The Stories

One of the joys of ORP is the extent to which it is international — in contributors, with almost a fifth of this issue made up of writers from outside the US; readership; and staff, myself the only American in the editorial voices on this page. It’s a widened perspective that’s especially welcome as the arts are defunded at home. Part political fireworks, part punishment, the move is completely maddening in its shortsighted self-injury. And yet, another season of submissions has only deepened my sense of how innate the desire to create is. This is what I hope you see in the stories below; that, despite attempts to divide, we are united by this drive toward artful communication, across time and place and circumstance.

— Carolyn Wilson-Scott
Fiction Editor

I've always wondered at the human mind’s capacity to react to reality in myriad, often surprising ways. I found that the stories in this issue beautifully explore this intricate dance between what we perceive and what is real. Driven by the relentless yearning to find meaning, the characters in these pieces look for ways to create a reality from their consciousness, often filling in gaps when reality doesn't make sense. We see how different characters perceive the same reality in different ways, and how someone’s entire reality can sometimes be forged from their imagination and desires. Storytelling, especially within this issue, acts as a magical force. The stories presented here are, in essence, a collective act of creation, a testament to writing as a place where different realities meet in a single consciousness, or indeed, where different consciousnesses come together to constitute a new reality altogether.

— Passant Eltarek
Fiction Editorial Intern

Lao Tzu (Chinese philosopher and author of the Tao Te Ching) said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” This is one of my favourite quotes because it is relevant to many situations and rings true especially for a writer. That first word, which soon blossoms into a story, is the basis of every writer’s work. Emerging writers probably feel the importance of this ‘first word’ more acutely. It might be their first word of thousands more, or the first story of a line of future accomplishments. I am grateful they have chosen to take their journey with ORP. This year’s work is varied in theme, but they all speak to the courage of putting words on a blank page and filling it with wonder and imagination. I am, as always, in awe of this and am thankful to be a passenger in their journey.

— Michelle Tanmizi
Editor, Emerging Voices in Fiction

One of my greatest joys is to delve deep into the heart of a writer’s story. The imagination and truths, surroundings and marvels, strengths and wonderful innovations that take readers into worlds beyond their own imaginings. This year’s submissions sent us into a wild sea of creativity with islands of gems. It was a hard task picking the best for this issue’s Emerging Voices Fiction category. It was both delightful to receive so much potential, but heartbreaking to let so many pass our shores. We hope that the stories we have chosen bring joy and wonder to our fellow readers.

— Alaa El Fadel
Reader, Emerging Voices in Fiction

Black Sky, Blue earth

Jaime gill

One moment, Earth is dead — a vast, aching absence fringed by coldly glittering stars. The next, it is resurrected — sunlight rolling across the clouds and continents in a red-gold wave.

I look for anything new down there, a reason to hope, but the land’s bleak contours remain unchanged and the cloud cover is as grim and ungiving as before. Nothing dangles the prospect of recovery or a safe homecoming.

for the love of magdalene

Edidiong U. Essien

Every part of me wants an impossible thing. Magdalene the sensitive. Magdalene the elusive. She is nothing like us ordinary mortals, not a clay figurine inflated with lifegiving air. Doesn’t share our useless imperfections. Envy, indolence, acrimony. No, Magda is something else entirely. A pearl amongst swine will always stand out, won’t it?

tommy Rock

David serafino

We do our drugs as a team, bandmates at my back because I'm Bobby Rock and everybody knows it except this punk taita. Punk taita got a dirty eye. I say keep putting that eyeball on me I'll stick it in my pocket. Taita says I got bad juju because he don't know I am juju.

easily obtainable self destruction

oliver rosen

Shifting, I try to manufacture a cooler stance, something unclenched. My smile pulls to attention, stretched sideways across my face in a way I hope is charming but is just as likely to be creepy or cringy or any swirling combination in an endless list of terrible things. Yet, by some miracle, I am searched in the awesome fire of his gaze and found worthy, rewritten in gold with a casual “so fucking good to see you, man,” and a firm pat on the back. In his presence, I forget that I’m not very funny, that I’m freckled and kind of stretched looking in a way that Becky, my roommate’s hot girlfriend, once described as “slenderman-esque.”

terminal

lucy zhang

Grandma hates cats. She’s on her ninth life and has spit in death’s face eight times. Five of those times, death ignored the glob of saliva and tried to hold her back from returning. She thinks cats are too tricky. Always skirting death instead of facing it head-on and winning. A deceptive, selfish species that’ll amount to nothing even with all nine lives, Grandma swears.

The North Side of The Chain Bridge

Anita Harag

Translated by Walter Burgess and Marietta Morry

I don’t dare take his hand. My palms sweat. They sweat when I’m nervous. This time I’m nervous because I have to take his hand and my palms sweat. Whenever I held my mother's, my father's, or a friend’s hand they sweated even more.

re: the wedding

Hunter Hague

Nancy,

I hate to email you again, but Teddy and I are feeling pretty low right now TBH. We just got a message from Violet's wedding website, and apparently I've been uninvited to the wedding. Is it a scam?

Body language

charlie watts

When the explosion happens, so close that Jeremy cannot give it a location, he thinks maybe he had known, in advance, that it was going to happen. This is because the thunderclap that replaces, for a long two-count, every other sight, sound, and smell in the restaurant with a flat-handed punch to his ears, is not even scary. Or painful. In fact, Jeremey feels bodily relief. His muscles activate, fixing him against all the movement around him. Glasses and dishes break. People leap in crazy ways out of their chairs. Messes explode everywhere. There is no plan.

intruder

shayna brown

My favorite photo is here, a portrait of the three of us together on the stoop of Granny’s shack. I can’t tell if it was happiness or sunshine illuminating our smiles. Because of Granny, we got to be kids. We never knew our dad, and Mom was lost to a cunning and baffling disease – too lost to be present for us, popping up only in between rehabs and binges.

the punchline

caleb sarvis

You say, What did Death do?

Death did three things. It wiped my memory of before, though it preserved my sense of self. It dropped me off in front of a set of swinging doors that read SAL and OON respectively. It dressed me in a tailored suit, three pieces, a raven’s sort of black that might’ve been purple if you were desperate enough.

kayayo

etornam agbodo

I had wept the whole day. Tanko was older than my father. My father was a man of sixty-two and called Tanko elder brother not because Tanko was richer. He was tall and missing his upper front row of teeth. Apart from festive occasions, he had always worn the long brown djalabia I knew him for. So much so that when you mention Tanko, the long brown flowing dress came to mind. I would do anything to keep Tanko’s hands off me.

slough

Christopher Lee Chilton

It was an old Crown Vic that stopped for me, the kind they used to make into police cars. I thought it might be an undercover cop car at first, and the three men inside — large men with sack-like jowls — might be cops. They turned out to be insurance adjusters on their way to a conference in Daytona Beach.

On the High-Guide-Path of the Wind-Riders

Gary Devore

Critter’s first memory was being carried as a boy. His head turned, dozing, face-skin pressed against the back of his mother-brother. He must have been in a hide-sling because his sleeping boy-arms would not have been able to keep a grip for the whole low-path across the grass-plains. Critter remembered security. He remembered calm. To not walk was a comfort only for the youngest.

When an older Critter finally asked the others in the clan what happened to his mother and father, he got many answers. Most were lies.

dirty water

joshua patterson

Dad’s face and clothes were covered in dirt and dust. On his right knee was a bottle of what Momma called “Dirty Water.” He drank the dirty water all day long, only stopping to eat or open another bottle. He got mean when he drank it a lot, probably because dirty water didn’t taste very good, but Momma said it made him feel better.

the snake

loria harris

In the beginning, She took off Her clothes. She laid down into the cold and quiet of empty space, into the vacuum that burned Her skin and stole Her heat. She laid round, encircled Herself, and became the globe. From Her crevices, hair flowed into trees, grasses, into the bushes, the thistles and thorns. And from Her tears rivers streamed, oceans sprouted from inside of Her, broke the surface, and overtook most of Her body. Her breath evaporated into mist, and an atmosphere accumulated all around Her, protecting Her, warming Her. This felt right.

Planting the seeds of your own destruction

haley basil

You are planting the seeds of your own destruction. You know this. There is only one option when you are dating a man seven years older than you.

And he is the first man you’ve ever dated.

And you are queer.

Playing on

stephen j. bush

You’re taking Imogen Giles who, despite the oncoming later decades of your relationship (a regretted peccadillo, debt, habituation, and illness), you’ll love always your life long, on a date — but it’s not a date-date yet, dinner and a show, but an impromptu and unstructured exposure of your heart. Perhaps you should be more anxious, but you’re not.

A horse made of smoke

JJ Amaworo Wilson

Matilda be my name, though some call me Tilly. Others call me Matty. Others Tilda. It don’t matter what folk calls me. I’s one hunnerd an’ twenty year old. By the time you git that old, nothin’ matter much.

I done buried four chillen. When they come from my womb they was made o’ the Lord’s clay an’ I done lef’ ‘em in clay, so they’s home. One were only a toddler. He the one I regret. He never did have no chance.

kept voices

Sage Tyrtle

Teacher Ducasse is separating ten eggs for the consommé, and the classroom smells like my feet after I run track. He says that if even a tiny speck of yolk gets into the whites you have to start again. I wonder if that's what it's like to live in a house? If sometimes the Wife is still cooking at three o'clock in the morning because she keeps getting yolk in the whites? I can't wait for next year, eighth graders get to do Indonesian Cuisine.

whistle

Franz Jørgen Neumann

I don’t tell Daniel that he was here before, as a baby. I don’t tell him of the life I thought was ahead for the three of us. How would telling Daniel more things about his late mother — about a life he doesn’t even remember — help him feel anything but an undercurrent of loss? Instead, I gather flat stones and hand him the best ones.

Steam

Beth sherman

When we were little, my brother and I used to jump out the window into the snow. First, we’d catch our breath in our hands. It looked like steam or some special effect from a movie we’d never watch. The cold grabbed hold of us and tore at our skin. Some people say Maine’s pretty. That’s because they don’t live here. There’s nothing to look at, just mountains and pine trees and potato fields and more mountains. But I had my brother and that was enough.  

bloodstream

Dafydd McVeigh

Diego was dating an older guy who had a car and everything. I rode in the back like a kid, the two of them up front like my parents. Diego had ostensible control of the music, but Brett — the older guy, Brett — kept asking him to queue up songs. I held an iced coffee in one hand, and passed it to the other whenever it got too cold. Each time the rattling ice gave my restlessness away, I feared that Brett might judge me because of it.

Black Sky, Blue Earth

Jaime Gill 

One moment, Earth is dead — a vast, aching absence fringed by coldly glittering stars. The next, it is resurrected — sunlight rolling across the clouds and continents in a red-gold wave.

I look for anything new down there, a reason to hope, but the land’s bleak contours remain unchanged and the cloud cover is as grim and ungiving as before. Nothing dangles the prospect of recovery or a safe homecoming.

The first time we saw a sunrise from space, only a few hours into our journey to Mars, you called it a miracle. Though the scientist in me flinched from the M-word, I didn’t have a better one. But this is almost the 13,000th sunrise since we returned to Earth and Hanuman locked into this orbit. Repetition makes even miracles mundane.

On Earth, it would take thirty-five years to see so many sunrises. Here, 1,200 miles above its surface, it’s taken less than three.

My sense of time is unraveling. Nothing so exotic as time dilation, a negligible factor at this orbit and velocity. It’s much more humdrum — something countless prisoners in solitary confinement have experienced before me. Alone, inactive, and unmoored from circadian rhythms, my mind is crumbling. My past and present are collapsing into each other.

Breaking free from Earth’s atmosphere was more violent than the simulations had prepared me for. I feared my teeth would splinter from the shaking, and when gravity released its grip, I felt it in my ears — like breaking surface after a long dive.

Still strapped in, we watched Earth shrink through the observation window, from endless expanse to beach ball. It looked so calm and kind from a distance. It was difficult to believe that beneath those shreds of cloud superstorms raged, or that the crinkled khaki land was wracked by floods and wildfires. It didn’t look like a planet lurching into catastrophe.

“Yuri Gagarin was the first person to see this,” I said. We didn’t know each other well yet, or you’d have punched my arm and told me not to patronise you. “He said ‘the sky is very black, the Earth is very blue.’”

“‘Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do,’” you replied, eyes still fixed on the world we’d left behind.

“Gagarin said that?”

“No, you heathen,” you laughed. “David Bowie did.”

My stomach hurts. I try to return my attention to the show I‘m watching — Seinfeld, an ancient comedy you loved — but pain ripples up from the bottom of my stomach, like an acid wave. It’s been nearly thirty-six hours since I last ate. That’s the longest I’ve gone yet, and my body is making sure I know it.

Back in those rushed final weeks of training before we left Earth, we were instructed to maintain a strict regimen of daily physical exercises for the entirety of our mission, an attempt to ward off the worst consequences of years with little to no gravity. I was more diligent about the workouts than you, until the time came when we faced bigger problems than loss of muscle and bone density. Activity became our enemy. It was harder to eliminate physical movement than I would have thought, but over the years I’ve turned it into an art form. Still Life Of Astronaut.

I wish you were here to tell me how bad that joke was.

Of course, mastery of mind over matter can only do so much when it's the brain that’s the real gas guzzler. Less than a fiftieth of our body weight, but it sucks up a fifth of our calories.

I try not to think too deeply, though that’s not about energy conservation. Thinking deeply hurts. Especially now, knowing what I have to do.

The show is confusing. My brain is slowing down, an emergency response to lack of nutrients. My thoughts are fuzzy and drift away from the now and into the then.

You laughed a lot. I was sensitive to laughter — a legacy of schoolyard bullying — so it took time to understand you weren’t laughing at me, or that, when you were, it wasn’t out of cruelty. All my life, people had said I was too serious and lived too much inside my head, but you were the first person who wouldn’t let me.

"It's ten months until we reach Mars and I'm not doing it in silence,” you said, when I told you I wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Then you lowered your voice. “I have ways of making you talk.”

I must have looked confused or alarmed because you sighed and explained the joke to me.

You filled our days with music and movies, things I’d spared little time for before. As long as I could remember, I’d thought the one true purpose of life was learning. I wanted to understand how the universe worked, the secret mechanics of it all. Surface details — jokes, songs, people — felt trivial in comparison, a waste of time.

“Why do you need there to be a true purpose to life?” you said, when I tried to explain this to you over a meal of tofu and spaghetti. “You just have to live it. And not finding any time for fun, that’s a waste too.”

If we’d been on Earth, you’d have been the one with your feet on the ground, and me the one with my head in the clouds. In space, neither metaphor worked. But, somehow, we did. NASA had run personality tests and psychological assessments before pairing us, but I still didn’t expect to find anyone so easy to be around. I hadn’t before, after all.

You were my first real friend, though I never dared tell you that.

The cabin is dimming around me. I don’t look down. I try not to watch the sunsets anymore. They feel like death.

A gentle buzz tells me it’s time to approve Hanuman’s regular systems check. Seinfeld dissolves and an array of numbers and summaries roll across the screen. I scan through the figures, mentally breaking them into three categories.

Reassuring: structural integrity, energy stores, orbit stability, oxygen converter functionality.

Not reassuring: water recycling integrity, radiation levels.

Doom: food stocks.

I tap to approve the report then return to New York in the 1990s. I try not to think about how every actor in this show, even the babies that sometimes appear, are surely long dead.

I could talk to Hanuman if I wanted to. I did for a while after you left, desperate to fill the empty space and time you had left behind.

First, I did what the old me would have done and tried to continue my studies. Hanuman’s scientific knowledge obviously outstripped my own, so I wrestled with some of the more arcane branches of chemistry, but my advances didn’t bring me the satisfaction they once would have. Next, I tried to get the ship to feed me new enthusiasms like you once did, but when it recommended movies or songs it didn’t have sea-blue eyes that lit up or a voice that slipped into squeaky excitement.

I eventually understood that Hanuman’s cool conversation didn’t distract me from the fact you’d left — it made the pain of your absence sharper and harder. I disabled the voice interface. Now I stay silent as a Quaker in prayer. I even laugh silently, on the rare occasions I do. Perhaps that can’t be called a laugh. This life of mine needs new words.

The journey to Mars was surprisingly noisy. It wasn’t just the music you played constantly, there were also video messages. In your daily reports to ground control, you used the same word in almost every one: uneventful. For me, those were the most eventful months of my life.

You messaged your wife, your brother, friends from college days or NASA. Once you were talking to some college friend and pointed at me in the background, saying, “That’s William, the guy keeping me sane.” I felt as proud as I had of any of my academic achievements or promotions.

I tried not to listen to the messages you received in return. They were full of jokes I didn’t get, reminders of the kind of life I’d never lived. You didn’t have kids — despite Government incentives that amounted to lavish bribery, few people wanted to bring kids into a world with a looming expiry date — but you had a dog which barked during your wife’s messages, as if it knew they were being sent to you. I didn’t fully understand my feelings, but I knew they were uncomfortable, and so — when the comms unit buzzed to let us know a new message had arrived — I put in headphones.

You offered me the same privacy when I left messages for my mother and she replied, once a week like clockwork. I was glad you didn’t hear us talking. I knew how stiff and formal you’d find us. I did, too, now I knew better.

There was never anything formal about you.

Before I met you, I’d heard NASA rumours of your achievements. Your courage had been credited with saving the lives of everyone on the International Space Station during the 2043 Kessler incident. That was back when the nations of the world were still co-operating enough to call the Station International.

Your reputation was such that I was anxious the night before we were to meet. I had conjured an image of some hypermasculine man of action — bold, brusque and brash. I half expected you to turn up, look into my eyes, and laugh mockingly before telling me — or, worse, everyone around us — that I wasn’t the right man for the job.

My nightmare almost came true. You did laugh when you saw me. “Is there even going to be room for you on the ship?” you said, grabbing my hand, clenching it once, then letting go. You took a step back and looked me up and down. I was also surprised at how much taller I was than you. A year ago I’d also been skinny, but NASA training had bulked me up. “Guess I’m not going to be challenging you to any arm wrestling matches.”

You did, actually, made me work out a pulley and cord system to make zero gravity arm wrestling work. I won.

On Seinfeld, George is eating a sandwich in bed, and whatever hold my mind had over my body breaks. A hunger pang strikes so hard I wince. I think of that horror movie you made me watch where tiny aliens burst out of human bodies and grew gargantuan within hours. I quibbled with the film on the grounds of physics, biology and chemistry — in that order. You rolled your eyes and told me science wasn’t always my best friend.

I try to regain control over myself and return my attention to the show, but then another stab of hunger hits, harder than the first. A thin moan slips through my lips. It’s the closest I’ve come to hearing my voice in a long while. It’s a terrible sound.

I can’t hold on much longer.

Things got eventful when we reached Mars. As we approached, Hanuman analysed the atmosphere and reported unusually fierce dust storms. I worked with the vessel to recalculate our entry trajectory, but the safest option was to wait in orbit for the storm to abate.

“How long?” you asked, brow furrowed.

“Impossible to say with any confidence.”

“Then say it without any confidence.”

“Probably a week, could be more.”

You said we needed to press ahead. The climate situation at home was too unpredictable to risk even the smallest delay. I tried to explain that your logic was false, and that the greater gamble would be to endanger the whole mission by landing recklessly.

You lost your temper with me for the first and only time, raising your voice. “You aren’t the only one who understands how risk works, you know.”

In fact, your assessment of the situation would turn out to be right, though it would take time to understand that and neither of us ever acknowledged it.

Our entry to Mars was turbulent, and did cause external damage to Hanuman’s shielding, but it was superficial. We tried to file a report to Earth, but the dust storm above made transmission impossible. Hanuman said we’d have to wait until we left orbit again before communications could be restored. If you were angry or upset, you didn’t show it. We had work to do, and you were the type of person who could cope with problems if there was something practical you could do to fix them. You adjusted our schedule so we could work harder and leave sooner.

We spent less than three weeks on Mars, just long enough for us to plant deep-drill rigs assessing the ice deposits that would be essential for the planned emergency colonization drive. Earlier attempts to send robots for the task had been stymied by the unpredictability of the Martian terrain. Human improvisation was the only solution, and so NASA had paired the two of us.

I think it was the second day when you sang “Life On Mars?” over our comms units as we worked. I squinted through the red dust and saw you at the far end of a ravine, waving from your drill unit. I waved back and joined in singing — I knew Bowie by then. Your voice cracked on the last note and I tried to hold it, showing off, until my suit struggled to feed me enough oxygen and I almost hyperventilated.

“Some scientist you are,” you cackled.

We could have spent longer on Mars if we had wanted to, explored a little. Hanuman had been overstocked with supplies to allow for unforeseen complications or delays. But we didn’t want to linger. A few weeks earlier, we’d been excited to walk on another planet after almost a year toiling through dead space, but Mars was dead too, for all its barren beauty. The further we got from Earth, the more I understood beauty, and the more I understood beauty the more I understood it was meaningless without life.

You’d known this all along, of course.

And you wanted to go home. You had a life to return to. A wife to return to.

As we prepared to leave, I could sense your mood lifting. Mine began to sink, though I tried to hide it. Our return journey would take months longer than the first, with the two planet’s orbital positions diverged. I wished the delay was longer.

Your good mood lasted until we got out of the Martian atmosphere. That was when we discovered that our comms wouldn’t reboot. Hanuman said there may have been more ionic damage than it had initially assessed when we entered the Martian atmosphere. The sensors were impaired and self-repair was beyond its capacities. We could land again for manual repairs, but that risked greater damage, and possible mission failure.

You lost your temper again, but this time with Hanuman and, even more, yourself.

For a week, you barely talked. I remembered what you’d told your friend, that it was me who kept you sane. I forced you to watch films with me, to listen to music like you once made me. I told you embarrassing school memories, things I could now see were funny, but never could have before.

I finally made you laugh by telling you the time I read a book at the school disco, eyes straining under the flashing lights, not understanding this was considered abnormal. When I realised you were laughing, really laughing and not just being polite, I had to turn away. I was about to cry and ruin the moment.

After that, the journey was easier. There were still movies to watch and music to listen to. There were still stories to tell each other about who we were and how we’d ended up inside this great chunk of metal, hurtling homewards through dead, empty space.

I wasn’t quite as happy on the return trip as I had been before, mostly because you weren’t as happy. You drifted sometimes into long silences that I struggled to pull you out of. I knew you were worried your wife would have assumed the worst after months without communications. I knew you worried about a lot of things. But though I knew your mind was often elsewhere, having half of you with me was better than having none of you.

I pause Seinfeld and unstrap, before carefully pulling myself up to reach the centrifuge control panel. I activate it, then sit to acclimatise to the subtle thrum of artificial gravity.

I barely even notice the show until the credits roll. My brain wandered somewhere else. I switch the screen off and catch my reflection in the screen’s empty blackness. I look like my grandfather in his last days, all flesh and fat sucked out of me, leaving waxy skin draped over a skeleton.

My muscles are so atrophied that my calves ache when I stand, even in this feeble gravity. I maneuver through the living quarters with painstaking care, grabbing onto the handrails to steady myself.

The only time you ever hugged me was when we saw Earth again.

We had the centrifuge on full power, now confident we had enough energy to get home. It was good to stand in close-to-normal gravity for the first time in almost two years. It was like a little appetiser of normality, before we got the main course back on Earth.

I tried to feel as happy about our return as you. We would stay friends, you had said.

It wouldn’t be the same, but it would be something.

For days we’d stared at the dot we knew was our destination, but it was too far away to feel familiar, and the sun’s glare too harsh to see through clearly.

And then, finally, we were close enough that Hanuman’s shielding blocked the sun and we could see it in all its vivid beauty. Colour in monochrome. A single blue flower blooming in a barren field. Home.

You turned to me with a huge grin, arms held out, and pulled me into you. I hadn’t hugged anyone since I was a child, and held on just a little too long. The heat of you, even through our uniforms, surprised me.

You stepped away and I let go. You gave me a big smile, but I thought I glimpsed a strange sadness. Perhaps it was just kindness.

“We should celebrate,” I said, turning and hurrying towards the logistics quadrant. You’d brought wine to celebrate the return home — champagne would have exploded with all the pressure fluctuations. While I searched for cups, my thoughts churned. I wanted to thank you for all you had done for me while I had the chance. You wouldn’t laugh, I knew that, and even if you did it wouldn’t be cruel.

I’ll never know if I would have had the guts. When I returned, all joy had drained from your face.

“What?”

“The land,” you said in a flat voice. “Something’s wrong.”

I put the wine down and stepped beside you, not too close, and looked at Earth. We were close enough to see an enormous and oddly textureless grey-blue cloud knotted north of the equator, spreading hazy tendrils across America. The US was barely visible, but enough to see its contours had been savaged. There was too much sea. Florida had dissolved, and with it our base.

I squinted at the globe’s shadowy edges, looking for the ice cap gleam. Nothing.

Planet Earth was blue and there was nothing we could do.

You mastered your shock quickly, commanding Hanuman to slow the approach and start scanning the atmosphere. Hanuman reported that it could detect no broadcasts, but there was something unusual — radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere. Vast quantities, elevated by a factor of thirty.

“Nukes,” you whispered.

Right here right now, I’m facing a smaller problem. A forgotten code.

I made it across the twenty metres of the living quarters, lungs struggling like I was mid-marathon, but there’s a five-digit code to get into the logistics quadrant. There’s a hole in my mind where it should be, like the hole in your gum when a tooth is pulled.

My brain really is crumbling.

I could ask Hanuman to open the door but I haven’t spoken in a year. I don’t want my first words in so long to be to a machine. I stand, stricken, until some veil parts and I almost laugh.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

When you set it, you were so pleased with yourself. I said it wasn’t a very secure code, and you said we weren’t going to get burgled in space. But we both knew what the codes were really for. You (and only you) could override them if something went wrong between us and you needed to contain me. Though our emotional stability and behavioural compatibility had been assessed, there had to be safeguards on a mission with so many variables.

You didn’t need them. You never needed to be protected from me.

I tap the numbers and the door slides open. I shiver — it’s even cooler here than in the living quarters, and I don’t have any fat left insulating me.

Holding the rails, I pull myself past the dry food store I emptied two days ago, then past the oxygen converters and water recyclers. I can hear the recyclers’ distress now I’m near, their filter systems’ thin whine. Doesn’t matter now.

When I reach the freezer unit, I have to rest. I take a deep, shuddering breath and try to summon whatever strength is left, but my body is mutinous. It doesn’t want to move and I know it’s not just fatigue.

I slump against the freezer door, sharp cold against my back.

My brain joins the mutiny, pushing me into a past I don’t want to remember.

After the nukes, you changed, and this time I couldn’t bring the old you back. After a few hours of rage, and tears that frightened me more, you regained control. But you were never again the same person I’d spent two years beside. You became drily practical, like the tough, hard-edged NASA legend I’d once expected you to be.

We spent days searching for ways to get to Earth safely, but all amounted to suicide. Without ground control to guide us, and with Hanuman’s navigation systems inoperable in the Earth’s current atmospheric radiation levels, safe landing would be impossible. Fuel levels were too low to take us anywhere else, not that there was anywhere to go. Our only option was to orbit and wait, hoping the radiation would drop or “some miracle” — my words — intervened.

You agreed, at last, body slumping in defeat.

Hanuman recommended locking into a high orbit, one requiring less fuel for orbital anti-gravity corrections. It calculated that with strict rationing, no use of centrifuge, and reduced heating, we could survive for five years.

“Out of the question,” you said. “Wouldn’t that place us out of the range of short-wave radio communications?”

“But there aren’t any—”

You cut me off. “There might be, and I’m not going to miss them sitting out in space while we starve and freeze. Also, we’ll be able to observe more clearly if we’re nearer.”

“Yes, that’s true.” But I guessed the real reason behind these rationalisations. You just wanted to be as close to Earth as you could. To your wife, if she was still there. We might be trapped in space’s dead emptiness, but at least we could look at life. There had to be people still alive down there.

I worked with Hanuman on the most fuel-efficient compromise, identifying a narrow zone between low and medium orbit. We stilled all centrifugal activities and lowered the temperature to 14 degrees Celsius.

And we waited. And watched.

When Earth was sunlit below us, it was nightmarish. Vast clouds wrapped around most of the planet, the legacy of whatever nuclear catastrophe had unfolded. When they parted, we named the countries we could see for sure had been swallowed by the sea. Bangladesh. The Netherlands. Vietnam.

Night-time was worse. With the cities now dark, Earth looked dead. Dead as space, dead as Mars. Sometimes it felt like we were the only living things in a dead universe.

You said your wife was smart, she’d have left Florida before the sea took it. She’d have gone inland or to her mother in Seoul.

Hanuman gathered data, confirming what I’d already worked out as the likeliest explanation. While we were absent, the climate catastrophe had entered the predicted doom loop, a decade earlier than even the most pessimistic models had predicted. Global warming had accelerated, thawing the methane-saturated permafrost, leading to further temperature acceleration, ice caps melting — and so on. Total climate collapse. The sea, tens of meters swollen, had mauled the land. The catastrophe had probably begun while we were still travelling to Mars. NASA would have censored any messages saying so. Too demoralising.

When the Earth was sunlit and the clouds parted, we could sometimes see cratered cities with our naked eyes. Our best guess was that total war had broken out over the possession of still-habitable land, places with life-tolerating temperatures and clean water sources. Siberia and Tibet, possibly.

Humanity had tried to act against climate change — we had been that act — but far too little and far too late. Now, we could only witness.

Hanuman couldn’t calculate the odds of civilizational survival, so we looked for signs with our own eyes.

None.

Instead, Indonesia disintegrated. China’s coast was devoured slowly. The continents continued to be whittled away, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes in shocking surges. When the sunrise came that revealed a blue and white hole where Seoul had been, I said your wife would have already moved inland.

“She probably died before we left Mars,” you said, in a flat, dead voice.

We’d surely both known that for a long time, but you’d never said it out loud. I wanted to take your arm, but you weren’t looking at me and I was afraid to.

We fell into silence after that, and I don’t remember us talking again. We probably did, but I don’t remember a single conversation. I fell into old habits and thought about science a lot. You were right. It hadn’t been a friend.

With our days and nights splintered, we slept fitfully. Life took on the dislocated, stifling quality of a nightmare. You cried in your sleep and I didn’t know what to do so I pretended not to notice.

One day I woke, but you did not.

Enough. I get back to my feet slowly, like a man three times my age, and turn to the freezer unit. I tap it open, clouds of icy air billowing out as if to greet me.

When the clouds have cleared I can see the body is where I left it, propped up against the wall in a grotesque, stiff-legged sitting position.

I step into the cold and force myself to look. The skin, once so pink and full of life, has a silvery and smooth quality. It reminds me of a Roman statue, remote and cold. Those statues were painted once, though it’s impossible to imagine now. I wish it were impossible to imagine this body was once alive. That would make everything easier.

But I am a scientist. This body is not you. You are gone. This form you have left behind is a substantial source of preserved meat. It is survival.

And yet I’m afraid to look into the eyes. Instead, I inspect the wrist. Red wounds have now frozen into tiny black canyons.

They are so transformed, so alien, that I find the courage to look at the eyes.

Ice crystals have formed across them, like that cloud across Earth, but I glimpse sea-blue in the gaps.

I am not looking into those eyes for an explanation. You left me a note, written on paper with a pen. The note said you were sorry but you didn’t want to go home anymore. You said that with one less person on board, the food supplies would last longer and give me a chance.

The last paragraph was written in large letters, as if you were afraid of illegibility.

I am counting on you to be your rational self, if it comes to it. The data from Mars could still be of value to survivors when you get to Earth. Do what you have to do to stay alive and get home.

Remember the Andes. You promised. Your friend, Aaron.

With love.

Remember the Andes. That show about the plane crash survivors who ate their dead. We joked while we watched, debating whether we’d eat each other if we had to.

“Certainly,” I said. “Survival is survival. I might not wait for you to be dead if I was very hungry.”

You laughed. “Trust me, if I was alive, you’d be the dinner.” You prodded my chest. I was still muscular then, still keeping up my exercise routine. “God, you’d keep me alive for months.”

I pointed at your stomach, just a little flabbier than mine. “You know, fat is underrated as an energy source. Our bodies process fat faster than protein.”

“Process this,” you said, middle finger raised.

Those jokes don’t seem funny anymore.

I lean closer — frozen eyes reflect my movement. I was probably meant to close them when I found you dead. I can’t remember why I didn’t.

All of my memories of that time feel jagged and incomplete, like a smashed mirror. I only have pieces that don’t quite fit. Did I carry you to the freezer unit the same day? Or did I wait a little longer than I should have? I didn’t want to touch you, I remember that. After feeling the heat of you that time we hugged, I couldn’t bear the idea of feeling it gone.

At some point, I must have moved your body, obviously. It couldn’t have been long. Not long enough for there to be a smell. I’d remember that.

I think I lost my mind for a little while. I didn’t do anything wild. There was no tearing out my hair or screaming. But my mind… it just wasn’t really there.

I knew there was a possibility there were no humans left on Earth. It was unlikely — humans are a wily and numerous species, and some would surely have survived even the most catastrophic of nuclear wars and cruellest of temperatures — but not impossible. And if that were true, I was the last human alive. That wasn’t a thought I could keep in my head for long.

I must have kept functioning at some level. I checked the logs later and found that I had dutifully approved all daily systems checks. But what I did in between those checks… lost to me.

Eventually I returned to some sort of bleak normality. I tried and failed to make Hanuman my friend, then settled into my routine of watching the Earth’s death and rebirth, again and again and again. I cut my rations to bare minimum, enough to sustain me as long as possible. But the day was always coming when there would be no more.

I know what you would want me to do. I’d know even if you hadn’t left the note. You were, ultimately, a practical man. You’d tell me that if I don’t do what has to be done, there was no point in anything we’d done.

But I’m not just a scientist. You made me more than that and when I look at your face, even though it is silvered and lifeless as marble, it is still your face.

I squat opposite you. I don’t know why it seems important to look you in the eyes now, when you can’t look back.

“I wanted to say thank you.” My voice is a rusty ruin. “You did so much for me and I should have told you. But I can’t do what you asked. I’m taking us both home.”

Yuri Gagarin said something else about space. He said he couldn’t see any god up here.

I know I should move but I don’t want to leave you. It’s very cold, even with the door open and plumes of frozen air drifting out. Nearly all my strength is gone. If I sat down, I think I’d fall asleep quickly and wouldn’t wake. There would be no pain.

Why is it even important to take us home? My thoughts are sluggish, but a kind of answer comes. Because there must be some life left. Even if humans have wiped each other out, other creatures will have survived. I look again at your frozen skin, unnaturally preserved. Down there, it will do what dead bodies have always done. It will decay, and then feed other forms of life. Birth, death, rebirth. The heartbeat of existence.

Maybe that is God.

And if that’s God, it’s down there, not up here.

I force myself fully upright again, take one last look at you, and then drag myself through to the living quarters. Your seat is uncomfortable and I have to readjust the straps. I was once taller and wider than you. Now I’m only taller.

I override Hanuman’s safety-locks, and set a direct course for Earth. Hanuman flashes a warning signal. I reject it.

The acceleration adds nausea to the hunger in my stomach, and I close my eyes as if that might quell the urge to vomit. Would there be anything in me to throw up? Almost certainly not, but the exertion might make me black out.

Maybe that would be for the best.

But I want to stay awake. There’s still something to see or learn. I don’t know what, but I know there must be.

I hum a song we once sang together, though I can barely hear my cracked whimper over Hanuman’s shuddering as we tumble into gravity’s grasp. I open my eyes and am almost blinded by a sky that is now white, not black. I glimpse a sliver of browned land far below. What legs walk there now? Do any of them belong to creatures that look like us?

It doesn’t matter. Hanuman can’t land safely. This isn’t a return, it's an ending.

My starved body isn’t ready for re-entry’s hot, rattling ordeal. I’m shaken so hard I feel my brain concussing. Black spiderwebs creep across my vision.

At the sky’s edge, I hear a voice from the communications console, even over the cacophony.

“Respond. Anyone. Respond.”

A wishful hallucination. It has to be. The mind is a trickster in its final moments, will do all it can to shield us from pain. Drowners are said to feel a strange elation as they surrender and their lungs fill. People who freeze to death feel peaceful at the end and sometimes even undress. And then there are those who almost die and come back with tales of white lights greeting them. Hallucinations, that’s all. Kind lies.

The last of my vision eclipses. The land disappears.

How many times have I watched Earth die? Thousands and thousands and thousands. But it is always resurrected and will be again. I just won’t see it. That’s all.

My mind feeds me a few last crumbs of comfort as it dims. I swallow them gratefully. I remember the way you looked me up and down when you first saw me. The questions you asked about my life, and the furrow in your brow when I answered. That time I finally made you laugh on our way home. Your shameless chest-beating triumph whenever you beat me at chess. “With love” in large letters on paper. Your horrible singing voice.

I'm going home now. There is so much more in my heart than when I left.

 We’re very good at almost

Kyla stelling

There were, of course, things Arthur had meant to say to Elle. A litany of ‘unsaids’ that had, over time, curled like burnt paper at the edges of his mind. But as anyone with a modicum of self-awareness will admit, intention is rarely an honest currency. And Arthur had spent the better part of a year accruing a wealth of intentions, none of which had been exchanged.

Elle, for her part, was a woman of convictions and half-buttoned oxford shirts, the sort of woman who took her iced coffee black and her intimacies complicated. She wore her contradictions like vintage denim—classic cut, faded in all the right places, and shaped more by wear than design. Arthur, meanwhile, was still somewhere inside a book he hadn’t yet written, narrating his thoughts in cadences that borrowed too heavily from other people’s prose.

Whatever had existed between them resisted easy definition. Calling it a relationship would have been generous, not to mention taxonomically irresponsible. It was a shimmer, a

subplot that refused to resolve, surviving across years and partners and changes of address. They had a habit of resurfacing in each other’s lives just when it was least appropriate. Elle had once said to Arthur, not-quite-smiling, “We’re very good at almost.” He nodded; not in agreement, exactly, but in recognition. He didn’t ask for elaboration. The ache had failed to vanish; it had simply become architectural, part of the way he was built now. A sentence he’d written in his head a hundred times and deleted each time before speaking.

It had started again, recently. The texts. Threads spun from digital cobwebs: a photo of her in a dress, a quip about a themed party, a GIF of a priest emerging in robes that Elle captioned as herself, followed by another of a woman stretching in a cemetery—Arthur. These things were, ostensibly, nothing. They were also everything. Because when Elle wrote, Arthur wrote back. And when she teased, he teased back. And when she asked, What do you want? He didn’t quite answer.

Not completely.

Not honestly.

He’d always loved the way she wrote desire sideways, through metaphor and mischief. One of those French New Wave heroines who only speaks in riddles and lipgloss. But love—albeit in dialects neither could ever fully translate—hadn’t been enough to keep things simple. It gestured at something grand, yes, but failed to contain the mess, the misreads, the emotional overflows. Whatever they’d had, it hadn’t lacked feeling. Just structure. Just timing. Just the necessary grammar.

And now they were here, on the other side of another rupture. Part of their cycle. An estrangement that smelled of shame and sounded like a slow dissolve. The kind that had tilted, quietly, with his engagement.

Arthur had recently proposed to his girlfriend, just as Elle had always known he would. Years ago, she’d asked if he would leave his girlfriend, and he hadn’t said no. He just drifted into speculation, into shared daydreams about a life they both knew would never arrive. It was refusal disguised as existential open-endedness, and Elle had seen it for what it was. She always did.

Elle was the first person he told about his intention to propose. There was no confrontation. No explosion of grief. In their ten-minute phone call, he offered that he wanted to be with Elle in whatever way was still possible. They were in a good place then. He wanted it to remain as such. “Romantic,” he’d called it, vaguely, as if he was naming a genre rather than describing a future.

She took the news the way she took most things—with a kind of elegant realism. Except something in her felt quietly rearranged. Not surprised, not shattered. Just heavy. As if she were losing him, or losing them, in a way that didn’t make sense to mourn—but still asked to be mourned. Elle knew how much this engagement mattered to him. And how final it sounded, even when hedged.

From Arthur, Elle needed something that registered. Marked and meaningful. Not flirtation. Not banter. Something deliberate. If she wasn’t set in his future, she needed to know she wouldn’t simply fade. That she was still visible to him, still named, still held.

And so she asked him to write her an email.

A letter.

Like the ones he used to send in the beginning—pages of lyricism and longing. Back when there was space for indulgence and feeling without consequence. When he could offer the fullness of his thoughts because nothing was fixed yet, and wanting her didn’t cost him anything. Not practical, not performative. Just composition that placed her at the center of something.

But to write to her would mean stirring what he’d fought to keep still.

And he couldn’t do that.

Not because he didn’t care. Only because in order to live the life he’d chosen—with his fiancée, with stability, with clean lines and no shadows—Arthur had to keep his heart in compartments. He couldn’t allow the ache to escape. Even the pang of what Elle still meant to him felt like a threat.

A letter would have made it undeniable.

A text could vanish. A call could blur. But to write it out—carefully, completely—made it solid. Spoken things had weight. Written ones, permanence. 

Underneath it all, he knew Elle deserved the part of him that wasn’t barbed with hesitation. She deserved the man who recognized her through language. Who made words feel like touch. But that man was more echo than presence now. She couldn’t reach him, and neither could he.

So, Arthur didn’t write.

And in not writing he broke trust far more intimate than silence.

His withholding, polished and cowardly, made Elle respond in a way that was eloquent, furious, unrelenting. This had become their pattern.

She asked.

He retreated.

And his quiet had calcified into the core of their undoing.

Months later, her birthday message to him had been warm, unguarded; ending with I love you, the way they’d tentatively started saying it again. He saw it. Heart-reacted. Nothing more. A muted ambivalence he hadn’t quite admitted was resentment; something about her not wanting to watch the short film he was making with his fiancée still clung to him. Petty and bruised. When she asked about it, he said a line about silence being subjective. When she pressed, he spiraled. It wasn’t elegant. His avoidance never was.

She had told him once, during a fight that left both of them wrung out and speechless, “You treat closeness like it costs you. Like I should be grateful for scraps. I’m not begging, Arthur. I’m just done pretending you're generous.”

Now they were trying this thing—friendship. Platonic in theory, peripherally flirtatious in execution. Elle was good at narrative design; she had proposed a once-a-week exchange of updates. Breezy things. Observations. The texture of their days. And it had mostly worked. Until Elle, ever the curator of subtext, asked if Arthur would give her a blank slate.

He ventured, I think the question I have is, if past context is blanked, what is left for the future?

She responded, I don’t think we’re blanking the past so much as choosing which parts we carry forward. That feels like a kindness to both of us. What’s left for the future? I’m not sure. But I still feel the thread—that connection that’s always been there—even if the shape of us is changing, more consciously now.

Arthur waited to reply. He told himself he was giving the message space, that thoughtful responses took time. But really, he just didn’t want to feel the weight of her words yet. He knew he’d respond later that afternoon, but not days later; a compromised latency that had become typical of him in recent months. There had been stretches, not long ago, when he’d let her messages sit unread for days. Not to punish her. Not consciously. But because opening them was inviting a gravitational force he wasn’t sure he could withstand. He claimed he could handle conflict—welcomed it, even—yet the reality was murkier. He avoided when he felt cornered, deflected when things got too sharp.

Lately, though, his replies had come faster; sometimes within minutes, sometimes hours, if he was busy or pretending to be. It was part of a new equilibrium. He was engaged now, folded into a life that felt like a self-sustaining universe, the kind that forms around you once you commit to permanence in a way the world can recognize. And with that choice came a kind of protective barrier: Elle’s emotional volatility no longer reached him with the same force. He could respond now, casually, calmly. So long as she kept things soft, manageable, just outside the center of impact.

Elle, once the axis of his emotional weather system, had been recast as someone he could correspond with from a higher, drier altitude. It was easier now. Lighter. Or so he told himself.

It was choreography they both knew by heart: Arthur offered just enough presence to stay close, though never enough to feel solid. It was the varietal of inconsistency that made Elle feel both chosen and avoided, depending on the hour. And Arthur knew that.

Elle, for her part, didn’t do well with silence. Not his kind, anyway. The kind that felt intentional, curated, an ellipsis held just long enough to make her question her own tone. He’d seen it before, the way uncertainty made her more expressive, not less. The not-knowing created space she couldn’t help but fill.

While he lingered in his distance, she sent him her usual GIFs—offbeat, wry, disarmingly accurate. Always from Fleabag. The visual metaphors did what script couldn’t: they let her confess I still care and I’m still watching without pressing her face up to the glass.

She sent a GIF of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character gently, yet hesitantly, touching the paw of a guinea pig her friend was holding out.

Guinea pig = our friendship, Elle wrote. Figuring it out doesn’t mean launching into some heady think tank project. It just means petting it, holding it, feeding it carrots and lettuce. Maybe one day you’ll even find it cute.

Arthur smiled when he saw it. Of course she’d find a way to articulate what he couldn’t without sounding like she was trying. Guinea pig = our friendship. It was playful, and gentle, and—infuriatingly—right. It didn’t need to be theorized, just tended to. And that idea, so simple and obvious, made a wire tighten in his chest. There was a resonance in her tone—written, visual, vocal—that always bent him out of shape. She wielded vulnerability as a blade, silken at the edge, sharpened to cut.

What would it mean, really, to be her friend?

Could he sit through stories of her husband with equanimity? Could he answer her questions about Max Minghella—her dream man—without letting jealousy sprout like mold in the dark corners of his gut? Could he offer her the version of himself she deserved—unobligated, unguarded—without imploding?

He wasn’t sure.

But he also knew that when she sent a video of herself singing, he watched it twice. And when she joked about her boobs typing random texts, he laughed in that real, involuntary way. And when she said she still felt the thread between them, he felt it too. Tugging. Always.

Her earlier phrase—a kindness to both of us—stuck. It made him feel, briefly, like someone worth forgiving.

He heart-reacted, of course. That safe, antiseptic placeholder. Then he added: I mean, yes, this is the question I’m wondering :)

It was vague. Evasive. True. Or at least true enough to send.

When she followed up, So, you’re open to figuring it out with me? Slowly but surely? He felt the tug again. And this time, he let himself answer plainly:

Yes, I’m open.

What came was a flurry of texts in the rhythm they used to find without trying. A grin emoji. A one-liner. A pause. Then came the Fleabag GIF—Waller-Bridge cracking open a Bible and inhaling it, as if theology could be taken in through the nose. It was absurd, obviously. Funny, yes.

Also—uncomfortably precise.

It was Elle at her best: irreverent and affectionate, silly and sincere, all in the same breath. Not revering the object so much as testing the feeling behind it. The suggestion was clear, even if she’d never say it in words: I don’t need doctrine, I don’t want intensity masquerading as clarity. I just want to be here with you, in this strange in-between, and let it matter. Even if it’s a little ridiculous. She wasn’t asking for a treatise. She didn’t want theory. She wanted presence.

Small, tactile gestures.

Carrots and lettuce.

A willingness to hold the tiny animal in both hands and not flinch.

Maybe even call it cute.

 For the Love of Magdalene

Edidiong U. Essien

Every part of me wants an impossible thing. Magdalene the sensitive. Magdalene the elusive. She is nothing like us ordinary mortals, not a clay figurine inflated with lifegiving air. Doesn’t share our useless imperfections. Envy, indolence, acrimony. No, Magda is something else entirely. A pearl amongst swine will always stand out, won’t it?

We moved, together, to Sugarcane Valley. Together but separately. At the same time, is what I mean. Magdalene first, then me. A day apart, exactly three years ago. Fate? I believe so. Magdalene the pragmatist disagrees, chalks up our paths crossing to coincidence. She doesn’t believe in fate and its unknowable orchestrations, has no patience for that kind of metaphysical talk. It angers her. Really, she gets a little violent when fate is mentioned. Claws at her delicate scalp until she draws blood, plugs up her ears childishly, threatens to skin me without the mercy of anesthesia. Magdalene deals only in absolutes she can perceive.

We met at a train station. The ugliest place for a serendipitous encounter. Rotten fruit peels underfoot, overfed rodents slithering past turnstiles, evading the underpaid station attendants trying to crush their fat bodies, a smell of sour moisture, of perspiring skin following me doggedly. But the station’s repulsiveness made our meeting all the more memorable. More memorable than if it had occurred at a cathedral or library.

I’d just left a symposium my university hosted for graduate students, a failed event. Not enough canapés, too many hungry scholars. I cannot recall a single thing the panelists said. And how could I, on an empty stomach? Knowledge is sustenance, to a certain kind of person, but not to me. I prefer food one can touch and smell and ultimately consume.

I took off quite early. Strolled all the way to the nearest train station. A five-kilometer walk. At the station, I purchased a bag of salted peanuts from a vending machine with sticky buttons and a sunken protective screen. The machine shuddered once I pushed a rumpled note into the appropriate slot and discharged two more peanut packets than I’d originally paid for. I took them all, pleased at my good fortune. Some divine presence, I thought, was rewarding me for the suffering I’d tolerated at the symposium.

Hunger sated, I finally noticed Magda, long before she caught wind of me. She was standing too close to the train tracks, nibbling the keychain dangling from her wallet, absent-mindedly. I remember everything she wore that day. Khaki shorts, similar to the ones my grandfather likes, ribboned socks and a distressed blouse. The picture of impossible health. Her thick braids were glossy, teeth and nails too. She was more lustrous than any person I had seen in my twenty-five years. Magdalene shimmered, like her spirit had been doused in fresh Vaseline, like she’d been kissed all over by an indulgent saint, or a legion of angels. A consecrated pearl amongst swine. And there I was, smelling of other people’s sweat and my own, my face all twisted up, belly in shambles; I’d eaten the peanuts too quickly.

What clever thing could I say to pull her into my orbit, to keep her there? I mulled it over, by the malfunctioning vending machine with sticky buttons.  It was agonizing, a worse agony than fracturing a bone. This woman, this seraph pretending to be a human being, wearing grandfatherly khakis and Sunday-school socks, had me in knots and there was nothing I could do about it. I could only stare. Gawk, more like. As if I wasn’t an adult with above par intelligence and half of a graduate degree completed.

Look this way. Look right at me and I will say something to you. And because I willed it so acutely, she did as I hoped. Fate, like I’ve said. Magdalene looked over, not at me, but at the vending machine. It was having another groaning fit at the moment of my anxious petitioning. Another peanut sachet regurgitated from the machine’s guts, for no apparent reason. I hadn’t paid for the newest bag, either. Fate.

She noticed me, at last. Thanks to the vending machine, its inexplicable noises and behaviors. The watery quality of her eyes enraptured me. Made mine water, as well. What awful things had the seraph in the train station been forced to endure? Environmental pollution? Unfair ticket fees? Any ticket fees at all? A creature like herself needn’t soil her inherent goodness on public transportation.

I approached Magda with the bag of peanuts tucked under my arm. She observed my approach, quite coolly, hardening her posture until she seemed immense, formidable even in the adorable clothes she wore. Now what will you do? her demeanor seemed to say.

Here’s what I did. I offered her the peanuts. Gave the whole bag to Magdalene, tangling myself in the clever string of words I'd prepared on the way over. Something about divine providence and malfunctioning machinery. She didn’t say a single word, eyed me, as if I was a centipede in her path that had suddenly been granted speech. But she took the peanuts. I thanked her. I did, like she had done me a favor, not the reverse. And was I bothered? Not at all. This was my life’s turning point. Nothing prior to this day in the train station mattered. Not my foolish hobbies, casual acquaintances, or the graduate degree I was in the process of completing.

“Your number. Please,” I asked, begged.

“What will you do with my number?” she said, not sweetly at all. Sounded like an exhausted ruffian.

“Call you? If you don’t mind. Please.”

“What is your name?”

I told her, pulled out my student ID, without her asking for it. I’m not sure why. She’d really done a number on me, her apathetic dialogue, her confusing clothes.

“What’s yours?” I had to shout a bit. A train was pulling into the station. Commuters churned behind us, aggression in their steps, sending obese rats scrambling back to their dank hiding places.

“Magdalene,” she said.

“Magdalene,” I repeated. What a name. Sumptuous letters arranged so carefully, one after the other.

She conjured a piece of grease-stained paper from one of the many pockets on her khaki shorts, a pen from another, and scribbled illegibly on it. Handed the greasy paper over to me. It was an email address, I realized.

“We will talk, maybe later. My train is here,” Magdalene said. And she walked off, jostling the people in her way, like they weighed nothing. Elbowed backs, pinched a few obstacles, snarled more than once, pushed her way onto the overwrought train. My victorious seraph. Well, not mine yet, but I wanted nothing more, for this contradiction of a woman, this sweet-faced ruffian, to love me.

The train, engorged with impatient passengers, shut its doors and pulled away from the station, louder than it had been when it made its entrance. I waved it off, hanging on to the paper Magdalene had given me, the most precious piece of paper I could ever own.

Magdalene would tell me, much later, that she’d been impressed by my juvenile attempt at romance. The peanuts, the fidgeting movements I couldn’t stop once I entered her sphere of influence. She was overcome by the urge to dissect me, to analyze every drop of passion, every ounce of desire I was harboring in my arteries. She knew she wanted me, instantly. I was The Valley personified, crumbling with fetid beauty, and it aroused her.

The first email I sent, not the same day of our meeting but two days after. A brief one, testing the waters.

-Magdalene, forgive my delay in correspondence. Been busy with school. Do you remember me? The peanuts, the train station.

She responded an hour later. Her message had no regard for grammar or its restrictions. She capitalized whatever letters she wanted to, damned punctuation. I felt that agony once more, inside of me, a million fractures. How precious she was, how unrestrained.

-will you meet Me, somewhere

-Of course. Shall we get tea? Or coffee? Or wine? I’m not sure what you’d like to drink.

-i don’t drink. Caffeine Or Alcohol.

Magdalene wanted to go to a local art gallery. She sent several articles about the artists in residence, clogging up my inbox. Some photographers, a tapestry weaver, metalworkers, a sculptor who made recreations of musical instruments using donated body hair and fingernails.

I’d been there, with another woman. A former classmate of mine. Nothing serious, the visit. The day started on a literal high. We smoked a little, rode city bikes to the gallery, euphoric. Ate flaky meat pies before heading into the art sanctum, didn’t dust the crumbs of baked dough off our lips and clothes.

We ignored the exhibits, poked fun instead, at the other very serious gallery visitors. Made great nuisances of ourselves, like the children we were. In one of the gallery’s unisex bathrooms, my former classmate kneaded completion out of me, on her knees the entire time, pie crumbs wedged into the corners of her mouth, murmuring kind encouragement I don’t think I deserved. I came on her fingers, on the tiled wall beside her head. Felt immediately rancid.

Quietly, we rode our leased bicycles back to the university’s campus and had dinner with her roommates. The atmosphere, strained. The food, tasteless. Someone had overcooked sad looking servings of nkwobi. I left once we’d eaten, shook the girl’s hand before parting ways with her. Her roommates, three of them, stood aghast by the kitchen’s granite island. The collective pinched looks on their faces, solid irritation, is an image forever emblazoned in my mind. We never spoke again.

All this to say, I didn’t want to go to the same gallery with Magda. It was a cheap place to take her, forever ruined by my behavior in the gallery’s toilet, ruined more by the apparition of my former classmate on her knees, face beatific as she did this nice thing that made me feel horrid afterwards. I tried to suggest something different:

-What about another gallery? There’s one at my school. Showcases student artists.

-no.

That’s all she said. No. I acquiesced, ordered our day passes myself and sent her confirmation links. I didn’t want to upset her, not this early, not ever.

-sweet. See you Then. x

She never thanked me for the passes, and still, I didn’t care. Already, she was stitching my priorities to hers.

At the gallery, I was rigid, felt too stiff to engage with the full force of Magdalene’s allure, and was simultaneously worried that I’d be recognized as the bathroom ejaculator. Magda brought a little tape recorder along and spoke at length into its microphone. Descriptions of the exhibits she liked. Scathing insults for the characterless ones. She was carefree, glowing.

“Would you like to say something?” she asked, a half-hour into the date, thrusting the recorder under my chin. She wobbled her eyebrows, so I would laugh, and I did. I’d been following her silently, half expecting my former classmate to accost me, her hands covered in the mess I’d made. An irrational fear.

“Hello. We’re at the gallery, me and Magdalene,” I said, into the recorder. “Is that okay?”

“What do we see? At the gallery.”

“Right now? A photograph. A small one. Matchbox-sized.”

“And in the photograph?”

“A person. Peeling yams.”

“I don’t like the taste of yam,” she said, turning off the taping device, pocketed it.

“Why not?”

“Don’t laugh, if I tell you.” Magda seemed timid, no less angelic. Even more so.

“I won’t laugh. Never,” I said, solemnly.

“My grandmother told me this story when I was seven, I think. About why babies can’t speak anymore.”

“What did she say?”

“They could speak. Long, long time ago. Babies were such gossips. Talking all the time. Putting their mouths in business that didn’t concern them.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Long story short, a baby had seen someone do something awful. Steal another person’s property. The baby told everyone in the community about the theft. I’m not sure if I’m remembering this correctly.”

“What was the consequence?”

“The supposed thief killed herself. The embarrassment, you know? It was too much.”

“Shit. Really?”

“Right. All because of the gossip-monger baby. So, the god of that place ground up yams, and shoved the paste down every baby’s throat. They would never be able to speak again, not until they could think critically. That’s why baby spit up is white, and a messy consistency. Yam paste. Disgusting, right?”

“I see why you’re not so crazy about yams. Completely rational.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“Never,” I said. Her face right then, was an open, vulnerable sheet. Dusky, in the gallery’s candlelight glow, where others, including myself, looked sallow. I wanted so badly to kiss her, in front of the matchbox-sized print of unknown hands peeling yam tubers.

The following month, she took me to a nursing home. A nursing home’s parking lot. We didn't enter the facility, not that day. She refused to.

“Smells like formaldehyde,” she insisted.

I sat there with her, in our car rental, waiting for something to happen, anything. But there was hardly any talking between us. We listened to a jazz album, a CD I’d brought with me, and I sang along, serenaded her poorly, got the lyrics mixed up, and the cadence. The album cycled from start to finish, we watched uniformed nurse aides and visitors stream through the home’s revolving doors.

Magda became drowsy quickly, and affectionate. She tucked her head under the safe tilt of mine. The jewels she’d braided into her hair pressed against my chin, but I bore the pain for her sake, for her comfort. And selfishly, for the intimacy the pain implied. If only my cheek and chin would fuse with the iridescent clusters flashing on her cornrows. Such a bond would make living impractical. How would I attend lectures, or eat, or touch my toes at leisure, with the head of an adult woman attached to my face?

Another date, a confusing outing, but everything about Magda was confusing. We visited a shrine. Not just any shrine, an abandoned one. Nothing to keep it company but rural fauna and insects desecrating its baobab frame. Sad thing to see.

“Who put this together?” I asked.

She didn’t know and had only heard of the shrine from a friend. A priest, Magda assumed. A priest who’d most likely forgotten where it was or intentionally neglected it. The cylindrical shrine lacked offerings, was veiled in spiderwebs and a thick skein of harmattan dust. Housed no warm sentiments or foul ones even, only maggots that twisted by its base.

Magdalene cut a button from my shirt’s collar with her sharp teeth, and placed the button on the shrine, a flippant action. Remember her disdain for the metaphysical. She asked me to hold her while she thought about the shrine. What it could have been. Her hands were cool in mine, felt like holding pliant marble. I wanted to know if the other secretive parts of her skin were as cold as the hands I held but was too afraid to take action.

We rested there, after her moment of reflection, in front of the lonely shrine out in the middle of nowhere, hours and hours. It was a Saturday. I worked on a paper I’d been assigned the day before, and she napped beside me, on the thick blanket I’d spread out to protect her sundress from grass stains.

If I were a different man, a more reckless one, I would have done this. I’d have kissed the pulse visibly throbbing at her wrist, would have lifted her onto the shrine’s collapsing ledge and fixed my lips to the side of her neck. Latched on tight, made uneven indentations on her throat with my teeth. If I had the strength, I could have parted her stocky legs, using my knee perhaps, or both palms, to get a closer look at the cotton briefs I knew she was wearing, lilac with embroidered turacos. She’d shown them to me on the drive over to the shrine, a quick look, lifted her dress’s hem, all casual and put it down, as I maneuvered the car I was unaccustomed to driving outside of city limits.

Two months after our meeting at the train station, we slept together for the first time. She’d invited me over to her flat. Slow cooked a fatty leg of lamb in a crockpot. Fed me bowl after bowl of tender meat and vegetables. Mashed ripe bananas in a cold mug, ladled coconut cream over it, and brown sugar.

Food cleared away, Magdalene sat me down between her knees and combed the tangles out of my afro. She massaged castor oil into my hair’s dry ends. Her hands, lava on my scalp. Not cool at all that evening.

“I’m on the pill,” she said, once my hair was a mostly knotless halo. I nodded, my throat dry. We did it there, on the living room settee, clumsy, unhurried. And slipping into her, moving in her, I knew I’d never experience anything similar to this, not with any other woman. She unmade me, reassembled my molecules in the span of minutes, kept me hovering too close to my limit. Dragged clawed fingers through my combed hair, and it hurt, but there was something else, superimposed with the pain she was inflicting. I had no choice but to melt. I was butter at the mercy of a scalding knife.

With distant ears and eyes, I heard the roar of dry wind rattling her flat’s shutters, saw Magda’s stomach heaving forcefully, her legs twisted, vicelike, over my hips and lower back, holding me near, her voice, airy, whimpering. Then: releasing all I had. For her. And she took it all, a serious look on her face, brilliance bursting from her pores, lulling me into a near unconscious state.

Magdalene and me. A cautious pair. She wooed me in her own way, did her best to fan the flames of devotion. What I wanted, I got, and I made my demands as ridiculous as permissible. Sponge cake baked by her hand, fed to me after our bodies cooled and untangled, post intercourse. Pieces of tulle cut from a yellowing wedding dress she’d inherited from her grandmother. Houseplants I suffocated in pesticide and water.

My seraph asked for little in return, and I gave it tenfold. Did she need to draw solace or satisfaction from my flesh, a fabric of purposelessness before we met? I allowed it. I allowed anything, would have carved out my own lungs and eyeballs for her pleasure, or fallen on a scimitar at her request. It was a rush to be the channel through which a person this ethereal could be content.

There was a scale we were balancing on, with Magda on one end and me on the other. It was out of equilibrium, and always would be, I thought, unless I offered something visible, something she could use, beyond insatiable prurience. My culinary skills would never compare to hers, but I made do with the limited tools of my arsenal: ready-made dinners. After fulfilling the parameters of educational welfare, I would diligently purchase fruit and boxed meals from a supermarket close to her flat. It was small, gleamed inside and out, like the surface of a sun-bleached nautilus shell.

The act of shopping for her was medicinal. As I browsed aisles housing genetically altered vegetables, fermented beverages, and prepackaged meats, I was separated from the world and its exhausting dullness. When weighing, with bare hands, the garden eggs, mangoes and udala my lover would eat, I fully believed that something more divine was at play between us.

More visits to the nursing home, nine more at least, always sitting in the car.

“The formaldehyde,” Magda would say, patiently, if I asked to go in. She continued to resist potential entry, wouldn’t explain the reason behind our vigil, did not name what it was we were waiting for, although I sensed her desire to be near whatever it was. A friend or foe, I wondered, but never ventured to ask. However long she wished to sit, staring at the revolving doors, I would do the same.

Before Magda told me about her grandparents, she brewed chamomile tea, using an archaic French press dug out of her pantry. We drink our tea unsweetened, usually, but that morning she dropped eight brown sugar cubes into her mug. Stirred the cubes until they dissolved to watery grit.

She was wearing a caftan she’d taken from me, loose, sand colored, its hem dragging on the floor as she puttered around the kitchen putting away our sugar tin and the French press. The caftan was sheer, I remember, and exposed the indent of her navel, every fluid movement of her hips, the fine hair surrounding her areolas. A devastating sight to behold so early in the morning. Outside the flat, another dust storm raged, loud, full of ire; it bathed the mosquito screen above the kitchen sink in dust that clumped as it settled.

“Do you have anyone? Family, I mean, living in The Valley?” Magda asked, sipping the tea I feared was still too hot and overly sweet.

“My parents live two hours away, by train. Valley-adjacent,” I answered.

“That’s nice. I have my grandmother.”

“What’s she like?”

“Hard to say, it varies now,” said Magda. “What are your parents like?”

“Bookish, very much so. And tolerant of me. Good people.”

“My grandmother, she’s barely literate. But rather expressive. She was. Loved telling me folk tales.”

“Not anymore?”

“No. Her husband cut her tongue out,” Magda stuck out her own tongue here, made a snipping motion with two fingers. “The folk tales dried up inside her. Would you like sugar in your tea as well?”

That’s exactly how she put it. No preamble, or sugarcoating. And she carried on, as if forced mutism was standard marital practice, kissed the nape of my neck on her way out of the kitchen, asked if I wanted carrots or potatoes with my supper. The violent picture she painted so sedately, with two fingers and her flattened tongue, stayed with me the rest of the day. A strange feeling brewed afresh, an unreachable itch inside my stomach.

My life seemed even more ordinary in comparison to Magda’s, following the gruesome revelation shared over chamomile tea. I was colorless, an eddy of grey nothing. No graphic skeletons in my metaphorical wardrobe. Ordinary parents, standard grandparents on both sides. Former academics, like my mother and father. All with tongues firmly attached at the root.

Meanwhile, Magdalene gained a new vibrancy. The love I had for her expanded. It stretched in my chest, warmed up my body, enlivened me. But I also shrank from her brilliance, aware of my own inadequacies. I made a greater effort to hide the more grating parts of what I was from her. When I shaved my face, I rinsed the lather and my coarse hair down the drain, obsessively scrubbing the sloped insides of our bathroom sink with bleach afterwards. I only defecated at university, if I could help it, in the admin building’s lavatory, or during my commute to and from Magdalene’s flat. To muzzle my insomnia, a recent development, I swallowed glossy sleeping tablets before bedtime. Without the pills, nightmares besieged me. Of a wide mouth, cracked lips, and the pink stub of a shortened tongue.

Inside Magda was subtle despair. Almost invisible. The size of a shrunken pea. Smaller than that, even. Subatomic. She hid it from me. Like I’d been hiding my banal tendencies. Belching openly, idle self-pleasure. Because we’d been cohabiting for a prolonged time, I eventually saw signs of her despair, one June evening.

The particular evening I speak of, we’d returned from a film showing. It was a foreign movie, all in Québécois, small English subtitles at the bottom of the screen for those deficient in the language, myself and Magda included. We took the train home after, discussing unimportant matters good naturedly. The movie, its characters, their silly capers.

At home, Magdalene mixed gingeritas without tequila, and we imbibed together in light spirits, or so I thought. I’d only just gone to the bedroom to put on my pajamas when I heard, in the flat’s toilet, a quivering, guttural sound muffled by the closed door. Compressed weeping. It was Magdalene. She emerged soon after, face dry, expressionless. As if she hadn’t been purging herself of tears a few short minutes before.

I asked later, when we’d settled in for the night: “Is everything alright?”

“Yes,” she said. “All’s well.”

But all clearly was not well. The compressed weeping continued, sporadically. Always in the toilet. I listened to it, my ear pressed against the door, mystified by the peculiar sound. How had I not noticed that Magda, a confirmed seraph, could be so downcast? That she possessed that ability, small and collapsible as it was? Wasn’t despair a feeling reserved for clay figurines, mortals like me? What could I do? What could I say? I was still frightened of alienating her with my pushiness, so I said and did nothing, at first.

Our lovemaking strengthened during this period. She was very giving of herself, more and more affectionate, but I recognized distress, underneath all that affection. She’d say, while I was inside her: “You are so kind.” And I couldn’t manage, the earnestness in her voice, her serious face.

I continued to drive her to the nursing home, more frequently it seemed. Almost every other weekend. Until one day, I asked the question eating away at me.

“Who is it you’re here for?”

She was quiet, looked wounded. Finally responded, “You know, already. You must.”

“Your grandmother? The one without—”

“The tongueless one, yes.”

“Don’t you want to see her?”

“I can feel her, from this parking lot. It’s enough.”

“What happened? Between her and your grandfather?”

In speaking these words, by asking this unambiguous question, I had split something open, similarly to how raw eggs are broken, exposing sliminess within. We would not be able to scoop albumen and yolk back into the halved shell pieces. But what a relief, to get it out in the open, to appease curiosity.

“He wasn't well. The men in my family become addled in old age. Their kindness curdles.”

She used the word “curdles,” evoking vivid pictures in my mind. Papayas decaying, softening from the inside out, becoming inedible. Mushrooms that reeked of ammonia. The shrine she’d taken me to, its multitude of maggots. A violent man aging rapidly, stooped over and habitually drooling. Armed with a knife, no, a machete.

“I don’t think he meant to disfigure her. He just got it into his head that she’d been unfaithful to him. And so, he cut her. Using my mother’s pinking shears,” she chuckled, mirthlessly.

“Magda. How awful.”

“My parents put her in this facility.” Magda pointed using her pursed lips, at the nursing home spewing and guzzling guests from the same opening, its revolving door. “And I came here, with my grandmother. It does her good to see a familiar face, every once in a while.”

“She’s lucky. To have such a devoted granddaughter. To have you,” I said, moved.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I look just like him. Her husband. My parents think so. And I can’t help it. Can’t pull his likeness out of my face, can I? So bringing myself to her, isn’t it selfish? Isn’t it cruel?”

“Keeping your grandmother company is cruelty? What is kindness, then?”

“Do you know what happened the last time I went inside? She hit me, right here.” Magda touched the highest point of her left cheekbone with two fingers. “Because I have him in me. The look of him, at least.”

“She might have been confused,” I countered, moving her knuckles away from the cheek that was struck, replacing it with my own hand. Magdalene the burdened. I pitied her poor grandmother too, maimed into wordless rage.

“No. She tried to say his name. His face is my face. I’d like to go home now. Please.”

She believed exactly what she’d said. That her existence was an imposition of cruelty on her grandmother. Magda had always been candid with me, never misrepresented her feelings, or lied, save the little one she told me when I first heard her weeping in the toilet. All’s well. But was that a lie? Was the despair I falsely assumed as something hidden always hovering in plain sight, waiting to be noticed? Perhaps. Wasn’t it my prerogative, as the man who loved her, to sift through the fossils of her feelings, like a paleontologist, and perceive her hidden truth?

The despair did not thaw. It retreated, slithering back into her body’s crevices, sequestering itself. As for the way Magda carried herself around me, it changed. She was looser. In her words, in her actions. She bombarded me with questions about the family I’d come from, what I was like as a child, the things I loved to eat before our paths converged, the meals I detested, and I supplied her with the answers.

My bland chronicles of youth entertained Magda, and so in retelling them, I was entertained too. Stories I had nearly forgotten were dredged up. The year I smashed my mother’s prized chandelier to bits. With a tennis ball. The first time I kissed a woman, at a convention I’d accompanied my parents to. How the woman’s mouth felt, smooth and decisive on my inexperienced lips. The smell of my bedroom, cloying body spray and peppermint fumes. My inexhaustible appetite for okra as a seven-year-old, and my revulsion for catfish; I hated the pin sized bones hiding within slippery white flesh. My brief stint in a choir. Upon learning about my musical past, Magda coaxed me to sing her a hymn, and I obliged, sheepishly.

“You sing well,” she said after I bumbled my way through three stanzas of “Amazing Grace.” “You must do it more for me.”

Magda volunteered more information about her family. I learned that she’d been born prematurely, with her umbilical cord wrapped around her tiny throat. And that her mother suffered fainting spells, a trait she luckily did not pass down.

“Imagine me, fainting,” she scoffed.

Her father was a chemist, and her mother owned a restaurant. “Nothing grand,” said Magda. A simple business frequented by frazzled office workers and laborers on their lunch breaks, dust from construction sites clogging their pores.

Her first memories of her grandmother: the two of them, alone in the house her grandfather built, shelling peas, coloring on envelopes, watering the thirsty plants competing for space and attention in the compound. Morning glory, banana trees, hibiscus blooms. The grandmother reciting folk tales in a sing-song voice, Ibibio poems too. Magda described, in detail, the nail polish on her grandmother’s toes, a color she’d thought was too girlish for an old woman, at the time. Coral pink, with splashes of luminescent glitter.

We continued to share these stories, emotionally charged at times, and before I knew it, we’d been dating for six months. We established routines suited to our individual strengths. Magda sorted out our meals. She planned multicourse feasts for our consumption, and I would clean. Dirty dishes, dirty clothes, the minor messes in her flat. Our flat. I had fully moved in at that point. She’d organize our simpler dates, and I handled logistics for the more elaborate ones (overnight visits to the seaside, touristy adventures to nearby towns by road or rail). I attended my lectures, and she worked, thirty-five hours a week, at a record shop located not too far from my university.

The love expanding in my chest matured, so I did as well. I shed my insomnia, before June simmered warmly into July, then August. Magda’s despair made fleeting reappearances here and there, but I didn’t fear it. What was there to fear? Nothing at all. I only had service to give, limitless devotion. The limbs to prop up her body when she wilted, the mouth that spoke reassurances, every one of my organs a dedicated servant to my seraph.

And when August waned, Magda asked: “May I show you something?”

“Show me.”

It was an album of well-preserved photographs from her early childhood and late teens. She unearthed the book from its hiding place, a box beneath our bed bound with velvet ribbon. In the album: photographs of a nondescript couple she identified as her parents. Portraits of Magda, four, five, seven years old, sitting on the bonnet of a peach sedan, legs crossed like a miniature lady. Magda brandishing dolls of varying complexions, wearing gingham dungarees, suede trousers many sizes too big, sleeping in a bed shaped like a canoe.

More photographs: dance recitals, sporting events, giant smiles on the faces of the ever-changing Magdas. Passage of linear time from child to teenager. A graduation ceremony frozen on film. The diploma hand-off on a stage covered in tinsel and balloons. Magda standing between another much older couple. Her grandparents, before the severing. Magda’s arms thrown around the shoulders of the man on her left, her grandfather, and the grandmother, taller than Magda, raising a hand to the person behind the camera.

When Magdalene sneezes, her toes curl inwards, then relax after the sneeze subsides. She has a Swiss Army knife, with a tortoiseshell handle that she carries everywhere. On the train, to the record store. She dislikes oysters, the slimy texture as they slide down her throat, the residue left behind on her lips, the briny aftertaste. She could survive on a strict diet of ripe mangoes and kilishi alone, eons if need be. Magdalene’s favorite books are never in English. Only Ibibio. She thinks she has her grandfather’s forehead, and so she hates her own, how narrow it is.

She doesn’t remember her grandmother’s voice, before the severing happened, worries that she will forget how I sound as well, if I somehow misplace my tongue. Magdalene has gifted me my own little tape recorder, pocket sized. Just in case. A minor contingency plan. She asks me to record myself speaking, as I go about my day. And I talk to it. To her. Whenever I can. Between lectures, on my evening runs. I’m thrilled that I can give this intangible thing to Magda, my voice itself. Seems like a paltry offering but she truly enjoys listening to my nonsensical ramblings. She listens to the recordings on the weekends, coiled on my lap like a warm kitten, smiling occasionally, and I see that she is as in love as I am, in those moments. I see it, yes, that Magda the Seraph deems me deserving of this impossible love.

 tommy Rock

David Serafino

We do our drugs as a team, bandmates at my back because I'm Tommy Rock and everybody knows it except this punk taita. Punk taita got a dirty eye. I say keep putting that eyeball on me I'll stick it in my pocket. Taita says I got bad juju because he don't know I am juju. I could burn down this tepee with all the juju I got. Punk taita calls it his healing hut, but it's the same knock-off, tea-stained canvas tepee you see in lousy westerns and roadside picnic parks. This dude ain't Native American. He's Peruvian or Colombian or something. This whole place reeks of appropriation and Nag Champa, and soon as we're back on the bus, I'm gonna post on this guy. My people need to know you can't be using fake tepees, calling them healing huts, charging two hundred bucks a head, throwing on feathers with your Diesel jeans, playing Native American for unhip gringos. Fact is, a lot of these taitas turn out to be rapists. My eighty million followers need to know that Tommy Rock don't jibe with heartless manipulators.

Taita's cooking up some dishwater, gray and grassy-smelling. I drink the first cup and it hits me wrong, turns my guts like being on stage in middle school. You're supposed to drink three times, then ride the vomit comet to profound spiritual well-being. Marty and Van start upchucking into the plastic bucket the taita has provided. Lola seems out of it already, tapping her feet and fingers, giggling at a lizard climbing the wall. Woman can bash the drums, but she sucks at drugs. Me, I'm a showman, but my other talent is smoking cigarettes and glowering, so I chain-gang about a dozen and generate serious glower power, blowing smoke all over the taita.

The second cup tastes worse because you know what's coming. You wanna puke your tongue right out of your head, which is what I try to do, then settle for finishing my first pack of smokes. Good thing I brought back-ups. It's gotta be about two in the morning and I don't feel anything except sleepy, bored and basically vexed by this sex offender posing as Chief Joseph.

They say the third cup oughta fetch you, but all it does is make me dry heave, which is why I told the band to lock their phones in the bus. I'm leaking snot, drooling, tearing up like my therapist just dumped me. I really need to get outside, get some fresh air. All the healing in here makes it hard to breathe.

It's easier to puke with nobody watching. I throw up things I ate as a kid, old bubblegum, coins, fried worms, barfing up frecklejuice, stars like a million glow-in-the-dark pediatric e-pills, coming on like a migraine aura, wormy light beams wriggling over your skull looking for the cracked place to crawl in. I'm terrified my inner child will appear and treat me cruelly.

Back in the healing hut Lola's gotten hold of the taita's bongos and is teaching him a rhythm, hopefully raising his awareness of his own inadequacy qua taita. Van caught the lizard and he's trying to feed it flies, which is making Marty cry. I don't see much healing going on. We're supposed to be here to work on our issues, which means accepting the paycheck's never going to be equal because we aren't equals, I got a hundred A&R men who'd sign me solo, the chicks come to our concerts for me, so do the dudes, and that's just the truth and the way. All this squabbling over money is unbecoming. It makes us look corporate.

So I say to them, Band, I love you all, I really do, because if not you, then who, and love is all you need, though I also would like a glass of water, and I need us not to break up. You don't break up after three albums. It doesn't matter what you get paid, because it's four – there have to be four great albums, then you're immortal, so I ask you, what is money beside immortality? Would you rather be rich, or would you rather live forever? Marty says he'd rather be rich. Van, too. Lola keeps beating the bongos. Some other things are said, mostly by me, all of which are regrettable, many of which are drug-induced. Then I doff my fedora and go into the desert.

In the tepee there are no stars but me. Out here they're all over, sprinkled right there on the horizon, and I gotta hand it to these stars, man. I mean, I obviously shine brightest, but there are others, and they burn like me. I'm in my proper place, shaking hands, slapping backs, seeing, being seen. High living. The desert's a real nice set-up. Nothing tacky, pure class. That moon, for instance. That moon is bling. I'm gonna grab it, get it to my glam squad, have them hang it on a diamond chain for the Grammys. The moon's onto my scheme, though. She keeps her distance. Whatever, I can track that ho all night.

Except after a few hours the moon skedaddles, goes underground. Been up all night, guess she got sleepy, which I can understand, because I'm feeling snoozy myself. I should wander back to the tour bus, get some roadies to dig up the moon and load it onboard.

Problem is, somebody moved the bus. I told Gary not to hire that driver. I don't care if he's a cousin, you don't hire an alcoholic bus driver. This is exactly why we need a fourth album, because then you get a private jet. Instead, we've got Gary's alcoholic cousin. I try so, so hard to make people understand we're not just some rock-and-roll assholes. My band is incorporated in Delaware. I have fiduciary duties. I can't have some lush driving off with the bus, though that's a great song title. I'm gonna give that to my writers.

Okay, so the bus is gone. Also, somebody moved the tepee. Fine, no problem. Tommy Rock doesn't do problems, only opportunities. People get lost in the desert, so what? It's a total cliche with how often it happens. Happened to Jesus and Jim Morrison, and I've got better hair and abs than either of those guys, so I'm pretty confident. I can see the interviews. People need to know Tommy Rock can hack it in the desert. That he's not only immortal, but invincible.

Something's going on, sounds like a gig, so I wander over and there's a stadium shoved into this canyon like a poor man's Red Rocks. I ease through a crevasse into the amphitheater, up in the nosebleeds. Some nimrod beach bod slithers across the stage, perilously close to snakewalking. The sound up here is garbage. I flash my VIP smile like a badge and people clear a path until I'm near the stage. Must be some half-assed lookalike contest. The guy on stage does look a bit like me, got that dragon energy, but he can't sing a lick.

I figure I'll give the people some joy, jump up and jam with my doppelganger, but the crowd's getting pushy and security moves in. One of them grabs me so I deck him in the face, dodge a couple rent-a-pigs and rush the stage. People start booing. The fake Tommy Rock acts like he can't even see me, then somebody throws a cup of piss and the atmosphere turns hostile. I gotta chill these people out, so I hit my straddle pose and belt out STOP! Nobody stops. Somebody throws a shoe, which I throw back harder, grab the mic from the poseur in the Hammer pants and scream, “I'm the real Tommy Rock. I'm the one you love!” Security tackles me. I punch one guy so hard he turns to sand. The other guy, though, is a rock.

Fade in on a bloody, maybe broken hand. The rock is undamaged. The desert, smug.

I gotta keep on keeping on. I'm probably going the right way, but if not, whatever, I'll just announce a concert right here. First one to find me gets a private show. I'll crowdsurf outta here and into legend. Even easier, I'll just sing, because when I sing, people come. I belt out a bit of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, but I guess I only know the chorus. That's why I always keep a back-up teleprompter on the bus.

The sky blushes. I know the feeling. Maybe the drugs are wearing off. I hope so. I'm thirsty and tired and it's definitely hotel time. I'm not sure where the next hotel is, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico. Doesn't matter. I've traveled so much I've literally become one with the universes, so these minor differences mean nothing. Still, it seems like something I should know. I remember my name, that's good. Thomas Augustus Arbuckle, no relation to Fatty or Jonathan Q. Probably the worst name you could give a kid, the direct cause of at least half the beatings I took before I got cool.

Sunrise shows I wasn't far from the tepee. It sits there like it's been waiting for me. I might kiss that taita. His cure worked. I've never been so happy to see the band. I might give them a raise. It would be nice if they were a little more desperate, combing the desert screaming my name, but I understand and I forgive and now we will be brothers and sisters again. Nobody sees me come in except the taita, who gets up to close the flap behind me. Marty and Van are a couple fried eggs, greasy and comforting. Lola's shooting frisky looks at the taita. They'd make a good couple. They both emit the same bad-touch vibe. 

I clear my throat and they all ignore me, but I don't even care, I'm so suffused with goodwill and I'm about to lay some wisdom on everybody. You can't trap healing in a tepee. You gotta go into the world, surrender to the beauty. This is the sublime state of my soul when Lola looks up from the bongos and says, “If they can autotune his voice, why don't we find an ugly guy who can sing, then autotune his face?”

I don't take it personally. It's the flagrant sexism that offends me, on behalf of my ugly male fans. I mean, we're a world-famous rock band, idolized by millions, ergo it is our duty to fix this broken world and you don't do that with snide, bigoted comments. But okay, I'll let it slide, because after all, there are no cameras. We gotta be ourselves sometimes.

Marty says he doesn't care if the band breaks up. He'll go back to school, or join the army. The army pays better and you get to go home sometimes.

“We're fine. He doesn't turn up by tomorrow night, we'll tie a cat to the microphone.”

“With its tail on fire.”

“A cat with attitude.”

“A cat with web presence.”

“The cat will be an ally.”

“A radio-friendly, unit-shifting cat.”

“Get it? An ally cat?”

I bust out before the puns get worse. The taita shuts the flap behind me, I guess to keep all the sweet healing in, and the tepee vanishes, probably for the better. Good riddance. Tommy Rock's going solo, baby. That's why the light's all shining on me. Sweaty out here. I should have some mineral water. I need an all-terrain roadie for situations like this. I remember reading that when you're lost in the desert you should drink your pee. Funny, I don't have any. I've got a classic car collection, got my Malibu Barbie Mansion, closet full of leather pants, seems like I oughta have some pee.

But it's all good. All good. I'm having a real experience now, that's what's happening. I'm reaching a new level of authenticity. I'm becoming a survivor. People love a survivor even more than a victim. I'm gonna hit a hundred million followers after this. I feel more real. My bloody hand throbs, I've got sand in my socks, the start of a sunburn. I am very, very thirsty. I have that in common with African children.

Unlike African children, I have my mansion and my mansion has a swimming pool, so that's where I'm headed. Fuck the tepee, fuck the tour, I'm going home. Los Angeles is west, but the sun's going down again and I don't wanna walk all night with the sun in my eyes and my attache case of custom Prada sunglasses locked in the bus, so I'll just head east until I hit a town, or someplace I can buy a car or helicopter.

I must've been heading the right way, though, because here's my house. That's so like me, trying to go the wrong way, ending up exactly where I want to be. Maybe my staff wheeled the mansion into the desert. If so, I'll have to thank them. There's nobody inside, but that's for the best, since it'll save me the trouble of trying to remember their names. All I want is a quick dip and a sandwich, and I can do both by myself. 

But the fridge is empty. So is the pool. There's a crack in the deep end and all the water must've leaked out. There's an inner tube deflated on the deck beside a forlorn rubber ducky. I raise up the duck. I will teach the duck this secret: if you keep a positive attitude, anything is possible. It doesn't matter if there's water in the pool. With a positive attitude, you just jump in and swim.

The water is so cold, smells like bleach, like teen spirit, like a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I haven't felt this good since I was a kid. When I was a kid, you couldn't get Thomas Arbuckle out of the pool, not for ice cream or comic books, not for Reebok Pumps or a Jose Canseco rookie card. Tommy Arbuckle was an aquatic being. Maybe that's where I went wrong. I got out of the pool. I shoulda just stayed in the water, right through the winter, into summer, year after year, until I grew flippers and gills. I was happy in the water. At least I made it back where I belong.

 EASILY OBTAINABLE SELF DESTRUCTION

OLIVER ROSEN

Mark Fisher is a lot of things: recruitment chair, player, king in his court. He is a man everyone knows, a hard thing to be on a campus this large. His presence turns the nastiness of the moldy Pike basement into a place worth being. Around him, the party expands and contracts, in for a dab and then out of his way, leaving space for the next waiting hand and overflowing cup. An ocean of boys, and none of us matter, not when a real man like Fisher is in the room. In his midst, we are nothing.

“Dude!” he shouts, spotting someone from across the room. He ambles in my direction, stepping over the twisted body of a fallen freshman without even a glance. He’s used to such navigation, of course he is.

And then, in his loose-limbed pursuit of someone more worthy, his eyes land on me.

Shifting, I try to manufacture a cooler stance, something unclenched. My smile pulls to attention, stretched sideways across my face in a way I hope is charming but is just as likely to be creepy or cringy or any swirling combination in an endless list of terrible things. Yet, by some miracle, I am searched in the awesome fire of his gaze and found worthy, rewritten in gold with a casual “so fucking good to see you, man,” and a firm pat on the back. In his presence, I forget that I’m not very funny, that I’m freckled and kind of stretched looking in a way that Becky, my roommate’s hot girlfriend, once described as “slenderman-esque.” That I’m here, not at the invite of the friends I don’t have, but at the request of my father, a man who says he is worried I’m not doing anything in college and that video games don’t count. Instead, I become a treasured-but-silent guest, the jester a king loves too much to let suffer alone.

Fisher sways slightly, beer sloshing over the lip of his cup and forming a sticky trail down his forearm. I can’t stand that kind of texture, the way my wet arm hairs clump together, but Fisher is unphased. There are names for people like him—names like GOAT and badass—and there are names for people like me; names that don’t bear repeating. I didn’t even know that Fisher knew me. I’m not sure how he could. I tend to hang back at parties, talk to a couple of friends, and then get bored and leave before anything is really over. I try to catalogue what might be different, daring to hope it may be my new haircut: a mullet just like Fisher’s.

“This music,” says Fisher, swallowing heavily, “is shit.” And he’s totally right because it totally is. It’s more of a series of sounds than any sort of melody. The backbeat pounds in my head, taking up space between my eyes, and pulses there.

I don’t really speak. I’m too busy maintaining my casual smile. But he must sense my agreement because he grabs my arm with an extended cry of “partyyy” and manhandles me to a fold-out table arrayed with shot glasses and bottles. There’s jagger, gin, vodka, a mostly empty tequila that strays pretty heavily from the Oktoberfest theme. Fisher takes eight plastic shot glasses and pours us each four. I have never been as close to greatness as I am at this moment.

He lines up the shots, looks me in the eye, and then they’re gone, swallowed away like they’re fresh water and he’s dying of thirst. I eye my own shots distrustfully. I’m not much for hard liquor, but he tells me to just fucking do it, man, and to not be a pussy, and I’ve spent too long surviving without living. So, before I can think, I’ve put back all four and I’m coughing. My eyes water, but he’s cheering, and when Fisher cheers the world cheers. I may be no king of the party but, in his midst, I am for the first time within the court.

Fisher introduces me to a girl whose name is Cindy. She’s pretty, really pretty, and I fumble as I tell her that, but she seems to find it charming. She’s exactly the kind of reason my father, so concerned about my missing out on life, wanted me to go to this party: classically gorgeous and wearing a tube top.

“I like your costume,” she says. “Phineas, right? From the cartoon?”

I look down, confused, at the stripey orange shirt my mother bought me at Target.

“Exactly,” yells Fisher. “My boy, Steve’s a man of culture.”

It becomes clear, in this moment, that Fisher thinks I’m someone else. I do consider telling him that my name isn’t Steve—it’s Garren, after my mother’s second least favorite Uncle—but Steve is a good name. A better name even. Steve is the kind of guy who gets to be Fisher’s boy. He’s a part of something bigger than a nothing-dork like Garren could ever dream.

Steve is, apparently, wearing a costume at a completely costumeless party, but I shrug, real cool, and pretend it’s intentional. At her request I say, “I know what we’re gonna do today,” in my best impression of a show I’ve never seen. It’s totally working, and she’s totally feeling me.

Fisher hands us each a shot, downing three more himself as Cindy giggles. I hold the room temperature liquid in my sweaty palm, putting it down and to the side when they get distracted in an effortless conversation about something I can’t really follow. Fisher talks like he’s underwater, and he’s practically glowing, just like he always is, so I don’t care that I can’t tell what he’s saying. Not many men can have this much presence this many shots in.

The song cuts off midline, harshly switching to something loud and Mr. Worldwide, and then another guy is calling for Fish Man, and Fisher slips away from us and out the door, taking the easiness of the conversation with him.

There is a moment of silence. Cindy looks at me. I search the room for something to talk about. In the corner, the sound of a girl retching is just loud enough to be heard over the music.

“So,” I ask Cindy, stilted. “What’s your major?”

In my mind I calculate how long it will take me to fumble this girl.

We talk for a little while longer. She’s undecided in her major, and from just outside of Philly. She seems increasingly eager to get away from this conversation, but her friends ditched her for another party, and they forgot to tell her where they’re going. Apparently, they do that a lot. Apparently, her friend Jessica is, what she calls, a total bitch.

She asks if she can borrow a cigarette, and it goes against every fiber of my being to tell her I don’t smoke, thinking of the videos my mom likes to send about lung cancer and the fentanyl crisis.

“I don’t either,” she says. “Drunk cigarettes don’t count.”

She walks up to some other guy, giggling, and places her arm on his bicep. I look away. Check my phone. I haven’t been here nearly long enough to leave without facing the despondence of my father, who so badly wants the type of son who posts pictures in backwards baseball hats, six friends and a girl under each arm.

I am deciding if the light mockery is worth withstanding when there’s a tap on my shoulder, and there’s Cindy. She holds her closed fist out to me, and says, “guess what I found,” before opening to reveal two cigarettes. She takes me by the arm and pulls me up and through the door. I laugh a little uncomfortably as I follow, but I know better than to let an opportunity like this slide.

I’m through the door, and then outside, swaddled and hidden by the surrounding fence, and there’s a cigarette in her palm that I don’t want to smoke. There is a beautiful girl in front of me, and all I’m thinking about is charred, blackened lungs. I wonder if I’ll end up coughing out tar. I see my life stretched out in front of me, cut short by lung cancer at 38.

“I’ve always liked dorky guys,” she whispers like a secret, like she’s seeing some pathetic piece of me and liking it anyway, holding my clammy hand in her pretty one as she passes me a mistake I know I’ll make for her.

Her lighter is a piece of shit, and it takes three tries for her to get the flame steady. In the struggling light I see a beautiful future, a friendship with Fisher that last decades, that pulls me into his glorious world. In the beautiful future, Fisher gives a speech at my wedding, bragging how he set us up, how he always knew Cindy and I were meant to be. My father thumps me on the back and tells me I’m a good man, a lucky man, and he always knew I could do it. In the future everyone calls me Steve, and I don’t even care because I know I deserve the title.

It’s when the cigarette finally lights that we hear him: Fisher, singing a stretched and wobbly Pledge of Allegiance. We walk around the fence and there he is, on hands and knees on the rough pavement of the quad. We watch as Fisher crawls forward, shredding his own knees on the coarse ground. Behind him is a trail of blood that extends in a circle around the whole quad. As we watch, he pauses to hack up a wet splatter of bile, before continuing, crawling right over the vibrant, orangish liquid. Dotted around the circle, we see more such splotches, and watch as a salsa-like chunkiness is slowly replaced by just an outpouring of liquid, remnants of a body turning itself inside out.

It's almost mythical. One must imagine heroes of old. Bruce Willis, battered and broken and bleeding, glass wounds and gashes on both feet, and yet unwilling, unable to surrender. Mel Gibson, despite all his years of military training, tortured and dripping, but only more heroic for his pain. It’s glorious.

Cindy, unable to understand the beauty before her, drops both lighter and cigarette to run to Fisher. I follow.

She steps in front of Fisher, earning a wet noise of frustration when she blocks his path. The singing goes quiet. She leans down toward him, then sinks onto her knees in front of him on the cold concrete. It looks nearly religious, a beautiful angel kneeling in front of a triumphant king, both faintly haloed by the streetlight and the light of the party, a night so awake, it’s almost day. If I could paint them, I would. But I’ve always been shit at art.

“Are you alright?” she demands. Fisher replies in only sounds.

“He’s fine,” I tell her because he is. “He’s just a little drunk. He’s fine.”

“Are you fucking stupid?” She whirls around. “This is your fucking friend. And he’s bleeding.”

“Yeah,” I admit. “But in, like, a cool way.”

She just looks at me.

“Like Iron Man.”

She doesn’t understand, of course she doesn’t. She’s effortlessly cool. She hasn’t had to spend time watching like I have, standing in corners and nursing a single beer. She doesn’t know Fisher like I do, months spent trying to be just like him. She doesn’t know that this is normal for him, that blackouts just make cool stories to tell your kids. That he’s having fun, that fun isn’t a crime, that he needs to be fun because if even Fisher can’t make it then we’re all absolutely screwed. Even the idea of Fisher as anything other than magnificent sets the entire world off-balanced and angled. It rushes through me and spins away with what’s left of my drunken composure.

“He’s just fun,” I try to explain, tongue heavy and unwieldy in my mouth. “He’s just like this. It’s normal. It’s cool, he’s cool. Everything is cool.”

She rolls her eyes, big and annoyed like she wants me to really feel it, then turns back to Fisher with a, “Hey, Mark, I’m gonna make sure you’re alright, okay?”

“He’s fine, Cindy. Don’t be a buzzkill. He’s Fisher.” She isn’t listening to me, no one ever does. I pull on her arm, growing desperate. “He’s always going to be fine. He’s a fucking god, Cindy. Come smoke with me.” I’m pulling her arm, dragging her up and away, and she turns, and she backhands me, every finger and ring connecting with the side of my face.

It hurts.

“Get the fuck away from me,” she says.

And with that, I’m dismissed. Unimportant. Ignored. Relegated back to a nothing, away from the glory and the action.

In the light of the porch, the world seems far away. From the ground, I pick up one of the cigarettes, craving some easily obtainable self-destruction, but, finding myself obviously lighterless, I just put it in my pocket. Emptiness consumes me, every piece of my body weighed down with the wet sloshing of my stomach. In my mind, I am already retconning the details, preparing what I’ll tell my father. How I spent the night with a girl on my arm, a pretty girl who gave me her number. I might take her on a date. How I might rush or bed a thousand women or drop out or go to every party and get so fucked up that I forget what happened and what didn’t. How Fisher—heroic, godlike Fisher—became my friend.

I turn around, walking towards the party, stumbling against the pushing crowd, squeezing out the door.

And then, just like that, I’m through. 

 Terminal

Lucy Zhang

Grandma hates cats. She’s on her ninth life and has spit in death’s face eight times. Five of those times, death ignored the glob of saliva and tried to hold her back from returning. She thinks cats are too tricky. Always skirting death instead of facing it head-on and winning. A deceptive, selfish species that’ll amount to nothing even with all nine lives, Grandma swears. She is an overachiever who only takes a break during the first few years of her life while her several-month-old body poses a physical limitation. Grandma has racked up so much equity that she had to build a whole system to self-manage her different bank and brokerage accounts accumulated over the centuries. Most of it, she tells me, is wise investments of the cash she once earned with a sesame oil business from her first life, which, although modest and completely reliant on a handful of employees manning the expeller press and manually filtering the crude oil, saw extreme success thanks to Grandma’s marketing. Her sesame oil solved every problem from female beauty insecurities to male heat imbalances to children’s brain development. The sesame oil company is a big corporation today. It’s run by a bunch of “idiot men who don’t know rancid seeds from fresh.” Grandma refuses to buy their products. She never fails to remind me that the only two reasons the company makes money today are: one, the effort she put into the original brand and reputation; and two, idiot consumers. 

I own two cats: one is missing an eye and the other a leg. I picked them up from a shelter spontaneously. Or maybe not so spontaneously? The apartment had felt lonely, and I refused to introduce other forms of life that I couldn’t keep up with — I wanted life, but not too much life. Grandma has always been healthy, still hiking and out-arguing young, white doctors who try to convince her to take their prescriptions instead of her thousand-year ginseng tea. I doubt she would have escaped death all those centuries without her impeccable vigor. If my cats could skirt past death too, then I’d take Grandma’s word for it: cats were tricksters that transcended physical limitations, and maybe I too could trick death because I knew I didn’t possess Grandma’s spirit and strength to plow past it.

“Oh it’s easy,” Grandma tries to convince me. “As long as you believe you’re worth another life and you’ve got a bit of forearm strength, you can push death aside.”

“I don’t think I’d be able to do that,” I worry.

“It’s those cats. They’re going to mislead you into your grave. The one with the missing eye is especially nefarious. Since it can only see half the world, it’ll make up the other half and convince you of its truth.”

“Who knows, it could be true,” I mutter. Grandma hears me. Her hearing is too good for her age.

“Never true,” she insists loudly, her spit hitting my hand. “Not in this decade or century or the previous or the one before that.”

I’m sure her words contain some merit given her significantly more stacked resume in life experience, but she’s also the kind of woman who will hike alone through the mountains despite news reports of several women getting hacked to death by vegetable cleavers because they thought it was okay to roam the rural farm roads at night.

“I won’t get rid of my cats,” I tell her because I know what she’s getting at and don’t need her pressing me again. “I’ll just die, and that’s that. No need to circle back again.” Even I think I sound decisive and confident and a tiny bit cool when I say that.

Grandma shakes her head. “Young people these days give up too soon. Back in my day, I biked three hours in the snow while pregnant to get back from work. Being pregnant is worse than death, you know. And here you are knocking at death’s door before you’ve toughened up with any real hardship.”

I nod. “You’re right, Grandma. I can’t compare to you. You should take it easy the next time you spit on death. Your next grandchild will be thankful.”

Grandma glares at my two cats resting in their respective donut beds. I distract her with an article on formal suit versus sports coat fashion etiquette. She believes men’s professional fashion is the next most lucrative market because “they think dropping big money is the solution to poor sense.” I still think she should invest her efforts in something more stable like funeral houses. Spruce the ceremonies up with well-marketed multicultural rituals since people these days are so enthused by “ethnic” gadgets and traditions. I’ll sign up as a customer so my cats can mourn me in their trickster ways.

 The North Side of the Chain Bridge

Anita Harag

Translated from Hungarian by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess

I don’t dare take his hand. My palms sweat. They sweat when I’m nervous. This time I’m nervous because I have to take his hand and my palms sweat. Whenever I held my mother's, my father's, or a friend’s hand they sweated even more. Once I noticed father wiping his hand on his trousers after having let go of mine. I didn’t know if it was on my account or because his palm was sweaty, too. We’re the same blood type, he is also AB. That’s the rarest, father said, yours is the same as mine.  That’s fine, it’s a father-daughter thing. Perhaps that’s why our hands sweat, that’s what I believed for a long time.

I don’t dare take his hand. We’re walking up on Gellért Hill, he knows a place where there aren’t many people. I’m a girl from the Pest side*, the last time I went to the Buda hills I was seven. I don’t say this out loud. We walk up along the winding path; I try to breathe calmly without panting. At the playground, the kids are lining up to use the slide, their parents are holding their hands. My buddies and I used to come here to smoke weed, he says, rather not exactly here, he corrects himself, but where we’re heading. Three or four of us, there's not much room for any more. I hope there aren’t too many people there. I don’t know, it’s been a long time since I was here. Even then it was dark, so I don’t know if we’re supposed to turn right now or a bit farther up. He stops, looks around and leans over the railing. Aha, that’s it, he says and jumps over it. I also climb over it. I’m careful not to let my leg get caught, afraid my pants would split. We start down, he’s ahead of me on a narrow trail. I try to avoid the branches. I haven’t sprayed myself with insect repellent. At home I’ll have to check my body for ticks, especially at the back of my knees where my skin is softer and thinner. I don’t slip on the steep slope; he takes my hand to help me down from the last steeper section, and I only realize this afterwards.

I took his hand for the first time yesterday. We arranged to meet on the north side of the Chain Bridge. At first I thought he meant the Buda side but he also mentioned that it would be in the middle. In the middle of the north side. That’s where he was waiting, I wanted to give him a peck on the cheek, but he extended his hand. I was so nervous and didn’t pay attention to squeezing it hard and looking into his eyes. I always pay attention to these things, looking into the eyes, squeezing. I don’t pay much attention to names, neither first nor last. I knew his name.

A boy of twenty and a somewhat younger girl are drinking beer at the rampart when we arrive. He greets them, hello. Hello, they greet him back. Hello, I also say. We sit down by the low stone barricade. He puts one of his feet on it and leans on his knee. I turn my back to the Pest side a bit so that I can see him.  I’m afraid of heights. I look down carefully, but I can’t guess how high we are. Twenty, thirty meters. Both seem wrong. We’re high up, we can see all of Pest, he points things out. That’s the top of the basilica, can you see it, he asks. That’s where the eastern railway station is, and over there the Arts Centre, although you can’t see it from here but it’s in that direction. And I live that way, somewhere, not far from the station. You can see the very top of my old school, over there, it’s reddish. Do you see it? I follow the direction in which he points but I don’t see it. I see it, I answer. Good God, all the crazy things we were up to! he says. The principal sent a note to my parents almost every month. Once we stole all the chalk from the classrooms. Since then, they keep the doors locked. Smoking in the toilets, I ask him. Of course, every day. That’s hardly worth mentioning, he answers. I never had a smoke in the toilets, but pretend I did. I tried it once when I was thirteen, not at school but along the Rákos Brook. I finished two cigs then told my mother about it. She would have smelled it on me anyway. For two weeks afterwards I thought I would get cancer of the tongue. One of my classmates told me that even one cig can bring it about, and it’s much worse if you don’t inhale. I didn’t inhale.

What were you like, he asks. My parents also got a note from the principal once, but I was mostly a straight A student, I participated in all the events, recited poems on national holidays, things like that. You know, I was that typical good girl. Uh-huh, I was the bad boy and always attracted to good girls. And me, to bad boys. He smiles. I like it when someone smiles so that there are creases around the mouth. He talks about all four years, he recalls in full detail, when and how he broke the principal’s window with a soccer ball, how he reported a bomb scare from a phone booth just to avoid writing a math test on functions. I don’t listen to every word. He often smiles when he talks and then I also smile automatically, but what I’m thinking of is what type of undershirt is beneath his pullover. And what his chest must look like under that. Is the hair blond like on his head or is it darker? Perhaps red.

It’s slowly getting dark; I rub my arm. He also rubs my arm and asks if I’d like to have his jacket. I shake my head. I can hardly make out the branches over the trail, one hits my face, he walks in front, I follow a few steps behind. At the top he helps me over the railing. He reaches for my hand again, and then doesn’t let it go. I let him hold it. His palm is a bit rough. He accompanies me to the bus stop. He hugs me to keep me warm. He gives me a quick kiss on my mouth. Four buses pass by before I get on one.

He’s taking pictures of me while I’m sleeping; it wakes me up. What are you doing, I ask him. Nothing, go back to sleep. You know I don’t like it. It’s only that the light caught you so nicely, he says. He points out the specks cast on my belly and shoulder made by the light filtering through the blinds. They glow. He puts the camera on the night table, strokes my belly and kisses my shoulder. Don’t go to work today! Tell them that you’re sick. That you’ve got the runs, or something like that. Should I tell them that I’ve got the runs? Tell them. They can’t say anything to that. He tries to persuade me; we could go back to sleep and stay in bed all day. I text my boss that I’m not coming into work today. Indigestion. He keeps kissing my belly, satisfied, presses his ear to my bellybutton. It’s gurgling, he says. He slides up and puts his head on my chest. When you take a breath, it beats faster. I got arrhythmia. Arrhythmia? Yes, it means irregular beat, or that there is an extra beat between beats, I don’t know exactly. My phone pings, my boss replies: get better. I’ve a small cramp in my stomach. I’ve never called in sick without being sick. I’m sure they know. They know that I’m not sick. That’s what they’ll be talking about; yesterday I was perfectly fine; indigestion is like that; it always starts at night and there are no warning signs. He gets up, opens the shutters, I cover my eyes against the light. Let’s go out for breakfast, he says. Aren’t we going to stay in bed all day? We can lie down again after.

He puts on his trousers, I’m looking for clean panties in the drawer, I don’t bother putting on a bra, we’re only going to corner coffee shop. I close the door and check twice to see if it’s properly locked. Don’t do that, he scolds, you’ve locked it. OK, I only want to check, and I go back, put in the key and turn it until it stops. Next time, I’m going to lock up, he says on the way down. Do you trust me to lock up properly? He lets me go ahead at the front door, puts his arm around my shoulders. I’m in the habit of checking the light switches, he says. Sometimes I get out of bed to check if I’ve turned off bathroom light.

There’s a long line up at the coffee shop but no one is sitting at the tables. Everyone is going to work. I’m bed-ridden because of indigestion, I’m not going. He doesn’t go either, he doesn’t work today, he’ll only have to take pictures the day after tomorrow. They’ll go to an old outdoor pool in Lepence that’s been closed for fifteen years. There’s nothing there except empty pools covered in leaves, condoms, and candy wrappers. And an old hut where the food was sold. It’s our turn next. He orders a bacon wrap, me an omelet and coffee. He an espresso lungo and me a latte. I wouldn’t call that coffee; he says and sits down at a table near the window. I would prefer to sit farther inside, it’s quieter and people at the bus stop wouldn’t see us. They wouldn’t see us drink coffee and stare back at them. That’s just like some foamy sugary hot chocolate. I like foamy sugary hot chocolate, I tell him. Taste this, and he offers me his cup. Taste this, this is the real thing. I just shake my head but then he doesn’t take the cup away. I taste it, the bitterness hurts my tongue. This is too strong for me, I say. It’s bitter. Of course, it’s bitter, coffee is bitter. This is real coffee. It’s just an illusion that you sense bitterness and sweetness on different parts of the tongue, did you know? He wipes his hand on a napkin, pushes away the empty plate and drinks up what’s left of his coffee. I’m a slow eater, I say; he strokes my thigh. But do you know why, he asks. After you cut off a piece you transfer your fork from the left hand to the right. I guess because you’re better with your right hand. Haven’t you noticed that? No, I answer. It’s true, it’s what I always do. But it only dawned on me now that that’s why it takes me twice as long.

He suggests we go for a walk. The weather is so nice, why shouldn’t we. After all we haven’t got anything to do today. I’d like to go upstairs to change first, and head for the building. I’d like to put on a bra, but I don’t say that. No, let’s not go upstairs, he insists and takes my hand, if we go upstairs, we’ll stay there. He pulls me along. I go.

We roam the streets, I follow him. Sometimes he stops to take pictures, he always carries a camera, yet he doesn’t look like a tourist. It’s how he holds it, a 700 Nikon, that’s what matters, that’s what’s different. He stops in front of a run-down house; one of the panes of a huge double window is broken. He takes pictures of the broken glass and the ivy growing on the side of the house. It’ll be nice inside, too, he says, and goes over and pushes the gate; it doesn’t open. He looks at me, he’d like to go inside. I wouldn’t, stop fooling around. He knows that I’d like to go in, I shouldn’t resist. Don’t resist, let’s look inside. He walks up and down along the fence; this is number twenty-four. The lot at twenty-six is empty, the owner of twenty-two can’t see in because the area is overgrown with weeds. There’s nobody here, we’d have no trouble getting in, we’ve got to go in, he repeats, and tries to push the gate again, this time with more force. He succeeds. We won’t do anything, just look around to see what it’s like in there. I shouldn’t be scared, he’s entered a lot of abandoned houses before, nobody gives a damn.

I follow him. The gate squeaks, it’s hard to open and close. He pushes it until it clicks. He’s holding my hand; I pull back a bit to make him slow down. He walks closer to the ivy to take photos. He proceeds slowly into the back yard with his hands in his pockets as if inspecting how large the garden is, if there’s enough room for a pool, because if there isn’t, we won’t buy. I follow him slowly. The house has a large garden, this could be in the ad. I stop at the end of the house, as if hesitating at some boundary. Even in the cemetery I always feel bad when I must cross some stranger’s plot among the graves. Nobody has tended this garden for years, even though it was once well kept. There are traces of cordoned-off flower beds, the weeds are somewhat higher here. He checks everywhere, stops at the back of the garden and starts kicking something. He bends down, rummages on the ground. There’s something there. He straightens up and comes back. They haven’t been living here for quite a while, there’s a shed-like structure in the back but it has almost completely collapsed. What do you think must have happened? I don’t know, I answer. It’s a one-story house but with huge double windows. He walks over to the side entrance of the house. It’s locked. I stay in the garden, hesitating at that boundary. He walks over to a back window, forms a visor over his eyes with his hands and looks inside. There’s nobody here. I think we can go in. I don’t want to climb in through the window. It’s not very high, he’ll go in and then help me. But I don’t want to, I say. Come on, why not, I don’t believe you’re behaving like this, he answers, he doesn’t understand why I’m so inflexible, why he can’t do any fun stuff with me. I’m going in, I don’t care, he says. He pushes the window open, lifts himself onto the ledge and climbs in. I walk to the window; he reaches out his hand. Well? Now or never. I take his hand and he helps me over the ledge. I can do it from here, thanks. I step inside, there’s dirt stuck to my palm and a few bits of wood from the ledge.

The tall chestnut tree in the garden blocks out the sun, it must be cool here in the summer, now it’s dark and musty. The house is completely empty, on the ceiling there is a moldy stain in the shape of Lake Velence. During geography class, our teacher, Karola, hung a huge topographical map of Hungary over the blackboard. When it was my turn to answer, I had to point out where the different minor lakes and hills were located and how tall the hills were. She never asked me about the major lakes like Balaton or Velence. Once she caught me using a cheat sheet. The patterned wallpaper below the stain is blistered, by the window it is completely detached. There is filthy greyish white plaster underneath. A large room, a small room with a narrow corridor between, a bathroom, a toilet and a kitchen. A small jewel box close to the heart of the city. The toilet is separate from the bathroom, the latter has a tub with a hole in it, the bottom covered in scale. It just needs to be cleaned, he says, a thorough cleaning with vinegar plus a coat of paint and you could move in. I like it that the toilet is separate from the bathroom. What do you think, dear, he asks. Yes, sweetheart, and having a window in the bathroom is also an advantage. You grew up in one of those apartments from the ’70's, he says, breaking character. He walks through the rooms, presses the torn wallpaper back onto the wall, but as soon as he lets go, it separates again. He says they must have emigrated. Why emigrated? That he doesn’t know. I don’t think so, it’s more like the last generation died here. Then their children must have emigrated, that’s why they didn’t do anything with the house. Or, simply, the last living Szebenyei must have died, or Kovács, or Balogh. That’s why the house is deserted, because it belongs to no one. Perhaps, but it sounds better that they emigrated, he insists. They have emigrated, it’s much more interesting, where they emigrated to and why. Perhaps, I answer, it’s more interesting to me if they died out. If there’s no child or grandchild left in the family. The grandchildren will remain grandchildren, they’ll never become parents or grandparents. They’re old yet not grandfathers or grandmothers. I find it hard to imagine an old lady in her seventies who’s not someone’s grandmother. He closes the window, are you afraid of the dark, he asks. No, not of the dark, only of water. For a long time, he used to be afraid of the dark. Of complete darkness when the venetian blinds are closed and not even the streetlights filter through from the outside. The time he was most scared was when the power went out in their building when he was eleven. The streetlights were out, as well. He was alone at home, perhaps his mother was at the hairdresser’s, his father at the pub or was working late, he no longer knows. He was alone in the dark. He’d never been as scared as at that moment. Because he couldn’t see a fucking thing. He thought he’d gone blind. The clock on the stove was off. He switched the light on and off, but nothing happened. That’s it, there’s nothing more, he’ll never know how white their fridge is, where his father used to slide the Mona Lisa magnet to the side because he hated the way it looked at him, and his mother used to push it back to its place. He was not going to see the crack on the wall in his room that he always stared at in the semi-darkness before going to sleep. He walked over to the window, pulled up the venetian blinds and there was a tiny bit of light reflecting from a spade in the garden. He kept looking around to see if there really was light there. The power was out for twenty-six minutes. Do you know where else it’s so damned dark? In caves. When he was nineteen, he went on an excursion to the Caves of Aggtelek. He hasn’t been scared ever since. He just closed his eyes and felt around, and after a while he knew how to feel around to avoid falling. Using his feet and hands. Somehow, he felt more secure in the pitch dark if he closed his eyes.

We should go for walks more often; he says as we leave the house. He holds my waist and helps me climb through the window. It was good, wasn’t it? It wasn’t at all risky, he could tell I liked it.

Every evening, we go for a walk to the island and then back. It takes an hour, sometimes only fifty-eight minutes, sometimes seventy-three. My pace depends on my mood, that’s what he thinks. If I’m nervous, I go faster, at such times he can tell that my right foot is turned in. He watches how I walk, I didn’t even notice, did I. He knows that I used to do gymnastics. That was eleven years ago, I should try to do some exercise again. It would help my back; I sit in front of a computer all day. That’s also the reason my neck hurts. The island is a fine place, he and his friends used to come here a lot to drink; that was a while ago. They would open the beer cans, which hissed in the silence, the water carried the sound to the opposite bank. Nobody used to come here. Now all the benches are occupied, you can’t be alone here. We must come late at night when there are fewer people. That’s why we come here on weekday nights. He knows a place past the Musical Fountain, you need to climb over a fence, only those who know about the trail go there.

He used to have a girlfriend, he won’t give me her name, not because he wants to keep it a secret, I mustn’t think that, but if he gives it, I’ll associate a face and a personality with it, and she doesn’t need a face or a personality. She wasn’t that important. I tend to overthink and overblow things, I mustn’t deny it, he knows it. He took this girl, who doesn’t have a name, to this public building on their second date. The windows were broken, it was easy to climb over the gate, no one guarded it. He’d been there several times before and was curious if the girl would go inside with him. He didn’t tell her where they were going, they just kept going and the girl, who doesn’t have a name, didn’t know the place. He didn’t think she would go in, she was always very quiet, hardly spoke with strangers. Yet, she went in OK. The quietest girls surprise you the most, that’s been his experience on several occasions.

We walk over to the island and back, the trip takes longer on the way there. He holds my hand, he always holds it, he takes it when we come out of a store. He’s noticed by now that I prefer him on my left side. My right hand is more skillful, that’s what I use for everything, that may be the reason. That’s because my right hand is steadier than the left. That’s what I use to open everything, to write on Messenger, to support myself on the bus. His left hand is also weaker, but that’s because of a skiing accident. He still can’t completely bend one of his fingers, he has no sensation in the phalanges. He doesn’t know if I had noticed it.

I shouldn’t pick up the phone, it doesn’t matter who it is, he is the one present. I always have my phone at hand, I should really get out of the habit when we’re together, I shouldn’t be available to others. I feel bad because he’s hit on a sensitive issue, he can tell, he says. I knit my eyebrows, my nose wrinkles a bit, I should see myself now, I would see how right he is. He strokes my face; his palm is rough. He used to row, that’s why it’s like sandpaper. Once he had a date with a girl who was not willing to take his hand because of that. It bothered her, he said, she’s the one who said it was like sandpaper.

The forecast for tonight is -4°C, it might break a record; the last time it went down to -3° on this date was in 1971. He read in an article that two people froze to death that night. Once he and his buddies went into the Danube when it was -13°, that was the coldest. They took bets whether they would dare to go in the water on the coldest night of the year. That was on January 22. They stepped on the ice flows, but that was different, they didn’t have to go into the water, just step on the ice. One time the ice cracked under him, he’s the tallest and heaviest. A thin opening formed from his right foot toward the other bank. He and his two buddies had been doing this since the age of seventeen. Misu and Bandit, that’s what he calls them, he hasn’t yet given their real names. Bandit’s name is András, but his father has the same name and so he hated it. It’s stupid that when sons are named after their fathers. These days he simply goes by the name Bandi; the usual nickname for András, they haven’t met for two years. Before that they went into the water every winter. They stripped naked, left their clothes on the bank beside the blankets they brought along. Misu had curly black hair between his legs, you could hardly see his cock, that gave us a good laugh. He had a short haircut, that’s why you couldn’t tell how curly it was. They had a rule to stay in the water at least five minutes. On the coldest day, Bandit didn’t want to go in. This is crazy, he said, why don’t they just have a beer and then go to his place. He’s chicken, his balls almost froze, and he got scared. Then he came to his senses, after all this was a tradition. They must go in. They took off their clothes and ran to the river and dove into the water, then ran out, the pebbles hurting their feet. They wrapped the blankets around themselves and jumped up and down like idiots, to warm up. The cold hurt, first it burned then caused dull aches and a kind of numbness. Bandit lost it, imbecile, imbecile, imbecile, he kept repeating while banging the pebbles by his feet with his fist. The skin tore on his hand. He claimed he did it to have a different kind of pain. The next year they didn’t want to go in, just sat on the bank in their coats. At one point he suggested that they go in, but neither Misu nor Bandit wanted to. We’re too old for that, they said, or something like that. It was around that time that Misu’s girlfriend got pregnant, two months before that, he was going to break up with her. It was also when Bandit started not showing up, he doesn’t know what happened to him, they haven’t talked for two years. From that time, he went by the name of Bandi.

I’m cold, I’m cold again, even though he reminded me to put on another pullover. He knows I get cold easily, as soon as the temperature gets below 3° I shiver and my lips turn purple. They’re purple now, too, the lip balm I put on doesn’t help, he can see. I should give him my hand, my left one, he slips it in his pocket. It might have used tissues in it. It doesn’t matter, he isn’t put off by my snot. Then I’m not put off by his either. A cloth coat isn’t enough, it looks good, a nice yellow and all, but I’m shivering in it. He gives me his coat, he’s not cold. The cold doesn’t bother him, my nose gets all red, this time, too, it’s getting red. He kisses me, I ‘m always the first to open my eyes, he’s only noticed that recently. He finds it strange to be kissing while I’m looking at him, that’s why he opens his eyes, too. We look at each other for a while, then we start laughing while still kissing. He already knows that I like watching him during sex, too, he digs that I watch him; anyone looking on can tell that I love him. It’s in my eyes, the way I look at him, that I’m totally into him. It’s going to be very cold this evening, it was already -4° when we left. It’s going to be a record cold at night. I’ll see that in a couple of days there’ll be ice flows on the Danube. We’re about to reach the place where he and his buddies used to go. Yes, they need to go this way. I should also climb over the railing. See, here’s the trail, we’ve been here a couple of times before, he asks if I remember. I used to like it here, just like I used to like it in the house, it was me who wanted to go back. I got to like the garden, the patterned wallpaper, the tub with the hole. There was a hole beside the living room door, I always put my finger into it; it left white dust on it. I tried to imagine what could have been there. You could see the traces of pictures near the other holes, the wall was lighter there but not there, perhaps there used to be a lamp or something hanging from a nail. A talisman. Some of the pictures had disappeared but others remained. He knows that my favorite is the photo of a woman with curly black hair, not looking into the camera but away, as if out through the window of the living room. Photos didn’t use to be digital; can I tell the difference? He has an analogue camera at home, it requires a whole different approach. I’m curious why they took away some of pictures but not others, I always asked him that when we went there. For example, why did they leave the picture of the curly haired woman. He thinks I should take it, nobody needs it, but I don’t want to, it belongs to the house. I don’t even know her name. That bothers me, he can tell. I want to know her name, her job, when she died and when she was born. Whether she remained young, around twenty, or grew old, her back aching from all the gardening, but even at age eighty, she would still plant and weed. I tried to guess her name, Éva, Berta, neither suits her, Gréta, perhaps, or Katinka. Not Katinka, more like Gréta. I always give her a different name. Then one day, there was a man walking in the garden and we couldn’t go in. That ended it. We never went back again.

There are no ice flows on the Danube yet, today we can still go into the water. I should look how the streetlamps on the opposite shore reflect on the water’s surface. The water should be around four or five degrees, that’s still bearable. We’ll get undressed, leave our clothes on the shore; no one ever comes this way. We could pile everything on this rock, they wouldn’t get wet. Let’s go in, it’ll feel good after. Everyone has to try this once. Just to know that they can do it. Me, too, he’ll come in with me. It shouldn’t be just five seconds, there should be some challenge in it. Let’s swim over to the other bank. OK, that’s really crazy, not to the other bank, let’s just see who can swim farther. It will be good, I’ll see. He knows I‘d like to do it but that I’m afraid, but there’s no need to be. I became really fond of that house, too. It’s only the beginning that’s difficult, after it’s easier. Shall we go? We must sink under fast then it only hurts for a couple of seconds. I mustn’t think, let’s just run. To the count of three. One, two, three.

*Buda and Pest were once separate cities. The Danube flows southward with flat Pest to the east and hilly Buda to the west. The Chain Bridge, the oldest connecting the two, is suspended from chains.

re: The Wedding

Hunter Hague

Nancy,

I hate to email you again, but Teddy and I are feeling pretty low right now TBH. We just got a message from Violet's wedding website, and apparently I've been uninvited to the wedding. Is it a scam? 

I'm writing to you (sorry, I know you're busy) so I can get more information. I always feel calmer when I can review facts. First of all, can you confirm I was disinvited? If so, how was the decision made, and by whom (Violet?)? Have any other guests gotten their invitations revoked?

Sorry if this is turning into the longest email ever, but your phone can't accept new voice messages. (Also, Teddy said emphatically you don't text.) Can you send me Violet’s email address? I'd like to get her perspective. (Teddy's been a wreck since we got this weird message. He's been coping by playing too many video games. I find he can't be relied on to help remedy the situation). I just think it would be incredibly special to be at Teddy's sister's wedding and I'm confused as to why I can't all of a sudden.

I'd be willing to skip dinner at the reception if that helps.

Sorry. Thanks,

-Kath

Hi Nancy!

I found Violet's email address on the internet and sent her a message, I hope you don't mind. Violet replied really fast and guess what? I'm back in the wedding! Or, as Violet said: I was never out of the wedding. The whole drama was a mistake! When you do write back (BTW, I totally get you're busy) I'm curious to hear what you think happened. 

It's time I lay my cards on the table. There's a reason we kinda freaked out when we thought I wouldn't be attending Violet's wedding. The reason: Teddy is going to officially propose to me at the wedding. Email feels so cold for a daughter-in-law/ mother-in-law relationship (okay if I use these phrases?). Nancy, I really would call you, I really would text you, or visit with you in person, or contact you in any other way if I could. But I asked Teddy how I could contact you and he said to email. I hope I'm not making a total fool of myself by sending this.

There have been moments over the years, a condescending look (maybe?), a long pause, the feeling that when I'm not in the room I am being talked about by you. These are not facts. They are a collection of vague impressions, making the diagnosis difficult. But they are something. Teddy told me early in our relationship that you expressed hesitation with me because I'm "not very spontaneous." (I want to bury the hatchet between us. Is there a hatchet? I don't think there's a hatchet!)

If there was something specific I did to get myself uninvited, I beg you to please tell me. Med school has been crazy, and beyond that I am told I sometimes fail to pick up on social cues. 

Can I say, as if there were any doubt, Teddy is the man of my dreams. I love him so much, and I plan to tell him this every day of our lives together. (I've always wanted to marry a rugged, adventurous guy who's done tons of cool stuff: like work on a farm in Chile and hike the Appalachian Trail — both things Teddy's planning on accomplishing. Someone who is also cultured and knows his basic composers.) Guys like Teddy are so rare.

Thanks. Sorry,

-Kath

Nancy,

I'm really sorry to bother you, but I wanted to keep you posted. Teddy and I are all set to go with Operation: So Cute I'm Gonna Barf!

But . . . can I be totally honest for a minute? I am feeling cut off from you. Teddy tells me you are getting my emails, but you never write back. This dynamic feels a little awkward and wrong, not how I imagined my relationship with my mother-in-law going. I'm wondering, for example, what you think about everything that's happening? Your son is going to propose to his girlfriend in 7 days. If you have any reservations about Operation: So Cute I'm Gonna Barf, now would be a good time to discuss them. 

There's one more thing. Can you tell me what you and Teddy texted about today? 

As I was driving us home from the mountain, I was chatting with Teddy about the recent NASA Mars operation. Have you heard much about the robotic helicopter they deployed on the surface of Mars? The Martian atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than our planet's, which means flying near the surface of that planet is like flying 87,000 feet above Earth. The helicopter worked. What a feat of planning! Anyway, as I was chatting with Teddy, every two minutes or so, he'd glance at the phone in his lap and then tense up. I asked him is everything okay? He said yeah. But he kept acting strange and withdrawn. Finally I offered to give him a dishbuck in exchange for telling me what was going on in his head. (Dishbucks are a currency he can spend to not do the dishes.) He wasn't budging, so I offered two dishbucks, and then 3. He said, Oh, I'm just texting with my mom. I asked if you were alright. He said, yeah.

A few minutes passed, and I started thinking: oh no, is he having doubts? It seemed like the messages (from you, apparently) were causing his back and shoulders to tense up. I asked him what was the problem: something with Violet's wedding? He wouldn't say.

Teddy seemed on edge for the rest of the ride. When we pulled into the driveway he eyed all the snow that had built up on the roof of our apartment. Per a deal with the landlord, he's responsible for raking the snow off the roof. I imagined he was thinking of this chore as he closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. I'm shutting down, he said. I can't deal with everything right now. He sometimes falls apart emotionally. You've seen this. I said, We'll get through this together. Is there anything I can do to help?

That evening I washed the dishes and played Teddy's "Classical Music for People who Hate Classical Music" playlist. The only time I spoke was to announce the composer when a new track came on, to help Teddy memorize his composers. But he was quiet and weird all night.

Can you please tell me what you two were texting about?

I'm sorry, thank you,

Kath

Nancy,

I'm shaking right now. I can’t believe what happened. I guess now I know what you two were texting about: how to put me out of my misery. Well, congratulations. (I know even as I type this email I'm going to regret sending it, Nancy, but I'm just so f___ing mad! I'm not a vindictive person. I hope Violet has a wonderful wedding, and Teddy and you have nice lives.) Goodbye forever.

Can I just say one more thing? What's wrong with me? I'm organized, ambitious, intelligent. Why did you feel I wasn't good enough for your son? Is it because I'm "not very spontaneous"? I've nearly been engaged with two other guys, and they both broke up with me unexpectedly at the last minute. I guess everyone's afraid of the girl who takes control of the situation, who won't hesitate to speak her mind. Is that it? Or maybe everyone sees straight through her to the girl who was always moving schools and always feeling lost. Is that who everyone sees and hates? Well, I hate her too.

If you have any sympathy for me, can you please tell me what it is about me you find so wrong? I had our whole trajectory mapped out and it went away in seconds and I don't understand why . . . What am I saying? I didn't deserve to be blindsided. 

-K

Nancy,

I really wish your voicemail wasn't full. Can I begin with an apology? When I wrote my email to you yesterday it was late, and I was exhausted and stressed. So, I'm sorry. 

As for Teddy, I want you to know he's fine. He's sleeping thanks to pain medication. We plan on trying to reach you again in the morning. I figured a quick email tonight would help soften the blow. I know how you worry about him, but you don't have to worry anymore. 

Last night Teddy began packing up his clothes and video games. I flitted around the apartment out of my mind with grief. I kept trying to give Teddy redundant or unwanted advice, like, "Don't forget to rake the snow off the roof!" I didn't know what to do with myself. I sent that hasty email to you. Then I had to clear my head so I got in my car and drove. In the cupholder of my car is a plastic bag clip in the shape of a pizza slice. When I stopped at a red light and happened to look at it, I burst into tears. 

I came back a few hours later. Turning into the driveway, my headlights illuminated a scene of horror. Teddy lying on his back, not moving. The large green recycling bin on its side, receipts flapping around crazily. It was chaos. Teddy's snow rake in pieces. (Teddy had climbed onto the green plastic bin in order to reach the flimsy snow rake to the dormers, and he'd fallen off.) I've told him never to climb on that recycling bin. I jumped out of the car with the headlights still on him. My heart was racing. 

He pointed to his lower back. "What's here? Is this where the kidney is, Kath?" The fact that we'd just had a huge fight (and in a different universe he might have been moving his boxes into someone's car right then) just went away.

I told him to hold on. He seemed to think he had landed on his kidney, but I was more worried about the head or spine. My training took over. I barely had to think. After determining there were no apparent signs of trauma to the head or cervical spine, I took Teddy's pulse and respiration rate.

"Could it be the kidney?" he said, lying uneasily on the ground.

"Where does it hurt?"

"Here. Ow. It's bad." He pointed vaguely toward his hip. 

I unzipped his jacket and lifted his shirt. The spot he had indicated wasn't near any vital organs. Instead, I drew on my training to palpate the 2nd right interspace, the 2nd left interspace, the sternal border, and the apex. I was being extra thorough, Nancy, and checking his heart, an organ very dear to me. I felt for the carotid upstroke, which was okay.

"Kath—my kidney?"

I looked for the apical impulse.

Teddy stared into the night sky. "Should I call my mom?"

"You're okay, Teddy. We should go to the ER to get you scanned, but I think you're totally okay." As I zipped his coat back up, I mentally rehearsed how I would present my findings to the ER docs. 

"And what if my kidney explodes in the car and I never get to say goodbye to my mom—" Teddy closed his eyes as if he had just looked straight into my car's headlights. 

"We'll go to the ER." I helped him up, and put his arm around my shoulders.

He stood. "I'm so glad you came home when you did." 

I said, "We'll talk later."  

As we moved unsteadily toward my car, Teddy said, "I should have never . . ."

"What?" We stopped walking. "You should have never what? What is it?"

Teddy looked at me, confused.

"You just said: 'I should have never.' What did you mean?"

Teddy's eyes were glassy. He stared towards the car. We weren't moving. 

"What did you mean?" I said.

"I should have never. . . ended things."

"Oh, forget about that," I said, and now we began approaching the car again. My professional duties ongoing, I couldn't let any emotions in. I buckled up the patient and asked him to list his composers.

"Debussy," he said. "Shakespeare, Mozart, Joan of Arc. Do you think I'm at risk of dying?"

"No."

"I'm scared. I love you. I love you so much, Kath. I'm sorry."

"That's ok, Teddy. That's ok."

Later, the CT scan definitively ruled out any damage to his organs. We learned he had fractured his 9th right rib and had a transverse process fracture on one of his thoracic vertebrae (basically 5 or six weeks of taking it easy and he's fine; probably no dancing at the wedding). I took his hand in mine and told him that I loved him very much and we could simply forget all that breaking up business. He smiled and repeated that he loved me, too. I was swept up in a warm feeling. I mentioned how that stupid pizza clip had made me cry, and he said, "That's so cheesy." I literally laughed so hard I coughed.

Later on I inquired about your family's 1920's art deco ring. Teddy said he would ask you about it.

An eventful day. Anyway, Violet's wedding will be here in 2 days. Talk soon.

-Kath

Hello from Arizona. Teddy and I came to Sedona because the red rocks here are supposed to resemble the Martian landscape. Ever since the 5 successful helicopter flights on The Red Planet, I'm even more obsessed. The odds were so long, and the engineers planned so diligently. Staying here, I feel some of the magic of that inspirational mission. I watch the sun set and think about what it would be like from the rover's point of view. 

Back on Earth: I bet you are regretting your actions at Violet's wedding a week ago. You were so drunk, Nancy, I'll remind you what happened in case you blacked out. Remember our talk at the porta potties? You flaunted the art deco ring right in my face! What could I do but try to defend myself. I was feeling really cornered and attacked so I lied and said, I'd do anything to make sure Teddy makes the right decisions, even loosen the wheels on the recycling container thing that he stands on to do the roof. That really set you off. You said some pretty disparaging things about me and then left to have another drink or two or 3. You looked shocked when you were called on to do a toast. Did you forget Violet and Russ had asked you to give a speech? 

I have a pretty good memory. Should I remind you what you said? You delivered a mini-sermon on how parenting was a process of gradually losing control. You start out doing everything for them, diapers and food, and friends, and then as time goes on they gain independence and you have less and less control. Then there was a confusing transition. You made eye contact with me. And then this: "This girl who is with my son is a tricky, lying manipulative — I can't even look at her — am I . . . does anyone else see this? I can't be—" Here is where Uncle Harold made his first attempt to rescue the microphone. You pulled it back and made eye contact with me. "She's a rat. She's like a rat. A little . . . infestation. I don't know — wait. Wait! I don't know how to get her. Call the . . . people. Teddy, please. Who else can see this? Teddy, honey. Please. Dump this bitch. You won't believe what she said to me—"

Uncle Harold seized the microphone. You should have seen the looks on the Violet's and Russ's faces. Let's just say there are many embarrassed relatives who reached out to me to apologize for your behavior. Just so you know, Teddy took it really really hard. 

It's funny. I spent so much of my life worrying about being spontaneous. Believe me, you are not the first person to mention it. In college, I used to write down "random" topics on index cards and then go to the bathroom, read one, and return to the party or whatever and mention it to someone. But the truth is, when you're forced to move all the time like I was, you don't think wacky, spur of the moment ideas are such a blast. And here's the other thing: spontaneity doesn't get you to Mars, it doesn't land the rover or power the solar helicopter. Planning does. I'm a planner. And I've landed on the man of my dreams. Don't you EVER try to break up me and my fiancé again, Nancy.

We'll have to see if we think inviting you to our wedding is appropriate, what with how much of a scene you caused at Violet's. Why don't you send me a photo of the art deco ring so I can see what it looks like up close.

Warmly,

Kathy

Body Language

Charlie Watts

Jeremy watches his father watching the waitress. She’s cleaning their table with a big red rag, moving from corner to corner to corner. When she’s done, she straightens up and touches Jeremy’s mother’s arm. She tells them to sit, saying it like she’s talking to a dog. Sit. Good boy. Jeremy wants to bark, but he knows that would not be prosocial.

Jeremy does not like the salt and pepper shakers in the center of their table. One is in the shape of a lighthouse, the other a lobster boat. They are stupid because you would never want holes in a lighthouse and with the fishing boat, the holes would be on the bottom, for the tank that holds the lobsters, not on the deck. A better idea would be lobster traps with the salt and pepper in a glass box in the middle. Then it would make some sense even if it was still stupid.

His mother hands him a shiny menu and he begins the process of choosing either a burger or a fish sandwich, working through the set of texture and flavor questions that will give him the correct answer. In the corner of the restaurant, he sees a boy that looks like he’s also twelve and three-quarters years old. That boy is sitting with his chair turned the wrong way around and his chin resting on the chairback. He has very long hair, especially compared to Jeremy’s #2 buzzcut. His legs are spread out around the chair and they are jiggling, making a noise Jeremy can hear if he does the eye-squeeze trick.

Sybil is looking at the waitress and thinking she’s got a nice ass. A solid, well-built ass that’s not afraid of its own shadow. She’s also patting her son Jeremy’s forearm because he’s fussing with the salt and pepper shakers. She wants him to calm down before he starts kicking the table legs. Sybil does like her own body, but she’s not as robust as this waitress. She’s on the phone all day with her Medicare clients and not getting 30,000 steps slinging lobster rolls, but she does some yoga and feels she hasn’t entirely gone to seed. She is, however, having a bit of a battle with her new haircut. Her sister Maggie calls it “the flying wedge.” The way the stylist arranged things, with most of Sybil’s newly recolored and hot-oiled hair slung over to the left, she has to hold her head at an angle to keep the hair from flopping into her eyes. It’s causing an actual crick in her neck.

The waitress returns and asks about drinks. Sybil wants iced tea, sweetened, no lemon. Her husband David is having the IPA, as expected. Jeremy wants a Coke, but she amends to Diet Coke. And waters for everyone, please. Then she finds her purse under her seat and digs out a packet of Kleenex for Jeremy. She knows it will take him some meaningful amount of time, owing to all his rules, to get the first one out of the package.

Sybil wants to get a tattoo. Apparently, she’d come to the right place for field research. Is there anyone here without a tattoo? Jesus. The main obstacles for Sybil are the whole it’s a permanent commitment thing, some nagging concern about whether tattoos are a form of self-mutilation, and the fundamental quandary of what, actually, to get. She can see her grandmother’s pinched apple-face of disapproval. Some mornings she rolls over in bed, extends one arm up toward the ceiling, and imagines the whole of it, from her knuckles to her shoulder, decorated in dark grey and red vines. There would be obscure symbols and a secret face hidden in the leaves that only she would know about.

David is both pleased that they have an IPA he enjoys — just enough haze to make the flavor profile pop — and annoyed that he’s sitting with his back to the take-out line. It’s not that he’s been in the military or had some past trauma. He just doesn’t like wondering if someone might be looking at him. He should have taken Jeremy’s spot, which would have given him a clean view of the line and the comings and goings from the kitchen. He shrugs it off, puts his hand on his wife’s hand, and sees that they are featuring a steak burrito as a lunch special. A strong favorite. And, he reasons, acceptable because he’s planning a bike ride for later, so the protein blast makes sense.

The waitress returns with their drinks. Her forearms are incredibly ripped, he notices, and he wonders if it’s just waitressing or if she has a specialized lifting routine. He leans back in his chair, making room for her and smiling.

“What else are we thinking?” she says, pulling a notepad from her rear pocket and a pen from her hair. David likes that her eyebrows have up-ticks at each end; to him, they are saying hell yes.

After they order — a process complicated by Sybil’s over-rule of Jeremy’s choice — David takes a long sip of his beer and returns to considering his plan to bike solo across the country. Back and forth. Southern route going west. Northern for the trip home. Three or four months, he figures, if he could do seventy-five miles a day. He’s only at sixty miles a week now, but that’s because he’s time constrained. What if he had three or four mornings a week just for riding? Game changer.

David holds his beer glass in front of him on the table and begins to formulate the sentences required to tell Sybil that he’s planning this trip. It seems like a good time. Public place. Not too loud. He’s only mildly uncomfortable. Their food arrives.

Jeremy’s choice had been fish fingers, but his mother said he would never eat them. She did not accept his counter-argument — today is Saturday and Saturdays are different — despite several fist-squeezes. The waitress puts her hand on his right shoulder as she sets down his plate. He feels the outline of every finger and can sense that her skin is not entirely dry. He does an eyes-closed three-count. There are dark lines on his grilled cheese that make the bread look like a sweater he would not wear to school.

The long-haired boy is eating a very large hamburger. It’s as big as his face. The boy has now turned his chair around the right way. But instead of sitting normally, he has one leg tucked up under his butt. This is how the girls in Jeremy’s school sit — one foot under, elbows on desk, hands covering mouths and cheeks. Jeremy tried it once and ended up falling out of his chair. Everyone got very excited. His mother called this a flub and said he shouldn’t worry about it. She had touched his hair, then, so he knew it was an important moment.

Jeremy fits his sandwich to his mouth and continues watching the long-haired boy, who is himself in mid-bite. Sauce and other bits drip onto the boy’s plate. When he pulls his mouth away, smiling, Jeremy can see parts of the mushed-up bun and burger. It makes Jeremy think of butterscotch pudding. Everyone at the long-haired boy’s table is laughing.

Jeremy feels two taps on his wrist from his mother. This means he has been looking at something too long and he’s supposed to look at something else. He wants to keep looking at the long-haired boy, but he also knows he’s promised his mother, many times, to be proud of going with the plan. In this case, turn away and look at your own food. There are chips and a pickle on his plate and he moves them off onto the table. His father puts them, quickly, on his own plate and says Jeremy.

Sybil likes this town for three reasons. Distance is one. Far enough from home that coming here is something of an event. But not so far as to require any significant management of Jeremy or David, which would of course defeat the point. The second is the rock shop, a gallery featuring a staggering number of unremarkable rocks. Jeremy seems to receive the names of the rocks, and their places of origin, as interesting news bulletins. Huh, see this? Amethyst from Tuttletown. Go figure? David is good at playing along. Perhaps he is not playing. Finally, Sybil loves the long, flat beach that borders the town. She’s planning to walk there while David takes Jeremy to the rock shop. She will get her heart rate up. Experiment with her hairdo in the wind. Watch the other people on the beach and try to imagine what it is that they experience as freedom.

Sybil sips her iced tea and thinks again about the tattoo idea. She knows that part of why she’s going down this road is because of her friend Doris. Sybil and David had met Doris and her husband Chuck at birthing classes before Jeremy was born. She and Doris had the immediate connection of recognizing that their husbands were equally disconnected from the upcoming life change — present but not accounted for was their joke. However, the thing about Doris, as opposed to Sybil, was that she didn’t give a crap what other people thought about her husband or her laugh or the fact that she loves the super-long press-on nails. Just loves them. Jeremy and Doris’s daughter, Mae, had gone to the same pre-school and elementary, so they’d gotten to be friends during the endless school committee meetings and inefficient fundraisers. Now they were taking a yoga class that gave them time to yak a bit in the changing room. That’s where Doris had basically flashed her crotch in Sybil’s face to show her the blueberry-blue genie head she’d had tattooed high up on her inner thigh. Doris had just come from the shower and was still steamy. The paralysis that came over Sybil — a blockbuster on-rush of excitement, shame, and high-pitched ear ringing — was unlike anything she’d felt since puberty. All she could do was blink and smile before Doris snapped out her towel and rewrapped it around her pink torso, laughing as she twirled away in a gust that smelled like sex and eucalyptus. It was at that moment that Sybil had the idea, new to her, that perhaps she could do something that no one would expect her to do.

 Sybil watches her husband claw Jeremy’s chips and pickle off the lunch table. She presses her teeth together and sets down her lobster roll.

“How’s your food?”

“Good. Really good.”

David, sensing that there may be a foreign substance on his chin, plucks another napkin from the dispenser and wipes. Because David is the bookkeeper for a restaurant supply company, he’s familiar with both the type of napkin in the dispenser and the maker of the dispenser itself. He will not miss his job when he quits it to do his bike ride. In truth, it’s more of a contract gig with benefits than a real company position. But the hitch is losing medical insurance. This is what he needs to figure out. Sybil will insist. He adjusts his feet under the table and accidentally kicks her.

Two years prior, David had had a heart attack while doing nothing. Literally. Just being a 45-year-old white male with no known pre-existing pathologies, waiting for a software update to finish. Without warning, everything went sideways and he did a face-plant into a tangle of computer cords. The petroleum smell of the carpet burned his nose. Then things went entirely dark, like his signal got lost. He woke up in an ambulance with a woman holding an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. He remembered her saying hey, sweetie. Ultimately, he had to get a pacemaker and start a complex blood thinner regimen. No real restrictions on exercise and biking, however. Just be reasonable, they told him. What David dislikes is that there’s no endpoint. It’s not a treatment plan he can complete. He hates that.

David sees their waitress pushing through the double doors with an enormous tray of dirty dishes notched up on one shoulder. Her corded forearms keep the tray rock solid. A moment ago, he’d watched her load it, stacking plates and glasses with such precision that it seemed as if she’d mapped out a plan in advance. David sucks in his stomach and sits up.

Jeremy finishes the correct amount of grilled cheese sandwich and returns to the Kleenex his mother had given him before the food arrived. He positions the package so that he can study it and do his counting, but also so that he can again watch the long-haired boy. The boy is using a knife and fork to eat his hamburger. Jeremy thinks about asking his mother if that is part of the plan but the effort of trying to explain what he's talking about is too much. Jeremy determines that there are eight Kleenex tissues left in the pack, having counted the individual folds twice. He closes his hand over the package to make it go away.

Now something big happens. The long-haired boy is telling a story or maybe he’s singing a song. He’s chopping the air, his knife and fork in his fists, and he hits the edge of his sky-high milkshake glass and there is, all at once, a wave of bright white milk on the table and a whole set of adults and children shrieking and laughing. They keep laughing as they pile napkins on the slurry. The long-haired boy is standing up. He's not even touching his chair! Their same waitress goes over with a rag and a small bucket and she’s laughing too as she begins to clean up. It’s all impossible to understand.

“Jeremy,” his mother says. He feels her wrist taps and tears his eyes from the scene. But it’s still there in his head, the way the milkshake traveled under every plate and glass. Nothing holding it back or slowing it down.

Sybil moves Jeremy’s glass of Diet Coke a few inches toward the center of the table and thinks, well, yes, in certain ways, Jeremy is a lot easier than most kids — especially now that they have the diagnosis and something of a support team. She takes up her iced tea and flushes with shame at the memory of having left three-year-old Jeremy alone for an unconscionable number of hours during a party at a friend’s house. David was not there so she’d been letting loose — drinking, laughing, touching people. But she spasmed when someone across the room used the word retarded, dumping her drink down the front of her shirt and yelling Jesus Christ! Hours and hours ago, she’d left Jeremy sleeping in a spare bedroom and had not checked in since. Every part of her body hyper-compressed, bracing for impact as she ran to the bedroom. He was not on the bed. He was not in the room. He is not okay. Now everything will be different. As she spun back toward the hall, her eye caught a momentary pattern shift and she realized that Jeremy was kneeling on a bench next to the room’s only window, his nose touching the glass and his arms down at his sides. His hands were two tight little fists. He looked like a prisoner waiting to be cuffed. Sybil collapsed next to him. The rest of the party pushed in around them, filling the room. Jeremy didn’t start to bay — that was the best label they could come up with for his other-worldly form of crying — until one of Sibyl’s friends buzzed his lips on the top of Jeremy’s head in a supposed gesture of affection. That was it. They had to leave.

“I have an idea,” David announces.

David’s voice interrupting her memory causes Sibyl to hiccough. Once. Twice. Jeremy bites his lower lip. She knows he is trying not to react to all the commotion; that he is doing a lot to manage himself. She smiles, but also dips her head down and to the side. Keep it together, kid.

“What is it?” she asks.

For her tattoo, instead of something so provocative, like Doris’s bad trip genie, Sibyl wants something organic. Earthy. Indigenous in a way that wouldn’t be offensive. A plant that no one else would recognize…? A bird known for its remarkable self-sustaining characteristics…? A single word that would convey, equally, fuck you and I appreciate you…? She wants it to be red and black and placed on the side of her torso where someone would see it if she ever wore a bikini again or if the wind caught the hem of her t-shirt. There and gone in a flash. People would say wait, does Sybil have a tattoo? That’s kind of a surprise.

“I am planning to bicycle across the country.”

“What?”

“Out and back. Both ways.”

Announcing his plan feels like the first moments of shooting down a water slide — a brief but distinct surge of terror and then the reassuring comfort of knowing, okay, no more waiting for it, now we’re just in it and we’re dealing with it. He hadn’t been on a water slide for seven years — not since they had tried the disastrous experiment of having five-year old Jeremy go along with David down an S-curved slide at a low budget water park overlooking the coastal highway — but he remembers the feeling. After Sybil had taken Jeremy to the car to calm him down, David had gone back and done the slide a dozen more times, trying to see if he could erase those first moments of fear.

He takes a bite of his burrito and chases it with a long pull from his beer.

“Is this a real thing?” Sybil asks. David continues to stare at his beer.

“Yes.”

David becomes aware of Jeremy’s heel drumming. The kid could rattle his shoe against the floor as fast as any drumstick. It is, honestly, kind of incredible.

“Jeremy,” David says. The shaking stops, but he can hear his son’s breathing get immediately more labored.

“When did you get this idea,” Sybil says, sucking on her iced tea and looking at him without blinking.

David looks down and focuses on his lunch, pushing fries into ketchup. He does not yet want to see what’s going on with Sybil’s face. While he had been told that he wasn’t particularly good at reading the room, he did know the three modes of Sybil’s face: yes, no, and doesn’t register. The no was the easiest to detect because her right eye would almost completely close.

He says, still looking at his food, “Not sure. I saw a thing on my phone about a guy, like a guy my age, doing this. He was raising money for a disease.”

Linking the ride to a charitable cause — something he hadn’t been planning but that sounded excellent out loud — gives David the energy to look directly at Sybil.

Doesn’t register! No closed eye. He finishes his beer and continues.

“I think it will take about three, well, maybe four months.”

He sets his hands flat on the table in a way that seems to interest Jeremy.

Sibyl is wiping her mouth with her napkin, looking over at the table with the very, very loud family. They are playing some kind of guessing game, half of them blurting out words while the other half laughs.

“That’s a lot,” Sibyl says. And then again, “A lot to work out.”

David realizes that maybe the charity angle wasn’t enough. He should have developed the budget first, put the numbers together in a way that he could easily refer to if Sybil had any questions. He presses his teeth together and narrows his focus to her right eye.

When the explosion happens, so close that Jeremy cannot give it a location, he thinks maybe he had known, in advance, that it was going to happen. This is because the thunderclap that replaces, for a long two-count, every other sight, sound, and smell in the restaurant with a flat-handed punch to his ears, is not even scary. Or painful. In fact, Jeremey feels bodily relief. His muscles activate, fixing him against all the movement around him. He holds his breath and tries to memorize the feeling, wrap it up and store it away, until the moment slips by and it’s back to screaming and yelling and general pinpricking. Glasses and dishes break. People leap in crazy ways out of their chairs. Messes explode everywhere. There is no plan. His mother springs herself forward across the table, pawing to get ahold of his hands. His father bends forward in his chair, arms crossed tight around his chest. A cold liquid from the table drains directly onto Jeremy’s kneecap.

The next thing — which happens at the exact moment when Jeremy looks at the spot where it happens, another sign that perhaps he knew about all this way in advance — is a man bursting through the kitchen double-doors. His arms are stretched forward, zombie-style. Streams of silver smoke trail from his globe of wiry hair. His whole face is blackened. Even his lips and the lids over his eyes. He looks like the characters in the low-quality video game Jeremy plays on his phone when his mother says screen time is available. Now, he feels her arms tighten around him — she’d managed to get over to his side of the table and wedge herself behind him on his chair. Everything falls on the floor except the lobster boat pepper shaker. His mother says Jesus H. Christ in a whisper next to his ear. Jeremy knows that Jesus H. Christ was nailed to a cross, so that’s different. But Joan of Arc was burned. That’s more the same.

The burning man continues through the restaurant, stamping toward the front door. People fall away. They don’t know what to do, Jeremy thinks. They don’t know where to put their hands. Or their feet. They don’t know what the plan is.

The man reaches the front door. It opens when he hits it, but, at the same time, the glass in the top half shatters, causing a fresh wave of general screaming. It is at this moment that his mother squeezes his shoulders and says stay with your father. She bends him forward and throws her leg over his head and launches herself across the room and out the door after the burning man.

“Sybil!” his father says, straightening, but not standing.

 Jeremy gives himself a three-count and allows his leg, the one with the wet knee, to bounce. His mother would say no, but she is busy now and this is without a doubt a special moment. In all the commotion and his mother’s gymnastics, he has lost track of the long-haired boy. What he discovers, once he reorients, is a surprise. The long-haired boy is not in or on or around his chair. He’s not even at his table. He’s over against the wall and there are two adults kneeling next to him. Jeremy can’t see his face, but he can see that the boy is hitting his head against the wall and the adults are crying and yelling at him and trying to hold him. They’re grabbing his hair, in fact, but they can’t get him to stop. Jeremy does not like head banging. It’s not for him. Another adult pulls the long-haired boy away from the wall so he can’t bang. They should tell him it’s not part of the plan. The boy is still fighting them. They are failing to move him. Jeremy can see that the adults are swearing. It’s the word you are never supposed to say. Does the long-haired boy know that word? Is it helping him to hear them saying it?

Jeremy stops shaking his leg and tapping the table. What he wants to do is to stand up. And when he does, he feels an incredible synchronization between his legs and his stomach and his back and his shoulders. They are all working together without any active management from Jeremy. He just rises, like an inflatable lawn Santa, every bit of him filled out and full. And all he does, once he’s standing and smiling a half smile down at his Dad, is to clap. Clap three times with his flat dry hands. And that’s all that it takes. The restaurant goes immediately quiet. So quiet that all he can hear is the rolling of one last plate, spinning on the floor. He looks, and the long-haired boy is looking at him, tear-stained and shaking. It’s fantastic. Fucking fantastic.

Sybil springs over the wash of broken glass at the front door and reaches the burning man just before he steps off the sidewalk into the street.

“Hey. I got you,” she says, hovering one hand in front to slow him down and the other in back to keep him from falling over. She has no idea how much of him may be burned. The smell of him – his burnt head, his burnt arms, his burnt eyebrows — stings her nostrils. Her eyes are watering or she’s crying. She doesn’t know which.

Sybil works to keep the man still, although she can tell he’s trying to move. He wants to get out of his skin, of course. She knows that. She sets her hand, very lightly, on his ribcage, trying to create stability. Now she can feel his thundering heartbeat.

“I want you to turn with me. We’re going to walk. Just slow. Here on the sidewalk. Can you do that? Can you walk with me?”

She’s talking to him, maneuvering him, pretending to know the right thing to do. She’s not a nurse. She has no medical training. She knows about medical bills and claims procedures. But, she realizes, she also has twelve years of Jeremy and his beyond-the-norm ability to go board-stiff and utterly silent. Her friends would say oh, honey, all kids do that, and she would think you don’t have a clue. Jeremy’s stamina for resistance — especially in the early years — had forced her to develop an alternative approach. Brute counterforce was useless. Instead, she’d learned to bring forward — to literally expel through the tips of her fingers – a kind of stillness that could, if she worked it right and if David didn’t get involved, unlock whatever tangle had clenched Jeremy into steel. You can do this, Sybil.

She touches her tongue to her top lip and continues walking forward with the burned man. And then, suddenly, another person joins them, plugging in just as Sybil had — one hand very lightly on the man’s stomach and the other on his back, just below Sybil’s.

It’s their waitress. She has her shoulder hitched up to hold the phone against her ear.

“I’ve got 911 on the phone,” she says to the burning man. “The ambulance is coming, Lenny. They’re on their way.”

She is calm but purposeful, as if she’s managing a huge lunch rush. She and Sybil are quite close together, clearing the space in front of Lenny as they shuffle forward.

“The stove went out,” she says to Sybil, leaning forward slightly. “Our propane tanks are all fucked.” Her breath smells like buttered rolls and Sybil pulls it in, trying to override everything else.

“I hope—” Sybil says, but then understands that she has no idea what she’s hoping.

The waitress talks to the 911 operator, explaining more as they, without any obvious communication, turn Lenny back around toward the restaurant and the crowd now gathered on the sidewalk. Sybil can see David and Jeremy. They are standing just off the sidewalk. David is looking at her as if she’s a stranger.

When the waitress reaches up to adjust her phone, Sybil sees through the gap in her shirt that this woman’s breast is tattooed. A spider web that disappears under her work-a-day white bra but also spreads back, traveling around and apparently over her left shoulder. High up, just above the collar bone, there’s a fierce looking wasp. It’s got human hands that are curled around two different strands of the web — rattling the lines either as a warning or to get free.

“Yeah. Please. We’re out here on the sidewalk. Right in front,” the waitress says.

They arrive at the scene of the shattered front door and pause. Sybil hears the ambulance sirens and wonders if Jeremy will begin to echo the call. Without words, Sybil and the waitress shift Lenny slightly forward, readying him. The waitress lets go of Lenny and rubs her face with both hands like she’s taking a very hot shower. Sybil puts her arm around the woman’s shoulder, letting her hand cup the place where she knows the web is printed on the woman’s skin, wondering just how close her fingers are to that wasp.

David is pleased that despite the hubbub and the salty dirt smell — taste, really — of the burning man, he’s remembered not to take Jeremy’s hand or grab him by the shoulders. While hugging is not David’s instinct with Jeremy or, frankly, anyone, the situation and the unexpected involvement of his wife prompted a wave of desire to wrap his arms around his son. It would not have gone well.

Now they are out on the sidewalk with everyone else. Atypically, Jeremy has chosen a spot in the middle of the crowd. He seems to be interested in another boy who is having an epic tantrum. The kid is crying hard and flopping himself against his parents. The boy’s hair comes down to the top of his butt. Except for Jeremy, everyone is looking at the burned man walking with Sybil and their waitress. David feels paralyzed by all the inputs: comparisons between Jeremy and the kid having the meltdown, surprise at Sybil’s central role, all the people behind him, looking over his shoulder. And how will all this impact his bike ride later in the day?

When the ambulance comes into sight, David imagines himself springing into action, arranging the crowd. Making space. He’d wave the truck into position and snap open the rear doors to receive the stretcher. He believes, despite the lack of training or any prior experience, that all the necessary knowledge would come to him and that he could be the guy that was there, moving with grace and selfless determination to enable the rescue of a tragic burn victim. He feels a throb in the general region of his pacemaker and pokes his fingers in-between the buttons on his shirt to rub the flat lump of scar tissue that’s been there since the surgery.

One squawk of the ambulance horn clears the crowd, and the professionals are out of the truck and with the burning man before David can even pull his hand from inside his shirt. Sybil and the waitress interact seamlessly with the professionals, transferring custody of the burned man as if they’d done this a thousand times. Jeremy has drifted slightly back into the crowd, away from him, apparently to maintain his sightline on the upset boy, who is now, along with his adults, down on the sidewalk, still flailing.

David studies the waitress, who is now crutched against Sybil like a longtime teammate, as she responds to questions from the paramedics. From where he’s standing, David can see that Sybil is looking at the waitress’s mouth as she answers questions. Their faces could not be more than five inches apart. David feels suddenly as if a glass cylinder has dropped down around him, separating him from the crowd. It changes the sound patterns, but also sharpens his vision, enlarging the scene like wrap-around reading glasses. He can see how Sybil is holding the woman, anchoring her, one hand resting on her far shoulder and the other on her arm. David narrows in on Sybil’s fingertips. They are twitching, pressing and releasing, against the skin of the woman’s bicep in what looks to David like an autonomic way.

David is having trouble breathing. He sits down on the sidewalk and covers his face with his hands. He does not know if anyone is looking at him or if anyone is bent down, extending a hand.

Now he opens his eyes and discovers that a dog has wormed its way through the crowd and is standing next to him, his drooly tongue hanging at the level of David’s face. The dog smells like cooked liver. David does not know anything about dogs, but he decides it’s a sheep dog because he can’t see the animal’s eyes through all the curly salt-n-pepper hair. The dog sits, as if in solidarity, and David feels himself smile, now suddenly enjoying the cocoon of other people’s legs.

What he feels, in a definitive way that arrives as equal parts surprise and relief, is that he does not want to go on the bicycle trip. In fact, he feels more desire to sit exactly where and as he is, than he does to go anywhere or see anything new. That is the feeling that blankets his body. Like a dog dreaming, David thinks. Stretched out long across all three cushions of a couch, belly full and paws twitching. Following every leap and twist across rivers and downed trees and stone walls. Sticking the landing every time with a nice sharp crunch of leaves and snow. Eyes not even open.

Jeremy moves a one-count away from his father so that he can watch, without obstruction, the long-haired boy. With all that is happening, Jeremy feels certain there is no plan. Therefore, it is acceptable to do watching. He makes fists with his hands and jams them into the front pockets of his pants. Sounds blur together and then recede, making it easier for Jeremy to see.

What is he seeing? The long-haired boy sitting cross-legged on the cement sidewalk, picking at the rubber soles of his sneakers. His adults have made a hut around him with their bodies, but Jeremy can still see the boy’s face. It is wet and Jeremy thinks maybe it would be sticky if someone was to touch it. One of the adults is managing the boy’s hair, pulling it together in the back and trying to organize it with their hands. This boy jerks his head and the adult stops. Then — just as in the restaurant — the boy looks directly at Jeremy. Without hesitation, the boy puts his thumb in his mouth and begins to suck.

Jeremy feels enormous. He feels tall and stout. He stands rock-still, as if against a fierce wind, and returns the boy’s stare. The boy’s lips pulse as he sucks. Jeremy touches the back of his teeth with his tongue and imagines walking forward through the crowd, going up to the boy and saying are you ready and the boy getting up, shaking off his adults, and coming along beside Jeremy until they walk clear of all the extra details and noise and come to a salt-water pond where the first stone that Jeremy throws skips nineteen times before sinking into the black and the stone that the long-haired boy throws gets caught by a fish jetting up out of the water and winking at them in such a stupid way that it sets both boys to laughing and they fall together in a heap on the shore and nothing ever again feels like it felt before.

 INTRUDER

SHAYNA BROWN

It’s normally seven hours from my doorstep in Austin to hers in Baton Rouge, but I’m on course to make it in six with only a warning from a cop to slow down. Billboards litter both sides of the highway – advertisements for drive-through boudin and gumbo, alligator museums, and a handful of “Geaux Tigers!” I try not to think of the divorce papers buried at the bottom of my bag, papers Adam shoved in my hands as I was trying to leave town. The thought of my shattering life in the rearview mirror puts lead in my foot. As I drive, I play with the ring on my fourth finger; a gold band etched with fleur-de-lis that ties me to this state, and to her. 

When I reach the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, I can almost smell Granny’s small, musty house – one of the few still standing along the channels of the marsh below. Its dust and stale air mixed with melted grease bubbling in a cast iron skillet, just waiting to bathe bacon, or catfish, or whatever it is Granny’s frying up today. The house has eroded so much, a passerby might assume no one could possibly be living in it, and maybe they’re right, because she’s been dying in it for almost a year. 

When I arrive at Granny’s house, the smell eagerly awaits me but Granny does not. She’s probably napping, as she does so often now. As I shut the front door, a cold breeze surprises me. A winter storm has snuck in and I don’t think I brought a sweater. My sister and I are taking shifts every other weekend, leaving a home-care nurse to handle the weekdays, so I never bring much with me.

The house is dark even though it’s afternoon. The windows are locked shut and covered by thick drapes that keep all light out and all sickness and decay in. I’d open the blinds if I could get to the windows, but old cardboard boxes scattered throughout the house block my way. They’re stacked high and shrink the living room to a narrow path. I have to move a large box holding small kitchen appliances, fabric strips, and an antique shotgun from my path. Who has left this mess here? Even before she got sick, I suggested Granny get rid of some of the piles, but she wouldn’t budge. More recently, I tried to talk Becca into helping me discreetly take some of the stuff to the Goodwill, but she sided with Granny.

“I’m not taking her blenders. And it’s not like a couple boxes is gonna make any difference,” Becca had said when I called with a plan to clear out the house, get some houseplants, let in some fresh air.

“But they’re everywhere. This is no place to get better.” I kept my voice low, careful not to wake Granny, shifting the phone from one ear to the other.

“Uh, Granny’s not going to get better,” Becca said, and I felt my face flush.

“That’s not what I meant. I just… I just want to make the place brighter. More conducive to…” I trailed off, feeling stupid.

“The doctor said she doesn’t have long. Let her keep her crap,” Becca said. I wondered where she’d buried her heart.

“The doctor doesn’t know. People outlive doctors’ predictions all the time. It’s totally normal to beat the odds now.”

“I don’t think that’s how odds work,” my sister said, a new gentleness in her voice that irritated me. “But regardless, she likes knowing her stuff is there. It’s like a security blanket. Just give her that.”

“I’ll clean out the fridge, at least,” I surrendered.

“Fine, but the freezer is filled with actual useful, edible stuff, so don’t go crazy in there. I had a popsicle last weekend and it didn’t seem to be toxic. I highly recommend ‘em.”

Becca is younger than me but wiser, which bugged me when we were kids, but now it feels like a gift. I’m not expected to have it all together. She is. While I was off failing in school and marriage, somehow Becca got a nursing degree and met a nice lawyer with a full set of aggressive, white teeth and Popeye muscles, and together they built a full life. My life is full too – full of failures. I barely graduated from college, my paralegal job is a soul-sucking grind, and my marriage-turned-in-process-of-divorce never should have happened. It’s been five years of combat and bringing out the worst in each other and still, I can’t let him go. I let out a frustrated growl as I toss my duffle on the couch, aware of the divorce papers buried inside it. Then, I look around the rest of Granny’s house. 

Photos hang on the only wall that isn’t blocked by piles of boxes. There’s a wedding photo of Granny and Pawpaw but the rest are of my sister and me as kids. Here we were at my piano recital, two sisters smiling at Granny behind the camera. And there’s one from Easter twenty years ago, where we were wearing new fleur-de-lis rings Granny had tucked in a plastic egg. The rings were too big for our little hands, swallowing even our thumbs, so Granny gave us each a long, thin chain necklace to hold the rings until our fingers could. My fingers find the ring and I fidget, running my thumb along the etching of the lily’s three leaves emerging from a central point, engraved in a repeating pattern.

My favorite photo is here, a portrait of the three of us together on the stoop of Granny’s shack. I can’t tell if it was happiness or sunshine illuminating our smiles. Because of Granny, we got to be kids. We never knew our dad, and Mom was lost to a cunning and baffling disease – too lost to be present for us, popping up only in between rehabs and binges.

“We don’t talk about that in this house, Anna Lynne,” Granny used to say. Instead, she stepped in to provide the parenting and support we needed.

I hear her stirring. Slowly, she shuffles out of her bedroom. She’s paler than I remember, all five-foot-nine of her hunched in her nightgown, worn down from almost eighty years of living. She’s a blurred version of herself, stooped and trembling. The house is drafty, and I want to wrap her in warmth.

“Hiya, Granny,” I say.

“Anna Lynne!” Hers is the joy of a child on Christmas morning. Even though I was just here two weeks ago, even though she barely has the energy to hold herself upright, her love rushes over me like a rainstorm and I’m a thirsty flower.

I kiss her on the cheek and smell talc powder and something strong and medicinal. “Let me look at you.” I pretend to examine her and she bats me away.

“You’re too skinny,” I tell her. Becca had warned me it had been a bad couple weeks but I’d hoped she was exaggerating. She lives only an hour away in New Orleans, so she has a more constant finger on Granny’s pulse.

“You’re one to talk, Anna Lynne. Have you had any supper? The aide left fried cornbread on the stove.” 

“Let’s check it out,” I say.

 After dinner, we stay seated at the small, metal kitchen table and I deal us a hand of Gin Rummy. Granny is reclined in her chair, slight in body, and known for her sleight of hand. We’ve been sitting at this table playing cards my entire life. Even our discomfort is comfortable here.

“Well, you must not like me very much if you dealt me this hand,” she says, her laugh interrupted with a violent cough.

“I just know you’ll play any hand well, Granny,” I reply. An exchange we’ve had a million times.

We play for almost an hour. She moves slowly but still beats me. The scrape of card against card is rhythmic, soothing, blending with the only other sound in the room, the tick tick tick of an antique clock on the wall.

“You hold on too tight, Anna Lynne,” Granny says, looking past her cards to me.

“Ma’am?” I look at my hand, at the cards gently nestled there.

“Not the cards,” Granny says. A sharpness in her tone cuts the air between us. “In life. You understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I lie, looking down.

“Head up, young lady. Head up,” she wheezes, and I lift my eyes. “We’re strong women. You hear me? Let go.”

I give her a confused look before realizing Becca must have told her about my divorce. I feel the heat of shame on my shoulders, melting between my shoulder blades, warming my sides like an unwanted hug.

“I’ll let go of some of these boxes for you,” I joke, forgetting where I am, who I’m with. She gives me a look I haven’t seen since I was a teenager sneaking out of the house on a school night and, always, getting caught. “Sorry, Granny, sorry. Just kidding. Yes, ma’am. I will.”  Her eyes slice through me but I’m saved when she starts coughing and turns away. I wait a beat and then slowly, carefully, continue with the game.

We play in silence for a few more rounds. I’m looking at my hand when I hear her breathing get deeper, more ragged, and I look up. She’s fallen asleep. Her chest rises and falls. Her mouth is slightly open as her head tilts back and balances between her bony shoulders. I sit across from her, and we are surrounded by looming piles of boxes. As her head rests on her chair, she leans dangerously close to a stack of toaster oven boxes. I stand and push the whole pile away. Becca’s right. The choice to hoard is Granny’s, but I wish I could clear out some space and give her some room to breathe. I just want her to breathe.

Ages ago, before I went to Becca, Granny shooed my questions away with her hand. “Honey child, they were marked down eighty percent! Eighty percent! Never know when you’re gonna need a toaster oven. And I could give them as Christmas gifts. Stop picking on me about my boxes.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” was all I have ever answered.

Watching Granny doze, I wrap a thin blanket around my shoulders and listen to the tick tick tick of the old clock. Her cancer is inches from me and I believe I can see it eating away at her insides, its outline visible through the thin fabric of her nightgown. I imagine reaching in and grabbing it, ripping it out of her body and throwing it out of this house.

I’m bending the cards in my tightened fingers, so I set them down on the table. Granny’s hand has dropped to the table too, her fingers relaxed so her cards are half held, half fallen to the side. I avert my gaze, refuse to cheat, even though I’ve never been able to beat her at Gin honestly. 

She falls asleep in her chair a lot lately. The cancer, the treatment, the exacting toll of existing so long, they just wear her out. I think falling asleep is the only way she can outrun thinking about where she’s going.  Normally, her frequent naps would have alarmed me, but the doctor told us it was normal.

“Normal,” he’d said. Normal to have a tumor the size of a plum poking out of your chest. Normal to poison your body in hopes of poisoning the protruding tumor. Normal to be saying your goodbye in a way that is a forever-goodbye. At thirty-five years old, this is my first encounter with death up close, and I still don't know why “normal” is a reassurance. I just know that it is.

Tonight, I tuck her in, laying an extra blanket over her, shivering as I curse the ineffective radiator. The house is so run-down; maybe the piles of boxes are actually structural, holding up the roof. I make myself some tea and bring a book to the couch where I sleep when I visit. The couch is in the kitchen by the metal table, right by the entrance to the house. The living room is too small for a couch, so this has been the setup since we were kids. The only other room in Granny’s house is jam-packed with boxes of things Granny has dreamt of using, gifting, or selling at a profit. They’re things she’s spent so much of her life wanting, needing, and not having, and now they surround her: mixers, skillets, homemade jarred vegetables and jam, waffle makers, ice cream makers, decks of cards, that weird antique gun. This room, like all of Granny’s home, is swollen with piles stretching higher than my head. I know one day soon my sister and I will have to clear out the room, and it will take weeks of work before it’s emptied. This is a good lesson for me, and I tuck this information away to use later, when I am older, when I do not want to burden my loved ones with things.   

I get comfortable on my couch-bed and fidget with my fleur-de-lis ring, which slips from my finger and rolls away. I imagine it’s rolled into a puff of dust, and I’m a little desperate as I get on my hands and knees and start to search. As I sweep my hands around the edge of the couch, I hear a commotion behind me. I push myself up and Granny is standing in the kitchen doorway in her thin nightgown with house slippers on her feet.

Her eyes are blazing, and she has the old shotgun propped in her arms. 

“Granny!” I yell but regret it immediately. Yelling at someone with a gun, even a gun that has been sitting around collecting dust for years, is never a good idea. I stagger, jumping to my feet. She trains the gun on me and snarls.

“Granny, it’s me,” I say, quivering hands lifted above my head. The winter storm rattles the house and whistles loudly. The antique clock continues its relentless ticking.

“I heard somethin’,” she says to me, and I can’t tell if she knows it’s me she’s talking to. “Intruder.” Her eyes are wild, and it scares me. She’s erratic as she whips the gun around to the other side of the room. 

“Granny, no one’s here, it’s just the wind outside. Just the wind.” I try to control my breathing and approach her carefully, reassuring her as I go. But when I reach for the gun, she shrieks and thrusts us both to the side with a violent turn.

“There!” she screams and points toward the stove. I jump to look, goosebumps on my skin. Now she’s got me spooked, but I see nothing out of the ordinary. She shivers with a whimpering cry.

“Granny, it’s the stove! No one’s there.” I put a hand on her arm and slowly trace my fingers along the stock of the gun until we are holding it together. Without warning, the gun fires, rearing back like a wild horse. The recoil jabs Granny and she falls backward into me. I slam against the wall, landing hard on my hip. The gun drops to the ground where it lies motionless, playing dead. I gently kick it away from us and keep a steadying hand on Granny. I survey the room for damage but find none.

“It’s okay,” I say, breathless, ears ringing. Not a single box seems out of place. Granny is staring into the distance, eyes wide but empty. As I hold her, I anchor us both.

“It’s okay,” I repeat. “You’re okay.” I steer her toward her bedroom.

“There?” her voice breaks.

Once she’s back in bed, I sit by her side quietly, trembling but hoping to be of comfort. As she gets settled, she is shaky and uncertain, confusion seems to be overtaking her. My breath catches. Granny looks like a sketched drawing of herself, not the formidable spitfire grandmother I know, and the contrast makes my stomach tighten. Tucked in like a child, she is shrunken, betrayed by the body that has been her lifelong companion. 

Once she seems to have drifted off, I rise to leave. Her eyes jump open and she grabs my arm with both her hands.

“Anna Lynne, I’m scared,” she says, her voice an urgent whisper.

“Granny, it’s okay, I’m here.” My stomach is twisting like it’s host to a family of squirrels.

“Is this going to hurt?” she asks. It takes me a minute to understand what she’s asking, and I feel my skin on fire as I stumble to process it.

I don’t know anything about death; I barely know about life. My fallibility is on full display and I know I’m letting her down. I remember being nine or ten, going to the dentist for the first time. Is it gonna hurt, Granny? I’d asked, shaking and ready to make a run for it. I don’t think so. But I’ll be right here no matter what, she’d said.

Her grey-white hair is swirling around her head now, hovering above her like a halo.

“No,” I say, trying to project a certainty I don’t have. “And I’ll be right here with you no matter what.”

I hold my eyes firmly on her face.

We sit in silence for a few minutes. I am frozen, not daring to move. Her eyes are closed but she keeps a strong grip on me. Then her eyes are open again.

“Will Pawpaw be waiting for me where I’m going?”

This question surprises me even more. Granny has always been a fervent atheist, singing that gospel to anyone who’ll listen. Now that she’s on hospice, though, she seems to be more open-minded. God has been dancing on her lips lately.

“Yes,” I tell her, not because I believe it or have thought it through, but because it seems like the only kind response. “Pawpaw is waiting for you.”

“Oh, that is so good, Baby. So good,” she murmurs, closing her eyes again. She seems to be drifting away from me. I hold her hand in silence until she falls asleep and lets me go. Her strength seems completely drained away, a human husk where a powerful force used to be. Instead of sympathy or compassion I feel a rush of anger at nature for giving and then taking away. 

I walk back to the kitchen, still shaking, and take the old, dusty gun from where it had fallen. I run my hand along the tarnished steel neck and smooth wooden stock, its shine faded but its form unyielding. It’s like Granny, I think, old but still strong.

Slowly, carefully, I push the gun deep under the couch, planning to have my Popeye brother-in-law handle it next weekend. As I climb into my couch-bed, I notice a small hole just above my head. The damned thing really shot a bullet. I run my fingers along the jagged, chalky gash left behind, and start to laugh. Granny was never one to go quietly, and I guess neither was her gun. Are there other dangerous items in these boxes? The idea of purging grabs hold. I jump from the couch and start looking through boxes. Slowly at first but then with frenzied energy, weeding through box after box, consolidating, culling, and then sneaking bags of stuff I’ve deemed expendable into my car to donate on my way out of town. I manage to fill the back of my car in under an hour. Afterward, when I scan the kitchen, it looks almost inviting. I feel like I can breathe. Moonlight trickles through a window that’s been covered by boxes for years, and my heart thuds. Granny will be angry, but in this moment it feels worth it.

I sit on the couch and reach into my bag and grab hold of my divorce papers. Granny’s words tickle at my stomach. She’s right – we are strong. She and I are spun from the same yarn, and I lift my head with the power of that knowledge. The divorce papers feel lighter here, smooth and inviting, and I’m not sure why I’ve been afraid of them. I find a pen in my bag and without hesitation, sign here and here. I stuff the signed documents back in my bag, and burrow into my sheets. I am drained of everything and feel lighter than I have in ages. I don’t even remember falling asleep. 

“Normal,” the doctor says when I call him the next day. “Hallucinations at this stage are normal. It means she’s progressing. You’ll want to let the hospice know.”

When Granny wakes up, there is no sign she remembers anything of the previous night’s excitement. She hobbles into the kitchen, and I make her instant coffee with sugar and heavy cream, the way I’ve watched her drink it my whole life. She sits at the table and doesn’t even seem to notice the mug. She also doesn’t seem to notice the clearing out I’ve done.

“How you feeling today?” I shuffle cards and deal ten to each of us.

“Pretty good for a dyin’ old gal,” she answers with a scraping gasp of breath that turns into a cough. I tell myself not to worry; the coughing is normal. I want to tell her not to say the word dying, but I know she’d want me to be tougher than that, so I don’t.

“Is there anything special I can make us for dinner tonight?” I ask.

“My appetite isn’t so much, honey. You just do what you’d like.”

There are times when taking care of the people you love doesn’t look like what you wish it looked like. But that’s okay. That’s normal.

I go to the freezer in the shed and find some chicken, and a bag of frozen trinity – onion, celery, peppers. I make chicken and dumplings because it’s easy on the stomach and it’s one of the first things Granny ever taught me to cook, so I think the sentimental value may outweigh the nutritional.

She takes a single nibble of dumpling and pushes her bowl aside. I’m still working on my bowl and Granny catches me staring at the tumor protruding violently from her chest, just above the hem of her shirt. The radiation marks around it boast angry shades of black and dark purple, like a vibrant orchid bloom.

“It’s not nice to stare, Anna Lynne.”

“Yes ma’am. I’m sorry.”  I lift my eyes, and this makes her smile.

“I named it,” she says and touches her chest. “His name is Robert Pattinson.”

“What?” I stare at her, thinking I’ve misheard.

“The actor. The vampire. I named it after him.”

Now the confused, old woman has confused me. How does the actor Robert Pattinson’s name belong in this space, floating among the boxes and chicken and dumplings and purple tumors?

“Do you know who Robert Pattinson is?” My words tumble out.

“Of course I do! You think I’m a fool?” There’s an energy and a return to the old grandmother I remember, and my heart beats hard, happy. She’s getting better, coming back to us instead of walking away. Clearing out the boxes did help. I will call Becca tonight to tell her.

“Well, I’ll be darned, Granny.”

“I’ve seen all the Twilight movies a dozen times.” She is smug now, and I am at a loss. “He is one very good-looking young man,” she says, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Anna Lynne,” she says, turning to me with a look of clarity.

“What’s up?” I say with too much perk.

“You moved my boxes.” My stomach drops to my feet.

“Hm?” I put my hand down.

“I’m no fool. I see—” she interrupts herself with gasping coughs. I get up to pat her back and inch her water cup away from the edge of the table.

“It’s okay, Granny. It’s okay.” I pat her back and realize I was wrong. I love the boxes. I love the smell. I love everything about the house. I don’t want anything to change. 

“I can put it all back, I haven’t donated it yet.” I start to say. Her coughing slows to a raspy breath, and she turns in her chair and leans her head against my side.

“Thank you,” she says, staring out the newly unobstructed window. “Thank you, Baby,” she says again, keeping her head against me. I hold one hand on her shoulder and with the other I swipe tears from my eyes. The moon is nearly full, and its shine brings a new brightness to the room. We sit in this light, silent except for the tick tick tick of the clock.

 The Punchline

Caleb Sarvis

You say, What did Death do?

Death did three things. It wiped my memory of before, though it preserved my sense of self. It dropped me off in front of a set of swinging doors that read SAL and OON respectively. It dressed me in a tailored suit, three pieces, a raven’s sort of black that might’ve been purple if you were desperate enough. 

The Boy says, Where did the doors lead?

A saloon, which surprised me. I was never one to take things at face value — at least, the sense of self Death had retained for me informed that impression. The doors swung slowly, as if the atmosphere were gelatin. Since I was now dead, and I understood this, I stepped through, saw an empty bar, and took a seat.

You say, Was anyone else in the saloon?

Not at first. The swinging doors fused shut behind me. The saloon appeared to be composed of two rooms. Across from the bar was a small stage and a single microphone. To the left of that was an opening into another room, where a large round table took up most of the space. A chandelier hung above the table and a turtle shell was used as a centerpiece. 

The Girl says, What did you do first?

I drummed the bar with my knuckles and waited for someone to take my order. 

You say, What was your order?

I was easy. Old fashioned. Though, I would’ve preferred Basil Hayden on a rock. I was a heavy pour, for no other reason than I liked a big ice cube and I found pleasure in the liquor resting at even height of the rock. 

The Boy says, How long did it take for someone to join you?

Hard to say. What is time in the afterlife?

The Girl says, What did the bartender look like?

She was a worn woman, thin because she was malnourished, and her hair was thick in a way to make her look like a sapling.

The Boy says, Did she have a name?

Sapling.

You say, Did Sapling say anything to you?

She said: You’re a little early. The doctors don’t arrive for a few eons. There are six of them: Dr. P; Dr. Q; Dr. S; Dr. T; Dr. N; and Dr. Cowabunga. They meet at the round table and discuss the meaning of the Door. The Door is against the wall nearest the round table. It’s a permanent exit. You may open it, others have. You may choose not to, though no one stays here forever — even the doctors will pass through eventually. There used to be a Dr. C but he exited rather quickly, uninterested in asking questions, let alone discussion. The important thing to know is once someone passes through, there’s no returning to the saloon. The doctors will have plenty to say about why you should or should not open the Door. Their reasoning is limited to their own speculation, their own philosophical appetites, but in the end, nothing matters other than your sense of when.

The Girl says, What’s on the other side of the Door?

Only those who pass through have that answer.

You say, Did you talk to the doctors?

Eventually. They arrived later, after the NASCAR man romanced Sapling.

The Boy says, Who’s the NASCAR man?

He was a slim man who wore a NASCAR helmet over his head. The visor was reflective, shielding us from his eyes and watercoloring our perceptions of ourselves. Sapling was surprised to see him — much more than she had been to greet me — because while I was early, he wasn’t scheduled to appear at all.

The Girl says, What does a schedule have to do with it?

I meant to ask that myself, but the NASCAR man was quick to romance Sapling. He focused his visor on her, tilting his head this way and that as she meandered behind the bar. If I were still alive, I’d have felt uncomfortable, something of a third wheel, but I was content to watch it all unfold since I had nowhere else to be. Eventually, Sapling asked the NASCAR man to lift his visor so she could get a look at him, but the NASCAR man refused. 

The Boy says, What does romance mean?

It means he wanted to engage in love-adjacent shenanigans with Sapling. Sometimes that meant possession. Sometimes it meant mutual recognition. Sometimes it meant submission. Romance was a word people used to soften biochemical warfare.

You say, Was the NASCAR man successful?

He was successful in that he captured Sapling’s attention. My drinks arrived in eras, and in between servings, the NASCAR man managed to inspire violence from Sapling.

The Girl says, Violence?

Yes. Sapling slapped the sides of his helmet hoping he would speak. She demanded to know what he wanted, why he had joined us in the saloon, and how he intended to leave, since one opening was an entrance, the other an exit, and he couldn’t possibly know what awaited him on the other side of the Door.

The Boy says, What did he want?

The NASCAR man did not respond with words. He wiped his visor with a cocktail napkin, then he rested his elbows on the bar, pressed his hands together, and prayed.

You say, How do you know it was prayer?

Because Sapling said: We’ll see what Mr. D has to say about this.

You say, Who is Mr. D?

Owner of the saloon, supposedly.

The Girl says, What is prayer?

Nothing to us, but everything to some. The NASCAR man was one of the some, it seemed, and he stayed like that for close to eternity. I was ready for another drink, a worsening thirst gripping me tight around the throat, but I couldn’t get Sapling’s attention. She was transfixed, perhaps hypnotized, and when I tried to reach across the bar myself, a warm, invisible force propelled me back to my stool.

The Boy says, Did the force hurt you?

No. There was no pain in the saloon, only thirst.

The Girl says, Did Mr. D come get the NASCAR man?

I waited for that to happen, so I could get another drink, and a soft hand patted me on the shoulder. It was not Mr. D — it was one of the doctors. She invited me to join them at the round table to discuss the Door. She said they needed fresh ears to weigh the merits of their arguments for passing through the Door or not. She asked if I held any philosophical allegiances.

You say, What did you believe, anyway?

I was never wholly committed to one belief, except that I thought answers were a fiction. I’m comfortable without meaning and humble enough to accept we may never know the Truth. Therefore, any school of thought or congregation of spirit that sold themselves as a means to an answer — or, even the answer themselves — was always suspicious to me. But I liked the idea of rhetorical pursuits, of open-ended musings, so I accepted the doctor’s invitation to join them.

The Boy says, What happened to the NASCAR man?

He remained steeped in prayer and Sapling remained imprisoned by those prayers as I stepped away from the bar. I briefly considered my responsibility in the matter, determined I shared none, and stepped into the room with the roundtable. Then I saw the Door.

The Girl says, What’s so special about a door?

Doors open. Doors transport. Doors are opportunities, of course.

You say, The doctors.

There were six of them, just as Sapling said, and they all looked the same: bald, frail, androgynous people clad in different color robes with their initials stitched to their chest like varsity athletes. Dr. P in pink; Dr. Q in red; Dr. S in silver; Dr. T in teal; Dr. N in blue; and Dr. Cowabunga in a sunrise gold. She was the one who invited me to join.

You say, What did they say?

Dr. Cowabunga gave a preamble about coming to order and explaining — to me, but also the doctors — that each of them would have an opportunity to make opening arguments regarding the Door. Then they’d open the arguments to cross-examination, in which each doctor would have the opportunity to introduce their disagreements and respond to counters made against their beliefs. They would proceed in reverse alphabetical order and after the cross-examination period, I was free to introduce my thoughts, philosophy, and judgments.

The Boy says, That means Dr. T went first.

Yes. Dr. T began by saying: The Door is not and cannot be a bad thing. Therefore, passing through the Door is not inherently a bad thing — unless of course the person passing through the Door is doing so with ill intent. The person passing through the Door must prioritize owning their motivations. If they are not honest with themselves about why they are passing through the Door, then yes, it would be ill-advised to do so, and the greater forces at play will hold them accountable for their actions. The known and unknown sides are the Door are equal in value, a value that is unmalleable and static and free from good or bad. Whatever the Door means is whatever meaning the person passing through brings with them. Thus, the merits of passing through the Door are undefined, indefinitely.

The Girl says, What did the Door look like?

It was a standard, pre-hung bedroom door. A dull shade of green inside a black frame with a black knob and matching black hinges. It swung outward, toward the unknown. I watched it to see if it had anything to say in response to Dr. T’s position, but it was as brainless as any other door.

You say, Did Dr. S respond to Dr. T?

No, not yet. The doctors were a respectful bunch. While they differed philosophically, they were aligned in their sense of decorum. Ritual and routine appeared tantamount to a sacrament — though, Dr. C was no longer around to offer his thoughts on that.

The Girl says, What did Dr. S believe?

Dr. S said: The Door is a gateway to our own subconscious. Whatever is on the other side is likely filled with our unconscious fears, our deepest desires, and our truest nature. If the person passing through is comfortable with the shadows of their heart, then they should feel comfortable passing through. However, if they prefer wakefulness to sleep and lucidity to dream, then perhaps passing through the Door isn’t right for them. Not every person is capable of passing through the Door successfully. To assume so would be to limit the unique potential awaiting us on the other side. The Door could open to stairs that have no end. It could open to a sky in which the stars have been replaced with apples. It could open to a world in which the atmosphere is nothing but Jell-O. It is dependent on the voracity of the individual’s dreams. 

The Boy says, What did you dream about?

Death is a dreamless sleep, or a sleepless dream. I’m not sure which is appropriate, but the saloon was the totality of my experience.

You say, Dr. Q?

Dr. Q first turned his back to the Door and asked us all to rotate our chairs so that our backs were to the Door as well. Then Dr. Q said: The Door only exists because we are here to observe it and give it credence. If the six — seven — of us were not sitting here, the Door would cease to be. Now, as we all have our backs turned, the Door does not exist. It cannot until it is observed. That is the simple argument. The other thing to consider is, we have yet to establish where we currently sit. Does this saloon reside in its own galaxy or universe? Are we somewhere on the dark side of a moon? Or, perhaps more likely, are we somewhere so small time could not possibly exist? For a second to pass, half a second would have to pass first. But for half a second to pass, a quarter of a second would have to pass first. Are we someplace in which time never finds its foot—

The Boy says, But time passed. A doctor spoke before. A doctor spoke after. 

Stories are told in sequential order so our minds don’t fold in on themselves and liquify our consciousness.

The Girl says, Electrolytes.

The Boy says, Jamba Juice.

You say, Did Dr. Q ever finish?

He concluded by suggesting Dr. C was the only qualified doctor of the bunch, because he made the Door real by passing through.

The Girl says, P comes before Q.

Dr. P finished rolling his eyes and pointed at the Door. He said: The Door is right there. It is quantifiable. It is a rectangle, formed by three-hundred-sixty degrees dispersed across four ninety-degree corners. The Door is approximately eighty inches or two-hundred-three centimeters tall. It exists. Because it exists, it has meaning, because a meaningless door does not align with the inherent meaning of our present existence. Whether or not we open the Door is moot because we are not the center of the universe. Why else do we sit at this round table — which also exists — ornated by this turtle shell — which also exists — if not to discuss the very real and present Door? Whatever awaits on the other side is exactly as it would be if we were to open the Door or not.

The Girl says, Dr. P sounds like a buzzkill.

He had little patience for differing points of view, but he relished the opportunity to engage in fierce debate. 

You say, Dr. P doesn’t sound all bad.

He wasn’t. There was no good or bad at the round table — a Dr. T observation, but one that felt true. There was only space for thought. It was a crock pot for ideas, and I managed to taste them all, even as they blended together.

The Boy says, I don’t like the doctors.

Don’t hide yourself.

You say, Be gentle with him.

The Boy will have to crack himself open before the world breaks him all its own.

The Girl says, I’m not broken.

We’re born broken. Then we adapt. That’s why we have the doctors. They can identify our ailments — though they are as likely as any of us to get it wrong. Then we die broken.

You say, They’re not ready for this.

They will adapt.

You say, Let’s talk about Dr. N.

Dr. N shrugged. She blew a raspberry on her palm. She said: Why are we talking about the Door instead of opening the Door? Your answer may fall somewhere close to these doctors’ lips, but it doesn’t matter. The answers are whatever you want them to be. The aims of these discussions are also whatever you want them to be. The Door has a knob. Turn it, or don’t. Listen to us, or don’t. Grab yourself another drink, or don’t. Pretend any of this has merit or meaning, or don’t. The Door — and I — couldn’t care less.

You say, Why did Dr. N sit at the table?

No reason.

The Girl says, Dr. N is worse than Dr. P.

At the round table, subjectivity was all we had. Better or worse was why the discussion persisted. Of course, Dr. N would disagree, and with her, I would agree.

The Boy says, What about the Door?

The Door is the subject.

You say, He’ll need time to understand.

Tell that to Dr. Q.

You say, One more doctor.

Dr. Cowabunga. She presented a jar of pickles, removed one, and got to snacking. She said: The perfect treat has a little bit of everything. Crunchy. Juicy. Salty. Flavor. There is a population of people who don’t care for pickles, hate them, really, but I think those people chose a side a long time ago and are too afraid to consider what the opposition has to offer. 

The Girl says, I love pickles.

That’s right.

The Boy says, Pickles are disgusting.

We know this about you.

You say, What do pickles have to do with the Door?

Dr. Cowabunga said: The merits of opening the Door or not opening the Door are ultimately uninteresting. Rather, we should consider the mechanics of opening the Door. The how as opposed to the why. Opening the Door should be done so with the gusto of a dill pickle. Without it, how can we be certain the Door will cooperate with our will? Whatever a person chooses, they must do so with the conviction and audacity of the dill pickle. With the undeniable fortitude of this here turtle shell. That’s why Dr. C passed through successfully.

You say, How did the doctors respond to Dr. Cowabunga’s preoccupation with pickles?

Dr. T cleared his throat, prepped himself for rebuttal, but was interrupted by the arrival of the NASCAR man. 

The Boy says, Does the whole thing start over now?

No. The NASCAR man did not come to engage with philosophical appetizers.

The Girl says, What did the NASCAR man want?

He wanted to leave.

You say, Did he free Sapling from his prayer?

Sapling wasn’t visible from my seat at the round table, from which I could only observe half of the bar and project suggestions of shadows. For a moment, or perhaps an era, or an eon, I ached for her to return. Her absence was an omen. It was a signal that a cosmological screw had rattled loose. The NASCAR man held his palms against the side of his helmet and twisted his head back and forth, as if he were releasing the cork of a wine bottle. He’d turn his head one way, hold it there for ten seconds or so, then turn it the other way and hold it for another ten seconds. The doctors showed no concern, a few maybe took notes on their palms, and the NASCAR man stumbled past us, aimless as he worked to remove his head. I longed for Sapling to reveal herself. If she did, the NASCAR man wouldn’t behead himself.

The Boy says, My stomach hurts.

It’s okay to be afraid. Sit with it.

The Girl says, If the NASCAR man dies, does he go anywhere?

That’s a good question with an imaginary answer.

You say, This is becoming something we didn’t care to know. What was a curiosity, an ache for closure, has only added to the awesome weight we’ve been left to carry. The Boy is incapable of comprehending it. The Girl is punctured in dormant fashion, vulnerable to spontaneous devastation at any given moment. I am transformed into a function. I am microwaved into a life net. Death took who I used to be and dropped me off at those swinging doors. Who I used to be is up for adoption. I should’ve answered my own question. What did Death do? Death fucked us.

Death is a motherfucker.

The Girl says, These are bad words.

Let me return to the round table.

The Boy says, Did the NASCAR man remove his head?

No. He twisted with increasing frequency until he threw himself against the Door, landing with a crack of thunder and entrapping the doctors in a spell not unlike what had ensnared Sapling. The NASCAR man fell to his knees, engaged in prayer once more, and a flicker of static infected the Door.

You say, Static?

Like television snow. The visual phase of orphaned radio waves. 

The Girl says, What is television snow?

A problem from before your time.

The Boy says, Is it bad?

I’m sure most of, if not all, the doctors would agree there is no badness associated with television static — unless of course you’re trying to catch a live event in a world without internet.

You say, What did it mean?

This is why the doctors sit at the round table.

You say, Okay.

The static crashed and retreated, eating away the green in waves until only the edges remained. The NASCAR man was stupefied. He stood, catatonic, while his visor reflected the flicker from the Door. I continued my search for Sapling, hoping she’d stepped away to alert Mr. D, to appeal to a higher authority and restore stability to what felt like an impending collapse. I strained myself willing shadows to appear, but nothing revealed itself. No Sapling. No Mr. D. No avatar for omnipotence. We were stranded, victim to the NASCAR man’s agency, and absent of our own.

You say, Okay.

The NASCAR man placed his hand on the knob and the turtle shell began to spin. The static waves turned tidal, and the NASCAR man flipped his visor up. We craned our necks to get a view, but we were blinded from seeing his face. The turtle shell spun faster, the NASCAR man turned the knob, then he pushed the Door open. 

The Boy says, Where did he go?

I don’t know.

The Girl says, What did you see?

Only the NASCAR man, until I didn’t anymore.

You say, Is this how you come back to us?

No. I won’t be opening the Door. I’m happy to sit and drink, to hear the doctors search for a Truth I don’t believe exists.

The Girl says, What happened when the Door opened?

The NASCAR man stepped through the Door and slammed it shut behind him. The turtle shell fell still. The doctors turned their attention back to Dr. T. Dr Cowabunga said: Would you like to offer your rebuttal? Dr. T nodded and cleared his throat, but a loud bit of microphone feedback squealed through the saloon.

You say, What now?

It was Sapling. She was on stage in the other room. I could see her shadow stretch towards the bar. She tapped the mic twice more and said: Does anybody want to hear a joke?

 KAYAYO

Etornam Agbodo

It was in the month of December I decided it was time to go. I had kept postponing it for the past two years. My cousin who had taken the lead when the chance arose was now sending money home. This December she had sent some money as her contribution towards upkeep of her mother’s household.  She had sent two lengths of cloth too. One for her mother and the other for her father. Aunty Muna had come rushing to our house like she always did when the gifts came in.

‘What beautiful fabric?’ she asked, holding the two neatly folded lengths of cloth as she entered the compound. ‘Amina has done it again, eh. And who says daughters are worthless these days, who?’ Aunty Muna declared, dancing around the compound in circles and holding forth the two lengths of cloth. 

My father who had been reclining in his lazy chair looked up, put his wooden tobacco pipe to his mouth and puffed. Mother was already getting up from the low stool that faced the fire. She stood full length and faced her sister, sharing in her joy with expectant smiles.

‘Eii my sister, look what Amina has sent,’ Aunt Muna said, stretching out her hands.

Mother took one length and passed her hands over the fine texture. Everyone agreed to the beauty of the cloths except my father who sat in the moonlight puffing his pipe as if he never heard a thing. The moon was bright and the gentle night breeze was cold. A few dogs howled in the distance, singing my shame. Girls my age were responsible adults and fertile mothers. In Yulinayuli, a girl of fourteen was old enough. I was just two months away from turning sixteen; my cousin Amina had jumped at the opportunity as soon as it came. We were age mates. The very driver who brought the remittance and gifts she sent had brought the woman we all called Hadjia to our little village in Yulinayuli two years ago. 

Hadjia had a great proposition. ‘Accra is a city teaming with life and people. It offers opportunities no one will offer you here,’ Hadjia explained. ‘Yes, it is far but it is a city that changes girls to ladies. I went there myself a poor village girl but here I am today. I have three restaurants in the city and drive my own car.’

In Yulinayuli we had a few lorries with wooden bodies that had benches in them. No one had a car. Her lecture drew a lot of interest. Hadjia promised to house her employees, feed them and then pay them salaries at the end of every month. It was an opportunity too good to ignore. But my mother’s kose and koko business was too big to let her be. I was her only girl. Mother had given birth to seven children. She lost two out of the seven. My four elder brothers and I were all she had left. My brothers had taken trades and wives of their own. They had moved on. The koko itself was porridge we added some pepper and spices to while the kose was the condiment of special fried and spiced bean cakes. It took a lot to do and mother’s koko had some following. Even with my help she worked deep into the night and she was getting no younger. I had passed the opportunity to go to Accra so as to stay and help Mother. But that was before my decision. The November before my departure, Father had woken Mother and I up. If Father woke you up at dawn, the issue at stake was really important. My mother sat on a low stool and I sat beside her on the floor with my legs stretched before me.

‘Ahm.’ Father cleared his throat and looked at both of us without speaking. ‘Tanko has asked for the hands of my daughter in marriage,’ he stated suddenly, pointing a coy finger in my direction. Tanko was a kola nut merchant. ‘He will give three cows in honor of your hand,’ Father declared, his face flushing with pride.

I had wept the whole day. Tanko was older than my father. He was a rich man in Yulinayuli. My father was a man of sixty-two and called Tanko elder brother not because Tanko was richer. No, Tanko was older than my father. I had known Tanko as a child. He came round buying kola nuts from anyone who had. Tanko had a bigger market for his collection of kola. He was tall and missing his upper front row of teeth. Apart from festive occasions, he had always worn the long brown djalabia I knew him for. So much so that when you mention Tanko, the long brown flowing dress came to mind. I would do anything to keep Tanko’s hands off me.

I cried the whole day Father broke the news of Tanko’s proposal. Amid my tears I made my decision. I went to see Hadjia’s agent in town and begged to go to Accra. ‘You will not be shamed, sir. I will work hard,’ I assured him. This agent was the brother of the driver who brought Hadjia to our village. He was a seasoned customer at mother’s koko joint. ‘Very well, I will put in a word for you,’ the kind man promised. ‘The next bus taking deliveries to Accra is due soon. You can go with it,’ the man assured me. Deliveries did not only refer to the usual Yulinayuli ingredients that Hadjia perpetually wanted for her restaurants. The willing human cargo was considered delivery as well. I was happy. When I broke the news to Mother, she wept. ‘My mother, my mother,’ she called. She had always referred to me thus. Mother believed I was her mother come back to her through birth so she always called me Mother. ‘Your absence will cause me pain but lesser pain than having you marry toothless Tanko,’ she said almost in lament, and I could see her aging face lines tighten in pain. My mother resolved to bear her sadness and let me fly from the clutches of old Tanko. 

My father was sitting in his perpetual chair smoking his foul-smelling tobacco when I broke the news to him. Mother had been too broken to tell him. ‘What is it?’ he barked when I bent down before him. ‘Father.’ I called. ‘I am going to the big city,’ I said. Father looked into my eyes and frowned. ‘So, you don’t want to marry Tanko,’ my father replied and continued with his pipe. That was all he said. When there was nothing more coming from him, I informed him I was going back to help Mother and he ignored this too. I got up and walked away slowly. Mother informed me later my father wept when I left.  

In January I packed my few belongings into a small jute bag and bid my mother goodbye. Father was conveniently absent. As the big vehicle full of passengers trudged on through the streets of Tamale, I took in the entire scenery with already growing nostalgia. It felt as if I might not survive to return. I was heading into the unknown. The polished mud houses stared at me. The call of every bird that dawn seemed to have a message of doom and the trees seemed to wave gloomy farewells. I remembered my mother’s tears and wept afresh. 

For ten hours we travelled. I must have slept during the latter part of the journey. Yells from excited passengers shouting, Accra! Accra! roused me. I woke to the sight of the big city I was coming to. There were no mud houses and thatch roofs as far as I could see. There were tall and great buildings. Finally, our vehicle pulled over at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. Hadjia had sent one of her girls to bring me along. I thanked the driver who had kept Hadjia informed about our progress, then I headed off with the girl who had come for me. She was dressed in a very short skirt that exposed more than I liked. The shirt she wore over the skirt was white and a bit revealing too. I asked her name and she said she was called Sisi. I had never heard a name like that. I was silent throughout the bus ride to Madina where Hadjia lived. Sisi chewed gum loudly and continued filing her painted nails. How she could keep doing that in the bus that kept bumping up and down the road surprised me. I watched her in silence.  

I expected to meet cousin Amina at Hadjia’s place but was disappointed. ‘Amina does not work here. She is at the Dzorwulu branch,’ Hadjia explained to me. The house itself was fenced and had a big compound. There were two long rows of single rooms facing each other. At the other side of the compound stood the business itself. One of the restaurants Hadjia talked of, complete with kitchen and eating places for customers. Patrons moved in and out constantly and there were numerous girls running chores. I could see robust young men wielding the heavy pestles with which they pounded boiled cassava and plantain known as fufu. It was a constant flow of activity. Sisi took me to one of the rooms that had three low beds. ‘You will sleep on this one,’ she said, pointing to the bed close to the wall away from the door. I moved over and dropped my bundle of possessions on the floor beside the bed that had been indicated. I had brought with me all I owned in the world. Three long dresses, a leather pair of sandals, and two scarfs. A bundle of chewing sticks my mother had given me for oral hygiene lay within my possessions.

Sisi proceeded to give me a tour of the house. She showed me the bathroom and where the toilets were located. Everyone watched me when I was shown the restaurant. ‘Why are they staring at me,’ I asked Sisi. ‘Why will they not stare with that crude long thing of a dress you wear? It looks like a Nsawam prison uniform,’ Sisi explained. I looked down at the long simple dress mother had given me and understood. It stood out among the style of all the other girls. They were mostly dressed in tight pairs of jeans and t-shirts. When the tour was over, I was sent back to Hadjia who sat under a tree in the compound continually counting monies brought in to her. She asked me to sit on a stool beside her. 

‘Rafia,’ she called me. ‘You have come a long way to earn a living. Most of my girls come from far so you will work with girls from different backgrounds. All my girls are hardworking and obedient. This city is hard and can be cruel but smart people prosper here. You must work hard but you will be paid for it. If you are nice to the customers, you will earn tips from time to time. These you can keep for yourself. Your style of dress does not fit in here so we will get you some nice clothes.’ 

I looked on, confused about the dress issue. I still thought my dress more proper and those of the other girls too revealing, but like she said I had come from far. The dress code was not enough to frighten me off. My mind went back to the lengths of cloth and money my cousin Amina had sent her mother. I was determined to treat my mother equally well. After a long talk with me, Hadjia asked me to take it easy for the day and hang around the restaurant running errands to learn the ropes. That is exactly what I did for the day. I washed dishes and helped carry food to customers. I even earned a tip at the close of the working day.

At the close of work when dishes were being washed and the place cleaned, those hard-working men who had pounded fufu throughout the day sat down to the leftovers. One popular one among them who joked all the while as he did his work and had a ready smile as if he was preparing his own meal asked me for water. I sent him a sachet from the fridge. He drank long and belched the belch of a satisfied man. ‘Kwrasene!’ one of the girls called out, addressing the belch in the Akan word that meant villager. 

I was alarmed as I thought the insult would incur the man’s anger but I was wrong. He joined everyone in the laughter that followed and handed me a five cedis note. I didn’t know what to do at first. I stood watching the hand that held the gift. ‘Grab it, girl,’ another girl said. I took the money then and the young man nodded in agreement. ‘You have to learn fast if you want to survive here,’ the man said. ‘Or are you not here for money?’ he asked. I nodded and curtsied in appreciation while thanking him. They all laughed as if this was awkward. I was taken aback as this was usual back home. You bent low to say thank you when given a gift but this gesture seemed funny to these city dwellers.

That night when I was just about retiring to bed, I noticed a lot of the girls had changed into more revealing dresses. Some went out that night and some sat in the compound chatting with Hadjia.  I had had my bath and lay on my bed thinking about home, thinking about Mother. I did not know what she might be feeling at the moment back in the village while I lay here for the first time not on a straw mat on the earth but on a soft mattress in a bed. I was in the big city. I was in Accra. The two girls who shared the room with me were Sisi who had picked me up earlier from Kwame Nkrumah Circle and a smallish girl with short hair called Liza who seemed to talk forever. She continued talking even when Sisi put the lights out. Liza was inquisitive. She wanted to know everything about Yulinayuli and talked a lot of her home where she had left her mother and little son. ‘I come from the Volta region. Keta to be precise. It is the loveliest place on the planet Earth. The sands are golden and the sea bluer than the sky. There are coconuts so big it takes seven people to drink up the water in one.’ Liza chatted away, keeping us up. She said she had fallen pregnant after a brief affair with her boyfriend in school who happened to be the football captain and was so handsome all the school girls wanted him. This was until he deserted Liza. That was when he turned so ugly no girl wanted him anymore. ‘Hey Sisi, is your rich man not coming for you tonight?’ Liza asked. The question drew a chuckle from Sisi. ‘He has grown stingy these days. The pay goes smaller and smaller with a lot of lame excuses.’ Sisi was still talking when I slept off. 

I heard the door creak in my sleep and then voices followed. These woke me. They spoke in low tones. I guessed they did not want me listening. I remained as I was and pretended to be asleep. 

There was a male voice and that of my two roommates. ‘You no go come?’ the male voice asked in broken English. He was asking whether the person he addressed would not come along. ‘Look, Soja, we don’t take those your coins anymore,’ I heard Sisi say. ‘How much do you have Soja?’ Liza asked.

 ‘Oh what now? Liza, I no address you o. I no want horse with baggage,’ Soja gave back strongly.

‘Aha, today you say I am horse with baggage because I have a child. So, you were blind to my child all the other times. Sick man without money says medicine is not good. I am not cheap o. I was only being kind to you those other times,’ Liza rationalized. 

There was a brief pause and then Sisi’s voice came through again. ‘Ok, how much do you have?’ The male voice did not respond immediately but came in shakily after a brief hiatus. ‘I go pay twenty Ghana cedis. Only short time.’ The male voice was not as bold as it had begun. ‘That your long thing?’ Sisi countered. ‘Thirty or no business,’ she offered. ‘Ok thirty,’ Soja agreed. ‘Money na hand, back na ground,’ Sisi said and Soja pulled money out of his pocket and handed it over to the service provider. 

In silence I wondered at what I had just witnessed. “Money na hand back na ground,” I understood well. It was a prostitute’s way of saying I will lie down for the act only if you pay. Upfront payment.  With dread, I came to understand my roommates were up for sale. They were trading sex for money. I don’t think I slept a wink again before daybreak. What had I gotten myself into? 

At dawn the whole household was up. We had our baths and it was work as usual. I helped in packing the various foods from the cooking place to the sale spot. As early as half-past six in the morning the inflow of customers started and never stopped till night. I learnt another lesson again that second night. I had shied away from Sisi that whole day knowing what she had done the night before. Liza and I became closer and I just had to tolerate her permanent chatter. Before we went to bed, one of the girls who dressed up with overdone make-up came out smiling from Hadjia’s room. ‘I got the big one,’ she said to Liza. I asked Liza if we could go to have our baths after the others were done. I wanted to have a word with her. She agreed. When I asked in the bathhouse about the incident of last night and what the other girl meant when she talked of getting the big one, the explanation tore my heart to shreds. I wondered whether the fate I was opened to now was not worse than having to settle down with kola nut Tanko back in my village.

The matter at stake was huge. Ostensibly we were all prostitutes. ‘See, these customers who flock in here. They do not do so just because Hadjia’s food is the best in Accra. No. They come gawking,’ Liza explained. I could only shake my head in disbelief. ‘Sorry excuse for gentlemen. They come here to see and pick. They come to point and kill. We are all on show. As for Soja and Sisi’s affair, these are normal happenings. Wake up,’ Liza pointed out. 

‘So, this is Accra.’ I said in alarm. ‘Very much Accra. Hadjia is a big broker. You see, many of the big men who come here have wives at home. When they spot anything they like, Hadjia does the approach and negotiation. She takes her commission of course. And you do not say no to Hadjia unless you want to be thrown on the street. Hadjia herself started earning her wages this way and is still available if the purse is right,’ Liza told me. 

I had come all the way from the North. What was I to do? One thing I was sure of was that I would never be involved in any of these illicit transactions. But was I ready to be thrown out? I was in a dilemma. I did not know where to turn. I had nobody in Accra. No known relative except Amina whose whereabouts I was not sure of. 

The Saturday after this revelation, Hadjia went with me to the market. We had to replenish the storehouse with foodstuff. Along with that I got new clothes. For the first time I owned pairs of jeans trousers. I had always considered trousers dress-up for men but I was used to women wearing them now. When we got home Hadjia made me wear the clothes so she could see how I looked in them. ‘You are beautiful Rafia,’ she said over and over again. The fate I had dreaded never befell me. I was spared for one whole month. The night it threatened I had almost forgotten of it and was fitting in that fine. I had received my pay too. One hundred Ghana cedis for a month’s work with free food and boarding. I felt blessed. My plan was to buy a new mobile phone, add a length of cloth and a new pipe for my father when I added the next five months earnings. 

That night my two companions had gone on trek as they called it. To them it was work away from home. ‘That is a good earner. You spend time with a man willing to put good value on every moment you give him. Hadjia vets them well and so pay and safety guaranteed,’ Liza explained to me earlier. I was alone in the room. There was a knock on the door. The man who had given me my first cash gift of five Cedis and subsequent others came in. We had become somewhat friends now and talked freely around work. He had complimented me over a hundred times on how my new clothes looked good on me. This man was one of the male workers who shared a room in the compound. Just a handful of them did. The rooms were mainly for the girls. 

‘Jojo aren’t you going to bed?’ I asked him. ‘Bed for where? I can’t sleep. You are like a fire burning in my heart. I should have told you this all the while but I could not risk your refusal with everyone watching. I waited for this moment. I have loved you from the first when you came in here,’ Jojo revealed, drawling his words at times and sounding confident at others. When I told him in plain words I would have nothing to do with anybody, he offered me more money. ‘Here, see.’ He pulled out a wad of ten cedis notes. ‘One hundred Cedis all in cash. It is yours.’ I got angry and asked him to leave. That was when he grabbed me and the struggle ensued. I shouted and screamed so loud that my shrill voice through the night got the household’s attention. Jojo tried to silence me by pressing his mouth against mine and I bit his mouth so hard part of the top lip was almost severed. His own scream in terror and pain joined mine now and the door burst open. Hadjia and many of the girls pushed in. No one recoiled in anger or shame when the story was told. 

‘Are you not a woman?’ Hadjia had asked. ‘And you screamed as if he was killing you. Look how you’ve hurt him,’ Hadjia fumed. Jojo was rushed to the hospital. The next day most of the girls shied away from me as if I had committed a terrible sin. At the end of that week Hadjia called me. ‘Rafia, you can earn a living under my roof or you can starve on the streets,’ she started. ‘I had to pay over a hundred cedis for Jojo’s treatment. You will pay it back. I shall take your salary for this month ending and the next in place of what I spent and the inconvenience.’ I looked surprised. I was so horrified she must have seen it. Then she came through with her proposition. ‘A good man,’ she said, wanted a night with me for which she guaranteed me two hundred cedis.  ‘Two month’s salary in just a night you see. Your beauty is going to turn you rich in no time,’ Hadjia explained. Of course, I turned down the offer. The next dawn Hadjia marched to my room with two girls and gave me a sound thrashing. She demanded all the clothes she had bought me. They threw me out in my mother’s old dress I had worn to Accra and I wept.

That is how my journey as a kayayo began. Kayayo is what they call those of us who bear loads on our heads to various destinations for pay. Kaya refers to the various burdens we bear while yo qualifies the bearer. That morning on the streets of Madina, I was fortunate to meet Samia. We had not known each other previously but she was kind. I told her my story and she listened with keen attention. ‘How naïve of you.’ Samia said. ‘I can’t blame you. I was almost as naïve as you when I first came to Accra too but I learnt fast. There is no free meal here. To many of the men, we are commodities,’ she told me. 

Samia slept on the streets and carried loads. I joined her in the trade. She was a good teacher. The busier spots were the big Makola market and Kaneshie. We went wherever there was work. Within a month I did not need Samia’s help again. I had learnt the trade. I knew the busy market stalls to hangout. I knew how to catch the eyes of customers. Finding a place to sleep was trickier than many other maneuvers I could manage. The first few days I slept under a shed in Makola number one bus terminal. It was made of wide zinc sheets supported by stout odum poles. My colleague kayayos jostled for a spare place and when I found space enough, I claimed it, coiling  my body as comfortably as could be managed. The large carrier basin I used as my load-bearing tool came in as a handy pillow and guaranteed my basin from getting stolen. The position I took was way behind the lines of crouching sleepers. I was close to the little office cabin under the wide shed. So close my feet almost touched the cabin door. I did not mind the mice running over me occasionally. At dawn we woke up before the drivers and mates came to make use of the shed. On the fourth night I found out the safety of the shed could be breached too. I had fallen sound asleep even in the midst of the various symphony of snores. But then I sensed movement. A body touched me and a sharp sigh escaped into the night like smoke through the chimney. My eyes opened in sleep’s haze but I shut them again. The sigh and movement came from the girl curled to my right. It came again and I opened my eyes but dared not move immediately. The lights under the shed had long been put off and darkness engulfed us, but I was aware. The girl curled to my right was moving, not of her own volition. I turned to my right, still feigning sleep. It was then that I saw faintly through the night what was unfolding. The moving girl was being pulled by the leg. I felt the coiled body of the girl to my left move momentarily. She too stopped still in an adjusted crouching pose. She said nothing. If others had noticed, they said nothing. Did nothing apart from the momentary instinctive crouching adjustment.

The streets teach you to be economical with screams and the moving girl might have learned that too. Your next scream might be the last, cut quickly by a blade, a fatal choke. It is safe to scream when there is honest help at hand but honest help is a scarce commodity in our world. There was a momentary struggle and another sigh but instinct is a precious gift. The girl slithered in vain struggle as she was pulled by the leg but did not scream. My eyes caught the menacing flashy bared teeth of the determined puller. I had a glimpse of the muscular fore-am enacting the pull before the slithering girl in a final haul vanished into the small cabin used as a makeshift office during the day. Just moments later I heard stifled intermittent cries emanating from the little office cabin and I heard no more. The deep night held her own menace. 

With relief I saw the slithering girl alive the next day. She was limping on one leg but she was alive. ‘The hulking bastard,’ I heard her confide in another Kayayo. ‘It was the foul-smelling master of the shed. He splintered me apart. He is big as a log.  I will move to Nkrumah Circle. There I can pick and choose,’ she affirmed. After that night, she vacated the shed.

I moved too. I had to pick and choose as well. My next abode was not totally removed from Makola number one bus terminal. It was a waterlogged spot at an abandoned warehouse. There was a place under a solemn bridge. The dripping droplets did not touch the spot. The company of mosquitoes were not as menacing as gripping hands and scowling teeth. My sleeping nights were unbothered except for the splitter splatter of running raindrops and nimble insects. My cover shawl given me by my mother served as a head bundle for my loads at day and blanket at night. 

My delicate solitude was neither broken by dragging hands nor slithering sighs. The song that broke my peace came at dawn. ‘Some have food but cannot eat, some can eat but have no food. We have food and we can eat.’ I woke slowly to this soulful song and realized I had company. He was standing clothed in tattered shrubs with his hands held in humble supplication above.

I recognized the man in the dim cast of street lights. Koo Labi. The insane man who begged his keep with fervent movements of a juggler by day, disappearing into obscurity when night came. How was I to know my lowly spot held attraction for him too? With a final leap of faith and drooping lips, Koo Labi took a cowering lunge at me. My instinctive role saved me as the mad man landed with a heavy thud in my dry spot. I sped away pulling my basing in firm grab but I lost my mother’s old shawl that had served me as a head comfort during my labor days and blanket at night. Koo Labi wore it as a trophy the next day, and many other days to come. I was not deceived. Even this small dry space held her own nocturnal danger. 

There was no one safe spot at night for sleep but a juggernaut of maze puzzles to maneuver. I slept in teaming huddles, shivered in lonely cold spots and even claimed vacated fireplaces abandoned at night but I learnt to keep my pants on and padded cloths wrapped around my waist with my purse of earnings. Sleeping when possible, I neither grudged the night nor my circumstances.

One day, I carried a load of groceries for a man from the stalls to the car park where his vehicle was parked. ‘How much?’ he asked when I offloaded the groceries into the trunk of his car. ‘Oh, anything you give me, Sir,’ I answered. The man looked at me without blinking. I could see surprise written in his eyes. ‘You are a good girl. Give me your phone number and will call you whenever I come shopping,’ the surprised man addressed me. ‘Oh, I do not have a phone, Sir,’ I explained. ‘Here,’ he said, handing me twenty Cedis. I was struck dumb. That was a lot of money for the short walk I had done. ‘I will come shopping with my wife on Saturday. If you will make yourself available at the Madina bus station, we will meet at two o'clock Saturday afternoon.’ I nodded my head and thanked him again, bowing low before him. ‘My name is Sir John,’ he called as he pulled his car from the car park and drove away. I was mighty glad, and yes, I met him and his lovely wife when they came shopping the next Saturday. I helped them to their car. That day he gave me my first mobile phone. A simple Nokia pad phone so I could make time when he came shopping. His wife gave me an added tip after Sir John paid me. It became a good relationship. I came to know Sir John’s house and delivered groceries when needed. 

It was this benefactor of mine who turned my innocence into depravity. I had shopped the family’s weekly groceries and sent it to them, expecting the money I used for the shopping and the extra always waiting for me. I tapped at the door and it was opened from inside. Sir John stood there in a pair of khaki trousers and white t-shirt. I saw a strange smile on his face as he waved me in. ‘You know you are such a good girl. A wife material,’ he said as I passed him by and smelled the unmistakable stench of alcohol on his breath. I was alarmed. Not so much for the stench but his comment. The good girl part he had said often but the wife material call was not amusing. As I was placing the groceries in the kitchen as I normally did, I felt an unsettling presence behind me followed by a heavy sigh. Turning around suddenly in alarm I encountered Sir John with a wide grin on his face. His t-shirt was off and his hairy muscular chest looked menacing. I dashed back from the door but fell back against the kitchen cabinet. ‘Oh, come on. Don’t be that way. Good girl,’ Sir John said and pounced on me. ‘Aooo. Ma!’ I called out to his wife but it was in vain. The empty walls echoed back at me. My struggle was vain in the face of his strength and determination. I was still crying and begging when he took me. 

When I left, I threw all the money he gave me at him. That foul gift of money felt like rubbing salt in my injury. It came as a cheap insult after the travesty brought on me and the money felt dirty. I was no longer chaste. The way I saw it, the men could have their way. Later on, I learnt to keep the dirty money and not to throw it back in anger. I became what I had fought against this long while. A prostitute. 

I returned to Yulinayuli after six years. Within those six I had come to discover Amina my cousin. She was in the same trade, prostitution, but Amina was luckless. She died of AIDS and I was part of the delegation that took her body home. My mother could not recognize me until I called to her. She was at the bus station to welcome us. I had aged and looked I believe older than Mother. She took in all with the subtle understanding of a woman and wailed in sorrow. She wailed; I believe not for the dead daughter of her sister but her own daughter whom life had dealt many savage blows. She wailed. ‘My mother,’ she called me over and over as she clung to me. If only she knew, knew how I managed to send her the phones I did, the lengths of cloth and money. ‘I am home, Mother, and that is sufficient,’ I told her. She understood and wiped her tears as she led me home.

 ———————-

As narrated to me by Rafiatu Ibrahim

 A Six-Year-Old Takes on Form N-400 (With Some Help from Mrs. K)

Elizabeth Rosen

Form N-400 Application for Naturalization - Instructions

Part 1. Information About Your Eligibility.

Mrs. K says “eligibility” means “are you a good person for this.” Mrs. K is helping me fill this out because my s’s and b’s and p’s are messy and my h’s and n’s and m’s are lopsided. I want to stay here because Maggie S. is my friend, and Mr. Singh from the corner store at the bus stop gives me a free sweet after school. (Mrs. K says it’s probably not free and that Mami pays for it.) (Also, she says it is important to tell you that Mr. Singh is a citizen.)

Part 2. Information about you.

Item Number 1. Your Current Legal Name (do not provide a nickname)

Manuel Allende

Item Number 2. Other Names You Have Used Since Birth

Manny. Guapito. Mi solcito. Also, my Tío calls me Little Dude.

Part 3. Biographic Information.

Items Number 1.-2. Ethnicity and Race

Texan. (Mrs. K says to put Hispanic and Mexican.)

Item Number 3. Height

3 feet and a half.

Item Number 4. Weight

42 pounds

Item Number 5. Eye Color

Brown

Item Number 6. Hair Color

Brown

Part 4. Information About Your Residence

Physical Address

Mrs. K’s house. Mrs. K says I will stay here until Mami comes back. Mrs. K lives next door to us. She says some people came to Mami’s work and took her away to talk to them. (Mrs. K says to tell you that that was several days ago and that I am staying with her while I wait for Mami.)

Part 5. Information About Your Marital History

Mrs. K says “marital” means marriage. I am not married. I want to marry Maggie S. when we grow up.

Part 6. Information About Your Children.

When I marry Maggie S. we will have six children. Three boys and three girls, and they will be named Stephen, Ricky, and Little Dude, and Mariana, Mercedes and Little Maggie.

Part 7. Information About Your Employment and Schools You Attend

Mrs. K says “employment” means a job. My job is to make my bed every morning. Also, to get good grades. My school is St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Maggie S. goes there too. We are in grade Kinder Garden.

Part 8. Time Outside the United States.

I have never visited my abuela in Valle Seguro where Mami is from, but one time we drove to Louisiana to see Mami’s brother who works on a sugar cane farm. Tío had a big knife. He peeled a piece of sugar cane and gave it to me to chew on. It was so sweet my head exploded with happiness.

Part 9. Additional Information About You

Good Moral Character

Mrs. K says this is the most important part. She says that “moral” is whether you are a good or bad person. I am a good person, except when Maggie S. won’t let me have my turn on the swing at school. Then I am a loud person and once I was a person who kicked the swing set and yelled that sharing is caring. Other ways I am a good person is I give hugs to Mami when she has a bad day at work and smells like chicken poop. I am also a good person to take a bath when I am supposed to. (Mrs. K. says this is true.)

(Mrs. K says I am also a good person because I did not cry or yell back at Maggie S’s mother at Maggie S.’s birthday party even though she got angry when she saw me holding Maggie S’s hand and yelled a word I didn’t understand and all the other grown-ups looked at her funny. Mrs. K says I am also a good person because I said thank you when Maggie S’s mother said my English was very good and asked where my family was from and what street I live on now. Mrs. K says it’s ok not to like Maggie S’s mother, even if she did give me a bigger piece of birthday cake than the other kids and said I probably need it more. Mrs. K says that some people are dumber than posts. That is a funny thing to say because posts do not have brains but I have to hide my laugh, because, one thing, Mami says it is not right to call someone dumb, and second thing, because Mrs. K does not look like she is saying a joke.)

Oath of Allegiance

I know all the words to the Pledge of Allegiance and “America the Beautiful” which we do every day at school before we start our lessons.

Part 10. Request for a Fee Reduction

Mrs. K says to ask you for this because I only have my allowance that I get on Sundays after church and the quarters that el ratoncito pérez leaves me for my baby teeth. Maggie S. says she gets a dollar for her teeth, so the tooth fairy must think that Maggie S. is gooder than I am. She has very shiny teeth, so she probably is. That is why I want to marry her when I grow up and we will go to Valle Seguro to live with my abuela and will eat sugar cane every day. Mrs. K says that we will get cavities if we do that and also that we have to take a break now and have a snack of ants-on-a-log before we do the other twenty-two pages of this form.

 SLOUGH

Christopher Lee Chilton

It was an old Crown Vic that stopped for me, the kind they used to make into police cars. I thought it might be an undercover cop car at first, and the three men inside — large men with sack-like jowls — might be cops. They turned out to be insurance adjusters on their way to a conference in Daytona Beach.

I was going to the Everglades to band birds. They didn’t understand why anyone would want to ban birds from the Everglades. No, I said, I’m going to band them. To track their migrations. They didn’t understand why anyone would want to do that, either.

They offered me sunflower seeds. They were spitting the shells into a murky bottle formerly filled with Old Crow, and when I saw it, I realized they were all ripping drunk. The drunkest of all might have been the driver, who had one hand on the bag of seeds and another on the bottle, and who was trying to steady the wheel with pleated knees.

We were going very fast, and I became afraid. I must have been pressed against the seat in fear, because the man next to me — sour of breath, greasy of face — turned to me and asked me how old I was.

I said: I’m twenty-two, sir.

He shook his head and called me son. Son, he said. You ain’t gonna die at twenty-two.

But he was wrong. I did die. We made it to Daytona and I hitched the rest of the way to Hialeah safe and sound. Later that spring, in my canoe with all my banding equipment, looking for wood storks, I came upon an alligator poacher in an airboat. He was just some cracker kid, no older than sixteen. He must have been afraid of being caught more than anything. He got me right in the stomach with his .22. He didn’t ask me my age, so the rhyming of it — the stupid little limerick God loves to write — was lost on him.

I sank to the bottom of the slough. The water there moves slowly but steadily, and it began to tear away bits of skin from my body. Beautiful tropical fish gathered around to feast on these floating pieces of myself, and when these were gone, they ate out my eyes.

In Baltimore they had me declared dead. It must have been a slow and painful process for my mother and sister. It doesn’t seem right to have a funeral, my sister said to my mother. He’s not even here.

But I was there. Or, at least, a part of me was there. I was looking at a pair of birds in the hall of the funeral home. They were Gouldian finches, an Australian species with striking rainbow-colored markings: a red mask lined in teal, and a violet bib over a golden belly. Gouldian finches are popular in the exotic bird trade, and a popular species among poachers. This was the kind of thing it had been my job to know. I spent much of my own funeral wondering where the funeral home had gotten them.

These two finches — the striking male and plainer female — were kept in a glass case that seemed entirely sealed. There must have been cleverly disguised air vents somewhere. The finches hopped restlessly around on a three-fingered branch.

The curved top of the case made it resemble a gravestone, which struck me in bad taste. In my distracted and half-present state — at this moment, an eel was oilily sliding between my ribcage and lungs — I was seized by the idea that these finches were to be buried in my place, a representation of my absent spirit. This isn’t right! I wanted to scream at the funeral director, potting around the carpeted floor in his velvet slippers. Free these finches, sir! I knew then why ghosts in old books are always described as rattling their chains. If I’d had chains, I’d have rattled them.

My sister stood up in the chapel to speak, but I couldn’t really hear her. I was having trouble focusing on any one place or thing. I was being carried away to diverse corners. Carried away by the little fish and the big ones, by the oblique scuttling of crabs, inside the gullets of pelicans, cruising in swift straight lines over the water like Crown Vics. I felt bad for my sister, who was trying to reduce my life to a few meaningful sentences. She couldn’t have known that just the opposite was happening. I was expanding; I was being spread out.

I lost sound and vision. I had to make do with my deepest dreams. I became obsessed with the idea of becoming fossil fuel. I saw myself powering a great industrial machine with thrusting pistons. I relished the sexual power of the industrial machine, and knowing that, without me, a gallon of petroleum, the machine was impotent.

I was embarrassed by this fantasy, and by how much it pleased me. In life I had been something of a Luddite. I took conscious measures to reduce my carbon footprint. Perhaps the fantasy was evidence of how much I was changing, how much I had already changed. Or maybe it was something that had always been within me and only now being revealed.

Sometimes I imagined myself as a cupful of gasoline inside a Crown Victoria, being driven by three dipsomaniacal insurance adjusters, picking up a young hitchhiker. I was combusting at their feet, like a rare red orchid. At other times I thought of myself as a skin of oil on tarmac, inside which all possible colors lived.

In my more lucid moments, I knew the process of becoming petroleum took many millions of years. By that time there would be no Crown Victorias, no Gouldian finches. There wouldn’t even be a Florida. Everything would be something else. I thought about that. I went on thinking about it for a long time.

On the High-Guide-Path of the Wind-Riders

Gary Devore

“It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be.”  ― E.M. Forster

The eastern plains of what will eventually become the country of Colombia

12,000 BCE

Critter’s first memory was being carried as a boy. His head turned, dozing, face-skin pressed against the back of his mother-brother. He must have been in a hide-sling because his sleeping boy-arms would not have been able to keep a grip for the whole low-path across the grass-plains. Critter remembered security. He remembered calm. To not walk was a comfort only for the youngest.

When an older Critter finally asked the others in the clan what happened to his mother and father, he got many answers. Most were lies. He was told they left him behind because he cried too much. Or because his yips were like the pelt-beast, and that was why the clan called him Critter. He was told a cave-beast ate his parents up. He was even told he never had a mother but hopped up from the ground. But his mother-brother said what Critter thought must be the truth: his sister and her mate just laid down one night and never woke up. The clan put their bodies under stones and moved on. Freed, Critter’s mother and father would have flown up as wind-riders, spreading their wide, dark wings and leaping into the air. They would have joined the many others floating in slow circles, following the clan on the high-path as the clan walked the low-path from the grass-plains to the hills and back again. The wind-riders only landed to eat the meal-gifts left behind on the season-walk.

Whenever the clan reached the tall-rocks, they would rest before returning to the grass-plains, another winter survived. Sometimes they would trade with other walking-clans who knew the same place. It was the single time Critter saw strangers. To mark another cycle on the low-path, Critter’s mother-brother always painted on the huge white walls of the cliffs. He showed his sister-son how to make crushed red-powder from soil and beast-blood. He would make a large pile of paint, dip his fingers in, and smear the color to make pictures of beast-kills and clan-bonds and strange things seen on the low-path. This pleased the clan. When Critter became an adult, put on the snout-beast fur, and masked his face with soot from the special man-fire, his mother-brother drew him among the other figures, standing next to the boy-form he was to leave behind. He was of the clan now, and the clan was of him. To look at the wall of red shapes was to see the story of the clan. To remember. Critter’s mother-brother enjoyed showing these memories. To make sure they were true. Not lies. He often pointed to two wind-rider figures, Critter’s mother and father, then smiled at the clouds. If Critter ever was lost, he should look to their high-path and make it a guide.

While painting the shape of a shell-beast far up on the rocks, Critter’s mother-brother fell from a tree-tower. His body crunched against the ground and no longer moved. The clan placed him under a pile of stones near the wall he had painted many, many times. Critter was alone in the clan now. No one to protect him. As they left the tall-rocks and returned once more to the grass-plains, he looked up to see which new wind-rider following them might be his mother-brother. He could only see distant shapes with wide-wings. They all looked the same.

The clan took three more trips between grass-plains and tall-rocks before Critter fell. He did not fall from high like his mother-brother, but under the legs of tusk-beasts. Critter had never been a good hunter. The clan knew this, and told him again and again that he was useless. They often threw hard stones at him. None of the men wanted him on the hunt. They said he could not use a hunt-spear as good as them or run as fast as them. He would scare the beasts with his yips. But he went that morning with the men because they were hunting tusk-beasts and he loved watching the animals move through grass. But the hunt went bad. The tusk-beasts panicked. No hunt-spears could stop them. When they turned their gray bodies and raged, the hunters fled. Critter was caught between two. He fell and rolled, pushed by trunks and tusks. In the dust, he hit the ground. Strength bashed him. He could not breathe. He could not see the sky. If his mother-brother had been alive to draw him tumbling, his legs would point up as a red herd of tusk-beasts ran down on him.

The dark-sleep that came made him think that it was his time to fly away, to join the other wind-riders. But his eyes opened again. He was on the roughed ground. Raising his head, he saw no tusk-beasts or hunters. He was alone. In his nose was the smell of mud. In his chest was quivering fear. As the sun slid down into the far-sky, he could just make out the circle of wind-riders in a part of the sky. That was where his clan was now, walking again toward the tall-rocks. They had left him behind. Like they did not want him. Or did not care to check he still breathed. 

He would need to reach their rest-fires to keep the night-beasts away. He would need to follow the high-guide-path to the wind-riders or the dark would eat him.

He rose, in pain. His leg and ankle hurt but he hobbled forward. Every other step he whimpered. In agony, he tried to hurry. He wept. His face-skin soon burned but the rest of him felt cold. His bare arms stung. He had to reach the clan.

He limped until the sun deserted him too and he could not see. Sobbing, he bumped into a scrub-bush. Its briars cut his cheeks. He stumbled, falling. He crawled under the scrub-bush, next to its roots. He hoped the hungry night-beasts would not find him. Crying, he rubbed his sore leg and ankle. He was alone. He wondered if the families in the clan missed him. 

Critter dreamed of the white tall-rock wall. The red beasts drawn there by his mother-brother leapt down and began to stalk him through the grass-plains. He was scared.

In the new-day, Critter’s stomach hurt as much as his leg. He shuffled on, trying to find the circle of wind-riders in the sky again, but he could not see them. He worried that his clan would keep walking, leaving him further behind. On all sides, the green grass and red dirt spread. The plain gave nothing. His lips cracked. He was thirsty, lurching forward. He called out to the wind-rider of his mother-brother, wherever it was, begging it to come and pick him up. To come carry him again. It was his last thought when he stumbled, pitching to the ground. Falling, he bit his tongue. He tasted blood as he breathed dirt. Inside his mouth, he made the paint of his mother-brother, but was unable to reach the tall-rocks. He spit. Eyes closed. 

As he lay, the dark-sleep gripped him until he thought a large beast came and sniffed around his body. It snorted. Critter could smell the stink of rot-meat. Scared, he did not open his sight. The beast lost interest and Critter lost himself again. 

He half-waked again when he was turned over. He expected beast-teeth to sink into his now exposed belly. Sink in and rip out the pain. But no teeth attacked. Instead, hands lifted him. They did not shove him down a beast-throat. These hands smelled of man. They placed Critter over a man-shoulder. His empty stomach lurched at the movement. He was carried away. Critter could not open his eyes or speak. His throbbing leg pushed him back down into blackness.

He knew it was night when he next woke because he could hear the sing-bugs, but Critter was confused because he was not under the sky. He tried to calm his breathing. He only saw dancing light-shapes on stone. He was in a small space, maybe under the ground. Turning his head, he found a rest-fire near. A man, a stranger, was beside it, although Critter could only see his head in the glow. His egg-face had thick, curly, dark hair atop it and the same below. The beard hid his mouth. Large eyes sat under brows that stared at Critter.

Critter was afraid. He tried to speak, to tell him about the tusk-beasts and the accident and how he needed to follow the high-guide-path before his clan walked so far ahead, but he was shivering too much to draw in enough air. 

The man slid closer and Critter startled. He could see more details. The man had muscles, larger than Critter and larger than most men in his clan. There was more thick, curly hair on his chest that made Critter want to reach out and touch its strange softness if he had the strength. The man wore beast-skins below like those that covered Critter’s whole body.

With more movement, the man gathered water from somewhere, cupping it in his large hands. Careful, he poured it into Critter’s mouth as he lay. It tasted so good. Critter swallowed, trying not to choke. For as big as the man was, he seemed gentle. 

After the drink, the man picked up a broad-leaf holding a pile of jelly the color of sunlight. He smeared some on a finger and placed it just inside Critter’s lips. When the glob came in contact with his tongue, Critter found a strange sweetness. Flowers and root-herbs, sticky, heavy, and rich. Critter swallowed again and smiled, but kept shivering.

The huge hands gave him more jelly then felt his cheeks where the flesh burned. As Critter inhaled, the man slid down next to him. Solid arms encircled him. The man tried to make him not cold with the heat from his body. They both lay, facing, but Critter’s head only came up to the man’s middle. Trembling from the chill, Critter folded his fingers under his chin. He rested his face-skin against the warm chest-fur. Inside the strong grip, Critter stopped shaking.

Clasped, Critter felt safe. The clan was far away. Getting farther. He needed to find the high-guide-path again, but it was night. And he could not walk fast. He needed rest. He needed to not feel cold and pain. He licked the remaining sweetness from his lips and soon more empty dreams hopped up from the ground.

The man gave very light snores. Critter woke, warm, still pressed against the chest-fur. He was not shivering but had grown hot. At his front, his stiff-tail was full hard alongside the man’s. He could tell some life-milk had leaked out, and this thought made more drip.

Critter had slept next to only a few people. Some women in the clan slid to him when he lay near the rest-fire, but they never caused a stiff-tail. Even when they sent hands down there looking for his life-milk. They also threw stones at him.

Critter realized the man was awake when he stopped snoring. They lay still together, not moving but throbbing. The man tightened his grip a little bit. Critter burrowed deeper into the chest-nest. The man seemed to understand this. He parted his legs and took Critter’s stiff-tail between his thighs. Eager, Critter reached down and grabbed the man’s stiff-tail. Squeezing, they nudged their hips. Critter moved his hands along the man’s stiff-tail the way he would knead his own. Their movements and rubbing drew forth moans and then, quickly, life-milk from both, into a tangle of pressed limbs and hair. The man grunted, and pulled Critter against him, almost into his skin. Panting breath whispered across the top of Critter’s head. Critter smiled.

Ignoring dampness, the man turned Critter to hold him from behind. Their bodies slid into a natural pose. He gave a low growl near Critter’s ear, a cave-beast-mother grumble to her cub. Telling him to sleep. Soon, it fell upon them again like water closing above.

They could make each other understand only some thoughts. Many words that came from their throats were similar but their tongues gave them strange ear-shapes. But they could speak simple things, like babies. Critter tried to explain the tusk-beast hunt and that he needed to follow his clan. He shot up, but wobbled on his leg and the stranger-man had to help him back down. Critter wept again. He could not let his clan get so far ahead. The man said when it was a new-day, he would help Critter find them. He would help Critter walk, and together they would look for his wind-riders. Critter’s mouth fell open, happy. He folded his hands over those of the man. It was how his clan showed thanks.

The man awakened the rest-fire in the cave and cooked a bush-beast for them both. They ate, and the food pushed most of the worry from Critter. The man said he would help him walk. He had a voice that sounded of stone, like his house. When asked, he told Critter he had left his birth-clan long ago. He left to live in one place, and stop walking, with one other man. They were a clan of two. He told of this man with some words Critter did not know, but he understood when he said the other man had laid down and not woken up. This was many winters ago in this place, and he had lived here in this cave since. He was out searching for the jelly, what he called hive-treasure, when he saw Critter in the grass. He brought him back and gave him some of the sweet hive-treasure to make him feel better. And kept him warm until he stopped shivering.

Critter wanted to ask about the exchange of life-milk, and if they could do it again, but instead asked how the man was called by his tribe before he left. “Uku,” he answered.

Critter knew his clan was walking to the tall-rocks. If he and Uku could find the high-guide-path of the wind-riders, they could follow it there. Because of his leg, they must slow-walk at the start of the new-day. Leaving Uku’s cave in the ground, they scanned the far-sky for signs of the wind-riders. Critter stumbled. He leaned on Uku’s strong arm that was holding his hunt-spear.

The grass-plains buzzed around them. All that moved was alive. Blue-beaks hopped in the bushes and sang songs to their friends. Bite-bugs hung in spinning black clouds. Far off, herds of the horn-beasts ate from the waving grass. Sometimes, they heard a musk-beast squeal as it rubbed its coarse fur against a stone. But Critter saw no wind-riders in the sky. He and Uku walked through pain and the worry in Critter’s belly grew.

One time, Uku stopped their walk with a fast-pull. His hunt-spear pointed at the ground in front of them, where their steps would go. Critter thought at first the dirt was moving, black soil running. But then he saw the pinch-bugs going, and further on, their mud-hills. Many, many of them. Uku warned they were fighting. Not a clan of two but two clans of pinch-bugs. A frenzy of bite-kills, and very dangerous. And if Critter and Uku were not careful, they would be bitten too. Critter put his hand on Uku’s broad shoulder and they stepped back. They let the pinch-bugs fight for whatever reason pinch-bugs fight. Critter heard the clicking of their bug-war until Uku led them around, through some sweet-bush, and away.

At night, Uku found them a place to rest, sometimes on a rock or small hill. He lit a rest-fire with spark-stones, made Critter comfortable near it, and left to find food. He always returned, with a bush-beast or horn-beast if lucky with his hunt-spear, with only berries and chew-roots if they had walked too long that day. As they ate, Critter made patterns in the sky-lights above. 

With full bellies, they always drew close, letting the rest-fire lower. Critter asked on the first night if they could touch their stiff-tails together again. Uku agreed. They laid together and used their thighs and hands to give rub-joy to the other. Uku also showed how to use his mouth, and Critter’s stiff-tail was swallowed into the black beard. Fire-joy!  Panting and milk-weak, Critter slept like a whelp of a pelt-beast, curled against a warm body.

He asked Uku if the friend he had lived with in the cave also rubbed stiff-tails. Uku said yes. He explained in a simple story that was why they had left their clan and lived together as a clan of two. Critter tried to make sense of all of Uku’s strange words, but Uku seemed to say that no other men in their clan wanted to rub stiff-tails together. Critter could not understand why. This was like water to him now. He had that thirst. It felt good. He wanted to rub Uku’s stiff-tail, and Uku to rub his. Why did not all the men want this? The animals too? Maybe they did. Maybe that is what the bush-beasts and horn-beasts and musk-beasts did at night. Maybe that was the noises they heard. He tried to tell this to Uku. The bearded man gave a laugh deep in his throat and squeezed Critter tight.

The rains fell for three days. Critter’s leg and ankle were feeling better, but the sky became shadow-smoke. He and Uku walked through red mud, searching always for the wind-riders to show them where Critter’s clan was on their low-path. River-water broke above sand-banks, licking their feet, and threatened to pull them into the quick-foam. Long-mouth-beasts prowled. Sometimes, Critter’s sad tears fed the rain, but Uku remained beside him. Next to the soggy rest-fire, Uku held him.

Critter shouted when he finally spotted the wind-riders far away. He pointed. When Uku saw them too, he gave what sounded like a victory-cheer. They now had a high-guide-path that would lead them to Critter’s clan. He hugged Uku and told him again about the tall-rocks and all the pictures his mother-brother made there. That was where his clan would wait. Uku said they would follow the path together.

As they walked, Critter thrilled at ideas in his head. He wanted to show his clan to Uku and Uku to his clan. To see the man who saved him, who found him after the tusk-beasts hurt him, and walked with him many days to find the high-guide-path. Uku could walk with a whole clan again. When they set up the clan rest-fire, he and Uku lying together would keep both happy. And, thought Critter, if anyone tried to throw stones at him, Uku would protect him.

They followed the high-guide-path through the grass-plains for four days, matching the route of their steps to the circle in the sky. Every night, a happy Critter laid with Uku. They pressed lips and tongue-made through the beard and Critter was cloud-high. Sharing breath, the two men let every beast hear each joy-shout.

They lost sight of the wind-riders when they reached the tree-wall, but Critter knew this was part of the low-path the clan always followed. If he and Uku could find where the river-waters met beneath the vine-trees, Critter thought he might locate the tall-rocks, and his clan. As they crossed the thick tree-wall, they could no longer see the sky. Uku, in his strange words, warned Critter to beware of fang-beasts and sting-beasts crawling through leaves on the ground.

Critter walked beside Uku, not leaning. His leg had healed. They were now twin-men, going together. They stepped over logs and rocks covered with green fur-grass. The noise beneath the vine-trees ate them. It hurt their ears until there was nothing to do but listen. Uku raised his head to sniff the heat-air. He smelled the track to the river.

Near the first day-end, they were still under the vine-trees. They found a circle of rocks that Critter believed he remembered. They were still on the guide-path. The ground was dry so Uku suggested they sleep there for the night. If this meant more stiff-tail touching with Uku, Critter agreed. Uku lit a rest-camp, found them a musk-beast to cook, and laid down with Critter between the stones. They took off their beast-skins and saw their whole man-forms. All Uku’s muscles and chest-fur as thick as his beard. What Critter saw gave him joy. When he looked, he felt sing-bugs inside, their songs tickling. Uku’s smile said he also had sing-bugs. Critter wanted to please him, share with him his joy. He gave lip-taps over his whole form.

Milk-weak, Critter told him many words about his clan, about the families and their names, and the beast-hunts that he was not good at, and also about his mother-brother and the tall-wall. So many words. He was not sure Uku understood all of them, and the man closed his eyes, but more joy sat inside Critter. He was held by Uku. He would soon see his clan, and the tall-wall. They would be surprised to see him so long after the tusk-beast hunt, and with a stranger no-clan man! This season-walk was almost over. He gave his breath and was soon in the dark-sleep.

Growls woke them. In the light-shapes of the dying rest-fire, they both saw a spotted-beast still, not moving, but staring. Ready to pounce. Its tongue hung out a red mouth between fang-teeth. Its small ears held back, alert. Round-eyes forward.

Slow, Uku closed his fingers around his hunt-spear. His other arm stretched out to shield Critter. The spotted-beast growled again, panting. Long muzzle-twigs twitched.

Deep in his man-throat, Uku gave an answer-growl. The spotted-beast leapt. Critter yelled. As quick as storm-wind, Uku batted away the claw-paw with the side of the hunt-spear. The animal roared.

Critter crawled back against the rock as Uku rushed to stand, both naked. The spotted-beast raised its strong claw-paw again to strike, mouth open, fang-teeth clear. To eat them. Uku screamed against it. He jabbed his hunt-spear at its head. It batted the point, and then again with growls. Critter stood too. Behind Uku, he shook.

The point hit fur. It drew beast-blood. The animal yelped. Uku screamed again, mouth open inside the beard. Critter yelled too, joining his voice. The night around them held no other sounds. Uku shook his hunt-spear point, slicing air.

The spotted-beast cowered, round-eyes always forward, panting tongue out. Then it turned and ran into the vine-trees. Claws left cuts on the fur-grass covered stones.

They let it go. Uku placed a warm hand on Critter’s face-skin to check his life. Critter folded his hands over Uku’s, still gasping. He had yelled too.

They put on their beast-skins. Uku built the rest-fire again, making it high to keep the night-beasts away. He gave Critter the last of the hive-treasure he had brought and told him to sleep, but neither could. They held each other until new-day, when the sun returned to a sky still hidden above the vine-trees.

The next day, they found where the river-waters met. The pink-fish jumped from that place, as if to welcome back Critter. He began to remember the land here. His clan would be near, at the tall-rocks. He would soon show them Uku. And tell them of surviving the tusk-beasts, nights in Uku’s cave, and how Uku scared away the hungry fang-teeth of the spotted-beast. He would draw Uku and his hunt-spear in red-powder paint next to the figures of his mother-brother. They must believe his truth.

Critter was almost running in joy, Uku beside. Away from the rivers, one fallen gray-tree was familiar and Critter showed Uku the ax-wounds on its trunk from the last making of hunt-spears for the clan. They were close.

Then further, the berry-grove. The clan had left some on the bushes. The juice ran down Critter and Uku’s face-skin as they ate, laughing. Critter asked Uku why he saved him so many times. He needed to know, so he could tell the clan and paint it on the wall. It took three tries for Uku to understand what Critter was asking, but when he did, he answered that when he found Critter, Critter needed help. Then when he wanted to rub stiff-tails, Uku said he wanted to be with Critter. They could walk together. He had joy in helping Critter find his tribe. This kept Critter happy.

They rushed on. Critter kept eyes on the sky when he could peek it, but saw no wind-riders. He hoped they were on the ground with the clan next to the tall-rocks, waiting for him.

A pond where a clan-hunter fell in stink-mud and all laughed. The lonely-tree to touch for luck. Where Critter saw the blue-beak that sang to him as a boy. Not far now. He ran. Ahead, the curve that led to the tall-rocks under the thick vine-trees. He burst through the scrub-bush, calling. He had found his guide-path back to them! He had survived! And he brought Uku!

No wind-riders took to the air, scared by his voice. No heads turned, to spot him. Below the decorated tall-rocks was only roughed ground. Dead rest-fires. Broken sticks. No clan.

Critter stopped. He stared up at his mother-brother’s figures on the wall, but they were cold. Red shadows. None new. The clan had been here, but not made any new drawings. Not of Critter falling to the tusk-beasts, or them leaving him behind. Then they went on. They did not wait for Critter.

Alone before the tall-rocks, tears came from his eyes. When he heard Uku arrive behind, he wept more. There was no one here to meet. No one to see who had saved Critter, and hear the stories. No place for either of them at the clan rest-fire. He tried to explain this, but could only cry. He pointed at the empty ground, and sank down.

Uku stood beside. He put his strong hand on Critter’s head, and then made a kneel. Critter wrapped his arms around Uku. His wet-eyes stung. His chest shook. The clan did not wait for him. He did not know where they had gone now. The high-guide-path was not true.

They sat together for many breaths until Critter had no more tears. Still he clutched Uku. When he calmed, he heard a leaf-dance. He looked up past Uku’s shoulder. In a tall vine-tree, Critter saw a wind-rider almost as large as him. Strong claw-feet grasped a high branch. Its black feathers ruffled, shaking air-dust from them. It turned its gray head atop a long white neck and its eyes found Critter. He thought it could be his mother-brother, come back to finally carry him. As he had hoped all those many days ago, stumbling in the grass-plains. But the wind-rider did not lift him up. It spread its wings, showing white feathers underneath, and with hard-force, beat its way into the air. It flew up through the leaves of the vine-trees and was away, silent, leaving Critter behind.

If it had been his mother-brother, it was a message. He was not of the clan now. The clan was not of him.

He did his best to explain this to Uku. He placed his hands over Uku’s once more in thanks and said he need not come back to the tall-rocks again. Uku seemed to understand him, more familiar with his words now. He told Critter that they could go anywhere. Uku’s clan knew of a place beyond the vine-trees, beyond mountains, beyond another grass-plain where there was the shore of a river with no other shore. It tasted of salt and there were many birds there, not just wind-riders. Uku had wanted to see it. They could go together.

Critter would like traveling with Uku more. Walks, but without a guide-path. Every night, wherever they went, they would lay together and make joy with their stiff-tails, and hold each other close. And they would protect. Critter needed no guide-path if he walked with Uku.

Critter looked up at the wall. He saw the red memories of the clan. They were not his memories. They never were.

He would leave one.

It was easy to find a red-powder pile left by his mother-brother. Critter used his spit to make it wet and called over Uku. Critter smeared the powder on his hand, and then pressed his hand against Uku’s. Then he turned both to the wall. Below the clan memories, at the bottom, they made two symbols on the white surface of the tall-rock. Each of their hands. Near shapes of the wind-riders. Critter smiled and rested his head against Uku’s. In a clear, proud voice that echoed down from the highest points of the wall, Critter said, “Now we are a clan of two.”

 dirty water

joshua patterson

The day I hit my dad started like any other. I woke up that morning to the familiar creak of the rocking chair on the front porch. The sun burst through the wooden planks nailed to my window. Worn newspapers lined the creases of the windowsill. I got up to peek through the boards and saw him sitting there.

Dad’s face and clothes were covered in dirt and dust. On his right knee was a bottle of what Momma called “Dirty Water.” He drank the dirty water all day long, only stopping to eat or open another bottle. He got mean when he drank it a lot, probably because dirty water didn’t taste very good, but Momma said it made him feel better.

When the Dust Monster came, Dad couldn’t work on the farm. Our house sat on a large wheat farm that flowed with rows of amber grain. When the wind blew, it sounded like a rushing river. He and I would sit for hours outside on our rocking chairs and listen to the rustling. He used to make me go with him and help cut down the wheat during the harvest. Even though it was hard, I still miss it. He used to joke with me and play hide and seek in the field. After the dust monster came for the first time, everything changed. The wheat died, then the grass, and eventually it all became covered in dust. It was an empty brown desert.

I watched him rock and look out into the nothing. Wind flowed through his stringy hair, making dust and dirt stream off like a cloud. Suddenly, he looked over, then came inside.

“Mary Anne, Jed, dust’s coming!”  Dad said.

I came out of my room, just as Momma came out of hers. We sat in the middle of the house, away from all the windows, so the dust monster couldn’t see us. Momma pulled me close and spoke softly into my ear.

“It’s gonna be okay, Baby. The dust monster can’t hurt us while we’re in here.”

“Woman, stop babyin’ that boy. He’s eight years old,” Dad said.

“Don’t worry about him, Jed. Momma’s gonna protect you,” she said.

Before long, I heard the screams of the monster. It pushed and shook the house, trying to get inside. Dad was up against the door, holding it shut. Dust swirled as it came in from the exposed cracks in the doorframe. The windows rattled and creaked like someone banging and scratching to get in. I put my face into Momma’s chest and closed my eyes, waiting for it to go away. She pulled me close to her and rubbed my head. A few minutes later, the rattling stopped. Except for the sound of our breaths, it was quiet. Dad didn’t say a word. He got up and walked out of the door. I heard his feet stomp across the wooden porch, then out into the dirt, and back across the wood. A thud. Then the rocking started back up.

“You want some breakfast, Baby?”

“Yes, Momma,” I said, heart still pounding.

I clung to her side as she cracked an egg onto a pan on the stove.

“Momma?”

“Yes, Baby?”

“Is Daddy going to town today?”

“Not today, honey”

My heart sank and I sighed. She rolled up the sleeves of her milk-colored nightgown so she didn’t get them dirty while she cooked. A few large bruises colored her arms.

“What happened?”

She turned and looked at me and then at her arm. She rolled her sleeve back down to her wrists.

“Can you go tell your father that breakfast is almost ready?”

“Yes, Momma,” I said.

I’d seen my dad hit Momma once when he thought I wasn’t looking. Momma didn’t yell or hit him back. She just cried. I walked over to the front door. When I got there, I took a deep breath, and twisted the rusty, brass knob. He was still rocking. The bottle of dirty water sat on the planks beside him. His head was firmly resting on the palms of his dusty hands. He sniffled and wiped his face. I took a step out. The wood creaked underfoot. His head snapped violently towards me. He inhaled hard through his congested nose, coughed, then spit a glob onto the dirt. His eyes were red and swollen like a bee had stung him. I couldn’t tell if he was crying or if the dust was just in his eyes.

“What is it, Jed?” he asked softly.

“Momma told me to come get you for breakfast.”

“Gimme a minute,” he said, clearing his throat.

I ran back inside to Momma’s hip. She told me to sit at the table. After a couple of minutes, I heard Dad come in. His boots thudded like thunder as he walked through the house. The smell of the dirty water followed him. I looked at his face as he sat down opposite me. His pale skin was so dirty, his lips were almost black. His face was skinny and bony. The whites of his eyes shone with a red glisten. His pupils were dark; black that burned like fire when the sun hit them. His hair was thin and messy. A cloud of dust puffed off him whenever he moved, leaving the trail of a shadow behind him.

Momma made each of us a plate of eggs and bread, then fixed one for herself. Once she sat down, Dad bowed his head. They both closed their eyes. I never closed my eyes. In the darkness, the monsters and bad people came. Instead, I sat and stared at him.

“Let’s bow our heads,” he said. “Lord God, we pray for this food, and the hands that made it. We pray that the dust would come to an end, but the liquor wouldn’t. Amen,” He chuckled. Momma hit him softly on the arm.

“Harvey Hunch, you quit that right now.”

Dad looked at her and laughed. Even Momma let out a giggle.

Dad ate loudly, slurping up the egg yolk, and dipping his bread in it. I took little bites at a time. I didn’t really like eggs, but it was all we had. As soon as he finished his food he went back to the porch. That was where he would be until it got dark. While he was outside, Momma would teach me. Unlike Dad, Momma could read and write. She was smart. She taught me my letters and numbers and was teaching me how to write.

I loved to write stories. I wrote about knights in great, big castles, overlooking bright green fields of grass. When the dark came, the knights would fight the monsters attacking their home. They rescued the princesses from the bad men and took care of them. I wished I could be like the knights. Before the dust, Dad whittled me my very own knight’s sword out of an old broom handle. I practiced with it every day. I hit fence posts and chair legs, and sometimes Momma even let me smash Dad’s empty bottles of dirty water. I loved my sword. It made me feel safe. It sat right by my bed just in case the monsters came, so I could protect Momma.

I learned and played until it was time for dinner. I brought my sword to the table. I heard Dad open the door and come inside. He couldn’t walk straight, and used the walls to keep him balanced. I smelled the dirty water as soon as he came into the kitchen. It was so strong I almost threw up. He dropped into his seat and rested his head on the table. He looked up and his eyes met mine.

“Get the stick off the table, boy. Now.”

“Daddy, it’s my sword.”

“Don’t make me come over there, boy! Get it off my table now.”

“Yes, Daddy,” I said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.”

He took a large gulp of the dirty water. His face squished like he ate a lemon. He slammed the bottle on the table and I jumped out of my seat. He rested his head in his hands. No one said anything the entire time we ate dinner. Momma made pork and beans, which was his favorite. He didn’t even say thank you. When we finished, they sent me off to bed.

“Momma, I’m scared. Can you sleep with me tonight?”

“Your Momma’s with me tonight,” Dad said

“Maybe tomorrow night,” Momma said quietly. “Goodnight, my sweet baby boy.”

“Goodnight, Momma.”

I walked slowly to my room and slid under the covers, still clutching my sword. My heart was beating out of my chest. It was already pitch black in my room, but it was made even darker when the light from the kitchen that peeked under my doorframe went out. I never liked closing my eyes to sleep. I stayed perfectly still and stared, unblinking, into the black. After my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I saw a shadow move across the room from right to left. It happened again. I bit my lip and stayed quiet. The wind picked up outside, whistling. Breathing heavily, I put my blanket over my head. My eyelids were heavy and before long, they closed as if someone pulled them down.

Dad was sitting out on the porch. It was sunny and warm. The smell of a fresh baked cherry pie filled my nose. He had a stick in one hand and his knife in the other. He whittled while he rocked in the chair. I couldn’t tell what he was making. He looked up at me and smiled, a smile I hadn’t seen in years. Then he nodded at me to come closer, picked me up from under my arms, and sat me on his lap. He gently placed the knife in my hand and then held my wrists. He moved with me as if we were whittling the stick together. After a while, he let go and I kept going. He placed his hand on my shoulder. Then, there was a bang and a crash.

I shot up and rubbed my eyes. The noise came from Momma and Daddy’s room. I crept out of bed with my sword gripped tightly in my hand. Pushing the door open, I tip-toed across the creaky, dark wood floor. The rooms looked different in the dark. Shadows moved over the walls. They danced through the kitchen and played in the dining room. Moonlight lit parts of the house I normally missed; corners full of dangling cobwebs, and walls covered in dirt. The dust was clearer in the moonlight. It floated across windows and stuck to the ceiling, my clothes—anything it could find.

A dim light shone from underneath their bedroom door. I walked towards it. Muffled voices interrupted the silence of the night. I heard her crying.

“Momma,” I whispered.

There was no reply. I touched the tip of my sword to the door and pushed softly. It inched open and the light from the room flooded the house. They were lying on the floor. Dad was on top of Momma, pressing her arms into the hard, wood floor. As he pushed harder, the floor creaked and cracked. The light from the lantern by their side, cast unnatural shadows on the walls. Dad looked up at me. His pupils were coal black, except for the orange glow of the flame.

“Out!” he yelled.

“Jed, go,” Momma said.

My heart raced; sweat dripped off the tip of my nose. My breath felt heavy and slow. I clenched the sword in my right hand and charged towards them. Nothing was more important than protecting Momma. Dad let go of her arms and sat up straight, his eyes on me, unblinking. I reeled back my arms and swung with all my strength. With a booming crack, the sword smashed into Dad’s face. My sword splintered, throwing chunks of wood across the room. A puff of dirt, sweat, and dust flew off him. He fell to the side and thudded to the floor. Momma got up and put herself in front of me. She struggled to catch her breath.

Dad was on the floor holding his head. Blood dripped through his fingers. He sat up, looked at Momma, then his eyes drifted to me. He tried to stand but stumbled and fell onto one knee. A trickle of blood ran down his brow. His breath was heavy. His eyes never left us. Momma held me behind her with one arm. With the other, she picked up the broken pieces of my sword and threw them to the side.

I stood stiff as a statue, unable to move. Dad got to his feet. He stumbled a bit, then Momma stepped up to make sure he didn’t fall. She barely had time to grasp his arm before he pulled sharply away.

“No,” he said.

He looked dazed as if the world was spinning around him. He held the edge of the bed for support. His red eyes met mine. With one hand, he held onto the bed, and with the other he softly pulled Momma aside. His gaze never left me as he approached. I wanted to run but couldn’t. I stood, unblinking, until he was a foot in front of me. The smell of the dirty water lingered on his breath. His dusty hand reached out and gripped my shoulder. I winced at the pain. He pulled me to his right, out of the way.

He walked past me out the door into the hall. I heard the front door open and close. The rocking chair creaked. Momma walked over and sat on the bed, cupping her face in her hands. I walked to her and rubbed her arms gently. She looked up at me and gave me a weak smile.

Then, she ushered me to bed. I was scared Dad would come back inside and get angry about what happened, but I went to bed anyway. When I got to my room, I pulled the heavy, old, wooden chair to my door and blocked it, just in case. I stood by my window and peeped through the slit in the wooden planks, watching him. He rocked back and forth, holding his head. Small splotches of blood on his shirt shone under the lantern light. On the other side of him stood a half-full bottle of dirty water. After a while of rocking, he opened it, got up, and leaned against the railing. He looked down at the bottle, sloshed the dark liquid around, and took a sip. Suddenly, he reeled back and threw the bottle across the field into the darkness.

He clenched his fists and his jaw quivered. He sniffled and his breathing shook for a while. Then, he turned around towards the chair, and I ducked. When I looked back up, he was gone. He walked into the night with the lantern; a single star lighting up the darkness. I pulled the heavy chair away from the door, opened it, and walked through the hallway to the front door. I took a scarf off the coat rack and wrapped it around my face in case the dust started up. My hand rested on the cold doorknob, and I hesitated. Then, I took a deep breath and turned it.

The night air bit my skin. It was dark, but I could still see Dad with the light not too far ahead. I walked down the stairs and stepped out into the dirt. It crunched beneath my feet. That morning’s attack from the dust monster left remnants floating in the air, whipping with the wind. With the light from Dad’s lantern, I saw the barn ahead of him. When he entered the barn, I was left in the pitch black. I walked towards where I knew the barn to be, heart pounding. The wind whistled as it swirled around my head, pelting any exposed skin with dust. I ran, thinking I wasn’t going to make it to the barn.

As I ran, my foot caught something heavy, and I tumbled to the ground. Dirt puffed up all around me, entering my eyes, nose, and mouth, making me cough and spit. Reaching out, I felt for what had tripped me. My hand brushed the side of it. It was cold and hard. I knew immediately it was the tire of Dad’s big tractor. I moved my hand higher and felt the rusted steel. Paint chipped off with every stroke of my hand. I hadn’t ridden it since the Dust Monster came. When it was new, the tractor was painted a vibrant red that shone in the sunlight. Dad used to take me out when he harvested the wheat. As I sat on his lap, he held me tight with one arm and drove with the other. One time, the last harvest before the dust, he even let me drive. Instead of wrapping his arm around me to hold me in place, he took my hands and placed them on the wheel. Terrified, I looked back at him. He gave me a soft smile and nodded. I took a deep breath then drove. I watched as the stalks of wheat fell behind the tractor, chopped by the harvester.

I used the top of the tire to pull myself up off the ground, then brushed my clothes off. I knew the tractor was near the barn, so I figured I was close. With my hands out in front of me, I walked slowly to avoid running into anything else. Before long, my fingertips touched the wooden exterior of the barn. I slid my hand to the left until it met the door, then pushed it open, and went inside.

It was as dark inside as out. A faint light shone in the loft above me. I heard what sounded like scraping and chopping. I climbed the ladder carefully, afraid of what I might find. Dad sat in the corner, surrounded by a pile of wood. His lantern sat next to him. The fire from it lit one side of his worn face. Sweat covered his brow and cheeks. The droplets slid down his face, carrying dirt and dust, weaving in and out of his wrinkles. With every movement he made, dust flew off, each speck caught by the lantern light. Sawdust and shavings covered his lap and arms.

In his right hand was a knife. In his left, an old broom handle.

I watched him whittle the wood.

THE SNAKE

Loria Harris

In the beginning, She took off Her clothes. She laid down into the cold and quiet of empty space, into the vacuum that burned Her skin and stole Her heat. She laid round, encircled Herself, and became the globe. From Her crevices, hair flowed into trees, grasses, into the bushes, the thistles and thorns. And from Her tears rivers streamed, oceans sprouted from inside of Her, broke the surface, and overtook most of Her body. Her breath evaporated into mist, and an atmosphere accumulated all around Her, protecting Her, warming Her. She stared off, out of the shroud, wondering if She would wish to one day dally in the frozen emptiness again. Her gaze was so fixated that Her eyes seared the dark space and caught it aflame, a bursting bubble of explosion to remain fixed in Her view all the days. This felt right.

On this rounded soil, She imagined more life. She longed, even with all She had done, to see something else. An ache bellowed in Her pelvis, an ache so ferocious a bleeding erupted. It begged, pleaded. She grabbed the blood from between Her knees, cupping handfuls and bringing them to Her lips. She blew, the breath of life. She spoke, Her first words. Speaking had felt forbidden, but She couldn’t have said why. No one lived to forbid it. Why shouldn’t She speak? She yelled, She roared, She growled, She whispered: “Live.” Wild cats, horses, reptiles, and every animal life came forth. She lusted after mysteries and populated the waters and the realms so minuscule as to be invisible to the naked eye with more forms than could ever be counted — creating most life to live in eternal earthen mystery. She smirked. This was good.

Creating humanity was Her final act before closing Her eyes for a millennium-long nap.

Eve was the first. Swimming out of the blood of Her hands, she stood tall and wiggled her dripping fingers, tingling with nerves and muscles and newness. Eve was full in figure, lavish in breast and hip, cavernous in stomach, equipped with all that she would need — padded against cold and bruises. Dark hair flowed down her rich mud-colored skin. Her footsteps on the soft grassy earth reverberated and broke the land, broke it into many continents, forced it into collisions and mountains, until it adjusted to her presence. Then it welcomed her, sprouted into beautiful gardens, flowers, fruit-bearing trees; creatures that sting and bite populated this sanctuary. They were her protection, and they were their own protection. It felt right. This was good.

It turned out that Eve was a chamber, echoing with the longings of her maker. She awoke one morning in a pool of blood, brought forth from her own scratching onto her own arms. The marks spelled out, but not in words, her name and also her hunger. She dug into the ground, deep, a hole so long she could slither into it and reach the core of this globe on which she lived. Her face and skin became caked and lumpy in the gravel and wet mud. She was seeking her creator; she was digging for prayer. How does one ask for something she cannot give herself? 

The ground crumbled and embraced her; it caved in all around her body. Her limbs became roots, and she grew. She grew out, stretching her arms as if to encompass the entire planet. She grew up, her body expanding and rising out of the ground, into the light. She reached, rooted in the body of the earth, and flung her fingers all around her, finding she had many arms now. They twinkled, her digits. The chiaroscuro of light sparkled through the leaves that her fingers had become. She wondered in the air, near clouds, near sunshine, the air thinner and more right. Her throat rattled, gasping in freedom from the suffocation underground. She felt a stirring from her torso, her trunk. The brightest fruit, yellow and scarlet, popped forth from her tendrils en masse. Twenty, thirty — no — one hundred at least: soft, plump orbs appeared within seconds. It filled the air around her with a bright, tempting scent. Then the stirring returned, larger, shaking her branches. She grew nauseous, swaying as if there were a wind. As she lurched back and forth, she felt herself separating, as if her skin was peeling off of her, as if she were two persons splitting down the middle. A lunge, a burp, as if the tree were regurgitating, and the wooden plant expelled her back onto the land. 

She looked herself over. Her hands, her feet. She was whole, she was one — a singular person, two arms and two legs once again. The tree she had created towered over her, and the sunlight burned at her eyes as she tried to glance up at its top. It was more expansive and demanding of attention than any tree in the garden. She could still smell the ripeness of its fruit from down here, below the branches. It was beautiful. 

She slept nights under its canopy and whiled away many of her afternoons in its shade. The tree was mysterious. She tasted fruit from every plant in this home, but not this one. It was something of her own creation, something she did not understand. Had the creator gifted her also with the ability to create? Fashioned her in something of Her own image? It did not matter. She circled her arms around the tree. She would humbly embrace what she had made with only her longing. Yet, she longed still. This left her suspicious. Was it safe to keep longing, to keep seeing what creations would come forth? Did she trust herself? 

She laid down to sleep one evening, the grass tickling the insides of her nostrils and filling them with its scent. She dreamed the freshest of dreams, of her own body again creating life, of that life growing off of her like the harmless fruit on a branch, like that fruit which she could never dare to eat. Loneliness shook through her, and she seized awake in the morning. Again, she knew, she would go to the dirt. She dug once more, but this time she didn’t go deep. This time she took what was shallow that she could easily obtain; she didn’t desire surprise; mystery surrounded her enough. She spat into the mound of earth in her cupped hands, and she molded the lump into a sort of clay. She shaped it into what she longed for — something like her, just as her creator before had done. But this new thing she decided to give fewer crevices. She felt around herself for inspiration — what could go where her deepest, most throbbing crevice existed in its place? On her side she felt ribs, and she fashioned something long and straight to replace all that was empty, something erect to replace all that was concave in her. She couldn’t say exactly why she did this for this new creature; she could have molded something for herself, something to make her own body different. She felt that to be possible, but she sensed a beauty in her seeming incompleteness; it came with capacity. Perhaps she was proud and longed to remain unique, to keep that capacity hers alone, but perhaps she knew there were other ways to experience joy, and she wanted to give those ways to her new companion, whatever they might be. She wanted to create someone who wouldn’t fear his own capacity.

Adam became the man she made. He was taller, as was the tree she had created first. He was flat, and she would learn she could fit up against him.

“Please show me everything,” he asked her, slipping out of her hands in muddy slime, freshly formed.

“Everything?” She tilted her head, studying him.

“Please. Everything.”

She walked him away from her tree, through the garden where she lived, lifting the skirts of willow branches to step with him into the dark respites. They drank water from the streams, flavored like dirt and citrus. They pressed the openings of the flowers, fondling the stigmas and ovaries, inhaling the dusty perfumes, discovering the world. She showed him all the delicious fruit — whether berries in blood reds or pink meaty fleshes under spiked shells—all except the fruit of her tree. He ate it all. Adam had a particular effect on the animals around them. While Eve had only thought to observe the way a horse chews the grass, bucks at her fellow equines, shakes her head free of the gnats drinking from her tear ducts, Adam knew this was a beast he could sit atop. He fascinated her, but she soon saw she fascinated him even more.

“Why do you have a different shape than mine?” he asked her, the two lying in the shade, as he stroked her dark hair that lay on her breast. Her hand rested on his sternum, which was rougher than hers, freckled with short wiry hairs.

“My creator made me this way.”

“And me?”

“I made you the way you are.”

“How would you do that? I’ve never created anything alive.”

“I don’t know. It came from an ache, from a longing, from love.”

“Maybe it was the creator that created me, using your hands.”

She nodded. That seemed possible.

He eyed her, up and down her length. Leaning his head back as if a realization had occurred to him, he moved his hand. He dragged it along her sizable stomach, he brought it to the place between her thighs, where her own hair grew wiry and thick. His hand felt warm, and she tensed in surprise at the sensation.

“Why are you different here?”

“Oh,” she began, but it was all she could say. 

He moved his fingers around, searching. She continued in silent gasps, but she saw his form changing, hardening to the rib-like structure she had first imagined for him. Her own hands reached for that, and she pulled herself closer to him. With no distance, the hands seemed only to be in the way, and the two humans found each other.

After this, Eve stared at Adam, admiring him for the way his body molded to hers, for the joy she felt with his touch. She would smile at him as they walked through the long grasses together, gathering seeds and fruit to eat. He would smile back in kind, a warm and perfectly crooked glimpse of tender teeth. That first night and on many of the ensuing ones, she was still pained with incompleteness, though — a tugging at her pelvis, a thirst inside her bowels, while Adam slept beside her, all of his body at rest. She looked at the evening sky, the brightness fading and the bruised purples seeping into it in striated layers. The snuffed pain continued, and she pulled his sleeping hand back to herself, back to her crevice, until she could rest, as well.

The next day, Eve showed Adam the only remaining discovery for him in the garden, her tree.

“I grew into this tree when I was at my most sad and alone,” she said. 

He pondered her, walking around the trunk of the tree. “Did it hurt?” he asked, tugging at a leaf.

She winced at the tug. “Yes.”

He reached for one of the fruits next, a game of tag between him and her pride.

“I will never eat this fruit,” she told him.

“Oh? Why not?” He twirled it, the bobble still dangling on its branch.

“Please stop.” She reached her hand over to his and stilled the twiddle.

“Why?” He stopped toying, but he held his hand there.

“Would you eat your own flesh? I was this tree. I don’t want to know what tearing into it will do. Please leave it. This feels right.”

He removed his hand from the peach, and he took her hand instead. She led him away, but he turned his head and looked behind as they walked.

Eve’s stomach began to grow firmer and more rounded as the time passed. Adam marveled at her, cupping her firmed middle with his palms. At times, he would feel something inside of her stir and push against him.

“What magic is this?” He laughed, cheeks red, eyes alive. 

“I think I am creating something new again; I can feel it, the same ache.”

“Love?”

Eve nodded.

“Did I do this too? Was this from my love for you?”

“It could be,” Eve said. She felt her face grow warm. 

“What a wonder you are,” he said, stroking her stomach. “What a wonder I am too.”

As she grew greater in belly, Eve became tired and sore. This was not the same discomfort she had felt when she was pulled from the tree; that had been momentary, and she had been restored. This felt extended. It did not feel to her as if she would be the same after this discomfort had worked itself out. Her lower back was sharp against her hips, and it pained her to raise and lower her own body. It pained her to walk — more of a waddle, as of the ducks, less of a gallant prance, as of the stallions. She hungered all the time now.

Letting her lie in the shade, Adam brought her whatever he thought she might need. He brought her the fruit from every tree except the one she asked him never to violate; he brought her water from the streams; he brought her beans and carrots and every meaty root he could unearth. She hungered and thirsted still. 

“I’m going to bring you the fruit from your tree,” Adam said one day.

“No, please. Never,” said Eve.

“It’s the plumpest and juiciest in the garden, Eve. It was made from your own body, so you say. Maybe it will help you.”

“We can never eat that, Adam. It isn’t right.” She felt a sensation of teeth piercing her own flesh at the imagining of someone eating her fruit.

He sighed and sat in silence. “Have you eaten any of the animals?” Adam asked finally.

“The animals? Why would I do that?” she asked, pale in face.

“I don’t know. Something inside me can smell a feast when certain ones are near. Have you noticed the blood the deer spills when it cuts its hocks on thorns? Has it stirred your stomach too?” 

“No, I haven’t felt that,” she said. Her eyes rolled back into their sockets as her head lolled against the bark. 

“You look like you could faint,” he said. “I’m going to bring you an animal to eat.”

Eve wanted to protest. This didn’t feel quite right, but she was too weak. They killed plants for food, but an animal would feel pain. Perhaps Adam would find one who had already died. She closed her eyes and nodded. The taste was scrumptious, she learned, when Adam returned and offered her something fresh and warm. Over the days, her color returned to her face. She continued to bloat as a bubble, and her pains continued as well, but her energy improved with the new addition to her diet. She was able to walk freely again.

Adam and Eve began to notice the animals in the same couplings the two of them had learned to embrace. They noticed the females — the ones more like Eve than Adam between their legs — growing in their middles, as she had. Soon they witnessed offspring. New deer sprang forth and replaced those that they had eaten. The new ones were smaller, colored differently, and replaced the growth of the mothers’ sides. They stood by their mothers and suckled at yet another new growth on those female bodies, the teats. Eve would scoop her own enlarged breasts into her hands and see the pulsing, swollen nipples. She thought she understood.

One day, Eve’s pains culminated. A force pounded through her sides; her muscles tensed and released with increasing frequency. She screamed a deep bellow, and Adam ran to her. Pain and blood and the scent of feces and tar, scratches deep through the soft dark ground, uncovered roots, fistfuls of grass and mud, tears of skin in a too-delicate area, breath like a stag speeding away from its own lungs too quickly to be caught, fire in every part of Eve’s body and especially her loins, and an umbilical cry piercing the cloud of breath around the two bodies: now there were three. Then a shape like a snake followed the third out from Eve, attached to his stomach as if latched onto him with fangs.

“Tear it off!” Eve said.

Adam grabbed a rock and pounded the snake-like form off of his son then pulled it away from his mate. He cradled the baby and handed it to Eve, who gentled it against her breast and cried. Milk a bright whitish yellow formed in droplets on her nipples, and the scent around them faded into something softer and sourer. 

Adam walked like a king in the garden after that. He found leaves on twigs and twisted them into an ornament for his head, laurels encircling his skull. Eve thought it looked handsome and admired his new strut, even as she rested and nursed a new life yet again, in a new way.

Nursing was not as she had thought she understood. It brought pain and blood again, even after all of the pain and blood that had occurred up to this point. She cried often, and the baby cried more. 

“He’s still hungry,” Adam had to say.

“I give him everything,” Eve said.

“I will bring him more to eat,” he said. And he did. Adam brought fruit mashed into sweet pulpy lumps, and the baby ate it. Sometimes his stomach would reject it, but as he grew older and older, he began to tolerate it more, and it always helped bring Eve reprieve. Eve marveled at Adam.

“Why do you stay by my side?” she asked.

“I don’t. I hunt, and I collect fruit, and I walk.”

“But you always return.”

“You need me. I love you. Why would I leave?”

“I might have left, if I could have,” she admitted.

“I am not you. You do more than I ever could.” He held her head against his chest and kissed her hair. She did do more than he ever could, she agreed in her mind. He had never birthed a tree, or a man from the dirt, or a child. His steps had never shocked the earth into mountains. But he roamed and ran and strutted and did more than she ever could now, now that she was hobbled by her capacity to grow life. She wanted to heal. She had found herself at the mercy of her own creation after all, even though she tried to dig less deeply when she made him. She still did not understand creation, its bumps and wetness and its power. It was only a secondhand gift from the creator to her, as Adam had helped her to realize, and as she now reminded herself. And she closed her eyes and attempted to rest while the child with her slept.

“Eve,” Adam said, waking her from her sleep. “The baby has moved. Get up!”

Eve stirred, glancing all around her. “You don’t see him anywhere?”

“I haven’t looked yet,” Adam said.

She rose, still sore even months after birthing their son, but grateful to be growing stronger again.

He wasn’t far, the child they had named Cain. He was wiggling and dragging his own body around, pulling himself with new strength in his limbs from one spot to another, covering ground with an almost serpentine motion. He had moved himself to the other side of the tree; that was all.

“Oh! He’s learning to move! Look how he crawls!” Eve said.

“He’s getting bigger and stronger! He will be like me one day.” Adam puffed his chest larger, and the crown of leaves on his head seemed to glisten in the light. Eve smiled to herself.

“He will,” she said, holding Adam's arm. But the ache resurged in her heart.

Adam stepped back and turned to face her. “Be sure to keep an eye on him. You are still slow, but you are faster than him. You have to keep him safe.”

“I will.” Eve nodded. It was new, the assumption of command, coming from Adam. But it made sense to her. They were new, a new couple in a new world yet again. This life with this child was a new creation, separate from the life they had before, when they were the only two humans. Adam was the stronger one now, and he needed to be free to bring them food and care. Eve needed to keep watch of the baby.

Eve and Adam walked the garden together the next day, Cain squirming along on the ground beside them at times and squirming in Eve’s arms at other times. Eve’s legs felt like tree trunks again, sturdy and capable. She enjoyed moving by herself and relished the moments Cain was in the grass. They approached her tree, the beautiful tree. She had not birthed Cain under its leaves; a different tree had been their home. She hadn't seen the golden glow of its fruit and the dapples of the light through its incomparably numerous leaves in many days. 

“Our tree,” Adam said. This was new, Eve thought, his ownership of it, too. It was like another part of their family. She felt a warmth in her chest knowing he saw it as his, as he saw her.

“Our tree.” Eve smiled in return, squeezing his hand.

Adam pulled her to his body, grabbing at her elbows with a grip that left white indents on her skin. His fingernails dug into her pulpy flesh. She felt him harden between his legs, and she felt her own counterpart blossom with blood flow. Cain wandered off behind the behemoth trunk of Eve’s plant.

“But Adam,” she began, but he put his finger on her lips, silencing her. She couldn’t say why she wasn’t comfortable. Perhaps the child was too close, or perhaps her own body wasn’t ready. He pointed in the direction the child had crawled. Eve nodded, as had become her habit. She would keep quiet; that might make it right. They wrapped each other in their limbs and partook with Eve’s back pushed against the rough, wooden skin of her tree, quickly. Quietly.

After they had collected Cain again, the three sat in the sun, letting Cain nurse on his mother. 

“Are you hungry?” Adam asked Eve.

“I am so hungry I’m hollow,” she answered.

“Let me get you some fruit,” he said. Eve saw the flickers of gold dangling in the sky within her view, the fruit she had forbidden. 

“Just not—”

“I know,” Adam said. And he walked away, past their tree.

Eve was still in pain, as it seemed she always had been. The boy’s first teeth had come into his mouth, and her nipples, which had become stronger, were pierced again with each feeding. The child was developing a taste for blood, no doubt. But her pain was also between her legs. Adam had helped himself to her too quickly. This was the way, now that a child was nearby; the act felt too intimate to share with an infantile gaze. It was like the tree was to her—private, special. Except that this was hers and Adam’s; it had never been hers alone. It felt like mostly Adam’s now, though, even as the tree had become partly his. She wondered at that. She sighed as the pain settled into sharp discomfort. It was not an aching. She let her gaze wander, at the soft hair of the child in her arms, at the air littered with flower petals and twinkling pollen. She smelled Cain’s swirl of hair, and it reminded her of the scent of her own milk. Cain became full and slept in her arms. Eve waited and laid back, her eyes on the shock of white clouds above her.

Adam returned. His feet came into her view right beside her face as she looked up from the ground.

“Adam! You brought food?”

“I have. Sit up.” 

She obeyed.

“Here, eat.” He placed a slice of something stringy and ripe inside her mouth, pushing it past her teeth onto her tongue. It was like nothing she had had before, like the bursting flavor of the mango and the crunch of the apple and the overpowering sweetness of the grape all combined.

“What is that? Mmm, I have to know!” She looked at him. He was munching away at something in his own mouth. 

“I can’t tell you. It’s a surprise,” he said.

“Is there more?”

“Yes.” He produced more chunks and slices, each covered with a velvety skin that melted into her tongue and inner cheeks. She chewed. She was so hungry. Her stomach finally felt satisfied, not in the way other food had satisfied it before. How had she let herself become so starved? 

“Adam, I have to know what this is.”

“Isn’t it delicious?” he said. “You need to trust me. You’ve made rules, but your rules aren’t for a very good reason.”

Eve swallowed. Her stomach twisted. “Adam, you haven’t. This isn’t — is this from my tree? My special tree?”

“It’s okay. Trust me, Eve. See? It’s delicious.”

“Adam! I told you never to eat that!” She rocked the child in her arms back and forth, frantically, though he was still asleep, to keep her tears from waking him. They rolled down her cheeks, hot lava erupting, flowing onto his back.

“And what happened? Nothing. Everything I’ve ever told you to do is good.”

“And I’ve done everything you’ve told me. You couldn’t give me one thing? One rule to never break?”

“Never is a long time, Eve. You can’t keep things from me. They are mine, too.”

“Why now? Why did you do it?”

“I did it for our son. I wanted him to have the knowledge of every fruit in the garden one day. I needed to make the way for him. And for you, who didn’t trust. You were so hungry.”

A snake slid past them in the grass, weaving its way around the flowing green hairs. Its scales swirled past Eve’s eyes, a beautiful pattern of gold and blue diamonds decorating its skin. But she noticed them flaking off its body; as it wormed its way through the grass, it left a part of itself behind, a skin. A hollowed, empty replica of itself.

Eve looked down at her body. She saw the grassy hair between her legs, the lumpy, reddened breasts hanging from her chest. The stomach, the hunger that made her so weak, the feet that no longer shook the planet. Naked with all of her once powerful authority stripped from her. The arms holding a child, whom she couldn’t blame but had still hurt her. She looked up at Adam, his tall face looming above in a gentle, apologetic expression.

“Please understand. I love our child, and I needed to make the world right for him,” he said.

She nodded but turned her head, handing him the child, and she plodded toward the foliage surrounding the swamp. Adam looked at their son, still sleeping.

Eve rummaged around among the large, shiny leaves, each such a deep green and so smooth and thick. It smelled spongy here by this water, a thick humidity to the air and a moist mildew to the earth. Adam is right, she thought. Nothing bad became of us eating the fruit. She picked the big, heart-shaped leaves from their white stalks among the marshy muck, and she held them against her body. They could cover her breasts. He is right, she continued thinking. If he hadn’t been brave enough to defy me, I would still be hungry. She turned the leaves in the light. They could cover her pelvis, her hips, and her middle too, if she could only string them together. Why would he ever fear to defy me anyway? she realized, aching in her useless hips. Where is the woman I was? She found reedy, thick stalks waiting for her beside her legs, tickling the small hairs of her calves. She pulled them up out of the ground and with her fingernails pierced the flaps of green and began to stitch together the coverings. This was a new kind of creation, made in a way she understood. A new knowledge informed what came forth from her now. Where is the woman who erupted into a tree from sadness? Where is the woman who dug into the earth and created a man? Once the creation was complete, she knew she would take Adam’s hand again. He was good, as much as she knew good in other humans. He cared for her and their child, and another might be growing already. She would take his hand. They would walk, and walk, and they would walk. And they would leave this garden and find a new home, she decided. She held out the piecemeal garment, flicked it in the wind, and stepped into it with one foot then another. 

This was the end, and it was the beginning. 

In the end, she put on her clothes.

As they walked away, Eve turned and saw the garden behind her, the tree looming in the golden backlight of the setting sun. As if it were aflame, she thought, and she turned her eyes back to the path ahead of them. Just as she did, the leaves, drying in the wind, sparked from the light of her gaze and exploded soundlessly into fire.

Great Families

Robert Osborne

“There is so much weight to these things,” Molly told me after the funeral of her mother. “It’s oppressive.”

Today, as with that day sixteen years ago, everything is jumbled and chaotic. The lid of the old Steinway is stacked with unlabeled boxes. The sword Molly’s great-great-grandfather captured on the battlefield at Gettysburg leans against the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the tarnished iron of the scabbard further dimmed by the bubble wrap I’ve taped around it. Where I’ve removed the daguerreotypes of Molly’s long dead relatives from the walls, faint outlines remain as if of their ghosts. Half the furniture is already on the moving truck, but I’ve kept the things we really need like the wingbacks that lord over the living room, the settee the cats like, and the brass clock sitting patiently by the cherry wood bar cart (also very much needed).

“Dad, why are we getting rid of Mom’s stuff?” Trevor asks me.

“I’m not getting rid of it. I’m just moving some of it to storage.”

After her mother died and we drew back the velvet curtains of her mother’s home in Arlington Heights, Molly physically sagged as we surveyed all the old furniture and ephemera packed into the house like a 3D jigsaw puzzle. A lifetime of things, generations really, each with their own meaning, each freighted and burdened.

All those items became ours, and today I sag under the same weight, all that history now in my loft apartment, all of it screaming: Molly. It’s too much. Throwing the furniture out or selling it aren’t options, but neither is keeping everything. And so, I’ve been slowly replacing everything, moving items to storage in shifts, diminishing Molly into something I can handle, one piece of furniture at a time.

Trevor hasn’t emotionally processed his mother’s death. Or maybe he has, and I’m the one who hasn’t. He sits now in front of the television, his arms around his girlfriend Madeline as they watch some anime movie. It bothers me that Madeline is blonde and white, a young woman right out of middle America except with heavy eye makeup and an expensive manicure, and also the fact that she lives on the Upper West Side and has probably never been to the Midwest. Trevor’s mom was blonde and white, too, so to be bothered by Madeline’s appearance shows how far my hypocrisy will go. But I’d dated a Latina, a South Asian, and three Black girls before I fell in love with Molly. The white girl just happens to be the one I ended up with. Trevor has only ever dated white girls.

Since Molly’s death a year ago, he’s kind of gone on his way. His grades dipped a bit. He stays out a little later than he used to, but I haven’t really seen him mourn. I know I should be concerned about the lack of outward sadness, but we each grieve in our own way. He seems heavier, more mature, more determined to get on with his life.

Me, I miss Molly every day. Prior to Molly’s death, I could count the times I’ve cried in my adult life on one hand, but now it feels like it’s all I do. I keep it to myself. When Trevor’s around, I’m a rock.

“You two want some lasagna?” I ask. I’m all about the casseroles. Molly used to do the cooking, and it’s about my least favorite thing, so I’ve figured out how to minimize it. Big pots of things, big pans of things, and then there is always delivery.

“We’re going out, Dad.”

“It’s a school night.”

Trevor doesn’t even bother to roll his eyes. He just goes back to watching television and pulls his girlfriend a little closer.

A few years ago, this decorating blog came by the loft for a photo shoot. I reluctantly agreed to it because I knew it was important to Molly and she was going to do it, anyway. For certain things, I had absolutely no veto. This was one of those things and so I sat around the apartment, posing awkwardly, as these two photographers took pictures of everything in the loft, including me. The old family Bible; Molly’s family, not mine. All the Queen Anne chairs and the settee, of course. The Chippendale armoire. I was wearing a suit because I had come from work and didn’t feel like changing, and because I had no idea what you wore to something like this. I wondered if I looked like some family administrator standing there in front of one of the toile upholstered wingbacks.

The two photographers pointed their camera at everything, commenting on what an amazing collection of late colonial furniture we had, and what an amazing family she came from.

They clicked away, but then paused at the lineage society documents. Molly had them framed, and they lined a wall, under the scattered light of one of the more intricate chandeliers Molly restored. Daughters of the American Revolution. Colonial Dames. The New England Society. The Mayflower Society. These social clubs all cleaned themselves up, of course. Blacks, Asians, Jews, all were theoretically welcome now, assuming they had the proper ancestry. I wasn’t sure about the Confederate societies, but Molly’s family made their money cattle ranching in Nebraska, so her family seemed to have steered clear of the more egregious crimes of this country, or at least the well-documented ones.

“Can you both stand next to this wall?” the photographers asked. “The lighting is perfect.”

I doubted you’d be able to read the words on any of the certificates, but I declined. I told them I’d had enough photography for one day. Molly waved me away and then smiled in front of her pedigrees.

The first time I met Molly’s mom Bunny was right after we had gotten engaged, but also three months into Molly’s pregnancy. She greeted us at the door of her Arlington Heights home, framed by camellias and azaleas that were just beginning to blush on a cool spring day. She smiled at me and gave me a hug, the little diamonds in her ears flashing, the pearls around her neck producing a gentle pressure against my chest. The hug was warm and real.

The house felt identical to our loft in downtown Manhattan, but on a larger scale. We sat and drank lemonade on the same toile upholstered wingbacks that would later be ours, the rug under our feet as white and untouched as the Antarctic.

“We never sit in here,” Molly said of the room that looked like something out of a 1950’s Doris Day movie. Bunny seemed right out of the same movie, blonde, petite, poised, and if not exactly relaxed, knowing she was in her element.

“Not true, honey,” Bunny said. “We do when we have important guests.” She winked at me, and I joined in the conspiracy and smiled back.

Bunny was delighted that Molly was pregnant. She chatted away about baby names and how much she was looking forward to having a little person to show off to her friends. She was excited about the baby maybe looking like Wentworth Miller or Mariah Carey. I thought maybe it would be cool if the baby had blue eyes or was one of those kids that have blonde highlights. Maybe both. We all got excited about some kid who might not look too Black, although none of us came right out and said it.

The kid we got about five months later was this light-skinned, dark eyed, straight-haired little boy who got darker and whose hair got kinkier as the years went by. Once he was born, I didn’t think too much about it one way or the other. He was beautiful, and he was mine.

When I had Trevor, I thought about all the talks I would need to have with him. Driving while Black, the handshake, the magic of the nod as you pass another Black person on the street. But how many of these really apply to his life? We live in TriBeCa in Manhattan and the only time he sees the police they’re in their cruisers or else on a subway platform, keeping an eye out for other Black people, sure, but not for him in his J. Crew. The kid has all kinds of privilege thanks to the business I own and generations of family money on Molly’s side. The neighborhood is teaming with two mommies, two daddies, and every mix you can think of. Cuban-Israeli. Chinese-Peruvian. Norwegian and Tamil. On and on. It’s a bubble and then there’s the world outside, but Trevor doesn’t see it that way.

“You’re Black,” I tell him. I want it to be an assertion, but it feels more like a plea.

What are we going to do with the fucking Chippendale armoire? It’s a beast and it glowers from the corner of the bedroom. I want to move it to storage and it seems to threaten to take us with it. Trevor and I both eye it warily and I can’t for the life of me remember how we got it in here in the first place.

“You may want this one day,” I tell him. “Or at least your future wife may.”

Trevor eyes the hunk of cherry and brass skeptically and then nods, no doubt picturing it in some suburban McMansion he’ll share with his cheerleader wife. But this is probably not giving him enough credit. McMansions were anathema to Molly, as were cheerleaders, and she has almost definitely passed her sense of taste down to her son. So, most likely it’s some farmhouse in Connecticut with a barn and a stone fence that meanders around the grounds. Let’s chuck in some horses while we’re at it. I could picture it. The horses wouldn’t be for him, but for the wife. I can see him tolerating it, taking a smug satisfaction that his job at Goldman has paid for it all.

“Okay, so let’s keep it then,” he says. “Why can’t we just leave it here? Can’t you use an armoire?”

I can, but what to say to him about the quiet campaign I’ve been waging to remove the obvious memories of Molly from the apartment, to blunt the impact of her going? I think if I store pieces bit by bit, one day the last of it will be gone and Trevor will be in college. It’s not that I want to erase her, it’s just that her constant presence is unbearable. This was her loft even if the deed was in both of our names. To recover, to find myself again, I need for her to be more in the background.

“Sure,” I say to him. “We can leave it.”

Trevor gives me a look, like he knows exactly what I am trying to do, and then shrugs and goes into the kitchen to make himself a snack.

I love my son and like my son, although it may seem as if I feel some resentment towards him. Maybe. Maybe there is something there. But the kid’s a wonder. Handsome, straight As, off-the-chart SAT scores. He can realistically consider most of the Ivy’s and, thanks to Molly’s family money, I can even pay if he gets in. No, I admire the kid. But what is hard for me is how easily he’s had it. I think about that all the time. Did I prepare him for what the world has in store for him? Is he ready?

When I expressed these doubts to Molly, she would smile at me and clutch my hand.

“We’re giving him the best chance,” she would say. “This is what we want for him.”

It is what I want for him. It is.

Trevor and I take some time to tour the UPenn campus on a day as pleasant as a bath, the sun alone in the sky, a breeze taking the edge off the heat. On the train ride there, he stares out the window with his headphones on as the remnants of industrial America scroll by. I read my book, listen to my podcasts, and take occasional glances at Trevor to see if I can figure out what he’s thinking. I know he’s excited about the tour because he’s excited about going to college. He’s excited about leaving home. I know I shouldn’t take it personally, that it’s a normal reaction even if your mother didn’t just die of a sudden illness. I don’t blame him for not wanting to stick around, for wanting to get on with his life. Some kids would have wanted to cling to what was left of home, but that’s not Trevor. It wasn’t Molly either and she would have been glad he is reacting this way. But me, I’m the type who does want to cling. What am I going to do now? My wife is gone and soon my son will be, too.

We walk around the leafy campus while a small young woman whose name tag reveals she’s from Plano, Texas, explains the significance of various buildings and tells us about student life. Trevor has that quiet, blank face he gets when I know he’s really taking something in.

I remember my college tours with my mother, although we never toured the kind of schools I tour with Trevor. Mostly I applied to small schools in the northeast whose names sound vaguely familiar to folks, but didn’t elicit any special reaction. College was a very mediocre, at times traumatic, experience for me, not much different from high school, and I wonder to this day why I didn’t think of investigating schools with more Black people.

I asked Trevor at the beginning of this journey if he’d thought about any of the HBCUs.

“I think I can get into any Ivy,” he’d said. “Or maybe Stanford.”

“Sure, but there are some really strong schools made up of people who look like you.”

“Like me? What’s that?”

He knew what I meant. But I also knew what he meant, too.

Trevor wants to go away for the Christmas break with Madeline and some friends, a skiing vacation. He asks me sheepishly on a late September afternoon as we both watch some police procedural, the mac and cheese I prepared balanced on trays that rest on our legs. We haven’t eaten at the big dining room table since Molly died. This is a failing, I realize, one of many. The domestic situation is just this. Two people watching TV, seeing each other only when there isn’t work, school, or the girlfriend.

I pause and let what he’s asked sink in. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Okay, that’s not true. I know exactly how I feel about it, but what can I do about it? What do I offer the kid in the way of home, of domesticity, except mac and cheese served with no vegetables in front of the TV? Still, I’m hurt he’s asked.

“If that’s what you want to do,” I say.

“I’ll be here for Thanksgiving,” he says quickly.

“Sure. But I’d like to meet her parents.”

“Whose parents?”

“Madeline’s parents.”

He pauses again, considering this, and then nods as if this is an acceptable price to pay. I’m not sure why I even said it. The kids roam around NYC at all hours, doing who knows what, and I want to meet the parents? Still, it feels like I need to make some concession to good parenting. I have to try, even if it’s just going through the motions.

Molly was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last winter. Stage Four. Three months later, we were at her funeral on a rainy April morning outside of Chicago. We buried her on the Amberville’s ancestral plot in a large mausoleum the family bought generations ago in the shade of cedars and cypress planted just as long ago. The entire clan turned out, as did my parents, and some of my cousins and uncles I was closest with. We stood around, shocked into silence by the circumstances and the icy wind coming off Lake Michigan. Birds wheeled in the sky, and I had this feeling of surreality. It felt off, my family and Molly’s family standing in the cold together, staring at a large stone structure while the family pastor went on about God’s plan. Molly would have agreed with me that the whole thing was a strange collision of circumstances, and we would have shaken our heads about it later, sitting at a lively bar, sipping wine.

As it was, Trevor and I said goodbye to her, went to the reception and stayed long enough to not be rude, and then headed to the airport. We were originally supposed to stay at a hotel, but neither of us could stand the idea of sharing a room together. I don’t think we took it personally. We just needed to mourn quietly by ourselves without having to worry about the other. We had the rest of our lives to be alone together.

Except maybe we don’t. He seems eager to move beyond all this, and maybe that means moving beyond me, at least for a little while. I don’t know. I am struck by how bad men are at discussing their feelings with each other.

I tell Trevor I love him while we are packing up some of Molly’s china. We both agree we have little use for it, given my cooking and entertaining skills. He looks me in the eye and tells me he loves me too and then we are silent, wrapping plates and platters in bubble wrap and placing them in boxes.

We go to Trevor’s girlfriend’s house together. When I said I wanted to meet them, I meant a phone call, a basic conversation to feel them out and make sure they were responsible, non-sociopathic people. Instead, we were invited to dinner. I bought a nice Barolo at the local wine store. One thing about being rich is you better bring some good wine. Even if your good wine will be brought into the kitchen to sit on the counter while they pour you some mediocre Cabernet. Which is exactly what happened.

Madeline’s parents live in one of those big twenty-story buildings with a doorman, and that take up a good portion of a block. Their apartment is tastefully decorated with a modern aesthetic, leather couches and chairs in the living room, and what looks to be originals of modernist painters on cream-colored walls.

Jerry, Madeline’s father, is a tall man with a shaved head, fit, with only a slight gut pushing against the pinstriped button-up shirt he is wearing. He takes the bottle and returns with glasses of the aforementioned Cabernet and with a Coke for Trevor, who stands awkwardly by in his khakis and a solid blue sweater. Together we take a seat, and I wonder where Madeline and her mother are.

“Madeline and Suzanne should be out in a minute,” Jerry says. “I think they’re putting together some kind of cheese plate.”

He has a deep voice and the air of confidence I find all white men of his stature have. I have more money than him but can’t duplicate the same confidence in myself. For me, the money is a justification; for him, it is a birthright.

“Thanks for having us over,” I say. “We just love Madeline.”

I like her well enough, but don’t really know her. And who was the “we” I am referring to?

Jerry seems to wonder the same thing. “I was sorry to hear about your wife. Your mother.”

I shrug, nod.

Madeline and Suzanne walk in then with the promised cheese plate on a wooden board, with prosciutto, dried salami, and some candied apricots. They are the spitting image of each other, with their long blonde hair, pink faces, and petite bodies sensibly clad in trousers and their own button-down shirts. Madeline sits awkwardly next to Trevor, and I know both of them are waiting for the moment when they can be dismissed from the presence of these adults and do whatever the kids do these days in the privacy of Madeline’s room.

We chat amiably about the weather, the kids’ school, about the upcoming ski trip.

“Where do you and Trevor usually ski?” Suzanne asks me.

“I don’t ski,” I say and then add by way of further explanation. “I grew up in the Bronx.”

“Oh, I thought Trevor knew how to ski.”

“He does. I don’t. He knows how to play squash, too, and chess, and can do a bunch of things it never occurred to my parents to teach me.”

“It’s ridiculous what we teach these kids,” Jerry says with a laugh. “For Madeline it’s fencing. She plays soccer, too, but frankly, there are a million girls who are exactly like her, who do the same thing.”

Ridiculous maybe, but necessary all the same. At least if you are Trevor and me. The Ralph Lauren Trevor is wearing, the Gucci loafers I have on, the niche sports, are all tickets into a club. Madeline and her family are members of that club; I was just a guest of Molly’s. We’d have to see about Trevor.

“It’s a great group of kids coming with us,” Suzanne says. “Very New York. I love that they all have so many friends from diverse backgrounds.”

Both Madeline and Trevor roll their eyes, and I have to show some restraint to not do the same. You want to take these comments at face-value, but you can’t.

“And the place we stay in Aspen is this wonderful lodge we rent every year. It has separate bedrooms for the boys and the girls. We let them have a little drink, but only when they’re with us, if that’s okay. And Trevor will meet some other great kids, some people from great families.”

He will. He comes from a “great family” himself. I remind myself this is what I want for him, this is what Molly and I deliberately set out to do. All the trappings of the elite will be his. All but one.

Later, Trevor and I take a car home. He’s quiet and asks me what I think, and if it’s okay to go on the trip. I tell him that Madeline’s parents seem like nice people. I tell him it seems like it will be a good experience. I tell him he’s free to go.

 PLANTING THE SEEDS OF YOUR OWN DESTRUCTION

Haley Basil

You are planting the seeds of your own destruction. You know this. There is only one option when you are dating a man seven years older than you.

And he is the first man you’ve ever dated.

And you are queer.

He is not the best lover you’ve had, but you accept this as a side effect of straight sex. You did tell him one night in bed that you could not feel his tongue when he was going down on you, which made him question his whole sexual life. You take note of this: even thirty-year-olds are self-conscious.

He will not tell you how many lovers he’s had. This makes you shrink; he will only be your fourth.  No matter how old you get, you’ll still feel like a stupid overgrown virgin.

He will tell you how much he likes having you in his bed, late at night, with his arms wrapped around you. The next morning, he will call you annoying. You accept this; you are annoying. 

YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL AT BREAKING YOUR OWN HEART

He will open the car door for you. And put on your jacket for you. And open doors for you.

He will pick up the check at restaurants. In fact, waitresses will never ask if you need separate checks. They will simply place one check in front of him every time you go out to eat. 

You will find it both rewarding and disturbing to be perceived as a couple. When you went out with women, waitresses would always ask if you wanted to split the check. You could be holding hands, alone, in a diner booth with a woman and the waitress would always ask if you wanted to split the check.

But now, in public, you are perceived.

This makes you uncomfortable. You remember getting spit on when you kissed a woman on the street. You remember having a bottle thrown at your head when you were holding a woman’s hand.

When he reaches for your hand on the street, you will shrink. It is so natural, so innate for him. But he doesn’t know he is speaking a foreign language to you.

You crave pain; he will open a door for societal acceptance.

So you will break your own heart instead.

FOUR YEARS AGO
You are the same age now as she was when you started dating her.  

Reading through your old journals, you’ll remember the pained self-consciousness of a twenty-year-old in love with a twenty-four year old. Your old words will make you laugh; you thought that twenty-four was so old. Now, at twenty-four, you’ll realize you feel the same as you did when you were twenty.

That’s not true, actually.

But you are the same age now as she was when she started hurting you.

It was a slow, methodical process. First, she crept into your heart. She made you feel things you had never felt. You felt seen and beautiful and intelligent. She touched you and your soul sang. She got you hooked. At first, it was such a beautiful mystery to fall in love with a woman.

Then, she slowly started sucking away the marrow from your bones until you couldn’t stand on your own.

She was afflicted.  And you thought you could help her, fix her. If you could just love her enough, she would get clean.

So, you started setting aside your needs for hers. She had immediate pain, yours was an ancient pain that was there before her and would remain after her.  If you set aside your needs now, then someday, one day, when she got better she would give you all the love you gave her right back.

It never came true.

But when she was high, she would be kind. When she was high, she would love you for an hour or so. 

But it would wear off quickly, as it does when you’ve been using since you were thirteen, and she would go back to being afflicted.

YOU ARE DESCENDED FROM WHORES

You are descended from raped women, sluts, and whores. Sadness is in your blood. It is not your trauma that you carry, but the trauma of your ancestors.

One night, your grandmother will be just drunk enough to tell you the story of her grandmother.

She will tell you of the old country. She will tell you that her grandmother was the most beautiful woman in all the town. She will tell you she was the maid in a very wealthy family’s home. She will tell you how she dutifully polished the silverware and cleaned the rooms. She will tell you how she cared for the children that weren’t hers. She will tell you how her beauty caught the eye of the man of the house. She will tell you what a dutiful servant she was. She will tell you that she dutifully bent over for him when he told her to do so. She will tell you that she dutifully carried his bastard.

She will tell you the last name of the man that raped your grandmother’s grandmother. It is a well known name to this day. 

You will cry, but your grandmother won’t know the real reason why.

Don’t cry, darling. This was a lifetime ago.

But you will cry. You cry a holy flood for the ancient pain that you carry from your grandmother’s grandmother.

You will wonder how to heal your ancestral trauma.

THE FIRST GOOD MAN

There has never been a good man in the history of the world before him. You are sure of this.

You lie in his bed, surveying the land that is his body.

He is unreasonably handsome. He has high cheekbones and deep eyes. He looks five years younger than he actually is. You especially love the wrinkles around his eyes, just deep enough to show his true age.

His skin is peppered with moles. Charming moles and freckles and dots that create a solar system on his skin. You connect the dots with your finger. He closes his eyes and hums in pleasure at your touch.

Spring is shyly approaching. The sun peeks through his half open blinds and warms your faces.

It is his birthday. You are so scared, waiting to fuck something up, waiting to do something wrong, waiting for him to hurt you. So you watch him, bracing yourself for impact.

You know I can see you thinking. You think I can’t, but I can.

You don’t know what to say.

You can tell me.

But you can’t. It wouldn’t do him any good to know anyway.

So, you cry.

Shit, you think, I’m ruining his birthday.

But because he is the first good man in the history of the world, he pulls you close to him. There, in the spot between his chin and his shoulder, the spot that has just started to feel like home, you let go a little bit.

YOUR GOOGLE SEARCH HISTORY

Can swallowing cum give you a stomach ache

Do all lovers feel like they’re inventing something quote where from

Fatalism

Outfits for meeting your boyfriend’s parents

OUTFITS FOR MEETING YOUR BOYFRIEND’S PARENTS

You pull everything out of your closet and try it on. Skirt after skirt. Shirt after shirt. What will give off that you’re a nice girl, but not too formal, but not too slutty? That you’re fun and interesting and right for their son? You know you’re overthinking it but you’re on a bullet train and you can’t get off.

Finally, you settle on a bright blue skirt and a green top.

When your boyfriend sees you in it, he can’t stop remarking how beautiful you look.

You’re so pretty. So so pretty.

He tells you this outside of the restaurant you’re meeting his parents at. They haven’t arrived yet, so you pass the time by kissing in the parking lot. You feel good, excited, to meet the people who created this weirdo you’ve grown attached to.

Then, his phone buzzes. He’s in a group chat with his mother and father.

You glance over. You don’t mean to snoop. Truly, you don’t care what his text messages say. Or so you tell yourself.

We’re on our way!, the text from his mom reads.

Looking is just a reflex, you don’t think anything of it. But you see something. There, right above her text, is a paragraph from him.

You don’t see all of it. You realize you shouldn’t be looking and you turn away quickly. But you can’t forget what you saw.

There, in a blue text bubble, his words--

Just letting you guys know in case she brings it up…

… she is bisexual and I don’t want you to…

… so everyone is comfortable…

And his mother’s response--

Always good to have a heads up!

Confusion.

You had no intention of coming out to his parents. Though it unsettled you to be perceived as just another straight woman who’s fucking their son, you also thought it would be out of place to burst out with I’m queer! I’ve fucked women before, too! at the dinner table.

At first, your stomach drops. He doesn’t realize that he has just outed you to his parents. You have never met them before, and you don’t know if it is even safe to come out to them. Your ability to divulge or conceal that information is the one control you have over how the world treats you.

Then, you consider his kindness. He didn’t mean to hurt you, he meant to protect you. He did it because he cares about you.

But now your outfit feels wrong. It’s too bright, too colorful. Too queer. You should’ve chosen black or grey or brown or anything that would blend in.

But it’s too late now. His parents are on their way.

What is the right outfit to wear when being outed to your boyfriend’s parents?

ACTS OF LOVE

To be loved is to be consumed.

You know this.

Your first knowledge of this was Jesus’ body, his blood. Take of this and eat it, this is my body, which has been given up for you. Love through submission: a body willingly given up to be consumed. The ultimate act of love.

So you make yourself consumable.

Take of this and eat it, as you offer yourself to him every night. You’re basically living with him, and isn’t this what you always dreamed of anyway? Nights being held by someone and maybe even being loved, though he hasn’t said it to you yet, the L word, and even though it’s his bed, and even though it’s his sheets and his nightstand and his dresser and his posters, even though, even though, isn’t it better than being a hollow offering, an unconsumed thing?

This is my body, which has been given up for you, as you willingly become Object for him, just like you learned in Sunday school and can’t forget, no matter how hard you try. And he accepts, consumes you, fills you up, makes you whole. Like you always, always wanted. Like Jesus taught you to do.

And one night, he will take of your body, but you will give him your blood as well. He will notice before you do, the blood, and it will stop him in his tracks.

I just need to clean off, he says. He runs off to the bathroom, slamming the bedroom door, and when he comes back he’s no longer hard and no longer kissing you.

You squirm and writhe and try to kiss him, still overwhelmingly hungry for him.

But he turns away.

Can’t we…

And he gives you a look.

I thought you understood.

You search his face, trying to discover the hidden understanding.

I just don’t like it.

Your face burns hot with embarrassment. 

Your body is disgusting, bloody and disgusting and unconsumable.

But it’s not that much, you offer. Maybe we could…

It’s gross, it makes me uncomfortable. Do you want me to do something I don’t want to do?

You don’t. You’ve been made to do something you don’t want to do before. Of course you don’t want to make him do the same.

But his rejection of your body makes you shrink. He notices this.

Most guys I know feel this way, he offers sweetly, brushing your messed hair behind your ear.

So you lay there, in his bed, in his room, in his apartment, bleeding, unconsumable.

You love him.

You love him you love him you love him you love him you love him you love him you love him you love him you love him you love him you love him so much your heart might burst at the seams.

Your mouth tastes metallic. He looks at you. You smile. 

Your stomach growls. You get up out of his bed and put on your clothes and go to his refrigerator and open it.

It’s empty.

Playing On

Stephen J. Bush

You’re taking Imogen Giles who, despite the oncoming later decades of your relationship (a regretted peccadillo, debt, habituation, and illness), you’ll love always your life long, on a date — but it’s not a date-date yet, dinner and a show, but an impromptu and unstructured exposure of your heart. Perhaps you should be more anxious, but you’re not.

Having known her only a fortnight, you’re carrying takeaway mochas around the atrium, in the city museum on a Saturday, and you can’t help yourself, steering her — by suggestion, not touch — to the tiny quiet touring gallery which, for eight weeks only, is exhibiting the Golden Record, or, more precisely, its facsimile.

Framed on the wall, it’s a gold-plated copper phonograph disc, ‘The Sounds of Earth’ written in the middle. Around it, eclectic photos blown up to poster size, a god’s eye motley of the planet: mushrooms, a toad, the Taj Mahal, snow. They’re not artistic shots but documentary, as if intended for a textbook about Earth. Precisely that, the exhibit informs you; these are the pictures digitally encoded in the grooves of the record, two copies of which were dispatched to the cosmos, one on Voyager 1 and one on Voyager 2, space probes launched a month apart in 1977. You know all this already, though, and look at Imogen looking at a woman licking ice cream. The caption reads: ‘to demonstrate the function of human mouths.’

The Golden Record was a gift, you say, a summation of us, offered without prospect of reception, comprehension, or reciprocity. “Us?” asks Imogen, but you miss her specificity. “You,” you say, “whoever you are.” Other than photos, the record is a curated ninety minutes of music (fourteen of which Beethoven, eleven Bach), prefaced by a soundscape of the planet: glaciers calving, mudpools bubbling, stridulating crickets and a doleful moan of frogs, their plaintive refrains those of ghosts in a barrow, then a susurrus, another rustle (scree, you think), a tidal whomp, a crack, a crump, and thunder. A pause. Heartbeats are heard. Cordialities follow. In Chinese, a woman asks, “Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet?” There’s a wish for their good health in Welsh.

The record shares the optimistic property of a message in a bottle, thrown into the ocean of the solar system. It’s the entire history of Earth, you enthuse to Imogen. Compressed, you concede. You gabble and slop coffee, give animacy to the facts: that these records are the most enduring cultural artefacts humanity has made, that they’ll remain intelligible for billennia, that they’ll (in principle) outlive the planet. You’re unable to explain this without sprawling your hands and so, serendipitously, you gesture.

Your finger finds a listening booth in the corner, unoccupied, its couples of headphones abandoned like shells. As rain starts to wham the room’s skylight, you slide up the volume, coffee and a hushed breath on your lips, listening. Imogen leans into your shoulder, and champagne from your kneecaps froths beyond your neck. You tap your feet, together sway gently. To Javanese gamelans, you dance.

Eventually you leave, and with left arm outstretched run your fingers on the wall, stroking dimples in its whitewashed brick. You don’t know why you had the impulse, but Imogen does. As she leaves, she pauses at the picture by the exit, a representative foetus in a diagrammatic womb.

It takes you years to realise what she learned of you that day: that you wanted to put something into the world without thought of or care for recompense, that in some way other than material you’re ambitious, and that what you’d like to do with life is encapsulate a planet. You wonder on occasion whether you’ve coloured yourself over-favourably. She finds you endearing anyway.

The exhibition finishes, shifts to another city. You take Imogen for tapas and to festivals. You both graduate, get jobs, promotions, a mortgage, and married. You argue on occasion, ignore each other on occasion, talk, touch, spend time, and are tender. In August 2012, Voyager 1 leaves the solar system, the first human-made creation to do so. You raise a son who, in turn, grows out of ‘dad mountain’ (holding your hands and climbing legs, hip, chest, neck), falters respectively in his enthusiasm for the recorder, swimming, and video games, then loses his virginity, attachment to your town, and daily contact, cycling with differential periodicity through friends, hobbies, jobs, and habits, until settling like a stylus in a groove. Signals from Voyager 1 aim your way at light speed still, but yet take a day to reach back to Earth. They arrive weak, a millionth-of-a-billionth of a watt, almost too scant to be captured. You buy knee braces and reading glasses. You dabble in woodwork and home-brew. Imogen gets into fun-runs and learns to make jam. Her parents die, heart disease and stroke. Yours, car-wreck and leukaemia. In the autumn of 2032, the thermoelectric generator on Voyager 1 exceeds its engineered limit and fails gracefully. This doesn’t affect its journey, being already in motion in frictionless space, but it no longer has power to signal back home. Adrift, it’ll take 40,000 years to reach the nearest solar system. If it’s ever intercepted by someone intelligent, there or elsewhere, the cover of the record gives instructions on how to play it. Diagrams etched in aluminium show the right time for its rotation, in units anyone sapient in the universe should recognise, being based on the action of an atom.

Imogen stops breathing. You find her in your staircase, blue as an old bruise. You cremate her, grieve, and on the minor aspects after, unintentionally forget. You’re never tested on your commitment to the principle that it’s a worthy thing to try and compress life, to selectively make of it a relic. You’re never tested because you die in a hospital, stooped and quiet, with the more important things voiced by then if not, in truth, quite forgiven. Your son cremates you and later, later, dies in the night. You share a gravestone with Imogen together, its letters losing lustre, though not all at once. Your data-trail, anonymised, is compiled and parsed, and after your passing you in part contribute commercial insight into the demographic bases of pesto and mouthwash. Your names perpetuate, for a bit, in assorted official records, of interest in aggregate to historians. Climates — political, atmospheric, and economic — alter. Rancorous weaponry whams your town, country, and continent from skyward. Breaths still, and volumes deafen. Crops wilt and networks fail, fisheries, stores, stocks, and birth-rates collapse. You, as a species, launch rockets with at first warheads aboard, then colonists, with sperm in vials and rice seeds in liquid nitrogen. You fail, are forgotten, your cities eaten by trees. You’re without hope of literal recovery, but not wholly yet of recall. After all, something of you, whoever you are, is en route; Imogen too, if only either by inference or degrees of separation, and not that anyone but you really knows it. Henceforth, you’re warping details to accommodate the altered context.

Now you’re accompanying vir to the plaza to witness. You thought vir would like it, so invited. Some magisters have claimed an interpretative breakthrough, and their exhibition – although more technical than a spectacle — is exquisite. Now universal patterns seem apparent in the artefact; inversions, repetitions, and refrains. Mathematics, applied, lets us sense them. You can’t resist explaining what, peculiar though it is, that implies — that it’s not abstruse, but a new world — and vir realises, not that you notice in the bliss of the concept, that you must surely love the notion of making something precious and submitting it to hope. Vir twinges, chromatic and lustrous, but subtly. You’re prismous in chartreuse and sepia. Chiaroscuro scurries, running murklins then harlequin, as within, chemicals swirl about a follicle. Now vir rhythm of limbs is compelling. Coyly, you attend, organs queerly, thrillingly, stirring. Moons’ light makes a plaid of shadows; they curl on vir skin like a snuffed candle’s smoke. You don’t know it, you can’t know it, but to Javanese gamelans, you dance.

 A Horse Made of Smoke

JJ Amaworo Wilson

A god made of grain. A mind made of salt. A throat made of clay. Figures in the wind cross the bridge between waking days and dreamtime. A heart made of leaves. A head made of sand. A horse made of smoke. And we, the righteous dreamers, walk in the grooves you shaped on your way to the edge of the world.

Trans. from the Yoruba “Tales of Woe and Dreaming” - Anon.

 


Wind blowin’ down, rows o’ trees bustlin’, leaves shakin’, everbody waitin’ for rain. Ain’t nothin’ grow wi’out rain. 

Matilda be my name, though some call me Tilly. Others call me Matty. Others Tilda. It don’t matter what folk calls me. I’s one hunnerd an’ twenty year old. By the time you git that old, nothin’ matter much. 

I done buried four chillen. When they come from my womb they was made o’ the Lord’s clay an’ I done lef’ ‘em in clay, so they’s home. One were only a toddler. He the one I regret. He never did have no chance. The others, well, they lived they lives an’ died when they was suppose to die.

I done buried three husbands too. The firs’ he were no good. Josiah died as he lived – knee deep in moonshine. He weren’t even forty year old when the Lord took him, an’ I swears as they close the casket I smells the whisky that done pickled him head to toe.

The secon’ husband, I guess he were a fine man. Least everbody say so. He were the father o’ five o’ my seven chillen. He tall, upstandin’, honest. Everbody say he had a good temperament. I don’t even know what that mean but everbody say, “That Charlie Douglas, he have a good temperament. He never git mad, not even wi’ they chillen runnin’ wild all day long.” Well, sho’, he had a good temperament, but he din’t have good lungs, cos they done collapsed afore he turn fi’ty an’ he spend the next ten year in bed an’ me waitin’ on him hand an’ foot. He always say please an’ thank you, but still. Even a fine man wi’ a good temperament need a pair o’ lungs. 

My third husband were perty good too. He give me my las’ child, Little Lady, the best o’ them all, an’ a gift from the Lord which I done received when I were close to fi’ty year old. Now this third husband he up an’ die o’ old age at eighty-eight an’ afore he die he turn on his side on them white sheets where he was alayin’ an’ where I’s alayin’ right now an’ he look at me wi’ them grey eyes full o’ mist an’ sawdust an’ say, “See you soon in the afterlife.” Well, forty years done pass an’ I ain’t seen him yet. Come to think o’ it, I ain’t heard from him neither. Then agin he always did have a poor sense o’ direction, so his ghost may be awanderin’ aroun’ in the wrong neighborhood callin’ me by my many names. But it don’t matter none. By the time you gits to one hunnerd an’ twenty, nothin’ matter none.

What is it I be wanting to say to you, Matilda or Tilly or Matty or whatever I’s to call you? That the ghosts ain’t never quiet in this house? But you knows that already. An’ I knows you miss me an’ Josiah, James, Belle, Roberta, Charlie Junior, Willard, yo’ Momma an’ Poppa, all yo’ dead. One hunnerd an’ twenty years on this planet an’ you talkin’ wi’ us ghosts day an’ night because you be closer to the dead than the livin’. An’ I, who up an’ died at eighty-eight, yo’ Charlie, yo’ Charlie wi’ a good temperament, why everbody say so, who spent half my life waitin’ for you, in the kitchen, in the grocery store, in the tree-shaded lanes where we done walk in the mornin’s, I’s still awaitin’ for you.

I still goes for walks along a row o’ trees not far from my family property. Some folks don’t go there cos they scared o’ encounterin’ the ghost o’ Billy Jarvis, who were hung on a oak tree there in 1926. Phooey, they say he done look at a white woman the wrong way an’ nex’ thing he know he swingin’ from a tree. When the coroner cut him down, he say Billy weigh twice as much as he did when he were alive cos he full o’ lead from the white men shootin’ him up after he dead. 

So the people ain’t come here now. But I goes there all the time, says hello to Billy when I sees him. He ain’t so scary. His ghost ain’t swingin’ from that tree, but sittin’ under it eatin’ a red apple an’ lookin’ content wi’ everthin’, like he done forgave those fellas what killed him.

Yes, I still walk even at one hunnerd an’ twenty. The trick is not to be thinkin’ ‘bout yo’ age. It be jus’ like walkin’ – one step at a time an’ soon you done walk a mile an’ then two. Jus’ don’t think to yo’se’f I gots to walk two mile cos tha’s when you gits to sayin’ oh my knee hurt, oh my back hurt, oh my rheumatism killin’ me, oh this oh that. Just git up an’ walk. Just git up an’ walk.

I’m lookin’ down on you an’ thinkin’ you sho has a better life than we did. You made it to one hunnerd an’ twenty. How in the name o’ the Lord you manage that when me an’ yo’ Daddy din’t make it to sixty? You spent mo’ years on this earth n both o’ us put together, baby Tilly! I see you in the kitchen bakin’ greens, on the loom makin’ clothes for the little uns, walkin’ on an’ on through them trees. What keeps you goin’, girl? You done buried four o’ my grandchillen an’ who knows, you may bury three mo’ afore you go.  

In our little church I first seed Josiah when I were but sixteen year old an’ I falls in love wi’ him right away. He say he been watchin’ me for two month but I never notice him. That day he done come home wi’ my family an’ we done eat corn bread an’ carrots for dinner an’ he sho look happy. Momma wouldn’t let me walk to he house so I jus’ set an’ wave goodbye but I knowed then that he gon be my husband. An’ I were right, for weren’t two weeks later he done ask me to marry him. I say yes. An’ he say but you gotta ask yo’ momma an’ pappy. An’ I say I already did. 

Josiah go celebrate wi’ a whisky bottle. Lord know where he get a whisky bottle, but it weren’t the firs’ an’ it weren’t the las’ an’ eventually I comes to know that he weren’t married to me, he were married to that whisky bottle.

You know what done drove me to the moonshine, Matilda? When we lost our land I was but a bitty child. But my mammy an’ pappy was so miserable they took to drink. An’ I took to drink wi’ them. I din’t mean no harm to nobody, but I couldn’t git my life goin’. Went from farm to farm lookin’ for work an’ sometimes even found some, but it weren’t never enough to feed us all good like I wanted. I worked on the railroad diggin’ pits. Worked on the riverboats loadin’ an’ unloadin’. I worked from sun to sun, but it weren’t never enough. So instead o’ food I bought whiskey an’ it done cured whate’er it was that ailed me till it be the drink itse’f that ailed me. An’ then I up an’ lef’ the world wi’ you an’ the child still in it.   

Now I’s gotten old, they be one thing crossin’ my mind agin an’ agin. One thing I ain’t gotten used to in all my one hunnerd an’ twenty year, an’ that be the horse. This horse runnin’ through my dreams my whole life an’ now it begin runnin’ through my wakin’ times, too. When I close my eyes, I sees it. The thing so beautiful it caint barely be true. White wi’ black hooves an’ movin’ so close to the speed o’ light that maybe it be made o’ light, smoke flyin’ off o’ its back. But when I look closer I understan’ it ain’t made o’ light an’ it ain’t smoke flyin off o’ it. No sir. The horse be made o’ smoke. An’ I jus’ knows it be a ghost horse, but who it belong to? Do it belong to anyone or do it jus’ belong to itse’f, like the earth an’ the trees an’ the pine cones an’ the eagles? Why do a horse need to belong to anybody?

Now I not only sees it. I hears it, too. Hears the drumroll o’ its black hooves poundin’ the dry land. An’ sometimes I smells it. That smell o’ horse so musky an’ grainy, a smell so fine it done make me weep one time. When the horse snort, the air turn blurry an’ smoke rise up the sky. That horse be more real to me than my wakin’ times, than my nieces an’ nephews, than my chillen now gone, than the stove in front o’ me that I been cookin’ on for eighty years. That horse be gallopin’ inside o’ me, the thing so beautiful it caint barely be true.

Three blind mice. I remembers all yo’ songs, Momma! Do you remember? After I got sick an’ you couldn’t play wi’ me no more, you done sing to me every day. You sing about three blind mice. An’ ring around the rosie. An’ you feed me from the porcelain plate liftin’ the spoon to my mouth when I gets too weak to do it myse’f. I remembers that spoon an’ that plate an’ everthin’ you ever fed me. Oatmeal an’ berries, rice an’ turnips, cabbage wi’ a egg on top. Every meal were a feast, Momma, cos you made it so. An’ I remember my brothers an’ sisters wearin’ homespun shirts an’ britches, three of us sleepin’ in one bed, head to toe, a bed made o’ hewed logs wi’ lines o’ rope twisted ‘cross it. I passed away into the nex’ worl’ in that same bed, an’ I was jus’ a child an’ you cried an’ cried an’ cried till there were nothin’ lef’ in you to cry. Yo’ tears dried up like the creek in summer an’ you din’t sing no more neither. Where all them songs go, Momma?       

They be many myst’ries in this life. How be it that I live so long? I ain’t had a easy day my whole life. But I be fixin’ to die perty soon here on these clean white sheets. Jus’ as soon as my livin’ chillen come an’ soon as I figure out the horse. Why it be visitin’ me now in my wakin’ time, why it be makin’ so much damn noise, ‘scuse my language, when it be made o’ nothin’ but smoke. It ain’t that I’s feelin’ my age. I feels good. Jus’ that all they folks acallin’ me from yonder – my husbands callin’ me to cook for em an’ the chillen awaitin’ for they momma, an’ the nieces an’ nephews askin’ so many questions from the nex’ worl’. The only ones I don’t wanna see is the overseer an’ the masser an’ mistress o’ the house but I figurin’ I ain’t seein’ them anyways cos they gone to the other place down below. At leas’ that what I be thinkin’. But who knows? They be many myst’ries in this life.  

You sure liked to dance when you were a child, Tilly. When I and the master had guests at the Great House I used to put a glass tumbler full of water on your head and have you waltz around the room. You danced so smoothly you didn’t spill one drop. But a child that dances is also a child that runs. And it doesn’t do no good to have a child that runs. Before we know it, you’re running away.  

I remembers my peoples runnin’ away time an’ agin. They always git caught an’ tha’s when the masser bring out The Paddle an’ The Cat. They done buckle you to a barrel an’ hit you naked wi’ a cobbin paddle, which were made o’ hardwood an’ had forty holes. An’ when they hit you, them forty holes done made forty blisters. Then they bring out the cat-o-nine-tails wi’ its nine lashes. They lash you till the blisters pop, till the blood be runnin’ down yo’ ankle. Nex’ thing they boil up a big ol’ tin pail o’ salt water thick enough to hold a egg an’ they wash you in it so the salt season yo’ wounds. Once I seen it an’ heard a man screamin’ from the pain, I never run away.

We still be waitin’ for rain. Ain’t nothin’ grow wi’out rain. The fields bone dry, the sky heavy like a blanket the Lord fixin’ to drop on yo’ head, but no rain come. Jus’ like my chillen ain’t come. I’s awaitin’ long enough.

These be days o’ locusts. They be everwhere. You open yo’ door an’ they be jumpin’ off the roof an’ onto yo’ porch like them acrobats that come down one time from Tennessee in a cart wi’ two black Clydesdales in June o’ 1848 when I were a child. I remember them acrobats doin’ cartwheels an’ flips so quick on the back o’ that cart an’ the chillen standin’ there agoggle-eyed watchin’ till the masser tell us go back inside. These be days o’ locusts.   

We lived in log cabins near the Great House wi’ chimblies made o’ red mud an’ skinny branches. Our beds was rough wood wi’ a mattress full o’ hay an’ lynn bark that prickle yo’ skin at night.

There was a ol’ lady what look after the chillen while they mammies work in the field. She had a horn what she blowed when it be time to eat an’ all the chillen come runnin’ for they grits an’ taters or corn bread an’ pot likker. We was jus’ chillen so we din’t do no heavy work, jus’ sweepin’ the yard an’ fetchin’ wood. An’ once a week if the masser be in a good mood, we gots to pet the horses, stroke they manes so fine like strands o’ silk in the wind. I’m guessin’ it was then I firs’ saw the white horse, but I cain’t remember. I’s one hunnerd an’ twenty an’ things git mixed up. Now where my livin’ chillen at? They needs to be here afore I forgets they names.

Yes, Matilda. I am a ghost horse. A horse made of smoke. I was alive once and now I am dead. You, who remember so much, don’t remember me. I was a horse made of flesh that came chasing you and your kin. We chased you over the fields and through the marshland and across the stream with its white stones slippery as soap. Explosions of water from my hoofs and wind in my mane. A sun so high it flooded the land with light. You were young, barely a living thing, in your mother’s papoose. But I remember when we gained ground on your mother, she turned, you opened your eyes, and you saw me just as I saw you. And if it wasn’t fear in those eyes of yours, it should have been because I was fearsome once. But the overseer I belonged to, he was more fearsome still. When he wasn’t on my back, he was wading in blood deeper than the canyons of hell. But you, Matilda, you outlived him. You outlived him and me and everyone else. You outlived us all.

One of ‘em myst’ries I done spoke of is land. The land I sit on now weren’t the land I grew up on. A person jus’ know it. Even if they caint remember nothing o’ they childhood, they know they ain’t where they roots are. When it be time to die, a person want to return to where they was raised jus’ like them turtles do. After a life o’ wanderin’, when they turtles gon die they return to the beach where they was borned. But I don’t know exac’ly where I were borned an’ raised. I jus’ know it weren’t here. Here be nothin’ but locusts an’ dry ground an’ the chirrup o’ cicadas as the moon rise. An’ me waitin’ for my chillen, the livin’ an’ the dead.

You be right, my child. You wasn’t raised here. You was raised some miles away, you who never rode a car or a train or even a horse. You never went nowhere yo’ feet din’t take you. Those two feet be the only locomotion you know. But it weren’t your feet that took you away from the place where you was born. It were my wife’s, your mother’s. An’ she were runnin’, not walkin’.

Somethin’ done triggered my mind this mornin’. It were the sound o’ engines. From outside my room I hears a automobile arumblin’ an’ arevvin’ an’ I figurin’ it be my child Marybeth. I ain’t never had the pleasure to ride in one o’ they automobiles, but I sho’ hears ‘em. Someone tol’ me once they was powered by gasoline. An’ tha’s what done triggered my mind. 

When they find oil on this land, the white men claim it were theirs. It always be theirs. The Lord done ordained it were theirs. Preacher Dale Goodman o’ this parish preach it were theirs. The press man J. Hogan Lansberry done wrote that it were theirs. Sheriff Robert B. Boondoggle announce it were theirs. Judge Theophile Mills Murdoch agree it were theirs. The barber who knowed everbody an’ cut everbody hair who name I forgit say it were theirs. The rag n bone man who slep’ under the dime store in his rag n bone suit say it were theirs. The only folk who say it weren’t theirs be the black folk livin’ on the land an’ the ghosts o’ the Indians who was wiped out by the white men so’s the white men could git the land in the firs’ place.

An’ cos the white folk an’ the black folk caint agree about whose land it be, that’s when the white folk set their horses an’ dawgs on the black folk. 

An’ now it come to me clear as a baby’s skin: the hooves o’ that horse, they weren’t black. It were the oil the horse be runnin’ through, it done turn they hooves from white to black. That very same oil the white man want so bad he gots to chase the black folks off o’ they own land.  

You ever see oil jump out o’ the earth? It don’t jump. It come asprayin’ wild like a geyser or a explosion. Why Tilly, ain’t nothin’ like it! The earth givin’ up its riches o’ black gold. An’ I say whatsoe’er come from so deep a place done come from Hades, which in old money is what you call Hell. I be yo’ preacher an’ yo’ uncle, too, though you won’t remember me. Yo’ uncle David Silver an’ ne’er a man did have such a misbegotten name cos I aint never had a lick o’ silver nor gold my whole life.  

I knows who you are, white horse wi’ black feet. You be the one who done chase me offa my land when I were but a bitty child. I don’t blame you. It were someone else pullin’ the reins. It were someone else done steer you onto the path my mother made across the fields an’ the babblin’ water. It were someone else raisin’ the shouts an’ pullin’ the trigger. It weren’t you, horse that been in my dreams my whole life. Now I gittin’ ready to go. I gittin’ ready to see my loved ones who been waitin’ so long. An’ maybe I see you, too, white horse, an’ come pet your mane so soft it be silk in the wind. Yes, you be a thing so beautiful it caint barely be true.

Kept Voices

Sage Tyrtle

Teacher Ducasse is separating ten eggs for the consommé, and the classroom smells like my feet after I run track. He says that if even a tiny speck of yolk gets into the whites you have to start again. I wonder if that's what it's like to live in a house? If sometimes the Wife is still cooking at three o'clock in the morning because she keeps getting yolk in the whites? I can't wait for next year, eighth graders get to do Indonesian Cuisine.

It's snowing outside and the heater's up too high and to keep myself awake I'm running my fingers over the underside of my desk when I feel a rough part that wasn't there yesterday. It's a rectangle, kind of. But not solid. Made of scratches like it was cut by a knife or something. It can't be a drawing. There's no way. That ninth grader Kiro breathed on the window of the Dining Hall and drew a happy face and the next day the Headmaster said she was being treated for Defiant Disorder by a Specialist. Which is good! Because you can die of Defiant Disorder and I want Kiro to be okay. And then — at the start of the rectangle — I can feel what it is and my breath gets stuck in my throat and I have to cough a bunch. A letter. I'm touching the letter W.

Everything girls write is in our Keeper (Secrets are the bane of society / Honesty shows your gracious piety) and I didn't even know you could write without a stylus and a screen. My eyes feel itchy like they always do when I want to talk. (Does that happen to the other girls?) It's like my words know they can't go out of my mouth so they try to go out of my eyes instead. After the W is an O, an M, an E, then an N. Holy, it's a swear word! Is that—

"Pandora?" calls Teacher Ducasse and I startle like a cat. "What's this called?" He tips the stock pot so everyone can see the dog-food mess floating on the top. I let out my breath, because I know this one, and I grab my Keeper and write, "That's the raft," and it appears on the board above Teacher Ducasse's head.

He nods and starts explaining what the raft does and when my heart calms down I go back to tracing the rectangle. I'm wide awake now! What's the next word? Is it an even worse swear, like — like the F-word? My cheeks go red even thinking of a word that bad inside my own brain. (Bitsy used it two years ago on her Keeper and on the board it just said "Bitsy: Are there any f-------- left? HEADMASTER ALERTED.")

But it isn't the F-word. It's "talking."

On the board it says:

Lacey: But don't the eggs make the consommé taste bad?

Teacher Ducasse explains why not but I can't even hear his words because inside my head is a giant blinking sign and it says WOMEN TALKING WOMEN TALKING WOMEN TALKING. Who could have written this? It wasn't here yesterday and we're always being Protected -- by the Teachers, by the Monitors, by the cameras and microphones in our dorm rooms. It's not like someone could have just written it during class. Greenwood Finishing School is tiny, just grades 7 to 9, and I can't think of one girl who would be so bad.

Should I tell a Teacher? The Headmaster? Except what if I did and he thought I wrote it? I shudder. If they thought I wrote it, they'd send me to a Specialist and I know what that looks like because of the movie they make us watch every year. "Specialists: Here to Help." It starts with loud scary music and a girl talking and another girl takes video of her using the Emergency Button that's on the front of every Keeper, the one with an exclamation point on it. The Protectors swarm and take her to the Sanitarium. There's lots of girls and Wives in windowless rooms, staring. Drooling. The girl from the start won't stop talking — we can't hear what she's saying because the scary music is the only sound — and they try giving her pills and injections and nothing works and then the music gets really really sad and they take her to the shock treatment machine. They give her a rubber mouth guard so she doesn't bite off her own tongue. There's so many sparks. After, she's quiet. Except now she won't stop crying.

Fourth period is PE with Teacher Brae and in the locker room an old Jason Helix song is playing, the one about starships. After we get weighed (Daisy is over by two pounds and the scale spits out a half-rations ticket at the Dining Hall for until she's under again), we change into our navy skirts and white polo shirts. I go faster than anybody else on the indoor track. I love running. I love how fast I can go. Mostly, though (and I know, I know it's bad) I run so I can whisper to myself, so I can listen to my round tones so different from the male rasp of the Teachers, the Monitors, the fathers who visit on Father's Day. I whisper so I can feel real too.

Last Saturday in Chapel the Headmaster sent that famous painting Soon, the Hush of the Wallace-ites to our Keepers (The Wallace-ites fought a losing battle / The Protectors silenced their endless prattle) and none of us wanted to look at their scarred faces, their pants, their bodies so much flabbier than ours, their missing teeth, their shaved heads. But the Headmaster said it was part of understanding what the Last War was about. So we made ourselves look. On the board above the Headmaster opinions were popping up:

Hedy: so ugly

Bitsy: I feel sad for them.

Melody: No dentists in war, I guess...

Sweetie: Thank you, Protectors, for setting us FREE

Were we all saying something about the painting? I didn't want to. Because even though it was of long dead soldiers, all I could see was how bright their eyes were. How — their mouths wide open in howls of rage — they seemed more alive than anyone I'd ever seen.

After PE I shower in the locker room (now it's Tennessee Ned and the Boys singing "Battle of September") and then we all walk in silence, in the snow, to the Dining Hall. After dinner we go to our rooms, one for each girl. The automatic locks turn, all one hundred and fifty, click clank clonk. My room doesn't have any posters in it. We're allowed two, but I never really got why anyone would want a boy band staring at them while they sleep. For study time I take notes in my Keeper about the Last War for class, and when the lights dim I dive into bed. I pull the covers over my shoulders because the cameras can see even in the dark, and under the covers with my heart beating about nine zillion beats a second I trace the words on my arm. Women talking. Women talking. Over and over until I fall asleep.

In the morning soft chimes play and the lights come back up. Outside the sun is trickling through the clouds. I lie curled up for a moment longer, my stomach lurching, half happy and half scared. I don't know what women talking is about, but I want to. I get on my wool leggings under my uniform dress and grab my overcoat and hat and walk with the other girls to the big field. We sit in neat rows on the bleachers, and I'm glad for my overcoat, even though most of the snow has melted. Every Wednesday boys come from their schools to our field to play sports against each other. Today it's King Eamon playing rugby against Branko Academy. Greenwood doesn't have team sports — and that's good! I don't even want to do them! (Girls, girls, solo is best / Team players get sent to the Specialist) But sometimes... I have dreams where I'm playing rugby too, and I run really fast and make a bunch of goals and everything.

At the game I sit between Hedy and Jane. Jane is my friend. I think. All I have to go on is how she stands up so slowly to wave her arms at the Wednesday games. How easily she smiles at me. That time she didn't take the last piece of cherry pie at dinner. Because maybe she was being nice, and saving it for me. It's easy to think that though. That she likes me as much as I like her. And I know, I know I should show the words to Teacher Ducasse, or the Headmaster, but I only want to show them to Jane.

She's tapping her knee in time to the boys chanting, "GOAL GOAL GOAL," except she's only tapping with three fingers and those three fingers form a W. Holy! Is it a coincidence? Did she always do that and I just didn't see it before? Right after I see it Hedy nudges me to see a boy making the last, winning goal of the game and we all have to stand again and wave our arms. The boy runs off the field and hands his sweaty scarf to one of the ninth grade girls, Louie maybe, and she buries her nose in it, yuckola. The boys are chanting, "Kiiing EAMON! EAMON! EAMON! KING EAMON!" and I try to imagine what girl's voices would sound like, more than one, voices that are a shout not a whisper. But I can't.

After the game Jane and I walk to History. Teacher Newcastle is talking about the Last War: "...and when every man in every nation understood that their destiny was to Protect the vulnerable, our precious peace began..." and I'm watching Jane, wondering if I really saw her make a W and if I did what that means. Did Kiro write words on the window, really? It was the Headmaster who said it was a smiley face. It could have been anything. Jane sits to my left, one row in front of mine, and her face doesn't give anything away. But her hands do. Teacher Newcastle says, "Can anyone name the Protector who helped Wives understand that their voices were sacred, and meant only for their husbands?"

On the board above his head appears:

Sweetie: Robert Donovan

and some of the girls smile at Sweetie, but Jane's fists are clenched so tightly her knuckles are white.

During Beauty I get marked down for getting mascara in my eye during the smoky eyes quiz. That night I wake up a hundred times, I feel like the time I snuck two extra cupcakes in the Dining Hall, like if you cut me open you'd find nothing but silver glitter.

The next day I look for more carvings, more hand signals. But there's nothing. When I touch the underside of my desk in French Cuisine it's smooth again. Like the words were never there. And without being able to touch them, I wonder if there were words or if I was just bored in class and making things up. (Defiant Disorder isn't catching, right? And besides, Kiro is a ninth grader! We don't even eat in the Dining Hall at the same time as the ninth graders.) In PE I don't get on the track early, or run faster than the other girls. I run with them, like I'm supposed to. That night I have a nightmare that I'm already with the Specialists. That they've already given me the shock treatment. That I am staring with blank eyes at a wall just imagining that I'm still at school.

Friday at breakfast I'm carrying my cottage cheese and grapefruit to the table. I didn't want to have a secret! I liked not having a secret! I don't even like grapefruit but the only other option is egg white omelets and kale chips, no thank you. I feel mad about breakfast. I feel mad that I don't get to choose anything I like and I never feel full and I feel mad that Daisy only gets a quarter of a grapefruit until her weight goes down. Augh! I have to stop myself from throwing my bowl at the wall I feel so mad! I put my bowl down on the table and make myself breathe until I calm down. Jason Helix's latest song is on the speakers, the one about hearing his Wife's voice on his wedding night. Hedy and Rose are swaying back and forth to the chorus, which is the Wife's voice but it's a high, fluttering flute. I don't think that's what my voice would sound like, if I heard it loud.

In History we're reading the Protector Manifesto. We always read the Protector Manifesto. It's the only book that's appropriate for girls. When we were kids it was the children's illustrated version (the one where there's no blood in the Battle of September so everyone just looks like they went to sleep in a field, I always wondered if the other girls thought that too), but now that we're in seventh grade we're using the adult version. Teacher Newcastle is reading out loud and we're following along. This is the part where Robert Donovan is going off to be a soldier in the Last War, where he's explaining to his Wife that she can't fight beside him because Wives get too emotional for fighting. And the words just start swirling on my Keeper.

I rub my eyes but it doesn't help, the words are still swirling and on the edges everything is a blur. He reads, "And Robert Donovan's Wife knew that he was right. She knew that she must delight in her patriarch, and she gave him a kiss and sent him off to fight like the brave man he was," and my head starts hurting, not like a regular headache but way worse and the words are even more blurry. I stand up because I don't know what else to do and when I do I get so dizzy I fall over, I fall right on the floor and the best thing that happens is that Teacher Newcastle stops reading.

A Monitor takes me to the nurse, and he asks me a bunch of questions except my head hurts so bad now I can hardly even see my hand writing so I have to write huge in my Keeper, like I'm a little kid again. The nurse says that I've got a migraine, maybe from the sleeping pills, and he takes them back and gives me a migraine pill and says to go to my room and sleep if I can. The Monitor walks me back and by the time I'm in my room again I can't think about anything but not throwing up. Even the lock going click clank clonk makes me want to ralph all over the floor. I manage to keep my food down, though. In the bathroom I can see my pupils are enormous, I look so strange. I lie down on the tiles, which are nice and cool on my cheek, and close my eyes.

But when I wake up to the morning chimes I feel a zillion times better, even though I slept all night on the bathroom floor. My head feels fine and after breakfast I even go to Ballet. But I keep thinking bad things. And we're supposed to report bad things! And I want to, I do. It's just... what if that was a W that Jane made with her fingers? If I go to the Headmaster Jane could get in trouble and I can't do that. I can't. Later I'll report it, honest! Just not now!

After we've warmed up and put on our toe shoes Teacher Brae has us do fouettés. He says when you try really hard and get really good at ballet the toe shoes don't hurt, which must be nice. I bet Melody's feet don't hurt at all — she can do nineteen fouettés in a row! But Hedy is really good, she makes fouettés look as easy as walking down the street. Even though I don't like ballet much, it's nice to be moving around at least. After a while all the babbling voices in my head fade away, and I even manage three turns in a row, which for me is the best I've ever done.

Teacher Brae has us do pas de bourrées across the ballet studio and then arabesques. Laquita usually stays in the background, ever since that time Teacher Brae yelled at her for falling down, but today when he asks for volunteers, she comes forward first. There's a knock on the door and Teacher Brae opens it, there's a Monitor with a question and while they're talking Laquita lifts her left leg into the air, she lifts her arms and stretches her fingers like she's trying to touch the other side of the studio, but only three fingers, only the fingers that make a W, and I don't know if it's real, I don't know, except then it's Melody's turn and during her arabesque she makes a T with her thumb and middle finger. Bitsy goes next and makes a W, and there's three other girls who go before me.

I have a brief surge of hope when I remember in fourth grade Lacey and some of the taller girls had a dance they did whenever that "Helpless Protected" song came on before the Headmaster decided it came under the heading of team sports and they couldn't do it anymore. Couldn't it just be a game? I'm at the barre and just like all the other girls my Keeper is leaning up against the wall in case I need it.  All I can see in my head is the Emergency Button, bright red with an exclamation mark on it (Press the button short short long / Show us what you saw that's wrong), and if I picked it up and took video right now of the next girl to make a W or a T, there would be no taking it back. The video would go to all the Teachers, the Headmaster, and the Protectors. Just like in the start of "Specialists: Here to Help." Protectors in their green uniforms would swarm the school. There would be no classes, no Dining Hall, no sleep. Just interrogations, until they had enough information to help the girls suffering from Defiant Disorder.

My head is hurting again, like my conscience is pounding on my skull from the inside, telling me to do the right thing. But I watch the other girls, their hands making the unmistakable W and T, and when it's my turn I move forward to the centre of the studio. I lift my leg, I point my toe, I stretch my hand out and I make a W. And that part of me that keeps me safe, that makes sure I do right things, that part just... falls over. No more pounding in my head and I don't even know if I'm glad. I walk back to the barre without looking at anyone, avoiding my own eyes in the mirror. I should want to keep my voice sacred, I should focus on my real responsibilities, which are to be the best Wife I can, to give my future husband the precious gift of my voice. I should. I should.

In Chapel I sit on the aisle with Jane to my right, but I don't look at her. I still don't know what happened in Ballet. I don't even know if I want to be part of whatever it is that's happening. When the Headmaster comes onto the stage we all stand and raise our hands to cheer. We sit down and he says, "Girls, before our Protector Manifesto reading today, I want to share with you this very joyful moment. Your classmate Kiro has made a video to show you how well she's doing in her work with the Specialists." Kiro appears on the video screen. She's writing in her Keeper. At first I think she's okay. She doesn't seem like she's been crying (I would be doing nothing but crying if I were her) and she even smiles a little. She writes and writes and when she hits the enter key with her stylus she looks up and her eyes are like mine when I had the migraine pill. Are they giving her pills like in the movie?

Her words pop up on screen: "I feel a lot better now. I'm so happy I'm getting the help I needed. I miss you all, but especially Melody, Bitsy, and Laquita. I wish you could all come visit, ha ha!"

My shoulders go stiff. She wrote for way longer than it would have taken for just those words. She wrote fast, she wrote like she was trying to say something real. Besides, she doesn't know us, she's a ninth grader. She's still writing, but tiny. Like she thinks no one can see. She's not even looking down. My throat hurts like it always does before I cry because what if the Protectors are really who wrote those words? Maybe what Kiro wrote didn't make sense, because of pills. But what if she wrote real things and the Protectors are saying to us that they know about Women Talking?

Kiro waves to the camera and now I can see how flushed her cheeks are. How it looks like she's been biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. The screen goes dark. The Headmaster opens his big leather copy of the Manifesto and looks up at us. "There will be some shocking words in today's reading, but I know you're grown up enough to handle them." He starts to read. "General Donovan knew that there was no saving the Wallace Feminists." Even though he warned us, we flinch like one girl. I've never heard the F word said out loud. I only know it exists because in kindergarten it was one of the list of forbidden words, the ones we could never, ever write in our Keeper even if we heard a Teacher say it.

Somehow the next sentence is worse. "He knew he could not save them because there was no Wife inside the Wallace Feminists. No comprehension of the wonderful gift the Protectors were offering, no understanding of the sacred glory of their voices. And that day, at the Battle of September, General Donovan wept as he ordered his men to wipe out the Wallace Feminists. To kill not just the ones who were fighting, but to silence every promiscuous voice, to hunt down every single one in the attics and basements and forests where they were holed up. To begin again, with true Wives."

In the seat next to mine Jane's face is calm. But she's resting her hands on her knees with only three fingers visible on each. I realize I'm biting my own lip like Kiro and stop. When I was little and the Headmaster at my old school read this part (in the illustrated version they were called the Wallace-ites after the worst of them, Elizabeth Wallace) I would feel sorry for them. I would wonder how they even wanted to be alive if there was no Wife inside them. But listening to the Headmaster describe death after death in horrible detail, I think for the first time — if there was no Wife inside of me, wouldn't that mean there was no husband in my future? And without a husband, couldn't my voice be my own?

I'm still thinking about it as I eat dinner, as I take my place in the neat lines heading for our dormitory in the newly falling snow, as the lights dim and I get under the covers. Everything feels strange today, wrong and off-kilter. I wish there had been no video of Kiro. It was so much easier to imagine her happy, relieved to be in a place where everyone was there to help, before I saw her face. Before I saw her frantic writing. It feels like not one thing has gone the way it's supposed to today. I want to go back to the moment before I touched the words under the desk and reach out. I want to pin my past self's hands to the desk and keep them there, stilled. Content. Silent. That's what I keep in my head as I finally fall asleep. The quiet. The calm.

In my dream Teacher Ducasse asks for the number of millimetres for the apple thickness in a tarte tatin and I try to write the answer in my Keeper but when my stylus touches the screen I say click. All the other girls gasp. Teacher Ducasse tsk-tsks. I try again, but this time I say clank and the other girls stand up, back away from me, leaving me by myself in the middle of the classroom, they hold up their Keepers, they are touching their Emergency buttons to film me, and I put one hand over my mouth and try to write but instead I scream CLONK and I wake up, trying to catch my breath, and it's dark outside but the morning chimes are playing, and I remember what's missing. Holy. I never heard the doors lock.

I walked in here, I closed the door, I had my study time, I went to bed, and the doors never locked.

And I can stay right here. I can make myself forget the three fingers outstretched to make a W, the responding T, I can forget women talking, I can work hard and learn to cook and be beautiful and slim and understand the glory of the Protectors, I can be good and I'll never find myself in a windowless room with a rubber guard in my mouth and sparks everywhere.

Or I can run to my door, I can open it, I can go outside, I can place all my hope on the possibility that the Monitor watching the camera feeds is dozing. And it's like my body decides for me, because my feet touch the cold floor, my fingers turn the doorknob, before I know what's happening. I run, silently, down the hallway, past Bitsy knocking on doors, past bewildered girls, past Melody wedging her desk chair under Sweetie's doorknob.

I run down three flights of stairs, I go outside and there are girls everywhere, standing barefoot in the snow, and no Teachers or Monitors, but instead Wives — and I correct myself inside my own head, women, they are women, and they don't look anything like Soon, the Hush even though they have pants and fleshy bodies and missing teeth, it's the laugh lines radiating from their eyes, it's the kindness in their mouths and I was right, their voices don't sound like flutes at all. They are oboes, cellos, and they are saying, "Come with us," and even in the madness I don't think to talk, I write in the snow, "Is it safe?" and the one with the gray halo of hair around her head says, "No. Come with us anyway," and there are sirens in the distance and the women are not afraid.

They stand straight and tall, they run into the forest, and we follow, at first whispering, but soon shouting our joy.

 repeat and fade

katarina garcia

I am not okay.

The thought haunts Luna like one of those earworm rhythms that slip out from under the rim of her drum snare or Rey’s bass and crawl into her mind during the thick of a band jam session. Between dusty memories of pain that look like joy and joy that now brings her pain, the earworm builds a nest for itself.

It chants in beat with her footsteps after the first of too many black coffees. It croons to her from nine to five when mindless meetings stretch further than chewing gum worn grey. It hums to the pitch of the whirring bus on the scenic Bellevue streets that once seemed like something out of a fairytale. She thinks she sees Rey in a bus that passes hers. She stares, then decides the figure has too wide a smile.

In the shower, the earworm echoes the musical theatre songs she used to sing to the water-streaked walls and steamed glass. She watches her distorted reflection and listens. The earworm’s voice is high and pure, like hers when she first started out, singing in Julie Andrews’ bright soprano before her bathroom mirror. Luna wonders if her voice always sounded so naïve, if that was why Rey hated it.

I am not okay, the earworm sings, bringing a throbbing ache to her head at times and an amused twist to her lips in others. She wonders what the band would say if she told them about it.

Put it in a song, she imagines Varun saying from the keys as he experiments with different tone effects. Alexei would noodle around on his cherry red Epiphone Riviera, and Riku would start improvising lyrics over it. Rey would lock eyes with her, and they’d find the rhythm together.

No, she wouldn’t tell them. The earworm is loud enough just in her head.

As the week wears on, the earworm settles into white noise. Luna hums harmonies to it as she drives to rehearsal, her voice gravelly and raw from the cigarettes Rey gave her that she keeps trying to quit. She twirls one in her fingers now, embracing its warmth as it burns her.

Art is born from pain, Nita, her brother, Santi, once told her in his lecture-voice before she started hitting things just to feel the vibrations. Pain makes you interesting.

When Santi ran off two years later without so much as a note, she condensed her tears into four minutes and thirteen seconds and sung it a cappella to dead-eyed regulars at Eke’s. After not so much as a drunken applause, she stormed over to the bar’s decrepit drum set and poured the rest of her tears into the most blissfully deafening noise she could create until the bartender kicked her out.

Out in the street, she hugged stolen drumsticks against her chest. They still buzzed with warmth, a feeble rebellion against the biting nighttime chill. The light from a streetlamp bounced off something on the grimy sidewalk by her feet. A penny.

Santi had always teased her for gasping when she’d found a coin. Dios mío, it’s the twenty-first century, Nita, he’d tell her. It’s not worth anything. Flushing, she would slip the coin into her pocket anyway. Her brother hadn’t understood that it wasn’t the penny’s worth that made it so precious, but its shine.

Since Santi had left, joy had been a penny on the gum-strewn sidewalk, too dear to do anything with but cradle in her hands and avoid thoughts of the grime. In the bar, rattling the earth with the drums, she’d felt the weight of a coin in her fist beside the drumstick. She resisted the urge to pluck the coin from the sidewalk.

The door swung shut behind her. A boy watched her, his hands in his scuffed jean pockets. He had unforgiving brows and red, red hair bright as a stoplight.

“You’re a shit singer,” he said.

Luna snorted.

They stood there for a few minutes, drinking in passing car lights. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Drums were good,” he said. “But your rhythm was off.”

“Thanks for the input, jackass,” she said.

“My friend has a drum set, but he can’t play for shit. You’re good, though. Really good.” He looked at her. “You should come try it out.”

“I’ve got places to be,” she said.

She wasn’t fooling anyone. He raised a brow. She wondered what sound his face would make if she hit it.

“I have a bass,” he added. “Alexei—that’s my friend—he can strum a few chords on the guitar.”

“Not interested.”

“Whatever.” He kicked the sidewalk penny from foot to foot and pulled something from his coat pocket. She heard the click of a lighter, caught the glint of a flame as he lit a joint.

He noticed her watching and held it out.

It was a ceasefire, an olive branch. He wasn’t nice, but he was honest, a trait in scarce supply among her friends those days.

She took the joint like a handshake, took a long drag.

He said, “I’m Rey.”

“Luna.”

Seven hours and several joints later, Luna’s hands were blistered from drumming and her ears were ringing. She lay on the floor beside Rey and Alexei as Julian Casablancas screamed “The room is on fire as she’s fixing her hair” from the tower speakers.

“We’re going to be something,” she said.

She pulls the car into the parking garage, takes the keys out of the ignition, and sits there.

I am not okay, the earworm says.

She pushes herself out of the car and takes the elevator down to the basement. The studio is a patchwork quilt of memories. In places on the walls, the freshest coat of muted blue paint has been scraped off to reveal earlier shades of cloying yellow-green and rebellious fuchsia. The corner houses the half-built shelf Varun has procrastinated finishing for two years and the PA system he engineered himself. Beside that stands Rey’s rack of basses, which they call “the graveyard” because once he adds an instrument to it, he decides it’s “shit.” Riku’s box of earplugs and good luck charms sits on a table at the back because if anyone so much as brushes by it, he’ll storm out of the studio. Off to the side, there’s a hole in the wall that Alexei gives a different cover story for each time they ask.

One by one, the others arrive. Varun says an empty salutation, wanders to the keyboard, and starts playing with the controls. Riku comes next, scowling down at them through his designer sunglasses as he crosses the room to the mic. Luna doesn’t notice Alexei slip in, but now he’s in the corner, setting up his pedal board. Last, there’s Rey. He doesn’t meet her eyes.

There was a time when Varun would come into the studio ranting about his latest scientific obsession and launch into cheerful debates about jazz standards; when Riku laughed when he messed up a lyric and let them tease the slogans on his shirts; when Rey and Luna made silly faces at each other as they traded fours and Alexei made concerning jokes instead of just nodding hello and goodbye.

Luna wonders if Santi would have liked them. The brothers who took her in when hers had gone; a headache on the best of days and the only people she would want beside her on a battlefield.

She takes a seat on the drum stool. Everyone’s all set up, but no one is moving.

Riku sighs. “Just count down already, Luna.”

They play the song they’ve used to warm up for years, a cover of a ‘90s track that felt so clever when they first arranged it, when a studio sounded like shiny floors and LED lighting instead of a leak they couldn’t patch up and the faint smell of vinegar. Four years, and they’ve moved two floors down from a view of the sun.

She isn’t old enough to give up hope, but she’s too old to let herself believe wholeheartedly in something. And yet, hope is all she has. Even if it will break her heart.

I am not okay, says the earworm. She tells herself this at concerts, when all the eyes in the world are on her. If she loses the beat, it’s all over. She can’t fail, or she will die. She will die.

She and Rey play off each other, the pulse of the drums and bass two parts of the same whole. They are the sun and the moon, nothing without the other. When they’re playing, nothing else exists but the rhythm they share.

She doesn’t think about the last time they played outside this room. Doesn’t think about the rhythm slipping out of her hands, the deafening silence. The way Rey looked at her.

I am not okay, the earworm sings. She pounds it into submission and buries it somewhere in the rhythm, somewhere the others can’t see it.

They run through the track list they’ve been honing the past few months. In the middle of one, Riku calls for a pause. “We’re missing the mark. It’s not crisp.”

“Fucking Zeppelin wouldn’t sound crisp to you,” Rey says. “And enough with all that ‘we’ shit. You’re the one who’s racing ahead on the choruses.”

“No, you and Varun are taking too long on the chord changes.”

Rey scoffs. “Varun, you hearing this?”

The keyboardist shrugs. “We have room for improvement.”

Luna stiffens as Rey turns his gaze on her. “Back me up here.”

She knows the song’s current state is the best they’re going to get. She bites her tongue, and Alexei says nothing.

At the end of the rehearsal, they each pack up and rush out the door, as if there’s traffic to beat at nine p.m.

As she and Rey take the elevator, she fixes her gaze on the glowing buttons.

Luna feels his eyes on her. He says, “What’s wrong?”

His tone is indifferent, without a trace of his usual anger. That’s warmth, from him. Love she once would have done anything to bask in the flame of, that part of her still wants. She wants to punch him. She wants to hug him. Instead, she exits the elevator and makes a beeline for her car before she gets nauseous.

She doesn’t stop at any streetlights on the drive home. To her swimming vision, they all look green.

I am not okay. I am not okay. IamnotokayIamnotokayIamnotokay…

When she gets home, she can’t move. She can’t breathe. Her body’s emergency control system takes over, and her legs start towards the bathroom of their own volition.

In the shower, she sits on the floor. She can’t hear the earworm’s singing anymore. She doesn’t know if the water bathing her is from her tears or the faucet above.

She blinks, and she is in a memory.

Their last concert. The biggest crowd they’d ever seen. An opportunity, a true chance for success. Big names hid somewhere in the sea of faces, deciding whether to give the musicians a future.

The band started their opening song, ingrained into them like calluses.

There were so many eyes. People Luna hadn’t met, who didn’t know her, or Rey, or the rest of them. People who wouldn’t give them another chance, who didn’t care that this moment was everything to them.

Luna couldn’t breathe. Her hand slipped.

She lost the beat.

The aftermath comes to her now in flashes. The song collapsing into a cacophony until Riku finally lifted a hand and put it out of its misery. Stumbling through the rest of their set, their shoes finding a way into every possible pothole, everything off, like their songs distorted through a wineglass. Backstage, they bickered and bit until their throats were raw.

Before long, they moved on from finger-pointing and started digging deeper, where it hurt, where it scarred.

Luna cried at everyone to stop, stop-stop-stop, and tried to push Riku and Rey apart before anyone’s nose got bloodied. Someone threw a fist. The blow landed on her cheek, sent her stumbling back.

Everyone froze. They were a record everyone had heard too many times, and the needle was caught in a scratch. No one said they were sorry. No one offered to get her ice or asked if she was in pain.

She was always in pain. Art was born from pain, and pain made her interesting.

Riku raked a hand through his hair. “Fuck you, Rey.” He left the room and slammed the door behind him.

Varun shook his head and followed, avoiding everyone’s eyes. Alexei had disappeared long before.

Only Rey and Luna remained. Rey was angry, always angry, but for her, there was a softness to it. He didn’t give her much, but what he gave her, she made it last. She kept the looks he reserved for her in a little filigreed box in her mind and took them out when her heart was hurting. A smile from him filled her with cozy warmth in the cold. A laugh from him changed the season to summer. They were sol y luna, Rey and Luna, inseparable as their instruments. She knew the city through the streets she’d followed him down; the bar where the band they’d built together was in the same room for the first time; the person he’d turned her into.

He never stayed still for long. She was chasing after him, always, longing to earn his smile. Always one step behind, holding on too tightly, afraid that if she didn’t grasp hard enough, he’d leave her behind. She was the only person he let so close to him, she knew, but not close enough. He loved her, trusted her, in every way except the one she wanted.

She wondered if it had been his fist that had struck her. If the guilt would overcome his anger, and he would give her an apology, a remorseful look, pity, anything she could put in her box and hold on to.

Rey, his face as red as his hair, told her, “Sometimes, I can’t stand you. You can’t leave me alone. You’re always there, like some fucking mosquito.”

Her face was burning, but she felt cold. “But… I… you’re my person,” she said. “We’re a team. Sol y luna.”

Rey looked at her like when they’d first met, like she was a child. Like she wasn’t fooling anyone.

He snorted. “To you, maybe. You’re not my person.”

Part of her, a distant one untouched by the shock, wondered if the blow had been an accident at all. If he’d been yearning to hit her as much as she’d yearned to kiss him.

Inanely, she wanted to laugh. Hope was a poison, wasn’t it? Hoping for Rey to stop and see her, for fame to make it all worthwhile. Hope was unrequited love. It made her feel ugly and small, pressed its fingers against her throat and slowly suffocated her, but she couldn’t bear to separate herself from it. On the best days, it was the fantasy that fueled her to keep going; on the worst, it was a reminder of what she couldn’t have.

Always, she felt as if she were living on a precipice—one misstep, and she’d go tumbling down. She’d thought her own thoughtlessness would make her trip. Rey—firebrand, honest Rey, who’d taken a chance on a lonely kid and given her purpose—had gone ahead and given her a shove.

Curled up on the shower floor, she turns off the water.

Since their last concert, she’s been living a slow death. Repeat and fade. The copout ending bands use in recording studios when they don’t know how to end a song. Repeating the good part again and again as it gets further and further away from you, until it loses the magic that once gave it meaning.

She remembers how Rey looked at her after the rehearsal. How he asked her what was wrong.

“What’s wrong?” she says to the shower walls. “You hurt me, and you’re pretending nothing happened. And I am not okay.”

She is not okay. It didn’t start at the concert; it started before rehearsals became a hassle, before they all met at Eke’s and decided to give it a try, before she lay on Rey and Alexei’s floor and listened to the Strokes. It started with Rey outside Eke’s, offering her a joint and honesty that had seemed like salvation.

He gives her less than she would accept from anyone else, but it’s more than he gives anyone else, and she thought that made it okay. She knows he’s always caused her pain, but he didn’t ask for her to love him. He isn’t kind, has never been kind, so she doesn’t blame him for how he treats her. What they had was beautiful because it hurt, and art was born from pain.

But there are moments of joy, too. When everyone in the studio collaborates on a new song, shouts out ideas and experiments until they stumble upon something good, and everyone cries out, Again! Do that again!

Maybe art could be something else, something more than pain. Maybe life could mean something without the band. Without Rey.

She dries off and finds the phone she left on her kitchen counter. She opens the band group chat. Years ago, they would send memes to each other and clips of crazy guitar solos. When she scrolls up, all she sees are rehearsal time suggestions and thumbs ups.

She’s never liked to repeat and fade. She prefers a decisive ending, a crash of cymbals and then silence. She knows when a song has gone on for too long, when it’s time to let go.

She sends a text to the band: Eke’s, 8pm tomorrow. We need to talk.

Before she sets her phone down, it starts vibrating. Rey is calling her.

She takes a deep breath and doesn’t pick up.

In another season, another city, Luna drives her car out to a place she hasn’t been before. She rolls the windows down, breathes in the fresh autumn air, finds peace in the changing leaves. The earworm in her head today just hums, doesn’t say a word.

She sings as she drives. Her voice isn’t as strong as it once was, but it’s lost the gravel from the cigarettes, and after months of practice, she can hold a note, high and clear. The car’s passenger seat houses a stack of fliers with a smiling picture of her drumming on the front, advertising Thursday night jam sessions at a jazz club. Other musicians drift in and out of the jams like ships at a port, but she remains like a lighthouse. When they have a good rhythm going, they’re electric.

Outside the car window, she sees a line of trees in autumn blaze. She parks and gets out of the car. The sidewalk has been worn by a thousand shoes, and she joins their chorus.

Up ahead, the sun glints on something on the path. A penny on the sidewalk.

She kneels to pick it up.

jake!

robert stone

Rice was still unsure of his modest intentions even as he left the house. He thought he would buy a ticket to Melton, the station beyond Woodbridge, then walk back to Woodbridge along the river and there visit the high street where he could buy books and CDs in the charity shops.

He would call in at Mick’s on the way to the station and get two flapjacks and a bag of mini-Cheddars for his lunch. He thought to eat these sitting by the river at Wilford Bridge in Melton and having a read but he knew he might eat them on the train. That had happened before. It was only a fifteen-minute journey.

The weather was cool but dry. He would be alright to read outside for an hour and his scarf was stuffed in his pocket. He crossed to Mick’s side of the road. Twenty minutes should be enough to shop, even if there were a queue, which there almost never was. Up ahead, however, walking quickly towards him, was a man, swearing uninventively into his mobile, ear phones plugged in, not attending apparently at all to his exact direction of travel and with a muscular dog on a long lead. An unruly-looking dog and similar man. Rice was not afraid of dogs but without hesitation he crossed back over the road to avoid the awkwardness of passing this man and his excitable animal on the narrow path. No Mick’s today. He would get something in Woodbridge, a spinach and feta roll.

He had his cards ready even before he entered the station lobby. That was an old man thing to do. He’d had a senior railcard for more than a year but it still gave him a miserly thrill to use it. A third off. Lovely. Melton was three short stops away so a third was not a great saving but he could buy a CD with that money. Greater Anglia’s gift to charity and to culture.

Rice had no one to answer to, which, naturally, was a burden to him and he changed his mind once again on the train. He was anxious, childishly so, to look in the shops and hungry for his lunch. He would get off at Woodbridge and walk on to Melton, otherwise he would have to wait until he had walked back to Woodbridge for that spinach and feta and he would have nothing to eat while he sat by the river. He should have taken the trouble to go to Mick’s.

There were more than half a dozen charity shops in the high street but Oxfam and the Queen Elizabeth Hospice were the best bets. Rice never thought of which charity a shop supported. He didn’t care, although he had avoided the ‘pro-life’ shop in Ipswich. That seemed, anyway, to specialise in baby clothes, nursery paraphernalia and wool from what he had seen through the window. More volunteers than customers. He didn’t know what he thought about abortion, not really.

He didn’t find a lot in the end. A couple of CDs of music he had never heard, might be alright, good labels, and The Mound People by PV Glob. He got that for fifty pence because the pages were falling out. He had read Glob’s The Bog People forty years ago. That seemed as remote a time to him now as the lifetimes of these executed and exhumed Danes. Rice did not know whether he was still the man who had read that book, or a stranger with the same name. Remarkable photographs, some of the most amazing photographs ever taken of human beings. The Mound People was not so good as The Bog People, the bodies not nearly so well preserved.

It occurred to Rice that mining the charity shops was akin to archaeology. Obviously, the death of the previous owner was not the only reason for a book turning up in Oxfam, but when you found, say, three books published by the Grove Press in one go, or four novels by Alexander Baron, what was the likelihood? These books had been collected. No one gives such things away. Scratch one serious reader. As sure as a headstone.

He bought his roll and walked down to the river by the tide mill. He didn’t know why Woodbridge was so called. There surely could never have been a bridge of any kind here. The river was too wide. Was it not? He began his walk, away from the sea.

The path was often busy on this side; takers of exercise, walkers of dogs, watchers of birds. It was pleasant. There was a lot of greenery and even the businesses were boatyards, carpenters, craftsmen making bespoke furniture, and that was interesting. The sewage plant stank but you passed it in a minute and it attracted birds. Rice had heard a nightingale there last spring. On the other side of the river, the Sutton Hoo side, there was no path.

It was hard to say how wide the river was here, hard for Rice to say, anyway. It could not be very deep although evidently navigable. It had islands on which birds sheltered at high tide. He could see a flock of avocets packed tight like a stratum of chalk just below a long thin strip of grass on a narrow island more than a hundred yards out. Or like bathroom tiles, black and white, all that is left of a ruined house. At low tide the birds got onto the mud beyond the islands and you could not see them. The river had its secret life.

He thought of the world under the water, the culverts, crevasses and gaping trenches of the bed. Those channels in which rivers ran under this river, the cold water there that took its own course. The objects lost and thrown away that would never be found. The rare plants that no one would ever see, the ridges, ranges and chasms that might be the homes of monstrous eels. And there you were looking at it, the chilly and indifferent flux.

Rice measured the distance with his eye in one hundred yard sprints. He could remember, long ago, running such a distance. How many hundred yard sprints was it to the Sutton Hoo side? Rice couldn't find a number that would mean anything to him. He lacked the mechanism necessary to calculate such things. How many furlongs, how many cricket pitches? The river was broader here than the Thames outside the Tate Gallery, but that gives the wrong impression because the Thames is a much mightier river than the Deben, its volume of water much greater. At low tide the Deben is little more than a stream and it narrows to a very crossable place at Melton’s Wilford Bridge, doubtless the river’s ancient ford. You could ride across easily and walk it if you didn’t mind getting very wet. Sitting there Rice had seen cobbles that might have been the road before the bridge was built and larger pieces of masonry that were likely parts of an earlier structure. It’s concrete and brick now.

The Thames is impossible without a bridge or a boat. The Deben is broad because it expands downstream from Melton into that field of mud around Flea Island, as someone, Adey, dead for years now, had told him it was called. It probably wasn’t really called anything. Why should it be? The tide is the thing. The river claims a lot at high tide that its low tide self wouldn’t dream of.

Along much of this walk a metal, probably steel, wall acts as a flood barrier. It hardly seems necessary, this is not an ambitious river, but Rice supposed it must be. People choose to sit on it despite the many benches. The metal gets hot in the summer but is much less inviting on a winter’s day. Children walk along it, often holding a parent’s hand, so it pleased Rice to see a black Labrador single-mindedly trot along the barrier and making all of those taking a rest and one hand-held child get out of its way. Rice thought dogs were a nuisance generally but this one was so rude and the idea of rudeness attributed to a dog amused him. Even the people ploughed out of the dog’s way thought it was funny. Woodbridge was a good-natured place. People seemed to like one another here.

It attracts tourists. You can get in the tide mill which is a museum and the river provides easy and attractive walking for miles, but Sutton Hoo is the main reason that people come. 625 AD is the date. Rice had looked it up several times and he remembered it now. The people of Woodbridge had dragged a Viking longship into the field alongside the riverbank and buried their king in it with his grave goods, including the splendid helmet that everyone has seen. There were already barrows in the field but these were ordinary tombs. The ship lay undisturbed until 1939 when Basil Brown’s excavation found it to be the only known ship burial in Britain.

People said that Redwald was the buried king because they couldn't do without a name, but no one really knew. Once everyone had known the king who was buried there and did not imagine a period when it might be forgotten. The simple passage of time had wrought that. The secret life of the world had ticked on. The secret that is no secret.

The Sutton Hoo site had been desecrated more than a thousand years ago. Christians had used it deliberately as a place of execution and criminals were buried there. Building the barrows must have been a great unifying endeavour. That might have been an important part of the point of them. Everyone would have helped, the community, perhaps been made to. Now we have charity shops, our communal resource.

Rice had once walked among the barrows after dark, looking for birds. It had not been quite dark, he remembered because a chiffchaff had called all the time that he had been there, persistent and monotonous, counting off all the million seconds. Chiff chaff. Chiff chaff. Like a metronome keeping the beat of things. He had had an eerie time of it.

He had his binoculars slung around his neck now as he approached Flea Island, the mud field all around it under water at this point. Binoculars are an invitation to strangers to talk to you, like walking a dog. Rice was ready for these two. He had seen them scanning the water through their own glasses and he knew that they had seen him and would speak to him. It was a woman and what was surely her son, a little boy under ten. An unusual combination. At no point in the ensuing exchange did the boy take his glasses from his face, or look away from the water or offer any indication that he heard anything that was said. Rice liked him. Children with binoculars tend to bring out the evangelist in most birdwatchers.

She said,

- These birds on the island, do you know, do you mind, can you tell us what they are?

Rice raised his binoculars. He was glad to be asked. A woman was talking to him which was nice, he was flattered and helping her wasn’t going to cost him anything. He paused so as not to give the impression that the answer to her question was really obvious, although it was. Rice hadn’t heard his own voice for several days.

- I think they’re black-tailed godwits.

- Black-tailed godwits, Simon.

She looked very pleased and grateful. Rice was equally so, to be included in her view of the world as a friendly, co-operative place. Simon might have been made of stone.

- Some of the birds still have a few russet feathers left over from the summer.

The three of them watched the godwits together. The birds did nothing. Occasionally one would lift its rather comical head and as rapidly tuck it away again. A wing would be stretched high. Rice hoped that the birds would fly, rise and circle and return to the exact same spot as though a poker-faced conjuror had thrown a deck of cards into the air in a black and white swirl and then caught them all again in one hand. But the birds did nothing.

- Have you seen anything else, she asked?

The standard question. He didn’t think that he had really, nothing that he didn’t usually see at this time of the year.

- There are a few avocets off the boatyard.

- Avocets, Simon. Where are they, how far back?

It was apparent that Simon and his mother had never seen an avocet. These birders were at the beginning of their journey. People think avocets must be rare because they are so beautiful. Rice told her where they could find the birds, which they would surely see so long as they were willing to walk that far. Always a pleasure to put someone onto a new bird. She was excited for her little boy. Mentioning the sewage works would have been a help in finding the right island but Rice didn’t like to bring it up, felt squeamish about it. He could have told her about the nightingales to be found there but that was almost projecting a friendship between them into the future and those birds were not there now.

He was soon at Melton, not that there was much to the place. He crossed the busy road that went over the Wilford Bridge, next to the pub of the same name, and walked down to the water’s edge where there was some flat ground suitable for sitting and reading. Even at high tide the river was narrow here. He had brought a book with him of course but he took out the Glob and had a look through that. The Mound People. These people had been buried in barrows too, in great oak coffins. The coffins had survived but water had gotten into them and some chemical in it had dissolved the bones of the corpses leaving only skin tanned like leather. The first finders of the coffins had thought they were empty but for a few rusty bits and pieces and had thrown away the boneless bodies without noticing them.

Rice became absorbed. He liked the descriptions of the modest things that were found...two small bronze discs with raised spikes. Such things often called ornaments as if that explained anything...two rows of bronze tubes, about one hundred and twenty-five of them in all.

He read on, arrested by the photographs, flicking through. Certain words caught his eye. A collection of objects that might once have belonged to a shaman, comprising a part of his equipment...a squirrel’s jaw, a falcon’s beak, the tail of a grass snake.

It was while reading this that he heard the train go by behind him. That was the train that he had hoped to catch back home. He cursed. He was cold. He decided to walk back to Woodbridge and get on the train there. He might see Simon’s mother again, but it was unlikely and he wasn’t thinking about that as he knotted his scarf around his neck.

The tide had hardly seemed to change, the water was still slack. He looked at an island on which there were three tall trees quite dead. They had grown twenty feet and then the water had killed them, the salt most probably. Cormorants roosted on them now and sometimes a little egret. Someone had told him that mere decades ago cormorants never roosted in trees, only on cliffs. They were changing and moving inland.

Rice didn’t meet Simon and his mother on the way back. He wondered if they had bothered to try for the avocets. What he did see was a man standing facing the water and shouting at it. Rice couldn't hear what he was shouting at first but it was the same word over and over. When he got closer he understood the man was shouting Jake! and he was shouting this at a black Labrador that was on the opposite riverbank however many yards away. Rice stopped and looked at the man, a little behind him. What was to be done? He looked with an interested curiosity, watched the man and waited.

It appeared that this had been going on for some time, judging by the man’s hoarse exasperation. Rice didn’t like to ask at this point. Jake’s owner was a beetle-browed Cro-Magnon-looking chap with hair rather like a dog’s fur, but red. Bristles almost. He was a tough, a roughneck. His face was like a fist that opened when he shouted and closed tight again when he was quiet. He was clearly upset.

Lots of dogs swim in the river as part of their walk. Their owners throw things for them to retrieve. Jake had, for reasons of his own, swum all that way to the Sutton Hoo side and now could not swim back, or chose not to, or did not understand that he had to. If this were a cat up a tree scenario you could phone the Fire Brigade or the RSPCA. Part of the problem was the absence of a path on the other side. Jake was on the edge of rough scrub that ended at the water. Even if you were over there it would not be at all clear that you could tell where the dog was and to cross the river from here and to find the right route through the fields where the barrows were was no small matter. The road ran some distance from the water.

Jake was so far away that Rice couldn't properly make out what he was doing. He looked at him through his binoculars. The dog had his mouth open in that simulacrum of an affable grin that Labradors have. He might have barked once or twice, but you couldn't hear him. Like a silent film of a dog, all the noise around them made quiet by that unheard barking. Maybe Jake could hear his owner, a dog’s senses being more acute. Rice thought that he could shout too, to increase the volume and perhaps excite Jake. The owner might think that he should mind his own business.

Could Jake island-hop back to the Woodbridge side? Or walk back through the mud at a lower tide? That would take many hours, the turning of the tide, it would definitely be dark by then. Rice wondered if Jake might have an almost genetic knowledge of tides and of the time of day, or know that there ought to be an easier crossing nearby. Could an animal know that? Really wild animals must know. They are not bamboozled by rivers, they don’t cross them just by luck, by trial and error, do they? But this was assuming that Jake wanted to come back.

Rice watched Jake through his glasses again, curious to see how he was spending this time. The dog paced a few yards of the shore, sniffing at the water, carelessly standing in it. Occasionally he raised his head and pricked up his ears as though he could hear his name being called but not sure from where. He lifted his leg a time or two. He sat on his haunches and watched the green water. He shook himself and perhaps turned the air around him silver, but you couldn’t see that, not from here. If he caught the scent of a rabbit he would be gone and that wilderness was alive with rabbits.

Rice dared to ask the man if he had a phone. He could have phoned a friend who would watch Jake and liaise with the owner as he made his way to Sutton Hoo and through the scrub. The owner had no phone. He looked ashamed not to have one and irritated with Rice for bringing it up, who didn’t have one either. Perhaps he felt tested. Rice suggested that it was a pity that no one could swim across, as Jake had done. This was a stupid thing to say, but the owner wasn’t angry. At least someone was talking to him, keeping him company. Everyone else walked by without comment, amused if anything. Still, the man could not see how Rice might help him and neither could Rice, but he needed only a very little encouragement to keep talking. Rice did think of simply walking on, catching his train, going home. It was an option and he was a man who considered options rather than one who felt urgent desires. It was cold and he only now remembered that he had not eaten his roll. It seemed callous to eat it in front of this man.

An obvious solution, Rice thought, would be for the man to walk away and forget the whole thing. Jake was only a dog. Get another dog. You wouldn’t do that with a child, but this situation exactly demonstrated the difference between a dog and a child. You can reason with children, who are often, in any case, relatively poor swimmers. It was within this man’s power to walk away and rescuing or retrieving his dog was not.

Rice admired Jake though. The Deben had been a Lethe to him, if not a Styx, once he had plunged in. All of a certain world forgotten. Only the need to swim to the other side remained. Forget your old and pathetic life. Had Redwald been laid to rest with a dog at his feet? He wasn’t sure he hadn’t got that from a film. Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis.

Rice considered Jake’s options. He had swum five hundred yards, perhaps, but also fifteen hundred years. A poet had said that time is inches and the heart’s changes. Jake had swum to the day when the ship was dragged from the river. Imagine the heart and lungs of that heroic animal, swimming the great night journey to the land of the dead. Where ought Jake to want to live? The Sutton Hoo side was death, or the ancient and better world. Or does he return to Woodbridge where he is only a pet, a daft dog? Better to be swept off to drown. The dog is wild at heart. It once ran alongside better men than these and it only takes a dip in the river and it remembers that unspoilt life. It clicks back into place like a dislocated bone. Jake was free now. His primeval body on its joyful escapade. How were we to lure Jake back from his wild and ancient life? With a biscuit?

A robin began to sing behind them. Rice had no need to turn around, he was sure of the song. Robin, he muttered under his breath, unable to help himself. He was getting tired of standing. He couldn't feel his toes, the only parts of his feet that did not ache.

He admired Jake’s owner too. It takes a certain kind of courage or desperation to stand on a riverbank and shout as Woodbridge files past behind you. You give yourself away. You tell everyone what it is you need. Rice thought he might not be able to bring himself to do that for the sake of a dog. It was a matter of self-defence. Admiration, pity, contempt. If Rice shouted too it would divide the shame of the thing and the owner ought to be ashamed because it was clear that his dog did not love him. It’s like he was standing in the street and shouting to his wife, Jacky! Jacky! Please don’t leave me. Come back, Jacky!

He didn’t shout all of the time, although he carried on shouting, perhaps in the hope that the 100th or 200th Jake! would unlock the dog’s obedience. Abracadabra. Little motor dinghies were pottering up and down the river all of the time, but they were here and gone in a moment and could not be made to understand what was required. A sailing boat was moored nearby and a metal clasp in its rigging chimed against its white mast with an unthinking constancy. Rice began to count the chimes. Every fifteen, the man shouted Jake! and Rice realised the man was counting too. Fifteen, his lucky number, perhaps. Unless he had been captured by that pitiless rhythm. He might have been afraid that his voice would break into a humiliating squeak.

Rice wondered what a dog’s name meant to it. Was this dog the one he had seen walking along the flood barrier? He thought not. There were a lot of black Labradors.

He pondered the irrelevant and foolish things he could say to this man. If he had named his dog Redwald he would now be standing here shouting Redwald! Redwald! at Sutton Hoo. He didn’t say this, he said something that surprised himself. He told the man he would go and get his dog for him. The man looked at Rice as though he expected to see him jump into the water there and then.

Rice knew that you don’t do the things you think about doing, only the things you do without thinking. Hearing the robin sing had made him remember that tomorrow was inevitable and the week and the month later. Times passes irresistibly. Life is a collection of disparate things, not a puzzle or a story. A resolution of all of this had looked impossible, but a resolution of some kind was actually impossible to evade.

Rice told the man to stay where he was and he would walk round to Sutton Hoo, over the Wilford Bridge, and find a path through the scrub to roughly where he thought Jake was now. He could take a bearing from the tide mill. The man should stay put in case the dog tried to cross the river again or in case the man’s disappearance should encourage Jake to wander off. Rice stressed to the man that this would take some time, two hours, certainly. He had to dampen the man’s gratitude at this point as he evidently thought that Rice was pleading for some.

- I’d better go straightaway, said Rice, or it will be dark before I get there.

He began to walk briskly back towards Melton. Almost immediately he regretted what he had promised. It’s only a dog, he told himself. When he got to the bridge, having scoffed his roll, finally, as he walked, he was also at the pub of the same name, The Wilford Bridge. It was already dark enough so that the light through the window shone a warm and yellow welcome. Rice decided to go in. He thought that something might turn up in the pub, as things sometimes did, if he got chatting to someone with a car, a dog lover.

When Rice had offered to go and get Jake, he had meant it. Not really out of generosity, more that he saw this as a possible answer. The only one, unless Jake decided to rescue himself. That of course might still happen, the animal would take a hint from the failing light and the falling tide.

Rice ordered his pint and stood reading what was chalked up on the specials board. Steak and ale pie. He looked around the pub. Quiet as yet. He considered that he had done no harm, that he might still go and look for Jake. If not today, then on another day. He might like to live with Jake in those hills, with all of nature by their side.

 Whistle

 Franz Jørgen Neumann

While on our drive to meet Sara’s folks in Port Angeles, the three of us stop at a lodge so my son can use the bathroom. I lead Daniel through the lobby to the single stall in the men’s room where I lay down a seat liner and lift him onto the toilet.

“Got it? I’ll let Sara know where we are.”

Sara stands at the edge of the gift shop. A wedding party fills the space between us, perfumed women done up and laughing, young men looking like it’s their first time in suits. I point to Sara and then to the lodge’s dining hall. She gives me a thumbs up.

As always, Daniel takes his time. On my third check-in, I find a middle-aged man in a suit and feathered trilby knocking at the door to Daniel’s stall.

“You must understand,” the man says in a European accent. “The other toilets here are in repair. I must use this one.” He turns to me. “I am next.”

The man bends down to look under the door, and I do the same. Daniel’s legs are swinging, pants bunched above his little sneakers. He’s a four-year-old who’s never been in a rush, who doesn’t consider how his actions might affect the patience of others, who has been taught to ignore strangers. He is unperturbed by the man’s “You must be done now, little boy. You must!”

Little boy is humming.

I could tell Daniel to hurry, but that’s never done any good. A child is a creature who slows down time. I’m not sorry for prolonging the man’s agony, either. No one should be allowed to ask anything of a boy who has lost his mother.

Daniel emits a dog-like whine and a puff of gas.

“I must use it now, you understand?” the man says. He is sweating and swaying, the crisp creases of his trousers buckling. He takes hold of the top lip of the stall door and shakes it back and forth. “It cannot wait! It cannot wait!”

Heat shoots through me. I grab the man by the back of his neck and force him into the lobby, then out to the parking lot, where I shove him forward.

“Stay the hell away from my son,” I say.

The air is cool and fresh from a drizzle, but I feel disgusted. I reenter the lodge behind a bride, groom, and videographer. Beads of water leap from the bride’s dress. The groom’s suit glistens. The bride turns from the camera and drops her smile. “Enough. I don’t want to remember this,” she says, reading my mind.

Daniel appears beside me, tugging at my arm.

“I’m done, Daddy.” 

His hands are wet, pants buttoned, cheeks apple red from his palms having pressed against them for…was it really fifty minutes?

“Good job,” I say.

We join Sara in the lodge’s dining hall and place our orders. Sara suggests we book a room for the night, given how the day has gotten away from us. Daniel, tired of sitting, isn’t interested in coloring the kids’ activity place mat, so I take him outside and down to the lakeshore. Silver rowboats lie upturned where the grass and gravel intermingle. I don’t tell Daniel that he was here before, as a baby. I don’t tell him of the life I thought was ahead for the three of us. How would telling Daniel more things about his late mother — about a life he doesn’t even remember — help him feel anything but an undercurrent of loss? Instead, I gather flat stones and hand him the best ones. We skip them across the water and into the curls of mist, the quick dimples on the surface of the lake looking like the tracks of an invisible creature sprinting from shore. Some of Daniel’s throws miss completely and clang on the boat hulls behind us.

“We should head back before Sara starts on your mac and cheese,” I say.

Daniel sprints up the lawn and manages the doors on his own. Following behind, I take in the lodge and have the peculiar sensation that my recollections have waited here to ambush me, each colored by a sorrow I would never have imagined could attach itself to memories of a woodpecker outside our room’s window, the banana slug on my jacket, the giant raccoons that woke us in the night as they fought up in a tree.

To derail the heartache, I imagine it was Sara I had Daniel with, that this is our return trip instead of an unscheduled stop. But the soulless trick works for only a moment. The love I have for Sara is different. A necessary love. Maybe not love at all.

Seeing Daniel take his seat in the dining hall, I stop at the front desk and learn that the lodge has a few vacancies — if I don’t mind a bit of ruckus from a wedding party. I’m handed earplugs with the room keys. I fetch our bags and take them upstairs, then reenter the restaurant where Daniel is showing Sara a terrifically long French fry. She leans forward and nibbles it all the way to his fingers as he giggles. I give her one of the room keys and finish my meal alone, looking at the wall of sepia photos showing the lodge under construction: the horse-drawn logs, the record snowpack, the work crew posing amid beams and joists, people who’d left behind their efforts but not themselves.

On my way out, I spot the European man in the gift shop. He comes toward me haltingly, like he’s just learned how to walk.

“You must accept my apology,” he says, removing his hat. “I was desperate, you understand. I was not thinking.”

“Neither of us were thinking,” I say.

“Yes.” He beckons me toward the gift shop. “Let me buy your boy a trifle. What does he like?”

My eyes pass over the polished rocks, miniature license plates, pocketknives, and vials of gold flake, knowing that accepting his offer is necessary so we can both forget our earlier altercation.

“What about a train whistle?” the man says. “Does he like trains?”

“Loves them, but it’s not necessary,” I say, playing the game.

He pays and returns to me.

“One train whistle for your son,” he says, his face soft and kind. He hands me a second whistle. “And one for the father.” 

“Thanks,” I say, feeling utterly removed from the person who saw malice in this man.

We shake hands, finalizing our peace treaty. For the first time all day, a moment of lightness fills me. It holds steady upstairs in the hallway where I give a whistle a try and enjoy the little four-tone toot. In our room, I find Daniel out from his bath and in fresh pajamas, Sara ruffling his hair dry with a towel. He runs into my arms, his body still hot-water warm and smelling sweet, a precious wonder of a being whom I hug hard, even when he’s let go. I hand him a train whistle and pass mine to Sara. “One for you, too.”

I want to thank Sara for waiting for us in the dining hall, for giving Daniel his bath, for being here. But she’s already chugging around the room with Daniel, both of them blowing their whistles, the air rich with pleasant downy harmonics. Around and around me they go until a firm knocking on our door halts them. The man in the hallway says he’s from the room downstairs. His wife has a headache. Could we keep it down? 

“Sorry,” I say. “We’re just letting off some steam.”

Daniel’s brief toot undercuts my apology. Sara turn away in laughter.

“I wish you’d do it outside,” the man says.

And we do. We walk along the water’s edge, Daniel blowing his whistle and insisting that we answer.

When Sara and I first got together, she had the two of us set aside an entire weekend where I did nothing but share everything I wanted to share about my late wife and our time together. But I’ve found that there are always more memories. And though Sara didn’t set a limit on disclosures, what would be the point of telling her how Daniel’s mother, here at the lodge, fell down the stairs, laughing so hard at her tumble that she could barely breathe? The running gag of her clumsiness was really just the first sign of what was to come, though we didn’t know it then.

I keep the memory to myself and pretend she never passed away. That she’s an ex, living abroad, a woman I’m under no obligation to think about daily. This trick works for a few moments, then my thoughts jump to Daniel, who is waiting for us at the first plank of a boat dock. We take his hands and lead him out onto this long and narrow in-between space that’s not quite land, not quite water. We walk to the end, where we swing him repeatedly out over the deep, dark water to Daniel’s fearful delight.

Members of the wedding party come out onto the dock. They’re laughing, ties loosened, bridesmaid’s dresses the color of the trees in the dusk. We cede the dock and watch them imitating us, two of the women swinging a young man over the edge by his arms and legs, once, twice, then losing their balance, all three of them falling into the lake. They shriek, laugh, splash each other in water that turns out to be only a few feet deep, there where it looked like it went down forever.

 Steam

Beth Sherman

When did it begin? I don’t know. When do you want it to begin? 

Fine. When we were little, my brother and I used to jump out the window into the snow. First, we’d catch our breath in our hands. It looked like steam or some special effect from a movie we’d never watch. The cold grabbed hold of us and tore at our skin. Some people say Maine’s pretty. That’s because they don’t live here. There’s nothing to look at, just mountains and pine trees and potato fields and more mountains. But I had my brother and that was enough. I wasn’t scared to jump from a window. I knew nothing bad would happen because he would keep me safe.    

If I’d grown up someplace else, someplace like Florida, for instance, I’d probably be working in a school right now. I’d be a teacher’s assistant. I always liked kids. At the end of the day, my husband and I would sip wine on the porch and watch our children play on the swing set. I’d be a different person. My father doesn’t think so. Neither does Pete. But I do. Otherwise, I couldn’t stand being cooped up with a bunch of women who committed real crimes. 

My father drove me to the bus station. 

“Listen,” he said. “There’s nothing for you in New York. Someone gets shot there every twenty minutes.”

“What about the rest of the time?”  

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

Outside, the wind moaned. Icicles dangled from tree branches. The plows had come through and piled snow higher than the car on both sides of the road. It was like driving through a tunnel.

“You could have waited till graduation. How far are you gonna get if you drop out of high school?”

“How far’d you get staying in school?”

He reached for me, but I pressed against the passenger side door and he ended up pretending to turn the radio higher. After that we stopped talking. 

My father’s lived in Maine his whole life. He’ll never leave our crappy town. The worst part is he doesn’t mind. He’s happy working at the auto body shop, having too many beers with his friends. He doesn’t care that he comes home smelling like diesel oil and passes out on the couch. Other nights, the angry ones – well, I don’t want to talk about that. 

When we got to the bus depot, he fiddled with the defroster. It was clear he was dropping me off instead of waiting for the bus to come. “I give it three weeks,” he said before the car door slammed shut. “After that, don’t bother coming back.” 

I want to be the one asking questions. Grilling you for a change. Asking you all kinds of personal stuff about your marriage and your kids and how often you use drugs. Would you like that? I didn’t think so. I’d sit there knowing when I was finished, I could leave this tiny room and get a burger and a Coke and walk down the street naked if I wanted and no one would think I was a bad person. I’ve gotten death threats. Did you hear? People who don’t even know me think I should be killed.    

The first night I slept in a park. Not Central Park, a smaller one downtown. There were lots of fancy buildings on the edge of it, like big glittery mirrors. A playground. A fountain. Dozens of benches smeared with bird poop. I put my duffel under my head like it was a pillow and a few hours later, when I woke up, a man had his hand down my shirt.  I screamed so loud I scared us both, before he took off with my stuff. I was too dazed to cry. All the money I’d saved was in the bag. I rummaged around in my jacket pockets, unearthing a quarter, a used tissue, and half a pack of gum. That stupid Frank Sinatra song kept playing in my head: Something about the news and being a part of it. 

I met Pete the next day at a Burger King on Seventh Avenue. He had a nose ring and his hair was bleached white with a green streak through it. He turned to me in the line and said: “You used to be able to come in here and get a burger for a buck.”

“Are they any good?” 

“How about I buy you one and you decide?” 

He also got me a medium fries and we split a vanilla shake. I looked terrible. I hadn’t showered and the makeup I’d applied in my bedroom at home was cakey and gross. Pete didn’t seem to notice.

He told me how he’d grown up on a farm in Utah with cows and chickens, instead of potatoes. “I’ll take you there sometime,” he told me.

I wasn’t sure if he was saying that because he wanted something from me or if he really meant it. “I don’t think I’d like a farm. I hate getting up early and I’m not good with animals.”

He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You have the most beautiful eyes. They give me chills. Look.”

He rolled up his sleeve and I saw he had a tattoo of an old-fashioned pocket watch on his bicep. Underneath it said: Don’t waste time. The rest of his arm was covered in goose bumps. 

“Look what your eyes have done. They’re so damn pretty they should be in a song.”

It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. Plus, he was the only person I’d talked to since I got to the city.

After we finished eating, we walked down Broadway, making fun of the people dressed up as Minnie Mouse or Smurfs. One of the Elmos kept trying to shortchange the tourists he took pictures with until a guy punched him to get his money back. When it got dark, Pete invited me over to his place: a homeless shelter in Brooklyn. I remember the whole building smelled of piss and beer. He shared the tiny room with two other men. The walls were so thin you could hear people yelling on both sides.

How far did I think I’d get in New York City with no money? I never really thought about it. Now I know you can’t rent a closet for five times what I’d managed to save. I’m talking about an actual closet, with hangers and a light bulb that hangs from a chain.

“You’re a whore,” Pete would say.

He’d look up from the floor where he was picking at his guitar, hitting one sour note after another and calling me the worst names you can think of.

“You’re nuts. You need to check yourself into a hospital or something.”  

“Bitch. Without me, you’d be living on the streets.”

By this time, we were living in a different shelter. Pete claimed I was his wife but our marriage license had been stolen.     

He’d fling the guitar across the room and storm out. I wouldn’t see him for days. 

He wasn’t a mean drunk like my father. He never hit me. But there was something wrong with him I couldn’t fix. He’d be okay for a while and then out of nowhere he’d start saying the food at the shelter was poisoned or he’d accuse me of coming onto other guys behind his back. He’d get jittery and stay up all night, writing his “novel,” which was just a bunch of words strung together that didn’t make sense.     

“When they come for us, we need guns,” he used to say, staring at the door like someone was going to burst in any minute.

“We can’t afford a gun.”

It was true. We could barely afford a bottle of Pepsi.     

Plus, they do background checks in New York and neither of us would have passed. Back home, we have a Smith & Wesson. I went there once with a boyfriend. He owned a 69 Magnum that he took better care of than he did me. 

“Jalen says we got to get a gun.”     

“Uh huh.”

Jalen is one of the people inside the walls who talks to Pete. Not all the time. When he’s normal and I ask him about Jalen and Kryton and Ankara, he laughs and says he makes them up to tease me.     

The city is filled with sad people. You see them living out of cardboard boxes on Fifth Avenue, right in front of the expensive stores. Sometimes they have signs or dogs. No matter how awful things got, we were never that bad off. Every time I felt like going back to Maine, I thought about my father, and I stayed. Pete kept moving us from one shelter to the next. When it came time to fill out the papers and meet with social workers, he never acted crazy. He’d tell them how he’d been looking for work, how he wanted a better life for us.     

Pete likes to say everything happens for a reason. I guess he has a point.  There are millions of people in New York and who’s to say I wouldn’t have met some other guy if I’d walked into Dunkin’ Donuts instead. Maybe I’d have gotten a job somewhere. I used to walk into delis and coffee shops, tell them I could work the register or wait tables, whatever they needed. But they’d take one look at me and their faces would shut down. I was usually wearing something that didn’t fit right. And I must have smelled bad because I didn’t like taking showers at the shelters. The locks on the bathroom doors were broken and men were always walking in. Once, a guy grabbed me from behind and pushed me against the wall. I fought back. He only broke my nose. Pete found him and beat him up so badly they couldn’t wash his blood off the stairwell.     

It wasn’t always like that. I taught myself to play Pete’s guitar and sang on subway platforms with a wooden cigar box at my feet, where people put tips. Once in a while, Pete would get work unloading stuff from trucks. Then we could afford to treat ourselves. We’d ride the Staten Island Ferry back and forth all day. It’s peaceful on the water. I felt like I was just another tourist taking pictures of the Statue of Liberty.     

“I love you, angel,” Pete said.

He’d have his arms around me, and he’d kiss the back of my neck and rub my hands to keep them warm.     

“You are the best thing in my life,” he’d say. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” 

Once, in winter, we bought roast chicken and potato chips and headed to the Hudson River. Pete called it a snow picnic.     

He used to go to church on Sundays. Sometimes I went with him. It was warm inside, and you could sit for as long as you wanted. No one threw you out. He comes from a religious family. They’re Mormons so for them God’s in charge of all the stuff you’re not allowed to do. Pete says how he’s through with that nonsense, but I don’t believe him. He still has his Bible from back home. The cover’s faded and the ink’s a little smeared. He carries it in a Ziploc bag from shelter to shelter, like a valuable sandwich.

I know being with Pete wasn’t good for me. Sometimes I’d lie awake at night thinking up ways to leave him. I’d picture myself on a bus or a train. I was always wearing clean clothes. I had money in my pocket and the air smelled like buttered rolls. Only that’s as far as I got: Transportation. I never had a real plan. And I knew it was only a dream. I couldn’t survive in the city without him.     

Right before I left Maine, my brother asked me to go out in the yard and shovel a path from the truck to the front door. He was taking a class at the community college and said he’d help me when he was done studying. After I finished with the path, I started making snow angels. He and I used to do that a lot. We’d get on our backs and wave our arms like mad and make angels with perfect wings. It was always so quiet in winter. The sky went on forever and sunlight tickled the branches of the pines, then slid down and warmed our faces. It was the closest I ever got to happiness.     

When I went back inside, my brother was lying on the couch with his face mashed into the pillow and his skin so white it was paler than snow. On the table beside him were lines of white powder that looked like sugar. It took twenty-three  minutes for the ambulance to come because the roads were so bad. The whole time I was talking to God in my head. Making imaginary bargains. Like I’d never steal lip gloss from Target again if only He’d fix it so my brother would be okay. I’d never cut school or talk back to my father or forget to make supper – you get the point. I even offered to switch places, so I’d be the one passed out and he’d be screaming wake up wake up wake up. 

The funeral was two days later. Because the ground was too frozen to bury him, they had to put his body into a storage unit until everything thawed out. We had a service at the cemetery anyway, just for show. Snow caked my eyelashes and made my teeth ache. Afterwards, the local paper wrote a story about us. How my brother was the eighty-first person to overdose in Maine that year. I was home when the reporter interviewed my father. She asked if we’d known my brother had a drug habit. That’s what she called it – a “habit.” As if it was something as casual as brushing his teeth at night or whistling under his breath. My father swore he didn’t know, but I did. I guess I was too stupid to realize what a big deal it was. I was more focused on my clothes and my friends and whether or not Trevor LaFroschia liked me. My brother wasn’t eating or sleeping. He’d gotten so skinny his pants kept slipping below his boxers, but every time I tried to talk to him about it, he promised to stop. My father was too busy drinking to notice. He could barely stand to look at me. Maybe he thought he’d already invested too much love in one kid, and it was easier to stop caring so he wouldn’t be crushed a second time. Or maybe he never really liked me to begin with.     

I used to see my brother all the time. He’d be sitting across the room from us at the shelter, eating a bowl of soup, or driving a truck up Eighth Avenue or getting on the downtown train just as the doors were closing. It wasn’t like with Jalen. I knew he wasn’t real. But he wasn’t a ghost either. It’s like all these other people had his face, only they didn’t know it.     

When Pete wasn’t around, I’d take out the molly I’d stolen from my brother’s bottom drawer and try to figure out how much it was worth. It didn’t look like much. Powdered sugar you could stretch into lines. But it was the only thing that could get me someplace better than where I was.     

Pete knew how to work the system, which meant we usually had someplace to stay. Only the shelters are too cold in winter and too hot in summer, so we played this game to keep our minds off the weather. It’s called “Would You?”

We’d ask each other questions like: Would you rather go to Germany or Australia? If you were stranded on a desert island, would you rather have food or music? If you could change one thing, would it be where you live or how you look?     

Then we guessed which answer the other person would choose. I got pretty good at it. 

One time, we were asking each other how far we’d go for money. It was so cold in our room that my whole body hurt. Even my nose was cold, like a dog’s. We didn’t have a blanket. We were lying on the bed with our jackets over us.     

“Would you rather rob an old lady or a kid?” Pete asked.

The guy next door to us was beating on his girlfriend again and she was crying and cursing him in Spanish. Every time he hit her we could hear his fist smack some soft part of her body.     

Pete kept the game going. “When you broke into her apartment, would it be through the window or the door?”

“What do you think?”

“Window.”

“Correct.”

“Would you steal cash or jewelry?”

I guessed cash, but I was wrong.

“I’d take her wedding ring,” Pete said, “and give it to you.”

That’s how he asked me to marry him.     

Skyler and Sammi were born three months later. Those were the happiest days. I think I finally started to care about Pete, instead of thinking up ways to flat leave him. We got free formula and baby supplies and when we went to the soup kitchen for a free meal everyone would look at the babies and fuss over them. I took them with me when I sang in the subway. People gave me more money when they saw the girls, who laughed when trains rushed by. They weren’t scared. Trains were like big, noisy pets. And Pete liked being a dad. He’d change the girls’ diapers, push them in the stroller and walk the halls carrying them until they stopped crying and fell asleep. When I asked him about the people in the walls, he said Jalen and the others had gone into hiding for now and he didn’t know exactly where they were. He never called me names anymore or threw my things in the trash. He spent every free minute looking after his girls, singing to them in his high-pitched, cracked voice, which used to get on my nerves but now sounded as soothing as summer rain.     

In my favorite picture of us, Skyler’s wearing a pink headband with a bow on it that I found on the platform of the downtown A train. It cleaned up good in the wash. All the dirt came out and it looked like new. Sammi is wearing this big smile that’s always on her face. People comment on it. They say things like, What a happy baby. What a sweetheart. Not that Skyler isn’t happy, too. They have different personalities. When they were born, I was the only one who could tell them apart. The nurse put them in my arms, and I knew I finally had something that was mine. It was like holding the best part of me.     

The last shelter we lived in was in the Bronx. A small, dark building next to a liquor store so there were always drunks hanging around hassling you when you walked by. When I heard someone knocking, I thought Pete was back and he’d forgotten his key. The babies were lying on the sofa. I opened the door to see a girl standing there. She was older than me, with tangled black hair and olive skin. She had three kids with her. A little boy who looked about three and two older girls. I thought maybe she lived down the hall and wanted to know if I had any milk. That’s how stupid I am.     

Pete had a plan. We were going to Florida. Saving up, selling the molly a little at a time. All our money was rolled up in a sock. I used to count it when I was feeling low. He knew some guy whose friend worked construction and they were always hiring. We’d looked at photos of Miami on his phone. It was pretty – palm trees, sunsets, beaches, ocean. I pictured us feeding the seagulls, how the girls would learn to swim and have a good life. They’d never be cold. We’d live in a real house with a kitchen and a yard. People would get to know us.     

“I’m Pete’s wife,” the girl said, pushing her way past me, dragging her kids with her.

It felt like someone had punched me in the throat because the minute she said it I knew it was true.

“Get out,” I told her. “There’s nothing for you here.”

“I don’t want him back. I need money.”

The kids were looking at Skyler and Sammi. The girl looked at them too and shrugged her shoulders like they were nothing special.     

“Danny has to go to the dentist and Maya needs new shoes.”

I put my hands over my ears because I didn’t want to know her kids’ names. There were too many people in the room. It was hard to breathe.     

“You have to leave. You can’t stay here.”

I spoke really loudly – not yelling because I didn’t want Skyler and Sammi to think I was the type of person who yells – but loud enough to get the girl mad. She started screaming at me, saying how she was going to tell the cops about Pete and haul his sorry ass to jail, how he never saw his own kids anymore. He couldn’t just dump them like they were nothing.     

The babies started crying. I wanted to go over and pick them up, but her kids were in the way.     

“Stop,” I said, closing my eyes.     

I could see she didn’t blame me for anything. Even though she was mad, she felt sorry for me.     

The rest is a blur. I don’t remember how I got her out. I think I told her to leave her number. Or I promised I’d talk to him. Anything to get rid of her.     

By the time he came back, we were gone.     

We had rats in Maine. My father used to hide glue traps all over the place. I was the one who had to collect them and throw them in the trash. The rats’ eyes were always open, staring at me like they were trying to make me feel guilty. With sticky traps, they don’t die right away. Their feet get caught and they struggle for a long time. I think they die of a heart attacks or something. That’s how I feel – since you asked. Like I’m in a big sticky trap and the more I try to wriggle free, the more it hurts.

I’m a good mother. I know what that means because I didn’t have one. She took off when I was three and my brother was five. She didn’t leave a note saying she was sorry or that she’d write us with her address when she got where she was going. I remember her standing in front of the stove, cooking something yellow. My father says that can’t be right because she never cooked or cleaned a day in her life. According to him, she just lay around the house and complained. There aren’t any photographs. Maybe he threw them away or never took any to begin with. I’m not telling you because I want you to feel sorry for me. It’s not an excuse, just a fact.     

I didn’t know how to work the system like Pete did. When I applied for new housing, they said I already had a place to live. They wanted to know if Pete had abused me or the girls – if that’s why I wanted to leave. I said yeah, he did. I had to get away from him. Everything he told me was a lie. What’s one more? I’d seen his true self. A guy who could walk away from three kids and never look back is a guy who’d forget about us one day.     

The social worker was barely older than me. She wore jeans and a low-cut blouse. I thought she looked unprofessional.     

She took a small plastic frog from a drawer in her desk and gave it to Skyler. Sammi was asleep. “Let me check your file,” she said, thumbing through papers in a cream-colored folder.  

“I have a file?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“Can I see it?”

“I’m sorry. That information is confidential.”

I could guess what was inside. Police reports from when I’d gotten caught buying weed and stealing food. All the times people had called social services about me, saying it was wrong to have my girls on the subway platform while I sang.

“Are you planning on filing charges against your husband?”

Pete and I aren’t legally married. We were waiting until we got to Miami, a sunset ceremony on the beach.     

“I’m leaving the city. We’re going to stay with my father in Houlton, Maine.”

“When?”

“Today. Could I use your phone? He’s going to wire us the money.”

“Certainly.”

She pushed the phone across the desk. It was four in the afternoon. I dialed and waited, listening to the phone ring in the empty house, picturing snow clouding the windows.     

“He’s not home yet. I’ll call back later.”

“Do you want to try him at work? We can look up the number.”

“He might be on the tractor,” I said, smiling harder.

There were potato fields surrounding our house, but nobody had farmed them in forty years. I was never going back to Maine. I didn’t want my father to lay a finger on my babies.     

“Do you think you could lend me money for bus fare and then when I get there, I’ll send you a check to pay you back?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. Let’s see if we can find you a room for the night and we can call your father in the morning. Or I can keep trying him if you leave me his number.” 

“Sure.”     

I gave her the number of Just Bucks, in Houlton, where I used to work before it closed. 

“I can stay with a friend in Brooklyn tonight. My friend, Stacy. She’s a teaching assistant.  Is it okay if I come back tomorrow, around ten? That way, you can help figure out how I can get us the money.”     

She nodded, like she believed me. I guess watching Pete all this time had taught me a few things after all.     

When that girl knocked on the door, she ripped something loose in my heart. It wasn’t me I was worried about. It was the girls. Now they’d never have a father. The only thing they had was me. The thought left me shaky and hollowed out. I just wanted to stop feeling that way. I’d never taken molly before. You can ask Pete. He’ll tell you.     

They were working on the Second Avenue subway but there were still places you could get to underground, secret parts that weren’t finished. The workers had left a tarp on the platform, and I made a bed out of that. It was cold and I put the babies close to a steam pipe. That way, they’d be warm.

You know the rest. It was in all the papers. How a construction worker found us. How their skin turned purple and started blistering from the heat. How I couldn’t have known the pipe would burst.     

Tell me again what reckless endangerment means.     

Skyler has some breathing problems. And Sammi’s going to need another operation. But they’re alive. That’s all that matters. They’re alive. I did everything you said. I told exactly what happened. Now you have to let me out. I’ll never take drugs again. I swear. I’m their mother. That has to count for something.     

I know what I did was wrong. My babies almost died because of me. If you fix it so they’ll be okay I’ll do anything you say. Anything at all. I promise I won’t ever go near either of those girls again if the doctors make them well.     

When did it begin?

The first time we jumped out the window it had been snowing for a week. Drifts licked the side of the house. We opened my bedroom window as wide as it could go and sat on the ledge. The potato fields were tucked into a thick coverlet of snow.   

“Come on,” my brother said. “It won’t hurt. I promise.”

I wanted to believe him. Outside, jays screamed in the pines. The moon was icy white and all the potatoes were sleeping underground. When he grabbed hold of my hand, I felt the snow strike my face and before I knew it, we were falling.     

 Bloodstream

Dafydd McVeigh

Diego was dating an older guy who had a car and everything. I rode in the back like a kid, the two of them up front like my parents. Diego had ostensible control of the music, but Brett— the older guy, Brett— kept asking him to queue up songs. I held an iced coffee in one hand, and passed it to the other whenever it got too cold. Each time the rattling ice gave my restlessness away, I feared that Brett might judge me because of it.

Brett said, whipping down a narrow side street, “So, Elis — what do you do for work again?” Everything in that moment, from Brett’s wraparound sunglasses to the bland suburban foliage to the Sports Utility Vehicle I was riding in, reminded me of being in high school. A friend’s dad, driving me home from debate practice because I didn’t have a car then either.

“I don’t know,” I said on reflex, and it struck me, even as the words left my mouth, as a very odd thing to be saying.

“You don’t know?”

“No, I mean. I just meant it’s not very interesting. It’s consulting, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Sorry. It’s consulting. I don’t know why I said sort of.”

 Diego said, “He never likes to talk about his job. He gets embarrassed.”

“Sure,” Brett replied charitably.

Diego leaned over and pecked Brett on the cheek, a gesture so chaste and affectionate I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to watch it. But there I was anyway, watching it, having watched it, transferring the coffee to my left hand. I was in love with Diego but I was neither possessive nor delusional. It occurred to me that I was either supposed to ask Brett something in turn, or volunteer some alternative ice-breaking information about myself. “How many cities have you lived in?” I asked him.

Diego burst out laughing. A strand of hair fell over his eye and he brushed it away; it fell back over his eye in the exact same place and he left it there.

Brett said, “Hm. Seven? Or no, eight. I was in Albuquerque for a year. Oh, hey. Look where we are—” He made the slow, exaggerated turn into the Ikea parking lot.

Diego touched the handle of every single pot, the back of every chair, and the hard surface of every wooden structure in the store. I was there to buy a little shelf. Something I could assemble myself, use for a year or two, then dispose of unceremoniously. I was planning to buy online, but Diego had insisted that Brett would drive me, and that we’d make a day of it. I figured Diego wanted to guarantee that his new boyfriend made a good first impression on me, and assumed the way to do this was to flaunt his usefulness. The blunt, raw kind of utility that middle-aged men can have. A hand whisk, a machete, a stethoscope.

“Have you ever thought about going back to school?” Brett asked me, standing between shelf models. “An MBA did wonders for me. I went when I was twenty-four, too. I was making six figures right out of school.”

“I make enough,” I told him. All those shelves, so flimsy. They cut down old-growth forests to make flimsy shelves like those, and I knew that, and I was going to buy one anyway. “What were you doing in Albuquerque?”

Brett’s lip twisted into a half-smile. He had thin, serious lips. “Odd jobs. Just needed to go somewhere new after my divorce, you know?” Brett was one of those older gay guys who had been married to a woman. And this, too, drew Diego to Brett. He liked the idea of being the fresh start, he liked the idea of being Albuquerque to someone.

“And did you find anything new there?”

“Sure,” he said again, this time with a snort. He slammed his palm down on a shelf that was no different from any of the rest of them and said, “This one looks nice.”

“Yeah. I’ll get this one. I don’t know where to — or how to—”

Diego came up behind us then, and drummed his fingers on a different shelf. I knew that his fingertips were numb and callused from years of playing classical guitar, and I wondered if that was why he felt the need to put them on everything. The first few weeks after I got top surgery I touched my chest incessantly, in utter disbelief that there was a part of my body where physical sensation could be so dull and noiseless.

Diego said, “You write down the number and pick it up downstairs in the warehouse. They don’t keep their stock up here in the display rooms.” He drummed out a rhythm then that I recognized as a waltz.

In the basement, I sliced my middle finger open on a loose nail sticking out of a box. The injury neither surprised nor concerned me. I could never help but take pleasure in minor, self-contained mutilations like pulsing hangnails and acne scars. I liked the novelty of feeling my heartbeat in my fingertip and watching myself overflow.

Brett looked over and said, “Jesus Christ, are you bleeding?”

“Yes,” I said, “and I think it might be fatal. Do you know a priest?”

Diego came over to us, still tapping his fingers on everything and not cutting himself on anything. He said, “Well, don’t just stare at it. Put pressure on it.” To Brett, then, warmly: “Honey, you have Band-Aids in your car, right?”

Brett stared at me for another second and replied, “Yeah. I think so.” When Brett finally looked away, I felt like I had won a game that only I was playing.

The next week, Diego insisted on going for a walk before we were supposed to meet Brett for dinner, despite the weather. Chicago used to be a swamp, and I felt like the late August heat that afternoon was going to drown me. Heat always pooled in my fingers first and most severely. The way they would bloat, as if waterlogged. Swollen and ready to burst open, pink with blotches of white and red like uncooked sausages.

We walked along the lakeshore trail, ravenous for the occasional gusts of wind that came to us. I wanted to open my mouth and swallow them. Diego’s veins looked like they were embossed on his skin.

“Just so you know, I really actually like him,” Diego said, sweat glazing his entire face. He shimmered.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, because I did know, and I didn’t want to hear about it again and again.

“Did you like him? At Ikea?”

“He was fine,” I said, and I meant it. I was not being a saboteur, only honest. Brett was fine and I had absolutely no other thoughts about him.

Diego pressed his lips into a thin line. “I think you’ll like him. You just need to get to know him better.” Diego sent a text to both of us then — in a group chat, for some asinine reason — saying that we were going to head over soon.  

Their obscene age gap would’ve been an obvious, understandable reason for me to dislike Brett, but Diego and I were well past that. Sure, Brett was the oldest, but Diego always dated older guys, even back in college. It’s just how he was. Sometimes I got the sense that Diego wanted to be attracted to me, had tried in the past to be attracted to me, and he just wasn’t. It’s not the kind of thing you can force for yourself. I didn’t lose sleep over it. I tried not to lose sleep over it.

Diego said to me, “You’re still my favorite though, don’t worry,” and his sincerity moved me as it always did. But I was tired of being moved by love in the metaphorical sense. I wanted something so embodied that it moved me like a muscle, a joint, a ligament. I wanted feeling that didn’t merely graze my skin, but flowed through me.

We did not meet Brett at a restaurant, as I assumed would be the case, but at his condo where he, himself, had cooked us a full meal. When we entered the front hall (Diego had a key), Brett was in the kitchen, stirring something with an apron on and a black towel slung over his shoulder. In the living room, where the warm air from the stove met the cold air from the air conditioning, I was afraid clouds might form. I was afraid it would rain over his couch and shag carpet.

“Hello!” Brett called.

“Smells good,” Diego said back to him. “What are you making?”

“Curry,” he said. “Thai, green. But come in! I set out wine and cheese. Elis, I hope you like a Gewürztraminer. They’re very floral, not to everyone’s taste.”

“He likes anything.”

“That’s not true,” I said. I was looking at Brett’s library of vinyls, something I always wanted to collect for myself, but hadn’t. In fact, the whole apartment painted Brett as someone who had both the time and money to curate his possessions and to cultivate taste. The place was decked in cool, coherent grays and blues. My life, in contrast, was still Ikea shelves and ripped posters. “I only drink bottom-shelf gold tequila.”

“Check the bar cart then. Feel free to make yourself anything,” Brett said, and I realized he had a bar cart, that he had met and then effortlessly one-upped my game of detached irony.  Diego went to the kitchen and wrapped his arms around Brett’s waist from behind. I flipped through Brett’s coffee table book — a Robert Maplethrope collection — and I understood Diego’s interest in him for a second entirely. It was all so secure and intentional.

Brett, true to his word, had made the curry hot. I was not sweating though, only burning.

Brett said, “They eat spicy food on warm days in most hot countries. They say it really cools the body down.”

Diego, who was born in Mexico, seemed to accept Brett’s positioning of himself as the resident expert of most hot countries without issue. But I knew that he found comfort in relationships like this, where he could abdicate claims to any and all authority. He spooned tofu and basil into his mouth mindlessly.

“Right,” I said, after it was clear that Diego wasn’t bothered. I knew for certain then, listening to Brett’s jaw click as he chewed, that I wouldn’t ever like him much. I could tolerate him, yes, and maybe even bask in his usefulness and stability from time to time as Diego did. But I would never regard him with any fondness or intimacy.

We drained the wine bottle, and then Brett made us cocktails — the kind of cocktails that use bitters, and have notes. The different colors of tequila, Brett informed me, actually come from the aging process.

At ten-thirty I made a show of yawning, an attempt to go home. Diego lay his head on Brett’s shoulder and wrapped his hands around his bicep. The tenderness he showed Brett then bordered on obscene.

“I should check the bus times,” I said.

“Oh, don’t even bother with the bus,” Brett replied. “You can sleep here. I’ll drive you home tomorrow.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he insisted, waving his hand. “I’ll set out the air mattress for you. It’s no trouble.” I couldn’t tell if he was doing it out of kindness or spite. I would’ve preferred spite, but his blank, vacant expression told me it was more likely kindness.

Brett’s condo had central cooling and heating unlike my apartment, where I had been subsisting off an army of fans and a dinky window unit all summer. He kept his apartment almost too cold, though, and I did not feel like I was allowed to touch the thermostat and therefore had no real recourse against it. I slept with a heavy, woven blanket on an air mattress in his living room and labored through surreal dreams in a cold sweat. I woke up at five-thirty in the morning in a mess of tangled sheets and realized at some point during the night, I had peeled my shirt off and thrown it on the floor next to the bed. When I picked it up, I realized it was still damp. I left it there and went to the bathroom to wash the night off me.

His bathroom was bright, with both yellow light overhead and white lights over the mirror. There were twenty different skin care products on the counter, some in plastic bottles, some in glass. Some small, meant for dispersing conservative dollops and others large, simple, and meant for slathering. Oils, liquids, lotions. Brett’s skin was clear, I thought, and not especially wrinkled or saggy, but he was still forty-eight and looked it. I, too, had some minor wrinkles forming around my mouth, but I felt no solidarity with him in his quest to stall aging. The bottles signified nothing to me but a bit of disposable wealth and delusion. I wondered briefly about Brett’s ex-wife, if he had been kind to her.

I went through the skin products one by one and smeared them all on my face without reading the labels. My face was moist and heavy by the end of it. I wiped myself down with a washcloth and cold water because using his shower felt too familiar. I went through his medicine cabinet and found aspirin, eye drops, Finasteride, Minoxidil, Prozac, and Viagra. I shook an antidepressant into my palm and mimicked the act of popping it into my mouth before putting it back in the pill bottle.

When I finally left his bathroom I saw him standing in the living room, still raw and disheveled from sleep. I met his eyes and felt like I had just wandered into his dream.

“Morning,” he said after a few seconds. He softened, as if remembering that I was supposed to be there, that he had invited me to be there. “I thought I heard someone in the bathroom.”

It was still strange to me that he said someone, not you, like he was unwilling to acknowledge the specificity of my presence. I only nodded.

“You’re an early riser, then?”

“Not usually.”

“Only in strange places, then.”

“Air mattresses.”

He examined my body, lingering in odd places for odd amounts of time. “They’re sweat traps, aren’t they? I try to keep it cool in here, but I’m afraid there’s nothing that would make them very comfortable.”

I looked at his overhead lighting fixture, which flickered. Mine did that too in the summer, in time with the cycles of the A/C unit. Those goliaths of power usage, making every other electronic bow to them. “Yeah,” I said.

His eyes stopped at my chest then, knowingly. “What happened there?”

“Oh, that. A heart transplant. Severe. They had to replace it on both sides.”

“Ha,” he said. He knew I was trying to be funny, but was disarmed by it regardless. “But a mastectomy, right?”

“Sure. If you want to call it that.”

Brett said, then affecting a polite but nervous laugh, “You know, I would’ve never been able to tell.”

I said, “Thank you,” because it was clear he thought he was complimenting me. But it was neither a compliment nor an insult, it was a banal remark on my appearance. As if I’m supposed to act grateful for comments like your eyes are brown, you are five foot seven, you are a resident of planet Earth.

He said after another few seconds, “And I know you’re joking around, but it really is refreshing to see someone living so… authentically. Not everyone has the bravery for it.” But I am not authentic, and I am not brave, and I don’t know why I have to bear the burden of either. This blinding, predatory light. I had the urge to bite through the skin on his arm until I met bone, just to see his face completely unguarded.

I asked him instead, “Are there any parts of your body you can’t feel?”

He contemplated the question with bemusement. “My hands, sometimes. In my thirties I developed awful carpal tunnel and it still haunts me.” After a second, he added, “Forget what I said to you before about the MBA. Don’t get another office job. Go out. See the world if you can. Don’t use your hands too much. They weren’t meant for that.”

“I’m not sure my hands were meant for anything,” I said. Because I was resentful of that sort of thing, that any part of the body was specifically meant for anything.

He replied thoughtlessly, crossing into the kitchen to begin making a pot of coffee, “Oh, sure they are.”

I got a text from Brett at eight-thirty PM on Wednesday, three days after his dinner party. It read simply: Hey.

hey, I wrote back. I looked at his message alone, sitting on a thrifted couch in my sparsely decorated apartment. I had no bar cart or photography collections, and I had made myself plain chicken and rice for dinner.

He replied: You’re very funny. Do you do it on purpose?

nothing i do is purposeful

You know, I’ve always been curious for FTMs.

So he knew the old-fashioned clinical term, then, which was also not infrequently the porn term. His use of it wasn’t an indictment but at the very least indicated some history.

your curiosity doesn’t have much to do with me

It could if you wanted it to.

And he added, when I didn’t respond: Would you like me to show you?

He sent me a video of himself stroking his cock then, which was wide and average length and, insultingly, only half-erect. It didn’t register to me at first as genitalia, only some truncated, discolored limb. I watched it a second time with passive disinterest, and then a third. His dick turned abruptly from beige to pink in the middle, as if adhering to an arbitrary national border.

I imagined Brett thinking about me as he filmed, turning me around in his mind. How I would have loved to have a conversation with the version of myself he was fucking in his head. I felt so inside myself that I became dizzy.

Diego’s apartment was chaotically decorated and infinitely more charming than mine. He and his roommate both had a knack for thrifting and had managed to cover their walls with things that were at least interesting to look at, if not beautiful. They had one shelf I was particularly fond of filled with different salt and pepper shaker sets.

I said, while he scrolled through a list of movies we might watch, “So your old-man boyfriend sent me a video of himself jacking off last night.” The shaking in my voice first surprised me, then it unsettled me. I hated that there were parts of myself I was unable to control. I imagined the feeling of someone stroking the inside of my lungs, my larynx, in between my vocal folds. If it would feel like fingers on skin or something else, entirely foreign.

Diego paused his scrolling and took a second to process what I had said. He didn’t look away from the screen. “Oh, um. Well, I mean. We’re open. You knew we were.”

“Still. I just thought it was a little inappropriate. Shouldn’t I be off-limits?”

Diego fidgeted with his fingers nervously. “I don’t like to be controlling.”

“How is that controlling? I’m your best friend.”

“Just… either of you. I don’t want to be the person who says who you can and can’t have sex with.”

I stared at the window behind him. Diego lived in a second-story apartment right next to an L station. The biggest rat I’d ever seen ran along the tracks and I wondered why the rats never got shocked by the third rail. I would say I was afraid for them, but that wasn’t it. In fact, I was hoping to witness an electrocution. “Right, yeah.”

Diego fidgeted. He put down the remote and swiped his calluses against one another. “He was actually asking me the other night if I thought you’d be down to have a threesome. Or something.”

Sometimes when I masturbate I don’t actually think about sex, but about moments of drastic, unbearable intimacy just like this one. Diego caught my eye then looked away, and I knew that he was not really propositioning me in a meaningful way, but asking for a favor. And for him, I had only ever been able to acquiesce. I was capable of nothing else.

 I called myself bisexual for many years, even though I was not interested in women. This, principally, was because the word gay scared me. Once I said it, I was afraid there was no coming back from it. Or even worse. I was afraid that once I claimed it, someone might try to take it away from me. Some days I feel like my whole body still has claw marks. But I’ve learned this much, since my identity, like any, is primarily a reckoning: men are not always kind.

Every aspect of the occasion was unserious. It was not a threesome in any true sense. Brett fucked me while Diego watched. In this way he felt to me more like a chaperone than a participant. He only made an effort to look like he was into it when Brett was looking back at him.

I took advantage of Diego’s inattention to examine him. The thin trail of hair down the middle of his chest, the puckered scar on his left shoulder, the tan lines on his thighs and biceps. The slight divot on his waist, where I imagined my hand would fit perfectly. I imagined how warm his skin would have felt then, and I think I will imagine it for the rest of my life. Diego did not do the same to me. He found my body then as uninteresting as he always had. Sometimes, I used to wish he was disgusted by me — revulsion, at the very least, commands attention.

Brett ran his hand across my chest, where I still had very little sensation, only the outline of it. His hands in that moment seemed particularly selfish to me, almost irredeemably so.

I reached down with two fingers and listened to his pulse. It was so quick I thought his head might burst, and as soon as I thought that, I began wanting it earnestly. I wanted to watch his brain, sticky and wet, sliding down the off-white wall of his condominium. This type of release seemed as urgent and inevitable to me as his impending orgasm; in fact, the two became inextricably linked in my mind.

“Choke me,” he said, while my fingers were still lingering.

“What,” I said, training my eyes back on his face. He insisted, then, and finally engaged Diego’s attention as well. “Choke me, fucking choke me.”

I squeezed the sides of his throat with my right hand. I did it lightly at first, getting to know which parts of him were soft, which were taut, which would give and which wouldn’t.

“Harder,” he said, and I did it harder. And I did it harder, and then as hard as I could with one hand.

His eyes bulged for a second, once he realized that my pleasure lay not in the innocent thrill of mild kink, but in the proximity to true brutality. I wanted to exert myself onto him exactly in the way he’d done to me.

“Take your hand off him,” Diego said nervously after about thirty seconds of it, and I did. I’m glad it was him who asked. If it were Brett, I don’t think I could’ve.

When it was over I lay on my side and thought about mollusks and reptiles, and how they could molt. I wanted to take myself off and leave it behind.

It was another week before I answered Diego’s texts. I told him he could come over if he wanted, and that I wouldn’t stop him or anything. He stood in my narrow doorway and I left him there. I took a wet rag and began cleaning grime off my blank white walls just to look busy.

“Listen. I shouldn’t have asked that of you, okay? I know I made things weird.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but it’s okay.” It always amazed me how walls could get dirty, it’s not like I was constantly touching my walls or anything. But I knew, too, that sometimes mere existence could wear a thing down.

“Is it? You’re not acting like it is.”

“No, it’s fine.” I added, after a pause, “Just don’t make me hang out with him again. I mean it.”

Diego let out a long sigh, and finally came into my apartment. It was sizable for a studio, but still a studio. He looked at my bed, then sat on my couch. “You know,” Diego said, “sometimes I feel like I just want to empty myself out.” And what a tantalizing, impossible desire: to be vacant and adored. He wanted both Brett’s love and my friendship, blamelessly. I turned off my A/C unit because I was upset by the droning sound and the arid chill.

“It wouldn’t make you happy.”

He replied quickly, stepping over the end of my sentence, “Then I never want to want anything at all.”

“But you’ll always want something. That’s just being human.”

“I know,” he said, and he was exhausted. “I know.”

“All I said is I don’t want to see him again. I’m not upset with you. I’m not even upset with him.”

“You are, though. You’re just trying to spare my feelings.”

I put the rag down on my half-built shelf and sat next to him on the couch. I had seen him completely naked and yet I could barely handle our knees touching on the loveseat. The cushions were so old we were sinking into them. How small and insignificant our bodies really must have been, that they could fit on that tiny couch in that tiny apartment on that tiny street. How gigantic it all felt to me, regardless. “I’m not sure what you want me to say to that. I already told you how I feel.”

He shook his head and began shuffling his body forward. “Sorry. I should go. This isn’t helping, I’m just being weird. I shouldn’t have come over.”

I called his name and grabbed his wrist. When I pulled him back, he came crashing into me hard, his chin against my nose. It was a sharp, concentrated pain that grounded me. I was astounded by my body as a blunt instrument.

“It was an accident,” I said after a moment, but Diego already knew that and it made no difference to him. It was just something to say out loud. He pulled himself off me; my forehead was damp and I wasn’t sure if it was with my sweat or his. I hoped that it was both.

He brought his hand up to his lip and swished his tongue around in his mouth, before looking at me. “You’re bleeding,” he said quietly.

“No I’m not,” I said. Again, just to say something — I already felt the hot trickle of it seeping out of my nose and beginning to pool above my lip. The flow was languid and warm, like wax melting.

“You are,” he said, and he wiped it away with his sleeve before he could think better of it. It was a comfort to me though, imagining how the stain would never wash out of his t-shirt.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was an accident.” Diego got up then, unfolding himself. He crossed the room and opened my window, filling my apartment with the dead weight of late summer. In that moment I found the wet, heavy heat calming, like a blanket. Diego lay his arms on the windowsill and leaned his head outside. He played music quietly from his phone. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t muster up the feeling. I sat cross-legged by my coffee table and began rolling a joint.

When I was finished rolling, he lit the joint and took the first hit before passing it back to me. The smoke curled into evening air and I realized the blood had dried above my upper lip. It was starting to itch, but I felt like I wasn’t allowed to wash it off, yet, or that I couldn’t. Like I would be prematurely exiting a moment I hadn’t yet reconciled. There was the distant sound of cars and people talking, but I was always surprised by how quiet of a place Chicago could really be. The thrum of cicadas overpowered the city-sounds like traffic and street conversations.

Diego said, with an air of complete resignation that I’d never heard from him before, “Elis, do you think you’re capable of taking care of other people?”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly.

Diego took another hit and said, “I don’t know if I am.”

“Some people aren’t. It’s fine.”

He rolled the joint around in his fingers and hacked up an ugly, phlegmy cough. I imagined running my fingers down the slope of his jawline.

“And I’m sorry for asking all that of you, with Brett. I am.”

“I know.” Sometimes, Diego would put out candles with his fingertips. It always struck me as something so fearless of him. It wasn’t fearless though, it was just something his calloused fingers were able to do. I thought he was about to do it with the joint, but he just looked at it for another few seconds and passed it back to me.

“But I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright. It’s fine.”

“I wish it was.”

I thought, maybe, that was supposed to be the part where I kissed him. There were no parts, though. There was no anything. I listened to the blood pounding through my ears. Gushing.

 Up in the Mountains, Are You Still My Pal?

Nic Guo

A little past halfway, we stop to rest at a spring. From the rim of the basin I watch him wade in; I, submerged but for my head, he, dry from the waist up. As he moves, his torso cuts a grey swatch out of the sky — stretching and swelling until it has eaten up most of the blue. Because of the hasty nature of our trip, we haven’t planned a route, we just follow our senses and the people climbing with us. A few meters away an old couple rests on a boulder sharing crackers. The man finishes up, strips to his singlet, and plunges in. His wife leans her head onto a gingham rag she’s propped up against the boulder. Their presence has spoiled the perfect site for an airing of grievances. That they remain ignorant of the surge of resentment I feel towards them only irks me further — the water around my skin starts to form a hot, sulfurous membrane. Kernels of sediment and kelp feathers float beneath the water’s surface. The crickets are singing a throaty song, not to be outdone by the steady drone of summer cicadas. He begins to turn around to face me.

I was lying slovenly on the manilla-colored couch, breeze lofting the sheer curtains on high when the news came that a student had lit a pipe bomb at the base of the Nine Dragon Pillar. I looked to Tianhang, who looked over at Li Kui. Instantly we recognized the student as one of our own. He had those acne-scarred cheeks that served as resting beds for our nails, and spider limbs curling beneath his eyes, which we got from staying up all night and sleeping all day. We observed the news like naughty children at sermon, poking each other through the pews, bound by a mutual understanding that nothing very meaningful was at work. Shortly after, the student was apprehended in Shenzhen while trying to purchase an electric scooter with his mother’s credit card. Officially, he was branded a terrorist. To us, we gained an unlikely hero. To hell with the Nine Dragon Pillar, we thought. News anchors made a great show of the pillar’s everlasting quality. The bomb had dislodged several large chunks of cinder at the base, but the pillar itself remained unscathed. By the time Gao Tianhang and I decided to embark on a trip to Mount Lu in the city of Jiujiang, it seemed everyone in this god-forsaken generation was going mad. 

The root of our conflict was unremarkable — a classic tale involving two men and a woman — but we were young and felt nothing was real without dramatization. To the outside observer it would appear the timing of it was all wrong — why come to blows now, after Wang Yimin and I had already broken things off? A part of me thought he planned on luring me into the wilderness to kill me. It was an outcome I was willing to accept but not without first hearing why. I had begun to suspect that the love triangle was just a pretense, an excuse to smother any underlying problems between myself and Gao Tianhang. 

To be clear, pretense was not something we took issue with. If anything it was admirable. We befriended and made acquaintances of all manner of everyday actors: first, there was the Pharmaceutical King, Zheng Mao, who got chummy with housewives for the purpose of birthing a male heir. Then there was Su Wei, a lifelong classmate who lied about her age in order to win ornate stationery and silver butterfly clips from older men. Even the mangy tabbies and poodles were shameless in their mercenary obedience, all for something to eat and a place to sleep. Pretense was a way of getting things done, which had always been our mission and a seemingly impossible one at that. It was the question of what purpose this particular pretense served that troubled me. In no time at all, Gao Tianhang had cloaked himself in overlapping pretenses, each only tangentially related to the one before. My friend now resembled a staircase that had folded in on itself, but imperfectly, at odd intervals, so that only its corners are touching.

Here is the information I was privy to. By fall semester of his sophomore year, Gao Tianhang had fallen out of love with film. His school was in upstate New York, total red county where locals harangued him in the deli for his ratty sneakers, curly black hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He joined a Bible study. The pictures he watched felt increasingly starved for meaning. Spring came and he returned heartbroken, his vision of America in pieces. He volunteered on a millet farm in Hebei during harvest season and worked until his hair started thinning and he had gained twenty pounds of grain fat and muscle. How did I know all this when Tianhang hadn’t breathed a word of it to a soul, let alone his betrayer? His own mother, a portly angel in a mohair sweater, had called in the middle of Fables and Poetics, begging me to write her boy who she feared had lost his mind. 

Then one day Tianhang showed up back home. He started taking classes at Huashi U, not many — one or two — just to get back into the rhythm of things. His curly hair grew out again and he got a new pair of glasses. That was the last I heard from his mother. I suspect he caught wind of our talks and quickly snuffed them out. When I got back to Shanghai on summer break, Tianhang had dropped out again. This time the reason was less clear — by design, no doubt.

In the weeks that led up to our trip, I paced around my room thinking about giving Wang Yimin a call. Some days I studied the collected short fictions of Raymond Carver, took walks with my parents in Zhongshan Park and went for happy hour with Li Kui and Wu Haoxi, who were Gao Tianhang’s friends too (we had agreed to leave them in the dark for the sake of keeping matters simple). Some days were so stiflingly hot, it was all I could do to lie on the couch and doze off while keeping an eye on the laundry I had set out to dry. Then I would wake to the smell of burning rice and hurriedly wash another batch before my parents got home from work, setting aside the burnt portion for myself. 

As for Tianhang, I imagine he spent time at the municipal pool swimming laps. He was fooling around with a woman called Shi Jun who studied fine arts at Jiaotong U, though any activity would have to take place at her apartment. Like me, Tianhang still lived with his parents — there was another reason we had chosen not to disclose the specifics of our trip. For one, I didn’t know its purpose — how to describe it? Reconciliation, revenge, admonishment, understanding: all these struck me as possibilities. The other thing was that it was too much, verging on the point of fantasy, and a poor one at that: two grown men, jobless and still living with their parents, taking a high-speed train to a faraway mountain to settle old scores. 

Years ago, during the most fragile period of our friendship, we had gone to a karaoke bar on the western side of Changning District. In a private room full of friends and casual acquaintances, Wang Yimin and I attempted to make love with our eyes. Only Li Kui and two girls I didn’t know, one called Elaine, the other Xiao Mi, separated us from Tianhang. He’d partaken in every song except two, one of which was a love ballad. When Tianhang had a bit to drink, his cheeks rose up into his eyes, robbing him of his natural sweetness. Behind him was a screen on which cherry blossom petals were wrested by a southerly wind. The lyrics were written out in characters with phonics spelled out above; they made little sense to me when I was lucid and were totally hieroglyphic when drunk. Wedged around the corner sofa were the soldiers, chief among whom was my old friend Lu Ge, who had lost a tremendous amount of weight but remained puffy in the cheeks. Naturally, Lu Ge had to be chief because his service time doubled that of the others, and he had the epaulettes to prove it. Buckteeth bit into pink lips, over which he had tried to grow a mustache. His hair was unruly, having gone uncut since his last shave in the barracks. Then came another love ballad and this time Tianhang seized his opportunity, dragging along Li Kui, who couldn’t keep his eyes open or his ponytail from wrapping around his neck. Colorful spotlights hovered on the walls and fluttered from place to place. As I sipped on my drink, I felt increasingly put out by my friend with the grating voice. He really put on a show, the bastard, feigning feeling in his eyes, which were swollen without his trademark eyeglasses; he showed off those great lips of his, and that neck, flush with pimples. You need not worry, one of these days you’ll find someone who’s got eyes just for you…then Li Kui, playing the part of the somber lead, chimed in, that isn’t it, it’s me who can’t stand others, I always feel we can’t get along. 

Because Lu Ge had demanded we maintain a strict ratio of boys to girls, we had asked our female friends along to mollify the chief. Li Kui introduced two girls to us, first a local girl with whom he’d taken a pottery class, then a sous chef, how they met I don’t remember. It was odd that he’d elected to drink as much as he had; it made me think that Li Kui was the sort of fellow who lacked a need for pretense, because usually a man would restrain himself in the presence of so many eligible bachelorettes. Tianhang had brought a pharmacist who worked at the Portman. In the face of all these unfamiliars I felt I had lost the ability to make friends in unlikely places. It would never be me singing in envious stupor, then going out the next night to do the same with a different old friend, a different past lover. Streaks of grey ran down Tianhang’s shirt collar, you could see the pit on his throat and its marble quality, a plum pit, he was sweating like a madman, I felt his warmth on my skin when he popped back onto the sofa, sighing contentedly. I wanted no part in his hateful rapture. What made matters worse was that Tianhang made an oafish show of wishing us well — he was on his feet; he was on his knees; he took one hand from each of us like a greedy pastor. Whether he knelt from intoxication or to complete the gesture was anyone’s guess. I suspected both and didn’t listen to a word he said. I was only conscious of Wang Yimin’s little hand in his. 

On the way home I paused every few steps to corner Wang Yimin against a streetlamp or a brick terrace. By a telephone box I made a fool of myself, pretending to dial an old friend and then singing Wang Yimin’s praise — something I had seen in a film. She played along the first few times then, rather seriously, said that we wouldn’t make it home until four in the morning if we continued at this pace, and so from then we only stopped at every other intersection.

We met at Hongqiao Railway Station an hour before departure. As I was leaving home, I peeked into my parents’ bedroom to find the Governess by her bedside window with the curtains drawn. She spoke into a creamy white receiver, cradling it as one would a conch shell. Her freshly-done nails were like little bumps on the shell’s surface. I had already come up with a lie if she should ask where I was going. Actually, I’d come up with three or four. But she was preoccupied and my hard work was for nothing. 

Whereas Tianhang had packed a medium-sized suitcase, my duffel was loosely composed of four sets of clothes (in case of rain), some sleazy detective novels, a knapsack for the mountain, a tin of mints and a stowable chess set. When the PA announced our train had arrived on the eighth track Tianhang was still asleep. From across the aisle, I appraised the pebbled vinyl suitcase between his legs. A small padlock was affixed to its zipper. The central terminal swelled with the raucous sounds of kids horsing around and the solemn worries of adults alike. A row of windows faced the platform below. I watched as people boarded. The granite platform shone brightly, the sun painting the curved metal exterior of the train white, turning the floor to tundra. It looked like the moment before a magnificent explosion, like the birth of a supernova. Then I looked back at my sleeping companion and wondered if he was still my pal.

Pulling into the darkened platform, we could only make out a few trees whose tops glowed orange with lamplight. I had slept well, shedding off my unease along the way. Together Tianhang and I lifted our baggage from the overhead bins, hailed a cab to the apartment Tianhang’s friend had graciously loaned us, watched some television and were asleep within the hour. 

At six-thirty Tianhang was nowhere to be found. We’d agreed to leave for the mountain at seven. The morning light, fresh and nubile, sliced through chambray curtains. Water roaches leaked out of invisible cracks and from underneath cheap furniture, some falling from the ceiling like drops of condensation. The bathroom had a squat toilet and a spigot in the corner but no shower — I had to splash myself with water from the sink. A porthole carved into the wall let some light in. When I had rinsed off, I looked into the mirror and projected my best rendering of Wang Yimin which, I reasoned, was not delusion because I had sought her out intentionally. Then I went into the kitchen. 

In the refrigerator I found a steamed bun that had probably been there for weeks and ate it on the veranda, the only place free of roaches. From there I spotted Tianhang down in the courtyard, kicking a ratty old ball with some kid sporting Barcelona colors. I could tell they’d already been at it for a while by the way they matched the pace of the other’s ball, anticipating the curves and grooves of the pavement. The ball scudded back and forth making harsh noises like flame struck on the side of a matchbox. Each time the kid’s foot touched the ball, he’d cry out, Fuck you! Tianhang didn’t hold back either, winding up before every strike, sometimes whiffing entirely and then hurrying off to retrieve it. 

I ate and watched like this for some time, how long I can’t be sure, long enough for a fleet of fast-moving clouds to pass by. They took turns hiding the sun, those heavy-set palanquin bearers. I thought to myself that things couldn’t be going well with Shi Jun, the fine arts student — or else Tianhang wouldn’t have taken two days to seek vengeance in a third-tier mountain town. To derive satisfaction from the knowledge that my old pal was suffering a few stories down was a cruel if natural act. 

Eventually I skipped down the stairwell with my knapsack and two bottles of water for myself and Tianhang, who was already sopping wet when I handed him his share. His plump lips rose and fell as he caught his breath, whisker fields trembling under his nose. Taking a long draw of water, Tianhang passed the bottle to the kid who finished it. Kid, I said, what position do you play? I’m not bad myself you know, dribbling the ball and catching it in the crook of my ankle. When he didn’t answer I turned to Tianhang and said I would wait if he needed to go upstairs to wash off.

Tianhang and I had met while attending an English-speaking school. If he was a recluse then I was a hermit, having only just moved to Shanghai and wanting to reinvent myself from the shameless loudmouth I had been as a boy. The first two years of secondary school, Tianhang and I kept our distance. In truth, I thought he was a little too Chinese in the way that he answered the teacher in broken English, happily mixing and matching prepositions. I scoffed at his myopic but absolute outlook regarding world events (I, in turn, was hopelessly apolitical, but attributed my lack of knowledge to a lack of caring and in that way, was able to stomach my ignorance).

My only friends were Lu Ge, who I’d gone to summer camp with years before, who spent all his time feverishly checking the stock market and bickering with his Taiwanese mother, and Fan Zhesi, a duck-faced boy from Santa Barbara who had yet to grow into his oversized body, and whose greatest passion was sending me pictures he’d taken of the girls in our year with their pale fledgling bodies, captioned suggestively.

In the third year of secondary school, I grew three inches, Zhesi moved back to California and I ditched Lu Ge ruthlessly. Meanwhile, Tianhang had been named captain of the swim team, though it hardly made him any more popular (and by popular I mean sociable, likely to be found among others—of admirers, he had plenty), and improved his 200m freestyle to the point where university scouts began to take notice. As a result, the school saw fit to reserve a special lane for Tianhang to practice.

During swim unit I would often spy Tianhang by the side of the pool, chest heaving, having completed a set of the butterfly (his specialty). I admired his seeming indifference towards being perceived. Our class was in the midst of the backstroke, a devilish stroke for graceless individuals. I wound up choking down so much water that our teacher had me sit in the corner and watch Tianhang from whom, he said, I could learn a thing or two. In his wet and shockingly hairy paws shone the cover of a book, bent out of shape, having the texture of an old teabag. How he could even decipher characters or separate the pages enough to turn them I didn’t know.  

Crouched over wet tile, cadaverous ribs on display, I struck up a conversation. From then on we were pals. It is difficult to say what stuck, or what we even had in common. All I know is that from then on, swim unit became tolerable, even pleasurable. Like me, Tianhang thought family was important, though neither of us could say why. My best guess was that whereas Li Kui was perpetually locking horns with his architect parents, who would have been pleased for their boy to pursue a life in the arts, Tianhang and I saw our parents as so vastly different from our own image that we felt compelled to bridge the gap or at least reason with it. During swim unit I would join my pal in the lane specially reserved for his training, where we would share intimate family details under the guise of backstroke. My teacher was none the wiser — unable to object to what essentially amounted to a private lesson. And when that was finished, then we moved on to speak of the future and the nuances of the butterfly stroke.

At the foot of the mountain lay a hamlet. Tianhang and I stopped to have a meal at its only restaurant, which was fortressed by a pagoda, a western-facing moongate, and a length of sugi trees. The hostess looked to be in her early thirties. Because, I supposed, of the early hour and lack of customers, she sat down with us. Soon our table was populated by steamed fish, spareribs, lotus root, morning glory, and tea. Loose strands of hair fluttered in and out of the hostess’s face. Tianhang seized the opportunity to start yapping. Occasionally a stout lady would call from the kitchen and the hostess would excuse herself, returning only after whatever had to be dealt with had been dealt with. In between appearances, we sipped on the house-brewed fermented rice drink. Though it was nearly impossible to get drunk off, we found ourselves drawn in by its rich fragrance, and our hearts began to ache for understanding. The hostess went first: It’s always been my dream to open shop and watch the expressions of worldly travelers as they eat my food, she told us. As the meal progressed, Tianhang recounted a few stories from secondary school, which always seemed to cheer him up. Then he moved on to the present day. How he could shift so seamlessly from one time to another without experiencing some sort of internal dissociation amazed me; I regarded Tianhang fondly as the historian of our little band of second-generation wealth. Chinese girls all have such unbelievable English names, he announced through a stalk of morning glory. Tianhang then proceeded to rattle off a laundry list of girls he had fucked: there was S Jie, Garbage, Wolf, Football, Clean, Dirty, Kinky Hell, and so on. It was with great regret that the hostess admitted she had no English name. 

Usually I would chime in with some thought of my own, but since I felt nothing had been resolved, I only laughed politely and sipped my drink. Before we left, the waitress offered to fill our canteens with sweet wine. Mine was still full of water so I excused myself. Outside a hut with some coolers set out on the steps, a young pigtailed girl eyed me as I surveyed her wares. I turned to check on Tianhang, who had yet to move from the table. Through the moongate fronting the restaurant, I spied on my friend and the hostess. Delicate umbels littered the pagoda and the path leading down to where I stood. Wind rustled through the trees like a thin net through running water, seeming to dislodge individual petals and leaves without disturbing the trees at large. Tianhang let the waitress fill his canteen to the brim, burbling as it pooled over the edge. 

We started up the mountain. There was hardly any foot traffic — summer break had yet to begin. As we ascended it became clear that Tianhang had become bloated with food and drink so I set off on my own, ten or fifteen paces ahead. When I reached the stone pagoda in a clearing about four-hundred meters from the start, I allowed myself to stop and rest by its shade. Some university students were posing for photos by the edge of the cliff in the reeds and the clouds. They had set their camera on a pagoda bench on a timer so one had to continuously scurry back and forth, first to start the timer, then to make it into the picture frame, a task he failed more than once, much to the delight of his cohorts. Outside the pagoda, overlooking the countless valleys of Mount Lu, squatted a Zhuang Chinese woman who looked to be in her sixties, though she could have easily been twenty years younger. She wore a pink gingham apron, flats, and something resembling a nursing cap to keep her hair back, though a few strands found their way down her forehead in spite of it. At her feet lay a wicker basket with towels and beverages. I took a seat beside her while waiting for my friend. I bought two hand towels for three yuan apiece, poured some water on one, wiped my brow, then took a step towards the edge of the cliff. Peering down I saw pert little fountains spurting out of the faraway mist at odd intervals, like streams of bathwater jetting down a titan’s calf. Reeds swooned at my knees. At the peak opposite me I could see the leaves of gingko trees parachuted over a thick haze.

After Tianhang had caught up with me, we rested for almost an hour just panting and waiting. Tianhang bought a towel of his own though I would have happily parted ways with one of mine. I watched my friend the way you would a sick puppy, trying to diagnose him. He had spoken to the waitress so vigorously, yet had no words for me.

A memory: by the time Li Kui and Wu Haoxi met up with us, the streets were thickening with midday traffic. We took the subway to a dive bar in Jing’an where we could either wait for a table or share one with a party of four. Li Kui asked the doorman to point out the party in question. As it turned out, they were all guys around our age so we left— even if they’d been girls we’d have left, unless they were extraordinarily pretty. Li Kui grumbled that Jing’an was getting too crowded and that we ought to have gone somewhere more discreet like Bell’s or Habibi but we reminded him that those too were overrun by foreigners and more importantly, they cost money, money that we didn’t have— or did but preferred not to spend on alcohol which was potent no matter the source. Outside we warded off the beggars who pestered Li Kui — his mixed blood ran a little differently than ours (ours was blue, his pure gold!). A man with no teeth and an indigo cloak tried to put his parakeet on Li Kui’s shoulder. I was laughing and telling Li Kui to go on and accept his gift while he implored me to get it off him. The toothless man must have already begun to smell his next meal because he kept egging on that parakeet with whistles and frantic gestures of the hand, leaning in so close that I was going to retch and then I was no longer laughing, his demented smile was scarily close-up, and — amazing! — he really did not have a single tooth to his name, plus he stunk of piss and ash. Then Haoxi yelled at us to come the fuck on, he had succeeded in hailing a cab, so me and Tianhang pooled our efforts, pulled Li Kui into the cab, and we shut the door on the toothless man’s fingers and then quickly opened and closed the door again before we even heard him scream, this time cleanly. 

Haoxi, being the tallest, sat in the front. It was rare for him to come out these days, though none of us knew why. Gao Tianhang suggested Haoxi wasn’t up to anything. One of us had probably said something insensitive or looked at him the wrong way, and he was now self-isolating to exact a measure of revenge. The most obvious explanations were often the truest, said Li Kui, therefore it was clear Haoxi had gotten himself a girl. 

The cabbie asked us where we were heading and nobody said a thing. Halfheartedly, I suggested a pool hall in Minhang. Too far, said Haoxi. The others agreed. If you boys don’t come up with something soon, I’m calling the cops, said the cabbie. Then Li Kui suggested a new dance club right in central Jing’an whose owner he knew. The music was good, he promised, and the crowd was alternative if a little punk for our tastes. Not only are you boys unable to give me an address, the cabbie said, and I’ve been driving for nearly twenty minutes now (it had been five, ten at most), but I can tell you’re also degenerates, second-generation wealth, and I’m not moving from here until you get out of my cab. Behind us a fleet of vehicles had already begun to screech and blare. What’s the matter with you? asked Tianhang, knocking on the plastic divider. Give him the address, he said. The driver still wasn’t having any of it — we had to put down half the fare and promise an extra fifty upon arrival just to get him to shift the car into drive. For some time, we sat in silence, not wanting to provoke. I jabbed quietly at Li Kui and Tianhang who were crowding me when I’d already resigned myself to the middle seat, those jerks. When he pulled onto the side of the road where Li Kui directed him, the cabbie surprised us by apologizing for having spoken rashly. Maybe he thought we weren’t going to pay him. I leaned forward to get a better look at him. His face was covered in liver spots and his nails were longer than the Devil’s. The face on his license didn’t match his own, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. In reality he had nothing to fear, we were writers and filmmakers and not insurgents. We left him the money he was due, bid him a good evening and that was that.

Outside the dance club we came upon Stray Cat and Pebble Dong, the ex-poetess, sharing a smoke. Of the two I was closer with Stray Cat since I liked his songs, the ones about his dead mother, the ones about his neurotic dad, the ones without any particular meaning. As we greeted them, Tianhang and Li Kui accepted Pebble’s cigarettes and struck up a conversation — I went to claim mine and Pebble snatched the pack away, even though there were three or four in plain view. 

I did my best not to make a fool of myself, grateful for the darkness and for my friends. Only Tianhang could dance without thinking, seeming to relish the attention. Magenta lashed at his cheek — it rolled down his face and revealed beads of sweat — then slithered down his torso and legs. At intervals, when the light caught his expression, I could swear that Tianhang was crying. The skin between his eyebrows was all knotted up. He still had his glasses on. And when the light looked elsewhere, he turned back into a devil. I turned my back on him. The music was decent, some Russian techno that could not pierce my skin but which I enjoyed nonetheless. Stray Cat kept on swaying his hips behind me and touching my chest, like he always did when he was drunk. I strained my eyes trying to find the others but it was too dark and the silhouettes of dancers were indistinguishable, merging into an amorphous, toxic sludge. I called Stray Cat’s name but he didn’t hear me or pretended not to, so I ducked my way through the crowd of bodies and undulating waves of sound until I found an exit. I spotted some familiar faces belonging to Pebble and her friend whose name I had already forgotten. They were with a man who looked twice our age with long silver hair and sunglasses. I approached them with a dumb smile. Come on, I said to Pebble, taking her by the arm, let's go find our friends. They're not here, she said, so you can let go of me. I know; that's why we have to go and find them. No, she said, I mean they've left. Li Kui got drunk so they called him a car almost half an hour ago — a silver Peugeot. For some reason I could hear her perfectly clearly through all the sounds of the mob. I don't believe you, I said, but I let go of her arm all the same.

After resting with our hand towels, now chilled and clinging to our necks, we went on climbing. A woman hauling wooden crates filled with hawthorn passed us on her way down the mountain. After her, we didn’t pass another soul. The trees started to thin out. The verdant tunnel they had once banded together to form became mostly blankness. It was not desolate or hopeless, just placid. The only identifiable landmark was a red pagoda that appeared to be floating below. Reaching another peak, we took a seat on a boulder that had split down the middle. Over the years the chasm in between had filled in with shrubbery and reeds like those we had encountered on the way up, only these were taller, sparser and had an air of nobility. The sun had all but disappeared, diving behind a cliff into its nest beneath the earth. I was vaguely aware we were experiencing the last of its warmth. 

Do you remember my letters to you? asked Tianhang.

Of course, I said, I wrote back didn’t I? There was a defensive edge to my voice, as if I wasn’t entirely sure I had. Truthfully, Tianhang had a way of writing that both charmed and vexed. Try as I might, I could never match his earnestness. From the farm he had written me twice, and each letter had brought me equally to tears and fits of shame. I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts. I thought it was my gift to play with words and coerce new meanings from them. Tearfully, on the mountaintop, my thoughts drifted to a poem tacked up on a wall in Tianhang’s home. From the scrawl and colored pencil illustrations you could tell it had been conceived by a child. The poem described a stray cat that Tianhang’s mother had encountered while gardening. Nobody came to claim him and over time, the cat became their pet Rocket, named for his wiry tail that shot up in the air. Feeling as though the altitude was getting to me, I struggled to remember the ending to Tianhang’s poem. The wind had started whipping the clouds in odd directions. I could no longer see the floating pagoda, though the ridge that led down to it remained in place. Tianhang, I heard myself say, you’re my good friend. Let us try to speak plainly. Catching speed, the clouds whisked around us until I could see nothing but a small patch of rock where I sat. I clutched my arms which prickled with goose pimples, taking hold of my wrists. Then, swallowing my fear, I stuck an arm out until my fingers disappeared into fog, then my wrist and forearm with it. I shut my eyes. Catching hold of something soft, I yanked it, hoping to pull something into a space where I could see things and name them. In came Tianhang’s sweater. His hand grabbed mine, a cavernous, sweaty thing. I was grateful for its warmth if nothing else. I was still talking but my mouth was dry, and because the sound of the wind drowned out my words I couldn’t even be sure they were coming out.

Dear Ziqin,

How are you? How’s university and everything? I think of my experience here like school in a way. I got a single room, everything is strange to me and I have to make friends all over again.

I met some really nice people in my first few days here capturing fish. This one fellow who is in charge of the pond walks his German Shephard dog everyday in the morning. Dog is called 贝贝 (bei bei). One morning I caught him trying to give the dog a bath by full-blasting the water hydrant. The dog wouldn’t go near the water and the fellow was in shock asking me if his dog was dumb. He also has two other dogs, Wolf and Blacky, the first being a six-month-old typical stray. The other is still a puppy that just started walking. 

Last night was my first time having Mid-Autumn Festival dinner without my family. The farmer’s son sat by my side and even served me beer to go with my hairy crab. He couldn’t have been older than nine. I tried to help him with his homework, but I don’t think I’m much use at all. Some days, I think that my days spent here are meaningful. Like when we fished in the sea with these big nets. Or the other day, when I ran 10k in the fields, passing all sorts of melons and vegetables. Other times I think it’s sort of pathetic. 

September was a pain, simply adjusting to waking up so early, poor living conditions, bad food and sanitary issues. But the worst is probably loneliness and homesickness. I missed my home so much. I still do. Not just the house and food but Mom and Dad. Just seeing them again would probably make me break down and leave the farm with them. I’m still such a kid.

 Not But from Myself

Jacob Reecher

This city doesn’t sleep because it can’t. Not just because of the noise. Though there is the noise. Some cars blast music loud enough to hear from blocks away. Imagine being inside the car. Ambulances blare their sirens and sit in traffic. The other day one took five minutes getting from 48th to 49th. I was there; I clocked it. The whole time, wee-ooo wee-ooo wee-ooo. Neighbors squawk and fight and screw. Upstairs must live a family of goddamn giants. Every morning, evening and night: stomp, stomp, stomp. And light everywhere. Look up from your shoelaces and a hundred signs blind you, signs for where to park and eat and drink, where to get your hair cut and your fortune told, what clothes to wear, what music to buy, what movies to see. No wonder nobody for miles can see a single star. Think about that. We literally traded the heavens for Times Square.

But anywhere on this island, close your eyes and cover your ears; that world-famous energy still pulses through you. Like radioactivity. It makes you sick. That’s why some people throw themselves off the bridges: crossing, they feel sicker and sicker with every step. Look around in the subway. Everyone wants to heave or cry or bleed. If, on the platform, they wait long enough to feel sick, and to realize they always feel sick, maybe they jump in front of the train, to make it stop. Every unexplained delay, someone made it stop.

But today — yesterday I guess — I got lucky with the trains. After closing up the coffee shop, I rode the express as far as I could, then caught the local right across the platform. I got home before the rain, but not to hunker down. As I said, this city lets no one rest. Plus, objects in motion stay in motion, so either I have to keep moving to keep moving, or I couldn’t stop if I tried. Anyway, in my hat and shoes I listened to the messages on my machine and nibbled a prune. Prunes help my stomach. At least they would, if I could eat. League basketball, as I’d expected, was postponed due to weather — outdoor courts. My friend Jean’s band was filling in for some openers who fell through. The guy who took me bowling last week wondered what I was up to. I replayed Jean’s message and wrote down the venue’s name, then found its address in the yellow pages. I knew its area, even if not the particular spot. But before I left, I had to call the three people below me on the basketball team’s phone tree.

Like a slot machine in the slowest motion, the first two calls went to machines, and as the third rang, I prayed for a jackpot. Ben, this last branch of the phone tree, is in love with me. He pines after me, invites me constantly to parties and to movies and for drinks. And acts so casual every time, as if the thought just occurred to him. Sometimes he even says, Not like a date or anything. It drives me crazy. I joined this league for the familiar rhythm of dribble, pass, shoot; for a few hours a week in my body, without my mind; for something to do every Wednesday. Then this bozo gets in everybody’s way and makes me think all kinds of uncharitable thoughts. Even though I signed up, and this is my team, and he is on it, and I never quit anything, I also can’t float suspended inside his romantic fantasy. And so last night, as I listened to his stupid outgoing message, I swore to swap branches with somebody.

I hadn’t left three words of message when Ben breathlessly snatched up the phone.

“Adrienne!” he said. “I was just — I just got — To what do I owe…?”

I gave him a second; he didn’t finish.

“The game tonight,” I said, “they moved it to Saturday.”

I imagine he stepped to the nearest window and looked out of it at the dark sky.

“Because of the rain?” he said. 

And then, I swear, he gasped. Probably he realized that if the game were cancelled, I likely had no plans. Ben is not great under pressure. I don’t know why he chose league basketball for a hobby. Maybe somebody roped him in because he’s tall. But he never posts up anything. He just stands there and fidgets the drawstring of his shorts. Whenever someone passes him the ball, he freezes, and blinks, as if he forgot where to go (the hoop) and how to get there (dribble). The color drains from his long face until someone knocks the ball from his hand. Or until he shoots, which, imagine a clumsy octopus toss pizza dough.

“I guess it is kind of pouring,” he said. “Bummer. So then, of what will you make, I guess, of the evening?”

Usually, when Ben asks me out, I lie right off the top of my head. I want him to know I’m full of shit, that I’m not interested. Which is mean, but to shut him down outright, as if he’s too dumb to read between the lines, would be cruel. Because he isn’t that dumb. And I am going to be so proud of him when he finally gives up. But last night, I thought I was so slick. I had plans. No lie necessary. So I told him the truth. And on, of course, came the questions. Where was the show? In which neighborhood was the club? Which train would I take to get there? Was the rain supposed to get worse or die down? Was I getting dinner before? What kind of music did Jean’s band play? For whom were they opening?

“U-fucking-2,” I said.

I hung up and threw myself down on the couch. I really don’t mind a little extra attention, but this was ridiculous. Ben needs to get a grip, I thought, because to treat him so mean hurts me as much as it hurt him. I pressed my face into a throw pillow. Do people really kill people with pillows? I could breathe just fine. Jean’s band was scheduled to play in two hours, but wouldn’t actually take the stage, I knew, for at least three. I turned on my TV and caught the end of a M*A*S*H rerun. Then all the way to subway I whistled “Suicide is Painless” under my umbrella. I think my TV is still on. 

To while some time away, I rode the train four stops too far, then three stops too far back, then two stops too far, then one stop too far back. I saw a red-faced Iowan tourist shout at his corn-fed family. I saw a woman with no shoes pocket a wad of bills before she moved to the next car with an empty cup. I saw a pot dealer find a customer. I saw a teenage boy read On the Road through sunglasses. And I hated all of them. Finally I emerged into the fallen night with an hour still to kill and a hankering to sit in a restaurant and hate more people. I thought I might even eat something. So I walked the wet streets until on a sandwich board I saw a burger-and-fries combo special. Inside the bar, I ordered it with a beer. The bartender poured the beer and brought my order back to the kitchen. The place was busy, and I hated everyone in it: the cooks, the bartender, the dudes shooting pool, the girl getting stood up.

These moods come over me. A therapist might help me quote-unquote “figure them out.” But who am I, Woody Allen? It’s just this city. It makes me sick, too. But to make it stop is not my style. Instead, I loathe everyone around me. And they deserve it. Take the tourist. He shouted at his family because they missed their stop. But whose fault was that? His kids barely knew their dicks from the stanchions, and his wife was busy wiping their faces and finding their snacks and looking out for the murderers who prowl those tunnels. Take the dissembling panhandler. Whatever, lady, lie to us about your money, shake a few pennies around an empty cup like you don’t have twenty bucks in your pocket already. Take the drug dealer and the Kerouac kid, take everyone in that bar: please!

My food came, and I looked at it while I drank off my beer. Then I asked for a box, which I handed to the first bum I saw when I went outside. Sometimes food upsets my stomach. Maybe at Jean’s show, I thought, there would be nuts or popcorn on the bar. Or maybe not. But then, no liquor, I reminded myself. Hard stuff on an empty stomach gets me shitty before nights even begin. Beer fills my belly faster than it fills my blood, so as hours go by, pints last longer. And wine is a sleepy drink, a nightcap. Anyway, the bum opened the box and asked if I had any ketchup. I told him I didn’t, and he looked away, disgusted. No good deed, right?

I turned a corner and saw Jean’s band — a stoner outfit called "The Rent” because they’re so fucking high all the time — unloading the van. That’s what they call standing around and looking like a rock band: long dirty hair, cigarettes between lips, thin T-shirts, shrunken chests, tatted arms, joint passed between pinched fingers, ripped jeans, Chuck Taylors. I don’t know when this became the unofficial uniform of every band in every bar. Ask whether they coordinate—they’ll scoff. But you were there. You saw them. Tell me they didn’t coordinate. And did you notice the little particularities? The bass man in glasses. Jean in a wifebeater. The singer in shredded flannel. The drummer with the extra-long hair. All so thin, like bags of bones about to collapse. It’s like they were put together in a lab. But then, so were the Sex Pistols. There’s nothing organic about any of it. Otherwise somebody would look like not a model, with extra weight or bad skin or thin hair or whatever.

But I like Jean. He’s a weirdo. I met him two years ago in the library, where he read Popular Mechanics, he said, to keep tabs on the robots. Later he told me that, just to make that joke, he’d sat in the periodicals section all afternoon, until I came along. He does stuff like that. He brings his own scale to grocery stores to recalibrate their produce scales. He waits hours for tables at fancy restaurants, then drinks tap water and looks at the menus until somebody asks him to leave. He gets on rides at Coney Island just to scream “Stop this thing! Let me off! I wanna get off! My heart!” as soon they start to move. Sometimes they stop the thing and let him off; sometimes they don’t. Ask him why and he says, “What should I do? Watch Carson?” Even though Carson isn’t on anymore. We had a thing for a minute that didn’t work. I felt like another one of his amusements. Not even sex felt real. He said that it was real for him, in his way. I don’t believe him, but there aren’t hard feelings.

I wanted to sneak up behind him, but the rest of The Rent saw me and gave me away. He turned around and wrapped me up in his long Gumby arms.

“We are so fucking high right now,” he said.

“I can smell it,” I said.

The joint came around, and I took a puff. 

“Whoa,” Jean said. “Look at Cheech over here.”

I don’t usually care for pot; it makes me crazy. But a little mania, I thought, might keep me on my feet.

“I haven’t eaten,” I explained. 

“I never eat,” Jean said. “Who eats?”

It was a good question. The answer was nobody anymore. People don’t meet people for lunch or dinner or brunch. People meet people for coffee or drinks. But to eat out was a thing once. I remember; I’ve done it. Eaten pizza or salad or chicken across a table from another human being, among other human beings at other tables eating other food, or the same food. At the bar where I’d ordered the burger and fries, nobody else had been eating. I didn’t eat. Not even that bum ate when I gave him the box of food. Something happened to all of us — like, the whole human race. Do we all just nibble prunes at home to appease our stomachs? Won’t anybody eat anything without ketchup, or whatever? Maybe humans are evolving to survive on caffeine and alcohol. Time to revise the food pyramid.

I looked at my watch and said, “You guys starting soon?”

Jean sighed and looked at his watch. “Yes,” he said. He turned to his band and said, “Ready gang?”

The Rent looked at their watches and grumbled, but then schlepped in their amps and the drum kit. I carried Jean’s guitar and a tote bag full of cables. I wanted to tell him about Ben, because I thought the big loser might show up, and I wanted to have a plan. I wanted several plans: a plan for Ben with a rose in his teeth, a plan for Ben with a chip on his shoulder, a plan for Ben with his sheets to the wind; Jean was my boyfriend, Jean was my tough street-fighting boyfriend, Jean was my tough street-fighting boyfriend with his rough-and-tumble rock n’ roll band for backup. But Jean had to run back out to the van, and then to tune, and then The Rent checked sound. When they were satisfied, they stepped off stage and bee-lined to the bar for stage drinks. Jean ordered first, and then turned around to count heads. He didn’t have high to count; the headliners weren’t even in the building yet. I sidled up to him.

“So there’s this guy in my basketball league,” I started.

“That’s cute,” Jean said. “Is he coming?”

“He might be,” I said, “so—”

“Good,” he said. “Nobody comes out to anything anymore. Just stay home and watch TV. They need their six hours a day. Please sir, can I have some more? Fucking cable. More like cabal, am I right?”

“No,” I said.

“Listen, sweetie,” he said. “I’m sorry, but this is a band-only pow-wow. Got to settle the setlist. So scram.”

He even swept me away with a twitch of his fingers. All a joke, maybe, but what an asshole. And he knew it, too. I saw in his eyes: to treat me that way embarrassed him. After all, however many people he called, I was the only one who showed up to a dingy bar on a rainy weeknight to watch his dumb band play their dumb songs. So I scrammed down the bar, and from there ordered a shot. It went right to my head, and I knew I should eat something. I ordered another beer. And when The Rent started their set, I sat at the bar and watched with a scowl on my face. People trickled into the bar, and some politely watched The Rent to pass the time until the headliner took the stage. 

Jean acts as if everyone lives outside his private joke. But there is no joke; there is just the act. That’s why Jean counts his friends on one hand. Not even the rest of The Rent like him, but it’s his band — he started it and writes the music — so they can’t exactly fire him. But then, I count my friends on one hand too. Who needs two hands to count their friends? I can’t remember a party where everybody knew each other. Something happened to make us all strangers. It’s not just TV, like Jean said. It’s these acts we put on, all of us, just like Jean. But what are we supposed to do? Maybe once upon a time humans ate and drank and loved and died on instinct and desire. Now we project these finely manicured images of ourselves, build self-consciously the narratives of our own lives. Jean is a man who wants most in the world to look like a certain kind of man. Once upon a time — five hundred, a thousand years ago — Jean could have been a man, and I could have been a woman, and it would have been that simple. Or maybe not. Maybe your average peasants had all the self-awareness we have. But their models were their own mothers and fathers, their village shepherds and basket-weavers. Or else men and women in ancient stories, like Moses or Ruth or Esther or Job or Achilles or Persephone. Now people style themselves after this week’s movie star. It’s the worst. Modern consciousness is two mirrors pointed at each other. Copies of copies of copies. And everyone all the time desperate to appear one way or another. But then we look at each other and see fakes. It’s obvious. And so everybody hates everybody else. 

Anyway, that’s why I hated Jean as I sat there at the bar and filled my belly with beer. Soon I reached the point of equilibrium; not much more booze could fit in my stomach. My options were to slow down to a steady sip or switch to more concentrated stuff. I ordered a whisky neat. I always order it neat, in case the bartender pours the same as with rocks. This one did. I’d sipped two of three fingers when the bass player in his glasses started to play the riff from “Hey.”

“We’d like to bring up a special guest for this next number,” Jean said. 

He asked the crowd whether they wanted to meet a special guest, until they cheered. It was late in The Rent’s set by now and the room was filling up.

“Adrienne, you still here?” Jean said, shading his eyes against the stage lights. “There she is. Adrienne, you want to come do ‘Hey’ with us?”

The whole place turned to look at me. This was Jean’s way of apologizing, and anyway I had no choice, so I downed my last finger and got up. The audience parted like the Red Sea. Onstage, I told Jean I was drunk.

“Perfect,” he said.

But he didn’t understand: I was drunk. Both in front of The Rent and in front of the audience I could barely stand. Three fingers and four beers and a shot, plus that puff, in just a couple hours, will do that to a girl my size.  Fortunately, the girl part in “Hey” is just to scream the word chained over and over. I think I nailed it. And thank God, from up on stage I spotted you. 

I know you, you know. Everyone does. You’re kind of hard to miss, dressed not quite like a goddamn yuppie: The Guy In The Suit. And always the only suit on the block. To fool the straights, I’m sure. Huckster. At some point, when I was out with some friend of mine — maybe Jean? Maybe Jean and I still were sleeping together? — out somewhere, he pointed you out and told me your deal, and I started to keep a tab on you, for emergencies. 

Emergencies like mine, onstage. So I locked my eyes to yours and winked a couple times to make sure you got the message. Clearly, you did. Something you said in the bathroom I thought was so funny. You said people remember the suit because it makes you, at 5’3” and a hundred-ten pounds, the scariest person in the room. It’s funny because it’s true. Before tonight, I always kept a close eye on my drink if you drifted nearby. When you walk through a crowd, people creep away from you, as if a cold wind followed you everywhere. What is that? What are we afraid of? Just so many wool and silk threads. But woven together like this, they’re armor. Especially next to, say, The Rent. Next to Jean. Next to me. Who would believe us? So we all remember you.

I felt a million percent better coming out of the bathroom. Steady. Present. Focused. The Rent was offstage; I found them outside smoking, and I kissed some of my lipstick onto Jean’s face. He didn’t realize, but his drummer wiped away the kiss with a cocktail napkin damp from sweat off a beer.

“Awww,” I said. “It looked cute.”

“Trying to mark your territory,” Jean said. “Did you get it?”

The drummer lifted his thumb. I lifted mine too, to show how stupid he looked. Then we flipped each other off. I don’t like the drummer. I don’t like any of The Rent (except Jean: and him less and less). They don’t talk to me. Which, I can hardly blame them for that. Because I’m sure Jean told them everything, and it’s hard to make small talk with someone whose business you shouldn’t know but do. Maybe they want to chat, be friendly, but can’t stop thinking about how, during sex, I cry, because it hurts, because I’m dry, because I don’t eat. Well, but why is their alternative to ignore me, as if I’m some dumb groupie?

“Great set,” I said. “That one’s that gonna make you guys.”

Jean said, “You remember it? I thought you blacked out.”

“Just the opposite,” I said. “I was in white.”

I know that didn’t make any sense; it didn’t have to. The Rent doesn’t deserve my coherence. More important than to make sense is to make a point. And my point was that I would not be taken for granted anymore. You see my face. And the waif look is a thing. Long and willowy, like a Gibson Girl. Heroin chic, they call it now. God damn it, men swoon over me. Jean should be proud to wear my lipstick on his face. But to hear him tell it, I cramp his style. Well, maybe I do. Somebody has to.  Otherwise, he peacocks all over, the wanna-be, like he is. If he actually got around, I could stand it. But he only pretends to be a Casanova, and it’s not one of his bits. Last night he really thought he had every woman in that bar wrapped around his finger. So of course he didn’t want my kiss hanging on his cheek. But do you think he’s with any of them right now? He’s not. He’s at his hovel of an apartment, smoking another joint and maybe calling the number at the end of an infomercial to jerk the chain of some poor call-center operator. Don fucking Juan.

Anyway, my absurd little pun did not amuse The Rent. They all puffed their smokes and looked away from Jean, embarrassed for him because I was his problem. He took the fabric of my dress between his fingers.

“Sweetie,” he said, “this is blue. Remember your colors.”

“I know my colors. I know this,” I said, and pinched his cheek, “turns me green. See?”

He slapped my hand away, then shook himself cool.

“My face makes you sick?” he said. “Is that the joke? Then go puke.”

But he’d slapped hard, and we all saw it. Even though my wrist hurt, I refused to rub it. I didn’t want to give Jean the satisfaction, but I also didn’t want to let on to anyone else that he’d hurt me, and also I was actually fine. The slap did hurt, but not any more than I could take, or deserved. The swelling has already gone down a little. I think. I shouldn’t have pinched Jean’s cheek — that went too far. Sometimes I wonder why Jean treats me like garbage; sometimes it’s abundantly clear. I wouldn’t want myself — drunk, spouting nonsense, pinching cheeks—to shadow me. Why would Jean want me for a tail? 

Well then, he was in the right; I still couldn’t let him win, or let stand that go puke zinger — he knows I haven’t stuck anything down my throat in years. So I tapped his beer, and foam erupted all over his hand.

“Adrienne,” he whined, and chugged what he could.

I watched him drink, with a coup de grace on the tip of my tongue. Something about envy? Kermit the Frog? It’s not easy being green? I did kind of want to throw up.

Jean swallowed the last drops of his beer and took a deep breath. “Well?” he said.

Like I didn’t care, I flicked my wrist — I ignored the pain that shot up my arm — and turned my back on Jean. And then on my way inside to the bar, I ran into you again. I bet we made a pretty picture for The Rent, walking off into the night, arm in arm.

You have a nice place. I don’t know why I assumed you lived in a hole; if anyone had asked, I would have guessed you made decent money. And then what are you supposed to do all day but clean. Especially when — but you probably don’t make a habit of sampling. Otherwise you would live in that hole I imagined. No, you probably pop CDs in that nice stereo and dance with the broom, sing into the feather-duster like a microphone, wipe the sponge across the countertops in time with the beat. And then you sit in your spotless apartment and read your books. Hmmm. Shall I read Milton or Dante this evening? Hmmm. Shall it be Kafka or Chekov tonight? Must be nice to have the time and energy to keep your place clean, to read literature. Some of us have lives. Real jobs. I can’t come home from work and clean my toilet. I can’t come home from work and read Ruskin. I can barely choke down a prune.

I used to read. I used to read a lot. When I was little, my dad gave me books he read when he was a boy: Koko—King of the Arctic Trail; Silver Star and the Black Raider. Koko was a sled dog that solved mysteries. Silver Star was a ranch horse that solved mysteries. But I didn’t read about animal detectives forever. My dad also had a whole box of vintage Hardy Boys, which I devoured. He reread them with me, and we talked for hours about The Melted Coins and The Secret Cave. I preferred Frank, the thinker, but Dad liked hotheaded Joe. Of the Hardy’s friends, however, Chet was both of our favorite. Biff was slick, with the boxing and whatever, but big-boned Chet—he had a big heart too. And in the occasional fistfight, he was as brave as anyone. I read all of my dad’s books, and then as much of Franklin W. Dixon as the library offered, before I checked out a Nancy Drew story. My dad was disappointed. Nancy Drew was girl stuff, and he wouldn’t talk to me about it. The same went, later, for Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith. Then Flannery O’Connor and Edith Wharton were girly and highfalutin. He approved of George Eliot until he found out that was her pen name. Finally, in college, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein: girly, highfalutin nonsense. 

Either you disagree or you like girly highfalutin nonsense. Or you just keep it around and dusted to seduce bra-burning bookworms. Maybe, like your suit, your apartment just communicates that you are not to be fucked with. Anyone who lives with this many books in a place this clean, this close to the subway, must know good lawyers. Not to mention your gun, which in its pouch looked from a distance like just another book there between volume one and two of Plato’s dialogues. How could I help but test the locks on the coffee table drawers while you went to the bathroom? If I couldn’t rip enough off of you to do the trick, maybe you would catch me trying and do it yourself. So when you caught me, and laughed, and said all I had to do was ask, yeah, I started to cry. I can’t believe you tried to hold me. The last thing I want is tenderness. I want to puke myself out and flush myself away. I want to sleep. At least, sleep is the nearest analogue.

But you wouldn’t open your drawer. Lie down, you said. You clapped to dim the lights, and with a remote control turned on the stereo. Jazz, of course. Lie down, you said. Being very sweet. It made me furious. I could have screamed. I did scream. At least, I raised my voice. Which you didn’t like any more than other men do. But clearly you weren’t pushed around. You looked me in the eye, looked at the drawer, weighed your options, made your decision. Out came the key.

We had fun, right? Talking all night? That’s fun. About our first records and our first movies and about how TV isn’t what it used to be. About the chores our mothers assigned. About whether to dust or sweep first: to dust may knock dust down to the floor to be swept, like your mom said, but my mom said that to sweep kicked dust up onto the furniture to be wiped away. About what times our fathers left for work and came home. About the times they didn’t. About divorce. About crushes, first kisses, about virginity and losing it. About cutting class. About first beers and first cigarettes and first joints and first lines. About professors that blew our minds and professors that bored us to death and professors who turned us on. About parties off-campus. About cops. About the sixties and the seventies and the eighties and today. About rent (not The Rent) and groceries and utility bills and the subway. About hating bosses and coworkers and customers. About living alone. About going home for Christmas and Easter. About taking Communion even though we don’t really believe anymore. About cutting Pascal’s wager. 

About Jean, and that it felt like I loved him: I thought about him all the time, I wanted him to smile at me, talk to me, kiss me, hold me, and more. But really I hated him. And what did that mean? You had no answer, except to sing “What Is This Thing Called Love?” That was my cue to leave. Clearly you weren’t listening, not at all. And now I hate you too, along with Jean, alcohol, cocaine, The Rent, Ben, basketball, New York. And why? Look at the morning sun kiss the tops of skyscrapers. Watch the river flow under the bridge. Everyone else on this train will be at work soon. I’m calling in sick.

The azucena

fiona vigo marshall     

She was from some sardine village on the ruthless, sparkling Med, one of those dustbowls full of half-built ghettos for the English where even now you can get a house cheap without running water, and still missed the smell of fish in the air. Down here on the marina, there was just a pervading dankness, and whiffs of raw, eerie mud coming up from the river. The tide was coming in, swallowing up the mud flats and forming a thin line of water through the marshes. Azu stomped on ahead through the gathering October afternoon with its scrubby grass and red haws, past the conglomeration of industrial huts and portakabins that made up the waterfront. The two schoolgirls who trailed behind in their uniforms were at eleven slightly taller than her, with her determined, bow-legged stride.

‘All right, girls?’ she called back. ‘Come on, chop-chop! Before it gets dark!’

Azu stood waiting for them, hand curled on one hip. Her husband had named the boat after her, so long ago that it fell into the region of myth, not history. Yet there it was, down the swaying, rickety walkway, beneath the shade of the Medway Bridge with its eight lanes of traffic: The Azucena.

The girl with the dun-blonde ponytail hastened forward.

‘A boat. A real houseboat!’

Azu shook her head at her daughter’s friend, in foreboding rather than welcome.

‘Ah! If I had a house like yours, Kate! I’d give anything. But there. Isn’t meant to be at the minute. Your mum, now, Kate, you’d never find her on a boat — no, no. Not like Carla and me, stuck here. No, your mum’s a clever old stick, int-she, a clever old stick—’

Her lisp, from the sides of her mouth rather than the front, might have been a lingering remnant of her Spanish origin, that and the lustrous wave of black hair on her rather large head. Also something about the confident curl of her hands, that were like capable lilies, opening out white and elegant to grasp the air. As if she had never quite forgotten that azucena means lily. Otherwise she could have been native to the place, to the crevices and precipices of chalk tumbling down to the dull hiatus of the water, to the big main roads and their ghosts that encircled this little encampment. If Dickens had found her, he might have given her just such a tagline — clever old shtick — clever old shtick. But her shortness was Spanish; too young for the starved Civil War generation, she had all the same inherited hardship, it had become genetically encoded in her. She had come to the UK at twelve , in forgotten circumstances. Now The Azucena, trim, green and peeling, was home.

‘Home, sweet home.’

The girls gazed at the houseboat: Kate in awe, Carla with indifference. Fresh from the overheated classroom, they looked flushed against the pallid air. Bristling with pride - it was not every day Carla had a friend round — Azu did the honours.

‘Swing a leg, swing a leg. Hope you don’t get sea-sick—’

She flung a short leg over the rail, straddling the uncertain, heaving void, where you might pitch into the black water beneath. For both Azu and girls it was a bit of a stretch. Then the boat lurched beneath them and they were on deck, rocking gently. A small front door was wedged into the green planks that made up the front, with plastic windows either side and alcoves holding potted geraniums and Spanish plates, sombre yellows and greens and oranges, fish and fruit. At which Azu waved her improbable, lily-fingered, white hand.

‘The genuine article. La ceramica. Makes me homesick.’

Tears filled her eyes. Ask her to go back, though, to the bad-place town of narrow streets and little, under-nourished, pigeon-breasted men stepping out in their beige shirts, and hard-faced matrons with their shopping baskets, where once a year there was a festival to whatever pagan goddess kept the sea in order, disguised as the Virgin, and every so often someone threw herself off a balcony on a stifling summer’s night—

‘Funny, int-it, Kate, your mum and me both being Spanish. I’ve got a lot in common with your mum, you know. Shared heritage. Ay Seňor, if only I had her sense!’

Kate considered. Her mind struggled to make any connection between Azu and her mother. Besides, Mum had been born and brought up in London, speaking mainly English, her acquaintance with Spain limited to summer holidays. Her family were from the north of Spain, of a pragmatic, business-like, rather dour race; not like Azu, who had blossomed in the south, speaking a different language, smelling different flowers. Azu’s father, she had it on the best authority, had been a blacksmith, a thing of glamour and black flame impossible to imagine in her own family dynamic.

Azu flung the door open.

‘Aqui es tu casa. Come in, make yourself at home.’

They entered. It was dark and narrow, like another life. Azu hurried to raise the green blinds. It was all in miniature. A neat little worktop with a tiny microwave into which you could just fit one ready meal. A kettle giving two cups of hot water, as if for a dolls’ tea party. A narrow, hard sofa which turned into Azu’s bed at night. A box TV. A dark-red, ornate, cast iron stove of real beauty. Everything was exquisitely tidy.

The only door, at the back, led into Carla’s room, which was pink and held a slim bed with a few ornaments either side and clothes drawers beneath. Two people could fit into the room if one perched on the bed. Enchanted, Kate duly sat and gazed out of the window, which took up most of the side, and out over the baleful river to the line of low, dark shrubbery on the opposite bank some three hundred feet away. She would be tall; already, tucking her legs in beneath her, she felt too big for these surroundings.

‘How amazing to wake up and look out onto water!’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I’d love to be rocked to sleep.’

’’Tisn’t always in water. It often just sits in the marsh. Only floats when there’s lots of rain or if the tide comes in.’

Azu was surveying them from the doorway, hand on hip, with a mixture of pride and dismay.

‘Yes, it’s cosy all right. Oh yes — hard work to keep it tidy — but life’s impossible if you don’t. When Dean was here—’

Again her eyes filled with tears. Both girls’ faces froze, in silent prayer that she would not break down completely.

‘But there—’ running a finger beneath her glasses — ‘he found a house. Don’t blame him for legging it, really. Pity of it is, was his idea to live in a boat. Your mum now, Kate, she’d never put up with it.’

Carla gave a rough laugh.

‘Yeah, he’s the one wanted to live on a boat in the first place!’

The girl was jeering and unimaginative. Already she had all but forgotten her father.

‘Don’t you like living on a boat? On a boat?’

‘S’all right.’

‘Yes. He named the boat after me, then did a runner. Bastard. Found another woman, he did, a woman with a house — lived on dry land, she did—’

‘Oh, stop going on about a house, Mum.’

‘Well, I want a bathroom! Marooned here… and winter coming on again…’

‘Um - I need the loo, please,’ said Kate, reminded.

‘We have to go out again.’

Back up the wooden walkway to the shared facilities; toilets with a primary school gap under the door, and showers, bleak, bare cubicles. The wind from the marshes found you everywhere, ankles, back of the neck and wet vulva. Carla’s hand came under the door, holding paper.

‘We have to bring our own.’

‘What if you forget? In the middle of the night?’

‘That’s why Mum wants to move into a house.’

‘Can you get one?’

‘She’s on a list with the council. Or a flat. Anything, she says, so long as it’s got a bathroom.’

‘So can’t you ever have a bath?’

‘No. Just showers.’

‘That must be cold in winter.’

‘Tis.’ Still addressing the locked door, she added, ‘Mum had a bath at Jessica’s house on Monday.’

‘I heard something about it.’

It was no news to Kate; it was all round school, how Azu, towel over arm and soap in hand, had marched Carla into Jessica’s house and taken possession of the bathroom, without invitation.

‘Wasn’t Jessica’s mum out?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was she cross when she found out?’

‘Don’t know.’

Jessica’s mother was some kind of distant cousin to Azu; but even so. The sense of outrage had reverberated through the village. Kate felt guiltily that she ought to offer a bath; but she didn’t want to. She trusted her own mother would hold firm. Imagine, just imagine, Azu and Carla arriving to stay, with suitcases, moving in! It was a real possibility. Only give them an opening, and they’d be in.

‘What’s that rustling? Are there rats?’

‘Sometimes, at night. And first thing in the morning sometimes. Have you finished? Hurry up. Let’s go and play in the wreck.’

‘I want to get changed out of my uniform first.’

‘Well, hurry up!’

The wreck was out of bounds, half sunk into the mud and held by a massive rusty anchor. Changed into leggings and hoodies, the girls approached cautiously, looking round. Nothing stirred, the low river held a last afternoon sheen, the banks of mud rose opposite, where four boats stood nose to tail. To the left, the motorway bridge reared tall, the traffic so far above as to be like the constant passing of angels.

A man appeared on the river path, a tall, stooped figure with cap and pipe, walking a golden retriever.

‘That’s Alfie,’ said Carla, sotto voce. ‘Big Alfie. There’s Big Alfie and Little Alfie. They own those two horses that graze on the corner by the school.’

‘Oh, do they? But the horses are the same size.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They’re not one big and one little.’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. The horses are retired. They used to pull their scrap cart. They’re called Elijah and Ezekiel. Eli and Zek for short.’

‘Can you stroke them?’

‘You can do, if you’re quick. They’re not really that kind of horse. Mum says they bite. I don’t think they do, though. She just don’t trust them.’

Alfie approached, he of the inexplicable horses, nodded good afternoon. Kate dismissed the thought of asking him for more of an explanation. The girls waited until he had gone by; looked round again.

‘Get the plank,’ said Carla.

An old plank lay on the shore. They flung it across the mud and ran across, one by one, to haul themselves awkwardly up the anchor and on board. Kate looked in dismay at the rust stains on her hoodie and hands.

‘Quick, down into the hold!’ said Carla. ‘In case anyone saw us.’

There was a wooden step-ladder, down which they clattered, breathing fast.

 ‘Now we’re marooned,’ said Carla with satisfaction.

‘Aren’t you marooned enough as it is?’ said Kate, looking round. The hold was musty and dark and felt as it were going to fall in on you any moment.

‘I can’t see very much,’ she added, critical.

‘I usually bring a torch. Only I left it on the boat. I sleep with it by my bed.’

Kate wiped her hands down her sides again, but the smell and brown of rust remained. Mum would be unimpressed.

‘What are we going to do now? Just sit here?’

‘Isn’t anything else to do. Except watch TV.’

‘Well, let’s play Robinson Crusoe.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well, he’s this sailor who’s marooned on an island…’

But Carla was indifferent. She didn’t know or care that marooned could trace a corrupted descent from the Spanish cimarrón, with an etymology of living wild. Her heritage meant nothing to her. Cimarrón, meaning gone astray, feral, runaway, untamed; believed, probably falsely, to come from Old Spanish cimarra; thicket in turn from cima, summit, peak, also falsely traced to the Latin cyma,  with its implications of escaping to freedom in the mountains. Living wild. Poor Azu had tired of it long ago. And to Kate, already the wild was dull.

 The Ship That Sails

Stewart Engesser

Debbie was supposed to spend the weekend at the Finch’s, watching their dog, but her boyfriend scored Metallica tickets. Two shows, Saturday, Sunday, Boston then New York. She asked if I’d do it. Their dog is so sweet, Debbie told me. It’ll be fun, it’ll be good for you. You’ll just need to go over and meet them before they say yes. 

At first it sounded kind of overwhelming, then it sounded good. Get out of the apartment for a while. Do something different. Escape. Sure, yeah. Why not. 

Some things were going on in my personal life. Debbie knew about some of it, but she didn’t know everything. Nobody did. I hadn’t told anyone. 

I was maybe losing my mind. 

Seeing things. 

Things that weren’t there. 

But the thing is, they were there. 

Or rather, she. 

She was there. 

I went over that afternoon to meet Mr. Finch. On the way I thought about the adventures we’d have together, me and the Finch’s dog. Walking? Hell yeah. Throwing balls? You bet. For the first time in a while, I was kind of excited. It was summer, and I rolled the windows down. I drove past the golf club, the park, the meadow that soon would be reborn as a luxury condominium complex. I wondered how the meadow felt about its looming reinvention. I assumed the meadow wanted to remain what it was: rolling, grassed, caressed by winds and rains. But the meadow was not consulted. The meadow had no influence or power and did not attend town planning meetings or submit rebuttals to proposed zoning variances. I thought about the voles and mice and butterflies that lived in the meadow, who were about to wake to a day of incomprehensible death and terror. Then I was at the house.

The house was a well-kept 18th-century salt box. Weathered shingles, white trim, a brass ship’s bell by the door. It was in a neighborhood that used to be for sea captains and fishermen. Now it was for rich people. When I got out of my car, I could smell the ocean. Flowers spilling everywhere, granite steps, a tidy lawn. 

I knocked and Mr. Finch opened the door right away, like he’d seen me coming, like he’d been watching me approach through the window. He was fifty, maybe, red faced and rumpled. He reminded me of a professor you might see driving an old MG on a crisp fall day, bundled against the cold, roof down, whizzing past horse farms and stone walls, half in the bag, music too loud, sneaking a cigarette. His white oxford needed ironing. 

Mr. Sweeney I presume, Mr. Finch said. He sounded sort of British, but he wasn’t. 

That’s me, sir, I said. 

Call me Buckley, Mr. Finch said. 

I had no desire to call him Buckley. I had no desire to call anyone Buckley, or to know anyone who referred to themselves as Buckley. He put his hand on my shoulder, like he was about to give me some tough news. 

Debbie told me about your friend, he said. 

What was I supposed to say? I didn’t want to talk about it. Someone had cut the grass recently, you could smell the warm green sweetness of it. 

Mr. Finch frowned and squeezed my shoulder. 

It’s a tough break, but it’s not your fault, he said. 

I know it’s not, I said. 

Attaboy, Mr. Finch told me. 

There were oil paintings of sailing ships in the hall. Pumpkin pine floors. Leather bound books in a case, a framed vintage map of the United Kingdom. An old fishing creel hung from a coat rack. I thought he might invite me in, but instead he gazed off at his quiet street, the houses with ivy and lawns. 

Mr. Finch seemed to be gathering up the resources for a speech. A car drove by, going too fast. He scowled after the car as it sped away. 

We live imperiled lives, Mr. Finch told me. Some people understand that, some people don’t, but certainly everyone understands it in time. 

He was talking about, I suppose, death, and how it might crash into your life at any moment. He seemed to believe he was telling me something I didn’t know. Mr. Finch stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. Trying to seem sad, but not really sad. 

Anyway, I’m sorry for your loss, he said. 

Thanks, I said. 

Where was the dog? Was there a dog? I just wanted to meet the dog. 

You know, my father was a shoplifter, Mr. Finch told me. 

I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. A shoplifter? 

I don’t mean he was some kind of criminal, or anything like that, Mr. Finch said. As you may know, my father was Chief Justice for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He just loved to steal. Little things, steaks, bags of chips, a bottle of wine. My first bike, he stole. I found that out later, of course. I guess my point is, who knows what makes a person tick. We can’t blame ourselves if something goes haywire. 

I laughed. What was funny? Was something funny? Nothing was funny. 

Mr. Finch laughed too, one of those fake little chortles. I made him nervous. People didn’t know what to say, so they said all kinds of things. 

Well, anyway, we love Debbie, he said. And she recommends you highly. So hopefully this works out for all parties. Piper’s already on island with our little guy. I’m supposed to head up Friday. All the cousins are there, but I guess someone’s allergic to dogs, or afraid of dogs, or who knows. Everyone’s allergic to something now, apparently. 

It’s going to be perfect weather for the island, I said, just to say something. I had no idea, nor did I know what island I was supposed to be talking about. And who was Piper? It didn’t matter, and I didn’t care. 

Mr. Finch told me to wait in the hall while he went to grab Reuben. He didn’t spell it out, but I assumed Reuben was the dog. 

A door closed, another door opened, then the sound of claws on linoleum, happy barking, and then, here was the dog, the goofy guy, and when he saw me he lost his mind, became ecstatic, ran over to me and began leaping and spinning in circles so his floppy ears spun this way and that way, and his whole body twisted and rolled around, and his tail went wiggy-waggy. 

Hey, bud, I said to the dog. Look at you! 

The dog said, I love you. 

The dog said, welcome to my home, please come in, never leave, I am so happy to see you. 

Well, Reuben likes you, Mr. Finch said. 

Reuben rolled over and I rubbed his belly. 

His belly was soft, and Reuben loved that I was scratching it. Just like that, Reuben was my boy. My man. My partner. 

Is that your belly, I asked Reuben, even though I knew that, yes, it was.

OK, Mr. Finch said, clearing his throat. Let me show you where everything is and all that, and I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions. 

I didn’t have any questions. I was ready to wing it completely. 

I pulled up to the Finch’s house that Friday. Mr. Finch had been gone a few hours. There was a ferry involved in his travels, a two-hour drive. A trio of women jogged by, chatting. I waved and they waved back. Sprinklers whirred. Hydrangea, lilies, rhododendron; roses and daisies. A jet flew high and silent, painting white trails in the blue sky. There were people in that plane, trying to get comfortable, a drink cart banging up the aisle. In another time, another age, seeing such a miracle – a plane in flight – would have proven the existence of monsters, caused wandering hunters draped in skins to weep and shiver and murder each other with stones, offering blood to the Mysteries in exchange for mercy. Now we don’t even notice. But the Mysteries aren’t done with us yet. 

Reuben was barking. 

I got out of my car and retrieved the key from under a flower pot. I opened the door, and Reuben froze, staring at me, startled and unbelieving. 

Oh my God, it’s you, he said. I love you, I’m so happy to see you! 

He spun in happy circles, wiggled in spasms, ran into the kitchen, skidded, then ran back to me and leapt into my arms. 

There’s my boy, I said. There’s my buddy. 

Reuben ran to the couch in the living room and leapt up, staring out the window, then looked over his shoulder at me. Get a load of this, he said. There are squirrels in the yard. Look! 

He was right. There were several gray squirrels, running and twitching their tails. There was a bird feeder, too, and one squirrel swung from it, dipping up seed with a gentle dexterity. The squirrel seemed thoughtful and content. He could have been thinking of love, economic policy, an article he’d read about building a birch bark canoe. 

There’s a lot we don’t know about the world, I told Reuben. 

I can smell grief, he told me. And when people are afraid. 

Yes, I bet you can, I said. 

He seemed a little worried about me. 

I love you, he told me again.

I love you, too, man, I said. You and me. In it to win it. 

Reuben said, I’m sorry you’re sad. 

It’s OK, I said. 

I hugged him.  He smelled good, almost like peaches, and his fur was so soft. I could feel his heart beating. There was a faint yeasty smell coming from his ears. I wanted to take him home with me. I wanted to live with him forever. I wanted to get an old motorcycle and drive around the French countryside with Reuben in the sidecar. I was crying a little bit. It happens. It’s fine. It’s part of the whole thing. Reuben leapt off the couch. There were a couple paw prints on the cushions. 

Let’s go chase those squirrels, he said. 

How about let’s get changed first, I told Reuben. 

I went upstairs, into the Finch’s bedroom. I’d been told not to go into the Finch’s bedroom. At any second, everything – you, me, fish, trees, wicker patio furniture, the entire planet – all of it can vanish in a blinding flash of what the fu…? What I mean is, if you want to go in the bedroom, go in the bedroom. 

There was a sundress tossed on the bed, a couple of gym socks without their mates. Empty hangers on the floor, water glasses on the bedside tables. A stuffed animal – a pig - with the face chewed off. I stared at the pig for a moment. It was terrifying. Was it their kid’s toy? Or the dog’s? I could imagine the pig animating, sitting upright, and speaking in a cute sing-song voice through its mangled face. Saying something innocent and sane that in this new context vibrated with horror. It’s feeding time! Something like that. 

The bedroom smelled like air freshener and something sour. Spilled milk, vomit, something. Reuben waited in the doorway, panting. I was told not to let Reuben into the bedroom, but I wasn’t going to play that way. Equal partners, equal shares of the spoils, that’s my motto. 

Want to join my crew, I asked Reuben. 

Reuben said yes, he wanted to join my crew. 

I’m talking no leash, no harness, anything goes. Are you ready for something like that? 

Yes, Reuben said. But I am afraid of garbage trucks and lightning. 

We’re all afraid of something, I said. Get in here, buddy. 

I had a strange feeling. I felt like maybe it was time to become someone different. 

Mr. Finch’s closet was full of expensive, tasteful clothes. Button-down shirts, jackets, polished shoes. Whites and pinks and blues and greens, madras, khaki, mohair. The clothes of a lawyer, a boarding school man, the clothes of someone with a working knowledge of sailor’s knots. I found an old seersucker suit. Penny loafers, a faded yellow and hibiscus Hawaiian shirt in the back of the closet. A pair of parrot-green socks. Reuben watched as I put on his master’s clothes. I left mine on the floor in a pile. They smelled of sweat and weed and grief. There was a floor length mirror on the back of the bedroom door. I looked like a cheap lawyer, drunk at a convention in Bermuda. 

What do you think, I asked Reuben. 

You look amazing, he said. His tail was wagging, his entire body vibrating. 

Want to get up on the bed, I asked him. 

I patted the bed. 

He stared at me, head tilted, tail wagging hesitantly. 

I’m not allowed, Reuben told me. 

Don’t be ridiculous, I said. 

He jumped on the bed and began scratching and digging and rolling, as though he were a wolf, pawing at the ground to dig a shallow hole to sleep in. I lay on the bed, too, and Reuben licked my face. We lay there together, taking it all in. A couple of buccaneers. He didn’t want anything from me but love, and kindness, and that’s all he had to offer. It was everything. 

If you think anyone understands everything that’s going on, I told Reuben, you are mistaken. 

I am just happy to be on the bed, Reuben said. 

I bet you like peanut butter, I told Reuben. 

Reuben said, yes, I do.

I’m gonna get you some peanut butter, buddy.

I opened all the windows. There was a breeze, the leaves on the oaks in the front yard shook and whispered. The light was long and slow and golden, and it reminded me of how the light might look in a movie about dead people in Heaven. What was this feeling? It felt like I’d been asleep, trapped in a terrible dream, and now I was waking up. I felt an unfurling, an unspooling, a simple unfocused glee. It was happiness. I was happy. It had been a long time. 

I made a mental note to get Debbie a six pack, a couple joints. Something to thank her. Maybe some taxidermy. Are there taxidermy shops? Maybe a stuffed raven, or something more surprising. I’d read somewhere about a shop in Paris that sells human bones. Where do they get them? Can you buy an entire skeleton? Debbie would love to have a human skeleton. 

I grabbed my sunglasses, tied my hair back in a pony tail. There was a red, white and blue terry cloth sweatband on the dresser on a small sterling silver tray. I put it on. 

America!

A framed photo of Mr. Finch and his wife and little boy sat on the dresser. They were on a sailboat. Mr. Finch was at the helm. The wind was blowing their hair around, and the light was perfect. Golden hour; sails the color of tea. Handsome people, lucky people. Their faces glowed. You could tell that their little boy was positioned for a privileged life of paddle sports and waterfront vacation property. 

I made a wish for little Finch. I wished that he would skip college, travel the world with a toothbrush and a change of clothes, living by hook or by crook. Befriend cartographers and watercolorists and learn to tango, learn French, how to free climb, surf, play Flamenco guitar. I imagined him drifting above the Serengeti in the basket of a hot air balloon, I imagined him as a waiter at an art opening in Paris, staring at women in backless dresses, writing poems on napkins and being seduced by the wife of the Paraguayan ambassador. I saw him in a far-flung jungle village, a shaman painting his face in blood, preparing him for a ritual involving hallucinogens, dancing, ecstatic copulation and feasting. 

Don’t play it safe, little Finch, I told him. The world is an amazing, wonderful place, if you can stand it. 

I would like dinner, and a stroll, Reuben told me. Also, I need to poop soon. 

Okey doke, pal, I said. Let’s hit it. 

I felt almost jaunty. 

We went downstairs. Reuben ran ahead into the kitchen and started barking. Barking and barking, angry and sharp, the kind of barking dogs do when someone is in the house and shouldn’t be. My heart sank. I was pretty sure I knew why he was barking. 

She’d found me. 

I walked into the kitchen and floating above the kitchen table was Judith, my girlfriend, or rather, her spirit, her vibe, her energy, her ghost, whatever you want to call it. The rope was around her neck. Her neck still had that horrible broken lurch, and her feet swung gently as from a swing in the yard of a house where nothing bad was ever supposed to happen. 

I wasn’t sure you’d find me here, I said. 

Judith or what once was Judith shimmered and flickered and for a moment glowed red, which I took to mean, I can find you anywhere. 

My heart whizzed and blurred, as it always did when Judith appeared. 

Reuben was barking and growling and not at all relaxed. His ears low and flat against his head, his teeth bared, GRRRR, GRRRR, GRRRR. 

I told him it was OK, but he didn’t believe me. 

I waved a treat under his nose and tossed it into the living room, but he paid no attention. 

Do you not see what I’m seeing, Reuben asked me. 

Yes, I do, I said. 

There’s a dead person in the house, Reuben clarified. 

Yes, that’s true, I told Reuben. This is Judith, my girlfriend. She hanged herself about a year ago. 

Judith pulsed red then purple. I heard her in my head, behind my eyes. 

We’ve been over this and over this, I told her. It’s true. You’re dead. 

Judith flashed and pulsed, spinning in the air above a vase of flowers on the counter. The flowers trembled, as from a breeze. Reuben hunched and squatted, hackles raised, belly low to the ground as Judith flickered like the snow on an old TV. 

I shouldn’t even be talking to you, I told her. I’m supposed to ignore you, you’re not supposed to be here. 

Her voice in my head, strange and distorted, a warped record played backwards. 

I need to know, she said. 

That’s what she always said. 

I need to know. 

I don’t know what you expect me to do, I said. 

Reuben cried, his body trembling as he leaned into my legs. 

Judith flickered at a slower frequency and disappeared.

I don’t know what’s happening, Reuben told me. But I am hungry, and after I eat supper I will have to poop. It’s important to not poop in the house because I’m a good dog and good dogs poop outside. 

I saw something move outside the window. Judith hovered around the bird feeder. She looked tired and gray, and her eyes were bottomless black holes in which lived all the sad secrets the living cannot see or understand. Birds flitted and spooked, flying away in flashes of color, yellow, blue, red and dusky brown. Judith reached for them, as if to catch them, as if to hold them as they sang. They flew through her fingers. 

Reuben whined. 

Supper’s coming, buddy, I told him. You’re such a good boy. 

There was a note somewhere, instructions telling me how much to feed him, but I just poured some crunchers in his bowl. Maybe too many crunchers. It was fine. I found the peanut butter and spooned a big dollop on top. Reuben gobbled it all up, yum. Then I found a lime, the gin. I made myself a double gin and tonic and glugged it. 

Judith drifted sadly through a wall, her head bowed. There was a small TV on the kitchen counter, and I turned it on, thinking it might help Reuben settle down. On the TV, a woman stared out a window, her apartment candlelit and stylish. There was a voice-over, speaking to no one, or maybe just to me: I never understood New York, but I sure did love it. It was Judith’s voice, somehow, sweet and gravelly, and the sound of it broke my heart. 

Reuben trotted out to the mudroom where his leash and harness hung. 

I would like to go for a walk now, Reuben told me. 

Reuben knew where he was going. I traipsed behind, and Judith drifted above the street, spurting along, her movements jerky and angular and confused. Only Reuben and I could see her. Through the tops of trees, above the passing cars. A sprinkler hit her, and she turned for a moment into rainbows. 

Reuben seemed OK with Judith now. Maybe because we were outside, maybe because he’d eaten. He was happy to be walking. He kept stopping to sniff bushes, pee on trees. We arrived at the park, and Reuben led me to a bench. There was a pond. A little boy in red boots waded in the pond, feeding bread to ducks. His mom sat in the grass, her shoes off. You could feel how much she loved the boy. Her love was energy, it was alive, and it glowed. Judith sat beside her and wept. 

Why is she dead, Reuben asked. 

A seagull, far from the sea, drifted and swooned. It landed on the grass, eyeing the little boy, his bag of stale bread. The ducks quacked and muttered. 

She got tired, I guess. 

Why didn’t she just go to sleep, Reuben said. 

She was sick, I said. And nothing could make her better, even though we both wanted her to get better. A lot of people wanted her to get better. 

But she killed herself, Reuben said. 

Yes, she did, I said. 

I love ducks, Reuben said. And squirrels. And my people. I would never kill myself. 

I know you wouldn’t, I told him. 

We lay in the grass and Reuben put his head in my lap. 

Thank you for taking care of me, he said. 

Judith rose into the air, majestic, terrifying, sensual, worn down. 

I need to know, she said again. I need to know. 

I love you, but you’re dead, I told her. You’re dead. Please. You have to go. 

Judith did not go. She hovered. 

Years before, I went to a reading. I hadn’t intended to. It was raining, the windows of the café were fogged; I couldn’t see inside, didn’t know there was a reading in progress. I ducked in, everyone turned, I was stuck. I had to sit through this reading now. I picked my way to the only empty seat, right in front. Judith stood at the podium, a book open before her. She smiled at me, welcomed me. She wore a green baggy sweater, chunky glasses, patched old jeans. The way her hair stood up in places did something to me. I wanted to hear her voice, her words. I wanted to hear everything. 

She read a section of her novel that was about two lost horses wandering a Civil War battlefield. They get separated, find each other again. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She couldn’t keep her eyes off me. Her story was beautiful and funny and strange and sad, and I loved it, even though I wasn’t sure I understood it. I wanted more. I wanted her to read to me forever. Just knowing this person existed in the world. That was enough to be thankful for. But of course I talked to her. 

In three months we were living together. Happiness. No money. Leaves in the fall, weekends away. We left New York, moved to Portland, Maine. She taught, wrote, gave readings. Started another novel. I ran a little studio, produced some records, composed music for ads. We went to book stores, record stores, shows in people’s houses. Ate out. Made friends. But Judith’s world began to shimmer at a strange frequency. She drifted through a variety of distortions. She thought she was being followed. She received messages hidden in the chirpy dialogue of home makeover shows. 

A blur of doctors, therapists, pills and tears, unemployment, shuffling the floor in robes. 

The second novel was abandoned. 

Set fire to your car, the messages instructed. Take off your clothes and scream in a church. Stay up late and order a thousand baby chicks. Drink, sleep, weep, apologize. 

I held her, and it didn’t matter. She was in another room. 

We walked the little paths of the botanical garden, the flowers bobbing. I made crepes, drew baths, rubbed her feet, washed her hair. The messages kept coming. 

Toss your phone. Hitchhike without shoes. Disappear. Book a motel room in a logging town. Get a rope, tie a noose. 

Join the constellations. 

Reuben sat in the grass before me. He was watching the little boy. I could tell he wanted to go over to him, wanted to say hello, to wade into the pond and splash around. 

You can go over there if you want, I told him. 

That’s OK, he said. I’ll stay here with you. 

Judith floated above the boy, who could not see her. She seemed to reflect the color of the water, the color of the sky. Maybe she was water, was sky. I wanted to hold her, but there was nothing to hold. There would never be anything to hold. A chickadee flew through her and made a sound that reminded me of static.

She is very sad, Reuben said. 

She is, yes, I agreed. 

You’re sad, too, Reuben told me. 

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, I said. 

I love you. 

I love you, too, I told Reuben, and it was true. It felt good to say it, and it felt good that it was true. I was already thinking ahead, to when I’d get in my car and drive away from the Finch’s house, from Reuben. I knew I would be driving into a hole, a deep, dark hole, and that the hole wanted to swallow me completely, and that I must not let it. 

I’m all alone, buddy, I said. 

You’re not alone, Reuben said. Do you not see all those ducks? 

I do see the ducks, yes. 

The ducks were floating and quacking and seemed vaguely irritated by something. It looked like a pretty good life to me. Pieces of bread floated on the water, and all they had to do was eat it. 

Part of me wants to maybe eat the ducks, Reuben told me. But it’s a quiet part, sort of, and kind of far away. 

We watched the ducks, and the boy, and Judith, floating, the end of the rope she hanged herself with drifting in the water, making ripples. The mother saw the ripples, and sat up straight, watching them. Where did they come from? What was making them? She looked around, as if seeking an explanation. But there wasn’t one. The ripples expanded in circles. 

Do you love her, Reuben asked. 

I do, yes, very much. And it makes me very sad that I couldn’t help her. 

Did you go on walks? 

Yes, Reuben, we went on a lot of walks. But sometimes walks aren’t enough to fix things. 

A good walk always fixes things, Reuben said. 

Not always, buddy, I said. Most of the time, but not always, and not all the way. 

Judith floated over to the bench. 

She says she’s supposed to go into the light, Reuben told me. But then she’s going to be gone. And she doesn’t want to be gone. 

I don’t want her to be gone, I said. 

She knows that, Reuben told me. 

What am I supposed to do, I asked Reuben. 

The ducks flew away, whap, whap, an explosion of duck, and the little boy, startled, began to cry. 

Tell her the truth, Reuben said. 

What’s the truth, I asked. 

Tell her you’re going to be okay, Reuben said. 

Okay. Was that what I was going to be? Okay? A ridiculous word, a silly word, too small to contain whatever all this was. I thought of clowns spilling out of a tiny car. 

The mother waded into the water to comfort her little boy. The ducks across the pond, in the grass beneath a willow. Judith pulsed. To them, she wasn’t there, had never been there. They’d never know who she was, what will never happen, never know anything about Judith at all.

The light in the park was beautiful. Long shadows, trees illuminated. The sky folding its wings. A plane overhead, mourning doves. 

Judith. I remember you. You’re in a doorway, drying your hands. It’s summer, earlier it rained, but now the rain is over. The sun is going down. There is gold in windows, the half-lit trees, gold spilling on the grass. Shading your eyes, you are smiling, about to say something. The garden is full of flowers. I am listening. 

And you, so close, so almost alive. 

You are gone.