FitG Update: The Giver

I'd seen THE GIVER by Lois Lowry on so many favorite-book lists over the years, and what with it being a Newbery Medal winner, I couldn't resist adding it to my Fill-in-the-Gaps list (which I have neglected for much too long, by the way).

I can see why THE GIVER received such accolades. What a fascinating concept and world! And it was a page-turner, too. I was so curious to find out what would happen to Jonas (who was precious!).

I think what makes this book so sticky (in a good way, in that it STICKS in your head) is that the world was so haunting and brilliantly (and patiently) unraveled. As a writer, I received a good lesson in what it looks like to show-don't-tell.

Have you read THE GIVER?

Next up in my Fill-in-the-Gaps reading challenge:

I'm only on the second chapter, but the voice in this book is freakin' amazing. I'm enjoying it so much! 

What are you reading?

Summer Schedule

My parents are visiting this week from Hong Kong AND I received very helpful feedback from my critique partner, Melodie, on my work-in-progress YA novel, so I haven't had time to write short stories lately. I still have a few people's inspirational words left, so my goal is to write about one story a week until I catch up.

Just wanted to explain the delay.

If you're in the northern hemisphere, enjoy your summer. We've had some hot, beautiful weather over here!

Two of my kiddos enjoying time at the park with my mom.

I've also been spending lots of time with my seven year old at the gym -- she's third from the left.

Happy summer! How have you been keeping busy?

Short Story 9: Perfume

Sheri could still smell Grandmere’s eau de cologne from when they’d embraced. It lingered all day, bringing back the jagged memory of the old woman’s crannied face bending close to whisper, “Murder.”

Grandmere had lived half her life isolato, handing her husband a pink slip the day she turned forty that read: I’m leaving you and the children, finding my own way.

She’d lived for years now on her own desert island, which was really only in Palm Springs, but might as well have been off the coast of Iran for as much as anyone came close to her.

If Sheri had believed in karma, she would have relished this moment: Grandmere’s brain addled from her solitude, from the brabble of her vindictive imaginings.

But Sheri couldn’t bring herself to feel anything but cold.

She viewed the day in disjointed memories, as if detached from it.

There was the casket with Grandpa Jack inside.

(They’d buried him with his hunting rifle and the dead rabbit he’d shot the morning of the heart attack.)

There was also Grandmere’s dyed-pink hair in a floaty poof.

There was the embrace, the halitosis and perfume intermingling.

And there was the dread that locked around her throat, the dread she had carried from childhood but had never named.

Oh yes, it was all there.

And there, of course, was the word Grandmere had murmured.

“Murder.”

Her pink hair bobbing like she knew. She knew.

Sheri stepped into the shower, scalding hot against paper-thin skin, to wash all the smells away.

Thank you to Sheri (a.k.a. S.A. Larsen) for her inspirational words: karma, brabble and isolato. If you're wondering why I'm writing shorts, click here.

Short Story 8: Mr. Darcy

Mr. Darcy was everything Myrna wished him to be. Gray, sleek. A warm body. Even his claws against her skin was a reminder that he was alive, that she was not alone, that she had no control over what he did. He was his own. And he was choosing to be with her.

This is why she did not move for two hours.

This is also why her toosh fell asleep.

And if you know anything about Myrna’s toosh, you will know that it does not take well to sleeping.

But Mr. Darcy. Oh, Mr. Darcy. He was a luxury.

When he finally ambled away,  she tried to lurch for the phone, but found it out of her grasp.

She wiggled her toes. “All right, old woman. Get up.”

But the lecture did no good. The couch was too deep.

Mr. Darcy licked his silken paws in the doorway.

“Fickle creature,” Myrna scolded. But she didn’t mean it.

She made another lunge at the phone. This time she managed to knock it to the floor.

“Well, you could help, you know.”

He regarded her placidly.

“A dog would do it,” she said. “A dog would nose the phone closer so I could get it. Or pick it up in its mouth and hand it to me. Come on, Mr. Darcy.”

Though she didn’t know what she would do with the phone if she had it. Call the fire department?

Myrna found that if she laid sideways and pushed off, she could lift her toosh from its concave spot.

She landed with a bump on her hands and knees, the phone directly under her nose.

“Glad you’re the only one to see that. Karen would have made a brouhaha.”

It took some effort to raise herself, some grunting, but she did it.

Mr. Darcy mewed.

“Selfish creature,” Myrna said. “Hungry, I suppose.”

And she followed his long, flicking tail into the kitchen.

Thank you to Myrna and sorry for accidentally skipping your words! They were the very inspirational words: fickle, ambled and brouhaha. If you're wondering why I'm writing shorts, click here.

Short Story 7: Miracle

The miracle started with the car dying and Mother slapping the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. “Well, there you go!”

The engine shuddering to a stop woke me. “Where are we?” 

Mother sighed, but eventually pulled out her well-creased map of Arizona. “Here.” She stabbed her finger at the paper.

“Can we walk the rest of the way?” I peered out the window at the desolate landscape. We might as well be on the moon.

“No. We haven’t even crossed the border into Nevada yet, Vijaya.”

Mother and I were already wearing our saris and our delicate sandals. We were going directly to my aunt Varsha’s house to have our hands and feet decorated with henna. All the first cousins would be there. We left directly after Mother got off work, so we wouldn’t be late.

“So, we’re not going to make it.”

“Don’t say that,” Mother said. “We’ll make it eventually. They’ll have to understand.”

But the mehndi—the beautiful, intricate henna! It was my favorite part. I fought against the knot in my throat, against all the terrible things I wanted to say about this stupid, old car.

The two-lane highway snaked along a barren ridge. A dusty bank rose steeply to our right, and dropped away in a cliff to our left. Mother pulled out her cell phone and flicked a long nail across the screen.

A tapping  sound at the window made us both jerk.

A man stood, bent at the waist. He wore a thin, button-down shirt and dark dress pants. He looked Indian, but his skin was black as an African.

Mother reached across the seat to roll down the window.

“Car trouble?” The man’s accent was thick.

“Where did you come from?” Mother asked.

“Back there.” He pointed vaguely behind us.

“I didn’t see you.”

“Sorry to frighten you. Do you want me to take a look?”

“Would it be too much trouble?” Mother’s accent shifted as she spoke, like it always did when she was with other Indians. Back home, surrounded by only her non-Indian friends, her accent all but disappeared.

“No trouble at all.” He smiled—a rich, warm smile, I thought.

“I don’t have any money to pay you,” Mother said.

He swatted her concern away and rounded the front of the car, whistling through his teeth.

 Ten minutes later he was back at the window. “Just a small problem of the carburetor. You may drive now.”

“It will work?” Mom turned the key in the ignition and the engine responded with a purr.

“Good as new,” the man said, displaying dazzling white teeth.

Mother nodded. “Thank you.” She hesitated. “Will you have any trouble getting where you’re going? I could….”

“No trouble at all.” His head bobbed once. “Goodbye.”

He started back up the freeway. I watched him over my shoulder. He moved purposefully, stepping over kicked-up gravel in his sandaled feet.

Mother watched him leave, her eyebrows contracted.

“Ready?” She didn’t wait for a reply before setting the car in gear. She checked the lane before pulling onto the highway, but there were no other cars. Not a single car had passed since we stopped.

We drove in silence, until I had the courage to ask, "Mother, who was that man?"

Mother opened her mouth to answer, when the scream of sirens rushing up behind us interrupted her.

She pulled onto the shoulder again, her lips moving in prayer. But the cars whooshed past. There were three, followed by an ambulance.

It was only when they careened to a stop, forming a barricade of flashing lights in our path, that my body went rigid with fear.

Mother fumbled with the door latch. She stepped out of the car as the policeman approached. “What happened?” she asked.

I tumbled out of the backseat and wrapped my arms around Mother’s waist. Her warm skin smelled of sandalwood. The beaded silk of her sari scraped my cheek.

“Sink hole,” the policeman said. He was a white man in a uniform, wearing sunglasses like someone on television. “Went down about ten minutes ago. We’re estimating it ate up about five hundred yards of road.”

Behind the lined up cars, I could make out the edge of the crevasse, a deep, jagged fissure.

“You folks hold tight,” the policeman continued. “We’ll have to close the highway, set up a detour.”

Mother caressed the back of my hand with her thumb. Then she turned slowly to look behind.

Perhaps we both expected the Indian gentleman to appear. But no one was there. Only the empty highway, extending for miles in a dusty haze, and the gaping hole ahead. 

Thank you to Vijaya for her three inspirational words: crevasse, caress and carburetor. If you’re wondering why I’m writing shorts, click here.  

Short Story 6: Hand Bells

Faith made me do it.

She’s dreaming for me again, even though I keep saying, “Stop dreaming for me. I want my own dreams.”

But she says, “You wouldn’t do anything except if I made you, Wally.”

So, I’m stuck on that point. Because, yes, I like to sit in one place and think thoughts.

Whereas Faith made me do hand bells.

We go and sit in the third row in the white church at 1472 West Barley Street, she right next to me with her shoulder pressing my shoulder, warm, and she whispers so soft, “Now, listen close, Wally, because they’ll give you directions.”

But I’m feeling glum. Sort of stooped over in my seat because this ain’t my dream. It’s Faith’s dream and she always gets to do all the dreaming.

“Watch him, how he holds the bell. He’s trying to teach us, Wally.”

So, I peek at him. He’s a man like a beetle, with black skin and a shiny head and glasses that make his eyes look big. And his shirt is green, like the wings of a beetle that crawled up my leg one time. The only thing he ain’t got like a beetle is many legs, not to mention he's bigger, and a man. But he has two arms, and in his hands he holds hand bells, the ones Faith wants me to look at.

Faith is whispering this word over and over. “Tintinnabulation. Tintinnabulation. Tintinnabulation.”

The man said that word. Now Faith is saying it, over and over, real soft. Softer than quiet.

Faith leans over real slight and says in her whisper-voice, like the kind we used to use in school so the teacher wouldn’t catch us, “Isn’t tintinnabulation the most beautiful word in the English language?”

But I just shrug and say, “I never heard of it before.” But I forget to use my whisper-voice and everybody turns around with a creak to look at me with their eyebrows pushed together. The lady in direct front of me has real blue eyes that get squinty when her eyebrows do that. Her face looks like one of Mama’s cheese soufflés, kind of poofied out with a nose stuck in the middle, so I want to push my finger into it and say, “Are you fallen, soufflé?”

Then I remember Mama’s voice saying, “Don’t make the soufflé fall on purpose, Wally.” So I guess I shouldn’t do that to the lady’s face, neither.

Though I wish she’d turn around and quit her staring.

This ain’t my dream. It’s Faith’s.

This turned into another experiment instead of a story. But thank you to Faith for the three inspirational words: soufflé, beetle and tintinnabulation. If you’re wondering why I’m writing shorts, click here.

Short Story 5: Gossip

Such a brouhaha across the street at the Eagle Arms two nights ago. Saw it all from my window. You heard about it, surely.

That Woman and her photograph up on the wall, unveiled for all to see.

The men were over-full of ale and clamoring to look at it. Garry tried to hold them back and they all but trampled him.

Poor man.

He’s always been a good sort, Garry. Don’t mean any disrespect.

But it was a kerfuffle, and was on the second page of the Times, because one of the men did go into a conniption and had to be taken out on a stretcher.

Turned out he had knocked his head and been kicked in the stomach and burst his liver … or was it his pancreas? One of his vital organs. They treated him with something … something for the pain. What was it, Sally?

Oh yes, hydrocodone. That new thing everyone’s mad about. Terrible stuff. Worse than opiates, Mildred told me.

And what’s worse, he came out of the hospital begging for more.

No, I’m not joking.

What was his name again, Sally?

Isn’t he trying to run for parliament?

He’ll never make it now.

Not good for anything after that. And the papers all saying what a terrible photograph it was of That Woman’s, that he never should’ve been looking at it in the first place.

Filthy stuff.

I hear she’s off to America on the next ship. Can’t take what everyone’s whispering about her behind closed doors. Says she’ll be in pictures or dance on a stage.

I can tell you what kind of dancing that’ll be. Mark my words.

She won’t be missed around here, that’s for good and certain.

Poor Garry. Bad for business, this.

I’m sure he didn’t know what he was putting up on that wall. She could act like such an innocent thing. And I did have her here following the parish picnic. Pulled the wool over all our eyes, didn’t she.

He’s a good sort, that Garry. Next time he’ll have to do a check beforehand, if he ever decides to put up Some Person’s Art again. And yes, I say Art that way because it’s not art at all. It’s devil’s work, to make men stumble.

Though I doubt Garry never will fall into that trap again. We’re all about learning lessons, we humans. That’s what we’re good for.


This one turned into more of a voice experiment than a story, but still fun to write. Thank you, Garry, for the inspirational words through facebook: hydrocodone, bruhaha and kerfuffle. If you're wondering why I'm writing shorts, click here.