So, VanDuyn had everybody take out their laptops. If you don’t have a laptop, he gives you a block of paper. One girl, Maya, has no laptop because she has broken three of the school laptops. She takes them to the fourth-floor bathroom and throws them out the window. No one knows why she does it, but when she does she gets a lot of credit from everyone. It is really funny. She pretends it is an accident each time, but she still gets in trouble. So, Maya and I got blocks of paper, is what I’m saying, and everyone else had a computer.
VanDuyn read to us from an essay by some Pulitzer Prize–winning author. He said, to enter the sweet land of fiction, think about something outside of yourself. Then imagine yourself inside the thing. Then that is a story.
I have no intention of entering the sweet land of fiction, wherever that is.
We worked on the stories for three days in English class. On the third day, we had to give ours to the person next to us to read. I gave mine to Grace, and Grace gave me her laptop with the story open on it.
It’s not really done, she said.
Mine is, I think.
Grace’s story is called DOLPHIN FRENZY.
It is about a dolphin named Reno who wants to go to the big city. I’m not kidding. You can’t make this stuff up. The problem with Grace’s story is that after the first page, on which we get a bunch of Reno’s thoughts, most of which are small-town thoughts and thoughts about swimming, Grace runs out of steam. She starts just putting in facts about dolphins. I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything, but the language changes a little, so it seems like maybe she copied the quotes from somewhere. Here’s a sample:
Reno woke up late and his mom was already setting the breakfast table. He took off the sheet and got up and brushed his teeth. Got to run, Mom, he said, and got just to the bus in time. Some common dolphins are: the common dolphin, Fraser dolphin, Clymene dolphin, Pacific white-sided dolphin, and others. New dolphin species are discovered every day. If you can have a curved dorsal fin, you will, or else probably you will have a straight one. Watch out for the rough-toothed dolphin. They can reach 350 pounds.
I told her that it was great. Don’t change a word. They will tell you to change it, but you have to stand firm.
She said my story was pretty good, too. I asked her why. Then she admitted that she didn’t like it very much, she was just trying to be nice. I said that’s okay—she should know I actually did enjoy her dolphin story very much. She asked if I wanted her to try again with mine, and I said, no. She admitted that she didn’t really read it. I was playing with my phone, she said.
Maybe I should put more animals in mine, she suggested. That’s how she got hers started.
ENGLISH two
At the end, VanDuyn had everyone read the stories out loud, which was really painful. When it got to me I said I hadn’t done it. Grace got a weird look on her face, but she kept quiet. She read hers, and she was honestly really proud in the way that she did it. I thought it was pretty beautiful that she could be so proud of such a terrible story. I am such a coward I could never have read my story to the class like that, no matter how good it was. So, Grace is a little ways ahead of me on the path of life, I honestly think.
After class, VanDuyn motioned me over to his desk. He said he was willing to give me some leeway because of my situation, but he would love to see what I wrote if I was prepared to show him. It’s almost the worst thing when people are actually kind. It would be easier if they could all be creeps all the time.
Anyway, you are probably interested in hearing about my story, even if Grace didn’t like it.
My story was called “MAY I SWEEP YOUR FRONT STEP.” It was about a woman who lives in a house. One day a beggar comes and asks her if he can sweep her front doorstep. So, she lets him. The story doesn’t start there, though. It starts in the future, at this refugee camp. There has been a disaster, and no one has a nice home anymore, but even in the refugee camp there is stratification, so some people have tents and others don’t. Outside one of the tents, there is this guy sleeping, and he occasionally gets up and mimes sweeping the ground in front of the tent. Every now and then he lies down and sleeps some more, then gets up and repeats it. Someone asks the woman in the tent why he is doing this and she says, many years ago, she lived in a wealthy house in a big city and a man came to her house, a beggar, and he wanted to sweep her front step. She could tell that he was a suitor in disguise, and wanted to marry her. But, she let him sweep the front step, and she was kind of tricky, so whatever stratagems he would use to try to get more out of her, she would always reply with something more clever and he would have to keep sweeping.
Eventually, they grew old, and the disaster came, and she ended up in the camp with her tent, and the beggar shows up again, and he doesn’t even have a broom, but still he sweeps the ground in front of the tent, this time with no broom. He doesn’t even have a name anymore, she says, he has utterly become the costume he was wearing.
So, that was the story, but it was much better in reality, because it is all matter-of-fact. The woman doesn’t see anything strange about any of it. Also, there is this thing about what the service actually is—what it is that the beggar is providing, and what it is he is taking. It is pretty hard to say who is winning.
PREDICTION
On this visit, I will go from my aunt’s hospital to visit the Home, so the route will be different. There is actually a rail line that I can take, which is pretty exciting, since I have never taken it before. So, I will sneak on if I can without paying, or alternately, I will pay. I can’t make a prediction about that until I know more. When I get to the Winston stop on the rail line, I will walk to the Home, this time from the other direction, and go up the drive, get my pass from the counter, go to my mom’s room. She won’t be there. But, she won’t be at the fish pond either, because I think it will rain. She will probably then be under one of the gazebos. The place has at least ten gazebos. It seems like doctors think that gazebos are good for curing mental illness, because every asylum I have ever seen in reality (one) or in a film (five or six?) has gazebos everywhere. I guess some of the ones in films just look like prisons, so those don’t have any gazebos, but I think it is mostly true.
Why that would be so—is hard to fathom. In my opinion, a gazebo should exacerbate mental illness, as it is a pretty unreasonable structure. It is poorly made, it doesn’t provide any real shelter, and it is impossible to do any meaningful tasks inside of it. If a person is struggling to figure out the most basic rationales about life—is that the kind of place you want to stick them? It is pretty hard to understand.
Anyway, I will sit in the gazebo and witness my mother’s gazebo behavior. I think that behavior will be a lot like the fish pond behavior. At some point the orderly will show up and we will pretend like nothing happened, but maybe he will give some overture to see what else he can get.
Then, I will head out and take the bus to the bus to the bowling alley and I will cry my face off telling Helen about my aunt, and she will give me a drink and I will wake up either at my aunt’s house, or at Helen’s. It doesn’t really matter which.