This War Paint

Jane


It had been a mistake, my one brief second of rebellion branded all along my hip. And I regretted it. I regretted it like I regretted allowing David Armstrong into the bathroom that night and leaving Dad to deal with Mom every day. This time, though, my selfishness couldn’t be scrubbed away with a good hot shower or pounds of chocolate. My mistake was a rose pattern dancing in and out of my panty line. And it was forever.

I couldn’t afford that kind of imperfection tarnishing my pristine image, that kind of rebellion permanently branded on my skin. People like me didn’t go out and get tattoos. We stayed home and looked after our parents, did all of our homework, kept away from trouble.

So I couldn’t show anyone, which was easier said than done in our town’s summer of sweltering heat and long nights. I knew that just one accidental slip and everywhere would be alight with gossip and rumours because Jane Hathaway was their sweetheart. She was the girl mothers would point out to their daughters and mutter things like “why can’t you be more like Jane.” And those girls would watch me with adoring eyes as if every move I made was magical and perfect. As if that Jane Hathaway and I were the same.

And I hated that word. Perfect. It was a stupid, ambiguous, open ended word.

But every town needed an angel just as desperately as they needed a devil. It just so happened that they got both wrong, or at least confused.

It’s not that I knew Butch or anything, had even spoken a work to him in my life, but his face wasn’t one of someone cruel. Sure, he was built like a wrestler and had barely an inch of skin free of a tattoo. Sure, most people looked at him as if he were an omen to everything. Yet anyone with a smile as pretty as his couldn’t be so bad.

He had been the one I’d thought of as I’d paid that lady to stick her needles into me and tarnish my body. I didn’t want to be who they saw anymore and it happened to strike me at a time where my mind obviously wasn’t computing things right. So I’d leant back into a chair and closed my eyes as pain ruptured through my left side. And then I’d seen the tattoo in all its glory.

It was actually beautiful. Actually the rose image was lifelike and pretty, conflicting with the pale skin of my hip and stomach. If it had been on anyone else, on a faceless person without an identity, I may have thought it was glorious and been jealous. Every girl wants to feel lovely and the tattoo strangely made me feel momentarily just that.

But of course reality didn’t disappear for long. Back in it crept, making me hate the thing suddenly irremovable on my hip, making me conscious of the way some tops rode up and jeans fell lower.

“Jane!”

My Dad’s calling startled me, causing my body to almost topple off of the porch I’d been sitting on. The lazy sun was blinding as it sunk lower and lower into the horizon of houses. Bleeding clouds of red and pink moved with an unfelt wind, breaking up the sky as the evening pressed further in.

“Jane, where are you?”

I rose slowly, reluctant to leave the quickly changing sky which made up our sunset. Any second everything would be dark, only the porch light casting any break in it. My eyes moved over to the houses opposite us across the peaceful street, catching a glimpse of some movement in windows I wondered what was happening at that time to others. If they were watching the sunset, seeing the colours shift so quickly, thinking about how our world can change in just a single moment?

“My God. Jane Hathaway if you don’t get in here this minute I’ll be forced to deliver some awful, unseen punishment which will have you incarcerated for the rest of the summer!”

I smiled at Dad’s weightless threat. He was the best man I’d ever known, strong too to have to deal with what he did, and still he found the humour and wit that Mom had once told me she fell in love with. I hoped that one day I’d find someone half as good as him to marry, half as happy and supportive.

My feet left the wooden porch, my hands pushing open the front door from where it laid open just a crack. My house was homey at best, cramped at worst. There were four of us living in a place which was probably only meant for two – not that it bothered us any. Helen and I spent most of our childhood playing outside with the other neighbourhood kids, dancing along the shoreline, playing hide and seek in the woods. Florence was a wonderful place to live so it more than made up for our tiny home.

I sidled my way into the kitchen, relishing the warm wood beneath my toes. Mom was sitting at the table which initially shocked me. Wasn’t it past 9? Didn’t we usually get her up to bed before that?

“Jane,” my father sighed, running a hand through his dark hair which was undoubtedly thinning. Sometimes I wondered if that was just due to age or if the stress of Mom had forced it to fall out quicker. In old pictures his hair was thick and lush, but then Mom was happy and alright, normally tugging his hand to get to some unknown destination out of the camera’s range.

“It’s a beautiful sunset tonight,” I brandished a hand at the window above the sink. “You should have come outside and enjoyed it Daddy.”

But, of course, he couldn’t leave Mom alone. I watched her silently just staring at the air around her head as if it were visible, as if she could watch her own breath materialise into something beautiful. It would be nice to understand, sometimes, just what she was staring at.

“Where’s Helen?” I moved around the small kitchen, my hip scraping the table, to pour boiling water in my favourite mug. The long hair dripping down my back scratched my shoulder as I turned my head to observe Dad, perched on a chair beside Mom.

“Out with James again.”

I smiled at my father’s antipathy towards any boy who got close enough to us to offer up a sentence. He’d always been stupidly protective when it came to the opposite sex, scared perhaps that we’d get ourselves knocked up and have to cram another person into our already overcrowded house. Scared that we’d elope with them, run off and leave him alone. If you ever asked him why he hated boys so much he’d simply smile thinly and state that they were only after one thing. What thing, though, he never elaborated.

“James isn’t so bad, he makes Helen happy,” I felt the need to defend the boy. He wasn’t like the usual guys Helen went out with. James was kind and sweet, even a little nerdy. I enjoyed watching my baby sister have doors opened for her and be told how beautiful she was almost every day.

I stirred the tea slowly and listened to the outside world seeping in through our open window. A car made its way past, the lights flickering briefly onto me before highlighting the rest of the neighbourhood in its turn.

“As long as she comes back before her curfew and keeps her promise of high grades I don’t mind. I wish she was more like you sometimes though Jane, eighteen years old and you’ve never brought a scruff bag home.” I flinched inwardly. Eighteen years old and never had a proper boyfriend, and my Dad was praising me for it!

I laid the steaming mug before him, taking in his lined face and tired eyes. It must have been a tough day; Mom must have put up more of a fight than usual.

“You stay here Daddy, I’ll take Mom up to bed.”

He nodded slowly, his very movements fatigued. The usual smile which adorned his face sloped down into something heavier as if it couldn’t take the weight anymore. I bent close to place my lips on his cheek, tasting the stubble he hadn’t had the energy to remove. Yes, today had obviously been a hard day.

I turned to Mom and placed a steady hand on her shoulder. The flimsy nightgown she wore was soft under my touch and I felt a stab of something. Something which told me she’d never reach for my hand again, never hold me like a mother should her daughter. Instead of showing my discomfort, I shook her gently before coaxing her softly out of her seat.

“Come on Remy; let’s get you up to bed.”

“I had a bad dream,” Mom sighed “I woke up and couldn’t remember where I was.”

“Well you’re home Remy, you’re safe.”

She followed me up the stairs. I kept throwing looks over my shoulder to make sure she was there, hadn’t forgotten again, wouldn’t lose her footing and fall. I took her small hand in mine as we reached the top and led her into my parents’ room.

She sniffed the air, as if checking for something, while we crossed the threshold. Then she removed her hand from mine and made her own way stiffly over to the bed. I smiled at her when she peered expectantly at me, wondering just who she saw me as at that moment. Was I Jane, her daughter? Tessa, her old best friend? Carrie, the nurse who occasionally came to check up on her?

“Come over here Tess,” she beckoned from where the covers almost smothered her “come tell me how you and your sweetheart are doing?”

Tessa and Remy had been best friends all through their teenage years and early twenties. She had been the woman who held Mom when her first boyfriend cheated on her and laughed with her when Dad had tripped over himself while caught up in staring at her. Tessa had eloped with a man sixteen years ago, run off with him and never been heard from since. Mom had been torn up about it for a long time until she just forgot it had ever happened. She forgot a lot of things ever happened.

I stretched widely, hoping to silently communicate with her that I was tired and therefore unable to pretend I was Tess for a few minutes. She just gasped which instantly made me alert, worried that she’d hurt herself or forgotten something else.

“Tess, I didn’t know that you got a tattoo,” she murmured, pointing to where my shirt now covered the rose. I cursed myself for being so stupid, for already slipping up and letting someone see it. Yet in the recesses of my mind I was glad it had been Mom. She wouldn’t even remember let alone understand that it was her eighteen year old daughter sporting the tattoo. If it had been anybody else I could kiss my freedom and social status goodbye. Two things I needed just to keep me sane.

“Must have been that boyfriend of yours, he always was too arty for his own good. Well I’m tired now so will be seeing you later. Don’t forget to pop in sometime and let me know how you’re doing.”

And she settled herself amid the floral sheets, already half asleep. I whispered a good night before slowly making my way out of the room, closing the door as quietly as the hinges would allow me.

My Mom had severe Alzheimer’s. She had always been different from others, something which used to be endearing, until it developed into an unstable mental state. I was only five when the doctors first started visiting. They brought their drugs with them and their calm voices and soothing words. Whenever they came I was instructed to stay in my room with a little Helen who just wanted to play Barbies or My Little Pony. As we got older, it became harder for us to be herded to our room, harder to pretend that Mom was actually okay when really she spent most of her time in bed.

And then she began to forget us. Helen was mistaken for me. Dad was mistaken for a doctor. I was mistaken for Tessa. It just got worse until we were never quite sure who she thought we were and where she thought she was.

More doctors came and went, loading us with Living With Alzheimer’s and So You’ve Got Alzheimer’s leaflets. They didn’t help but we all came to terms with it anyway. We didn’t have much of choice, we all still saw her as Mom and Wife, as Remy the endearing.

My hands subconsciously traced the rose along my hip. It was stupid of me to get that tattoo. It was stupider of me to actually think I could hide it forever. But, while I had it, I thought it was beautiful, thought it made me less Jane Hathaway, Florence’s sweetheart, than I had ever been before. And I loved that.