University of Cincinnati Date: 2/18/2011 I, Soren G Palmer , hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English & Comparative Literature. It is entitled: The Swimming Rabbit Student's name: Soren G Palmer This work and its defense approved by: Committee chair: Leah Stewart, MFA Committee member: Michael Griffith, MFA Committee member: Jay Twomey, PhD 1355 Last Printed:2/23/2011 Document Of Defense Form The Swimming Rabbit A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English of the College of Arts and Sciences by Søren G. Palmer M.F.A. Arizona State University December 2006 M.T.S. Vanderbilt University May 1997 Committee Chair: Leah Stewart, M.F.A. Abstract The same week three friends open a restaurant called The Swimming Rabbit in Elora, South Carolina, a woman is murdered across town, leaving her twelve-year-old daughter, Jasmine, pregnant and orphaned. In the wake of the murder several lives are thrown into chaos. Swimming Rabbit owner Boyd Tennor wants to use the tragedy to his advantage, hoping a fundraiser for Jasmine will increase the restaurant's reputation and revenues. NFL icon Sterling Carroll offers to participate, wanting to help Jasmine stay at the home run by Boyd's ex-girlfriend Emily. Boyd and his business partners are thrilled, but Boyd's employee Lamont is not. Lamont has been keeping secret not only that he's Sterling's brother, but that Sterling was kicked out of the NFL for gambling and is currently a bookie for Elora's biggest criminal. Lamont, a PhD candidate, waits tables only to help Sterling pay off his gambling debt. Preoccupied with his brother's financial troubles, his own struggles within the philosophy department, and his longing for an unavailable woman, Lamont fails to ask the most important question: Why is Sterling, recently fallen on hard times himself, so interested in helping this little girl? What might his involvement be in her mother's death? As the fundraiser draws near, Sterling’s past gambling problems begin to jeopardize The Swimming Rabbit’s delicate balance. While the owners fight for control of the restaurant, Jasmine fights for a place to live. Table of Contents Creative Portion: The Swimming Rabbit 1 Critical Portion: Mimetic Anxieties 410 THE SWIMMING RABBIT By Søren G. Palmer First Course: Amuse Chapter One The day Yolavia was to die she was walking to church with her daughter, Jasmine. It was a Wednesday evening during the second week in October and the bottom of the sun slipped into the horizon, as if it had no intention of circling back around. Mother Nature tossed a plastic bag past them that caught on the end of a branch but still bellowed out from the breeze, then tore itself free and tumbled down the street. When Yolavia and Jasmine came to the curb where Baker crossed Sixth, Jasmine started to step into the street without looking, and Yolavia shot out her arm, popping her daughter in the chest. Not a car in sight, Yolavia thought, but that is not the point. The point was, Jasmine always missed the point. Even now, Jasmine sighed dramatically, her mouth hanging open. “Go ahead,” Yolavia said, her arm still against her daughter’s chest, “sigh like that again and see what happens.” “Ain’t no cars coming.” Yolavia dropped her arm. “Can you see what’s coming around the corner?” Jasmine looked down, fingering a yellow bracelet she’d begun wearing two months ago, religiously, refusing to shed it for any occasion. “No.” “That’s right. And we wouldn’t be in this mess if you’d stop and think. Think about what might be coming around the corner. Better pray when we get to Church because I have run out of answers.” “I been praying,” Jasmine said, running her hand down the front of her light blue dress, trying to bend a ruffle over a small tear. “And take off that bracelet – whatever it is. I don’t like the kind of girls I see wearing those.” Yolavia swore all the bad of the last six months had come from that bracelet, as if it was making Jasmine fight against the best parts of herself, the parts that had made her the perfect daughter. “It ain’t hurting nothing.” “It ain’t helping nothing. Give it here.” Jasmine wrapped her right hand around the bracelet. “Come on, then.” Yolavia zipped up her coat and stepped off the curb, still dressed in the blue pants and white blouse she wore working the front desk of a Best Western. She planned on being back there tonight, pulling a second shift, auditing the day’s numbers and drinking weak coffee. And since Jasmine could no longer be trusted she would sleep in a vacant room complete with the luxuries of cable TV. Some punishment. They didn’t have cable at home, and they didn’t have a computer, but working nights allowed Yolavia to take accounting classes online. It didn’t make her an accountant, but she could do the auditing and add another dollar an hour during the shift. It also made her realize she liked numbers. Liked how predictable and tidy they were. Liked how two plus two equaled four no matter how many times you added them up. And she especially liked how they didn’t come home and tell you they were pregnant. A funky beat tumbled out an open front door up ahead, the words falling like an inebriated body at Yolavia’s feet: Treasure, what’s your pleasure? Life is a, uh, depending on how you dress her. So if the devil wear Prada, Adam-Eve wear nada. A teenager leaned against the doorjamb, his jeans barely clinging to his butt. He had already adopted the neighborhood colors, wearing a blue basketball jersey with the number thirty, Magic above the number in white, pointed letters. Cause when you try hard, that’s when you die hard. Ya homies looking like “Why God?” When they reminisce over you, My God. The boy in blue held a beer bottle in his left hand, tapping it against his hip to the beat. He nodded at Yolavia, solemnly, trying to be hard and polite at the same time. Laaaaa-la-la-la. Wait till I get my mon-ey right. Yolavia was thinking about how close she was to getting her money right, how close she was to not being behind, at least. She was considering more accounting classes, considering a computer for her and Jasmine. Not a new one, but a computer nonetheless – unless Jasmine had that baby. Then, Yolavia knew, she’d never get her money right. Ever. They turned right on Rallfallen, starting up a long hill, and Yolavia cursed herself for not changing shoes. She’d gotten home and Jasmine wasn’t ready. On purpose, surely. Being ornery, surely. Six months ago Jasmine had grabbed hold to the tail of anger and refused to let go. Mad she didn’t have a daddy. Mad she didn’t have an iPod. Mad Yolavia worked sixty hours a week only for them to be poor. Yolavia tried everything to douse her daughter’s anger – being nice, being mean, ignoring her, grounding her – but always ended up blowing on that ember instead, Jasmine’s anger blossoming. Soon she was acting just like Yolavia had at thirteen: an ungrateful little brat who did everything she could to anger her mother. Except Jasmine raised the stakes from talking back and smoking cigarettes to having sex and smoking crystal meth. Jasmine had stood there, swaying back and forth, a pinky hooked beneath that yellow bracelet, so high and whacked out it terrified Yolavia. She didn’t know what to do, so she slapped her. The single second of that slap annihilated a fourteen-year promise she’d made to herself after being slapped by her own mother, after becoming pregnant herself, “I will never do that to my daughter.” There it was, her past scurrying into her present, the repetition piercing her heart, the reality allowing Yolavia to understand – finally and too late – that her own mother had been scared. Frightened, rightly, for Yolavia’s present and future. Terrified of the taunting in the halls and the whispers from other mothers. Afraid that she had failed Yolavia, that it had all happened because of something she had or had not done, had happened because she was one of those bad mothers. Yolavia understood, finally and too late, because it was how she felt: it was her own fault Jasmine was pregnant. She even sympathized what had come after the slap, her mother calling her a “whore,” that damning and indicting word that could endure for decades suddenly on the tip of her own tongue, like a diver waiting to summersault into water. Whore. Those heels pinched on Yolavia’s toes, her arches aching, her calves stinging, and the top of that hill barely in sight. She unzipped her jacket, thinking that at least she had been seventeen when she got pregnant. At least she had been able to enjoy being a teenager for a while, enjoy being chased and caught by boys, escorted to dinner and dances. Jasmine was thirteen. One year past twelve. Seven years before twenty. No matter how Yolavia did the math it didn’t add up to any sense or answer the question she couldn’t shake from her mind: When did thirteen-year-olds start having sex? Jasmine’s daddy, Jerome, had been one fine man.