Exercise One
1. She couldn’t quite get over the feeling that today would be the day that she would die.
2. As my mother rolled out the buttery dough for her famous cherry pies I heard he mutter under her breath, “those fucking commies.”
3. There in front of half of my fourth grade classmates I felt the warmth of urine spread down the length of my leg.
4. Since my mother died I have been unable to enter my living room.
5. It seemed like any normal night as Caroline walked home from the graveyard shift at the hospital; that is until she heard the footsteps behind her.
6. Johnny slipped into his mother’s negligee and raised the barrel of his father’s 48 to his temple, pulling the trigger with surprising ease.
7. I stood transfixed as the wind whipped at her white cotton dress, and I knew that I would do anything for that woman.
8. My mamma always told me to be careful who you marry, I wish I had listened.
9. I am allergic to incompetence.
10. In my country we believe that the greatest asset a man has is his character.
Exercise Seven
Words: sidewalk, popcorn, grout
When someone close to you dies you expect the whole world to change. You expect the colors to shift, the weather to darken, and the world to take a momentary pause from its hectic progress and feel the weight of your loss, but it doesn’t. I approached our house after school just like I had any other day. The concrete sidewalk still had chalk drawings of butterflies and flowers from Sunday when my little sister Jamie had the neighbor girl over. The mailbox still contained the usual junk, bills and postcards from dad – this week was from Madrid where he brokered international business takeovers. I entered the house, grabbing my usual bag of popcorn from the pantry, and I sat down flipping through the channels. It didn’t occur to me that Johnny hadn’t gotten back from school, nothing about our house suggested that one floor above me my older brother had taken my father’s loaded pistol and pulled the trigger. I nibbled on kettle corn and watched as Oprah told me how to get the best bra for my bust while Johnny’s blood stained the white grout in our parents bathroom.
Exercise Ten
Jacqueline Baynes
She is the type of person who keeps her mouth shut as her parents passive-agressively comment on her clothing, her hair or her grades.
She is the type of person who fiercely defends her big brother and baby sister when her parents do the same thing to them.
She is the type of person who cries when she is angry.
She is the type of person that given a choice would eat chocolate cake and peanut butter cookies for breakfast lunch and dinner.
She is the type of person that isn’t really noticed by her peers, is adored by her teachers and loved by her brother.
Exercise Eleven
Character’s Name: Jacqueline Baynes
Character’s Nickname: Jack, Jackie, Jacks
Sex: Female
Age: fifteen
Looks: Average, brown hair, brown eyes, bangs that hide most of her face, average build. She wears clothing that is neither trendy nor odd. She has a beautiful smile with two dimples, one on each side.
Right or left handed: Right
Education: Currently Attending Silver Springs High School
Vocation/occupation: Student and fro-yo expert
Salary: 7.50/hr
Status and Money: Lives with her parents, her older brother Johnny and her little sister Jaimie
Marital Status: single – has a crush on a Neil Housetand a junior on the baseball team
Family, ethnicity: white
Diction, accent etc: typical teenager.
Relationships: She has a one best friend, Ashley. She spends a lot of time with her brother and his best friend Ally. She doesn’t have boyfriends, she doesn’t really hang out etc.
Places: Home, backyard, school, froyo shop
Primary mode of Transportation: Bicycle, brothers car
Halloween costumes: She hasn’t been done anything for haloween in years, the last time she went as a ninja
Tricks: She wiggle her ears, she knows how to make the perfect lasagna
Email Adress, blog and/or website: J.A.Baynes@gmail.com, she doesn’t blog, she wouldn’t know anything about making a website.
Passwords: password
Posessions: she is a simple girl, she does have a necklace that her brother got her for her golden birthday. She wears it every day. It is a simple gold chain with a small Garnett her birthday.
Recreation, hobbies: She is really good at scrabble, she plays word games whenever she can
Obsessions: chocolate, the new yorker
Additctions: Chocolate, sweet things
Beliefs: equality, tolerance, love, non traditional gender roles
Attitudes :
Superstitions: Doesn’t really have any
Prejudices:
Politics: Liberal
Sexual History: Got kissed by Freddie Joyce in third grade. Matt LeBlae tried to get to second base in eighth grade then spread a rumor that she was easy.
Medical History: had her appendix removed when she was seven
Ambitions: she wants to be a writer or a journalist
Religion: uhm, well that’s complicated
Fears: Her brother’s death
Character flaws: She gets stepped on a lot. She is gluttunous and sees things in black and white
Character strengths : she is loyal, dependable, and good
Secrets: Her brother is transgender
Pets : a fish named lucille
Tastes in books, music etc Whatever her brother likes and musicals
Journal entries: That is none of your business
Correspondence: she doesn’t have a lot of friends, she’s old school – likes passing notes
Food preferences Anything sweet, anything savory and anything that is deep fried
Handwriting – poor
Astrological sign – Aquarius
Talents – she is a fantastic writer, she is smart, articulate and very likable if you can get her talking.
Friends – Ashley
Relatives - Mom, Cheryl, Father James, Brother Johnny, sister Jamie, Fish Lucille
Enemies- Mitchell Hobbs – neighbor boy
As seen by others - she isn’t seen at all
As seen by self – she doesn’t seem to see this either
Scars – Cresent shaped scar on her elbow. Appedix scar -
Tattoos, piercings etc.? none
Excersize 19
Third to first
She plunged her hands into the steaming dishwater. Before conscious thought entered her mind she pulled them away cursing her own carelessness. “shit,” she mumbled under her breath. She hadn’t been paying attention as the dish water filled the tiny kitchen sink in her one bedroom apartment. As the near-boiling water nearly reached the rim she was thinking about Jim. She had glanced across the kitchen to the small dining table where her cell phone sat, its silence a constant reminder of the fight they had had the night before. She’d be damned if she called him first. Some of the things he said, just thinking about it made her want to push his head into her kitchen sink. Flipping the cold facet on she started nibbling on her thumb nail. Jim hated it when she did that, “gross,” he’d say. She took a great deal of satisfaction biting her small hangnail imagining his face as she did so.
Owe, shit. Dammit, stupid water. I should have been paying attention. I swear to god if he doesn’t call me soon. This really will be the last time. How could he accuse me of those things – like he is absolutely perfect. I really should just end it, it isn’t like I don’t have other prospects. Jim would do well remembering that I am a catch. What an asshole. I wonder if my phone is on silent. It could be, I did have it off for the movie last night. Maybe he has called and I just didn’t notice. I flip open the small blue phone, a gift from Jim, to see if I had been beating him up in my head for no good reason. Nope. No missed calls, no text messages. I had plenty of reasons. I throw down the phone with more force than necessary. I don’t even like blue, if Jim knew me at all he would have picked the little red phone, even the generic grey phone would have fit me better. Jim likes blue. I start biting on my nails, he absolutely hates it when I do this. I smile to myself as my nibbling draws the tiniest droplet of blood.
I don’t believe in fate. I don’t think destiny exsists and I do not believe in a god. I tell you this because every time I tell this story some idiot feels the need to comment on good luck, or fate or, “God looking out for me.” It makes me want to scream. There is no such thing! The only reason I didn’t die a terrible and horrific death in front of Trump Tower was because of science. It was my reaction time and force that allowed me to spin around avoiding the yellow taxi that was rampaging down the street. I don’t care if there are too many coincidences. So what if that was the taxi driver I rode with yesterday. So what if I my shoe was caught in a stupid hole on the crappy New York sidewalk. Perhaps if the city crews took better care of the sidewalks my shoe would also have survived the incident. There is nothing but sheer chance and science. Seriously.
She was not the type to believe in chance or fate, luck or destiny. She was also a very firm and very loud atheist. She openly scoffed at people who put their faith in an invisible, “myth,” as she would call it. If asked about religion she would say it was a nice morality story to tell children and as an adult it served only to numb the masses from their crappy dejected lives. An opiate that one doesn’t smoke,sniff or shoot but one that you have to get down on your knees to receive. Nothing more than superstition and simplemindedness. She absolutely didn’t believe that it was God or Allah, or St. Whatsawhosit from Bumfuck . Nope, it was sc ience she would say. Science is the reson the hurling yellow taxi missed her bent and exposed body by only a few centimeters. It is because she has excellent hearing and that the synapsis in her brain firing and the adrenalin shooting through her system allowed her to move away. That is what she would say.
Exercise 22
I don’t understand why my mom won’t let me in the big room. I hate it here. I am bored with the toys I have and it smells funny. The smell of this place is old and hurts my nose. It is like a mixture between grandma’s house and when mommy makes sauerkraut. I keep playing with the long green threads in the carpet. I can tell everyone is really sad, but I don’t know why. My grandpa’s face looks dark and his eyes are all red and puffy. I just want to go into the room. I decide that I should just sneak in behind someone. A man in a black suit with a tie goes in and he holds the door for me. There is a big box made of fancy wood with lots of flowers. I don’t think anyone notices me as I walk toward it. I have to step up on a set of stairs that lead up to it in order to see in. At first I don’t recognize the cold, waxy face looking up from inside the case. Then I realize that it is grandma. I am confused and curious so I gently poke her skin. It feels cold and squishy like she is filled with jello. I notice that she is wearing her glasses. My grandma hated her glasses. She and grandpa fight all the time because she is suppose to wear them when she drives, but she thinks they make her look old. “I may be elderly Robert,” that’s what she calls grandpa Bob, “but I am not old. I will not wear those frumpy looking glasses out in public people will think that I am an ancient old bat.” I agreed with grandma, she did look silly in them. She was a really beautiful lady and they covered up her big eyes and her nice nose. I reach down into the case to take them off. Grandma shouldn’t be wearing them. She hated them. As I reached down my mom quickly grabbed my wrist pulling my hands away. She scares me and I think she is mad at me for trying to get rid of those glasses so I start crying.
Exersize 23
I was three years old when my grandmother passed away. She was a beautiful woman of remarkable character. My family likes to tell stories about her around Christmas time. When my father was a young man, a boy in Catholic school, he was a bit of a handful. He and his friend Billy Sustano from school were joking around during a geography lesson. Billy had grabbed some chalk from the ledge of the chalkboard before Sister Claire had gotten to the classroom that day. As she lectured, her face to the chalkboard, Billy began chucking small pieces of the chalk at other students and at the sister. This is my father’s retelling, so bare in mind that he is probably not as innocent as he makes himself out to be. Billy is ruthlessly throwing these tiny pieces of white chalk for probable five minutes. He winds up, throws a piece directly at the back of the nun’s head. He then dropped off the remaining pieces into my completely innocent father’s desk. Sister Claire sees this and beats my father’s knuckles until they are so black and blue that he is unable to hold a pencil. When my grandmother found about this she went to the nunnery and held the nun up by her throat decalaring in a voice full of a mother’s righteous anger that , “If you ever touch my son again I swear to God Almighty that I will end you.” She was the kind of woman who went to church every Sunday, who worked doubles to help pay for medical bills and new clothes. She was a child of the great depression and a mother to six. She worked hard and prayed harder. She loved her husband for forty five years, and helped his stay sober for thirty five of those. She helped her neighbors, her family and her friends. She was a remarkably beautiful woman inside and out. I wish now that I had known her, that I could see more of her in me. I don’t remember her strength, her courage or her hard work. I remember how soft her hands were and how she would read me my favorite stories over and over and over again without ever complaining. Even after she worked for ten hours, cooked and cleaned she would cuddle up next to me, pull me into her arms and read my favorite books again and again and again. I didn’t understand why everyone was sad. When my mother told me that grandma had died I didn’t understand what that meant. I know now that they were sad because they had lost a remarkable person in their lives. I know now how devastated they all must have been. I didn’t understand, in my mind I didn’t connect this jelly skinned woman to my nanna. I didn’t understand why she was laying there a wax statue. I really didn’t understand why those glasses were there. She hated those glasses, and if heaven exsists she is there probably still pissed that her husband and children sent off into eternity with those ugly old glasses.
Exercise 26
1. “Ma whatever you are makin’ smells sweeter than candied yams at Christmas time.”
2. “Don’t you think that there are other people to think about now? Well don’cha?’
3. “If you would pardon me for just one moment I have to kip inside to use the loo.”
4. “I need to ax you a question. Hey hey, I says I need to ax you a question.”
5. “You head straight down that there hallway and you take a right at the bubbler.”
