Well. That set me into a quandary. Where to find the original now, since the years hence have had me cleaning out and clearing at least four times, and the manuscript, done that many life changes ago, would pretty much be a stranger to me.
Fiction is not something I've done much of. In all the words I have put on paper, only a few have been devoted to it, mostly in the guise of a family story, part of it (necessarily) imagined. In fact, this story, too, began as one, told me by my husband Jake about his grandmother, a woman who had died fairly young and whom he hadn't much chance to know. As family stories often do, this one had a mystery about it, mostly because it had been handed down in parts by different people at different times.
But it wasn't so much the story but the occasion which prompted my deciding to write from it...if, in fact, you could call it deciding. One fall morning, Doris Schneider walked into the journal workshop at the library with a flier from New Bern arts festival literary contest. New Bern is an old town about half an hour from Washington, where were were living then, like New Bern an old town on a river which used to be important. There are many similarities of history, landscape, and social design. But it also has its differences, particularly among the people who live there.
That, however, is beside the point. Doris' point was that we should enter some of our work in the contest. Doris was a novelist-in-training, one who has since shown her talent in print several times. So it was not a surprise to hear her so interested in the contest. But the rest of us were in the workshop for very different reasons, writing for ourselves primarily, reading to a closed and respectful group, so her flier didn't receive much enthusiasm.
I felt a little bad about that response, so I told Doris I would think about it. There were separate contests for poetry, nonfiction, and fiction entries, and it would have been easy for me to turn in a poem or two. But a few days before the deadline, I sat down with an image in my head for which poetry would not suffice...a young girl, running from home, hoping for a life outside the one slowly suffocating her. It was the girl from Jake's grandmother's story. To this day, I can't figure out why, at that moment, she came to me.
The limit of five-pages went quickly, because that image erupted into words from the first. I turned it in, as Doris did her story, and another journal writer her poem. In a few weeks, all three of us received a call indicating that we had won something. New Bern might be the judges, but Washington was holding its own. We were pleased with our success, and I, especially, was grateful for the remarks of one of the judges who sought me out. "I really liked your work," he said, almost sotto voce, "I could see that girl, such an interesting character."
Not too long after that, there was a suggestion, I forget how, that perhaps I should keep her story going. So, having nothing pressing to keep me literarily busy at the moment, I did. All good fiction, said someone who knew what she was talking about, begins with a question, even if at first one thinks he/she has the answer. The question now was obvious: where did she go? And then, What did she do? Until, What became of her?
Jake, excited to be my guide, drove me all over his home town, filling in the facts of the town he knew so well: who was who, who did what, where to find more. He tagged along with me to two library archives where facts and photographs rose up like painted scenery behind her story. I moved my girl, Anna Lee, up about thirty years ahead of her model's real time, to take advantage of the possibilities history presented, and also because, frankly, I couldn't envision the 1890's the way I could the 1930's. I imagined houses, streets, buildings, roads and the faces of people whose lives could easily interject with hers.
Best of all, at the invitation of Jake's sweet cousins, we went to stay awhile in the old family cabin out in the county where, each day, I set up my laptop on the porch overlooking Stony Creek, and a new chapter a day bloomed.
Beyond some family and a few friends who know writing, I didn't send it out anywhere. I think I wrote one publisher about it, but having no response, let it dangle. And then Jake died and the need for it died, too. It went on the shelf, where a few other manuscripts lay collecting age. To be honest, I am a person who, when she is finished with something...writing, painting, whatever...is done with it. I don't care how it gets out into the world, or whether it ever does.
So, that's the story of my story. Now the trick would be finding that manuscript in one of a few stored closets, digging for some missing parts, and then, one Sunday afternoon, all afternoon, sitting down to read it again. That turned out an adventure in itself. Had I really written this, I kept asking myself? The story was familiar, but the words...how did I ever think of those phrases? Where did that fellow out of New Orleans by way of Brooklyn come from? But obviously they were my inventions, some other mind ago. Now, like a stranger reading a new book, I was looking with other eyes at that girl, and at all the others who crossed her path along the plot. There were, in fact, numerous plots, for each character brought his or her own story into the fray, weaving in and out of the happenings and places to change their direction or import. That was the fun of writing it.
I also found a few startling abscesses, for clearly not quite all the story had left my head for the black and white of the page. There were misalliances and leaps of incredulity I hadn't seen from so close. (I think Wayne Caldwell, for one, tried to tell me something like that back then, bless him; now I see it.) Still, I have to say, the story was in the main pretty good.
Eventually, I found that my sister was, indeed, missing a chapter, and promised to send it. I also mentioned that it might be interesting to go back and see what I could do about revision, after all this time, even if it were just an exercise to help fill these virus-enclosed days, in the hours when art, reading, walking, and Alexander escape me. Maybe the characters everyone seems to like deserve not to stumble over their lives so.
I haven't got to it yet, but if I do, I'll let you know how it goes.
