While A is away, the blog continues to play. Please welcome Andra Watkins of The Accidental Cootchie Mama.
A: This is all about Katie, isn’t it?
D: What is?
A: How horrid you’re being. You’re put out because she’s not here, and you have to deal with me, and I’m a pathetic substitute.
D: I morph to suit the characters in your head, Andra. This isn’t about Katie. It’s about you.
A: I don’t have any characters in my head. I am sick of writing. Sick of it. And, I am especially sick of you.
D: I’ve only been in your head for a year. I’m just now letting you get to know me.
A: And, I don’t want to know anymore. I don’t know what to do with your craven wishes. Your faulty desires. Why do you have to be so dark?
D: If you’d just let me have her, I’d go away.
A: YOU CAN’T HAVE HER! She’s not even ten years old. Grown men do not have little girls. This is not Kentucky in the early 1800s.
D: Don’t lecture me about the 1800s. I was there, remember?
A: Sigh. Yes. I know you were there. But now you’re here, and you cannot marry a ten-year-old-girl.
D: She. Is. My. WIFE!
A: Oh, don’t start with the hyper-punctuation and delusional melodrama. I think it’s your silly dramatics that agents keep rejecting. I have yet to nail your character, but I know Em isn’t your dead wife. That’s not how things work.
D: How do you know, Andra? Have you ever died? Like me?
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Bertie blew me a kiss and left me in Mommy’s office. I crawled into her cushiony chair and made it spin like the merry-go-round at school by pushing off the front of the desk with my hands. If I spun fast enough, maybe I could disappear.
When I started getting dizzy, I sat still and looked at the things spread out on top of her desk. It was a roll top, almost always closed when I came in there. I picked up a black book with “Appointments” on the front and slipped Mommy’s big silver ring with the blue Indian stone on my finger.
And that was when I saw Mommy’s special cards.
My mommy liked to play rounds of cards with some of her men. Two nights a week, she’d set up tables in her parlor, get several of her ladies, and play her games. Aunt Bertie always put me to bed early, those nights. She had to play, too. Mommy’s rules.
Mommy had different rules for me. Sometimes, Mommy or Aunt Bertie played Go Fish with me, or Old Maid. Mommy even let me yell when I told her to go fish. I got so excited when I was winning. Like it was my one-and-only way to beat her. She’d smile and draw her card and tell me to never forget what it felt like to be the underdog. Acting like the underdog would get me far in life.
I didn’t understand, but this was Mommy; she didn’t explain.
One time, I snuck down to her office. Late. I knew she played cards with grown men different from the way she played with me. But, everybody was shut up in the bedrooms by then, playing cards of a different kind, I guess.
Anyway.
That night, I was looking for a deck of cards to play solitaire. I played for hours, sometimes, but Mommy didn’t let me keep cards in my bedroom.
I opened her desk drawer, and I found a deck in a pretty ceramic box with jewels glued on top. When I turned them over, every card had pictures of me on one side with scribblings and notes on the number sides. I was younger in the picture, but I remembered posing for it. Mommy made a big deal out of how I looked that day. I stacked the cards and hid them under my pillow in my room.
The next morning, I found Aunt Bertie in the kitchen. I spread the cards out on the table and asked her why she and Mommy played with cards that had pictures of me.
She scooped them into her hands and stacked them back together, really neat. “Child, don’t be asking me about these cards again. Ever. I mean what I’m saying. Lawsy mercy. I need a cocktail to go.” Her hands shook when she left me to take them back to Mommy’s desk and put them back just like I found them.
I never saw those cards again until the day I tore my dress at the zoo. They were magnets I had to pick up and shuffle, more worn around the edges than last time. One by one, I turned them over and read the numbers and words on the backs. Mr Devereaux $100K. Mr Carnell $475K. The Sugar Daddy $500K. The last one had red stars around my face and the words “the winner” written in cursive. When I tilted the chair closer, I almost fell on the floor.
“Emmaline Cagney. Whatever are you doing, pilfering through my private things?”
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About Andra Watkins
I am a recovering CPA. A product of thirteen years of parochial school. A former abused spouse. An awesome aunt, but never a mother. I wonder whether I will ever be able to call myself a writer, but I am content as the wife of the lover of my soul.
I am The Accidental Cootchie Mama, because my blog reveals more than I ever intended.
The D/A Dialogues 
Lawdy Mama, what DID I walk into?!
I was expecting a sweetly humorous read!
Now it’s like I need a drink after eking up screaming!
I like it
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Fantastic yarn, though dark…beautifully written as always, Andra.
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You are handling a very difficult story with great delicacy. It is horrifying and repulsive to think of what may happen/is going to happen to this little girl, but you write in such a way that I’m compelled to read more.
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I hope you will read more when the time comes. 🙂 Thank you.
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Yes, I want to read more. I really do!
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Gripping!
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In a sickening kind of way…….
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Wow, Andra! I am speechless. But, I want more! I need to know more. I will be thinking about this all night. I hope it’s the very near future that we get to experience the full tale. 🙂
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I wish I could send your comment to the agent who just rejected me……who kept it so long because there was something about this story that stuck with het, but in the end, it just did not grab her enough.
One way or another, you will read the whole thing.
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Wowa, I’m sure to remember this story the next time I play a game of cards!
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Hopefully, your stakes won’t be so high…….
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I certainly understand why Mr. Abell was second guessing himself — I read this and had to scratch my head, and think “She can’t be suggesting what I think she’s suggesting, is she?” At the very least we have a mother prostituting herself, and if I’m reading the very worst into this, I shudder with revulsion. You continue to surprise me, darling! And if this is related to those other tales you wrote a couple of months ago (and it seems to me like it certainly could be) may I just say that the narrative on this story is much crisper and less stream-of-consciousness — if it’s not too disturbing to visit this headspace, I’d say you have a bigger tale to tell her, and I for one would read with rapt attention.
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This is an excerpt from my novel. I am currently awaiting the final agent’s horror at how to sell something like this so that I can move on and implement my sell-it-myself strategy. So, one way or another, you will be able to read with rapt attention at some point in the near future.
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(so is it or isn’t it related to those shorts from a while back?)
I look forward to it, and wish you success in your solicitation.
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It was some voice work for a different book, but the character appears in both.
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Very good, I hope theres chance to read more someday.
oh, Mr Carnell, you were soooo close… hehehe.
hey Mr D, no touch!
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You will be able to read more, one way or another.
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Revenge. Oh sweet revenge.
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Carnell? Low bidder? Brrrrr. *shiver* I felt the hair raise on the back of my neck…again.
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I thought he would like to be in the book. Heehee.
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Low bidder… harrumph.
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That was the creepiest story I think I’ve ever read. Andra Watkins, do you write nice things to your mother with those hands???
I remember reading your earlier offerings with this character, and that was just a glimpse at darkness (unless I’m mistaken and this is unrelated, in which case, just label me confused and appalled but impressed at how well this is written and how twisted it is.)
I think it takes talent to write something so disturbing without delving into over-the-top exploitation — which is tasteless, whereas all the chills and shudders this story produced came from my imagination filling in the sickening blanks.
I’ve just re-read it, and I hope I haven’t misinterpreted what’s going on.
Please tell me I’m not imagining what I think you’re suggesting. (Can I be any more vague?)
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Well, this comment made my day. Would you like to represent me, Ken?
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HA! I have no head for the business end of things — can’t I just write and then be discovered for my genius? If you get it figured out, let me know.
I see that this is an excerpt from your novel — I think I misunderstood, thinking this was a continuation of those other stories. Well, either way, this was really well done.
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Thanks. I hope your genius is discovered very soon.
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Excellent, Andra – thank you so much. I think you played well with my deviling muse!
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It was daunting. D has such a specific personality.
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He does – and he’s a pain – but you dealt with him beautifully.
I think I’ve learned more about D in letting other people play with him than I did in the whole 13 years I carted him around in my brain! It helps as I barrel into the last quarter of book 1 (finished part 3 at the stroke of midnight!).
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Intriguing story! Nicely done. And, who know hyperpunctuation started in the 1800’s?!
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The rules for both spelling and punctuation were more fluid then, but this character has been around a long time.
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Um excuse me?!?!
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Hee hee.
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Reblogged this on The Accidental Cootchie Mama and commented:
Katie Sullivan of the D/A Dialogues invited me to write a guest post for her blog while she is away. It is always a challenge to play with someone else’s muse. Please head over to her blog and check out my effort.
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