Perhaps my favorite was the first Ligeia Two, who was artistic and sensitive to her individuality. I think she could have made it professionally as an artist, and she wanted to pursue this career, but her folks had other plans for her. Later I saw the movie Dead Poets Society, which hit home to me on several levels. I attended such a school, and later I taught English at such a school. But in this case I’m thinking of the young man portrayed there who wanted to be an actor, and could have made it, but his father refused, and he committed suicide. Parents can do terrible harm to their talented children that way. I tried to help her by putting her in touch with another person—and this went wrong, and she overdosed on pills. They caught her in time and I heard from her in the hospital, and not thereafter. I could have killed her, just by trying to help her. It is foolish to speak of such emotion in such a connection, but there was that in me that could have loved her. She was a sweet and sensitive girl. Had she been my daughter, her art would have been allowed to flourish.
Others wrote once or twice, and not thereafter. “Why is life so unfair?” one asked. In that case I had confirmation from a relative of a deeply disturbed girl. But what I said to her was limited; I had become too conscious of the danger of doing harm myself, without meaning to. I stopped trying to keep track of them; I don’t know how many there have been. Some women have written, and only later revealed their suicidal tendencies. Others have only skirted the notion, for reason: they had been abused, or raped, or otherwise devastated. There is a lot of grief out there, and only a fraction of it ever goes on record. A number told how they made it through to successful marriage and family. As a general rule, based on my observation, if they make it through their teens, they are probably all right. But it is never certain.
You may wonder whether some are just making it up, to get my attention. I don’t think so. Some send me pieces they have written, or sketches they have made, and I think I am experienced enough as a writer and as an adult depressive to have a notion whether they are faking it. Some of this material horrifies me. Some is presented as fiction, but I know that a person that young would not write that kind of fiction or poetry if she didn’t have a basis. The details are too real, the material rings true. They are not fooling about death. They are obsessed with it. I believe, I believe.
Why does it seem to be exclusively female? This is a matter of natural selection. There are suicidal boys, but a boy is likely to try to kill himself with a gun, while a girl is more apt to try it with pills or wrist slashing. The gun is more effective. I understand that twice as many girls try suicide as do boys, but that twice as many boys succeed as do girls. So the main reason I heard from relatively few suicidal boys may be that those who might have written were already dead. At least my own depression is mild. One might expect the author of funny fantasy to be light-hearted, but professional comics may be quite otherwise privately, and my affinity may be closer to Colene and Ligeia than to the happy folk.
Now I have some credits for elements of this novel. All of them relate to the characterization of Colene, but to protect privacy I will not identify the actual items here. Some of the contributors may have felt suicidal at some time; some have not. Some are young; some are not. What they have in common is that they happened to mention things in letters which I asked to use. They can not in any other way be classified. I list them in alphabetical order by first name:
Amanda Wagner
Frances Wagner
Kimberly Adams
Ligeias—anonymous group
Margaret McGinnis
Yvonne Johnston
And a sketch titled “Someday” sent by Oria Tripp: a young woman walking through shallow water toward distant mountains, her hair and dress blown out by the wind. She reminds me of Colene, and of the one to come in the next novel, Nona: girls with more hope than prospects. Then there’s Emily Ivie, with a literary project: “It is a waste of paper to speak of it.” Colene would have said that too.
But not all the women I hear from are related to such things. Let me tell you about another kind.
Some years back I had one or two fan letters from a young woman in America, unremarkable. Then she sent me a newspaper clipping describing her work with raptors, which are birds of prey. She would take care of injured ones and nurse them back to health and set them free. Folk would bring them to her. She did not get paid for this; she just did it to help the birds. Suddenly this young woman came alive for me, and I dubbed her the Bird Maiden. I mentioned her in the Author’s Note in the reprint of my Arabian Nights fantasy tale adaptation, Hasan. In that novel, the Bird Maiden had a feather suit which she could put on so that she could fly; Hasan captured her by hiding her feather suit. He married her and took her home. But later she recovered the suit and flew away, with her two children. After a fabulous adventure, Hasan won her back. So there’s really not much connection between that Bird Maiden and the one who cared for raptors, but I was satisfied with the designation and so was she. Indeed, she flew overseas (today it is done by airplane) and was captured by a modern-day Hasan in Germany, fulfilling the romance.
So did she live happily ever after? Well, it’s too soon to tell, but she had a scary moment in this period of my writing this novel. At this time the Bird Maiden has a daughter, Alessandra, eighteen months old, cute as only that age can be. After the Christmas holiday, with her husband back at work, Maiden decided to catch up on some postponed housework. She got a bucket of water, a sponge, and a squeegee and started cleaning the windows of their upstairs apartment. She squeezed out past the heavy glass door, onto the balcony, into the just-above-freezing outer air and started scrubbing from outside while Alessandra watched from the warm inside. Maiden pretended to scrub the little girl’s face through the glass: fun.
Then Maiden heard a familiar thud. Alessandra was clasping her hands with pride at her accomplishment. She had managed to operate the lever that effectively sealed the door back in place from inside. She was too small to work the lever the other way. Maiden was locked out on the balcony with the temperature in the thirties with no shoes, just a sweater and sweatpants. She had not expected to stay out long. The apartment’s front door was locked from the inside with the key still in the lock; no one could enter that way. What was she to do?