Under the Bed Archaeology

Under the Bed Archaeology by Sandra Gail Lambert

"Hand me a wet cloth, and I'll get these base boards. And here are some pens."

Pam is flat on her belly with everything from the waist up under the daybed in my writing room. She's volunteered to search for copies of my memoir, A Certain Loneliness, to take to a book table. A hand sweeps into view and her fingers push eleven dusty Dr. Grip Gel Fine Point Rollerballs up against my wheelchair wheels. The pens represent fifteen years of wondering why I couldn't find something to write with. I'd known that they fell off the bed on that far side, but I'd trained my little dog. At the sound of one clattering onto the floor, she'd squirm underneath and retrieve it for me. It seems she'd missed a few.

That's not completely fair to the dog. Over the years, I've added to the maze of storage boxes shoved underneath, so even a terrier bred to hunt out moles couldn't be expected to track through them. And as she aged, more and more, whenever I asked her to go find a pen or scrap of note under there, she'd act as if she had no idea what I wanted. And these days she's become deaf so she can't hear the drop. Instead of saying "find it," my hand sign is to point down in an aggressive way. In response, she'll stretch one leg out, make it quiver, and give me side eye without lifting her head. It's her way of saying, “Fuck you, I’m retired.”

But Pam is doing a great job. I toss a damp cloth under the bed. Another plastic bin comes sliding my way. Then another. Then cardboard boxes. I look through the box with my name tag, promotional bookmarks, business cards, little purse of small bills for change, and many copies of my novel from a decade ago, but can't find the memoir. Pam uses her hips to scooch out.

I dust off Pam and all the boxes. I spray vinegar and water on a mop and push it deep under the bed. This cleansing of my writing space makes me enthusiastic about the possibilities. (Yes, I am at the stage of writing a novel where I’m tempted away from the work of it by anything new.) Pam lifts a couple of long, large, plastic bins onto the bed. They aren't the type that seal well, so I do that Florida thing of having one hand on the joystick ready to back up while stretching my arm out as far as I can to flip the lid in case there's a swarm of roaches. There are no roaches.

I ask Pam not to put anything back except the box still taped up from the warehouse. It contains copies of my novel its publisher sold to me on the cheap before the rest were destroyed. It still hurts my heart. (If you want to buy one for $10 including postage, let me know.) But the other bins are filled with files of past writings, research for past publications, research for future, never written, abandoned projects. I might as well go through it all. It won't take long.  

The first bin is easy. It's one of those portable file boxes with a handle. I can lift it myself. A few files have nothing in them. The next file is from Tom Hart's "Comics for Writers" course. It was a great class, but I'm unlikely to ever write a graphic memoir. Still, I pull out a couple of panels that I impressed my own self with and save those before the rest goes in recycling. I'm hoping I can fit everything left after the big sorting in this one box.

The next storage bin is a long one and was probably meant for bedding. There are nineteen spiral bound, eight pocket portfolios all bulging. Many of them are the research, notes, drafts, and feedback for each of the chapters of The River's Memory, my debut novel published way back when I was sixty-two. The label on the first one I pick up says "The Runner." I'm confused until I remember that this is an unfinished chapter I decided to leave out. Could I rework it into a short story set in that moment when historically it would have been possible for an elderly woman, one of the few still surviving Timucuan woman, a Yamassee youngster, Spanish occupiers, and English invaders with their Creek allies to exist in the same space on the night before an attack on a cattle ranch in the early 1700s ten miles from where I now live? Probably not. My white lady perspective is not what's needed here.

The next file is really five bulging files wrapped together with one of those super-thick rubber bands that the post office uses to wrap two weeks' worth of your held mail. To pick it up, I position myself so I can lean against an armrest and free up both arms. The label says "OEL." Old English Lady. These are all writings about my mother.

And that's where I've stopped. I haven't even taken off the rubber band which is probably stuck in places and will disintegrate when I try. I'm thinking I'll skip OEL and move on to a another chapter of the novel. I remember, I think, printing out the oral histories posted by an Ocala city department that I can't find anymore online. In them, besides the arrival of the Cuban-run cigar makers up from Tampa (The River's Memory, Chapter Three), there was information about a Jewish peddler with his wagon whose grandson or maybe son established a department store there in Ocala. (The River's Memory, Chapter Four)  My friend Sarah Einstein has Jewish Appalachian ancestors she's writing about who took the same journey. I had wanted to show her some primary sources of a Florida version.

I know. I can hear you telling me I'm missing the point which is hidden in parenthesis up above. I need to put away those shiny baubles of possibility (the grimy boxes that might have roach egg cases in them). Get back to the novel, you say. You're being a do anything to avoid the hard work, procrastinating, worried that the whole thing is just too boring, is irredeemable, is crap, you could be dead before you finish and no one will publish it anyway cliché of a writer.

But I just can't yet. Instead I'll give myself a date. I get to dig into this archeology of my writing life and my life life and my mother's life until Wednesday, December 20th at 8am. Then it's all novel, all the time. Although, and this in no way went into my calculations, of course, but by the end of January, I will be deep into promoting the publication of My Withered Legs and Other Essays. Maybe even before. During this phase of putting a book out, no writer is expected to write. We exist in that parallel universe period of time where we are celebrated for our writing as we spend months never writing a word.

Speaking of a parallel sort of universe, here's that short story that has become the first chapter of this novel-in-progress.

Sandra Gail Lambert

P.S. We never found the copies of A Certain Loneliness until after the event and after I'd reordered a few more from the publisher. Sigh. More books to go under the bed.

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