“pebbles” — from my memoir “whitegirrrl” — short fiction chapter

You walk the beach and the sea-washed pebbles glisten underfoot.

There is comfort in scooping them up.  The smallest of stones that millenniums from now will be grains of sand.

“You have to learn to just maintain,” your best friend says, passing it to you.  But you’re laughing too hard at the sun and the light and the tiny shells the two of you collect and string.  You sit on the old pier — it’s wooden pilings holding the two of you close.

She teaches you about cigarettes too.  It’s so you can look cool when the two of you are out.  It becomes a crutch for you, after.  Part of the costume that you wear.

Taking five and hanging ten near Hammond’s.

The boys are surfing nearby, and the two of you watch as her big brother catches a wave and spins along it while the sea glimmers splash.

Years later you try and remember what it was to be given a guitar, or a violin and the way she smashed that out of you.  Crushing that part of you that could make a sound.

Your little bedroom was decorated with powder blue and olive green and years later you drive by the house remembering the night she swept all your toys out the window in a drunken rage.

You learn to be unsure, never knowing when the rage might set in.  Her face changes.

In the morning you tell your mother what she has done.

“It was my little emerald ring, Mommy.”

The ring your grandmother had given you.

You are only eight that night.  She swept everything out the window.  All your little dolls and toys and saved things.  At your best friend’s house her bedroom still has childhood.

You learn early not to be attached.

It’s the moods of hers you have to watch out for.

It will be years before you and your best friend talk again about your mothers.  You revisit it like chapters that got lost, somehow.

“What has she done to you?” your grandmother says.  She’s standing at the door of your little room in Cambria where you are sent to summer.  The beds have red bedspreads, pin-tucked, and you stand at the window looking at the pine trees and listening to the wind whistling through.

“Tell me what she has done, honey.”

But what are you going to say?

It’s not as if you can explain to your grandparents.

You can’t access the memories before age eight.  You just can’t.  It must have been bad, and so your mind blocks it.  Your mind survives it.

“Your mother really did a number on you,” he says.  He’s your therapist.

“So did mine.”

He lets you know what she did when his first play was released.

You learn the term for this, later, becoming a psychotherapist.

A negative mother.  After she passes away it take you years to start sifting.  You roll the memories around in your mind like sand shifting along a dune.  Memories like pebbles, some shining.  Some rock hard and not endurable.

There are dreams.  Two dreams you want to remember, because you had them all the time.  From the time you were eight.  In the first one you are in the charred rafters of an orphanage crawling along.  It’s as if you are in a gothic cathedral so high up you might fall, but you don’t.  You creep along the rafters with the other children.  They are blackened and they might break at any moment.  You always wake up from this one, with a start.

In the second dream you open the door to the house where you live and all you see is empty space in a black void.  There are what appear to be floating stage sets, or geometric planes that are spotlit with stage lights and your family stands on them like some kind of theatrical tableau.  You can’t access them.  They are too far out of reach, and you can see daddy and your mother and your little brother, but they are all so far away.

In those years your grandparents pull you.

“You can have a horse,” your grandmother says.  “If you come and live with us.”

The dunes are where you feel most free, cantering, the waves splashing up.  Your horse running, kicking up the sea in droplets.

* * *

Have some more, she says.  “Just maintain.”

You smile at her.  Your best friend knows so much more than you do about everything, it seems.

At your house the parties revolve around Artists and Jazz.

At her house she has a mother and father.  Or she had, until this summer.  The summer you are both thirteen and her world is about to fall apart like yours did when Mommy told you you could no longer see Daddy.

Years later you meet the surfer who knew you then.  He tells you that you and your brother came over all the time with your dog Tiger, and he played the guitar.

“She was kind to me,” he says.  “At the time.”

Suddenly the sun is out, illuminating the beach.  The pebbles glint and flash and tumble.

Whatever was bad recedes.

You can close the door on whoever she ways, and whatever she did, and you can know another side of her — the one you never knew in childhood — because so many people loved her.

~

“pebbles” by Valentine Bonnaire — copyright 2010 — all rights reserved — from the memoir “whitegirrrl.”

*author’s note — on music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwNrmYRiX_o

When I was in Graduate school we had to write many papers.  I once wrote one about this film for Lionel.  I saw myself in the little blond girl, and the mother was much like mine.  One day I will revist all those papers.  It’s been long enough. now.

25 thoughts on ““pebbles” — from my memoir “whitegirrrl” — short fiction chapter”

  1. This is painful to read.  I wonder sometimes how you can be so lucid describing such jagged places.  Those smooth rocks that time has worn away now.  Your voice is gentle.  
        
       I just really want to tell you how much I love the person you are. Those pebbles are pearls of great price.  Come forth from the sea.    

    Like

    Reply

  2. I’ll charge up my battery and call you tomorrow night. I don’t know a damn thing about the technical aspects of writing. Nor dp I look back in my own life. Your Recent Heart of Clouds post I would call a confirmation on the path. I don’t think my comment was necessary. But I saw the magic on the lifestream. There are tears. But those tears break forgetfulness. Sometimes we walk right by heaven. But when we don’t? Well the true gold is there. Like that book you gave away that came back with your Heart of Clouds.

    Love

    song!

    Like

    Reply

    1. It was magic that the book came back. I can call you too? I saw someone who was so important to me in childhood just before I wrote that last one. He gave me a spanish guitar but I was never allowed to make noise. In terms of practicing? So….
      hugs. One day I will learn to play the guitar i bought to replace it a few years ago. My brother was the musician in the family.

      Like

      Reply

  3. Jung spent ai lifetime documenting the lifestream but he fainted on a train platform and never went to Rome. Had he made the trip well it could have become more personal than abstract. But that is a subject for another day. . I wrote about it the other day. On my phone’s notepad. I will see if I can find it.

    Like

    Reply

  4.   Still I do believe that Something beautiful has to rise above each age (so I say to myself) even so like a heart of clouds.  Or?  Even if it’s the life we live–or what lovely memories, poems, pictures, and songs we hold in our inner world. Love elevates us this way.  And no metaphysical book reveals the mysterium of love so it is truly confusing to me why so much of that material is merely a symbolic  alchemy.  For each has their own language here though the sages strike their universal pose borrowing the symbols of yesteryear when what is true of each life has an address and a worn path that leads to a personal doorstep.    
     
    Then in the grand places of worship once the doors and windows are open and the dome removed the skyward message is that all the world’s cathedrals cannot hold what one heart can hold.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I miss you! and your blog!

      One day, soon. I am going to write in Nov second book for Teenie. I am. Again! xxoo! Teenage calif surf culture revisted 70’s. My plan to save the planet! I think I’m going to call it The Sea Heart! (since that was in 1st book)…

      Like

      Reply

  5. You have a gift for titles too. The Sea Heart. I am intrigued and excited about this. As soon as my computer is fixed (if it can be fixed) I might approach the blog again. I am thinking about it actually. I imagine your friend might teach you to play the guitar? Then someday if I get out that way I will show you more. My style was for accompaniment so. Oh! I fingerpick. Don’t use a pick. Nope. My guitar. A fellow musician named it “The Entity” because of the magic harmonics and tone. You would enjoy playing it.

    Now I have again had little sleep so if I don’t call it’s because I am friggin’ tired. I sleep when I can. Geez.

    Like

    Reply

      1. Ha! Sore fingertips. So you know huh? Ha! Yes. Oh discipline to be slow at first with chord changes. Why hurry huh? So when we meet again I will teach you. I have a fast method for the impatient. No need to learn theory and such. I saved tedium for the flute. Guitar should be fun unless you want to be Segovia. Then? Not so much.
        Oh! I can play bluegrass with the best of them so they say.
        Somehow I don’t see you learning that! Hahaha! Nope you aren’t the type. Very fun though. Used to jam with a banjo player. Both of us classically trained. What a hoot!
        Can’t have long pretty fingernails though girlfriend. But you can wear your red high heels.

        Like

  8. Well someday we’ll do that. A beer on the beach. Then I’ll teach you my superduper pain sucks easy and delightfully enjoyable guitar method.

    Nite now.

    Like

    Reply

  9. Ha! Would you prefer wine? If the waves were loud I would have to yell though. That would not be too pleasant for you. That store looks wonderful. You are right. I’ll see if I can find a picture of my guitar. It’s 3 am. Geez.

    Like

    Reply

  10. Acoustic! Ha! That is the way to go. Pure and simple. I couldn’t find a picture of my guitar. It has a different neck. It’s a C F Martin D-35 B. Handmade. I need to practice now huh?

    That store. Primitive drums too!

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment