My Name is Ida Jane

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She found the name in an old book at the Salvation Army on First Street, the one next to the Walmart and across the street from the Bank of America. Ida Jane. It was a kind of prayer book with recipes for living. It cost twenty-five cents, and with two sweaters, she spent her last dollar on it.

When she straggled into the shelter that night, she showed the intake worker the book with her new name inside it. I’m Ida Jane. She pointed to the inscription. The woman told her identification wasn’t required for entry.

Sometimes her brain juices just ran sour, was one theory from one doctor. Another one said something about neurotransmitters and rush hour traffic. “One day you’re going to wake up dead,” was her mother’s contribution. All she knew for sure was that sometimes she just needed to hug a light pole until dark fell. Sometimes she just needed to run into the park with her butcher knife looking for a birthday cake.

Four days ago, it was the butcher knife that got her put on a 3-day, 5150. Orange juice and olanzapine was what got her off. Anyway, after three days, she assembled a version of herself that wasn’t so scary to people. She turned a kind of new leaf.

The Book of Psalms she got at the Salvation Army was a gift to a “real” Ida Jane from her sister, Iantha. Praying to the Lord for Your Salvation! Beloved, I. They were both dead by now, these real people. You’re dead when your book, inscribed by your beloved sister, is for sale for twenty-five cents at the Salvation Army. You’re probably dead by now if at any time you owned your own copy of The Book of Psalms. You’re nearly dead if you ever owned a book. She could not keep out of certain rabbit holes.

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This is about the fourth day.

On the fourth day, Ida Jane was staring into the mirror in the women’s bathroom at that McDonalds across from the park. She could only see the edges of things again, her long, wavy brown hair tracing the place where her face should go. Her hands were missing, too, except for the two black fingernails a man painted on her while she slept in a bush. She knew his face, but couldn’t remember his name. Her hair fluttered in the empty space above her naked, freckled shoulders when the hand dryer went on. She stared at the pale yellow subway tiles behind her on the wall. For a Good Time Call Your Sister! Urine and bleach. A dissolving woman. She began to laugh. She bit her tongue to stop laughing.

This is still the fourth day.

She wandered into the park and sat on a bench to watch the gardeners with their lawnmowers dance in unison, like a high school drill team, turn and stop, push and pull. They were wearing orange Day-Glo uniforms and red hard hats. They sang in Spanish. The leader wore a sombrero. She laid back on the flat wood bench in the sun and laughed. It was hot for February. Wasn’t it? Her tongue hurt, but she didn’t know why.

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The intake worker at the Salvation Army was a fucking bitch. Sunshine Sally. It was on her nametag. It should have read Doubting Thomas, Ida thought. Wasn’t he in the Bible? Sunshine Sally didn’t believe a damn thing. She didn’t believe Ida Jane’s mother owned a nudist trailer park at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, that on two occasions her mother was named Businesswoman of the Year, that Ida’s older half-sister, Ophelia, was missing half her right foot. A gator ate it. This was always funny to think and say. Try it. A gator ate it.

Ida Jane’s mother was called Ophelia, too. She named her first daughter after herself, the way men do their sons because women let them. It wasn’t Ophelia Jr., or Ophelia II though, but Ophelia, Darling. Ophelia, Darling’s father was big in pest control. He had three trucks. Ida Jane’s father was different and briefly a man of the church. He was briefly a man, Ida repeated in her head and giggled. He lost everything betting on greyhounds, so he went back to his other wife in West Virginia. That’s how Ophelia told it, anyway. It wasn’t as funny as a gator ate it, but the result was the same. Nothing, where there used to be something.

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Later, on the fourth day, Ida Jane got on a city bus by the park and got off at Leisure Village Drive. Ophelia lived there now, but she forgot where exactly. In one of the villages, Sparta ,or Hydra, or maybe Barcelona. She is 2012, or 212, or 2121.

Ophelia was always on a boat somewhere. She liked to “buy cruises.” She laddered CDs at the Bank of America to pay for it: fall, winter, spring. In the summer, Ophelia stayed home and went to the beach. She sewed her own one piece bathing suits and matching swim caps, like it was 1925.

She broke her head, or the drugs did it, Ida overheard Ophelia telling the neighbors sometimes. Her gumballs rolled all over the floor and so on. Ophelia, Darling was normal. Ophelia, Darling married a boy who managed concessions at Wakulla Springs, north of Mexico Beach. Ophelia sent them postcards from her cruises because she knew their address. Ophelia doesn’t send Ida Jane anything because she doesn’t know where she was half the time. She doesn’t even know Ida Jane is Ida Jane at this point.

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You can follow the white stucco wall from the bus stop, up the hill to the water tank. That’s what Ida Jane did. From there, ribbons of red tiled roofs undulated across the hills. You can see the clubhouse steeple at the entrance, and behind it, the Olympic-size saltwater pool. The new lanai was next to that. The putting green. You can’t see the butterfly garden, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Across from the dog park, people play tennis. The bocce green is packed.

Sometimes, Ida Jane camped out here in the shade of the small citrus orchard, on the edge of the RV lot. The gardeners never went back there. Security didn’t either. It was shady and the fruit was good in winter. On Mondays and Wednesday, when the food trucks came, she waited until the guys are packing up and asks them if they had anything to throw away. She knew them, but not their names.

Ophelia was religious about closing up the house when she went cruising. She shuttered the shutters in the kitchen, and in each of the two bedrooms. The shutters were shuttered. Ophelia was bad about locking her windows, though, especially the one above the kitchen sink. Ida Jane popped the screen and slid it open. It was hot and stuffy inside. Ophelia has been gone a long time.

Ophelia believed in the idea of Florida. She believed in investing in whitewashed wicker. On every wall, over every window, creeped giant pink peonies, pink tulips, pink camelias (dark and light), dahlias, climbing sweet peas, enormous pink geraniums. Pink geraniums overflowed terra cotta pots at the front door. Along the walls and above the trash cans, meandered bougainvillea. Two things you could not kill with benign neglect were pink geraniums and bougainvillea of any kind or type.

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This was how they got to Leisure Village Drive. When the guy who owned the Dairy Queen next to Ophelia’s trailer park wanted to add a Pitch-and-Put to his business empire, citing among other things, synergies, he offered Ophelia a million dollars. Half that up front, and the rest in some kind of installments. Ophelia said no three times before he raised his offer to $2 million. Ophelia, Darling was already married by then, so all she got out of the whole thing was a cashier’s check. Ida Jane hadn’t done anything anywhere, so she got to move here with her mother.

Here wasn’t an easy place for a young person to live, Ida learned in time. The children of millionaires here were thought to be defective—failures-to-thrive, gumballs rolling all over the floor. There were not up to It. They looked normal from a distance, but in flip flops you could tell a gator ate it and so on.

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Ida Jane laid down on top of her mother’s bedspread and made snow angels until she fell asleep. She didn’t wake up until the front door rattled. Rolling off the bed, she hid in the walk-in closet. Her first thought was Ophelia was home from her cruise, but no. It was just the neighbor checking on things. The woman stacked the mail on the dining room table and went room to room. She was diligent, spreading her legs in each doorway like a soldier on patrol. After a while, she left. Ida Jane wondered if it was dinner time.

Frozen enchiladas. Frozen fettuccini alfredo. The freezer was stocked.

Ida Jane kept the shutters shut, the lights off. She microwaved green enchiladas. They took forever. While she waited, she pulled out The Book of Psalms and started to read. She wondered about the woman called Iantha, and about the other one, her namesake, Ida Jane.

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May he remember your sacrifices and accept all your burnt offerings. Psalm 20,Verse 3.

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The enchiladas were the devil in her mouth. They burned her tongue. Burnt offerings, she laughed at the thought. She sat down at Ophelia’s dining room table with her box of enchiladas and kept reading. She found a Sprite to drink. The refrigerator was full of Sprite, and outdated mayonnaises. The freezer was full of every shape of Blue Ice Pack. She tookt one out and put it against her forehead while she read the book.

When it was close to midnight, Ida Jane walked outside into the backyard and sat down on the patio. Only one neighbor could possibly see her, and all the lights in that house were out. She felt safe and invisible. The cat from next door wandered over. Ida found it some old cheese in the refrigerator. The cat was so fat it couldn’t jump up onto the table, so she petted it on the ground. A couple of firetrucks went by on the outer street, the sirens off—flashing, whirling lights into the trees. Chest pains. A slip and fall. A fainting in the kitchen. Something like that was always happening here. Ordinary stuff. The moon was full. She tried to remember the name of her half-sister. All she remembered was a gator ate it. The porch light came on next door. The woman let her dog out to pee. Ida slipped back inside and fell asleep on her mother’s bed.

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On the day Ida Jane was sent away from her mother’s house for the first time, that day long ago, Ophelia had just returned from a cruise to Puerto Vallarta. She was queasy and furious. On a trip into town, Ophelia’s bus had been robbed. Bandits in black masks waving rifles came aboard and took everyone’s wallets and jewelry. Ophelia lost three hundred dollars and an opal necklace she bought in Panama City after she sold the trailer park. Heartbroken about the necklace, she vomited in the street while the police took her statement. She cursed Mexico and all its people. Ida Jane told her there was nothing more natural than the poor stealing from the rich. Ophelia told Ida Jane her gumballs were rolling all over the floor again, and she needed to go. She left in the middle of the night with a backpack and the last of her meds. She ended up in that park, the one with the dancing gardeners and good bathrooms. This was year before last, or the year after that. Ida Jane didn’t even get a hundred dollars for that diamond ring she took with her. They were very small diamonds, the jeweler complained, but the money lasted a while.

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Nightmares were nightmares, sleeping and awake. Ophelia was running through the trailer park completely naked, her sagging pink breast flopping as she runs, her pink, feathery pumps clacking in the wind. Behind her, just inches ahead of it, that giant albino alligator raced after her. Screeching and snatching, the swamp fog rolled over the ground. Ida Jane was sunning herself on a rusted lounge chair, trying to get a tan. Just one step behind Ophelia, trying desperately to catch up to her mother, was Ophelia, Darling, of course.

Ida Jane woke up smiling. How ridiculous they had all been, This had all been. She wondered what a man, briefly of the church, would say about all this? What good use would he put The Book of Psalms to?

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This is the fifth day.

On the fifth day, Ida Jane warmed up the fettucine alfredo. She sat at the dining room table. She read her book. She looked down and saw she isn’t wearing any shoes. She wondered why not. She wondered how long she’d gone without shoes. Gumballs rolling all over the floor.

In the closet, there were three sets of slide-in tennis shoes. Ida Jane took the navy blue pair with the giant white anchors on them.

After everyone everywhere was asleep, Ida sat out on the patio, again. She thought about burnt offerings and God. A coyote came up into the yard. He looked like a lion to her, with his collar of thick golden fur circling its face. She fed him an orange and he left. The fat cat came back for cheese.

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This is the day after the day after that. This is seventh day.

Late, on the night of the seventh day, Ida Jane gathered everything she brought with her and piled it on the patio table.

She went back inside and started with Ophelia’s closet of fluorescent floral pool dresses. The first burnt offerings. The bedspread was next, a slow carpet of flame rippled out in every direction, climbing the curtains. The second bedroom, where she used to live, each piece of wicker exploded into a torch. The books folded in on themselves. The pink peony wallpaper curling, pink tulips, pink camelias, sweet peas floating into the air. By the time the flames finally pushed out the windows, Ida Jane was already sitting on the white stucco wall at the water tank.

This time the firetrucks kept their sirens on and run their lights, too, bright red birds flying into the jacaranda trees. The fire lit up the black curve of sky. There was nothing about that house Ida Jane would miss. There was nothing Ophelia would miss, either. Was there? She had all that insurance, she said, more than enough to make a new start somewhere. More than enough for both of them, she had said so many times, Ida remembered. Maybe they could go back to Before, when they all lived together in that trailer park at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. They could go back to before the man who was big in pest control, and the man, briefly of the church, even before the gator ate it. As Ida Jane sat on that long white wall, kicking it with heels of her new slide-in tennis shoes, she smiled and started to peel her orange.

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