I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.
Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.
Enjoy.
Choke Point
For Sue Grosz. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.
We have a surprise for you, Shirley’s parents told her one morning, and the surprise turned out to be the ruinizing of her summer. No sneaking into the movies when Lorena’s brother was working the box office. No Almond Joys from the corner store. No stickball. No trips to the zoo on Free Day. No library, no public pool, no Tasha or JJ or even stupid Lolly with the makeup kit she wanted to try out on everyone because she was going to be a cosme-thing when she got out of high school, which was a million years away, and even longer now that Shirley was going to spend her summer with old people and cows. They probably didn’t even have TV out there. They probably didn’t have Coca-Cola. And she could hardly remember Granny Bea.
“I don’t want to,” she said. “Why do I have to go?” But they wouldn’t tell her why.
She stood in outraged silence while her momma packed for her. She went rigid under her mother’s long, strong hug. She sat in stiff rage as her daddy drove her out of the city, and she wouldn’t talk to him even when he offered to stop for Dairy Queen. “You have a mighty will, child,” he said, with a chuckle that made her so mad she thought she would explode. But finally she ran out of anger, the way she always got to the bottom of a milkshake no matter how hard she tried to make it last. So then she sat in silence; she felt so confused and sad that all her words were stuck in her stomach.
But her daddy seemed to understand the difference. He reached out and stroked his big hand along the back of her head. “It’ll be all right, baby girl,” he said. “It won’t be long, and Granny Bea’s real nice, and she loves you.”
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Granny Bea was almost as tall as Shirley’s momma, with deep lines from her nose down to the corners of her mouth. She wore jeans and a boy’s shirt with the sleeves cut off raggedy near the shoulders. She didn’t look like anyone’s grandma that Shirley had ever seen.
“Thank you, Bea,” her father said. “Toya sends her love…and we’ll get through all this.” Then he knelt so his face was level with Shirley’s. “Be good, sweetheart. I love you.” And still she couldn’t say a word; but she hung onto him tight and tried to make her arms do the talking. Don’t go, don’t go. The way he hugged her back, he seemed to understand. But he got in the car and went anyway, and left Shirley standing in the farm’s dirt driveway with too much to say and no one to say it to.
Granny Bea put a hand on Shirley’s shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze. “Come on, honey,” she said. “Let me show you around.”
They put Shirley’s suitcase in a small bedroom with a dresser painted with flowers and a mobile of different colored fish over the bed. The fish swam round and round each other in the breeze from the open window. “That was your momma’s,” Granny Bea said. “She liked the green-stripey one best.” Shirley did too, but she just nodded.
They went out to the barn. There was a horse named Billy-bob, and a cow named Florence, and a pig named Flower. “That one’s kind of a joke,” her grandma said, and wrinkled her face up and waved her hand in front of her nose.
“Stinky,” Shirley said in a small voice.
‘It sure is, honey,” Granny Bea said. “Now you come on with me, I’ve got one more thing to show you.”
She led Shirley into a patch of trees behind the barn. The breeze made the leaves rustle, shhh, shhh. “You hear that? Those trees are trying to say Shirley,” Granny Bea said. Under the trees, a creek ran shallow along a muddy bank. Some parts were shady and cool; in other places, the sun came through the leaves and made the water sparkle. “You know what I think?” Granny Bea said. “I think that sometimes when we’re not around, those fish in your room get loose and come over here to swim.”
Shirley hoped Granny Bea could see she wasn’t impressed. She was nine. She knew those fish were stuck there on the ceiling.
Granny Bea squatted and pointed at a narrow place where the creek was gummed up with dirt and leaves, so the water could hardly get through. “Those fish are gonna be mighty disappointed,” she said.
She picked up two fat sticks and gave one to Shirley. So they dug and poked, and one by one the leaves worked free. She watched them go bobbing down the stream, just like little green fish.
Granny Bea said, “Takes a while to get things unstuck sometimes.”
Shirley nodded. Inside her, words started swimming to the surface.
Thank you.
My pleasure 🙂 Lots of nostalgia in this one, no?