Doris Muise: Elbow Room
Elbow Room
(curious about the title! What is its connection to the story ?)
Theona loved living in her murky pond. She darted around in the water and nibbled on algae. She knew she was changing, but for now she was a tiny tadpole and she enjoyed being small. She had a little song she sang to the tune of The Wild Rover’s song she’d heard carried on the breeze.
I am a wee tadpole, for many it’s clear.
With my gills and my fins in the water I steer.
I nibble on algae, I’m a wee herbivore.
And I won’t give it up for a life on the shore.
And it’s no nay never. Give up my gills?
No nay never no more, will I say the pond’s over.
No never no more.
The other tadpoles laughed.
“Sing all you want,” Ribberta said. “You’ll hunt in the end. Algae are for babies!” I love this line algae are for babies. Something kids totally say!
“I am a tadpole,” Theona said. “I eat plants.”
“Not for long. Herbs are a bore. That’s why they call it herb-a-bore. Get it? Herbs? Are a bore?”
“Well, what do they call eat meaters?” Theona asked.
“Carnivals,” said Ribberta. “You know - lots of fun and games. I can’t wait until my tongue gets full length. I’ve been practicing casting it out over the pond!”
Ribberta was already changing into a toadlet. She only needed to lose the nub of her tail and she would be ready to leave the pond for good.
“I will never eat meat,” Theona said. “There are lots of plants on the land.”
“But toads don’t eat them, egg brain,” Ribberta said. “Once you’re a toad, you won’t like plants any more. My cousin told me. And if you eat a plant by accident you’ll just spit it out.”
“I won’t.” Love this won’t/wlll/won’t will, just enough to create tension
“Will.”
“Won’t.”
“My cousin said. Toads. Only. Eat. Things. That. Move.”
“I’ll wait for the wind to blow,” said Theona, “and I’ll nibble the swaying plants.”
“You don’t know anything. But you’ll find out soon enough,” Ribberta said. “You’re going to join the carnival like every other toad. The minute you see an insect or an earthworm move your tongue will spring into action.”
Ribberta demonstrated by flicking her tongue out at Theona’s face. Love this detail and can see the art.
Gross,” Theona said, wiping her cheek off against a cluster of algae. Like the sensory detail here with the cluster of algae
Ribberta laughed and the whole school of tadpoles and toadlets turned their backs on Theona and swam away. Theona let herself sink behind a rock to the bottom of the pond.
She had a few restless nights after that. She couldn’t sleep from worrying. She was hungry all the time. She fretted and hoped her tongue would never grow long.i like this emotional explanation of impact on her
Algae were no longer enough to eat. Theona was gobbling up bigger plants. There were so many things to taste.
Theona watched as the other toadlets’ tails had gotten very short. They were already edging their way onto land, eager to start their new lives. For them, the more fusses thing was a breeze. For Theona it was a storm building and building and building.
And now the buds of her back legs were showing. She knew she was changing but she continued munching on plants.
One morning Theona felt her feet push against the pond floor. Her back legs were all the way out. It made her awkward and clumsy in the water. Any day now she would get that shoulder itch that all tadpoles get, that swelling and anxious feeling they know means that their front limbs are about to break out of their bodies, elbows first.
“Looks like you’re getting ready to join the carnival and eat yummy meat,” Ribberta teased, when she saw Theona.
“I don’t think you or your cousins know what that means. I think that’s just a people thing. You know, humans?” Theona shivered, as toads tend to do when they think about people.
“Maybe. But toads do eat insects and earthworms. My big sister has been practicing hopping at the edge of the pond and she said she saw it with her own two eyes.”
“That doesn’t mean toads haveto eat insects and earthworms, does it? Maybe your cousin saw the one toad that likes to do that. I know I will never eat meat. So there.”
“You’re so—stubborn,” Ribberta said and swam away.
“I’m not stubborn,” Theona muttered. “I’m determined.”
A shadow fell over Theona as she swam to the edge of the pond, worrying about her itchy shoulders. She looked up. A shimmering creature flitting about in the sky above. Was it a bird? Theona waited until the creature alit on a branch. She stared at the iridescent animal and it stared back with its great, green eyes. The only thing Theona and the creature seemed to have in common was their big shimmering eyes. They smiled at each other and Theona darted behind a rock just below the surface of the water. When she popped out again, the shimmering creature zipped behind a tree branch. I like this detail of the animals making contact with each other. You have created a powerful scene her with the eye contact and them coming from different worlds but connecting nevertheless
Back and forth, the two animals smiled and hid from each other. It became a daily game. And Theona knew she finally had a friend. Nice! She began to think leaving the pond might be fun after all.
Theona didn’t mind that she was the last one out of the water. She missed her tail, but she enjoyed how solid she felt when she lumbered out of the water and onto the soft muddy bank. She saw now that her webbed back feet were not only useful for swimming. With most of her weight on her back end, the skin between her toes kept her from sinking into the mud. Nice sensory detail about the feet. She had only a small distance to hop before she reached the bulrushes at the edge of the dark woods. She hoped the wind would be blowing over there. She was hungry, but her tongue had so grown long she could no longer nibble on water plants with her tiny teeth.
She hopped and hopped, hopped, then she stopped and rested next to a mound of dirt. Her body sank low to the ground and she blinked. Something caught her eye. A wave of energy ripped (love this verb( through her body and rose up in her throat. Her tongue lashed out of her. A sweet explosion of flavour washed the inside of her mouth. (love the sensory detail here I can almost taste something!) Theona sank lower into the dirty, dizzy with flavour. Her tongue was alive with the taste of the food she had lassoed. Great verbs!!! She blinked. She couldn’t see any more plants on the mound of dirt. What had she eaten?
Theona looked around. Just ahead of her, just above the mound of dirt, she saw her shimmering friend fly through the tree branches and snatch a small fly from the air, and then swooped ! yes love the verb back up to a tree branch.
Theona stared. She had just seen her friend an insect. I assume you mean she saw her friend Eat an insect, right? Meat. Oh, the world on land was a terrible place. Theona tried to give her friend a disgusted look, but her tongue shot out of her and another sweet explosion of flavour washed the inside of her mouth. Theona sank back down, dizzy with flavour. But this time something was stuck to her lips and she pawed at it with her front feet but could not shake it loose. Her tongue tightened its grip and eyelids blinked as she pulled the tasty treat into her mouth and swallowed it down.
Theona watched the dirt ahead of her. Where were these plants coming from? This wasn’t at all what she had expected.
She stared, unmoving at the mound of dirt next to her. She barely had time to glimpse a tiny earthworm poke its head up out of the ground before her tongue shot out of her mouth and snapped back again. Empty. A wave of disappointment followed. Theona shudder. She had almost eaten a worm and her mouth was disappointed! Ugh. It was all too much, the world on land. It was humiliating to be a toad. It was embarrassing to admit she wanted that taste again. There was the truth. She was a toad. The other tadpoles and toadlets had been right all along. She couldn’t help herself. She liked meat. No, she LOVED meat.”
“I know what you’re going through,” the shimmering creature called down to Theona from the tree branch.
“WHo are you? And how can you know?” Theona said. “You’ve never been a tadpole.”
“I am Demi,” the creature said. “And you’re right, I’ve never been a tadpole. But I’ve gone through metamorphosis, too.”
“YOu had more fusses, too?”
“Not more FUSSES,” Demi said. “Met-a-mor-phos-is. It’s a special change that some animals go through.”
“Why don’t you come down on a lower branch and talk to me about it?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m an insect.”
“But I just saw you eat an insect!” Theona said.
“There are more than a million different insects on earth,” Demi told her. “We eat each other. It’s a fact.”
“Ugh.”
“Ugh all you want, little toad. You eat them too. And you’d eat me, if you had the chance.” ( I really like this dialogue because we get to hear their voices which up until now we have not heard them have a conversation.
“Never,” said Theona. “I would never hurt you.”
“You say that now, but if I got close enough to you, you wouldn’t be able to help yourself. It’s your toad instinct. You’re a predator just like me, and predators hunt. Let me prove it to you.”
The dazzling, green eyed iridescent beauty zinged down towards THeona and zipped away again, just as Theona’s tongue shot out and slammed back into her mouth before she could even blink. (great verbs here zing, zip shot and slammed because they make the action powerful and visceral)
“Told you.”
“I am so very sorry,” Theona said, covering her mouth with her front foot, as if she were excusing herself for burping.
“No apologies necessary.”
“But I want to be your friend.”
“Tell you what. First let me tell you about my metamorphosis and then you can decide whether or not you like me.”
“I didn’t always look this way. I was born in the water, hatched out of an egg, same as you. But I wasn’t a tadpole. And I wasn’t pretty like I am now. I had six legs, of course, and large eyes. But I had small wing buds on my back. And here is an embarrassing detail. I had gills inside my butt. !! love this detail!! Love the gills in the butt think kids would love that feature I had to breathe by pulling water in and out of my behind. Then I had to push the water out really hard to move around in the pond.”
“You lived in the pond?” Theona asked.
“I did. And my lower jaw was like a scoop so big it covered most of the bottom part of my head.”
“You used to be a dragonfly nymph!” Theona shuddered and sunk lower into the dirt.
“Can’t be a dragonfly without first being a nymph.”
“But that’s terrible. Dragonfly nymphs are the scariest things in the pond. They are tadpoles’ enemy number one.”
“I can’t help it. I was born loving meat.”
“Stay away from me,” Theona said.
“I intend to,” said Demi. “Otherwise, I’m dessert.”
Theona backed up towards the pond. Maybe she could just sink back into the murky water and pretend none of this ever happened.
Dores and Jenn M
I have structured the critique as suggested and made some positive commentary within the text itself. Lesley
What I think the story is about
The story is about an invidual and a non-conformist. Someone who does not want to follow the pack someone whose heart beats to her own drummer. Theona—curious what does her name mean or what is its origin?-- does not want to be like the other tadpoles. She describes herself not as stubborn but as determined. At the same time the story is about the difficulty of change-of things beyond your control. Her growing out of tadpoledom reminded me of the changes kids go through during puberty where you may feel as if your body has been invaded by something completely beyond your control. She did not choose these changes and so in this way the story is about the adaptation that comes from change we have to go through. Change that is thrust upon us, in this case as illuminated by the bodily changes for Theona. The story is also about the difficulty of being an non-conformist beause she is isolated. That is why the beginning scenes with the other creature, Demi is so powerful because we feel that she has lost her original community and is alone without a friend. I am referring to the scene with the eye contact and then their first conversation before we learn that Demi “may be dessert” because she is a dragonfly nymph. The story has multiple themes woven throughout it-fear of change, power of instinct, promise and loss of potential friendship. I have referred to these other themes in my other comments so you can see where I see the theme operating with more specificity. The theme at the close of the story is different than its beginning premise. The theme at the end for me is more about the promise and then loss of a potential new friend ( a powerful theme to expore and something that kids could relate to) as is the theme of being attached to the place you call home (theme 1 set up in the pond). I realize I have provided a lot of themes but I see the story moving in different directions and so I am sharing the multiplicity here with you Dores.
What is working for me now #1
The following conversation is working because of the conflict. The conflict creates narrative tension. The tennis game between will and won’t is super simple but because of that its’ powerful and gets the point across in a concise way: I love the insult as well “egg brain!” because it’s funny! It is something I can imagine a kid actually saying as an insult.
I will never eat meat,” Theona said. “There are lots of plants on the land.”
“But toads don’t eat them, egg brain,” Ribberta said. “Once you’re a toad, you won’t like plants any more. My cousin told me. And if you eat a plant by accident you’ll just spit it out.”
“I won’t.” Love this won’t/wlll/won’t will, just enough to create tension
“Will.”
“Won’t.”
What is working 2
The scene where they make eye contact (comments in text itself) is lovely because we feel she is isolated and this is her first friend. The way they are playing with each other reminds me of hide and seek or how when kids make a new friend there is sometimes a testing ground of push/pull to see if there is going to be a friendship emerging from the meeting of two people Their body language in this may mimics the beginning of that testing out phase of a new friendship
What is working 3
I like the last line here and the tension that has now been created that although they thought they were friends they discover now that their relationship may be dangerous and one of them may get eaten. The stakes are now very high because Demi does not want to be dessert ! This final tableau raises some questions about who is a friend, and who is an enemy and what the role of instinct may be in the animal world, obviously a theme and motif running through the story. This is powerful because there was the promise of possibility with a new friend but now that possibilty has suddenly vanished. Hope dashed! That is a common experience
“But that’s terrible. Dragonfly nymphs are the scariest things in the pond. They are tadpoles’ enemy number one.”
“I can’t help it. I was born loving meat.”
“Stay away from me,” Theona said.
“I intend to,” said Demi. “Otherwise, I’m dessert.”
ONE THING TO BE STRENGTHENED.
The story is predicated on Theona not wanting to grow up. (Another theme). The story is predicated on her loving the murky pond. But we don’t know what she loves about being a tadpole in this murky pond enough to know what she is losing . For example she loves the murky pond but why? The only detail we have which is lovely is that she nibbles on algae. Love the verb nibble, love the detail about the algae. I can almost feel its slime!