Prompt #119
The People That We Meet
Good morning, everybody.
And happy almost July Fourth!
Welcome to the new folks who have come my way via George Saunders’ substack, Story Club. Hope you enjoy this place! I post both new prompts and ones that I pull out of the archive. Take a look around. Not every prompt will speak to you, and that’s okay. You are welcome to post anything you want in the comments section (under 400 words), even if it’s not aligned with any week’s particular prompt.
Questions? Ask away!
Here’s a little something I wrote that a lot of people wouldn’t call a “story.” Of course, it all depends on what your definition of a story is. Here, we’ve got a narrator, a couple of other characters, a bit of tension, and a character-defining choice. So, to me, it actually IS a story. But you’re welcome to have a different opinion. Does it matter what we call it? The upshot is: this is what appeared on the page, and writing anything at all, in my book, is a win.
Anyway, give this a read (if you are so inclined!) and then I’ll get to the prompt:
Pam and Olga
Dentist appointment this morning and when I’m called back, it’s not my usual hygienist, Pam, it’s someone else. Olga. It seems Pam has retired. What a thing to have happened! I’ve seen Pam every six months for years now. We have our patterns. She knows me. We chat and we laugh and at the end of the cleaning she says, do you want to make another appointment for six months from now? And I always say yes, and then we both say goodbye, see you in six months. And now I will never see her again. Look, I know that’s how life goes, but still, it feels funny. I’d have liked to have said a real goodbye, or good luck, or whatever. I’d have liked to have given her a little hug and thanked her for all the teeth cleanings. Well, Olga seems quite nice. She’s younger. Less put together than Pam. Earthier, I’d say. I tell her about Pam. I say, so Pam and I used to play a little game that goes like this: I ask Pam how I’m doing with the flossing and she says, you’re doing a really good job! And then Pam asks if I’d like to try a water pik and I say no. And then Pam tells me that actually I could do a tiny bit better on my back teeth and I say I know. But then she says again that I’m doing a really great job—it’s just those back teeth. And I say, right. Then she’ll ask if I’ll get x-rays this time, and I say no, maybe next time. So, I say to Olga, maybe we could play that same game? And Olga says, okay, but then she completely forgets the game. I say, how am I doing with the flossing, and she says, not bad. I say, do my teeth look all right? And she says, they look okay. There is no upbeat nature to her voice. She’s matter of fact. I’m pretty sure she wants me to use a water pik, but she holds back. She says, hmmm. Those back teeth, you’re not getting back there enough. I nod my head as best I can. At the end of the appointment, Olga asks if I want another appointment for six months from now and I say yes. Later, at home, my gums hurt a bit, and they never hurt after I saw Pam. Maybe Pam didn’t do as good a job?
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write your own Pam/Olga story. Call it “Pam and Olga.”
In your story, Pam and Olga are not dental hygienists. They are something, anything else!
They are two elderly ladies in a nursing home. They are both card dealers in Vegas. They are both your mothers. They are neighbors who do not speak to one another. They are babies, switched at birth at the hospital. They are flies in the kitchen. They are nicknames for body parts.
Okay, you get the point. You’ve got Pam. You’ve got Olga. Now write them a story.
That’s the whole prompt.
Pam and Olga lived down the street growing up. They were twins, joined at the hip. Not literally, fortunately, physically, I mean, but otherwise. Like they wore the same outfits, even after they started making their own clothes, they made the same things. Same haircuts, same freckles. Same same.
And they were pretty, the same pretty. When I went over there to play I got two for one. They shared a room and liked the same music, so when we put on a 45 they sang the song so you couldn’t tell their voices apart. Sitting between them was like stereo. When they smiled it was like stereopticon. When they went down the stairs it was like Eadweard Muybridge.
When Pam and Olga grew up and went away to college, the same college, the same psychology major, of course, my life went monosyllabic, monaural, monocular. I lost it. When I asked a girl on a date and only one showed up I was so disoriented I could hardly speak, and cancelled, saying I was sick.
I realized I wanted to be like Pam and Olga. I understood that when you had a double, you didn’t have to reflect too much. It was all done for you. You weren’t alone. How generous life can be sometimes, say, when you have a double. It was too late for a twin brother, of course, but in recalling the rapture I felt in childhood with the twins I wondered why not carry on.
They were still wearing their matching graduation dresses when I asked them to marry me. Yes, they said, exchanging symmetrical glances with me, smiling bilaterally. All was well.
The wedding is tomorrow. Probably there are some things we haven’t thought about yet. But you know, when you accept life is surreal, you just get on with it.
Pamela hand waters her garden, a garden confined to pots on the front stoop of a converted Victorian. Once a grand home in the Western Addition, the house was divided a hundred years ago into eight small apartments. Pamela, now the senior tenant, moved here over four decades ago when she was newly divorced and emotionally at sea.
She started the garden to anchor herself and to have something to love. The landlord disapproved. He disapproved so much that he took away the hose he’d occasionally use to wash down the sidewalk and disabled the faucet, hoping the lack of water would discourage her. It didn’t though. Instead, she rescued a watering can just as she had rescued her original pots from various trash bins and filled it each day in her kitchen sink. It made no difference to her since the water was paid for by the landlord anyway. A few years on, when he realized that the garden improved the building, he bought a new hose and fixed the faucet. When his widow sold the building after he died, the new landlord liked her garden so much that he regularly gave her money for improvements and cut her rent by $100 a month to compensate her for her efforts.
Three years ago, Olga and her mother, Oksana, moved into the apartment below Pamela’s. Refugees from Ukraine, neither spoke English. At first, five-year-old Olga would sit silently on the steps watching Pamela tend the garden and run inside if Pamela did anything to acknowledge her. Slowly, they became friends and gardening partners, learning to speak each other’s language along the way.
Yesterday, an ICE officer came round while Pamela was watering. He asked about “the Ukrainians.” She told him she didn’t know any Ukrainians, and he told her that two live in her building and have fallen out of status and need to turn themselves in for deportation. He told her that if she lied or helped them in any way, she’d be arrested.
This morning, Pamela walked Olga to school. Olga was puzzled but delighted at the new routine. After convincing Olga to introduce her to her teacher, Pamela kept walking. Part dumpster inspection, part aimless wandering, she took the long way home.