Foreign Facades

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Jesse

Snip. Snip, snip, snip, snip.

Jesse Garcia watched each strand fall individually, watched as if the dark, unkempt, and oily mass of brown hair didn’t belong to her, as if the hand that lifted the scissors was anyone’s but her own.

Snip.

Rain was pelting the window, and the bare branches of the big chestnut tree swayed in what was just another dreary February day. It was one of those where it never quite gets light and where dawn, day, and dusk seamlessly blend into one another. Jesse didn’t know what time it was. Her watch’s battery was dead and she hadn’t bothered to look at her phone for some time. She glanced to where it lay on the bed that had been hers for as long as she could remember, partially obscured by the heavy feather duvet with its outdated flowery cover. The two pillows piled on top of each other were flat from age and use, the imprint of her head faintly visible.

She closed her eyes against its beckoning. Against the promise of, if not sleep, at least oblivion. She had gotten good at that in recent weeks, good at finding that dreamless state somewhere between wakefulness and slumber, where each speck on the faded wallpaper could provide fodder for endless contemplation, and each particle of dust floating in the air was to be followed with utmost concentration.

Snip.

Another matted strand hit the desk that had at one time held her girlhood secrets, but was now storage for her mom’s craft supplies. That’s where she’d found the scissors, and they were good ones, too. Normally used for cardboard and a myriad of colorful felt pieces and construction paper, they cut through her hair with ease.

Snip.

The office chair squeaked as she tilted it backward to see herself in the hand mirror she’d propped up on the desk, momentarily forgetting. Blue eyes stared back at her, rimmed by long, dark lashes, perfectly shaped and, even unaccented by any liner or shade, very arresting. Quickly she looked away, but too late—already pain flooded her, engulfing her without mercy until ice water flowed through her veins and once again she felt the harshness of the snow-covered slope underneath her as her butt and legs gradually went numb.

“Jessica?”

She heard a thud first and then the familiar clink as her mom dropped her keys on the console under the coat rack, followed by the whirring sound of the zipper of her anorak being pulled down. Paper crinkled.

“Jessica? Are you there?”

Stomp, stomp, stomp. Light on her feet her mom was not, especially after a day of taking care of twenty-odd children under the age of six. Jesse heard her going into the kitchen, heard the refrigerator open and close, and the scraping of a chair’s legs over laminate.

Jesse picked up the scissors again, but they felt heavy in her hand and she put them back down. The microwave dinged, telling her she had about a quarter of an hour. Petra Garcia, no, Petra Wagner—her mother had gone back to her maiden name a couple of years ago—never wavered in her routine. Right about then she was adding four little squares of sugar to her coffee, reheated from this morning’s batch. No milk, never, but always accompanied by some form of cake or pastry, a candy bar, even sweetened baking chocolate in a pinch. Jesse reached for the scissors again.

Snip.

The wind had picked up, and rain pummeled the windowpanes in an uneven staccato. It was completely dark now, and in the light of her bedside lamp, Jesse could barely make out her face in the mirror. That suited her just fine, as she imagined a hollowness of her eyes, dark circles under them, and stark cheek bones bearing not just her own sorrow, but that of the world—all in all, the face of a tragic heroine in a movie. Suddenly the light was flipped on, and what looked back at her from the mirror was her own face with its coloration too olive to ever show any blanching, never mind dark circles. Only her eyes looked haunted, their vibrant blue contrasting as usual with her overall exotic appearance. Exotic for a German, that is. In the little town where her mom lived were plenty of women of Turkish descent who had the same complexion and even darker hair.

“Jessica Marie!”

Hands on ample hips, her mom stood in the doorway, waving a piece of paper accusingly. The shopping list. Jesse dimly remembered agreeing to go a few days ago. Not for bread and cold cuts and such. Her mom picked those up from the store she walked by every day on her way to and from work. But there was a large discounter at the edge of town which hadn’t been there when Jesse was growing up that sold things cheaper. And while her environment-conscious mother used her beat-up Golf as little as possible, about once every two weeks or so, she drove to the Penny and stocked up on items too heavy or cumbersome to carry.

“Didn’t I tell you we were low on toilet paper? There’s only about a third of a roll left so I sure as hell hope you’re not on your period. What is wrong with you? And what in heaven’s name have you done to your hair?”

Stomp, stomp, stomp.

Then, one hand on Jesse’s shoulder and the other one on the back of the office chair, her mom twirled her around as she’d done a million times when Jesse was a teenager ignoring her. Jesse half expected to hear Look at me when I’m talking to you! but her mother stayed silent. Her palm cold against Jesse’s chin, she turned her face this way and that. It felt odd, being inspected this way, and even odder to be forced to actually look at her mother. Close up, Petra’s face appeared older than she remembered it, its lines deeper around her blue eyes, now watery from the cold.

“Never mind. They’re open till eight today. I’ll go after dinner.”

She let go of Jesse then, and the defeat in her face and in the way she turned and clomped heavily back to the kitchen might have pained Jesse if she’d let it. She didn’t, preferring to mutely stay seated until her mother, who’d come to expect nothing different, poked her head in once again.

“Brotzeit is ready. I bought you a pretzel.”

As if that would erase everything, make up for…Jesse hated her mother then, hated her for that spark of hope in her voice, hated her for her fake cheer and most of all for her determination. When she’d first arrived, numb with shock, half dragged and half prodded by her mom into this bedroom which hadn’t been hers for over fifteen years, she’d been so out of it she barely noticed Petra’s mothering. And a tiny part of her had actually welcomed it as she retreated into a state of just breathing and sleeping, barely eating, and never, ever thinking back.

“Jessica Marie, if you don’t get your ass out of that chair this very instant, I’m going to come and get you!”

She would, too, as Jesse had learned a few weeks prior. The scuffle that had followed her then-refusal to budge had been undignified and embarrassing enough to make her get up now. Satisfied, her mom disappeared and Jesse followed, childishly rebelling by taking her time in doing so. It wasn’t like dinner was getting cold. With Petra eating a warm lunch at the Kindergarten along with the children she supervised, evening meals during the week were Brotzeit, meaning bread and whatever she chose to accompany it. Jesse didn’t mind, didn’t care what she was eating or even if.

“I got you the liverwurst with herbs in it that you like.”

It was pathetic, really. Yes, Jesse did like liverwurst on her pretzel, or she had, rather, in a different life. As soon as she sat down, Petra shoved a jar of cornichons in her direction, the little pickles that, yes, she used to like as well.

“Thanks.”

Her mom’s face lit up and this time, Jesse did feel a pang of guilt. She really needed to be nicer to her. It wasn’t her fault, after all. Taking a tiny bite of pretzel, she watched her mom chow down on her own roll. Petra still ate like she had fifteen years ago, several slices of bell pepper-laced cold cut over half a centimeter of real butter per half roll, and she would consume at least three. There was a bottle of Radler standing next to her plate from which Petra now filled her glass.

“You sure you don’t want any?”

“Yes, Mama.”

It wasn’t like Petra hadn’t already placed the bottle of sparkly mineral water on the table. But she still asked every evening and every evening Jesse declined anew, preferring dry red wine to beer, even beer that was diluted into a sweeter, milder version. Not that she’d touched any wine since…well…She put her pretzel down on the wooden plate, her appetite gone.

“Don’t start that again, now! I bought this pretzel for you, especially, and I expect you to eat it. You know, those bastards at Edeka raised their prices again. I still remember when one pretzel was fifty Pfennig and now you’re lucky if you can get two for a Euro.”

She rambled on about price increases at the store, but Jesse had tuned out already, familiar with her mother’s topics of conversation. While well-respected, Kindergarten teachers didn’t get paid a lot, and Petra struggled to make ends meet, always had. Yet Jesse hadn’t ever felt poor growing up. Somehow, Petra had managed after Jesse’s dad had escaped back home after only one short year of marriage to her mother. Joe Henrique Garcia—American, but Mexican by birth, and as such, ill-equipped for the cold German winters—had hated Langweid, and their marriage, hastily undertaken for the sake of Jesse’s birth as it was, had quickly fallen apart. When she was younger, Jesse had wondered how it would have been if he’d stuck around because, frankly, not having a dad sucked.

But that was far behind her now and, from how it appeared, Petra as well. Oh, her mother had dated occasionally. Jesse remembered a friend or two. One guy had even tried to get her to call him uncle, a notion Petra had squelched quickly. She cleared her throat now, and Jesse reluctantly reached for the pretzel that had a dollop of liverwurst on it she didn’t remember putting there.

“Eat! I won’t have you looking like a bean pole. That is not attractive in the slightest.”

Which was ripe, really, coming from someone who needed to shed not ten, but easily forty pounds. Still, Jesse knew she’d been getting thinner, because twice last week her pajama bottoms had slid off her butt when she’d stumbled out of bed during the night. Not that she cared, as she would have preferred being able to disappear altogether, but apparently her mother did. And when Petra cared about something, she went at or about it doggedly, ad nauseam. Reluctantly Jesse took a bite, a big one this time, knowing from experience that it was less exhausting to do so than to keep arguing.

“It’s been two months now. Don’t you think it is time you got out and did something?”

Startled, Jesse inhaled sharply while she swallowed, and a crumb of pretzel made it into her windpipe, causing her to choke and cough violently. Tears were running down her face by the time she managed to dislodge it.

“Mama! You can stop pounding now.”

It came out as a barely audible croak, but her mom did stop beating on her back.

“Drink some water!”

Jesse obeyed and the scratching in her throat abated. She dried her face with a tissue her mom produced, not looking at her as she did.

“I meant it, you know. You’re thirty-five years old, for crying out loud! You can’t hide in your old room forever.”

Watch me! But her defiant stare crumbled under the concern in Petra’s eyes. And deep down Jesse knew, of course, that what she was doing was neither healthy nor right. It wasn’t as if the world had ended with Julia’s death. Well, hers had.

“Oh, child. I know it’s hard. But life goes on. It always does.”

The tears she had just dried threatened to fall again and Jesse pushed against them with all her might. Not now, not here at the dinner table!

“Look, why don’t you come to Penny with me? Just pull on some jeans instead of those god-awful sweatpants you’re wearing. And a hat, you’ll need a hat to cover that hair of yours.”

That was her mother all right. No matter what might have happened it would never do to leave the house in loungewear. She felt Petra scrutinizing her—her head, to be exact. So, what if she hadn’t finished cutting her hair? If it looked like the unevenly chopped mess it was? Did it really matter, now that the one person who’d loved it wasn’t here any longer?

Jesse choked back a sob. “My Indian princess,” Julia had called her. “My goddess from the sss,” or, when she’d been in a more playful mood, “my Mexican señorita.” Julia, a dark blonde herself, with hair as soft and fine as silk, had adored Jesse’s heavy mane and played with it constantly, even when they were just sitting on the couch. Or in public, on the bus, or at the movies or in a restaurant. When they’d first gotten together, Jesse had asked Julia what had attracted Julia to her. Because, let’s face it, Julia was a true beauty, whereas Jesse had inherited her mother’s nose and angular face and overall average looks. The answer had been instant: Your eyes, of course. And your hair.

She touched her shoulder where her hair should have been, unused to the lightness. She hadn’t gotten to the back yet, and she reached behind and grabbed a handful of what was left. Unwashed and uncombed for weeks, it didn’t even feel right anymore.

Pushing back the chair so hastily it fell over, she rushed from the table. Holding both hands in front of her mouth, she raced down the short hallway and into her room, kicking the door shut behind her, not letting go until her face hit her pillow. Without looking, she fumbled at the old radio her mom kept on the night stand and turned up Radio Fantasy as loud as it would go. Only then did she lift that second hand from her lips. And only then did she start wailing.