Julia

(A Twig)

The bus was nearly full. Yellow light made the whole inside feel cheap, like a waiting room nobody wanted to be in. She got the window seat. I sat next to her, feet not quite touching the floor, poem folded twice in my hand.

I didn’t even like poems. But I’d written one and held on to it for a while, until that day. I thought maybe she’d be different. She wasn’t mad. She hadn’t yelled. Her face looked neutral enough to risk it.

So I gave it to her. Just handed it over and waited.

She read it, quickly, like it was something she wanted over with, then laughed out loud. A real laugh, she said I was just like him.

“Eres igual a tu padre, escribiendo estupideces.”

I just looked straight ahead. The man in front of me had a collar stained near the neck.

Ah, there’s a stain. Wonder how he got it. Does he even know it’s there? Did anyone hear her?

There were no more words exchanged until after we got off the bus when, to appear unperturbed, I offhandedly posed some irrelevant question.

That shows her. It meant nothing. It was nothing.

“Go turn the television on, one of you.”

That was Julia’s first comment when she came home from work.

Not that I was usually there. Once or twice she permitted me to wait for her, but that was definitely not the norm. If she invited me over, it was a charitable “come over, if you want,” she was already home.

Still, that line stayed with me.

Too quiet here.

Years later, as a social worker, I recognized something familiar with clients. Some insisted they needed sound constantly: television, radio, headphones, anything. I heard it said more than once that they were trying to drown out the noise of their own thoughts.

I am not saying Julia should have been a client.

I am saying there were things about her that looked less like personality and more like distress disguised as refinement.

Grandiosity. The bad manners hidden under refinement. The desperate desire to be counted among the elegant hostesses she admired. The way she berated my father, screamed at me, and spoke of “those inferiors” with a rage so thunderous there was nowhere for anyone to disappear.

And mental health care?

Julia would not have been caught dead walking into a clinic, even in a small, traditional city where those things were mostly for people with money and the good sense to suffer discreetly.

Or anywhere, for that matter.

Her refrain was always the same:

“Your father met me when I was very young, while I was working. He married me so I would be a housewife and a mother to his children.”

Not true.

But for a while, she made it sound as though my father had plucked her from a promising life and ambushed her into birthing children.

I used to hear that and think: here we go again.

Now I wonder.

How much of what I called arrogance was fear?

How much of what I called cruelty was untreated rage?

How much of her performance was just one long attempt not to sit alone in a quiet room with herself?

Funny, no?

Not funny.

Tag: Julia

Just Like Him