Nephilim by L. Annette Binder
Read by me in the PushCart Prize XXXVI
Originally published by One Story. I enjoyed the FAQ section on One Story’s website because I was able to gain further insight into the story. The way Binder describes how the story came together is great and odd and reminded me how unique story development, how happy occurrences happen, yet many things are intentional.
The story of Freda:
The story revolves around Freda, a woman born with the condition, gigantism, and Teddy a young boy who Freda helps guide, at a distance, into adulthood. At the same time there is a history weaving through the story about the Nephilim, the information of the Nephilim is relayed through Freda’s memory of her mother telling her the tales. The narrator of the story is third person limited omniscient, the reader is given insight into Freda and Teddy’s thoughts but not into every thought.
There is an odd distance to the story that exists for the reader but also for Freda and Teddy too. Teddy refuses to give Freda insight into his parents fighting and his home life. Freda’s love for Teddy is palpable in the story yet it is never discussed between the two of them. But the main theme I get is the quiet understanding that Freda and Teddy give to each other. Though Teddy must grow up and leave Freda, for a time they help each other get through pain filled lives.
Freda’s story is painful and feels like it needs to be told and Freda would never tell it herself. This story communicates the quiet painful life of Freda, an outsider, a recluse forced into the role by her physical condition. Binder makes a poignant point when she says,
“Things turn in an instant, this was the lesson. Hit your head and everything changes.”
How true for so many people.
The story of the nephilim plays an interesting role in the story. I get an undercurrent of Binder telling the reader that Freda is a nephilim not in the obvious definition but that there exists a correlation to Freda’s pain and the pain of the Nephilim who are born different into a judgemental world.
“But hunger was their burden and they should have carried it.”
Freda’s mother tells her this when she is young and the reader learns about it from her memory. What I think it reveals about Freda is how she views her condition; it is her burden and she will carry it.
But time has passed by the end of the story and Freda’s condition has escalated and when Teddy returns home for a visit, he stops by Freda’s house to give her flowers, and to introduce her to his son. But Freda doesn’t open the door.
“His face was like a mirror and it was better not to look.”
Thinking of Teddy as a symbol of a mirror. First Teddy’s understanding of Freda made her acceptable in her own eyes, but now her condition has wreaked havoc on her body and she no longer believes this is the case or maybe that she just can’t bear to put the weight of her condition on him.
Her refusal to answer the story is the closure to the story.
Just Beth 