"Belonging"

Jill Fordyce was born and raised in Bakersfield, California. She received a degree in English from the University of Southern California and a law degree from Santa Clara University. While practicing law, she continued to study writing through the Stanford Continuing Education creative writing program.

Fordyce applied the Page 69 Test to Belonging, her debut novel, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Belonging begins with dialogue between Jenny and Henry. Here it is in its entirety. Jenny speaks first:

“I don’t understand how people can do something like that.”

“I know you don’t. Get some sleep and try not to think about it anymore tonight.”

When she hung up the phone, she went out the window and sat on the rooftop. A rare breeze lifted her hair slightly off her face as she stared into the darkness. The only sound was the collective hum of air conditioning units droning through the neighborhood. She thought about her mother asking her to take off her sweatshirt, tearing the photograph, calling her trashy. Her mother had always been absent maternally, unconcerned with all the things that other mothers were concerned with, like grades and groceries and dinner, but there was something about Jenny being a teenage girl, with breasts and long legs and full lips, that piqued her interest. She’d become overly intrusive, and her scrutiny was constant. Her standards were from a different time. She didn’t want Jenny to wear spaghetti straps or cut-off jeans or sandals with heels. She glared at her if she ever saw her touch Billy, even just holding his hand. The words trashy, slut, tramp, whore, floozy were flung at her so often that Jenny almost believed that they were true, even though she was a virgin and had only kissed one boy her whole life. She wondered how much of it had to do with her mother’s own teenage years, and the fact that she’d married her father and given birth to Jenny at nineteen.

She thought about seeing Henry being kicked and punched and spit on, about throwing herself into the fray. She realized that she was more afraid walking into her own house than she was confronting Henry’s attackers. She remembered what Henry said by the pool, and she knew he was right. She started to imagine driving away from Lupine Lane, from Bakersfield. They would find a way to go away to college.

Before she got in bed that night, she took her prayer cards out of the drawer. She searched for the Saint Teresa prayer she’d turned to so often. May I be at peace. May my heart remain open. May I be aware of my true nature. May I be healed. May I be a source of healing to others. May I dwell in the Breath of God.

If a reader turned to page 69 of Belonging, they would get a very strong idea of the book. I was surprised and fascinated by how well this test worked, as page 69 reveals several important aspects of story, character, and theme. For example, the reader gets a glimpse into the relationship between Jenny and Henry, childhood best friends now on the cusp of adulthood, which in many ways forms the heart of the book. The dialogue at the top of the page is a phone call between them on the night Henry was jumped at a high school party and Jenny tries to protect him. We see the early seeds of Jenny and Henry planning to leave town. We learn that Jenny is a girl who is not afraid to throw herself into a fight to defend her best friend, but who lives in fear in her own household. On page 69, there is arguably the most definitive description of Jenny’s relationship with her mother, an emotionally abusive alcoholic. It hints that the mother has some secrets and articulates the foundation of Jenny’s shame. Finally, we see what Jenny relies on to steady herself—the solace of her rooftop and the prayer cards she’s collected since she was a child.

Visit Jill Fordyce's website.

--Marshal Zeringue