Untitled NaNoWriMo Novel Part 1

Please bear in mind this is unedited and I haven’t actually even got a plan for this novel. I just started writing it on the 1st and am seeing where I go with it. I’m going to use December to edit it and actually make it a coherent story with a plot or whatever these novels have these days. Here goes!

PART 1

I always wondered if when a dog starts running beside me, it’ll confuse me for its owner and think I’m taking it for a walk. I always wonder that if it ever did, how long it’d be until it realised who I am. How long until it loved me too?

I wanted a house with a kitchen, just so I could have hung waxed leaves up over the doorway in autumn, and have a bowl of fruit that looks waxed but isn’t. Oranges and lemons in summer, even though they’ll be brought from the warmer towns across the sea and cost so much.

My name is Mima and I live at the Bottom.

–

Tarianna looks through the harp. The world behind is split open, behind bars. And she, Tarianna, sits looking in at the world. The world looks out at Tarianna.

“Again, please.” Her tutorette sits behind her, a solemn little face looking out of vast swathes of black robe. Two tiny white hands sit primly on her knee, crossed, immovable. To think they once played across a harp on a stage, for money (endless amounts of money, she had a car once. A car! A car and a big bed with navy blue sheets and a man who loved her and the way her hands played across a harp, across a body), was impossible. They had always sat on her knee, immovable. Tutorette M was old.

Tarianna did as she was bid, and played again. She played over and over, until she didn’t stop at the end but went straight back to the start without missing a beat, after one deep breath she started again and did so all afternoon, over and over. Tutorette M didn’t move, her hands didn’t move, her face didn’t move. Her face couldn’t move, really. It was too smooth now. Her hands showed how old she really was. It was a shame Tarianna had no love of music. M could see she had no passion, no talent. M’s eyes moved around the room in her taut little eyelids. She was hot in this cloak, hot and uncomfortable and bored. Her faced showed no emotion. It was too smooth now.

Tarianna played the harp whilst Tutorette M fell asleep with her eyes open, and dreamt of her husband when he was twenty six.

At night Tarianna slept with her hands handcuffed to the side of the cot. All unmarried women sleep this way, they said. Each hand was cuffed to each side, and Tarianna lay on her back. They all sleep like this, it’s for the posture, they said, it’s so your back grows straight and your legs grow long. Each night the women and the girls would come and cuff her in and put a hot brick at the end of her bed, to keep her feet warm in the tower. All unmarried women sleep in their towers, they said. The whole cliff was lined with towers, looking out over the sea and the rocky beaches and the empty air, full of their unmarried women. A line of towers like lighthouses, bringing men from overseas following their instincts, over rocky beaches and empty air to the lighthouses of unmarried women, sleeping happily chained in their warm cots. Beautiful women, because ugly girls had a lot of different accidents. Some fell down stairs they weren’t even allowed to walk, some drowned in the sea they weren’t even allowed to swim, some disappeared, some threw away their virtue and went to live at the Bottom. Girls in towers growing like flowers. If a family started building themselves a tower, the father held a feast in the foundations. Each tower should be ready by the time the girl first bleeds. She lies on her cot listening to the sea with her hands cuffed to the sides.

–

I am an ugly girl. My father decided this when I was 14. He decided that, although it is prudent and wise to be patient with a daughter, my nose is too big and my nose will forever be too big. He said that, although it is definitely more fruitful to wait for your daughter to blossom, he had waited long enough for me and he knew, although it is not humble to suggest he always knew, that I would never be pretty. The tower was done and waiting for me, and he said, although it is vain to say he is bothered by the judgments of others, that instead of taking it down as he was supposed to, he’d keep it and give it to my sister, whose nose is small and pretty. After all, being careful with money is akin to being careful with virtue, and virtue is what we all strive for, isn’t it?

So this is who I am. I am an ugly girl. They could die, or move to the Bottom. I was 14, and scared of death. Surely death would be as unkind to an ugly girl as life was. So I walked to the Bottom, by myself, and never saw my father again. Apparently my sister got the tower, and everyone has forgotten my father – my prudent, wise, fruitful, humble, careful father – broke the rules and gave one girl’s tower to another. They forgot me entirely.

My name is Mima.

A lot of people who chose to live in the Bottom, or ended up living in the Bottom, or were sent to live in the Bottom, remembered before. The brothel Madamettes, the Barbers, the Butchers, the craggy drunks, the aging whores, the opium addicts sitting black-eyed in their attics, the ugly girls. A lot of them remembered before, and those who remembered told stories in the downstairs of the brothels under swinging lampshades and thumping ceilings. In the Top, the land of virtue and beauty and the girls in towers, nobody mentioned before. Nobody mentioned it, and nobody learnt of it. Even the older people, the Tutorettes and the bearded grandfathers and, far off, the Chief in his mansion laboratory turning metal into gold, who remembered before never said a word, pretended it had always been this way. The young, pretty girls and their strong armed suitors who came over the sea believed that this was all it had ever been, all it will ever be.

A lot of people who chose to live in the Bottom, or ended up living in the Bottom, or were sent to live in the Bottom, were nameless. The brothel Madamettes lost their names when they turned from aging whores with fake names from before, like Crystal and Brandi and Bunny, the Barbers were Barbers, the Butchers, Butchers, the craggy drunks and the opium addicts sitting black-eyed in their attics had forgotten their names gradually as they cried in gutters and sweated in bathrooms.

I walked to the Bottom, by myself, with more than I have now. I had a bag of dresses, two pairs of shoes, two tiny bottles of Shampoo stolen from the store my mother made for the towers, a name.

I walked to the Bottom, by myself, at the age of 14, and the first thing I saw was the bloated corpse of a drunk with no name.

My name was Mima.

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