Innovative Design & Marketing LLC submits a call for writers to participate in its 2010 3rd Annual Innovative Short Fiction Contest.
The Innovative Short Fiction Contest celebrates its 3rd year in providing a creative outlet for local writers, an opportunity for competition and publication, and is open to KC Metro Area youth writers between the ages of 14-18. The contest also awards cash prizes to its top three winners.
Stories are judged on originality, structure, and flow.
Submission is FREE and open until the contest deadline of Friday, March 19, 2010.
We look forward to reading many outstanding stories this year!
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SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES - Sponsorship and donations fund the contest entirely. Business sponsorship is $100. Individual sponsorship is $25. Please show your support for our area youth writers and contribute today! Contact Diane for more information.
Current Contest Sponsors include:
Jeweler in the Dishwasher, PresentMagazine.com, and Sonic Spectrum
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Season's Flower
by Beryl Zhao, 1st Place Winner of the 2nd Annual 2009 Innovative Short Fiction Contest
These houses had to be at least five decades old.
My bike sped swiftly down the streets of the old neighborhoods bordering the east edge of University of Iowa’s campus. Sprawling oak branches and unwashed cars continuously whizzed by, and I had long lost count of how many blocks I had passed. Wanton vegetation and yellowed houses made every block identical, and the houses didn’t help either: all grimy windows, crumbling driveways, vines plastered onto weathered siding. Only the crushed beer cans and bright yellow Hawkeye logos reminded me that I was in a college town.
I turned the street corner with one hand on the handlebars; the other held a phone to my ear.
“Mom. I am not living off-campus next year. And even if I were, I’m not living here.”
I heard the typing on the other side pause and then resume. My mom worked as the copy editor for a small newspaper in Council Bluffs. Near deadlines, she often called me from her desk while still at work. Her voice sounded impatient.
“Kristen—right here is good, Sherry, thank you—the mortgage is paid off. The house is ours.”
I swerved to dodge a pedestrian. “Then rent it out.”
“You know the rent wouldn’t cover the five thousand dollars a year we’re paying for your housing.”
“Well,” I said. “It’s not worth it.”
“Kristen, just find the house.”
I passed a house with plastic lawn ornaments and tie-died shawls hung on its porch. I stopped pedaling and took another look at the crude map I had drawn on my hand. I squinted up at the street sign.
“I’m on Perry,” I said. “Tailor should be next.”
“Good. Look on your left. It should be the second or the third. Purple with the cracked window.”
“Mom, they all have cracked windows.”
I turned onto the street and slowed to a stop. Tailor Street felt darker and cooler, a canopy of ash trees dappling the sidewalk with shadows. I walked my bike two houses down.
“Do you see it?” my mom asked.
I craned to read the house number. “4135, right?”
“Yes. Now, remember, you’re not in a hurry—Oh, yes, thank you, Tom. I got it—Tidy the house up whenever you have time. Your uncle wants it cleaned out by March. Do what you have to do, but leave all your grandmother’s things in a box. You should have enough boxes—your father crammed who knows how many in the trunk—but if you don’t, well, I honestly don’t know where—“
“Mom,” I said. “Relax. I’ll be fine. Just get back to work.” I leaned the bike against the house’s mailbox. It was a beaten, black mailbox with fancy ironwork.
“No, no, Tom—take good care of the house, Kristen—I like it.”
“I will. Bye, Mom.”
She had already hung up. I sighed and snapped the phone shut. I turned to get a look at the house, and my shoulders slumped with despair.
. . .
The house was in worse shape than its neighbors, if that was possible. I walked up to its peeling front porch. I remember my grandmother had kept a cascade of climbing vine trimmed neatly on a side wall. Now, the vines swallowed half the house, letting only patches of worn purple siding peek through. Something crackled underneath my shoes—the porch was littered with dried leaves. Above my head, the once graceful hanging plants were now shriveled crisps. Several dirt-filled flower pots and glass marmalade jars sat along the edge of the house. My grandmother liked to use old jam jars as flower pots. It was her way of recycling, she had told me years ago.
I didn’t know my grandmother too well. She passed away this year in April while on her two month stay at my uncle’s house. My mom never talked about her mother because, she claimed, she knew very little to talk about. She only remembered my grandmother speaking of chores and everyday things. Grandma apparently wasn’t a warm woman; she had always stood silent, arms folded across her chest, apron around her waist, staring out the window at a vivid, invisible landscape.
The funeral had been awkward—apparently there had been unresolved conflict between them. Mom had sat stone-faced during the whole procession, but that night at home, she locked herself in her bedroom and wept. I only know that grandma liked to garden. I remember her behind the house, hunched over drawn plans for her flower beds, explaining color composition to my 7-year-old self.
I crunched my way across the porch. A long crack seared across the spattered window. I sighed, fumbling for the keys my mom had given me. The white storm door was stained and waterlogged, its corner peeling and bent out of shape. It took several yanks for it to dislodge, and I cautiously entered the house, the door squeaking shut behind me.
Orbs of multicolored light danced around my feet. I looked up. Prisms and colored glass ornaments hung in front of the sitting room window. Sunlight scattered on the suspended ornaments, spilling brilliant jewels onto the rough hardwood floor. The rooms were surprisingly bright and trim. The house’s interior was more spacious than what I would have guessed. I regarded my surroundings—I had walked into what had been designed to be a sitting room, but had cleverly been converted into a large study.
Rows and rows of shelves cluttered the walls, each containing an odd, crowded assortment of books, paintings, and curios. I stared in wonder—I had stepped into an I Spy book. I studied the shelves’ contents. I spy: a baseball glove, a lamp, 3 Norman Rockwells, the Eiffel Tower, 5 Russian dolls, a bust of Beethoven… At the center of the room was a large, sturdy oak desk littered with old newspapers and empty coffee mugs.
I frowned, crouching down to examine an intricately carved jewelry box. I didn’t remember any of this. I had been over at my grandma’s house several times when I was little, and I didn’t recall these shelves at all. She must have put them up sometime after my last visit. The walls’ arrangement looked erratic, but there seemed to be a strange pattern to each object’s placement. It would be a shame to take it all down. I hoped I wouldn’t have to.
Next to the sitting room was the kitchen. The kitchen looked quaint with its flowery countertops and white cabinets. Some of the cabinets were peeling or missing knobs. I left them unopened. Why bother? I had until March. I turned to the rest of the house. Across the room was a staircase that no doubt led up to the bedroom. I’ll explore the other parts of the house later, I thought, save the surprise.
As I crossed the sitting room to the front door to leave, it occurred to me: of all the strange and numerous objects lining the shelves, my grandma didn’t have the things grandmas should have.
No cookbooks, no knitting needles, no pictures of family.
. . .
I liked college. I liked going to a big university with its constant stream of unknown faces trickling past me, feeling free to travel against the current, to do what I wanted. The anonymity was pleasing. On more than one occasion, I found myself thinking back to the relaxing peace of the house. During September, I visited it many times, bicycling down the same path through the old neighborhoods.
I didn’t know why I liked being alone so much. When I was a kid, Mom used to worry that it wasn’t healthy, but she needn’t have. I had a lot of friends but spent my childhood summers in my pink and purple bedroom reading, bare legs dangling over the bed, sunlight streaming in the window.
There was an inexplicable completeness to the house. Every object, every detail of every room seemed to be purposely in place, like in a museum exhibit that recreates the living quarters of people of decades before. Everything—the slow drip of the kitchen sink faucet, the pages of old newsprint lingering over the sitting room table, the empty, overturned can of baking soda in the cabinet—lent to the house’s curious balance.
I had given up on my mom’s instructions long ago—I couldn’t bring myself to disturb anything. I resorted to throwing away old food containers and dawdling in the sitting room, reading the titles on the bookshelves. The titles were impressive and bizarre: Babbitt, An Annotated List of the Birds of Bolivia, Pat Boone: A Miracle a Day Keeps the Devil Away, International Encyclopedia of Aviation. I frowned. Who was my grandma really? She had never finished college, lived outside the country, came back, worked as a clerk in an insurance company, married my grandfather, and became a housewife. But so far what I’d seen in the study didn’t match up to that at all. All the facts I had suddenly became meaningless. There were so many objects, so many clues, but from them, I couldn’t piece together a story. But that all changed with the discovery I made one stormy afternoon.
I was in my grandmother’s neat bedroom, folding up the clothes in her large closet and packing them into boxes, when I spied a dark red mahogany chest hidden behind an old set of luggage bags. It sat in the corner of the closet solemnly, covered with a thin layer of dust. I fumbled for the damp rag inside my apron. A sweep of the rag revealed the wood’s swirling texture—dark patches rippling across a red pond. I admired it for a moment, tracing the chest’s gilded hinges. Then I scooted the chest in front of me and opened it with a click.
A bundle of white silk and black lace. I lifted the bundle up delicately to the light and shook it loose—an old evening gown. It had a small waist and a full skirt and looked like the ones in the old glamorous Hollywood movies. The chest was a time capsule filled with artifacts from the past: lady’s gloves, an ornate music box, a crumbling photo album, tattered women’s fashion magazines. There were a couple of framed pictures—all but one of them was black and white—and I examined them closely, searching for any recognizable faces. In one photo, a group of women stood in old fashioned dress suits. In another, a grim, handsome young man with a dark cap leaned back in his chair. There were also old newspapers, bumpy and yellow from age, but something else in the chest caught my attention.
A book. I held it up to the light—it was green, leather-bound, with silver floral insignia and worn edges. The book was thick, heavy in my hands, and when I flipped open the cover, I discovered it wasn’t a book at all. In the left corner of the cover, printed in neat, slanted cursive was the name Marion Corinne Barlow.
I stared at the name. A thudding realization sank in. My grandmother’s name was Marion Barlow. I riffled through the pages—pages and pages of the same slanted cursive, lines cramped together, ink starting to fade with time. This must be—I clapped the tome shut and examined its binding—this must be a journal.
I excitedly scuttled out of the dark closet into the bedroom. Heart pounding, I sat against the dresser and flipped to the first page. It was dated April 7, 1950. I studied the handwriting, the way it raced across the page, and took a deep breath, willing myself to read the words that my grandmother had written nearly 60 years before:
Seasons come and seasons go.
Every morning, I wake up to the sun and sit on the edge of my bed, hands on my lap, directly underneath the long block of sunlight shining through the gap between the gossamer curtains. I like to sit there for a moment, my ankles lit aglow, careful to only step on the bright strip of floorboard that the sun has warmed. I trace the warm strip with my steps, toe to heel, until I’ve crossed the room to the window. Then I throw back the curtains and let the day in.
I must always watch the seasons for my flowers. My mother used to tell me this when I was a little girl standing behind the back of the house in my pink, plaid sundress, watching her scoop out chickweed with a trowel. Every afternoon, I watched my mother tend her flower beds. She always wore delicate gardening gloves and a floppy sun hat over her short brown hair and said, with her birdlike voice, to always wait until the last frost to plant annuals. My mother loved annuals, plumes of color, don’t have much time so they give it all they got, she said. Over the years, I learned their names: French marigold, nasturtium, scarlet sage, pansy, Forget-me-not. Every year she arranged a different palette in the front yard. Indigos, bright pinks, violets. Her favorite annuals became mine, but I preferred perennials with their pastels.
Underneath the weeping branches of my mother’s beech tree, I tend my own flower bed. Aster, bearded iris, daylilies, monkshood. Perennials are predictable.
Spring, grow. Summer, bloom. Autumn, prune. Winter, renew.
Constant. Perpetual.
. . .
It was a love story I found out with pleasant surprise the next day. Behind all the musings and flashbacks, the book was a love story. I snuck in pages every chance I got, taking in every passage slowly, sinking into the settings. It was written like a stream of consciousness—a process, not a product—a notepad of a philosopher, deliberated abstractions fused together.
I hadn’t finished the book yet, but the story itself was a simple one. The character was a girl my age—Jean Hanley. The book was in diary form, her diary, with lengthy, dated entries.
She lived in a small Iowan town (it didn’t say which), growing up on movies and Coca Cola. The story begins the summer before she attends the University of Iowa. Jean reminded me of myself—she liked to be alone, preferring the company of flowers and the silver screen. That summer was a surreal break from her customary solitude: she goes out with Leon, a guy she had secretly admired throughout high school. They are in love that summer, a tentative, passionate first love, and they attend the same college but break up after the first semester.
The book seemed to be autobiographical, but there was no way of knowing, nobody to confirm; my grandfather was dead. On several pages, my grandmother had jotted in the margins names and phrases that I interpreted to be quotes. So far it matched up to what little Mom and I knew about her—that she decided to take a break from school the end of her sophomore year to live abroad, to live in—
“Paraguay,” a distant cousin had circulated at the funeral. “She lived in Paraguay.”
“For eight years?” My mother wrinkled her noise in doubt. She had secretly done the calculations.
“Beats me.” He shrugged. “Paraguay’s all she ever said.”
The writing was very unique. Although not perfect, the narrator’s voice was vivid. Some passages were flawed, but somehow the imperfections were important—with them, the words rumbled through with a resounding force.
I had gotten to the middle of the book, reaching a blank page that was marked “Part 2.” Indeed the cousin was right: she had taken a break from school to go to Paraguay. Or at least Jean did. But I didn’t feel comfortable reading on without Mom. The book potentially covered two of grandma’s eight unaccounted for years, and if anything was revealed, I felt Mom should be the first to know.
. . .
I had called that Friday, and my mother came the next. She fell silent after I had told her about the book and quietly agreed to spend the weekend in Iowa City. "I'll take a look at it," she had said, just like the way she always did when reporters wanted their stories checked. I had given her a tour of the house. All the while, she said nothing, just nodded, her gaze slowly casting over each object, each room. She called my Uncle Craig afterwards, and they had a long, hushed conversation.
Late that night, from the bottom of the stairs, the single aura of the desk light illuminated the dark. My mother was sitting at my grandmother's desk in the study. She had made herself at home; pens and half-filled notepads were strewn over the surface. The book lay open on the desk underneath the glare of the lamp. She looked tired, lines on her face accentuated. Her brown hair was done up and her reading glasses were on, and she was staring at the pages, frowning. Editor mode. That evening, I had given her the book. She had taken it without a word, opened it and studied the inside cover. I watched her study the book for a long time, flipping through the pages quickly, flipping forward and back, forward and back, always returning to pause at the inside front cover.
She was looking at the book now, her chin resting on her hand. Her right hand fidgeted with a red pen. It was her habit, but tonight she marked nothing. As she read, she tapped the pen. Up, down, up, down. I watched her flip the page with the decisive manner of a proofreader, her face a frown and then solemn again as she continued to read.
There was something peculiar about the book’s last page that I had never figured out. I sat down in the dark on the front step and leaned on my knees, listening to my mom’s page turns and the steady drip of the kitchen sink. The last entry was dated December 12, 1954, but the opposite page read June 21, 1961. I had committed the hastily scribbled lines to memory:
Mabel
mockingly,
a famous playwright
points out a flaw
not flawed execution—
but immortality
It looked like the stanza of a poem, and it was obviously added as an afterthought, but the lines confused me because they were a blatant contradiction to the rest of Jean’s journal. If immortality was a flaw, why did she so often long for it—if not for herself, then for her gardens? Every summer she’d always wish that it’d stay summer, that every flower would bloom forever, and that she could live in the idyllic sunshine of everlasting youth. Jean wanted to be constant, like a constellation, to leave a trace of herself long after she was gone.
May, two years later, I was at the end of my junior year, packing for my summer-long excursion to Argentina. I was pretty proficient in Spanish and looked forward to the trip. A year ago, I had decided to major in environmental science—a huge deviation in a family of English and history degrees. I wanted to spend a few years in the field—promoting sustainability in use of resources—and then maybe work abroad as an environmental lawyer. My mother didn’t approve, ostensibly worried over my traveling to remote corners of the earth. I had rolled my eyes.
“Mom,” I said, “I’m not Grandma. I’m not going to run away to Paraguay.”
Mom didn’t laugh, but she gave her consent.
I sat down on my pink, plaid bed, leaning on my hands, staring out the window at the shrubs across the neighbor’s porch. After two years of living in the house, it still felt like my grandmother’s. Some mornings, I felt like a stranger, like Goldilocks, waking up to a set of foreign walls and windows staring back at me.
My uncle had let me keep the study intact. Late at night, after I had finished everything that was due, I would fix myself a kettle of hot tea, make my selection from the bookshelves, and sit down at her desk and read. I read my grandmother’s book many times. Every time, the same lines jumped out at me:
Sunlight is a good elixir, I think.
Let your memory do its work.
The pages are left blank as time is marked and recorded. They are left blank, and I thumb through them, looking for stray blotches, but there are none.
Every time, Jean’s story replayed itself more vividly, and every time, I saw something new that I liked. In Paraguay, Jean worked at a flower and hat shop, staying with an elderly English couple until she rented her own room elsewhere. It seemed odd to me why my grandmother would trade her life in Iowa for one elsewhere that was equally ordinary. It didn’t make sense—wasn’t she looking for adventure? But she was happier there amidst the “buzz of the street vendors, strange colors, and exotic senses.” Her contentment was reflected in her writing; the narration in Paraguay was easy, effortless, comforting—leaving me in a graceful freefall only to snatch me up again in a warm, breathless swoop.
I lay back on my bed, hands folded over my stomach. The afternoon was warm, muggy. I turned my head toward the open window, listening to the drone of my neighbor’s lawnmower. Mom was the one who first mentioned publication. I remember being surprised at this suggestion.
“Why?” I had asked.
“Why not?” my mother had replied with a smile. Then the smile disappeared, and she sighed. “Craig and I have no more use for the book,” she said. “And I think your grandma would appreciate it.”
I nodded, remembering. My uncle had told me that Grandma could never find a publisher that would take her poetry.
Mom knew an agent who handled the publishing. After days of thought, we had given the novel a name, Season’s Flower. I had withdrawn back to college life and only half-watched as the manuscript sent local publishing houses into eager murmurs. Advanced reading copies were circulated, and Iowa City’s literary community was slowly stirred into action, excited about unearthing a long-lost, as one critic put it, “homegrown and homespun” novelist. The book even garnered a positive review on Kirkus. Pretty soon, my mother was contacted by local reporters and historians who were in anticipation of a touching human interest story. A short biography of my grandmother had to be written for the novel along with a foreword.
I yawned, rolled over, and pulled the blankets over my body. Birds flitted across the driveway below. On my nightstand sat an advanced reading copy of Season’s Flower. I sat up and tossed it into my trunk; I had given the original copy to my mom. Underneath the book was a laminated newspaper article from the Iowa City Press Citizen a year before. I reached over and picked it up, unfolding the newsprint until the headline came into view:
Local Wallflower Blossoms Into Novelist
The Story of Marion Corinne Barlow 1932-2009
Underneath the headline, there was a picture of my grandmother when she was young. It was her senior picture in high school, from 1950. I liked to study the picture. Marion was in a frilly, polka-dotted sundress, her short brown hair in waves. Although she was not beautiful, something about her face was very pleasing. Her eyes, blue and profound, seemed to penetrate.
. . .
I remember the long afternoons during which the article was written. Last summer, my uncle had flown in from Minneapolis and my mother had taken a week off from the office to meet at the house where they compiled their research. All the sources they had were anecdotes from relatives, photo albums, Mom’s old journals, and the book. The rest was up to memory and speculation. They sat around my grandmother’s study over a kettle of Earl Grey, the hazy sunlight filtering through the blinds onto the floor. Uncle Craig had a vivid memory and told animated stories, his hands excited and eyes lit up, and he recalled their mother from their childhood while Mom sat quietly taking notes, nodding.
They discovered very little from those sessions. They collected and organized, scrutinized and examined, but the mysteries, what had happened during those mysterious eight years, remained unsolved. I often came downstairs to find Mom rifling through my grandmother’s bookshelves, frustrated, and Uncle Craig leaning back into his chair, rubbing his eyes.
The night the article was finished, Mom sat in front of her laptop, expressionless, scrolling through the Word document, gently tapping the arrow keys. The desk was cluttered with old newspapers and books, pens and notes. I watched her exit Word and fold the laptop shut, turning to the globe that sat on the edge of the desk. Frowning, she tapped her finger on Paraguay, withdrew it, and spun the globe hesitantly toward Europe and stopped.
“So?” I asked. “Do you see anything?”
Mom sighed and leaned back into the chair. She set her reading glasses on the table, rubbed her eyes.
“Almost,” she said.
All these tantalizing hints just to lead to another dead end. I turned to leave but stopped. Startled, I looked back at the desk. Beside the globe sat a black and white photo of Marion. In the picture, she was young, in her late twenties, sitting on the porch with a large sunhat. I blinked. It must have been a trick of the light.
For a second, I had sworn I saw my grandmother peer out from her frame, looking smug.
. . .
I stretched. A warm breeze blew in and ruffled my hair. The thick, hardback journal that my uncle gave me lay stashed underneath my bed, half-hidden underneath a pile of magazines. I rolled over and dug it out, resting on my elbow, flipping through its clean, white pages. What could I fill it with? I debated whether I should take it with me. Uncle Craig had presented the journal to me two months ago for my birthday and had watched me eagerly as I unwrapped it, carefully stripping back the shiny wrapping paper.
He had laughed at my quizzical look. “Now don’t get carried away and drop out of college,” he said with a chuckle. I turned the journal over and examined it. It was green, leather-bound, with silver floral insignia. “Make it fun for your grandkids. Write a literary masterpiece and then hide it away.”
I lay back on my pillow. The lawnmower had stopped. The air had settled, and the sun, with its youthful vigor, streamed down through the swaying green canopy of ash trees. I snapped the journal shut. What could I fill it with?
Through the open window on the quiet street below, a boy sped by on his bicycle. Across the street, my neighbor lifted a sack of groceries from his trunk and slammed the door shut. A breeze picked up, rustling the giant foil pinwheels in the man’s lawn. The pinwheels began to spin, and they fluttered as sunlight ricocheted off their gleaming surfaces, scattering its shards across the green lawns of Iowan summers.
I hopped off the bed and rummaged through my desk for a pen. How to begin, how to begin. I flipped open the journal, hesitated, sat down. I tapped the pen against my lip. Outside the window, the pinwheels had stopped. I pressed my fingers along the journal’s edges, creasing back its binding. In the left corner of the inside cover, I slowly printed in neat, slanted cursive my name Kristen Anne Whelan.
These houses had to be at least five decades old.
My bike sped swiftly down the streets of the old neighborhoods bordering the east edge of University of Iowa’s campus. Sprawling oak branches and unwashed cars continuously whizzed by, and I had long lost count of how many blocks I had passed. Wanton vegetation and yellowed houses made every block identical, and the houses didn’t help either: all grimy windows, crumbling driveways, vines plastered onto weathered siding. Only the crushed beer cans and bright yellow Hawkeye logos reminded me that I was in a college town.
I turned the street corner with one hand on the handlebars; the other held a phone to my ear.
“Mom. I am not living off-campus next year. And even if I were, I’m not living here.”
I heard the typing on the other side pause and then resume. My mom worked as the copy editor for a small newspaper in Council Bluffs. Near deadlines, she often called me from her desk while still at work. Her voice sounded impatient.
“Kristen—right here is good, Sherry, thank you—the mortgage is paid off. The house is ours.”
I swerved to dodge a pedestrian. “Then rent it out.”
“You know the rent wouldn’t cover the five thousand dollars a year we’re paying for your housing.”
“Well,” I said. “It’s not worth it.”
“Kristen, just find the house.”
I passed a house with plastic lawn ornaments and tie-died shawls hung on its porch. I stopped pedaling and took another look at the crude map I had drawn on my hand. I squinted up at the street sign.
“I’m on Perry,” I said. “Tailor should be next.”
“Good. Look on your left. It should be the second or the third. Purple with the cracked window.”
“Mom, they all have cracked windows.”
I turned onto the street and slowed to a stop. Tailor Street felt darker and cooler, a canopy of ash trees dappling the sidewalk with shadows. I walked my bike two houses down.
“Do you see it?” my mom asked.
I craned to read the house number. “4135, right?”
“Yes. Now, remember, you’re not in a hurry—Oh, yes, thank you, Tom. I got it—Tidy the house up whenever you have time. Your uncle wants it cleaned out by March. Do what you have to do, but leave all your grandmother’s things in a box. You should have enough boxes—your father crammed who knows how many in the trunk—but if you don’t, well, I honestly don’t know where—“
“Mom,” I said. “Relax. I’ll be fine. Just get back to work.” I leaned the bike against the house’s mailbox. It was a beaten, black mailbox with fancy ironwork.
“No, no, Tom—take good care of the house, Kristen—I like it.”
“I will. Bye, Mom.”
She had already hung up. I sighed and snapped the phone shut. I turned to get a look at the house, and my shoulders slumped with despair.
. . .
The house was in worse shape than its neighbors, if that was possible. I walked up to its peeling front porch. I remember my grandmother had kept a cascade of climbing vine trimmed neatly on a side wall. Now, the vines swallowed half the house, letting only patches of worn purple siding peek through. Something crackled underneath my shoes—the porch was littered with dried leaves. Above my head, the once graceful hanging plants were now shriveled crisps. Several dirt-filled flower pots and glass marmalade jars sat along the edge of the house. My grandmother liked to use old jam jars as flower pots. It was her way of recycling, she had told me years ago.
I didn’t know my grandmother too well. She passed away this year in April while on her two month stay at my uncle’s house. My mom never talked about her mother because, she claimed, she knew very little to talk about. She only remembered my grandmother speaking of chores and everyday things. Grandma apparently wasn’t a warm woman; she had always stood silent, arms folded across her chest, apron around her waist, staring out the window at a vivid, invisible landscape.
The funeral had been awkward—apparently there had been unresolved conflict between them. Mom had sat stone-faced during the whole procession, but that night at home, she locked herself in her bedroom and wept. I only know that grandma liked to garden. I remember her behind the house, hunched over drawn plans for her flower beds, explaining color composition to my 7-year-old self.
I crunched my way across the porch. A long crack seared across the spattered window. I sighed, fumbling for the keys my mom had given me. The white storm door was stained and waterlogged, its corner peeling and bent out of shape. It took several yanks for it to dislodge, and I cautiously entered the house, the door squeaking shut behind me.
Orbs of multicolored light danced around my feet. I looked up. Prisms and colored glass ornaments hung in front of the sitting room window. Sunlight scattered on the suspended ornaments, spilling brilliant jewels onto the rough hardwood floor. The rooms were surprisingly bright and trim. The house’s interior was more spacious than what I would have guessed. I regarded my surroundings—I had walked into what had been designed to be a sitting room, but had cleverly been converted into a large study.
Rows and rows of shelves cluttered the walls, each containing an odd, crowded assortment of books, paintings, and curios. I stared in wonder—I had stepped into an I Spy book. I studied the shelves’ contents. I spy: a baseball glove, a lamp, 3 Norman Rockwells, the Eiffel Tower, 5 Russian dolls, a bust of Beethoven… At the center of the room was a large, sturdy oak desk littered with old newspapers and empty coffee mugs.
I frowned, crouching down to examine an intricately carved jewelry box. I didn’t remember any of this. I had been over at my grandma’s house several times when I was little, and I didn’t recall these shelves at all. She must have put them up sometime after my last visit. The walls’ arrangement looked erratic, but there seemed to be a strange pattern to each object’s placement. It would be a shame to take it all down. I hoped I wouldn’t have to.
Next to the sitting room was the kitchen. The kitchen looked quaint with its flowery countertops and white cabinets. Some of the cabinets were peeling or missing knobs. I left them unopened. Why bother? I had until March. I turned to the rest of the house. Across the room was a staircase that no doubt led up to the bedroom. I’ll explore the other parts of the house later, I thought, save the surprise.
As I crossed the sitting room to the front door to leave, it occurred to me: of all the strange and numerous objects lining the shelves, my grandma didn’t have the things grandmas should have.
No cookbooks, no knitting needles, no pictures of family.
. . .
I liked college. I liked going to a big university with its constant stream of unknown faces trickling past me, feeling free to travel against the current, to do what I wanted. The anonymity was pleasing. On more than one occasion, I found myself thinking back to the relaxing peace of the house. During September, I visited it many times, bicycling down the same path through the old neighborhoods.
I didn’t know why I liked being alone so much. When I was a kid, Mom used to worry that it wasn’t healthy, but she needn’t have. I had a lot of friends but spent my childhood summers in my pink and purple bedroom reading, bare legs dangling over the bed, sunlight streaming in the window.
There was an inexplicable completeness to the house. Every object, every detail of every room seemed to be purposely in place, like in a museum exhibit that recreates the living quarters of people of decades before. Everything—the slow drip of the kitchen sink faucet, the pages of old newsprint lingering over the sitting room table, the empty, overturned can of baking soda in the cabinet—lent to the house’s curious balance.
I had given up on my mom’s instructions long ago—I couldn’t bring myself to disturb anything. I resorted to throwing away old food containers and dawdling in the sitting room, reading the titles on the bookshelves. The titles were impressive and bizarre: Babbitt, An Annotated List of the Birds of Bolivia, Pat Boone: A Miracle a Day Keeps the Devil Away, International Encyclopedia of Aviation. I frowned. Who was my grandma really? She had never finished college, lived outside the country, came back, worked as a clerk in an insurance company, married my grandfather, and became a housewife. But so far what I’d seen in the study didn’t match up to that at all. All the facts I had suddenly became meaningless. There were so many objects, so many clues, but from them, I couldn’t piece together a story. But that all changed with the discovery I made one stormy afternoon.
I was in my grandmother’s neat bedroom, folding up the clothes in her large closet and packing them into boxes, when I spied a dark red mahogany chest hidden behind an old set of luggage bags. It sat in the corner of the closet solemnly, covered with a thin layer of dust. I fumbled for the damp rag inside my apron. A sweep of the rag revealed the wood’s swirling texture—dark patches rippling across a red pond. I admired it for a moment, tracing the chest’s gilded hinges. Then I scooted the chest in front of me and opened it with a click.
A bundle of white silk and black lace. I lifted the bundle up delicately to the light and shook it loose—an old evening gown. It had a small waist and a full skirt and looked like the ones in the old glamorous Hollywood movies. The chest was a time capsule filled with artifacts from the past: lady’s gloves, an ornate music box, a crumbling photo album, tattered women’s fashion magazines. There were a couple of framed pictures—all but one of them was black and white—and I examined them closely, searching for any recognizable faces. In one photo, a group of women stood in old fashioned dress suits. In another, a grim, handsome young man with a dark cap leaned back in his chair. There were also old newspapers, bumpy and yellow from age, but something else in the chest caught my attention.
A book. I held it up to the light—it was green, leather-bound, with silver floral insignia and worn edges. The book was thick, heavy in my hands, and when I flipped open the cover, I discovered it wasn’t a book at all. In the left corner of the cover, printed in neat, slanted cursive was the name Marion Corinne Barlow.
I stared at the name. A thudding realization sank in. My grandmother’s name was Marion Barlow. I riffled through the pages—pages and pages of the same slanted cursive, lines cramped together, ink starting to fade with time. This must be—I clapped the tome shut and examined its binding—this must be a journal.
I excitedly scuttled out of the dark closet into the bedroom. Heart pounding, I sat against the dresser and flipped to the first page. It was dated April 7, 1950. I studied the handwriting, the way it raced across the page, and took a deep breath, willing myself to read the words that my grandmother had written nearly 60 years before:
Seasons come and seasons go.
Every morning, I wake up to the sun and sit on the edge of my bed, hands on my lap, directly underneath the long block of sunlight shining through the gap between the gossamer curtains. I like to sit there for a moment, my ankles lit aglow, careful to only step on the bright strip of floorboard that the sun has warmed. I trace the warm strip with my steps, toe to heel, until I’ve crossed the room to the window. Then I throw back the curtains and let the day in.
I must always watch the seasons for my flowers. My mother used to tell me this when I was a little girl standing behind the back of the house in my pink, plaid sundress, watching her scoop out chickweed with a trowel. Every afternoon, I watched my mother tend her flower beds. She always wore delicate gardening gloves and a floppy sun hat over her short brown hair and said, with her birdlike voice, to always wait until the last frost to plant annuals. My mother loved annuals, plumes of color, don’t have much time so they give it all they got, she said. Over the years, I learned their names: French marigold, nasturtium, scarlet sage, pansy, Forget-me-not. Every year she arranged a different palette in the front yard. Indigos, bright pinks, violets. Her favorite annuals became mine, but I preferred perennials with their pastels.
Underneath the weeping branches of my mother’s beech tree, I tend my own flower bed. Aster, bearded iris, daylilies, monkshood. Perennials are predictable.
Spring, grow. Summer, bloom. Autumn, prune. Winter, renew.
Constant. Perpetual.
. . .
It was a love story I found out with pleasant surprise the next day. Behind all the musings and flashbacks, the book was a love story. I snuck in pages every chance I got, taking in every passage slowly, sinking into the settings. It was written like a stream of consciousness—a process, not a product—a notepad of a philosopher, deliberated abstractions fused together.
I hadn’t finished the book yet, but the story itself was a simple one. The character was a girl my age—Jean Hanley. The book was in diary form, her diary, with lengthy, dated entries.
She lived in a small Iowan town (it didn’t say which), growing up on movies and Coca Cola. The story begins the summer before she attends the University of Iowa. Jean reminded me of myself—she liked to be alone, preferring the company of flowers and the silver screen. That summer was a surreal break from her customary solitude: she goes out with Leon, a guy she had secretly admired throughout high school. They are in love that summer, a tentative, passionate first love, and they attend the same college but break up after the first semester.
The book seemed to be autobiographical, but there was no way of knowing, nobody to confirm; my grandfather was dead. On several pages, my grandmother had jotted in the margins names and phrases that I interpreted to be quotes. So far it matched up to what little Mom and I knew about her—that she decided to take a break from school the end of her sophomore year to live abroad, to live in—
“Paraguay,” a distant cousin had circulated at the funeral. “She lived in Paraguay.”
“For eight years?” My mother wrinkled her noise in doubt. She had secretly done the calculations.
“Beats me.” He shrugged. “Paraguay’s all she ever said.”
The writing was very unique. Although not perfect, the narrator’s voice was vivid. Some passages were flawed, but somehow the imperfections were important—with them, the words rumbled through with a resounding force.
I had gotten to the middle of the book, reaching a blank page that was marked “Part 2.” Indeed the cousin was right: she had taken a break from school to go to Paraguay. Or at least Jean did. But I didn’t feel comfortable reading on without Mom. The book potentially covered two of grandma’s eight unaccounted for years, and if anything was revealed, I felt Mom should be the first to know.
. . .
I had called that Friday, and my mother came the next. She fell silent after I had told her about the book and quietly agreed to spend the weekend in Iowa City. "I'll take a look at it," she had said, just like the way she always did when reporters wanted their stories checked. I had given her a tour of the house. All the while, she said nothing, just nodded, her gaze slowly casting over each object, each room. She called my Uncle Craig afterwards, and they had a long, hushed conversation.
Late that night, from the bottom of the stairs, the single aura of the desk light illuminated the dark. My mother was sitting at my grandmother's desk in the study. She had made herself at home; pens and half-filled notepads were strewn over the surface. The book lay open on the desk underneath the glare of the lamp. She looked tired, lines on her face accentuated. Her brown hair was done up and her reading glasses were on, and she was staring at the pages, frowning. Editor mode. That evening, I had given her the book. She had taken it without a word, opened it and studied the inside cover. I watched her study the book for a long time, flipping through the pages quickly, flipping forward and back, forward and back, always returning to pause at the inside front cover.
She was looking at the book now, her chin resting on her hand. Her right hand fidgeted with a red pen. It was her habit, but tonight she marked nothing. As she read, she tapped the pen. Up, down, up, down. I watched her flip the page with the decisive manner of a proofreader, her face a frown and then solemn again as she continued to read.
There was something peculiar about the book’s last page that I had never figured out. I sat down in the dark on the front step and leaned on my knees, listening to my mom’s page turns and the steady drip of the kitchen sink. The last entry was dated December 12, 1954, but the opposite page read June 21, 1961. I had committed the hastily scribbled lines to memory:
Mabel
mockingly,
a famous playwright
points out a flaw
not flawed execution—
but immortality
It looked like the stanza of a poem, and it was obviously added as an afterthought, but the lines confused me because they were a blatant contradiction to the rest of Jean’s journal. If immortality was a flaw, why did she so often long for it—if not for herself, then for her gardens? Every summer she’d always wish that it’d stay summer, that every flower would bloom forever, and that she could live in the idyllic sunshine of everlasting youth. Jean wanted to be constant, like a constellation, to leave a trace of herself long after she was gone.
May, two years later, I was at the end of my junior year, packing for my summer-long excursion to Argentina. I was pretty proficient in Spanish and looked forward to the trip. A year ago, I had decided to major in environmental science—a huge deviation in a family of English and history degrees. I wanted to spend a few years in the field—promoting sustainability in use of resources—and then maybe work abroad as an environmental lawyer. My mother didn’t approve, ostensibly worried over my traveling to remote corners of the earth. I had rolled my eyes.
“Mom,” I said, “I’m not Grandma. I’m not going to run away to Paraguay.”
Mom didn’t laugh, but she gave her consent.
I sat down on my pink, plaid bed, leaning on my hands, staring out the window at the shrubs across the neighbor’s porch. After two years of living in the house, it still felt like my grandmother’s. Some mornings, I felt like a stranger, like Goldilocks, waking up to a set of foreign walls and windows staring back at me.
My uncle had let me keep the study intact. Late at night, after I had finished everything that was due, I would fix myself a kettle of hot tea, make my selection from the bookshelves, and sit down at her desk and read. I read my grandmother’s book many times. Every time, the same lines jumped out at me:
Sunlight is a good elixir, I think.
Let your memory do its work.
The pages are left blank as time is marked and recorded. They are left blank, and I thumb through them, looking for stray blotches, but there are none.
Every time, Jean’s story replayed itself more vividly, and every time, I saw something new that I liked. In Paraguay, Jean worked at a flower and hat shop, staying with an elderly English couple until she rented her own room elsewhere. It seemed odd to me why my grandmother would trade her life in Iowa for one elsewhere that was equally ordinary. It didn’t make sense—wasn’t she looking for adventure? But she was happier there amidst the “buzz of the street vendors, strange colors, and exotic senses.” Her contentment was reflected in her writing; the narration in Paraguay was easy, effortless, comforting—leaving me in a graceful freefall only to snatch me up again in a warm, breathless swoop.
I lay back on my bed, hands folded over my stomach. The afternoon was warm, muggy. I turned my head toward the open window, listening to the drone of my neighbor’s lawnmower. Mom was the one who first mentioned publication. I remember being surprised at this suggestion.
“Why?” I had asked.
“Why not?” my mother had replied with a smile. Then the smile disappeared, and she sighed. “Craig and I have no more use for the book,” she said. “And I think your grandma would appreciate it.”
I nodded, remembering. My uncle had told me that Grandma could never find a publisher that would take her poetry.
Mom knew an agent who handled the publishing. After days of thought, we had given the novel a name, Season’s Flower. I had withdrawn back to college life and only half-watched as the manuscript sent local publishing houses into eager murmurs. Advanced reading copies were circulated, and Iowa City’s literary community was slowly stirred into action, excited about unearthing a long-lost, as one critic put it, “homegrown and homespun” novelist. The book even garnered a positive review on Kirkus. Pretty soon, my mother was contacted by local reporters and historians who were in anticipation of a touching human interest story. A short biography of my grandmother had to be written for the novel along with a foreword.
I yawned, rolled over, and pulled the blankets over my body. Birds flitted across the driveway below. On my nightstand sat an advanced reading copy of Season’s Flower. I sat up and tossed it into my trunk; I had given the original copy to my mom. Underneath the book was a laminated newspaper article from the Iowa City Press Citizen a year before. I reached over and picked it up, unfolding the newsprint until the headline came into view:
Local Wallflower Blossoms Into Novelist
The Story of Marion Corinne Barlow 1932-2009
Underneath the headline, there was a picture of my grandmother when she was young. It was her senior picture in high school, from 1950. I liked to study the picture. Marion was in a frilly, polka-dotted sundress, her short brown hair in waves. Although she was not beautiful, something about her face was very pleasing. Her eyes, blue and profound, seemed to penetrate.
. . .
I remember the long afternoons during which the article was written. Last summer, my uncle had flown in from Minneapolis and my mother had taken a week off from the office to meet at the house where they compiled their research. All the sources they had were anecdotes from relatives, photo albums, Mom’s old journals, and the book. The rest was up to memory and speculation. They sat around my grandmother’s study over a kettle of Earl Grey, the hazy sunlight filtering through the blinds onto the floor. Uncle Craig had a vivid memory and told animated stories, his hands excited and eyes lit up, and he recalled their mother from their childhood while Mom sat quietly taking notes, nodding.
They discovered very little from those sessions. They collected and organized, scrutinized and examined, but the mysteries, what had happened during those mysterious eight years, remained unsolved. I often came downstairs to find Mom rifling through my grandmother’s bookshelves, frustrated, and Uncle Craig leaning back into his chair, rubbing his eyes.
The night the article was finished, Mom sat in front of her laptop, expressionless, scrolling through the Word document, gently tapping the arrow keys. The desk was cluttered with old newspapers and books, pens and notes. I watched her exit Word and fold the laptop shut, turning to the globe that sat on the edge of the desk. Frowning, she tapped her finger on Paraguay, withdrew it, and spun the globe hesitantly toward Europe and stopped.
“So?” I asked. “Do you see anything?”
Mom sighed and leaned back into the chair. She set her reading glasses on the table, rubbed her eyes.
“Almost,” she said.
All these tantalizing hints just to lead to another dead end. I turned to leave but stopped. Startled, I looked back at the desk. Beside the globe sat a black and white photo of Marion. In the picture, she was young, in her late twenties, sitting on the porch with a large sunhat. I blinked. It must have been a trick of the light.
For a second, I had sworn I saw my grandmother peer out from her frame, looking smug.
. . .
I stretched. A warm breeze blew in and ruffled my hair. The thick, hardback journal that my uncle gave me lay stashed underneath my bed, half-hidden underneath a pile of magazines. I rolled over and dug it out, resting on my elbow, flipping through its clean, white pages. What could I fill it with? I debated whether I should take it with me. Uncle Craig had presented the journal to me two months ago for my birthday and had watched me eagerly as I unwrapped it, carefully stripping back the shiny wrapping paper.
He had laughed at my quizzical look. “Now don’t get carried away and drop out of college,” he said with a chuckle. I turned the journal over and examined it. It was green, leather-bound, with silver floral insignia. “Make it fun for your grandkids. Write a literary masterpiece and then hide it away.”
I lay back on my pillow. The lawnmower had stopped. The air had settled, and the sun, with its youthful vigor, streamed down through the swaying green canopy of ash trees. I snapped the journal shut. What could I fill it with?
Through the open window on the quiet street below, a boy sped by on his bicycle. Across the street, my neighbor lifted a sack of groceries from his trunk and slammed the door shut. A breeze picked up, rustling the giant foil pinwheels in the man’s lawn. The pinwheels began to spin, and they fluttered as sunlight ricocheted off their gleaming surfaces, scattering its shards across the green lawns of Iowan summers.
I hopped off the bed and rummaged through my desk for a pen. How to begin, how to begin. I flipped open the journal, hesitated, sat down. I tapped the pen against my lip. Outside the window, the pinwheels had stopped. I pressed my fingers along the journal’s edges, creasing back its binding. In the left corner of the inside cover, I slowly printed in neat, slanted cursive my name Kristen Anne Whelan.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
2009 First Place Winner Announced!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 2009 Second Annual Innovative Short Fiction Contest Winner AnnouncedKansas City, MO, May 21, 2009 — The 2009 Second Annual Innovative Short Fiction Contest is pleased to announce our First Place Winner, Beryl Zhao, who graduates from Park Hill South High School today.
Innovative Design & Marketing LLC awarded Miss Zhao $300 for her winning story Season's Flower. The winner also received a piece of Be Real...Be True...Be You self-affirmation jewelry, donated by Head 2 Toe Consulting Group LLC. Season's Flower will be posted on this contest blog this month.
Beryl attended the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio with Sarah Fay last Summer and was in Mr. Reuscher’s Creative Writing class at Park Hill South this past school year.
Beryl plans to major in International Studies at Ohio State University and is particularly interested in Chinese, Japanese, and other East Asian cultures and economies.
Among others, Beryl Zhao is the recipient of the following Honors and Awards:
- National Merit Finalist
- AP Scholar with Distinction (scores of 3+ on five or more AP exams)
- Missouri Scholars 100 Program (1 of 100 top students in class of 2009, run by Missouri Association of Secondary School Principals)
- Attended Missouri Scholars Academy
Innovative Design & Marketing LLC hosts the annual short fiction contest, which is open to Kansas City Metro Area youth between the ages of 14-18.
The contest mission is to provide a creative outlet and an opportunity for competition and publication to area youth writers. Stories are judged on originality, structure & flow, and grammar.
In 2010, the Annual Innovative Short Fiction Contest will include two new categories: Graphic Design & Poetry - and may be changing the contest name to be more inclusive of various forms of art.
Stay tuned! Subscribe to this contest blog to stay abreast of 2010 submission rules, deadlines, and more!
Contact:
Diane Thompson, President
Innovative Design & Marketing LLC
7701 NW Prairie View Rd, Ste 67 KCMO 64151 or
diane@innovativedesignandmarketing.com
(816) 569-0015 Phone(816) 569-0015 FAX
http://www.innovativedesignandmarketing.com/
Innovative Design & Marketing LLC provides business development, marketing, professional coaching, and graphic design consultation services to entrepreneurs, small businesses, financial planners, non-profits, and more!
###
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Short Fiction Contest Sponsorship & Submission Info
Innovative Design & Marketing LLC
Innovative Short Fiction Contest
7701 NW Prairie View Road, Ste 67
Kansas City, MO 64151
Contest Submission is FREE and open to ALL KC Metro Area Youth between the ages of 14-18.
Business Sponsorship: $100
Individual Sponsorship: $25
Make checks payable to: Innovative Design & Marketing LLC
Please note: 2010 Short Fiction Contest in the Memo Section
Please email your logo in .jpg format; and/or how you would like your name listed; and/or the title and link for your sponsorship button to Innovative at here.
A receipt for sponsorship will be mailed to your return address unless otherwise indicated.
If no address is present, a receipt cannot and will not be mailed.
Thank you for your participation and/or support!!
We're looking forward to an AWESOME contest!
Innovative Design & Marketing LLC
Innovative Short Fiction Contest
7701 NW Prairie View Road, Ste 67
Kansas City, MO 64151
Contest Submission is FREE and open to ALL KC Metro Area Youth between the ages of 14-18.
Business Sponsorship: $100
Individual Sponsorship: $25
Make checks payable to: Innovative Design & Marketing LLC
Please note: 2010 Short Fiction Contest in the Memo Section
Please email your logo in .jpg format; and/or how you would like your name listed; and/or the title and link for your sponsorship button to Innovative at here.
A receipt for sponsorship will be mailed to your return address unless otherwise indicated.
If no address is present, a receipt cannot and will not be mailed.
Thank you for your participation and/or support!!
We're looking forward to an AWESOME contest!
Innovative Design & Marketing LLC
Contest Rules
*The contest is open to KC Metro Area youth of high-school age (between 14-18).
*Entries must be unpublished short fiction.
*Entries must be in English.
*Entries must be typed and include name, age, and parent/guardian contact info if under 18 or author info if 18 to include name and email and/or physical address and phone number.
*Entries must be no more than 5000 words in length.
*Entries must be received by March 19, 2010.
*Entries must be accompanied by Contest Submission/Release Form (see Release Form in Labels) - copy & paste text into an email or Word doc; complete - making sure to sign and date; mail, fax, or email to Innovative.
*Must be teen-audience appropriate.
SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE SENT TO:
Innovative Design & Marketing LLC
Innovative Short Fiction Contest
7701 NW Prairie View Rd, Ste 67
Kansas City, MO 64151
or via email here
Please provide your email address if you would like to receive a confirmation receipt.
KEEP A COPY OF YOUR STORY AS ENTRIES WILL NOT BE RETURNED!
*Entries must be unpublished short fiction.
*Entries must be in English.
*Entries must be typed and include name, age, and parent/guardian contact info if under 18 or author info if 18 to include name and email and/or physical address and phone number.
*Entries must be no more than 5000 words in length.
*Entries must be received by March 19, 2010.
*Entries must be accompanied by Contest Submission/Release Form (see Release Form in Labels) - copy & paste text into an email or Word doc; complete - making sure to sign and date; mail, fax, or email to Innovative.
*Must be teen-audience appropriate.
SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE SENT TO:
Innovative Design & Marketing LLC
Innovative Short Fiction Contest
7701 NW Prairie View Rd, Ste 67
Kansas City, MO 64151
or via email here
Please provide your email address if you would like to receive a confirmation receipt.
KEEP A COPY OF YOUR STORY AS ENTRIES WILL NOT BE RETURNED!
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