“Your eyes are amazing. I’ve never seen a blue like that.”
Emma Landry is tough, independent, beautiful, and smart. Being an outcast unable to identify with her classmates, she was willing to do whatever it takes to climb her way out of poverty.
“What color would you say they are?”
Like Sapphire Blue
Having never known a mother’s love, her father “Bear”, raised her on the wrong side of the tracks in a wealthy town.
When success beckons, the woman she’s been in love with is, finally, within her grasp. Life is now worth living and loving. That is, until a dark family secret is revealed. A secret tied into the very fabric of who she is, and what she spent a lifetime working to overcome.
Faced with a foundation shattering treachery, Emma finds herself at the crossroads. Can she
overcome a destiny stronger than death, destitution, and murder, to prove she is more than just her father’s daughter? Or will this new knowledge lead her to destroy the world she’s spent a lifetime building?
“Your eyes are amazing. I’ve never seen a blue like that.”
Emma Landry is tough, independent, beautiful, and smart. Being an outcast unable to identify with her classmates, she was willing to do whatever it takes to climb her way out of poverty.
“What color would you say they are?”
Like Sapphire Blue
Having never known a mother’s love, her father “Bear”, raised her on the wrong side of the tracks in a wealthy town.
When success beckons, the woman she’s been in love with is, finally, within her grasp. Life is now worth living and loving. That is, until a dark family secret is revealed. A secret tied into the very fabric of who she is, and what she spent a lifetime working to overcome.
Faced with a foundation shattering treachery, Emma finds herself at the crossroads. Can she
overcome a destiny stronger than death, destitution, and murder, to prove she is more than just her father’s daughter? Or will this new knowledge lead her to destroy the world she’s spent a lifetime building?
~ 1 ~
Humble Beginnings
The Present...
Discord, meaning a lack of harmony or unity by the definition. In a relationship it is that moment when the realization hits that there is no turning back and the damage is done. It’s irreparable.
Why won’t she look at me? Emma looked about the room. The table was set with the good china. Their favorite bottle of wine sat corked in the center, and across from her, was her beautiful wife. This was the woman that she spent the last two decades of her life with, and she won’t even look up? There was no way I was ever going to really fall in love with anyone else, you made sure of that. Whenever I thought you were out of my life, you miraculously reappeared every time. With narrowed eyes, gripping the ends of the table she looked around in the dimly lit room.
The dining room was immaculate, crown molding lines the ceiling, and a tapestry of a French courtyard hangs on the back wall. A china cabinet delicately displaying the unused settings on the opposite wall. The dimmer switch was set to low and candles flicker in silver holders (inherited from her wife’s grandmother, who inherited them from her grandmother and so forth and so on). Her wife was sitting, with her thick strawberry blonde hair in delicate waves down her back. Her favorite dress clung to her curves. She has a beautiful body, and not a lot of things look bad on her. Her chin was down, and her beautiful blue eyes are downcast, refusing to look at Emma. She is leaning back against the chair with her head down. She’s there, but she’s not.
Emma sat back, still staring across the table at her wife. One hand rested on the table, the other on the back of her chair. She worked so hard on this dinner. She made their favorite meal – eggplant parmigiana, pasta, home-made garlic bread. Not even an acknowledgement of the fact that the bottle of wine costs what Bear used to make in two weeks working at Jessie’s shop.
Her wife just sat there unmoved. Unimpressed. Not looking. Not speaking. This was her schtick though. The cold shoulder. The silent treatment. It wasn’t the first time she did this to Emma. But still, it was frustrating to her. And to think, this woman has a PhD. You would think she has better coping mechanisms than the silent treatment.
The dinner itself and the beautiful and impressive dining room it was served in, could not be a further cry from Emma’s meager beginnings. To keep from looking at her silent wife, Emma looked around at the room.
“You had everything growing up. This dinner, and what I did to prepare it, probably don’t mean much to you. But to make this, to have this, this is the world to me. What we built together, has meant the world to me.” Emma’s voice was quiet. Tears had welled up in her eyes.
The Past (1976-1991)
Emma Landry never knew her mother. She didn’t even know she had one until she was in kindergarten. She thought she only came to be because of one parent, her dad Frank, who she called Bear, short for Papa Bear.
She lived with her dad in a small trailer near the town. It was behind the auto shop that her dad worked at, which was owned by his brother, her uncle Jessie. The trailer was rundown, and there was a hole in the corner of the floor in the living room where she could see the ground beneath. In the winter time, she would stick a towel in the hole to keep the cold out, but sometimes the mice beneath the trailer would take it. Bear’s room was located at one end of the narrow trailer, and hers was at the other. There was a small living room with a tv that had bootlegged cable running to it. The walls were lined with a dark, faux wood paneling. An old card table with folding chairs was where they ate from dull plastic plates with mismatched silverware and chipped ceramic mugs. The couch was old, cream colored with brown and orange flower print, sagged in the middle and smelled faintly of mildew.
Their trailer and the shop were located on a small, wooded plot of land. They didn’t have neighbors, and she didn’t have friends. Her friends were two plush animals, Teddy (a floppy eared dog) and Brownie (a threadbare cotton tailed bunny).
Bear worked for her uncle Jessie at the small garage providing oil changes, tire rotation and simple mechanical services for the locals who couldn’t get in to have their services done at the dealerships. Before she was able to go to school, he would bring her with him to work. Sometimes she stayed with Jessie when Bear wanted to go out after work. Jessie would take her back to the trailer and make her macaroni and cheese from a box and tuck her into her small bed and tell her fantastic stories that he made up. He gave her books sometimes, too. She loved the stories, and she loved the books. Getting lost in stories that fueled her vivid imagination was her favorite thing. She could read before she started kindergarten.
Emma’s life was simple with Bear. She grew up exploring in the woods, bringing Teddy or Brownie with her to keep her safe. They would watch sports together on the small television in the living room and sometimes sitcoms, too. Holidays were small and basic. They would go to Jessie’s house and eat a dinner usually prepared by one of his girlfriends and she would get a small toy or a book or a new outfit to wear.
Bear was an awkward father. He never knew what to say to Emma or how to interact with her, exactly, however she never questioned his devotion to her, and knew he loved her and would do anything for her, and she always felt safe with him. He would always tell her that she was his princess, and she was Daddy’s little girl. She loved sitting on the saggy couch and watching football with him. He taught her all of the calls and she rooted for his favorite team with a fervor that matched his.
He always bought her cute clothes from the Salvation Army. Pink tops and jeans with sparkly stuff on them. Shoes with pink and sparkly stuff to match. They were used, and out of date compared to that of the other girls in town, but that was no mind. He did his best.
Bear even learned how to put her hair in pigtails and braids, taught by one of Jessie’s many girlfriends. “Just because we ain’t got money, doesn’t mean my little girl has to look bad,” he would say as he brushed her thick dark hair gently.
When she was five, Bear taught her how to trap rabbits for dinner. She caught four that year. Bear cut one of the feet off and mounted it for her as a lucky rabbit’s foot on her backpack.
When she got to school, she showed that foot to her classmates for show and tell. The teacher did little to hide her disgust, and the girls thought it was gross. She never talked about it again. Emma didn’t understand why everyone thought it was weird or gross. She asked them how else they got food. “At the store!” they all laughed as they answered.
She would see the other little girls get walked in by pretty mommies and that was when she asked Bear for the first time about her own mother.
“Bear, some kids have mommies. I don’t. Why?”
“Your ma couldn’t stick around. She had some issues,” was his reply. Simple and to the point was just the kinda guy Bear was.
“What do you mean? What kind of issues?” Emma pressed on.
“Issues that made her not want to be a mama or a wife.”
“Was I not a good baby?”
“No, you was a great baby. Your ma just couldn’t be a ma.”
“But why?”
“Emma, baby girl… That’s just not something a little kid needs to talk about or know about. You got me, and that needs to be enough.” He sounded wounded in the last sentence.
That shut her up, but she never stopped wondering. She did learn that kids look like their mommies and their daddies. Bear was really tall, and really big, he was blond with coarse straight hair and deep, dark, blue eyes. She had dark hair that was silky and wavy, and her eyes were a very dark blue. Her skin was darker than Bear and her features were not as big. She was taller than most other kids her age, like Bear, but she was slender and reed thin, not like Bear. She gathered her dark hair and complexion came from her mom, and also that she was so skinny, and her height and blue eyes were from Bear.
Bear didn’t have family other than Jessie. Emma didn’t have grandparents that could spoil her rotten. There were no aunties and cousins to play with. It was just her, Bear, Jessie, Teddy and Brownie. While she was young, she didn’t mind as much. It was something that would bother her as she grew though.
Starting from the rabbit’s foot episode, she didn’t have friends either. The girls were afraid of her, and the boys didn’t know what to do with her either. It didn’t really bother her, because overall, she was a happy kid. With a vivid imagination fueled by books picked up at library sales or from Jessie, and the endless woods behind the trailer to explore she didn’t need anything more.
When she was seven, Bear bought Emma her first rifle. While her classmates were going to ballet lessons and playing sports, she was learning her way around the rifle. Cleaning it, loading it, and being safe with it. “Don’t point that thing at me!” Bear would yell.
“It’s not loaded, Bear!” she would say, pouting at Bear’s displeasure with her.
“Never assume that!” he corrected her. “As far as you know, there is always something in there!”
Bear spent a year teaching her to shoot. He set up targets of soda bottles behind the trailer. He showed her how to hold the rifle and how to stand and brace for the kick.
Emma was far from being a natural with the rifle. She struggled for months, but Bear was a patient teacher. He took his time and helped her and cheered her on and praised her when she did things right.
When she was eight, he took her to hunt deer for the first time. He waited until she was able to hit every target he set up for her behind the trailer; one right after the other in rapid succession. She still was not a master, but she had definitely become skilled in her ability to use the rifle and hit the targets as they were lined up.
Up in the deer stand, in the early morning, she sat with Bear in silence waiting for a deer.
Anxious, with her heart thrumming loud in her chest she sat quiet in the stand. Calm down, the deer can hear your heart beating! There’s no way they can’t hear it! They are not going to come, and Bear will be sad! They were perched up in a home-made deer stand built into a large tree overlooking a small clearing. The early morning was misty, and frost clung to the surfaces of the deer stand and on the grass below them.
Steam came from her every exhale, and her ears were so cold she thought they might fall off her head. She sat quietly next to Bear, watching the puffy clouds of their breath, and trying to not complain. I really have to pee. There’s nowhere to go though. Trying to not fidget with her discomfort because she didn’t want to disappoint Bear, she distracted herself by trying to count the remaining leaves that hung from the tree the deer stand was propped in.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Bear nudged her and nodded his head out to where she could see a large doe and her fawn grazing. She froze looking at the majestic animal. It was so big and so gentle with her large black eyes. Its ears flicked, and the fawn looked around before going back to its gentle grazing. She’s so beautiful! Look at that baby with her! I can’t kill it. I can’t. I don’t want to.
Bear nodded to her again, nudging her to do it. His gesture said, ‘Go ahead, now!’
Don’t make Bear mad. You have to. Just do it. Do it now. She looked through the scope and honed in right where Bear told her to. Her finger wrapped around the trigger, and her body braced for the kick. She took a deep breath in and going against all she was taught – she closed her eyes. On the exhale, doing as she was taught – she squeezed the trigger.
Her eyes opened as the loud bang echoed off of the trees in the clearing and she watched, almost in slow motion as the doe dropped and the tiny buck fawn ran off into the woods.
“Alright! Princess! Way to go!” Bear was on his feet slapping her back and cheerful.
She stood there frozen.
Bear was making his way down and out of the deer stand.
She couldn’t move. She kept seeing the doe fall again and again in her mind’s eye every time she blinked and her eyes closed. What did you just do? Why did you do that? Oh, I need to pee so bad. That poor beautiful animal! Where is the baby? Where did he go? Oh, you killed her. You killed her in front of her baby!
Tears were welling up in her eyes.
“Come on, Princess!” Bear called.
Her lip was trembling. Every time she closed her eyes to blink, she saw the doe fall and the fawn sprint off. She couldn’t not see it. It was ingrained in her brain.
Where are you, little fawn? Are you scared? Are you looking for your mom? I know you have to be sad because I’m sad. I wonder where my mom is too. I’m so sorry, little fawn. You were just there with her and now she’s gone. You are alone now. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry, little fawn. Are you out there looking for her? I really need to pee. Why did I do that? How could I do that to that baby and that mama?
The tears were overflowing now. With shaking hands, she put her rifle down and crumbled to her knees sobbing.
Bear stood with his upper body still in the stand, “Emma, honey, why are you crying?” His voice was exasperated.
“I killed her, and she was a mama.”
“That mama is going to feed us for all of the winter, Princess. That mama would probably starve during the winter anyway.”
“That baby deer doesn’t have a mama no more. I killed his mama.” She was inconsolable, trembling with sorrow and cold. “I don’t have a mama, and the baby deer doesn’t now either, because of me.” It was only the second time in her life she had brought up not having a mother and the first time she realized she was upset about it. She had peed her pants in her meltdown and only just now noticed it as the wind blew and she felt cold and wet.
“Listen,” Bear was firm. “That mama deer was most likely going to die in the winter. She was gonna get killed by a car or starvation or another hunter. We need to eat. She is going to feed us for a long time. What you did was good. You need to stop crying and get over it. Now. I’m not going to listen to that sniveling all day. Get your ass out of this stand and help me load this deer into the truck.”
Emma stopped the sound of her crying but could not stop the tears from flowing freely.
The snot poured out of her nose like a faucet and dried to her upper lip in the cold as she made her way across the ground to her first kill. Her legs and her bottom were cold from where she peed, and her wet cheeks felt cold every time the wind blew.
She felt every bit as lost and alone as that baby buck must be feeling now. Where did you go, little fawn? Are you watching us? Do you know what I did to your mama? Are you scared?
Bear field dressed the deer right on the spot. Slicing open her belly and pulling out the intestines and other now useless organs.
Steam rose from the organs as he pulled them out of the large gaping gash in her belly. Emma’s head was swimming and she felt sick.
Eyes clouded with tears, she watched as his hands went in and heard the noise reminiscent of footsteps in sludge as he kept pulling them out. The acrid metallic smell filled the air around her. The world began to swim in her eyes and the ground was unsteady under feet. She fell to her knees and threw up. I wish my mom were here. I’ve never met her, but I want someone to hold me right now. Tell me it’s okay. It’s not okay. Nothing is okay. Bear ignored her as she continued to sob and kept on with his grisly task.
Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Eyes forward. Look ahead. Don’t look back. She helped her father carry the doe to the truck, her small hands wrapped around the rope that attached to a sled that carried the deer, arms behind her, stopping frequently to rest. Bear heaved it up into the bed of his beat-up pick-up truck. Its tongue was sticking out, and its eyes were vacant and dull.
Bear got into the driver’s seat, and she stayed behind looking at its face. She laid her hand on its neck and whispered, “I’m sorry. I hope your baby is okay.”
“Emma! Get in this truck! Now!” Bear yelled.
How is he able to do this and not care? Why doesn’t care about the fawn? Or me? With a heaving sigh she ran up and got into the truck next to Bear. She wiped the last of her tears and snot with her sleeve. Don’t look in the mirror. Don’t look at Bear. If you look in the mirror, you will see the poor mama deer bouncing around back there with her tongue out. Don’t look at Bear because you don’t want to cry anymore. I can tell he’s mad at me. So mad at me. I’ve never made him this mad before. Bear stared straight ahead at the road, white knuckles gripping the steering wheel. She wasn’t looking at him and he wasn’t looking at her either.
The remainder of the winter, she refused to eat the meat that came from the doe. She made herself peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead.
“Suit yourself,” Bear would say. “More for me,” he would say as he heaped venison stew from the large pot on the stove into his bowl.
The thought of eating that baby buck’s mom made her ill, though she never said a word about it. The gamey smell of the meat cooking nauseated her, and the thought of the texture of the meat on her tongue made her head swim all over again as it did in the woods, and a clammy sweat break out on her forehead bringing her right back to the moment she watched her father field dress the doe. It was a visceral reaction she couldn’t control, so she flat out refused.
Bear was angry at her insistence on wasting perfectly good meat and a meal he worked hard to provide. But he didn’t know how to navigate the situation, so his compromise was that she had to provide for herself and prepare something else.
She outsmarted him by choosing to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. She didn’t care that she had eaten it for lunch as well. It was better than the alternative.
As she became more self-sufficient, Bear would go out after work and stay out late into the early morning or sometimes all night long. Smelling like alcohol and cheap perfume with a dusting of glitter (most notably over the lap of his pants), he would come rolling in just in time for Emma to get ready for school. Emma didn’t think twice about it. She liked being alone. She loved Bear, without a doubt, but it was just nicer when she was alone. She would watch television, eat her dinner and then brush her teeth and tuck herself in. She would read her books and she would talk to Teddy and Brownie about her day.
Although she was a good student Emma began to resent certain assignments in class that had to deal with family trees or talk about families. She didn’t know if she had grandparents or family from her mom’s side. Bear would refuse to talk about it. He said he would handle it with the teachers so she didn’t get a bad grade for not participating. He would meet with the teachers or call them and sweet talk them about how it’s a touchy subject and to please not require these things from Emma. Emma would be given alternative assignments instead, which was embarrassing to her, as she would be pulled aside by the teacher as they explained some meaningless task to keep her busy while her classmates looked at her and whispered while they worked on their family tree.
She would see the elaborate and pretty trees her classmates would make with pictures of extended family-grandmothers and grandfathers and great grandparents and so on. Jessie didn’t have a wife or any kids. Sometimes he would have girlfriends. Pretty girls from the town, who would talk sweetly to Emma and play with her hair. But they never stuck around long, and Bear never had girlfriends, or at least none he would bring home to meet Emma. She wondered what it was like to have cousins and siblings. She wondered what it was like to be tucked in by a mom, or soothed and comforted when she was sick.
She resented that Bear wouldn’t tell her where her mom was or why her mom left. She resented that he never talked about his own parents or where they were. Jessie never talked about it either.
She went from being a happy kid, to a quiet kid.
As she grew, the other kids noticed that Emma wore clothes that were faded and shabby. She didn’t have the shiny and new toys or a bike, or new stylish clothes. Many of them remembered the rabbit’s foot she had brought during kindergarten. She continued to have no friends to play with. They would pick on her for her clothes or the rabbit foot, and her lack of a mother. Unable to relate to the other kids as they talked about vacations and new stuff she kept to herself. They didn’t try to befriend or relate to her either.
After school she would come home and draw pictures, read books, or wander the woods that were slowly losing their magic as she grew older and she had memorized each tree and stump and path around, or she would walk to her uncle’s shop and hang out with Bear and Jessie and watch them as they worked on the cars. She began to learn the customers and would help out with the front desk and the register and books, or sweep up around the front. Jessie would toss her a few bucks here and there for helping.
Emma would use the meager earnings from helping out at the shop to buy herself a used bike from the thrift shop, and the food she liked so she wouldn’t have to eat the rabbits and the deer that her father killed. She refused to kill another animal after her incident with the doe. Her heart couldn’t take it. She wouldn’t eat meat even if it was store bought, and especially if Bear killed it, she wasn’t eating it. She refused to trap rabbits or join Bear in his hunting excursions.
“You know all food comes from something that died?” Bear asked her one night as she microwaved a frozen French bread cheese pizza. “Wheat plants and tomatoes died for that pizza you are going to eat.”
Emma shrugged. “But I didn’t see it be killed. I didn’t see it dead in the back of your truck. I didn’t kill it. I didn’t make eye contact with it.”
Bear didn’t bother to argue with her.
As middle school began, Bear was pushing her to do things that didn’t require her staying around the trailer all day or the shop. He encouraged her to try out for various extracurricular activities and sports.
Emma started playing softball and basketball with the girls’ teams. She wished she could try out for football since she and Bear loved to watch it together, but they refused to let a girl try out, even if it was just flag football.
It didn’t stop her from attempting to try out. When she showed up for the football tryouts on the field, and the coach looked at her, “Cheerleading tryouts are in the gym.”
“I’m not here for cheerleading. I’m here to play football.” Emma was certain and confident.
The coach laughed and the boys waiting to try out joined him. Emma stayed stoic and narrowed her eyes at him so he could see she was serious.
The coach stopped laughing and so did the boys. “Girls don’t play football.” The coach was befuddled.
“Why not?”
“They don’t. We can’t have girls on the team. It’s not … It’s not a thing.” Now he was annoyed.
“I think there are laws against that.”
“It doesn’t apply to football.”
The boys assembled for tryouts began to laugh again.
Head down, Emma sauntered off the field and walked to the shop. She sat in the office chair and spun around lazily.
“What’s wrong, Princess?” Bear called in from under a customer’s luxury sedan from the bay.
“I tried to try out for football, and I was told I can’t because I’m a girl.” She was pouting.
“Girls don’t play football.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in the chair. “That’s stupid.”
Bear shrugged. “It is what it is. At least you tried.”
Though she was on both the basketball and softball teams, she maintained her status as a lone wolf. She had managed the art of disappearing in a room full of her peers. She only spoke in class when called upon, and though she was a talented athlete and performed well on her teams, she didn’t socialize with her teammates, as she had nothing in common with those girls. They would talk about their vacations with their families, boys, makeup, or the newest clothing trends. She couldn’t relate, so she stayed quiet. The girls didn’t try to include her, and she didn’t try to be included.
For being a pretty girl who obtained great grades and was a talented athlete, she was invisible. Teachers never even acknowledged her unless they called upon her to answer questions. She had grown accustomed to flying under the radar. She sat alone in the hallway at lunch and aside from small talk in the locker room or mandatory group work in classes, she didn’t speak.
After school and after practice, she would make her way home and stop by the shop to help out if anything needed to be done, and then home to the trailer. She would lay across her bed with a beat-up book she bought second-hand from the library sales or the thrift shop. She lost herself in the stories of lives she would never otherwise imagine and in worlds that had to be better than what she lived every day.
Midway through her first semester of seventh grade, Emma was moodier than normal. Everything Bear did or said made her want to cry.
She could feel stabbing little pains in her lower abdomen and her pretty complexion was sporadically dotted with small pimples.
She avoided going to the shop after school lest she explode and yell at Bear or Jessie. They annoyed her constantly. Everything was annoying to her.
She couldn’t stand her characters in the books she was reading. They were so predictable, and their worlds were bullshit. She would write in a notebook she used as a journal or lay across her bed and listen to the radio fantasizing about a different life.
It was a dreary mid-November day. The weather matched Emma’s persistent mood lately. It was overcast, and damp outside. Emma was sitting in her science class at a black Formica table with a sink and Bunsen burners. Ms. Vasquez had been droning on about the biology of plant cells and Emma struggled to pay attention. She didn’t feel well, and she could hear the boys at the table behind her whispering and laughing together. She was annoyed and just wanted to get done with the day so she could go home. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights was causing her head to ache and that annoying stabbing pain in her lower abdomen made her feel like she wanted to throw up. The cool black surface of the lab table felt strangely reassuring as she placed her palms flat and tried to breathe through the pains in her belly and stay focused on her teacher. Just breathe. Inhale. Exhale. I wish Ms. Vasquez would stop talking. Why won’t Rhys and his friends shut up? I wish she would do something about them or move me further away.
Finally, the bell rang while Ms. Vasquez was mid-sentence, and Emma stood up to go.
The table behind her of three boys was snickering and leering at her.
She was not used to this attention, and she turned red with frustration. What are they laughing at? They are so stupid. I’m definitely going to have to ask Ms. Vasquez to move me.
As she was walking to the door, Ms. Vasquez’s large chocolate brown eyes got big and her thick black eyebrows raised up, and she pulled Emma aside by grabbing her arm abruptly. “Emma, sweetie, you might need to go home and change.” Her voice was discreet.
Emma looked at Ms. Vasquez confused.
“You started your cycle,” she prompted, cocking her head to the side.
Emma still looked confused. What is she talking about cycle? The wash?
“You took sex ed fifth and sixth grade, didn’t you?” Ms. Vasquez tucked a lock of her short dark bob behind her ear.
“Bear – my dad – didn’t sign the forms so I had to go to the library.”
“Did your dad or mom tell you about your period?” Ms. Vasquez asked.
Emma looked at her confused. “I don’t have a mom. I mean, I guess, biologically I do, but I’ve never met her.”
Ms. Vasquez took a deep breath and exhaled. Peeling off her brightly colored cardigan, she handed it to Emma. “Wrap this around your waist. You and I are going to go to the office and talk to the nurse.”
Am I in trouble? Ms. Vasquez ushered her at breakneck speed taking long and fast strides weaving around the masses of students, down the hallway and to the office and into the nurse’s office. “Ms. Wilson, this is Emma. Emma just got her cycle and doesn’t know anything about it. She wasn’t able to participate in Sex Ed and doesn’t have a mom. I would stay and help her, but I have a class in one minute that I need to rush back to.”
Emma looked at Ms. Wilson, the school nurse. If I ever had a grandmother, I would want this woman to be her. She looks like she bakes cookies and gives good hugs. She was stout, blonde, and had the sweetest round face with soft blue eyes that Emma could swear sparkled when she laughed. Ms. Wilson raised her eyebrows at Emma with concern.
Why am I even here? Did I do something wrong? This is so embarrassing. I wish everyone would stop looking at me like my dog just died. This is annoying. Just don’t cry.
“Sit down, Emma,” Ms. Wilson prompted. She proceeded to explain to Emma about becoming a woman and starting her cycle. She gave Emma a bag full of tampons and maxi pads and explained to her how to use them.
Emma sat and listened to Ms. Wilson as she spent the better part of the hour explaining menses, and she was mortified as she looked at the bag full of sanitary supplies.
“Can I go home and change my clothes?” Emma asked quietly.
“We have to call your parent and they need to pick you up. You can’t just leave,” Ms. Wilson informed her.
Stop looking at me like that. I don’t want your goddamned pity. Emma started to cry despite herself. “I don’t want to talk to Bear about this, and I don’t want to stay here in messed up clothes.”
“I am so sorry, Emma. I have to follow the rules, I can’t just let you leave. There are laws and stuff, sweetie. Why don’t you go clean up in the bathroom and you can stay in here until the final bell? I will call your teachers.”
Emma composed herself and took a deep breath in. She nodded at Ms. Wilson. That was a far better plan than having to talk to Bear about her being a woman now.
She was self-conscious as it was about dealing with the fact she had boobs and was almost as tall as some of her teachers if not taller than a few.
After re-reading the instruction on the maxi pads (after looking at the instructions of the tampons she figured that was something she had no desire to try), and cleaning herself up, she went back into the exam room Ms. Wilson used, and grabbed the book she had been reading out of her backpack. She made herself comfortable on the exam table and read until the final bell rang.
Ms. Vasquez’s brightly colored sweater stayed tied around her waist as she walked home. After having the rest of the afternoon to process what had happened in Ms. Wilson’s exam room, she at least now understood why she had been feeling the way she had emotionally and that gave her some comfort. Her sadness and confusion had given way to anger and bitterness that ran deep. She was angry and bitter at not having a mom to explain to her these things, or that Bear was so … Bear, and he couldn’t be bothered to, or maybe he was too embarrassed to explain it to her. She felt as if she had been left to deal with this huge change on her own, and that just was not fair.
She tossed Ms. Vasquez’s sweater in the wash with her clothes when she got home and stored the products she had been given by Ms. Wilson under the sink in the bathroom. She contemplated telling Bear about what happened but decided it would just be weird so she decided it would just not be discussed. It was just as well, as Bear never came home that night.
The next day, when Emma arrived in her science class, as she walked in, the table of boys that sat behind her started chanting in unison, “Bloody Mary! Bloody Mary! Bloody Mary!” as Emma took her seat.
“Absolutely NOT!” Ms. Vasquez shouted and slammed her hands down on her desk so hard it shook.
Rhys, the ringleader of the boys at the table, was laughing. “Have a sense of humor!” he said snidely.
Emma put her backpack down, walked around his table so she was standing in front of him and looked Rhys in the eye and said, “How’s this for a sense of humor?” as she belted him with a right hook.
Rhys, not expecting it, went back and landed on his backside on the floor.
No one had expected it. Emma herself had not expected or planned her reaction.
She pulled Ms. Vasquez’s sweater out of her backpack and brought it to the front of the class and set it on her desk. “I will take myself to the office.”
Ms. Wilson brought her a bag of ice for her right knuckles as she explained to the vice principal, Ms. Jones, a young very pale blonde administrator who was new to the school, what she had done. Emma was unwavering as she looked at Ms. Jones in her pale watery blue eyes, who seemed so kind and quiet. “I started my period yesterday in class. These boys noticed it. I didn’t even know what a period was… I just learned from Ms. Wilson because I don’t have a mom or anyone to explain these things to me.” Emma felt a twinge of emotion in the last line but swallowed it. Just keep it together. Don’t cry. Don’t let them see how much it hurts.
She was given two days of in-school suspension for striking Rhys.
After school, she made her way to the shop. She was sitting in the office chair swiveling back and forth, using her toes as a pivot.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” Bear asked.
Most definitely, I do not. Emma shook her head ‘no’ as she twisted back and forth in the office chair behind the desk.
“Did he deserve it?” Bear asked.
If you only knew, Bear. Emma nodded.
“Did he touch you?”
Gross. No. Emma shook her head ‘no’ again.
“Did he say something nasty about you?”
He most certainly did. Emma nodded her head.
“You ain’t gonna tell me what he said?”
Nope. Nope. Absolutely not. No, sir. She shook her head ‘no’ again.
“Did you get him good?”
She grinned and nodded. You taught me well, Bear.
“Good girl.” He ruffled her hair and went back to the bay.
Emma liked the in-school suspension days. The room was quiet, and it was just her and one other student who had been caught smoking in the girls’ bathroom. The teacher seemed not to care too much and just doled out the work that was given to her from her teachers. The room had one small window that looked at the street and the houses across from the school. There were only about 10 desks lined up inside. Emma sat at one of the desks in the back of one corner, the other girl, a grade ahead of Emma, sat in the opposite corner. They looked at each other, nodded a greeting and had no further interactions. Would it be too much to ask if I could just stay here the rest of this year and next? I like this room.
The remainder of her middle school time no one bothered to mess with her. They would murmur about her, she would hear them, but they didn’t dare cross her for fear she would lay them out like she did Rhys.
Middle school also saw the dawning of new love for most students. Emma would watch as they began to pair off in couples. She thought she should be envious of them, but she wasn’t. There wasn’t a single person who caught her attention that she would want to pair off with.
Dances were announced. Notes were passed asking classmates to go to the dances or to go steady.
Emma watched the goings on, curious, but distant, still invisible. She didn’t want to be asked, and she didn’t want to ask anyone. She could see couples in the hallways holding hands, and behind the school up against the walls making out. It made her slightly nauseous. Even that turd Rhys had a girlfriend that would hold his hand and kiss his slimy lips. Emma knew his lips were slimy, because she could remember the feel of them against her knuckles when she hit him.
Emma threw herself into her sports and her studies. She didn’t have time for socializing, no one was worth detracting her from her goals. Jessie had told her that some students who were really smart and athletic could get scholarships to colleges and universities. That was what she wanted. She decided she wanted out and she wanted a new life. Her superpower was that despite all of her accomplishments, she maintained a level of invisibility. Even her teachers couldn’t remember her name, even though she often had the highest scores in the class.
Like Sapphire Blue follows the life of protagonist Emma Landry, a forlorn misfit struggling to figure out her place in the world. It should be said upfront that although the premise sounds similar to that of young adult novels, this is very much an adult novel, full of teenage angst, but also deeper themes of generational trauma, family secrets, and homophobia.
The story begins with Emma having dinner with her wife, trying to determine where things went wrong between them. During this dinner, she reminisces about her life growing up as a poor, trailer-dwelling child with no family other than her father and uncle, her mother having run off when she was a baby. She struggles to remain invisible, a loner until she's cruelly bullied in middle school--an event that will, unfortunately, follow her throughout her entire life.
Like Sapphire Blue captures the struggle of many children who just don't quite fit in while growing up, but especially sympathizes with the plight of the LGBTQ+ community--especially in the United States of the 90s and early 2000s, before marriage equality was legalized and more LGBTQ+ voices began to gain traction and people finally began to listen to them. Author Marisa Billions manages to tackle these issues, along with issues of parental abandonment, life-altering family secrets, and overcoming the environment people are raised in with unflinching looks into people's psyches. It's a lot to process, but Billions does it well, never feeling like she's exaggerating things simply for dramatic effect or dumping so many difficult issues into her plot that they end up only partially explored and unresolved. Emma and the supporting characters feel like real people, with real struggles, and real flaws. I couldn't wait to keep reading to see what came next, and boy, was I in for a ride, devouring the last third of the book furiously to find out how Emma would deal with the final major event of the story in which she was entangled.
Despite Billions' vibrant, lively descriptions of not only the scenery surrounding the characters but their innermost thoughts, I found the actual spoken dialogue between characters to be a bit stilted and unnatural. Many lines of dialogue are written formally, without contractions or slang, even between close friends or couples, making me feel kind of as if I were reading a screenplay and had to conjure up the correct emotion for the scene in my mind. I felt a bit distant from the characters, which was a shame because of how gripping the whole plot is.
Nevertheless, this is only Billions' second novel, so I'm looking forward to reading more from her in the future. Marisa Billions' Like Sapphire Blue is one of those stories that will take up real estate in my mind for a while as I continuously mull over the agony, the pain, and the love explored, and I imagine it will stay with other readers as well.