Crowd pleasers in our 2024 Writing Contest
Carolina Woman's literary showdown attracted brilliant pieces of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. In the last few months, we ran the Grand Prize to Honorable Mention winners as well as Staff Faves. Here are the Crowd Pleasers. Enjoy the read!
– Debra Simon, Editor & Publisher
"Only My Mother Calls Me Camille"
story by Anne Anthony of Chapel Hill
She's asked again about Walter, dead from lung cancer, five years before. And I can't bring myself to explain about my brother. She can't recall, will forget again, but her eager look stops me from taking the easy way out.
"He's not around anymore."
"Not around, Camille? He lives across town."
Only my mother calls me Camille; sometimes my husband whispers it in a way I don't mind. I breathe in the mix of urine and roses. I bring a weekly bouquet to mask the other odors of the nursing home where my mother lives. I reach for my mother's hand, hold it in mine, my thumb sweeps across her papery skin.
We visit almost every other day; sit in wicker chairs with soft cushions. The lobby with its tall windows brightens this dark building. If I'm not here, I live here in my head. My mother is always, always in my head. My guilt is always, always in my heart.
Is this solution the right solution, the best solution? I convince myself it is, if I'm to keep my wits about me and live my life. At my age, my mother taught school children. Her mother died at 70. My mother lives into her 90s.
I'm lucky.
The staff tells me she waits every day even when they tell her I won't be visiting, and she tells them, 'maybe she'll surprise me' and stays all day until convinced to change into her nightgown with promises that her daughter will visit the next day.
Look.
She holds out her hand and shakes it. Brown spots and veins peek through skin as delicate as tissue paper.
Me, too.
I stick out my hand. She's happy. I remembered the game she invented.
Getting old, Camille.
We listen to the whoosh of the lobby door; watch the man in his brown shorts drop packages at the front desk.
"When's Walter coming?"
"Walter passed, Mom. He's with Daddy now."
She always, always looks away. And I wait, expecting the same response she gives when she realizes half her family is dead.
"Daddy's gone, too? Why didn't anyone tell me?"
"Sorry, Mom. We thought it best."
I check the wall clock. Inhale deeply. Rise to leave.
"You're not leaving?"
"I've got to get dinner for my husband. He's waiting."
I bend to kiss her goodbye.
"Sorry I didn't come to the wedding. But your father..."
"I know, Mom, I know."
She frowns as I slip on my jacket and zipper it.
"I want to go home, too."
She half-rises to leave.
"You live here, Mom. This is your home."
She settles back in her chair, shakes her head, and crosses her ankles. I hold my breath anticipating her farewell.
"Thanks, Camille. Bring your brother next time. I miss him."
Me too, Mom. Me too."
"Great Balls of Fire"
short story by Teri M. Brown of Calabash, N.C.
I hold in my stomach and suck in my cheeks, before facing the mirror. "It's no use." My muscles relax, and my stomach expands beyond the reach of the zipper on my jeans. The scales remain untouched to prevent proof-positive that the number continues to creep upward.
Instead, I turn toward the white dome on the counter and state in a slow robotic voice, "Alexa. Play my morning mantra meditation."
The blue light glimmers hopefully before Alexa replies in a voice more robotic than I can muster, "Sorry. I'm not sure about that."
Narrowing my eyes, and raising my voice a notch, I grind out each word one at a time with a slightly exaggerated pause between each, "Alexa. Please. Play. My. Morning. Mantra. Meditation."
However, the blue spinning light begins as Alexa searches in vain for my request. Before the smart device proves it is nothing more than an oxymoron, I unplug it from the wall. "That's it! You are useless. I'm putting you in timeout!" Then, muttering under my breath, "We'll see if you become 'more sure' after a couple of days without electricity."
I snatch up my phone and head to my meditation playlist, scanning to find one of my morning regulars. My finger hovers over a new recommendation called 'I am in charge of my happiness.' A harsh laugh bursts out into the otherwise silent house. Tell that to my kids who don't call and my husband of 27 years who has decided to move on.
There it is. 'Body Perfect.' The mantra I use to remind myself each morning that I love my body just as it is, despite the menopause belly, lackluster hair, and fine lines. I face the mirror again as a soft, hypnotic voice intones, "I am perfect just the way I am."
I look deep into the eyes staring back from the mirror and repeat, "I am perfect just the way I am."
My breath comes out slowly as the calm messenger recites, "My legs are beautiful."
Resolutely not looking down at my legs, I repeat in a less determined way, "My legs are beautiful."
I work to clear my mind of dimpled thighs and varicose veins as I exhale again. This time the perky, somewhat irritating spin doctor exclaims, "My skin is beautiful."
I stare critically at the lines at the corners of my mouth and eyes and the extra skin under my chin. Before I can repeat the pack of lies, the obviously young and beautiful muse in the box moves on. "My hair is beautiful."
To my dismay, my gray roots begin sending out an emergency distress beacon, causing me to reach up to tease the hairs near my part to hide the unseemly silver growth.
"My arms are beautiful," mocks the gorgeous waif living in the recesses of my phone.
The sagging skin flaps along the length of my upper arm as I try to hide the gray. "This is horse manure, at best," I snap before the harlot can finish uttering nonsense about my beautiful stomach. With one fluid motion, I banish the annoying tart to time-out with Alexa. "They deserve each other."
With another quick swipe, I find the playlist labeled '1950s Jukebox' and begin to sing along as The Temptations croon 'My Girl.'
"This is more like it."
I hold my hairbrush up to my mouth like a microphone, as the first tune rolls into the next. Then, I dance my way into the bedroom to the tune of 'Lollipop, while making a new resolution.
"No more mantras, especially those meant for those who still have tight boobs and a firm hind end."
And with that, I begin to wiggle to 'Great Balls of Fire.'
"Shine and Her Buick '59"
short story by Veronica Krug of Emerald Isle, N.C.
Surrounded by weeds and vines, occupying a patch of gravel, was a pristine 1959 Lido Lavender Buick Electra. Delta wings on either side of the trunk thrust sharp tail fins to the sky. Its quadruple headlights and front grill gave it a toothy, lecherous smile. It stood out from the ancient, abandoned homesteads littering the landscape between fields of cotton and tobacco in the North Carolina countryside. The scene compelled me to stop and check it out.
Twenty feet behind the parked auto was the porch of a dilapidated bungalow. Catbrier vines trailed up the posts and along the roof defying any other weed to challenge it. Claiming its own space, languid Virginia creeper grew through the wooden planks of the porch, tickling a rocking chair with several missing spindles. One arm rest was gone. Bees and wasps had made residence through holes in the home's decaying clapboards. Above the crescendo of the cicadas was music coming from inside. The door hung ajar like someone preparing to speak. Would you like to go a ride'n my Buick '59-Buick '59? Well, I'mma tellin' you baby, the ride'n is mighty fine.
Impulsively I called, "Hello?"
Pushing it open, I faced a living room–or it once was. There was a couch and a chair, but they were torn, and dust ridden. Cobwebs littered with the shells of long dead bugs hung amid them. A fireplace graced one side of the room; thick ash crusted below mostly burned logs.
"Hello? Anyone home?" I called again. No answer. The house appeared empty. I had to find the source of the music and stepped inside.
Beyond the desolate room was an entryway flooded by sunlight. It guided me to a kitchen straight from the fifties. The floor was a clean black and white checkered linoleum. White lacey curtains waved in the open window to a fresh early fall breeze above a copper sink. A square table with chrome legs and a red Formica top surrounded by four chairs covered in matching upholstery sat in the middle of the room.
The music was coming from a lime-green transistor radio on the counter. A young woman had her back to me while chopping vegetables. Her skin a warm sienna.
She startled and whirled around, pointing her knife at me. "Oh my word!"
"I'm sorry...I thought..." I stammered, "I knocked, but..."
She patted her heart. "Oh, I love my music." She gave me the once over with her eyes, then turned the music down. "Thank the Lawd you don't liken to a robba'. Nothin' here to steal anyways."
"Except for maybe your Buick '59," I smiled.
She glanced at her radio before her eyes widened with realization and laughed. "Oh, that, right. I was all lost up in thought." She thumbed toward the front of the house. "That's my baby. Ain't no one takin' her offa my hands."
"I had to stop to admire her."
Her entire face beamed with pride. She didn't look older than thirty. "Thank you much. I earned it."
"You earned it?" I couldn't help but ask.
She waved over a pot on the stove. A bright wide smile glowed from her face. "I'll jus' leave these here to simmer awhile. I love my collards and beans."
"By the way, I'm Victoria."
She faced me, head cocked, holding her blade. "Nice to meet you, ma'am, I'm Shine." She waved toward the table. The knife slicing the air.
"Sit down an' rest your bones awhile till I finish this."
I pulled out a chair and sat at the table. "Pretty. Is that a nickname?"
She turned the knife in her hand watching a sunbeam dance along the cold steel in total stillness for what seemed to me an eternity. That feeling I get when I shouldn't be somewhere kicked in, yet I remained in my seat.
She finally spoke. "Because it's what I do. I shine. I shine no matter what they do...what he did. My mama lost her shine. She worked day and night on the tobacco to support Pa and me. He declared he had a bad back, but not so bad he couldn't whop me. But I shined. Pa wasn't gonna take that from me."
She lowered her head shaking it, "Mama died in a farm accident. The insurance man came with a whole passel of money compensatin' our loss. Pa spent it on booze and..." she tilted her head. "That car." Shine placed her knife on the counter, approached the table and slammed her hands down. "He gave it to me! He said, Shine, you deserve it. I was a bad father." Her sweet smile returned. "I'll take you for a ride if'n you like."
Shine untied her apron and tossed it onto a chair. "I'll tidy up a bit, an' meet you outside."
I caressed the glossy paint along the length of the car, giddy with the idea of riding in a 1959 Lilo Lavendar Buick Electra in perfect condition.
The wings on either side of the trunk reminded me of sentries protecting an Egyptian tomb. The lid was unlatched. I nodded to them as if asking for entry and opened it. I fell back. Spots blocked my vision as I tried to keep from passing out. Breath stuck in my throat. A human skeleton lay splayed inside, clad in fragments of bib overalls. Did Shine do it? No, she was so sweet. "Shine!"
"Shine!" I ran to the kitchen and stopped at the doorway. There was no black and white checkered linoleum, no table and chairs, no curtains, and the copper sink was coated with a bright green patina. Boards and insulation batting hung down from a gaping hole in the ceiling. Then, I saw it. Shine's knife on the counter where she placed it. A sunbeam pierced the ashen window and rested on the blade. It shined.
"My Mother Teaches Me"
poetry by Valerie Nieman of Reidsville, N.C.
Cursing the mold and rotten spots,
I squirt lemon juice over the berries
to kill, or preserve, or something.
Late night before a road trip
but I can't make myself
throw the damned things away.
I remember when an uncle dropped off
a bushel of dead ripe peaches.
We thought you could use these.
And we could, but my mother was sick,
or maybe pregnant, and my father
dead asleep in the few hours
between rounds of his traplines
and a factory job.
August, hot as the hinges.
Fruit flies clouded the rotting clingstones.
Dark had closed in, out in the deep country,
but she pulled out lids and jars,
set a pot boiling to slip the skins,
carried in the pressure canner.
She began cussing, low,
as we sliced and pitted,
packed the fruit, set the jars
in the canner.
She turned up the heat
until the pressure gauge
began to rock and hiss,
and so I learned how you do
what you must.
"Nothing Is Simple Anymore"
nonfiction essay by Diane Pascoe of Lelend, N.C.
I had a big problem. I was unemployed, and no longer had that company-paid life insurance that previously made me so attractive to my family, inheritors of my company life insurance, when they envisioned me six feet under.
Although I didn't want them dancing in joy on the fresh earth above me when I passed, I wanted to be sure there was enough money for my wine and cheese wake, where everyone would be telling tall tales about me, saying "Wasn't she smart or funny, or isn't that bright red casket monogrammed with DJP so very unusual, but so very her?"
I also pictured some chocolate caramel truffles, pomegranate martinis and a little quartet churning out tunes by Otis Redding or The Temptations from my teen years. Too bad I wouldn't be there to enjoy the party.
The vision in my head of that rollicking event had distracted me from finding a new life insurance policy, and like everything I did, it was not simple. One task always led to five more tasks.
As I started my internet search for life insurance, an advertisement popped up saying "Life Insurance at Great Rates." I completed the on-line form and waited for my "great rates" to be emailed to me.
An hour later the phone rang. It was a sales rep from the great rates insurance company, asking if my husband needed some insurance too.
"Sure, the more the merrier," I responded. She then asked some questions about our medical histories and medications. I responded that Eric took blood pressure pills.
"Ooh," she exclaimed.
I asked her if taking these pills would be a terrible thing for insurance.
"Oh no, he should certainly take them if he needs them," she said, "even if that does change his category."
Category? Talk of categories sounded expensive–I braced myself for the questions that I knew were coming.
"How tall is your husband and what does he weigh?" she asked.
"Six-foot-two and I don't know his weight," I lied. The tall tales had begun.
Then she hit the mother lode. "How tall are you and what do you weigh?"
I replied that I was 5'5" and fat. That's the bottom line, Miss Nosey. Skip the actual weight.
She threw out a number, as though she were guessing weights at the fall fair.
"Nope, way fatter," I proclaimed. I could have told her my real weight, but my coyness was amusing me.
She tried again with a bigger number.
"Nope, fatter."
"Oooh!" she said.
It was at that point I realized that "oooh" was her way of calculating her commission which escalated with our weights.
She decided to try a new approach. She asked if my weight fell within a certain weight range.
"Yes, it does," I heard myself saying, as my Pinocchio nose grew. I reasoned that I would be in that weight range by the time I met my maker, so it wasn't exactly lying.
"I don't have any more questions," said Miss Nosey.
I breathed a sigh of relief, but the relief was temporary.
"So what date would be good for Mr. Walker to come to weigh and measure you?"
The other shoe had finally dropped! Why didn't she tell me about the home visit before I misrepresented everything about myself? And how would I explain to Mr. Walker my sudden twenty-pound increase over the weight range that Miss Nosey had recorded. Do I tell him it is water retention? Constipation?
Exhausted, I told Miss Nosey I would need to talk to Honey about when we could see Mr. Walker, and that I'd call her back...maybe in a year or two, I said under my breath. Eric and I needed to exercise big-time before we could afford to buy life insurance.
Nothing is simple anymore.
"Nowadays"
poetry by Zoe Wynns of Chapel Hill
Nowadays I eat pasta in my bed and write poetry,
And fire my therapist for her simple platitudes like "Get out more."
It's easier to think up reasons I'm a bad person than
Romanticize the mangoes I got from the taco truck across
The street. You said you had to head on back home, you had
A lot of work to do. Later, I come in. Halfway through
I find the pit and accidentally bite into it, nearly shattering a
Tooth. Once I realize, I suck the juice off and grin at you,
Tajin in my teeth. I got a huge bottle of it at Food Lion
Days after moving into my new house, but even adjusting
The ratio of Lime // Tajin // Honey // Mango
I can't make it like they did, in the taco truck, or in
Panama where I had them for the first time and was
so proud when I said the dish name in perfect Spanish
back in good old Chapel Hill. I joke about never falling in
Love a little too freely now. The days I want to pretend it
doesn't scare me, I go downstairs into the kitchen and
Find something in the fridge. Peel. Slice. I've learned where the
Pit is now. I'm not afraid.