Marilou is Everywhere by Sarah Elaine Smith

 

Marilou is Everywhere

by Sarah Elaine Smith

Cindy Stoat's mother has taken off and left her with her two older brothers, Virgil and Clinton. Cindy, 14 years old, often feels abandoned and overlooked, and she longs for a life where she and her choices matter.

When Virgil's ex-girlfriend, Jude Vanderjohn, disappears Cindy finds an opportunity for another life. Everyone in town has a theory about Jude and why she disappeared. Some say she ran away, some that she's dead, and others with wild variations in between. Cindy wishes she could disappear as well, into a new life. When she meets Bernadette, Jude's alcoholic mother who is suffering from a memory loss condition, she sees her chance. Inserting herself into Bernadette's life, Cindy takes on Jude's role, becoming her, and leaves home to live with Bernadette.

But Cindy isn't doing this for Bernadette. She goes out of her way to make sure the woman stays drunk and confused in order to stay. She starts wearing Jude's clothes, dyes her hair, and calls Bernadette "mom." Even when Cindy's own mother returns, she keeps up the charade. It's obvious that her own mother is selfish and should never have had children. To her, Cindy is an afterthought. No one seems to care that Cindy is missing from the house.

Then Jude calls Bernadette, and Cindy listens in, hearing Jude's pleas for help. Bernadette, drunk and confused, thinks the call is a bad joke, and Cindy keeps it to herself, not wanting to leave the place where she feels seen and useful. Then the guilt creeps in and overtakes Cindy.

This book never makes Cindy out to be anything other than human, with desires and needs. It never tells the reader that what Cindy is doing is morally wrong. It never asks us to pity these characters. Marilou is Everywhere is full of longing and sadness, a desire to be free, to escape, even to not exist. The prose is poetic and shows us the difference in the way Cindy views the world and her place in it. It is almost otherworldly. I'm giving Mailou is Everywhere 4 stars.