Jill Malone

“Do you remember,” my child asks me, “when we were kids together?  And we used to play trains, and hug each other, and never fight.”

“Were we kids together?” I ask.

“Yes.  We were both small, and we were friends.”

“Hmm,” I say, at a loss.  This is a story he tells frequently.  When we were children together.  I wonder how much has to do with an expansive notion of time that children seem to have.  A month ago, he was a baby. Next weekend, he’ll be a big guy.  That sort of thing.  But also, the dreamlike sensation that the people we love are somehow the same as ourselves:  that those around us, feel what we feel.   He has known me all of his life, so, of course, we grew up together.

I bought my running shoes yesterday.  The clerk had me run up staircases, and around marbled hallways, and elevators, and back down to the shop with each pair.  The whole time I felt the exhilaration of dash and dart.  So, in the blued afternoon, rain in a steady slick, I ran a cross section of the South Hill, past the mucky leaves, and the yipping dogs, and the smokey air.  I’ve got a new voice.  It came two days ago.  A boy’s voice, I think.  Clever, contemplative.  Telling me a story.

Sometimes you aren’t chasing, or being chased.  Sometimes a run is just a chance to feel your muscles stretch.  To let your brain roam.  To remember the form of your body — the pump of your arms, and the elegance of your breath.

Maybe a character has found me again.  Maybe not.  If he stays, if he insists, I’m here.  Or, at any rate, I’ll be right back.  I can’t run all that far yet.

I could be anything I wanted all week, until Sunday morning.  On Sunday morning, I belonged to god.  And by god, I mean my mother.  On Sunday morning, I agreed to wear dresses, and have my hair curled, and shimmy on tights and fancy shoes.  I agreed not to run in the sanctuary, or tackle the boys in the fields beyond the chapel.  I agreed to sit, quietly, and with attention, during my father’s sermon.  (Jamie was permitted to sleep, and usually snored, but more was demanded of the older sibling, and the girl.)

I dreaded Sunday.  Dreaded having to sit with the curling iron perched fractions from my skin.  Dreaded the terrible pull of tights up legs.  The awful, awkward, half nakedness of dresses.  I dreaded the pretense.  The farce.  If God knew me, and loved me, what the fuck difference did it make if I wore my jeans and baseball shirt?  The one with the green sleeves.  Or my baseball cap.  The dirty, fitted one.  Or tackled the boys on the fields.

Why pretend to be some other kind of girl?

But pretend I did.  Under my mother’s thumb, and then later, under my own.  I wore makeup, carried a purse, adopted coyness when it served me.  I played the girl. 

And then, I found a closet full of boy pants.  Wide legged, button flies, shredded at the hem, cut to fit ski boots.  They hung at my waist, had to be rolled up.  They roughened my look.  Started something.  Or relit something.  Reminded me to drop pretense.  To be authentic.  Comfortable.  Daring.  Contradictory.  A woman, yes, and more importantly, myself.