3. Sympathy for the devil.
on me and Marguerite
My father’s marriage to my mother was his third; the first two were to the same woman, who was said to be crazy. My father and his first and second wife had a daughter, Julia Marguerite; I don’t think I knew her middle name until I saw it on her gravestone the day we buried her, under the dogwood tree and the Spanish moss, 20 years ago last summer. Such is the way, perhaps, with half-siblings: there were no embroidered birth announcements hanging on the wall for her in the house where I grew up; no engraved pewter cups on the mantle bearing her name. But I’ve always loved the name Marguerite- the French word for daisy.
By the time I was born, Julie was 11 years old and living with us full time. My brothers were toddlers; my mother was said to be a saint. My earliest memories are of Julie adorning me in costume jewelry and giving me makeovers (though my family didn’t approve of children wearing makeup, or of anyone being too girly in general, Julie loved cosmetology); Julie singing gospel music (she loved Jesus and had a gorgeous voice); Julie teaching me about the devil, hellfire, and damnation (a topic that was not openly discussed in my erudite suburban Presbyterian church and therefore very fascinating).
By the time I was 5, my big sister was a teenager in turmoil, a tornado. Though I wasn’t privy to the details, I knew that she was in and out of the house, in and out of school, surrounded by an aura of danger encapsulated in one sinister word: drugs.
By the time I was 11, she had her son, my beloved nephew. She loved him with all her heart, but becoming a mother compounded the many complications in her life, raised the stakes of her failures- increased her reliance on my family and therefore obliged her to their contracts, their carrots and their sticks.
The years that followed were fraught. We tried to stay connected: she took me to my first concert (38 Special at the North Georgia State Fair) and gave me my first whippits during my 8th grade spring break in Panama City. She told me about her singing career, and going to hair school. We went camping together here and there, but I was mostly in my own world. In the meantime, her chaos stalked my parents on the margins of the life they were building: her boyfriend showing up at my father’s office asking for money; jail time, the perils of sex work, years where she didn’t talk to them or let them see her son because of their judgement and their shame. By the time my sister started methadone and settled down with a loving partner who doted on her and her son, the party lines were firmly entrenched: “why does she get a parade for doing something the rest of us do every day?” “Addicts just trade one addiction for another.”
By the time my nephew was 13, Julie’s mental illness overwhelmed her and she lost custody of him in a chillingly swift and methodical takedown that extracted him from her home and placed him with my parents- which is not to say that she was a competent parent at this time- she wasn’t- only that the way it took place was so devastating.
A year later, when I was 25 years old and she was 36, my sister Julie died of an overdose. It was a month and 2 days before my wedding, and in a blur of “we lost her a long time ago”s and “we did all we could”s, my family held the wedding anyway.
When she died Duncan and I were new to Asheville. We paid $550 a month for a little blue two bedroom house nestled below the parking deck of Mission hospital. When I got the news I sat on the back steps overlooking the groundhog hillocks and sobbed and wailed and Duncan held me and then we had to go pick up my nephew at summer camp on the worst day of his life. We took a week off of work (we both had jobs at the West End Bakery) to go to Tallahassee to help my aunts prepare for the funeral and when my brother arrived, he was filled with bile: he couldn’t understand how I was so sad, why everyone was weepy, when clearly the appropriate emotion was anger: she did this to us, she did this to her son, she fucked up, she was always a fuckup. She doesn’t deserve sympathy, she deserves contempt. And so we piled our shame and our contempt into that casket that day 20 years ago last summer and we buried it in the Tallahassee earth.
I know this is the part where I’m supposed to tie it all together, and tell you of my healing journey, and my pilgrimage to her grave after I broke my hand driving drunk and crashing into a tree, and how she helped me heal even though it meant leaving my family of origin behind, and how her spirit is with me every day at the clinic where I now work with women with opioid use disorder, how I’m happy, sober, intact, how much I love her son, how much I wish she would have lived to know mine, how I’ve learned to forgive. But I can’t make it tidy. The truth is, it’s a disaster. The truth is, there is no redemption in this tale. The truth is, she was a really difficult person to be in relationship with. She had a horrible disease and she made horrible decisions that harmed a lot of people over and over again and it was infuriating. The truth is, she was beautiful and shallow and broken and whole and she didn’t deserve the hand she was dealt or the way she was treated and she’s responsible for her one wild and precious life just like the rest of us. The truth is, we couldn’t save her. The truth is, we didn’t try hard enough.
She was messy and she was human, and she was my sister. May she rest in love.
editorial note: thank you for being here with me on this third installation of Home + the World. I was not expecting the response I have so far received, and I receive it with no small amount of gratitude. It has been so lovely to reconnect with so many of you and be encouraged (en+courage: literally to give heart), to be heartened by your words (and your paid subscriptions! Wow!) I started writing again because I had to. You know how that goes. The happy surprise is that you are all here with me, and have been all along. One friend texted me yesterday: “I shared your newsletter with some friends. It inspired one to go to the city and spend time around people”. Another said “your dispatches are providing a genuine connection to your self and I’m grateful for this.” Thank you for reading, sharing, and subscribing. This reciprocity is a gift beyond words and I’m so thankful.
Home
Yesterday I got to spend some time in the kitchen with kindred spirit April McGreger (we only have a few things in common: we are both leftist women of Scotch-Irish descent raised in the deep South who started food businesses in North Carolina in the early 2000’s and authored cookbooks based in traditional Southern foodways and then moved to Philadelphia with our respective husbands and sons to be closer to our respective husbands’ families, so not much in common really). I got to help April roll and fill the dough for the amazing fried red bean sesame balls that she made for a Lunar New Year celebration she attended! She’s got some pictures in her stories and she’ll be posting a reel with the recipe on her insta: @preservingthesouth. Also check out her amazing work in food rescue and preservation at The People’s Kitchen Philly!
Thanks April! Here’s to many more food collaborations. xo
The World
Though The Devil, with its themes of power and subjugation, addiction and control, would seem the more natural Tarot card to accompany this issue’s essay, it’s just too bleak and I couldn’t do it. Instead, I choose The World: the card of completion, integration, fulfillment, belonging, wholeness- my wish for all of us angels and all of us devils and all of us in-betweens.
xoxo
Jodi
Home + the World explores the ways we become exiled: through trauma, addiction, oppression, grief, loss, and family estrangement; and the ways we create belonging: through food and cooking, through community care and recovery and harm reduction, through therapy and witchcraft and making art and telling stories and taking pictures and houseplants and unconditional love and nervous system co-regulation and cake. Thank you for reading.