Instructions for Surviving Your Own Metaphor

How it begins

Pella arrived at the workshop dragging six suitcases and a small locked trunk.

Martin checked the course title.

Writing from Life. No residential component.

“Are you moving?” he asked.

“Apparently.”

She let go of the largest case. It rolled back toward her.

The other students watched with the careful politeness people reserve for a problem they hope is temporary.

“I told my sister I was carrying too much baggage,” Pella said. “Then this happened.”

Martin looked at the cases.

One bore an airline label from a trip Pella said she had never taken. Another had been tied shut with a man's necktie. The trunk made a faint sound whenever anyone mentioned work.

“Perhaps,” he began, then stopped.

As a writing tutor, he believed in the power of language. He had not expected it to require a luggage allowance.

A student offered to help carry the trunk.

It became heavier the moment he touched it.

“Thank you,” Pella said, “but other people's concern seems to count as an extra item.”

Martin canceled the opening exercise.

They tried labels. They tried asking the cases what they contained. They tried opening one with a butter knife borrowed from the community kitchen.

Inside lay a remark her father had made in 1998.

Everyone heard it.

Nobody repeated it.

Pella closed the case.

For a while, the room became very quiet.

Then the student by the window asked whether the remark had always been that heavy.

Pella sat down on the largest suitcase. It held her easily.

“No,” she said. “I think I've been adding things.”

Martin took out his notebook.

At the top of a clean page, he wrote Instructions.

He crossed it out.

Beneath it, he wrote What We Tried, and asked Pella whether she wanted her name included.

It was the first useful editorial question he had asked all morning.