Tile Detail
by Allen Peterson
November 27, 2007
Shiva Nataraja
by Blaine Garrett
Rasputin As A Youth
by Kessie Wheelock
Om Shakti 6
by John Tribbett
Om Shakti 5
by John Tribbett
Om Shakti 4
by John Tribbett
Om Shakti 3
by John Tribbett
Om Shakti 2
by John Tribbett
Om Shakti 1
by John Tribbett
Close 3
by Kessie Wheelock
Close 2
by Kessie Wheelock
Close 1
by Kessie Wheelock
Caliban
by Kessie Wheelock
Bridge
by Daniel Sobaskie
You Peel Fruit
by Josie Sigler
1. The Orange.
Worth a dare, common enough,
I’ve seen them in the bins waiting.
I’ve seen them taking alms,
impatient with the grey flecks in your eyes.
Small in your hand,
but you lean
with the nail of your thumb
like Orion driving at winter’s earth
from sky; you try, sucking at the wound
until the blood’s gone dry;
pull back again, stare: Seductress,
and in the concave bird
of finger-crease,
the zest; and in the air,
a fine mist coming.
2. The Grapefruit.
Larger, and it sung
in the kitchen cupped
entirely between your palms,
nimble as you readied it beside a tall
glass of milk, your fingers
grow lean, removing the silk
threads bearing down to the Glisten:
You can Get at them all.
Listen, parting it at the center, you do the math
of love.
3. The Avocado.
The shape, blood-time held still
for wanting; you take
the cocoon and run a knife along it,
edging the supposed moth
back out; Avocados taste best in a season
of doubt, say spring,
but you’re busy, you’re hurrying, it’s a fact
of the thing: you want this flesh;
you smart a knife into the pit, it sticks,
come out triumphant, use your hands to scoop
And, even licking, that butter clings
to your lips.
4. The Pomegranate.
Too many’ve loved her wrong, you say,
they squeezed until she bled on their neat shirts
You understand in a lifetime she’s worn
the most-varied of skirts; you remove
each neatly, separate
the whites, let each red pustule dance so briefly plump
between your first two fingers,
slight small pause before the basin comes to the brink
of full, you cull any that have burst:
you like to bring them, you like to think
of me waiting so I can praise
but I’ve watched all along:
a marvel that someone so strong could do the gentle thing
we’d asked, and so bent
at your task.
How To Kill A Cat
by Eddie B. Oroyan
First of all, after the divorce
Never call it "Pumpkin"
But call it "Cat!" or
"Hey!"
Let it sleep, sometimes with you,
sometimes outside the door.
Feed it twice a day.
Let it pee in the sink.
Yell at it if it goes on your counter, table, desk
And ask, "Are you going to make me come over there?"
or "Hey! ... Hey!"
let it sleep sometimes with you.
Bathe it when your house is warm
(dress its head with socks)
let it eat what’s left on your plate in the sink.
Sing to it, play with it, talk to it.
Clean off its eye boogers.
Get angry at it for not knowing better after
How many times you’ve told it to stay off
the counter and it STILL doesn’t listen!
Spank it...
Let it sleep, sometimes with you.
sometimes outside the door.
Where I'm From
by Kirk Wisland
I’m from nowhere
in the middle
from a two car garage port
basketball court
overhanging shade trees
and boredom battles
I’m from Sunday morning regularity
and stand up straight
and dinner’s at six
and don’t be late
and futile rebellion
against back of the hand diplomacy
I’m from certain rock
transplanted
to the avenue of questionable indecision
and unfortunate decisiveness
where it intersects with shaky ground
Every year or so
here
we burn the mementos
uproot and re-pot
to a little further east
of sense.
Untitled
by Danielle Sobaski
Too late in the season for a ladybug there it is crawling on a leaf the color of sun tea, I haven’t seen that tea since I was a kid on my father’s back porch. Haven’t seen him either, he hates me or I hate him, so long I don’t remember who hates who. It still matters to me what he said and the things he never said. The lady bug has moved on but the sun tea leaf still sits there. No wind, well not enough to move the leaf from its resting. Not cold enough to move me either but my butt is numb, I should stand. Yet I can’t stand and write, so here I sit wasting lead and trees ‘cause I can’t write regardless. So many write and move mountains but as I write that leaf still sits there mocking me. I should move on, my next adventure awaits for my lead and trees to be wasted this time in a language that is not my own. But before I leave I stomp on the leaf and ground it into dust, remnants of who it was, so at least I can make an impact on today.
A Farce of Life
by Eric James
Creeping up faster on your lifeline
The throttle is getting high
I am watching a gauge turning to the right
Dance, dance you crazy man
Make me another mocha and
Play the guitar in the moonlight
Or quiet offices of the building
Silent, silently, tapping the chair seat
Then again, make your move
Once again, pull the rope
Which again, makes me choke
Stuck in another closet full of manikins
Dance, dance you crazy man
A farce of life is beautiful
Only when you make it to be
Continually on a quest for greatness
Be a great man, crazy man
Its time for you to shine
Its time for you to shine
Don't die so fast
Don't die
Swim Lessons
by Josie Sigler
Grandma left to get the towels, Jimmie
and me on the muddy bank of Uncle Ed’s
back cut in the shade of the old boat house:
Jimmie crows, Grandma only has to teach
you to swim because your momma is a drunk.
His daddy, my uncle, tried summer before
throwing me off the rickety wooden dock, all
the peonies in the yard glaring at him as I fell,
slow-motion, to the swallowing water.
My mother laughing as my head surfaced, hair
pushed down like a drenched rat but when I was
a baby, she put me on my back in the water gentle,
said "find the octopus on the ceiling, white-pool ceiling
with dark beams, and I searched like something
fed on white, but that was before Jimmy your momma
is a drunk-skunk and I forgot how, still,
my grandmother waist-deep in the murk, the firm,
uncompromising hands under the water, it don’t matter
who teaches you, you gotta learn her grip so tight
on one forearm it almost erases Grandma only loves
you because your mother doesn’t and the sky
is deep, has color, is a wound---the line of her eyes
cut through his words relieving a tight-chestedness
the loose thread of a body in water recalls.
Fall in San Diego
by Jenny C. Blaine
Why fall? Our yankee leaves fall, temperatures fall, nights fall
early. Businessmen and mothers fall up here if they walk
careless like a southerner on ice.
Some people who move to San Diego from L’Étoile
du Nord say they miss the seasons.
Some people say there are seasons
in San Diego.
But in San Diego their dads don’t have to go up
two tall stories on ladders with forty-pound storm
windows, glass and wood, lean out, risk a fall to put them on.
In San Diego, they don’t go from summer outside dogfoot pads burn on
asphalt to winter if you fall down and can’t get up, not enough on, die ... freeze.
Their green tomatoes always ripen.
There, our houseplants can grow outside, become trees.
They don’t need to spin cocoon skin of wool, silk, fleece.
In San Diego they have real Dr. Suess trees
and unlike in the Battle of the Bulge, on a Christmas Eve
They don’t have to dig in snow for a father’s wristwatch lost
in a foxhole. They can let the outside in.
They miss the seasons in San Diego? They can let their guard fall.
Their iris, thyme, rudbeckia, peonies
don’t know the embrace of straw or oak leaves.
They don’t have to change socks or their doughboy feet freeze
in the cattle cars. They can leave the dead with their socks
in place and let the inside out.
Stepladder Nation
by Martha Vogel
I am orange and silver, standing like a pyramid.
I am reds, blacks, yellows, and whites.
Why are the darkest dyes at the broad base?
I am smooth side railings, rough rungs.
I am lives of many sizes, shapes, and ages.
How can one ignore the siren song of the next rung?
I am the quiet click of my center pieces locking.
I am the clattering collapse leaned too far left or right.
Why are the margins so nasty and noisy?
I am lingering vapors of paint and primer.
I am myriad smells, evidence of luxury and labor.
What can connect such a deep divide?
I am the taste of old garage dust.
I am the sweetness of hope, bitter bile of despair.
Are tears only to salt the tongue, dampen the face?
The Day
by Alison Fiebig
I will die in New York on a melancholy night.
Leaves will kiss my boats, and the wind will brush my sandy strands of hair.
The park will murmur its good-bye and the pond will reflect innocence back into my life.
The park passes, but doesn’t know -
How could it? It sends me on with the bitter tides of breeze and movements by the trees.
I think it will be Thursday like today, except the clouds will wither and stars will hum.
The shriveled, breathless dandelions will shake themselves of the endless ugliness.
I will kneel besides them, lean in and cry.
"It’s sad how no one sees past your ugliness," I’ll say.
That is how I know it will be a Thursday.
The dandelions will cry with me.
November 26, 2007
Self Coagulation
"That's the way it is with a wound." - Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club.
by Charles Aslesen-Rekela
The layers grow faster than can be peeled away.
The scab seals the scarred surface
Supposedly seeking the sun.
Search for sight
Beneath the dried blood.
Pick it. Pick me.
Choose open and visible wounds over oddly smooth leather scabs.
If you pull the flaky-cracked and broken blankets over your late teen
(Though not wonting worldly wise)
Eyes,
He applies
The darting darkness lies
And exhausted nightly crys
To the section of his brain saved for the dust and flies.
Under pressure, emotion dies.
Tell me what that implies.
Never mind.
Rhyming does sensationalize.
Distort the truth, subterfuge, fake false faux guise.
Androgenize, artificialize, anabaptize.
Cauterize.
Is it possible to squirm around sands much more
and wade through muck much less
Than does he with collected rhyme and directed diction
Showing not telling his way
Around the foggy draggled forest?
(Mother Tongue’s sore congeals within the articulated chops.)
You take the low road through the tapering jungle and watch him
Outside the edge
Fiddling a tune on the yellow brick sunshine high road.
If you are lucky, he will extend
A smooth and creamy hand to you
To point.
(The forest closes in and begins to coalesce.)
A sticky lump of thought thus coagulates:
When the scabs are in season, they grow plentiful.
When one falls ripe yet dry from the vine, a truth escapes the scabless place.
When the open sore begins to wane
Under the weight of the clotting corpuscles,
The pain cannot see the light
And the light can’t see the pain.
Damn
by Nikki Schultz
he wears cool like blue jeans
kissed by sidewalk scuffles
baptized by blue ribbons
slouches in his seat with indigo
jazz rhythms so heavy
he might glide to the floor
a heap of threads bought secondhand.
we met as hungry clumsy angsters
hiding behind long hair and tall intellect,
penning our post-industrial tragedies up and down Brady Street,
necking in the gilded gutters of Milwaukee post-consumer waste.
fathers made piece, grunting and grinding
through factory lines at ManPower, Miller, Masterlock
so that we could make love to language and languish
in the poetry of a café chord strum
reminiscent of Marx and Stevie Ray
ironic fathers of working men’s blues.
seventeen was an explosive composition
i would brood over brewed awakenings in awe of how simply
his wit nibbled to the quick of fingered fury
each fret an exercise in love’s fleeting firsts and seconds
these days i could trail his guitar case
to a hundred coffee bars and still not taste
our yesterdays in his chord progressions.
The Portrait of Mollie Tenggren: 1935
by Morgan L. Mann
Mollie should be a movie star.
She’s gazing at me and I’m falling
in love with her.
Purple and turquoise
pale and pink.
Long hands resting against soft
thighs. And her lips ...
turned down, head cocked.
That dress ...
green silk and skin
graceful and elegant.
There are rich people
contemplating putting her
in their foyers ...
She belongs on the red carpet
at the Oscars.
Bonsai
by Julie Kahlow
If you fell I think I would hear you...
not in the woods, but on my windowsill,
extending placid branches,
claiming space for nature in my silicone world.
tender greenness sprouting from harder browns,
you are a tiny version of the earth:
dirt, moss, bark, and leaves,
occasional berries ripen red.
I read your paper label:
exotic and hard to care for.
I only wanted something alive to share my room with.
When your branches begin to break,
And your leaves crumple to brown,
I will remember,
I forgot to water you.
now I have another concern.
What I really wanted was a cat.
says the other, unsure of what he could do, but clearly
something must be done: the hands are moving backward.
Nocturne
by Morgan L. Mann
There is moonlight floating
on the river. Or is it street light from the bridge stretching
across the water?
Under the reflections, the mirror mimics the sky
obsidian hued
deep as a dream
like I could see supernovae
and Saturn’s rings
if I gazed far enough into the water.
Every light moves in the wrinkling black glass
twinkling, cold and distant
a tessellation of waves and stillness.
Pin pricks of light
staccato and sharp
oil across the frigid depth.
I imagine myself diving
from that bridge
and plunging into the bracing abyss
just for fun
Myriad biting bubbles
of black champagne
on my cheeks
and in my eyelashes
One of those little moments
of insanity
Watching from my room, a swarm
of little lighted windows gaze
at mine from across the water
orange against the black
sky. The bridge light sparkles up
from between the banks
Beloved
by Eddie B. Oroyan
Amidst delirium and pain, then grief
Stormed a spirit trailing Life afterglow.
She, an emissary? An answer? A thief!
Accomplice to mine Usurper of woe!
Am I among the vicious and helpless?
Praise Thee, O Father, for her to my aid.
How clear my crown anything but selfless;
How clear her love evidence of Thy Braid!
Beneath the beauty of her encasement
Bursts sovereign flames of Thine endless glow;
Reaching the wretched with graced amazement.
Within her, without her Thy will, my tow.
O Jesus in her eyes, two haloed stars,
Consume my evil thirsts and seal my scars.
Never-ending
by Katie Kirchoff
It’s a rule of driving out where I live
that home is twenty minutes from everywhere
And everywhere is forty-five minutes
from everywhere else so cars drive
more than they should and it’s easy to lose track
of where things are and the musical tracks
on the CD player that skips when it hits a bump
skips a beat when the Cavalier rolls towards the stop,
the stop that has stopped a million stops
and the Cavalier slows and the foot’s on the break
but the mini-van coming down the hill is so close
but not close enough to allow to beat on the left
the Cavalier which is younger and faster and stronger
no point looking right where things never happen
out in the country where people drive faster
if I’d been in the cities, where things move much slower
and white trucks they don’t barrel at ninety per hour
I wouldn’t have ended up in a field
fifty yards from the spot where my car collided
with a man about twenty years over his due
And my white shirt I’d worn since before I remember
wouldn’t have been soaked with the blood of another
except the blood was mine but it couldn’t have been
Because girls my age don’t get covered in red
And the glass of my windshield and the glass in my eye
were made from the same patch of granular sand
and the decorative frog on the edge of my window
Is nodding his head and this is a dream because dreams don’t happen
So I lay in the grass where the crickets are chirping
And the white clouds flow by and the blue sky flows too
I close my eyes and this should end, so I can be back in my bed
But my car has driven more than it should
And the roads and fields are swallowing it whole
And as much as I want this dream to end
my bed is twenty minutes away from here
and forty-five minutes from everywhere else.
Another Lost Soul
by Holly Strong
The waves fall violently upon one another
Collide, stinging the sea
Casting a slight breeze across the rickety bridge
Which brushes the unshaven face of a broken man
His faded, torn jeans press upon
His worn legs
The cold of this air inflames
That frigid feeling deep within his soul
Seeming to mock his pain
Above, bold stars hide
Behind clouds of onyx mist
So surreal, reminding him of a van Gogh painting
He once encountered in this bleak city
The swirls of the sky creating an aura of false peace
But below his meek legs tremble
Reminding him of the fear deep inside
Of the unknown, of what is to come
Still feet slowly creep toward the edge
Drawn toward the rush of the waves below
Unsuspecting drivers continue their journeys
Among the city lights which shine
Like scintillating diamonds
Amid a never-ending black pool
They will never know
This lost, drained man
The man does not detect their presence either
He is defeated by despair
Mesmerized by this minute
Ready to momentarily take flight
He bends his aching knees
Allows his feet to slip now
Falling, drifting, relaxing, releasing
In slow motion, time dragging
Unlike tasks from his past
Which somehow always got out of hand
A chill pulses through his entire body
As his weight interrupts the sea
His breath is seized, his heart crushed
Under the last pressure
To torment and tease
His tired soul
Now at rest under the churning waves
On a journey toward the unknown
As the only witness, that painted sky
Rains its tears for another lost soul
The Loneliness Clock
by Josie Sigler
Two boys stroll past the house, hands inside
their jacket sleeves. They walk so far apart.
We here are not allowed touch, even in cold winter.
Loneliness is a tower, clock slightly obscured by weather.
Here we either praise or continually crash into its base,
surprised that something so large
sprung up without drawing our notice.
Some of us watch boys walk down the road
that moves past our quiet house.
On lucky occasion, the winds blow just a strand
of whip-cloud past the face,
revealing, for a time, before the temperature rises
and the hands regain their privacy, exactly
how long it will be before someone touches them
precisely the way they want to be touched.
Maybe they should just stop walking now.
Maybe they should give up wishing and touch each other.
At least to get warm.
Of course, they’re distracted, laughing boyishly
at the tower appearing behind my head. "How long’s it been
since someone touched her?" asks one. "What I could do for that
lady,"
Animal Lover
by Jennifer K. Barger
There I was, minding my own business,
when he turned around and bit me on the arm.
What was I to do? Start yelling? Cry? Bite him back?
I don’t want to make a scene and he knows that.
That asshole.
Laughing at himself, laughing at his funny, comical self, he then turned around completely and grinned at me,
a malicious smile filling his entire face.
I averted my eyes, but I could still feel him staring and shaking with laughter at the dilemma he’s put me in.
Oh how I hate him.
Fighting the urge to kick and scream, I calmly wiped the blood from my arm and turned around to leave the scene
before I made a scene.
And of course he follows, acting all innocent, like nothing has happened, putting on his I’m- so-sweet look for the benefit of those around us.
All I can think of is biting him back.
See how he likes it.
Maybe draw a little blood from his arm.
Then acting like a saint, filled with nothing but love and sunshine.
I know he does it just to infuriate me.
As I wipe the blood from my arm
I imagine his life
Doing nothing but dreaming of ways to torture me with his very existence
Aggravating me, hounding me, constantly keeping me on alert for what shit he might pull next.
He jumps on my back now, almost knocking me over
I stumble
I catch myself with my hands
And lose it.
Turning around, I start chasing him with all the fury I can muster
Intent upon showing him what’s up
Who’s the boss
Who’s running the shows these days
I yell at him, not caring about the scene I was making, until hands grab me from behind.
He’s blocks away now, probably running to tell someone what I did, whimpering and batting his puppy dog eyes...
No one knows the viciousness underneath that pitiful sham...
Well he started it...
Loathsome dog.
We’ll see who wins next time.
Word Of The Day: Mother
by Kayla Schaefer
I am late again. It is 8:00 a.m. and I am ten minutes away from her group home in South St. Paul. I am supposed to be there and already on our way to St. Louis Park. She is going to be so late. I punish myself for not getting up when my alarm went off.
I pull into the small parking lot ready to pull out as soon as she hobbles to the van. She is there waiting on the stoop of the first house. She lives in the third one but eats and takes her medication in the first. I can tell she has been waiting there a while.
"I was just calling you," she greets me without a smile. "I was hoping you didn’t answer because you were on your way."
"I’m sorry, Mom! I am so sorry. Are we going to be able to make it there on time?" I say while squishing my shoulders up and pouting my face, showing her I am sorry and ashamed.
"We’ll see," she exhales, letting me wallow in the guilt.
My mom has this way of packing the guilt together and dropping it on you, like the anvil crushing the coyote. It hits you square in the gut every time. Suddenly you are just being drowned by so much guilt that you can hardly keep track of who you are.
The 20 minute drive to St. Louis Park is driven in silence. Well, more like I am silent. Mom jabbers on about how she is feeling and makes a few phone calls to doctors on that cell phone of hers. Her phone bill is off the charts and she says she doesn’t know how it happens. I can tell her. She talks on the phone and the minutes accumulate. Simple as that. I try to ignore what she says, but I can’t.
"Kayla, you really understand me. You are so much like me, we have this special connection. Kayla, you are the only one that wants to see me, well maybe Krista and Kathryn. Your father hasn’t been that great of a man. He just doesn’t care about the family the way I do. I am scared that Kaitlyn is going to turn out just like Grandma Schaefer. That is where she is headed."
I try to make all her comments go in one ear and out the other, but I can’t. Just the conscious thought of wanting the comments gone make me concentrate that much harder and continue listening. I need a thick wall to be built between the passenger seat and the driver’s seat. There has to be some law somewhere that says that the passenger is only able to tell the driver happy things. My wall is the radio.
"Do you mind if I turn on the radio? I just feel like listening to music," I suggest, hoping that she won’t realize my real intentions.
"Well, I would prefer if you didn’t. Jingle Bells just won’t go away, and I’m scared that another will replace it if it does," she says staring out the window through traffic.
Mom told me about a week ago that she was hearing songs in her head. Christmas songs to be exact.
"Hearing songs?" I questioned her as I followed her up the stairs to her room, "Like...what do you mean?"
"Well, the doctors gave me some medicine for it. Some anti-schizophrenic meds. Hopefully it will go away," she stated nonchalantly, as if it was no big deal.
"Oh," I said and let the subject drop, trying to pretend it was no big deal, too. I told myself, at least she is getting help, and she isn’t hearing people talking to her, they’re just singing. Singing Christmas songs.
I was trying hard to think that Mom wasn’t crazy. Was she like this when she was living with us? June 1, 2000 is the exact date that she moved out. Could it be that it was only three weeks ago that she lived with my five siblings, my dad, and me? So much has happened since then, and so much has changed.
"Oh! That reminds me, I need to call Dr. Meets to get another prescription." She fumbles through her new plastic purse, a recent purchase at Target, until she finds her calendar. She takes out her cell phone, to add a few more minutes to her bill, and dials. She gets the wrong number, and then dials again, this time reaching the office. I decide that the radio won’t kill her and tune it to 93X, hard rock.
We make it to the doctor 15 minutes late. We are always late. I am a perpetually late person, and since I drive Mom everywhere, she is a late person too. It is hard to make Mom late, when I know if she were driving herself, she would be on time. Being on time will be my next goal.
I park the van in the handicap spot near the door. I get out of the car quickly as if I am the one late for an appointment, and help Mom out of the van. Her arms are extremely thin now. I cringe just grabbing her bicep, always surprised by her delicateness. You cannot see how thin she has become just by looking at her because her clothes are so baggy. Hitting the automatic lock button on the passenger door, it locks each door simultaneously, sounding like a line of gunmen cocking their hollow guns.
Mom’s 43 year old body hobbles down the tiled hallway to the office of her doctor, with her aluminum cane clicking with each step. I stroll along next to her. There isn’t a comfortable pace to take while walking with her. It is either you are walking too fast and stopping constantly to allow her to catch up, or you are shuffling along, and the mere pace of reaching each destination is so slow it drives you to depression. I keep my mind on other things, allowing myself to enjoy the smaller things in life.
"See how much time you are spending with Mom?" I encourage myself. "You are a good daughter. You should be glad that you are getting all this quality time with your mom. Not every 17 year old would do this." I smile because I am doing so much good.
Then I concentrate on the tiles on the floor, and keep my steps in the exact place so I step on each horizontal line as I approach it. To keep my pace with Mom, while continuing to look like a mature person, are the most challenging parts. I take one big step, slowly, as to stay with Mom’s small shuffles, and I pause. I then take two small steps before another big one to hit the next line. I stay at Mom’s right hand side the whole time.
"Yeah, I know what you mean, Mom," I contribute to her conversation, which she has been continuing since we arrived. Someday I will get caught. She will see that I am not paying attention and understand that my comments are so general that they would fit any conversation. I try to listen. I really do try. It seems like when I try not to listen, I do listen, but when I try to listen, I just can’t do it. My mind wanders off. I think I need to try harder. I need to be here for her. She needs my support.
I wait in the waiting room for her appointment to end. Wheel-of-Fortune is on the television in the upper right corner. A woman is wheeled to the phone where she dials and makes a phone call for a bus. A little boy sits perpendicular to me with his grandma. His legs bounce up and down on the chair as she reads him a picture book from the table. Mom is taking forever. I check the wall clock, then get up and head to the cafeteria.
I only have enough money to buy a medium. What I want is a large. A large Coke and maybe some food would be nice. I didn’t have time for breakfast in my rush to get to Mom’s. I take my Coke and my book out to the veranda to sit in the sun for a bit. Despite it being June and nearly 80 degrees, I wear pants. I get too cold in all the air conditioned buildings if I dress for summer, but the sun feels so nice warming my skin. Sunbathing, I sit among the dining doctors and secretaries. They chatter about work and their children, and I can’t help but think that I don’t belong here.
Mom comes outside and calls for me, disturbing my peace. She has finished her appointment. I wonder how she knew that I was out here, but then I remember that I came out here on Monday too. I get up and slowly walk inside to join her on our journey down the hall to the parking lot.
"How did it go?" I ask with a smile, in hopes that it was positive.
"Ok," she exhales emotionless, "Dr. Tram missed part of her lunch so she could see me."
"I’m really sorry for making you late, Mom. I’m glad that you still got to see her though."
"It’s just that I am never usually late for anything," she adds.
~~~~~~
She wants to stop at Target on our way back to her place. She always needs something new. Luckily I just found one near her house. We used to have to drive the 30 minutes back to Burnsville just to go to Target.
Mom has a great idea for a purchase today. After getting her Kiwi-Strawberry Gatorade (which is the only thing that she drinks) we head for the jewelry department. Mom wants to get me a watch.
"You need a watch, Kayla. It’ll help you stay on time," she states, looking through the Timex sport watches.
"I don’t know, Mom," I doubt her. "I don’t think that will help."
She doesn’t seem to listen to me. I think she just wants to buy something, and it is for me, so I am not going to argue it any further. I pick out one with a blue fabric type wristband, and Velcro clasp. The face glows in the dark. I figure this watch will make the day worthwhile.
I carry our purchases up to the cashier. I note how funny it is that the Target cashiers match the counter and stand there waiting for customers, like hunters wait for prey in their camouflage outfits. I set the watch and the Gatorade on the conveyer belt.
That’s when the cashier said the dreaded phrase, the phrase I fear coming out of any person’s mouth in my mom’s direction while I am anywhere near.
"How are you doing today, ma’am?" the innocent lady asks my mother.
Automatically, I turn away and pretend to be really busy looking at everyone else. The man at the customer service counter is returning something, the child in the next aisle is picking his nose, but please don’t let me hear what my mother is telling the poor woman. Of course, my attempt to block it out is futile. I hear every word.
"Well, it isn’t so great," she puts in a fake airy laugh here, "It’s tough when you have no money. My husband doesn’t want me spending any, but what am I supposed to do? But of course it probably helps that I don’t eat that much. This Gatorade will probably be my lunch. I’ve been buying posters to hang on my walls of the group home. You just have to make it seem homey, right? I hope it will grow on me. Anyway, what was the total again? I just cannot seem to concentrate these days. Must be the depression." Then she performs a few more airy laughs, shifts her weight, and finally begins writing out the check.
I can feel how uncomfortable the cashier must feel right now.
"I hear ya," the cashier replies. "Sometimes I only eat a candy bar for lunch. And my husband is a tight wad, too."
Yeah, I want to say, but don’t you eat other days? Don’t you consider your family when you spend money? Don’t you shower? Don’t pretend that you have this bond! I want to laugh at how wrong she is to even pretend they have something in common. But instead I just help my mom put away her things, smile at the cashier and leave, pretending nothing has happened. I trail behind her just enough in a way that says that she might not be related.
Ordinarily, people say that teenagers don’t want to be seen with their parents, and I suppose I fit the stereotype. Sometimes I pretend that I am merely a hired hand, or I volunteer at a group home to bring the residents out to shop. I am not related to this woman, but I choose to help out because my passion is helping the mentally ill. My real parents wait for me at home with dinner, hugs, and eagerness to hear all about my day
Swallowed
by Scott Wenker
I can feel myself slipping back into the hole. You know the hole I’m talking about. It’s the place you go when life is throwing shit at you left and right. It keeps piling up and if you don’t do something, you’ll be in over your head. So you take a pill, or two, or more. You drink a few beers. I don’t. I am invited out to eat. I go. I want to eat and eat. I do. I need to stop. It’s finals. My rotator cuff may be torn. I need a job. I need to graduate. I need to find a woman. I’m lonely. I’m frustrated. I’m afraid. I’m hungry. I eat and I eat. I need to stop.
The saying goes, "such and such is a bitter pill to swallow." Science tells us that if it’s bitter, don’t eat it. The cave dwellers never ate bitter food, because bitter meant poison. Life can be a bitter pill, can’t it? But not too bitter. It may hurt going down, but it feels good once it gets there. It feels good because you know it’s going somewhere. And it's not too poisonous. It kills you slowly. You swallow every injury, every lonely Friday night, every bad grade you ever get and you fade away. You consume every little pain in life so it doesn’t consume you. But it does.
I can’t remember how everything has happened in my life. This is my state of mind being represented through the actions of a little boy in my memories. This little boy never aged. He learned when he was five that his parents did not get along. His life was not as "perfect" as he remembered it. In an effort to return his life to how it was, this boy never matured. The things he did when he was five he did when he was ten, fifteen and twenty. When I try to talk to this little boy, he says little. He instead draws me a picture- of a boy - standing alone on the outside, shivering and watching those inside move on without him. Time stands still on the outside. The little boy never feels like he is wanted inside, so he remains outside. For him, nothing has ever changed. For him, nothing that happens is important. All that matters is where he is, and where he is not.
I need to stop. I told myself this before. I was 340 pounds or more for the past five years since I graduated high school. I battled obesity all my life, and was steadily getting slimmer until my senior year. I developed my first real crush on anyone ever with a classmate. Through the first three years, she did not know who I was. We had two classes together in twelfth grade and had to work together on projects. We slowly grew to know each other and became friends. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, though. She saw me as a friend and I wanted more. I would get depressed and jealous whenever she ignored me. I didn’t know how to handle it. Then one day, she confided in me.
"Do you know what I heard?" she asked me, looking into my eyes, "I heard that So-and-so has a crush on me. I mean, ew!"
I don’t know what she saw in him that made her say "Ew." He often smelled bad, and acted like a fruitcake. Nobody really liked him, but nobody liked me either. No matter what she said or what she meant, in my mind she called him fat. I was fatter. I went home that night and every night after that and went to sleep. I would wake up to play Playstation, to eat and to use the bathroom. Eventually, I would wake up to get ready for bed. During the day, I went to school and I listened to her gossiping, and I swallowed my tongue.
When I finally got over her, if I ever got over her, I just ignored the tears that were crying to get out, and they welled up inside of me. I spent four years of college letting it well up inside of me. Pound by pound I grew. I took the elevator because I was out of breath and sweating when I got to class. I was not able to lower university desks without my gut sitting on top. I couldn’t write; there wasn’t enough room for my notebook. I couldn’t understand what I had become. It was not sudden. It was not a conscious decision. I just let it happen, pound by pound.
Everyone, you must be thinking, has had a crush. Everyone has had his or her heart broken by a crush. Everyone has dealt with it and moved on. My broken heart was only part of what I had to deal with, and I have never handled anything well. As a young child, when I was not getting enough attention I would throw tantrums. A tantrum includes, but is not limited to: excessive screaming, throwing, and breaking things. If I had a grievance, I wanted to be heard. I could remember when I was a baby; whenever I needed something I would cry. I kept it up.
The pain I felt was too great to keep to myself, and I wanted to share it. I wanted other people to hurt, so I would throw things - hoping they would break. I would slam doors, clear shelves of their contents, kick boxes, punch walls, but my favorite tantrum activity was to throw. I was reaching out for help, and my toys were my beacon - my flare. Maybe someone would see it fly by and come to ask me what was wrong. Maybe I would hit somebody. If I hit Mom, maybe she would come pay attention to me. She might yell if it hurt badly enough and she might not. It was a risk I had to take. If I hit one of my brothers, he would chase me and I could hide behind Mom. She would protect me. I would be safe -- in her arms, and back at the center of her universe. I didn’t like making Mom upset. When I threw a tantrum, my little belly would tense up, wondering whom the projectile would hit, and how they would react. My tantrums only hurt Mom, so I needed to stop.
Have you ever carried something so heavy it made your whole body quake, only to find there’s nowhere to put it? You want so bad just to drop it where you stand or to put it where it belongs. You can’t, though, so you stand there holding it while your legs turn to Jell-O. You know that once you put it down you won’t be able to pick it back up again. The world doesn’t make a lot of sense when you carry a burden so great; eventually you just have to drop it. When I held in my tears it was the same. I could no longer reach out for attention. I would stand there hoping for someone to come, but if nobody did, I would begin to cry. I cried a lot over the years, until the tears dried up. I decided this activity was too painful. I wanted to feel good.
When a junkie is cornered, at risk of being caught, he has to get rid of his stash. When he has no toilet down which he can flush it, the next logical step is for him to swallow it. He destroyed the evidence so he could continue suffering in silence. Maybe he even caught a buzz in doing so. It is a win-win situation. I was cornered, shouldering my burden with nowhere to put it. My knees were beyond quaking. I couldn’t handle it, so I swallowed every bad thing I could to lighten my load.
Every time a pet died, I would swallow the memory and I would grow fatter. I swallowed every dirty look I ever received. At lunch, I would walk through the cafeteria with a pizza and I heard people talking. "I heard he ate 10 pizzas last night didn’t you Scott?" "There goes the Defective Human." "Hey, Fat Scott. Hey, hey!" It came from all sides. I felt the shame hit me and start to pile up. My legs grew weak and my back would ache so badly tears began to form. I kept on walking until I found a table away from their sneers and their jokes. I opened up my individual Pizza Hut pizza, sprinkled the hot peppers on and bite by bite I swallowed all of the mocking. I choked the tears back and swallowed them and I swallowed the fact that I was sitting alone in a booth in my high school cafeteria, eating my individual pizza.
That was how I lived my life. Every day was another day to be mocked. When the insults stopped coming, I grew afraid. If the insults stopped, the pain might stop and I would have been left with nothing to swallow. In high school, nobody is afraid to tell you what they think. After graduation, they all develop tact. Tact means you think it but don’t say it to someone’s face. So I began to look in people’s eyes. When someone looked at me, he or she would quickly look away. Sometimes I could catch a guy nudging his friend and pointing at me. It was often the case that I would frighten people. One time a pretty woman was walking towards me but wasn’t paying attention. She turned and saw me in front of her. I smiled and she jumped back. "HOLY SHIT!" she turned her eyes away and started laughing. She shook her head a few times to knock loose the memory of what had happened, but I never could. I could only swallow it, and grow bigger.
Nobody ever told me what was wrong with me. Everyone around me said I was just a depressed boy, eating because I was unhappy and unhappy because I ate. I didn’t have willpower, and I didn’t have self-esteem. I hated myself and didn’t care how I looked. I was slowly killing myself but nobody ever told me. I was just that kid. I was the kid who couldn’t sit in certain chairs because my aunt was afraid I would break them. I was the kid who, when upset, was easily quieted with two - yes, two - large burritos. I did not get hugs; I got two large burritos.
Last summer, a friend and I were talking. I was whining about being lonely. I told him I was too fat to find a girlfriend. He scratched his head.
"You don’t care what you look like. You have no reason to be depressed." I replied that what he said was bullshit. I did care. He laughed, "Dude, no you don’t. If you did, you would do something about it."
I argued with him for what seemed like hours. He wouldn’t listen to me, so I got pissed. I stopped talking to him. I knew he was right and I couldn’t face the truth. I knew exactly who I was and who I am. I am an attention whore. I have a large, hungry, fragile ego. I like being the center of attention, and I am vain. I am so vain that in high school I used to pray to a God I didn’t believe in every night. I prayed to be pretty.
"God," I would whine in my most desperate voice, "If you help me through this I swear I will believe in you."
If you have ever tried getting a child to take a pill, you know the best way is to mix it up in applesauce. I was that child. Life had injured me and I needed a remedy, so I swallowed. I would shoulder other people’s burdens when my own pain wasn’t great enough. I would always "be there" for people and share their grief. I would tell them everything was all right and eventually they would drag me down with them. I would get depressed because I couldn’t help someone else and I would swallow that pain. When the boys in high school stopped insulting me, I got paranoid and decided that every reaction that was made toward me was out of fear or disgust. I wanted them to hate me and to pity me so that I could swallow the hatred and pity. I was addicted to swallowing and it prevented me from moving on.
When my friend and I had our argument, I tried to think of ways to excuse myself. I was in pain, I was depressed, I was too fat to change. I had nothing to change for. But I knew I was better than the excuses that kept me fat. I knew that if I wanted to be liked, I could make people like me. If I wanted attention, I could get it, and it didn’t have to be negative. I knew also that I was at the center of someone’s universe. I have a nephew, my godson, who is reaching school age. He is starting Tee ball, Basketball and Soccer and he needs me. He needs me now and fifteen years from now and I have no reason not to be there for him.
So here I am, 150 pounds lighter. My body has rejected all of the excuses I had once accepted. I can no longer stomach the bitter pill, no matter how much food I eat with it. When my life is full of stressors and I feel I can’t handle it, I want to eat. Sometimes I do overeat and sometimes I don’t. I feel myself slipping, and that’s okay. I can slip a little bit, as long as I remember what I am doing and why. Life may be difficult and it will only get worse, but I am prepared. The little boy inside of me has finally grown up, and all the things that little boy used to swallow? I chew them up and spit them out.
The Visitation
by Gladys Mambo
Age Eleven. A shrub. A long avenue. A parade. She appears. Just the way I remember her; she has not changed. I recognize the innocence. An outstretched hand. A crooked smile.
"Come with me," she invites.
"I can’t," shivering from sheer shock at seeing her.
"Please come. I am happy there. You would be too if you came."
"No, I can’t. If I do, they’ll be looking for me like they’ve been looking for you for years. You did not say where you were going and everyone has been looking for you since. I can’t do that too."
The crooked smile again, except this time it is more intense. She is still very shy as she lowers her sad eyes to the ground near my feet. Her innocence and what seems to be a little sun radiate around her head. The brightness astounds me. She is wearing the short black skirt and schoolgirl white shirt I last remember her in. Little has changed.
"I cannot come. I want to but I can’t. Where are you now, anyway?"
"I’ll tell you all about it if you just come with me." She never moves her feet. She’s leaning against the shrub, her hands fidgeting with its greens. The parade continues. We both go unnoticed. It’s a different world... She cocks her head to one side but I am not mistaken - she fills up the space and I struggle to be.
"Come now. Please come, come. I came to take you to where I am and then you can tell them." She reaches for me and gently but relentlessly pulls my arm.
"I can’t. I can’t. I can’t..." and my voice echoes and eventually is fading...
The bell goes and again, I am alone in my pajamas. I am still on the upper bunk and my blanket is halfway to the ground, leaving my flustered face without a shield against her brightness. I hug myself and reach for the suspending blanket. The dormitory extends in the looming darkness as the fifty or so girls travel silently through their counterparts’ snores. Some are presently freeing their saturated bladders onto their thin mattresses as they dream that they’re squatting on a cistern. The flowerbed outside the window has ghost hairs in its shadows reflected on the walls of Fatima House. I look away from the glass panes and dreadful flowerbed shadows. I ignore the sounds from the visiting owls in Fatima, staring instead at the empty ceiling above my head. Too close for comfort, it feels like the ceiling is caving in on me. Upper bunk. The Virgin stares at me with sad eyes, her hands stretched forth to all her lost daughters wallowing in their greed and lusts. Christ looks straight ahead from the heights of his carved wood, hands above a bleeding head of thorns, into the pitch darkness of the long dormitory. I’ve had a visitor. Quite a strange guest but one nonetheless.
***
Age Eight. We are at it again. Up early in the morning and daring each other to run to the veranda and look. We’re excited. Our parents are still asleep and we know they should never catch us here. I open the door wide enough to peer outside. There is just the empty space between four curious eyes and IT. The block of cement brick is still lying there. It is comfortable in the February sun. The harmattan wind rages on and our lips quiver from the cold that defies the sun. It will all change by noon though. It will get really hot and dry, my bottom lip will crack due to the dryness and I will lick my own blood. Every time I open my mouth to speak or eat, it will hurt and bring forth more blood, which I will again consume generously.
We make a run for it, stay there for five seconds and run back into the house. We live on the third floor so our view of IT is clear. IT is starting to welcome the sun, swelling to acknowledge that. Today is Tuesday and it has been six days. The red and white of the torn shirt are still there although it is getting damp. The deep brownness is, however, turning to a high yellow. IT yearns for the sun further and continues to grow towards it. My eyes travel the entire course of IT, disregarding the scolding or possible whooping I will be offered without choice if Mummy or Daddy catches me.
I do not look outside my window at night. The dusty football stadium is still there, although the runners and football players have ceased to come for their daily practices or runs. Our primary school is only a five minute walk away from home and from IT. The other pupils admire our courage in dealing with IT and although we brag about our success, after this number of days my patience is beginning to wear out. The adults never wanted it there - an omen of evil. But for us kids, it was fun - for a while... and then it began invading our play, lives and our dreams. These days, no one shows up at the field - IT fills up the entire space, all of it and we hate such crisp silence.
It is Friday morning. I wake up and shower with cold water as usual. I get into my beautiful knee-length blue school dress. The trimmings around the neck and arms are white. I put on my polished black shoes and ask the others to hurry. Boys! You can never get them to do anything on time.
Today is a strange day. It’s been nine days since IT arrived, but today is the only day that I am not excited about seeing IT. The novelty of ITS presence on the side street in front of our home has worn off, although the smell is still pungent. After all these days, it just booms - it’s no longer just a smell, it is a presence, a vacuum that denies filling, a question, a fear, reality even. It assails our clothes, our shoes, our hair and our food. We children have rejected our meals on several occasions, although the kitchen faces a completely opposite direction from IT. Today, the smell is even stronger. The brown is now the highest yellow it has ever been and the protrusion is quite close, in my eight-year-old opinion, to bursting point. I can almost see through the stretches, the wiry strings underneath the thinning surface.
We leave for school and because IT has made it impossible for us to cut through the field to get to school, we have invented a new but longer way to school. I am unhappy about that. Today, some vagabond children muster the nerve to come closer to the cement block where they perceive on it a colored patch - in red. These same bold loafers come even closer to IT and lift... Two deep holes where there shouldn’t be any. I am horrified. Today is indeed an unusual day - even the sun says that. It’s burning hot at 7:30 a.m.
The last nine days, I have made my own stories about how IT got there. I ignore all the adults’ speculations. I don’t want to share my stories - I am greedy and I don’t want someone to tell them and claim ownership. I just change the plot when I feel like it and shed a tear when my story demands it. In my world, IT is alive in ITS present form, and mine to do with as I please.
It is soon 3:00 p.m. and the school day ends. We head home and then we hear. Rumors. IT is gone... Gone? Gone where? I hurry towards the field and sure enough, my IT is gone. I am happy. Hereafter, I can stare out my window without worrying about the stretching contours of the body lying undisturbed on the cold, hard concrete. The smell lingers however, stronger than ever. It is extremely hot, and the street side that this murdered boy’s corpse inhabits has quenched its own thirst from his juices. The street seeps in just enough to leave a clear trace of where he has been laying these nine days.
At the time of the good news, we clap. We all shout and celebrate. IT no longer fills our days and nights, our meals and outings, our trips to school and lunch breaks. IT no longer fills our conversations and imaginations. IT no longer invades our deadened consciences - consciences that allow a man to murder another for a mere ten thousand francs, without raising a finger. We are satisfied to have it gone from the comfort of our homes and neighborhoods, leaving behind relieved but haunted people. In a way, I am happy that IT was most kind not to have given in to the greedy sun’s demand. IT stretched far out enough to call and get help. But IT never gave in! The prisoners came in the nick of time to whisk away the disintegrating body already returning to its natural biblical form.
I stare at the image in the ground. It will be there for a few more years, despite the rain and shine. No one touches the cement block - no one has the nerve to. But a mother’s memory is etched there, among us, strangers to her and her own. A father’s pride is on the colored patch of a lone cement block. A future is lying there, having quenched the thirst of an insatiable tarred street which, like its mother earth that incessantly swallows bodies, never satisfies. I am eight and frightened. Some days, IT visits me in that place where I am not I but a voyeur, peering through a screen into my own life.
Three years later IT doesn’t visit but IT sends a most beloved emissary, although it would be another three years before her arrival. The smell of IT was pungent and evoked from deep within all things terribly disgusting and best forgotten. But when she comes, I am eleven and sleeping in an upper bunk in Rosary House. She smells of cypress - the wreaths! the wreaths! I put one of those on her wooden box back in 1987. She also smells of cypress, the kind of trees that enclose the yard into which she and grandma have relocated. But it’s her and not the cypress that almost engulfs me. I am losing grip and ready to go but oh! the morning bell saves... it saves...
Pretending
by Kirstin Smith
I am lying on the floor with a pillow in the front of my shirt, pretending to be pregnant. I am 5. The orange carpet presses through my shirt and prickles my bare legs. I turn and look at the new furniture in the corner of my room. Actually it is old furniture – a scarred wooden crib full of fluffy pink and yellow, and a dingy white wicker changing table, bursting with cloth diapers and blankets and sheets, all in muted pastels and covered with ducks and chicks and lion cubs. In the corner of the bottom shelf something catches my attention. It is lime green and lemon yellow and checkered. It looks like my favorite dress that I can’t wear anymore but I don’t remember why not. I roll onto one side and get up the way I have seen Mom get up and waddle to the changing table with my hands on my lower back. It is my favorite dress with the matching underpants. I pull off my clothes and set the pillow aside. Something feels funny when I pull the dress over my head, but I ignore it and step into the underpants. They don’t go all the way up, but that is okay with me because I need room for my pillow baby anyway. Plus, they make the waddling easier.
I am standing in front of the mirror in my bedroom with a pillow in the front of my shirt, pretending to be pregnant. I am 12. I throw the pillow across the room and pull up my shirt, sticking my stomach out as far as I can. I turn left and right, looking for lumps – the layers of fat that took over Mom’s body after Erin was born. I hunch down and try to make my belly hang over the top of my pants. I stick my tongue out at myself. "I’m never having babies," I whisper.
I am lying on my back, looking at the shiny pink skin on the top of his head, thinking, "Did he use a condom this time?" I am 17, he is 36. He is my mother’s best friend. I turn my head to watch the TV by his bed. Seinfeld. It’s the episode where Elaine can’t buy soup. I am still wearing my shirt, red and white striped long-underwear from The Gap. He is still wearing pants. My overalls are on the floor, but I think my foot is still in one of the legs. I will panic until I bleed again, terrified that someone will find out about "our little secret." I can’t be pregnant.
I am lying on my bed looking up at my lover, grateful that her x-chromosomes can’t fertilize mine. I am 19. I believe that most people who have babies are environmentally irresponsible sheep who only procreate to ease the stifling boredom of their lives. I am wholly in favor of mandatory sterilization for anyone who has more than two children. I am rabid about safe sex and encourage people to use condoms, even in committed relationships. I tell them about the woman that I worked with who got AIDS from her husband of 23 years. You never know who you can trust. I tell people that I can’t have children, that not eating throughout high school damaged my ovaries. It could be true.
I am lying on the couch with a cool washcloth over my eyes, suffering from the side-effects of the morning-after pill. I am 21. He is one of my best friends. I’m not sure why I did it. Maybe I was lonely. Maybe I was drunk. Maybe I thought that if I could be with any man, it would be him. Maybe it is true that we only make friends with people we want to have sex with. He is gorgeous, smart and fun, and, I think, in love with me. I am now absolutely certain that I am gay. He didn’t cum, but he also didn’t use a condom and I don’t trust those sperm. They are tricky.
I am sitting on the couch next to my good friend Molly. I am 24. She is pregnant. My hand is on her belly. It is round and smooth and surprisingly firm. A warm shiver runs up my arm and courses through my blood-stream settling, not uncomfortably, in my womb. It lingers there for weeks, months. I have dreams starring a beautiful, sandy-haired boy and wake sobbing because I remember that he is not real. I pick a fight with Christy about circumcision, which gets heated and dangerous until she reminds me that I don’t want children. My dreams change. They begin to feature accidental pregnancies; my baby is always taken from me for some sin that I have unintentionally committed.
I am lying on an examining table with my legs splayed, my feet in the metal stirrups. I imagine myself at 29 or 30 or 35. Will Christy be in here with me? Will we have an anonymous donor, or a friend? Will we tell our parents before or after we get pregnant? We talk about it all of the time. We pick out first names and middle names. Lilly Kai. Or Finn. We fight over things like mandatory music lessons, make-up, college. We fight about what we will do if it is born a hermaphrodite. We agree on punishments and rewards and sports and school and fighting (or not) in front of our child. We agree that I should be the one to get pregnant because I am younger and stronger and ache for a child in a way that she does not. There is box in our garage full of cloth diapers, flannel blankets in soft pastels covered in elephants and ducks and clowns, a green and yellow serge sundress with matching underpants.
I am lying on my living room floor with a pillow in the front of my shirt, pretending to be pregnant. I am 26. I can feel the coarse fibers of the area rug through my shirt. I turn my head to the side and smell the rug: five years of living, of dog hair and carpet cleaner and coffee spills and bare feet have given it a musty, homey smell – not unpleasant, but stronger than I would have expected. After a minute I get up, throw the pillow back on the couch and get the vacuum.
Harvest
by Rhea Davidson
The rows of corn moved as though they were not driven by the wind but as if they generated it. Up close, the stalks smelled of butter and sheaves of new paper. Hanna tugged a stalk down and gripped a cob of corn. Teasing back the leaves, she rubbed a finger over the kernels, feeling their plastic resistance. She walked further from the edge of the row and the nearby highway, and the hum of passing cars faded.
Green stalks obliterated the tan chrome of her Ford as she moved away from where she’d parked it in the field approach. She had been driving past Gramma’s farmhouse on the way to her mother’s when her eyes fell on the waves of corn moving in the sunlight, and she felt compelled to stop.
Now, moving into the field, her feet found the wide path created by the John Deere and followed it. Her legs protested faintly, reminding her she had been driving for hours. As she traced the wide swath of the tractor, she felt as if only a part of her was present. The other part, the part that was familiar and ordinary, was still back at her apartment in Detroit, sitting at the kitchen table. That part of her hadn’t yet picked up the phone, and didn’t know Wally was dead.
She continued on into the field. Her feet sank slightly in the days-old wheel ruts, but they were already filling with earth. She walked until the path stopped at the north corner of the field, just shy of the highway. She took in the massive John Deere before her, mud-spattered and wearied. It sat on its haunches like an abandoned beast, surrounded by growing rows of August corn on three sides, a trail of black country soil stretching behind it. Mentally, she retraced the path she’d walked in her mind, looking for a pattern, some meaning. There was none.
She reached out to touch the grimy green paint, then clambered up to the cab. Opening the door, she sat on the dusty vinyl seat. Her hands clenched in frustration and she became aware of the slightly acidic scent of her sweat breathing through her tank top. The heat seemed to roll just beneath the surface of the soil, baking her as she walked. She’d forgotten how warm Minnesota summers could be.
She eased the door back open and hopped down, landing awkwardly in the soil. Her twenty-seven year-old frame lacked the grace and energy she’d had as a child. She ran her hands down the back of her shorts to brush away the soil. Pausing, she glanced back up at the tractor. She wanted to know about the man who had driven it, steering it haphazardly into wind and rain to slice a trail through the cornfields he made his living on. She wanted to know what Wally had been thinking. She needed to know something more about the man whose childhood features were imprinted into her memory with fear.
The sun that had circled her as she traversed the field, following the John Deere’s footsteps, was sinking. A familiar, uncomfortable sensation seeped into her. Gazing at the end of the row, she could just make out the corner of Gramma’s house. With the sunset partially blinding her, she couldn’t make out the scars and rigors of weather on the house’s siding. It looked just as it had when she’d been a child, coming over for get-togethers with her family and her mother’s brothers and sisters and their families. In her mind, she was transported to her childhood.
She was running through the rows, tripping over broken stalks and zigzagging around rain puddles. Stopping for a breath, she grabbed the end of a corn stalk. A half-mile from Gramma’s house, she could see gray clouds in the west and smell rain in the air. She wondered if she’d made a mistake. She’d seen Wally eyeing her while they were playing a game of kick-the-can. Her first thought had been to hide.
Wally wasn’t like the rest of her cousins. He was loud and was always picking on her and his other little cousins. Usually, he’d just give them a shove when the grownups weren’t around or call them some dirty words. Hanna didn’t even know what he was talking about all the time, just that he said "sex" a lot, and he kept putting his hands in his shorts. The way she’d caught him looking at her made her feel like he wanted to put his hands on her, too.
Hanna hadn’t stuck around to see. She ran into the cornfields. She was the third fastest runner in her second-grade class, and she thought maybe she’d go so fast he wouldn’t even see her. There would be just a blur, and she’d be gone.
Still, she was scared. Wally was three years older and a lot bigger. Now, she tried to keep still while she waited to see if he’d followed her. Her breath came quick, but she tried to hold it and be quiet.
A hand dropped down behind her, on her left shoulder. Turning, she looked up at Wally. He was smiling, but he didn’t look friendly. "Hiding, Hanna?" he asked.
"No," she responded. "I’m just sick of playing, that’s all." She tried to shake his hand off. She remembered where it had been.
Wally’s fingers didn’t loosen. She felt as though his fingerprints were marking her skin. "I knew I’d find you." Already, his other hand was moving, running down her back to her rear end, where it stayed. His fingers pinched. One arm held her in place, while the other moved around her body.
She put her arms out to push at him, but she knew it wasn’t working. She thought maybe if she said something, he’d stop, but his eyes looked like he wasn’t even there. He was all red and excited and didn’t seem to hear her yelling. She was still wiggling away when Wally’s fingers found the edge of her jeans and pushed their way inside her cotton butterfly underwear.
Hanna gripped a couple of stalks of corn, leaning on them for support, reminding herself she was an adult, not a child. She had known when she decided to come for Wally’s funeral that she would be forced to remember what had happened to her. The incident in her mind had been the first time Wally attacked her.
Taking deep breaths like her therapist recommended, Hanna refocused her thoughts. Seldom a day passed when she didn’t think of Wally. She realized now that what continued to churn in her was not the shame of the actual abuse, not the loneliness of carrying her secret, and not the anxiety she suffered. She had looked to her faith in God and He had healed her gradually. What hurt now was the thought that, as impacted as she was by Wally’s abuse, he hadn’t seemed affected. He didn’t seem to give another thought to her other than when he was molesting her. To think that he was utterly unchanged by her pain frustrated her attempts to move on.
Sighing, she turned. She prayed softly, asking God to give her understanding, to give her peace.
At her mother’s house, she took in the familiar front porch and the country-style welcome mat as she hugged the woman before her. Her mother seemed smaller than the last time she’d been home to visit her. Then, she’d been filled with the nervous energy of grief. She’d run Hanna through the arrangements for Gramma’s funeral, made Hanna dinner and gossiped about the farm family down the road, all at the same time.
Now, she was more subdued, careful. Her blue eyes had softened to gray, and tiny lines accompanied her smile. She pulled Hanna inside. "You must be hungry," she murmured. Seating Hanna at a table that was already set out with coffee for two and a plate of sticky buns, she took the chair opposite Hanna’s and sat. "So," she said, "how’re you holding up?"
Hanna thought it an odd choice of words. Her mother made it sound as though she was grieving for Wally. What she felt was more complex than that. She was grieving, but for the little girl she had been. She was also feeling hurt, angry and, if she had to admit it, relieved.
"I’ll manage," she said.
Her mother tried again. "Now, Hanna, I know we’ve been over this before, but with Wally’s dying and all, I’ve been wondering…" Her words trailed off. She started again, "When you came back from college and told me what Wally did to you all those years ago, I thought I’d be sick. I felt terrible, being your mother and not even knowing." Her fingers clasped and unclasped the handle of the coffee mug. "Well, I guess what I’m trying to say is, can I do anything? I mean-"
"It’s okay, Mom. I’m okay." Her mother looked up from her mug to meet Hanna’s eyes and see if she was telling the truth. Hanna reflected that there was a time when her mother’s words would have been like bread to her, when she was a child, not knowing how to say something so humiliating, or when she was a teenager, struggling with insecurity and confusion. Still, since she’d told her, her mother had been making an effort to support Hanna. Her words, though late, were welcome.
"But how are you, Mom?" she asked.
As always, her mother deflected the question. "Oh, fine," she responded. "But poor Ben and Harriet, they’re taking it pretty hard, Wally being their only son. Still, with the kind of life Wally led, it wasn’t such a shock." Her words were matter-of-fact, but not unfeeling. "Plus, they’re all stirred up about the land. Wally did a fine job of working the farm. After all he put into it after Gramma gave it to him before she passed away, well, they just hate to see it go unused now." She caught Hanna’s questioning expression.
"Don’t you know what I’m talking about?" she asked. "Well, I’d have thought that lawyer would have gotten a hold of you by now. Well, I’d have called and told you myself-"
Hanna gently grasped her mother’s hands. "Mom, what are you talking about?"
"It’s yours, honey," she responded. "He put it in a will."
Hanna was uncomprehending.
"Wally left the land to you in his will. It’s all yours now," her mother said.
Hanna couldn’t seem to grasp what she wanted to say. She felt simultaneously as though she would never know the man Wally had been and as though she understood him to his core.
The next morning, she waited at the edge of the hill outside of town. The minister was solemn, his words spent already. Waves of flowers lined both sides of the grave. She watched the minister drop the first clump of dirt on the coffin. His wrist, jutting out from his sleeve, seemed somehow vulnerable: white and raw-looking. Murmurs wafted back to her where she stood, at the back of the crowd, with her mother. Her mother’s gray head was bent quietly, her frame leaning into Hanna.
Hanna realized heads were turning back toward her, feigning casual glances. She knew they were watching her. Their eyes weren’t hostile, though, merely small town curious. She realized it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling to be recognized after years of anonymity, living in a big city.
She turned her attention to the new gravesite. Hanna knew from her mother that stories were circulating about the man who had driven his tractor through the fields on a drunken whim, then died of a heart attack behind the wheel. Hanna could bet that the farmer who had discovered the tractor still wandering at dawn would have his story mastered by now.
Hymns began to fill the hillside. The sky was mostly clear, the sun faltering on a few wisps of clouds. She thought she might not see a Minnesota sunrise again when she’d left for college at age eighteen. Now, she was admiring the way the light touched the tops of the trees, the rows of corn, as it rose. She could feel something within her shifting and turning.
Unconsciously, one hand squeezed and released her mother’s hand. Her eyes went over the hills of rolling corn and alfalfa surrounding the cemetery and little church. Hers. It felt as though something moved into place inside her.
She lifted her voice to join the other singers. "Thank you Father," they sang, the hymn moving lullingly through the trees. Hanna rested her head against her mother’s and looked into her fields. In her mind, the seasons turned. The stalks fell and were gathered to the earth, where they slept and then grew. Slept and then grew.
Thick Snow Was Falling
by Aaron Perkins
She remembers watching him the night before she left for West Point. He’s putting all his pills in their proper places in little blue compartments that snap shut. MTWThF is listed above and morning, noon, and night, are listed to the left. Of the pills there are blues shaped like mini spaceships. Capsules filled with powder are chalky and leave a residue on his fingers. He notices Anna and tells her about the purposes of the whites, the clear ambers, the purple squares. The names and the purposes lose any meaning as she watches him. He jots down notes on a pad. Guests have gone home after the going-away party and Charlene is outside picking up paper plates.
This is the last time Anna sees her father before she leaves for school. He is writing notes to himself about whether or not he should take food with the purple, how much water he should take with the white, that he has to take the blue in the morning before eating anything. She watches over his shoulder. He writes on a yellow pad, Just two glasses of water with spaceships. Anna walks to the back of his chair. He says something like "I really want to get it right this time,� then smiles weakly, oblivious to Anna’s own trepidation concerning her first year at the academy. Anna is struck by this memory. She wants to throw her bag down the hall, thunder down the stairway, bust out the door, steal the car and drive to the airport by herself, without looking over her shoulder to see her mother’s hurt and her father’s confusion.
Anna is walking near the Hudson at sunset. She is alone. At West Point you are rarely alone. Music from one of the Victorian mansions trails out through the screened porch and down toward the river. There is a party at a superior’s bungalow up the road. Women in red carry martinis. Booming male voices compete against one another to the soundtrack of 1940’s jazz music. A civilian walking through the campus tonight or at anytime would think that everyone was a member of a large extended family. Everyone makes eye contact, cheerful expressions exchange and quick conversation begins and ends within a couple pulses. One swarm of people was deriving great pleasure out of a camp fire beyond the patio. The beer made for coziness. Backs patted, butts slapped, arms around shoulders, and they gathered in a semi-circle around the glow. At a clink of glasses Anna left.
HE HID THE TRUCK BEHIND A COUPLE OF PINE TREES NEAR A CLEARING.
Anna’s calls her mother to discuss Christmas vacation plans. Her mother tells her to take the train through New York to her Uncle’s at the lake. They will talk about everything when she gets there.
"Andy and Margaret and their boys are here, and the hospital gave your Dad a leave of absence, so he is here. They are all out now, in the woods, the boys went for a Christmas tree, Dad and Andy are out there too."
Anna says, "Dad doesn’t like to stay at the cabin because Andy always says things to him like ‘when are you going to support your family, Peter?’" A moment elapses.
UNCLE ANDY AND THEM CAME BACK FROM CHOPPING WOOD TO EAT DINNER.
"We bought some groceries, have your bed ready, rented a couple movies, you know... so, uh... we’ll have a nice relaxing time, we can just laze about all day if you like.
"How are you doing?" Anna asks.
"You know... It’s hard to wake up in the morning..."
"Is he still going through shock therapy?"
"Yes, yes he is."
Anna suddenly increases the volume of her voice. "I don’t really see the point of that Mom, you know it’s like sticking your finger in a light bulb socket!" She still hears the music from the mansion, laughing out into the night.
"Anna, the doctors know more than we do about what was best for your father, we cannot change anything." The sound of Charlene’s cigarette lighter is heard through the phone, she inhales and her voice cracks in a lower register, "He’s sick and it is not my responsibility."
MUST HAVE GONE TO BUY CIGARETTES, WE THOUGHT.
"Honey you must have some packing to do," Charlene inserts, "I won’t keep you on the phone all night."
"All right Mom, I’ll see you tomorrow, tell Dad hi."
"Anna," Charlene hesitates, "Goodbye."
Her fingers are stiff from squeezing the phone too hard. The tension is released and she looks at them. They have changed. When she sees her mother she will compare. Anna’s hands have always been so similar to her mother’s thin and light blue saucer palms, dishwater soft. The light filters through the trees and the Hudson flickers through the frosted window, allowing Anna’s focus to disintegrate into a whirring blur.
At the next stop four musicians step on the train and begin to play "Joy to the World" loudly. Soon the train glides above Bronx apartments without decks, kids building snowmen on basketball courts. Anna rests her eyes back into her lap on a letter from her father. Anna asked to go to the hospital to see her father when she was home over Thanksgiving. Charlene told her that he could not have visitors because he just started a new treatment, then she handed Anna a letter. Anna knew that he would be incapable of writing something like this. With so much feeling, so interested. She recites by memory the last paragraph:
I believe in you Anna. You continue to show your mother and I that any fences complicating your way, you tear down. You are not like me. Your mind is clear. It will never betray you. You are talented, intelligent, and enthusiastic. You are my lovely girl and I am so proud of you. Dad.
LATE IN THE AFTERNOON THE NEXT DAY THEY FOUND HIM.
Anna read her Father’s letter over and over and imagined him in a moment of great lucidity reciting this poetry to her. She had made herself believe that he would love her in such terms because she needed him to. She was attending an institution where everyone was concerned about one thing... making it through, surviving. This letter from her father was vivid, and he was real. He was concerned about her making it through. She had wanted to read it out loud to the people of her company. It was a manifesto of a father’s belief in a daughter’s strength. Anna opens her journal to the middle and finds the letter. It is worn and has muddy water stains.
ICE COVERED HIS FACE.
But she always thought it was easier to believe in her father when someone else was speaking for him. There were many people who would offer explanations for him. Sometimes defending, often condemning. Anna grew up alongside his fabulous shopping sprees, late night fast-food fixes, ten-hour movie marathons, and 50 mph flights over railroad tracks. Hospital visits, sleeping for days, stone-faced stupors, falling tears without explanation, and suicidal thoughts replaced the antecedent excitement.
HALF BOTTLES OF HIS MEDICATION WERE STREWN AT HIS FEET, A BOTTLE OF GIN IN HIS POCKET.
The brakes release and the train staggers to a stop deep underground. The lights flicker as if there were two giant wings suspended in front of the florescent panels. The quartet continues to play "Jingle Bells" until someone screams "We’ve stopped!" The heater shuts off and a fluttering chill moves across Anna’s ankles and legs. While an hour elapses, a shuffle of feet moves through to the front of the train. In the dark stillness the echoes of shrieking people and children reverberate down the subway. Their shadows melt into ghosts or shadows of shadows. Anna is left alone in the dark, unmoving, paralyzed. If she tried to move, she couldn’t. Her body feels like the weight of the city of New York is upon it: the skyscrapers, the rush hour traffic, thousands of wandering people. Steam from her breath rises and she closes her eyes.
HE WAS FROZEN, BACK AGAINST A BIRCH, LOOKING OUT OVER THE WHITE BOG.
Fried Chicken & Oatmeal Cookies
by Teri Carter
The oppressive Indian summer heat held us captive in the kitchen of our rented farmhouse. A starless black sky threatened rain. We’d long since finished our supper of fried liver and onions, but the pungent smell smothered us. Grandma and I wilted over the sink, washing and drying the last of the dishes.
It was the fourth night in a row that this week’s Food Giant special, calves’ liver, served as our main course. Our entire house smelled like a sweaty dog that had ventured too close to an angry skunk.
My 11-year-old mind wandered. I gazed transfixed into each newly bathed dish. Like our family, they were a mismatched set. Grandma handed me the last plate, and I stared at the deep purple scar separating her lower lip from her chin. Once the prettiest girl in Burnt Prairie, Illinois, an almost-fatal car accident 40 years ago had rammed her teeth up into her face and left her lower lip hanging by a thread. She was lucky to be alive. But Grandpa made sure that she never thought of herself as lucky and she had developed the temperament of a defeated and angry woman.
The clatter plates and a distant clap of thunder brought me back to the present, back to the nauseating odor of the kitchen. I gagged. Grandma glared at me. I clamored for something to say.
"I need something sweet. Are there any cookies?" I asked.
"You eat too many sweets. And there aren’t any cookies. Kids today. You can’t get ‘em to eat a good meal, but they want a treat every five minutes. You get on to bed. Your mom went up over an hour ago," Grandma barked, shooing me away as if I were a pesky fly.
I didn’t normally go to bed at nine o’clock on a Friday night, but I was getting up early the next day. Our landlord, Mrs. Bahn, was paying me to help unpack her newly built home just up the road. I needed to be there by eight a.m.
As I ran up the stairs, Grandma’s gravelly voice thundered behind me. "Teri Lynn, you stop your running this instant! The whole house is gonna fall down." And then, under her breath, "That damn kid. Driving me crazy."
"Sorry," I tossed over my shoulder as I tiptoed like a ballerina past my mother’s room. Surely she was fast asleep, having just put in a 12-hour shift at the hosiery factory. Mom was always looking for ways to make ends meet and overtime pay came in handy. That’s why, three months back, we had moved into the broken-down old farmhouse with Grandma and mom’s brother, Uncle Joe. They were struggling as much as we were and we thought sharing expenses would help us all get ahead. It was hard living with extended family, but we were all willing to make the necessary sacrifices to save a buck.
Another clap of thunder crashed as rain pounded the tin roof above my attic bedroom like a herd of stampeding horses heading for the barn. I fell onto my hard featherbed, the rusty bedsprings squeaking under my slender frame. My stomach gave a lion-like roar. Lightening flashed and crackled. I tossed and turned, fantasizing about cookies and milk. Then I heard the kitchen screen door fling itself shut. Uncle Joe was home from work.
Unable to sleep, I eased out of bed and slithered to the top of the stairway until I reached my favorite eavesdropping position. If they went to bed soon, I thought, I could go in search of a snack. Be invisible, I thought. Nothing made Grandma angrier than catching me listening to her conversations. Every time I came near she said the same thing.
"You get out of here, Teri Lynn, and find something to do," she would scold. "Grown-up talk ain’t for kids’ ears."
After ten minutes or so of their mindless chatter, I decided to abort my mission. Uncle Joe droned on about his day at the Phillips 66. How boring, I thought, rolling my eyes.
I turned back toward my room when I heard the sizzling of a frying pan. What was she cooking at this hour? More liver and onions? Pretty soon even my dreams would start smelling and tasting like liver.
Then I caught a whiff of a wonderful aroma. Fried chicken? It wasn’t possible. Then I remembered Mom telling Grandma that, one night soon, we would have ‘that chicken.’ Mom had purchased a chicken two weeks ago to save for my upcoming birthday.
I crept like an alley cat down the staircase. My heart pounded. I stopped breathing. I peeked ever so carefully around the corner. Grandma and Uncle Joe were eating my birthday chicken! My mouth watered and my stomach turned over as I watched them savor every bite.
"She’ll be pissed when she finds out we ate her chicken," Uncle Joe scoffed.
"It’s not ‘her chicken.’ She’ll get over it. We’ve been eating liver and onions for a week just so she can save this chicken for her brat’s birthday. Save it, my ass. Judy and her perfect kid are driving me nuts."
"No shit. Just the other day, I caught the kid using my toothpaste. Don’t they even have their own goddamned toothpaste?!"
They leaned back in their chairs like two fat cats, stretching and yawning. Then Grandma opened a nearby cupboard and reached far into the back to ferret out her well-hidden stash of oatmeal cookies. A choke caught in my throat. My stomach growled. I turned up the stairs, not caring any longer about being invisible as the stairway creaked louder with each step.
Rain hammered the roof and shook the windowpanes as I made my way back to my room. I eased my door shut, and then crawled like a wounded animal into my bed. I pulled my threadbare bedspread up tight under my chin. Their blatant meanness strangled my heart, but I refused to cry. I needed to be tough. Mom was desperate for us all to get along. After all, it was just a chicken, wasn’t it? My mind poured over what I could have done to them. Did I eat too many of her cookies? Had I used Uncle Joe’s toothpaste? I couldn’t recall. I was trying so hard to be on my best behavior. I fought to let it go and get to sleep. Grandma was right. Grown-up talk wasn’t for kids.
I was still wounded when I awoke the next morning. I dressed with purpose and made my way down the stairs. Grandma was sitting alone in her standard pose at the kitchen table, wearing a shabby lime-green and orange housecoat. A Marlboro Light dangled from the corner of her mouth as she dipped a forefinger into a jar of Vick’s VapoRub and shoved a little up each nostril. We exchanged an icy glance. She knew I’d been witness to last night’s feast. Neither of us uttered a single word. I breezed past her, drawn toward the back door like it was the gate to heaven.
The screen door rattled and slammed behind me as I bounded off the stairs and ran like a horse heading for the barn all the way to Mrs. Bahn’s house. The sun shone bright in a cloudless blue sky. Last night’s storm had chased away the stifling heat, and there was the slightest nip in the wind.
Mrs. Bahn greeted me instantly at her front door. "We’ve got a lot of work to do today, Miss Teri. First, my husband’s study. His collection of books will take the longest to unpack, dust and put away. You might be here all day."
The idea that I could be there all day made me smile. I grabbed a tattered dust rag and some furniture polish and got right to work. The dark mahogany bookshelves enveloped me like a chocolate cocoon as I inhaled the lingering fragrance of Dr. Bahn’s pipe.
Before I knew it, noon arrived and I heard Mrs. Bahn calling to me from the kitchen. "Miss Teri, are you ready for some lunch?"
I strolled toward the kitchen and instantly caught my breath. On the granite countertop bar was a thick turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato on whole wheat bread, sliced in half to make two perfect triangles, alongside a mountain of potato chips. All of it sat elegantly atop a sunflower-yellow place mat with a matching napkin.
I augured into a heavy wooden chair, acting like I belonged in the cozy kitchen. I admired the newly varnished cabinets and elegant window dressings while I savored every bite of my decadent lunch. Then I washed my glass and plate and called out a "thank you" to Mrs. Bahn.
"Anytime, honey. I’m just glad you’re here," she replied.
She’s glad I’m here, I thought. I felt like I’d won the lottery. I worked extra hard for the rest of the day but, when the clock struck five, I decided I should be getting home. Mom would be home from work and I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. Mrs. Bahn handed me a crisp $20 bill.
"Are you available tomorrow?" she asked.
"Yes ma’am," I answered too quickly. "Same time?"
"Same time. See you then."
I meandered back to my house, enjoying the quiet solitude of the country road. It was going to be difficult to live with Grandma and Uncle Joe for a whole year. I wished I could live with Mrs. Bahn. What a wonderful grandmother she would be. I imagined living in her house, having cookies and milk after school, wearing pretty new clothes, and sleeping soundly in a queen-sized bed with a fluffy pink quilt.
Then, from a distance, I saw Grandma sitting on the broken down front porch swing of our farmhouse, a glass of iced tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her permanent scowl was perfectly in place. She was nothing like Mrs. Bahn. But then, she and Mrs. Bahn had led very different lives.
Grandma hadn’t enjoyed her life. Grandpa was dead now, but the car accident from so many years ago provided him a way to hold her hostage. He didn’t allow the plastic surgery that would repair her face. The doctors quickly sewed her lip back on, fitted her with false teeth and sent her home. No one ever again thought of her as the prettiest girl in Burnt Prairie.
She jolted as gravel crunched under my footsteps. Like this morning, our eyes met. But this time she looked away instantly.
"Hey, is Mom home?" I asked.
"She’s making supper," Grandma answered, cigarette smoke obscuring her face.
I left her alone on the porch and found Mom next to the kitchen sink, dipping something into white flour on the blue-speckled Formica countertop and dropping it into a frying pan. It was the same sizzling sound from the night before.
"Are you making fried chicken?" I asked, wondering how that could be possible.
"Yes, ma’am. I know it’s not really your birthday yet, but I just found out that I could pick up an overtime shift on your birthday. And you know we need the money. So I hope you don’t mind if we celebrate a few days early," Mom answered.
I was dumbfounded. If this was my birthday chicken, where had last night’s chicken come from? Grandma and Uncle Joe must have made an emergency trip to the Food Giant.
"What’s on your mind? Did Mrs. Bahn work you too hard?" Mom asked. When I didn’t answer right away, she probed further. "Are you sure you don’t mind doing this tonight?"
"No, it’s fine, really. I was just thinking about how great that chicken is going to taste after all the liver we’ve had this week."
"You got that right," Mom laughed.
I was ready to tell her about last night’s activities when Grandma sauntered into the kitchen to refill her iced tea glass. Did I want to be a tattletale or did I want to get along with her? I needed to make a grown-up decision. We were all going to be living together in this house for at least another ten months. I was never going to live my dream as Mrs. Bahn’s granddaughter. I needed to make the best of it. Then I saw the jar of oatmeal cookies sitting out on the counter.
"Well, don’t just stare at ‘em," Grandma snapped. "Hell, if you want one have one." And with that, she turned on her heel and headed back to the front porch.
So that’s her way of making peace with me, I thought. Her prized cookies had made their way out into the open. I lifted the lid just enough to grab one cookie, gently balancing it between two fingers before I put it back. Maybe we could all have cookies after dinner.
Red Angel
by Jake Sarnowski
He was always faster. I could never really believe how fast. I would run until I couldn’t breathe and he would still pass me, leaving me staring at the soles of his shoes as they effortlessly flipped up from the pavement at a speed that seemed to defy reality. I was always second best. And honestly, second best was not a bad place to be, not behind someone like Alec. If anything, it made me work that much harder, trying to match his pace, his style, trying desperately to outrun him just once.
Baking under the hot sun, my feet feeling like they were melting into the track, I began to focus on the run before me. Today’s practice was important, our final one before heading off to the Nationals. On the football field that our track surrounded, the cheerleading team was having their own practice.
It was always odd to watch them practice, to hear Haley Cosgrove bark orders at the rest of the squad, to see them hate her, and then at our meets, the black bands around their left arms, all smiling that same plastic smile which will be forever preserved on a Barbie doll in a time capsule somewhere. That smile will outlive us all.
Alec took his place in the center lane as we waited for the coach to give the signal. I cleared my head of all sound and smell. There was only Alec, me, and the track. I saw his leg muscles tighten and I took off, forcing my eyes ahead, sure that this time I would never see Alec come from the side and leave me behind him. But sure enough, in a moment he was in front of me. He was nothing short of majestic and I wondered for a moment if he wasn’t something else. It seemed as if he floated off the ground, like his feet were too good to touch it. I was nothing more than a common road runner, and he was a hawk, soaring beyond all of us.
Alec never really spoke much with the rest of the team, never came to the parties or joined people for food after practice. Yet we never thought of him as arrogant, just private. He seemed a simple man laden with a million worries he insisted on carrying himself. I remember when Claudia died last semester just before the season began again. The whole team was at the funeral service for her, and tough as I tried to be even I let out a tear or two. But among the sobbing cheerleaders and misty eyed men, Alec remained exactly as he always was. I looked over at him when they began to lower her coffin into the ground and I saw nothing. He was there and gone. He was detachment personified. There had been rumors about Alec and Claudia, but we didn’t believe them. Alec seemed beyond dating, and if Claudia had been dating one of the best runners in the nation, then why did she shoot herself? She was found naked in her bathtub, most of her head on the wall behind her. No one had seen that coming.
Somehow the black bands on the arms of a few cheerleaders were supposed to make everything okay. I hated the constant reminder of things that should be left in the past. Most of the girls kept their bands on their bags when they weren’t performing, and I found myself staring at Jenny Heagle’s bag while we began emptying the bus to the hotel. I dragged myself to my room, not looking forward to sharing a room with Alec. He normally had his own room, an undisclosed perk of being the best runner at a college with a deep history in track and field. But due to the crowds coming, probably to see him run, the hotel was just too packed for him to have his own, and I was sacrificed. Normally these trips were a blast. Rooms full of runners, sneaking cheerleaders in after hours for drinks and cards. I highly doubted Alec would consent to anything like that.
I picked up my key but couldn’t bring myself to go into my room yet, so I spent an hour or two in Greg’s room for some euchre. Deciding it was time to pack my stuff away, and hoping to find Alec gone, or asleep, or just in a corner, I took myself to our room. I tried to be as loud as I could coming in, scared to find him watching the skin channel, but I still disturbed him from something. His back was to me, his face buried in some white cloth, and as soon as I closed the door he threw it to the ground, under the bed.
"Get out."
I dropped my bag and mumbled something about being back a little bit later. Thirty minutes later I came back to the room and he was gone. He didn’t return until late that night, and he only crawled into bed.
The next morning he awoke much earlier than I and went for a short run. Somehow he could run in the morning and win races all afternoon. While he was out I decided to get a jump on the day, do some stretches, get myself in the mindset. In the dark I opened his drawer instead of mine and searched around for a t-shirt. I felt one crumpled, and with an odd texture. Turning on the lamp on top of the dresser I could only see the bottom half, sticking out. I could clearly read the print near the bottom- "01 State Champs!". It was one of the shirts I so often saw the cheerleaders wearing at practice. What does he have this for? Then I recognized it as the cloth Alec had buried his face in the night before. Maybe those rumors about him and Claudia were true after all. What a gossip jackpot. I pulled it out, intending to smell it myself and see what the fuss was. I grabbed it by the sleeves and spread it open against the light, and staring back at me, was a red figure. The blood formed what looked like a man, his neck stopping at the shirt’s own neckline, his angel wings spread out and turned down. I crumpled it up and threw it back in the drawer, making it to the bathroom just in time to throw up. Claudia must have been wearing it the night she killed herself. Oh fuck.
I avoided Alec and everyone else the remainder of the morning before the race. All I could see was the angel, the wings downturned, and I wondered whose head went on those shoulders. Was it Alec’s, his face a solemn stone as it always was? Or Claudia’s, her hair frizzing out in the back where the skull came through? Or was it mine, my head lowered...
We got on the line, Alec and I and members from other teams throughout the nation. For the first time, I looked not at his body or his legs, awaiting a sign, but at his face. I was petrified to see him staring back at mine. In that single moment, he knew. His dead eyes all-wise and all-knowing. But as we lowered to take our marks, I saw his eyes melt from stone and harden again, filled with rage. He shut his eyes for a moment and when he opened them they were on the track. I was so scared I couldn’t block out the sound, the smell, and instead my vision began to blur. All I wanted was to get away from him, to be anywhere in the world but on that track.
Bang.
I ran faster than ever before. My vision went white, and there was only the sound of my heart pumping, my breath coming fast. I could hear his feet above the track, flying after me, the hawk hunting its prey. I pushed harder and red clots filled the white.
I ran harder and harder, faster and faster, and the clots came into focus and the angel was there before me. Its wings opened upward and then around me, and red was the only thing left. A million miles away my face hit the track, a runner’s legs kicked my body and fell over me. I heard the crowd release its breath of shock. The red parted again as the angel opened its wings and began to fly away. A headless figure flying out of sight, the soles of its feet marked with runner’s tread.
Dervish
by Jake Sarnowski
Angelina stared at her Aunt, spinning effortlessly again and again, her dress blooming out around her, the gentle folds blowing the dust off the ground into small clouds around her feet. Angelina’s father was beyond her, strumming his guitar with such fervor that the strings were in danger of breaking beneath his hand. His face was a deep red, the drenching sweat giving his rough, pock-marked face a smooth and shiny appearance. Angelina wanted to spin like her Aunt. She wanted to see the world pass by her, a single blur, and know that all the eyes were transfixed on her.
As her eyes followed her Aunt, Angelina started to turn in place, bringing her head around as fast as she could and holding it to the last possible second so she wouldn’t miss a moment of her Aunt’s magnificent dervish. Then she felt her mother’s heavy hands on her shoulders, forcing Angelina’s own twirls to a stand-still.
"Mama, I want to dance." Angelina looked up at her mother, whose eyes were straight ahead.
"It’s not proper. No es correcto, mi niña." Angelina followed her mother’s eyes across the floor to her father. He was smiling broadly as another member of the band took a long trumpet solo. His smile was for her Aunt, who never stopped spinning.
Asking for a refill on her water, Angelina took another Dramamine and placed it on her tongue, feeling the bitter taste. The sharp distaste usually helped to keep the nausea at bay, and by closing her eyes with a deep breath the room would feel stable again. The bartender brought her another glass and she gulped it down quickly, anxious for the pill to take affect. Won’t they play something faster?
She held the bottle of Dramamine in her hand and noticed how light it was getting. She’d have to get more before the end of the week. She absently let her eyes and mind wander when it came back at her again, the dizziness. Every object in the bar came at her at once. Picture frames, glasses, tables, people, bottles, even the band- they all attacked her with their individuality. She shut her eyes quickly, taking a deep heavy breath and fighting the sickness. There was just too much, too many lines, too many shapes, too many things in this place to take in.
She finally heard the band begin to play something for her. Stumbling off her stool, she nearly pushed her way through a couple who assumed she was drunk. She found her way to the floor’s center and stood, waiting for the intro to finish and the tempo to take its course. She felt the beat, felt every rhythm of the room and began to dance. The couple she practically knocked over now stared in awe at this woman dancing like a whirlwind in the middle of the floor.
As she spun to the music the world around Angelina blurred into a sea of color, a haze where nothing was definite, nothing demanded anything from her. The dizziness sank away to the bottoms of her feet and was flung away. The sound of the lead singer came from all around her, wrapped about her like a blanket and repeated in her head. Volare
Instinctively
by Jessica Barwick
The ceramic tiles beneath my naked body are cold, hard, and uncomfortable. But I can’t physically peel myself off the bathroom floor yet. My cheery yellow bathmat cradles my head and I worry about all the stray hairs accumulating there. I haven’t cleaned in a week, my sheets smell like anxious sleep, my cat’s litter box smells rude, and I can see an orange coating of film forming on the bottom of my toilet while I am heaving into it. I stare ahead from my fetal position on the floor. The tiles behind the toilet still look like new, they are not worn and cracked like the ones in front of the sink and shower. Behind the toilet the lines of caulk that the tiny blue squares sit in are still pristine white. I can’t, for the life of me, even with a toothbrush, get the mildew stains out of the caulk matrix over the rest of the bathroom floor. The plunger and the toilet-brush rest up against one another with nothing better to do. I blink. So is this what they call rock bottom?
Nausea tempts and teases me, keeping me still except for the blinking, on the cool bathroom floor. It is some time before I am able to make it back to the reality of my bedroom. Finally, on my bed, I am able to think again. My room is so familiar to me. There are pictures of me smiling everywhere. My mom’s wedding last summer when my two sisters and I are drinking out of a huge cosmo glass with "the bride." My face hurt from smiling that day, the same way my abdomen hurts today from retching and sobbing. Another picture of me smiling, holding a sweaty bottle of Corona. He has his arm across my sunburned shoulders, and he’s smiling like he’ll never leave me.
I sob so hard my mouth opens and nothing but drool comes out. My hands instinctively cover my uterus and I attempt to tell myself that we will be okay. We will be… Wait! We! Wait! Instinctively! Maternal instincts and I am only nine weeks! Can that be possible? I mean, I have heard about the miracles of pregnancy, but I thought so many of those tales were myths to sweeten up the awful processes involved in child bearing. The morning sickness (that one is for sure real), the awful heartburn, the constant peeing, the lower back pain, and the leaking breasts, all dolled up and called maternal instincts.
I crawl into my bed and wait for this wave to pass. Pain comes in waves you know, kinda like my nausea. It gets really bad, where I actually feel my heart aching and I become consumed by my sobs. And then eventually a calm will reside over me for a few minutes, I will concentrate on my breathing, worrying only about my next inhale-exhale. Then, sure enough, I remember that I am pregnant and that he’s left me, just in time for the next wave to wash over me.
After I told my mom she replied that she expected something like this out of both of my other sisters, but not me. Jamie, my twin, is the rebel of the family, and Lindsay, my younger sister, is completely irresponsible. I reasoned with her, I am twenty-two, it’s not like I am sixteen and still living at home. I am on birth control, I swear. I never meant for this to happen. She wanted to know why he left me. I told her and she told me she’d be here as fast as her car could drive.
That is how my mom found me, curled up in the fetal position, naked again on the bathroom floor, staring behind the toilet. She brought my younger sister, Lindsay, along so she could bitch to someone for the entire five-hour drive that it takes to get here. My sweet sister touched me first, and once again a wave washed over me. My mom went to get me a t-shirt, and once they got it over my head they both cradled me and we rocked together on my yellow bathroom mat. Suddenly I wished I was sixteen and still living at home.
Later, after we all get a good cry in, my mom decides that we need to get out of this sad apartment. She tells me to take a shower and "put my face on." They tidy up my place while I stand in the shower and sob. Water courses down my face following the tracks of my tears. I do not recognize my own face through the condensation on the mirror above the sink. The girl looking back at me does not look like there is life growing inside of her. Her expression is empty and hollow.
My mom’s biggest concern is not my situation as I come out of the bathroom. It is my sheets, "Paris-pink satin and worth every penny." She has "no idea how the streaks of mascara are ever going come out of the satin pillowcases." I tell her that pillowcases are the least of my worries, but she huffs anyways as she puts them into a bag to take to the drycleaners.
We go to seek the only form of therapy our family knows: shopping. Nothing a few new pairs of shoes can’t fix! My mom always says stuff like that. I adore the new purse, love the new outfits, and appreciate the expensive make-up, but when we get home I am still pregnant and he is still gone. I check my messages. Of course he didn’t call. Why would he? He doesn’t even know that I am carrying his baby yet.
My mom and sister sleep next to me in my bed that night. Lindsay snores and my mom breathes on my face. I don’t sleep really well, but just the sound of their bodies close to mine makes me feel safe. I listen to their noises and talk silently to my baby. I make it promises that I will never leave it like its daddy has left me. I promise it that we will be okay, and that I will try to be strong enough for the both of us in the meantime.
The next few days are a swirl of morning sickness, tears, my mother’s wacky pick-me-ups (grape soda floats, chocolate chip pancakes, Aretha Franklin and Cher), and my sister’s sweet hugs. My mom comes with me to the clinic, and while we are waiting for the doctor to come in she holds my hand and tells me that she knows that "everything really does happen for a reason." She should know, with one abortion, two failed marriages, and a miscarriage all hiding in her closet. She promises me that we will be okay, mothers must all promise their children this. She tells me that God must want me to have a baby, or else he wouldn’t have given me one.
The doctor comes in, my OB/GYN. She is older, but I am comfortable with her. She has seen more of my vagina than I have. She shakes my mom’s hand and thanks her for coming. I stare at the stethoscope draped around her neck and think about how that cold, metal circle leaves a burning mark on my left breast whenever she checks my lungs.
She begins by telling me that her calculations were correct, nine weeks along, putting time of conception around the second week of July. My mom’s wedding was July twelfth. He was with me, we danced to their wedding song and smiled for a hundred pictures that day. If her notes are right I was treated about that time for a little cold that we thought I caught in Mexico over the forth of July while I was there on the vacation with him. The antibiotics prescribed had weakened my birth control pills; I vaguely remember my pharmacist saying that was a possibility. That explains the mishap. All very clinical, no miracle, no strike of lightening.
What she tells me next will take me weeks to understand, comprehend, and swallow. I cannot keep the baby. No matter how badly I want to. I will refuse an abortion, I tell her. I don’t believe in abortion. Abortion is for irresponsible teenagers, white-trash whores, and crack heads, not me. Then she tells me I am not even eligible for an abortion. My condition is much too serious. Serious? I am healthy. I don’t drink much, I’ve never even smoked a cigarette, and I’ve certainly never tried drugs. But my condition has nothing to do with any of that. It couldn’t be prevented. My uterus is lined with growing cysts and legions that prevent the uterus from expanding. My embryo won’t have enough room to grow. It isn’t a baby yet, she explains. It is just an embryo, about the size of a pea. There are other options she informs me. A pill from Germany, after swallowed, "naturally" aborts the child, in the comfort of your own home. I imagine my baby’s fetus covered in blood in my own toilet. I retch.
I can’t breathe. I scream and gulp for air. My eyes are stinging from a week of solid tears. I clutch my stomach, cradling my embryo. Why would God give me a baby if he was just going to turn around and take it away? I slide out of my chair onto the clinic’s floor. No, this is rock bottom.
The doctor’s hands are cold as she pushes the needle into my arm. My mom is holding my head and the fluorescent lights make the white ceiling look urine yellow. The medicine coursing through my veins is cold. My mouth tastes like metal. A tear rolls off the side of my face onto my mother’s hand. She wipes it onto my hair as she attempts to soothe me.
The doctor leans over me and hands my mom a bottle of horse pills and says to give me one whenever I have an outburst. I can see the name of the medication as I stare blankly ahead. Valium. A friend of mine was given Valium after her boyfriend died in an accident. She came to the funeral all doped up and to this day remembers nothing of the service. My embryo’s funeral will be a flush of the toilet. There will be no service to remember.
My mom makes the appointment for two weeks from now with the nurse at the desk. They talk about me as is if I am not sitting in a wheelchair two feet away. I am not there really, my mind is back in Mexico. We are swimming way out in the ocean, his arms are around me and we are bobbing up and down between sets of waves. His mouth tastes like salt. I see a big wave crashing our way, I am scared and tell him not to let go of me. He promises he won’t. My mom wheels me out to the car and helps me into the front seat. I dry heave into a shoebox the entire way home.
My mom and younger sister leave, they will be back in a couple of weeks for "it." I lay in bed for three days deciding how to tell him. Finally one morning, after a breakfast of two Valium, I call him. He won’t agree to meet me, so I tell him over the phone. It takes him a few minutes to respond. He tells me that he isn’t ready to be a father, that he is only twenty-six years old, then he tells me that I can’t keep it. I scream/yell/sob/choke into the phone. I already knew that! And I tell him that I can’t carry our child. He sighs and I know that it is with relief.
He tells me then that he will be gone for the next two weeks. Remember, to the Caribbean? Of course I remember, I was supposed to be going with him. He tells me that we will talk about it when he gets back. He’s just going to leave me and make me go through this alone. He is sorry, but they have their tickets already. They… Oh, you’re taking her. He grunts into the phone, yes she is going with. He tells me he will do anything but go to the clinic with me. Bastard. He asks me if I need any money. He is that kind of guy, he thinks that he can buy his way out of this. He pays to have his house cleaned, his clothes washed, his Corvette detailed. Why can’t he pay to have this mess cleaned up for him too? He says he will call in two weeks to see how I am doing, to see how "it" goes. Then he says goodbye, and warns me not to do anything crazy or irrational while he is gone. He hangs up before he hears any of my hurt.
Minutes slip by painfully. I continue to talk to my embryo and tell it how loved it is. As insane as it seems, talking to my little embryo eases some of the aching. Lying in my cool satin sheets at night I don’t feel so alone knowing it is there living inside of me. During daylight my friends stop by and hug me tenderly, as if I am dying or something. No, it is not me who is dying, it is my embryo, you idiots! I don’t feel like talking about it so I ask them questions about their non-pregnant lives. I pretend to be interested in what happened at the bar last Saturday night. I try to smile for the entire time there is company. When my twin sister sees me she tells me that my smile looks deranged and my eyes look void. Then she curls up next to me, puts her cheek on my shoulder and tells me that it is okay to be sad. She says it is okay to cry. I imagine us in our mother’s womb together, tiny embryo hands and feet intertwined, her cheek against mine. My tears drip quietly onto her hair.
My dreams are haunted. He chases me down the beach and we tumble onto the warm sand. We sip piña coladas and nibble on slices of pineapple and lick the sweet, dripping juice off each other’s bodies. He picks me up and carries me into the water, his mouth tastes like salt again as he carries me farther and farther away from shore. I giggle and squirm in the warm water. I see a big wave pushing towards us. I make him promise he won’t leave me, I tell him I am scared. He smiles and holds me tighter, then covers my lips with his. The wave rushes over me, I can’t breathe. I gulp for air and choke. I wake up soaked, and of course, he is not there.
The day arrives unannounced. The sun is shining just to spite me. For some reason, I think it will be easier to do this if it was raining. Lindsay is the one my family has elected to come with me. Both my twin and my mother admit they can’t be there without crying. My younger sister is the strong one, she works with mentally handicapped children, and she promises not to cry. They attempt to get me ready, putting me in my "It’s Not Easy Being A Princess" pajamas, and pink fuzzy slippers. My mom puts my long brown hair in a lumpy ponytail, like she did when I was in kindergarten. My twin hugs me and turns away quickly so I can’t see her red eyes. I hug my mom as if I am a zombie and walk towards the car. Wait, wait, wait! My mom yells from the front door. For a split second I think that God has changed his mind and miraculously given me a new healthy uterus for my little embryo. My mother runs barefoot across the lawn to where I am standing, a little gift box in her hand. Can a new uterus fit in that tiny box, I wonder? But there isn’t a new uterus inside. There is a sparkling diamond winking at me from inside the box. My mom puts the delicate gold chain around my neck. She hugs me, and this time I feel it. See, she tells me, now you can carry your embryo with you everywhere, right there, close to your heart.
The air in the clinic smells stale and disinfected. As they roll me to my death chamber I feel like everyone is staring at me. Maybe the doctors told the other patients that I would be killing my embryo today and that is why they are staring at me like I am a murderer already. The nurse checks my blood pressure and little sister fidgets with her watch. I swear I can feel my embryo swimming inside of me. It is doing summersaults and cartwheels. No one told it that it was going to die today.
The doctor comes in and gives me a chilly hug with her bony arms. Her stethoscope presses against my shirt. She asks me if I am ready. I nod and grab my sister’s hand. The doctor explains what will happen, I hope my sister is paying attention because I am too busy bidding farewell to my embryo to listen. I am to take two pills, twenty minutes apart in her presence. The first one will be a pill to prepare my body for a traumatic shock. The second pill will be the killer. That is all I am able to understand.
The first pill is red. I take it with a gulp of stale water from a Dixie cup like the ones we drank juice from in kindergarten. I pray that the pill will put my body into traumatic shock instead of just prepare me for it. But it doesn’t. I feel the same, empty, for the next twenty minutes.
The doctor tells me it’s time. I pick up the pill. It is bigger than I expected, and shaped like a triangle. I bring it close to my face stare at it. I silently tell it how badly I despise it. I glare at it for a few long moments. My sister touches my shoulder, and the doctor nods me along. I put the pill in my mouth and reach for the Dixie cup of old water. The pill tastes like death. My hand shakes and I nearly spill the water as I bring it to my lips. I close my eyes and pretend him and I are swimming in the ocean again. I drink and swallow. Then I sink beneath the waves of pain, to the rock bottom.
I wear a diaper for the next five to seven days. I suck on ice chips and taste chicken broth twice. I don’t look when I go to the bathroom and I say a prayer each time I flush. He comes to see me once, Caribbean tanned, sporting a new watch and a relaxed look in his eyes. He looks at me as if he feels sorry for me. Sorry for me because I cared about our embryo, and he never even got to meet it. He asks me again if I need any money from him. I shake my head and ask him how she enjoyed my trip. He shifts from one foot from the other and doesn’t look me in the eye. Instead he changes the subject. He tells me that he likes my new necklace. Instinctively my hand covers my tiny diamond, protecting it from him. I say thank you, and then ask him to leave us alone.
The Caretaker
By Teri Carter
"If God exists, I hope she’s a woman," Mom jokes while the young male nurse fumbles to adjust her oxygen levels.
Frustrated at his incompetence, I push him aside to do it myself. "I’ll keep my fingers crossed about God," I say, reaching over cold stainless steel bed rails to make the necessary adjustments.
Mom’s eyes smile as she gasps for each breath of disinfected hospital air. I force myself to smile back, caught off guard at her ability to maintain a sense of humor while her oxygen-starved body shakes like an unbalanced washing machine.
In less than a minute, her violent shaking is reduced to a slight tremor. The nurse makes a quick getaway back to his station.
"Oh, be nice to him. He’s trying," Mom wheezes. "And you don’t have to do everything yourself."
"Since when?" I ask, one eyebrow raised.
Mom closes her eyes and waves the back of her hand toward me like she’s shooing away a pesky fly. I turn toward the window on my left to escape the pale green room, medical equipment and worn furnishings, disappointed to notice that the once-blue noonday sky has turned a dismal gray. Charcoal gray clouds tumble end over end at the edge of the horizon and I can see the rain making its path toward me.
When Mom’s labored breathing settles into a pattern of soft snores, I reach up to turn off the overhead light. A welcome, night-like darkness descends. Taking a deep breath, I pull a chair over to the window and drop into it as I gaze out over the half empty parking lot. Her lung cancer is progressing fast now.
Staring past the rain rattling the windowpane, I wonder what I’ll do when she’s gone, when she doesn’t need me to look after her anymore. And my heart races at the thought of losing the role I’ve played for most of my life – that of her guardian, her protector, her replacement for a husband.
* * * * *
Mom grew up in a generation of American women who believed they needed a husband to survive. Every time a man left her, she clamored to latch onto the next one who just might save her.
I remember when I realized that she needed me to take care of her more than the other way around. I’d just started second grade and she was in the middle of her second divorce. Butch was only a slight improvement over her first husband, my father, who left her a month before I was born. That is to say he held a respectable job and occasionally slept at home. But Butch had a weakness for whiskey and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. He would stumble in the door most nights fresh from happy hour, reeking of cigarette smoke and stale beer, kicking my toys out of his path and demanding that dinner find its way instantly to the table.
No matter what Mom did, dinner was never good enough for Butch. It was always too plain, too cold, too spicy, too "something." My heart ached for her as she plastered on her best Donna Reed smile and turned cartwheels to please him. I, on the other hand, gave him the silent treatment and slowly picked at my food until he left her alone and focused his anger on me. He would inevitably sentence me to time in the darkest corner of the kitchen, where I was to stand until I ate my potatoes and pork chops, or until bedtime, whichever came first.
Mom was devastated when Butch left. I was relieved. Even at seven, I knew she deserved better. But she was ashamed to be divorced for the second time and remained hell-bent on finding the man who would take care of her the way her mother had promised.
Butch’s moving truck was barely out of the driveway when Mom met her next prospect. Late one sunny Saturday, we drove to a secluded area in the back of the local park. When another car pulled in behind us, she turned off the engine.
"Just listen to the radio while I’m gone. I’ll only be a few minutes," Mom explained, giddy as a schoolgirl. "Charlie and I need a little privacy."
She took one last, long drag off her cigarette, then re-applied her cherry red lipstick in the rearview mirror. Smacking her lips loudly to even out the color, she eased out the driver’s side door, pulling at the hem of her too-short skirt and swinging her ample hips toward the back of our car.
When she finally plopped back onto the seat next to me, she was smoothing her freshly dyed red hair and breathing so heavy I felt like I needed to breathe for her.
"Are you okay?" I asked, trying to hide the sarcasm in my voice.
"I’m having my friend over late tonight," she said, wiping away smudged lipstick and saving me from making small talk. "So you need to make sure you’re in bed by ten. Charlie and I need some time alone to get to know each other."
Mom and Charlie spent the next five years getting to know each other late at night in the privacy of our one-bedroom apartment. I spent those years letting her cry on my shoulder while she waited for Charlie to leave his wife. But he left Mom instead and, after a respectable week of mourning, she continued on her quest for the husband and savior who would never materialize.
When I became an adult, I swore I would never be like her. I would never marry a drunk, never smoke, never get a divorce, never date a married man, and certainly never depend on a man for my happiness. Well, my ex-husband wasn’t a drunk and I don’t smoke.
* * * * *
The rustle of bedcovers draws my attention away from my reflection, away from the rain-splattered window, and I see that Mom is awake. She looks rested, peaceful. I wish I felt the same.
"What’s a woman got to do to get some service around here? I’m dying ... of thirst," she says, laughing at her bad joke.
I pick up the pink plastic cup on her bedside table and bend the straw as I put it to her lips. "That’s not funny, Mom."
"Oh, you need to lighten up a little," she scoffs, taking a long drink and looking side to side. "Hey, where’s that deck of cards we played with the other day?"
"That cute boy nurse of yours probably lost them," I answer.
"See, that was good. That’s what I mean," she says, proud of my attempt to humor her. She reaches into her bedside table, pulling out a red deck of playing cards and holding them high in the air.
We play several games of gin rummy until her breathing becomes noticeably strained and I can tell she’s starting to lose interest.
"Okay, that’s enough for today," I say, gathering up the cards from the stiff white hospital sheets.
"But I was winning," she says, laying her head back in defeat. "You’ve always been a sore loser. And you certainly didn’t get that from me."
"No, I didn’t. You’re an unnaturally happy loser."
"No, I’m just realistic."
I don’t respond because I know this conversation can go on forever. We’ve had it many times over. So I change the subject back to something safe.
"Well, it looks like the sun wants to come back out," I say, turning my back to her and walking toward the window.
"You should argue with me while you have the chance. I won’t be around forever, you know," Mom announces.
Ignoring her last comment, I walk to the door. "I’m going to see if I can find that inept nurse you love so much. It’s almost time for your meds."
"Oh, be nice to him," Mom instructs. "He may be the last man who’ll ever take care of me."
"We can only hope," I answer.
She smiles like a woman with a delicious secret. "No, it’s for sure," she says, resolute. "I talked to God while I was taking my nap. She can’t wait to see me."
With a big sigh, I walk toward the door. "I’ll go find that cute nurse."
Mom gives me her most winning smile. And when I turn the corner and she can’t see me, I smile too.
November 19, 2007
Believer
by Angie Myhre (PDF).
Desert Flora and Fauna
by Dan Fontana (PDF).
Venetian Rooftops
by Dan Fontana (PDF).
Clarity
by Molly Tolzmann (PDF).
Down in Uptown
by Yolanda LaMar (PDF).
I'm Mad at Your Dad
by Aberdeen Sather (PDF).
Unnatural Birth
by Yolanda LaMar (PDF).
Self Portrait - My Things
by Brittany du'Monceaux (PDF).
Convergences and Crossings
by Erica Niemiec (PDF).
The Quiet Splendor of Falling Out of Love
by Jeremy Keller (PDF).
To Reaffirm a Warmth
by Max Schmetterer (PDF).
Natural Disaster
by Diana Heim (PDF).
Two Grandchildren
by Kari Volkmann (PDF).
Urban
by Julia Christianson (PDF).
Small Deaths
by Caitlin Thompson (PDF).
Peace Across the Northside
by Jasmine Omorogbe (PDF).
La Ville-lumière
by Chloe Bade (PDF).
Uncle Richie
by Diana Heim (PDF).
Melee
by Marlene Moxness (PDF).
Untitled
by David DiPasquale (PDF).
Advice
by Diana Heim (PDF).
History of a Lake at Night
by Luci Kandler (PDF).
The Heat of Our Hands
by Bridget Haeg (PDF).
I Climbed a Tree to Write This
by Sarah Peterson (PDF).
Poetry 2007
Test.
When I Paint My Masterpiece
by Alexander Varner (PDF).
Cocoa Season
by Becky Lang (PDF).
Watch Our Pride Blister
by Jacob Steinbauer (PDF).
Grandma's Hairy Upper Lip
by Jason Zabel (PDF)