Before You Knew My Name, Jacqueline Bublitz [best book club books for discussion txt] 📗

In that interview, Gloria spoke about my mother. Things I knew. The extreme violence of her childhood, the disintegrations of home and family, until she ran away at eighteen years old, and no one bothered to come find her. The way she brought me up on her own from there, wanting, Gloria said, nothing but the best for her Alice. Things, too, I did not know. How that traumatised child never really grew up, how my mother suffered from breaks in reality I must have thought were games at the time. She did, it turns out, whatever she could to ensure my safety, from dealing drugs to sleeping with cold, old men for money. Forgetting to protect herself and getting deeper and deeper into trouble with her own mind, and the law. Not even Gloria could say what caused my mom to pull the trigger that afternoon, but she did say this: ‘I know that woman loved her daughter with all her heart. At least now, they can be together.’

Mr Jackson does not attend the funeral either; he is already long gone from town. House packed up and makeshift studio closed. He won’t be returning to school in the fall. Impossible now, with all those rumours buzzing about him. Most of the young girls he taught scoff at the idea of this man taking advantage of Alice Lee. More like the other way round, some of them say, because they like him better. Unaware of the tremble under my skin when Mr Jackson first asked me to take my clothes off, these young girls can’t understand you sometimes say yes as a means of survival. Not until it is their turn to say yes, some day.

At any rate, my teacher has gone to ground. He will emerge, eventually, with his own story to tell, a wound that will draw other young women to him, call them over. There was a girl he loved, and she died, he will tell them. Rearranging the truth until he believes it. Convinced he seeks solace, not power, when he takes another seventeen-year-old girl into his arms and into his bed.

One of these girls, eventually, will share her story. This time, there will be people looking for her, and when they find her, there will be another knock at Mr Jackson’s door. That knock won’t happen for some time yet, but you can hear it well enough, can’t you? Now that we know what to listen for.

My friends go down to the river together. It is the first day of summer. A whole season has passed, and the sky is blue, bright.

Noah carries long-stemmed roses, a rainbow mix of colours. Ruby holds a small silver padlock close to her chest. They greet each other warmly and hug. Franklin has a purple scarf tied neatly around his furry neck.

There are lots of people out and about on this clear day, as Noah and Ruby weave around children and dogs and fields with baseball games in their fifth and sixth innings. Ruby is once again struck by the idea that people actually go about their lives up here. Neighbourhoods full of children and families and sports teams and pets, hours spent together in a communal backyard.

They walk past one of the dog runs. Off their leashes, a clamour of pups and old mutts rush around, chasing balls and tails and each other. Ruby stops for a moment at the fence, thinks of me, considers how she might have jogged right past me at this very spot someday. Imagines the striking, yellow-blonde girl calling back a wayward beagle or pug, lunging for a designer leash, dogs circling around her. Noah sees this, too, the might-have-been of this meeting, and gives Ruby a gentle nudge with his shoulder.

They keep walking toward the water.

Both Ruby and Noah grow silent as they approach the little beach. The river is calm today, the view clear across to New Jersey. To Ruby, those wooden posts poking up out of the water still look eerie, a reminder of hidden depths. But aside from these markers, she acknowledges there is nothing extraordinary about this place, nothing good or bad or mysterious. This place would have remained one small, innocuous part of a sprawling city park, were it not for an angry, entitled man, and an April morning when life stopped and started, all at the same time.

‘Are you all right?’ Noah asks, bright, beautiful flowers framing his face.

Ruby nods.

‘I was just thinking. How this place is really nothing special.’ She looks down at a discarded juice wrapper, fluttering on the rocks. ‘I could have run past here a thousand times and never given it a thought.

‘And yet,’ she turns to Noah, her fingers pressed tight around the padlock, ‘this is also the most incredible place. It’s where I found Alice. I felt so guilty at the time. Like I should have done more. But what if I’d kept on running that day? What if I never stopped. Can you imagine what I would have missed?’

‘Can you imagine?’ Noah repeats, before taking one of his roses and tossing it into the river.

They watch as the flower bobs around, a bright yellow star dancing across the murky water. Silently, they throw the remaining roses over the railings, one by one, bright, beautiful colours suffusing the dark surface of the Hudson. As the last of the flowers land on the water, Ruby crouches down and clips the padlock around a wire at the base of the metal railing. Feeling the click as it closes shut, tracing her index finger over the letter A engraved on its shiny surface.

On the path behind them a child shrieks, giggles, and Ruby stands up, takes a deep breath, New York City filling her lungs.

‘Thank you, Alice Lee,’ she says quietly, and then she turns from the rocks, from the river, and walks away.

If I had lived.

The woman sits down on the park bench next to me, tries