The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Delta Dawn

My cousin was my hero when we were kids. Her hair was redder than mine, her eyes blue, she was taller, and she was funny. Maybe witty is a better word for her, but whatever the case, the girl would crack you up without thinking about it. I was three or four when I developed an imaginary friend whom I named 'Dawn', my cousin's name, and I guess it goes to show that I thought a lot of her back then, when I was naïve and eager to please. Of course, my aunt, her mother, took this to mean I was insane and that I should be brought immediately to a doctor so that an assessment could be made, which obviously rubbed my father the wrong way and caused a fairly major rift between them for years. My father refers to his sister-in-law by a variety of names, none of which were originally given to her: Poor Lynne, Dumb Bitch, That Feckin' Eejit, Gobshite and, my favourite, The Mental Patient.

So, at my mother's insistence, I was carted off to the doctor anyway, and apparently he laughed and said that imaginary friends are the creation of highly intelligent and artistic children. Thank you very much. My father could not wait to tell my aunt about this, to which she just sniffed and changed the subject. The thing is, though, that I could never figure out why she thought I was crazy when it was clear that I simply enjoyed spending time with my cousin, and that when she wasn't there, I just pretended like she was. Why was that difficult to understand?

But, all these years later, D. and I are virtual strangers. When at my grandmother's funeral reception, she actually approached me to ask why I don't speak to her anymore, and I couldn't come up with a specific reason. I mumbled something about how we live far apart, that we lead very different lives, and I also managed to impart some blame on her by saying 'it's not like you call me, either'. The truth of the matter is, though, that I don't much care for the woman. So many small, childish slights which eventually bloomed into outright contempt had me turn my back on her whenever she was near. There was almost a 'meanness' to her, a very palpable sense of envy twisted with self-pity, and it took some time before I copped on to it.

When I was twelve, she phenagled an invitation to go to the party of a girl in my class with me. Not only did she bring along one of her friends, but she purposely pushed said friend in the direction of the one boy I'd had a massive crush on for three years, intentionally pairing them together despite knowing I was madly in like with him. Then, to make things worse, after that party she began socializing with the girl who'd had the party, MY friend, and soon I was completely excluded from every group activity because she engineered my ostracism. Obviously this was some time ago, but I never forgot the coldness in her then, the complete disregard for my feelings. I didn't understand why then and I still don't. The old 'blood is thicker than water' concept was lost on her, I guess, and I began to feel less and less important to my hero.

Then, the years picked up speed and she turned into one of those wannabe goth creatures, wearing ripped nylons, black lipstick and sporting a Satanic Bible in her knapsack. She was whispered about, people made low-voiced jokes at her expense, but the more they did the more she seemed to like it. Now, I did some time in black clothes, too, but I think the main difference was that I wore tailored suits and paisley on occasion (it was the '80's, I stand by it). I liked goth music, and I read poetry and dabbled in casting the odd spell, but I was also mostly normal with very normal looking friends. For some reason, she took to referring to me as 'preppy', which made no sense given that I did not own a polo shirt or have one of those strange assymetrical haircuts. In fact, in a sea of Catholic school prepsters I was one of the few who didn't conform. Maybe she knew that it would irritate me and that's why she said it, which is actually pretty typical if I think about it.

And, it shouldn't matter now, just like it shouldn't have mattered then, because the things she said weren't really that important. It's not I really care about whether or not the world saw me as a preppy or a goth or whatever ridiculous label we were aiming for back then. It's about the intention. It's about the reasons behind the deprecation. She wanted to bring me down, and for some reason I let her get to me.

Here's the thing about D.'s weirdness: it's completely contrived. That's why I never saw her as interesting or cool because I knew none of it was genuine. She is not genuinely weird, much as she'd like people to believe. She's messed up, sure, but weird in a cool way? No. The goth phase was just a way to fit in to a group which hadn't rejected her yet, because the so-called 'preppies' didn't really take her under their wing. She had a reputation for being kind of whorish, stories of her even reaching my father's construction site where the young labourers gossiped about her, not knowing my father was technically related (They're not my nieces! I'm not related to them! They belong to your mother). She was so desperate to be accepted that she'd do just about anything so that she would be, including eventually becoming a member of the Dutch Reform Church in order to please a boy (that is one weird religion), despite her former assertion that there was no God.

And yet, it still hurt that she seemed to get off on making me feel bad. For years I didn't understand it, until one day I did.

Her father, my uncle (not related by blood, he didn't belong to me!), was a rough man. A truck driver who chain-smoked and had a serious alcohol addiction, which he denied having repeatedly, he was also a racist and a womanizer. What I didn't realize as we were all growing up was how much he basically ignored my cousin D. and my other cousin L. They were girls, and he'd always wanted a boy, or so the story goes. He would go on long trips and be gone for at least month on a fairly frequent basis, leaving my aunt to do most of the work at home. When he was home, my cousin would then go into overdrive trying to please him, which never worked, until one day she took on a different strategy. Suddenly, out of nowhere, my cousin decided to only exhibit interest in black men. Now, this didn't seem like a problem to me at all until I realized how odd she was acting, pinning up pictures of any black actor or singer she could on her bedroom walls and going on and on about them whenever anyone would listen. As I was in my own phase of British Boy Bands at the time, I didn't really see any kind of issue, but eventually the strange desperation of her situation began to hit home. She was trying to get my uncle's attention, and it seemed like the only way she could was to peck away at his prejudice. Maybe it wasn't intentional on her part, but it seems fairly clear to me today that this was what she was doing. I remember telling her once that if I were black, I'd be really annoyed with her. They're not your cause, you know, I'd said one day when I was in her bedroom, listening to Prince over and over. What's that supposed to mean?, she'd asked. It's not right to like someone just because they represent some kind of idea to you. You can't just like them because of their skin colour. That's stupid and insulting. It's like you're trying to prove something! Of course she was offended by my statements, but I really felt like all of it was just another attempt to reinvent herself. She'd done goth, she'd done wannabe preppy, now I guess she was going to be black.

One night, years later, after a party at my parent's home which my aunt and uncle came to, I had to drive them home because my uncle who didn't have a drinking problem was drunk off his ass and couldn't drive. Once we got him inside, he leaned over toward my then boyfriend R. and said, loudly, "I wish my daughters were like those nieces of mine (You don't belong to me! We're not related by blood!), they're decent girls, not like mine. You've got a decent girlfriend there, boy. Good head on her shoulders. Wish mine were like that, but they're not. They'll never be much." Standing within earshot was my cousin D. Despite all the meanness and wholehearted attempts to dismantle my self-esteem on her part, I felt my heart break for her a little. When he died a few years later of cancer, I knew that it must have been a very difficult thing for her, mostly because she'd never been able to win his acceptance. For some reason, she'd always wanted it.

She's always on Facebook these days. Married for seventeen years with two teenaged sons, you'd think she'd be past all of it, but she's not. She is one of those people who sits on the computer all day, has not had a real job in her entire adult life, chats all day with her son's teenaged friends, and makes ridiculous statements on her status in the hopes that someone will eventually respond. I recently made a very rare comment to something she'd posted saying something about how we're getting so old, to which she responded "I don't feel old at all! I'm still a teenager!"

And I just nodded my head, knowing that could be taken in a couple different ways.

It's sad, really. She'd been my hero, once.