Assignment Week 5
The Five Senses (yet again)
In these forums our concern is not so much the quality of writing but the willingness on your part to be open, honest, and part of a conversation.
So here’s another exercise to challenge you to think in terms of the five senses we discussed last week with concrete details. This particular exercise comes from The

Creative Writing Handbook, edited by John Singleton and Mary Luckhurst.
This exercise also fits into one of subjects this week, the memoir. You’ve read Alice Walker’s Beauty, now it’s time to cast your mind back to your own young self.
Recall yourself and your life at age seven. Now go through the five senses and write a single word or idea for each that brings that time alive again for you. It could

be the taste of a certain candy, or the feel of oil on your hands from your bicycle chain. It doesn’t matter.
Now imagine yourself at fifteen. This time we are interested in bringing forth three things: A piece of clothing you wore, a turn of phrase you used back then (like a

piece of slang or a catchphrase), and a favourite song.
After fulfilling the above questions about these two stages of your life, choose one, and write a brief story of 3pages of words built around the material you have.

Don’t worry about it being as dramatic as Alice Walker’s story. Most importantly your story should be fresh and come quickly, do not worry about it being polished. But

it must be true.
3 pages.

Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self

By Alice Walker
It is a bright summer day in 1947. My father, a fat, funny man with beautiful eyes and a subversive wit, is trying to decide which of his eight children he will take

with him to the county fair. My mother, of course, will not go. She is knocked out from getting most of us ready: I hold my neck stiff against the pressure of her

knuckles as she hastily completes the braiding and the ribboning of my hair.
My father is the driver for the rich old white lady up the road. Her name is Miss Mey. She owns all the land for miles around, as well as the house in which we live.

All I remember about her is that she once offered to pay my mother thirty-five cents for cleaning her house, raking up piles of her magnolia leaves, and washing her

family’s clothes, and that my mother–she of no money, eight children, and a chronic earache– refused it. But I do not think of this in 1947. I am two-and-a-half

years old. I want to go everywhere my daddy goes. I am excited at the prospect of riding in a car. Someone has told me fairs are fun. That there is room in the car for

only three of us doesn’t faze me at all. Whirling happily in my starchy frock, showing off my biscuit-polished patent-leather shoes and lavender socks, tossing my head

in a way that makes my ribbons bounce, I stand, hands on hips, before my father. “Take me, Daddy,” l say with assurance; “I’m the prettiest!”
Later, it does not surprise me to find myself in Miss Mey’s shiny black car, sharing the back seat with the other lucky ones. Does not surprise me that I thoroughly

enjoy the fair. At home that night I tell the unlucky ones all I can remember about the merry-go-round, the man who eats live chickens, and the teddy bears, until they

say: that’s enough, baby Alice. Shut up now, and go to sleep.
It is Easter Sunday, 1950. I am dressed in a green, flocked, scallopedhem dress (handmade by my adoring sister, Ruth) that has its own smooth satin petticoat and tiny

hot-pink roses tucked into each scallop. My shoes, new T-strap patent leather, again highly biscuit-polished. I am six years old and have learned one of the longest

Easter speeches to be heard that day, totally unlike the speech I said when I was two: “Easter lilies / pure and white / blossom in / the morning light.” When I rise

to give my speech I do so on a great wave of love and pride and expectation. People in the church stop rustling their new crinolines. They seem to hold their
breath. I can tell they admire my dress, but it is my spirit, bordering on sassiness (womanishness), they secretly applaud.
“That girl’s a little mess,” they whisper to each other, pleased.
Naturally I say my speech without stammer or pause, unlike those who stutter, stammer, or, worst of all, forget. This is before the word “beautiful” exists in people’s

vocabulary, but “Oh, isn’t she the cutest thing!” frequently floats my way. “And got so much sense!” they gratefully add . . . for which thoughtful addition I thank

them to this day.
It was great fun being cute. But then, one day, it ended.
I am eight years old and a tomboy. I have a cowboy hat, cowboy hoots, checkered shirt and pants, all red. My playmates are my brothers, two and four years older than

I. Their colors are black and green, the only difference in the way we are dressed. On Saturday nights we all go to the picture show, even my mother; Westerns are her

favorite kind of movie. Back home, “on the ranch,” we pretend we are Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Lash LaRue (we’ve even named one of our dogs Lash LaRue); we chase each

other for hours rustling cattle, being outlaws, delivering damsels from distress. Then my parents decide to buy my brothers guns. These are not “real” guns. They shoot

BBs, copper pellets my brothers say will kill birds. Because I am a girl, I do not get a gun. Instantly I am relegated to the position of Indian. Now there appears a

great distance between us. They shoot and shoot at everything with their new guns. I try to keep up with my bow and arrows.
One day while I am standing on top of our makeshift “garage” –pieces of tin nailed across some poles–holding my bow and arrow and looking out toward the fields, I

feel an incredible blow in my right eye. I look down just in time to see my brother lower his gun.
Both brothers rush to my side. My eye stings, and I cover it with my hand. “If you tell,” they say, “we will get a whipping. You don’t want that to happen, do you?” I

do not. “Here is a piece of wire,” says the older brother, picking it up from the roof; “say you stepped on one end of it and the other flew up and hit you.” The pain

is beginning to start. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I will say that is what happened.” If I do not say this is what happened, I know my brothers will find ways to make me wish

I had. But now I will say anything that gets me to my mother.
Confronted by our parents we stick to the lie agreed upon. They place me on a bench on the porch and I close my left eye while they examine the right. There is a
tree growing from underneath the porch that climbs past the railing to the roof. It is the last thing my right eye sees. I watch as its trunk, its branches, and then

its leaves are blotted out by the rising blood.

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