(no subject)
A blonde, I admired from a far… she was the girlfriend of my friend’s younger brother I “Let it be” and because it was graduation season and there were plenty of girls to go around, until one Sunday afternoon when I was there and she was there, and she asked me to drive her home, and then to come in, and so on. But by then her relationship with Rick had ended, and she was free to do as she pleased…and she pleased, so did I, and it was a summer of pleasing each other. In the evenings, we’d go for a drive then park by the lake… or stay in, she lived with friends, she was that much more mature, and it wasn’t too heavy, because she was done with him, and I didn’t care much about anything. But then she moved…and she’d call me at times, and it was nice, but I didn’t care, and a year went by and she called and played like she was still there, far away, until she said…”why don’t you come over, will you please come over”…because she was back in town…so I did.
But, by then something was different about Delia, and the more time I spent with her, the more I came to realized this. The night ended with us back in the bedroom and we did what we always did. In the end I went into the bathroom turning on the light to discover I was covered with blood around my stomach and groin. I was worried, and when I went back into the bedroom to find her crying. She told me she had an abortion last week, before she left him, and that it was an abusive relationship with an abusive alcoholic and that it was the only way to get her untied. This fell heavy on my spirit and I instantly felt as a conspirator in a plot I knew nothing about.
I wondered how Dee could let herself slide into a bad relationship and then let it go as far as a pregnancy. I looked at her differently and instantly became her adjudicator; I was clean and wanted to remain that way. We talked all night and the gory details of her failed attempt at a new life and other secrets were unveiled. Innocence was our divergence; I had yet to try, let alone fail; and our relationship was rooted in a fluffier soil than all this. I kissed away her tears, held her, and listened as the conversation turned to something even darker.
I had known that her mother had died when she was a young girl, but the air and circumstance surrounding her death was privileged and Jenny’s outward appearance and social ability never revealed the anguish inside.
As we lay side by side, intertwined and interconnected, my ears now belonged to her suffering; I held her tightly and prepared my heart to share her pain. Delia led me back to her childhood with a soft narrative, speaking longingly of her mother’s unyielding love and rocky marriage. The scene was vivid in my imagination; I saw her as a child, standing alone by the graveside, a bouquet of flowers in her hand, her long blonde hair neatly braided, and her soft dress detailed to match her sparkling young imaginative mind.
A divorce was imminent; there was money and undertones of organized crime and abuse. “Her father”, she said, “was obsessed”; steadfast on the conviction that… “What he built belonged to him” and that there was no way that he would let her mother tear it apart. That last day, Dee woke from a nap and found her mother’s body in the garage, the car running, and no suicide letter to heal the wounds and answer the questions that enshroud the circumstance of her demise. There was an investigation; the police held suspicions on her father but lacked the evidence to prosecute.
The detectives were kind and careful with the young girl. The investigation revealed other things about her father; mainly that he was an unfit parent. Delia was put in the custody of her aunt; her relationship with her father severed.
Years later, Delia called on the detective that investigated the incident. They opened the file and followed through on what years of therapy recommended. The detective was again kind and careful, but told her in confidence that he believed her father was the main conspirator in a murder tailored to look like a suicide.
Soon after this she decided to leave town, to travel far from the avenues, names, and faces that never let her mend. But eventually, a thousand miles away, she found herself living in the same circumstances that surrounded her childhood. In the light of dysfunction, she borrowed money for an abortion, then more to get back to a place that had robbed her of so much.
We smoked in the dark; the hot ash from our cigarettes intermittently illuminated the silent despair and the vision of a little girl with braided blonde hair that was branded across my consciousness. We found comfort together, silent the rest of the evening, but our feathery love affair ended shortly after.
The rest of her story, from then on, was allegedly sad and I know nothing else of her circumstance. I thought of her this week at work, but had no idea the magnitude of what she revealed to me that night until I woke up on my 39th birthday with an obsessive need to write about it. The unapparent root of this need, led me to some self analysis and I realized that I have too many friends with sad stories and tragic endings not to share its profoundly common characteristics. I’ve chipped away at self destruction myself; delving into self medication and self-indulgence, but always held the perspective I needed to separate myself from the subversive darkness that befell so many young friends. I saw the evil that crept into and preyed upon lives lived in despair; the cycle perpetuating itself until a dismal, dark veil disorients the victim to the point that no direction is apparent.
Some people bring this upon themselves, the go out and dance with the devil; they hang around the barber shop too long; they cast their pearls among swine and still manage to think with the most naïve of perspectives that they are somehow immune to the disease that claimed so many incurable mortal beings. “Wake Up” I tell you no one is immune. Nietzsche’s madman smashed the lantern and exclaimed “God is dead”. But do you know who killed him? Have you bothered to investigate any further? Who stole that girl’s innocence? Why is her blood on me and on my hands? With snide judgment the audience replies…”because you slept with her”. Maybe I did, but I tell you, this story connects us all.