Somebody, probably multiple people chided Rosalyn for her smoking. She didn’t do it around Jenny anymore. Her purse stank less. In it, she her lipstick and mascara swam in all the lottery tickets. She went clothes shopping as an ‘investment’ for a ‘future job’. She tended to her petunias and azaleas. The pages in her daily devotionals were neatly organized by colored slips. She applied to work as a substitute teacher and with a half and half coffee or half and half tea, laid back on her lawn chair, reading next year’s curriculum. Between pages and her bare feet she scorned the flower choking chickweed.
Robust weeds couldn’t be excommunicated so instead they were squashed with garden ceramics. She didn’t own gnomes, swans or any woodland creatures for fear that it would attract the real versions (no rabbits and bambis allowed); no, she had pink flamingos and a fake pond with fake frogs, fake butterflies and a woodcut map of Virginia: rather, just a picture of an abstract shape. She also had fake palm trees and a fake celtic cross. The green turf scraggled with bugs under everyone’s bare feet.
These were the lotto ticket days, daily devotional days, and drugstore days. (“Can we get cinnamon rolls? Please?” “NO.” ) Today was a good day. Jenny secretly gulped a little debbie cake thanks to the dime she found on the drugstore sidewalk. Math. How many little Debbies could she buy before her mother told her she was wasting her allowance? Three? Oh the sugar. Mother played records now. When she wasn’t blaring christian barbershop quartets, She replayed ‘Accentuate the A-Positive’ until everyone’s ears bled.
“I’m in a really really really fabulous mood! Let’s go swimming! At the public pool!”
“But… that’s half an hour away” Jenny was busy on a project of her own, drawing a hybrid of a pegasus and a peacock.
“Pish posh, it’s fifteen by my watch, and you don't have a car. Maybe you should get one. Save up your allowance now and you can buy it when you’re sixteen. wouldn’t that be nice?”
“That’s not what it’s for”
“Then what is it for?”
“Riding lessons, if I had to choose between a car and a horse I’d choose a horse.”
She chortled. “That riding school in Richmond’s an hour away. The pool is closer. Take some swimming lessons.”
“If we go, can we buy some feathers for my peacock horse drawing?”
“Do you have money? I thought you were going to save up your allowance.”
Math Problem: Why would Ms. Carter buy what Ms. Carter wanted to buy for her daughter and not what her daughter wanted?
“We’re vacationing in Florida this summer.” Ms. Carter said at the public pool.
“Not North Carolina?”
“We won’t go at all if you keep getting bad grades.” mother flapped a yellow spreadsheet in the air.
The teachers said how impressed they were in her Quarterly Report Card, but praise was empty to her in terms of reward, especially when she was more often punished for reading during class time. “Repeatedly told to put books away, refuses to listen.” A more compassionate review: “Taciturn, but insightful when participates, such moments are scarcer than desired” Princess and the frog, The princess and the pea, A little princess, The Little Mermaid. Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Black Beauty. And Swiss Family Robinson, and Robinson Crusoe, and Moby Dick, The Goose Girl, locked up in a penitentiary infirmary institutionalized. The teachers almost got rid of her desk when they caught her looking down at her lap a bit too much.
“You have a C in math” said her mother.
In the Goose Girl, a princess was forced by her handmaiden to switch places with her on a journey to marry the prince of an allied kingdom. Only the betrayed princesses’ talking horse knew the truth so the handmaiden had the horse killed and their head hung on the city gate, and made the princess into a geese herder. To let the geese roam, the princess had to walk by her best friend’s decapitated head every day. Cloud, cotton-stuffed-horse, her horse. She was horrified at the idea of her best friend-horse being killed and hung at the school gate. “Cloud, if I ever get you for real, I won’t let that happen to you.” Jenny promised
“Neither will I,” Cloud promised back. Cloud nuzzled her cheek.
Eight times Thirty-seven…………………… Fifty-six carry the number Two hundred forty plus fifty six= Two hundred ninety six! Three eternal school minutes had gone by. Equations… prepositions… please excuse my dear Aunt Sally. Dolphins- friends- TV. night- running away. School, pageant She drew the other kids. Unicorns and Pegasi, running away “Stay with us.” said her stuffed toys. “We’re almost there” (Summer) Almost there. Almost heaven Almost. “I love you.” her mother chanted when she was asking/demanding a favor. Math equation: how many I love yous would make Jenny obey in servitude? How many days until summer and she would be released from prison? How many days until freedom? How many missing variables?-
“Come on, you can do it.” Do what? Whatever pointless task pushed forward under a threat?
Her books were weapons, her little Debbie was a medicinal potion with spiritual qualities. She didn’t know what drugs were. Sugar was the opiate of unruly Sunday school kids who opened their eyes during prayer. Church cookies, doodles on the welcome new believers pamphlets. Oh God the sugar. Yes, this life was perfect. Almost heaven yet what room was there for improvement? Unicorns. On her Math book she had drawn unicorns all over.
Now she had a D.
The April sunlight peeked at the world through a photo lens in the clouds, forming a hazy film. “Stand still for the picture.” A new Italian restaurant opened in town. On Sunday Mother made it her civil duty to go. Rosalyn was a restaurant tourist. Elvis Presley at the Italian restaurant. Italian scones and garlic bread and marinara sauce. They prayed before every lunch. Mother made her hold hands. Mother’s hands were nice and soft, if only she would just relax them. Mom’s Sunday gaggle of church families had prayer circles where all the kids would hold hands around their hotdogs. Whenever there was a circle of any type, the kids chose their favorite so it was a ring with the most popular kids on one side, trickling down to the least popular kids, and Jenny was almost always on the opposite end… The lunch line was the most anarchistic part of the school day as far as combinations of girls and boys and friends and enemies goes. It was every kid for themself. Sometimes kids would lean over to talk to their friend three or four spots down. Sometimes they talked with who they were stuck with. Jenny talked to animals, she talked to the moon. Pulpits, diners, classrooms, cafeterias, instructions “Sit down, stand up, kneel, bow your head,” “Read the bible and pray everyday.”
Even though there were rules against disrupting class, the students disrupted anyway. Your mom jokes, drumming pens, rolling coins across the room, improvised jewelry making, improvised weapons, white out correction fluid. Girls also talked about snacks. They sized each other up with earrings. There was few girls dared taunt the teachers lips and they weren’t allowed cosmetics during school hours by the principal. There were two girls who had just started baking but they were friends so didn’t compete.
Children gabbed about anything from an abstract scuff on the road, to gas mileage on cars. They dreamed, they bragged, but mostly bragged.
“I wish my car could drive ten thousand miles on one gallon of gas”
“My daddy’s car can drive smoother, faster, longer than your daddy’s”. It was the christian way boys would size up; They laughed. When they did, Jenny couldn’t help but walk up to them and ask what was funny. They’d either scowl, talk her off, walk away, or say “It’s you, you’re funny.” and laugh harder.
Barbeques, gas stations, drug stores, church and waffle houses “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” and the polaroid empty walls margined everything in between. Barren prison cells.
On Sunday, Sodom and Gomorrah burnt to the ground. The hot pavement stung. “The truck is coming! Can I get ice cream? Please please please!” “Sure.”
Her only logic resided in trading compliance for tiny pieces of freedom. Everything beyond tradeoffs and debts was illogical. Freedom Freedom Freedom. Classical music, Swan Lake, generously played on the radio. Mother controlled what played. Classical music. She twirled ballerina, ballrooms, curtains draped, at Mimi and Pop’s fiftieth anniversary. Dressed in Easter colors in the canary yellow auditorium all daffodils. Touched by tender whimsy. That spring was a blur of keyboard organs, flowers, and instructions.
Heat strokes on a May soccer day: running feet, yards, leagues and meters and spans and cubits back and forth pinball machine newton’s pendulum she was like the newtonian balls in the center, so rigid and afraid yet running everywhere at once while trying not to get hit at once but helping but not enough. Math: what is enough? Fainting. RUN YOU IDIOT RUN RUUNNNNNN There were sirens whirring, kids standing over her snickering. Teachers muttering, “In the name of Jesus, heal her.” Graham crackers, ice packs, and apple juice. Math: was this exertion enough for the adults?
The prefix and suffix to every revelry was Do your chores
At sunset, there was a birthday party. It was strange to be so late in the day, but it was a hot late May, and the gazebo was strung with lights. so maybe not.
The kids weren’t allowed on the unlit playground but half of them went anyway. Kids have night vision. Games outdoors at night are different. There’s no adults to criticize. They played war, spies…
“Kamikaze!”
Water guns, lawn darts, blow up clowns for punching, they took the clowns as hostage and demanded ten dollars or the toy would go kablooey and redeem its ticket to heaven. Jenny was their pretend refugee. One boy zoomed by on a race car.“Coming through!” “Outta ma way!” “Excuse me!” “This wagon is made of the same metal as rocket metal. It was made in the same factory.”
“How?” Rockets don’t creak like a rocking chair or an old Ford.
“You’re too stupid to know, besides, my Dad told me and- your Dad doesn’t exist!”
Father was a myth. Jenny learned the word “eccentric” from mother’s description. Mom sucked her teeth at the thought. Speaking of fairy tales, she couldn’t read her books in the dark so she blew bubbles and watched the string lights glitter inside them. Magic. She saw the first firefly of the year confuse the lights for family. Magical.
Thinking about magic was like biting into birthday cake. Effortlessly pleasing. Sugar was the drug of the academy kids, the drug of the christian future. Jenny didn’t know anything of the hippies, but she knew an unseen army was poking holes in the pastor’s logic and that when they were through, the teetotaler Christians would drown their religious grief in ice cream. But Jenny didn’t know what drugs were, she didn’t know that sugar was part of the southern baptist religion. She just used everything to her own devices…
She collected loose beads. Colors stained onto her skin in some way or another. Markers, crayons, paint.
“Jenny, take those flower crowns off.”
She put them in her desk, then wore them on again during recess
“Jenny I told you to take that flower crown off.”
Newspaper puzzles. Cereal box puzzles: get the kitty home maze!
There were secret patterns. Count the panes on a window: twelve four by three three by four six by two but god forbid two by six. Count every plane which crosses the sky in one day: Count how many passengers, count the people who fly for how long count the raindrops on the window 11 every minute rain for 20 minutes: 220 raindrops on my window. There were secret patterns but the patterns appeared to lead to nothing but an inconsequential state. Much like the state of mind she was in right now.
Answer: how many fries on my school platter? Seventeen- now sixteen (Four times four, 64 divided by four) how many before I get a tummy ache? I ate all of them, I got 40% of a tummy ache so 17/? = 40/100. Forty divided by seventeen… seventeen times two is 34, so 2 and… and… 6/17ths? screw it- 2.5 or something. One hundred divided by 2.5 is 40 gee. I need to eat almost exactly forty french fries before I get a tummy ache. Right? Who cares?
How fast can a car go? Percentage: 50% off 20$ 10$ I don’t know I don’t know… How many people got pedicures, How many people gave pedicures, How many sewed dresses and throw pillows, how many flipped burgers, how many ate, How many cared for zoo animals? How many people were treated like zoo animals? How many were afraid? Driven mad? How many were brave? Drivers of madness? How many were rich? Poor? How many dollars are there in the world? How many people are there in the world? How many babies are born per minute? How long have we been here? How many have died? How many ways are there to die? Why do people die of old age? Seems like a joke, and yet, when I run I get tired just from running. And when I play all day I have to go to sleep at the end of the day. If I didn’t get older, I wouldn’t need sleep. Not one wink. But I love to dream. Maybe that’s what happens when we die: We dream a really fantastic dream. So that’s what heaven is! Makes sense. But… it’s so weird… there’s something off about that.
At Penelope’s party there was a little brown and white pinto pony, tacked up in red gingham and sunflowers. It was like the other girl didn’t even cared. No one cared about the pony more than she did,
All the other kids got longer rides than her because she went first. The owner took each of them a little further than the last one until the last kid went.
“Can I go again?”
“Sorry, little Petunia’s tired now.”
(And the first shall be last and the last shall be first) (she hated that proverb)
“Can we rent a pony Mom?”
“Why would we rent a pony when there are dozens around us for you to ride?” She deflected brusquely with a wave of her arm out the kitchen window
No one ever said ‘Jenny would you like to do this activity you like to do? Would you like to choose where we go what we look at? what ideas to consider? You can come up with any ideas you want and we’ll enjoy it we’ll enjoy you.’
“Mommy, can you drive me to the Mooney’s farm? They’ve got horses.”
“No. We don’t know them.” She refused
They never asked her first she had to beg them. Or do it herself.
Her birthday was less than a month away. “For my birthday, I want to go to the Museum.”
“What museum?”
“The one we went to on our field trip.”
“Are you sure? That’s two hours away, we wouldn’t have time for a birthday party.”
“We could have a sleepover party, everyone could come for dinner.”
She shook her head. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Can we get a poodle? Pretty Please?” “Can we pretty please get a dog?”
“I don’t have time to take care of one Jenny.”
“Can we go camping? Can we please?”
“Not anytime soon, why do you ask?”
“Nevermind.”
They were going to move to her grandparent’s house in the Lynchburg country for the summer.
School was over in one week, Jenny cleaned her room reluctantly and helped with the laundry and the dishes. They never ended even when school did but they were more bearable. She was required to do summer reading which she finished before school was even over. Text floated away dandelion fashion. Hans Brinker glided away on his silver skates. This gave her an excuse to get extra books on whatever she liked at the library, volcanoes, sharks, stars, ancient gods and she got to stay up much later. But school’s tomorrow. The thought leaked from the ceiling and hit her on the neck. She jumped in her chair. School’s tomorrow everyday for the next five days.
Some loons whistled at the setting sun.
There was a pageant every year called “Liberty Day” where all the students would salute the armed forces more robustly than usual and the principal would give a sermon that the kids had to sit through instead of running wild. There were skits, paper machie cannons, toy guns, Pilgrims, Founding Fathers, Paul Revere, Abigail Adams. RED WHITE AND BLUE RED WHITE AND BLUE RED WHITE AND BLUE.
Will you let me be your servant,
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I may have the grace to
let you be my servant too.
Hundreds of hymns, she had to sing them. Sing Jenny.
The school’s pastor gave a final address to the graduates and their parents.
“Some of our youth are thinking of going to college. These are the worst of times to attend a university. I regret to inform you of this because… these are the most godless places in our country now. “
“Amen!” cried Rosalyn Carter.
“They are actively teaching students to be junkies, hippies, to hate America.”
Pop Pop picked His daughter and granddaughter from the church/school for lunch.
In a solemn voice he questioned Jenny. “What’s the capital of North Dakota?”
“Bismarck!”
“What’s p plus q?”
“Uhm… r?”
He patted her on the head,
There would always be a test. He gave her a nickle, then witnessed to her on the value of currency.
There would always be a sermon.
Today was a good day. Independence. Liberty Day. The first day of summer. She walked up and down the hills where freedom rang all the way to the Mooney’s. Marched right up to their steel bar gate.
“Hi, I’m Jenny, nice to meet you. Can I ride your horse.”
“He’s not for riding and if he were I would prefer someone who knows how to saddle up.”
“Oh.” Oh but she had read all the books about horses. She knew about the fetlock and the chestnut and the flank.
When she got home her mother wasn’t there and neither was the car. Rosalyn didn’t have a number. The sun was hot. The ground baked. She heard a car in the distance. It was mom’s. It was pulling in in a matter of seconds.
“I haven’t known where you were in seven hours!” She roared. “I called multiple houses. I’ve been searching for you all day!” “You can’t run away like that!" “Where did you go?”
“I just wanted horse-back lessons.” Her feet baked into the ground.
“Are you out of your mind?” She said bewildered. “Do you think I would give you riding lessons if you acted like that?”
Invisible ferns grabbed Jenny’s legs again, trying to take her away.
As soon as Jenny closed the door and turned her lights off she cleaned her room with a feeling of safety. In her dark room, she practiced dashing under the bed post, crawling quickly and silently. She hid in her closet between her clothes, then would leap both feet onto the bed super hero style. She did this in alternate variations and iterations. She had a diamond she had to transport (a piece of sea glass) across enemy lines to a pirate in the sahara desert who would use it as the crown jewel of a newly formed empire, at the end, the people found her so cunning and brave (and beautiful) that they crowned her queen. She taped the sea glass to her forehead, and sighed.
What a beautiful Summer this would be.
Very nice. Reads quick, and always charged with feeling, shared humanity, vivid, I really like this. It feels so natural, like it just flowed out of your mind straight onto the screen, even though I'm sure a shit load of thinking and work went into making it come out like that.
This sort of flow is so good:
The kids weren’t allowed on the unlit playground but half of them went anyway. Kids have night vision. Games outdoors at night are different. There’s no adults to criticize. They played war, spies…
“Kamikaze!”
Thinking about magic was like biting into a cupcake. Effortlessly pleasing.
--- It's like that all the way through. The character building is on point. Feel like I know the mother on a deep level.
There was a typo I spotted in there. Think you wrote grit instead of gritted. But can't remember exactly where.
Anyway, good stuff.