On Writing While Visiting Babette

While Visiting Babette, my new novella, struck Camille Griep, the editor of Does It Have Pockets, as a fairy tale. My publisher perceived strains of Alice in Wonderland, as did reviewer Devyn Andrews, who pointed out that “we first meet Ina when she is running late … and the Queen of Hearts makes a notable appearance.” 

Although I can’t claim to have begun the manuscript with the intention of writing either a fairy tale or a fantasy, I can see the reasoning behind both descriptions and in no manner object. Women rewriting fairy tales (Angela Carter, Kate Bernheimer, and many other contemporary women writers) have made new an old form, and in doing so have bestowed power and agency on female characters who lacked both in the traditional tales.

Although clearly not a visual artist myself (as you’ll swiftly perceive!), I first began exploring the story of cousins Ina and Babette through a series of rough sketches. Not a complete storyboard by any means—more a handful of locales where key scenes might occur. Ultimately, those rough sketches served as something like narrative prompts. 

The unnamed facility in which Babette and Ina are confined is a place of locked doors, communal dining rooms, an underused library and residential rooms comprised mostly of beds. Since I am an insomniac, beds play a huge role in my universe and that personal preoccupation usually announces itself in my fictions by one means or another. 

“You could hide under my bed,” Babette offered, not quite as spot on as Babette typically was in reading Ina’s thoughts. In any case Babette’s single bed had no bed skirt and was not much of a hiding place, clean though the floor beneath appeared to be. 

Ina had given the position of her own bed considerable thought. She could not have abided having her bed in the middle of the room like Babette, a position she did not for a second doubt would generate a run of unmoored raft and floating banshee dreams.

Babette, Ina and their comrades can’t leave the grounds but are, on occasion, permitted to go outside. As that outside landscape began to take shape, it revolved around a splintery bench, a brick wall plaited with ivy and a duck pond. 

Babette and Ina sat on their favorite bench with their favorite view of the pond, each under a black umbrella. It was not raining but it was so very, very hot and they had no hats. They had to keep the umbrellas entirely upright. Otherwise the umbrellas tangled and pitched and exposed one or another of their arms to the sun.

Through the course of the writing I became quite obsessed with the pond and the ducks.

At some hour of the night ducks flew in and laid claim to the pond. From pond level, the wall behind the pond was barely noticeable, disguised by cascading ivy. The ducks did not seem to mind the wall but there was discord among them. They swam in tight circles, bickering. 

Unaccountably someone named Phoebe ran at a duck and began to thrash at its head. A chorus of human moans went up and up into the trees. The ducks in the pond flew and landed, flew and landed in great confusion. Ina had been too stunned to move but Babette vaulted toward Phoebe’s branch and liberated it. Phoebe did not fight to keep the branch but would have lost the branch pull, regardless. Angry, Babette could be very tenacious. When they returned to Babette’s room, Babette’s eyes were still as dark as the pond.

The view from a barred window is a view disturbed—that was my working premise. What Ina sees, when looking out her window, is always a view that is both restricted and compromised.

Ina, like every resident, had to leave her room during the inside window-washing sessions but was allowed to watch the outside window washers go about their business, turning and twisting their implements to get between the bars. Now and again one of the workers would knock a pail off the platform or drop the squeegee. Should it start to sprinkle, the outside window washers labored on, hoping, Ina supposed, that the sprinkle belonged to a sun shower rather than presaged a coming deluge. 

As of yet, none of the outside window washers had stopped their washing to stare between the bars and through the window at her.

Not to give too much of the plot away: someone does try to escape in While Visiting Babette. And that someone succeeds.

WHILE VISITING BABETTE

Ina adores Babette and visits her cousin regularly in whichever facility Babette currently resides. She trusts Babette’s take on all things and has since childhood (“orphans cannot afford to be squeamish”), but on Tuesday’s visit, to her grave detriment, Ina fails to follow Babette’s advice when an “incident” throws all in chaos.(“I told you to hide, cousin,” Babette said sorrowfully…)

A one-way Alice in Wonderland, Ina now lives in Babette’s world of lockdowns, barred windows, displaced ducks, mashed potatoes, plays told as stories and stories told as plays, perpetual cleaning, howls in the night and far too many windows.Staying sane isn’t as simple as it seems.

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Kat Meads is the award-winning author of more than 20 books and chapbooks of prose and poetry, including While Visiting Babette, These Particular Women, The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan, and Sleep. Her work has been described as “astute” (Kirkus), “brave and compelling” (Other Voices), “fascinating” (Wafer Thin Books), and “witty and eloquent” (Southern Literary Review). A native of North Carolina, she lives in California. (katmeads.com)

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Category: On Writing