Words in a Row: A Case of Mysterious Identity

Vivian Vance and her sister owned the house I call my own. They lived in this simple cracked-stucco box on the edge of the Great Plains, where Mother Earth New Mexico gives birth to a flat-chested Oklahoman girl, a long-legged Texas boy. When Vivian as Ethel Mertz told Lucy Ricardo that she grew up in the Land of Enchantment, she wasn't kidding. I imagine her tooling along the Turquoise Trail outside of Santa Fe in a silver-finned convertible while her handkerchief-covered curls catch white sage and sharp bits of tumbleweed. On purpose, of course. Vivian was that kind of gal.

Doc Holliday rented a room in what is now my backyard. Billy the Kid terrorized the locals, the Rough Riders held their first meeting eight blocks away, Kit Carson regularly rested across the street, the great Navajo Warrior Manuelito rode a gray horse along the Santa Fe Trail that still cuts my town into north and south. I could list the famous people who called Las Vegas, New Mexico home, a stopover, a place of commerce and good tequila, but it would take a ream of paper and more time than I've bought. It doesn't matter. Vivian and her sister reign supreme.

Guero NightHorse laughs when I tell him this. He lifts his brown beaver felt hat and scratches his blonde hair. It's become Our Thing.

"Birdie, how can Vivian be more important than Manuelito? Even Kit Carson?"

I always give the same response, arms akimbo, my feet planted on the cement stairs of my front stoop.

"Guero, Vivian made people laugh. Besides, I can feel her presence sometimes. Her and her sister. I think they visit this old place even though they didn't die here."

Until recently, Guero just nodded, wandered further down the street in search of something to do, something, anything other than lifting the bottle. He's not always successful. A couple times a month he lurches past, doesn't see me, sees three of me, the scent of Tecate and fear rising from his lips. One of those days he stopped. I lifted my hands from my laptop.

"Hey, boy! What's up?"

Guero looked through me, as if Vivian Vance stood behind me, hands on my shoulders, reading my screen, the story that wouldn't gel.

"Were you serious about those spirits? Do you believe?"

I hesitated. Vivian lifted her palms from my shoulders. I felt her take one step back.

"Guero, I don't know for sure. I feel that we're more than our bodies. I've never seen Vivian, not really. But I can feel something here, some kind of funny presence. I did see my Grandpa's ghost once, when I was a child. So yeah, I guess I do believe."

Vivian smiled. I felt her grin raise goosepimples along my arms. A fat spider dropped from the porch eaves and twirled in front of my face - a warning, a roadblock. I shifted my body, let her attach a gossamer web to the iron railing.

"That's a Globe Spider."

Guero moved off the sidewalk onto my driveway. He approached my house, got closer than he ever had, repeated his words.

"That's a Globe Spider. They bring luck, Birdie. My people say they spin stories into their webs. Like in that book about the pig. Stories into their webs. You can't read 'em, but they can read you."

The spider didn't seem to notice his breath, the way it blanketed the porch with green chile and sour booze. I unconsciously lifted my hand to wave the smell west, but caught myself, let it drop. The spider continued to work. I pressed my glasses further up my nose and leaned close, too. One thread against the rail. Another from rail to step. Another from step to an empty ceramic planter that once held an Easter lily. Spin. Drop. Twist. Rest. She barricaded me from Guero, from the land, from the rest of the town I love, spun a story I couldn't read. I knew it was a story of isolation, of introspection.

This spider knows me too well. I'll have to remember to tell the boys to use the back door.

Guero straightened his back with a groan.

"Do you have any spare change? I know I never asked you, Birdie. I just need some money. Can't find any work around here since I got jailed for DWI."

I hesitated. The question frightened me more than ghosts. I knew my answer, though, the answer I always gave the homeless, the placeless, the ones like Guero heavy with psychic fatigue, with the certainty of unhappy death.

"Sure, Guero. Hold on."

I felt Vivian slip into the house as I opened the door. I reached inside my purse and grabbed what little money I had. A few dollars in change. I carefully held it around the web. Guero left without thanks, probably for the saloon, for another cheap can of beer, another slim dull moment. I slid my computer back onto my lap and stared at the forming web. I heard Vivian whisper into my ear.

We're all echos of history. You, me, Guero, Kit Carson, Manuelito, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid. Only the spiders know us, know what presses us to ask for money, for more time, for another day of good health. Only the spiders know.

The spider lifted one leg as if to wave. Vivian floated above my head, floated above the cedar, above the catalpa. The spider chiseled another scene out of air and silk, a story of an uncertain woman, a dead funny lady, a man with unlikely blonde hair and a deep sorrow, a story only the innocent can read.

********

When I started writing this story, I didn't intend to tell you about Guero's drinking problem, about his asking me for money, about the spider, about my secret conversations with Vivian Vance. I wanted to tell the story of how Guero invited me to join him and his Navajo friends out on a mesa to call down the sky spirits. I'll tell that story another day.

When I sit to write, I use the three lists of three things I described in my last essay, each individual point written on an index card. I line them up in a straight line, look at them. Then I move one index card next to another - an arbitrary move - see how they fit, how they compliment each other. It takes several shuffles of the deck to find the story, to find what most needs to be said. The momentum for the story comes from the placement of one card against another.

In a way, it's like creating a necklace of beautifully colored beads. A red bead, a green, two purple, one pitch night black. Which beads belong together, bring out the best, the unusual, in each other? The cards for this story held Guero, the spider, Vivian, the sky watch. I found myself keeping the sky watch on the outer edges of the card spread, as if it were an aside in my unholy tarot. Outer rim cards means drop the scene, save it for another story.

Every new card spread brings me surprises, brings me a story I didn't realize existed. Even if your cards hold fictional elements, you will find new connections, new meaning and importance by shuffling them around.

Take your lists, break them down, line by line, one line per index card. Shuffle them. Arrange them in a row, in a circle, in several lines, in a gentle story web like my Globe Spider's story creation. We are all spiders, all storytellers, and our discreet pieces of memory carry more spirit, more weight than we know.

Tell me what strange surprises happen when you organize your cards in new ways. You can't do this by looking at your list and imagining your entries next to each other. You must write one per card and shuffle.

I want to feature a BlogHer member's recent blog entry. Lia emailed me, telling me that she wrote something using last week's technique. If you read her list in the comments under last week's Words in a Row, you will see what elements she added. Now read her beautiful story of friendship and surprise and see how she combined them together. A lovely moment from the piece:

The next year, when I come to visit my friend again, Jules sees me in the theatre cafeteria and screams, “You bloody idiot, why didn’t you tell me you weren’t a dancer?” (Though bloody is not the right word.) He comes running over to my table, gives me a big hug and starts talking and doesn’t stop until I leave three weeks later. Nerida, the dear friend I come to visit, is ever so tolerant of Jules and my budding friendship. Something I love her for.

Birdie Jaworski blogs at La Pajaro. This Friday she is sitting on the Storytelling panel at BlogHer 2007.

Miss the first essays in this series? Here's the list:

Words in a Row: Write with Birdie
Words in a Row: Marty Cherryseed and the Good Bad Idea