story

Walking through Fires

/ Gerry Wilson / Leave a comment

Meet Leona Pinson — “that girl” in That Pinson Girl, my debut novel — who at seventeen gives birth to an illegitimate child. Leona has completed the eighth grade, the only education available to her deep in the beautiful but hardscrabble hills of north Mississippi. Leona lives on a farm with her troubled mother, Rose, her aunt, Sally Pinson (a dwarf whose appearance has always frightened Leona), and her older brother, Raymond, who drinks and rides at night with other young men who feature themselves the “new” Klan. The year before her child is born, Leona’s father died in a hunting accident she believes may have been murder.

Leona is smart and resourceful, but vulnerable. Lying with that boy before he goes off to the war in France and refusing to name him as her son’s father invite the scorn of her family and the community, except for Luther Biggs, a biracial sharecropper who has a long history with the Pinson family. Luther loves and protects Leona, but he too keeps a devastating secret.

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Early on, the problematic side of Leona as a character seemed to be that she was a victim of her life circumstances. Nobody wants a passive main character! But as she developed over the course of re-writing the novel many times, I discovered she wasn’t a victim at all, subject to the whims of others and whatever Fate might have in store. She evolved, and eventually, I found depth and resilience and courage in her that surprised me. You see, when Leona encounters hardships — when she walks through the fires of discrimination, hatred, violence, and loss — she suffers, but she picks herself up and gets on with the life she knows, all the while yearning for something better, all the while becoming stronger.

Where does the character of Leona come from?

In part, at least, she comes from me. My own life is probably my deepest source, whether I’m aware of its influences when I’m writing or not. Leona also comes from stories my maternal grandmother told. Her early life was a textbook for living with hardship and loss.

But Leona also comes from this:

When I was a child, a woman lived with her son and her mother in a shabby house down the street from us. It seemed nobody ever visited or called or spoke to them. They went about their lives in isolation. When I asked my parents about them, I got non-answers. I was almost grown when I learned she had borne the son out of wedlock when she was just a girl, and all of them were shunned because of it.

And there you have it: the birth of Leona Pinson as a character. I’m grateful to know her and share her with you.

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A different version of this piece appeared September 8, 2023, on Substack at Stories I’m Old Enough to Tell. I’m in the process of transitioning this website blog to Substack. I would love it if you would subscribe there (it’s free!) and share with friends.

Coffee? Lemonade? Or Nothing?

/ Gerry Wilson / Leave a comment

“At the end of every hard-earned day / people find some reason to believe.”  — Bruce Springsteen

In “Reason to Believe,” Bruce Springsteen tells it like it is.

By many people’s standards, my days are not “hard-earned.” I have a good life, not without its problems and sorrows, but easy compared to most, I suppose.

My dad’s days, on the other hand, were different. He came up poor, and after high school, he went to live with and work for my uncle, who had a car dealership in a nearby town. When my uncle decided to move back to Pontotoc, the tiny town in the hills of north Mississippi where they had grown up, my dad moved with him. In those days, Daddy followed the big bands that traveled the South. He was handsome, and I have old photographs of the pretty girls he knew. But my mother put an end to what seemed to be his confirmed bachelorhood. When they married, she was eighteen and he was thirty-two. The love affair that was their marriage continued until his death forty-five years later.

Do I believe in providence?

I suppose I do. I’m not certain how my parents met. I know my mother’s best friend lived across the street from the little service station my dad ran. I imagine her walking past the station, never looking his way. Did she and her best friend watch him from the porch across the street? Did they giggle? Did Mother write her name as his—“Mrs. G______”?

I wish I knew the answers. What a shame I didn’t ask.

I can only speculate, just like I can speculate about the coincidence of meeting my first husband at a college party. We were both there with other people, but he cut in and danced with me. Later, I ran into him on campus and he offered me a ride back to the dorm. Still later, he called and asked me out. And that was the beginning.

Or much later, twenty-seven years ago, a phone call came from a college professor I didn’t know. He had seen the high school literary magazine I sponsored, he said, and he needed a judge for a writing contest; would I do it? When I said yes, he offered to bring the materials to my house. And soon, there he stood, on my doorstep, this man I would eventually marry. He says I served him iced tea (it was July, maybe August). What if I’d offered him coffee? Or lemonade? Or nothing? What if I’d said no on the phone? I so easily could have, but I didn’t.

Photo by The Matter of Food on Unsplash

Today or tomorrow, noon or evening. This restaurant or that one.

Why are we in particular places at particular times? Five minutes, or less, even seconds, and the turns our lives take could be so very different. Call it providence. Call it fate. Call it God-ordained. Our lives unfold in mysterious ways.

I’ve lived long enough to look back on the days of my life—some of which were indeed hard-earned, heartbreaking days that I thought at the time would break me—and see how they didn’t. They shaped and matured me and made me a different person from the one I might have been. Is that evidence enough to believe? I can’t prove there’s a force larger than us at work. But the thought sustains me, and that’s what matters.

Have you experienced a particular moment in your life when you felt something larger than yourself at work? Tell me about it in the comments.

This piece first appeared November 18, 2023, on Substack. Want to read more? Go to “Stories I’m Old Enough to Tell.”

When Life Gets in the Way

/ Gerry Wilson / Leave a comment

The first week of June, on the fourth day of a beach vacation in Fort Morgan, Alabama, my husband and I walked down to the beach after dinner to watch the sun set. My son’s family was there; it’s become a tradition to gather at the beach with them every summer. That evening, I walked out of our shade tent to take a look at the sand castle my grandson was building, stepped in a hole in the sand, and went down. Hard.

From that point I remember only bits and pieces—a blessing, I’ve been told—but I do remember the EMTs putting me on a backboard they had trouble latching in the sand and loading me into the bed of a red pickup truck with “RESCUE” emblazoned on the doors (the ambulance couldn’t navigate the beach). I remember the guy in the back of the truck with me yelling “Go go go!”, urging the driver on over the rough terrain.

I had surgery in Foley, Alabama, and my husband and son drove me home to Jackson, Mississippi a few days later. I spent three weeks in a rehab facility. I’m now almost four months out from the fall and the surgery and doing well.

But what about the time I “lost” to a fog of pain and meds and physical therapy and learning to function again? If you’ve had a similar experience, you know that getting well becomes all-consuming. The momentum I’d had before the accident—preparing to launch my novel, starting a Substack newsletter, expanding my social media presence, and more—was gone.

This is where the old saw, “life gets in the way,” comes in. After something that shakes us, how do we reclaim our momentum? How do we rebuild confidence? How do we pick up where we left off—or even better, how do we take the earth-shattering experience and create something good and maybe even beautiful from it?

I don’t have many answers, but I will say this: like regaining strength, we get back a little bit at a time. We allow whatever emotions we have to play out. I’ve cried plenty over those lost days, but that won’t bring them back. I’ve begun to write again (this little essay is part of that effort). I’ve gotten back to revising stories for a collection. There’s a 40,000-word draft of a sequel to my forthcoming novel, That Pinson Girl, nagging me for attention. I haven’t written anything new yet, but I hope that will come, in time. Time’s the great healer, people keep telling me. I hope so!

What about you? Has life thrown you a curve ball lately? How did you adapt? What tips do you have to offer? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

This piece was originally published at Story Circle Network, October 4, 2023.