Dear Camilla,

12: Jane

Dear Camilla,

My mother, Jane, is yellow plaid. 'In' in the 90s, but unappealing and uncouth today. She was sharply pretty, but her features softened with age. She works as an assistant nurse at an old folks home in the town over. The residents there support her delusions of grandeur and her savior complex. Jane's a sunflower there, a bright champion of beauty and eternal youth equipped with bleached blonde hair. Maybe that is why she spent so much time there instead of with me. I reminded her of the truth.

On her odd days off, usually a Wednesday or Thursday, she invariably served honeydew melon slices for dessert. We would eat them and watch the sunset from our porch, listening to the wild sounds of the evening and waiting for the fireflies to shine. She would chase those little bright bugs beside me, laughing and spinning in the dark night that painted everything cobalt blue. When the colder months came and the honeydew season passed, we'd pick blackberries from the neighbor's yard to make pie. They would always come out burnt, and she'd cuss and curse God.

Caught in the wrong town at the wrong time, my mother was more of a child than a domestic housewife. It was your job, Camilla, not my mother's, to help me up when I fell. That became the unspoken agreement, anyways. And, as a plus, the blackberry pies became much better after you started hanging around.

Our little family arrangement became explicitly clear, though, on my twelfth Fourth of July. I hadn't seen Jane at all that day. It was just me and you. In the evening, we biked through the neighborhood next to mine. It was more suburban and lively than that of our meager country farmhouse. The smell of nuclear family barbecue cookouts smothered the air. The sky above each identical home was filled with dazzling fireworks, coating the black night with a pink hazy fog and alarming everyone and their mother's Labrador. This day celebrating freedom always inspired individual carnivals behind each white picket fence home.

We came across a steep hill and you masterfully soared down it with your hands off your handlebars, to your sides like wings. Your hair blew behind you in the wind creating an effortless image of grace and composure that I desperately craved to mimic. You waited for me to catch up at the bottom of the hill and looked up at me.

I tried to emulate you. It worked for one precious moment. Grinning under the crackling fireworks, a breeze blowing under my extended arms refreshing me from the summer's heat, watching you watching me, proud. I was flying. And, it was beautiful. It felt right, like mastering a difficult piano part or landing a flip on a trampoline. I felt right.

But, I was going too fast. I was out of control. My stomach and my intuition told me that much. I couldn't slow down, though. Not like that could have helped much, anyway as I didn't see it coming. Suddenly, my front wheel twisted 180 degrees and my bike stopped abruptly with a shrill shriek. I had hit only a small rock, but the velocity was enough to send me over the handlebars and right into Ms. Albarich's prized rose garden.

I soared into their thorns like a falling star and I hit the ground hard like a skydiver without a parachute. In the aftermath, I lay crumpled, dirty, and scratched. I cried easily and freely back then and my fat tears sketched streaks in the dust that covered my face. Though I don't remember the pain, I remember you dropping your bike and sprinting over to me with a look of horror on your beautiful face.

"Aww, Maxie! Are you alright sweet thing?" You bit your thumb nail, concern evident in your wide eyes.

"No," I choked out.

"Okay stay right there sweet thing. I'm gonna go grab my daddy's truck and take you to the hospital," you said with your thick, sweet southern drawl.

I lay on my back and watched the fireworks explode above me through teary eyes. Then, Ms. Albarich was above me, her white hair in little curlers and her Kimono on, looking down at me with a stern expression. Her skin looked like crumpled office paper in the moonlight.

"Hot dang, I swear. What in the gracious Lord's name have you done to my roses, ya rascal?" She wailed.

Then she placed my face. "Now, if it isn't that bastard child of the town's whore, Jane. I knew you were trouble just like that Devil of a Mama you got. Go on now— get up. Get outta my yard, I said! Don't make me call the sheriff on ya! Look at you, such a mess, wait until everyone hears about this... Christ!"

I crawled over to the asphalt, where I lay down again, still weeping, but this time on the rough road like a dead fawn. Ms. Albarich stood, back hunched over and hands on hips, watching me from her doorstep for fifteen minutes before heading back into her house. She would periodically peep through her blinds to make sure I stayed off her yard. Occasionally, trucks would drive by me and honk at me to get out of the road. Then, finally, I recognized one— your father's old red Ford Corolla, you sitting in the driver's seat, peering over the wheel.

You were fourteen, then, and drove with no headlights because you didn't know any better. I'm still surprised we even made it to the hospital. We must've looked so strange in contrast to the cleanliness and order of the sterile hospital. Two scrawny kids, alone, the one in dirty green overalls scratched up and bloody.

We waited hours together for my mother to arrive. I remember the pain here, and it was excruciating. I wished I was in your care completely, that you could sign the consent forms for me, and that I was entirely your responsibility.

When she finally came it was three am in the morning. She was in a nice dress. I guess she was on a date in the town over, with that fancy old lawyer, the rich one with the handlebar mustache that always bought her lobster, and couldn't leave right away.

"Camilla, honey, if you're going to hang around my house, you've got to look out for my baby Maxine. Now, tell me, does this look like lookin' out for Maxine to you? No. You know I can't be available all the time, right sugar plum? That's the trade-off, doll. Work better with it. Now I gotta pay for this mess, bless your heart."

When I was finally admitted for examination, the doctor discovered my collarbone was broken in three different spots. I was in a sling for the rest of that summer, but you stayed with me. While you swam in the lake, I lounged on floaties, drinking pineapple juice through curly straws. We'd play monopoly for hours straight and binge-watch James Bond on VHS tapes. Though I couldn't do much on my own as a result of that independence day accident, I was perfectly fine with you helping me.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead said a healed broken bone is the first sign of civilization in ancient cultures because it is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety, and has tended the person through recovery. You were that someone for me, Camilla, when no one else— not even my own mother— was willing to show me basic human compassion.  

It's not my mother's fault, though, that she is out the way she is. She became pregnant with me just out of high school and had no options. Before me, Jane was the perfect daughter of two very religious parents who farmed corn. She was prom queen and sang in her church's choir. I took her best years from her, so I don't resent her for wanting them back. Getting kicked out of her parent's house and raising me alone would've been hard on anybody. It's ironic how cruel Christians can be to someone who so identically parallels their divinity, Mother Mary.

The patriarchy demands the impossible from women— to conceive a child while remaining a virgin, to look sexy while being innocent— all strategies of oppression. Furthermore, the neighborhood gossipers labeled me a bastard child for the austere crime of being born. As such, I feel like a pinball protagonist in my own life— spending my days in a reactive state, too scared to declare any direction for I know it will be shamed regardless. I am a mere touchstone for listeners to explore the strange world of my mind. And, even in being the way I am with good reason, I am still ridiculed. There's a reason why Fanny Price is Austen's least popular and most contentious heroine. Fully aware of the prejudice against women who dare to demonstrate any independence, Fanny is not proactive in the slightest. This results in yet another unattainable double standard for women: to be fearless and cowardly, to be decisive and malleable, and to be docile and bold. How on Earth am I to be? How am I to be loved?

But, you will always understand me, won't you Camilla? If I am just a touchstone, to you I am a lustrous gemstone, right? I believe that. I must and I do. I do because if I don't I am nothing.

Much love,

Maxine