Cauldron Anthology Issue 9: They Who Were Spurned cauldron9finalproof | Page 10

Beneath the Lines
Re nee S oase y
I sit in bed, both hands grasped around a cup of coffee almost too hot to hold, fingers stinging with
heat. Three spiral notebooks lay in my lap. On the pink cover of one my mother has written—in a
script so familiar—“Private Property of Jean Wright.”

My stomach involuntarily clenches. So does my jaw. I attempt to flatten the unreasoning hope
that rises up my throat. I talk to my thoughts: Be still.

I’ve waited years to get ahold of these journals. Sixteen, to be precise. Sixteen years since she
died, since I learned of their existence and asked for them. “Your mother’s journals are staying in
the attic until I’m dead,” my father said. Supposedly there was a box full of them. Maybe more than
one box. And somehow they’ve been whittled down to three notebooks. Are most of them still up
there, slowly growing a coat of dust, yellowing around the edges? Did he destroy them? Lose them?
Lie about them? All of these options are possible, and now I may never know. My father’s sixth-stage
dementia safely secures his secrets.

These three journals came to me via my sister, who at my behest asked my father on her last
visit if she could have them. I couldn’t undertake the task myself, as Dad and I have been estranged
for years. I doubt he realized what was being requested, given he didn’t even recognize my sister, but
he said yes, so she rummaged around a few of his dresser drawers and came up with these.

I’m not ready to digest whatever might be in the journals, but I flip open the cover of each one
to glance at the dates. One is from 1974—the year my life took a turn down a fundamentalist hell-
hole after I left home and went to Portland Bible College. One is dated 1979—the year I gave birth to
my mother’s first grandchild. The last one is from 2003—the year she was diagnosed with stage four
colon cancer and died. The significance of those particular years in my own life catches my breath,
makes me dare to hope I might find what I’m looking for. I want to discover that—in her secret heart
of hearts—my mother was really who I always wanted her to be: someone who unconditionally loved
me. Someone who honored her mothering heart over her religion. Someone who acknowledged the
injustice inherent in her expectations. My mother was dedicated to her religion and 1950s culture,
so she raised me to have babies and treat my man like a king. To change dirty sheets and clean dirty
kitchens and serve three home-cooked meals a day, the reward for which was often ridicule and criti-
cism whenever the king needed to feel bigger, better, or brighter than he was.

I did that life. For years. Until the resentment turned into resistance. When I found the cour-
age to claw my way into rooms I could walk through without flinching, where I could breathe free
and sleep easy, my religion pronounced me a failure, because divorce is always a failure—and a sin.
In turn, I pronounced my religion a failure and shook the dust from my feet.
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Cauldron Anthology