My mother pleads not guilty

I'm in Boston, thinking about my mother at 13, facing the court

May 14, 2023

I sent my mother flowers for Mother’s Day from her favorite neighborhood florist. We’re the kind of women — raised by Grandmother, the original arbiter of exquisite (her favorite word) taste — who love to have fresh flowers around, beautiful things that don’t keep, something bright and beautiful, go ahead, make a fuss. We love a fuss. Frills in abundance. Come what may, we will always balk at a life of plain practicality. There’s more than flowers coming her way, too, little pretty things I picked up on my trip to Japan last month, but I’m late putting them in the mail, always late. We also have that in common. We mean well about the post but time slips away; also, we don’t really mind belated presents when they extend the occasion.

None of these gifts feel sufficient after what she’s given me, of course, the latest and biggest gift being her stories that I wove into mine for Runaway, which I must point out is now out in paperback with new glowing blurbs and such. I’m in Boston at the moment, for a quick drop-in to see my favorite band The Hold Steady play with Dinosaur Jr., flying in after work on Friday and home by lunch on Sunday, another way of giving myself fresh flowers, of sprinkling some temporary joy into the month for no practical reason at all. Boston is where my mother hitchhiked to at 13, after Aspen, her first destination, put its golden summer season to bed. It was in Boston where she rented her first room in a shared house, a little cupboard under the stairs in Cambridge; where she was arrested on suspicion of being a runaway — pleads not guilty — and held in jail while she and a judge played who will blink first. They did. She was found guilty anyway. If you’ve read the book, you know what happens next.

If you haven’t, but you like stories about ungovernable girls and how the world treats them, maybe this is a book for you. Or maybe it’s a book for your own mother, because you are also a late present-giver — your local bookstore is open today. In honor of Megan Shane, the girl my mother became at 13 and had to leave behind before she turned 14, only to resurrect herself again as Alexis months later, here’s part of the court documents an archivist helped me find, and which my friend Emily was good enough to retrieve for me at the courthouse as I researched from afar.

Here’s to all the Hallelujahs, all those real sweet girls who made some not-sweet friends; resurrections all around for those soft girls who went through real hard times, including those who grew up to become mothers themselves, today.

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