Jennie
by Emilie Helmbold
Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash
14-years-old
I sit in my bedroom alone and watch my alarm clock closely. I’m counting down the minutes until the clock strikes midnight. When the short and long clock hands reach twelve, it will be nine days until my fifteenth birthday. That’s the day when I’ll have lived longer than my sister. My parents have been acting strange all day, as if they’re watching the shadow of my sister disappear. Although I can’t tell anyone, I hope the remnants of my sister disappear at midnight. I imagine it will be like being released from a curse where I’m forced to always exist in the shadow of someone I can never live up to. For my fifteenth birthday, I want to be my own person.
I sit in my bedroom alone and watch my alarm clock closely. I’m counting down the minutes until the clock strikes midnight. When the short and long clock hands reach twelve, it will be nine days until my fifteenth birthday. That’s the day when I’ll have lived longer than my sister. My parents have been acting strange all day, as if they’re watching the shadow of my sister disappear. Although I can’t tell anyone, I hope the remnants of my sister disappear at midnight. I imagine it will be like being released from a curse where I’m forced to always exist in the shadow of someone I can never live up to. For my fifteenth birthday, I want to be my own person.
~
12-years-old
I’m sitting in seventh-grade art class, sketching a rough outline of the sculpture I hope to make out of papier-mâché while my friends talk about their siblings. My friend, Sarah, asks me if I have any siblings because I never talk about them. I have two options: tell my friends I have a sister who died or lie to them. Every time I’ve told people that my sister died, I’ve been met with an expression of both shock and pity, along with a quick change in subject. I’m an only child, I tell them. I keep up this lie for months. I feel guilty for erasing my sister from my life.
I’m sitting in seventh-grade art class, sketching a rough outline of the sculpture I hope to make out of papier-mâché while my friends talk about their siblings. My friend, Sarah, asks me if I have any siblings because I never talk about them. I have two options: tell my friends I have a sister who died or lie to them. Every time I’ve told people that my sister died, I’ve been met with an expression of both shock and pity, along with a quick change in subject. I’m an only child, I tell them. I keep up this lie for months. I feel guilty for erasing my sister from my life.
~
24-years-old
During my first semester of grad school, I seek the help of a psychiatrist for my anxiety. I sit through a three-hour evaluation over Zoom where a woman I’d never met in person asks me to rank 250 or so questions on a scale of “never” to “always.” We meet the next week in the same Zoom room to review my diagnosis, where she diagnoses me with Complex PTSD. My first thought is that the psychiatrist is wrong. I look up the definition online after the appointment. Complex PTSD is defined by the Cleveland Clinic as:
… a mental health condition that can develop if you experience chronic (long-term) trauma. It involves stress responses, such as: Anxiety. Having flashbacks or nightmares. Avoiding situations, places and other things related to the traumatic event. Heightened emotional responses, such as impulsivity or aggressiveness. Persistent difficulties in sustaining relationships.
After I decide to seek long-term treatment for Complex PTSD, my therapist explains that there are studies that show that trauma can be passed from parents to their children through the miracle of genetics.
During my first semester of grad school, I seek the help of a psychiatrist for my anxiety. I sit through a three-hour evaluation over Zoom where a woman I’d never met in person asks me to rank 250 or so questions on a scale of “never” to “always.” We meet the next week in the same Zoom room to review my diagnosis, where she diagnoses me with Complex PTSD. My first thought is that the psychiatrist is wrong. I look up the definition online after the appointment. Complex PTSD is defined by the Cleveland Clinic as:
… a mental health condition that can develop if you experience chronic (long-term) trauma. It involves stress responses, such as: Anxiety. Having flashbacks or nightmares. Avoiding situations, places and other things related to the traumatic event. Heightened emotional responses, such as impulsivity or aggressiveness. Persistent difficulties in sustaining relationships.
After I decide to seek long-term treatment for Complex PTSD, my therapist explains that there are studies that show that trauma can be passed from parents to their children through the miracle of genetics.
~
Negative 4-years-old
In 1994, my sister and two of her friends are killed in an accident when an elderly woman runs a stop sign on an otherwise deserted country road. Although the accident occurs nearly four years before I’m born, this is where my story begins; because if my sister were still alive, then I wouldn’t be. My parents only want one child.
In 1994, my sister and two of her friends are killed in an accident when an elderly woman runs a stop sign on an otherwise deserted country road. Although the accident occurs nearly four years before I’m born, this is where my story begins; because if my sister were still alive, then I wouldn’t be. My parents only want one child.
~
9-years-old
My mother decides that I need to begin an after-school activity. My parents desperately want me to find a sport I like. Instead, I find that I’m miserably inept at cheerleading, gymnastics, swimming, and softball. I quit all of them. I’m happy sitting at my desk and writing stories about mysteries and faraway lands.
Desperate to send me someplace where I can spend time with other kids my age, my mother sends me to auditions for the town’s annual production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I get cast in the chorus, and for once I’m excited to be doing something other than writing at my desk by myself.
My mother never misses an opportunity to tell me that my sister also acted, but she played parts with lines and names. I didn’t have a single line. I didn’t even have a name; I was just Chorus Leopard 2. She doesn’t stop talking about how Jennie played Principal McGee in Grease until the last show of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe closes.
My mother decides that I need to begin an after-school activity. My parents desperately want me to find a sport I like. Instead, I find that I’m miserably inept at cheerleading, gymnastics, swimming, and softball. I quit all of them. I’m happy sitting at my desk and writing stories about mysteries and faraway lands.
Desperate to send me someplace where I can spend time with other kids my age, my mother sends me to auditions for the town’s annual production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I get cast in the chorus, and for once I’m excited to be doing something other than writing at my desk by myself.
My mother never misses an opportunity to tell me that my sister also acted, but she played parts with lines and names. I didn’t have a single line. I didn’t even have a name; I was just Chorus Leopard 2. She doesn’t stop talking about how Jennie played Principal McGee in Grease until the last show of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe closes.
~
3-years-old
I’m just old enough to form memories of my own when my mother takes me into my sister’s bedroom. Seven years after the accident, she still has a room in my parent’s home. All of her belongings lay there just as she left them as if one day she’ll return like nothing ever happened. I remember a dollhouse sitting on top of an armoire. I can tell my mother still comes into this room because the dollhouse is carefully dusted. The dollhouse is prettier than any of the cars and trains that lie precariously around my playroom. I ask my mother if I can play with my dollhouse. When you’re older, she says. She’s afraid that I might break the dollhouse irreparably. The miniature house is filled with intricate spindles that line the three stairwells, thin stained-glass windows, and delicate furniture. My parents consider my sister’s belongings to be artifacts—something to be preserved and treasured. A few months later when we pack up the house and move across the country, our belongings are sorted into three piles: give, store, keep. None of my sister’s belongings go into the give pile.
I’m just old enough to form memories of my own when my mother takes me into my sister’s bedroom. Seven years after the accident, she still has a room in my parent’s home. All of her belongings lay there just as she left them as if one day she’ll return like nothing ever happened. I remember a dollhouse sitting on top of an armoire. I can tell my mother still comes into this room because the dollhouse is carefully dusted. The dollhouse is prettier than any of the cars and trains that lie precariously around my playroom. I ask my mother if I can play with my dollhouse. When you’re older, she says. She’s afraid that I might break the dollhouse irreparably. The miniature house is filled with intricate spindles that line the three stairwells, thin stained-glass windows, and delicate furniture. My parents consider my sister’s belongings to be artifacts—something to be preserved and treasured. A few months later when we pack up the house and move across the country, our belongings are sorted into three piles: give, store, keep. None of my sister’s belongings go into the give pile.
~
|
4-years-old
After my parents unpack the storage unit where all our store belongings are kept and move everything into our new home, my mother gives me an American Girl Doll. The doll’s name is Samantha, the historic doll whose story is set in the Victorian era. I’ve been engrossed in the American Girl Doll catalog that arrived in the mail for the last several weeks. The catalog advertises a collection of dolls that are designed to look just like you. Samantha doesn’t look like me; she has straight, brown hair and chestnut eyes. My mother explains that my grandparents gave the doll to my sister as a gift because Samantha looked just like her. When I insist that I want a doll that looks like me, my mother tells me not to be a spoiled brat. |
"My parents consider my sister's belongings to be artifacts--something to be preserved and treasured." |
~
Negative 8-months-old
When my mother finds out she’s pregnant, she already knows what my name will be. My name will be Emily because the poems of Emily Dickinson help her survive the excruciating hours that turn to days that turn to years after my sister’s death. Emily will be spelled with an –ie in honor of my sister, Jennie. Years later, I’ll ask my mother what my name would’ve been if I’d been a boy. She replies, I always knew you’d be another girl. The emphasis is on another.
When my mother finds out she’s pregnant, she already knows what my name will be. My name will be Emily because the poems of Emily Dickinson help her survive the excruciating hours that turn to days that turn to years after my sister’s death. Emily will be spelled with an –ie in honor of my sister, Jennie. Years later, I’ll ask my mother what my name would’ve been if I’d been a boy. She replies, I always knew you’d be another girl. The emphasis is on another.
~
13-years-old
My aunt and uncle come to stay with us for a week. I lose track of the number of times they accidentally call me Jennie. By the end of the second day, they stop apologizing. They assume that I must be used to being called her name by now.
My aunt and uncle come to stay with us for a week. I lose track of the number of times they accidentally call me Jennie. By the end of the second day, they stop apologizing. They assume that I must be used to being called her name by now.
~
6-years-old
On Christmas morning, I sit on the pilling, baby-blue carpet in my grandpa’s living room. I open a handful of gifts that have my name printed on the gift tags; every box contains tiny, carefully constructed furniture for the dollhouse that I’m allowed to play with now that I’m older.
My grandpa is sitting in his recliner and beckons me to come over to him with jerking forceful motions. Since his stroke last year, he’s been struggling to speak. I walk over to him but don’t know what to say. Slowly, he mouths the words, I love you, Jennie. I never remember him calling me by my own name.
A month later, he falls asleep in his recliner. My father gets a call the next morning that his father stopped breathing in his sleep, the box of cashews that my parents bought him for Christmas still rests on his lap. At his funeral a few days later, I watch my aunts and my mom cry in the front pews of the rural church he attended for nearly sixty years. I don’t cry. I don’t know how to mourn someone who never understood the difference between me and my sister who’s been dead for ten years.
On Christmas morning, I sit on the pilling, baby-blue carpet in my grandpa’s living room. I open a handful of gifts that have my name printed on the gift tags; every box contains tiny, carefully constructed furniture for the dollhouse that I’m allowed to play with now that I’m older.
My grandpa is sitting in his recliner and beckons me to come over to him with jerking forceful motions. Since his stroke last year, he’s been struggling to speak. I walk over to him but don’t know what to say. Slowly, he mouths the words, I love you, Jennie. I never remember him calling me by my own name.
A month later, he falls asleep in his recliner. My father gets a call the next morning that his father stopped breathing in his sleep, the box of cashews that my parents bought him for Christmas still rests on his lap. At his funeral a few days later, I watch my aunts and my mom cry in the front pews of the rural church he attended for nearly sixty years. I don’t cry. I don’t know how to mourn someone who never understood the difference between me and my sister who’s been dead for ten years.
~
"I don't know how to mourn someone who never understood the difference between me and my sister who's been dead for ten years." |
7-years-old
My father and I are playing a game of checkers at the dining room table. I’m about to jump one of his last remaining black checkers when my dad says, Look out the window, Jennie. There’s a deer right outside! My eyes dart up, but I don’t look out the window. I look into his eyes and tell him that my name isn’t Jennie. He’s startled by the anger in my voice as if he expects that I’d just accept being called by the wrong name for my entire life. As if not wanting to be called Jennie is offensive to her memory. He doesn’t know what to say. I look back down at the checkerboard, jump his black checker, and put it with the rest of my pile, pretending as if I didn’t say anything at all. |
~
10-years-old
I don’t like my father’s hometown, with its inescapable specter of grief that seems to cast a shadow over my parents’ faces as we pass the “Welcome to the Village of Millington” sign on the outskirts of town. My parents lived on the same road as my father’s parents for sixteen years, only moving when I was three so that I didn’t have to grow up in a community that already knew too much about the loss that my family endured.
I like family reunions even less than I like my father’s hometown. At the last reunion I attended, I came across three elderly women sitting at the dining room table because the late July sun beating down on the front lawn was too nauseating for them to sit under the tall oaks with the rest of the family. I didn’t know if these women were the matriarchs of the family, but their large glasses and nearly transparent skin made them appear older than anyone else by several decades. Usually, my parents would keep me close to them around my extended family so they could make a point of introducing me to the older family members before they had a chance to say, you’re Jennie, right? That day, my parents sent me inside to get a sandwich by myself.
One of the women turned to me and said, you must be Nan and Dale’s daughter. I nodded, I was so close to the platter of cold cuts and cheeses on the kitchen island that they taunted me. I could tell they didn’t know my name, and they regretted saying anything to me in the first place. They stared at one another over the metal rims of their bug-eyed glasses and dared the others to speak first. Jennie? One of them guessed. I told them my name was Emilie. Before they could stumble through a half-hearted apology, I was over by the cold cuts preparing a ham sandwich. I quickly made my way out of the kitchen and back to my parents without another word.
I don’t like my father’s hometown, with its inescapable specter of grief that seems to cast a shadow over my parents’ faces as we pass the “Welcome to the Village of Millington” sign on the outskirts of town. My parents lived on the same road as my father’s parents for sixteen years, only moving when I was three so that I didn’t have to grow up in a community that already knew too much about the loss that my family endured.
I like family reunions even less than I like my father’s hometown. At the last reunion I attended, I came across three elderly women sitting at the dining room table because the late July sun beating down on the front lawn was too nauseating for them to sit under the tall oaks with the rest of the family. I didn’t know if these women were the matriarchs of the family, but their large glasses and nearly transparent skin made them appear older than anyone else by several decades. Usually, my parents would keep me close to them around my extended family so they could make a point of introducing me to the older family members before they had a chance to say, you’re Jennie, right? That day, my parents sent me inside to get a sandwich by myself.
One of the women turned to me and said, you must be Nan and Dale’s daughter. I nodded, I was so close to the platter of cold cuts and cheeses on the kitchen island that they taunted me. I could tell they didn’t know my name, and they regretted saying anything to me in the first place. They stared at one another over the metal rims of their bug-eyed glasses and dared the others to speak first. Jennie? One of them guessed. I told them my name was Emilie. Before they could stumble through a half-hearted apology, I was over by the cold cuts preparing a ham sandwich. I quickly made my way out of the kitchen and back to my parents without another word.
~
17-years-old
Seven years after my encounter with those women who probably weren’t even alive any longer, my dad pulls into a Taco Bell parking lot about halfway between my hometown and my father’s hometown because he decides that we should eat lunch before the reunion just in case Joann decided to buy those shit store-brand cheese slices for the sandwich platter again.
As I sit in the booth in the lobby of the Taco Bell that feels uncomfortably sticky on my bare arms while we wait for my mother to finish eating, my father looks me up and down and says, you really don’t look like your sister much anymore at all. My mother looks up from her taco and slowly nods in agreement.
It’s as if my parents finally see me for the first time. They see that my hair has always been curly, that my eyes have always been livid (a term I learned for blue-grey), and that my figure is significantly more delicate than hers. They don’t look at me and see the shape of my face and my smile as a reminder of a girl I’ll never meet, unable to escape the dull ache of a loss that I’ll never understand. At this moment, my parents see a different person entirely. They begin to see me.
Seven years after my encounter with those women who probably weren’t even alive any longer, my dad pulls into a Taco Bell parking lot about halfway between my hometown and my father’s hometown because he decides that we should eat lunch before the reunion just in case Joann decided to buy those shit store-brand cheese slices for the sandwich platter again.
As I sit in the booth in the lobby of the Taco Bell that feels uncomfortably sticky on my bare arms while we wait for my mother to finish eating, my father looks me up and down and says, you really don’t look like your sister much anymore at all. My mother looks up from her taco and slowly nods in agreement.
It’s as if my parents finally see me for the first time. They see that my hair has always been curly, that my eyes have always been livid (a term I learned for blue-grey), and that my figure is significantly more delicate than hers. They don’t look at me and see the shape of my face and my smile as a reminder of a girl I’ll never meet, unable to escape the dull ache of a loss that I’ll never understand. At this moment, my parents see a different person entirely. They begin to see me.
~
19-years-old
It’s the summer my parents sell my childhood home when I notice a box in the closet at my family’s cabin that reads Jennie’s Stuff. I’m staying at the cabin alone, meaning I can take the box out and examine its contents without being disturbed by either of my parents giving me the same careful warnings I’ve heard thousands of times: be careful with that. Put that back. You don’t need to look in there.
I take apart the box meticulously, making sure that I remember the order of its contents so I can put everything back in the same spot where I found it. In the middle of the box, I find a notebook with a picture of a grey tabby cat on its cover. Scrawled within the cover page in my mom’s handwriting are the words: To our dear Jennie on her 12th Christmas. May you have many wonderful things to write about in this journal. Love always, Mom & Dad. Christmas 1991. I flipped through the pages and heard my sister’s voice for the first time.
July 30, 1992
Even though the theatre workshop caused its share of problems, and I got stuck with a stupid character, I already miss it.
July 31, 1992
Tomorrow is the Helmbold Family Reunion at our house. (Oh thrill.) Once again my mom is going around in an annoying frenzy to get the house clean, as usual I just want to get it all over with.
August 13, 1992
I don’t know if I can stand my parents for another five years! I’m thirteen in 13 days, and they won’t let me go to the teen dance … either they’re ignorant or they don’t trust me for some reason …
June 12, 1993
My mom and I haven’t been getting along too well lately. They don’t think I help out enough or happily enough. I don’t really feel unloved, just underappreciated. No matter how unhappy I am, I usually do whatever it is anyway. But do I ever hear a word of thanks or a hint of gratitude? No! Instead I hear about how badly I did it! (Attitude, speed, correctness, etc.)
Maybe I’m just sick of my life as a whole. Shyness, boredom, location, people, and many others. Geez! If this keeps up too much longer, I’ll probably end up on the brink of suicide. But lets hope not. I don’t want my already bad problems to grow.
For the first time, I begin to see Jennie as a real person. She’s no longer the perfect daughter I’ve always expected myself to live up to. She isn’t only the faded apparition of a daughter my parents lost, she’s a sister. Throughout her journal, she wrote about her experiences as a teenager, littered with complicated emotions and intense feelings. I could see how she struggled with my parents in the same ways that I did. And, although we’re separated by death, I begin to feel a connection to her.
It’s the summer my parents sell my childhood home when I notice a box in the closet at my family’s cabin that reads Jennie’s Stuff. I’m staying at the cabin alone, meaning I can take the box out and examine its contents without being disturbed by either of my parents giving me the same careful warnings I’ve heard thousands of times: be careful with that. Put that back. You don’t need to look in there.
I take apart the box meticulously, making sure that I remember the order of its contents so I can put everything back in the same spot where I found it. In the middle of the box, I find a notebook with a picture of a grey tabby cat on its cover. Scrawled within the cover page in my mom’s handwriting are the words: To our dear Jennie on her 12th Christmas. May you have many wonderful things to write about in this journal. Love always, Mom & Dad. Christmas 1991. I flipped through the pages and heard my sister’s voice for the first time.
July 30, 1992
Even though the theatre workshop caused its share of problems, and I got stuck with a stupid character, I already miss it.
July 31, 1992
Tomorrow is the Helmbold Family Reunion at our house. (Oh thrill.) Once again my mom is going around in an annoying frenzy to get the house clean, as usual I just want to get it all over with.
August 13, 1992
I don’t know if I can stand my parents for another five years! I’m thirteen in 13 days, and they won’t let me go to the teen dance … either they’re ignorant or they don’t trust me for some reason …
June 12, 1993
My mom and I haven’t been getting along too well lately. They don’t think I help out enough or happily enough. I don’t really feel unloved, just underappreciated. No matter how unhappy I am, I usually do whatever it is anyway. But do I ever hear a word of thanks or a hint of gratitude? No! Instead I hear about how badly I did it! (Attitude, speed, correctness, etc.)
Maybe I’m just sick of my life as a whole. Shyness, boredom, location, people, and many others. Geez! If this keeps up too much longer, I’ll probably end up on the brink of suicide. But lets hope not. I don’t want my already bad problems to grow.
For the first time, I begin to see Jennie as a real person. She’s no longer the perfect daughter I’ve always expected myself to live up to. She isn’t only the faded apparition of a daughter my parents lost, she’s a sister. Throughout her journal, she wrote about her experiences as a teenager, littered with complicated emotions and intense feelings. I could see how she struggled with my parents in the same ways that I did. And, although we’re separated by death, I begin to feel a connection to her.
“Complex PTSD.” Cleveland Clinic, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24881-cptsd-complex-ptsd. Accessed 4 Dec. 2023.
Emilie Helmbold is an MFA candidate at Western Michigan University. She is a lifelong Michigan resident, a setting that has inspired much of her creative work. Her work has appeared in The Raven Review, Small Town Anthology, and The New Twenties Magazine. Her plays have been produced onstage at the University of Michigan and the Kennedy Center Regional New Play Project.
A 2025 Pushcart Prize nominee, Emilie's essay can be found in Issue 29 of Glassworks.
