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Crossing Borders
Volume 8, Number 2 - Spring 2010
Trying to Render a Moral Universe in Short Fiction
by Anndee Hochman
For nearly a decade, I’ve been leading People & Stories groups in Philadelphia. I’ve read, discussed, wondered about, argued with and marveled at the words of Alice Walker and Raymond Carver, Kate Chopin and Gary Soto. Stories I thought I knew well took on surprising dimensions as the residents of Interim House—a recovery program for women who have abused drugs or alcohol—wove their own voices and questions with the text.
But I had never put my own words on the block.
As guest writer at the Bo Robinson Education and Treatment Center in Trenton, I’d already attended one session of a People & Stories group facilitated by Stephanie Hanzel Cohen; about twenty men and three Crossing Borders volunteers discussed Milly Jafta’s “The Home-Coming,” the story of a mother who must leave her own children in order to support them by caring for another family; after forty years away, she returns to her village.
I was impressed with the men’s insights about the gravity of this final trip. “It was the end of something—maybe the end of hard times. She was coming back to her home,” said Andre, and another man offered explanation for why the mother remains on the bus until all other passengers have gotten off: “She’s savoring the moment, the final hurrah.”
It was easy for me to join in the discussion of another writer’s work, taking note of metaphors, adding my thoughts about the mother’s struggle to “mark time” while away from home and wondering how the daughter must feel about this reunion with a mother she barely knows.
When the daughter first greets her mother, she offers “an unemotive kiss,” and the two share an awkward silence. But as they journey down a dusty path, parcels balanced on their heads, the daughter stops to ask if she is walking too fast, then invites her mother to walk ahead and set the pace.
“At the end, it was like a blossoming of her spirit. She was going home to her family,” said Dennis. “She had low self-esteem about not being with her kids,” Juan observed. “But when her daughter blessed her with kindness, that motivated her.”
One man said the scene reminded him of when Nelson Mandela was released from prison; another said it made him think of the moment in The Color Purple “when Celie got reunited with her children.” “[The daughter] is saying to her mother, ‘I’m going to let you do your thing. You’re home Andre concluded.' "
The following week, my voice faltered a little as I began to read “Do Not Attempt to Climb Out,” a piece from my collection, Anatomies: A Novella and Stories. The protagonist is an African-American man in his late 40s, a janitor in a sleek downtown high-rise; would the men find his voice authentic or contrived? Would my language be evocative or mere window-dressing? Could the story stand up under their scrutiny?
As I read, though, I eased into the voice of Omar, a character who had arrived in my consciousness fully formed; as a nighttime cleaner in the office tower, he longs for a glimpse of the city from the 35th floor. Entering the elevator is a risk, as well as a violation of his contract, which stipulates that he “never needed to leave the ground.” Midway up, the elevator stops, trapping Omar with his thoughts, memories and anxieties for the duration of the story.
For Dimichre, the elevator trip was a metaphor: “I think it was about life, his life. He wanted to see the skyline on the 35th floor.” That skyline, he and others said, represented wealth and power, the “big-picture” view that influence can buy.
“[Omar] wanted to see something other than his own existence. He wanted to be in their world. A lot of us do that; we want to step into someone else’s reality. He wanted to get a glimpse.”
For some of the men, that yearning was a flaw. Kenny said Omar was—figuratively and literally—trying to rise above his station. “He has no reason to go to another level. When you go off-key, you get in trouble.” Vance extended that idea: “He got stuck in places where he didn’t need to be.”
“There’s so much in this story about moving or not moving,” observed Margaret Griffin, one of the Crossing Borders volunteers. “Sometimes you become paralyzed for a while; then you start moving again.”
The story was a metaphor, but its resonance was real: these readers had been incarcerated and knew what it was like to be “stuck.” They had spun their own narratives about what led to that dead end and what it might take to climb out.
“Sometimes we don’t think about our real-life problems until we’re stuck,” said Vance. “Here, you hear people talk about their families a lot; it takes being stuck to even reflect or grieve.”
“I’ve been incarcerated,” said Javier. “And I’ve been thinking about the choices I’ve made in my life.”
While trapped in the elevator, Omar does the same. He reminisces about his deceased parents—a God-fearing, church-going mother and a gambling, alcoholic father—along with his faithful sister Sissy, who comes by each Sunday morning to ask if Omar “will be greetin’ the Lord” with her, and about the likelihood that God will help him out of this particular mess.
He ponders the sign posted on the elevator wall: “Help Will Arrive Soon. Do Not Attempt to Climb Out.” Is that a promise, or a warning? The men read it, and the story itself, in multiple ways: for some, the piece was a parable about the necessity of knowing one’s place and staying in it; for some, it was a call to faith; for others, Omar’s ill-fated ride was a story of transformation, the elevator trip a period of “stuckness” that prompted change.
The story, like so many we read in People & Stories, has an ambiguous ending: “The elevator floated for one sickening second between nothing and nowhere, and then it began to move, though Omar could not tell whether he was sinking or rising."
“I think he appreciates his situation a little better,” said Juan.
“I think he’s going to try to go back up,” said Vance.
“I think he’ll find a better way of grieving,” said Javier. “I lost my mom eleven years ago and my dad two years ago. I know what he’s feeling. I’m stuck, too. I think Omar’s going to take life more seriously.”
For ninety minutes, a group of readers had taken my words seriously and reminded me of literature’s power—not only the power to stir emotion and forge connection, but the power to create a moral universe, one in which characters can strive to do good or endeavor to destroy themselves and others. The characters may not be conscious of their motives and their impact, but the writer must be; that’s the responsibility that comes with the privilege of inventing fiction.
I didn’t set out, in writing “Do Not Attempt to Climb Out,” to create a “good” character or a “bad” one, but simply a human one, a man muddling through a life that yields plenty of ambiguity but few clear answers. I was honored that the men of Bo Robinson found Omar human enough to remind them of themselves and their own unfinished lives.