Willett .'s Open Salon Blog

OS Weekend Fiction Club--Charm Offensive (Chap4)

Fri, 25 May 2012 10:05:31 -0400

This serialized novel follows 17 year-old Mayella Winton, who has recently been expelled from the tony Freemont Academy for Negro Girls, and comes to live with her Mother, Delores, who is the live-in housekeeper for Herbert Halethorpe, a rich, Baltimore industrialist.

This excerpt: Herbert Halethorpe's first day with both Delores' two children at the mansion. Thanks for reading.

The Charm Offensive -- Chapter Four

Herbert Halethorpe went into his study. He had not planned on lingering long, but stopped short at seeing one of his diplomas askew, blatantly wrong, among the array on his desk. The smell of lemons and vinegar hung in the air, getting caught in his nostrils and throat. He picked up the diploma, an honorary degree in Agricultural Studies from a little known college in Kentucky. This one conferred as acknowledgment for a paper he wrote examining how crossbreeding thoroughbred horses leads to inferior specimens with aberrant behaviors. Taking a seat at his desk, he studied it carefully, noting, with a grimace, a single smudged fingerprint.

Delores was headed his way. Her light, but determined gait echoed throughout the mansion like strains of a song long past its relevance, but still impossible to forget. There was also that distinct scent of hers—like apple blossoms left too long to steep—which, no matter the season, was always in the air.

She walked in hurried and in a huff.

“Before you say anything, Delores, what happened this morning at breakfast, is never to happen again.” He did not bother to turn around to face her, but continued to stare out the window at his garden, dismal and in desperate need of personal care.

“Do you understand?”

“I know things got out of hand, Mr. Herbert. But…”

This time there was no look to quickly past between the two, only the back of his closely shaved head for her to focus on.

“I don’t care what your reasons are for striking that child. It will not happen again, ever.” She opened her mouth, but his hand was up, signaling that what needed to be said had been said. It was over.

She turned to leave, but instead put her slim hand onto his shoulder, squeezing lightly, over and over again. Not thinking, he reached back, patting her hand, letting it rest there a moment before pushing it, along with its heaviness to the side, dismissing her.

“And, Delores?”

“Yes, Herbert—Mr. Herbert?”

“I like things shipshape—are we clear?” he said, placing the diploma face down onto the desk to be attended to by others later.

“I know you do, Sir,” she said, her voice sounding smaller as she began walking away.

Herbert Halethorpe rubbed his temples. Already things were getting out of hand. In less than twenty-four hours, two little Negro children had taken over his home, and now it reeked to high heaven, smelling for all the world like a gigantic tossed salad. He took out his handkerchief and blew into it.

He’d fought in the war…killing both “men and beasts,” he described to those gathered at the Greater Baltimore Leadership Assembly. He had been fired upon and nearly lost half his leg at Pearl Harbor, when the battleship he captained was torpedoed. Laughing, he told them, “I have no one to blame but myself, I should have ducked.”

He outright stole, commandeering two major business concerns, running both into the ground only to bring them, along with three other flagship businesses started by his grandfather, back from the depths of bankruptcy. Today these enterprises, in addition to his overseas holdings, comprised a formidable empire. He was, by his own definition, a man who had successfully executed every dream he had dared to conjure. But this day, with vinegar infused water barely set to dry on the windowsills and a forgotten and still damp sponge squished beneath his foot, he was a man clearly out of his depth.

Well he thought, while good deeds are often welcomed by their recipient, these same favors are rarely worth the trouble they cause the benefactor.

Herbert Halethorpe, angry, kicked at the sponge. He was just about to lean far back into the chair—settle into the quiet that had finally fallen over the house–when he heard the voice, sounding strained and weaker than it had been earlier that morning.

“Herbert…darling, is that you? Are you there?”

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This is a continuation of the serial novel: The Charm Offensive. Click here to read previous chapters:

http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/category/fiction/serial-novels/the-charm-offensive

OS Weekend Fiction Club--Charm Offensive (Chap3)

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:05:23 -0400

This excerpt: Mayella's first day at the mansion. Thanks for reading.

The Charm Offensive -- Chapter Three (Excerpt)

After whacking Leni on her back so hard she had no choice but to choke or swallow, I spent the better part of the day doing hard labor. What were, Delores explained smiling, my daily chores.

The thermometer mounted above the garden gazebo read 32 degrees. Still, there we were in jackets, gloves and mittens, Leni snotted up, the both of us pulling weeds.

“Not that one,” Delores said, causing me to look more closely at what was between my fingers – a long stem, lined with thick foliage, dotted with clusters of white flowers. What I knew from my intermittent botanical studies at Freemont was a weed, but which all the same, I dropped like a hot coal and tamped back into the ground.

Delores had us doing this for an hour, the "gardening." I did the bulk. Leni’s hands were too small to make any significant contribution, so Delores told her to “just stand there” and hold tight to the sack while I filled and re-filled it like a per pound migrant worker.

We got a 20-minute lunch break: sandwiches made of watercress and thin onion slices, crusts cut away, made tolerable with a smear of butter. There was milk for both of us. Then we were back again, out into the cold to muck out a barely frozen over koi pond—mucking which also included seeing that the fish and the other reptiles housed in the pond were fed—watercress.

Then we moved on to polishing dingy Halethorpe Family silverware. With Delores giving demonstrations on how to apply up and down motions so we wouldn’t leave streaks. Mid-afternoon, somewhere around 1:30, the main-level floors had to be seen to. After handing each of us an old and grizzled toothbrush, Delores assisted us with this task by first pointing and then inspecting as we scrubbed deep and thoroughly the mansion’s every crack and cranny.

Once we finished with thrashing the rugs and sweeping the stair carpets, but in between sneezing fits, we dusted all Mr. Herbert’s do-dads: trophies for athletics, including college competitions won in broad jump, shot put and rowing. Mr. Herbert’s 50-plus framed certificates for civic contributions and academic degrees were not to be touched.

“I’m the only person—other than Mr. Herbert—who gets to touch these,” Delores said. For some reason she felt the need to repeat this several times throughout the day, gazing at them fondly as if she herself had played a significant role in him having won them.

By the end of this our second work shift, we were slumped back at the kitchen table. Leni was at full recline, head back and mouth open, snoring. I had lowered my own head onto the table in time to see a blue and white blur, Cook as she hurried out the kitchen door and into a waiting car, Benny at its wheel.

“Chores,” Delores began, as noxious fumes from our day’s cleaning still filled the air, “are simple house tasks all children have to do,” she said, taking a moment to lift Leni’s chin, closing her mouth. “All children have to earn their keep. You wanna eat, then you gotta work,” she added, gazing about, looking frustrated that Cook had felt free to leave without asking permission, or providing a clue to what was for supper.

“Y’all get use to schedules,” she said, leaving the kitchen, starting out at a fast clip in direction of the library, where I suppose she was headed to have a private moment with Mr. Herbert’s awards.

My household tasks were to be performed twice daily between the hours of 7 and 9:30 a.m., and then again, after tutoring, from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. I wasn’t sure about other Baltimore children–how much they knew about Maryland’s child labor laws. But as for myself, I was pretty sure if it wasn’t my house, then doing these tasks just meant I was Mr. Herbert’s indentured servant.

But by the time I began heading for my room – this time backstairs, I was seeing things clearly, and having had a change of heart, now forgave Delores for trying to work me to death, and for her reoccurring bouts of insanity.

The fact that I was willing to do this meant I was maturing. And so, I didn’t have time to be mad at what life (and Delores) had decided to throw my way. This day forward, I needed to be focused to do whatever necessary to: 1. Get my allowance reinstated; 2. Get Leni and me free of this labor camp/old mansion.

If I had thought things through before letting myself be yanked out of the Academy, I would have held on to a portion of the 10 dollar allowance Delores gave me every week. What she now said was allowance on permanent suspension.

To read more of chapter three, or previous chapters, go to:

http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/the-charm-offensive-chapter-3/2012/05/18

OS Weekend Fiction -- The Charm Offensive

Sat, 12 May 2012 10:05:57 -0400

Here's an excerpt to the next installment of the Charm Offensive.
Thanks for taking a look!

The Homecoming

When I arrived I was a sight. The ride from the Freemont Academy for Wayward Negro Girls was a rough one. Of course, this was not the institution’s proper name, but considering my purpose for being lodged there for the previous three years, it might as well have been.

We drove straight through from New Brunswick to Baltimore. Setting off before dawn. Not even a mumbled “safe travels,” or a wish good luck from the apple sour lot of ‘em. The only display of human warmth was demonstrated by the Academy headmistress, Miss Hattie Rangale, who though bundled against the cold in only a gingham dressing gown and double crocheted shawl, was red-faced splotchy and misty with perspiration.

“Well Mayella, Dear,” she said, stamping one muled foot and then the next against the cold, “Please do what you can to remember all Freemont attempted to teach you—we don’t give up often, but only God knows ones truest path. It’s neither our place, nor duty to salvage souls who do not want to be saved.”

“I always do what I can, Miss Rangale,” I said, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Yes, ma’am, the Academy taught me the time spent puttin’ y’all foot in another’s back, could be spent lendin ‘em a hand.” I said this, and then quickly ducked my head back inside the car window, but not before yawning in a bored and all too exaggerated manner. I did this so she wouldn’t mistake my words as a show of genuine contrition, one last ditch effort to soften her heart in order to allow me to stay.

To read more, or previous chapters go to:

http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/the-charm-offensive-twelve-years-later/2012/05/12

Fiction Alert -- The Charm Offensive

Thu, 3 May 2012 09:05:10 -0400

Hello OSers,

Baltimore Post-Examiner is a new online magazine very open to creative writing: fiction, essay, poetry, etc., and you don't have to be from B'more or writing about the city to be considered.

Below is the link to the first chapter of my serial novel, The Charm Offensive, that will appear at Baltimore Post-Examiner every week.

Shameless self promotion? Sure. All the same, give a hoot and take a look.

Thanks!
Willett

http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/category/fiction/serial-novels/the-charm-offensive/

Open Marriage (circa 1960’s)

Thu, 2 Feb 2012 10:02:05 -0500

When I was five I didn’t know my mother was in an open marriage, and for the most part neither did she. My parents married when my mother was 24, just out of college, and my father, 29, played basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters. He did the road thing. She did the home and hearth thing. I did the burp and gurgle thing. The union, from what little my mother will allow herself to be harassed about, was clearly not ideal. Marriage based on the understood notion (my father's) that what happens on the road, stays on the road, can hardly be expected to thrive when the one not on the road is left to tend an endless pile of dirty diapers (cloth diapers mind you), and, then too, confronted with the ticker tape parade of women's phone numbers wafting from one’s husband’s trousers those nights he does come home.

This is how it was in the 60s. Some might say this is also how it is today with professional ball players, politicians, anyone really (men) in high paying, power positions. As my father’s “little woman.” my mother commanded the envy of other young women like herself: small town girls who were brought up to think that the key to the “good life” was first and foremost getting a degree, and second, and just as important, making sure that in the process of obtaining that degree, you also become some bright young man’s Mrs.

In large part, for my mother’s time, this was a sound and well proven strategy for success. While in college she met my father and they married soon after. We lived in a nice home in a tony Connecticut suburb. She had a car, fashionable clothes, and an undeniably cute toddler. And for these perks, as my father’s wife, she only had to be a little accomodating and turn a blind eye to all the Professional Basketball Wife wannabes lurking about.

Unfortunately for my father (Newt and Ashton too it seems), he married the least accommodating woman he possibly could have. Two years in and we were gone, having settled in Washington, D.C. Two, free and single girls as my mother got a job as a secretary, and I became a latch key preschooler with a nose for sniffing out felons in training, all seemingly content to try out babysitting as they figured out their next big caper.

It was a good life. My mother was a future Mary Richards, and I was her very young Rhodaesque friend. And it could have stayed this way indefinitely if my father hadn’t showed up at our door three years later with his new wife and my new half baby brother in tow.

What did he want? Did he want to apologize for being silly enough to think that anyone with any measure of self esteem would allow herself to share her man with another woman, or even still, other women? Did he come to visit me, to see how I was thriving, whether I was reaching all those milestones crucial to a child’s early development? No. Not hardly. Done with basketball, he now needed a job to provide for his Phase II family--seems like Newt, my father was staunchly pro-family. And being so, he wanted my mother, who now knew everyone in local D.C. government, to make some calls on his behalf.

My mother made these calls not because she’s particularly kindhearted--because, frankly, she ain’t--but because she could. I’m sure she wanted to send a clear message to my father, one both he and the little girl (my father’s new bride was seventeen, a “kissing cousin” from his home town in Kentucky) would always remember. She wanted them to understand that she was the prize in their brief union, both of us. And we should have been all he needed. Our family. Hindsight being greatly improved, perhaps he did understand, only sadly too late for Family Phase I to benefit.

My father was really tall. I remember thinking this as he looked around our home, commenting on this or that, how nice our two bedroom apartment was, letting us know how close it was over at his sister’s place, where he and his brood slept in the living room, on the pullout sofa. I’m sure my mother took satisfaction in hearing this, being able say if not out loud, then quietly to herself. “Not such hot stuff anymore.”

I think this is what Marianne Gingrich wanted to do, tell everyone, “Newt, you’re not such hot stuff anymore,” or more to the point, nor should you ever be allowed to be again. Perhaps a better way for a former spouse to get closure would be to not tell all his (and your) business, but to show him and everyone else how brilliantly you've moved on. This was my mother’s way. I think it worked, seeing how I never heard her say another word good or bad about my father after this first, and what would end up being his last visit to Family Phase I.