Sometimes I sit here and wonder why I am not more productive. Aside from the fact that there are three kids in the house, doctor’s appointments to make, food to cook, a dishwasher to empty, blah blah. Why is it, when I sit down in the quiet of the night, I still don’t get a lot done?
Two reasons.
1) On my computer right now, I have Scrivener open with three projects running. My WIP, notes for a potential WIP, and the tutorial. Tweetdeck is open and blinking updates in the corner of my screen. Firefox is open with tabs for my gmail, a short story contest, an article about how it’s OK to write a crappy first draft, the TLA conference site (I have to figure out how to get my butt to TLA this year), Facebook, an Instructables page on creating a desalinator out of a dirty rag and a 2 liter bottle (oldest boychild has a science project coming up), Amazon, and WordPress.
Obviously, I should shut all that mess down, turn off the wifi and work. I know this, you know this, we all know this. This one is an easy fix… HOWEVER…
[dissonant woodwinds play in the distance]
2) I seem to write best in creative bursts. It’s been over a year that I’ve been working on a new novel, but during that time I wrote an entirely different novel in just a few months. The inspiration hit, I sat in a spot on the couch, and I wrote non-stop until I was done. I wrote two entirely different drafts of that novel in just a few months. BAM BAM BAM. Done. Sent to agent. Sold. Waiting for publication. Of course it’s a non-traditional novel – more of a graphic novel, really, depending on how my editor sees it, but still. Idea, story, writing, editing, everything – the process was incredibly fast. So it’s frustrating that something like that can happen in the midst of something else going so slowly.I want everything to come as quickly!
I think it must all come down to inspiration, excitement, that fluttery feeling you have with a new crush. I am such a happier person when I’m writing, and yet, if I force myself to do it when I’m not ready, it doesn’t make me that happy. I have a desire – a need really – for a way to sustain excitement in my projects. My life doesn’t often allow me to work at a frantic pace when inspiration hits, so sometimes the glow fades quickly as it gets lost in the doctor’s appointments and the diapers and the juice refills.
The other night I was talking about how I seem to have developed adult-onset ADD. There is always so much going on I am afraid to sit and concentrate on one thing because I’m either forgetting or ignoring or missing some other thing.
Having time to write is one thing, but finding and maintaining the thrill and the patience is another.
Do I ask for too much? Maybe I should embrace writing prompts and rely more on my brain than my muse. I don’t know.
I think there must be a more productive way to go at this, though. I just haven’t figured it out yet.
OK, you guys. I love writing these short stories but I’m finally realizing I need to be spending this time finishing my WIP. I think this has been the most productive sixteen days of procrastination I’ve ever had, by far. And I think my child-rearing-induced ADD has settled down a bit, considering I managed to keep a single plan going for longer than two full weeks. (Ha! Take THAT, frenzied brain!)
So I hope you don’t think I’m a quitter if I, um, quit. I promise I will still be writing thousands of words a day, and coming up with new characters and ideas, I will just be doing it in a book I’m half-way finished writing instead of in weird stories on my blog.
I’ll also be writing everyday in blog posts. And I’ll be writing down research for a book I want to write after the WIP is finished. I’ll be writing notes to myself (“you’re good enough, you’re smart enough and doggone it, people like you” “don’t forget to TiVo the Amazing Race”), and I’ll be writing grocery lists and random run-on sentences, and I’ll be writing down how many ounces of milk and yogurt my youngest son has eaten in a day.
I will be writing lots of things. Maybe even short stories. But I don’t think I can do the short stories everyday. I really need the next two weeks to focus on my WIP.
Please, when I post again in a few days about how I’m starting back with the short stories because I can’t get anywhere with my WIP, give me a friendly virtual kick in the butt. I’m just warning you now… steel-toed Doc Martins may be in order.
Very, very short story, told in haiku, about an unfortunate incident in a mirror (ShoStoBloMo #16)
A bump on her head
Newly hatched vestigial twin!
No wait. Just a zit.
*note: I pronounce “vestigial” with three syllables, not four. Just like Agent Scully. So there.
His incubator was a little Dagobah set up for him… warmed, darkened and humidified to keep him comfortable. She stared at him everyday, at first only allowed to briefly touch his head and his feet. No stroking, no caressing, no nuzzling allowed. She whispered to him to use the Force, to suck all the energy out of the Universe and harness it to grow and breathe and eat and poop and keep that heart beating (even though sometimes it was really hard to do all of those things at the same time).
She wondered what he was thinking during those days in the incubator, so tiny, covered in wires and tubes. She wondered if he had a chance to think anything at all. Maybe he just got flashes of voices and light and noises. Maybe he spent the whole time dreaming of the womb he was no longer swimming in.
She found herself rubbing her belly a lot, mystified that there was nothing in there kicking her anymore. How could that be? How could her body betray her like that? And not only did it betray her, it betrayed him, too. It tried to devastate them, to ruin them.
Somehow, though, even as her body turned on her, her mind fought to stay on her side. It was an epic battle. Fighting to stay pregnant, fighting off infection, fighting to grow tiny tiny lungs as fast as possible, fighting to stave off contractions, fighting to be brave, compartmentalizing fear so that she could be strong enough and stubborn enough to not let happen what seemed inevitable.
And through the whole battle – through the phalanx of drugs and hormones and steroids and fear – there was a tiny little man responding to his mama’s commands. He listened as she wept for him and he listened as she begged him and bossed him around. He tolerated it when she played the Rocky theme song through her mp3 player, onto her belly at full volume. He grew and developed – even with hardly any fluid to swim in. He saluted the doctors with his tiny middle finger when they said he would never make it… especially not to Thanksgiving.
Then, all of a sudden, he was on the outside instead of the inside. Two pounds, 12 inches, and a little bit see-through. He had no nipples, but tons of hair. Everywhere. Like a teeny tiny see-through nipple-less monkey baby.
He was born.
The doctors and nurses whisked him off to Dagobah, trying to recreate the world he needed for survival. Synthetic chemicals replaced natural ones. Assisted breathing replaced oxygenated fluid. Their advanced technology was outpaced by the complexity of the human body, but would it do in a pinch? They were in a pinch.
She wondered if the alarms bothered him, when they went off as his heart rate slowed or his breathing became shallow. She wondered if his sleep was peaceful or tormented. She wondered when they would let her hold him. She was his mother. She could fix everything. She needed a chance.
She had not considered that when her epic battle was over and seemingly won, his epic battle would be just beginning. It didn’t seem fair to fight for so long and so hard, only to transfer the battle to someone so new and tiny. She wanted to fight for him, to swallow him up Greek-myth-style and settle him back inside her body. She wished she could have fought longer and harder so that his turn leading the charge would have been easier. But he didn’t seem to mind. He fought like he’d been taught. He took no prisoners, defied all odds.
She was finally allowed to hold him. Stuffing him into her shirt, all two and a half pounds of him – with his additional two and half pounds of wires and tubes – she nestled him against her bare flesh and tried to recreate the home he’d been evicted from. The nurses called it “kangarooing” which was appropriate because of how she was able to cocoon him, and how she fervently desired to kick anyone who came near her.
He slept on her, skin-to-skin, mouth open, his miniature diaper slipping off his microscopic bottom. They rocked for hours, listening to the beeps of the machines, keeping Dagobah close by in case it was all too much. She held the syringe that fed him through a tube in his nose. It was a very poor substitute for suckling, but at least she got to feed him (she was secretly disgruntled and jealous of the tube, though).
Dagobah treated him well. He began to grow. His nipples appeared. His eyes opened. He traded the tube in his nose for a bottle – and sometimes a breast – in his mouth. Weeks went by. Doctors came and went. Nurses silenced alarms, checked vitals, fell in love.
And she wondered, does he know? Does he see the army he’s created? She thought probably he did know. He could see them. He reacted to their touch, to their voices. But even as he knew them, he knew her better. He knew, out of all the people who took care of him in a day, which one was his mother. He smelled her, he turned towards her voice, he gripped her finger, he nuzzled for milk.
She played the Rocky theme song for him, over and over as they kangarooed. Over and over as the months passed. Over and over and over.
He would always be her Thanksgiving baby. Even if he was born in August.
Having a name like Shenandoah Jones can mean you are destined to be one of a variety of things: country singer, starting tailback for a nationally ranked SEC team, car dealership owner, Serious Actor. What our friend Shen has found, though, is that it means he gets his ass kicked about seventeen times a day.
See, having a name like Shenandoah Jones also kind of relies on you being a big dude, with mournful eyes and big muscles and a smile that lights up the world. When you are, in fact, short, scrawny, four-eyed, brace-faced, and scowly, having the name that Shen is cursed with is kind of like finding a way to unironically mock yourself in front of everyone you know, everyday, forever.
We zoom in on Shen, riding his bike home from school, skipping choir practice because of a stomach ache. He is plagued with stomach aches, by the way, because he is in love with Macy Anderson. She’s the prettiest girl in school, the meanest girl in school, and the epitome of every stereotype you’ve ever seen on TV.
From the look in Shen’s eye, it’s pretty obvious he’s dreaming of Macy Anderson, or he’s dreaming of something, because he doesn’t see the station wagon coming up on the stop sign with no hint of stopping.
It only takes a split second and Shen is airborne, his bike having t-boned the front of the wagon. He flies over the hood of the car and lands with a very unpleasant sliding squish onto the pavement a good ten yards away. For a moment everything is silent except for the radio blasting from the windows of the car. Journey, if you want to know. But you probably didn’t. And now that I’ve said it, it’s made things worse, hasn’t it? Sorry.
Shen lays there on the road, bleeding, but alive, and suddenly Shenedoah Jones is the name of the kid on the glass jars in sandwich shops, asking for donations to pay medical bills.
The siren’s wail is getting louder and people have come running form their houses to see what the commotion is all about. Kids who previously had kicked Shen’s ass earlier in the day are helping to tie tourniquets on his appendages, even as he squeals and cries for them to stop.
Then the ambulance is there, and the paramedics pop out of the doors like they’ve been shot out by James Bond ejector seats. They split up – one run-walks to the car and the other run-walks to Shen. After a few minutes of triage, he is tied to a board and loaded onto the ambulance. The police have arrived and ticketed the station wagon driver, Macy Anderson, who seems to be fine physically, though emotionally may be having a hard time of it as she contemplates not what she’s done to Shen, but how long she’ll be grounded and how she probably won’t have the car for Friday’s party at Jack’s house.
The ambulance wails its way down the street and Shenedoah Jones is now the name of a boy who survived being run over by the most popular girl in school. They are inextricably linked now, whether they want to be or not, and the Fates open up a new door for the future.
I can see this door opening from my vantage point up here and I wonder if Shen knows what he’s in for. Benefits, weeping – the whole Ferris Bueller work up. All for a kid everyone enjoyed picking at and beating on and generally terrorizing every minute of every day of every year.
Shenedoah Jones is now the name of the kid who gets the news story written about him. It’s the name of a guy who is on TV all the way in Dallas because of the community support surrounding him and his family. It’s the name of a guy, who, on the way to the hospital, had a stroke and fell unconscious and hasn’t woken up even though it’s three weeks later now.
I sit up here and I can still see the red smear on the road. I am not sure if it’s from his face or what. It’s still there, though, and it proves that sometimes your destiny isn’t planned for you. Sometimes gaps open into the ether just like the surprise doors in Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. You’re torn, herky-jerky from the path you were on, and you take the fork in the road whether you want to or not.
Shenandoah Jones had always agonized over not living up to his name. But maybe he should have agonized more about not living.
That’s not a very nice thing to say about a bullied kid in a coma, is it? It doesn’t matter. I’m a tenured angel so no one can say shit. What does matter is that I’m getting ready to wake up this poor SOB, and he is not going to know what hit him. So to speak.
You tell me, is it worse to be bullied everyday, or is it worse to be Ferris Bueller-ized by the kids that still hate you but have now latched onto you for attention and fame?
Shenedoah Jones is the name of a guy who is going to wake from a coma and then wish he was still asleep.
It’s the name of a guy who will sue the ever living shit out of Macy Anderson’s family and tear the town in two.
It’s the name of the guy who is sitting in the car in front of you on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
Buckle up.
The phone rings.
Charlie winces.
Hello? Yes, this is she.
Charlie tries to tip-toe out of the room.
I’m sorry to hear that.
A hand catches Charlie’s shirtsleeve.
Actually, she’s right here with me.
Charlie struggles.
No, she didn’t say anything about that.
Without thinking, Charlie peels the fingers off her shirtsleeve.
I don’t mind speaking with him at all.
A slap at Charlie’s hand, and then the fingers tighten on her shirt.
Hello, Mr. Blard. Yes, I can hear you. I can hear Mrs. Smith as well.
Charlie unbuttons her shirt, planning to leave it behind and run.
Yes, sir. Mrs. Smith was just filling me in on….
Charlie is pushed into a chair, a finger pointing at her menacingly.
Believe me, this will not go unpuni—-
Charlie tries to speak, but one look – that look – keeps her quiet.
I agree, she’s old enough to—-
What was that? Maybe, possibly, a note of irritation? Charlie’s hopes rise.
Well, sir, with all due respect—-
Definitely a note of irritation now. Charlie dares to meet her mother’s eyes.
Certainly provocation is no excuse, however—-
Eyes batting like a chagrined puppy, Charlie takes advantage of this window.
If you would please stop interrup—-
Charlie’s head cocks to the side as she tries to hear the other end of the conversation.
I am not sure that is at all a proper punishment. No I’m not—-
Charlie stands and tentatively places her hands on her hips.
Yes, Mrs. Smith. I see Mr. Blard’s point, but remember—-
Charlie screws up her face to show her feelings about the situation.
Sir! Ma’am! My daughter is 10 years old. She is not—-
Charlie dances in a small circle as her mother’s voice is raised.
No I do NOT think that is appropriate. No I do NOT think you should—-
Back in her seat again, Charlie feels her heart race.
Listen to me. A 10 year old girl should not be subjected to—-
Maybe it’s not a good idea for your mom to scream at the principal.
That is unacceptable! I am happy to take this to the school board to see what they—-
Maybe it’s not a good idea for your mom to scream at your teacher.
To be frank, Mrs. Smith, I think Mr. Bland is coming from left field here.
Charlie’s hand covers her eyes.
Yes, sir, well I’m sorry you feel that way.
Charlie sees her mother’s jaw clench.
I think an apology from both parties is in order.
Charlie gasps. Mr. Blard apologize to her?
I don’t think there is an age requirement when it comes to respect, and—-
A smile, a nod. Charlie feels the fingers release her shirt.
At least I’m not a book burner, you Nazi cow.
Charlie’s eyes widen.
It’s from a movie. Yes. Field of Dreams. Yes that’s a REAL movie.
Charlie and her mother roll their eyes together.
There are worse movies to quote from, believe me.
A giggle.
I agree she should respect her teacher. But he should respect her, too.
A thumbs up.
I will decide what books are appropriate for my daughter, thank you.
Charlie grabs her backpack.
Well then we agree to disagree.
A pen. Paper. Charlie scratches out a note.
Well. I will have to get back to you.
The phone beeps off. Charlie holds up the paper:
“I’m sorry you made me call you a book burning Nazi cow.”
Men can’t be cows, Charlie.
A pause. Charlie looks at her mother.
Bt they can be cowed.
Charlie doesn’t know what that means.
Go get ready for dinner.
I can tell that these are the last few minutes I have to live.
My eyes are tearing up – not because I know I’m going to die, but because of the wind blowing directly into them. I can’t turn my head to the side, because I need to see straight ahead. But my eyes – my eyes are not tolerating my velocity very well at all.
I know I’m moving incredibly fast. The shicka-shicka-shicka of my windbreaker is the same noise it made when I stood on the porch as Hurricane Kady approached. I can feel the jacket pulling against my chest as the wind tries to rip it from my body.
My hands are braced, knuckles white. My knees are pulled into my body. I think of how I got here. How I could have been so stupid. The world has become a blur as my speed increases. I can no longer even make out the outlines of trees or houses, it all blends together in streaks of color.
I think of Gorby, my dog, and how sad he’ll be when I’m not there to feed him or throw his ball. Probably, though, as soon as Jimmy takes over those duties, Gorby will be fine. Maybe he won’t miss me at all. Stupid dog.
Probably my mom will miss me. Though she’ll be happy to not have to clean up after me anymore. I imagine her wailing at my funeral, but then the wails turn to sniffles and the sniffles turn to hiccups and the hiccups turn to a small smile as she suddenly realizes there will be one less set of drawers in the house she will have to stuff with clean underwear.
I suddenly remember the handbrake and reach down to grab it. I’m saved! But wait… What?! I hazard a glance as my hand frantically grapples for the brake that isn’t there. There is a shredded nubbin where the handbrake used to be.
Sabotage!
I think I should have probably planned out this little escapade better before executing it. Big Hill Street (yes, that’s its actual name, and yes it’s kind of obvious) can be easily tackled with a ten speed, but a Big Wheel? I thought it would be fun and noisy and fast-ish. No big deal. Who knew they could go this fast? I’m bouncing over the road, tipping from side-to-side, racing faster every second, and I can’t help but marvel at the capacity this plastic thing has for speed. I could seriously be breaking a land speed record here. I’m listening for the sonic booms that are sure to be throbbing overhead at any minute.
I fly past Mrs. Daly’s house and think, “This is it.” I have three choices. Neither of which seem very appealing.
A) I can brace myself as best as possible and hope that Mr. Albee’s garage door at the end of the cul-de-sac cushions my blow enough to only break a few of my teeth but protect my brain.
B) I can hope that the small patch of grass next to Jason’s mailbox will slow me down enough so that I land in the koi pond, instead of shooting airborne over the thing.
C) I can ignore the fact that my feet are bare, drop my heels, Flintstone-style, on the gravelly road, and hope that my skin and bones can hold out long enough to slow my supersonic speed into mere super speed.
The options are not great, but it’s decision time. I decide to sacrifice my feet, so I lower them and hold my breath, preparing for the pain.
But then… Gorby runs right out in front of me and I swerve as best I can. He’s barking and I’m screaming and I make the perfect donut that Jimmy never managed last weekend. The Big Wheel tips onto only two wheels and I’m sure I’m going to repave the road with my face when I feel something soft. I’ve tipped over, at a thousand miles an hour, and landed on Gorby. He gives a yelp and we roll as one big boy/fur ball down the little bit of hill that’s left.
The grass by Jason’s mailbox doesn’t slow us down at all, and together we fly into the koi pond, skipping like rocks across a very tiny lake. We have flipped and now I’m on my butt, with Gorby covering my face. We bounce out of the pond and start rolling again. We take out a good chunk of the hedge between the Albee house and the Daly house, and come to a rest WHAM against Mr. Albee’s garage door.
The dust settles. I spit out a piece of hedge in my mouth.
I can hear Jimmy and Lisa shouting and whooping as they run down the hill. Gorby is laying across my chest, panting. He licks my face and gives me that stupid grin of his. I assess the damage. Legs seem to be intact, arms intact, teeth intact, brain intact. Gorby intact. One of my fingers is bent in a weird direction and my toes have seen better days. Plus, I’m soaking wet and covered in koi-poo-algae-funk, but I have survived.
I guess Gorby didn’t trust Jimmy to remember his dinner every night.
“Good boy,” I say. He barks and slobbers.
Jimmy and Lisa come running over. Jimmy’s holding the Big Wheel and laughing. He sets it down in the driveway and grabs me by my arms. Gorby barks in protest as Jimmy lifts me to my feet and dusts me off.
“Awesome, bro. You were flying.”
Lisa doesn’t say anything, she just looks pissed that I stole her Big Wheel. But then she smiles and reaches behind her back. Her hand reappears, holding the busted handbrake. She drops it at my feet and innocently walks home.
Little sisters. Holy crap.
“Why are you so mean to Mr. Potato Head?” This is the question posed to me by my babysitter, a friendly lady who sometimes antagonizes me because, I imagine, she thinks I don’t understand what she’s saying.
I blink at her at couple of times and furrow my brow. She laughs and says to herself, “It’s like he really knows what I’m saying!”
Of course I know what she’s saying. Maybe I’m only 9 months old, but I’m not an idiot.
“Come on, you,” she says, lifting me by my armpits. “Let’s have some lunch.” She buckles me into the high chair. I duck and try to poke at her eyes when I see the bib she’s trying to snap around my neck. It’s covered in offensive whimsy and I will have none of it. I mean, really, just because I’m a boy I need a bib with trucks and cars on it? What about a bib with a platypus? Something interesting for God’s sake. My finger makes contact with her sclera. She hollers a satisfying “DAMMIT” and drops the bib.
Baby Jake 1, Babysitter 0.
“Ja-ake…” Her tone has switched from shouty to mellifluous as she smiles and waggles her fingers in the hair. I am suspicious, but I can’t help looking. Her silver rings dazzle me as the light arcs off the plating. “Gotcha, you little turd,” she says, and snaps the bib around my neck while I’m distracted.
Sonuva… Babysitter 1, Baby Jake 1.
She comes at me with a spoonful of organic pomegranate turkey souffle puree or some equally awful thing and I can already feel the stomachache that will ensue. I clamp my mouth shut. She tries the distraction thing again, but I’m not falling for it this time.
“Come on, dude,” she says in a faux-friendly voice. “Just take one bite. If you take one bite, I know you’ll love it!” She pretends to take a bite. She pretends to love it. I am not impressed. We play this little game for longer than either of us would like. I have pomegranate turkey souffle puree in my hair, eyelashes, ear holes and nostrils. She has it on her shirt, arm, knuckles and a splatter dangles from her bangs. I am hoping she will just sigh and give in to my irascible charm, as I grin at her and bat the spoon away for the thousandth time. Instead, she surprises me by grabbing my cheeks with one hand and squeezing open my mouth. I struggle, but she is a behemoth. Her giant paw grasps the spoon, and using my bottom gums as a fulcrum, she manages to dump a scoop of the food into my mouth. I splutter and gag, my tongue undulating in a manner I had not known was possible. But some of the slop slides down my throat, and the babysitter gives me a triumphant grin.
Babysitter 2, Baby Jake 1.
I am not pleased with the outcome of the lunch situation, but I also know that the babysitter will not be pleased with the lunch outcome either, as I work on the transubstantiation of pomegranate turkey souffle puree into a miraculously shaped poo. This thought makes me laugh a little and the babysitter ruffles my wispy, crusty hair. Our tempestuous relationship notwithstanding, I do enjoy it when she shows me affection, so I reward her with a few cooing burbles. She burbles back at me and we converse nonsensically for a few minutes before I tire of the scintillating conversation and shit myself.
Baby Jake 2, Babysitter 2.
After the diaper change, we wrestle through a bath, where I do my best to imitate a slippery squid, and the babysitter does her best to not steal my mom’s Vicodin. It is an exhausting ordeal and by the end of it I can barely keep my eyes open. Off we go to my room where I am placed gently into my crib. The babysitter kisses my cheek, pulls down the shade and exits my room with the flourish of an ingenue. She loves naptime. I know she does. Everyday, before I drift off, I hear her on the phone, soliloquy after soliloquy, regaling her friends with stories of my antics and magnificent poos. Today, though, she is quiet. This intrigues me. I heave myself up to standing, grabbing the crib rail to balance my weeble wobble body. Only I have managed to stand facing the direction opposite of the doorway, and I find myself staring into the chasm between my crib and the wall. A disgusting array of detritus is scattered in the gully below: petrified cereal, abandoned pacifiers, a dried spray of misdirected reflux, and a smattering of brown objects that surely are raisin pieces and not a pile of offerings from munificent rats. Surely. I slide back down to my bottom and scoot to the other side of the crib. I pull myself up and strain to hear what’s going on, but at some point, I fall asleep.
Babysitter 3, Baby Jake 2.
When I wake, I am frustrated that I wasn’t able to solve the Mystery of the Momentarily Silent Babysitter. I frittered away important sleuthing time by sleeping. Blast. I give a cry of frustration and a few minutes later the babysitter appears. She is all smiles, retrieving me from my crib, and cooing at me like a sycophantic moron. She swings me upside down and tickles my face with her ponytail. I can see her split ends. Surely a haircut is in order. I wish with every ounce of my being that my first words could be, “Hey babysitter, get your split ends out of my nose!” Alas, they are not. I offer her a splutter of indignation which she misreads as a sneeze of joy, and then she heaves me under her arm like a football. We march down the hall to the playroom and I admit that I squeal a little at the fun of it.
Babysitter 4, Baby Jake 2.
The babysitter plops me on the floor of the playroom and I sit there, a solipsistic sack of potatoes. She offers me a sippy cup of juice and a snack. I oblige, leaving her sclera intact this time. After taking a long pull of the sweet stuff and surveying my surroundings I get that familiar feeling and smile. I am perfecting my transubstantiating again. I get two points for this one.
Baby Jake 4, Babysitter 4.
I hear the garage door open. Mama is home. The afternoon ends in a tie, as it so often does, but I know that the babysitter and I still have tomorrow to look forward to. I await our future confrontations not with trepidation, but with relief. The day is always brighter when you have someone to poke in the eye.
I asked the Twitter and Facebook crowds to suggest some words for my short story today, with the promise that I would include everything suggested.
You guys.
This is either going to be the best or worst story EVER. I can’t wait to get started.
Here are the words, in no particular order:
Transubstantiation
Tempestuous
Pomegranate
Platypus
Scintillating
Ingenue
Mellifluous
Squid
Haircut
Undulate
Vicodin
Munificent
Rats
Soliloquy
Sycophant
Fulcrum
Solipsistic
Irascible
Chasm
Detritus
Fritter
Whimsy
stomachache
Time to start writing. We’ll talk later…
The slap slap of baby knees echoes through the kitchen while the lady in the cut off jeans mixes cornbread batter by hand. It’s a hot hot steamy hot kind of day and the oven just adds to the misery, heating up the small kitchen by exponential degrees. There are children outside, brave enough to suffer the heat, and they are playing a game that requires a lot of shouting and a busted up red rubber ball. Sometimes the ball flies up and bounces off the kitchen window screen and the lady in the cutoff jeans yells menacing things to the children, but there is no wind to carry her ferocity so the kids just ignore her.
The baby has traveled to a comfortable location under the kitchen table and she is gnawing on something she picked up off the floor. Her knees and palms are black from the state of the floor, her dingy diaper clings to her with sweat and luck, the pins barely holding the threadbare fabric together. The lady in the cutoff jeans opens the oven to retrieve the hot iron skillet, and the blast of heat makes the baby look up, blinking and grimacing. The batter goes into the skillet and a sizzle rises into the air like a devil’s cackle. The lady in the cut off jeans carefully slides the skillet back into the oven and tosses the oven mitts onto the table. She makes note of the time and then pulls a chair out and sits, holding a glass of iced tea to her face. The baby crawls to her legs and pulls up, resting her little chin on the fringe of the cut offs. The lady grabs her and lifts the little one to her breast. The heat they both feel increases tenfold as the baby’s sticky hot skin is pressed against bare belly flesh. As the baby nurses, the lady in the cut off jeans finishes her iced tea and closes her eyes for a moment. She imagines a breeze as she tucks her sweaty hair behind her ear and sighs.
She opens her eyes with a start. How long have they been closed? The baby is asleep, sweating against her breast, and the smell of cornbread is heavy in the air. A glance at the clock tells her it’s past time to retrieve the bread. She carefully peels the baby from her chest and lays her on a blanket on the floor. The baby’s hair is stuck to her face in messy ringlets, framing her pink cheeks and wicking the sweat from her temples.
The cornbread has survived the onslaught of time and heat and now rests atop the counter. The lady in the cut off jeans has expertly flipped the skillet and transferred the bread to a plate. It is a perfect golden circle, the crust crispy from bacon grease. It will make an excellent supper companion to the greens slow cooing on the stove.
A shadow falls across the room causing the lady to peer out the window. An afternoon storm is expanding into the heavens, dark and roiling and welcome as a million dollars. The children outside scream at the thunder and scatter, as if they are mimicking bowling pins. The rain begins to fall as the sky darkens even more. The lady in the cutoff jeans closes the kitchen window and scoops up the baby, who has woken from the sounds of the crashing thunder. She takes the little one out onto the covered porch, holding her close, feeling the cold splatter of the raindrops blowing at them from the wind.
The baby laughs and so does the lady. The rain comes down harder and harder, blowing in under the roof of the porch, soaking the two of them as they laugh. The lady in the cutoff jeans feels a chill as the breeze picks up, and the baby buries her head in the lady’s neck. Cold, wet, smiling, they enter the house. The baby’s chin quivers from the sudden chill and the lady covers her with the blanket from the floor. They snuggle together at the table, warming up, marveling at the sound of the rain on the tin roof.
Then, standing with the baby on her hip, the lady goes to the counter and cuts a piece of warm cornbread.
It is perfect.
