Try to remember them:
The days of smoke, of rain,
of golden leaves and woodfire embers
and orange twilights.
The growing nights,
ignited by the tawny harvest moon,
as full and round with possibilities
as the coming season.
These are the September kind.
The hours and minutes and memories,
the time and the turning,
the living and dying
that belong to us,
when we feel older and younger at once.
We are all the children of the fall.
My grandmother believed in magic, and I loved her for it.
She lived in a small cabin in the woods, accessible only by a long dirt road marked with bright yellow “No Trespassing” signs. She wore her auburn hair long and loose, and her favorite shade of lipstick turned her lips the color of an overripe nectarine. She gathered flowers at sunrise, and filled her modest house with bunches of sage and lavender candles. She sat out on a picnic blanket at night and stared at the moon, and at dusk, she sang for the fairies. You couldn’t convince her they weren’t real.
“Happy nature, happy home,” she’d say.
And I’d nod, bobbing my tangled head up and down to the rhythm of the crickets chirping.
These days, I think we might call her an eccentric, or maybe even crazy. But to me, she was perfect. Some people just aren’t meant to be tamed.
I used to stay with her during those long, hot summer days when my parents were at work and I didn’t feel like being alone in a sweltering house with only the TV to keep me company.
“You’re the only kid I know who doesn’t like cartoons,” my dad told me once.
“I like making up my own stories,” I’d replied.
I guess people would probably call me an eccentric, too, at that age. And probably at this one. I learned a lot from my grandmother.
I remember one particular August day. I know it was August, because I remember the humidity, the gold slant of the sunlight, and the high cornstalks in the neighboring fields. And because school was about to start. My grandmother and I were sitting in her back garden, which she’d let go pretty much wild, on a worn-out plaid blanket. The sun hung low and heavy in the sky, casting shadows through the trees.
“You excited about school?” She asked me this as she wove a crown of purple clover flowers.
“I guess,” I said. I lay on my belly, propped up on my elbows.
“Fourth grade?”
“Yep.”
“I only got to about the sixth,” she said.
I sat up. “Really?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She finished the crown and placed it with a flourish onto my head. “There wasn’t much call when I was your age for girls to finish school,” she said. “My daddy needed me home to take care of us.”
“Couldn’t he do that?” I asked. “Or your mom?”
“There was only my daddy and me,” she answered.
I waited for her to add more, but she stayed quiet. So I took a deep breath and asked, “Where was your mom?”
She took a moment, straightened her legs out in front of her, and said, “I don’t know.”
And then she told me a story.
When I was a little girl, she said, about eleven years old, my mama changed. It was like she forgot who she was, she said, and my daddy didn’t know what to do, and so it fell on me to be daughter and mother both. He told me I had to leave school, and I did. He was not a loving man, she said, but he made sure there was money to put food on the table and shoes on our feet, and I made us dresses out of old sheets and curtains, and our small life was enough. And at night, she said, I sang my mama to sleep.
And one day, she said, I came in from the vegetable garden, and she was just gone. Couldn’t find her anywhere, and neither could anyone else, though we searched through the night and into the next day. And eventually people stopped looking, she said, even my daddy. And my mama never came back, she said. And after a while, people seemed to forget she ever existed at all.
“Wasn’t your dad sad?” I asked.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “And so was I. We stayed sad for a long, long time.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened to her?”
“I do,” she said. “I wish I knew, and I wished it before I fell asleep every night for years. But you can’t live your life just wishing.” And then she added, “Believe me, because I’ve tried.”
“Does my mom know?”
“No,” she said. “No, I never told her, because I didn’t want her to be sad for me.”
“Why’d you tell me, then?”
“Because you’re my brave and smart granddaughter,” she said. “And because you asked.” And then she took my two hands in hers and said, “But don’t you be sad for me.”
I squeezed our hands together and said, “Okay.”
We stayed quiet for a long time after that, and watched the sun set through the tree branches. I picked at the blades of grass around the blanket, pulled them up and arranged them in a neat row. My grandmother hummed to herself. Just when the dark began to settle around us, she said, “I think things happen they way they’re supposed to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s a special kind of magic, the way the world comes together.”
She stood up, and I did the same. As we folded up the blanket, she told me what she meant.
If I’d stayed in school, she said, I wouldn’t have been at the grocery store the day I met your grandpa. And if my mother hadn’t left us, I would have been in school. See, he worked there at the grocery store, she said, and I’d dropped a bag of flour all over the floor, and he helped me clean it up, and that was how we fell in love, just like that, in less than a minute, covered in flour, both of us. Like snow, but in the middle of summer.
And, she said, if I hadn’t met your grandpa, I wouldn’t have your mother, or you. I’m right where I need to be, she said, and I never even knew I was heading there, but here I am, she said, and that feels an awful lot like magic.
“But that’s not magic,” I told her. “Those are all just things that happened to you.”
“You can see it that way,” she said. “Or you can see that all of those little pieces came together just as they were meant to, and that takes the sting away when the things that happen to you are bad.”
“My friends say magic isn’t real.”
“You listen to me right now, Ellie Jay,” she said. “A lot of people are going to tell you a lot of things you love aren’t real. You don’t listen to them. You listen to you.”
And it’s funny, because even now, all these years later, me sounds a lot like her.
I visited her once, years later, when she was in the hospital. I was her last visitor, as it turns out, and we sat together in her room, hand in hand.
“I sure would like to go home,” she said.
I answered by way of a sniffle.
“Why are you crying, little girl?” she asked me.
“Because I’ll miss you,” I said.
“Did you know,” she said, “that when caterpillars go into their cocoons, they turn into goo before they become butterflies?”
“I didn’t know that,” I told her.
“That’s what I’m doing now,” she said. “I’m turning into goo. I don’t much like it, but I know it’s just so I can become something else. Just like magic,” she said. “I wonder what I’ll be.”
“Something amazing,” I said.
“Just like magic,” she said, and squeezed my hand.
And honestly, I think she was right, and I love her for it. Life is a lot like magic, only you have to choose to see it. It brought my grandmother to me, and me to her, and who knows where else it might lead me. But I do know one thing. Wherever that is, it’s right where I’m meant to be.
************
Thank you for reading! This is the eighth of twelve stories I’ll write as part of my 2021 Short Story Challenge. Twelve months, twelve stories, and the theme this year is: Home.
Here are the first seven stories, if you’d like to read them:
And if you want to join in the fun, here’s more information. I hope you do! But just reading is good, too, and I’m glad you’re here!
The next story will be posted at the end of September.
It just needed a little more time to come together. But it’s almost there! We had a busy weekend, and I think my brain just needs a little rest before putting on the finishing touches. I’d rather take some time, get some sleep, and come back with fresh eyes than post something I know I’ll want to edit later. So, thanks for bearing with me!
And in the meantime, enjoy this sweet picture of Gatsby enjoying his favorite sunny spot. 🙂
I’m working a little bit on my August short story today, and I’ll probably work on it a lot more over the weekend. It’s slow going – I have a spark of an idea, but it’s not really a story yet, and I’m waiting to see where it might go.
And that got me thinking.
Back when I was in college, I took a creative writing class. One of our in-class assignments was to write a story around an opening line provided by the professor. We had fifteen minutes to write as much as we could. This was the line:
“When we saw the headlights coming, we ducked.”
I can’t remember what I wrote, but I remember that opening line. And I remember some of my other favorite opening lines, too.
How about:
“Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom noticed it when caught by her charm…”
Or:
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
Also:
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
Or, the old favorite:
“Call me Ishmael.”
Whether I enjoyed these books or not (I resolutely hated Gone with the Wind, and surprisingly loved Moby Dick), these lines have stuck with me, as have many others. This speaks, I think, to the power of a good opening line.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it’s a make or break thing. Many an excellent story has had a lackluster or an unassuming opening sentence. One of my personal favorites begins really rather quietly with just:
“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”
And I’ve never been very fond of this one, but everyone else seems to like it:
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
Anyway, my point is this: A good opening line gives a story somewhere to go, and a really good opening line hooks a reader immediately.
In the spirit of fairness, here are some that I’ve written. Some are fine, some not so much. Some have become stories. Some are still waiting. But I thought it would be fun to share them.
Summer is the time for magic.
The girl stood alone on a beach she had never seen.
“This is not how my life was supposed to turn out.”
To anyone else, the door at the end of the hallway was just that – a door.
It was Lloyd Alexander’s fault, not that she could ever tell him, seeing as she’d never met him, and he was dead.
See, sometimes, when I’m having trouble putting words together, I’ll just sit down and write first lines. No story or characters attached, no ideas, no strings. And I actually find it really helpful. And usually, one of those first lines will lead me somewhere.
So, tell me! Do you have any favorite opening lines? Or least favorites? Either that you’ve read or that you’ve written. Either way, I’d love to hear them!
Long lost,
then found.
And found again.
You and I –
we keep coming back
to each other,
my old forgettable friend.
*I am currently in the middle of a weeks-long, house-wide decluttering spree, having decided I can no longer stand the state of my closets, drawers, cabinets, and other storage spaces. I don’t have regrets. BUT, this was a much better idea before I got started.*
Good morning sunshine
Mist and calm in the meadows
A new day begins
Cicadas singing
A soft breeze through the green leaves
The sounds of summer
S’mores by the fire
The soft glow lights our faces
We’re summer people
Moonlight and warm air
The stars shine white in the dark
A nightly blanket
Half of my heart is here with me,
the other half’s in the hills.
I’m not ashamed of where I’m from.
I carry them in me –
my mountains, my people,
those places and faces
and powerful memories.
See, you can take the girl out,
but she’ll come home
whenever that strong heart wills.
They arrive
and darken the skies.
With a boom
and a crack,
like sprinters on a track,
they test their mettle for
the measure of a moment.
And in the end, they are
like victory – so very short,
nearly fleeting.
But never, ever sweet.
Somewhere by the blue gray sea,
just after the pink sun
peeks over the horizon,
when the water sparkles like diamonds
and the sand turns golden,
that’s our place.
(Let’s go back.)
I see Jesse’s face in my dreams at night, still and pale, and young. She’s always young, even after all these years. I can’t call it a nightmare. She doesn’t scare me. She doesn’t move and she doesn’t talk. Her eyes are closed, heavy lids and dark lashes, her mouth a thin line. It’s not the dead we should be afraid of.
Jesse was my cousin. She was all quiet moments and pretty things. When we were up to our knees in muddy creek water, hands digging in the muck for crawdads and river rocks, she’d be up on the bank, making flower crowns woven so tight and so clean, every flower perfect, you’d think they were plastic. I wore torn denim overalls and dirty sneakers. Jesse wore white linen, soft cotton in pastel shades. She loved checkers and cherry colas, always in a tall glass with big ice cubes. Her blonde hair lay braided and neat, trimmed bangs framing her freckled forehead. She offered to braid my hair once, and to help me comb out the tangles. I told her it wouldn’t be worth the time.
She was three or four years younger than me. If she’d grown up, we’d be in the same spot – mothers and wives and almost old women, both of us. But when I was eleven, nearly a grown-up, she was a baby. I often wonder what kind of teenager she would have been, what kind of mother, what kind of person. I try not to think of her often, but it’s gotten harder now. See, place is a powerful thing, and this is Jesse’s house.
I’ll tell you a story. Over the years, the details have gotten fuzzy, and most of the people who remembered it well are gone now. I feel like someone should tell it and remember it, though, even if it’s done poorly, because I don’t know if there are even any pictures of Jesse left.
On her last day, we’d gone out into the woods. The weather wouldn’t let up. It hadn’t rained for days, but the dewy air stuck to our arms and faces. The heat wouldn’t break, even at night. Nothing to do in that kind of weather but live with it. So the neighbor kids had strung up a rope swing into one of the old oak trees in the clearing near the river, under its shade and out of the brightest sunlight.
There were five of us that day. Me, my brother, Bill and Audrey from down the road, and Jesse. We headed out after lunch time, our faces and hands stained pink and sticky from the watermelon we’d snuck out of the refrigerator. Except for Jesse’s. She’d decided to save her watermelon for later. Our plan was to cool off in the river, and then to spend some time on the swing, maybe see who could get the highest and then jump the farthest.
“Audrey’s scared of heights,” Bill said.
“I am not,” Audrey yelled, and crossed her arms and stomped on ahead.
“She is so,” Bill told me. “She won’t even climb up the ladder in the barn.”
I wasn’t really listening or not listening. Bill and Audrey argued a lot, and it played in my head like the music on a radio station. Constant background noise. Jesse trailed along behind us, picking the dandelions from along the path and blowing their fluff out around her. She giggled, and I smiled. I turned around at one point and threaded a stem behind her ear.
“It’s itchy,” she said, but she smiled too.
The river was low and warm when we got there. It almost stood still.
“There are mosquitoes everywhere,” I said. “Let’s just go back.”
But the group decided we’d come all this way and we should at least get some time in on the rope swing. So we did, and took turns.
“It’s too high,” Jesse told me. “I don’t want to.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Next year.”
We headed back at about 3:00, a little more dirty and tired for the time, but pretty happy and mostly distracted from the still sweltering summer day. Jesse trailed along behind again, clean as a whistle, but with a wrinkle in her brow and downcast eyes.
“What’s wrong,” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nah,” I said. “I can tell it’s something.”
“You’ll laugh at me.”
“I would never!”
Now, this wasn’t strictly true. I’d laughed at Jesse plenty. She was an odd kid. But I could tell something was eating at her, and I wanted her to tell me. I especially wanted her to tell me before she told her mom, in case what was troubling her meant trouble for us.
So I added, “You can tell me, promise.”
And she said, “I want to go back and play on the swing.”
“I thought you were scared,” I said.
“I was, but that was dumb. Now I can’t even try.”
“We’ll go back tomorrow,” I told her. “We’ll go just us.”
She grinned a little then, and I thought it was fine. I held her hand most of the way home, and only let it go when Audrey tripped over a rock in the road and needed help to get up. I don’t know how Jesse slipped away from us. But she did. And when we all walked through the kitchen door, Jesse wasn’t with us. I’ve never felt so terrible for anything in my life as I still feel for letting her disappear like that.
“Jesse still outside?” My aunt sat at the table with my mother, shelling sweet peas.
“She was right behind us,” I said. And I thought it was true.
But by 5:00, Jesse still wasn’t back. And people started to worry, and then, before dinner, they went out to look.
They found her in the swing, all tangled up in the rope. She looked like she’d been there a long time. I’ll spare you the details. I don’t like to think of them.
They brought her into our back room, and laid her out on the little twin bed. If you didn’t know, you’d have thought she was sleeping. She looked peaceful there in the dark. I hope she was.
Or, I suppose, I hope she is.
I don’t think she ever left.
Everyone else did, though, and now it’s just me and my husband in this old house. My brother left for the Army. Bill and Audrey moved away. My parents died, and Jesse’s mother, my aunt Margie, she could never come into the house again.
“She’s still in there,” she’d say. “I know she’s still in there.”
I thought she was just sad. Sad and a little crazy. They say she went a little crazy after Jesse died. Now that I’ve had children, I don’t blame her. I’d go crazy, too. I’ve had a hard enough time knowing they’ve moved away to start families of their own. The house is too quiet without them.
Except when it’s not.
Every once in a while, I’ll hear a giggle. Sometimes a creak on the floor, or a rustle on the bed. Sometimes, I’ll hear a door open and close, slow and quiet. Jesse was always so quiet. And when that happens, I’ll say to my husband: “Jesse’s in the back room.”
Whether he believes me or not, he’s never said.
************
Thank you for reading! This is the seventh of twelve stories I’ll write as part of my 2021 Short Story Challenge. Twelve months, twelve stories, and the theme this year is: Home.
Here are the first five stories, if you’d like to read them:
And if you want to join in the fun, here’s more information. I hope you do! But just reading is good, too, and I’m glad you’re here!
The next story will be posted at the end of August.
A Virginia Writer's Diary 