{"id":2033,"date":"2011-05-18T12:51:06","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T16:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=2033"},"modified":"2011-05-18T12:51:06","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T16:51:06","slug":"excerpt-from-my-novel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/excerpt-from-my-novel-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt from my novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coming soon, in an e-book…<\/h1>\n

<\/h1>\n

Dirt:<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A Story About Gardening, Autism, and Other Messy Business.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Susan Senator<\/p>\n

susan@susansenator.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Part I<\/p>\n

Late February:\u00a0 Frozen Ground<\/p>\n

Chapter 1<\/p>\n

\u201cEye, heeem,\u201d Nick said.\u00a0 He reached up and touched his open eyeball, and blinked at the unexpected jolt of pain. The pain spread, flashing red light everywhere.\u00a0 He could feel the sharpness opening outward and he silently endured it, waiting for it to subside.\u00a0 There were no sounds in his throat right now and he was glad.\u00a0 His noises made Mommy talk to him, and there were always too many words itching deep inside his ears.<\/p>\n

A few moments later, there was only a soft ache behind his lid and he opened his eyes.\u00a0 They were clear again.\u00a0 He looked skyward, and his eyes followed the rays of the sun to where they hit the porch door.\u00a0 He liked the way the sunlight slanted when it went behind a cloud, like an eyelid closing.\u00a0 He closed his eyes and rotated his head until he almost couldn\u2019t see it.\u00a0 The light became a tiny ribbon, shining across the back of his eyes.\u00a0 Happiness coursed through him at the beauty he was seeing.\u00a0 \u201cHeee, light,\u201d he said quietly.\u00a0 Every now and then, his own words appeared to him and he could say them.\u00a0 Letting them out was like bubbles popping, like the ones Dan used to blow. They popped, a tiny sound that he liked; Nick felt he could hear the tiny click each breaking bubble made.\u00a0 Also that was how words came out of his mouth:\u00a0 a sudden, round pop in the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cNick!Whatswrongwithyoureye?\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Mommy, and her line of words flew past his ears, like a sharp, stinging wind.\u00a0 He shut his eyes so that she would stop looking at him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat. Happened. To. Your. Eye.\u201d Mommy said this the right way, with spaces of air between the words.\u00a0 Nick loved air.\u00a0 He liked to squeeze it with his hand, open, shut, open, shut.<\/p>\n

\u201cNick!\u201d<\/p>\n

Mommy was very close now.\u00a0 He could smell her skin, which he loved.\u00a0 It made him want to sleep.\u00a0 He knew she was waiting for him to talk, and his stomach squeezed itself. Then he realized Mommy was saying a lot of words again. \u00a0He felt them rushing up to him like water, and enjoyed the sensation, without trying to break them into words. \u00a0He closed his eyes while she talked, rat-tat-tat like when it rained hard:<\/p>\n

\u201cI know you won\u2019t like this, Honey, but I have to look at your eye to see if it\u2019s okay.\u201d\u00a0 She approached him slowly, and Nick felt her pry open his lid.\u00a0 \u201cIt looks okay, just red,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cYou must have gotten something in it and rubbed it too much.\u00a0 Try not to rub your eyes, Nick.\u201d<\/em> Mommy let out a big gust of air and tilted her head, still looking at him.\u00a0 Her eyes were so big, and he could see that shadow in them.\u00a0 He knew the word for this:\u00a0 \u201csad.\u201d\u00a0 He would never forget that word.\u00a0 He saw it passed over Mommy\u2019s eyes, like the cloud and the sun.\u00a0 He hated that because it always spread into him.<\/p>\n

Once she saw that he was okay, Emmy reached out to give Nick a kiss but then thought better of it.\u00a0 A kiss would feel good to her, but not to him.\u00a0 Nick suffered through kisses and hugs, but never offered them himself.\u00a0 She sighed, breathing extra deeply to suck in the cold air so that it might freeze the flare-up of sadness before it got any worse.\u00a0 She walked through the garden, back inside the house.<\/p>\n

She hadn\u2019t noticed it before, but it looked like a wild animal had been let loose in there.\u00a0 Henry\u2019s junk was strewn everywhere.\u00a0 She started gathering it into a pile for him, so that she could walk more easily through the living room into the kitchen.\u00a0 She found herself staring at a notice that had been stuffed into Henry\u2019 backpack. Henry, although newly fourteen, still did not mind his mother going through his backpack, or cleaning his room; at least she thought he didn\u2019t. Her hand pushed aside a half-pack of Juicy Fruit gum (were they allowed to chew gum in school these days?), a crumbled lunch bag, a rubbed-raw binder with Green Day written in big letters and then \u201csux\u201d in Henry\u2019s handwriting right beneath it. Finally she seized on the usual small pile of flyers and sifted through. An offer for cheap tickets to several performances: Boston Ballet; Flying Karamazov Brothers; Alvin Ailey. She tossed it.<\/p>\n

A torn note, written in smeary gray pencil.\u00a0 Henry\u2019s handwriting.\u00a0 It said, \u201cplay structure — J.\u201d\u00a0 The rest had been ripped away.\u00a0 Emmy suddenly felt a pang; guilty to be going through his stuff, she supposed, because this was obviously personal business of Henry\u2019s.\u00a0 Henry\u2019s secret life.\u00a0 She smiled, thinking of him and his messy head of hair. She was so proud of his emerging independence, achingly proud.\u00a0 She embarrassed him with her overflow of love, she knew that. It was hard to control, hard to get things right with a crabby teenager.<\/p>\n

She put the backpack away, and walked back to the window to watch Nick.\u00a0 He was standing still in the very center of her brown, dead garden.\u00a0 The tendril of sadness unfurled, fully this time. She had thought she was long inured to that kind of pain by now.\u00a0 Nick was fifteen, after all.\u00a0 Why was she still susceptible to sudden waves of grief?<\/p>\n

copyright, May 2011, Susan Senator<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming soon, in an e-book… Dirt: A Story About Gardening, Autism, and Other Messy Business. By Susan Senator susan@susansenator.com Part I Late February:\u00a0 Frozen Ground Chapter 1 \u201cEye, heeem,\u201d Nick said.\u00a0 He reached up and touched his open eyeball, and blinked at the unexpected jolt of pain. The pain spread, flashing red light everywhere.\u00a0 He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-wN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2035,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions\/2035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}