“Let me call you back,” a lady about seven steps to my rear says, “I’m in the library.” This is after I’ve given her a couple of short, but meaningful stares, including one where I use my pointer finger to aim towards the floor, suggesting she go downstairs.
“Who do you think you are little girl?” My grandmother and her daughters were always sure to humble me. “You got some nerve!”
The way I am, I’ve always been, for as long as I can remember, for as long as I’ve had words.
For as long as I’ve had words, I’ve had something to say and there’s never been a part of me that even thought to hesitate, not naturally, at least.
Until now, that is, I’ve learned, and continue to learn, how to bind my tongue and season my words. That’s a phrase the old folks used to say down South. Granny would specifically instruct me to beg The Lord for this attribute, the ability to remain silent or speak with particular choice when required to speak.
[BOP!]
Well, there goes the spotless aspect to my new, pretty, First Sunday dress. We’d gone to Burlington a couple of weekends ago. The circular racks are my favorite. They have a round rod supporting the legs at the bottom, near the floor, not only one at the top holding the hooks of the hangers. [screech]. I slide open a space between one of the most stuffed racks and climb between the coats. From inside of my fort, I close my makeshift door and balance on bottom portion of the fixture. This is great! There’s no way my big brother could find me! Hahahahaa! [subdued laugh of victory]. See, the parallel racks are plentiful, but a pair of feet beneath are too easy a giveaway.
Got damn it, Te’Keya! I just bought that dress.
I keep pretending that something is irritating my right eye, making an upward sweeping motion along the outer corner with the knuckle of my index finger, as I sit at this independent study desk in West Hollywood’s clean and modern public library, as beautiful as it should be with Pacific Design Center as its neighbor. Crying is odd and crying in public is especially ludicrous, so I wouldn’t dare let a tear drop, not in here. Why does one keep trying to come anyway?
There’s no way Granny’s turning around. I’ve seen at least fifty buckeye trees since we left the house. And we already passed Lake Eerie? My elementary school is close. And the high school my brother will go to in a few years is even closer; it’s basically across the street from Joey’s house, to which I’m never invited, as my brother doesn’t like me hanging out with his friends, but I follow him anyway. Joey’s mom has sunflowers and I like to see them. Hm, her hair is similar, yellowish for the parts that would flutter in the wind, then brownish at the base. “She’s fine, Llolowen.” Joey’s mom is nice. He must be awfully bad to get punished; she’s so patient. Against her welcome, “GO HOME, TE’KEYA,” my brother insists. I could hopscotch from Joey’s house to ours. That’s an exaggeration – Granny’s first born that gave birth to me says I do this a lot, exaggerate. See, I know what it means, I can’t really hopscotch from Pawpaw’s house to Joey’s. When she’s home, I use her word as I try to fill her in on what she missed while away, “Ma, I’m not exaggerating,” I say.) Anyway, church is faaaaaar.
We park and get out of the car. Granny grabs a handkerchief, wets it with the remnants of a deserted water bottle from the door and grabs me. “Come here, Te’Keya.” I’m intentionally not scurrying. Don’t you always say that I have to deal with the consequences of my actions? Well, your turn. Since she told me she didn’t want to hear another word out of my flip ass lip, I’m quiet, but it must’ve been all over my face. I tilt my head. I look down at the stain, then back up at her with tight lips and narrow eyes. Her back bends slightly, hovering into me. “Ugh, you, girl,” she grinds her teeth, knocking her knuckles on the wind between our faces, “so flip by the lip,” before looking over her shoulder at other members marching up to the vestibule some feet away, unclenching her fist to swat the wrinkles out of my new, pretty, no longer spotless dress. “You, girl, always got something to say.” Hey, Sister Beavers!
This piece was written as part of my participation in UCLA’s Writers Program for the Memoir and Personal Essay course with Professor Amy Friedman, an established author of many memoirs (and that’s only the tail end of her impressive resume as a writer). The two-day workshop takes place in-person at the UCLA Extension building in Westwood Village.
She said, “not 12:01, midnight,” when letting us know to have our 3-pages of double-spaced writing submitted by EOD Wednesday. And guess what time I sent mine? Midnight. That’s a shame. 11:59pm would’ve been a bit more respectable. Hopefully, Ms. Friedman will still read mine and include it with the work of our peers that we’ll all receive to be read by one another.
Mine was only two pages because I wanted to save the last page to include another piece of writing. We weren’t required to write anything new. She said it was only to get a feel for us as a writer ahead of day two. I could’ve pulled from one of the fifty-leven pieces I have up on this blog, or one out of my physical journals sitting around my room that haven’t been transcribed to digital. I could’ve done that Saturday on the bus ride home, right after walking out of part one of the workshop. Submitted. Done. Noooooo, I sat my big raggedy tail up here and played. I opened a page Monday and started writing a story that came from who knows where! It wasn’t from none of the many prompts we started in class. It really wasn’t a moment I’d thought about… my childhood was filled with getting popped in the mouth, not leaving much room for any of the little incidents to have stood out.
“Writing reveals what you don’t know you know,” our wise writing instructor quotes another writer. Hm, who knew that’d be observed in practice so soon.
When she first told us we’d be submitting a piece of our writing, my mind went to my creative non-fiction story Leave Her that I recently discovered wasn’t a bag of a** when my LMFT asked me a question that only that story could most appropriately answer. I remembered the sentiment, but didn’t really remember writing it and surely hadn’t read it. As I read it to her to express an emotion that couldn’t fit into one word, I thought, “oh snit, this is a story!” There was an introduction and rising action and a clear climax and a bit of a resolution with suspense dispersed. Girl, my face scrunched up and my head tilted to the side. Hm. That wasn’t something for which I tried. But I like it!
(This is three years later, by the way, so I’m no longer an emotional wreck as I’m reading it for the first time. Well, I still cried. I cried as a reader though. When I was writing it, the words on the keys were the tears on my face.)
The LMFT could’ve been lying to me, “wow, you’re a really talented writer.” I wanted to know if it were really a story. Did it make sense? Did people follow it? Does it create interest, evoke emotion, a thirst for more?
Not long after that session, a post on Instagram appears on my explore page promoting a “kitchen sink open mic” at an independent bookstore that welcomed all short-form creative works under five minutes. Hm, I’ve never performed at an open mic, as poetry mildly disgusts me, but these folks are welcoming prose. I’m going!
Being extra af, beyond my control, I need something to read it from. This moment of venting wasn’t captured in a notebook; I woke up and picked up my phone. I decide that I’ll copy/paste it from my blog website to a printable page, so I wouldn’t have to be up on the barstool reading from a webpage. What if a text comes in while I’m taking my turn? Uhnt uhn.
I study two memoirs from a stack in the library, then make a booklet out of a sheet of paper with a creative non-fiction short story that I wrote a few years ago as the text to begin imagining how it might look if I wrote my own.
When I arrive to the library, I can’t copy/paste it onto a plain document; I tried, it wasn’t pleasing to my eyes. I end up spending hours formatting it into a literary zine of sorts. (I hadn’t thought to call it by that name; the independent bookstore clerk that organized the event called it that when she saw my little arts and crafts project). I grab two books out of the memoir section at random. After studying their anatomy, I replicate the memoir packaging for my short story, Leave Her, that I would cut and fold into a 4x5 booklet.
I wanted to see how I’d sell my story with the cover. I wanted to see how T. Krystal Greaux would look in the author position.
The public library only prints in black and white and baby, I need color!
Okay, I’ll go to the nearest office supplies store with a printing department. Well, if I’ve come all the way in here and I spent all this time making it to print, why only print one? I print 10. You never know, someone in the audience of the open mic night may inquire how to spell Greaux or something and wouldn’t it be lovely to hand her a copy and say “keep it?!”
Maybe I can have these remaining 9 on-hand for future open mic participation.
Mmm.
Some kind of way, I end up sending copies to some of my closest and most respected cousins.
Whew. I went from hiding that emotional vomit 3 years ago to reading it for the first time myself, reading it in front of a crowd (albeit a crowd I could count on my fingers), and mailing it to people that I know in real life for them to see?!
Child, talk about ripping the bandage off!
A couple of weeks later, I’m sitting in UCLA’s Extension wing for a 9am to 5pm day on memoir and personal essay writing. What?! What is that? [squints]. Is that me? Is that me taking myself seriously? Chiiiiiiiiild. We’ll see.
Leave Her has had her creative non-fiction moment to be seen by some eyes. Let me get some eyes on something else.
I sit down at the computer in the library this past Monday just knowing that I was going to continue writing from one particular prompt we’d started in class. The writing instructor had said the word neighbor or something and we had to write down the first image to come to mind. I began writing a pleasant story about how I played with the kids of the Egyptian family that lived across the street from my grandparents’ house in Cleveland, Ohio. It was lovely and I smiled, sharing the two sentences that I wrote with the class. (My fellow writers’ workshop attendees had written pages in the same amount of time). I wanted to continue that story. Somehow, when I sat to write, something else came out, a story of my getting popped in the mouth. ***spoiler alert*** Well, she missed my mouth, or I moved, and that’s how I ended up with a bloody nose.
Wow, it’s now nine minutes after two o’clock in the morning. That means I’ve been sitting here yapping away on these keys for a couple of hours, when all I came to do was copy and paste what I sent in.
BOP!
T. Krystal Greaux
UCLA Writers Program
Memoir and Personal Essay
Professor Amy Friedman
Perhaps that’s how I would’ve headed the document had I not waited until the very last minute to submit. [inserts emoji with missing mouth]. It was just the story text. Untitled document and all. “Document sans titre (1)” attached to the email headed for the instructor’s inbox. Shameful.
Hey, I just started, okay. By the next course I take within this UCLA Writers Program, I won’t be as… sh*t?