Title: Full of Woe Thanks, as always, to my girl Teanna.
Author: cgb
Rating: PG
Category: Daria/Jane, mild f/f
Spoilers: Well,anything pre the college years. Australian television hasn't made it that
far (might want to bear that in
mind when reading).
Archive: Yep
Summary: "Wednesday
was the day you thought the weekend would never come"
Author's Notes: Written for the Bordello Days of the Week challenge: "Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full
of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe..."
*
The writing on the back of the toilet door says, "God
is the answer" and underneath someone has written "Oh
no! I checked 'D: none of the above.'"
Three years at UCLA and she has yet to fill a cubicle
in the girl's room with her manifesto. This surprises
her. Was she not the unheard voice of dissent and here
she had a captive audience. Not that she needed an
audience.
"It's understandable," Jane says. Her voice travels
down the telephone line in the small hours of the
morning. Jane went to Berlin on an art scholarship but
she spends more time drinking in smoky bars than
painting. "Positioning yourself next to the Christian
Right, either politically or on the back of a toilet
door, is never where you want to be - just ask Andrea
Dworkin."
"What do you think Andrea Dworkin was like in
college?"
"Cute, popular - probably Keg Party Queen or Miss
November in the Pi Alpha Sorority calendar."
"Say something in German."
"Sauerkraut."
She dies her hair black. She concedes she may have
been thinking about the sleek, blackness of Jane's
hair, now shaved within an inch of her scalp in the
photos she sends. It makes her look older.
Daria's room mate tells her she looks like Wednesday
Addams, and she is reminded of a rhyme, "Monday's child
is fair of face, Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe..." She was once
fixated on the idea of Wednesday. Wednesday was the
day it could rain and no one would notice. Wednesday
was the day you thought the weekend would never come.
She decided she was born on a Wednesday. She asked her
mother about it. "Was I born on a Wednesday?"
"Heavens no, Daria! You were born on a Friday."
"Are you sure?"
"Well of course, I'm sure! I'm your mother aren't I?"
"I wasn't going to ask, but now that you bring it up..."
"Daria!"
She found a birth certificate in a box of old papers
in the attic. Friday, 19 April 1983 - "loving and
giving" so the rhyme went. Not for the first time she
wondered whether there'd been a mix up at the
hospital.
"Wednesday Addams never wore glasses," Jane says.
"I'm wearing contact lenses again."
"I see."
"They're for driving. I have a car."
"That excuse didn't work last time."
"Do you ever think your lack of faith in me might
leave lasting psychological damage?"
"It's a small price to pay for a reality check. You'll
thank me one day."
There's no one now. No one who talks like Jane. Aunt
Amy knew this. She told her there would be no
salvation in college - or anywhere really. "You just
get better at ignoring them," she said, and that was
something to think about.
"I gotta go," Jane says. "There's a strange man in our
kitchen and he's sniffing my pizza."
"Remember, you promised me a piece of the Berlin
Wall."
When the line goes dead she thinks about three things:
1. The bill will be huge. Her mother will probably
scream and her father will clutch his tie in that way
he probably never did before she came along.
2. She should have said, "I never had it so good as
when I had you," or something equally trite, however
true. She should have told her that college life isn't
different from anything she knew four years ago. Same
old crowds, same old nightmare. They're older and they
have their own names on the plastic but there are
'Britneys' and 'Kevins' and, wouldn't you know it,
'Quinns' at college. And for some reason she's the
only one who finds this morally outrageous. She
wonders whether there is somewhere you can go and
really be somewhere else, and whether Jane found it.
3. She wonders whether she should have told her what
she' s only come to know now, or whether there's a
time and place for that - whether there will be a day
when she can say, "you know, I was always a little in
love with you."
fin