Name of fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us? The novel is called Rise From The River. Over the years that I was trying to write it, it was mostly called Nightswimming. I changed it during the final draft, because Nightswimming no longer reflected what it became.
What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction According to my Word file, I finished this book on 8/7/2014. I don’t remember when I actually began writing it, but it was somewhere in the mid-90s. I started it several times, and then would chicken out over saying what I really wanted to say. And as time went on, I found I wanted to say even more that was difficult. It wasn’t an easy book.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? When I first started writing this book, I had a corner in the basement of my now ex-husband’s house that I used as a writing space. Then we moved my boys down into the basement, and I moved upstairs in one of the bedrooms they left behind, and it became my writing space. I had a computer desk and a rolltop desk. Then, after I left my first husband, I started to try to write this book again, again down in the basement of the townhouse I shared with my second husband, though we weren’t married yet. We eventually bought a house and in another basement, I had another office, and I tried there. At that point, I know the book’s title changed to something with “Moon” in it, but I don’t remember what, and I soon abandoned it again. Then we bought the condo where we currently live and I have my writing space on the third floor with lots of light and air, and there, with my life more settled, I was finally able to write the book. There is a photo attached that shows my space. It’s all me. We built this place, and this room was always mine, and not just a spare or stuck away somewhere.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? My writing time changed over the years as my availability changed. When I had young children, I wrote late at night. But for the last 16 years, I’ve been an afternoon writer. I meet with coaching clients in the morning, write in the afternoon, and meet with more clients and teach classes in the evening. Since the early 80’s, I’ve composed completely on the keyboard. I like seeing how the actual pages are going to look.
With every book I write (and I wrote books in between trying to get this one written), I assign a song, and then I listen to that song every day before I work. It snaps my mind back into the world of the book. With Rise From The River, the song started as Nightswimming by REM.
But by the time I really sat down and wrote the whole thing, it changed to “The Scientist” by Coldplay. The lyrics, “I was just guessing at numbers and figures, pulling the puzzles apart, questions of science, science and progress, cannot speak as loud as my heart,” just summed up the entire experience of writing this book for me
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
In the book, it’s from pages 69 – 76.
After clearing the breakfast dishes, Doris made all the usual moves to clean her bathrooms. She emptied the little garbage cans. She tossed the bath rugs out into the hallways. Her bucket of cleansers and rags and sponges waited by the toilet on the first floor.
But then she followed her thoughts outside. Moving around her yard, she rearranged that day’s episode of stuffed animals. She added the rooster, Tish’s favorite, to the fencepost and replaced the green gorilla’s stuffed bananas with a bowl of birdseed. Doris loved the way the birds settled next to the neon green fur, even sometimes perching on the ape’s head, as if stuffed green gorillas were as natural in the wild as cardinals and blue jays and robins. She thought her sheepdog patriarch looked harried today, so she put the mother dog and puppies back inside. Then she added something new, something she’d been waiting to surprise Tish with. The majority of the animals came from the bin in Goodwill, but this one, she found at the church rummage sale the weekend before. New animals debuted on Friday afternoons in her yard and each one celebrated its new homecoming with a sleepover that first night in Tish’s bed. Removing the glorious purple cow from its hiding place in her coat closet, Doris settled it next to the sheep so they could graze together. She thought of the little rhyme she planned to teach Tish on the day the cow appeared:
I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one,
But I can tell you anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.
She wondered if Tish’s sudden bark of laughter would bring her voice back. If she could trick Tish with joy and surprise back into normal.
Then Doris got in her car and drove off toward downtown, just a mile or so away. Maybe a stop at the library, she thought, or a trip to the Tres Chic Used Boutique. Doris bought quite a few of her clothes from there, and it was where she found the terrific hot pink overall dress that Tish was wearing to school that day.
All the way into town, at every stop sign and stoplight, Doris could see her church’s steeple. It towered over the town and Doris looked for it wherever she went. It was like a beacon, showing her the way home. She always liked to think of it as a big pointed finger, made out of Milwaukee’s historic cream city brick, directing the way to God. She kept the finger in sight, as if it was beckoning her, as she drove past the library and then Tres Chic without a glance, even though she’d taken herself away from her chores with the thought that she’d shop there. It just didn’t seem right, cleaning bathrooms on this day. Not when Rainey was back in the shower again. Not when Doris couldn’t provide her with any answers, and not when Doris couldn’t find any answers for herself. She parked in front of the long row of steps leading upward to the church’s entry. The doors were thrown open, the way churches always used to be, welcoming, all day and all night, and Doris took this as a sign that the church was where she was supposed to be.
Each week, it seemed to take her a little longer to get up the stairs to the church, but so far, Doris refused to give in to age and go in the handicapped entry around back, where there was a parking lot and a door that led to an elevator which would raise her up to the church proper. That time would come soon enough, she figured. For now, she put her knees and hips to work, her arms swinging encouragement. But in the middle of a weekday morning, with no other church-goers there to chat her up, to take her mind off the step followed by step followed by step, the journey seemed to take forever. On this day, for the first time, she counted the steps and discovered, after attending this same church for her entire life, that there were thirty-three. She wondered about the significance of that as she stood puffing at the top. Thirty-three. Christ was supposed to be thirty-three years old when He was crucified.
And the “supposed to” in that thought robbed Doris of the breath she was trying to catch. It was another first. A few days ago, the sentence would have been, “Christ was thirty-three years old when He was crucified.” There was no supposed to about it. Or there didn’t used to be. That thought, the simple addition of two words, rattled her.
Everything was changed. In just a few days, from a Tuesday to a Friday, everything was changed. Even things that were supposed to be unshakable. Like faith. Faith, by definition, was supposed to be unshakable. At least, by Doris’ definition. A rock. Faith was supposed to be a rock.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Second Corinthians. Chapter 4, Verse 18.
But Doris was shaken.
Making her way into the church, she blinked as the muted stained glass lit the air with dust-mote smears of red and green and yellow. Everything always looked holier in a church, she thought, whether it was full of people for the celebration of a mass or a wedding or the somber slow quiet of a funeral. Or if it was empty, like on this day. There was something about the orderliness of the pews, the hymnals standing at attention in their holders, the stained glass, the statues, and of course, the gigantic crucifix that overlooked everything from above the altar. Doris always felt humble when she was here, humble and quiet and meditative. But now, as she looked up into the face of the twenty-four foot tall Christ, looked into His closed eyes, she didn’t feel holy at all.
“Where were You?” she whispered. “Weren’t You there? You know what a beating feels like. Why didn’t You stop it? There was Tish! There was a little girl!” Doris felt dizzy from looking up and she stepped backwards, grabbing onto a pew. “She’s only four,” she said. “How can you be four years old and witness something like that?” She moved into the pew and sat. “How is that even possible?”
“Doris?” The familiar shape of Father Markham moved out from the little dressing room to the side of the altar. He was folding something. “Is that you?”
Doris wondered if she didn’t say anything, would the priest just go away? But she was raised to answer to priests, and to answer immediately and politely. “Yes, Father.”
Father Markham had been Doris’ priest for the last eight years. He’d grown familiar to her now and, like all the priests before, seemed to embody the church, give it a life of its own. It took Doris a while to get used to his looseness, his easiness. But now, when she came in to volunteer for a bake sale or a rummage sale or to weed the beds of the Garden of Prayer, she often found herself answering his smile with one of her own, even slapping him lightly on the arm when he made a bad joke. Now, he walked across the altar, genuflected (that answered a question Doris always had, if the priests genuflected on the altar when they were not performing a mass), and then stood in front of her. He was folding a chasuble, she saw now, a beautiful shimmery green one. “I was going through all the cupboards,” he said. “So many people have donated beautiful chasubles to the church for our priests to wear. With only me left, it just seems like so many. I hate to see them go wasted, but how do you give such gifts away?” He formed the Eucharistic robe into a neat square. “I thought if I just straightened them up, made them orderly, then…well, then they wouldn’t take up as much space and it wouldn’t seem as excessive and then it would be okay.” He laughed softly, his voice a hushed echo in the body of the church.
She smiled back and touched the light-shot material. It felt soft and airy, almost like water running between her fingertips.
“Is there something I can help you with?” He moved to the far end of the pew, went inside, then sat next to her, giving her the center aisle. To escape in, she presumed, if she didn’t want to talk. Or if she’d been interrupted in the middle of a sacred conversation.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “It’s just…well, a friend of mine has been hurt. Really hurt. And I can’t seem to find any answers. I always know just what to say to people, what verse to offer. But there doesn’t seem to be anything for this. And that just amazes me.” She took a hymnal from its holder, flipped through it. “It scares me, actually. I’ve always had answers. God has always given me answers. But not this time.”
“How was she hurt?” The priest settled back, lowered the kneeler, propped his feet on it. He seemed so relaxed, like he was in his own living room. He also seemed smaller than when he was on the altar, preaching.
Doris wondered about discussing such things with a priest. Rape. An awful act. But to bring it up to a priest, a priest who was celibate…what would he know? Doris settled her shoulders, stared straight ahead. Father Markham was a man of God. And God wasn’t giving her any answers right now. Maybe the priest, even though he knew nothing about even proper intimacy, of what happens between a man and his wife, could come up with something. Doris knew her Bible. But the priest should know it better. He should know the ways of God. So she said it straight out. “She was raped on the Fox Riverwalk a few nights ago. Father Markham, it’s my neighbor. My tenant. Rainey.”
The priest drew his head back, then tented his fingers into prayer formation. “Oh, gosh, how awful. I read about that in the paper. She’s your neighbor?”
Doris nodded. “And I babysit her little daughter. Tish. And Tish saw the whole thing. Rainey…well, she hasn’t told me all the details, but she was brutalized. Her face is bruised, her ribs are cracked. There’s more bruise than normal skin right now on that girl. It’s just painful to look at her.”
“Awful,” Father Markham said again. He flexed his fingers, curling them into his palms and then flinging them into a tent again. Doris was reminded of the little game she played with Tish, flapping her fingers into a church crowded with wriggling people. Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple, open the door and see all the people! Tish always crowed in delight at all the finger-people waving in a row. “Wasn’t she in the park after it closed? What was she doing there with her little girl?”
“Trying to come home.” Doris swallowed. “She wanted to get Tish home for her bath and it was late, so she took a shortcut through the park.”
Curl, tent, curl, tent.
Doris closed her eyes and dove in, into what she was sure was a murky puddle of blasphemy. “I just want to know where God was.” She wanted to close her hands over his and squeeze, draining some of his strength, his faith, into her own fingers.
“How could God let that happen? To Rainey? And to a little girl?”
And how many times had Doris been asked that by grieving or angry church members over the years? How could this happen? How could that happen? And every time, Doris answered. She put her arms around those people and she spoke in a low voice and she answered. But not now. Not for herself. Now, the words she murmured into their ears, God’s ways are His own, and we just have to accept His actions on good faith, seemed empty, mocking, almost insulting. Good faith. Fixing your eyes on the unseen. The eternal.
Faith was supposed to be a rock. But even rocks could split. They could shatter.
Father Markham crossed his legs. “We both know His ways are hard to figure sometimes. Rainey might not know His purpose for a long while. It will take a lot of prayer to bring healing.”
The same thing that Doris whispered to others. All those times she whispered, it made sense. To her. Had it made sense to them? Or did they feel just the way she did right now? Lost. Angry. “Father Markham.” Doris stood up. Her hip brushed the folded chasuble and sent it slithering to the floor. “This is a four-year old little girl. A baby. Maybe there was a reason God wanted this to happen to Rainey, though I can’t imagine what that would be. Why would any woman need such a horrible thing to happen to her? But to a four-year old…to have her see something that she shouldn’t even know about yet…and to see it happen to her mother…Oh, God, it just makes no sense.” Doris sidestepped out of the pew and walked down the aisle. She usually wanted to linger in church, to soak it in, but not today. Not now. It was a mistake to come here.
Church had never been a mistake before.
“Doris, stop a minute.” Father Markham followed her. Doris didn’t stop, but moved more slowly, her head turned to show she was listening. “You know I could throw all the old platitudes at you. God works in mysterious ways. Everything happens for a reason. God never gives you more than you can handle. I know they don’t seem to work right now, they don’t make sense, they don’t fit. But that’s sort of the point, isn’t it?”
Doris stopped. “What point?”
“That faith isn’t supposed to just work when it’s easy. It’s not supposed to be applied only to things that can be explained. There’s a reason it’s called blind faith…sometimes we just have to feel it, even if we can’t see it or explain it. God was there, Doris.”
To see what isn’t seen. Doris’ definition of faith. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Doris swung around and looked right at Father Markham. She stared into his eyes and saw what was there, kindness, faith, a desire to help. But she said, “And He didn’t save a four-year old little girl?”
Father Markham blinked, then bowed his head.
“’Let the little children come unto me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these,’” Doris said. She looked over the priest’s shoulder at the tall figure of Christ, arms outstretched, nails pounded into palms dotted with red. She found herself wondering if Christ’s imprisoned hands kept Him from beckoning to Tish and Rainey, from lowering His arms around a little girl and her mother.
But how foolish. Christ came down from the cross centuries ago. His arms were free while Tish’s tongue was now in prison. And Rainey…Doris thought of the way Rainey moved across her porch this morning, of the sound her throat made when she cried. Doris thought of STDs and the possibility of an unwanted, violently bred baby. Rainey was in Hell. There was no kingdom of Heaven on the Fox Riverwalk. No Heaven in Rainey’s interminable showers either.
Then Father Markham looked up. “Doris?” he said softly. “They’re alive, aren’t they? Rainey wasn’t murdered? And the little girl…the rapist didn’t touch her?”
It was Doris’ turn to blink.
“God was there, Doris. What happened is just unthinkable. But maybe what didn’t happen is even more unthinkable. Beyond it. Abominable.” He held his hands out to her, palms out, then turned and walked back up the aisle.
Doris waited until Father Markham scooped up the chasuble and disappeared into the side room. He remembered to genuflect. Then Doris left the church, counting the thirty-three steps backwards as she returned to her car. As she counted, she tried to find comfort. In the priest’s words, just as she tried to find comfort in the Bible. In hot coffee and cinnamon coffee cake. And in the fact that Rainey and Tish were still alive and breathing.
Even if they were battered. Even if Tish wasn’t talking, and even if Rainey could be diseased or pregnant.
Doris tried to find comfort. She looked in the Bible. She talked to a priest. She raised her face to a crucifix and she attempted to soak in the words of advice and care and compassion offered in God’s house. But there just didn’t seem to be any comfort anywhere today. Not even in the warmth of two sustained lives. Lives that she was grateful to have right next door. Two lives that she loved very much.
For the first time ever, Doris Granger couldn’t deny being angry at God. She couldn’t deny the Truth.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? It’s amazing to me that, after this book being out now since 2015, and the time of writing it is so far behind me, that this part of the book immediately comes to mind. And that’s because I never expected to write this part. I struggled with this book all the way through, not knowing what Rainey would do, not knowing what was right. It was so hard.
And then, through Doris’ part, when she goes to the priest because she’s angry with God, and she asks where God was, how he couldn’t save a four-year old little girl, I planned, as I wrote this, to have Father Markham fall silent. To not have an answer. But then he said, “They’re alive, aren’t they? Rainey wasn’t murdered? And the little girl…the rapist didn’t touch her? God was there, Doris. What happened is just unthinkable. But maybe what didn’t happen is even more unthinkable. Beyond it. Abominable.”
I didn’t write those words. But they came through me. And it stunned me.
This whole book was an emotional experience to write. I wanted to write it because I was the victim of a gang rape with three boys when I was fourteen years old. I never told anybody, not a soul, because I knew I would be blamed. And the worst part of it was that I was so terrified of pregnancy. Three boys? How likely was it that I would turn up pregnant? My parents would have never been able to handle that, and I have no idea what they would have made me do. Abort? Maybe. Have the child and give it up? More likely. And I already knew that if I went through with a pregnancy, giving up a child that was so intimately attached to me, more than anyone else, would have been impossible for me to do. I would have taken my own life, as well as the child’s, before I allowed that to happen.
When I finally got my period, late, the relief was so great that it allowed me to stuff that experience and not deal with the trauma of it for years. Every time this book began to feel personal, I quit. But then I powered through.
Pregnancy through rape is not an abortion issue. There have to be more safeties put into place to protect the woman so she can really choose what she wants to do.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt? I always write directly on the keyboard, so I don’t have any marked-up drafts, I’m afraid. And any deletions are long gone, as I always write over previous drafts. The book changed a lot, as I changed a lot. I grew braver, stronger, and more willing to raise my voice.
I’m glad I did.
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