Why Percy Was Born a Parker: A Personal Tale
by Leanna Renee Hieber

It was early in the fall of 2001. One late night after play rehearsal, in a delirious blaze of inspiration, the idea of the Strangely Beautiful series first formed. Miss Percy took shape much like how she looked; like a…ghost. But while this eerie girl immediately had a first name and a nickname, I was ambivalent about a last name. I nonetheless began a first draft.

As an intern for the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, I was working on five different plays at once. We toured productions to southern Ohio schools during the day and returned to the theatre to rehearse main-stage plays at night. Between tours, we had time to kill. One day we were driving aimlessly in southern Ohio’s vast middle of nowhere, when amidst the trees a small graveyard was spotted. Spending 14 hours a day with the cast meant we all knew each other, sometimes more than we even wanted. Also, there’s only so much time 7 actors with large personalities can be kept in one small van. Jason, driving the van, knew me as a consummate graveyard connoisseur. He turned and said, “Hey, Leanna, there’s a graveyard. Want out?” Of course I cried: “Yes!” and leapt out to explore. Little did I know what I would find.

Many of the graves were old and broken, a few dated from within the 20th century, but all were clustered in the center of the graveyard.  Except for two.  On the opposite end of the field, just before a thin fence restrained a wild and creeping forest, lay two small graves with a dead tree growing up beside them. I walked over as if magnetized. It was such a striking visual: these isolated graves, the dead tree… And then I was struck again. Plain, modest grey markers read: “I. Parker, mother” And, smaller, beside: “Infant Parker.”

There were dates on the stones, of course, but I confess I don’t remember them beyond that they were in the early 1900s and seemed to indicate the mother did not die in childbirth. The real details are fuzzy because a scene began to unfold in my mind in the instant I saw those stones. I knew I had Percy’s last name—and much more.

These graves were separate and alone. This could have been for many reasons, but to my mind it was most likely because I. Parker was a single mother. At the time, having a child out of wedlock was enough to entirely bar her from a cemetery, let alone keep her from being placed alongside “proper” families. To be appeased there were superstitions, prejudices, church policies, etc. The dead tree next to the graves only added to superstition, to a chill of lost memory and the lingering air of lonely neglect. I took the name Parker in honour of this striking scene, in tribute to all those unfairly isolated or disenfranchised (a theme I’d already established in my unusual heroine Percy), and even created a way to incorporate this real-life moment into The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker.

I hope you enjoy the story. And I hope the ghost of I. Parker is pleased with the way her name lives on.

For more information and extras, visit Leanna at her Web site.

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