flashquake Editors' Corner In each issue of flashquake, one of our editors will try their hand at the issue's theme. The brave soul stepping forward to go first for our "Betrayal" issue is Amsterdam-based Jonette Stabbert. |
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My early drawings, paintings and sculptures were kept in a deep drawer of the large oak secretary in my bedroom. I saved everything I ever wrote in a beautiful leather case. I used to type on a very thin, see-through kind of paper. Onionskin? Vellum? I don't know what it was. It was similar to the kind used for airmail correspondence; only it was white, not blue. My first submission was to Woman's Day when I was fifteen. The rejection notice was a form letter, but it had an encouraging note handwritten across the top. I added it to my writing case. 
My mother rejected me too. She didn't want me and we have had conflict all my life. She often said, "I wish you were dead. You should never have been born." I understand now that she was a deeply emotionally disturbed individual, apparently due to the loss of her first child and several severe post-natal depressions, which they didn't know how to treat in those days. I understand, but the hurt remains. I left home at 18 to travel outside the US, storing many possessions in my parents' attic before setting out. By then, I was an award-winning artist and a serious writer. Back home from my first trip, after only several months, my mother informed me that she hadn't been certain I would ever return. Deciding my stuff took up too much space, despite lots of room in the attic, she told me she had BURNED my artwork and writing. I felt like I'd been assassinated in my sleep. I became a woman without a past. My art and my writing bore witness to my existence. All my growing pains had been written down. Others have photographs of their youth. I didn't. My portfolios were my documentation, albums of my soul. I had been wiped out. She had succeeded in killing me. But not really: at some point a few years later, my mother 'discovered' that she hadn't burned my big leather art portfolio, after all. This contained the pieces I showed when job-hunting. The writing case and wooden secretary and everything within them was gone. One small sculpture survived because I had it in a friend's apartment. Because I was always 'pushed' to be an artist, not a writer, the writing was slightly closer to my heart. Unfortunately, the leather art portfolio went missing during a move in Holland. That really is gone forever. I still have the small sculpture, which had been briefly exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum of Art when I was a teenager. For more than twenty-five years, my mother occasionally sent me a small page of my writing that had 'surfaced'. So, did she burn them or didn't she? Was this her calculated version of the Chinese Water Torture, or a genuine error? I suspect the former. This will no longer happen; others cleared out her home when she moved to a different state. The beautiful leather writing case was found and sent to me. It still contained a number of the things I wrote, from age 14, typed on that magical translucent paper. Many pieces are still missing, but at least I have some of it back. I marvel at what a talented kid I was. |
© 2001 by Jonette Stabbert |