If I was ever late for my curfew, my witch of an aunt (I was staying with her for the fall semester) could transfigure me into the hallow apple or pear in the kitchen’s fake fruit basket. It was my uncle who, after being asked by my aunt, assigned midnight as my curfew because that’s what it was for his friends’ children down the street. Back home my parents didn’t care much, as long as I popped my head in their bedroom when I arrived and whispered, “I’m home.” I was proud to be the one to give my uncle and aunt a foreshadowing of what their only child, twelve-year-old Griffin, would soon become: a teenager who would not always be slumbering when the hours grew small. But more likely I guessed, if I didn’t respect the curfew, Aunt Barbara would reprimand me in her subtle, icicle way, making me feel like the toy blue marble in the downstairs den, lodged in the corner between the floorboard and carpet. “Didn’t you go out last night, and two days before that?” she said once, her cardigan arms folded. In her sterile house on a hill, the rooms were usually pungent with all-purpose cleaner. After smelling the fumes of the maid’s Friday labor for many weeks, I finally caught sight of the maid, Dee, in the last days I was in Birmingham. She was pale and gap-toothed. Not even she descended the seventeen stairs to the bowels of the house to clean my square, white room in the basement where it was always cold.
I liked how this small window into the life of the narrator tells the reader so much. The image of an overly strict parent was perfectly illustrated in the descriptions of Aunt Barbara. The inclusion of the maid is important, as it shows the Aunt's obsession with cleanliness, but I feel that the maid is introduced too abruptly. You maybe should try introducing her differently so it doesn't look tacked on to the end.
ReplyDeleteVery descriptive piece and i like the details; "cardigan arms," "pungent with all-purpose cleaner," etc. The piece seemed to be lacking in overall meaning; and, instead, seemed like a summary of a more plot detailed piece.
ReplyDeleteI feel like this piece of part of another, larger piece - maybe a memoir [a full book or shorter-write up] that's leading into a description of the aunt. I'm a little bit curious as to the line 'transfigure into the hallow apple or pear' - I don't get what you're quite getting at, though that may just be me. Though I love the introduction and foreshadowing of Dee, it almost doesn't seem to fit into the rest The description of the house on the hill smelling like pungent cleaner feels almost like it should be with another description of the Aunt's smell, instead of Dee's introduction - though as said, I do like the new character, brief as she may be.
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