Gemma, fairy girl

Juliet

Juliet was the main character in a novel I didn't finished, Let Her Cry.  I'm reworking the novel, but this part probably won't appear in it.  Still, it's something Juliet needs to say...

Let her Cry

By Juliet Lourdes

Setting:  a small home in Los Angeles, CA

Characters:

Juliet:  sixteen

Cristina:  Juliet’s mother, late forties

Dan/Danny:  Juliet’s father, early forties

Scene one:

Juliet lies on the floor of her bedroom with her feet in the air.  Her laptop is next to her.  She types with one hand as she speaks.

Juliet

I’ll bet when people think of me, they are like, “Wow, look at her, she’s so cool with her clothes from Out of the Closet, all punky and retro.  She gets that from her mother, Cristina Lourdes, the actress.  Juliet’s mother is the coolest mother in the world…”

They don’t know us.  They don’t know that sometimes I have to lie on the floor with my feet in the air, counting…

Scene two:

Cristina and Dan enter the living room, just one thin wall away from Juliet’s bedroom.  Cristina slams the door behind them, then pushes past Dan and paces.

Cristina

They hated me!  I’m not going to get the part!  I hate me!  You hate me!

Cristina collapses on the floor, bawling.

Dan

I don’t hate you.

Cristina

They hated me.

Dan

No one hates you.

Dan tries to comfort Cristina, but she pushes him away and hurries past Juliet’s room to her own.  Dan stares after her, lost.  He goes to the stereo, puts on a Hootie and the Blowfish tune, “Let Her Cry”.   The lyrics blare, “And if the sun comes out tomorrow/ Let her cry…”

Scene  three:

Juliet, still lying on her floor with her feet in the air, gulps for air as she counts…

Juliet

Eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven…

Juliet stops counting, looks at the audience.

Juliet

“They” don’t know us.  Sure, my mother and I are close.  Sure, she’s cool.  She takes me to awesome thrift shops for clothes.  She’s my best friend sometimes.  She taught me that when I’m having a panic attack, I should put my feet in the air and count backwards from one hundred because if you’re counting, you’re breathing, plus, no one dies with their feet in the air, counting backwards from one hundred.  When I have a panic attack, it feels like someone’s going to die.

Eighty-six, Eighty-five…

Scene four:

While Juliet continues to count, Hootie continues to play in the living room – “And if the sun comes up tomorrow/Let her be...let her be.”  Dan gulps from a glass of scotch.  Cristina rushes out of her bedroom, runs to Dan and collapses against him.  Juliet is still counting.  Dan and Cristina hug-walk to their bedroom.  No one checks on Juliet.

Ella

Ella read a New York Times article about posting videos of cutting yourself on Youtube.  Right Now, she is a star...
Ella first appeared in OGW 2/3/2011.

Ella:  My mother yells up the stairs, “Ella, you have to get dressed Right Now.”

She says, “Ella, the bus is coming Right Now.”

“I’m busy, Right Now.D” 

Cutting. 

Only I don’t say that part.

Duh.

Using a bent paperclip, digging in, dragging it up and down my arm.  Making a cross.

Right Now I’m making a short film.

Youtube.

Me.

Cutting.

I do this every day.  Right Now, I’m done cutting, and I check my Hits and it’s around ten thousand and that’s just since three weeks ago and I’m a star.

Right Now I’m a star, Ma.

My mother says, “I’m not driving you if you miss the bus, you’ll have to walk!”

I haven’t missed the bus.  I have time to pull a long, black sleeve down over my bloody arm, turn off the computer – password protected – tie on a choker of a fake cameo in a gothy-y cross on a ribbon around my neck.

“I’m coming!  Right Now!” I yell down the stairs, my voice running ahead of me.

I smile to myself.  What she doesn’t know will hurt her.

Only, then she hugs me, says, “I hope the rest of your day is better than the beginning,” and she means it.

Great.  Just Great. 

Right Now, I feel like shit. 

My arm stings.

oh boy

ohshit

i am a star.

there’s the bus.

Stephanie

Stephanie is a young writer-to-be with a domineering mother and a hurting heart.

Stephanie:

I feel … ick.  Icky.  Blah.  Motionless.  Immobile.

Depressed.

Because of Christmas coming up?

Because I’m done shopping, and now it’s just a waiting time, and I hate to wait?

Because I want – no, I expect – to write everyday, and today I just don’t want to

Don’t want to don’t want to don’t want to

Do

Maybe by feeling this way, I’ll learn something about myself, or about other people,

Maybe I’ll grow in my understanding of why my mother comes home and yells because my sneakers are not lined up by the door, one is askew and the other is touching the wall and sneakers are supposed to be lined up with their toes one inch from the wall and why don’t I do anything right?

Cassie

Cassie is my youngest outsider girl, just seven and three-quarters years old.  She is to be the main character in a picture book I’m working on called, “I Like Her That Way”

Cassie: Sometimes Mommy is very busy writing all day, and she doesn’t have time to get dressed, she just stays in her sweats all day, dressing it up with a sequined scarf when she comes to pick me up from school.   She hasn’t even bothered to twist her dreads, she just has them pushed back with a headband, and they’re all sticking out this way and that way, and I like her that way.

Eva

Eva is thirteen, stuck between being a little girl and a teenager.  It feels like her mother doesn’t care about her anymore…

Eva:  “You’re the worst mother ever!”  I shout, basically throwing myself up the stairs – I hit the wall with my body, bounce off, fling myself up another step, crash, thrump stomp stomp.

I want to throw my laptop against the wall, just to show her, but I can’t even throw it on the bed.  Aaagh!  I can’t believe she made me take my homework upstairs just because precious little John, her precious baby who’s not even a baby anymore, just because he’s using the computer downstairs, and my laptop lost its charge and now I’m putting it gently on my desk and plugging it in because even though I want to show my mother how little she means to me, I need my laptop. 

After it’s plugged in, I throw myself across the bed.  I stop crying, because she hasn’t come up the stairs after me, and she won’t hear me.  She doesn’t care.  She doesn’t care about me anymore. 

Before she had John, shit, even earlier this week…

I remember, sometimes she’d scream at me if I screamed at her.  I remember how much that scared me.

But this time she just calmly told me to go to my room now, and she didn’t yell, and she didn’t come after me.  It’s been like ten minutes, and she’s just downstairs watching TV with Daddy or playing a game on the computer with John, and she just left me up here.

I start doing my homework, but not on the floor, like she said, or my bed, where I could be comfortable, but standing up next to my desk.  My chair is covered with clothes I haven’t put away when she told me to. 

She used to put my clothes away for me.

She used to read me three stories a night.

She used to cry how sorry she was if I had a tantrum.

Now it’s like I don’t exist, it’s like…

“Eva!” she shouts up the stairs.

“What?” I say, and I don’t even sound mad, like, “what!”, instead, I sound relieved.

“When you’re done with your homework, come down, I want to read the Nutcracker to you and John.”

She always does this, she always tries to make me part of the family.  It’s like she doesn’t even acknowledge that I’m mad at her, and plus I’m thirteen and not a kid anymore…

“I’ll be right down!”  I say, and hurry up to finish my math homework.

I’m not saying she’s right.  But I feel a lot better, and I can’t wait to snuggle up next to her and anyway, she needs me to cuddle with her because she’s always cold, and she’s says I’m her heater, and I can go back to being mad later.  

Gemma

Gemma is the adolescent girl with wings, a birth defect caused by her mother smoking Fairy Dust.  Gemma is in New York City, searching for her mother, who ran away when Gemma was six.  Earlier posts from Gemma appeared in OGW 9/24/09, 10/29/09, 2/4/10, and 7/29/10.  In this, longer, post, Gemma finishes her visit with the Hag, who divinates where Gemma can find her mother.

Gemmma:  “Spirit of Fire, burn away the masks which may hide Gemma’s mother from her --” 

     I close my eyes.  I barely breathe.  This is so stupid, and yet I want to believe.  I want to believe this is a spell that will conjure my mother.  I want to believe that tomorrow midnight -- the dawn of spring -- the Hag will turn into a beautiful maiden, and she will have fulfilled her destiny and magic will be real and my mother will appear in this circle next to me any second now, any second now I’ll smell her rosemary shampoo and feel her hand rest on mine and I’ll stop shivering and --

     “Spirit of Water, wash away the obstacles that stand between Gemma and Maya--”

     I smell incense, not my mother.  Incense and rosewater and the slight stink of diaper, a smell I remember from when Jacob, my Jacob, was a baby.  

     Great, just great, the most magical witch in the city wears Depends.  Opening my eyes a crack, I see her bare feet right next to me.  They are smooth and milk-white, not the hairy, bunioned things I expected.  But instead of seeing the magic in that, I want to scream, You’re not a witch! I but I don’t, I just sniffle again as I start to cry, thinking, It’s hopeless.  This old woman will never find --

      “Spirit of Earth, ground us... ground us...”

     Ground us in reality, woman!  Like, get a grip, I think, mustering up some anger out of my fear and heartache and starting to stand up again.  With surprising strength, the old lady pushes me back down. 

     “Ground us in reality,” she says, which freaks me the hell out, I mean does everyone here read minds?  Again, I try to stand, and again she pushes me down.  “You must not break the circle,” she says, and then she totters away to the cabinet over the sink.  I’m watching her as she stands on her toes and reaches in, pulls down a box -- not a shoe box but maybe a boot box -- and brings it back to the circle.  She puts the it in the circle with me.

     All of this has been as if I’m not here looking at her.  Frustration is welling up inside of me like a tornado gathering momentum and sucking everything in.  I’m shaking, I’m so mad.  Where is my mother, that’s all I came here to find out!  I don’t have time for hocus pocus bullcrap.

     “What the --”

     Before I can even get going on my rant, the old, haggy, witching woman gasps!  She claps her hands to her cheeks, and her mouth is a ridiculous “O”.  Putting her hands on the box, she says, “Look what the spirits have brought!”  She pushes the box toward me until it touches my legs.

     Seriously? 

     FUCKING WACK JOB WITCH, WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MOTHER!  I scream in my head.

     The bitch witch opens the box slowly.

     Oh my Goddess.  Oh my Goddess!  I dive into the box with my hands, grabbing letters addressed with my mother’s handwriting -- oh God, I remember now how she used to dot her “i’s” with little hearts...  Envelopes marked “Return to Sender”, envelopes addressed to me!  Fifty letters, easy, plus drawings, a little watercolor of me, a silver ring with a dragon etched into it that says “Luis”.  That’s my Celtic zodiac sign.  I put the ring on, and my finger feels warm, and then the warmth rushes up my arm and to my heart.  Other trinkets that clatter and tinkle as I scrape my fingers through the box, feeling my mother, physically feeling her presence.

     I’m crying so hard, I can hardly see.  I’m happy to have the box, but I’m going to rip the old woman’s head off for not just giving it to me.  I want to boil her in oil.  I want to shake her until she breaks into pieces and leave her on her weird kitchen floor in her weird, fake circle, a puddle of baby blue satin and tulle.

     “You!  You!  You, you -- you had this all this time and you made me sit here and wait and you saw, you saw how upset I was, and you, you pretended to do magic, but I saw you!  I saw you turn on the stove to make it warm!  I saw you get my mother’s things out of the cabinet!  You’re just, you are -- you are a LIAR! I HATE YOU!”

     I drop handfuls of my mother’s letters back into the box, try to put the top on but am shaking so badly, I can’t even do that simple task, and I feel like such a loser and a chump.  Finally, I get the top on and clutch the box to my body -- protecting it, loving it, holding on to it for dear life.  I scramble to my feet and run to the door in a totally ridiculous way because I am still wearing my tight leather skirt and I can’t move my legs that well, plus my foot has fallen asleep --

     “Fuck a duck!” I say, withholding a scream as I struggle with the chains and bolts holding me in.  I can’t get out, I can’t get out, help me help me “MoFo!” I cry out.  I can’t breathe.

     The old woman puts her arm over my shoulder.  I feel something like an electric shock, and for an instant I think I’ve been tasered!  Either because of the taser or because I’m panicking, I can’t move!  I call out with my mind for my Fant friends, “Help me!”

     Suddenly, the shock fades, and like before, when Aleia touched my chest, I feel calm.  I watch while a hand unfastens the door and opens it for me.

     “Go in peace, Believe in peace, Create peace,” I hear, but it’s not the old woman’s gruff, warbling voice -- it’s a soft, warm, feminine voice that feels on my ears like a swallow of warm milk would feel.

     As I leave, I turn to look, and instead of seeing the old woman, I see a beautiful maiden.  She smiles.  “Spring is early this year,” she says just as Ian comes barreling up the stairs. 

     “No!” I say to him, but it’s too late.

     He’s yanked a pole out of the bannister, and is brandishing it like a sword, aiming for the hag/maiden’s throat.

Cherish

Cherish, teen mother and Outsider Girl, tries to find some time for herself and discovers it’s “not about me”.  Cherish also appeared in OGW April 1, 2010 and May 20.

Cherish:  Seven am, before the boy is awake.  He got me up at four, then he went back to sleep.  I tossed and turned, got up, made the coffee for my mother and me, sat down at my computer.

Free time.  Writing time.

Only there’s an email from the Disney store about a sale on hoodies, and next thing I know I’m browsing their site for about an hour, and I’ve put like sixty dollars on my PayPal account and I’ve bought the boy stuff like a white tee shirt with Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas on it which I figure he can get away with wearing to school ‘cause the uniform is a white shirt.

I want him to stand out.  I want him noticed.

That’s how it is now – screw me getting noticed, nobody ever noticed me for the good things anyway.  And now I don’t have to worry about me anymore, it’s all about him.

I haven’t written one word.  I have like six pages of a children’s book, one I’m writing for him, my sweet little boy.

For him.

When will it be for me again?

Was it ever?

But guess what -- I have a beautiful boy going into kindergarten this year, so who the fuck am I to complain?

Only, I can’t help it.  I want a boyfriend, friends, a new hoodie for me, a full night sleep going to bed before one and up after nine and then a day to write and draw like I used to but—

He’s awake now, tugging on me leg, smiling in my face.  Then he sneezes, and the dripping boogers make him cry so I have to go now, have to clean his face.  Story over.

For today, it’s not about me—

It’s Not About Me.

Gemma's Mom

Gemma’s Mom:  Gemma is a thirteen year old who has just sprouted fairy wings because her mother was an addicted to fairy Dust.  When she burned out and her wings stopped working, Gemma’s Mom ran, leaving Gemma when she was only six.  Gemma first appeared in a short story, “Wings”, then in OGW 9/24/09, 10/29/09, 2/4/10, and now she’s the narrator of a novel I’m working on.  The following is a letter Gemma’s mother wrote to Gemma when she was eight.

My darling girl, my little fairy, my precious Gem,

Remember when I used to fly?

Remember that poem I used to read to you?   “Come away, human chyld/ to the waters and the wyld/ With a fairy hand in hand/ From a world more full of weeping than you can understand.”  I saw it framed on the wall of a friend’s bedroom yesterday, and I began to cry.  I’d tried not to think of you for so long.  My feelings for you came rushing back in that instant, breaking the wall I’d built up around my heart.

Do you still love me?  I used to be your whole world.  Are you very angry with me?  Have you tried to forget me?  Please believe me when I say I love you very much.  I’ve been scared and lonely and trying to heal.  But yesterday, the Goddess showed me that Yeats poem, and I knew it was a sign that I needed you back in my life.  I’ve missed you soooo much. 

You must wonder why it took me two years to write to you.  Maybe you’re wondering why I never came home.

Remember when you couldn’t wait to be like me?  When I left, I didn’t want you to see me so broken.  I didn’t want you to want to be like me any more.  I left to spare you.

Honey, I couldn’t bring you with me, or come back, not the way I was. 

It’s taken me two years, but I’m learning to fly again.  I have friends, I have the Goddess in my life, I’m painting beautiful pictures (like we used to, together.  Remember when we used to paint together?  Is that mural still on the wall in the upstairs hall?  Or did your father paint over it?  He probably did paint over it.  I don’t want to place blame, but in order for you to understand why I left, you should know that your father never understood me.

I should’ve taken you with me.  Every day I’ve thought of you.  Every day.  I have a picture of us from the day you were born, you’re a little doll, porcelein-white, sucking on the long sleeve of a onesy that covers your hand.  Your head is against my neck, and you are at peace.  As am I.

      

I was afraid to write to you.  I was afraid your father had turned you against me.  Do you understand, I loved him so much, but he stopped caring about me.  In the end, he wasn’t even talking to me!  He never understood me.  How devastated I was after Jacob was born, when I stopped being able to fly.

I’m not blaming Jacob -- he was such a sweet boy!  How is he? 

You were tooo young to understand, but when Jacob was born, something inside me snapped.  I think it was what’s called post-partum depression, which you’re too young to understand.  I was just so sad.  I felt like I was in a horror movie, only it was real and it was never going to end.

I felt trapped.  I was dying inside.  My wings had stopped working and were worn out and dull and I couldn’t understand why, but I know now it was because of my heavy heart.  I’d always used flying to lighten my spirit, but it wasn’t working anymore.  Even your sweet, heart-shaped face and contagious laughter couldn’t lift me up.  My wings were heavy weights.  Jacob was another weight I couldn’t carry.  Your father didn’t want to help me.

You used to say, “It’s all right Mommy,” and pat my hand.  But it wasn’t.

Anyway, enough sad talk.  I love you Gemma, I always have and always will.  I am getting better, and when I am fully healed, I will bring you to New York City to live with me.  We were meant to be together.  Goddess willing, we will be.

Please forgive me.  I love you, baby.

Love,

Mommy

Juliet

Juliet:  “You’re wearing your mermaid dress,” I say to my mother as she pours us to-go cups of dark coffee.  Is my smile stretched too tightly?  I’m just so happy that she’s so happy – as indicated by her wearing her “mermaid dress,” a long, spaghetti-strapped, emerald green casual gown covered with cheap lace, worn under a faded denim jacket that matches mine.  Her “happy” -- so happy she’s like immortal -- dress.

     I’m wearing a faded black tank with a faded silver arched cat on it, over a bright white tee, under my denim jacket.  Black leggings, knee-high boots with zippers up the backs.  Everything soft and worn, from my heart to my heels.

     “You should try wearing a tee shirt and leggings and cute boots sometime,” I say, getting into her car.  She never drives me!  This is way special.  I am way special today…  I don’t even miss not getting a ride from Derek, even though he’s my best friend and he’s driven me every day for this whole year and even though this year he turned into a total hottie, not that it matters -- Michael is, and always has been my one true love…

     I shake my head so that my thoughts stop jumbling.  My curls fall out from behind my ears, and I look even more like my mother.  Smiley and red-headed.  “I mean, it feels really good,” I continue – “I always feel really good when I wear this outfit.  Like, calm.  Comfy, but also kind of shiny, you know what I mean?”

     My mother pauses, the car key poised to turn.  Did I say something wrong?  Oh Goddess no… why can’t I do anything right?  I love you Mommy --

     But my mother doesn’t burst into tears, she just says, “Interesting, very interesting.”  Then she smiles at me, and I lean in close, holding on to her arm and breathing in her scent – peaches and bergamot and coffee.  Rosemary in her hair.  Love in her warmth.  She loves me!

     But suddenly, she’s gone!  Just like that, on the way to my school with me hanging on to her every word and movement and mood.  She’s drifted into a world I only get to watch-- Heavy lids, eyes almost unfocused but not enough that she can’t multi-task – still letting me hold tightly to one of her arms, and driving at the same time.  This while her brain has sunken into creative mode.  The artist at work in my element…

     Sliding into a parking space at school, she suddenly breaks the surface, splashing up at me with an excited sparkle– “When I wear my mermaid dress, I feel slinky and cool, like I’ve just risen from the deepest, darkest part of the ocean, up into the light.  I feel renewed.”  My mother ruffles my hair as she says, “And shiny, too.”

     “Um… interesting?” I say, trying to see where she’s going with this.

     “Okay, picture this – I’m onstage—“

     “Or me, I’m onstage—“

     My mother waves at me with one hand.  “Shh, shh.”

     I hate when she does that.

     She continues, the ideas bubbling up like the froth of a wave, crash! Ideas! And bubbly-bubble— “and the show’s called ‘You Are What You Wear,’ and I have on an outfit, and I’m talking about how it makes me feel and—“

     I join in.  Crash!  “—it’s one outfit, but it’s in layers that I peel back into other outfits, each one with a different feeling attached—“

     My mother has clasped my hands in hers.  (Crash!)  “We must make lists.  Of outfits, different outfits and feelings that go with them.”

     (Crash!)  “We’ll have to go shopping!” I add.

     “Maybe one of us will be lit at a time, and the other changes clothes meantime instead of showing the layers revealed—“

     “—maybe we call the show, ‘Layers Revealed’!”

     “No, honey, ‘You are what you wear.’ Is better, it’s like ‘You Are What You Eat,’ but--”

     “We should practice wearing our outfits one at a time all day and write down what we’re feeling—“

     This is so great, I don’t even want to go to school, I’m all—

     Oh no.  Shit no!  All of a sudden she has those glassy eyes again.  Mommy’s hands grow cold as she withdraws into her own creative space again.  Without me.  Goddess damn it!

     A boy whistles.

     Michael?  No he did not.

     OMG, it was Michael.  Not whistling at my mother, not not not!

     Was.  Was whistling.  At.  My.  MOTHER!

     I tilt my head down and hurry out of the car, run into school.  I will not cry. 

     I will not cry!  Leave that to her.  Let her cry.