Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull ShortLit) Read online

  fooling around, giving instead of getting, cheery not driven, sure not uncertain, possessing not anticipating, answers not questions.

  I’m seething lately

  —but it too shall pass.

  FIRST PHOTOS

  The only photo of Jane

  I saw while growing up

  hung in my parents’

  bedroom. She was wearing

  a long raincoat and

  standing on a stair,

  against a tacky interior

  of bronze chevrons.

  Later I will find out

  that Jane was wearing

  a long raincoat the night

  she was killed. What if

  it were the same coat

  as in the picture, the one

  I looked at all those years?

  I arrive at the New York Public Library

  with my two dates, the bare brackets

  of a life. I ask a librarian

  where I might find information

  about an old murder. Was it

  a famous murder? she queries.

  Not really, I say. It was in the family,

  My answer embarrasses me.

  She gives me little slips of paper

  which I fill out and roll up

  then shove into silver tubes

  as long as pinkies. After

  dropping them down a hatch

  I wait for the invisible staff

  to send up dark blue spools

  of the Detroit News from below.

  Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, the spools

  rocket across the lighted screen.

  Ike Fights Heart Setback. Blacks

  End Long Strike at College. Old Foes

  Truman and Nixon Hold

  a Sentimental Visit. “We’ll Be

  on the Moon by July!” Then

  on March 22, 1969, Jane’s face

  suddenly fills the screen.

  Her youth an aura like a

  new haircut-just blatant,

  raw, crushing. A headband

  keeps her brown hair back;

  her lips are parted slightly.

  How she wants. How she

  penetrates, her eyes set back

  in her brow like my mother’s,

  like their father’s: dark,

  obedient, devouring.

  My face stares into hers,

  our thoughts frozen together

  on the cusp of a wave

  just starting to go white-cold, curl

  and fall back into the spitting green.

  When I started looking at Jane,

  she was much older than me.

  How strange her face seems now

  enlarged on this grainy screen,

  now that she will always be

  only twenty-three.

  SPIRIT

  The spirit of Jane

  lives on in you,

  my mother says

  trying to describe

  who I am. I feel like the girl

  in the late-night movie

  who gazes up in horror

  at the portrait of

  her freaky ancestor

  as she realizes

  they wear the same

  gaudy pendant

  round their necks.

  For as long as I can

  remember, my grandfather

  has made the same slip:

  he sits in his kitchen,

  his gelatinous blue eyes

  fixed on me. Well jane,

  he says, I think I’ll have

  another cup of coffee.

  HOW THE JOURNEY WAS

  TWO LETTERS FROM SWEDISH ANCESTORS, MUSKEGON, MICHIGAN (1910)

  1. How the journey was (Marie)

  I will let you know that I have come to a new land.

  I will tell you now how the journey was.

  Dear you can imagine it was terrible.

  There was a war boat that drove into us

  so there was a big hole in the boat

  and our trunks stood in water.

  We thought we were gone.

  But we were not so far out.

  Then we went with a smaller boat called St. Louis,

  a little terrible boat.

  We were real glad when we came to land.

  We were in Muskegon Tuesday, October 3rd, at night.

  They were nice people that Nels lives with.

  Just young people.

  He was so glad when he saw his little Svea.

  You can’t imagine how fat he is. He thrives good here.

  I have only my man and little Svea

  and it is of course at first I feel alone.

  I don’t think we will ever come to like America

  as good as Sweden.

  I wonder how it is with you. Well,

  you are probably busy with the harvesting.

  Is it a nice fall there at home?

  Here it is changeable.

  One day it rains,

  the next day the sun shines.

  2. A hearty greeting (Nels)

  I must also write a few lines to you.

  I have worked almost every day since I came here to America

  so I am never free.

  A worker can get along better here.

  I am working in a factory

  where we make billiard tables.

  There are 700 men in the factory

  so we make several hundred tables a day.

  They do everything on a big scale here.

  There are 3,000 Swedes here,

  three Swedish churches, and many

  Swedish lodges. That is good

  because it goes slow to learn English.

  We are too old. I wish I had been here

  ten years sooner.

  THE BOX

  My mother says she won’t leave Michigan without it.

  But when her father goes down to get it,

  all he comes up with is a slim packet

  of ruled paper, bound by a piece of twine.

  Jane’s Diary-Private

  it says on the cover,

  Private twice underlined.

  She didn’t always like her sister,

  and she didn’t like her parents much either,

  he warns my mother, who says

  she doesn’t mind. She packs it

  in her suitcase, tells me

  we’ll look at it in due time.

  About a year later, she sends me a copy.

  The diary starts in January, 1960,

  when Jane was thirteen, and runs

  to October of 1961.

  At this moment in my life

  hate is so fierce

  that I would give anything to kill my mother

  she begins, already

  on her way

  to becoming a woman.

  (OCTOBER 21, 1960)

  This little book is full of my ups and downs.

  On one page I am obviously happy and on the next desperately unhappy.

  Such is life.

  Now, well now I am quiet, happy, dreamy and listening to the hi-fi.

  This fall has certainly been better than last fall and I am very happy and very busy.

  I am a cheerleader now and have been practicing all the time.

  Also Barb was sixteen this month and we went to Ann Arbor

  this weekend. Plus the fact that I have Latin, algebra,

  and my four other subjects. Indeed I love it! I am so pleased!

  Secretly I long to be as mature & chic & sophisticated as Sandy Robertson or Gail Beatty,

  but such is not possible so I shall have to be content just being Janie [M.].

  GUSHING

  Jane was a gusher,

  my mother says.

  You know, a gusher—

  “I really like your dress,

  I really do, I mean it’s adorable,

  really and truly adorable. ”

  I know about gushing, how charming

  it can be, and how a
larming

  when it comes on strong:I went over to Jan’s Thursday nite and really spouted off.

  Heidi and Suzie were there and they objected to my ideas, strenuously.

  I do too I just talked.

  Everything I said or did, I said or did wrong.

  But all those joys, sorrows, and upsets

  help you find yourself, help you to build

  a life of real value. Those upsets all contribute

  to my character and what I’m going to be.

  I love the sound of it, a girl

  surging into herself

  as she writes into the night—

  I am all mixed up and these pages filled with writing haven’t helped any.

  I can’t sleep. I have to write.

  (MARCH 7, 1960)

  I’ve decided to resign from the compliment club.

  This may seem trivial, but to me it’s a big thing.

  I have come to the conclusion however that I am not the kind of girl

  who belongs in a group such as the club and that my ideas are too strong to ignore.

  Friday there will be a meeting of the club. I will not be there.

  Instead I will write a letter explaining my resignation.

  I will no longer be part of the crowd listed in the front of the book.

  I will know how Gwyneth Nevins and Sally Fredericks feel when

  they are left out.

  I will be an outsider.

  THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL

  I’ve just finished Anne Frank:

  The Diary of a Young Girl.

  It too spans age thirteen to fifteen—

  it too covers young love, hating

  one’s mother, and sibling rivalry.

  The new edition has restored

  some passages, such as Anne’s

  description of female anatomy. She says

  the clitoris looks a bit like a blister.

  She describes everything she eats

  (potatoes, rotten lettuce, fake gravy,

  the occasional glut of strawberries)

  everything she reads (genealogy, mythology)

  and how the families in the attic fight

  (often, and bitterly). Anne was also a gusher-

  a chatterbox, as she says. But who can guess

  what Anne would have said

  about the last place she went.

  (1960)

  I bought a record. It’s called “Cuttin’ Capers” by Doris Day and it’s real cute

  and happy sounding. I love it! It makes me happy and feel wonderful too!

  I’m beginning to really like music and what it adds to life and its many moods.

  Life is good to me!

  BARB AND JANE, PART I

  Two sisters, fifteen months apart, sharing a yellow room.

  They divided it in two; it drove Barb nuts

  that Jane’s closet was on Barb’s side of the room.

  All the myths have been juggled about, so

  it’s hard now to figure out

  who was messy, who was neat

  who awkward, who popular.

  Barb remembers wearing a patch over her eye

  at age five, having braces, and being deeply sick

  with rheumatic fever, so of course she thinks

  Jane was much cuter, with her freckles

  and fresh row of bangs. But their father maintains

  Jane was wildly jealous of Barb’s social ease, her lanky body.

  Barb remembers trying to steal Jane’s friends, writing her name

  on every page of Jane’s journal, and hating her sister so much

  she often imagined smothering her to death with a pillow.

  JANUARY 20, 1960)

  Right now I hate my sister so.

  There is no sense of unison or understanding between us.

  I hate her so much.

  She is sarcastic, spiteful, snobby, snippy, and her whole attitude is one of being better than I. I know that she is and perhaps I am jealous, but I have no companionship with her any longer.

  Jealousy is a funny thing. I am jealous of Barb’s fun, dates, looks, assurance, way with parents, clothes, charm, age, etc. Yet it’s something hard to understand. I am not always jealous or always envious but just sometimes I want to have and be like her so badly that I could cry. It’s a shame for she deserves what she possesses and certainly should have it.

  If she hates me that’s OK. But I would give my life for her and she doesn’t care whether I live or die.

  I wish we could go to Florida. Maybe being together and having fun would help.

  SLOGANS

  My grandmother’s house was full of slogans-laminated plaques in the kitchen, teddy bears on twin beds

  with T-shirts that read, God Is Love.

  One of her favorites:If you can’t say anything nice,

  don’t say anything at all.

  I can hear her now, fingering the white collar

  of a pageboy dress Jane wore that day to school.

  I can’t believe I raised a daughter

  who lives in such filth, she says,

  disgusted by the sweat stains

  on the two half-moons.

  (JANUARY 21,1960)

  I know that my feelings

  toward both parents will soften

  but now the thought of these people

  being my parents sounds utterly repulsive

  and I feel almost sick.

  I have come to the point

  where home is unbearable

  and I will do anything to escape from it.

  I feel sorry that I feel this way and regret

  that our previous good times

  are spoiled. Someday perhaps

  my feelings toward my parents

  will change, but until then

  I’m afraid they and myself

  will have a pretty tough time.

  MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

  I’ve heard that Jane said horrible things to her,

  but I don’t know what they were. My mother says

  they ridiculed, patronized her.

  My estimation of her has fallen sadly, Jane wrote,

  for now I no longer think she is a good mother.

  I even think she is a poor excuse for a woman.

  My grandmother never finished high school, she never

  drove a car. She lied about her age her entire life

  so my grandfather would marry her. While

  they were dating, she never let him drive her home.

  After they married, she never talked about

  where she came from, never mentioned her own

  dead mother, or the years she spent taking care

  of her drunk father, her drunk brother.

  Only once a year, at Christmas, would she visit

  her brother and his twelve children; she brought

  a check and cans of food. His whole family appeared

  at my mother’s wedding reception, but they didn’t

  come in. They just hovered like shadows on the lawn.

  Years later, Grandma would refuse to take my sister and me

  to church or the mall because she said

  we looked poor. We tried to tell her

  it was the style. She was very, very hard on us,

  my mother now notes. But you know

  how people are often merciless

  on those they love the most.

  (APRIL 15, 1960)

  Why can’t I always be happy and content? Why must life get all mixed up sometimes? I just wish I could always be happy, but I know I won’t be for no one always is.