Helena Clare Pittman, one of the Center’s most dedicated teachers, has written, painted, and taught her entire life. In her monthly Helena Writes series, she shares a lifetime of wisdom, one pearl at a time.
In her 52nd post, Helena shares a continuation of a chapter from her favorite of her original works, Ruthie Pincus of Brooklyn. Enjoy!
Story seeds
There is a section in my book Ruthie Pincus of Brooklyn that came from one initial potential chapter, “The Science Fair.” During the years-long writing of Ruthie, though, I developed pieces from the many story seeds that were in that original chapter. The science fair at P.S. 221 at the corner of Montgomery Street and Troy Avenue, two blocks from where we lived on Crown Street, was an event so exciting in my memory that I couldn’t stop writing about it. By the time the chapter “Rocks and Birds of Brooklyn” delivered itself to me, I was deeply enmeshed in the comic possibilities of all the characters involved—characters that were real people in the configuration of people and relationships that made up my world until my family moved from Crown Street, when I was ten years old. That began a new life.
But my muse wanders, like a horse pulling at its bridle, back to Crown Street, to that time and to the people I knew. They stand on some internal stage, ready for the plays that come from my storytelling soul, that have something to do with the root memories of the events of my childhood. But these actors are so skilled they take the action, the story, in directions I can’t guess. And I become a scribe, laughing, listening to what they say and do, writing as fast as I can.
The next three blog writings, coming from Ruthie Pincus of Brooklyn, and the former, “Science Fair,” pick up after the chapter entitled, “Jamboree.” I sincerely long to offer that chapter here in this space, and one day likely will. Writing “Jamboree” astonished me, revealing, as it did, things I knew inchoately about my parents’ relationship, and now understood as their intimacy with each other, concealed beneath the layer of ordinary daily life with its strains and strong headwinds that made up the atmosphere of my family’s life. I love writing, for the deep truth I recognize that it bears. It seems to me that fiction and nonfiction writing tell an otherwise unachievable truthfulness, reveals the bedrock of things. I believe there is nothing that is writing’s equivalent.
The following begins in our backyard on Crown Street. Up until about the age of, I think, four, I pronounced the word, back-ee-yard.
From a chapter following Ruthie Pincus of Brooklyn: “Rocks and Birds of Brooklyn" (© Helena Clare Pittman)
Nine species of birds have come to our backyard in the dead of winter. By Sunday night, I’ve combined them, in the bird book I’ve made out of colored construction paper from Nat’s Candy Store on the corner of Crown and Troy Avenues, with the birds that fly north when spring comes to New York State, New Jersey and Connecticut, and, of course, Brooklyn, which I’ve learned about in the encyclopedia.
I’ve eliminated the idea of using my rubber band ball as a project for the Science Fair. I can’t have three science projects. But can I really have two? I’ll be the only one. But who ever thought so many birds lived in the Tri-State area? And right here in Brooklyn, on our very street! That’s too surprising and important to just keep to yourself. And a fossil—that isn’t just nothing, I’m thinking. And I’m thinking about the moment Pappa and I saw it in the ordinary looking gray rock that split open when it hit the other stones we used to fill the hole we’d dug for the bird house, to keep it from falling over. The very birdhouse that brought the birds from wherever they could smell the fat from Benny Pitt’s butcher shop on Troy Avenue. The fat I collect. The fat that makes my sister Rebecca sick to her stomach, now sitting on Pappa’s plywood plank in our backyard, my science project bird house, the fat from Benny Pitt’s now offered up to the winter sky.
I’m having this discussion inside myself, working on the drawing of the cardinal husband and wife, coloring the male red and the female, red-brown, when my father comes to my door.
“How are the birds?” he asks.
“Pappa, I have fifteen kinds!”
My father crosses the room and looks at the picture of the cardinals. “My mother— your grandmother, Lily, could draw.” Pappa says this softly. “Not just music runs in this family!” He kisses me.
“But, Pappa, now I have too many science projects. No one will have two but me!”
My father looks at me. He’s thinking. “You have one extra,” he says. “Isn’t there something called extra credit?” he asks.
“Extra credit?” I repeat.
“Why not?” asks my father.
“Why not?” I repeat.
What an idea, I think. Mrs. Roth gives Nina Present extra credit for working ahead in her math book while mostly everyone else is struggling to do the day’s homework.
“Besides, sweetheart,” says my father. “If it weren’t for the birdhouse, we wouldn’t have found the fossil! They belong together!”
Now we smile.
I draw purple finches, robins, cardinals. They’re linked, they’re linked, they’re linked, I’m saying inside myself, filling in the outlines of the bird drawings, feeling the linen cover of the encyclopedia under the paper making liney patterns in the crayon colors. My two science projects are LINKED! I couldn’t have one without the other! I draw mockingbirds, seagulls, blue jays, starlings, grackles chickadees, crows, pigeons, sparrows, tufted tit mice, gold finches, Helene Lamont’s parakeet, and Ella, Aunt Dorothy’s canary. Linked linked linked linked, I am saying inside myself about my two science projects. Two two two two!
Do you ever feel like your characters take over when you’re writing, and you’re just following where they lead? What did you think of this excerpt from Helena’s novel? Share with us in the comments.
Related reading: Helena Writes
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