Vladimir

by Julia May Jonas

I remembered my thirties, as a young mother, meeting young fathers, talking about where their sons or daughters were going to elementary school, or whether they were going to try out karate, and how thrilled it made me to see them adjusting their hair or clothing subconsciously: a nervous nod to the powers of attraction I possessed at the time.

When I think of his little excitements at his own quips, the amount of time he spent caressing that device with quivery anticipation when he could have been doing something worthwhile, it all feels grotesque.

My worth would be equal to how helpful, useful, and uncomplaining I could be. I would be tolerated as long as it was clear I appreciated the cots, the sofa beds, the small bedrooms. I would have to demonstrate gratitude for the scraps and crumbs of time, attention, money, and luxury that came my way. I would work for it, with early mornings watching the baby, or nights doing dishes after everyone fell asleep. I couldn’t be particular. Particular old women are not invited on vacations. Unless they are very rich, which I was not.

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But art did cause damage, and I was affected by films I had seen when I was young, and I was ashamed when I watched an old film and saw racist depictions I hadn’t seen before, and I was glad to be ashamed. But did we all have to see ourselves in the presentations of types? Did I have to feel like every wife and mother was presenting an overarching narrative of Wife and Mother that reinforced or rejected my own experience?

Awkward around most women, I had trained myself to notice something on their person I could compliment. Compliments made you supplicant, equal, and master all at once. Supplicant because you are below, admiring; equal because you have the same taste; and master because you are bestowing your approval. In my life I’ve been wounded more by compliments than I have by insults. (Once when I asked an acquaintance what they thought of my second novel they said, “I can tell you worked so hard on it.”) “Thank you,” she said. “A friend

Electra spends the entirety of Sophocles’s play in a doorway, I say to my students, when we read his Theban trilogy in my Adaptations course. She is unable to return home and unable to venture into the world. Pay attention to doorways, to paths, to in-between spaces, I tell them, these are the places of transformation. The

Weekends drinking and doing yoga, trying to recover a sense of self one way or another. The money wasn’t even that great. My only question was “Why did I think I was better than this?”