Proquest Dissertations

WAKING UP DEAD By Kaitlyn Andrews-Rice Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing Chair: a )1 ce.~~J /d-rtell~'!c-·c ··~ Andrew Holleran /~/~ Cfiuzr:!-u:.__, Denise Orenstein Date 2008 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cl ~00 UMI Number: 1460429 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 1460429 Copyright 2008 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 E. Eisenhower Parkway PO Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 WAKING UP DEAD BY Kaitlyn Andrews-Rice ABSTRACT Waking Up Dead is a novel organized around three generations of women affected both directly and indirectly by the Iraq war. Taylor, an aspiring singer with an independent streak, and Steve, a young Marine about to deploy to Iraq, make the rash decision to marry. The novel explores the consequences of their decision and the notion that history may repeat itself. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... ii Chapter ONE TAYLOR .............................................................................................. l TWO LANA ................................................................................................. 72 THREE SLOANE........................................................................................... 105 Ill CHAPTER ONE TAYLOR I tell him about the baby over the phone just after he says it's so hot over there Satan would fry. His response is silence so I say it again thinking it's a bad connection. "I'm pregnant." "Shit." "Shit? That's your response to your wife telling you she's pregnant? Shit?" It's all muffled as he pulls the phone away and shouts that his wife's having a baby. There's lots of whooping. Lots of taunts, lots of "guess you gotta give up all those whores." "What?" "Shut up, Custodian." I assume Custodian is the name for someone holding down the fort with him in the desert. "Steve?" "Sorry baby, just Custodian being an ass." 1 2 "What kind of name is Custodian?" I ask, knowing full well that there's no good answer. "Nicer one than it is at home." "Oh." "Time's up," he says. Wind funnels against the phone. A world away and the dessert storms manage to effect life here. That's what it's like in country, the girls say. In country just another euphemism for being fucked in the middle of a war zone. "Are you happy about this?" I ask. "You know it. Hey Sarge! I was just saying how I was gonna name my kid after you. Isn't that right, baby?" "Funny." "Talk to you soon." "I love you." "Love you too, baby and little baby." My mother is next. She says she knew this would happen. She is probably staring out of her bay window, sizing up the neighbor's new garden. She says she just knew it. Then she hangs up on me. The mosquitoes come in through a crack in the screen. I cut a piece of scotch tape with my teeth and hold it against the hole. My belly squishes against the counter. It's gonna take some adjusting to being fat. I'd always been able to wear my jeans low. When I moved here the owner of the Shoe Salon said I had knees made for cowboy boots. No 3 idea what she meant by that, but I reminded myself of that very fact anytime my self esteem was low. Five minutes later my mother calls back. "What do you want?" "What if he never comes back?" "I'm hanging up." "You won't even have enough to raise this bastard's child." "I told you not to talk about Steve like that." "Oh, honey. Time to face the reality of the situation with him over there and never coming back from the looks of the Channel Four news. I hate to say it 'cause you're my daughter but you don't have any idea. You move down to Texas with this boy and he leaves you behind in a shack while he goes off to play with his guns." ''I'm really hanging up." "Lighten up, Taylor. It's very brave and all what that boy's doing but now you're knocked up and alone. Soon to be an army widow working at the Walmart." "I will never work at the goddamn Walmart." "What are you going to do?" "See a doctor. My friend Tracey's taking me." "That's wonderful." "Uh-huh." "In a few years you can try again." "Steve said it's 113 degrees there." 4 "That's if you don't leave him first. Did I tell you I ran into Jimmy Johnson in the Shop & Save? He was getting some things for his mother and he called me Ms. Carlson with that long voice of his. He asked about you and don't worry I told him you were in school and you'd be back this summer." "Good to know you're still lying about your only daughter." "Don't be so sensitive. Just trying to keep your options open." "I don't need your help." "Least you only have to deal with those crazy hormones a few more days." "Seven more months." "If you're going to the doctor tomorrow it shouldn't be much longer." "Huh?" "You said your girlfriend's gonna take you to take care of it." "I said she was going to TAKE me. I never said I was taking care of it. Steve and I wanna have a baby," I say, not knowing if there's any truth to it. Around here having babies is just the next step and when I'd met Steve he was the first guy I'd wanted to be the father of my children. "Wish it were that simple, darling." "It is." This time I hang up on her and kick the rusty kitchen chair. I've just put lasagna in the oven and the sweet smell spills into the room I've scrubbed the kitchen top to bottom with bleach and paper towels, but everything still green or river brown. This is standard issue military kitchen in a standard-issue, one-story clapboard house passed down from 5 one young military family to the next. When we arrived, it was move-in ready: cheap artwork (pastel interpretations of "Green Pastures") hung on the walls; cactus shaped salt and-pepper shakers on the table; wilting tulips in an aluminum can. And since we, like the previous tenants, had no income to upscale the decor, we had to accept this as our new home even if there were crusty toothbrushes next to the sink and three used condoms in the trash. We're lucky to get anything at all. Getting a house on base had a mile-long waitlist. Home sweet home. Steve had whistled as he swung me over the threshold to our new home and proceeded to peel off my sticky sundress. There on the scratchy "Home Sweet Home" welcome rug is where I first saw the spider webs draped in the room's comers and where we probably conceived the baby now making its home in the wad of skin swelling under my shirt. I had threatened to leave and head south since my sixteenth birthday. My mother became obsessed with entering me in singing competition; I was North Carolina's reigning Little Miss Baptist. Other mothers with bubble butts, faded jeans, and fake nails drooled on my mother, telling her I was on the path, that I had been given a gift (from God, my mother lectured as she marched to the local Baptist church and made me join the youth choir). One Sunday after church, after my cheeks had been poked like the bruised apples at the Shop & Save, after what the congregation called a "goose bump 6 thing" of a performance of "Amazing Grace," I told her I was going to Nashville, to become a country star. She was eating grapes for dinner, which was her idea of a sensible meal, and she laughed, flipping her head back, blonde hair flashing like sparklers. She said I'd never do it, that I'd come to my senses. She said all my girlfriends would go off to college and I'd want to be just like them because that's just who I was. She said I was a follower. According to her, my father had also been a follower, following in behind his father's alcoholism and love of what my mother called skanks. She said "skanks" with such carelessness that it was as though she was saying "Bless You" to a sneeze. I never saw her cry, not even when my father's new girlfriend called to say he'd been in a terrible motorcycle accident and might not recover. He did. I remembered my father as this tall man with hairy calves who sometimes tied my mother to the bed and left her there. It wasn't until sixth grade that my mature friend Carly (she had an actual bra with a tiny pink bow) told me that my dad was probably fucking my mom and that's why he tied her up and yelled her name over and over again and why she whimpered and screamed.

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