When I was 10 years old the airline that my mother and step father worked for folded, and we had to hastily leave Florida and come back to Texas.  The reason was that they were surprised by the bankruptcy of the airline, and they were not prepared financially for the sudden loss of job.  So we sold everything we owned (couldn’t afford a moving company much less movers) and moved back to Texas by driving all day and all night from Florida to Texas, stopping over to sleep for a few hours in our vehicle at a rest stop in Mississippi because “all the hotels were full”.  My stepfather had an abandoned home that had not been lived in for more than a decade that was out in the country on 7 acres of land.  It was overgrown with weeds and critters and he had about a dozen abandoned cars scattered throughout the property that he was planning on “tinkering” with someday.  There were also about 3 families of raccoons living in the house that my step father had to kill with his shot gun before we could get our stuff inside. 

The last people to live in this abandoned home were my step father, his 2nd wife and her young daughter.  I will call this woman “Mary” and her daughter “Jane”.  Mary was about my mom’s age when he married her, and Jane was about my age at that time too (9-10 years old).  My stepfather left Mary for my mom in the decade prior, so they had to leave this home and they were the last people in it before it sat empty.  Thus, when I pulled my suitcase up the stairs and into my new bedroom, which had been Jane’s, it still had some of her stuff in it from when she was my age.  There were a couple of items of her clothes.  A couple of books sat on an empty shelf.  The dresser that had been left against the wall held her hair brush, and there were some toys from the 70s like Flintstone dolls and a plastic horse.  I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t want them.  I felt weird playing with them (so I never did).  Jane had her bedroom painted yellow, and even though I liked yellow I didn’t want the same color that she had so we re-painted the walls bright pink.

I would never meet Jane.  I wasn’t even sure of what she looked like as there were no pictures of her anywhere and my step father never spoke about her.  She never came to visit.  But I had her things.

It wasn’t but about a year after we moved in that our house would burn to the ground in a total destruction house fire from embers burning in our fireplace that set the wood shingles on fire.  My bedroom was directly under this and most affected.  I lost all my things, and Jane’s things.  They were buried, mixed together under a pile of smoky rubble.

About a year after this we moved back into the partially re-built home and established a new land line phone number.  Not long after establishing a new phone number Jane called.  I happened to pick up.  “Is my dad there?” an early 20s voice asked.  My step father had grown kids of his own, but I knew them as I had met them all and they were old enough to have their own kids so this wasn’t them.  I thought this was a wrong number.  But before I could question further my step father walked up and asked who I was on the phone and I told him a young woman asking for her ‘dad’.  He took the phone from me.

It would go on like this for years.  Maybe once or twice a year we would get a random phone call from Jane asking for her dad.  This was in the era before caller ID, when there were no cell phones or home internet.  Perhaps Jane called more and just didn’t leave a message on the answering machine and we never knew?  Maybe they were writing letters too?  The thing that was most poignant for me was that I didn’t have a good relationship with my step father.  He was tired of kids as he had raised 4 of his own and partially Jane, plus he was older since he was 14 years older than my mom so he wanted my mom all to himself and made this very clear to me all the time.  He would send me off to summer camp for the entire summer when my teacher-mom was off school.  He wanted me to move back in with my Me Ma who was okay with this and encouraged my mother to let me come live with her again (I had lived with her from the ages of 3-8), whom I wanted to live with too.  But my mother was battling my dad in court to pay her child support and refused to let me move away. 

I firmly believe that women set the stage for men’s behavior on this planet which is why it is so crucial for women to own their power.  In the case of my mother she was obsessed with my step father and he could do whatever he wanted as he was the puppet master.  She never stood up for me when he would tell me what a piece of shit I was for no reason other than existing.  I was a sweet kid, and didn’t deserve to be treated the way he treated me but she always followed his lead and gave her power over to him.  You see this all the time in stories of kids growing up with mean step fathers who dominate.  It is a surrender of the female power over to their dominant “prince” they conform to and want to please and it effects generations of kids my age and beyond.

It dawned on me that even though there were parallels in our worlds between me and Jane it was likely that Mary was a different woman than my mother.  This is because Jane clearly had some sort of bond with my step father as she referred to him as “dad” and would call the house a couple of times a year to have long talks with him.  He was always sugar sweet with her on the phone, an entirely different person than when he talked to me.  I didn’t know who this man was when he was on the phone with Jane as he was so warm and kind and accepting.  She lived in California, and perhaps that is why she never visited.  My mother would occasionally make references to things like, “poor Jane, she’s dating that guy who treats her terribly” so I at least knew perhaps my step father was helping to give her some sort of advice.  Whatever the bond, I always guessed that Mary was the kind of woman who would never let him speak to Jane the way he spoke to me so this bond was able to take place. 

In September 1994 my step father was diagnosed with cancer that was already eating up his body.  He was in the final stage and didn’t know it.  In January he would be dead.  In April the phone in our house rang.  I was 15 years old and picked it up.  It was Jane.  “Is dad there?” she asked in her vulnerable voice.  She didn’t know.  I didn’t know exactly what to say as I didn’t know Jane but I knew she had been calling for years, and her life had been like mine but not like mine for a period of time, and that I was partially growing up in the bedroom she had partially grown up in, that we played with different toys in the same bedroom that existed in another time that burned down all at once and some our toys were buried together, and that we had this man in our life named John (his real name) that I always, firmly called John and never, ever dad but whom she comfortably called dad.  And he was now dead.

“I’m sorry but he died in January” I said matter of factly, like I was reporting the weather or who was probable to win the upcoming Kentucky Derby.  Jane didn’t say anything but gasped.  I was at a loss for further words, not because I was trying to be cruel but because I didn’t want to be cruel and I just didn’t know what to say.  She broke down in a melting pool of shrieks and tears.  I managed to relay that he had a brief battle with cancer.  We hung up.

Later I found out that Mary called my mother and was very angry that my mother didn’t call Mary to tell her he was dying so that she could let Jane know.  I didn’t even know that my mother knew her number.  I never heard from Jane again.  I don’t know what she looked like when she was my age, or what she looked like in her 20s when she found out he died, or what she looks like now.  I don’t know her exact age or last name then or now.  I don’t know exactly how my step father affected her life though it was likely different from mine in a more positive manner, but I also realized that his exit from her life probably affected her just like his entrance into my life affected mine as we were little girls at the same age when these things happened a decade apart.  And more than anything I hope for Jane’s life to be filled with happiness from all this disruption, and peace.  Much love and peace to Jane on this journey.  She’s like a ghost sister for me.