Allegedly
By: Tiffany D. Jackson / Narrated By: Bahni Turpin
Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
Not a Did She/Didn’t She—More like a young girl trying to survive, trying to live Hope in a brutal world…
Ripped from the headlines, this story by author Tiffany D. Jackson gives us a What Might’ve Happened when a God-fearing mom, babysitting for an acquaintance one night, is away for a bit, and her young (Here 9-years old) daughter beats a baby and throws it against a wall, killing it. That the baby is white, and the daughter, here Mary B. Addison is Black, only adds kerosene to an already hot fire.
The story opens with Mary just about to turn 16, living in a group home and amongst other (deadly and somewhat sociopathic) teens accused of grisly crimes. She killed the baby, went into the system, and now looks forward to POSSibly getting out and going onto life as an ex-con at her young age. She’s never cared before, and we see that Mary has spent years quite simply NOT speaking, the truth, lies, whatEVER: She’s just not talking.
Life throws a monkey wrench into the works when she discovers that she’s pregnant, and tho’ she’s terribly afraid, Ted, the father of the baby, loves her and wants to not only be there for the baby but be there for her too, starting the family they’ve both wanted but have been too miserable within the system to really dare dream of. Unfortunately for them both, there’s no way the system will allow a baby-killer to keep her own baby.
And so begins a new journey for Mary, where she has to speak her truth about what went on that horrible night so many years ago. That she and her own mom have a twisted relationship comes into play: A mom who kept “having days”—days where Mom went off her meds and horrible things happened to Mary—, but who now is a married woman, living the life, visiting her daughter for 15 minutes every other week, rain or shine, but NEVER copping to what really happened that night. As Mary tells us, Mom, if she mentions it all, only says that the Devil was always in Mary, -or- that Mom wouldn’t last a night in jail, Mary would get so little time comparatively.
But Mary really wants this baby she and Ted have dubbed “Bean” from the sonogram, and she’ll do what it takes to keep it. Even if that means addressing the evils that have been done to her, upending all that Society has written about her in the interim—that she’s a soulless killer, that she’s heartless and remorseless. At times, a writer here or there have addressed her childhood, that she and Mom got their relationship crossed and Mary has taken the role of caretaker to her mother, but for the most part, Mary has been demonized.
Through it all, Mary is mad smart, wants to take the SATs to get into college so that she might better herself, have a chance in the life to come, and Ted is ultra supportive… until his life, his choices, make things topsy turvy in the story, leaving Mary to decide what really is Love? And also through it all is life in the group home, with savagery abounding, beatings galore, and a girl out to kill her if she doesn’t get out, get safe soon. Her roommate is the New Girl, and Mary learns more about this seemingly weepy yet intelligent frail girl as the story unfolds, and we the listeners don’t really know what all else is coming around the pike as scene follows scene.
Bahni Turpin has got to be one of the most AWEsome narrators there is. Whether she’s doing YA or straight adult, horror or even nonfiction, Turpin just adds so much to already jolly good Listens. Here she gives us the increasingly distraught manipulative Mom to add to Mary’s already formidable woes in the way of each teen-aged girl that wants only the very worst for Mary (As she’s a bit of a celebrity for her well-known and much-documented crime—There will even be a Lifetime movie of her depraved act). Turpin manages Black and Hispanic, the low-down along with the educated and well-heeled, the uncaring along with those who care so very, very much.
All goes along at a blistering pace… until we get to the end, where Jackson adds a twist that’s supposed to come Outta Nowhere, and which throws the whole book into the category of the old-fashioned Penny Dreadful. Boooooo! I assuuuuume it’s meant to completely floor and unhinge the listener, but it’s so abrupt that it just seems like a cheap literary device where a good and well-written ending would’ve been soooo much more solid a way to land.
Still, come in for a story of Society’s depraved indifference, stay for Turpin’s stunning performance, and try to put the unfortunate choice of endings behind you when you leave this, on the whole, great audiobook. Truly, boooooo. But! Mary’s story woulda been memorable no matter what!
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