My last post was the beginning of Chapter one, so here is the rest of the Chapter for those of you who said you would like to keep reading. Remember that I am interested in what you want to know more about, and what ever else you want to say. Because I expect this to be a novel someday, I ask you to respect the copyright and leave it here on my Blog.
"You
see, she was a child of rape. Yup! Good old Zeus, master God, had come down and
raped her mother Leda. Yes. The books say he visited Leda in the shape of
a swan and that she then had
children. So he did it in the
shape of a Swan, but come on! And then,
her own Daddy-swan-Zeus, the God above, had not stuck around long enough to get
to know her. True, her Mom was married
to a nice man, but Helen couldn't help but wonder about her real Dad because
she was only one of four children that
Leda gave birth to that day. Well, that
isn't quite true. Leda gave birth to
only one thing--an egg! Well, what do
you expect from a mating between a human and a bird? Zeus was Helen's father, and when he
"visited" Leda, he looked like a swan! And myths are always larger than life, so, of
course, Leda layed an egg and there were four children inside rather than
one. Helen had a twin sister named
Clytemnestra and two twin brothers named Castor and Pollux. Well, the boys right away claimed kinship
with papa Zeus and left, so the girls were alone with their earthly parents.
And their earthly Dad worried about who they would marry because their husbands
would inherit the land. So the sisters
grew up with no choice but to marry, and they had no choice but to marry the
two strongest most competitive men available, the brothers Menelaus and
Agamemnon. And these two boys were not
chosen for the length of their names but because of their power to make
alliances. They took an oath to protect
each others' marriages. They made all
the rejected suitors take the same oath.
A group of men stood and said, 'We accept this marriage. We will not try to take your new wives away
from you. We will defend to the death
the rightful marriages of the two sisters Helen and Clytemnestra to the two brothers
Menelaus and Agamemnon.' They took this
oath and then they drank some wine and broke some glasses and went back to
their far away homes without a second thought."
Alice
went through the actions of shaking hands and drinking and throwing and putting
thumbs up and all the time backing away and sneaking back until she heard
enough laughter. She came forward again,
this time slinking into the character and voice of Helen.
"But
Helen had not yet fallen in love with her husband. She resented the deal which had gotten her
born and the deal which had gotten her married.
So she thought about the letter she received from Paris. Why not think about it? 'I am
yours and you are mine,' he said.
And why not go with him? She
didn't know him, but maybe he loved her!
Her own husband only talked about how, thank you very much, he now was
pretty powerful because he had her land.
And Paris seemed to want to take her away from it all, to his home in
Troy. Helen had heard of Troy as one of
the seven wonders of the world. She
would like to see it. She was tempted,
but she hesitated because of the pact between her hubby and his bro. If she left with someone, they would probably
go to war to get her back. War! With her as the cause. Everything that was human inside of Helen
screamed "NO."
"Helen
told me that she was about to sit and write Paris a long and grateful letter
that thanked him for the compliment and said NO, she wouldn't go; she wouldn't
cause war. She said that she was sitting
there just like this when she felt several hands lifting her up--despite
gravity and despite walls and ceilings--the hands lifted her way way up into
the sky. She said she kicked and
screamed, "No, No, I won't go! Leave me alone; let me go!"
And
with this the Gong sounded again, and Alice jumped up to stand in the rocking
chair. There she teetered, saying the
words of Helen as if she had become her, looking out over the audience as if it
were the entire world:
No,
let me down. I don't want to
go! Where are you taking me! Put me down.
Not here, back home. Who the Hell
are you, anyway? Yeah, right. My real Dad wants to meet me now? Well he can forget it. OOOOO.
Wait come back! Don't leave me up
here in the clouds! Ohhhh. OHHHH.
Ah. I can see a lot. HEY! That's
Menelaus! He's in the harbor with the
ships and there's Aggy too. Looks like
war preparations already. With, no! Yes!
They've used my likeness for the figure heads of the ships. Ohh, noo.
No. Just where is Paris
anyway? Why doesn't he tell everyone
that he didn't take me to Troy?
Oh, Oh, there he is, already in Troy.
He thinks that fashion model with him IS me. He thinks that's me! She sort of looks like me--she really looks
like me! Hey Paris! I'm up here!
hey Menelaus,I'm up here! Don't
either of you recognize me? Look up,
damn you! And, if I know my husband,
this is war. And, if I know my husband,
this war will last ten years! And if I
know my husband, he'll blame it all on me!
At this point Alice/Helen groaned
and sat down in her chair rocking it to a stand still. She stroked her books. She sighed.
She
looked out at all of the little children who had just heard the story, and she
said, "Don't you just love books?
Sometimes they are true, and sometimes not. And, every once in a while, a character comes
forward to tell her own story. We just
have to listen."
"But
is Helen right?" one child asked as the lights came up.
"The
war lasted for 10 years," Alice answered with a smile. "Could you believe it was all for nothing?"
"No,
that's stupid."
Yes,
you're probably right."
"Humph,"
said the child as he moved off. Alice
heard another ask her Mommy what rape was.
"Uh
oh," she thought.
Chapter One ends here.
