When Oyster River Pages set sail over four years ago, who knew that the shores of 2016 would be ones we would never revisit? That the world we would return to would be almost entirely remade with all the parts of ourselves we thought we left behind? Metaphor fails. In four years of publication, ORP has become a ship, an anchor, and a lifesaver for readers, contributors, and publishers. We have turned to it to see ourselves—the good, bad, and ugly—and to find a vision of who we might become.

For reasons that need no explanation, this year we were captivated by stories about the possibility of life and love after a plague. And by tales of agency, power, and the abuse thereof. And by stories that remind us how hard it is to love, and how worthwhile; how necessary and delicious it is to laugh in spite of everything; how good it is to have someone to hold amid the chaos, even (or, perhaps, especially) if that someone is yourself. 

Our fourth annual issue is our largest ever. Take your time with it. May it be a buoy to you in the tumultuous days to come.

Jonathan Freeman-Coppadge
Fiction Editor

As our fourth annual issue gets released into the world, it is being entered into one foreign, new, and unpredictable to all of us. In the course of a handful of months we have all witnessed and experienced the chaotic waves that can so quickly and easily pull us from the safety of shore, unbalancing and causing us to wonder how to recover from such a blow. These stories, these characters, these worlds created are glimpses and reflections of the realities that neighbor us; that resonate with a story of our own that follows and hovers like a shadow. As you read about the third grader, the husband in a thirty year marriage, the housekeeper, and the many other individuals who seem to not be fictitious at all but a person you once had been or knew, there will be that realization, that awakening, that warmness of comfort in your stomach one feels when embarking on a worrisome journey, knowing their fellow companion is only a few steps away: What lies ahead for us all is unknown, and for that reason, we are never alone.

Arlene Opio
Fiction Intern

As of late, tragedy has been at the forefront from gross racial injustices to a global pandemic and careless criminals masquerading as heads of state—a lethal concoction here and abroad leading to human rights abuses and mass death. Times like these demand art—stories, poetry, and visual art—to remind us of the beauty resisting within the darkness, persisting despite immeasurable suffering and loss. This year’s collection of stories offer us a necessary flicker of hope daring us to burn bright against the bleak odds.

It gives me great joy to help present these stories to the world. Shine on.

 Eneida P. Alcalde
Emerging Voices Fiction Editor

The nature of the world has always been one of vivid, and uncertain change. Each day brings something new to leave its mark on history, tangling the threads of our lives. But at the core of the cacophony and chaos, there remains humanity. The small crises of the everyday that silhouette against the background of the fractured world. These moments weave the story of being alive, of the imperfect emotions that ruin and mold us again. All the moments of reverie, all the moments we feel we may never recover from. The heartbeat of the world thunders on, and we rise each day. We continue. We forever weave the tapestries of our stories into the blanket of the world. In this fourth installment of the annual issue, we invite you to lift up one of the threads, so heavy of life, and to look at the world through eyes anew. 

Meggyn Keeley
Emerging Voices Fiction Intern

The Stories

A House Full of Spirits

Ope Adedeji

Once the strand of yarn goes around her feet, the rest is easy. My girl, Edima, is only a few weeks old. Her skin is pink and supple as a thumb. The yarn isn't cashmere soft, but it also isn't thick like the cheap yarn the old neighbor Alhaja wanted to sell me in exchange for a small tin of evaporated milk. Cashmere is expensive, and common yarn can cause allergic reactions. I dropped the tin by her foot mat—social distancing—and watched as her cat, a poor, hairless thing with wicked teeth, brought me two rolls of merino wool with thick strands instead…

 After the End

Joel King

The sun is setting as he shuffles forward down the road, kicking up dirt and grime with his feet, lifting them just enough to make progress. His destination registers dimly in his head, flickering like a dying light bulb, threatening to burn out. Several times, he stops, backpedals a little, and restarts, the destination coming back alive just long enough for him to grab onto it and proceed.

His conception of time has eroded, but something in his mind tells him that he’s been like this for at least half a year, whatever that means. Really, it could have been years since the end, or maybe two weeks. The days blend together in his head, when he can remember them in the first place. Recent events shine far brighter; the past, beyond a certain point, is nothing but an abyss, a black hole in the center of his mind.

His mind flickers again, shifting to the woman who sent him out on this scouting mission. He’s reasonably sure she’s female, anyway, but her features have degraded so substantially that it’s hard for him to tell for sure. He’s not much of a looker either, but his face is at least intact. Rotting and stretched taut across his skull, but intact all the same. When he catches a glimpse of his reflection, in the windows of empty, decaying storefronts, or the side mirrors of abandoned cars, sometimes he can almost recognize what he used to be.

He makes his way down the exit ramp off the highway, the quiet shuffling of his feet the primary soundtrack for his travels, augmented only occasionally by the sound of a bird, or something in the grass below. It’s a process, and he can feel his muscles straining against the angle of the road, the shredded, atrophied tissue protesting his movements. If he could still feel the pull of emotion, he would be annoyed at how weak his body has become, how much his affliction hinders him. But he cannot, and so he simply continues down the exit ramp, turning off into a clearing that once stood as a thick forest, reduced to charred and chopped stumps at some point in the recent past.

He’s been running these scouting missions as long as he can remember, which doesn’t count for much. The woman in control of his settlement was more advanced in her resurgence from the infection than almost everyone else, and it gave her the ability to issue commands that the rest of them could understand. To organize them, form some echo of a community. These are concepts he is unable to grip in the moment, but he believes, somehow, that he may understand one day. For now, he shuffles out into the wilderness, to find more survivors.

The sun is just touching the horizon in front of him, and he stares at it for a moment or two. He set out later than usual because his calf muscle stopped responding and he had to crawl for a while instead of walking, which tore up some of the skin on his stomach. The skin is ragged and raw now, and it registers in his mind—just barely reaching over the threshold—that it will not heal. He has a lot of marks like that, bumps and scrapes that become permanent no matter the size or severity.

In the distance, he sees something new. He scouts on a daily basis, this same area every time, and his memory has recovered enough to retain dozens of previous scouts. Nothing has changed in this former forest in the entire time he’s been scouting it. Nothing until today, where he sees something like a tent, scraps of cloth propped up by scavenged sticks, blown out by the intense light of the setting sun.

For the first time, his mind clears. The days blended together because they were all the same; presented with new stimuli, dormant synapses awaken, and, for a moment, everything sharpens. He watches the tent, dropping to his knees to camouflage among the ruined stumps and tall, overgrown grass that took their place. His pallid skin and filthy clothes blend in acceptably with his surroundings, and he is almost invisible as he watches the tent.

A figure approaches the tent from behind, clutching something at their waist. He cannot get a good look at the figure, too far away with too little light, but he can tell that this one is not like him. They are a survivor. They move impossibly fast with full control of their motor functions. They look around often, their head on a swivel, on the lookout for his kind. The survivors always are.

The thought floats into his mind that this is why he’s been sent on these scouting missions. For once, he has finally stumbled on something that makes it all worthwhile, though he cannot quite grasp the reason behind his sudden spike of adrenaline. If he was as he was before, he would call it “excitement.” But he is not, so he remains hidden in the grass until darkness has fallen. It’s one of his most proficient skills, shutting down for hours at a time, oblivious to the monotony. He supposes it’s an instinct of some sort, that primal desire to convert a survivor to their cause. The instinct will drive him to do anything to make it happen.

Before, he knew that his instinct was raw, indiscriminate, unrefined, unintelligent. He can see it now in the others in the community, the ones who hadn’t turned as early as he had. They were still waking up, still consumed in the throes of the instinct, moaning and shuffling around without purpose, until a survivor had the misfortune of stumbling into the scene. Then, he would witness the process all over again, waking up more and more.

Now, at his level, when the instinct takes over, it makes full use of his increased capacity. It drives him to stay motionless until the middle of the night, when the survivor is most likely to succumb to exhaustion, for their watch to pause long enough for him to crawl to the tent. Long enough for him to convert them with minimal damage.

The instinct rings an alarm in his head, and he begins to crawl, trying as he does so to register a thought about what he was doing. The clarity he’d previously been blessed with has faded; it’s back to the fog, and it is so all-encompassing that he cannot remember how he felt when the fog lifted. Instead, what little unallocated brain-power is left over is dedicated to rolling the clock back, back beyond the curtain that separated what he used to be from what he is now. He goes back here sometimes, when he can spare the energy, when his ravaged mind allows him to. He sifts through the wreckage, to try and grab onto something, anything, that might remind him of what he was before. Tonight, however, there is nothing. The instinct is stronger than he can remember it ever being, and it is robbing him of his autonomy.

The grass crinkles beneath him as he lurches forward, crawling on hands and knees to stay below the line of the grass and tree stumps. The tent looms in the distance, quiet and unmoving. His hearing has deteriorated, but he can detect enough to know that the occupant is not moving, though he cannot tell if they are awake or asleep. If they’re awake, he faintly registers, this encounter could be his last. If they are asleep, it will be easy pickings.

He pulls open the flap of the tent, and the moonlight provides just enough illumination to reveal the survivor—a man, dark-skinned, with long, matted, tangled hair and a thick beard to match, dead asleep in a sitting position, propped up by his walking stick. It seems as though the man may have simply passed out from exhaustion. His body is emaciated and, if his visitor still had a functional sense of smell, he would likely be repulsed.

He reaches forward, intending to grab the survivor by the shoulders and bite down on his neck, but his arm spasms, knocking the survivor’s walking stick out from under him and waking him up. Now, what would have been a simple conversion has become a fight, as the survivor’s own instincts kick in and he backpedals, screaming, reaching wildly for a weapon behind him. The visitor tenses up, trying to regain control of his rogue muscles, but the survivor’s only weapon is a knife—ineffective against his kind, for the most part. They struggle, the knife parting flesh repeatedly, in his hand, his ragged, rotting abdomen. The survivor, sensing that he is fighting a losing battle, scrambles to turn on his lantern for better visibility, and when the tent is flooded with light, time stops for both of them.

The survivor freezes, staring into the face of his assailant, and he stares back, as prey is no longer prey.

“J-Jonas?” the survivor chokes out, shaking his head a little.

The fog recedes again, and Jonas is slack-jawed.

“C…” He struggles with the words, his vocal cords straining. “C…Craig.”

Craig is standing outside the tent, shifting in place, having scrambled his way out when Jonas spoke back to him. He looks as though he’s seen a ghost, and to him, he has.

Jonas watches, his eyes unblinking, unmoving. He’s sitting, slumped forward, looking somewhat like a doll that’s been tossed on a shelf after its owner is done with it. His mind is running faster than it has in…ever, as far as he can remember, which admittedly isn’t all that impressive.

The lantern has been left in the tent, and they are illuminated only by the full moon looming overhead, beaming its reflected light down onto the ravaged world below. The scene triggers something in Jonas’s mind, something lodged deep at the bottom of the sea, dredged up by seeing Craig for the first time.

They used to sit on the roof, staring up at the night sky, observing the stars and the moon as they twinkled. Their home was on the outskirts of town, in an area with little light pollution, away from the dense smog that consumed most civilization from day to night.

As soon as it comes up, it is gone, washed away in the never-ending tide of Jonas’s ravaged, shredded memory, and his attention returns to Craig.

“Is there anyone else?” Craig asks, his voice uneven, raspy, out of practice. “Are there—are there more of you here? Did you bring—”

“No,” Jonas chokes out, his own voice crackly and garbled, like a late-stage smoker. “No more.”

Craig covers his face. “Jesus Christ. Of all the fucking walkers, Jonas. Of all of them, it…it had to be you.”

Jonas can only sit in silence to that. He is still trying to piece things together. He knows who Craig is—the photo in his shirt pocket is a helpful visual aide in that regard. He reaches for it now, pulling out the ragged, dirty, torn photograph, unfolding it with shaky, grimy hands that have lost all dexterity.

The photo is of the two of them, on the Fourth of July, fireworks behind them. The flash is too harsh, washing out Craig’s complexion and rendering Jonas as little more than a ghost. But they are both smiling, wrapped in each other.

The photo is the first thing Jonas remembers seeing after waking up. Confused and disoriented, the photo asked more questions than it gave answers, but something stirred in him whenever he looked at it, and Craig’s face unlocks more of the puzzle.

Craig kneels down in front of him. “What do you remember?” he asks.

Jonas stares at him; he needs specifics. “I…” His hands are shaking; he looks away.

Craig covers his face. “For the love of God.”

He stands up and walks away, back over to the tent. Jonas notices that he walks with a limp, favoring his left leg. Up close, he does not look nearly as agile and quick as he did from a distance.

Easy to overpower with a surprise attack.

The voice comes out of nowhere, but it is like a cloister bell in Jonas’s head. He knows what it is, even if he has never heard it before.

The instinct does not want to wait any longer.

“What am I even fucking doing here?” Craig muses aloud, still turned to face the tent. Jonas lurches to his feet, his muscles screaming as he does so. His mind is screaming as well—wordless, primal. The instinct has had enough, and Jonas can do little to stop himself. He shuffles forward, footsteps muted in the tall grass.

Before he can lunge, however, his left Achilles gives out, and he topples to the ground in a heap. Craig jumps in surprise, whirling around, knife in hand, only to see the fallen Jonas, and drops his guard in response. He crouches down, and the eye contact quells the instinct, for now.

“Are you alright?” he asks, the concern in his voice not making it up to his eyes, still narrowed in suspicion, wary of why Jonas moved in the first place. If Jonas could still feel the sting of the implication in Craig’s eyes, he would be hurt. But he cannot, and so he gives a literal answer to the question.

“No.” He taps the back of his calf with a hand that has some skin peeling off the palm. “Legs…give out.”

“No shit.” Craig pushes Jonas to a sitting position with one hand, the other tightly gripping the hilt of his knife. He falls back to a sitting position himself, a few feet away. The moonlight reflects off his forehead, and his eyes seem bottomless in the darkness.

“I don’t know what to do here, Jonas,” Craig laments. “It’s been…eight months, I think, since I last saw you. Since the outbreak. Eight months of trekking across the country, seeing everything leveled, just ravaged. The world is fucked, Jonas. It’s all gone. But you probably already know that.”

In fact, the information is new to Jonas. He has not ventured out beyond the stretch of land between two highway exits since he woke up, confined to the community of those who were converted in the immediate area. Hearing Craig talk about the “outbreak” and the “world” is much like hearing someone talk about some sort of alternate universe; the words make sense individually, but are being put together in an order Jonas doesn’t recognize. The world Craig speaks of is gone, and Jonas, as he is now, has never been part of it.

Craig takes a moment to compose himself, and Jonas remains silent, just staring ahead, mouth slightly ajar.

“I came out all this way to find you.”

Jonas tilts his head, eyes still locked on Craig. Craig is crying, now, his head bowed, the words hitching in his throat.

“All this way. All the way across this God forsaken country, all because you were here. On a business trip, of all things. You never came back, and I’d spent all this time thinking you were either in hiding or dead, or…”

He gestures at Jonas.

“Or this. This…thing.”

The instinct has been quiet for a while. Jonas can feel it bubbling in his chest, idling while his brain processes the unexpected reunion. More memories are flitting about in his mind, but they are like gnats—constantly moving and impossible to catch in one’s hand. He cannot latch onto any of them, onto any of it, and so he is content to let them come and go as Craig talks.

“I almost…I almost feel like this is worse,” Craig says. “Seeing you like this. Just a…just a husk. Torn up and practically brain-dead. And I was going to blow you away, too, when you woke me up in the tent. I know what you were trying to do. To be honest, what I don’t know is why you haven’t already tried again.”

It is a fair question, one for which Jonas has no immediate answer. He did try, when he couldn’t hold back the instinct. But the instinct is content to remain in the background for now. Instead, he feels something else that he needs to say, and he takes a while to form it in his mind, pull the component parts together before speaking.

“I…” Jonas begins. It feels like pushing against a brick wall, but he can feel it budging, and all he needs is a little bit of give.

“I…am here. I am…still here. Craig.”

Craig looks at Jonas as if he has said the worst possible thing in that moment. Those deep brown eyes well up again, and he shakes his head.

“This is it, isn’t it?” he says. It’s not a question, more of a resignation. “Humanity isn’t coming back from this. I haven’t seen another human being in three fucking months. It’s just wild animals and—and your kind. God, there’s so many of you…everywhere. All over the country. And I’ve had to—”

He chokes up again.

“I’ve had to kill so many, Jonas. I can’t—I can’t do it again.”

Jonas can only sit and listen as Craig breaks down, shaking his head and turning away. He cannot relate to how Craig feels—he cannot relate to anything. Something is stirring in him, however. He watches Craig hold his head in his hands, shoulders shaking, and rusty cogs squeal and screech in his mind, turning for the first time. The first time he can remember, anyway.

“Join me.”

The words escape his mouth without thought or consideration. It takes Jonas a moment to even realize that he’s spoken them, as Craig lifts his head to stare.

“W-What?” he says, disbelief written across his face. “What did you say?”

“J…Join me.” The words feel more natural this time, but Jonas still does not know where they are coming from. Nonetheless, he plows forward, putting everything he can muster into conveying his message clearly.

“There is…nothing left. For you. Like this. We are…rebuilding. Join me. Join…us.”

Craig’s eyes widen, and he’s shaking his head a little. He seems aghast at the suggestion, the callous writing-off of humanity. To Jonas, however, it is a matter of simple logic. The survivors are few and far between; the “humanity” that Craig speaks of is either severely endangered or functionally extinct. Jonas has seen how many of his kind there are, even just in his little community. He knows—he’s not sure how, but he knows—that Craig’s days as a survivor are numbered. It’s just a matter of time until someone else from the community finds him. Just a matter of time until Jonas loses the tug-of-war against his instinct again.

Craig stands up. Silhouetted in the moonlight, he seems massive, but the illusion is shattered as he begins to limp back to the tent. Jonas struggles to stand, but Craig holds out a hand to stop him.

“I…I need some space. I just…”

He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“This can’t be the answer. This can’t be…this can’t be the only way.”

He points at the tent. “Don’t come in here. Don’t…don’t let anyth— anyone else in, either. Understand me?”

Jonas nods. Craig stares at him for a moment longer, then disappears into the tent, shutting off the lantern as he does so, leaving Jonas in the sole company of the moon. The passage of time does not register in his mind; the moon is dimly reflected in his glassy, clouded eyes, fixated on the sky above. It is a cloudless night, and the stars are luminous and all-encompassing.

He can feel it, nipping at the edges of his mind. With Craig out of his presence, the instinct is bubbling back up. He pushes back against it, harder than before. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the photo again, barely able to see it in the darkness. But it is there, and he reaches behind the curtain again, the photo a map for the scattered, fragmented memories, like a recovery program on a corrupted hard drive.

Christmas. Halloween. Labor Day. The words mean nothing to him, but the feelings—the feelings are new and old at the same time. He does not remember them, but he can feel, in his chest, in his heart, that diseased, atrophied bundle of muscles in his chest, working in tandem with the virus to keep him in some analogue of living.

On the horizon, deep black is being replaced by blue and purple. Time is not something that Jonas has a great grasp on, but even he can tell that a new day is dawning. Craig has not moved or emerged from the tent, and his warning echoes in Jonas’s mind.

A sleeping target is the easiest to convert.

Jonas shakes his head. His body has settled in its sitting position, and any movement is difficult and jerky. He cannot disobey Craig’s order.

He finds, however, that he cannot disobey the instinct, either.

He crawls forward, parting open the tent. Craig is there, lying on his side, his chest rising and falling with each quiet breath. It is the most peaceful Jonas has seen him since they first re-encountered each other.

The instinct is positively screaming.

Do it.

Take him.

You are doing him a kindness.

Something else will get him if you do not.

He finds it astonishingly difficult to reason with the instinct when it’s as strong and as loud as it is in this moment. He’s hovering over Craig now, staring down at him as the sun begins to crest over the horizon outside.

It would be easy, the instinct whispers, seductive in the back of his mind. He won’t even realize until it’s too late. Just one bite to the neck, enough to break the skin.

Jonas lets out a ragged, rancid breath. Craig rolls over onto his back, towards Jonas’s arm, and he leans back to avoid contact. In the process, however, he sees Craig’s peaceful, sleeping face in full, and clarity washes over him like a wave, smashing the instinct back.

He blinks, his eyelids out of sync, and observes Craig for a little while, taking in his features, all softened in sleep. He leans forward, placing a hand on Craig’s chest, and Craig’s eyes flutter open.

Jonas tenses, but Craig simply stares at him, a look in his eyes that Jonas finds it difficult to parse. Reading subtle cues is a skill that is still far beyond his capacity. He opens his mouth to speak, but Craig beats him to it.

“Just do it,” he says. His voice is flat and even-toned, not smiling or frowning. “Get it over with.”

The instinct has returned, and it is like a hurricane in his head. He knows that this is for the best. He knows it is the only way to save Craig, for them to be reunited. The memories flying around in his head make him feel something, make him feel everything, and there is nothing he wants more than to hold onto those feelings as long as he can. If Craig is converted, “as long as he can” becomes forever.

He leans down, his leg and ab muscles struggling to hold him up. He’s going for the neck, their faces coming closer and closer together.

Just one bite. Enough to break the skin.

They are just inches apart now. Craig recoils a little from the rotten smell of Jonas’s breath, but does not move otherwise. He’s accepted fate, accepted that this is the only answer.

If Jonas could feel, he would shift his trajectory from Craig’s neck to his mouth. He would show that there is something on the other side, that humanity does not have to end, that it can adapt and evolve.

And now, he can feel, and Jonas’s chin lifts, and their lips touch.

Craig’s eyes widen, but still he does not move, does not struggle. The kiss is short, unrefined, and, truth be told, unpleasant—Craig’s lips are hopelessly cracked and chapped, and Jonas’s are limp and pallid. But when Jonas pulls away, back cracking as he straightens to a kneeling position, he feels more alive than he ever has.

Craig shifts up to a sitting position, pushing himself back against the tent. They stare into each other’s’ eyes for a while, trying to process what to do next. The sun and horizon have separated, and daylight beams through the open seams of the tent.

The instinct is silent. Jonas has won this round. He knows it will be back, but for now, he does not care. Its work is done. He is in the driver’s seat now.

“I’m here.”

The words are spoken effortlessly this time, but Jonas can feel the weight of them as he says them. No struggling, no stumbling, no pauses.

Craig brings his hand to his lips, brushes his fingers against them. His face has relaxed, as if a burden has been lifted. They sit there for a while, as the sunlight washes over them. In the light, Craig looks far less haggard, more like the picture in Jonas’s pocket.

Finally, Craig shimmies forward. He reaches out and touches Jonas’s upper arm, gently squeezing, grimacing at the too-soft, spongy flesh. With the other hand, he taps his neck.

Jonas stares at the area he touched, and looks back into Craig’s eyes, staring into the deep brown abyss. He is asking for permission, and Craig nods.

Jonas leans forward, his lips curling back, and Craig closes his eyes as teeth meet flesh.

They return together that evening, Craig supporting Jonas as they make their way up the highway, back to their new home. The others have not quite been waiting, but the leader has made a note of Jonas’s extended absence, and is excited that he has brought back a new convert. She sees the mark, sees Craig’s paling skin, and knows that it is just a matter of time. None of the others approach them; they can all tell that he has been converted.

“This is it, huh?” Craig asks. He is putting on a brave face, but Jonas can tell that the virus has taken hold, and is sapping him of his energy. He stumbles and drops to one knee, gasping for air. Jonas pats his chest to reassure him, and Craig chuckles.

“This sucks, you know,” he cracks, falling back on humor, but the process is almost complete. Jonas props Craig up against the wall of an abandoned storefront, dropping down next to him. Craig reaches for his hand and takes it, staring ahead at the sunset in front of them. His breathing is ragged, coming in short, uneven breaths. His eyes have clouded over. Jonas knows the signs, knows the steps; it will not be long now.

There are a few others watching them, mostly the oldest in the community, the ones who, like him, woke up the earliest. They are aware enough to take some sort of pleasure in watching a conversion, though they cannot grasp what it is that draws them to it.

Craig turns his head, just enough to catch Jonas with the corner of his eye. He opens his mouth, but no words come out. He tries again, and again, but his mind is failing. Soon, the virus will have taken full control, and Craig will not speak again for weeks.

Just before he goes under, however, he finally manages it. Just six words, a post-it note for Jonas to hold onto while Craig is out, to tide him over until he returns.

“See you on the other side.”

The breathing stops, and Craig is gone. His eyelids droop, and he lets out a low moan, toppling over. He is utterly mindless now, and he will be for a while, until he can wake up again. But Jonas is not concerned. He is patient, and he will wait for Craig to wake up.

They always do.

 A Visit to General Lim Street

Monica s. Macansantos

Celeste’s handwriting had a neat, elegant flourish to it, making Gabriel suspect she had gone to one of the fancier Catholic schools in Manila, where the nuns insisted on leaving an imprint of civility upon their students’ penmanship. The cross of her T swept forward into space, as though to provide shelter for the letters that fell underneath it. Celeste Chan. 14 Jungletown Road. A simple address that served as an opening into a stranger’s life.

Or perhaps this was just Gabriel’s wishful thinking, that this woman would invite him to her house, even though she had extended her invitation to Carlos, her former communist comrade-in-arms, and not to him. He had merely been asked by his mother to hold onto Celeste’s address while Carlos decided whether or not to accept the invitation. Gabriel was, after all, her responsible son who had never been a communist or landed in jail. He had found, over the years, that people thought it wise to trust him with addresses and secrets, as though these were objects they were handing over to him for safekeeping, like a purse, or a set of keys.

His mother probably did not expect him, of course, to contact Celeste, or if she did, she had forgotten about this in her rush to restore the joyful order of an afternoon she had painstakingly arranged. The slip of paper was just another inconvenience to dispose of, and she handed it to Gabriel in the hopes that he would, as always, keep it in a safe space until it was conveniently forgotten. Contacting Celeste felt like a deliciously quiet violation of an unspoken rule, and he turned the slip of paper over in his hands as he sat at the edge of his bed during the cold hours of dawn, noticing that Celeste had given her home phone number in addition to her address. This meant she was of fairly comfortable means, being able to secure a landline when his family was still on a long waiting list for one. How did one transition from jungle guerrilla to bourgeois university professor overnight? Of course her transformation was likely to have taken place over the course of several years, and it was probably a journey she was eager to talk about with an old comrade she hadn’t seen in more than a decade. He didn’t expect Carlos to be willing to talk to her anytime soon, not after the way Carlos had behaved with her. Would she be willing, perhaps, to talk to him while waiting for Carlos to come around?

He slipped the piece of paper into his wallet, and returned to bed, taking care not to awaken his wife as he eased himself beside her. It was daylight when he awoke, and he turned onto his back to find her sitting beside him, watching him. “Anything wrong?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“No,” she said, with a look of alarm. “It’s just that you were talking in your sleep.”

“Oh?” He yawned and stretched, and a voice, familiar and yet faraway, grazed the surface of memory.

“Who’s Paulie?” she asked, flicking a lock of hair away from his face.

“Oh my God,” Gabriel said. Paulette’s face resurfaced from the murkiness of his dreams, turning away as she fired a gun. It was the gun’s explosion, more than her voice, that reverberated in his body, and he took his wife’s hand as though to reassure himself that he was still here, in this time and place.

“It was just Paulette,” he said. “You know, Carlos’s old girlfriend. We used to call her Paulie.”

Her face softened, and she turned to the wall that separated their room from Carlos’s. “You were calling out to her in your sleep.”

He sighed as the dream’s afterglow faded, then flickered out.

“He probably dreams of her too,” she said, staring at the wall. 

“He probably does.” He rose from bed and turned away from her as he felt around for his slippers. He didn’t want to discuss Paulette again with her—it was part of his past now, and besides, she had been Carlos’s woman, and not his. Gabriel had just been a friend of hers in 1976, the year before she died, and if his wife wanted to know how Paulette had been killed, she would have to ask Carlos, and not him. He was sure he had nothing to do with it—he had just been a friend, perhaps merely another nuisance in Paulette’s life, and whatever impressions he once had of their relationship had merely been the fevered imaginings of an adolescent mind. In her lifetime, he never knew enough about her to be a true confidante, a true friend. To her, he had just been a kid.

“I don’t even remember what I dreamt about last night,” he said, which was partly true. All he remembered was Paulette raising a gun and firing it at an invisible target.

“She’s dead, by the way,” he said, pulling on his robe.

“Dead!” Her face fell, and then, blinking, she asked, “You’re not talking about Paulette Hoffer, are you?”

“Yes, the Paulette Hoffer.”

“My parents kept talking about her at home when they found out she was killed,” she said, gazing at the edge of the bed. “It was one of those things I kept thinking about growing up, even before we met. How girls like us could easily end up like her.”

“If you had met her, you wouldn’t even have thought she was an NPA.”

But yes, there was a toy gun, on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

He found himself unable to meet Carlos’s eye as he approached the breakfast table, and snatches of Paulette’s young, bright voice flickered, faintly, in his ear as Carlos asked for more sausages. Gabriel felt the unexplainable urge to unburden himself with his brother, and to ask Carlos if Paulette had also haunted his dreams. I saw her shoot a toy gun in her parents’ backyard. Yes, that was what had happened, if he remembered right—and never did he have the opportunity to tell Carlos that he was amazed and frightened at once.

Later that day, as he sat in his office, he picked up his phone, wondering if it was the best time to phone Celeste, or the Hoffers, whose number was listed in the phone directory, or anyone who cared to listen to him. He listened to the receiver’s bright hum, closing his eyes as he imagined himself speaking into the bottomless silence, mentioning a secret or two before hanging up. Or perhaps it was better to speak to a priest in a confessional—he hadn’t been to confession in years, but at least, in a confessional, someone was listening, and there was nothing that a priest could do to hold him accountable for his wrongs, aside from acknowledging that he had sinned.

On the other hand, there was nothing preventing him from calling Celeste, and checking whether she was open to speaking with him. He could imagine himself meeting her at Dainty Restaurant for coffee, and telling her about the time he met Paulette, a year after Carlos’s defection, and how he wondered about how such a beautiful woman could be abandoned by the father of her child and left to fend for herself. Perhaps Celeste, who had also been her comrade in the New People’s Army, would graciously share with him anecdotes about Paulette’s shooting skills, which went unexplained to him when he saw her firing a pellet gun with unnerving accuracy.

The phone directory rested on his desk, and remained turned to letter H. The Hoffers still lived on General Lim Street, which he found unsurprising, yet vaguely unsettling. The outpouring of grief in their community when word broke that Paulette had died while fighting as a guerrilla took him by surprise, considering that the same people who mourned her death had distanced themselves from his family as soon as they learned about Carlos’s defection to the NPA. But Paulette was a Hoffer, and her decision to join the NPA was spoken of as a waste of potential, her untimely death a tragedy. The Hoffers, he guessed, were never banished from their circle of powerful friends, and would never have to leave this town where they were clearly loved. And yet he wondered how they could possibly endure the weight of their daughter’s absence in an old house where the ghost of her presence lingered.

They had probably expected him to attend Paulette’s memorial service, or to drop by to offer condolences in the months following her death. But back then, he was too afraid to show his face in their house, especially after disappearing from their lives without any explanation in the months before her reported death. He had avoided Sam, his high school best friend,  after embarrassing himself in their house, and what if his unexplained snubbing gave them all the more reason to suspect him of being connected to Paulette’s death? They didn’t find a body was what people kept saying in the months, and years, after Paulette’s memorial service, and he was sure that whatever explanation was given to the Hoffers by whoever had reported her death to them would never be enough. He was sure it would be impossible for him to sit in their living room, waiting for Manang Rosing, their maid, to serve him tea, without feeling a deep sense of shame. The truth was that her death came as a shock to him, and he found himself equally uncomfortable that the revelations that surfaced after her death did not come as a complete surprise to him.

After work, he found himself driving past City Hall and entering the leafy neighborhood where Sam’s family lived. He hadn’t been to this part of town in years—although he knew an accountant at this office whose family owned a home on this street, he couldn’t remember a time when this chubby, bespectacled boy had invited anyone from their office to his family home. Though the boy was affable, he suspected that he didn’t have close friends at the company, reminding him of the kids he met on Sam’s street as a teenager, who smiled into space as he walked past them, perhaps too timid, or frightened, to acknowledge his presence in their neighborhood. As a child, whenever his father drove past the edge of General Lim Street, his eyes would linger upon the trees that flanked its entrance, wondering how trees, and vine-covered walls, could intimidate him while simultaneously remaining easy on the eye. He found himself hesitating at the wheel before entering the tree-lined boulevard that led to the Hoffers’ house. No longer did he have the same confidence he once had as Sam’s high school best friend to make the pilgrimage up its hilly incline without giving any second thought to the strangeness of his visitations.

He parked his car across the street from the Hoffers’ steepled, two-story home, just as the vines twisting their way up towards the house’s second floor caught his eye. Other than the abundance of vines on the house’s facade, and the lushness of the bougainvillea bush that cascaded down the property’s concrete wall, not much had changed. Time stood still on 6 General Lim Street, and the house’s clapboard walls hadn’t been subjected to the damages inflicted by the sun and rain. It was more likely, though, that the house received a regular paint job: Tita Irene was not one to neglect the sight of water damage or peeling paint. The living room drapes were drawn, and a small gray-haired figure flitted across the window. Was it Manang Rosing, their old maid? But Manang Rosing had been an old woman long ago, and it was possible that she had been replaced too. His eyes then fell upon the old gray Beetle that Tito Eugene used to drive to work, and he wondered how the old man had maintained the appearance of the car’s sheen well into the eighties. Surely he could afford to buy something that was newer and easier to maintain, instead of insisting that this old relic maintain the newness of the era to which it belonged.

He felt his hesitation creep up on him again before opening his car door and stepping outside. He wouldn’t blame them if they turned him away, but he felt a strange, unexplained peace descend upon him as he crossed the street towards their gate. The closer he came to their house, the more he felt that he was not just visiting the home of an old friend, but was finally, after many years of exile, returning to a place that was once familiar and safe.

There was a stirring from inside when he knocked at their gate. A woman whose face was unfamiliar to him pulled back the living room window’s gauze drapes, glancing briefly before pulling away. Was it their maid, or was it a member of the family who took a quick look at him before deciding whether or not to open their doors to him? It would have been better, perhaps, to have called them first to check if they were amenable to meeting him. But he could hear their front door being unlocked, and Eugene Hoffer, who had visibly aged since the time they last met, stepped outside.

Mr. Hoffer’s eyes smarted in the sunlight, and tilting his head to the side, he asked, “Gabby, what brings you here?”

“I was just in the neighborhood, and thought of dropping by,” Gabriel said, as he watched the old man walk with a sure, steady step towards the gate. Although his head of hair was grayer now and the lines in his face were more deeply etched, his muscles remained taut and tanned—Gabriel’s guess was that Eugene still played tennis at the Country Club.

“I was actually at City Hall,” Gabriel said, as Mr. Hoffer unbolted the front gate and waved him inside.

“Well, it’s nice you thought of us.” A smile then bloomed across his wrinkled, freckled face. Polite Mr. Hoffer, always beating around the bush instead of expressing his discomfort, or annoyance. He had always been nice to Gabriel, even during moments when Gabriel had tested his patience.

“Your niece has just come home from school,” Mr. Hoffer said, as they walked up the graveled path that led to the front door. “I was helping her with her math homework.”

“What grade is she in?” Gabriel asked, trying not to betray his surprise that Mr. Hoffer was willing to speak the truth with him. It seemed that the old man didn’t want to make a big deal out of the situation, and so Gabriel followed his cue.

“Fourth grade. She’s ten years old now. The things they make those kids do at that school we sent her to,” he said, shaking his head as he reopened the front door. “Sometimes I worry that she doesn’t have enough time to play with kids her age, but maybe that’s just me.”

A child in shorts and a tank top was seated at the dining room table when they stepped inside, and her legs dangled from her seat, swinging to and fro as she scribbled inside a notebook spread out in front of her. She had Paulette’s oval eyes but they slanted downwards, like her father’s, and she pursed her lips in concentration, the way Carlos did when he and Gabriel were much younger. Her features, though similar to her mother’s, were not as sharply defined—the plainness of her father’s peasant looks appeared to have dissolved the edges of her mother’s beauty. Paulette’s beauty had been unambiguous—it struck people the moment she walked into a room, and she was fortunate to be good-natured, since this, somehow, softened the edge of her perfection. Her daughter’s plainness was a blessing in disguise, since it would free her from the impossible standards to which Paulette had once been held.

“Diwa?” her grandfather called out to her, and her head bolted up. She stared at Gabriel, who smiled as he stood behind Mr. Hoffer, hoping that her grandfather, with his mere presence, could turn his unannounced visit into a normal, foreseen event in the child’s life.

“This is your Tito Gabby, a good friend of your Tito Sam.”

“Hi,” she said, in a voice that sounded like a younger, unbroken version of Paulette’s.

“He’s also the son of your Lola Aurora,” Mr. Hoffer added, blinking.

“Oh?” she asked, her lips parting in surprise.

“Hello, Diwa,” Gabriel said, unsure if he was capable of hiding his discomfort.

The girl stared at him, tapping her notebook with her pencil’s eraser.

“Come and ask for your Tito’s blessing,” Mr. Hoffer said, giving Gabriel an apologetic look. Diwa slid down from her chair and padded, barefoot, towards Gabriel, who offered a hand to her before she took it and pressed its back against her smooth, sticky forehead.

“The girl’s smart,” Mr. Hoffer said, as she made her way back to the dining table. “She’s just like her mother, which can be both good and bad. We’ve had to come to her school on several occasions because she answers back to her teachers. She even answers back to us.”

“I didn’t know Paulie was like that.”

“Paulie was nicer, in fact. Her sass only started coming out in college, when she started joining activist groups. Before that, she was perfect,” Mr. Hoffer said, sighing as he watched Diwa pick up her pencil and return to her work.

“I’m sorry if I didn’t visit earlier,” Gabriel said, avoiding Mr. Hoffer’s eye. “It was inexcusable. You were all so kind to me.”

“You were young,” Mr. Hoffer said, smiling. “You probably took it hard too.”

“It was hard,” Gabriel said, feeling a soreness in his throat. Unable to speak, he shook his head, then rested his hand on the back of the leather couch. Mr. Hoffer put a hand on his shoulder and asked their maid, a small woman with braided hair who faintly resembled Manang Rosing, to bring them a glass of water. The old woman filled a tall glass and held it aloft with her two hands, like a chalice, as she carried it with her to the living room. Gabriel took it from her wrinkled hands, acknowledging her look of concern with a nod, and a smile, before taking a long, refreshing gulp. He could get away with terrible behavior in this household; he was still a victim in their eyes, despite his lack of decency following their daughter’s death.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Gabriel said, “That was good.”

“You all right?” Mr. Hoffer asked.

The little girl raised her head again, and fixed her curious, unblinking eyes on him.

“I’m fine,” Gabriel said, before taking another drink from the glass. “Just thought about Paulie, that’s all.”

The girl continued to watch him.

“Diwa, you should probably finish that in your room,” Mr. Hoffer said, turning to her. She closed her notebook and held it to her chest as she slid down from her seat. Padding towards the staircase, she gave Gabriel one last lingering look before resting her hand on the banister and marching upstairs.

“We try to be open with her, but only when she’s ready,” Mr. Hoffer said. He gestured towards the living room sofa, where Gabriel took a seat.

“I’m sorry for imposing myself on you, and at such a confusing time.”

“No, it’s no problem at all. In fact, we were hoping that you would drop by sometime,” he said, sitting at a respectable distance from Gabriel. “These are interesting times, after all. We thought it would be easier for you to be open with us, now that Marcos is finally gone.”

As the old man fixed his eyes on him, he could feel the urge, yet again, to relieve himself of an old, burdensome secret. But the words for whatever it was he wanted to tell Mr. Hoffer slipped from his mind’s grip. It had been so long ago, and the sins he had committed in this house now slipped, inchoate, into the dense blur of memory. Only the urge to confess remained.

“My brother is staying with me, right now,” he found himself saying, filling the space allotted for his confession with something else.

“And how’s that going?”

“It’s been strange, living under the same roof after not having seen each other for so long. But we’re trying.”

“Were you speaking to him while he was in jail?”

Gabriel shook his head. “No sir, not at all.”

“This has probably been tough for you.”

“You’ve said it. It was just too hard for me, to visit him in jail. We’ve mostly let my mom do the visiting for us.”

“There have been times when I wanted to visit him in jail myself. To ask him about Paulette, and what happened in those mountains long ago.”

“I heard she died in an ambush,” Gabriel said, wondering if his sudden visit had given Mr. Hoffer the chance to make a confession of his own.

Mr. Hoffer sighed, then leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees as he fixed his eyes on Gabriel. “Paulie’s death was so suspicious for us. Paulie didn’t even want to go back to the NPA. She wanted to stay on and take care of Diwa. But some people came to take her away one night. We wanted her to stay, but she went with them. I think it was to protect us, in case they retaliated.” Mr. Hoffer smoothed his palms on his knees and shook his head. “They said they were her comrades, but God knows if they were PCs or spies posing as comrades. She had to go with them, maybe because she was married to your brother, and she had to honor their marriage vows. And then a few months later, she was dead, and they couldn’t even produce her body.”

“And then he surrendered himself to the authorities,” Gabriel said, remembering his own shock when he had received the news. He had just begun his senior year in high school, and he had come home one afternoon to find his mother getting ready to take the evening trip to Manila. “Your brother’s back,” she said, slipping some of Carlos’s clothes inside her open suitcase. Just when he had stopped hoping for his brother’s return, it finally happened, and he didn’t know how to feel about its suddenness. A part of him wished that his brother had never come back.

“Would you know why he surrendered?” Mr. Hoffer asked, his voice bearing the faint hint of accusation.

“I don’t know, sir. I just assumed that he got sick fighting in the hills and wanted to come back.” Back then, although Paulette’s death and Carlos’s surrender were two separate events, to Gabriel they felt like puzzle pieces, waiting to be fitted back together to form a picture that made sense.

Mr. Hoffer’s eyes softened. “Throughout these years, I’ve contemplated talking to your brother. Wondered what he was like, whether he was like you. Because he loved my daughter, didn’t he? He had a child with her, and knew a part of her that Irene and I never got to see.” He stared into space, opened his mouth, and quickly closed it. He sighed, and finally said, “I wondered if it was best to see him, to find out from him how exactly she died and why we didn’t have a body. But I didn’t have that strength to hear the details. Neither I nor Irene had that. Irene was so heartbroken. I didn’t want to subject her to that pain anymore.”

“You didn’t have a body to bury,” Gabriel said.

“But we aren’t the only parents who have lost a child to the dictatorship, who do not have a body to bury. I’m just glad Marcos is gone. He murdered our daughter, at least that’s how I feel.” He nodded and sighed.

“Your mother wants your brother to see Diwata, actually. And we have nothing against them meeting—in fact, it would be good for Diwa, to have a father. The problem is that your brother seems unwilling to see her. Which confuses us, because he was the one who told her all about Diwa,” Mr. Hoffer said, casting his eyes around the room. “I remember her coming here around the time Diwa had just turned three. Paulette had told us that Judge Arguelles’s son was the father right after she gave birth to Diwa, but we were too afraid of approaching your family back then, because Carlos was such a famous defector and we couldn’t just make it known to the world that our daughter had carried his child.” He pursed his lips, and shook his head in regret. “When your mother came to visit Diwa, three years later, we weren’t sure if we were ready to allow Carlos into our granddaughter’s life. We were still angry with him because our daughter was dead.” He raised his eyes to the sky, blinking away tears. “We all thought he wanted to be involved in his daughter’s life, through your mother, of course. And we didn’t like it at all, but he was Diwa’s father, and your mother was her grandmother, and we didn’t have the right to keep the child from them. It was only later that we found out from your mother that he wanted nothing to do with Diwa, and that she came to visit Diwa on her own.”

Gabriel hadn’t noticed that the family maid was still in the kitchen, until a sharp whistle interrupted the uncomfortable silence that followed their friendly, but uneasy conversation. Without turning his head, he listened to the maid switch off the range and take a kettle off from the stove. He heard the hissing sound of boiling water as it hit the bottom of a ceramic cup, and the sharp ping of an oven toaster, heralding the sweet, comforting aroma of heated pastries. This woman wasn’t Manang Rosing. This woman was shorter, for one thing, and her movements were brisker.

“So Manang Rosing’s gone,” Gabriel asked, gesturing with a flick of the head towards the kitchen.

“Oh, this is Marta,” Mr. Hoffer said, sighing as this maid, who greeted them in a bright, girlish voice, set a tray of tea of pastries before them, crinkling her eyes as Mr. Hoffer nodded at her in thanks.

Gabriel spooned sugar into his teacup and asked, “So Manang Rosing’s retired?”

“Well, sort of. She was quite old when we let her go.” Lifting an eyebrow, Mr. Hoffer said, “Actually, it was your Tita Irene’s idea.”

“What happened?” Gabriel asked, before picking up his cup and blowing into his tea. “Was she too old?”

“She was still perfectly capable of accomplishing her tasks, if you ask me. You know how these peasants are, their bodies are built for hard labor. Manang Rosing was old, but was fit as an ox, and very capable,” Mr. Hoffer said, before picking up a sugared ensaymada and munching on it, his eyes darkening in thought. “It’s quite hard to explain why we decided to let her go, and I think it was still unjust that we did it. But this was shortly after Paulette died, and we didn’t know what to think.”

“You thought Manang Rosing was a spy?”

“For all we know, she could have been. But who knows, maybe it was just our grief that took over us when we handled the situation. Irene and I were looking for someone to blame. Maybe that was Manang Rosing. Or maybe she was just a convenient scapegoat.”

Gabriel’s cup of tea felt heavy in his hand, and he put it down on its saucer, staring at its dark surface as a sudden faintness washed over him. He could hear Ricky, his youth mentor at the Kabataang Barangay Center years ago, tell him, on a quiet, sunny afternoon, You’re doing the right thing. He wouldn’t have said anything about Paulette if it weren’t for Ricky’s urgings, if Ricky had never said at their lectures that the communists were everywhere, listening in on them, waiting for the right moment to sabotage Marcos’s democratic revolution. He had only wanted to prove his loyalty to Ricky the day he talked about Sam’s sister, hoping, somehow, that if he was wrong about Paulette, she had nothing to fear. 

“So you think Manang Rosing had anything to do with it?”

“We just blamed the wrong person,” Mr. Hoffer said, wiping his mouth and giving Gabriel a sympathetic, but knowing look, which made Gabriel suspect that Mr. Hoffer hadn’t completely let him off the hook. “Of course we blamed the government, Marcos, this goddamn dictatorship that took our daughter away from us, that took the children of our friends away from them. But how do you take revenge on this force that’s just bigger than you? So we started looking for someone to blame.”

“And you didn’t suspect me?” he blurted out, his laughter weak and unsettled.

“It was wrong of us to blame anyone,” Mr. Hoffer said, taking in Gabriel’s question with a calm, but reprimanding look. “Those were strange times, and good people made mistakes. Who knows if any of us, even Sam, blurted out his sister’s membership with the NPA while with a friend. Or just said something that planted a seed of suspicion in someone’s head. It could’ve been any of us, but it makes no difference who it was. As long as Marcos was going after our children for standing up to him, nothing would stop him from killing them.”

“You’re being very kind,” Gabriel said, knowing, at this point, that it would do more harm than good for Mr. Hoffer to know what he had told Ricky that day, at the center. The old man found solace in the conclusions he had drawn, and Gabriel was in no place to disrupt his hard-earned peace.

“Paulette loved your brother, till the very end,” Mr. Hoffer said. “It’s why she went with those people when they asked her to come with them. She was torn between us and him, and she chose him.”

“If not for him, she would have stayed.”

“Precisely.”

He could picture her stepping forth from her house, into the arms of these strangers. What was she thinking, as she followed them down the street and into the night? Was she merely obeying her husband, even as she wished to stay with her child?

“It’s all part of the past now. As I said, if there’s anyone who should be blamed for Paulette’s death, it’s no one else but Marcos and the military. That’s how I’ve forgiven your brother. Carlos and Paulette wanted to fight this dictatorship. They faced the dictatorship’s bullets. Both of them were braver than I could ever have been.”

“They were braver than any of us,” Gabriel said, before he finished his tepid cup of tea.

 scarce adjusted in the tomb

mike karpa

Natalie’s hand squeezes mine under the desk when Daphne’s T.A. announces he is taking over Precursors of Modern American Poetry. And why. Grief counseling sessions will, of course, be available. I want to pull away, but I can see Natalie is on edge, so I squeeze back.

The T.A. flips his red hair out of his face and scratches the revised course schedule on the board. I find it hard to stay in my seat. I hate Daphne; the word had no meaning in my life till now.

The T.A. struggles through a lecture that is mostly throat clearing, ums, and one wiping of his eyes that makes me look away. He sucks in a breath, holds it for an ungodly amount of time, and dismisses us twenty minutes early. Natalie walks out to the Quad with me, takes my arm and leans on me as we walk. Natalie and I have been an item for six weeks. Item. What a stupid euphemism. Fucked. We fucked for the first time six weeks ago. Funny how that makes me angry now. Funny how long it can take to catch on to the obvious, like how relationships are only about sex, like how helping someone makes them resent you. It's late April and the cherry trees are in full bloom, giant pink dandelions whose fallen blossoms form mock shadows on yellowy grass not yet recovered from winter. I feel if I blew hard enough, all the petals would float away.

“I'm so sorry, Greg. I know you liked her class.”

“Did I? Did I in fact give a damn?”

She jerks her arm away as though scalded, pivots, and takes off down the concrete path in the other direction.

“Natalie!” I yell. “Come back.” I don’t want her to, but this is what I am supposed to do: have a girlfriend, want her to come back.

She keeps walking. I look at the sky—blue, a few stringy white clouds—and scream wordlessly at it.

She stops around the curve to Berger Hall, facing away from me. I’m supposed to run across the grass to her. It’s the last thing I want to do, but I do it; I catch up, stare at the soft stray hairs on the back of her neck and attempt to summon feelings that aren’t there. I put my hands on the back of her upper arms, half surprised it is OK for me to touch her, half resentful I’m required to.

She turns toward me, teary eyed. I wonder how she’ll play this. She always has a wounding comment ready if she needs to remind you she’s from “the fucking Bronx,” and God help you if you ever mistake that for Brooklyn, which I have done.

“Don't yell at me,” she bleats. She’s not someone who bleats. It’s her teacher who died, too, I remind myself; she wants to be comforted.

“You don’t even like me.” Her lower lip actually trembles. She’s crying now. Jesus, who is this person?

“I do, I swear. I'm sorry.” I feel like someone is writing my lines.

“Let's go over to my house,” she says. “I've got goat cheese and kalamata olives. We can have lunch.” Her hair is the same black as Daphne's but thick and assertive where Daphne’s was fine and limp, unable to resist gravity. In my mind I see Daphne’s hair slip forward as her head moves toward me.

I shudder. “No.” I gasp it; a tone of repugnance seeps out. I know I’ve blown it before the word escapes my lips.

Natalie squirms out of my grasp.

I'm choking on air, blinking, not seeing. But some part of me does notice Natalie speed past the weathered copper domes of Berger and is glad. I want to be alone.

As soon as Natalie left my room this morning for her eight A.M., I high-tailed it across town to check on Daphne. A police car was parked out front of Daphne’s house. I thought of turning back, but all I could think was, Why aren’t the lights flashing? I stared up the steps to her porch, at the gleaming dark oak and beveled glass panels of the front door, which was open a few inches. Into a crackling walkie-talkie a man said, “Yes, medium-caliber gunshot to the temple. Self-inflicted.” He was loud.

A policewoman opened the door wider and peered at me. Her relaxed hair looked stiff, styled into something altogether different from what it wanted to be. She seemed barely older than me.

“Can I help you?” She was very dark, but nonetheless ashen, as though seeing Daphne had made her re-consider her line of work.

“I wanted—was going to drop off a, a late paper.” Best to pretend I hadn’t heard the walkie-talkie.

“Yeah, hang on to that paper,” she said.

I nodded.

Someone called to her from inside, and when she turned, I took off for our now teacher-less poetry class because I thought I should be there for Natalie.

Ha.

I drop my books on a booth table in the basement snack bar of the Student Union, buy coffee and a bagel with cream cheese, and hope someone I know will show up. I guess I don’t want to be alone after all—I just don’t want to be with Natalie.

I spread the cream cheese in little cresting waves that look like a frozen ocean. I knew Daphne was going to kill herself. She told me. Not in coy metaphors of kindly stopping her own carriage. She said, “I am going to kill myself.” And I told no one.

I drink the coffee and tear the cup into Styrofoam bits till it looks like I emptied a box of breath mints onto the table. A cook clacks his metal flipper on the griddle; I smell French toast. Daylight streams in from stubby ground-level windows that rim the ceiling. The room is painted yellow and well lit. It’s cheered me up many a time, but its magic has no power today.

Ginny comes in and sits at her usual table. Our usual table. I’ve known Ginny since we were freshmen. We have been platonic friends from the get-go, which Natalie says isn’t a thing. I do not understand why she thinks it’s impossible.

“I just saw her,” Ginny says, “frowning at the sidewalk.”

Her. Natalie.

The collar of Ginny's light blue sweatshirt is stretched and loose because she chews and tugs on it. She pulls her long blond hair out from her sweatshirt, where she keeps it contained.  “You two are such opposites.”

Everyone here says so. I’m always a lap behind, friendly, obliging, aimless; Natalie burns with purpose. Natalie is half Inuit, half not, and spent her early, pre-Bronx years in the Alaska bush, much as I spent mine in Asia and the Middle East. Not having to explain nostalgia for a lost home is what initially drew us together. After she graduates, she is going to her father’s town in the bush to make sure Inuit kids get good educations. Every class she takes—early childhood development, ethnomusicology, curriculum design—fits into her plan. She is studying how to become herself. Me, I just want to blend in so I can fail upwardly with the rest of the friends I’ve made here—folks who have advised me on how to present myself in class, which classes to take to get into this thing I’d never considered called “graduate school”, which unintentionally hilarious Texas turns of phrase to avoid. I admire these folks, who know which Vermeers hang in the Frick and which in the Whitney. (Trick question—the Whitney has none.) Blending in takes all day every day to pull off. It is my true major.

“You had Burton, right?” Ginny moves her collar to her teeth.

I nod. Daphne Burton. “Just came from there.”

I blow into the pile of Styrofoam bits and they fly up. A single chunk gets tangled in Ginny's hair, but she doesn't notice. I spent last fall break with Ginny and her dad—then newly un-estranged—at his apartment in Manhattan. (My parents were and are working in the Persian Gulf, which I have learned not to call “Arabian”.) She hinted I should treat her dad with the same wariness she did, in case her nascent forgiveness of an unmentionable betrayal was withdrawn, but I liked her dad a lot. She raised an eyebrow, but forgave me.

She looks at the clock on the wall. “Modern British Litrahchah at one.” She stands up, mustering proper British aplomb. “Well, glad you’re OK.”

“Wait.” I pull the chunk of Styrofoam from her hair. She pretends to bat my hand away and then leaves. I herd the scattered chunks back into a pile. She never ordered anything.

And for the record, I never said I was OK.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Daphne at her office in the Humanities Building for almost the last time. I sat in her armless, red-leather “student” chair. Daphne squatted on the stepstool near my feet. She had locked the door. “I need you to know something, but you have to promise you’ll tell no one.” She placed her head onto my lap.

“I promise.”

She sat up and shrugged kinks from her back, moving her spine through concave and convex, concluding with a rotation of her neck. “I'm old enough to know my life won't get any better so I'm going to end it.” She said it like it was an insight gained from a careful reading of Emily Dickinson. “I’m going to kill myself.”

I tilted the chair back, my feet pushing on the carpet. “I'll tell.”

“I’ll deny everything and do it somewhere else.”

My heartbeat accelerated. She reached to the desktop for her entirely illegal pack of cigarettes, pulled two out and handed me one.

I waved my cigarette at her. “These things’ll kill you.”

She didn’t laugh.

Now I was scared. I guess it showed.

“I just don’t want you to be surprised. I promise to wait until after you graduate. I owe you that much.”

“It'll get better. You've said that yourself. Lots of people feel that way.”

“Yes, but unlike them, I’m not a coward.”

So she was brave. I was the coward. Of course I should have told.

I'm half asleep. Cold air sucks up under the covers. I press against the wall, heart pounding. The beat-up old house I live in is infested with rodents, but the force of the intruding blast tells me it’s no mouse. It’s Natalie. One of my housemates has let her in, and she's managed to get in my room and shed all her clothing without waking me.

She snuggles against my back, warm and comforting. She’s forgiven me and I can't remember for what.

It's getting light outside. Green leaves scratch the bedside windows of my second-floor room.

“That wasn’t about kalamata olives yesterday,” she says.

“No, it wasn’t,” I mumble into the pillow.

“So what was it about?”                                                  

I squeeze my eyes shut. I killed my friend. That’s what it’s about. I shake my head, no. That’s wrong. I had a bit part in Daphne’s drama. She killed herself. She did that. I open my eyes and stare at the wall. I could have delayed her, but I don’t know that I could have stopped her. Shit, maybe all I had to do was delay her. But it was her decision to make, wasn’t it? I can’t believe I won’t see her again. She shouldn’t be dead.

“Talk to me,” Natalie says.

Natalie will despise me if I tell her about Daphne, and rightly so.

“Is it Ginny?”

“Is what Ginny?”

“Never mind,” she says. “That was stupid.”

I’m not sure if I’m breathing. I should say something; anything, almost, would do.

“I know how you get,” she says.

I’m not sure what she means, though I know it’s why she gets angry. I often feel like I almost understand what’s wrong with me but can’t catch up with the thought. Perhaps it’s that I don’t give her what she wants. Perhaps it’s that I don’t know what she wants. This is a question for which my wise friends have no answer.

She snuggles closer. I should want to be here. We’ve had a loss. I turn toward her and put my hand over her shoulder. She tries to put hers around my rib cage but our elbows knock hard.  She jerks away, but now my arm is on her long hair so she can't move her head, though she tries anyway.

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.”

I pull my hand away. She snuggles to my hairless, skeletal chest. I’m not much to look at, but I have a cock so I guess I will do. She places a hand over my nipple. I feel shocked to be touched, feel a stab in my gut as she lays her hand upon my belly. She’s kissing me; it’s seven in the morning, and my single bed is writhing with skin. I do my duty. In spite of all our elbows and knees, sex happens.

“I couldn't get to sleep,” Natalie says, after.

I tie the end of the condom in a little knot, a recent skill.

She squirms. “I thought you would never speak to me again.” Her words pop with vocal fry.

She's between me and the wastebasket so I tuck the condom under the bed. “I need to be better,” I say. I’ve learned so much more from my peers than my teachers—I’m in awe of them—but I have so far to go. What comes naturally to them does not to me. I don’t think this is a matter of perspective; I think it’s the God’s honest truth. “I need to be better.”

“You don’t. Just don’t make me do Natalie’s so strong. I need someone to know who I am.”

She grabs my other arm and pulls up against me. Her breathing deepens. She appears to fall asleep, hands locked on my upper arm. I wonder if she was up all night. It happens. I'm lying flat on my back and have to pee. I can see right up her nostrils. I've never seen her fall asleep before. I’ve certainly never looked up her nose. Or anyone’s. Are they all the same? Her nostril hairs spiraling inward weave a cone that should gross me out, but doesn’t. I don’t want to wake her now that she’s reached precious sleep, but I really have to go. I begin to push her fingers off my arm but she stirs. I lie back, wedged between her and the wall. I can hang on a while longer, I decide.

Professor Burton, as I called her then, sat at her desk, back to the tall window, the first time I came to her office. From the student chair I scanned the floor-to-ceiling bookcase on the far wall of the narrow room. Sunlight reflected off the snow outside, blinding me. Two white pillars partially obscured the view, part of an ornamental concrete grillwork that creates a second skin over the Humanities Building, a cage over a box. We are safe, here, in our small college. Daphne rocked in her chair, a blot in the sunshine. I couldn't focus on her or the bright concrete bars for more than a few seconds at a time.

“I liked your comments on Dickinson today.”

“I thought so.”

Her eyes widened. I must have sounded like a little snot.

“Um, I mean, well, you did seem—you seemed so interested. You leaned forward. I'm not saying this right.” I shivered.

She laughed, a single dry ha. “Emily is someone my husband and I shared back when I was young, if you can believe I was ever young.”

Based on her diplomas, I put her a couple years shy of forty. Young enough.

She leaned back in her chair. I leaned back in mine. I couldn't remember an adult ever confiding in me and was flattered.

She swiveled so the sun shone on her profile. Her nose was short and her skin pale, making her fine straight hair look even darker. She stared out the window. I heard nothing from the corridor outside.

“I heard a Fly buzz — when I died — / The Stillness in the Room,” I quoted.

She laughed, this time a raucous cackle. She smiled, a nice smile, her canines a bit forward from the other teeth. “Sorry, my mind wanders. Do you like it here?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I loved it, in fact. I’d never been in one place so long. Here, I hadn’t been the new kid; instead, we’d all started together. Now, nearly three years later, I had friends.

I caught her eyes and we stared at each other. I didn't turn away. Neither did she.

“I'm happy,” I said.

She laughed again, this time her voice lowered to a pleasant burr. “I'm sure you are.”

Natalie turns over. It’s strange to sleep next to another person. Sometimes her breathing keeps me awake—I worry there’s not enough air—while other times it’s comforting, and I fall asleep holding her, feeling safe, as though the pulse of her heart helps mine pump too.

The urge to pee physically hurts. I scooch up against the headboard. My chest is cold. My knees knock together, even though they're under the covers. I can stand it no longer.

Natalie opens her eyes. “You getting up?”

I put on t-shirt and boxers. “Be right back.”

I sit in the front room waiting for an unknown housemate to finish up in the bathroom—probably Mesut, an early riser and art history major—and hear Daphne breathing in my ear. They should arrest me. But there's no law against being cruel and stupid and scared.

Finally, sweet baby Jesus, Mesut emerges. Droplets cling to his bare, athletic torso as he brushes past me. I pee, shave, and wash my hair, which feels like it has bugs crawling through it, each one a little Natalie Natalie Natalie eating into my brain. Shampoo trickles into my eyes and I wince, but the sting fails to distract me. I think of Daphne, swiveling back and forth in her chair, months ago, as she listened to an interpretation of a poem I was trying out for a paper.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Daphne asked.

Natalie had invited me over for dinner several times, but I’d made excuses. She’d finally asked me if I was gay. I’d laughed, deflecting, but was going to have to say something eventually.

“No,” I told Daphne, “I do not have a girlfriend.” I’d never had a girlfriend.

Daphne smiled. She looked good, dressed in a white turtleneck with a short, smart haircut. She could look meek if she didn’t pay attention; instead, she looked intellectual. Her breasts were too large for her frame. Not the breasts of an English professor, I thought. I felt like she, too, was about to ask me over for dinner. But that was ludicrous.

She lit a cigarette, despite the ban. “I hate it here. I’m turning into someone who talks too much, and I don’t even care.”

“I like it when you talk.”

“There might be something you can help me with. Do you smoke?” she asked.

I nodded. It was a longstanding vice I tried to hide, feeling it played into everyone’s view of me as gregarious hick—I pretend to be from my Mom’s home state of Texas to simplify my story—but I took the cigarette she offered. I waited to hear what it was I could help her with. She puffed, and in the silence I wondered what she had against our manageable little town.

“Is it too isolated for you? Here, I mean.” We are out in the cornfields, and the only way into town for those without cars is the once-a-day airport shuttle at the Lodge, our one hotel.

“No,” she said. “Too many people.”

Natalie is asleep when I step back into the bedroom. I tried to break up with her last week, but she said our communication was improving so much she refused to give up. Well, alrighty then. I dress quietly and slink off to the snack bar.

Ginny waves at me from our usual table as I push through the double swinging doors. Thank God Natalie isn’t here to see this.

“Where's your love object?”

“At my house,” I say coolly, as though quite accustomed to leaving a woman sleeping naked in my room. “I’m afraid of her.”

A backpack slams onto the floor at the end of the table and I jump.

“Natalie!” Coffee spills over the table toward Ginny. It's been ten minutes since I left the house. Natalie had to have run after me.

Ginny tweezes napkins from the table-top dispenser, and we push them in circles over the table.

I scoot over and Natalie sits down beside me. “Hi,” she says, to us both.

Ginny’s lips twitch a smile in response as she heaps soggy brown napkins at the table’s center. Natalie doesn't seem mad. She must not have heard what I said. In my mind, tendrils of smoke curl around Daphne’s face.

“Why did she do it?” I say this out loud.

“It must have been something organic, because she's atypical,” Natalie says without missing a beat. Natalie's a psych major. “Most successful suicides her age are men.”

“The gun was a shock,” Ginny says. “She didn’t seem depressed. At all.”

Natalie shakes her head slowly. “Didn’t see it coming,” she says, as though three years of abnormal psych classes should have enabled her to predict it.

Then nothing. Neither says anything. No flies buzz.

The stillness in the room.

I start to imagine Daphne doing it, sitting on her brown couch. Click, click, bang.

“She liked you,” Natalie says. “I mean, she liked everyone, but you were her favorite.”

The world closes in on me. The lights grow dim; Natalie and Ginny recede. My hold on consciousness feels weak. After this morning’s seminar, I have no more classes, no appointments, and no papers—just endless reading, eight hours of daylight, and the specter of comforting teary Natalie while really thinking, What the fuck do you have to cry over?

Ginny presses her hand down on her jeans and brings it back, palm up, to show us. It's wet.

“You're soaked! I'll get you some paper towels.” Natalie heads to the bathroom.

When Natalie's out of sight I stand up. “Tell Natalie I'm coming right back.”

“But you're not, are you?”

“I am. I might. I don't know. I do have seminar. Can you tell her something to make her happy?”

Ginny makes the face of Munch’s Scream.

It was still winter, barely. Yellow light from Daphne's living-room lamps sparkled back to us from her icy eaves. We'd been sitting on her couch for hours talking. She’d asked me to help her organize sources for a monograph a publisher was hounding her to write. She’d been putting off the groundwork for months. It went so quickly once we got started I felt sad when I thought of her avoiding it for so long.

She made us a very late dinner. She asked me about myself. I told her my real story: We’d lived on one construction site after another, punctuated by trips to South Texas. Daphne latched onto this as me being from Texas—because people have to be from somewhere, right?—and I realized we were bonding. She told me about growing up in Atlanta, her profound culture shock at Smith College, training away her accent, meeting her husband Bill in grad school. She told me so much about Bill I was surprised first to learn that they were divorced, then later that they had divorced eight years ago. She confided she took rejections hard and kissed me, full on the lips. Oh, fuck, I thought.

I closed my eyes and felt her lips soft on mine. Her hand moved over my thigh. My muscles seized, sharp with pain, but I was able to hide it. I did not want to lose her friendship. Her hand moved onto my crotch. I took a deep, deep breath and let my mind go blank. She seemed to take this as arousal and began to moan. I went elsewhere, let some other part of me respond. She unzipped my pants and pulled out an incipient erection through the fly of my underwear. I opened my eyes and stared at it. It looked like part of someone else. She wrapped her hand around it.

She groaned and released me. She shook her head rapidly, almost a tremor. “I can't do this.” She lit a cigarette and held it toward me, an offering. “Lordy.”

I looked at the burning cigarette, then at her. Her eyes had returned to my crotch. I willed my erection to go down, but now that I was exposed it performed without me. She rolled her eyes at me, as though I was trying to get her to do something. I tried to zip up, but the tangle of underwear and jeans conspired against me. This was all happening to someone else, but I was tied to him and couldn’t get away. She puffed on the offered cigarette in my stead, making it glow. I took the cigarette and sucked in a drag. My lungs burned like the insides of a car engine, and my problem subsided enough for me to tuck myself back in my boxers and zip my pants.

She patted my hand. “It's the meds. They warned me to watch out for hypersexual behavior.”

I picked at the flowered cushions littering her couch, alert for clues about what I should do next, how not to be wrong.

“I didn't mean that the way it sounds,” she said. “You're very sweet, really sweet. But I shouldn't be doing this. These drugs make me feel I can do anything. Bill would have loved this. He would have loved you. You look like him, you know.”

This made me queasy.

“I could never explain anything to him. A Ph.D. in English and I can't say how I feel.”

I gave a flick of the eyebrows. Finally, something I actually knew about.

“You know the last thing I said to him?” She put a cushion behind her back. “I cannot live with you,” she recited. “It would be life, / And life is over there / Behind the shelf.”

Wow, I thought. How can she remember something perfect for the moment off the top of her head? She was so smart.

“Can you believe what an idiot I am?” She rasped it out, the words seeming to gouge her throat.

I shook my head dumbly. The yellow knot of yarn I had been tugging at snapped back into place.

“I can't stand to even think about it.” She pulled a rust-colored throw to her chin. Only her head was showing. “I'm going off my medication,” she said, “for your sake. This should never have happened. Some people are meant to be depressed.”

My mouth opened and closed. Before college, I’d probably have said You’ll be OK, or It’s OK. But it wasn’t OK, not hardly, no how. The next day I called Natalie, went to her house, and accepted her invitation to dinner and her room and spent my first night in a woman’s bed, beginning the relationship I was supposed to be in—my ticket to that lifetime of upward fails.

It's night and college is over for me, that’s clear. I board the airport van at the Lodge and in ten minutes we're driving the Interstate. The driver stops at the passenger-unloading zone outside the terminal. Of course, I have hardly any money. I'm twenty-one and broke and don't know what I'm doing at the airport. My parents have another eight months to go on their contract—double-wide living in the Saudi desert—so there’s no home to go to. It occurs to me the airport is home. I call Ginny.

“Ginny, I'm at the airport. I'm taking off.”

“What?” She sounds dead, like I’ve woken her up from a deep, deep sleep.

“Look, can I stay with your father in New York?”

“OK,” she croaks.

I write a check I can’t cover for an exorbitant ticket. “Cute,” the woman at the counter says as she hands it back. She stares at me till I move away. I hit myself in the forehead with the base of my hand until she stares again from across the lobby. I step outside to the sidewalk. I have two cigarettes in my jacket pocket. Without someone to smoke them with, they’re just clutter—or so I tell myself, but when I discover I have three, not two, my joy is inordinate. I have become an addict without noticing. I light one.

I wake in the middle of the night, asleep on a bench, back inside the airport. I am the only one here. Barely warmed air blowing through ventilation is the only sound.

The last time I saw Daphne was in her office. She squinted, crow’s feet deep, even though I was the one facing the sun. “I don't blame you if you're angry about that night. I'm angry too. But the worst of it is, part of me wishes I hadn’t stopped.”

I turned my face to the door. “I won't tell.” I wasn’t sure if I meant about that night or about her threat of suicide.

“I feel empty inside, Greg, and it’s not stillness.”

“Go back on medication.”

“I’ve tried them all.”

“Maybe you don't want me to come see you anymore,” I said.

“No, I do. You have no idea. But you can’t. For your sake, not mine.” She leaned back in her chair and faced the sunshine. “But, most, like Chaos — Stopless — cool — / Without a Chance, or Spar — / Or even a Report of Land — / To Justify Despair.”

“I can be your report of land.”

She banged her fist on the desk, rattling the illicit crystal ashtray. “To justify despair?” She looked at me, maybe angry, maybe contemptuous, I couldn’t tell. Maybe she couldn’t either.

“You could stop reading Emily.”

She whispered, “Go.”

I writhe on the cushioned airport bench. I look at my phone: three A.M. I imagine the buzz of Natalie’s phone. I could tell her everything, whine that I’m bad for her as she pleads that I can improve. Everyone needs a home, she’ll say, the implication being of course that she, that this college, this world, is that home.

She isn’t. It isn’t.

I don’t want to be taught, I don’t want to be touched, I don’t want to belong. I see now failing upward was never in the cards, no matter how much I pretended, and I’ve already left that manageable town to its admirable people and their useless wisdom.

The ventilation heaves its unending mechanical sigh. Everyone there, and all their fucking New York boroughs, I hate them. Daphne pretended, she made it, and they killed her, they took her, everyone there. But me, they’ve given something. For now I know: I am not, will not, cannot, ever be one of them, and this, this fleeing, is my graduation.

 maggie upstairs

jocelyn royalty

We have a lot of rain in April. The sky hisses like an open mouth, long tongue lapping across all of New Orleans, down rows of shotgun houses and side streets that become canals, through flooded squares that seep and squish. In the year I lived below Maggie, I watched her wade into Brechtel Park, mud caking her shins, and smile wildly up at the sky.

“Grace!” she had shouted, so loud and wide that I caught a glimpse of her silver molar. Her voice caught on the diced-up wind, my name coming at me from all directions. “It’s raining!”

I was huddled in the entryway of Laura’s and my apartment with the dog, watching the storm come down in sheets. It slapped to the ground like the water I gathered in my hands when I showered, droplets pooling in the cup of my palms before crashing down onto porcelain.

“Sure is,” I called to her. She spun, near-balletic in the mushy ground—barefoot, I noticed with a shock—with clumps of waterlogged grass and roots tangled between her toes. She seemed satisfied by this acknowledgment. I watched her twirl away, arms outstretched and covered in strands of Spanish moss.

As soon as I stepped inside, Laura rushed towards me, tattered towel in hand, the kind we devoted only to wiping our feet and pets on. She caught the dog as he tried to wiggle away.

“Oh no you don’t,” she mumbled to him as she cocooned him in stained terry cloth, meticulously drying his ears, his paws, the stringy hair under his belly. “You were out for so long,” she said, and I said, “I was watching Maggie.” Laura sighed. Three months prior, Maggie had moved into the studio above us, and since then it had been a non-stop onslaught of strangeness and the smell of incense through the vents. She came downstairs often, sometimes to offer us her “signature” pralines, which were baked into lopsided shapes (I had once compared them to turds, resulting in hours of yelling on Maggie’s part, and a subsequent threat to “never bring baked goods again,” which was lifted a week later with a plate of doughy beignets). Other times, she wanted to dance, or to play her new viola, or to show off the opal ring that her grandmother had sent from Phoenix for her birthday.

“What’s she up to tonight?” Laura asked. She let the dog loose, and he bolted from her arms, nails clacking against the hardwood floors before skidding to a stop at the stairwell.

“Truly, Laura,” I said. “I have no idea.”

We sat together at the kitchen island for a while, and I pointed at Maggie’s outline through the window. She was just barely visible. She had given up her spinning in favor of sitting directly in the mud. I wanted to ask Laura the things I always asked her about Maggie, just to hear her say the answers: Do you think she’s crazy? Oh, without a doubt. Not anything really wrong, right? No, just quirky, I’m sure. Do you think she’ll move out soon? I can only hope. In a marriage, there is an amicable script written between two people, a rhythm that one falls lovingly into. Should we check on her? Oh no, I’m sure she’s fine.

A week later, Maggie wanted company. She wanted to sit on our new IKEA sofa and drink wine and watch Big Night, holding the dog in her lap while all of it was going on. She told us this as she stood at the threshold of our door, an empty glass clutched by the stem in her stocky fingers. Laura, who is a schoolteacher and therefore very patient with such out-of-the-blue demands, took Maggie in willingly, and we sat in front of the TV, Maggie cross legged and petting the dog’s snout, Laura and I stiffly in the corner, each of us with a shallow glass of sangria.

“Stanley Tucci is so hot,” Maggie said. Her face had a sort of odd lilt to it, one eye slanted upwards and the other down, like someone had cut out all of the features of a Picasso painting and tried to rearrange them back into a normal face. She had the wildest hair I’d ever seen: peach-colored and gnarled around the sides of her face. She was overgrown. I told this to Laura later that night, while we lay in bed and looked out at the city. She narrowed her eyes.

“Hey! That’s really mean.”

I said I was sorry. I was always saying the meanest things about Maggie without meaning it. That night, she downed her wine at the speed of light. She looked thankful. She suggested we put a record in the tan Victrola that I received from my grandmother’s estate, the one that hulked in the corner, untouched and used mostly as decoration. As a child, I had stared into the stereo of that record player, convinced that I saw a face: two bulbous eyes where the knobs were and the grinning, thousand-toothed mouth of the speaker. Looking at Maggie, I saw some resemblance between the two.

As Laura slotted a vinyl Buena Vista Social Club album into the player, Maggie began to cry. She swayed slightly to Chan Chan as she sobbed—she would tell me later, once she’d calmed down, that this was the most beautiful song she had ever heard. Her tears started suddenly, and Laura went to her in that kind way she has, draping a blanket around her shoulders. I stood back, cautious, the same way one might regard a magazine-wielding Jehovah’s Witness on the street. This was a very Maggie sort of thing, the bleeding of emotions quickly into their reciprocal: happy flooded into sad, angry into peaceful. Tonight, it was her ex, Jordan, and the cat that were making her weep.

“He took her,” she sobbed, the words exploding from her mouth in a whirlwind of tears and spit. “My Lucy. My little baby Lucy, my cat, he left me and he took her and he called me crazy and I don’t care that he left me, but I want my cat back, Laura.” 

Laura nodded wisely. Outside, for the first time in days, the rain had slowed slightly. It was as if Maggie had taken all of it for herself.

I think often, after Laura has fallen asleep and I am staring across the water at the neon-lit aquarium, of what I wish I’d done that night. On the biggest party days of the year, sometimes I feel as though I can hear whole conversations carrying across the water from the French Quarter—drunk girls consoling each other, saying, It will all be better. Let me look at you. I love you, stop crying. You will get better soon. I wish I had given Maggie my cardigan. Another glass of wine. I could have indulged her, asked who was hotter, Stanley Tucci or Tony Shalhoub? Instead, I backed into the kitchen while my wife held Maggie’s trembling shoulders against hers. I did anything else: filled the dog’s water bowl, scratched him behind his floppy ears. I cleaned out the fridge. I waited for her to leave.

We saw less and less of Maggie. I bumped into her once at the record shop while I had been taking the dog for a walk, and she shouted at me, waved me in.

“You won’t believe what I’ve found,” she told me while I double-knotted the leash to a nearby stop sign. I followed her inside.

The wood floors heaved under her boots, that same clunky leather pair that she was always wearing—I had noticed, lately, that her steps seemed heavier. I watched as she leafed through vinyl albums, clumsily picking past The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Bob Marley.

“Here it is,” she said. And there it was: an authentic 1996 Buena Vista Social Club album, Havana-printed, not like the knockoff that Laura and I had.

“I like the little man on the front,” she said, and then opened the cover.

The scent of old ink floated towards us, mildew mixed with saltwater and years of sun. I started to respond, but before I could her eyes glazed over and she looked past me, somewhere out towards the horizon. It was like watching ice cover the Gulf, that once-a-year phenomenon where still water crystallizes near the docks.

“Maggie,” I said. “Maggie.” I clapped my hands in front of her face. She continued to stare.

I took the album from her hands—I noticed they were tremoring slightly but brushed it off as an overabundance of Maggie-esque energy—closed the album and slotted it back in with the rest. I wasn’t scared, not exactly, but I contorted my face into the most worried expression I could conjure so that when she snapped out of it, she’d feel guilty for worrying me so much. I do the cruelest things without meaning to. Laura is always telling me. The dog yipped outside and that seemed to jolt Maggie back to life.

“Oh, Pablo!” she exclaimed.

She gathered the hem of her dress and rushed outside, crouching by him and petting his head. She did it too aggressively. I wanted to show her, take her hand by the wrist and guide it softly along the fur like instructing a toddler, but I was afraid. I realized this with a start: that I didn’t want to touch her.

“She won’t break, you know,” Laura told me that evening. We were on the balcony. She had a pile of papers in her lap, half of them graded in purple gel pen. The temperatures had swelled in the last week, and with them the humidity. It felt as though the whole world was pregnant with water.

“That was weird,” I said. “Was that weird? Should we be worried?”

“It’s a little weird,” Laura offered. “But that’s just Maggie, you know? And it’s been rough lately. This week would have been her anniversary with Jordan.”

I understood. She and Jordan had only been together a few months, but he was all she'd talked about. (“He's perfect, just perfect," she'd told me the night of their first date. "Such a gentleman. He wore the nicest cologne. It smelled like a campfire. ”)  We weren’t sure why they had broken up, only that one afternoon we had found Maggie sobbing in the stairwell, clutching a pen with the insignia of Jordan's law firm printed on the side. We speculated: maybe she was too clingy, or she had too much energy. Maybe Jordan had cheated. The most likely solution seemed to be, though, that Maggie was simply Maggie. She left little space for coexistence.

From the balcony, Laura and I watched trees rustle like muffled laughter. The light filtered through and for a moment Laura was dappled in it, all golden and camouflaged in the city. She was beautiful. I loved her. These were the things I knew.

The next time we spoke to Maggie was in July. She had taken an unexpected vacation—to Borneo, she’d said. For three weeks we went without seeing her. Secretly, we liked this. For three weeks there was no off-tempo tapping from above (recently she had purchased a flamenco board in hopes of becoming an alluring, red-rosed maiden) and no need to be on-the-spot therapists or confidants to anyone but each other. We made pralines, perfectly oblong. Outside, it was springtime and sugary. All of Algiers smelled of damp earth and saltwater.

And then she was back, Maggie in a long red-and-white polka dot dress, Maggie as loud and happy as before, but something was off.

“It’s like she’s hiding something,” I told Laura the night that she returned. Maggie had been glad to see us but vague about her vacation, mumbling something about the beach and skinny dipping. She rushed upstairs, and we heard no thump-thump of the flamenco board, only a nauseous silence. My hands felt tingly.

A week later, we heard a scream coming from the apartment above. Both of us took off running, up the stairs, down the hallway towards Maggie’s room. It had been her voice, I was sure. For a moment, my brain flashed with nightmares of Maggie abducted, hurt, in agony. She didn’t answer the door. Laura stooped down by the doormat and plucked an iron key from underneath (she would tell me, after weeks had passed, that Maggie had alerted her to its location in case Jordan ever returned with the cat when she wasn’t home and needed to be let in). Laura opened the door. Through the crack, we saw Maggie kneeling on the floor, mouth askew in a soundless wail. Laura rushed to her. Maggie kept touching her temple, saying nothing, and it was this way that we learned of her tumor: word by word over the course of an hour, lapses of sobbing in between.

Maggie’s apartment reeked. That was all I could think about. It was funny—for all the times she’d come to our place unannounced, she had never invited us up. I saw why. Piles of laundry rose like anthills all around, dirty dishes stacked in Tower of Pisa-like configurations in the sink. Only the flamenco board, polished and perfectly situated in the middle of the room, was clean.

When Maggie left for the hospital, the stink wafted down and into our place. I told Laura, “I swear, when she comes back, I’m going to clean top to bottom and show her how to do it, too.” Laura, who had been chopping onions too meticulously at the counter, put down her knife and lowered her head. She swayed back and forth. She said, “Grace,” and I said, “I’m right here,” and she said, “Grace,” and I said, “Laura,” and I grabbed her by the shoulders. It felt as though the whole building began to waver. We could have lifted clean out of the foundation, toppled into the ocean, if I hadn’t caught her.

“Grace,” she said,  “Oh my God, Grace,” and I knew what this meant.

The next week, we would see people we’d never met—family members, we assumed, maybe distant ones—filing upstairs and retreating with armfuls of Maggie’s things. Some of it they marked to be discarded: her mattress, oily from years of no bed frame, her DVDs of The Devil Wears Prada, Joe Gould’s Secret, Road to Perdition. Other things they marked as “repo” with a red sticker. The last thing to be carried out of her apartment was the flamenco board, still slick and smelling faintly of incense (“healing smoke,” Maggie used to call it—I remember this like swallowing a pill wrong).

We have a lot of rain in April. In our bedroom, I slowly open the blinds when I’m sure that Laura is asleep. She hates all of the light and the cold feeling of the glass. We get a lot of rain in April and right now it is April and raining, again, and last July, Brechtel Park was paved over to stop the mud from flooding. I think that someday soon Algiers will sink for real, and all of us with it, my wife and I, the dog, the plasticine modernism of our apartment complex. We could go unmissed by the mainland. It is so quiet upstairs. A boy moved in last month, a junior at Xavier. He is polite and perfect and smokes one of those new E-cigarettes. I hate him. I don’t know how much more rain this place can take. 

I wonder, heavily, if Maggie is missed by the mainland. Across the room, I can see the square shadow of a dusty album, authentic, 1994 Havana-made. I had gone back and bought it for her on a whim, weeks ago. I was keeping it for her birthday. This is a secret that my wife will never learn. It’s too kind of a thing for me to have done, too friendly.

I almost wake Laura, tell her that I feel like my hands and head are being unscrewed, that I am afraid I’ll float away, but before I can say anything I have already been filled with helium. I soar way up above our building, above New Orleans, above the cloud cover, past planes carrying passengers to Borneo, into the stratosphere, where I hear soft flamenco music and taste undercooked and over sweetened dough. Maggie, my Maggie; I want to think she is in heaven dancing with Secondo and Primo in a vast tiled kitchen. But Laura’s hand, half-asleep on my chest, pulls me down, light and piercing as a blade of grass. Downstairs, the dog yips, a sharp, grief-soaked noise that carries up to me and across the water. From somewhere distant, I swear I hear a faint meow in response. 

“It’s raining,” I say to my silent room, to the Buena Vista Social Club. Laura tosses slightly in her sleep. “It’s raining.”

 a brief murmuration

bill bruce

Mornings are always the same because no two are ever alike. Not even close. Given that waking thought, voila: your eyes open with the hushed anticipation of a stage curtain.

The orchestra tunes: a dusty ceiling fan takes its turns swaying and wobbling. The orchestra settles: ivory sheers breathe in and out on either side of the open window. The orchestra readies, poised: long shadows reach across the bedroom and climb the far wall where Lebron drives to the basket. Tap, tap, tap; on cue, all of life slowly rotates toward the sun.

You look out through the window beside your bed. A ladybug stubbornly crawls across the outside of the glass. Large kettledrums boom in perfect sync with each tiny step. You feel it so deeply it’s as if it’s your skin that’s stretched across the copper bowls. Your body vibrates. You smile. This never gets old.

The ladybug takes off. A feverish piccolo, tethered like an invisible cape to its oscillating wings, rises and falls as the little red dot slowly disappears into a just washed and cleaned sky after southern clouds thundered in last night, emptied themselves, and moved on.

Now, water drips from the leaky, clogged gutter and hits the wood sill with vibrant, splashy cymbal crashes in rhythmic succession. Your edges lose shape and blur just like a crash cymbal. So cool, you think. So cool.

You could lie here all day and just look and listen and feel excited, hopeful, and happy.

A bow draws evenly across a cello as the door opens slowly. The cello and the door stop at the same time. Your mom peeks in, sees that you’re awake. A soft pizzicato marks each step as she comes to the foot of the bed.

Her melody, her theme, penetrates your entire being. It changes, depending on her mood, but you soak up those notes like rain in a parched field. Today she sounds warm and optimistic, her philharmonic gradually rising like the sun outside your window.

Hey sweetie, how’d you sleep? she signs.

The music accompanies her hands, her every gesture, as if she’s politely inviting the notes to follow and not commanding them.

She leans her head to the side; her wheat hair falls across the valley of her cheek. Her green eyes sparkle. You sit up and smile at your mom in a way that makes her wonder what you see in her that she can’t see in herself.

Great, you sign. And I just saw a ladybug. So cool.

That’s nice, she signs, but doesn’t seem to fully share your excitement. You have a big day today.

You don’t see what she signs. Once again, you’re looking at her mouth, not her hands. She moves her lips when signing; they are vibrant, full of expression and emotion. They rise and fall, creating shapes that don’t have metaphors. It’s hard to look away.

In the past, she told you it’s just habit. Just verbalizing, she said. Her mouth saying the same thing as her hands. She apologized, said she knows it’s distracting and will try to stop. You quickly signed no, don’t. You like it. Because what mirrors her mouth, the shape of her lips, their rise and fall, are two sopranos. One male, the other female. Always a duet. Beautiful voices soaring in unison above the philharmonic. She’s both Pavarotti and Sutherland—expression and emotion in high C.

Today is no different. You can’t take your eyes off of her. You could listen to her all day. Though what she says isn’t always something you want to hear.

You have an appointment with Dr. Jacobs today, she signs.

That you see. I don’t want to go.

We’ve talked about this.

You talked about this.

He can help you, she signs.

I don’t need help. I’m fine.

I know you’re scared, but this is for the best.

Nothing’s wrong with me, you sign.

She begins to sign faster, which you know is a sign she’s getting frustrated. I’m not saying there is. I want to help you. I love you, and I want you to have a better life.

It’s good the way it is.

Trust me, she signs. You’ll be happier.

Please don’t make me.

Honey, I know what’s best for you.

How? But before she can respond you close your eyes, which means this conversation is over. She tugs at your big toe. You squeeze your eyes tighter. Your lips pucker, lose color. Your pulse throbs: boom, boom, boom.

You don’t hear her leave. Because without sight, there is no sound. There is silence, a quiet emptiness that extends forever. One that you alone control.

Truth be told, you were born tuned to a different station. You just don’t know it. Neither does anyone else. (How could they? Everyone just thinks you’re deaf, as simple as that.) You never talk about it. (Why would you? You just think it’s life, as natural as breathing.)

Since you took your first breath, music is attached, inextricably linked, to everything you see. The same way, you guess, scent is attached, inextricably linked, to everything that blooms. It’s just the way it is. Still, even after more than fifty-five-and-a-half million breaths you think, so cool. So cool.

A grey squirrel chases two others in the large maple rising outside of the kitchen window. Brass horns race up and down with them. Strings bend on bowing branches and instantly snap back in rhythm. Then you remember…life is in stereo. You close your right eye and the right channel silences. You alternate with your left, back and forth: slower, faster, slower. The balance shifts: side-to-side, right-to-left, splitting the world in half and back again. You could do this all day.

Years from now, you’ll sit at a different little table, closing your left eye and then your right, trying to recapture what it was like; wondering if it was ever more than a game. You’ll ask yourself, was it a way to appreciate what you had? Was it about asserting some semblance of power and control? Was it a way to recognize and understand different perspectives? But in the end, you’ll realize those questions are not the questions little boys ask. Back then, those questions were still single cell organisms that had yet to divide, multiply and grow. Back then, it was about something much deeper.

In a flash, the squirrels leap from a thin branch and soar in three part harmony. All forty pounds of you bounces, both eyes wide open and smiling. Here and now there are no cracks, no gaps, nothing missing. Here and now you are whole, in perfect balance. Here and now both eyes are wide open and smiling.

Your mom watches you. She cranes her neck to look where you are looking, wondering what could possibly be so mesmerizing. She sees a couple of squirrels in a tree, shrugs, turns back to an empty mixing bowl on the counter. It must be Tuesday.

She opens the fridge, grabs the milk and butter, cracks the eggs, beats the mixture, retrieves the pan and spatula, starts the flame, pours the batter, flips the pancakes, doing so many things at once, in such perfect rhythm—she’s a polyphony. She’s a symphony. She’s harmony. It never fails; she might as well have a halo, you’re in awe.

You sit at the table for two and swing your legs back and forth like pendulums. She puts a bowl of raspberries on the table and smiles—hoping to get one back. You don’t disappoint her.

You focus on a single raspberry you turn in your fingers. It’s quiet. But you know what it’s capable of. Much like a cymbal, it’s nothing without a little momentum and blunt force. Your legs slow and then sit still. You glance at your mom. Her hair was shorter then.

Two years ago, when you were four-and-a-half, there was a bowl like this on the table. While your mom went to the bathroom you picked a raspberry, just like the one you hold now. You sensed there was something inside that was confined, imprisoned. So you put the ripe little berry on the table and smacked it with the palm of your hand; your mind exploded. The sound rode like a rogue wave up your arm and crashed in a huge crescendo. It was magnificent, as if ten orchestras hit the same climactic note at once. So, of course, you did it again. And again and again and again. The harder you smacked, the more magnificent the sound. Then you started doing multiples: two, three, five. So cool, you thought. So cool.

You looked up and saw your mom, her hand covering a gaping mouth. A discordant tremolo of building and multiplying violins playing along. But she wasn’t looking at you. She was looking at the remains of three dozen raspberries splattered on the table and all over you. After a long moment, one in which it looked like her expression was changing channels—shock, anger, frustration, worry, sadness, concern—she finally looked at you, still on concern.

Why? she signed.

Didn’t you hear? You smiled.

What?

That sound.

Daniel.

Wasn’t it amazing?

Sweetie…

Her arms fell limp at her sides. She knew you couldn’t possibly mean that. It just wasn’t possible. Then the channels flicked backwards: concern to sad and finally, landing on a new one—pity. The initial joy drained from your face. She forced a smile and signed, Let’s make jam.

Today, you don’t want her to look at you like you’re broken so you just pop the raspberry into your mouth. And even though you can still hear the crescendo, it feels very far away.

She slides a heaping stack of pancakes in front of you. A long sustaining note holds till you look up and sign, Thanks Mom.

You’re welcome, sweetie.

You watch her clean the kitchen. The music flows and transitions with such ease and fluidity, so completely in sync with each and every movement, it’s hard to tell what’s following what. You may only be slightly taller than the kitchen counter, but you recognize there are life lessons here: the mundane should never be boring, what you decide to focus on determines your happiness, all of life exists in a single moment.

You will return to these simple truths again and again until, one day, you won’t remember where you left them.

She fills your favorite James Harden glass with milk and tells you, Eat before it gets cold.

She found the glass at a tag sale. Why only fifty cents? you asked her. Probably because he’s wearing an Oklahoma City Thunder uniform and not the Houston Rockets, she said. When you asked why would anyone trade James Harden, your mom said, like most things, there are two sides. And so you looked it up. The Thunder said it was a good opportunity, in the best interests of James Harden, and were sorry to see him go. Harden said he wanted to stay but communication broke down and, in the end, it was a business decision so his interests, or what was best for him, had nothing to do with it. Given how he dominates the league, you’re pretty sure OKC regrets their decision. But, like so many things, there’s no going back.

Your mom sits with you at the table; she doesn’t like you to ever eat alone. But you don’t eat. Not right away. You wait. Because while you’re always surprised by the music that accompanies her, you quietly ache for the sopranos. Cold pancakes are worth it. So you wait. Finally, she looks across the table and...cue the sopranos.

What’s the big idea, she signs. Don’t like my cooking?

Your face lights up. You feel the electricity, the pull, between the two voices. The way they weave in and around each other and become one. They’re perfect together. They belong together.

You cut into your pancakes; she looks at her phone. Your head sways gently to the music that flows from her. These are by far the best moments of the day. When it’s just the two of you.

He doesn’t ever visit. You don’t even remember him. Maybe that’s why you never missed not having a dad. Who, by the way, is also very far away. You last heard from him on your fifth birthday. It was a Snoopy card with five New Zealand dollars tucked inside. Now, anytime your mom goes on a date you wonder if she’s trying to fill that role. But you don’t want a new dad. She’s the best dad you could ever want.

Last summer, she organized a basketball league for deaf kids. She even coached. Which isn’t necessarily dad stuff, but all the other coaches were men and a lot less patient. There were times you didn’t catch the ball because you didn’t want to interrupt the melody soaring along with it. She didn’t know that, of course. Still, she didn’t get upset. She was encouraging. The other kids weren’t as kind. But you’d just smile as they shook their heads in disgust because the chords that would repeat on their heads moving back and forth was hilarious. Although, it was all high-fives once you realized how amazing the music sounded when the ball hit nothing but net. Suddenly, you were the star, and your mom was there, like always, with a fist bump and a soft kiss.

You shovel in a mouthful of pancake. She puts her phone down, watching you more closely than usual. Something is off. Her melody is repeating, unable to make a smooth transition. She’s conflicted, stuck on the bridge. You put the fork down.

What’s wrong? you sign.

Nothing sweetie. Eat your breakfast.

She spins her phone in circles on the table. You wait till she looks up.

What’s a procedure? you ask.

She looks at you for a long moment; her eyes get glassy. Like an operation, she answers. But less serious.

So today is a procedure and not an appointment?

It’s both, but yes.

I like the way I am.

She sits up. It’s not about that, she signs, regaining herself; her melody continues, strong again.

Don’t you?

Of course I do. Haven’t we been over this already? It’s about what’s best—

You look down, stare at James Harden smiling at you in his OKC Thunder uniform. She reaches across the table and gently taps your hand with her index finger. You look up.

It’s about what’s best for you.

I don’t want it.

You will be happier after, I promise.

You look back at James Harden and push the glass toward your mom. Milk spills over the edge and onto the table. I don’t like this glass anymore, you sign.

You’re in the backseat of Mrs. Grimaldi’s Toyota. She lets your mom borrow it so you don’t have to take three different buses to Dr. Jacobs’ uptown office. Still, you wish her car didn’t smell like wet dog and cigarettes.

You pass that corner. You think of it as that corner because that’s how your mom refers to it. Even today in the rearview mirror her eyes say it too: Promise you’ll never do anything like you did at that corner ever again.

It was a summer evening; you got ice cream at Baskin Robbins on Jenkins Road, near the CVS and Clean Queen. The air was hot and humid. You let go of your mom’s hand so you could switch hands to lick the chocolate drips from your palm and wrist. Then you looked up; your mouth dropped open. What is that? Is it real? How does that happen? While more and more questions broke the levee and flooded your mind, the ice cream cone fell headfirst onto the cement.

You’d learn in the newspaper the next day that it was a murmuration of more than five-thousand starlings. You think, Murmuration, that’s a good word for it.

They swirled and turned, rose and dove like one epic pixilated wave. And yet they were tied to one of the most beautiful pieces of music you ever heard. Though instead of wondering if the music was following the birds or the other way around, you understood they were happening at the same time; they were of one mind, united, in perfect harmony. It was hypnotic. Spellbinding. You felt connected. Invited.

Then, in an instant, they climbed and turned inward, creating a six-and-a-half story question mark. As if to sign, Are you coming?

Your arms opened like wings. You followed them. You couldn’t look away.

You also couldn’t hear the horns, or tire squeals, or your mother’s scream. Only after she wrapped you in her arms, holding you so tight you could barely breathe, did you realize you were in the middle of Jenkins Road. Headlights skewed and static. Car doors opening. Judgmental heads shaking. Still, you couldn’t take your eyes off the majestic display in the sky. Because at that moment, something in you fell into place, like tumblers lining up inside a lock.

Finally, you were able to stop your mom from kissing your face and smearing tears and snot all over your neck. You looked at her and signed, Did you see? Did you hear? That music?

That was the second time she looked at you like you were broken. And so now every time you pass that corner on Jenkins Road she looks at you, and her eyes seem to make a promise that she will never, ever let that happen again.

Three days later, you began visiting Dr. Jacobs’ office.

On a winter afternoon, a few years from now, you’ll recognize the murmuration music as Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, specifically the Eroica. You’ll learn Beethoven composed this piece after he was mostly deaf.

You’ll wonder if you and Beethoven were both tuned to the same frequency. You’ll wonder if all the deaf, or mostly deaf, are set to that channel. If so, you’ll wonder if maybe some are able to write down what they hear, share it, take credit for it. While the rest, like you, are simply left to wonder.

Today, you pull into Dr. Jacobs’ parking lot. The sun sits high, straight overhead, like a pin in a map.

The last thing you remember is laying on the table, the smell of antiseptic, a nurse shining a bright light in your eyes, your mom leaning over and kissing you on the forehead. But the absolute last thing you remember are the notes that you’ll one day discover come from Beethoven’s 5th: dah, dah, dah, duh. On that fourth and final note, a tear falls from your mom, hits your lips, and that’s it.

When you wake up, the world is different. Something is missing. Something critical. Like someone made a pie and forgot the sugar. It’s not a small thing—it’s everything. Because without it, it’s not pie. Just something bitter that resembles something sweet.

Your mom leans toward you from the foot of the bed, eager, like you’re a Christmas present about to be opened.

Dr. Jacobs carefully sits you upright. While he picks at something on the side of your head, you’re forced to focus on his earhole and the unattended dark hairs standing straight up like wild grasses at the beach. He unwraps the tight bandage secured around your head and ears. A repeating stain of yellow and brownish-red grows on the layers of unraveling white gauze. After pulling what feels like a drain plug out of each ear, he joins your mom looking, like two people who share a secret no one’s let you in on.

These are your first sounds: outside—police sirens and a repetitive fire engine airhorn, a jackhammer and construction crew; inside—bed pans fall and clatter on the tile floor, two people yell in Spanish, a door slams, another voice curses in English, squeaky soles on the polished floor, a voice garbled over a broken intercom. Your head snaps back and forth from the third-floor window to the hallway. Your heart beats an erratic rhythm. Your eyes well.

Your mom leans in, softly touches your shoulder. She smiles, her hands clasp over her chest. She turns her head slightly and speaks to Dr. Jacobs while keeping her eyes on you. But there is no philharmonic, no music. Just something high-pitched and nasally.

Tears roll down your cheeks.

Your mom’s eyes grow wider, they don’t blink. Her mouth hangs open, both hands fly up and cover it, fingers trembling; then a quiet release—a joyful little squeal. Dr. Jacobs puts his arm around her looking very proud of himself. Your mom keeps her eyes on you but hugs Dr. Jacobs. She signs to you, but you only hear her high-pitched, nasally voice. No sopranos. No duet. No soaring voices in high C. Pavarotti and Sutherland are nowhere to be heard. The electricity is gone. The pull is gone. Everything is gone. Everything.

Oh sweetie, she signs. You can hear. You look so happy. I told you. Isn’t it wonderful? You can hear!

But you don’t register any of it. You are looking at her mouth, the shape of her lips, their rise and fall. The tears come faster.

She kisses you ten times all over your face and leaves with Dr. Jacobs.

The nurse comes in to take your temperature. She smells like soap and peppermint. She holds your wrist. You feel her eyes on you. She senses something no one else saw, or didn’t want to see. She angles her gaze, dipping her head so you have no choice but to look into her eyes. You just want silence; the quiet emptiness that extends forever. You close your eyes tight, then tighter. But silence doesn’t come. That’s gone too. She finally lifts your chin and steps back and signs in a very tender way.

Soon, you will learn to understand spoken words, sounds of every kind: happiness, laughter. There is a whole world out there waiting for you to discover and connect with. She pauses, smiling with the glow of a saint, albeit a saint trying to sell you something. Doesn’t that make you happy?

If you were older, you’d tell her she has no idea what you’ve lost, what’s been taken. You’d say this is so utterly devastating you’re having a hard time breathing. But you’re only six-and-a-half and you’re in shock. So without looking at her, you sign, No.

She waits patiently till you look up.

It will, she signs. Believe me, it will.

You wonder why people who can hear never listen.

And then you hear the first breath of sadness to ever leave your body. It won’t be the last. But that will come later. For now, there are only tears. Because you know all of life exists in this single moment.

 no machetes in america

karen halvorsen Schreck

Severino Kwizera splashed disinfectant into the big yellow bucket on wheels, then hoisted the bucket into the metal utility sink. A clockwise turn continued to be his first impulse, but he thought again—righty, tighty, lefty, loosey—and twisted the spigot to the left. Clean water gushed effortlessly from the tap.

Severino knew a few expressions in English now, thanks to his boss, the Facilities Manager at the Bethelsville Public Library. Some proved helpful, provided reminder or inspiration—a stitch in time saves nine—and for these Severino was grateful. Others, uttered by Mr. Jim Fund in moments of impatience, muscles taut as wire twanging in his jaw, Severino did his best not to recall.

In Severino’s opinion (never to be shared), Mr. Fund was, in addition to being impatient, far too thin. Perhaps Mr. Fund was impatient because he was thin? Severino had never seen the man eat a bite of food on the job. Why would the Facilities Manager deny himself when there were, more often than not, snacks arrayed on plastic trays in the library’s staff lounge, liters of soda for the taking in the refrigerator? Perhaps beneath the thin skin of his impatience, Mr. Fund’s blood was clotted with despair. Perhaps Mr. Fund wanted to be nothing more than a bag of bones, heavy spirit laid to rest.

Severino understood this desire. In the past, he had longed for similar release. He hoped never to feel that way again, but no man could predict the future. Ask Mr. Jim Fund. Mr. Fund could not have predicted that Severino Kwizera, unused to the ways of the “First World” (Mr. Fund’s term), would be a library employee who, after three months of training, still clumsily and inconsistently carried out orders. Mr. Fund said there were other, more qualified men, long-time citizens of Bethelsville, who needed Severino’s job. “Remember that,” Mr. Fund said, as if remembering that would make Severino a worker who never made mistakes.

Severino frowned into the churning depths of the yellow bucket. In this country, things were expected to function properly and predictably. If a thing proved unpredictable or improper, someone swiftly fixed it or threw it away. Like a spigot turned to release or stem a flow, Severino vowed to function in the proper, predictable way.

The rising water was gathering heat, and steam drifted upwards, clouding Severino’s vision. He removed his glasses and wiped the scratched lenses with his handkerchief. “Girlie glasses,” jeered his son Janvier, when he first brought the round blue plastic frames home from the donation center at Global Relief. “Tho pretty,” Janvier lisped with a weak-wristed flap of his hand.

Severino no longer understood his son, whose English was very good and whose innuendos and expressions were weighty and complex. When Janvier spoke, he sounded like a real American, an American Black. According to Janvier, Severino would never be mistaken for anything but a refugee.

Severino put on his glasses again. He had chosen the frames because of their shape and color; he liked their shape and color still. But his son was right. The frames would suit a smaller, less fleshy face. No matter how Severino tried to adjust them, they perched crookedly on his round cheeks and slid down the bridge of his nose. He must remember these glasses had come to him at no cost. Scratched, ill-fitting, and feminine they might be, but they were free and serviceable, good enough. Beggars can’t be choosers. Next time Janvier taunted or criticized something like a pair of glasses, next time the boy complained about something he could not have, Severino would try to recall and sternly share this particular bit of wisdom gleaned from Mr. Fund.

How had the bucket become so full—too full for easy lifting? “You’re distracted!” Mr. Fund would say. “Focus!” Severino wrenched the tap to the right, and the water ceased its rapid flow. A drip descended from the lip of the spigot, then another, then nothing. A person might think the well had run dry. Severino knew better now. 

He ran his finger under the collar of his work shirt. He had been warm beforehand, thanks to a busy morning. Now perspiration rolled down his forehead and neck; his armpits were sticky with sweat. No matter the temperature outside, the inside of the library typically seemed to be neither too cold nor too hot, and so Severino found this current physical discomfort disconcerting. Physical discomfort was an unfamiliar feeling now. Physical discomfort reminded him of other times.

Severino sighed heavily, then cast a wary glance over his shoulder. To his relief, no one was there to hear. Unlike Mr. Fund, he could not afford to be impatient. He could not afford to feel anything but gratitude. And Severino was not ungrateful; in fact, he could not put into words how grateful he was.

Still, he felt as he did at the end of a long workday—bone-weary. This was a problem because the day, as Mr. Fund would say, was “still young.” A digital alarm clock perched on the shelf above the utility sink; its bright green numbers blinked 11:53. Not yet noon, and a cup of ramen and a can of Coca Cola spilled on a computer keyboard in the library’s tech center. A smear of excrement—human or animal, Severino did not care to consider—spanning the lobby carpet. Fuses blown, a foul odor of something rotten in the elevator, a splat of red graffiti outside the library’s main entrance. “‘Unite the Right’,” Mr. Fund had muttered when he pointed it out to Severino. Another catchy expression, although Severino did not know how to apply it to everyday life. Righty tighty, he’d thought, applying solvent to the spray paint, scrubbing at the scrawling letters with a nylon brush. Perhaps there was a connection?

The area’s first-ever Islamic Heritage Festival was today, Severino did know that, and it was happening right here in the library. The event was a big deal, according to Mr. Fund, and some locals were quite upset about it. “Things might get a little crazy,” Mr. Fund had warned.

It was true that the building was far more crowded than usual on a sunny Saturday. The more people, the more messes and mishaps for Severino to clean or fix. He was a man who made things seem like they had never happened. This, Severino had decided weeks ago, was the essence of this job. In this way, he worked a kind of magic.

Now his magic was needed in the Youth Services’ bathroom on the lower level. A toilet was clogged. He must wheel the utility bucket and a mop over there, a spray bottle of bleach and a bundle of rags tucked under his arm.

Severino did not like to waste water. Just this morning he had warned Janvier against taking one of his overlong showers. He would not waste the water in this bucket by emptying it into the drain. He braced himself, then lifted the bucket from the sink and lowered it toward the floor. Despite his best efforts, water sloshed as he set the bucket down, dousing his work boots. These, too, he’d retrieved from the donation center. Sturdy brown boots, soles intact, only the toes split. He’d tried to mend them with a roll of strong black tape he’d found in one of the library’s storage closets. Either he hadn’t used enough tape, or the tape wasn’t waterproof— his socks were soaked to the balls of his feet now.

With a rag, Severino mopped up the floor. He draped the rag over the side of the sink to dry, then used his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow and neck. He considered removing his boots and socks to dry his feet as well, but what would be the point? His feet would suffer anyway, because the leather and cotton would remain wet . The years had taken their toll on Severino’s feet—the camps and the marches between the camps and the ill-fitting shoes that preceded these boots. There was a time when he walked on strips of rubber, cut from a blown tire abandoned on the side of the road, tied to his feet with twine. There were long seasons when he went without any shoes at all. Now his feet always hurt. In the days to come, they would hurt worse: blisters, fungus, joint pain. Severino expected nothing less, but he would not complain.

Well, maybe he would complain a little to Clementine when he returned home. This was her day off, after all. If she was not too tired tonight, maybe she would rub his feet. Maybe she would fill their biggest kitchen pot with warm water or cold water, depending on what she thought best, and then he would soak his feet, one foot at a time because only one foot at a time fit inside their biggest kitchen pot. Clementine would suck her teeth and say it had been a bad sign, the day off to such a rough start and carrying on so. A bad sign, indeed. And she would close her eyes and pray to the god in whom she did not believe, although their sponsors at Global Relief did, and encouraged them to do so. Carol and Gene Jensen were passionate in their devotion to The Lord. Every Sunday, they offered to drive Severino and Clementine to an astonishingly large supermarket where the prices were low—but only after the service at their church, which, in turn, Severino and Clementine were required to attend.

What else did Severino and Clementine have to do on a Sunday morning, and when else would they be able to benefit from the luxury of a car ride to the market—and such a large market with such good prices, at that? It was challenging for Clementine to carry numerous shopping bags on a city bus. People stared when she balanced groceries bundled into a towel on her head; she did not like people staring. A ride from Carol and Gene spared her the scrutiny. Besides, the church music was rousing, the song lyrics projected on large screens so that everybody could join in.

Singing at church, Severino and Clementine both agreed, was helping their English. Sometimes, when the drums and guitars swelled, they were stirred to tears. After so many years of not weeping, whether because they chose not to do so or found themselves unable to do so, the tears were gratifying, a kind of release that made Severino feel almost relaxed, the way he did after a bottle of beer or an afternoon nap. Their tears seemed to satisfy Carol and Gene, as well. It was only when Clementine could not stop crying that trouble ensued. This had happened a total of three times, and all three times, Carol and Gene had stiffened in the pew, their faces reddening as Clementine’s tears turned to wails that filled the large sanctuary long after the singing was over. When this happened, Severino led Clementine from the church to the parking lot, where they waited under the shade of a tree. There was no trip to the grocery store for them that day. After the service, Carol and Gene drove them back to their garden apartment, and Clementine spent the rest of the day in bed. Such was the risk of weeping. There was no spigot that one could turn to the right to make it stop.

In fact, Severino remembered, as he wheeled the yellow bucket from the janitor’s closet, Clementine had predicted today would be a bad one, half-waking in the pre-dawn.

The little brown birds outside their narrow bedroom window had begun their peeping. It was unusual for Clementine to wake so early—she worked late into the night at the dining hall of a nearby college, baking breakfast pastries as sweet as candy. Sitting bolt upright in bed, less than an hour after she’d slipped beneath the covers, she’d clutched at Severino, rousing him from deep sleep. She was babbling in Kirundi, their first language, which was something she rarely utilized now, desperate as she was for them to strengthen their English, hoping to bridge the growing gap between Janvier and themselves.  

“Run!” Clementine’s eyes remained closed as her grip tightened on the ragged neck of Severino’s t-shirt. The lingering scents of sugar and cinnamon, canned apples and syrupy berries wafted from her skin. “My brothers, at the window! Run, hide!”

She shoved at Severino then, nearly pushing him from the bed before he was able to restrain her, pressing her head to his chest, disordering her head wrap so that it slipped back and exposed the pale scar that crowned her forehead. Clementine’s scar was as familiar to him as her smile; like her smile, it was thin as a blade and curved down like a frown. She thrashed against his hold, kicked at his shins. When she finally awakened and raised her stricken face to his, he tried to soothe her. He told her it was all a dream.

“It’s not a dream,” she replied hoarsely.

Although Severino had not acknowledged her assertion, he knew it was true. Waking or dreaming, what his wife relayed in terror was always anchored in truth, her memories of life before she knew him—memories of Burundi, 1993.

Clementine’s first marriage was made in 1991 when she was still a girl. She wed a Tutsi man—a self-educated man who taught her the little bit of English that, years later in a Tanzanian refugee camp, she would teach Severino. To love an enemy was an act of bravery. To marry an enemy—this was sheer foolishness. (Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Another of Mr. Fund’s expressions.) Clementine’s three older brothers viewed their sister’s love as transgressive. For them, her marriage was an act of familial and tribal betrayal.

In the middle of the night, at the onset of the Hutu uprising, Clementine’s brothers, wielding machetes, entered the newlyweds’ small cinder block house. “Devil! Oppressor!” they shouted, and they forced Clementine to watch the brutality that followed. They murdered her first husband, then marked her forehead, scarring her so she would always remember. As if she would forget. Clementine fled to Tanzania, where she met Severino, who’d been living in one camp or another since 1972, when he was ten years old, and a gang of Tutsi militants set his village on fire. It took Severino three years to woo Clementine, who, upon her arrival at the camp, was a cracked husk of a human being who claimed she would never love again. When she finally accepted Severino’s proposal, she had come to love him, too. Severino was her second husband, she said, but he did not occupy second place in her heart. Severino trusted Clementine’s love and her commitment to their marriage, but he knew that her original passion, her self-educated husband of another tribe, a sworn enemy with whom she’d entwined her young life, occupied and dominated her dreams. On mornings like today’s, it took some effort for him to reconcile himself to this fact.

The man haunted Severino as well. There were no photographs of him—none that Clementine had managed to save—but clearly, her first husband was a strong man, a wise man, an intelligent man of great emotional capacity and character. A handsome man, no doubt. When he appeared to Severino, he took the shape of the strongest, wisest, most intelligent and handsome man Severino had ever known—the chief of his childhood village. When the village chief tried to defend Severino’s community, the Tutsi invaders burned him alive. Severino witnessed this before his parents dragged him away. According to Clementine, her first husband, like the village chief, had remained silent even during the height of his suffering. The two men had not shamed themselves by rewarding their enemies with any evidence of weakness.

Severino knew he would not be able to remain silent in the face of such pain. He had resigned himself to the fact that he would always share his wife with another. He consoled himself that she was mostly his to love, his dear companion. The two of them were surviving the First World together. No lost love could take that away from him, from them. Neither could the horrors of the past.

“We’re safe,” he told Clementine that morning in bed, looking tenderly into her tormented eyes. He traced her scar. “No machetes in America.”

But she begged him to stay home for the day. Although it was Saturday, Janvier had a school field trip—to this very library! one of his teachers was requiring her students to attend the Islamic Heritage Festival!—and Clementine begged Severino to keep their son at home too.

“I’ll go to the store and buy your beer and a treat for Janvier. I’ll make your favorite fish. We’ll watch TV together tonight, the three of us. A little holiday. Please.”

Severino and Clementine did need a holiday, perpetually exhausted as they were, and as for the three of them, together—well, they rarely spent any time with Janvier now. If not at school, Janvier was out with his friends, whose faces they never saw, whose names they had yet to learn. But Severino’s answer had been a firm no. He had to save his remaining sick day for when he absolutely needed it. He could not risk his reputation at work, calling out on a whim. Jobs like this were hard to come by for people like him—as Mr. Fund had informed him, there were plenty of other, more qualified men. And Janvier should not be encouraged to miss school.

When Severino reminded Clementine of all this, she turned away from him in their bed. With her back to him, she buried her face in her hands. She was still like that when he left for work, the ghost of her first husband hovering over her: his noble gaze trained on her prostrate form, his full and sensual mouth silently shaping tender words, his elegant hands with their long and nimble fingers stroking the air a hair’s breadth above the wrap that Severino had left disheveled upon her head.

A librarian was waiting for Severino outside the door to the children’s bathroom. She appeared to be about Janvier’s age, but of course this could not be the case. She was leaning against the wall, studying her cell phone, her shining black hair falling forward and hiding her expression. Her arms were covered with colorful tattoos. She, too, was a relatively new staff member, and she and Severino had yet to be introduced. Because the tattoos on her arms were mostly of birds—some of them recognizable as actual species, others fantastical in nature, rising from flames or darting between coils of barbed wire, surviving—Severino thought of her as Bird Girl.

The librarian looked up at his approach. Her brow furrowed, but she managed a smile. “It’s a disaster in there.” She shuddered so that the hem of her blue and white striped dress stirred above her knees. (So short! Severino, spilling water on the floor, might be as wasteful as any American now, but he still wasn’t used to the immodesty that pervaded this land. Clementine would never dress like this. She still preferred to wear the imvutano dresses of her young womanhood, their bright colors and bold patterns faded now from so many washings.) Severino focused on the woman’s dark eyes, and her eyebrows knit together, gauging his expression. “I’m sorry.”

Severino had seen disaster. He forced a smile, shaking his head. “Okay.” He reconsidered and qualified his reply, “It is okay.”

“Maybe, but I’ll stay here in case you need anything. Paper towels or whatever.” She flicked back her hair. “I won’t go back to my desk until you’re liberated from your distress.”

She laughed. Did she expect him to laugh with her? Severino shaped his mouth into a careful smile.

Inside the bathroom: yes, a murky mess, spreading across the floor. But not disaster. Nothing like disaster.

Even so, after spending a few minutes trying to extract a sodden diaper from the depths of the toilet, Severino stepped back to catch his breath and steady himself against the sight and odor. This was a good problem to have, he reminded himself. He had not seen a toilet, except in pictures torn from magazines, before coming to America. He, like Clementine and Janvier, had refused to use the toilet available on the last long leg of their journey, their flight to Chicago. The operations were confusing; how could such a thing be trusted? (The strange little sink seemed less threatening, so he and Janvier had tucked themselves into the cramped lavatory and pissed into it; he still didn’t know how Clementine had managed.) Upon their arrival at the airport, they were met by Gene and Carol, and when Severino expressed desperation, Gene had escorted him to a “restroom.” There were restrooms for men, Severino learned, and restrooms for women. So much space and light and so clean, with individual rooms called “stalls” for privacy! The bright blue liquid inside the white porcelain bowls—was it really water? Water in Burundi and Tanzania was the color of the earth, which was mostly clay; sometimes, the water was a deeper hue than that, nearly black with blood. The drinkable water on the airplane had been the color of air, which was to say the color of the clear plastic tumbler Severino had tipped to his lips. All this had seemed appropriate—the water a reflection of what contained it, or of what it contained. But blue water in a white bowl? It didn’t make sense. When Gene demonstrated how the toilet functioned, pushing a silver lever and saying, “Flush,” Severino jumped at the sudden noise and swirling rush. One moment, the liquid was in the bowl, then it was gone, all gone. When the bowl filled itself up again, Severino was tempted to try and catch the brilliant blue water in his hands. Even after squatting over it and tainting it with his own waste, he had to fight off the impulse to try and keep it for himself and his family, should they ever go thirsty again.

Severino pitched the disintegrating diaper with its unsettling spill of spongy synthetic beads into the trash can, then removed the black plastic garbage bag, and secured a shiny new one inside the can. He mopped the filthy floor clean and wiped everything down with bleach. When he finally emerged from the bathroom, Bird Girl was still there, scrolling through her phone and swaying, her dress’s short hem stirring. Now it was Severino’s turn to apologize. He’d forgotten to tell her to return to work; no disaster; everything was fine.  She should have been able to go back to the children’s desk, where patrons were probably waiting with their questions and their library books. But she seemed only happy, not irritated at all.

“Listen, I wanted to tell you, Severino, my family immigrated here, too! From Honduras.” Her expression softened with what appeared to be compassion and understanding. “My mother was a cleaning lady all my growing up, and my father worked two jobs, sometimes three. Things are better for them now, but I know it’s not easy. This kind of life, this kind of job—I get it.”

Severino glanced quickly around, hoping she had not been overheard. To his relief, there was no other person to be seen. He straightened his shoulders and forced a smile. “I am grateful.”

“Well, I’m grateful to you.” She raised her hand as if to touch his arm—so young and pretty in her short dress—and Severino took a step back. She swiftly withdrew her hand, and silence yawned between them. Then, to Severino’s immense relief, the air crackled with the sound of the intercom being activated, and he heard his name.

“Will Severino please come to the Circulation Desk?” Mr. Fund’s voice, biting out the words. “Severino, to the Circulation Desk.”

“Oh, no!” Bird Girl started in on yet another apology, but Severino was already turning away in relief, trundling the bucket back to the utility closet where he would empty and rinse it, clean the mop and rags, then hurry on to whatever task needed his attention next.

Really, the children’s librarian should know better. With her tattooed arms and short dress, she must have come to this country young, very young, like Janvier. She must not have listened carefully to her parents’ stories. If she had, she would have known the only true humiliation is pity.

Mr. Fund was waiting upstairs by the Circulation Desk, his arms crossed over his narrow chest. His thin face flushed to the roots of his white hair. A bad sign, Clementine would say. Somehow Severino had displeased his boss. Perhaps he should not have taken the time to rinse out the bucket, the mop and the rags.

Mr. Fund was of Swedish descent. He had mentioned this to Severino in a rare moment of personal revelation, his voice swelling with pride. “On my mother’s side. As for my father—his ancestors were from everywhere. He was a mutt.” (Later, Severino had looked up the word, only to wonder why Mr. Fund had called his father a mongrel dog. Severino had felt a flare of protectiveness for a man he would never meet, a dead man from everywhere.) When Severino asked Mr. Fund how long he had been in America, his boss had frowned, offended. “My grandparents were the ones who came over. I’m as American as baseball.” Unlike you, Mr. Fund did not need to say.

Mr. Fund beckoned now, a sharp gesture that indicated Severino should hurry. A stitch in time . . . Severino picked up his pace. In a moment he stood face to face with Mr. Fund. But not too close. Mr. Fund did not like Severino standing too close.

“God spare me the festivals. I knew this day was going to go south, and was I right? You better believe it! Some girls are doing a henna demonstration over by the Tech Center on the other side of the DVDs and Blue Rays, just past the computer stations and scanners beside the CDs and video games.” Mr. Fund seemed to think it necessary to map out the library for Severino every time he gave directions. “They had a big spill. Go figure.” Mr. Fund was speaking too fast. Severino leaned closer—not too close!—hoping to catch everything, or at least the essence of it. “This whole deal is basically a free-for-all, just shy of a circus. The girls should have been better supervised. This whole deal should have been better supervised.” Mr. Fund broke off, regarding Severino. He shook his head. “Never mind. Grab what you need, then get over to the Tech Center. Hustle!”

Severino collected his plastic basket of cleaning supplies from the employee entryway and hurried to the Tech Center. His attention was drawn to a cluster of kids gathered around a table, looking down at something on the other side of it. Most of the kids were laughing; their laughter was not kind. Severino drew closer. Now he saw the three black-robed and veiled young women, down on their hands and knees on the floor. The women were scrubbing at the carpet with wads of paper towels, attacking a dense spattering of brown stains. Severino hoisted his basket higher and picked up his pace. The women would make things worse if he did not stop them, grinding what had spilled into the carpet’s weave.

“Please,” Severino called out, his voice louder than he intended. “Please to stop, please!”

The kids at the table turned as one to look at Severino now. Tough kids, American kids. Boys and girls standing close. One boy, a black boy, an American Black, wore a bright red t-shirt several sizes too big and baggy jeans that pooled around expensive-looking trainers—shoes intended for fashion, not sport, their red laces untied and dragging on the floor. He was the only one in the group not staring at Severino. Instead, he gazed out the wall of windows that flanked the small park behind the library, his arms tightening around a girl who wore a tight pink shirt that exposed her pale middle and the shadowed O of her pierced belly button. The girl’s pants hugged her skinny legs as tightly as the boy’s jeans hung loosely on his. She, too, was a girl from another hemisphere—a Chinese-born girl, maybe. Or, like the tattooed children’s librarian or Mr. Fund, her parents or grandparents were from another place. The “Third World,” as Mr. Fund said. “The Developing World,” as Gene and Carol said. The girl’s clothes were as faded and ill-fitting as those Severino had brought home from Global Relief. Something about the way she wore them—a certain self-consciousness—suggested she had not been in America for long. Certainly not as long as the sullen boy pressed up against her, with his confident, careless slouch.

The boy’s arms moved higher to tighten around the girl’s throat. Neither this couple nor any of their friends stepped aside to make way for Severino. Mr. Fund would simply push his way through them. But Severino was not Mr. Fund.

“Excuse me.” Severino raised his voice. “Please. I help.”

“I help.” The American Black boy said this, his voice dripping with mimicry, and Severino suddenly felt woozy, remembering this morning when he asked Janvier about the required field trip.

“Teacher’s orders—we have to be at the libary by ten. I hate that bitch,” Janvier had said. When Severino corrected him gently, Janvier had flashed a wicked grin. “Libary. Shit, Dad, you been saying it wrong all this time!”

Severino had been too tired for a fight. It had been easier for him to pretend he didn’t understand the foul language or that his son had turned him into a joke. Instead, he had tried to explain that Janvier would have to leave with him in a few minutes to catch the city bus. The next one wouldn’t come until early afternoon; that would be too late. Janvier should not get in the habit of being late. “The bus or you walk,” Severino had said.

It was a good three miles to the library, and Janvier preferred not to walk anywhere if he could help it, let alone run. But the boy, still lying on the foldout couch that served as his bed in the apartment’s cramped front room, hadn’t looked up from his phone to meet his father’s eyes as he retorted, “I walk.” Those two words held Janvier’s disdain for Severino’s halting, flawed English, yet again, Severino had done nothing to defend himself. The old ways—scolding, threats, restrictions—had little effect on Janvier now. For the most part, the boy ignored punishment, or he rebelled against it, yelling and stomping about the apartment, storming out and staying away for hours on end, frightening Clementine. If Janvier was still a young child, Severino might have swatted him. Now, it seemed likely that Janvier would strike him back. The little respect Severino still received from his son would vanish with the lifting of a hand.

There were no machetes in America. There was clean water and a garden apartment, a job, a large supermarket with low prices, a bus to ride. But still, Severino’s family was in danger of being divided. Soon, Severino and Clementine would be living in one camp, and their son, their only child, would be living in another. They would be lucky if they ever saw him again.

Severino trained his eyes on the American Black boy. He would pretend he was Mr. Fund and practice authority. He would stare the sullen boy down, and the boy, blinking, would respect him. Severino would work his magic on the boy, and poof! The boy would move out of his way. The boy, like a mess or a mishap, would disappear.

His magic failed. It was Severino who blinked first. He closed his eyes in dismay and prayed to the god in whom he did not believe. He needed a miracle from this god, from any god who happened to be listening. Because the sullen boy was no stranger, no American Black teen. The boy was Severino’s boy. The boy was Janvier.

A stranger’s pity was nothing compared to the humiliation of a son ashamed of his father. And a son ashamed of his father in the presence of strangers—this was the greatest humiliation of all.

Severino opened his eyes.

Janvier, his mouth a tight line of defiance, met Severino’s gaze. Severino held his breath, but he could not stop his heart from banging in his chest. One heartbeat, then another. Then Janvier hitched up his baggy jeans—where had he gotten these expensive clothes and shoes?—turned his back on Severino, and walked away. Severino might as well have never existed for his son at all.

Now Severino could pass like a ghost between the American teens. He could go to the three young women in their long black robes and veils, tell them not to worry, please to stand. I help. He could get down on his hands and knees, nudge his little girl glasses up on his nose, and address the oily brown stains on the carpet. This was Severino’s life now. This was the job for which he must always be grateful.

Severino thought of Clementine, turning away from him in their bed, her face in her hands. She had warned him about today. He had not listened. He heard her now.

A sound rose in Severino’s throat, and he released it—a melding of moan and snarl. The young people turned and stared. Janvier turned and stared, too, and Severino’s sweat turned cold with fear.

Severino was afraid of himself—the ghost of the man he had been, the ghost of a man he had become. He saw his own ghost, sweaty and slope-shouldered, big-bellied and short-sighted, an ashy shadow of himself, kneeling by three girls in black. His own ghost haunted him, and it would haunt him into the future. Because this was how Janvier saw him—Janvier saw him as a shadow of a man. This was how Clementine would come to see him. This was who he had become in the First World.

Severino set down his plastic bucket of cleaning supplies. He drew himself up to his full height. A few long strides, and he took his son by the arm.

“We are going home.” He spoke in Kirundi. No one else needed to understand. When he spoke in English, the words emerged from his throat, constricted and unforgiving. Kirundi sprang from deep inside his belly like rich laughter or righteous rage. “Your mother needs us.”

“What the hell?” Janvier said.

In Kirundi, Severino ordered him to be silent. There was a time for Janvier to speak, and that time was not now. He gripped his son’s arm—a thin arm, a child’s arm, no real muscle on the bone—and turned to lead him from the library.

The girl with the pierced belly button latched onto Janvier and held them back. “What’s happening, babe?  Where you going?”

Janvier opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, opened and closed his mouth again and again, like a fish. The girl’s sugary sweet expression soured. She turned on Severino.

“Let go of my boyfriend, asshole!”

“Let go of my son, child,” Severino said.

He spoke in English. He had not intended to do so, but the words came to him, the words were his, loud and clear. The girl gaped; in her surprise, she loosened her grip, and Severino wrested Janvier away. He steered his son from the Tech Center, through the library, toward the exit.

When Severino was a boy in Burundi, the village chief walked through the world like he and the world were one. Perhaps this was how Clementine’s first husband walked as well. Let it be so. Let the chief and Clementine’s first husband appear to him as guides. They would understand danger, division, and suffering. They would respect his recuperation of dignity and pride, his survival in the so-called First World, his ability to thrive.

Mr. Fund drifted into Severino’s field of vision, a white-haired shadow. The white-haired shadow tried to block Severino’s path, but Severino waved him aside. “Emergency,” Severino said. Pale eyes widening, the shadow complied. Perhaps the shadow would give Severino’s job to another man. If so, such a loss might reveal itself as a gain.

Outside, the city bus waited in the street like a large and obedient pack animal. Janvier hesitated. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Severino said in Kirundi, guiding his son forward.

On board, Severino leveraged Janvier down in the front seat. Severino stood in the aisle beside his son. He knew the bus driver, a man with mottled skin and tired eyes named Bill. Bill was a decent man. He did not treat Severino differently from anyone else.

“Bill,” Severino said. “Kira!”

Bill cocked his head.

Severino nodded at Janvier. With an expansive wave of his hand, he gestured for his son to explain.

Janvier gnawed at his lower lip, but then cleared his throat. “My dad says, ‘bless you’, the way they do in Burundi.” The boy spoke respectfully enough, if not with great respect.

“Well, hey, I like that.” Bill smiled, revealing crooked front teeth. “Kira!”

Severino clutched the top of Janvier’s seat as Bill drove away from the library. The streets were punctured with potholes; turns were sharp, train tracks bumpy. Severino widened his stance, shifted his weight to accommodate the changes. He rode out the juddering as Bill shifted gears, swayed when the bus jolted to a stop or lurched forward. In this way, watching over his son, Severino kept his balance all the way home.

 how i became friends with an idiot by marni graham

kimm brockett stammen

A flaming red box hung on the wall in the main hallway of my elementary school. Above its red lever, white painted letters taunted:

FIRE ALARM

PULL

You weren’t supposed to do what it said. We all knew that. But the box was low on the wall, the lever right under our fingers as they skimmed the green cement block on the way out to recess. And the command was so bossy, but at the same time it practically begged. Naturally, everyone pulled the fire alarm all the time.

Everyone was mostly Dickie Green. He’d yank on anything if it hung within reach: ponytails, fire alarms, his own crotch zipper. Also, he pulled faces, his eyes rolling up and his index fingers pulling his drool-y lower lip down, and sometimes he did what he called pulling a fast one. I sat in the front row, never got in trouble, and always got 100% on spelling tests, so I thought, what an idiot. He’s going to grow up to be a paint scraper or something.

A guy had come the previous week to scrape the peeling paint off our house, and I thought it looked like the worst thing to do ever. That’s why we pay him, said my dad. If it was fun we wouldn’t need to. And taking care of your home has always been fun, my mom said to him, in her voice that meant Be Careful, It Might be the Opposite. Don’t Start, said my dad, which was the way all their arguments started.

The thing that I hated about the paint scraper guy was not so much the scratchy sound of the metal scraper thing, or the way grit flew about when he pulled it against the worn wood, flakes of gray jumping around and sticking to his overalls. The thing that got me was the disappointment of it. My parents had said we would paint the house a bright pretty white, and make it look like it was new. But the first thing that happened was this sad-looking guy came out, and he didn’t even have paint cans, he just had a metal tool and a ladder and he spent a week making the old gray paint all splotchy, and our house looked much, much worse than before. So I thought probably Dickie Green would grow up to be that.

When Dickie Green pulled the fire alarm lever the first time, I was out on the playground on the other side of the school.  I heard the clanging and saw the teachers walking fast and stiff-legged in the way that meant something was up but they didn’t want us to think so. They made us line up by grade, and then alphabetically, and there was a lot of confusion around the MacDonalds and McKenzies, and some of the little kids forgot which name was their last, and the teachers waded in and took kids by the shoulders and adjusted them like chess pieces. I was in the third-grade line near the front, thinking that if there really was a fire we would all be burnt up.

All through the raggedy lines, the news traveled that it was Dickie Green who had pulled the alarm. Kids whispered and pointed. He was standing in line behind me looking extra innocent, poking an ant into the ground with his toe. I frowned hard at him; we were missing all of recess. When he noticed, he glanced around to see if a teacher was looking and then smirked at me and hitched up his pants zipper.

“Idiot,” I hissed.

“Takes one to know one.”

Principal stomped out from his little office behind the main secretary place. His shiny not-gym shoes got wet grass stuck to them, and his forehead bunched up like a cauliflower. He demanded to be told Who Was Responsible for This. No one said a word. We scuffed the dirt with our shoes, and the result was we all had to miss recess for the rest of the week.

Because of Alphabetically, Dickie always stood behind me in lines. And I always turned around and faced backwards, watching him, because otherwise he might stick something to the back of my jacket. Or put a bug down my shirt. Or just say something dumb. Maybe it was Dickie Green who first taught me it's better to keep an eye on stupidity than wonder what's going on behind your back.

A week after the fire alarm, on the last day of no recess, we all lined up in the hallway, waiting to go home for the day. The line of waiting kids flexed and wriggled like a snake with its head caught. There started to be giggling. A teacher near the door yelled that we wouldn’t get out until it was Silent In Here. The cement wall was cool when we bumped against it, the indentations between blocks just wide enough to run our small fingers along. Some kids were absent for some reason, so Dickie and I ended up closer than usual to the front of the line, right next to the little red box.

Even I could feel my fingers itching for the alarm's lever. It was maybe that I hadn’t had recess for a week. Or that the paint scraper guy had finished, and the real house painters had come with buckets of white and ladders and big cloths and calling bad words in the yard, so I hadn't been able to play outside at home, either. In fact, I’d had to stay inside by myself nearly every day after school because my parents had something called Counselor Appointment. And inside was always a mess because dad left things sitting around everywhere, which made mom mad so she put things away in random places, and then dad would yell and pull everything out of drawers and closets looking for stuff so I couldn’t run around without tripping on something. In short, I was stuffed full of unused running around. I would have complained, but dad had his grumpy face on all the time lately, while mom kept saying, This is a Good Thing. I didn’t believe her; appointments were never good things, especially dentists.

So, when I saw the white painted letters spelling out “PULL,” my fingers itched to do what they said. I was starting to feel very annoyed at things that said the opposite of what they meant.

Just then Dickie Green yelled, “Don’t do it!” as he grabbed my hand, put it over the lever, and yanked.

I yelled, “Hey!” just as the clanging started.

Instead of a semi-calm line there was instant chaos in the hallway, with giggling and pushing and teachers yelling Who Did This? One of them screeched, all shocked, “Marni!”

The alarm jangled and jangled, although another one of the teachers called it some bad names she maybe learned from a painter. No one could think until Principal came out of his little room and said Where’s Mr. Wu? which is what everyone said when anything got broken or dirty. A group of us bigger kids got asked to go to the end of the hall, past the bathrooms, and knock at the metal door that said Janitor. That’s where Mr. Wu hid, with the boiler and the tools and the all-different-sizes-of-mops. He came out after we hurt our fists pounding on the metal door, his big ring of keys that he kept attached by a chain to his belt loop jingling. We all crowded around him, yelling and fidgeting and imploring, with the alarm clanging and knocking all our brains into mush, but he stayed calm like always. He just turned around silently and went back into his boiler room, us kids trailing after like buzzing flies. We crowded in there after him, and from a nail in a secret cupboard in the corner, we saw him lift a teeny tiny key. It was so small it looked like a toy in his big calloused hand. And then the group of us kids—which surprisingly somehow included Dickie and me—saw him stick the key in a tiny lock in the same cupboard, and like magic the alarm shut off. The school plunged into a silence so deep it was like a snow day when everyone stayed home under blankets.

The quiet only lasted a minute. Then Dickie and I got grabbed and led to Principal’s little office. Dickie had been there many times but I hadn’t. Ever. My palms felt sweaty and there was fear in my stomach; it felt like the only way to get rid of it would be to throw up.

Dickie whispered, “Don’t worry.”

I stuck out my tongue.

In Principal’s office there was a lot of silence and foot shuffling and I noticed that Dickie’s sneakers had holes in them. Principal boomed, Tell the Truth, and Nothing Will Happen. Which was so obviously not true that Dickie and I looked at each other and made surprised eyebrows. The colored parts of Dickie’s eyes were flecked with copper.

He winked one and said, “She did it!”

I shoved him. “I did not! You made me!”

We both had to stay in the office until our parents came, and then they put us two small kids in the big office and all the adults crowded into Principal’s tiny room. Adults get everything backwards. After a while they all came out and told us it was decided: Dickie and I had to stay after school every day for a week and help Mr. Wu empty waste baskets. The adults thought there was some logic to that, too.

“At least someone will set an example for you on how to clean up after yourself,” said mom.

“Don’t Start,” said my dad.

Dickie left with his adults, and I started to leave, too, but my parents, without explanation, went back into Principal’s room without me and did Closed Door Talking. I started to tremble, in the empty secretary place, because on the list of things I hate, Closed Door Talking is right up there with Saying the Opposite. 

When they came out and we got in the car to go home, both mom and dad were like statues, not talking and looking straight ahead.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t do it!” As soon as they came out of my mouth I heard that the two exclamations were complete opposites, and that made me mad. But my parents ignored me and continued to be statues the whole ride home, even though I did sniffling and some weird kind of choking and tears without even trying. By the time we pulled up in front of our house I was mad and scared at the same time, which I didn’t know was a thing you could do.

Dad turned off the car and in the weirdly clean garage finally said something. Except it made no sense. “It’s not your fault. We told Principal the circumstances.”

And then my mom said something that made even less sense than that: “It’s really nothing to do with you.”

The whole school got a lecture about Emergencies and When To Pull Fire Alarms and To Basically, Don’t. We had to sit on the gym floor, which was always gritty, and if it was just gritty you were lucky because sometimes it could also be sticky, and then you didn’t know what it was sticky with but you did know Mr. Wu had been too busy doing something else to clean it. I sat crisscross waiting for everyone else to get sat down in the right place, which always took forever. While I waited, I did what I’d been doing since the ride home the day before: puzzling about Circumstances, and why they weren't my fault, and if it had nothing to do with me, why did they tell Principal? And if it wasn’t my fault, why did I still have to clean wastebaskets?

Principal stepped to the front, making a crunchy sound with his stiff dress-up shoes. He said we are having this assembly because someone—no—two someones have Not Behaved Wisely. Everyone glared at me and Dickie. Alarms. Are. Not. For. Pulling, he said. I sat on the gym floor looking at my knees and wondered how much dumber Principal could get. Why have an alarm that said PULL if it was not for pulling? If it was not for kids why put it at kids’ level on the wall? Dickie Green, crisscross next to me, spelled out HI with his finger in the dust of the floor. I gave him a tiny smile and decided maybe he wasn’t such an idiot; he was smarter than Principal. But even a paint-scraper was smarter than Principal. I sat there glowering and decided that when there really was an emergency, I would make the biggest noise possible, and no one would stop me.

The wastebaskets smelled bad and Mr. Wu mostly grunted at us, but staying after school was better than being home alone because of Appointments. Which were for Counselor and now also something called Lawyer. After school one day that week, Principal came out of his tiny room, said hello to me, and put his hand on the top of my head. Which was unheard of. Also, my teacher started smiling at me in a sad way. By Thursday I felt like a hundred recesses were pent up inside me. Dickie and I laughed sometimes when we were emptying baskets, making up some games and jokes about garbage, and all my classmates started teasing me that he was my boyfriend.

“Not that idiot,” I said.

Dickie just made farting sounds through his lips.

On Friday, the last day of our punishment, Dickie and I were with Mr. Wu in the second-grade room. It was always the messiest room with brown banana slicks on the floor, waste cans overflowing with smushed construction paper and crumbled goldfish crackers, and a gerbil in a cage that plain stunk. Dickie and I held our noses and peeked in at the gerbil, and then we ran out of the room and slammed the door and collapsed, gasping, in the hallway. After we sat awhile, Dickie told me he lived with his mother one week and went to his father’s the next and how it was OK because he got candy at both places and his parents couldn’t keep track of if his homework was done.

I looked at him, straight into his copper-flecked eyes. He wasn't pulling anything.

"I have to go," I said.

I ran down the hall, passed The Girls and The Boys, and slipped through the metal Janitor’s door that was locked during school but unlocked afterwards so Mr. Wu could get stuff in and out of it. I opened the secret cupboard and I took the tiny key, putting it in my pocket, and when I went home, it went with me.

Why do third graders do things? All I can tell you is that we know when something is our fault and when it is not. We know when people are Saying the Opposite. And we know when something is strange, and has been strange for too long, and will only get stranger, and that we might soon need a magic key.

When I got home, our house sparkled all over with bright white paint. The painters were gone and I could run in the yard. But there was a big red sign stabbing the front lawn that said:

FOR SALE

Because of the sign, I guess, which was there in red and white and could not be ignored or have a door closed on it, my parents told me what a divorce was. They said it was Not So Bad. Instead of a house they would get two apartments. And I would get two rooms, one on either side of the city. They said, with completely straight faces, that this would be a Good Thing and that Two Rooms are Better than One.

My parents thought I was an idiot.

I waited three days. I kept the tiny key in my coat pocket and wore my coat all day long. When I thought of signs or paint scrapers or parents or Principal, or other things that straightforwardly said exactly what they did not mean, I pressed the key into my palm until it hurt. If anyone had thought to pry open my fingers they would have found the imprint of a tiny red key in my skin. But no one did. The closest anyone came was the second-grade teacher, who stopped me in the hall, smiled like she might care, but instead asked if I had Learned Something. Suddenly it felt like all the recesses squished inside of me burst out all at once. Learned Something? I said real loudly. The Something I Learned is your room is the messiest and also the smelliest. And then my voice got squealy but it kept going. The Something I Learned is you should take care of the place where you are or no one will want to be with you in it! She looked shocked. She backed away. The Something I Learned is that adults lie and I hate them. And then I ran. I ran into The Girls and I flushed the key down the toilet and then I sped out and pulled the fire alarm lever as hard as I could.

The alarm screamed and clanged, so long and so loud that I heard Principal yell at Mr. Wu and then at the secretaries, and the second-grade teacher grabbed onto my arm and yanked me down the hall towards the office with all the kids in the school gaping at me, their doofus mouths hanging open. Principal called my parents while the alarm just kept on yelping. He had a hand over one ear, and he was yelling into the phone and his face got purple and his nostrils flared. Mr. Wu came in, jangling his enormous, useless key ring. A secretary lady searched my pockets and then the adults, buzzing like a wad of hornets, searched all the rooms and The Girls and The Boys too, and then they remembered that I had been helping empty waste baskets so Mr. Wu got told to go and paw through the dumpster. He did a very big frown. The teachers took all the other kids outside in frazzled lines. I could see out the office window the MacDonalds and McKenzies started shoving each other, and then all the kids were shoving each other, and the teachers got out their whistles which worked about as well as you’d expect—which was Not. The clanging knocked everything around in my head and all I could hear, like gongs being whacked over and over, was Divorce and Two Rooms, Divorce and Two Rooms, It’s Not Your Fault. I squirmed away from the secretary lady who was holding onto me and I put my hands over my ears and I started to scream.

I didn’t have to go to school for a week, and my parents took me to my own Counselor Appointment, which was not quite as bad as the dentist. She told me it was OK to be angry and OK to be scared and OK to yell. Which was nice but kind of too good to be true. I said, Is It My Fault? and she said, No It Isn’t, and maybe I partly believed her. And then I cried a little.

When I went back to school, the first thing I saw was a new fire alarm in the hallway. It said:

IN EMERGENCY

BREAK GLASS

Dickie told me that Mr. Wu used a bent metal bar to pry off the old one, and it made shrieking sounds all during spelling so he got 23% percent on his test. He said for three days after that there was a hole in the hallway wall and a pile of concrete grit underneath it, and then the new alarm appeared. We peeked into it. There was a little glass window and a tiny silver-colored tapping hammer on a cute little chain.

“Why would broken glass help in an emergency?” I whispered to Dickie.

He followed me around all the time now, whether we were in line or not.  His eyes were pretty.

“I don’t know," he said.

Which was, I decided, the most honest answer anyone had given me in a long time. There were way bigger idiots in the world than Dickie. I could tell his fingers were itching for that hammer, so I took them in mine and pressed them, as if they too might unlock something.

 migratory patterns of birds

jessica hertz

She had grown used to the middle seat. He needed the window—needed to lean against the plastic wall of the plane, needed to open and close the shade at will, needed to press his forehead against the cool pane when he got overheated. She felt it was an equal trade since she needed things too: to rest her head on his shoulder, to feel the reassuring weight of his hand on her knee during take-off, to share his earbuds as she drifted off to sleep.

But now, on this flight, she sits in a window seat. It takes her a moment to adjust to the newness of it. Her knuckles turn white from gripping the armrests as the plane climbs to cruising altitude. She presses her head against the window but it is too cold for her. She closes the shade. She reads. She sleeps. She opens the shade again.

Seven miles down, Greenland stretches out as far as she can see; flat white ice meets cloudless blue sky to the edges of the window and, for a moment, she imagines this is all there is— just empty landscape and possibility. The sunlight reflects across the tundra; it is painfully bright. She is used to looking out the window while leaning across his lap, feeling slightly unbalanced, peeking through the part of the window that he hadn’t claimed. Now she makes herself large. The stranger in the middle seat can see out only where she lets him. She feels greedy and stable and powerful.

The Denmark Strait unfurls below her, and she relaxes back into her seat and allows the plane to shepherd her to her destination—first to Keflavík before continuing east to Egilsstaðir. She thinks of how he said he needed to stay in Los Angeles. He didn’t understand why she would move for two years to a small town in eastern Iceland in order to research bird migration patterns. She hadn’t done field research since graduate school; he didn’t realize she missed it. They failed to find a compromise and so each of them broke the other’s heart as well as their own. She left without him; he stayed without her.

The plane begins its descent. Out the window she spies an Arctic tern in the distance. She imagines it flying over the flat openness of Iceland, tilting from side to side in response to air currents, both wings working in tandem to stay aloft not through perfect equality, but rather with a fair sort of imbalance, each propping up the other by turns, enabling the bird to fly.

She hopes he will change his heart and join her as she had so often joined him, whether he presented at conferences or visited family or simply said “I need you.”  She misses resting her head on his shoulder, the weight of his hand on her knee, sharing his earbuds. He can lean across her lap to look out the window if he likes; she knows it won’t unbalance her.

 dandelions of the fields and the daisies thereof

andrew furman

So I was just about to tell Joan that I was leaving—we were eating our breakfast oatmeal at the granite bar in the kitchen (we ate a lot of oatmeal those days)—when she suggested between spoonfuls that we finally break down and start watching all seven seasons of that popular fantasy TV series before the final, eighth season dropped. I said sure (I said sure a lot those days) and resolved that I’d tell her I was leaving after we completed our media adventure. Sitting through the seventy or so hour-long episodes, I reasoned, would at least give me time to work out exactly how to break this news to my wife of nearly thirty years, news that I knew would shock and upset her.

The challenge, as I saw it, was to minimize the shock and concomitant upset by couching my position in a carefully constructed and cumulative series of sentences and paragraphs detailing (by the second paragraph or so) the slow but steady cooling of the once warm hearth that was our marriage so that by the time I told her that I wanted—no, needed—out (the penultimate paragraph), and that I would soon move into one of the newish condominium complexes closer to our mirrored downtown, where we both worked (the final paragraph), she would have practically arrived at the same conclusion (or at least anticipated said conclusion). Perhaps here I should mention that I’m an attorney.

The particular fantasy TV series in question, I should clarify, was more than merely popular. Rather, it was so wildly popular that to remain utterly oblivious to the main characters, their virtues, weaknesses, and peccadilloes, and the essential plot goings-on, amounted to an act of civil disobedience on par with, say, refusing to stand for the National Anthem or carry a smartphone. Or if it wasn’t quite so grand a gesture, per se, not watching the wildly popular fantasy TV series at least left us nonplussed on countless occasions as work associates, friends, politicians, journalists, and TV news program hosts increasingly slipped references of it into the dependent and independent clauses of their sentences to elucidate or underscore this or that statement. I mention all this mostly as a point of clarification about Joan and me, as we weren’t the type of people to watch a wildly popular fantasy TV series, or to partake of a fantasy anything. My wife was an ophthalmologist, which may be neither here nor there.

We decided to stream the first episode on the TV set in the bedroom after dinner, turning off the lights, brushing and flossing our teeth, and emptying our bladders in advance so that if the wildly popular fantasy TV series failed to engage us, or one of us, we, or just Joan or me, could simply nod off to sleep. I know what you’re thinking. That’s their problem right there, watching TV in bed. Beds, everyone knows, should only be used for sleeping and sex. All I can say to this is that a) loss of consortium ranked rather low on my list of grievances by this point, b) some of my fondest childhood memories involve crowding with my two siblings onto my parents’ creaky, queen-size mattress to watch classic TV programming—The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, I Love Lucy reruns, that sort of thing—and, c) some of my best memories as a husband and father involve Kayleigh’s occasional presence between Joan and me on our queen-size bed, smelling her apple juice breath and the more musky odors of her scalp as we watched some insipid TV program together, or slept, or tried to sleep, Kay between us in the still-dark morning. At this time, she was a junior at a small liberal-arts college two time-zones away, our younger daughter.

The first few episodes of the TV series didn’t put Joan or me to sleep, I’ll say that much for it, although I think we were both expecting a more elevated, if not quite high-brow, entertainment. The show seemed principally to involve a diminutive female heroine in a desert clime, who suffers repeated rape by her barbarian husband, the marriage having been forced upon her by her wormy brother. Inexplicably, however, she grows to love her rapist-husband, and vice-versa, the two of them rather seamlessly transitioning from rape to various lovemaking calisthenics, all the while cooing cosmic endearments at each other until the barbarian’s violent demise.

Ridiculous, Joan uttered beside me a few nights into our adventure just as one of the steamier, and consensual, love scenes between the diminutive female heroine and her former rapist, but now doting, husband cut to a secondary plot set amid lush deciduous trees in a more temperate land across a narrow sea.

I didn’t disagree with my wife on this point, yet something about her critique, its pithy certitude, roused oppositional sentiments, regardless. It was a different time, I rehearsed the ludicrous retort in my mind. You can’t just superimpose our own culturally constructed values on the complex sexual politics that obtained in whatever desert-y place this was. Who are we to doubt the verisimilitude of their love? But I held my tongue (I held my tongue a lot those days) and raised the incline on my side of the bed, instead, so that I could follow the wildly popular fantasy TV series more purposefully, should the occasion arise to have it out with Joan on some future point of contention.

I feel like I should say something more here about the bed, itself. By this point of the marriage, such as it was, our bed was one of those high-end numbers you see advertised everywhere as a “sleep system.” Me, I would have been fine with another Serta, but shortly after Kay graduated high school and decamped for college, Joan insisted that we shell out the big bucks for this top-of-the-line mattress in a California king-size that took up most of our room’s square footage. The behemoth sleep system somehow monitored our slumbering patterns (or claimed to do so), issuing daily reports online, while the mattress was adjustable in every way imaginable: firmness, temperature, and angle of repose, bow to stern. Joan even insisted that we pay a bit extra for the model that allowed each side to be adjusted as independent territories.

Maybe we should just get separate beds while we’re at it, I quipped at the mall-store, the only mild protest I offered that day. This made Joan scowl at me. The pretty sales lady struggled to maintain a neutral expression on her face, having noticed Joan’s scowl or, perhaps, having detected the darkness of my stupid joke that maybe wasn’t a joke at all.

Our elder daughter, Rachel, I might have mentioned earlier, used to visit our old queen-size bed, too, but she didn’t quite have the stick-to-it-ness Kay had when it came to these nighttime visitations or when it came to anything. She tended mostly to creep down the stairs and encroach upon our master bedroom in the middle of the night to use our bathroom, which she, for whatever reason, preferred to the bathroom she shared with her younger sister between their upstairs bedrooms, flicking on the light switch in both our room and our adjoining bathroom to do so. The piercing white light aggravated me to no end (I aggravated quite easily those days) and made me holler at her half-asleep from the bed to turn off the lights, which might have been why these nighttime visitations ceased. Rachel never could quite absorb verbal discipline in the manner in which it was intended. The mildest reprimand from Joan or me, or from one of her teachers or coaches, would wound her to the core, raising the blood to blotch her cheeks and neck and making her eyes quiver in their sockets, while the more serious chastisements tended to ricochet off her like seeds sprinkled across hardest earth.

I’m not quite sure what I would have done had Joan made it clear after those first few nights we spent watching the wildly popular fantasy TV series that she hated the show and that we wouldn’t be watching any additional episodes, after all. I braced myself for this follow-up to her Ridiculous assessment. Would I have forced matters to a crisis by telling her that I wanted out of the house and marriage right then and there, or would I have waited until our morning oatmeal at the granite bar to launch into my carefully constructed and cumulative series of sentences and paragraphs, detailing the slow but steady cooling of our once warm hearth? In the end, it didn’t matter, because Joan made no gesture one way or the other about the series that night, just returned her expanse of overpriced mattress to “Flat” with her remote control, fluffed up her pillow, turned her pajamaed ass toward me beneath the sheets, and issued one of her weary exhales that may have contained a multitude of meanings, but which I decided not to press her on, tired as I was.

The next night it was Joan who set us back on our schedule of watching the TV series.

Let’s go to bed, she suggested shortly after we consumed our chef-designed, meal-kit dinner of salmon, herbed couscous, and broccoli. We received the meals mail-order those days in insulated cardboard boxes (meals which featured far too many roasted cruciferous vegetables as sides). Now, twenty-some odd years earlier, Joan’s suggestion that we go to bed just after dinner might have been a euphemism for let’s enjoy a good screw. But I somehow knew that let’s go to bed only meant let’s start in early on the next episode of the show and maybe we’ll have time to watch two or three episodes before we fall asleep. All the same, there was a timbre of actual excitement to her voice as she rose from her chair to clear her plate, which weirdly jolted me. It had been a long time since I’d detected that lively sound from my wife’s throat.

Joan, I might mention here, hated her ophthalmology practice, and often came home from work with a joyless expression painted across her face. Her practice, as far as I could determine, mostly entailed negotiating the outsize demands of her geriatric patients or their adult children-chaperones, arguing with insurance company medical directors or their underlings over their ever dwindling coverages, and managing a rotating assortment of inept or downright thieving front-office staff.

The secondary plotline of the wildly popular fantasy TV series, set amid deciduous trees in a more temperate clime, involved a virtuous lord of a northern parish (or whatever those land holdings were called), who loses his head to a sadistic little prick of a child-king after the lord’s wife makes a series of astonishingly stupid tactical decisions without consulting her husband. The sheer inanity of the woman over several episodes and nights enraged me out of all proportion to her ill-conceived actions or to the level of significance that any fantasy TV series—no matter how wildly popular—should have held over my emotions.

You have to communicate for Christ’s sake! I cried at the screen from the bed one night, just as the virtuous lord’s severed head kerplunked against the wooden stage, which elicited a snort from Joan’s nose. I didn’t know exactly what she meant by that snort, but I was able to interpret the sardonic gist of it, at which point I instantly redirected my ire toward the rival parish that was the other side of our sleep system.

What? I pressed. What’s so funny?

I stole a glance at my wife across the broad expanse of mattress. The blue light from the TV in our dark room danced across her eyes, which remained on the screen. The producers, writers, or directors of the show were nattering on from a small quadrant as the credits rolled, offering their Cliff’s Notes version of various scenes we had just watched, in case there was something we missed. But I wasn’t listening to what they were saying and could somehow tell that Joan, even though her gaze remained on the screen, wasn’t really watching or listening to the TV, either.

I wouldn’t say that communication is one of your virtues, she finally said.

Well it certainly hasn’t held me back.

Now, this was cruel of me to say as it wasn’t merely a reference to my thriving estates and trusts practice (a byproduct of certain fortuitous changes in the tax laws governing inheritance) but a rear-guard assault on Joan’s foundering ophthalmology practice that brought her no joy.

I wasn’t talking about work, she replied, responding to my cruelty in kind.

Her words pierced me. I couldn’t quite look at her anymore so I gazed absently, instead, at the TV screen, which had segued to clips of upcoming episodes. The room grew very quiet, even though neither one of us had done anything to the TV volume. I could hear my breath travel the reed of my throat and could hear, too, the overgrown branches of our oak tree scratching against the aluminum gutter of our roof, reminding me of my household neglect.  

I know you weren’t, I said.  

Joan was talking about my parenting of our girls—Rachel, specifically. I’m not sure how exactly I knew that that’s what she meant, as her snort over my comment about the episode we were watching and her subsequent remarks were the closest she’d come up to that point of reprimanding me outright for my fatherly failings. Which is partly to say that I don’t think Joan was ever so great at this communication business, either. In any case, I steeped in this bitter marinade for several moments. Yet my initial anger at her oblique criticism turned into something else as I lay there. I felt something shift inside me as the oak branches I ought to have trimmed with the pole saw weeks ago continued to whine against the second-story gutter, as my wife’s side of the bed groaned upon her command to return to “Flat.” All this time Joan had felt this way but spared me the knowledge, just soldiered through crisis after crisis the best she could, and mostly on her own.

I don’t think it was ever a matter of me not caring for or loving our elder daughter when she was a child. I wasn’t lacking in fatherly feeling, is what I suppose I mean to say. I just couldn’t quite translate these feelings into commensurate words or actions most of the time, or at all. That I somehow lacked the equipment pained me, and this pain sometimes manifested itself at inconvenient times and in odd ways. There was a laminated, letter-size card of gradually shrinking text that Joan used in her office to test the efficacy of her patients’ readers. I remember the first time I scanned the card after I walked down the street to my wife’s office, middle of the workday, to pick up my new progressives. It was right around the time that Rachel was nine or so, when the solitary predilections her teachers worried over as early as preschool, which we tended to write-off as innocuous, gave way to her deep-seated anomie, which we could no longer ignore.

I give to all good fathers and their mothers, but in trust for their children, nevertheless, the largest print at the top of the card read, all the good little words of praise and all quaint pet names, and I charge said parents to use them justly, but generously, as the needs of their children shall require. . . . The text continued its bequeathals in ornate and antiquated language for several shrinking lines. The words thickened my throat as I sat there on the padded stool beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, as treble notes from the voice of Joan’s receptionist on the phone out front seeped through the walls, for I had begun to struggle, even then, to locate and deploy good words of praise and encouragement when it came to our elder daughter, so perplexed was I by her every mood and action. I was aware of Joan lingering in the doorframe, her visor with its magnifying lenses propped up on her forehead, waiting for me to tell her whether my new prescription was okay. She had squeezed me in between appointments.

Well? she finally asked, her voice tinged with what I took to be impatience, if not annoyance. Something wrong with the lenses? Did the lab screw them up?

Here I might have shared with Joan how moved I was by the words on the laminated card she had just handed me. I might have made inquiries about where she found this curious poem or Bible passage, or whatever it was. I might have asked, Have you read this? or simply recited the rest of the passage out loud to her, or part of it, anyway, so that we might together affirm its earnest and heartfelt verities. I leave to children exclusively, the shrinking script continued, but only for the life of their childhood, all and every the dandelions of the fields and the daisies thereof, with the right to play among them freely, according to the customs of children, warning them at the same time against the thistles. . . .

But something, I don’t know precisely what, kept me from saying or doing any of this. She seemed unusually busy that day, and I had my own grasping clients to deal with, plus I felt the first stirrings of doubt over my initial high opinion of the purple prose on the laminated card. These might have been hackneyed sentiments culled from some mass-produced greeting card. Anyway, Rachel’s condition required a greater measure of masculine toughness on my part (didn’t it?), not this wallow in fatuous feeling. I cleared my throat to bring myself to and sniffed back the tears I hoped Joan would mistake for my allergies. I might simply have been embarrassed.

The glasses are fine, I answered.

I think that both of us began more and more to look forward to the long, dark evenings we shared in bed over those weeks and months, watching episode after episode of the wildly popular fantasy TV series. Ready for bed? Joan would ask, or I would ask, while we scraped clean our dinner dishes and filed them in the rack of our dishwasher. And Joan, or I, would say, Yep!

The secondary plotline involved the young daughter of the virtuous lord of a northern parish, on the lam in the frightful woods ever since her father’s abrupt demise. She couldn’t have been more than twelve or so, small too, yet she manages across several episodes and seasons to evade all manner of lethal threats—thirst, starvation, roving bands of scoundrels and thieves, the prick child-king’s assassins, carnivorous wild beasts—to survive and even thrive. Her combat skills grow considerably by the fourth season. At one point, she manages to kill a miscreant bent on raping and murdering her by stabbing him about the face and neck with several staccato blows of a dagger she’d secreted beneath her leather shirt-sleeve.

Jeez, the kid has moxie, I uttered, as the audaciousness of her actions seemed to require some sort of utterance. The light rain outside offered the child its soft applause, as well, against our metal roof.

I’ll say, Joan replied. Yes. Something about this last bit, this Yes, maybe the slight pause prior to its utterance, told me she wasn’t thinking anymore about the precocious girl on the TV, and suddenly nor was I.

It’s not really something you can teach, I said. Moxie. Grit. Whatever you call it.

Maybe not.

We lay there listening to the rain as the episode segued to the primary plotline of the diminutive female heroine in the desert clime. Her story now involved dragons, which I imagined was obligatory of the fantasy genre. Dragons were bound to show up, eventually, is what I suppose I’m saying, and once they did it sort of lowered my appreciation for the show. The computer-generated creatures were rather young and small at this stage of the series and so adorable that I expected Joan to comment upon their adorableness. That she remained silent told me that her attention still hadn’t returned to the episode. The rain outside intensified and began to pound against our metal roof, making it difficult for me to hear the TV. The diminutive heroine was knitting her dark eyebrows together to betray fierce resolve over something or another. She had moxie too. I considered raising the volume on the TV so that we could hear, but then reconsidered.

I wonder what would have happened if Rachel stuck with the viola, I said over the rain, as if that would have made all the difference. I detected through my peripheral vision the slightest bobbing of Joan’s head as she weighed the merits of this comment. We somehow managed to coax Rachel into giving the viola a try after she jettisoned in short order the manifold other constructive, extra-curricular activities we foisted upon her: painting, ceramics, ice skating, karate, ballet, Zumba, soccer, basketball, swimming, piano, girl scouts, lacrosse. (Our Kay, by contrast, fell early in love with lacrosse and captained the women’s team at her small college.) The wife of one of my law partners was a professional violist and for a small fortune administered lessons, privately. To our surprise, Rachel stuck with the instrument for most of her middle school years, even practiced some days without being prodded. I think it gave her a charge to play an instrument that she perceived as oppositional to the more ballyhooed violin, opposition being Rachel’s métier. She managed within months to play classical songs that I actually recognized; the arrangements might have been on the simple side, but still. I had worried that Rachel’s hand tremor, on account of her medications, would complicate the requisite movements of her fingers to strike the proper chords, but her tremor somehow disappeared while her hands were so usefully employed. I used to marvel during her recitals at the strange expression of placid concentration on her face above the chin rest. Her expression intensified—her nostrils dilated and she seemed to grip her teeth with her lips as if to hold them inside her mouth—as she summoned the viola’s most resonant, somber notes with the well-rosined horsehair bow.

All this only bolstered my conviction that the viola was the perfect pursuit for our elder daughter. Once high school started, however, Rachel claimed such mental fatigue from negotiating the complicated personalities and demands of her teachers and peers that it was impossible for her to continue her viola lessons if (I anticipated the strategic threat before it escaped her mouth) we wanted her to finish all her homework, too. We weren’t happy about her giving up the viola. We consulted with Rachel’s therapist, who took our daughter’s side (she ever seemed to side with Rachel, which enraged me) and suggested that we just give her a break from the lessons for a while and then “reevaluate.”  

It’s not like we didn’t try to make her stick with it, Joan finally said. We could only push so much. She knew how we felt about her viola. How proud we were at the recitals. Besides . . .

Joan let her next thought, whatever it was, linger there in the flickering blue darkness between us. The rain ceased, as it tended to cease shortly after such strong downpours. It seemed that we would just watch the rest of the episode now that we could hear the words emanating from the screen. Two men rather new to the series were canoodling with each other in a brothel on a large bed festooned with shimmering linens, wine goblets, oozing cheeses, and exotic fruits that vaguely recalled the Middle East. There was a surprising amount of homoerotic male sex in the show (complemented by an unsurprising amount of homoerotic female sex), enough casual and sporting homoerotic male sex to make me wonder, if only for an instant, whether I had too hastily dismissed an entire realm of carnal activity that might have brought me pleasure. Then I tasted Joan’s Besides once again in my mouth, which could have meant, a) it’s pointless to ask what-ifs about the past, b) Rachel’s musical gifts, her instructor implied, were not overly prodigious, anyway, c) I really thought she’d pick it back up after we “reevaluated” during the summer, or, d) can we talk about this later, I’m trying to concentrate now on the two canoodling men in this episode of the wildly popular fantasy TV series? 

Goodnight, Joan, I said once the producers, writers, or directors of the show appeared in their small quadrant and the credits began to roll, returning my side of the bed to “Flat.”

She said goodnight back, her soft voice lilted by surprise, as if she wasn’t used to hearing me say goodnight, which I supposed she wasn’t.

Williston Fish. He was the fellow who wrote the lines on the laminated card in Joan’s office. It took me all of five seconds to locate the passage online in my office after picking up my new progressives from Joan’s office. The piece was first published, apparently, in Harper’s Weekly magazine in 1898. Reading the words aglow on my computer screen moved me for the second time that day. . . . And I devise to children the yellow shores of creeks and the golden sands beneath the waters thereof, with the dragon-flies that skim the surface of said waters, and the odors of the willows that dip into said waters, and the white clouds that float high over the giant trees. And all the meadows, with the clover blooms and butterflies thereof; and all woods, with their appurtenances of squirrels and whirring birds and echoes and strange noises, and all distant places which may be visited, together with the adventures there found. All the snowclad hills where one may coast, and all the streams where to skate. . . .

I can’t say that reading these lines impacted my actual parenting at the time in any constructive or lasting way. As Rachel’s difficulties escalated, I tended to withdraw rather than engage foursquare with whatever crisis befell her and us. I pretty much left things to Joan. Partly, I reasoned to myself, because Rachel was a girl and I felt ill-equipped as a man to negotiate the tricky emotional terrain. And partly because Kay (almost ten years younger than her sister) had become such good company, by contrast. And partly because my work demands escalated as my practice took off, and there was suddenly a lot riding on my success as Joan’s practice had started to teeter. This was right around the time that Rachel was sixteen or so, when it had been clear for quite some time that medications and therapy would never “cure” our elder daughter, per se, but only help her “manage” this world that wasn’t quite set up to accommodate her personhood. It hadn’t occurred to me—I wouldn’t let it occur to me—that saddling Joan with the lion’s share of our parental duties might have exacerbated her career difficulties. Joan didn’t complain about her lost time at work, those numerous occasions she had to chaperone Rachel to this and that doctor, therapist, acupuncturist, or herbalist (if I recall), or scurry off to Rachel’s school to retrieve our elder daughter after one of her outbursts or other disciplinary infractions, and advocate for her to whatever principal or vice principal threatened suspension or expulsion. Nor, as I’ve suggested, did Joan ever tell me outright that it might have helped matters if I could only shift some of my energies from Kay and my work to extend a greater measure of love, affection, or simple encouragement toward our foundering elder daughter once in a while.

A tertiary plotline of the wildly popular fantasy TV series involved a handsome, shaggy-haired bastard son of the virtuous (though now deceased) lord of a northern parish and his peregrinations across the frozen tundra of an even more distant north as he seeks bravely to meet his fate, which may involve either, a) true love in the heteronormative romantic fashion, b) steadfast guardianship of the entire civilized realm against a gathering horde of undead as a member of a vaguely sinister brotherhood, which involves lifelong celibacy for reasons never fully explained, c) roaming the known and unknown world as a lone wolf, seeking the pecuniary, erotic, and alimentary rewards that come his way, d) gaining credibility somehow as the rightful heir of this or that prestigious house, parish, throne, or, e) some combination of the above.

I say that this handsome, shaggy-haired character’s plot was tertiary, but the genius of the series (if I might concede that it possessed a certain genius) was that you never quite knew which plotline, character, or characters were primary, secondary, tertiary, and so on and so forth, or if these particular terms were at all apposite to the universe evoked in the wildly popular fantasy TV series. As soon as Joan or I latched on to a particular character and his or her associated plotline, that character was murdered or killed in some other fashion, unmasked as a fraud, or simply “disappeared” by the writers of the series, and we were left scrambling to reconsider and redirect our attentions and sympathies. All of which made me wonder by the fourth season or so whether there might be an analogue to pursue in my decidedly less fantastical existence.

Although I hadn’t thought about my life in quite these terms, it also involved a plot, a cast of major and supporting players, and a few climate-control interiors for its setting. That is, I was living out a narrative—however unpublished and obscure—that at least brought a sense of mental order to my experiences, if not much by way of happiness. What were all my grandiose plans to leave my house and long marriage if not an attempt to alter the trajectory of my plot and introduce new characters and settings to the narrative that was my life? While this insight might have bolstered my resolve to forge ahead as planned, the way the wildly popular fantasy TV series kept upsetting my initial expectations gave me pause. Perhaps the real trouble in my life wasn’t what I took it to be at all, not at all. What if I was every bit as wrong about what I took to be my primary plotline as I was repeatedly wrong about the wildly popular fantasy TV series? Perhaps the source of my malaise was that I had been wildly misreading my own story.  

It had been years since I located online and read that extended passage from Williston Fish, but, for whatever reason, watching the wildly popular fantasy TV series summoned the piece to my mind. It might have had something to do with how many of the plotlines on the show involved bequeathals and inheritances, the sanctity of bloodlines, the scattering of family members and their desperate attempts to reunite, the fierceness of family love. I looked up the passage again and read it in its entirety once, twice, three times. I still wasn’t certain whether this Fish fellow wrote it in a serious or slightly satirical spirit, but it moved me all the same, just as it moved me years ago. . . . I leave to children the long, long days to be merry in, in a thousand ways, and the Night and the Moon and the train of the Milky Way to wonder at; and I give to each child the right to choose a star that shall be his, and I direct that the child’s father shall tell him the name of it, in order that the child shall always remember the name of that star after he has learned and forgotten astronomy.

The handsome, shaggy-haired bastard son of the virtuous (though now deceased) lord of a northern parish soon developed a love interest, who fast became one of our favorite characters. The ginger-haired gal, quick and true with a bow, sure had moxie. Moxie was sort of a requirement for all the female characters, it became clear, if they were to survive for any appreciable amount of time in the manifold cutthroat environments of the wildly popular fantasy TV series. This particular female character also possessed impeccable bone structure and a winning Scottish dialect (it might have been an Irish or Welsh dialect, for all we knew). In any case, Joan and I tended to perk up on our sleep system during the couple’s shared scenes across the frozen tundra. One scene involved their passionate lovemaking among and between a series of thermal baths inside a mood-lit cave that resembled an upscale Icelandic day-spa, or at least what I imagined an upscale day-spa probably looked like in Iceland. We felt certain that this comely, ginger-haired lass chock full of moxie would survive at least three or four seasons and perhaps till the end of the series. We settled in to enjoy their nubile bodies and bristling repartee.

Imagine my astonishment when a rather random arrow to her back during a nighttime skirmish erases her presence from the series. I turned toward my silent wife to see whether she was left as slack-jawed as I was and was astonished afresh to notice a tear skid down her cheek, just barely aglow in the dim light of the nocturnal TV battle still raging. It wasn’t like my wife to cry over something on TV, or over anything.

Now Joanie, I said, don’t take it so hard. You know that’s how it goes. Most of the characters die sooner or later.

It’s not that.

What then?

My innards seized for the split-second before my wife’s response as the possibility flashed that Joan might ask me for a divorce, that she might have been preparing to do so all the while of our media adventure. But this wasn’t what she said.

It’s Kay. She got that summer internship at EPI.

My innards scrambled to process this unanticipated nugget of information, my visceral dread (which was a surprising feeling to feel, in and of itself) replaced with . . . what?

Well that’s good news isn’t it?

I had no idea that Kay had applied for a summer internship at EPI. I had no idea what EPI even stood for and Joan’s blithe utterance of the acronym stung a bit as I thought about it—that Kay had confided all along in her mother but not in me. I didn’t advertise this small hurt in the midst of what seemed to be Joan’s greater hurt.

Yes, she replied. It’s good news. But. . . It took her a moment to gather her next thought. I could hear the muted glottals of the producers, writers, or directors of the show, who were now discussing the episode we had just watched. I could hear the overgrown oak branches as they whined against the roof gutter. I could hear a mockingbird outside our window chattering away as these crazy birds tended to do from the shrubbery and fence-posts, even in the middle of the night certain times of the year. But I wasn’t really listening to the crazy bird or the oak branches or the voices on the TV.  

She’ll never live here with us again will she? Joan finally asked.

No, I replied. Probably not. I’m sorry, Joan. And then I realized too, in a way I hadn’t quite realized yet, that our younger child would probably never live with us again, that she was off on her own adventures that no longer included her mother and father.

I like to think that Joan and I reached a silent understanding at that moment, as the screen grew dark awaiting our next command, that we would soldier through this thing together, by which I mean the rest of our lives (which weren’t without daily satisfactions and even joys), and that we reached this understanding even before we heard the complaint of the stairs as our elder daughter, Rachel, descended from her bedroom, even before we heard the three raps of her knuckles against our door and we simultaneously declared, Come in!—both of us more brightly than usual—to see what it was that we could do for our adult daughter at this hour, what we could do for her tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. She poked her round head inside the narrow crease between door and jamb, which reminded me for whatever reason of something I hadn’t thought of in many years, a good memory that brought a curious smile to my face. I lifted my fingers to my bristled mouth in the darkness of our bedroom to feel the smile. It was her birthday that I remembered, her original birthday, when our elder daughter descended so quickly down my wife’s birth canal that she crowned before the nurses even thought to check Joan’s nether regions, much less summon the obstetrician. She was anxious even then, our darling Rachel, as she remains now, to be in our loving presence.

 to the king of fruits

annie trinh

I remember the day I saw you.

I came with my parents, wearing a worn-out cotton t-shirt and faded blue jeans. I was nervous. My Grandpa decorated the house with tiny kumquat trees and draped the ceiling with red paper lanterns and banners saying, “Welcome to the Year of the Rat.” And everyone was dressed elegantly: silk gowns made from the finest cocoons of the mulberry worms, jade necklaces and bracelets dug from the caves of Vietnam hanging from their wrists and necks while the gemstones clicked and clanked as they showed their status.

Then you came.

You looked majestic, your body decorated with miniature brown-green stalagmites. You sat on a porcelain platter, surrounded by newborn peaches and pears. And everyone adored you, your majesty. My relatives giggled like children getting red envelopes filled with money for the first time. Their fingers twitched and their mouths watered as they took a knife and pierced through your rind. You smelled, some said, of sweet intoxicating red bean paste from mooncakes. But your stench trapped me—drowned my lungs in a sea of decaying doe carcass. They opened your shell, and a yellow larva rested inside your body. Then one by one my relatives picked up golden nuggets, gulped them down, and asked for more.  

My King, you had so much power over my family they questioned my taste. They said I must eat you. I must eat since it’s tradition. I told them I didn’t care about tradition—that I wanted to eat the mangosteen because at least she helps us, providing nutrients and resources compared to you. You, who do nothing, sit on your silver throne while expecting everyone to hearken.

When I told them no they rolled their eyes; some even snickered, whispering how foolish I was. My cousins told me to stop being a baby. My aunts and uncles promised I’d grow to love you. Family friends whispered to one another, saying they couldn’t believe I would disobey the King. Even worse, my mom and dad said I was being an embarrassment. Then Grandpa gently grabbed my hand, his face wrinkled and pasty white, saying, “Please child. Eat, it’s Vietnamese New Year’s Day.”

I couldn’t say no to my Grandpa. He was old, living probably the last few years of his life, and could die anytime.

So I picked up your leathery flesh and took a bite. My eyes watered and burned as the creamy pulp scraped and scorched the back of my throat. I said you tasted great. Grandpa smiled, all the guests nodded, then they faced back to you and ate until there was none left.

The day after the celebration, you started to appear everywhere. At the dinner table beside the dishes, at school hidden within my lunches, at the supermarket beside the mangos—convincing me to be with you and listen to your every demand, just like my family.  But my dear King, no matter how much you follow and try to convince me, my answer will always be the same as on that day when you clawed down my esophagus and bled into my veins. You seeped into my bones as I rushed to the bathroom, faced the toilet, grabbed the rims, and gagged, forcing everything out—making sure to never let you in.

 the year of the bat mitzvah

jonathan mendelsohn

War may be hell, but the year of my bar mitzvah…well, the Jews don’t believe in hell, but there is a kind of netherworld mentioned in different parts of the Bible, a place where “the deceased”, according to MyJewishLearning.com, “… cut off from God and humankind, live on in some shadowy state of existence.”

That was me.

In grade seven.

Pudgy, fairly miserable and most assuredly cut off from God and humankind both, in a shadowy state of existence.

The invitation rules seemed set before anyone had even been called to the Bima. Once January of 1989 hit and the first kids in our grade turned thirteen, these were things understood, never to be questioned. Like mixing milk and meat or asking Bram Riegel if he wanted to come over when it had long since been established that Bram wasn’t ever coming for a sleepover again. Bram was one of the popular kids now, one of the five guys (there were six girls) everyone agreed on. He ate lunch in the best circles. We were at that age where lunches were eaten in circles. And where most boys weren’t rushing outside to play Whip Ball or Red Ass anymore. Because there were girls now. As if all of a sudden.

The cardinal rule was you invited everyone in your class. Only close friends from the other two classes required invites. Close friends and perhaps the cool kids. On the spectrum of popularity never discussed but forever obsessed about, I wasn’t Terry Feigenbaum (thank God), but I was no Andrew Damlin either–if good looks plus money were a surefire inclusion into the highest echelons of popular powerdom at HHDS, it never hurt to have an anglicized and not remotely Jewish-sounding name: Damlin was king of the popular boys. In a school that cost way more than any social worker of a single mom could ever hope to afford (there were subsidies for people like us), the invite rules were about as fair as things got.

That is until Tamar Klein sent out her invitations.

Tamar was second in popularity, girl-wise, to Courtney Kalich of the flowing blonde hair and the goyishe snub nose, which is to say she didn’t “look Jewish”; she looked like the people on TV. Which is of course who we all wanted to be. Tamar, meantime, was pretty enough, for a brunette, but she did have the best boobs in the grade and a don’t-fuck-with-me-attitude that she could pull on pretty much anyone but Courtney. Anyway, Tamar flagrantly ignored every invite rule there was, leaving out nearly her entire class. To her March 25th bat mitzvah, she only invited the nine most popular kids in the grade. And me. And I wasn’t even in her class.

For perspective, Zane Ladner hadn’t made the list, and he regularly lunched with these people. A real tragedy. Zane Ladner, the guy who mooed at the fat girl, in our case, Mandy Gottlieb, when she passed in the hall. The kind of mediocre athlete who went out and bought a Franklin white leather batting glove. As if he didn’t suck the bag at hitting—he was that kind of shmuck. The kind that yelled out at you from second base when you dropped the ball. “Benji, you dumbass!” Zane Ladner was destined to rise up, stepping as he did atop all the poor souls he squashed on his way to get there. But not this time. Not for this bat mitzvah at any rate.

Zane caught me outside the boys’ bathroom, by the water fountain, one recess. I spent a hell of a lot of time that year walking back and forth from our class to that water fountain–what else was I supposed to do? Too much time to kill and no one to kill it with. I wasn’t a cool kid, but I wasn’t a try-hard kiss-ass either, which left me in this in-between—dare I say nether—world that had no designated circle to lunch with. When Zane came up to me, he had two wannabe-popular guys with him: Manny Sloman and Saul Galinsky. Manny was too thin to be cool; Saul was too vacant. But both, especially Manny, could laugh hyena-like when Zane tore some kid a part for, say, dropping a baseball in left field. When there was no one better to eat lunch with, Zane settled for Manny and Saul. Zane wasn’t likely to do much alone in his lifetime.

“Green, z’it true? Did you get invited?”

When I admitted I had he turned to his cronies. “See, Galinsky!”

Saul turned to me. “Why were you invited?”

I told them in the most yellow-bellied, couldn’t-look-him-in-the-eye sort of way, that I had no idea.

Dinner had yet to be served. The dancing wouldn’t start till later. The adults were mostly at their tables, a few men lingered at the bar, eating plain potato chips while waiting for beers or gin and tonics. Phil Collins crooned quietly away in the background while the band tuned up on stage. The guys from my school were in the kids’ room. Well, all but one of them were—I was still parked at table fourteen, on the edge of the shiny wooden square in the middle of the hall that was the dance floor. Holding down the fort, you know, picking at the closer of the two bread baskets, steadily breaking off more and more of one of those long thin sesame cracker things that jut out of overflowing bread baskets. I was eating out of boredom and because it made me look busy; this was necessary considering  I didn’t really feel like being looked at doing nothing while occupying a table surrounded by nine empty seats. Also, the crunchy, salty cracker complemented my Coke Classic. And because eating was good company when you were alone. Which is what made me chubby. Which of course made me all the more unhappy. The fat kid cycle. Waiter, another Coke please.

When Bram and the cool guys from my grade had gotten up to leave the banquet hall to get to the kids’ room, they hadn’t asked me to join. I could have followed, but I hated that. Bram did look back, as if to almost invite me. But he didn’t have the balls and I loathed him for it. Jesse Handler pulled Bram in close as they were crossing the dance floor to leave the room. I heard him not quietly ask, “Why was he invited? What about Zane?” It was a good question. What about Zane? I shouldn’t have been here. I knew that. These weren’t my friends, Bram included. I couldn’t help questioning the sincerity of my invitation.  What had I done wrong to deserve this? Was it because my mom and I didn’t have enough money? Was it my lack of suit? I was the one loser without one. Instead, I had on my Polo shirt, the only one I owned in the world (a fake my Aunt Lou had brought back from Thailand) and it was blue and clean and tucked into khakis. I’d thought I looked good until we started going to b’nai mitzvahs every weekend, and I saw the boys in their fancy suits and they saw me, Saturday after Saturday, in the same dumb, faded shirt. The girls wore pricey dresses and very red lipstick. Some even wore jewelry. A few of the girls had stayed at the table a little longer after the boys left. Mandy Gottlieb was one of them.

“Green,” she said in her aggressive, tomboy way. “You coming?”

“Yeah. No. I will in a minute.”

Gottlieb got invited because she’d been best friends with Courtney Kalich since birth, practically. It was the only reason that made sense. Because she was kind of fat. The only fat girl in the cool world. She was actually pretty cool, though I was never as nice to her as I could have been, which is to say I was only nice to her when no one else was around. In my defence, she had this weird habit of looking over at me in class or wherever a lot. When she did that I felt like she was on the verge of making fun of me. It made me nervous. Still, I never mooed at her when I passed her in the hall. Then again, I wasn’t exactly sporting a six-pack myself. But a chubby boy was one thing. If you were a fat girl you were fucked.

At least Mandy had a reason to be here. I honestly couldn’t figure out what mine was and was starting to wish I’d never shown up.

The kids’ room was just another party room kind of space. I’d passed it before entering the banquet hall. It was filled with balloons and streamers and the music was too loud (Tone Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina” when I first went by). There were bowls of nerds and skittles and whole packs of Big League Chew you could take. There was a cotton candy machine in the room and a bored looking girl serving up the stuff. The Kleins had also paid for the skills of a pot-bellied, middle-aged guy with red cheeks and slicked back almost-platinum-blonde hair to sit on a small stool all night, drawing caricatures of us. He seemed OK with it. We’d seen that guy before, though, at Alan Schwartz’s bar-mitzvah in February. There’d also been a three flavour slushee machine at Alan’s. So to top this—because of course it had to be topped—Mr. Klein, Tamar’s father, had invested in a karaoke machine. “Sing Your Heart Out” it said in calligraphic writing on the side. You got a tape of it after.

It was all fine, I argued to myself, breaking off more cracker, sipping the last of my second Coke. The band had come on. They were playing soft jazzy stuff for the adults to talk over. I wouldn’t have minded that, someone to talk to. Mandy aside, the only conversation I’d engaged in was saying hi to Courtney and a few others at the coat check when we’d arrived an hour earlier. Courtney had said hi back. They all had. It felt very good, their saying hi back. Courtney in particular. I was in love with her, like every other boy in our grade. The hellos were almost as good as conversation. But, again, that was nearly an hour earlier.

Just as I was finally willing myself to go check out the kids’ room, someone’s grandmother approached my table. She was wearing too much lipstick, but I nearly cried when she put her hand on my shoulder. It was the kindness in her smile. She was that sweet. With old people, if they’re good,  you see it right away.

“Where did your friends go, darling?”

“Oh,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“Why aren’t you with them?”

I lied and said I wasn’t feeling well, which also gave me the excuse to back out of the only real conversation I’d had. I just couldn’t stand to be around someone so nice. It made my misery too obvious, reflecting it so blazingly real back at me. I excused myself and crossed the dance floor. I found the bathroom and made myself pee, though I didn’t really need to. I washed my hands for a long time, looking at myself in the mirror, hating the chubby I was forced to see. Hating everything about that kid.

I don’t think I was gone five minutes. When I returned to the hall I had a hard time crossing the dance floor. There was this old couple dancing on it. Dinner was being served, but the old couple was clearly rekindling the sparks of their earlier romance and so felt the need to swoop, twirl and get dizzy across every inch of the wooden square of dance space. I kept getting blocked every way I tried and had to actually go round the perimeter of the floor to get back to my table. Everyone was already digging into their baskets of chicken fingers and fries. This was the standard caterer’s fare for the kid meal. We pretty much always got chicken fingers and fries. Except there was no basket of fried food at my place. There was instead a big piece of grilled fish over yellow rice with bits of nuts and raisins and other forageable things that a squirrel might get excited for. I’d been given the adults’ meal.

Maybe when I was forty I’d find this delicious. But not at Tamar Klein’s bat mitzvah, not when I was twelve and anything deep-fried that went well with ketchup was the closest to any guarantee of happiness my lard-ass could dream. That wasn’t the real issue, though, of course. The real issue was that the whole thing was obviously a joke at my expense. The guys—all of them, even Bram—were laughing into their hands when I sat. Someone had obviously told one of the servers not to give me the kids’ meal. Suddenly it clicked. I knew why I was there. I was the entertainment, yet another dumb thing to amuse the children of the bored and the beautiful. At least Courtney hadn’t laughed. She was actually the one who ordered the guys to stop being mean. The strange part is, I wasn’t all that happy about it because I wasn’t totally sure what Courtney’s intentions were—if she was doing it for me or because she liked putting her power on display.

“Do you want the fish, Benjamin?” Courtney asked me. The table went mostly silent, though Jesse Handler was still fighting the giggles.           

In front of the whole table I had no choice but to answer. Granted, I couldn’t look at anyone. “No,” I said, like a little kid talking to his mom in front of all. “I just want what you guys got.”

The boys at the table lost it when I said that. I noticed Mandy looking at me with the saddest goddamned eyes in the universe. Like a puppy’s frown. That was the worst. The last thing I wanted was for someone to feel sorry for me.

“Jesse,” Courtney said. She had to call him again; he was busy laughing it up with his buddies. “Would you get Benjamin a plate of chicken fingers, please?”

“What? Why can’t he get them?”      

“Jesse!” Courtney warned.

Jesse sighed but he didn’t rush to move. Didn’t have to. I’d already stood up. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll get it.” I was looking at no one in particular, especially not in Mandy’s sympathetic direction. I did catch Courtney’s eyes before I left. She too looked almost sympathetic for a second. My heart went crazy over that flutter of humanity that I looked so hard to find in her.

I walked straight past the kitchen doors, to the back of the room, where they were setting up the dessert table. The centerpiece was a large ice sculpture of a duck. It was in my throat now and I had to move fast, round the tables on the other side of the room on route to the exit. A balding man in his fifties was sitting way back from his table, a leg crossed over his knee, his chair back against the wall. “Bush knows what he’s doing,” he was saying in the kind of booming voice meant for the whole room to stop and hear. “I’m sure this new Secretary of Defense, this Cheney fella, will be a good thing.” He was blocking my path completely, totally unaware I was standing behind him. I hadn’t asked him to move, afraid I might lose it right then. His wife finally noticed, getting stern with her husband to let the “young man” go by. I rushed past, making it out the big banquet room and down the hall. I got my ski jacket from the coat check and went out through the sliding glass doors. It was snowing outside, but I barely noticed. I swallowed several times to make it go down, the same way you can stop yourself from puking. I held it back. I didn’t cry.

If the country club hadn’t been a good couple kilometers north of the nearest city bus stop I would have taken a bus. I swear to God I would have. I still had an hour and a half before my mom was coming to pick me up.  

I watched my breath smoking in the March cold. I tried to blow rings, but you need a cigarette for that. I was under the entrance thing where smokers would have huddled if there’d been any out there. But there was no one. There was nothing but the sound of snow falling, which is no sound at all, which is so good when you can’t handle the world. It was coming down in those magical fat flakes that drop, each one, in their own time. I looked out at one of the lamps over the parking lot, watching the snow fall under the orange light and onto the fancy rich people cars lined up in front of the club.

I pulled out the pack of fruit Mentos I had in my pocket, a kind of necessary crutch I needed for these long and lonely Saturday nights. I always got a fresh pack in preparation. I popped an orange one in my mouth and chewed it down in about two seconds. I walked out to the top of the five shallow steps that led to the parking lot. I stood out there to be in the soft white world of it, to be enveloped by it, sticking my tongue out to catch a shimmering glimmer of it. But I wasn’t seven, so that didn’t last very long.

Why had I been invited? For a while, like when you stand in front of a mirror and convince yourself you really are this handsome devil, I’d thought that maybe it was some secret hidden cool I liked to think I possessed and that they were only now—finally—starting to acknowledge. But alone in the cold, the wind, it was hard to believe that. A chill went up my spine, nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with feeling sorry for myself. I needed to go back inside and get warm, but I really didn’t want to. I kicked some snow around. Ate another two Mentos. I walked up to the edge of the parking lot, looked up at the sky to watch the snowfall like an endless shower of stars. It was pretty, but it was also cold. I had no choice. I went back inside.

“Benji.”

I could tell you every time Courtney Kalich said my name that year. I could probably tell you every time she said my name over all of elementary school. I was that obsessed with her.

Courtney Kalich had come to find me. On her own. Me.

“Were you just outside?”

Standing stupid in my jacket now covered in snow, I had to admit I was.

She asked why, and I gave some vague reply. I looked around. There was no one else out in the hall. It was just me and the prettiest girl in our whole school, just standing there, by the glass door that led to the indoor tennis courts you could see one floor below (the door was locked; we’d all tried). 

I took off my jacket and asked Courtney why she was there.  

“Actually,” she said, standing so tall, her chest pushed out. “I came with a message for you, Benjamin.”

“Really?” I said, not knowing where to look. Her chest. Her beautiful eyes. “For me?” I said it to her shoes.

“Yes. Someone here has a crush on you. Do you want to know who?”

I nodded, too stunned to speak.

“Ok. Just go back outside and wait. The girl who likes you will come out.”

With that she spun round on her heels and was gone.

Back outside, under the snow, I considered the possibilities. I couldn’t really think who it could be. There was the bat mitzvah girl herself but we hardly knew each other, so it wasn’t Tamar. The hardest part was realizing it wouldn’t be Courtney. She wouldn’t have brought the message if she was. Or could it be a kind of double trick? The human brain’s dumb-ass ability to endlessly fool itself back to convince itself of whatever it most wants. I had no idea who it was. It wasn’t Courtney. I wanted it to be Courtney. It wouldn’t be Courtney, who was I kidding. Whoever it was, I suddenly thought of a good reason for why I was there. What if each girl Tamar invited was allowed to invite the one boy they liked? Did girls play games like that?

The snow seemed to be coming down harder, though no faster. There was just more of it. Over a foot had landed now; you could measure it off the cars in the parking lot and the handrails on either side of the stairs. You could see it weighing down the pine trees. I kept turning round to see if someone was coming. I wondered what was taking so long. I pulled out my Mentos, the next available one was Strawberry, my lucky flavour. Then I put the pack away, as if I wasn’t going to eat another one in like eight seconds. I think I managed a whole minute before popping another in my mouth. Still, no one had come down the hall. The glass doors never opened. Courtney wasn’t coming. Tamar Klein wasn’t coming. No one was coming. It was another joke. Grade seven, remember? Let’s invite the loner. Just for kicks. I got another spinal shudder realizing it was almost certainly Courtney herself who had set the whole thing up. I walked round the building into the shadows beyond the range of the parking lot’s orange lamps.

I could still see the lot from where I was, but I couldn’t be seen, my back against the scratchy red brick of the building. There were three snow covered pines huddled together directly in front of me, blocking view of the field beyond and the road past that. They didn’t move, those trees. They didn’t make a sound. I envied them, just standing there. It was so quiet. I wished I could have stayed longer, but I couldn’t because, in my most pathetic way, I was still hoping someone would be there. I walked back to the entrance doors. No one was there. I stood a little longer looking out at the weather, feeling sorry for myself. I was a bit lost in it when the sliding doors opened behind me. It was Mandy.

Mandy. Right. Shit.

“Is it you?!” I asked, way more harshly than I should have.

“What? No, you idiot! It’s not me. There’s no one. Don’t you get it? No one. A joke. They just did it because they’re assholes.”

“Who did it? Courtney?”

“Who do you think? Yes, Courtney.”

“So there’s no one.”

Mandy shook her head. “I’m sorry, Benji. I didn’t know they’d do that. Honestly.”

I looked up at her. The tears were coming themselves now, I couldn’t stop them. “Can I ask you something?” I said, my voice somehow almost holding steady. “Why do they have to be so mean?”

Mandy closed her eyes a moment, this amazing face in sympathy and understanding of how mean they could be. She took  a step forward as if to comfort me, but I backed away.

I tried to sniff up the snot coming out my nose.

“Come inside. It’s cold.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’ll stay out here with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

Mandy didn’t make a move to leave. I was a bit worried because I sort of knew what was coming next.

“What would you have said if it had been me?”       

When I didn’t say anything she came in and slugged my arm, hard. “It’s not, OK? I’m just asking.”

I shrugged because what could I say? I’d known she liked me for a long time.

“You still like Courtney, don’t you?”

I’d once told her because she asked.

I shrugged again. “Yeah, maybe.”

Mandy shook her head. “Well now you know who she really is.”

“I thought she was like your best friend.”

“Yeah, not exactly. Not for a long time.” Mandy gave out a laugh that was no laugh at all. “The prettier they are the more bitchy they’re allowed to be, but I’ll bet you anything you still have a crush on her come tomorrow.”

I sniffed up snot more successfully and hard-wiped my face with the back of my fist. I was done crying. “I don’t know,” I said, because that was better than admitting that of course she was right.

“It’s so pathetic. I can’t believe I still like you after all this time.”

“Mandy,” I said. She was the one getting teary now. She didn’t say anything though, and I didn’t know what to say.

I couldn’t look at her. Neither of us was talking. It was still snowing. We looked out at it. Finally, I turned to her and apologized.

It didn’t seem to have an effect so I took her by the hand.

“What are you doing?”

I didn’t answer, and I didn’t let go; I just led her round the side of the building to where the three pines stood. Her cheeks were red and wet, and she actually had a really pretty face when you looked at it up close.

“I can kiss you,” I said.

She didn’t look impressed. “You don’t even want to.”

“Yes I do!” And I meant it when I said it. I wanted to kiss her, for her. To at least leave someone feeling good in all this crap.

So I did. I kissed her. Kissed her like I knew what I was doing. Kissed her like I’d done it a hundred times before. Like she wasn’t the first girl I’d ever kissed. Our bodies were close, and I didn’t want to pull away. And though I did pull away and would so spinelessly, pathetically ignore her when she came down the hallway Monday morning, and every morning after that until the last time I saw her at grade eight graduation, we kissed some more in the shadows before we went back inside to the stupid kids’ room. Jesse Handler and Bram weren’t so much singing as yelling Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” in the Sing-Your-Heart-Out karaoke box.

I looked at my watch to catch the time but it was the date I fixated on.  March 25th. Three more months to summer vacation. Fourteen more Saturdays to go. Fourteen more synagogue mornings. Fourteen more chicken finger dinners. But who was counting.

what i didn’t take

rhienna renÈe guedry

I thought of two things when I found out that the Zimmerman’s home had gone down in flames: first, that I would’ve saved my hour and forty-five minutes Q-tipping the dust off each picture frame on the mantle if I had known the entire house would become dust itself just an afternoon later, and secondly, that I wish I had stolen something other than their silver-plated wine stopper shaped like a starfish.

All that is supposedly left of the house on Peony Street is a chimney, soot and blackness—like the asphalt turned itself inside out—and the Zimmerman’s antique, stainless steel toaster in perfect condition, as if it was the last item standing at a garage sale and is now free for the taking. At least this is what I’ve been told.

Let me start over: I’ve never stolen anything valuable. My latex-gloved hands have polished silverware worth more than my annual earnings, have dusted behind vases hundreds of years old that are often stuffed with cash, as though any thief or house cleaner wouldn’t expect to find a neatly-tied roll of hundred dollar bills in a porcelain orifice, shining under a spotlight. I have assigned the same unceremonious care scrubbing the rim of a second-floor toilet as I have buffing out fingerprints from a silver serving tray for hors d’oeuvres, never being tempted by objects of status—though I am aware of their importance to those who possess them.

What I have taken: a canvas grocery bag with the faux-leather handle, which I found a family of baby mice nesting in. A wooden cutting board with the unsanitary, deep ridges a knife doesn’t forget. The lime green tennis racket. The ceramic butter dish covered in blue flowers from the back of the refrigerator. A package of cloth diapers from after the miscarriage. Eleven pencils, collected over time, each with unused erasers and perfectly-sharpened tips. The navy pair of broken glasses with one taped arm. A pair of tiny nail clippers from Italy after they fell into the toilet. The fuzzy green pipe cleaner that, twisted around the loop of a candy cane with googly eyes, made antlers for a child’s stocking at Christmas. A collector’s edition issue of Vogue magazine kept in the bathroom, taken after it turned to waves of pulp by an open shower curtain. Seven unique socks that never paired up with their mates, stacked for an entire season on top of the washing machine.

The lure of taking unceremonious things has been thick since my childhood. From our neighborhood Montgomery Ward, I plucked the tags off leather purses: tiny flags of leather that boasted, in serifed stamped branding, “This purse is 100% leather.” (Could something ever be 80% leather? If so, what would the other 20% be?) At nine, I didn’t even want a purse, yet my collection of leather purse tags grew large enough to fill a pickle jar. I kept my secret under my bed, and added new acquisitions when I could.

This jar, of course, was exactly how my mother found out what I’d been doing while she dove through clearance endcaps for blouses two sizes too small for her to fit into the next hopeful summer. Cleaning one afternoon, she knocked the jar over with her vacuum hose, which quickly gobbled up two, six, eleven leather tags from the floor with a WHOOSFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, sucking dryly at them like leaves caught in a storm drain.

Memory tells me she dragged me into the store by the tip of my ear, making me apologize to a bored salesgirl in a beige smock as I handed over a jar full of the remaining useless leather swatches sorted by size and color. Poor thing; I now recognize she was likely faced with two options: throw the contents of the jar away after my mother and I left the store or tell her boss—undoubtedly a round, nervous little man with hairy knuckles—who’d ask her to stay after close to match up the leather samples to their mother-purses, snapping the tags all back on. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. By the end of the night, her fingers would be blistered at the tips. Whom taught whom a lesson?

I wake up early because I have to, what with the dawn seeping through my bedroom window, and two cats that seem to know how to tell time. They are only interested in making noise like a complaint card at six forty-five in the morning and again after seven, never to be heard from again, even at mealtime, even during a luxurious petting.

I get up and put the kettle on, take the paper from the front step, though I rarely read it, and shower, but I rarely bathe. I believe in the efficiency of 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner combinations; bar soap that you can use on your face and everywhere else; a hot water heater that putters out after thirteen minutes, before things get too exciting.  I spend three mornings a week cleaning three different houses and follow up with two of the most anal retentive of clients another afternoon a few days later.

The high-strung anal retentive clients are bona fide matriarchs; they could be sisters. Franke Nesthouse likes her oven cleaned monthly, even though she never bakes; likes mail sorted by shape and size, even though she promptly flicks the stack into the garbage; walks her condo with me before I am sent home to be sure that I was still “giving it my all” and not “getting too comfortable.” Franke is a divorced single mother of one whose teenage daughter’s room is off limits to both of us, who works in advertising and complains about “the stress” while self-medicating with a bottle of Pinot Noir, nightly, except for those four months during her pregnancy. Franke confessed to me one afternoon that both of her pregnancies had been “strategic actions without birth control” between herself and “unknowing strangers with excellent bone structures,” but she never spoke of either encounter—or any suitor or partner of any kind for that matter—again.

Christina Moss leaves a list on the refrigerator of things she hopes I won’t forget. Even though the list rarely changes details, she signs and dates it each time, sometimes making cartoonish “Os” like smoke rings hovering above the two i’s in her name; sometimes short-handedly writing “Xtina” with a big giant “X” like the mother elephant—clutching a writing utensil with her trunk—writes to sign her name in the movie Dumbo. I have never seen or met Christina’s husband, though evidence of his existence (one tube sock with a blue mouth under the bed, a razor and shaving cream left out but without any shaving trimmings in the sink) sometimes made me question whether it was her husband, another man, or Christina’s desire to make it appear as though someone lives with her by scattering the suggestion of masculine things.

The Zimmermans, on the other hand, aren’t high-strung or micromanaging, though they can be meticulous, and confessed to pre-cleaning before I came over if they were “too embarrassed” to let anyone, even a cleaner, know they “lived like that.” Isaac said once that he knew he had ascended class when he and his husband budgeted for a cleaning service and still found the resources to travel internationally twice a year. While Isaac wore freshly-pressed suit jackets and worked in business (though he never mentioned exactly what type), Javier stayed at home and thought about the new paintings he wanted to create. Javier took Isaac’s last name to piss off his Cuban family; thirteen generations of handsome-and-womanizing Albuerne men whose lineage was halted equally by his homosexuality as his vehement disinterest in homonormativity. 

The worst moments in my line of work aren’t de-clogging a bathtub drain or excavating the contents of a soggy, torn garbage bag: it’s acquiring new business. Selling myself has never been one of my strong suits, and it’s not for lack of self-confidence. The game feels counterfeit, no matter how it’s played: if I do it well, I spend my walk home wearing my false smile like a grotesque mask stuck to my face with the glue burning; if it goes poorly, I retrace every word of the conversation, every strange phrase that exited my mouth like a runaway cable car. If my social skills were a movie, they’d probably be Thelma & Louise. 

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when things spiral out of control, but any well-meaning conversation can go from zero to crazy, like when my energy accelerates from enthusiasm to unbridled desperation and loneliness. I overshare; I pathologically lie and those tales become too involved and cumbersome, large-legged things knocking knees into the corners of the room. Normal or well-adjusted people can detect these moments on a dime, like an accent or affectation: something here is different. 

Thankfully—and I hear this from a reputable source—people will not notice how awkward I am if I don’t call attention to it. I challenge myself with silence. Every time I am out in the world, I practice. A cashier at the grocery store says, “Hello, how’s it going?” and instead of filling the air above me with squawking birds, I smile demurely and lock my teeth to hold the words in. I claw at my palms to keep my worst outburst—“last time I bought this artichoke dip I had diarrhea for a week!”—to myself. You can’t undo those kinds of statements, and I speak from experience.

Instead, I have gotten really good at asking questions. People, especially rich people, love it when you ask them about themselves; if their answers are greeted with careful, slow nods and pleasant half-smiles, they often forget about reciprocity.

I consider this a best-case scenario.

It’s interesting in which ways I can personify a clean house to a stranger. If you stop to think about it for a minute, it’s ridiculous to think you’d want any living person to be so meticulous that you feel comfortable allowing them entrance to all your private places. But you see, that’s just how the world works: these people want to see short, manicured fingernails (even though a manicure is near impossible to maintain when you spend most of your days using your fingers to pry, scrape, wash, wipe, tie, pluck, and scrub), canine teeth that match the ivory of your other teeth when you smile, clothes that are solid-colored and forgettable. They want to believe you have everything under control so that you can help them get everything under control, too.

New clients usually come by way of recommendations. In the eleven years I’ve been doing this, there’s been a strange symmetry: when a client receives word that they’ll be relocating for work at the end of the month, I invariably receive a cold call or a referral for a new client who just can’t take the reality of their own bad habits anymore. It’s like that old saying about how when God closes one door He opens another (except I’ve never been much of a Believer, so the idea of some all-knowing bearded man playing with the entrances and exits to anyone’s given life seems kind of sick).

I have juggled as many as seven clients and survived on as few as one. Three seems to be a sweet spot, what with Franke and Christina’s twice-weekly appointments.

Now that the Zimmerman’s house has burned to the ground,  I guess it’s no longer appropriate to say that the two “got along like a house on fire.” I’ll have to remember that.

What’s great about my job is that I don't have to talk to anyone, and when I do, I am mostly expected to be focused; friendly, but curt. If the conversation is too boring or too hard to keep up with, it is acceptable to apologize and say, “I’m sorry, I was focusing a little too intently on scrubbing this caked-on chocolate syrup off your cabinets, what did you say again?” My intense sudsing—me on my hands and knees—is proof I’m well worth the money, and besides, I’m not getting paid to clean and be their therapist.

Today, my younger sister Mar meets me for Mexican food next to my go-to sushi restaurant, the one I feel self-conscious about walking by and not patronizing (but paradoxically self-conscious that I eat there as often as I do). She’s late and I’m early, as usual.

I’m relieved to see that the sushi bar’s blinds are closed. It's their customary two-hour hiatus between lunch and dinner, where the sushi chefs sharpen knives or pick up fresh fish at the market. I breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t have to wave and grin maniacally to the woman who holds the door open for the patrons coming in, who would undoubtedly have made eye contact with judgmental undertones lapping around her retinas. I guess it’s possible that I read too much into things.

When Mar walks into the Mexican joint Brava-Bravo, she is dressed for work without apology. Under her grey oversized hooded sweatshirt with the letters DKNY embellished in rhinestones, I can see lace and ribbons in lavender and lime, booty shorts barely longer than the hoodie itself. It’s spring, after all, but she’s dressed like an Easter egg in panties. Sometimes it’s surprising that we’re related.

Mar wants to be an actress. She’s going to end up being one of those extras that’s only cast as an extra because she’s husky, even though she’s trying time after time to go after lead roles in romantic comedies. Like anyone larger than a size 12, and with no real issue with wearing lingerie on stage in front of a room full of strangers, Mar got into burlesque to put herself through college. Crowds and strangers do not intimidate her. Small talk doesn’t feel like a funeral to her. There are no backstage pep talks before she performs or goes out for an audition. She goes to see movies alone without feeling like she’s being followed by the man three rows behind her, or judged by the ticket-taker. I could say Mar got the looks and I got the brains, but I think she maybe got them both, and I got just enough to get by.

One table over, a man with a wedding ring is biting into a huge burrito, but he can’t help but watch her unzip her hoodie and tie her dark hair back; if she were facing him like I am, she’d probably smile at him before letting it fade dramatically, like a dried-up river bed. He probably is chewing each bite wondering the exact point in his marriage where his wife would have gone from charmed to offended if he brought home something like that for her to wear.

The server comes by to see if we’re ready to order. As a rule, Mar never finishes her food and doesn’t “believe in” leftovers. Typically, I end up scarfing hers down an hour after I get home, emotionally eating through what is left in the Styrofoam container because there just isn’t room to store it in my refrigerator. Knowing this, I order something small but deep fried, while Mar goes for the two entrees she wants a few bites of.

“The Zimmerman’s house burned down,” I say.

“God, that’s too much,” she frowns. “Terrible. Have you been by?”

“I was thinking of sending a card, but of course, what address would I use?”

“Just call them.”

“That seems so uncomfortable. Like I’m putting them on the spot.”

“Getting a ‘sorry about your fire’ Hallmark card is incredibly uncomfortable. You’re their employee, have been for years now. You’re practically friends—”

“We’re not friends. Conflict of interest, professional integrity, and all that. I know all their dirt. I know where they keep their sex toys. You don’t want a friend like that at parties, constantly worrying about what I might unknowingly say to a coworker. Loose cannon. You know me.”

“So you haven’t gone? I’ll drive you. I want to see it.”

“I’m sure it’s barricaded. Besides, what is there to see?”

“Soot. What was and isn’t. The exposed wiring. I don’t know, I’ve never seen a building immediately after a fire before.”

“There’s nothing left but the chimney.”

“You should call them.”

“I just can’t.”

“When were you next supposed to be by to clean?”

“Tonight.”

“Oh. See? You need to call them. They obviously won’t be thinking about calling you to tell you your services are no longer needed.” Mar pauses, tears a napkin corner, and sops up the small puddle of condensation on the table. “God, I wonder if their dogs made it out alive.”

“I was thinking I would wait until this evening, about forty-five minutes after I would be over there cleaning, pretend I took the bus over and saw what was left of the house and wanted to call on my cell phone, but my battery was dead, so I ended up writing an email instead.”

“Why does everything you do—that could be so straightforward—have to be so damn complicated and fucked up?”

I think Neil Young's “Man Needs a Maid” ruined what we do for a lot of people. And by a lot of people, I suppose I just mean the percentage of people aged forty to fifty-five who have actually listened to the words of that song. So some balding, plaid-wearing, hunchbacked Canadian who probably never has scrubbed behind his ears wants “someone to keep my house clean, fix my meals, then go away.” Man Needs A Maid: An Exercise In Learned Helplessness. I should update my resume with this as the byline.

I take Mar’s advice and call the Zimmermans after lunch. A man who introduces himself as Javier’s brother takes my call, keeping me on the phone for two minutes and thirty-two seconds as I try to sound like a person who didn’t spend an hour rehearsing what I would say when I called. Staring at the notepad full of scribbled notes, I decide to go against what I have written. I do not ask if they’d like me to clean the extended-stay hotel where they’re situated with the dogs while they try to sort through the wreckage of their life. Instead, I shake my head side to side and pucker my mouth like he can see me, and say, “I see. I see. I see.”

I take the bus to Franke Nesthouse’s condo early enough to walk the seventeen blocks each way to where the Zimmerman’s house used to stand. It’s just to see if it’s still steaming, the way burned down spaces do in movies, or if I would know how to navigate the ghost walls of their former house when standing in the middle of blackened ruins. As expected, the lot is barricaded with flimsy yellow tape tied sloppily around the metal fence posts on either ends of the lot. The chain link fence that used to run the parameter of the house is flattened down to the sidewalk, like the house fell on it or a fire truck rolled over it. There is nothing behind the yellow “DO NOT CROSS” tape—it looks like the finish line of a marathon in Hell.

I shift my weight from foot to foot in the open space that used to be the kitchen. I notice a crushed pile of metal objects: several of the kitchen counter-top appliances wadded together like a giant ball of tinfoil, recognizable by the strange little parts that spidered out—the grilling units from the inside of a toaster, the blade of the Osterizer blender I used to scrub clean after Javier’s morning shakes. It’s like the universe chewed up a couple’s kitchen accoutrements and spit them back out again. Seeing the wad of scrap metal and charred plastic made me sad. I frowned. I felt like a toddler as I became aware of a couple who stopped on the sidewalk to stare at me. Waving felt downright clown-like, so I raised one eyebrow and straightened my mouth as if to say, “Shit Happens,” or “You Just Never Know.” Unresponsive, they turn abruptly and walk away.

I look around one last time. Nothing is steaming, smoking, hot to the touch. That must be something they add for effect on the big screen.

I walk back towards Franke’s building, crossing the river on foot, over the most convenient but most unstable-looking neighborhood bridge. Each time I cross this bridge, I count the number of large cylindrical posts (178) and note that there are smaller runs (12) between each large one; they’re square like those on the staircase of my grandmother’s Michigan craftsman home. I wish I were good enough at math to multiply them in my head, to know just how many skeletal limbs hover over the river to support my path across. I suppose I could just use my calculator at home, but it never feels urgent in the same way once I get there.

The counting is really just a means to distract myself from all the ways I know I could potentially die on this bridge. The trap door of the drawbridge, or the ejection by air and flipping cartoonishly; the wind itself; the man who smells of liquor and feces; the train; the swiftness of the cyclist behind me, the one who rings his bell and passes with only inches to spare.

When I arrive, Franke is day-drinking, but has switched to Pinot Grigio in a tumbler with ice cubes like it’s the thick of summer instead of 67 degrees and overcast outside. She is watching a soap opera with the sound turned down while her stereo plays a male singer-songwriter with a lot of feelings.

“I took the day off,” she begins. She pauses as if she wants to dish with a friend but never takes her eyes off the television. On screen, a glamorous woman with large hair and distractingly gaudy jewelry is having dinner with a man whose eyebrows are more impressive than hers. It’s hard to tell whether they are flirting or breaking up—maybe this is true of soap operas in general?—but by the time I collect the dishes scattered on the counters of the nearby kitchen and open the dishwasher, they are passionately kissing over rare steak on a plate.

Franke doesn’t move the entire two hours I’m there: not for another tumbler of wine, nor to use the bathroom. As I wipe down the handles of the refrigerator and put away the wine key, I notice a mint green lighter with the words “Gotta Have It!” written playfully on the side. I have no idea what this means, but I feel the familiar pull of the tide—this is a treasure, I’ll never remember this phrase if I don’t do it—and I slide the lighter into the pocket of my slacks.

Franke’s staring blankly at the rolling credits.

I take the empty bottle of wine from beside her, sliding it quietly into the blue recycle bin, which is brimming with a proverbial Tour of Italy itself: just empty wine bottles and empty spaghetti jars. “Do you want me to open you another?”

“There’s another white in the door of the refrigerator. It’s already open, but I’ll take it over here, if you don’t mind bringing it over here.”

“Sure thing.” I walk over and hope the mouth of the lighter isn’t poking out from my pocket. Franke’s face, I notice for the first time since arriving, is puffy as if she’s been fighting off allergies. “I’m ready for the walkthrough, whenever you have a second.”

“It’s fine this time. Thank you.”

I switch to a different sushi restaurant this afternoon just to avoid having to hear, “Wow, three times in one week!” As if that could ever be interpreted as a compliment. I know servers are just trying to make you feel at home, but if I wanted someone to qualify how much food I’m eating and how frequently, I’d still live with my mother.

With the restaurant across the street from my place, something happens after I hit my second visit of the week, and I simply cannot bring myself to call the number, pronounce my name clearly to avoid repeating myself, or worse, having to spell it out. There is that familiar pause of a lightbulb going off: ol’ Dump Truck across the street is calling again, ordering food for two but she lives alone. How they haven’t recognized my out-of-state area code or the familiar tonality in my voice (even though I try to change the inflection on the order every time) is beyond me. But no matter how hard I try, my fear is that I sound like a maniac: a woman on an emotional rollercoaster who's not quite sure when the drop will hit, so she keeps her mouth open just in case she needs to let out a “Yip!” or “Hoot!” I sometimes say, “Just a minute!” and act like I’m asking someone in the room with me what they want to order, adding on one more roll.

Table service means at minimum three to four points of contact with my server coming by, while take-out means precisely two: one by phone (and phone is easier than face-to-face), and one after I waddle through the crosswalk to pick it up. I pay by card, leave an unspectacular tip, leave my sunglasses on even if it’s overcast, and say thank you.

It’s a tie for which is worse: the familiar neighborhood sushi bar, or going somewhere new with its own set of customs; the contrast between knowing stares and unknowing stares.

The place I’m willing to venture into today is one of those sushi-go-round joints. While food on a conveyor belt is as close to heaven as I can imagine, it’s no surprise that the rolls are lackluster.

I sit down on a squatty barstool and put my purse on the floor between my ankles. I try to take off my jacket while seated instead of, as I should’ve done, before I sat down. It’s these little moments that make me confident the world is challenging in a way for me that’s unique to other people: normal people would realize this and stand up without deliberation; people like me try to tuck their elbows out of jacket sleeves in slow motion, trying not to flail or sigh or struggle too hard, thinking about it the entire time.

Thirty-three seconds and a few disapproving glances, and my face starts turning turnip as I try to do it all slower, like it’s no big deal. Like I’m not doing anything weird. Only now, I’m clocking over a minute and I still haven’t gotten my shoulder out from my grey blazer. The waiter notices that I’m struggling and stops in his tracks with the glass of ice water he was intending on bringing me; he does a little Texas two-step and fidgets with the napkin dispenser that’s ejected half its contents, using his free hand.

Once released from the one-woman circus act, I start tearing through dish after dish of sushi, thin little sad rolls with too much rice, not enough fish, and a lacking sense of aesthetics.    

In ten minutes, I have a sad little tower of plastic saucers in lavender, light blue, cafeteria creme, and faded orange; in ten minutes I have eaten more sushi than the couple beside me, who I had assumed were watching a flat-screen television over my shoulder until I look behind me and see there’s nothing but a light-up painting of a waterfall. I get the overwhelming sense that they have just come from putting down a pet, or are having the “breakup” conversation after this. I’m tempted to mouth, It’s gonna be alright and rest my palms wide on each of their shoulders, but neither they nor I want this, so I finish my meal, pay for my sushi, and leave in silence.

For days, I dreamed the smell of cinders into nightmares, the dark corners of an inverted sunset like the edges of the frame had caught fire. In another dream, I recognized a field that had been the entrance to a family farm from my childhood, silent and full of doom. There were supposed to be horses, somewhere, but as I stepped closer to the fence, I noticed that the mud underfoot was actually ashes, and just the legs of two beautiful brown horses were there, all singed hair and exposed bone—eight legs like two oak kitchen tables flipped upside down for space in a moving truck. I put my hands to the gate of the fence and jerked back from the heat of it, the sizzling of the skin and the smell of meat, my fingers quickly charred, like hot dogs on a grill.

When I awoke, I felt the nausea of fear and regret: that the Zimmerman’s house fire had somehow been my fault. Had I left an aromatic candle burning, a tiny wick and metal island floating in the shallowness of remaining wax? It had been a chilly spring morning: did I leave an oil-burning heater on in one of the rooms? Had the electricity panel in the basement been overloaded from use? It had, after all, been a three-load laundry day; an all-lights-on affair. Anything could have happened. How does someone determine the start of a fire when all that is left is ash and a pile of scrap metal that used to mean something?

I am at Christina Moss’ home for the second appointment of the week and I have the house to myself. Her note lists the usual concerns (behind the couch, the coffee-stained teaspoons) but an addendum in green ink reads, “Take the glass serving dish on the kitchen table to Goodwill. -CM.”

Here’s what I probably shouldn’t tell you: the last time Christina Moss asked me to take something with me was the vintage tennis racket with which her husband used the handle to hit her. She had left it in the middle of the kitchen table two winters ago, with a yellow post-it note on top of it that read “DONATE THIS,” underlined twice. Once I saw the flecks of crimson on the handle and the tear in the netting, I didn’t have the heart to tell her a donation center wouldn’t want such a thing, so I brought it home with me.

I kept the racquet beside the shoe rack near my front door. Once, a failed blind date I took home anyway asked me, “Oh, do you play?” I said yes.

Months after the Zimmerman fire and I still dreamt of the horse legs. No client calls came, and I floated by, balancing Christina Moss and Franke Nesthouse, snacking on pickles or old food from the backs of their refrigerators to save on money. At home, I took to using a space heater instead of heating the entire apartment. I stopped eating out completely. It’s not rock-bottom, but times are hard.

It’s not that I never thought about taking cash; I think about it all the time. I’ve been in this business long enough to know your reputation precedes you but precisely long enough to learn that anyone privileged enough to not clean it doesn’t know shit about their own home. It took two years and an innocent mistake to realize what I could get away with, and another year before I started taking things purposefully. The first thing was the hair clip. It was pastel blue and to this day it has never seen use.

But there is more to it, of course, than utility. There is always a reason, a calling that tugs on my collar and will not take no for an answer. It has never been about the money; it has never been about the thrill. I like to think about it like this: taking things away can sometimes be a gift I give to people, a way to keep them from remembering things they don’t want to remember. It’s easier than you expect, given that so many people don’t see what is right in front of them, let alone what has been removed.

When I took the diapers, it was to keep Franke from a baby shower gift tumbling out of her pantry when she reached for winter linens, startling her into the memory of her miscarriage, of the baby who came out still and the size of a bird.

I discovered the rats nesting in the canvas bag while Isaac prepared dinner, discreetly twisting the mouth of the bag like a dishrag, so as to not call attention to the situation during dinner time. It never came up, even after.

Franke cut the tip of her ring finger off on the wooden cutting board. Wine, carrots, and an independent film were all involved in the scene. Franke used this as evidence that she had no business cooking, anyway.

The glasses were the same ones that Christina wore around the time of the assault. She stopped wearing them immediately after offering up the racket, so I inferred the rest. The glasses moved from atop the microwave to inside the drawer where she kept old menus and packets of condiments.

The Ceramic butter dish lid that never sat just so; always got bumped by the orange juice and came crashing down to the shelf below, sometimes exposing butter for days, and no one seemed to notice except me. The things you stop seeing.

Tennis racket. The “Gotta Have It!” lighter. Pencils: Number 2 with perfect tips and perfect erasers, some octagonal and school bus yellow, others perfectly cylindrical and deceivingly pen-like. A hair clip that fell behind Christina’s bed, used to pin her hair back when she was on top.

My house is full of things removed from other places. Sometimes I do it because I have to, and sometimes I do it because someone else needs me to, though they rarely even know it. Sometimes I do it to remind myself of the places I have been, and sometimes it’s to allow others to forget.

 Everyone Needs A Place

Elizabeth Kirschner

My lover, George, lies to me about the smallest things. Now he's dying and I'm trying to forgive him and everyone else while painting objects.

I keep saying I've never been in love. That’s not quite true, but I keep describing the same things differently, as sailboats through the locks of reversed rivers or as streaks of red across the sky, visible only in one eye.

I forget who I am and wake up exhausted. I once had a teacher who died. It was as if she removed herself into the forest where I scatter leaves to read them like pages, as if she's speaking. She was in love.

I'm choosing between two trees with two hollows. One begins breaking as I step inside while trying to sleep. I find a feather and have a thought, there must be an object. The field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick with sunshine.

The man I love, he’s easy to desire since there’s not much to him, just light bouncing off skin thin as a peanut shell. He’s vague and smeary in his hospital johnny, which is tucked under his chin, a green bib.

Forget about his insides, his plumbing and his furnaces—put a thing in his hand and be done with it. No one wants to know what’s in his head. It should be enough. To make something beautiful should be enough, but it isn’t. It should be.

The smear of his head—I paint it in, paint it out again, like a whisper of ashes, which says, We were born before we were born.

I paint it in, paint it out again. A blur of forces. Why take more than we need? Because we can.

Deep footprint, it leaves a hole. I’d break George’s heart to make it bigger. I’d even crack his skull to make his mind swell into a thought larger than his own head.

You’re dying, I say, so why not do something?

When he doesn’t answer, but dozes off, my mind moves forward—the paint layers up: glop, glop and shellac. I shovel color into his face, shovel his face into me.

From the apple green hospital room, I see a bird and find it beautiful. The bird has a song inside, and feathers. I feel like the bird and I feel like a stone—solid, inevitable— but mostly, I feel like the bird, or that there’s a bird inside me, or that something inside me is like a bird fluttering. This goes on for a long time.

I see the bird and want to paint it. The problem, if there is one, is simply a problem with the question. Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all? Not how, because the hows are easy—series or sequence, one foot after the other—but existentially, why bother, what does it solve?

And just because I want to paint a bird, I mean, I actually do want to paint a bird, it doesn’t mean I’ve accomplished anything. Who gets to measure the distance between experience and its representation? Who controls the lines of inquiry? We do.

Blackbird, says George. So be it, but he isn’t a bird, he’s a man in a bird suit, blue shoulders instead of feathers. Besides, he isn’t looking at a bird, a real bird, as I paint, he’s looking at his heart, which is impossible.

Unless George’s heart is a metaphor, silent and upright, which it is as it stands in profile against the green wall, until looking at the paint is like looking at a bird that isn’t there, with a song in its throat that he doesn’t hear, but I paint it anyway.

The hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not, and because my hand wants to do something useful, I think about a sable radiance where gloom foregathers, and the stern winds brood.

Before George started dying, we looked at the walls in a cave that different men had painted in torchlight: red mostly, sometimes black—mammoth, lion, horse, bear—things on a wall, in profile or superimposed, dynamic and alert.

They weren’t animals, but they looked like animals, enough like animals to make it confusing—this meant something but the meaning was slippery: it looked like the thing but wasn’t the thing—was a second thing, following a second set of rules—and it was too late: their power was no longer absolute.

What is alive and what isn’t and what should we do about it? Theories: about the nature of the thing. And of the soul. Because people die. The fear: nothing survives. The greater fear: something does.

The night sky is vast and wide. In the hospital bed, we cuddle close, shoulder to shoulder, paint ourselves as a herd of two, together and apart from the rest.

We look at the sky, and the stars. This goes on for a long time. To be a bird, or a flock of birds doing something together, one or many, starling or murmuration. To be standing on a hill, as half a woman, or half a man, shivering in the flock of himself. These are some choices.

The night sky is vast and wide. My lover has two birds in his head—not in his throat, not in his chest—and the birds sing all day never stopping. Because they are dying. That’s what makes the singing. The dying.

When George says, One of these birds is not my bird, I agree. The lines my eyes cast braid me to his skin until I know I’m a thing that can take itself away—refined, resolved to curving inward.

Screaming isn’t looking—when my mother died, I folded time into my mouth, as if to flee into private chambers only to find an uninvited thought, whispering, It’s easier to unmake everything.

Come morning, my paintbrush takes yellow from the pewter sky while I wonder about all the rooms the sky makes and about George’s body, which is a sheet of sand and snow.

“A boy hung a dog in the playground today,” I start, “right there under the dark leaves where the birds go.”

Sharp sweet dung smell. The yelps almost digital. Above the dog, faint blue expanse, and won’t I always be closer to the falling away of George’s gaze than anyone else?

With my hands on his chest, I set the scene. When grief comes I’ll bite through it, as though it were his soft hands, these I’ll bite through as if into the bright white light of summer.

I leave George’s room, go to the playground. By the jungle gym I find the dog the boy hung. Its neck looks like a U-turn. I stop, pick him up.

Everyone needs a place. You need it for the moment you need it, then you leave and move on. Who does this? Everyone. But the dog, I carry him, like a wine bag into the woods.

I look at all the trees and don't know what to do. A box made out of leaves? What else is in the woods? A heart, closing. Always and nevertheless.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside someone else. I keep my mind on the moon. Old moon, long nights, moon.

From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale.

Because everything casts a shadow. Even or especially the dog. Which doesn’t sing. Still it finds its way out, leaving behind it the future, dead and entirely, ours.

I go back to George, whose body is like wheat. Nothing will release us from the death of the dog, which I diapered with leaves. Unleashed into us now, the yelps that blazed from his lungs.

We are meant to ward off the desolation that bores into our blood, but what will we do without this aching chord, without the bright morning that tore the parched dirt from the dog’s throat?

I hold George’s hand, which is lamb-soft. How can I live without the dictionary of his face? How can I accept the certainty of his quiet grave?

Beneath the hospital window, girls walk past, hair fluttering like commas. And their dreams are musk, or water gently falling on smooth, warm stones.

This is what George’s dying looks like. Musk, water falling on smooth, warm stones. Something I’ll carry around like a baby.

My eyelids droop, fall, heavy with sky. Going up, slowly, is how George dies. His body exerts a last pull that drags, like a match across sandpaper, then ceases.

In the phone booth, which is caulked with soggy directories, I call all the people we hardly know while watching the morning spell his name on the cracked glass.

The sound of his mother’s dial tone smells like fire, like the sun projecting simple stories, and I wonder if I know I’m melting, if what I feel is more than empty space.

Because death sets me apart, I see George as a small boy, digging a hole so big, he can’t see the other side.

This is where his mother laid out his dog, where she made George eat his organs, like cabbages. Lonely as manure, the bones—these soiled his gums, until she tossed them into the starless hole.

It’s the hole, of course. In earth that is mink-lined.

This is place we all go back to—the color of its bones we do not know, but all of us are stationed before it, like glass sheets; we see right into it, into the dirt and dregs, silt and stones.

Eel-black. And starless.

 A House Full of Spirits

Ope Adedeji

#1

Once the strand of yarn goes around her feet, the rest is easy. My girl, Edima, is only a few weeks old. Her skin is pink and supple as a thumb. The yarn isn't cashmere soft, but it also isn't thick like the cheap yarn the old neighbor Alhaja wanted to sell me in exchange for a small tin of evaporated milk. Cashmere is expensive, and common yarn can cause allergic reactions. I dropped the tin by her foot mat—social distancing—and watched as her cat, a poor, hairless thing with wicked teeth, brought me two rolls of merino wool with thick strands instead.

Edima coos and twists as I wrap her arms. I feel a pinch of guilt on the mole above my right eye. I sing a song someone used to sing to me as a child to comfort her: “Omo mi, a ke re beke ku beke.” The song comforts me instead and my guilt grows. How do you convince your baby that you're wrapping her up to protect her? How do you promise that this is not a ploy to throw her away? I sigh. Before the last strands of yarn cover her face, I push my nipple into her mouth to be sure she is still here. Her mouth closes over it as she sucks. Her face relaxes and she shuts her eyes. I only wait a few seconds before I pull out my nipple, wrap her mouth and the rest of her face up until she is wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy. I wonder if babies dream of anything; if they do, Edima would probably dream of sheep.

I tuck her into the wrapper tied around my waist and stand by the window listening to the house breathe. My eyes are fixated on a small barely-there crack beneath the burglar proof window guard. It's a childhood crack that has refused to heal. It festers all sorts, from black ants to tailless geckos. Above the crack and through the mosquito net, the sun is a sallow glow that bounces over rain-beaten roofs.

The world is happening slowly. There’s now, there’s later, and there’s before, but they're all merged in one. Like when I climbed the stairs to Alhaja’s apartment this morning. This was hours ago, before the house even woke up, but it feels like only a few seconds ago. Being here feels unreal. It's the virus. And that I'm living, breathing, in fact, without Udo.

A week ago, I arrived for Mami’s sixtieth birthday party. No guests had arrived when I got here, only her sisters. There were two canopies and dozens of white plastic chairs stacked on top of each other in the compound. The caterer, a middle-aged woman with grey eyes set up pots of jollof and fried rice just by the well. I moved around in my dry lace with Edima on her baby sling on my chest, ensuring things were in order. Everything seemed to be fine, until a neighbor came to tell me with too much glee in her flared nose and fake sympathy in her watery mouth that the General had just ordered a lockdown of the entire state beginning 12:00 a.m.—something about stopping the spread of the virus that had invaded the city. It was about 5:00 p.m.; the DJ had only just begun playing an old playlist with songs by Tuface Idibia, P-Square and Styl Plus.

The news from the neighbor's lips was airborne. The music stopped just as Styl Plus said an umpteenth “Imagine That.” I went in to see Mami, to break the news as gently as I could. She was in front of her vanity mirror, checking her made-up face for errors.

She screamed as I spoke: “No wonder people have been calling to cancel,” she said, staring at my eyes through the mirror, her teeth chattering. For the first time, I saw that I had become my mother, that our resemblance was not just in the plump lips and in the large eyes, but in the lines of our skin. It was unsettling; I looked away.

Six months, if not forty years, of plans cancelled in a wink. We came out of the house and watched as the service providers packed up. There was no talk about refunds. The chairs went into a squeaky blue truck, the DJ waved, saying he had to stock up on necessities, the caterer put food into coolers even if they were only half-done. Mami sat her white buba and painted face distraught at the front-door steps, her gele tilted over, covering most of her forehead. It felt odd to leave her feeling sad on the day that was supposed to be the best day of her life. So I stayed. Later on, I went to my old room and lay my head on my old pillow, tired. I dreamt that everyone in the world died and was buried in a mass burial site. Everyone except the General, so he sat at the steps of our house—the new Aso Rock—and led robots instead.

#2 

My old room is as it was when I first lived here. Except for the mustiness of age, the film of dust and cobwebs. The old housekeeper, Martha, used to scrub the entire house every Friday. After she died—hanging herself in one of the rooms—things started to deteriorate.

The walls are purple with stripes of white drawn across. The bookshelf has notes and textbooks from secondary school. My old uniform from six years ago—the blue blazer, blue pleated skirt, and tie—hangs on a rack, wearing dust. I miss the less complicated life in them. Being an adult with Edima and without Udo means adulthood is a real thing at twenty-two. It means that Mami and I fight a lot more. The fights started long ago, even before I was a teenage girl with breasts. Once, in this room, Mami's eyes burned red as she threatened to kill me—by digging a hole and pushing me inside—after I told her I was probably depressed and definitely suicidal. I was twelve. Hours later, in the kitchen, she pulled me into her warm buba and said she hated the American teenage movies I watched as they were influencing my thought processes. Our fights are slightly different now. There's a calmness about me and a wink of respect in her eyes when she speaks to me. But that's all.

If it was just Mami and her wind blowing through all six rooms in her house, it would have been fine. The family makes it worse.

We are many here: the two aunties from Bournemouth: Aunty Laolu and Aunty Ogo—Mami’s sisters. Their cheeks are always red with blush and full of flour. They wear mufflers around their neck and coats even though the heat that slices through the day is tangible: something sticky and warm like chunks of bread in a bowl of hot tea.

The dead grandfather is here too; he sits straight in the dining room with folded eyes behind his glasses, staring at faraway places. Yesterday, before it got dark, I watched from this window as he rose from the ground behind the house where he was buried between the moringa and coconut tree. It was quite casual—the way a man who hadn't slept past his alarm would sit up on his bed and get about his day. It was inside that moment I knew I had to protect Edima, to hide her; who knew what the old man had come back for. The white tiles covering his two-month-old grave remained sealed as he navigated his way to the front door, walking stick in hand. I dropped Edima inside a carton with old scarves, locked my room and put the key in my breast. I stood by one of the doors that connected the parlor to the long, dark hallway to watch. The women sang his oriki, welcoming him. Mami's voice wasn't sweet, but Aunty Laolu sang like an angel, holding his bony hands and dancing.

The grandfather smiled.

Aunty Ogo, with her mufflers and coat, ran water into a pot to boil for him. When she returned with a bucket of water, she said she’d seen this happen before at a wedding between two beautiful men in Peckham.

“The mother of one of the grooms came out of her grave after being dead for six months. Six whole months oh. And she had, you know, like a broom in her hand. The kind we use to sweep the compound. She came just to chase the other groom away.” She shook her head and sighed.

“They pressed her skin with warm water to keep her. You know that’s what the WhatsApp broadcast says, warm water, every other hour. And they said they tried, but seeing that after a few days, she sat up on her old bed, complaining of a headache, I don’t think they did enough. You know how humans are, they must have been careless.” She looked at her sisters, then at me; her stare lingering like she was trying to send me a message. “Before anyone could say or do anything, she melted into sand. You know the amazing, or should I say the worst, part? The two beautiful men had their happy wedding that very day.” Her too-fast voice was loud and filled with laughter. Her laughter was a cold, dry thing like the hacking of wood with an axe, her white tongue sticking between her gap tooth.

Mami and Aunty Laolu sighed, clasped their hands together, pressed their breasts. Lines from nowhere creased Aunty Laolu's forehead. She reached for a water pitcher on the dining table and poured herself a glass.

I’m still looking out the window and Edima is still inside my wrapper, when things start to happen rush-rush. The rain is starting, the wind is swaying the moringa tree and singing through the walls of the house. It's the first rain of the year. The aunties spent some of last night trying to contact a rainmaker to stop it—just for stopping’s sake, and, well, to prove to me that they're well-connected. We sat on mats in the parlor, wrappers tied from our bust down. Grandfather sat up straight at the dining table with Aunty Ogo who was having a late dinner. There was no light, but the parlor was lit with several electric lamps and two kerosene lamps. Dipping her long white nails in eba, rolling it and then dipping it in egusi, Aunty Ogo said that one time during her son's graduation at Brunel, the weather forecast had predicted rain, so she had called Mami all the way in Nigeria to call the rainmaker. She spoke Yoruba that was crisp and coated with a British accent: “Just as it got really dark in front of the graduation hall and people scampered for safety, the sun came out.” She laughed.

I hear some noise that sits inside the thunder; Aunty Ogo is shouting “Faramade, Faramade, come here.” I panic, wondering whether to take Edima with me. When I spent last night with them in the parlor, I’d left Edima in the scarf carton in my room, praying for her not to cry or make any noise. After 2:00 a.m., she finally did, probably just waking up from a nap.

"Where is Edima, sef?" Aunty Laolu asked, pouring some whiskey into a glass. Mami looked away from her phone.

"Slee-sleeping," I stuttered. I distracted her from that conversation by peeling dead skin off my fingers and showing it to her. The conversation died and the crying stopped. If the grandfather noticed, there was no indication.

I decide to take her with me. It’s better that way, to protect her. I retie the knot of my wrapper to ensure she is safe inside it. My belly shoots out slightly, like when I was five months along. I lock the room and keep the key in my bra.

“Fara,” Aunty Ogo says before my footsteps even break into the kitchen. “It doesn't make sense that you're not helping out. You're a woman, you really should be helping out.” I think of my favorite mockery meme—the one of SpongeBob’s hands on his hips, face bent forward with a beak-like appendage, much like a chicken—and a smile almost steals at my face.

The kitchen is choked. I peer at the dining room through the open door; Mami stares at me with blank eyes that say too much. She's sitting on an apoti in front of grandfather, trimming his overgrown nails with a razor blade. I look away, back at Aunty Ogo who is washing plates, then at Aunty Laolu who is turning wheat. The rain outside whizzes into the kitchen through the mosquito net above the sink and Aunty Ogo mumbles something under her breath.

“What do you need me to do?” I ask. There's no immediate response. Aunty Ogo looks around, searching the dark kitchen. I fix my eyes on the black heat patch on the wall above the cooker.

“Just set the table,” Aunty Ogo says, twisting and folding her mouth.

At the dining table, I realize that the grandfather has no voice. When he speaks, nothing comes out. Yet, they respond to him, nodding and laughing. I whisper to Aunty Laolu who is closest to me on the dining table. “Aunty, you guys are aware that this man is dead, right?” She drops the bottle of Heineken she's just opened and stares at me. The room pauses around us. I feel Edima try to move 

“You said what, Faramade?” Mami asks before Aunty Laolu can say anything. Her lips are twitching. I know the look. If I was a girl, she would've given me a slap. Even the grandfather looks in my direction, his quiet stare feels like vindication. I look down at my dark knuckles. Aunty Laolu fingers them and says—a little too loud—“Anyway, aren't we all dead?”

#3

The rain hushes after dinner. The grandfather made a mess of himself and the table; soup and clumps of wheat sit on the napkin across his chest, on the edges of his mouth, and on his placemat. Aunty Ogo cleans him up. She kneels by the chair, cranes her neck up, soaks a brown towel in a bucket of warm water and then presses it into his skin. Her fingers are mango-yellow, a tone higher than the caramel of her face. She has rings on each finger that she doesn't bother to take off. I look at my empty hand and look back at hers; they're knobby and wet. She hums a tune, her lips barely moving, her eyes lit with tears I don't understand. Mami catches me watching her sister and bites her lips.

I head out of the house. I barely touched my food after Mami's outburst. Something about her nostrils flaring up, the silence that crept up the table and Aunty Laolu's words frightened me, reminding me of the dream I had on my first night, the one where everyone in the world died. There are puddles of water on the uneven cemented ground. I unwrap Edima, with the assurance that everyone will be asleep by the time I return. I put her mouth to my ears to listen for breathing. It's barely there, but it's there.

"I'm sorry, baby," I whisper, pressing my face into hers. "I had to protect you from bad people." She yawns, stretching her plump hands to the bridge of my nose. It's hard to believe this small human came out of me only about a month ago. Mami wanted me to name her Babatunde, since she came only a few weeks after grandfather’s death. I said no and that I didn't believe in all that nonsense. I wish Udo had been there to say no with me.

I don't know how this thing with Udo finally split open like a wound. In early March, we were in the kitchen almost every day laughing about our awful cooking skills, arguing about pepper and falling deeply into each other's eyes. We were isolating even though there were only a few cases of the virus. In early April, the day Edima came into the world, Udo cried too many goodbyes as an ambulance took me away. She ignored my promise not to die and my pleas for her to come with, so I screamed.

I didn't stop screaming even when Edima was placed in my arms in the hospital. Nothing kills you like a heartbreak. And when love dies, you die. The nurse who attended to me, a soft-faced woman with eager pupils, said that I was frightening the other pregnant women with my scream. I hissed. She didn't know about me and Udo. That Udo was supposed to be by my side, through the whole thing, massaging my arms and comforting me, like in the movies, and without Udo—the glint of joy in her eyes—I wasn't sure I could do this. It was this anger that cracked through my voice and made me tell her to get out of my room when she asked about my husband. What dirty husband? Husband ko, husband ni. All I have is Udo. All I had was Udo. And I have no idea how that went from present to past.

I wrap Edima behind me, knotting the wrapper tightly at the nook of my armpit. The wrapper is an old ankara, patterned with ugly colors and shapes. It has too much Mami on it; it's the smell, not of her, but of Mami things: camphor, Pucelle, and Robb.

Mami built this house before me. When I came, it was painted a dull onion purple and the next plot was all bush. Mami and I lived alone. She was an aspiring screenwriter then, so she told horror stories of witches who lived in big buildings with large empty plots of lands just like ours, and how they would steal my spirit if I wandered too close to the bush. When we watched movies like Full Moon and Nneka the Pretty Serpent, she smiled at my fear. She used it to threaten me into eating meals I found repulsive—pap and akara, semo and egusi: "Now if you don't eat your food, that spirit is going to eat you up."

When she started renting out the apartments upstairs, she had to cut down the bush because there were pest complaints from the new tenants: snakes, alligator lizards, something called alasunbere. The tenants have come and gone over the years. The length of their stay depended on how well they could deal with Mami's red. Not just the red that colored her face when she was angry: the red, her signature color. Her red shoes on a red dress, the red Volkswagen and Lexus, the red lips. A few years ago, a tenant, a young, skinny boy who was only ever high and who spoke in slurs, asked her if she was into blood money. Mami slapped him, leaving a mark on his cheek and refused to accept his next rent. "Let him go and ask his next landlord if he's into blood money. Oshi."

Now there are two tenants upstairs in self-contained apartments. There's Alhaja, who lives with several cats. There's the young girl who informed me about the General's lockdown order. I don't know much about her; other than the loud street music she plays all day and especially at night. Sometimes, her face reminds me of Udo's and I don't know why; they look and behave nothing alike. Perhaps it's because I miss Udo.

I sit beneath a fir tree just by the gate. The moon is now a dot in the sky. I unlock my phone for the first time since I arrived. The battery is red and the network bar is low, but I'm able to open Twitter. It's full of news of the virus. The number of deaths is at least four times what it was the last time I paid attention. It still feels vague—like it's not really here. I gloss through Udo's profile. There aren't a lot of tweets, just retweets, food recipes, updates on the virus, deaths. My timeline is boring, but there's a thread on the different dreams people have been having due to the anxiety that comes with the virus. One Twitter user's dream was that she was a spoon. Another tweeted about travelling around the world in empty planes. I wonder about my dream of the world, whether it has some sort of meaning, or if it's just pandemic-anxiety.

After a few minutes, I open the gate to stare into the street. It is flooded and there's barely anyone in it. I return inside to an empty parlor. Grandfather is at the table. I'm torn between running to my room to drop Edima, who is currently exposed to him, or going to challenge him. I go with the latter.

"What do you want?" My voice is low, but curt. 

He smiles. His lips move slowly, though no words actually come out. I feel or read what he says: I came to welcome you. Mo wa ki e kaabo, he translates his English to Yoruba. Welcome me? I eye him: his dirty singlet, the uneven grey hair on his almost-bald head, his flat nose. Don't worry, he assures me, I don't want your baby, I already have your baby. This makes me feel queasy. Come on, you give her to me. Let me see my great-grandchild. I want to ask him to promise not to take her away, but my lips can't move. My arms move instead, to my back, untying the wrapper and handing Edima in her white onesie with her hairless head to him. He smiles and Edima smiles back at him or something like that.

#4

The strangers arrive under the brimming sun of the May afternoon. "August visitors," Mami says, peering through glasses that sit on the flat end of her nose. She pulls a chunk of Aunty Ogo's hair, divides a line with a red ilarun, and then rubs cream into the line. There's a slight throbbing on her temples as she works. She takes a deep breath and frowns.

"Gboriduri," she says to Aunty Ogo, pushing her head to the side. Aunty Ogo rolls her eyes.

I'm not sure what day it is; Udo has still not sent a text, not even to ask about Edima—Edima who sleeps on Aunty Laolu's lap now, no stranger to the aunties or to the grandfather, never having to hide inside merino wool or a carton full of scarves. Still, I constantly watch her through squeezed eyelids. A little time has gone, if I use these small changes to measure the days.

As the crunch of the visitors' footsteps approaches, I turn away from the television to watch them through the window; they're dressed in white protective wear like the ones of the disease control staff. They're carrying pumps, plastic thermal fogs and things I cannot name. Does someone in the building have the virus? Aunty Laolu sitting next to me pricks my skin with the cracked edge of her false pinky. I'm about to swear when I enter the soft, swirling spools inside her eyes. Inside her eyes, my mind is attuned to the sounds that make this day a day that'll never happen again: chickens in the pen reared by the Alhaja from upstairs cackle—which is a sign, if not the first sign. Above the chatter of the old sitcom we're watching on the television, above the cackling, the sizzling of plantains on hot oil in someone's kitchen, above grandfather's snoring and everything else, there's something bubbling like broth over a stove. My eyes break away from hers and she encloses my hands in hers.

One, two, and three afternoons, air fresheners, and disinfectants later, the smell of the chemical still hangs over us like a fog. Every now and then, I burst through rooms asking the aunties and Mami what's going on. Nothing makes sense. Not Udo's silence, not the fumigating, not the faceless dead bodies carried away in a white van, not the thunder-strong silence that follows. I feel palpitations everywhere so I buy more merino wool from Alhaja and start to wrap Edima again. Today, she's in pink wool, in her baby sling across my chest when I barge into Mami's room. Mami is playing a game of WHOT cards with her sisters.

"Why did those fucking men fucking fumigate the house while we were in it? Who were those dead people?" If I wasn't bald, I would've pulled out my hair. The insides of my mouth are burnt and full of blood. I don't wait for answers because I know they don't have any. My dress, a long chiffon maternity dress, billows around me as I leave the thick room with the old relics and smell of lavender to sit in the parlor, tapping my feet, moving my mouth, saying words I do not understand. The women chase after me, but don't get too close when they find me in the parlor. They stand in front of the television. Mami folds her arms and squeezes her face. We hold each other's gaze. Hers are hot red, mine, too white—not knowing: gullible.

"What the fuck are you all looking at?" I finally ask.

The grandfather quakes a little on his seat at the dining table, the table creaks and Aunty Ogo rushes to him. What she'll do now is easy to predict: go into the kitchen, boil water and press his skin, from his head to his toes. She'll mumble words of prayers or his oriki to keep him.

"Mami, why the fuck is the grandfather here?" I point, even though I don't need to. "He's dead. Why the fuck is he here? Why the fuck is he here? Why?" I've never cussed this much in one breath—not in front of my mother, especially not in front of Edima. She starts to cry, a barely audible sound that seeps through the wool and finds its place in a sour spot in my chest. I cry too, rocking myself and rocking her.

"You do not talk to me or your aunties like that. Abi ki lo fa nonsense? What has caused this rubbish?" She paces in front of me, holding up one wicked finger and wagging it. The other hand is on her hip. Her usual pillow-soft voice is high. "Look, the fact that you're a mother does not change anything. You're my child. You're unmarried. You're living under my roof. You're under my authority. And I will beat you if I have to."

I look up at Aunty Laolu who is on the lounge chair opposite me. She's moving her hand over her chest, up and down, telling Mami to calm down.

"Laolu, don't you dare tell me to calm down. No really, who does she think she is?"

Mami walks away, huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf in the story of the three pigs that I read to Edima last night. Aunty Laolu comes around to clean my face with a napkin. She holds my stiff shoulders and tells me that I should be patient. Her Yoruba is small and unsure. When Mami returns, she has a big Tesco bag with medicine in it. She digs through it for something to calm me. Aunty Laolu gets me a glass of water. I stare at the drug; it's blue, small and round like a multivitamin. A voice at the back of my throat tells me it's a trap. With all their eyes on me, I take it anyway. It makes me warm and dizzy. The mole above my eye twitches as I space out.

When I come to, I'm in an unfamiliar room. It's not my room. It's not Mami's room or the room both Aunties sleep in. I take deep breaths to gather my mind. I momentarily imagine that I'm with Udo, whom I stalk on Twitter, who retweets "Egungun be careful" jokes, quoting them with laughter emojis like she's over me. Udo, the mother of my child, whom I love, who said goodbye to me and our child on the day I brought her to the world. And that's the thing with life: when things start to fall apart, they fall apart utterly and completely, just like the breaking of a ceramic plate. Once it reaches the floor and cracks, it never matters how many pieces appear. All anyone needs to know is that there's no going back. I'm dead to Udo. It's time she becomes dead to me.

Someone coughs. I look up at Aunty Laolu, her dark, square face. She is standing in the corner of this room, just by the Ox standing fan. She smiles, kind eyes crinkling in the corners. Her smile calms me.

"Whatever happened with you and Udo, dear?" Adding “dear” seems forced, too creamy for her lips. I squint my eyes at her. She moves closer and it finally hits me that this is Martha’s, the former maid's room, a room we barely entered since she killed herself.

In my stretched silence, Aunty Laolu stops smiling and her lips tremble. "I have to show you something," she says. The urgency is in the speed of her voice, its rap-like texture. I sit up.

"What's that?"

Aunty Laolu sighs and turns to face the door. "Martha," she says—not mentioning a name, but calling it. "Martha. Martha."

The knob of the toilet door twists and Martha, in her pink uniform, appears. She's the same, broad shoulders, hair covered with a bonnet, small eyes, nurse shoes. I'm not startled until she smiles, brown and decayed eyes lighting up, until she walks up to me and touches my shoulders. I pinch myself, needing to wake up from a nightmare that conjures dead people. First the grandfather, now Martha who has been dead for years?

Edima—

— I press Edima into my breast, realizing she's still on her baby sling across my chest. Has Martha come for her? Silence engulfs us. Aunty Laolu looks down at her feet, I look from woman to woman. I need to be with Udo, spooned by her, forgetting these past few weeks. Her distant voice comforts me: "It's okay. It's okay."

"We're all— " Aunty Laolu starts to say just as Edima begins to cry. Her tears jump from inside me and into the rest of the room.

“Oh my little darling,” I say, rocking her. “I think she’s hungry.”

Aunty Laolu shakes her head. “I don’t think she is.” Her face has a comical look that makes me tilt my head back, stare at Martha who is still as a statue and then back at Aunty.

“Is something wrong, Aunty?” My words are measured and slow. I’m a bit cautious because of Martha. Does she want my baby?

She shakes her head again. “You feed her, I’ll wait.” She paces while I unwrap Edima, discard the pink wool and then feed her.

“Okay, but why is Martha here, Aunty? This is creeping me out.”

“Hm.”

“Aunty now, talk to me.”

“Hm. I'm not joking."

“Joking about what?”

“We’re all dead.” Aunty Laolu’s voice is distant with a twinge of resignation. Lethargy. I take a deep breath.

We stare at each other for a moment. She walks towards me and grabs my face in her hands. Her soft breath touches my skin, smells of palm oil. "Fara, you have to listen. This is not about being rational or politically correct. If you were not dead, how would you be able to see Martha or grandfather?" She pauses, letting go of my face. "Martha can you excuse us?"

Martha nods. I observe her face as she moves from the bed towards the door she came from: her skin is a dull black, it has cracks lined with white; the nape of her neck is still bruised, evidence of the rope she used to hang herself. Goose bumps pop up on my skin.

I need water. No, I need to be with Udo now, or to go back in time, to when I was a toddler, when things were so uncomplicated, as they are for Edima right now. When I was six, just before Aunty Laolu moved to the UK, Mami and I visited her in her home in Lekki. It’s one of my earliest childhood memories. While Mami was cooking lunch, Aunty Laolu and I sat on her bed in her big room, sorting out gold jewelry that she wanted to sell to raise the funds she needed to relocate permanently. We spoke about nothing, but it was nice, sitting quietly, the smell of meat stock floating around the room. The rose flower embroidered neckline of the cotton dress she wore on that day sits inside my eye and in my mind. Nothing significant happened but I want to go back to that day, to start over from there. My hands quiver and she fingers the lines. 

"So how did I die?"

She has the grandfather's faraway look in her eyes. I want her to say I died from heartbreak, Udo telling me good-bye, breaking up with me. Instead, she says “delivering Edima” and the sides of my face twitch into a frown.

"Look, Aunty, don't bring Edima into this. Don't.” She can’t say Edima doesn’t exist if Edima is right here on my chest, breathing, twisting, moving her toothless mouth.

"Edima… she doesn't... Your baby died." There are flecks of saliva in the corners of her mouth, her eyes are wet with tears. If I was not so mad, I'd have cleaned it.

“Aunty, get out.”

"Listen to me when I'm talking to you, jare. Your mum and Ogo and I—we all got the virus and died."

I realize now that the window is locked, that the room is hot. I'm sweating, my dress glued to my skin. In my head, there are voices and pictures that don’t match the voices: the sound of an ambulance, Udo’s voice screaming, calling my name, meeting Udo for the first time, that afternoon with Aunty Laolu sorting gold jewelry. It’s too much to run through on such little time, yet my mind runs through it.

"You don't believe me?"

"I don't. And I'm not sure why you're telling me this... what to do with that information now."

"Ogo and I got infected on our flight to Nigeria and…"

"I've had contact with Alhaja over the past few days. When I got here on Mami’s birthday, I spoke to the olopo, to the DJ. Are they… are they also dead?" My face is half fear, half sneer. 

"None of that really happened. You're dead."

"Right."

"I don't know how else to prove it to you, dear. But you're the one who was asking questions before."

"Just stop talking."

"Oko mi, you think about it. Why would I lie to you?"

“Aunty, I said I'll need you to stop fucking talking.”

She nods and leaves the room, her footsteps too light, barely even there. I cradle myself, pushing Edima deep into my chest, saying, This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream. Edima, you hear? This is nothing but a dream.

 A Tragedy of Sons

Alex Robert Franco

Vacation started as we crossed over into Florida. All three of us—Thomas, our father, and I—felt it, our breath now easy and salt-flecked. Shoulders softened, hands that once gripped the wheel relaxed. The world outside recognized the change too. The trees grew squatter as their leaves widened, more and more blue sky breaking through. Even the dirt changed from red to dusty yellow. I rolled down my window to feel the wind whip my face. Between flashes of silver and blue and white, I spied roadside stands selling pool floats and beach towels. I watched the faces of the men—why always men?—sitting in the shade, fanning themselves as they waited for customers, their skin like leather. Looming over them, the paint faded and chipped, billboards advertised wonders beyond my imagining.

Twenty miles, Joe’s Gator Farm.

Peaches, Peaches, Peaches! Next right!

Visit the Mystery Shack—if you dare!

“Think Dad’ll take us?” I asked, prodding Thomas’ shoulder. He paused his CD player and peeled off a headphone. He looked where I pointed, and sneered.

“That’s kiddy stuff,” he said. For weeks he had complained about the upcoming trip, laying out the reasons why he should be allowed to stay home, but our father would hear none of it. He slouched lower in his seat, grumbling, “I can’t believe I’m missing Stacey’s party for this.” Thomas looked at our father as he said this, but he either did not hear or did not care. He was too busy scanning the looming city, the skyline crowded with the familiar markers—roller coasters, aquariums, crab shacks—and new growths that had sprouted since last summer. As we passed through the shadow of a towering hotel, our father shook his head.

“When I was a kid,” he said, arm sweeping to take in the megaplex and newly risen condominiums, “none of this was here.” This, he reminded us, was back in the sixties, shortly after he’d moved to this country. “You could walk on the beach for miles,” he liked to say, “and the only people you’d run into would be fishermen.” He told this story, or a version of it, every summer, but each time felt like the first. I liked to imagine my father when he was my age—small and shy. America and its loud, round language were new to him. The world he had known before, with its intimacies, its close familiarity, dissolved beneath the wave of unending foreignness. Strangers, suddenly, were a thing when before he could name everyone he encountered, the tight knot of family unraveled in the long journey across the sea. Some inclination, the desire to recognize an unrecognizable face, lingered, born out of a yearning to be liked. But he was quiet and reserved, spending much of his time alone. It was easy to think we would have been friends.

Our father was the first to spot the apartment complex, its white-topped roof just visible as we rounded a corner. We parked in the lot next to a van with a white logo on a field of fresh red. Thomas and I loaded our arms with bags—Thomas carrying one for every three he gave me—as our father fiddled with the keys. We could feel the asphalt sizzle through our flip-flops, but as soon as the door swung open, we were hit with an arctic wave spiked with an astringent tang. The place smelled of cleaning supplies and the sea, as if the sailboat over the couch had capsized in the living room, spilling its cargo of bleach. When I rubbed my bare feet on the carpet or rubbed along the rough grain of the coffee table, I could still feel sand from last year. Summer lived here all year round. Nothing had changed.

Thomas sat, still listening to music, feet propped up on the couch, and our father surveyed the sad state of the empty fridge and cupboards, while I dropped my bags on the seashell bedspread in what would be our room. When we’d stopped for gas in Alabama, I’d changed into my bathing suit, and now I shed my shirt and made out the back door. A wave of ocean air surged into the condo as the door slid open, bringing the taste of salt to my lips. I looked back at Thomas, who’d raised his head at the smell, but he dropped his face as quickly as he’d lifted it, seeing me no more deeply than the curtains twisting in the breeze.

Outside, the ocean sang. White foam splashed onto white sand before being dried up by a white sun so bright it hurt to look at. Sweat broke out on my back, running down and into the folds of fat there, my skin prickling from the heat. Farther out, the sea turned emerald, glinting green like it’d been polished. Multi-colored umbrellas dotted the beach, men and women seeking refuge in their shade, or else sprawled out on towels, their skin roasted golden brown, the sweet smell of sunscreen and tanning oil thick enough to leave a film on the air.

Deciding we could get food later, our father also changed, setting himself up on a beach chair with a stack of books. He would, in an hour or two, get up to stretch, walking down to the water to let it lap his toes, but no farther. He knew how to swim, but had not done so since he almost drowned when he was barely older than I was now. When it had come time for Thomas and me to learn, he had handed us off to a woman from the Jewish community center with hair the color and consistency of steel wool. He preferred instead to spend his time with spies, pages and pages of them, looking up occasionally to wave and ensure we had not floated away.

Despite my begging, Thomas refused to come out from under the shade of his beach umbrella. Sunglasses hid his face, but he had not otherwise changed. During the drive down, Thomas had, unprompted, announced that he hated the beach. This surprised me, as Thomas had spent past vacations swimming in the ocean for hours. He was reluctant to take off his shirt around people now, which also surprised me, because unlike mine, Thomas’ body was lean and strong. I needled and asked and begged, but Thomas would not explain his sudden change of heart, no more than he would set foot in the water.

When my whining threatened to become annoying, I left Thomas on the shore and paddled out till the sand dropped away and the water took my weight. Flipping over onto my stomach, I floated, face half-submerged, watching the people on the beach. In the shallows, a man hopped around a woman, splashing her and laughing. His swimsuit, dark with wet, clung to his thighs. He lifted his arms above his head, the pits of his arms a tangle of hair, and though I was too far away, I imagined I could smell them, the mix of salt and sweat and skin warmed by the sun. The woman placed a hand on his lower back, same as you’d rest against a wall, and the ease of it, that kiss of palm to wet skin, made me angry and sad. Below the water I reached out my own hand, letting the fingers splay out, playing at touch though they held nothing.

Late afternoon rolled in, and with it a skyful of muted gray. What breeze there was disappeared. The ocean went sluggish and the air turned muggy. Thomas and I retreated inside, our limbs heavy from the sun. Our father, who had followed us indoors, loaded our pockets with quarters and sent us to the arcade, reluctant to share such a confined space with us, most likely wanting to put distance between himself and the inevitable squabble we would get into.

Behind the complex’s pool, bulging out of the leasing office like a late-addition tumor, a stout cabana housed a handful of games, only half of which ever seemed to be working. Our father said it had been around since he was a kid, and I liked to imagine how it must have looked then—colored lights blinking in time to overlapping jingles, the animation on the pixelated screens cutting-edge—instead of how it was now. With no windows, it felt more like you were being detained than entertained, the vending machine they’d put in in the 80s perpetually understocked. The lights bled yellow, making everything look like late-night TV. Only the A/C seemed new, the air so cold the first breath felt like a slap.

Thomas made his way to a hunting game, lifting the orange rifle out of the machine’s holster. He fed a quarter into the slot and played a round, taking aim at blocky deer as they bounded across the screen. He didn’t miss; Thomas was good with guns, even real ones, with actual heft and kick. Whenever we visited our family up north, our uncle would take him shooting. Our father promised that once I was old enough, I could go too. Our father owned a gun, hidden away in a duffle bag on the top shelf of his closet, though he still didn’t know that we knew. Thomas had found it one day, and after he’d made me swear not to tell, snuck it out for me to see. I don’t remember where our father was—at the store maybe, or just out, driving perhaps, relishing time away from fatherhood—but the fear of discovery and its awful repercussions were overpowered by the desire to share a secret with my brother. He only let me hold it for a second, but I remembered the weight of it, and the smell—like car repairs and the Fourth of July.

Thomas moved to a racing game, and I took up his place. I lifted the orange rifle to my shoulder, my other hand fishing for a quarter, which I slipped into the slot. I waited, but the screen never changed. I pushed the coin return button and heard a clunk.

“The machine ate my money,” I said.

“Tough shit,” Thomas said. On the screen, Thomas’ car leapt over a chasm, tires aflame. He skidded onto the ground, only for another car to careen into him. GAME OVER flashed across the screen before it went dark. Thomas looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there. “What?”

“The machine ate my money,” I said again, unable to keep the whine out of my voice. “Can I have one of yours?”

Thomas sneered, but reached into his pocket and threw me a quarter. I grabbed for it and missed, and as it bounced away from me, Thomas started up another game. After I’d chased it down, I debated what to do. Reluctant to throw my money away on the same game, I also hoped Thomas, in a rare moment of camaraderie, would want to play with me. I worked up the courage to ask when the door opened.

Hot air like bad breath blew into the arcade before the door swung shut behind a man with thin, greasy hair and the ghost of a mustache on his lip. He wore stained work clothes, the patch sewn onto his breast the same as the logo on the van out front. He knelt by the hunting game, pulling a jangle of keys off his belt. He opened the panel on the front of the machine, revealing a silver mound of money, which he scooped into a bag. While he worked, he whistled.

“Excuse me,” Thomas said, not looking away from his race, “that machine ate my brother’s money.” The man stopped and looked at my brother. He watched him, following not the pixelated oranges soaring from the fruit cart Thomas just crashed into, but Thomas himself, the grip and slide of his hands over the wheel.

“Well, well,” the man tutted, “we can’t have that, now can we?” He squatted down to look me in the eye. From his bag he pulled out two quarters, which he slipped into my pocket with a wink. I watched his hand—the nails dirty, his fingers cigarette stained—as he patted my leg. Thomas swore, and we both looked up in time to see his car hurtle into an animated abyss. The man stood and, leaning over Thomas, fed the machine another quarter.

“Try and take it slower this time,” he said. The game counted down and we watched as Thomas’ car sped off. I don’t think I blinked the entire race, my breath held tight in my chest. When Thomas won, the man clapped a hand to his shoulder and kept it there. “Want to play again?”

“No,” Thomas said, standing, “but thank you.” His cheeks were flushed with the pride of victory, his mouth stretched into a sheepish grin he tried to suppress. He looked down at his shoes, bashful in the way older relatives loved to comment on. The man looked at him. He pulled another key from his belt, opening up the vending machine. The glass front swung open to reveal a smattering of plastic wrappers, candy bars and powdered donuts, crinkling in the light. The man stepped aside and waved us close. “Take your pick,” he said, grinning. “You’ve earned it.”

Thomas took a honey bun, and I grabbed a bar of chocolate. The man took nothing, just watched us eat.

On Tuesday it rained, so we went to the movies. It was about a man running from the government, full of punches and car chases. Our father chose it—it was based on a book, he said—and I loved seeing how much he enjoyed it. Even Thomas liked it, hands gripped tight on the armrests, his face rapt and silver-lit. When the movie ended and the credits ran up the screen—instead of immediately standing to go—we sat there, quiet, not needing to talk, each of us aglow in the wake of the excitement we’d shared, carrying within ourselves something known and familiar to the others’, a rarity I didn’t know I craved.

After, we walked around the strip mall, our hands shaking with sugar. Our father led us to a bookstore and released us, saying he’d be at the sale racks if we needed him. I went to check out the comic books while Thomas flipped through CDs. I found an issue he had been searching for, so I went looking for him. Thomas was still in the music section, but now he was talking with a group of what looked to be college students. He had not seen me yet, so I watched him from behind a stack. I could not hear what Thomas was saying, but I saw how they listened to him, laughed even when he made a joke. I envied this about him, his ease with others, especially those older than him. He became talkative and friendly, something we rarely got to see. So I envied these beautiful strangers, too.

Later, back at the condo, Thomas revealed that the people he’d met were staying just down the beach. He asked our father if he could hang out with them before dinner, and our father sent him off with a wave. I watched him leave, squinting against the sun to find him on the crowded beach, until I blinked and he was gone. Our father went outside to read, and I enjoyed the freedom of being unobserved. I read too, basking in the cool kiss of air conditioning, the television on in the background. I put on whatever I wanted, changing it when struck by a whim. I lied on the couch, spread out, my body freed from constraints.

The day wore on and I began pestering our father with questions about his book until he told me to get the grill ready. We were having burgers, and I laid out paper plates and condiments on the picnic bench outside. As meaty smoke blackened the air, Thomas reappeared, the swagger in his step and the openness of his smile new and unsettling.

“Have fun?” our father asked. Grabbing a burger, Thomas said he did, but offered nothing more. We ate in silence, our father watching the ocean between bites. I sipped my soda and looked at the stranger sitting across from me, this happy, confident boy. Sensing my attention, Thomas looked at me, and when our father turned away, flipped me off.

“Excuse me, are you these boys’ father?”

All three of us turned to look up at the man from the arcade, now dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, standing by our table. “I am,” our father said, an edge of suspicion already in his voice. “Are they in some sort of trouble?”

The man, who said his name was Ralph, assured our father that, no, we were not in trouble. He recounted our meeting, omitting the free game and snacks, and went on to say how polite, how well-behaved we were. “Especially this one,” he said, nodding to Thomas. “Boy, I sure could have used a big brother like that.” Our father visibly swelled, inflated by pride. There was nothing he loved more than hearing his children praised by strangers, those who, without any reason to lie, spoke of us as saints, moved by some force beyond their control. Instead of jealousy at having been overlooked, I was instead overcome with relief, almost joyful to avoid Ralph’s penetrating stare. Our father asked Ralph to join us, offering him food and a beer. He declined the burger, but accepted the drink. Taking out a pack of cigarettes, he asked if he could smoke. Our father noted that they smoked the same brand. Ralph produced a lighter, which they shared along with a joke that made our father laugh but that I didn’t get. They talked about the things men talked about—the economy and politics and women—things I knew or cared little about. I laughed when they did, nodding in imitation of our father, wanting to belong, knowing I did not. They exchanged the outlines of their lives, where they were from, how they ended up where they were. There seemed to be an exchange of some sort, some secret code, as with spies meeting in an otherwise unremarkable location. Something of importance was being discussed, some ritual enacted, but our father might as well have been speaking Greek for all I understood of it. So I watched Thomas instead, hoping to gleam something from him, but he stared off at the sea, unaware of the eyes on him, both mine and Ralph’s. They were still talking when it came time for me to go to bed. Thomas followed, but stayed up in the living room, watching reruns of I Love Lucy. Through the crack in the door I could hear the laughter, canned decades ago, the light from the TV flickering across the floor.

Sometime in the night, I woke up to pee. It was late, past midnight, and as I waddled back to bed I noticed Thomas was gone. Grabbing my glasses, I crept into the living room, then the kitchen. Only the hum of the refrigerator and our father’s snores broke the quiet. An unnamed fear gripped me, and I wondered if I should wake our father, but something stayed my hand. Silent as I could, I slid open the back door and slipped outside. The air still held most of the day’s heat, warm and wet as bathwater. No one was on the beach, though I spied the remains of a bonfire, the aluminum cans scattered around it catching and tossing back the moon’s light. My eyes picked across the dunes, open to movement beyond the murmur of waves and the dance of beach grass, but saw nothing. Not wanting to go back to bed, and unsure where else to look, I went to the pool. Lit from below, it glowed a sickly green, the smell of chlorine almost enough to make me gag. The filtration system gurgled as I dipped a foot in. The pool chairs, scattered about in half-hearted organization, cast long shadows, their forms bent into shapes which lent themselves to horror. Despite the mild night, I began to shiver as real panic bubbled up. What had happened, where was Thomas? I imagined endless tragedies—swept out to sea, eaten by sharks, dead and drowned. Or gone, simply gone, our father and I abandoned. Tears threatened at the thought.

Somewhere beyond seeing, the sound of a door, followed by the hurried step of feet. I followed the noise to the arcade. The lights were all off, but when I pushed, the door opened. Almost too quiet to hear was the sound of sniffling. Someone in the corner, crouched down low, had their back to me.

“Thomas?” I whispered.

As if a switch had been flipped, the crying stopped. Thomas stood, hitching up his shorts, but not before I glimpsed a flash of pale thigh. His face hidden in the dark, I could not tell if he was looking at me or the wall beyond. He walked past me with stiff, brisk steps, pausing at the door to look back over his shoulder.

“If you tell anyone,” he said, “you’re dead.”

The next day, Thomas told our father he wasn’t feeling well. Something he ate, he said. He spent the day in bed, routinely refusing food or water. In the evening, our father tried to coax him out with the promise of ice cream, but he said he didn’t want any. On the drive to the shop, our father asked me if something had happened.

“No,” I lied, more to shield myself from punishment than to protect Thomas’ secret. Whenever the previous night popped into my head—grainy and black and white, like a movie you watched half-asleep—it left me more anguished than before, terrified my rule-breaking would be discovered. Worse, though, were the thoughts of Thomas and whatever had happened to him. I tried and failed to remember when I had last seen Thomas that upset, if I had ever seen him cry before. “Can I get two scoops?”

Back home, I set the styrofoam bowl on the nightstand next to Thomas’ bed. Without rolling over, he said he still wasn’t hungry, so I sat there, watching the rainbow mounds melt into a pool of muddled brown.

The next day when I went out to swim, Thomas felt well enough to venture down with me. He sat, curled in on himself beneath the umbrella, seeming to disappear in its shade. From his perch on the patio, our father browned in the sun, his nose blossoming into red, the cancer that would eventually kill him already fermenting under his skin. From the shallows I looked up to him, so far out of reach I was unsure he would hear me if I shouted. If I knew then that this divide between us would only continue to grow, that one day it would become untraversable, I would have run from the water and into his arms. I would have crawled into his lap, tucked my head under his chin, and told him everything, spoken words whose shape I did not know yet. I would have drawn him to me—Thomas too—and held tight. I would bare myself to them, to myself, let the raw truth blossom under the glare of the noonday sun. And in that drawing in, that closeness, if not love then a comfort, an easing of burdens, could be born. Our father would know me, know us, for the men we would become, and whatever existed between Thomas and me—rivalry or jealousy, apathy or disgust—would be wiped away and in its space something new would grow. But I couldn’t, so I didn’t, and the silence settled between us.

In the afternoon the students Thomas had befriended wandered down onto the beach from whatever house they had rented. Despite the size and volume of their group, I did not notice them until they were right up on me. Figuring Thomas would join them, I was surprised to find him gone. The beach chair sat empty, a depression from where he sat the only evidence he’d even been there at all.

The day before we left, our father told us to pack our things. I grabbed my bathing suit from the chair I’d hung it on to dry, and stuffed it, along with handfuls of shirts and towels, into the duffle bag, the sleeves stiff with salt. I packed up the bathroom too, stowing toothbrushes and toothpaste. In the trash, buried under a heap of wadded toilet paper, I found a pair of underwear—Thomas’—gone crusty and smelling of copper. I stuffed them in my back pocket and told our father I was going for a walk. I went behind the building and threw them in a dumpster, afraid I would cry or be sick.

We ordered pizza for dinner, the three of us eating in silence. I watched our father, who watched Thomas, who watched nothing at all, simply stared down at his food. Like we did whenever the end of our vacation began to loom on the horizon, our father reflected on the weather, which had been splendid, saying how good it was to get away. As if reading from a script, I said I wished we could stay here all year, something I said every summer and which never failed to make our father smile and laugh. We both looked to Thomas, expecting him to roll his eyes but reluctantly agree, but he raised his head, gaze returning from far away, as if he hadn’t heard us at all. “What was your favorite part of the trip?” our father asked. Thomas chewed his bite of pizza, slow, the working of his jaw almost methodical, before he swallowed and said, “I guess just being together.” He stood up and asked to be excused, and with his back turned he was oblivious to the shimmer of joy in our father’s eyes.

In bed later, I stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. The comforter felt heavy, like a body, the heat of it keeping me awake. I kicked it to the floor and listened for Thomas’ breathing. From the tightness of it I could tell he was still awake. I sat up and whispered his name.

“What?” he hissed. Silently, I motioned for him to follow as I stood and made my way out of the room. Moving as if compelled, he followed me into the living room and out the back door.

The water was smooth, the moon a drop of white paint. We walked down to the beach, drawn to it. I watched from outside myself as the waves drowned our feet and ankles. It was my body—I recognized the pale rolls of flesh like uncooked dough—but I no longer controlled it. Thomas watched me too, half a second behind me. I turned back and reached out for his hand, and for the first time in years, he held it.

We walked out until we couldn’t, and then we began to swim. When our breath grew short and our limbs cried out, we turned over onto our backs and looked up at the sky. Stars winked down at us, a skyful of them, like so much spilled salt. The water had grown cool without the sun, and my skin pimpled at its touch. I felt myself be carried, felt the lines of myself grow faint and blur, till I did not know where I ended and the ocean began. I turned my head to look at Thomas. His eyes shut, he hung suspended, moonlight falling on his face. Years later, in college, on the night our father would become my father—it’s Thomas, a neighbor heard the gunshot and found him in the garage—I would remember him as he was now: crowned by heaven’s wavering grace.

A swell rose beneath us, lifted us, and cast us apart. My head went under, and when I broke through, I could not find Thomas. Panicked, I called out to him, my throat raw with salt. Then there he was beside me, wet and smiling, as he grabbed my hand and pulled me close. For a time we said nothing, clinging to the other, letting the current carry us away.

 Strays

Ryan Fiordimondo

I am not sure what possessed her to abduct me when she did. She had visited me countless times on that same street corner, occasionally gifting me scratches on the head or strokes down the back, cooing and chirping before disappearing down the street. Maybe she was feeling particularly lonely, or maybe I looked particularly helpless. Whatever her reasons, she bent and scooped and swaddled me in the bottom of her hoodie, and I was off.

I could have broken free, no doubt about it. In truth I nearly did. I dislike being held, always have. However, amidst my quickened heartbeat and extended claws, I allowed myself to be taken. I was cold, and her warmth rendered me lifeless.

The screech of a gated door ripped me out of my delusions and, by the time she placed me on the maroon carpeted floor of her apartment, I was reeling. Strange, perfectly angular white walls stretched above and confined me. Sinister shadows danced and swirled wildly around the room. Something was burning; it emitted a foul synthetic odor that resembled an unholy mix of pine and peppermint.

Dread bubbled up inside me until it was impossible to remain still. I darted into the unknown, desperately searching for a safe place to collect my thoughts. As I dashed into the kitchen, which shared the same space as the living room, the carpet floor transformed into tile, causing me to slip and slide and flail in desperate attempts to regain control. I collided headfirst into a large white monolith which seemed to growl at me and, in my anxious stupor, I returned the favor with a confused, generally directed hiss of my own before continuing around the corner. Tile reverted to carpet and I found myself in a narrow hallway with three doors, two of which were closed. I ran for the available doorway, burrowed myself beneath a bed, and hid amongst forgotten articles of clothing and stray pieces of popcorn.

She attempted to lure me back out with chirps and coos and other stereotypical catcalls. I remained in the shadows, pressed as far back against the wall as possible. Eventually she fell onto the mattress, her shape imprinted above me, and remained still. Nothing was audible but the low hum of some device displacing the air and the heavy thump of my heart.

Daylight bled in between the blinds, projecting thin strips of orange and yellow onto the wall. I had not slept, but somehow I’d missed her departure. The room was still. For several moments I remained motionless, eyes widened and tail flicking, listening to the clicks and clacks coming from some kind of instrument mounted to the wall. She had left the whirring device running; it oscillated from across the room and blew air towards me every now and then. The Rolling Things passed by outside, their signature honks and rumbles shuttled down the streets and through the walls. Eventually, after concluding that there were in fact no immediate dangers present, I emerged from beneath the bed.

The room was small even for me. Aside from a single window positioned opposite the bed and the aforementioned clicking apparatus, the white walls were barren. Cardboard boxes littered the floor, and, upon closer inspection, one had actually been filled with cat litter. I presumed this box as my own and relieved myself, having not done so since before my kidnapping. It occurred to me, as I squatted over sand and soda and whatever else goes into the stuff, that I’d never used one of these before, that I’d never even seen a litter box until now. Despite this, I’d somehow known what to do with it. It was almost unconscious, as if I’d been wired to respond to all boxes of litter in this way. Even stranger, the box lent me a sense of calm that, given my shanghaied circumstance, should not have been possible. This mystery haunts me to this day, and has been the catalyst of many introspective meltdowns, into which I will not delve too deeply.

Just as the teleological implications of my urination were beginning to become known, a horrible, high-pitched chime struck from the clicking object on the wall. A strange mechanical thing repeatedly jutted out from and went back inside it. It sounded like an unnatural, bastardized bird call; it coo-cooed in rigid intervals far too precise to be of organic origin. I leapt into the air, terrified, and sprinted out of the room.

I ran down the hall, my footsteps slowing as I progressed further from the bedroom. Both of the hallway doors remained closed. I heard the growling from the kitchen, deep and monotonous, and promptly jogged back to the room I’d vacated. The bedroom had returned to its original state of clicking stillness.

Once I built up enough courage, I carried out multiple excursions to the extremities of the apartment, returning to the bedroom occasionally to calm my nerves. With each trip I explored a bit further. I located the source of the growl: a large white lifeless thing that smelled of ham and potatoes and tomatoes and milk. It was cold, perhaps even colder on the inside, and emitted a perpetual buzz that more closely resembled a purr than a growl. This put me at ease. I located two bowls in the kitchen, one filled with water and the other with dry, pebbly food. The food was strange and chalky and tasted vaguely of fish, particularly tuna. I devoured it.

Food has a curious, almost psychoactive effect on me. When I eat, my surroundings seem to fade away, my self fades away, in favor of the texture and taste and smell of whatever I’ve scored. It doesn’t even need to be particularly good. Everything that is not directly related to eating is in that moment compartmentalized and stowed away to be retrieved another time. This infatuation with food, paired with my utter lack of sufficient nutrition, explains why I barely registered, let alone reacted to, the sound of steadily approaching footsteps or the screech of the gated door. I was OK, safe and sound in my sensuous escape, far outside the confines of her apartment.

Once I finished my meal and subsequently plunged myself back into reality, I saw her. She hummed to herself as she locked the gate. I froze with face coated in kibble crumbs. My legs bent, primed to propel me to the bedroom. She had not yet seen me. She shed a hat, freeing curly brown hair to rest on her shoulders, and collapsed on the couch. She exhaled deeply and remained motionless.

Silence.

Stillness.

Heat whooshed in from the overhead vents.

This was my chance.

I stalked forward, compressing my body so low to the ground that my stomach was nearly dragging. One of her paws, grotesque and hairless, hung from the couch just barely above the ground. Perfect. I sprung on her, sinking tooth and claw into the back of her paw. She yelped, sprang up and, for a brief moment, just glared at me, her eyebrows furrowed and accusatory, as if she’d forgotten all about the kidnapping, as if I was the one at fault. I stood my ground. My tail puffed up and swung behind me, daring her to retaliate. She did not, however, and instead whimpered and sucked her wound. A drop of water fell from her eyes, possibly serving a defensive purpose specific to her breed. I sat upright and straightened my back to achieve maximum smugness.

She stomped to the kitchen and, to my surprise, opened the top compartment of the white, purring monolith. She groped around inside itーit crinkled and hissed and manifested some kind of fog which wafted in the air for a moment before dissipating. Even from where I stood I could feel its coldness. She produced a bag of ice and pressed it onto her paw. She sniffed.

Her face was peppered with dots, some of which were red and scabbing, while others were dark. The darker dots consolidated under her almond-brown eyes, lending her an intense, almost predatory gaze. The redder dots were randomly distributed around her face; a few gathered on her chin and beside her mouth while others, varying in size and redness, punctuated her forehead. Her lips were winter-chapped and thin; they remained stoically parallel as she stuck some kind of medical strip onto her injury. She was small, relatively, but did not move gentlyーshe slammed drawers and slapped objects onto tables with a fierce carelessness that intimidated me despite the moderate distance between us. Once she concluded whatever business she had with the cabinets and the ice, she walked towards me. I braced myself for combat. She bent over, lowering herself so that we were nearly face-to-face, and extended a single fleshy finger onto my nose. It smelled vaguely of soap. She repeated a sound that was not exactly a growl or hiss but nonetheless communicated anger, or dissatisfaction, or both. I considered swatting at her. Before I could make a move, she straightened up, spun around, and walked down the hall. I heard the door close behind her.

I remained in the living room as the moon rose. I felt completely and unquestionably alone. The special Rolling Things, the faster ones accompanied by red and blue flashes and hideous wails, occasionally cast their strobing lights through the curtains. Things rustled outside. By that time, on a typical night, I’d have been hiding in gutters or raiding trash bags, hunting and gathering before eventually retiring to an abandoned patch of lawn only I knew about. Instead, I sat and stared at the front door, hoping I could force it open using sheer will.

She returned to the kitchen once more, placing a cup of something in an artificially lit box. The cup spun round and round inside the box for a few moments before coming to a stop. It beeped obnoxiously. She removed the cup from the box and stirred it with a stick, revealing that food had somehow been conjured within the cup, presumably with the aid of the box. It smelled not quite of chicken, but rather of a suggestion of chicken, as if this box-cup incantation could only produce imitation food. Regardless of whatever blasphemy was required to generate such unnatural chicken-ish food, I licked my lips.

At first she paid me no mind, opting instead to gaze into an illuminated rectangle which seemed to react to her touch. However, she eventually noticed me and my undoubtedly intense, hungry stare. She looked at me and I at her. The rectangle projected multicolored light onto her cheek. She extended her stick, which turned out to be quite a pointy stick indeedーit featured four sharp prongs used to stab bits of food too stubborn to scoop. I licked it. It tasted how it smelled: imitation chicken. Delicious. I pressed my head onto her paw and allowed her to stroke down my back. I never retracted my claws.

Once I was certain she was asleep, I snuck into the bedroom. I watched herーthe way she breathed, how her head rested on her hand, delicately, with a streetlight’s yellowness illuminating her forehead. I hopped on the bed and relaxed at her feet. Rolling Things sped by outside. The bedroom’s clicking and whirring lulled me into a pleasant, intoxicating slumber.

Within the next few days, I found myself falling into routine. She left every morning, sometimes before dawn, leaving me alone to anticipate the clicking object’s inevitable cacophonic chiming. The thing seemed to go off at the same general times each day: it would chime and coo and uncannily thrust about in the morning, in the afternoon before she returned, and in the evening just before I was fed. Strangely, after a few days of this chime-and-food pairing, I began to eagerly anticipate its alarm. Even stranger, I salivated at its sound, sometimes even the thought of its sound, regardless of the time of day.

When she would return, which was usually shortly after the second chime, she was always tired. She’d collapse onto the couch and let out a long, exaggerated sigh, as if she’d been carrying something very heavy for very long. She would lie and breathe and do little else, occasionally rising to consult the magical Spinning Box for food.

There was an unshakeable tenseness about her; the way she moved was anxious and uneven, as if she were being pushed and pulled in conflicting directions. She was jumpyーI would elicit a small gasp from her if I entered a room too hastily or jumped on her bed without warning. She seemed to feel just as out of place in the apartment as I did. It was home to neither of us, we just happened to be there, floating, occupying space. Boxes still scattered the floor full of all sorts of things: oddly shaped glass, pots, pans, strange square cardboard prints with wax disks inside, plants, silvery sticks, et cetera. She sometimes tripped over the clutter, but never moved it.

At night, I would join her in the dimly lit bedroom. She would sit cross-legged on her bed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, scratching on paper with weird colored sticks. The images she produced were mostly incomprehensible, all geometric and abstract, with colors bleeding outside their borders and melding into each other. Many of these scratchings would be crumpled and thrown, sometimes directly at me, while a select few were displayed, crooked and haphazard, on the wall. Of the works displayed, I could only make sense of one. It featured a minimalist headshot of a woman. It was devoid of color except for large kaleidoscopic blobs that covered a majority of the woman’s face. Only her right eye, nose, and part of her mouth were visible; her curly hair pointed straight up towards a completely black, depthless oblong that seemed to be drawing her in.

When we settled down to sleep, which was often very late, I would sit next to her and she would pet me. In those silent moments, as she scratched my ears and whispered to me in an alien language, I felt genuinely fond of her. I would lie across her chest and feel her heartbeat. Water would sometimes drip from her eyes. 

One day, I awoke from a midday nap to discover the boxes had disappeared. The clicking object remained on the wall, but beside it hung printed images and plants and string lights which glowed warmer than the fluorescent bulbs I’d become accustomed to. The blinds had also been removed and replaced with purple curtains.

I heard her shuffling in the kitchen. I took some time gathering the strength necessary to move (it had been a good sleep) but eventually I hopped down from the bed and hobbled to her. She stood on a stepladder, wearing the sweatpants she’d slept in, consolidating the last of the clutter, placing pots and pans and other unidentifiable knick-knacks into cabinets. A knock came from the door. She let out a little squeak and ran to unlock the gate. Another cat, who appeared to be of the same hairless breed as my captor, rustled inside.

The new girl was tall; she had blonde hair and smelled of a Siamese. They sat around a long sheet of paper, the source of the rustling, and sipped sharp smelling liquid out of the newly unpacked glasses. I kept my distance. The Siamese slid a wax disk from its sleeve and placed it on a device that spun and crackled and emitted a nonsensical dissonance that the girls were somehow able to anticipate and mimic in tandem.

The singing became louder and more frequent as day turned to night and glasses transformed from full to empty and back to full again. The girls dipped twigs into assorted viscous goops and smeared color onto the paper, forming indescribable shapes and shadows. My kidnapper burst with energy; she and the Siamese engaged in rapturous conversation accented by wailing respiratory upsets and fumbling half-embraces, all inexplicably timed to the sounds of the wax disk.

As I sat and watched from the kitchen, my stomach growled. Some time had passed since the evening chime, yet when I investigated my food bowl, I found only my drooling reflection staring back at me. I attempted to make a scene, yelling and complaining over their singing, but they barely acknowledged me. They seemed transfixed by their twigs and their goop. As I approached them, I realized why. They had formed an image on the paper somehow; their smearing and dabbing and goop-dipping all came together in a glorious depiction of me, myself, dressed as a member of royalty. My likeness was unmistakableーthey had even captured the birthmark which whitened the fur above my mouth. In the image, I was enveloped in a yellow glow, as if my majesty eclipsed the sun itself, wearing an oversized red velvet coat with matching scarf. A tiny crown adorned the top of my head. My expression was stern and empowered. I looked absolutely regal.

A honk came from the street, causing the girls to jump up and scamper outside. Their footsteps and laughter echoed down the street. The gated front door remained ajar.

I sat in the doorway and looked into the night, feeling the outdoors’ breeze blow in between my whiskers. The air was warm, warmer than before, and smelled of bacon and half-eaten chicken wings. Blacktop streets, lined with trash bags, extended indefinitely in all directions. The sidewalk bathed in familiar midnight-yellow streetlight. Trees swayed. A rat scurried into a storm drain.

I turned and walked to the bedroom to await her return.

 Night Music, 1933

Trudy Lewis

The classroom glowed with the golden light of late September—too bright, as far as Lotte was concerned. She preferred the gloomy days, when she could sit in the corner and sketch her classmates or read her book undetected. The whole school vibrated with an overabundance of yellow—the pine desks, the jonquil blinds, the fall colors of the lindens outside the window, and the thick blonde braids of Gerta, the Christian girl who had displaced Lotte in Hilde’s affections. There was such a thing as too much clarity, and light could be as confounding as shadow.

Lotte had learned as much when she attempted to draw her stepmother in the parlor and saw the new lines in her face, so distracting that they distorted the emerging profile. Paula had changed since being shouted off the stage at the height of her aria, losing her position at the Municipal Opera House, and being denounced as a Judenschwein in the press. She did not give up, however, and continued to sing in the synagogues and practice her arias at home. She did not sulk, but increased her efforts on behalf of the B’nai B’rith society and the Jewish musicians and artists who appeared in her parlor, day after day, seeking food, clothing, recommendations, and encouragement. Meanwhile, Papa, who’d lost his professorship at Berlin University’s Medical School, found employment at the Jewish hospital. So it was only Lotte who continued to enter the Christian world on a daily basis, forced to observe each new slip in her status, each betrayal and humiliation.

Gerta passed a note to Hilde, and Lotte’s old friend blushed, two crimson streaks emphasizing her high cheekbones and her lustrous black hair. What could Gerta be writing to produce such an effect? The biology teacher drew a chart of racial origins on the board, indicating the inferiority of the Semitic and Roma lines. She did not appear convinced, however, and avoided her pupils’ eyes while mumbling the party line. The girl behind Lotte raised her hand to ask whether it was true that you could identify Jews by smell, and, if so, what was the scientific explanation?

Now it was the teacher who blushed, slapping her forehead in exasperation. “I’m afraid that goes beyond my area of expertise,” she said. “You’ll have to look elsewhere to satisfy your intellectual curiosity.”

Lotte was relieved to go to the gymnasium and change out of her uniform and into her shorts and blouse. She looked forward to a game of ping-pong, the soothing back-and-forth that did not depend on conversation or personality. But when she approached the table, she couldn’t find a partner. She looked with longing at Hilde and remembered the times when they had walked home from school together, just the two of them, the constant tumult of Hilde’s enthusiasms meaning that Lotte rarely had to speak. It was a relief to lose herself in that torrent, always knowing she had a place in the warm boat of Hilde’s affections. But then Gerta began to join them, adding her own babble to the stream, and Lotte’s silence was transformed from the wordless support of a trusted companion to the mute presence of a pitiful person who had nothing to contribute. Then she was always trailing behind the two of them, watching the dark head pressed to the fair one in a display of irresistible affinity. She complained to Paula, who offered to help her work up topics of conversation. But later, she heard her stepmother tell Papa that their Lotchken was only feeling sour because her school crush had found a prettier friend.

Lotte was amazed then, when Hilde approached her and nodded at the ping-pong table, assuming a position at the other end.

“Awful, isn’t it, the way these girls harass our poor teachers? I heard one of them goading Fräulein Gruber to let her put up posters for the Hitler Youth.”

Lotte looked down at the table, preparing her serve, soothed by the matte green surface of the table, an unbroken field of concentration. If she couldn’t reach Hilde with her speech, perhaps she could convey her feelings through the movement of the ball.

Her serve was true and Hilde had to stretch to return it, revealing the dark hair in her armpit, which seemed to have grown denser and springier since the last time Lotte glimpsed it.

“Gerta is not like that, you know. Her parents have lots of Jewish employees in their shop. They say it’s a disgrace, what’s happening in Germany. We have a long tradition of religious freedom. That’s why so many of our ancestors settled here in the first place.”

Lotte did not reply, but only returned the ball, pleased by the way Hilde was forced to contort herself to return it. She gave a little hop, joggling her breast, and Lotte noticed again how her friend had stopped growing upward and begun growing more womanly instead. Hilde had always been shorter than Lotte, but now she barely reached her nose. And although Lotte had been having her monthlies for years now, she remained skinny and unarticulated, a blank form, neither girlish nor boyish, neither pretty nor handsome, not even ugly in a striking and memorable way.

“Want to come to the movies on Friday? Mädchen in Uniform is playing again and Greta never got to go.”

“Maybe,” Lotte said. “I’ll ask my stepmother.” But she didn’t think she could bear to see Hilde giggling with Gerta in the dark theater, while Lotte sat apart, trying to keep her eyes focused on the screen.

A girl with a high forehead and a snub nose interrupted their play, saying that she and her friend wanted the table.

“When we finish this game,” Hilde replied, turning on her bossy hip.

But the girl, Eva Becker, persisted. “You know, it just doesn’t seem right, letting mere Israelites hog the tables, when good Aryans are in need of a place.”

Things had certainly changed since the spring, when the students agreed to salute Hitler with their left hands instead of doing so, properly and in good faith, with the right. Now the factions were beginning to appear. The pupils had been forced to bring in their certificates of baptism, proving that they had four Christian grandparents. Some discovered, in this way, that they were actually Jewish, though they’d been practicing Christianity all their lives. Then Jewish students were forbidden to go on field trips to the country cabin or the swimming pool. And although most of the teachers were sympathetic, they were forced by law to observe the regulations of the new regime.

“That’s the kind of thinking that makes you look like a troglodyte,” Hilde said. “You’ve been going to school with Jewish classmates since kindergarten. Don’t you know any better than that by now?”

Lotte smashed the ball so that it shot past Hilde and into the girl’s chest. Was it intentional, or just a reflex of rage? She couldn’t tell. But it brought her one step closer to winning the game.

“So the little mouse has some spirit after all. Come after me, little mouse, and you will feel the kitty cat’s claws.”

Eva threw the ball back at Lotte, who caught it deftly in her right hand. She had to finish the game quickly; there was little pleasure in playing under these circumstances. So her time with Hilde was to be cut short again. There was no avoiding it. She beat Hilde handily, 4 to 1, but felt no satisfaction in the victory. She lifted her damp blouse away from her skin and smelled her sweat with its mix of iron and sulphur—the smell of a Jew or just a generic human adolescent in the midst of play? Hilde’s hair was so damp that it frizzed up in a smoky halo around her pretty face, and her substantial chest heaved with exertion.

Lotte had hardly stepped away from the table when Eva elbowed in, carrying a bucket full of soapy water. She and her friend began scrubbing down the table with exaggerated gestures, creating dark scallops of a deeper green.

“You can’t be too careful these days,” Eva said, loudly enough for the whole gym to hear. “You never know what you will catch from these polluted Jews.”

Lotte felt a dip in her stomach, her internal organs collapsing in on one another. But Hilde remained stalwart. “Looks like you’ve already come down with a bad case of cruelty. Maybe you should go home and stay there until you’ve recovered your humanity.”

There was little chance of that, Lotte thought, as she watched the performance, the two girls mopping the table so vigorously that their blonde curls shook and their backsides waggled with satisfaction.

Hilde seemed more solicitous after school that day, waiting for Lotte at on the sidewalk under the stone bust of Athena, its helmet dappled with sunlight and its breastplate white as shale. In the goddess’s shadow, Hilde appeared even darker, with her heavy eyebrows and her olive skin. For the first time, Lotte felt the other girl’s vulnerability; although Hilde was undoubtedly beautiful, it was a beauty with a particularly alien flavor, evoking the gypsy, the Spaniard, and the Jew. Lotte, as fully Jewish as Hilde, had somehow inherited the physical features of an Aryan. Up until now, her plain appearance had been a disadvantage, but she understood that her invisibility might soon serve as a shield.

When Gerta joined them, Hilde made space for Lotte on the sidewalk between herself and her new friend. She did not tell Gerta the story of the ping-pong table and, when Lotte mentioned it, she set a warm hand on her friend’s arm and said it was better not to dwell on the injuries of the day, as there were certain to be more of them tomorrow.

At home, Paula was in the parlor with Kurt Singer, her former conductor, the two of them bent over the tea table examining a document. He’d been spending more and more time at the apartment, since he too had lost his job at the Municipal Opera, and now sat drinking tea with Paula while scheming to find employment for his former colleagues. Lotte tried to reach her room without detection. Perhaps she could sneak by under the cover of the phonograph, which was playing Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik at high volume. But Paula heard her over the music and called out that she should come and speak with Herr Singer.

So Lotte entered the room, lingering in the alcove where their influence could not reach her. Paula wore a dressing gown over a skirt and sweater and Singer had on a rusty dark waistcoat that emphasized his white hair. They were both flushed with the heat of the rosy room or the brilliance of their plans, and there was a bright smell of apples and spice in the air.

“Here she is, the lucky one, who can still show her face in the world,” Paula said.

Lotte felt her arm trembling and braced it behind her back. She swayed with the advance of the serenade’s first movement, the irresistible progression of the chords.

“Come here and let me look at you, Liebling. Have you been scratching your neck again?”

Lotte felt under her collar for the rash that has plagued her for the last week. Had she been scratching? She hardly knew. But there was a fresh slash in her flesh, and a bit of blood came away on her finger.

“It’s reprehensible, what these children do to… themselves. My daughter has taken to drinking… vinegar to lose weight. And her little… girlfriend has refused to eat for three days.” Again, Lotte felt a stab of annoyance at his affected speech, the irrational pauses that seemed deigned to build up an artificial sense of suspense.

“What do you think, Kurt? Will Lotte make a respectable Fräulein? Once the blemishes simmer down and the figure asserts itself?”

Herr Singer touched his chin and regarded her, turning this way and that, as if examining a painting. “Let me hear her recite… something…. Surely they still teach elocution in school.”

“Maybe you’d like to hear me recite one of the Chancellor’s speeches,” Lotte said. “Since that’s what we have to listen to day after day.”

“Please… spare my delicate… ears,” Herr Singer said. “I’ve been exchanging words with his… puppets all day.”

Lotte gave in and spoke a short poem by Goethe. “It’s my favorite. But now teacher tells me that it is the exclusive property of the German students, and that, as a Jewish pupil, I should look elsewhere for my inspiration.”

Paula bit her lip and turned her eyes to Singer.

“She lacks…”

Lotte held her breath to hear what it was that Herr Singer thought she was in need of. She could provide a lengthy list: friends, talent, hope, purpose, and stamina, to name a few.

“…Projection, though there is definitely feeling in the…phrasing.”

Lotte stared into the cornflower blue eyes that were said to hypnotize women and other vulnerable parties. “It’s only for my own enjoyment, you know.”

“As are all our efforts, under the current regime.”

“You are lucky, Lotchken, that you are too young to have a profession. To build up, stick by stone, a life’s work only to have it collapse at the will of a petty parvenu.”

“At this rate, perhaps I never will.”

“Nonsense,” Herr Singer said. “Only today, we have been putting our… heads together to create a Jewish arts society.”

He pointed to a half-finished document lying on the table. Lotte recognized the tiny precise handwriting that made the letters of the alphabet resemble musical notation. “Proposal for a Jewish-German Kulturbund,” the heading read.

“Herr Singer has made an appointment at the Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda.”

He had courage, Lotte had to grant him that. “You’re really going there?”

“If I have to speak with Herr Goebbels himself.”

Paula cut a slice of Sachertorte and handed it to Lotte on a silver-rimmed plate, one of the few remaining reminders of her mother’s tea table. “Herr Singer believes that we can appeal to the inherent prejudices of the Nazis.”

“If they believe that Jews should be… segregated, we respond by segregating… ourselves, creating an artistic society of our own. That way, we can perform whatever we like, in whatever fashion we choose, creating, in effect, a Jewish… Renaissance in times of trouble.”

Lotte bit into the cake and tasted the aching sweetness of the icing. She wished she could believe in Singer’s plan. But after what she witnessed, day after day at the Fürstin Bismarck School, she did not believe that the work of the Jews could ever be tolerated under the rule of the National Socialists.

“Perhaps I could come and work for you,” she said. “I’m getting impatient with the girls at school.”

Paula set her cup down with exaggerated care and touched the silver nightingale pinned to the breast of her sweater. “That’s ridiculous. If Hilde has dumped you, you can always find another friend. It’s just the nature of girls to gossip, backbite, seduce their enemies and torture their friends. It was the same when I was at school. It makes the opera look like a somber little chamber drama. But you can’t let that interfere with your education.”

Lotte pushed her plate away and set her hands on her knees, gaining strength from the connection. “You have quit. Papa has quit. Herr Singer is planning a play party where he and his friends can frolic in artistic freedom without ever having to encounter an Aryan bully or a Nazi snout.”

Paula gave her a level stare. “There is a grave difference, young woman, between quitting and being forced to leave.”

But Lotte did not lower her eyes or deny her claim. “It seems that the difference is growing smaller and more insignificant every day.”

The music was reaching its zenith and Lotte felt its frenzy rise up in her breast. She had not spoken so many consecutive words in weeks. Papa came into the parlor and lifted the needle, removing the cover of music under which they spoke, so that the room vibrated with its absence.

“How is my family?’ he said. “How are my girls? Herr Singer, I trust that you are enjoying good spirits and excellent health.”

“That I am, Sir. I believe that I am about to turn a corner, with the help of your brilliant… spouse. We’ve arranged for her to sing at Yom Kippur again this year.”

“It will be a treat for us all.”“Meanwhile,” Paula said, standing and putting her arm around her husband,

“Your little Lotchken has decided to quit school.”

Papa looked at Lotte, then at Paula again. His face did not change its expression, but his eyes widened and his Adam’s apple wandered aimlessly in his throat. “Not really, Lotte. I thought we agreed you would continue—at least long enough to take your exams.”

Lotte stared at the tea table in confusion, nudging the spoon on her saucer. Had she actually said that she was quitting school? And had she ever agreed to continue long enough to take her exams? She remembered a talk in her father’s study, in which he urged her to take her studies seriously, because, during times of political uncertainty, an education was all that she could rely on in the end. That, at least, no one could take away from her. Yet she couldn’t help thinking of what had been taken away from him—his position as chair of surgery and the professorship of which he’d been so proud. Her grandparents hinted that he had neglected Lotte’s mother, spending long hours working at the hospital then coming home to lock himself up with his books. After all that, did he still believe that he possessed something valuable—a knowledge that could not be altered by political contingencies or destroyed by the raw exercise of power?

As much as she wanted to defy Paula, she couldn’t bear to hurt her father, with his kind, sensitive fingers and his gentle eyes.

“I‘ll try to make it to the exams,” she said. “If you’ll promise to come home early and study with me.”

She stood and pressed her face to his side, smelling the antiseptics of the hospital, and he put a stiff arm around her shoulder. He was not a demonstrative man, and when they stood this way, she realized that it cost him an effort, but that made the connection feel all the more powerful. They were alike, after all, in their fear of interaction and their love of solitude. While others scorned her as diffident pupil and a plain, insignificant girl, she knew that Papa always approved.

“I believe I can arrange it,” he said, squeezing her shoulder before gently pulling away.

Paula was at the phonograph, putting on another record, Kurt Singer standing over her shoulder to read the title. Why had Papa chosen a woman like this to share their life—someone so loud, so public, so bright and beautiful that it hurt Lotte’s eyes to look at her, even though she found the sight so compelling that she couldn’t avert her gaze? Paula had certainly improved Lotte’s life—taking her shopping, treating her to shows and dinners, offering advice and encouragement, and showing her unstinting affection, although her love was always seasoned with a stimulating pinch of cruelty and laced with a lacerating sting of superiority. She even convinced Albert to spend more time with them as a family—at the opera, at a dinner, in the museum—where Lotte could rest her eyes on him for whole minutes at a time. In his presence, Lotte felt her muscles relax and her soul expand. But why did he need Paula to tell him to pay attention to his own daughter?

“Then I will try to stick it out until exams,” she said, and she was rewarded with a short, nervous, but genuine smile, which, in Albert’s case, was only a twitch of the muscles on either side of his mouth.     

That night, Lotte heard her stepmother humming the Mozart while her father gargled in the bathroom. She listened for the moment when they would exchange their impressions of the day. Sure enough, her father asked about Singer. Wasn’t he worried that his plan would expose him to further persecution? And what about Paula? Was her former suitor going to get her imprisoned or killed? He seemed to have set up shop in their parlor. He wasn’t practicing hypnotism on her, was he? Albert had heard all about his experiments, and even if the conductor called them neurology, there was something of the mesmerist in his approach. Why then, Paula said, there is nothing to concern yourself about, since he will certainly have no trouble mesmerizing that gullible minister. But Albert didn’t have to worry about Paula. Hadn’t she proved her immunity by standing strong against Singer’s marriage proposals, which had been frequent and forceful? Now their Lotchken, that was another story. Such a crush she had on Singer! Paula had never seen anything like it. She couldn’t say a word to her friend in private without her stepdaughter creeping around outside the door.

Lotte bit her lip so that she wouldn’t cry out in frustration. A crush on Singer! How could Paula say it? Did she even believe it was true? Lotte had a visceral dislike of the man, with his ridiculous affectations and his pretentious speech. Every time she saw him, she felt an unpleasant taste in her mouth, a memory of rotting cherries, and a tickling sensation at the back of her neck. Did Paula recognize something in her behavior that Lotte couldn’t see for herself? Lotte was horrified at the thought. Perhaps there was little difference between love and hate, and disgust was a reliable route to attraction.

She turned on the light, picked up a hand mirror, and tilted it so that she could examine the rash on her neck. Yes, she must have been scratching without knowing it. The flesh was suppurating, irritated by the wool of her school sweater and the lace on her nightgown. A few scratch marks extended down to her chest and she wondered how she’d been able to make them with her short, bitten-down nails. The voices down the hall eventually gave way to the soothing sounds of the apartment singing itself to sleep, the windows rattling, the radiator sighing, the pipes ringing like a glass goblet’s vibrating rim. This was the night music that Lotte had grown accustomed to, the substitute for her mother’s lullabies. Usually, it put her right out. But tonight, she couldn’t find her place in the melody and when she did, plummeting down into a deep crevasse of oblivion, she regretted it, because she saw Kurt Singer in her dreams, marching into the Ministry of Enlightenment to the tune of Mozart’s music, only to be decapitated by a violin string.

The next morning, she could barely look at Paula as she spread marmalade on her bread roll and bit into the rubbery flesh of her boiled egg. Her stepmother appeared strangely dowdy in her spotted dressing gown, her bright hair dulled and her makeup removed. Perhaps she, too, had trouble sleeping?

She reached in her pocket for a packet of Reisen chocolate caramels, which she set by Lotte’s plate. “Here. For your friends,” she said.

Lotte stared down at the table. How could Paula think that her classmates, grown girls of sixteen and seventeen, could be bribed with candy? And what made her believe that Lotte was in need of friends? She tore into the packet and ate a caramel with a sudden ravenous hunger, then spit it out again, sticking it to the underside of the dining room table like a wad of gum. The taste reminded her of hot chocolate in the morning with her mother, a milky memory that made her weak in the knees.

She met Hilde in the street and saw that her friend had bluish circles under her dark eyes, emphasizing her sharp cheekbones and her prominent nose. Perhaps no one was sleeping in these times of trouble. Hilde was in an agitated state, speaking very quickly and switching her satchel from one arm to the other, adjusting the straps over her breasts. She’d had bad dreams the night before: She was playing ping-pong with Greta when a long row of Brownshirts filed into the gym. She thought that Greta would protect her. But Greta only took a piece of chalk and drew a Star of David on Hilde’s side of the table. Then the Brownshirts put her in handcuffs and led her away.

Lotte scratched her neck, recognizing the gesture that she must have repeated dozens of time to produce all those scratches. What could she say? As usual, she only listened, waiting for Hilde to reassure herself. The fears came out, one by one, jostling the surface of her friend’s speech: her four Jewish grandparents, placing her in the most persecuted category, her father’s continued unemployment since he lost his job at the University, the many friends who had dropped out of school or moved away. And now she was doubting Greta’s loyalty. What kind of person did that make her? What kind of person couldn’t even trust her own friends?

The stream of Hilde’s speech burbled on unrestrained, bringing Lotte’s breakfast back up into her throat. She reached in her pocket and handed Hilde a chocolate caramel, hating herself for following her stepmother’s advice. Still it was a relief to have some kind of comfort, however insignificant, to offer. She unwrapped another candy in sympathy and the two girls chewed in unison, the regular motion bringing on a kind of calm as they approached the school. Hilde even set an arm on Lotte’s shoulder as they reached the final block.

There, a crowd of students gathered at the gate, laughing and whistling. Had the teachers forgotten to open the building? Or had some emergency made them decide the students shouldn’t enter the school? When she got closer, Lotte saw that her classmates were clustered under  the bust of Athena. Overnight, someone had vandalized the mascot, and the pale goddess now wore a Nazi flag like a flower in her helmet. A charcoal mustache appeared over her full lips, and on her noble breastplate, someone had drawn two swastikas in the position of nipples, their dark arms creeping over the stone.

Lotte’s own breasts ached in sympathy, and she poked the corner of her book into her chest to drive the sensation away. Hilde had dropped her satchel and was sitting on the ground with her head on her knees. Lotte knelt over her, wanting to provide some comfort. But she was afraid that her touch would only add to her friend’s pain.

“She is the goddess of war, after all,” said Eva, who stood with her arms crossed in front of her, smirking.

“Who would do that?” Lotte asked, not addressing anyone in particular.

Greta, who had walked up behind them, ducked down to touch Hilde on the shoulder and give her the reassurance that Lotte could not provide. “ Maybe just a random vandal,” she said. “But more likely, a person with a point to prove. They could be saying that our school has been taken over by Nazis. Or they could be threatening us, saying that, if we haven’t been overrun yet, we soon will be.” As she spoke, she stood and pulled one blonde plait over the front of her sweater where it shone like the braid on a uniform. Lotte, reminded of her stepmother’s golden hair, felt an irrational anger at the sight. It was the color of privilege, of sunshine, and of visibility. It was the sign of favor and praise.

“But which do you think it is?” Hilde asked, from her position on the pavement.

Greta began stroking her braid, only adding to Lotte’s agitation. “Does it matter? We are under attack.”

“Some of us more than others,” Lotte said. “It should really make a person think about their choice of friends.”

Hilde looked up over her shoulder with an injured expression and Lotte felt immediately sorry, as if she’d reveled her friend’s deepest secrets and fears. After all, Greta hadn’t actually betrayed anyone, although, in Lotte’s imagination, she was already on a par with Eva and her friends.

That afternoon, Lotte went home and announced that she was quitting school.

“But you promised your father,” Paula objected. She was alone for once, sorting clothes for out-of-work musicians and actors. Lotte recognized one of her stepmother’s blouses, a low-cut magenta silk, and the blue dress she’d worn at her own Bat Mitzvah.

“It’s different now.”

“What can have changed, in a single day?”

Lotte didn’t have the heart to tell the story. “I just can’t go there anymore. Besides, you are the one who brought up the idea.”

“What will you do, then, my stubborn Lotchken?”

“Maybe I will take up the arts, like the rest of you.”

“There’s not much profit in that, as you can see,” said Paula, holding up a muslin dress decorated with red and gold embroidery. The afternoon light went right through it, and Lotte wondered if she was just as transparent to her stepmother.

“Yes, but I can draw in private. I don’t need an audience or a patron. I won’t have to parade myself in front of the Aryans or suffer the attacks of bullies and fools.”

“Then you are serious?” she said. “It’s not just a spat with your friend?”

 “I will not go back there, not if you pull out my fingernails or burn me in hot oil.”

“Ach, they always told me you were difficult on your governesses. But I thought I would be equal to the job.”

There was a break in Lotte’s anger and she leaned over to kiss her stepmother on the cheek. “Moo, you are doing beautifully,” she said. The jasmine of Paula’s perfume stung in her nostrils, and she felt dizzy with the possibility of its tenderness.  Perhaps they could learn to be mother and daughter after all.

But the bell rang and Paula rose, brushing off her dress and snatching up her compact to check her face and hair.

“Not Herr Singer,” Lotte said. Why did Paula primp and posture for a man she had repeatedly rejected?

“He’s been to the Ministry today.”

Lotte thought back to her stepmother’s disheveled appearance that morning, her worried expression, the telltale signs of a sleepless night. Perhaps she worried whether Singer would actually return. The Ministry was no place for a Jewish conductor, that was certain. And Singer, in spite of his bravery, would have been sorely tested there.

Paula dabbed her cheeks and forehead with powder, took a visible breath, as if preparing for a performance, then headed down the hallway. Meanwhile, Lotte stayed in the parlor, sifting through the discarded clothes, remembering this outing and that performance, a slight, an argument, and an unpleasant conversation. She heard Singer whistling. It was Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, surely a good sign.

“You are in high spirits,” Paula said.

“The Minister has agreed to consider my… request. We will have you singing Carmen again in no time. Still, I believe I need something stronger than… tea… this afternoon.”

Paula walked to the side table and poured two glasses of brandy, then, upon  consideration, filled a third.

“My Lotchken will drink with us, since she has left school and declared herself an adult.”

“Oh?” he said, letting his eyes settle on Lotte’s with a sharp, inquisitive stare. Then she remembered Paula’s comment about her crush, and searched her body for any response to the man. He was handsome, or so people said, with a striking profile, broad shoulders, and excellent teeth. Even his wrinkles were distinguished, like highly-wrought designs engraved on his forehead and beside his eyes. But Lotte felt an irritation at his confidence, a dislike of anything so certain and self-satisfied, a hatred of his sharp outlines and his cloying speech.

“I am emancipated,” she told him, although she still dreaded telling her father and the principal at her school.

“To emancipation, then,” he said, and tipped the brandy toward his lips.

Paula nodded, and drank too. Then Lotte lifted the glass to her lips. She had often been allowed wine at dinner, but had never tasted brandy, and was surprised at the taste, a burning sensation over a warm, buttery base.

“And how did you find things, at the Ministry?” Paula asked.

Singer seemed to collapse then, his face falling out of its careful composition so that Lotte could make out the skull underneath. He pulled a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and began dabbing at his eyes.

“The minister received me with some… warmth,” he said, sitting down in his usual spot. “But the general tenor of the place was terrifying. The fellow who took my name commented that he could hardly breathe, with the crowds of Jews in the streets. ‘Lucky thing we don’t get many like… you… in here,’ he told me. As for Goebbels, he seemed interested in the idea of a Jewish Kulturbund. He knew about my work with the Municipal Opera. He offered me a cigar, asked my opinion on the pictures in his office, and declared I was a… gentleman. I was certainly the right fellow for the job. He would make me an honorary Aryan, if he could.”

Then he held his face in his hands and made a sound in between laughing and crying.

“An honorary Aryan, what have I done?”

“Kurt, you are looking after your people. You are doing what you can.”

He did not speak, but began singing instead. Now it wasn’t Mozart, but something more obscure: “Dopo tante tante peine.” After so much pain… His voice was not a clean and soaring one like Paula’s, and it strained and cracked under the pressure of emotion. All the same, it had a kind of beauty, a crushed masculinity that reveled in the sweetness of its own ruin. It was the first time that Lotte had seen him doubt his own actions, and it made her like him more.

“We must work, after all, or what are we?” Paula said. “Just human statues watching history parade before our glazed eyes.”

Lotte thought of the bust of Athena, the powerful warrior incapable of defending herself. The horrible sight of this most venerated goddess marked as a victim and desecrated like a prostitute, swastikas sprouting from her nipples like the tassels of a dancer in a cabaret. Her very solidity made her a target. But Lotte, though she was weak, was, nevertheless mobile, invisible, and alive. She would not stay where she was bullied. Even if she was plain and insignificant, she would not become the background music for another person’s song. The brandy burned on her tongue and she pulled out a sheet of paper to begin drawing: a head, a hand, a breast, an eye, an arm.

 Caregiver

Lance Milham

People didn’t call Tommy. He didn’t have much other than Mom for obligations, so he kept his ringtone off. That’s why he missed Brenda’s call. She left a hurried message, that she was okay, and she was hoping to talk with him after work. Said she’d be working a full shift. He wondered what she wanted to talk to him about. Her voice put him back in Cali. He wondered if she was still serving at Izzy’s. He used to get the meatball on his lunch breaks, then sit in the back to get in extra time with her. He wondered where she stayed now, if she still hit the same beach. It’d only been a year, but he knew how fast things could change.

Tommy’s identical twin brother got murked the summer after Cube left NWA. He was the only body in a botched robbery. Their mother, forgetful with age, remembered him well, a sweet, loving son. She shouted for him now, Tommy looking too similar while fixing them sandwiches by the radio. The window open, the Orlando morning tasted dark, bitter like coal or gunsmoke.

She filled a small recliner, faded gold-yellow, her fingers twisted by gout tied in her lap. She wore the thin kind of jeans that they make for old people. She shouted for the window to be closed. “I’m freezing, Eric,” she told Tommy, in the mean voice. She hugged herself in the gray sweater. “I’ll freeze to death in this house.”

The window now closed, Tommy still tasted something in his mouth, like the dust deep in the shag, deep in the old woman in the small recliner. He closed his eyes and put an ear by the radio, Tupac reminding him of sunblock and bikini tops. He kept the volume low so she wouldn’t hear, simultaneously because he didn’t want to disturb her, and he didn’t want a lecture. She often forgot he was forty. Well, thirty-nine. And she often forgot he was Tommy, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing. Sometimes, like now, for instance, she said things like “I love you, Eric,” and “You always take such good care of me, Eric.” That was okay, though, because he didn’t mind being Eric, especially if he was being praised.

The taste fell away from his tongue by the time he started eating. He stared at his mother. She liked to do things for herself, feed herself. Her twisted fingers caged the sandwich like a rat trap. She bit the corners lightly, getting only crust at first. Chewed in the side of her mouth like a baby cow. “Good,” she said. “Very good, Tommy.”

He smiled and took his empty plate to the sink. He sponged off the mayonnaise and wrung his hands in the hot water. Her tongue smacked, and she mumbled “Very good” between bites, not to anyone in particular.

Tommy was balding, just a little in the back. He put a finger on the spot, and leaned against the counter to think.

He’d been back in Orlando a year. A little less, but you don’t just throw things out of your head with time. There are other factors at play, like thinking time, time to dwell, and Tommy had plenty of thinking time, or missing time, as it often was. He thought about Brenda again. The last time they spoke was the first Saturday after he got everything unpacked at Mom’s. She’d called to make sure he was getting settled well, or so she said. He figured she cared about that too, but he knew it was a diplomatic call, making sure they were on the same page. He moved back into his old room, upgraded the bed the next week, but that night, his body felt big sitting on the edge of the twin bed. He and Mom would switch rooms, soon, though, about when she started calling him Eric.

He wondered if Brenda expected him to apologize for leaving, but he sort of expected her to apologize for staying. They junked a good thing, he thought. She could’ve been the one. He could’ve started a family, been a dad. He wanted to be a dad so badly. He and Eric used to joke like having families of their own was a million years away. Then he died, and Tommy took things more seriously, life more seriously. Somehow, still, those million years came and went, and he felt like he’d waited too long.

Brenda showed up late in life, changed his mindset, but she didn’t want his problems, his mom. He felt guilty, though. Three years isn’t that long, but they were both getting old. He wanted to make something to leave behind. If you’d asked him in college, he’d say he expected to be married and on the PTO by forty. Thirty-nine. Life was sliding away now, he thought. Years start moving quicker.

Tommy touched Mom’s knee as she finished chewing the last bite. Her lips smacked, and she smiled at him with a wet white crumb in the corner of her mouth. “Delicious,” she said in the sweet voice. He took her glasses from her face and desmudged them on his shirt. She thanked him, but called him Eric.

He swept up while she eyed her book. He wasn’t sure if she actually read anymore. There was one day he noticed her flip back and forth between two pages for a half hour. Her bookmarks were often moved backward on different days too. That was something he quit checking for as it made him feel depressed. Eric liked to read too. He was an English major at UCLA when he got popped. Was taking summer classes and everything. Tommy didn’t remember the timeline that well. He spent a lot of time hammered after the cremation. He remembered returning Eric’s textbook rentals to the bookstore drunk as hell. That he did remember, because some meathead-looking guy eating a croissant saw him and must’ve realized because he said, “Whoa. How ‘bout a coffee, brother?” and Tommy lost his mind right there in the store. Scared the whole place with his hollering. He tried to slow down after that, started crying more.

He liked to remember them as kids, hanging on the balcony rail, watching pigeons and seagulls integrate and combine in the air. They were probably ten when Eric first questioned why seagulls were so far from the sea.

“You’re starting to look like your father,” Mom said from the recliner. “A handsome man.” She grinned at him.

Tommy nodded and thanked her. Made sure to call her “Mom.” He liked using that name as a constant, an anchor. He clicked the TV on for her and expected her to go quiet into the news, but she continued.

“Do you and Eric still look the same?”

He hated to play along, but he knew he was supposed to, so he played along. He told her they are still identical. At least he was Tommy for once, he thought.

“Oof,” she said. “My little mirrors running up and down. Just what I need: three of your father!” She chuckled and patted her hands together in her lap.

He considered being one of three—the only one who remained—back against the refrigerator. Soon, he noticed she had fallen asleep.

She snored with her mouth barely agape so her lip flapped back and forth against her teeth and made a suckling sound, the kind Tommy imagined piglets make on their mother.

He took to the tiny sofa with a glass of water. He wasn’t a news type of guy—the headlines always made him feel depressed—and for that reason, he must’ve dozed off, because suddenly he jumped and splashed himself when Mom walked over the creaky spot of the floor. He blinked himself awake and immediately felt guilt. How long had she tried to stand by herself? How long had she been awake by herself? He watched her waddle—looking drunk—across the living room to the hall. He said, “Are you all right?” assuming she was on her way to the bathroom. She told him she “had to go.”

At least the day wasn’t dragging.

He listened for that one thunk of her wedding band on the counter as she lowered herself onto the toilet. He nodded once, not realizing that was a quirk of his, and he stood. He pinched his temples, clicked off the TV, and glanced out the slider. The sun was dropping behind the rooftops, burning orange. Already dinnerish, he’d slept too long, so long he felt nauseous—so he started preparing dinner. He popped a lasagna into the oven and that was pretty much everything. He’d prepped the night before with double meat like Mom used to make for him and his brother.

The lasagna in the oven, Tommy tapped around his phone, looked at Brenda’s name. She’d be getting off soon. Maybe she did get out of Izzy’s, onto something new. Maybe she found someone good for her.

Mom rustled in the hallway, rapping on the wall as she slid by and bounced off down to her bedroom. He didn’t hear her flush, though, so he sighed and said, “Mom, you didn’t flush.”

From her bedroom he heard a drawer scooting open. He repeated, “You didn’t flush.” And she said, “I will. I’m not done yet.”

He stepped back in line with the hall’s doorway. In the middle of the wall hung a crucifix. He stared, not blinking, not speaking—just staring and waiting.

Jesus looked battered and frail, but his core was strong. He pictured Jesus with the Makaveli bandana like on the The 7 Day Theory cover art: Pac up on the cross. Back in 1995, ’96, he thought, he cut out of work early to roll a joint and swing through Best Buy for a copy of that record on release day. Listened in his car there in the parking lot.

Mom walked back across the doorway and blocked Jesus. She walked quickly, for her, and focused. The first thing he noticed were her legs, that they were naked and white and she clutched her jeans against her privates, covering her crotch and thigh. She had another darker pair of jeans in her other hand. Tommy didn’t feel so good all of the sudden. His stomach felt heavy. He leaned his elbows on the counter and palmed his eyes before whispering no no no and following her to the bathroom.

He could smell it. Muddy, scummy smell, sharp and sour. Of all the times, she had to have an accident now. Brenda would call any minute. The smell seemed to be quickly getting thicker, stronger, toxic. Rancid, putrid. He sighed long, then cringed when he had to inhale. “Mom,” he said, “you need help, don’t you? Don’t you?”

“No, no, no,” she repeated. “No, no.”

“Yes, you do,” he said. Then, “I’m coming in.”

She didn’t say no. If there was anything she made easy, she let him help when she was in need. Like now, pantless, one white Velcro sneaker off and in the corner, spots of shit smashed into the rug, looking helpless seated on the toilet. Her sweater was balled on the counter, gritty brown goo painted down the counter’s corner, on one of the sleeves. Her twisted hands looked dipped, nails dark. She didn’t look at him, and she said, “Oh, God. God, oh, God,” shaking her head slowly. She looked so tired, melted to the seat, back hunched with age. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Tommy gagged and said, “Mom, don’t be sorry. It’s okay,” but the words came out gooey.

“Oh, God,” she said, sounding small. The darker jeans she had grabbed were laying over the edge of the tub, already streaked brown just from her hands. They looked like eating Easter chocolate outdoors hands, and she held them up, fingers knotted together.

“Give me your hands first,” he said calmly starting to buff the brown from her skin. She twitched and he said to be still. Then, “Don't move your hands.”

“I’m not,” she yelled.

“You are. Just keep them still.”

“I’m not moving,” she said, in the mean voice.

“Mom,” he said. He looked her in the eyes. She looked sick, old. He swallowed hard, sucked in air fast, and finished wiping off her fingers.

Once her palms and wrists were clean, he had her lean forward, pulled her by the arms forward and draped them over his shoulders, like a hug. She didn’t protest this part anymore. Tommy thought that was sad: the easiest way to be wiped was a memory she always remembered.

“Ouch,” she said. “Ouch, that hurts.”

“Mom.”

“You’re hurting me,” she yelled. “Ouch!”

“Mom, come forward. Mom, lean forward,” he said. Once she had leaned completely against him, armpits around his neck, she fell silent. Wiping your mother doesn’t get easier—accidents just become a routine. He paused for much too long, preparing, squinting, furrowing, before putting his toilet paper wrapped hand under her. Would this be too much for Brenda? Could she handle cleaning up? Could she handle being a caregiver?

His mother hummed like babies do before they cry. Then she made a noise with her mouth like she was about to say “Eric.” What about him? Tommy wondered if Eric could’ve handled this. Would he have been the one to move back to Orlando? The smart one had life to slay. Tommy still would’ve been the one here.

“What a mess,” he finally said, shaking his head. That's when she started to cry.

He stopped to listen. She had never cried during past accidents. “Ouch,” she said.

Tommy felt the color drain from his face. “Mom, am I really hurting you?”

“No,” she said. “I feel sick. I’m so damn embarrassed.” He felt tears falling on his neck.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’m almost done.”

She started trembling, wiggling restlessly. “Oh, God,” she coughed out, and he tried to calm her because she was moving. He needed her not to move.

“Mom, I really need you to be still.”

“Damn it, you!” she spat in his ear. “Shut up! Oh, God. I just want to go some days,” she cried. “He wants to take me! He should!”

Tommy was confused.

She exhaled and whimpered. “God, why are you waiting?”

The oven beeped. The lasagna was done.

Tommy wiped. He held his eyes open wide. They were filled with tears, and if he blinked, he knew, they’d fall. So that’s it, he thought. His mom, half-naked and spangled with shit, weak arms wrapped around her son’s neck, asked God to take her away. He blinked, and the tears fell just like he expected. Landed on her shoulder. Of all the times for her to give up, maybe, he thought, this felt like a reasonable one.

He wet wads of toilet paper under the faucet and wiped her, washed her. He then used some soap and wet towels and piled the soiled ones in the corner by the tub. She repeated, “God, God,” again and again, bared her teeth and breathed heavily from deep down low in her chest like she'd been running for all her life. When she was clean, he asked her to stand still in place, handing her the last clean towel from the closet to wrap herself with. She squeezed her eyes tight while he wiped down the seat and the bowl. He fetched new jeans from her room and looked around long and hard for anything tracked onto the drawers or walls. At least they were all clean. The oven beeped on and on. She had stopped crying, but she was still trembling.

“Are we done?” she asked, out of breath.

“Almost,” he said, starting her heels in the pant legs.

“What’s that noise?”

“The oven, Mom.”

“I couldn’t dream of eating.” She put the towel on the floor, not in the pile, and Tommy held the door for her to leave. She walked slowly, drained. “I’m so angry,” she said.

When his mother was seated, Tommy silenced the beeping and took the lasagna from the oven. He mashed a piece into chunks with a fork on a plate. He balanced it on the arm of the recliner and said, “It’s so hot. Do not take a bite yet.”

“I won’t eat it. I can’t,” she said, refusing to look at it. And as he slunk away she wailed: “God, I miss him. I miss Tommy so much.”

Tommy stopped. Stood still. Clenched his fists and held his eyes open wide again. Too much crying already between the two of them. He exhaled sharply and turned to face her. When he went to speak she raised a hand at him, like swatting a fly, and that’s when the phone rang.

Same song from the year before. He hadn’t realized he hadn’t changed it because he never got calls. He was reminded of the same song and same buzzing from between the driver’s seat and the door after fumbling it on the freeway.

“Oh, God, what is that now?” Mom said.

“Just my phone. Someone’s calling.”

“Well, I’ve never heard it before,” she said, sounding mean.

Tommy didn’t reply because she was right and that made him mad. She needed space. He caught the call on the last ring, and Brenda was humming something on the other end. Went on the balcony, closed the slider behind him. He said hello and she responded: “There he is.”

He tried to breathe slowly because his heart felt thick and his face felt hot. He collapsed into the folding chair. Brenda’s voice sounded about as average as he remembered, somewhere stuck dead between musical and grating.

“Brenda,” he said, like you say when you first greet someone but have nothing in particular to lead with. Short pause. “Got your message. Sorry that I missed the call.”

“Well, I got you this time,” she said. She sounded happy.

He said that was true, and she laughed. “You don’t get harassed day in and day out like the rest of us?”

“Sure, sure,” he answered, loosening up. “I suppose I get a solicitor or someone trying to get in my wallet every now and again, but typically? Nope,” he said. “Stays pretty quiet around here. Not many calls.”

“No? None from your girlfriends?”

Was that a joke? Assuming so, he faked a chuckle.

“Well,” she continued, “I just got in. Feet up. Uncapping some Seagrams in my Seagrams. Been going T instead of juice recently. Purer to the gin, I guess. Doesn’t matter much, I guess. How’s things way back east?”

He sighed, away from the receiver. His brow was sweating. “Hot, but the air is clean.”

“You got me there,” she said, laughing. “God, I’d love to be able to breathe and not worry about dying young.”

Tommy wanted to say something vague and passive aggressive like “Oh, well, you could be able to breathe just fine out here” but instead he just said, “Yep, yep. Rough out there.”

She grunted in agreement and asked again if how he was doing.

“No, yeah,” he said. “Things are fine. Taking each day an hour at a time. How are you, though?”

She told him that she was mostly the same, which she was thankful for—consistency and all—but then detailed something about Izzy’s. He let himself relax in the conversation, really take in what she was saying, or really just how she spoke. He thought about how much time he spent listening to her talk. All the different places she talked. All the things she talked about.

The sky looked red and hot. High above his head, though, everything looked cooler, and stars were starting to pop behind the night’s blues.

“What about a girl?” she asked him, when she was finished. “Girls? They all just flocking?”

She sounded serious, which made him uncomfortable. He tried to sound serious, too. “No,” he said. “I don’t have time for that.” He faked another chuckle.

“Yeah, I understand,” she said.

She wasn’t really saying anything, like they’d run into each other at the grocery store. And not that he really wanted to spill any info, but why hadn’t she asked about Mom? It was only polite, right? What was he doing all day? All day, every day. He wasn’t seeing random kids from high school, balding now, probably, somewhere hating their trapped-in-Orlando lives. And no women. No time for women. Why would she even ask? She knew what he was doing. She knew exactly what he was doing. Everything. Making sandwiches and cleaning shit off the countertops and under fingernails. Being the best Tommy he could be. Being the best Eric he could be. Being housemaid and caregiver and encyclopedia of memories Mom couldn’t keep in between her ears. That’s what he was doing. But she hadn’t asked, and wouldn’t, he realized. She wouldn’t ask because she already knew—or assumed, at least. She didn’t want to hear about that. No Florida things. No Florida Tommy. She wanted to hear about Cali Tommy.

“Brenda, what exactly did you call for?” he said.

She stuttered, emulating that vague embarrassed feeling you get when you’ve been interrupted.

“Y’know,” she said finally. “Just thought we’d chat, maybe I’d see—” Tommy was feeling impatient. “—about you, things—”

“Things?”

“Yes, things, you know. Y’know, things, just things. You, your mom?”

Finally, he thought. His mom was looking humiliated in her chair, shoulders trembling like she was crying but he couldn’t hear through the glass. “Mom’s fine,” he said.

She exhaled. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you okay?”

Tommy wanted not to respond, but he was feeling like his time was being wasted, and not responding would just waste more of it. That was the only reason he said, “I’m doing what I can,” and he said it quickly, sharply, the way people sass waiters and customer service reps.

“Tommy, you knew what you were in for when you left. I’m sorry—”

“I had to, Brenda,” he said. “Listen, I have things to take care of if you’re finished.”

Brenda was silent for a moment, and Tommy afforded her that moment. “She’s really a handful then, huh?” she said. “Can’t even spare enough time for a phone call anymore?”

“I do what I have to do, Brenda. She needs me.”

“Come on. See the Bat Signal, do ya? I’d hate to keep you from saving the day, but come on.”

“Brenda, she’s my mother.”

“I know she is. I know. I’m not trying to keep you from her. I never was,” she said. “But you made your choice.”

“We could’ve worked something out—I don’t know. We could’ve been on our way to a family by now.”

He afforded her another silent moment.

“Would you want me there?” she finally asked. “Would that solve this? What if I were there right now? If I were there and pregnant, right now, would things be better? Would you have all you wanted?”

“Would you?” he asked.

Tommy would never have wanted to burden her with days like today, and days like today would keep coming, amplifying, probably. And anyway, he didn’t know what he wanted now, if anything at all. He didn’t want much more than a moment of peace.

“We’ll catch up again, Brenda. I should probably go, really. Thanks for calling.”

She exhaled again. “She’s lucky to have you. You have my number,” she said. “Don’t lose it.”

He hung up. There were ways, he knew. Stranger things had happened to stranger people than Tommy, but Tommy didn’t care about them, here and now.

She wasn’t completely wrong. His long nights of ceiling-staring, dreaming awake of tossing the pigskin, trying—and that was trying—to help with homework. Popping a set of earphones on him and shushing “Don’t tell Mom.” The best dad things. He hugged his knees, then pawed at his bald spot. Sounds crazy, he knew, but he felt the glossy, barren spot getting bigger by the day. Felt the sun shining shorter and shorter. He wished nights felt short too.

He turned off the ringtones again. No one called him, or no one who needed him ever called him. Vibration did just fine.

He waited a while, just breathing and looking around the room. Walked here and there, adjusted some glasses in the sink, clicked the TV on, but Mom didn’t look. She still hid her face. She hadn’t eaten, and, when Tommy walked over the creaky spot, she suddenly said she’d like to go to bed. He hated when she sulked.

She tried to stand without his help, but—because of her teary eyes, he figured—her knotted hand booted the plate off the chair’s arm, straight to the carpet. The lasagna chunks bounced away from the plate and left a red sauce circle at the crash site, looking like the black marks fireworks make on asphalt. She finished standing, saying, “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Mom,” he said, sounding tired.

“Oh, stop it. Just leave me be, damn it!” She answered fast—mean voice again, but different. Had a backbone and sounded strong-willed, lucid. “I didn’t mean for it to fall,” she said. “I’ve gotten so embarrassed.” She was crying. “I want to go to bed. I just want to go to bed and go to sleep.”

He told her that she had fallen asleep in the chair, that she wouldn’t be able to sleep yet.

“Damn it, Tommy, I’m tired,” she yelled.

He helped her get to bed once she calmed down. She walked hunched forward with a hand against her chest. She whispered, “Oh, my God,” like she was in some pain. She tried not to look at him in the eyes, but he stared and eventually she did and repeated, “Oh, my God. Eric, please.”

She changed herself into nightclothes, slowly, while sitting on the bed, and eventually, when she was under the blanket, he said goodnight. He watched from the hallway, leaning on the doorjamb. Her glasses were smudgy again, on the nightstand. She lay on her back, glassless face looking gaunt and angular under the sharp shadows of the nightlight on the right and the moon on the left. He turned when he thought maybe she didn’t want to be looked at, maybe covering her face if she wasn’t falling asleep, but he doubted she even knew he was still there. He stood there longer than usual, staring but not seeing.

In his head, tomorrow was already here. He stood in the kitchen, cooking. She was in the recliner, saying something about what a good pair they were, Tommy and Eric, and how he’d be lucky to meet them someday. “Such fine boys,” he heard her say. “They’ll be around soon. They’re due to visit this old bird.”

He left the plate for now, looking like Excalibur in the rug. He needed to relax, out on the balcony in his folding chair. He ended up standing, instead. The chair didn’t feel comfortable.

Tommy had been rolling joints like someone who had never rolled a joint since he was in high school. Joints made him feel closer to the weed he was smoking, like smoking was a full experience. He hit them rarely, leisurely, only when she slept. He’d feel guilty smoking on duty. If she needed him, he wanted to be available. She was always there for him, for them both. He knew his turn had come.

That was what pushed Brenda away, left her behind. That look in his eye, like he’d found a purpose in life. Maybe that was why she stayed. Maybe if his mother was gone, maybe if he had a clear conscience. Maybe in another life. Because as he smoked, leaning over the metal railing, the night air rang at a certain frequency of silence that he filled with every exhale, each one sounding more like a sigh. What would he do after all was said and done, all the papers passed out among him and the two or three other people she knew? They’d ask at the funeral: “Where are you going now? Will you stay in the apartment? Do you have any big plans? You should enjoy your time. You’ve been so good to her. You’re free now. You can do anything.”

There was a green glow low on the horizon, oozing between the bottom floors of the taller buildings. He felt a thin hum beyond the headphones, a tremble in the air, like a voice calling from the house, or a phone vibrating on the table, and the smoke climbed higher and higher and dissolved like sugar in the night.

 Date Night

Christopher Linforth

In the bathroom, our babysitter comes at us with tincture of benzoin. She unscrews the lid and holds the glass bottle above her head. The amber liquid swishes inside, spills over the lip. We cower behind the shower curtain. I see you, she says. As she pulls back the curtain, we turn the shower head her way, spray her face with steaming hot water. Our babysitter shrieks that she will call our parents. She hates that we’re twins, but not twins, the pair of us almost identical to strangers. Our spindly bodies look pale, rarely exposed to the outside world. We hop out of the bath and surge past her. We hear her footfalls as she follows. We dive into our parents’ room and jump onto the bed. Our babysitter snatches our ankles, trips the pair of us onto the coverlet. Our parents’ odor puffs into the air—all three of us can smell the stink of our stepfather’s semen, our mother’s sweat, the cheap hairspray she overuses every morning. Our parents always rut after returning from their Saturday night dinner. They carry in leftovers, a bottle of late-night supermarket wine; they pay the babysitter with a check, call her a taxi. Tell her to go. They smack us when we refuse to sleep. They leave bruises on our arms and chests. Tonight, before they left, our mother egged on our stepfather. She told him we did not view him as our father. He threw us to the floor and slapped us around, his class ring nicking our cheeks. We blamed the cat when the babysitter arrived. She asked to see the tabby, which died years ago. We don’t remember its name. Now our babysitter wrinkles her nose. Enough, she says. She climbs onto the bed. She hunches over and tips the bottle of benzoin onto a wad of tissue. She dabs at our arms, cleans up a little blood. Then she moves onto the second of us. We brace for the pain. Now stay still, she says. This will toughen you up.

 Pampers

David Chura

I wonder sometimes, sitting in the waiting room bullpen for my babies’ visit, what my life would’ve been like if mommy hadn’t run out of Pampers. Maybe if Camille had got toilet trained just a few months earlier, mamita would still be around, and I wouldn’t be nineteen, doin’ two years for some shabby grab-and-run at Pop’s Liquor Store—two whole years—in this shithole jail, having to see my two precious daughters in that dirty visiting room, afraid to let them touch anything or run around, even though little Loretta can’t wait to show her papi how she can walk now.

“At least Loretta’s toilet trained,” I tease Camille when she comes to see me, wearing her St. Ursula’s uniform. She’s so proud of her white blouse and plaid skirt, she wears it for visits so I can see she’s really doin’ something with herself.

But I can’t really blame her, I mean, she was only a little kid. It always cracked me up when she’d go in her diaper. All of a sudden she’d drop the doll she was playing with and run out of the kitchen and hide until mommy or grandma would call her.

“Camille, what are you doing?”

“Pooping,” she’d yell out from behind grandpa’s ratty old recliner.

Grandma would shake her head, smile at me, and wink.

But not mamita. She’d get real pissed and yank Camille into the bathroom.

“Yeah, it’s fine for you to laugh,” she’d scream at abuelita, “but I’m the one who has to clean up her shit.”

By that time, mommy was cursing at everybody, even her parents, and they gave up telling her “Don’t you talk to me that way, girl,” the way they used to when mamita was still their daughter, still respected them.

Truth is, even when I was ten, I knew if it wasn’t Pampers, it would’ve been something else. Cigarettes. Toothpaste. Weed. A bottle of Bacardi.

Either way, I’d still be sitting here in this stinking bullpen, in this tight-ass orange jump suit, looking like some kinda Mexican clown, which is what the real nasty COs call anybody whose name ends in “a” or “o” like me.

I’m always telling the young Spanish brothers, when they get pissed off, not to waste their breath trying to tell them assholes that they’re from Ecuador, or Panama or, like me, born in the US of A. I tell them, save it for visiting days when them honkies make you bend over and spread your butt cheeks and shove a flashlight almost up your hole.

But them skinny-assed kids with hardly no meat on their butts to spread, ‘cause crack has eaten them up, don’t listen. I don’t give a fuck. All I know is, the po-lice make me feel dirty, bending over like that just before visiting my girls.

Anyways, it’s them young kids, fifteen-, sixteen-year-olds, got pigs doin’ this to us, going and coming back from visits. They’re the ones sneaking around, trying all this stupid stuff, sneaking shit in and out of jail, swallowing something or sticking something up their ass.

All I know is that when mamita left that day, she didn’t worry about sneaking around, sneaking out. She just walked out.

I was doin’ homework at the kitchen table, when she told abuelita and abuelito that she was going to the store to pick up some Pampers.

“Please watch Rolando and Camille for me,” she whispered just as she was closing the door. I don’t know if I really heard her say that or if I made it up. Either way, mamita never came back.

I never knew if my grandparents called the cops when she didn’t come home for dinner. But grandma still set the table for five people that night, and the night after that, and the night after that. And she did something else. She left the tall red church candle she had in front of her statue of Mary burning all night and all day. Matter of fact, she never let it go out. It was still burning when I finally ran away from there, two years later when I was twelve.

Nobody talked about her those first few weeks, at least not to me. Camille whimpered mamita a lot, but the bean pot she loved to bang would always distract her. Me? I just kept watching grandma and grandpa’s faces.

Grandpa looked tired all the time, his eyes were black, like he’d been punched or something. He didn’t sleep in grandma’s bed anymore, instead he stayed in his chair all night, like he was waiting up for mamita to come back from the store, like maybe she’d need help with her groceries.

Grandma’s old lady friends still came around. They’d sit at the kitchen table, drinking tea with lots of sugar, but instead of shouting over each other like they usually did, they hunched close together, their big boobs squeezed up against the table, and whispered in Spanish. Grandma wouldn’t say much, she just kept looking over her shoulder like she was afraid bad news would come walking through the door.

It’s weird, but I’ve seen that same kind of scared, worried look on a lot of the mommies visiting their sons here. They keep looking over their shoulders like they have to protect their kids from traffic or something. But they know it’s too late, so instead they’re busy guarding their pint-sized grandsons with the fresh Jordans or their granddaughters with a dozen bows in their braided hair that they’ve brought to see their sixteen-year-old daddies.

Of course, those daddies are too busy scoping the room, looking over their shoulders for females, any female, they’re that hungry. Forget about the kid hugging their knees, asking to get picked up, unless some cute bitch across the room in the tight ass jeans looks like she thinks you’re cute ‘cause you’re a daddy, then all of a sudden you’re all over your kid.

I know, ‘cause I’ve looked over my shoulder like that plenty of times in all kinds of visiting rooms the po-lice run, back when I was a player, not worried about no babies, just babes and bitches, keeping an eye out while my latest shortie was visiting, hoping damn straight that some other girl I was fucking didn’t decide to show up too.

But the looking never stops.

Here I am, nineteen, wifey and babies coming to see me, and I still find myself looking over my shoulder in that visiting room.

But now it’s a different kind of looking. I’m looking for mamita.

I know that sounds crazy, but a part of me keeps thinking that maybe someday she’ll come walking in, and ask to see me.

Yeah, yeah, I know that won’t happen. If she ever did show up, she’d be sitting across the hall in the women’s visiting room, all hunched over, skinny as those skinny-assed kids, in an orange jumpsuit same as me, looking beat-up and worn-down, leaning over the same kind of table, talking to some legal aid lawyer. Or on days when I feel really shitty, I get to thinking I’ll see her sitting across from some guy just a little younger than me, the son she had after she left me, the son who made it in the world, white shirt, tie, sports jacket on the back of his plastic chair. Either way I wouldn’t recognize her, and I know she wouldn’t recognize me. But still, when I’m down there visiting, I keep looking over my shoulder like abuelita did at the kitchen table.

It’s strange to be looking for her after all these years. I didn’t then. I mean, I wanted her to come home, but it was a lot quieter without her and grandma fighting all the time about her drinking and staying out all night. And I didn’t miss her screaming at me, or hitting Camille for doin’ some dumb kid thing, and the house was a lot cleaner without all those empties rolling around. But you can’t tell people that, that deep down inside you’re glad your mother walked out on you.

I tried once.

It was the only time my grandfather beat me.

I’d just turned eleven. Auntie Lucille decided to have a birthday party for me. She was grandma’s baby girl, that’s what grandma called her. Mommy and Auntie Lucille never got along. Auntie would say that mommy was jealous of her, and after a while mommy and her would end up cursing each other out. Mamita was usually drunk, so she always got the meanest. One time, she shoved auntie, and grandpa had to pull them off each other, until grandma told Lucille not to come around unless mommy was out. So, once mamita left us, auntie was there all the time, and did nice things, like giving me a birthday party, and later, after abuelita and abuelito died, sending Camille to St. Ursula’s School.

After my party and all the cousins went home, grandma told me and grandpa to go into the living room and watch TV “while us ladies clean up.” Grandpa and I laughed about that.

“Okay with us gents.” Grandpa winked at me, but he almost fell over, he was so drunk.

That happened a lot after mamita left. Grandpa stayed in his chair and drank and smoked cigarettes and drank some more. He stopped driving the cab, and then he stopped going out of the house all together. We all knew it was ‘cause of mommy, but nobody could say that.

After a while there got to be just as many whiskey bottles and empty beer cans around as when mommy lived there. And he started shouting and cursing me and Camille, except that sometimes when he was yelling at Camille he’d call her Alicia, mommy’s name. But at least he never hit us.

Until the party.

That afternoon, after I helped grandpa into his recliner, he seemed happy, like he hadn’t been in a long time. I think that day we both wished I was small enough to crawl up on his lap like I used to. So instead I walked over and sat on the floor near his feet.

I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe I felt old enough to finally say what had really been going on inside me.

“You know, abuelito, I’m glad mamita left us, ‘cause now it can just be us.”

I don’t think he meant to hit me so hard—or to hit me at all, but he did. He keep kicking me and punching me, yelling mommy’s name over and over again, Alicia! Alicia! Alicia! until he finally hit me with a wine bottle on the back of my head.

There was a lot of blood and Auntie Lucille wanted to take me to the emergency room but grandma wouldn’t let her. She was afraid social services would take me and Camille away from them. They were already giving her shit about mommy’s leaving and grandpa’s drinking and us kids not being safe. Instead, they cleaned me up and made me lay on the couch with an icepack on my head where he hit me with the bottle.

Once he sobered up grandpa cried and tried to hug me and swore that he didn’t mean it and that he’d never beat me again, that he’d never lay a finger on me. I told him that I knew he didn’t mean it, and that I believed he’d never do it again.

I knew he’d never do it again, ‘cause that night after Auntie Lucille pulled me from under him, I swore to myself that I’d walk out on him as soon as I could. I’d walk out the same way mommy did.

And I did.

It was two weeks after I turned twelve. There wasn’t a party that birthday. Grandpa didn’t hit me, or anybody else. He hardly had the strength to lift a drink. He didn’t even seem to see us kids anymore, like we had disappeared with his Alicia. Camille made me a birthday card with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it, and her and grandma signed it. That was it. But that was okay with me. It made leaving easier.

That afternoon I told my grandparents that I was going to play basketball. The only thing I took was that birthday card.

“Please watch Camille for me,” I whispered as I closed the door just the way I imagined mommy did.

For a few days I did play basketball. I ate at friends, slept under their beds or in their garages so their parents wouldn’t know I was there. During the day, when school was going on, I hung out behind the gym and met my buddies. That’s when I started smoking weed.

I was surprised how easy it was—cutting school, sneaking around, copping weed. Pretty soon, though, I got bored, and after a couple of the guys got busted behind the school gym for cutting class and smoking dope, I cut outta there. I didn’t need no cops in my business.

That’s when I decided to check out this laundromat that I used to go to with grandma when I was little. It was run by this old guy, Eduardo, who was from Ecuador like my grandparents. On weekends, abuelita took me with her to the Bronx to buy chickens and stuff. Sometimes she’d get off the bus at the laundromat and have coffee with Eduardo. He always treated us like family. Maybe we were, for all I knew. He’d take us into the back room, pull grandma’s chair out for her, like he was some goofy gentleman, and give me hot cocoa while him and abuelita drank black coffee and talked. Once I’d finished slurping up all my hot chocolate, I’d wander out front.

I loved that place. It was hot and noisy, with all crazy types of women—Spanish, Italian, Indian, Black, mothers and grandmothers, and young chicks. They’d be sorting clothes, counting their change, folding laundry, yelling to each other over the salsa music blaring out of the radio. And there was always tons of little kids, about Camille’s age, running around.

I think that’s why I started hanging out at the laundromat. I missed my little sister. A couple of times I snuck over to her nursery school and watched her playing on the swings with her girlfriends, but I always hid behind a car across the street so she couldn’t see me. But it made me too sad to see her, and not be able to joke with her, or read to her, so I stopped.

Those first few weeks I stayed out of Eduardo’s way. I didn’t want to take no chance that he’d recognize me, even though I was a lot older since the last time he saw me and a lot taller. When he wasn’t around I did stuff like throw out the old newspapers and stack up the magazines people left. I’d sweep the floor or tie up the trash. Sometimes, when there was hardly nobody around, I’d read old Reader’s Digests.

At first, nobody paid any attention to me. Pretty soon, though, the little kids started following me around. They thought everything I did was a game, which I suppose it was, since I was just killing time, for what, I still don’t know. When they asked me what my name was, I told them Jovencito, “Little Man,” what grandpa used to call me before I started to hate him.

And I could’ve had some new older friends, too. Some of those mamas were real happy to have me help them fold their laundry, and they didn’t mind complaining to me about their big fat husbands who were too lazy to do anything. I pretended I didn’t know what they were talking about with that anything. The way they said “Jovencito,” all sexy and hot, scared the shit out of me, but that’s something I didn’t tell nobody, not even myself, and certainly not the hombres I still hung out with, like Roberto, who’d come over to the laundromat to pick me up for some hoops and stealing 40s from the bodega. Berto’s eyes would be poppin’, checking out all the ladies, him smiling like a dumbass kid.

“Yo, Rolando, who’s the bitch?” he’d ask me as soon as we got out on the street. “You see the way she was looking at me? Yo, man, she was open. Fuck the park, let’s go back in.”

I’d act like I didn’t care and keep on walking. I wasn’t about ready to tell Berto or anybody else that I didn’t really care about no bitches then. I was happier crawling around under a bunch a chairs with some two-year-old in smelly Pampers chasing me.

That’s where Eduardo found me the first time.

I saw his shoes the same time I heard him laugh.

“So this is Jovencito that I keep hearing about,” he called out to all the ladies in the room, sounding like some kind a game show host. “Si, si,” they all laughed and nodded and then shouted at their kids to leave Jovencito alone, he needed to talk to Señor Eduardo.

I didn’t have to worry about Eduardo recognizing me. I hardly recognized him. He was smaller than before, all stooped over, and his eyes were huge under some mad thick glasses. They didn’t help much, I could tell. He seemed to move around more by touching things than by seeing.

It was weird, that first day, how he showed me around the laundromat like he was hiring me for a job I didn’t apply for. He touched everything—the washers and dryers, the plastic chairs, the detergent dispensers, even the kids and their mamas—smiling and nodding and whispering all the time.

And he kept telling me stuff like he knew all along I’d be working for him. He even gave me a key and asked me to close up for him. “These eyes not so good at night.” He never said anything about paying me, and I never asked, ‘cause I wasn’t really there, if you know what I mean. We both seemed to understand that—that I just needed to be there.

And I was—all day. While I was taking care of things for Eduardo, the neighborhood women took care of me, the way they took care of their own kids. They fed me, smiled at me, thanked me when I did the smallest thing for them. But when the streetlights came on, and the cop cars started rolling by slow, and the winos and crackheads started coming out, looking for a place to crash, the ladies wished me good night and hustled home. Then I’d sweep the floors, turn out the lights, yank down and padlock the grate, and head down the block to the bodega.

Even there I was Jovencito, but a different Little Man, the one who smoked weed and drank 40s, who every once in a while carried packages, no questions asked, for Miguel who owned the place and who pretended I didn’t rip him off for cigarettes, beer, chips, ramens, and beef jerky just as long as I delivered certain things to a certain cab driver at the train station on the regular. I knew all about dope and guns, and I when told Miguel I knew “what’s up,” he looked all hurt.

“Whatta you talking about, Jovencito? Food for my poor sick mamita, that’s all.”

Then he’d smile and shove another package at me. Pretty soon, I was dealing all over the Bronx, but that was way later, after I ran away from the group home and did time in juvie.

But back then I was just Little Man, hanging out at the bodega for a couple of hours at night, then sneaking into Eduardo’s and sleeping next to the driers where nobody could see me, just waiting for the mamas and their kids to show up for another day of play.

I don’t know, it sounds crazy, but there’s something about being around little kids I’ve always loved. Even though I got two of my own, I’m still that way. I get dumb happy just hearing kids out in the visiting room. And the little kids? They love me, they just swarm all over me. It happens wherever I’m locked up.

Like last year, when I was doin’ another county bid, I got into deep shit ‘cause me and this little guy, maybe four years old, were making weird monster faces at each other across the visiting room and laughing. Then before I knew it, this crazy little dude comes running across at me, jumps into my lap, and wraps his arms around my neck, and gives me a big kiss on the cheek.

That’s when all hell broke out. These two pigs come charging across the visiting room, screaming at me, like I got a weapon: “Drop the kid. Drop the kid. Now.”

But before I could do anything, po-lice started pulling at him and shouting and the little man started balling and hanging on my neck even tighter until his mother got him off.

Cops called a code, and all of a sudden these two helmeted goons are slamming my face into the floor, cuffing me, and dragging me out of the visiting room in front of my babies’ mama and my two little girls. Back in the pen, CO stripped me and butt searched me hard, like the kid might’ve snuck me something. I got two weeks in the box, two stupid weeks, for playing funny faces with some little boy who got dragged off to jail on a sunny Saturday afternoon to watch his daddy and mama fight. But I didn’t give a shit. It was worth it. In some ways those fuckers were right, the kid did slip me something, ‘cause anytime I’m around a kid, any kid, I’m flyin’ high like some cokehead.

That’s why I make wifey bring the girls up here every week no matter what. It’s weird, but while the dickheads are searching me, I can almost feel my babies getting off the bus outside the gate, and then, when they’re in the visiting room. I swear I can hear my Loretta asking her mama, “Is papi coming? Is papi coming?” “I’m here for you, little ones,” I keep whispering to myself. “Don’t worry. I won’t desert you like mamita did me.”

But deep down, I know that’s bullshit, no matter how many times I brag to those young knuckleheads on the block that I’m not like them, dumping their seed, then leaving the bitch to deal with it. No matter how much I say I am, I’m not there for them.

And I know there’ll come a day when wifey and the girls don’t show up. That’ll be the day my daughters look at each other and finally realize, “Yeah, we know where our papi is—he’s in jail, where he’s always been.” Then they’ll turn to their mama and say, “Why bother?” and get back on the bus for home.

I know it’s gonna happen. Someday. But for now, I’m where I’ve always been, sitting in a filthy visiting room bullpen, trying to hear my little ones’ excited voices, waiting, hoping, praying, “Please, please, just don’t make that day today?”

 They

Madeline Furlong

Kat is disappearing. It starts on Monday, when they are too quiet—quiet when they wake, quiet when they arrive home, quiet when we brush our teeth at our Jack and Jill sinks.

“Do you see me?” their reflection asks me in the mirror.

“Every bit,” mine responds.

But Tuesday they hunch their shoulders up against the world, and I swear they look smaller, somehow, like they are sinking into themselves. Or the earth.

Kat has changed in other ways, too.

We met three years ago on a women’s over-thirty softball league. It was a year after my divorce. I had done very little since the split, and my coworker Megan had been bullying me for months to join. Megan played shortstop; her wife, also Megan, played left field.

“I’m trying to stay away from activities that bring out my competitive side,” I told her.

“Why? Because your ex-husband didn’t like it? Girl, forget him.”

I had never played before, but Megan put me at first base. Kat played catcher. I noticed her right away—she had short black hair that looked like it had been sprinkled with salt. She was Korean, with freckles across her nose, and circle glasses. The first time we touched was when I stole home during a scrimmage, sliding into the plate as Kat went to tag me out. I never knew, before that, that a twinkle in an eye and the touch of a glove could change a life.

“Was this your plan all along?” I asked Megan, later. “For me to date a woman?”

“Girls are the best,” she said. “You’ll see.”

Falling in love with Kat was the easiest thing I ever did. I had been married to a man like myself, one who moved fast at work and even faster outside of it. Kat was different. She led a simple life, and made me want to lead one, too. She never had a plan, but didn’t mind that I always did. She worked produce at an organic food store but loved that I was on the partner-track at my firm. Kat watched me with that twinkle whenever I went off about a coworker who couldn’t meet a deadline or a client who was getting cold feet. She called me her little lion—beautiful and fierce. I called her my guardian angel—the one who brought me back to life. We moved into a little house in a quiet neighborhood where Kat started an herb garden and cooked gluten-free. We went to softball games at the high school down the road. We drank tea on the porch at night. When I told Megan about our routine she laughed.

“That’s the most lesbian thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.

“You’ve lost weight,” I tell Kat. It’s Wednesday morning, and in the locker room of the gym, as we towel off, I can see their ribs.

“Have I?” they ask, and I can tell that they are genuinely surprised. Their glasses are steamed from the shower, slipping on their freckly nose. I think, I could fall in love with you all over again.

I say, “Yes, I’m worried.”

“Don’t be too hard on her,” a woman jokes. “She looks good!”

“They,” I say sternly.

Six months ago, Kat told me they weren’t a woman, not really.

“But I’m not a man either,” they said. “I’m neither. Or maybe a bit of both.”

“Ok,” I replied, “Then we’ll find something neutral to call you.”

I did my research. I read articles and listened to podcasts and googled activists who introduced me to an underworld of gender possibility. I learned so much that I wrote it all up in a report. Then I made a PowerPoint on the history and correct usage of they/them pronouns. I even included a slide on gender duality in nature.

“This is interesting,” I told Kat from the kitchen table one night. “Did you know that earthworms are both male and female?”

Kat was knuckles-deep in her herb garden, coaxing the thyme to make room for the sage. “I wouldn’t lead with that,” they replied with a laugh.

On Thursday Kat’s body begins to go. At first, it’s subtle, just the touch of a hand that meets no resistance or the edges of their arms just a little less defined. But when I bump their shoulder and fall through them, I know something is really wrong. I take off work and drag them to every doctor in town. I spend hours on the phone with specialists. I bully our way into an appointment with a top dermatologist. No one knows what to do.

“I’m going to fix this,” I say to Kat that night. “I have to.”

We told the Megans first, three months ago. Kat was nervous before. They practiced their speech in front of the mirror. I picked them out a new tie. When the Megans arrived, Kat set out the hors d’oeuvres and I opened a bottle of wine. Kat was excited, and clutched my hand as they came out to our friends. I read from my report and played the PowerPoint, too. But the Megans just stared at us.

“Are you really going to abandon your sisters?” Megan said. “What about lesbian solidarity?”

“What about the team?” other Megan said. “We’re women-only. She’ll have to quit. I mean he. It.”

No one else wanted to use Kat’s new pronouns, either.

“I’m just too old to learn something new,” said my grandmother as she sent out a tweet.

“It’s too hard to remember!” cried a friend, who had committed several Shakespearean soliloquies to memory.

“But I’m really into grammar,” said a stranger. “And as an English major, that’s just incorrect.”

Friday night we make love and it is clumsy, Kat’s body flickering in and out. I can barely feel their fingers on my skin, so I get myself there on my own. Afterwards they stroke my hair and whisper, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” I say fiercely. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry for this world.”

I corrected people for months—reminded coworkers, cajoled friends. But in the end, I had to stop inviting my parents over for dinner. Kat had to quit the team. And she followed them like a shadow, from the “ma’am” at grocery checkouts, to the “hello ladies” whenever we went out, to the “check a box: male or female” on every form Kat filled.

“How does it make you feel,” our therapist asked us, “when people get your pronouns wrong?”

“Disrespected!” I spat. “Furious!”

“Like no one can see me,” murmured Kat. “Like I’m small, and slimy. Easy to crush.” 

On Saturday afternoon I take Kat to a high school softball game. We sit in the bleachers and listen to the thwack of bats and the laughter of teenagers. Kat is barely visible—only an outline seen from the corner of your eye, like an angel in the sun.

“You know,” they say, and from what I can see of their face it is turned toward the sky, “maybe earthworms don’t have it so bad. Just to be out in the sun, a simple life. I’d give anything to stay in this moment forever.”

“Kat—” I start.

“Don’t be sorry, little lion,” they interject, and take my hand. “For this world, I mean. Without it, I would never have known you.” 

We told Kat’s parents last Sunday, the night before they began to disappear.

“You’re breaking my heart,” said their mother.

“I just want my little girl back,” said their dad.

Kat shook the whole way home.

Sunday morning it is quiet when I wake. I can feel the early-morning sun on my face. I can feel the empty space beside me on the bed. I know they are gone before I open my eyes, and I let the tears burn hot down my cheeks. But when I turn toward their empty side, I see an earthworm curled on the pillow. I pick it up and examine it closely. Around the eyes are the exact circles of Kat’s glasses. Maybe there are freckles. I swear I see a twinkle.

I carry them outside in a tiny terrarium, the kind my brother kept his hermit crab in as a boy, and walk to the high school down the road. It is a warm, clear day. In the green of the softball diamond, I let Kat go. 

I want to burn the world down. I want to remake it. I want to feel nothing and everything and I want Kat back. So I tend to their herb garden and publish my report and play my PowerPoint at schools and conferences across the country. I stage protests, I go on TV, and I help write laws, laws that protect. I will make them see, I promise the sky. And when I go to softball games now, I always reach down and touch the grass. I like the feel of it—green and lush and life-giving. A frozen moment. A simple home.

 Dissent

Jonny Baltazar Lipshin

After receiving the summons, the one wanting your daughter, I poured the Stanley to the brim and put our shit in the Bronco. Masha snoozin’, I mean my daughter dreamin’ in the next seat, bangs hanging like the slip of a sleep mask. Me? My thoughts keep time with the drone of the motor. Sweet Revenge on the stereo, a can of Kodiak on the center console. Dipping below the panhandle, I’m reminded that I was once one-to-watch. A big-hearted boy with a Texas twang. Blonde and blue. A gracile face that gave my ‘Merican frame a hint of humility. A halfback that led the way to State. Did I know it then, when Uncle Sam asked me to sign?

Minus Masha now, I’m nothing. Nada. Zilch. Negligible to the point of obscurity. Two tours in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne will do that. When our eyes met in the mess hall, you holding court over a dinner of baked beans and stale cornbread, I lost my breath. The battalion in stitches after your Pacino: Scent of a Woman. I was blinded by desire. Your cocksure gaze made me drop my tray on the first pair of Army boots I was ever issued. The second pair flew a chopper over the Persian Gulf, beads of ammonium nitrate making dust from sand. Boom! I remember the third time we made it, our heads a hair below the pitch of your canvas tent, the springs of your mattress thrusting against the rubble. I can still smell the tart bright scent of a lime lingering on your fingers, your hand concealing my mouth as noise escaped me. Your piquant sweat dripping onto my nose, your thick thighs crashing into me. I exploded into the sky, left my body on the mesh of wire, a twisted skeleton of light.

What happened to us? When did it change? It should have been easier here, across the ocean, where gays like us can be guys like us. But no. It wasn’t. You returned withdrawn, altered, against the grain we should’ve been grating together. A wonder we lasted as long as we did. The contents of our stolen decade: the clipped and rectangular lawn, Sunday mornings marbled in joy, our bodies joined in irreligious matrimony. You runnin’ with Masha when she ditched her training wheels. When did it happen? It had to happen before that.

Nights back at home, I braced in bed for the impact of your arrival. The density of your movements. The hitch in your lungs. The booze on your breath. Me knowing where you were but unsure of how to find you. You never touched me nicely after. Never asked me how my day was, never told me about yours. So all I know now is where you weren’t. Masha’s small freckled hands playing piano at her first recital. Her toes pointing inward, even now, while she rests next to me. Rather: she is rising, her puppy-dog eyes heavy with sleep, the crook of her nose reminding me of yours.

 Double Singles

Giacomo ‘Jack’ Ortizano

Content Warning: This story includes scenes of violence and abuse that some readers may find disturbing.

She stepped off the bus on the East Side, the better part of the city where the better people lived. An ordinary-looking eleven-year-old girl carrying schoolbooks in an ordinary-looking, oversized tote bag. She appeared as if she belonged there, though she did not feel that way. No, she thought of herself as an outsider entering hostile territory, where people of her ilk are routinely used and then discarded the way some people flush a bloody sanitary pad down the toilet.

On this hot Friday afternoon, Arjuna—more commonly known as Junie—felt drained by five consecutive days of humdrum middle school. Despite minimal effort, at school Junie got straight-As and praise for her work ethic, which was something her teachers perceived as an anomaly among their pupils. Earlier that week, Junie’s guidance counselor had advised her she could become a success in life if she applied herself and resisted the temptations of the inner city. Junie reflected upon how her counselor would be pleased to view her striding miles away from her so-called underprivileged environment, making her way along the avenues of respectability and elite culture.

Junie did not envy East Side residents in the slightest, with one exception. She marveled at the sight of tall, well-dressed women exercising flawlessly coiffured, pedigreed dogs. Junie always longed for a puppy, but pets were not allowed in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt housing projects.

As was her custom, she walked with an air of confidence that let potential abusers know she was not a pushover, and thugs searching for an easy victim had better look elsewhere. The fact was, however, such posturing could not protect her from the pangs of poverty. Economic deprivation, she believed, was an unacceptable condition requiring prompt repair.

Junie arrived at the canopy-covered doorway of an apartment building where one month’s rent cost more money than people in the FDR projects earned in an entire year. She ignored the mildly inquisitive stare of the bored doorman, the city’s equivalent of an upscale suburban community’s gate and high walls. He wore a pseudo-military uniform, a symbolic reminder he was paid to guard the building’s tenants from undesirables. Junie undauntedly slipped past the human scarecrow with ease while he was signing for a delivery package. At four feet eight inches and a wispy ninety-four pounds, Junie moved freely, an inconsequential and minuscule cog in the machinery of a large, dynamic city.

She breathed in cool air conditioning as the ornate elevator doors sealed her in the box that, ever so gently, raised her to the third floor. The elevator doors opened with the splendor of theater curtains at the beginning of a familiar production she had played many times.

Junie sauntered down the carpeted corridor, pausing at the door to run a comb through her hair and straighten her barrette prior to knocking. Her pounding on the hardwood door shook the premises as if to announce something unsettling like the arrival of the police or a debt collector. She had forgotten, again, that these apartments had functioning doorbells that softly announced the presence of company.

Alessandro, a twenty-seven-year-old aspiring corporate executive, heard her knocking while he was preening himself in the bathroom—applying a spritz of expensive cologne to his neck, shoulders, and the base of his armpits. He answered the door wearing a sandy-colored, Egyptian-cotton robe that deliberately matched the dark-brown consistency of his impeccably styled hair.

He waved her inside. “Hi, Princess. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Junie nodded and walked straight to the bedroom, where she detected the fragrance of incense and the faintly audible sound of chamber music. On a bedside table, the restrained brightness of a forty-watt bulb was further muted by a paper-thin, crimson lampshade giving the room an ambience of understated sensuality. At the base of the lamp, barely visible in the subdued light, lay a small stack of currency. Biting her lower lip, Junie placed the cash in her tote bag, tucked between pages of The Old Man and the Sea that was her reading assignment for the weekend. She then set the bag on the floor beside the bed and began to undress. Alessandro, who was already lying on his back, watched intently as she removed her clothing, each piece adding to his anticipation of intimacy and forbiddance.

When Junie removed her underpants, Alessandro stole a quick glance at her crotch to satisfy his curiosity about whether she had started to sprout pubic hair. He felt relieved when he saw she had not, and he unconsciously reached down to verify the abundant curls flourishing about his own groin.

Alessandro closed his eyes and relaxed to the strains of a string quartet while Junie held his swollen manhood in her hands and provocatively caressed its shaft. He fell into a peaceful reverie as she wrapped her lips around him and maneuvered her tongue until he became completely rigid and fully extended. When he heard her breath quicken, he mistakenly assumed his hardness had aroused her bourgeoning adolescence. He uttered a moan of self-congratulatory pleasure without any inkling of Junie’s contorted scowl, accentuated by her gritting incisors, glinting in front of him.

Then, with every ounce of strength Junie could muster, she bit down with her clenched teeth.

Alessandro let out a scream and his body shook like a person going into a grand mal seizure. He gasped, “What the—?”

Junie spoke in a voice almost as loud as Alessandro’s scream. “You son of a bitch. Where’s the rest of my money? The deal is three hundred dollars a visit. And you think I’ll settle for only two hundred?”

Alessandro ever-so-gently rubbed his penis, partly to comfort himself but primarily for reassurance it remained attached to his torso.

Junie seethed, “What the fuck were you thinking? Maybe I wouldn’t notice? Maybe I wouldn’t care?”

Alessandro, through a mixture of pain, anger and penance, replied, “Look, Princess, I ran a little short this week. I didn’t think—”

“Yeah, you didn’t think,” she said. “Well, I don’t need any of this shit.”

“Honest, baby. I’ll give you the money—”

“You’re damn right you will,” she said, leaving the bed and heading for the gray metal desk that supported his computer. The desk had three sliding drawers on the right side, and she moved directly to the middle drawer. Before Alessandro could climb out of bed, Junie opened the drawer and pulled out a handful of video disks. She turned to him and said, “I’m taking these with me. Next time, if you have the full amount on the table, including the extra hundred from today, I might give these back.” When Alessandro raised his arms and rushed at her, she yelled, “Don’t you dare lay a finger on me. Or I’ll go to the police and tell them what you did. I’ll show them some of these disks, including the one you made of us together, and they will put your perverted ass in jail for the rest of your life.”

Alessandro slowly took hold of his senses and perched himself on the side of the bed. Still suffering physical pain, he sat holding his throbbing forehead. Junie, having shoved the disks deep into her tote, was about to close the drawer when something caught her eye. “What’s this?” she asked, reaching into the rear of the drawer and retrieving a clear plastic bag filled with white powder.

Her rage soared even higher than before. “Damn you. You snorted my money up your nose. ‘A little short,’ you say? Well, I’ve seen enough.” She stuffed the drugs into the bottom of her bag along with the disks. “This you are never getting back.”

As Junie pulled up her jeans, Alessandro began to plead. But Junie would not relent. “I don’t want to hear your excuses,” she said. With hangdog eyes, he picked her T-shirt off the floor and handed it to her. “I’m serious,” she said in the tone of a mother scolding her recalcitrant child. “You know better than trying to cheat me.” And with that, she was out the door.

The doorman was once again too distracted to notice her. He was preoccupied with hailing a taxicab, hoping to extract a gratuity from a silver-haired couple who had ridden alongside Junie on the elevator. As Junie left the building, she was struck by the showmanship the doorman employed to stroke the elderly couple’s vanity, exaggerating his every gesture in an ostentatious display of self-degradation.

Moving on, Junie made her way to the bus stop for the return-trip home. Thinking to herself, she sighed at how so many males, the grownup kind, were all about bravado and deceptive appearances. They projected strength and courage to disguise their insecurities and frailties. Alessandro was the youngest of the three men in her stable, down from five only a few weeks ago. Every one of them personified weakness of conscience and social intelligence. Their lack of modesty tried her patience. Their lack of substance turned her stomach. They imagined themselves so benevolent in helping a poor waif in need of economic support. Just the same, they felt no remorse over cheating her whenever possible. The men persevered in acquiring graduate degrees and high-paying jobs, yet they could not overcome their fear of approaching a full-grown woman. There must be something profoundly wrong with people who don’t associate with others their own age, Junie thought.

Junie yearned to be her mother’s daughter. Her mother, Suzanne, could find goodness in every person she met. Moreover, she could forgive endlessly and always give people additional chances. Her mother would say, “Life isn’t fair. When people keep getting hurt again and again, they become discouraged and feel worthless like hopeless losers.” Junie would retort that “hopeless losers” was an apt description. But Suzanne would ignore the criticism and continue, “Sometimes they get so discouraged that they turn mean or self-destructive. They need someone who will remind them—during their darkest night—to stand tall, look up at the stars and smile at the moon. With love and faith you can learn to smile—to laugh—at life’s silly tribulations and carry on.”

On this day, Junie was not smiling. Alessandro’s misdeeds had put Junie in a state of pessimistic agitation. “Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed in the morning,” she muttered to herself, quoting a favorite refrain of her Aunt Violet.

On the bus, Junie sat in her preferred seat, just behind the driver. The bus had two rows of long, plastic benches along its sides so passengers faced one another unless the view was obstructed by standees. Junie liked to sit up front, near the door where she could watch the riders as they boarded. Also, she felt protected by her proximity to the bus driver. And as an added benefit, nobody could bother her from the left side.

As the bus proceeded westward, Junie focused her eyes on the bearded young man across from her, seated on the far left. In his early twenties, he was dressed casually in an orange sweatshirt and blue denim slacks. He had an aura of studiousness about him, an effect reinforced by his tortoise-shell eyeglasses. Junie thought highly of men who wore beards and eyeglasses, which to her connoted intellect and personal strength. She was not as impressed by material possessions, like cars or fancy houses, because such things revealed nothing about a person. This lesson had been made clear time and time again by the affluent men in her brief life. And besides, she could acquire those possessions by herself. Her mother, a sagacious authority on the subject of people, had taught her what matters is a person’s character, and to seek out the goodness in every human being. The sad truth, however, was that Junie could not find anything good in some people, no matter how hard she tried.

Junie sensed the young man across the aisle had been giving her an appraising look. More than once his face broke into a subtle, shy grin indicating he was charmed by her preteen femininity. It was the kind of encounter Junie went through frequently when she traveled alone. The sight of an unescorted female seemed to elicit a reflexive hormonal response in the male psyche. For some men, it uncovered an innate masculine need to protect and provide security. In others, it aroused a predatory instinct. On this occasion, his eye contact showed a benign interest and nothing more. This was in contrast to the dreaded Look of the Raptor, a look she first noticed on fearsome creatures that repulsed her during an elementary-school field trip to the museum. It was the same grotesque, raptor-like facial expression she’d seen on the stocky, middle-aged man who she had foolishly accompanied to a hotel room. Though nearly a year had passed, Junie knew she would forever remember his maniacal twisted mouth and, worse still, his fiery eyeballs that rolled aimlessly yet somehow focused on her body and penetrated the terrified soul that lay within. She had been fortunate that day to escape with only a few bruises and a dislocated arm, which surely had been only preliminaries to the fun and games he had planned. But now this young man on the bus, who almost imperceptibly—yet undoubtedly—pursed his lips at her to communicate his delight, presented nothing beyond an innocent flirtation. To be honest, she felt validated and flattered.

When the young man reached his stop, Junie wondered whether he could resist looking back at her as he disembarked, just to savor her one more time before she became a fading memory. She had noticed many men would do this, as if to pay her a final compliment in appreciation for their shared, though unspoken, meeting. The bespectacled young man exited through the front door and, at the last possible moment, he turned his head to view her one last time.

Junie rode contentedly as the bus rolled on, her mind roaming absently from one thought to another until jarred when the vehicle stopped abruptly at a red light. The bench seat formerly occupied by the young man had been taken by an enormously obese woman flanked by her two toddler daughters. The average-sized girls sat obediently as their mother shifted uncomfortably, trying to accommodate her pachydermal girth onto the space usually taken by two passengers. Junie tried to guess the woman’s age. Perhaps twenty-five, perhaps thirty-five. The chubby face with its sagging chunks of flesh made her look older.

Junie’s attention fell upon the woman’s breasts. They were a colossal pair that suggested the woman’s chest had spawned a second set of buttocks. They went beyond voluptuous, reaching a level that Junie suspected even the basest men, with the lowest standards, would consider unacceptable. And yet this woman had two children, so a minimum of one virile male must have found her attractive.

Junie studied the two daughters who sat quietly at peace with themselves, their little legs dangling over the edge of the bench. Would heredity condemn these girls to grow into oversized bodies with mammoth mammary glands? Junie shuddered briefly to herself, then began thinking about how her life might change when she developed breasts of her own. I already have to deal with weird men who want my body. When I fill out, will it get even worse? Or maybe not. Full-breasted women are available everywhere, so maybe they aren’t sought after as much as young girls, like me, who are harder to find. Well, in any case, I’ll get my answers soon enough.

The bus delivered Junie two blocks away from her home in the projects. Despite having lived in the neighborhood since birth, she felt ill at ease in ways not unlike her visits to the East Side. The streets were just as intimidating, the people just as dangerous, and the tension just as combustible beneath the surface.

The block across the street from the FDR projects featured an array of stores that catered to consumers, mostly by offering low-quality products, high prices, and easy credit. Junie stopped at the liquor store to buy a bottle of Four Roses bourbon for her mother and a couple of small fruit pies for herself. As she stood in line waiting for the cashier—a middle-aged foreigner who spoke little English and never asked any questions or demanded proof of age—she overheard a conversation between a pair of older teenage boys.

“You see that bully over there in the gray jacket? Don’t ever mess with him,” said the taller one.

Junie looked through the glass window and spotted fourteen-year-old Durian. He was standing on the sidewalk in the area known as Lee’s Corner, speaking with a boy she recognized as a high-school dropout who lived with his grandparents on the ground floor of her building. Durian gave him a bunch of vials in exchange for some cash. It was Friday, always a busy day for Durian as pleasure seekers made preparations for the coming weekend.

“Why?” the other boy asked.

“He’s mean—and dangerous.”

Junie had heard similar assessments of Durian before. She had to admit it was true enough he’d been an uncontrollable child who resisted discipline—not out of rebellion, but as a result of a disposition marked by belligerence and aggressiveness. School was a bore and the hours he spent there only served to contain his explosive energy until he could attack someone, usually within minutes after the three o’clock bell. Of moderate size, his broad musculature and assertive bearing had commanded respect from boys who were older and taller. At the same time, his surly demeanor ensured his status as a loner.

“My cousin goes to the same school as him,” the tall one said. “And none of the guys will talk to him. The teacher lets him sit in the back of the room and read comic books. Even the teachers won’t mess with him.”

Annoyed by the boy’s insulting tone, Junie shook her head disapprovingly. Maybe if these kids approached Durian, they could learn more about what they needed to know than they would ever get from their teachers.

“They say he killed a whole bunch of people.”

Junie couldn’t say whether that was true. She knew from firsthand observation that in a fight, Durian would attack with unbridled ferocity. His skills were such that he could instinctively find his opponent’s weaknesses and exploit them to the fullest. Unwilling to tolerate losing, he would stay on the offensive—relentless with seemingly unlimited energy—until the other person succumbed or, on rare occasions, managed to render Durian unconscious. The few young toughs who knocked him cold would inevitably pay dearly for such a violation. And if Durian believed his bare fists were insufficient, he never hesitated to use whatever weapons would ensure against him ever suffering a second loss. In some cases, according to people who knew about such matters, Durian arranged those get-even engagements with lethal effectiveness so there would be no possibility of a rubber match to break the tie. Such exploits required stealth, which was another proficiency that distinguished the solitary man-child of the FDR projects.

“Is he an enforcer for one of the gangs?” the smaller boy asked.

“Nah, no way. He can’t get along with people. No gang would have him.”

Maybe so, Junie considered, but Durian despised the gangs.

While Junie continued standing in line, the topic of gangs drew her attention away from the boys chattering and filled her mind with memories of Yvonne. Durian’s younger sister, Yvonne, had been Junie’s best friend since before they entered the first grade together. Inseparable, Yvonne and Junie shared their games, laughter, and secrets. Together they entertained their families and guests with their duet singing of popular songs. But the music stopped the day Yvonne had the misfortune of getting caught in the crossfire of feuding youth gangs. Yvonne caught a stray bullet and was buried four days later. Durian, then ten years old, was devastated from the loss of his only sibling. His lack of interpersonal graces had already established him as a loner who the neighborhood children sensed was someone better left alone.

As a consequence of Junie’s constant presence at Yvonne’s side, Durian felt a bond between himself and his sister’s best pal. When Yvonne died—despite their three-year age difference—he turned to Junie for solace and consolation. Although Junie herself was experiencing intense sorrow, she summoned the strength to help the boy avoid slipping into a deep state of melancholia. Durian had subsequently clung to Junie for emotional support and she, feeling a void in her world as well, assumed the role of his substitute sibling.

And there he was working Lee’s Corner. Junie thought Durian, who had been working the street wearing a polyester jacket under the hot sun all afternoon, could use some refreshment. Relinquishing her place in line, she walked over to the cooler and picked up a bottle of cola.

Durian’s dour expression changed completely when he saw Junie coming toward him. “Hey Junie,” he called out in a voice letting her know he was glad to see her.

“This is for you,” she said, handing him the cold, twelve-ounce bottle.

“Aw, Junie,” he said. “You don’t have to do stuff like that for me.”

“I know that, Durian,” she said. “I do it because I want to.”

Durian twisted the cap and took a long swallow. Lost for words, he repeated the same offer he made whenever he tried to show his appreciation. “You know, Junie, if you ever want me to, uh, well, get rid of somebody, all you got to do is tell me.” Junie just smiled and shook her head. This was Durian’s way of showing his tender side.

“How is your mom?” she asked.

“She’s all right.”

Durian trusted nobody except his mother and Junie. They were the only ones he allowed to see him laugh, the only ones he allowed to see him cry. Realizing he was a person of few talents, it irritated him when Junie steadfastly declined to receive what he perceived as the only gift he could give her that held any substantial value—his offer to commit homicide for her benefit. And though he respected her benevolence and compassion, he maintained that every human soul knew at least one annoying person whose disappearance would be most welcome.

“Some boys across the street were saying you’re a bully,” she informed him.

“A bully, huh? Well, that’s okay. But it’s not true.”

“I know you’re not a bully, Durian.”

“No, see, a bully likes to hurt innocent people. The people I hurt bring it on themselves.

They borrow when there’s no way they can payback. They make big promises knowing that they will never keep them. They lie to others and lie to themselves.” He took a long swallow from the plastic bottle. “And bullies will only go so far when they hurt you. They won’t do permanent harm or leave any marks because they don’t want to leave evidence or take the blame for what they do. Bullies try to inflict pain. And you remember what I told you about pain?”

“You said pain is only temporary. Never be afraid of pain.”

“That’s right,” he said approvingly. “That’s why I don’t do pain. I do damage. If I break somebody’s leg, he’ll walk with a limp or ride a wheelchair till the day he dies. Nothing temporary ‘bout it. He’ll never run track or play football. He’ll never be a good dancer. If I damage his eyes, he won’t be able to see a movie or drive a car. If I do real damage, he may not do anything at all. But pain is nothing to be afraid of. Pain is a part of life—and a blessing when it warns us to take action.”

Junie and Durian watched as a pregnant woman pushing a stroller with a sleeping child passed by.

Durian continued, “Mommy told me that having babies was the most painful experience of her life. Nothing else came close. But know what? Mommy said when she held us babies she forgot about the pain and enjoyed the happiest feelings ever. It was worth every bit of the pain and she would gladly do it over again if she had to.”

“How is business?” Junie asked.

“Business is good,” he replied with a nod.

Regardless of what others might say, Junie was impressed that Durian seemed to discover his vocation at an early age. On the other hand, those who criticized him usually had no money, no job, and no ambition. Nor did they have his courage and loyalty.

“Know what?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye. “Folks now calling this Durian’s Corner.”

“Might as well,” she said. “Lucky won’t be around anymore.”

“I guess he wasn’t really so lucky.”

Durian’s natural skills were recognized and mentored by Lucky Lee, a hustler in his mid-twenties who prospered by selling drugs to frequent users who lacked a reliable source of income. Lee permitted his clientele to buy on credit, thereby justifying his above-market prices. But selling to addicts with questionable credit ratings inevitably created problems when making collections. And so Lee hired Durian, who had just turned thirteen, to deal with customers who fell behind on their payments. Most of the physically depleted addicts were quick to pay up when confronted by the youth’s intimidating presence. Those who refused—or were not able—to settle their accounts gave Durian the opportunity to experience the satisfaction he derived from damaging people.

That arrangement came to an end, however, when Lucky Lee got arrested and received a lengthy prison sentence. Durian responded to the turn of events like anyone else who finds himself suddenly unemployed. He became downcast and lost his feelings of usefulness and self-respect. Upon seeing him in such distress, Junie proposed a solution. She would finance a startup inventory if Durian agreed to take over Lee’s business. From the day of the arrest, Lee’s Corner remained unattended and his customers still needed a supplier. Durian liked the idea, even though the fun of making collections had become a secondary feature of his duties as a salesman. Arjuna and Durian agreed to split the proceeds fifty-fifty and he’d been working Lee’s Corner ever since.

While chatting with Junie, Durian saw a returning customer heading his way. “I have to do some commerce,” he said to her with a hint of sadness. “You better go on home.”

Arriving at her red, brick high-rise, Junie was dismayed upon discovering the building’s sole elevator was out of order. She reluctantly adjusted the shoulder strap of her tote bag and took a firm grip of her package from the liquor store. Then, inhaling a final deep breath of fresh air, she opened the door to the fetid stairwell and commenced the journey to her apartment on the twelfth floor. The stairwell, enclosed without air conditioning or adequate ventilation, reeked of stale marijuana, old garbage, and the urine and feces often left by children who lacked access to their apartments while their families were away at their jobs or tending to other responsibilities. Though the housing development had several playgrounds and basketball courts, it had no public restrooms for fear they might attract muggers and pedophiles. Resignedly, Junie ascended the obstacle course of human waste, empty bottles, candy wrappers, broken toys, cigarette butts, and discarded drug paraphernalia. With each floor her load seemed to grow heavier, and by the eighth floor, she was ready for a break.

Aunt Violet lived in apartment 8D. She was not really Junie’s aunt, but for all practical purposes she may as well have been. Auntie Vi and Junie’s mother, Suzanne, were as close as sisters. In fact, Violet drove Suzanne home from the hospital when she had given birth to Arjuna.

Junie liked the way Auntie Vi complemented her mother. Violet was pragmatic and grounded, whereas her mother was a dreamer. Both women gave Junie an abundance of warmth and love, and Aunt Violet was Junie’s main source of worldly wisdom. Auntie Vi had been a professional singer and had once toured Europe with a jazz band. Her singing career was cut short by chain-smoking, fast living, and an inability to stay on key. But along the way she accumulated a vast repertoire of stories about unconventional people and exotic places that Junie found irresistibly fascinating.

Whereas Violet’s world was notable for its breadth, Suzanne’s world was equally notable for its depth. Suzanne lived her entire life in the same neighborhood. She never left the vicinity for longer than a weekend, and then only to attend an obligatory wedding, funeral, or family affair. And she could describe the neighborhood’s history in elaborate detail. When Junie picked out a storefront at random, Suzanne would explain how it had changed over the years. She also provided particulars about its ownership and the people who had worked there. In fact, Suzanne was a glorious storyteller whose words could weave the most trivial event into a scintillating narrative. And if anything rivaled Junie’s fondness for the animal stories in her collection of picture books, it had to be her mother’s tales of the Roosevelt projects and its environs. Suzanne had a way of helping her daughter understand the local mores, traditions, and motivations behind people’s behavior that made no sense to those from outside the neighborhood.

Violet and Suzanne were acutely aware of their differences. The two women would joke they were the Martha and Mary of the FDR projects. When you were in Violet’s apartment, you were likely to smell the down-to-earth aroma of homemade bread baking in the kitchen; whereas if you were in Suzanne’s apartment, you were likely to smell the ethereal essence of spikenard or patchouli oil.

Junie, worn out from climbing the stairs, gave Auntie Vi a halfhearted hug as she entered the apartment. Violet’s expressive face wore a blissful smile––her eyes half-closed as if she were in some kind of mystical trance––at the sound of Jimmy Scott crooning “Someone To Watch Over Me” emanating from her high-fidelity speakers. Auntie Vi had introduced Junie to the artistry of prominent jazz musicians, poets, and abstract painters. She would encourage Junie by presenting her with a song, a poem or a picture, and ask the girl to interpret its meaning. Junie thought this was the greatest game ever, and she delighted Violet with inspired creations from her prolific imagination.

When the song ended, Violet had a change of mood. “I’m hungry,” she said. “I’ve run out of almost everything and, just when my check arrives and I’m ready to do my grocery shopping, the elevator breaks down. I can’t drag myself up those stairs loaded down with bags of food. Why couldn’t the elevator have waited just one more day?”

“Don’t worry, Auntie Vi,” Junie said. “Make me a list and I’ll go to the market for you. I can handle the stairs.”

“Bless you,” she said. “Give me half an hour and I’ll have the list ready for you.” She found a note pad and ballpoint pen, then sat in an overstuffed, living-room chair.

“Here,” Junie said, fetching two miniature pies from her tote bag. “These will fill you up for now.”

“Give those here,” Violet said, reaching for the pies. “I haven’t had anything to eat all day. I can use some energy.”

“And take this,” Junie said, handing her a plastic bag full of white powder. “This will give you lots of energy.”

“Oh my, you are an angel,” Violet said. She rose and held up the bag in the sunlight of the window as if she expected its contents to sparkle with a divine radiance. “Oh my, oh my!”

Violet broke into a dance, taking Junie in her arms and sweeping her around the room.

She sang a duet with Jimmy Scott. “I’m afraid . . .” Then Junie joined in to form a trio. “The masquerade is over.”

They both laughed, Junie feeling very happy that she could bring gladness to her auntie. Then, after several spins around the room, the exhausted but still exuberant duo flopped on the sofa. “Life is a wonderful gift, my darling,” Violet said. “Celebrate everything. Don’t let any opportunity for happiness pass you by.”

They sat quietly together, each lost in her own thoughts, until Junie finally said, “I have to go see how Momma’s doing. Then I’ll come by for that grocery list.”

“All right Junie,” Violet said, walking her to the door. “Meanwhile, I’ll take care of this,” she chirped, opening the plastic bag.

Junie climbed her way up to the twelfth floor, a task made progressively irritating with every step in the darkness created by the absence of light bulbs, which had been either stolen or smashed by juvenile residents of the building.

At last she stood outside her apartment door, wiggling an arm into the bottom of her tote bag in search of her keys. She could hear two distinct voices speaking inside. One voice she identified right away as her mother’s. The other belonged to either a deep-pitched woman or a shrill-sounding man.

When she entered the apartment, she stole a quick glance at the parlor, where her mother sat in her easy chair. On the couch, at a ninety-degree angle from her mother, sat a sordid-looking, middle-aged man who she had never seen before. He wore an ill-fitting Charlie Chaplin suit, a pair of scuff-marred shoes, and a raggedy, paisley necktie—an ensemble giving the impression he’d come by his clothing at a thrift store. His left arm sported a digital wristwatch made of cheap-looking plastic while his right hand flaunted a golden ring with an ostentatious red jewel—a shining example of where a smaller-but-genuine gemstone would have looked immeasurably better. Her mother was decked out in a dry-cleaned, cotton twill dress with a floral pattern and complementary pearl earrings.

It seemed naive to Junie that her mother had unbounded sympathy for habitual failures, the kind of men whose misguided efforts invariably imploded into self-destruction. Despite much savvy about the opposite sex, Suzanne’s loving and optimistic nature too often superseded her good judgment. In Junie’s opinion, her mother was compulsively drawn to men with tragic life patterns. But whenever Junie spoke harshly about such men, her mother would remind her “blessed” were the poor in spirit. And Junie would respond to herself, I’m sure Momma is right—even if I don’t understand exactly what she means. But one thing I do understand is that the blessed do not include those sleazy connivers who always cause grief for people who are nice to them.

The accumulation of empty beer cans on the coffee table affirmed the visitor had been on the scene for a while. The background music was supplied by a John Coltrane CD, a recent gift from Auntie Vi.

As Junie entered her room, she gave a nod of greeting to Pandu the panda-bear doll, a beloved favorite among her menagerie of stuffed animals. Tossing the tote bag aside, she sat on her bed and clutched the well-worn Sweetie Giggles doll, a gift from her mother on Junie’s fifth birthday. As children’s playthings are seldom built to last, the sound-producing apparatus inside Sweetie Giggles—which provided the doll’s signature giggling—had functioned less than a year. Suzanne had tried cutting a small slit in the doll’s soft-rubber tummy in an unsuccessful attempt to extract and restore the device. Over the years, the slit grew into a Caesarian incision large enough for Junie to insert her hand. Ultimately the doll’s interior space became Junie’s special hiding place, and now Sweetie Giggles was so packed with fifty and one-hundred-dollar bills Junie had to make an effort to push Alessandro’s money through the opening.

Junie lay stretched out on her bed when she heard what sounded like a hard slap. She hoped her mother slapped him a good one. But when she got up to see what was happening, upon entering the parlor she saw her mother cowering on the couch as her visitor stood over her with clenched fists. The two adults looked at Junie with embarrassed expressions but neither said a word.

After an awkward pause, Junie’s mother gestured toward her guest. She said, “Junie, say hello to Mister Reynolds.”

“Hi,” he said, extending his bejeweled right hand. “I’m Sonny Reynolds.”

Junie tried to give his hand a polite shake, but Sonny reached out with his left hand, nimbly sandwiching her between his palms, and gripped her like a hostage until she managed to yank herself free. He did not try to conceal the malicious glee he felt in causing Junie discomfort. Junie’s mother, who had been looking away to hide her own discomfort, did not witness the exchange.

“Mister Reynolds has been giving me advice,” her mother said while he gestured with his hands, encouraging her on. “He has all kinds of ideas about how we can improve things around here.”

Sonny focused his eyes on Junie for a slow and thorough appraisal. “You’re very pretty,” he said in a voice conveying an expectation of gratitude for his approval. “How old are you?”

“Double singles,” she responded in a sarcastic tone.

Junie’s mother, seeing the confused look on his face, explained, “She means that she’s eleven.”

“Oh,” he said, still not making the connection.

Junie, unable to take any more, turned around and retreated to the kitchen. When Sonny followed her, she turned around and hissed, “Please go away.”

Sonny spread his body like an angry animal who tries to appear larger and more intimidating. “You’d better get used to me, little girl,” he said, “because I am not going anywhere.” As he spoke, he edged closer to Junie, backing her up against the refrigerator door.

Junie’s words were both a statement and a question. “Why don’t you just leave us alone?”

For a moment they glared at each other, standing as if frozen in time. In the background, John Coltrane’s arrangement of “My Favorite Things” clashed with the song’s lyrics about confronting life’s trials with cheerful, submissive passivity. In fact, Trane’s mastery of his instrument testified to a belief that certain challenges call for fighting with everything you have. Both Junie and Sonny shared Coltrane’s total-commitment philosophy, and neither would cede a trace of an advantage to the other.

Coltrane’s saxophone took flight mimicking the sound of a bird flapping its wings as it soared from earthly bondage to an infinite sky of freedom. In cadence with the melody, Junie stretched her arms away from her trunk, much like a bird trying to spread its wings, reaching out with open hands for the imaginary handle of a bright copper kettle or a steel-blue cleaver blade she could use to impale Sonny’s skull.

Making the most of his superior height and bulk, Sonny leaned in closer. So close that Junie could taste his breath, a mixture of gum rot and bitter pilsner. He shook his head from side to side. “Why don’t you just accept me as the new man in your life?”

They glowered at each other until Sonny, incapable of staring her down, backed away a step. He relaxed his face into a confident, though cautious, smirk. “You and I are going to know each other really well,” he said. “And in a little while, you and I will become really ... connected.” As he said this, Junie noted the emerging expression on his face. She saw the contorted mouth. She saw the orbs rolling and dilating. She recognized the unmistakable Look of the Raptor. A shudder ran through her as she involuntarily turned away. Sonny, observing Junie’s torment, chortled with satisfied amusement. He turned sideways, allowing the girl to push her way through and flee temporarily into her bedroom.

Junie hugged Pandu the panda bear as her teardrops moistened the fabric of his soft fur. Her pulse beat violently and the doll began trembling to the rhythm of her heartbeat. Through the door, Junie could hear her mother and Sonny talking and laughing in the parlor, the world continuing to turn on its appropriate axis without the slightest concern for her situation.

“Junie, come on out here,” Suzanne called. Junie gave Pandu a kiss before setting him on the shelf with the other stuffed animals. Then she reluctantly went to her mother.

“Listen Junie, Mister Reynolds has offered to visit McD’s and bring us dinner,” she said with a hopeful smile. “Tell him what you want so he can get it for you.”

“He’s buying us dinner?” Junie asked.

“Well, I gave him a few dollars,” she said. “But he is making the trip for us.”

Junie stared with repulsion at Sonny, who stood leaning back with his hands on his hips, thrusting his chest out with the swagger of someone who had just successfully defended the heavyweight title.

“I don’t want anything,” she snapped. “Not from him.”

“Don’t be rude, dear,” Suzanne said. “Mister Reynolds is trying to show you how much he cares about us.”

“Shit,” Junie said. “He doesn’t care about anybody but himself.”

“Arjuna! You’re getting a dirty mouth,” her mother rebuked. “You know, Violet is right when she says that words can heal and words can kill. Maybe you need to wash your mouth out with soap.”

Junie rolled her eyes upon receiving a wink from Sonny. “Oh, come on, Momma. He’ll take your money and never come back—unless he thinks he can con you for more.”

Suzanne overruled Junie’s attempt to change the subject. “I mean it. Wash out your mouth and give yourself ... purification.”

Fuming, Junie stalked behind Sonny as he headed for the door. She groped for the right words to relay her contempt and dissuade him from ever returning, but her brain had stalled in the turmoil and could not respond. As it turned out, words were unnecessary. Her piercing stare was more than sufficient.

Sonny turned around, and gave her his raptor sneer. “You may rest assured—my ornery disrespectful lamb—that I shall be coming back. For your mama—and for you.” Stepping nearer and tilting her chin upward, he added in a tone sweetened with poison-tainted sugar, “And you’ll learn to love me.” He pressed his fingertips along her cheek. “What do you have to say about that?”

Junie stood immobile while her brain tried to keep pace with her emotions. When her mind cleared enough to speak, he was already gone.

“What were you two whispering about?” her mother called out from the parlor.

Junie entered the room. “He was saying how he wouldn’t be back.”

“No, he didn’t say that,” Suzanne said. “You’re lying to me.”

“I’m not lying,” she said.

“Yes, you are,” she insisted. “He is coming back and he’ll take care of everything and—”

Junie shouted, “He’s not coming back, Momma.”

Her mother said softly, “Yes ... he ... is.”

After a minute of silence, Suzanne said to her daughter, “I spoke to Sonny about how it bothers me when you stay out for hours without telling me where you go. He said that what you needed was some strict discipline and not to spare the rod. So I gave him my permission to use his leather belt when you don’t do what you are told. You’ll be getting what you’ve been needing for a long time. He’s going to give you a dose of tough love.”

The daughter felt a tightening in her stomach and the onset of nausea. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

Junie departed the living room and bowed her head in the bathroom sink. She vomited the remains of her fish-fingers school lunch and endured a subsequent series of dry heaves. When the spasms subsided, she washed her face and rinsed out her mouth with the scorching alcohol of Suzanne’s mint-flavored mouthwash. All at once, Junie spat out the residues of her own bile, Sonny’s beer breath and Alessandro’s debauchery. Then, for good measure, she gargled forcefully with the minty antiseptic. In the process, she could not help but think that, as usual, her mother had been right about her needing to wash out her mouth with soap. Then, looking at her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, she brushed her teeth with repeated rapid strokes until her gums ached but all the tension had evaporated from her hands.

Thus purged, she locked the bathroom door and scrunched herself atop the lid of the toilet seat. Isolated from outside interference, she sat placidly trying to gather her thoughts. After assessing her options, she reached inside her hip pocket and retrieved her cellphone.

“Uh-huh ... he’s on his way to McD’s ... in a shabby black suit. That’s right. Calls himself Sonny Reynolds. Big red ring on his right hand. Thank you, Durian … I really appreciate this. I’m all right. Yes, I know ... bye.”

Rising up, she evaluated the image she saw in the mirror. Satisfied with the likeness of composure and dignity, she unlocked the door and ventured out.

Suzanne, now supine on the couch, watched her daughter fumble with the buttons on a pink cardigan. “Where are you going?” she wanted to know.

“I promised Auntie Vi that I’d help her with her grocery shopping. I’m going to the store.”

“All right, dear,” she said. “Violet does need help with the elevator out and all.”

“I hope they fixed the elevator by now,” Junie said.

“Ha!” her mother said. “You expect them to do repairs this late on a Friday? They won’t get around to fixing anything until Monday at the earliest.”

“Oh, shit,” Junie said realizing this was true.

“Don’t use words like that,” her mother admonished. “And don’t take too long. Sonny should be getting here soon with the food.”

“I told you, Momma,” Junie said in a strained tone. “He won’t be coming back.”

“Oh yes, he will. And did you get my roses?”

“Yes, Momma. I left you the bottle on the kitchen table.”

“All right, honey. I think I’ll have myself a taste while I wait for Sonny.”

“I told you,” Junie began to say, but then reconsidered. “Oh, Momma, I love you and I want to be like you. But I don’t understand why you—”

“No, of course, you don’t understand. And that’s all right. You’re only eleven years old. You couldn’t possibly understand. Besides, you are a lot like me. You know why? Because you have patience. I’ve seen you handle very tough times without coming apart. Just like me.”

“You keep giving chances and taking chances—”

“With people who have run out of chances or feel too discouraged to use the chances they have.” Then, seeing her daughter’s exasperated expression, she added, “And if I don’t try, then who will?”

Junie slammed her fist on the table. “These people, Momma, they want to drag you down with them. They don’t care about you, they don’t care if they hurt you. They keep letting you down.”

“Oh, Junie, don’t be so hard,” her mother said with a sigh. “I wish that I could persuade you to stop playing down the power of love.”

“I wish,” Junie replied, “that I could persuade you to stop playing down the power of people who won’t love.”

Suzanne dropped her voice to a whisper and took Junie’s hand into her own. “I appreciate your concern for me. And while it might not make any sense to you now, eventually you’ll learn to never allow anything—not even the deepest disappointments—to destroy your faith in people.” Responding to Junie’s quizzical stare, she continued, “Look at it this way, until a doctor loses a patient or two, she is not a real doctor. Nor will she stop trying to help someone suffering from an incurable illness. You’ll understand before long. Some wisdom comes only from experience. Your strength, darling Junie, is, and always will be, your patience.”

The two faced each other, communicating silently through their eyes and body postures. Then Junie leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek. “I’m leaving now. Auntie Vi is waiting.”

“All right, love. You tell Violet that I said hello.”

“I will Momma,” she said, taking her keychain.

Junie walked past the broken elevator to the stairwell at the end of the hall. Though she had walked the very same hallway hundreds, maybe thousands, of times, she nevertheless felt disoriented. A cascading succession of discordant thoughts raced through Junie’s mind as she began descending the stairs in near darkness—all the lightbulbs from the roof down to the ninth floor were missing. She stepped slowly with a tight grip on the handrail to steady herself as she navigated what felt like a vertical tunnel, moving closer toward the light beckoning below as if she were struggling to escape from the inside of a CAT scanning machine.

Upon reaching the darkened ninth floor, her brittle concentration drifted and she slipped on the wet landing. Supporting herself up on her left arm, Junie caught her breath and settled on the floor. She sniffed the odor on her right hand, which was very wet from having reached out toward the floor during her fall. Sure enough—she was sitting in a pool of urine. Her haunches dampened and her legs splayed on the wet concrete, she sat there unhurt but bewildered.

Eventually the cones of her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she recovered her senses. Her initial impulse was to curse the stupidity of her situation. But then she gave her shoulders a vigorous shake, tossed her head back and gazed up the unlit shaft as if searching for the moon during the darkest hour of a moonless night. The absence of visual or aural stimulation—the only sound Junie heard was her own breathing—had a sedative effect bringing peace and calm.

Junie remained sitting there dissipating all resistance and embracing the moment. “It’s all right,” she whispered up at the missing moon, “because I have patience.”

Her tension continued subsiding and, before long, she found herself breaking into a contented smile. She managed to suppress the urge to chuckle aloud for nearly a whole minute before bursting out with exhilarating, joyous laughter. Still smiling, she said to herself, “Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed in the morning.”

 The Lightning Jar

David B. Holton

A bullfrog booms out nearby in the field, punching right through the summer cicadas, way down low like a thrum, thrum, thrum in the center of my chest, and the cicadas are higher up, like a buzzing between my ears. I stop a moment and study the jar Daddy told me to carry—it’s one of those big Mount Olive pickle jars. Even though the jar is empty, I still smell the sour pickle smell coming up through the jagged holes that Daddy punched in the lid.

“Daddy?” Between the bullfrog and the cicadas, I got to shout to be sure my voice will reach him. “You sure it’s all right for us to bottle them up in here?”

Daddy stops walking and peers back over his shoulder. I can see his frown—the moon is bright enough to cast shadows—and his face falls so heavy on me I can’t stand it. I look away.

“Course it is,” he says. “It’s what little boys are supposed to do. It’s what I did when I was your age.”

“But … won’t they just crawl out through these holes?”

Daddy laughs, then—not a full laugh, more of a short huff. “They ain’t that small.”

“And you promise they’ll be all right in there?”

“Yes. They’ll be all right.” Daddy shakes his head like I said something crazy, but then a smile takes the place of the frown. “Now, come on.”

Daddy’s got a great smile. Momma once told me that Daddy’s a real looker because he’s tall, has all his hair, and because he’s got a great smile—she said I got the same smile and that I’ll probably get the other things, too. But she also told me it ain’t just about having a great smile and a full head of hair; there’s a lot more to it than that.

“We ain’t got far to go,” Daddy says. “Just to the tree line yonder.” He starts walking again, across the field, and his boots crunch through the dead soybeans.

The crunch pulls at me, but I don’t follow him at first. We’re still less than halfway across the soybean field—well, the field that’s supposed to be soybeans but is mostly just scratchy brambles and dried-up clumps of dirt—and I can’t help it; I got to look back.  

Turning toward the house, I see the floodlights blazing yellow on all four corners and over the door. Our house looks real little in the daytime, all alone with nothing but empty, flat fields and other little houses just like it going off for miles in every direction to both sides along the state road all the way to Rocky Mount. But at this moment, our house looks like a big, yellow sun burning a hole right through the night.

Behind the double-pane window to the right of the door, Momma sits at her sewing machine—too far away to see her expression, but I’m sure she’s frowning, too.

Sometimes I wish there were two of me; that way, one of me could do what Momma said, and the other could be with Daddy, and Momma and Daddy would both be happy because they’d both get what they wanted. The two of me could just split the difference. Truth is, I feel as stretched out as a piece of Laffy Taffy, fat on both sides and thin in the middle.

Daddy stops crunching and calls back, “Come on, now. We ain’t got all night.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, and I turn away from Momma to run after Daddy.

My boots are about one size too big for me, and halfway to Daddy, the toe of my right boot gets hung up in a clump of dead soybeans. I fall face first, letting the pickle jar go as I throw my hands out to catch myself, and the jar bounces away and rolls across the dirt and comes to rest near Daddy’s feet. He peers down at the jar and then at me, and he’s scowling away.

“Careful now,” he says. “You hurt yourself, I won’t hear the end of it.”

Trying to pretend like it was nothing at all, I pick myself up and brush myself off. My knees are all right—I’m wearing my Carhartts—but my hands got scratched up real good on some stupid brambles. I suck it up because I know Daddy is watching me. I ain’t about to cry.

As I gather up the jar, Daddy takes a handkerchief from his jeans pocket and mops the sweat from his forehead, staring up into the sky, looking for something that ain’t there. It’s as clear as it can be, just like yesterday and the day before, and the day before that. This drought we been having goes all the way back to sometime in May.

“Hey, Daddy,” I say. “What’s this moon called. This one got a name?”

“Yeah,” he says with a smirk that ain’t really a smile. “It’s got a name. Way back when, they called this one the thunder moon ‘cause it rained so much in July.”

Daddy surveys the field, dried up all the way from the house to the tree line, every dead plant lit up by the full moon. He spits in the dirt and says, “I reckon that’s a bullshit name, now.”

My mind races for something to say that might ease Daddy back toward a smile. “Hey, Daddy,” I say, and he looks at me, his face kind of blank, waiting, so I push on ahead with the next thing I think of. “We about to catch some lightning, ain’t we?”

I see him chew on that one for a moment, and then his lips turn halfway up, and he says, “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“Well,” I say. “Maybe if we catch enough lightning, you and me will call up a storm tonight.” As if to help make my point, a breeze kicks up, bustling the heat about us both.

“Yeah,” he says, and sure enough, he’s smiling again. “Maybe you right.”

When we get to where we’re going, I slow down and let Daddy get between me and the trees. The woods that line the back of the field are thick with sassafras, cedar, live oaks, pines, and creeper vines that carpet and connect everything in between, and in the daytime, these woods are as green as can be. But at night, even nights like this one, they’re like a black curtain come down over some unknowable cavern full of monsters and demons. Daddy says that stuff’s all in my imagination, and I’m too old to be scared. But the truth is, I am scared.

Daddy strides over to me and kneels and says, “Hand me that pickle jar.” After I hand it over, he unscrews the top and sets the jar in the dirt between us with the lid next to it and says, “Okay, now hold out your hands, palms to the sky.”

I follow his instructions and spread my hands out in between us. I can see Daddy studying the scratches on my palms, clear as day in the moonlight, but he doesn’t say nothing about it. He just brings his hands underneath mine, and his palms press up against my skin, tough as two baseball mitts. One day, I’ll have hands hard as his, and no stupid brambles will ever get through my skin no matter how scratchy they are.

“Now, when you catch hold of one, you got to be gentle,” he says, “You got to cup your hands like this, so there’s still a space in the middle, and don’t put no pressure on him. They’re just little critters, and little critters can’t abide too much pressure.”

As Daddy stands up, I cup my hands together like he showed me, and stare toward the tree line, and then, I see something I didn’t see before—a flash, then another, and another! And little bits of light dance all along the edge of the black woods, twinkling on and off like stars—no, not like stars. Like lightning!

Like little bits of lightning, zapping right through the shadows.

“Well,” says Daddy, pressing his hand up against my back. “What are you waiting for? Go get us some of that lighting and call us up a storm like you said you would.”

He gives me a little shove, and he laughs as I take off, and his laugh is like gas for my engine. I head straight for the first flash I lock eyes on—I lunge for it, but the little bit moves every time it goes out, and it takes me several tries until finally—finally!—I shut my cupped hands together with a loud pop. There’s something inside tickling one of my palms, and I clasp my hands together so tight that nothing could ever get out, but I leave a space in the middle just like Daddy showed me; I don’t squash down. I run straight back to Daddy, and the whole time I’m squealing with laughter because the little bit of lightning tickles my hand. Daddy waits by the open pickle jar with the top in his hand, and he’s laughing, too, and his laugh is so loud I can’t hear the buzzing of the cicadas or the booming of the frog or nothing else, and all I hear is Daddy laughing, and nothing—I mean nothing!—scares me anymore, not the woods, not any old monsters or demons. When Daddy laughs like this, they don’t exist at all.

I shove my hands way down inside of the big pickle jar and pull one hand out and shake the other like crazy, but the lightning clings to my hand and won’t let go. It’s the funniest thing ever; I shake, shake, shake, and shake again. Finally, the lightning hits the bottom of the jar.

Daddy plops the top back on and then holds the jar up at eye level—I’m tall as he is when he’s down on one knee—and we peer into the jar at the little bit flashing all by its lonesome.

“That’s a good start,” he says. “But I think we need more than that, don’t you?”

I grin at him and say, “Yes, sir,” and he grins right back at me, and he and I both got the same great smile, don’t we? “Yes, sir. We sure do.”

“All right. Go on, then. Gather us some more lightning.”

On the walk back to the house, I lead Daddy through the field, jar held high like a magic lantern to light the way, and my face hurts from laughing and grinning so much. The moon may be shining too bright for the stars, but my jar shines even brighter than the moon—some fifty flashing bits all adding up to one zip-zapping batch of lightning.

About halfway back, the breeze picks up, and goosebumps pucker up on my arms as the temperature drops. My jar gets brighter as the field around us gets darker, and then I see it, a cloud passing right over the moon! And I don’t mean one of those wispy ones that don’t mean nothing—no, sir. I mean one of those tall, puffy ones that sure as shooting spells rain.

“Look, Daddy! Look,” I say, pointing at the cloud.

But Daddy doesn’t say nothing, and when I look back, I can see he’s not looking at the cloud—he’s looking at the house, and he’s wearing that same frown again.

“We ain’t got time for stargazing,” he says. “We got to get you back. Your mother’s going to have our hides if you don’t get to bed soon.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

The field grows real dark behind us, and a low rumble rolls right through me. All of a sudden, I’m scared again—I got a feeling I know what’s coming next. I hope I’m wrong, but just as soon as we get into the circle of light around the house, Momma opens the front door, and right away, I know she’s cross. Momma's a good deal smaller than Daddy side-by-side, but three steps up, standing in the doorway, she towers over me and him both.

“You said nine-thirty,” she says, and her lips don’t show at all, and her black hair falls down to her shoulders, and her face is like some kind of predator poking its head out of a bush.

“It’s just ten o’clock,” he says, holding back a few steps from the house, hands shoved down in the pockets of his jeans. “What’s a few extra minutes with my boy?”

“Look, Momma,” I say, raising my jar. “We caught a jar full of lightning, and now—”        

“That’s nice, honey,” she says. “Now, say goodnight to your father.”

“But Momma, I—”

“No buts. It’s late, and you got school tomorrow,” Momma wraps her arms tight over the front of her white t-shirt like she’s trying to hold herself back. “Time for your father to go.”

I hate summer school. If I didn’t have to go to summer school, it wouldn’t matter that I’d stayed out with Daddy. I should have got better grades, then I wouldn’t need tutoring.

“Ain’t you going to offer me something to drink?” Daddy says. “I’m thirsty.”

“You know better,” Momma says.

The yellow light above the door hits their faces such that their brows hang dark shadows over their eyes—it’s like I’m standing at the edge of the woods again. I raise the jar a bit, hoping my lightning might zap some light into the shadows, but the light above the door is too bright.

“It’s still my house,” Daddy says. “I can come inside if I want to.”

“It’s late,” Momma repeats, and she turns to one side and opens a boy-sized space in the doorway, and her eyes cut through the shadows straight at me. “Time for my son to go to bed.”

“But, Momma—

“Bed,” Momma’s face pulls tight as a piece of plastic wrap. “Now.”

When I get in my room and shut the door, I don’t even need to turn the light on because my jar zaps like crazy, shining into every little nook and cranny. I set the jar on the nightstand by my bed, and as I kick my boots off and strip down to my skivvies, I hear Daddy’s heavy boots thumping around on the floorboards in the den. Our house is just two bedrooms with a kitchen and a den in the middle—where Momma does her sewing—and the walls ain’t nothing but thin sheetrock, so I can hear pretty much everything going on in the den even with my door shut.

Momma tells Daddy to stop, that he’s getting dirt on everything. He stomps harder.

Too riled up to sleep, I lay on top of my covers and thumb an old Archie comic—in this issue, Archie’s trying to decide which one to take to the high school dance: Betty or Veronica, and he ends up taking Veronica, and like Daddy says, brunettes ain’t nothing but trouble. Then again, I ain’t so sure he’s right—after all, Momma’s the brunette, and he’s the blond—and then something bangs in the kitchen, hard, and Daddy unleashes a string of curse words. I toss the comic aside. I put my pillow over my head, but I can still hear them—Daddy’s voice rolls like rocks through the floorboards, and Momma’s voice screams through the rafters like the wind. Even if I can't understand the words they’re saying, I still get the meaning.

I hear something else, a loud bang outside the house, and I take the pillow off my head. Then there’s a flash, another bang, and hard drumming on the roof—and sure enough, a sheet of rainwater running down my window. I can still hear Daddy yelling and Momma crying, but now their voices are mixed up with the wind and rain and thunder and lightning, and it’s all part of the same storm that I called up with Daddy when I went out to field with him instead of going straight to bed like Momma told me.

In between the drumming on the roof, there’s another sound, a tapping sound coming from my nightstand. When I look over, I see that where there was a lightning jar before, now there’s just a big pickle jar full of little critters throwing themselves against the glass, trying to get out. The jar still zaps out light enough to see, but not as bright as it was—already, a handful of critters are sprawled out on the bottom, legs kicking in the air. A few ain't moving at all; they just lay there on their backs, cold and dark. In the field, these critters were all made of lightning, but now, they’re nothing but bugs falling dead on the bottom of a pickle jar.

I jump out of bed, yank the jar from the nightstand, run to the window—another flash of lightning lights the world, and the bang that follows almost makes me drop the jar. I clutch it tight against me with one arm as I raise the window with the other, and the rain soaks my skin. The critters that are still alive smack the glass—I can feel the little hits against my chest and arm, and all I can think is that Daddy wasn’t supposed to be here today; if I had gone to bed instead of going out with him, Momma would be sewing right now and Daddy wouldn’t be in the house. After I get the lid unscrewed, I turn the jar upside down out the window—the dead bugs fall right out, but for some reason, the live ones still hold on to the side of the jar; they don’t seem to know where they are supposed to be.

I do the only thing I can think of, then; I pitch the pickle jar just as far as I can pitch it—it lands on the dirt driveway near Daddy’s truck and rolls away from the house toward the field. I wipe my eyes and squint as the jar comes to a stop just beyond the yellow circle thrown by the floodlights, hoping to see the lightning leave the jar, but I can’t see through the storm.

I hope the little critters make it out alive.

I shut the window and get back in bed, soaking wet, but I don’t care. I throw the pillow over my head again, but then, the front door slams. I lift the pillow enough to hear Daddy’s truck crank to life outside, then sputter out to nothing as he drives away across the field.

Daddy’s gone, but the storm ain’t over. Momma's crying in the other room, I’m crying in this one, and the rain keeps on coming. I know no amount of rain’s going to fix things now.

The next morning, I wake to the light rapping of Momma’s knuckles against my door frame, her usual shave-and-a-haircut, but I’m so tired I can hardly open my eyes. It’s still dark outside, and it’s still raining, and I don’t want to leave my bed. I groan, and Momma laughs.

“Come on, sleepy-head,” she says, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest almost the same way she was last night, but not the same—relaxed and smiling like it’s any other morning. She’s got her uniform on, a red button-up, short-sleeve skirt checkered black-and-white on the collar and apron, and I always think Momma’s real pretty done up like this.

“I’ll fix you a nice breakfast,” she says, “and then I’ll drive you to school on my way to the diner. You don’t need to wait for the bus in this weather.”

Momma hums a tune as she goes back toward the kitchen—this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine—but it’s like I’m full of mud. I drag myself out of bed and into my jeans and a t-shirt, then I pull my socks on one after the other, but then I step in a puddle by the window and soak both my socks, so I got to go back for a fresh pair.

By the time I get to the kitchen, the smell of bacon fills the air—Momma stands over the stove, spatula in hand, humming away. I sit down at the table and work to tie my shoes.

“Momma?”

“What, baby?” she says, still facing the stove against the wall across the kitchen.

“About last night,” I mumble. “I’m sorry I …” I can hardly get the words out.

Momma turns and peers across the kitchen at me, her eyes squinty. “What, baby?”

“About last night, I’m really sorry …”

The bacon in the pan pops and sizzles. She turns the stove down and lays the spatula on the side of the pan, then comes over and kneels by my chair so that I’m almost a head taller than she is, but I don’t look down on her. I can’t do that.

“What are you sorry for?” she asks, placing her hand on my knee. When she does that, our eyes meet, and there’s so much between us I just can’t help it—the tears start up, and she’s the same. I may have got my smile from Daddy, but I got my eyes from Momma.

Then I say, “It’s my fault Daddy came in here last night.”

She takes a breath—her eyes as green as grass after the rain, and just as wet—and I can tell she’s holding something back because the little muscles at the sides of her face jump around.

“Listen now,” she says. “And you listen well. Your daddy and me? That’s not on you.”

“But if I had just—”

“No. None of that was your fault. Never was your fault, never will be your fault.”

I don’t say nothing, and for a minute, neither does she. The rain drums the roof of the house and patters the window, and the bacon pops in the pan. She takes my hands in hers.

I’m glad my hands aren’t as tough as Daddy’s, because Momma’s hands are soft as tissue paper, and I wouldn’t want to scratch them up. I don’t ever want to hurt Momma. Never.  

“Hey,” she says, and her face is like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud. “Where’s that lightning jar you wanted to show me last night? I didn’t see it in your room this morning.”

“I threw it away,” I say. “I let the little critters go. Shouldn’t be kept in a jar like that.”

“Is that right?” she says, standing; she bends and mashes her lips against my forehead.

When she pulls away, I can feel a wet spot on my skin, but I don’t wipe it off like I usually would.

“You’re a good boy, you know that? A real good boy. I want you to stay just like you are, for as long as you can.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, though I don’t really know exactly what I’m supposed to do.

When Momma gets to the stove with her back to me, she says, “Want to see a trick?”

“What kind of trick?” I say.

Momma pulls a funny face and juggles one, two, three eggs in the air, like a clown. I try not to laugh, but I can’t help it, a giggle spreads over me, and before I know it, all of the mud is washing right out. I’m laughing, and she’s laughing, and she almost drops one of the eggs, but she catches them all and holds one up. “Okay, now how do you want them?”

I don’t even have to think about it. “Sunnyside up.”

She grins and says, “All right, then. Sunnyside up it is.”

Momma goes back to humming as she cracks the eggs on the side of the pan and drops them into the bacon fat, and I turn my eyes toward the window. It’s grown lighter outside, and I can see all the way to the tree line—the rain falls steady now. Everything looks gray from ground to sky and side to side, but somewhere behind all that gray, I guess the sun’s coming up.

I can see the soybean rows have turned into little streams running off toward the ditches alongside the field, and some of the brambles are washing away. Who knows—maybe when the rain is done, some of the soybeans’ll come back just as green as ever, and maybe then, Daddy will smile more.

Then again, maybe not. Either way, I know there’s more to it than that.

Cold Bouillabaisse

Navya Kaur

It is a common misconception that all poets are gifted with a Superior Sight––eyes that can see past the shallow and obvious to spot a Truth others cannot discern. We often attribute a certain veracity to our eyes, making assumptions on the visuals they see, not understanding they only see part of the picture. But if eyes were truly so legitimate, then Monsieur Clotaire would never have found himself sitting inside a publisher’s room with a manuscript of translated Braille poems in his hands.

“A poet? You are a poet?” The inflection in the editor’s Russian accent indicated a slight hostility, but past experience had taught Monsieur Clotaire that skepticism could often be duped as unkindness. And so, he took no offense.

“Oui, Monsieur. I know it may seem unusual.”

“May I inquire as to why you chose this profession? Or rather––how?”

“I am not a poet by choice, Monsieur. Like my blindness, it is a sickness that has plagued me since my youth. I am coerced to write. I find words spilling out of my ears, emanating from my chest, and stuck between my teeth. I find no peace until I relieve myself of their burdens.”

“I see.”

“Well, I am glad one of us can.”

The editor chuckled. Comedy was as integral to Monsieur Clotaire as his poems. It was also the basis of his spirituality: he knew God existed precisely because He had a sense of humor. For how was it possible that a man without eyesight should have the unshakeable urge to make his mark? Moreover, how was it possible that the same man also possessed a strong sense of self-worth to do so? Monsieur Clotaire’s life was a joke of cartoon-ish proportions and he had realized the only solution was to laugh along.

“What do you write about?”

“You can take a look yourself.” Monsieur Clotaire dropped the stack he was carrying on the desk in front of him. “I must confess I am no Wordsworth. I have in the past attempted to emulate his style, but felt that comparing a woman’s eyes to twilight stars would be a bit inauthentic from my perspective.”

The editor was silent for a moment. “Yes, but that sort of imagery is what makes a poet a poet. Do you not agree?” (Apparently, Monsieur Clotaire’s humor had not translated).

“I agree completely, Monsieur. But who is to say that the sight of nature or women can be our only muses? Can not the sound of a saxophone or the aroma of a pâtisserie give us similar inspiration? In fact, I believe eating Chef Pazi’s lemon-soaked chicken on a noisy Thursday afternoon is the closest I have ever gotten to discovering the meaning of life.”

“That is quite a bold statement Monsieur! Chef Popov’s beef stroganoff is by far more poetic.”

“So I have heard! I will have to give it a try the next time I am in Moscow.” Monsieur Clotaire enjoyed the banter and was glad to dispense of the niceties. Too often, a new acquaintance would adopt a serious, pitying tone with Monsieur Clotaire in an attempt to compensate for his blindness. But he was reminded of his condition every morning he opened his eyes. He did not need his conversations to remind him again.

Monsieur Clotaire heard the editor rustling through some papers and patiently awaited his verdict. It was clear that despite their friendly repartee, the editor still had reservations over Monsieur Clotaire’s capability to write poetry. The kindness was unfamiliar, but the suspicion was not. Monsieur Clotaire had received many rejections over the years from publishers who simply could not see past their narrow conceptions of poetry and their judgment of such an ambitious blind man.

The editor cleared his throat. “Your work is ... interesting Monsieur. Quite unconventional. But I do not think it is suitable for our magazine.”

Monsieur Clotaire exhaled sharply. He had hoped that this editor would break the pattern of disappointment, but it seemed God was still unfolding new tricks. “Forgive me if I am being too forward here, but may I ask why not?”

“Well––uh––I am not sure how to phrase it. It is too ... outlandish ... I just do not consider it poetry.”

“Outlandish?” Monsieur Clotaire had heard the phrase before and could not help but disagree. Poetry is about uncovering the veil over people; it is about finding significance past the physical; it is about suffering, resilience, heartbreak, awe, and all the wonderful and terribly intense emotions that life offers. And who could capture those emotions better than a man who has never been distracted by the world’s visual facade?

“Uh ... oui, Monsieur.” The editor sounded uncomfortable and Monsieur Clotaire did not want to convince the man to like his poems if he simply did not.

 “I respect your decision, Monsieur. I have enjoyed your magazine since it first published in 1922 and recognize that you hold all of your poets to a very high standard. Nevertheless, thank you for your time and consideration.” And with that, Monsieur Clotaire left the publishing house and headed straight for another.

Paris was a city full of possibility, where the line between freedom and sin blurred and the boxes of orthodoxy and obedience faded, leaving people on a constant quest to forge their own identity. This is what Monsieur Clotaire loved about Paris—whether you sensed with your eyes, ears, or nose, at every moment, Paris would give a completely new story.

It was Monsieur Clotaire’s theory that just as a person had a denotable visage or aroma, they also had a perceivable and original style of music––a song filled with sounds only they themselves could play. For instance, while Monsieur Clotaire sat outside the 13th arrondissement’s metro station, listening to the noise of busy travelers boarding and deboarding trains, he heard a familiar weight of footsteps, a cough over a handkerchief, and a clunk of a briefcase hitting a thigh. He stood up in anticipation and––

“How do you know it is me every time!” Nicolas said, embracing his friend.

“Oh, my blindness is all a ruse to seduce more money from innocent bystanders. Did I not tell you?”

Nicolas laughed. “I wish that were true for the both of us,” he said, slapping his left arm, which, as Monsieur Clotaire well knew, was a stump. Though Nicolas was lucky to only have lost an arm in the Great War, his disability left little capacity for manual work. Another one of God’s jokes.

Nicolas unclicked his briefcase on top of the table and adjusted the typewriter’s settings. Monsieur Clotaire firmly believed mankind would never top the invention of the portable typewriter. To be able to write wherever one goes and not have to scribble lines of poems on napkins and newspaper scraps (or in his case, to not have to tell waiters and friends to do it for him!) was absolutely ingenious.

“I am all set up. Clotaire, are you ready?”

Monsieur Clotaire nodded and took a seat next to his old friend, who promptly jumped up and began his usual sales pitch to passersby. They had begun this routine six days ago after a long night at a restaurant two blocks from Nicolas’ apartment. Monsieur Clotaire, who usually prided his optimism, had had a rough day––much like today––after being turned down by multiple publishers. After several glasses of wine (which they both drank to forget their woes), Nicolas raised the idea of selling Monsieur Clotaire’s work on the street in the form of personalized poems. Clotaire! Nicholas had said. The fancy men in the publishing houses may not understand your poems, but perhaps a real audience might! Monsieur Clotaire had been reluctant at first, finding the idea slightly childish, but Nicolas’ persuasion skills were indeed  persuasive.

And so on the following day, they came to Paris’ 13th arrondissement and set up shop outside the metro station. Monsieur Clotaire offered his services as a poet and Nicolas assumed the role of the transcriber. Their initial business had come from young children, who were amused with the idea of a blind poet and a one-handed typer, but today, Monsieur Clotaire and Nicolas hoped to broaden their interest.

“Clotaire! It appears we have a customer!” Nicolas dropped the money in the soup can and hurriedly sat down, accidentally pushing the table forward and almost dropping the typewriter. “She seems to be a wealthy woman.”

“Excellent!”

“Her young granddaughter, Elise, is visiting her this afternoon and she wants to gift her a poem.” Nicolas rolled in a fresh sheet of paper and waited for Monsieur Clotaire’s cue. Though Nicolas was a perfect friend and a charming conversationalist, his fifth-grade education required Monsieur Clotaire to spell out almost every other word, which made the process even lengthier once compounded with his one hand.

“She went into the café down the street for an espresso, so I do not think we have much time before she returns.”

“No problem. I am certain I can think of something.”

Eleven minutes later, with a fresh poem typed and a strong sense of accomplishment, the woman reappeared.

“Has my poem been written?” she said in the sweet voice of a grandmother and a haughty tone of an aristocrat.

“Oui Madame!” said Nicolas. “It is a masterpiece! Remember the name Clotaire for he will soon be the most famous poet in the world! ” Monsieur Clotaire blushed. While Nicolas’ youthful personality suited him as a salesman, Monsieur Clotaire could not stand the personal exaggerations it demanded. It was good he was destined to be a poet; in a sense, he was allowed to hide behind the poems and let them speak for themselves.

“I will be the judge of that,” she said, grabbing the parchment and reading the poem aloud:

Sacred are our friendships and hopeful are our romances

But you, my sweet granddaughter, are an ever-giving prize

Your laughter is a rich expense––a pretty penny I am willing to spend

In your presence, my belly fills up with delicious pasta

And when you leave, I am left starving for another strand of spaghetti

There will come a time when death will take us all,

But remember, my dear Elise, you will always be my little gnocchi

For the next two minutes, Monsieur Clotaire feared that deafness had also afflicted him for the woman remained completely silent.

“Do you find it humorous to insult your customers?” she finally said. Insult? Editors had told Monsieur Clotaire his poems were “outlandish” and “unconventional,” but never insulting.

“I am not sure what is wrong, Madame.”

“You have compared my granddaughter to pasta. She is my granddaughter not food!”

“Of course not! It is a metaphor, Madame. Poetry is full of them.”

“I know it is a metaphor. I am not a nitwit. Poetry is meant to be beautiful and elegant. It should make you feel elevated, not hungry.”

“Poetry is about capturing a true feeling, Madame. It need not be beautiful ... it should be true.”

“You are wrong. There is a certain ‘how’ to poetry––a structure which you have failed to capture. I would like my money back, I am late as it is.”

Monsieur Clotaire was not yet ready to concede. “Poetry is art, Madame. And as art, should not poetry continuously evolve in untraditional ways? Many people believe poetry was perfected in the past and the present interpretations are simply gross insults that tarnish the beauty of the art form. But why should poets remain chained to an old way of thinking––of writing?”

“The old poets had talent, that is why. If Shakespeare had written, ‘my heart felt like cold bouillabaisse,’ he would not have been a poet, he would have been the laughing stock of Europe!”

“But if that line characterized how he truly felt, then why should it not be considered poetry? Poetry is everywhere! Even in cold bouillabaisse.”

“I see your gimmick, now. You lure unsuspecting people to your little stand, give them a nonsensical poem, and then argue with them for twenty minutes until they leave in frustration. Well, you have succeeded once again!”

Monsieur Clotaire heard the woman abruptly huff off.

Later that night, Monsieur Clotaire laid in bed with an unusual sense of melancholy. His ordinary night routine was to write a poem detailing his day, but the voices of the editor and the woman replayed in his mind, screaming louder than his strong morale could take. Could they be right? He had initially interpreted unconventional and outlandish as compliments, but now they posed the same threats as insulting.

When Monsieur Clotaire attended the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles, once a year, he would barricade himself in the common room tuning the grand piano. His teacher, who would often play the music of Beethoven for the class, would patiently sit with him as he arduously adjusted each string with a hammer and a tuning fork. Not having the same ear for pitch as she did, he would ask her opinion after tuning every note. However, instead of complying with his request, she would say, it does not have to be perfect, Clotaire. As long as it feels right to you. Now, even if Monsieur Clotaire heard a piano playing in perfect A440 pitch, it would sound off-key to him.

Was that how people saw his poems? As off-key? A wave of embarrassment shuddered over Monsieur Clotaire as he remembered the confidence he would walk with into publishers’ offices. How naive he was to think he could be a poet! How could a blind man have anything authentic to say? The woman was right, a poet did not write about spaghetti and gnocchi, a poet wrote about the beauty in what they see––the greenery of the trees and the rosiness of a woman’s cheeks. Eyes were the ultimate surveyors of truth and without them . . .

Monsieur Clotaire shut his lamp and rolled over on his side. Though he was not tired, he closed his eyes and let the tears spill freely across his cheeks.

Unfortunately, from a very young age, Monsieur Clotaire had always been taught to honor one’s commitments. Whether it be a game of chess or a Sunday lunch, Monsieur Clotaire always arrived perfectly on time. And so, even today of all days, when Monsieur Clotaire wanted to remain in bed and avoid any personal interaction, he put on his suit, grabbed a hat, and headed to meet Nicolas at their usual corner next to the 13th arrondissement metro station.

“There you are Clotaire! I was concerned; you always arrive before me. But, do not worry, I got everything set up in the meantime, so we can begin as soon as you are ready.”

Monsieur Clotaire had never had a stronger urge to run away. Monsieur Clotaire wanted to reveal to Nicolas that he had cried all night thinking about what the editor and the woman had said. He wanted to explain to Nicolas that he was a good friend, but their street business was a poor idea. He wanted to tell Nicolas he feared the ink inside him had dried up and that he felt ashamed to ever call himself a poet. But admitting his worries aloud––especially to dear Nicolas––gave them a certain credibility he was not ready to face. And so he kept his lips sealed and nodded his head.

At the end of two hours, they had received two customers––neither of whom chastised Monsieur Clotaire’s poetry, but both of whom took the poems in a hurry without reading them. Monsieur Clotaire had avoided the metaphor of pasta and instead, substituted the comparisons and descriptions of John Keats and William Blake, which he knew people preferred to read. He had expected this new style to ease his anxiety and boost his self-esteem, but if anything, he felt less accomplished.

Monsieur Clotaire had often lauded his blindness as a secret superpower. He experienced the world differently and that difference had given him a pen to write with and a story to share. But like a tree that falls in the middle of a silent forest, are poems still poems if there is no one to read them? And if perchance, a readership should develop, what mark would Monsieur Clotaire make if he only copied the greats? As Monsieur Clotaire’s mind drifted into a spiral of despair at this thought, the voices of the editor and the woman revisited his head ... insulting ... laughing stock ... outlandish ...

Monsieur Clotaire brushed his fingers against the keys of the typewriter in an urge to summon its usual warmth. On days where Monsieur Clotaire felt his life too miserable and burdensome to bear, the typewriter would beckon him and the sound of typing would subdue his gloom. For the typewriter did not require the privilege of sight or the benefit of two arms, but a heart capable of feeling and a voice capable of speaking.

Yet today, outside the 13th arrondissement’s metro station, this machine had no warmth and no solace to offer. Monsieur Clotaire could feel its allegiance to him had been revoked; the keys felt as foreign to him as his unwanted thoughts. He, a poet, had now become a stranger to his own tools.

While Nicolas stood out on the street convincing others of his talent, Monsieur Clotaire sat on his stool feeling a fraud. The typewriter had finally revealed him, stripping him of his sunny disposition and his protective naïveté. This thing––this poetry––was a sphere so small that Monsieur Clotaire, who had once considered himself a part of, had merely been dancing on the outskirts, looking for a way in. After twenty-two years, Monsieur Clotaire now knew that trapdoor was nowhere to be found.

And so, feigning a headache, Monsieur Clotaire summoned Nicolas back to the table to end his nightmare. Nicolas packed up their belongings and Monsieur Clotaire followed him down the street with his burning fingers holding the portable typewriter in his right hand.

But had Monsieur Clotaire and Nicolas stayed in their spot a little longer, they would have been approached by the daughter of the wealthy woman from yesterday, who was a writer for The Paris Times. She would have told him she had found his poetry to be refreshingly entertaining and true and wanted to interview him. Monsieur Clotaire would have ended up on the front page of the newspaper, would eventually have gotten his poems published, and would have achieved worldwide renown.

Instead, however, Monsieur Clotaire went home that day and had Nicolas type his last poem.

With a huff and a puff, I was rendered obsolete

Now because of these eyes that cannot see

My heart is cold bouillabaisse

Fish Out of Water

Natalie Harris-Spencer

The Bio Hunters are coming for us. They’ve been scouring the waters for our species, seeking out our cobalt-blue scales to trade at the Flesh Markets. They’ve traced our shoal—another Fish from a rival shoal betrayed us—and now we’re forced to swim for our lives. We have an escape plan: New York City is accepting our species for a limited time through a “door ajar” policy. In school, we completed the New York City virtual immersion program that took us through Central Park, got us hooked on all the good sitcoms and Christmas movies, learned why the Big Apple is the Greatest City on Earth.

Except Earth isn’t where we live yet.

We steal from our parents’ substantial savings and splurge on one-way AmphiShip tickets for two. My sister knows a guy who knows a guy from the Flesh Markets. He comes through with the tickets.

Because of your family name, he says.

We tell our parents to hide deep in the Yellow Reef, knowing that the Bio Hunters will murder them for their scales if they find them. We say we’re going to find help. We don’t mention the AmphiShip; they’d insist on coming with us if we told them, but it’s far too risky. At least if we go, if we survive the trip, we can send help from Earth.

We don’t kiss them goodbye. We don’t even cry as we prepare to leave our home planet forever. There’s no time for kisses or tears, barely time to consider the face of the enemy. All we care about is that our parents stay safe and alive, as far away as possible from the Bio Hunters, swaddled in the capillaries of the Yellow Reef.

We board the belly of the AmphiShip with a finful of other passengers from different shoals who also look like they’ve secured their tickets through wealth or influence. We’re the lucky ones. One nods my sister’s way. I suppose he recognizes our status within the shoal, our specific, iridescent blue.

We strap in, hook our ventilation units to our gills and cushion them against our fragile spines like rucksacks. I glance at my little sister, younger and wetter, more feminine than me, a waxy fear on her face, her thick, ivory lips spread in a clownish frown. She looks the spit of me but slightly shorter: webbed, a crackle of blue hair flowing down her back, and a long, golden tail. She’s fleshy, too; all her Fish curves in all the right places. I grip her pectoral fin in mine to reassure her, but we’re traveling so fast through space that our fins slip apart.

The AmphiShip rattles up, along, then down, descending fast, entering the Earth’s atmosphere at a treacherous angle. Then we’re sinking to the ground from just thirty-eight thousand feet, but it feels like we’re rising to the surface, like air bubbles about to pop. The descent feels like progress. Our brittle bones shake and crack against the slimy seats as we plunge to land. The ventilation units take a little getting used to in this new atmosphere; our gills are sore, our breathing labored. We sound like human astronauts.

We touch down with a tremble, wheels reverberating against sizzling tarmac, and dive into the mad swell of JFK Airport. The frenetic foreignness of suitcases rolling along the ground is comforting, in a way. If you follow the wheels, follow their jaggedy patterns, it means you’re going somewhere. It means you have direction.

Except we don’t have any luggage. None of us do. What could we take from our underwater planet that could last long on land? Besides, I’m sure we’ll find everything we need on Fifth Avenue. The elegant store fronts look so bright and brilliant in the pictures, a bounteous reserve of graphic fashions and furnishings.

We’re marshaled in line with other Fish who look like us, but who come from different shoals. They sound different. We compare passport photos, searching for something, anything to connect:

You look so young in this picture, a fellow passenger tells another. Your scales look so shiny. Why aren’t you smiling?

We’re kept behind a thick, navy rope, separated from the humans. Quarantined, they call it. We’ve been told our presence is expected, that we’re not the first Fish to arrive at JFK, but still, the stares. Still, the whispers. I curl my tail in embarrassment, its golden feathers brushing along the dirty airport floor. There’s a long line of human passengers across the hall, uneasy with shuffling sneakers. We stand a little taller than the humans, our blue bodies radiant. A toddler starts pointing and screaming at us:

Smelly Fish! Bad smell. Stinky.

His mother raps her child’s hand, shuts him up. The mother turns away from us, gagging. She’s less glamorous than I expected her to be; her skin doesn’t shimmer at all under the strips of airport light. The child’s cheeks look wan.

After nearly two hours of waiting in line behind the rope, we’re frogmarched to the front. Dark uniforms come straight for us, their epaulettes glinting proudly. We flop through border control, thirsty, desperate for water, our scaly skin starting to parch. Our bodies ache from the intergalactic journey and from standing upright, balancing on the tips of our tails for so long.

Papers? Passports? bellows the man from behind the Plexiglass screen.

We have them ready, facing upwards for inspection. We push them under the gap in the glass. Mine is stamped with the letter F, printed in a solid, emerald ink. The letters J, F, and K look so ugly on our tickets. English always seemed such a hostile, foreign alphabet to me, drenched in spikes and edges. My sister is four years younger, but already has much better English. The passport stamp smudges like seaweed as it’s snapped shut.

There are sixty of us in a small room, some from the earlier AmphiShip flight. The ones who got in first have been waiting for us to arrive, they tell us. Only two flights a day allowed, for the next week. That’s fewer than five hundred rescued Fish. We’re the lucky ones, the rich Fish who could afford the tickets. We’re saving our species by risking our lives. We’re billions of miles from the Bio Hunters, but also from everyone else on our planet. I snuff out thoughts of my parents. It’s easier that way.

I hear coughing and wheezing—a strange, faraway whistle from our collective lungs. Some huddle in their shoals. My sister hugs her tail for support, bends it up into her body like a blanket. I keep us hydrated by re-filling a bottle at the water cooler. The air is too dry. It stinks of hot mackerel.

An hour slips by. Maybe two. Someone who speaks our language comes in with a clipboard and starts reading names from a list. My sister and I are included in the rollcall. I wonder how they’re sorting us. It’s not by shoal. I look around at those lining up—it’s by age. We’re sorted with the other teenage Fish.

The uniforms come for us. A human male with an Al Pacino gun addresses me. I wonder if guns work the same way on Earth as they do in the movies. We don’t use guns like that on our planet; we use harpoons. The male has a whiny accent. I recognize the odd word, although it mostly sounds like a lot of jumbly sounds. My sister translates:

Raul. His name is Raul and he’ll be escorting us, my sister and me.

We don’t dare ask where, exactly. We’re cautious of the thin gun slung across his middle, its potential. We assume he’s taking us somewhere safe for the night. Somewhere well-guarded. They told us on the AmphiShip that the people of New York City are sensitive to our situation—they’ve welcomed many humans before to the shores of Ellis Island, humans searching for freedom, to make their fortune, to seize the chance at a new life. If the Statue of Liberty can keep the humans safe under her gaze, why not the same for us Fish?  

Raul holds each of our dorsal fins as he steers us through a back exit. His leather gloves can’t get a good grip on any other part of us; we’re still far too wet. He glowers at us like we revolt him. Like we absolutely reek. In the hot Earth daytime, I guess we must.

Raul nudges his way through the banners and protesters at the picket line, shepherding us with him: one Fish in each glove. I don’t understand what the protestors are saying, but when they see us, they go nuts—absolutely fucking nuts—jeering and hollering. One throws something; it splatters at my feet. It’s an old haddock head, its wet eyes flashing up at me. They look like little pimento olives I’ve seen on pizza pies, in the movies. Its dead lips are turned down in a frown. I slide up closer to Raul, trembling, seeking the protection of his movie star gun.

We reach the parking lot, skyscrapers visible in the distance like stencils against the fading afternoon sky. Raul opens the back of a black van with an EMPIRE STATE license plate. He mutters something to my sister and pushes us into the back, slams the doors on us. I bang and kick and holler, alarmed by the instant darkness. I watch him climb into the driver’s seat. The engine jolts. The van swerves away, and the two of us are hurled back against the plastic panels.

Hey! Where are you taking us? Do you understand me? Hey! Look at me, you sonofabitch!

My sister pulls me back.

Shush. Calm down, she commands.

I stop. My sister’s right. What’s the point in getting all worked up? He can’t hear me from the front of the van. He can’t understand me. My fin is throbbing, and I’m shattered from the journey. My sister doesn’t speak again; Raul said something to her that she won’t repeat or translate, and now she’s lying against the van’s wall, unsteady on her fins. We’re too warm and fragile to move much. I spit on her brow; pat it in. It’s all I can do to keep her wet.

I ache to know what my parents are doing right now. Are they still hiding? Are they safe? I have to believe they are. This must be what homesick feels like. So far, New York’s not what I imagined it to be. The bleak airport was nothing like you see in the movies. Still, we’re alive. We’re breathing.

I check my ventilation unit. There’s a dry area forming around my hair line; my skin is flaking off, scale by scale. I don’t mean to do it, but I start scratching. I show my sister, try to compare patches but she doesn’t want to look, because looking will mean acknowledging that we’re drying up. Our icy blood isn’t adjusting well to dry land. I lie down next to her, bending my body beside hers. She’s too hot, her scales crumble when I touch them. I can feel she’s fallen asleep by her great drags of breath against my chest.

I stare out the rear window as we descend under the Queens Midtown tunnel. It’s hot and strange and beautiful. I imagine a watercolor painter gliding their brush along the tunnel’s dark walls, journeying with us beneath the river in streaks of faint color.

Afternoon sunlight again. We sail past erect skyscrapers, their shadows long. My tail looks greenish, translucent. My sister swats her neck in her sleep; an invisible dragonfly is there. Raul is still driving, manly and silent.

The van stops, suddenly. My sister sits up, alert, peers out the back. She translates the sign: FISH JUNGLE. We weren’t expecting this—they’d promised us accommodation befitting our species—but a jungle? A jungle makes me think of suffocating vines and creepers coming to choke me.

The Fish Jungle gates open with a greasy creak and we edge through crowds of noisy protesters. My sister translates:

No travel ban! Save the Fish! Free the Fish!

That’s good, right? I ask. The people of New York City must be on our side? Right? Right?

She doesn’t reply.

Raul delivers our documents to the human woman at the checkpoint. Her gun is slung casually across her back like a ponytail resting there. More guns mean more protection. Good. But her face is hateful as she peers at us through the back window. She wrinkles her nose, hocks, spits on the ground. I cradle my sister closer.

The Jungle is crowded. There are many others like us. I can see them surfacing from the river, dipping up into the world, forming small Os with their pouty lips, sinking back down again. Some of them look Fishier than others, some are almost humanlike, their eyes pulled tight in anguished slits.

The gates lock behind us. Still, we have to trust what’s going on, because they told us on the AmphiShip that New York City was a safe, free city, where there would be no sanctions placed on Fish.

Everything’s going to be okay here, I tell my sister.

She nods, but she’s not looking at me. She’s peering down into the dark, churning water. Raul leads us down some mossy steps to the edge of the Hudson River. These steps are man-made, deliberate. They twist round to the left and down beneath the pier and out of sight. Down here, it’s cool and shadowy. The sky is charged; the sun is dipping down for dinner. I can hear the mechanical call of sirens and car horns from beyond the Jungle gates.

My sister gags. Her throat contracts, her mouth springs into an exaggerated oval. I check her ventilation unit. Its narrow pipes stay firmly implanted in her neck.

You’re fine, I tell her.

She looks at me, a hint of sadness in her burgeoning eyes. My sister has always been the brave one. The ballsy one. The one who would swim the farthest beyond the Yellow Reef, in search of tastier algae. She’s the Fish with the guts—a dumb joke we’ve shared with each other. Except that ever since we escaped our world on the AmphiShip, she’s been acting gutless. I grip her, because her sadness frightens me more than anything. It means she thinks we made the wrong call leaving, that it would’ve been better to stay where we were with our parents and take our chances with the Bio Hunters than come to this alien planet.

You’re absolutely fine, I say. We’re going to get through this together. We’re going to send help back there. The humans will help us fight the Bio Hunters, you’ll see.

There’s a wooden sign by the side of the river. FISH ONLY, my sister translates. Her voice is quiet. The sound rattles in her throat. Raul chuckles and pushes us into the water, first my sister, then me, fast and hard. There’s no time to scream.

The river is crowded with Fish. We thrash, trying to find room, trying to fight against the current but it’s too strong and we’re dragged down deeper.

I tear off my ventilation unit—a painful rip of flesh and scales—at least we can breathe properly again. I swim across to my sister—see she’s also ripped off her ventilation unit. Her gills flash bright, angry scars that look almost indigo against her gleaming curves.

The wetness comes as a glorious relief, until we realize that there’s some salt, but not enough. Nothing like what we’re used to back home. We’re instantly queasy from the mix of salt and fresh water, our heads swimming with white crystals. Down here we’re in a soup bowl of water and sky, compressed in a blended body of water. And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.

I gaze around, spot a boot, a hook, a sandwich packet. I taste human feces. I hear a collective moaning sound coming from beneath us. It’s a churn of others, whole shoals of them, dark shapes of Fish flicking their tails hither and thither. Why are they crowding like this? Why aren’t they swimming away?

I take my sister’s fin and we swim like crazy, buck and soar like we did when the Bio Hunters came for us. My skull bashes into something hard. I open and close my eyes from the pain, notice a thick, transparent surface.

Where are you going? The other Fish laugh. There’s no way out. The only way out is up.

We’re enclosed by thick and impenetrable glass, the tank walls of the Jungle. I look up at the surface: too heavy and too far. It glimmers in the filtered dusk light, a long way away. I try to remember how to breathe underwater when the salt is low, the basics our teachers taught us in school, but I can’t; all I can do is concentrate on how sick I’m feeling and the raw stench of Fish rot.

The humans can’t keep us trapped here like animals, can they?

Night descends in the Jungle. My guts feel cold and raw. My sister’s eyes are so wide that they look like they have no eyelids. They shimmer like oil puddles—unbearably exquisite without trying to be. She’s so beautiful, my sister. She was always the Fishiest. She was the first one to become a real woman. She grew downy hair on her teenage fins before I did. She started bleeding before I did: a slow escape of crimson swirling in the wet. She had her first kiss before I did. She never told me so I can’t confirm for sure, but I’m certain she’s had sex, laid bright orange eggs, hid them under the fronds. I covered for her because that’s what older sisters are supposed to do. But looking at her now, through my haze of river-sickness, she looks so young. I never should’ve made her leave our parents. We should’ve stayed together, faced the Bio Hunters together. We should’ve died together, as a family.

But it’s too late. Now, the heavy line is extending up and over and my sister—the Fishy one, the more attractive one with her scales like sequins and her sex as ripe as a codfish—is bait for the humans. The humans trapped us down here for sport.

She rips wide.

Unable to speak, I pop out bubbles in alarm. A cold fear, a sickening tear, and the thick bronze hook claws open my sister’s stomach, navel to nostrils. I watch in horror, powerless against the current as she’s lugged up to the surface, thrashing her tail like a maniac. The more she convulses, the more guts she spills: her Fishy secrets revealed to the cold night of the Jungle.

In a swirl of paint, she is gone.

Confusion: like trying to remember a dream after waking. I’m close to the surface; the human world glimmers above in the daylight. Something awful happened last night, but it’s a fast thought that evaporates like a droplet, and I can’t think clearly, can’t breathe. I’m shoved into a passing shoal, bashed and whipped across the face by sharp, golden tails. The sound of constant moaning thickens the water. I open my stretched lips wide, and wider still. My gills are closing, crushing in. I yearn for my ventilation unit, abandoned somewhere on the riverbed.

I have a choice. I can stay down here and die, or make a leap for it, spring from my tail, launch myself out of the Jungle and onto dry land, and maybe also die.

From the perimeters of the Jungle, right beside the pier, I spy on the apartment. It’s a big, beautiful brownstone on Riverside Drive, a model of American living I’ve only seen in 80s movies. A father, his girlfriend and his two young daughters live there. I’ve been watching them for days, biding my time, treading water, my bubble eyes hovering just above the surface. They eat Everything bagels on Sundays and the girls play lacrosse in Central Park. This is precisely the kind of family I’ve been looking for. I’m convinced the only way to fit in here in America, to be part of a family like that, is to shrug off my identity like a raincoat of scales. To dry off. To become one of them. It tears me apart to think I’ll be abandoning my Fishiness, but I can’t focus on that. All I can think about is what I need to do to get the humans to listen to me, to help me rescue my parents. I lost my sister; I can’t lose them too.

It’s Sunday morning; they won’t be back for a few hours. I take my chances. I flop up onto the pier, the American dream apartment in plain sight. My lungs are dead and heavy, and my gills are a meaty-crimson color. I’m dreadfully sore. I try to stand up, but I have no legs and my tail feels too brittle to support my weight. The humans are shouting and screaming at me. I writhe along the side of the pier, the sidewalk and out into the road. There are children laughing, their bellies quaking. I glide, ooze my fleshy body along the tarmac, but I’m too long and too slow; I’ll never reach the building before the oxygen runs out.

Flat on the road—a fat old fillet.  Sideways, I pop open my mouth, once, twice. I look like a deflated sex doll. America is slipping away … until it isn’t.

Because it’s happening, finally happening, my once-icy scales turning a gut red, a female red, as blood cells form and coagulate, hitting my thumping veins, and breathing in life. I’m growing, taller, and taller still—taller than the Statue of Liberty, the largest woman I ever saw, rising like a green goddess from the water, the emblem for aliens everywhere—fingernails and hair follicles, long limbed, seeping with humanness, drenched in the desire to be accepted, to fit in. As if from deep inside a whale I’m sprayed up and out, ejaculated into this Fish-hating world.

I’m doing this for my parents, I think, gasping for life, determined to survive, to fit in, to save them. Transformed, I cross my legs, disguise my Fishiness, and step out onto the very human streets of New York.

 Only if You Want to Hear

Jamie Collins Kahn

By the time Parker and Kegan reached their junior year at their all-girls Catholic high school, they had already broken up twice. They couldn’t explain fully to anyone why they stopped being such close friends on a whim. This time, though, they were both sure that it would stick.

They were the only gay people that they knew in their town. Not that they ever thought to tell anybody. They couldn’t. People suspected anyway, they started rumors, called them dykes and freaks in the school hallways. If nothing else, it united the two of them. They’d always been best friends. They were the weird girls together, and they had one another’s backs.

Kegan always felt things much more than Parker, and her sensitivity was one of the things Parker loved so much about her. At the same time, it overwhelmed her. Kegan had nowhere else to go with it all. Parker became her sounding board for everything, good and bad, because not a single soul knew they had even been together. That they were ever more than a pair of strange friends. Kegan had pressed for them to come out. She thought it would be liberating, that it would help them become their best selves—what could be more exciting than radical fearlessness? Parker shut her down every time in whispers, trying not to sound frustrated as they lay in Kegan’s bed together.

It was easier for Kegan to think about that stuff. She was the only child of a single mom who, although conservative, was kind and understanding. Kegan suspected on more than one occasion that her mother might know she was a lesbian, but still it remained a silent issue. Parker, on the other hand, was the youngest of three sisters, and the only one still in high school. The only one left unmarried. Her parents were true Catholics who had sent her to this school for that very reason. Before school, they watched Fox News together every morning over nauseatingly big breakfasts that her mom cooked up. Her dad still used words like faggot, and when she mentioned in passing that she might want to cut her hair short, both of her parents reminded her every day for the rest of the week that if she did this, no boy would want to date her. They were the kind of parents that might even kick Parker out of the house if she told them she was gay.

Even knowing this, Kegan kissed Parker’s cheeks slowly and softly behind the luxury of her closed bedroom door as she begged for what felt like the millionth time for them to go to the homecoming dance together. “I don’t want to go with some random dude from the boys’ school again. It’s gross. I just want you.”

“That would open up a huge can of shit. You know it. My parents might kill me. What would I do then?” Parker heaved a sharp breath out and frowned. “Just go alone. That’s what I plan on doing.”

“If your parents hate it that much, you could stay here. My mom loves you.” Kegan gestured with the slight nod of her head to the locked bedroom door that was only allowed at her house.

“Your mom loves me because she doesn’t know I’m your girlfriend. I’m done having this conversation.” Parker felt like she was about to cry. Instead, she swallowed hard. Kegan didn’t understand the gravity of what it would be like to have your whole family hate you in an instant.

“I don’t think it’ll be as bad as you make it out to be,” Kegan said.

“That’s really easy for you to say when you’re not the one risking everything. What if my parents kick me out? What if they hate me? You’re already my only friend. Do you want me to just depend on you for everything?” Parker’s words stuck in her throat as she croaked them out. Her face was so close to Kegan’s, but the loneliness crept around her incredibly fast.

Kegan’s mom knocked on the door, asking if they wanted to come downstairs for dinner. Kegan’s mom asked them about their school day and offered a warm smile, but still the three of them ate in near silence that night. The silence stretched as Kegan reached for Parker’s hand on the way to the front door, feeling it go cold and limp in her grasp. In the dim yellow light of the front porch, Parker told Kegan that she didn’t want to be together anymore before biking home in the chilled darkness.

They didn’t speak for three months after that. Kegan went to homecoming with someone from the boys’ school. She made a few friends, and at the dance, she looked for Parker, who wasn’t there at all. All night, as she slow danced with a boy who smelled like pine and Old Spice, she wished that she could touch Parker’s hair, smell her cherry blossom conditioner, stroke the side of her blush-toned face, and pull her in close for a kiss. She tried to forget about these feelings all evening. For the next three months, she kept trying to forget.

She discovered that she liked hanging out with some of the other unpopular girls from their school. The kind of girls that got made fun of for being virgins rather than being dykes. And sometimes, she even found herself liking boys. She liked the way they looked sometimes, and she felt both fear and relief in the possibility that maybe this meant she wasn’t even a lesbian anymore. But she knew that that could only be true if she stopped loving Parker, which never happened. Kegan wasn’t sure that she wanted to be out anymore. Without Parker, everything felt so confusing. Parker made her sure of herself—sure of her longing to come out without considering what anyone else thought—but without her it hardly seemed worth it.

Parker didn’t make any new friends. She remained a loner, and in a strange way, when she saw Kegan with her new friends at school, she felt happy for her. But it was a distant sort of happy. It was somber and tinged with the slightest hint of jealousy that she could be so happy without her. Mostly, this was the result of Parker still being in love with Kegan, while at the same time she feared that Kegan had forgotten about her entirely. She went about her days reading quietly in study hall and sitting alone at the back of the school bus. Whenever she saw Kegan, she turned her head just slightly in the opposite direction so her dark hair shaded her face as she caught the end of a sentence or laugh in a conversation with her friends.

Kegan started dating Jimmy, someone from the boys’ school, right before Christmas break. It seemed that a few of the girls in her immediate circle had begun to show interest in boys, and Jimmy seemed nice enough. She feared that if she turned him down when he asked her out, people would wonder why. They would start to suspect things. So, even though she didn’t like him that much, she accepted his invitation to begin officially dating.

Parker only heard about the new relationship from her mother, who had seen Kegan’s mother at their church’s charity bake sale.

“I always thought Kegan was a good influence on you,” her mother said as she washed the brownie pans, empty from the success of the church event. “She always made good grades. And so polite.”

It was all Parker could do to keep from giggling or crying. It was one of those days where the loss felt particularly heavy, and so much of it came from the urge to laugh with Kegan about everything. The sudden, biting urge to share something, only to realize that it’s lost entirely.

By the time all of the girls returned to school in the new year, a slushy sheen of snow on the ground soaking through each and every black Mary-Jane and onto the argyle socks beneath, Kegan had already broken up with Jimmy, but Parker did not know about it yet. All Parker knew was that Kegan was late to her locker. Kegan was never late. Parker watched for Kegan a little longer than she would normally allow herself to, peering around corners on the lookout for Kegan’s sweet dimples and swinging brown ponytail, but there was no sign of her anywhere even after the bell rang. As the girls scattered like mice into their classrooms leaving the halls cold and empty, the tile floor wet from snow-slick Mary Janes, Parker walked slowly towards Kegan’s locker. The air was quiet for a moment, and just as Parker was about to give up and head to homeroom, she caught a glimpse of Kegan walking in through the side entrance of the school.

Kegan looked like hell. Her hair was frizzy and damp, and she looked pale in the face, like she’d spent all morning outside.

When Kegan saw Parker, who was clearly staring at her, her face turned surprised and determined. Kegan rushed over and quickly took Parker by the limp wrist and dragged her into the girls’ bathroom. The heavy wooden door clicked as she locked it behind them, the white glow of the bathroom lights turning Kegan an even grayer shade of pale. She motioned for Parker to check underneath the stall doors for feet, and Parker followed immediately, shaking her head to signify that they were, in fact, alone. Their heavy breaths echoed against the acoustic walls.

“Hi,” was all Parker could say. She stood a full arm’s distance from Kegan—probably more than that. Like they were strangers.

“I’m sorry, I know that you probably don’t want to hear from me right now.” Kegan looked down at her wet shoes as they squeaked on the tile. “You’re just the only person that I felt like I could come to about this. I’m glad I found you.”

“So, you dragged me into a bathroom to tell me a secret?” Parker asked.

“Only if you want to hear,” Kegan said. When Parker nodded, she continued, “I think I might be pregnant.”

Parker didn’t even know what to ask first. The only thing that she could think about was the fact that Kegan had actually slept with someone else. A boy, no less. It hurt her, even though she knew it probably shouldn’t. She was the one who dumped Kegan in the first place. “What do you want me to do about it?” Parker asked. The words came out harsh, but she didn’t correct herself.

Kegan’s eyes turned damp, but not teary as she looked up at Parker. “Well, I was wondering if you could come with me to the drugstore so that we could get a pregnancy test together. I broke up with Jimmy over winter break, but it wasn’t about this or anything. The baby’s not even his. If there is a baby.”

Parker swallowed hard, trying not to be rude in her shock. “Whose is it then?” she asked, her stomach dropping with concern. “Did somebody do something to you? Maybe we should just go to Planned Parenthood.”

“No. God, it’s nothing like that. He’s an older guy. Catherine’s brother, actually. You know, the junior student council president? But she doesn’t know. Nobody does.” Tears welled up in Kegan’s eyes.

“Jesus, okay. What should we do?” Parker asked.

“I need to get a pregnancy test.” Kegan looked at Parker with her big, dark eyes. Though she didn’t say it, the implication was obvious that she didn’t want to be alone.

“I can go with you during lunch,” Parker said.

“I can’t wait that long. I need to know now.” Kegan’s eyes bugged out a little more, looking even sadder.

“So you want to go like now now?” Parker asked, like it was an annoyance. But really, she knew she’d do anything for Kegan. “Fine.”

Kegan thanked her, and the urge rushed over both of them to hug, but neither girl so much as reached over to grab the other’s hand.

They snuck out the side emergency exit, only a few feet from the first floor bathroom. The coast was clear, and they made a break for it easy enough. The air was fresh and cold the moment they stepped out the door, cars rushing through the grey winter slush on the surrounding streets. As they waited for an opening and rushed across the street to the drugstore, soaking their shoes even more in the snow, it was almost as if they had never stopped talking all those months back. It felt natural, being together again. Schlepping through adversity. They found the pregnancy test at the drugstore almost right away, and Kegan handed it off to Parker to pay without even asking. Parker didn’t bother fighting it. She figured that Kegan was having a bad enough day already. But before going up to the register, she picked up a small bag of Swedish Fish, two packs of raspberry bubblegum, and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

The old lady at the register gave Parker a look of exhaustion through her thick-framed glasses. It was a look of having seen this too many times before.

Parker opened the bag of Doritos before they even stepped out the door of CVS. “So you’re not gay anymore?” she asked, somewhat timidly, the weight of the plastic bag suddenly heavy in her hand.

“I think I am, though,” Kegan said. “I still, you know, like girls.” Kegan’s shoulders tensed up as a flush of red rushed over her cheeks.

Parker rolled her eyes and smirked. “You slept with a guy. I’m assuming you slept with him without a condom, too. God, that’s rich.”

Kegan stopped and faced Parker straight on. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Parker shook her head. “Just that you were so gung-ho about coming out. And now, you’re just like the rest of those straight girls.” Even though she wanted to stay mad, her voice quivered the slightest bit. Parker didn’t understand why liking girls wasn’t enough for Kegan. Why liking her wasn’t enough for Kegan.

“I don’t think I am. I didn’t even like him,” Kegan said. But she did like him, not as a boyfriend, and not nearly as much as she liked Parker. She knew that she liked him at the time she decided to sleep with him at least. But she didn’t want to make things worse with Parker. “Do you want me to apologize or something?”

“No.” Parker stepped closer to her, the wind and noises from the cars whipping all around them.

“Well, what do you want?” Kegan bit the inside of her cheek and squinted in concentration, waiting for an answer.

“Let’s go inside so you can take that test.”

They entered through the emergency exit. As they ducked for the bathroom, Parker almost wondered out loud if she’d get detention for cutting, but the timing didn’t seem right for that, so she kept quiet. She held the plastic bag tight, bunched up in a wad of her fist right at its neck, before the handles. The box with the pregnancy test sat between the Swedish Fish and the raspberry bubblegum.

They closed and locked the door of the wide handicapped stall as they slowly placed their things to the ground. The plastic bag, their backpacks, lanyards with their school IDs. Those pictures of their shiny-faced freshman selves. Parker took the pregnancy test out of its small cardboard box and its plastic packaging, handing it off to Kegan by the wider end. Kegan squatted over the toilet and held the test underneath the stream as she peed. “Am I getting it?” she asked.

“I think so,” Parker said as she leaned the slightest bit down to catch the right angle.

All they had to do was wait. Just as Kegan set the test down carefully, as if she were afraid she might hurt it, onto the boxy metal toilet paper holder, the pair heard the door swing open. Kegan almost asked Parker why she didn’t lock the door to the bathroom this time, but she didn’t even get a breath out before Parker put a finger to her lips and mouthed quiet.

It was only one person, but Parker and Kegan both froze up. Even as they did this, taking short breaths and remaining still, the footsteps moved slow and steady towards the handicapped stall. The door shook once, and neither girl said anything. The owner of the footsteps bent down to check beneath the stall. Parker and Kegan saw knees hit the tile floor, then a green plaid uniform skirt. “Oh my god!” Catherine, the junior student council president screamed at the sight of two pairs of feet beneath the stall. “Are there two people in there? Who is that?”

“Nobody!” Parker said, her throat croaky and tight. Kegan’s eyes went wide as her jaw tightened.

Catherine bent down again and pointed at their school IDs. “I knew it! Parker and Kegan, lezbos. Ew, are you having sex in there? Oh my god, you’re having sex in there!” she said, and made a forced dry-heaving sound.

Kegan opened the door just slightly, enough to hide the pregnancy test still developing as it rested on the metal box. “We’re not having sex in here, I promise, we’re not.”

“Then what are you doing?” she asked, crossing her arms over her sweater vest.

Parker stepped closely behind Kegan, though careful not to get too close. “That’s not any of your business,” Parker said with a scowl as she exited the stall. The two girls stood in front of the door, afraid their classmate would charge past them and find the test. What was worse? Being gay, or getting knocked up?

“That means you’re having sex in here. That’s against the school handbook, and it’s disgusting. I think I have to tell the principal. Or Sister Brigit.” Catherine pursed her lips.

“Please don’t.” Kegan thought of the unrelenting nun with her deep frown lines, who would surely give them detention. “Parker was feeling sick and I came in here to stay with her. But she doesn’t want to miss chem later so she wouldn’t go to the nurse. You won’t tell the nurse, will you?”

Catherine glared at them with beady eyes, like she was ready to jump over and bite one of them, but she only chuckled and said, “Alright, just a couple of damn nerds, then.” She turned to walk out and let the heavy bathroom door slam behind her.

Parker ran to lock the door at the first sign of clearance, and they both sighed in relief, only to tense up again at the realization that the test had to be ready by then. They moved slowly towards the stall door, Kegan leaving room for Parker to go ahead of her. She didn’t want to say she was scared, but it was clear that she was. She wanted to close her eyes, ignore the missed period and the cold sweats. But all she could do was ask, “What does it say?”

Parker took the fat side of the pregnancy test in her hand and looked down. One thick purple line as clear as day. “Not pregnant,” Parker said, holding the test out to Kegan. “You should throw this out in the dumpster behind Shoprite. The one on the way home from school. Don’t want anybody finding it.” She picked up her backpack and turned around to leave.

“So that’s it?” Kegan leaned towards Parker with just the slightest hint of desperation.

Parker stiffened. “What else do you need me for?”

“I don’t know. A lot of stuff.” Kegan looked down at the test in her hand. “Do you miss me at all? You know I miss you.”

Parker turned to face Kegan. “You’re a straight girl now. You don’t miss me.”

Kegan shrugged. “Sleeping with one boy doesn’t make me straight,” she said, a little too loudly.

Parker was afraid for a moment that someone might hear her, and this made her feel the slightest bit guilty. Parker dropped her backpack onto the harsh, dirty tile and took a step towards Kegan. “Okay, so what. Do you want to get back together?” Her voice softened.

“I don’t think so, actually,” Kegan said. She searched Parker’s face, her expression an amalgamation of anger, sadness, and confusion.

Parker’s eyes glistened.

Kegan thought she saw a tear, but Parker wiped her eye with her sleeve too soon to tell. She picked up her backpack again and walked out, letting the heavy door slam behind her.

Alone in the bathroom, Kegan realized that she meant exactly what she said. She still loved Parker. But they weren’t good together. Maybe that made her a bad lesbian, or a straight girl. She didn’t know. But she didn’t want to keep feeling sorry about it.

Kegan finally picked up the pregnancy test for the first time since peeing on it. No baby. Just like it all should be. She wrapped the plastic wand in toilet paper and stuffed it into the deepest pocket of her school bag. She would throw it in the dumpster after school, the one that Parker told her to. On the floor of the stall, the plastic CVS bag sat intact. She wasn’t sure if Parker had left it for her, or if she had just forgotten it. Part of her wanted to leave it there, but instead, she sat down on the floor of the stall, tiles cold as they pressed against her legs.

She opened the bag—tore at the plastic with a vengeful second wind—to find the raspberry bubblegum. Pink packaging, paper dry and soft in her hands as she opened it, stuffing piece after piece in her mouth. She wanted to cry, and she could. Nobody was there to tell her not to feel things. But instead, she just kept chewing, the candy far too stiff, but still sweet.