Mariah Young tells how moments turn into story
Mariah K. Young received the
James D. Houston Award in 2012 for Masha'allah and Other Stories, honoring
books by writers whose voices reflect humane values and a thoughtful literary
exploration of California, Hawai'i, and the West. Young is also the recipient
of the RV Williams prize for fiction. Born in San Leandro, California, she
spent her childhood living in the Bay Area and in Lahaina, Hawai`i. She is a
graduate of California State University, East Bay, and UC Riverside. Her book Masha’allah
and
Other Stories is available in stores and online.
So, over to you Mariah. Please would you tell us something about this award-winning collection.
So, over to you Mariah. Please would you tell us something about this award-winning collection.
Like most writers, I am a thief of moments: many of
the stories in my collection are built around moments or swatches of dialog
which then become the seed of a story. One evening after work, I stopped at the
taco trucks parked in a vacant lot off of International Boulevard. Few linger
once they’ve gotten their plates—the ambiance of the parking lot and traffic
from the thoroughfare don’t encourage people to stay long. It was sunset but
still warm, so I took my torta and sat at the outdoor benches, where others
were eating and talking, coming and going. There was an older man at the end of
the table; he had an empty paper plate in front of him and he asked me for the time.
We started talking about the food or the weather or something just as
inconsequential. After a while we were the only ones on the bench with clean
plates. He asked me again for the time, and I told him it was time to go home,
that he should too—“why’re you hanging around here,” I asked. It was fall and the
air was crisp with no sun to warm it. He pointed with his chin toward the
payphones on the corner. “I’m waiting for 8 o’clock. That’s when I call my
wife,” he said. She was back home (he didn’t say where) and they set up these
calls to each other, sometimes weeks in advance. He smiled as he said it,
pausing as he searched for the phrase in English—“It’s our special time.” We
threw away our plates and said our goodbyes; he had another hour of waiting. As
I drove home, I thought about that man—I never caught his name—and imagined him
waiting, killing time to meet the hour when he could call his beloved back
home, wherever home was, and how that moment of hearing someone’s voice could
be so treasured because of the waiting, the anticipation. But then I wondered: what
if no one picked up? That scenario sprouted into this story, where that phone
call was made and went unanswered.
One
Space (excerpt)
You walk to the market on
Thirty-fifth Avenue because it has pay phones in their back lot, away from the
sounds of traffic and people moving about the city. The last clock you saw said
it was 5:52, and long enough has passed so that time must be crowding into six,
if not already there. You imagine Eldie sitting in one of the plastic chairs
outside the shop. You see her in jeans and a red shirt, her black hair
down—this is always how you imagine her, out in the world anyway. That’s what
she wore when you first took her out; you watched an American movie about
aliens with no subtitles, and the two of you made up the dialog at the more
exciting parts and spent the slower screen time kissing.
You fish out your phone card and
dial the numbers, key in your pin, and enter the market number. It rings and
rings and rings.
“Hello?” The voice is coarse,
low. “Speak!”
“Eldie?” You hesitate. The phone
clicks dead. You hang up and try again. The same voice sounds through the
receiver.
“Who is this?”
“Who is this? I’m calling
for Edelmira Sena.” Your voice gets loud.
“Clear the line.” The voice on
the other end is gravelly, grumbling. “I’m waiting for a call.”
“No, I’m on now. My wife—” This
should be much simpler.
“Get off the line. My sister is
about to call.” She hangs up on you again. You imagine a fat woman, old and
sour. Moles on her chin with hairs springing out of them. An old wench with a
mean cane. Probably likes to hit children with it.
You redial. This time, no one
answers. You try again and again until you practically memorize the pattern of
numbers across the grid of one to zero, your fingers crossing each followed by
a jab on the pound sign. You try different strategies. At first you wait a few
minutes and call back. Then you double-check the number and dial it
successively. Each time, the hollow sound of the ringing tone buzzes in the
phone. Finally, the phone clicks back to life. Another voice comes on. It’s a
man’s voice, and you don’t recognize his dialect—something Indian. “Get off the
line!” you shout, but the voice keeps jabbering, and you finally slam the phone
back in its cradle.
At first, you try not to be
angry. This is the number a lot of jornaleros use to call home. Sometimes a row
of people waits to use the phone, waiting for their husband or brother or
sister or son or daughter to call. Scenarios, explanations arrange themselves
in your mind. Eldie stuck in the middle of the phone line, deciding whether to
be polite and wait, or tell the old wench hogging the phone to get off the
line, her husband is about to call. You think of the stretch from your house to
the market, a half hour’s walk through the valley to the paved roads of the
square. The winter rains could be falling, and maybe the road is blocked or too
deep with mud to pass. There, in her red blouse and hair all caught in the
breeze, Eldie on the dirt road that turns to pavement once the beaches are in
view. You try the number one more time, and your heart sinks at that ring,
tinny like a coin clinking against the walls of an empty well. You drop the
receiver and hurry to the street. A block down, the clock over the liquor mart
reads 6:43. You spit—old lady or no, mud or none, she should have been there to
answer.
Now I'm longing to know why she's not there. You certainly pull me into this story, and I love how you describe writers as "thieves of moments." The moment you took at the taco stand is given back here, transformed into story, polished and beautiful. I hope I might be able to convey the moments of people's lives as well in my own writing, and I'm grateful to you for visiting my blog.
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