Kathie Giorgio, whose short story “Quiet” received honorable mention in the Zona Gale Short Fiction contest, was ill and couldn’t attend the Council for Wisconsin Writers May 11 Awards Banquet, but she did send us her thoughts on what winning this honor meant to her. Her comments are followed by a reprint of “Quiet”.
My story, “Quiet”, winning an Honorable Mention in the Zona Gale Short Fiction Award category results in a double-happy feeling for me. First, the story is a testimony to the validity and worth of the “quiet person”, the introvert, someone who prefers to be a fly on the wall rather than the elephant in the room. But then the story itself is also a quiet story – there’s no sex, no violence, no action scenes, no great drama. It’s all internal. Some editors and publishers would tell you
that writing a quiet story is an exercise in futility – that readers want loud, they don’t want quiet.
To me, this award is proof that this is not necessarily the case. CWW, thanks so much for this!
Quiet came about after a soft-spoken student told me that her mother sent her when she was in grade school to what was called a Personality Class. It was supposed to give my student a bold and confident personality. I was horrified. I was speaking a lot at the time about what is expected of writers these days – writers are most often introverts, yet if we want to succeed in the publishing industry, we have to push ourselves to be extroverts, comfortable on a stage, speaking to small groups and large. I wanted to show in the story that this could be accomplished, but without the loss of the quiet individual’s soul. She could maintain her isolated introspection and find ways to both please the world and herself.
“Quiet” first appeared in moonShine review, volume 14, issue 1
QUIET
A Short Story by
Kathie Giorgio
You are eleven years old when you stand by the passenger side front door of your mother’s Buick LeSabre. Across the street, you see Sasha waiting by her mother’s car; she’s heading to dance class. Next door, Robert stands by his mother’s minivan; he’s going to basketball practice. You can’t see behind your house, of course, but you know if you walked to the back of your back yard, crossed the invisible border to your neighbor’s back yard and continued around to their driveway, the Gallagher twins would be waiting on either side of their family station wagon, the twin who called shotgun at the front, the other scowling at the back. They’re going to piano lessons.
You wait for your mother. She’s taking you to Personality School.
When your mother comes out of the house and approaches the car, she calls, “Are you ready to go, hon?” She looks right through you.
You wave, then jump up and down. “Yes, Mom, I’m right here.”
She smiles, reaches out, you think to pat your hair, but she misses completely and pats the car instead.
“Oh, good. Hop in. We don’t want to be late for your first day.”
You climb in her car in concert with all the other kids climbing into theirs. You know they will dance, throw balls, play piano. They will wave at each other from back seats and front seats as they pass by. They won’t wave at you. You watch them every day from your front window or your front porch. You know their names from school. Your name is familiar to them, from roll calls over the years, but they wouldn’t be able to put your name to your face.
Your mother says you’re a shrinking violet, a wallflower. A shy girl, the quiet one in the back row, the corner, the shadow. Secretly, you think a wallflower would be a pretty thing, a way of taking something plain and whispering it lovely. But your mother wants more for you. She wants you to be a field of sunflowers, a bouquet of roses, a Christmas wreath with red ribbons, jingle bells and pinecones. She says you have to learn to speak out, be bold, make an appearance; your life is a presentation. She is, she says, tired of having to squint to see you.
But truly, you’ve never minded not being seen. You like watching others from your window or the porch, from your spot in the corner, or tucked in a shadow. There’s a lot to see and hear in this world, when you’re quiet. In the morning, you hear the murmur of the sunrise; in the evening, the complaint of the sunset. You’ve never been sure if it’s the sun that propels the breeze, or if the breeze blows the sun gently up over the horizon, then urges it back down again. You watch the way people move, the ballet of bent elbows, graceful heel-toe, the dip of a chin or the way hair flows like an ocean wave over the shoulder. There are so many conversations to be a part of, without being a part of them at all. You hear stories, secrets, sadness, glories, and you can tuck it all away to think about later. For as long as you like. Long after the conversation is over. There is so much company in being by yourself.
But your mother is your mother, she loves you even as she tries to find you, so you do as you’re told. For your mother, you go to Personality School. Even though you whisper that you’d rather go to swim lessons. You wonder what it’s like to swim underwater. To open your eyes to the swirl of fluidity. To hear sound where there is no sound, where all is blue and bubbles and subtle motion.
Your mother waits in the waiting room with a dozen other eager mothers, all sitting in a rainbow of plastic bucket chairs. You walk in invisible; the mothers call goodbye to the air.
In Personality School, you sit with other wallflowers who at first you can barely see. You talk with those you can barely hear. But as weeks go by, months, then years, you all become straight-backed and long-strided. In focus. You learn to dress in vivid colors. You learn to speak in loud voices, not shrill, not sharp, but loud and strong and confident. The kids at school begin to notice you. You get chosen as a lab partner, a project partner, a team player in gym. You go out for the school play, for the yearbook committee, for debate club. You become Homecoming Queen. You date a football player, then marry another. But before that, you go to college on full scholarship, then land a job doing motivational and promotional speaking. Your smile is everywhere. Billboards. Social media. Commercials.
Everyone sees you. You become a spokeswoman. You are the tallest sunflower, outstanding in your field.
Your mother, at your wedding, raises a glass to you in a toast. Her eyes glisten. “She started as such a wallflower,” she says to the crowded room. “But I knew, when I caught glimpses of her, that she held greatness. I knew she was in there. And look at her now!”
Your mother is your mother. You’re happy she’s happy.
The years pass and you speak and you smile. You pose for cameras and you stride across stages. Your face is as familiar as a reflection. There is a child, then another, and then a house in the suburbs where children wait by their mothers’ cars to go to after school activities. Ballet, piano, basketball. Your children go to swimming lessons. Your daughter likes to dive and you count the seconds she remains underwater. You applaud.
In your new house, you choose one room to be all your own. It has a floor to ceiling window, framed to make the world look like a photograph, a painting. You choose the opposite wall to paper. In flowers. Violets. It makes you smile in a way that no one else can see.
Late at night, long after you’ve removed your headset, taken off your vivid designer clothes, and dimmed your smile, you slip out of bed, leaving behind your sleeping football player husband. You go into each of your children’s rooms, your boy, your girl, both of whom you see quite clearly, and you kiss them on their foreheads. Then you move to your room.
Next to your chair, an open book. A mug of hot chocolate with just one marshmallow. In front of your chair, the window.
You watch the moonlight on the snow. It glows late at night with a muted light that no one else is awake to see. There is a whisper as the flakes touch ground, a hiss that is not admonishing, but appreciative. For a few seconds, each flake sparkles like a sequin, then it smooths its glint to the white of the whole. There are no vivid colors. Only you can hear yourself as you speak in thoughts, and you speak in a voice so soft, you can barely hear yourself. But your words are carefully selected. You are there to hear. There is so much company in being by yourself.
Nobody can see you, there in the quiet air. Nobody knows that you’re happy.
But you are.
THE END