Ms. Archer gives us class time to work on our personal essays on Thursday. Kylee lets me read what she’s done on hers so far. It’s about knitting—surprise, surprise. It’s about how she learned to knit, taught by her Chinese grandmother, who died earlier this year.
Kylee is half Chinese (her mother) and half not Chinese (her father). Some kids and even some teachers expect Kylee to be a math-and-science whiz because she’s part Asian, but she’s not at all mathematical or scientific, and neither is her mom. Kylee says that’s a stereotype, and even though it’s a positive stereotype and not a negative one, it’s just as annoying.
Her essay is good. It’s sweet and touching and really sensory. You can feel the warmth of the tea she’s drinking as she knits, and how it’s a metaphor for the warmth of the relationship she had with her grandmother.
But is it about something? Or is it just an incident?
Right now my piece about Hunter and Mrs. Whistlepuff feels like an incident, too: here’s a nice thing my brother once did for me. Mine is even more of an incident than Kylee’s. You could say that hers is about the value of passing on family traditions, about how little things like knitting together can feel so big when someone is gone and only the memory remains. Kylee’s piece starts with the line “Po Po died last May.” That lets us know right from the start the essay is going to be about surviving loss.
Now that I think of it, my piece is about the exact same thing. The person I loved is gone, like Kylee’s grandmother, but in a different way. My piece is about surviving loss, too, about how people who once loved you may not love you anymore, but you still love them because of things they did back when they did love you. Though right now I have to admit I don’t feel a whole lot of love for Hunter, just this sickening kind of hurt inside me.
But I don’t think any of this comes through now, the way I’ve written it.
I gather up my essay and my writing notebook to take them over to Ms. Archer’s desk. One of the reasons she gives us in-class writing time is so that we can conference with her as much as we need to.
Olivia is already talking to her, of course, leaning forward in the conference chair, tossing her long dark hair as she gestures animatedly. Olivia talks one-on-one to Ms. Archer every single in-class-writing day. I guess she’s entitled to. Half the time Ms. Archer is sitting there waiting for someone to talk to her, so it isn’t as if Olivia is taking time away from anyone else. But it makes her seem needy or greedy, soooo eager to be the teacher’s pet. I know, I know. I shouldn’t think such hateful things about Olivia, because down deep—well, not down all that deep—I’m as needy and greedy and teacher’s pet-y as she is.
When Olivia is done—she used up seven whole minutes—I plunk myself down in the chair next to Ms. Archer’s desk. Wordlessly I hand her my essay. I added some stuff to it since the freewrite. I put in some of the other things I was—am—afraid of, like spiders and eyeballs (if I ever need glasses, I’m never getting contact lenses) and chairlifts where your feet hang down. At the end I added the thought about how I don’t have the flashlight anymore, just the memory. Other than that, though, it’s pretty much the same.
It’s the tensest moment in a writer’s life: to sit there watching someone reading what you’ve written. The only thing even tenser is if they’re reading something you’ve written about your life.
Ms. Archer isn’t reading fast or slow, and she doesn’t show any reaction. I can’t stop my eyes from trying to read upside down, so I can be reading exactly what she’s reading, exactly when she’s reading it.
She looks up when she’s done and smiles.
“This is lovely, Autumn. So many vivid details to let the reader experience a five-year-old’s fear. Even as we know there is no such person as Mrs. Whistlepuff, you’ve made us believe in her. You’ve done a deft job of showing the family dynamics with so few words: ‘my father took the night-light out of my room because five-year-olds are big girls who don’t need night-lights anymore.’ And you’ve made us love Hunter.”
Ms. Archer always starts with the positive. That’s good, but it makes me wonder if she means the nice things she says, because she really does find something nice to say to everyone.
“But?” I ask, prompting her for the criticism I know is coming.
“What do you think it needs?” She turns the question back at me.
“It’s just an incident? It’s not about anything?”
She considers this. “It’s about overcoming fear?” she suggests. “And how sometimes, as Beatle Ringo Starr once sang, ‘we get by with a little help from our friends’? How could you bring out that idea a bit more?”
I shake my head. That’s not what it’s about, not for me.
“Or?” she asks.
“It’s about my brother. How he used to be. Versus how he is now…”
Even as I say it, I know this is not the right kind of about-ness. About-ness isn’t supposed to be personal; it’s the universal truth you’re trying to share with the reader. That’s what Ms. Archer told us the day we did the best-or-worst-present freewrite.
I’m so tuned in to Ms. Archer that when she gives a slight nod, I know she’s not nodding for what I said, but for the ellipsis points at the end of it, for how I realized myself that it wasn’t enough.
“Actually,” I say miserably, “I don’t think it’s about anything that anybody except me would care about.”
That’s why I came to you. Tell me what it should be about. Tell me how to fix it. Tell me what the universal truth is supposed to be.
“Maybe…” she says.
Tell me, tell me, tell me!
“Maybe you’re not ready to write this yet. Let it simmer. Let it stew.”
It’s due tomorrow!
“What it means will come to you,” she continues. “You’ll wake up in the middle of the night someday, some month, some year, and say, ‘Cumin!’ or ‘Coriander!’”
I don’t cook, except for my killer French toast, but I recognize those as names of spices. My essay needs more than a spice. It needs the central ingredient. Right now it’s like chicken soup without the chicken.
“But now I see,” Ms. Archer says. “I was wrong before. Take out the bits about the spiders and the chairlift. Those are red herrings. They lead us in the wrong direction.”
Isn’t that always the way it is when you write? She wants me to take out the very things I worked so hard to add in.
“This isn’t about fear,” she says as she hands my essay back to me. “It’s about love.”