“I won’t be around much longer,” I said to her. “There are whispers. Don’t talk to me about time.”
She said I’d hear from her soon, but who knows. She hung up unhappy with me, I know it, and that wasn’t my original intent, though it seemed to become my intent over the course of the call. I should call back and apologize but I haven’t, and I won’t.
My parents taught me that the world is unfair. These parents now, including my Lucy—what they try to teach is the opposite. We like to share, etc. A lifetime of disappointment awaits their children. My parents used to whip us with switches when we were bad, switches we’d have to select ourselves from the yard. Across the street was a boy named Jimmy. He and I were always getting in scuffles. My mother told me that if a fight kicked up between us, I needed to come straight home. The next time it happened I tried to obey her, but his father held my arm asking what had happened, what we were fighting about, insistent even though I kept saying, “I need to go home, I need to go home.” It was a weekend and both my parents were there. Though my father was not the daily disciplinarian, not the maker of rules, if he was home you could be sure he would go to great lengths to enforce my mother’s.
When the man finally released me, I went home to find both my parents in the parlor. Not all the details are clear in my memory—how did they know I’d been fighting with Jimmy? Somehow they knew. My mother said, “I told you to come straight home,” and my father said, “Why didn’t you do what your mother told you?” I explained, but my father said I needed a whipping anyway. He said if they whipped me, then Jimmy’s parents would feel compelled to whip him. I saw my mother’s hesitation, but my father ruled our house, and she took me in the bathroom and hit my bare legs with a switch. At first I refused to cry, but then I thought that I’d better go ahead so she’d stop, so I did and she did.
My father wanted his victory. He cared about that more than he cared about causing his own child unjustifiable pain. My mother, my lovely mother—she knew he was wrong but whipped me anyway.
Tell that story to your children. That, my dears, is the world.
Please Don’t Tell
Jennifer is trying to remember all the names. Erica, Juliana, Leigh Anne. Jodi, Nicole, Susan. These are the people at Megan’s party, what Megan called her “girls’ night in”; she says hello to them one by one. Megan’s friend Amanda—appointed Jennifer’s guide while Megan tends to hors d’oeuvres in the kitchen—dutifully introduces her. Samantha. Shivika. Terry, who hugs her. “I’m a hugger,” Terry says in her ear.
“Okay,” Jennifer says, startled, patting the other woman’s back.
“You should have told her that before you hugged her, Terry,” Amanda says.
“That’s true.” Terry pulls back and gives her a look of playful apology. “I should warn, then hug.”
“But you’d lose the element of surprise,” Jennifer says. The other women laugh. They laugh! Jennifer made a joke. Is it possible she might enjoy this party, which she’s been dreading for days and days?
Tommy always liked a party.
“Leigh Anne!” Amanda calls, waving the woman over. Amanda wants the scoop from Leigh Anne about the meeting of some committee, and Terry asks things like, “What did Karen say?” and from this Jennifer deduces that the three of them must be colleagues. Professors, she assumes. Terry turns to her at one point and says, “Sorry, this is so boring.” But Leigh Anne is saying, “And I promise you, you will not believe what he said next . . . ,” and Terry can’t resist diving back in. Jennifer doesn’t blame her. They all care very much about whatever they’re discussing. They’re all completely absorbed.
Jennifer stands on the other side of the looking glass, where she always ends up, where she’s always been, and what she’d really like to know is, is she cursed or did she do it to herself, and is there a difference? Either way, she believes she understands something these women do not. The ordinary is a mask worn by the awful. What we accept as normal is a play in which we’ve all agreed to take part. They don’t know it’s a play, or they willfully forget. She can’t forget. She just keeps watching, bemused by their commitment to the performance, forgetting to say her lines. Why can’t she change this about herself, as easily as she changed her name? Stack the past away like boxes in the attic. Be one of these women, remake herself in their image—be cheerfully annoyed with the preschool teachers, discuss the last book she read. Lighten up.