A few weeks ago I read the unpolished version of a short ghost story I wrote in 2007 for Timothy's seventeenth birthday at a WriteOn Joliet meeting.
The untitled piece was also, at the time, a practice piece for me. I was considering finally writing the vampire story that had simmered inside me for decades. But although I had written features professionally for many years, I had not written any fiction since the eighth grade.
As I worked on the piece, I only had one element to show that the story, set in present day, was steeped in too many elements of the past. And that element was the food.
One writer in the group, who's read the first book in the BryonySeries "drop of blood" trilogy, pointed out what she considered an excessive amount of food references in the story.
But my use of food in that piece, and later in the BryonySeries, stemmed from two different places in my mind. I just mentioned why I used food in the short story. Why so in the trilogy?
Because as I stepped into the shoes of my main character, a 1970s teen who hangs out in the late 19th century with a vampire, I tried to see the past through her eyes and contrast her new experiences with those of her everday life.
Laundry and transporation were different. Her home was different. The types of people she met were different. Mostly, the clothes and the food were different. And I elaborated on those the most.
Especially the food.
For Melissa, the protagonist, encountered, and shunned, many strange items on her plate, while ignoring her place on the food chain: a vampire's meal.
"Go on," Henry said, suddenly beside her. "Read it. She's
dead, you know."
"She can't be," Melissa said, glancing at her long skirts,
suddenly confused. "I'm
Bryony."
Henry's face was expressionless. "You're food."
Melissa covered her ears and angrily stomped her foot. "I'm not!
Those are the others! I'm special! John needs
my blood. He won't hurt me!"
“A trussed-up turkey nicely adorned with apples and berries on a platter
is a splendid sight to behold, but it's still dead," Henry said. "And
it's still dinner."
That theme twisted its way through the other two books in the original trilogy, and it plays a major role in the new Limbo trilogy, for all of the above reasons and one more: one of the protagonists spends her entire life preparing food for others.
In "The Phoenix," the first book in the Limbo trilogy, the ability to sort of eat real food was necessary for the "larvae" vampires in if they wanted to move about the world as humans.
Henry headed to the ice
box where he had fished out that lunch he’d shared with Anna and opened the
door. The water had long since evaporated but a delicious aroma and interesting
colors and textures greeted him. The milk had curdled into a solid yellow lump
except for its black-speckled amber layer of cream. The chickens’ wrinkled skin
hung over their bones like a maize overcoat. The orange cheeses now sported
coats of many colors, reminiscent of the Old Testament Joseph. The salted
codfish had shrunk to powdery marbles, and the pink leathery ham was topped
with gelatinous shine. One mutton roast had melted to jelly; a side of beef had
partly dissolved.
Most of that didn’t matter
since spoilage had no effect on vampires. Still he couldn’t use anything in a
liquified state, at least not where solids were needed.
He pawed through some
drawers, and found not one, but two cookbooks: A New System of Domestic Cookery
by Mrs. Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell and Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt
Book: Designed as a Supplement to Her Treatise on Domestic Economy.
He also found a stack of hardish squash in the corner, hardish because the skin had collapsed where the flesh evaporated, like the cheeks of an old granny with her teeth out. He assessed the rest of the stores and discovered a sack of enchanted cornmeal, or so it seemed when Henry peered inside, for the sour, musty grains crawled as if bewitched. Upon closer inspection, Henry noticed an infestation of weevils; the same was true about the beans and the flour. So – all usable.
In the five-book "Before The Blood" novel, food plays a similar role. But food also denotes social class, location, medicine, economy, intrigue, scandal, philosophy, lifestyle, and keeps the reader rooted in a particular era.
And in the standalone werewolf novel "Lycanthropic Summer," food twines back into fairy tales and cannibalism.
When I was
a little girl, I had a grandmother who lived in the woods. She wasn’t really my
grandmother, but she was old and weird and lived alone in the middle of a
field, and she grew herbs that my mother took to Rosie to sell and then brought
the money back to Grandmother’s house.
The house
always reminded me of a gingerbread house. It was painted cookie crumb brown
with a roof as sweet as sugar cakes, and sugar plum shutters and trim. My
mother and I always visited on Monday to give Grandmother her money and to
gather more herbs for Rosie.
I remember
Grandmother never ate vegetables or fruit or grain. She only ate meat, and she
wasn’t tidy about it, either. Her floors and grass were littered with bones.
And she always wore black.
But
Grandmother was especially kind to children. She liked to leave out sweet
treats for them to eat as they passed by her house. This wasn’t just a single
plate of Toll House Inn cookies, although she left those, too, and they never
melted, no matter how high the sun rose in the sky or how scorching it sent
down its rays.
No, she
laid out rich slices of layered chiffon cake drizzled with chocolate, wedges of
rhubarb pie and banana cream pie, cubes of colored gelatin, ice cream snowballs
with strawberry sauce, pudding topped with maraschino cherries, pineapple
upside down cake, squares of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, and lots
of cookies: peanut butter, sugar, shortbread, oatmeal, and fruit bars.
Writers don't always understand that setting is a type of character. Food can also be a character. As can wine.
Food also shows characterization. What would supernatural super sleuth Cornell Dyer be without his orange drinks, potato chips, and "persuading" his clients into preparing his food and washing his laundry?
Cornell caught three words: “old as
bone.”
The teachers smiled at him and said
their names. Cornell could not remember all their names. He didn’t care.
When one is
a great supernatural super sleuth, one doesn’t bother with names. A brain will only
hold so much information, Cornell’s brain was full of supernatural clues and
where to buy a giant hamburger with pickles.
Unconvinced? I didn't make any of this up.
An essay called "The Symbolic Nature of Food in Literature: Reflecting Upon Personal Experience" says that, "food presents a contrast between order and chaos; etiquette and taboo behavior; and social classes."
Crystal King in an article "Why We Hunger for Novels About Food" wrote, "Food is love. Food is conviviality. Food is politics. Food is religion. Food is history. Food is consolation. Food is fuel. Food identifies us and who we are. It can even help us make sense of our world."
Michael Sears in an article called "The Importance of Food in Fiction" wrote that food can even be a murder weapon in crime fiction. It can also denote character and place and it can use all of the senses.
And in the case of the BryonySeries, food can also help youth mentoring.
Food, then and now, is often the center of any celebration. What is a birthday without cake? A picnic without potato salad? A backyard party without a cookout? Thanksgiving without turkey? Christmas without all those dishes Grandma makes every year? Valentine's Day without chocolate? Easter without lamb? Halloween without candy?
Finally, for all of us, food can assess our mental/emotional/spiritual health: "The cheerful heart has a continual feast." Proverbs 15:15
I rest my fork and knife.
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