Wednesday, September 30, 2009
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Monday, September 21, 2009
Notes on Blind
I wrote this story based on a second-hand story I heard and have no idea how much of it (or if in fact any of it) is really true.
Blind
Blind
My husband Christopher was once a financial planner. Even though he couldn't balance our budget, his clients trusted him implicitly and he made them feel secure. In exchange they paid him very well. We had a nice life then, except for the occasional blip on the radar screen of our relationship - nothing that couldn't be solved with a few soft words or a trip to the bedroom. Usually little tiffs about money. My yoga studio was just starting to make a profit, and I had recently decorated it in a lovely minimalist way, in neutral tones with simple prints and accents like straw-coloured silk cushions and clay flowerpots. At last, I was in control of my working life and poured my heart and soul into making it succeed.
When we first met, I fell hard for Christopher right away, although I wouldn't call it love. I'd never been with a man who was prettier than I was, but after a while I got used to it, and it didn't bother me so much. I was recovering from a broken heart and needed something to help me move on. If it wasn't love, it was good enough, and when he asked me to marry him I jumped at the chance, knowing that it might be my last.
Things started out so well. I was working steadily and Christopher was patiently climbing up the ladder in his department. Then, without any warning, one overcast winter afternoon in year five, he just upped and left his desk in the gray cubicle at the bank, handed in his resignation, and came home and told me he wanted to start an interior design business.
He has always loved mixing and matching, and has a real eye for colour, texture, and shape, but the idea of turning a hobby into a business wasn't something we had ever discussed. I thought the stress of his job was becoming too much and perhaps he would take a few months off over the spring and summer to relax, do a project or two, and get the idea out of his system. I didn't believe he could be serious. But once he had a few clients, (thanks to my sister who has a lot of rich friends), he began to draw up plans, ordering catalogues and scouting vintage furniture shops, turning our empty workshop into a kind of makeshift studio with all of his sketches pinned to the wall. After spending a lot of time and money on all of this preparation, and really doing quite a nice job of it, he called each client in turn and apologized, saying he wasn't well and wouldn't be able to design their living spaces after all. Then he went to bed.
He's been home now for almost a year. In the beginning, he just slept for most of the day, then got up but stayed in his pajamas, watching Oprah and whatever came on afterwards, didn't even shower or shave most of the time. He didn't and doesn't want to have sex with me anymore either. Our sex life was the best thing about our relationship. And now he has changed his mind again and has decided to take a course in jewellery design. I'm trying to support the idea, because I'm happy that anything interests him at all, but I have to say this life I have with him at the moment feels a bit odd and sometimes (lots of times) unfair. For one thing, I've had to close my studio location downtown and start running my classes out of the house. Also, with Christopher out of work, and for who knows how long, I have to pay for everything myself. There is just no other cash coming in.
Yoga clients coming to the house isn't so bad. I've got an area for them in the workshop, now that it's heated. And there's quite a lot of space available there. Yes, the new studio is working out, but still, it's not always easy to get Christopher and the trail of mess he leaves wherever he goes, out of sight. At least he's getting dressed these days, so it's not as though I have to hide him, the way I did in the beginning.
Most afternoons I give him some money so he can go to the movies. Apparently he's seeing a lot of them. He never used to go by himself, but everything is different now. I try not to think about where he might be if he's not at the movies. My imagination just shuts down. What's the matter with seeing a movie by yourself, really? He's smoking now too and I have to pay for his cigarettes. I try to keep the incense burning when I know people are coming over, and that gets rid of most of it, but it's not something I like.
I wish we could talk about the smoking, and the money problem and why he is suddenly going to movies in the afternoon alone, sometimes two of them, but we can't. I wish I could ask him why he doesn't want to sleep with me. The one time I tried he started to cry, and even though he didn't say anything, I thought it was better to wait for him to come around by himself rather than push. Wouldn't you? At this very moment, Christopher is sitting at the kitchen table, trying to make a pair of earrings from some bits and pieces of old jewellery I've given him to practice on, and he seems so peaceful.
The important thing is that right now he needs my support. I know that. I can't think about myself. It would be selfish, wouldn't it? Later, when he's feeling better. More himself.
My husband Christopher was once a financial planner. Even though he couldn't balance our budget, his clients trusted him implicitly and he made them feel secure. In exchange they paid him very well. We had a nice life then, except for the occasional blip on the radar screen of our relationship - nothing that couldn't be solved with a few soft words or a trip to the bedroom. Usually little tiffs about money. My yoga studio was just starting to make a profit, and I had recently decorated it in a lovely minimalist way, in neutral tones with simple prints and accents like straw-coloured silk cushions and clay flowerpots. At last, I was in control of my working life and poured my heart and soul into making it succeed.
When we first met, I fell hard for Christopher right away, although I wouldn't call it love. I'd never been with a man who was prettier than I was, but after a while I got used to it, and it didn't bother me so much. I was recovering from a broken heart and needed something to help me move on. If it wasn't love, it was good enough, and when he asked me to marry him I jumped at the chance, knowing that it might be my last.
Things started out so well. I was working steadily and Christopher was patiently climbing up the ladder in his department. Then, without any warning, one overcast winter afternoon in year five, he just upped and left his desk in the gray cubicle at the bank, handed in his resignation, and came home and told me he wanted to start an interior design business.
He has always loved mixing and matching, and has a real eye for colour, texture, and shape, but the idea of turning a hobby into a business wasn't something we had ever discussed. I thought the stress of his job was becoming too much and perhaps he would take a few months off over the spring and summer to relax, do a project or two, and get the idea out of his system. I didn't believe he could be serious. But once he had a few clients, (thanks to my sister who has a lot of rich friends), he began to draw up plans, ordering catalogues and scouting vintage furniture shops, turning our empty workshop into a kind of makeshift studio with all of his sketches pinned to the wall. After spending a lot of time and money on all of this preparation, and really doing quite a nice job of it, he called each client in turn and apologized, saying he wasn't well and wouldn't be able to design their living spaces after all. Then he went to bed.
He's been home now for almost a year. In the beginning, he just slept for most of the day, then got up but stayed in his pajamas, watching Oprah and whatever came on afterwards, didn't even shower or shave most of the time. He didn't and doesn't want to have sex with me anymore either. Our sex life was the best thing about our relationship. And now he has changed his mind again and has decided to take a course in jewellery design. I'm trying to support the idea, because I'm happy that anything interests him at all, but I have to say this life I have with him at the moment feels a bit odd and sometimes (lots of times) unfair. For one thing, I've had to close my studio location downtown and start running my classes out of the house. Also, with Christopher out of work, and for who knows how long, I have to pay for everything myself. There is just no other cash coming in.
Yoga clients coming to the house isn't so bad. I've got an area for them in the workshop, now that it's heated. And there's quite a lot of space available there. Yes, the new studio is working out, but still, it's not always easy to get Christopher and the trail of mess he leaves wherever he goes, out of sight. At least he's getting dressed these days, so it's not as though I have to hide him, the way I did in the beginning.
Most afternoons I give him some money so he can go to the movies. Apparently he's seeing a lot of them. He never used to go by himself, but everything is different now. I try not to think about where he might be if he's not at the movies. My imagination just shuts down. What's the matter with seeing a movie by yourself, really? He's smoking now too and I have to pay for his cigarettes. I try to keep the incense burning when I know people are coming over, and that gets rid of most of it, but it's not something I like.
I wish we could talk about the smoking, and the money problem and why he is suddenly going to movies in the afternoon alone, sometimes two of them, but we can't. I wish I could ask him why he doesn't want to sleep with me. The one time I tried he started to cry, and even though he didn't say anything, I thought it was better to wait for him to come around by himself rather than push. Wouldn't you? At this very moment, Christopher is sitting at the kitchen table, trying to make a pair of earrings from some bits and pieces of old jewellery I've given him to practice on, and he seems so peaceful.
The important thing is that right now he needs my support. I know that. I can't think about myself. It would be selfish, wouldn't it? Later, when he's feeling better. More himself.
Notes on Losing Susie
One year when I was separated from my then-husband I had a student in my class who needed a home and I took her in. I fell in love with her, or at least I thought I did, but maybe I just needed to fill my life up somehow, I really don't know anymore. I think we loved each other for "a reason and a season" - and then it was over. The first time I'd lost someone to Jesus.
Losing Susie
Losing Suzie
When I get home Suzie is gone. There is nothing left - no note, no clothing or books, no scent, no trace that she has ever been here at all. I can hardly get my breath and feel like someone has cut out a piece of me and left the raw bits dangling like severed nerves. I grab the teapot and some tea, clumsily putting the water on the stove to boil, nearly catching the sleeve of my dress on the red-hot burner, and then concentrate on breathing, slowing down my heartbeat. I look at the clock and see it’s already 9:00 pm. and wonder where my "almost" daughter will sleep tonight.
Sitting down at the kitchen table and fingering the little glass vase full of tiny paper hearts she made for me, I put my head in my hands and cry. Softly at first and then huge gulping sobs that no one can hear, but I cry them anyway until I can't cry anymore. Then I go into her room, fall onto the stripped bed and try to rock myself to sleep. But sleep doesn't come and all I can think about is finally losing Suzie, wondering what I can do to find her or even if I should try. I remember this room the way it was only yesterday, with the pink bedspread and white frilly curtains, the bulletin board crowded with pictures and sketches, some of them of me. The tiny clothes hung in the closet by colour and type. The origami mobiles hanging from the ceiling.
********
I remember being enchanted with Suzie from the first day she came into my classroom. I can still see her standing at my desk behind her uncle while 20 pairs of eyes stared at the both of them while he pleaded with me to accept her into the class, despite the fact that she wasn’t yet 18 and this was an adult class.
She was all in pink, wearing clothes and accessories by Hello Kitty, clothes that my own daughter had worn when she was a little girl. A fuzzy pink hat with floppy ears, a Hello Kitty ring, and a little plastic purse that dangled from her fingers, the silly face of Kitty smiling at my group of middle-aged immigrants and refugees. Mevla, from Bosnia, who always took control in these situations, despite the fact that she couldn’t speak much English yet, said. “Sit. Eat. What you name?”as she held out a piece of her famous pita that we all snacked on every day at noon.
“Suzie,” she said, smiling that smile that would light up our hearts and our dreary portable for the next six months.
*******
I think about our first Christmas together, when I took her to my Mom's to celebrate the day with my family. She had never had a Christmas tree or gifts before, except for that one perfect day she had told me about when she was 12, her mother and father and she were together - before her father would be sentenced to death for dealing heroin in China, for just that one day, before her mother hung herself, before she would go to live with her aging grandparents. That Christmas was Suzie's second perfect day, she said. And I remember her captivating everyone who was there - my grown daughter, my brothers, my sisters, their husbands, wives and girlfriends - my nieces and nephews and especially my mother who took special pains to make Suzie feel at home, buying and wrapping gifts for her and placing the origami basket of flowers that Suxie had made in the middle of the dining room table surrounded by more traditional offerings - turkey, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.
"I like when your mother calls me 'honey,'" she told me later, smiling her sweet smile. "It's good."
********
I remember the afternoon she stayed after school to help me with the planting of more flowers and herbs that we kept on the windowsills. Her pretty fingers tamping the soil down and watering the tiny shoots with such care. Looking up at me and smiling that smile that could break your heart or make it sing.
"You always look so happy, Suzie," I told her.
She fixed me with a look I hadn't seen before and said, "You think so?"
"Yes, I do. You are the happiest girl I've ever met."
With that she put the little clay pot she was holding down on a desk, and put her head in her hands.
"I need you to help me," she'd cried.
"I can't live there anymore. They hate me."
I had put my arm around her while she cried like a baby until she got it all out and we rocked together like that for a long time. And then I invited her to come and stay with me for awhile, calling her family to see what they thought. I told them nothing about what she had told me - the aunt with the gambling problem who had spent all the money that had been sent for her care, the fighting between them, the feeling she had that she was in the way and not wanted, especially now that the money was gone, how they were supposed to adopt her and now didn't want to. No, I told them only that I would be happy to have her stay with me for a little while so she could improve her English and then be able to get into high school sooner rather than later.
There was no problem at all, and she arrived the same night with her bags, her uncle quickly emptying the car of everything she owned.
**********
I remember those first few days after she came to stay. How happy I was to have her with me, especially then when I was on my own again after separating from my husband a few months earlier. How suddenly the house was alive again with all the things I did't even realize I'd missed. How with every day that went by I fell more in love with her, even as my family and friends wondered what it was all about. She was the daughter I'd had too soon, who left too soon. And she was mine and my life was full.
The way she said she had never talked about feelings and when I asked her to tell me more about herself or how she felt about her family or being with me, leaving home or not having many friends her age, she'd shut down like a trap door and ask if she could go and study. How she didn't eat much and sometimes would exercise behind the closed door of her room until she fell asleep on the floor. How much time she spent in the bathroom. How when I asked her about it she didn't want to talk. How I'd arranged for her to see a doctor and a therapist and how I felt when they told me she was anorexic. How I wanted to make her happy and healthy and whole again.
"I'm not used to talking about those things, like feelings," she'd said. "No one asked me."
***********
How when she was ready to go to high school, how proud I had felt to meet with her teachers and some of her new friends. How I daydreamed about adopting her and then began to look into it. How she brought me little gifts and left them on the kitchen table as a surprise. How she loved to braid my hair and tell me she thought I was beautiful. And the day she gave me the bottle of a hundred tiny red paper hearts for Valentine's Day - so all my wishes would come true. How she eventually let me touch her without recoiling. And sometimes hugged me for no reason at all.
How happy she was at school, joining the volleyball team and taking art classes where she painted beautiful pictures that we put on the fridge and then sometimes had framed. How she loved mythology and thought the Greek gods and goddesses were the most amazing people she'd ever heard about. How she wished they were real.
How she finally made a best friend whose name was Jen. How excited she was to have her first sleepover at a girlfriend's house. How much she loved Jen's family and their dogs and the way they were with each other. How she told me Jen's father was a minister and had asked her to come to church.
How sometimes she'd seem to have disappeared even though she was right in front of me, her eyes narrowing and when I asked what was wrong she'd say "Nothing."
********
How jealous I was of Jen and her family, especially when they started coming by on Sunday mornings to take Suzie to church. And then during the week for meetings of the youth group. How she asked me to make one of my caramel apple pies to take to one of their meetings, holding it aloft like a sacred host, doing a little pirouette and telling me it would be the best thing anyone ever brought. Kissing me goodbye and saying she'd be staying over at Jen's and see me after school the next day.
How lonely I was when she was away.
********
I wanted to keep her for myself, tell her everything that was wrong with this family roping her into their church, how she was becoming a religious snob, not wanting to make friends or spend time with people who were not Christians. The feeling I had that Jen’s family was asking her about me and giving me a negative review because I wasn’t religious.
I tried to avoid the topic but it sat there like a smoldering fire between us, even in our almost perfect moments. I remembered how she began to want to say grace before meals while I looked at her and said, "What would you think if I prayed to Athena and Zeus before every meal?" and how she'd laughed.
I remember how I'd worried so much about her for so many reasons and was sad when summer came and she began to wear sleeveless tops that showed the cigarette burns on her arms, brutal mementos of her time in a Chinese gang after she’d spiralled out of control and her grandparents couldn’t help her or didn’t know how to. How cute she looked when she said. “I was a bad girl, you know” after telling me about the gang, the hurting of other people, the drugs, the loose sex and the boyfriends who beat her. It was almost impossible to believe those things but I knew they were true.
I remember hearing that she’d asked Mevla from school to give her back the Hello Kitty ring because she was a Christian now and Mevla was a Muslim and it wasn’t good. That Jen’s father had said she should only have Christian people in her life.
And how all of my worry came out as anger and we started to fight. How in the heat of our last argument, I had said "If the church makes you so happy, maybe you should go and live with someone from the church."
How she'd looked at me with her eyes half-closed and said “Maybe I will.” Then grabbed her purse and slammed the door.
And now I am crying for myself, for her, for the way the world is sometimes. For the children who are lost and the parents who can’t keep going, for the love and the heartbreak and the misunderstandings ... knowing that Suzie is truly and finally lost to me.
When I get home Suzie is gone. There is nothing left - no note, no clothing or books, no scent, no trace that she has ever been here at all. I can hardly get my breath and feel like someone has cut out a piece of me and left the raw bits dangling like severed nerves. I grab the teapot and some tea, clumsily putting the water on the stove to boil, nearly catching the sleeve of my dress on the red-hot burner, and then concentrate on breathing, slowing down my heartbeat. I look at the clock and see it’s already 9:00 pm. and wonder where my "almost" daughter will sleep tonight.
Sitting down at the kitchen table and fingering the little glass vase full of tiny paper hearts she made for me, I put my head in my hands and cry. Softly at first and then huge gulping sobs that no one can hear, but I cry them anyway until I can't cry anymore. Then I go into her room, fall onto the stripped bed and try to rock myself to sleep. But sleep doesn't come and all I can think about is finally losing Suzie, wondering what I can do to find her or even if I should try. I remember this room the way it was only yesterday, with the pink bedspread and white frilly curtains, the bulletin board crowded with pictures and sketches, some of them of me. The tiny clothes hung in the closet by colour and type. The origami mobiles hanging from the ceiling.
********
I remember being enchanted with Suzie from the first day she came into my classroom. I can still see her standing at my desk behind her uncle while 20 pairs of eyes stared at the both of them while he pleaded with me to accept her into the class, despite the fact that she wasn’t yet 18 and this was an adult class.
She was all in pink, wearing clothes and accessories by Hello Kitty, clothes that my own daughter had worn when she was a little girl. A fuzzy pink hat with floppy ears, a Hello Kitty ring, and a little plastic purse that dangled from her fingers, the silly face of Kitty smiling at my group of middle-aged immigrants and refugees. Mevla, from Bosnia, who always took control in these situations, despite the fact that she couldn’t speak much English yet, said. “Sit. Eat. What you name?”as she held out a piece of her famous pita that we all snacked on every day at noon.
“Suzie,” she said, smiling that smile that would light up our hearts and our dreary portable for the next six months.
*******
I think about our first Christmas together, when I took her to my Mom's to celebrate the day with my family. She had never had a Christmas tree or gifts before, except for that one perfect day she had told me about when she was 12, her mother and father and she were together - before her father would be sentenced to death for dealing heroin in China, for just that one day, before her mother hung herself, before she would go to live with her aging grandparents. That Christmas was Suzie's second perfect day, she said. And I remember her captivating everyone who was there - my grown daughter, my brothers, my sisters, their husbands, wives and girlfriends - my nieces and nephews and especially my mother who took special pains to make Suzie feel at home, buying and wrapping gifts for her and placing the origami basket of flowers that Suxie had made in the middle of the dining room table surrounded by more traditional offerings - turkey, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.
"I like when your mother calls me 'honey,'" she told me later, smiling her sweet smile. "It's good."
********
I remember the afternoon she stayed after school to help me with the planting of more flowers and herbs that we kept on the windowsills. Her pretty fingers tamping the soil down and watering the tiny shoots with such care. Looking up at me and smiling that smile that could break your heart or make it sing.
"You always look so happy, Suzie," I told her.
She fixed me with a look I hadn't seen before and said, "You think so?"
"Yes, I do. You are the happiest girl I've ever met."
With that she put the little clay pot she was holding down on a desk, and put her head in her hands.
"I need you to help me," she'd cried.
"I can't live there anymore. They hate me."
I had put my arm around her while she cried like a baby until she got it all out and we rocked together like that for a long time. And then I invited her to come and stay with me for awhile, calling her family to see what they thought. I told them nothing about what she had told me - the aunt with the gambling problem who had spent all the money that had been sent for her care, the fighting between them, the feeling she had that she was in the way and not wanted, especially now that the money was gone, how they were supposed to adopt her and now didn't want to. No, I told them only that I would be happy to have her stay with me for a little while so she could improve her English and then be able to get into high school sooner rather than later.
There was no problem at all, and she arrived the same night with her bags, her uncle quickly emptying the car of everything she owned.
**********
I remember those first few days after she came to stay. How happy I was to have her with me, especially then when I was on my own again after separating from my husband a few months earlier. How suddenly the house was alive again with all the things I did't even realize I'd missed. How with every day that went by I fell more in love with her, even as my family and friends wondered what it was all about. She was the daughter I'd had too soon, who left too soon. And she was mine and my life was full.
The way she said she had never talked about feelings and when I asked her to tell me more about herself or how she felt about her family or being with me, leaving home or not having many friends her age, she'd shut down like a trap door and ask if she could go and study. How she didn't eat much and sometimes would exercise behind the closed door of her room until she fell asleep on the floor. How much time she spent in the bathroom. How when I asked her about it she didn't want to talk. How I'd arranged for her to see a doctor and a therapist and how I felt when they told me she was anorexic. How I wanted to make her happy and healthy and whole again.
"I'm not used to talking about those things, like feelings," she'd said. "No one asked me."
***********
How when she was ready to go to high school, how proud I had felt to meet with her teachers and some of her new friends. How I daydreamed about adopting her and then began to look into it. How she brought me little gifts and left them on the kitchen table as a surprise. How she loved to braid my hair and tell me she thought I was beautiful. And the day she gave me the bottle of a hundred tiny red paper hearts for Valentine's Day - so all my wishes would come true. How she eventually let me touch her without recoiling. And sometimes hugged me for no reason at all.
How happy she was at school, joining the volleyball team and taking art classes where she painted beautiful pictures that we put on the fridge and then sometimes had framed. How she loved mythology and thought the Greek gods and goddesses were the most amazing people she'd ever heard about. How she wished they were real.
How she finally made a best friend whose name was Jen. How excited she was to have her first sleepover at a girlfriend's house. How much she loved Jen's family and their dogs and the way they were with each other. How she told me Jen's father was a minister and had asked her to come to church.
How sometimes she'd seem to have disappeared even though she was right in front of me, her eyes narrowing and when I asked what was wrong she'd say "Nothing."
********
How jealous I was of Jen and her family, especially when they started coming by on Sunday mornings to take Suzie to church. And then during the week for meetings of the youth group. How she asked me to make one of my caramel apple pies to take to one of their meetings, holding it aloft like a sacred host, doing a little pirouette and telling me it would be the best thing anyone ever brought. Kissing me goodbye and saying she'd be staying over at Jen's and see me after school the next day.
How lonely I was when she was away.
********
I wanted to keep her for myself, tell her everything that was wrong with this family roping her into their church, how she was becoming a religious snob, not wanting to make friends or spend time with people who were not Christians. The feeling I had that Jen’s family was asking her about me and giving me a negative review because I wasn’t religious.
I tried to avoid the topic but it sat there like a smoldering fire between us, even in our almost perfect moments. I remembered how she began to want to say grace before meals while I looked at her and said, "What would you think if I prayed to Athena and Zeus before every meal?" and how she'd laughed.
I remember how I'd worried so much about her for so many reasons and was sad when summer came and she began to wear sleeveless tops that showed the cigarette burns on her arms, brutal mementos of her time in a Chinese gang after she’d spiralled out of control and her grandparents couldn’t help her or didn’t know how to. How cute she looked when she said. “I was a bad girl, you know” after telling me about the gang, the hurting of other people, the drugs, the loose sex and the boyfriends who beat her. It was almost impossible to believe those things but I knew they were true.
I remember hearing that she’d asked Mevla from school to give her back the Hello Kitty ring because she was a Christian now and Mevla was a Muslim and it wasn’t good. That Jen’s father had said she should only have Christian people in her life.
And how all of my worry came out as anger and we started to fight. How in the heat of our last argument, I had said "If the church makes you so happy, maybe you should go and live with someone from the church."
How she'd looked at me with her eyes half-closed and said “Maybe I will.” Then grabbed her purse and slammed the door.
And now I am crying for myself, for her, for the way the world is sometimes. For the children who are lost and the parents who can’t keep going, for the love and the heartbreak and the misunderstandings ... knowing that Suzie is truly and finally lost to me.
Notes on Loving Katya
This is a (mostly) true story about the friendship between two women in their 50s who are both married to younger men they are beginning to have serious doubts about. The story was published twice, once in Cahoots Magazine, Canada and once in Green Silk Journal(US), where it took First Prize in an international writing competition.
Loving Katya
Loving Katya,
When I arrive, Katya is in labour, softly moaning to herself while rocking back and forth on the edge of the hospital bed. Hovering behind her, Mischa is smiling at me in welcome, thankful that someone else is here. His nervous hand gestures and silence tell me he isn't at all sure what he should be doing.
I give him a big smile and hello and then move towards the bed to give Katya a gentler hug and kiss and then smooth her forehead a little bit, whispering encouragement into her ear. Her white/blond hair is fanned across the pillow and starting to curl from perspiration. She clasps my forearm with more strength than I knew she had, but it's fine. We've both been working out since we turned fifty, and my arm is now as strong as her hold on it.
I stand by the bed feeling a little foolish about the things I've brought along. Little bags and baskets of pleasures that I thought might make things easier for her--hand lotion, a hot pack, some crystals from Crabtree and Evelyn that work as smelling salts, a bit of chocolate and a board game. A board game? What was I thinking? I can see it's too late for any of that, but I hold up these treasures and she smiles anyway, not wanting me to feel bad. Mischa says she's been in labour for hours and it isn't getting any easier. I wish she'd called me earlier, but she wouldn't have called at all unless I'd insisted. She is someone who could do this entirely alone if she had to and then remember it as easy.
I look around the room--what they now call a birthing room--and notice the pine furniture and soft cream and maroon wallpaper, a rocking chair, and a small sofa where I sit down and put the bags on the floor. Music is playing from an old ghetto blaster that they brought with them, softening the harshness of the light coming through the window. Still, the classical music creates an odd backdrop to primitive sounds that are getting louder now, making me want to lie down on the bed with her and hold her while she screams.
But I can't do any of that now. She is Mischa's wife, and this is going to be his baby and his responsibility. I can't take that away from him today of all days. At the best of times he seems so childish, so helpless, so dependent on Katya for everything in his life that I often overcompensate, doing things for her that make her feel as though she's loved and cared for, because I know he either can't or won't. And she does the same for me, bringing little gifts and making tea from time to time when things at home are off kilter and I've sobbed the details into the phone.
Watching Mischa now I worry that he won't be up to helping her through the labour or dealing with the baby once they get home, and I feel a lump forming in my throat. All I can do now is try to find a balance between what he is not doing and taking over completely while we wait for the baby who will be named after me--Julia.
Katya says Mischa was a prodigy as a child-a mathematical genius who was working on his Ph. D. at 15 or 16 with people who were 15 or 20 years older than he was. I've seen the photographs of him with his old schoolmates who all look like grandfathers now, while at 40 he is still young and vibrant. He himself doesn't see anything odd in this age difference, but Katya and I think it's sweet if not a little bit sad, too. This is her third marriage. I'm on my second.
My husband J. C. (Juan Carlos) came to this country as a political refugee fleeing from a dictatorship on the other side of the world and met me when I was teaching at the Centre for Victims of Torture, where he spent his time learning English among other exiles who spoke the same language but had other things in common, too. We got married while he was in the middle of his refugee claim, something I suggested myself even though he said he "didn't want to mix things."
I think our husbands loved us when we met them, but they were also ripe for us and our own motivations, for marrying them went beyond love. In some ways, they are our little coups in a world that is so focused on youth and beauty. They make us feel both young and victorious and come from cultures that revere older women. Our accomplished older daughters and our May/December marriages are something we have in common that we like to talk about. But in most other ways, Katya and I are totally different.
We first met when already fluent, but a perfectionist, she registered as a student in my English as a Second Language class after arriving here from Moscow. I liked her right away, but as I began to find out more about her, I was occasionally intimated by all of her successes which made mine feel so small. Not that she bragged about them because she didn't, but in everyday conversation it turned out that she was a former athlete (cross-country skiing--something she refuses to do now even for fun, remembering all those years as a special kind of torture) as well as an aerospace engineer who had designed the interiors of rockets as part of the Russian space program. None of my friends is a rocket scientist and despite my own advanced degrees, success as a journalist and now as a teacher, these accomplishments of hers made me feel like I hadn't done much in the same time period.
Sometimes we love to say we are 50 in that way that Mick Jagger is 60--much younger and cooler than that number would suggest--and our husbands go right along with it. But the truth is we worry about aging long before they do, keeping them interested, and whether or not our little jokes about our "trophy boys" are pathetic attempts to hang on to our fantasies about ourselves before they all blow up.
Over the last few years we've become very close, our husbands have become friends, and we spend a lot of time together. She and Mischa are like family to us now with their own families so far away and ours scattered across the country, only seeing them for Christmas, funerals, or weddings.
***
When I hear another louder scream and see Mischa's look of helplessness mixed with tiny beads of sweat forming on his upper lip, I approach the bed again and suggest he go out for a smoke, maybe pick up a coffee in the cafeteria on the way out, and take a break. Poor Katya is beyond noticing the change of guard, but she looks happy to see me as I rock and kiss her, something like a smile forming through all the pain and tiredness. She touches me lightly and fleetingly; but when I put a hand on her brow, pushing the damp hair away and whispering in the same way I do when I talk to babies and kittens, she waves it away as though it's a fly and I try not to take offense.
When the nurses come in they are perky and efficient, chattering on about this and that as though this is nothing unusual--giving birth at this age in a new country with a child/man by your side and a new best friend. For them it's routine, and if they looked any less cheerful we'd think something was wrong. At the same time, they are annoying, and I want them to leave. The doctor is nowhere to be seen on this Sunday afternoon, but will eventually be here to take a look, see how much she's dilated, whether things are going well or not, whatever it is they do in these situations. I remember my own labour as a private thing and really can't remember seeing the doctor until moments before my own daughter was born.
I am lulled into a trance by the music and the nurses' chatter, and now that they have taken over, I am not entirely sure what to do with myself. I'm part of this, but I'm not; I think she wants me here, but maybe she's thought better of it now and doesn't. Finally, Mischa returns and perhaps sensing how I feel asks me if I want to videotape the rest of the labour. This is something I'm comfortable with, video and photography being such a huge part of my life, so I am relieved to be doing something I feel confident about as I start playing with all the little buttons and dials. I'm not familiar with his equipment, the latest state-of-the-art as always (although everything else they have seems old and used). But that's fine because it gives us something to talk about as well as a new focus, and I begin to film the scene in front of me. Mischa timidly waving, nurses bustling about while turning to smile into the camera, all to a soundtrack of the classical music mixed in with the occasional ambulance coming or going outside, their sirens working into a crescendo and then falling away.
When the doctor finally arrives, I find him young and arrogant, comfortably making himself the star of this drama. A little harmless flirting with the nurses, a casual nod towards me, then speaking to my two friends as though they are kindergarten children in the way that people do with people whose first language is not theirs. Where they come from, being a doctor isn't any more important than being a clerk, so I try to imagine what they are making of his quasi-rock-star status here, watching the nurses quietly defer to everything he says and does, suddenly becoming quiet and respectful. Sitting on a stool between Katya's legs (his own splayed like a teenager's), we wait for some kind of news while he pokes and prods.
I watch the minutes tick by on the country kitchen clock on the wall, willing the hands to speed up and make something happen when the doctor announces that the labour is in earnest now and the baby will shortly be born. Trays of instruments appear on a little table which is then placed in-between Katya and the doctor who asks me if I want to get in there with the video camera because the baby is crowning. I'm surprised he's allowing this, maybe he's not the arrogant little prick I thought he was after all, and I watch him move out of the way to let me pass. I've never seen another woman's vagina up close before and as the little camera whirs in my hand, I find it's beautiful--my fingers responding to the nurses' voices by tripping the shutter in time to their cries of push, push, don't push. Push.
My reverie is broken by a long scream, after which I hear the doctor shout, "No, sounds. No sounds." Even in the middle of her agony, Katya catches my eye and we almost laugh out loud together. One of our private jokes is about having to stay muzzled most of the time to keep our relationships intact. This pretty much sums it up: our eyes are telling each other, and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. No sounds. I want to kick him off the stool, smash his head against the floor, and deliver the baby myself--sounds or no sounds. He is a prick after all, although he eventually follows these words up by telling Katya it will be harder to push if she's screaming. A woman of course would have said that first. And gently.
Julia arrives crying her tiny heart out, so much so that I worry there is something wrong; but everyone is smiling and laughing so I do, too. And when I finally see her miniature scrunched-up face, I fall in love with her. Her mother is so exhausted by now she seems to hardly notice the writhing little girl on her chest. But I can see her, and I want to pick her up and hold her to my own breast. Suckle her. Let her shriek. Suckle her. Let her shriek. Isn't that we all want?
Afterwards, outside on the steps where we've gone to let Mischa have another smoke, J.C. arrives and we tell him a little about our adventure, but also that Julia is a beauty and he just has to see her. I know he's glad he missed the labour and the birth as hospitals make him nervous after his Mom died in one when he was barely a teenager, but he's happy to troop back in with us to see the baby for himself.
While we wait in front of the nursery window for a nurse to hold her up and show her off I think about how happy I am to be standing here with two men that I care for so much. But then J.C. asks Mischa what he's doing the next day, and I'm agitated. How about a game of squash? he says. Squash? Mischa nods assent, but I interrupt them to say I think Katya's going to need Mischa here tomorrow. She'll be going home with the baby. Chagrined, they both seem to realize the foolishness of this idea, but I know they'd like to go. Boy/men. They are so young and beautiful, but sometimes I want to weep at the sight of them.
***
Lying on Katya and Mischa's bed with her and Julia, I feel perfectly content. She's breastfeeding the baby and likes to talk to me while Julia suckles and we have some quiet time together without the baby crying or the demands of looking after Mischa and J.C. Their demands are not about cooking and cleaning, but rather giving them the attention that they both crave, neither really having other friends or family that they are close to. They are out somewhere together now so it's just "us girls" as we like to say, and now there are three of us. Here on this bed with my closest friend, I feel most at home in my skin. It's where I am, I think, really myself. At home things are good but not like this. I have to watch what I say between the language barrier and the fact that J.C.'s Latin background and a stint in a South American prison have given him a hair-trigger temper that doesn't take much to set off. Mischa's temper is more in check, but he's another perfectionist who spends a lot of time nitpicking about things that don't matter and Katya also has to hold her tongue or they'd be fighting even more than they already do. But she and I together create a kind of peace for ourselves that doesn't exist anywhere else.
On afternoons like this we talk about everything and nothing--the small things and the big things. We have a little fantasy that we call the Big House. In this house we live together with Julia and other women friends of ours, some of whom have children and some who are on their own. We imagine ourselves like those women who lived and worked together during the wars when all the men were away, learning things they never thought they could learn like how to unplug a sink permanently or work on a car.
It's not that we don't like men--we love them, but it's never all the time the way we love each other and now the way we love Julia. We'd like men to be a part of our lives in the Big House, but only sometimes--those times when they can bring their better selves with them. We imagine huge dinners we will cook on weekends when the men come to visit, after which we might go out somewhere with them in couples or groups, and if we want to sleep with them, they can spend the night. And then they leave. Sometimes we wish we were lesbians, even though the few we know seem to be locking horns half the time, too. Maybe sexual love just isn't meant to be 'round the clock.
Some days Katya cries in my arms telling me how little attention Mischa pays to Julia, how he can't stand her crying or waking him up in the night, refusing to help with even the smallest tasks so she can sleep. I know she had this baby for him who had claimed a little family would make him happier than anything else in the world, but now that his baby is here he just wants her to be quiet and not interfere with his work on the computer or his plans for ice fishing or squash dates. Katya looks exhausted and so much older than she did just a few months ago when her beautiful face was lit up like Christmas with news of the pregnancy and she carried herself like a Russian czarina. Now her eyes are hollowed and dark and her hair is a mess, stringy and unwashed. She's not taking care of herself anymore and insists on breastfeeding when if she would stop at least I could take the baby for a while as she catches up on her rest. But no, this is her way. Everyone else before herself, and there's not much I can do to change things.
She has begun to refer to Mischa as a monster and can barely stand the sight of him now. Applications for Julia's passport are flying through the mail to various embassies here and there. She wants to go home. Home is love--home is mother, children, friends, and language. She weeps into my hair telling me how sorry she is--how she will hate to leave me here without her, but that she has to do something, can't take anymore of anything, just needs to be suckled by her own.
***
We write, we email, and sometimes talk on the phone as we try to keep our friendship strong, but it's different now. Sometimes Mischa comes for dinner, looking lost and a little bit older. He doesn't know why she left or how to get her back. J.C. doesn't understand it either, but I think is quietly thankful that he wasn't put to the test, himself. And so am I. He's what I have now, and I'm trying to make the best of it.
While I'm loving Katya.
When I arrive, Katya is in labour, softly moaning to herself while rocking back and forth on the edge of the hospital bed. Hovering behind her, Mischa is smiling at me in welcome, thankful that someone else is here. His nervous hand gestures and silence tell me he isn't at all sure what he should be doing.
I give him a big smile and hello and then move towards the bed to give Katya a gentler hug and kiss and then smooth her forehead a little bit, whispering encouragement into her ear. Her white/blond hair is fanned across the pillow and starting to curl from perspiration. She clasps my forearm with more strength than I knew she had, but it's fine. We've both been working out since we turned fifty, and my arm is now as strong as her hold on it.
I stand by the bed feeling a little foolish about the things I've brought along. Little bags and baskets of pleasures that I thought might make things easier for her--hand lotion, a hot pack, some crystals from Crabtree and Evelyn that work as smelling salts, a bit of chocolate and a board game. A board game? What was I thinking? I can see it's too late for any of that, but I hold up these treasures and she smiles anyway, not wanting me to feel bad. Mischa says she's been in labour for hours and it isn't getting any easier. I wish she'd called me earlier, but she wouldn't have called at all unless I'd insisted. She is someone who could do this entirely alone if she had to and then remember it as easy.
I look around the room--what they now call a birthing room--and notice the pine furniture and soft cream and maroon wallpaper, a rocking chair, and a small sofa where I sit down and put the bags on the floor. Music is playing from an old ghetto blaster that they brought with them, softening the harshness of the light coming through the window. Still, the classical music creates an odd backdrop to primitive sounds that are getting louder now, making me want to lie down on the bed with her and hold her while she screams.
But I can't do any of that now. She is Mischa's wife, and this is going to be his baby and his responsibility. I can't take that away from him today of all days. At the best of times he seems so childish, so helpless, so dependent on Katya for everything in his life that I often overcompensate, doing things for her that make her feel as though she's loved and cared for, because I know he either can't or won't. And she does the same for me, bringing little gifts and making tea from time to time when things at home are off kilter and I've sobbed the details into the phone.
Watching Mischa now I worry that he won't be up to helping her through the labour or dealing with the baby once they get home, and I feel a lump forming in my throat. All I can do now is try to find a balance between what he is not doing and taking over completely while we wait for the baby who will be named after me--Julia.
Katya says Mischa was a prodigy as a child-a mathematical genius who was working on his Ph. D. at 15 or 16 with people who were 15 or 20 years older than he was. I've seen the photographs of him with his old schoolmates who all look like grandfathers now, while at 40 he is still young and vibrant. He himself doesn't see anything odd in this age difference, but Katya and I think it's sweet if not a little bit sad, too. This is her third marriage. I'm on my second.
My husband J. C. (Juan Carlos) came to this country as a political refugee fleeing from a dictatorship on the other side of the world and met me when I was teaching at the Centre for Victims of Torture, where he spent his time learning English among other exiles who spoke the same language but had other things in common, too. We got married while he was in the middle of his refugee claim, something I suggested myself even though he said he "didn't want to mix things."
I think our husbands loved us when we met them, but they were also ripe for us and our own motivations, for marrying them went beyond love. In some ways, they are our little coups in a world that is so focused on youth and beauty. They make us feel both young and victorious and come from cultures that revere older women. Our accomplished older daughters and our May/December marriages are something we have in common that we like to talk about. But in most other ways, Katya and I are totally different.
We first met when already fluent, but a perfectionist, she registered as a student in my English as a Second Language class after arriving here from Moscow. I liked her right away, but as I began to find out more about her, I was occasionally intimated by all of her successes which made mine feel so small. Not that she bragged about them because she didn't, but in everyday conversation it turned out that she was a former athlete (cross-country skiing--something she refuses to do now even for fun, remembering all those years as a special kind of torture) as well as an aerospace engineer who had designed the interiors of rockets as part of the Russian space program. None of my friends is a rocket scientist and despite my own advanced degrees, success as a journalist and now as a teacher, these accomplishments of hers made me feel like I hadn't done much in the same time period.
Sometimes we love to say we are 50 in that way that Mick Jagger is 60--much younger and cooler than that number would suggest--and our husbands go right along with it. But the truth is we worry about aging long before they do, keeping them interested, and whether or not our little jokes about our "trophy boys" are pathetic attempts to hang on to our fantasies about ourselves before they all blow up.
Over the last few years we've become very close, our husbands have become friends, and we spend a lot of time together. She and Mischa are like family to us now with their own families so far away and ours scattered across the country, only seeing them for Christmas, funerals, or weddings.
***
When I hear another louder scream and see Mischa's look of helplessness mixed with tiny beads of sweat forming on his upper lip, I approach the bed again and suggest he go out for a smoke, maybe pick up a coffee in the cafeteria on the way out, and take a break. Poor Katya is beyond noticing the change of guard, but she looks happy to see me as I rock and kiss her, something like a smile forming through all the pain and tiredness. She touches me lightly and fleetingly; but when I put a hand on her brow, pushing the damp hair away and whispering in the same way I do when I talk to babies and kittens, she waves it away as though it's a fly and I try not to take offense.
When the nurses come in they are perky and efficient, chattering on about this and that as though this is nothing unusual--giving birth at this age in a new country with a child/man by your side and a new best friend. For them it's routine, and if they looked any less cheerful we'd think something was wrong. At the same time, they are annoying, and I want them to leave. The doctor is nowhere to be seen on this Sunday afternoon, but will eventually be here to take a look, see how much she's dilated, whether things are going well or not, whatever it is they do in these situations. I remember my own labour as a private thing and really can't remember seeing the doctor until moments before my own daughter was born.
I am lulled into a trance by the music and the nurses' chatter, and now that they have taken over, I am not entirely sure what to do with myself. I'm part of this, but I'm not; I think she wants me here, but maybe she's thought better of it now and doesn't. Finally, Mischa returns and perhaps sensing how I feel asks me if I want to videotape the rest of the labour. This is something I'm comfortable with, video and photography being such a huge part of my life, so I am relieved to be doing something I feel confident about as I start playing with all the little buttons and dials. I'm not familiar with his equipment, the latest state-of-the-art as always (although everything else they have seems old and used). But that's fine because it gives us something to talk about as well as a new focus, and I begin to film the scene in front of me. Mischa timidly waving, nurses bustling about while turning to smile into the camera, all to a soundtrack of the classical music mixed in with the occasional ambulance coming or going outside, their sirens working into a crescendo and then falling away.
When the doctor finally arrives, I find him young and arrogant, comfortably making himself the star of this drama. A little harmless flirting with the nurses, a casual nod towards me, then speaking to my two friends as though they are kindergarten children in the way that people do with people whose first language is not theirs. Where they come from, being a doctor isn't any more important than being a clerk, so I try to imagine what they are making of his quasi-rock-star status here, watching the nurses quietly defer to everything he says and does, suddenly becoming quiet and respectful. Sitting on a stool between Katya's legs (his own splayed like a teenager's), we wait for some kind of news while he pokes and prods.
I watch the minutes tick by on the country kitchen clock on the wall, willing the hands to speed up and make something happen when the doctor announces that the labour is in earnest now and the baby will shortly be born. Trays of instruments appear on a little table which is then placed in-between Katya and the doctor who asks me if I want to get in there with the video camera because the baby is crowning. I'm surprised he's allowing this, maybe he's not the arrogant little prick I thought he was after all, and I watch him move out of the way to let me pass. I've never seen another woman's vagina up close before and as the little camera whirs in my hand, I find it's beautiful--my fingers responding to the nurses' voices by tripping the shutter in time to their cries of push, push, don't push. Push.
My reverie is broken by a long scream, after which I hear the doctor shout, "No, sounds. No sounds." Even in the middle of her agony, Katya catches my eye and we almost laugh out loud together. One of our private jokes is about having to stay muzzled most of the time to keep our relationships intact. This pretty much sums it up: our eyes are telling each other, and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. No sounds. I want to kick him off the stool, smash his head against the floor, and deliver the baby myself--sounds or no sounds. He is a prick after all, although he eventually follows these words up by telling Katya it will be harder to push if she's screaming. A woman of course would have said that first. And gently.
Julia arrives crying her tiny heart out, so much so that I worry there is something wrong; but everyone is smiling and laughing so I do, too. And when I finally see her miniature scrunched-up face, I fall in love with her. Her mother is so exhausted by now she seems to hardly notice the writhing little girl on her chest. But I can see her, and I want to pick her up and hold her to my own breast. Suckle her. Let her shriek. Suckle her. Let her shriek. Isn't that we all want?
Afterwards, outside on the steps where we've gone to let Mischa have another smoke, J.C. arrives and we tell him a little about our adventure, but also that Julia is a beauty and he just has to see her. I know he's glad he missed the labour and the birth as hospitals make him nervous after his Mom died in one when he was barely a teenager, but he's happy to troop back in with us to see the baby for himself.
While we wait in front of the nursery window for a nurse to hold her up and show her off I think about how happy I am to be standing here with two men that I care for so much. But then J.C. asks Mischa what he's doing the next day, and I'm agitated. How about a game of squash? he says. Squash? Mischa nods assent, but I interrupt them to say I think Katya's going to need Mischa here tomorrow. She'll be going home with the baby. Chagrined, they both seem to realize the foolishness of this idea, but I know they'd like to go. Boy/men. They are so young and beautiful, but sometimes I want to weep at the sight of them.
***
Lying on Katya and Mischa's bed with her and Julia, I feel perfectly content. She's breastfeeding the baby and likes to talk to me while Julia suckles and we have some quiet time together without the baby crying or the demands of looking after Mischa and J.C. Their demands are not about cooking and cleaning, but rather giving them the attention that they both crave, neither really having other friends or family that they are close to. They are out somewhere together now so it's just "us girls" as we like to say, and now there are three of us. Here on this bed with my closest friend, I feel most at home in my skin. It's where I am, I think, really myself. At home things are good but not like this. I have to watch what I say between the language barrier and the fact that J.C.'s Latin background and a stint in a South American prison have given him a hair-trigger temper that doesn't take much to set off. Mischa's temper is more in check, but he's another perfectionist who spends a lot of time nitpicking about things that don't matter and Katya also has to hold her tongue or they'd be fighting even more than they already do. But she and I together create a kind of peace for ourselves that doesn't exist anywhere else.
On afternoons like this we talk about everything and nothing--the small things and the big things. We have a little fantasy that we call the Big House. In this house we live together with Julia and other women friends of ours, some of whom have children and some who are on their own. We imagine ourselves like those women who lived and worked together during the wars when all the men were away, learning things they never thought they could learn like how to unplug a sink permanently or work on a car.
It's not that we don't like men--we love them, but it's never all the time the way we love each other and now the way we love Julia. We'd like men to be a part of our lives in the Big House, but only sometimes--those times when they can bring their better selves with them. We imagine huge dinners we will cook on weekends when the men come to visit, after which we might go out somewhere with them in couples or groups, and if we want to sleep with them, they can spend the night. And then they leave. Sometimes we wish we were lesbians, even though the few we know seem to be locking horns half the time, too. Maybe sexual love just isn't meant to be 'round the clock.
Some days Katya cries in my arms telling me how little attention Mischa pays to Julia, how he can't stand her crying or waking him up in the night, refusing to help with even the smallest tasks so she can sleep. I know she had this baby for him who had claimed a little family would make him happier than anything else in the world, but now that his baby is here he just wants her to be quiet and not interfere with his work on the computer or his plans for ice fishing or squash dates. Katya looks exhausted and so much older than she did just a few months ago when her beautiful face was lit up like Christmas with news of the pregnancy and she carried herself like a Russian czarina. Now her eyes are hollowed and dark and her hair is a mess, stringy and unwashed. She's not taking care of herself anymore and insists on breastfeeding when if she would stop at least I could take the baby for a while as she catches up on her rest. But no, this is her way. Everyone else before herself, and there's not much I can do to change things.
She has begun to refer to Mischa as a monster and can barely stand the sight of him now. Applications for Julia's passport are flying through the mail to various embassies here and there. She wants to go home. Home is love--home is mother, children, friends, and language. She weeps into my hair telling me how sorry she is--how she will hate to leave me here without her, but that she has to do something, can't take anymore of anything, just needs to be suckled by her own.
***
We write, we email, and sometimes talk on the phone as we try to keep our friendship strong, but it's different now. Sometimes Mischa comes for dinner, looking lost and a little bit older. He doesn't know why she left or how to get her back. J.C. doesn't understand it either, but I think is quietly thankful that he wasn't put to the test, himself. And so am I. He's what I have now, and I'm trying to make the best of it.
While I'm loving Katya.
Notes on Aubergine
Long long ago when I was virtually a child I was married to a man who had grown up in Haiti.His father was a diplomat, his mother a beautiful French Creole woman whom I never got along with. Looking at this now it seems like something that happened to someone else but this is a fairly accurate account of my first days in La Boule, up in the mountains in Haiti - where the rich people live.
Aubergine
Aubergine
Lucy is terrified of airplanes. She is afraid of many things, most recently the fact that she is on her way to a foreign country with a man she hardly knows. Married to him. She is thinking about this, as the tiny plane rumbles and shakes its way towards the island. But, as usual on planes, she is mainly preoccupied with pictures of those moments just before the crash, and then the impact, where she's blown to bits. Because the plane is now over water, she's also thinking about floating around down below in the ocean, swimming with sharks, and possibly (most likely), being eaten alive. She can feel the perspiration dripping under her arms, along her sides and down her chest. She would like to scream, let some of her terror out, but her new in-laws are on the plane too, and she knows she has to restrain the impulse. .
The land coming up into view from below is a strange mixture of green and brown. Her new husband, whose name is Patrick, explains that this is what happens when people don't know how to re-terrace the land, chopping down trees willy-nilly and not bothering to replant. This is one of the many things he plans to teach them with his new degree in agronomy and zeal for instruction. He has grown up here, speaks the language, understands the people, and has, he has told her, rejected his claim as a favoured son living far away from the capital, in an enclave up on the mountain.
However, that's where they're going to be staying on this trip, because it can't be helped. He says it's the least he can do to make his parents happy for once, since they extended this invitation unexpectedly after his and Lucy's honeymoon on an island close by, and have also paid for it. She knows him well enough to know that not only does he want to show Lucy how he grew up, something he often complains about, he also wants to hear her own (and possibly unflattering) comments about it.
The family have diplomatic immunity, so when the plane finally lands, unlike the rest of the passengers' bags, theirs are not checked. As a naive middle-class girl (although she doesn't see herself that way at all, and thinks she's quite radical compared to her friends and family), growing up in a suburb, with no exposure to very much outside of her own narrow realm, Lucy is uncomfortable with special treatment and has a sinking feeling that there might be more to come. But right now she is on an adventure and will try to open her mind to new things.
Patrick's parents make her very nervous,and she feels awkward and uncomfortable around them. All thumbs. She felt that way at her own wedding, a time when for once in her life, surely, she should have felt happy and in control. Still, she doesn't hold grudges and has decided to make as good an impression as she can on this visit, despite her fears that her relationship with them is already doomed.
This is what she knows. Her new father-in-law is Austrian and unfortunately, has that chilly manner Lucy dislikes in people. Her new mother-in-law is, according to Patrick, some kind of French Creole aristocrat, a Catholic, and is essentially a snob. Her new father-in-law is Jewish, fled Hitler's Europe many years before this trip, and has never recovered from the events of those years. At the same time Patrick has shown her pictures of him recently cozying up to the dictator currently in power, and although Patrick sees this as hypocrisy, Lucy thinks maybe he just doesn't care about politics anymore, and simply wants to get along, and go about his life in peace without worrying about knocks at the door in the middle of the night.
She knows he chose this island, Haiti, because it was easy to get a visa to come here, and also because he was an archeologist and anthropologist, who had done his dissertation on this country, the first black republic in the world. Once established, he made it his life's work to protect the country's practice of voodoo, and despite his privileged position and his relative wealth, is very revered here; so much so, that the Haitians who practice voodoo, which is almost everyone (Patrick says she will hear the sound of the drums coming up the hills every night, but not to be afraid), have made him an honorary voodoo priest. Lucy can't imagine such a thing, but it's exciting and she can't wait to see the voodoo altar in the house, something Patrick mentioned on the honeymoon.
Lucy didn't discuss any of these things with her Catholic/Italian parents before or after the wedding, even the part about her new mother-in-law's family being all shades of black, from mulatto to jet. On one level she thinks that she wanted to shock them, although she feels badly about that now, (she has a habit of doing things impulsively and then regretting them later) and on another, pretended if only to herself, that it was such a trivial matter that it wasn't worth talking about. Most of the time she's not really sure why she does anything; there's no script for her life lying around somewhere that she can just pick up and follow. She is also the eldest child at home (there are six), and her parents are busy with other things, mainly trying to keep her Dad sober, dealing with him when he isn't, and praying that it won't happen again. Possibly this is one reason why she can be a little sly sometimes, in the guise of something loftier, when all she's trying to do is make her family pay attention to her. It also helps when she knows she won't be around after the fireworks go off.
She's actually afraid of confrontation, but she likes to strike the match. And sadly, there is the indisputable fact that despite her attempts to change him, in that hipppy-dippy way of hers, her father, a victim of his generation, is at heart still a racist and doesn't like Jewish people much either. But Lucy wanted to get married. Not so much for love, but to get on with her life, do something different, see the world. She is only eighteen after all. Still, she knows her parents deserve so much more than she's given them (like the truth), and she wonders what's the matter with her when she behaves so badly.
Her new husband has told her that the house where they will be staying, where his parents still live, used to be their country house, but since the government took over their city home and turned it into a clinic, it is now their permanent residence. The car they are riding in has just passed through this same sad, hot and dirty city, with its stench of open latrines, claptrap buses and colourfully clad women with baskets on their heads and sometimes, corn cob pipes in their mouths. Some of them seemed to be glaring at Lucy, probably because she's so blond and so white, but she found it unnerving.
As the car wound its way past them, she was glad they weren't making a stop. She knows at bottom she's a coward, afraid of too many things, and hopes that this will change. She is doing her best to control her nervousness in this foreign place, but is still more anxious than she can ever remember being, even on planes. When moments ago a wild throng of men, women and children had pounded on the doors and windows of the car, shouting words she didn't understand, their hands out, faces contorted with the effort of screaming and banging, she felt horrible and wanted to empty her purse and throw it out the window, give them whatever they wanted, so she didn't have to feel so guilty about driving in comfort with a full stomach and a new one-hundred dollar dress on. Her mother-in-law, whose name is Ghislaine (please call me by first name), noticing Lucy's reaction, told her they were just beggars, nothing to worry about, always begging, professional beggars, just ignore them, you can't help them. C'est tout. And with that, blotted her recently applied lipstick on a piece of scented tissue.
Soldiers are positioned at every intersection, khaki-clad black men with huge guns (machine guns?) at their sides. They are wearing wrap-around sunglasses, and like the women with the baskets and the pipes, glaring. Everyone is glaring. Lucy feels her heart skipping in her chest and wishes she could take a tranquillizer, although she has never done this in her life. But this, at last, is the "authentic," life she asked for, marrying this man (he is three years older than she is) who would whisk her away somewhere new and exotic, where she could re-invent herself, despite her fears. However, at the moment, new moons of perspiration are appearing under her arms on the new silk turquoise dress her parents gave her as part of her trousseau.
Up, up, the mountain they go - no guard rails here, and the driver has to stop when a car is coming the other way because the road is so narrow that only one car at a time can get by. Are they actually going to make it, or will her parents get a cable telling them their precious daughter (she's sure she will be precious once she's dead) was found at the bottom of a mountain?
Little girls in pretty dresses, carrying flower wreaths to sell, spring up like flowers themselves along the dangerous road, waving their wares at the car. Lucy is thinking that with one slip, the car, the little girls and the flowers will all be flying through the air. At another point further up, the car is actually passing through clouds, and Lucy feels like she can't get enough air. Maybe it's her period coming on, but between her fear of heights and all the sights she's seen so far, she feels like she's going to be sick.
Having survived the drive, the car and its occupants finally pull up in the driveway of the country house, and Lucy feels better. To her still somewhat childlike mind, the house looks as if it has been transported here from the pages of a fairy-tale book. It sits in the middle of a pine forest, and in bright red letters, the red contrasting with the green of the trees, there is something written in German across the top floor. Patrick tells her the house is also the home of the Austrian Consulate and that is what the script says. Lucy wants to know exactly what it is his father does in that role, and plans to ask him all about it once she calms down, changes into something white that won't show the sweat (just in case there are any more surprises) and has a quick wash.
Getting out of the car at last, the family is surrounded by smiling people dressed in white, large and tiny black people who swiftly unload all of the suitcases and boxes from the car and then quickly disappear. Lucy notices a black wrought-iron gate surrounding the house, and sees dozens, maybe hundreds, of little black hands and faces peeping through. They are holding wooden sculptures of some kind, but she doesn't know why. She will ask about that too.
Once inside, Ghislaine announces that lunch will be served in half an hour, and shows Lucy to her room. Patrick is busy chatting away in Creole with the servants who seem very happy to see him, hugging him and slapping him on the back. He has introduced her and they have looked at her with what she feels might be contempt, but have still welcomed her in a language she doesn't understand, although she did catch some of the French, when they called her "Madame Patrique." Apparently they see her as not much more than a rib attached to the boy/man she married, whom they have known since he was a baby, and probably know better than she does. Still, she has never heard of a woman being called by her husband's first name and it doesn't sound right.
The bell rings for lunch and the new family take their places at the table. White table cloths and silver, too much cutlery for Lucy's limited experience with formal dining, and more servants wearing white overcoats, fussing about and fawning over everything her husband, mother and father-in-law have to say, yet rarely giving her a glance.
"Why are you hiding your hand in your lap?" her mother-in-law asks Lucy. "Put your hands on the table where they belong." Her lovely mulatto face sags into a frown that will soon become a familiar sight. Everyone is speaking French, Lucy's best subject at St. Joseph's, so she tries a few words but Ghislaine quickly stops her in mid accent grave. "Ma Belle Fille. Tu ne peux pas parler bien le Francais. Please speak English, dear. Your French hurts my ears." Thank goodness she's changed into the white dress, Lucy thinks. More sweat. She's afraid to eat. Doesn't know what utensil to use, and although she is surreptitiously watching her husband to see what he is doing with his, she has lost her appetite.
"This looks lovely," Lucy says, "what is it called?" (trying to buy time while she figures out which fork or spoon to use).
"Aubergine, dear. My goodness, what a question." Again, the face lands in a sulk, clearly disappointed in the question, the fact that the servants are judging her new daughter-in-law, but mainly Lucy thinks, in her son's choice of wife. A Philistine, non-European of course, what could he possibly have been thinking? All of this is telegraphed to Lucy without a word and slings a poison-tipped arrow right at her heart.
Lucy picks up a small scrolled silver fork, and hands on the table, begins to eat. The dish is truly delicious. Eggplant mixed with what tastes like Parmesan and breadcrumbs baked as a casserole. She will make it for years to come, as a memento of this, her first real adventure, and how it changed the course of her life. Made her better. More compassionate. How she saw her life afterwards in terms of the extremes that she witnessed here - the poverty and the wealth, the love that she'd left and the coldness that she found, the right fork more important than the little hands and faces at the gate.
And although she will eventually learn to live as the wife of a diplomat's son, she won't want to be one. There will be a day when she speaks better French and finally speaks up and says, "No more. C'est tout."
Lucy is terrified of airplanes. She is afraid of many things, most recently the fact that she is on her way to a foreign country with a man she hardly knows. Married to him. She is thinking about this, as the tiny plane rumbles and shakes its way towards the island. But, as usual on planes, she is mainly preoccupied with pictures of those moments just before the crash, and then the impact, where she's blown to bits. Because the plane is now over water, she's also thinking about floating around down below in the ocean, swimming with sharks, and possibly (most likely), being eaten alive. She can feel the perspiration dripping under her arms, along her sides and down her chest. She would like to scream, let some of her terror out, but her new in-laws are on the plane too, and she knows she has to restrain the impulse. .
The land coming up into view from below is a strange mixture of green and brown. Her new husband, whose name is Patrick, explains that this is what happens when people don't know how to re-terrace the land, chopping down trees willy-nilly and not bothering to replant. This is one of the many things he plans to teach them with his new degree in agronomy and zeal for instruction. He has grown up here, speaks the language, understands the people, and has, he has told her, rejected his claim as a favoured son living far away from the capital, in an enclave up on the mountain.
However, that's where they're going to be staying on this trip, because it can't be helped. He says it's the least he can do to make his parents happy for once, since they extended this invitation unexpectedly after his and Lucy's honeymoon on an island close by, and have also paid for it. She knows him well enough to know that not only does he want to show Lucy how he grew up, something he often complains about, he also wants to hear her own (and possibly unflattering) comments about it.
The family have diplomatic immunity, so when the plane finally lands, unlike the rest of the passengers' bags, theirs are not checked. As a naive middle-class girl (although she doesn't see herself that way at all, and thinks she's quite radical compared to her friends and family), growing up in a suburb, with no exposure to very much outside of her own narrow realm, Lucy is uncomfortable with special treatment and has a sinking feeling that there might be more to come. But right now she is on an adventure and will try to open her mind to new things.
Patrick's parents make her very nervous,and she feels awkward and uncomfortable around them. All thumbs. She felt that way at her own wedding, a time when for once in her life, surely, she should have felt happy and in control. Still, she doesn't hold grudges and has decided to make as good an impression as she can on this visit, despite her fears that her relationship with them is already doomed.
This is what she knows. Her new father-in-law is Austrian and unfortunately, has that chilly manner Lucy dislikes in people. Her new mother-in-law is, according to Patrick, some kind of French Creole aristocrat, a Catholic, and is essentially a snob. Her new father-in-law is Jewish, fled Hitler's Europe many years before this trip, and has never recovered from the events of those years. At the same time Patrick has shown her pictures of him recently cozying up to the dictator currently in power, and although Patrick sees this as hypocrisy, Lucy thinks maybe he just doesn't care about politics anymore, and simply wants to get along, and go about his life in peace without worrying about knocks at the door in the middle of the night.
She knows he chose this island, Haiti, because it was easy to get a visa to come here, and also because he was an archeologist and anthropologist, who had done his dissertation on this country, the first black republic in the world. Once established, he made it his life's work to protect the country's practice of voodoo, and despite his privileged position and his relative wealth, is very revered here; so much so, that the Haitians who practice voodoo, which is almost everyone (Patrick says she will hear the sound of the drums coming up the hills every night, but not to be afraid), have made him an honorary voodoo priest. Lucy can't imagine such a thing, but it's exciting and she can't wait to see the voodoo altar in the house, something Patrick mentioned on the honeymoon.
Lucy didn't discuss any of these things with her Catholic/Italian parents before or after the wedding, even the part about her new mother-in-law's family being all shades of black, from mulatto to jet. On one level she thinks that she wanted to shock them, although she feels badly about that now, (she has a habit of doing things impulsively and then regretting them later) and on another, pretended if only to herself, that it was such a trivial matter that it wasn't worth talking about. Most of the time she's not really sure why she does anything; there's no script for her life lying around somewhere that she can just pick up and follow. She is also the eldest child at home (there are six), and her parents are busy with other things, mainly trying to keep her Dad sober, dealing with him when he isn't, and praying that it won't happen again. Possibly this is one reason why she can be a little sly sometimes, in the guise of something loftier, when all she's trying to do is make her family pay attention to her. It also helps when she knows she won't be around after the fireworks go off.
She's actually afraid of confrontation, but she likes to strike the match. And sadly, there is the indisputable fact that despite her attempts to change him, in that hipppy-dippy way of hers, her father, a victim of his generation, is at heart still a racist and doesn't like Jewish people much either. But Lucy wanted to get married. Not so much for love, but to get on with her life, do something different, see the world. She is only eighteen after all. Still, she knows her parents deserve so much more than she's given them (like the truth), and she wonders what's the matter with her when she behaves so badly.
Her new husband has told her that the house where they will be staying, where his parents still live, used to be their country house, but since the government took over their city home and turned it into a clinic, it is now their permanent residence. The car they are riding in has just passed through this same sad, hot and dirty city, with its stench of open latrines, claptrap buses and colourfully clad women with baskets on their heads and sometimes, corn cob pipes in their mouths. Some of them seemed to be glaring at Lucy, probably because she's so blond and so white, but she found it unnerving.
As the car wound its way past them, she was glad they weren't making a stop. She knows at bottom she's a coward, afraid of too many things, and hopes that this will change. She is doing her best to control her nervousness in this foreign place, but is still more anxious than she can ever remember being, even on planes. When moments ago a wild throng of men, women and children had pounded on the doors and windows of the car, shouting words she didn't understand, their hands out, faces contorted with the effort of screaming and banging, she felt horrible and wanted to empty her purse and throw it out the window, give them whatever they wanted, so she didn't have to feel so guilty about driving in comfort with a full stomach and a new one-hundred dollar dress on. Her mother-in-law, whose name is Ghislaine (please call me by first name), noticing Lucy's reaction, told her they were just beggars, nothing to worry about, always begging, professional beggars, just ignore them, you can't help them. C'est tout. And with that, blotted her recently applied lipstick on a piece of scented tissue.
Soldiers are positioned at every intersection, khaki-clad black men with huge guns (machine guns?) at their sides. They are wearing wrap-around sunglasses, and like the women with the baskets and the pipes, glaring. Everyone is glaring. Lucy feels her heart skipping in her chest and wishes she could take a tranquillizer, although she has never done this in her life. But this, at last, is the "authentic," life she asked for, marrying this man (he is three years older than she is) who would whisk her away somewhere new and exotic, where she could re-invent herself, despite her fears. However, at the moment, new moons of perspiration are appearing under her arms on the new silk turquoise dress her parents gave her as part of her trousseau.
Up, up, the mountain they go - no guard rails here, and the driver has to stop when a car is coming the other way because the road is so narrow that only one car at a time can get by. Are they actually going to make it, or will her parents get a cable telling them their precious daughter (she's sure she will be precious once she's dead) was found at the bottom of a mountain?
Little girls in pretty dresses, carrying flower wreaths to sell, spring up like flowers themselves along the dangerous road, waving their wares at the car. Lucy is thinking that with one slip, the car, the little girls and the flowers will all be flying through the air. At another point further up, the car is actually passing through clouds, and Lucy feels like she can't get enough air. Maybe it's her period coming on, but between her fear of heights and all the sights she's seen so far, she feels like she's going to be sick.
Having survived the drive, the car and its occupants finally pull up in the driveway of the country house, and Lucy feels better. To her still somewhat childlike mind, the house looks as if it has been transported here from the pages of a fairy-tale book. It sits in the middle of a pine forest, and in bright red letters, the red contrasting with the green of the trees, there is something written in German across the top floor. Patrick tells her the house is also the home of the Austrian Consulate and that is what the script says. Lucy wants to know exactly what it is his father does in that role, and plans to ask him all about it once she calms down, changes into something white that won't show the sweat (just in case there are any more surprises) and has a quick wash.
Getting out of the car at last, the family is surrounded by smiling people dressed in white, large and tiny black people who swiftly unload all of the suitcases and boxes from the car and then quickly disappear. Lucy notices a black wrought-iron gate surrounding the house, and sees dozens, maybe hundreds, of little black hands and faces peeping through. They are holding wooden sculptures of some kind, but she doesn't know why. She will ask about that too.
Once inside, Ghislaine announces that lunch will be served in half an hour, and shows Lucy to her room. Patrick is busy chatting away in Creole with the servants who seem very happy to see him, hugging him and slapping him on the back. He has introduced her and they have looked at her with what she feels might be contempt, but have still welcomed her in a language she doesn't understand, although she did catch some of the French, when they called her "Madame Patrique." Apparently they see her as not much more than a rib attached to the boy/man she married, whom they have known since he was a baby, and probably know better than she does. Still, she has never heard of a woman being called by her husband's first name and it doesn't sound right.
The bell rings for lunch and the new family take their places at the table. White table cloths and silver, too much cutlery for Lucy's limited experience with formal dining, and more servants wearing white overcoats, fussing about and fawning over everything her husband, mother and father-in-law have to say, yet rarely giving her a glance.
"Why are you hiding your hand in your lap?" her mother-in-law asks Lucy. "Put your hands on the table where they belong." Her lovely mulatto face sags into a frown that will soon become a familiar sight. Everyone is speaking French, Lucy's best subject at St. Joseph's, so she tries a few words but Ghislaine quickly stops her in mid accent grave. "Ma Belle Fille. Tu ne peux pas parler bien le Francais. Please speak English, dear. Your French hurts my ears." Thank goodness she's changed into the white dress, Lucy thinks. More sweat. She's afraid to eat. Doesn't know what utensil to use, and although she is surreptitiously watching her husband to see what he is doing with his, she has lost her appetite.
"This looks lovely," Lucy says, "what is it called?" (trying to buy time while she figures out which fork or spoon to use).
"Aubergine, dear. My goodness, what a question." Again, the face lands in a sulk, clearly disappointed in the question, the fact that the servants are judging her new daughter-in-law, but mainly Lucy thinks, in her son's choice of wife. A Philistine, non-European of course, what could he possibly have been thinking? All of this is telegraphed to Lucy without a word and slings a poison-tipped arrow right at her heart.
Lucy picks up a small scrolled silver fork, and hands on the table, begins to eat. The dish is truly delicious. Eggplant mixed with what tastes like Parmesan and breadcrumbs baked as a casserole. She will make it for years to come, as a memento of this, her first real adventure, and how it changed the course of her life. Made her better. More compassionate. How she saw her life afterwards in terms of the extremes that she witnessed here - the poverty and the wealth, the love that she'd left and the coldness that she found, the right fork more important than the little hands and faces at the gate.
And although she will eventually learn to live as the wife of a diplomat's son, she won't want to be one. There will be a day when she speaks better French and finally speaks up and says, "No more. C'est tout."
Notes on The Devil's Larder
This is a very different kind of story from the ones I usually write which are drawn from my own experience. I saw this young Amish girl on a short clip on 60 Minutes or a similar show and thought about her for quite a while afterwards. I didn't know anything about the Amish but did a little research and wrote this story as I imagined it had happened. It has never been published as anytime I've sent it out I've heard that it is too anti-Amish - whatever that means.
The Devil's Larder
The Devil's Larder
Monika still can't talk, but it doesn't matter; she has nothing left to say. She looks like an animal, moans like an animal and feels as dirty as the pigs snorting at the trough next to the stall where she has been sleeping. Apart from the pigs, her only company is her pen and a small notebook. She knows this pain is rooted not only in her mouth, but in the Amish idea of Gelassenheit and she has had enough.
When Monika's brother Klaus started molesting her, she was only 11. He was 19. Then when he moved away, her 17-year-old brother Peiter, started raping her. She didn't try to stop either of them at first, because she couldn't say "No," to her brothers, who were so much older than she was. But lately she's started fighting back. She doesn't want to be one more Amish girl who has a baby fathered by her father or a brother.
Over the last little while, she's been dropping hints to Mrs. Burke, the English woman she cleans for, but because she's been afraid to come right out with it, Mrs. Burke doesn't really understand, although she knows Monika isn't happy. So last week she got bolder and used the phone at the Burkes' while they were out and called Children and Family Services, who sent someone out to talk to her and ask her mother Sarah some questions. Sarah was furious and denied knowing what Monika was talking about. She even suggested to the worker that her daughter was mentally ill. Then there was the visit from the lawyer, followed by the bishop and some of the elders, threatening Monika to take back her story or be taken out to the woodpile - or worse. With no faith in anyone to protect her, she did as she was told. She knew from a cousin who'd left the Amish, that she'd have to be physically hurt by her family before the state would do anything about it. She prays that what her mother has done will be enough to bring the worker back.
Lying curled up like a baby on a bale of hay in the barn, the same barn where all of this began, (she can still see Pieter's face and hear him telling her to shut up and roll over on the scratchy bale of hay while he pounded himself into her), the pain shooting through her mouth and up into her face is excruciating. Pressing her hands over her mouth and pushing doesn't help at all and because she hasn't eaten for three days, she also feels weak. She wishes she could go back to sleep because she doesn't feel it then and the dreams make her feel better too.
She has just woken up from one where she and her mother were reading together. Her mother was once a teacher and although books were strongly discouraged in the Swartzentruber district, the strictest of all Amish communities, Monika knows Sarah secretly read them late at night when she thought everyone was asleep. So when Monika found a pile of Nancy Drews in an abandoned schoolhouse, her mother didn't get angry or ask her to return them. There was a time when her mother could be kind. But that was a long time ago, before her father beat Sarah into submission after he caught her reading one night, and things just got worse after that. Maybe Monika needed the dream to remember a better time in her life, because right now all she feels in pain and rage.
The trip to the Swartzentruber dentist in another town in the buggy with some of the other children from the community, wasn't something Monika had looked forward to, but she never imagined it would turn out the way it did. After she watched two of the other children have one or two bad teeth pulled, she waited her turn and was glad she'd come just to have a small cavity filled. So when she felt the dentist injecting novocaine into her top gum, she shook her head trying to explain what she had come for - the cavity on the bottom - but it was no use. He asked her mother which teeth should go, and Sarah answered, "All of them." After he had pulled all the way along the top gum and then the bottom, and the last tooth had pinged into the metal pan, on the table next to the chair, her mother looked at her and said, "I guess you won't be talking anymore."
She has been bleeding steadily for three days now and hasn't had any medication to relieve the pain or the swelling. Her family has paid little attention to her other than to sporadically give her some water to drink. She isn't surprised because she knows they believe her pain and her thirst are punishment for her sins. This is what they think she deserves.
Monika's always had her mother's penchant for talking out of turn and some of her father's stubbornness too. Whether for wearing her cap too far back on her head or for "acting around" in church, she was often in trouble at home, and her father, despite his age and heart problems, knew how to give her a good beating. Sometimes he used the strap, a foot-long piece of rubber; other times, he took her "to the woodpile" and hit her with a piece of wood until she could barely stand up.
She liked to draw, which violated the Ordnung. And she didn't like the constant dimness in the house or at school or in church. The community only allowed kerosene, which gave off less light than gas, and even candles had to be kept at a low glow, making it difficult for her to read and she was always squinting. Whenever she was foolish enough to talk about any of those things it was the strap or the woodpile.
Her life in her own mind has always been dull, hard, strict and painful. Maybe it was the Nancy Drew books, but she knew there was more to life than this and wanted to taste it, savour it, devour it. The only relief she got was when she went to clean the house where the Burkes lived and could sneak peeks at television shows that were on if their kids were home, or sometimes magazines - especially the fashion magazines with pictures of girls and women and boys and men dressed in colourful clothes and living in the real world doing real things. Touching each other, kissing, smiling, shopping, drinking. She wanted to live like that.
Not in a world where girls were made to wear dark colours and dresses had to reach down to the tops of their shoes. Monika dreamed of spike heels in bright colours, sheer pantyhose and lacy bras and pretty underwear. Here girls weren't allowed to wear bras at all and underwear had to be homemade. Black shawls, white or black bonnets, no makeup or fragrance or nail polish of any kind.
Real life in her world means getting up at five a.m., going to the barn with her brothers to feed the animals and milk the cows. Then joining the family for prayer and breakfast. If it's laundry day, she has to get the gasoline motor started on the wringer washing machine, do the wash, and hang it out on the line to dry before she goes to school. Other mornings she helps the younger children get ready for school, packing their lunch boxes and brushing their hair. Then after school she works in the garden, preparing it for planting, or harvesting vegetables for meals.
"God help me. Someone help me," she scribbles in her book. Maybe when she has a little more energy she'll find the perfect words. But right now, she's so tired, all she can do is tuck the notebook into the top of her dress where it comforts her even while it scratches her breasts and makes them itchy. Whether there is a god or not, and she's not sure about that anymore, she's glad that she can keep her thoughts to herself. No one knows about them except her friend Ana, and Ana would never say anything. If Ana knew about what her mother and the dentist had done, Monika knows she'd do something - call the police maybe - but Ana doesn't know. No one knows.
Trying to make herself stronger by counting her blessings, and writing them down, Monika comes up with only three. Ana, of course, and then going to the Burkes' and lastly, taking the family's horses out to pasture. It's the only chore she enjoys and hasn't told her mother how much she loves the horses or Sarah would ask someone else to do it. When she's with the horses she loves to clap her hands, making them scatter and then chase them around the open field, because it makes her feel free. There's no one else around and she can run, or do sommersaults if she wants to, falling into the sweet grass or simply lie down on her back, close her eyes, and dream.
If the bishop hadn't found her the cleaning job with the Burkes, she would have lost her mind a long time ago. When the Burkes go out shopping or to a movie, things Monika has never done, she can almost live the life she dreams of. In a real house with pictures on the walls and coloured cloth on the furniture, a television, a modern kitchen, sometimes music, and all those books and magazines. She knows from reading them that there is so much to learn about the world that she isn't learning. And so much to see that she isn't seeing. And she thinks Mrs. Burke likes her. The other night she heard her on the phone, and she's been thinking about what Mrs. Burke said ever since. "A lot of Amish will tell you they don't want their kids to be educated," she said. "The more they know, the more apt they are to leave. Poor Monika, coming here and seeing how we live and then going back to that family of hers. It breaks my heart. Honestly, I know she's not happy, there's something going on over there that I worry about, but I don't know what it is and I'm afraid to ask."
Hearing that made Monika happy, because she loves the way Mrs. Burke is and she's going to need her help. She wonders what it would be like to be part of this family, who are always hugging in the house or going out and doing things together. She'd like to go to Mrs. Burke now, and just fall into her arms and weep, but she's so embarrassed about the way she looks; all swollen and red and tear-stained from the pain and the shame, the helplessness and the betrayal she feels.
Mrs.Burke likes to tell her how pretty she is - or at least she used to. And even though Monika never believed it, and has never heard anyone else say it, it makes her smile inside just remembering. She knows her mother has told the bishop to tell the Burkes that she's sick, but if Mrs. Burke knew what had really happened, she would help. Monika is sure of that.
All of the thoughts spinning through her sore head are broken by the sound of the barn door opening and then the confident clackety-clack of Sarah's shoes with their tiny heels walking along the wooden floor. Sarah leans over her, and in a voice that is pitiless shouts, "Monika. Get up. That's enough feeling sorry for yourself now. Get those horses out to pasture, and then get back here as soon as you can and start supper."
Monika nods, humming assent, and slowly pulls herself up. As she watches Sarah's back make its way to the barn door she wishes she could strike her dead. Maybe an arrow right through her back and out the front. Or a bullet. If she believed in hell, she'd be worried about these thoughts, but she doesn't believe in anything anymore except her own ability set herself free
.
She feels dizzy and almost falls down, but grabs hold of one of the rough beams to steady herself. Taking a damp rag hanging from a nail and wiping her blood-stained face, she checks to make sure the pen and notebook with its message to Mrs. Burke are still there. Then dipping the dirty rag into the water trough she splashes her face until she feels more awake, and slowly makes her way over to the horse barn. The bright light outside gives her a headache, and all she'd like to do is fall down and sleep it off, but there is no turning back now.
Leading the horses out to pasture, her heart thumping like a trapped wild thing, Monika imagines what it would be like to walk past the field, out the gate and never come back.
Out in the field, she's glad the animals are feeling frisky. Feebly clapping one hand against the notebook, she waits for the horses to scatter and then stumbles across the field to a mailbox, where she drops off the letter to Mrs. Burke. "Are you willing to help me?" she wrote. "I need
to get out of here." She told Mrs. Burke what had happened and then asked if she could put a message in a plastic bottle and leave it in the ditch by the mailbox where it would be easy to find.
Four days later, feeling stronger because she had been eating a little and getting outside, Monica spooked the horses again. When she got to the ditch she could see the bottle with a piece of paper in it. Lifting it up, she opened the folded pale yellow paper and read: "Our arms are open to you and so are our doors. Come as soon as you can." It was signed Jennifer Burke.
Monica burned the note with a match and went home.
It was her turn to make supper. She lit the stove, began heating water, and sat down to write a letter to her mother. In it, she thanked Sarah for finally doing something to wake her up give her a reason to find the courage to leave. Licking the envelope and sealing it, and then leaving it on the windowsill for Sarah, Monika felt happy. Her teeth were gone, but her future was waiting. She smiled.
Then she walked out the door, down the porch steps, and ran.
Monika still can't talk, but it doesn't matter; she has nothing left to say. She looks like an animal, moans like an animal and feels as dirty as the pigs snorting at the trough next to the stall where she has been sleeping. Apart from the pigs, her only company is her pen and a small notebook. She knows this pain is rooted not only in her mouth, but in the Amish idea of Gelassenheit and she has had enough.
When Monika's brother Klaus started molesting her, she was only 11. He was 19. Then when he moved away, her 17-year-old brother Peiter, started raping her. She didn't try to stop either of them at first, because she couldn't say "No," to her brothers, who were so much older than she was. But lately she's started fighting back. She doesn't want to be one more Amish girl who has a baby fathered by her father or a brother.
Over the last little while, she's been dropping hints to Mrs. Burke, the English woman she cleans for, but because she's been afraid to come right out with it, Mrs. Burke doesn't really understand, although she knows Monika isn't happy. So last week she got bolder and used the phone at the Burkes' while they were out and called Children and Family Services, who sent someone out to talk to her and ask her mother Sarah some questions. Sarah was furious and denied knowing what Monika was talking about. She even suggested to the worker that her daughter was mentally ill. Then there was the visit from the lawyer, followed by the bishop and some of the elders, threatening Monika to take back her story or be taken out to the woodpile - or worse. With no faith in anyone to protect her, she did as she was told. She knew from a cousin who'd left the Amish, that she'd have to be physically hurt by her family before the state would do anything about it. She prays that what her mother has done will be enough to bring the worker back.
Lying curled up like a baby on a bale of hay in the barn, the same barn where all of this began, (she can still see Pieter's face and hear him telling her to shut up and roll over on the scratchy bale of hay while he pounded himself into her), the pain shooting through her mouth and up into her face is excruciating. Pressing her hands over her mouth and pushing doesn't help at all and because she hasn't eaten for three days, she also feels weak. She wishes she could go back to sleep because she doesn't feel it then and the dreams make her feel better too.
She has just woken up from one where she and her mother were reading together. Her mother was once a teacher and although books were strongly discouraged in the Swartzentruber district, the strictest of all Amish communities, Monika knows Sarah secretly read them late at night when she thought everyone was asleep. So when Monika found a pile of Nancy Drews in an abandoned schoolhouse, her mother didn't get angry or ask her to return them. There was a time when her mother could be kind. But that was a long time ago, before her father beat Sarah into submission after he caught her reading one night, and things just got worse after that. Maybe Monika needed the dream to remember a better time in her life, because right now all she feels in pain and rage.
The trip to the Swartzentruber dentist in another town in the buggy with some of the other children from the community, wasn't something Monika had looked forward to, but she never imagined it would turn out the way it did. After she watched two of the other children have one or two bad teeth pulled, she waited her turn and was glad she'd come just to have a small cavity filled. So when she felt the dentist injecting novocaine into her top gum, she shook her head trying to explain what she had come for - the cavity on the bottom - but it was no use. He asked her mother which teeth should go, and Sarah answered, "All of them." After he had pulled all the way along the top gum and then the bottom, and the last tooth had pinged into the metal pan, on the table next to the chair, her mother looked at her and said, "I guess you won't be talking anymore."
She has been bleeding steadily for three days now and hasn't had any medication to relieve the pain or the swelling. Her family has paid little attention to her other than to sporadically give her some water to drink. She isn't surprised because she knows they believe her pain and her thirst are punishment for her sins. This is what they think she deserves.
Monika's always had her mother's penchant for talking out of turn and some of her father's stubbornness too. Whether for wearing her cap too far back on her head or for "acting around" in church, she was often in trouble at home, and her father, despite his age and heart problems, knew how to give her a good beating. Sometimes he used the strap, a foot-long piece of rubber; other times, he took her "to the woodpile" and hit her with a piece of wood until she could barely stand up.
She liked to draw, which violated the Ordnung. And she didn't like the constant dimness in the house or at school or in church. The community only allowed kerosene, which gave off less light than gas, and even candles had to be kept at a low glow, making it difficult for her to read and she was always squinting. Whenever she was foolish enough to talk about any of those things it was the strap or the woodpile.
Her life in her own mind has always been dull, hard, strict and painful. Maybe it was the Nancy Drew books, but she knew there was more to life than this and wanted to taste it, savour it, devour it. The only relief she got was when she went to clean the house where the Burkes lived and could sneak peeks at television shows that were on if their kids were home, or sometimes magazines - especially the fashion magazines with pictures of girls and women and boys and men dressed in colourful clothes and living in the real world doing real things. Touching each other, kissing, smiling, shopping, drinking. She wanted to live like that.
Not in a world where girls were made to wear dark colours and dresses had to reach down to the tops of their shoes. Monika dreamed of spike heels in bright colours, sheer pantyhose and lacy bras and pretty underwear. Here girls weren't allowed to wear bras at all and underwear had to be homemade. Black shawls, white or black bonnets, no makeup or fragrance or nail polish of any kind.
Real life in her world means getting up at five a.m., going to the barn with her brothers to feed the animals and milk the cows. Then joining the family for prayer and breakfast. If it's laundry day, she has to get the gasoline motor started on the wringer washing machine, do the wash, and hang it out on the line to dry before she goes to school. Other mornings she helps the younger children get ready for school, packing their lunch boxes and brushing their hair. Then after school she works in the garden, preparing it for planting, or harvesting vegetables for meals.
"God help me. Someone help me," she scribbles in her book. Maybe when she has a little more energy she'll find the perfect words. But right now, she's so tired, all she can do is tuck the notebook into the top of her dress where it comforts her even while it scratches her breasts and makes them itchy. Whether there is a god or not, and she's not sure about that anymore, she's glad that she can keep her thoughts to herself. No one knows about them except her friend Ana, and Ana would never say anything. If Ana knew about what her mother and the dentist had done, Monika knows she'd do something - call the police maybe - but Ana doesn't know. No one knows.
Trying to make herself stronger by counting her blessings, and writing them down, Monika comes up with only three. Ana, of course, and then going to the Burkes' and lastly, taking the family's horses out to pasture. It's the only chore she enjoys and hasn't told her mother how much she loves the horses or Sarah would ask someone else to do it. When she's with the horses she loves to clap her hands, making them scatter and then chase them around the open field, because it makes her feel free. There's no one else around and she can run, or do sommersaults if she wants to, falling into the sweet grass or simply lie down on her back, close her eyes, and dream.
If the bishop hadn't found her the cleaning job with the Burkes, she would have lost her mind a long time ago. When the Burkes go out shopping or to a movie, things Monika has never done, she can almost live the life she dreams of. In a real house with pictures on the walls and coloured cloth on the furniture, a television, a modern kitchen, sometimes music, and all those books and magazines. She knows from reading them that there is so much to learn about the world that she isn't learning. And so much to see that she isn't seeing. And she thinks Mrs. Burke likes her. The other night she heard her on the phone, and she's been thinking about what Mrs. Burke said ever since. "A lot of Amish will tell you they don't want their kids to be educated," she said. "The more they know, the more apt they are to leave. Poor Monika, coming here and seeing how we live and then going back to that family of hers. It breaks my heart. Honestly, I know she's not happy, there's something going on over there that I worry about, but I don't know what it is and I'm afraid to ask."
Hearing that made Monika happy, because she loves the way Mrs. Burke is and she's going to need her help. She wonders what it would be like to be part of this family, who are always hugging in the house or going out and doing things together. She'd like to go to Mrs. Burke now, and just fall into her arms and weep, but she's so embarrassed about the way she looks; all swollen and red and tear-stained from the pain and the shame, the helplessness and the betrayal she feels.
Mrs.Burke likes to tell her how pretty she is - or at least she used to. And even though Monika never believed it, and has never heard anyone else say it, it makes her smile inside just remembering. She knows her mother has told the bishop to tell the Burkes that she's sick, but if Mrs. Burke knew what had really happened, she would help. Monika is sure of that.
All of the thoughts spinning through her sore head are broken by the sound of the barn door opening and then the confident clackety-clack of Sarah's shoes with their tiny heels walking along the wooden floor. Sarah leans over her, and in a voice that is pitiless shouts, "Monika. Get up. That's enough feeling sorry for yourself now. Get those horses out to pasture, and then get back here as soon as you can and start supper."
Monika nods, humming assent, and slowly pulls herself up. As she watches Sarah's back make its way to the barn door she wishes she could strike her dead. Maybe an arrow right through her back and out the front. Or a bullet. If she believed in hell, she'd be worried about these thoughts, but she doesn't believe in anything anymore except her own ability set herself free
.
She feels dizzy and almost falls down, but grabs hold of one of the rough beams to steady herself. Taking a damp rag hanging from a nail and wiping her blood-stained face, she checks to make sure the pen and notebook with its message to Mrs. Burke are still there. Then dipping the dirty rag into the water trough she splashes her face until she feels more awake, and slowly makes her way over to the horse barn. The bright light outside gives her a headache, and all she'd like to do is fall down and sleep it off, but there is no turning back now.
Leading the horses out to pasture, her heart thumping like a trapped wild thing, Monika imagines what it would be like to walk past the field, out the gate and never come back.
Out in the field, she's glad the animals are feeling frisky. Feebly clapping one hand against the notebook, she waits for the horses to scatter and then stumbles across the field to a mailbox, where she drops off the letter to Mrs. Burke. "Are you willing to help me?" she wrote. "I need
to get out of here." She told Mrs. Burke what had happened and then asked if she could put a message in a plastic bottle and leave it in the ditch by the mailbox where it would be easy to find.
Four days later, feeling stronger because she had been eating a little and getting outside, Monica spooked the horses again. When she got to the ditch she could see the bottle with a piece of paper in it. Lifting it up, she opened the folded pale yellow paper and read: "Our arms are open to you and so are our doors. Come as soon as you can." It was signed Jennifer Burke.
Monica burned the note with a match and went home.
It was her turn to make supper. She lit the stove, began heating water, and sat down to write a letter to her mother. In it, she thanked Sarah for finally doing something to wake her up give her a reason to find the courage to leave. Licking the envelope and sealing it, and then leaving it on the windowsill for Sarah, Monika felt happy. Her teeth were gone, but her future was waiting. She smiled.
Then she walked out the door, down the porch steps, and ran.
Notes on Once Upon a Time
When I was 35 I spent a summer in Paris studying photography and fell in love there. This is the story. It was later published in an anthology of short stories put out by Mock Frog Press in Australia.
Once Upon a Time in Paris
Once Upon a Time in Paris
My lover Andre is shaving. I stand a little bit behind him with my camera and try to catch his face in the mirror. What concentration. He doesn't look at me at all, but manipulates the blade over his creamed face with the skill and steadiness of a surgeon. It's dark in the tiny bathroom where he stands in front of the mirror as I lean on the old wooden door frame to help keep the camera steady. There is an antique fixture hanging from the ceiling, its dull bulb surrounded by fragile pink etched glass throwing a haunting glow over everything it catches - the peeling plaster walls, the old sink, the mirror with its missing bits making strange black splatters in odd places and most importantly, the beautiful face and the waltzing blade.
Without making a sound, I move away and put the camera on a tripod because the light is so dim, moving it along the old wooden floors, scratching them the way lovers might carve their initials in a tree, but nothing breaks his concentration. Music on the radio lulls us both into a light trance and nothing is hurried.
He is so much younger than I am, but I am falling more in love with him with every moment we spend together, wanting to drown in him, lose myself in his tangle of shiny black curls, his long arms, his whole body, his mind and his spirit and his soul. Making love is not enough. I want to be so tiny that he can suck me into himself whole and I never have to leave. These feelings are so new to me, something I thought I'd left behind as a teenager and even then were nothing like this. My husband is so much older than I am, he's nearly 60 now, and I've always liked it that way. Andre's physical beauty might have something to do with the attraction but it's so much more than that. There is a quietness in him that I like, a sense that everything that happens is fine. He is a Buddhist. Maybe it's that.
We have come here to Paris to take master classes with some of the best photographers in the world, our heroes. The day I met Andre, Lucien Clergue was giving a workshop on photographing the nude. Models posed for us on the grass, in the trees, poking out from behind huge shiny leaves, by the water, in the water or wrapped in one another's arms and I was intoxicated, drunk with desire to steal them from where they were and hold them tight to myself with light and film, anxious to get back to lab and watch them come to life in the developing trays, making them my own. I didn't know that before this perfect day was over, it would also be Andre I wanted for myself, equally intoxicated by what he was offering me.
The day of the workshop, tired from the pounding heat of the sun and the demands of his muse, he had fallen asleep on the grass, away from the rest of us where it wasn't easy to see him, but once I had I woke him up to tell him the bus had arrived and we were leaving. Walking together in silence, watching the sun's slow descent making abstract paintings in the western sky, we ran to catch the bus before it pulled away, sitting at the very back where is was empty and should have been uncomfortable but wasn't. Before we fell asleep, he had put his arm lightly around my bare shoulders and said, "K'Leigh. What a beautiful name. I could fall in love with you before we get back to Paris," and then given me a tiny peck on the cheek.
This trip away from home, where I live with my husband Clifford and my daughter Becky has me doing things I would never have done as my old self, but oddly, I don't feel guilty. I feel new. And unfettered. And free. And although things at home are fine, I am having trouble remembering my husband's face in detail, even as I rack up expenses on the credit card he has given me to use on this trip. My daughter is away at camp and writes almost daily so I feel a little bit closer to her, but some part of me seems to have been left over the Atlantic. My former life is beginning to feel like someone else's life and I feel more at home here than I do there. When my husband calls every few days his voice sounds odd and the conversations feel like scenes from a dream that I've suddenly been startled awake from. When he asks if I'm really alright, I tell him the connection is terrible, but everything is perfect and thank him again for giving me this trip for my last birthday.
Walking the streets of the city or through the gardens in parks with their reflecting pools and wrought iron benches, flower gardens and children sailing their paper boats, Andre and I are not only falling in love but telling each other things about ourselves that at least for me are long-held secrets that were never intended to be shared and I think he is doing the same. I hear about his French mother and Serbian father, the passion that lives in the home he was raised in, so unlike my own. The girlfriend who left in the middle of the night after he'd asked her to marry him because her parents didn't want her to marry a "half-breed" and she didn't have the courage to stand up to them, the pressure to excel in everything as the first generation immigrant child in a new country, his dog Oscar, his best friend Paul. The books he loves and the music he can read and write and the guitar he can play. Why he wants to be a photographer and not a doctor, even though he's almost finished med school now. How he knows it's going to break his parents hearts but he will not return to his small town in France after this course but stay and do what his heart tells him he must do.
And in exchange I tell him about the first husband who beat me, the pregnancy years after the divorce that was the result of another night of drinking and drugs, how I met my husband when he was my boss in another low-end job I hated, the way he loved me like a daughter and took my my own daughter on as his own, adopting her and giving her his name. The nice life that we have at home; the friends, the comfort, the way he lets me be. The fact that I was never in love with him but needed him. That he knew that and it was enough. How much I feel I've cheated him now.
Sometimes when we talk about these things I realize I am quietly crying and he will put his arms around me and pull me closer, kissing my tears and saying nothing, because there is nothing to say. And I might wonder for a moment what my husband would do if he could hear us, see us, talking about him, what expression he might have on his face knowing both of us are hurting for him but too greedy in our fascination with each other to let it go and give what we have to the man who earned it. But at the same time when I'm nestled in Andre's arms or have my head tucked under his chin as he plays with my hair before we fall asleep, I have such an overwhelming sense of peace that it just doesn't let the image form.
Night after night we return from our walks or concerts or trips to jazz clubs where occasionally Andre will play the guitar and I'll watch him cradle it and strum it like a lover, the same way he will touch and cradle me when we arrive at his room, the room we now share on the top floor of a crumbling old house that has become our home. I might dance up the stairs, losing my eternal shyness, always wearing one of my long white cotton dresses that billow around me as I twirl, knowing that in a moment I will find him swooping me up in his arms, laughing and carrying me the rest of the way up the stairs, still holding me easily as he puts the key in the lock, and I will feel again like a virgin bride in another time and place on her wedding night.
Afterwards, I will lie there thinking that this life must belong to someone else.
In the mornings we get up late and often take pictures of each other. We are missing most of our classes now but use the darkroom when no one else is there, documenting this love of ours moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day. He photographs me standing in the bathtub, light falling on my face from the tiny window, steam swirling around my body, my hair starting to curl in tendrils and it turns out to be my favourite. Even now I have it on the wall at home. I photograph him in jeans and wet hair, without a shirt, sitting backwards on a chair and looking at me as though he can see really see me, that all is transparent and all is good, even the not so nice things. It is the best photograph I will take in Paris and it later wins a prize.
While I am here my husband Clifford will be moving all of our things to new house that we found together and loved - a little dream house, he'd called it. He has just phoned to say that when he picks me up at the airport we will go directly there. When he talks about it, he sounds as excited as I've ever heard him and it breaks my heart. "I can't wait to see you K'Leigh. I miss you so much. Do you need anything? Is everything okay? Safe trip, honey. God Bless." This is the way he is. Good. Sweet. Caring. The man who took me in when even my family wouldn't speak to me anymore. Clifford and my daughter Becky are my world now. My only family.
On our last day in Paris Andre and I sit in an outdoor cafe drinking wine when he again asks me to stay. To send for my daughter and live with him here. He is crying into my silence in this public place. I've never seen anyone cry over me before and I don't know what to do. I take one of his hands into both of mine, moving our hands together in a barely noticeable rocking motion until he looks at me without tears and I'm ready to speak. "Andre, I'm going to go home to see Clifford and get Becky and bring her back with me. It might take a little while but I'll be back. I love you, but I have to know that this is not just a passing thing. It has to be what you truly want." He puts his arms around me and we sit there like for a long time, my head tucked into that little place between his shoulder and his neck, wondering how long it will be until we are together this way again.
On the plane ride home I become aware that not only am I literally suspended in the air I am emotionally suspended too, heartbreakingly hanging between here and there, between domesticity and bliss, certainty and the unknown, loyalty and betrayal. I know they'll be waiting for me at the airport, Clifford and Becky, the only two things I've managed to get right so far in my life. There'll be hugs and kisses and smiles and the trip to the new house where I can almost be sure my favourite flowers - yellow roses - will be waiting for me on the table in the hallway. Clifford is always thoughtful about the little things.
But I am also thinking of Andre and I together, our bodies glistening with love and lust and secrets, old lives fading away, everything fastforwarding at such a gallop that I feel dizzy and hungry and foolish. I fall asleep eventually, still not sure about anything, and when I wake up we are landing.
"Mommy. Mommmmmmmmmmmmmmy." Becky is throwing her little suntanned arms around me while Clifford watches from behind the rope at the Arrivals gate. From here I can see how people often think he's Becky's grandfather, his gray hair so neatly parted, wearing a suit in this warm weather, always elegant if a little formal and stuff. He smiles his sweet smile and waves and I can already feel the fault lines in my heart deepening their crevices as I smile and wave back at him.
As the days pass into weeks I still can't summon the strength to talk to Clifford about what happened in Paris. Andre's letters urging me to come back as soon as I can are read and reread until I hide them in my lingerie drawer. Clifford doesn't question them, assuming they're from one of the girls I met in the course. One of these includes a photo that I took in the Luxembourg gardens by the reflecting pools on a day when we rolled around on the grass like teenagers. In the photo Andre's hair is tousled and falling into his eyes, his hands reaching towards me trying to grab the camera and pull me back onto the grass with him, impatient with me because I can't stop taking pictures, smiling that funny and sad smile that makes me ache. I carry it with me constantly, tucking it into a pocket or inside my bra close to my heart.
Clifford has bought me a new car for my birthday and I like go down into the parking garage and sit in it with the radio on rereading Andre's letters and composing mine to him. I can be completely private here with no interruptions from the phone or the call of the computer or Clifford and Becky, although their demands are always small. Yet nothing I write feels right and I rip the papers up and throw them into the garbage bag on the floor, paralyzed.
On one particular day I fall asleep there until a knock on the window wakes me up. Clifford is outside the car looking upset. "What are you doing down here?" he says, "It's 6:00 o'clock. We were worried." I don't know what to say other than "I was just listening to the radio and I guess I fell asleep."
"I don't know what's wrong with you these days K. The radio isn't on now, so you've probably killed the battery. Try to start the car and see what happens."
The battery is dead and Clifford asks me to go upstairs to let Becky know I'm alright while he goes to his own car to pull over and start mine with his jumpers. I'm still half asleep when I open the door to the townhouse and see Becky bent over her homework at the kitchen table. There's nothing for dinner and she looks at me as though she knows something that I haven't told her. "Are we going to order out then?" she says. "I'm starving." I order some Chinese and then Becky and I spend some time just talking about her day, her friends, her teachers and her dream of going to the school for the arts next year. "It's just like the Fame school, you know," she tells me. "But I don't know if my art is good enough to get in. What do you think, Mom?" I ask her to show me some of the new drawings she's tucked away into her portfolio when Clifford comes into the house looking as I've never seen him before. He is holding the garbage bag from the car and his face is contorted and red.
"What are these? Tell me, what are they?" He is holding up a letter from Andre and some of the torn bits from the letter I tried to write telling him that I would be there as soon as I could once things were settled at home. Telling him how much I loved him, how sorry I felt that I couldn't love my husband the way I loved him, and begging him to hang on until I got there.
"You know what they are," I say. "I just didn't know how to tell you. I'm sorry."
"If you want to go and live in Paris K, go. I don't want you here. Tell your boyfriend you've told me what you had to tell me and you'll be leaving soon. And tell him to send you a ticket because by god I'm not going to get it for you."
And I do. When I call Andre at the little apartment in Paris, crying and trying to explain what happened, he tells me he doesn't have enough money to send tickets for Becky and me, that it's impossible. That we'll just have to wait until Clifford and I have some kind of legal separation and I have the money to get there on my own. He sounds tired, maybe a little annoyed, weary of all of this. I can't blame him, but I feel betrayed. I am now both betrayer and betrayed, a feeling that makes me queasy and I want to be sick.
Later on Clifford and I fight again and I beg him to give me the money to leave but he is stubborn and humiliated and getting short of breath. "I'll find a little condo for you and Becky, pay for it, give you some money for both of you every month and that's it. If you want to do more than pretend to be a photographer, you can get a job and save for your trip. I don't want to talk about this anymore and I won't change my mind. I'm calling my lawyer tomorrow and that's that. We'll find a place as soon as we can, because right now I really can't stand the sight of you and the sooner you leave, the better it will be for all of us."
When I relay all of this to Andre he listens with half-hearted interest and finally says, "Never mind K. Don't come. It was a summer in Paris. And it's over. I'm sorry."
Did I really love Andre as much as I thought I did? Or was he just an interlude - something between here and there, contentment and excitement, security and the unknown? I think he was all of those things. My love, my fantasy, my dream, my indulgence, my imaginary future. He didn't know me as Clifford knew me, but then I showed him different things, things that I didn't know were still inside me. Was that person I became real? I hope so. It was a summer in Paris. And then it was over. And now I must learn how to take care of myself.
My lover Andre is shaving. I stand a little bit behind him with my camera and try to catch his face in the mirror. What concentration. He doesn't look at me at all, but manipulates the blade over his creamed face with the skill and steadiness of a surgeon. It's dark in the tiny bathroom where he stands in front of the mirror as I lean on the old wooden door frame to help keep the camera steady. There is an antique fixture hanging from the ceiling, its dull bulb surrounded by fragile pink etched glass throwing a haunting glow over everything it catches - the peeling plaster walls, the old sink, the mirror with its missing bits making strange black splatters in odd places and most importantly, the beautiful face and the waltzing blade.
Without making a sound, I move away and put the camera on a tripod because the light is so dim, moving it along the old wooden floors, scratching them the way lovers might carve their initials in a tree, but nothing breaks his concentration. Music on the radio lulls us both into a light trance and nothing is hurried.
He is so much younger than I am, but I am falling more in love with him with every moment we spend together, wanting to drown in him, lose myself in his tangle of shiny black curls, his long arms, his whole body, his mind and his spirit and his soul. Making love is not enough. I want to be so tiny that he can suck me into himself whole and I never have to leave. These feelings are so new to me, something I thought I'd left behind as a teenager and even then were nothing like this. My husband is so much older than I am, he's nearly 60 now, and I've always liked it that way. Andre's physical beauty might have something to do with the attraction but it's so much more than that. There is a quietness in him that I like, a sense that everything that happens is fine. He is a Buddhist. Maybe it's that.
We have come here to Paris to take master classes with some of the best photographers in the world, our heroes. The day I met Andre, Lucien Clergue was giving a workshop on photographing the nude. Models posed for us on the grass, in the trees, poking out from behind huge shiny leaves, by the water, in the water or wrapped in one another's arms and I was intoxicated, drunk with desire to steal them from where they were and hold them tight to myself with light and film, anxious to get back to lab and watch them come to life in the developing trays, making them my own. I didn't know that before this perfect day was over, it would also be Andre I wanted for myself, equally intoxicated by what he was offering me.
The day of the workshop, tired from the pounding heat of the sun and the demands of his muse, he had fallen asleep on the grass, away from the rest of us where it wasn't easy to see him, but once I had I woke him up to tell him the bus had arrived and we were leaving. Walking together in silence, watching the sun's slow descent making abstract paintings in the western sky, we ran to catch the bus before it pulled away, sitting at the very back where is was empty and should have been uncomfortable but wasn't. Before we fell asleep, he had put his arm lightly around my bare shoulders and said, "K'Leigh. What a beautiful name. I could fall in love with you before we get back to Paris," and then given me a tiny peck on the cheek.
This trip away from home, where I live with my husband Clifford and my daughter Becky has me doing things I would never have done as my old self, but oddly, I don't feel guilty. I feel new. And unfettered. And free. And although things at home are fine, I am having trouble remembering my husband's face in detail, even as I rack up expenses on the credit card he has given me to use on this trip. My daughter is away at camp and writes almost daily so I feel a little bit closer to her, but some part of me seems to have been left over the Atlantic. My former life is beginning to feel like someone else's life and I feel more at home here than I do there. When my husband calls every few days his voice sounds odd and the conversations feel like scenes from a dream that I've suddenly been startled awake from. When he asks if I'm really alright, I tell him the connection is terrible, but everything is perfect and thank him again for giving me this trip for my last birthday.
Walking the streets of the city or through the gardens in parks with their reflecting pools and wrought iron benches, flower gardens and children sailing their paper boats, Andre and I are not only falling in love but telling each other things about ourselves that at least for me are long-held secrets that were never intended to be shared and I think he is doing the same. I hear about his French mother and Serbian father, the passion that lives in the home he was raised in, so unlike my own. The girlfriend who left in the middle of the night after he'd asked her to marry him because her parents didn't want her to marry a "half-breed" and she didn't have the courage to stand up to them, the pressure to excel in everything as the first generation immigrant child in a new country, his dog Oscar, his best friend Paul. The books he loves and the music he can read and write and the guitar he can play. Why he wants to be a photographer and not a doctor, even though he's almost finished med school now. How he knows it's going to break his parents hearts but he will not return to his small town in France after this course but stay and do what his heart tells him he must do.
And in exchange I tell him about the first husband who beat me, the pregnancy years after the divorce that was the result of another night of drinking and drugs, how I met my husband when he was my boss in another low-end job I hated, the way he loved me like a daughter and took my my own daughter on as his own, adopting her and giving her his name. The nice life that we have at home; the friends, the comfort, the way he lets me be. The fact that I was never in love with him but needed him. That he knew that and it was enough. How much I feel I've cheated him now.
Sometimes when we talk about these things I realize I am quietly crying and he will put his arms around me and pull me closer, kissing my tears and saying nothing, because there is nothing to say. And I might wonder for a moment what my husband would do if he could hear us, see us, talking about him, what expression he might have on his face knowing both of us are hurting for him but too greedy in our fascination with each other to let it go and give what we have to the man who earned it. But at the same time when I'm nestled in Andre's arms or have my head tucked under his chin as he plays with my hair before we fall asleep, I have such an overwhelming sense of peace that it just doesn't let the image form.
Night after night we return from our walks or concerts or trips to jazz clubs where occasionally Andre will play the guitar and I'll watch him cradle it and strum it like a lover, the same way he will touch and cradle me when we arrive at his room, the room we now share on the top floor of a crumbling old house that has become our home. I might dance up the stairs, losing my eternal shyness, always wearing one of my long white cotton dresses that billow around me as I twirl, knowing that in a moment I will find him swooping me up in his arms, laughing and carrying me the rest of the way up the stairs, still holding me easily as he puts the key in the lock, and I will feel again like a virgin bride in another time and place on her wedding night.
Afterwards, I will lie there thinking that this life must belong to someone else.
In the mornings we get up late and often take pictures of each other. We are missing most of our classes now but use the darkroom when no one else is there, documenting this love of ours moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day. He photographs me standing in the bathtub, light falling on my face from the tiny window, steam swirling around my body, my hair starting to curl in tendrils and it turns out to be my favourite. Even now I have it on the wall at home. I photograph him in jeans and wet hair, without a shirt, sitting backwards on a chair and looking at me as though he can see really see me, that all is transparent and all is good, even the not so nice things. It is the best photograph I will take in Paris and it later wins a prize.
While I am here my husband Clifford will be moving all of our things to new house that we found together and loved - a little dream house, he'd called it. He has just phoned to say that when he picks me up at the airport we will go directly there. When he talks about it, he sounds as excited as I've ever heard him and it breaks my heart. "I can't wait to see you K'Leigh. I miss you so much. Do you need anything? Is everything okay? Safe trip, honey. God Bless." This is the way he is. Good. Sweet. Caring. The man who took me in when even my family wouldn't speak to me anymore. Clifford and my daughter Becky are my world now. My only family.
On our last day in Paris Andre and I sit in an outdoor cafe drinking wine when he again asks me to stay. To send for my daughter and live with him here. He is crying into my silence in this public place. I've never seen anyone cry over me before and I don't know what to do. I take one of his hands into both of mine, moving our hands together in a barely noticeable rocking motion until he looks at me without tears and I'm ready to speak. "Andre, I'm going to go home to see Clifford and get Becky and bring her back with me. It might take a little while but I'll be back. I love you, but I have to know that this is not just a passing thing. It has to be what you truly want." He puts his arms around me and we sit there like for a long time, my head tucked into that little place between his shoulder and his neck, wondering how long it will be until we are together this way again.
On the plane ride home I become aware that not only am I literally suspended in the air I am emotionally suspended too, heartbreakingly hanging between here and there, between domesticity and bliss, certainty and the unknown, loyalty and betrayal. I know they'll be waiting for me at the airport, Clifford and Becky, the only two things I've managed to get right so far in my life. There'll be hugs and kisses and smiles and the trip to the new house where I can almost be sure my favourite flowers - yellow roses - will be waiting for me on the table in the hallway. Clifford is always thoughtful about the little things.
But I am also thinking of Andre and I together, our bodies glistening with love and lust and secrets, old lives fading away, everything fastforwarding at such a gallop that I feel dizzy and hungry and foolish. I fall asleep eventually, still not sure about anything, and when I wake up we are landing.
"Mommy. Mommmmmmmmmmmmmmy." Becky is throwing her little suntanned arms around me while Clifford watches from behind the rope at the Arrivals gate. From here I can see how people often think he's Becky's grandfather, his gray hair so neatly parted, wearing a suit in this warm weather, always elegant if a little formal and stuff. He smiles his sweet smile and waves and I can already feel the fault lines in my heart deepening their crevices as I smile and wave back at him.
As the days pass into weeks I still can't summon the strength to talk to Clifford about what happened in Paris. Andre's letters urging me to come back as soon as I can are read and reread until I hide them in my lingerie drawer. Clifford doesn't question them, assuming they're from one of the girls I met in the course. One of these includes a photo that I took in the Luxembourg gardens by the reflecting pools on a day when we rolled around on the grass like teenagers. In the photo Andre's hair is tousled and falling into his eyes, his hands reaching towards me trying to grab the camera and pull me back onto the grass with him, impatient with me because I can't stop taking pictures, smiling that funny and sad smile that makes me ache. I carry it with me constantly, tucking it into a pocket or inside my bra close to my heart.
Clifford has bought me a new car for my birthday and I like go down into the parking garage and sit in it with the radio on rereading Andre's letters and composing mine to him. I can be completely private here with no interruptions from the phone or the call of the computer or Clifford and Becky, although their demands are always small. Yet nothing I write feels right and I rip the papers up and throw them into the garbage bag on the floor, paralyzed.
On one particular day I fall asleep there until a knock on the window wakes me up. Clifford is outside the car looking upset. "What are you doing down here?" he says, "It's 6:00 o'clock. We were worried." I don't know what to say other than "I was just listening to the radio and I guess I fell asleep."
"I don't know what's wrong with you these days K. The radio isn't on now, so you've probably killed the battery. Try to start the car and see what happens."
The battery is dead and Clifford asks me to go upstairs to let Becky know I'm alright while he goes to his own car to pull over and start mine with his jumpers. I'm still half asleep when I open the door to the townhouse and see Becky bent over her homework at the kitchen table. There's nothing for dinner and she looks at me as though she knows something that I haven't told her. "Are we going to order out then?" she says. "I'm starving." I order some Chinese and then Becky and I spend some time just talking about her day, her friends, her teachers and her dream of going to the school for the arts next year. "It's just like the Fame school, you know," she tells me. "But I don't know if my art is good enough to get in. What do you think, Mom?" I ask her to show me some of the new drawings she's tucked away into her portfolio when Clifford comes into the house looking as I've never seen him before. He is holding the garbage bag from the car and his face is contorted and red.
"What are these? Tell me, what are they?" He is holding up a letter from Andre and some of the torn bits from the letter I tried to write telling him that I would be there as soon as I could once things were settled at home. Telling him how much I loved him, how sorry I felt that I couldn't love my husband the way I loved him, and begging him to hang on until I got there.
"You know what they are," I say. "I just didn't know how to tell you. I'm sorry."
"If you want to go and live in Paris K, go. I don't want you here. Tell your boyfriend you've told me what you had to tell me and you'll be leaving soon. And tell him to send you a ticket because by god I'm not going to get it for you."
And I do. When I call Andre at the little apartment in Paris, crying and trying to explain what happened, he tells me he doesn't have enough money to send tickets for Becky and me, that it's impossible. That we'll just have to wait until Clifford and I have some kind of legal separation and I have the money to get there on my own. He sounds tired, maybe a little annoyed, weary of all of this. I can't blame him, but I feel betrayed. I am now both betrayer and betrayed, a feeling that makes me queasy and I want to be sick.
Later on Clifford and I fight again and I beg him to give me the money to leave but he is stubborn and humiliated and getting short of breath. "I'll find a little condo for you and Becky, pay for it, give you some money for both of you every month and that's it. If you want to do more than pretend to be a photographer, you can get a job and save for your trip. I don't want to talk about this anymore and I won't change my mind. I'm calling my lawyer tomorrow and that's that. We'll find a place as soon as we can, because right now I really can't stand the sight of you and the sooner you leave, the better it will be for all of us."
When I relay all of this to Andre he listens with half-hearted interest and finally says, "Never mind K. Don't come. It was a summer in Paris. And it's over. I'm sorry."
Did I really love Andre as much as I thought I did? Or was he just an interlude - something between here and there, contentment and excitement, security and the unknown? I think he was all of those things. My love, my fantasy, my dream, my indulgence, my imaginary future. He didn't know me as Clifford knew me, but then I showed him different things, things that I didn't know were still inside me. Was that person I became real? I hope so. It was a summer in Paris. And then it was over. And now I must learn how to take care of myself.
Notes on Rain
This is the story I like best of all the stories I've written. Maybe because it was one of the first but also because it evokes the feelings I actually had at the time of these events. Some of them are written exactly as they happened, some are not, but overall it feels authentic to me. I wrote it in Boot Camp when I was writing with Alex Keegan et al, a tough experience but one that changed me from someone who wanted to be a writer to someone who was a writer. This story took First Prize at Skive Magazine in Australia and was later published in a book of short stories, the title of which comes from my first line in this story - you are going away.
Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
you are going away
Best of Skive Short Story Prize 2005
Matthew Ward, Ed
Mockfrog Design Press
2005, till 31 Jan priced at:
$11.00 AUD (Australian Dollars)
$8.18 USD (US Dollars)
available as printed book
Ebook(.pdf) $1.33 (AUD) = $0.99 USD
Emailed:
http://www.skivemagazine.com/skivessprize/skivessprize.html
I’m predicting that the short story is on the verge of making a gigantic comeback. The form is perfect for the modern short attention span; perfect for a brief moment of respite in between the chaos that makes up most people’s lives; perfect, because of its brevity, for ebooks and podcasting; and when written well, a perfectly short piece of well structured, intense, and powerful literature. Compilations of short stories are, generally speaking, a delight for the reader, as it allows for a quick bite of literary pleasure at any time, with a diverse range of voices, styles, settings, and narrative structures that ensure freshness. Venues like Skive Magazine, launched in late 2003, have done much to bring the art of short story writing into a public arena. The site features original, and often edgy short stories illustrated and presented with panache by editor Matt Ward. Skive's second publication, You Are Going Awaycontains the top eighteen submissions to the Skive Short Story Prize run in mid 2005. I suspect that there are many writers who don’t really understand what it takes to make a good short story--a tight, clean structure, conflict, hook, desire, and a ringing ending--and others who equate the short story form to a short version of a novel, or worse, a slice out of a novel--something secondary to or preliminary for the real game of full length fiction. Thankfully, there isn’t too much of that in this new collection, which features stories from around the world, with a myriad of different voices, settings, and time frames--some very short and even cursory, and others longer and more detailed. Most of the stories, and particularly the three winners, have all of those qualities: are tightly structured with a conflict that pulls the reader in and drives the narrative forward, leading carefully and conclusively towards the ending. Interestingly, a large proportion of the stories included here are first person narratives, rooted in the present and reflective of the past. Where the stories work best, the narrative is driven from well developed characterisation and a strong sense of place, with evocative detail drawing the reader deep into the world of the story. It’s impossible to read a collection like this without assessing the prize winners first, partly because of their placement in the book.
First prize winner, Ann Fischer’s ‘Rain, a Quiet Street and Amber' provides the title for the collection with its opening line. It’s a beautifully paced, almost tender look at love lost from a first person point of view. The events in the novel have already passed, and neither the protagonist narrator nor the antagonist are present in a direct sense. However, the narration resists nostalgia, as the author creates motion, conflict, and a strong sense of present tense desire with a reflective assessment of an affair long over. The structure is both unusual and tightly mapped, and the writing remains clean, toeing the line between the past and present and keeping the reader involved with its rich characterisation and subtle build up of dramatic tension without consummation:
When your first book comes out I read through the stories like someone munching through a box of chocolates, gorging myself on the love that we had that now lives on the page. I am everywhere, but not with you. (9)
The story is so richly detailed, and the characterisation of the protagonist so well written, that I found myself imagining that the unnamed ‘star’ was Malcolm Lowry or Michael Ondaatje--some eminent Canadian male author of note, although of course this is fiction, and there need be no ’real life’ behind it The transport of the reader however, was complete, as was the ebb and flow of the dramatic tension.
Second prize winner Caroline Fletcher’s ‘A Taste of Money’ was full of humour, and provocative in its connection between sexual desire and the succulent taste of fresh cherries. However, this story seemed a little pat in its ending--the tiny pun not enough to sustain the weight of the full story. The narrator is made to appear unstable, and a little unpleasant, which works well, but again, doesn‘t fulfil its promise as it ends too soon, without a real denouement or any sense of where the narrator was taking us. The pun just isn’t enough of a conclusion to give this story the sense of completion it requires.
Third prize winner, Melissa Beit’s 'The Bridge' lives up to its prize and presents a complex first person memory of a near fatal train bridge crossing. The story is full of detail, and despite its small word count, manages to convey a heady sense of life in rural Queensland for the children of Italian migrants--picking up the multicultural flavour of Australia, an authentic child’s perspective, though shot through with a light touch of nostalgia, amidst conflict and resolution:
As well as the juddering and rattling of the train and its empty cane bins, the howl of its passing wind, and the earthquake tremble of the bridge, the platform was doing its thing, bouncing up and down under our weight as though inviting us to triple pike. My brother, who is not musical, in spite of the piano lessons, broke confidently and roundly into song: Train is comin’, oh yeah, train is comin’ oh yeah…(15)
Other stories in this collection traverse a wide terrain, moving through a child’s discovered guilt in country Australia, a strange bus ride through a deserted Sydney, a sultry beach where a would be detective follows the trail of a failed romantic interlude with roses and footprints, a woman’s unexpected dream of Fred Astaire on the last day of her life, an obese young woman about to take on a serious exercise program after one last chocolate fling, a young man on the verge of leaving his Floridian family home for a new life in Chicago, or a man dying in the Australian outback. The stories make ample use of dialect, individual voices, and tend to have engrossing, easy to read plots, with little overt experimentalism, and a healthy sense of fun. In other words, this is a collection full of entertainment, immersion into a new world, and sometimes a little gem of wisdom to take away. A few of the stories begin with a great idea or concept, which is left unfinished, so that the reader feels cheated. Or at times the reader is taken on a great journey, which then has an ending too contrived--a deus ex machina. There are a couple of stories that are beautifully written, such as Joseph Shorter’s ‘Cass,‘ but which just don’t have a strong enough structure or plot to make a dramatic impact on the reader, who is left wondering what has happened. In these instances, a little more development and a tighter sense of what the story is trying to convey would have helped. Another recurring fault is that characterisation is often sacrificed in favour of plot--something which is fairly easy to do with the short story, since there is little time for character development. Writing good characterisation in such a short space takes the skill of a poet, and where it does occur well, such as in Joanne Riccioni’s ‘The Art Collector’, few words are needed to convey meaning. Here sexual tension appears in the most mundane of activities, revealing the protagonist‘s desire:
As he turned off the tap and dried his hands, he heard the jingle of her bracelets, a soft, preparatory cough, the unzipping of her portfolio.(44)
Despite some minor faults, and a few stories which could be made better with a couple of reworks, this is a very pleasurable collection. In general, the writing is strong, the stories engaging, and easy to digest in a single sitting. I reviewed the ebook version, and although I usually find ebook fiction difficult, it is ideal for the short story form. In the midst of working on a mundane project, one can turn to a story, and read it in the space of 10-15 minutes for brief respite. The book is also available in hard copy, and both the ebook and hard copy are so reasonably priced (the ebook is almost free until the end of January), that one can buy them purely to lighten the load of life--to experience a few moments of reflection, or change of scene. For more information visit:www.skivemagazine.com/skivessprize/skivessprize.html
Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
you are going away
Best of Skive Short Story Prize 2005
Matthew Ward, Ed
Mockfrog Design Press
2005, till 31 Jan priced at:
$11.00 AUD (Australian Dollars)
$8.18 USD (US Dollars)
available as printed book
Ebook(.pdf) $1.33 (AUD) = $0.99 USD
Emailed:
http://www.skivemagazine.com/skivessprize/skivessprize.html
I’m predicting that the short story is on the verge of making a gigantic comeback. The form is perfect for the modern short attention span; perfect for a brief moment of respite in between the chaos that makes up most people’s lives; perfect, because of its brevity, for ebooks and podcasting; and when written well, a perfectly short piece of well structured, intense, and powerful literature. Compilations of short stories are, generally speaking, a delight for the reader, as it allows for a quick bite of literary pleasure at any time, with a diverse range of voices, styles, settings, and narrative structures that ensure freshness. Venues like Skive Magazine, launched in late 2003, have done much to bring the art of short story writing into a public arena. The site features original, and often edgy short stories illustrated and presented with panache by editor Matt Ward. Skive's second publication, You Are Going Awaycontains the top eighteen submissions to the Skive Short Story Prize run in mid 2005. I suspect that there are many writers who don’t really understand what it takes to make a good short story--a tight, clean structure, conflict, hook, desire, and a ringing ending--and others who equate the short story form to a short version of a novel, or worse, a slice out of a novel--something secondary to or preliminary for the real game of full length fiction. Thankfully, there isn’t too much of that in this new collection, which features stories from around the world, with a myriad of different voices, settings, and time frames--some very short and even cursory, and others longer and more detailed. Most of the stories, and particularly the three winners, have all of those qualities: are tightly structured with a conflict that pulls the reader in and drives the narrative forward, leading carefully and conclusively towards the ending. Interestingly, a large proportion of the stories included here are first person narratives, rooted in the present and reflective of the past. Where the stories work best, the narrative is driven from well developed characterisation and a strong sense of place, with evocative detail drawing the reader deep into the world of the story. It’s impossible to read a collection like this without assessing the prize winners first, partly because of their placement in the book.
First prize winner, Ann Fischer’s ‘Rain, a Quiet Street and Amber' provides the title for the collection with its opening line. It’s a beautifully paced, almost tender look at love lost from a first person point of view. The events in the novel have already passed, and neither the protagonist narrator nor the antagonist are present in a direct sense. However, the narration resists nostalgia, as the author creates motion, conflict, and a strong sense of present tense desire with a reflective assessment of an affair long over. The structure is both unusual and tightly mapped, and the writing remains clean, toeing the line between the past and present and keeping the reader involved with its rich characterisation and subtle build up of dramatic tension without consummation:
When your first book comes out I read through the stories like someone munching through a box of chocolates, gorging myself on the love that we had that now lives on the page. I am everywhere, but not with you. (9)
The story is so richly detailed, and the characterisation of the protagonist so well written, that I found myself imagining that the unnamed ‘star’ was Malcolm Lowry or Michael Ondaatje--some eminent Canadian male author of note, although of course this is fiction, and there need be no ’real life’ behind it The transport of the reader however, was complete, as was the ebb and flow of the dramatic tension.
Second prize winner Caroline Fletcher’s ‘A Taste of Money’ was full of humour, and provocative in its connection between sexual desire and the succulent taste of fresh cherries. However, this story seemed a little pat in its ending--the tiny pun not enough to sustain the weight of the full story. The narrator is made to appear unstable, and a little unpleasant, which works well, but again, doesn‘t fulfil its promise as it ends too soon, without a real denouement or any sense of where the narrator was taking us. The pun just isn’t enough of a conclusion to give this story the sense of completion it requires.
Third prize winner, Melissa Beit’s 'The Bridge' lives up to its prize and presents a complex first person memory of a near fatal train bridge crossing. The story is full of detail, and despite its small word count, manages to convey a heady sense of life in rural Queensland for the children of Italian migrants--picking up the multicultural flavour of Australia, an authentic child’s perspective, though shot through with a light touch of nostalgia, amidst conflict and resolution:
As well as the juddering and rattling of the train and its empty cane bins, the howl of its passing wind, and the earthquake tremble of the bridge, the platform was doing its thing, bouncing up and down under our weight as though inviting us to triple pike. My brother, who is not musical, in spite of the piano lessons, broke confidently and roundly into song: Train is comin’, oh yeah, train is comin’ oh yeah…(15)
Other stories in this collection traverse a wide terrain, moving through a child’s discovered guilt in country Australia, a strange bus ride through a deserted Sydney, a sultry beach where a would be detective follows the trail of a failed romantic interlude with roses and footprints, a woman’s unexpected dream of Fred Astaire on the last day of her life, an obese young woman about to take on a serious exercise program after one last chocolate fling, a young man on the verge of leaving his Floridian family home for a new life in Chicago, or a man dying in the Australian outback. The stories make ample use of dialect, individual voices, and tend to have engrossing, easy to read plots, with little overt experimentalism, and a healthy sense of fun. In other words, this is a collection full of entertainment, immersion into a new world, and sometimes a little gem of wisdom to take away. A few of the stories begin with a great idea or concept, which is left unfinished, so that the reader feels cheated. Or at times the reader is taken on a great journey, which then has an ending too contrived--a deus ex machina. There are a couple of stories that are beautifully written, such as Joseph Shorter’s ‘Cass,‘ but which just don’t have a strong enough structure or plot to make a dramatic impact on the reader, who is left wondering what has happened. In these instances, a little more development and a tighter sense of what the story is trying to convey would have helped. Another recurring fault is that characterisation is often sacrificed in favour of plot--something which is fairly easy to do with the short story, since there is little time for character development. Writing good characterisation in such a short space takes the skill of a poet, and where it does occur well, such as in Joanne Riccioni’s ‘The Art Collector’, few words are needed to convey meaning. Here sexual tension appears in the most mundane of activities, revealing the protagonist‘s desire:
As he turned off the tap and dried his hands, he heard the jingle of her bracelets, a soft, preparatory cough, the unzipping of her portfolio.(44)
Despite some minor faults, and a few stories which could be made better with a couple of reworks, this is a very pleasurable collection. In general, the writing is strong, the stories engaging, and easy to digest in a single sitting. I reviewed the ebook version, and although I usually find ebook fiction difficult, it is ideal for the short story form. In the midst of working on a mundane project, one can turn to a story, and read it in the space of 10-15 minutes for brief respite. The book is also available in hard copy, and both the ebook and hard copy are so reasonably priced (the ebook is almost free until the end of January), that one can buy them purely to lighten the load of life--to experience a few moments of reflection, or change of scene. For more information visit:www.skivemagazine.com/skivessprize/skivessprize.html
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