Jazz Age Mermaids | Sam Grieve

Today is publication day for my latest short story, Mermaids in the Ballroom, and I am feeling that particular, zingy happiness every author must experience when a character finally steps out into the world. Edith, who came to me on a lonely walk during lockdown, is now tripping her carefree way through the eternal labyrinth of the internet.

Let’s face it, writing is hard. Most days I sit and grind it out, a pony pulling on a millstone. Occasionally, I knock out a 1000 words without even trying. And sometimes, rarely, a story is handed to me, like a gift. I unwrap it, and there it is, fully formed. It was like this with Mermaids. I wrote it in one evening, Edith dictating the whole time in her wry, sly voice. I wrote it in the middle of quarantine, when life itself seemed unreal. I was working on another piece of fiction at the time, a longer work, about a shy, lonely woman. In that story, my character works as a chamber maid at the Biltmore in Providence, Rhode Island, and when reading up about this grand, old hotel I stumbled upon this astonishing delight: Mermaids were indeed hired to perform in glass tanks during Jazz Age balls.

I could have continued with what I was doing. Perhaps I should have. But I didn’t. Instead, I leapt into Mermaids without a second thought. Edith got to go to a ball, and so did I. Edith got to put on sequins. Edith got to ride on a luggage trolley. Edith did not spend her day trying to bake sourdough bread using wild-harvested yeast, or save the discarded bottoms of celery to attempt to regrow on the windowsill. Edith did not find herself reduced to the bare instincts of motherhood, where sourcing food safely during a pandemic suddenly became overwhelming.

Of course, in Mermaids, it is not all song and swimming for Edith either. She does not live in a modern America. She is objectified, sexualized, underpaid and (mostly) powerless. Her lack of rights is what American women and their allies have fought against for a hundred years. Her story should be a diversion, a little lesson in what once was. But it is not. The fight may have been long, but the path is steep and slippery. Progress has been made, of course, but much of it seems imperiled, particularly now when the most powerful of men boasts about walking into dressing rooms uninvited, or reduces women down to the sum of their sexual parts; when congresswomen are belittled for once bartending and when women still do not earn the same as their male counterparts for the same job. I could go on and on but I won’t. We all know what is happening.

Edith will have to wait until her mid-forties to vote in 1946, when universal suffrage is introduced in the USA. Luckily for you, you don’t have to. Tuesday, November 3rd. It is your voice. Use it.

Thank you to the wonderful editors at Maudlin House who took a chance on this mad tale. And happy birthday, Edith!

( Mermaids in the Ballroom Pinterest)

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