The Unnatural Paper

Clara couldn’t recall who gave her this stationery. She vaguely recalled some preadolescent birthday dinner with elderly family members she hadn’t met before. They were in town for the funeral of some great uncle she had also never met, and her birthday dinner coincided with their travel plans. Of course, Mom invited everyone.

The worst part was that, due to their various dietary restrictions, they could no longer dine at the Cajun seafood restaurant she had selected and had to instead go to a rather bland buffet place. The dinner bill was so expensive that her parents couldn’t afford to have a do-over with the friends she had to uninvite.

“But Mom, the birthday kid always picks the restaurant!” Clara insisted at that time..

“Sweetheart, there’s been a death in the family. We can’t just carry on like normal. I’m sorry, but I’ll make it up to you later,” her mom replied. Clara couldn’t recall if she ever did. Her dad offered to take her bowling or fishing or both, but those were activities her sister Sarah enjoyed doing with her dad.

Now, she was graduating from college and had received a few gifts from relatives. Her mom handed her the stationary that she found while emptying her room she hadn’t used it in four years except for school breaks, but it was still sad to see her room remodeled as a guest room/gym/office.

“You need to write thank you notes,” her mom insisted.

“Fine,” Clara replied. She ruffled through the set that had the usual cards, envelopes, and paper. There was still a card attached that read: “Happy birthday, Cara! Use this paper wisely as it will help you achieve great things!”

Three pieces of paper were a different style than the rest. It was sturdy and almost as thick as cardstock. There wasn’t anything special about it except one of the pieces looked a bit smudged as if someone had written on it in pencil and erased it over and over again. She could barely make out the word “circus” impressed in the smudged area. She put it aside and completed her task with the thank you cards.

“Mom, do you remember who gave me this?” she asked.

“Your Aunt Clarabel,” her mother responded.

“I have an Aunt Clarabel?” Clara asked incredulously. “Was I named after her?”

“Of course not!” her mother exclaimed. “She was the family loon.”

“Like the bird? She was at the birthday funeral dinner, right?”

“No and yes. Like a nutcase not a bird,” her mom explained.

“That doesn’t seem very nice. I recall how mad you got on to me for not wanting her at my birthday dinner because I needed to respect my elders,” Clara insisted.

“Well, she’s dead now,” informed her mom. “You can be disrespectful now.”

“Mom!” Clara replied, shocked.

“She was a crazy, old loon,” her mom laughed. “She could never get my name right.”

“Yeah, she wrote ‘Cara’ on the card,” Clara said. “What did she do that was so crazy?”

“Let me see,” her mom said as she sat on the loveseat next to her sister.

“The first incident I recall was when she joined the circus,” her mom recalled. “She was five and performed two days before her parents found her.”

“How did a five-year-old join the circus?” Clara asked, dumbfounded.

“That’s the question, and no one knows the answer,” she said. “It’s hard to get an answer from a five-year-old that doesn’t want to answer. She was very precocious and was already reading and writing. The circus people believed she was a dwarf. They claim Aunt Clarabel told them that.”

“OK, that’s crazy,” Clara stated. Her dad entered the living room to join the conversation. “It’s more of a reflection of her parents though, isn’t it? What did she do in the circus?”

“I think she was a clown,” Dad interjected.

“I want to be a clown in the circus,” Sarah inserted.

“Don’t be silly,” her mom dismissed her.

“I don’t think your grades are good enough,” Clara joked as Sarah stuck her tongue out at her.

“In college, she accidentally started a cult,” Dad announced.

“How does one accidentally start a cult?” Sarah asked.

“It was the 50s,” he said as if that explained things.

“Many women went to college with the intent to find a husband,” her mom explained. “That was Clarabel’s parents’ intentions but not hers.”

“What’s the point of going to just find a spouse? I had brutal classes that I barely survived.”

“They used to offer home economics in college. Some women just signed up for those classes then dropped out when they got engaged,” Dad explained.

“That’s so sad,” Clara replied.

“Times were different,” Mom offered.

“How did she start a cult?”

“Aunt Clarabel signed up for classes like anthropology, geology, and real economics. She was a very good student and challenged her professors. Some people didn’t like that. The women who usually took those classes sat there quietly and just took notes. It wasn’t the professors she upset by asking and answering questions, but some of the male students with fragile egos. They tried to get women banned from certain classes. Sexism was not only tolerated but often encouraged back then,” her dad explained.

“She was opinionated and vocal. That rubbed people the wrong way,” Mom added.

“Some of the male students formed a committee hoping to establish rules of behavior for the female students who were allowed in their classes that basically insisted women sit in silence. Clarabel formed her own committee. Or that was what she thought she was doing. It grew very large, and she was surprised to find herself in charge of people. Some were students, some were staff, some had been students but dropped out for the committee, and some had no relation to the college at all. She was flummoxed. Her followers started recruiting and fundraising. Once she graduated and moved away, it just fell apart and people picked up their lives where they left off. However, it did accomplish the goal Clarabel intended. The other committee dropped their objections due to intimidation of Clarabel’s group.”

“Wow,” Clara reacted. “That is unbelievable. What did she do after graduation?”

“I’m not sure. Something to do with sociology I think,” her dad replied. “Didn’t she teach?”

“Yes, and it was anthropology and archaeology that she was involved in,” her mom stated.

“She doesn’t sound like a loon or a nutcase,” Clara declared.

“There’s a lot more,” Dad insisted. “She started a tribal war.”

“Do go on,” Clara responded not knowing why he even stopped after that announcement, and at the same time her sister asked, “How is that a cult?”

“I think Mom knows more than I do about this one,” he said.

“There’s not much to tell. I don’t recall ever hearing much about it. It’s not something anyone bragged about. Like the cult, it was an accident or rather a misunderstanding is all,” Mom offered.

“No, no, no! Go back to the cult thing. How is that a cult?” Sarah demanded.

“I don’t think it was a real cult, but cultish. Her followers worshipped Clarabel and wanted to all buy some land to live on together. Clarabel didn’t ask for any of that. She just wanted to be a regular student,” Mom explained. “It was the others who went all whacky.”

“So she’s not the loon,” Clara concluded.

“I guess not by today’s standards,” her dad said. “Back then she ruffled a lot of feathers by standing up for herself. That was enough to be considered crazy. Some women at that time were given lobotomies for being outspoken, or depressed, or for even having anxiety.”

“You just sat by and watched stuff like that happen?” Sarah asked.

“How old do you think we are?” Mom asked back while Dad said, “The people who didn’t sit back and watch that happen are the ones others considered crazy.”

“How about that war?” Clara asked.

“Well, Clarabel was in South America doing research or something; I was never quite clear on what she did,” her mom said. “For over a year, she had been living amongst a tribe documenting what she observed. At some point, she moved on to a different tribe who weren’t as accepting of her presence. There came a time when the new tribe was physically violent towards her and I think the other tribe felt obligated to defend her…or maybe they joined in. All I know is it ended up in a full-out tribal war, and Clarabel flew home.”

“That doesn’t make her a nutcase,” Clara stated. “I’m sure the indigenous people felt resentful of her presence. How would you feel if some stranger who looked very different from you in physical appearance and the clothes you wear just showed up to stare at you and take notes? I’m sure she didn’t speak their language either.”

“I’d make friends with them,” Sarah suggested.

“Well, I wouldn’t like it,” Clara retorted.

“I wouldn’t resort to violence. She could’ve been killed,” Dad declared.

“Men in her field were doing the same kind of work,” Mom said. “She fought for her right to get a degree; she wasn’t going to just sit home and stay barefoot in the kitchen.”

“Did she get married?” Sarah asked.

“No,” Mom said.

“Kids?”

“No.”

“That’s sad,” Sarah stated.

“It’s not something she wanted,” Mom explained. “She went on to have an adventurous life of traveling and teaching.”

“Like Indiana Jones,” Dad suggested.

“Who’s that?” Sarah asked. Dad just groaned and rolled his eyes.

“I wish I had known all of this before she died,” Clara stated. “How are our names so similar yet I’m not named after her?”

“I’ve just always liked the name, and your dad agreed as long as we named our next daughter after his grandma if we had one,” her mom explained.

Later when Clara was alone in her old room, she inspected the paper again. If she held it up to the light, she could clearly read the impression of the word “circus” scrawled in the hand of a child, big and clunky. Near the word she could make out what looked like “dwarf.” Did Clarabel write her plans on this paper? Or maybe document it after? She couldn’t tell if her eyes were tricking her, but in the same area, she thought she could make out letters spelling equality and S u h Am ic and a few other letters that she couldn’t get a read of. She traced the letters to spell out South America then went to sleep.

The next day the company that hired her called to say that there had been big changes over night, and they hoped she had a passport because they needed her to go to Santiago for a few months. It wasn’t until months later after she returned that she remembered the paper. She loved living in Chile and hadn’t been thrilled about returning to her hometown. She erased where she had written South America on the paper and wrote Paris in pencil.

Sure enough, the next day she got a call that she was being transferred to Paris. Paris, Texas.

Clara vowed to be more specific from now on.