Post by PRUDENCE MARIE CLAIBORNE on Jun 8, 2012 7:59:14 GMT -5
| [atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 460px; background-image: url(http://i44.tinypic.com/34fb0ns.jpg);-moz-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; -webkit-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; border: 4px ridge #7a9aa9, bTable][tr][cs=2] prudence marie claiborne. twenty. student. dianna agron. | |
[rs=2] | an oral history, courtesy of p. claiborne: “I can tell you about my life, if that’s what you want. My name is Prudence Marie Claiborne. Everybody calls me Pru. I’m twenty years old. A student in Miami. Next year I’m gonna major in feminist literature – yeah, I’m one of those girls. Those are just facts though, right? That’s not really me. So… I was born about twenty years ago. Can’t tell you the exact date. They found me outside Jacksonville General Hospital, in a sock drawer. I can’t tell you what my birth mother was thinking when she left me there. I can’t tell you her name. I can’t tell you where I came from. That’s the earliest thing anyone knows about my time on this planet. One morning, I was found in a sock drawer. Sounds kinda funny, right? Can’t really tell you much about my first couple of years, either. I don’t remember them and I don’t know who was there with me. Kinda bounced from foster home to foster home while potential adoptive parents fought over me. Couples always want to adopt babies, y’know? Not so much the older kids. Baby girls are like diamonds in a sea of cubic zirconias, in terms of the adoption market. Everyone wants a baby girl. So in the end I went to the Claiborne’s. Obvious, I know, considering that’s my name and all. The Claiborne’s. Wow. They were some kind of crazy even back then. They found out they couldn’t have kids, so they started on this mission to adopt as many babies as possible. I was one of five of the second wave. The first wave were all boys – there were six of them. And then us five girls. We all got named again and baptised. And it was like a theme, right? All the boys were named after the Apostles. All us girls were named after virtues. Now it was all right for my brothers, right? Names like John and Judas and Peter. It just didn’t work out so well for me and my sisters – Prudence, Verity, Chastity, Constance and Hope. I guess ‘Hope’s okay, but the rest of us? Yeah. So the Claiborne’s were kind of religious to say the least. If I had to describe my childhood with them it would be in one word: suffocating. You’d think they might have trouble keeping track of all eleven of us. They didn’t. They were like a well oiled machine, watching over their little flock of apostles and angels. Couldn’t get a minutes peace. My whole childhood was church, church socials, church camp, etcetera. I went to Catholic school. Mom didn’t like us talking to boys – even conversation with our brothers was strictly monitored, considering we weren’t blood and ‘couldn’t be trusted’ around each other. Between all the herding and scolding, Mom and Dad didn’t have that much time to actually raise us. It’s kinda funny, me being the second youngest of all eleven of us, but I was kind of the group-Mom. At least to the girls. I was a bossy little thing, and they’d all just sort of… fall into line when I told them to do something. I was the one they came to bandage a scraped knee. I read bedtime stories. I mediated during games. I guess that’s maybe why I turned out more settled than anyone else? I found my place in the world early on. I’m the mother. I always end up playing the mother to people. Things were a little more tricky during adolescence. I mean, eleven teenagers in the same house? Holy shit, right? Mom and Dad still thought they were in control but they weren’t. Nor was I. Not anymore. There’d be kids sneaking out left, right and centre. We’d all cover for them. We had a rota. Who’s turn it was to sneak out next. I wasn’t on the rota. That stuff didn't appeal to me, and anyway, someone had to make sure things went exactly as planned, and why not me? The control freak. Some of us got into bad things. Like what? Like… like Simon. Fell into a bad crowd. Did an awful lot of weed. He used to climb back through the window, gone midnight, and we’d be waiting on the upstairs landing to squirt him with air freshener and bundle his clothes down to the laundry room so Mom and Dad never smelt it on him. They never did catch him, y’know. No. The first person they caught was Chastity. Chas. She was the youngest, but she was the bravest of us all. Me and the other girls, we’d stand around at the bus stop in our Catholic school uniforms, making brief eye contact with the boys watching us, giggling. Meanwhile, Chas would already be over there, picking up phone numbers like she was a magnet for little scraps of paper. Bless her. I dunno. I guess she must have found at least one guy that she really liked, that was worth the risk of sneaking him into the house, into her bedroom… Mom and Dad never caught him. Never saw him, myself. But they found the used condom in Chas’ waste paper basket. That was it. She was seventeen, and they kicked her out of the house. She wasn’t pregnant. She didn’t have an STI. If anything, the condom proved she was being careful, right? They didn’t care. It was the fact that she’d had sex at all. She cried. Begged. But they didn’t care. They just… kicked her out. Washed their hands of her. It became sin to mention her name in our house. Maybe because of the irony. Y’know, Chastity? Having sex. You know. No one kicked up too much of a fuss, though. It was around the time that we were all coming of age. Going off to college. Lucky Mom and Dad had more money than they knew what to do with (and they did – I mean, eleven children? You’d have to be rich and crazy both to take that on), because they were paying ten sets of college fees. But ‘cos we were all leaving ‘round about the same time, heading to different places in the country, no one really even noticed Chas’ absence that much. I was the only one who went to a state college, but I picked Miami. Different city. Far enough away. And my Grandma lived in Miami. She’s the only non-insane member of the Claiborne family, I swear. That’s probably why we only visited her like, twice, when we were growing up. She was more than happy to welcome me into her home, though. I didn’t fancy the idea of living in a dorm – I mean, I’d grown up sharing a small space with four sisters and six brothers. I wanted to live away from my peers. So I moved in with Grandma Ellie. I’ve been living there two years now, and it’s the first time in my life that things have felt normal? Like I am where I’m supposed to be. Like this is what a family is supposed to be like. And not a crucifix or a church social in sight, which is refreshing.” (note: bad app is bad. sorry. >.<) |
pun. nineteen. some. |
