Harvest Time
Professor Ericsson insisted on keeping the oral tradition alive, so for his midterm, he assigned an oral presentation on the topic of trauma. I spoke about my mom and her battle with cancer and her subsequent death—all of which transpired over five helpless weeks. I spoke about her Last Days, and trying to break the news of her death to the cat, whom she called my baby brother, and the heartbreak of broken routines, like how whenever the apartment gate slammed shut, I got up to unlock the front door, thinking it was her coming home.
Halfway into my speech, I started crying. At least I wasn’t alone. Half the women in the room cried with me. One asshole snickered, but he was easily four bills and sported the glossiest of cold sores. He had every reason to be angry.
When I finished, Professor Ericsson opened his eyes a crack and said, “Heavy on pathos.”
After two rapes (father, uncle), three dead grandparents (all heroes), one leg amputation (a Mexican stingray), and two car crashes (both DUIs), class ended, and I bolted for the door, head down, to avoid any questions or comments about my mom or cat—and, I suppose, to flee the embarrassment of crying in class like a bitch. Right when I made it to the hallway, I tripped right over a woman in a wheelchair and landed face first beside her stupid service dog.
I hopped up and ignored wheelchair lady and her growling dog and the blood trickling into my eye and the people asking if I was okay and the blood dotting my path. Down the hall, as I tried to slip into the restroom, I felt someone tugging my backpack. It was a girl from class. I only recognized her because she presented right after me. Her grandfather was a hero. She placed her hand on my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic smile and said, “Not one stone here will be left on another.”
Half my face was covered in blood, and all she had to offer was a riddle.
I said, “Thanks,” and went into the restroom.
#
Seven stitches and a week later, she found me in the library. I was reading Heart of Darkness when she sat beside me and waved hi. She took out a highlighter and a book entitled Human Anatomy.
“I never introduced myself,” she said and offered me her hand. “Tiffany.”
She had freckles on her nose and shoulders, a thin gold cross around her neck.
“Joaquin.”
“I thought Professor Ericsson called you Anastasio.”
“That was my dad’s name and fuck that guy.”
She locked eyes with me and smiled.
“I take it he’s not in the picture.”
“You can say that.”
She glanced at my book.
“How is it so far?”
“If you can deal with dense paragraphs, it’s alright—for a book about the inherent evil of whiteness.”
She canted her neck to the right. “What?”
“Never mind. I liked your speech. Your grandfather sounded like a cool dude.”
She lit up.
“He was a hero.”
Not really. He found a rare flower in the wild: the Parrot’s Beak. That’s it. He just found it, took a picture of it, and went on his merry way.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” she said, “but what are you? Mexican? El Salvadorian?”
“Mexican, and it’s just Salvadoran. You don’t need to say ‘el.'”
“Oh.”
“I’m guessing you’re white.”
“Actually, I’m three-quarters Dutch and one-quarter English.”
“So you’re one of those ethnic whites. Cool.”
She didn’t laugh.
“Sorry. My jokes just aren’t landing today.”
“Do they ever?” She smirked. “It’s okay, though. You have other things to offer. You have heart.”
Her words took me back to the seventh grade. It’s the middle of fourth period, and I just socked Chino in the face after he made fun of my knockoff Stussy T-shirt. (We all had them. He didn’t have to attract attention to mine.) He collapsed to the floor and looked up at me, more confused than angry. After the dean gave me and my mom a lecture about violence against fellow Latinos, he suspended me for two days. On the bus ride home, somewhere between Avenues 26 and 28, I started to cry.
“You know why you’re crying?” my mom asked. “It’s because you feel bad that you hit your friend. It’s a good thing. It shows you have a heart. And most men don’t have that. So cry, baby. It’s okay.”
It didn’t take much to think about her.
I snapped to and said, “I think you’re mistaking me for someone else.”
“That’s your machismo talking,” she said. “No one without heart would have given a speech like that.”
She looked right through me.
“How’s your eye?” she asked.
“It’s fine. Just a couple stitches. Doc says I’ll probably have a scar, but I can live with that.”
She nodded as if in agreement.
“You’ll be okay. Chicks dig scars, right?”
“You tell me. Do they?”
“No. Not at all. I don’t know where that expression comes from. I don’t know anyone who finds scars attractive.”
“Well, how many of your friends are desperate? I bet you the desperate don’t mind at all.”
She burst into a paroxysm of laughter and snorts. She reminded me of Muttley from one of those old ass Hanna-Barbera cartoons. All she was missing were the aviator hat and goggles.
“Tell me something,” she said, serious now. “How did you get through all that?”
“Through what?”
“Your mother’s illness. I can’t imagine how tough that was.”
Tough was finding a bus that operated at midnight. Watching cancer strangle your mom from the inside was death by a thousand cuts.
“It’s not something you think about,” I said. “You just take your licks and keep on moving. I mean, what can you do?”
Besides cry, drink yourself blotto, punch walls, nail a sucia or two.
Nothing good.
That’s all you can do.
#
On the bus ride home, as I gazed at the farrago of Victorian homes and gang graffiti along the freeway, a question dawned on me.
On a trip to the Pioneer Market, when I was eleven or twelve, some dude handed my mom a receipt with his number scrawled on it.
“I’m sorry,” she said and handed it back to him. “I’m not looking right now.”
“Then why were you looking at me,” he asked, crumpling the evidence of his rejection.
Mom rolled her eyes and pushed the cart into the cereal aisle. She tugged me by the collar.
“Don’t be like that asshole,” she said. “Just because a woman glances at you or gives you the time of day doesn’t mean she’s interested in you. Okay?”
I nodded.
She tossed a box of Shredded Wheat into the cart and must have seen the confusion on my face. “What is it?” she asked.
“Then how do I know? How do I know if a woman’s interested in me? ”
“When she takes her shirt off.”
I didn’t bother to ask how to make that happen. In the end, I never knew when a woman was interested in me.
I thought of Tiffany, the way she sought me out, and wondered if she was into me.
#
“So what do you think?” I asked Danny.
“Whatever she wants, it’s not the D.”
He sat on the floor of my living room, sorting through my mom’s letters, receipts, bills, pictures. Seven months removed from her death, and I still couldn’t look at her stuff without crying. So I sat on the couch and watched TV as Danny did it for me.
“What makes you say that?”
“The cross around her neck, that she keeps asking about your mom.” He craned his neck down the hallway. “But the silver lining is what they say about Christian girls isn’t true.”
“How’s that a silver lining?”
“It’s not.” He slipped something into the paper shredder beside him. “Besides, you’re not supposed to make any major decisions for a year. Remember? That includes dating. Just give it time. Grieve.”
“First, I didn’t say I wanted to date her. I was just curious. Second, I’m not just going to sit here and cry.”
“You don’t have to cry.”
“Whatever. I’m fine.”
“Fine. If you insist on exploring something with this girl, then you should introduce me to her. Let me assess the situation.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I can’t math or type or cook for shit, but I know people. Give me five minutes with her, and I’ll be all up in her head.”
“Calm down, Sipowicz.”
“You don’t know people like I do. Just saying.”
Danny inspected a slip of paper.
“What is it?”
“A report card.”
“Whose?”
“Your mom’s. Want to see it?”
“Just shred it.”
“This is history right here.”
“What am I supposed to do with it? Tape it to the refrigerator?”
Danny shook his head, slipped the report card into the shredder. The shredder screeched and exhaled a whiff of smoke.
“Hey, give the thing a break.”
He put my mom’s stuff into a cardboard storage box and pushed it against the wall, beside two other boxes.
“Want to take a stab at the bedroom?”
“Not tonight. Just hang back.”
Danny fell into the couch. “You think about seeing a shrink?”
“For what?”
“It’s been six, seven months, and you can’t walk into your mom’s room. Need I say more?”
I flipped through the channels.
“Therapy’s for all the Oedipuses of the world. Not me.”
“Pretty sure therapy isn’t limited to actual mother fuckers.”
“And bulimics, cokeheads, insomniacs, and premature ejaculators.”
“Really, you should give it a shot.”
“Pass.”
“Fine. Stay miserable.” He swiped the remote from my hand and started flipping through the channels. “If you think she digs you—and she doesn’t—go for it. Maybe the hunt will help clear your mind.”
Thus far, that had been his only advice: Get laid, as if sex was Lethean therapy for the bereaved.
I wasn’t really into Tiffany. She wasn’t much to look at. She didn’t wear make up or lipstick. Kept her hair in a ponytail or bun. Wore jeans and sneakers, never dresses or skirts. A plain Jane. In any context, I wouldn’t have paid her any mind, let her disappear from memory along with the other clowns of no consequence in class, but I was in a year long drought. A veritable lifetime. She gave me some shine, so why not give it a crack? Something to take my mind off things.
Danny looked toward the hall again.
“Dude, what’s up with your cat?”
I looked around the living room. The cat was nowhere in sight.
“What about him?”
“He won’t stop meowing.”
“Really?”
“You can’t hear that? He’s been meowing all fucking night.”
“Where is he?”
“Your mom’s room.”
Even though I kept her door closed, the cat pushed his way in, lay at the foot of her bed. I needed to install a lock.
“You should go pet him or something.”
“Nah. Just close the door.”
#
I never had to look for her. We’d stumble upon each other at the library or on the quad. We started having lunch together at the Jack in the Box across the street from campus. We’d shoot the shit, begin with small talk: weather, the weekend, our classes, the next essay. She probed me about being an only child, being a Mexican who couldn’t speak Spanish, growing up in Echo Park, and my mom. She always wanted to talk about my mom. Though it stung, I obliged and milked that odd aphrodisiac called pity. Whenever I told her a story, she put her hand on my lap and squeezed whenever she thought something shocking or heart breaking.
She shared just as much. In high school, she partook in drinking and smoking weed and other gauche activities. That was her word: gauche. She once had sex in a drunken stupor. Or so her friends told her. She couldn’t say one way or another. Nevertheless, the ghost of that incident haunted her. Not enough to stop drinking and smoking weed, though. That didn’t happen until she found Jesus.
She found Jesus after a Mercedes slammed into the rear-end of her mother’s Tercel. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt, so she shot out the windshield. She parted her hair to show where her skull cracked open and healed into the cross laces of a football. She said as she flew through the windshield and skidded across asphalt, she felt no pain, nothing but a warm embrace. “It was God,” she said.
Or endorphins.
Her faith helped her survive her brother’s alcoholism and her grandfather’s death.
“One day,” she said, dangling an oily french fry, “I surrendered to Him, stopped fretting about the things I couldn’t control, and let God do his work. It was the best decision I ever made.”
To this, I made no comment. Nothing but skepticism and assholery would have escaped my mouth, so I nodded and prayed for her to move onto another topic.
“Do you believe in God?” she asked.
Of course, my heathen prayer would fail.
“No,” I said.
God, no.
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
I hoped to keep it that way.
“Okay,” Tiffany said. “No more heavy stuff. Want to see something cool?”
“Sure.”
“But first, are you squeamish?”
On the fourth floor of the U building, she took me to a room housing a wall length stainless steel refrigerator with a dozen or so small doors. She dropped her backpack on the floor and ran to a door in the center of the refrigerator and opened it to reveal a pair of cold, grey feet.
“I wanted to say, ‘Y’all want to see a dead body?’ like the kid from Boyz N The Hood, but I didn’t want to give the surprise away. And there was only one of you.”
Before I can say not to, she rolled the body out.
“Look at him. He’s amazing, right?”
He was probably in his fifties, had a salt and pepper beard and a Betty Boop tattoo on the left side of his chest.
“I named him Bob,” she said, almost giddy.
Bob’s eyes were closed.
In the movies, you can close the eyes of the dead with a gentle caress. In real life, you need much more force.
“I get to dissect him next week.”
I could see my mom’s eyes: a pair of light brown gemstones, staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Come on, this is cool, right?”
I turned away from Bob.
“Aw, you are squeamish after all. You big baby.”
#
She paged that night. At 9:30pm.
I slipped some receipts into the paper shredder and gave her a buzz.
“I’m in bed,” she said. Not even a hi. “What are you doing?”
What I’ve been trying to do for months. Going through my mom’s stuff. Deciding what to keep, what to junk. Beside her collection of bills and receipts, dating back years, the junk pile remained nonexistent.
“Watching TV,” I said finally.
“Why’d you hesitate?”
“You caught me off guard.” She let the moment hang in silence. “So what are you really doing?”
“Nothing fun. Can we leave it at that?”
“Do you have a girl there?”
“I wouldn’t have called if I did.”
“Ah, so now I’ll know what you’re doing when you don’t call.”
“That’s it. I’m most desirable these days. So my nights are quite busy with the sex.”
She giggled.
“Is that your cat?”
“What?”
I looked down the hall. My mom’s bedroom door was open again.
“Oh, yeah. That is my cat.”
I walked over to close the door.
“What’s her name?”
“His name is Nicolas.”
She guffawed. “What!”
My supposed little brother lay at the foot of my mom’s bed, awash in moonlight. He turned to look at me, gave a sup nod, and then grumbled.
“Who gave him a human name?”
“My mom. She said he looked like a Nicolas. So she named him Nicolas.”
“That’s cute.”
I closed the door and walked back to the living room.
“Well, I called to ask if you wanted to go to a concert with me this Saturday. You interested?”
#
Tiffany lived in South Pasadena, so I took the 401 to Glenarm and Arroyo. I bought a single white rose from a flower shop around the corner and hoofed it from there. The streets were peak suburb: verdant and clean and absent potholes. The yellow road markings bright and unsullied. Million dollar homes both in vainglorious display and hidden behind sprawling greenery and long, serpentine driveways.
I didn’t ask who was going. I should have. Because when Tiffany opened the front door, two fat fucks and some old bag wearing a baby blue fanny pack were behind her.
“Aw, you’re so sweet,” she said and snatched the rose from my hand.
It cut like pity.
She put the bulb under her nose, took a whiff, and then set it on table beside the door, beside some keys and unopened mail.
“I have some people I want you to meet.” She put her hands on the crone’s shoulders. “This is my grandma Mary.”
Grandma Mary waved at me or possibly the front door because she sure as shit wasn’t looking at me.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said and ducked into her line of sight. I gave her a hug because it seemed like the thing to do. She felt like a plastic bag draped over a wire hanger.
One of the fat fucks smirked and nudged the other with his elbow.
“And this is Gabe and Salvador. They’re friends from church.”
Both were stuffed into white button-downs, grey slacks, and all too shiny shoes.
“This is my friend Joaquin.” She presented me with a flourish, like Vanna White revealing the letter M.
As Gabe stared at me with a fake smile, his nostrils flaring, I couldn’t help but wonder if she used the word “friend” intentionally.
I shook their potbellied hands. Gabe held my hand for a moment too long and squeezed tightly. I knew then that he, too, wanted to nail Tiffany.
“What happened to your eye?” Gabe asked. “Looks like someone gave you a beating.”
“Not quite,” I said. “But you should have seen the other guy.”
#
In the car, grandma Mary sat bitch in the backseat, the hippopotami on either side of her. Tiffany behind the wheel.
Gabe slapped my shoulder. “Which church do you go to?” he asked.
Salvador couldn’t contain his chuckle.
“I don’t go to church, actually.”
“You an atheist?”
“He has to be an atheist,” Salvador said.
“I’m undecided.”
“Undecided?” Gabe asked. “We’re not talking about voting.”
“He’s agnostic,” Tiffany said.
“Oh, so you need proof of God’s existence.”
“Pretty much.”
“What kind of proof do you need? Do you need to experience some divine event?”
The asshole was staking his claim for Tiffany.
“A near death experience I bet,” Salvador said.
“So he wants to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“He needs a car crash.”
“Or fall down some stairs.”
“Or get speared by a swordfish.”
“Joaquin, you fish much?”
They both laughed and stomped their feet to the rhythm of a stampede.
“I’m not waiting for anything,” I said. “Just living my life.”
“Maybe he needs to see Jesus’s face in a burnt tortilla. Tiffany, stop at the first taquería you see.”
One of them laughs. I can’t tell which.
“Okay, okay, take it easy on him.” Tiffany reached over and squeezed my thigh. She wore a mischievous smile on her face.
“He knows we’re just messing with him,” Gabe said and slapped my shoulder.
I should have stayed home.
#
We arrived at Angel stadium. Banners for The Harvest Crusade hung all around, and it didn’t occur to me what it meant. We took our seats as the singer onstage belted out her love for Jesus.
“You want anything to drink?” Gabe asked Tiffany. “Or eat. Or eat and drink?”
Salvador gave him a look that said, calm the fuck down.
“Can you get me a Diet Coke?” Tiffany asked.
“Of course,” Gabe said and disappeared up the stairs.
I looked at the crowd. Many were clutching bibles and praying. Some held their hands in the air, as if reaching out to God.
#
I was bored as fuck. Every band sang of worship, and at some point, half of the singers fell to their knees, clutched their hearts, and praised Him, sweet, glorious Him. One singer, some dude with a fire-red pompadour, collapsed on stage and had to be revived by his bassist with a devout kick to the ribs. Tiffany and the chunky twins bobbed their heads to the beat of Jesus and the Hail Marys while Grandma Mary stared blankly at the stage.
And not a single sign that she was interested in me. But Gabe bought me a hotdog and whispered, “Eat a dick” into my ear.
So I had options.
When the Book of Revelation left the stage, Tiffany cleared hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “I know you’re not the most religious person, but have you ever tried praying?”
I had.
Once.
After the ER doc found the white flak of cancer scattered in my mom’s lungs, and after I settled her into her hospital room and bought her a cold Pepsi, I went home, cried some more, and tried to cut a deal with God. I didn’t genuflect or put my palms together. I simply lay in bed, closed my eyes, and asked Him to let her live. In return, I promised to be a better person, as if my plan in life was to be scumbag.
I was a fucking idiot.
“You have,” she said. “Haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have.”
“You asked Him to heal your mom, right?”
I nodded.
“And?”
“And nothing. She died.”
“What did you expect to happen?”
“A miracle, I guess. A few more years. Something.”
“Joaquin, a prayer isn’t a fountain you blindly toss a coin into for good luck.”
“I know. They’re empty words said by desperate people.”
She grimaced, but took my hand and interlaced her fingers with mine.
The music stopped.
Tiffany turned away from me, but held my hand. Maybe this was the sign I was looking for.
A silver fox grabbed the mic. He thanked the crowd and then spoke about the struggle to maintain faith in a cruel, unjust world. He told the story of two missionaries named Paul and Silas who were persecuted and imprisoned for spreading the word of God. Despite their seemingly grim futures, Paul and Silas never abandoned their faith. They continued to worship Him. In their prison cell, they sang to God. They prayed. And then the earth shook. Their shackles came undone, and their cell doors opened. God had rewarded their faith. The silver fox rambled on about other troubled Christians and the rewards that faith brought them. He ended with a word on salvation and then offered an invitation. He said, “If you want to be saved, come onto this field, and accept Christ into your heart.”
And then it finally donned on me.
Harvest.
Crusade.
Reaping lost souls.
That’s why I was here: Tiffany was trying to save me, the ghetto orphan.
Gabe and Salvador tumbled past.
“Tiffany, you coming?” Gabe asked.
“I’ll catch up,” she said. She was looking at me, not Gabe, not anyone else.
“You don’t expect me to go down there, do you?” I asked.
She let the question hang for a moment and then, in a sultry voice, asked, “Do you want to go down there?”
I felt bamboozled.
“I just thought you wanted to hang out.”
“I did, but come on. You knew what you were getting yourself into.”
The stands emptied as people flocked to the field.
I turned to Tiffany and her grandma Mary was there. She clasped my hands together. Her eyes pleading for something I wouldn’t do.
“She wants to pray with you,” Tiffany said, standing behind her.
I deserved this. I grew up to be the dick at the market.
I wriggled my hands free.
“Give me a moment,” I said and stood.
“I’ll go with you,” Tiffany said and stepped toward me.
“I don’t think you’re allowed in the men’s restroom.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I’ll be right back.”
The usher in the corridor gestured to his right. “This way to the field.”
I blew past him and went down the stairs.
“Sir, you’re going the wrong way!”
I walked out into the parking lot and thought about how many busses it would take to get home, if Danny would give me a lift.
All I wanted to do was go home and listen to my little brother’s voice.
THE END
Michael Leal García teaches and writes in Los Angeles, CA. Depending on your cultural ideology, he is either Mexican-American, Chicano, un pocho, or not Mexican at all. His work has been featured in Your Impossible Voice, Drunk Monkeys, Lunch Ticket, Apogee Journal, and The Carolina Quarterly. He is currently writing his first novel.
Don't Ask Her Why
Angie’s unbuttoning her shirt when I notice a pile of her clothes have accumulated in the corner of my closet. There’s a pinch in my stomach, and I start to feel jumpy but keep my mouth closed. She turns around and slips off her bra, then closes the closet door and reaches for me with one hand. The room is dark. I hear a car door slam in the parking lot across the street and the hip-hop music from my neighbor upstairs. Angie’s breasts look like small circles of white light.
She leads me to the fold-out couch and suggests we both get completely naked. I consider asking her what she means by “completely,” but she turns around and heads for the bathroom. I open the bed, then take off my clothes and slip under the cotton sheet.
When Angie comes out of the bathroom, I notice her blue jeans are folded over her arm the way people carry their jackets while they’re at the museum. She looks around, then sets the jeans on my desk near the window and stands there looking out. Against the background of the light outside, I can see the reflection of her figure in the windowpane. The Golden Waffle’s flashing sign throws streaks of yellow on the curve of her hip. She looks exotic.
She climbs in bed without a word, and for the next twenty minutes, my mind is a blank. She’d never before been that intense and attentive. Not even when we first met.
After an appropriate silence I look up at her and make a comment about new vistas and she laughs vaguely. Her long, dark hair hangs in my face and tickles my lips. I take a short breath and gently try to shift our positions so I can lie on my side and breathe more easily. When Angie doesn’t move, I realize I must have been too gentle. Her old boyfriend, Doug, played rugby.
She’s still sitting on top of me with her hair hanging down in my face when she starts to make amusing comparisons between my job as a museum curator and her graduate work in astronomy. It’s been her passion since childhood, but she’s having an “identity crisis” because she’s “losing faith in science.” While she talks, her knees occasionally dig into the side of my ribs.
She says museum people like me are hung up on eternity and so are they, the space scientists. Then she asks me if I’ve read the paper today. I say I haven’t and she frowns and tells me that the Nobel Prize was awarded to three scientists who have “directly detected gravitational waves.”
I smile and say, maybe that explains why I’m so attracted to you.
She says, attraction, yeah, but this is about how black holes rotate around each other before merging, and that the closer they get, the faster and faster they spin until…
When her voice trails off, I nod and try to encourage her to go on, but I must have a vague look on my face because Angie lowers her eyes and says it’s hard to explain to a non-scientist. What happens, basically, is that there are two black holes getting closer and closer, and the result is they merge and create a bigger black hole.
Then she slides off of me and curls up on her side. I take a deep breath and listen to the bass line of the hip-hop music vibrating through the ceiling. It’s the same four notes over and over again. When Angie’s breathing falls to a steady rhythm, I slip out of bed and go to the closet.
There are four T-shirts, seven pairs of underwear, five pairs of socks, and two pairs of pants, not including the pair on my desk. Two of the T-shirts were given to her by her old boyfriend, Doug. In addition to playing rugby, he’s a “community activist” who splits his time between New York City and Albany, stopping in Binghamton whenever he gets a chance, which seems to be quite a bit.
Two of the shirts are gray with a large fist in the center and the words BLACK LIVES MATTER. This almost makes me laugh out loud because—well, I’m black. Doug’s white. Angie’s Latina. Only in America, right? Actually, that’s no joke. If you ask Angie, she will explain that “Latino” means a U.S.-born Hispanic.
That’s her definition, anyway. And definitions matter. I appreciate that.
For the most recent T-shirt, Angie cancelled out on an art opening with me to attend a “speak-out” on the SUNY campus. The next morning I went over to her place for breakfast, and she showed me the T-shirt. I reminded her it was the second T-shirt Doug had given her in the last six weeks.
She shrugged and I asked her if she was sure she felt resolved about how that relationship ended. And I added, do you miss big white Doug?
She told me not to call him that and said of course she’s resolved about how the relationship ended but that Doug happens to be involved in some very interesting work and is quite knowledgeable about some crucial issues. I told her I didn’t think T-shirts were that crucial, and she said, Rich, you don’t date a man for two years and then let him just drop off the earth. I said I wasn’t asking that he drop off the earth, just that he live on his part of it without bumping into us so much. And I told her that when it comes to the “crucial issue” of Black Lives—mine matters, yes.
She hunched up and gave me that look where her cheeks and jaw get tense and her eyes go blank. Then she said, Rich, you don’t own me.
* * *
Looking down at the big gray fists, I roll both the T-shirts into a tight ball and throw them against the back wall of the closet. There’s a soft thud and I make a mental note to ask Angie if big white Doug has ever been stopped by the police for driving in the wrong neighborhood.
Then I go to the window and lean against my desk. I feel like smoking or drinking or punching the wall. But I just stand there in the dark, looking out at the Golden Waffle’s lot, where two squad cars are parked next to each other, facing opposite directions so the drivers can talk. The street is quiet and behind the squad cars the sky is a strange blue-gray, like the color of smoke. It occurs to me then: Angie and I need to move forward, take the next step in our relationship. Yes, I feel quite sure, the next step needs to happen.
But in the morning I wake up with anxiety about the exhibit that’s supposed to be installed next week and decide I’m too distracted to talk to Angie about us living together. Because I’m being sort of quiet, she asks me what’s wrong, and I start to explain that we’re doing the history of women’s fashion from the Civil War to the present and that we’re doing it mixed media: photographs, paintings, film, wax figures, live models. It’s a lot to organize.
Angie agrees and gives me a passionate kiss, then says this morning she’ll make the coffee.
In the shower I begin to think again about Doug and the T-shirts and how he and Angie dated for two whole years, and my skin and muscles get hard. My feeling of urgency embarrasses me, but over the sound of the running water, I yell Angie, I love you.
When she doesn’t answer, I yell it a couple more times until finally she pokes her head around the shower curtain and smiles. I stop lathering myself when I see her glance at my groin. Then our eyes meet and she mouths the words I love you too, and in an instant she’s gone.
* * *
Later that evening we meet for dinner at the Lost Dog Café and split a carafe of wine while listening to a quartet play smooth jazz. The guitarist, a skinny white guy, wears sunglasses and a black fedora like the ones gangsters wore in the 1920s. When I bring up the subject of our living together, at first Angie’s tone is cool and detached, business-like. But then she warms up and says it’s an exciting step, and finally we both smile and make a corny toast about the power of love. I suggest we find something right away, and Angie says how about a place near the university, where the “kids” live.
The following Saturday we sign a lease for a two-bedroom on Murray Street, and the landlord agrees to take $150 off the security deposit if we clean it ourselves. So Sunday morning I squash roaches in the kitchen while Angie scrubs the bathroom floor. Around 2:00 I go out for submarine sandwiches, and we eat on the floor in the living room, laughing and exchanging stories about crazy roommates we had in college. Angie asks me if I can take Monday or Tuesday off of work so we can be finished by Wednesday. I know that I shouldn’t, but I feel happy and carefree and say OK, I’ll try.
* * *
Wednesday rolls around and, sure enough, the place is all set up. Angie has put plants in the alcove, and there are bowls of flowers in both the kitchen and living room. I have my African masks on the wall above the couch and my James Baldwin poster in the front hallway. But I can’t find anyplace to put my collection of Mesopotamian copper and bronze spearheads. Angie suggests hanging them in the extra bedroom and says we should also bring over the sleeper-sofa from my old place. I give her a quick look and ask her why we need that crummy old thing. She rolls her eyes and says, Richie, not for us. For guests. I nod and say yeah, of course.
At dinner we sit in the living room at opposite ends of a long, mahogany table that we bought in a thrift shop on Vestal Parkway. Angie wears a see-through blouse and has her long, dark hair pinned up. The chicken she has fixed is delicious. Exquisite, I say, exquisite. Then she leans back in her chair with her glass of wine in her hand and says, now this is more like it. I say, yeah, and this is the quickest, most dramatic move I’ve ever made in my whole life.
She gets up from her chair and starts to clear the table, and the way she looks at the leftover chicken tells me I’ve said something I shouldn’t have.
After we finish the dishes, I put on a John Coltrane album and try to coax her to the couch, but she pushes me away and says she has reading to do. Then her cell phone rings. It’s Doug.
She tells him he’s the first one to call her at the new apartment, then takes the phone into the bedroom. They talk for twenty minutes, and when Angie finally comes out, she says she’s tired and is going to bed. I’ve been standing in the alcove trying to tell which plants need water. When I wave to her without saying anything, she gives me a concerned look and says that I shouldn’t stay up too late.
* * *
After Angie closes the bedroom door, I drive over to the old neighborhood, where I pull into the Golden Waffle’s parking lot and sit in the car, smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio. Then I go to a bodega and buy a six-pack of beer, which I also drink in the car. Then, feeling a good, strong buzz, I drive back over to the Golden Waffle and eat. After that I’m wiped out and doze for an hour in the car.
When I get back home, it’s after two and Angie’s sound asleep. I slip into bed and turn on my side so that I’m facing the wall. Angie presses her body close to mine and begins to whisper things I can’t understand. It takes me a minute to realize she’s talking in her sleep—in Spanish. Her skin is warm and a little damp, and I can feel her breasts pressing against my back, but I can’t understand a single word she’s saying.
* * *
The next morning I wake up late and Angie’s already gone. There’s a note on the kitchen table that says she won’t be home for dinner. She’s meeting Doug. I grab a handful of vitamin C’s and take a gulp of juice, then spot a roach crawling out of the sink and squash it against the counter with the palm of my hand. There’s no time for a shower, so I leave the house smelling like last night’s beer and cigarettes.
All day long there’s a hammering in my head and a feeling of fog all around me. Other people’s words serve as a background for my thoughts, and I can’t stop thinking about Angie and Doug. Jenny Silver, this small, pretty, Jewish girl from Manhattan who works in permanent exhibit research, says that I look tired and asks if I want her to bring me something in for lunch. I tell her to mind her own business, that I feel fine. Then I say I’m sorry several times and that I appreciate her concern. I’m just uptight about this current exhibit on the history of women’s fashion. She says, oh.
* * *
After work I stop for pizza and a beer and make sure I don’t get home until well after nine. When I open the door, Angie’s in the alcove watering the plants. The apartment smells like cheese quesadillas.
I take a deep breath and ask Angie if she went out for dinner. Without turning around, she says no, that she and Doug came back here. He wanted to see the place. I ask her if he liked it, then toss my jacket on the couch and listen to the soft hiss of the plant spray. Angie pauses, then says, yeah, he liked it.
I go into the bedroom and spot a watch on the night table but decide not to say anything right away. Angie calls from the living room and asks me if I’ve eaten. She says there’s half a quesadilla left. I tell her no thanks, then sit on the edge of the bed and pick up the watch. It’s heavier than it looks and has two sets of digital numbers on the face and three buttons on the side. The bottom set of numbers are military time and read 21:42. The two small dots blink on and off.
Angie appears in the doorway while I’m still sitting on the edge of the bed and says, oh, Doug forgot his watch. She startles me but I don’t look up. Instead I press the button that turns the top set of figures into a stopwatch and concentrate on the numbers in the far right column. They race by, marking hundredths of a second.
When Angie starts to turn away, I get off the bed and grab her wrist. She twists her arm and says que demonios, which means “what the hell?” in Spanish.
I say, Doug’s watch isn’t on his wrist, is it?
She says, Richie, you’re jumping to conclusions.
I turn around and say, maybe, but we’ll see. Then I begin to pull the blankets off the bed and Angie starts to cry.
She asks me what I’m doing, and I tell her I’m going to smell the sheets. She cries harder. I grab again at the blankets. One of the pillows knocks the clock-radio off the night table. It cracks.
She yells, Rich, stop, and I freeze, holding the corner of the top sheet in the palm of my hand. I focus on the wall in front of me and take a deep breath, then say, Angie, I’m sorry. I want to trust you. Really, I do. It’s just not easy for me. I’m a man—a black man—who feels many things.
She says, Richie, don’t give me that crap. Everybody feels a lot of things. I could run away with Doug or move to outer space, and to you it would mean the same thing. She pauses, then says go ahead and sniff the goddamn sheets.
I kneel down and press my face hard against the mattress and inhale deeply. Then I hold perfectly still. The sheets feel worn and warm and damp against my cheek.
Angie sits down on the corner of the bed and the mattress sags. I look up at her and see that she’s on the verge of starting to cry again. Her lip quivers. The room is quiet.
She tells me not to bother asking her why she did it because she doesn’t know. She says the real world isn’t like an exhibit in a museum, it’s loose little thoughts and pleasures and impressions, and the problem is how to connect one thing with another. She says again that it’s not like a museum, so I’d better not ask her to put it all together right on the spot. She doesn’t know what Doug means to her, and yes, she does love me.
I’m still kneeling on the floor at the side of bed. I look at the cracked clock-radio and crumpled pillow and then back up at Angie. She’s staring straight ahead. Her eyes are open wide. There’s a tugging at the back of my throat, and I swallow hard to squelch the tears. Then I pull my legs out from under me and try following her line: accusations will not help, asking questions will not help, trying to make a connection between one thing and another will not help.
I get back on my knees and turn to look at Angie. Her eyes are open even wider. She extends a hand, and I take it, and she squeezes tightly. I want to say something deep and insightful—about museums and black holes and identities and love—but very slowly Angie closes her eyelids, and the gesture makes me think of a curtain being drawn at the end of a scene in a play.
THE END
Walter B. Levis was nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize and is author of the novel MOMENTS OF DOUBT (2003). His literary fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of publications, including North Dakota Quarterly, The Amherst Review, The Cimarron Review, Connecticut Review, Drunk Monkeys, Forge, Hobo Pancakes, New Plains Review, North Atlantic Review, Permafrost, Storyglossia, Serving House Journal, and Willow Review, among many others. His nonfiction has appeared in The National Law Journal, The Chicago Reporter, The New Republic, Show Business Magazine, and The New Yorker. Complete publication and biographical information is at www.walterblevis.com.
Peace Accord
My first bikini, polka dotted in blue, the Cairo sun and the pee-scented pool. My mom’s bikini is brown polka dotted. She is so tanned she looks almost Egyptian. The roly-poly German ladies go topless even though it’s the Middle East, but we all know they have no shame. My strawberry blonde hair is long and wet with sweat and chlorine and hits my sunburned nose. My nose is always peeling, always bubbled up a little. We use Coppertone or baby oil to tan. I play in the mango garden under the grape vines when I want shade at our home, but at the Club we only want sun. I remember going to get grilled cheese sandwiches from the bar. Flat European bread and mango juice and a hot grill run by a teenaged Arab boy. I am so tall, but when he stares at my chest it makes no sense. The bikini ruffle, heavy with pool water, flutters open, and reveals my flat nipple. Laughter. I run. But I don’t tell my mom…I made such a fuss to buy this bathing suit in Canada over the summer, along with the white nail polish she said was tacky and bourgeois. Too young for polish and probably too young for a bikini, and now the hot sun burns my shamed face.
Valerie and I play in the mud by the canal. She gets parasites, but she isn’t as ashamed as my mother is when I get lice. Later Val and I drink alcohol by the tennis courts late at night, sneaking out of the outdoor movie theatre where we rent seat cushions for 5 piasters each. I carry her drunkenly home through the hot Cairo night. The soldiers and guards miraculously leave us alone, but her mother watches angrily while I pull her up four flights of stairs to her tower room next to a mosque. Call to prayer comes early, and she pukes in harmony to “Allah Akbhar”. Her mother tells mine that we can never play together again.
Cigarettes from Abdul at the kiosk. Mark wears wife-beaters and bell bottoms and has a child back home, so they say. I am too shy to speak with him till alcohol numbs us both, and when he touches my flat chest I pray they’ll suddenly grow. School time comes; I’m red with embarrassment. We never speak again. Stephen stands up for me when the other preteens call me pancake-chest, so I long for his gaze but Pam has a hold on him. Sherrie and I smoke in the huge abandoned sewer pipes, catching donkey rides from home in our shorts and halter tops. The veiled Arab ladies look away, the men stare, and the little Egyptian boys try to grab our ass. We’ve learned to insult them in their own language. Kos Omek…kos omek…kos omek. We chant, giggling.
While Sadat and Begin sign the Peace Accord and shake hands, I hug our maid, who is my age and shares my name. We cry, holding each other, with happiness. Her husband, our cook, is as old as my grandfather. I ask how they could be married, and receive a red face similar to how red mine is when she has to clean the blood from our living room floor. My father has broken my mother’s nose, but we tell everyone it was a car accident. Some things even friends can’t discuss. Mom’s collarbone is broken too, and we ignore the sling and the big white plaster on her face. Ma’alesh, says my dad, who takes binoculars to the roof to look through the windows of the whore house next door. We see soldiers going in there, holding hands with each other, and I am confused but laugh with my mom as if I understand. They wear machine guns slung over their shoulder, though we’ve been told the Egyptian government is too poor to issue ammunition.
I find comfort that our maid Nadia and I share a name. I am sad, though, that she has to clean, and work, and wear robes, while I can run and play in shorts and halter tops. I remember getting small Nutella containers and fake cigarettes and real wine from the kiosk near school, where the older kids bought hashish and real cigarettes. Ages seven through twelve are intertwined in a memory of sweets and wine and beatings and dust and camels and traffic and calls-to-prayer and overly chlorinated pool water and old spaghetti westerns.
When we first move there, right after the ’73 war with Israel, Mom tells us to ignore everyone on the street, just keep walking. Walking back to our hotel; soldiers with machine guns yell at us, waving the guns in our direction, running toward us. Mom keeps us walking, “just ignore them!” My brother, panicking, finally gets her to see the weaponry as it is nearly shoved in our face. We stop just in time; apparently we are in a sensitive area in front of an off-limits building. In school, near the army base, we hear target practice all day. Half our classrooms then are prefabs. We get half-days as the weather heats up, and we take salt-tablets before gym class.
Walking through the Khan el-Khalili in downtown Cairo. There must be a million stalls, ten million customers. We’re the only white people for miles. My parents move ahead of me, and I’m suddenly surrounded by women and children, stroking my long, strawberry blonde hair. I can’t call loud enough for them to hear and finally they turn, startled by the crowd that has formed around their little girl but surprised by my tears.
We have mango trees, and guava, and bashmalla fruit, grape vines, all surround our garden, watered by Nile water from the canals. I’m warned to stay away or I’ll get parasites like Val, but I don’t understand and so I make mud pies by myself under the vines and lush trees. In less than a year, I will walk home alone from the Ma’adi Club after a movie. They run out from near the whore house, grabbing my pants, trying to get my zipper. I am just nine, but I understand these boys will hurt me. I scream at our gate, pound on the bell until the buzzer rings, and I scare off the boys eager to take my innocence.
Smells there are different; extreme. Light there is different; harsh white and glaring. Camel urine and cockroaches and dead rotting bodies and flesh of fruit that’s been in the heat too long. Our rugs forever hold the smell. We walk past a car wreck where the bodies remain for days. The cops are busy shooting dogs and taking their left paw as proof of death, in the war against rabies. They leave the corpses for some other department, which never seems informed.
Sharm el-Sheikh is serene and lovely compared to Cairo, compared to Ma’adi. The ocean calm, the sand smooth and white, and we are ready for a week without our father. Neil Young and Led Zeppelin, my mother in her faded bell bottoms and tie dye, and we soak in the sun. Then the winds start, and the haboob begins, and days and nights make no difference. We are in a little cabin, unable to see anything but the sand storm blowing around us. The noise is impressive, and we dig into the wine and cheese and wait. It ends up lasting almost 6 days, so we eventually lose our minds playing bridge and checkers and yelling at each other. The last day there though…we are in heaven again, white sand, the wrestling teacher is there and has only half a leg. We make jokes and swim in the calm. Later that night our driver takes us home to Ma’adi, past Rommel’s old abandoned tanks. They remind my mom to tell us stories of growing up in France during WWII, and we doze listening to her speak of the gestapo and of eating all the sugar ration early one month during the beginning of the war.
My father changes jobs when I am perhaps 10. He’s left Mobil Oil after perhaps twenty years there. We don’t know exactly why, but there are hushed conversations late at night about his drinking. We spend a long, cool summer in Calgary, watching Nadia Comaneci win the Olympics. We are in someone else’s home, a summer rental, and I dig through their daughter’s carefully boxed belongings to gain a glimpse of what must be her perfect life. I remember riding her bike to ride to the 7-11 through the friendly suburban neighborhood, birds chirping, kids on lawns. It smells of pine and freshly cut grass. The 7-11 is resplendent in its wealth of shiny candy and sweets, no Nefertiti wine, but plenty of Sweet-Tarts to roughen my tongue. I pay for my candies with pennies that I stole from around the house, and suddenly I’m ashamed as I hand the clerk 100 pennies and a dime. I’m dressed in a denim overall dress, and I haven’t put a shirt underneath, but the bib is just a tad too low. He notices this, as I blush. He’s a nice Canadian young man, looking away quickly and reassuring me that they need the pennies.
The house in Calgary comes with a small white dog, a Westie that I sleep with. After a couple of months there, my step-grandmother comes to visit. My brother and sister taunt me because they have two fathers and more grandparents than me. That is, until the evening Grandma Bev gets drunk slowly in the kitchen, arguing with my mother. She needs help to bed, and suddenly her zebra-striped dressing gown comes open as she falls to the ground, exposing a naked body covered only by nude-shade pantyhose. I stare at her gray pubes and cry. My father shoos me away to my room where I listen to them struggle with her drunken ramblings. In the morning we all act as though nothing has happened, though she moans about her headache and avoids our eyes.
Finally, after much negotiating on my father’s part, we end up back in Cairo just before school starts. He’s taken a job with Canadian Superior Oil. I’m excited to go back, to start sixth grade, to see my friends. The plane door opens to that smell and that heat, and I know I am home again. This time though, no big house with a roof and turrets, no mango garden. We are in a flat with thin walls and no live-in maid. No more driver, but still a house boy and gardener. The heat shimmers in the distance, thick and slow. The house boy prays five times a day in front of the fridge and ignores my mother. No authority is recognized from a woman though, and my father is always gone. Eventually my brother has to fire him after school one day. The house boy would take it from a fourteen-year-old, but not from a woman. He toddles off on his broken bicycle, cursing my mother and all the infidel.
When the Bread Riots happen, we get off of school because of the danger and the curfew. They are shooting at people in Mercedes, because the Arabs drive much cheaper cars or ride on donkeys. My father stays at his office for a few days. My brother and sister sneak out during curfew, but I am too young as usual, and so I stay home with Mom. She cries and pulls out maps, asking me where we should move if she were to leave my dad. Over the summer in Calgary, they had fought over who would get custody of me and had asked me to decide. I cried, frozen. My mother asks me, “France, or maybe Greece, or maybe back to Canada, but definitely not Dallas, but we could live anywhere!” and I pretend to be excited because that’s what she wants, but I just want to live somewhere safe and filled with love. I long again for the hugs from the other Nadia and for the sweetness of Sadat and Begin on our television, shaking hands in black and white.
Nadia Bruce-Rawlings is a Nashville resident of six years, transplanted from Los Angeles. She has a book published by Punk Hostage Press, entitled Scars, as well as a book she co-authored entitled The Untold In-Depth Outrageously True Story of Shapiro Glickenhaus Entertainment, which was self-published. She grew up all over the world, and her submission Peace Accord reflects her time in Egypt during the mid-1970s.
I'm So Glad: Highlights of a Cross-County Trip
PHILADELPHIA, PA: I’M SO GLAD I DON’T HAVE TO INVENT MEMORABLE NAMES FOR MY TOYS
We left early the morning after New Year’s Day, four women crammed on a bench at the Alamo office at Philadelphia International, destination Los Angeles and back to celebrate another fresh start, another new year. I dismissed the incompetence suggested by the car rental agreement that had listed Jean Danette (an inversion of Danette’s first and middle names, no indication of her last) as the primary driver and Parchel Remick (that would be me) as one of the other three twenty-five-dollar per driver add-ons (Donna and Carmen completed our group) as just the first of many laughs to be shared by the lot of us. Where Alamo got Parchel I’ll never know, but it is what I would name the Build-A-Bear I made almost two weeks later while waiting for a replacement car.
RICHMOND, VA: I’M SO GLAD I TOOK A SHOWER LAST NIGHT
I am awakened by a snarling command—Close the door!—that almost has me leaping from the bed to close the door, any door, open and re-close a door, but then I hear a slamming and assume said door is duly shut. Leaning up on my elbows, focusing my sleep-bejeweled eyes, I make out the blurry form of Danette standing in front of the common room mirror, pinning up her hair. Even from this distance I can see her hands shaking. Over a Denny’s Grand Slam, where the only sounds are forks clanging against plates and pursed lips slurping last night’s lipstick stained coffee mugs (drink from the other side) Donna speaks the morning’s first act of contrition.
I’d like to apologize in front of everyone, Danette in particular. I’m already a total bitch in the morning, but I completely lost it when you opened the bathroom door and let all the warm air out. Next time, if you’re not finished getting ready, just stay in the bathroom until you are. Don’t tell me you’re finished and I can have the bathroom and then barge in on me. Or just let me have the first shower. Anyway, I’m sorry if I was short with you.
Danette’s hand was still shaking as she lifted her coffee cup to her mouth. Carmen, oblivious, suggests maybe she should stop drinking so much caffeine.
RALEIGH, NC: I’M SO GLAD I PAID ATTENTION IN SPANISH CLASS
Rule of the Road # 3: the driver gets to pick the music. Since Danette—daughter of Julian Maresa, Esq. and former Miss Argentina Dianata Lopez—was listed as the primary driver and got car sick unless she was positioned behind the wheel, the rest of us settled into the cruel realization that the soundtrack accompanying our road trip was going to be Santana and most of Ricky Martin’s Spanish speaking catalogue.
CHARLESTON, SC: I’M SO GLAD I HAVE A VAGINA
The declaration of triumph Danette brought back to the group, along with directions to the Magnolia Plantation, after she’d tossed her hair back and sauntered over to two men wearing Confederate flag belt buckles like she was one of James Bond’s Octopussy honeys about to coerce top secret information from the bad guy. Did she really think it was her irresistible feminine mystique that had prompted them to give her directions to the historic mansion? That had she been a man requesting the same information they would have said no? Well, yes. That’s exactly what she thought.
SAVANNAH, GA: I’M SO GLAD THERE ARE NO BOJANGLES WEST OF MISSISSIPPI
Rule of the Road #9: Never pass an exit. And that’s exactly what Danette did when Donna saw a billboard that said she had to have Boberry biscuits now now now.
Where are you going? There’s a Bojangles. Get off here. Get off! Never pass an exit, rules of the road!
In her dire need for a sugar fix, Donna forgot exactly who was driving, exactly who hadn’t been driving when, on a trip taken two years ago that included only the three of us, driver Carmen cut across four lanes of St. Louis rush hour traffic rather than pass the first exit we saw that had a Jack in the Box. Carmen grew up with Donna, suffered through Grade, Middle, Hebrew and High school with her. She understood that her need for certain foods that were unattainable in Philadelphia—such as Bojangles biscuits and Jack in the Box tacos—were akin to an asthmatic needing her inhaler. Danette did not. Donna ranting about missed Boberries begat Danette raving about how she couldn’t cut across traffic, we should have told her sooner, it was only a Bojangles, there were plenty of food places around at the next exit, maybe even another Bojangles sooner or later, and not once, not once, when we were discussing road rules did it come up to never miss an exit.
Calm down. We’re only teasing you.
We found a Bojangles five exits later. Donna insisted we go through the drive thru. She was afraid if she left the car Danette would drive away without her.
BILOXI, MS: I’M SO GLAD I WORE A SKIRT
It’s amazing the things women can find to argue about, even when there’s no man or last Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup at stake. Bill Maher couldn’t put together a more polarized panel than what we had inside our dark green SUV as we crossed from Georgia into Alabama. It seemed to start with something Danette kept referring to as a Pharmacist’s Bladder. Or maybe it started when Donna said she had to pee right after we left Savannah, which led to the first mention of the PB. Maybe you should develop a Pharmacist’s Bladder. No one asked what it was, although she clearly wanted us to. Was this a good thing to have, this bladder that only someone dealing in pharmaceuticals developed? Danette clashed with Donna; maybe it wasn’t a good thing and she was cursing her: maybe you should develop a Pharmacist’s Bladder, bwah-ha-ha. Danette was a pharmacist; did she have PB? Maybe I should have just asked her, but I didn’t want to be the one to give know-it-all Danette the satisfaction of schooling us on any subject, even one in which she had inside information. But all of us became quite vocal when she spoke on something we could debunk. Oh, yes, then everybody became a member of The View bitchfest.
Round 1: Danette vs. Rachel. In a respite from Ricky Martin (whose disc A Medio Vivir I can now sing by heart) a classic rock station was playing on the radio, the song All the Young Dudes. Danette turned it up, claiming she loved David Bowie. Obviously not so much, I said. Huh? I informed her it wasn’t David Bowie. She said it was. No, I said. Yes, she insisted. It’s Mott the Hoople, I informed her after I’d three times told her she was wrong. For good measure I tossed in that David Bowie wrote it, but I would give her consolation points if she knew who the lead singer of T-Rex was.
Round 2: Danette vs. Rachel. As we drove past a rest stop that featured both a Wendy’s and a McDonald’s, Danette informed the car that Dave Thomas purposefully built his fast food chain less than a mile from the fast food titan. That’s why you’ll always see McDonald’s and Wendy’s in the same shopping complex or rest area. It was his marketing plan. Sure enough, the next five Wendy’s we passed also had a McDonald’s nearby, and Danette triumphantly pointed out each one of them as though the strategy had been her own. “Welsh and the Boulevard,” I said. Huh? There’s a Wendy’s on Roosevelt Boulevard, between Welsh and Grant. Not a McDonald’s within a mile. A Taco Bell, KFC, Burger King, Hardee’s. No McDonald’s.
The next rest stop had a McDonald’s with Wendy’s as its neighbor, a fact which Danette no longer found sport in pointing out.
Round 3: Danette vs. Rachel. I found out what a PB is when we finally stopped to go to the bathroom and grab the next round of snacks to sustain us for the remaining hundred miles to Biloxi. Danette was the last to use the single-serve rest room, claiming it was her Pharmacist’s Bladder that allowed her to do so. In being a pharmacist, especially during your first year, you’re the only one behind the counter, sometimes for ten hour shifts and you learn fast to hold it in for unimaginable lengths of time. In my working career, where I have found myself serving in a pizza place on the Wildwood boardwalk; where I have found myself alone in a full service shoe store because the manager decided to spend her shift Christmas shopping; where I have found myself as the only barista manning the coffee counter, I have also found it necessary to not only develop a PB, but also the colon of an ROTC cadet sent to live out in the woods for a month and the thirst tolerance of a camel wandering the Sahara.
So okay, maybe it was just me fighting with Danette, but at least I kept my aggression confined to words. While we were climbing the stairs inside the Beau Rivage, Donna tripped on the hem of her pants and fell forward, striking the person in front of her in the lower back in an attempt to grasp for stability. That the person in front of her was Danette and Donna’s hands happened to be balled into fists when it happened was something for which I still have no comment.
NEW ORLEANS, LA: I’M SO GLAD I ORDERED DESSERT FIRST
Zach had a clear favorite at the table and, for once, it wasn’t Danette. It also hadn’t been Danette the street performer outside the Café Du Monde had presented with a balloon flower this morning. That had been me, and after I thanked him and gave him a five—and a bite of my beignet—Danette had cooed, “Oh, isn’t there something you could make for me?” How about a Pharmacist’s Bladder? She gave me the evil eye, and Mr. Street Performer constructed a heart for her, which he then promptly broke in symbolism. Now here we were eleven hours later and she was doing it again, flirting with the server who was flirting with Carmen. By the third time Zach came back to check on us, and finally muster up the courage to ask Carmen how much longer we’d be in town and informing her he was off duty at ten, Danette cut in to ask if he wouldn’t mind escorting us to Bourbon Street later on. She got so claustrophobic in large crowds and as men were always hitting on her, it would help so much if she had a guy beside her to discourage any unsavories from making a play. Zach smiled politely, uttered a non-committal, “Really,” and did not come back to our table until it was time to dump off the check and a quick well wish of, “Don’t any of you ladies get in trouble tonight.”
Earlier, when she had come between me and balloon man, I had kept quiet, believing my feelings petty or even envious. There was no doubt Danette was exotically beautiful, uncommonly so, and having her around upset my belief that I was usually the prettiest one at the table; maybe my annoyance stemmed from feeling my territory was being encroached upon. But sitting there in that restaurant, watching Carmen pick at her etouffee and witness her self esteem slowly draining out of her, I could no longer remain silent.
You win, Danette. In any given group of women, especially this one, you are the prettiest. You are the one men will eighty-five per cent of the time try to talk to. But there are times when a man might want the blonde, or the cute one, or the athletic one. So let one of us enjoy our paltry five per cent when it comes our way, would you? Will you please be satisfied enough with your eighty-five per cent and let me have my five?
I would assume the responsibility for the animosity that hung over the rest of the evening, but that was another five per cent I was willing to enjoy as long as Danette would continue to be held accountable for her eighty-five.
CARLSBAD, NM: I’M SO GLAD A PHARMACIST’S BLADDER DOESN’T NECESSARILY PROTECT ITS REAR NEIGHBOR
Rule of the Road #13: We must sample each locale’s authentic cuisine. Early on in the trip Danette had established herself as lactose intolerant and not a fan of spicy foods. Never was this more evident than in the one-two punch, roundhouse kick that was the culinary choices available in New Orleans and New Mexico. Luckily our hotel was in walking distance from the Mexican restaurant where we chose to eat dinner the night we drove into town. Not so fortunate was that the route was mainly uphill. The walk back from dinner turned into a run for Danette, who made the quarter mile sprint with clenched buttocks, which in the long run—I suppose—will ultimately enhance her already perfect physique.
LOS ANGELES, CA: I’M SO GLAD MY HOLLYWOOD IDOL IS MARILYN MONROE
Having visited Jayne Mansfield’s grave the previous summer in Pen Argyl, PA, I wanted to make a stop on the other side of the country to visit MM’s crypt in Westwood Memorial. The section of wall bearing her name is a tad darker than the others, no doubt from the dirty hands who can’t keep grabbing at her even in death, and smattered with different shades of lipstick. Although I didn’t put my lips to her crypt, I was the proud owner of a set of grubby hands that touched it and a few of the cards and notes mourners had left behind for her. Danette took a few minutes to stand by the grave of Natalie Wood. There was a cowboy next to her, with a young boy I assumed was his grandson. The cowboy took off his hat and held it over his heart. “She was so beautiful,” I heard him saying as I approached. “My father was her biggest fan. He took me to see West Side Story when I was eleven years old. I’ve been hooked ever since.” Danette looked bored until she saw me coming.
At least her movies were relevant. She got to work with James Dean. She had real talent; not just another pretty face like Marilyn Monroe. She was classy. My mom loved West Side Story, too. She bought me the soundtrack, and I would sing and dance around the house, pretending I was Maria.
The little boy put a wad of gum in his mouth and threw the wrapper on the ground. The cowboy grabbed him roughly by the arm. “See now, boy, you go pick that up. You don’t go littering in a place like this, especially on the resting place of one of the greatest American actresses of all time.” Then he made a disgusting snarling noise as he inhaled a load of snot back into his throat and spit it out. It landed somewhere over Natalie’s body, next to Danette’s three hundred dollar Jimmy Choo strappies.
LAS VEGAS, NV: I’M SO GLAD I AGREED TO PAY FOR MY OWN TRAFFIC TICKETS
Rule of the Road #1: The driver shall be financially responsible for any debt incurred directly as a result of her driving. I’m always the one who gets burned by this one, as I’m the only one who ever gets speeding tickets. Every trip. No one complains when I get them to their beds faster after being cooped up in the car for twelve hours, but when it comes to the inevitable citation for receiving such five star transportation, I’m on my own. That didn’t seem like it was going to be an issue on this trip, considering Danette was monopolizing the wheel, so I sang along with Ricky and sucked it up.
Our last night in Vegas Danette wanted to stay up all night gambling and dancing in the after hours clubs. Where else can you do that other than in Vegas? Rules of the Road dictate that we have to partake in the exclusivities offered by each city. I don’t know how a rule involving local cuisine turned into an excuse to recreate The Hangover and declined to accompany her on the audition. I was called no fun, an old fart, a stick in the mud (a creative literary genius she was not) who would not rain on her parade (see first parentheses). I was not to be intimidated or manipulated by her childish name-calling, but would have suffered through the evening if everyone else was on board for this thank you sir, may I have another brand of self-punishment. Of course Donna had no problem refusing the offer; I hoped Carmen would also demur, thinking maybe Danette wouldn’t go if she had no one to steal a man’s attention away from. But Carmen said she wouldn’t be able to sleep with Danette carousing Vegas alone and decided to act as chaperone.
Around four in the morning I am awakened by Carmen telling me she and Danette had been in an accident and the car was totaled. Donna snaps to attention and asks Carmen if she’s all right. Yes, I’m fine. Who was driving? Danette. How much was she drinking? Two beers, which can be loosely translated as two beers and a shot from the guy at the first club who paid her attention. Why had they used the car? We met some cowboys who wanted to go to Stoney’s. Apparently the cops declared it a no-fault accident. Danette was moving through an intersection when another car crashed into the driver’s side of our rented SUV, pushing it onto its two right wheels. It rode that way for a few feet—long enough to make Carmen lose control of her bladder—before crashing into a traffic light. As far as they knew, no one was severely injured. They never saw the driver of the other car, but apparently she told the police she never saw Danette. There was a traffic light; no one could say who had the green. Either Danette wasn’t legally drunk or was too pretty to haul away in handcuffs.
The next day I was at the Build-A-Bear in the Fashion Show Mall giving birth to Parchel.
SALT LAKE CITY, UT: I’M SO GLAD I’VE NEVER COINED A PHRASE
It all started when Donna said something about how she didn’t want Carmen sitting Indian style on her bed pillow. Danette then labeled Donna ignorant and racist. That seated pose was never originated by the Indians and to say otherwise was offensive. So in all her social responsibility, Donna agreed to stop sitting cross-legged so as not to offend the Indians, Carmen said she’d stop having sex on her back so as not to offend the missionaries, and I consented to no longer pulling my hair back so as not to offend ponies. Never much of a team player, Danette had no offering for the group: she continued to offend everyone with both her speech and behavior.
DEADWOOD, SD: I’M SO GLAD TIMOTHY OLYPHANT BECAME AN ACTOR
We spent the day touring Mt. Moriah Cemetery, where Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok and Seth Bullock are buried. The former sheriff chose his final resting place to be atop a hill overlooking Mt. Roosevelt and the climb is exhausting, but I found it interesting comparing fact with what was presented in the HBO series and was determined to see Bullock’s grave. Danette always remained several steps ahead of me on the unpaved slope, slipping from time to time on the rocky terrain, but she was determined to get there first as if Bullock himself was up there waiting for her. Even in my Nikes I got there a few seconds after her. She, who had chosen to wear spike-heeled leather boots, spent the next two days hobbling around like someone who had climbed off the wrong side of the horse.
DES MOINES, IA: I’M SO GLAD I DRESS MY SALADS WITH VINAIGRETTE
The only thing we could find to do in Des Moines was tour a dairy farm. The brochure Donna had picked up in the Hampton Inn lobby sounded promising, especially the part about the cheese sampling at the commencement of the tour. The tour consisted of being led into a back room of their headquarters to view a short film on cheese making that I suspected was shown as part of new hire orientation. The cheese sampling was a plate of four crackers topped with a slice of bleu cheese that was offered as we walked out the door. I declined; Danette accepted and popped the entire hors d’oeurve into her mouth. Outside she spit it in the grass, much like the cowboy had done on Natalie Wood’s grave.
CLEVELAND, OH: I’M SO GLAD OHIO IS ATTACHED TO PENNSYLVANIA
Our last argument happened while we were leaving the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, fittingly, it was about music. Since the accident in Vegas Danette had surrendered the wheel—and the music—to the rest of us. I ended up racking up the most miles and as we were climbing into the car, Danette made a nasty comment about my choice of music, which consisted mainly of pop music staples and songs that had been popular when we were in high school. At least my music introduced everyone to something new instead of the commercial crap we’re force fed by major record labels.
“You mean that clanging and banging (translated: Nine Inch Nails) you insisted we listen to at three in the morning while crossing Texas tumbleweed country?” the usually quiet Carmen spoke up. Carmen appreciated that I brought commercial crap on our trips to keep her mind happy and awake as she sang along. Although I didn’t need to, I explained to Danette that I picked the so-called commercial crap because I knew it was music everyone recognized and could enjoy. I took everyone’s feelings into consideration when I selected my cross country music, unlike someone who only thought of her own musical tastes when choosing her catalog.
Think of everyone? Well, you clearly didn’t think of me.
No, Danette; you do that enough for everyone. And you don’t know who Marc Bolan is.
PHILADELPHIA, PA: I’M SO GLAD I’M NO LONGER FRIENDS WITH THE WOMAN WHO IS SO GLAD SHE HAS A VAGINA
A week after arriving home we all got an email from Danette requesting $125 apiece to cover her deductible from the accident. She felt it was fair we split the cost since she had been kind enough to put the car in her name. Carmen, the only other person in the car that night, politely declined in an email that replied to all. Donna replied only to the sender with a scathing letter in which she labeled Danette a snake in the grass. I took a day to consider my response, curious to see how she would handle the answers she had received from the other two. In true Danette fashion, she got to me first. I received an email from her following the path of Donna’s nasty diatribe telling me that if I agreed with those two other bitches then I could consider her no longer a friend of mine. My reply was swift and to the point: In a year where I lost both my father to heart disease and my sister to drug addiction, do you think I’ll have a hard time letting go of you?
Let go of her I did. And I am so glad.
Rachel Remick’s fiction has previously been published in several literary magazines, among them Rosebud and The First Line. She currently resides in Tampa where she moderates two blogs and runs a successful wholesale gift and jewelry business.
This Is Not a Funeral Procession
It is snow.
It sticks to my boots,
wet heavy.
There’s a reason
I don’t name it
Sadness,
but you—
You understand me,
my rigid silence.
There’s only so much I can say.
Down in the basement,
in the winter,
with the courage
I save
by staying the same,
you still do all the talking.
I like it that way.
You let me hide
in the silence
of your death.
There’s only so much I can take.
I have this memory:
you told me once
how the apocalypse
runs its course
in unexpected ways.
Often in the moment
I turn over in my sleep
between dreams,
sweaty bedsheets
strangling my thighs.
What I dream of
(these days),
it’s hard to say.
S.R. Aichinger recently earned an MFA in creative writing from Creighton University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in |tap| lit mag, Into the Void Magazine, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, and Gyroscope Review, among others. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.
Blue Plumbago In Morning Sun
Ms. Heyer, 32, was killed when a car plowed into the crowd.
The New York Times, Aug 13, 2017
Caught up in the song of an ecstatic wren
I forget all the ways I might die—forget
rage-filled faces marching, torches raised,
the hateful discourse of our time.
Sitting on the terrace with a morning cup of tea,
I watch a thousand purple beautyberries
explode. A bank of plumbago is lit by sun.
Spiderwebs are everywhere—spun
in the crook of the maple, stretched
between smoke tree and azalea—
a slapdash spectacle spans porch post
and holly—plump red spider
breathless as a berry.
Is the black swallowtail oblivious
as she drops to the flowers? How
narrowly she skirts the snares!
Her season draws to a close—
earlier forms of herself already
forgotten. Butterfly with blue scales,
impervious to the jay—
There is still time for a sip of nectar,
a cup of green tea—
time to lay a clutch of eggs
in a bed of fragrant blooms—
before the morning newspaper
opens the day to dying
and webs confound our way.
Judith Grissmer has been published in Sow’s Ear, The Alembic, Adanna, The Broken Plate, Clare, Midwest Quarterly, Streetlight Magazine, Schuylkill Valley Journal and in other literary magazines. She is a retired marriage and family therapist living in Charlottesville, VA, and at the Outer Banks of North Carolina where she maintains a family beach house/vacation rental home. She lives with her husband and 4 cats and begins her day in the garden with a morning cup of tea.
Contact Lenses For Chicken
A Harvard Business School case in the ‘70s proposed
inserting purposely clouded contacts into the furtive eyes
of chickens to boost farm profits by curbing hostile pecking
and cannibalism—those historical drags on egg production.
A few entrepreneurs did give it a go. And the science
actually panned out, led to more manageable workers,
though the business model pretty much sucked—
contractors who regularly visited farms for other reasons
weren’t sufficiently dexterous or disposed
to try and shove the darn things into the peepers
of livestock descendant from velociraptors.
Ideas that fail in one context, though, can thrive in another.
Perhaps we should try special lenses on human chickens:
Those afraid of the dark get contacts with night vision.
Afraid of frogs and you get green ones—can’t tell a toad
from the innocent grass. Have a heightened fear of crowds
and you get fractals—see the world one thug at a time.
Phobic about intimacy and we’ll prescribe a pair like
the side views on cars—objects appear farther than they are.
And, for those who aren’t chicken enough, contacts
like the warped mirrors in amusement parks
that make everything look larger, including the balls of
the chicken across the street or across the ocean to whom
we sold the gun and lenses that make everything look small.
Ken Haas lives in San Francisco where he works in healthcare and sponsors a poetry writing program at the UCSF Children’s Hospital. His poems have appeared in over 50 journals, including Clare, Freshwater, Helix, The MacGuffin, Natural Bridge, Nimrod, Pennsylvania English, Poet Lore, Prism, Quiddity, Sanskrit, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Spoon River. Ken’s poetry has been anthologized in The Place That Inhabits Us (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010) as well as the Marin Poetry Center Anthology (2012, 2013), and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. You can visit him online at http://kenhaas.org.
Unlike the myth, her life was never easy.
From the start, Eve worked tirelessly
gathering berries and other fruit, leaves
and plants, digging and cleaning roots,
shivering or sweating through nights and days
in low, dark caves, always on the move,
while Adam battled hungry animals,
foraged for water he carried back in gourds,
or gathered supple foliage they could weave
for cover from the sun and chilly nights.
They were as firmly bonded as two portions
of one being. Sometimes Adam looked
at her as if she were a miracle.
Other times, he looked away or wanted
her to serve him; she did the same to him.
They made babies, aged, survived.
Whatever God they had was in their bones;
their evil, a wayward excess of desire.
Eventually, Eve became the one
to fathom twists of the human coil, Adam
the one to grasp the coilings of the world.
In The Garden
Lynn Hoggard received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Southern California and taught at Midwestern State University, where she was professor of English and French and the coordinator of humanities. In 2003, the Texas Institute of Letters awarded her the Soeurette Diehl Fraser award for best translation.
For several years, she was arts writer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls and wrote more than six hundred articles, features, and reviews. She has published six books: three French translations, a biography, a memoir, and a poetry collection (Bushwhacking Home, TCU Press, 2017). Her poetry has appeared in 13th Moon, After Happy Hour Review, The Alembic, Atlanta Review, The Broken Plate, Clackamas Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crack the Spine, The Delmarva Review, Descant, Forge, Edison Literary Review, FRiGG, The Healing Muse, Licking River Review, The MacGuffin, New Ohio Review, Sanskrit, Soundings East, Summerset Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Tower Journal, Weber: The Contemporary West, Westview, WestWard Quarterly, Wild Violet, and Xavier Review, among others.
Arrived in our mountain paradise
where summer showers fall on afternoons
still full of sunshine,
our chimney snow-damaged,
rain leaking on our inner world,
repairs a week away,
where a milky haze hangs on the valley—
smoke from Los Alamos fires—
where moles have made
an underground maze throughout
our yard, killing the cinquefoil,
paintbrush, and geraniums,
burrowing under the concrete slab
supporting stairs and porch,
where a kitchen window sticks shut
and the doorsill disintegrates.
Mountain Dissaptions
Remembered Night
Night fell upon the city like a word
you wished you hadn’t said. But there it was,
the dark, not to be taken back, not yet. Someone
began to cry, someone to argue. Was it you? The moon,
a blank eraser, blotted nothing out. The night
was now a wound, you said, and in the sudden silence
astonished looking up you saw the stars
not as the salt of the earth, as you had thought,
but the salt in the wound. There was no stopping
the language that a word had liberated –
if “liberated” was the word. There they were, at any rate,
all the reproaches and recriminations
that had outlived the pleasures of the day.
Clearly there was no turning back now to the fields of light.
But what was the word, the original word, no one could say.
Bruce Lawder has published three books of poems and a book of essays on poetry, Vers le vers, as well as numerous articles on painting. In addition to Friedrich Hölderlin, he has recently translated work by Johannes Bobrowski, Georg Trakl, Paul Celan, and André du Bouchet. He lives and works in Switzerland.
You want to plow me—
a crop
you didn’t plant,
bite me
like bits of ripe tomato
on toast, my two yolks
sun up,
young and fresh.
After all,
young girls
are like breakfast.
Hot. Fragrant.
Hominy on a plate.
Innocent corn
that did nothing
to deserve your
little flypaper hands.
To The Man Who Grabs Girls
Suzanne O’Connell’s recently published work can be found in Poet Lore, Forge, Atlanta Review, Juked, Existere, Crack The Spine, Pennsylvania English, Drunk Monkeys, The Louisville Review, and Found Poetry Review. O’Connell was nominated for a Best Of The Net Award in 2015, and a Pushcart Prize in 2015 and 2017. Her first poetry collection, A Prayer For Torn Stockings, was published by Garden Oak Press in 2016.
We were like, you might say,
crossed swords.
On foggy mornings,
I think of him
with death on my tongue.
I’d like to poke my sword
into his unfortunate sweater vest.
Under it, his robust body stands
ready to push somebody around.
Or maybe,
we were a hangman’s noose.
My neck itches when I remember.
His sheets smelled like gasoline.
His lips tasted like arson.
We were pistols at daybreak.
We walked four paces away then turned.
His arm straightened as he aimed
for my red paper heart.
I still cry about him once in a while,
but only from one eye.
That’s all I can manage.
That’s all he deserves.
Let Me Count The Ways
Day After Winter Solstice
The day after Winter Solstice
I walk my dog in the clear morning air—
A brisk sunny day under a sky
Innocent of clouds.
My dog lopes in front of me,
His fringed tail swaying
To the tune of his gait
As he ambles, nose to the ground,
Alert to the hundreds of smells
He is privilege to with his
Stereoscopic odor-catcher.
I catch only faint scenes
Of pine needles and dead leaves.
But as I look up again to the sky
I see the steamy vapor trail of a jet
Pointing vaguely toward Canis Major
And I wonder—
Could any comet in the cosmos
Vie successfully for the title
“Best Tail in the Universe”
In a beauty contest with my dog?
Diane Pitts is a relative newcomer to the poetry scene. She received her Ph.D. in French Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill and taught French for nearly 20 years before joining the creative team at the University of Tennessee Office of Communications and Marketing as an editorial project manager. She attended Marilyn Kallet’s poetry workshop in Auvillar, France in 2013 and has a poem in the online publication, One Trick Pony, 2014 special Auvillar issue. In addition to poetry, she enjoys tennis, travel, theatre, cooking, and gardening.
Pirouette
Before there was me there was
a ballerina pale dark-haired slim–
I picture this– her feet bound in satin
pointe shoes made rigid and inhuman
she dripped
sweat from pain hours of breaking
down the body and making it myth
I ask about her curious wondering
what it is like to join your body
to a body like that to move with
someone who has created themselves
to flow like water fluid and barely
there
I imagine she lifted into the air spun
her body into impossible molds
looked down once and disappeared.
Anna Sandy is finishing her MFA in poetry at Georgia State University, where she also teaches English Composition. She is the current Editor in Chief of New South, and her work can be found in SFWP’s the Quarterly, Santa Ana River Review, Sun Star, Muse/A, The Indianapolis Review, Nightjar Review, and others. She lives in Atlanta with her fiance and three cats.
Suicide Psalm
The hour frozen in its drowsy beauty⸺
four geese, a quantifiable gaggle, row
across the morning sky⸺ its blue bounty
contrasted with a distant, eerie glow⸺
lemon colored squall gathering, almost
incredulously, on the horizon. But, for
now, the world is tranquil, a pleasant host,
pitch of the moment at its dreamy core
a sufficient placebo to the ever
present crusade of the heart. After all,
its only our own ghosts that await, clever,
well-schooled authorities on the pall
of living forever. Hungry for company they stray
from the shadows, anxious to lure us away.
Tony Tracy is a Pushcart Prize nominated author who has written two poetry collections, The Christening and Without Notice. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry East, North American Review, Tar River Poetry, Hotel Amerika, I-70 Review, Rattle, Painted Bride Quarterly and many other magazines and journals. He resides in Urbandale, IA with his wife Anita, their two boys and two dogs.
Dead Letter Mail
You can use a smudge stick to write
Hello from Earth. What’s your weather?
Just don’t expect a reply. You think the dead are
where you left them; weeding the garden, in the hospital
driving back from chemo, talking on a landline.
Take my father 20 years out from death.
As I speed down Storrow Drive I still think some nurse
is sailing my father through the elevated tunnel at MGH
to one of the numbered rooms where I will find him
and bring him sushi, a cranberry scone.
From Earth you will see the scenes you missed
as clearly as the ones you witnessed.
Your father’s body facedown on the family room floor,
knees toward the chest. The fork and pineapple chunks
last meal fallen to the floor, knowing that the dead
use extendable forks to spear fruit on Earth and eat it in the sky.
Rachel Tramonte was born in New York City and grew up in Brooklyn Heights. Her work is forthcoming in Common Ground Review, Gloom Cupboard, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Jelly Bucket, Slab, These Fragile Lilacs and Third Wednesday. She received her MA in English and Creative Writing from Binghamton University. She lives and writes in Cleveland, OH with her partner and their two daughters.