The Girl I Used to Be

“All my life, I’ve known what I am. The daughter of a victim and a killer. When I looked in the mirror, sometimes I thought I could see them both—the cowering and the rage. Part of my dad was in me, and that meant I could grow up to be like him. Every time I lost my temper, I felt it pulse deep inside. The knowledge that I could do something as crazy as he did, stab someone I was supposed to love and leave them with only the cold stars as witnesses.” 

Olivia’s self-concept is revealed as complex and heavily influenced by the murders. Here, Olivia identifies with her mother (the presumed victim) and her father (the presumed killer). Totally alienated from her family by the decisions of the foster system, Olivia has little more to go on than these two facts; naturally, she’s tried to incorporate both into her self-image. Knowing nothing more about her father than this accusation, she has nothing of him to seek in herself other than violence.

“Since I can’t afford to fix anything, I keep the stereo turned up and pretend I don’t hear bad noises.”

This seemingly superficial comment about Olivia’s car has deeper implications for human behavior. If we view this as a metaphor for life, we can identify a theme that will recur later in the novel: seeing or showing only what you want to. Olivia pretends she doesn’t hear the bad noises in her car much the same way that she pretends she doesn’t hear them in her life. Sometimes, one functions simply by moving forward and not thinking about difficult aspects of one’s life. As Olivia’s life is primarily difficult aspects—loneliness, guilt, alienation, abandonment—the reader can ask what is left for her to focus on if she’s drowning out all of the “bad noises” of life. 

“The crayons and pink erasers feel full of promise. Every time I started at a new school, I told myself things would be different. This time I would have tons of friends. This time I would raise my hand. This time math would make sense.”

Olivia relays the hope for a “new start.” Telling oneself that something will be different “this time” ignores the larger factor of the constants in one’s life. There’s a commentary here about the use of consumable, material objects to signify change: All of the new pencils and erasers in the world wouldn’t have made Olivia less traumatized, less isolated, or better adjusted. Pinning hopes on the external markers of newness and normalcy, much like ignoring the bad noises in the car, is a method of avoiding the core of the problem.

“Suddenly, I feel as if I’m seeing double. It’s like that drawing of a vase, the one where if you look at it right, it changes to two people facing each other. I see an old lady dressed in black, but my memory superimposes another image.” 

One frequent appearance of the doubling motif is Olivia’s experience of memories—she sees things in Medford with both her “now” eyes and her “then” eyes, and the images appear layered as she attempts to process them. It is as if she is seeing as two people: both Olivia and Ariel. Because Olivia has been so alienated from her past, this effect is pronounced. 

“My father at birthday parties, at restaurants, holding a blue can of Pabst. Holding a silver fish, grinning. Holding a limp deer by the antlers, grinning. Maybe he liked to kill things. Maybe it hadn’t been such a stretch to think he’d killed my mom. Or maybe this is just the kind of small town where people hunt and fish. I feel like I swallowed a stone. Who was my father, really?” 

Here we see Olivia attempting to reconcile the one thing she always knew about her father—he was a violent killer—with the memories and impressions of the people who loved him. Her difficulty in processing the images of hunting, in particular, emphasizes the degree to which she has been estranged from him. Consider the photographs that newspapers print of convicted or suspected killers; the expectation of darkness colors otherwise innocuous photographs. Olivia articulates the difficulty she’s having in extrapolating her father’s character from these images due to her previous and rapidly changing expectations.

“I decide she looks perfectly fine if you take away the purple hair and the piercings. Even just the piercings. Maybe she doesn’t want anyone to see past them.” 

This is another of Olivia’s insights into the difference between truth and image. In this case, she sees that Lauren might be using these markers of difference to conceal deeper aspects of herself. In choosing an “alternative” appearance, Lauren is intentionally setting herself apart from the other members of her family and community. While this could easily be a statement of individuality, Olivia perceives that Lauren might be using the jewelry and hair color to prevent people from seeing beneath the surface.

“I’m going to leave Medford with two things—the photo in my pocket and this. That’s all of my dad I’ll ever have. That and a memory of an apple he might have peeled for me. And the long nose and square chin we share.” 

For Olivia, the funeral program and the stolen photograph are the only physical objects she has to tie her to her father. She notes the facial features they share, along with a hazy memory that might not be accurate. This is worth considering, especially after having seen Olivia discuss what she felt she had of him earlier: his violence and anger. Without that, Olivia has to fill the vacuum with new ideas and perceptions about her father. His newfound innocence allows her to seek him deeper than her fears of inheriting his rage.

“For years I’ve felt so alone. Abandoned by everyone. By my mother, who was stupid enough to have a child with a man who would soon kill her. By my father, who was worse than dead. By a woman who said she wanted to be my mom but who couldn’t see how much I was hurting. But those first two things weren’t true. And now I’m sitting next to an old woman who loved my grandmother. Who loved my mother. Who once loved me. Here, things feel like they fit into gaps I didn’t even know I had. An empty space shaped like the golden hills that hold this valley. A hollow filled by the woman next to me, a woman with silver hair and crowded teeth. Maybe there are even three missing pieces shaped like my aunt and uncle and their purple-haired daughter.” 

Olivia names some of the “bad noises” that she’s been attempting to overlook in her life. Discovering that her family did want her helps to counter but also reveal the depth of the trauma she experienced after her grandmother’s death. She notes gaps she “didn’t even know [she] had.” It’s important to note that her alienation was not just physical, but also emotional and psychological. In the absence of input about herself and her history and values, Olivia smoothed over voids that she is now discovering.

“‘God of merciful love, help Terry’s friends and family remember the joyful times they shared while he was still on this earth. Teach them the forgiveness that was exemplified by Jesus as he said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know what they do.’’ He’s not done praying, but I’m done listening. I open my eyes. I’m not going to forgive. Someone murdered my parents and left them underneath the cold sky and thought they got away with it. They were wrong.” 

This is the moment in which Olivia first decides she is going to find justice for her parents. It’s also of note that she categorizes herself within the “friends and family” descriptor that the pastor uses. The pastor is appealing to the congregation to focus more on their love for Terry than on their anger at his death. This appeal does not work on Olivia, who has no memories of that love. She has only anger, sadness, and now, a mission.

“‘It matters because it affects people’s opinions of you,’ my aunt says. ‘If they can’t look past a six-inch-long sterling-silver chain, then I don’t care what they think.’” 

This is one example of a positive use of a superficial or distracting image. In other instances of this in the text, people invest in their image to conceal something embarrassing or undesirable about themselves; in Lauren’s case, she uses the chain to filter out those she would not respect or care for. People’s various reactions to her appearance tell her more about them than they know about her.

“It’s like I’m in one of those snow globes. Somebody’s picked me up and shaken all my memories loose. Now they float around me, flickering in the corners of my eyes.”

The snow globe analogy allows Olivia to articulate the disorientation stemming from the small, haphazard memories that are returning to her. If we extend the analogy, we realize that Olivia describes herself as the stable object at the center of the snow. The reader knows this is not exactly true, as Olivia is easily as unmoored as the snow that falls around her. The image of the snow is significant, considering the snow-covered woods on the day of her parents’ murders.

“To me, Nora’s house is full of things I long for. But none of them are tangible.” 

Olivia hints at both a financial and emotional poverty. The novel earlier established her low income and small collection of personal items. Here, we see that that lack reflected in her sense of self and relationships. This passage follows a description of the many items and charming clutter in the home, a play on the material versus the spiritual. What Olivia is saying is that she longs for the sense of home that Nora’s house invokes—items that represent memories and comfort but primarily the presence of love and familiarity.

“Mourning. It’s such an old-fashioned word, but so is grief. Both as heavy and solid as tombstones.” 

This is a meditation on the nature of mourning and grief and the physicality of how the body experiences it. Olivia describes both as “heavy and solid,” which suggests that the mourner or griever experiences the emotion as a weight they have to carry. Carrying such a heavy weight, even an emotional one, is exhausting. 

“My arms spread as if they might tunnel through the earth and pull her to me, reclaim her bones and put flesh on them.” 

Olivia, in visiting her mother’s grave much closer to adulthood, experiences powerful emotions she couldn’t have articulated or formed as a child of seven. The image of “reclaiming” and re-fleshing the bones is a powerful metaphor for restoring humanity. Much as Terry’s identity was compressed into that of a killer, Naomi’s was compressed into that of a victim. Olivia’s desire to reembody her mother can be read as a longing to resurrect not just her body, but the fullness of her memory.

“Even Duncan looked at me differently when he thought I was from Seattle than he did when he realized I was the only surviving victim, the coda to a terrible story.” 

This is another exampling of doubling and alienation. Olivia, for the reasons the novel makes clear, sees herself as two overlapping people: Olivia and Ariel. Though Olivia and Ariel are the same person, her Olivia façade allows her a measure of distance from her parents’ murders. Hiding Ariel behind Olivia functions in much the same way that Lauren’s purple hair and piercings do—when Olivia muses that Lauren might not want people to see past them, she is also speaking for herself.

“Or maybe Duncan just doesn’t want to believe it could be someone he knows. I think of foster homes where I lived in fear but smiled for the caseworker. Or where the house was a pigsty unless a visit was scheduled. If I’ve learned anything in the past ten years, it’s that a lot of people have one face in public and another in private.” 

Olivia again ruminates on the nature of the public and the private and the way one is used to conceal the other. Olivia gives examples only of terrible things concealed by a shallow veneer of goodness. Olivia isn’t ready to process how she uses this strategy within her own self-image. She mentions concealing discomfort from others, but not from oneself. As Olivia’s layers of defense between herself and her history peel away, she is forced nearer to the “truth” of her identity and her family.

“Half an apple with a wormhole in the other half. A chunk of watermelon too mangled to wrap in plastic. A carrot that looked like two legs and a torso. All the imperfect things no one wants to buy, as if everything has to be free of bruises and blemishes or it’s worthless.”

This is a metaphor for the way society praises the “perfect” and rejects the “imperfect.” For Olivia, this goes deeper: In Olivia’s experience with her adoptive mother, Olivia was the “bruised fruit,” and her adoptive mother was the consumer who rejected her. Olivia is expressing feelings she’s internalized from years in the foster system and from her long-held belief that her father’s side of her family did not want custody of her after her grandmother’s death.

“If you stabbed somebody once, it would already be too late. You couldn’t stop. You would just have to keep stabbing until it was done. Even if it took nineteen times […] Love, hate—are they really that different?”

Sam expresses a dark outlook at the methodology of the murders. Whereas others in the novel have expressed that the number of stab wounds was indicative of a crime of passion, Sam suggests that once one stabs someone, one must finish it. Otherwise, one is already guilty and has left a witness. 

“I’m ready. I’ve had two heart attacks. My hearing is totally shot. My cataracts are getting worse […] It’s like having a car that’s starting to nickel-and-dime you. At some point, it’s not worth keeping anymore. Besides, I want to see what happens next.” 

Though Nora’s speech here upsets Olivia, who doesn’t want to lose her, it provides a different view of death. It’s possible that this line is intended to cushion the blow of Nora’s murder, but there’s also a “life well lived” aspect to consider. Nora, a woman who has been allowed to live well into her old age, who is surviving a number of painful and sometimes debilitating illnesses, has reached a state where she does not resent the failings of her body. 

“It was already too late. I couldn’t make it better. I couldn’t bring Terry back to life. It was Naomi or me. There weren’t any other choices. But it was the hardest thing […] It was awful. Do you think I haven’t lived with that for years? Do you think I don’t have nightmares, that what happened isn’t in my thoughts every day?” 

This speech from the murderer, Spaulding, is noteworthy in its flawed and self-interested premise. Though Spaulding clearly wishes it hadn’t happened the way it did, his belief that his life was worth more than Terry and Naomi’s is clear. When he says, “there weren’t any other choices,” what he means is “there weren’t any other choices that didn’t affect my life going forward.” Shooting Terry was an accident, but Spaulding was concerned about the consequences he would (rightly) face for the outcomes. Spaulding reveals the degree to which he values only himself. As he has just killed Nora and is planning to kill Olivia, it’s apparent that he weighs his own life and happiness far above that of any other person.

“Get up, a woman’s voice says. I don’t know if it’s in my head or in my ear. You have to get up, honey. Now, a man’s voice commands.” 

The lingering spirits of Olivia’s parents appear to reach out to encourage her as Olivia flees from their murderer. Though Nora speaks of an afterlife, Olivia previously dismissed the idea that her mother could be haunting their family home. The more likely interpretation of this passage is that Olivia is hearing the voices of her parents in this moment because she has developed enough of a sense of closeness to them that she can almost hear them speak to her. She admits that she doesn’t know if the voices are real or not. Regardless, Olivia draws strength from these voices and uses them to keep herself fighting. For a young woman who has only ever had herself to rely on, the presence of the voices indicates that she’s opened herself to relationships with others.

“Amazingly, the deer have survived, too, although their flanks are dotted with burned patches. A look passes between me and the mama deer, a look beyond words, but still filled with understanding. I start to laugh. I’m alive. I’m still alive.”

The doe has led her fawn to the safety of the stream; she has also led Olivia. This puts Olivia in a similar to position to the fawn, and thus forms an ephemeral bond with the deer. In this oneness, Olivia finds joy—a simple appreciation of being alive. When Spaulding kills the deer after this moment, Olivia is deeply affected. In a sense, he has taken yet another maternal figure from her, another savior in her time of need. 

“At first, I wanted to make the house look exactly the way I remembered it from when I was seven. I wanted to buy a blue teapot to set on the corner shelf, to put a TV in the old spot, to find flowered bedspreads like the ones that used to cover the beds. But then I realized I was trying to mimic the taste of a fifty-six-year-old woman. And as great as my grandmother was, that’s not who I am. I’m not my grandmother; I’m not my mom; I’m not my dad. Parts of them are in me, but I’m my own person.” 

How far Olivia has come is reflected in this passage. Throughout the novel she’s experienced a “doubling” where her memories and Ariel-identity attempted to enforce the past over what Olivia was seeing in the present. Here, we see Olivia accepting both—she values the memory without feeling obligated to adhere to it. Instead, she’s occupying the space of her childhood home as a full person; she is changed but not destroyed by the tragic events of her life. Similarly, the house is changed but not destroyed. Olivia will inhabit it now as a whole version of herself, having reconciled the conflicting narratives she believed of herself and her family.