TheBanyanTree: A Novel Try

[Terri W.]

In the temporary absence of Tobie, I think I shall step in with the beginning of my novel.  I want it to unfold here in the tree.  I've been thinking about it or years.  

Keep the faith.  :->

Sidda

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3:48 a.m. I can't sleep. Again. I wake up, with my heart yammering away in my chest, and I think I smell smoke, then I realize (again) I probably always will. I've had another dream with the faces of Daniel and Maggie and Lousia and Flossie and Honeyrose looming and shifting around me. What is it about such emotional memory? I truly think it must live in the cells, down at the very deepest molecular level, because when these emotions come up in my dreams, they are not only the same feelings I had before, but they burble up as if I am having them for the very first time. I am as transported and amazed by their newness and power as I am by the feelings, themselves. I am so thrilled and stunned by how Life is finally happening to me -- happening like it happens to other people -- and so curious and passionate to find out what will come next and how this will all turn out. And, in my dream, I am prepared to do anything. If it all turns out to be a crime or a tragedy, I am ready for it. And I won't regret it. I may be heart-broken and even devastated, but I will not regret Life finally paying attention to me and bringing me some tiny portion of the ride it offers to others.


That's how it feels in my dream. Then I wake up, and I look around and see what has happened and how things have turned out, I wonder what ever will I do with the rest of my life? What is to become of me? How shall I fill the hours and days? I will die, here, in this house, in this room, many, many years from now. My former life is all gone. And my life now? I feel as if I were an astronaut, out on a space walk, and then someone just... cut the cord. 


3:54 a.m. I know now what keeps waking me. It is Daniel's face, the memory of it, his face in my dream, it is the imaged of Daniel's dear face, so plain and so close to me. The rain is glistening on his hair, curling it behind his ears, plastering it to his forehead. His intense blue gaze is full of concern and anger and frustration and pleading. 


"Please. You must tell your story. You have to share what you know. Please. Listen to me, Edna. Believe this. You deserve -- more than most -- you deserve to be heard."




So I'm going to write it all down. That will make the time pass, from now till I die, and it will honor those who should be honored. It will, no doubt, put blame on others, and offer pardon to others, and, perhaps, be my path to forgiveness for everyone. Including me. But, I vow now, I will tell my story. 


And so, here it is. 


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My name is Edna St. Vincent Goodner, and, yes, I know it is not very pretty to hear or to say, but it's what I've got. My mother, Margaret, as you'll hear (again and again), is an artist. Or as Flossie would say, "An artiste." She says this in a particularly tone of voice that does not suggest it is a good idea. In fact, it's about as pathetic as one can be. It's along the same lines of "Bless her heart," here in Friendship, Texas. "She's gotten mighty broad in the beam, bless her heart." "They keep breaking up, but the splits never seem to work out, bless her heart." "She took off the emergency brake and aimed for the end of the dock, bless her heart." 


"Poor pitiful person, I'd just as soon slit my wrists with a rusty 2 penny nail than live the life that's been handed to her, the artiste. Bless her heart."


Flossie has always thought Mama -- who is Margaret, and also Maggie, so if I refer to her as any of these names, understand I am talking about the same person -- did not have the sense God gave a goose, which is simply not true. Mama was born with a sensitive spirit and compassionate heart, and (what is worse) a belief in romantic endings. By that I mean she believes in happy endings, not romantic endings as in "let's all take poison and die." It is her devout belief in things turning out all right in the end that allows Mama to live in a halfway vertical way at all. Especially on the days when there seems little reason to get out of bed. It is Mama's complete devotion to the God of Happily-Ever-After's that makes her swing her bare feet out from her side of that old double bed, pad to the kitchen, and plug in the the coffee. She believes that anything in the world might happen to her before she returns to her side of that same double bed that night. It makes no matter that nothing happened the day before, or the day before that. It makes no matter that nothing good has happened to her in almost ten years. Every day is a new beginning, with a bright horizon, full of opportunity for this phoenix of Friendship, Texas.


And it's hell to live with, let me tell you.


Anyone with more sense than... okay, a goose, knows that life proceeds pretty much the way it always has. Sudden events are always tragedies -- unless it's a lottery ticket, and we don't have those in Friendship, so we can just wipe that out of the realm of possibility right now. The accidents, mishaps, disasters, catastrophes, and paper cuts of every day life are never good news. Oh, sure, maybe the fact that we survived them, is good. But it's rare that someone calls in the middle of the night to tell you they've fallen in love, or found buried treasure, or met up with a unicorn (at last!) because they've always believed in them and they just thought they should call you up right then and say "I told you so."


I write this knowing full well that Mama's great faith in the Universe has already paid off for her big time twice, so far, this year, and it's only October. I can't quite imagine what else she has in store, but -- oh, wait, three times, the Universe has answered her unuttered prayers. So, okay, never mind. Three notes from God saying, "Yes, you are one of my favorites," and there's just no convincing anybody anywhat otherwise.


I'm getting ahead of myself here. This always happens, and will be the hardest part of writing my story, because I know so much about what everyone was thinking at every different intersection and turn, and they all are pushing each other around in my brain, calling to me, "Talk about me! Tell my part!" So I don't really know where to begin. 


This also happens to me when I've gone on the prowl and seen too much, and it replays itself in my mind. So maybe I can handle this writing sort of inner chaos the same way. I must concentrate very hard until I am in the very center of myself. I can see myself there, inside of myself. The myself I see is me as a child. Sometimes I am three or four, sometimes I am almost ten. I imagine a big trunk sitting in the dark of my middle. And I raise the heavy trunk lid, lift my feet very high, climb into the trunk, crouch down, and let the lid drop. This image takes me to the safe places I felt before I was eleven and things went haywire. I used to go on long walks by myself in the pasture. I'd hide under the chinaberry bush on the south side of the house, and no one could see me. They'd walk by, calling me in, and not see me. I had one hiding place up in the oak by the gate, but I was found there one day, so that became the first place they'd check. And sometimes, when I read books as a child, I'd feel very safe and secure in the story. I remember when I'd come home from school to a book I was reading. It was as good a feeling as coming home to someone who loves you.


Once I get going, I hope to feel as safe in this story as that. 




Edna St. Vincent Goodner. 


Friendship, Texas. 


A tiny town you have never heard of, because it is on the way from exactly nowhere to nowhere. It was on the railroad route, generations ago, and there's still a roundhouse near downtown. But the highway went right by us and that was the end of that. We were the tomato capital of... central Texas, the South, the whole country of the UsofA, I forget which. But the trains stopped and the highway missed us, and tomatoes are no longer our major deal. Now it's leather. And I know for a fact, because it is on the front page of the twice-weekly newspaper, that we are "The Leather Capital of the World." We are also known, according to that same paper, as the "Hub City." This is because, I think, everything happens around us -- and we just keep spinning in circles here in Friendship on our own little private axle.


Most of this area is farm country, with folks raising a lot of cotton and corn -- not corn for people to eat, but corn for livestock, which is different. Cattle are pretty major. And sheep and goats. There are some horse farms, too, that raise rodeo kinds of horses and offer stud services. Just about everybody around here is German or Czech or Polish. There is talk about the "Bohemian Wall" here, which just means you have run up against a particularly stupid individual. I looked it up in the library bookmobile and it seemed to me like everyone here is a Bohemian, me included, if you judge from historical bloodlines.


A lot of people came here from Tennessee after the Civil War, I read. German farmers migrated with their families. There's land and sky stretching as far as you can see. Flat land, mostly, pocked and dented with ravines and gullies and creeks. The creeks swell with the spring rains and can cause some damage. Houses don't topple or anything, but every so often some poor livestock animal walks where it is used to walking, and find itself knee-deep in mud, and then there's a rescue mission, if it comes to somebody's attention in time. That same creek -- I'm thinking of Cottonmouth Creek in particular, now -- goes so dry in the summer that there is no "creek" there at all, but only deep crooked cracks. The cars traveling along the bridge over it must wonder: Why have a bridge here at all? 


When there isn't a drought, the sky is low for long periods of time. The trees are low and dense and wide, ancient live oaks dripping with moss, and mesquite. They are filled with cicadas that drone so loud you can hear them indoors, even in church. The tall, graceful pines don't begin till you get closer to the Gulf, but we have the same humid, sub-tropical heavy air weather here. Two or three times a week in the fall, which is lately, you can feel the wind shift and go suddenly cooler, and there is a great groan as all the rusty windmills in the county begin to turn. It means a Norther has blown in, and it is anyone's guess as to whether it will bring rain, hail, or nothing more than groaning windmills, lowing cattle, and silent cats with their whiskers lifted to twitch at this new flavor of air.




I will tell you first what happened ten years ago, which you must know about before anything else will make sense. This is the sudden event that happened to our family, the one that was not good news, the day that changed our lives into "Before" and "After" forever.