Corinna Van Tricht. Even the way I remembered her name said something about her. Tricks… I thought. She was tricky. My mother said she was a Dutch girl in her high school who she thought was the prettiest. I imagine Corinna sautered the halls, flicking her hair, doe eyes staring at all the boys. I was eight when she told me this and my mind would race with thoughts of her clothes and her boots and her perfume. However, I never admitted to anyone how I fantasized and was curious about the girl my mother says she named me after. Because she was a scandal. Corinna Van Tricht used her tall, blonde good looks to seduce one of the teachers and run off with him. Such a conflict. Envious but still a scandalous, seductive slut.
As I think of my birth, and this moment of influence I know that these were the connotations already in my mothers head. So much to put onto a newborn baby. My mother named me after someone she admired and secretly hated.
But my mother wasn’t very good with women. And she never wanted any daughters. When I was born… they said “it’s a girl”… and she said, “oh, no”. She told me that she felt guilty for saying it and the nurse chastized her, as I was a beautiful baby. After all, I had a newborn’s optimism about life, a full head of hair, a dimpled chin and a lot of charm.
My mother had sisters. Three of them. She was jealous of them, too. They were pretty, popular and bold. She wasn’t like them. And she was the oldest of six. She became pregnant at 18 and had suffered a scandal of her own. The 1960s was not a kind era to unwed and pregnant teens. Her youngest brother was seven. Her parents offered to raise the baby as their own, a doctor offered adoption… she opted for marriage and a ticket out of her life of babysitting her siblings and the chaos of my grandparent’s marriage. She had my brother after her 19th birthday and after her wedding. She never graduated from High school but had gone onto nurses college. My father dropped out of school in Grade eight. I don’t think that was his choice, but given his academic record and he was able to join the family business of being a Plumber.
I was born into an apartment, with two people who had little experience or education. Two people caught in a situation that forced them to be together. Maybe they felt love at one time and maybe they still felt it when I was born, I don’t know. They were so young and would have to grow up alongside my brother and I. They were already both misogynists for different reasons. They would cash in on their inheritances of alcoholism and depression. I was an outsider and I had just been born. I understood this immediately. The separation from my parents and the sense of autonomy was something I always felt. Sometimes I felt close to my mother because I needed her…. but truthfully she never let me into her heart completely. She was too afraid to let any woman in there. It wasn’t until I was older that I would see my mother exposed as a fragile human being. But at my birth, I was already closer to Corinna Van Tricht than anyone.
An unlovable girl 