Jelly: Reject of The Stars

-

Two weeks ago, I woke up one morning and remembered the day before it. I have no record of that ever happening before that day. From what Mamma says, though, I had a pretty normal life. I liked trains a lot when I was little. She shows me the pictures still, every day. I had a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake for my third birthday. We served chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks at my fifth birthday, and I got a bike with streamers on the handles and a wide seat. I once pet a llama, and I was wearing a denim hat with a ladybug on it. I've tried to piece myself together from facts like that. It's not easy.

It's weird how many of the things you like are learned. There's a baton in my room, and two silver twirling trophies dated back to sixth grade. The walls are pink, and the bed is pink, and the pillows are pink. I must have really liked that color, but now it just makes me think of the raw globs of salmon that my mom gets with her takeout. There's a collage of tiny strangers mounted on a corkboard. There's a printed out rainbow word-art in the center that says "P,B,&J = BFF". I think the joke must have been that the other girls in the pictures names started with P and B, but even that hint doesn't help. We're wearing twirling uniforms in some of the pictures. In another, we are in a barbie jeep car. I don't know whose it is. There's a few of us at different ages in the same summer camp uniform. There's pictures of at a waterpark, and the circus. I bet they were fun times. Every day, for two weeks, I wake up thinking that they will call me. I wake up wondering why nobody has, why it's just been me and Mamma.

There's a diary that I've been keeping for the past few months, ever since I woke up. The handwriting is horrible, but when I go to write an entry on the first day I remember, my handwriting is neat. It's tight, dark, almost printed-looking. The earlier entries are scratches and squiggles and only ⅓ of the letters are written in script. I search it for clues, but it's boring.

Monday: Ate fish. Greasy (too much salt). The woman is your mother.

Tuesday: Your room is the one at the end of the hall. Take your shoes off in the house.

Wednesday: Left hot, right cold.

Thursday: Left loose, right tight. Your grandmother is dead and her name was Blythe.

Friday: You used to own an iguana. You were in an accident with a motorcycle.

It doesn't start right where I woke up. Mamma said it took two weeks for me to even talk again, and when I did I talked like a caveman. She say in the hospital with flashcards and taught me words. After about a month of that, I started learning to read again. Mama brought up 'Junie B Jones' books, and 'The Velveteen Rabbit" and a whole bunch of others that I liked when I was little, like when I learned to read the first time. She says I only got back to writing six weeks ago. The earliest entries are all spelled wrong and the letters take up too much space and don't fit in next to each other.

I wonder if these little notes were really significant, or if they were just all i retained by the time I sat down to scribble something out. It's all I have of myself. I know what dress I wore to every birthday, but I don't remember if I'm a virgin. I don't know if I've ever been kissed. I think maybe I'm not a virgin, because all Mamma really wants to tell me about what I was like past when I was a kid, or about the motorcycle, is that I was going through a "rambunctious period". When I look in my closet, I see hints that she couldn't obscure. I own two leather skirts and fishnet stockings in five different colors. Most of my shirts cut off before my belly button. There's a little mark above my navel where I think a piercing used to be. There's no pictures, though. Im 11 or 12 in the old ones, sixteen in the mirror.

On the day I tuned back in, I checked the computer in my bedroom. There were no documents saved. No pictures, no passwords. The full Sims 3 collection was installed, which was kind of like a virtual dollhouse, but there was no saved game. The browser history was clear. I googled my name and nothing came up.

'Angela Abate'- Nothing.

'Jelly Abate'- Nothing.

'Abate Accident'- Zero.

'Angela Abate Motorcycle Crash'- Nada.

The only thing, other than the game, was my itunes playlist. From the stuff in the closet I thought I liked rock or metal, but they're all electronic songs that loop the same thirty second melodie for eight and a half minutes. I wonder if P and B like this kind of music. I wonder if we went out at night, snuck into bars and danced. B looks like she grew up to be the best dancer. Her teeth are straight in the picture, but without braces on them. She wears thick, sequined scrunchies. P looks like she grew up to smoke cigarettes and dye her blonde hair black. Her fingernails are painted blue in every picture.

I ask Mamma who knows I woke up. She says "Anybody that matters".