My Father's Daughter Eboni G

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 January 2008 My Father's Daughter Eboni G. Rafus University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses Rafus, Eboni G., "My Father's Daughter" (2008). Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014. 159. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/159 This thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER A Thesis Presented by EBONI G. RAFUS Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTERS OF FINE ARTS September 2008 Graduate Program for Poets and Writers MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER A Thesis Presented by EBONI G. RAFUS Approved as to style and content by: _______________________________ Sabina Murray, Chair _______________________________ Chris Bachelder, Member ________________________________ Peggy Woods, Member _____________________________ Dara Wier, Director M.F.A. Program for Poets and Writers _______________________________ Joseph Bartolomeo, Chair Department of English PREFACE My Father’s Daughter, part bildungsroman, part family drama, is the story of Tabitha Robinson, a successful writer on a hit prime-time teen drama in Los Angeles who is called home to northern New York to say good-bye to her dying father. Tabitha and her father, Ray, a retired military solider and Southern Baptist minister, were once quite close. As a girl, Tabitha idolized her father despite his long absences and philandering ways. In turn, Ray favored Tabitha and encouraged her ambition. Their relationship changes however, when Ray divorces Tabitha’s mother and remarries. Already strained, the relationship is threatened further when Ray, after battling cancer, suddenly sees the error of his ways and attempts to reform Tabitha as well. The novella begins with a short vignette about the incidents surrounding Tabitha’s conception and birth. This vignette, told from Tabitha’s point of view, illustrates how Tabitha becomes bonded with her father as an infant. This also establishes the notion that this novella is Tabitha’s story from her limited perspective. It is meant to unfold as if Tabitha is telling her story around a campfire or confiding in a close friend. The next thirty-three pages take place in the present and are told in the present tense. Tabitha is twenty-seven years old and hasn’t spoken to her father in nearly iii two years. Yet, at her mother’s request, Tabitha visits her father and discovers that his cancer has progressed and thus he has little time left in this world. This tragic realization causes Tabitha to look back at her relationship with her father and how that relationship affected the relationships she has had with every other man in her life. The next eighty-nine pages are essentially a series of flashbacks told in the past tense. In these vignettes we see how Tabitha’s relationship with her father evolves and devolves from the age of seven years old until the age of twenty-four. The last six pages of part one bring us back to the present tense and back to Tabitha as an adult before she takes her trip down memory lane. She leaves her father’s house to give her family the news and reunites with her childhood best- friend, and sometime lover, Michael. This novella is, admittedly, not written in the traditional narrative form. Instead, it consists of thirty short chapters or scenes that give the reader insights into Tabitha’s life and character through short snippets that are separated by months or years. I liken these short chapters/scenes as quick punches to the gut: they are quick and painful and get right to the heart or core of the matter. I’ve been writing this novella, on and off, for the past four years. In that time, I have changed tenses, points of view and writing styles. Yet after four workshops iv and almost fifty pages of comments, I seem to have returned to my original vision for this project. In the beginning, I tried to workshop this novella in twenty-page increments in a traditional short-story workshop fashion. As you can imagine, this didn’t work out too well. In fact, I was so frustrated by this process that I abandoned the project for over year and a half. Yet, because I still felt called to tell this story, I decided to try again during my third year in the program. Thanks to Chris Bachelder’s understanding and flexibility, I was able to submit large chunks of my novella (90 pages or so) and have an entire class session dedicated to my work much like in a worshop focusing on longer works. The comments I received in these workshops helped me better define my project and choose the direction I wanted to write in. I have a newfound enthusiasm for this project, and now that I have completed the novella, I am interested in expanding it into a novel. To that end, I plan to write a second part to the novel which would take place in present tense with the exception of one vignette that centers around Tabitha and Ray’s last fight before they stop speaking. While part one spans twenty-seven years, part two would take place over a period of ten days. The second half of the novel would be concerned with Tabitha’s attempts to forgive her father and herself and prepare herself and her family for his inevitable death and therefore it would be written with a slower pace and a more reflective tone. This part of the novel, which I estimate would be another one hundred pages, would be written in a more traditional, continual style v and would include scenes of her father’s death, funeral and burial as well as scenes of reconciliation between Tabitha and Michael. As I move forward, I have a lot to navigate. In this story about a woman and her father, I also find myself also attempting to speak to/about military life, the African-American religious culture, and the modern woman’s relationship with food and body image. My challenges are numerous. I know that I have a tendency to be a little melodramatic. I am heavy on dialogue and short on physical description. I must be careful not to be too expository in my language and I must loosen the narrator’s grip on the story. Having said that, I am quite pleased with my novella as a completed work and yet, I am excited to see it evolve further. I hope that you enjoy reading it. vi CONTENTS Page PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………. …iii CHAPTER PART ONE 1............................................................................................................................................2 2............................................................................................................................................7 3…………………………………………………………………………………………..13 4…………………………………………………………………………………………..19 5…………………………………………………………………………………………..27 6..........................................................................................................................................32 7..........................................................................................................................................37 PART TWO 8..........................................................................................................................................42 9…………………………………………………………………………………………..45 10…………………………………………………………………………………………49 11…………………………………………………………………………………………54 12…………………………………………………………………………………………59 13…………………………………………………………………………………………63 14…………………………………………………………………………………………67 15…………………………………………………………………………………………71 16……………………………………………………………………………………….75 vii 17……………………………………………………………………………………….79 18……………………………………………………………………………………….86 19……………………………………………………………………………………….91 20……………………………………………………………………………………….95 21……………………………………………………………………………………….101 22……………………………………………………………………………………….105 23……………………………………………………………………………………….109 24……………………………………………………………………………………….114 25……………………………………………………………………………………….121 26……………………………………………………………………………………….126 PART THREE 27………………………………………………………………………………………133 viii Part One 1. My story began in the middle of the country, in the middle of the state of Kansas, where Daddy was stationed with the 1st Brigade Infantry Division of the United States Army. In the beginning, my mother, who was 24 at the time, wanted me, but my father, who was 26, did not. After I was born, they both changed their minds. At first, Daddy wanted to wait to have a second child until my sister, Gidget, was a little older. However, my mother desperately wanted a son and so decided not to wait. Also, she decided not to tell Daddy she wasn’t going to wait and merely stopped taking her birth control pills. I guess she reasoned that Daddy, never having carried a girl child for nine months, all the while hoping for a boy, couldn’t possibly understand her disappointment when Gidget was born. She had gotten over it easily enough, being grateful for a healthy child at the very least. Besides, as a sheltered only-child who had never baby-sat a day in her life, she was too busy learning how to change diapers and test the temperature of baby formula to fret too much. Yet, by the time Gidget was three years old, and Daddy, 2 being the eldest of ten, had successfully taught my mother how to sort laundry and braid hair, she was ready to try for a boy again. I don’t

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