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I had to read only one of her assignments to recognize the gift she had with words. Her ability to recreate a time and place—often beyond her scope of experiences—was uncanny. Her first essay captured the feel of living on a farm in the 1950's, a time and place occupied by her grandparents. With words magically woven together, she could transport me to that farm. I could feel the straw between my toes as I leaned into the chicken basket to search for a new cache of eggs. The warm mist rising from the newly-plowed furrows enveloped me as I read the essay.
What talent she possessed! Yet the talent came with pain. I watched as she struggled over each word or phrase, looking for that precise conveyance of meaning. I was privy to these labor pains as she brought an unfinished draft to seek an answer or to solicit an opinion. One afternoon, she appeared at my elbow to discuss her previous paper, the farm essay. Noticing her wrinkled brows, I wanted to assure her that the final product would be fine, that the process did not have to be so painful. Certainly, some joy had to accompany this extraordinary gift of hers! I soon realized the worry lines were etched by my insistence upon her producing error-free, concise papers. Because her first essay was three times as long as her classmates', her few errors per page, though minor, had accumulated sufficient penalties to offset the high grade for content. By my noticing every error, I—through grades—had dulled the brilliance of her writing. No wonder my assurance that her essays were beautifully written slipped to the floor unheeded.
Throughout the year, knowing that her writing would transport me to another time and place, I always moved her compositions to the top of the pile. Amid a sea of good, but often plain, writings, hers shone. An additional treat was reading her essay tests; she sprinkled each answer with keen observations far beyond her years. Whatever the assignment, she excelled; however, her creative writings were far beyond any other writings that had come across my desk in twenty years. Two of the creative assignments were short stories in which either the first or the final sentence was supplied. The students' challenge was to fabricate a story around the given sentence.
Again my rules and parameters almost ruined her work. The day the first short story was due, Amelia broke out of her habitual shyness to ask a question—in the middle of "Channel One," a school-mandated news show. That atypical action on her part should have alerted me to the seriousness of her problem. Because we were all reading the stories aloud and because I had scheduled only three days for the sharing, I had placed a 5-7 minute limit on each story. Timidly, Amelia approached my desk to see what the ramifications were for going beyond the time limit. At first I unwisely suggested that she read the story quickly; unreceptive to this idea, she merely looked at me. Trying not to stifle her creativity but mindful of the class time frame, I then suggested that she cut something. She tearfully nodded, said she would have to rework hers, and turned away. She returned the next day to read her story to the class. Reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor or Eudora Welty, her work took us back in time, to another way of moving and of thinking. I could imagine a lazy, lightweight screen door opening onto a rose-scented porch and the gentle squeak of the porch swing enticing passersby to take a moment to chat. The floral-sprigged parlor with its starched crochet circlets and sepia-toned portraits spoke of a family only heard in murmured drawls in another part of the house. As I listened, I was ensnared. How could she possibly know of a time past, much less recreate it for us so that the sights, sounds, and smells were vividly portrayed? The story developed in this setting was a delightful one of a younger, rebellious sister protesting the rules set forth in a deportment book. Even the word deportment spoke of a time and place beyond Amelia's life. The subtle humor entwined in the story cogently pointed out the foibles of a society that restrained young girls with its silly notions of proscribed behavior. Eudora was alive and well in the Pee Dee, our own little corner of Mississippi right here in South Carolina.
Later, as I looked over her first version, I realized that even though what I had heard her read was an amazing story, the original, longer one was much better. To save five minutes of class time and to be "fair" to the others in maintaining the same length for all presentations, I had forced Amelia to perform deadly surgery on her story. No wonder she had tears in her eyes the day before.
Because I was determined to be more flexible in setting the variables for the next assignment, we avoided the time dilemma. Her second story equaled her first in its honesty and in its success in capturing a place in time. Moreover, the complexity of the story line was neatly carried out by a "sophisticated" narrator who the reader could see was not at all sophisticated. To succeed in this undertaking of having an unreliable narrator was, once again, a feat well beyond her years. I listened to the story, thoroughly enjoying the subtleties and thoroughly relieved that I had not ruined that special creative voice within her.
As Amelia left my room the last day of class, I called her over. Trying in an awkward way to express my joy in her writing, I handed her the two books that I had bought for her, short stories by O'Connor and Welty. Feebly apologizing for any artificial boundaries I had imposed on her work, I reminded her to be careful in altering her work to please another. She, as writer, possessed the inner voice of the story and had the skill to put this voice on paper. I will always be on the lookout for her published work; someone that talented will be read by many, that is, if her tenth grade teacher didn't ruin her.