Pretty Girls Bleed Flowers

Not Jenny's Daughter

  I am not Jenny’s daughter. I am simply not. Despite what you may have heard, how much I look like her or how people I’ve never even met exclaim I must be, I can assure you I am not Jenny’s daughter. I got my own blue eyes and crooked dimples. See, I can’t be her daughter. 

  More importantly, Jenny is not my mother. She never was. I don’t care if she was in labor for thirty-two hours, that she knows just the right way to make shells and cheese, or that my grandparents beg me to talk to her; she is not my mom. She has never cared for me or anyone else. See, she can’t be my mom. 

  Now that we all agree that I am absolutely, totally, completely not Jenny’s daughter, I can tell you why everyone else is so confused. The only bit of trouble is I don’t remember exactly when it started. Maybe it was the day I was born, nine months before in a bathroom stall, or even when Jenny was a little girl. So, unfortunately, I can only tell you from when I was a little girl.

  I was sick. I was almost always sick back then. I got these terrible ear infections constantly. I can still taste the bubblegum antibiotics my dad made me drink that morning before sending me down the street to Jenny’s apartment. She let me sleep in her bed that day. It was a special treat because the sheets smelled like her, and I felt so comforted I could sleep all day. I loved her then. Children can’t help who they love, I guess. 

  She and her boyfriend came to check on me. They even got in bed with me. I just watched my cartoons. I didn’t know what they were doing. Children don’t know those things. Children shouldn’t know those things, but that wasn’t the last time they did it. It wasn’t the only thing they did either. 

  By the time my dad divorced her and I had to talk to a woman in a fancy office about what Jenny encouraged him to do to me, I knew more than any child had any business knowing without realizing until I was much older. 

  When I was much older, she made me talk to her about it. When Jenny finally forced the confrontation out of me, she was offended by my accusation. I had to be confused. She had a friend named Jen back then, and I must be mixing the two of them up. The funny thing about it was even in her version of events where she just learned I had been molested, she wasn’t upset it had happened, only that she was implicated. I’ve never had a mom, but I think they’re meant to care about those sorts of things.

  I learned a couple of years ago that Jenny wears lavender perfume. I’m allergic to floral perfume; it makes me woozy.