For "Chrissie"

I first heard the following story during my CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES years when a classmate told it in front of our English class as part of an oral presentation assignment.  Her harrowing tale of Mother-daughter love stayed with me long after I lost contact with my classmates, so much so that I later based a short story on it, which subsequently won a writing contest at INSIGHT MAGAZINE.  I did make an attempt to locate her and share my published version her story, but we didn't have the internet then, and I didn't find her.  Now through the wizardry of Facebook, we have reconnected, and at long last I get to tell her that this story is dedicated to her.

Here is the story as it appeared in INSIGHT MAGAZINE's 5-7-04 edition.

as told to Debra Wintsmith

Chrissie!” my father says softly, like he doesn’t want to scare me. But even half asleep, I can hear the fear in his voice.

I don’t want to wake up. I want to dream it’s yesterday morning, with the sun coming up bright over the mountain, and my mother waiting for me to slip into her bed for a before-school visit.

No matter how early I get up, my mother’s always awake. Awake waiting for me. She says she sleeps in the daytime while I’m at school. I curl up beside her under the electric blanket, and we talk about what I’m going to do that day. I can tell her stuff that would bore anyone else to tears, like every single word Tray Knight said to me in the hallway. My mother is my best friend.

I don’t tell her she’s my only friend, that because of her I don’t really fit in. I think that would hurt her. But mothers aren’t in style at our school. If you don’t have a major blowup with your mother every day, you just aren’t cool.

The popular girls at school hang around in the restroom between classes. They spread out their sweaters and books on the floor and sit with their backs against the wall, dissing their mothers.

Ashley rules the girls’ room. Yesterday when I walked in, she was saying, “My mother had hysterics! All because she went through my dresser and found my sequined nail polish! You’d think I’d done something illegal!”

Melissa sighed in sympathy. “I think my mother actually goes through my purse.” A giggle.

I don’t know what she thinks I’ve got in there! She’s such a snoop.”

Dawn suggested, “Maybe you ought to put something in there just for her to find!”

“Like what?” shrieked Melissa through gales of laughter. “You think I oughta put a—oh, hi, Christin.”

“How’s your mom?” Dawn ventured.

I stepped over the line of legs to the mirror and ran a brush through my hair. “I think she’s better this week.”

“Oh, good.” The others had gone quiet. They stayed that way until I left. It was their way of being kind.

“‘Bye!” they chorused as I stepped out the door.

The door shut and their voices burst out again.

I’m a teenager too, but I could never be like them. Their mothers are their pet peeve. I grab every minute I can with mine. Because I won’t have my mother much longer.

Daddy is shaking me gently, his voice close to my ear. “Chrissie, honey, you have to wake up.”

It’s dark. The clock says 2:30 a.m. My heart clenches like a fist. “Mom—”

“She’s taken a turn, Chrissie. The paramedics should be here any minute.”

“No! No!” I shut my mouth tight, but inside I’m screaming. No! Please, Jesus, not yet! Not tonight!

As I grab my coat, I think for a second that I screamed out loud, because the room is filled with noise. Then I recognize the wail of the siren.

I ride with Mother in the ambulance. She can’t talk to me because of the life-support equipment, but as the van lurches around the twisting hills toward town, her eyes never leave mine.

I don’t talk either. But our eyes say a million and one things to each other. Remember when we went up the Blue Ridge Parkway and we had to talk you out of hugging the bear? Remember when you made me a birthday cake and all the frosting slid off? Remember. Remember. Yes! Yes! Always and forever! Me too, chrissie, I remember everything you ever told me. Even the tiniest little detail, I remember. Always! Always!

Car lights play eerily against the black highway. Somewhere behind us, going much slower, Daddy follows in the car.

I cry—tears that fall somewhere inside of me and don’t get anything wet. Mother keeps looking into my eyes, and I know she sees me crying.

Remember what I told you about Jesus? That He will take care of us no matter what?

Yes, Mother, I remember. I remember how I prayed and prayed to Jesus to please make you well. You told me I shouldn ‘t. That you were ready to go when Jesus called

you.

But not now!

The driver curses. How dare he use words like that with my mother right here, fighting for her life! I look up and see past him. We’re on the open highway, and a pickup truck is racing us.

I hold my mother’s hand against my heart and watch the joyriders swinging toward us, crowding the rescue van. Our driver grips the wheel and holds stubbornly on course.

Mile after mile we’re neck-and-neck with the pickup. Even with the windows up and the siren going, I can hear the heavy pulsing of their radio.

I want to scream, “Stop it! You’re going to kill my mother!” But I say nothing. I don’t want Mother to know what’s happening.

I pray. Please, Lord, help us stay on the highway. Don’t let us die. Please, don’t let Mother die.

I open my eyes, not realizing I shut them. Mother’s eyes are looking into mine. Chrissie, Jesus knows what is best. I’m ready to go.

But I’m not ready for you to go! Not yet! Not now!

I don’t think I say it aloud, but I hear a voice speak quietly beside me. It’s one of the paramedics. “Happens all the time, miss. People gettin’ their thrills offa playin’ chicken with us.”

“Don’t they know it—it’s an emergency?”

“They don’ care.” His big hand squeezes my shoulder. “But Jerry there, he kin drive with the best. He’ll get us where we’re goin’.”

I’m praying again. Please, please help Jerry. Help Jerry drive.

I watch Jerry’s scarred hands clenching the steering wheel. They hold steady as he presses the accelerator to the floor. I see the first lights of town. The pickup edges back into its own lane and falls back at the city limits.

I feel a slight pressure on my hand. Mother is reassuring me that everything is OK. We glide into the emergency zone at the hospital. The glass doors fly open, and orderlies rush out.

As they lift Mother’s stretcher, I stare at Jerry’s face. It’s rough like his hands and his speech, but there are cheerful lines around his eyes and mouth.

“Thanks, Jerry,” I say.

He nods. “Hope your mom does OK.”

I stand under the clear night sky, waiting for Daddy so we can go inside together. An hour ago I would have been running after the stretcher. They would have had to force me to stay outside in the waiting area. But for some reason I feel peace now. Maybe it’s just relief that we weren’t run off the road.

But no, it’s more. I realize that now, for the first time, I’ve released my mother into God’s hands. Your will be done.

If I lose my mother tonight, I know I’ll never be able to replace her. But she will leave something I can take with me the rest of my life. Remember! Yes, remember.

In the short time we’ve been given, we’ve forged a powerful love. Other girls battle their mothers. It will take them years to forgive, to accept, and to love each other. Mother and I have found a calm.

“Chrissie, are you OK?” Daddy comes toward me out of the dark parking lot.

I slip my arm around his waist. “Yes, I’m OK,” I say, and it’s the truth.

INSIGHT  MAGAZINE'S NOTE AT THE END OF THE STORY: This story won first prize in the general short story category of our 1993 writing contest. This incident happened to a high school dassmate, who told Debra, “God let me be with my mother another whole year after that night.”

Exonerating Jadesy Horn

In CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES, a character I named Jadesy Horn tries to befriend me and I am unable to respond to her overtures because by that time I have been bullied into a chain link fence of silence that I can't break out of.  About a month later, I decide that Jadesy wasn't sincere about wanting to be friends because she invited everyone in our class to her birthday party except me.  In the narrative I describe how each desk, save one, had a crisp white invitation envelope placed upon it.  It is a classic episode in the life of a kid who doesn't fit in.

Through the next six school years, I viewed Jadesy Horn skeptically because I believed that she had excluded me, and only me, from her birthday party in the 7th grade.  And we never became friends.

But while writing the story all these years later, something occurred to me for the first time.  I realized that I had blamed Jadesy Horn for something she may not have done.  For one thing, such a mean act didn't fit into the rest of Jadesy's personality in all the time I knew her.  This isn't something that I could have rationalized at the age of 11.  Such is the luxury of time passing.

Now I wondered, how do I know that Jadesy didn't place an invitation on my desk?  How do I know that it wasn't snatched away by one of the other kids whose personalities did fit the crime?  I don't know it.  I assumed, and it was a reasonable assumption at the time because so many people in my world at the time were cruel.  But I may have been wrong about Jadesy Horn.

I almost feel as though I owe her an apology for sticking with the perspective that I had at the time.  But CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES isn't Jadesy's story.  It is mine, with the feelings and perceptions that I had then.  Right or wrong.

It is moments like this that make writing from real life a unique experience.  The author must constantly decide whether to write the story as it was lived or to adjust it in light of future perspective.  In order to maintain the integrity of the story, I believe that the author who writes from life should avoid as much as possible the intrusion of the older, wiser self.

But I still feel a twinge of guilt about Jadesy Horn.

Never Thought I'd See You Again

I wrote FIREFLIES and CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES with the insulation of decades between me and the events described. The colorful characters described in the books left my life at the same time that the narratives end, so it is a very odd feeling that suddenly people out of both books are resurfacing in my world.  I changed the names, of course.  There is nothing in the books that resembles slander, and I don't believe I wrote cruelly even about those who did me cruelly, but I have thought of them for so long as story characters that it is a bit unsettling to be reminded that they are and were real people.

I have always viewed life and people as stories.  It is part of how I survived some difficult years.  To see things in terms of plot, conflict and resolution instead of whining about the unfairness of life gives me an advantage as a writer.  What might have destroyed another person has made me richer.  Oh, the stories I can tell!  

  

But back to the reappearance of the characters from my books.  Might one say "YIKES!" ?  

This is the thing about writing from real life.  Perspective varies.  This was emphatically brought home to me when interviewing family members for PRECIOUS JEWELS, A SDA FAMILY SAGA.  People experience things differently depending on their position in the story, or upon the position of the person who passed the story down to them.  I compromised when recreating some of the incidents, basing what I think happened upon other supporting evidence from the time, reconciling disagreeing witnesses into something that made sense and was true to the essence of the characters involved.

But the stories in which I write from personal experience are different.  The power of the narratives is fueled by the intensity of which the narrator experiences them.  In FIREFLIES, I experienced intensely the loss of a friendship.  Writing that narrative, I realized that the child who impacted me so deeply  had no idea what was at stake for me when she eagerly embraced new friendships and moved forward without me, while I stubbornly refused to change, haunting our old secret places alone.  If she told the story, she would tell it differently, and I would probably be a minor character.  But FIREFLIES is my story, my perspective, and I imagine she will be quite startled how I felt if she reads it.

The same for CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES, whose characters are also starting to reappear in my world.  I wrote it as I lived it, but it may not be as they lived it, walking in their shoes, living their own blues.

Pictured: If you knew me then, the picture above is probably what you saw of me.  The notebook is the same one that I carried in the CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES years, scribbling Gothic novels while pretending to take notes in class.