So I came up with the idea for this novel last summer with my friend Kayla as we were trying to fall asleep one night at my house. While I'd rather just write the novel than divulge all of the complexities of the plotline, the story I feel is particularly interesting in lieu of recent attacks against women in the world. The plotline can be summarized (very very briefly) as this: a girl is gang raped her freshman year in college completely transforming her life and after ten years has passed, she ends up unintentionally and unknowingly falling in love with one of her reformed original attackers. Its a type of love-that-cannot-be/showing the gray reality of life and our relationships that I think will come out nicely. Started actually writing for it during NaNoWriMo last November, but have been slowing down lately. Hope to do some more this summer with editing/revising/and writing more. This is an excerpt (from the first chapter I suppose):
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Eve
by Sydney Odell
They never said it would hurt. It’s
like childbirth—everyone goes on and on about how the big football hands or
petit ballerina toes, but no one tells you about the pushing. No one tells you
about the hours right before where all you want to do is die. That moment when
you finally realize your body’s built-in mutiny. That these pounds of flesh as
far from being your own, but merely an empty vessel—a perpetual giver. When
each contractual prayer uttered through clenched teeth and tear ridden eyes lessens
your faith in a creator’s mercy. How each staggered breath weighs down not only
on your lungs but down to your very soul. And then when it’s over, they are all
too eager to deflect reality and mimic the socially constructed birth scene.
“It wasn’t that bad” they say, and that’s the end. Everyone gets so caught up
in the love, and I envy them. But I can’t forget the dissonance, it hurts. It
wasn’t my choice.
My older
sister Lucy was the first. Like many adolescent girls, she had built up so much
romantic anticipation of her first time that it seemed almost impossible that
any earthly being could fulfill that illusion of love. There would be candles
and classical music, he would be gentle and she would be generous. It would be
near a beach, and they would go walking off into the sunset and live happily
ever after. So when she finally decided at sixteen that Tommy Erickson, all
5’8” of lanky acne ridden pre-pubescent manhood, was the one-- there was no one
there to stop her. But like those mothers who were so quick to forget, she too
pounced on the opportunity to reframe her experience to fit her dreamy
expectations.
“I know why they call it making
love” she said, her eyelids weighing heavy as she curled up next to me in bed, her
mouth dripping sweet sensual omnipotence. “The way he held me, it’s just…oh I
can’t explain it to you Sarah, you wouldn’t understand. You’ll know when it
happens.” That was back when they called me Sarah, Princess. Back before I
realized my sister had mastered the art of storytelling—of lying. That was
then, back before my God died.
As much as
she tried to forget, there weren’t candles and it wasn’t near a beach. Actually,
our hometown in Kansas was about as far away from a beach as you can get, and I
don’t think Sarah had been to the beach before her senior trip to New Orleans. Our
parents weren’t very adventurous, and most of our childhood traveling was done
through pictures. Lucy had the hardest time, being an avid traveler from a
young page. All throughout her teenage years Lucy hung a giant poster of a hula
girl smiling proudly in front of a Hawaiian beach (no doubt a promotional tool)
on the wall behind her bed. The poster was a gift from her best friend
Charlotte who went for a family vacation, a luxury neither of us had ever
dreamed of in our humble surroundings. Lucy loved that picture more than anything
else growing up, and she was determined to get out and see the ocean. I think
to her it symbolized freedom—freedom from our over-protective parents and the
suffocating Midwest County we had been raised in. If some people’s grass was
greener, Lucy’s was bluer. She was determined. The beach was her way to
rebellion and rebirth, a heavily focused vantage (vanquishing) point that would
one day be within her grasp.
I never had the sense of rebellion
my sister did, and certainly lacked her connection to the ocean. Sometimes when
I lie awake at night, staring out my window at the twinkling lights of the big
city, I almost think that sense of purpose might have saved me--might have
given me a sense of independence, of strength. In the end, there’s no use
entertaining these drifting fantasies any further. I don’t dare allow myself.
I remember my first time seeing the
ocean when I was 15 with my father on one of his business trips to Texas. He
never liked to bring us girls because my mother always said too much freedom
would go to our heads. Our mother was a devout Presbyterian Christian, dragging
us into Sunday school week after week to become educated in the highest caliber
of morals. She would always scold us, preaching that “God does not forgive
those whom he doesn’t know,” an excuse she would give for denying us
unsupervised independent pursuits. Some people are like that, you know.
Going to Texas was the first time I
had been out of Kansas, and really the first time I had been allowed to spend
the day to my own devices while my father attended various meetings. I remember
sitting on the pier, long gone now from the hurricane and watching the waves
wash back and forth just thinking about Lucy and her dream. I tried to imagine
what her first time would have been like here, with the grayish-brown expanse
pulsating to the rhythm of her ecstasy. How he might have pulled her in closer as
their bodies melted into one, gazing lovingly into her eyes, a telepathic
message of his enduring devotion. And as I sat on the beach that afternoon,
meandering through our love stories, I wondered for this first time if that’s
all they’d ever be--stories. Maybe love was never supposed to be as real as our
dreams. Maybe we weren’t ready.
While I knew that Lucy could never
go back and have another first time, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she
would have been different if it had happened on a beach like she had planned. Maybe
she wouldn’t have run so far away from us, blamed us for her dream’s lack of
fruition, harrowing so much hate and resentment for the life she never had. Lucy
had been at Louisiana State for almost two years now, and Tommy Erickson was
nothing but a distant memory, but I knew how important it had been. I hoped she
was having better luck on the beaches in Louisiana. There was a beach there,
and maybe the next boy who loved her would love her properly. Looking back now,
Galveston isn’t much of a beach, but it was all that I had. I wonder if Lucy
ever feels that way thinking about Tommy. I wish I had that luxury.
My own sexual fantasies were far
from my sister’s coveted beach scene, and much more traditional in nature. If
my sister’s fantasy revolved around sunshine, mine was snow. When she dreamed
of fluidity I found shelter in a dry consistency. She sought freedom while I
sought enclosure. I needed stability, routine was my salvation. The first time
would be with my husband on my wedding night, somewhere cold and foreboding
like the Western Rockies I had once seen pictures of in my history textbook. We
would be snowed into our little log cabin of love and commitment and stay up
all night kissing and laughing while sipping hot cocoa and watching old
westerns, the twinkling Christmas lights illuminating the scene of our
lovemaking. While I could never particularly put a face to this feeling, I knew
what his hands would feel like folded within mine. How his head would feel
resting against my head. How his toes would warm my own chilly extremities.
After it happened, there was a time
when I thought this numbing cold would strip away all the pain. My mother, who
had been my sole confidante and guidance throughout my sheltered teenage years
knew this most intimate anesthetic of mine and soon after they released me from
the hospital took me to Colorado for a few weeks in one of my Uncle’s cabins. It
was my second time out West, but this time it held an entirely new meaning. Everything
was different, and a part of me feared that this sweet comforting fantasy would
too be taken from me as my sister’s dream had been taken from her those many
years ago.
The doctors said I needed rest.
They said that I needed to be surrounded by friends and loved ones. Buy her favorite things; cook her favorite
meals they suggested. Take her to her
favorite places. But their words were hollow, full of a distracted pity as
they raced from room to room—already mentally setting a chronological hierarchy
of whom next needed their attention, rarely physically and emotionally
conjoined. Their recommendations only made me feel even guiltier about my
situation. That I was just another patient who had resigned to die at the hands
of their own stubborn will, taking up time and bed space. Rather, they refused
to see me as the broken doll I had become, trying to piece back together the
silky white porcelain of my previous innocence.
On our second day at the cabin,
there was a huge snowstorm that kept us locked inside for the rest of the weekend.
And while my mother was horrified, I felt a sense of relief at being forced to
be still. To be silent.
My mother, however, thought
otherwise.
“Sarah, princess” she whined, a
slight southern lilt in her voice. “Aren’t you cold?”
“No.”
She rocked back and forth trying to
keep warm, looking rather like a penguin cooped up in her winter warmth. I
imagined that in another time she was, and that by the time Spring came and the
ice melted I would have peeked out beneath her bushy folds, a newborn babe
adjusting its eyes to the light and taking its first brave steps into the icy
tundra. Even with the hard snow climbing halfway up our window, I still felt
open—vulnerable. I could still feel the hollow space of my womb, conscious of
my body’s new nightmare. Thinking about myself as an animal always made it go
away, helped me to once again feel the security of our wintery tomb. It helped
me to transcend.
“Do you want to play a game?”
“No.”
My mother huffed audibly to let me
know that she was upset and waddled back to her John Grisham novel on the
kitchen table in as dignified of an air as possible. In religious arenas, my
mother feigned to love the romances of Agatha Christie and Jane Austen though
from the few times I was invited to their monthly book club meetings she never
seemed particularly animated about the novels. Ironically, for as much as my
mother chastised indecent graphic exposure in her Christian circles she dearly
loved reading about issues of violence that so permeated Grisham’s novels. Deep
down, I always wondered if there wasn’t something about my mother’s past that
resonated deep within that I would never quite know in the quiet recesses of
our one-sided confidence. And though she would always hide her collection from
us “impressionable” young ladies she could regularly be found sitting at the
dining room table in our small suburban home with a gory thriller in hand,
sometimes staying up late into the night as she waited for my father to return
home from one of his long business trips. My mother has always been a curious paradoxical
anomaly to me.
Without looking up from her book,
my mother shot out another question that rang loudly off of our surrounding
wooden fortress.
“What if we run out of food?” she
propositioned, her lips perched ready for a cutting retort.
The most annoying aspect of spending
large amounts of time with my mother was that whenever my mother felt like she
was being ignored, she would always go into a fit of passive aggressive rage.
While she would never quite say what was on her mind, she would make damn
certain that you knew that you were not appreciated. A sick kind of therapeutic
catharsis, she would dance around your apathy until you exploded through her prodding
annoyance, laughing at her vindictive success. It was the way my father had
always been with my mother in the early years of their marriage, a tactic she
had only picked up second hand though she had learned the art of perfecting his
craft. Watching them fight was like re-enacting the Cold War. It was a
neiztchean battle of wills, missiles pointed in powerful intimidation.
Even before the “incident” I was no
match for my mother’s cunning manipulations, and in lieu of my fragile
circumstances I was far from having the stubborn will to test her gloomy resolve.
Pushing myself outside of my blanket cocoon, I opened my eyes timidly to the
soft evening glow that filtered in through our iridescent window. Caught in the
dialectic of obligation and personal preference I conceded to respond for the
sake of keeping her quiet, whispering softly into my pillow.
“We die.”
I spent most of
those three weeks pondering death, welcoming it as an old friend. Insisting on
an almost constant state of melancholy that even my mother’s passive aggressive
tactics could not tempt, I struggled to find any solace in the therapeutic
exercises I had been taught back at psychiatric. Since art had always been a
passion of mine, I thought that perhaps it was this medium that would once
again resurrect my spiritual yearning for life.
By day I would read poems from
other artist’s about the sweet tantalizing fruit of self-destruction and in
some ways felt a renewed sense of strength and courage through our camaraderie.
It was a temporary fix, one where I would occasionally indulge my mother in
short outings to the local grocery store for some type of outside interaction. But
then the night would fall and I would lie paralyzed in fear, feeling the
wintery wind blow unwelcome kisses on the back of my neck and remembering the
foreign hands reaching out to me in the dark. Filled with the emotional
vulnerability reading their poetic pieces inspired in me, I would often fall
asleep to my own deep panting as I tried to silently calm my hyperventilating panic
attacks. By the end of those three weeks, I had become to associate art with
pain. The two were interchangeable, and as a consequence I found my new path
towards any type of temporal reconciliation in subconscious revelations.
When I did sleep, my dreams were
often confusing. Littered with disembodied joints—elbows, ankles, wrists—never a
face though occasionally an ear or an oddly shaped nose. Occasionally, I would
peal these back and sift through the sinews of scarlet coated veins searching
for the hidden disease. With each layer slowly folding back to unveil even more
folds of pink mortality, I felt a calm reassurance that if only in the distracted
search I could find peace for this curse. Finding this center always helped to
slow my breathing, to drift farther into a subconscious state that I could
trust. And as long as I never saw a face, I was fine. Without a face, the
disembodied parts could not assemble into my ultimate fear. Without a face, it
was not a human. Even now today working long night shifts in the hospital, I
have a hard time associating a face with a disease. Many tell me this natural
dehumanization is a blessing, but I would give anything for it to be as foreign
to my mind as the memory of that night.
It’s funny how our dreams of death
and birth are near the same. We struggle through our gestation, this
preparatory state for something in hopes of a greater reward—deceiving
ourselves into thinking that our hope is well grounded. But for me? I can’t
forget the agony and complete lack of faith in salvation which is how in that
log cabin that I finally found the courage to make that prayer all women forget
about in those final throes of birth. The one God we all secretly pray to in
our anguish. But in the end there was no ultimate reward. There was no rebirth,
no enlightenment. All that was left to me instead was a portable coffin of
frigid numbness and excruciating awareness of humankind’s own inadequacy.
