Janet

My sister’s friend, Janet, came from a big family. A house full of children ranging in age from elementary to high school. A bouquet of humans that, from my vantage point, seemed to perfectly complement each other no matter how they were arranged. And I would know, because I watched them closely. At nine years old, I made it my mission to observe the Godwins*. I watched them in the hallways at school, basketball games, school assemblies, and sometimes, if I was lucky, at the grocery store. Out of school sightings were not only rare, but a validation of the Godwin family’s strange functionality. Away from the confines of school, in those places where their guard might be down, under the prying eyes of a little girl, the Godwin family did not disappoint.

What I saw was kindness, love, support, encouragement, and tenderness even when they didn’t know someone was watching. Their disagreements seemed brief, more bickering than anything. “Fight" was not a word that applied to this family. Fighting was what happened at my house. Bloody fists crashing through glass and fireplace pokers were the ingredients of fights, not a passing eye-roll paired with an elbow nudge. I came to understand that, at the Godwin’s house, the little kids probably didn’t seek refuge in a barn, a constant supply of books, or a treehouse without a roof.

Once, my sister had a slumber party. The oval of the braided rug on our living room floor became obscured by the bodies and sleeping bags of teenaged girls, all seven years ahead of me. Janet Godwin was there. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her long blond hair pulled back with hair combs, braces glinting as her mouth opened into a wide, welcoming smile at the sight of me. Janet patted the floor in front of her crossed legs, inviting me to sit. When I hesitated, she raised a hairbrush and patted the floor once more while I stood there, confused by the ease of her invitation. If I sat, would she be kind? Was she a sister who feigned kindness in the presence of outsiders? 

And then I sat. With my back to Janet, my legs folded into a pretzel shape that mirrored hers, and I waited. What came was not frightening. Janet leaned in close to my ear and told me my hair was pretty. The warmth of her lingered at my left shoulder after she sat up again and raised that brush to my head. There was no pulling. Janet’s hairbrush gently and patiently worked through the tangled mass of my waist-length hair, likely days unbrushed and perhaps holding bits of hay from the barn. As the knots untangled, her movements developed a pattern. First of the brush gliding through my hair, then her hand. It became a repetition of soothing massage delivered first through faint scratch of bristles against my scalp and then heat of Janet’s palm following the path of the brush, slowly petting me from crown to low back.

Through it all, my body relaxed and Janet continued to talk to my sister and the other teenaged girls littering the floor around us. She brushed and talked and laughed with ease, as if some rule had not been broken by inviting my presence. I was sure that in Janet’s living room, sisters brushed hair and laughed and talked with that same ease. Janet had no way of knowing that this was not often the way in our house. That my time in front of her would be brief. That I could steal those moments of kindness and attention from Janet because a group of teenaged girls was there, watching.

*Not Janet’s real name