Assignment #6
Edited per M.J.'s excellent suggestions

Reiss DuPlessis

“I’m glad I don’t have to kiss you!” She was sure her entry line was projected to the far reaches of the crowded room. The greeting was delivered in the most demeaning and insulting tone possible. It was what she did so well. Her greatest joy was making people squirm. It was an art, a career, a calling. This big family gathering was the perfect opportunity, the perfect setting, the perfect moment and I, with my new beard and 19 year old ego, the perfect target for Hannah’s entrance attack. Before anyone could release the customary gasp responding to one of Hannah’s digs, I smiled and, as I turned to walk away from her, said, “Me too!”

Until that moment, I thought my new Van Dyke was, like cool, man. The minute the committee selected me to be the devil on our float in the homecoming parade, I started growing, grooming, and nurturing my first beard. I wanted to look like Satan should as he reigned on our Holiday in Hades entry in the parade. Everyone else thought my Vandyke was cool. The girls on campus evidently thought it was cool because they lined up to kiss me in the kissing booth at the campus fund raiser. I was the cool cat on campus!

That retort and the laughter it earned were never forgotten or forgiven. I was, suddenly, Hannah’s nemeses, the one person who dared respond in kind, something she’d rarely
faced. I considered myself lucky because, from that moment, I was spared some of the indignities she showered on everyone else in our world. Oh, she tried, but I had tasted something very few people had in interactions with my sister in law, an unquestioned and public victory. She was never able to get to me again. She disliked me more than anyone in our family. One day, her dislike turned to hatred when I opened my home to my brother when he left her. That hatred reached new and greater heights when, with my friend, Fiona, I was called to testify at their divorce hearing. She complained that I had a memory like an elephant and remembered things she “preferred to forget.” I told her I was “flattered and thank you.”

The years went by, our youths went by. She and my brother married other people. My brother lived a happy and rewarding life with his new and genteel wife to the day he died. I saw Hannah at weddings, funerals and other gatherings. I was still her enemy, her nemeses. We managed to sit at opposite sides of the church, the hall or the banquet room. When we were forced to face each other, a quickly delivered hello, was enough. It was always strained.

I learned, in recent months, that she is suffering the tragic ravages a devastating form of mental regression. I was not, however, prepared for the person who was wheeled into the room at a crowded function. It was not the entrance she had enjoyed all of her younger, healthier, feistier life. Instead, there was a grinning, childlike woman, with hands moving in the air, with little or no direction as she uttered a few words of greetings but, evidently, not able to put a sentence together beyond her childlike muttering.

I braced and walked over, pulled up a chair close to hers, sat, faced her, took her hands in mine and said, “Hello Hannah.” I smiled, I waited. “Do you know who I am?” She grinned. “I’m Reiss.” Again, the grin as she grasped my hands, tightly, and said “Hello, darlin’.” She looked around her, her body swaying back and forth as she was drawn toward other sounds, movement and people around her. The music in the room grew louder and she moved her hands in mine in rhythm to the music and she grinned.

“He came into my bedroom and forced himself on me! I was bleeding and I didn’t know how to tell Alva but I had to tell someone! I was so scared and embarrassed but she quieted me down and told me it wasn’t my fault.” My mother shared this with me on my last visit home. It seems that while she and my father were dating they had spent one night at his uncle and aunt’s Ordin and Alva, place. My dad was sleeping on a cot in the hallway and my mother was in the guest bedroom. He had sneaked into her room and had his way with her.
My mother is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s and had been having trouble sleeping. She told the nurse who comes by once a week to check on her that she was upset and the nurse told her to write it all down and share it with someone…from the family. I drew the lucky card. Even though mother knew she was telling me about my conception I don’t know that she fully understood how much it would hurt and affect me. To hear that I was conceived during a date rape which of course led to my parents being forced into marriage was very painful. I knew that my mother had been pregnant before they were married but I had never heard how and I would have preferred thinking it happened during uncontrollable passion or one mistake but not rape.
Mother continued to tell me, “I don’t know what he was trying to do but he would drive me over the plowed fields in the car so that I was being tossed about and his friend asked him, ‘are you trying to get rid of the baby?’”
Coming to grips with my father’s abuse took more years of my life than I care to mention and now this! Will it never end?!
When my mother had finished reading all the things she had written I asked her, “Do you know what we’re going to do with those papers?”
“Burn them?” she asked.
“Yes. Right now.” I took them over to the kitchen sink and lit a match. As we watched them burn, I held my mother and sang, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Thank you, Mom for not aborting me and giving me life. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen”
We held each other and sobbed for all the pain and sadness of my conception, birth and life that followed and tears of joy were shed that I was alive and had forgiven them both. Life is for living and forgiving. Praise be to God!

What do you have to lose?
“What do you have to lose?” my roommate asked me all those years ago. I had just transferred to the university and didn’t know anyone – except my roommate. Auditions were that very day for the spring musical.
“But I can’t sing.”
“Yes, you can. I’ve heard you sing every day around here.”
“But to try out in front of others…”
“What do you have to lose?” she asked.
And so I borrowed her grey pleated skirt and gold turtleneck sweater and forced myself to go to the audition.
“Next,” called out a gruff voice from the dark seating area of the auditorium.
“I’m going to sing “I’ve got Rhythm,” I managed to say, trying to sound confident.
“What key?” asked the woman sitting at the piano in the orchestra pit.
“Anything will be fine,” I mumbled having no idea what key. Suddenly the image of Ethel Merman popped in my mind and how she’d belt out a song. I decided to try the same. After all, what did I have to lose?
I relaxed as I sang the second stanza, and I even threw in a few dance steps.
There was deafening silence when I finished.
“We’ll let you know either way,” said the gruff voice. I took that to mean they’d let me know if I made it or not.
A week later a call came and I was told I had the part of Jenny and to pick up my script at the auditorium office.
I fingered through the pages, figuring my part had one or two lines of dialogue. Jenny was on the first page with ten lines, the second page with twenty lines. I counted the lines. I had more than any other part! I guess I could be considered to have the lead.
How did my performance go? Well, I remembered all my lines, and didn’t forget any dance steps.
Judy Saxon

“TIMOTHY GLASBY
Assignment 5/ Dialogue
Edit/rewrite
“Mr. Glasby, the principle would like to see you in his office.”
My worst nightmare, I would have to repeat my senior year and be forced to spend another god-forsaken year in this cornball hayseed burg. I had big plans of moving to California, fulfilling my dream of being a big time magician, actor, or anything but living in Birch Run, Michigan.
Standing outside Zelker’s office, I thought, “ If he says I have to spend another year here, I’ll have to beat him to death with one of the sports trophies that he had won when he was a student here. Then I’ll hop in my 1953 Buick Roadmaster and drive to California.”
I envisioned his office would look like a tomb. The curtains were always drawn and the door was always closed. Rumor was he was a vampire and kept it dark inside so sunlight wouldn’t melt him. He was never seen in the halls until after school when the sun had waned and you were stuck in detention.
He came to the door, small drops of blood (or was it ketchup?) dripped from his overly formed canines, and invited me in. Pointing to the chair across from his desk, he sat and smiled at me as if we were going to have a nice civil conversation. I’m sure he saw my eyes darting around the room. He didn’t realize that I was looking for the biggest trophy to use on him until he was nothing but a mass of smashed bone and sinewy flesh. My eyes quested for a sharp wooden object , as I knew that I would have to pierce his heart as just a beating would not slow this demon Nosferatu.
“Mr. Glasby, I have been speaking to all the bums that have no plans to go on to college to ask what they’re planning for their futures. You happen to be one of those bums.”
“I’m leaving Birch Run to move to California as soon as I have enough money,” I quickly replied.
I hated giving away my new location, vampires could travel fast at night and he could probably track me down, but California is a big state so he’d still have lots of looking to do.
“I see,” he started. “Any plans on going on with school once you resettled out there? There are a lot of great schools in California. You’ve heard of UCLA?”
“Yes, But Santa Barbara is where I’ll be moving as that’s where my brother lives,” I started, hating myself for pinpointing my exact location in California. “But, I don't think I'll be going to college there because they had a big riot and the National Guard killed a couple of students or maybe it was principal last year.”
“Well, Tim, you’ve done pretty well in the classes that you cared about. I see you had six English classes and six math classes and did well in all of them.”
“Don’t forget the speech class, “I got an A+ in that,” I said, hoping to save myself the pain of his fangs to my jugular vein.
“Yes, and you were active in theater also. Your records shows that you are a member of the National Thespian Society.”
“Yes, I did six plays. I played Piglet in House at Pooh Corner for the children’s show.” Still, the burning question persisted, “Am I going to graduate Mr. Zelkers?”
“Yes, Tim,” he stated. “We just wondered why you didn’t want to go onto college.”
“Because I’m moving to California,” I finished. “May I go back to class now?”
“Sure, but if you have any questions about college, Mr. Offenback, your counselor, can help you. Good day and good luck in California.”
“Bye,” I said, as I hurried back to class with the knowledge that I had not become one of Zelker’s minions of living dead and would be able to leave Birch Run.
Returning to class, my friend John, asked, “What happened?”
“I’m still going to California, and Zelkers said it was okay," I replied.

Trash and transformations
Dishes washed each day
So meals could be served
On clean turned messy

Hours into years fizz/wiz/bang
Bucket full of children out of the womb,
Whiz-bang, flung across the country
By the sea, in the valley, in the desert,
All of them blooming grandkids

And here friends suddenly wrinkled,
Fresh complexions gone,
The old lady looks and sees
Reality, a hard place

Listen! Consider the meadow
Have you looked where the green,
Forever lush, silky to the toes
Yielding under foot and cool

In the morning, where dew rises
Then vanishes to soft green?
Have you looked where dreamers come to rummage
Through images of hours, whipped into years
Where waterfalls pool mirrors luminous with images?

Here nightingales sing and humans listen