Maricia: A Mother
Who was she? Without an answer to that question, Patient Jane Doe 22 would be doomed to live out her days in the psychiatric ward.
Vera rearranged the pictures on her desk. These crudely drawn images were the only clues to Jan Doe's identity. She hadn't spoken since her involuntary commitment.
They'd found her wandering in a wash near Las Vegas Boulevard. She carried nothing--no luggage, no ID. No hint as to why she was there, or who she was.
The pictures she drew were richly symbolic. Themes repeated in a world askew, vivid dreamscapes that could hold the key to her identity.
Vera picked up a picture--a map, perhaps, of J.D.'s psyche.
Five children in the foreground, their attention focused on a sharp-bladed scythe nearby. In the distant background, a woman, coddling an infant. This is a verdant scene, with an open body of water, and a dirt road going nowhere.
There is a fixation in almost all the pictures, on children, and menace.
Vera picked up another picture, a grotesque juxtaposition of elements.
Gradually, clues began to fit together. The woman's memories were not from the Vegas area. Judging by the flora, likely she'd lived in a farm community. Maybe in the Northeast, or Northwest.
What had happened to her? What had shattered her connection to reality?
Vera picked up another picture.
A child trapped in a pit. And man atop, hovering, sinister.
J. D. was seated in the corner of her room. She could always be found by the window, staring at a solitary tree that had survived decades of property renovations.
"Hello," Vera said, as she sat across from J.D. "Is it alright if I sit here?"
J.D. held her gaze on the window view.
"I've brought someone with me today."
Vera looked over her shoulder and signaled a figure in the doorway to come forward. It was a cleric, with a black robe and collar. This might be a breakthrough. The one picture that had been repeated more than any other, with precise detail, had a religious theme.
The cleric advanced. J.D.'s gaze shifted. She fixed her eyes on the cleric's collar and screamed.
"You! Get out! Get out!"
The shrieks echoed down the hall. They escalated until an attendant came and medicated the distraught woman.
That night Vera redoubled her efforts to discover J.D.'s identity. She examined the pictures with the compelling new clue: something terrible had happened at a church or that involved a church. As disastrous as the afternoon had been, this was a wedge, an entry point into the puzzle of J.D.'s mind.
Vera looked at a picture that had no children, but had an ethereal quality. A cat sleeping on an open well.
Something about the well, and the way the cat was perched precipitously near the opening caught Vera's attention.
She resolved the next day to visit J.D., if the hospital would let her in. She'd bring the pictures, and start talking about them.
It was five weeks later that the first smile appeared on J.D.'s face. Vera was holding a picture. A surreal impression of a vine-covered tree.
"This is a beautiful tree, but I've never actually seen one like this. It's almost as though it came from a fairy tale," Vera chatted, without expecting a response.
That's when J.D. smiled. And talked.
"Of course it's not real. It's a cat, like the Cheshire Cat, in a tree. It's a magic place."
Then she started to weep.
Vera rose to call an attendant. But J.D. stopped her.
"No. No more numbing. I have to be here. I have to go back and bear witness. No more hiding. There are those who must be held to account. If I don't go back, no one will ever know. Let me see my pictures. Let me see my children. It's all I have left of them."
She held the pictures gently, and tears flowed. Over the weeks that followed, her story emerged.
She had six children. They struggled to make ends meet. One of the children fell ill. Then she fell ill. Food was scarce, as was her husband. The family tried to warm the house with a kerosene heater.
One morning J.D. woke. But the children did not. They lay peacefully in their beds, their mouths open as they struggled for air in the deepest of sleeps. The heater had malfunctioned and poisoned them with carbon monoxide.
She left her home that day, and took nothing with her. How did she make it to Nevada? She didn't know. How long had she been wandering? She didn't know.
But she was ready to return now, to hold her husband to account. To hold the priest to account who had told her marriage vows tied her to that husband forever, no matter the circumstances. The story might not be important to anyone, but it would be told. For her children.
Vera asked, "What will you do once you have told your story?"
"What is there for me? I cannot look beyond the story."
J.D.--now with a name, Maricia-- was getting ready to leave, packing her possessions. Maricia's story had touched more than one heart at the precinct house. They took up a collection so she'd have a ticket home and some cash to travel with.
Maricia turned to Vera.
"I have something for you. One of the last pictures I drew. Keep it for me. My sweet child, at a happy time."
Pictures:
I drew them digitally. Parts of some pictures have appeared elsewhere, but not in this form. These were recreated to fit the story line.
I love this drawings.
Nice art for kids too. :)
Dear @steemean:
Thank you! It tickles me that the pictures speak to you. As a young person, I was afraid to express myself in art, because I wasn't "good at it". But I missed out on such joy.
As an older person, I'm brave and have great fun with art. I see that you are the "youngest person on Steemit". I may be the oldest:)
I wish for you a lifetime of joy in creating art. Most of all, have fun.
Regards,
AG
Edit: I'll have to upvote your delightful comment later, when I have more VP :)
The younger found the oldest. hehe
I love art for the fun.
Thanks a lot my old friend. :)
That's art. I love your work. You will teach me :)
I'm going to upvote your posts instead of these comments. I can't catch up on the VP, so I'll put the votes where they will make a difference.
So nice to meet you.
Thanks a lot.
But you are a great artist.:)
I love comments much more then votes(I love them too).:)
Nice to meet you too.
A long story and i have to read til the end! Great job dear @agmoore All the pictures with their symbolic... Thank you very much.
Hello @ditsch,
Thank you for reading to the end. It didn't feel long when I wrote it. The pictures came first...they were the map to the woman's secret. Then I filled in the story around that.
I'm glad you enjoyed the symbolism. Played around a lot with that. Great fun.
Thanks for your appreciation and encouragement.
Warm regards,
AG
(I have to wait for my VP to go over 95% to upvote the comment otherwise it turns to dust...I figure in about an hour and a half).
🤣 I have just "dustvotes" on comments - otherwise i have to take 100% maybe i can give you !ENGAGE 30? I don't know... you story ist as long as it should be! Regards
A short title for a long story - i like that! And i like the whole story with all these pictures with their own speech... You are a master of picture-speech! Thank you and many hugs for you!
My dear Kadna,
So happy to see you here and get your feedback. It is great fun to write stories that come from my imagination and to create pictures that 'speak'. That is exactly my intention, and you are so wonderful to see that.
I'm sorry it is long. There was nothing I could cut to tell the woman's history. Putting the story and pictures together seamlessly was a challenge...had to go back and change the pictures a bit.
Thanks again for stopping by and appreciating my effort. Upvoting, of course, will have to wait until my VP is replenished. But I was eager to respond now.
Big hugs from your good friend,
AG
Your story is not too long ;-))) I enjoyed reading.
That is agmoore as i know you from all your storys... It is a great ability that you learnt by hard lessons i think... (school!) Big hugs back Kadna
Very well written short story that kept me engaged and reading until the end. I enjoyed the addition of the pictures you created and used as great plot device to accompany the story. Awesome post! :)
Hello, @paradigm42,
That's an interesting handle. Have to check out your blog :)
Thank you for liking my story. I try to keep things clear...it's so easy to muddle a plot with unnecessary detail, so I "clean it up".
The pictures took much longer than the writing. I have no art skill but that does not diminish my enthusiasm and determination to express myself visually. I'm glad that worked for some of my readers.
Thanks again for stopping by...I'm commenting now because I want to :) but upvotes will have to wait until my VP is replenished over 95%. Otherwise, the vote turns to dust.
Warm regards,
AG
Thank you, I always wondered if anyone would catch what my handle means lol. :) No need to upvote my comment, just keep posting and I will happily keep reading them!
I've been told you write fiction, but this is the first of yours I have read. It's a gripping tale, and such a tragedy. How could she go on? How?
Hold her husband accountable is itself an ominous statement. What is she going to do? Will it involve a scythe or a hatchet?
Excellent story. Wow.
I am so grateful for that powerful response. Fiction for me is risk-taking, because it's personal. Science and history, well they speak for themselves. Fiction is more a lens into our own psyches.
I think Maricia plans the worst punishment for her husband: public exposure. Usually this sort of neglect is private. Nobody acknowledges it. But public shaming....that will do it. Ditto for the cleric.
Thanks so much for the encouragement :)
Warm regards,
AG
You must read this one.
I read so much and forget most of it but some stories just stick with you and this is one of those.
I remember reading this one myself now! So I have read her fiction before. Stunningly great story. Holy cow.
You forgot the TL;DR.....I'm kidding of course but two of your readers mentioned the length and I found myself smiling at what is considered lengthy in these days of ever-decreasing attention spans.
The story is, of course, the perfect length, with nothing superfluous included and nothing essential omitted. And the final drawing, ...my sweet child at a happy time...so serene, so tranquil...but for the axe.
😂
I thought of leaving the axe out in the final picture...but, no, the axe belongs in this woman's story. I think, of all my readers, you might agree with that. 😎
For some of my readers, English is not their native tongue--in that case, the story might seem long. When I read in German and Spanish I stop for breaks, and often use Google Translate. It's a worthwhile effort, but still takes a long time.
I've been checking your blog, looking for one of your distinctive pieces. Hope the muse strikes soon.
Thank you for the positive critique. Trimming the fat is an essential part of the process. Editing usually takes longer than writing. Probably true for you, also (especially in the 31 Sentence contest!).
I really appreciate your support and love to find your comments on my blog. (Upvoting, however, deferred until tomorrow when my VP is stronger).
😇 AG
Of course, being the self-absorbed individual that I am, I didn't consider non-native English speakers at all. Which brings me to this translator which some lovely person posted a while back. I find it far superior to google translate.
btw, Owasco has just posted a challenge, so it looks like I'll have to come out of retirement.
Thank you for that link! I won't let language be a barrier to communication, but Google Translate is a crude tool to knock down barriers. This may be easier.
Looking forward to your piece. You have a distinctive talent for blending the sympathetic with the ironic. Never boring. Never ordinary :)
Want to thank you again for that translation link. So much better than Google translate. :)
It sure helps me make a whole lot more sense of all the Spanish freewrites.
I wish I could remember who posted it so I could go back and thank them.
Mm... What does it mean? Revenge on a man and a priest? The children died. The pain of their deaths didn't. It's a return to pain. After the numbing episode of shock and oblivion, it's now the deeply cutting pain. The axe symbolises this deep cut for me. Cutting everything in one go. Life with the children and then, from one moment to the next: the cutting.
I feel towards Maricias loss. I don't agree with Maricias answer. She wants to atone for her pain. By taking pain as atonement. Nobody has deceived her, neither husband nor priest. She was deluding herself. And so the others have only been fooling themselves. Everybody has fooled themselves. One does not know whether the man from your story kept his wife in marriage by force or not. Whether she was locked up like a prisoner 24/7. So I would think that if she had not been what the pictures testify to, she could have gone away, could have taken her children with her. At least there were some happy time. Children with dog and trees. She did not. Maybe she didn't dare? Afraid of the uncertain consequences? So she alone with the children on the run, she alone could have been responsible for bad consequences, their deaths?
So maybe it's guilt she feels. Guilt that she didn't act when there was time. Guilt that she cuddled up in the warmth of this room, sleeping, dreaming, not paying attention. What a horror to wake up and find the children dead. It's human to want to avoid that pain. To dream the trauma away.
That man, a one-dimensional prison guard? Like he had nothing to do with the children, didn't love them? Nor his wife? Not at any time? His pain: unimportant? The torturer, he too is a tormented one. To shame or punish him: isn't this the return to total pain after all?
I feel for all of them. The children will not come back to life. Hard to learn a life without them.
How did you make the drawings? Must have taken quite some time creating them. They deliver a certain mood, very felicitous. As if they were indeed made by a kid.
Dear Erika,
I am not at all surprised by your perspective, and delighted that you have offered to share it.
Of course there is responsibility from many parties. This adds to Maricia's distress...as it does to all of us when we make decisions and others suffer.
No, the husband did not hold her prisoner, but psychologically she was held prisoner by the ideology of her Church. She made a decision to bend to that will, but having been indoctrinated since birth by an all-encompassing belief system, her free will was compromised. She believed it was a mortal sin to leave her husband. That's what the priest told her, though he knew the dangerous circumstances of her life.
Also, recall that she had a severely ill child. There were still choices, but they are harder when one of your children is an invalid.
This is the story that will be told. She was there, he was not. She provided, he did not. That was a story he did not want the world to know. Now it will be public.
Revenge...no, revenge is not in the story. Holding someone to account, publicly revealing events--this is not revenge. A public shaming is not revenge. It is the merest justice.
The pictures: I can't draw. I don't know about perspective and shading. I showed the drawings (digital using Paint and GIMP) to my son and husband before I posted and asked if I should be ashamed of them, because they are so primitive. But son and husband told me to go ahead. Parts of the pictures were created over a period of months when I was writing a memoir. Here I chopped them up and added elements to fit the story line...Maricia's shattered psyche.
The memoir was been killed (writing that was a therapeutic exercise) but the pictures mean something to me. Many of them reflect vividly recalled scenes from childhood.
Thanks so much for stopping by. You always have something interesting to say.
Your friend,
AG
(BTW: Speaking of the one-dimensional prison guard, the model for the husband: he was an indifferent, cruel, brutal person who enjoyed power. He exploited the weakness of the family with the invalid child and threatened to inflict harm, even death, should disobedience surface, should there be an attempt to escape. He even threatened to kill anyone who came to the aid of the wife and children. His violent actions in the home fully backed up his willingness to follow through on this promise. Of course, there are still choices. Always there are choices. But sometimes in life, there are prison guards, brutal bullies. Surely you have read about these in the newspapers. )
Is not the very act of public shaming also a Christian indoctrinated matter?
I think you are trying to be provocative :)
As you know, after the Killing Fields in Cambodia, survivors strove to have the truth come out. After the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, survivors strove to have the truth come out. In South Africa, at the end of apartheid, There was a Truth Commission.
Those who were responsible for these tragedies strove to suppress the truth. Can't raise the dead. Can't undo history. The only justice survivors and families can hope for is that truth comes out. If this shames some, that is their own doing, their own acts that have brought them shame.
This is not Christian. This is human
Surely you know that. 😇
Have a great day, Erika
Dear friend,
are you perfectly sure, absolutely and without any doubt, that there is a crystal clear truth? Are you beyond any doubt of the need for public shaming of a person in his entirety? Surely you have also heard that it is the deed that is to be judged, not the doer.
What about the paradox of a constraint of responsibility arising from public shaming? How can someone actively, out of his own insight and reflection, give his voice of compassion, yes, how can he even become credible when he is publicly shamed? It would be as if the crowd was shouting to the man: "Repent spontaneously now!"
Allow me to cast doubt on the image of a female figure who, if she has fallen victim to indoctrination without exception, by the very definition of indoctrination, must also have inflicted on her children the same oppression that your story attributes to her oppressors. Is oppression not also to be found in subtle actions and repeatedly dropped remarks of effective content? Does it not have different faces?
A person who recognizes the strong extent of oppression will also recognize that he has already lived it out on his own children and he will want to stop it. To the extent that the character in your story recognizes that under this indoctrination she had accepted as inevitable and true what she had previously believed - the sin of separation from her husband and similar beliefs - she would have set heaven and hell in motion to protect her children from further indoctrinations, I'm not talking about her husband's indoctrinations right now, but those indoctrinations she herself unconsciously carried out. Is my doubt that I suspect such unconscious acting out by a mother on her children to be completely dismissed?
Is your reader to be relieved of absolutely every doubt that this female figure did not recognize her own, and therefore blind spots, in her dealings with the children? But how then can she have been so strongly indoctrinated, if she herself did not use a single means to which she had been so vehemently brought up?
You see, if you write a story and you grant me no reasonable doubt, must I assume that you see the point of your story in my taking sides? My interpretation that the man seems too one-dimensional to me may have seemed a superfluous objection to you against this background of the clarity of the characters, but it was not for me.
The story has touched a sore point in me as well, which has been reopened to me by reading it. That my father ... been considered such a villain and this a long lasting pain of our identity as children with our father - a violent yet weak figure compared to my mom (which was no saint either). Right now I'm dealing with the "shadow" after C.G. Jung. I came to this through a lecture by a Harvard professor on Jean Piaget and the mention of the darkness that dwells within each of us and that makes us go from being a human being to being a monster at any given moment. ... Painful moments in my parenting towards my son, that is for sure.
I am not happy with your distraction to Cambodia and apartheid. To answer your initial question: Yes, I provoked, but you are trying to distract me? In your answers, you chose the greater reinforcement of what I think you left out in your story in the first place.
Can I be a critic to you? You won't convince me anyway to get involved into public shaming but in case, I am not aware that I am doing it, please give me a note. I also was raised by a strong christian doctrine. :)
Yours Erika
Dear Erika,
Of course it's a story. Every writer knows that writing a story is only half the job. Reading a story is the other half. I write with a certain idea in mind, but readers have different minds. They have their own histories, and I cannot (and do not wish to) control that.
It's like looking at a painting. What do I see? Probably not what the artist sees. The same with this story. You have the memory of your father, who you feel was wronged. And then there's Yung.
Cambodia and South Africa are not distractions. They are exactly to the point. But that's the way I see it. You bring to it something else.
And if we are not free to discuss this, then we are not free. An open exchange of ideas is good.
I love your ideas (even when I don't agree with them). I was reading your blog about memory as I went to sleep last night. An apt blog in this discussion. Today I had lunch with family and so put off writing a comment there. Later, you will get feedback on that most interesting post.
What I find really, really interesting is that we both had "villains" as fathers, although you do not see yours that way. I'm afraid mine was a nasty character--my mother never, ever said an unpleasant word about him. It was his actions, and his words, that created the impression of villainy.
You see how we come to this story from opposite poles and yet the same place? Isn't the human psyche fascinating?
Your good friend, who is a generation apart and yet close in so many ways,
AG
AG...you got me hook, line and sinker. I thought this was a true story until I read that you drew the pictures and saw your fiction tag. The drawings are incredible and I think they helped make the story real for me. And when I read this:
I got chills and said, "OMG!" This is what I was told and some other choice words from a priest. Needless to say that I never went back to my church and finally got a divorce.
And that last picture of happier times with the axe, spoke volumes to me. I have to shake off all of my feelings I have for Maricia and I have to keep telling myself that this is not true, this is not true. Great job AG!
My dear friend @whatisnew,
Can't fool a friend, can you? I confess so much of this was inspired by true events. The pictures were put together from some I had drawn over the years, inspired by my childhood. It took a while to grow past that, but I have.
Nobody died, but a lot of the other stuff was true. And that story about the cleric is taken from life. My mother was devout and followed the advice, with disastrous consequences for the family.
Here we meet, you and I, through art and in a virtual universe, sharing a story that is all too common. This is what I have learned after a long life: We are unique and the same.
It is such a great pleasure to know you.
Your friend,
AG
I'm going to save my vote for your posts. Frustrating to wait for VP to replenish so it counts on a comment. I'm allergic to dust :))
It is good to know that nobody died in both of our worlds. AG...you summed it up perfectly when you said, "We are unique and the same."
I will always cherish your friendship, dear AG! HUGS!
wow! I hate to use a cliche like tear-jerker but this is powerful, high-impact, and inspiring. And it feels so authentic. I would swear that you took this story straight from real life. The part about a wife being advised to honor her marriage vows also rings true. They forget the part that husbands are to treasure, honor, and respect their wives, and what recourse a wife might have when he abuses his family.
Your images are fantastic, as always.
And in case you missed it, look who got a nice mention today from @raj808:
@agmoore is one of the oldschool of fiction writers
Ditto that, and thank you @raj808
for your positive outlook, your thoughtfulness, your kind words, and your determination to shun drama!
https://steemit.com/hive-174578/@raj808/who-do-i-follow-on-steem-and-why-a-tale-of-two-halves
This is such a quotable quote, from your comment to @owasco:
And what a great insight on public exposure (which is the most I ever hoped I'd get for my sister's killers):
Hey @carolkean,
If you read my comment to @whatisnew above, you'll see that much of it was taken from life. Not the missing person's part, but the scenes, malfunctioning kerosene heater and cleric. Nobody died, thank heavens.
Of course, I mixed up the scenes. That was great fun (and a lot of work!), to try and create a map of Maricia's psyche. The great thing about writing is that it's better than therapy. We can take events from our lives and mold them, so they work for us.
Thank you for sharing @raj808's post. He was one of my strongest supporters when I had few. No reward in it for him, except to reach out. I remember that.
And thank you most of all for your support and high praise for my efforts. At this stage in my life, creating has become one of my chief outlets, so this is much appreciated.
From fellow writer,
AG :)
I'm saving the upvote for post, where it will count. My VP is anemic.
My VP finally rose to 0.02 this week....
You nail it: The great thing about writing is that it's better than therapy. We can take events from our lives and mold them, so they work for us.
The truth is best told in the guise of fiction - my motto, my manifesto!
I hope someone else didn't come up with the same phrase. -_-
I think it's a great motto. Fiction not only gives us cover, but it also allows us to represent emotional events symbolically... which I think enhancing self-awareness. Also raises the experience to a universal level (for readers).
Art is great for that too. Even better, sometimes. Different parts of the brain give more intuitive expression (I think!)
More quotable quotes from @agmoore2 - I need to do a post on this!!!
Fiction not only gives us cover, but it also allows us to represent emotional events symbolically... which I think enhancing self-awareness. Also raises the experience to a universal level (for readers).
A beautiful and mysterious piece of fiction @agmoore.
What really impressed me about this short story was the way that you used the digital art to underpin the psychological puzzle that unfolded with Maricia's story. I love it when I see a post like this which shows a flair for expressing creativity across a range of mediums.
Great stuff as usual :)
Dear @raj808. Thank you!
A range of mediums...that's me. Spread out everywhere, never acknowledge boundaries, creative or otherwise.
I appreciate your support and will be following you more closely. One of my earliest and greatly valued friends.
Warm regards,
AG