SOUNDTRACK:
[READ: December 1, 2022] “Bread of Lifers”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fifth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
Like we always do at this time: the Short Story Advent Calendar is back for 2022. We had such a great time last year working with our first-ever guest editor, the one and only Alberto Manguel. This year, however, we’re bringing things back to basics. No overarching theme or format, just 25 top-class short stories, selected in-house, by some of the best writers in North America and beyond. It’s December 1. To officially kick off the 2022 Short Story Advent Calendar, here is a story about faith and carbs from the author of The Prince of Mournful Thoughts.
This story was dark and twisted and quite funny.
The narrator is thinking back about a kid she used to babysit called Ruth, a plain, blocky sort of girl. The narrator was brutally honest with her–to teach her how to survive. Ruth was eleven but acted eight.
This was tough for Ruth because her family were Bread of Lifers–a religious group that was very strict and emphasized having no fun. They never tried to convert the narrator’s family (don’t shit where you eat, I guess).
So when the narrator told her things like “Most people will hate you. On sight. For no reason,” Ruth, whose face was almost always hopeful, would fall and harden. But Ruth was perpetually full of love for everyone. Especially her babysitter. “I love you,” Ruth would say. “I sometimes like you” is as far as I was willing to go.
Ruth was an only child which is surprising since the other families were quite large.
The other surprising thing was that Ruth’s mother smoked cigarettes. In secret. In the backyard. The narrator admits that she looked pretty cool smoking.
That year when Ruth’s birthday came up (Bread of Lifers don’t celebrate and don’t eat cake) the narrator decided to make her a cake. But when she went to get Ruth for the cake, she wasn’t home. Ruth is always home.
Ruth’s mom answered the door. She was alone. She was smoking. She was naked. She told the narrator her parents were hippies–she used to run around naked all the time. She was an outsider. And she was tired of that, so she joined the Bread of Life. They tell you exactly what to do and if you follow the rules you belong. But now that she had Ruth, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to be normal anymore. When the narrator muttered that normal is good, Ruth’s mom said that normal is idiotic.
This was a great start to the calendar.
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