Alice – Episode 6: Meeting the Neighbors

That first day, we made quick polite stops at every house on the block, both sides of the street. Like Jack had figured out, it was a bedroom community, so most houses we ended up tucking the flyers into the edge of the front door. I was going to put the first one in a mailbox, but Jack stopped me. “That’s a federal offense,” he said in that serious lecture tone he shared with Mom. “They probably wouldn’t care, but it’s best to avoid trouble when you can.” I was burning to know more about Jack and trouble, considering all Mom had shouted when he first arrived, but I hadn’t even figured out what to call him. Grandfather was way too formal, Grandpa didn’t really fit either. I thought of him as Jack, but I didn’t normally call adults by their first name – at least not anyone over thirty. “We’ll go back out in the evening,” said Jack. “After dinner. And on the weekend. Take our time and let people get to know us.” That evening, Jack went straight for the house where he’d seen the girl with her head covered. It turned out one of the Apu families was Muslim, from Pakistan, but the other was Hindu, from India. Their dads were doctors at the same office. There was a Hindu girl my age, Ambar, and two Muslim brothers a little older than us, Yusuf and Karim. While Jack chatted with the fathers, Ambar and I sat in her backyard talking with the boys. Her mother kept an eye on us from the kitchen. “I’d never have been allowed to have Muslim boys for friends if we were still in India,” Ambar said. “And when it’s time for me to marry, my parents are going to insist on a nice Hindu boy.” Yusuf, who was sixteen, laughed. “Our parents would be furious if they knew how casual we are at school with the other kids. They wouldn’t want us marrying outside our religion, either.” “I don’t know if I’ll ever get married, and I don’t even go to church,” I said. “We celebrate Christmas, but that’s because everybody does.” “Don’t tell our parents,” said Karim. “That’s worse than being a Christian!” “Definitely,” said Ambar. “So you girls are going to be in high school with us this fall,” said Yusuf. “You’ll probably get Mr. Zeller for math,” said Karim. “He’s a complete burnout—he should have retired years ago. Whatever you do, don’t correct him if he makes a mistake.” We chatted for an hour about the different teachers and what high school was like. We were all friends by the time Jack finished talking with their fathers and said it was time to head home. I told him how nice they all were. “I can’t believe they’ve been on the bus for three years and they never talked to me before.” “They were probably waiting for you to make the first move, Nina. After all, they’re in a country where half the people see someone whose skin’s a little different, who talks with an accent, and immediately they’re suspected of being a terrorist.” I considered that. “Maybe. And I’m usually doing homework or reading.” I started to wonder what other potential friends had never tried to talk to me. “I don’t talk much with anyone else on the bus, either.” “Well, don’t feel bad. They’ve had each other for friends.” Jack laughed a little and slipped into teaching mode. “That definitely wouldn’t have happened if their fathers hadn’t gone to med school together. When India and Pakistan were split apart by religion, the lines weren’t as clear as the politicians tried to make them. It got ugly.” Mom using that tone would leave me bored and looking for a way out. Jack made it feel like he was sharing important secrets, so I didn’t mind. I wanted to share, too. “Ambar wouldn’t be allowed to be friends with the boys anywhere else.” “I’m surprised they let it happen here,” said Jack. “But maybe they figure it’s unavoidable, and they can manage it this way.” It was too late to go anywhere else that night, but we went out every evening after dinner. Three of the houses we visited later that week belonged to university professors. Jack talked with the couples about new developments in stem cell research, globalization vs. isolationism, and the social resistance techniques of Gandhi. In the last discussion, Mr. Parker, a young professor of Social Justice classes, eagerly listened to Jack describing the Berkeley protests he had participated in, with Mom strapped onto his chest. He asked if Jack would be a guest speaker in the fall. “I’ll have to let you know,” said Jack. When I told Mom how much Jack knew about so many different things, she still said he was full of shit. She used that word a lot whenever he was near her, and they argued almost every time they were in the same room—about personal stuff or world affairs, anything and everything. Jack’s check came to our house the first of July and he insisted on giving Mom some of it for room and board, which was probably why she quit saying he had to leave. She was getting more and more stressed about money and not having a new job lined up for the fall. She was on the computer all day every day, putting in applications all over the country. She told Jack she wasn’t putting our house up for sale until she knew where she’d be working in the fall. There was still a chance a French teacher would leave mid-summer, somewhere close enough for her to commute. I finally decided to call my grandfather Jack, like Mom did. I tried it out on him alone first, then at dinner. Neither of them noticed. At least they didn’t say anything about it.

You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to use the material elsewhere. Even if you’re making it into a school skit, I’d like to know where it’s being heard. Thank you.

www.sherimcguinn.com

Amazon Author Page

#socialcommentary #AliceMcKenna #moraltale #NewAdult #taxpayerscivilrights #audio #novels #civicresponsibility #heroine #ethics #YA #womensfiction #Humor #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #Alice #strongwomen #transition #FemaleRoleModels #fiction #family #civilrights

Alice – Episode 4: Nina Cries

This is the fourth episode of an abridged version of my novella Alice. You can read the whole thing here over the next weeks or buy a copy and binge. Or you can do both and compare the two – writers may learn from the differences. As always, you are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to use the material elsewhere. Even if you’re making it into a school skit, I’d like to know where it’s being heard. Thank you.

Jack was really old school about technology. He insisted on having the cell phone on speaker so it wouldn’t give him brain cancer, so I found out his friend was dead with him. He wrote down the name of the cemetery and thanked the person who told him, then said goodbye and handed me my phone.

“I don’t know how to hang that thing up. You don’t have to pay long distance for that call?”

“No, we have unlimited calls and text anywhere in the country.”

“And your mother has internet on her phone, doesn’t she? That’s what she was doing before?”

“Yeah. So can I… I’m sorry about your friend.”

He shrugged it off. “Wouldn’t a land line cost less? Or having one cell phone? What with your mother losing her job and all?”

I’d never known anyone who had someone close to them die, so it was a relief to talk about anything else. Maybe that’s how Jack felt, too. “We talked about it when she got pink slipped, but my cell phone’s how I stay in touch with my friends, especially over summer, and Mom needs hers for jobs. So I’m going to babysit more and pay half.”

“I’m just meeting my granddaughter and here she is taking care of babies herself.”

He sounded sad again, so I babbled on about texting and Facebook and Twitter and all the ways my friends and I communicated.

“You don’t have to be an adult for that?” he asked.

“As far as the internet is concerned, I’m eighteen.”

“Does your mother know?”

“Yeah, she lectured me about not talking to strangers online, but she caved on the age issue because she knows that’s how all the kids connect. She admitted that’s important. But she insisted that I keep her on my friends list, so I have to tell everyone to be careful what they post.”

He stared out the window and let out a big sigh. “Does your mother have many friends?”

“Not really. Mostly she works and then spends time with me. It was cool when I was little, but it’s kind of a pain sometimes.”

“That’s probably my fault,” he said. “When she was little, she made new friends all the time, then we’d move on. Somewhere along the line, she started keeping to herself. I didn’t even notice until she was gone and there was no one to tell me where.”

I didn’t know what to say. Most of what he’d been telling me about my mother was really weird and didn’t fit with what I knew about her at all, but being a loner was totally Mom. After all, she even went to a sperm bank for me. But I’d never thought about why she might be that way.

“You and your friends do things together, too?” he asked. “It’s not all electronic stuff?”

“Of course.”

“But skinny dipping’s not one of them?”

He smiled. I was glad he wasn’t talking about sad stuff anymore. I grinned back at him.

“No, I don’t think my friends would do that.”

“Too bad. It’s a liberating experience. What will you be doing with them now school’s out?”

That’s when I told him how my friends all lived across town and everyone had plans for the summer. It hadn’t mattered when Mom and I were going to hike the Appalachian Trail all summer, but now it was a bummer. But it wasn’t as bad as finding out a friend was dead, so I stuck on a fake smile and tried to sound excited that I’d have all that extra time for babysitting.

“Who do you babysit for?” he asked.

“There’s one family down the street, but I think there’s more with little kids.”

He looked at me like I’d said something really strange. “Think? You don’t know your neighbors? How long have you lived here?”

I got defensive. “All my life, but we’re never home. When I was little, Mom taught gymnastics across town and took me with her – that’s where I met my friends. We’ve been friends forever. We do things together after school and summers, Mom and I go camping different places.” By then I was shaking. Everything caught up with me all at once and I couldn’t stop the tears but I managed to lower my voice. “It’s just now everything’s messed up. And I can’t tell Mom because she’s worried enough.”

Jack pulled me into a hug and let me muffle my sobs against his chest. He didn’t mind the snot all over his shirt.

I’d almost gotten it under control when we heard Mom coming. He gave me a wink and went to head her off. I washed off my face and holed up in my room until dinner.

Dinner was tense. Jack still looked like a hippie, but he wasn’t so scruffy after he’d showered, shaved, and put on some clean clothes. He complained about the bus trip.

“It would have been more comfortable if I’d hitchhiked,” he said. “But the folks at the hospital didn’t think I should do that. . . So, is this a small town or a suburb?”

“A little of both,” Mom replied. “It’s more separate from the city and smaller than most suburbs, but there aren’t a bunch of people who’ve lived here forever. Most of it used to be a farm until they built these houses for commuters.”

Jack nodded. “So it’s a bedroom community? People mostly just sleep here?”

I put in my two cents. “And they work in their yards and gardens. The houses in this area are all pretty small, mostly like ours, but they all have big yards.”

“Folks keep things nice?” he asked.

“Pretty much.” Mom replied.

“Looks like you picked a good place for Nina to grow up.”

“Don’t try to schmooze me,” Mom warned him. “You’re only staying a few days.

“I know.” He put his hands up, then looked at me and lowered them.

That ended conversation until Jack helped clear the table while I loaded the dishwasher. Mom had already excused herself to get back to her job hunt.

“I usually take a walk after dinner,” Jack said. “Let’s scope out the neighborhood, see who might need a babysitter.”

“Okay.”

As he closed the front door, Jack asked if there were any kids my age in the neighborhood.

“A few ride the bus, but they keep to themselves.”

“Why’s that?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I think they’re Muslim. I know it’s two different families, but all the parents speak English with that accent like Apu.”

“Who’s Apu?”

“On the Simpsons, the storekeeper?”

“Oh, that cartoon. I’ve seen that a couple times. Never bothered having a television myself.”

“Mom’s like that. She’d rather read.”

“Guess I didn’t do everything wrong.”

The red Porsche with the personalized license plate that said “I SUE 4U” went by about the time we reached the vacant house on the corner.

“Lawyer I take it?” asked Jack.

“Yeah. He moved in next door last summer. He’s hardly ever home.”

“Probably busy taking people’s money away from them. He doesn’t have any kids, either, right?”

“I think he lives alone.”

There was some new graffiti on the abandoned house and the grass wasn’t coming back.

“That place looks like shit,” said Jack.

“It’s been empty a couple years. Mom said it’s going through foreclosure.”

“That’s too bad. Especially when everyone else keeps their places so nice.”

“There’s two more the other direction. They’ve been empty even longer,” I said. “They’re worse.”

You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to use the material elsewhere. Even if you’re making it into a school skit, I’d like to know where it’s being heard. Thank you.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8459664/

#socialcommentary #AliceMcKenna #moraltale #NewAdult #taxpayerscivilrights #audio #novels #civicresponsibility #heroine #ethics #YA #womensfiction #Humor #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #Alice #strongwomen #transition #FemaleRoleModels #fiction #family #civilrights

Alice Episode 3: Settling In

We only had one television; Mom was weird about that. She thought it was almost all a waste of time. I even had to promise not to watch programs online. At least I had my own computer. It was her old desktop, but I’d put in some new components to speed it up, so it worked great. No, I wasn’t really a computer geek. They had a workshop at school on how to build a computer.

Anyway, the television was in the den, where I helped Jack set up temporary living quarters. I figured I wouldn’t be watching TV much while he stayed with us.

“Does this thing pull out into a bed?” he asked.

“No, sorry, but it’s comfy to sleep on,” I said. “I’ve zonked out on it plenty of times when I was watching movies late. Or we have those really thick air mattresses that we use for camping, if you’d rather have one of them.”

“No, the couch is fine. How often do you go camping?”

“At least half of the summer, usually.” Talking with him while we put sheets on the couch seemed like the most natural thing in the world. “We’ve been to most of the national parks east of the Mississippi. And we were going to hike the northernmost section of the Appalachian Trail this year, except Mom’s got to job hunt now instead. We were going to do part of it each year and finish right after I graduate from high school.”

“Don’t teachers get tenure in New York?”

“Doesn’t matter when they cut the program. If she’d been qualified to teach something else they would have transferred her. But she can only teach French.” Jack laughed so hard his shoulders shook and his eyes teared.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Your mother started speaking French when she was about your age,” he said. “We were living with this woman in Quebec. That only lasted a few tense months, but your mother caught onto the language easy as pie.”

“You lived in Quebec?”

“Just while I was with. . .Genevieve, that was her name.”

“Mom never told me she lived in Canada. She never talks about anything before I was born.”

“She had a whole lifetime before that, Darlin’.”

I whispered again, “She used to skinny dip?”

He whispered back, “When she was a little tyke, she hardly ever wore clothes and no one wore them for swimming.”

“What are you whispering about?” Mom was in the doorway and she didn’t look happy.

“We’re just talking about how much you liked swimming when you were little, Baby Girl.” He sounded completely innocent. “Thought you were unloading your car.”

“It was almost done. Nina, don’t listen to his stories. This man is the biggest liar you’ll ever meet. And you, don’t you infect her with your nonsense.”

“What do you mean?” He looked bewildered, but I could tell he knew exactly what she meant.

“And no pot in my house,” she continued to lecture. “Nothing illegal, or you’ll get a ride straight to the police station, you understand?”

“Sure thing, Baby Girl. I don’t want to cause any problems. I’ll just sleep here a few days until I figure out where I’m going. I won’t be any bother at all.”

“Yeah, right. Nina, take him to your room and do a search for this Jimmy Parks person in Arizona.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“And leave the door open. I’ll be checking on you. No stories.” Jack had never had a computer or a cell phone.

“Seriously?” I asked. Jack sat on the bed behind me. “Played with one at the coffee shop a few times, looking around on it, but most of the news was about people I’d never heard of. Seemed like most of them hadn’t done anything worthwhile for people to care about, either.”

“Yeah, but you get the news fast.” As I waited for the internet to load, it didn’t feel fast.

“How much confidence can you have in the truth of it? They’ve always tweaked history, but they can do it way too fast with the internet.” He sounded so much more serious now. “I’d rather read something on paper, where they know what they said is going to be around for people to take a second look at it. That’s harder to change.”

“You can get news from around the world, though, and get their perspective on things. Our Social Studies teacher had us checking the BBC last year.”

“Really? Well, that might be a good thing,” he said. “So you think you can find Jimmy Parks?”

“I can try.”

It turned out that there were dozens of Jimmy and James Parks in Arizona, but we didn’t find the one Jack knew.

“I should have had them check while I was at the hospital.” He sighed and shook his head.

“Should always have a backup plan.”

“He was in the military with you?”

“We were in ‘Nam together.”

“When’s the last time you talked to him?”

“Ten, fifteen years ago. Maybe.”

“He could be anywhere,” I said.

I was thinking he could be dead, and Jack looked like he was thinking the same thing. I figured that was why he hadn’t asked at the hospital – that and he’d expected Mom to be happy to see him. Sadness poured out of him the same way happiness did. I wanted him happy.

“How did you meet Mom’s mom?” I asked.

“Got out in June of ‘67. Headed straight for San Francisco.”

“That’s what they called the Summer of Love, wasn’t it?” I was proud of my knowledge. “We had a sub in Social Studies when we were studying the sixties, and he told us about that and Agent Orange and a whole bunch of other stuff that wasn’t in the books.”

“History changes according to who has power.” Jack spoke in what I already considered his lecture voice.

“That’s exactly what Mom said when I told her the teacher was upset his plans hadn’t been followed! Word for word the same.” And she’d sounded like Jack, too.

“Well, she heard me say it often enough, and she was there for the protests. She was a tiny thing, she may not remember much of it, but she was there.”

He dug in his pocket for his wallet and pulled out a plastic sleeve. I caught a glimpse of a young woman with flowers braided into her hair before he turned it over and pulled out a yellowed piece of newspaper. He unfolded it carefully and smoothed it out on my desk where I could look at it. It was starting to rip on the folds.

“That’s your mother,” he said proudly.

It was a peace rally. The toddler he pointed to had tangled hair down to her waist and she was wearing shorts and nothing else. She was helping a much younger Jack hold a sign: Make Love, Not War!

“Did she do protests when she got older?” I asked.

“Nah, the movement cooled off once they finally pulled out. There was still stuff going on, but the fire had died. At least for me it had.”

He looked sad again so I got the hospital’s number from Mom and called to ask about Jimmy Parks. Jack’s social worker connected us with an officer who connected us with another officer, until we finally got someone who could help us. Jack had enough information for them to track down Jimmy Parks.

Unfortunately, Jimmy was residing in a cemetery in Phoenix.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8459664/

#socialcommentary #AliceMcKenna #moraltale #NewAdult #taxpayerscivilrights #audio #novels #civicresponsibility #heroine #ethics #YA #womensfiction #Humor #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #Alice #fic #strongwomen #transition #FemaleRoleModels #family #civilrights