Hook Us With Your First Page # 3

And it's another installment of HOOK US WITH YOUR FIRST PAGE!

This first page comes from Heidi W. Durrow, and is the first page of her WIP titled "Light-skinned-ed-Girl" (literary fiction).

So, what do you think? Does she hook YOU with her first page?

Please leave comments in the comment box.

Chapter One

“You my lucky piece,” Grandma says when the bus drives up just as we reach the stop.
Grandma has walked me the half block from the hospital lobby to the bus stop quickly. Her hand is wrapped around mine like a leash.

It is winter in Portland and it is raining. Puddle water has splashed up on my new shoes. My girl-in-a-new dress feeling has faded. My new-girl feeling has disappeared.

My hand is in hers until she reaches into a black patent-leather clutch for change.

“Well, aren’t those the prettiest blue eyes on the prettiest little girl,” the bus driver says as we climb aboard. The new-girl feeling comes back and I smile.

“This my grand-baby. Come to live with me.” Grandma can’t lose Texas .

Her body is a bullet. She is thick and short. Her waist is the same go-around number as her chest. She has Grandma boobies; smother-you-into her kind of boobies that make her soft and squishy. Her dark hair is pulled back and is covered by a plastic bonnet. She puts the change in for my fare. “Here you go, ma’am.” The bus driver hands her a transfer slip for each of us.

“Thank you ma’am,” I say. I mind my manners around strangers. Grandma is still a stranger to me.

I know only a few things about Grandma. She’s a gardener; she has soft hands; and she smells like lavender.

For Christmas, Grandma sends Robbie and me a card with a new $10 bill wrapped in aluminum foil. On the back of the envelope where she presses extra hard there’s a small smudge. The card smells like the lavender lotion she uses to keep her hands soft.

I hold her hand again and think of cotton, not knowing what that means, and pillows and clouds. She doesn’t have a single wrinkle on her anywhere. She has dark eggplant brown skin as smooth as a plate all because of the lotion she sends for special from the South. “They got better roots down there—better dirt for making a root strong.”

“Well, aren’t you lucky to have a special Grandma,” the bus driver says. “Pretty and lucky.”
This is the picture I want to remember: Grandma looks something like pride. Like a whistle about to blow.

She wipes the rain off my face. “We almost home.”

When we find our seats, she says something more, but I cannot hear it. She is leaning across me like a seat belt and speaks into my bad ear—it is the only lasting injury I have from the accident. Her hands are on me the whole ride, across my shoulder, on my hand, stroking my hair to smooth it flat again. I am the new girl, partly the new girl but a little off –balance. Grandma seems to be holding me down, as if I might fly away or fall.

The bus ride is seven stops and three lights. Then we are home. Grandma’s home, the new girl’s home in a new dress.

Copyright 2005 Heidi W. Durrow

5 comments:

  1. I have a sense of what happened but I would like to read more. This would be better though, with a more active, show not tell, voice.

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  2. I wanted to like this because who can't identify with the new-girl-in-a-new-dress feeling? It's too passive, though. There are too many "has." I understand the grandmother is from a different country, but the way she talks is distracting.

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  3. I wish I hadn't listened to Heidi speak at the University of Copenhagen because it's greatly influencing my opinion. She just blew me away. I love this premise. While others think it's been done before, it doesn't matter to me...it still drags me in. I'm curious to see what goes on from here. I love her descriptive language...especially the way she describes her grandmother. I can feel the passive voice, and maybe she needs to work on that, but overall, I really liked it. But, again, I wished I hadn't listened to the audio of her reading at the University of Copenhagen. If you want to listen to it and see what I mean, go to www.heidiwdurrow.com/pagewtg.html. Marvelous reading.

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  4. Would it be acceptable to post excerpts from non-fiction works as well?

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  5. That's a good question. Sure! That first page is very important whether it be fiction or non-fiction. Just make sure it's not published. For those that are published, I offer the opportunity to post your first chapter...whole separate ballgame. ;o)

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