Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon has been missing her poetry. But her attempts at writing it during the café’s last day were rather unsuccessful, so she gave up and went home after saying her goodbyes.

She does not like goodbyes.

She spent the rest of the day at home, submitting eight packets of poetry to journals while a handyman did some long-overdue and some exciting house repairs. (You’ll get the full list when he’s finished!) He was there so long that she almost asked the him if he required a cot. She did feed him a snack.

Submitting poetry means going back through old poems and smoothing their hair. WR was pleased to note that for the two themed submissions she had plenty of water-adjacent poems, as well as scents for the ones that required those.

She enjoyed revisiting her lovingly crafted poems, those more polished, those less so, too, but full of fire. It reminded her of all she loves best.

Then, she surprised me. While she sat nearby in case the handyman had questions (and he did), she applied for a six-week residency, even though she had to update her CV. Ugh. She despises fiddly paperwork, but I told her if she wants to go focus on her novel for a month and a half in a gorgeous wilderness (maybe, if she is fortunate enough to be chosen), it takes doing just what she was doing.

When I told her that we also had to choose a writing sample from Novel #3 for the application, she put her little furry nose in the air and declared it impossible to choose from some many pages.

She demanded chocolate in kind, then acted wounded and betrayed when I gave her a freeze-dried peppermint patty.

Yeah, it does sound better than it tastes, WR. LOL.

Pardon me, dear reader, if we seem off. I think we’re still feeling a bit overwhelmed by the closure of the café. Or this headache. Or the fact that sleep again is a phantom. We tried to write two poems about it so we could process the closure, but they were laughably bad.

Sometimes the writing just needs a break from itself. Or for itself.

So next week, there is no master plan. No “Where’s Waldo” hunting for the perfect spot. I’ll just let the writing day happen. Maybe I’ll write at the kitchen table. Maybe I’ll wander uptown if I need to clear my head. The world keeps moving, and so do we.

We all know that poetry is as free as the wind. Which is, much to our regret sometimes, as it should be.

Would we want it any other way?

Sometimes, sure. But there is a quiet kind of peace in just appreciating and letting things be what they are. 🙂

Remember that, WR.

Fondly,

Drema

Dear Reader,

Sad sack post forthcoming, because today is the last day this café will be open.

I didn’t give my heart fully to this version of the café, I confess. Because the other that had previously been here had meant so much to me, had become intertwined with my novel writing. This one has too, but I see it more as having been part of my poetry.

If only Word Raccoon could take that Japanese maple when we leave. If only we could take the porch, where you are covered and yet not. Where you can watch the whole town, learn its rhythms perhaps better than it knows them.

I told myself, I told Word Raccoon, that we were not going to write this post. That the writing is what is important to preserve, ultimately, and that we can walk by the tree sometimes if we miss it too much. That we can pretend we are back on the porch.

I try to think of the positives: If I write at the library, I can bring my own snacks. I can go home for lunch and come back. If I write at the café uptown, I will still see some of these humans who have become a part of my life, who tease me and ask if they are in my writing.

Sometimes I say yes, because naturally, they are.

Everything is.

Every car that passes. Every person. Every squirrel, every bird.

I don’t want to think of this as saying goodbye to a café full of people I’ve grown to care about, from the baristas who have part of my order waiting for me sometimes to the cook who always brings my breakfast to me with the biggest smile on his face.

It’s a small town. I might see them around…or not. (Cry emoji here.)

Maybe this time I won’t plan a place to write at all, and I’ll wake up and see what I’m in the mood for day by day. 

Maybe I’ll “Where’s Waldo?” this thing, but with me and WR, obviously, instead. And maybe eventually one place will feel better than another. Maybe not.

But hell, once I’m writing, the place tends to disappear anyway.

Which is not to say I won’t miss the café. Word Raccoon and I absolutely will.

It’s been our constant.

Anyway.

What makes a good farewell gift for those who have ministered to your writing for a couple of years? 

Drema

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon was at the gym at 5:30 this morning.

Recently we were at the gym and met the new coach, who asked if that was the time we generally came to the gym.

WR laughed.

No, no, Angie. We go to the gym whenever the spirit moves us or whenever Word Mom (that’s me) puts on her shoes and says, “Let’s go!”

What WR is not telling you is that sleep is apparently optional nowadays. Since I was awake early and trying to solve the day like it was a damn equation, I let X = Go to the gym NOW.

Then I came home and addressed my craving for Vitamin C with neither the oranges I wanted nor the lemons our grocery delivery guy apparently thought were a brilliant substitution for avocados??? but pineapple and applesauce.

Meanwhile Herbert, the grumpy ol’ Muppet who tries to live rent-free in my head, started up his Muppet Show chortling and informed me that if I keep this up, I will end up doing zero writing today.

He knows that’s what happened yesterday.

Well. Sort of.

I did finish Hollywood, Ending right before my coffee date and questioned all my life choices, damn you, John Green. With about fifty pages to go, I thought I had it all figured out and worried I might be disappointed.

Reader, I did NOT have it figured out, and I was NOT disappointed.

I started the novel in Writing Craft Mode and had to get past hearing John’s voice instead of the characters’, but eventually I willingly followed Juniper and Kai wherever they wanted to take me. And they took me somewhere I was not expecting.

That is all I am saying. I am militantly anti-spoiler. (Usually. Sorry about the Their Eyes spoiler the other day.)

But what did I do yesterday instead of writing?

I accepted an offer for a free week of a newspaper archive.

Friends, this was a mistake.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

I went deeply down the rabbit hole and looked up anyone who had ever interested me.

I found newspaper ads from when my dad offered an attic/basement cleanout and hauling service when I was a young child. When I saw our old New Jersey phone number, I closed my eyes and discovered I could still recite it immediately, like I was in kindergarten memorizing it all over again.

I remembered how my dad took the secondhand items he didn’t want to end up in a landfill and, for a short time, opened a shop.

I remember spending time there, carefully sorting through the toys and playing with them. I can’t remember individual toys, but I remember the textures and colors: vinyl, blue, orange, wicker, polyester, pink.

Maybe that’s why I’m such a believer in donating things if they’re at all salvageable.

I found the announcement of my birth. I found the announcement of my mom’s release from the hospital after having me.

My mother was named when she was released from the hospital, but in the announcement of my birth, she was a “Mrs.”

I know that was the convention. But damn. She had literally just given birth to a human being and apparently did not merit a first name.

I found so many things. So many word goodies.

I treasure the details.

So no, I didn’t write yesterday.

But maybe I did something writers also have to do.

I seeded my imagination.

And apparently this morning I harvested a blog post from it.

Now Word Raccoon would like me to stop analyzing all of this and get ready for the penultimate day of writing at the café.

At this point, I think I’m beyond sadness about its closing and have arrived at: Okay. What’s next?

It’s not like life is asking my permission anyway. (On another day, when I’m more awake and more caffeinated, I will view this as an opportunity to rethink my writing spaces/places. Just not today.) 

Drema

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon is engrossed.

She’s halfway through John Green’s first novel for adults, and she loves how he talks about art in it, especially. But then again, he’s married to someone who used to be an art curator for a museum, so no surprise there.

And now WR has to find that Warhol book we bought that he used for research and read it, but also…shhh, World!

And TBH, she’s a little miffed that apparently she only gets a “Jn” as a signature. I mean…sure, he signed 85K+, but still…

We would have kept reading last night, but we had a headache, and we were not about to read this with a headache.

Now if you will excuse us, we have a coffee date today, but until then, it’s all Juniper and Kai over here.

#AmReading

Drema

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon and I have been holding out on you.

We hope you don’t mind. We had been asked to keep the secret for a while, and then we wanted to wait a beat because of the loss of dear Mawgy.

But remember that pinked grass I mentioned?

Well.

THERE WAS A REASON I SAID THAT.

Our son Zack and his girlfriend Erica are having a baby girl.

Myah Ann is coming in March 2027. (The Ann is after my middle name!)

We’ve known about the baby for a month and a half, but we waited to share the news until they were ready for us to. Recently, they came to our house with a gender-reveal cannon and a card, though they already knew.

We pressed the button.

Out came pink, white, and gold confetti ALL OVER THE SIDEWALK AND YARD AND I’M LEAVING IT THERE, MAYBE FOREVER!  I LOVE IT!

(Not that Word Raccoon and I believe colors have genders, but we understood the assignment. LOL.)

And I made an absolute spectacle of myself, yelling and dancing. Regrettably, there is video evidence.

Maybe I should mind. I do not.

Because I have been saying all along: You can say whatever you want, but that baby is a girl.

LOL.

AND SHE IS A GIRL.

In fact, I have already begun referring to her as Princess Myah. Not “princess” in the stereotypical, must wear pink and play with dolls sense (unless she wants to). Princess as in: she is royalty and I am willingly in her employ.

Anything she asks? YES.

Anything she wants? ALSO YES, if at all possible.

We are so thrilled. So excited. We cannot wait to meet her.

Someone said Princess Myah looks like a little turtle in her sonogram.

So apparently Turtle is her first nickname.

(Sorry, Myah. You aren’t even here yet and apparently you have a nickname, though I’m not mad about it. I hope you won’t be if it sticks. Why am I reminded of the Barbara Kingsolver character named Turtle, also a child?)

I originally thought I would make something elaborate for this announcement. A cute little vertical story with scenes and characters and a grand reveal.

But I can’t.

I just want to speak from my heart and say how completely overjoyed we are. When I love, I LOVE. Forever.

Word Raccoon may be the tiniest bit jealous because I have already begun imagining Myah’s future. Things I might teach her. Things we might make together. Places we might go. Books I might read to her. (I have a list of all of these things but this post would get SOO long if it added them.)

And yes, I know. I know that none of us gets to write the future in advance. Heartbreak can reach for you and there’s not a thing you can do to stop it. 

It would probably be safer to tell myself to hold off. Don’t imagine too much. Don’t hope too much. Don’t dream too much. Wait until she gets here. Wait until you know. Protect yourself.

But I refuse to live that way.

Because if you start papier-mâchéing over your heart to keep it safe, eventually what do you have left?

Besides, papier-mâché melts in the rain anyway. 

So come on, March. We’re ready.

Word Raccoon will just have to learn to share me with you.

Drema 

P.S. Yes, I wrote a poem about her the day I found out she existed, though the poem is addressed to “Baby Drudge.” It’s a hot mess but I was so excited when I found out she was a girl that I actually read it to the family.

Dear Reader,

Today was catch-up day. As in, the past week has been absorbed (by necessity, and rightly so).

My plan was to go to the gym first thing this morning. I did not give Word Raccoon a choice – I made her start the day in workout clothes.

But once there I discovered that while yes, indeed, they were reopening today, they would not open until 1.

Which meant I was not going to be able to shower early afterward and re-caulk the tub as soon as it was dry, as I had planned.

Fine, fine. Tomorrow is another day and all.

I came home and ate breakfast and watched an episode of SpaceMaker Method.

Note to self: do not let WR do that before I have remapped her day when plans change.

Can you see where this is going?

She insisted on decluttering three huge bags of clothes.

I’m proud of her, I am. She’s prepping for the closet organization wall I will be assembling later this month, so I get why she wanted to do that. (She also dropped them in a local donation bin when she returned to the gym, so good on her.)

But it was a backwards day because as soon as business and society had reopened this morning, we had appointments to confirm and coffee dates to extend before the café closes for good, and then one dreaded administrative task that we had been putting off for a week. For good reason. But we really, really wanted to put it behind us.

We did that after lunch, and though it took some doing and some mental profanity, it’s finished. (As far as we know. Unless we hear differently.)

Then and only then did we sit down with When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse and read a few pages, WR stopping every so often to make argumentative notes. (Some of her notes weren’t arguments. In fact, many lines were just thoughts on language.)

We changed over to reading the poetry collection we bought yesterday for inspiration, and it was potent. WR gnashed her teeth when I asked why she couldn’t write like that.

She said I had hurt her feelings, that I know that she’s still a baby poet and also that I know she resists even the movement that works in others’ poems because she prefers her poems to spontaneously birth themselves. (Then I make her revise!)

Then she began writing a devastating poem that both surprised me and didn’t. That one is…well. Time will tell. It needs revising, but not yet. It’s called “The Protest,” and I suspect it will be one of those poems that stick. 

I really enjoyed reading the accretion of poetry in the collection, piled up by one poet after another, all different in style and yet the same in result. (Does that make any damn sense?) 

And while I bitch and moan when the music in a movie tries to push my emotions without earning it, tries to make me feel, I willingly surrender to a good poem. So many nuggets of truth, the sanctification of everyday moments. These are people who understand that life and valuing every moment is the treasure.

Sorry. Post-loss thoughts, I guess. Borderline overly sentimental, but I stand by the outline of it. 

Last night, WR and I began reading that art essay collection I bought with the intriguing title, and we were so damned jealous of the author who talked about her first encounters with visual art and how disoriented she was by it and how she desired to learn about it.

Relatable. 

She also said she will always know more about language than paintings. (Which, same.)

I was jealous because I am sometimes still that hungry young woman in front of a painting begging it to explain itself to me, because I sense things I can’t quite grasp.

I am the one whose face dripped in Spain before a Picasso, not one anyone mentions much (Couple in an Andalusian Patio), and I had to trace those lines myself with paint to see if I could understand what he meant. (God, was I really trusting him to explain love??)

Once I was the one listening to the Matisse painting of Olga, asking myself what she might be saying behind what he thought he was portraying her as saying.

Once I was the one lightheaded before other works of art, nearly fainting before the Pietà, not expecting it to appear as I toured St. Peter’s Basilica. (I had forgotten, then there it was.) 

And there was my irrational reluctance to leave David, in Florence, only being coaxed away by the impatient tour guide when I promised David I would return. (I did, a few years later.)

So many other works of art and artists have spoken to me, and I have taken them all in as a part of me. (This is a pre-making-supper blog post, so pardon the hasty assembly.)

Right now there is a Mary Cassatt exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, and I was so close to it opening week, but it was Labor Day Weekend, not the best time to crowd into the city. But I hunger to see it. I know it might seem like I’m an artistic lightweight to favor Impressionism, and yet I do.

That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate tons of other art. Why, I’ve bought art right off a local café’s wall on multiple occasions.

The Arts are swirling in my head, and I’m always interacting with them, though nowadays I can’t seem to read anything or see any exhibits without poems coming to me or essays or whatever. It’s a blessing and a curse, you know? 

I do not know how people survive without immersion in ideas and beauty, no matter where they find them. For all my talk of museums I do not know how they limit their definition of them to museums and such. 

I do not know.

Word Raccoon, what do you make of it all?

Anyone up for a road trip to the Art Institute for the Cassatt?

Anyone? 

Drema

Dear Reader,

Alas, today contained another memorial, and after extending condolences, lunch was Chinese food followed by a pop-by to Ollie’s Bargain Outlet.

(Not an ad!)

Y’all, it might be my and Word Raccoon’s new book addiction spot. Even as I complain about needing more bookshelves and bargain with myself and Word Raccoon about weeding out some books, I couldn’t resist! I mean…look at those prices!

We first wandered into an Ollie’s when we had half an hour to spare a few months ago. Apparently, that was all it took.

Most of the books are $3.99. At that price, leaving them there began to seem financially irresponsible, or so sayeth WR.

In case the photo doesn’t do it for you:

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It by Ben Yagoda
Trajectory by Richard Russo
Elsewhere by Richard Russo
Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery by Jeanette Winterson
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry edited by Billy Collins
The Only Story by Julian Barnes
The 50s: The Story of a Decade by The New Yorker

I even checked our library’s catalog while we were there, and of the books I was considering, they only had one, a Nancy Mitford, so I put that one back and bought the rest because you’re not going to find these just anywhere, and certainly not for $3.99! 

Why, the shipping would be more! (I sound like that unintentional ASMR curtain woman, am I right?!) 

There were a few more books I kinda wanted, but I told myself they are niche enough that they are likely to still be there when we return sometime. And then there were a couple that were right author, wrong book. 

But I keep thinking if I bide my time, I will find the elusive creatures without having to pay full price. 

I think I’m most excited to read Winterson (that title!) and the volume of poetry. Then again, maybe the Russo. And didn’t I start the year reading Barnes’s latest? Maybe I should catch up on him.

Oh, and I saw Patchett’s Tom Lake on sale at a distance there, though it had its own special display case, so it might not have been $3.99 like the rest. But it’s at a discount store? Already? 

It came out in 2023, WR reminds me. Still. That seems like just yesterday. 

And wait, wasn’t that the year my own Southern-Fried Woolf came out? (I see the sales reports monthly and well, I still get a bit, but Word Raccoon and I are not exactly getting wealthy from the proceeds. Which is fine, because that’s not why we wrote it.)

WR might be on her walking pad right now trying out her new handle so she doesn’t fall off like she did the first time she tried it, but I’m going to be reading very soon.

I’m also contemplating pretty seriously a DQ pumpkin pie Blizzard.

The gym is reopening tomorrow after the renovations, not that a Blizzard deserves penance. Hmm. I think WR just convinced me to upgrade from a mini to a small. I mean, the PPB is only available once a year, am I right?

Drema

Dear Reader,

Apparently I’m writing a new poetry collection.

Hear me out, please, before you change this bat channel.

Word Raccoon and I came to the porch pre-Mawgy’s memorial, before it was light out, before doing the remaining tasks for the day.

Something You Should Know:

One of my mottos in life has been Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down.

Obviously, that’s shorthand for not allowing life’s reversals to take away the joy and beauty of being alive. 

God, WR says, that sounds too Pippi Longstocking by far, minus the profanity, of course.

I agree, WR, but let me finish!

(She wants to insert a juvenile punchline from The Office TV show, but I am not going to let her. I know she’s only deflecting.)

Anyway.

After the Coke Zero this morning, this wee raccoon beastie asked me to head to the porch before dawn and write.

No agenda, not from either of us.

Actually, the last thing we were planning to write was anything grief-soaked.

Grief takes so many damn forms, and honestly, I’m tired of that MF’ing shape-shifter. I don’t think there’s a flavor I haven’t tried. (Flavor/shape-shifter…I will manage my metaphors any damn way I please, thank you very much. We are not charging by the word, WR says. Opposite.)

Once on the porch, I opened a Word doc and wrote the first thing that came to mind. Here are the (for now) poetry titles in the order in which I wrote them:

Just Another Grief Poem (it’s not)

Lifeboat Contestants (this one has a live wire)

Season Tickets to Death (that’s gotta also be the title of the collection, am I right?)

Opportunity Cost (my mom loved that phrase)

Only four so far, but as soon as it gets lighter out there are Things I Need to Do. Like vacuum out the car and put it back together especially since we might provide post-memorial transportation to dinner and it was a dune buggy a couple of weeks ago and I have not taken the time to reassemble it or remove the sand.

Make sure the house is tidied in case out-of-state guests and/or close family come over before or after.

Obviously, get ready for the memorial late this afternoon.

Be on troubleshooting alert, because day-of can get messy:

Did the thank-you card to the minister get prepared with the honorarium inside? (I went to the ATM yesterday, dug out a card as well, but it is not made out yet, as that is not my task, though I would do it if needed.)

Did the message from the aunt who cannot be here get printed so it can be read at the appropriate time?

Check the multiple family text threads to be sure nothing has been overlooked.

Family who were stuck at O’Hare make it in yet?
Restaurant reservation made for after?
Anyone need transportation?
Mints?
Kleenex?

Be on deck to run errands if anyone has forgotten anything.

Notice when family members have been standing too long and need a chair or someone to lead them downstairs for coffee/a break.

Give the chattier family members a heads-up when The Song comes on that is intended to lead them to their chairs for the actual service. 

On and on…and I’m happy to do these things.

While this is my loss as well, it’s buffered enough by relation that I am glad I can think of these things, since my mind is not overshadowed. And my son will be there. Being helpful and knowing the right thing to say at funerals is his superpower.

(Although we have learned from experience that we cannot be sat beside one another for any serious event, or inevitably one of us will begin laughing inappropriately and the other will catch it. It’s embarrassing, but I can admit it.)

Anyway, this beginning of a poetry collection is a morning surprise and has allowed me to empty the grief tanks enough to move through today with a clearer head, to be there for those who will need me.

That’s what we do for one another, isn’t it?

The squirrels and their kin came to check on me, too. Lovely.

Drema

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon has taken down yesterday’s red string from the board. Thank goodness. I don’t know what she was thinking, hot tempered little animal. 

She looked at the index cards this morning, sighed a very small raccoon sigh, and swept them all into a drawer before I even had to ask her to. 

The desk is now clear of everything but a Coke Zero; the rain sings outside.

Dear Reader, sometimes the world gets too loud and distant; all of life’s uncertainties gang up on WR and she feels deserted by hope. The weight of things, so many things, makes her sharp when she wants nothing but to be soft. 

WR apologizes for the literary slaps in yesterday’s post. To make up for it, she went deep into the bottom drawer and pulled out a draft she’s been hoarding. I told her it was too raw, too unfinished. I told her I was saving it for publication. She didn’t care. That’s for the birbs, she tells me. Don’t you mean birds? I ask. Poor thing can’t spell. 

But she does like a sharp-dressed man. Back away from Father John, WR! 

She’s so funny. 

Here’s hoping you like the poem. I wrote it last year.

Paging Father John Misty

Kind Sir,

Please fling your arms

out from your sides,

those long levers

of pleasure.

Consecrate

at your leisure

my cathedral.

Sigh us a tune,

our salvific muse.

And now, WR, I think I will invest in a roll of duct tape for the days you need it! I imagine everyone who has met you would be relieved at that. 

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon asked me recently why there are so many novels in which characters slap one another.

WR, where did that come from? There’s no point in asking; she is off on a tangent.

Okay, raccoon of mine, what are you talking about?

She clears her throat, shows me her non-murder board (you’ll get that joke when my novel comes out) and slams her pointer across it.

Exhibit A: (for no good reason she did not label her other exhibits)

Wuthering Heights

Well, obviously a Brontë is involved.

In Wuthering Heights, Catherine Earnshaw wants Nelly Dean to leave the room so she can be alone with Edgar Linton.

Nelly refuses.

Catherine pinches her.

Nelly still refuses.

Catherine slaps her.

Unfortunately for Catherine, Edgar is there to see the whole thing.

WR writes COURTSHIP GOING WELL?? on an index card.

I tell her that’s editorializing.

She informs me that this is not the only slapping going on in Wuthering Heights.

Of course it isn’t.

It’s Wuthering Heights. And let’s not forget Heathcliff’s slapping Cathy when she tried to grab the key from him to secure her freedom. (How exactly did he become a romantic figure?)

Great Expectations

Then, what the Dickens? (Couldn’t resist.)

Pip tells his sister Estella that she isn’t as insulting as she used to be, so…she slaps him.

Then she asks:

“Now?”

Reader, do we call that efficiency or dastardliness?

WR writes COUNTEREVIDENCE on the board and asks permission to add dastard to the list of curse words.

I have no objection.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

WR brings me Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

I already know this isn’t going anywhere good. Even if I have stood in front of Stonehenge reciting passages from the book. Maybe. I think so. Been too many years and it’s too good a story to say I don’t remember, so sure, I did that.

Alec has returned to Tess’s life and continues trying to exert power over her. When he disparages Angel, Tess slaps him across the face with her glove hard enough to draw blood.

WR and I confer.

Does a glove count?

She points out that there is a hand inside the glove and Hardy calls it a slap.

The tribunal accepts it.

GLOVE: COUNTS.

No further questions.

A Farewell to Arms

And then there’s Hemingway.

Early in A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry tries to kiss Catherine Barkley.

She tells him no.

He tries anyway.

She slaps him hard across the face, then apologizes for what she sees as a mere reflex because she is grieving and then says he may kiss her.

WR looks at me.

I look at WR.

She already said no.

WR nods. “But then she apologized.”

I refuse to quibble with her. We are not researching motives. We are looking into instances.

CONFIRMED SLAP.

Then WR clears her throat.

What?

Apparently A Farewell to Arms contains another slap.

Who?

The baby.

What?

THE BABY GETS SLAPPED.

During Catherine’s labor, the doctor holds the newborn by his feet and slaps him.

Twice.

WR, I hardly think…

“It counts.”

I hate this project. Why is she doing this? We have a perfectly respectable poem we are still working on, plus the Genette book came in today. AND we downloaded the newest Allende, which is a book on writing, and we are eager to read what she has to say, particularly because we used to be very interested in magical realism. 

Their Eyes Were Watching God

At this point WR has begun to suspect she needs a larger board.

There are multiple slaps in Their Eyes Were Watching God, and this is where our investigation becomes heavier.

Early in the novel, Nanny slaps Janie during their argument about Janie’s future. Janie wants love. Nanny, whose understanding of security has been shaped by everything she has survived, is desperate for Janie to marry Logan Killicks and have the protection she never had.

Later, Joe slaps Janie after a dinner doesn’t turn out the way he wants. WR and I are not a fan of Joe. At all. 

And later still, Tea Cake hits Janie out of jealousy and possessiveness, including slapping her. That’s not why Janie shoots him later. It’s really not. (And sorry for the spoiler, but damn, if you haven’t read it by now, are you really going to?) But she does shoot him. 

Anyway.

WR reminds me we’re counting slaps, not deaths.

Right.

WR looks at the board.

She writes only:

MULTIPLE.

Then puts down the pointer while shaking her head.

Beloved

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Sethe remembers her mother showing her the identifying mark on her body. Young Sethe asks to have one too.

Her mother slaps her.

Sethe doesn’t understand why.

Not then.

WR quietly puts down her pointer.

We leave that one alone, too, and regret some of our earlier unintentional lightness while investigating these slaps. Except the baby slaps. That was funny because they were not malicious on the doctor’s part.

The House of the Spirits

WR brings me Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. (Oh, shoot. I should have mentioned her new book here. Oh well.)

It’s been a long time since I’ve read this one, but I own a battered, second-hand copy full of lovely scribbles. In it, Esteban Trueba strikes Clara across the face during an argument so violently that he knocks out some of her teeth.

Clara never speaks to him again.

Not for the rest of her life.

Horrific behavior by him. Understandable reaction from her.

But.

Was it technically a slap? I mean, since that’s what we’re recording.

Checks notes.

We can establish the blow to the face. We cannot establish that it was specifically an open-handed slap. We are not convinced that a slap could do such damage.

WR is displeased.

STRIKE: INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE.

“That’s ridiculous,” she says.

Your rules, raccoon. Now if we were to expand this to include violence in literature…

WR raises her tail and hisses.

Okay, okay. Enough said.

The Great Gatsby

And finally, because apparently Tom Buchanan wasn’t awful enough already, in a scene that sounds a bit like the one we just mentioned, at the drunken apartment party in The Great Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson repeatedly says Daisy’s name.

Tom tells her to keep Daisy’s name outta her mouth.

Myrtle:

Daisy. Daisy. Daisy.

(I had an aunt named Myrtle. My grandfather’s sister.)

Fitzgerald doesn’t actually use the word slap, but he describes Tom making one “short deft movement” and breaking Myrtle’s nose with his open hand.

WR points violently at OPEN HAND.

Yes, I see it.

She points again.

Fine.

OPEN HAND: COUNTS.

I look back at Allende.

Wait.

Didn’t we just reject that one partly because we weren’t convinced a slap could do that much damage?

WR freezes.

I believe there is a precedent problem.

She reaches for the Allende card on the board.

No. We are not reopening the case.

WR, I feel like this post is a little messed up. What are you even doing?? Why are we spending perfectly good writing time writing about such a depressing topic? 

WR steps back from the non-murder board. She looks wounded, because she thought I knew that she enjoys her tangents, however morbid. 

In the meantime, the non-murder board has become considerably more murder-boardish.

There are index cards everywhere threaded about with red string. 

CONFIRMED SLAP.

GLOVE: COUNTS.

BABY: ALSO SLAPPED. (At birth, WR!)

MULTIPLE in several novels.

OPEN HAND: COUNTS.

STRIKE: INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE.

And, in increasingly large letters:

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY?

I don’t know, WR. And we are aware of other novels with slaps and plays that we decided not to mention. Apparently, once you start looking for literary slaps, they are everywhere. They deserve a proper deep dive, but this is not that. 

WR has suggested a spreadsheet.

I have declined, although something about the idea interests me, too. Not just for slaps, but some sort of literary database for the color blue in novels, and those featuring raccoons, for instance, or paintings, and so on.

WR considers this.

Then she nods. She nods again, concluding her slap search.

Thank goodness.

I start gathering the books.

Behind me, I hear the squeak of a marker and get gooseflesh.

WR!

She is writing on a fresh index card.

NEXT INVESTIGATION: SLAPS THAT DON’T INVOLVE HANDS BUT STILL STING LIKE HELL.

I look at her.

She looks at me.

“Absolutely not,” I say.

She reaches for the red string.

I still her paw.

Dear Reader, I would never.

Drema