Lara wins a prize for an essay about our class.

Lara wrote an essay about our class and submitted it to the Chautauqua Writers' Center contest--and won an honorable mention! It's about our shared experience, and she'd love to hear your reactions.--K

I Heard a Story Today

I heard a story that hasn’t yet been written and isn’t mine to tell, but it is a story so beautiful and so moving I cried when I heard the outline for it. I heard a story that will be one of the greatest stories of this decade, a story that will become celebrated and remembered as one of the most important stories of our time, and I was one of the first to hear it.  I got to hear this story before it was written, in a hot humid room in the middle of the rainiest summer I can remember.

I came to this place to tell my own stories. I knew I had important, meaningful stories that deserved to be told properly and that the world needed to hear, and I had come to this room to learn to tell them properly.  I did not primarily come to listen to the stories other people had to tell.  I took my writing very seriously.  I vowed to wear a skirt every day and try not to shock my fellow students too much.  I failed at both endeavors; I cannot contain who I am for very long, certainly not an entire week.

“You are all great listeners,” the teacher exalted on the first day of class. The implication was that we were probably not great writers, but she was wrong.  I knew I was a great though unpolished writer.  As a listener I’m no great shakes.  Honestly, I have to force myself to pay attention most times, and my listening is more about politeness than interest.  I knew I would surprise her with my great literary skill.

There were fourteen of us writers, plus our instructor and her assistant, making sixteen. There were only four men. Two attorneys, one doctor, one something else – I don’t remember if I asked what he did for a living or if he answered. I did not care who my fellow studiers were or had been, only what they wrote, and if it was beautiful or skilled or made me see the world differently.

One man I wrote off right away. He was tall and had thick white hair, the kind of person to whom life comes easy.  Our society rewards tall, thick-haired white men with fast career advancement and higher paychecks, particularly when they have advanced degrees as well.  He did not look like someone who struggled or had much insight.   He looked like he came to write a sweet sentimental tribute to his mother, or a memoir about a life that would be of no interest to anyone but his grandchildren.

We got into a fight on the fourth of July, he and I, about mothers and their obligations to their children.  He was old-fashioned, sexist, and most certainly a Republican, I could tell just by the two sentences he uttered and the look on his face when he said them. He had absolutely no idea about how the world really worked, but how could he, when society had handed him a nice life of thick hair and Anglo-Saxonism? It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t blessed with the hardships I was that have formed me into the complex and insightful person I am.

After our in-class fight the instructor sent us all out on break to cut the tension.  On our return I listened to a classmate read a beautiful piece she had written, a lyrical essay on sisters that was just right for cooling heated debates. I was impressed that the teacher knew to call on her to read just then.  Next, I got to read my own assignment and was proud of its feminist leanings, and glad that I just happened to write something the night before that was the perfect retort to this close-minded man’s arguments against mothers. I hoped he was listening hard, with both ears open. 

Finally it was his turn to read, and I self-righteously gave him my full attention, magnanimously listening with my whole body; my feet rested firmly on the ground, toes lined up and pointed towards the reader, knees together with closed notebook balanced on my lap, chin on hands, elbows on knees, forming a sturdy foundation for rapt attention, should it be required. I was prepared to show what a good and open-minded listener I was. I was not going to yawn or lean back with crossed legs or anything that might imply disrespect; I was the consummate aspiring professional writer supporting her fellow students striving towards truth and perfectly-formed sentences.

Then the world changed.  He read his outline, a timeline really, with a strong quiet voice.  It took me a few sentences to understand that he was talking about his wife, and a few more to understand the woman of which he wrote was complicated and strong and beautiful, and I knew from listening that she was going to have to die before he got to the end of the story.  By line five I knew he wasn’t the man I thought he was.  By the halfway mark I knew I wasn’t the woman I thought I was when I entered the room.  By the time he had turned the corner to final stretch I was crying with the strength and beauty of this man’s story.  I wanted to go up to him after class and thank him, tell him what it meant to me to be able to hear it, but I had lost my words, and I filed out of the room silently without taking even one extra minute to speak to him personally. I longed to ask him if I could see the picture of her that I knew with certainty he must carry with him, but I did not ask that day.  It was enough to have heard the story, and I didn’t have the right to intrude further.

 I wanted to tell him that his story, which he has not yet written, made me feel small in the way religion is supposed to make you feel, but never has for me. I wanted to convey the awe I felt in hearing of greatness, and I wanted him to know that I understood what he was trying to say, that the beauty of the story was in the contradictions, that I would never forget the woman who died changing the world and threw toast at her husband.

I came to this classroom with its rattan chairs and big old windows to tell my own stories to a captive audience.  I did not know the most important part of the week would come from listening to someone else.  I left that classroom bigger and hollow and filled with wonder and clear sunlight because I got to hear a story that has not yet been written, but when it is, it will change the world.

New work from Zoe: Please comment

Greetings fellow writers.  I"m finally getting past work deadlines and getting to writing.  I've reworked the piece I read in class, I trust having fixed things from your comments. And I've changed the end because I"m thinking I'd like to send it to Sun magazine under the topic 'security'.  Please do send comments.  Zoe

When our daughters were 4 and 2 we accepted a challenge to move to Chicago’s west side ghetto and join a community engaged in urban renewal. I struggled hard against such a choice. I could hear my parents’ voices: You are moving to a ghetto with our young grandchildren? I was terrified for our safety. When we were first married we had lived on the south side of Chicago and I taught at the Lab school. It was north of the Midway, we lived south – and until I made it across the Midway each morning I watched every person on the street and glanced behind every bush or tree. Cars were routinely stolen and apartments broken into – including ours. The nearest thorofare was 63^rd street. It ran under the EL, and had an active life of drugs, prostitutes, and gospel mission storefronts. But we could buy ground “meat” for 10 pounds for a dollar. Now I was going back to that life with two small children?

We packed up our belongings dog and all. This was the 60’s. It was a hot, tense summer in Chicago. It took four men to haul our nine foot sleeper sofa – with twin beds – to the attic of the old dormitory. There was no space for it in a dorm room. What were we thinking? The group had moved to a former seminary campus when the seminary fled to the suburbs. The first week there was an uprising on the block. Families housed in buildings off campus came to stay on campus until it blew over. It wasn’t as much for their safety as to protect the black neighborhood from being incited to riot if something could be blamed on a whitey. Our girls watched from the window as a man was shot on the street. Our 30 or so mostly white children walked to the public school down the block. We had them walk together and they were always accompanied by one or two adults. When there were rumors of trouble the neighborhood mothers would come by to ask if we were sending our children to school that day. If so, they would send theirs. Those 30 little white faces stand out in the class pictures, a few in each class. 

We arrived in 1966, in 1968 all hell broke out. Many in the neighborhood joined us for a horribly sad gathering the evening of King’s assassination. Then the fires began and moved west. Riots – sometimes urged on by the Black Panthers – started near the Loop and spread toward us. We watched from upper floor windows. Then we gathered everyone in the main building on campus. Our daughters watched the fires reach the building used for after school activities. When they came and set fires in our buildings, the Blacks among us refused to leave. The rioters left and we put out the fires. The local gang showed up ready to defend us, they said, but an altercation between them and the more organized of the perpetrators could only come to grief. The next day Mayor Dailey moved the National Guard in; we relocated the children to friends in the suburbs and settled in to help the neighborhood recover. All the convenience stores had been burned. Cars were trashed on the street and we all - white and black - felt violated.

From then on security had to be tightened. No one walked alone. We closed the campus except for the main entrance and hired a guard to sit at the door with the receptionist. He wanted a gun. But the gun was a high level commodity in the area and was a frequent target for a quick snatch. What to do? It was decided to keep the gun inside where it could be brought to the guard when needed but wouldn’t be there for easy picking.  Somehow my husband was chosen to keep the gun. After a few middle of the night calls for the gun, the absurdity of this means of security became clear. Was he, whose only experience with guns was hunting rabbits on the farm, to come blazing into the reception room to defend the guard? Should he toss the gun to the guard and dash back inside? The gun was the attraction. Better to forego security on these terms.