The Books: “Dancing Girls” – ‘When It Happens’ (Margaret Atwood)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Here is an excerpt from Dancing Girls – by Margaret Atwood. This is her earliest short story collection – I think it was published in 1979 … and then re-issued after the huge international success of Handmaid’s Tale. I read all of the stories (she’s wonderful in the shorter format) – but it was years ago. I’ll just quote from the one that really burned itself into my memory – it’s called “When It Happens”. I highly recommend this short story collection, if you haven’t read it already. They’re raw, many of them – the young writer – the young angry writer – she’s in great form here. Where Edible Woman and Surfacing fail – these short stories blaze with success. “When It Happens” is fascinating – just in terms of her use of verb tenses … because it is disorienting … (and it’s meant to be disorienting.) Is this GOING to happen? Has it already happened? Or is it just a fantasy of a bored housewife? Where are we in time?? Atwood does not mean to answer those questions definitively. Because when we go off into fantasies … they are real. I have fantasized many things in my life – I have lived the life of an international spy, I’ve lived the life of an aviatrix in the early days of flying, I have lived the life of a harem-member in medieval Arabia, I have lived the life of a martini-drinking bored 1950s housewife, I have lived the life of a serial killer. When I’m in my fantasies, I don’t have the rational part of my mind going, “Now … please remember that none of this is real …” No. Because what good is a fantasy if you can’t lose yourself in it? “When It Happens” occurs on multiple levels of consciousness: Mrs. Burridge (we never know her first name, so there’s already a formality here in the writing) is pickling her tomatoes for the winter. She is taken up wtih her task. The story opens with the details of this activity. But soon … we become aware that something else is going on … but is it real? There has been an apocalyptic event. A military coup. A nuclear blast. A war. Something unforeseen and terrifying. Soon everything will change. Mrs. Burridge, as she pickles her tomatoes, wishes that her husband had taught her how to shoot their gun. She feels she might need to go underground for a while. She seems an unlikely revolutionary. She’s domestic, calm, a busy hausfrau … but … again, we don’t know: is it a fantasy? Is she imagining an alternative life for herself? One where she wears a black bandana around her head, and camo-pants, and lives in the woods, on the run from the authorities? Or … is this actually occurring?

I love this story. It’s my favorite of the collection. Here’s an excerpt. You’ll see what I mean about the tenses.

Excerpt from Dancing Girls – ‘When It Happens’ – by Margaret Atwood.

Nothing has changed outside the window, so she turns away and sits down at the kitchen table to make out her shopping list. Tomorrow is their day for going into town. She tries to plan the day so she can sit down at intervals; otherwise her feet start swelling up. That began with Sarah and got worse with the other two children and it’s never really gone away. All her life, ever since she got married, she has made lists of things that have to be bought, sewed, planted, cooked, stored; she already has her list made for next Christmas, all the names and the gift she will buy for each, and the list of what she needs for Christmas dinner. But she can’t seem to get interested in it, it’s too far away. She can’t believe in a distant future that is orderly like the past, she no longer seems to have the energy; it’s as if she is saving it up for when she will have to use it.

She is even having trouble with the shopping list. Instead of concentrating on the paper – she writes on the backs of the used-up days off the page-a-day calendar Frank gives her every New Year’s – she is gazing around the kitchen, looking at all the things she will have to leave behind when she goes. That will be the hardest part. Her mother’s china, her silver, even though it is an old-fashioned pattern and the silver is wearing off, the egg timer in the shape of a chicken Sarah gave her when she was twelve, the ceramic salt and pepper shakers, green horses with perforated heads, that one of the other children brought back from the Ex. She thinks of walking up the stairs, the sheets folded in the chest, the towels stacked neatly on the shelves, the beds made, the quilt that was her grandmother’s, it makes her want to cry. On her bureau, the wedding picture, herself in a shiny satin gown (the satin was a mistake, it emphasized her hips), Frank in the suit he has not worn since except to funerals, his hair cut too short on the sides and a surprising tuft at the top, like a woodpecker’s. The children when they were babies. She thinks of her girls now and hopes they will not have babies; it is no longer the right time for it.

Mrs. Burridge wishes someone would be more precise, so she could make better plans. Everyone knows something is going to happen, you can tell by reading the newspapers and watching the television, but nobody is sure what it will be, nobody can be exact. She has her own ideas about it though. At first it will simply become quieter. She will have an odd feeling that something is wrong but it will be a few days before she is able to pin it down. Then she will notice that the planes are no longer flying over on their way to the Malton Airport, and that the noise from the highway two miles away, which is quite distinct when the leaves are off the trees, has almost disappeared. The television will be non-committal about it; in fact, the television, which right now is filled with bad news, of strikes, shortages, famines, layoffs and price increases, will become sweet-tempered and placating, and long intervals of classical music will appear on the radio. About this time Mrs. Burridge will realize that the news is being censored as it was during the war.

Mrs. Burridge is not positive about what will happen next; that is, she knows what will happen but she is not positive about the order. She expects it will be the gas and oil: the oil delivery man will simply not turn up at his usual time,a nd one morning the corner filling station wil be closed. Just that, no explanations, because of course they – she does not know who “they” are, but she has always believed in their existence – they do not want people to panic. They are trying to keep things looking normal, possibly they have already started on this program and that is in fact why things still do look normal. Luckily she and Frank have the diesel fuel tank in the shed, it is three-quarters full, and they don’t use the filling station anyway, they have their own gas pump. She has Frank bring in the old wood stove, the one they stored under the barn when they had the furnace and the electricity put in, and for once she blesses Frank’s habit of putting things off. She was after him for years to take that stove to the dump. He cuts down the dead elms, finally, and they burn them in the stove.

The telephone wires are blown down in a storm and no one comes to fix them; or this is what Mrs. Burridge deduces. At any rate, the phone goes dead. Mrs. Burridge doesn’t particularly mind, she never liked using the phone much anyway, but it does make her feel cut off.

About now men begin to appear on the back road, the gravel road that goes past the gate, walking usually by themselves, sometimes in pairs. They seem to be heading north. Most of them are young, in their twenties, Mrs. Burridge would guess. They are not dressed like the men around here. It’s been so long since she has seen anyone walking along this road that she becomes alarmed. She begins leaving the dogs off their chains, she has kept them chained at night ever since one of them bit a Jehovah’s Witness early one Sunday morning. Mrs. Burridge doesn’t hold with the Witnesses – she is United – but she respects their persevernce, at least they have the courage of their convictions which is more than you can say for some members of her own church, and she always buys a Watchtower. Maybe they have been right all along.