Tomas was real cute and he was always polite with me even when we were alone. I had this urge to get to know him a lot better but he told me that he was thinking of entering the priesthood and wasn’t supposed to be getting physically close to girls and besides “It was a sin!”

I thought it was a real shame because he had nice looking narrow hips and his shoulders were wide and very muscular.

When he finished his field and track workouts, I talked him into letting me give him some nice neck and shoulder massages. I am ashamed to admit that when I was running my fingers all over his dark brown skin, I could feel my insides quiver and I had this sensation of something funny going on down below. Usually, when I was alone in my room, I would lie on my bed and fantasize about us “doing it” nice and slow in tall grass where no one could see what we were doing. I loved the way my heart beat so fast and my breathing got all short and heavy until I got that nice feeling inside and I felt all relaxed and calm.

My mom was working in a restaurant now and she was making real good money on tips. I found a job in a funeral parlor doing a lot of odd jobs like arranging the flowers and setting up the chairs and ushering in the family and friends of the “recently departed.” Mr. Sullivan told me it was always necessary to refer to the dead people as recently departed. Usually the stiffs were older people and it seemed all normal and just the way of things. Sometimes, the recently departed were young people and it seemed so strange to see them laying there all peaceful and reposed. I felt real sad for the young ones and I wondered what they would miss out on with their lives cut short like that.

Because of my Goth background, which nobody suspected, I was real comfortable around the funeral parlor and felt an attachment to the bodies that were processed through our rooms. We even had a neat crematorium that got rid of the remains and the coffin at the same time. One of my jobs was to see the next of kin got the ashes in one of our low-priced cardboard boxes or one of the up-grade urns for keeping in memorial inside the home. I kind of felt well-suited to this chore because I liked to comfort the bereaved next-of-kin even though I was a complete stranger.