Jenny: “Dear God: Make me a bird so I can fly far… far, far away from here. Dear God: Make me a bird so I can fly far… far, far away from here.”
Forrest: God didn’t turn Jenny into a bird that day, instead he had the police say Jenny didn’t have to stay in that house no more.”
I believe I was around six years old the first time I watched Forrest Gump. Since then I have come to watch it millions of times. I have the entire movie memorized, well almost; I still get the shrimp in the wrong order. By the time I was twelve it became my favorite movie, and my favorite character has never changed.
Her name is Jenny Curran, but to Forrest she was just Jenny. She met Forrest on the bus, and they were immediately best friends. They had shown true loyalties to one another, Each teaching the other. When Forrest was being teased by the boys, it was Jenny who stood up for him. It was Jenny who unleashed his running potential. “From that day on if I was goin’ somewhere I was runnnniiinnnggg.” The scene that plays in my head most nights is Forrest and Jenny running through the corn field, with her father in hot pursuit. Soon they reach a patch of high leaves, where Jenny kneels onto the ground and pleads for Forrest to pray with her. Her Dad was a drunk, who abused his daughters. “He was a very lovin’ man. He was always kissin’ an’ touchin’ her and her sisters.” After moving in with her Grandmother, “she would sneak out and come over to my house, just ’cause she said she was scared. Scared of what I don’t know. Maybe it was her Grandma’s dog, he was a mean ole’ dog.” As the lay next to one another you see Jenny laid her arm across Forrest and bury her head in his shoulder. She finally felt safe.
This was the first movie I saw that even touched on child abuse. Although at the time, I may not have understood why Jenny “wasn’t on the bus to go to school” that day, but I knew there was something about her that was being played out in my life.
It was easy for me to picture myself running through the corn, hand and hand with Forrest. It was easy to fall upon the ground and pray for God to take me away. It was easy to have a police officer walk me into my grandmother’s arms. But my life isn’t a movie, and easy was a never used adjective.
The next mention of Jenny and her father comes when she moves into Forrest’s house. They went for a walk and came across the house of her father. Jenny walks to the house and throws her sandals, she then picks up rocks and begins to throw them violently at the house. Most just bounce off the wood, but one was able to crash through the window. If you listen closely you can hear Jenny say “how could you do this?!” Jenny then falls to the ground in shambles. “Sometimes there just arn’t enough rocks”
I would like to think of the shattered window as a broken silence. Jenny didn’t have to say it, Forrest may not have been a very “smart man”, but he understood Jenny’s feelings towards her father. I wonder sometimes if Forrest wasn’t meant to symbolize society, and its blind eye to symptoms of abuse.
There were clues: Jenny’s absence on the bus.
Or absence from a sleep over.
Jenny’s torn sleeve on her dress.
Or a tear down a nightgown.
Running away when her father wakes up.
Or never falling asleep with him near.
Pleading desperately for God to take her away.
Or never understanding why it took Him so long.
Sneaking over to Forrest’s to sleep.
Or longing for a safe place.
Throwing rocks at her father’s house.
Or breaking the silence with written words.
Clues no one thought to look for.
“Her dream had come true. She was a folk singer.” She is my idol, the one girl I have always wanted to be. She may have been addicted to heroin and coke; she may have contemplated suicide, she may have died from AIDS… but those were based on the choices she made. Not the choice of the police who took her away from her abuser, “they said Jenny didn’t have to stay in that house no more.”
They rescued her, and that was something I could only dream of.
As Always,
K.U.
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