I've Become
Exclusive: The First Chapter of My Manuscript!
Here’s the first chapter to my manuscript. It's historical fiction and based upon two characters named Jennifer Hanssen and Pedro Pacheo. The themes I'm exploring are:
Racism
Sexism/Misogyny
Collective trauma/epigenetic trauma/intergenerational trauma
Placemaking
Displacement of people
White supremacy
Substance abuse
Each chapter has four sections, which flips back and forth in time. (Since my plan is to get this manuscript published, I’m only going to share two chapters to paid subscribers, so all of you will have to wait until it’s available in print).
Chapter 1: Family Pickings
1 WICHITA, KANSAS (2023)
*** Jennifer’s childhood home, 5 N Grand Mere, Wichita, Kansas ***
At 40, Jennifer Hanssen had become her ugly, white mother. Despite what others said, the mirror told her as much. Even worse than being ugly, she was pregnant. Luckily, nobody knew she was pregnant. Not yet at least. Now she had to face her mother and sister for the first time being ugly and pregnant without Pedro as a buffer, while pretending she was neither of those things.
She’d parked her car 20 minutes earlier at the farthest edge of her parents’ driveway, away from the imposing, stone house, so as not to alert anyone to her arrival. Jennifer now stood still between the entrance to her childhood home and the gravel roundabout driveway. She looked down at the doorsill made of carrara marble. She could hear her mother and her sister chattering and laughing back in the kitchen where she had once broken her baby teeth on the brick fireplace at the age of three. Every time she recalled that memory, she could taste the sweet blood again, hear the screams of her mother, and then feel the warmth of her mother’s arms, cradling her, and placing her into the cold, white porcelain sink to begin cleaning her up. But after being placed on one side of the sink, and like most of her childhood memories, the recollection goes blank. It was akin to a movie being illuminated on a wall, only to be suddenly torn off its film reel by a projectionist. Her thoughts about missing links in her memories were disrupted by the sound of a tea kettle screeching. Jennifer’s scattered thinking landed upon vague notions of the grandfather she’d never met. Tonight, she was seeking more answers about him as she entered the house. She snuck quietly into the kitchen to greet her mother and sister.
