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Monday mornings at Pratt: Relief Printmaking

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Work being made #2

Fiction Writing, Exercise #1

Write a first sentence that is striking and to the point. Then write a second sentence, and a third. Write until you have about 1,5 page of fiction.

UNBOXING

“What you do next is up to you.” Marina had stacked the plastic boxes in the corner to make room on the kitchen counter. I noticed right away when I walked into the room, but Marina is set on not hearing me complain about it. She started nagging at me about them as soon as I walked in, a few minutes ago. There’s too many, too little room for her cooking, taking up too much space in our small apartment, it’s just sitting there, in her face, without purpose – nothing new there, we’ve been over this. I really don’t like it when my boxes are stacked. It’s hard to see what’s in there, and I like to know what I’ve got. Now I can’t see at all. But I won’t complain, I’m not wasting any breathe. Marina sighs and turns her back towards me, emptying the milk carton in the sink, waving the pungent smell away with her other hand.

“You need to do something. This has to change.”

I haven’t decided what I will do and that annoys her. I can tell by the drift in her movements, the force with which she squeezes the carton. She knows me well enough to know that I am not planning on making any decision anytime soon. Stalling has been working so far.

She keeps screwing the cap on and off the carton, resting her eyes on me. If you’d ask her, there isn’t much to consider, the options she is handing me are just hypothetical. It annoys her I’m not solving this seemingly easy problem for her. But today she seems especially uneasy. She keeps looking to the boxes and back. I want to unstack them but I won’t in front of her, how am I supposed to enjoy myself with her probing eyes? If she would only leave me alone, and stop moving around my boxes.

Marina tosses the empty carton to the ground and plants her foot in the middle of it with a resolute stump, catapulting the cap that she apparently screwed half back on from the kitchen to the hallway. My neck turns to see where the pill lands. Marina paces towards it. I walk faster. I grab the piece of plastic, put it in my pocket and walk to the front door. I’ll sort it later.

“Dominique! Dominique!” She shouts my name twice when I close the door, then cries for it one more time while I descent the stairs, or more than once, but her trembling voice is leaving me. I like walking slow, exploring the ground surrounding my footsteps, but I can walk really fast too. If I had anywhere to go, I would get there record-breakingly fast right now. If I had anywhere to go and anything to do but to sort my boxes.

It is very unattractive for a woman to try to change things, people. I bet you she has some remarks about me too. The truth is that this isn’t a difficult decision to make. It’s less of a problem to me than it is to Marina. In fact, it is not going to be my decision to make at all. Marina knows it, she’s surely realizing that the one who is stalling is her, I bet that’s why she got so nervous this time around.

I don’t want to wander too far from home. Maybe Marina will leave the house to look for me and when she does I can sneak back in. I’ll just hide around the corner for a bit, walk in circles, do some mental cataloging. I wish I had a rarer cap in my pocket, but I’m happy to at least have one here with me. The plastic ones used for disposables – water bottles, milk cartons, apple juice – are usually pretty plain, At least the juice’s caps are green, different shades of green depending on the brand. I currently own 21 different shades, though some owe their peculiar color to exposure to the sun. Delis and evening shops usually have the right suppliers for these treasurable finds.

I twirl and roll the plastic cap between fingers, from thumb and forefinger to forefinger and middle finger, walking along the walls of the square in front of our apartment building. My favorites are crown corks with a special design on the inside, a hidden gem, I see the designer sit there in his attic turned office, allowing himself some fun in his work. They are also a larger challenge to preservers: which side of the cap do you showcase? I consider myself a profound decision maker. Parents who can’t point out one child as their favorite are liars: choosing between two things is almost never impossible. It can be painful to admit, but never hard to decide. I squat in the corner of the square, across from the dumpsters. I usually like to frisk through the garbage. I always find some good stuff. What the heck, I like it now too; what I don’t like is letting Marina get to my head. One of the containers is chock-full, with two bags of trash leaning over the edge. It’s a good pick: just a small cut with a pocket knife and the contents gush out and spread onto the floor in front of you. I like exploring the ground surrounding my feet. One bag on top looks particularly full, not too smelly, not too soft, quite some solid materials I conclude after poking it. I slit it open with my knife. Some carton boxes, some peels, some leftovers from the dinner we had yesterday, and mainly caps, it’s dozens of caps and corns pouring on the ground in front of me.

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