I’ve been thinking a lot about fire in the past several months—wildfires consuming areas the size of small countries, urban flames captured on and shared through cell phone photos and videos, smoke and fire aimed by armed forces at peaceful protesters, fires from history that burned books and crosses and human beings whose very bodies were sites of resistance. Fire is also cleansing and full of hope, the way forest fires renew and restore, create growth and new life. I see this kind of fire in the courageous, committed souls who use their bodies and voices to stand up to injustice, totalitarianism, and fascism across the globe, and in particular, in our own country which has, from its inception, been an evolving experiment in democracy, equality, and freedom. These fire-starters are continuing the work of those who through the course of history set fire to notions of inequality, injustice, and hatred. They are the fires that will quench what I hope is just the extinction burst of hateful, extremist fundamentalism. They are the fire of a movement towards something better, greater than what we have allowed ourselves to imagine. The essays in the fourth issue of Oyster River Pages capture this historical moment perfectly—they tell stories of deep loss, terror, fear, compassion, empathy, awareness, resistance. They resonate profoundly in this period of indefinite uncertainty, acknowledging all that is broken and hopeless while seeking out and praising that which is transcendent and merciful and forgiving in this world. I hope these essays will remind you, as they did me, that to live in this world is to open ourselves to inevitable loss and yet persevere, and that in spite of everything, hope in something beautiful is an act of resistance, and ultimately, of redemption.
Ranjana Varghese
Creative Nonfiction Editor
The pieces in this issue have shown me yet again that the threads holding us together, whether in uncomfortably incendiary or warmly relieving ways, are space and love. The writers of this issue invite us to see these threads strain against each other when they are at odds, crowd each other out when unacknowledged, and even intertwine and meld together into one when allowed. The images we see woven from these threads span a spectrum of exhausting strength, welcome isolation, gutting loss, hard-won peace, and homecoming. Much like the world that these pieces came out of, these essays illustrate the dynamics between space and love with fierceness that is full of emotional contradiction— that renders stories too difficult to place into neat categories. The truth, I’ve found, often has this quality. This fullness is increasingly necessary in the face of the catastrophic effects of rampant misinformation, oversimplification, and reductive, bigoted logic. The fullness of the truth is the only way to do justice to life, and to me, that is what lies at the heart of these essays. It is what allows for a breath, for an acknowledgement that wherever we go from here, those threads of space and love–that interaction–will go with us. I’m so honored to have that reminder, and hope that you, as a reader and another being existing in the complex tapestry of this time, feel the same.
Yamilette Vizcaíno
Creative Nonfiction Intern
the essays
paddling
chelsey clammer
Before Tulsa was put down around noon, she went down in the morning. A deaf, mostly blind, malnourished, twenty-four-year-old horse got on her knees at some point early in the a.m. and was lying on her side by the time the cops arrived. Neither of the two officers was the cop who showed up last week in response to an animal report. That cop will do a follow-up in a few weeks. These cops were responding to a new call. Apparently the neighbors have noticed some things.
Tulsa was being unintentionally starved. Accidental neglect.
the entertainment center
john means
Odz had told me it was just a bookcase we’d be hauling away in my pickup. I expected it to be sitting out on his carport, but there was nothing there.
Instead, it was down in the basement rec room, and it was no bookcase. A monstrosity of particle-board shelves, platforms, and compartments with little doors. Odz said it had been their entertainment center.
Had been. Odz was too old to be getting a divorce, too overwhelmed to navigate the minefield of a real estate settlement, too alone to be moving off to another town alone.
the place where i’m from
mai serhan
I’ve never been to where I’m from. When my father was alive, he would reminisce about a huge manor with a horse stable and wine cellar. I was told my grandmother, Ibtihaj al-Qadi, took her children and fled through olive trees and under a hail of bullets in 1948. My uncle, Nabil Serhan, then six years old, was shot in the palm of his hand, or so the story goes. As for my grandfather, Faris Serhan, he chose to stay behind to fight with the rest of his village. Years later, I picked up Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury and found a detailed account of the battle for our village: “If we’d fought throughout Palestine the way El Kabri fought,” it read, “we wouldn’t have lost the country.”
advice about grapefruit and getting dumped
anna nguyen
Grapefruit are always cheaper in Atlanta than in Nashville, so without fail, my grandmother always returns home with a whole laundry basket full of them. After a big hug and some chiding about how I’ve gained weight since my last visit—“Khánh, your arms are manly!”—she leaves me to carry in her luggage. I awkwardly heave her bounty of grapefruit out of the car’s trunk and into the living room, where she sits on a plastic footstool between the couch and coffee table. “The cushions are too soft,” she’d say. “Too soft for Bà.”
stuttering in isolation
isabel armiento
I’ve always loved words but dreaded speaking. Ever since I can remember, people have told me there’s something wrong with the way I speak. Most people would call it a stutter, though people who don’t know me may think that I stammer through my words because I’m shy, or painfully awkward, or simply lying. They hear speech disfluency and think of insecurity—Did I stutter?—or anxiety—Piglet’s frightened Oh d-d-dear, though my stutter looks nothing like the endearing repeated syllables of animated anthropomorphic pigs.
subsidence
r. gene turchin
Subsidence occurs when the ceilings of the spaces carved out of coal seams collapse to the floor. The earth above shifts and sinks downward to fill the voids. Inside it is a minor cataclysmic event without observers. A violent cracking, inside the hollowed out spaces of the mine echo's with the screams of shifting earth as the roof falls. On the surface, the ground dips and seeps lower, forming small potholes, divots, and depressions. It happens with the slowness of warm summer days. Houses ultimately suffer from the quiet straining. A small crack in a foundation wall grows into an errant branch and becomes age lines on the face of the home.
what i wished i knew about the one-child policy
pei ja anderson
This summer, my parents and I saw the premiere of One Child Nation, a documentary that revealed the brutal human implications of China’s one-child policy regime and its legacy. As a Chinese adoptee, I thought I was prepared; I knew I was one of the hundreds of thousands unwanted baby girls born under this policy. Children were discarded and left to die while others fell victim to infanticide. International adoption had saved a portion of a population of girls who would otherwise been killed. What I was not prepared to learn was the prevalence of abduction: that there were babies who were torn from intact families and used as a tactic by the government to extort money from families who could not afford protection from the corruption of the one-child policy. My mind began to spiral.
banana republic
vahni kurra
When my amma told me that she had grown up in a banana republic, I thought she meant the clothing store. I was probably seven or eight years old. At that point, I had only encountered the Banana Republic as an establishment of the Indianapolis mall. I pictured my mom sleeping under racks of cashmere sweaters and dining on Annie’s pretzels for every meal. She loved junk food and ate it with the guilty relish of a child, sucking crumbs from her fingers. She also adored Banana Republic. She thought their clothes were classy, though not as nice as J. Crew’s. It made sense too, because my mother had told me that she had come to America with only three dresses as a child. From this, I reasoned that my mom, aunt, and grandparents had been storybook poor.
living a life in cars
kurt schmidt
I am eight and experiencing the first of many traumas in my father’s old Pontiac. One night, on a family trip to visit relatives at Christmas, Dad slams into a deer, throwing my sister and me to the floor in back, leaving us bruised and frightened. The second trauma months later is more serious. Again in my father’s Pontiac, this time returning from an autumn foliage excursion, Mom implies my father is failing as a beer salesman. She starts the argument by saying she’s having trouble paying the bills.
The rationales for spending or not spending escalate until Dad’s shoulders jerk back.
to hold my mother’s fear
elias lowe
My mother’s voice trembles. She raises her hands above her face and shakes them back and forth, fingers wide and strained, making an “eee ooo” squeamish sound. “Pray for me, pray for me,” she says after my stepfather, driving the golden Toyota, reminds me to be grateful for the pain I’ve just complained about. He says, according to recent studies, I am less likely to get Alzheimer’s since I have consistent menstruation periods. “I’m in the opposite boat,” my mom growls from the passenger seat as we pull up the drive to the Pittsburgh Airport. She reminds us once again that she bled irregularly throughout her life. “Lucky you,” I cackle and crouch as my ovaries are strangled by an invisible stone.
mothering in the pigwood
barbara felton
“My daughter would love to see the pigs!” The woman glanced down at the child beside her, a girl about seven years standing in front of the counter. Wearing jeans and sneakers, she was dressed for a visit to the pigs but her face reflected none of her mother’s enthusiasm for the venture.
On Saturdays, our farm store draws steady customers and we offer shoppers the opportunity to visit the farm animals. My husband staffs the store—he can answer every quirky question about how cows grow and how the cuts have been specified and why we raise our cows and sheep on grass and our pigs on open pasture—and I escort people to see cows, sheep, or pigs, depending on the visitors’ preference.
blinkies
stephen policoff
We bought the house in Ulster County because Kate yearned for a place where we could get away from the city, where she could garden and grill and take walks in the leafy expanse of upstate New York, not far from where we both grew up.
The hapless real estate guy first showed us many unappealing options. One house in Hurley featured several bats sleeping upside down in the windows. Another, near Woodstock, had the pungent odor of unrestrained mildew. We saw tumbledown mansions in Pine Hill, and a glorified ski hut in Boiceville.
have been, have being, to be: meditations in the mountains of jemez
benjamin green
The planet floats within a swirling and whirling universe. The land moves, migrates: as continents, as mountain ranges, as single rocks falling, as grains of sand flowing in a river or as particles of dust flying in the wind. The cosmos is a force; it shapes, it shifts, it puts creatures in motion (birds and whales and pronghorns and elk). Sometimes they crawl up-mountain and down, like our local tarantula migration from mesa top to river bottom every fall; sometimes they swim upstream and down, like salmon and steelhead in the Pacific watersheds; sometimes they fly from north to south along the Rocky Mountains.
