Gertrude's Palace

Gertrude Katherine Turner

My name is Gertrude Katherine Turner, Katherine as in my great aunt and Gertrude as in my mother. I was born in the winter of 1966 and tomorrow, I turn 14 years old. Like my mother, I have black hair like the crows, blue eyes like the lake, and I'm very, very intelligent. The only unfortunate thing I share with my mother is her name.

Father looks nothing like me or mother, even more so now, and I often wonder if our dissimilarity is by chance, adoption or kidnapping. Surely if he were to kidnap a child, he would have picked one he could actually tolerate, one that looked like a rat or a pig or a capybara, so others would believe they were related. In fact, father and I are nothing alike at all, which is one of my favourite things about myself.

Only two years ago our home seemingly worked like clockwork; mother did the cooking, cleaning and laundry, and father did the woodchopping. But despite her duties, mother is exceptionally good at many other activities. She is a mathematician, mechanic and a hunter, and summer of two years ago I saw her chopping wood like daddy. I recall she was wearing pants, and her hair was up and a mess, she was smiling wide. "Trudy, come here, chop some with me, it's exhilarating!" She handed me her axe and let me chop, in my frilly skirt and braids.

We were chopping for hours in the wilds of the forest until we heard the rumble of father's car. A loud, angry rumble. I like how Father doesn't drive that ghastly car anymore. After my mother blurted some obscenities, the last words she said to me were "This will be our little secret, Trudy." Mother's middle name is Ophelia, like from 'Hamlet', Shakespeare's woman of immeasurable beauty. My mother died summer of two years ago.