Ruins

the space between then and now

Dysfunctional homes are the center of narrative gravity in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. In Chapter Eight, Ruth comes upon an abandoned house across the lake from her family's house in Fingerbone. One might think it impossible to imagine a less stable home that than the one Ruth and her sister grew up in, but Ruth finds it among the ruins.

Someone had scavenged there. Most of the shingles had been stripped from the roof, and all in all, the poles and planks that remained seemed much less than the makings of a house. The  ridgepole  had  snapped,  no  doubt  under the  weight  of  snow.  That  was  probably  the  beginning of  the  catastrophe,  which  might  then have  continued  over  weeks  or  years. I had heard of a family who had lived some distance to the north of the lake who had been snowed up in to the eaves and whose house began to fall. They upended the kitchen table to to prop the ridgepole in the middle, but the roof had pried loose from the walls at either end, admitting the wind, and the walls sagged the window frames out of square so that all the panes broke. They had only snow to stanch all these openings. They hardly dared make the fire in the stove hot enough to warm drinking water, they said, for fear that the snow, which was all that held the house up, would sodden and shift and pull it down. There were reputed to have been seventeen in that family. They were said to have survived by stacking themselves up like firewood at night under nineteen quilts and as many hooked rugs. The mother was said to have kept a stew on the stove of water and vinegar, into which she put the tongues of all their shoes, as well as the trimmings of their hair and beards and fingernails, and pine pitch and a pair of antlers and a long-handled shoehorn — and they lived on the pot liquor, poured over snow to stretch it. But that is a part of the world where people tend to boast of discomfort and hardship, having little else worthy of mention.

Prompt: Take your character to a place that has fallen into disrepair or decay and have them imagine — or recall, if they’ve been there before — its former state. Allow what they remember or envision to reveal information about the character.