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CW Eng 221 NMC Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
6/9 - 7/30 June 30, 1997
BAPTIST PALLET: small portable bed or pile of quilts placed on the floor for visiting kin, usually children. Named "Baptist" during the days of the circuit riding preachers I suppose. I left "Baptist pallet" out of this rewrite of Christmas Secrets.
Assignment: KIDS' STUFF 6/16; 6/23; 6/30
CHRISTMAS SECRETS
3rd draft adding conflict for the sake of story
(1st rewrite)
Every year on the night before Christmas Lottie's whole family begins to gather at the home place in Tennessee where Ohney and Papa Judson live. They come from as far away as Savannah and Charleston, by train most of them, boarded down in compartments no bigger than a closet.
Lottie's family comes by car on a slick tarvy road, then they jostle along four miles on rough gravel and finally enter the frozen ruts of a mud path, that leads to the fading grey house.
Lottie stands on the back seat of the car and leans over Twymama's shoulder, her body hanging halfway out the rolled down window. Her bare arms start waving the minute the car leaves the gravel, and her knees by now feel like jelly and begin to buckle. She strains, with each bump the car makes, to hold herself upright and not let her teeth bite clean through her tongue.
She is eight now and having made the trip twice before has become downright jittery about her arrival at the old farm. She views the scene in her mind's eye and practices it over and over. She will run into Ohney's arms first and snuggle into her bosom and breathe the scent of sugar and cinnamon while Ohney's soft arms hug her like a lost treasure.
Lottie's stomach flips over itself and she is sure it is going to fall out and scatter in all directions like a ball of mercury. She can see her grandmother running around with her apron out in front of her trying to catch all the peices of her precious grandaughter. Lottie's giggle skips out of her mouth and punctures the cold silent air.
She can already, even before he starts to play, hear Papa Judson's French harp, and she can see those lonesome notes and hear the strains of Silent Night floating through the darkness right up to the starlit sky, and she can hear herself humming along too, blowing paper on a comb.
She can see it all, and take into herself the whole of Christmas, even now, before the car shudders itself to a halt. Her stomach is flipping somersaults as she runs from the car and into Ohney's arms. Papa Judson stands by, waiting his turn, and winks at her over Ohney's shoulder. When she runs to him, he holds her face in his hands and laughs at how much she's grown.
The grass has become frosted already and the grown-up's shoes crunch tracks into it as they follow the scent of turnip greens back into the house. Lottie holds onto Papa's neck when he trots up the steps to the front porch. He gives out a real loud neigh, and Lottie says to him, "Good Pony," when he deposits her into the warm living room. He chuckles a big belly laugh then and hugs her real hard, gives her a pat on the bottom and points her toward the kitchen where the vittles are stewing away.
A low fire is crackling in the living room fireplace sending sparks up the chimney as if (the thought makes Lottie shiver) in search of something, and the tree beside the fire glows from within and fills that whole corner with its shine. The wine colored couch, covered with giant snowflake doilies, has been moved over to one side of the room and placed underneath the north window. The wind rattles the window and Lottie jumps, and all the grown-ups laugh outloud like they're watching a show.
Ohney's eyes mist over and she reaches an arm around Ilene's waist, "Yall will never know how much this means to me," she says, "to have my whole family back home for Christmas, yall'll never ever know..." Her voice fades into a quiet whimper like slowly melting snow.
Ohney shakes her head and Judson Jr. kisses his mother's cheek. Judson's wife Jewell does the same. Lottie's father Charlie, remarks with a twinkle in his eye, "Aw Misres Surrey...you'll have us all bawling in a minute," and Ohney laughs, "Don't cut the fool with me Charlie Cline or I'm liable to wear you out just like I usta do these young'ens!" She gives Ilene a squeeze. Charlie winks at Ilene, "Your Mama takes the cake, Hon," he laughs, "she pure T. does!"
Ohney's youngest, fifteen year old J.T., hangs just inside the kitchen doorway watching Lottie climb up on a kitchen chair. Lottie wants to see what Ohney is stirring up in her biscuit bowl. J.T. is interested in watching Lottie. He grins as she climbs, her firm white butt showing through her panties.
Lottie sniffs. "Teacakes?" She glances over her shoulder at J.T. He laughs and pulls air through his teeth making a sucking sound. He puckers his lips and kisses the air between himself and Lottie. Lottie cringes.
That was the sound, that sucking teeth sound, she had heard when she was three and playing underneath the porch and she had watched as he had smothered the baby chick with his fleshy hands and he had seen her watching him and pulled her out from underneath the porch where she was playing and marched her into the house and threw the dead chick into the ashes of the cold fireplace and then had said to her, "Ashes to ashes Missy, and that's where you're goin' if you don't behave."
Lottie purely hated it when J.T. was around and spent her days trying to avoid him and her nights praying he would crawl off somewhere and die.
Ohney's voice sails out in front of her as she starts for the kitchen, "Let's fix those chocolate pies, Jewell, c'mon girls..." and Lottie thinks, Now...this is Christmas! No more waiting, making Xs' on Mama's calendar and waking up with a tummy full of butterfly bubbles. She scampers down from the chair and runs past J.T. to grab her grandmother's gentle hand.
After supper all the men and J.T. linger around the table with their shoulders hunched up until their necks disappear. They joke, smoke cigarettes, and put each other in headlocks and rub their knuckles into each others scalp trying to act young again. The women shush them every few minutes, calling each one by his full name, "...quieten down," the women say, "Lottie's trying to get to sleep!"
Papa Judson's voice is low and smooth sounding, "Settle down now boys," he says, and begins dealing out cards for a game of Rook. The men snicker and make wagers with one another as to how many of Jewell's chocolate pies they think they can eat if only she will stop talking, Judson Jr. says, "and get the ball rolling!"
All the beds in the house are for the grown-ups so Lottie is tucked in for the night underneath a quilt on the living room divan where she is told she should duck under quickly if she hears anyone roaming about with a jolly laugh and sleighbells attatched to his feet.
The kids at school had told Lottie there was no such person and she had told them all their hair would fall out if they didn't believe, and she knew for sure something bad was bound to happen to you if you said outloud that you didn't.
She can smell the bubbling chocolate, hear the women tasting it, talking about drops of vanilla, and pinches of salt. Her mouth waters. If it wasn't Christmas Eve, she thinks, she'd march right in that kitchen and join the party. She tosses about on the sofa, slapping her pillow until it is fluffy again.
They always tucked her in early, and she spent every evening of her life like this, lying in bed listening to the joking voices of grown-ups and wondering why adults never ever used those same voices when they talked to children. Their voices were always sharp and mean sounding, and forever ordering you around.
She doesn't mind going to bed early on Christmas though because, She knows you have to be sound asleep or else Santa Claus will not come inside the house. Everyone knew the old fellow could see you day and night and that you couldn't pretend to be asleep either. You had to be, "conked out like a light," as Daddy said, "and I don't mean maybe!"
But those other nights, when she was just there with the grown-ups, not talking or crying or anything, she couldn't understand why she was made to leave the warm living room and go to a bed that was cold and far away from everybody. But like clock work, about the time things got interesting, she was carted off piggy-back style up the stairs, hugging her Daddy's neck.
Twymama usually tucked the quilt around her, wrapping her up "snug as a bug" she'd say, and her father would give her a kiss on the cheek and whisper, "Sleep tight Baby, and don't let the bed-bugs bite."
Lottie would lie there in the dark and kick her feet and spread her legs wide until the quilt came undone. She'd move her legs fast across the cold sheet trying to scare the bed-bugs out of her quilt. If she opened her eyes very wide she could see, in the moonlit part of the room, those tiny bed-bugs jumping around like fleas.
This night however, on the living room couch at Ohney's and Papa's house, with the icicles twinkling underneath each tree light and the wind rattling the window pane, Lottie doesn't dare move or make a sound. Once she had seen a deer leap across the frosted window glass, but she doesn't want to see one now, not on this night.
Lottie keeps her eyes shut tight and slides into a dream, floating on waves of laughter with her body rolling over and then under the waves, and she loves the dream and stays in it and rolls and rolls until the waves of laughter turn grey like ashes and then ugly and mean like J.T.'s snicker.
She is running now, her feet in powdery dust, running, running away from a strange watery sound, from brown rocks that are melting and folding over themselves and falling on top of her and her feet are caught and she cannot free them and there is a sucking sound in her ear and it is pulling her into a dark and ugly place and her voice is muffled and her arm hurts until it burns and everything goes still as dawn, and she sits up wide awake.
The quiet around her is dense and eerie and makes her shudder. She peeks one eye out. The fire has gone black, even the embers and there is nothing but grey ash left. The lights from the tree fill the room with a diffused look as if someone has placed a gauzy scarf over everything and there are no presents!
She will have to sleep harder, hold her eyes tighter. She squinches them as hard as she can and then she hears a sound breaking through all that silence.
It is like a whisper and then like boxes being scooted across the floor. She hears the crackle of paper and someone saying, "Shhh..." and then another longer more demanding shush ending with lots of S'es'.
She pulls her breath inside her cheeks and waits. A low, but familiar sounding voice says, "Put her doll-baby there, where the tree lights will shine on its face, she'll see it when she first wakes up,"
There was so much love in that voice, but she knew it wasn't Santa's voice. She had heard Santa's voice at the Christmas party in church on Sunday night and it had sounded like Pastor Bynum's voice only lower and more cheerful.
No, this voice is different. It is tender and sweet and personal like Daddy's voice saying, "Ilene...darlin'" when Twymama cries and he is pleading with her to stop. And this magical voice is playful like a kid's voice with a lilt in it when it says the word "doll-baby".
She hears her father's soft cough and she can smell his cigarette smoke and then her mother's regular whispering voice says, "You'd better get a drink of water, and bring me the scissors when you come back."
Lottie opens her eyes underneath the quilt and stares at the fuzzy darkness. She thinks her parents had better go to bed soon or else they'll scare Santa away and he might forget to come back.
She listens to the shuffle of her father's socks sliding playfully across the linoleum and then stepping, as if by magic, onto the silent woolen rug. "Scissors," he says, and then with great tenderness, "That's beautiful Hon!" and he begins to cry softly. Lottie knows her father is tender-hearted and not a bit afraid to cry when he is happy. She hears her mother's gentle whisper. "I'm going to put the doll's clothes out next and the little dishes. Meanwhile, Honey, you start filling the stockings and put that tiny music box in the toe, and don't bump it or it'll start playing." Lottie hears a kiss on someone's cheek and folds her lips inside her mouth.
She swallows her breath and listens to her parents as they move about the room, sometimes playing with a toy as they place it under the tree as though they themselves are children. They work quietly and are so careful in the placement of each item. Lottie feels like she does in church when she closes her eyes and prays. Like she is blessed by some caring loving yet mysterious being who is invisible to her, but whom she knows without a doubt is there taking care of her.
There is a strange fullness now in her chest which she cannot name. It is a sweet sensation she has never before noticed. Her thoughts are warm and deep blue in color, more mature and understanding she thinks, and she is so filled with caring for her mother and father that she is sure she is the only child in the world to have ever felt this way. There is genuine love, thick as cream, in this room this night, and Lottie thinks she can lie there and spoon it into herself like snowcream and hold onto it and keep it forever, and of course, she is right.
CW Eng 221 Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
6/9/97 - 7/30/97
EXERCISE: Facts of first seven years of your life (pg 10)
Designate (*) events that still occupy your mind
Categories:
Events -- born in sharecropper's cabin. TN.
Age 2 moved from farm to GA.
* Age 3 sister born/died @ 4 mo. S. C.
Age 4 brother born. S.C.
Age 5 blackouts/war. S.C.
Age 6 attended one-room sch. 1 day. TN.
Age 7 living in housing projects in S.C.
People -- Grandfather a tenant farmer. Father
employed in shipyards in Charleston.
* Mother and Grandmother very proud,
and patient with me.
Negroes chopping cotton/picking
cotton & not being allowed to eat off
of Mammy's good dishes.
Mr. Kay Gardner and his grocery
Miss Kate and her dress shop
Lannell and Pugo, my parent's friends
Willodean, my sister.
Johnny, my uncle.
Uncle Buddy in a casket in the good parlor.
Your Self --
First sentence spoken: "Take the
baby to the house."
Standing by a child's red wicker
chair and frowning for the camera.
Temper tantrums and china dolls
breaking on cement floors.
bouncing on the bed and making my
4 month old sister laugh out loud.
posing for pictures with her
* riding on a train with my dead sister
somewhere in the back and wondering
why she wasn't with us
living upstairs at Mr. & Mrs. Bell's
house and listening for their signal
telling us to turn off the lights and
draw the shades. Hiding in a closet
until we heard the all clear.
finding Easter eggs hidden inside
the Hyacinths at Mammy and Pappy's.
* choosing not to point to my own name
at the one-room school.
being reprimanded and shamed for it.
tricycles and sidewalks
indoor running water & electricity
hot dogs and big red apples
Lillian Jenkins and condoms and the
boys who found them and what they
told us their daddies did to their
mommies & knowing it wasn't so.
Daddy bringing home the prettiest
china doll.
crying, screaming, jumping up
and down. The shocking sound of the
doll breaking.
* Daddy and me at the ocean and Mama
taking pictures.
Inner Life -- Being very happy living in the
projects. Having lots of kids
to play with.
Being thrilled to pieces when we
went to visit my grandparents.
* Wondering why Mama was so unhappy
and why Daddy was so strict.
Trusting my parents and grandparents
and feeling safe with them.
* Not wanting to make the boy (the other first grader) feel dumb because he pointed up to my name. Thinking I was being "well-mannered". Feeling sad that I had disappointed the teacher and my mother.
Stuffing my mouth with "nigger toes" when Mammy told me not to. Loving to listen to the stories the grown-ups would tell after supper. Catching lightening bugs and putting them in a fruit jar and finding them dead in the morning and wondering why the grown-ups let us do that.
Standing with Mama and Daddy and my little brother at a small gravestone shaped like a lamb and trying to believe that was the place where my baby sister went. Daddy crying and blowing his nose. Mama not smiling.
Characteristic Things --* Frowns, temper, anger.
* Fear of falling into
a well.
* Loving to sing.
* Mocking people.
* Keeping secrets
* Listening to stories
* Being polite.
CW Eng 221 Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
Mon. & Wed. 6p-9p
6/9 - 7/30
Assignment: Changes to DARE after workshop 7/7/97
CATFIGHT TENNESSEE
1956
WINNING DADDY BACK
Lottie knew she was the most timid person in her family. In the whole community even. Everyone teased her about it, even the grown-ups. But not her mother and daddy. They appreciated Lottie's shyness and the quiet way she played by herself. Her brothers were "a handful" her mother said, and when she'd had an especially rough day with Brad and Craig, she'd use her whisper voice and nod toward Lottie's room and say to Lottie's father, "Bless her heart, that one never gives me a moment's worry."
Lottie, lying still in her bed, could hear her mother's words through the flimsy darkened wall. She smiled up at the ceiling of her room and strained to hear what her father's voice was answering back.
He cleared his throat and coughed. "Wheat chaff," he wheezed. He was going to say something good about her too, Lottie just knew it. His tone sounded kind and reverent like always, but when the words settled in on her, they made tears come to her eyes.
"Wouldn't be no fun atall, Lil," he said, "if them boys was like the girl." Like the girl? He sounded tired as if even that was more than he wanted to say about his daughter.
Something went cold inside of Lottie and she felt a jab of pain near her heart. She was the one who brought her daddy tea in a jug with lemon and sugar all the way from the house to the pasture field. The one he held on his lap and told stories to, and she was the only one he ever hugged, because it was all right to hug girls, because they didn't need to be tough like the boys did. What did he mean with his sad old voice when he said to her mother that she was no fun? Did you have to be mean like Brad and Craig to be fun? Was the nice voice her daddy used when he spoke to her a fake one like grown-ups used at the church on Sunday mornings? And the worst question of all: Did her daddy love the boys more than he loved her?
She sobbed into her pillow, her face swollen and red, and fell asleep with her father's words, "wouldn't be no fun atall," spinning around in her head.
The next morning she was hiding underneath the front porch, when the boys came running to the side yard and began drawing a marble ring into the ground. She peeked through the lattice at them. They began to smooth the dirt with their scruffy boy hands. Jimmy Ledford must be coming, she thought. She rubbed her hands in the cool dirt under the porch, spreading her fingers wide, then rubbing the damp earth on her new pinafore. She had picked this dress out herself on Saturday when she had gone with her mother to the dime store to buy shoes for school.
Lottie hated the way the dirt felt on her hands. All chalky and gritty when it was dry, and clumpy and squirty when it was wet. Boys liked all kinds of dirt and didn't even seem to know it when they had it smeared all over themselves.
How could they not know that, she wondered. How could they not know? They were strange all right, these boys. They acted like grown men, keeping busy thinking up mean things to do, like whatever it was that Tom Wren had done that got Mr. Stubblefield to shoot him dead with his rifle.
She had heard her daddy telling her mama that Tom Wren had done something with Misres Stubblefield that he shouldn't of. "It wadden altogether Tom's fault," Daddy had said, and it sounded to Lottie like Misres Stubblefield was a problem for every man because she was so good looking. So that's how boys were. Going out of control if you teased them, and torturing you when they felt like it. Most of 'em were as mean as snakes. Only a few of them, like her daddy, turned out to be good when they got grown.
Jimmy Ledford came running up the gravel road, his shoestrings flapping, and from the tops of his shoes, his dark green socks were scrunching down toward his ankles. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his Long-Johns. Lottie shuddered.
She purely hated Jimmy Ledford. He was famous for doing more bad things than even her brothers. He bragged about how he had put a golden cat, into the new clothes dryer on Mrs. Clayton's back porch. Big old square box of a thing all slick and shined up and looking hungry enough to eat. The old cat didn't meow or scratch or nothing when he picked it up and put it in the opening. Jimmy said the dumb cat laid around all day on that machine and was purely asking for a ride inside of it. Mrs. Clayton came running up the steps of her porch yelling at him to get away from her house and never come back or she'd have him horse whipped.
She had heard the loud thumping inside the dryer when she was tending her flowers, and had opened the dryer door and screamed at Jimmy like a banshee. The cat was all right, Jimmy said, but his eyes looked fearful, and his fur was electrified and standing out away from his body like he had been shot through with a bolt of lightning. Jimmy Ledford couldn't keep a straight face when he told this story, and neither could most everybody else. Boys like Jimmy Ledford were always and forever torturing somebody's old Tom cat. They thought they were adding to the lore of the community, but they were so ignorant they didn't know or even think to ask somebody how the place got its name. Being boys they assumed they already knew.
Lottie's mother overheard Jimmy bragging about the cat and she made her face look hard and sent him home, and told him not to come back til he had something good to brag about. Lottie had thought he'd prob'ly never return, but here he was.
She lay flat on her back and listened to the click of marbles as each steelie flipped from dirty folded thumbs into glass pearlies hovering in the middle of the dirt circle. Crack! Boys were so rough, she thought. They were all hard edges and liked everything loud. There wasn't anything soft and kind about them. She listened for the next sharp snap, rolled over on her belly and watched. The boy's heads were snug together and their lips were sputtering. She saw Jimmy wipe his dirty hand across his mouth and Craig and Brad listening close at him like he was the law.
Her stomach fluttered as she crawled out from under the porch and ran to the dirt ring. She stood outside the circle being especially careful not to let even her toes touch the sacred inside part.
"Get her outta here," Jimmy said, looking squinty-eyed at Brad.
"Go away," Brad said through his gritting teeth.
"No goody-two shoes allowed," yelled Craig.
Lottie sat down on the grass. So this was what Daddy thought was good and fun, she thought, all this playing in the dirt and talking rough and thinking up bad things to do. She squirmed. She knew she was staining her panties, but what did it matter? She wanted to be like the boys. To be fun and to win her daddy back. Might as well start now, she thought. She rubbed her hands in the dirt of their marble ring and then rubbed her hands on her pinafore. The boys looked at each other and snickered.
"What's wrong with you, Pip-Squeak?," one said.
Lottie grimmaced. This is not easy, she thought, this dirty stuff, but she vowed to not be perfect anymore. She was going to start doing daring things like the boys. She thought of her father. The way his voice had sounded through the dark wall. The way her heart had felt when he'd said "the girl was no fun." Well, she thought, The Girl was going to be as much fun as the boys, if it killed her.
The boys huddled closer together and whispered even lower, turning their backs to her. Lottie leaned her body over like a sapling so she could hear what they were planning. She knew it couldn't be anything nice and clean and good. "What'er you whispering about?" she asked.
They were going over to Stubbs quarry, they told her, to climb the water tower, and then they giggled their secret code kind of giggle. The one they used to exclude her from all the fun. Jimmy Ledford winked at Brad. Craig nodded. Lottie shivered and the picture of the cat, with its fur sticking out all over, came into her mind and she felt in that second like she ought to run into the house and hide from them.
"Wanna come?" Jimmy asked, looking directly at Lottie. She glanced at Brad and Craig trying to look into their eyes for what she should answer. They had their arms folded across their chests. There wasn't a hint inside them that told her they were on her side. Jimmy was smiling in a "dare you, double dare you" sort of way. Her heart thumped in her chest like a frog. She swallowed and her mouth tasted bitter.
Why was Jimmy even asking if she'd like to come along? No one ever asked her to do anything they called fun. Could the boys tell that she had decided to be different? They mostly thought she was a sissy and if truth be known she had been, but that part is over, she thought.
"Whadda you do over there?" she asked.
"Nothing much," said Craig struggling to keep a straight face.
"Sometimes we test ourselves," said Brad.
"For what?" Lottie asked.
"How long we can balance on a rock and stuff like that," Brad said, "It ain't hard." He looked at Jimmy.
"C'mon. Leave her here!" Jimmy yelled and started running, his dirty shoelaces catching on the tall grass as he jumped over the side ditch. Lottie made her legs start running. Down the gravel road she went, just like she was one of them. Her mind on nothing but putting one foot in front of the other. The boys looked back every few seconds to see if she was still coming. They jabbed each other with their elbows just like old men telling jokes to one another.
When they got to the quarry, Lottie was breathing hard, but so were the boys. She saw other kids there too. Some balancing themselves on rocks and some lying in the grass underneath the tall legs of the water tower.
The James' kids were huddled together off to one side looking at a picture torn out of a magazine. They always sat in the back pew of the church, and escaped before the preacher ever got to the forgiving part. Lottie's daddy had said they didn't know no better.
Leroy Bullock and John David Wilson, the bullies who hated everybody in town, were there too. Leroy Bullock went over to the scrap heap of James boys and grabbed the picture from Mayfield James' hands. He waved it in the air and Lottie could tell it showed a bare naked woman with her big breasts flopping out for all the world to see.
Lottie stared with her mouth open as Leroy came swaggering toward her. She looked up at him and he threw the picture at her feet and strutted past her to the grassy area behind her. She picked up the paper and turned around to watch him.
He was walking straight and purposful like a man on a mission and then she saw who he was headed for. Sally Jenkins was lying in the grass reading a book and pretending to ignore everything around her!
Sally Jenkins who squealed if squishy food like marshmallows crossed her lips. Sally Jenkins, who shined her patent leather shoes every day with the insides of a biscuit and never had a wrinkle in her hair or her dress, was lying in the grass at Stubbs quarry waiting for one of the bullies to come and maul her.
Lottie's mouth went dry and she tried to swallow. Her ears filled with cotton and everything sounded muffled. Sunlight, brighter than fire, turned her eyes inside out. She never knew that anyone but her brothers and Jimmy Ledford played at the quarry. She would never have guessed that prissy-butt Sally Jenkins would ever go there, much less lie down in the grass and smile up at the likes of Leroy Bullock!
"All right, Sis," Craig said, nudging her with his elbow.
She looked up at Craig's sweaty face. "What?" she asked. The sun was beating on the rocks and bouncing waves of heat all around her, yet she felt cold like a breeze had kicked up.
"Gimmie that!" he shouted and grabbed at the picture. Lottie held on tight.
"No!" She shouted right back and could hardly believe that that was her voice saying No to her brother.
The picture ripped in two and Craig picked up the top half of the big-breasted woman, crammed it into his pocket and yelled, "Come on!" Then he jerked her arm hard.
Brad and Jimmy, were staring at her and even Sally and Leroy were looking at her. They think I'm cool now. Like them, she thought.
"I'll go first," Jimmy shouted and Lottie wondered where he was going. All the others seemed to know. They turned their faces toward the sky. Jimmy began to climb up the ladder of the water tower.
Lottie's eyes stared into Brad's and then into Craig's. Mid-way up, Jimmy turned and looked down at them, cupped his dirty hand around his mouth like he was an announcer on television, and ordered the others to follow him to the top. Brad tugged at Lottie, but she planted her feet in the ground and made her legs stiff. He let go and Lottie fell backwards onto the rocky dirt. Brad swore at her and said, "You're gonna be a God-damned sissy all your effing life, you sure are!" He hurried to catch up to Jimmy, and then Craig too, began the climb.
"C'mon...chicken!" Jimmy yelled down at her. He looked like he was a million feet in the air and you couldn't even see that his clothes were raggedy.
Sally Jenkins came up behind her and touched Lottie's hand. Lottie pulled it away before she saw who it was and then started to cry. Sally said, "C'mon Lottie. You can do it. I did it twice already. I'll help you."
Lottie wiped her nose with the palm of her hand and then wiped her hand on her pinafore. Yuk, she thought, but wiped some more and looked into Sally' eyes.
They looked kind today, not smart alecky like they usually did. Like she knew every thought Lottie had ever had and everything she'd ever done and was ready to tell any minute. Sally's eyes looked sweet as a doe's eyes today, big and watery and innocent as a hoe-cake.
Lottie walked to the ladder with Sally Jenkins behind her touching her back, and Leroy Bullock holding her right hand. Leroy lifted Lottie with his strong arms and she reached her right foot up on the first rung of the ladder. "It ain't hard," Leroy said, "Just move on up and we'll be right behind you."
She held onto each side of the ladder and Sally Jenkins gave her a boost up to the next rung. With each rung conquered, she thought of herself as brave as any boy she'd ever known, even braver than her daddy. Even he was probably not brave enough to do this.
She moved on up rung after rung. The climb was fun now, and she began to pull herself up all by herself. I can do it, she thought, I can be like the others. I'll not ever be called chicken again! She'd tell her father tonight about what she'd done. He'd laugh his big laugh and she'd hug his neck real hard and he would love her again like always.
With each step, she became stronger and smarter than she'd ever been, and then at last she was on the very top rung. She stepped onto the wire mesh floor of the cat walk that ran around the huge silver tank. The floor felt like you were walking on a chain-link fence and like if you were skinny enough you'd fall right through.
"You made it, Sis!" shouted Craig. Brad clapped his hands like he was watching a show. Even Jimmy Ledford looked pleased and shook her hand. Sally Jenkins said, like she was making an announcement in church, "We have a new member of the club!" Leroy Bullock clapped and whistled.
Lottie smiled. That wasn't so bad, she thought. Now they'll like me and let me play with them, maybe marbles or baseball even! Maybe Sally will invite me to her house sometime like she does the girls she likes. Lottie's face was flushed and her insides were jumping with the thought of how popular she had become.
She grabbed onto the rail, turned around in one swoop, and looked down. There was nothing there, nothing but empty air. She couldn't see the bottom of the quarry at all. It was open and gigantic and pink, like the mouth of a hippopotamus and if you fell into it, it would swallow you up and eat you alive and you'd never be seen again.
The rocks around the sides of the quarry, as far as she could see, were chewed away like some monster had been eating them, and the raggedy James kids all looked like dots of pepper waving up at her.
The boys started running around the cat-walk and shoving each other in the back and falling and rolling on the chain-link walkway. The clouds were spinning around now, and the tank felt like it was bound to come loose and crash to the ground.
"C'mon," Sally shouted and began to climb back down the ladder with Leroy right behind her. Lottie hung onto the railing and shook her head. She was afraid to speak for fear of turning the whirling dirvish that was in her head loose.
Jimmy went sailing down surefooted as a monkey, and then Craig, and finally Brad. They all climbed down quick as spiders on a fence rail, leaving her on the wire mesh landing where she stood getting dizzy and sweaty and cold.
She began to sniffle back the tears that were coming, and then she heard a painful wail come out of her mouth, and she wanted to sit down on the grate and die right there in front of everyone. In front of their snarly faces and dirty hands, their hungry monster eyes, but she couldn't move for fear of falling into the pit below, and her body being smashed to smithereens and never being found.
The sun was going down over the hills behind the quarry and the kids below watched her for awhile and then they began to wander off to do other things, like eat supper, leaving her there to perish on top of Stubb's water tower forever and ever, because she really was not brave enough to be their friends. Not brave enough to be anybody's friend.
Sirens moaned through the hills like far away hymn singing. They whined softly, like a kitten begging milk, sounding stronger, as they moved up and down the gravel roads and melted away as they took the curve around Skull Bones Crossing.
When the wailing, moaning sound climbed the hill near Lottie's house, she thought of her family sitting around the supper table without her, and not missing her at all. She groaned deep in her throat until it pained her chest and she felt like she was going to throw up.
She remembered the house she used to live in with her mother and father and how her father told stories every night after supper. The pretty house with flowers and grass all around where her brothers played marbles all day long, and where she had played too, a long time ago when she was nice and clean and good and not a bit of fun.
A whimper came out of her mouth and she tried to snuffle it back, but it was too hard and what did it matter anymore?
The sirens were closer now and screaming, sounding red and mean and full of fury, and the quarry walls were glowing with the lights from the truck, and someone was climbing, climbing, climbing up the ladder of Stubb's water tank to rescue her and she closed her eyes to the world and felt the strong arms of her father around her and she heard his deep and comforting voice sweetly calling her name and she hoped she would never wake up.
CW Eng 221 Gilda Povolo
6/9-7/30 Nancy Griesinger
June 18, 1997
EXERCISE: Roger's Story
(1) The man on the street corner, waiting for traffic to ease, shakes his head. Out of his mouth comes a hissing sound, "Roger," he says, his teeth held tight together. "Roger, Jesus Christ, Roger!" His mouth is fixed in a sarcastic grin.
(1b) The man has a limp suitcoat flung over his shoulder. The tie he'd paid thirty damn dollars for has loosened itself from around his neck. He slides it under the buttons on his collar. They called the hanging off, he thinks, and then he laughs out loud, "but of course they didn't...you fool," he says, and watches a young mother, her eyes wide, gather her children closer.
(2) You don't have to fear anything, but fear itself. Who said that? You dumb bastard. His suit pants slouch down his hips, too lazy to hold themselves up. The cuffs drape loosely over his shoes. His eyes are dark and sunk back in his head like those of a corpse.
Forlorn, is what his mother had said, You poor dear boy. Jeeze! Dear boy. What did she know. My little John-boy won't even know his old man. Another few years and they will deny ever knowing me.
(3) "Over and out!" he shouts, looking skyward, "as the saying goes." He crosses against the light. What the hell does it matter. Light or no light. That is the question.
(4) "Roger...over and...out." Marriage over. Roger out. Out of her life. Their lives. She was the one who couldn't take her eyes off him, who promised she'd be his forever "and ever," she'd whisper. Damn! Always needing to add, "and ever."
(5) What was she afraid of, he asked her. Getting old, she said. His, was being alone, but he never told her. How did she find that out? All men feel like that, she said. Men need women. Women don't need men.
Women love being loved, he told her, but they don't love. A man makes one mistake in his life and she's out of there. Never to return. Thirty-three and she hits him with it. Divorce. Everything gone asunder.
(6) Forever wasn't long enough for her, she'd said. She wanted to see him suffer, had no sympathy toward him. Her face was blank when she said it. I should have known, he thinks, should have seen something there in the back of her eyes, where she kept all her secrets, but I wasn't searching for anything then.
(7) Custody! God how I hate that word. How can a court of law rip a man's children away from him like that? How can they rip the very soul from him? The only thing is: when she took the children, she took my life with her.
(8) Mom and Dad are the ones who've stood by me. They said she was fickle and up to no good, but I didn't want to believe them. I don't know how I could have made it this far if they hadn't forgiven me for loving her.
(9) I was headed for Stone Mountain when I left the courtroom. I was going to get sloshed at Grave's Pit and head to the highest point on the old Rock. Dad saw me swagger. I said it was the heat. He took the keys. Everybody always takes the damn keys. How do you expect to get by in this world without keys?
She did. She was good at it. She was full of this mind stuff. Could read your thoughts, she said. Made up things to suit her purpose.
(10) Anyway, it wasn't any of my doing. A man can't...oh shit! A man without an education ain't worth a damn. I'll get the grades. Show her. Join the P.T.A. Join the Church. Give until it hurts. Keep up appearances.
(11) The kids would like it here, but what does it matter what the kids want? Judges have the power. Man has none. Man doesn't even have the power to conquer his fears. All he can do is hide from them. If Paula and John don't see me, don't remember me, know how much I love them, they won't miss me. I'll fade from their view like a plane lost in the clouds.
CW 221 Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
June 9-July 30, 1997
June 19
EXERCISE: Roger From His Dad's pov
The boy has always been lazy. Takes after his mother's side. They never worked, not like our family. My wife wouldn't be able to have other children.
You almost lost her with this one, the doctor said. "Count your blessings, my boy." We saw the Priest. "Pray," he said, "and God's blessing will come."
Not her fault. Some are born totally barren. Freak of nature someone said. I didn't let on, but I agreed with that statement. We were a freak of nature.
She was Polish, my wife. She wouldn't name the child after me, or my Papa. "Antonio! You married too soon," Nana said, "Give yourself time, Antonio, give yourself time." Nana was right, but I was in love.
Tesia was different from the neighborhood girls, like soft, you know? And golden. A sunset, that hair. Never saw so much hair. It blew across her face when we talked and she pulled it back with her hand, her body already a woman's.
Her ways in the dark were gentle. I needed gentle. I taught her to cook. Ah! She did okay. Not like my own Mama, with her sauce, but good. She cooks good Nana, I said when she asked me. We didn't starve. Drove me crazy with the pasta. Every Wednesday, she'd make it, but no other time. Said once a week was enough for the pasta! I never told Mama or Nana, their tongues would never stop.
Roger, she loved. More than anything. I couldn't get close to him. She'd fly into a rage. I wanted to act like my own Papa, but she told me to be quiet, let the child sleep. I wanted to make him tough. You have to train a child. She wanted to let the boy choose his own way. Ah! It was useless, that situation!
Now he's back. Back from a broken marriage. No longer a man. No obligations. He says he'll get custody himself. Says he's working on it, but he's not. Not in my book. Me? I'd be a man, stand up for myself. I wouldn't take no for an answer and if I wanted my wife back and my children with me, I'd see to it, and it would happen.
He's his mother's child. I can't find it in me to call him son. She named him after someone else. "No," she said, "no Italian names!" The way she'd throw that word around as if it was trash. She hated my mother, said she never felt welcome even from the beginning.
Her family brought bread and salt to the wedding. Bread and Salt! Strange custom. Her mama fed it to her at the reception hidden behind a pillar. My aunts were busywith the sauce, brought from home because no one could make it good as Stellini's. We know sauce.
I got him the job. Start at the bottom. If you're any kind of a man, you work your way up. He has no ambition to do anything but go to school and live off his mama and papa.
CW 221 Gilda Polovo Nancy Griesinger
June 20, 1997
Trying to find Jimmy Ledford's Story (character in "Dare.")
Jimmy Ledford scurries from the house most mornings before his mother stumbles down the stairs, cussing at his father and tripping over the coal scuttle. His father hardly ever comes down. His lungs are shot.
Jimmy runs out dressed any old way and always without a coat because he's never owned one. His mother, when she is sober, promises to buy him one. She enjoys trying to act like a proper mother.
Sometimes she even ties up his shoelaces for him and brushes his hair out of his eyes. "Are you eating enough?" she'll say. But most times her words cut him like a scythe, and she calls out every foul name in the book. He forgives her. It ain't her fault, he says.
Evenings Jimmy runs to the Jenkins place and begs for Sally to come outside. Good smells sneak out from underneath the door. Bacon and onion sizzle while waiting for potatoes. Milk is waiting to be poured and bread and berries are on the side table like company come to tea.
Sally's mother moves the lace curtain and peeks at him. He stands on one foot and acts like he doesn't see her. Sally comes to the door and says she has to set the table and she says she'll see him at school.
Jimmy Ledford doesn't go to school. He makes an appearance now and then, enough to keep the law off his back, but he's never really there even when he's in his seat.
His mind is off at Brad and Craig's house playing marbles out in their side yard or else at the quarry. Stubbs quarry is the best place for his mind to wander off to. It's the only place he feels at home. The jagged rocks are so warm he feels like sleeping on them, and often does.
Jimmy drops down in the bushes outside Sally's kitchen window, and when the night comes over him, he watches Sally through the golden window-light. He hears the clink of silver against real china plates and thinks about how unfair the world is.
Sally and her mother go to church every single Sunday no matter what. Rain or shine they go. He can't remember ever sitting beside his mother in church. He can remember being there once with his grandmother and feeling sad because his mother and daddy had stayed home.
He cried when he heard his grandmother's voice sing out on the hymns, and then all the other grown-ups singing away. He saw the mothers and fathers looking down at their children, and the sadness crashed in on him and his grandmother hugged him and he couldn't keep his shoulders from shaking. That's all he could remember about church and it was just as well. No use in wishing for a life you weren't suppose to have.
CW 221 Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
Exercise: Roger's wife's point of view.
He never liked me. Loved me, yes, but I knew from the start he didn't like me, you know? A woman can just tell. We've got that woman's intuition you know? I tried to be what he wanted, but even he wasn't sure what that was.
I love the children and will never let him have custody, but the truth of the matter is: They were a mistake. Roger and I were too young to start a family. Christ! We hardly knew each other and there we were groping around in the back seat of his father's car.
He had high aspirations. Like he was definitely going to college and make something of himself. He made me that promise, but he's only just now started to work on his degree, serious like, you know?.
Once we were married, he started leaning on me for everything. Wouldn't even wash a dish or sweep a floor. I worked two jobs and he looked for work. He wandered around talking to the store owners and shop keepers, but he'd always get into these long drawn out conversations about the meaning of life or some such thing and never get hired for pay.
No, he said, he would not work at McDonald's. "Anything!" I said, "for Christ's sake, do something!"
Then seven years ago when Paula was born, my Dad gave him a job. But it was office work and Roger is an outdoorsman. He felt stifled he said like he couldn't breathe half the time.
My poor father put up with a lot from that man. Roger screwed everything up for Daddy. Forgot to turn in his reports and forgot even to do the reports at times. When Paula was two our baby John was born and I thought Roger would feel the immensity of his responsibility, two kids and a wife, but still he wasn't disciplined enough to work for my Daddy during the day and go to school at night.
I think he wanted a free ride. And I'm suppose to believe him now when he says he's back in school? I don't think so. He won't be there long is my opinion. He's in a rut if you ask me. Driving truck for his old man and putting his feet under his Mama's table every night.
He says they need him, they're getting old and can't remember things and he's worried about them. Bull! Roger worries about himself. That's all. And his mother and father don't need him, for pity's sake! They're able to find their way to the Bingo hall without his help.
After I filed for divorce, Daddy said he'd support me and the kids himself before he'd pay Roger one more red cent to lay around the office and complain, so he let him go. Gave him enough to tide him over until he could start child support payments. He does make those, so far.
So far. So good.
CW 221 Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
EXERCISE: Roger's mother
My son moved back temporarily. Tony is upset. I gave Roger his old room. Since I hadn't changed a thing, I thought it was fitting. God didn't want me to change that room. I'm sure of it now.
At the time I wasn't sure, in fact I was puzzled. Mildred had told me she could hardly wait until Bruce was out on his own, and she proved it by making his old room into a sewing room. She dolled up that house so much you were afraid to step one foot inside. Said she felt almost free with him gone. He was not the most well-behaved child on the block, I can tell you that, so I'm sure Mildred did love her peaceful life without Bruce in her face every day.
But I didn't feel that way about my Roger. He was a perfect child. Never fought like the others, never talked back to me, not once. I thought I'd react to Roger's leaving home and getting married the same way Mildred did, but instead of feeling relieved, I felt jilted. I felt as if I'd been betrayed by a friend. He is my very best friend.
His girl was nice enough I suppose, and I certainly tried to make her feel welcome because I could remember when Tony and I married, how alone I had felt in the presence of his big Italian family.
Those people poked fun at themselves and then under the guise of including me in 'the family' they began to tease me about being a Polak. Tears sprang to my eyes on more than one occasion when they made remarks about my heritage and told jokes that were cruel. The worst part was that Tony, big brave Tony, didn't have the guts to tell them to stop. Or maybe he didn't care. They apologized each time I was brought to tears and assured me they meant no harm.
"It's the Stellini way," they'd say. "We tease. We laugh, you should lighten up, c'mon."
I adjusted. Had to for the boy. It was not easy. The Stellini family never fully accepted either me or Roger. He didn't look like any one on the Italian side and I was happy about that. It was the only way of getting back at them.
So I tried to make Roger's bride feel welcome, but she was cold. Some people are. I don't believe Roger loved her. He said he did, but he was nervous around her, and when his responsibilities increased, he simply couldn't keep up. I begged Tony to help him out, but of course, you know Tony. Mr. Macho. "A man who cannot get off his butt and provide a decent living is no man at all." Tony is fickle hearted and it is still hard for Roger to take, I can see that.
Roger has started taking college courses once more. Wants a degree so he can do something other than drive truck for the plant. He dresses nice and acts fine, but still, there are no two ways about it, fancy name or no. Roger is a garbage man just like his father. He had a nice office job, but he had to resign from it after the divorce became final. He said he couldn't stand working for Julie's father anymore.
I want to encourage the boy to find another job, one that's more befitting his personality, so I fix some wonderful meals for him, do all of his laundry, which gives him time for his studies. I'm the one who put the bug in his ear about joining the P.T. A. because he says he wants to work to get custody of the children. I thought it would show he cared about their school. I want him to take custody, but I don't know if there is room for the children here.
They're so much like their mother, I think he's apt to see her in them all the time. They won't be happy here. He says he'll get a place of his own soon as he can. Tony says, "That'll be the day." Tony has missed out on so much by keeping that chip on his shoulder. He's missed out completely if you ask me.
CW 221 Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
6/9 - 7/30 1997
EXERCISE: pg 326 idea #3. situation from your own life with
theme of nakedness.
The cousins are gathered in Uncle D's old camping trailer learning a game called strip poker. They've played doctor so many times it has worn itself out on them, and most don't find it fascinating anymore because they are so young, but they never guess that as the reason.
"So a girl's pee pee is different from a boy's. So what?" says Nina, the prissy butt of the group who's father, in a few years, will watch her like a hawk because of her early interest in playing what he calls "ugly." Nina is destined to become a preacher's wife and tsk tsk her way through life, while envying the lifestyle of her more adventurous cousin, Lynn.
"I'll tell you so what," says Lynn who will later become a whore, a prostitute, and finally a call girl. "It feels good when somebody touches it, that's what!"
"Well, I don't like it. It ain't worth getting whipped for if they catch us."
"Who got whipped, I never got whipped in my life!"
"Me and Kevin, we got whipped when Daddy caught us. His belt hit every piece of skin that showed."
"We'll get the little ones to do it. They won't even know what they're doing, come on..."
"Will we have to touch anything?"
"No, dummy, you do it with cards. The smart ones never take off a thing. Girls can take out one hair pin for instance and then another and so on before they ever get to their clothes. It's the boys who'll be showing their hinies first. Are you in or out?"
"Okay. In...I reckon."
"First we need a look-out. Bobbie you go first. Stand by the front window and peek out and tell us when you see Uncle D or Uncle Walt coming this way."
"Gotcha," Bobbie says and salutes as she hurries to the window. She separates the delicate pink curtain with her forefinger and fixes her eye on the house.
Lynn places her hands on her hips and instructs the kids on the object of the game then picks up the cards and begins to shuffle. Nina watches Kevin's face register shock and she panics for fear he'll snitch to Daddy when it's all said and done. She raises her fist to him and he looks down at his cards.
The children are into the game and giggling over hair ribbons being pulled out and socks and shoes being removed. They are squealing when Aaron removes his shirt and the excitement is building. Bobbie can't take her eyes off the table. She peeks out through the curtain from time to time, but for fear of missing the show, snaps her head back to watch the game.
Kevin is down to his shorts. Not another thing left on his body. Nina feels sick. Lynn looks like she's a wolf who's not been fed in a week.
Bobbie claps her hands and jumps up and down when Larry removes his pants. She peeks out the curtain and screams. Uncle Walt is traveling fast and headed straight for the camper.
Nina shoves Kevin into an empty compartment. Larry slides under the bed. The others grab their shirts and Lynn throws the cards under a dishtowel in the sink. Sunlight blinds them when the door is jerked open.
Uncle Walt's gruff voice hauls their butts out of there and he asks his daughter where her brother is. She lies.
Lilly starts to whimper and points toward the compartment where Kevin is hiding. "Young man," shouts Uncle Walt, "Are you in there?" Kevin opens the door and steps out in front of his father. Uncle Walt picks him up and throws him out the door. Nina gasps. She knows her daddy will kill them both.
"No, Daddy, no!" she shouts through her tears. "We didn't do nothing, honest, honest to God, we..."
Uncle Walt shoves the others out one by one. They lie still like petals all around the trailer yard, and even though their bodies are dressed and fully covered, they all feel as naked as any jay bird ever did.
2nd part of the EXERCISE: explore everything you think, know, believe about the theme of "nakedness"
Total honesty is nakedness. So is naivete.
The nakedness of the human body is necessary for a full and rewarding life, (sex without undressing is unthinkable) but the degree to which nakedness is "correct" is dictated by the time frame in which we find ourselves living. For instance, the people who were shocked to see a lady's ankle would be vomiting in the streets if they were transplanted to our times to witness our "heathen" ways.
To be naked is to be vulnerable, and to have meaningful relationships one must be brave enough and willing enough to risk showing one's vulnerabilities.
Some magazine pictures are too explicit for my taste. Good paintings and sculptures of nudes are inspirational.
There is nothing sweeter than a naked baby fresh from the bath, wrapped in a hooded towel until he/she is warm, and then crawling away from whoever is holding the fresh diaper.
Nakedness in well-fed happy children is beautiful beyond compare. Those skinny limbed, fly infested, bloated children running around naked in some Third World country bring me to tears.
I enjoy touching a man's naked body especially if it is filled with a tender craving for mine own.
I think prudishness is more sinful than promiscuity. The promiscuious person is giving and living, celebrating life. The prude withholds and hordes out of fear.
I am glad we have incorporated modesty into our lives. Modesty is proper and good. Like a lace table cloth at Sunday dinner, modesty insures the proper decorum. The trick (no pun intended) is to know when it's time to remove the damn cloth and put your elbows on the table and enjoy the feast. Auntie Mame's quote comes to mind: "Life's a banquet, and most poor sonsabitches are starving to death!"
I can speak of prudishness. I have known prudes and I have been one. I can speak of promiscuity. I have envied those happy-go-lucky folk, but never had the nerve to imitate them. Came close a few times, but no cigar. I can speak of naivete because I have often been naive, especially when I was younger and cynicism had not yet found me.
CW 221 Gina Povolo Nancy Griesinger
6/9 - 7/30 1997
EXERCISE: PG 326 # 5. Write a short story you have not written because you thought it was too big for you and you might fail.
LOTTIE, BRIEFLY
Lottie is ten years old and has been abused by her girlfriend's father. She has been taught to be polite and "mannerly" to every adult. She says "Yes M'am and Yes Sir." She offers her chair to anyone who enters the room. She does not speak unless spoken to, keeps her legs together and her dress down, scurries around the perimeter of her world, observing it like a silent Indian on the prowl, and picking up insights into what works and what does not.
It does not work well, this world, but she feels she is the only person who knows this. Her parents and grandparents seem oblivious to her agony and distress. They treat her like a child. She retreats into childhood ways for their benefit and suffers alone.
She tells no one of the times when Mr. Bottom pulls her on his lap and works his fingers inside her panties. She knows her father hates this sort of thing, watches out for it and throws a duck dying fit if he catches her touching her own body this way.
Mr. Bottom doesn't say a word. His wife, Cora Lee, is standing at the sink with her back turned. Lottie thinks Cora Lee will tell Mr. Bottom to stop. Cora Lee acts like she is blind and sometimes she hums a tune while Mr. Bottom's eyes glaze over and Lottie sits very still.
Lottie wonders if Mr. Bottom does this to his daughter, Marcella. She thinks he probably does, but she never asks Marcella, not once. It would be impolite to tell on an adult, and children are nothing if they are not well-mannered. Lottie thinks she is the most well-mannered of all the children, but of course she is not. Lottie is typical.
The family moves away from Mr. Bottom and Marcella and back-turning Cora Lee. They go to live with relatives. Lottie has no place to sleep, so she sleeps in the living room of her grandmother's house, on a wine colored scratchy sofa. It is early morning and she is not fully awake. She hears the clink of silver on china, the soft laughter of her grandfather, the whispery voices in the kitchen, and the sucking of coffee from a saucer.
She is visited, on these early mornings there on the sofa, by her uncle who fondles her vagina, spreading it wide as if examining it for problems. The first time it happens she thinks she is dreaming and his touch feels good.
Most times she plays possum, feigning sleep so she can enjoy the feeling, but then a sadness comes over her and she feels guilty for being such a nasty person that invites this kind of behavior from men, and she wonders why her father is not helping her to get out of this awful awful thing.
Her father watches her constantly, except when she really needs him to. She thinks he must surely know of her affliction, of this awful signal she sends out that says, "Here, here...touch me here," but she is even more puzzled as to why he doesn't have the power to make the men stop. She kicks at the face of her uncle. His hand closes over her mouth and his eyes threaten her.
When she is twelve she has a bedroom of her own. She has pictures of movie stars pinned up on the walls, and mirrors she can primp in, and beautiful lace underwear she buys at the dime store. She has a diary with a lock and key, but she never writes about what the men have done to her.
Her uncle finds his way into her room. Sometimes he is waiting for her when she comes home from school. The room is empty then, and feels so dark.
When no one is around he climbs on top of her and pushes himself inside her through her wide spread legs. She thinks of how she has failed her parents by not keeping her legs together and her dress down.
In her mind she renders him powerless by never screaming once. She is proud about that. He doesn't know she has shut him out, pushed him away. It is like he is fucking somebody else.
He warns her if she tells she'll be breaking the hearts of her parents and her grandparents. She never tells until she is grown and in the office of a therapist who's questionaire asks if she has ever been molested. She checks "yes".
The therapist asks by whom and Lottie tells briefly about Mr. Bottom and her uncle. And there were others, she says, but she doesn't name the men who passed her on the street or in the doorway of a business and felt her up. She doesn't mention the boys in the carnival funhouse. It seems to Lottie that she has been fighting men her whole life and she is sick to death of it.
A few days later Lottie, now a grandmother, receives a phone call. She is diapering her grandaughter and fighting off flashbacks of a naked child in a white crib being leered at by a set of eyes the baby cannot yet name.
Uncle J.T. has been arrested for molesting his own grandaughter. Lottie shares with the caller, her long guarded secret, hoping to jump on the bandwagon with other accusers and to see to it that J.T. is finally punished. She tells her husband, tries to tell her son, talks to her sister and waits to hear of the outcome. "Tell them this is not the first time he has done this," she says into the telephone, "because he did it to me."
A few months later, another phone call comes. "We got him off," the voice says.
"Did you tell the authorities about me?" she asks.
"Naw," comes the reply, "Don't nobody know."
She feels angry with herself for being so damned polite. She starts to cry.
"You done good not to tell Lottie, your mama and daddy would be proud." And the truth of that statement is almost unbearable. That they would be proud that she had kept quiet and not caused the family any shame! Proud that she had remained mannerly all her life!
Her belly is burning hot and cramping and her face and neck feel prickly. She hangs up the phone and retreats into old age with one dying prayer: That her uncle J.T. ask for her forgiveness.
Not for God's, but for her's, the mortal whom he harmed so severly with his cruel and selfish ways. Not for her parent's whom she now realizes were as blind to her childhood needs, and as back-turning in their attitudes, as Cora Lee. But that he, she prays, J.T., her mother's youngest brother, eight years older than she, should ask her to forgive him for harming her. He does.
J.T. comes to sit with Lottie when she is dying and she rallys enough to argue the point that if she forgives what he did, it diminishes the hurt, and says to him, "it wasn't so bad a thing to do," and she will go to hell, she tells him, before she'll let him rest easy over his despicable behavior.
"No," she shouts, and others come running into the room. "No, J.T. I'll be damned if I'll forgive you for taking so much from me. I'll be damned if I'll let you sail off to your heaven feeling relieved of all responsibility. You took advantage of children and you harmed them beyond belief. I'll meet you in hell myself before I'll let you walk away from this with your tail between your legs and the sympathy of the world surrounding you!"
Lottie's head slumps back into her pillow. J.T. looks around the room at the family gathered there. They avert their eyes from his, for fear of taking sides. He walks past them shaking his head as if he's been misunderstood, and when he has left the house, Jewell his brother's wife, locks the door upon him.
Creative Writing 221
Gilda Povolo
June 9-July 30, 1997 Nancy Griesinger
An incident two years prior to Christmas Secrets.
1st draft June 30 and July 1, 1997
The Lesson
Lottie's right sandal flaps in the dusty lane. She stomps her foot and watches the powdery silt spray up through her toes. She steps her foot harder into the tickly flour-dust of the road. She is a dumb six year old girl and hurrying home from her first day at school.
When she left this morning she was a smart girl and ready for school. At least that's what Twymama had said and Ohneymama too. Her mama and her grandmama are her two best friends, and she has to get home before J.T. does so she can be the one to explain what happened.
She glances over her shoulder, then rounds the curve that leads to the faded grey house. She can see Ohney flapping a rug out the back door, and Twy in a big straw hat coming out of the garden. Lottie waves her good arm. They wave back to her like their faces are smiling. She feels her heart skip and beat hard in her chest, the sound pumping up into her ears.
She starts to run full throttle and is jerked backwards like she's been caught by a fishing line. The flat of J.T.'s hand curls around her wrist.
"Hey", he says, "slow that motor down!"
She twists her mouth into a snarl, "Let me go, let me go!"
"They told me to look out for you kid, and that's what I'm doin.'"
"You ain't neither...you ain't lookin out for nobody!" Lottie's voice is shaking. She jerks her arm and he grabs it tighter and bends it behind her, and holds it there. He's fourteen and strong as a bull and don't nobody fight him off if he don't let 'em.
"I'm tellin' on you little missy and you're gonna git it," he sneers.
Lottie lets her arm go limp in his fist as he drags her further down the road toward Ohney's place. She knows how he will do the telling. He'll whoop and holler and cry fake tears and slap his knee the same as he had when he led the whole school house in a snickering fit over her not pointing to her own name. He drags her up the back steps and into Ohney's sweet smelling kitchen.
She had felt so proud that morning as she walked down the grassy edge of the path. J.T. led the way over the big gravel hill to the creaking door of Coats' School.
The teacher had said it was destined to be torn down to make room for a new building where the eighth graders could be off by themselves and not have to sit idle while the "young'ens" learned their basics.
The day before, Lottie's daddy had had the car loaded down and ready to roll when the subject of Lottie going to Coats' school came up. Somebody said, "Yall remember Miss Maimie? She's in her last year and she'd be glad to have Lottie, even for one day. It'll be something the little thing will remember forever. One more day won't hinder you, and Savannah'll be there when you get there. J.T. 'll watch out for her, let the child go."
So next morning there she was, walking on the same crunchy gravel where her mama had walked, stepping her foot down hard, but not hard enough to match the sound of J.T.'s footfall. She wondered when she'd be big enough to make that good strong sound.
She thought about how she'd soon be sitting in the same seat her mama had sat in, and she'd show her manners and raise her hand to speak, and she would smile her big smile up at Miss Maimie and Miss Maimie would think she was every bit as wonderful as her Mama had been.
Inside the white churchy building, Lottie and the other first grader, who wouldn't smile at all, sat on a long bench in the very front of the room. The air was hot and flies were buzzing around the open windows trying to find their way out. The trees beyond the windows looked dry and sleepy and tired, as if they were longing for a cool rain.
Miss Maimie stood directly in front of Lottie. The hem of her dress was brushing against Lottie's knees but Lottie didn't move. Not one iota. She sat with her hands folded in her lap like a proper first grader, waiting for the lesson to begin.
As soon as all the other students were seated in their rows Miss Maimie clapped her hands and cleared her throat. Her chin was pulled up tight and her shoulders thrown back like she was about to salute the class. She frowned at J.T. and told him to sit up straight. J.T. sucked air through his teeth and scooched his butt back on his seat.
Miss Maimie walked to the blackboard and wrote out two names in cursive letters.
Lottie scratched the mosquito bite on her arm. She saw her name as it went sprawling out in pretty white chalk letters. She could only print in block letters and she dreamed of the day when she could curl the L of her name and make the letters loop together like those Miss Maimie had just written in her fine hand.
Miss Maimie called out the name of David Lee McKelvy, the other first grader, and asked him to come to the blackboard and point to his name. The boy moved slowly toward the front of the room as if he was fearful the place would cave in. Every pair of eyes were tuned in on him like he was in a side show at the circus, and David Lee McKelvy wiped the palm of his hand on his shirt and pointed up to Lottie's name.
Lottie's face was sweating. She stuck her feet under the bench and tried to look into the boy's eyes to will him to change his pointing finger like you will the needle on a Ouija board, but the boy just grinned back at her and kept right on touching the bottom of the letters of her name with his fat sweaty fingers.
Lottie heard J.T.'s snickering laugh coming from the back row and then a smacking of his hand on his thigh. The boy's face went ashen, but he kept his sweaty fingers pointing up to Lottie's name. Then Miss Maimie clapped her hands and called out Lottie Belle Cline, and Lottie smoothed her dress with both hands and walked smartly to the blackboard and pointed up to the cursive letters of David Lee McKelvy's name.
David Lee smiled at Lottie and looked proud and Lottie felt good like she did when she said Yes M'am and Yes Sir to grown-ups. Snickering erupted all over the room and spewed forth around Lottie like a hot fever. The teacher took each of the first graders by their limp arms and marched them back to their bench. Her tongue clicked and her face was meaner than a dog's when she frowned. The eighth graders were laughing up a storm and Miss Maimie's eyes were twinkling like a smirky old cat's and her face looked like it'd never seen a smile.
On the way out the door, J.T. pushes Lottie and tells her it's a good thing she's leaving for Savannah or else he'd have to put her in a tow sack and drop her down the well like he did the baby kittens, because she doesn't even know her own name.
Lottie's feet commence to run and she heads down the middle of the gravel road and doesn't stop until she reaches the cool dust of Ohney's dirt path.
At the house J.T. begins his tale before she can say a word. He tells her mother and her grandmother his version of the whole story and they laugh like they're having a party right there in Ohney's clean kitchen.
He tells how Miss Maimie looked disappointed and how she grabbed Lottie's arm and marched her back to her seat and all the while he snickers and guffaws and gets louder and louder as he goes.
Lottie's mother smiles at him like she's enjoying the story and after he tells the thing over and over to the others when they come sauntering in, Lottie's mother tells him that's enough teasing now and sends Lottie off to sit in the front porch swing and wait for her to come and talk to her.
Lottie wishes J.T. would get slapped silly by somebody, but no one seems to think he's doing anything wrong. She goes to the front porch and climbs up in the creaky old swing. She puts a blob of spit on her mosquito bite and waits for the flies to find it, then sits and lets them bite her because she knows she needs to be taught a lesson for being so dumb and not pointing to her own name.
CW Eng 221 Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
NMC 6/9 - 7/30 June 30, 1997
EXERCISE: Roger's thoughts after leaving doctor's office,
and having been told he has a terminal illness.
The sun in Roger's eyes was more brilliant than he could ever remember. He pulled out his sunglasses, put them on and peered through the dark lenses. He jerked them from his face and tossed them away. He didn't need darkness, not now, not shading this bright and glorious world! He needed to absorb that sun, let it pierce through the iris of his eye, the window of his soul. He needed the sun to warm him, warm his soul and he needed rain drenching him, cold and icy on his broad shoulders. And thunder, God yes, glorious thunder loud as cannons pumping through him.
He removed his suit coat and tossed it aside. He sat down on the nearest park bench and turned his face to the sky. It was bright and gaudy and full of life and he loved it -- loved that sun, that sky -- the sidewalk, the noise of the traffic.
Roger rolled up his sleeves and rehersed in his mind what he would tell the family. He swallowed the lump forming in his throat and breathed in the scent of lilacs blooming nearby. Tell them about the lilacs a voice echoed. Tell the whole world about the lilacs.
He found his mother standing at the kitchen sink when he arrived home and the sight overwhelmed him, stunned him and for the first time that day tears formed in his eyes.
He walked up behind her and hugged her, nestled his face into her neck and squeezed his arms tightly around her body. Dear God, he thought, she is so beautiful and I never noticed it before, not really, not fully. She has always been just Mom, there when I needed her, full of love for me and now, very soon I will leave her and it will cause her so much grief and Pops, oh God, Pops too.
His mother looked at his face. "What is wrong?" she asked smiling. Roger shook his head, "Nothing, Mom...I just...I don't know, felt like giving you a hug...okay?"
"Sit down Roger, have a cup of coffee, I made oatmeal raisen today, they're in the tin."
Cookies, Roger thought, God a simple thing like cookies, taken so for granted. How could life have been this wonderful and me not realize it?
Mom has always made the best oatmeal cookies. Paula and John scramble for them warm...from the oven...Paula... and John. They'll never know how much, how very much I have loved them, and Julie...Julie...so sweet, my Julie... How will I be able to tell them that I am losing them, losing everyone in fact, even myself?
Maybe they will find a cure, there have been miracles. I won't tell the family yet. I'll become healthy, and live life fully and perhaps they'll never have to know, besides that guy is only one doctor, there are others. Maybe he got it wrong. It's even possible that I can lick this thing. I've heard of it happening before.
But right now I have to see the kids and Julie. I'm going to go find my beautiful kids...and my wife, and I'm going to pause along the way, every chance I get, and smell and see and hear and touch the entire world in between.
CW 221 NMC Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
Exercise in class: 7/2/97 Write about your first kiss.
It was the 1950s and I was fourteen and filling out my pink sheath sooo well. My hair was shining from brushing it all afternoon and I was wearing nylons with pumps for the first time and keeping the seams straight. My earrings were pink clusters of fake pearl and my complexion was glowing.
My parents had agreed I could go to my first boy/girl party because it was at a neighbor's house. I guess they thought they could hear me scream if anything bad were to happen. They didn't know and I didn't know that my girlfriend's parents would be away from home and that the older boys from the school would be there.
When I walked in, the kids were all in a circle spinning an empty beer bottle around on the floor. I wondered who had been drinking the beer? Honestly, I wondered that!
I joined the circle like I knew what I was doing and one of the toughest and cutest guys pointed his forefinger at me like a pistol. Chills flashed through my body and I smiled and blushed. He spun the bottle around and it pointed its lip toward my feet.
The boy swaggered over and bent me backwards and kissed me hard on the lips and I felt numb and dizzy and stupid all at once. I had dreamed of a soft kiss, gently brushing my lips and here I was, my face being swallowed by this character. He lifted me up and shouted to the gang, "God! What a dork! You're supposed to kiss back!"
Now the truth is I don't think he said the word dork because I never heard that word until I heard my own sons using it about twenty years after my spin the bottle episode. Anyway, all that humiliation I felt cloaked the pretty tight fitting dress and dulled my shiny locks. That's for sure.
I remember standing outside the circle the rest of the night, drinking Coke and acting like I was too mature for such stupid games. I've hated parties ever since.
Not gatherings of friends, mind you, but parties where you shop forever for just the right look and then stand around or sit around making small talk to impress someone or listening to someone try to impress you.
I recall going to perfunctory parties in the sixties when you had to act hip and together and with it. And all I wanted to do was go home and take off my girdle and padded bra.
I remember going to parties in the seventies and listening to people argue over politics and not having an opinion because I didn't have time to read the paper or watch television.
I remember retirement parties in the eighties for people I couldn't stand and was glad to see go, and smiling and acting as if they would be missed and I remember the nineties when I finally grew up enough to RSVP an invitation with a firm No thank you and not feel guilty about it.
It was in the late eighties and early nineties when I learned to let the telephone ring if I didn't feel like answering, and even unplug the thing altogether sometimes. I learned to let the mail pile up in the mailbox until I was ready to read it.
I learned to skip the movie and read the book; play on the floor with children even if I look silly sometimes; go to the beach alone instead of lunch with the girls, and write in my journal instead of answering letters. I learned to lie to my family about my need to study in order to escape from them for a few hours. I have learned that I need a great deal of solitude in order to write and think and meditate and pray and that I do not have to let others eat up my time. And in these glorious nineties, I have learned to say ouch when someone hurts me and whoopie when they please me and to feel the presence of God all around me and sometimes even within.
CW 221 NMC Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
Writing Assignment #4 page 228: Write a monologue from the point of view of a mother - your own or imaginary - laying down the rules for her child.
Come back here! You cannot go into the meadow alone, you are too young. There are things there you do not yet know. You must be trained. Wait. Listen. Be sure the meadow is safe. Stay on the edge of the brook, but do not cross the brook. The grass on the other side is not good for you. Drink water from clear streams, never stagnant pools. It will make you sick. Scratch your back on the bark of an Oak tree and never trample on a sapling or you will destroy the forest. Without the forest we cannot hide from our enemies. Without the forest we cannot hide... Don't ask questions. It is your job to obey. When you are older you will understand. If you are speaking with other youngsters and one of the elders is speaking, stop your chattering and perk up your ears. When the elder ones speak it is for your own good. Obey the elders at all cost. You will understand why later. Life is not a bed of roses no matter what the others tell you. Life, if it lasts at all, is very difficult. Learn to sleep curled in upon yourself in the smallest spot available. Never stretch out taking up space. If you feel like crying, swallow your feelings. If you feel angry with anyone swallow that too. No one owes you a living. You have to earn your own way. Forget about trusting the strange ones. They do not love you. Only our kind truly can be trusted. Stay with your own kind. Don't mix. It isn't safe and the world will not approve. Do not mate before your time has come. I will tell you when you are ready. Do not have offspring of your own for they are nothing but trouble. Take your medicine. Smile. Sit under the Willow tree and take your hands down from your face, you look awful. Fix your hair. When the doctor questions you tell him you love your mother. When they bring your tray eat the bread but not the meat. The meat does not belong to you. If they bring you books, send them back. Books are trouble. If you say anything to them I will know. Don't say a word. Sit still. Stop jiggling. You're too old for such behavior. What do you mean you're not happy? Listen to me! You don't have a clue as to how the real world works.
CW 221 June 9-July 30, 1997
Gilda Povolo Nancy Griesinger
Homemaking 101 -- Northwest Tennessee 1948
Instructions from grandmother
Fixing Sunday Breakfast
Go to the well-shed and draw two buckets. Be careful not to stir up the water. If it comes up sandy we won't have decent drinking water all day long. Fill the iron kettle that we boil clothes in. Stir up the fire underneath the kettle and add more kindling. Add two small logs. Draw another bucket of water and tote it to the house. Put it on the table on the back porch, and touch only the dipper handle when you put it back into the bucket. Come inside and tell me when the water in the kettle is boiling. When you see it rumbling around, we'll go catch us a plump little Bantie hen. You go thata way behind the chicken house, I'll go this here way round.
Scare that plump one into the fence row. Careful now, they're quick. Grab it by both wings and hold it tight underneath your left arm. Take its head in your right hand and twirl it by the neck like a 4th of July sparkler until its body flies out of your hand. Hold the head in your hand until the body of the chicken stops flapping itself around, then fling its head toward the hog pond. It's bad luck to throw the head away before the chicken is dead. Stay away while the hen is flopping so you don't get blood all over you. When it ain't twitching no more, pick it up by the feet and hold it away from you. Carry it to the boiling water and douse it good. Several times. Reach your hand into the hot smelly feathers and give a yank. Pull out a big handful. Throw the feathers in a pile. Misres Cantrell will use them for a mattress tick. Keep pulling the feathers out of the limp body. Roll me up a piece of newspaper so I can singe off the pin feathers. When that's done push the unburned logs apart so we don't waste them. Carry the bird to the back porch and put it on the oilcloth table next to the water bucket. Fill two pans with fresh well water. Chip off a piece of ice for the rinse pan. Put the chicken in the other pan and cut him open.
Take out all the entrails and the heart. Dip the cavity in the water over and over until the water is red. Throw the entrails in the slop bucket for the hogs, but not the heart. Your grandaddy loves the heart. Take the gizzard and clean out all that gravel and peel off the membrane. Be extra careful not to damage the liver when you're in the cavity. Your mama loves the liver of a little Bantam hen.
Wash the chicken's feet like they were your own, and throw them in that fruit jar there. Same with the neck. Put 'em in the ice-box. We'll fix broth tomorrow.
Cut off the little wings and plop them in that ice water. Cut off the legs above the thigh and separate them by folding them over your left thumb and cutting them apart through the joint. You can feel it right there. Look. Toss them into the good water. Cut the tail part off pretty deep like you'd core a apple and toss it into the slop bucket. If you see anything black get rid of it. Wash each piece real good before you put it in the cold water. Take your sharpest knife and cut around the ribs and pull out the breast. Put your knife underneath the pulley-bone and cut it out. That'll be your piece. Bend the breast like you did the legs and separate it. Cut out the back. That'll be my piece.
After all the pieces are in the cold water pan, rinse each one realy good one more time, and put them on that plate right there and take them to the kitchen. Carry the bloody water outside and throw it on the fence row with all the other blood. Don't spill a drop on my clean-swept dirt! If the feathers on the ground look dry by now, take that small stewer hanging by the bluing and sprinkle some of the dousing water on them so they don't blow away.
In the kitchen dip out about a cup of flour and put it in that yellow bowl with some salt and pepper. Put lots of pepper. Everybody loves a good peppered piece of chicken. Mix up the flour mixture with your clean dry fingers.
The biscuits are ready to go in the oven so go to the closet underneath the stairs where the lard bucket is, and scoop up a handful of lard and put it in that iron skillet that's on the front burner. Stoke up the fire and spread the red coals around kindly even.
When the grease looks hot, roll your chicken in the flour mixture. Now place the pieces into the grease. Be careful so they don't pop out at you. Don't let the pieces touch each other otherwise they won't crisp up. Put the skillet for the eggs on the back burner and check the fire under that eye to see that it's not too hot. Dip out a couple a tablespoons of the chicken grease and put in your egg skillet. Turn the chicken and put a lid on it.
Crack seven eggs and put them in the other skillet and watch them close. If there's a speck of blood in the yolk, take that egg out right away and crack another one. Have your turner ready. Nobody likes a hard fried egg for breakfast.
Take the biscuits out of the oven, but don't take them out of the pan. The heat will keep them warm. Look at the chicken. Turn each piece once more and spread them around in the skillet. Leave the lid off and go set the table. Take out the breast and pulley-bone. Put them on a platter. Take out the back and wings. Let the thighs and legs stay in there another minute. Turn the eggs and take the skillet off the eye. Take the warm platter from the top of the stove and put biscuits on one side and eggs on the other. Fix the gravy and pour it into that white bowl. Carry the coffee pot in the dining room and put it next to my plate. You're done now. Call ever body to the table and after the blessing, start passing the eggs around. Now here's a rule: The ones who do the cooking serve themselves last.
July 16, 1997
Dear Gilda,
Thank you so much for looking at my extra stories and for your generosity in helping me. Your observations in "Sermonette" are going to serve me well when I rewrite that sucker still one more time. I know it's a good one and I love writing about those folk, so to spend time with that story will be great fun.
The question of "Law me" bears explaining I reckon, and brings up something I wrestle with every time I write. My question is: How much does the author owe to the reader? Does the author have to explain or somehow define for the reader any word? Doesn't the reader get from the piece what he/she brings to it? I want to be understood, but not at the expense of losing the flavor of the language I want to use. I would value your thoughts on this question.
Here's a for instance:
My 93-year-old German mother-in-law does not know what the word "lasagna" means. I feed it to her son and write and tell her what we had for dinner and when I talk to her on the phone she asks me to define the dish and then says, "Oh, I was wondering what that was." I could not find it just now (to spell it correctly) in my 50,000-word speller by Harry Sharp, or my 60,000 word Webster/Thesaurus or even my Webster's Approved published in 1943. I found the word in my Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary which has 320,000 definitions. Whew!
So. Back to "Law me." (Jerry is not too pleased with our friendship, but Law me, I don't know what I'd do without Lannell and her dress shop.) These people use "Law me" if they are not exasperated enough to say, "Lord have mercy." (meaning Lord Jesus) Stronger still would be: "Lord, have mercy on my soul!" Those callings on The Lord would be using His name in vain if you used them in casual conversation.
Sometimes they say "lord" meaning lord of the manor, which is entirely different than Our Lord Jesus Christ. The word is used by people who never ever consider taking the Lord's name in vain. We were tenant farmers and sharecroppers and there was a lord over us all. His name was Mr. Brock. My grandfather was Mr. Brock's tenant farmer for 30 years. Mr. Brock and his wife Ethel owned everything on the farm and inside the farmhouse except the dishes, quilts, fruit jars, etc. When my grandfather died my grandmother left her home of thirty years with her belongings wrapped in a bed sheet. Her oldest son now has her iron skillet as his legacy. I have her butter mold. Her youngest son has her porch swing which my father made for his in-laws.
The wife of Jerry Charles, my fictional preacher's wife, would definitely say, "Law me." It's about like saying "La te da!" Something very innocent. She would never take the Lord's name in vain. Lannell, of course, will spout off any word she dang well pleases.
My mother was so saintly in her behavior around me, that she could not let the word "shit" pass her lips. She'd hiss the beginning of the word out through her clenched teeth, but somehow couldn't let it spray out of there. And yet, both she and her mother and yes, many other relatives of mine, even the Baptist preachers (my uncles) all said "Law me," quite freely. It doesn't mean Jesus the Lord.
I believe reserving "Hell and Damn and Great God Almighty" for use in the pulpit gives more strength to the men doing the preaching. The people in the pews in my memory were all quaking in their boots at all that Hell-fire and Damnation talk. So much so that they substituted "Durn" and "Dagnabbit" and so forth for the stronger words (around children anyway.) By the way, I couldn't even say Law Me when I was a child. Children were seen and not heard.
Also, I find a lot of O.E. words still being used in my family. The Elizabethan tongue was alive and well in those Tennessee hills, and we only had two books in our home. The King James Version of The Bible and Sears and Roebuck Catalogue. No kidding. So you can get some pretty odd combinations out of that.
But everyone was a storyteller. That and a singer of hymns and ole English and Irish tunes. Little Scots and little French. Some Cherokee. My father thought too much "book learning" was not good. Certainly not at the risk of losing your "common" sense. I loved libraries and married myself a durn school teacher -- probably for spite!
Blacks, in my childhood days in the south, the 1930s,40s,50s, would say "Lawsey Mz. Huggins etc..."
When I write "black" I use "Yessum" and "Lawsey" if the blacks are the shucking and jiving type. I don't use many of those, but they are there in my memory. I never heard a white person say "Lawsey" in my life unless they were mimicking a black person.
In the story, "Tattered" when the old woman rolled down her garters, they ended up with her nylon stocking-hose around her ankles looking like what I called "gauzy jar rings." There's a question mark by that phrase. Women's garters used to look like "gauzy jar rings" when they were rolled down. I'm old, Gilda. I was born before panty-hose. Perhaps you mean you wouldn't use the phrase at all?
In the story, "Ashes" when Lottie wants to "get shed of" him, she uses this phrase in her head because this is the way she speaks. She has never heard the phrase, "shut of." Lottie wants to get rid of Gene, but she can't say "rid" because she is eight years old and not that citified. She says, "shed" meaning like a dog sheds fur and a flower sheds petals. The word "shed" puts Gene physically closer to Lottie than "rid" would. These are my thoughts anyway.
I read a lot of new southern writers like Clyde Edgerton (Walking Across Egypt) and Kay Gibbons (Ellen Foster). Also, I have tapes of the old songs and phrases and it is quite a thrill for me to come across a phrase in a story that I thought I'd never see in print.
I'm still looking for "who laid a chunk" which means going like Hell and "jeuning around that kitchen" which means covering every inch of it. I find the phrases great fun to write I guess because it brings my people back to me, if only for a moment, and I do get so lonesome for the voices.
Notes on what I have learned in Creative Writing English 221
June 9 - July 30 1997 Instructor: Gilda Povolo
Student: Nancy Griesinger
I learned:
1. To recognize a cliche more readily from reading the manuscripts of others. And from the examples outlined in the Burroway text. Also from the comments made in class such as, "If you've seen it in print, it's a cliche." (I feel sorry for the new writers in the year 2000 and beyond).
2. How a good workshop works. Spending time with other's manuscripts and trying to see where they are going, what they are aiming for teaches in a way no textbook can. I found myself itching to change things. I learned how difficult the task of editing someone else's work is. When I received my ms back from classmates, I found their insights helpful. Someone else's confusion at my words always surprises me. As author, I think I'm perfectly clear. But if the audience doesn't think so, then what good are my words of wisdom? I'm learning this, but it always begs the question for me: What does the author owe to the reader? The story, I say. Not an explanation of it. That will come after the author is famous and has been in the grave 100 years! Classmates were also able to spy things that were out of sync in my stories and they had good ideas for the improvement and clarity of my ms.
3. The value of actually doing the exercises that are suggested in the textbook. The ones I chose to do for this class have made me realize that I've only been tapping about in the gold mine with a little pick. I haven't hit the mother-lode yet, but I can feel it, smell it. I know it's there.
4. That memory/truth alone does not make a story. It must be coupled with imagination. This from the verbal exchange of our stories that we turned into lies. My taking Sue's water tower story and her cat in the dryer story and weaving new cloth.
5. That making everyone who reads your story understand every bit of it is work with a capital W.
6. That even very ordinary names like Frank can be used purposefully to promote a theme of a story. I've known instinctively that names "show" a great deal about a character, but until this class, it never really occurred to me that good authors were going into that much detail. To let an honest, straight shooter character be called Frank, and a killer-diller type have a first name starting with a K and sounding kidish.
7. That I really am becoming a better writer. I saw this when I read through some of my old pieces to have Gilda read. I saw immediately how they needed work.
8. This particular class, because of the way the instructor has conducted it, and because the other students are serious about writing and interested in the subject, has been the most rewarding one I've taken at NMC.
8.
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