the lemon tree

27Oct09

this is another litttle story that i wrote for my fiction writing class. i have to say, this was a tough process. i knew what i wanted the story to vaguely be about, but the characters kept on taking me elsewhere. but i think we found a good medium
i realized that after writing the other story: Stranger , that i cant really make up stories purely out of thin air. i really have to stay close to home (gosh that was cheesy) when i write stories. i have to incorporate some sort of personal story or character to write…which i guess IS what authors do…but i could never write a story in outerspace. or in the 1800’s. or about fairies and gnomes and whatnots…
i got a b+, which i guess i am happy with. my teacher did stress upon the fact that a’s are kept for the exceptional, and i didnt think that this story was exceptional. but i also saw that a few people around me got b’s…
wellll, because im not an english major, i use it as an excuse to be “dumb” and so getting the same grade as some hoity-toity english major makes me feel pretty good. especially those english majors that ramble on and on and kiss teacher’s buttocks.
dang, all i wanted to was shove my grade in front of his face and yell: Hah! i dont need to pretend that im some intelligent fool to get the same grade as you. i dont need to ramble on and on in class like a pretentious toothpick. muahhhaaaaa 

anyway, one thing that bothered me about this story was how long it took me to write it (it’s 5pages doublespaced)…and i have a 10-15page story due next week and i have NO idea what to write for it …if this story took 1.5weeks, i dont know how im going to write this next story…
/sigh
…i guess we’ll see… 

 

in other news:
I am sick w/ a nasty cold.
my stupid body has been aching for a few days and everything i eat comes straight out of my body like soup. the coughing is bearable though. not the breathing. my nose is so raw from breathing in and out and blowing yucky boogers into scratchy kleenexes…
gahh…i suffer.

but there is one positive result: i have the lowest voice everrr!! it’s so cool

 

 

      The Lemon Tree 

Amy slumped in the passenger’s seat of her father’s old sports car and listened to the vibrations of the rumbling wheels against the dirt road. Beads of sweat collected on the back of her neck as she rolled down the window, only to be hit with the stale summer breeze against her face.
“It’s getting a bit hot in here eh? Let me try and turn on the air conditioning. Cross your fingers that it’ll work today!” Her father chuckled, while pushing the buttons in the car. Amy felt more dry air around her and decided to focus on the scenery outside her window instead, already counting down the minutes of when she would be able to return home.

Once a month, Amy’s parents would take her to Grandmother Nanna’s house for the weekend. During that time, Amy would have to spend all of her time with Nanna because apparently, her parents thought that all that “family quality time” would come in handy one day. Amy hated the idea of having any sort of “quality time” with Nanna because that time was spent raking the backyard, listening to Nanna complain about the neighbor’s dog, or on an especially uneventful weekend―cutting Nanna’s toenails while listening to Nanna talk about her lemon tree. That darn lemon tree.

Amy leaned her face to the window and saw the familiar neighborhood streets that lead up to a steep hill where her Grandmother Nanna’s house resided. They drove up the graveled pavement parking in front of the wired gate in front of her grandmother’s yard.

“You almost hit my lemon tree, Bill,” Nanna screeched. Nanna loved that lemon tree. “You can’t find any store bought lemons as good as these!” Nanna would always say to Amy. Sometimes Amy would catch Nanna talking to the tree as she watered it. Nanna never talked to Amy like she talked to that tree. That darn lemon tree.

“Whoop-sa-daises Margery, this car sure does have a mind of it’s own, eh?”

Nanna scowled, and walked back into the house as she mumbled about how “ridiculous it is to see a grown married man drive a dinky sports car” and that her “lemon tree was worth more than anything he ever had”.

While Amy unpacked her clothes, Nanna began to tell her the story about how she had started out with just a single lemon seed and how much devotion and care she had spent on that tree— a story Amy had to listen to every time she came over. “You kids don’t know a lick about work. I would walk up at five thirty in the morning to pull the snails off of that tree when I was your age. You know, I won three contests with that tree, did I ever tell you about that?” Amy had heard that story, and every other story Nanna had about her lemon tree. That darn lemon tree.


“I’m going to be outside, Nanna,” Amy interrupted. The screen door slammed behind her as she ran towards the neighbor children’s voices outside the house. Amy stopped a few feet away from two sisters. Both children wore matching blue shirts with faded cartoons on them. The girls were tying two pieces of thick rope on the post of the metal gate. “What are you guy’s doing?”

The older girl turned at Amy. Her short hair strands were in tangly bunches and reminded Amy of dead sun-burnt grass on a summer day such as this. Her cheeks were already turning pink against her almost translucent white skin, but that didn’t seem to deter her from standing in the sun. “We’re going to jump-rope,” she replied, turning back to tying. Amy was excited, she truly was good at jump-roping– probably the best person in her class to jump-rope for the longest amount of time with the most amount of tricks. “Amy can do a double-criss-cross-applesauce backwards!” raved her friends at school.

“Oh how fun! I love jump-rope! At my school, my friends and I always playing it during recess time. Can you do a double jump backwards?”Amy rambled. “One time I was trying to do that and—“

“We didn’t say you could play with us,” snapped the girl.


“Yeah, you can’t play,” The younger girl echoed, she looked like a smaller version of her older sister and had snot coming out of one nostril.

A few minutes of awkward silence fell between Amy and the two children, and Amy felt the potential friendship with these girls, wither away. Just when Amy was about leave, the older girl said, “Well, you can play with us, but only if you turn the rope.” Amy hesitated at the idea of turning the rope for someone else, but the thought of spending the rest of the day watching soaps with Nanna didn’t seem any more appetizing. Amy begrudgingly turned the rope, listening to the rhythmic tap of the rope against the girl’s feet. 

“This is getting boring,” the younger girl complained as she wiped the snot from her nose with back of her hand, she wasn’t very good. Her feet would constantly get entangled with the rope, and would get tired easily. Amy was glad to stop turning, the palm of her hands felt raw from gripping the plastic rope. “Fine,” the older sister said. “Let’s go back home and play Monopoly.”

“Can I come too?” Surely they would allow her to come along, she had turned the stupid rope for them for at least twenty minutes.

“Uh…” the older girl looked around, stalling her answer. “Only if you…if you let us pick some lemons off of your tree.” Amy glanced at the tree, she was uneasy at the idea of picking even one fruit off of Nanna’s prized tree.

“I don’t know if Nanna would let us do that.”

“C’mon, only a few lemons. She won’t even be able to tell— there are at least thirty lemons on that tree. If you let us, I’ll let you can get two turns and start first for Monopoly.”

“I guess it should be okay. Nanna is probably watching tv anyway…” Amy’s voice trailed off as she watched the two girls run through the gated fence, scanning the tree up and down, looking for the largest lemons to choose. Even they were more interested in that lemon tree than they were of Amy. That darn lemon tree.

“Isn’t that enough?” Amy asked, the girls had already had at least seven lemons that were as big as her pet hamster back home.

“Just a coupla’ more. We need more if we wanna give them a good smashing.”

“Smashing? You’re going to smash them?” Amy felt cheated, the least they could have done was to take the lemons home.

“Yeah! It’ll be fun.” The girl had already dropped a few lemons on the ground. “Like this!” She picked up her grimy foot and used the heel to smash the lemon. Amy, horrified, watched the sisters continue to stomp on the fruits. The two girls squealed with glee as the lemon juices sprayed onto their feet. Amy felt powerless watching the girls destroy the lemons. She stepped back, only to step on a lemon. The soft ripe fruit filled between her toes as the pulp and juices leaked out. Amy was surprised at how much she enjoyed stepping on the lemon. “It’s just a lemon tree, that’s it,” Amy thought. She picked off a lemon and this time, deliberately stepped on it— hard. T next lemon was easier to step on than the first, and the lemon after that was even more gratifying. All three girls giggled between themselves as they stomped on one fruit after the other. Amy’s excitement was just about to peak until she saw that the older girl had stopped the lemon massacre. 


“LEMONS!” The shrieking voice was coming from behind Amy. “MY LEMONS!”

Amy saw her Nanna pointing her finger at the culprits, and suddenly realized what she had done. “YOU CHILDREN SQUISHED ALL OF MY LEMONS. YOU CHILDREN. YOU, YOU…”. Nanna no longer had the word capacity to express her anger as she started to walk shakily towards the girls. Amy stood on the lemon juice stained grass unable to move, until one of the girls grabbed her hand while the other screamed, “RUN!”

The sisters lead Amy through the neighborhood until they could no longer hear the angered cries of Nanna. “What are we going to do now?” Amy asked them, desperate to hear an extravagant plan to help her fall back into Nanna’s good graces.

“Do what we do whenever Ma gets mad at us for letting the dog in the house. Wait for her to sleep and then sneak back in your room!”

“Yeah, Ma always forgets after she takes a nap.”

“But that was pretty fun huh? Did you see the look on your grandma’s face?” The older girl scrunched up her face, imitating Nanna’s fury.

Amy looked at her dirty feet, now gray and sticky. Her hands were still red from the rope. She had just help destroy that darn lemon tree in hopes of playing Monopoly with two girls who clearly did not want to befriend her. But after all, it was just a lemon tree. Amy would politely explain to Nanna that there were plenty of seeds leftover from the flatten lemons— so she could grow a whole grove of lemon trees if she wanted too. A whole grove of those darn lemon trees.

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