[stylist] Writing Prompt: Finding the Good in the Villian

[Jewel S.]

Chris,

I really liked your prompt writing. I could see where it is going, and
I think it has great potential.

A quick remark about my own writing. That short writing was based on
my own upbringing. Many of the details were the same as what happened
to me growing up. The re-giving of food until it ws eaten, the
coloured bowls were actually coloured plates and cups...the bowls were
all white growing up, but plates and cups were green for breakfast,
orange for lunch, blue for dinner, and paper towels or bowl for
snacks. My mother was a first-grade teacher, not a teacher in a
special education classroom, but she was very well loved by parents
and her classroom was known as the best integrated classroom, with as
many as 4 special needs in her class at a time along with the other
children. She was not abusive to my older sister like the sister in
the story, but she was to my younger brother (I guess I exchanged him
for the older sister, because I don't relate well to my brother, who
is bipolar and ws temporarily insane during the years after my
father's death when it was just me and him and my mother). So, I guess
I would rather write about the sister, because I relate better to my
older sister.

While my mother was not as physically abusive as Mrs. Landreneau in
the story (which the name, by the way, is based on my Cajun heritage),
she was very abusive emotionally and mentally, and she was sadistic,
finding great pleasure in seeing me hurt myself.

That prompt really helped me write about my childhood, and I think by
the time I'm ready to present it, I'll be able to share my memoir
without anonymity...I'm making great progress in that department with
my counselor and writing.

I would love to see more of your writing, Chris. That was very well
written, and I really could see the man on the bench and the cop. I
wanna read more about him!

~Jewel

On 6/1/10, Chris Kuell <ckuell at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hi Jewel (and others)--
>
> I'm new here to the Stylist, so I beg pardon if I'm not following proper
> protocol.
> I enjoyed your story, especially the differently colored bowls for
> designated meals--signs of a strict disciplinarian. I did have a little
> trouble believing the same woman who could hit her own kids so violently
> would be the 'sought after' special-ed teacher, but I suppose stranger
> things have happened.
>
> Below is my own quick response to the prompt. I don't know how you all work
> with prompts, but I don't take them too literally, prefering to take the
> concept, tumble it around in the old noggin for a while and see what comes
> out.
>
>
> Lester
>
> Something hard nudged at his shoulder, interrupted his dream. Elizabeth
> Taylor, dressed in a see-through, silk kimono,   was washing his back.
>
> "C'mon, Lester. Time to get up."
>
> The nudge came harder, pushing Elizabeth far away, forcing him to deal with
> the cold, the lights, the noise.
>
> "It's almost seven o'clock," the voice said. "Time most respectable folk are
> at work. Now get up. Move along."
>
> Lester used a dirty finger to smear the sleep glue from his eyes. A dark
> figure stood above him, waving a night stick. He blinked, twice, and he saw
> it was that cop.
>
>  like a freshly hatched moth, unfolding its wings for the first time, Lester
> forced his frozen bones to move, to uncurl from their fetal embrace, shift
> into a sitting position. He blinked a few more times, ran his fingers
> through his ragged, gray beard, picked out a little piece of carrot.
>
> "Ain't you got nothin' better to do?" Lester's voice came out uneven, as if
> one lung had more air than the other.
>
> "Serve and protect," the cop said. "Which means getting bums like you off
> public benches like this."
>
> Slowly, methodically, Lester put his boots on the pavement and slipped his
> mismatched socked feet inside. He took the boots off at night to keep the
> thieves from stealing them. He slept clutching the boots like they were a
> sack of cash. They had no laces; he'd traded them for a few slugs of whiskey
> to the Puerto Rican.
>
> Lester rubbed his gloved hands along his thighs in an attempt to bring about
> feeling. He heard footsteps and rapid breathing, looked up just in time to
> see a young woman wearing headphones and a sports bra run by. The cop turned
> to admire the view.
>
> Lester shut his eyes, slipped a hand into his jacket pocket, past the crust
> of bread wrapped in a napkin, ran the tip of one exposed finger along the
> rosary beads. Sylvia's rosary beads. He saw her auburn hair twisted in a
> braid halfway down her back, eyes bright as new pennies. It gave him the
> will to push himself up, to stand, to shuffle through another day.
>
> --chris kuell
>
>
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