On Borrowed Wings: A Novel - Softcover

Prasad, Chandra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743297830 ISBN 13: 9780743297837

Publisher: Atria Books, 2008

Synopsis

Adele Pietra has heard her mother say that her destiny is carved in the same brilliantly hued granite her father and brother cleave from the Stony Creek mine: she is to marry a quarryman. But when Adele's brother, Charles, dies in a mining accident, Adele sees the chance to change her life. Enrolling at Yale as Charles, Adele assumes his identity -- and gender -- as a way to leave behind her mother's expectations and the limitations of her provincial Connecticut town.

To her own surprise, hair chopped and chest bound, Adele falls in naturally with a lively crew of undergraduates: the Jewish Harry Persky with his slick Manhattan know-how, the quiet and mysterious legacy student Phineas, and the lanky, charismatic Wick. And in many ways, Adele faces her freshman year at Yale as would any undergraduate boy: she dreads invasive PE examinations and looks forward to dances, experiments with cigarettes and reads the classics. Through her work with a questionable eugenics professor and her friendship with a local Italian family, Adele confronts her class and ethnicity as never before, all the while fearing that both her crush on Wick and her mother's well-meaning interventions will put an end to her delicate masquerade.

One part social history, one part comingof-age tale, On Borrowed Wings is an impeccably researched first novel that transports us to 1930s Yale, showing us around through the eyes of an unlikely, appealing female narrator.

About this title

About the Author:

Chandra Prasad is the originator and editor of -- and a contributor to -- W. W. Norton's Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience, which includes original pieces by Ruth Ozeki, Danzy Senna, and Rebecca Walker. Her other works include the novella Death of a Circus, which Tom Perrotta hails as "narrated with Dickensian verve, a keen eye for historical detail, and lots of heart," and the careers guide Outwitting the Job Market. Prasad is also the author of numerous articles, which have been published by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times Magazine, among others. A graduate of Yale, she lives and works in Connecticut.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One

Mother once said I'd marry a quarryman. She looked at me as we washedclothes in the giant steel washtub, two pairs of water-wrinkled handsscrubbing and soaking other people's laundry. We were elbow-deep indirty suds and our fingers brushed under the foamy mounds.

"Some mistakes are bound to be repeated," she murmured.

We lived in Stony Creek, a granite town at a time when granite was goingout of fashion. There were only three types of men here: Cottagers,rich, paunchy vacationers who swooped into our little Connecticut townin May and wiled away time on their sailboats through August; townsmen,small-time merchants and business owners who dreamed of becomingCottagers; and quarrymen, men like my father, who worked with no thoughtto the future.

The quarrymen toiled twelve hours a day, six days a week. They didn'tcare that they smelled of granite dust and horses, grease and puttypowder. They didn't care about cleaning the crescents of grime fromunderneath their fingernails. Even when they heard the foreman'semergency signal, three sharp shrieks of steam, they scarcely looked upfrom their work. In the face of a black powder explosion gone awry orthe crushing finality of a wrongly cleaved stone, they remainedundaunted.

I knew why they lived this way. They did it for the granite. Nowhereelse on earth did such stone exist -- mesmerizing collages of whitequartz, pink and gray feldspar, black lodestone, winking glints of mica.Stony Creek granite was so striking, it graced the most majestic ofarchitecture: the Battle Monument at West Point, the Newberry Library inChicago, the Fulton Building in Pittsburgh, the foundations of theStatue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. The quarrymen of Stony Creekwould wither and fall before the Cottagers, before the townsmen. But thefruits of their labor tethered them to a history that would standforever.

"You'll marry one, Adele -- I'm sure of it. His hands will be tough asbuckskin, but you'll love him regardless," Mother told me, her breathwarm in my ear as the steam of the wastewater rose around us.

I didn't say that she was wrong, that she couldn't know what wouldhappen. I'd learned that from the quarry. Pa was a stonecutter and hecut the granite according to rift and grain, to what he could feel withhis fingertips and see with his eyes. But there were cracks below thesurface, cracks that betrayed the careful placement of a chisel and thepounding of a mallet. The most beautiful piece of stone could shatterinto a pile of riprap. It all depended on where those cracks teased andwound, on where the stone would fracture when forced apart.

"Keep your eyes open, Adele. I don't know who it will be -- a steamdriller, boxer, derrickman, powderman? Maybe a stonecutter like yourfather?" I turned away from her, feigning disinterest. "There's nopredicting," I told her.

In May 1936 the sun, convinced of an early solstice, shone so warmlythat the citizens of Stony Creek kept fresh handkerchiefs in everypocket to wipe off their perspiring faces. I kept three and used themall as I walked the mile from our boardinghouse to the quarry. I broughtlunch to my brother, Charles, and to Pa. Despite the heat I basked inthe freedom of my walks. Out of school until autumn, I was under theconstant scrutiny of Mother, who always had a fresh pile of laundry thatneeded attention, and if not laundry, then some other chore. I welcomedany errand that took me out of her eyeshot.

Upon reaching the work site I would look for ways to dawdle. Sometimes Icould convince one of the quarrymen to tell me a story. Most of the mendidn't mind chatting as they worked. Still steeped in the lore of theirancestors, they spoke to understand where they'd come from and wherethey were now, how it had come to pass that they spent their days in agiant crevasse hacked out by their own hands. Maybe the granite itselfkept them talking. The patterns in the stone were hypnotic,kaleidoscopic, powerfully inducive. Stare at them too long and you couldstart to see things, people and stories compressed between layers ofsediment.

Old Man Richter, a stone loader, spun the best yarns. That day I passedhim at the creek bank. Here, an estuary whooshed by fiercely beforegiving in to the sea. All around, the blades of the salt marsh bentunder gentle winds. Old Man Richter was fishing for eel -- a free lunch.He was up to his knees in the brackish water, stabbing the muddy bottomwith a hand-fashioned spear: a pocketknife tied to a broom handle. Hisrolled-up sleeves and pants' legs revealed sinew and strength, thephysique of a younger man. Yet he was the oldest worker in the quarry byat least a decade.

"Afternoon,Mr. Richter," I piped.

"Afternoon, Adele."

Though I knew I oughtn't -- Mother wouldn't have liked it -- I took offmy shoes and waded into the creek. The water nibbled the hem of myskirt. The pebbles, slick with algae, felt smooth and cool under myfeet. I sidled up to Mr. Richter carefully.

"Say, Adele, do you remember when the shanties were close to here? Whenthey were only yards away? You could get out of bed and practically tripover the edge of the quarry."

"I think I'm too young to remember."

He squinted at me, his eyes settling on my long braids, on thesmattering of freckles on the bridge of my nose.

"Oh, too young," he repeated. "Sixteen?"

Mr. Richter had always been a presence in my life. When I was a childhe'd doted on me as if I were a favorite grandchild or niece. He'd cometo my Sunday tea parties, sitting outside on a make-believe chairbetween two of my make-believe friends. I'd pour seawater from a chippedblue teapot Mother let me borrow and Mr. Richter would unearth lintysugar cubes from his pockets. He'd always remembered my birthdays, too.Once, he'd surprised me with a bicycle. It was a boy's bicycle and alittle worse for wear, but how dazzled I'd felt when I'd laid eyes onit.

"Seventeen," I corrected.

His eyes widened merrily. "My! You'll have to pardon me."

"What was it like -- living close to the quarry?" I asked him.

He jabbed the spear, stirring the already murky water. When the knifecame up empty, he sighed. "Not so different, except for the blackpowder. There are accidents now, but not like then. No one knew what toexpect from a blast, no matter how careful we planned it. My lord, wehad to watch ourselves. Stone was always flying. My wife was sure I'dlose an eye. She was sure we'd all go blind eventually. She had bigstatues of all the saints lined up on the bureau. Every night she'd savea little of our dinner and offer it to them -- a bribe to keep me safe."He smiled, the remainder of his teeth worn down and yellow-rotten. "Aloon, that woman was."

Old Man Richter's spear emerged again. This time an inky, slippery-longfish dangled from the tip. Though the knife had plainly impaled it,still the eel squiggled.

"Want a bite?" he joked, waving the spear in the air.

He couldn't have expected girlish squeals or even blushing. Mr. Richterknew as well as anyone that I'd grown up around the quarry, that I wasused to rough talk, and fish scales, and granite pebbles lodged in thesoles of my shoes. One thing I would never be mistaken for was aCottager's daughter.

"Cook it up and maybe I will," I told him, my words coming out soclipped and fearless they stopped him outright.

I pulled on my shoes and left Old Man Richter to skin and cook hislunch. After circling the work site several times I found Pa. He wassitting on an empty dynamite keg outside the cutting sheds. I wassurprised to see him at rest -- he seldom allowed himself a lunch break.I knew I had only a few minutes to give him his meal before he went backto work, his smile upon seeing me replaced by grim concentration.

Pa ate quickly, wheezing and coughing between bites. He'd tucked thedust mask Mother had sewn for him carelessly in a pocket. He'd promisedto use it, but wore it only when representatives from the insurancecompany came for inspection -- twice a year, like clockwork. It wasobvious that he was resigned to his fate: silicosis, the stonecutter'sblack lung. He'd carved his tombstone five years back, at the age ofthirty-four. All the stonecutters made this morbid gesture early.Everyone knew that their day was distressingly near, so much dust comeback to haunt them.

"Delicious, Adele," he said. I smiled, though I knew he was lying. Heate the same lunch every day: cheese, homemade pickles, and salamitucked between slices of brown bread.

"You've been helping your mother?" he asked. I nodded. His eyes werekind, and I felt buoyed by them, like the channel markers that bobbed onthe surface of Long Island Sound.

"But I hope you've saved some time for yourself," he continued, tiltingback his head, lips parted as if to drink in the sun, the blue blaze ofsky. "A day like this doesn't come around often." I, too, dipped back myhead. Together, we watched the clouds drift past like elegant ladies inwispy white gowns.

"Francisco used to spend whole days like this -- doing nothing," Pasaid. "He never felt bad about it, either. No matter how much my motheryelled at him, or how much the teacher scolded him for skipping school,he didn't give a darn. He did things his own way, at his own pace, nomatter what."

I loved to hear Pa talk about his brother and the adventures they'dshared as children. It didn't matter that I'd never met Francisco. Infact, my ignorance probably added to his allure. What I didn't knowabout Francisco, I had the privilege of imagining: the way his hair blewlazily in the wind, how his laugh lines made his face ruggedly handsome.Pa had disclosed some details over the years. I knew, for instance, thatyou couldn't pin Francisco down. He lived by neither calendar nor clock.A traveling musician, he possessed an aversion to routine andobligation. Pa said he preferred untrod continents, sun-blanched earth,pungent spices that came from across wide seas. Though he was youngerthan Pa, Francisco had already seen the greatest places in the world:the Taj Majal, the Great Wall of China, the pyramids. He sent Papostcards of these distant wonders, but I'd never seen them. Pa keptthem tucked away.

Sometimes, when ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0743297830
• ISBN 13: 9780743297837
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336