Fictional Characters

My friend wanted to go out last night and I had planned on going -- but then I went to the library and got some books. I didn't want to tell my friend that I blew her off for fictional characters (sorry friend! I really can't help myself).

I will blow your ass off for a stack of books this high

I stayed up all night, reading the top book in that stack called Little Bee by Chris Cleave.

I realized, once I started reading, that Little Bee was going to be a character that stays with me.

She's a character that set up a little home inside me and that's where she'll stay.

Little Bee isn't the only fictional character I keep inside me -- nor are her words the only words that will play over in my head.

Little Bee lives next door to Francie Nolan (from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith) and her brother Neeley and their parents, Katie and Johnny.

Francie, sitting on the fire escape, eating her peppermint wafers and reading (and watching the girl across the street getting ready to go out because it's Saturday -- the day everyone gets paid) under the tree growing from the cement sidewalk stays with me. A tree that grows from the sidewalk in Brooklyn  -- the 'Tree of Heaven', the kind of tree that liked poor people.

So much of that story is inside me. Sometimes it feels like Francies stories are my memories from another life, or family stories passed down from ancestors.

Sometimes it doesn't feel like a book at all -- but like something that actually happened to someone I know.

Next door to Francie is Dolores (from She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb) -- I found that book at a yard sale for .10 cents and it was more than worth it. That book found me at a time when I really really needed it. I needed it because, at the time, I was as sad as Dolores is. I lost people like Dolores did but I didn't end up as sad as she did.

Dolores doesn't have much of a family and so she makes a family, her makeshift family. An old teacher, her neighbor, etc..

My mother had this old book -- I have no idea where she got it -- called, Bad Girls, Good Women (by Rosie Thomas) and it's so very long but I read it. I've read it more than once actually. It was the first time I encountered a gay man in literature - his name was Felix but the story isn't about him. It's about these two girls named Julie and Mattie in England. They run away from home, for different reasons and end up living with Felix and his mother. But the story is much more than that. It's their whole lives.

I have this desire to go to Italy and stay and work on a garden.  That's Julie -- she practically runs away to "Montebellate" in Italy and lives in some kind of nunnery and/or church and renovates the garden there.

The Bean Trees (Barbara Kindslover) is another one that stays with me.

Taylor from Kentucky who picks up a little (Native American) Indian baby (who she names Turtle because she's got some a tight little grasp) in the "Cherokee Nation" of Oklahoma and ends up adopting her. Taylor and Turtle and Mattie (Jesus is Lord used tires) and also LouAnn all stay with me. Mostly, Taylor though.

But it's not limited to literary characters.

'When Harry Met Sally' is a movie from 1989. It's one of my favorite movies and, like song lyrics, quotes/scenes from that movie replay in my head over and over again.

"Harry, I can't do this anymore. I am not your consolation prize."

"I will never want that wagon wheel coffee table..."

"Harry, you're going to have to try to find a way of not expressing every feeling you have every moment you have them..."

I am more 'Harry' than 'Sally' though.

Pablo Neruda reminded me of love.

I found him in a used bookstore on accident -- his cien sonatos de amor. I found love exactly when I needed to be reminded that it exists in an honest way.

"I like it when you're quiet, it's as if you weren't here now and you heard me from a distance, and my voice couldn't reach you..."

I really feel like books find you when you need them. At least that is how it happens for me.

'Little Bee' found me and I know parts of her will stay in me.

"In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile." (from 'Little Bee')