And thus Mark shackles the baby to an impromptu title which no one will ever know how to pronounce, or spell. When calling register, teachers will hesitate over ‘genie’ (maybe?) or (could it be?) ‘zhjaan’, or (possibly?) ‘zhjannay’. Perhaps it is merely ‘jean’? They are unable to reconcile the exotic spelling with the child’s curt, plain-spoken correction. Jennie. Really! People are affronted. Was such rudeness called for? Jeanné takes to spelling the name how it was meant to be, aloud, as if for some mentally deficient chump: jay ee en en ai ee. Pretty simple, huh? Though teachers, especially, consider her a liar or an idiot when they try to reconcile the vowels.
But Jennie’s logic is clear. She is completely intolerant of learning; sees no point if even careful spelling and enunciation cannot teach teachers the absolute basics: how to recognise her name. No wonder she doesn’t answer when called. The music teacher will be particularly perplexed: it is completely beyond her how a child with an exquisite soprano and perfect pitch can seem deaf to her patient, inspired instruction.
Mark, having stood in the queue in that abstracted frame of mind, and then at the last minute feeling slight panic at his undeniable sense of having messed up, again, also decides, without running it past his wife, hell, why not, he’ll give the new baby a second name, which is Norma, after the tragic sister. Somehow he thinks that this will ease the ruckus that’s going to be raised when he gets home and has to hand over the birth certificate, which will show another misnomer confirmed by official pink ink.
Ever the cock-eyed optimist, he reckons blithely that look, if Jeanné won’t do, the wife not happy with that, at least there’s a back-up. Quite sensible, really, and he starts to feel almost chuffed.
Norma. Will do the trick, no? Was a good name, that, good enough for his sister. Busy reasoning, he even convinces himself that ‘Norma’ marks an important gesture towards family tradition, and is some compensation for the fact that with their first-born he and Nora hardly knew what they were about, having had on the spur of the moment, as it were, to find a suitable name for a girl. This time he’d wised up, kept his options open and didn’t count his chickens.
He seems to forget, however, that his wife is not one to tolerate either male ineptitude or a man’s foolish flummery, not to mention his relations, so why he thinks she’ll be placated by ‘Norma’ is anyone’s guess. Nora is sick of Mark and his stories, and would like him to grow up.
But anyway, now it’s Jeanné Norma’s turn to start growing, and despite her father’s subsequent ridiculous fancy, a false memory par excellence – that yes, indeed, the name of his second was inspired by Norma Jean . . . Marilyn Monroe? – she grows increasingly to resemble the deceased sister. Jennie has thick, black-brown hair that frames her delicate face in lustrous waves, her eyes are dark and sultry, and there’s the mouth that makes no concession to propriety, sulky and sexy by turns.
Soon, she’s two years old, but even as a toddler, Jennie is a siren. Most unlike her sister, who at three can whistle like a boy and already likes to trumpet her own importance.
Atavistic Jen is how the Murphy women are supposed to look, although the family has historically been predisposed, by preference as well as genetics, towards males. But as Jennie grows she repeatedly tries to tell people, No, she is just herself. They must stop comparing. She starts off so completely herself that this is how she remains; not even her two names are enough to hold her back, keep her in the odd relation that people have fixed for her. She shrugs off the ghost of the name. She is Jennie. She is Jennie on any and every document, naming herself as she’s been doing since she knew her name and was able to talk. If there are queries, which inevitably there are, given the discrepancy, and her birth certificate or ID must be produced to verify her identity, she produces it, blaming the inexplicable on her crazy parents.
Families, shrugs Jen, the whys and wherefores. They cannot be explained.
Names are quite a thing for the Murphy family. Something so simple, you’d think, but they find it hard to get right. So they don’t, really, and whatever you’re called, you simply have to live with it.
Though when it comes to names, Jennie and Halley have different strategies.
When the newlyweds were taken by surprise that their first-born was a daughter (meaning, mainly, that Mark was so fixed on a boy he hadn’t stopped to consider the only other alternative), the unborn son was already called Ryan Patrick. Both solid, traditional monikers which would merge nicely, melodiously, with Murphy.
(Though nobody had given a thought to the initials, which would be RPM, enough Revolutions Per Minute to make any child dizzy at the thought.)
And then he turned out to be a she, the wife not turning out a boy, so something had to be done.
The story goes (though maybe someone’s only talking through his hat) that the father picked several possibilities and scribbled them down on bits of paper, then invited his mother to draw the winner from a hat.
Take a chaaance, Mark encouraged, passing the hat as Felicity sat in the lounge at Ixia Court, sipping tea, Why not, Ma? This could be your lucky day. His eyes twinkled, his eyebrows wiggled.
Oh my son, she said, teared with laughter and shaking her head, You and your nonsense! And then she felt, with feeling, and picked.
There is no written record of the odds; nor is it known what the infant’s mother thought of her husband’s impulsive strategy. Though the winner, as you know, is Halley. Which for the child doesn’t feel like her real name, even though she will come to appreciate that she has reasons to count herself fortunate. For she is not Dorcas or Zibbeth or Zillah. Not Winifred or Zenobia. Among these may be good names, even good biblical names, and good enough for some people, but they’re definitely not hers. Not her. Any of these names would be a terrible cross to bear.
She’d heard some rumours that in the hat of names had been Karen and Barbara, two among her father’s scrawled possibilities when he’d found himself stumped for ideas when faced with the flabbergast of a female child.
And that Nana had almost cuffed him, after she’d drawn the lucky winner and was casually going through the hat, checking for the names that didn’t make it. Because Karen and Barbara were recent granddaughters from her other sons, born a few months ahead of Mark’s girl.
What were you thinking? his mother persisted, although Mark’s face was all fallen and forlorn, meaning why must someone always spoil the party.
Or not thinking, as usual! she shoved her silly son hard in the chest. Lord have mercy, did this man have no brains beyond the merest stretch of empty imagination?
In the beginning, when Halley thinks about her name, the fact that most stubbornly demands attention is the idea of the hat. A pebble in the shoe. A mote in the eye. An annoying fly in the ointment.
A hat.
She’d asked her mother, who’d only shrugged at this nit-picking, and observed that hats hadn’t been particularly fashionable for men back then. And Nana? Halley wondered, but she’d never seen her Nana wearing hats. Not even one single hat.
So the hat must have been her mother’s. If it was that obvious, why didn’t she just say so, then Halley could figure out where to start?
For Nora wore hats, many different hats, all of which she’d made herself.
After finishing school, which wasn’t finishing school like some place fancy in Switzerland, only Matric, but actually for a poor female at that time was exceptional enough and one of the upsides of the orphanage, which was sponsored by church and state, when she’d done with high school Nora was enrolled in a six-month evening milliner’s course at the Bloemfontein Technical College, so that she might acquire a socially useful skill.
The fruits of her youthful labour remained in Ixia Court, stored in hinged hat boxes on top of the bedroom wardrobe. In one box, she’d even kept the milliner’s blank form, a funny wooden blockhead without hair or features, little more than a domed crown on a metal stand upon which to shape and balance her decorative craft, though these days she