Dialogue Exercise: Sophie, Or Prince Fred

“I think I should put you in bed, Sophie.”

“But Simone! You can’t go to sleep in the middle of a tea party, you just can’t. And also I think you forgot, but my name isn’t Sophie it’s Prince Fred and besides, you can’t leave the castle unless I let down the gate over the moat and the moat has water-dragons in it so I don’t think you should swim across it. You should probably just wait until I let down the gate—this is the moat here, all the way to the end of this hallway (I can stand in it because I feed the water-dragons so they know that if they eat me they won’t get any more food even if they get to eat me because they’ll get even more food if they don’t eat me) and this room is the castle and I’ll pretend I’m letting down the gate when I go like this.”

“Okay Soph—Prince Fred. I shan’t cross your moat lest I be eaten, but could you please let down your gate. It is two hours past your bedtime and I fear the king and queen may be back at any minute.”

“The king and queen, the king and queen! A ring and a bean, the king and the queen!”

“Prince Fred. Do you want to be in trouble with the king and queen?”

“I’m never in trouble because my mom and my dad like me too much so they are always taking my side.”

“Oh really.”

“Yes. Sometimes I even just pretend to be asleep when they come check on me and then when they leave I make a fort with my blankets and think about a lot of things.”

“You make a fort with your blankets?”

“Yes, I do, and sometimes I take my little flashlight that’s on my keychain and read and sometimes I just make shadow puppets but that’s sort of hard sometimes because I have to hold the keychain like this with one hand and then I can’t make eagles because I need both hands to make eagles and eagles are my favorite because you can pretend they’re flying when you go like this. See?”

“I see. So maybe we can go to your room and set up a fort so that you can make shadow puppets and I can hold the flashlight for you.”

“What a great idea! And then I can show you all my special blankets and the quilt that me and my mom are making and I get to pick out the squares of fabric and she sews them on. It’s really neat.”

“That does sound neat. Okay, you go brush your teeth while I put these teacups away, alright? Can you brush your teeth on your own?”

“Yes but maybe you should help me put the toothpaste on because sometimes I put too much and then my mouth gets really foamy and my dad tells me I look like a mad dog.”

“Okay. You get everything ready and change into your pajamas and I’ll be right there, sound good?”

(unfinished as of yet)

100 words (/223 words): smoke

My grandma is an eighty-year-old Chinese woman. Petite. Small feet. She stands at 5’0’’. Her hair, which is pure white, is cut short (because it is more practical that way). And she mends my socks in her spare time.

On this particular day, she is over at our apartment, mending my socks at the kitchen table. I am reading quietly beside her, and the balcony door is open, letting in summer air.

In the midst of my meditations, I become aware of an increasingly noticeable smell of cigarette smoke. My grandma looks up from her sewing as it seeps into the apartment through the screen door.

Two cigarette butts fall from the above balcony onto ours.

“Goddamn black people,” my grandma says loudly. She wets a thread and continues to sew.

What? I stare at her. What did you say, grandma?

“They must be black,” she says matter-of-factly. And in my shock, and abhorrence at her ignorance, I lash out. I fold my book and march to my room, shut my door, unwilling to have anything further to do with her.

But she made moon-cakes, that night, to make up for it. It was the wrong time of year to be eating moon-cakes, but she hand-made them and delivered them to my room where I was shut up, busy being ashamed of her.

Braided Essay Exercise: A Cat-like Affair

3 threads:
-cat
-marble
-school teacher

1st sentence is from Thackeray’s Vanity Fair

“Married! Married!” Rebecca said, in an agony of tears – her voice choking with emotion, her handkerchief up to her ready eyes, fainting against the mantelpiece – a figure of woe fit to melt the most obdurate heart. Hardly in a steady state of mind myself, I stood up to calm her. “Now, we mustn’t despair, Rebecca,” I consoled her as I sat her down in an armchair. “But a scandal, yes. An affair with her student!”

An affair, in nature, can be likened to a cat. A kitten, perhaps, in its early stages. Playful. Bemused. Curious.

He examined the glass marbles. “A collection?” he asked. “My grandpa’s,” she replied, “Not mine.” He looked fondly down at the ring on her finger. “I love marbles,” he said. Then, for clarification, “The game.”

Curious, it bats at the ball of yarn. Finds the loose end and holds on, somehow. The cat pulls and plays until it becomes entangled in strings – caught before it knows it.

Of course he does, she thought. She crossed the room, rearranging things as she went. He’s still a child. She bent over her coffee table and sifted through the pile of ungraded papers. Somewhere among them, his name flashed up at her.

Rebecca fell into a fresh fit of tears. “And to an American, no less!” She blew her nose loudly into her wet handkerchief. I handed her mine, which had managed to stay reasonably dry, and she took it without much acknowledgement. “He’ll make her stay in that cruel land and I shall never see her again! And a scandal…” She shook her head resignedly. “A mess, Martha. That’s what this is. A great mess.”

The cat, realizing it is entangled, begins to struggle. But it is wound in indifferent yarn.

A clash of breaking glass came from behind her and she wrenched her eyes from his name to turn in the direction of the sound. But marbles don’t shatter, she thought as she stared at the broken fragments littered across the floor.