Jaspur's She Stories

  The roof over her head was precarious. The custody case was over.  From start to finish barely 5 months.  $20,000 in lawyer’s fees and as usual, no one really wins.  For her, there was a cathartic maneuvering in the process that fed her tendency to obsess, to ruminate on the trauma and survival mode of the last 15 years of her life.   She had poured all the details of the marriage from start to finish into a 90-page PDF file.   The timeline of their life together took 3 pages. The supporting evidence of her efforts and his minimizing those efforts on the remaining pages: Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C, and so on….   She had spent every waking, non-working non-sleeping minute for four solid days on all the proof she could muster.    She had sought a lawyer to force him to have more possession of their son recognizing some of her scheduling needs, he in turn counter petitioning for full custody. No one would really read that PDF doc...

  They were best friends.   She, awkward and pale with tousled brown hair and mouth full of large, wayward teeth.   Her bestie, caramel and statuesque with a headful of tiny and tightly wound ebony ringlets.   They had met the previous year, sharing the same class at school.   They shared a love for music and fashion.   Late 1970s funky town and funky prints.   In the small, southern California beach town they lived in she could walk the six blocks from the little house she shared with her mom…to the apartment that her bestie shared with her parents.   This was the era of sleep over parties, dress up fashion shows, and disco dreams. Caramel because she came from a white mom, and a black dad.   The mom was striking, a hint of strawberry in her wavy hair.   Her dad was tall.   SO TALL.   If she stood next to her friend’s dad, the top of her head barely reached his belt line.   It wasn’t hard to believe that had been a bask...