Here's an excerpt I read from my novel at my writers group's Christmas party. We were all asked to bring something to read that was Christmas-themed. It was a challenge; this 1500 word selection was carved out of a 4,000 word selection. For better or worse, here is an excerpt with a large section taken out, and the ending lopped off. (In another blog I wrote about what I learned from this exercise, and whether or not it was a waste of time...)
Background:
Ginny and Ash, married couple with no kids, hosting Christmas dinner for first time.
Guests: her mother Ruthanne and newish stepfather Allen, her cousin Ruby with infant daughter Namaste, and her best friend, pregnant Daniella.
Then hours before the meal, Ash invites guests without asking her fist: Tiffany next door that has seven kids and a husband, and the neighbor on the other side, the bachelor scholar Thomas, with whom Ginny, unbeknownst to Ash, has recently had a very comfortable encounter.
Ginny gasped when she opened the oven to check the turkey.
“Ash! Asher, what did you do with the turkey?” She was staring at his pies—which weren’t supposed to be put in yet.
“What?” he blinked innocently. “The turkey was done, so I put my pies in.”
“It can’t be done yet! Where is it?”
“Oh, there was no room, so I put it in the bathroom.”
“The bathroom?’ she whispered in disbelief, racing to it.
“It’s not like I stuck it in the toilet,” he laughed. “I just balanced it on the sink.”
Ginny winced. That unused room smelled like stale water, rust and mildew. She threw Ash a look of disgust as she gripped the handles of the roaster.
Then she saw her sweet potatoes--the top a surprise pool of white goo.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Oh, I finished them,” Ash said. “We’ve gotta have marshmallows.”
“Ash—I was making a different dish than what your mother makes! They weren’t unfinished!”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh well, we’ll get extra sweet sweet potatoes!”
Wrenching back a turkey wing, she poked the flesh. Pink flesh.
“Ash, it’s not done.”
“What‘d’ya mean?’
“What do I mean? The turkey’s simply not done!” She closed her eyes and slumped against the counter.
“I was just trying to help,” Ash sighed. “It’s Christmas, Ginny.”
Ginny felt his arm snake around her waist. She thrust it off.
“It is Christmas. And I’m trying not to get really upset with you.” She shut her eyes until she heard the bang of the kitchen door.
Soon everyone was seated, but herself and Thomas, who’d not yet arrived, but whose seat was across from hers. Her mom sat around the corner from her, she and Allen sharing that head of the table. Tiffany’s husband Don headed the other end and nearly shared his seat with the Christmas tree. Ginny shook her head, thinking how if Ash had his choice of tree, they’d never have fit the table at all.
Ginny gasped; she’d forgotten the butter. Through the sound of her own hurried steps, she heard the knock on the side door. Out the window, she saw the light reflecting off Thomas’s glasses and the taut, side-skewed smile on his face.
“Sorry I’m late.” He hung his head.
“We didn’t start yet,” she smiled uncertainly. “Coat, there,” she motioned to the hooks by the door, then opened the fridge and swung around the door like it was her dance partner, the butter dish in hand a prop. As she hurried ahead of Thomas, her skirt swirling between her ankles nearly tripped her.
As her mother lead the Christmas prayer, Ginny tried to breathe deeply, as Daniella did when stressed.
As strangers passed dishes, Ginny worried that the baked corn was too runny and about the plaster dust on the nativity set on the mantle. (Thomas had offered to clean all his mess, but Ginny had been more eager to get him out of her house.) Then she worried what they’d talk about. She’d spent all her worry on the food. She noted Ash had done well with the seating, putting all with or expecting babies together and not splitting family units.
“Hey, Mr. Ash,” said three-year old Jaibee, who was sitting on her knees in her chair, “I can sing Jingle Bells and my ABCs.”
“Well, sing for us,” encouraged Ash. So the little red-head sang in her tiny voice until the close attention wicked it down to a whisper and she turned her head into her mom’s shoulder.
“Ginny, why don’t you sing them the Sunday School ABCs,” said her stepfather. “Tell that eternal E story!”
Ginny felt her cheeks burn. In Allen’s eagerness to love her mother, he took a weird ownership of all her childhood stories.
“No, no!’ Ginny protested.
“What’s he talking about?” Daniella asked.
“It’s really not that interesting,” Ginny rushed, deciding it was better to tell it herself. “There’s a Sunday School ABCs all about Jesus. The final rhyming line was, ‘a home eternally.’ Well, I was really young, so I thought the words were, ‘a home eternal E,’ as in the letter E was given special recognition as the best and everlasting letter, God’s favorite.”
“She drew Es all over her wallpaper,” her mother chimed. “She made a point of telling everyone ‘my name has four E’s in it!’ She wanted her middle name to be changed to Evangeline, and she loved eating eggs, eggplant, beets, and her favorite animal was the eel!”
“Oh, Gin-Gin, that’s so cute!” Daniella gushed, rubbing her starting-to-show belly.
Ginny didn’t dare glance at Thomas. Their relationship pivoted on not getting too personal.
“This is really yummy orange stuff,” a pig-tailed girl said as sweet potatoes oozed between her lips.
“You like them?” Ash asked, winking at Ginny.
Ginny wanted to pinch him.
The kids resounded with assurances that they were the best thing on their plates. Ash’s face bloomed to them like a sunflower tracking the sun.
“But if we’d’a stayed home,” a boy perhaps seven piped up, “we coulda had Spam out of a can. I like Spam better’n bird.” His mother tried to nudge him.
As Ginny took her first bites, conversation moved to baby things.
“Disposables came out right before Ginny was born,” her mother directed to the middle of the table, “but I didn’t give them any bother.”
“Yeah, my mom used cloth, and I plan the same,” Daniella said between bites of mashed potatoes she smoothed into hills of snow with her lips. Ginny noticed anew how beautiful she was, though she didn’t need the silver eyeliner. Daniella had let her hair go natural brown after years of coloring it, and it made her Italian skin tone rich and luminous.
“Oh Lord,” Tiffany exclaimed. “If I had to wash diapers for the past fifteen years, someone would have to put me in my grave.”
“They’re easier now,” Daniella said. “My sister swears by them, and now they’ve got ones with Velcro or snaps. No more pins.”
“But you still have to wash them, right?” Tiffany asked. “Not for me.”
“Well, we think it’s worth the benefits,” Daniella shrugged.
“Benefits?” Ruby asked. As Daniela enumerated the health and environmental benefits of using cloth, Tiffany interjected.
“The environment?” Tiffany asked. “I don’t have time to worry about that, and I don’t think we need to anyway,” she said, brushing her brassy hair off the face of her newborn who was sleeping in a wrap swaddled to her chest.
“I’m curious why you think that,” Thomas said.
“Well,” Tiffany said without hesitation, “we don’t put much stock in anything you can’t weigh, measure and paint John Deere green, but I think if there is a God, we can’t destroy his world.” Ginny could almost hear Pap saying “Worrying about the environment is for atheist idiots who haven’t read the end of the book. Only God can destroy this world.”
Thomas responded, “But, accepting Revelation as literal, who’s to say that precludes our ability to severely maim the earth or destroy a large percentage of the inhabitants beforehand?”
“Ooh, that’s a good point.” Daniella pondered. “There are many degrees of decline between health and death.”
Tiffany’s baby cried, and she began to move out of her chair, lips a taut line.
“I agree with Tiffany,” Ash rushed. “He’s not going to let us live on an earth covered with soiled disposable diapers.” Just like Ash, Ginny thought, missing the point.
“But,” Daniella said, “in third world countries that’s already true.”
“That’s like all the worry about a nucular holocaust,” her stepfather laughed. “In my day, people protested it, fearing we could do each other off in some mishap. But we can’t nuke the whole world; God will destroy the earth, not us.”
“But should we make choices to destroy portions of the world and unleash perilous health consequences we can’t reharness?” Thomas asked.
Ginny felt like warning Allen that he was arguing with a PhD in the philosophy of ethics. Her stepfather used logic like a four year old, repeating an unsound point as if repetition could change its veracity. But as Allen smacked his lips against his fork and jabbed it in the air to enumerate his points, she wished she had warned Thomas of Allen.
“Yes, but again,” Thomas responded patiently. “where does the Bible promise the world will function in health until the last day? Parts of our world are dying every day. We’re reaping consequences already. Aren’t we responsible for our choices?”
“I just wish,” Ash smiled and brushed his hands together, washing his hands of the discussion. “that we’d lived in the good ol’ days—the fifties and sixties.”
“The good ol’ fifties and sixties?” Ginny didn’t withhold her incredulity or her annoyance. “That’s one of my pet peeves—that level of ignorance! Even with 9-11, we are living in safer times compared to the Cold War with people building underground shelters.” Ginny felt tension in her fingers as her gestures grew larger. “And the sixties—well, that was the most colossally dangerous decade of the earth’s existence! And furthermore—”
Just then Ruby’s baby whapped Thomas’ drink into Allen’s plate, and everyone made much of it, seeming relieved for a change in subject.
I wrote here about how I felt after reading this to others...I was tempted to give up on the novel...
No comments:
Post a Comment