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.

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.

Chapter 5: Dark dreams

Courtesy of Crystl.

An intermittent unfolding of a short story involving a woman, her luck and a randy cockroach. The earlier installments, in chronological order, are: The fall; The blame; Her very own hell; and What happened next.

*

Their meetings in bed were violent encounters: foot shoved against thigh, elbow jabbed into rib, and he would fall out of bed.

Help me! she'd hiss.

Whaa? he'd say.

He fumbled in the darkness, trying to pull it off his body, but the night stuck to the sheets and in his ears like tufts of thundercloud, dark, soft, ominous.

I need help, you fucking idiot.

Her anger crackled like the static electricity in the blankets he was pushing back. His hands glided over lump and limb until he found a small wet face and silky hair. He lifted the bundle up and she cried with pain and alarm: Not that one, he's nursing! The other one! He'd start again with his hands, feeling, feeling. A tiny mouth latched hungrily onto his finger and he picked it up, triggering a new bout of crying.

Downstairs they'd walk from living room to kitchen to hallway and back to living room, a track so well tread he paced it with his eyes shut, arms jiggling the bundle of blankets. It was neither eyes nor ears, but hands that told him which son he held. There was a stubbornness, a stiffness, that came from one boy, a refusal to be cradled and rocked in his father's arms, so the two walked instead.

When the father needed to pee, he'd walk himself and his wailing son into the bathroom, where, with eyes shut, he'd jiggle his son with one arm, and with the other, loosen his pajamas and piss. There was that one night when he opened his eyes because he was splashing all over himself and found that he wasn't in the bathroom but was standing over a kitchen chair, urine running off the seat and spilling on his feet. But tonight was uneventful. Holding his son he tried to slip into bed quietly, but he was big and heavy and the bed bounced, the second baby cried, his wife let out a sleepy hiss and shoved a new crying son into his arms. Once again he was walking through the dark, eyes closed, arms telling him this was a smaller, lighter bundle whose cries would quiet to whimpers and finally ragged breaths. The father slept.

In the light, she woke, felt for her babies and found one.

Just one.

She kicked him, again. Hard.

Where is my baby?

Whaa?

Where's my baby!

He sat up in bed, the memories of the night unrecorded by his eyes that now opened, blinked, irises dilating, contracting.

I don't know.

The words floated above the bed with the dust dancing in the sunlight. He could hear her calls from the kitchen, then the living room, heard them replaced with coos and then the creak and whisper of her feet on the stairs. She climbed back into the bed that separated them, so big and crowded with young bodies.

You put him in the bassinet. He wasn't even crying.

In the darkness beneath the blankets, her cold feet sought his warm ones, touching them softly and gently, asking to be warmed.

The gritty details

Image courtesy of Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

In a daily state of exhaustion I've developed new respect for the plumber, the carpenter and the painter. It's been nonstop, physical work since the decision was made to move my family from Sparks, Nevada to Seattle. I work until I fall into bed, paint in my hair, grime under my fingernails, with teeth too tired to brush.

On Sunday, for example, I wiped out twenty-five kitchen cupboards and drawers, scrubbed behind the washer and dryer, cleaned blinds, washed windows, packed the linens, cleaned my closet and my husbands, and, at 9:30 at night waxed the kitchen floor. Today, I was up at 6 and facing another full day of physical work.

I'm not just digging holes, here. There's a whole lot of thinking in physical work. How does one rehang a closet door? Or make a ceiling fan stop wobbling? Why is the hot water slowed to a trickle? And what the hell is for dinner tonight?

My admiration for the laborer grows with each passing hour this house doesn't sell.

Image courtesy of digital_monkey.

We've been living off a fast-food diet of pizza, tacos, Chinese and burgers, though I've managed to make a pot of spaghetti or stew on the rare day I think about food before the kids wander past with stomachs clutched, moaning that they're starving to death.

The strangest meal I've served this week: pancakes and beans.

Everyone ate it, without a peep of protest.

Max, not happy.

I expected two weeks of frantic house improvements to show on the kids (mainly in the form of callouses developed from daily weeding), but I hadn't anticipated how the moving preparations would give them a new arsenal of words and weapons against each other.

First overheard was an argument between Max and Chaja over the vacuum cleaner.

MAX
Chaja had the vacuum last and she's not putting it away.

CHAJA
You're not done with it.

MAX
Don't tell me how to clean my room!

CHAJA
(running to her room and slamming the door)
Well, don't blame me if a Realtor can't sell our house because your carpet's dirty.

MAX
(running after her while clutching a roll of toilet paper above his head in a threatening manner)
You're going down! You're going down!

And secondly, was 2-year-old Ivan's newly learned phrase.

"Give me a break!" he yelled from the top of the stairs when I asked him to help in the kitchen.

A break. That's what we all need right now. That's what we need from this stinking housing market.

Today, the For Sale sign is hammered in to the lawn. Wish us luck.

Jewels in a jar

Today The Slow-Cooked Sentence ends its four-week series highlighting moments of my family's summer vacation on the East Coast.

"Firefly" courtesy of art farmer.

It was a hot, sticky night in Delaware, and my 8-year-old son Max and I sat on the grass staring into the shadows for a sparkle in the bushes, a flicker of chartreuse in the grass. My eyes ached from staring at nothing. Then right in front of our faces a ghostly green glow burned. Faded. We saw the smokey shadow of tiny wings and body. Erased.

We were watching fireflies. For the first time.

Max tiptoed through the grass, hands cupped, poised.

“I caught one!” he cried and ran to me, opened his hands a crack, then wider.

“Ooh,” and his face fell.

Bug guts smeared his palms, glowed, glistened, a miniature shooting star smashed in mid-flight. He wiped his hands in the lawn. Now the blades of grass glowed, too.

He ran to the house for a jar. First he tried catching the fireflies directly with the jar. Metal lid clinked against glass. No luck. He returned to using his hands. Gingerly.

He caught one and transferred it to the jar. He caught another. Together in the jar, the fireflies glowed like green embers. Their flashes pushed him further into the night, into the shadows, searching for more. Far away, the sky was heavy with rain clouds and silent streaks of lightening.

Max caught a few more before the mosquitoes drove us inside. When I went to kiss him goodnight, I found him under his blanket reading by firefly light.

Check out Firefly, a nonprofit site dedicated to raising awareness about the decline of firefly populations, for amazing and magical pictures and information about this jewel of a bug.

Failure or Alas, I cannot get published

"The blossoming of your words" by psyberartist.

Rejection excerpts:

Thanks so much, but we weren’t able to include this in the November issue. -- Skirt!

Thank you for sending "Creation" to us. Unfortunately, we won't be able to use this piece for Literary Mama. Please know that we receive a tremendous number of submissions, and can only take a small percentage of the fine stories that are submitted. But we are thankful for your readership, thankful that you thought of us and value us enough to submit your work. -- Literary Mama

I was really touched by your piece, and I think a lot of mothers would be helped by it. I don't think it would be retained by the Mothering editorial staff but I do think you should send it to Brain, Child. It reminds me of a lot of pieces they have published, although not on the same topic. -- Mothering

I enjoyed reading your essay and admired your smooth prose. However, I must report that we’ve decided to give it a pass. Please note that this doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of your work (we receive about 750 submissions for every seven we publish). I wish you the best of luck placing this piece elsewhere. -- Brain, Child

"La tristeza del silencio: Tears" by lord cнernoвιll.

I received five rejection letters last month, three in the final week. I read the last letter at 10 p.m., then I switched off the lights and walked head-on into a wall. Bam! Nose and ego both smarting, I crawled into bed, pulled the covers over my head and cried.

This is (generally) what happens when I receive a rejection letter:

I shut down. Hope closes, curls, crumples inside of me until it's nothing more than a small, hard fist that punches me in the stomach. Pow! Oomph!

I cry. Lip trembles, tears spill while my small son looks on. The toddling mime tries to mimic his mama, but uncertain whether she is laughing or crying, emotions flit across his face like clouds in a windy sky.

I remember. The clenched fist inside me finds scars left by editors who were too harsh, who cut too deep. Pow! Oomph! More bruises, this time self-inflicted.

I search. I open cupboards, find chocolate and eat the equivalent of two candy bars. I drink two cups of scalding tea.

I play a song. "Failure" off Laura Marling's album Alas I Cannot Swim. I pledge to play it every time my writing is rejected.

I read. The rejected piece of writing. Other pieces. Tinker. Email something to a new editor.

I stand. In sunshine, melting like butter.

The fist opens. Hope unfurls.

"Her Hands" by Slaff.

"A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper."

-- Ursula K. Le Guin: A Few Words to a Young Writer

I spent this weekend thinking about why and what and where I write, and decided that I need to shake things up a bit. So The Slow-Cooked Sentence won't be publishing three times a week during November. I'm going to be busy writing a novel.

"What?!" you ask.

Yep. I've signed up and am participating in National Novel Writing Month, a "fun, seat-of-your-pants approach (that values) enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft." The goal: To write 50,000 words in 30 days, which works out to 1,667 words a day.

The Slow-Cooked Sentence will publish (hopefully) on Mondays and Wednesdays in November. There will be a guest column or two and the occasional update on how the novel writing's going. So keep dropping in. Meanwhile, the gun's been fired, the race begun. I'm off and writing!

Still life

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954). Woman Before an Aquarium, 1921–1923.

I think I'm pretty good at painting a vignette with words. I can set a mood, sketch a character, but try and make that portrait come to life and my brain bogs down, its wheels sink into sand and spin, spin, spin in place. I'm stuck, and I'm stuck good. All that journalistic training to act as the impartial observer has me creating still lifes instead of stories.

Right now I'm thinking about the passionate woman I created a few months ago, and her terrible streak of bad luck. What's she going to do about this curse? I ask myself in the shower as I shampoo my hair. I ask as I pour my first steaming mug of coffee and sweeten it with cream. What's she going to do? Do. Do. Do. Do. The word thuds in my head as I walk home from the kids' school. It slaps against my skull as my sneakers hit the sidewalk, beats out a rhythm, a tribal calling to circle the fire and listen to a tale.

But what is my story?