Week 1

James walks into the community room clutching a four-section, college-ruled notebook with pens of several colors lined up along the cover. As we introduce ourselves around the circle, he tells everyone he’s read Lord of the Rings three times and Harry Potter through twice, but he doesn’t read much literary fiction.

What’s that? asks Deidre, the high school girl next to him.

All eyes turn to me. On the way out, James is explaining to her why he will not read the Twilight books.

 

Week 2

James has started a story. In an overpopulated future, births are banned. Women carry babies to term, but at week forty, a vaccine is administered to cause the baby to be reabsorbed by the mother’s body. James hasn’t worked out everything yet, but his fifteen-year-old protagonist has found a back-alley midwife. He’s named the mother-to-be Mary Roe.

 

Week 3

James brings a new story with a protagonist who has two bodies. Anytime he likes, the protagonist can switch. He can, according to James, do anything to his duplicate body without harming the original.

Can the two bodies fight each other? asks Deidre.

I haven’t worked out everything yet, he tells her.

 

Week 4

This week, James has another new story. In this one, God is a gigantic pink baby who reaches down from cloudbanks over the Midwest and swirls up tornadoes with his pudgy fingers.

 

Week 5

James brings back his Mary Roe story. She has found a midwife, but now James must figure out what Mary will do with the baby. He has introduced the baby’s father into the story.

You should call him Joseph, says Deidre.

 

Week 6

After we talked about autobiographical elements in fiction last week, James went home and began a story about the time he spit into the family well. Only beating Mama ever gave me, he tells us.

 

Week 7

One body is a spare, explains James, so his protagonist can smoke and drink all he wants. He is considering letting it get tattooed, but the fear of needles transfers from one body to the other. If the spare gets drunk enough, though, James will send him to a tattoo parlor.

Why don’t you have them fight each other? Deidre asks.

 

Week 8

It’s back to Baby God this week, who is gently thumping church steeples on Sunday mornings while people are bowed in prayer.

 

Week 9

For our final session, James has melded his stories into one. Mary Roe is recalling how she spit in the family well the night she ran away from home. She has had a dream in which God, in the form of a fat pink newborn, is hovering over Nebraska. In the dream, God asks her to come to Carhenge with her twin Josephs. Neither she nor James knows why.

Maybe God wants the two of them to fight for the baby, says Deidre.

I’m still working out what God wants, says James.