White Oleander

by Janet Fitch

She was a beautiful woman dragging a crippled foot and I was that foot. I was bricks sewn into the hem of her clothes, I was a steel dress.

If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one’s own universe, to live on one’s own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil.

In a different quadrant of the sky, another star broke loose. It was eerie, the one thing you didn’t plan on, stellar movement.

When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despair wasn’t a guest, you didn’t play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy.

What was beauty unless you intended to use it, like a hammer, or a key? It was just something for other people to use and admire, or envy, despise. To nail their dreams onto like a picture hanger on a blank wall. And so many girls saying, use me, dream me.

You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don’t know whether you’re going to jump.

One can bear anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.

You used to say I had no imagination. If by that you meant I could feel shame, and remorse, you were right. I can’t remake the world just by willing it so. I don’t know how to believe my own lies. It takes a certain kind of genius.