enjoyed each other when I visited Wednesdays after school talking about Cecile's clothing and the Ferrises’ funny ways.
2
C ecile found me in my room on an evening early in December just before my fifteenth birthday. The rain had been sluicing Lynchburg for over a week. Cold, winter rain that flowed like Rio Grandes of depression, clearing out the delusion with which I normally consoled my aching heart. I found myself getting irrationally angry at inanimate objects, hurling them against the wall. My nose, bleeding again, did so with greater frequency and I found myself oversleeping more than I should have. Life felt so imposing and important. Too important, if that makes sense. Too serious. Too overwhelming.
Head in my math book, I had been thinking just how ridiculous geometry was for a girl who only wanted to sing. Unless I decided to go into acoustics, I saw no value in all of those angles and theorems. I did however appreciate being on the honor roll, and since I had skipped a grade I realized that I did have some sort of reputation to uphold. Even if it was just for myself.
Right then, more than ever before, I kept to myself at school. Tenth-grade schoolwork was hard enough without all the social dilemmas. I doubted anybody would have wanted to hang out with me anyway. I had nothing to offer them.
See, what I had realized that past year at the Wagners’ and the Biggs’ was this: Mama really wasn't coming home. I thought I had realized it earlier, but then I fell back to my old habit of hope like a dog to an old, familiar vomit, a vomit that had stopped tasting bad a while before because that's all it had fed upon for years.
Some days it seemed the Evanses had never existed at all.
So a nocturnal pastime developed that I dubbed, “The Disappearance Theory Hour.” The latest sign of my inner distress was insomnia. Now, I don't know much about much, but I say insomnia is truly a trial! I’ve heard of people not getting a wink of sleep for years on end. Of course, I believe in the traditional theory of Hades as hellfire and brimstone or else why would God make His precious Son go through all of that pain on the cross for nothing? That would be a monstrous thing, I believe. And you know, I think even some of those radio preachers would agree with me. My husband Harlan does. And he's even been to Bible college. But I think that persecution by insomnia should entitle you to skip hell altogether, because lying there night after night, watching the moon, each car that slips down the avenue, each tiny feathering of the leaves by an errant wind, lying there like that—it's misery, pure and simple.
But I’d lie there in my room, the green room with a distinct guest-bedroom feel (except for the framed pictures of the Evanses, my own pillow, and my willow plate), looking out at the night sky through the leaves of the big sugar maple tree outside the window and I’d theorize.
I made a list of the possible happenings of Isla Jean Whitehead.
1. She just plumb forgot about me.
2. She didn't forget, but figured I’d be all right one way or the other.
3. She was having so much fun she hadn't realized how the time had flown.
4. She had other children by now and to bring me into the big, beautiful house in Washington, D.C. would just be confusing for everyone involved.
5. She tried to come back to get me but that snazzy man wouldn't let her, and so she'd been checking up on me in secret all of these years for her own sense of satisfaction. She'd known I was doing all right.
6. She was dead.
That's why I didn't want to admit anything beforehand, before I really gave her enough time. Because I knew that any mother who really loved her daughter would come back when she said. So Mama either didn't love me anymore, an evil thing to do, or she was dead.
Either one, take your pick, broke my fourteen-year-old heart. I decided that day dead was better than evil.
Isla Jean Whitehead died that day.
And my goodness, almost
2
C ecile found me in my room on an evening early in December just before my fifteenth birthday. The rain had been sluicing Lynchburg for over a week. Cold, winter rain that flowed like Rio Grandes of depression, clearing out the delusion with which I normally consoled my aching heart. I found myself getting irrationally angry at inanimate objects, hurling them against the wall. My nose, bleeding again, did so with greater frequency and I found myself oversleeping more than I should have. Life felt so imposing and important. Too important, if that makes sense. Too serious. Too overwhelming.
Head in my math book, I had been thinking just how ridiculous geometry was for a girl who only wanted to sing. Unless I decided to go into acoustics, I saw no value in all of those angles and theorems. I did however appreciate being on the honor roll, and since I had skipped a grade I realized that I did have some sort of reputation to uphold. Even if it was just for myself.
Right then, more than ever before, I kept to myself at school. Tenth-grade schoolwork was hard enough without all the social dilemmas. I doubted anybody would have wanted to hang out with me anyway. I had nothing to offer them.
See, what I had realized that past year at the Wagners’ and the Biggs’ was this: Mama really wasn't coming home. I thought I had realized it earlier, but then I fell back to my old habit of hope like a dog to an old, familiar vomit, a vomit that had stopped tasting bad a while before because that's all it had fed upon for years.
Some days it seemed the Evanses had never existed at all.
So a nocturnal pastime developed that I dubbed, “The Disappearance Theory Hour.” The latest sign of my inner distress was insomnia. Now, I don't know much about much, but I say insomnia is truly a trial! I’ve heard of people not getting a wink of sleep for years on end. Of course, I believe in the traditional theory of Hades as hellfire and brimstone or else why would God make His precious Son go through all of that pain on the cross for nothing? That would be a monstrous thing, I believe. And you know, I think even some of those radio preachers would agree with me. My husband Harlan does. And he's even been to Bible college. But I think that persecution by insomnia should entitle you to skip hell altogether, because lying there night after night, watching the moon, each car that slips down the avenue, each tiny feathering of the leaves by an errant wind, lying there like that—it's misery, pure and simple.
But I’d lie there in my room, the green room with a distinct guest-bedroom feel (except for the framed pictures of the Evanses, my own pillow, and my willow plate), looking out at the night sky through the leaves of the big sugar maple tree outside the window and I’d theorize.
I made a list of the possible happenings of Isla Jean Whitehead.
1. She just plumb forgot about me.
2. She didn't forget, but figured I’d be all right one way or the other.
3. She was having so much fun she hadn't realized how the time had flown.
4. She had other children by now and to bring me into the big, beautiful house in Washington, D.C. would just be confusing for everyone involved.
5. She tried to come back to get me but that snazzy man wouldn't let her, and so she'd been checking up on me in secret all of these years for her own sense of satisfaction. She'd known I was doing all right.
6. She was dead.
That's why I didn't want to admit anything beforehand, before I really gave her enough time. Because I knew that any mother who really loved her daughter would come back when she said. So Mama either didn't love me anymore, an evil thing to do, or she was dead.
Either one, take your pick, broke my fourteen-year-old heart. I decided that day dead was better than evil.
Isla Jean Whitehead died that day.
And my goodness, almost
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