Jade nodded.
"Right."
"Then let's get started, Princess Jade," Star said, and thrust a roller in her hands.
"We need music!" Misty cried, and rushed out to turn on the stereo. A minute or so later, the sounds rocked the house. Star twirled with her roller in the air and Misty shimmied up to her. The two of them lipsynching the song. Jade and I roared.
Secrets fall like rain, she had said.
Maybe Star was right: my storms were over.
Or maybe, maybe they had just begun.
11 Exposed
For all of us the revelation of family secrets and lies made the world seem less and less solid. It was as though the very ground we walked upon could become thin ice at any moment. We would fall through, screaming and crying until we hit rock bottom, forced to confront another ugly truth about ourselves or our lives. Even with a warm, secure and loving family, young people my age struggled to find the answer to the haunting questions, "Who am I? Who am I supposed to be?"
After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memorizing, reciting, reporting, and performing for jury after jury of teachers, counselors, and administrators, you still feel inadequate, alone, vulnerable, and naked in a world that can be unforgiving and terribly demanding.
Sometimes, you cling to your family like some shipwrecked passenger clutching a lifesaver, but when you look into their eyes, you see their impatience and their expectation. You hear what they're thinking you should be swimming on your own by now. You'll only drag all of us down if you don't.
If you're lucky, really lucky, you find someone to love who will in turn love you and the loneliness and fear is greatly reduced. Often, it seems from what we've all experienced, you can make the wrong choice and just when you thought it was safe enough to let go of the lifesaver, you're tossing and turning and on the verge of drowning again.
But what if you've never really had a loving family? What if all your birthdays were treated as minor inconveniences and all your presents were grudgingly shoved your way? What if all your candles were snuffed too quickly and whenever you reached for that lifesaver, you were tossed ideflated tube and left to struggle on your own?
And what if after you had come through the darkness and finally looked for the light and for hope and promise, you found only a prism of lies twisting and turning, making you dizzy and sending you spinning in a whirlpool of memories you now knew were all illusions? Into what stream, what pool would you dip your hands to wash your face in smiles? Where would you go to hear the melody of laughter? What place in yourself would you reach into to draw out some happy moment to share even if you did find someone with whom you could share?
How would you know the difference between yourself and your shadow? Would anyone blame you for stopping and asking everyone, every passerby, every acquaintance, every stranger the same question? Do you know who I am? Do you know where I can go to find that out?
I had a mother who was captured only in a small pile of letters. I had a father who was someone frozen in old photographs, a face without a voice, a hand without a touch, eyes that never saw me and ears that never heard me. I had parents consisting of twisted and knotted ribbons of deception, who even deceived each other.
My friends and I had begun to unravel all the ribbons and make the painful discoveries. My mother was not my mother. She was my half sister. My half sister was not my half sister. She was a complete stranger who had no past herself. What if one day, one moment early in my life, she had stopped and turned to me and said, "Cathy, it's time you knew the truth so that we can all live in a solid world, a world without thin ice."
What if she had given me the most precious gift of all? My real name, my identity, an opportunity to be someone and know the difference between my shadow and myself? What kept her from doing that? Who was she punishing? Or was she merely so full of hate that any act of love was beyond her?
Tied and bound by death she lay in the cold, dark earth behind our house like some piece of buried evidence that would easily convict all those who had helped create her. It was best not to think of her. Oh, do not think of her, Cathy. Run your hand over your forehead, I told myself, and wash the memory away as you would some ugly stain. Think of yourself as reborn. Light new candles, Cathy the Cat. Turn them against the darknes
s.
I thought all these things as I worked
mechanically beside my new sisters. They chatted and laughed, sang and giggled, and filled their ears and eyes constantly so as to keep out their own demons. Geraldine used to say "Work hard so you don't think about unpleasant thoughts." She was right about that, although I was sure she never dreamed I would think of her as one of those troubling thoughts.
"All right now," Jade cried, interrupting my reverie as she turned around and looked at our work. The whole room, even the ceiling, was a flat black. She, Star, and Misty had moved the furniture out, taking the beds apart first and then removing all the drawers from the dressers. The room was completely bare. All the furniture and clothing was in the hallway near the stairs.
"Tomorrow, call the Salvation Army," Jade said. "They'll come by to pick up the furniture and the clothes." She looked at me. "Is there anything of hers you don't want to give away?"
"No," I said, without any hesitation. "Good." She inspected the door closely. "Can this be locked somehow?"
"Why?" I asked.
"This room will be our sanctuary, our temple We don't want anyone in here, even by accident," she explained. Star looked at the door too.
"You'll have to replace this knob with one that locks then," she said.
"Okay. I'll pick up a new knob on the way here tomorrow," Jade promised.
"Let's get going then. It's late," Star said.