Shouting for Grace($19.99Value)

Description

Ellie Hartley's carefully controlled life explodes when she faces the billboard: Don't Make Me Come Down There--God. Ellie lives in San Diego and has built a life that allows her to function with her compulsive tendencies under control. She fled from her North Carolina home ten years earlier to escape the rituals that rendered her helpless. The message from God forces her return to face both her eccentric family and her twelve-year-old daughter Grace, who is showing signs of obsessive compulsive disorder. Ellie attempts to reconnect with Grace after a long separation. But Grace, hurt, confused, and angry that Ellie abandoned her, runs away. Ellie is diagnosed with breast cancer, and her OCD returns in a fury. Back in San Diego, she attempts to help Grace while being treated for cancer. Her perceptions of her past are turned upside down when she uncovers a stunning secret about her family, a secret that has defined her life. Shouting for Grace explores how childhood experiences and perceptions shape us as children and adults and how fear can define us. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and often both, Shouting for Grace celebrates the indomitable human spirit. Shouting for Grace A Novel By Sylvia Peddycord Balboa Press Copyright © 2017 Sylvia Peddycord All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-5043-7553-5 CHAPTER 1 As US Air Flight 92 approaches the Queen City, Joni Mitchell's clear voice rumbles around in my head. Turn this crazy bird around/I shouldn't have got on this flight tonight. I grew up with Joni singing in the background of every major event in my life. When my father left us, or was thrown out on his keister, depending on which story you believe, Vangela played Joni: I can't go on/Everything I had is gone/Stormy weather/ Since my man and I ain't together/ Keeps rainin' all the time. Vangela told me over and over that she related to Joni who had lost her daughter and wrote music to release pain. Our mother didn't write music, nor did she lose a daughter. Vangela is my mother. I started calling her by her first name when my cousin, Frannie, came to live with us. Frannie was thirteen when her mother, my Aunt Bella, died. I was twelve and my sister Kate was eleven. Stair steps to heaven. That's what the family called us: stair steps to heaven. The three of us became inseparable, except in Vangela's eyes. Have you ever watched baby birds learn to fly? Some try to take off before their wings are strong enough and crash to the ground. The mother hovers nearby to encourage her child and scare off enemies. Some babies watch and wait before they take off. Kate and I were like those babies. I waited to see if Frannie made it, and Kate waited to see what I would do. Meanwhile, Frannie had landed hard on the ground and Vangela was more concerned with her landing than whether Kate or I flew. Kate and I loved Cousin Frannie, but she betrayed us. She was ready to take her place in the world, along with her two-year-old daughter Grace, but she had the audacity to die. Leaving me Grace. Making me a mother. A job I failed at miserably. Frannie is a memory I take out and look at every so often when I feel in control. I don't feel in control right now so I try to think of something, anything to stop the emotions storming in. Think of surfing, Joella. Feel the peace that comes with surfing when waves are two to three feet high. The hypnotic movement of the waves flowing beneath me as I sit atop my board in a peaceful sea. Breathe. Stop the jerking of my head. I am calm. I peer down at the muddy waters stretching across the North Carolina Piedmont as the plane starts the final descent. I consider the Xanax in my purse but it's too late to take effect before our landing. Plus, if I take it I'll be groggy and won't feel in control. But I need it! No, I must feel like I am in control without the drugs. Just take the damn Xanax! It's been a long time since I've taken the pill and I don't want to start again. Come on, Joella, breathe in through the nose and fill up the stomach, breathe out at twice the pace. Get body and mind in sync. Think surfing. It's too late. The anxiety builds and I jerk my head to the right. I grab the arms of my seat until my fingers hurt. Willing myself to stop the compulsions. Don't think about the problem right now. Don't focus on that. Focus on — "Are you all right, honey?" An elderly grey-haired woman in the seat next to me closes her bible and pats my hand. "I used to be scared myself. But I read up on the Charlotte Douglas International Airport. It has twenty-three million passengers per year. Planes come in. Planes go out. Nothing to worry about. We'll land okay. God is watching over us." I'm not worried about the plane landing. I clench my hands together to stop turning my head. I do try to keep my mouth shut, but it doesn't work and the words sneak out, "Don't count on it." Her pleasant smile turns to a frown and her voice becomes the firm and disapproving one I heard so often in