LITR 3731 Creative Writing UHCL sample student fiction submission 2006

December 1941 promised to be one of the coldest in recent memory for Wilmington. The winter brought with it the kind of cold that bit into the skin buried beneath mounds of wool clothing. Just behind sunrise on a frigid Sunday afternoon, Sophia cracked two eggs on the side of a white mixing bowl while Mother prepared sugar cookies by cutting cookie dough into circles with a drinking glass. She placed two perfectly flattened dough circles on a pan as the two listened to Bing Crosby crooning Sierra Sue from the radio in the hallway.

Calling for you, Sierra Sue.”
In the middle of the chorus, Crosby was interrupted by a hurried male voice.

“We apologize for the interruption of your regularly scheduled program. This is Arthur Godfrey with a very important news update. This morning, a surprise Japanese naval attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii has left countless casualties and the number of dead is still unknown…”

As the newsman continued his hurried update, Father put down his coffee cup and turned off the black Emerson radio. Without the rapid cadence of the newsman’s words, the silence was thick, like the fog that settles on a river after the early morning dew. Father cleared his throat, obviously sobered, and stared down at his newspaper.

Graham and Sophia stepped out onto the Carter’s front porch. The April wind picked up the scent of freesias from Mother’s flower garden and carried it through the mild spring evening and into the open picture window that peered into the pristine living room. Graham held the car door open for Sophia. She allowed Graham to help her into the car as she wrapped her cream shawl around her shoulders. Graham ran around to the driver’s seat, shooting Sophia the crooked smile that assured his status as one of the cutest boys at Andrew Johnson High School.
Sophia, in her knee-length navy-blue pencil skirt and dark brown hair parted to one side with tightly curled bangs, felt like Katharine Hepburn at a glitzy Hollywood party. The ring Sophia wore on her left hand caught her gaze, illuminated under the pale moon that dangled only slightly above the Carter’s maple tree ― the same maple that once hosted Sophia’s tree house tea parties. As Graham eased out of the driveway and onto Mayfield Lane, Sophia remembered her bedroom floor, littered with rejected skirts, blouses, and sweaters that just hadn’t seemed quite right for her date with Graham.

The two headed to their spot ― Point’s Peak. A clearing in the woods just outside of town, Point’s Peak was the most popular Friday evening date spot in Wilmington. Couples hiked the trails, shared picnic dinners, or gazed at a full Carolina moon hand in hand. Sophia and Graham had spent countless evenings there over the last year, Graham with his arm around Sophia, fingers interlocked with hers. Graham’s new Packard drove up the familiar dirt road and turned into the clearing. Shutting off the engine, he remarked, “Not many folks out tonight.”

With the car windows rolled down, the wind settled on the pair as they sat beneath the diamond-studded sky listening to the radio. Dinah Shore’s voice carried throughout the still night. Sophia snuggled closer to Graham, and sang softly with the radio as she mindlessly twirled the fringe from the edge of her shawl around her index finger. But instead of pulling her toward him, Graham took Sophia’s hand in his, and kissed her gently on the forehead. The delicate cream fringe dangled once again untouched.

“Sophia …” Graham said softly after what seemed like an eternity of silence had passed. Something behind Graham’s soft hazel eyes made Sophia grow worried. His face seemed older than it had just five minutes prior. His now abandoned smile left his mouth drawn tight, and his forehead bore creases that she didn’t recognize. As she waited for Graham to continue, she silently prayed that Graham didn’t have bad news.

Mother’s knuckles tapped repeatedly on the white door that led to Sophia’s lavender floral room. Sophia s door remained closed most days and only when Sophia needed something from another room did she find reason to leave the confines of her purple haven.

“Not hungry.” Sophia’s muffled voice carried through the tent-like comforter on her head and into the hall where her mother stood waiting patiently. Sophia, hearing her doorknob turn, shut her eyes tightly. When she was a child, closing her eyes always made unwanted visitors vanish. As her home-made tent was pulled from her brunette head, she remembered that the “I-can’t-see-you-so-you-must-not-be-here” game never worked well past the age of 8. Sophia squinted as her mother, who obviously failed to vanish at Sophia’s silent wish, continued to pull the comforter toward the foot of the bed and walked through the room where she drew open the pale pink blinds. Slits of summer sunlight chased shadows from every corner of the extraordinarily cheerful room. Sophia had begun to despise her purple room. Since Graham left …

“I was thinking that you and I should get out of the house today. School will be starting in a few weeks and you have nothing new to wear.”

Mother began to straighten Sophia’s lavender sheets as she spoke, an indication that she expected Sophia to get up and help her make the bed. Instead, Sophia flopped back onto her side and pulled her knees up to her chin, just as she had done as a child. She decided to try her game again. She closed her eyes as tightly as her eyelids would allow, but hearing her mother rustling around in her room only reinforced what she had feared was true… children’s games don’t work for a girl of nearly 17.

“Mother, I’m not interested in going anywhere. I’m happy here in my room.”

“Sophia, I don’t think that’s true. You’re not happy in your room. In fact, I haven’t seen you happy in months. Can we please just talk about whatever you’re feeling? You might be surprised… I might even understand.”

Sophia knew that her mother understood, maybe better than anyone. After all, Sophia’s brother Michael had been drafted and sent to London just before Graham enlisted and traveled to Luxembourg to fight in the war.

            “But it’s different with Michael, Mother. I thought Graham and I were going to be married. The night he…“ Sophia stopped. She hated to talk about Graham leaving. Saying it aloud still caused her heart to ache even more. She sighed defiantly.
          “The night Graham told me he had decided to enlist, I was surprised because I actually thought he had planned to propose marriage. I actually thought we were going to start our lives together, and now we’re apart.”
     Feeling ashamed of her own humiliating foolishness, she sadly stared at her left hand. Sophia twisted round and round the pearl ring Graham had given her last year, and pulled it from her finger. Wearing the ring on her left hand had always made Sophia feel more grown up. Now it only reminded her of Graham’s absence.

“I guess I always assumed that one day, he would replace this pearl ring with a wedding band, and we’d just live happily ever after or something. Instead, he decided to go to war. I’ll never understand.”

To Sophia’s embarrassment, tears began to fill her eyes. Why hadn’t Graham talked to her before he joined the service? Was he unhappy with her? Maybe he didn’t want to marry her. Shouldn’t they have decided together?

“Sophia, honey. I didn’t realize you were going through this. I thought that you understood why Graham joined the army. Honey, he did it because he believes in a good cause. Your brother is there for that same cause, though he didn’t choose to go.” Sophia fell into her mother’s embrace. Why had she been afraid to talk with her mother?

“We’ll get through this together, Sophia,” Mother said. As her mother’s fingers brushed through Sophia’s hair, she exhaled loudly, pressing further into her mother and allowing her heart to release a portion of the burden she carried.

The story I have ended with, above, is in my opinion quite different from the one I presented in class. Originally, Lily Carter (now Sophia Carter) began the story sitting in her window seat dreaming of the mailman dropping off a letter from Graham. I completely removed that “scene” (not really a chapter or a scene) because I felt that it was too cliché. Also, several students in the class felt that my transition from Dec. 1942 with Lily at her window to Dec. 1941 was too confusing.

The second “scene” originally placed Lily and her parents in the kitchen making breakfast on Sunday morning. That scene has remained (now Sophia), and it is now on Sunday afternoon, rather than morning, as someone in class pointed out that the attack on Pearl Harbor couldn’t have been broadcast in the morning in the U.S.

I also omitted several lines exchanged between Mr. Carter and Graham. Many students in the class felt that the lines did nothing for the plot. Many classmates also felt that my story wasn’t told through the eyes of the characters, but through the narrator’s exposition. That was one of the most helpful comments, and I decided that the entire story needed to be from one character’s standpoint. So, one of the major changes in my piece lies within Lily. Now as Sophia, I have created the entire story around her reaction to Graham’s departure to war, not to the war itself. Originally, the bulk of the story happened at Point Park. Graham tells Lily he is leaving, and then Lily runs off in a tantrum toward the woods, and they both hold one another and cry. I didn’t like where that storyline was going, so I took the advice of my classmates and added some depth to the main character. I also took the advice to make Graham enlist, rather than be drafted. This lends to Lily/Sophia’s intrinsic conflict even further – now manifested in Sophia’s depression, which isn’t discussed but implied. She does not have adult coping skills and handles the loss the only way she knows… she locks herself up, longing for the days when she can make people disappear in her mind.
Sophia is now portrayed, I hope, as somewhat childish and immature. I believe Sophia is in love with being married, and being an adult. She wants badly to grow up, but she isn’t yet mature. I allude to several childhood games, tea parties, tantrum positions, etc. Also, Sophia thought Graham planned to propose, yet he was really telling her that he was leaving. I will leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not their relationship ended when he left, or remained throughout the war. She wore Graham’s pearl ring on her left hand, and hopefully the reader believed the two were engaged before the Point Park scene, though they were not. My intention was to give the allusion that Graham and Sophia shared a mature relationship, yet it was unstable because Graham had to leave. We don’t know what Graham’s intentions toward the relationship were.

Also, I decided not to go into detail about Graham’s character, because to me, he is no longer a large part of the story. The main conflict is Sophia’s need to be an adult and her lack of understanding adult situations. A child may believe that someone enlists in the army to avoid commitment or love.
Sophia’s realization that her mother is suffering a loss while Michael is at war is also key to Sophia’s coming of age. I have left the story somewhat unresolved. War breeds sadness and despair, and can’t always offer resolution. I wanted to leave Sophia with a little hope though. Her hope is that her mother understands and she can confide in her, and possibly develop a more adult relationship with her mother.

Overall, I’m not completely thrilled with my piece. Though I’m not sure what I would do with it, I would like to have more time to reflect on Sophia’s choices and her options in the story. I am not entirely sure that she and Graham should remain a couple if the story were to become longer. But I believe his leaving her is key to Sophia’s maturation.