About Books: The Search

 

One of my interests is the Middle Ages. The problem is, I’m a bit lazy about research. The result is that anything with a medieval flavor to it ends up being fantasy.

I’m okay with that. Fantasy is popular.

So it should come as no surprise that I have written – albeit several years ago – a fantasy novel with kings, queens, princes, pirates a haunted woods, a boy who may or may not be fae and a quest. As soon as I get a cover, I’ll be publishing it – so if you know someone interested in doing book covers, let me know.

I also like studying foreign languages. At one point I started to learn Russian, but then I returned to college full time, and couldn’t continue my foreign language studies.

When I finished my college studies, I was interested in learning Welsh. While I can say more things in Russian – perhaps 20 things, and I still don’t know how to ask for the bathroom – I really like the interesting spellings and pronunciations of Welsh. I’m probably the biggest non-Welsh advocate for the Welsh language going –at least in America.

It should come as no surprise that I’ve not only used my love of languages, but also put a bit of Welsh spelling and Russian pronunciation in a blender in order to create names and places in my fantasy world. A writer needs a hook to stand out from other writers. (And don’t worry, there’s a pronunciation guide at the end of the book.)

The British Royal family in the 1980s and ‘90s kind of sparked the writing of this book. My being left-handed also played a role.

Imagine a place where left-handed people learn to read and write upside down and backwards. (Ink, you know. And so they can take dictation so that the person dictating can read it at the same time.) 

Their scarcity makes them prized. The fact that they can master writing upside down and backwards, resulting in beautiful penmanship means that they are the only people in this kingdom who can become scribes.

Now imagine that one of the best scribes is the second son of the king. 

This sort of thing doesn’t usually happen. In fact, when he is made master scribe of the kingdom, there is some grumbling from masters and journeymen alike. Having a member of the royal family as a scribe has never been done before.

The industriousness of his youngest child makes it all the more painful for the king to discover that the heir is a slacker. He thinks nothing of throwing money around for the entertainment of his friends, but also doesn’t care that anyone can best him in any of the studies or weapons he’s supposed to have mastered – including his younger brother. Even his twin sister can beat him at most things.

Oddities don’t end there. In this kingdom, the Princess twin sister of the heir would become the heir should anything happen to her brother. In fact, if she’d been firstborn, she would have been the heir. 

While this is no big thing in the 21^st century, in the mid-1990s, when the tale was first written, this was cause for smirks, head shakes and the occasional, “Yeah, right.”

Having been denied things in life for no better reason than the lack of a Y chromosome, I have always been sensitive to fairness. I’ve never been in the “girls are better” camp. I’ve always been in the “we’re all better” camp. 

Just try to deny me something for no better reason than I’m “just a girl” and you’ll discover that fencing and kick boxing weren’t wasted on me.

To say the king is irked by his eldest son’s behavior – especially since it had to be brought to his attention by the boy’s instructors – is an understatement. 

He demands the boy relearn every one of his studies, from history of the kingdom to proper use of the bow and arrow to horsemanship, beginning immediately – destroying his chances of a planned liaison with a certain maid, attendance at the next ball and an evening of fun with his cronies. 

The king will hear no excuses. The heir is answerable to whichever instructor has him in his/her charge. Furthermore, he will be addressed as a commoner until he learns his skills, and failure to do so will result in his being disinherited.

Needless to say, the heir isn’t happy.

As the story progresses, an accident occurs in which the heir is injured. During his recovery, he decides he must go on Search.

Search is dangerous. One has a horse and whatever food, clothing, weapons and other goods one can carry on said horse. The searcher enters the great woods looking for whatever he is led to. 

Many don’t return. Those who do are never quite the same. But no member of the Royal Family has ever gone on search. It isn’t certain they are allowed to. But the heir insists, threatening to sneak off if he isn’t allowed to go.

The quest is very much a D&D activity. As such, it would be recognized by gamers as well as historians. That is what the Search is, without the dice. The heir’s adventures on Search are very much "real life in a Medieval world" activities – or at least the sort of thing we’ve seen in movies.

The heir’s ultimate fate and his true character are brought out in how he handles his fate.

I Wish

 

 

Ancestry.com is a wonderful thing, something I never expected anything from except perhaps to discover a few ancestors. It delivered so much more than that.

My parents’ generation of our family all grew up in South Philadelphia, second generation Americans. They were city kids, a bit more streetwise than I ever was, but then, I was the protected female offspring who wasn’t allowed to do many of the things my brothers were.

When my parents’ generation grew up, they all moved out to the suburbs. Most of those relatives moved to Delaware County, PA. My parents moved to Bucks County, on the other side of Philadelphia, instead. Whenever he was asked why he didn’t move to Delaware County, my father would reply – with a bit of truth as well as irony – “Because it’s too damned close to the relatives.”

Granted my parents grew up a block away from each other, and their cousins – my dad had many – all lived a block or two from each other. You couldn’t walk to the corner store – or the corner bar – without bumping into a relative. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing.

When I grew up, the relatives barely knew my brothers and me, other than what we looked like from the annual Christmas card, where the three of us were posed in some scene (Santa’s elves, flying in spaceships over the city, delivering Christmas wreaths in the snow while a ceramic deer looked on).

We visited some of the relatives once or twice a year, and others a few times in my lifetime, but they seldom, if ever, came to our house. When they did, they looked at us and our surroundings as if they were visiting a strange planet and we were the resident aliens.

Even though they lived in the suburbs, as did we, their neighborhoods had sidewalks; ours did not. Our neighborhood had summer homes on stilts, and those houses had outhouses; they had weekly streetcleaners coming down the street. Even though we didn’t live on or near a farm, some neighbors had chickens and roosters, and one had ducks. Our area was really more rural than suburban.

All of my grandparents lived in the city. They were first generation Americans whose parents came from Irish stock. My mother’s parents had both died long before I came along, so my dad’s parents were the only grandparents I ever knew.

I’m sure if I’d asked my grandfather, he would have told me about his family. He was a good one for a story. But he had a stroke when I was about 9, and was difficult to understand after that, so by the time I was old enough to think of the questions, he couldn’t give the answers. He died when I was 10.

My grandmother never seemed to want to talk about anything to do with Ireland beyond saying her parents were born and raised in Ireland – especially if you mentioned that her maiden name was English. Since we only visited them on a few holidays a year, and my grandmother, after feeding us kids milk and some of her wonderful cake, got busy with making dinner and talking with my mother, there never seemed to be a chance to sit down with her and find out the family history. By the time I was old enough to want to delve into family history, she was living with my uncle’s family and later was in a nursing home, so I couldn’t really get information from her.

I heard that someone had had a family tree done – this was in the days before the internet – and I set about getting a copy. First I was told my father’s aunt – the only remaining one on his father’s side – had it. I wrote to her, and her reply was wonderful. 

She referred to me as her namesake – I wasn’t. We didn’t spell our first names the same way, and my mother was adamant that I had not been named for her, of all people. She was delighted that I had written, and knew all sorts of things about me, apparently from other relatives. She didn’t have the family tree. She said one of my uncles had it, so I wrote to him, and he sent a copy.

I wish I’d asked the aunt if I could come visit her. It didn’t matter to me that other people in the family didn’t like her – my mother said that although the woman was childless, she told everyone else how to raise their children. I would like to have spent an afternoon with her and learned what she knew of the family history. But I didn’t think of it until years later when I actually had a car, and by then she was dead.

I always knew my mother’s family better than my father’s because we visited them more often. My mother’s identical twin sister was a prolific producer of children, so we were at their house at least once a year, and her other sister lived near them. My mother’s brother lived in the outskirts of the city, not far from us. I knew the stories, but when it came to the people, my knowledge ended with my mother’s grandparents.

Armed with the family tree from my dad’s side, I had a bit more history, but without the stories. Our family had actually married into part of the family tree that went back several more generations to a Lord Someone-or-other.

I had always assumed my family came over because of the Great Hunger (what most people mistakenly call the Famine). I was wrong. They didn’t leave Ireland until the late 1880s.  Having survived two potato crop failures, I wondered why they left.

With the advent of the internet and Ancestry, I got some of my answers. They did not come from the website itself; they came from an email on Ancestry from someone who turned out to be a third cousin.

Because of that email, I had the opportunity to meet both the sender and many other third cousins who live in England and Northern Ireland. I am Facebook friends with many of them. I consider that knowledge and those friendships a gift.

I love discovering relatives I never knew I had. And when I have the opportunity to meet them, it’s thrilling to me.

Recently, I met another of the distant cousins with whom I’m Facebook friends.

On my last trip to the UK, I didn’t ask anyone over there if we could get together because, having done so before, and having been met with excuses from a few, I thought perhaps I was being a bother, and they weren’t as interested in our meeting as I was.

I was surprised when two of the cousins I’d met before wanted to get together. But even more surprising was that another that I hadn’t met before reached out to see if we could meet. It surprised me, then, toward the end of our afternoon together that she said, “Well, I guess you can cross me off your list now.” I hope she was joking. I am never quite sure, when people say things like that, whether or not they’re serious. I genuinely liked her, and would be happy to get together again, just as I was very happy to get together again with the other two cousins.

The thing I haven’t yet discovered is why everyone else from our family who left Ireland went to England, while my direct ancestors came to America. I wonder, if someone asked them why they didn’t go to England if they would’ve said, “Because it’s too damned close to the relatives!” But so far, I haven’t discovered a reason.

I would love to be able to afford to get the kind of in-depth family history that people who appear on Finding Your Roots get.  It’s possible, but I think I’d have to win the lottery to be able to do it. Of course, they wouldn’t be able to surprise me with a famous relative. I already know about and have met the Broadway actress in the family.

About Books: Wolfbane

 

 

Have you ever read a story and thought, “I could write that better!”

Perhaps not the entire story, but certain aspects of it. While that may sound terribly conceited, sometimes an author doesn’t quite hit the mark, and it can be frustrating for the reader, especially if it’s a favorite genre.

This was the case when I read Stephen R. Donaldson’s first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant trilogy, a series about a man with Hanson’s disease.

In this novel, Covenant slips into and out of an alternate world. In this world, he is free from his disease. His wedding band is made of white gold, and the people in this world believe that the white gold wielder has special powers. Thomas is reluctant to use these powers, and only when he is put in a situation where he has no choice does he ever use them and save the day.

I found Covenant to be a bit of a drama queen over the white gold. I understood why his wife left him. He was annoying and prone to whining, and overall not a very good role model for a hero.

At the time I believed you should plug through a novel in a series because the second one or third one might just get better.

I was wrong. The time spent reading those novels is time I will never get back. Yet, it wasn’t a worthless exercise. As I read the books – I’m told the author improved with subsequent novels, but after an entire trilogy, I felt he had his chance and he blew it – I kept thinking of how I would have done things differently.

As far as I was concerned, Thomas Covenant took himself far too seriously. True, Hansen’s disease is no laughing matter, but landing in a place where you’re completely free of disease is a chance to show a little humor.

A source for ideas was, of course, The Twilight Zone. Slipping into an alternate universe seems perfectly normal to anyone who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s watching Rod Serling’s weekly program. There was always the possibility for your consideration of this sort of occurrence actually happening.

And of course, the individual slipping into the universe would be alleviated from some illness or other difficulty. Of course, one must pay the piper, so to speak, and a price of some sort would be exacted.

I had seen many Twilight Zone episodes where being in a strange place resulted in meetings with monsters or worse. But the characters were plucky, and even if they screamed at first, they pulled themselves together and solved their problem – unless they were eaten by the monsters.

So, putting Rod Serling and Stephen R. Donaldson in a blender with some strawberries and a shot of vodka, not to mention late night radio, I created my own story. And before you take umbrage at my “stealing” an idea from elsewhere, even Shakespeare’s work is of questionable originality.

I offer for your consideration: Wolfbane.

Enter Tristan Devereaux, overnight disc jockey on a progressive rock station in the 1980s. Still in his 20s, he has everything going for him until he develops an illness the doctors can’t figure out. Something is wrong with his blood, a disease so rare it doesn’t even have a name. But until they can figure out what to do for him, his best option is to receive transfusions periodically.

Tris is a free spirit who doesn’t want to be tied down, especially with medical issues. He believes he is owed as long a life as most other people. He’s lived his life as a fairly decent person: not perfect, but not a trouble-maker, either. He certainly shouldn’t die before his own parents.

He pulls inward and starts avoiding many of his friends just to keep them from realizing he’s ill. As a way to lighten the mood, because his illness requires blood transfusions, he calls his late night radio show, “Vampires into the night.” Unfortunately, there aren’t any Vampire songs, so he begins his program each evening with “Werewolves of London.” In the 1980s creatures of the night were as in vogue as rock bands that looked like the members were vampires or werewolves.

One night, tired and in need of blood, he stumbles in his living room and falls to the floor. A growl coming from nearby alerts him to the fact that suddenly he is no longer in his living room, but in a woods somewhere, and a wolf is chasing him. The wolf is huge and gaining on him. He has no weapon, so he runs to a tree with low enough branches to climb up, and scurries up the tree high enough to keep the wolf from reaching him.

The wolf jumps and snaps, snarls and paces, but he can’t reach Tris. The young man doesn’t understand why the wolf wouldn’t just get tired and go away. But this wolf is on a mission, and eventually settles on the ground below the tree.

Looking around, Tris sees no one who might be able to help him. Night is coming, and he doesn’t want to spend it in a tree. After a while, as he’s trying to come up with a solution of what to do, he realizes he’s not wearing the clothes he came home from work in, but an outfit that looks more like something from a Robin Hood movie. He didn’t have time to think about how that happened, but he begins to search for pockets in his clothes, to see if he has anything that might help. He finds a dagger.

The dagger isn’t much, and he doesn’t think it’s big enough to kill the massive wolf below him. He moves to the lowest branch, and the wolf appears to be sleeping. Tris has to do something. Without thinking he jumps down from the tree, landing squarely on the wolf, and jams the dagger into its neck. Then he does something he can’t believe: he begins drinking the wolf’s blood as the wolf struggles to get free.

Tris doesn’t have time to be horrified by his own actions. He works instinctively to get the blood he desperately needs.

Finally, the wolf stops struggling, and Tris is sated. He sits up, finally realizing what he’s done, and glad that there was no one to see him. He wipes his mouth, cleans off the dagger and is about to go see if he can find a town or people somewhere to help him.

He’s kind of amused at his decision because he believes he’s still on the floor of his apartment, and this is all a dream. He doesn’t need to do anything, just let the dream move at its own pace.

Gradually he becomes aware that he’s not alone. One by one, people who are all several inches shorter than him, all wearing the same drab garments, come out from behind trees and bushes to surround him. Once a large group has gathered, they begin haling him as the Wolfbane, the killer of the wolf that has been terrorizing their village for months. A cheer goes up, and they heap praises on him.

At first startled, he quickly becomes annoyed because he’s just spent a few hours in a tree, and realizes these people, whoever they are, have been hiding and watching him all this time without anyone lifting a finger to help him.

Finally, they manage to cajole him into returning with them to their village so they can welcome him properly.

The whole episode strikes him as the craziest dream he’s ever had, but since it is a dream, he goes along with it.

It has to be a dream. These people are plain, simple folk who seem to live in the Middle Ages, yet their houses have holographic fireplaces that actually give off heat, sophisticated kitchens with heating and electrical sources he can’t figure out. They have a town council and a town witch. In one sense they seem modern, yet they don’t understand the simplest ideas of 20^th century living. But it’s his dream, so he’s going to run with it.

Before he can figure out the ins and outs of this new society, he wakes up in a hospital, and everyone wants to know where he’s been for the past few days. People had gone to his apartment, but he wasn’t there until that morning, when they found him lying on the floor, barely alive.

He tried to give evasive answers. He knows if he tells the truth, they’ll assume he’s crazy, but he has to tell them something. He claims he doesn’t know, and they think he’s as mad as they would have thought if he’d told them the truth.

He does finally tell someone about his adventure, and even though they don’t believe it, they continue to try to help.

Over the next several months, he has a few more experiences with this alternate world. He tries to find things there that wouldn’t be in his 1980s world, and tries to bring things back with him to prove he isn’t mad. He develops relationships with the townsfolk, both good and bad, and tries to convince his friends there is another world he goes to.

His doctor doesn’t understand when he disappears and comes back seemingly well. He confides in her about the strange village, and insists he doesn’t believe it himself, that it’s just a dream. Yet he is well when he’s there, and in the real world, he’s quickly losing ground to his disease.

He finally tells her he’s decided that he’s going to go permanently to the dream village, where he can live a different sort of life than he ever visualized, but one where he’s no longer the slave to an illness. And yes, later I used a similar plot twist in the Unicorn novels.

Since she can’t talk him out of his decision, she decides wants to witness his going. He seems to fade as he’s lying in a certain spot on the living room floor.

But just deciding to move to an alternate universe isn’t as easy as it might seem. Outside the village, a pack of wolves, brothers to the one he killed, have come for revenge. If the disease doesn’t kill him, the wolves might.

How does it end? You’ll have to wait until the book is published.

I Learned the Truth at 17

 

 

When I was a kid, I thought 17 was going to be the most fantastic age. I was wrong.

While it wasn’t horrible, it was not what I had hoped.

I turned 17 near the end of 11^th grade, and most of 12^th grade made up the rest. It’s what people think of as a prime age, when people are dating and attending proms, and generally making high school memories. I wish that had been my experience.

My junior prom was less than ideal. With little to no possibility of a date, and facing the prospect of the humiliating horror of not attending the prom – people allowed to attend the prom stag have no idea of the shame involved in missing the prom at the time,  and we couldn’t attend without a date – my mother negotiated with one of her friends for her son to be my date. All I had to do was call him and ask.

All?  They had no idea what they were asking. I barely knew the boy. He was cute, and I, an introvert, had to make a phone call and speak to him! The hours of rehearsing what I was going to say, what I would say if someone else answered, the calming of my shaking hands, can only be imagined.

Finally, I worked up my nerve, and when I asked him the stammered question, he said, “No, I don’t think so.”

My response? An embarrassed, “Okay, bye.”

In a flood of embarrassed tears, I screamed at my mother for setting me up for such humiliation. How could anyone say he’d go with me, and then have this happen?

Now, not only would I be humiliated before my classmates for not attending the prom, I had embarrassed myself by even having a moment of thinking I could actually experience the same things my peers did. Yet again it was, Mother, they don’t like me.

A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was his mother, who spoke with my mother. Then they wanted me to talk to him. Oh, no! I would probably never be able to look at him again, much less speak to him. It was too humiliating.

My mother finally talked me into – coerced me into – taking the phone. The boy in question told me he would go. According to him – I suspect this was a parental excuse concocted for the occasion – he thought I said the senior prom, and he didn’t want to wear a tuxedo. Since it was semi-formal and only required a regular suit, he would go. He still didn’t sound thrilled, so I thought he’d probably been the victim of the same sort of coercion I’d had to make me talk to him on the phone.

I would be going to the junior prom. I was fine with my mother making my dress – I picked out the pattern and the colors – and I thought everything would be fine.

But this was 17. Since my date was a year younger than I was, he wasn’t quite 16, or at least didn’t yet have a driver’s license. My parents held the archaic notion that the girl couldn’t possibly drive on a date. So, my father drove us there, and would pick us up at the end. At least no one I knew noticed.

Good times the rest of the night, right? Um, no.

My date wouldn’t dance with me on claims of a bad back (at 15?). I managed to cajole him into dancing the slow dances with me, at least.

At one point I went to the ladies’ room. When I came back into the school cafeteria, where the dance was taking place, I was accosted by a couple of my friends, who pulled me out into the hallway.

“Did you know your date is telling everyone he’s in ninth grade?” they asked.

I couldn’t imagine how that would come up in conversation. “He is,” I replied.

“You’re dating someone two years younger than you?” they asked, horrified.

It shouldn’t have mattered. At least I had a date. I should have left it at that. But out of embarrassment at their attitude I said, “No, he’s only a year younger. He was left back somewhere along the line.”

I was in first track, one of the “smart” kids. The idea that I was on a date with someone who had been left back, no matter when, was worse than the fact that he was younger, given the prejudice of the day. It seemed nothing I could do or say met with approval.

When I returned to my date, I asked why he had told people that. He shrugged. It was obviously no big deal to him. Or maybe he thought it was cool being a Freshman at the Junior prom.

That wasn’t the end of Murphy’s Law’s interference in my attendance at the Junior prom.

When the prom ended, my dad was nowhere to be found. My date and I waited inside the school as everyone else went to their cars and presumably, home.

Still, we waited.

I went to the payphone with a borrowed dime and made a reversed charges call home. My father had fallen asleep, and my mother, who “couldn’t sleep if any of us was out,” hadn’t woken him up, since she was probably waiting up asleep.

I was used to being the forgotten child in elementary school, when my father frequently picked me up late from choir practice because he was waiting for my brother to finish gymnastics practice and shower before taking him home. But my brother was in college! I was the only child left at home, and they still forgot me!

We were asked to wait outside because the cleanup crew had to do their thing.

Finally, about half an hour after everyone else had gone, my father arrived.

Being 17 wasn’t all bad. I went to Dorney Park and Seaside Heights in the summer, and had fun despite sunburn – high SPF sun blocks weren’t a thing then.

And then there was Senior year.

Near the beginning of the year we received our school rings. Mass, a day of following superstitious ring-turning traditions and a dance that night were the order of the day.

Knowing this was coming, I enlisted the help of the leader of the church guitar group to which I belonged, to interest one of the other members in asking me to the dance. He, like me, had about a zero chance of a date, so by asking me, he ensured that we both could go.

Finally, my luck was changing. My friends and I sat at lunch taking about who we were going to the dance with, what we were wearing, and all the details involved.

He came to my house for pictures that evening, and then we went to his house for the same before leaving for the dance.

But Murphy hadn’t finished with me yet. Or maybe it was the full moon.

Ten minutes before we reached the school where the dance was held, we came to a red light. My date didn’t notice it was red. He also didn’t notice the car stopped at it until I yelled. Too late. The car slammed into the one stopped at the light, knocking it across the intersection.

These were the days before mandatory seat belts, padded dashboards and airbags. My date had braces on his teeth. His face hit the steering wheel, breaking the braces and sending the wires into his gums. I flew forward, breaking the windshield with my head. My knees hitting the bottom of the dashboard kept me from going through the windshield.

Needless to say, we didn’t make the dance. Instead, we spent the night in the emergency room, which was probably more fun. It was very crowded. The nurses insisted that was due to the full moon.

After being gowned and taken to x-ray, I got to lie on a gurney in the hallway for lack of more private space. At one point, a knifing victim decided to leave, and made it as far as my gurney before he passed out and fell to the floor.

While I was treated with kid gloves, probably due to having come in by ambulance, my date was ignored because his only injury was due to his braces. Apparently, if they touched him and he lost any teeth, the hospital would be held liable.

When my parents arrived, my mother was livid that they were ignoring my date. When they explained why, my mother asked for a wet washcloth. She had my date wipe the blood off his face, then she set about cleaning any blood from his shirt so stains wouldn’t set in.

I had only a mild concussion, so no real cause for concern when there was a blood-stained shirt to take care of.

They let us both go home, and gave my parents a fact-sheet of things to check for.

At the time, concussions weren’t treated the way they are now. I returned to school on Monday. I had 10 years perfect attendance, and I wasn’t about to ruin that over a bump on the head.

My friends asked where I was Friday night. When I told them, they didn’t believe me. They assumed I’d made up a story because I didn’t have a date – and these were my friends! I had to take one girl’s hand and run it across the bump on my forehead before she believed me. (It didn’t show because of my bangs.)

At least Senior prom, when I was 18, didn’t involve any drama on my part. My date for the ill-fated ring dance was also my date for the prom. We arrived without incident – we went with two other friends, one of whom drove. Although he was no more willing to dance than my Junior prom date had been, we sat at a table with friends and had a good time.

There was plenty of drama that night, but none of it had to do with my date or me, so we simply got to watch.

It was nice to have something happen where Mr. Murphy wasn’t invited.

 

About Books: The Invisible Twin

 

This book was the one that took me the longest to write. It was two years or so in the making. I don’t know why it took so long. Maybe I simply wanted to make sure everything was accurate. I had a vague idea what happens and much of the information is gleaned from diaries. That meant that I had to make diary entries as well as writing a novel. The novel is in two parts.

My motivation for writing this one was exploring the relationship between identical twins. What happens when one dies? How does the other learn to cope?

As the child of an identical twin, I had a unique glimpse into that world. There are things about twins that singles don’t generally encounter. I noticed things about my mother and my aunt as I grew up, and heard some of the silly questions they were asked.

People frequently asked me, once they found out my mother was a twin, how I could tell them apart. That was easy. I never thought they looked all that much alike. I never mistook one for the other when our families were together, although occasionally a couple of my cousins did.

My mother and her sister were frequently asked what it was like to be a twin. I found that to be a strange question. How would a twin know what it’s like not to be a twin?

Some twins experience something where one is considered the sympathetic twin. This is the phenomenon in which one twin feels pain or some other sensation when something happens to the other twin. My mother felt labor pains every time my aunt had a baby. And my aunt’s varicose veins often gave her – and my mother – trouble. My mother’s legs would ache, and it had nothing to do with anything she was doing. She’d call my aunt and tell her to sit down and put her feet up. My family always found it funny. And my mother always knew when something happened to my aunt.

In fact, I used to worry about what would happen if my aunt died first. That could have dire consequences. My mother died about six years before my aunt, so we never found out if death had an effect.

Only when my aunt was in her 70s or 80s did I discover that she sometimes experienced pain when my mother was hurt. Once, when my mother smashed her knee cap, my aunt responded to being told with, “So that’s why my knee was bothering me.” But it seemed, from what she told me, the sensation wasn’t as great as it was for my mother.

Twins also, as babies, tend to develop their own special language. They understand each other when they speak what seems to others like gibberish. Most outgrow this in their first few years, and while it may delay regular speech a little, they learn to talk like everyone else.

Twins have their own individual personalities. For however identical they may be, there are differences, even in looks. I always thought my aunt looked slightly more like her father’s side of the family, while my mother looked more like their mother’s side, yet they were, indeed, identical. Even looking at their baby pictures, I could tell which one was which.

My mother was somewhat of an introvert. My aunt was an extrovert. They had different friends, although some were the same. And even after not seeing each other for a time, they could pick up the conversation as if only minutes had passed. They had certain looks they gave each other as a kind of unspoken code.

While some identical twins are what people sometimes call “mirror image” twins, where one is left-handed and the other is right handed, my mother and her sister were not. My aunt did say once that she thought she should’ve been left-handed. Of course, they grew up in an era where that wasn’t tolerated.

Armed with this information, I knew how characters who were twins would behave.

My twins are teenage boys who live in Wales, Kit (Christopher) and Bryn. At the start of the story they’re just shy of 18, and on their way to a party, a rare one where friends of both of them will be in attendance. Just before they reach the house where the party is, they’re in an accident. Kit is hurt; Bryn doesn’t survive.

Through a series of flashbacks to when they were between 15 and 17, as well as parts of Bryn’s journal, Bryn is revealed, and we learn the relationship between the boys, their hopes, dreams, similarities and differences.

The boys have a way of identifying people who only hang around them because they’re twins: twin groupies. Most are harmless, if annoying, but a few are less than friendly, and use one or both of the boys for their own purposes.

Many people are devastated by Bryn’s death, none more so than Kit. The entire family has difficulty for a while, barely managing to cope. They put up a front for Kit’s benefit. But Kit isn’t about to wallow in self-pity. He has to learn to cope in the world without Bryn, and seeks out help on his own.

Kit acts in the school plays, and always planned to become a professional actor. Bryn wanted to be a footballer, possibly for Manchester United if he was good enough.

The story is set in the 1980s, with all of the hair, makeup and music of the time. Each chapter is titled with a song from the British top 40 charts from the week in the 1980s in which that chapter takes place.

Kit’s first challenge after losing Bryn is to finish his final year in sixth form. He takes his A Levels (Something like SATs) over the objections of his parents, who think he’s been through too much to pass. They encourage him to wait. Typical of a 17-year-old, he’s not about to listen.

While most are supportive of him, he has a few people who end up playing games with him. He discovers his own resilience, and that many of Bryn’s sports friends actually like him.

The second part of the story revolves around his life in university and beyond and the many starts and stops in his healing process. He believes it’s important for him to succeed, not just for himself, but for his brother, too.

He tries to keep the fact that he had a brother who died a secret, with some disastrous results. He doesn’t want the pity. He discovers that’s only a momentary experience compared to backlash from people who believe he’d lied to them.

While he studies to become an actor, his instructors, while trying to hone his acting skills,  inadvertently give him suggestions that, at times, wreak havoc with his real life.

Through the roles he eventually gets, he manages to move forward with his life, and, he hopes, make Bryn proud.

Mute

 

I’ve always been teased. 

My dad always had various names for people other than their given name. That wasn’t unusual. But when the Chatty Cathy doll came out and I asked for one, he said, “We already have one,” meaning me. Everyone else laughed. I was hurt. And I never got the doll.

I had lots of dolls I didn’t ask for. I combed their hair until they were nearly bald, but otherwise took care of them. Some were kind of ugly, as far as I was concerned, but they were what I had, so that’s what I played with.

Tiny Tears was probably my first name doll. I’m not sure whether or not I wanted her, but she was a baby doll, and that’s what my mother thought would be good for me.

My mother didn’t often let me feed my dolls water because they all wet themselves, and she didn't like wet doll clothes all over. The difference with Tiny Tears was that if you fed her water, she cried “real tears,” too.

Of course, water wasn’t the same as milk. Since real babies drank milk, I wanted something that looked like milk. In my quest for something resembling reality, I ground up chalk and mixed it with the water. This was fine for all of the dolls except Tiny Tears. I didn’t realize, as a small child, that the chalk would also go to her eyes. As a result, I had the only Tiny Tears with cataracts.

 

                                                               
Chatty Cathy was a different story. You didn’t feed her. She actually talked. She came with a choice of blonde or dark hair, rather than the dull orange most of my dolls had. This was a chance to actually have a doll with dark hair like me. But my dad said no because I was the Chatty Cathy of the house. And that hurt. (Chatty Cathy Christmas Ornament, pictured above)

My mother used to say I was quiet. Of course, as I got older, people would tell me I talked a lot. Too much. Do you ever shut up? I know often I would start to say something and someone usually interrupted me before I could finish a sentence, and no matter how many times I attempted to tell them what I was trying to say, I was always interrupted, and never got to finish. That’s probably why I prefer being by myself.

I didn’t have friends. Oh, yes, there was a girl everyone called my friend, who lived across the street. She was a year and a half younger, which when I was four, made her 2 ½. Not someone to socially interact with. I played alone most of the time, unless my brothers were available.

That’s the only reason I was interested in dolls. They were my friends. I could line them up on chairs and pretend they were the audience, and I’d be a rock star. Or they were the patients when I played hospital. Or I’d choose one or two to be my sidekick for some game I was playing. They were never my “children.”

I don’t think I chatted all that much. I wanted to participate in the family chatter at the dinner table, but I was usually told to be quiet because I didn’t know anything. My mother told me once that she used to come in to my play room or out in the back yard to check on me to make sure I wasn’t dead because I was so quiet in my play. I “talked” my dolls in my head because I thought only crazy people talked to dolls or talked out loud pretending to be the doll answering.

I think, looking back on it, that my dad was just teasing – they never got me that doll! – but I didn’t know that then. He hurt my feelings, and no one seemed to care. I don’t think my parents considered much that small children have feelings.

My brothers also called me names. I was “Hey Ugly,” or “Hey Stupid” for no better reason than I was the youngest and fair game. But that’s what brothers do, so I’m told.

I know I had lots of questions as a small child, but I didn’t ask them. If I asked my mother something, she’d reply with, “Because I’m your mother, and I said so.” My brother, Rob would say I didn’t know things because I was stupid. I knew I wouldn’t be enlightened by my mother, and I didn’t want my brother to think I was stupid. So I kept my questions to myself, and tried to figure out answers that made sense to me. They were wrong, and to an adult me, they were hilarious, but my answers weren’t really a help to child me.

My mother always thought I was being a smart-Alec when I would look at the sky and the ground before crossing the street, but I was looking up and down, just like she said.

Often, since I didn’t have friends, I created friends in my head. I would have a whole imaginary scenario set up, and often forgot that others didn’t know about it. I’d make a comment based on my imaginary play, and people – especially my peers once I went to school – looked at me oddly and moved away from me.

School was supposed to be an amazing wonderland where I would not only learn to read, but also have lots of friends. It didn’t go quite that way.

I progressed through school with an attention deficit and mild dyslexia. They didn’t diagnose things like that when I was in school – especially not in parochial school – much less do anything about it. And I was considered fairly smart, so every problem was blamed on my being left-handed. My mother, working with me on reading, got me through learning to read.  Since the letters in the words were so large and the words were widely spaced, it wasn’t that difficult, once I got the hang of reading frontwards.

Problems didn’t show up until third or fourth grade when letters were smaller and more closely spaced. But by then I had figured out compensations that allowed me to cover. Still, I’ve always read slower than my peers because I have difficulty going from one line to the next, and sometimes the words move around.

Because we never printed, but used cursive handwriting, I was never found out because letter reversals weren’t a possibility. If they’d looked at my printing, they would have seen several reversals. But since we didn’t use printing in school, it didn’t matter.

By about 6^th or 7^th grade, I only had two reversals left, z and Q. I figured out a way to test the direction of z. Write Zorro, with the orro on the bottom line of the z. If the z came first, it was done correctly, and I could erase the other letters. If the o came first, I needed to erase everything and make the z the other way. Q, I never found a way to fix. Unless I had a Q to look at, it was a guess, and still is. I would stress over where the bottom line went. Finally, I’d just put it anywhere. Once done, it was always wrong.

I’ve now adopted that as my unique Q, and I don’t care. I’ve also been told my check marks are backwards. Until I was in college, I didn’t know there was a backwards or forwards for a check mark. I don’t care enough about them to fix them. It’s another signature thing I do.

My mother always complained about my handwriting. So did my teachers. I was doing the best I could, but, like art, it didn’t come easily to me, like math or English. I still get mixed reviews. My husband thinks my handwriting is pretty but illegible. Other people seem to be able to read it just fine. Of course, there are fewer and fewer people who can read cursive, so I suppose it’s better that most written things I have to give people are typed.

I was considered fairly intelligent at school, but I had no social skills. The first day, I was put in line with a sea of children, most of whom were crying. I didn’t know whether or not I was supposed to cry, since I didn’t know why they were crying. I knew from my mother that you weren’t allowed to cry without a reason. One of her favorite sayings was, “If you don’t stop that crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.” So I stood there, mute, wondering if I would get into trouble for not crying. I was relieved, once we entered the building, that the others had stopped crying by then, and I didn’t get into trouble.

Our first recess was a revelation to me. We had to line up with partners. There were two girls in my class that I knew. One, who lived in my neighborhood, and apparently liked first grade so much she was doing it for a second time, didn’t like me. Her dislike – and the way she plagued me the entire year – was because of something that happened a few years earlier at home, where she was forbidden by my mother to come anywhere near me.  As a result, she did her best to get me into trouble whenever she could.

The other girl I knew from church. But she was on the other side of the room, since her last name was near the beginning of the alphabet. So, I had to pick someone near me in order to have a partner before everyone was taken.

The girl in front of me at our desks was cute and littler than me, and she had a name I loved (Debbie). Those were reasons enough to ask her to be my partner. She accepted, and I thought that made her my friend. To my mind, we would play together once we were outside, and be partners in line forever. That’s not what happened.

Once we were outside, Debbie disappeared – apparently, she actually had friends. I wandered around, trying to figure out how to play the various games the other girls were playing – girls and boys were not allowed to play together at my school. I went from group to group asking if I could play until I found a group that didn’t say no. That is how recess worked for me for most of first grade.

I didn’t know why I was rejected, and never did figure that out. Maybe they thought I was ugly, like my brother said. At six, I was very aware of things and people either being pretty or ugly, and I was never told I was pretty, ever. I knew what pretty looked like. I had a cousin with blonde hair and blue eyes, and everyone said she was pretty.

I never went near groups of pretty girls. I knew they wouldn’t play with me.

When recess ended, I again stood next to Debbie, as I did every time we lined up for the next few days. Then my world crashed. One morning as I lined up with Debbie, another girl I didn’t know dashed up and said Debbie wasn’t my partner, she was hers. And she stole Debbie. I had been betrayed, and stood in line without a partner, crushed.

Sister wanted all of us to be partnered. I told her I didn’t have one. She made me go to the back of the line. Apparently, being a failure who didn’t have a partner was the most horrible thing a child could do. Once at the back of the line, she grabbed another girl without a partner, and pulled her next to me. After that, I would just wait until everyone else was lined up, and go to the end of the line, hoping someone would be my partner.

Recess was an odd world. There were all of these children who knew each other. I lived in a neighborhood where most of the girls were older than I was, except for the girl across the street. Just before I started school, another girl, Helen, appeared. She was also a year younger, and lived down the street. She was one of those children my mother called a street urchin because she was allowed to wander anywhere she pleased in the neighborhood, instead of having to stay in her own back yard, like I did. So, when I went to school, Helen essentially stole my only friend in the neighborhood because I wasn’t there. And when I got home, she often didn't play with me because she already had Helen.

The large globs of children tended to play together, and to protect themselves from outsiders, they would cross their game. Then if someone like me showed up, asking to join, they would say the game was crossed, so they couldn’t let me play. No one ever came up to me and asked me to play with them. (Crossing the game wasn’t the religious expression it seemed. “Cross, cross, double cross, nobody else can play but us. If they do, I’ll take my shoe and beat them till they’re black and blue. Cross!” Such a Christian sentiment for little girls in a Catholic school.)

The girl who had repeated first grade often walked up to me in the recess yard and told me I thought I was a big shot. I didn’t. How could you be a big shot if you didn’t have friends? She said that because I usually knew the answers when called on in class, and she didn’t. 

But it didn’t matter. Sister used to put all of the girls who were repeating the grade – I discovered there were several of them –  in charge when she left the room. My nemesis would invariably make me stand in the back of the room, and tell Sister I was talking. Usually,  Sister's habit hadn’t completely left the room  before my nemesis told me to go stand in the back of the room.

When she returned to class, Sister would ask why I was in the back of the room (I was never alone. There were usually several.) I would tell her I didn’t know. My nemesis would say I was talking. I would say I hadn’t been talking, and Sister would tell me to sit down. If I had been lying, there were plenty of people who would have said so.

Our first grade Sister apparently didn’t like boys, so she was severe with them at a time when corporal punishment was the norm in Catholic school.

When I was growing up, there were two churches that I knew of in the area: the Catholic church that I attended, and the Methodist church. The children who attended the Methodist church went to public school, so those of us in Catholic school referred to them as “the Publics.” And there were some Catholics who attended the public school, so they were also Publics. Being referred to as a Catholic or a Public was just a way of acknowledging which school someone attended, and there was no stigma attached. Many of the children in my neighborhood were Publics, so I never got to know them at school. But they were mainly older than I was.

By the end of first grade I somehow managed to have some friends, but I never knew from day to day whether or not they liked me. Sometimes they would let me play with them; sometimes not. The girl who had stolen Debbie from me ended up as one of my friends for a few years, but Debbie was more of an acquaintance for some reason.

I went through elementary school drifting socially from one group to another. The summer of 1964 I had a group of three friends who lived three or four blocks away. Two were in my grade at school. The other was a Public. We played together most of the summer, and often went swimming at one girl’s house. Her older sister - a teenager - belonged to the Beatles fan club, so she got the Christmas recordings the Beatles made each year, and had all sorts of Beatles memorabilia that third graders could only dream about.

We had a game that summer called Beatle wives. We each picked a Beatle. I had George, since Paul was already taken. They would pretend to be married to their chosen Beatle. I didn’t want to be married to anyone, so I pretended to be George. Because we’d listened to the girl’s sister’s Beatles Christmas recordings, where they actually talked, I learned how to do a Liverpool accent. Not bad for a 9-year-old. They were impressed that I could talk like the Beatles. (Only years later did I learn about inflection, British vocabulary and idiomatic phrases.) To anyone from Britain, my Liverpool accent was probably on par with Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney, but my friends and I thought it was good.

The nice thing was, they didn’t mind me being George and not being a girl. Whenever I played with Helen and the girl across the street from me , they would get mad at me for being a boy. They’d try to tell me I had to be a girl, and I didn’t want to be. And I always played the youngest, usually a boy named Michael.

After that summer, those friends drifted away. The girl with the pool was in the other 4^th grade, so she hung around with a new set of friends, and I really never saw the Public girl. The third girl (another Debbie) moved away.

My nemesis from first grade was still sometimes my nemesis, and sometimes – like when she needed help with homework – pretended to be a friend. I didn’t particularly like her, so if I were playing in my yard and she came over, I frequently hid until she went away. Often I was in the tree fort, and she couldn’t see me from the ground. My mother, fortunately, never gave me away. She assumed if I wanted to play with the girl, I would’ve made myself known.

It never bothered my mother that the other girls would sometimes decide to fight with me. They’d insist I couldn’t be whatever character I was pretending to be that day, or they’d make me pick whatever game we were going to play and then refuse to play that game, saying I always picked that one. It didn’t matter if I told them I didn’t care what we played. They were intent on having an argument. So I’d go home.

My mother often told me I didn’t need them, they were stuck-up. And eventually, I didn’t. I had enough pretend friends to have all sorts of adventures by myself. I’d ride my bike, pretending it was a motorcycle (balloons or baseball cards clipped near the wheels to make the engine noise), or go into the woods to pick blackberries, or play in the tree fort, pretending it was a space ship or an apartment or whatever I was thinking of that day.

I never quite figured out girls, although I could do the girl act pretty well by the time I got to high school. At least there no one ever said I thought I was a big shot.

About Books: I Think I Will Have to Eat You Now

         

With a title like that, I surely can't be serious?

Well, no I wasn't.

This started as a joke. I wanted to see if I could write a children's book, even though I had, until then, never seen myself as a children's book author.

But why not?

For one thing, preschool books are often written in poetry form. While I've written poems from time to time, my poetry teacher's little sermon on why he gave me an A always comes back to haunt me. 

Normally, I didn't ask teachers about grades, but in the case of my college poetry-writing class, when my grade report arrived, poetry was marked NG. I went to his office to find out if that meant "no good." Yes, I was being sarcastic. At 20 I thought I was a much better writer than I actually was.

He explained that it meant "no grade," and I wasn't alone in receiving that on my report. He hadn't turned in the grades on time. But he assured me that the following term my grade point average would be fixed and reflect where I was.

"What did you think you got?" he asked. 

I have always hated teachers asking that question. If I say a grade that's too high, they think I have too high of an opinion of myself -- or perhaps that kind of reasoning is the result of 12 years of nuns deflating any vague hint of self-worth that I ever showed (that may be the subject of a future blog). If I say a grade that's too low, I might give them ideas that perhaps that's what I truly deserved and they might lower my grade.  

"I don't know?" I replied wondering if I should be so bold as to say a B. He hated the fact that I'd tried for a few weeks to write villanelles, and pointedly asked me to stop in front of the whole class. He made fun of some of my rhymes as contrived and overused. This was the Snydley Whiplash guy who was also my first short story writing teacher as well as my guidance counselor. While I could joke with him at times, I didn't think he thought much of my writing.

"Well, you got an A, of course."

Before I could congratulate myself on being a better poet than I'd thought, and that all of his attempts at humiliation were simply his way of making me a better poet, he followed up that statement with, "I had to give you an A since you handed in at least twice as many poems as anyone else in the class."

So it was quantity, not quality for which I was graded. Or maybe he just wanted to make sure my feet were firmly planted on this earth.

No, there was more.

"But I want you to promise me that you'll never ever try to become a professional poet.  You just don't have the talent."

Then why, regardless of how many poems I handed in, did he give me an A? I would grade according to quality. But I wasn't going to argue the point. An A was better for my GPA than any other grade.

Of course, his telling me not to become a professional poet gave me ammunition for humor whenever I went to his office. He happened to hate Hallmark cards. So, whenever I stopped by, I'd casually say something like, "I was thinking of trying to get a job working for Hallmark. I bet they'd like my poetry." It was worth it to see the look on his face.

Of course, if I'd ever applied to Hallmark, I would have also tried to get them to start a line of humorous sympathy cards. After all, when do you need cheering up more? And after that, who knows? Divorce cards? Your cheating heart cards?

But his disparaging remarks stayed with me, and I didn't imagine even Sam I Am would be satisfied with my rhymes. And after trying to find a rhyme for tiger, I became frustrated, and decided to write a story without rhymes.

Next on the list of necessary things for a children's book are pictures. I may be able to write, but art was never my strong suit. In high school, when we were forced to take an art class when I would have had much more use for typing than trying unsuccessfully to color in the lines, I consistently got the lowest grade in the class for my work. My drawing is generally on the level of a three-year-old, although I have progressed to coloring like a six-year-old. I can, at least, tell you what's wrong with my work, but I have no idea how to fix it.

Well, I was writing a story for three-year-olds, so why not have drawings on their level?

I gamely started my story, tongue firmly planted in cheek, about a baby tiger who is left behind when the circus leaves town. He approaches one animal after another in an attempt to find home. Each one, in an attempt not to be killed, plays with him, shares food, and makes suggestions. But none of what they do is very helpful, so when he finishes playing with each one he thanks them and says, "I think I'll have to eat you now," to which each animal gives him some justification why it would be bad manners to eat them after all they've done for him. Then they pass him along to the next animal until he finally meets a human. Humans, of course, can fix things.

What I was trying to do was something like what the creators of Rocky and Bullwinkle had done: create something for children that adults could get a chuckle out of.

I read my story to a class of third graders. They had questions, like what was the Tiger's name (he didn't originally have one) and where was his mother. They insisted he needed a name, so they each wrote their suggestion on a paper and the papers were put in a hat. Then the teacher pulled one out, and that's how Isaac the Tiger was named.

The third graders were very kind about my art. They told me my pictures were very good, except, "and I don't want to hurt your feelings," one little girl said, "but your bunny looks like a dog." (Bunny pictured above)

So, I asked the third graders if they would be willing to draw some pictures for me, and they jumped at the chance. Many of their pictures were so good that I hope some of the now college-age students are pursuing art.

I can't say I've sold many copies of that book, but it was fun working with eight- and nine-year-olds, and getting their perspective. And for something that started out as a joke, I think it turned out okay, even without poetry.

                

The Doll

 

[Since last month's post was about writing, and this story was referenced, I thought I'd post it here. This was written for my first major course in Writing. I wa 18, so keep that in mind.]    

     Her name was Holly. She was born on Christmas Eve, and although she had ruined her parents' plans for that evening, they managed to forgive her for that. Then they named her in the true spirit of Christmas.

            She was now six, that novel age when she was "Mommy's big girl" while still remaining "Daddy's little angel". She was a vibrant child. Everything about her seemed radiant, including her long, brown hair that glistened red in the sun.

            She wore green well and almost exclusively; that was her mother's way of keeping Christmas around her all year long. Many of Holly's dolls wore pretty dresses of red or blue, but none dressed like Holly except one: her Christy-Anna doll. Christy was not only Holly's favorite doll, but she was also her best friend. Christy listened like none of the other dolls when Holly spoke – so Holly told everyone – and always had something nice to say. But Holly only reluctantly admitted that she had to pull a string to make Christy talk.

            Holly lived a very happy life with her dolls when she wasn't too busy entertaining her invisible friends at imaginary parties.  She was happy with her parents, too – when they weren't too busy entertaining their real friends at real parties. Like her mother, Holly often told her doll that if she were good, she'd get a piece of cake; then Holly would rush upstairs and try very hard to go to sleep.

            The Andersons were well known for their parties.  Their friends often envied their ability to entertain well. The Andersons, of course, enjoyed their popularity as much as children do.

            The day after a party, however, was usually a bad one for Christy.

            "Can't you ever do what I ask?" Holly would demand in sleepless irritability.  "You always have to make noise, don't you?  You always want the spotlight. Well, you're nothing but a brat. You'll learn that the parties I give are mine. You'll learn – you'll spend the day in your room." Then Holly would slap the doll's face.

            "Mama," the doll cried automatically.

            "Don't think crying will get you anywhere," Holly answered.  "You're a bad girl. You're no good at all."

            "I love you, Mama," the doll responded, and the worn record made it sound like the doll was crying.

            "I don't love you anymore," Holly said, then began beating the doll with anger unusual for a child her age.

            Poor Christy-Anna! When she was good, she was Holly's most beloved doll, but when she displeased Holly, she bore the brunt of the child's rage. Yet, for all the beatings the doll received, it still said, "I love you, Mama."

            Of late, the doll had stopped talking much. The string didn't always work. This annoyed Holly. She couldn't tolerate Christy being like the other mute dolls she had.

            "If you're not going to say anything, then go away," Holly said. But the doll remained in its place. Holly went about her work, ignoring Christy completely. Finally, Holly turned to the doll.

            "I'm going to have another party. This time, you're not going to ruin it for me."

            Actually, the doll never did anything to ruin Holly's parties.  She was very good, but some of Holly's friends became quite loud, disturbing the doll's sleep. An accidental cry of "Mama!" would send Holly into a rage, even though accidents of this sort often happen to talking dolls.

            Holly could be quite charming to her friends at a party, but coming back to the realities of life the next day had devastating effects on her. Days like that made Holly hate the doll. But then Holly would realize that her troubles were not entirely the doll's fault, and she would try to make things up to her.

            "Let's see my big girl smile," Holly said, hugging her doll.

            Together the girl and the doll would take imaginary shopping trips, and as far as Holly was concerned, things were all right again.

            Holly had another party, but this time things were worse than usual. One of Holly's imaginary friends got out of hand, and Christy, unfortunately, was not well. Holly was quite embarrassed, and the party ended early.

            The following morning found Holly out of sorts, a pounding headache adding to her tiredness. Poor Christy-Anna, who had, until then, looked like a normal worn doll, took such a beating that Holly's hands were sore.

            "You're not sick, you bad thing!" Holly shouted. "You've ruined everything. I hate you, Christy-Anna, I hate you! I wish I never had you."

            Holly beat the doll unmercifully. When she finished the doll looked frightful. The tangled brown hair fell over its face, the wrinkled green dress was torn, and the arms and legs flailed about with every blow.

            Finally exhausted, Holly threw the doll on the floor. As it hit the floor, it cried, "Mama," perhaps for the last time. That infernal squeaking voice!

            "Shut up!" Holly said, shaking the doll, and banging it against the floor. The doll was silent, and the blue eyes closed.  Satisfied, Holly left the doll lying on the floor, and went off to do her work.

 

            "Hi, hon," Tom Anderson said. "You look beat."

            "Oh, I've been cleaning up after that party," his wife answered. "Brad Quinton will never be invited here again after the mess he caused last night."

            "I agree. Where's Holly?"

            "Upstairs. Do you know that fake wasn't sick last night after all? She just wanted attention. And to make matters worse, this morning she broke that stupid doll,"

            He stood looking at her oddly for the comment. Why was she talking about a child's doll? It made no sense, and didn't explain the anger he'd heard in her voice – the sudden realization of the reality beyond the words pushed through the years of denial.

            "My God!" he said, horrified, as he dashed upstairs.

            When he reached the room, he found Holly on the floor where her mother had left her, still squeaking "Mama." He scooped her up, and laid her on the bed as he looked pityingly at her battered body. He pushed her hair from her doll face.

            His wife watched, unmoved, from the doorway. "I told you you never should have given her that doll," she said.

 

 

                                                                          END

                                                                          1973