Jane: A Murder
ISBN: 978-1-59376-658-0
© 2005 Maggie Nelson
Book design by Shanna Compton
Cover photograph: Jane, 1961. Family collection.
Printed in the United States of America
Published by Soft Skull Press
1140 Broadway, Suite 704
New York, NY 10001
Distributed by Publishers Group West
Cataloging-in-Publication information for this book is available from the Library of Congress
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Some of the writing that appears here is Jane’s own, either from her childhood diary dated 1960-1961 or a loose sheaf of journal pages from her college years. The later fragments are mostly undated; here I place them around 1966, but that date is by no means a certainty. I have taken the liberty of altering the appearance of Jane’s writing on the page and correcting spelling and grammar when necessary. Also, although this is a “true story,” I make no claim for the factual accuracy of its representations of events or individuals.
For my mother, who took the journey,
and my sister, Emily Jane, who has been there all along.
We walk on air, Watson.
There is only the moon, embalmed in phosphorous.
There is only a crow in a tree. Make notes.
—Sylvia Plath, “The Detective”
October 1, 1962
Dear
I understand many people write for therapy—one’s own.
So this epistle, addressed to no one,
is therapy for me. What have I got to say—
oh a lot of crazy impressions about nothing
I imagine
She had been shot once in the front and once in the back of the head. She wandered, trying to find someone to remove the slugs from her skull. She was not dead yet, but she feared she was dying. The holes in her head were perfectly round and bloodless, with burnt-flared edges, two eclipses. The passage of air through the holes felt peculiar, just dimly painful, like chewing hot or cold food on a cavity, the sensation of space where it had once been dense and full.
Sunlight shot around the circumference of each black rind, so that a long shaft of pale light cast out from the center of her forehead, and another shaft streamed behind her.
Is this the light of the mind? Is this the light of my mind?
So I was a genius after all! The thought made her smile, but then she wondered, Why had the light always been invisible? I must have been squandering it, I must have felt only its vaguest rotations. Now what can I do with it? If I could find a lampshade, someone could read by it. I might illuminate entire rooms, entire dungeons, I shine so bright.
But in fact she was losing the light; it leaked everywhere, unstoppable.
She wakes up. Opens her eyes and sees peonies standing absolutely still. The window frames a solid blue mist; it is 5:30 A.M.
She sleeps next to a mirror, sits up and looks into it.
There is one slightly enlarged freckle which she cannot remember having seen before, smack in the middle of her forehead. She watches it, puts a finger to it.
Pale white skin covered with freckles, what’s one more? But the dream! What’s one more.
The air is unbearably wet with mist, and suddenly she thinks she can see the freckle growing—just as the flowers are surely growing; but slowly, slowly.
The freckle is turning purple, a miniature contusion. Then darker purple still, as the flowers begin to grow heavy with their petals. The leaves flop over the edge and begin to dangle to the floor as the spot begins to blacken.
Ever so slowly, the spot becomes a hole.
She wakes up. The mist has dispersed. There is no freckle, no hole. The flowers, however, have opened, and they have turned to face the window.
Soon she will want something—a cup of coffee. She sets off into the day. The sky comes down in big vertical blue slabs the sun streaks through like bleach.
The flammable suitcase she was carrying without knowing the danger she was in. Just walking down the street in the middle of a spring day. Unseasonably warm. She is singing, “I Wish I Were a Kid Again.” She