Lightning in a Mason Jar

by Catherine Mann

Because from birth, we women aren’t tethered to our names.

As if a woman’s entire worth, her sum total sense of self, were tied into her ring finger and uterus. A Mrs. or a mom.

Giving me away to Phillip, as if I were a possession passed over to a neighbor like a handsaw or a charcoal grill—or the tiny black-and-white television—he no longer needed but still thought of fondly. Although if I’d been a brighter color TV, I might have been wanted. Still objectified, but not discarded.

In fact, it’s better that way since a whisper of that time threatens my present, even my hard-won sanity.

Excitement and terror are close kin. Outwardly they resemble each other. Anticipation and fear both flip the stomach, set the heart racing, dilate the pupils, and accelerate breathing.

The library felt like a portal between my previous world and the one to come.

She told me about a network spanning the country, connected through the library system. And while she couldn’t guarantee anything . . . I said yes. Hid in a food delivery truck. Faked a suicide on the beach.

thought. I slipped on the name like a new pair of shoes, so much more comfortable than the ones from before.

own. I was learning a new language of sorts, speaking in code with benign-sounding phrases laden with undercurrents.

Not realizing that the real strength lay in breaking the cycle.

Thank heaven for Uncle Russell and Aunt Winnie, who’d taught her how to steer her life rather than be dragged along by the undertow of her mother’s generational trauma.

Everywhere she turned, those phantoms from the past blocked her path forward.

For a girl who’d been in survival mode for too long, it had felt indulgent to discuss something other than how to make it to the next day.

As a child, I’d prided myself on always saying thank you and cleaning up after myself. Like I was doing others some kind of favor rather than just pulling my own weight.

The ones who threw furniture, fists, and words that had the power to break her mother as much as the violence.

she hadn’t been adept at regulating her emotions in those days. She hadn’t cried like expected—instead she’d raged at the simplest of perceived injustices.

I missed the man he’d pretended to be. However, I didn’t miss the woman I’d been—the one who embraced that shell of a life we’d shared.

How tragically ironic all those miscarriages had turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

I didn’t understand missing my mom and resenting her at the same time, wishing she’d prepared me better for the world.

What would push me to the point that pride no longer mattered?

I needed to forget about the past if I ever hoped to build a good future for myself. One that didn’t consume me with memories of all I’d lost.

Maybe from some latent grief over not having a child and from a sense of guilt over having it easier than she did.

Even if it meant I stayed up past midnight, I filled those orders, desperate to pack the hours in my day and increase the money I’d hidden away in my tampon box under the bathroom sink. I’d yet to meet a man who would touch a container of feminine products.

Over time I learned all those nuances that too often got lost when relationships progressed at a fast pace, rushing to connect rather than savoring each layer of the person.

Yvonne had rarely grieved for the last guy, always focused on the next man and his potential drug stash.

shoved the memories aside like reshelving a one-star book she’d finished and hoped never to read again.

scrubbed her hands and then her face. Mundane tasks could go a long way toward restoring equilibrium.

Sometimes the best way to pull yourself back together is to help somebody else.”

Then she was left with nothing but hurt that somehow made her do bad things.

I’d experienced how the soul could wither when talents were denied.

reminded myself that I was no longer a prisoner of the past—no

As if a dozen roses made up for his absence.

How the past shredded my ability to trust my own judgment?

“I need my grandson to stay safe from people in the present who would still do him harm for looking at you the way he does.”

“But there’s going to come a time when people like me are going to get tired of carrying the burden of helping white folks trying to understand.”

Saving the day felt good. Knowing why, though, left a hole in your heart that always felt empty.

odds were that the girl’s hostile appearance was honed from the long practice of distancing herself from people determined to harm her.

“I helped you because you needed it. You’re not a substitute for anyone. You matter.”

As a child, she’d found it easier to leave a place by distancing herself ahead of time.

My mother once told me—in a lighthearted tone—about the time she wanted to kill herself. But she didn’t want people to see her messy house. So she cleaned. Then she worried about how she would look when people found her, so she showered, changed, and styled her hair. Next, she wanted to make one more special moment with her daughter and sat with me on the sofa to read a book. As we explored the Velveteen Rabbit’s urge to become real, she realized her house was clean, she looked her best, and her little girl was such a quiet toddler. And my mother’s urge to take her own life faded.

Everything I could have wanted even before I’d known a relationship like ours could exist.

Bailey Rae wanted to reach out and hug her hard but understood how sometimes comfort kicked holes in walls that needed to be dismantled one brick at a time.

while marriage was work, it shouldn’t be a chore.

Anger was easier than vulnerability.

I bit back a fresh sob that wanted out.

You gotta pour it out, sit in it for as long as you need, then step back into your life.”