FVS Discoveries

A Young Writer Discovering Her Voice

Samantha Pratt ’16 was editor of the Athenaea literary magazine and at Commencement, she won the Creative Writing Award and the Robinson Art Award. She is the daughter of Sarah Mariner ’83 and the granddaughter of former faculty Jim and Jeanne Mariner P ’82, ’83, ’88, GP ’14, ’16.

A PERFECT D SHARP The ringing in her ears did not stop. It started the day her friend died and did not stop. The ringing blotted out everything, becoming everything—her mother’s voice, the rustling of the leaves, the words spoken at the funeral, the creak of the gate, the groaning of the old heifer in the yard. Instead of speaking, rustling, creaking, or groaning, they all rang in her ears, the same undying tone echoing on forever and ever behind her eyes and above her mouth. It continued to ring until the loaf of bread her mother made—a soft, round shape the color of summer afternoon— tasted like ringing. It smelled like ringing, too. Her cat, curling expectantly around her bare legs, hoping for some cream, did not feel like bird flight as he usually did, but ringing. The cold tile floor of the kitchen, chipped and worn by generations of living, rang up through her toes and into her ears.

Perhaps she was not as she had been, but instead had become, herself, ringing. The note, a perfect D sharp, was not only ringing in her ears but in her mouth and nose, through her collarbones and into her shoulders, down through her hips and reverberating around her stomach and echoing in her lungs. It was her breath and heartbeat, her skin and hair, the curve of her spine and the freckle on her jaw. It permeated everything, became everything. The floating, TV-static, light headed, numb feeling that fog feels when rolling over the sea. The summer afternoon of the bread itself was ringing and so was the bird flight of her cat wrapping his tail around her legs. The chipped tile floor under her bare feet that had seen so many meals, late night snacks, and women’s gossip over puffs of flour and the tears of cut onions, was also ringing. The D sharp blotted out everything else. She couldn’t see the salt shaker on the counter, just the ringing note. It spread from the shaker and obscured the knives like the ominous approaching darkness of midnight thunderheads, spilling down into the sink and ringing up across to the summer afternoon of bread.

The ringing obscured the world, covering the scuffed and scarred wooden counter oiled with lemon juice and many mothers’ love, and encircled the partly eaten loaf, lapping at its edges until all that was left was that summer color, a soft, warm brown like the poplar cabinets. Just as everything was about to succumb to the ringing, she reached out and grabbed ahold of the last remaining thing: a single strand of evening sunlight, orange gold, that fell upon the summer loaf.

When her fingers closed around the thread of light, another note sounded. This one blended with the first ringing note and created a round harmony, pushing back the midnight thunderheads of the D sharp. There was the muted marble white of the salt shaker, and when she reached forward and plucked the color from it, a third note joined the others. The grey of her cat curled around her ankles was a light and airy sound like bird flight. The rich mountain purple of the verbenas in the sunlight vase on the windowsill added a soft, low hum, and when she walked— barefoot—out into the garden where the old cow groaned, she plucked the rich blue note of the late-in-the-day sky from the air and began to weave the strands of light together.

The cream of the heifer’s coat and the chipped pale yellow of the creaking gate’s paint. The warm, velvet green of the sweet young grass on the sides of the road that led from her house, and the dark purple evening shadows. All of these she collected and braided together, leaving behind a ribbon of shimmering lights. The others saw her plucking strands of color from the trees, the sky, the paint of the town drunk’s house as she walked down the road, just a barefoot girl weaving light into a song that spoke of a summer evening and an absent friend.