What’s most exciting about this book to you?
“A Lucky Breath” is a memoir of leaving a crumbling marriage. The book is written both forward and backward from the point where it begins, which means that, essentially, it begins in the middle and ends both at the end and at the beginning. For me, the most exciting thing about this book is that it works! This forward/backward storytelling was immensely difficult for me, and I was at no point certain that the result would be intelligible. All the same, the story insisted on being told in this way. It seemed to be the only way to tell it that would create the emotional depth that I feel belongs in this piece. Apparently, it works! And I continue to be thrilled about this.
Do you see it as a new departure for you, a continuation of earlier work/themes, or some combination?
In short, a combination. It is a departure in that the themes and the mood of this book are vastly different from those of my other books. It does, however, follow them chronologically as it tells another piece of my story. In this way, it is a clearly a continuation in the literal sense.
At this point in your career, do you see your work as “Mennonite,” and how or how not?
I could answer this question either “yes” or “no” and give convincing reasons why. The answer, therefore, is somewhere in the ambiguous middle.
I see myself as a Mennonite writer because I see being Mennonite as part of who I am. I do not attend a Mennonite (or any other type of) church, but my personal history is so Mennonite that I couldn’t begin to separate it from myself. In that way, I define my work as “Mennonite” regardless of scope or subjects.
My previous memoirs deal specifically with “being Mennonite”—the first one with early childhood as a Mennonite, and the second with young adulthood and being Mennonite. This book, “A Lucky Breath” does not deal with being Mennonite at all, neither directly nor indirectly. I would not call it a Mennonite book except by association, in that it forms a sort of trilogy with the other two memoirs that are Mennonite. My other writing, such as poetry, I do not consider to be specifically Mennonite.
What themes, issues, techniques, and/or other authors were most in your mind as this project came into being?
An important theme for me in the writing of this book was fairness—to everyone in the story. The narrator suffers injuries, and while of course I hope the reader will sympathize with her perspective, I struggled to tell the story in a way that is true to these experiences without demonizing other characters. There are no innocents, no true victims.
Present to me during the writing of this book was the first sentence of Miriam Toews’ “Irma Voth.” It’s barely more than a dozen words, and from it we learn everything we need to know about the speaker, about her husband, about the relationship they have, about the world they live in, and we experience a whole series of emotions. The language is so simple even a child can understand it; the implications are so deep that a whole world is unveiled. That one sentence, for me, is a writing class. I return to it every time I need direction.
If there is one question this book attempts to answer, what would that be?
This book is the long answer to the glibbest questions I’ve ever had to improvise a reply to. Questions like the one I will never forget decades ago when a new acquaintance, upon learning that my husband was Costa Rican, chirped, “O wow! What’s it like to be married to a Costa Rican?” I thought it was a rude, stupid question. I wanted to snap back, “What’s it like to be married to your husband?” Instead, I told her it was “great” and spouted some charming anecdote to please her. This book is a truer answer to that question, although it is not meant to answer the question for anyone but me. It is full of stories I don’t tell because they are not quick and easy. Stories not only of a relationship that ended, but of a world that, as the decades have marched on, has shifted, faded, and changed.
Here are two excerpts, one piece of forward-moving story, and one piece of backward-moving:
We sit at the table and eat together.
His dark curls are wet from the shower and smell of the hair gel he loves.
I watch his deft brown fingers as the grip the coffee cup.
I watch his jaw move as he chews.
Enrique is beautiful.
I want to act normal, but I can’t breathe.
I ask Enrique what he is going to do today.
He hates that question.
He snorts that he is going to work, annoyed that I have asked him to state the obvious.
He gulps the last swallow of coffee and pushes back from the table.
I say I have to go to town this morning.
I say this because I will drive our truck down the road past the pottery cooperative where he works when I leave.
I don’t want this to surprise him.
Surprises spark his explosive possessiveness, and I would rather be ignored.
He gives me money and tells me to bring him batteries for the flashlight and food for the dog.
I lay the money on the table.
I kiss him goodbye before he walks out the door—a little peck of a kiss on the lips.
He hates these formalities, but might notice if I don’t insist.
I always insist.
I would love for him to crush me against his chest in an embrace like he used to.
He doesn’t.
Enrique gets on his bicycle and rides away.
His red shirt disappears around the corner into the trees.
My coffee has gone cold.
There are no last-minute decisions today.
Every movement I will make now is premeditated.
Enrique isn’t aware that objects in the house have been shuffled.
My clothes are separated into what I will take and what I will leave.
I’ve gone through my books, notebooks, and papers.
A fire in the back yard last week released the things I can neither stand to leave nor afford to take with me.
Better to send them back into the universe myself than to imagine Enrique destroying them in rage.
Trash fires are unsuspicious.
My luggage is ready in minutes.
I know what goes in each box, each suitcase.
In my mind, I have rehearsed these moments a thousand times.
Time will be important.
Enrique must not catch me leaving him.
Enrique loves nothing on earth as much as our pick-up truck.
But my name is on the title and it is coming with me.
Enrique will have the house and everything in it so I feel I am not unfair.
I don’t know what Enrique will do if he catches me trying to leave him with the truck.
Maybe scream horrible insults.
Maybe cry and beg me to stay.
Maybe hurt me.
He could simply stand behind the truck so that I can’t move it.
He could break the windows, slash the tires.
There are a hundred ways to foil my plan.
I have imagined them all.
I am mostly afraid that he will break my resolve.
I am afraid if he begs me to stay, I will give in.
I have before.
I love him.
So I run away like a criminal, hiding from what Enrique might do to me and what I might do to myself.
I am trembling and sweating cold as I push my belongings into suitcases and boxes.
This efficiency makes leaving my life look easy.
It isn’t.
I was Mateo and Norma’s roommate, not Enrique’s wife, when I went with Mateo and Enrique to the mountain for curiol. Curiol is the word for the paints we used to color the pottery—rock pigment not for sale in any store, but hiding in veins at secret spots in certain mountains. Women don’t go to collect curiol. Women stay home with the children. They stay home to prepare food for the men who go, and will return hungry. But I was a woman with no responsibilities, so when Mateo said to me, “Vamos,” of course I went.
We collected curiol negro that day, at the most sacred of all the sacred places the ancestors went to gather colored stones. Mateo explained to me that when we climbed the mountain to the curiol site, we would not speak. It’s bad luck. If you speak on the mountain with the black curiol, you frighten away the spirits that lead you to the curiol you need to earn your living, and the black veins hide in the flesh of the hills. Curiol negro is the hardest color to find, the one that lives only in the slimmest veins, only in the highest mountain which you can only get to on the hottest and driest days of the year. It was February 29, 1996.
Mateo and I got up at three in the morning and drank the hot coffee Norma made for us. We would want to be at the curiol site by daybreak in order to collect what we needed and leave the mountain before the sun became strong enough to harm us. In the morning cool, we didn’t mind the long pants, shoes, and socks we needed to wear because of snakes we wouldn’t be able to see in the dark. We wore long sleeves and hats to protect us from the eventual sun. In our backpacks we brought rice and bean lunches, and water. Enrique met us in front of the house.
Mateo, Enrique, and I rode our bicycles the three kilometers to the other side of Santa Cecilia under the stars and occasional streetlight. Outside of town, we left the bikes lying hidden in the weeds by the barbed wire fence we climbed through, and set off on foot. It was dark. Mateo and Enrique wanted to run. Run, because even though it is blackest night, day is coming, and when day comes the sun will burn us through our clothes, we will drink our water, and the rocks we are touching will burn our fingers. I didn’t know these things, but Mateo and Enrique knew them well. They ran, and I ran behind them through dark meadows with high grass. By starlight, we began to see the silhouette of the mountain ahead of us--the black space where no stars are. We ran stumbling, laughing in stifled hysterics about the dangers of snakes, angry bulls, and fresh cow pies. There was no road. Mateo and Enrique lead the way by landmarks: the trees, the rises, the gullies in the terrain. When we came to the fence on the other side of the pasture, we slipped carefully as felines between the strands of barbed wire and the climb began. Up and up as the sky paled above and around us.
We climbed the steep tree-speckled slope of dry grass to a sudden cut where the earth has been clawed away and the raw mountain flesh stands pale in the sun. This was the secret place of the black curiol. Birds spoke around us, and the February winds picked up strength as the sun melted the night’s coolness. We’d already drank half of our water, we were hungry, and the sun was cresting over the mountain top. We put down our packs in the shade of a tree and looked out over the dry valley below us. Above, a cloudless morning sky advised us not to waste time.