Men of Business: take 2

It still needs a lot of work, I know. Please help me! I hate to demand a lot in an informal critique, but could you be as precise as possible? Specificity seems to help me best... Please assist the poor little girl crying in the corner...

@~~,~~`~~~~

So this summer, my family had dealings with the Mafia. No one believes me, but it all happened. Cheesy threats, goons with twenty-inch necks, heavy Italian accents, the works. It’d all be really funny if it weren’t true.

Let me tell you about Richard Conti. The guy’s shorter than me. Five feet, tops, with slicked-back black hair, getting gray on top. Has to use half a cup of gel every morning, I swear. He seemed really friendly the first time I met him. He’s a lawyer; I suppose he’s got to do that. Otherwise he’d never get more holdings. Anyway, he owns about half of Providence and a good deal of the rest of the state. A hundred and fifty buildings, he’ll tell you proudly if you ask him. And this summer, he decided he wanted another one.

We ran an artisan bakery that turned out the best bread I’ve ever tasted. The guys who worked there were great. They were all Guatemalan Indians, and the most devout Catholics I’ve ever met, except they were willing to work on Sundays. It was a small building with two ovens, massive mixers, and four tables to form the bread by hand. The place always had someone in it, a baker or a packer or someone at the counter. On holidays, it was just me, sometimes my dad, and sometimes Catherine. I ran the wholesale department for six summers, starting when I was fourteen. Called people every day in the summers and on holidays: “Hi, this is Bess at Daily Bread, just callin’ to see if you need anything for tomorrow.”

I despised calling customers. I loathed it. If I never see another telephone in my life, it’ll be too soon. Every day, I had two solid hours of talking to purchasing departments, chefs, and inept assistants with my voice an octave higher than normal. I made myself sick with my sweetness in the face of customers. There were a few places that were really nice when I called, but the rest were wretched. Chefs are the angriest people on earth. People tell me no, they know people who would stab little furry animals and laugh about it, but chefs would do it just because the bread looked a little funny and they wanted to set an example. Roberto from Roberto’s was the worst. He would call if the bread was five minutes late from its six o’clock drop-off, or if one loaf was overcooked, or the raccoons got it before he did. He called me up on the fourth of July once, about five years ago. Now, in Bristol they have this parade that’s been going since before we won the revolution. We’re real patriotic in Rhode Island. Anyway, he calls because the bread’s not there at nine in the morning. The driver missed him because the parade was setting up. This guy’s restaurant is on the parade route, and it’s going on right now. He says he wants me to get it there. I tell him I’m fourteen. Through my tears, I tell him I don’t have a car, much less a license, and I’m the only one here. Tough, he says. Get him the bread. Later he calls back and apologizes for the words he used about me and the “Mexican” driver who needs to “learn to speak fuckin’ American.” By that time we’ve found someone to get him his bread. He says oh, that’s okay, he doesn’t need it till five. Roberto gives me headaches beyond the help of painkillers. A dollar fifty-one a baguette. That’s cheap, and he only gets twelve. He doesn’t get to complain.

It’s been five years since that conversation, and I’m tougher now. I’ve been sworn at and threatened by chefs and managers so many times, it’s hard to scare me. Conti, however, proved to be a different kind of threat.

So my sister and I are calling customers one day in our little wholesale cubicle in the basement. It’s about eleven and the smell of cinnamon has finally penetrated the ceiling. Cat has been talking with Roberto about the fact that he needs to order more bread or we simply can’t deliver to him anymore. When she hangs up, she fills in the order sheet and hands it to me to type.

“Je deteste les clients,” I say to Cat, snatching the slip without looking up from the computer. Getting yelled at by chefs is a miserable experience; I’m almost glad we’re closing the business, just so Cat and I don’t have to deal with the idiots anymore.

“Juste trois heurs,” she reminds me with a heavy sigh. It’s Thursday, and we get to go home at two today. Five sourdoughs, four peasant, six Tuscan loaves, all sliced, I type rapidly to the rhythm of the Celtic drumming Cat let me choose. If I type quickly enough, I can get several invoices out in a minute, but my hands will hurt like hell later. Two years ago, this job put me into physical therapy for carpal tunnel. Unfortunately, the owner’s daughter isn’t entitled to workman’s comp.

We speak French to each other, just for practice mostly. It bugs Dad because his grandparents used to speak German around him when they didn’t want him to understand, and he doesn’t speak French either.

“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a ici?” Cat asks as the visitors come into view. I look up from the sixty-seventh invoice in a row and rub my aching hands.

Conti comes into the basement in a three-piece suit with his lawyer and these two guys. I only got a little glimpse of them, but they were big. Like I said, twenty-inch necks. Biceps as big as your head. Dark blue t-shirts with hardware store logos on them. One of them’s missing a tooth. Dad greets them at the stairs, gives us a look that tells us to stay in the office and says, “Hi, Mr. Conti, what can I do for you today?” He leads Conti away from our line of sight, just outside the cubicle wall. Conti’s our landlord at this point, and we’re in our last month in the building. We had tried to sell the business to this great guy, Arnie, but Arnie had a heart attack on the day of the signing and his wife wouldn’t let him buy the bakery. I understand why. Any deal that endangers your life can’t be a wise idea.

We can’t see Dad and Conti and the guys, but we can hear them.

“Hey, Bill, how’s Arnie doin’ these days?”

“Better. He should be out of the hospital before next Wednesday.” Pleasant as anything. Dad’s a salesman by trade. He didn’t want to be, but that’s what he’s best at and he needs to bring home something at the end of the week. Dad doesn’t bake. He can’t really cook, for that matter. He just runs the business end of things at Daily Bread. His day job is selling phone systems to major companies on the East Coast. He knows how to talk to people and he knows how to organize everything but his own papers. However, the bakery loses thousands of dollars a year no matter what he does; that’s why we’re selling it. I think he wants to get out of this business as much as I do.

“Listen, Bill,” Conti says with an edge that says listen or else, “I need you out of here a week early. I got someone who’s seriously looking at the building.” That’s a damned lie. To this day, there’s still a “For Rent: Fully Equipped Baking Facility” sign in the window. Dad reminds him that the deal with Arnie fell through and the guy’s still in the hospital, showing no signs of buying when he gets out. We need the bakery and the equipment so that we can keep providing product to the customers. (I wouldn’t have minded stopping early, but we promised them bread through August 31, and Dad says you should never back out on your word. Even if they’re not going to follow through with their end of the bargain, i.e. paying you, you have to keep your promises.)

For a second or two, nobody says anything. Then Conti says, “You and me, Bill, we’re men of business. Businessmen, right?” Cat looks at me and gestures like the Godfather, thumb to middle finger, shaking her fist a little. I shush her so I don’t miss a word of the conversation. His accent is hysterical. It’s too stereotypically Italian to believe. Besides, someone that small can’t be intimidating. I should know; I can’t scare anyone. Conti goes on, “We understand when things go wrong. But these men, they’re not like you and me. They work with their hands.” And we hear cracking knuckles. Honest to God, cracking knuckles. I look at Cat, and her mouth’s wide open too.

“Il est de la famille,” I whisper to Catherine, and she does the Godfather thing again and says, “Il lui donne une offert qu’on ne peut pas refuser.” One of Conti’s thugs pokes his head around the cubicle wall and Cat hands me another order slip hurriedly, a blank one. He doesn’t understand French; we’re safe. He goes back out and we give this big sigh of relief. Sighing runs in my family on both sides. I swing at the air with my imaginary crowbar and say, “C’est l’homme qui casse les kneecaps.” Cat laughs out loud, but there’s fear behind her eyes. When you’re faced with a guy like Conti, with certain pain, you have to speak French and laugh if you want to stay sane.

“I’m sorry, Mister Conti, but we need to stay here until the thirty-first. I’m sure your client will understand.”

Conti mutters something barely audible about regretting this. Then he and his thugs leave without getting what they want, and Dad collapses in a chair in the wholesale cubicle. “So that was exciting,” he says, rubbing his hand. He seems to have survived with nothing more than a too-firm handshake. I love my dad. “Your mother won’t believe this.”

We tell my mom about this whole scene and she knows it’s true. She’s the only one in our family who isn’t scared of Conti at all. Mom says if any of us come home with bruises, she’s calling the police. Dad says not to worry. Conti won't try anything down the street from the police station, but Mom's still on her guard. She calls my aunt the next day and tells her about it. She’s just gotten to the part where Cat does the Godfather thing and she waits for an answer. Then she says, “You don’t believe me, do you?” And she waits some more, and she says, “You know, all I ask is that you believe me. I need to tell someone about this, and I’m not a liar, you know that.” And she hangs up, like that.

We started moving out on the twenty-eighth. When Dad tried to unlock the door the next day, the key didn’t work. The son of a bitch changed the locks two days early. It’s been two months now, and Conti's still got security guards standing at the back doors of the empty bakery just in case he tries to break in. They were there the whole time we moved out the computer systems and files so that we couldn’t steal anything that Conti owned. Like the three-ton mixers, or the brick ovens bigger than my bedroom. For God’s sake, my dad would never steal anything. Conti should know that by now. My father is the most honest guy in the world.

FOR GOD'S SAKE, HELP!!!!!

I need serious assistance with getting affect into my work. I mean line edits, tasks, practice sketches, something! I just can't seem to get it! Hache, I know you told me a lot yesterday, but I just don't understand!!!

And now, sketches. If you could point out good and bad points for me, that'd be fantastic.

1.

It was cloudy the day he would not believe me. I had tears in my eyes. My heart was stopped and I had no breath with which to answer his jabs at my integrity. Teeth chatter, somewhere between caffeine and restraint, and my eyes are itching. I needed him to know that I needed help, I wanted help, and someone needed to stop Richard Conti from breaking us.

That’s nice, miss, but without evidence I can’t do anything to help you.

I had told him the story the way everyone else had heard it. I’m not sure they believed me, either.

2.

At eleven o’clock on any given weekday in August, my hands ache from typing hundreds of invoices. By this time, anyone but a customer will hear me cursing and see me flopped back in my father’s office chair, the one with wheels. My head is filled with orders, questions, complaints, two sourdough, five Tuscan, four peasant, all sliced. The phone rings and I cry out in agony at the thought of dealing with the late callers. Get your orders in by eleven or they will not be sent until the next production order goes through. Doesn’t anyone follow the rules anymore? Quick change. An octave higher than normal, masking a rage that should not have to exist, “Daily Bread wholesale, how can I help you?” I need to get out of here before repressed anger kills me. Lucky for me, we have to close the bakery.

They don’t pay, no matter how often I call, no matter how many weekly bills are sent. Some of the classier restaurants are over three thousand dollars in debt to us and refuse to admit it. I’ve been bounced from kitchens to purchasing to accounting to general managers to the kitchen again, looking for a check. By the end of a collections day, I’ve nearly lost the will to live. Five to nine hours a day with no company but a telephone full of faceless raging chefs will drive you to the brink.

It was a Wednesday when Conti dropped by the basement office unannounced in a three-piece suit with a lawyer, a file folder, and two men with twenty-inch necks. I know it was Wednesday because Cat was there with me, filing old checks and chattering in French for practice. I straightened my hair, wild from running my fingers through it too many times in the deepest of frustrations, and greeted him with the voice I reserve for customers. Only Cat knows the contempt I bury in the phone voice.

3.

She works with stainless steel because aluminum is weak. Her muscles strain around the pliers, opening and closing rings. She is thin, too thin. Her blood is weak. Her eyes are enormous as she works the chain mail. There is passion in those eyes. Reflected glitter of swords and shields and days she doesn’t remember in her baggy t-shirts and blue jeans. One ring, two ring, three ring, she arms herself. She needs protection. The bruise on her forearm could have been prevented with a good bracer. Mountain Dew for strength, stainless steel just in case.

4.

Let's watch me listening to Albeniz. I breathe higher, my waistline is cinched, and my hips begin to move back and forth. I cannot move my feet right, but I want to. Small steps, Bess, small steps and sweeping hips.

5.

Eyes closed tight in dismay and pleasure. Yellow flush to the temples. Her nose has disappeared, but thin nostrils lineate the center of the beauty. Her lips are petals, to be soft, to be touched. Ashamed of orgasm she hides in flowers. Blue hair blends with spiking grass and stems, but is too soft to avoid contrast. Red, red, why can't she be red? White skin is a betrayal.

6.

The faeries all sneer. In their nudity, they are superior. Blank eyes do not dim the contempt radiating from pale faces. Wings made of webs won't fly, but my aren't they pretty? Long ears, pierced several times with refined gold, surrounded by loose hair. They pout and glare. Hair covers just enough breast to taunt with feigned modesty.

7.

She would not survive in Arabia. She would be beautiful, yes, bound in silk. Her hair would be tied to itself and wrapped in gold, soft brown hair. She would not stop smiling, grinning in the sun. But it is forbidden in Islam to portray the human form in art. Soon men would follow her. She would be labeled an idol and killed for her sin against he who had given the world such beauty.

8.

I was cold. I tied my arms around myself. I curled into a ball and covered my nose with my tail. My legs were tight against my chest and I shivered. A mew escaped my shaking teeth and my father kicked me in the stomach. He kicked me with those spotless leather boots and told me to shut my mouth. Soldiers work in the cold. He had stolen my breath, and I wanted to scream. I wanted M'ma so much, but I did not scream. I just felt water through the fur on my face. If it weren't dark, my father would have kicked me again for crying. If he hated me so much, why did he take me from the Captain and keep me with him day and night?
The fire had gone out and left only the stars for light. Through the trees, I could only see three stars. One burned a cold blue like my father's left eye. I shuddered; even in sleep he was watching me. The fur on my back stood on end.

9.

The dice are cool and smooth in my hand. Familiar angles and edges and etched numbers. When I open my hand and let them roll, they glitter and clack across the table. Five, six, ten, one, two: I succeed. I need this. I need to pretend for a few hours that physics does not exist, or my brain will implode.
Why turn to drugs when I have my own mind? If it's going to be so damn creative that it makes nightmares out of conversations, then it can fix the mess it makes.
Tonight, they will follow my lead. I will tell a story and they will swing from chandeliers and save the princess. Statistics in Neverland. They can act without real consequences in my world.
I light the wild berry candle and open the window. The smell stays in the room, and the smoke blows out. Now the gaming room smells like adventure.

10.

She won't talk to me. She says it's over. It can't be over; five years, Bessie, you've been my best friend for five years.
I pour another shot with a shaking hand, gasping to keep tears back so I can see the glass. I hate tequila, but that's all I have and it's good enough. Maybe I'll drink enough to forget her.
Five years. I bought her a camera and she made me a scarf and a mix CD. Cheap bitch. No, I'm sorry, Bessie, it was a nice scarf and I know you don't have a lot of money. Otherwise you would have come to visit me and then you'd know there was nothing wrong between us, babe! So I drink. So I flirt. I still love you so much, I'll never give up.
Our picture slips from my hand to the floor and the glass shatters. God, I'm sorry. I broke it, and it was ours. Best friends forever, that's what the frame said.
You know what? Fuck that. I stand up, supporting myself on the bar, and pick up the photo. A piece of broken glass sticks in my finger. Shit, I'm clumsy tonight. With dragging hands, I manage to get a finger and thumb on either side of the picture, us dancing at prom. Her date took it, the date I set her up with. Bitch. "Bitch!" I rip it down the center.
The pieces fall to the floor among the glass. That's all I remember.

Week 7 Responses: Group 2

Noticing details in "Penguins"

Jeffers seems to have found confidence in “Penguins.” It’s wonderful to see him in an element in which he feels comfortable. In this piece, he focuses his attention outward, rather than spending all of his time feeling awkward. The best way to learn about Jeffers in “Penguins” is to notice what he notices. Out of an entire zoo full of people and animals, he draws the reader’s attention to a “spot of bird shit on the black asphalt” that “looked like a raindrop running slowly down a window” and the feeling of the handrail against his butt cheeks. He notices the penguin that bites a little girl while his friend Mike is trying to see the main exhibit.

Jeffers sees subtleties. I like him a lot more now that he does things. Keep this up, Tom. It’s beautiful.

Expectations in "Opening for a story"

Tucker has such great expectations for age. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when he hits 25… One way to make his desires and frustrations more effective at the beginning of the story would be to progress his own age in 3-year increments. Instead of going from eleven to sixteen to twenty-two, we should see if he meets his expectations when he actually hits the ages he desires. And what happened when Tucker turned 14, 19, and 22? Was he disappointed by each birthday?

I adored the preparation he made in case anyone asked him about the patches on his jacket. It provides yet another small disappointment on top of everything else he has to deal with in being three years too young for his desires. This shows more about Tucker than the rest of the paragraph. Give us more of this gorgeous affect!

[Untitled] by Kate Schlachter

Unfortunately, despite the beauty of Kate’s writing, I had no idea what was going on in this piece. I gathered something about maybe a funeral and an apathetic guy named Charlie who has a sister and an annoyingly tactless mother, but I’m not entirely sure why he leaves his apartment.

The description of how Charlie sees Dale’s apartment building and feels in it, however, was beautiful. The image of a building that is “heavy against the sky” is so clear in my mind. The word choice in this paragraph is beautiful. Kate captures the feeling of coming in from the cold amazingly well. Again, the descriptive language is gorgeous, but we need some plot. Is this a complete piece? I hope you’re going to write more of it, and I’d love to read it if you do.

Demanding and commanding in “Elise” by Gillian Chisom

It was great to read a piece that takes place outside our era. Gillian has a wonderful command of Austen-era dialogue and language. The dialogue is all spoken very frankly; there’s no beating about the bush between mothers, daughters, sisters, or servants. The phrase “now leave me” was used at least three times as both a request and a command simultaneously. It seems there is no end of demands in Elise’s home. She is practically required to marry a stranger in order to save her family’s manor, and she acquiesces without a fight. Where is the reader’s sympathy supposed to lie? We know she has a mild internal struggle, but she gives it up quickly enough so as to discredit it as a legitimate argument, and resigns herself to her fate. I have no real emotional attachment to Elise during this massive change in her settled life. Perhaps we could meet this suitor in a dialogue or learn some more about him? This would give us more of an idea of how and why she decides to leave childhood behind and marry so young.

Rapid trains of thought in "Wynona Sketches" by Al Keefe

The beauty of Keefe’s writing lies in his understanding of not only how Wynona thinks, but what she says to herself as she thinks. She does not break up her thoughts into coherent, grammatically correct sentences because her mind moves entirely too quickly to follow the conventions of proper writing. This old woman’s mind-rants are fascinating, especially those about her childhood and her husband. As in the original Wynona piece we read, she ties several clauses and pieces of dialogue together in one thought with only commas and oddly placed conjunctions. Page five is filled with these strings, such as “Always Wynona is eight years old here, and always her father is the only miner with a Model T and rides for all her girlfriends but pick one boy Winnie, and her mother always in the front seat rolls her eyes and holds a smile.” Memory is a strange and meandering realm, and Keefe explores it very effectively. The slower thoughts tend to kick in when she thinks about more recent or saddening events. The sketch covering pages 1-3, the piece about Jack, is much slower and more articulated than Wynona’s childhood memories. She seems to be pondering these and examining them with the reader. It’s gorgeous. Will these all be tied together in one piece, or are they just explorations of a style and a character?

“Bill Raymond,” dealing with a legend

Dear God, I loved this piece! Again, David has shown that he is a master of the folk tale. This time, however, we are asked to deal with the truth and consequences of a living legend. What I liked best about “Bill Raymond, My Father” was the way David made the con-artist father so very believable to both Bill’s audience and the reader. The narrator casts no judgment on his father throughout all the dowsing procedures, and thus keeps us in suspense as to whether or not Bill is really a dowser. And time and again, the farmers never realize they’ve been had. There’s never a lynch mob out to get the man who impregnated the farmer’s daughter and didn’t really find water. As far as we know, up until the end of the piece, Bill could be an angel or a magician. Our suspension of disbelief is held in two separate dimensions. Well done, David.

Sketches vii-x

vii.
Elícia cupped the bloom of the rose in one hand as she sat outside the church. It sat lightly, suspended on its stem, in her pale right hand. Inigo had sent for her and told her to meet him at the yellow rose bush at noon. She wished he would hurry; the cold stone of the cathedral wall was freezing her bare shoulders.

The petals were soft; the blossom was new. Yesterday Father Inez had cut the flowers for altar decorations, leaving only the buds behind for lovers to steal.

viii. Sense memory: Elicia and 87% cacao content chocolate
“Impetuous child,” her father scolded over his papers as a seven-year-old Elícia ran from the kitchen with the treat wrapped in a handkerchief. She giggled as she scampered into the field behind the manor to find Rico and share the chocolate with him.

She broke the piece of her mother’s baking chocolate into two pieces and gave the larger to her older brother, who was reading his Book of the Prophets under a tall tree. Without exchanging a word, they both popped the near-black chocolate into their mouths. It was the most bitter and sweet combination of tastes Elícia had ever experienced. At first, the dryness made her crave a sip of water, but it melted quickly and filled her mouth with flavors from the distant Crescent Empire. It had become silk, at once smoother than her mother’s finest dresses and harsher than thorns.

ix. "art of fighting"

Oven mitts over tight clenched fists. Smirk on the clean face with a smudge of powdered sugar next to the wrinkled nose. One raised eyebrow; you question her domain? Curly short black hair shines in the morning light through a window. Impish smile adorns a perfect young face; she still has to grow into her nose. Pay attention to her; all else fades around her. Focus, boy! Her eyes would be covered if not for the clip in her bangs. God, I love her.

x. Sable's eye photograph

She doesn't pluck her eyebrows, or at least she hasn't recently. The eye is wide open. No mascara here. Flourescent bulbs are reflected on the iris. Black to silver to black again, in a white space. It's wet from too many tears. Shadows are scarce; she loves the light and can't live without it. She makes light. Behind her, all is darkness and you can't see a thing. Focus instead on the sparse hairs over the eyelid.

Week 7: Sketches i-xi

i.
The child had a cat-like voice. It disturbed Nar'kel. He held his "m"s out too long and whined at night. They had taken him from the female too late; the bodywas perfect, but the voice would betray him anywhere in Madeleinia as an outsider. So Nar'kel took the chiod to the Captain the next night.
The Captain was an old dog now, retired, arthritic and gray-faced. He had taken a wife some years ago; talk in the barracks was, she'd taken him. Her name was Cissa. She hated that the Captain still wore his uniform and kept a knife next to the bed. Cissa made her old clothes from old tablecloths and blankets, then made tablecloths and blankets out of old clothes. Tonight, when she came to the door, Nar'kel recognized a piece of the Captain's armchair in her skirt.

ii. Man in Blue vii
The body waits. One hand rests on the other. Eyes gone but glaring. Lips gone but smirking. Skin like smoke and dust over cold fire. His head is tilted. The face waits. He is tall and straight. He does not move but waits. Cleanshaven, awake in the dark. Awake but not alive. Feeding off the meager light. It falls into the vacant holes of his face. They are open, he is always awake and watching at night. Leaning on one arm, prepared to move as soon as the holes see a movement. Only the tie is askew, but he has not fixed it. The shoulders are broad and strong under the dead suit. His hair holds itself back; the whole face is visible, but one hand is hidden.

iii. Garlic I: my memory
Jeni dancing in the kitchen while I chopped the garlic and Catherine poured oil in the pan to make sauce. Jeni kissed Jon and he held her hips. I smiled and Cat stirred the oil and the Turts University Beelzebubs went on singing "Machinehead."
"Grampa grew this garlic himself, out in Illinois," I say, but no one seems to hear. The water won't boil so we can't make the pasta and Jon gives Jeni another piece of foccacia. I bite my own piece and the garlic and oil and salt and dough burn my throat as I throw the cloves in the food processor with olive oil. This was before the Atkins diet, and none of us cared that there wasnothing but carbohydrates and garlic in the meal.
We skipped to that Frank Sinatra song, "The Way You Look Tonight," and I became a baritone. Cat's famous garlic pasta after a long night of carols in the snow. We eat so much garlic in this house, the dogs will never have fleas and our hearts will never stop. It's all in a big bowl under the microwave, the orange ceramic bowl that can't go in the dishwasher. I don't want to wash my hands, the garlic smells so good, but I can't open the juice bottle with all the oil on them.
Cat cuts the lemon last. She reams it, spilling juice everywhere. You have to use a lemon, not bottled juice.

iv. Garlic II: Character
We used to sell garlic bread at the bakery, before I started working wholesale, but it went bad too fast. Now I know exactly what breads are good for it. The best, I tell customers, is our rosemary sourdough. For garlic bread? they ask. I say yes, that's what my dad makes it from. Of course, if you wanted something more traditional, Italian loaf would work very well, or a sliced baguette. Then they say, oh, never mind. They make me go through three minutes of my hard-earned bread knowledge and then say forget it. Screw you, I don't tell them. Have a nice day.
I'm a bread snob. This one time, I was walking down the dairy aisle looking for Will's cheese slices and I had to repress a gag reflex. They keep the Wonder Bread there. The preservative smell made me want to throw up. Why the hell ould yoyu buy Wonder Bread when you could get artisan bread for cheaper? I ran down the aisle but the smell was caught in my clothes. Cat smelled it on me when I got home.
In the caf the other day, I tasted a piece of bread. It was a slice of some baguette, rye and honey and wheat, and I cried.

v.
On the black hands, blood was invisible. It frightened Airen when he was small. One time, he hurt his hand and set it on the wall. When it came away and left a red print, he fell the floor and scuttled backward in shock. Airen looked at his hand. It wasn't red; the fur just glistened.

vi. Sean's hair
His hair is styled like a 70's prom queen's. It's straight on top; all the body's in the curl at the bottom. Natural layers from just letting it grow for years. If there weren't so many split ends, I'd think he took care of it. It's this thing boys can do, look better than us without trying.

Week 6 Responses

Reliable narration in Peter Orner’s “Spokane”

I think this was my favorite piece from this week. In my second story, I decided to work with a first person narrator, and “Spokane’s” narrator was deeply inspiring. Orner captures a very human voice in this story. What I loved most about it was that it was a story, told in a way that made me believe I was listening to it straight from Stace’s mouth. Orner accomplishes this by creating a narrator who is sure of her story, but not sure of herself. She constantly clarifies herself. For instance, on the second page she says, “He was tall. One of those tall guys who doesn’t know what to do with his height. The kind of guy that lanks around and apologizes for having to stoop through doorways except that Edward never apologized.” The beauty in this story lies in Stace’s narration of what happened when she discovered Edward’s body in the basement. This scene once again begins with her stating a fact, and then going on to clarify and describe what happened. When read aloud, it sounds like she’s trying to convince both her audience and herself of the facts of Edward’s suicide. It’s truly beautiful narration.

Blindness in “Lola”

To tell you the truth, I was completely confused by this piece, even after reading it several times. The grammatical structures and punctuation made it even less understandable. Page 7’s long strings of dialogue without narration or paragraph breaks were interesting, but overall confusing. However, the repetition of blindness and limited sight stuck with me. Starting with her dizziness and the blurriness of the club around her at the beginning of the piece, Lola has many experiences with the loss of sight. She barely escapes the blind pimp, has her sight limited by the sight of a rifle, and finds herself nearly blind with blood on her chest after shooting the gun. It’s all fascinating, but I don’t really know what it means. The beginning is filled with colors, and more than any other sense we see what Lola sees. Is this contrast of sight and blindness deliberate? If so, could you clarify it further?

ah, my favorite part of blogging... quizzes...

there is some actual classwork in the entries under this, but i thought we could all use a little extra fun :)


You're a Dialogue/Character Writer!


What kind of writer are you?
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Congratulations! You're Merry!


Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
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Okay, this is my second story. Please refrain from commenting here. I would, however, appreciate it if you commented on "Under Any Circumstances" which is just below this. Thanks ever so.

Men of Business

So this summer, my family had dealings with the Mafia. No one ever believes me when I tell them that, but it’s true. Really! Cheesy threats, guys with twenty-inch necks, heavy Italian accents, the works.

Let me tell you about Richard Conti. The guy’s short, like shorter than me. Five feet, tops, with slicked-back black hair, getting gray on top. Has to use half a cup of gel every morning, I swear. He seems really friendly at first. He’s a lawyer, he’s got to. Anyway, he owns about half of Providence and a good deal of the rest of the state. A hundred and fifty buildings, he says proudly if you ask him. And he wanted another one.

We ran an artisan bakery. The guys who worked there were great. They were all Guatemalan Indians, the most devout Catholics I’ve ever met, except they were willing to work on Sundays. It was a small building with two ovens, massive mixers, and four tables to form the bread by hand. The place always had someone in it, a baker or a packer or someone at the counter. On holidays, it was just me, sometimes my dad, and sometimes Catherine. I did wholesale. Called people every day, “Hi, this is Bess at Daily Bread, just callin’ to see if you need anything for tomorrow.”

I hate calling customers. There were a few places that were really nice when I called, but the rest were wretched. Chefs are the angriest people on earth. People tell me no, they know people who would stab little furry animals and laugh about it, but chefs would do it just because the bread looked a little funny and they wanted to set an example. Roberto from Roberto’s was the worst. He would call if the bread was five minutes late from its six o’clock drop-off, or if one loaf was overcooked, or the raccoons got it before he did. He called me up on the fourth of July once. Now, in Bristol they have this parade that’s been going since before we won the revolution. We’re real patriotic in Rhode Island. Anyway, he calls because the bread’s not there at nine in the morning. The driver missed him because the parade’s going on. The guy’s restaurant is on the parade route, and it’s going on right now. He says he wants me to get it there. I tell him I’m fourteen. Through my tears, I tell him I don’t have my car, much less a license, and I’m the only one here. Tough, he says. Get him the bread. Later he calls back and apologizes for the words he used about me and the “Mexican” driver who needs to “learn to speak fuckin’ American.” By that time we’ve found someone to get him his bread. He says h, that’s okay, he doesn’t need it till five. I hate Roberto. If I didn’t get paid, and if it wasn’t for family I was here every summer, I’d hang up on him. A dollar fifty-one a baguette. That’s cheap, and he only gets twelve. He doesn’t get to complain.

So me and my sister were calling customers this one day in our little wholesale cubicle in the basement and Conti comes to visit with his lawyer and these two guys. I only got a little glimpse of them, but they were big. Like I said, twenty-inch necks. Biceps as big as your head. Dark blue t-shirts with hardware store logos on them. One of them’s missing a tooth. My dad says, “Hi, Mr. Conti, what can I do for you today?” Conti’s our landlord by this point, and we’re in our last month in the building. We tried to sell the business to this guy Arnie, but Arnie had a heart attack on the day of the signing and his wife wouldn’t let him buy the bakery.

We can’t see Dad and Conti and the guys, but we can hear them. Dad tells Conti about Arnie, how he’s doing, et cetera. Pleasant as anything. Dad’s a salesman by trade. His day job is selling phone systems to major companies on the East Coast. He knows how to talk to people. For a second or two, nobody says anything. Then Conti says, “You and me, Bill, we’re men of business. Businessmen, right?” Cat looks at me and gestures like the Godfather. I shush her. Conti goes on, “We understand when things go wrong. But these men, they’re not like you and me. They work with their hands.” And we hear cracking knuckles. Honest to God, cracking knuckles. My dad, completely unfazed, says he understands, but he’s not moving out a day before the lease runs out.

“Il est de la famille,” I whisper to Catherine, and she says, “Il lui donne une offert qu’on ne peut pas refuser.” One of the guys peeks his head around the cubicle wall. He doesn’t understand French. We’re safe. He goes back out and we give this big sigh of relief. Sighing runs in my family on both sides. Then Conti and his thugs leave, dissatisfied. I love my dad.

We tell my mom about this whole scene and she knows it’s true. She’s the only one besides me and Cat who isn’t scared of Conti at all. She calls my aunt the next day and tells her about it. She’s just gotten past the part where Cat does the Godfather thing and she waits for an answer. Then she says, “You don’t believe me, do you?” And she waits some more, and she says, “You know, all I ask is that you believe me. I need to tell someone about this, and I’m not a liar, you know that.” And she hangs up, like that.

Conti still changed the locks two days early, so Dad doesn’t have the stuff he needs to do the taxes. There are security guards standing at the back doors just in case he tries to break in. They were there the whole time we moved out the computer systems and files, so we couldn’t steal anything that Conti owned. Like the three-ton mixers, or the brick ovens bigger than my bedroom. My dad would never steal anything. He’s the most honest guy I know.

Work in Progress: Under Any Circumstances

We started calling Will “Charles Wallace” long before he started showing symptoms. Mom’s always been a big fan of Madeleine L’Engle. I don’t think there’s a shelf in the house without one of her books on it. We have to have at least three Wrinkle in Times. Anyway, he gets these lucid moments sometimes. Like this one time, we were at the La Salette shrine, you know, that Catholic place with the great Christmas lights? And Mom comes running up to me crying, holding Will’s hand, and she says he kneeled down at a crèche and said, “Heal me, Jesus.”

And when Grampa Bill died, we had all been expecting it for a while. He’d been in intensive care down in Mississippi for months, drifting in and out. We didn’t talk about it around Will so he wouldn’t get upset. As far as I know, he didn’t even know his grampa was sick. My dad was there in the hospital room when he went. His heart just stopped beating. Considering everything else that was wrong with his body, this was the best way he could have gone. Well, Mom told Will in the morning that Grampa was dead. Will said, “No he’s not.” Not like he was in denial or anything, he wasn’t crying. He just knew.

Will has pervasive developmental disorder. It’s somewhere between Asperger’s and full-on, not-talking autism. Basically, the diagnosis means, “We can’t really do anything about this kid. Take this book and these pamphlets, and good luck finding out what you’re supposed to do with him. You’ll never know what he wants or how he thinks.” They said he wouldn’t be able to read and wouldn’t speak, even if he could.

He showed them. He could read at four. Full sentences, big words, whole books. Of course, all of them were about Thomas the Tank Engine or dinosaurs, but he could read. And talking? The kid never stops! He’s the most social autistic kid I’ve ever met. Charismatic, too. He wants something, you’ll help him get it and you’ll love doing it. He raised five hundred dollars through Christmas money, birthday presents, and general mooching to buy himself a pug.

Relationships in “Chapter 4” by Erin Hart

The most interesting aspect of this chapter of Erin’s as-yet-untitled novel is the development of relationships. From their mannerisms and speech, one can gather that the characters are of high school age, and Erin has captured the emotions of a high school girl in an unfamiliar place very well. I particularly noted the fact that Rose was so desperate to get along well with her cabin-mates that she refrained from asking important questions about Sean Marcus. She is determined to succeed in her new environment, but at what cost? The dinner-time conversation between Rose, Julie, and Sean enlightens us further in the processes of Rose’s mind. Rose not only watches Sean, but Julie’s reactions to him as well.

The only real issue I have with this piece is that Erin tends to tell rather than show. In many cases, this provides some expediency of narration, but it is less necessary during dialogue and internal monologue. For instance, on the last page, Julie tells Rose a lot of vital information, but in a very small amount of space. It would be nice to see this information spread out more, and demonstrated through Ardara and Sean instead of simply spoken aloud by an outside voice.

Judgment in “Cruisin’ for Christ” by Micah Riecker

The rumor mill is in full and vicious cycle in Micah’s story, and with it the inevitable judgment. It’s all very ironic but not unexpected, that on a church-supported cruise people are passing rumors and judgment left and right. What is truly fascinating here is the variety of judgments cast down and the lack of good reasons for these statements. While most of the story seems to revolve around dealing with Denise and “that atheist of hers,” the underlying problem is David’s guilt complexes. Don, Joshua, and Emily judge others very harshly, but David is constantly watching himself and doing mental penance for anything that seems even slightly sinful. The irony in all this is clearly that while Christians are told in the Bible to reserve judgment, every crucial character in this piece except David, Denise, and Allan is a back-stabbing gossip.

What I seem to be missing in all this is the motivation for such wretched behavior. Without an explanation for Emily and others’ meanness, the piece itself seems to be passing judgment on churchgoers as judgmental gossips. And exactly what is Emily holding over David’s head? I read through the story several times and I just couldn’t find his dirty little secret. Can you show us more of the relationships between the characters and more about each one?

Voice in the untitled work by Jon Crylen

This is a wonderful piece. That said, I particularly adore the close-third narration and the voice of Patrick Hunt. The story has a wonderful air of nostalgia to its narration that makes me feel like I’m listening to a friend telling a story about when he was a kid, but it still has the immediacy needed to keep a reader’s attention. Phrases like “bosomy cursive” give us a very good idea of the age of the narrator as he tells the story. I was strongly reminded of the voice and narration in “Gryphon” by Charles Baxter (high compliment from me, by the way; read it if you haven’t already).

My only suggestion would be to tighten the narration at the very beginning of the story. We have no idea that the story is from Patrick’s point of view until page 2, when Charlie Johnson bursts out that Patrick is the guilty party in the bus seat caper. It confused me when the narration switched from a general class-room view to Patrick’s voice. Perhaps you could bring in Patrick a bit earlier?

The Mother-Son Relationship in “Lasers on Steel” by Randy Robertson

Robert is a really interesting character. He is so genuinely human in all his fears and concerns. The really fascinating aspect of this great story is Robert’s relationship with his mother. To the world, he presents the image of being somewhat ashamed of living with his mother at the age of 35, but he truly loves her. He gets really concerned when she cries at 4:30 in the morning. He cares for her because her father and her husband never did; Robert’s grandfather was abusive, and his mother is broken because of all the other men in her life. Robert puts his own goals aside for her, genuinely concerned.

The issue I have with this piece is that you occasionally pull away from the close third in narration, going to a regular third person narrative. The paragraph on page 4 that begins “Robert didn’t have much to show for his life” tells us a lot about Robert, but from an outsider’s point of view. Can he show us these facts in his own voice? Because that’d be awesome.

Appearance and Affect in “Harriet” by Kathryn Goldthwaite

This piece begins with a wonderful exposition on public appearance and politics (the name of the groom’s character might be a bit over the top, but that’s not a huge issue). It sets up Rose’s mother’s obsession with appearance perfectly. We’re so used to thinking that the rich are the ones obsessed with looks and publicity; it was good to see this contradiction so subtly pulled off.

One of the best things about this piece is Harriet’s affect in the car scene. She puts her feet on the dashboard and picks at her toenails in front of her mother. This is such a great demonstration of her contempt for appearances. Using phrases like “as my mother puts it, look presentable for the wedding” do the same thing very skillfully.

I only ask that you put a bit more of this gorgeous affect in the final scene. We lose Harriet’s emotions and reactions on page 7, and it would be lovely to see more. Character development can go all the way to the end of the piece, and Harriet seems like such a deep and awesome character. Give us more!

Week 5 Sketches
(to be updated often)

i. Notes on Sr'Yzr
Sr'Yzr stalked. He called it "hunting," said it was good for the soul. His ears were so keen, he could hear the ladies' gossip from a hundred yards, word for word. His eyes were so sharp, he could count every leaf on a tree. If only those were his prey.
If it weren't for those eyes and ears, a wild mixture of vermin and predator, he would have been strikingly handsome. He would have looked like a hero, with the scar over his heart from a well-aimed Thendroni arrow. But the eyes inspired both respect and fear.
Sr'Yzr's laugh was musical, like a dirge. Slow and deep and mourning. When Airen heard the deep chuckle of Sr'Yzr's mirth, he knew death was coming.
Sr'Yzr's markings did not just glove his hands; his arms were pitch black to the elbows, and he wore leather boots to enhance the effect. He was proud to be darker-handed than his father.

ii. Jeremy
Jeremy is the son of a chemist. His dad works for the government. That's all I really know about his home life, except that his mom's a sometimes-lesbian who gave him condoms, some Playboys, and moist towlettes for his thirteenth birthday.
He's got this big brown hair and these gray eyes that are wild with ideas but kind of shaded by pot. Jeremy's the one that got me into gaming. He was always arguing about rules with this other guy in chemistry and talking about his characters. I loved listening to him. He's always so passionate about everything. And I mean everything.
This story has a lot to do with Jeremy and his LiveJournal. He had this talent for capturing attention. Like he did when he was talking about gaming, only if he knew someone was listening he would actually try.

iii.
Right now, my red corduroy jacket is lying in the basement at Grampa's house. I want it back. It's too big, it's too dark, it's missing a button, but I want it back.
I think I wore it every day in Europe. It smells like life, smoke and cough drops and motor oil. A Beethoven enthusiast spilled coffee on me once. I think he apologized, but everything in German sounds so angry so he could have been saying something completely different.

iv.
Bitch bitch bitch, Roberto from Roberto's. That's all he ever does. I'm so sick of listening to him. He gets twelve Italian baguettes every day, $1.51 a loaf. That's dirt cheap. He doesn't get to complain. But he does anyway.
If I didn't get paid for this, I'd hang up on Roberto every time he called.

v.
“J’ai besoin d’une vie,” I tell Katie day after day. And it might be true. Life just takes it out of me, you know? At least, work does. Reading fifty pages of Chrétien de Troyes a day’ll kill ya, I swear. Every day, watching the most handsome knight being honorable to the most beautiful lady in the land.

Hell, I could do that. Write like Chrétien, I mean. Watch me.

This is the story of the Knight with the Unusual Name, le Chevalier du nom inusuel. He found a damsel one day who was crying in her tower, so he climbed the tower and saw her and said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He made love to her and told her he loved her. She promised herself to him. The next day, he moved on to a new land and did the same thing. Oh yeah, and his name was…

God, Chrétien de Troyes sucks.

vi.
Q called me around ten. I hate it when she calls me that late. I was already in bed. It was a Thursday, and I had school in the morning, but so did she and I guess that's why she thought it was okay. She thinks everything's okay. That's her problem.
Inside that pretty blonde head, Q doesn't really know anything. I get at least one call every week that sounds guilty with a smile. It hurts like hell that she doesn't take me seriously. Whining my name like a siren. "Bessiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee!" There's an emergency coming and she doesn't even know it.

vii.
I don't really know why I didn't tell Adam that part of why we couldn't work was how he treated Q. I guess it should have been obvious to a normal person, but he had Aspergers so I guess there was something missing in that line of thought. He said she deserved to die. But somehow his brain just didn't see that that was wrong. After I said it was over, and I was crying for God's sake, he posted. There's something evil in a man who calls a bloodhunt. That same force made him call us "fucking elited bigoted Christians," me and my whole family.
Him and Jeremy, man, they were evil.

viii.
At the end, we were all alone, except Jeremy. All of us were grasping at distant hands for some kind of companionship that we had destroyed. I lost everyoe. Q lost more than that. She lost more than that. All she has now is a therapist in a sunny office.
Jeremy has the fame and glory of a murderer, a federal assassin who took out the most dangerous criminal mind of our time. They love him, and he loves us all dearly.

ix.
She tried to make her life a chick flick. If she had her way, Q wouldn't have parents, criticism, or consequences. Sometimes I think she pretends they don't exist, and that's when she gets in trouble and calls me so late at night. For some reason, I am her designated shoulder angel. Why the hell am I the voice of reason? I'm insane! And she's always so proud when she talks about her latest conquests. Then she talks to me and regrets the lot of it. "Why didn't anyone tell me?" she says, forgetting that I told her ten times yesterday alone...

x.
It has to be cream-colored. A textured fabric with swirling raised patterns. It won't give me hips. The skirt will hang to the floor in heavy, loose pleats that make me look tall, because I'm not wearing heels to walk down the aisle.
Mom will say it has to be white, my being a virgin and all, but I need red in my wedding. A red sash around my waist and a red ribbon in my hair. Tall black boots in an elegant Renaissance cut and a dark red rose in my hand. And a sword in my belt.

Leap
(n+1th draft)

Leap

For three days, Enna lay still in the Underhaven. The air was dark and wet; it threatened to choke her. Still, it was safer here than in the world above.

Her pink school jumper, ripped to rags, flowed around her, loosely waving in the darkness. She could not see her own hands, pale as she knew they were, through the blackened surroundings. They should have been right in front of her, she could feel them, but she hadn’t been able to see since the power went out. Enna forced her invisible hands slowly through the blanket of thickness, trying to perceive their position, her own place against the damp Underhaven wall. The water twisted her waist, digging her tiny shoulder into the cot. Sharp pain, like a breaking branch: the first real thing she had felt for days.

When the rain started, she had run from the streets with the world. Somewhere safe, they had said. When the rain starts, go somewhere safe and stay until the clouds recede. There was no “fast enough” when you ran from the wall of water. She had left her tight, buckled Mary-Janes behind in the street, next to her jump-rope, because putting them on would only slow her down. Gusts of wind whipped her hair and the skirt of her pink corduroy jumper around her. Tripping over fallen branches and tossed by the wind, she had sprinted between cars, through the open doors and fallen on the bare cot with her skinny arms clasped over her head. Her screaming, bleeding feet had left patches that stained the floor a vivid red before the lights went out.

The Underhaven provided the perfect barrier. Cement walls kept back the earth. Cement clouds blocked the perilous sky. Safety lay beneath the city ground, in the basement, where Enna could escape from torment and terror. When she slept here, she could not hear the noises from Above. No cars to scream at her. No Daffyd to make fun of her bruises. No rain. It was an impenetrable fortress, a castle among the sewers.

Mother called it perfectly damp. Nothing stuck to the basement’s bare walls except the ballerina, though the floor was constantly littered with running drawings of colorful fish. They wanted to escape from the paper, just like Enna wanted to get away from her gray world. Enna had always wanted to meet a fish.

A trickle of water ran from a crack in the wall. Enna had never tried to block or divert it because it had a pretty sound, different from the running water in the pipes over the cot, more soothing, and not frightening like the floodwaters. She set her head next to the stream when she needed to forget Daffyd. Stupid big brothers. They’re nothing but trouble, she often told herself as the water fought its way over the rough cement to gain itself a path.

On other days, she watched the ballerina, torn from her magazine to dance on the wall opposite the cot. She was frozen in a pirouette, perfectly balanced. The fading peach leotard she wore matched Enna’s only bra, the one Daffyd said she didn’t need. Whenever Enna tried to twirl like the ballerina, she bruised herself badly. Once she had gone into school with her hands bound in white gauze and a bruise on her arm and Mr. Aaron had asked very quietly if she had problems at home. Enna had said no, even though Daffyd called her names all the time. Another time she fell on her knee so hard on the concrete floor of the Underhaven that she hadn’t been able to walk for an hour. Her hands were always black and blue, but she had stopped crying about them months ago. She wanted that poise like nothing else.

When she fell asleep on the first day with the bracelet in her hand, the sound of the stream rushed in her ears.

Enna reached out for hours and finally found the wall. It was filthy, covered with the same slippery black silt that blanketed her. The Underhaven had grown closer. It surrounded her as it never had before, pressing in from all sides. She pushed against the dirty wall to lift herself from the cot, but her hand slid slowly on the mud and Enna did not move.

The stream had stopped flowing. For the first time in her memory, Enna could not hear anything. Perplexed by the change in her home, she let her hands float to her sides and felt herself rising. I’m under water, she realized with a shock. The Underhaven lifted her along. Enna could not find the ground at first, blind as she was, but soon the air guided her feet downward and held her upright with heavy chains. She pulled one leg against the restraint and felt the Underhaven hold her in place. Trust trickled into her as it pushed her gently, spun her in an age-long pirouette, and tossed her across the small basement, gracefully chaining her into its own arms. Silt fell and danced in Enna’s wake as the cement stage received her toes.

Enna rubbed her face with one wrinkled hand. Mud fell away from her eyes and she could finally see. Her once-blonde hair, now a pale green, floated in front of her face like a slow wind was blowing through it. Looking down, Enna saw to her dismay that her pretty school dress wasn’t pink anymore. The slime that had covered her sleeping body had given it an ugly brown color, and her white school shirt was stained green with mold. She stuck her tongue out in disgust. Mother’s gonna be mad, she thought. Stupid dirt. The water tasted bitter as it flowed through her mouth. It, too, was brown and gross, and too heavy.

The bracelet was still in her hand. Oh good, Enna thought. The silver chain was cold and thin, and pressed into her palm. She was glad now she had gone back for it. It reminded her of Mr. Aaron and his shining hair. Mr. Aaron had given it to her, years ago, but that was a secret. She closed her fingers around the bracelet and smiled as her arms were pushed back, crossing her chest once more.

A current of brown, broken intermittently by bursts of clean rain-water, suddenly swept down the stairs into her precious Underhaven. The new flood was frightening in its blackness. Enna snatched the chain close and ran, no, swam toward the door. The Underhaven tried to hold her back. It grabbed her hair and rags as she forced herself up the stairs, but her fear carried her through the open door and out of her beloved Underhaven. It was no longer safe, no longer a good home.

Outside, the rain was still falling, and the river was still suspended six feet above her head. It looked deeper than she had seen it for years, but still clear, and held an unusual rich green-blue hue. Most of its accumulated mud had already fallen to the street with the rain. A car was buried in it across the street. The sun barely shone through the deep sky-river and left spots of dim light on the damp pavement. So this is a flood, Enna thought, and the thought echoed frighteningly through the empty street. …It’s not so bad…

She took one step and felt the sky-river yank her up toward it. With a silent cry, Enna grasped with her free hand for the branch of a maple sapling planted in the sidewalk, waving strangely in the current, and held on for her life. Where was Mother? Where was Daffyd? They didn’t go above…did they? But it wasn’t safe there! Help! she called out.

There was only one man left to hear Enna’s shriek. Mr. Aaron stood three buildings down, staring at her. She only knew him by his flowing hair. It was dirty now, a brown and green crown connected vaguely to a starved beard. The wrinkles in his ancient face and hands were filled with the silt of the Underhaven. He, too, was dressed in rags that floated around his bones, the remains of ill-fitting blue-jeans and a teacher-shirt, most of its buttons gone. He smiled through the falling rain with a distant contentment. Peace surrounded the old teacher carefully, lovingly, as he nodded to Enna; he had to go.

Mr. Aaron then turned away and leapt upward, into the sky-river. Had she a voice to cry out, Enna would have yelled for him to stop. Her friend sprang into the water above them with a splash like death.

Alone now, Enna clung to her tree. Depth surrounded her; she was caught in the space between the fearful Underhaven and the deadly Above. There seemed no place to go, and it was so dark here…

…Enna…

The call came from Above; Enna looked up to meet it as it fell. It filtered through the sky-river with the sunlight and the rain, covering her face with dappled sound as the river drew her upwards. Someone wanted her. And that someone was above.

She shuddered as the sky-river began to fall. This, she had heard, was the most frightening part of a flood. Either it would take her, or she could leap through it like Aaron and hope for rescue.

...Enna, where are you?...

The water tightened again and tried to strangle Enna. It closed around her throat and chest like a too-tight neck on a wool sweater from Grandma that you couldn’t take off on Christmas morning. She could not stay here anymore. The middle-ground had forsaken her, just as the Underhaven had closed around her. Looking up, she could see the sun waving at her through the river. A dark shadow floated on the sky-river, perhaps a boat. There was life above! Enna released the tree branch and drifted to the road below. Her feet sank into the inch of silt the rain had pressed onto the road. She pushed against the filthy concrete with all her strength and landed with a crash in the sky-river.

It was cold at first, as she floated toward Above, but the water gradually grew warmer and brighter. Flashes of color danced around her eyes. One stopped and looked Enna in the eyes. It was a slender, blue streak. A fish? Enna tried to reach out and touch it, but her hands were bound at her sides. All she could do was watch as it blinked at her and then swam away. It became a color once more and disappeared.

She was so hungry for real light, for air; she began to struggle against the sky-river, squirming in the current to gain some hold on her own movement. The sunlight surrounded Enna. It stroked her belly and pushed on her legs, pushing her sideways as it lifted her. Shapes began to clarify themselves before her eyes. The sun was so close; it had stopped waving and started lighting the world Above. Enna could see a head. A helmet. A hand reaching toward her.

Enna breached the surface. She did not breathe.

Week 4 Responses

The developing character in McKittrick’s “A Friendly Dissertation”

I loved reading this piece. It was very interesting to read a story in which a character changes so quickly but convincingly. The main character goes from a seemingly self-confident, condescending young man to a disturbed character. We don’t really learn much about Speedy besides his appearance and the fact that the speaker considers him a crappy writer, but that’s not what we care about. What we care about is how the main character reacts to the crappy stories. They really change him. His reactions to Speedy’s stories tell us so much more about the character than he can tell us by himself.

What makes this story so effective is the narration from the middle of page 2 onward. Quite unfortunately, considering the excellence of the narration before this point, the character’s voice doesn’t really shine through until the line “this was a sort of tradition” (McKittrick 2). The narrative voice completely changes from someone dealing in geometry and metaphor to the voice of a teenage boy. We really need to see less of a drastic change from scene to scene. This will make his change at the end of the story more effective.

The rumor mill in Semonchik’s “The Soap Seller”

The wonderful thing about “The Soap Seller” is the fact that the narrative voice perfectly reflects an old woman gossiping nostalgically. The scene on pages 3-5 in which the grandmother relates the tale of Taavi held me captive like the latest story at the lunch table. Occasional interjections of opinion and hindsight happen just often enough to be believable. I want to meet the grandmother and talk with her about Taavi and her aunt Jonna. The story of Jonna’s pregnancy was really intriguing, especially the ending in which we find out the word for “soap seller” is the same backwards and forwards. Great little wordplay there. The voice could use a little more consistency during this part of the story, but it’s overall pretty good.

However, I was talking with someone earlier and he pointed out that the original narrator of the story never comes back. This led me to wonder, what is her purpose at the beginning of the story? She sets up the grandmother’s tales, but doesn’t reflect on them or talk about them with her grandmother. Will we see a return when the story is edited? It would tie the beginning with the end rather nicely, and this seems like a piece that needs a clean ending.

Week 4 Sketches

This entry will be updated often over the next few days. I just need to put up sketches here so I don't forget to do it on Wednesday too...

i. Sunday Night Laundry

Bleach bleach-alternative no-bleach smells mingled with rainwater and clean linen and God knows what other additives. I hate doing laundry. The only good thing about getting my clothes wet-and-soapy-and-spin-cycled is folding the freshly dry cottons. Then they’re warm and don’t smell like anything but clean. I’ll admit I’m impatient. I sit on the washer to pass the time a bit more pleasantly. The driers don’t vibrate, so they’re just a source of tedium.

ii.

He plays jazz clarinet on the lawn by Post. Only after dark. I can just make out a silhouette by the old-fashioned lamplight. Johnny wears a baseball cap and sunglasses, even at midnight. Sometimes he has a tuxedo jacket over an old band t-shirt. I figure he's trying to impress someone. A first-year girl whose eye he caught at Jazz Night two weeks ago before she started laughing with her friends. She was somethin' else, wasn't she, Johnny? Frizzy red hair and a tight black dress that looked like you could tear it right off. Bright green eyes that danced an improvized swing. Whatever, man.

iii.

The pug is insane. He runs around like a little naked madman, eager to spread his love to all the nations. Starting with your shoe.
My brother saved up and bought Bruce with his own money. Why he bothered to name him, I don't know, because we just call the thing "Pug" anyway. Pug was a runt. A runt and a fully functional hermaphrodite. He could have impregnated himself. The very thought scares me. Imagine giving birth through your penis. Christ, that'd hurt.
Anyway, Pug likes to make his own fun. He sees a cat, so. He chases it. If it bats at him with declawed paws, all the better. Gives him something to bite at with those useless little teeth. Socks are his favorite prey. I've lost too many socks to that little terror.
When he got spayed (because he did get spayed and neutered), he had stitches he wasn't allowed to lick. So he had a cone. And pugs don't really have snouts, so he didn't have anything sticking out of the cone. He just ran around like a little cone-demon, and the cats laughed.

iv.

Physics is trying to kill me. I go into D108 and it assaults me with a revolver. It's always missed, so far, but one of these days I'll go in after pulling an all-nighter with the coefficients of kinetic friction and it'll have a slower target. It likes to think it's something out of "The Matrix," which kind of boggles my mind because I thought they weren't on good terms. It says "dodge this" every time it shoots. When you shoot from across the room, and you give that kind of warning, it's pretty likely that I'll dodge the bullet. I'll fall to the floor at -9.8 m/s^2and Physics will miss by inches. Take that, Physics, I say.

v. I'd really like comments on this one! I think I'll turn it into something bigger.

I'm weird. I know it. I revel in it.
I once figured out the best way to keep sixth graders from sitting next to me on the bus the high school and middle school shared. I wore a black leather motorcycle jacket with brass-colored fastenings. I didn't comb my hair. I sat with my enormous backpack crushing my legs and the headphone cord sticking out of the top. Headphones on.
Conducting "Bittersweet Symphony" with an intense, wild subtlety with one hand.
It was fun to watch them stare and pass me by for a seat a little further back. This way, I didn't have to listen to them practicing swear words or ragging on the President.
It always turned out that I got a sweet little seventh grade girl in pink next to me. It was lovely, having someone who didn't care what you looked like or what you were doing or what you were reading. (This one time, a boy saw me reading "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." He said, "Are you a witch?" I said, "No...", trailing off like that, leaving room for a question. Then the little snot says, "But you're reading about monsters." And I say, "It's a Harry Potter book." And he says that's for fourth graders and laughs with his little friends about the freaky high school girl.) The little girls in pink are always sweet and well-mannered, as long as they're not wearing make-up. At that stage, they're long gone. Glitter is death.

Week 3 Sketches

i.

Notes on Enna

water as restraint/constraint
Enna is balanced in chains
Gracefully chained
wears a pale pink/peach trainer bra even though her brother said she didn’t need one (she only has the one)
her clothes are brown rags when she jumps
the upper river feels like sunshine
she saw a man in a helmet and reached for him, desperate for real light and real air. when she reached the surface, she didn’t breathe
there was an old man standing on the pavement, looking up at the sky-river. he wore brown, too, mud-covered tatters and a long, starved beard

ii.
In those three days, the Underhaven had grown filthy. Silt dripped from the smooth gray concrete walls. If she could have moved, she would have cleaned it off. It had covered the ballerina, but she could not help.

iii.
The river hadn’t returned to where it was supposed to be. It was still suspended six feet over Enna’s head. Beams of sunlight lit the damp streets in a green beauty.
The depth of the sky-river frightened her.

iv.
Aaron sits by the fire, warming his ancient hands. They creak terribly today. The rain is coming.

This time, he doesn’t have the strength to run. Every step breaks him a little more, making his back bend and his gait slow. Aaron’s hair is long and gray; like his beard, it’s thinning terribly. His blue jeans like to sit at his bony hips now, too tired, like him, to hold themselves up.

As the first drops fall, Aaron sighs deeply. It’s too much to ask an old man to evacuate on this short notice. He’s better off here, where he can face the flood and meet fate bravely. Running’s not just the hard way; it’s plain wrong.

v.
The walls were filthy; the current hit them gently and knocked debris out the open Underhaven door. Eventually, at the end of the third day, it caught Enna.

She rose deeply. She did not want to be lifted, not yet, and the cot held her by the rags around her waist. Her arms were chained gracefully to either wall as she rose. Perfect balance blessed her slow, deliberate motions, and she danced. She swirled toward the door, with the ballerina’s poise and the chain in her hand. It was silver, untouched by silt or rust. Daffyd had bought the chain, but that was a secret.

vi.
Dec. 13, 1899

Dearest diary,

I do not feel like being beautiful today. I shall dress myself in rags and dull my hair with ashes.

Rori has died. A battle with pneumonia; six weeks he clung to life and he falls so close to recovery. At the funeral, there was a man in a wonderfully tailored gray suit, gray like a day-lit thunderstorm, and a white top hat. He laid a red rose on the coffin and looked as though he might as well have been dead himself.

I learned later that his name is Georges, and that he liked my mourning garments. A strange comment. He also said that Rori could have been saved, if only he had accepted a gift. Giselle told me that he wished to speak to me, and perhaps to offer me the same gift. I am puzzled.

~Duenne

vii.
Since I started taking the meds, life has been a series of surreal and magical moments. I’ve painted with the sky. Its depths were full of pigment and oil, and I put a brush to the surface to stir them. I have watched music escape from me with intent to please. I have conversed with God about the weather.
It’s odd, really. Because they were supposed to make me sane.

viii.
I flew West, across the waters. It seemed the right direction, at the time. The sunset inspired me. I wanted to follow it, to be in the trail of that red, red sun forever.
One evening, when I was flying West, the sun stopped. It was sudden. I couldn’t stop in time. My wings were torn apart as I tried to fight falling into the sun. Feathers floated behind me, catching fire as I was sucked feet-first into the red lake.
It burned my toes at first, but as soon as my head slid beneath the surface it was simply warm. Peaceful. I did not miss my wings at all, because swimming in the sun was far better than chasing it into the night.

ix.
He bent toward the ground in his gray suit, reaching down for something. I gasped, but no one noticed. They were all too busy in their drunken debauchery.
Slowly, lovingly, he lifted a napkin off the grass and tucked it in his pocket. There was no proud smile on his broad face now. Only shame. I felt a tear gathering in my eye as I watched Roger Taylor walk toward his office, a drop of blood dripping from the center of his hand. The crown of thorns was barely visible in the hazy noon light.

x.
- They never listen, do they? Children, I mean. They come crying to you for help, but they don’t really want advice.
- Tell me more.
- All right. I guess. I was listening to her last night. She got drunk and flirted with this guy who has a girlfriend. Again. And she’s got this other guy who wants to marry her. At least this time the guy didn’t fall for her. The one with the girlfriend. I mean, it’s got to be the tenth time she’s come to me with the same problem. And she knows what’s wrong. But she won’t fix it. And I cut her off. Was that so wrong? I mean, how many times have I pulled her out of the same jam?
- You know, you don’t have to save everyone.
- I guess not. But it’s hard to watch them fall, just the same. And if all they’re going to do is choose to maintain the problem, then why do I even exist?
- For the same reason I do.
- Oh yeah. Do you ever get tired of it?
- Sometimes. But I get paid.
- She makes me cookies whenever I’m home.
- You don’t have to save her again, you know.
- And you don’t have to save me, but you’re still here.
- I guess so.