Chapter four: What happened next

Photo of Mike Cockrill's art by C-Monster

When she woke the next morning, she looked around for the charred bed springs and singed carpet, but the only sign of the night's combustion of words was the soot beneath her eyes. Warm buttery sunlight melted on the bedroom floor. She breathed, and her relief caused the mobile of paper butterflies to dance and twirl above her head. The days that followed were flights on gossamer wings. She danced and sang and smiled as the sun shone, but at night she plunged into the flames like a moth on a suicide mission, only to rise again in the morning to dance with dark rings under her eyes.

"Something is terribly wrong," she told a friend over tea.

But the friend was blowing on the tea to cool it and didn't hear her.

"I've been cursed," she told her husband over the telephone.

But the babies were crying, and when her husband asked her to repeat herself, she threw the phone instead, shattering it against the door and leaving a hole that resembled a small, hungry mouth. Picking up the tiny voice from among the broken pieces, she fed it to the door, which swallowed it and began reciting long passages from "Moby Dick" until her daughter came along and silenced it by taping its mouth shut with Band-Aids.

Certain book read in a certain place

Field Tested Books, 2008 edition

I've been thinking a lot about books and places, and the bond that can be forged between the two. The idea that there's a connection is the impetus of Field Tested Books by Coudal Partners. From the introduction by Jim Coudal:

"We had this notion that somehow through experimentation we could identify how our perception of a book is affected by the place where we read it. Or maybe the other way around. Maybe it’s possible to determine how a book colors the way we feel about the place where we experience it.

"We know, without a doubt, that book and place do affect each other, and that they are bound as a single experience in our memories.

"Complicating the quest for a tidy conclusion is the fact that sometimes the place where we read a book is not just a geographical spot but also a psychological one. In fact, the most compelling Field Tests in this collection are the ones in which a book, a physical place, and a significant emotional moment collide."

There are many books I absolutely love, that shaped me as a child and teen, but only one that I can remember exactly where I was when I read it. Here it is:

The 2006 edition, "The Illustrated Jane Eyre."

I scan the school bus for empty seats and spot one in the middle -- a good seat. Location is important: Too close to the front and I'm sitting among the scumbags and dirt-heads -- the kids who smell like B.O., pick their noses or are in special-ed class. A seat too close to the back of the bus and I'm an easy target for the older, bitchy girls who drink cough syrup on the way to school in an effort to get high, and the guys who laugh and make rude gestures at their crotch when I yawn.

But today I find one in the middle. I slide in and sit near the window, dumping my backpack next to me as a sign that I don't want to share the space. I rummage around inside the backpack, searching with my hands for the felty soft pages of "Jane Eyre." The cover had been lost long ago and the rest of the book was held together by tape. It first was my mom's -- a required text from her days in Catholic high school -- and in the back it held the notes she had written to herself: "Helen Burns -- friend (died, Jane 10 yrs.), Lowood -- school, Miss Temple -- nice woman, Mr. Rochester -- owner of Thornfield."

I huddle down in the bus seat, creating a wall of vinyl green around me, making me, for all practical purposes, invisible, just like Jane. I wiggle and breathe a happy sigh knowing exactly how the heroine felt as she huddled in her own window seat, reading in secret and safety. I love Jane Eyre. As a marginalized teen struggling to define myself, I grok this "poor, obscure, plain, and little" orphan who challenges the bullies and the brutes, shapes her own fate and commands her own destiny. Jane speaks directly to me, she acts for me.

The emotional connection I have with this worn and musty smelling paperback edition doesn't make sense. It just is. The book is my guide through adolescence, because Jane's efforts to define herself mirror my own. It's comforting to know that when life is particularly lonely and difficult, Jane is there too, insisting on finding her own set of values and enduring punishing exiles because of it.

For an hour I sit hidden between the bus seats, miles away inside the book. I don't check the time or glance up to see where I am on the route. After years of riding back and forth, I can feel when my stop is coming up: a lurch at the railroad tracks, a right turn onto a washboard road, and I pull myself away from Jane and the English moor. Stumbling off the bus, I stand on the side of an empty dirt road, dazed and squinting under a hot desert sun. Alone.

My thanks to Write Now is Good for sharing information about Field Tested Books, and issuing the challenge to write about book and place. More essays on the subject can be found there.

Chapter three: Her very own hell

Photo courtesy of Smileykt

Because her luck died in the bedroom, it was here she felt the first lick of fire and sizzled skin. The bad luck curled through the room like smoke, choking and strangling her until she woke, smothered by the blankets and babies and man. (There were too many penises!) She clawed her way out of her claustrophobia and went in search of her daughter. The tiny girl was sleeping nearby on the floor, and, sighing in relief at the familiar shape and smell of the girl's small body, she lay down and slept again.

But under the dark cover of sleep, her breasts were discovered by her daughter, who nuzzled and greedily drank the milk, as sunny and sweet as ripe strawberries. Waking to the gulps and tugs, she slapped the girl away and ended up waking her cherubs too. First one and then the other sent up sharp cries of protest when they discovered their milk missing. The husband woke and cursed. The children wailed. She yelled. And the balls of words smoldered and exploded in flame.

Throw some spice in that sentence

Photo courtesy of another sergio

I can set my clock by the curses and obscenities heard along Fourth Street every school day. The trickle begins at 2:05 p.m. and quickly turns into a churning river of spicy language and sluggish teens that dries up by 2:40 p.m.

I love it.

There is something wonderful in spying on these young teens migrating home in packs. They hold hands, block foot traffic for awkward kisses, and try on and throw off language like they do clothes. It reminds me of a story about my littlest sister, who, when she was 12 or 13, was caught standing with a friend at the busiest corner of our small town yelling "Fuck you!" to cars passing by. She was just trying the words on for size.

"If you're using the word in a way to heighten the impact of a sentence or season the stew -- they are after all great seasonings ... they have a proper place in language," said comedian George Carlin in a 2004 interview on Fresh Air. "And in my case, I just like them because they are real and they do have impact and they do make a difference in the sentence."

Another who knew how to pepper her sentences was my grandma. This rotund little woman loved fine meals, gay men, and Cadillacs with the air-conditioning so cold it froze her grand-babies. But nothing brought her more joy than knowing she shocked people because she was a blue-haired woman cussing a blue streak.

So today I honor the many foul-mouthed people in my life, and comedian George Carlin, who loved the English language and its seven dirty words. He died Sunday at 71.

A haiku for my husband

Photo courtesy of Shira Golding

The short-order doc
at the In-N-Out snips and
then shouts, "Order up!"

Chapter two: The blame

Photo courtesy of ichangedmyname.

Wherever she went she was told how blessed she was, how lucky to have a beautiful little girl and twins (twins!). Women envied her, wished for sets of their own, their covetous fingers lingering too long on her cherubs' rosy cheeks and full tummies. But by then she knew her luck had turned, and she'd smile politely and mutter "idiot" under her breath.

When had life turned wretched? Why, after so many years, was she cursing and spitting like a wet cat? She played back the time leading up to the birth of her babies and gave herself a migraine trying to remember the hazy days that followed in the hospital. And though she knew luck had flown away with her cherubs' arrival, she dared not point a sharp, blaming finger at her babies.

In truth, blame (if any could be found) lay between her toes. It happened one night in the sooty darkness of sleep. A cockroach had spied her luck curled up in its soft nest of dust under her bed, fallen in love with it, and, weaving tales of an exotic nightlife, convinced the luck to run away. At that same instant that her luck was wrapping its thighs around the roach's hard brown shell, one of her cherubs woke her with a round, empty belly wail, and as she stumbled out of bed and went groping for the crib she squashed the cockroach and her luck.

Chapter one: The fall

Photo courtesy of fturmog

Her luck had turned sour and curdled even as the abundant supply of sweet, nourishing milk sprayed from her breasts and was gulped down by the two little cherubs in her arms. Really, it didn't surprise her, because for years her wishes bore fruit. She liked to believe her luck involved a bit of magic from the gnarled pomegranate tree that she and her husband had made love under one desert night. They fucked each other so hard the fruit fell from the tree and onto their heads, but they kept going, their sweaty bodies rolling over and squashing pomegranates, staining them red. And when they were done and lay staring up through the tree's branches at the ocean of stars, she licked the juice from her arms and nibbled on the jeweled seeds.

She liked to believe that for years afterward she carried her husband's seeds and the pomegranate seeds inside of her, and that this was why two times her belly grew round and full, skin taut and crisscrossed with pale red stretch marks. That it was the pomegranate tree that gave her three children, and two of them twins (twins!), when doctor after doctor said there would be none. But if, she figured, there was no magic, if luck were as predictable as the economy's rise and fall, then she knew her time to plummet had come. And so she fell, tumbling and crashing into the depths of her own hell, the fires burning so hot inside of her that it surprised her that her milk spray wasn't a hiss of steam that scalded her babies.

Prompted by [Fiction] Friday's challenge to sketch out a character with wildly bad luck. Make it a character you like, as we will use her again.

When punch, puking and a poem occur in 5 minutes

Photo courtesy of Jared Zimmerman

A foot slams, the car stops and punch spills.
Grabbing napkins, mopping
spilled drink, spilled minutes.
Back on the road, turning, stopping, eating
greasy tacos. Vomit spills.
More napkins, more minutes.
Back on the road, windows opening, air carrying,
my laughter away.

Candy land

Comic courtesy of exepotes

When life gets loopy, I load up on chocolate pretzels, and right now my life is one roller coaster ride.

I discovered the pretzels while shopping at Trader Joe's last month, and have been back twice for more. The pretzels come in either milk or dark chocolate, but I've grabbed bittersweet each time, and have yet to make it home without busting open the bag.

I readily admit that I'm an emotional eater -- my stress level climbs and I reach for chocolate -- a habit I've picked up from my mother. I can't blame her. Weekly she'd shove five kids and a week's worth of dirty clothes into the blue Oldsmobile and make the long trip to Reno. After hours at the laundromat, we'd carry out a mountain of clean, folded clothes, pile back into the car and drive home. A stop to get gas permitted her a minute out of the car without kids, and an excuse to reward herself with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, which she'd sneakily eat once back on the road.

Of course, this couldn't stay a secret for long. Even if the fighting amongst ourselves deadened our ears to the crinkling of a candy bar getting unwrapped, my younger sister's nose could sniff out chocolate a mile away. Then we'd all pounce on my mother.

"What are you eating?"

"Nuthing," she'd mumble back, a cheek filled with candy bar.

"Yes, you are. You're eating something!"

Then we'd complain loudly about how unfair it was that she got a treat and we didn't. She thwarted future coups by buying us a single bag of M&M's to share. For you see, we couldn't keep an eye on her and make sure the candies were equally divided, nor could we argue with M&M's in our mouths. Thus she was left unobserved and in peace to secretly savor her peanut butter cups.

My own stealthy trips to my chocolate stash have increased since my mother-in-law's arrival from Amsterdam nearly two weeks ago. Add to this stress my husband patching a hole above the stove at dinnertime, my kids running inside every 5 minutes to tattle on one another, and my baby cutting two teeth. Can you blame me for slipping into the kitchen to savor these knotted little life savers and ponder how their chaotic combination of salty, sweet and bitter is the same stuff found in tears?

For Christ sake have a cuppa tea

Courtesy of the 19th century children's periodical "St. Nicholas Magazine."

There was a house, an angry house, where everyone was fighting.

And in that house there was a kettle, a screaming kettle, in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And near the kettle were two bickering children. Two bickering children near a screaming kettle in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And tangled up in the children was a howling dog. A howling dog tangled in two bickering children near a screaming kettle in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And standing over the dog was a seething mama. A seething mama over a howling dog tangled in two bickering children in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And from the garage was a cursing papa. A cursing papa listening to a seething mama standing over a howling dog tangled in two bickering children near a screaming kettle in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And on the papa's back was a happy baby.

A happy baby who kissed the papa, who danced with the mama, who pet the dog, who licked the children, who turned off the kettle.

There is a house, an angry house, where no one now is fighting.

Inspired by "The Napping House" by Don and Audrey Woods, and "Have a Cuppa Tea" by The Kinks.

Red water pump

Photo courtesy of Darwin70, Creative Commons

Pulling water from the depths of the Earth is no small achievement, especially for a 10-year-old, but this was my chore during the first summer in Silver Springs when we lived without running water.

My dad planned to erect a windmill to pump water to the trailer, but in the beginning we had nothing but a red hand pump standing amid rice grass and tumbleweed. If I stretched my arms and stood on tip-toe, I could reach the handle, pull it down, and after 50 strokes, be rewarded with icy cold water that splashed my feet and left a metallic taste on my tongue.

It was a pump with personality: Only my strongest, most exuberant strokes yielded a gush of water, and if I stopped for more than a few minutes to rest my arms, the pump demanded to be primed again. My little brother was 5 and could only hang from the red handle. So, while I pumped, he filled the empty milk jugs with water, then together we'd haul the gallons back to the trailer.

There was satisfaction in the growing row of jugs in the hallway, warmer water at the front, each jug cooler than the last, as we added to the line stretching toward the back bedroom. But in a trailer made of tin, everything warmed up quickly. Within a few hours, the last jug was as warm as the first, and like a fortune teller with her ball, I'd run my hands over the milky plastic containers to determine which jug promised the coolest drink.

I loathed pumping water and filling jugs when I was sent outside in the middle of the day, the air heavy and silent with heat. Only the grasshoppers clicked and whirled as I darted out of the house and over the baked sand in bare feet. I pumped, and from inside the well, came the clanking of pipes and the gurgle of water being carried to the surface. I'd reach out a cupped hand, while still pumping with the other, to capture that first drink.

I preferred to bring in water at the end of the day, when the air was easier to breathe, the sand cool between my toes and the sun melting into a sky of ice-cream sherbet. My dad would be home from work by then, and he'd command the pump while my brother and I filled jugs. His strong arms pulled the handle quickly, efficiently, and the pump obeyed, pouring out the water in one long, steady stream. When finished, he'd loop fingers through the handles of four or five jugs so I was burden free, and together we'd walk the narrow, sandy path created between well and home.

When life throws you a curve ball

Photo courtesy of University of Wisconsin, Madison

I'm three weeks into a blogging habit and my tender new routine is in danger. What threat is hurtling toward me and my computer? Summer. Specifically, summer with kids.

I'm trying to figure how to replace the regularly scheduled program with a new routine, one that will still permit me the space and time to think and write. Now, my thinking happens as I walk them to school in the morning: The straight shot from house to school, right foot in front of left, baby lulled to sleep by the motion, so that when I return, my mind is quiet and ready to pour thoughts on to page. But on Thursday it all ends, and I'm lobbed a curve ball of warm, round summer days that melt into one another.

I don't want to strike out.

In response to Sunday Scribbling's prompt: Curve.