Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories
Page 31
The wind strengthened by degrees, the sky darkening and he planted his feet to find the rhythm of the sea, the deck rising and then falling away and a loud laugh bubbled up from deep inside. The Harpies screamed through the shrouds and the sailors made the protective sign of the horns but he urged the Shriekers on as they played with mortal sensibilities, shredding nerves. This was life and even though he was mildly drunk, he knew his mood had more to do with escape than anything.
The Captain did indeed keep his crew leashed tight, allowing neither storm nor Others to shatter concentration as excess sail dropped to the deck and dragged at Finnian’s booted feet. The storm-rig was trimmed, the men springing to orders as if a cat o’ nine tails lashed their backs. As the action increased and the deck became slick with wash, Finnian glanced down the stair and caught sight of a white face. The cabinboy’s bleached visage stared back, teeth tearing at his bottom lip. The wind grabbed his blonde curls and lifted them skyward where they stayed, vertical corkscrews, as if he had the fright of his life. A familiar emotion chimed in Finnian’s memory when he saw the pale face and with barely a thought he jumped down the stair, hustling the boy in front of him to his cabin.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘I need some help getting out of my wet coat and boots.’ The silent boy took the weight of the saturated oilskin as Finnian shrugged it back off his shoulders. Sitting himself in the chair he thrust out a booted leg and bade the young chap pull. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Gio, sir. Gio Poli.’ He cringed as the boat shook.
‘Do you like being at sea, Gio?’
‘Most times, sir.’ He pulled and the boot came off with a rush, the boy fetching up against the planks.
Finnian shoved up the other leg. ‘When you’ve got this one off you’ll find a dry pair in the chest, you can help me put them on. Tell me, have you family?’
‘Oh yes, sir. My Mama and Papa and me, we all live in Veniche and my Mama is a sought after lace-maker, really good too. The nobles often ask her to do things for them. And my Papa…’
The boat pounded off a wave and the boy lurched sideways. Finnian grabbed him and set him to rights. ‘Are your family good to you, Gio? Do they beat you?’ Anything to keep the boy’s mind away from his fear because Finnian knew fear. Does it burn into your gut, Gio, until you feel more scared if your heart stops its frenzy — as if worse things are around the corner?
‘Lor sir, why would you ask such a thing?’ The boy held tight to Finnian’s leg. ‘I know there’s some who beat their children and it’s a terrible thing and my Papa who is the most gentlest person, he reckons they should be drawn and quartered for such behaviour. But I’ve the best family. I’m the luckiest boy ever. My Mama says she loves me more than life itself, which is lovely but a bit embarrassing if you know what I mean. But anyway when I come home, she cooks my favourite food and tells me all the doings that I’ve missed and even though I give her my earnings, she’ll give me a coin to do what I want. But I’m saving it ‘cos I want to buy her this tiny cameo I saw in a goldworker’s shop and she can hang it from a chain that my Papa gave her when they married.’ Gio propped the wet boots against the walls where they promptly fell again under the weather’s onslaught. The light swung like a dervish and the hammock creaked as it moved in unison. Weaving his way across to the chest, Gio grabbed the other boots and advanced at a run on Finnian who plucked him close as the ship slewed. ‘And my Papa has the best stories to tell because he’s met all kinds. Mortal and Other.’
‘Has he indeed? What Others then?’
‘Oh Færan, Hobs, a goblin once, some tiny Siofra who hid in a boat he was working on at the time.’
‘Anyone malicious?’ For the world is full of malicious folk at every turn, young Gio.
‘No…’ But then the boy’s face brightened. ‘He saw an urisk once. The fellow just sat on a rock in the middle of one of the marsh rills and played a tune on pipes. Terrible enchanted it was and Papa was going to stuff his ears with some cheese Mama had given him for midday but the urisk saw him and asked what he thought of the music. ‘Plain wonderful,’ says my Papa. ‘As if Aine has kissed the pipes you blow.’ And the urisk bowed and asked if he could share Papa’s meal and Papa knew that to deny such a request was to bring down all manner of ills so he welcomed the urisk. Do you know what his name was? He told Papa. Can you believe it? Cos name-swapping is bad with Others, so they say. But not this time.’ Gio’s face had brightened, a rosier tint creeping across the wretched shade of earlier. His eyes shone as he told his little story. Finnian nodded his head and the boy continued blithely. ‘It was Nolius although he likes Nolly. He was kind enough to my Papa. Said good things would happen to his son one day.’ He gave a grin of sorts. ‘That’s me. I’m the son.’
Your father met Nolius? Well, well. Finnian remembered the redoubtable urisk who had visited Castello for a short time. A very short time. As he left he said to Finnian, ‘This place is a pustule, a boil on the backside of Eirie. I would get you gone, Finnian. Bigger and better things await outside.’ He had thought then, I would but I can’t get past her.
Gio pushed on the last boot and stood. ‘There, sir, I’d better go to the cook and see if the Captain’s meal’s ready. He eats in any weather.’
The boy’s smile lit the shadows of the storm-tossed cabin as he departed, bravado on the small face. A thick and insidious thread of jealousy floated after him because Finnian envied the child the familial love and care. Something he had craved all his life, something he had never had. It invoked the sour taste of memory and he grabbed a pewter goblet and flung it against the planks. No one would hear; it was just another thump amongst many.
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Suzanne Tyrpak
Holes
I used to think I had to be perfect. Of course, I fell short of perfection on a regular basis so I frequently felt like a failure.
The only way to prevent failure is to hide. If we don’t put ourselves out there, we can’t fail.
To prevent myself from failing, I hid in a fantasy world. As a young child, I longed to be a ballerina. I loved to dance, but more than that, I wanted to escape into the fantasy world of the ballet. I wanted to live inside a fairytale, and in my mind, I did. I invented worlds I could escape to, perfect worlds that seemed more real to me than life. Meanwhile, I ate, and ate, and ate. Not ideal, if you want to be a ballerina. My reality never matched my inner world.
I created this pattern, this external and internal disparity, throughout my life. I brought it into my marriage, convincing myself that my marriage was perfect, while in reality it was a mess. Instead of leaving, I found escape in writing. I lost myself other times: ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome—worlds as far away from my reality as possible. In my writing, I disappeared for hours, days, years. I got a job working at an airline so I could travel and do research. I got an agent. I felt sure I would be published.
Then my world fell apart. After nineteen years of marriage, my husband wanted a divorce. I fought it. Divorce didn’t fit my idea of perfection, my fairytale. I viewed this loss as a disaster, but in truth it was an opening, a hole leading me to greater understanding and compassion for myself and others.
I was broke, trying to live on what I made at the airline. I was lonely. I had no time to write. Worst of all, I had to admit my life wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect. Forced to accept myself with all my imperfections, I discovered that the more I could accept myself, the more I could accept others. Even my ex-husband. To this day, we remain friends.
Because I no longer had time to sit down and write for hours, the kind of time it takes to write a novel, I wrote short stories. I wrote about my experience, about my struggles as a woman of fifty going through divorce and entering the dating world. Initially, I wrote the stories for myself as therapy. Then I began to share the stories with my writing group. They encouraged me to submit the stories to magazi
nes, and several were published. I read a couple of stories at our local library and people laughed. Then my good friend, Blake Crouch, convinced me to publish the stories on Kindle. A frightening prospect. What if my stories weren’t good enough? What if they weren’t perfect?
At first I resisted. I’d had two literary agents, and a longtime dream of being traditionally published. Self-publishing didn’t fit my idea of perfection. But, in reality, I no longer had an agent, and I hadn’t worked on a novel for several years. What did I have to lose? Nothing. So I published Dating My Vibrator (and other true fiction).
My world changed, not because I was finally published, but because I changed. I finally found the confidence to pursue my dream despite my imperfections. I found the courage to stop hiding and put myself out into the world. This freed me.
I rewrote my novel, Vestal Virgin—suspense in ancient Rome. Originally, my characters were a bit flat. Why? Because they were too perfect! I hadn’t looked at the manuscript for two years, and a lot had changed for me in that time. I rewrote the book with a cold eye: cutting, digging deeper. My characters became multifaceted, real people with flaws.
I became busier and busier, caught in a whirlwind, trying to hold down a full-time job, write, promote my books and have a life. Trying, once again, to be perfect.
And then the universe stepped in.
I had an accident at work. While moving a jet stair (which weighed over 1,000 pounds) away from the aircraft, my right foot got crushed. I fell, screaming, onto the tarmac while passengers onboard the plane watched. A coworker rushed me to the hospital for the first of three emergency surgeries. I suffered intense pain due to nerve damage, broken and dislocated toes and, ultimately, amputation of a toe. As I write this, I’m still recovering.
I spent five weeks at a nursing home, a good place for me (even though most of the patients were over eighty years old), because it would have been close to impossible for me to take care of myself at home. While there, I had a chance to meet a lot of the patients and residents. All of us had obvious holes.
I learned a lot from the other patients. And I was forced to face my own mortality. Aging offers us the gift of acceptance. In order to age gracefully, we must the release the idea of perfection. We learn there are some things we can change, and some things we must accept. And, when we accept what is, we may find the good in even the most difficult situations. We learn to accept the holes in ourselves and others. We even welcome imperfection.
Since the accident, I’ve been thinking about holes a lot. I’ve been thinking about being whole, in relation to loss. How can loss make a person whole? I’ve learned that loss can make a person strong, more self-reliant. Loss can make us more compassionate to ourselves and others.
Where I had a toe, there’s now a hole, and that hole reminds me that I’m not perfect. But, despite my imperfection, I am whole. I am me. It would be ridiculous to think that I am any less of a person, because I’m missing a toe, because I have a hole. Just as it’s ridiculous for any of us to think we must be perfect.
Physical wounds can’t be hidden as easily as emotional and psychological wounds. And that’s a gift. Physical wounds make us confront our mortality, our humanity. Physical wounds can’t be denied. They are tangible and force us to accept ourselves, with all our imperfections.
It’s impossible to get through life without being wounded. Some wounds are obvious. Others are internal, even spiritual: the loss of the ability to trust, to connect deeply, to hold a friend and know that you are loved.
We run away from wounds. Try not to look at them. We think they’re signs of weakness, but our wounds—the holes in us—provide a doorway, a soft spot in our armor. We walk around armored, protecting ourselves with platitudes and false smiles, never touching our own vulnerabilities, afraid to share our tender rawness with another or even with ourselves.
If we can touch the tender spots, allow ourselves to feel fear, sorrow, loss, we become closer to wholeness. The more we accept our holes, the more compassion we can have for others. When we feel compassion we are able to connect. We are able to expose our soft underbelly to another human being and share the salt of our tears, the sweetness of our joy. That’s what I want to write about, that’s what I want to share, because salt makes all the difference between a bland, protected life, and a true life: pulsing, bloody, messy, passionate and truly whole.
Flaws, or holes, are what make a character seem real—in life and in fiction. Perfection is impermanent, an illusion. A person who seems too perfect is repulsive. We don’t trust him. We know that person can’t be real. Holes speak of truth. Holes allow us to connect, to ourselves and to each other. Our holes make us human, make us beautiful. Holes allow the light to shine through.
If someone had asked me last spring, “Would you give up a toe in order to learn, in order to have time to write your next novel?” I might have said, “Yes.”
Funny, how life works.
About the Chick
Suzanne Tyrpak ran away from New York a long time ago to live in Colorado. When she’s not lost in the ancient world or writing twisted short stories about the current world, she likes to swim, bike, ski and dance the Tango. In her next life, she would like to be a belly dancer or her cat. Her latest novel is Agathon’s Daughter—suspense in ancient Greece, part one of this trilogy is titled, Agathon’s Daughter: Hetaera.
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Vestal Virgin—Suspense in Ancient Rome
Suzanne Tyrpak
An Excerpt
Chapter I
The Kalends of October
Year IX, reign of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus
…though they may condemn me, the words I write are heartfelt. I no longer trust Nero, no longer trust the gods. I don’t fear death, but life. This life devoid of passion. My fate has never been my own—my destiny decided ten years ago when I was pledged to thirty years of chastity. Keep this letter close, for I trust only you.
Elissa
She set down the stylus and read what she’d written. Could a person be condemned merely for thinking?
Through the narrow window of her chamber, a breeze brought the scent of roses, the last of autumn. Soon it would be winter, but sequestered within the House of Vestals the world seemed seasonless.
“Elissa—” a voice called from beyond the doorway’s curtain.
She snatched the papyrus, thrust it into the bodice of her stola, and turned
on her stool. Angerona, her fellow priestess, swept open the curtain. Unfettered by her veil, her auburn tresses fell over her shoulders in a wild cascade of curls. Beside her, Elissa felt small and dark. She ran her tongue over her teeth, the tip lingering on her deformity.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Angerona’s face was flushed, which only made her prettier. She sounded breathless, “I thought I’d find you working in the garden then I checked the library—”
“Why aren’t you at the agora?” Elissa wiped ink from the stylus, replaced it in the jar with others, hoping Angerona wouldn’t ask what she’d been writing. “All you’ve talked about for days is that gold bracelet. I thought you’d be haggling with the merchant. Did you finally get your price?”
“So you haven’t heard—” Angerona’s voice trailed off.
“Heard what?”
“All of Rome is whispering. I thought, by now, you would have known.” She touched Elissa’s shoulder, and something in her touch made Elissa shiver. “Your brother has been charged with treason.”
“Treason?” The word passed Elissa’s lips, but didn’t register.
“They say, Marcus has been plotting Nero’s assassination. They say—”
“They say!” Elissa stood, toppling her stool. “You’ve been listening to idle gossip, and now you’re spreading rumors.”
“My source is reliable.”
“Who?”
Angerona shook her head.
Elissa seldom raised her voice, but now she did, “Gossip will be your ruin, Angerona. Vicious lies.”
Angerona looked close to tears. She reached into the folds of her stola and withdrew a scroll. “This came for you by messenger.”
Hands trembling, Elissa broke the imperial seal, read aloud:
“I, NERO CLAUDIUS AUGUSTUS GERMANICUS,
PRINCEPS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE,
BELOVED OF APOLLO,
SUMMON THE VESTAL VIRGIN,
PRIESTESS ELISSA RUBRIA HONORIA,
TO WITNESS HER BROTHER’S DEATH—”
Her mouth went dry. The gods had acted swiftly, punishing her hubris. “There must be a mistake,” she said. “A Roman citizen, the son of a senator, can’t be treated like a common criminal.”
“I’m sorry,” Angerona said, tears spilling from her eyes.
“First your father, now my brother—Nero holds himself above the law.” Elissa took a breath and willed her heart to beat more slowly. “I’ve got to hurry.”
“You’re going to the circus?”
“The emperor requests my presence. Perhaps Nero’s forgotten how my family has supported him.”
“You can’t go unescorted—”
“No?”
“Let’s speak to the Vestal Maxima,” Angerona said, “request she file a petition and ask your brother’s life be spared. Even Nero can’t refuse a vestal’s intervention on behalf of a prisoner—”