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phyllishmoore.com
Amazon.com
Category:
Women
Publisher: self pulblished
ISBN-10: 1519401426
Type: Fiction
Pages: 238
Copyright: November, 2015
ISBN-13: 978151966036
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
Sabine reads her mother's journals trying to discover the identity of her father and help Josephine move on to her next milestone.
The second novel of the Sabine Trilogy traces Josephine's dysfunction. Her inability to be a mother becomes obvious when viewed from her own perspective. A victim of neglect and abuse after her mother's death, Josephine suffers unthinkable trauma and then is allowed to medicate herself with alcohol in her father's home. She attempts to escape, but finds herself layering more dysfunction and bad choices on her already chaotic life.
In reading Josephine's Journals, Sabine gains some insight into her mother's dysfunction and can almost come to accept and forgive her unspeakable neglect.
Sabine is able to share Josephine's words with her estranged sister, June, and build a bond to establish a type of family.
Excerpt
I think it’s over. I look at myself in the bed, a motionless lump under the duvet. There is no movement. I am not breathing. I did it, looking at myself from a distance, I can see I was not there in the first place. I am not sure where I resided, but not there. Sabine knew Billy was a soul. She never doubted, but she doubted me. I never knew my soul, I was the body. Now what?
Finally, there can be peace? I’m anticipating, no, waiting, for the next thing to happen, watching my body self from above. It is quiet, no ringing in my ears, no thoughts rattling, telling me I’m not enough. Quiet. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. There is no light for me to go to, no beckoning force for me to follow; I’m just here. Where is my soul? Has it fallen to the floor with the vodka bottle, rolling under the bed, spinning around with the countless dust bunnies, swirling there in a void, waiting for an exit? I’m confused; surely there is something more to this. I need some rest. How can I rest in this suspension, now waiting? Where is Nadine? She should know what to do; she has abandoned me again. Maybe I’m not done. Maybe there is more to this.
Someone is coming. I hear them walking, gravel crunching under their shoes, steps onto the porch. Augie is there, jingling her tags, nails clicking on the floor. It’s Sabine, cracking open the door, like she always does, looking in at the lump under the covers. She’s coming in, walking slowly to the bed, touching the envelope with her name on it. She just looks at it. She says my name, “Josephine, say something,” pulls the covers off my head, looking at the shave job I did on my hair during one of my silly, frantic episodes. She smells the vomit -- I don’t remember that -- turns my head toward her. I know she’s young for all of this, just twelve, but she’s smart for her age. Sabine’s little dog sees me hovering, watching. Augie is pacing and whining, trying to alert Sabine, I think. No, Augie doesn’t want Sabine to witness this alone. Sabine is Augie’s charge; she doesn’t want her to know what she is going to know. Sabine tells her I am gone. “She’s gone Augie,” Sabine says. “Josephine is gone.” She has never called me mother, none of them did. That didn’t bother me. I wasn’t that wild about being anyone’s mother anyway. They all knew that, even the babies.
“I’m trying to go, Sabine,” I scream, making no sound. “Tell me how to get out of here. I’m trying to go!” Augie stares at me in horror. She can see me and hear me. I must be screaming. There is quiet, I can’t hear myself. Say something; say something. Sabine walks to the kitchen, calling the sheriff. She will call Emily, too; she always does. Emily will come, cocoon her, tell her how sorry she is, and mollycoddle her, like she has all the kids. I can’t stand Emily judging me. Sabine always turns to Emily. They don’t understand. I’m not there, never could be there. It hurt, always hurt.
It has always been like that, people judging me, watching me, and assigning a badness to me. No matter what I did, there was some judgment. I played their comments over and over in my head. There was only the restless, negative recordings. My only escape from the noise was music, but I couldn’t always depend on myself; sometimes I had no motivation. Alcohol and pills helped when there was no motivation. More and more, there was no motivation, only an unbearable, restless gnawing. Constant tingling, an electrical pulse I couldn’t calm with the pills or alcohol any longer. I needed to sleep. Nadine often came to me in spirit, telling me to release what other people thought of me and try to calm myself without the alcohol and drugs. That is easy to say, but much harder to accomplish. I lost respect for Nadine long ago, when she relinquished all her power to my abuser, her husband and my father, leaving me alone with him. I was mad at her for being sick and weak, and then I was furious with her for dying. For a long time I was mad at her for leaving me alone with him, but I was alone long before Nadine died. I had been retreating into myself for years before I knew what was happening. Now, I can see the retreat was the beginning of the end, but then, I don’t know about then. The voices in my head were deafening. I suspect, although I could not prove it, that Old Dan and some others were also here, in this house, taunting me so they could feed off my fear and anxiety. I couldn’t stop the noise in my head. It followed me wherever I went. Nothing could drown the roar of no good. My own father, Old Dan, planted those thoughts (in such fertile compost), and I could not get rid of them. I don’t know why I ever listened to him, except sometimes in a drunken stupor, he would say something with such clarity I would gaze into his red, rheumy eyes and think he was the mouthpiece of God. It was a spiritual awakening. I could swear he could read my mind. He was always in my head, even when I wasn’t there. Many things were there when I wasn’t, that’s why I retreated. I couldn’t bear the things I saw and knew.
Sabine said the souls were gone. She and Emily chased them out with smoking herbs from Emily’s garden. Well, that remedy is as effective as an antifreeze enema. The cure will kill you for heaven’s sakes. There are shadows here those home-grown remedies will not address. I couldn’t name them and they refused to name themselves, but I know a casual relationship with a used to be medium won’t cure what ails this place. Old Dan fluttering around in a dark mist trying to raise my blood pressure was nothing compared to these dark creatures. There is unspeakable evil there, lurking and waiting. Someone will eventually open that portal and I don’t want to be here when that happens. They will have to round up every cleric, holy rolling bible thumper, voodoo queen, and snake handler between East Texas and Mississippi to burn enough sage to rid this place of these demons. I never knew where these guys came from. Old Dan said once he met them at the bowling alley, but I don’t believe it. Those guys didn’t have the presence of mind to roll a ball down an alley. I think he was at the precipice of hell when he struck up a conversation with these two. They arrived in no vehicle, always at the height of a storm; I wondered about that. They never left. My burden, my weight, my encumbrance. They were all mine. Haunting me until the day I quit and haunting me still.
I hear voices now, Emily and some men. Two deputies come in and take the pulse of the bald body, there in my bed. They know I was beautiful, and I didn’t really look like that. They look at each other and giggle, making fun of my shaved head. I could have their jobs. I’m Josephine Dunn, the richest woman in the county. I don’t have to watch this disrespect. Ranting does no good; they are gone, and so is the body, my thirty six year old body. Doesn’t seem possible. I should have lived twice that long, at least. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t figure out how to do it.
Emily has taken the sheets off the bed; the note is gone. Sabine is sweeping my hair from the bathroom floor. I can hear her talking. Their voices are echoing in the large, tiled bathroom. Emily asks about the sock on the floor, swept up in a heap with my auburn curls. Sabine tells her it belongs to Earl. I don’t remember his last name. Sabine shot him with her bow and arrow. She didn’t actually shoot him. She shot at him and pinned his sock to the wood floor. Sabine is a good shot. She did it twice, both socks. I was still asleep. Sabine told me he cried like a baby and she seemed to enjoy that. Emily is shocked and she’s judging me again. I didn’t have a thing to do with that. I was still asleep when all that happened. For heaven’s sakes, Emily can really get on my nerves sometimes. I have got to get out of here.
This just isn’t going well, not at all what I expected. They are closing up the house and leaving me here with these soulless bastards. Sabine is going home with Emily to live happily ever after and I am stuck here. Something should have happened by now. I am not at peace; I am miserable. Who can I complain to about this?
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