Robin Lee Lovelace and Her Stories

Stories

I believe stories are essential to living. Simple as that.

For all of my life I’ve been making up stories and writing them down.

One of my stories, Savonne, Not Vonny recently won the 2019 Etchings Prize for Novellas.

Here is an excerpt:

In 1967, a colony of bats took up residence in the abandoned building next to Mama Gwen’s whorehouse down on the boulevard. On the northside of Indianapolis, not far from Rose Hill Cemetery. Mama Gwen’s nine-year old granddaughter, Savonne, had a room in the back of the whorehouse, far away from the paying customers. Savonne was a working girl’s baby, fathered by Mama Gwen’s son Vic, who served as doorman, enforcer, money collector and bartender. Savonne’s mother was Coco Dupree; a half-creole girl who was the prettiest of the six whores working at Mama Gwen’s house of ill repute.

Vic didn’t question that he was Savonne’s father because Savonne’s skin was the same chocolate milk color as Vic’s, and she was thin like him and tall like him and had the same good teeth. Savonne was pretty, too. She had red-brown hair, full of crazy curls and eyes the color of burnt sugar; same color as Mama Gwen’s, who she called Granny.

Savonne was soft spoken and quiet, but her mama, Coco, was a loud, crazy-ass woman who had a temper as hot as a Mississippi afternoon and wasn’t opposed to beating the shit out of somebody, if she got mad enough. One time she took a straight razor and sliced off the earlobe of a customer cause he called her a Nigger. Another time she beat up a girl who was flirting way too much with Vic. She held the girl down, with a knee to the neck and pulled out a tuft of the girl’s hair. She threw it at Vic.

“Here you go, honey,” she said. “You want her so bad. Have a piece.”

Mama Gwen put up with crazy Coco Dupree cause Vic truly loved her. Even when Coco took a knife, ripped up the inside of his red Chevrolet when she got jealous one time, even when she threatened to cut off his man part, even after she said she hated him, after all that, Vic still loved Coco. So, every time something crazy happened, Vic would let it go because he had feelings for her. And Mama Gwen would let it go for a totally different reason. Coco was a hard worker and her best money maker. Why kick out the money?

Yes, and she adored her granddaughter. Mama Gwen had an abortion when she was younger, from a hacksaw up in Stringtown, who said she had nurse training but all she did was mop hospital floors. Mama Gwen almost died and had to stay up in County General for four days and was turned sterile from that hacksaw’s butchery. Mama Gwen had sorrows about that. This was two years after she gave birth to Vic, her only son. When she got older and was making big money, Mama Gwen wished she had a daughter too. Couldn’t have no more babies though, so Savonne was Mama Gwen’s most precious little girl, more like a daughter than a granddaughter.