Littlebirdstoriesvol4.Pdf

Table of Contents Introduction Rebecca Lee Woman In a Drawer Rachel Ball East One Jill Talbot Right, Right, Right Liz Windhorst Harmer Copyright 2 Little Bird Stories Volume IV Selected by Rebecca Lee If, as Nabokov said, literature is a river alongside our lives, following, interpreting, flashing, even threatening it at times, then I have lived for a few weeks very happily on the shoreline, reading some of the most lively, interesting, warm-hearted, intelligent prose possible. From a diversity of prompts, some beguilingly simple and some complicated, all generative: write a recipe, write 100 sentences that do not connect, write about rage, close your eyes and write, write about a flower, a heartache, a song, write in the voice of someone you dislike, write a list of things that give off light… come these voices, a reminder for me that there is a self that exists on the page that isn't present anywhere else in the writer or reader's life. One of the guiding principles for me as a reader (an unconscious principle, I believe, when I'm reading for pleasure, and a more conscious one when reading these works) is to note what this prose is doing that can't be done in any other art form. There are so many things that the movies can do better, and dance, and painting (I always have other art form envy when I'm writing: part of me wants to break loose into song, or dance, rather than that quieter, more stubborn negotiation with words). But there is something in a written sentence that can sustain a true reader longer— some road into the inner life, or an explanation of the contours of a relationship, a careful tracking of time, a grasp of feeling, a certain type of wordy humour that is getting at the strangeness of having an experience and thinking about it at the same time. These are the deep pleasures of literature; reading these entries in abundance has brought them all flooding back into my life. It was impossible to compare them, of course, and I kept coming up against my own limitations as a reader. For instance, I have a love of sadness in literature and though there is plenty of literature that speaks to this, it seems unfair to ignore that warmer, cheerier, happier, funnier side of the road. So one follows one's taste, but also judges it as well, while reading. But I would like to thank each writer, and join in solidarity with them, as we all keep, word by word, finding our way. Some notes on the three winning stories: First Prize Woman In a Drawer The sentences in this story are so mature, they have beginnings and middles and endings themselves. But they are inconspicuous as well, and straight-forward. The thinking is warm and thoughtful and conversational. It's a voice you could read forever; you'd follow every turn of phrase. You also, reading it, feel in the hands of a genuine storyteller; she is walking and thinking and taking you somewhere important. Trust that 3 something is afoot, something ahead. I loved every moment. Runners up East One This story is about difficulty, and the most difficult of difficulties, a mind on the outs with itself. And yet as it unflinchingly goes into this territory, the language is so buoyant and relentlessly powerful that the story also, at the same time, is a bit of a joyride. It's fun, even as it takes you inside sorrow. What could be better than that? It heals and makes jokes and the people in it become real the moment they step onstage and materialize. Right, Right, Right "A person married to a stone became a river." This is the sort of gem that lies strewn throughout this story, which is about marriage, and time, and disillusionment. It's funny, and deep, and kind. And the characters are real. I don't mean they must have counter- parts in real life, just that they themselves have presence and weight and have ineluctable things to say to any reader. - Rebecca Lee 4 Write a scene in which a character teaches someone how to do something. 5 Woman In a Drawer Rachel Ball When I arrived, the girls were somewhere deep in the house, so Mrs. Fielding called them out to meet me. Harriet and Gracie looked like miniature versions of their mother, but with delicate, sharply defined chins, and roving, bright eyes. They stared at me for a while without saying anything, until Mrs. Fielding asked where their manners were, and would they please show me around, and then she herself disappeared into another room. The girls—Gracie, the younger one, taking me by the hand—began the tour. Their home was larger than ours, but its layout was oddly linear: there seemed to be no central heart of the home, only rooms that led into other rooms, or a hallway that criss-crossed with another hallway. Pop music pulsed in the distance. Gracie pointed out her sister’s bedroom, then her own, then a little study in which “daddy doesn’t like to be bothered,” and another room with toys spread over the carpet and a big poster of a blue solar system on the wall. They showed me the kitchen, then the half bath intended for guests, both startlingly white and sweetly aromatic. When they finished—struck by listlessness, a large portion of the house still left a mystery—they asked why my hair looked the way it did. “It’s called a pixie cut,” I said, and then, a little desperately, “It’s in style.” What I didn’t mention was that my haircut was the solution to a bob I’d tried giving myself using the tri-fold mirror at home. Gracie asked, “Can you cut mine like that, too?” and smiled for the first time. She had long, sun-lightened hair, the sort I envied. I was tempted to say yes. I suggested we play a game instead. “She only knows how to play hide-and-seek,” said Harriet. “So?” asked Gracie. “I can teach you a new game,” I offered. “No,” said Gracie. “I don’t like any other games.” My mother knew Mrs. Fielding from her volunteer work at the hospital. Both of them had been assigned to distribute ice and blankets and library books to the patients—the sort of things that didn’t require much on the hospital’s part but translated to appreciable comforts for the patients. One slow afternoon, they got to talking in the stock room, and it didn’t take very long after that for my mother to start inserting Mrs. Fielding’s name (Susan, or sometimes Sue, when she was in a chirpy mood) into conversations as if my father and I knew her, too. But she did not invite the Fieldings over to our home, nor were we invited to theirs. It was not until much later, after I had navigated the politics of friendships myself, that I understood why: my mother and Mrs. Fielding wanted to keep their friendship to themselves. To introduce husbands and children into the mix would open it up too much, would dilute their intimacy; even one dinner together, out of politeness, would generate the inevitable pressure to include the rest of us from then on. Maybe, then, it was just a slip of the tongue when my babysitting services were offered. Or it may have been that their friendship was beginning to feel less precious—they did drift apart, eventually. Whatever the case, on that Friday evening, I found myself driving across town into an unfamiliar neighborhood, passing the hospital, looking up at the looming silver windows as I slowed at a stoplight. A noiseless ambulance pulled into the intersection. Further on, bare elms rose on either side of the street, the dormant branches brushing the power lines. “Goodness,” Mrs. Fielding had said when I first arrived. “You look just like your mother.” She laughed. Ushering me in, she clarified that she meant that in the best way possible. The girls and I returned to the front hallway, where Mrs. Fielding was fastening a watch around her wrist. She had changed into a navy dress and a dark cardigan and her lips were berry red. “Give me a kiss, sweethearts,” she said to her daughters, and then to me she said, “We’ll be back by ten, Laurel,” and opened the front door. Mr. Fielding had already gone out to warm up 6 the car. I’d seen a note left on the kitchen countertop with emergency contacts and a p.s. the girls go to bed at eight—don’t let them convince you otherwise! and I wanted to acknowledge that I’d read it, that they could trust me. But she was already out the door and rushing to the car. They were off. “Hide-and-seek,” Gracie reminded me. “I don’t know how to play that,” I said, because I didn’t particularly want to. “You don’t?” she said, dismayed. Gracie looked at her sister in disbelief, then back to me. “Here,” she said. “I’ll show you. It’s easy.” “I’m going to my room,” said Harriet. “I want to finish reading my book.” I said that was fine. I turned back to Gracie and her pleading expression. “Alright,” I said. “Show me.” She rapidly explained the rules: the counting aloud, the hiding, the way to surrender if it came to that.

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