"After Rosa Parks" by Janet Desaulniers

I mentioned last week how influential Hooked by Les Edgerton has been in my reading and writing.  This week, I edited three short stories and watched as the inciting incidents connected to the surface problems which both led organically to the story-worthy problem.  I finally get cause and effect and can feel my story-worthy problem guiding my way.  Pun intended: I'm hooked.  Not only has this approach changed how I write and edit, but it has changed how I read.  I'm picking up books at random and seeking out the inciting incident.  I'm barraging my husband with plot summaries and talk of the all-encompassing "SWP."  On tap this week: "After Rosa Parks" by Janet Desaulniers.

Opening Line

Ellie found her son in the school nurse's office, laid out on a leatherette fainting couch like some child gothic, his shoes off, his arms crossed over his chest, his face turned to the wall.  

Inciting Incident

You know when you were a kid and your mom used to respond to some generic childhood crisis with the wise question, "Wouldn't life be boring if we were all the same?"  After reading this story I'll pose a question to you, dear obscure short story blog readers.  Wouldn't life be boring if the inciting incident was obvious?  If we all saw the same inciting incident in a story?  When we read, don't we want to delve into the dance of creation along with the author?  

I'm going out on a limb but I'm going to argue that Desaulniers breaks some rules here and begins with some significant backstory.  The inciting incident, the disruption to Ellie and Cody's stability, comes later with her brother Frank's cancer diagnosis.  That's what changes everything.  

Surface Problems

Oh there's a lot to pick from here.  Ellie is a struggling single mom to young Cody, a child with a nervous stomach and a sensitivity to the sharp edges of the world that let's us know the future and all of its blemishes will be hard on Cody, and Ellie in turn.  Cody's an old soul, and what's worse for an old soul than a cookie-cutter public education?  Uncle Frank has come to help since the divorce went through, but his belly hurts too, for more nefarious reasons.

Story-Worthy Problem

If you haven't read anything by Parker Palmer, who writes about education but who really writes about life and justice and courage, please give him a try.  He changes the shape of your brain and heart.  He refers in his work to something called "The Rosa Parks Decision."  To paraphrase, it is the moment in your life when you decide to live on your own terms, at whatever the cost, because the cost of living under someone else's thumb will forever be too great once you see your world through your new eyes. 

This is the story-worthy problem for Ellie.  She's not the child quivering on the diving board, afraid to jump in.  She's the kid that won't even get off the bench, too resigned to the certainty that she'll fail to even stand up.  I imagine, though don't know for sure, that this moment of diving into the deep end, of reclaiming one's tenacity and hope, is common after divorce.  Ellie decides that if she can find her own terms, and then live by them, she and Cody will find their place in the world.  They'll both be free.