Carrie Snyder: On Writing the Juliet Stories
Transformation happened all in a rush this past winter, as if I’d cracked a code and could see previously invisible patterns and shapes. What emerged told not only of a remembered time and place, but of the telling itself: the ambivalence of the writer’s cause, her guilt at foraging through shared material, at plundering the past on a questionable artistic sojourn, her thievery, her coolness, her power to shape and reshape, to invent. Her immovable debt.
And, yes, the third person is the voice and character of these stories; in writing, I felt like a curator arranging pieces already in existence, polishing them; or a crane operator, literally lifting paragraphs and swinging them around the white space of the page; or a brick-layer, patiently building with solid material. These were stories, not chapters, ruthless in their plotting; and they showed themselves, their guts and their artifice; and the whole was faithful to its author.
Rat
Somewhere between Texas and Managua, the bags go missing.
Frederick collects the Friesen family from the airport. They are unencumbered by toothbrushes, diapers, and fresh underwear. Frederick packs them into his silver pickup, and ferries them across this new city, in this new heat, beneath this new sky, wavery with dust. Juliet and Keith ride with their dad, Luke, rattling around the open truck bed like loose teeth, amazed and elated despite their mother, Gloria, hammering on the window and telling them to: “Get down!” Baby Emmanuel hammers, too, toes dug into his mother’s lap.
Perched on the wheel well, Juliet stares at a city falling down or already fallen. Among shacks and shanties run skinny dogs and loose pigs. Children dart toward the truck and reach to touch Juliet’s hand; she pulls away, presses her fingers to her chest.
Managua smells like cooking fires, like the smoky sultry burn of incense.
It is dusk when they arrive at Frederick and Renate’s house. The gates swing shut, and Renate shows them to the room in which the family will temporarily camp.
