Okay Party people... I've been asked over email about the prologue to
Fancy That and I decided to post it up. (I spoke of my woes concerning it in my post "
Them Blues Part II" I'm not going to use it as a prologue, but I'm going to absorb in the story somewhere.
I posted 4 character sketches a couple of years ago...2 of the people are in this story.
Fancy That: Paulette ReeseFancy That: Arthur ReeseI have 10 chapters written altogether. I haven't worked on it lately, as I put it through my writing class and I have to spend a good deal of time editing it before I move on. But it is a story that stays on my mind, and I plan to work on it next year.
So here's that infamous prologue, a slightly cleaned up version using some of the class's input.
1972 No one could remember who owned or even lived in the old dilapidated house tucked away in the woods at the far end of Pine Street. It was as if the house was just standing there, vacant as the eyes of a drug addict staring openly at whoever cared to drive by.
The centuries old house was a creaky body, racked with the pains of old age, worn down worst than someone with years of arthritis and liver spots and the like.
But it breathed, its lungs dexterous and strong as the day it was built. It was alive and well, even if it looked like it would fall apart at any given moment.
Its mind was sharp, chocked full of memories from days of old: The memory of fires crackling in the stone fireplace, offering the only protection against some of the coldest winters ever. The laughter and crying of a newborn child, hungry for its mothers milk, giggly from a loving poke from its father’s finger.
It recollected all things family: birthdays, fights, and funerals too numerous to record.
If the walls could talk, they would whisper of their memories of the love shared between a young Paulette Charlita Childs and her soul mate.
Paulette lay naked on her back in what may have been once the Master bedroom of the house one sunny Monday morning in 1972, with only a old linen sheet draped loosely across her body. She stared up at the ceiling, which was beginning to dip in the middle. Ugly brown water stains left from rain leaking through a roof far past any hope of repair stared back at her. Even though she lay on mounds of thick billowy blankets, she could still feel the buckling wood boards beneath her body and the round heads of the rusty nails poking her back.
That discomfort didn’t matter, for Paulette was caught up in the soulful croons of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. The singers were pondering, mourning even, over their love for each other, and more importantly where that love had gone.
The sad song didn’t matter much to Paulette either, because the woman she loved was right there next to her.
They lay there in each others arms, caught up in the afterglow of their lovemaking, watching the gray smoke unfurl from a joint bursting at the seams with forbidden herbs free of irksome seeds and worrisome sticks.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Paulette breathed, her words rushing after the smoke that eased from her lips. She turned over and flicked ashes into an ashtray behind them just within arms reach. “There’s nothing in the world that compares to being with you, Fancy.”
“It could be this way all the time,” Fancy said. Her voice was quiet and shaky. “You know that.”
Paulette sighed and took another long draw on the joint. “You keep saying that.”
Fancy raised up on her elbows. “And I’ll keep saying it until it gets through your head. You are in charge of your life, Paulette, not that damn Arthur.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Well, it’s true. He stays in the way.”
Paulette waved away the smoke she’d just exhaled. “No, I’m not talking about that. Don’t call me Paulette. You know how much I hate it when you call me Paulette. I’m Lita. I’m your Lita.”
Fancy always called her Lita when they were alone together. It was her pet name for her, and what she called her in the diaries they shared over the years.
“Lita, I’m just tired of all this hiding. It’s been three whole months since the last time we were together. I miss you.”
“Well Fancy, if you wouldn’t have moved way down to Valdosta―”
Fancy sat up. “Stop blaming me for that. If Arthur hadn’t run my name in the ground and ran me out of town, then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
Paulette took another quick draw on the joint, then sat it on the edge of the ashtray. “Calm down, baby,” Paulette cooed. She wrapped a couple of strands of Fancy’s long curly locks around her finger. She leaned over and kissed her on the arm.
“I just hate him, that’s all. Hate that you’re married to him and he’s with you every night. Hate that he keeps us apart.”
“I hate him too, Fancy. God knows I do. But we’re together now, right here, you and me. And that’s all that matters.”
Fancy pulled away from Paulette. “No, that’s not all that matters.”
Paulette picked up the joint from the ashtray. She took a drag so deep that the soft insides of her cheeks touched. She exhaled the opaque smoke into Fancy’s face. “You always get the best grass, Fancy.”
“Well fancy that. She likes the grass,” Fancy said.
Paulette chuckled.
Fancy sucked her teeth. The bacon from the bacon and egg sandwiches they'd had earlier was stuck in her teeth. “You’re changing the subject, like you always do when it comes to Arthur.”
“Don’t wanna think about Arthur, right now. Not while I’m good and high. I just wanna think about you.”
Fancy smiled and lay back down on the rumpled blankets. Paulette knew just the right words to smother Fancy’s volatile temper. She held the joint up to Fancy’s lips and watched as she inhaled.
They lay there, taking turns smoking. The music had stopped. The wind whistling through the trees provided a soothing lullaby.
“Lita,” Fancy finally said.
Paulette said nothing.
Fancy took a deep breath. “I’ve saved up some money over the past year. Close to five hundred dollars. It’s enough, enough for me to move to Atlanta. I have an interview at Southern Bell tomorrow for a phone operator job paying a hundred dollars a week.” The words rushed from her mouth like the wind rushed through the trees.
This time, Paulette sat up, dropping the joint in the process, which had now dwindled down to a mere roach. It fell between them. Paulette picked it up and patted the sheet to make sure it wasn’t burning them.
“That’s why I bring the same old sheets. You always dropping the joints.”
“No,you can't do that,” Paulette said. She picked up a new joint from a baggie next to the two of them, and lit it with a match. “You sound crazy. How will we see each other, with you all the way up in Atlanta and me down here?”
“Lita, I want you to come with me.”
Paulette coughed hard, the smoke burning her throat and nose. “What?”
Fancy snatched the joint from Paulette’s fingers. “I said, come with me. It’s summer right now. That gives you plenty of time to find a teaching job up in Atlanta before the new school year starts. I have that money saved, and that’s enough to get us a nice one bedroom apartment in West Atlanta. We could be together, buy a nice house, be a family, and―”
“I can’t just up and leave like that. And give me back my joint.”
Fancy’s hopeful eyes clouded with anger. “No. You smoke too damn much. I’m trying to talk to you, and all you want to do is get high.”
“You blowing my high, Fancy.”
“You could leave if you wanted to,” Fancy said.
Paulette looked away from Fancy towards the bedroom’s broken door, barely hanging on by rusty hinges. This room was the nicest room in the house. Fancy had found it when they were teenagers. Everyone always said it was a haunted house, but Fancy was bold enough to sneak up in there and check it out. She cleaned this room and made it a private haven for the two of them. And now, with Fancy talking such foolishness about Atlanta, their private cove would become obsolete.
“You don’t want to leave, Lita.” Fancy grasped Paulette’s chin and turned her face to her own. “Always worried about what people say. Damn what they say.”
“Come on. I don’t want to fight about this.”
“It’s 1972, Lita. Times are changing. I’m twenty-three, and you’re twenty-four. We can go to Atlanta. We don’t have to stay down here all our lives. We can leave and be free.”
“Free.” Paulette snorted. “You always talking about being free. Those folks up in Atlanta will look at us like we’re crazy if we walk down the street kissing and holding hands.”
“Good ol’ Paulette Childs.” Fancy laughed. “Oh, sorry, it’s Paulette Reese, now, ain’t it”?
“It’s Lita to you.”
“So scared somebody’s going to see you’re not perfect.”
Paulette lay back on the pillow. “I’m not perfect. Just cautious.”
“Well being up in Atlanta will be better than you being here in ass backwards Fitzgerald and me being down in Valdosta.”
“That didn’t have to happen. You could’ve stayed quiet about us, and stayed right here in Fitzgerald.”
“No.” Fancy shook her head defiantly. “You were worth it. Standing up for you, no, standing up for us and what we share was worth it.”
Fancy reached for her shirt and hastily pulled it down over her head. She thrust her arms through the sleeve openings. “I’m beginning to feel like I’m not worth as much to you as you are to me.”
“You’re talking crazy. You always turn what little time we have together into a thing of frustration.”
Fancy stopped fighting with her shirt. She blinked rapidly. “I love you. And Lita, I don’t know, you just don’t seem to get that.”
Paulette rubbed Fancy’s arm, then gently brushed away the tears that fell down her cheeks. “I love you, too, Fancy. You know I do.”
If I had a gun,” Fancy began. She reached for her crumpled cut-off jeans and balled them up tightly with her hands. “If I had a gun, I would march right out to that factory and blow what little brains Arthur has right out the side of his peanut head.”
“Calm down. Don’t think like that. I love you, not Arthur.”
“Then prove it to me. Leave Arthur. Leave this place. Leave everything and come with me. I have the money.”
“Fancy―”
“Paulette, I swear, you’re so full of excuses. It’s just one excuse after another.”
“I’m just being realistic, that’s all.”
Fancy jumped up from the floor and snatched on her cut-off jeans. “No, you’re just being a goddamn coward.”
Paulette reached out and gently caressed Fancy’s bare ankle. Fancy didn’t move, only stared down at her. Fancy was a hothead, but Paulette knew that one touch in the right places calmed her down.
Fancy lay back down next to Paulette. As mad as she was, she too didn’t want their time together to end so quickly. They’d been there since early that morning, and planned to stay there all day.
They made love once again, and fell asleep in each others arms.
They were awaken by the patter of raindrops on the house’s rooftop.
“Oh God, I left the top down on my bug,” Fancy yelled. She’d just bought the VW bug and had to dry it out once before after a rainstorm. She wasn’t interested in dealing with the smell of rain soaked seats ever again.
She quickly put her clothes back on, slipped on her wooden clogs and ran out the house.
“Be careful,” Paulette warned. “Don’t forget to walk along the wall. There are new weak spots in this floor.”
“I know, I know,” Fancy yelled from the hallway.
Paulette heard the car door of Fancy’s car open and close, and the hard creak of the vinyl top being raised. She gathered the linen sheet around her body as she sat up to feel around for her own clothes and shoes. She didn’t plan on putting them on, but was completely unnerved by Fancy’s angry search for her own. She at least wanted to have them put to the side, out of the mess of sheets and blankets.
Suddenly Paulette heard footsteps, fast and anxious, coming up the stairs.
“Paulette,” a hard breathing Fancy yelled as she ran into the room. “Get up, we gotta get out of here.”
Paulette sat up. “What’s wrong?”
“Somebody’s outside. I think they saw me.” She picked up the flashlight they used earlier when they came in. “Get your clothes on and let’s go.”
“Who’s out there?”
“Don’t worry about that. Let’s go.”
As fast as Fancy said that, she was on her way out the door, transistor radio and picnic basket clutched in her arms, running down the hall. Paulette was left sitting there, struggling to get her tube top over her shoulders.
Then that’s when Paulette heard a sound she would never forget: the slow sound of splintering wood,the sound of the floor giving way. It was followed by a muffled scream and a loud crash.
“Fancy?” Paulette jumped up from the floor. She was so high that she found it hard to keep her balance. She wrapped the sheet around herself and walked towards the bedroom door.
Paulette squinted and saw a big hole in the floor of the hallway. She gasped as she saw Fancy’s fingers hanging on to the edge of the hole, the top of her hair just visible behind her hands.
“Fancy!” Paulette screamed. She dove for the hole in the floor, completely losing the sheet draped around her body. Paulette grabbed Fancy’s forearms, as best she could with her own hands. It didn’t help that Fancy’s arms were slick from the rain.
“Don’t let me fall,” Fancy whimpered.
The wood began to give beneath Paulette. “I won’t let you fall. Try to pull up.”
“I can’t.” Fancy let go, but Paulette caught her hands in her own. They stared into each others eyes.
“Hold on. Just hold on. I won’t let you go.”
All of a sudden, Paulette was snatched back. Fancy’s hands slipped from hers.
“Fancy! No!” Paulette screamed again at the top her lungs.
There was a loud crash. Paulette was still being drawn backwards. She saw a dark shadow flutter against the wall, and whoever was pulling her away suddenly flipped her over. She couldn’t tell who it was.
Just as she was about to speak, she was punched in the face.
Her world, Paulette’s world, went black as night, as she lost conscience that early summer morning in the vacant house on Pine street.
If the walls could weep, they would weep for a love snatched away.
A love broken too soon.
