Writing It Real member Arla Shephard Bull worked back and forth with me on developing an essay that was important to her to write. She had decided to use the third person as a way of distancing herself enough to approach the topic of a painful family trip. Despite a question she had about that decision not to use “I,” her revisions continued successfully in the third person once Arla created more scenes for her essay and allowed us to see more of the people and places she visited.

To help others experience the value of reader response for successful revision, Arla and I are sharing our back and forth. You will see that Arla’s focus and hard work led to a final draft of a well-developed essay.

Draft 1: Here is the first draft Arla sent:

The Longest Walk
by Arla Shephard Bull

Her corkscrew curls cling to the back of her neck. Flies circle her ears. Her bare ankles itch as tall thickets scratch her. The air presses down on her skin, the memory of cool Pacific Northwest breezes taunt her.

The girl longs to be in an air-conditioned mall, gossiping with her friends. She grows more and more irritated as her family trudges on, especially with her mother, whose idea this was to spend the holidays below the Equator.

She had looked forward to meeting her cousins, to whom she’d sent letters all her life, envelopes stuffed with purple ink-scrawled stationery and Lisa Frank stickers. She in turn impatiently awaited the telltale red, white and blue international envelops filled with stories about life on the other side of the world.

Aside from letters, the girl felt their presence once a year when her mother would dutifully pack one or two large Balikbayan boxes each December — new shoes, clothes, toys and books for five children, stuffed tightly in those cardboard panels.

That they would need so much every year bothered the girl, especially when her mother commandeered her brand-new toys to ship overseas. She bitterly remembered a pink bonnet-clad crawling baby doll taken from her the day after Christmas. She never felt jealous of her cousins, her anger directed squarely at her mother.

Meeting her cousins at the airport had been overwhelming for everyone. Her mother left the Philippines 13 years ago, before any of the girl’s cousins had been born. These mystery figures with whom she had fervently exchanged letters all her life were suddenly real people. Flesh and blood where only pen and paper had existed. Over the next two weeks, they’d laughed and played, communication only slightly hampered by language barriers.

After two weeks, though, the girl still hadn’t visited her cousins’ home. Instead, she and her sister had been sleeping on a lumpy, canoe-shaped mattress under a tin roof at her great aunt’s house, sticking to one another and the mosquito nets as they sloped toward the bed’s center. A rooster would crow its dreadful cry at hours the girls were not used to, and flea-infested pets roamed freely around the sparse house, with its bare walls and concrete floor.

She had eagerly awaited the end of the trip, when her mother said they’d visit her cousins’ house. The family drove out to a remote town, passing palatial homes like those in the fictional Agrabah in Disney’s “Aladdin.” The girl briefly thought her cousins lived in a grandiose estate.

When the van stopped near a patch of tall grass on the fringe of a neighborhood, the girl frowned. They started to walk, the adults explaining little.

The sun beats down now, as her family, cousins and all, makes their way. The girl worries about snakes hiding in the overgrowth, each scratch at her ankle teasing out her fears. They cross a rickety bridge over a small, sticky creek, the sweet, chemical odor mixing nauseously with the unease in her stomach.

Her legs tire, her lungs ache.

They reach a village, doors propped against frames. The elderly and disabled sit, hunched in doorsteps, everyone staring, as this troop of outsiders marches through. The girl feels their eyes follow her. She waits nervously for her cousins to point to whichever of these forlorn homes is theirs. None of them are. What was this? Where were they going?

They arrive at a hill on the outskirts of town, a hut perched precariously atop. The girl’s stomach churns with a disappointment seeded in the moment they left the van. She holds her breath.

The room they enter is smaller than her living room at home, less than 50 square feet, but here there’s a bathtub facing the couch on her left, straight ahead a small stove. Her aunt makes tea and explains that this is where the parents and baby sleep, on this couch in this hybrid bathroom/kitchen/living room.

Her eldest cousin is pulling her hand. The girl notices the curtain masquerading as a wall behind the couch. The entire hut is actually one room split in two.

Her cousins pull back the curtain, revealing two small beds for four children facing each other on opposite ends of the cramped space. “Little Mermaid” comforters adorn the bed, “Little Mermaid” curtains line the window. Her sister’s old art desk and easel stand in the corner, next to a long-forgotten mini-television, stacked high with old VHS tapes.

The floor is littered with Pokémon cards and toys, mostly Barbies, who still sport the same clothes and ill-advised haircuts the girl had given them years ago. The crawling baby doll with the pink bonnet looks at home with the singing teddy bear her sister had loved for years.

She is standing in the graveyard of her childhood.

She understands how much her mother loves her.

Her cousins proudly show off their belongings, her belongings, as the girl mechanically nods and smiles. Breaking away, she steps outside to catch her breath, alone.

She knows not to cry in front of her cousins, knows that showing any sort of pity would be cruel, the disconnect between their lives too great for them to understand, not at this age. She waits. She says a hurried goodbye, not knowing when she’ll next see them. She waits for her parents to disentangle themselves from her aunt and uncle, eager to be away from the people who live here.

At the last minute, her uncle announces he will walk them back to the van. Her throat tightens.

They clamber down the hill, past rusty playthings in the yard. They tramp through the village, past the vacant stares and breathing bones. They walk across the field of tall grass, past the sticky creek and rusted bridge.

She doesn’t notice the flies or the heat or the ache in her legs, all thought concentrated on the ache in her stomach, in her heart.

She does not cry, not yet.

(997 words)

Here are my reader responses:

I think you have written economically and in a well-organized way. I feel the heat, the love of meeting cousins who have been writing for years, and the shock of learning where and how they are living.

I am confused close to the opening. I understand that the girl is in a very hot climate below the Equator and wishes instead to be with her friends in the Pacific Northwest, shopping and talking. So, when the third paragraph says, “She had looked forward to meeting her cousins” I don’t understand why she wishes she were at home.

I think there might be a different order that would help the story flourish: opening with the part about meeting her cousins at the airport, including a description of what the girls looked like (do they resemble her? her mother?) then flashing back to letters they’d written and to Christmas times when the girl’s mother took her new presents and sent them to these cousins. Maybe including the girl wondering if they still have these gifts would be a good foreshadowing to the ending when she sees the objects in the poverty stricken place they call home.

Recap: the order might be: opening with the meeting at the airport, how much the girl looked forward to meeting them, how they’d “met” through years of letters, the fact that the girl and her mother are staying at a great aunt’s and haven’t seen the home of the cousins, then the heat, the wish to be home with her friends, then the getting to the cousin’s home and the insight that follows.

I am not sure I quite understand this line although I know it is significant: “She understands how much her mother loves her.”

I am not sure how seeing all of the objects she had hated her mother taking from her allows her to feel how much her mother loves her. I need more here—earlier in the story, the narrator might tell more about the girl’s anger toward her mother and then here describe how it melts away, how it is replaced by forgiveness toward her mother and allows the opening to see her mother in a much different light. That might not be about how much the mother loves her daughter, but about how compassionate and caring the daughter realizes her mother is.

More writing earlier when the girl first introduces the fact that her mother took her new gifts and sent them away to relatives far away would help deepen the impact when the opportunity comes up here later in the story to when the girl now sees what is true.

Draft 2: Arla send her revision and I began inserting my reader responses into the document she using Microsoft Word’s Insert Comment function. I also sometimes tightened sentences or added a few words here and there to help the reader.

The Longest Walk
By Arla Shephard Bull

Meeting her cousins at the airport had been overwhelming.

The girl anxiously awaited their arrival, tired, sweaty and disoriented from 20 hours in flight. She didn’t know what day it was, let alone what to expect from these mystery figures, people with whom she’d fervently exchanged letters her whole life.

Curiosity: Does this mean the girl never saw pictures of her cousins? Was that unusual if that were so? I am trying to figure out what the mystery about them was—physical? I am curious to know what they wrote in letters, which if they exchanged “fervently,” implies she may have learned quite a bit from them. On the other hand, perhaps they wrote letters that didn’t express the things she was interested in about their lives. As reader, I want to know why the speaker applies the word “mystery” when they have been writing letters “fervently.”

The eldest was a girl her younger sister’s age, shy, but eager to try out her English. The next oldest, another girl, resembled her own sister greatly, with large apple cheeks and a wide smile. The two younger boys scampered about, reticent, but playful, their bright eyes boasting their happiness where words failed them. The youngest, a baby girl, cooed from the arms of her mother.

The girl’s mother had left the Philippines 13 years ago when the girl was just a baby and before any of her cousins had been born. Suddenly, here they were, real people, flesh and blood where only pen and paper had existed. Her only flesh and blood cousins.

I think it is worth lingering here—I want to be with the girl feeling the importance to her and impact on her of being in the presence of her own and only flesh and blood cousins. I want to know more about the girl’s life at home—how she might have been envious of friends who had cousins or pretended she had some, etc. I’d love to see her in a scene where she is dealing with the lack of cousins where she lives.

She had loved writing them letters throughout her life, envelopes stuffed with purple ink-scrawled stationery and Lisa Frank stickers. She in turn impatiently awaited the telltale red, white and blue international envelopes filled with stories about life on the other side of the world.

Curiosity: I wonder what language they corresponded in and they were able to correspond in it.

I feel left out of learning at least snippets of these stories from the other side of the world. Were there words the girl didn’t understand? Cultural references, names of foods, ideas that she wondered about?

Aside from letters, the girl felt their presence once a year when her mother would dutifully pack one or two large Balikbayan boxes each December — new shoes, clothes, toys and books for five children, stuffed tightly in those cardboard panels.

If the letters came frequently, it would seem that she felt their presence often. Maybe the phrase “Aside from letters” somehow dilutes the significance of the letters. Maybe here is a good spot to talk about the difference in her feelings – warm when her mother showed her the letters had arrived, for instance, but angry when her mother packed things up. The narrator says she didn’t feel jealous and was angry at her mother. This would be good to show—maybe using dialog-in a scene before moving on.

That they would need so much every year bothered the girl, especially when her mother commandeered her brand-new toys to ship overseas. She bitterly remembered a pink bonnet-clad crawling baby doll taken from her the day after Christmas.

Curiosity: What other toys does she remember her mother taking from her and from her sister?

She never felt jealous of her cousins, her anger directed squarely at her mother. She didn’t understand why her mother would callously take away toys she’d wanted for months, unless she didn’t care about her. She added the grievance to a long list of perceived slights against her.

I think it may be too early to say this directly. I like reading about the girl not understanding why her mother did such a thing—take her and I assume her sister’s—toys away almost immediately after they received them. Curiosity: I begin to wonder who the gifts were from. If the mom was only going to ship them away, if they were from her, why did she give them to her daughter’s rather than just send them? What other slights did the girl nurse against her mother—it seems like this would be an opportunity to show the discrepancy between her mother’s culture and the one the girl was growing up in and why that discrepancy caused the girl unhappiness.

They fought regularly over everything, including this trip. While she’d been antsy to meet her cousins, the trip’s length seemed unnecessary and looked to be another holiday ruined, with palm trees replacing Christmas trees. There was no such thing as a White Christmas below the Equator.

I have been wondering why the girl’s sister wasn’t on the trip. Maybe here would be a way to put that in, if the girl is envious of her younger sister who gets to have Christmas trees, etc.

The only consolation was that she’d see where her cousins lived, a house she’d envisioned for years. She imagined bunk beds and spiral staircases, a home worthy of a bustling family of seven, large enough to entertain the adventures she fancied a large family would have.

Were there details in the kids’ letters that she put together into this imagined house? Did she ever ask her mom what houses were like there? What kind of answer did she get?

Over the next two weeks, they’d all laughed and played, communication only slightly hampered by language barriers, however, time passed and they still hadn’t visited her cousins’ home.

Instead, she and her sister had been sleeping on a lumpy, canoe-shaped mattress under a tin roof at her great aunt’s house, sticking to one another and the mosquito nets as they sloped toward the bed’s center. A rooster would crow its dreadful cry at hours the girls were not used to, and flea-infested pets roamed freely around the sparse house, with its bare walls and concrete floor.

Oh, you can see I didn’t think the sister had come along. I think she needs to show up early in the essay when the girl is meeting her cousins at the airport. Was the sister too young to write letters? Was she happy to be on the trip? Was the girl annoyed with her sister or happy to have her there? Do they have any dialog that would be valuable to the essay?

She had restlessly awaited the end of the trip, when her mother said they’d visit her cousins’ house. The family drove out to a remote town, passing palatial homes like those in the fictional Agrabah in Disney’s “Aladdin.” The girl briefly thought her cousins lived in a grandiose estate.

Who is included in “the family”?

When the van stopped near a patch of tall grass on the fringe of a neighborhood, the girl frowned. They started to walk, the adults explaining little.

The sun beats down now, as her family, cousins and all, make their way. Her corkscrew curls cling to the back of her neck. Flies circle her ears. Her bare ankles itch as tall thickets scratch her. The air presses down on her skin, the memory of cool Pacific Northwest breezes taunt her.

What was her sister doing? Walking beside her? Annoying her? She says annoyed especially with her mother but what about the others? In what ways did they annoy her? It seems a little late to feel annoyed about the trip as they have by now been there for two weeks and have played with their cousins. What was that like? What are the girl’s impressions of the country and the way the aunt lives, the food, clothes, and other things?

Despite her anticipation, the girl can’t help thinking of the air-conditioned malls and movie theatres back home. She grows more and more irritated as her family trudges on, especially with her mother, whose idea this was to spend Christmas in the tropics.

The girl worries about snakes hiding in the overgrowth, each scratch at her ankle teasing out her fears. They cross a rickety bridge over a small, sticky creek, the sweet, chemical odor mixing nauseously with the unease in her stomach.

Who has told her about the snakes that live there? What is she looking for to avoid stepping near one?

Her legs tire, her lungs ache.

They reach a village, doors propped against frames. The elderly and disabled sit, hunched in doorsteps, everyone staring, as this troop of outsiders marches through. The girl feels their eyes follow her. She waits nervously for her cousins to point to whichever of these forlorn homes is theirs. None of them are. What was this? Where were they going?

They arrive at a hill on the outskirts of town, a hut perched precariously atop. The girl’s stomach churns with a disappointment seeded in the moment they left the van. She holds her breath.

The room they enter is smaller than her living room at home, less than 50 square feet, but here there’s a bathtub facing the couch on her left, straight ahead a small stove. Her aunt makes tea and explains that this is where the parents and baby sleep, on this ragged couch in this hybrid bathroom/kitchen/living room.

Her eldest cousin is pulling her hand. The girl notices the curtain masquerading as a wall behind the couch. The entire hut is actually one room split in two.

Her cousins pull back the curtain, revealing two small beds for four children facing each other on opposite ends of the cramped space. “Little Mermaid” comforters adorn the bed, “Little Mermaid” curtains line the window. Her sister’s old art desk and easel stand in the corner, next to a long-forgotten mini-television, stacked high with old VHS tapes.

Is her cousin eager to show her the room behind the curtain? Is she happy to have her cousin visiting in the house and seeing how they use the toys, etc.? Were the Little Mermaid sheets once the girls?

The floor is littered with Pokémon cards and Barbies, who still sport the same clothes and ill-advised haircuts the girl had given them years ago. The walls are plastered with posters of boy bands and the crawling baby doll with the pink bonnet looks at home with the singing teddy bear her sister had loved for years.

She is standing in the graveyard of her childhood.

This sentence comes alive in this version!

Everything she has ever loved desperately at one time as a child, but later forgotten, lives here in a cacophony of colors. The sheer amount of toys, objects her mother had once bought to placate and please her, assaults the girl. The weight of the room, and the realization of all she has ever been given, threatens to swallow her.

She understands how much her mother loves her.

Ah, this sentence carries weight here now!

Her cousins proudly show off their belongings, her belongings, as the girl mechanically nods and smiles. Breaking away, she steps outside to catch her breath, alone.

She knows not to cry in front of her cousins, knows that showing any sort of pity would be cruel, the disconnect between their lives too great for them to understand, not at this age. She waits. She says a hurried goodbye, not knowing when she’ll next see them. She waits for her parents to disentangle themselves from her aunt and uncle, eager to be away from the people who live here.

This is the first time I know the girl’s father has come, too. I wish I had seen all of them at the airport greeting the girl’s mom’s family. Where is her father from?

At the last minute, her uncle announces he will walk them back to the van. Her throat tightens.
They clamber down the hill, past rusty playthings in the yard. They tramp through the village, past the vacant stares and breathing bones. They walk across the field of tall grass, past the sticky creek and rusted bridge.

This seems an apt and impactful way to describe people without enough to eat.

She doesn’t notice the flies or the heat or the ache in her legs, all thought concentrated on the ache in her stomach, in her heart.
She does not cry, not yet.

I am moved by the ending. I think if I learn more about the way she has been angry at her mom and what at home she had longed by way of answers to the questions in my comments, this would resonate even more strongly.

(1296 words)

Draft 3: Arla considered my reader responses and soon another draft appeared in my inbox. You will notice that she decided to start with the same corkscrew curls that opened her original draft.

The Longest Walk
by Arla Shephard Bull

Her corkscrew curls cling to the back of her neck. Flies circle her ears. Her bare ankles itch as tall thickets scratch her. The air presses down on her skin, the memory of cool Pacific Northwest breezes taunt her.

The girl longs to be in an air-conditioned mall, gossiping with her sister. She grows more and more irritated as her family trudges on, especially with her mother, whose idea this was to spend the holidays below the Equator.

It has been two weeks since they met her cousins at the first ramshackle hotel they’d stayed at near the airport in Manila. Tired, sweaty and disoriented from 20 hours in flight, her parents had quietly bickered with cab drivers and bellmen over the dozens of bags and boxes they’d brought for hundreds of relatives the girl barely knew, including a great-aunt who’d met them at the airport. She and her sister stayed silent, taking in all the foreign smells and sounds that greeted them in the middle of the night.

When their cousins arrived, the girl didn’t know what day it was, let alone what to expect from her newfound family. She had nervously awaited the arrival of her cousins, wondering if they’d live up to the nebulous image she’d crafted of them over the years, personalities invented and scraped together from superficial letters in stilted English they’d fervently exchanged her whole life.

The eldest cousin was a girl her younger sister’s age, 10, shy, but eager to try her English. The next oldest, another girl, resembled the girl’s sister greatly, with large apple cheeks and a wide smile. The two younger boys scampered about, reticent, but playful, their bright eyes boasting happiness where words failed them. The youngest, a baby girl, cooed from her mother’s arms.

Having left the Philippines 13 years before when she was a baby, the girl hadn’t met any of these children. Now suddenly, here they were, her only flesh and blood cousins.

At home, she’d felt the lack of family her whole life, jealous of school friends who spent summers scrambling about the ranch homes of cousins and aunts and uncles; she and her sister longed for more playmates and the loud, rambunctious clamor that came from a house full of family, of love, on holidays. They spent many a Thanksgiving alone as a small family of five, with the girl’s eldest brother, nearly 15 years her senior, rounding out the brood.

Over the years, the girl had loved writing her cousins letters, envelopes stuffed with purple ink-scrawled stationery and Lisa Frank stickers. She in turn impatiently awaited the telltale red, white and blue international envelops filled with stories about life on the other side of the world.

It would be good for her to recount some of what they had said in those letters about life on the other side of the world even if it is only about Mickey Mouse. Something from the actual letters would be good for the essay. Instead of saying she could only glean so much, it would be stronger to write what she wished to hear about and wondered about.

But there was only so much she could glean from notes about school and wanting to meet Mickey Mouse. Mostly the letters contained sketches and simple messages of “I love you” from children still learning how to read and write in their native language, let alone English.

What were the sketches of? They must have told her something about life on the other side of the world.

While she happily awaited her cousins’ letters, the girl dreaded the month of December, when she most felt her cousins’ presence — once a year, her mother would dutifully pack one or two large Balikbayan boxes, the cardboard panels stuffed tightly with new shoes, clothes, toys and books for five children.

The sight of the boxes made the girl cringe because she knew what was coming. That they would need so much every year bothered her, especially because her mother commandeered her brand-new toys to ship overseas. She bitterly remembered a pink bonnet-clad crawling baby doll taken from her the day after Christmas, a gift from a family friend. Other toys were taken throughout the year, but the doll stuck out because she’d barely had a chance to play with it.

Her sister got to keep her blue-bonneted doll because, her mother explained, she was the youngest and the two girl cousins could share.

She didn’t understand why her mother would callously take away toys she’d wanted for months, unless she didn’t care about her. She added the grievance to a long list of perceived slights, like the many times she had to turn down invitations to play or sleep over at friends’ homes. Distrustful of Americans, the girl’s mother rarely allowed her children outside alone, let alone to go to the homes of classmates. Enough sleepover invitations turned down, and the girl found herself with few friends, living a small, sheltered life.

Might you say more here about that distrust? What kinds of things did the girl’s mother say about white Americans that allowed the girl to understand she distrusted them? What would the girl say to friends when she had to turn down invitations? Knowing that in some snippets of dialog, her exact words, would allow us to feel her sadness about this situation.

The girl and her mother fought regularly over everything, including this trip. While she’d been antsy to meet her cousins, the trip’s length seemed unnecessary and looked to be another holiday ruined, with palm trees replacing Christmas trees. There was no such thing as a White Christmas below the Equator.

But she did want to see her cousins. Even that though was disappointing as they’d had sparse time to play and get to know one another as the girl and her sister were shuttled from relative to relative, constantly surrounded by adults, and ferried from activity to activity. They sometimes spent days away from her cousins.

A family reunion of nearly 1,000 people, each clamoring to know something about American life, sapped the girl of any energy to get to really know anyone.

Instead of staying with her cousins, the girl and her sister had been sleeping on a lumpy, canoe-shaped mattress under a tin roof at her great-aunt’s house, sticking to one another and the mosquito nets as they sloped toward the bed’s center. A rooster would crow its dreadful cry at hours the girls were not used to, and flea-infested pets roamed freely around the sparse house, with its bare walls and concrete floor.

She began to pin her hopes on the few days at the end of the trip when her family was supposed to see where her cousins lived. Without ever asking for any details, she imagined bunk beds and spiral staircases, a home worthy of a bustling family of seven, large enough to entertain the adventures she fancied a large family would have, like the Swiss Family Robinson.

It is hard to believe that after seeing her aunt’s poverty and knowing her mother sent things to the cousins because they needed so much she didn’t suspect her cousins’ home was poor.

Finally, her parents, her sister, her cousins and aunts and uncles drove in a van out to a remote town, passing palatial homes like those in the fictional Agrabah in Disney’s “Aladdin.” The girl briefly thought her cousins lived in a grandiose estate.

She seems like a smart girl so again it is hard to imagine she thinks this; if it were so her mother would not have to send so much every Christmas and deny her own children some of their things. I understand the hope but not the fantasy.

When the van stopped near a patch of tall grass on the fringe of a neighborhood, the girl frowned.

Now they walk, the adults explaining little.

The sun beats down, as her family, cousins and all, make their way, hardly speaking. Her father warns her and her sister to look out for rustling in the grass along the path, wary of snakes. Each scratch at her ankle teases out these fears.

The girl can’t help but think of the air-conditioned malls and movie theatres back home. She grows more and more anxious.

They cross a rickety bridge over a small, sticky creek, the sweet, chemical odor mixing nauseously with the unease in her stomach. The girl jokes nervously about pushing her sister in.

“You’d need a lot of shots to ever recover,” her father says grimly.

They trudge on. Her legs tire, her lungs ache.

They reach a village, doors propped against frames. The elderly and disabled sit, hunched in doorsteps, everyone staring, as this troop of outsiders marches through.

The girl feels their eyes follow her. She waits nervously for her cousins to point to whichever of these forlorn homes is theirs, relieved that they at least appear to be in their neighborhood. But none of these houses belongs to them.

They arrive at a hill on the outskirts of town, a hut perched precariously atop. The girl’s stomach churns with a disappointment seeded in the moment they left the van. She holds her breath.

The room they enter is smaller than her living room at home, less than 50 square feet. There’s a bathtub in the room on her right facing a lumpy couch on her left. Straight ahead there’s a small stove. Her aunt makes tea for her cousin, Dannae, who has grown ill from the walk. She also explains that this is her bedroom, where the parents and baby sleep, on the ragged couch.

The girl doesn’t notice at first, but her eldest cousin, Chessa, is pulling at her hand, excitedly chattering; the boys are also eager to show off their room. The girl then realizes this space they’re in is actually one room split in two, with a heavy curtain masquerading as a wall behind the couch.

Her cousins pull back the curtain, revealing two small beds for four children facing each other on opposite ends of a cramped space. “Little Mermaid” comforters adorn the bed, “Little Mermaid” curtains line the window, replicating a bedroom the girl had once had eight years ago. Her sister’s old art desk and easel stand in the corner, next to a long-forgotten mini-television, stacked high with old VHS tapes.

The floor is littered with Pokémon cards and Barbies, who still sport the same clothes and ill-advised haircuts the girl had given them years ago. The walls are plastered with posters of boy bands, and the crawling baby doll with the pink bonnet looks at home with the singing teddy bear her sister had loved for years.

She is standing in the graveyard of her childhood.

Everything she has ever loved desperately at one time as a child, but later forgotten, lives here in a cacophony of colors. The sheer amount of toys, objects her mother had once bought to placate and please her, assaults the girl. The weight of room, and the realization of all she has ever been given, threatens to swallow her.

She understands how much her mother loves her.

Her cousins proudly show off their belongings, her belongings, happy to share their life, as the girl mechanically nods and smiles. Breaking away, she steps outside to catch her breath, alone.

She knows not to cry in front of her cousins, knows that showing any sort of pity would be cruel, the disconnect between their lives too great for them to understand, not at this age. She waits. She says a hurried goodbye, not knowing when she’ll see them next. She waits for her parents to disentangle themselves from her aunt and uncle, eager to be away from the people who live here.

At the last minute, her uncle announces he will walk them back to the van. Her throat tightens.

They clamber down the hill, past rusty playthings in the yard. They tramp through the village, past the vacant stares and breathing bones. They walk across the field of tall grass, past the sticky creek and rusted bridge.

She doesn’t notice the flies or the heat or the ache in her legs, all thought concentrated on the ache in her stomach, in her heart.

She does not cry, not yet.

Draft 4: One more draft, and Arla had the essay she dreamed of writing. Here it is with the minor edits I made with Microsoft Word’s Track Changes tool:

The Longest Walk
By Arla Shephard Bull

Her corkscrew curls cling to the back of her neck. Flies circle her ears. Her bare ankles itch as tall thickets scratch her. The air presses down on her skin, the memory of cool Pacific Northwest breezes taunting her.

The girl longs to be in an air-conditioned mall, gossiping with her sister. She grows more and more irritated as her family trudges on, especially with her mother, whose idea this was to spend the holidays below the Equator.

It has been two weeks since they met her cousins at the first ramshackle hotel they’d stayed at near the airport in Manila.

Tired, sweaty and disoriented from 20 hours in flight, her parents had quietly bickered with cab drivers and bellmen over the dozens of bags and boxes they’d brought for hundreds of relatives the girl barely knew, including a great-aunt who’d met them at the airport. She and her sister stayed silent, taking in all the foreign smells and sounds that greeted them in the middle of the night.

When their cousins arrived, the girl didn’t know what day it was, let alone what to expect from her newfound family. She had nervously awaited the arrival of her cousins, wondering if they’d live up to the nebulous image she’d crafted of them over the years, personalities invented and scraped together from superficial letters in stilted English they’d fervently exchanged her whole life.

The eldest cousin was a girl her younger sister’s age, 10, shy, but eager to try her English. The next oldest, another girl, resembled the girl’s sister greatly, with large apple cheeks and a wide smile. The two younger boys scampered about, reticent, but playful, their bright eyes boasting happiness where words failed them. The youngest, a baby girl, cooed from her mother’s arms.

Having left the Philippines 13 years before when she was a baby, the girl had never met any of these children. Now, suddenly, here they were, real people where only pen and paper had existed, her only flesh and blood cousins.

At home, she’d felt the lack of family her whole life, jealous of school friends who spent summers scrambling about the ranch homes of cousins and aunts and uncles; she and her sister longed for more playmates and the loud, rambunctious clamor that came from a house full of family, of love, on holidays. They spent many a Thanksgiving alone as a small family of five, with the girl’s eldest brother, nearly 15 years her senior, rounding out the brood.

Over the years, the girl had loved writing her cousins letters, envelopes stuffed with on purple ink-scrawled stationery stuffed into envelopes fastened with and Lisa Frank stickers. She in turn impatiently awaited the telltale red, white and blue international envelopes from filled with stories about life on the other side of the world.

But there was only so much she could glean from notes in very simple English about school and wanting to meet Mickey Mouse. Mostly the letters contained sketches of flowers and trees, and always simple messages of the phrase “I love you” from children still learning how to read and write in their native language, let alone English.

While she happily awaited her cousins’ letters, the girl dreaded the month of December, when she most felt her cousins’ presence — once a year, her mother would dutifully pack one or two large Balikbayan boxes, the cardboard panels stuffed tightly with new shoes, clothes, toys and books for five children.

The sight of the boxes made the girl cringe because she knew what was coming. That they would need so much every year bothered her, especially because her mother commandeered her brand-new toys to ship overseas. She bitterly remembered, a gift from a family friend a pink bonnet-clad crawling baby doll, a gift from a family friend, taken from her the day after Christmas, a gift from a family friend. Other toys were taken throughout the year, but the doll stuck out because she’d the girl had barely had a chance to play with it.

Her sister got to keep her blue-bonneted doll because, her mother explained, she was the youngest and the two girls could share.

She didn’t understand why her mother would take away toys she’d wanted for months, unless her mother didn’t care about her. She added the grievance to a long list of perceived slights, like the many times her mother forced her to turn down invitations to play at friends’ homes.

Distrustful of Americans, the girl’s mother rarely allowed her children outside alone, let alone inside the homes of classmates. The girl recalled turning down her first sleepover invitation in fourth grade over the phone. When her would-be friend asked her over and over again why she couldn’t go, she sadly replied, “Just because,” through tears.

Enough sleepover invitations turned down, and the girl found herself with few friends, living a small, sheltered life.

The girl and her mother fought regularly over everything, including this trip. While she’d been antsy to meet her cousins, the trip’s length seemed unnecessary and looked to be another holiday ruined, with palm trees replacing Christmas trees. There was no such thing as a White Christmas below the Equator.

But she did want to see her cousins. Even that, though, was disappointing at first as they’d had sparse time to play and get to know one another as the girl and her sister were shuttled from relative to relative, constantly surrounded by adults, and ferried from activity to activity. They sometimes spent days away from her cousins.

A family reunion of nearly 1,000 people, each clamoring to know something about American life, sapped the girl of any energy to get to really know anyone.

Instead of staying with her cousins, the girl and her sister had been sleeping on a lumpy, canoe-shaped mattress under a tin roof at her great-aunt’s house, sticking to one another and the mosquito nets as they sloped toward the bed’s center. A rooster would crowed its dreadful cry at hours the girls were not used to, and flea-infested pets and chickens roamed freely around the sparsely furnished house, with its bare walls and concrete floor.

Despite the house’s shabby construction, the girl understood that her great-aunt lived comfortably by Filipino standards, in a home roughly the size of the girl’s parents’ house back in the United States. Her great-aunt sold vegetables and eggs from a large garden and chicken coop out back. The girl and her sister watched Filipino soap operas on their great-aunt’s TV on Christmas Eve, as carolers marched through the front porch at regular intervals.

She began to dream of the few days at the end of the trip when her family was supposed to see where her cousins lived. Without ever asking for any details and with much wishful thinking, she imagined bunk beds and spiral staircases, a home worthy of a bustling family of seven, large enough to entertain the adventures she fancied a large family would have, like the Swiss Family Robinson.

Finally, her parents, her sister, her cousins and aunts and uncles drove in a van out to a remote town, passing palatial homes like those in the fictional Agrabah in Disney’s “Aladdin.” The girl briefly held the hope thought her cousins actually did lived in a grandiose estate.

When the van stopped near a patch of tall grass on the fringe of a neighborhood, the girl frowned.

Now they walk, the adults explaining little.

And here she is, tThe sun beating down, as her family, cousins and all, make their way, hardly speaking. Her father warns her and her sister to look out for rustlings in the grass along the path, to be wary of snakes. Each scratch at her ankle teases out these her fears.

The girl can’t help but think of the air-conditioned malls and movie theatres back home. She grows more and more anxious, considering how far her cousins must have to walk to reach a doctor, a bank or a McDonald’s, far as they were from the main road or any relatives’ homes.

They cross a rickety bridge over a small, sticky creek, the sweet, chemical odor of it mixing nauseously with the unease in her stomach. The girl jokes nervously about pushing her sister in.

“You’d need a lot of shots to ever recover,” her father says grimly.

They trudge on, another half hour passing. Her legs tire, her lungs ache.

They reach a village, doors propped against frames. The elderly and disabled sit, hunched in doorsteps, everyone staring, as this troop of outsiders marches through.

The girl feels their eyes follow her. She waits nervously for her cousins to point to whichever of these forlorn homes is theirs, relieved that they at least appear to be in their neighborhood. But none of these houses belongs to them.

They arrive at a hill on the outskirts of town, a hut perched precariously atop. The girl’s stomach churns with a disappointment seeded in the moment they left the van. She holds her breath.

The room they enter is smaller than her living room at home, less than 50 square feet. There’s a bathtub in the room on her right facing a lumpy couch on her left. Straight ahead there’s a small stove. Her aunt makes tea for her cousin, Dannae, who has grown ill from the walk. She also explains that this is her bedroom, where the parents and baby sleep, on the ragged couch.

The girl doesn’t notice at first, but her eldest cousin, Chessa, is pulling at her hand, excitedly chattering; the boys are also eager to show off their room. The girl then realizes this space they’re in is actually one room split in two, with a heavy curtain masquerading as a wall behind the couch.

Her cousins pull back the curtain, revealing two small beds for four children facing each other on opposite ends of a cramped space. “Little Mermaid” comforters adorn the bed, “Little Mermaid” curtains line the window, replicating a bedroom the girl had once had eight years ago. Her sister’s old art desk and easel stand in the corner, next to a long-forgotten mini-television, stacked high with old VHS tapes.

The floor is littered with Pokémon cards and Barbies, who still sport the same clothes and ill-advised haircuts the girl had given them years ago. The walls are plastered with posters of boy bands, and had the crawling baby doll with the pink bonnet looks at home with the singing teddy bear her sister had loved for years.

She is standing in the graveyard of her childhood.

Everything So much she hasd ever loved desperately at one time as a child but later forgotten, lives here in a cacophony of colors. The sheer amount of toys, objects her mother had once purchased to placate and please her, assaults the girl. The weight of room, and the realization of all she has ever been given, threatens to swallow her.

She understands how much her mother loves her.

Her cousins proudly show off their belongings, her belongings, happy to share their life, as the girl mechanically nods and smiles. Breaking away, she steps outside to catch her breath, alone.

She knows not to cry in front of her cousins, knows that showing any sort of pity would be cruel, the disconnect between their lives too great for them to understand, not at theiris age. She waits.

She says a hurried goodbye, not knowing when she’ll see them next. She waits for her parents to disentangle themselves from her aunt and uncle, eager to be away from the people who live here.

At the last minuteWhen it seems she can wait no longer, her uncle announces he will walk them back to the van. Her throat tightens.

They clamber down the hill, past rusty playthings in the yard. They tramp through the village, past the vacant stares and breathing bones. They walk across the field of tall grass, past the sticky creek and rusted bridge.

She doesn’t notice the flies or the heat or the ache in her legs, all thought concentrated on the ache in her stomach, in her heart.

She does not cry, not yet.

(1987 words)

****

Gathering the places a reader feels confused or misses things is important for a writer. Readers can easily feel rushed in places where the writer feared they would be bored or could have somehow filled in information the writer knows even if it isn’t on the page. The interesting thing is that once you satisfy the reader, you have found a fullness that you may not have entirely realized before you started writing and revising. Almost doubling the words in the initial short essay has led to a story in which place, the times, and people are developed in a way that helps the reader have the very same experience as the writer when she has her personal, emotional insight.

At the end of our work together on this essay, Arla wrote this in an email to me:

Thank you so much Sheila, for this experience. It truly has been amazing to relive all of this and be able to put it into words.

Revision is good not only for the writing, but also for the soul.