But again, nothing was normal about this day….

‘Six degrees of separation,’ ‘ships in the night,’ ‘when worlds collide’ are expressions heard all the time, expressions that people seldom give much thought to unless something off course happens, like running into next door neighbors, from the suburbs, on a Hawaiian vacation that neither knew the other was taking.

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Corinthian Brown was ‘in trouble,’ even before he was born….one of those people who never had a chance.  His mother was a crack whore who gave birth to him under a bridge in Harlem among the filth and debris of multiple lives gone to shame.  She was fifteen and had not known she was pregnant.  It would not have mattered, as she was too deep in the drug to care or react.  Her death 20 minutes later went unheralded, as well.  The cops found her on a sweep of the area in search of a suspect from a liqueur store robbery.  It was handled routinely.  Overworked cops did not spend time on locating the families of junkies, even one, so obviously young; the new born baby just complicated things.  It was Christmas Eve and it was cold and starting to snow.  The young cop, fresh from the academy, cut the umbilical cord and wrapped the baby in his leather jacket, cleaned the air ways and waited in anticipation for the expected cry of life.  It came and it was a wail.  The baby boy opened his eyes; they were startling blue and the cop wondered abstractly if all babies had blue eyes.

Corinthian Brown was born, although the name came much later.  He left that bridge in a cop car, the first of many rides to come, with a robbery suspect and two Harlem cops, who were just too tired to care.  The ride immediately quieted the baby and both cops commented on his alertness.  The young cop lamented the loss of his expensive leather jacket and the old cop called in the body.  The body, the body of the girl, the mother, would remain a mystery.  In another life… she had been beautiful.  She had been smart.  She had been loved.  She had been middle school home coming queen, head cheerleader, student council, and honor roll.  She had a family who cared, a family who would never give up hope…just a distance away in Soho.  There had been prayers, interviews, detective agencies, and bad leads.  They would never give up hope for their blue eyed girl.  It had been three years since Hope Carson had disappeared with “that boy”…..  She had just turned 13 and he was 17 and he was ‘trouble.’  She had been ‘raised better’ and he had not been ‘raised’ at all. This was how it ended.  A cold slab in the morgue, a medical examiner who did not bother to go through ‘the process.’  After all, it was a holiday and the morgue was full.  Too many junkies and not enough time.  Her body would go unclaimed.  Her family would continue to hope.  Her newborn son, a ward of the state, shuffled from one foster home to the next.  Adopted once, at age two, he was given his first legal name; nice black couple that saw his appeal.  He was a beautiful child, with smooth chocolate skin, silky black curls, and those blue eyes, those bright blue eyes, his mother’s eyes.  Even at two, he was tall and thin.  He had a seriousness about him, as if he knew things…  then he would smile and his eyes lit up.   Tonya Brown fell in love with him at first sight and Jerome Brown, her husband, was so in love with her that he finally agreed.  Jerome had a bad feeling about the whole thing; “no background” on the child made him hesitant.  Married for seven years and childless, Tonya was desperate to be a mother.  Jerome’s success on Wall Street made it financially feasible and they both had so much love to give.  As Jerome was still ‘hesitant,’ Tonya chose the baby’s name on her own.  He would be Corinthian, after her father, just Corinthian.  No middle name.  Corinthian Brown had finally found a home.