Her Own House Read online

  Copyright Kim McCoy Vann 2008

  Originally published by Florida Atlanta University

  Boca Raton, FL 2008

  ISBN: 978-1-54397-730-1

  This book is dedicated to our father, Carl McCoy, who made each of us feel like the favorite child.

  Rest well, Daddy.

  Contents

  Foreward

  Preface

  The Story of My Thesis

  Historical Influences

  Religious Influences

  Traditional Stories

  Conclusion

  Flying at 30

  Intervention

  The House at the End of the Weeping Willows

  Tide

  The Liberation of Mammy

  Diary of a Video Honey’s Daughter

  Freak

  Her Own House

  Bibliography

  Foreward

  Kim McCoy was an artist who painted with words. This is my attempt to honor her wishes and share her amazing work with others. Kim wrote this collection of short stories for her thesis, while pursuing a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Florida Atlantic University and submitted it on June 11, 2008. I began preparing her work for publication ten years later, on June 21, 2018, six years after her death. As a family, we never gave up hope that she would survive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. When Kim took her last breath in 2012, a never-ending journey of grief began.

  As I read and reread the short stories in this book, I can hear my twin sister’s voice. I can feel Kim’s presence. In most of her stories, she wove magic with reality. Even in her final moments on this planet, she gifted me with moments that caused me to question what was truly possible. As we prayed in a circle around Kim’s hospital bed, her pastor made a statement about her being in God’s hands. I remember feeling two warm hands pressing onto my back as he spoke. The sensation was so strong that I opened my eyes and looked behind me and found no one standing there. That’s just one example.

  Kim’s writing is a combination of the real and the surreal. In her stories, we meet characters that defy imagination and characters that could be our very own neighbors, or even ourselves. Kim’s short stories reflect an extraordinary range of imagination and skill. My hope is that by sharing her work, we will all be inspired to imagine and observe the world more carefully.

  Courtney McCoy

  Atlanta, GA

  photo of Kim McCoy 2011

  Preface

  The Story of My Thesis

  When I told people that I was writing short stories for my thesis, a few responded, “Well, that’ll be easier than a novel.” Not for me. My thesis, “Her Own House,” a collection of eight short stories was the culmination of a sometimes painful experience. Writing is a demanding process where my brain is always aching for that perfect word or scene or whatever is necessary to take the piece to the next step. But when it finally comes together, I often feel like I have accomplished something that is worth sharing with others. Like the op-ed writer, I hope my work reveals something that makes people look at some issue in a new way. A common theme in this collection is nonconformity and self-acceptance, which leads to overcoming some internal or external challenge. My thesis is the result of my reactions to socio-political issues and personal experiences. The majority of the stories are not told in a realist way, and instead use magical and satirical elements. Exaggerating an issue makes people see the absurdities and complexities of it. In this essay, I will describe my creative influences and decisions I made when drafting and revising the stories.

  Historical Influences

  As I wrote “The Liberation of Mammy” and “The House at the End of the Weeping Willows,” I kept my Caribbean Historical Fiction class in mind. In that course, we always had to consider the following question: Why is this contemporary author writing about this particular moment in history? As I wrote these two stories part of my mission was to make them resonate with today.

  “The Liberation of Mammy” is about a slave who uses her secret pancake recipe to cause a distraction that allows her to escape from bondage. It is also intended to serve an allegory of how the Civil War began. Of course I had Aunt Jemima in mind when writing this. While her image has evolved over time from chubby and large-lipped to slender and modern, I cannot ignore her history when I see her on grocery store shelves (and eventually in my pantry). One of the most powerful depictions of Aunt Jemima can be found in Betye Saar’s mixed-media piece, “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima.” In this work, the larger mammy figure holds a rifle in one hand and a broom in the other; the smaller mammy figure holds a white baby, and there is a black power fist in the foreground. I had this image in my head as I wrote my story. I, too, wanted to show the evolution of the mammy/Aunt Jemima figure. I wanted to show what else mammy could do with that baby and that gun, and I wanted her to carry that pancake torch because that is the image that still exists today.

  In my story, there are many exaggerated descriptions and moments. Here is how it opens:

  There were pancakes everywhere. Approximately 2,233 golden brown discs of perfection piled high on white plates along long white counters. There were also blond-haired, blue-eyed white boys everywhere, at least 356. Little ones cooed from high chairs, bigger ones sat at long oak tables, and the tiniest 20 were strapped to mammy. A few dangled from her neck, forming a living necklace. Others were circled around her waist, overlapping each other, almost as if they were braided together. Several were attached to each ankle, and mammy managed to maneuver around as if it was nothing.

  I decided it was important to go over the top because the mammy figure herself is so over the top with all of her inflated features. Winkie by Clifford Chase, the craziest book I have ever read, inspired me to take risks and not be afraid to push the bounds and see what happens. One of the best parts of Winkie, the tale of a teddy bear accused of terrorism was the bear’s trial. Here’s a paragraph that describes the difficult situation Winkie’s lawyer, cleverly named Unwin, finds himself in at the beginning of the trial:

  Unwin continued searching through his piles of papers, folders, and computer disks. That morning the prosecution had suddenly honored his long-standing request for the release of evidence turning over approximately 10,000 typewritten pages and 213 compact discs. In the interest of speedy justice for a case of national significance, the defense’s plea for a continuance was denied, and the many stacks of testimony, lab reports and other documents now surrounded the lawyer and his client like a messy nest. (Chase 169)

  Chase’s details, such as the large numbers and the ridiculous claims were the types of details that I worked into my own story. While his details reflect the realities of the real-life Unabomber case, they come across as absurd in this work of fiction, which makes the scene funny. The entire premise is over the top, really. All of this evidence has been heaped against a teddy bear. Chase makes this work because he sets the tone from the very beginning. Here’s how the book opens:

  Please state your name.

  Clifford Chase.

  And what was your relationship to the defendant?

  He was my teddy bear.

  And how long have you known him?

  Since I was born really…

  Was there any indication, back then, that he was anything other than a normal toy?

  No. Though, of course, to me he always seemed alive. (Chase 3)

  From the beginning, it’s clear that this is not set in the real world; this is Chase’s world. As you go about the book, you believe in what is happening. The events seem true to the place that Chase has created. It was fun to read because I did not know what to expect next.
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br />   My other historical piece, “The House at the End of the Weeping Willows” was inspired by a (supposedly) true story from my father’s childhood—you never know when he is telling a tall tale. As a child growing up in Augusta, Georgia in the early 1960s, he and his buddies walked past a fraternity house and became engrossed by the Greek letters. One boy in the group pointed at the unfamiliar writing and shouted, “KKK! Run for your life!” They all followed his orders. My original story was pretty much a retelling of what happened but the piece fell short because the characters came across more like caricatures. This story proved to be a nice lesson in how real life does not automatically translate to the best fiction stories.

  In the next draft, I decided to keep the essence of the story, but take it to another level. I dropped a character and added magical elements like the lawn jockeys that seem human, the singing weeping willows, and the climactic scene where characters speak in real quotes from figures, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Strom Thurmond. I bring it to the present by including remarks made by Sen. Biden in 2007 about presidential candidate Barack Obama. I was trying to prove the old adage that the more things change the more they stay the same. History is still very much a part of the present. We see this concept in historical fiction, such as Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones. Published in 1998, it tells the story of the 1937 Haitian Massacre. When asked in an interview how the events of 1937 figure into Haitian consciousness, Danticat said, “Every time there is an election in the Dominican Republic, a large number of Haitians are shipped back to Haiti from the Dominican Republic. When there is an incident like that, Haitians say, ‘Oh, it’s going to be like 1937.’ The 1937 massacre is very much part of the Haitian and Dominican consciousness, but in Haiti it’s not taught in school as history. In the Dominican Republic, children learn about the Haitian occupation of the Dominican Republic in the 1800s. Dominicans celebrate their freedom from Haiti. For them, there’s a menacing feeling about Haitians.” Work like hers shows the relevance of historical fiction—that these past stories are worth retelling because we continue to see their impact.

  Religious Influences

  In addition to history, another creative influence of mine has been religion. I was essentially part of two religions growing up. Like all the other generations of both sides of my family, I grew up Baptist. But I also attended Catholic school and was allowed to do many of the same rituals my Catholic peers did, such as going to confession and getting ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday. At an early age, I knew a lot about sin (there did not seem to be much room for error) and eternal damnation. Today, I have non-denominational leanings, and am not completely over my fear of the devil.

  In my writing, I try to work out some of the questions I have about what it means to be a Christian. “Her Own House,” inspired by the biblical burning bush story, is anchored around a burning house that serves as a beacon for outcasts. It was one of the most challenging pieces and saw the most evolution. It began as a short story, then transitioned to a novel, and became a short story again. This was the piece that really made me think about magical realism and the purpose of using magical elements. In earlier versions of the story, I knew I wanted to use this concept of a burning house/building but it took me long time to figure out why it was burning. It was one thing to have a cool concept, but it had to mean something. I turned to Gabriel García Márquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” for inspiration, and really looked at what the people’s reactions to the old man revealed about their world. Here’s what happens when the old man/angel meets the local priest:

  Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels.

  The reaction of the priest is similar to the reaction of the mother in “Her Own House.” The mother disapproves of her daughter’s choice to live in a burning building and assumes it is hell because she does not understand it. This perspective of the mother created conflict and served to represent the larger question of whose definition of Christianity is correct. Who can judge what is right and what is wrong?

  My other religion-inspired story, “Intervention,” addresses similar ideas. In this story, a young woman’s family assumes she is an atheist because she has not followed the same set of moral codes that they have. It satirizes a drug intervention as well as fundamentalist Christianity. Using humor to explore a weighty topic can make it more accessible and can even allow a reader to see the complexities of the issue. For example, I like that Sherman Alexie is not afraid to play with the stereotypes of Native Americans to make a point. The narrator in “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” describes a former romantic relationship this way: “I walked through that relationship with an executioner’s hood, or more appropriately, with war paint and sharp arrows” (Alexie 5). He later describes himself this way: “I was one of those Indians who was supposed to make it, to rise above the rest of the reservation like a fucking eagle or something” (6). Inserting these stereotypes is a way of acknowledging that this character is considered different by the rest of society. And as a reader it makes you aware of your own misconceptions and limited views. Certain images associated with Native Americans may be true to their culture, but when those same images continue to be recycled it shows how little society actually knows about their culture. Ultimately, Alexie is poking fun at society’s ignorance. Not only does he make you laugh at the context, but also yourself.

  One thing that really stood out about “Intervention” on a personal level was that it was really fun to write. Often times, I hear authors talk about their prolificness--locking themselves into a room until several chapters of a book spring forth. I typically don’t operate like that, but this story was the exception. This is the one where the entire first draft just flowed out of me in one evening. I enjoyed balancing the humor with the weighty religious theme. This was another story where I could really make up my own rules and push the limits.

  While “Flying at 30” and “Freak” do not address religious issues, they do address themes similar to those found in “Intervention” and “Her Own House.” They also address non-conformity and self-acceptance. In “Flying” a young woman who has taken a slightly different path from her upbringing gains her family’s acceptance by using one of the skills that makes her different. In “Freak,” a woman who is different from others in appearance interacts with a couple that looks perfectly normal but are deeply flawed once you get past the exterior. My goal in these stories is to answer the question, Who is the true freak? Here again, I took my inspiration not from literature, but from visual art—the photography of Diane Arbus. An art website says, “Her unrelentingly direct photographs of people who live on the edge of societal acceptance, as well as those photographs depicting supposedly ‘normal’ people in a way that sharply outlines the cracks in their public masks, were controversial at the time of their creation and remain so today.” I love this idea of revealing flaws because it makes us equal. We are all freaks in some way.

  David Schickler does a great job creating characters and situations that are unusual but convincing in his collection of stories, Kissing in Manhattan. In “Jacob’s Bath,” a longtime, private ritual—Rachel bathing her husband nightly throughout their entire marriage—is made public by a friend who writes for the paper. Thanks to Schickler’s character development we see the differences between Rachel and her writer friend, Susan, and understand what th
ey are both capable of. “Susan March made a terrible realization: she craved baseness. Some fiber of her soul longed to kill, as Mr. Bruce [‘a supposed hitman’] did, or to cleanse countries with napalm or to be taken viciously by a man on the steps of a church” (39). These types of details make Susan her own person and not any stereotypical reporter. Schickler’s word choices—“baseness,” “napalm,” and “viciously”—do a convincing job revealing the character’s self-realization. Susan basically wants to go wild. In the larger context of this quote, a reader can feel some sympathy for her. She has spent so much time writing about the seedier side of life that she has not experienced life at all—the good or the bad. Schickler succeeds in making a reader interested in a character that may not be so likeable. As I am writing, I try to make my characters fresh and multidimensional by delving into their own psychology and issues.

  Traditional Stories

  While most of my stories combine the fantastic with realism, I do include two conventional pieces in my thesis: “Notes on a Video Honey” and “Tide.” These two stories are most directly related to ones I ripped from the headlines. They are the stories of two young black women from poor backgrounds. I used fiction to give them another dimension—one that you might not see in news reports.

  “Notes on a Video Honey” is the story of a young girl who doesn’t completely understand or approve of her mother’s decision to degrade herself by being mere eye candy in rap videos. This story was influenced by three things. First, I have had a love-hate relationship with certain aspects of hip-hop music for a long time: loving the beat, hating the lyrics, and still singing along. Second, Spelman College’s Take Back the Music campaign in which the school is taking a stance against the degradation of black women in rap music. Finally, the increasing popularity of urban literature, which I admit I have not given a fair chance. These books have titles like A Hustler’s Wife and A Project Chick. One day in a bookstore, I read the first page of one (I can’t remember the name or the author) and could not continue because it was too stereotypical. It had something to do with a young black woman in a courtroom at her boyfriend’s trial, wondering if he was about to go to jail.