Excerpts from Denise Turney's 5th Novel Open Something Up In Your Heart To Love" (working title as the book is yet in draft form). Look for two new books from Denise Turney in 2006! Enjoy reading the excerpts, and as always, Thank You for your support!
Dare To Soar - It is 1989. People have not yet been indoctrinated to fear the illuminating sun. Tennesseans have always feared Monterey Village."
Chapter One
Chapter One
“Hurry, Rabbit. Get her to the hospital.” The woman’s brunette hair blew up then fell haphazardly atop her head while she raced across the floor. “We’re losing her.”
Rabbit, a man with deep age lines going across his face like tic-tac-toe marks, spoke coldly. “No.”
“She’s lost too much weight. She’s dying.” The woman begged, her blue eyes focused on the woman’s limp body, her arm cradling the vanishing woman’s neck. “The pills were too strong. What are you doing? We have to stop.” When he didn’t speak, the woman looked at him somberly and asked, “Are you trying to commit genocide?”
Chapter Two
Knoxville, Tennessee’s Monterey Village, a large apartment housing project, stretches across more than eight-long city blocks. An hour ride from Monterey Village is the headquarters to Tyler Pharmaceuticals and Chemical Research, one of the largest employers in the Southeastern part of the United States. Monterey Village starts at the edge of Sammy’s Little Roadhouse, a bar and grill restaurant so small and dingy many in town refer to it as “a hole in a wall.” It ends along a stretch of woods that, over the last five years, have become an open grave for no less than half a dozen people.
At Monterey Village curtains blow and flap in the wind, their fabric badly stained, crumpled and worn. Kids play kick-ball in yards lining the front of the apartments that are built in rows of brick and mortar, one-apartment-beside-the-other-one-apartment-beside-the-other, with nothing more than patches of dead grass and dirt dividing them. Each summer children’s hurrying feet dig up the blades of newly grown grass that push above ground during spring as they run and slide for first, second and third base. Here the homeless sleep outside on friends’ and street hustlers’ front porches. Older residents steal canned meat out of neighboring dog and cat dinner bowls then take the food back to their small apartments and devour it. A number of mentally ill patients escaped from local institutions make their way to Monterey Village and rent one of the few vacant apartments. The tormenting voices filling their heads follow them here. They go about the day with blank stares on their faces or swat at and talk and laugh loudly to people who are not there. Children move to the other side of the street the mentally ill occupy, fear rising up their spines, concern and caution filling their eyes. Here an adult running a hand down a child’s panties or underwear is thought to be “only playing”. Children here are not considered to have been molested until they have been violently penetrated and viciously beaten and have the scars to prove it. Daughters sometimes give birth to babies who look too much like their own fathers. Nearly 24 hours a day someone’s voice can be heard in Monterey Village. Late at night most of the voices shout. “Tell that punk ass Jerome if he don’t give me my money, I’m gonna fuck him up!” “Bitch! If you don’t get down here and talk to me right now, I’m gonna come up there and beat your ass until you beg me not to let you die!” “Motha fucka if you don’t get away from my car I’m gonna slit your fucking throat and let all these kids out here watch you bleed like shit across this stinking sidewalk!” When local TV stations report a murder or burglary, before hearing where the crime took place, residents throughout the entire city instantly conjure up images of Monterey Village. Most of them have never been here or met anyone from the Village; yet they hate the area with a deep, hot hatred. Children living in Monterey Village are embarrassed to tell friends who don’t reside in the housing project where they live. It’s the reason some of Monterey Village’s children make note of the names of nearby streets in safer areas or put to memory the numbers on immaculate single homes further into town. These same children lie and tell unsuspecting substitute teachers and classmates they live in the better, single homes. Adults brag when they move from the housing project only to go across town to a less threatening yet equally impoverished neighborhood. Plainly put, Monterery Village is the worst housing project in the Southern part of the United States and one of the top twenty worse neighborhoods in the entire world. Taxi drivers jokingly refer to the housing project as “Monkey Village.” It is a place no one wants to call home, but more than 2,000 men, women and children live here.
Amid it all is Zoe Rowland, a short, slender Black American whose ancestors are by way of West Africa’s Sierra Leone and India’s Bihar. Zoe is a quiet, intellectual woman whose quest to prove she needs no one overshadows all she says and does.
*******************
It’s a balmy mid-summer day. High winds keep the rising temperatures from making Zoe sweat while she walks down the sidewalk with her head high, shoulders back and eyes roving. She feels good to be off the crowded city bus. The man who sat next to her was funky and engaged in a frenzied, solitary conversation the entire time they rode the bus. Not one for impregnating people with the ache of embarrassment, Zoe sat next to the man and didn’t utter a word. She didn’t so much as glance at him. She sat motionless even when the man slapped his knee and yelped to the imaginary characters. As relieved as Zoe feels to be off the bus, she’s more relieved to be away from work. She hates her job at the bank. It’s a hard emotion that drapes her with guilt. Although she has worked at the bank for three years, the role she fills is not suited for her temperament. Watching checks flip through metal machines while they are date and time stamped and counting and wrapping loose coins fails to harvest her interest. When she started working at the bank she did think the pay, $400 a week, was good. That’s what pulled her in. As much as it robs her of self-esteem, Zoe can still see herself grinning seconds after the personnel manager leaned across her desk, extended her hand and told her, “You got the job. You got the Currency Administrator position.”
Zoe’s life is like a patch of land tilled too long – tilled until, absent a miracle, nothing further will grow from it. Despite the pain it brings her, Zoe doesn’t know how to break the patterns in her life that keep her from what she wants. “I’m moving further and further away from my dreams,” Zoe told herself while she walked away from the bus stop. She zoned in on her regrets so pointedly, when she finally decided to stop feeling sorry for herself, she looked up, and, in the distance, saw Apartment 3067 on Davidson Drive -- home.
(NEXT EXCERPT)
A moment later Zoe stood at the edge of the apartment building she and her sisters lived in. When she neared the porch, her immediate neighbor, a woman named Candice with short dirty blonde hair, threw a glass out the window of the bedroom she shared with her husband, a man who drank hard liquor excessively. “Get your sorry ass out of here,” Candice shouted, her hair blowing in the wind, her face contorted and covered with sweat.
“I ain’t goin’ no where, you dirty, stankin’ ho,” her husband slurred while he wobbled at the edge of the porch. A second later he lay on his side in their small front yard. He’d passed out.
Zoe walked to the man’s side and began pulling him up by his shoulders, back onto the porch. “Come on, George. Let’s get you up.” She sat him close to the door and out of the sun’s path so he wouldn’t take ill from heat exposure. Then she stood and walked to her own apartment.
Pauline was standing at the front door when Zoe stepped on the porch. “Hurry,” she whispered. “Theresa’ll be home any minute.”
The first thing Zoe did when she entered the apartment was drop her briefcase on the floor next to the sofa. It’s one of her patterns. Beyond a few addresses scribbled on sheets of paper, the briefcase is empty. A needless accessory – Zoe only carried the briefcase because she thought walking downtown with a leather briefcase in her hand made her look important.
The briefcase on the floor, Zoe scampered about the apartment for several minutes dusting the living room end tables and shelving clean dishes at the side of the sink. Pauline followed her chatting about this and that as they went. Finally they returned to the living room and sat on the sofa. As soon as they heard the front screen door squeak open they hurried and stood on opposite sides of the door.
“Surprise!”
Theresa jumped and placed her hand across her mouth. “You two!”
Pauline and Zoe joined their love for their oldest sister into a sway of words and sang, “Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, Theresa! Happy Birthday! We love, we love, we love, love, love, love you!”
Theresa spent the next fifteen minutes opening presents; Zoe bought her books and scented candles. Pauline bought her fad clothes and a pair of leather boots.
The gifts unwrapped, Pauline heated three plates of roast beef, macaroni and cheese, collard greens and black eyed peas she picked up from Mama B’s, a soul food restaurant she passed on her way home from work. While they ate dinner and snacked on Theresa’s birthday cake they watched two of their all-time favorite movies – Lady Sings the Blues and A Raisin in the Sun.
Time passed so quickly before they knew it, it was midnight. Pauline went to bed first. “I have to get up at five o’clock in the morning,” she said while she climbed the stairs and headed to bed. “Attorney I work for has a special case he wants me to come in early and help him get ready for.”
“Good night, Sis,” Zoe called out to Pauline.
Pauline out of the room, Zoe turned and faced Theresa. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Pauline, because she worries sometimes. But something’s not right. What’s wrong, T?”
“I lost my job.”
Chapter Three
“We came here on hardship,” Zoe shouted while she backed away from the housing manager’s long desk, its top shiny, its legs well carved. “It’s not like we shopped around and said – let’s live in the Village. No,” she said shaking her head and pressing her finger against her chest as if doing so would authenticate her story in the manager’s eyes. “Our parents were killed. My oldest sister was barely 16.” She arched her brow and looked at the manager, his hair thinning badly near his forehead. “You’ve got to be kidding.” She walked in a circle and took in then released quick bursts of air.
When her back faced him, he clasped his long, thin fingers together and smiled. It took a great amount of energy for him to stifle the chuckle that hid behind his counterfeit smile. After working as housing manager of Monterey Village for more than eighteen years, he’d seen and heard his share of emotional petitions. He didn’t care why her sisters and she were at the Village; rent was due and he expected payment on time. Rather than speak and help Zoe regain her dignity he sat smugly against the soft spine of the high-back leather chair and watched Zoe circle the room with a myriad of pleas.
(NEXT EXCERPT)
Zoe watched Robert from a lab at the back of the plant. His temples bulged when he shouted, “Zoe.”
Snatching goggles off her face and rubber gloves off her hands and shoving them inside a cardboard box beneath the table she labored feverishly at, Zoe tiptoed across the room and eased inside a closet. Using a hole in the closet like a makeshift window, she watched Robert enter the lab and turn on the lights.
His shadow darkened the hole and she hunched down in the closet. Her lash tickled when she blinked and it brushed the hole. Robert was gone. She placed a hand against her chest and breathed deeply. Her heart yet racing, she leaned against the closet wall. It was a long time before she tiptoed out of the closet and down the hall to the Ladies Room.
“Zoe.”
With a lowered gaze, she said, “Hi, Cathy.”
“Mr. Whitaker was looking for you.”
Zoe erased emotion from her face. “Really?”
“He went all over the building looking for you. Didn’t you hear him? He was hollering loud enough.”
“I didn’t hear him hollering all over the building.”
“You’re the only one who didn’t. Where were you?”
Zoe leaned against the sink until water stained the front of her blouse. Then she turned and faced Cathy. “I spilled something on my blouse.” She reached for a paper towel and dabbed at the wet spot. “I tried to get it out at my desk, but it wouldn’t come out, so I came in here to get it out.”
Moments later Zoe jogged to the bus stop at the top of the hill. Feeling a hard stare at her back, when she was halfway across the parking lot, she turned and saw Robert mouth the words, “I’ll be watching you.”
********************
Like a copy editor, Zoe sat on the bus and reviewed the day. She’d overheard Robert talking on the telephone. He spoke loud enough for anyone passing his office to hear him. It was as if he thought by talking loudly he could convince himself he was the big fish. Puffed up – that’s what Zoe thought Robert was. She liked him as much as she liked his secretary, Cathy. The $500 Armani and Versace suits they wore gave their character no shine.
“The intitial results of the clinical studies were a huge success. Over sixty percent of the West Coast university student volunteers lost 25-40 pounds within the first month of entering the study. It’s clear the drug does what our engineers stated it would. However, be advised a dozen employees at the North Carolina plant became severely ill while participating in a local study. We are investigating the cause of illness. Two of the employees are on life support. Direct all inquiries about the study to our Corporate Public Affairs Office. I’m holding meetings with several medical associations tomorrow. Due to the events at the North Carolina plant we must cease all clinical studies immediately. Stop the test now.” Zoe heard a pause then she heard, “This is not up for debate, Robert.”
Zoe leaned into the spine of the bus seat. Glancing out the window, she watched buildings, people and automobiles pass. She couldn’t figure why Robert hung up the telephone after speaking with his boss only to pick up the receiver again and dial one of the labs. “Keep testing,” she overheard him direct a technician. “Just heard from the higher ups. We’re on schedule.” He raised his voice. “Keep testing.”
Moments later Zoe was in a back lab hunting revealing clues about the test. The many years her father worked at the plant he never talked about his job. Always said it was top secret. The last thing her father did before he died was appear in a commercial endorsing two of Tyler’s weight lose raised his voice. “Keep testing.”
Moments later Zoe was in a back lab hunting revealing clues about the test. The many years her father worked at the plant he never talked about his job. Always said it was top secret. The last thing her father did before he died was appear in a commercial endorsing two of Tyler’s weight loss products and contribute to a Science and Mind magazine article detailing the benefits of Renzos, Tyler’s new anti-bacterial drug created to destroy a resistant strand of influenza. Even his commercial appearance he wouldn’t talk about at home.
Before Zoe had chance to review other unsettling events at the plant, a heavy-set woman carrying six large shopping bags stood over her shoulder. Guilt clung to Zoe’s conscience like a web. She wished she could just once ride the bus from work to home in a row of seats all by herself – just once. She smiled before she looked up at the woman and stood from her seat. “Would you like to sit down? You’ve got quite a load. Must have been doing lots of shopping, huh?”
The woman struggled to slide across the seat with her bags in hand. “Grandkids. Birthdays.” She released a thick breath. “Sometimes I think they were all born in the same month.” After she sat, she turned and smiled at Zoe.
Zoe sat down next to the woman and her large, stuffed shopping bags. Her left butt cheek hung off the seat being that she only had about eight inches of seat to occupy. For the remainder of the forty-minute bus ride home, the grandmother and Zoe tossed light conversation between each other like popcorn going back and forth through the air.
ZOE -- A book about time and chance
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