THE RAINBOW CHILD by Lauren Keilani Kane a Capstone Project
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THE RAINBOW CHILD By Lauren Keilani Kane A capstone project submitted for Graduation with University Honors May 06, 2021 University Honors University of California, Riverside APPROVED Goldberry Long Department of Creative Writing Dr. Richard Cardullo, Howard H Hays Jr. Chair University Honors ABSTRACT I am writing a fiction novella following a girl throughout her life. Each chapter of the book is on a treasured object of hers and the significance it has to her major life events. There's a red stone, an orange carnival ticket, a yellow pen, a green brooch, a blue bracelet, an indigo pendant, and a violet cabinet. These items correspond to; her first day at school, the first time she looked forward to something but missed out due to fear, her birthday and entering a writing competition, her graduation and moving out, her wedding, her marriage, and the culmination of these events and the retelling of them to her granddaughter. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to sincerely thank my mentor, Goldberry Long, for guiding me through this process and being a great Creative Writing professor. Taking her class motivated me to do this project and gave me the confidence I needed to explore writing creatively. I would also like to thank my sister, Erin, and my fiancé, Justin, for supporting and encouraging me through this process. I dedicate this book to my grandma Ruth, who inspired these stories. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS The Red Stone…page 5 The Orange Carnival Ticket…page 19 The Yellow Pen…page 31 The Green Brooch…page 39 The Blue Bracelet…page 61 The Indigo Pendant…page 67 The Violet Cabinet…page 76 4 THE RED STONE I wiped away the tomato juice running down my chin, but it already dripped onto my chest. I took another bite. More cool juice splashed on me, but I didn’t mind. Tomato juice stained weakly, not enough for Mom to scold me about. My black curls glued to my forehead with sweat. The California sun – one we were grateful for during the winter and weary of during the current summer – beat down on me as I strolled the path behind our farm. The dirt trail I followed parted a sea of ripened corn stalks. I was five at the time, so Mom allowed me to go by myself, but she didn’t let me leave without food. Usually, she sent me along with the vegetables we grew on our farm, but if she had the spare time and ingredients, she’d throw together a sandwich that kept me full until I came home. “You need to wait an hour before you get in,” Mom would instruct me as she would hand me food, “You hear me, Rose? You’ll drown if you don’t.” “I will, I promise.” I’d say to her as I walked out of the house, overflowing with snacks. But I never did. As I took the last bite of my tomato, I thought about running along the path to get to my stop. If I kept walking, I would bake in the sun. If I started to run, I wouldn’t be baking, but I would kick up more dirt that would stick to my sweaty legs. Either way, I cooked in the heat until I reached my hideout: the stream. The stream meandered only a mile away from our property. We swam there every summer. I’d spend all day, like I did most days, savoring the coolness and weightlessness gifted to me by the water. The nights after I swam, I fell asleep faster and stayed cooler longer. Although bugs flew around and mud caked your clothes, we preferred the stream over all else to combat the heat. 5 My older sister, Marie, usually came with me on trips to the stream, but fall semester began at her college last week. Mom and Dad were mad at her for enrolling, but she saved up the money by herself, so they couldn’t stop her. They wanted her at home to help with the farm. She wanted to be away from here and my parents. I loved Marie, but we didn’t agree about home. I actually enjoyed helping Dad with the farm. I didn’t get any hard chores yet like Marie, but my chores made me feel useful. My favorite chore was taking out water to Dad and his workers out in the field. In the afternoons, when the sun pulsed at its peak, Mom helped me make lemonade. I then would carry it out, tiny arms wobbling, to each of the men. They all thanked me and accepted my unsteady lemonade with hands so rough and dirty the tips of their nails were forever black. I’d smile at each worker as he thanked me, grateful to be one cup lighter. When I reached my father, he would take the last glass and only nod, his hands the roughest and dirtiest of them all. This chore was my biggest responsibility prior to school. While walking along the path, I tried swallowing the realization that I wouldn’t be able to come here once school began. The stream’s current became audible, but my rising anxieties were louder. I had to accept tomorrow was the first day of school. The entire summer, I avoided the topic when Marie brought it up and tried not to think about it. Not only was school starting, but my responsibilities were growing, too. Mom announced at dinner last night that I was old enough to help her more at the vegetable stand. She smiled at me after, as if she just told me I earned a prize, and I tried to mirror it. I secretly hated working at the vegetable stand. I tried my best to be a good salesperson, but anyone who pulled over wouldn’t listen to me. No one wants to listen to a kid, especially a girl. I pushed them to buy the misshapen 6 produce – the many-legged carrots or the sunken-in bell peppers – because they were the most flavorful. They were horrified by the corn with the most earworms eating off it, but I told them to choose that ear because it’s the tastiest. They ignored my recommendations and instead picked the perfect-looking vegetables. Although perfect in looks, they weren’t nearly as flavorful as the misshapen or the eaten. After not listening and paying for what they thought good produce, they would get back into their cars and leave, returning to their two-story houses and flawless lawns. If they were lucky, they had a pool in the backyard with no mud and not so many bugs. And we were left to pick the earworms off the corn and savor the ugly produce. We didn’t have much over them, but at least we had better vegetables. And the stream. In many ways, it was better than a pool in a backyard. There were rocks to be skipped and the melody of the bubbling stream was a summertime lullaby, a better song than whatever played through their crackling radios. I walked through a cluster of trees that marked the entrance to the stream. The perfume of wet grass and earth wafted up when the wind blew. The birds chirped from the safety of their branches as I stepped in. My dress lifted and floated like a cotton jellyfish with each movement. I took it off and threw it on a nearby rock. Since the bottom half was soaked, it landed with a wet splat. I slowly fell back, allowing my body to float to the water’s surface. Now fully submerged, my hair swirled along with the current, no longer curly. I let the stream carry me lazily, so I could marvel at the trees above. The intricacy of the branches and leaves, how they never quite touched another, fascinated me. I looked for birds nestled within them. Although it sounded like there were hundreds, I could only spot a few, brown and chubby. I set my feet down and the water rose to my hips. The mud soothed the soles of my feet while in the water, but I knew when it dried, I would hate the feeling. I scanned the clear water, looking for a flat stone to skip. Any 7 section without a good skipping rock I stepped over, feeling the crunch of the rejected rocks beneath me. I ran across a section of mud. There weren’t any more rocks, I traveled too far downstream. I turned around and kept searching. I was on a mission to find the perfect rock. I spread my feet and bent down, so much so that my nose touched the water. All I could see were dull gray pebbles – nothing flat enough to get more than one pathetic skip. I kept looking. Trudging through the water, I almost stepped on something that caught my attention. A dot of red nestled in a sea of gray and black. I reached for it. When I grasped it, it felt smooth and icy from being in the shade. I stood up and opened my palm to examine my finding. It revealed itself to be a red stone, no bigger than a half dollar coin. It dazzled me with its color – a brilliant shade of maroon (A shade of red I was only familiar with at that young age because Marie wore a lipstick by the same name out on dates). I took it out of the shade, and it shimmered in the sunlight.