Faith: A Writer's Life

 

Charlotte Bronte Resolute

Sometimes I think a writer’s life is really many writers’ lives. One of the most moving and illustrative examples of this idea is this image of Charlotte Bronte from the BBC drama, To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters. Charlotte has in her arms, safely tucked under her meager shawl, protected more than she is from the driving rain from which everyone else is running, the precious manuscript of Jane Eyre. Where would the generations of future writers be if not for the fortitude, determination, and faith of Charlotte Bronte? Faith, the thing that carries her forward along that stormy path out into the world. 

I remember Betty Smith walking her dog at midnight, mailing her manuscript and wondering if anyone would ever get excited enough about her book to publish it. They did; it was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I think of Jerome Salinger sending story after story to The New Yorker Magazine, rejected every time until Ernest Hemingway served with him in Europe and called him over to the bar, “Hey, Jerry! Jerry! Everyone, this guy’s a helluva writer!”

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby only sold a few copies until the United States Army wanted to create small paperbacks for soldiers to carry with them; they chose Fitzgerald’s little book. The soldiers loved the story of the girl, the car and the house, The American Dream, reading it over and over, sharing the hand  sized books, causing such a demand for the story that Fitzgerald was restored as a great writer.

I am struck anew by the long road of writing. I look at my own work - Telling Time By Apples And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, for instance. It took years and years of heavy yard work and gardening - me digging, planting, raking, weeding, pruning; me creating a wheelbarrow out of a huge tree branch to haul gigantic loads of yard waste, me planting the infinitesimal seeds, nurturing the tiniest seedlings that could drown if watered if not lifted patiently by hand out of the puddles, these would grow to be cosmos taller than me that the goldfinches used to sway on, chirping deliriously. It took the subsequent illness, followed by recovery and the slow regaining of strength, the tyranny of the garden, the terror of winter, the slow recovery of Spring, the clean, new, fresh garden! When I wrote that long poem, I was sure no one would appreciate it, but I was wrong. Everyone who has ever gardened can’t help but shudder and sigh when they read it.

Besides all the living that is required, I also make my own books (with the help of my team, my daughter and husband). Perhaps every writer should have to physically make their books at least once! I decided to illustrate Telling Time By Apples. I didn’t know anything about making illustrations, which is very different from painting or drawing. These paintings or drawings are specifically made for print, which is a different matter. I could only paint on canvas, so that’s what I did, hoping the images would have a quaint, sampler look. 

I designed the cover, which was meant to have an apple flaming with autumn leaves. It was my husband who added the robin. Together, we chose the paper color to match the parchment look of the cover. We chose the typeface and the spacing of the lines and the margins. Then, I was propped up in a program called InDesign where I set the type and images. 

Thanks to Amazon’s publishing program, we are able to publish and sell books. This is pretty much the process of making our books: First, years of real life agony or joy, then writing, then the physical book. My daughter often created the covers, using my design joined with her art work or photography. She took the photos of the marble on the cover of my poetry book Atlantis and the deep blue water on the cover of Dreamwater. She painted the airplane on Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse, a cover designed around her original painting and the idea of daydreaming over coffee, plus the fact that the owner of the café had been a pilot. She designed the striking, glossy black cover for When Two Women Die. And, together, we bravely created the muted grey cover of Holy Days using a vintage photo of me at three-years-old. 

I am reminded of Virginia Woolf who, at Hogarth Press, set the type manually, letter by letter, with her husband, Leonard. Or, similarly, D.H. Lawrence having his banned books printed in Italy, letter by letter, by a printer who could not read English.

Woody Allen once said that he didn’t know where the words came from, no one really does, but they come and he’s grateful for them. I remember being extremely nervous at one of my first readings, in a little shop called Ironic, run by two women, one who made wrought iron furniture and objects, another who painted furniture. She had painted a lovely Italian countryside mural on the shop wall by which I was sitting. I loved being in such a charming, work-rich environment. I looked down at the book in my lap and saw my daughter’s graphic and exciting artwork on the cover of my poetry book, Marblehead Moon - a wild rendition of the  moon, the stars, and the ocean that she had made when she was quite young - and I thought, “What am I nervous about? The words are right here!” I still remember the warm rush of faith that enveloped me.

You see I believe the words come from God, or, if you will, the Universe. That is my faith. One’s talent and one’s work, they are a trust handed to the writer. The writer must then carry and carry and carry that work out into the world. I am grateful for my readers, the ones whose faces beam, who proudly tell me in the supermarket, “Patricia! I read your book!” chin jutted out in pride. I remember the woman at a reading who reached out and touched my arm as I passed her after reading, on my way back to my chair. Thank you, dear heart, I feel your touch every time I despair. I remember the gasps from the crowd. Gasps! Can I really be so lucky? Hey, I also remember the potato chip bag and the crunching of chips in the audience - infinitely more compelling than poetry at times!

Lately, we have just finished publishing Low Flying, a stunning dark green book with type that truly glimmers like gold though it is only gold in color. Though Low Flying is fictionalized, it came out of many painful conversations I had over the years with women telling me horror stories about their marriages; also plenty of lurid town gossip, as well as my own experiences with an abusive boss that I wished I could - well, the imagination can be very therapeutic. In Low Flying two women who suffer psychologically abusive marriages, gain strength from the simple act of working together in the nurturing environment of a beautiful old greenhouse. So, you see, years of suffering, years of writing, months of grunt work at the computer. In writing the book, I was especially proud of the “garden quotes” at the top of each chapter which I found over years of reading, some tidbit from the garden or from poetry, literature, even movies that enlightens the thought and action to follow.

Low Flying was finished in the late ‘90s. I’ve kept it close all that time, hoping one day to get it from manuscript to actual book form. My husband, who began in the book business, is very proud of this book. Right now, we have my author’s copy on the dining room table. He admires it every time he walks by, “You got yourself a beautiful book there!” Or “Look at that shine! You’d think it was gold leaf!” Or he’ll pick it up and say, “It even has a nice hand.” That’s the way a book feels if it feels good in your hand.

Faith.

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2020

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

HOLY DAYS - Sexual Memories

     Holy Days used to be titled Sexual Memories. Sometimes I wish it still were. It wouldn’t have a child on the cover, though I often talk about Gloria Wisher’s early sexuality in the novel, in such chapters as “Feeling the World,” for instance, because that’s how I remember life. “What a riot, what an orgy of living my little life was for me! I wondered at the peculiar mixture I was of Mama and Daddy, Nona, Grandma and Grandpa and all the things I saw and felt and ate and breathed. A part of me was perverted as though the good in Mama and all her generations had met the bad in Daddy and all his generations, had somehow twisted like a curious string of DNA creating this perversion, putting me beyond them both and everything.”

    Early chapters are structured around strong male and female images, sensual eating, beautiful gardens, wine, powerful paternal and maternal figures, brothers, sisters, men in uniform, women in soft sweaters, cigarette smoking, laughing, lipsticked lips, and the barren city street alive only with people. From the chapter “Love Parties,” “The house banged and stomped and ran with people; it called out and answered in happy shouts. They didn’t talk to each other in normal voices, they bellowed from deep in their bellies, with joy, with rage, with a deep relish of their joy and rage; from room to room, up the stairs or down, from the refrigerator to the stove, from adjoining beds, they loved the sound of themselves.”

     I describe the streets of East Boston in a chapter called “Sexual Law.” Gloria’s mother, Rosie, was forbidden by her father to ride a bike or skate in the street. Gloria’s response was this, “Grandpa knew how provocative these motions could be: her limbs rising and falling, her behind, a smooth, stiff outline, her red curls beckoning in the breeze. Mama on a bike! Mama on roller skates! I can feel Grandpa’s shudder going through me!

     But, Grandpa’s law couldn’t stop sexual law and restraint made Mama even more innocent and desirable. Especially to the bad boys. Boys like Jake and Daddy. Mama was really good. She prayed and went to mass and confession. She received Holy Communion every Sunday. She obeyed her father and her mother. She had that good look: round and soft and unaware of her power, a labyrinth of red curls, chubby legs in ankle socks and thick high heels stepping up into the corner store. The bad ones, without jobs, without homes, dropped out of school, squinting through the haze of cigarettes, were pulled right to her, without knowing what on earth had happened to them.”

     I remember life in the poor neighborhood as being shot through with sex: “When a young woman stepped out of the house, her sex went up like a shot and young men, standing around all day in the company of other men - like soldiers or sailors who’d been deprived of softness and a sweet smell - stood alert suddenly, even though they seemed not to have altered their slouches against the tenement wall or the store window. They squinted over their cigarettes and a hush, as though decided communally, instinctively, fell over them and inwardly, their feelings swelled as she walked by. Maybe one or two didn’t look at her: they watched her without looking. The others gave her the eye, up and down, through the haze of smoke. In the hush, the tension gathered, to be let out as soon as she passed, when they could still smell her, when she could still hear them, they’d let it all out, swoosh, as remarks she could just barely - or not - hear, but could feel, in a rush of heat through her veins.”

     The poor neighborhood is especially vulnerable to sexual power: “The tenements were close, less than two feet of alley separated them. Sometimes one wall held two houses together. Clotheslines crisscrossed, colored flags flapped from them; women’s voluptuous arms tugged the ropes and pulleys. Windows slid open and women’s arms tossed buckets of water out the windows. The women sang out to each other all day, their voices calling Italian like a song. We lived window to window, door to door, radio to radio, telephone to telephone - how many times did Daddy answer another man’s phone, picking up our receiver, saying “Hello?” into the dial tone? How many times did he look across to see another man’s wife naked in the dark?”

     Gloria is a victim of incest. For years, therapists have been telling victims of incest, “Incest is not about sex, it’s about power.” Rape – and incest is rape – may be about power for the rapist, but it is about sex for the victim. Incest is about sex.

     Sex is about power. At it’s best, sex is about the mutual power of the beloved: being loved is empowering, being made love to by the one you love who also loves you is empowering. If either partner is unwilling or uncomfortable, then the power structure becomes unbalanced. Sex becomes seduction at the least, rape at the most extreme. My definition of rape – would it have happened if you were in charge?

     Therapists mean well when they tell victims that incest is not about sex; it’s about power. But, victims know better. Therapists admit that sexual pleasure experienced during incest confuses victims. Victims ask themselves or their therapists, “Then how come I had an orgasm?” “How come I sexually fantasize about incest?” “How come incest has become the source of my desires?” “How come I cannot have a happy sex life?” “Why do I always feel guilty or dirty when I have sex?”

       The answer to all of those questions is for the victim, incest is about sex. For most victims of incest, incest is their first sexual experience, one that can both mar and make their sexual identity.  Their rapist is usually someone familiar, someone in authority, someone they trust: the very person who is teaching the child about the world, about reality. Incest becomes the child's view of reality. In Holy Days, Gloria envies what she calls "real people doing real things." She watches other kids, rich kids, going to a local baseball game dressed in real baseball uniforms and feels excluded from such wholesome activities.

      In Holy Days, incest is but a symptom of the over-riding sexual power of the neighborhoods and the families. Gloria is incested by her father. She is also raped by the boy next door. Her brother, who “sells” her to her rapist, becomes a thief at 10 years old. All these crimes are symptoms of the larger, overwhelming Stockholm Syndrome going on in Gloria’s life. The way of the poor neighborhood is to overpower those who live there. Gloria’s father, though good at his job and able to solve monumental problems in the factory, is overlooked by the bosses for advancements that go to, according to Billy Wisher, “college men with their heads up their ass.” In the Chapter “A Child’s Christmas in Revere,” Billy tells a black man that he knows what it means to be black. Why? Because he perfected the shrink-wrap machine and didn’t get any credit or reward while his boss walked off with the patent and the profits. Class becomes another form of slavery.

    In a very real sense, the neighborhood is raping the people every day through violence, poor conditions, neglect and disrespect, and the people, in turn, abuse each other and are proud of being abused as red badges of courage. “I come from Revere, I come from Southie, I come from East Boston,” become wounds worn with pride, a daily war that has been survived with an injury to show for it like a Purple Heart, a shining medal of honor.

     Gloria’s father acted his power upon the one thing in his life that he could control – his daughter. But, for his daughter, incest became a sexual battle she had to fight in order to regain her self-respect. Gloria begins to sink down into sexual promiscuity. Only the love of another troubled girl can help bring her out, into the light of her own promise and recovery. 

   As Gloria says in the chapter, “An Ounce of Pride”: “Romantic and idiotic as I was, what gave me that ounce of pride to keep myself safe? So many kids before and after me went under, looking for love in an alley, oblivion in a bottle or bliss in a joint or a needle or a pill, hit by a Mack truck, rolled and left under an overpass, buried under layers of pigeon shit. So many kids ran away from home. I knew I was supposed to run away, but I was afraid.

            I thought street kids must be very brave. I admired them that they were filthy and slept in doorways and drain pipes, that they ate out of trash barrels like refugees of war, a trash can lid for their plate, maybe scraping it with a spoon. I admired them that they coughed and bled and washed in the gutter, that they went crazy with disease and malnutrition and the street. They were brave! Brave!

            I, on the other hand, ate and drank at my father’s table. I sat right next to him and sincerely laughed at his jokes. I snuggled under the cool, crisp sheets my mother washed for me and, on them I had sex of varying sneaky, cowardly sorts with her husband, her boyfriend, my own father. Under the illusion of a contract of innocence and obedience, I let my parents keep me safe - yes, safe - from murder and robbery, beatings and what I came to think of as violent rape.

            But, there are so many subtle violences. And I was tormented by guilt. For having done bad things, for having enjoyed them much of the time, for having become these things out of doing, memory and time, and for not having the guts to run away. I was guilty. I didn’t want to leave my mother’s lap, soft and flowery in her cotton housedress. I used to sit at her feet and kiss them in their old slippers. I loved their smell, like warm, roasted nuts just out of the oven. I couldn’t leave her refrigerator that I could open anytime for fresh bread and butter, a half wheel of Romano cheese, pounds of sweet ham and hot salami, cakes, pies, ice cream, puddings, apples, peaches, grapes, strawberries, milk and cream. The warm, steaming windows dripping with cooking and tables warmly full of people as the winter howled or sizzling barbeques outside in summer. I was weak and as I tasted these things and wrapped myself in warmth, I nearly vomited with shame. And, among these things, I wouldn’t leave my books and my drawings. And, on Sunday nights, as though I deserved it, I wanted to watch “The Wonderful World of Color,” in black and white and imagined the colors. I reminded myself of the Jews who stayed in Berlin because they couldn’t bear to leave the piano and of the Jew who admired a weed blowing in the icy wind because he knew it was as alive as he was, while the bodies he buried were not alive.

            Why didn’t I go under? What gave me the pride that swelled in me like the dirty grey storm waves at Revere Beach, the pride it took to not get pregnant and the gall instead to tease Boy Scouts and sailors? What gave me the madness to bat Rick Likus about with my paw? It was Mr. Lanza giving me a large gold star for my stories. It was Mrs. French and her long-taloned hand on my shoulder telling me I could write. It was Ma and Daddy - yes, Daddy - bragging that I might be a teacher, that I was going to college and that I would be the first in the family, telling their friends and neighbors with pride about the books I read, about my grades, asking me for information like I was an expert or an encyclopedia. Grown men and women, neighbors, calling on the phone to ask me how to spell a word. They let me know I was worth something: but, they didn’t know how to help me. The very people who confused me, hurt me and neglected me also exalted me. They gave me life, but it was a long struggle out the birth canal.

            And, my angel was out there, looking for me. I had one more very important step to take before I could meet her.”

©Patricia Goodwin, 2015

 More to come about Patricia Goodwin's latest novel, Holy Days, now available on Amazon.


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