The Ravages of a Man
alcoholism, spousal abuse, child abuse, violence, brooklyn, short story
Published on:
Feb. 22, 2008, 5:49pmWord Count:
4862Work Description
The horrors an alcoholic Brooklynite perpetuates on his family during the 1930's and 40's and its impact on the family members.
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one place long enough to become known.
There were too many people living in cramped quarters, trying to
pretend they didn’t hear the noises coming from the apartments near
them, needing to think they themselves were not so easily
heard. Strangers seemed to feel that
Astrid had brought this anguish on herself; no one could be that
merciless to another without a good reason. Occasionally, a kindly woman or man sitting on the
front stoop might give Urni a treat, but that was where charity
ended.
In the still of the night Anna would wake from dreams of freedom to the smell of sweat and gin rolling off Gerard in waves, the threadbare blanket barely warding off the chill, the mattress creaking beneath them as his snores filled the air. In her dreams, she had never met Gerard, never left Norway, never endured the event that led to her banishment from the land she loved. Waking, she would force her thoughts back into her reality, not daring to seek redemption, safety, a new start in life. . . When she left Norway, it was in disgrace, pregnant with the child of a man who raped her. She gave birth to the boy while crossing the Atlantic in a cargo ship. When she arrived in America, she had no one, nothing, and no recourse except to leave the child at an orphanage. She never saw him or spoke of him again save once. To her it was a death nothing would ever make right. To Urni it was one whispered drunken confession of a woman crying for the child she had never known, always to be wondered about but not pursued.
Astrid had her faults, but not loving her children enough wasn’t one of them. She was an excellent cook, kept a clean home and taught Urni basic words in Norwegian. Their home was always clean, even if the furniture was frequently broken. She was beaten down by her husband and the life they were forced to live. Trapped by circumstances beyond her control, she turned to alcohol to numb the pain. Prematurely hunched over like an old woman, as if always warding off blows, she was a lost soul, in a land she wasn’t comfortable in, living in an area where many cultures blended, making their differences stand out, with a man who relished raising his fists in her direction far too frequently. She rarely left the apartment; her time spent caring for Jane and Urni and fulfilling all the household responsibilities aggravated by not enough money. If errands needed to be run to the market or elsewhere, Urni was likely to run them, and she almost always went with her mother if she didn’t run them herself.
Astrid’s life was spiritually, morally, and physically cruel. The new life she was supposed to have found in America had proven to be a bitter disappointment. She longed for those simpler days in Arendal, tending to the garden, going to the market to sell the fish her father and brothers had caught at sea, going to church on Sundays, seeing the same people she had seen every day of her life. Her hands had never lost the calluses she had gained pulling in and mending nets because she had so much work to do now. She ached for the crisp cold, piney scent of Norway’s coastal ocean air, instead of the soot and squalor she saw in Brooklyn.
Urni called Astrid an angel on Earth, always discounting the fact that Astrid liked her drink, too. She couldn’t reconcile the fact that Astrid had abandoned her children in her own way by relying on alcohol to get by. In that hazy never, never land of alcoholic fumes, the cries of children had little meaning. However, Astrid was a quiet, passive woman who did what she could to make their days a bit brighter without incurring Gerard’s wrath.
The family moved from apartment to apartment, leaving behind pots and pans, dishes, furniture, clothes and toys when the rent came due, sneaking away under night’s cover.
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You have the start of an incredible story here with fascinating characters and a wonderful grasp on description, creating a scene that the reader can taste, smell, see, and hear. That said, I think you need to bring the story to life. I felt a bit like I was reading a historical police account as opposed to a story. I know it's cliche, but "show, not tell" comes to mind. You nailed this with the beginning, bringing the readers into the story. If you could carry it throughout the piece, you'd have magic. Great start.
Astrid had made them eggs and boiled potatoes for dinner
"Astrid" stumped me and took a second to figure out that she was the mom. It just seemed like their was a third person thrown in, probably because Urni seems to be the main character and most wouldn't call their mother's by their first names.
Anna unfolded before Urni’s eyes.
Just wondering who Anna is? Did you mean Astrid?
Urni had his way with words
Again, just need clarifacation about who you were talking about? Urni or Gerard?.
In the early 1940’s women still had few rights and too few knew how to pursue what little they had, certainly not a barely literate one from another culture
This is a bit encyclopedic, telling history instead of showing it. Can you incorporate it into the story without creating a sense of textbook for the reader?
The details here are terrific. The setting is particularly well-done; at all points this story feels like it's firmly in pre-WWII Brooklyn. The pacing/plotting is problematic, and there are a lot of places where the grammar breaks down. There is a ton of good material to work with here - but there's lots of work still to be done.
When I say the pacing is problematic, what I mean is that this piece needs a stronger plot to give it order and progression. There's a good introduction and a terrific climax here, but in between are a lot of episodes whose order seems practically random. I think too much effort is spent on emphasizing how ever-present the family's problems are. Too many of those episodes between the start and the climax feel like digressions. The point of view should be tied more firmly to Urni. As it stands it feels like the point of each little episode is to emphasize how desperate the family's situation is. If, instead, each incident was tied to Urni's thoughts and each one nudged her closer to escape - that would get the plot on its feet and put some real steel in the story's spine.
Reorganizing the episodes and how they relate to each other could strengthen the plot. It could start off with Urni and Jane hiding in the basement. Then flash back to the specific violence that drove them there. Then flash back further, setting up the older stuff like Gerard's employment, Astrid's history, and the family's apartment-hunting. Urni's friend Lillian provides an opportunity to build a good progressive structure - she gets closer to the Perrys, things get better for her, and then it all comes apart when her father snatches her from the church. Then it goes back to the darkness of living with Gerard - in my mind this is a good place to show Gerard sleeping with Urni. At last it comes to a head when Gerard takes Astrid's ear and Urni escapes with Jane. Arriving at her aunt's home and being integrated into a new household makes a good end. I would keep subsequent details to a minimum - how Gerard finally killed Astrid is worth mentioning, but I don't think Urni would much care what happens to her father after that. When Urni escapes from Gerard she should take the story with her.
Now for the grammatical stuff:
Not for the first time, Urni wished she was a shadow disappearing into the walls.
Consider how the opening line would read without 'Not for the first time.' I think it would be much stronger.
the Brooklyn tenement her parents’ currently called home.
'parents' isn't possessive here. No apostrophe.
An overall note on the first paragraph - there's plenty of good scene-setting detail here. Too much of it, really. When the details are laid out neutrally they're kind of superfluous. When they're directly related to the characters they're much more interesting - Jane getting sooty and sticking fingers in the spiderwebs is a much stronger than saying 'there were spiderwebs and soot.' No need to do both. I bring this up because the same situation occurs repeatedly. The story can be condensed and the pace improved by sticking to the details that matter to the characters.
She had been in that hot, dusty, cobweb filled space for the last four or five hours but she could see, from the dirty, cracked window across the room there were still too many feet to be seen on the street of this September evening; Gerard would not pass out for a while yet.
This is an overloaded sentence. Too much information makes it hard to follow. Break it up and squeeze some of the excess stuff out: "She had been in the hot, dusty basement for four of five hours. She could see the street through a cracked window across the room. There were still too many feet outside; Gerard would not have passed out yet."
Astrid made Gerard’s dinner with food she couldn’t spare for the rest of them and placed it at the table, seating across from the plate and drifting off to sleep, her head in her arms – she knew better than to go to bed before Gerard came home.
It should be 'sitting,' not 'seating.' Or 'seating herself' could work. And the 'she knew better ...' clause is a great detail.
When father, Gerard, with a chest like a barrel and two spindly legs beneath, came home, smelling of over-ripe sweat, rancid breathe, and the overpowering stench of gin. . The stale, rancid smells of the bar followed in his wake.
Again, there's too much going on at once here. The grammar has fractured under the load. Consider the first sentence with the descriptions taken out: "When father ... came home ..." There's no actual subject or action going on, is there? It's a fragment, but it's so long it looks like a real sentence. Compare: "Gerard came home smelling of over-ripe sweat and gin. Their father had a chest like a barrel and spindly legs, and the stale, rancid smells of the bar followed in his wake."
With the face of a bull dog and a dispossession to match ...
'Disposition,' not 'dispossession.'
Quicker, and sober, she would race to her friend’s home, four blocks away, in her pajamas, or, more likely than not, in her underwear, and sought refuge.
First, I really like the economy of 'Quicker, and sober.' But there are two problems with the verbs here. There's a tense mismatch - race vs. sought. The bigger problem is the 'would.' Putting this sentence into the pluperfect (I think that's the technical term) is a small-scale example of the overall problem I mentioned earlier - stressing that this happens over and over weakens the language and, ultimately, the story. I would rather be reading about Urni specifically running from one incident of abuse: "Quicker, and sober - though wearing just her underwear - she raced to her friend's home and sought refuge."
Through the Perry’s, Urni found a second home –
'In the Perry's house' would be a better start than 'Through the Perrys' (which doesn't need an apostrophe).
She and Lillian loved to buy extra sour pickles and sit in front of the choir. As the choir would start to sing, Urni and Lillian would bite into the pickles, making sour faces and spitting out juice to throw choir singers off their notes.
This is great, an example of what I meant by 'terrific details.' I know I'm bringing up a lot of problems and suggesting a lot of changes, but I really want this story to hold onto these moments of kids being kids. They help make Urni's confrontation with grown-up problems poignant.
Anna unfolded before Urni’s eyes.
As others noted, 'Anna' comes out of the blue. It should be Astrid, right?
he was the one with the least to loose.
Should be 'lose' rather than 'loose.'
And then there was Astrid . . .
While doing this second read-through for grammar I've figured out a big pacing problem. This whole section - the description of occasional happy times, Gerard's work history, and Astrid's back story - is really out-of place. It interrupts Gerard sleeping with Urni, which is one of the darkest parts of the story, one that should be very close to the climax. This stuff is too good to get rid of, but it shouldn't be here. It needs to be worked into the story much earlier.
In that hazy never, never land of alcoholic fumes, the cries of children had little meaning.
'never-never land' should be hyphenated, not comma spliced.
There were few cars to be seen – in the Bowery most people couldn’t afford cars – a can skipped across the street, pushed by the wind, a rat skittered into an alley, bricks lay tumbled in a heap beneath the crumpling façade of a tenement front, garbage spilled from tipped garbage cans.
These are all good details. Cramming them into a single sentence is cruel. It could be broken into five sentences - it should be three at a bare minimum. I'd start a new sentence with 'a can skipped' and 'a rat skittered.' Note that the last clause in a comma-separated series ('garbage spilled' in this case) needs an 'and' at the beginning.
The winds of change swept Urni along the streets of Brooklyn, with leaves and garbage rustling in her wake as she left the police station and made her way across town.
'The winds of change swept Urni along the streets of Brooklyn' is bloody beautiful. I'd emphasize it and separate it by making it a separate sentence and rephrasing the rest ('Leaves and garbage rustled...' ) as appropriate.
After school her hours would be spent cleaning, waxing furniture, banisters and stairs a gleaming, burnished gold, washing floors and linens, only to leave the doing of her homework late into the night and Urni considered herself lucky.
Another overloaded sentence. Compare: "After school her hours would be spent cleaning. She waxed furniture, polished banisters, and washed floors and linens. Urni left doing her homework until late at night. She considered herself lucky."
... she assumed her mother would be safe, but in the 1940’s authorities rarely, if ever, interfered with household matters.
This is one of the rare moments when the authentic setting breaks down. By explicitly reminding the reader that the story is set in the 40's it pulls the reader out of an otherwise immersive environment. I would just say "The police rarely interfered with household matters," and leave it up to the reader to make any comparisons with how the police behave today.
That's it for the line-by-line. I pulled several examples of sentences where too much detail strains grammar and comprehension; there are more like them in there. A careful edit with an eye for simplicity will do wonders for this story on the grammar angle. As for the larger issue, the plotting/pacing problems I saw, some judicious reorganization would help a lot. I think the feeling to shoot for is "Things are bad now. They're not always bad, but they're bad a lot. And they're getting worse ..." If the episodes are laid out along that general path I think the story will be much improved.
There's a really good story in here and it just needs a little more attention to make it a great read. Thanks for sharing it.
Hey Debbie,
I finally got a chance to read this! God I hate when life gets in the way!!!
Let me start by saying I lived in an abusive household and you catch the essence of it very well in this story. From the physical description of the house to the people in it - every element screams that this world is dark and dingy and scary for a child narrator.
Couple of things.... I was confused by the change in voice here...
Astrid had made them eggs and boiled potatoes
the original voice appears to be a third person limited from Urni's POV and calling "mom" by the first name really threw me off. I had to read through the paragraph and then go back to figure out that Astrid was mom ..try and keep to one voice or the other - if you change mid-story your reader will get impossibly lost. Calling dad Gerard didn't throw me as much because of the disgust the narrator feels for the father, but with the mom - it really threw me...
Also....
Anna unfolded before Urni’s eyes.
Who is Anna? The name appears more than once and I THINK it is astrid - but I honestly am not sure if there is someone else I am missing?
you can't end a sentence with "or":
no basis in reality or. A
couple little spelling issues and grammatical issues - so you might want to give it a read through for the technical level.
Also...just a little opinion, take it for what it is - a lot of the story seemed to be TELLING because of the tense you used....if you change all of this to present tense instead of past and SHOW it I think it will increase the emotion of the reader and the impact of the story.
I'd be happy to read the rewrite if you decide to edit it. Happy Writing!
Kathleen
This story to me was in one way realistic: For one, alcoholism affects this country greatly and you had demonstrated this very well within pages of the story. This also reminds me of the fact that irresponsible drinkers drink and drive -- but this is such an ugly thought that almost makes me shudder and ache inside....
This is sort of like a living heck for me -- in a home with the scents of things like basil, curry, and cabbage that pervades through and through the house.
"She smelled the odors of too many different meals, garlic, cardamom, curry, basil and the scent of cabbage wafting over it all, her stomach an ever constant reminder that it had been some time since she had last eaten. The floor was littered with the relics of past tenants’ castoffs."
This house was a living nightmare to my thoughts. 5 out of 5.