Miriam

Miriam is not a very interesting person. She is not pretty, or particularly smart, or particularly kind. She has never won anything, except a consolation ribbon at the town's sesquicentennial when she was nine. They gave ribbons to all the kids, but they made up reasons that the other kids had earned them. Not Miriam. Not a real reason. When it was Miriam's turn to get her ribbon, the principal said, "and this is for Miriam Jameson, who always shows up. A big part of life is showing up." Miriam did show up for everything. She was in band and glee club and soccer and softball and cheerleading. She was there, but also not. She sat on the bench through interminable games. Every single time a sports or music program was printed, Miriam's name was somehow spelled wrong or left off. Her family members thought this was funny.

When Miriam was little, she wanted to be an explorer. Or maybe not. Maybe she wanted to be an acrobat. She went to the circus when she was four and saw the acrobats, and that's what she wanted to be. Actually, she doesn't remember wanting to be much of anything, except a mother like her mother was. But not a mother like her mother. Her mother was not a particularly good mother. Once Miriam saw Susie Colson's mother touch Susie's face, a soft pat on the cheek while they smiled at each other. It was so open, so affectionate, and it almost made Miriam cry, or throw up, and did make her rush to the bathroom to sit in a stall with her arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth. No it didn't. It made her want to do that, but she didn't do it. She stood there next to Susie, in the line of cheerleaders ready to go out and root root root for the home team. She didn't do anything but stand there.

The moment ended. Susie's mother went to take her regular place on the glossy wood bleachers. Miriam's mother was not there. In fact, Miriam's mother would not be there at any point during the game or at the end of the game, when Miriam would have to find her own ride home, as usual. She hated begging for rides. She wasn't close enough to any of the other girls or any of the other girls' moms to merit an automatic ride home.

She hated cheerleading, too. That year she got hit in the face by the ball twice and once a ref stepped on her foot and made a black mark on her bright white sneaker that she never even wore outside for fear of getting it dirty. The other girls would notice if she got it dirty. She wanted nothing more than to blend in.

Now she did nothing more than blend in. She wiped the counter that had been wiped so many times it wasn't shiny any more, and she couldn't see even a shadowy reflection of herself.

But once she did stand out, just for a little while. When she first started waitressing, when she was in high school. She was the first one in her class to have a job during the school year, and that gave her a strange sort of status. Boys talked to her at the restaurant, and she figured out how to talk back without looking at the floor or the wall or the table. She wasn't popular, but she was known. It felt good to be known.

And one night she met Eddie when his boat was in port for a storm and that was the beginning and the end.

Then she was first at more things. First to get pregnant and get married and lose a baby. And another. And a third.