‘ Marilou Is Everywhere’ tells tale of girl in crisis
What does it mean to be seen? Not just observed — we all let our eyes wander over strange faces every day — but to be recognized as an individual, with one’s own inner landscape that is acknowledged and appreciated? For something that sounds so simple, it’s a feeling that is often elusive. The need to be perceived as a fully realized human being begins to develop in adolescence, as children learn to self- differentiate from their parents and long for their own emerging identity.
In “Marilou Is Everywhere,” the debut novel from Greene County native Sarah Elaine Smith, a 14year- old girl who is nearly invisible to those around her escapes into the life of a far more visible teenage girl and experiences what it is like to be seen for the first time. Once she’s forced to reckon with the consequences of her actions, though, she begins to realize that being acknowledged changes everything — and comes at a price.
Cindy Stoat and her two older brothers live in a rural area of southwestern Pennsylvania. Their mother has disappeared — again — and left them to their own devices, so the three siblings rely on each other for company, money and sustenance. Between their poverty and the absence of any kind of nurturing care, Cindy is desperately lonely and longs for escape.
When Jude, the teenage daughter of a neighbor, goes missing, it alters the course of Cindy’s life. Jude represents everything Cindy wants to be: a girl with a loving mother who lives unapologetically and aspires to leave Greene County herself. When Cindy meets Jude’s mother, Bernadette, she discovers that Bernadette’s mental health has been deteriorating, resulting in memory loss, mood swings and
other related issues.
After Bernadette mistakes Cindy for Jude, Cindy begins to slip into Jude’s life, pretending to be her and feeling, for the first time, a mother’s love — even if it’s coming from a place of mistaken identity. As months pass, Cindy must come to terms with her deception and what it means for everyone involved, especially herself.
Given that the driving plot point of “Marilou Is Everywhere” is a teenage girl lying to a mentally ill woman about her missing daughter, it would be easy to make Cindy a villain. Yet, Ms. Smith writes with such empathy for her protagonist that Cindy becomes a much more tragic figure — a young girl desperate for love and nurturing who is so alienated from the world around her that she’s willing to become an entirely different person to escape it.
Cindy’s parents are absent, and while her two brothers care for her, they are unable to provide Cindy with the kind of unconditional love she so badly needs. She is moving through life without really being noticed by her peers or her family, which makes her longing to become Jude far more tangible. As Bernadette’s “daughter,” she is exposed to a cultural world far beyond anything she’s known: books, music, movies, food — an entire universe of things to discover that Cindy had no idea existed. The portrayal of a young woman learning what the world outside of her small town looks like will be all too familiar to anyone who has ever longed for bigger and better things.
The author’s sensitivity also shines in her description of living in poverty in Western Pennsylvania. Of course, the references locals would expect are present — Sheetz, Giant Eagle, even the Post- Gazette — but these are less important than her detailed rendering of the sheer boredom and ennui that poverty entails in rural areas.
Left with nothing to occupy her time, Cindy’s inner life expands to fill that space with self- loathing and desperation. Ms. Smith’s version of Greene County is achingly real, which in turn makes her characters more substantial — and their actions more understandable.
“Marilou Is Everywhere” is a breathtakingly empathetic portrayal of a young woman in crisis, and an astonishingly assured debut. With lyrical precision, Ms. Smith writes Cindy with humanity and kindness, bringing her to vivid life. “My hurt had no imagination for other people,” Cindy reflects. “Other people … were about an inch deep at best, but I went on for miles.” Cindy’s hunger to have those miles inside of her be recognized is part of the most human of desires: to be known as a person with an inherent worth — a need that countless hearts everywhere carry inside of them.