Viola Tipman
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Born into the arms of a single-parent family in Chicago, unplanned and unwanted, Vi grew up as the youngest child of four. Living in a three-bedroom apartment, sharing a room with her sister, Tina, Viola felt cramped, crowded, and unnoticed. She was only sixteen when she ran away, falling into the wrong crowd and into bad habits.
At eighteen, in New York, Viola realized what her life had become: shooting up, drinking, fucking, and playing bass. That wasn't what she wanted to do with her life. She detached herself from that group, and moved, taking a tiny room in some old woman's attic in Houston.
There, she purchased her first bass, and fell in love with the instrument. Between her two waitressing jobs, she would either sit on a corner and pluck a few tunes with a hat in front of her, or she would be found in her instructor's studio, learning another ditty. It didn't take long for her to realize that she was falling in love with her instructor, and since he was married and older, at thirty-seven, she could never tell him. Taboo. It was a teary (for her) goodbye when she told Jack that she had to leave. She was only twenty-one.
She packed her bags, and headed for the warm coast. In San Fransisco, she rented another room in the attic of another house. Waitressing again, working two jobs to make ends meet, she found herself subject to a burglary-and-rape, which broke her for a while; for three months, she stayed in a women's shelter, afraid of everything.
Then she got a letter from Jack. He and his wife, Mary, had gotten a divorce, and Jack had been looking everywhere for Viola. He confessed that he'd had feelings for her when he was her instructor. He said that he was going to San Fransisco; he'd be there the fifteenth - the day she got the letter was the fourteenth. Jack asked her to meet him.
She did. Over coffee, she told him how she'd fallen for him as well, but didn't want to mess up things with his wife. Jack said there was nothing to mess up, and there hadn't been anything to mess up for years...they had been together for appearance's sake only. Viola accompanied Jack to his hotel room.
Jack bought a house in San Fran, and Viola moved in with him. On her twenty-fifth birthday, he proposed to her, and she said yes. Their ceremony, a year later, was a small affair, with only their parents and a few friends. Pillowed by Jack's income - he was a top real estatesman - they went to Hong Kong for their honeymoon.
It was six months later that Viola got to tell Jack the happy news: He was going to be a daddy. Viola, overcome with toxemia, had to stay the last two months of her pregnancy in the hospital, but gave birth to a healthy, squalling baby boy. Benjamin Lee Tipman joined the overjoyed family, and they promptly began spoiling him, as all new parents tend to do.
When Benjamin was almost four, on Viola's thirtieth birthday, they got more news: A second baby. The doctors advised against keeping it, but both Viola and Jack refused to even consider abortion. Warned that Viola and/or the baby may not make it through this pregnancy, they carried on blissfully. In her sixth month, Viola and Jack got into a car accident, with baby Benjamin in the backseat. At the hospital, Viola learned that Jack had died instantly, baby Ben was on the critical-care list, and she'd miscarried the baby she was carrying.
Viola had to be sedated and strapped to her bed. For a month, she lay in the hospital's psych ward, waiting for word of her son's improvement. At the end of the month, she got an update on Benjamin. He'd died the night before in his sleep. Vi had to be transferred to an institution, where she stayed for two years until she was proclaimed fit to go to a group home. While there, she oversaw the selling of all of her things, putting the money into a bank account. After half a year, the people that ran the group home said she was able to live on her own.
At thirty-two years old, already a widow, outliving both of her children, Viola decided she needed a change of pace. She picked up the bass again, pulled her funds from the bank account, and headed to Florida. In Miami, Vi set herself up as a freelance bassist, playing for anyone who needed a bassist at the time; when she wasn't playing the bass, she was waitressing...again. She seemed to have put the past behind her.
In Miami, she was living in a small apartment. Sparsely furnished, it matched her mindless thoughts, her listless and empty heart. Viola could never bring herself to unpack the few boxes of pictures she'd kept, and these were stacked in her closet, far from sight but never far from thought. The only thing she bought in Miami was a mirror with ornate scrollwork all over its frame. In the antique shop she was wandering through, it seemed to call to her.
It was on the night of her thirty-third birthday, getting dressed to go to the party that the few friends she'd gathered were throwing in her honor, that she fell through the mirror. It was on the night of her thirty-third birthday, half-naked, that she found herself sprawled on an unfamiliar street. It was on the night of her thirty-third birthday, confused by all the odd people walking around wearing costumes, that she found herself in Rhy'Din.