Chloé Cooper Jones is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Find her here:chloecooperjones.com.
Her story "Parachute" appears in Issue Forty-Two of The Collagist.
Here, Chloé Cooper Jones speaks to interviewer David Bachmann about a young girl’s despair, a poor girl’s justice, and children finding equality.
1. This story starts with the despair of there being “little to like” for Margaret since she is denied the one condition that validates her and is thus forced to suffer in the middle of the line. How do you want the reader to feel about Margaret after the first two paragraphs? Do you want us to sympathize or merely recognize this as a machination of most children? (Do you care either way?)
I do, of course, care about how the reader feels about Margaret.
When you say, “merely recognize this as a machination of most children,” I’m not sure what you mean by “this.” Do you mean the self-centeredness of wanting to be first in line? Do you mean her need for validation? Or do you mean her unwillingness to like anything about school unless she gets her way? These are accurate descriptions of Margaret, sure, but not necessarily of all or most children. I also don’t know what you mean by “machinations of most children.” The word “machination” implies a plan or plot to do harm, which I do not believe widely applies to children. Although children can be cruel, their intentions seem to be to just want what they want and have what they want. In this way, the reader will probably see Margaret as being like most children, however her particular wants manifest themselves in her need to seen, whereas mine as a child would have manifested themselves in my seeking to be hidden.
I don’t think feeling sympathy for Margaret makes much sense, but perhaps the reader might feel a sense of recognition. We recognize these self-centered desires because we, in order to be adult members of our families and communities, spend so much time repressing or mediating them. The transition from children qua immature agents to adults qua mature agents might be best represented in the shift away from the question “What do I want?” toward “What should I want (to be)?”
2. Is the small girl’s presence in the “treasured spot in the center” of the parachute yet another form of charity for her and thus a deliberate consolation for her obvious hardships at home or was she merely selected at random? Does the story change if the latter is the case and if so, how? (Also, does her time at the center qualify as a form of justice?)
These are great questions. Thanks so much for asking them.
I think there is a navigation of justice happening from a few different angles in this story. First, there is a sort of palimpsest of adult concern that operates behind the action of the story. Margaret and the small girl recognize the other as being poor by seeing the way poverty is actualized in concrete objects belonging to the other, namely, ill-fitting clothing and wrapped squares of other people’s casseroles. These objects are delivered to these girls from well-meaning adults who are blurring the edges of pity and a belief in what is the just and moral act. Then there is the adult (presumably a gym teacher) who is in charge of choosing the small girl to be the star player of the Popcorn game. Is the adult compelled to choose the small girl out of a reaction caused by that abstract pity/justice space? Does being chosen in this way assuage the injustice of her difference or just highlight it through a pitying act? These are certainly questions asked, but not answered by the story.
What is more explicitly important to the story is the children’s interaction with and education in justice. In the Popcorn game, one child gets chosen to have all the enjoyment and none of work (gets to be lifted into the air again and again), while the rest of the children do all of the work and get none of the enjoyment (must do the lifting). Continental philosophy spends a lot of time dealing with this type of dynamic (theories about labor: the free, creative activity of the many being usurped by the few; theories about power: maybe the parachute is a sort of Panopticon of pleasure?). The acts of children can often offer up introductory instances of the same issues that dominate a type of philosophical and theoretical inquiry. I’m interested in/curious about where/when it is that we are initiated into concepts like justice. The answer seems to be: very early on in childhood. The girls in the story, Margaret and the small girl, are aware that they are poor, but it won’t be until much later that they really understand the relationship between their economic status and social and political (in)justice, so that is not the site of their education, but rather is just a source of abstract awkwardness and embarrassment. They really learn about justice when chosen or not chosen for the parachute game or, maybe, in other off-scene moments of play—not getting a turn on the swings or something. How those sorts of pangs of injustice get multiplied along with one’s expanding awareness! As adults, we know that their future holds such deeper pains.
3. When you shift to the Mushroom Cap game, you go abruptly from an intensely personal moment centered on the feelings of two girls to a simple explanation of a group activity that everyone enjoys seemingly without any thought. In this transition, is all jealousy and pity wiped away and replaced by the equality of a shared experience? (If not, what is the value of going from the deeply personal to that group mentality free of conflict?)
No, all the jealousy and pity doesn’t go away, it is just contained within one person who we, as readers, are forced suddenly to remember is just one among many. Then the reader can imagine what might be happening internally within any number of children—all of whom are having their own solipsistic dramas unfold as importantly for them as Margaret’s is for her.
The tension between the internal and the external—well, that’s everything, isn’t it? The study of justice is a study of the relationship between an individual and a community. The same statement can be applied to any number of fields of thought. Ethics, politics, moral psychology, and on and on; however, I am most interested in how this tension between the I and the They is presented in various artistic forms, narrative moves especially.
I mean, here’s what is happening to me right now as I type this: I’m sitting in a café in Brooklyn feeling any number of internal anxieties—my chair is uncomfortable, I am remembering that you asked me to send this interview to you in two weeks and that was four weeks ago, I’m avoiding a stack of papers that I should be grading, I’m feeling the constant low-level guilt that always appears when I leave my child and spouse at home so that I can work and be alone, the barista is blasting (BLASTING) Michael Jackson’s “Black and White” which is making me feel annoyed, then old, then nostalgic (I used to roller skate to this song), then super old. However, if one was able to take in the whole picture of the this coffee shop scene, I would look like just another member of a group—a peaceful and seemingly “free of conflict” group. How I behave as a part of this “café society” intimates something about my sense of justice (I don’t demand that someone move in order to give me a more comfortable seat). The way that Margaret responds to her “gymnasium society” says something about her developing sense of justice (and a type of maturity, maybe). She allows herself to be subsumed under the parachute in the Mushroom Cap game and decides to be part of the community instead of acting in reaction against it, despite her probable desire to knock the small girl off the parachute and take her place.
4. Was this piece ever longer? If so, are you willing to talk about what those other pages included in terms of narrative and/or character?
Yes, this piece was longer. Those other pages just contained boring pieces of information—the kind of information that writers put into stories when they distrust the sophistication of their readers, the kind of information that makes a piece read more satisfyingly (I think stiflingly) like a “real story,” which we’re all taught must have a readily measurable beginning, middle, and end.
5. What are you reading these days?
Edward Weston’s Daybooks.
6. What are you writing these days?
I’m finishing a novel. Aren’t we all.