KIMBERLY HULA
WRITER
There's a Word For That
Flash Fiction
This is just a sample. For your own tailor made story >>
Writing Samples
Let's Not Rush This
Short Fiction
In high school my dad, then living, would scream ‘be the ball!’ from the iron forged bleachers of the gymnasium whenever one was passed to me. And my mother, post-diagnosis, would for over a year think herself Ghandi and will me to ‘be the change I wish to see in the world’. My grandmother insisted I be a ‘good girl’, while my first boyfriend a ‘good girl’ and the words, the collective archive of beings and becomings sat sharply on my tongue. It may be that I was with the boyfriend and am not with the grandmother. I could say, ‘to be is not I am, is not I will, is not I was’. I could speak from the belly. I could give a sideline roar.
But there are no loud carry overs in my household. My mother would ask that I be the change. My father would roll over in his grave and my grandmother would spat something incoherent - some aggregation of words in air that would overstate without being understood.
There’s a word for that. There’s a dictionary of english words. There are 171,476 put to use, 47,156 obsolete- only if you discount the colloquialisms, inflections, TBA, and undeveloped technical vocabulary. And then there’s the Armenian alphabet, the Japanese, the Icelandic. There are the quick utterings of whatever he I chose to be with - a Danish professor, a Guadalajaran line cook. I may say ‘I am in love; I will marry you; I was wrong’. More likely, ‘I am angry; I am sorry; I was wrong’. But to just be - to become the architect of my own alphabet is never so simple. ‘I was wrong, I am trying, please forgive me.’
Mom gives me a dog for my ninth birthday. She says, “there needs to be some father figure in this household” as she fits the collar around his neck. He’s a Bernese Mountain breed with a lame hind leg and fur that sticks to your hands if its hot. Mom says he needs an ID ‘straight away’ and asks me his name.
“I don’t have a name yet,” I say.
She rolls her eyes and stops working the collar. “It’s just a name Andrew,” she says.
Mom gets like this. Exasperated is the word Dad uses. She breathes loudly through her nose and starts tapping one foot.
“Don’t be so exasperated mom,” I say, but that just makes her more. Now she’s pulling on the collar and the dog lets out a small whine.
“Can I think about it? I need time,” I say.
She nods but it doesn’t seem enough so I add, “I need to see what kind of dog he is.”
I know what she’ll say. She’ll say, “He’s a Bernese Mountain dog!” but that’s not the point. I need to know what name will fit. Dad says I’m such an Andrew and Mom says she gave me the name so I hope she’ll understand how important this is.
“Well what are we going to call him while you make up your mind?”
“Dog?” I say, and she lifts her hands up like criminals do with cops and says, “Whatever you want.”
It doesn’t take long for me to meet Dog. Or maybe I should say all of Dogs. He’s not a ‘straight shooter’ as mom would say. He’s actually everything. He can be sad or mad or quiet. Like yesterday, Mom had me wait in my room when Dad dropped me off. Dog ran in - crashing into my legs, licking my ankles. He was really, really happy. Then when the shouting started Dog froze, his eyes look wetter and he pushed his face up against mine as we sat in the corner quietly, listening.
It comes to me that same day. It’s a good name and I am excited to tell Mom. “I’ve got a name for Dog!” I say.
“Oh?” She’s at the computer reading something without her glasses. She doesn’t look up.
“Proteus,” I say.
She scrunches her face in a way that makes her look small and says, “Prometheus?”. From her tone I can tell she doesn’t like it.
“No!” I say, getting exasperated myself. “Pro-te-us.”
“What is that?”
“It’s a Greek sea god,” I say. She spins around and her eyebrows sit high on her face.
“Proteus changed into anything he wanted. He was a changer,” I say. Still she looks confused. Dad was right when he said Mom just didn’t get it.
“Like a Transformer, Mom!”
She speaks slowly and gives me a weird look. “Did your Dad teach you this?”
I watched it on the Transformers DVD extras but I didn’t want to tell her that. Instead I say, “I can read.”
Her mouth is open and she looks as wounded as Proteus, when he was just Dog, that day they were fighting. I bite my lip and looked to him. That was only yesterday.
I think she might say no, give him an easier name and I start thinking up a good backup when she says, “How do you spell it?” and I have to admit I don’t know.
Birds Once Bees
Flash Fiction
Eleanor used to say, "Now we're cooking with gas," and Ray, "that'll be the day" again and again in everyday conversation. They would say it in tandem. Ray would speak over El, El over Ray and their propensity to anticipate each other didn't stop with movie catch phrases. If one watched television, the other turned a radio dial. When praising one child, another was sure to hear hell. They had a natural buoyancy unsuitable for anything outside the realm of elastic love. So that when El complained, Ray atoned. When El lamented, Ray purchased. When El thumbed through a photo album of Ray making memories and spoke of her happiness for the first time in years, Ray died.
All I ever knew of my grandparents were their differences. Blue and pink, coffee and tap water, brick and linen. We would play a game of conversation tennis. Anyone other than my grandmother and grandfather would lob their head from one side to the other whenever they spoke. Arguments weren't heated, nor were they controlled. They lobbed up and down like strokes of a wave. So it never felt threatening. No one anticipated a divorce or a scandal. We all sat, seasick in our seats, waiting for one or the other to do one thing so we could witness its opposite. Ray would tend
to the cherry tomatoes. El would read the diary of her youngest daughter.
I had asked my mother what she considered the opposite of death when I received the news. She opened her mouth and said, “birth”. She said it clearly, using its one syllable naturally and with good ease. She always wore her shoulders high and lifted her chin in ways they teach graduates of Ivy Leagues. And my father, who could lift a chin himself, was known to follow suit. I could ask him, but he'd say “birth” too. My mother would knot my father's tie. My father would pick lint off my mothers blouse.
Hands held they ushered me to the car. But they fought the whole ride in. Less peaks and lulls and more atom collisions. I pushed back on the soft upholstery of the car seat and longed for the wind to tangle my hair. So I turned the radio up, so loud it drowned the synchronized voices of my parents. And I asked again.