Friday, May 27, 2011

"Erica"

          The Book Woman Club was reviewing The Color Purple written by Alice Walker.  They had just finished reviewing I am the Darker Brother; an anthology of African-American authored poems from the Harlem Renaissance Era.   This was Erica's third Book Woman Club meeting.  She had never read any of the Harlem Renaissance poems, and she was sorry that she had joined the club on the second to the last day of their reviewing. The women were beginning to review a series of books featuring women characters in transformation.   Although she had seen the movie version of The Color Purple on television, she had never read the book.  In fact, Erica wasn't familiar with African-American literature at all.  Maybe if she hadn't dropped out of school at 14, maybe if she had used the birth control her friend Carmen had stolen for her, maybe if she had read more on her own, maybe if she had gone to college....Erica stopped herself from beating herself up.  "Can't change the past", she mused.  But to be out of the house today...away from the kids...wow!   Erica sighed with pleasure, the sound coming from deep in her lungs.  This time to herself was...well it was such a sweet treat!  She couldn't believe she was here with these smart women!  She was a little intimidated.  No!  A lot intimidated!  Erica had yet to open her mouth; had not added her voice to the others.  She was afraid her words would not be as powerful as the others, that she was not as smart as they were.  Many of these women were college students, teachers, and one was a Doctor.  Erica looked around the room, listening to the comments, in awe of these educated women...these intellectual voices!  It was so wonderful just being in their presence! 
          It was her friend Carmen, her best friend Carmen, who had invited Erica to the Book Woman Club.  Carmen had been trying to get Erica to go with her to a book club meeting for over a year!  "I'm not going to give up on you, gur-r-r-l!", Carmen would fuss.  "You need to get out of this house, away from these kids!  You need to have some adult conversations!"   It was always so impossible for Erica to get out of the house! There was always something that had to be cooked, or cleaned, or wiped, or polished! Erica rubbed her hands over the pages of her brand new copy of The Color Purple.  It sat open in her lap, the pages already dog eared and stained.  Carmen had given the book to her as a kind of "welcome to the book club' present.  Erica had read the book in one day, laughing and crying with the words.  She held the book in one hand, while she used the other to vacuum, dust,and  mop her floors, and then to feed her toddler Francisco.  Francisco was the youngest of eight children and the only one not yet in school.  His mashed-carrot covered fingers had grabbed the book, and he had tossed it into the applesauce globs that he had smeared all over the tray attached to his high chair!  Erica had patiently cleaned the carrots and applesauce off of her book and Francisco, laying loud kisses all over his giggled filled chubby face.
           Erica began to nervously chew the inside of her mouth, a spot located on her left cheek so ravished with layers of sinewy scar tissue that the area lapped over her wisdom teeth.  The chewed area was a topography of worry, inflamed and bleeding from when she had chewed her way through Wednesday's begging.  It took two arguments that day to finally get him to say he would stay home a third Saturday and watch the kids. One argument in the morning before Pedro left for his job as at Southeast Community Center, where he was an Aids Prevention Counselor and then one argument when he returned home from work, tired and hungry and angry.  "I work all day, pay all the bills, take care of you and the kids and you want me to give up the only day I have to myself?"  His words bounced off the kitchen refrigerator, off the pots and pans, and off the old-fashioned chipped porcelain counter-tops.  "It's just for a few hours. Please?  Don't be mad."  Erica's voice was low and calming; softly brushing Pedro with the intonations that were used to sooth and lull baby Francisco to sleep.   Erica would explain to Carmen that Pedro was just "old fashioned".  "Yeah, he's old-fashioned and outdated.", Carmen would answer.  "Outdated and hard, like those chipped kitchen counter-tops showing black-metal underneath that he's too cheap to replace!"  Carmen would ask Erica "When you going to stand up for yourself guir-r-r-l?" Erica would say that Pedro was just trying to be a man, like so so many men weren't.  That he felt that  a woman's place was in the home, not out in the streets like some hooker!  And Carmen would laugh and say with the rich sarcasm that only Carmen could inflict, "Yeah, he want you home, guir-r-r-l!  24/7!  You needs to get yourself out of this prison and leave his ass!"  Erica would shut her face down and tell Carmen to mind her own business.  "He just wants me to be a good mother, like his mother was!"  Yeah, guir-r-r-l...barefoot and pregnant!"
          "Barefoot and pregnant for the rest of her life!"  The words jumped around in Erica's head as she bit down on the inside of her cheek and missed.  Her teeth painfully caught the edge of her tongue.  She grunted and stuck a finger in her mouth to access the damage. Erica thought back on Wednesday night's argument.  She last week, in order to convince Pedro to let her go to the second meeting, she had down-played the intellectual reasons for wanting to go to be a part of the Book Woman Club.  She didn't talk about the need to be with other women and to think out-loud.  The need to be listened to, sometimes.  Too be taken seriously, sometimes, not like when Pedro and the older children belittled her thoughts and ideas.  Pedro didn't believe in women talking too much, being too smart, going to college or trying to be men!  "Women should be good wives...let men be the head!" he would lecture when he felt Erica was getting out of her place.  Erica had told Pedro that the Book Woman Club was where women talked about romance books, ate food and talked about the price of chicken versus ground beef.  "Oh, a "hen" party!", Pedro had said. "Yeah, you know, just women talking." she had answered.  And he had let her go to that second meeting.  And she had surprised him that evening, after the kids were all asleep, with the red nightly that he liked.
          But why had he said yes to this third meeting?  Erica again thought back to their argument, turning it over and over in her head, trying to figure out when he had changed his mind. No...she tried to figure out what made him change his mind and agree to stay at home.  What made him decide not go down the street to his favorite bar to watch the game with the boys, like he did every Saturday afternoon?  Miss a third Saturday out with the fellows?  She pulled at a thread of the argument, troubled, a faint alarm going off in her head.  She pulled at the thread, but it was thin.  It broke and Erica could not bring the edges back together.  She could not figure out what worried her about Wednesday night.  She could not figure out why he let her be here this afternoon.
          Erica absently pulled her finger out of her mouth and started to leaf through the pages of her new book, looking for a passage that Kadi-jah had just referenced.  Blood and saliva from her injured tongue trailed from her finger and down the edges of the book's pages, leaving a watery red stain that grew and grew as it seeped into the stark white paper.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Sorry!

Dear Book Woman Club readers....my sincerely felt apology!  I did not post on the Book Woman Club Blog this past Saturday.  I am a storyteller and an artist and I had a gig this past Saturday.  I could not find time to post until today!  Hopefully, this will not happen again!  So "Lenora" is posted for your reading and a new post will be right on time - by 1:00 this coming Saturday afternoon. 

Thanks for reading the Book Woman Club Blog....your company is much appreciated!

Vanessa

"Lenora"

           Lenora loved mysteries and detective novels! She couldn't wait until the Book Woman Club voted to again read her favorite genre!  Her best loved writers and characters were James Patterson and his delicious milk chocolate character -  Alex Cross, and Jeffery Deaver and his damaged, but brillant, Lincoln Rhyme.  Whenever she read a Lincoln Rhyme novel, dispite Deaver's description of him as a white man, Lenora always saw Denzel Washington!  (Denzel had played Lincoln Rhyme in the movie "The Bone Collector", based on Deaver's novel with the same name).  Lenora just loved those dark chocolate crime fighters!           The Book Woman Club was now reading "I am the Darker Brother", a collection of poems from the Harlem Renissance Period.  Karen was hosting this weeks meeting and had made a pinapple upside-down cake for dessert.  Lenora's mouth watered as she sniffed the delicious scent wafting in from the kitchen.  The girl could cook!  Lenora patted her flat stomach.  Good thing she burned calories as she ate them!  Some of the sistahs were getting down right fat from all of Karen's fantastic baking!  Karen was writing a recipe book filled with family stories and her family's secret recipies.  Those family secrets were reeking havoc on diets, and hips were expanding in the club!  "Secrets can be so destructive!" thought Lenora.
          Lenora was an expert concerning secrets.  Her life was one big secret!  "Not one of these women in the Book Woman Club really know me!",  Lenora thought.   "Ask any one of them a question about me, and they would have to pause and think hard!"  Lenora looked around the room.  "None of them know me!  Not one of you know who I really am!"  All they really knew about Lenora was that she loved detective novels and that she loved mysteries.  None of them knew that she was the biggest mystery of all!  And they will never find out the mystery that I am!", Lenora mused.  Her eyes narrowed.  "They better not!"  Lenora took a deep cleansing breath and let it out slowly.  "This is not the time for an anxiety attack!", Lenora thought.  Besides...she knew how to handle her business if any one of them ever found out and tried to expose her!
           Dr. Pamela Sue was Lenora's Psychologist.  Dr. Sue said that Lenora's love of detective novels and mysteries was a manisfestation of her own need to be caught.  Lenora sometimes thought that Dr. Sue was the one that was crazy, not her! She had no intentions of "getting caught".  None!  Lenora liked her freedom, and knew Dr. Sue would never tell her secret to anyone.  Not because she trusted Dr. Sue.  Lenora didn't trust anyone.  But she knew the law; client attorney privelege and all.  Besides, the story that Dr. Sue knew was not exactly the truth!  Lenora was not a fool!
          Dr. Pamela Sue was treating Lenora for anxiety attacks.   Sometimes Lenora would be sitting in a room, having a good time, and then suddenly she couldn't breath!  Her heart would race and the room would feel like it was closing in on her!  Dr. Sue was teaching Lenora how to control her attacks.  Bio-rhythms!  Active Imagining!  Deep breathing!  Lenora took a second breath.  She could feel her heart rate slowing, her breaths quieting.  Lenora took a third and final slow, deep breath!  Everything was under control.  She sighed.
          In 1978 Lenora and four other students from Texas Northern University, a traditional black college down the road from the prodominantly white Cullen University, bombed the library on the Cullen University campus in Houston, Texas.  They were protesting Cullen University's racist policies. The Texas Five, as they became known as, took seige of the library, ordered everyone inside to evacuate, and demanded the immediate admission of an equal number of Black Students to White Students attending Cullen University, along with the immediate hireing of 20 Black Proffessors.  The University refused to comply and the govenor of Texas ordered in the Texas National Guard.  After a three day stalemate, feeling like the Govenor of Texas would order his troupes to storm the building, the Texas Five snuck out of the library and then blew it up!  They set off the dynomite that they had wired throughout the building, dynomite they had used to keep the Texas National Guard at bey!  What they did not know, was that one librarian had not left the building when the group had laid seige to it!  The librarian, fearing for her life and virginity, (according to a tearful T.V. interview by the librarian's mother, who had received a call from her daughter during the seige), hid in a closet behind boxes of new philosophy books, with a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread and a thermos jug of chicken broth.  Kathy Evian's, (Lenora could not forget the librarian's name), body was found in the aftermath of the explosion, crushed under flying concrete and covered with peanut butter and bread!
          Lenora had not meant to kill anybody!  Still, she knew that every revolution came with a price....came with collatoral damage.  Innocents got killed!  Freedom had a high price.  But, she felt extreme remorse for the librarian's death.  She lived with constant guilt....and with the fear of being caught!  Four of the Texas Five were caught within a year of the bombing, and each were serving life sentences.  "Wasted lifes!", thought Lenora.  "Such brilliant minds should have been put to better use by the unjust American legal system!"  Lenora felt strongly that penance should be service, not imprisonment!  Afterall, they did not kill Kathy Evian on purpose!  Abdulla's mind should have been put to use for the greater good; teaching revolutionary philosophies to this young politically apathetic generation!  Jamal and Kwesi should have been allowed to become civil rights attorneys, serving the American justice system, not behind bars being screwed by the injustice of America's corrupt legal system!  And Niahla!  Niahla.....tears began to build up in Lenora's eyes!  Anger began to fill her clinched fists! Niahla's gifted creativity should not be locked in a cell, but should be celebrated for the revolutionary messages that her art expoused.
          Lenora was the only one who had somehow managed to evade capture.  For over twenty-five years she had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List!  She had changed her identity.  (She barely remembered her birth name - Vi...)  Over the years she had shifted her appearance, like a camillion; hair color, her weight, numerous plastic surgeries.  She had eventually moved to Syracuse, New York, got a degree from Syracuse University and became a librarian.  No one looking at Lenora could tell she was a murderer!  And hiding this brought on anxiety attacks;  anxiety attacks that she fought back every - single - day!  Lenora felt that by becoming a librarian, she was living out the life of the librarian that she had killed during that fateful bombing.  And she was a good librarian!  She loved books; treated them with great reverence.  Lenora loved children and promoted family literacy in whatever way that she could.  She anonymously donated books to fledging school libraries.  Needy families found new books underneath their Christmas trees, lovingly and  anonymously wrapped by Lenora.  Lenora had turned her life into a living shrine to Kathy Evian.  Wasn't that justice enough?
          Lenora felt panic again rising in the pit of her stomack.  She closed her eyes, began her deep breathing again, and actively imagined being in a green field, the wind rustling through knee-high blades of waving grass.  When she opened her eyes, she quietly contemplated the women discussing Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem Juke Box".  The smell of pineapple upside-down cake again tickeled her nose.    She looked at herself in the mirror that covered the wall that was opposite of  her, there in Karen's tastefully decorated livingroom.  And she knew, dispite her buttoned up cardigan, her tightly knotted but grey streaked hair, her Syracuse University degree and job with the Onondaga County Library System, dispite the book donations and dedication to family literacy, dispite all that she used to mask her past transgression....Lenora was a murderer!
        

Saturday, May 14, 2011

"Rose-ann"

          Rose-ann stood in her living room, her back to the open doors that invited in the fragrance of summer flowers that grew in the gardens that surrounded her house.  Rose-ann loved flowers!  Her front yard barely had a blade of grass in it.  Her lawn was, instead, covered with flowers!  A riot of colors; reds, yellows, purples, golds and pinks danced in the sun.
          But it was not the flowers that held Rose-ann's attention this Sunday morning, the day after the last meeting of the Book Woman Club.  Rose-ann's eyes traveled from the piles of fabric scattered around the living-room, to the bins of buttons and beads that cluttered her office attached to the living-room, to the storage boxes that covered every piece of furniture in the dinning-room and every square inch of the floor.  A corridor of closed doors lined the hall that ran down the right side of the apartment.  The doors were closed to hide the content of the three bedrooms.  The first room was filled from floor to ceiling with bins of fabric. The second bedroom was filled with bins of ribbons, bindings, trims, lace and still more fabric.  The third, Rose-ann's bedroom, was stacked high with old sewing machines, rescued quilt squares from dead women she had never met, and old quilts from e-bay.  There was a narrow path to her bed and a still narrower space cleared on the bed where Rose-ann slept at night!   A tear ran down Rose-ann's face.  Every time she looked at the mess that covered her house, she felt utterly hopeless!  "How will I every get any of this in order?"  Rose-ann wiped the tear off her face, and felt another one replace it.  It rolled down her cheek and fell into a pile of yellow tie-dyed cloth that was tangled around her feet.  Rose-ann shuddered.  It was all so hopeless!  She felt like she was drowning!  She began to sob out-loud!
          Rose-ann stepped over the pile of yellow cloth, shoved a pile of half finished quilts over into one corner of the fabric covered sofa, and sat down.  Waves of shame rose up in her, as powerful and as destructive as a tsunami!  "Awaaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!"  Rose-ann wailed, wrapping her arms around her body, rocking back and forth.  For almost two years Rose-ann had been lying to the women of the Book Woman Club.  She had not been remodeling over the past year and a half!  Not one workman had ever stepped into this mess of a house!  She would have been too ashamed to let them in!  No, Rose-ann had never hosted a meeting of the Book Woman Club because of the horrible conditions in her house!  "I'm a hoarder!", Rose-ann whispered to herself in terror!  "I'm one of those sick people I see on T.V., who find dead cats they never knew they had, under the piles of their chaos!"  Rose-ann felt like a betraying adulterer admitting their sin for the first time!  She screamed at the junk that began to crush her in the weight of her admission, "I'm a hoarder!"
          Rose-ann hadn't always lived like this.  She had been a neat freak until 10 years ago.  Her motto had been "Everything has it's place and there's a place for everything."  People used to tease her about her obsessive house-cleaning.  But about 10 years ago, Rose-ann's obsession changed.  She joined a quilting circle called The Sankofa Piece Makers.  They met at the Beauchamp Branch Library, on the south-side of Syracuse.  She began to buy cloth; 5, 10, 15 yards or more at a time!  At first, she bought so much cloth, out of ignorance.  A novice quilter, she didn't know how much cloth quilters used!  But soon, she began to buy 5, 10 and 15 yards at a time because she liked the color of the cloth.  Or...she liked the texture of the cloth.  She bought 20 yards because it was on sale....or... 25 yards because she liked it's unusual decorative pattern.  She bought 50 yards because the color was so unusual and she might not see it again. She bought fabric because she didn't have any fabric of that exact color; because she didn't have any of that width; because she didn't have enough of that particular color at that width!  Then Rose-ann began to buy embellishments for her quilts.  Buttons, beads, lace, trims, ribbon, shells, and bindings!  Friends gave her cans of buttons, boxes of lace and cards of trims, that they found at bargain prices at garage sales.  So, hooked by the tales of the hunts that her friends had been on, Rose-ann began to make the weekend circuit of garage sales and yard sales.  She brought back cans of buttons, boxes of lace, suitcases of trim, shoe boxes of thread, and arm loads of fabric!  She began to justify this weekly gorging, saying that she was rescuing the histories of dead quilters; the lifetimes of women who's art had been thrown into the streets without last rites or proper burial!
          Periodically, Rose-ann would try get a handle on the mess that her living quarters had become.  She would donate fabric to a school art program, or donate buttons and thread to a Senior Center, or give beads as presents to her friends.  But then....she would feel duty bound to rescue an old sewing machine that had been set out on garbage day!  Or...she would find herself unable to drive past a half-price fabric sale at Joanne's Fabric!  Sometimes she just couldn't say no, to a gift of fabric from a well-meaning friend that didn't know that Rose-ann was addicted to cloth like some folks were addicted to alcohol or drugs!
          Rose-ann continued to sob into her salt stained hands.  She couldn't keep lying to the Book Women Club members!  That nosy Karen had started to ask questions about why Rose-ann had not ever hosted a meeting of the book club!  Rose-ann moaned. "They can't find out I live like this!  They just can't!  I'll just die of shame, I'll just die!!!"  Rose-ann shifted on the couch, starting an an avalanche of cloth that fell from the couch to the floor, burying Rose-ann up to her knees!  Rose-ann stifled her tears, a twinge of fear tickling the edge of her consciousness.  "There are piles of fabric in here high enough to bury me!", Rose-ann wailed. "I'll die in here! I'll be buried like one of those cats!  I'll come up missing and by the time someone finds me, I'll be a mummy!"  Rose-ann's tears began anew.  "It's hopeless!  It's all so hopeless!"  The fabric surrounding her knees soaked up Rose-ann's endless tears.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

"Karen"

          Karen took out the pineapple upside-down cake from the oven.  The heat from the huge cast iron frying pan began to seep through her use-worn oven-mitt, and Karen quickly put the skillet on top of the stove.  The old cast iron frying pan had been her grandmother's, as well as the recipe that she used for the pineapple upside-down cake.  She couldn't wait to taste it!  She sniffed the air, savoring it's smell filled with childhood memories and sighed.
         Karen was 5'2", weighed 245 lbs. and her middle just kept growing and growing!  "I look like a weeble-wobble!" she chuckled to herself.  It was the darn recipe book that she was writing!  Every recipe had to be tested several times, and of course, tasted!  O.k. - not just tasted, eaten!  Oh, she tried to dole the food out to others, but ultimately only she could tell for sure if the recipe was just right and worthy of going into the cookbook of family recipes that she was writing.  Karen grabbed a handful of stomach fat that was oozing over her jean belt.  "Just more of me to love!"  She smiled!
          Karen was hosting this week's meeting of the Book Woman Club.  She had volunteered her home at last week's meeting when Rose-ann had hemmed and hawed about holding the meeting at her house.  Rose-ann had never hosted a Book Woman Club meeting, despite the informal agreement among them that everyone would be in the rotation for hosting the club.  Karen made a point of driving by Rose-ann's house, the Tuesday after the meeting to check out these mysteriously on-going renovations and did not see any evidence of a contractor or work truck at Rose-ann's house.  This so-called renovating had been going on for two years and Karen had never seen a truck outside of Rose-ann's house.  She lived around the corner from Karen and if renovating was going on, Karen would know it!  "I'm not buying it!  There is something weird going on with Rose-ann!" Karen thought.  Karen turned off the stove and was taking off her apron, when, she heard the doorbell ring. She looked at her watch.  12 noon.  The meeting wasn't set to start until one o'clock.  She wondered who could be at the door this early!  Karen went to answer the front door and looked out the peep-hole. "Speak of the devil!" Karen said to herself.   It was Rose-ann!
          "Good afternoon, Rose-ann!  Come on in.  You're the first one here this week!"  Karen's eyes followed Rose-ann as she came through the door, a shopping bag in one hand and in the other, a pitcher of something red, the top covered in layers of plastic wrap.  "Well - I felt a little guilty for not being able to host again, due to the renovations and all, so I thought I would come early and help you set up for the meeting.  I brought a pitcher of my special cranberry punch, and...", Rose-ann handed Karen the shopping bag, "I brought you a gift."  "Well, this is a surprise!" Karen said, taking the shopping bag.  "Why don't you bring that punch in the kitchen and put it in the refrigerator?"  Rose-ann followed Karen into the kitchen.  "Can I offer you some coffee, tea?" Karen asked.  "Oh, no!  I'm fine." Rose-ann put the pitcher of cranberry punch in the refrigerator, while Karen put the shopping bag on the kitchen table and sat down in a chair.  "So what do we have here?"  Karen began to take a dozen or so tissue wrapped packages out of the shopping bag.  She folded back the tissue paper from one of the bundles, as Rose-ann sat down in the chair next to her.  "Oh my goodness! This is beautiful!"  Karen held a glass bead about the size of a donut-hole in the palm of her hand, admiring its dark green color.  "It's made of re-cycled bottle glass", Rose-ann explained.  Karen unwrapped another tissue package and held up a white bead, about 2 inches in diameter and about 6 inches long.  It was shaped like a tube.  "That one is made of stone....I forget what kind.  I got it from an African vendor at the State Fair last year." Rose-ann shared.  "Are all of these packets filled with beads?" asked Karen.  "Yes", answered Rose-ann,  "And all of them are from Africa!  I thought you could use them for your jewelry-making."
          Karen made jewelry out of beads that she collected from around the world.  Many of the women in the Book Woman Book Club bought and wore Karen's jewelry.  She was a good designer and had earned quite a reputation for her jewelry.  All of the women in the Book Woman Club agreed that Karen should leave Syracuse and go to a bigger city; L.A. or New York City.  They felt that Karen's talent was bigger than the opportunities little old backwards Syracuse had to offer, and that she would make it "big" if she were in a more progressive market.
          "Well! I don't know what to say!  This is so generous of you!  Thank you, Rose-ann!"  Karen reached over and gave Rose-ann a big hug!  "Now, I'll only accept these if you let me design a necklace for you."   "No, no Karen!"  Rose-ann waved her hand in the air.  "That's not necessary! I have so many beads, and I wanted to share them with you!  I am just so glad that you were able to host this weeks' meeting.  It's the least I could do, you know, with my house still under renovation.  I can't wait to see what you design!"  "Well - thank you again!  So... Rose-ann.  Tell me about these "renovations" that have been going on and on!  What going in that house of yours?  Can I come over and see your works in progress?"  Karen moved her chair closer to Karen's and leaned in, curious as to what Rose-ann would say.
          Rose-ann sat up straighter as Karen leaned close, and she began to stamper.  "W-W-Well, uh, I, uh...I'm remodeling the kitchen right now.  Put-t-tin' in new plumbing, sinks, cabinets, floors....y-y-you, uh, know.  So I couldn't cook...and you know, there's this dust - yeah, this dust floating around everywhere, I mean....you wouldn't be able to breath...you know....!"  Rose-ann was completely flustered, nervously wringing her hands and breaking out in a sweat!  Karen was about to move in for "the kill"; ready to share her suspicion that Rose-ann wasn't renovating and about to ask what really was going on, when the door-bell rang.  "I'll get it!", Rose-ann shouted, and ran for the front door!  "Wow!", thought Karen.  "What is going on here?"  Karen got up from her seat just as Rose-ann loudly announced the arrival of Erica.  "Another one with secrets", thought Karen.  "Humph!"  The doorbell rang again.  "I got it!" Rose-ann again shouted.  "It's Alsha!"  Karen wrapped each bead in their tissue paper packets and put them back in the shopping bag.  "This is a really beautiful bribe!", she thought.  "I wander what Rose-ann is hiding?"  Karen headed for the living-room.  "Let the games begin!" she muttered to herself!

The Founding of the Book Woman Club

So a couple of people have asked me, "What is this Book Woman Club"?  The Book Woman Club started in 2005.  I sew cloth book marks and hand-write stories on the back of them. These bookmarks carry the stories of women that are a part of the Book Woman Club and they meet in my imagination!  The Club has some regular on-going members....woman that I created; earthy, book loving, and adventurous!  Some are artists, some have beautiful souls, some have dark pasts, some are a little crazy, some are intellectuals, some have no sense at all!  All of the regulars are little bits of me!  (You that know me, know that I am a true Gemini - many personalities and a little bit crazy!)  And so the stories of these regular on-going members have lively, adventurous tales to tell, and like me, they just love to read!  They share their lives, their personalities, their secrets, their dreams, their troubles and their joys.  Since 2005, I have sold probably 250 bookmarks and have recorded the fragments of these on-going stories in a log. It is from this log that I share the stories of the Book Woman Club on this blog!

Besides the women that come from my imagination, there are real woman who have been added to the club by a friend or by a loved one.  At every festival, I have blank Book Woman Club Bookmarks.  Women give me the outline of a real woman's life that they want to honor, and they go and shop.  When they come back, I have used the information from my interview with them, (combined with my imagination), to create a custom story.  The purchaser has the option of adding that women to the Book Woman.

The "Bessie Davis Hudson" is based on a real woman...a life shared with me at the New York State Fair by her daughter.  Mrs. Hudson's daughter was brought out to the Fair by a friend who had bought a Book Woman Club Bookmark from me at the Syracuse Peace Council Arts and Crafts Festival.  Mrs. Hudson's daughter and I, along with her friend, ended up taking over a tram station and closing it down for two hours, while Mrs Hudson's daughter told me about her mother.  Mrs. Hudson had died when her daughter was 12 years old.  The pain of that loss stood with us in the tram stop as fresh as the day that Mrs. Hudson had passed.

The story told to me that day was powerful.  Mrs. Hudson was a remarkable woman, filled with love for her family.  But - the story was too long for a small fragment on a bookmark.  So I made the daughter a quilt, her mother's hand reaching down from heaven holding a heart - holding her love and her pride at the woman that Mrs. Hudson's daughter had become.  I wrote a story about Bessie Davis Hudson on that quilt, taking the two hour story told to me that day at the State Fair and weaving it into a tribute to this mother.  I had the honor of telling the story to Mrs. Hudson's daughter in her home and in the presence of one of her sons.  And yes, Mrs. Hudson's daughter got her Book Woman Club Bookmark, a story fragment written on the back, and a promise to honor Bessie Davis Hudson as an ongoing member of the Book Woman Book Club.  She has become the club's founding member, where she lives everyday in my imagination and now - in yours!