The Tale Teller (Story Fragment)
The Tale Teller
Raven Inkwell was once that girl you’d never let sit at your lunch table. She talked to herself around other people and said words like “crimmety!” and “golly-gosh!” and “jeepers!” when she got excited. Her unmanageable hair was sometimes tied down into braided pigtails, but there were those days when she came to school looking like Jr. Miss Einstein, with her hair in an electrically frizzy cloud. Its easy to imagine how awful Raven Inkwell was thought of by her peers and even her teachers, but what’s more important to know is how Raven Inkwell thought about herself. Fortunately for us she kept a diary, a very special one, and this is what she wrote:
I am a creator. I have visited many worlds. The old saying is true, a world is merely a stage. In my occupation I get to see them from all sides. I’ve applauded admiringly from the audience and humbly bowed, joining hands with the actors. I have gone behind the red curtain and helped carry off the sets: skies, forests, continents, and beings. I’ve carried worlds off into deep space. Tossed a galaxy down a vaporizing black hole. Cast a realm years ahead through Time tunnels. Trust me, its more boring than it sounds.
I’ve lived many lives since I was born. I’ve lived among creatures of every oddity. Nothing is strange to me anymore. Nothing excites me. New can not describe all that I have seen, heard, smelt. Neither does old. Everything that is--was--and has always been.
I have been called many things because I have been them all and more.
Alchemist. Batwing. Bunyip. Byrne. Centaur. Cancer. Countess. Death Dealer. Deer Dancer. Euphogean. Fang. Filker. Fungus. Gansas. Human. Hyalac. Isthmus. Ilker. Iodum. (Raven’s list of remarkable creatures goes on for pages, but is too long to write here.)
But it seems to me the most befitting name is the one that the Ethers give to my kind. That is Dream Weaver, because we bring our thoughts to life. My power comes from the Great Animator, the one who gave Time the power of impermanence, who also gave Life the power of existence, and Death the power of destruction. I am not alone. I have two sisters and nine brothers. The twelve of us live apart. We were born to different mothers, some in different worlds, and have always lived separately. The story of Dream Weavers is a long, winding tale, perhaps someday I will find the time to sit and write about the many worlds and many ways of dream weaving, but later.
I know what you are thinking and yes, Raven Inkwell did have what I would call quite an extraordinary imagination, but it will surprise you to know that the excerpt from her diary is mostly true. This is the first tale revised by Raven Inkwell, who devoted as much of her life to acquiring the greatest collection of magical tales in all the known worlds, as she did to dream weaving, a tangled business that is a winding tale indeed that will be told, but later.
Chapter Two~
Raven Inkwell: In Her Own Words
In horse racing, the surest way of picking a winner is to find out what horse is in the best condition and to do that you have to talk to the people who know the most about the race horses. Ask the rider, the owner, the trainer, and even the guy who feeds the horse the night before a big race. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could ask the horse yourself? That’s where the saying, “straight from the horses mouth,” comes from. And that is how we will hear much of the story of Raven Inkwell‘s adventure. Some of it will come from the pages of her very own, very special diary that was not always so dear to her.
I
My hobby, if you will, is collecting fairy tales. Long tales. Short tales. Happy-ending tales and tragedies. Curdling stuff and wild things. I find them, re-write them, and professionally age them. There’s not much difference in how I make my tales than how I make my wines. Both are full of spirit, rich, colorful, and the Strange Ones that visit my house say that I am a flying featherpen. And that is a great compliment, as Featherpens are thought to be the finest writers really anywhere. And I do mean, anywhere. But the Strange Ones are no strangers to exaggeration. I was more honored when I met a man who had been dead many years and languishing beyond the Living Wall in the realm of Waste. He somehow succeeded in finding a way back into the realm of the living by losing himself in one of my stories. Of course, that meant he had to leave his body behind. Like all new arrivals, he had to stand in the Line of Second Chances to be reborn and on a good day that line is a thousand years wait. But the man had inhuman patience. Eventually, he was reborn as a stray kitten (if he had been reborn in the same form he wouldn‘t have remembered what happened to him at all) and he devoted most of his life as an adult cat to finding me, just to say thanks.
It was a starry night that he came into my yard. A gleam of luck streaked striped his back and tail, though I doubt he could see it. He could not remember his old human name, but he introduced himself using his feline one, which was Shadow and his four lovely cat sons’ who came with--Ashy, Gray, Salty, and Snow, who were all lighter than their father--licked my nose politely to thank me also. I tried to look into their eyes, but I could only look at them. Which gave me reason to believe that the four of them were only on their first life. No one thanked me more than his wife, a pristinely white, fluffy Persian who curled up in my lap and allowed me to comb my fingers through her heavenly fur. Before meeting Shadow, I thought my stories were merely something I did to please myself. I never thought of them as useful, or needful things.
It was Shadow who encouraged me to open my first tale tavern. I named it in his honor, the Shadow Inn. Now there are forty-eight Shadow Inns under my management in the Kingdom of Agnon. They serve breakfast, lunch, dinner and after bedtime. My Shadow Inns are a little bit hotel, a little bit restaurant, and a little bit winery. Most have vineyards attached to them. Some have swimming pools. A few have elaborate gardens. They all were built with wide and long verandahs lined with wooden rocking chairs. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served at anytime of day the customer chooses, but tales are only told at dusk when they are most magical. A bottle of my good wine is always handy. But you wouldn’t want to get carried away with spirits--be it of wine or of story. The intoxicating effects are gentle, but still intoxicating.
II
A long time ago, when I was on just my first life--that of a girl named Raven Inkwell--and still just an ordinary child spilling over with that stuff most grown-ups call make believe and fae people call magic, my mother bought me a diary for Christmas. It was one of those secret diaries that came with a locket and a tiny key. Very cute and confidential. Exactly the sort of thing a girl my age wanted. That was the year I turned 9, which is the most powerful year of human childhood. It is the time when a child reaches the Main Crossroad. They are given two ways to choose to go. Choose this way or the other way, but they can only go one way.
We will consider both.
One way is simply a dirt road. So smooth and flat, a person can almost look up and see right down to its end, which is the safe way to go if you don‘t want life jumping out at you. If you don’t like surprises, good or bad. This first road is the one to take. You can tell the people who take this road. They are the ones with good credit. They are the ones pay attention to what is in fashion, and are always fashionable. They have savings and investments and a good retirement plan. These people are always very concerned about how they live and where they live and how long they live. These are the people who chose the flat and smooth path, the one that goes straight, so that a person can always see what’s ahead of them.
Now let us consider the alternative.
The other way isn’t a road at all. It is an opening, an exceptional place in the thick, tree line where no shrub, or tree, or vine decided to grow. Perhaps an animal made it. Or maybe a boulder once rolled that way and made a way where there never should have been one. Whatever happened, there is a definite opening there. But just an opening. That is all. You know the people who take this way. We pretend that Luck is responsible for what happens to them. They are lucky millionaires or the unlucky homeless. They are luckily, happily married for decades or unlucky in divorce. They take risks. They wander. Because for them there was no road. Once, it was wisely said that, “not everyone who wanders is lost.” Which is true. These are the people who live. Despite everything else. But it is not always the way to glory or a happy ending that awaits them.
The difference between the two ways is a personal one. But nevertheless, at 9 years old, usually that is the time we are expected to choose. And we do.
I chose to take the smooth and flat way. I might as well explain up front that I changed my mind before I had gone too far. But at first I wanted to be like most girls. Back then most girls I knew were toting diaries. That made them more interesting and popular. It was trendy to be obsessed with the business of getting, keeping, and revealing secrets. A girl was relevant then. Only mature girls were thought to have secret diaries. It meant they were doing something that everyone else would want to know about. And that made them the envy of other girls. Envy was the game. The goal. To be envied was what I wanted.
So of course I decided early on to be a part of this secret society too. I was thrilled when my mother had given me exactly what I needed to join--a diary of my own. But from the moment I laid my hands on its pink quilted cover and proudly fanned the inch thick stack of rose colored pages, and unsnapped its metal lock, the diary became my harshest critic. That pink little book taunted me, its pinkness was almost a blush for my childish ways and the fact that a child like me didn’t keep secrets. A child like me didn‘t have any secrets to keep.
I felt the blank pages. I tried to fill them with something. They were silky and crisp and clean and new and blank. One could tell they had never been pressed on by anything. Nothing had ever touched those pages before me.
And I had nothing to write about.
Sadly, my life had nothing material to keep under lock and key. As the sun went up and down, I went up and down to bed, and seemingly nothing important happened in between.
Christmas break went, I’d played tether ball a hundred times with my older brother Rory, and finished another Jungle Coloring book from the dollar store. Mother often bought our supplies there. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t above anything either.
I’d outgrown some of my old clothes and gone shopping for new ones before school, but one mustn’t put those things in a secret diary. Probably every 4th grader in Unction was doing that.
Soon it was time for school again. I carried my empty diary on top of my books like a trophy. I tried to feel superior to the girls who still didn’t have one. But whenever someone asked-- “do you want to be my key master,” which meant, “do you want to share secrets,” I stuttered, “no, thanks….I’m K-K-Keri Wisserman’s key master.” To this day, I still don’t know why I chose Keri. Her beauty had made her an instant celebrity at school and not just with the students. Teachers did their share of trembling over her too.
She had the aquamarine eyes of a mermaid and heart shaped lips that wrapped around pearly teeth. Thick, long, buttery hair flounced over her shoulders and back like a golden fleece. She was thin, tall, and always smiling, which I found very artificial. How could someone smile all the time and really mean it?
Artificial or not, her sunny presence worked on people. They followed her movement like flowers follow the sun. The follow-up question, which was not so much a question, to my claim of being Keri Wisserman’s key master was always--“Prove it!”
At first, I couldn’t.
But then people started to snigger and make fun of me and those days I was not a very good girl. I was average. Common. Too ambitious. And hardly capable of enduring any form of humiliation, whether I deserved it or not. Ashamedly, I began a rumor purportedly from Keri Wisserman’s diary, that she was secretly dating a boy named Travis Medley. That seemed almost true, since every girl I knew had a crush on Travis Medley, including Keri. W.
Travis was a soccer player and developing child actor. He had done a bit part in one commercial that made him famous in Unction. He had dark, floppy hair. Light brown eyes. And a face reminiscent of a young Leonardo Di Caprio. Very pretty indeed, for a boy his age. He might have grade A looks, but he was a grade C in every other respect.
Travis had no personality. He hated school and loved sports. But as much as he loved sports, he continued to be a grade C soccer player and just barely made the team that year.
The other boys teased Travis because of the attention he got from girls. They called him a softie--wuss--pretty boy--Nancy, and so on. 4th graders can be brutal.
All those things put together made him just as much of a school house celebrity as Keri Wisserman. For awhile people were just whispering, doubtfully, about them being a “thing.” Then something happened to stir the ashes. Keri and Travis were allegedly caught talking, alone, behind the gymnasium. That did it.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before she or he found out what I had said. Miraculously, the lie took 2 weeks to catch up with me. But finally it did catch up. I was eating alone, as usual, when my picnic table was suddenly covered in shadows, four to be exact. Keri Wisserman and her gang crowded round.
Her minions included a giantess named Dana, who glared down at me from a cloud of frizzy black hair. She was a star gymnast and only attended school about 4 months out of the year. But when she did attend she was always at Keri Wisserman’s side like a Siamese twin.
“I‘m going to make you eat more than that sandwich Ink-spot.” Dana said. She raised her boy-sized fist at me. Before I could say anything, like, “just try it and see what I do,”….she did. My shoulder was throbbing and there was a lump rising right in the place where Dana’s fist had landed. My body lurched sideways on the bench.
Then a scary thin girl with copper, Shirley temple curls scratched at my face and pulled my braid like it was a jump rope. Scalp bruised and a swollen arm, I slithered under the picnic table. I stayed there just long enough to catch my breath. Which was almost impossible when I was that angry.
But after a moment I wasn’t quite puffing. Like a mad badger I scrambled out on all fours. Before I had stood to my full height, Dana swung on me. I ducked and pounded a solid blow to her stomach. Dana seemed more stunned than hurt.
Chunky Angelina Mayes tried to crack me over the head with her binder. I ducked again and swung wide. I waylaid Angelina and the skinny-curly one, but Dana was not so dazed anymore. She spun me around and socked me in the eye. I didn’t even feel it, my adrenaline was too high. I lunged at Dana like a linesman in the NFL. We toppled over into the grass. We settled into a flurry of arms and legs until the Monitor arrived.
When we were finally separated, I looked like a clown. My hair was sticking straight out in tightly curled screw shapes. I could hardly see out of my right eye it was so swollen. Dana the Amazon was annoyingly unchanged except her shirt tail was hanging out the back of her skirt and the bits of grass in her hair.
The Monitor calmly reached in her pocket and withdrew a notepad. She wanted to get our names first, and then everything we knew about the fight.
The three girls accused me of being a “chronic fibber.” We all four, talked at once to the Monitor, whose eyes bounced between us with something like irritation and intrigue.
Finally Keri said sweetly, “Miss Collins,” that was the Monitor‘s name, “Inkwell‘s at fault. She‘s been telling stories about me. I called her a liar and you know I never call people names. She tried to hit me. But Dana and the rest of the girls came to my defense. I‘m sorry for calling her a liar. That‘s a bad word. But its true of her and she started all this.”
The Monitor nodded negatively at me. Of course she believed Keri W. completely.
“Since you’re the only one who didn’t throw a punch Keri, you’re cleared. The rest of you come with me.” We followed her in a single file line to the office. Referrals were handed out swiftly to each of the brawlers. But I was the only one who received an afternoon in Detention too. “Clearly, but for your actions the incident would not have occurred.” the Monitor said, accusingly.
My only response was to blurt out that Keri was a liar, but that didn’t do anything to help my case. Then those girls started spreading rumors about me. Really truthful ones. Like my diary was a fake. What a turnaround of events!
I was more eager than ever to find something material to feed the diary. I had began to have nightmares that someone would steal it from me and find out the truth. That it really was a book of empty pages. But no matter how hard I tried to find the fourth grade boys in Mrs. Blanton’s class not-boring, not-ugly, and not-stupid, there was no denying the fact that they were all of those things and more.
I didn’t steal. I didn’t cheat. There was nothing to fess up. No crushes. No rebellion. Nothing. I was as interesting as a brown paper bag.
The entire semester went by, the girls in my class, led infamously by Keri Wisserman, were spreading the news that my diary was just a prop and I was no better than Michelle Beaver who not only didn’t have a diary, but didn’t have enough money to buy one. Mean stuff like that gets the most laughs from the peanut gallery in class. Before long people were saying I’d stolen someone else’s diary and inventing mean rhymes like:
“Little Miss Inkwell
Sat on a carousel,
Spun herself round,
Fell on the Ground,
Cried Like A Baby,
Wah! Wah! Wah!
How bout that!”
When that happened Mrs. Blanton had a fight on her hands during fifth period.
Of course getting into fights at school doesn’t go in a secret diary, it goes on your permanent record and the school year ended before I could find one material thing to write about.
By summer break, I hated my secret diary. It had ruined the happiness that comes naturally to a young person. It used to be I could lay in the sun with my eyes closed and imagine I was on Mars and my scarlet eyelids was the scarlet atmosphere of the red planet. But since my secret diary turned into a common joke, I suddenly just felt hot and sweaty when I laid out.
Being disgusted with everything had become my constant state. And everyone around me felt uneasy around me. My brother Rory said thanks, but no thanks to tether ball and I just didn’t care for coloring books anymore.
Some Saturday morning that summer when I was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling fan and feeling miserable on purpose, I got fed up. I grabbed the diary off my nightstand and ran downstairs, and stamped into the kitchen where my mother was in the act of making my favorite desert, banana pudding, but that didn’t stop me from being miserable either.
“I have no use for this,” I confessed, slamming the pink little book on the kitchen counter. My mother looked vaguely at what had landed next to her pudding bowl.
“I thought you wanted a diary more than anything--” she said, her fingers were busy laying banana chips on top of a generous layer of pudding.
“I did want one, but that was before I knew it was going to be so much trouble. Look,” I flipped through the empty pages, “nothing. I don’t have anything to write about. I don’t have any secrets--I don’t have friends, or skirts, or crushes, or anything those other girls have.” Then for some reason, perhaps because she didn’t seem to be taking the emergency seriously, I turned the blame on my mother. “This is your fault. You never let me do anything.” Again, mother looked vaguely at the book and then her dark eyes looked down at me. Mother had emotional eyes. It seemed that there was no feeling she couldn’t communicate through a gaze. I felt her sensitive reassurance when she looked at me. But that only made me cry.
“What happened to the girl who used to play outside by the lake and find all sorts of secrets. You found a golden pocket watch and when I asked you where you got it from you said it belonged to a mermaid.”
My eyes rolled automatically. “I must have been a baby then,” I said, “not to know that mermaids live in the ocean and not in lakes.”
“It was just a little while before I bought you that diary,” my mother said, her hands were greasy from banana slices and gooey from vanilla pudding. “You make everything so complicated when its not really. Writing isn’t easy for most people. Like anything, it takes practice, even if you‘re just keeping a diary. My mother bought me a diary when I was your age. I never had any secrets either, but that‘s because I didn‘t know myself very well. After awhile I began to learn things about myself that other people didn’t know. If you just write, something will come to you eventually. It may not be what you’re expect, but something will come.”
I couldn’t believe my mother would say that after everything I’d been through, but even though it didn’t sound useful, I felt different. Less miserable. The pudding looked good to me, almost delicious even and later that day, I apologized to Rory for being moody and we played tether ball. Then toward the evening I went out into our yard and sat down by the lake. It was that time of day when the gnats are too tired to bother anyone. When the sun is almost the color of a butterscotch candy. I sat down in the crisp grass, it was spongy and relaxed at the end of the day
Raven Inkwell was once that girl you’d never let sit at your lunch table. She talked to herself around other people and said words like “crimmety!” and “golly-gosh!” and “jeepers!” when she got excited. Her unmanageable hair was sometimes tied down into braided pigtails, but there were those days when she came to school looking like Jr. Miss Einstein, with her hair in an electrically frizzy cloud. Its easy to imagine how awful Raven Inkwell was thought of by her peers and even her teachers, but what’s more important to know is how Raven Inkwell thought about herself. Fortunately for us she kept a diary, a very special one, and this is what she wrote:
I am a creator. I have visited many worlds. The old saying is true, a world is merely a stage. In my occupation I get to see them from all sides. I’ve applauded admiringly from the audience and humbly bowed, joining hands with the actors. I have gone behind the red curtain and helped carry off the sets: skies, forests, continents, and beings. I’ve carried worlds off into deep space. Tossed a galaxy down a vaporizing black hole. Cast a realm years ahead through Time tunnels. Trust me, its more boring than it sounds.
I’ve lived many lives since I was born. I’ve lived among creatures of every oddity. Nothing is strange to me anymore. Nothing excites me. New can not describe all that I have seen, heard, smelt. Neither does old. Everything that is--was--and has always been.
I have been called many things because I have been them all and more.
Alchemist. Batwing. Bunyip. Byrne. Centaur. Cancer. Countess. Death Dealer. Deer Dancer. Euphogean. Fang. Filker. Fungus. Gansas. Human. Hyalac. Isthmus. Ilker. Iodum. (Raven’s list of remarkable creatures goes on for pages, but is too long to write here.)
But it seems to me the most befitting name is the one that the Ethers give to my kind. That is Dream Weaver, because we bring our thoughts to life. My power comes from the Great Animator, the one who gave Time the power of impermanence, who also gave Life the power of existence, and Death the power of destruction. I am not alone. I have two sisters and nine brothers. The twelve of us live apart. We were born to different mothers, some in different worlds, and have always lived separately. The story of Dream Weavers is a long, winding tale, perhaps someday I will find the time to sit and write about the many worlds and many ways of dream weaving, but later.
I know what you are thinking and yes, Raven Inkwell did have what I would call quite an extraordinary imagination, but it will surprise you to know that the excerpt from her diary is mostly true. This is the first tale revised by Raven Inkwell, who devoted as much of her life to acquiring the greatest collection of magical tales in all the known worlds, as she did to dream weaving, a tangled business that is a winding tale indeed that will be told, but later.
Chapter Two~
Raven Inkwell: In Her Own Words
In horse racing, the surest way of picking a winner is to find out what horse is in the best condition and to do that you have to talk to the people who know the most about the race horses. Ask the rider, the owner, the trainer, and even the guy who feeds the horse the night before a big race. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could ask the horse yourself? That’s where the saying, “straight from the horses mouth,” comes from. And that is how we will hear much of the story of Raven Inkwell‘s adventure. Some of it will come from the pages of her very own, very special diary that was not always so dear to her.
I
My hobby, if you will, is collecting fairy tales. Long tales. Short tales. Happy-ending tales and tragedies. Curdling stuff and wild things. I find them, re-write them, and professionally age them. There’s not much difference in how I make my tales than how I make my wines. Both are full of spirit, rich, colorful, and the Strange Ones that visit my house say that I am a flying featherpen. And that is a great compliment, as Featherpens are thought to be the finest writers really anywhere. And I do mean, anywhere. But the Strange Ones are no strangers to exaggeration. I was more honored when I met a man who had been dead many years and languishing beyond the Living Wall in the realm of Waste. He somehow succeeded in finding a way back into the realm of the living by losing himself in one of my stories. Of course, that meant he had to leave his body behind. Like all new arrivals, he had to stand in the Line of Second Chances to be reborn and on a good day that line is a thousand years wait. But the man had inhuman patience. Eventually, he was reborn as a stray kitten (if he had been reborn in the same form he wouldn‘t have remembered what happened to him at all) and he devoted most of his life as an adult cat to finding me, just to say thanks.
It was a starry night that he came into my yard. A gleam of luck streaked striped his back and tail, though I doubt he could see it. He could not remember his old human name, but he introduced himself using his feline one, which was Shadow and his four lovely cat sons’ who came with--Ashy, Gray, Salty, and Snow, who were all lighter than their father--licked my nose politely to thank me also. I tried to look into their eyes, but I could only look at them. Which gave me reason to believe that the four of them were only on their first life. No one thanked me more than his wife, a pristinely white, fluffy Persian who curled up in my lap and allowed me to comb my fingers through her heavenly fur. Before meeting Shadow, I thought my stories were merely something I did to please myself. I never thought of them as useful, or needful things.
It was Shadow who encouraged me to open my first tale tavern. I named it in his honor, the Shadow Inn. Now there are forty-eight Shadow Inns under my management in the Kingdom of Agnon. They serve breakfast, lunch, dinner and after bedtime. My Shadow Inns are a little bit hotel, a little bit restaurant, and a little bit winery. Most have vineyards attached to them. Some have swimming pools. A few have elaborate gardens. They all were built with wide and long verandahs lined with wooden rocking chairs. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served at anytime of day the customer chooses, but tales are only told at dusk when they are most magical. A bottle of my good wine is always handy. But you wouldn’t want to get carried away with spirits--be it of wine or of story. The intoxicating effects are gentle, but still intoxicating.
II
A long time ago, when I was on just my first life--that of a girl named Raven Inkwell--and still just an ordinary child spilling over with that stuff most grown-ups call make believe and fae people call magic, my mother bought me a diary for Christmas. It was one of those secret diaries that came with a locket and a tiny key. Very cute and confidential. Exactly the sort of thing a girl my age wanted. That was the year I turned 9, which is the most powerful year of human childhood. It is the time when a child reaches the Main Crossroad. They are given two ways to choose to go. Choose this way or the other way, but they can only go one way.
We will consider both.
One way is simply a dirt road. So smooth and flat, a person can almost look up and see right down to its end, which is the safe way to go if you don‘t want life jumping out at you. If you don’t like surprises, good or bad. This first road is the one to take. You can tell the people who take this road. They are the ones with good credit. They are the ones pay attention to what is in fashion, and are always fashionable. They have savings and investments and a good retirement plan. These people are always very concerned about how they live and where they live and how long they live. These are the people who chose the flat and smooth path, the one that goes straight, so that a person can always see what’s ahead of them.
Now let us consider the alternative.
The other way isn’t a road at all. It is an opening, an exceptional place in the thick, tree line where no shrub, or tree, or vine decided to grow. Perhaps an animal made it. Or maybe a boulder once rolled that way and made a way where there never should have been one. Whatever happened, there is a definite opening there. But just an opening. That is all. You know the people who take this way. We pretend that Luck is responsible for what happens to them. They are lucky millionaires or the unlucky homeless. They are luckily, happily married for decades or unlucky in divorce. They take risks. They wander. Because for them there was no road. Once, it was wisely said that, “not everyone who wanders is lost.” Which is true. These are the people who live. Despite everything else. But it is not always the way to glory or a happy ending that awaits them.
The difference between the two ways is a personal one. But nevertheless, at 9 years old, usually that is the time we are expected to choose. And we do.
I chose to take the smooth and flat way. I might as well explain up front that I changed my mind before I had gone too far. But at first I wanted to be like most girls. Back then most girls I knew were toting diaries. That made them more interesting and popular. It was trendy to be obsessed with the business of getting, keeping, and revealing secrets. A girl was relevant then. Only mature girls were thought to have secret diaries. It meant they were doing something that everyone else would want to know about. And that made them the envy of other girls. Envy was the game. The goal. To be envied was what I wanted.
So of course I decided early on to be a part of this secret society too. I was thrilled when my mother had given me exactly what I needed to join--a diary of my own. But from the moment I laid my hands on its pink quilted cover and proudly fanned the inch thick stack of rose colored pages, and unsnapped its metal lock, the diary became my harshest critic. That pink little book taunted me, its pinkness was almost a blush for my childish ways and the fact that a child like me didn’t keep secrets. A child like me didn‘t have any secrets to keep.
I felt the blank pages. I tried to fill them with something. They were silky and crisp and clean and new and blank. One could tell they had never been pressed on by anything. Nothing had ever touched those pages before me.
And I had nothing to write about.
Sadly, my life had nothing material to keep under lock and key. As the sun went up and down, I went up and down to bed, and seemingly nothing important happened in between.
Christmas break went, I’d played tether ball a hundred times with my older brother Rory, and finished another Jungle Coloring book from the dollar store. Mother often bought our supplies there. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t above anything either.
I’d outgrown some of my old clothes and gone shopping for new ones before school, but one mustn’t put those things in a secret diary. Probably every 4th grader in Unction was doing that.
Soon it was time for school again. I carried my empty diary on top of my books like a trophy. I tried to feel superior to the girls who still didn’t have one. But whenever someone asked-- “do you want to be my key master,” which meant, “do you want to share secrets,” I stuttered, “no, thanks….I’m K-K-Keri Wisserman’s key master.” To this day, I still don’t know why I chose Keri. Her beauty had made her an instant celebrity at school and not just with the students. Teachers did their share of trembling over her too.
She had the aquamarine eyes of a mermaid and heart shaped lips that wrapped around pearly teeth. Thick, long, buttery hair flounced over her shoulders and back like a golden fleece. She was thin, tall, and always smiling, which I found very artificial. How could someone smile all the time and really mean it?
Artificial or not, her sunny presence worked on people. They followed her movement like flowers follow the sun. The follow-up question, which was not so much a question, to my claim of being Keri Wisserman’s key master was always--“Prove it!”
At first, I couldn’t.
But then people started to snigger and make fun of me and those days I was not a very good girl. I was average. Common. Too ambitious. And hardly capable of enduring any form of humiliation, whether I deserved it or not. Ashamedly, I began a rumor purportedly from Keri Wisserman’s diary, that she was secretly dating a boy named Travis Medley. That seemed almost true, since every girl I knew had a crush on Travis Medley, including Keri. W.
Travis was a soccer player and developing child actor. He had done a bit part in one commercial that made him famous in Unction. He had dark, floppy hair. Light brown eyes. And a face reminiscent of a young Leonardo Di Caprio. Very pretty indeed, for a boy his age. He might have grade A looks, but he was a grade C in every other respect.
Travis had no personality. He hated school and loved sports. But as much as he loved sports, he continued to be a grade C soccer player and just barely made the team that year.
The other boys teased Travis because of the attention he got from girls. They called him a softie--wuss--pretty boy--Nancy, and so on. 4th graders can be brutal.
All those things put together made him just as much of a school house celebrity as Keri Wisserman. For awhile people were just whispering, doubtfully, about them being a “thing.” Then something happened to stir the ashes. Keri and Travis were allegedly caught talking, alone, behind the gymnasium. That did it.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before she or he found out what I had said. Miraculously, the lie took 2 weeks to catch up with me. But finally it did catch up. I was eating alone, as usual, when my picnic table was suddenly covered in shadows, four to be exact. Keri Wisserman and her gang crowded round.
Her minions included a giantess named Dana, who glared down at me from a cloud of frizzy black hair. She was a star gymnast and only attended school about 4 months out of the year. But when she did attend she was always at Keri Wisserman’s side like a Siamese twin.
“I‘m going to make you eat more than that sandwich Ink-spot.” Dana said. She raised her boy-sized fist at me. Before I could say anything, like, “just try it and see what I do,”….she did. My shoulder was throbbing and there was a lump rising right in the place where Dana’s fist had landed. My body lurched sideways on the bench.
Then a scary thin girl with copper, Shirley temple curls scratched at my face and pulled my braid like it was a jump rope. Scalp bruised and a swollen arm, I slithered under the picnic table. I stayed there just long enough to catch my breath. Which was almost impossible when I was that angry.
But after a moment I wasn’t quite puffing. Like a mad badger I scrambled out on all fours. Before I had stood to my full height, Dana swung on me. I ducked and pounded a solid blow to her stomach. Dana seemed more stunned than hurt.
Chunky Angelina Mayes tried to crack me over the head with her binder. I ducked again and swung wide. I waylaid Angelina and the skinny-curly one, but Dana was not so dazed anymore. She spun me around and socked me in the eye. I didn’t even feel it, my adrenaline was too high. I lunged at Dana like a linesman in the NFL. We toppled over into the grass. We settled into a flurry of arms and legs until the Monitor arrived.
When we were finally separated, I looked like a clown. My hair was sticking straight out in tightly curled screw shapes. I could hardly see out of my right eye it was so swollen. Dana the Amazon was annoyingly unchanged except her shirt tail was hanging out the back of her skirt and the bits of grass in her hair.
The Monitor calmly reached in her pocket and withdrew a notepad. She wanted to get our names first, and then everything we knew about the fight.
The three girls accused me of being a “chronic fibber.” We all four, talked at once to the Monitor, whose eyes bounced between us with something like irritation and intrigue.
Finally Keri said sweetly, “Miss Collins,” that was the Monitor‘s name, “Inkwell‘s at fault. She‘s been telling stories about me. I called her a liar and you know I never call people names. She tried to hit me. But Dana and the rest of the girls came to my defense. I‘m sorry for calling her a liar. That‘s a bad word. But its true of her and she started all this.”
The Monitor nodded negatively at me. Of course she believed Keri W. completely.
“Since you’re the only one who didn’t throw a punch Keri, you’re cleared. The rest of you come with me.” We followed her in a single file line to the office. Referrals were handed out swiftly to each of the brawlers. But I was the only one who received an afternoon in Detention too. “Clearly, but for your actions the incident would not have occurred.” the Monitor said, accusingly.
My only response was to blurt out that Keri was a liar, but that didn’t do anything to help my case. Then those girls started spreading rumors about me. Really truthful ones. Like my diary was a fake. What a turnaround of events!
I was more eager than ever to find something material to feed the diary. I had began to have nightmares that someone would steal it from me and find out the truth. That it really was a book of empty pages. But no matter how hard I tried to find the fourth grade boys in Mrs. Blanton’s class not-boring, not-ugly, and not-stupid, there was no denying the fact that they were all of those things and more.
I didn’t steal. I didn’t cheat. There was nothing to fess up. No crushes. No rebellion. Nothing. I was as interesting as a brown paper bag.
The entire semester went by, the girls in my class, led infamously by Keri Wisserman, were spreading the news that my diary was just a prop and I was no better than Michelle Beaver who not only didn’t have a diary, but didn’t have enough money to buy one. Mean stuff like that gets the most laughs from the peanut gallery in class. Before long people were saying I’d stolen someone else’s diary and inventing mean rhymes like:
“Little Miss Inkwell
Sat on a carousel,
Spun herself round,
Fell on the Ground,
Cried Like A Baby,
Wah! Wah! Wah!
How bout that!”
When that happened Mrs. Blanton had a fight on her hands during fifth period.
Of course getting into fights at school doesn’t go in a secret diary, it goes on your permanent record and the school year ended before I could find one material thing to write about.
By summer break, I hated my secret diary. It had ruined the happiness that comes naturally to a young person. It used to be I could lay in the sun with my eyes closed and imagine I was on Mars and my scarlet eyelids was the scarlet atmosphere of the red planet. But since my secret diary turned into a common joke, I suddenly just felt hot and sweaty when I laid out.
Being disgusted with everything had become my constant state. And everyone around me felt uneasy around me. My brother Rory said thanks, but no thanks to tether ball and I just didn’t care for coloring books anymore.
Some Saturday morning that summer when I was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling fan and feeling miserable on purpose, I got fed up. I grabbed the diary off my nightstand and ran downstairs, and stamped into the kitchen where my mother was in the act of making my favorite desert, banana pudding, but that didn’t stop me from being miserable either.
“I have no use for this,” I confessed, slamming the pink little book on the kitchen counter. My mother looked vaguely at what had landed next to her pudding bowl.
“I thought you wanted a diary more than anything--” she said, her fingers were busy laying banana chips on top of a generous layer of pudding.
“I did want one, but that was before I knew it was going to be so much trouble. Look,” I flipped through the empty pages, “nothing. I don’t have anything to write about. I don’t have any secrets--I don’t have friends, or skirts, or crushes, or anything those other girls have.” Then for some reason, perhaps because she didn’t seem to be taking the emergency seriously, I turned the blame on my mother. “This is your fault. You never let me do anything.” Again, mother looked vaguely at the book and then her dark eyes looked down at me. Mother had emotional eyes. It seemed that there was no feeling she couldn’t communicate through a gaze. I felt her sensitive reassurance when she looked at me. But that only made me cry.
“What happened to the girl who used to play outside by the lake and find all sorts of secrets. You found a golden pocket watch and when I asked you where you got it from you said it belonged to a mermaid.”
My eyes rolled automatically. “I must have been a baby then,” I said, “not to know that mermaids live in the ocean and not in lakes.”
“It was just a little while before I bought you that diary,” my mother said, her hands were greasy from banana slices and gooey from vanilla pudding. “You make everything so complicated when its not really. Writing isn’t easy for most people. Like anything, it takes practice, even if you‘re just keeping a diary. My mother bought me a diary when I was your age. I never had any secrets either, but that‘s because I didn‘t know myself very well. After awhile I began to learn things about myself that other people didn’t know. If you just write, something will come to you eventually. It may not be what you’re expect, but something will come.”
I couldn’t believe my mother would say that after everything I’d been through, but even though it didn’t sound useful, I felt different. Less miserable. The pudding looked good to me, almost delicious even and later that day, I apologized to Rory for being moody and we played tether ball. Then toward the evening I went out into our yard and sat down by the lake. It was that time of day when the gnats are too tired to bother anyone. When the sun is almost the color of a butterscotch candy. I sat down in the crisp grass, it was spongy and relaxed at the end of the day