Young Writers discussion

“We are all that remains in this dead land,” He said as he brushed the sweaty hair off my brow. I called him ‘sweet talker’ and turned my head back to the scorching sun as it sank heavily into the earth.
We spent every afternoon on that porch, when the sun burned too hot for there to be anything sensible left to do. My husband and I, the young and reckless. Married when I was sixteen, spring of 1961. Mama didn’t see no problem with it, she was married at fifteen when it was the fashion to do so.
We were free from the prying eyes of the day above us, we snuggled closer. My bare feet brushed the porch floor, making a rough scraping noise and they rolled the dirt. It made my skin crawl, like nails on a chalkboard, and I stilled my body, saying a silent reminder to not do that again. A layer of dust had settled on anything, and no manner of scrubbing could make it leave. I felt grainy and disgusting all the time. I kicked it up, because I was a fidget-y mess. Could never stand still. Had wandering feet, like my daddy.
I watched his face, turned up the the glow of the sun we were only partially salvaged from on the porch shade. His gold hair stuck up in funny places, mostly from where my fingers had tangled in it. There was the edge of stubble on his jaw that itched at my hands and face. I loved to look at him. He was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, the most beautiful thing to ever be mine. He had one of those smiles that stole my breath, and when he kissed me it was quick and I never saw it coming. It was like suddenly, my breath was gone, and I was yanked underwater.
He was my poet, and everything sounded real nice when he said it. He could have told me to drink a glass of boiling cooking oil and it’d sound as refreshing as lemonade. My golden poet with sweet words.
He called me honey, and that’s what it sounded like when he said it, slow and good and golden. He was sweet like honey, and he was golden. He moved slow with a simple drawl to his person with a lazy, swelling importance about him.
That was my damn devil boy, and lord knows I can’t hate him.
That was what it was like, wakin’ up in a drought with my baby. It rained the day when we was married, buckets upon buckets. He yanked me by my arm out of that Courthouse and spun me round in the rain. I stepped out of my shoes and laughed like I ain’t never laughed before. We danced at the great world spun wildly under us.
“Brave new world,” he cried out to the sky, making me laugh, “Brave new world.” He was ridiculous to the point where nothing could make me stay mad at him. My feelings would always slip away and be forgotten.
White-gloved ladies stared at us with disapproving gazes. We knew what they were sayin’ about us. We was rushin’ to the altar like we had a reason to hurry. We was young and foolish. We’d catch our death, in this weather. Umbrella’s bobbed uselessly, because the flood began, like it was never going to stop. It did stop eventually, but I didn’t know that then. The sad thing is, I probably still would have danced with him, knowing what would happen. If I saw it coming, I would have looked the other way, hid my face in his chest. It was just so nice.
The world was weeping with pride that its daughter wore white her last day. That’s what my mama told me that morning, when I cried over the gray sky.
I didn’t wear white, I wore blue, and I didn’t have no church wedding.
Mama says that’s why it happened. I still think god don’t got no reason to hate me. I ain’t done nothin’ wrong. I just loved him.
He gave me sweet words to take to sleep and hold real close. All i have now is those words.
When I was real little, my first set of teeth rotted bad ‘cause I ate so much candy. Couldn’t hold back, I took to sugar like a hummingbird. My daddy always slipped me sweets when mama wasn't looking.
That’s how he made me feel, sneaking those sweets. They were real bad for me. Still couldn’t stop. Not when they rotted my teeth or made my stomach churn. He was real bad for me and everyone knew it. I just couldn’t hear the whispers about me.
I met him at a dance, stranger coming on in to town and driving all the girls wild. We danced to a song that went; ‘My baby whispers in my ear, sweet nothin’s, Oooh sweet nothin’s’. He had black eyes that saw everything, knew everything. Knew me, the simple girl I was, by only glancing at me.
He held me tight and I had never noticed the sensation of being held like that before. Sure, I’d danced before, and necked, and sampled at something bigger. Never before, however, was I so aware of the other person. The corner of my eye knew everything he was up to. I noticed every shift of weight, every breath. I needed to commit to memory this person who gave me feelings like none had inspired before.
Everyone stared at me like I ain’t never been looked at in my entire life. Like I had something they hadn’t. Like I had condemned myself to be seperate from them.
He’d whisper in my ear, and I loved that I was worthy of his secrecy. I loved that he had things to tell me that others couldn’t hear. “You’re gonna have to watch out, little girl, something tells me you never met a man like me.”
I never had. I didn’t know what he could possibly want, taking interest in a girl like me.
“Stop treating me like I don’t know better, I ain’t afraid of you.” I was trying to be smart, trying to know.
He grinned at me in that way he had; that stuck my feet to the floor. “Beautiful girl, you should be. And don’t worry, you will learn.”
That’s when I loved him, falling from myself into a new body for him. It devoured me, how much I loved this man. He offered me a box and told me to look inside. I did as he asked. I opened a box and there was a ring. Hell stemmed from what was in that box. I was the one who unleashed it.
He arrived at the house, hat in hand, like a gentleman. He’d always have a daisy that he’d find a way to tuck in my hair, brushing his hands over my neck. I got chills, in the baking summer heat, from his attention. His steady gaze. He knew me.
We knew nothing about him. Mama said he was a charming boy. My kid sister loved him like a new daddy. He showed up every saturday afternoon, sweeping me up in his car and carrying me away from Mama. She waved from the porch, twisting her ring around her finger.
Mama hated cars. A car carried my daddy away. Mama distrusted a lot of things because of him, and it made life real hard for her. She still let me go though. Said she couldn’t well stop me ‘cause of what happened to her. Had to learn my own ways, discover my own fears.
My damn devil boy had the tarnished reputation of a heartbreaker; a smile like his could only make one assume so. The church ladies with their little gloves would whisper and fuss over that boy. These were the women I feared. They taught me right and wrong. Black and white. Heaven and hell. Temptation and such. They kept me decent and proper and covered up. Bad things would happen if I didn’t follow their orders, so they told me. Everybody tells you what things are wrong, but not why. Nobody explained why dances needed chaperones.
Life was real different after I met him. Simpler. The lines that were once so fogged and frayed now had definite shape. It was clear the sides and boundaries kept. Them against us. I hate those stuffy ladies and their morals. I hated that I couldn’t live in a house with my sweet poet without judging eyes. I hated that we had to drive miles and miles to be alone.
They tried to hold us down and drag us away from the place we discovered in each other, to steal the knowledge we had earned. We were ripe and ready to grow and change the way of things, they tried to keep us grounded with their rules. Saying we were too young and too irresponsible. But we didn’t listen. In this place we found we didn’t have to listen to anyone but each other.
He was different and shining and I was beautiful in paradise, where we carved out our world in the unknown that so many people had grazed but we were the only ones brave or crazy or reckless enough to dig deeper.
Being with him was like a dream that you know’ll be ending soon, like you can just feel the sun creeping up, but you stay a while to see the end. So you roll on over and pull the blankets around you tighter. Next thing you know, you’ve overslept and you’re stuck in an empty bed. You still got that dream stuck in your head and it ain’t going nowhere. The world ain’t so bad but when you stay dreaming you’re in paradise. He brought me there, shared a world he discovered with me, didn’t let me be alone.
I let go and fell prey to the knowledge found only in paradise.
All ‘cept we didn’t have any water. It was ignorable at first. We moved into the the rickety house all fat and happy and in love.
The ground ran dry. His skin felt more and more like scales every day. we grew athirst and tiresome of each other. I ran out of things to giggle at. His touch grew familiar, then old. I was not swept up in him no more. We’d fight. His words never stopped being sweet, but they started to sound sharp; “Baby, I know you didn’t just say that, because no woman I married would talk like that,” and such. His words drove me mad; making me blush and cry and beg not for him to leave.
He still left me, even when I clung to his hand as he stepped down from the porch. When I asked him when he was coming back, he smiled real wicked-like.
“I’m coming home real soon, baby girl.” he had said. He kissed my hand and put on his hat, and he promised to come back when the rains returned, and it’s been raining ever since. He hasn’t kept his promise since. Everytime it rains, I still can’t breathe until the sky clears. I still wait outside on the porch until it gets dark and the roof taps out the rhythm of loneliness.
The next devil came for my sister, after I was cast out. I was ruined, as the ladies of the church-going degree said would happen to me.
I felt cursed, wild, dragged to brink of something and then left hanging. My hands clung to whatever they could. I didn’t have much to hold on to.
I spent every afternoon on that porch, waiting for my sweet man. So when the devil in rolled-up shirtsleeves moseyed on up the steps. I thought he was mine.
How my heart burst at the thought of my sweet-talking devil. I realized they looked the same. I couldn’t tell them apart. Same smiling teeth that took my heart.
He asked for my sister. I called mama outside, my voice already wary. I had to save my sister. We had to keep her inside.
He took off his hat and said sweet words at the door, and I knew what would happen. It sank in my gut, knowing what was going to happen. I missed the parts of me that didn’t know.
A gentleman is nice; but gentle ain’t always the same as good, because it don’t take much force to talk you out of your blouse and then leave town without any more words.
“Might I interest Miss Lena Walker in a dance?” He bowed like a real showman, and I knew poets and showmen got tricks and pretty words.
He held her hand like she was the porcelain queen, and lead her dramatically down the steps. She followed, simply because she was lead, just as I had followed.
“We can’t dance out here, it’s raining!” Lena giggled. I shut my eyes tiredly. I had laughed like that once.
Crazy ideas, the kind that make these boys seem like godsends. They ain’t like nobody else, until you realize they’re all exactly like each other. “Oh my, we can’t dance outside in the rain, that’s ridiculous!” “Holy moly, climb on the roof? At this hour? You’re crazy!” Such rebellion. Such originality.
“Of course we can, you told me you’ve been meaning to learn. No time like the present.”
He yanked her close, like I weren’t even watching. “I’m a damn good teacher, Miss Lena Walker.” I bet he was. She had a lot to learn. I’d be even more damned if I let it happen to her.

I could feel her breathless-ness, because I knew it, knew it and hated it. I missed it, longed for it during the periwinkle pre-dawn light.
“Lena?”
She snapped her head over to me angrily, cussin’ me for watching her. “What?” she snarled out.
I started to warn her, but mama cast me a searing look. What else could I say?
“Just... watch out.” I stared up at the sky. “The greater storm is coming.”
She rolled her eyes, and already the devil was pulling at her wrists, looking gorgeous in the rain like only a boy like that could. He pulled her away so easily. How could I have prepared her, no words can explain that kind of temptation. When you talk about a wanting like that, you can’t mask your own longing for it. She’d see how I still loved my devil, and how I can’t hate him. not even a little bit. How can I warn her against those I love? she’d do whatever she wanted anyway. She was at the age where we all felt immortal. Nothing can hurt us. our love is the greatest and truest. No one has felt as deeply as we have. Our thoughts were original. No one’s gone through what we have, no one understands our potential. Death is a myth.
I should feel that way now. Instead, me and death are drinking buddies. Misery loves company and such. I was no longer a young girl. I was no longer just someone’s daughter.
Instead I was the old lady watching two crazy teenagers like a hawk. Narrowing my eyes at every word. Lena could barely get a straight sentence out. I shut my eyes warily. She was a goner.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t know, golly, I’m not good at this. What do you want me to say?” She was just a baby then. Yes I thought. He just wants you to say yes.
He grinned wolfishly. My hands gripped the railing, because the chills I still got from that grin were different than from when I was sixteen.
“I asked for a dance from a pretty girl, and that’s all I expected from you. No need to dazzle me with your conversation, I can provide that for you whenever you see fit.”
His words sure were pretty, and they drifted to my ears like a memory. Maybe I’d heard them before. Thousands of girls probably have.
“Where’d you learn to talk like that?” she’d stuttered out, and I knew how that voice sounded, strange from your own lips, losing control of yourself like that.
He twirled her, and I knew that rush she felt. It kept her knees weak from distraction while he crafted an answer. “Years of practice. One should be prepared for when he meets the most beautiful girl in town.”
My eyes couldn’t even roll, but my stomach did. I smelled something rotten, and it was the words that reeked of decay because they were years old from when I first heard them.
I knew their plans, of forever and immortality, because they could not die, they were falling in love. They were falling in fascination with each other.
I draped myself over the porch railing, looking out and watching the two figures dance. I knew that dance, though the style how I had danced it was now out of fashion, I still knew the dance. My baby sister’s head shaking ‘cause she’s too scared to look up into the face of her partner. Scared feet kicking up dust. Hands that move so slow you don’t notice them crawling down your back.
“I declare, Evelyn Walker, you were a cat in a past life.” My mama scolded my boneless-ness, praying for a dainty young thing with a straight spine. I used to slouch, now, I’ve got nothing holding me up enough to do that. I moved with my ribbon-bones like a snake.
I fell onto the porch swing and mama propped my head in her lap. I curled up as small as I could manage, wishing my sins were gone and I could go back. She had gathered me back under her wing, moving into the house he left me in. Helping me recover from my feminine weakness.
“There are lotsa’ good boys in town.” I muttered.
“Yes, they’re good, but he’s gold.” Mama smiled, nodding towards that damn devil holding my baby sister. “And girls love shiny things.” Her face was distant. She had things she wished she didn’t learn.
“Mama, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know.”
I was choking, ‘cause I finally said it, I’ve finally damned said it.
“We all have to know sometime.” She wove her hands into my hair.
I wanted to cry. He ruined me and took away his words and I needed them. I needed sweet words like water. I was dying in this drought, and now my sister was dancing in the rain with a boy with sweet, cool words.
He was never coming back to me. My silver-tongued snake. “He was so sweet, mama.” I cried for the thousandth time.
“The best fruit is, baby.”
“Why’d he leave mama? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“You had to learn on your own. We all have to learn. I learned. Now it’s Lena’s turn.”
We were the three cursed women. Three beacons of heartbreak. My mama sat back and watched as it happened to me, like her mama did for her. Now it was expected of me, to let that baby go.
“Why’s He punishing me mama?”
“Because of our sins.”
“I ain’t done nothing wrong.” I cried out. “Why has He forsaken me?”
“Father ain’t listening to a fallen girl.” Mama said bitterly, because she hated me for growing up.
I slept in that bed with him curled next to me as the sun baked the earth dead brown. I married him when the prairie was still golden and alive. We were golden and alive. I was alive. The world withered and died around us, but we were different. We had to be different. We had to survive this. It was the dry spell of a century, and it tore my baby out of my arms.
I’d wake up to music drifting from outside as my poet would compose a lullaby that left me stupified for days.
Then he left, and all I could do was cry. I grew fat with his burden and cried and missed his hands and his words. My body swelled up and I was coated in dust that I couldn’t clean off. Every night I cried and begged for rain. I would scream for my forsaken love and beg forgiveness. My prayers went unanswered. My baby walked away from me.
Poets and verses sure are beautiful, but I never had much need for them. Rhymes hide truth. Poison was laced with sugar. He was a damned devil and I fell.
I was only allowed to sit back and watch my sister learn for herself. This was her life, her choice, her devil. I prayed she’d be smart. I prayed she’d ask for more, about every golden apple in every tree. Not the first apple.
Thunder cracked open the sky, my baby sister’s back had vanished into a nothing in the distance. That girl had run off before I could warn her, and the unsaid words choked me something awful.
I rolled my eyes to the gray sky, the spotless slate that hovered overhead; taunting me. My fingers should never brush something so clean for the rest of my life. I was ruined, so they said. And there wasn’t any way back to who I was.
He’d loved me. He had to have loved me. At some point, some of it was real. He could never un-mark me; I lay in wait for when he chose to return. To love me again.
The question used to be “when” he would come back for me, nowadays it was more like “If.”
I’d had enough of candies and promises and sweet nothin’s. That’s all they were, sugar-coated air. Icing on lies. I lay on the porch and denounced my apron and this lifeless land. I denounced apple pie and the evening radio broadcast. I denounced Clark Gable and Clark Kent.
The baby started crying real loud, shaking the roof shingles with its anger of being alive. I knew the feeling. Mama went to hush it, a natural grandma already. I was no natural mama.
“There is no father.” I murmured faintly, taunting the sky right back.
There is no father.

Wow. I love this story. The description was amazing. There were a few grammatical errors, but I'm positively breathless.

I know, I wrote it on google docs on a faulty day so it wasn't the best at helping me out. Thanks for the feedback!