Thursday, November 2, 2017

Where Was Brianna Brochu's Mom?

I can't help wondering whether she's as horrified as I am when I Google the measly "five facts"--Brianna's "an actress" who hails from Harwinton, a scenic New England town filled with wide open spaces and big white churches, complete with steeples. Litchfield County isn't as rich as Fairfield, the home of Old Greenwich. But Harwinton's website and the pre-mugshot photos of Brianna, one of her holding a fat pumpkin against a backdrop of fall leaves, intimate prosperity. Brianna's wide grin suggests, with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, Salome with the head of John the Baptist.
That her parents accompanied her to her arraignment, that somebody paid that $1,000 bail (only a thousand? Really?) suggests enough familial concern  to want to keep her out of jail, or at least a hope that the case will evaporate sooner if Brianna's out on bail.
I'm left with the usual unanswerable questions: Did her parents ignore her? Are they racists? Is Brianna trying to get their attention by doing something outrageous, or is she just a girl with a serious personality disorder and sweet, concerned parents? Is the whole incident something to be pinned on Brianna forgetting to take her meds?
We're not likely to get the real answer, but I continue to speculate: did she and her roommate fight over a boy? Or was it just the radiator, which Brianna wanted off (how like a New Englander) and Chennel ("Jazzy") Rowe, from Queens, New York--turned up. I'm siding with Rowe on that radiator!  My New England step-siblings always seemed not to notice when the house was freezing, and never bothered with their sweaters. For a native New Yorker, New England is chilly, in atmosphere as well as attitudes. That certain reticence--with which Brianna seems not to be afflicted--is still there.  
I can't know her motives, but observe the following, as an English teacher: Ms. Brochu writes well for a college freshman--vividly--and the well-constructed sentence that proved her undoing is a model of parallel verbs and the kind of humor you'd tolerate in villains of summer beach reading:

After 1 1/2 month of spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions, rubbing used tampons on her backpack, putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesn't shine, and so much more I can finally say goodbye Jamaican Barbie.

Spitting, putting, rubbing putting (again--repetition--she might have said "sliding" or even "hiding" but I can hardly fault her grammar.  True, there ought to have been a comma before the "I." Her choice of poisons--moldy clam dip, menstrual blood, and excrement--are not what you'd find in a Dan Brown novel, but one of his miscreants poisons an allergic man with peanut dust. 
What a shame Ms. Brochu's imagination took such a dark turn--that a bright girl like her would go to so much effort to harm someone who'd tried to be a good roommate and who appears to have done her no wrong--apart from having been born with a different skin color. 
But really, Ms. Brochu, really? 
It's still so hard for me to believe either that a girl who is educated enough to construct a sentence is that malicious--though of course I ought to know better. I do believe that education, rather than punishment, is the real answer to dealing with folks like Brianna Brochu, but the kind of education I'm thinking of usually devolves to parents--especially moms. Which returns me to my original question: Did Brianna do something of which her mother actually approves?

2 comments:

  1. Yep, Brianna has a mental illness that has been largely hidden until this scandal that landed her in the media. What a shame as she had gone to University on a scholarship. I can expect perhaps she also learned racist attitudes from her parents.

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  2. Is it known that she has a mental illness? That would change the picture quite a bit. One could feel empathy for that--but not for the racist attitudes. Thank you for your comments.

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