The writer thinks back to how she had one of the girls at camp one year, who felt just curious then afraid.

They have a fight and Lydia leaves the residency. She takes it to the dining table, horrifying Lydia. Another day, she finds the back half of the rabbit on her door mat. I looked in the water and saw myself.' Afterward, the writer looks in the water and sees only sky. On the way, she asks the girl scout to remind her of the Brownie rhyme, which is: 'Twist me, and turn me, and show me the elf.

She explores and finds a young lost girl scout, who she takes back to her camp. The writer has a dream about her wife, who isn't responding to her letters. The writer says she does write about herself, but her character isn't crazy. When she reads her work, Lydia asks her if she ever worries she's the 'mad woman in the attic,' or writing about herself. The artists' share their work and she feels betrayed by Anele's portrait of her. She thinks about scale of objects and defamiliarization. One night, she sees Lydia and Diego having sex. She feels this isn't what she signed up for, but then they have a splendid time running back, trying to beat a storm. Anele has her fall out of a chair in a field wearing nothing but a sheet. She tells Anele the fairytale where the Brownie name came from, but can't remember the tale's key rhyme. She begins to erupt with puss-filled lumps, which she drains and bandages.Īnele takes her to photograph her. She hikes around the lake and remembers being ill at Girl Scout camp. She can't remember what she says or tell what the pills are, and she flushes them down the toilet.

The mysterious painter brings her medicine. Anele comes to check on her and she begins to write again. She prepares to work on her novel, but wakes up ill the next morning. In a written list of names of its previous residents, she sees someone with her same name was there years ago. She agrees to let Anele photograph her for her project, titled 'The Artists.' She settles into her cabin. She meets the other artists-Lydia, who she doesn't like Anele, who she likes at first Benjamin, who is nice to her Diego, who flirts with Lydia and a mysterious painter whose name and words she continues to forget as soon as she hears them-and Edna, the cook and housekeeper. She arrives at the residency a day before they expect her. She gets pulled over by a police officer for speeding and she hits a rabbit, but can only find the front half of the rabbit in the road. She remembers driving to camp with a bunch of girls she didn't get along with and one of their mom's, after a mysterious 'incident' one year. A writer goes to a residency at Devil's Throat, near a lake where she went camping with her Girl Scout troop as a child.

Carmen maria machado the resident