Daily Book Excerpt: YA fiction:
Next book on the shelf is Myself and I (Tempo Books)
Saranne’s story continues – Paul Hodge (the bad boy) had moved away at the end of the last book – but in this one he returns. Saranne is obviously in love with him … but by this point she’s also dating someone else (in a very 1917 way) named Tim Molloy. So she’s still struggling with her good-girl/bad-girl image. Tish, her aunt, who is now a widow – meanwhile is kind of reconnecting with Ken, her old beau from the whole Keeping Days series – so there’s a lot of drama going on, family drama. Some of it is melodramatic, but in my mind – it’s always good writing, and very true – because sometimes life (especially in a big messy family) is melodramatic.
Paul is now on a personal quest to discover the truth about his mysterious childhood. Saranne takes on the quest as well – she realizes that the older generation (of which her aunt Tish is a part) KNEW the truth, they KNEW what happened … but they all closed ranks, and decided to lie – not just to themselves, but to the younger generation. Paul is determined to find out who his father was, and what happened back there.
Here’s an excerpt – of a scene between Saranne and her aunt Tish. Saranne is going through a box of Tish’s old things in the attic, I think. Yearbooks, notebooks, etc. She’s looking for clues to Paul’s past.
From Myself and I (Tempo Books)
Here were not only albums and school yearbooks, but all the Browning Quarterlies from Letitia’s school years – she must have gotten those from the little house – and boxes of letters, souvenirs, a group of dog-eared composition books.
I resisted the temptation to browse at random and sorted Quarterlies, snapshots, labeled souvenirs into careful piles: 1902 – the year of the Quarterly story Mary had written, that had led me to guess she was Paul’s mother; 1901 – the year Paul was born; 1900 – the year Mary had “gotten into trouble….”
Snapshots, unlabeled except for year. Mother, looking beautiful. Letitia, with my aunts and uncles. Letitia with school friends – Mary in curls and sweetness, both of which looked artificial. Mary with a blond boy. Letitia with a blond boy. A little headache was gathering in the back of my skull.
I picked up one of the composition books.
I begin this new Journal, otherwise known as The Tears and Trials of Letitia Chambers Sterling … One of Letitia’s old diaries. I put it aside and turned to the Quarterlies.
Poetry, some bad, some good. Articles on burning issues. An exciting story by Kenneth Latham about a train wreck. (“Thought we were done with you after the train wreck,” Aunt Sadie’d said.) A story by Letitia on prejudice. A story by Letitia about a fire.
I let the Quarterly fall aside. The ache in my head was pounding steadily now. Or maybe it was in my leg. Or in my conscience. I closed my eyes, and inside my brain, superimposed on images Letitia’s story had conjured up, was the image of the Halloween bonfire … Mr. Hodge and Mary Hayes in silhouette … a stream of obscenities spewing out, and a name, a name I hadn’t told a soul.
I opened my eyes, and there were Letitia’s journals, looking so like school notebooks and so innocent, pulling at me with such hypnotic fascination.
Invading another person’s privacy was wrong. I was doing so many wrong things these days – prying, evading issues, permitting intimacies, telling lies – all for Paul.
Letitia was part of the conspiracy of silence that was putting Paul through hell, and that was wrong too.
I picked up the Tears and Trials of Letitia Sterling 1901.
Last night my sister Katherine Allison was born, and I’m never going to be afraid of birth again … How do I learn to forgive – not those who’ve hurt me, but what is seventy times harder, the ones who hurt the people that I love? … Oh, Letitia was so much like me. The pages burned my fingers as I skimmed at random. Much about Kenneth, little about Mary Lou except scathing comments about her appearance, her vulgarity, her way of “throwing herself at men”. But no names mentioned, all references were cryptic; Letitia had been living in a big, curious household, and she took no chances.
Letitia and Kenneth were in Romeo and Juliet together. Letitita afraid of her own responses when he touched her. Letitia accused by others of not caring or thinking about anything in the world but Ken – I felt as if I were reading my own unwritten journal – Ken who was in anguish because of some unspecified but profound trouble. I read feverishly, trying not to see what wasn’t relevant and to seize what was.
May, 1901. Mary Lou tried to kill herself last night.
For a moment, everything was a haze, and my heart was pounding. I forced myself to go on reading … Letitia’s handwriting frantic, illegible, as though she was racing because a dam had broken. But no names, no specifics — daren’t write it, I mustn’t ever writer or tell … I should have known, I should have guessed. I’m so afraid for him. He feels so guilty, feels so dirty. And I’m not old or wise enough to help. I would do anything for him, but I’m so afraid … All I could do was lie with him, and hold him, hold him, while he tried to lose himself in me, but we can never go back to innocence again —
This time I didn’t even hear a creaking on the stairs.
Letitia in the doorway, white-faced and blazing, a Letitia who was a stranger to me. “What do you think gives you the right to invade another person’s secret self?”
My whole body flamed, and the book dropped from my fingers like a live coal. “I’m sorry! I know I shouldn’t have, but there’s a good reason –”
“How many other things have you done we don’t know about, for that same good reason?” Letitia swept the journals up, her voice shaking. “Let me tell you something I learned the hard way, Sarane. When love starts to corrupt you – makes you go against your own moral code, or lose perspective, for that love’s sake – whatevere sins you commit for it end up doing more harm than good. Not just to the two of you, but to everybody else your two lives touch. I hope to God you realize that before it’s too late.”
