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There is only one rule for writing memoir: You have to be honest. There are no templates, no blueprints, no other instructions. Unfortunately, this doesn't make it any easier. Here we will discuss with each other the difficult but exhilarating process of writing memoir—the worries we have, the obstacles we face, both real and imagined, and the pleasures of digging deep to find the story. There will be new assignments every month to jog memories loose, and to help banish self-consciousness, the scourge of all writers. I hope we will discover that the process of writing memoir is as valuable and important as the finished thing because of what we learn along the way. I hope we will share our concerns and our work with each other.
I will jump in and out of the discussions at least once a month. Given my limited availability online, I'm not always able to respond to personal messages. But I look forward to interacting with you all in this creative workshop of ours. Start writing.
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Still: Like the Serrano
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onewomanink said:
on October 24, 2009 02:21 PM ET
edited on October 24, 2009 02:23 PM ET Still: Like the Serrano Coyotes.
A cunning species that seems to live forever.
I’ve encountered coyotes.
And, like all good coyote encounters, this one begins in bed.
One summer, a few years before I married Marty, we drove up to a rental cabin at Big Bear Lake in the southern California mountains. It was on a Friday. It was for a quick weekend of much-needed rest, fishing, and multiple orgasms. It started out like all romantic weekends should, a bottle of champagne and a bag of chocolate chip cookies. We toured the cabin and dropped our overnight bags in the master bedroom. On the balcony railing, two robins perched…and kissed, while snuggling together under the brisk evening breeze. The night was as passionate as any we’d ever had. Though, back in L.A., we’d never thrown our clothes off so quickly that they landed in a blazing fireplace. The frenzy of which caused the two-story log structure to quickly fill with sooty smoke, charred carpeting, charred mantle, and the charred living room décor of a perfect stranger’s home. That night it was quite literally, breathtaking, as we smoldered in each other’s arms.
When we woke the next morning, we called from our bed to hire a professional cleaning company, so we could spend some time out on the calm water of the man-made lake that hung high in the mountains around us; mountains that belonged to the Serrano Indians and their ancestors for over 2,500 years. The name Serrano translated to “people of the mountains” or “people of the pines.” I too, felt like I was a person of the mountains, and year after year I made as many trips as possible to these same mountains. Serrano’s were delicate people who traded baskets and Tizon pottery for centuries, while honoring the great grizzly bear that walked among them with great respect. The Serrano regarded bears as their own grandfathers and never ate their meat or wore their fur, even in the worst of winter conditions. Then, white men came. They came to the pine place, or Yahaviat. They ate the meat of these bear grandfathers and danced around the carcasses in their new fur coats. They ground the mountains down to reach gold nugget. They brought missionaries to replace the Serrano culture with Christianity. Finally, they dammed up the rivers to create a lake large enough to fuel the white man’s economy.
For Marty and I, there were two good reasons to be on that lake: to fish for our dinner, and, if you laid back in your boat just enough to where the sun made you squint, then listened and looked at the same time, you could feel it. There, deep in the pines just over the rocks along the north shore. In the shadows, behind the fallen feathers, the pinecones, the lurking coyotes, the spirit of the Serrano drummed a wailing cadence that whispered, my water, my water, my water. We trembled from our connection to this right piece of history.
That night we played it safe: no fire. We spent the evening in bed doing what we enjoyed most, followed by a shower together and our second love, crosswords. Marty liked to trace my body with his fingers, telling me that my curves were more sacred than even the Grand Canyon. Neither of us fell asleep until dawn, and it wasn’t long before I had to pee. I rolled out of bed—my eyes swollen shut from too little sleep and too much Rosé—and stumbled to the small bathroom downstairs. While sitting on the toilet rubbing the bulky tiredness from my face, an unsettling awareness came over me; the room had turned red—bright red. Not just the white wallpaper, but the white sink, white tub, white-framed silver mirror, and parts of the yellow hand towels were streaked with blood.
I blinked, like people always do in times like this. Like when you see a car smack into the neighbor boy riding his bike out on the street and he goes flying through the air like a rag doll, or when you hear an explosion in the sky and see a Boeing 757 break into a fiery ball not five miles away. I looked at my body, feeling the unwanted red warmth at the same time I saw it. It was like I’d severed an artery. Actually, it was like a frenzied crime scene of some lunatic murderer. It was not like our frenzied love-making just two nights before.
I screamed. I cried out, “Marty, help me, please!”
He must’ve taken the stairs three at a time because he was at the door before I finished my cry. He blinked, twice, in slow motion, when he saw me. It seemed like he was praying to god as he took in the blood, my crumpled body on the bathroom floor.
Marty ran to call 911. They must’ve said it’d be faster for us to drive down the mountain, because he scooped me up and carried me to our car. I was getting woozy. Marty took the road’s curves as well as anyone in a panic: fast, wide, and carelessly. I didn’t care.
The local doctor guessed that it was an ectopic or tubal pregnancy, which I knew was ridiculous. The nurse started a blood transfusion.
I explained to the doctor in private, as Marty filled out forms in the lobby, that I’d just been through two abortions in the past few weeks—all related to one pregnancy; a pregnancy from one rape; one rape by a psychotic attacker, my boss at work.
In my half-dead consciousness, I pleaded, “Everything I tell you…this information is between me and you… do you understand that?” I told him what he needed to know. The mountain doctor seemed to care because he held my hand tightly.
“The first abortion was at Planned Parenthood; it was a vacuum abortion,” I said. “Keeping it a secret from my parents was...I knew they’d kill me if they found out; they’d blame me for it. Well, I heard Planned Parenthood does a good job, later, I found out they base abortions on grams; they take out a certain amount of grams.” I was getting weaker by the second. I struggled, “In my case, I must’ve been pregnant with twins or something, ‘cuz their standard 13.6 grams just wasn’t enough! My boobs were still sore two weeks later, so I went back in for a second vacuuming.”
He winced.
I went on as best I could. “They said it was dangerous, until I insisted, ‘Don’t you stand behind your work?’ So, they sucked out a few more grams, but…I was still pregnant!”
Then the doctor called my regular gynecologist in Encino, Dr. Trieger, and told him what he thought was wrong with me. I guess in some effort to stop a nervous breakdown he knew would come if my mother ever found out, Dr. Trieger offered a free “D&C” for me when I got back home, to scrape out my uterus, removing any remnant of the third guy to attack me that way.
I never talked about the vagrant who raped me at the park by my house when I was twelve, or the teenager who slammed me against the jagged rocks of Point Dumé at Zuma beach when I was fifteen. Both attacked me, it seemed, to take something away from me they could keep, and neither cared about the void that remained. I asked Dr. Trieger to tell this other doctor why it couldn’t be a tubal pregnancy. Marty and I went back to the cabin that afternoon with the doctor’s prescription for bed rest. I slept through the night and into Sunday. No new bleeding. I felt well enough for a walk that afternoon and asked Marty to pull together some picnic supplies. We drove to my favorite spot in the forest. We both needed some quiet time alone. Ever since I was small I’d felt an odd connection to the tall pines and winding trails of this mountain. I came to know them well through the years. I often visited the mountain alone, parked in my car, and slept alongside whatever clearing or pond I happened upon. The history of the ancient Takic peoples, which included the Serrano, spoke to me in every gust of wind. I responded, hoping they could hear me, and know I cared. Marty had never been to Big Bear, so he followed my directions heading off into the woods. We went a quarter mile. I found my “marker” tree, designating a turn right toward the last part of the trail, and to a secret clearing, where I took Marty for our picnic. I was exhausted and dropped down like a sand bag after he set out a thick, Mexican blanket. I was probably anemic. Marty leaned back against a boulder and I leaned against his sturdy chest. We kissed and breathed the cool afternoon breeze.
Then, it happened.
A familiar warmth spread under my legs like spilt paint and I almost jumped out of Marty’s arms. Marty pushed me back down hard. He saw them way before I did. Over our right shoulders, about thirty feet away, a growling pack of coyotes stood with sinister, expectant looks on their faces. They’d smelled me, even before I bled. An interesting dilemma. A human spewing her last few pints of blood—a soup course—for coyotes intending to eat her as their entrée. Marty’s instincts made him pull a knife from his boot and try to frighten them away. He told me to run, which I did for about a half-minute. Marty was braver. He hoisted all one hundred ten pounds of me over his right shoulder and took off running, just as several powerful coyotes gave chase, challenging the knife in his left hand. He kept running. Growling followed for quite some time. Marty ran so far he missed my marker tree by over a mile. That’s what I discovered when I opened my upside-down eyes.
The coyotes had long since given up. I made him put me down. It was dark.
We eventually got back to the marker tree, my feet dragging like a marionette without strings, and then made our way to the car. I’m glad Marty remembered the way to the hospital from there, because I passed out as I hit the passenger seat.
We spent the night in the emergency room. A room so unlike the Serrano’s homes, which were circular like the earth and most of nature, with a warm fire pit in their center. Instead, though covered with many heated blankets, I shivered until morning in a room constructed of cold plastic and colder metal.
Marty and I were changed: my blood intruded, taking something special away from us that weekend. In a way, I knew myself better. In a way, I understood more clearly the Serrano‘s devastation that forever altered the landscape of their lives; in some way similar to devastation that forever altered the landscape of my life with Marty.
I spent the next three months bleeding like a fire hose. I soon learned I was a hemophiliac, but I never was “still” pregnant.
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This is superior writing. You wrote about sensitive subjects with class and integrity. You have the uncanny ability to captivate your readers. You just gripped me and would not let go- and than I read it again. Thank you for sharing.
Reply to Post
I was mesmerized by your posting. Thank you for sharing such beautiful writing.
This is very strong writing. Underneath the difficult and painful story is some beautiful description and admirable scene-writing. Well done, and thank you for trusting us with your memory.
that was profoundly moving OneWoman--an amazing tale of love and loss and survival. Welcome to the group.
As I read your story, after the small Coyote intro, I began to read faster and faster as your story unfolded. I stopped and moved the cursor up, to begin again. I knew this was a story I wanted to read carefully.
When I finished, I knew I had read a masterful posting. Your treatment of Indian Lore and the animals was a a grand asset. Also the inclusion of Marty and real heroism.
Thanks for sharing your tale with us,
BrendanBrat/Eileen
Once I started, I couldn't stop reading. Very compelling. Your words made me see and FEEL what was happening,
Vikki
I like your style of writing. Your love of Native American culture & nature is palpatable. The sharing of such traumatic events in your life in such an even keeled way softens the blow for the reader, as I can only hope time has soften it for you. Thank you for sharing your story with the rest of us.
