Living & Arts

William Potter Fiction Contest Award Winners

In print | April 2, 2009

On Monday, April 30, the winners of the annual William Plumer Potter student fiction contest, organized by the English Literature department were announced. The contest was judged by novelist Elizabeth Strout, who was at the event to present the awards with her own commentary as well as a reading from her novel “Olive Kitteridge.” Krystyn McIlraith ’09 received first place for her story “Rita Ann Lawrence, You Don’t Know Nothing about Nothing.” Will Glovinsky ’12 received second place for his story “Taketh Away.” Blanca Gamez ’09 received third place for her story “Voice of Ghosts.” Here are excerpts from the winning stories.

From Krystyn McIlraith’s “Rita Ann Lawrence, You Don’t Know Nothing about Nothing:”

The past three days after school I’ve come home to sit on my stoop and look for Loretta Anderson for the hour before I have to leave for work. Her brothers, gangly, short thirteen year old twins, walk five blocks home from the junior high every day, their low-hanging, overfilled backpacks jumping up and down against their butts.

I haven’t seen her. Neither has Octavia, or anyone at school. Nobody knows where she is. People say maybe she’s just been cutting every day. Other people say she spends all her time in the nurse’s office, or talking to the guidance counselor. I imagine her in a corner of our library, among stacks of outdated almanacs and dictionaries. Maybe she’s sitting in the corner reading and reading but not really taking any of it in. Words blurring, everything meaning the same thing. Maybe she’s reading books in Spanish, the language she and her brothers speak with her father at home. Loretta Anderson doesn’t have a Mom anymore. She left when Letta was five, walked down the street with gray duffel bags and that was that.

I want to see if her chin doesn’t point up at people’s foreheads anymore, if she doesn’t put together the best outfits out of any girl in the sophomore class at Hughes. If anything is out of place. If she stopped wearing jewelry or straightening her hair. Or if she’s walking around as usual, smiling and taking long strides everywhere she goes. So I sit on the stoop waiting for Loretta Anderson to come home.

Letta’s daddy used to bring her sacks of sunflower seeds on Friday nights when he got off work selling snacks at baseball games. On Saturdays we’d sit on my stoop and spit the shells into buckets we’d set on the stairs. The Neighborhood Buckets, we called them. We took buckets from garages, basements, painters’ trucks, anywhere we could find them. I took them home and painted numbers on them, and then we sat around spitting and tallying points. Four points for bucket four. Six for bucket six. Crack, chew, spit.

Loretta’s crazy grandma says she’s a liar. Always has. We were six and seven and the woman would stand on the stoop in her housedress shaking a steel wire whisk and saying, Ay, Letta, your Papi don’t know what to do with you.

This was when Letta sold rocks she painted green to neighborhood boys for two dollars each, saying she found them by the subway tracks and green rocks found by subway tracks meant God was gonna make sure you had a pretty wife.

You know what happens to liars, right, Letta? Her grandma would say, meaty hand on hip.

Six year old Loretta Anderson would look down at her dirty, bare, six year old feet and say, Yes, Grandma, they get their due come Judgment Day.

From Will Glovinsky’s “Taketh Away:”

Pat’s house looked out of place. In fact, it was out of place. There was a company that could bisect it and load it onto two trucks and ship it wherever Pat wanted. Pat’s golf cart was parked on the cold gravel, and beyond it a large trampoline that Pat had asked for. Everything was clean, bright, and notably lacking manure prints because Pat always changed his boots at Mary and Thomas’s before heading home.

Pat’s face appeared in the transparent upper half of the door before Bill and Friday had reached the steps that led to the porch.

“What you doing?” Pat said through the glass.

“Can I join you for some coffee?”

Pat did not open the door.

“I’m not ready,” he said.

“It’s almost seven.”

Pat noticed Friday.

“You still got your dog.”

Bill was now standing in front of the door, still unopened, “The morning’s too cold for me. I have to wait so I can dig the hole. I don’t want her lying around all morning.”

Pat smiled down at Friday, who slowly wagged her tail. He opened the door and waddled into his kitchen. He was not fat, but he had a shuffle to his walk that most people identified as a waddle, a sort of horizontal gracenote to his progression. Once he had reached the kitchen Pat stopped, turned around to face Bill, and pointed to a sheet of paper fixed by a magnet to the refrigerator.
“I’m only on step four.”

Bill walked over to the paper. On it there was a carefully written list of Pat’s morning ritual, like an agenda that teachers write for young students. Number one was ‘let the cat in.’ Pat had had a cat, but it had gone missing, presumably due to his failure to comply with number one.

“I’ll make coffee,” Bill offered.

Pat considered the idea for a moment and agreed by disappearing into his bedroom.

Bill stepped toward the cupboard. Friday sniffed from a seated position, slowly angling her black-brown nose around the room.

From Blanca Gamez’s “Voice of Ghosts:”

I could sense my mother scoffing at Regina in the dark. Her hands in her pockets, she pushed down on her coat so it looked like a taut cowbell of khaki.

Is this what you learned all those days out in the street? Unintelligible music? She was looking at Regina move like a moth on the stage. Her loose shirt bellowed from her body as she danced. Sometimes it dipped too low bearing her white chest and ribs like tree roots. My mother jolted when this happened and looked away as Regina adjusted her shirt.

Her hand tugged my arm. I’m leaving. I hope you’re home before I lock the doors. She walked back home alone.

I was glad she was gone. I watched her walk through the groups of people. The young ones who didn’t see her walking by, knocking her purse with their elbows and backs; the old ones who did see her and moved away together for her quick feet; the lone ones who watched her furtively with sideward eyes and glances. I watched her until she disappeared up the hill, out of the valley, past the church where I used to sing.

I was glad to watch Regina alone. I wondered if before becoming Regina Shore, Voice of Ghosts, before ever imagining herself living in the Old Tammary Mansion beside a lagoon of still herons and cranes, if she once had to sing hymns as well. I wondered if she had a mother who adjusted herself from day to day as if she were a paper doll with detachable clothing and moods. She seemed like the type of woman whose father was still alive. He probably listened to her records with friends over dinner and muttered quickly, a cigar close to his lips, that’s my girl.

I wanted to meet her. To hear her voice when she wasn’t singing.

Her voice was low. She’s an alto like me.