My last post was the completion of
Chapter One, so here is Chapter Two for those of you who
said you would like to keep reading my novel-in-progress, Alice in Wonder, or, The Storyteller. 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.
Chapter Two
Alice
is a librarian in a library that is as white as cream and as vast as an ocean,
and the only things that break up the whiteness are bookshelves and rules. It is neat as a pin and quiet as a stone, and
Alice likes it that way. Before she
leaves for the day, she shelves all the books left behind by the hourly staff,
pushes in all the chairs, and smiles at it all as if to say, "I enjoyed
you today! I'll see you
tomorrow." Which is exactly how she
feels.
Storytelling
is her specialty. She started the
tradition of story hour at her library many years before and she had read to
children daily ever since, even if it meant coming in on her days off. She loves pulling out the low stool, opening
books wide for children to follow the images and to see the words and letters
that made up the sounds she voiced.
Lately,
Alice has been performing her own versions of the old stories, and she likes
this storytelling even more. Sometimes
she tells children the Jungian symbols behind fairy tales, sometimes she
explores the wounds and emotions inside
characters, and sometimes she simply puts the children in front of her
into the stories. For the younger
children, she has made what she calls a storytelling apron with four rows of
four pockets, each of which holds an object or toy animal, truck, or doll. She
lets one child pick a pocket and discover the character, and even tell a story
about it if he or she has one.
Otherwise, she spins the yarn herself.
In short, Alice is a gem. The
library loves her, the children love her, the parents love her, and she? She seems to love herself as well.
Alice's
home is as neat as her library, but not half so populated. She lives alone in walls that are far from
white, in fact their colors vary like flowers in a bouquet: rose pink here,
daffodil yellow there, iris blue in another place, and tulip crimson as
well. The place seems even more
jewel-like because fake oriental rugs soften the pool-table effect of the green
wall-to-wall. She has few furnishings besides
the paperback books crammed into built-in bookcases on either side of a working
fireplace. The long 3' by 4' mask of her Grandmother lives over the mantel while
the round tile and wood box lives on it with her Mother mask in its womb-like
interior. Alice made the sculpted
Grandmother mask years ago as one of the huge street puppets in an
anti-Apartheid rally. It remained
unpainted, with eyes that seemed to look wherever Alice stood. In Alice's mind it continually watches and
judges as her actual Grandmother had done with Alice's Mother, but Grandmother
had been Alice's soul mate and Alice feeels no malice in the gaze.
Alice
had hung the framed art of her
Grandmother and her Mother equally so that neither of the two could overpower
the other. Many trees clustered on the
daffodil walls, some with leaves and others without, in oil, pastel, pencil,
wood print, etching and embroidery. One
was actually a carved tree itself that looked like an old man or woman of the
green as in old Irish legend. The trees
were Alice's favorites.
On
the Iris walls were other etchings of towers and flowers, of men and women and
of scenes in Mexico or in imaginary underworlds. The rose walls carried oil, acrylic and tile
still-life squash and jars and African images and sun flowers and squiggles. On the tulip walls one mirror Mexican tin
mirror flashed its light, while the windows sparked with crystals, stained
glass and white lace. And here and there
were photographs of performances and of people, including a few of Alice
herself at 2 and 10 and 17 and 22 and 50.
In one she holds a doll and stares into the camera pouting and
angry. In one she is surrounded by
books, and in another she is playing chess.
In one she is getting married, and in the final one she is holding her
great mongoose of a cat, Little Kitty.
She
has a double bed and a double dresser and a double couch and a double coffee
table and two of everything else from cups to tables to pens to blankets. And Alice lives alone.
Before
she leaves home for the library each morning, Alice packs herself a knapsack
for a lunch of raisin bread and cream cheese sandwiches, an apple, and a bottle
of juice. She rinses out the cat's bowls
and leaves her fresh water along with dry food and a half of a tiny can of
Fancy Feast Whitefish and Tuna. She sets
the alarm on her door and closes it carefully.
She says good morning to the lilac trees and azaleas whether or not they
are in bloom and heads out her gate, turns left, and walks to work thinking
about the story for the day before taking a minute to notice God in
something--her walk, her neighbor, the sky, something.
Chapter TWO ends here.
