Prose

Sophia Terazawa

Pearl

I suppose it’s time. My friends have been kind. I’ve considered burning this notebook with your letters. The plushie will have to go to Goodwill. The air conditioner? Maybe I’ll keep it. I don’t know. Depends on where the next job or residency takes me. I quit the sales job. I’ve also considered texting you about the garage door opener. But it’s unbearable. Here it is, in the mail. My friend Ryan suggested I use it—every morning, stopping by your house and taking a shit in the middle of your garage. It made me laugh when he suggested this. Stone-faced. I wasn’t angry then, at least anymore. But for a while I was. Angry, disappointed, mournful, empathetic. With the way everything ended like a drive-by, and me tumbling out the passenger side. Kaput. I was numb and sad. Then Callisto got angry about it. And then my mom. I felt abandoned but didn’t know how to name my rage-distress because I was just thinking about the girls and you. So the anger came. And I quit my job. Finally. Tuesday is my last day. And I’m going to write. That’s all.

That’s my secret world for now, enough to keep you in, enough to keep you out, especially in the end. I have to protect my heart because it’s soft and craves love and touch and domestic bliss, but it doesn’t speak in the language that you speak; I know that, reading through your words. “Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood,” sang Nina Simone, and I was happy for those months. Trying to understand you. Trying to help you understand me and feeling the air taken out by my inadequacy to speak, especially when you went dark and started to shut me out. It was like I was on the other side of it, muffled and gesturing wildly, but no words except poetry came. When I wrote that poem on your porch among N and J, especially J who helped in the writing of it, I was sad because the poem indicated a foretelling: as soon as the beloved, you, enters a poem, it signals the crumbling of a relationship. You started playing the keyboard inside. I wanted to die but didn’t say enough, even to myself. So I occupied my body with sweeping the acorns so Pearl wouldn’t get to them. That kept me alive somehow, until I went home and thought: oh no, here it comes.

*

You have to know I really tried. Like a trick pilot who keeps from passing out while doing a barrel roll in the air. You didn’t see me bursting and screaming with joy. Shrieking up and down in the car with Callisto and Isaac, as I pointed out every spot: this was where we kissed, this is the photo of a sloth and the zoo, and on the merry-go-round I was so nervous about vomiting in front of J, but at home I wept on the phone with my mom about how this was it, I’m going to marry this man, and I’m going to have a family. But I wasn’t going to be foolish and say this on your bed on that night those words escaped, just barely my lips. I didn’t know if you could hear them or not. I was going to marry you one day, and that was kept quiet, up until the last night we were together.

My boss sent me a wooden box of succulents a day after you called to break up with me. I didn’t cry for a week.

Sophia Terazawa is the author of Winter Phoenix (Deep Vellum, 2021) and the forthcoming Anon (Deep Vellum, 2022), along with two chapbooks, I AM NOT A WAR (Essay Press, 2016) and Correspondent Medley (Factory Hollow Press, 2019), winner of the 2018 Tomaž Šalamun Prize.

Corley Longmire

Indelicacies

Sometimes, it’s like this: I wake easy, with nothing to do but fix coffee and feed the cats. Joy claims I’m the reason the cats stay around; this doesn’t stop her from offering them our son’s leftovers. Sometimes, I sleep through Joy leaving because I no longer need to be out the door before she’s even fully dressed. Sometimes, I wake before her alarm and listen to her breathing, that grizzled puppy snore she’s got, then go to Jack’s room. Rarely does he sleep with us anymore, but he’s all over the bed when he does and never gentle. In his toddler bed, he sleeps as if dead; I’ll watch him breathe before going to take the trash out.

Then sometimes, Joy shakes me awake in that apologetic way I’ve come to dread, the one that means I’ve pissed myself again. Last night’s muscle relaxer knocked out the leg spasms but also my bladder control. I apologize like it’s the first time this has happened.

Joy flicks my nose before kissing me. She’s never embarrassed by my body’s failures. We’re married now, she’ll say. Did the vows and everything. And that was after I knew what I was getting into. Still, I wait to see whether she’ll look at the bunched-up blankets covering my crotch before kissing her back. She touches the scar near my hairline and kisses it too. “How about you hit the shower? I’ve got this.”

I push up on my elbows and begin the process of maneuvering useless, sleep-heavy limbs. When I can’t straighten completely, I lock my hands around the headboard’s spindle rails and pull myself into a sitting position. The wood strains in my grip; one day, the rails will crack loose. Joy doesn’t offer to help knead my legs like she usually does. Sometimes the help’s needed and sometimes it’s not, and sometimes it can be fun, but not on a day when my boxers rub damp against my thighs. I scrub my legs until the tingling sets in and my palms go hot. Peeling out of my skin would probably be less agonizing. I don’t push past the burn of nerves spitting out pain signals and try to stand though: no way am I steady enough. 

Already, Joy’s stripping the bed on her side and unstuffing pillows from their cases. She’s finally realized it’s easier for me to do this when she’s not watching. Sweat pops above my upper lip anyway, pools in my armpits and groin. Most of the time, I’m not so badly off that I can’t get around without some mobility aid, but going without the forearm crutch seems impossible. Getting fully vertical takes a good minute; nearly another before I’m ready to move. I hobble to the bathroom, determined to clean quickly so that I don’t need the shower chair. 

Barely two minutes in, thighs twitching and knuckles popping white where I cling one-handed to the bar above the soap dish, I let myself sit and wish doing so weren’t so easy.

I’ll come out and find the mattress bare, my mess to be bleached away in hot water, Joy putting bread in the toaster so I have something to take my medicine with. She’ll suggest I let Jack sleep in. That I work only half the day: another reminder to be forgiving of myself. If I take a longer than normal shower, I can pretend it’s because of my sluggish body and not because I’m hiding from her saying this yet again.

*

Almost everything’s difficult during a relapse. Dressing takes longer. Bathing, cooking, picking up those socks that fall during transfer from the washing machine to the dryer. At least the laundry’s not in the basement. Whenever I stand, I can’t walk without allowing my legs time to adjust. Joy’s talked about buying a wheelchair. I agreed to the crutch. In the two years since my MS diagnosis, I’ve learned to manage. Stretches and strength training, prednisone along with my normal medicine, cut out salt to combat fluid retention. 

It might be bearable if I felt like a stranger inside my body.

Now I’m trying to breathe from my belly as I lie in Corpse Pose. Joy looked into trying yoga after the last relapse, and I actually don’t dislike it, even if I can’t do all the positions. Head to knee. Bridge Pose. Cat Pose. Legs up the wall. Downward-facing dog. Child’s Pose nearly snapped my spine before I became flexible enough; now, the muscles around my knees gradually unclench, one less charley horse to deal with. My ankles pop as I flex my feet in small circles. It takes effort not to rush through my morning routine knowing I have a video conference in an hour and need to dry the bedding and feed Jack.

Wearing an oversized T-shirt and Batman underwear, Jack has spent the last fifteen minutes alternating between imitating yoga positions and snatching pillows for his half-forgotten fort. He’ll be hungry soon. We’re in a phase where he only eats red foods: cherry tomatoes and bell peppers, strawberries. Steak, if I can convince him it counts because it starts out red. I’m not above putting food coloring in oatmeal. 

He’s taken to doing tumbles, loose-limbed and graceless, by the time I sit up. I squirm to find a more comfortable position on the carpet, but my ass is already complaining. “Where’d you learn that?” I ask him.

“Mrs. Kristy,” Jack says, momentarily upside down before gravity pulls him forward. There’s no hesitation as he flips himself around the living room, nearly colliding with the fireplace. Tumbling is new to me but not Jack: his daycare teacher taught him this, but he hasn’t been to daycare since I started working from home three months ago. Did he show us his new trick, or did I just miss it? He tips sideways, lands like it hurts but it must not because he giggles when I shout “Timber!”

Jack bounces off the coffee table on his way to me. Kid bruises easily: I can imagine the thumbprint-size swell we’ll find at bath time. He may have Joy’s burnt toffee coloring, but he’s like me in ways. Delicate, my mom would say. She’s always called me that: because medicine on an empty stomach makes me nauseous, because I can deal with blood so long as it’s not mine. I promised I’d never call anyone delicate. Not Joy—there’s nothing sentimental about her—and certainly not my child. 

Jack sits between my legs and leans back gently. Barely five, and he knows to be careful with me. That’s one of Joy’s biggest worries: that Jack might hurt me and not the other way around. 

I touch his curling hair, the spot where the bones in his skull have fused together. He snuffles and pulls my arm around him, his hand unbearably tiny, soft bones and fish scale fingernails. I don’t carry him anymore. Not because my arms are that affected, but out of fear that I’ll lose my balance and crush him. Delicate isn’t a word I will ever call my son, even if I can’t help but think it.

*

I might hate my job. Which is ironic, considering I’m supposed to convince physicians to invest in medicines that’ll help their patients live longer, live better. Applying for disability put things in perspective since I’m unable to drive for hours to hospitals and conferences anymore, but also because of my relationship with pharmaceuticals as a drug rep and a person who can’t get by without a ridiculous number of pills. During the video call with a doctor I used to visit, I go over the benefits of a new drug for autoimmune disorders: the positive results of clinical trials and how patients report less-severe flare-ups. Not that some have experienced hand tremors. The potential for birth defects, infertility. Prescriptions can treat one thing while ravaging a different part of the body. Either you have constipation from your illness or diarrhea from your medicine, vertigo or insomnia, muscle cramping or high blood pressure. The act of keeping yourself alive is exhausting.

My medicines do help, along with stints of physical therapy: I’m stronger than I was earlier this year. Occasionally there’s a close call, but not anything like that fall in February when I was at a clinic for work and my leg crumpled on the ways downstairs. Nothing broken, just a little more blood than I was comfortable with and seven stitches. There’s a pearled scar spanning my temple that Joy brushes her thumb over when she thinks I’m sleeping.

Joy wasn’t hysterical when I called after the fall. Held it together more than I did—I saw the 

blood on the floor, my face, and nearly hit the ground again. It did scare her into getting married.

“I’m sick of being treated like a leper because I call you my partner,” she explained. Jack lay between us, his head in my armpit. He’d said my stitches looked like train tracks and asked me to draw some on his cheek with magic marker. “I know it’s never been a thing with us, but the bank’s not letting me take off anymore.” Joy traced the skin around my stitches without touching them, her eyebrows puckered in the same way Jack’s do when he’s frustrated or exceptionally sleepy. 

“So let’s get those stupid marriage benefits and show ’em,” I said. 

Our next day off, we signed the license at the courthouse and took Jack for ice cream.

I’m still a decent salesman, but my ability to chitchat is practically nonexistent since I’m no longer regularly networking and spend most days trailing after Jack. The doctor babbles about turkey hunting and LSU football before signing off. “Take care of yourself, Matthew,” he says last minute, “you’re looking fit.”

I’m bloated and gross, but thanks.

Jack’s already in the doorway of the guest room-turned office when I swivel around, his mouth stained red from the Lucky Charms balloon marshmallows. “Mat-thew,” Jack says, mimicking how the doctor enunciated both syllables as he hands me a fistful of sticky hearts and horseshoes. “That’s your other name.” 

“Yup,” I say, crunching on marshmallows that don’t taste like much of anything. “I’m Matthew and Daddy, just like you’re Jack and kiddo.”

“Mama calls me Jackie.”

“Jack and kiddo and Jackie.”

“And baby.”

“And baby.”

“I got lots of names.”

“You’ve got the most names.”

Jack squirms until I hoist him onto my lap. His hair’s silky slick but stiff in places with…glue? I left him snacking on dry cereal and watching Babe, how’d he get glue? Feet swinging, he asks if he can help feed the kittens—Joy and I both forgot this morning—and my lower back’s starting to ache from sitting too long, and I have emails to send, but things could be worse. Things have been worse. 

Before we go outside, Jack grabs my crutch where it’s propped against the wall. I thank him and put it down once he’s left the room. My kid’s too young to be this considerate. It’s something I’m proud of him for, and a little heartbroken by.

*

Jack Junior is missing. Because I don’t want to worry Jack, I say his favorite kitten is probably under the house. Never mind that the others are on the patio. He huffs and continues pouring cat food into a disposable pie dish. The mother swerves around him, ears back, but this doesn’t bother Jack like it did before the kittens were old enough to tame.

Once full, the kittens chase each other and run across his bare feet. Jack checks to see whether I’m watching; believing he’s safe, he pulls a petal off one of Joy’s marigolds, puts it on the calico kitten’s head, and lifts her up Lion King-style. 

But Jack Junior is missing. And if he is under the house, I can’t get him.

I call Joy.

“I tried the back yard and looked into the crawl space but didn’t see anything,” I tell her, not using the kitten’s name. I lift my dragging left foot enough that it won’t catch on the threshold and start searching for a flashlight. Jack lingers at the storm door to watch the cats tussle themselves into tiredness.

“If that Harris brat took him, she’s dead.”

“She’s a kid, babe, you can’t kill her.”

“Daddy.” Jack tugs my shirt.

“Not right now, okay?” Everything you can imagine in the junk drawer—rubber bands, chip bag clips, corroded batteries, a screwdriver, some mystery pill or breath mint—but no flashlight. I ease down to check the cabinet beneath and try not to make any sort of humiliating sound when my thigh quivers. “I thought we kept the flashlight in the junk drawer.”

“The flashlight’s not junk. It should be in the tool drawer.”

“Screwdriver’s a tool, what’s it doing in here?”

“You probably used it last and put it there.”

Jack pulls on my shirt again, more insistent, and when I don’t give him my full attention, he puffs his cheeks out. If Joy were here, she’d spider-walk her fingers across his ribs or belly until he gave in and laughed. “I wanna feed the kittens a snack,” he says and points to the cat treats we keep on a shelf near the front door. “Jack Junior will come out if I do!”

“Just a minute, I’m talking to Mama.”

“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Joy says over Jack’s stomping feet. Rather than tantrum, he merely slinks back to the door, dramatically forlorn. I snap a picture to send Joy.

“Poor thing. Like a wife waiting for her husband to come home from sea.” Joy trails off, 

probably still staring at the photo of Jack. Then: “How are things?”

I tip my head forward until it taps the counter, the junk drawer’s handle digging a groove 

into my forehead. She means nothing by it. I know that. But it’s the same every time one of us calls—we can’t just have a quick conversation. I try not to let anything seep into my voice. “Fine.”

“That wasn’t very enthusiastic.”

“I’m fine, Jack’s fine, everything’s fine. Just like every day.”

Joy doesn’t sound resentful. She never does, even when I deserve it. Especially when I deserve it. “You’re aggravated that you had a bad night. And if you need to take that anger out on 

me, sure, it’s okay.”

“You know it’s not.”

Then why do it? she could ask. I imagine her at her desk, the way she’s tilting her face away from the handset and swallowing down a sigh or something worse. “Yeah, it’s not okay. But being angry is.”

“I’m not angry because of last night,” I say. We both know that’s a lie. “I just wish you’d stop coddling me. I’m crippled, not stupid.” Crouched on one knee, knowing I shouldn’t have gotten this far onto the floor without a chair nearby to grab, I feel both. I hope Joy will snap at me. When she’s as frustrated as I am, it’s easier not to feel like such a dick. Anger’s easier to face than patience and much easier than pity. 

Joy does sigh this time. “Why do you have to call yourself that?”

Whatever horrible thing I might hurl back is forgotten when I catch a blur in my periphery. There’s a second to wonder at it, then a meaty thud vibrates through the floor, and there’s Jack sprawled out a couple feet away. All it takes is seeing the bag of treats near his hand to realize he tried climbing onto the counter to grab it. 

Jack’s quiet, until he’s not. All that throbbing anger inside me shrinks beneath the wave of panic crashing against my chest at the first wail he lets out. I mutter a call you back to Joy and disconnect, hoping she didn’t catch much of him crying, and start to jump up. My thigh buckles before I even think about needing something to hold to, pain splintering across my kneecap when I stumble, the spasming the worst it’s been since I took my meds this morning, and my kid’s screaming. My kid’s screaming, and I can’t run to him. Get to Jack, just get to him, go go go do it. Nothing else can exist as I’m half-crawling to where he lies prone on the floor.  

“What hurts, where’s the hurt?” I ask, even as I take in the blood staining his mouth. Every terrible scenario comes to mind: he bit through his tongue, his lip, he busted his teeth. Jack’s mouth is redder than red, but he’s not crying so hard now that I’ve scooped him up. He licks the puncture marks beading his bottom lip—must have hit the counter when he fell. Eyes swimming, he asks, “Am I gonna die?”

I’d laugh if he weren’t so damned earnest. “No, it’s okay, it’s not bad.” Jack goes stiff as I touch the corner of his mouth to get a better look. I’ll need ice, and a washcloth for his face. He wraps himself around me when I try to stand, the added weight nearly tipping me backward. Standing wouldn’t be a problem if I’d brought the crutch—I’d slide my arm into the cuff and trust it in a way I can’t myself anymore. The frustration I feel toward my body, my limitations, is enough to choke on. Irrationally, I think: this would never happen if Joy were watching him.

Once I’ve shushed and rocked him enough, I’m allowed to set Jack aside and get to my feet. Arms dimpled with baby fat latch onto me, his face tucked into my neck, and my skin there is slick with snot and blood and spit, and it’s gross, but I woke up covered in my own pee. I keep a hand on the wall and take one deliberate step after the other.

A bitten lip isn’t the end of the world. In Jack’s world, this will pass within a week. I’m grateful he’s young enough where all he’ll carry is a scar and not the memory of that fear, of a body outside his control.

*

Despite their bendable bones and how we fuss over them, kids are resilient. I forget this often enough that it amazes me how quickly Jack recovers. All it takes is the “If I Had Words” scene from Babe and some cuddles to make everything better. Today’s fall only crosses his mind if I say something he doesn’t agree with: make sure you pick up your colors and you’ve got to wash your hands first and no, you can’t help with the stir fry. “But I’m hurt,” he’ll say and point to his pitiful bottom lip.

Smart kid.

We’re working on dinner when the front door rattles. Jack hops off his step stool, the chile 

powder I let him sprinkle the chicken with forgotten as he trots over to meet Joy. The effortless way she picks him up, the confidence that she won’t drop him, would churn my gut I let it. Joy fawns over him as he shows her where he bit his lip, acting surprised even though I texted her the first chance I got. The mark’s already scabbed over and doesn’t look too bad now that the blood’s gone, any swelling brought down by ice. Might not even scar.

There are other ways, I suppose, of being useful.

I scrape some chile powder from the chicken before putting the bottle in the spice rack with all the seasonings we regularly use. It’s only once Jack squeals that I notice Joy’s carrying something else. “Where’d you find that?”

“That is a him,” she says, handing the wriggling kitten to Jack, “and he decided to go off catting to the Harris’s. Their girl had him.”

“And she gave him back?”

Joy’s shoulders jump in a shrug. Despite the relaxed motion, tension pulls the corners of her mouth into a near-pout, one that normally only makes me think of how much Jack favors her. I wait for her to say something, but then Jack’s wiggling forces her to put him down. I hook my foot through the step stool and move it before Jack or I can trip over it, and to give myself room to put the chicken in the oven. When I look at Joy again, any indecision’s gone: she slides the stool back where it was so that, when she stands on it, she towers over me. Perfume lingers on her shirt collar, the skin behind her ear. I rest my weight against her and let my head fall heavy to her collarbone.

Jack’s cooing at Jack Junior, three pounds of lanky kitten for him to potato-pack through the house. Excited as he is, he’s got one hand cupped around the kitten’s head like he’d hold a baby, too thoughtful for a kid who’ll be starting kindergarten this autumn. Joy slides a palm up my back—not checking in, just to feel. She pinches my hip and ducks down enough that I can kiss her hair, the same chaotic curls Jack has. Neither of us apologizes except through these small touches. Jack fetches his Little Tikes shopping cart and begins pushing the kitten around, talking to it like we do him whenever we get groceries. “You have to sit still! If you’re not good, you don’t get a treat.” He runs over my toes and doesn’t say sorry. It hurts. It feels like a small victory.

Corley Longmire graduated with her MA from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her fiction can be found in Brink, West Trade Review, Stoneboat, Barely South Review, and is forthcoming in The Westchester Review. She works on the editorial team at University Press of Mississippi. You can find her on Twitter @Corley_Longmire.

Maureen O'Leary

The Ghosts of the Bees Weigh In On the Dishwasher Argument

The Man

The man bows his head with the dirty plate in his hand and thinks about how he doesn’t like the way the woman smells anymore. She’s been avoiding carbs so her sweat smells like metal these days when before all he would need to get hard was to bury his nose into the honeyed space behind her ear. This morning he senses metal under her perfume. Ozone. The scent of a machine working efficiently and releasing almost no emissions recognizable to the human olfactory system. She smells like a factory. 

 The Woman

The woman wants the man to put the plate in the sink and leave so that she can wash away his egg yolk. She wants to reorganize the dishwasher so that pre-rinsed plates stack together like pages in a book, so that knives go with knives and forks with forks and spoons with spoons. She doesn’t want him to watch her and she feels vaguely ashamed as if she has the urge to masturbate or eat chocolate ice cream right out of the carton with a spoon meant for serving rice. The shame pops and rolls in her throat and turns to rage. 

 The Author

Back off, the woman says and the man’s face falls so that for one tick of the second hand on the kitchen clock he looks like a little boy who was only trying to help and whose mother has snapped at him for no reason. His lower lip trembles. His cheekbones recede and his face fattens into round cheeks. His hard fingers become soft, the knuckles pudgy. His hands are blind as starfish and innocent that way, as if they could never mean any harm to anyone.

The Man

I didn’t mean any harm, I want to say, but I don’t. The dishwasher is meant to wash dishes, I say, every word burning acid in my throat. It was me who made the money to buy the dishwasher, let’s be honest. I work much harder than she does. Half the time when I leave in the morning she is still sleeping after staying up late “doing her work,” she says, but what she means is writing stories nobody ever wants to read or certainly pay for. I smash the plate in the sink and not the floor where the shards might cut her bare feet.

The Mother Spider

The mother spider knows that none of what you are saying matters because the spider has no voice box. She weaves her crunchy haphazard web above your heads. The flies from your compost bowl are all she needs and she sucks them dry. She is afraid of you but she judges you too because who gives a shit about the dishwasher? Your kitchen is a mess. Empty your compost before you snipe at one another over the dishwasher, but then again don’t. The flies are good for the mother spider. She needs to keep her strength up after laying so many beautiful eggs.

The House

My walls are spongy and near collapse as they fight over nothing. A flock of bees lived between the drywall and the frame once and I still hold the papery honeycomb in the secret dark parts of me. I smell like honey inside if you press your nose close to the space below the window. Do you get the sweetness? The musk? The memory of a time when everything was buzzing and flowing and we concerned ourselves only with what was working and how we lived together for the thrill of where their legs touched and where their tiny hairs collided?

The Ghosts of the Bees

Those were the days when we lived for each other. We made honey that was so thick it pooled at the base of the wall for days before oozing through the chalky drywall. The sweetness of our work filled the house on warm days like incense, the buzzing of our wings the smoke that bore the honey on the air. Those were the days of longing for the queen, of bristling in ecstasy, of getting so lost in one another nothing else mattered but what we could make from love. 

We remember the heady excitement of being alive but when we try to catch the scent in the kitchen, it isn’t there. We don’t believe the house that memory is enough to make feeling. We don’t believe that papery artifacts of when we were better together work to give us joy. What, we’re arguing about dishwasher now? We’re arguing about a machine? We used to taste, we used to writhe. We used to destroy the walls with our honey. 

The Baby Spiders

Look up at the ceiling corners and in the cracks. We writhe in quivering bulging spider egg sacs. We curl together in bundles silky and white. We listen to the man and the woman as they fight. We loosen our bonds and push from the fibrous locks. The woman cries and the second hand tocks. We fall from above like legged rain. Our jaws are open and ready to cause pain. The ghosts of the bees blow on our silken threads. We have landed on the couple’s heads.

Maureen O'Leary lives in California where she did once find a dead beehive in her kitchen wall. Her most recent work appears in Coffin Bell Journal, The Horror Zine, Archive of the Odd, DeComp Journal, Ariadne Magazine, Bandit Fiction, Hush Lit, Live Nude Poems, Esopus Reader, Black Spot Books' women in horror anthology Under Her Skin, and Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine. She is a graduate of Ashland MFA. Find her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Maureenow or Insta: https://www.instagram.com/maureenow/

Summer Hammond

I Don’t See a Cat

Grandma Gerlich’s cat was the meanest motherfucker in the whole Midwest. 

Jayna said this, not me. 

She said it in Grandma Gerlich’s bathroom, after we bolted the door and sank down onto the old, cracked, pea green linoleum with our stolen Molasses cookie. “Hurry, Cassie!” Jayna’s hand dripped blood but no matter where I looked I couldn’t find bandages, not even a measly box of band-aids. You’d expect Iowa corn farmers to have a ton of medical supplies on hand. 

“Just get me some toilet paper,” Jayna hissed, clutching our cookie in the hand that wasn’t torn up.  

 I crept to the toilet, and the floor creaked. I froze. Jayna jerked her finger to her lips, face shaking, eyes bugged. “Shush.”

Jeez. Sorry. What could I do? It wasn’t like I could take back a creak! I waited, my foot hanging, suspended midair, like one of the great blue herons in our favorite Florida campground. Finally, I skulked to the toilet paper, unrolled a supersize wad so I wouldn’t have to risk more creaks, balled it up, flung it at her. She thrust our stolen cookie at me. I cradled it while she wrapped the toilet paper round and round her hand, blood seeping through. That’s when she spat it, hard, between her teeth. Puddin’ Darlin’ is the meanest motherfucker in the whole Midwest. 

I sucked in a breath. Jayna never swore. Neither of us did. Mom said it wasn’t couth to swear, and being couth was one of Mom’s dearest preoccupations. She said swearing was as foul as smoking, drinking, and stealing. She’d grown up around all of them. Her father was the ‘town drunk’ and her sister was in jail for robbing a jewelry store. Even though we lived in a trailer park, Mom told us, we didn’t have to act like we did. Class, she said, wasn’t about money, it was about couth. 

Usually, Jayna and I were vigilant about remaining couth, especially when visiting Grandma Gerlich. If Grandma found us now, hiding out with our pilfered cookie, she’d blame our genes. Whenever I thought of our genes, I pictured rusty, clanging garbage trucks kicking up gravel dust, leaving a trail of rotten egg stink in our bloodstream. 

“Why’d you do it, Jayna?” I whispered. “That was dumb.”

Jayna was fifteen that year, and I was twelve. Usually she was the one who knew more, knew best, the one who got to scold, heckle, and shame. But here, I felt I was in my rights. I studied cats. We lived in a double wide trailer, surrounded by farms, and a glory of strays. Every day, I served them a heaping frying pan of scraps – oatmeal, eggs, milk, beef, and pork mixed up with cat food, steaming on cold mornings. I’d plunk down in the grass a couple feet away. None of those cats had homes, not even trailers, and they all led lives of endless hardship, much worse than mine. With them, I’d found a community, other beings that didn’t belong. My favorite I’d named Calamity, a beefy Tabby who’d been in so many fights, half her nose was torn off, dangling by a thread. “You’ve gotta learn to ignore them,” I’d tell her, as she sat on her haunches, wolfing down the food in great, ravenous gulps. “Just turn the other cheek, Calamity, that’s all.” That’s what Mom told me, when I came home from school just broken in two from all the vicious name-calling. Some people got lost in art. I got lost in cats. 

Jayna’d told me, with real respect, I had my Ph.D. in Cat Studies. 

Therefore, in this situation, I had some authority, and an opinion to assert. “You know Puddin’s got a bad temper. Why’d you push him like that?” 

“Why’d I push him? Cassie, he lunged at you! With claws and teeth! Didn’t you see?”   

“Well, we were trying to steal a cookie…”

“He’s a cat, not a guard dog. He hates us, always has.” 

“Turn the other cheek,” I said.  

“Yeah, and if I did, guess what, I wouldn’t have a face right now.” Jayna rolled her eyes, huffed at me.

Never mind. My sister was a crank in her old age, and it wasn’t worth a fight. 

I split our stolen cookie, right down the middle, and together we gobbled, like two Calamities, cross-legged on Grandma Gerlich’s sticky, dirty bathroom floor, with the gusto and desperation, of a dream long deferred.  

*

Every spring break, soon as school let out, we packed up our red Dodge van and ditched Iowa. So long, cornfields! The journey to Florida was far more than crossing state lines. It was a metamorphosis into a whole other life. At Hammock Springs State Park, we were loosed from all our labels. For a while, we got to be as mysterious as the alligators, up to their eyeballs in swamp water.

Sometimes we didn’t come back when break was over. 

Dad ran a janitorial service and he’d done well enough to hire two somewhat reliable employees, and work his own schedule. Sometimes we stayed in Florida two weeks, instead of one. Campgrounds were cheap. One year, we’d spent a whole month camping in the sand, close enough to hear the sea talk at night, swim in it if we wanted, while my classmates trudged back to school, shivering as the cornfields thawed, enduring endless worksheets in preparation for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. 

In Florida, I was rich. 

Grandma Gerlich told us, Dad had brains. He could’ve been a professor, an engineer. But what had he done instead? Why, he’d gotten with Mom, a poor girl from a bad family, none of them educated, a bunch of thieves and alcoholics, and not long after, Jayna had arrived, sealing the bitter deal. Grandma and Grandpa Gerlich’s farm was only five miles away, yet we were the ones who went to visit them. Not one time had they been out to visit us in our trailer off Gravel Pit Road. 

In Iowa, I was trash. 

That spring break, Jayna and I prayed our red Dodge van along as it creep-crawled the rural roads in the middle of a last hurrah Iowa blizzard, the white out kind. Every drawn out mile, our fears intensified. Our van would slide off the road, get stuck in the ditch, the snow plows would arrive in a long, embarrassing procession, and finally the tow truck to dig us out, hauling us back to cornfield prison.  

Three days later, Jayna and I were sprawled in the back of the van, on the bed Dad had crafted from two by fours and a piece of plywood, surrounded by crosswords and magazines, our Slap the Berry Bird card game that made our palms sting for hours, when Mom announced we’d made it. We’d crossed the Florida state line. Jayna and I sat up and screamed, bouncing up and down, rejoicing.  

We scrambled to dig out our suitcases, flinging them open, casting off our Hawkeye t-shirts and sweat pants, before Dad had even found a place to park at the Florida Welcome Center. Out came the Panama Jack shirts, shorts with bright bold citrus print, jelly shoes so pink they made your teeth ache. Clothing we’d never wear in Iowa, couldn’t wear without swift punishment. The hoity kids wore uniforms: United Colors of Benetton sweatshirts, Guess? jeans, and Eastland loafers with coiled laces. You had to have the coiled laces, or the God of Conformity would roar up from the portals of hell, located conveniently beneath the suffocating golden cornfield that surrounded our middle school. Try wearing the silver snakeskin loafers you found on clearance, and none of the kids would let you sit with them on the bus, scooting over real fast, or setting their backpack down, so you sat on it, the hard corners of books. “Get your trash ass off my stuff, troll face!” and then he pushed you, on that bend of the Mississippi, and with your palms pressed into the hot, gravel laced floor of the bus, the bus driver swore up, down, and sideways, he hadn’t seen a thing, not any of it, and he yelled at you, wrote you up for “defying safety procedures”, and in the principal’s office, you’d realize your favorite eraser had rolled out of the slightly unzipped pocket of your backpack, the eraser you found at a flea market in Florida, last spring break, the one that looked like a real orange, bright and juicy, the one you never let anyone use and guarded with your life, and later you’d see the kid that shoved you, that called you trash ass and troll face, using it in math class, your eraser, and helpless you’d watch him erasing so rough, that it split, right in front of you, your perfect, beautiful eraser, and that was what killed you, worse than being on your hands and knees in the aisle of the bus, the driver losing his mind.  

Boys will be boys, Mom told me, a shrug of defeat. 

At the Florida Welcome Center, Jayna and I emerged from the red Dodge van triumphant, our true selves. 

Well, except for the hat. 

In addition to her flamingo skorts and moccasins, that spring, Jayna smushed a straw Panama hat onto her flow of tawny curls. Finally, she said, she knew what it was. What was keeping her locked in uncoolness. Somewhere in Kentucky, bumping along in the red Dodge van, she’d sat straight up and pointed to her face. “It’s this, Cassie! This constellation of evil.” She freckled easily, and on that 1300 mile escape route from Iowa, Seventeen magazine had shown her the way, the truth, and the life, opening her eyes to the fact that freckles were flaws. 

That spring, Jayna declared war on her freckles. 

The Panama hat, shielding her face from the sun, was Phase One of the Battle Plan. 

Outside the Welcome Center, an orange-blossom scented breeze playing with our curls, we conducted our traditional toast, raising our complimentary orange and grapefruit juice. “To adventure!” We mimicked the clinking sound of fancy wine glasses as we touched paper cups, then downed our cold juice. I noted, on the back of Jayna’s hand, running down her wrist and arm, pale trails, like the streaks in the sky that airplanes leave. Dang. I’d nearly forgotten about Puddin’ Darlin’s attack. I didn’t know Jayna had scars. Til now, I’d never seen them. 

Never mind. 

Only a little while longer and we’d be at Hammock Springs State Park. 

We had so many plans. 

*

What they failed to tell us, our parents, was that Grandma and Grandpa Gerlich, en route to Arizona in their brand new RV, took a detour and magically ended up in our campground. 

“How do you take a detour and end up at Hammock Springs State Park?” Jayna whispered, fierce, as we trudged behind Mom and Dad on the way to Grandma and Grandpa Gerlich’s campsite. 

I puzzled, but the question seemed impossible to crack. 

Jayna huffed and puffed, kicked at the sand, sending it up in sparkly spirals around us, like genie smoke. I didn’t tell her this, but when Jayna got mad, her freckles practically glowed. Maybe because of the blood rushing to her face. I didn’t pay attention in biology, so I couldn’t explain the mechanics behind glowing freckles.

We’d had three blissful days here, all to ourselves, and Jayna had faithfully worn her Panama hat everywhere. And I do mean everywhere, even to swim! That spring, for the first time, Jayna left the shallow side, where we’d learned to doggy paddle in our matching red sequined swim suits, with our Cabbage Patch Kid water wings. She’d picked up her inner tube and without so much as a how-do-you-do, she’d plunged into the deep side, teal, green, and full of shadows, the water wheel churning nearby. That’s where the grown-ups swam. Our parents. I didn’t know Jayna was an adult, and I don’t think I believed it, even though she claimed her chest had undergone a major growth spurt. She swore, up, down, and sideways, she was very nearly a D cup. But was that license to force me to stay in the shallow side, chasing minnows alone? 

We were supposed to be swimming right now, had set out with our gear when Mom and Dad called us back, delivered the blow. 

“What the…” Jayna turned her head, this way and that. “Is this the rich neighborhood?”  

This section of Hammock Springs State Park, unlike ours, sported immaculately paved campsites with electrical hook ups, well-behaved foliage, and massive RV’s stretched out sleek, glittering in the sun, more like a dealership than a campground. Our site was over yonder, in the boonies. Mom and Dad pitched a tent on the sand. Jayna and I slept in the van, the back doors swung open. The raccoons got into our garbage cans, clattering around in the middle of the night, strewing empty hotdog bags and crumpled cans of pop, orange and banana peels caught up like bright party decorations in the tall, billowy clumps of Pampas grass. We had to pick our way down a makeshift path through the woods to the restrooms. Once we’d nearly tripped over a cottonmouth, yawning wide at us, fangs flashing like switch blades. In the middle of the night, we got up and peed in Zip-lock bags. In the morning, we pinched the bags from the top, dropped them in the trash, liquid gold water balloons.  

“Do they have money?” I whispered. “Grandma and Grandpa Gerlich?” 

In answer, we arrived to site #57 and laid eyes on their new RV. 

“Holy…” We both said at once, then clamped our mouths shut. 

Grandpa Gerlich was a corn farmer. My school secretary always asked me about his crops, as though he discussed them with me, as though he took me out on the tractor and taught me about the land, offering me heartfelt wisdom about the trials of farming, and life. No, never. Grandpa Gerlich only talked to Dad, bellowing from the depths of his La-Z-Boy, clutching a Busch Light, shirt flung open, belly poofed out, TV blaring football. He didn’t turn down the volume, but merely yelled over the announcers his own fiery proclamations ranging from gas prices to John Deere to Billy Graham, all peppered by his two favorite words. Cripes! Bullshit! We never heard Dad. Dad left Jayna and I in the dining room with the broken cuckoo clock, and Grandma Gerlich. Mom always came down with something, a cold or flu, that required her to stay at home. We asked to stay home, too, but Mom wouldn’t let us. That would be wrong, she said, uncouth.  

Trapped for hours in their farmhouse dining room, without a thing to eat or drink, the cuckoo shot out, lopsided, at unruly times. Each time, Jayna and I jumped in our hard, straight-backed chairs. Grandma Gerlich didn’t seem to see, which is maybe why, it never got repaired. She was too caught up in her beloved story about the best melon of her life, a famous Muscatine melon from Muscatine, Iowa, she’d bought from the back of a pick-up truck at a roadside stand. She plunged into deep detail about the webbed skin, ripened on the vine, the voluptuous flesh and luscious flavor, the juices dribbling down her chin. “But oh,” she’d conclude, shaking her head, “I’ll never have another melon like that again.” The best of her melon days were over, and each visit, Jayna and I were asked to share anew in what we called – Grandma Gerlich’s meloncholy. 

Now, Mom looked back at us over her shoulder. “Ready, girls?” Her voice, a long drawn-out sigh of resignation. 

The RV door swung open, and Grandma Gerlich appeared, surveying us from the top step. She crossed her arms over her bosoms and peered at us over the top of her spectacles. “Well, well!” she said. 

First and foremost, I was astonished that her Iowa attire hadn’t budged a bit. Green polyester pants, a long-sleeved green-and-orange checkered blouse, equally polyester, and those thick-soled shoes, like nurse’s shoes, only black. Her hair was iron gray, permed into tight curls that refused to play with even the most flirtatious Florida breeze. I never knew hair to be so stern. 

We watched as Dad tried to do something he usually failed to accomplish: hug his mother. Maybe the palm trees whisking above had some softening effect. Her hand lightly patted his back three times. A generosity of affection! She said, “Well, Mike, how’s the filth picker-upper business? No electricity in your campsite, I hear, but at least you’ve got a tent.” She turned to Mom, appraising. “Long time no see, Pamela. How’s that Richard Simmons workout? Slow going, looks like.” Then, squinting hard at me she said, “Is that Cassandra? Why, heavens. I barely recognized you. Finally starting to look like a girl!” She crooked an eyebrow at Jayna. “What’s with the hat? Shoo, missy. If I gave you a dollar for every freckle, you’d be a millionaire.” 

*

Jaw-dropping luxury, is what it was. Glossy floors and an immaculate white wrap around couch, a glass-topped coffee table and two swiveling leather arm chairs, a kitchen with polished countertops, pristine stainless steel appliances, and a fully stocked bar. A bedroom bigger than my room at home, with a King size bed!

I was forced to re-evaluate my Grandparent’s wealth. Essentially, my whole life, I thought they were like us – they didn’t have any. Grandma and Grandpa Gerlich’s farmhouse was ancient, and like their clock, clothing, and hairstyles, had never been updated. The barn and outbuildings sagged, splintering to pieces. Behind the barn, a jumble of rusted out farm machinery decayed in the weeds, what Jayna and I called John Deere Cemetery. Perhaps most compelling, the fact they never gave us gifts. Not for Christmas. Not for birthdays. None at all. 

Grandpa, giving us the grand tour, swung open the door to the bathroom and with a swig from his Busch Light, pointed out the highlight. A hot tub. A hot tub! 

Mom let out a Damn. Then bit her lip, sheepish. 

“So, Pam,” Grandpa said, finishing off his beer. “How much you think we paid for this beauty, huh, what would you guess?” Something was wildly different about him and I couldn’t make out what it was, until it hit me, he was standing! Rather than sunk down deep, nearly swallowed up by his La-Z-Boy pulpit. I’d gotten used to thinking of his lower body as blue plush with a ruffle at the bottom. 

Also, he was talking to us. 

“Uh,” Mom said. “I’m not so good at guessing.” 

“Really?” Grandma eyed her. “Isn’t that how you got through school?” 

Grandpa twisted to Jayna. “What about you, young lady?” 

Jayna lifted her chin. “Two hundred grand.” 

Grandpa cackled. “Oh you’re smart, too, huh, look at Miss Smarty Pants over here, all grown up.” He looked her up and down, eyes lingering on her pink manatee tank top. He whistled through his teeth. “You got a boyfriend, Miss Smarty Pants? Say now, what about me. A feller like me too old to be your boyfriend?” He leaned in the doorway, made a strange sound. Click, click, click. I looked harder. He’d pushed his dentures part way out, clicking them at her like toothy castanets! 

I looked at Mom. She’d gone quiet, turned to the side.   

I looked at Grandma. She flipped through a brochure, her spectacles glinting. “Have you been to this Shell Factory? I need shark jaws, a dozen at least.”  

I looked at Dad. He studied the ceiling with intense fascination. “Does the skylight leak?” 

I looked at Jayna. She’d backed up, against the wall, arms crossed hard over her chest. 

Just then, who should come swaggering out of the bedroom, down that pristine floor, past the luminous white couch and leather armchairs, brushing by the fancy barstools. He saw Jayna and I, stopped dead in his tracks. Then sat, green eyes steely. 

*

Ten minutes later, the meanest motherfucker in the whole Midwest launched himself after a feathered feast. He clawed the air in a suede zebra print harness, attached to a matching leash. I shrieked, struggling to keep hold. A snowy egret had lifted from the reeds and cattails and Puddin’ Darlin’, bucking and growling, was desperate to sink his teeth into that regal ballerina of a bird, tearing off and spitting out those shining feathers, scattering them over the length and breadth of Florida, wrecked and bloodied. 

“Cassie! Don’t let him go!” 

“I’m not!” I yanked the leash so hard, Puddin’ flipped to face us, wild-eyed, hackles raised, fur standing out around his face. He hissed and spit, then charged us. 

Jayna and I collided, tripped over one another, fell hard on our butts in the sand. Jayna buried her face in her hands. “How, how did this happen?” 

The long answer was: Grandma Gerlich had declared it was time for Puddin’ Darlin’s walk. Then, without so much as a how-do-you-do or a thank you-ma’am, she shoved us out the door with him. Jayna’d forced the leash into my hand. She said, it was only right, I was the one with my Ph.D. in Cat Studies. Boy. She knew how to butter me up when she wanted out of something. Now I felt cornered, like I had to prove my illustrious academic pedigree. 

The short answer was: “Karma,” I said. 

Jayna eyed me from beneath her hat. “What?” 

“For stealing the cookie.” 

“Oh, please.”

We stood, and Puddin’ Darlin’ shot ahead. 

I had to jog to keep up. Jayna huffed and puffed beside me, curls flying out, her hand pressed to her hat. A chipmunk perched on a rotted log, feasting on part of a hamburger bun, rotating it this way, then that, nibbling, focused and dainty. Instantly, Pudding Darlin’ lowered his belly, slinking low and fast across the brushy, pine cone strewn ground. 

“Be right back!” Jayna darted off.  I jerked my head up just in time to see Jayna’s legs disappear into our red Dodge van. Puddin’ pulled, choked, and heaved. I wrestled him back. Our campsite, the clothesline Mom had strung between two Saw Palmettos, our swim suits and towels flapping in the breeze, the festive pineapple camper lights we’d draped around the van, rather than being a welcome sight, overflowed me with the bad hot lava feeling, same as when the bus dropped me off at my long dirt lane off Gravel Pit Road. Our double-wide trailer in Iowa with a garden out back was thought nice, ritzy even, in a neighborhood of single-wides with rusted out cars on blocks. But to the kids who lived in gated communities overlooking the Mississippi, in the big stone houses that looked like castles, I was trash. Leaning half their bodies out the windows, they chanted that word at me, a staccato rhythm that matched my every footfall home. And where was the bus driver then? 

Jayna ran back. She’d thrown on one of Dad’s long-sleeved, button down shirts, covering up her most of her pink manatee tank top. I said, “Why you wearing that? It’s a hundred degrees!” 

“Freckles,” she said, not meeting my eyes. She buttoned the buttons, one by one, up to the very top. Sometimes I thought those beauty magazines of hers were just fancy, smart-sounding bullies, truth be told. 

A clatter over the top of pine needles and leaves. “Ope!” Jayna and I stepped back fast, but not fast enough. The biggest skink we’d ever seen, a long, twisting body that glinted like gold coins, head red as a fire engine, tongue shooting out a mile long, slid right over the top of our feet. 

“Aaaagh! Aaaagh! Aaaagh!” We clung to each other, dancing our feet up and down, kicking up sand and shells and leaves until we couldn’t see a thing. 

When the whirlwind cleared, Jayna pointed. “No! Oh no! Nooo!” 

The suede zebra kitty halter lay in the sand, broken, bedraggled, emptied. 

We raced to the underbrush, Jayna emitting a screeching sound like tires before a crash. 

Puddin’ Darlin’s bottle-brush tail was swallowed up, into the jungle of Saw Palmettos and ferns. 

Jayna threw out an arm, stopped me from diving in. “Don’t,” she hissed, “panthers.” 

“Dad says there aren’t many.” 

She glared. “All it takes is one, Cassie.”

I worried for the panther that would meet up with Grandma Gerlich’s cat. 

We listened to the crashing and snapping of underbrush, loud at first, then faint.

Then quiet. 

That’s when Jayna pushed me. 

She said, “Nice job, Cassie! Good work! So much for your Ph.D.!” 

I rubbed my shoulder. “Me? What about you? Screaming and wailing like a freight train! No wonder he ran!”

Jayna grit her teeth so hard, tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes. She whipped away, marched off to the picnic table. She hoisted herself up, sat. Her curls fell defeated over her shoulders. Her Panama hat hung lopsided. 

I plunked down beside her. A great blue heron rose up from the branches of the pine above us, long thin legs hanging down, like a basketball star making a slam dunk. On impulse, I reached over, straightened Jayna’s hat. I said, “Welp, I suppose now, someone’s going to come take my degree off the wall.”  

She laughed a little. Then whistled low. “If we don’t find him…”

“Don’t say that. Think positive! That’s what Mom says. When one door closes, another…”

Jayna cut me off.  “Mom’s full of it,” she snapped. “She just wants to slap bumper stickers all over people’s problems.”  

Well then. That was harsh. But we didn’t have time to bicker. I bit my tongue and stood, gathering up the halter and leash. “Puddin’!” I yelled. “Puuuuddin’!”  The ‘Darlin’, well. I wasn’t too keen to add. 

Jayna and I called and called, edging along the forest, right through people’s campsites. That was the exact opposite of couth, but this was an emergency. It was lunchtime, and whole families sat bunched together at picnic tables, laughing and drinking pop out of Red Solo cups. Grills sent up smoke, and the aroma of charcoal and hamburger turned my stomach into a pacing tigress. Burgers grilled by strangers, at picnics you’re not invited to, taste better. That’s a plain fact. Jayna and I called, “Puddin’! Here, Puddin’, Puddin’, Puddin’!” 

People raised their heads, watched us while chewing, like we were dinner theater. 

“Hey girls! Lose your dog?” A lady with a ponytail pulled through a black leopard print Busch Gardens ballcap waved us over with a spatula. 

“Cat!” Jayna said. 

“Well, that’s different. What should I be looking out for?” 

We tried to describe Puddin’ but realized, as our words ran together, he sounded less like a house pet, and more like an atrocious mythic beast, a bizarre creature from Dante’s Inferno, just short of horns and a flickering tongue of flames. 

“Hungry, girls?” We nodded and just like that, easy as can be, she handed us two paper plates. Jayna and I stood there frozen in disbelief as she served us burgers, invited us to help ourselves to the array of condiments, chips, and pop. We moved slowly, scared to startle the unicorn.  

“Good luck, girls,” she said, waving. “Hope you find him before the gators do!” 

Jayna and I scampered with our full plates and drinks to the playground, the one with the wooden old West style fort, where, before we were grown up, we used to play pretend. 

“Cassie. She gave us food. Isn’t that nice? Can you believe it?” Jayna whispered, looking side to side, like someone might come out of the woods and take it from us.  

We dug in, quick, and oh, it was wonderful, the cheese drippy and gooey, running together with the burger grease, the sweet tang of pickle relish. 

After a while, Jayna said, “Did you see the cookie jar?” 

“What? Where?” I couldn’t believe our luck. I swung my head around, hoping for Oreos, or my second favorite, Nutter Butters. 

“No, doof, in Grandma and Grandpa’s RV.” She licked grease off her fingers. “Grandma brought the cookie jar. It was full of cookies. Oatmeal raisin with big chocolate chips.”   

An abundance of frizzy red hair, attached to a small girl, popped up over the side of the fort. She peered at us, slid down the slide and skipped over. “Got extra?”

Jayna offered her plate, let the girl take a handful of potato chips. She smashed them to her mouth, crumbs catching in the hollow at her neck, glinting gold. “Where’s your dog?” she pointed to the empty harness. 

“It’s a kitty harness,” I said. “Our Grandma’s cat ran away.” 

Her eyes shot open. “Ooo-ooh, you’re in trouble.” 

“Say,” Jayna asked, “does your Grandma give you cookies?”

“Yeahhh?” The girl furrowed her brow, an expression rife with duh. “Cookies, brownies, cake, home-made fudge…” she rubbed her belly with a dreamy look. 

“Do you have to ask her?” 

“Nooo?” Again, pulling a face. “Momma has to tell her not to feed me so much, but Nonnie doesn’t listen. Nonnie gives me whatever I want. Hot dogs for breakfast.” She beamed. 

Jayna said, “You know what our Grandma does? She makes cookies, big and round as a plate, right before we come over, so the whole house smells like warm cinnamon and sugar.” 

“Yummm!” The girl clapped, while I thought, oh boy, because I knew where this story was headed. 

“Yep. She puts them in a glass cookie jar with a twist top lid. She keeps the cookie jar on a table in her entry, eye-level to us. So when my sister and I walk in, that cookie aroma is the first thing we smell, and that cookie jar filled with shiny cookies is the first thing we see. But you know what?” 

“What?” The girl wiped her greasy, salty hands up and down her shorts, enthralled. 

“Not one time has our Grandma ever given us a cookie. We don’t get a cookie. We don’t get lunch. We don’t even get a dang glass of water.”  

“Nuh uh!” 

“On my honor. It’s a fact.” 

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you. Nonnie’s don’t do that.” 

Jayna flipped her off and the girl stuck out her tongue, then scurried to the swings, her red cloud of hair shot through with sunlight. 

“Nonnie’s don’t do that,” Jayna mimicked in a sing song voice. “Pssh. Spoiled brat. She can take her Nonnieand...” 

Listen. I knew we were in a bad predicament, but Jayna seemed to have it out for everybody. Why squabble with an eight-year-old who looked like Little Orphan Annie? I owed her unaccountable fury to that long-sleeved shirt. “Aren’t you hot?” I asked, plucking at a sleeve.

“Apparently so,” she said, with a long, dark look.   

A beat passed. I decided to ignore it. We tossed our plates in the trash and continued the hunt, prowling the edge of the forest. 

“Puddin’! Puuuuuddin’!” 

We walked and called, at intervals crouched, peering deep into the underbrush. Rattled and shook the Saw Palmettos. “Hush.” Jayna pressed her finger to her lips. “You hear that?” We sank down, buried our knees in the hot sand. Closed our eyes, listened hard. The cracking and snapping of twigs brought us to our feet. We dove into the brush, scaring an armadillo right off her feet. She shot straight up in the air!  

Jayna and I ducked out so fast, her hat caught in a branch. She snatched it, stuck it back on her head. 

“I never knew armadillos had hops,” I said. 

“Your Ph.D. isn’t in Armadillo Studies.” 

I smiled as we kept walking. After a minute I said, “If it’s so wrong, about the cookies, why wouldn’t Dad say something? He’d say something, if it was wrong.”  I plucked up a Saw Palmetto fan that had fallen, whisked it across the tops of the tall grasses and wildflowers. Grasshoppers leapt up, left and right, like popcorn popping. 

A dragonfly landed on Jayna’s long-sleeved arm. She raised her arm, looked at it, let it stay. The shimmering light turned its wings to stained glass.  

“Dad only sees skylights,” she said.  

“Huh?” 

“HI-YAH!” 

Jayna and I flung up our arms. Jayna’s dragonfly zoomed away, twisting and diving, acrobatics of terror through the air. 

Nunchucks Boy stood cackling. He sounded like Reggie Mantle in my Archie comic books. Yuk! Yuk! Shaking his long hair from his eyes, he whipped his namesake from behind his back. Twisting his wrist this way and that, the weapon twirling and spinning, he ran at us. 

Jayna and I fled. Beside me, she let out a noise, a Puddin’ Darlin’ growl, low and guttural. She swiveled. “Get away!” she cried, her hands balled into fists. “Stop stalking us!”  

This was Nunchuck Boy’s third ambush. Our first day at Hammock Springs, he’d leapt out from behind the playground fort, cornering us by the orange tree. We’d managed to escape by climbing the tree, jumping down on the other side. Unfortunately, I’d landed in a fire ant nest. The second time, he’d sprung out from behind a towering Yucca on a trail to the springs. Wheeling our arms, we’d fallen back into swamp water. Yuk! Yuk! Even as we spluttered and splashed, in a panic over water snakes and gators, he stood there laughing his Reggie laugh, clacking his weapon at us nonstop. Mom said, he most likely had a crush on Jayna, and what could you do? Turn the other boob, Jayna had scoffed to me in private, eye rolling. 

Jayna’s outrage made him stop laughing. He stared her down. 

I tugged at Jayna’s sleeve. “Come on,” I said. “Ignore him.” 

I turned, took long strides away. After a minute, Jayna caught up. 

His Nunchucks trailed us, a terrible click-click-clacking sound. 

Oh, I hated that sound. 

My gut churned up something hot and ferocious, like fire ant bites. “Why doesn’t someone say something? Like his mother. Or someone. I don’t know. The bus driver for instance!” 

Our steps padding along, sandals slapping at our heels. Jayna said, “The bus driver?”

I broke down. Just lost it. “My orange!” I cried into the world. “My beautiful orange eraser.” I wept as though the destruction were fresh. It felt fresh. 

“This way, Cassie.” Gently, Jayna took me by the arm, guided me onto a boardwalk trail, beneath the lush and cool canopy of looming yet kind Cypress trees. I loved these trees. They were like grandmothers. The Nonnie kind that would give you a cookie. 

Jayna sat me down on a large rock, overlooking the most pristine, crystal clear pool I’d ever beheld. We took off our sandals, dangled our hot, aching feet in the cool rush of bubbling water. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “It’s just, have you ever seen the rearview mirror in a school bus? It’s huge! How do you not see, with a mirror like that, the girl getting shoved into the aisle, her perfect orange eraser rolling away?” 

Jayna wrapped an arm around me. The thing is, my sister wasn’t mean. Highly cranky, but not mean. This soft touch, however, was something new, and I melted into it. I studied her closely. The Panama hat stuck on her head, diligently guarding her face. Her cheeks, deeply flushed, sweat beads glistening, in spite of her feet swishing through the cold spring fed water. 

“Why don’t you take off that long-sleeved shirt, Jayna? Gosh. Does it really matter if you have freckles on your arms? Who really cares?” 

She withdrew her arm from around my shoulder. “I’m wearing long sleeves from now on, so get used to it and lay off.” She wiped the rolling sweat off her brow.

“Aye Aye, Captain Crusty.” I saluted. 

In the now tense silence, a big turtle swam by, so close, we held our breath, and her shell brushed our toes! Jayna and I quietly squealed, grabbed hands, and squeezed. The turtle swam with other worldly grace. Touching our toes felt like holy communion, a sacred blessing. She seemed to look at us over her shoulder, with a shy and knowing eye, as she paddled away. 

“Whoa,” I said. 

“Yeah,” Jayna said. 

I gazed at our entwined hands, suddenly enchanted. I didn’t know. I didn’t know, til then, that I loved my sister’s bony, freckled fingers. “I’m glad we’re here together, in the deepest manure of our lives.” 

*

We emerged from the boardwalk trail into the ‘tents only’ campsite. 

Goosebumps popped out on my sunburnt arms, not only because of the temperature drop. Out here, no families grilling. Storm clouds gathering over the emptiness in a mountainous heap. The pines sounding a hushed roar as a breeze tore through. 

And there went Jayna’s Panama hat, lifting right off the top of her head, graceful and fleet, like a heron rising.  

“No!” She took off, and I ran after her. The wind rolled her hat, teasing, tossing it one way, then another, keeping it just out of her grasp. A grumble of thunder at our heels, as Jayna’s hat smacked into the side of a small canvas tent, worn, army green. The front flap fell part way open. A man stuck his head out. He didn’t have his shirt on. “What is it?” He said, brushing his bangs from his face. His hair was thick and dark, unkempt, eyes heavy-lidded, forehead wrinkled. He looked familiar. 

“My hat!” Jayna said, jamming it back on her head. Her shirt billowed as the storm neared, a few drops of rain smacking the side of the tent. 

Watching her, the man’s expression changed. A flash of lightning lit up his face, his jaw line and cheekbones, unshaven, and arrestingly handsome. The goosebumps rivered up and down my arms. I knew this man. “Hey. You girls shouldn’t be out in lightning. Don’t you know Florida has the most lightning strike fatalities? Stay here, til the storm passes.” With a quick motion, he unzipped the rest of the tent flap. 

I grabbed Jayna’s arm. “Hurry, run, run!” 

We twisted and ran. 

Another flash, a deafening crack, like a tree splitting, and the rain bucketed down, hard and drenching. Jayna and I ducked into a picnic shelter, soaked to the bone, gasping for breath. The rain crashed about in true Florida splendor, so thick and whisked and blindingly silver we couldn’t see a thing through it. “I don’t think he’ll run through this,” I said. “Not from what I know about Ted.” 

“Ted? Who’s Ted?” Rain poured in little waterfalls from the brim of Jayna’s hat, making puddles on the concrete. 

“That man in the tent! Didn’t you see him? That was Ted Bundy.”  

“Oh for real, Cassie? Stop, would you.” She clambered up on a picnic table, and I followed, sitting beside her. I ran my fingers across the splintered wood, carved with hearts and arrows, names and years, the ghosts of Hammock Springs State Park campers past. 

“I don’t care what you say. It was him.” 

“Ted Bundy, or Mark Harmon?” 

She had me there. We’d recently watched The Deliberate Stranger, starring Mark Harmon. 

“You know you can’t tell the difference between actors and real people,” she said. 

I massaged my knees, the rain thrashing the palms, the wind bending them.  

“Ted Bundy’s in prison, Cassie. You know that, right?”  

“In the Florida State Prison! And how many times has he escaped? And why couldn’t he have escaped again? Tell me if you’re so smart. The last time he escaped, remember? He took a plane, train, and a bus, all the way from Colorado to Florida where he killed three more women.” 

She couldn’t contradict. We knew about his crafty, dramatic escapes, just like we knew the cunning ways he’d lured his victims, arm in a sling, dropping his books as he crossed paths with some kind-hearted girl, who stooped to gather the books for him. “Would you mind helping me to my car?” He’d ask. “It’s parked just over there.” And sweetly, the way she’d been raised, caring, couth, she’d nod and smile, say, “Oh, certainly, yes, of course.” 

Her body picked out of the bushes a week later, like litter.  

All because he was handsome, and charming, and smart. Even the judges and prison guards were swindled! They let him walk around the prison, use the library, unshackled, free as can be. He took advantage and got away, then got away with murder. Again and again. A girl trying to sleep in her dorm after a long day of studying. A girl on her way to a jazz concert, excited to meet up with her friends. A girl hitch-hiking, crossing a state line, trying to change her life. A girl about to be married, on the verge of a new life.  

He was a good boy, Mom said. No one could’ve guessed. But at school, I’d found a book on serial killers, and looked him up. As a toddler, he’d surrounded the form of his sleeping aunt with knives. She said, when she told the family, no one seemed to see how strange it was! Maybe, they told her to ignore it. Maybe, they were used to doing that. The book said Ted’s grandfather, Sam, was known to be a creep. And what did the family say about that guy? What dumb bunch of words made his “violent streak” okay? 

I shivered in my wet clothes as the rain tapered off, and the sun flooded through. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Jayna said, “before Ted hunts us down.” 

We slogged in our squishy sandals, dodging big muddy puddles, in the direction of our campsite. One last search before we had to give in. Face the wrath. I’d never seen Grandma Gerlich mad. I only knew who she was at her nicest. And that was scary. 

She thought it was funny, but it wasn’t. Jayna and her Ted Bundy jokes. I wouldn’t hear the end of it. But it meant something. It mattered. Whether that guy in the tent was Bundy or not. I saw the way he’d looked at her. I saw. 

I looked up, and here we were, back at the park, by the wooden old West fort. We were close now, to home base. But not safe. Not even a little. And not because of Puddin’ being lost. I just knew, I didn’t ever in my life want to be that bus driver. 

“Jayna.” My sister stopped walking and turned. The oversized shirt, damp and clinging to her newly grown D cups. “Jayna,” I said again. “I saw what Grandpa did to you.”

She bit her lip, ducked her head. She folded her arms tight across her chest. 

“I saw him look at you, clicking his dentures at you, and it wasn’t funny, it was bad, Jayna, how he looked, and what he said, bad and wrong, and I saw it, Jayna, I saw, and you better believe I’ll tell Mom and Dad, and if they don’t see, Jayna, I swear, I will never, ever let him look at you or talk to you like that again! I will rip off his nuts and run them over with his two trillion tons of bullshit RV. I will roast his dick over a campfire and feed the teeny tiny crumb of it to a raccoon. I will protect you.” 

No wonder, when she raised her head, she looked at me like that. No wonder. I never talked this way. I never punched and kicked, or swore. I tried so hard to be couth. I wanted to be Calamity instead, her nose hanging half off, a threat. 

“And I love your freckles,” I said, slamming my fist into my palm. “Fuck Seventeen!” 

Jayna smiled then, the wildest, brightest smile I’d ever seen…more like a lightning flash than sunshine. 

Meahhhhh! 

We whipped around, just as Puddin’ Darlin’ swaggered, cocky as a soldier, from behind the old West fort.  

“Puddin’!” I cried. He sank to the ground, hackles rising. You think he’d be chastened, humbled by his time in the wilds, but no. He looked hungry for flesh, like he could eat my heart right out of my chest without blinking. I braced myself, gathered the harness and leash, and went. 

Jayna took my arm. “Where you going, Cassie?” 

I gaped at her. “To get Puddin”!” 

“Where?” She turned her head from side to side. 

“Where? Jayna, what’s the matter with you. Puddin’. Puddin’s right there!” I pointed, and his ears flattened. 

She looked at him. He looked right back. They locked eyes for what seemed like a long time. 

Jayna faced me. 

She said, “I don’t see a cat.” 

And when we turned our backs, walking away into the perfect orange of a Florida sunset, it was not a lie.

Summer Hammond grew up in east rural Iowa, and on school breaks, the state parks of Florida. She homeschooled through high school and went on to teach 9th grade Reading in Austin, TX. In 2019, she earned her MFA in Fiction from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Her fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Haunted Waters Press, Broad River Review, and The Texas Review. She was a finalist for both the 2021 Rash Award in Fiction, and the 2021 Missouri Review Miller Audio Prize. Summer currently resides in Wilmington by the sea with her kindred spirit and fellow book lover, Aly. She can be found on Twitter: @SummerDHammond Instagram: summerdhammond or at http://summer-hammond.squarespace.com/

Erin Cecilia Thomas

What Happens When I Give You Everything

Maryanne’s new parents came on a Wednesday. I remember it was a Wednesday because it was Ash Wednesday, and we had black smudges of grit crossed on our foreheads. 

Her new parents pulled her out of our lesson in the middle of the day. They just couldn’t wait any longer. They came for her and took her in front of us while we stayed at our wobbly rusted desks and watched Maryanne as she collected her ragged books and papers. Sister Ruth stood at the front of the room with her forehead blackened and her hands folded in front of her starched habit. She smiled while Maryanne fumbled with her belongings, and she looked at the new parents and smiled at them too. She looked as though she were watching an injured fawn she had nursed to health return to her rightful doe. 

The girl seated next to me, a friend of Maryanne’s, began to cry. For a moment, the only sounds in the room were the shuffling of Maryanne’s folders and the pitiful sniffling of her friend. The boy in front of the friend turned around to stare at her while he chewed his pencil to pulp, and the girl’s cries got louder. When she was done collecting her things, Maryanne swept a hand across the empty seat of her desk, leaving it clean for the next student. She did not look at her friend. 

On that Ash Wednesday, with its flat gray sky pushing against the row of wire-glass windows, we watched Maryanne glide across the sickly brown linoleum floor straight toward her future. I only remember her name after all this time because of how much I hated her for getting to leave. We watched her put her small hand into the hand of her new mother. Her new father nodded at Sister Ruth and led them down the hallway to collect Maryanne’s things from the sleeping quarters. 

After they were gone, we sat listening to the girl struggle to stop her sobs. Sister Ruth walked to the door and closed it with the click of a latch. She crossed back to the center of the room and stood in front of the blackboard, looking at us. 

“Hush,” she said to the crying girl, not unkindly. “This is a happy day.” Behind her were the words she had chalked on to the board in neat slanting cursive– Psalm 103:14:

For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.   

*

I was born unwanted. Tiny, wrinkled and writhing, wrapped in colorless cloth. I was given up, by a mother or father or both, spat out and dropped into a box, to be shaped by strangers. 

I grew up in that building with wire-glass windows and linoleum floors, our home until we were given a new one. The halls smelled of floor cleaner and food from the kitchen. At night, in the sleeping quarters where our beds and chests of drawers were quartered into cubicles, we pressed our faces into pillows stale with laundry soap.

The Sisters watched us and taught us. There was a woman who worked in the front office who wasn’t a Sister but a regular woman. She wore blouses and dark rectangle glasses and could have been a mother to any one of us, something we knew the Sisters could not be. We watched her hungrily when she clipped down the hall in her heels, but she did not look at us. 

Of everyone, Sister Ruth was kindest; in a world of bared teeth, she was our only smile. 

In this building, the same where we slept and ate, we were taught the school lessons all children were taught. Curious George and algebra are the same whether or not you have parents. Lessons were taught with the classroom door open so visitors could look in on us as they were led down the halls. They peered in at us like we were fish, waiting to be caught in a small mesh net and, for a moment, lifted into an air in which we could not long survive.

But we were also schooled in other ways— when the nice young couple from Westchester comes in, whoever is the cleanest, prettiest and quietest gets to go home and have a family. Learn to smile. Stay out of the way but still manage to be noticed more than anyone else. 

*

I was chosen once, at the age of eight. A year after Maryanne had gone. The parents came and looked me over, spoke to me for a while as we all sat at a table too small for their legs. Sheila had long blonde hair falling around her shoulders and her husband William had thick dark eyebrows. They wore flowing winter coats and suits that fit them perfectly. They smelled like soap and peppermint. Sheila had a pretty face that somehow seemed closed off to me; she smiled tightly as if she were afraid of something secret escaping. William mostly watched his wife as we spoke, gauging her reactions. I was the dog in the pet shop window, and did they want to take me, or to come back next week when there might be a different breed? They left, saying they would be back. And after a while, they were. They had signed placement paperwork and had a background check. They had actually come back for me.

It wasn’t the blissful feeling I’d expected, being chosen. Sheila and William didn’t feel like parents, but I also didn’t have anything to compare them to. I was in a kind of trance as my belongings were packed. I kept expecting to turn around and see that they had been pointing to a girl behind me the entire time. 

*

Sheila and William lived in a large house with a front lawn that stayed green even in the dry winter. The rooms were quiet and adult, with dark furniture and paintings of featureless shapes. In the room they gave me there was a bed and a white dresser. They thought I would come with things to fill that room, but my clothes only took up one drawer. 

Sheila and William did some of the things the Sisters did when I was younger; they fed me, helped me dress and wash and put me to sleep at night. They did these things slowly, testing to see if they were doing them correctly. I didn’t tell them that I could do these things by myself, even though I wanted to. When Sheila brushed my hair, sitting behind me silently, I felt nothing but the pull of teeth through the tangles.

One thing they did not do like the Sisters was teach me. They enrolled me in a school right away, and sent me into that world of regular children, as if I’d know how to act and speak and move around them. The halls in the school were lined with tall green lacquered lockers and the buffed floors shimmered. The desks in the classrooms were new and the windows were open to let in fresh air.

 In my new school I first saw girls who’d had homes since the beginning. They wore pink dresses and socks so stark white they gave off a glare. Small golden shoes like magic slippers and Rapunzel hair all yellow down their backs. They carried dolls in their bags, mermaids and queens and fairies. The girls drifted along in warm orbs, glowing gold and sparkling diamond. They were perfect and clean and had been wanted since the start of their lives.

 Those girls didn’t like me much. They knew I had once been unwanted, could smell it on me, so they did not look at me. They were royalty. I worshipped them but also hated them, I wanted to tear them apart. But what I wanted more was their dresses and dolls. I wanted the pink and white and gold, and freshly scrubbed skin. I would have given anything to be like them, heirs to the castles they were raised in.

 After a few weeks, when I got home from school, Sheila started making me undress down to my underwear and she gave me an old oversized t-shirt. 

“Now, time for chores,” she said, her face a blank sheet I could not peer behind. She gave me a sponge and a harsh-smelling spray cleaner and led me up the wide carpeted staircase into the upstairs bathroom. She pointed to the shower tiles. “Do you know how to scrub?” she asked, and moved her arm in a circular motion. “Like this.” 

I climbed into the tub in my underwear and oversized t-shirt and sprayed the walls until there was a thick coat of foam that hissed as it bubbled. I watched it for a minute, the foam like chemical snow drifting down a vertical plane. I lifted my arm and began to scrub in that circular motion. My bare feet peeled off the surface of the dry tub every time I took a step. I jumped to reach the topmost tiles, my arm swinging wildly. My throat burned and my fingers wrinkled. But I did not hate it; I liked how bright the tiles became as I wiped away the foam and the grime beneath. I liked moving from row to row, buffing away. I liked finding long strands of Sheila’s blonde hair in the tub and holding it up to the light so it shone like silk. What I liked most though was when Sheila came back and nodded into the shower.

“Very nice,” she said. “Very nice, thank you.”

She asked me to dust, to sweep the floors and scrub the banisters. She showed me how to fold and press exactly one shirt, and then left me alone with loads of laundry. She gave me a stool so I could reach to properly wash the dishes and scour the sink. While I cleaned, Sheila sat on the sprawling leather sofa in the living room and looked through books and magazines, or stood at the front window and watched for William’s car. She stared at me with a faraway look, like I was standing across the street instead of right next to her. She patted my head absently. 

“Good. Now, time to go to your room.”

I would sit on the floor of my room with my school books, trying to be quiet. I tried to imagine what they wanted me to do, and then did it the best I could. When they called me for dinner I raced down the stairs so as not to keep them waiting. I sat at the end of the large table, wishing to please as they filled my plate. Bright green vegetables and a piece of meat. 

 “How was your day, girls?” William asked, looking from me to Sheila, some strain of hope in his eyes that I never understood.

“Fine,” Sheila answered. She cleared her throat and reached over to pat my hand on the table. “We got some nice cleaning done.”

William smiled and nodded.

“Nothing like a day’s hard work,” he said.

* 

William came to pick me up from school one day a few months after I’d started living with them. I got into the back of his car, slid over the soft beige leather seat and saw the bag with my clothes in it. William looked at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes troubled under those major eyebrows. He cleared his throat.

“All right then,” he said, and began to drive. 

We parked outside my old building and sat for a moment, looking out at it. They would be finishing up the last lesson of the day, about to be released for free time before dinner. My heart pounded in my ears and my hands slicked with sweat against the leather seat as I squirmed to adjust myself, still held by the seat belt. My head galloped with things to say to William. I could beg, but what would be my reasoning? I still wasn’t sure why they’d taken me in the first place.

William looked at his watch again and then finally opened his door and got out with a heave of breath. I hurried to unbuckle my seat belt and clumsily pawed at the door handle until I grasped it and the door opened. William opened the other door and reached in for my bag.

As I followed him across the lot I found myself almost running to keep up. He towered above and his coat bollywood behind him, otherworldly. I moved in a daze, still unable to form a full thought.

“It’s been nice having you stay,” William said from up there as he walked, clearing his throat again. He was bringing me back, like something rented and returned to avoid a fee. As we neared the doors of the building, they opened and Sister Ruth stepped out. Her hands were folded until we approached her, and then she reached one out to me and I took it. My hand must have been shaking, because she gave it a firm squeeze and held it in place. 

She took my bag from William. He nodded to her and tried a small smile, one which she did not return. She looked at him coldly, and I loved her for that. She turned without a word and led me back into the building. 

For a while after, I believed that I missed them, Sheila and William. I tried to conjure their faces and force myself to feel loss. I was broken hearted, and assumed that only another person could make me feel that way. But now I know that I was only missing those chores and that sense of task. I mourned the steady rhythm of my arm as I scrubbed and scoured. I was broken by the idea that I must not have made everything as clean as I’d thought. Maybe I never knew what clean was, and never would. I was born of only dust. 

*

I went back to my sleeping quarters, back to my lessons, where the other children stared at me like I had changed color or grown fur while I had been away. During lessons I let my eyes glaze over and dreamed of the girls at my other school, wondering what they were wearing and what they were doing. Sister Ruth looked at me like she knew I wasn’t listening to her as she taught, but she didn’t talk to me about it. Instead, one day after class she asked me to wait behind as the other students left the classroom, and she asked if I’d like to learn to sew. 

“I could teach you,” she offered. “It’s a good skill for a young lady.” 

“Why?” I asked.

“I’d like to give you something new to learn. Something to do with your hands.”

 I considered for a moment. I did like the idea of making something out of nothing. 

“Okay.”

She nodded and patted my arm.

“Okay then.”

Every Friday afternoon from then on, once classes were done for the day, I met Sister Ruth and her sewing machine in the classroom where they taught arts and crafts to the older children. She set the hulking white machine on one of the tables and showed me how it worked; how to thread it and press the foot pedal and guide the fabric through. I liked the steady pulse of the needle as it pulled the fabric along, and the straight dotted lines of the white thread that came out the other side. Soon Sister Ruth assigned simple patterns for me to work through. She told me I caught on very quickly. I begin to look forward to sewing every Friday, and the time passed like the sharp point of a needle through thin cotton.

When I was eighteen I was released into the world like a dog off its chain. The belongings I took filled a backpack and one ultra-stretch garbage bag. The clothes inside were blues, grays, browns. I had never managed a pink, never made the cut for white. I found a job cleaning an office building at night, and the cleaning company gave me a white polo to wear for a uniform, but it was quickly coated in dust that would not shake out. 

Every evening I took the bus to and from the office building from my one-bedroom apartment. Squinting through the steam of the bus windows, I could imagine that the lawns we passed were green and lush like Sheila and William’s had been, and that the people on the street waved and smiled at me. I could close my eyes and listen to the sounds– clearing throats, coughing thickly from lungs, peals of unhinged laughter followed by a hush, a sighing, the hiss of the bus door and the squeal of its breaks– and I could pretend we were a family running errands around town. The driver was our father and our father was a kind man, always stopping to pick up people who needed a ride. 

“Dad,” I groaned in my head. “Let’s go, we’re going to be late.” 

“Yes, darling,” he might answer back. “Let me just drop off your sister first.”

I let my head fall against the window and the rumble massaged my skull. 

*

At the office building I vacuumed the flat trodden carpet and scrubbed the smooth toilets. I remembered how Shelia had taught me, and I stepped back into the rhythm of my body pushing against dirt and grime. I savored the shine of the surfaces, the desks and sinks, and the sharp crisp air the cleaning spray left behind. Every night I cleared away the mess of the day. There was another woman named Judith who cleaned with me, and we cleaned together for two years. The only thing I knew about her after two years was that she kept three cats, named Tom, Kurt, and Harrison, after her mother’s favorite film actors. And then she quit.

After Judith left, there was a man who came to clean the office building with me. He was older, with stained teeth and thin hair. One night after I cleaned the last bathroom, I turned to see him watching me. Yellow hawk eyes and serpent tongue. He said, “Come here” in a gentle way, and no one had ever told me to come there like that before, so I went. 

I went to that man for a while until I realized what had happened. I took the bus to a clinic and a doctor told me I had a few options. I could choose to erase it and pretend it had never existed.

“No,” I said. “I want it. I want it.”

I had my child accidentally, but she was still wanted.

*

I found a job cleaning a different office building after I got pregnant. I took a different bus route and sat in the hard blue seat, holding my belly as it grew and humming along to the bus engine’s ebb and flow. When I boarded the bus and there were no seats open, someone would look at my swollen belly and stand, motioning for me to sit. That was the first thing that my daughter did for me; she made it so I was noticed.

I hobbled around the office building in the dimmed overhead lights, bending with a huff to collect every desk’s individual trash bag. The bags were always mostly empty, but I changed them anyway so my rhythm would not be broken. Once, along with the usual empty plastic water bottles and discarded post-its, I glimpsed half of a torn photograph swimming in the ripples of the trash bag. It was torn down the center, a middle-aged woman missing her other half.

I took one week off when my daughter was born. She came screaming and covered in red, and although I loved her instantly, I could not look at her until she had been cleaned. After one week, I began taking her on the bus with me to the office building. I wrapped her in my coat and laid her in an empty desk drawer while I worked. She followed me with her chasmal blue eyes, a look of peace on her face as long as I was within reach.

When she was big enough she followed me around, holding on to the cord of the vacuum cleaner. She grew long golden hair like threads of silk, and beautiful pink lips and cheeks. People on the bus glowed at the sight of her. Old men tipped their hats and women crumpled into themselves with joy. She sat on the seat next to me and made me loved by association. 

At home, she made our one-bedroom apartment into a castle. She had so much goodness in her, touched everything with reverence and love, twirled around in the center of the room like an angel about to take flight. 

* 

After a while it was time for my daughter to start school, and I knew she would be the prettiest child there. I made sure of it. I worked extra nights in the office building, covering other people’s shifts so they could spend more time with their children. My daughter dozed on the firm square cushions of the loveseats in the reception areas, or sat at one of the desks and pretended to use the telephone. I took everything I earned that didn’t go to our rent or food and poured it into her. I bought her the same glittered shirts and frilled skirts I always imagined, but when I stepped back to look at her in those outfits, the clothes looked cheap and wrong. They weren’t designed for her, but for any little girl who bought them. I wanted my daughter to have things that were made only for her, things that no one else could touch.

I could make those things. Sister Ruth had taught me how. I went to the public library and borrowed a stack of sewing pattern magazines. I went to thrift stores and hunted down an old sewing machine that screeched when it dragged the fabric through. But still, it worked. 

We took the bus to the shopping plaza and went into the Joann Fabrics. I lifted my daughter and set her in the green shopping cart, her small fingers gripping the plastic grating as I pushed her through the store. We rolled up and down aisles of fabric, rows of material stacked up like so many colored book spines. We ran our hands over them, feeling the textures. I selected chiffons, velvets, and taffeta, and stacked them around my girl in the cart. She drew their loose ends around her flaxen curls like a veil and peeked out at the other shoppers we passed. They smiled at us. 

Before we left, we rolled down the costume aisle and found a small diamond tiara. She reached out and I put it in her hand. I was to be a seamstress for royalty. 

At home, I started right away. I set up a shaky folding table in the living room and sewed dresses and skirts all day before I went to work, holding pins between my teeth and breathing steam from the iron I used to press the fabric flat. My daughter danced around the small room with whatever lustrous sheaf I wasn’t currently sewing, throwing it around herself and closing her eyes in pleasure at its touch on her cheeks. To keep her busy while I sewed, I bought her dolls– princesses, fairies, angels. She lay sprawled on the hard worn carpet in a mess of blankets, teaching her dolls to dance to the grumble of the old sewing machine. Slowly, her closet began to burst with radiance while I left my own bare. At night in the office building, I dreamt of an elixir that could shrink me to her size so I could feel those textures on my own skin as I moved. But it was too late for me, and the world was hers. 

Before school started, I bought her stark white socks, gold barrettes and silver ballet flats. I sewed jewels on to a backpack we filled with her dolls. She wore her diamond tiara on the first day of school so there would be no confusion about who was royalty and who wasn’t. That whole first year, I stood across the street at the bus stop waiting for her to come out of the school, and every day she came out with a throng of girls around her, all reaching to touch her hair or hold one of her dolls. They all wanted her, and in a way, I thought, wanted me. 

I made her, and not just the way all mothers do. I also made her with my hands. I molded her into exactly what the world was looking for. So how dare she not listen to me? After all I’ve done for her. 

*

When she started second grade, she made a new friend. Autumn, my daughter said. That was her name. This sounded fine– my girl was like summer, and now she had an autumn. But when Autumn came, shadows fell, and all of her starched whites turned gray.

Autumn did not play with dolls, my daughter said. Autumn played soccer and basketball, and rode her bike everywhere. Autumn wore plain clothes, her dark hair pulled up loose with flyaways. My daughter suddenly wanted to play sports, to wear shorts instead of her dresses. So I bought her a bright pink pair of khaki shorts, and she held them out in front of her like they were some diseased thing. Her bright white sneakers were suddenly smudged with dirt. As I folded her laundry and saw the imperfections creeping in in us– the grass stains, a hole forming in a sock, the rhinestones hanging on loose threads– I felt myself begin to slip. My hands shook as they handled the taffeta and velvet, unable to re-tie the simplest ribbons around the waist. 

I prayed for rain to keep her inside, to keep her porcelain skin away from the harmful sun. 

Autumn’s mother was older than I was, with three other children. She loved to have my daughter over to her house to play with them. My daughter was so polite, she told me. A little angel. She should join the soccer team at school, she told me. She would be happy to drive her home from practice if I needed her to. My daughter pulled at my hand, begging. I searched for words, my throat tightening. I had never said no to her before.

“We’ll see, darling.”

That was enough to send Autumn and her mother away smiling.

That night I paced our apartment’s tiny kitchen, my reflection bouncing wildly off the spotless countertops, flashes of light in my rage. How dare that woman fill my girl’s head with these inappropriate ideas?

I burst into my daughter’s dark bedroom in a fever, searching until I found her soccer ball. 

“Mama,” she said, sitting up in a daze. She saw what I held as I moved toward the doorway. “Mama!” 

I heard her small feet hurrying after me as I went to the kitchen and pulled a pair of scissors from a drawer, the blades polished and gleaming. She knew what I was going to do before I did it; in this way she knew me the way I knew her, and knew what she needed. I knelt and tore into the ball like an exorcist, and she walied above me.

“Mama!”

I set the dead ball aside and wiped the back of my hand across my damp brow. 

“It’s all right, darling.” I reached for her and she drew back, her eyes wide.

“Mama, no! I hate you!”

My hand fell to my side and I watched, from the scuffed kitchen floor, as she ran down the hall and back into her bedroom. The bedroom I had given her while I slept on the couch. Her bedroom full of the treasures I had collected for her. I could have cut out her tongue for talking to me that way! But after a while, my feet falling numb as I knelt on the floor, I collected myself. I rose, opened the trash can and threw away the skin of the soccer ball, and took a sponge to the scissors, scrubbing until I was satisfied with their shine, and then put myself to bed on our scratchy thrift-store couch.

For days afterward, my daughter looked at me like I was a stranger. She would not meet my eyes. After school my daughter would emerge with only Autumn, and no longer her adoring group who knew they were princesses to her queen. Autumn didn’t know who my daughter was, but she was taking her anyway. 

She just needed reminding of who she was. I bought her a new doll to make up for the soccer ball. The doll’s face was so lifelike it could have been a real child. Her clothes were more delicately detailed than any I’d ever dressed my daughter in. The doll had cost me half a week’s pay and I did everything but kneel before my daughter and present it as an offering. I gave it to her one evening after Autumn’s mother had dropped her off. My daughter, her eyes dull and cold, stepped back. 

“Mama, I don’t need any more dolls. I told you.”

The doll’s body suddenly went limp in my arms, as if it had been drained of life. I let it fall to my side, holding it by it’s dangling arm. 

“Well,” I said. Then I noticed something on the side of my daughter’s face and I reached to gently push her hair aside. She had smudges of dirt on her. 

“What is this?” I asked. I rubbed at the dirt and some came away on my fingers, dried silt like a brush of ash.

“Oh, we were playing hide and seek. I went behind the bushes.” My daughter reached up to wipe her face. I dropped the doll to the floor with a thud and took my daughter by the shoulders. 

“Come on.”

I led her into the bathroom where I scrubbed at her cheeks and forehead with a washcloth until she was pink. She cried and grabbed at my hands while I did it, but afterward I think she was glad. I think she was grateful. In a lineup of children, she would always be cleanest. And she was old enough to know about cleaning now, wasn’t she? 

I began to show her. I took her into the shower and showed her the jets of hissing foam, the circular motion of her arm, and the way grime fell away beneath the sponge. I taught her to spray the sink and wipe it quickly to avoid streaking, and to run the vacuum with the grain of the carpet. I taught her to wash with scalding water and to love the steam that rises. I made her a list and hung it on the wall, of all the things that needed cleaning. While I cleaned the office building, she cleaned our home. She told me she didn’t like it and that it made her tired for school, but I don’t think that’s how she really felt. I think that’s how it seemed she should feel. But she was my daughter, and I knew her best.

*

Soon after, she began putting her dolls away in the closet, along with her fairy wings, her tiara, her jewelry. Everything I gave her. Does she know what I did to get everything I gave her? Working those nights in those terrible dark offices, scrubbing the toilets clean of someone else's stains. And I used that money to keep my little girl pretty, to buy her anything she wanted. When she shoved those dolls into the closet, their plastic bodies jumbled together and their hair tangled, it was like my own body was being pushed and thrown around, nothing more than a used rag. Unwanted. I could not forgive her for this. 

While my daughter was at school, I tried to sleep like I usually did. I turned out the lights and drew the curtains, lay on the couch and closed my eyes. My hands shook as I tried to grip the blanket. I tried humming loudly to drown out my thoughts, but all I could see was her pile of dolls on the floor of the closet. My quickened heartbeat thumped unevenly in my ears and the daylight leaked through the curtains. I squeezed my eyelids tighter but it was blinding. How would I sleep? I had to sleep.

I opened my eyes, threw the blanket off and stumbled into the kitchen. I clamored around under the sink until I found the small set of tools, taking a hammer and box of nails back into the living room. I dragged the blanket to the window. All I could see was flashing white and all I could taste was the iron of my own pulsing blood. I held the corners of the blanket to the wall and hammered the nails. The room dimmed. I dropped the hammer to the floor and my heart quieted. I went into my daughter’s room, stripped her bed of its blankets, and dragged them out to the living room, where I slept.

*

It seemed for a few days after that things would be okay. I put the dolls back on the shelf in her bedroom and she did not remove them. She came home and did her chores. She brought home a note one day from school, saying that the children had all had their eyes checked and my daughter needed glasses. She would need to see an eye doctor for a prescription. I looked at the note in horror, then looked at her, into her blue zircon eyes, and asked, “You don’t really want to wear glasses, do you darling?”

She shrugged. 

“Then you don’t have to,” I said quickly. “Don’t worry. Mama will tell your teachers.”

She shrugged again. 

“Autumn is getting them.”

I drew my lips together. 

 “Yes,” I said. “But you don’t want them. Do you.” It was not a question and she shook her head. I relaxed my face and reached for her. I drew my fingers gently through her hair, then stopped. The light in the room seemed to be off. I threaded my hand into her hair again and squinted. I knew the color of my daughter’s hair against my own skin. This was not the correct shade of her hair. This was not her normal golden glow. I took her hand and led her over to the window, where I threw back the blanket and curtain. I looked again. Then I was sure– her hair was beginning to darken. 

I had heard that this could happen, that children’s hair could change as they got older, but it was not supposed to happen to us. Her honey-colored highlights were slowly fading, gold deepening to copper and rust. Muddied like dirt. Like the soles of her shoes. 

Well, I could not let that happen. If she wouldn’t let me dress her properly, at least she could let me keep the color of her hair. She would thank me for it later, after all this nonsense about soccer and bicycles had passed. After Autumn had ended.

 I did her a favor. That’s all I did.

“Come here, darling,” I said. “Let me see how well you cleaned the bathroom.” We went into the tiny room together and I closed the door behind us with a click.

 It might have seemed like she didn’t like it, the way she screamed and kicked when I held her and shaved it off. How she thrashed so hard that the side of her face hit the edge of the sink– the cleanest and most spotless sink I’d ever seen! She really was a natural cleaner– a dark bruise forming on her cheekbone the next day. How she cried when I brought home the wig. Perfect wavy blonde locks, the way she should have stayed. Yes, she cried and threw it on the floor, but she doesn’t understand. There is an order to this world, and there are people who move to the front of the line and people who will spend their entire lives waiting. I have done what I can to help her. 

*

 When the women in suits and lanyards met me at her school at the end of the day, she was hiding behind their legs like she was afraid. The foundation I had used to cover her bruise was wiped off, the dark welt raised and bloated. They led her away somewhere. 

“Please come with us,” they told me.

 Sitting in an office, I told them that I still wanted her. I told them she is wanted, so very wanted. They told me there’s a big difference between what I want and what I can have.

I also told them her hair will grow back. It will grow back, and if it’s such a big deal, she can keep it. I asked them if they knew what color it would be when it grows back, and they said they didn’t know.     

They told me to go home but not to go anywhere else. They would be calling me, they said. And my daughter? They couldn’t guarantee, but I probably wouldn’t be seeing her again, they said. I hummed loudly to block that part out.

I waited at the nearest bus stop, on a street I didn’t know. When the bus came I got on and sat in the very back raised section of seats. I looked out over the heads of the other passengers. 

“Dad,” I said quietly. “Can we get this thing moving?” 

As the bus merged into traffic and bumped along the street, I let my body melt into the seat. My lungs filled and emptied like I had suddenly remembered to breathe. My fingers relaxed and I flexed them in front of me. What about her clothes? I thought. What about her dresses and shoes?       I let my head fall back against the bus behind me and gasped recycled air as I let the tears fall. They fell and I laughed, thinking of how happy she would be to come home and wear her dresses again. Sister Ruth once said, “Sometimes you don’t know a good thing until it’s gone,” and I remembered that. 

Maybe my daughter could come home quicker if I got a man. I didn’t want a man, but maybe the people in the office didn’t like that I was a single mother. They wanted her to have two parents like Autumn has two parents. They wanted her to have money like Autumn’s parents have money. I could take more cleaning jobs, in people’s homes, I could work all day and all night. I could shave my head like I had done to her, so we would look alike, mother and daughter, and I would tie a scarf around my cold, shaved head and work until my hands were chapped and bleeding, all for my girl. I wasn’t sure what else those people wanted from me.

“Keep this thing going, Dad,” I said out loud to the bus driver. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.” Some people turned in their seats and glanced at me. I smiled at them, my brothers and sisters, but they quickly turned away. I reached to the steamed window and wiped it, then brought my fingers to my forehead and crossed it with the wetness. Dust to dust. I could keep riding all night. No one would need me until my daughter came back.

Erin Cecilia Thomas is a writer originally from Upstate New York. She has a BA from Berklee College of Music and is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at Lesley University. She is the recipient of the 2021 Beacon Street Prize in Fiction, and her work has been published in Redivider, Oyez Review, Into the Void, Illuminations of the Fantastic, and Archipelago: The Allegory Ridge Fiction Anthology. She currently lives in Nashville, TN, and can be found at excxt.com and @erinceciliathomas.

Marshall Moore

The Departure Board

Seattle, WA.

My lawyer’s talking about blowjobs. I found him via an ad in Seattle’s gay weekly. To an extent, I welcome the blue-tinged banter. Although he has issues with boundaries, at least I don’t have to worry about homophobia. I’m breaking messily up with a man. I’ve been supporting him. This is complicated and it is unpleasant. The tech crash after 9/11 cut my income in half, I was a shattered empty vessel after an earlier breakup with someone I was supposed to get old with, and this rebound I met in the East Village at The Cock the night before flying to Amsterdam for reasons that are murky now moved from Brooklyn to Oakland to live with me after four months and is prone to fits of screaming. Not all surprises are good. Now I’ve come to some semblance of… perhaps not sanity, exactly, but stasis. The lawyer—we’ll call him Greg—is here to help with the disentanglement. I scheduled half an hour for the appointment but I’ve been here almost twice that. All my paperwork’s in order, but the story about some guy whose cock he sucked has gone on much longer than the act itself did. But if I go home, there will be ranting and shouting. Given the choice between my attorney’s naked escapades and my partner’s mostly fictional but very loud indignities, the vicarious sword-swallowing is a great deal less tiresome. 

I have never liked being a captive audience. In childhood, I often was. Some quality makes me attractive to people who rant. My mother did, in the car, driving, often relentlessly. I was there to be a sympathetic spittoon for her sorrows. Overflowing, I became obsessed with faking my own death. You had to be careful with that kind of thing, though. No one wants to wake up halfway through their own autopsy. Characters in the novels I read would go to City Hall, find a birth certificate for a baby born around the same time as themselves but which then died in infancy, steal the certificate, and use it to set up a new identity in some other city. With just that piece of ID, you could then open a bank account, get a driver’s license, anything you needed. You could vanish. Provided you moved to some distant part of the country, no one would know. No one would find you. It would take more money than I had, though, and more time. Besides, I wasn’t sure where to start. I set the thought aside and ground my teeth for better days. 

I’ve been having those thoughts again.

Portland, OR.

We’ve been here a month. After the endless clogged freeways and sky-piercing cost of living in the Bay Area, I love this place. I remember being excited to leave California. I couldn’t afford to buy a house; there were earthquakes; it was crowded. Portland has a cozy charm that reminds me of North Carolina, albeit rainier. Yes, it’s self-aware here. Yes, the facial-hair topiary and the whiskey speakeasies do get a bit redundant. The nerds who made money in tech and could afford to upcycle themselves as the Cool Kids have moved here and now sneer at everyone less shellacked and shabby-chic than themselves. The transit system’s good but the closest station is kind of a hike. I like the trains but it’s faster to drive. My partner—the aforementioned rebound, let’s call him Terry—has just found a job: part-time, retail, at a Body Shop knockoff. Shower gels, lotions, bath scrubs, that kind of thing. It is, of course, my fault that he gave up full-time employment as a receptionist at an upscale Manhattan salon and flew across the country to live with me. He reminds me of this at least daily.

This morning, the ranting turns to a dark aria. Whatever’s gotten into him, it started last night: I picked him up from work, drove him home, and the raving commenced: “I hate this place! I can’t make any money! How is it that you work with deaf people and some of them are on benefits, and they have more money than I do! I want to get on disability too! I’m going to go to the top of a tall building, jump off, and break both of my legs. That would be easier than this.”

Now, in the car, more of same. I don’t know what has set him off. It doesn’t matter. I pull over. When he sees that I’m crying, he abruptly stops mid-tirade: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” 

Seattle, WA.

We’re homeless. Technically. According to the official definition of the term. Although we’re not on the street, I planned for that. We came close, too. The ASL interpreter-referral agency I worked for in Portland was lying about its finances, not paying my colleagues and me in full and on time when we invoiced. When you freelance, some fluctuation is part of the deal. But I’d submit an invoice for $1500 and get a third of that if I was lucky. Nobody warned me, either. They were afraid to. The classes I interpreted at the local community college and the occasional jobs I got from another agency were all that kept us fed and kept the lights on. But summer was coming; the Northwest still hadn’t recovered from the tech slump; the work would dry up until fall. 

“Get a job at Starbucks,” my father kept insisting. When I told him my hourly rate as an interpreter was so much higher than what I’d make as a barista that I’d make less in full-time work slinging coffee than scraping by on ten hours a week in my real job, he refused to believe it. This was not a new pattern with him, however. He’s hard of hearing. As a kid, I thought his obduracy was about his hearing loss. In adulthood, my experiences with the deaf community taught me a lot about the difference between hearing and listening.

But looking ahead and having no work on my schedule, nor the prospect of much, and my savings depleted from the move up from California, my credit cards maxed, and my regrettably audible partner to support, I could connect the dots. The arc pointed down. I started looking for a storage unit and a place to park the car while we lived out of it.

What saved us: Terry’s cousin in Seattle had a spare bedroom in her condo, and offered it to us. A family emergency was metastasizing, so it made sense for us to be closer anyway. Besides, Seattle is Terry’s hometown; he moved up here a few weeks ahead of me. The cousin already had a futon set up. It was that or my Honda. With the last of my money, we rented a storage unit, schlepped as much of our stuff up I-5 as we could fit in my Civic, and I’ve made weekly trips for the last month.

Now when I wake up and get ready for work, I open the door and come face-to-face with last night’s adventures. Still neck-deep in her nightlife phase, the cousin likes cocaine and Black men twice her size. It’s not unusual in the morning to find some guy crashed out on the sofa and a pile of blow on the coffee table. These visitors rarely come to fully dressed. If I’m honest, I don’t mind: I’m not into coke but I applaud her taste in men. She won’t struggle back to consciousness for a few more hours. I make coffee, offer this morning’s guest a cup. Looking sheepish and a bit the worse for wear, he declines, puts his shirt on, and leaves. I don’t catch his name.

Portland, OR.

 It’s my last full day in Portland. Terry’s already in Seattle, and I’ll be on the road soon enough.

The couple who own the interpreting agency are a pair of thieves. We’ll call him James and her Melinda. James, or so the story goes, has pancreatic cancer. He’s also gay, and she’s a lesbian, but they’re married. Or something. It’s very confusing and modern. I don’t care about that part today. They owe me almost three thousand dollars. I’ve come to collect it.

 When the starving, scared interpreters who work for them ask for the money they’re owed, the stock response is, “We can’t pay you yet because the client hasn’t paid us.” No other agency does this. We all know it’s a lie. But these two almost monopolize interpreting assignments in Portland. They’re not the only game in town but they’re the biggest. Piss them off and they’ll cut you off, and good luck with that. 

To those who press, Excuse Two is deployed: “Oh, it’s so terrible. You know James has cancer, right? We’re really struggling right now. Can you be patient with us?”

Today, I’m insistent: “My partner’s mother up in Seattle is actually dying of pancreatic cancer. Since I know you understand what that’s like first-hand, you’ll understand why I’m going to sit on your sofa until you pay me. After that, I’m getting on I-5 and driving up there. For good. The sooner you write me a check, the sooner I can get on the road.”

These are things I know: 

James is the apple-cheeked picture of zaftig, besequined good health. Terry’s mother is a talking skeleton wrapped in a layer of skin as thin and translucent as a spring-roll wrapper. The end will come for her soon. She misses dancing. James and Melinda bought another company and are hemorrhaging money. Their scheme of not paying Portland’s interpreters is all that’s propping them up. If James really has cancer, I have green hair, one eye, and three dicks. I’m going to break up with Terry. But I need my own place to live first. Which is why I’m not leaving this place without a check in hand.

Melinda keeps me waiting four and a half hours. 

At long last, she flounces into the lobby with the grace of something manufactured by John Deere. “Good news! I checked our books, and the clients have paid us. Not every bit of it, you understand, but enough that you should be happy.” She’s smiling and her eyes are telling me to go fuck myself. The check is a few hundred dollars short, but it will do. We both know it’s rush hour now: by stalling, she’s doubled the length of my drive to Seattle. I’ll be lucky to get there by ten. I thank her and leave.

Washington, DC.

 I’ve just bought the car. It’s a ‘97 Honda Civic sedan, black, quiet, comfortable. First car I’ve ever bought new. When you buy a new car, you have to drive it carefully for the first few thousand miles. Break the engine in gently. Don’t accelerate too hard, don’t stomp on the brakes, don’t drive like you’re at the Nürburgring. 

My muscle memory still has muscle memory of finding the Honda’s predecessor stolen. From in front of a church in central Baltimore, of all places. A friend from work was getting married. She asked me to be one of the interpreters. For the reception, everyone was meant to drive over to some waterfront restaurant. Except when I went outside after the ceremony, my car wasn’t there. 

Not possible, I remember thinking before an unsettling belief settled in. Who’d steal a green manual-transmission Toyota Tercel?

Someone did. 

Now I’m on my way up Wisconsin Avenue to the Maryland suburbs. There’s a cluster of federal agencies in Bethesda: Walter Reed, the National Institutes of Health. I have an appointment at the latter: a meeting that should last about an hour. It’ll be boring but I like the deaf guy.

For drivers, DC is confusing until you get used to it. The traffic and the buses are the same as you’d find in any large city, and the roads are wide, on a grid, and named alphabetically. Like French grammar, the problem with L’Enfant’s urban blueprint is the exceptions: the traffic circles, the tunnels, the parkways that begin in unexpected places and swoop through the city with minimal signage. They’re useful but you have to know where they go or else there’s no telling where you’ll end up.

Just up ahead and to my right, a woman on the sidewalk screams and drops her parcels. She is Asian. Shoulder-length hair. Wearing a purple jacket. Looks like she’s just been shopping at Mazza Gallerie or Nieman-Marcus. She’s looking at the maroon Ford Taurus sedan that’s just come to a stop on a side street. There’s something under the Ford. It’s light blue. A tarpaulin, I think. 

Then it hits me: It’s a woman. I stomp on the brakes, new-car admonitions be damned. Outside, around me, people are screaming. I realize what’s under the Ford at the very same moment its driver does. He tries to reverse. I guess he’s in a panic and thinks this will free the person beneath his car. It doesn’t work. I’m close enough now to see one of the tires crush the woman’s chest when the car backs up.

There’s nothing I can do, so in the interest of not blocking traffic, I find the closest parking lot, pull in, and… call my office to let them know I’m going to be late for my assignment.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I ask this question out loud, disconnect the call before someone answers, and call 911 to report the emergency. I’m not the first, says the voice on the other end of the line. Help is on the way. I then call my office back, tell them what happened, and proceed home too shaken—not just by what I’ve seen but by my own reaction—to even consider driving up to NIH. 

The agency schedules me to interpret a memorial service a few days later. Open casket. Someone kindly asks if I’m afraid of the remains. I’m not. I’m appalled, not afraid. When I get home afterward, I spend the rest of the night researching San Francisco: looking for apartments, interpreting agencies, information about utilities, and so on. Up till now, I’ve never seriously thought about moving to Northern California, nor even randomly thought about it. Nor have I even been there. The decision comes to me complete, already made, a found object. I’m sure bigger moves to more distant places have been decided upon based on less.

Seattle, WA.

There’s an ice dome in the refrigerator. Manufactured around the time Jimmy Carter left office, the fridge creaks when you open the doors. The reek of decades of leftovers pours out: pots of sauce gone sour in the remote back corners, vegetables rotted down to olive-black mush in the crisper, doggie bags and takeout boxes stacked up and wedged in. Frost from the freezer melts and (I guess) trickles down through a crack between the compartments. Hence the dome. It’s a terrible stalactite, a big frozen chode. It presses against the top shelf. It’s getting bigger. Things are frozen into it: packages of luncheon meat, a container of kimchi. The ice is yellowish grey. I try not to touch it

I’m past caring how Terry feels about things. His cousin has moved out, rented a place in the city center. She commutes down to Tacoma for work. Better to be closer to the station and the clubs. When the time comes to retrieve our furniture from Portland, Terry melts down on the train. On repeat: Why do we have to spend hours going down there. Why didn’t we rent a U-Haul in Seattle and drive it down instead of taking the train. It’s too much trouble. We should just leave it all in the storage unit and buy new stuff.

“With what?” I ask him.

We’re at that stage of a breakup where one partner goes cold and the other one panics. Terry’s angry all the time. He’s back to square one, looking for a job again, no car, tired of taking the bus, and his mom’s dying. Okay, he’s allowed to be a disaster. But he is also a mistake I don’t need to keep making.

When the end comes, it’s horrendous: more for him than for me. His family decides that since I have a job and he doesn’t, I should stay in the condo. They all know I’ve been supporting him. He moves in with his cousin downtown. The landlady—his auntie—has replaced the disgusting refrigerator too. Like the apartment now that I’m finally alone, the new fridge is blessedly clean and silent.

And in that echoing silence, my own ice dome finally cracks. Apart from a couple of friends—the kind you like but aren’t close to and will run out of things to talk about with inside of an hour—I don’t know anyone else in Seattle. There’s a park across the street and a convenience store two blocks away; otherwise, nothing within walking distance. I’m lonelier than I’ve ever been in my life, yet more relieved as well. I lose so much weight so fast that my trousers fall down in Whole Foods one night, but there’s a certain chilly clarity: this doesn’t have to be my life. I’m going to get as far away from all this as I can.

Osan, South Korea.

My American colleague and I are chatting with the head of the English Department. The academic year is wrapping up; our performance reviews have been very good. She is happy with us. Talk turns to holiday plans. The colleague wants to go home to the US; I’m in a long-distance thing with a man in Hong Kong, and we’re talking about meeting up in Taipei or Shanghai. Buying plane tickets is troublesome, though.  

“Why is that?”

I can’t buy them online because I no longer have an American bank account. I did, but on my last trip to Shanghai, someone stole my card details and used it to buy plane tickets, Persian rugs, and all manner of other shit before I finally convinced Washington Mutual to close the account. Between the purchases and the overdraft charges, the damage came to about $9000. I’ve been reimbursed for most of it, but the bank’s policy of referring overdrawn accounts to collections means I’ve been getting voicemail messages from agents. I delete them without listening. So: my credit is shot, no fault of my own. So: no US card, and our Korean debit cards don’t work for online purchases.

“That’s… preposterous! Can’t you use credit cards?”

“The banks won’t issue them to us because we’re foreigners.”

Professor K. turns several shades of purple, then picks up the phone. I understand Korean well enough to know she’s called the campus branch of Korea Exchange Bank. I feel sorry for the person on the other end of the line. This goes on for a few minutes. After the department head hangs up, she tells my colleague and me to stop by the bank tomorrow. It’s been sorted out.

I take Daesung, one of my students, a friendly guy who spent years in Canada, along to interpret. The teller asks for both of the cards attached to my account: the ATM card, which is only used for cash withdrawals; and the Visa debit card that should work for online shopping but doesn’t. She then hands me two new ones.

“This debit card is for ATMs and buying things here in Korea,” Daesung explains, pointing to it. “It’s like the two old cards put together. And the credit card: it’ll work online, and you can use it in other countries.”

Having understood some of this, the teller chimes in with a few more details. I wait for Daesung.

“But she wants to remind you that your ATM card—this new one—will not work outside of Korea.”

A rime of frost coats the walls. I ask, “It won’t work? So the old card would let me withdraw money anywhere and the new one won’t?”

Daesung looks embarrassed. “It’s because you’re a foreigner.”

“What if I need cash?”

He asks the teller this question, waits for the answer, then interprets it: “Take a lot with you?”

I need a couple of seconds. Then: “How is that safe?”

In the last few months, I’ve been followed down the street late at night and called a 씨발외국인 (fucking foreigner). An editor I do some work for at the Korea Herald has been stabbed. No taxi would take him to the hospital because he was white. I’ve had to break into my own building because the university put it up for sale and decided I didn’t need a key to the front door. Late the same night, I glued the locks open so I wouldn’t have to climb up the wall like a burglar again.

In the coming weeks, I will find that this policy has been quietly rolled out across the country. Some banks have stopped issuing cards that will work overseas for new accounts only. Others have cut off that functionality on existing accounts… without first warning the customers. Online, I read horror stories of foreign residents of Korea being stranded abroad, unable to access their own funds. One guy and his family got stuck in Phuket. Another, Vladivostok. And those are just the ones I hear about first.

“Thank you,” I say after some consideration. “I think I’m done.”

Daesung’s face falls. “I understand,” he says. “I’ve left before, too.”

Hong Kong.

Week after week, the violence cascades into more violence. My husband S. and I have participated in most of the huge marches, but now we’re talking about avoiding them. It’s getting too dangerous. Besides, I’m a white American. My presence there could be used to feed narratives. Friends closer to the epicenter have suggested I take a step back.

“What has to happen for us to go to the airport?” I ask S. one night over dinner.

On the news, tonight’s awfulness is unfolding. One highrise housing estate looks much like the next when it’s fogged in with tear gas. I ask what district this is. S. doesn’t know either. We’ve lost track. It’s hard to watch but we can’t look away. Oh look, they’ve brought the water cannon out. Oh great, it’s the sound cannon that gives you brain damage and makes you shit yourself. I need more wine.

“I don’t know,” he muses. “They’ve already killed people. Maybe if they declare a curfew? Put the city under martial law?”

Things get worse. Friends in various states begin offering houses. My sister does too, the difference being that she wants to charge us for it. Our (gay) cousin in Delaware has just bought a big townhouse and sends his address and a message to just text him if we’re on our way. Get out of there, people keep telling us.

The airport discussion evolves. When the government begins shutting down individual MTR stations, then entire lines, then the whole rail network, we’re effectively under a curfew. You can still get around if you drive or take a taxi, but you never know when the roads will be blocked and on fire. Besides, the cops might shoot tear-gas canisters at your windows. Some of the bus lines are running, but that’s unpredictable too. Scuffles and clashes flare up all over the city. And two or three places along the tram’s route across Hong Kong Island are regular flashpoints. For all intents and purposes, we’re trapped in our neighborhood.

We have the cat chipped. He objects, but the vet wins that argument.

“What has to happen for us to grab him and run to the airport?” I ask again when we get home afterward.

We’re effectively under martial law. There are black-clad stormtroopers at the entrances to most MTR stations. They grab young people off sidewalks and in shopping malls. Wrong place, wrong time, off to jail or worse.

“I don’t know, tanks down Nathan Road?”

Tanks are a sore spot with Hong Kongers. According to local lore, the authorities behind the Tiananmen Square Massacre back in ‘89 deployed them to crush dead and dying protestors’ bodies down to an unidentifiable substance called pie (not the exact word, but that’s how it translates, roughly) which could then be scraped off the pavement and disposed of. There were acid baths too, and immolations. Nathan Road is Kowloon’s main north-south corridor, and although it isn’t a straight shot down from Shenzhen, it’s the kind of street an occupying force would use to make a point. We don’t get tanks down Nathan Road, but we get other kinds of military transport vehicles. And yet, somehow we stay.

We keep having the same conversation, though: When do we leave? What will it take? When does it finally become too much?

As one violent nightmare week crashes into the next, we keep asking ourselves that. The answer always seems to be just a little worse, just a little worse, just a little bit worse.

Thessaloniki, Greece.

Alone again in a crowded room. Or a crowded departure hall, that is. As with many airports designed before the advent of low-cost airlines, Thessaloniki’s lacks adequate seating and the layout makes no sense. After security, there’s nothing but a grim convenience store, a ransacked deli, and a queue for the washrooms. I wish someone had warned me.

I’ve been in Greece for a conference. I gave one of the keynotes, in fact. The university’s based up in Florina, a town near the border with North Macedonia. It’s quiet and hilly; it bakes under the late-summer Mediterranean sun. Olive groves shimmer in the distance. Due to its elevation, it isn’t quite as hot as other parts of the country. It reminds me of the San Francisco Bay Area: same topography, similar climate. Florina, I’m told, is the only place in Greece where it snows. Okay, that’s one difference. Honestly, there’s not much on offer—you can see the whole place in a day and no tourists visit—but the food’s delicious and the people are great. When they learn where I live, the reaction is consistent: concerned, erudite horror. 

Even here, Hong Kong is big news, but no one knows the extent of it. The protest at the airport shocked the world. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get out for there. Now I’m not sure I’ll be able to get back. If it comes to that, I have a multiple-entry visa for China and can fly into Guangzhou or Shenzhen and make my way home by train. The trains will keep running even if the airport shuts down. I think. My Mandarin’s not great, but I’ll manage. There have been some 1300 arrests so far. Cops forcing prisoners to burn their own eyeballs with laser pointers. Beating prisoners they’ve already subdued. Stomping on their hands to break the bones. Dragging bleeding patients out of hospitals to arrest them. Shooting tear gas and pepper balls at journalists. And, more recently, a couple of weeks before this trip, attacking passengers in an MTR station and on the train and going on such a rampage that several are rumored to have been killed. The question is less about whether I can get back than it is about what conditions will be like when I finally do.

Most of the conference attendees teach at universities. Some are grad students. They all understand the hitch in my throat when I talk about my students who have gone missing. I’ve become friends with one of the conference delegates from Thessaloniki. She was kind enough to drop me off at the airport on her way home. In the car, somewhere in the middle of northern Greece, I check Twitter for news from Hong Kong. Two 13-year-olds have just been arrested during one of the protests. I can’t tell if they were participants or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Knowing what has been happening to people who get arrested there, I come unglued, crying in the car of this woman I just met.

This terrible waiting area contains about three times as many passengers as it was designed for. Lacking seats, people perch on their suitcases or just sit on the floor. I don’t want dust on my ass, so I pace, watching the departure board for updates, praying my flight to Istanbul won’t be delayed, praying that it will.

Seattle, WA.

What saved me: Several friends knew what was happening. One of them paid off the loan on my car. Two others sent funds to keep me (us) fed until my first paycheck from the new agency arrived. No point in asking my family for help. They won’t. I’ve tried. They treat me like I’m still the high school student who got in trouble back in the day, an endless and largely undiscussed narrative of punishment and contempt, and seem to wonder why I live on the other side of the country and have mostly stopped talking to them.

“I’m literally homeless.”

It’s your own fault. Get a job at Starbucks.

“I’m living with a guy who loses his shit and screams at me.”

It’s your own fault. Gay men are like moths that fly into candle flames.

I’m bored, burnt out, and in constant grinding pain from repetitive strain injuries. Nothing about my life then or now is sustainable. Now that I’m in Seattle, drowning in rainfall and silence, there’s enough time to think and little else to do. Years ago, a high school friend chucked everything and moved to Japan to teach English. Made some money there. Met his wife. I do some research. Seems it’s really a thing. Best of all, you can live below your means. In the online forums I stay up until 3am reading night after night, people talk about how much they save each month, how much they’ve got in the bank. You can do pretty well in Japan, even better in Korea. Your employer pays your airfare and your rent. The cost of living is cheap. It will give me time. Freelancing is an endless scramble for work, and there’s never a sense that my time is actually free. Agency positions aren’t much better. In Asia, I’ll have travel opportunities I wouldn’t otherwise get. Professional ones too, I expect. And with the money I imagine I’ll save, I can finally think about grad school. It’ll be a big move to a distant place, but there’s justification and I’m great at departures. Besides, it couldn’t possibly be worse than what I’m leaving behind. Probably much safer, too.

Cornwall, UK.

It would be vulgar to contemplate faking one’s death with a pandemic raging. I no longer do. For two years now, we have lived with this. Lived through this. First in Hong Kong (I think I had Covid before the public knew what it was), then here. Two years of grim terror and lockdowns. A second layer of terror waiting for my work visa to be approved. Everything about this past year in Cornwall has been a reflection of my time in Seattle. Throbbing, viral silence. Throat-shredding sobs with no one to hear them. Waking up in a panic at 3am feeling as if the blankets are strangling me like the tentacles of a kraken, dragging me down into depths from which I’ll never resurface. Sit up gasping, startle the cat. Drink some water from the bottle I keep by the bed. Do I put on some clothes and go out for a walk, just for fresh breaths of clean air? It’s pouring outside but so what? There will be oxygen. Or do I just get up and go to the bathroom, then come back to bed and hope for the best? Perhaps I’m already dead. It would explain a lot.

There’s a departures committee observing my comings and goings, counting down until it’s time to drive me forth into the world again. Britain ought to be scared or relieved. I’ve lived in more places than most people, and left every one. Or escaped, really. After multiple rounds of that, I don’t know what it’s like to be present. But with Covid surging and England drunk-walking in and out of lockdowns, there are lessons if I’m willing to receive them. This is my life now. This is going to be my life for some time to come, and I think I’m okay with that, inasmuch as I have any say in the matter. I’d prefer to remain. Now to figure out how.

Marshall Moore is an American author, publisher, and academic based in Cornwall, England. He has written several novels and collections of short fiction, the most recent being Inhospitable (Camphor Press, 2018). He holds a PhD in creative writing from Aberystwyth University, and he teaches creative writing and publishing at Falmouth University. His next books are a memoir titled I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing (Rebel Satori Press, 2022) and a co-edited academic collection on the subject of creative practice. For more information, please visit www.marshallmoore.com, or follow him on Twitter at @iridiumgobbler.

Candace Walsh

Christians and Poets

Dear Mrs. Gunderson,

Please forgive the tardiness of my reply to your letter sent twenty-three years ago. I re-encountered it while going through my mother’s bedside table drawer. I emptied her walk-in closet in under an hour. The women’s shelter volunteer comes tomorrow to pick up six big black garbage bag sachets wafting tea rose and Comet.

Leave it to a little wicker drawer of ephemera to slow my progress. Birthday cards from her mother. My sparse stack of letters from college. And then an envelope you once asked her to give me: a scalloped leaf of stationery folded over photocopied poems framed by dark toner, cleft down the middle by the gutter’s shadow. I remember reading the note, skimming the poems, and leaving the mess on her kitchen counter.

*

You were my first and second grade teacher, and I loved you so much the thought of summer recess[1] made me recoil. When I told my mother, she said I wanted to be your pet, a term that pricked warm at my spine. She didn’t seem to worry about what it meant that I’d imprinted on a short-haired woman who parted seas of children with a no-nonsense stride. 

You had an office off the classroom with a glossy wooden paddle on the wall, Bible verse posters, shelves of books, and a Mason jar of dried chickpeas. When I’d turn the jar, they’d tumble, rattle. They looked like little butts. I knew better than to point that out as I helped you staple handouts.

In class, you’d sometimes talk about your sons Ernest and Lawrence with a deep fondness that made me sad. I fantasized about being Ernest or Lawrence, I didn’t care which. I wanted to be your child, even if it meant being a boy. 

Do you remember that day in second grade when I came up to you, hand outstretched with the cluster of flowers I’d picked for you during recess? Their milk dribbled out of the downy stems and into my palms. 

You told me dandelions were weeds and I should throw them out. My belly felt like the freshly-emptied trash in which I dropped the scraggly blooms. Were you also meaning to discourage me from wooing you with flowers? Back at my desk, the dandelion milk on my palms dried as brown splotches. Proof of my cumbersome sun-shot fealty.

[1] 1. the action of receding; 2. a hidden, secret, or secluded place or part; 3. an indentation, cleft; 4. a suspension of business or procedure often for rest or relaxation (Merriam-Webster)

*

My mother finally brought you to my door when I was eighteen, my ardor for you an odd and faded scuff on my heart. I had imagined a lot of possible ways I might become your child when I was small, but I’d never predicted my mother would marry a man who tried to kill me[2]. He failed, but also succeeded, because afterward I was the one kicked out, not him. 

Why did she ask you? I think she was ashamed. You were not connected to her web of current friendships, to her persona as a Christian lady with her life sorted. She knew I had loved you as a little girl. But now I was a high school senior.

On that smeared day when my mother showed up with me like a package of drugs she needed to stash for a while, you led us to your kitchen table. There my mom and I battled for the right to define what had just happened. 

Before he wrapped his fingers around my neck, I’d yelled[3] the word asshole. I yelled asshole because he barged into my bedroom to turn down the radio while I was naked. If I hadn’t turned the radio on. If he’d been out getting the mail. 

I could never go back home, because now I knew anything could make him snap. And when he did, my mother would find a way to side with him and make me wrong. 

I watched you weave our strands into a braid that made sense to you, then coil it into a bun. You looked at my mother and then both of you looked at me. That’s when I knew, although you said I could stay, that you thought had I brought it upon myself. 

We had always moved around a lot, but you still lived in the same hushed ranch home on its plot of immaculate sod, studded with isles of factory blooms. No one really sat in your living room, decorated with blown-glass vases and pea soup carpeting. Instead, we watched PBS mystery shows in your finished basement. 

My banishment from home—no longer in charge of vacuuming our dog’s black clots of hair from the beige carpet, no longer able to count on opening the pantry to find a box of Frookies[4] to snack on while doing my homework—branded me in ways I still notice, but your thoughtfulness soothed. You settled me in Lawrence’s old room. 

I had left a shouty, volatile house for this no-nonsense respite. I could become a new me. You and I and your husband would read the Bible and pray together, and I said all the right words, even though they felt starchy in my mouth. 

One afternoon at your kitchen table, you showed me how to embroider a pillow using a method I’ve not encountered since. The front face of the pillow was composed of two layers: a translucent piece of fabric over a piece of plain cotton. I pinned felt cutouts between the two layers: a yellow hair shape, a peach oval face shape, a white gown, little semicircles of feet, and a pale blue cumulus cloud. Next I sewed through the layers to fix the shapes into a girl angel, using the thread as both an anchor and an outline. I was way too old for that baby stuff but I went along with it. 

I kept the pillow for years. It came with me to college. It sat on the bed in my first apartment, getting knocked off by my asshole cats and the (mostly) inadvisable (mostly) men I brought home. The angel looked trapped and blurry between the layers. Its homely wholesomeness didn’t go with my brittle East Village persona, but when my fingertips traced the fixed girl, I felt less like flotsam. 

When I told you I wanted to enter a poetry contest, your husband brought up an old electric typewriter from the basement, spooled in a fresh ribbon, and set it on a TV tray in my room. It was the Yale Younger Poets contest. I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. But you congratulated me for revising and typing forty poems and mailing the packet, with a self-addressed stamped envelope, before the deadline. The address was yours but it was also  a little bit mine.

I helped cook dinner, roasts and chops, a starch, a boiled vegetable, and I did the dishes. I dusted the blown-glass vases. I ate liver and acted like I liked it. 

[2] A necklace of fingertip bruises around my neck. A different kind of sore throat. My clothes hanging from the tree outside my bedroom, as branches snagged some when he threw them out the window.

[3] Or, you know, bellowed.

[4] A short-lived fruit juice-sweetened line of cookies; I preferred the green apple flavor. 

* 

The last day of second grade sang with the dread that I’d have a new teacher come fall, Miss Prinkle. She was younger, prettier, drove a Trans Am, was not as smart. I liked learning Roman numerals and listening to her read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe each day after lunch (although I quickly checked the book out of the library and devoured it inside of a week). Maybe she was smart in a different way. There was no paddle in sight, and once Ralph and Jamie (the class punks) brought her to tears. Our mothers whispered about her being too soft, but something bloomed in me that had stayed tightly budded in your class.

One day as Miss Prinkle led our class upstairs, Ralph poked me in the back.

“Stop,” I said. 

His fingers vised into my waist. I twisted away. As I rushed up the last few steps, I felt his sneaker push against my bottom.  

“Stop it!” I shouted.

You came rushing out of your office, eyes shiny and hard. My champion.

You’d tell him. I waited.

And then you reamed us both out.

“He was hurting me!” I explained.

“But you bellowed,” you said, nostrils flaring so wide I saw trimmed hairs. “A young lady should never bellow.” 

Ralph never even bothered to wipe the smirk off his face, even as you handed down punishments for both of us.

All day Saturday I wrote, “I will not bellow” as penance. “A thousand times!” you’d said, pointer finger stabbing the air near my face. 

Ink shadowed the side of my hand like a storm cloud. Neighbor kids’ voices rose and fell as they swung from the branches of trees as I wrote that stupid sentence over and over. Though I fumed with the injustice, my anger flamed beside my love for you, burned it in. 

Ralph lived on your block with his checked-out parents and hulking older brothers. You’d paved the way for him to go to school with us, saw him as needing rescue. Was I not? Or only up to a certain point? Boys and men can always be redeemed, but by the time girls need to be rescued they are already lost.

*

Ernie[5] was shy around me at first, until I won him over by talking to him as if we were both eighteen and cool. I had a hunch no one had ever talked to him that way when he was eighteen, because the way he moved through the house had a halting quality, a sense of constantly asking permission to be. 

That year Larry would marry your pastor’s daughter, a young woman with lustrous dark curls and doll-lovely features. Together they pulsed with a Camelot vibe that made me ache with envy, all the more because I would have loved to marry Lawrence. I had calculated that when I turned twenty-one, he would still be under thirty. I could have been part of your family. 

Ernie’s bedroom was across the hall from Larry’s old room. My clothes, some recovered from tree branches, were in Larry’s boy-plain bureau, on unfamiliar hangers in the cedar-smelling closet. I made my bed almost every day, as if I always had. 

One night, while I was on the phone with a friend, Ernie knocked on the door close to ask if I was warm enough. It was close to midnight. My friend panicked on my behalf, but I never sensed menace from Ernie. I wasn’t attracted to him, but I liked him. He was gentle and had your nose. Would I have married him to join your family? I didn’t let myself think about it.

Did you notice it too, the way he looked at me? I hope you didn’t blame him for his little crush. He was a quiet scientist. I was pretty, and clever in ways that amused him, though I wasn’t as much of a catch as Lawrence’s intended. 

I used to get a certain feeling when any man liked me, and it’s hard to describe but I’ll try: like a tightrope balance on the fine line between excitement and anxiety. Like being in an express elevator going down. Like proof for which I was forever hungry. It was a wonderment at the power I didn’t choose to have, and the wish to explore dark caves beyond the reach of sunlight, caves that wouldn’t have called to me had I not felt the charge of the story a man was telling himself, a story made plush by the wishes of his blood. 

[5] Ernest was older than Lawrence, but Lawrence was about to get married. I could see why. Lawrence, like the handsomest young suburban men, is probably bald and pot-bellied now, but back then he was a strapping, golden-blonde man with a sunny personality. Ernest was slight, with black, silky hair cut like his dad’s, a matching mustache, and quiet round eyes like a seal.

* 

One day after lunch, your husband insisted on doing the dishes. I thought it was a gallant gesture but it turned out to be calculated.  

You sat me down and told me you and your husband were getting ready to head down to your second house in Florida for a while. Next week. 

“Is Ernie going too?” I asked.

“No, but you can’t live alone in our house with our unmarried son,” you told me, as if that’s what I had been asking. Maybe I was, in a thoughtless way, like grasping at a tree branch in midair. 

You didn’t have any pressing reason to go to Florida. You hadn’t said, when my mother was trying to leave me with you, “She can stay until we have to leave for Florida in a few weeks.” I don’t even know if you actually went. 

I packed up my things and moved in with my father, who had been wanting me to. When Ernie hugged me goodbye, our two griefs met and melded.

My dad and I had always had a strained relationship, and he was living in a studio apartment with his girlfriend and her ferrets. But he was my father, my actual kin. I’d spent most of my life wanting to be part of your family, but that wish fully drained away the first night I fell asleep on the air mattress my dad inflated with a foot pedal. Whenever I turned over, I felt the floor rise up to meet my hip and shoulder. I got by and then I got out. 

My poetry manuscript must have come back to you months later. Reproaching, or just discomfiting, like a piece of gristle lodged between two molars. You didn’t give it to my mother—perhaps thinking it was not for her eyes. You didn’t ask for my college address and send it to me. Perhaps Ernie intercepted it. I’d like to think you kept it for sentimental reasons but your intolerance for the the odd and misshapen in your home makes that unlikely.

 *

I was 26 when my mother bumped into you. I had just gotten a full ride to an MFA program.[6] (My application contained a poem inspired by you containing the lines, “I never loved someone so much/who took for granted my impossibility.”)

I’m guessing she told you about how I’d left the church, wasn’t a Christian anymore, had no interest. She probably said I thought I was too cool for Christ, hanging around with all these homosexual poets who smoked clove cigarettes and smirked at earnestness.

When Mom handed me the envelope, I recognized your handwriting: Palmer method with a bird track scritch to the angles. In your note you betrayed the misunderstanding that I thought I couldn’t be a poet and a Christian. Scorn and guilt further scuffed the remnants of my love. 

Yet. You looked for religious poems, perhaps from books shelved in your pea soup carpet living room. You decided which ones to photocopy. You signed your note not Mrs. Gunderson but Grace. 

When my mom bumped into you she probably used the word “backslidden,” reserved for people who opt out of the religion they were raised with. It’s a shitty word, though, Grace, because I didn’t slide and I didn’t go backward. I didn’t fall the way I fell out of my family and then yours. Gravity had nothing to do with it, nor did being accident-prone or off-balance. I decided to leave the house of the Lord before I was asked to. 

But first I tried. For most of my teen years, I filled floral fabric-wrapped journals with prayers. I fantasized about going to one of the Christian colleges advertised in Campus Crusade magazine. At 17, I taught Vacation Bible School for one week with a fresh-scrubbed housewife in her thirties. We had such great teaching chemistry, Mrs. Gunderson. The little ones loved us. We loved them back. The students were like mushrooms—some stout-stalked and pancake-topped, others spindly-stemmed with thimble domes that sprang up overnight; they would vanish from our lives after just a few days. 

And when they did, my co-teacher and I hugged each other tightly. My chest began to heave with sobs; it rose with hers. We fused, dampening each other’s shoulders, taken over by something entire and unknown. Afterward we pulled apart and looked into each other’s eyes surprised and overcome. The borders of our mouths were swollen, flushed. 

I chalked it up to the passion of sharing the word of God.

Later, at a Campus Crusade conference in a sea of people whose fervor made my soul feel like a gutted clamshell, I realized that teaching and women were my passions. (No wonder I had such a thing for you.) Religion had just been the delivery system. 

I stopped knowing what was waiting for me after death. I stepped off the path leading to pearly gates, constant, ecstatic happiness and streets paved with gold. I began to invent my own faith and its commandments, too.[7] We each have to choose which ways we want to be limited in order to be free. 

I used to think airplane turbulence was the hardest time to believe there was no God protecting me, but Mom’s death has loosed termites that have been gnawing through the bark of my agnosticism. I want to believe she’s in heaven, her heavenly body be made whole, neck unbroken, bruise necklace removed as if by the click of a magical clasp. 

My mom kept asking you to rescue me, but I’m doing fine and she’s dead. I’m not even sure why I’m writing this…ten-page letter to someone who’s probably dead of old age. My mind resists doing the math. Losing my mom is enough for now. I need you ever alive, sailing into class, demeanor so stilling we hear the smart swish of your polyester pantsuit, smiling a rare smile like sun on ice, right eye crinkling more than the left. Flipping phonics chart placards with a liquid rhythm, metal rings tinkling like bells. Thinking fondly, not resignedly, of me.

Grace, I have to empty this last drawer, strip the bed, and update the realtor. But first:

I don’t know what will happen when I die. I hope to be buried in the back yard of a house my wife and I own and leave to my children. Buried quickly in a burlap sack. Maybe what will happen to me after death will be more about what happens to the richness of the soil and the vibrance of the flowers that spring from that particular patch of earth. 

I hope some of them will be dandelions. 

Your poems, my dandelions—two gifts discarded without grace. For all I know, there’s a Hopkins or Rossetti amid this smudged folio of hummable poem-hymns. I’ll look.

Yours truly,

Jenn

[6] The program was headed by a poet who first became famous for his poem “Howl.” So close to “Bellow.”

[7] Thou shalt righteously bellow without censure. Thou shalt love thy same-sex neighbor up, down, and sideways, shouldst thou both feel like it.

Candace Walsh is a third-year PhD student in creative writing (fiction) at Ohio University. She holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College. Recent publication credits include Hobart After Dark and The Lovers Literary Review (poetry); Leon Literary Review, Entropy, Complete Sentence, and Akashic Books' Santa Fe Noir (fiction); and New Limestone Review and Pigeon Pages (creative nonfiction). Her craft essays, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in Brevity, descant, New Mexico Magazine, and Fiction Writers Review. She co-edits Quarter After Eight literary journal. A passage from her novel in progress made the longlist of the 2018 First Pages Prize. Connect with her on Instagram and Twitter @candacewalsh.

Abigail Mitchell

Liberty Summer

The day Agnes goes to Bedloe’s Island is warm and gray. The morning air is still, pregnant with spring rain, and the water in the harbor shines like hammered steel. The ferry bobs in the water before her, looking tubby and childish compared with the leviathan steamship pulling into the East River in the distance.

Agnes is carrying a navy blue carpet bag with a horn handle. Inside it are her gingham dress and her flannel dress, three pairs of cotton stockings and bloomers, an apron embroidered with pink flowers, a nightgown, a horsehair hairbrush and a pigs’ hair toothbrush, a glass jar of toothpaste, a ragdoll Agnes is both embarrassed to have and unable to part with, a hand mirror, a pencil box with three stubby pencils and a ballpoint pen, and four leather-bound books: a prayer book, a diary, two novels by Alcott.

Now that she is here at Battery Park, bag packed and ticket in hand, with nothing left to do but embrace her mother, Agnes’s belly flares as though she struck a match to it. Ten weeks is a long time to be away from home, with cousins she scarcely remembers.

“Here’s your ticket, Agnes,” her mother says. Her hair is so glossy Agnes can almost catch her reflection in it.

“You’re sure this is the right boat?” Agnes asks.

With bright red lipstick, her mother’s smile resembles a gash slicing open. “It says so right on the side,” she says.

Agnes looks out towards Bedloe, where the Statue of Liberty raises her torch aloft. Agnes has never visited the island, never seen the Statue up close. From this distance the Statue looks like a toy soldier plunked in the water, though it dwarves the buildings that share the island. The island looks small, barren. Not at all the sort of place a girl would like to spend her sixteenth summer.

Agnes’s mother gives her a quick peck on the cheek, a whiff of rose and witch hazel. “Have a good summer, Agnes,” she says. “Now kiss your father goodbye.”

Agnes flinches to hear Mr. Hartley called thus, though her mother has been emphatically doing so since she married him two months ago. Agnes’s mother and Mr. Hartley are honeymooning in Montreal. Not the grand European tour her mother always dreamed of. Europe, even if they could get there, is crisscrossed with trenches like scars from a whip.

Mr. Hartley, trim and mustachioed, is standing slightly behind her mother. He smiles widely at Agnes, exposing the gap where he is missing a tooth. “Have a good summer, kid.”

Agnes holds out her hand. “Goodbye,” she says.

Her mother clucks her tongue. “Oh, Agnes.”

“It’s alright, Lucy,” Mr. Hartley says. He takes Agnes’s hand and gives it a firm shake.

“Be good,” Agnes’ mother says.

Agnes has been instructed to mind her mother’s cousin Lavinia, whatever she might ask. Lavinia’s husband is a colonel in the army, probably very strict, very regimental. His children are likely the same. Agnes is to speak only when addressed, refrain from laughing aloud.

Mr. Hartley drapes his arm around Agnes’s mother. Though Agnes has no desire to honeymoon with them, it still irks her, the ease with which they have shorn her off. Is it too much to ask that they might miss her? Suddenly Agnes cannot stand to delay a moment longer. She turns on her heel and marches down the gangplank to the ferry, without looking back.

*

Agnes learned about the Statue of Liberty in school. It was meant to be America’s Colossus of Rhodes, a monument to stand down the ages, like the pyramids of Egypt. From the ferry, on which Agnes turns out to be the only passenger, she watches the Statue rise mightily overhead. Torch aloft, eyes fixed to the east. She imagines it still standing there, a thousand years in the future, when the whole world will be steel-covered and shining.

The air is so clean it stings Agnes’s nose. The stiff breeze soon makes her chilly, and she wishes she had brought her wool cape after all. She tries to conjure up a memory of Lavinia’s stepchildren, whom she met at the wedding three years ago. Twins, a boy and a girl, almost exactly Agnes’s age. It will be nice to have new friends, Agnes thinks, if in fact they prove to be friendly. At the wedding she chiefly remembers a golden, impenetrable aura about them, their fine clothes and straight backs. She is anxious to arrive, to learn what her future holds for the next ten weeks.

As the ferry approaches the island, the Statue seems to grow, until Agnes must tip her head back to see the Statue’s face. It is a woman’s face, to be sure, but angular, not especially beautiful. Her gaze is impassive and fixed, as though no matter what she saw on the horizon—freedom, progress, the periscopes of German submarines—she would welcome its coming.

*

No one is waiting at the dock. Agnes’s mother said the twins would meet her, but as far as Agnes can see the dock is practically deserted. All along one side is a low wood building separated into stalls with half walls, like a stable. Only one of the stalls is occupied. Agnes smells it long before she sees the brown paper bags of fresh roast peanuts, a nickel a piece. A little further down the dock sits a soldier, shoeless, cigarette in mouth and fishing rod in hand. His face brightens with surprise as he sees Agnes, so she quickens her step, her bag thumping uncomfortably against her leg.

The dock meets land perpendicular to the Statue, which has ballooned to gargantuan proportions. The stone platform on which its pedestal stands is as tall as a two story building; the pedestal itself is taller still. Agnes imagines the lady is balancing the grey sky on the tip of her torch.

On the lawn in front of the platform are several cannon. Agnes slows her approach—is it possible for cannon to go off suddenly? When she gets closer she can see that they have been sealed shut. Unobserved, her foolishness amuses her. She laughs, devil-may-care, and sits in the grass, leaning against the cannon’s wheel.

Across the water Agnes can see the skyscrapers of Manhattan, the masts of ships clustered at Red Hook. How small everything looks! Agnes holds her hand in front of her face and crushes buildings between her thumb and forefinger with a whooshing sound.

Sometime later a boy about her age comes running around from behind the Statue. He is gangly and blond, holding his newsboy cap to his head to keep it from blowing away. When he reaches the dock he stands still a moment, then turns back in the direction from which he came and yells, “I think the boat’s gone!”

He’s addressing a blonde girl in a straw hat and a boy in a vest and knickerbockers, meandering towards him. When Agnes stands she sees the reason for their slow pace: a baby, toddling between them in a white gown.

The blonds are undoubtedly Paul and Mabel, the colonel’s children. Impossible to forget white blond hair like that, bones like birds. Paul sees Agnes first and takes off his hat to wave hello. Mabel hoists the baby to her hip and cuts across the grass.

“Oh, Agnes, there you are,” she says as she approaches. “I’m terribly sorry we abandoned you.”

“It’s alright,” Agnes says. “I only just arrived.”

“This is our brother Teddy,” Mabel says, looking at the baby. “We were giving him his bath and he just wouldn’t get out of the water, would he?”

“Bat!” the baby exclaims.

The two boys amble up, hands in pockets. The dark-haired boy has a curl drooping down his forehead and the wisp of a moustache. He gives Agnes a shy, dimpled smile.

“Hiya, Agnes,” Paul says. His voice is deeper now, a little scratchy. “This is Jeb,” he adds, thrusting his thumb in the direction of the dark-haired boy. “He’s staying the summer, too.”

“We can help you with your bag,” Jeb says.

“Jeb will be seventeen in August,” Mabel says breathlessly, as though attaining such an age is an accomplishment akin to winning a race.

Jeb’s cheeks flush and he clears his throat. “Shall we?” he says, stooping to pick up Agnes’s bag.

Mabel puts Teddy back on the ground and he charges off toward the esplanade which is, Paul says with regret, the long way. Agnes shrugs. She doesn’t mind in the least the twenty minutes it takes them to meander around the base of the Statue—an old fort, Paul says. Teddy proves to be fine entertainment. One moment he chases after seagulls, shrieking with laughter; the next, hands out leaves and twigs to the others with the solemnity of a priest.

What if her mother and Mr. Hartley have a baby? Agnes feels childish to realize that this thought had not occurred to her. The tenderness with which the twins dote upon Teddy—Mabel cooing to him when he falls, Paul carrying him on his soldiers—lights up a small dark corner of Agnes’s heart she didn’t realize was there. For the first time she is able to think of Mr. Hartley almost charitably. Certainly she will never call him Father; her mouth twists in disgust around the word. But as they round the back of the Statue and arrive at the colonel’s house Agnes senses her life has taken a subtle turn of its own. It could be there is goodness out there waiting for her, even joy.

*

The colonel’s house is red brick with white shutters and a wide porch. It’s large, but not as majestic as Agnes imagined. The brick is chipped in a few places. One shutter is partially denuded of its paint. Beside the house are a chicken coop, a congested vegetable garden, and a pen with two goats.

Lavinia is shorter and plainer than Agnes remembered, almost shy in her demeanor. She frets over Agnes so much it makes Agnes giggle uncomfortably. The colonel is a solid, sturdy fellow, with a full beard the color of straw. At supper he invites Agnes to say grace. Though she trips over her words, he says afterwards, “That was lovely, Agnes. Thank you.”

The next day, the colonel takes the foursome—Agnes, Paul, Mabel, and Jeb—inside the Statue. A jangling elevator takes them as far as the top of the pedestal. After that, the colonel informs them, it’s the steam of their legs or nothing. Agnes feels like Jonah in the belly of the whale as they wind their way up, the staircase a great iron spine within a cavernous beast. In spite of the colonel’s plodding pace, Agnes is panting by the time they reach a little room with a spray of windows.

“We’re inside the crown,” the colonel says. Agnes gapes at the view but even this is not the top. There’s a fifty-rung ladder which leads outside, to a small platform encircling the torch. After waiting for two tourists to descend, the colonel gives Paul and Jeb permission to climb. Agnes follows them, gripping the rungs forcefully as her palms begin to sweat. Mabel, below her, squeals with fright and, thirty rungs in declares she cannot go further, at which point the colonel, bringing up the rear, suggests it would be easier to simply finish going up.

The bracing air lashes Agnes’s cheeks and roars in her ears. The others whoop with delight, but Agnes thinks her voice has been sucked out of her throat. Across the water, the buildings of Manhattan might well be blades of grass; the Brooklyn Bridge, stretching across the East River, as flimsy as a rubber band. She grips the railing and peeks down. The soldiers exercising on the lawn below are small as flies.

“Busy day on the water, eh?” the colonel says, sidling up to her. The harbor is peppered with sailboats, ferries, tugboats. Two coal black barges are chugging toward the Narrows, the pursed mouth of the Hudson, beyond with lies the Atlantic Ocean.

“Where are they going?” Agnes asks.

“The big’uns?” the colonel says. “England. That’s weaponry they’ve got on board. Guns, cannon. Dynamite. They’re making it over on Black Tom.” He gestures to the spit of land just across the water in New Jersey, where another ship is docked in front of a warren of warehouses.

Agnes glances sidelong at the colonel. “I thought…I thought we weren’t getting involved.”

“Oh, we’re not involved,” the colonel says. “We’re only sending supplies.”

Agnes nods, but she is not reassured. According to the papers the war is only getting worse. In the Near East, Armenian women and children are being slaughtered by the thousands every day. Mr. Hartley says it’s a matter of time before America joins up. Whether by choice or by force, he says.

The colonel takes a deep breath. “Now. No need for these gloomy thoughts. Too much hard thinking’s no good for beauty, you know.” He gestures to his face, leathered and lined. “At least that’s how I excuse myself.”

It takes Agnes a moment to realize he’s joking. Embarrassed, she returns her gaze to the ships, the columns of smoke seeping into the air. There is something eerie in watching them steam toward the conflict, as though they might leave a trail that connects back to her.

“Maybe she’s watching out for us,” Agnes says.

“She?” the colonel says, brows furrowed over cornflower eyes.

“The Statue,” Agnes says. “She’s…watching. Making sure we’re alright.” The Statue’s torch makes a poor lighthouse, Agnes has been told, invisible in all but the sunniest weather. Still, it is comforting to imagine the Statue as a beacon, watchful and wise, no matter how childish she appears to admit it.

The colonel smiles. “I suppose she is. See, now? No need to be afraid.”

Agnes was never at ease around her own father. Excited, yes, delighted, sometimes, but never at ease. Standing beside the colonel she has the feeling that everything is under control, that she needn’t, truly, concern herself with any of it. Her fear begins to crumble and fly away, like salt in the wind.

*

Within a week Agnes has fully oriented herself. She thinks of the island as a big clock face: the Statue and its platform take up the lower half of the clock, facing the six; army buildings edge the island from about eight o’clock around to four o’clock. Accommodations for hundreds, probably, though there only seem to be a few dozen soldiers stationed there. In the center of the island is an open lawn, mostly dry crispy brown with a few patches of green.

There is no well on Bedloe, so water is brought over twice a week on the supply boat and put in a huge cistern between the colonel’s house and the barracks. Supply boat days also mean fresh meat, cause for extra festivity at supper. No ice, though, and no milk, which is why they have the goats.

Agnes and Mabel are required to help with the laundry; the boys tend the vegetable garden and chop wood. Beyond that, they are at their leisure. Lavinia is too busy with Teddy and helping the housekeeper in the kitchen to pay them much mind; the colonel disappears for most of the day to parts unknown. The soldiers give them a wide berth, on account of Paul and Mabel being the colonel’s children, no doubt. Thus they spend the better part of most days doing no more and no less than whatever they like.

After the Statue is closed to visitors each afternoon they have it to themselves. They picnic in the crown room until they’ve memorized the view. The boys take turns racing up the stairs by every method imaginable—hopping, all fours, skip a stair—while the girls time them with stopwatches. They even ascend the ladder to the torch a couple times, though the colonel has forbidden them to do so unsupervised.

Sometimes, while waiting for a straggling tourist to depart, they lie on the grass in front of the pedestal, gazing up at the Statue’s face. It is on one of these occasions that Paul suggests the Statue ought to have a name. Agnes finds this stupid, as the Statue has a name: Liberty Enlightening the World. There’s a little sunburst in her heart whenever she thinks of it. But the others scoff dismissively. That’s not a person’s name.

“Lady Liberty, then?” Agnes says.

“Columbia is better,” Paul counters.

“Lady Columbia, perhaps,” Agnes says. She feels instinctively that the Statue’s femininity ought to be taken into account.

Paul considers this a moment then gives a slicing motion with his hand. “Columbia.”

“I think she needs a grand name,” Mabel sings out in her melodious voice. “I think her name is Elizabeth Cleopatra Marie-Antoinette Victoria.”

“Ha!” Paul laughs. “You’ve just named all the queens you’ve ever heard of.”

Mabel sniffs. “Why not? She should have a queen’s name. She’s our queen.”

“America doesn’t have queens, Mabel,” Agnes says. She’s disappointed that Mabel has not ingested this basic fact.

“You’d be silly to name her after Marie-Antoinette, anyhow,” Paul says. “She lost her head!”

“Elizabeth Cleopatra Victoria, then,” Mabel says.

Agnes shakes her head. “You’d be wise to leave the Cleopatra off as well. She didn’t fare well in the end, with the snake.”

“Oh, what do you know about it!” Mabel rolls over and begins to pick at the grass.

The argument seems concluded when Jeb, lying a little distant, speaks up in a soft voice. “I think her name is Wendy,” he says.

For a moment a quiet crackle flashes through the other three, like the perked-ears alertness of a jack rabbit. Mabel and Agnes exchange a careful, sidelong look. Jeb hasn’t established himself to be a jokester, but surely he is pulling their legs.

“Wendy?” Paul says.

Mabel bursts into peals of laughter, rolling back and forth on the grass, clutching her arms.

Agnes bites back the giggle in her own throat. It seems ridiculous, nearly sacrilegious, to give so magnificent a monument a name from a children’s story. Like calling the great Sphinx Puss in Boots.

Jeb is looking fixedly up at the Statue, his cheeks flushed. Agnes has never noticed before the curved slope of his nose, the smooth pinkness of his lips. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. What might he do, she wonders, if she reached out a finger to trace along it? Perhaps sensing her attention, Jeb turns his head to look at her. Agnes quickly darts her glance away, hoping her thoughts were not plain on her face.

*

As the weeks go by they go inside the Statue less and less. A hundred and fifty stairs is a tiring job, especially for Mabel, who insists on resting the moment she senses she is about to perspire. Elsewhere on the island are more subdued pursuits: croquet on the lawn, bridge in the colonel’s library when it rains. But there’s no escaping the Statue; it dominates the island with gravitational force. Even from within the house it is visible from half the windows.

As it is happening, Agnes believes each part of the day to be her favorite: the cool, lazy mornings, the boisterous suppers, even the heat of the day, when the kids cram into whatever shade they can find and describe in detail the best ice cream they have ever eaten. Then comes evening. Gathered in the parlor, engaged in quiet pursuits, time takes on such loveliness Agnes wonders if it is possible to die from it. The tall windows of the parlor are left open, the breeze rustling the doilies on the arms of the sofas and chairs. Outside the gulls bid their goodnights and the water laps at the rocks just beyond the house.

On one of these nights, while playing backgammon with Mabel, Agnes looks up to see Jeb dandling Teddy on his knee. Teddy should be asleep of course, Lavinia has been musing as much for three quarters of an hour, but she too seems reluctant to bring the evening to a close. It appears that Jeb has been teaching Teddy to play “Pat-a-cake,” with the alteration that every so often Jeb replaces a clap with a tweak to Teddy’s nose. Teddy giggles every time.

As she watches, Agnes’s heart swells so quickly she gasps, which she turns into a yawn to evade Mabel’s questioning look. Seeing Jeb in that moment unlocks possibilities she hadn’t considered. There is a whole new sphere of life on the horizon. Agnes believes, deeply, that it will be better than anything that has come before.

*

Lavinia forbids war talk at supper, but it creeps in anyway, especially on supply boat days, when the newspaper comes. All through July a battle rages along the River Somme, with casualty numbers so high the colonel shakes his head as he reads them, his expression disbelieving. Paul wants his father to supply commentary, discuss tactics, and sometimes the colonel falls into this, his voice rising with passion until Lavinia, with the cluck of her tongue or a stern look, cuts him off.

One evening, Lavinia gets so upset by the protracted discussion between Paul and the colonel that she announces crisply, “If you two can’t find another topic of conversation I will have no choice but to withhold dessert.” It’s not a mild threat—dessert that night is chocolate cake with fresh strawberries.

“Gee whiz, Ma,” Paul says, ashen-faced.

“Wilson is keeping us out of the war!” Lavinia says. “It’s no use discussing. Didn’t you say Germany stopped using submarines? That’s all Wilson wanted.”

The colonel bobs his head side to side. “Well,” he says slowly. “They’ve said they’ve stopped.” Teddy is sitting on his knee, picking up peas from the colonel’s plate.

“That’s it, Ma,” Paul says. “Think of all that ammo over on Black Tom. D’ya think that if a ship of guns goes by they’re just going to sit back and let it pass?”

“But they agreed!” Lavinia insists. Red splotches bloom on her cheeks. Agnes and Jeb exchange a careful look across the table. Never once that summer has Lavinia raised her voice.

“You know, Ma,” the colonel says gently. “This is why I’m not sure all that voting business is a good idea. You don’t want to get wrapped up in all this.”

“I ask merely that the supper table be protected from these gruesome matters,” Lavinia says. She stabs at her meal with her fork.

“Potato,” Teddy says, enunciating carefully. It’s a new word for him, but it passes without comment.

“Quite right,” the colonel says. He throws a look to Paul, who wilts back in his seat. “Home is no place for war talk.”

A thought alights in Agnes’s mind like a bird settling on a branch. “Perhaps when women vote there won’t be any more wars,” she says.

All the heads at the table, save Teddy’s, swivel in Agnes’s direction. For a moment she fears everyone will laugh at her.

Lavinia puts down her fork. “I think Agnes is right,” she says. “Women simply will not vote their sons off to war.”

“It’s not the people deciding these things with a vote, Ma,” the colonel says. “It’s the President and Congress and them.”

“Women for president!” Mabel says merrily.

Paul laughs. “Ha! A woman president! What will they call her? The Presidentress?”

“Well now,” the colonel says. “Voting is one thing. It might do alright, in certain circumstances. But governing is a nasty business. Making tough choices, fighting wars. If we want progress, these things must be done. We can’t have women muddying everything up with sentiment.”

“Perhaps that’s wrong,” Agnes says, the words out of her mouth before her mind gives say so. “I beg your pardon, sir,” she adds hastily.

Teddy has divested the colonel of his fork and is banging it on the table. The colonel’s eyes dart as he looks for an opportune moment to retrieve it.

“No, no,” the colonel says, not unkindly. “What do you wish to say?”

Agnes hesitates. She clears her throat. “Well, you said that sentiment would muddy things. Confuse things. I am sure that you are right. Just imagine—what if every soldier in the war right now had his mother with him?”

Quiet laughter ripples around the table. “That’s quite a picture,” the colonel says.

“Certainly it would be a disaster if just one mother was there, or a dozen,” Agnes says. “But if every mother was there, then surely no one would fight at all!”

Agnes’s voice feels unsteady but a bright energy is pulsing through her body, urging her on. “Perhaps women are too weak to govern,” she says. “Too soft. And mankind is—we seem to be progressing, as you say. Yet here’s another war, worse than any that’s come before. What sort of progress is that? Perhaps a softer approach is just what we need.”

As the silence around the table grows weighty, Agnes’s euphoria dissipates at an alarming rate. She might be ridiculed, or even punished.

A broad smile creeps across the colonel’s face. He chuckles, just once, a single puff of air out his nose. “I tell you what, Agnes,” he says, raising his glass. “You run for President, you’ll have my vote.”

*

The next night, Agnes is roused from deep sleep by a mighty clap of thunder. She rolls over just as lightning strikes outside her window. It is a queer lightning, though, more fiery than white, emitting from the ground instead of the sky. There’s another boom and the bed shakes as though the thunder was right beneath them.

Mabel cries out. “Is it an earthquake?”

Another boom. The window lights up orange and red. Agnes rubs her eyes. Is she dreaming? But in dreams her body doesn’t feel quick with energy, nor her mind sharp and clear.

Agnes swings her legs over the edge of the bed. Mabel grips her arm, whimpering.

“I’m going to look!” Agnes yells, wresting Mabel’s hand away.

Just as she steps toward the window, a force of hot air knocks her backward. Her hip slams against the bedpost, her shoulder against Mabel’s knee. As she crumples to the floor, the air itself blazes, lacerating her skin with red hot cuts.

Mabel is screaming her name. As Agnes turns to look toward her she sees that the window has shattered.

“We need to get out of here!” Agnes yells. In flashes of orange light she sees Mabel huddled in the corner of the bed, her knees pulled up to her chest. Agnes tugs on Mabel’s arm. Mabel lets herself be dragged to the edge of the bed and stands up. Just as Agnes let go of Mabel’s hand the floor drops beneath them with another roar and Mabel collapses to the ground.

“Hurry! Get up!” Agnes says desperately. She reaches an arm around Mabel and helps her to stand. 

“Hmm, what?” Mabel says. Her voice is thick; her eyes glassy and unfocused.

The hallway is dark and empty. Between the booms—sometimes only a split second, sometimes several seconds—Agnes can hear shouts, but they’re directionless, coming from everywhere and nowhere. The most important thing, the only thing, is to get outside. It feels as though a volcano directly under the house is about to erupt. They must get as far away as they can.

Agnes moves slowly with Mabel leaning on her. The house has changed its configuration somehow, or it feels as though it has as Agnes turns wrongly again and again. Surely she is dreaming, stuck in some sort of labyrinth, the only exit for which is waking up.

They make it down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door. Only once they are outside does Agnes realize her mistake. They are facing the New Jersey side and across the water the entire wharf is on fire. She has done the wrong thing! Balls of flame erupt in the sky, with a terrifying whine like the devil’s own music. The water churns and hisses, the air burns with smoke. It feels hot, too hot, like the whole world is an oven. Mabel grips Agnes’s arm, doubled over with coughs.

“Mabel!” It’s Paul’s voice, strangled and desperate. “Agnes! Get down here!”

Paul, in his nightshirt, stands in front of the cellar. Agnes starts to cross, Mabel in tow, when another blast removes the ground from beneath their feet. Agnes’s cheek slams against the dirt and pain ricochets through her skull. She tastes blood, tangy and metallic.

Hands are gripping her and somehow she is on her feet, being led down steps into cavernous black. She gulps in the damp air, thick with clean earth. A burst of light behind her reveals the bags of potatoes, jars of berries and applesauce. The shadowy form of Jeb appears, crouched in the dark. He yelps as she descends and moves to make room for her on the dirt floor.

“Where’s Papa?” Mabel whimpers.

Outside, a piercing whine seems to be headed straight for them.

“Close the door!” Agnes shrieks.

Paul scrambles up the steps. Just as he latches the door shut the earth shakes, knocking him back down to the floor. He lands awkwardly on his side and cries out in pain.

They are left in darkness. Agnes hears Mabel murmuring to Paul, Paul’s moans in response. Every few seconds the cellar shakes as the outside world booms, sending dirt sprinkling down on their heads, rattling the glass jars. 

Agnes doesn’t know how long she is down there, or when it is that Jeb finds her hand.

*

Sometime later, the explosions stop. At first it is hard to tell—Agnes’s ears are ringing and her blood seems to be rushing through her body at great speed, conditions she imagines must be permanent. But at some point, the explosions dwindle, becoming softer and spaced further apart. Eventually, they stop altogether.

Agnes’s eyes have adjusted to the dark, but still all she can see is the vague lump of Paul and Mabel huddled across from her. It occurs to Agnes that they should do something, look for someone, but her mind is too brittle to work out what or whom.

Jeb volunteers to go outside and investigate. He takes his hand from Agnes’s, gently, with a squeeze as though to say he’d rather not. When he opens the cellar door Agnes squints at the light. Smoke billows in and soon they are all doubled over with coughing. Somewhere in the distance, soldiers are shouting.

After some amount of time—it’s impossible to say how much—Jeb comes back to the top of the cellar stairs. “It’s stopped,” he says. “It seems to have stopped.” He offers his hand to each as they climb the stairs. Mabel’s hair is matted with blood on one side. Paul cradles his left arm close to his chest.

Outside it is heavily grey, like dusk, though Agnes knows it must be morning. The smoke burns her eyes, burns her lungs when she is forced, despite resisting, to breathe. Holding their nightshirts over their faces, the four rush to the house and step gingerly through the halls. The floors are covered with shattered glass, splintered furniture, a carpet of ash. They call out to the colonel, to Lavinia, taking turns between coughs. Eventually they find them, in their bedroom, curled in the corner behind the bed. The colonel is draped around Lavinia, who is cradling Teddy against her chest. The colonel’s eyes are blood-shot and wild looking. Lavinia’s are closed. She rocks back and forth, moaning quietly. Eventually Paul is able to discern what happened. One of the explosions blew Teddy clear out of his crib and smacked him against the brick of the fireplace. He is dead.

*

After the coroner comes, Lavinia closes herself in her room and does not emerge. The colonel moves around like a sleepwalker, slow to take action and jumpy when addressed. The army medic puts Paul’s arm in a splint, sews stiches into Mabel’s scalp. Left largely unscathed, it’s Agnes and Jeb who set about cleaning up the house. Soldiers join them, and the housekeeper, and in a few days the glass and ash are cleared from the place. The broken furniture is mended where possible, thrown into the wood pile where not. A soldier begins boarding up the windows, but Agnes stops him. She cannot fathom compounding their misery with perpetual darkness.

Gentlemen in suits come to the island, not on the ferry, but a private boat. Government agents. The colonel puts on his uniform to receive them. Agnes hovers outside the library door as they converse. She hears the words “German” and “saboteurs,” “$20 million in damage,” a number so high she cannot fathom it.

Agnes can’t sleep. She begins to wonder if she has ever slept, if sleep even exists. When her bed becomes intolerable, she sits in the open hull of her bedroom window, listening to the breeze and counting the stars.

On the fifth day after, Jeb approaches her as she scrubs potatoes in the kitchen. He is leaving the next day, he says. His mother is worried about him and insists he come home.

“I guess they haven’t reached your folks yet,” he says. Agnes didn’t realize anyone was trying to reach her mother. The thought of leaving the island nauseates her.

He presses a slip of paper into her hand. “Maybe you’ll write to me?” he says, not quite meeting her eyes.

Agnes looks down at the paper, the neat, rounded hand. She awaits the spark of happiness but it is too far down, a penny at the bottom of a well.

Jeb shifts his weight. “You don’t have to,” he says.

The next day Agnes watches him board the ferry with a severe woman dressed in black. She wants to cry out to him, to apologize, beg him not to go, but her voice seems to have gone all crusty in her throat. When she heads back to the house she looks up at the Statue. Liberty’s robe is pockmarked with shrapnel. Still she raises her torch, looks stoically on.

*

That night, after a few hours of bed-tossing and murky dreams, Agnes rises and lights a lamp. She wraps a shawl around her shoulders and laces her boots over her bare feet. The night air is still, but even so Agnes must walk slowly, with her hand cupped above the lamp shade to protect the flame. When she enters the Statue the light scarcely penetrates the inky darkness.

Agnes heard from a soldier that the torch was damaged—perhaps beyond repair, he said. But it’s the crown that pulls her. Better to enter that capacious mind, where there might be wisdom enough even for this.

She pants as she climbs the stairs. Her lamp throws distorted shadows that reach up and down the cavern. When she is near the top she sees a faint glow of light emitting from the crown room. She is so startled she trips and nearly drops the lamp.

“Who’s there?” comes a masculine voice, unseen, from above.

Agnes hesitates. For the first time she recognizes the potential for danger, should she happen upon a soldier made less honorable in the dark. “It’s Agnes,” she says shakily.

A broad figure steps into view. It’s the colonel, fully dressed, with a face so sunken and sad it looks bruised. “What on earth are you doing here?” he says.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Agnes says, hoping the truth is sufficient.

The colonel turns back from the stairs. “Come on up, then,” he says.

The crown room resembles a cave from a story, all deep shadow and orange pools of light. The colonel stands before the window at the apex of the crown, his hands clasped behind his back. Agnes puts her lamp on the floor beside his and looks out into the dark. Each time the breeze comes through it sends a ripple down her spine.

Agnes’s eyes slowly render shapes out of the black view. The water sparkles faintly while the ground, of New Jersey, of Brooklyn, of New York, is pockmarked with pinpricks of light. But the wharf of Black Tom Island is densely dark, and caved in, like some giant took a bite out of the earth.

“Do you think they are coming to attack us?” Agnes says. “The Germans?”

“I’d love to see them try,” the colonel says. His voice is tight, as though pushed out with steel and not with breath.

“I’d love to see them try,” the colonel says again. Agnes realizes that he would love it, that he is, in fact, hoping it will happen.

“And if they don’t,” he continues, his voice rising. “I’m coming for them. I swear to God, if I have to swim to get there, I am coming. Do you hear me?” He is shouting now, glaring at the horizon. Agnes realizes he is not addressing her.

“Do you hear me?” he yells into the black. “Murderous bastards! Murderous goddamned bastards! DO YOU HEAR ME?”

The colonel’s voice cracks. Suddenly he is crying, weeping, loud sobs and noisy, gasping breaths. Agnes yelps in fright and surprise. She has never seen a grown man cry. She is not sure what to do, what to say. Tentatively, because she must do something, she reaches out a hand and pats the colonel’s shoulder. Almost immediately the colonel slumps to his knees, as though she had pushed him. He continues down, crumpling until he is on the floor on his hands and knees. He cries and cries, dropping his face into his hands, a posture so undignified Agnes has to look away. When Agnes kneels beside him he grabs the cotton excess of her nightdress, buries his face in her lap. Agnes is both mortified and yet unable to extricate herself. She pats the colonel’s hair as he wails.

Time takes on a circular shape. Perhaps time itself is a circle, Agnes thinks, the notion that it is moving forward in any way nothing but childish folly. Agnes, the colonel, everyone—they are all simply marbles in the mouth of a funnel, turning round and round in a journey that will never change. A year ago, Agnes thinks, in some deep, curious corner of her mind, this notion might have bothered her. Now, it stirs no feeling, except perhaps relief. There is no pattern, no solution. Nothing to be done.

Agnes gradually notices the colonel’s crying subsiding. Abruptly, he seems to remember where he is, and with whom, and sits up. He clears his throat and scooches away, pushing up on his haunches and then sitting, leaning against the wall. His moustache glistens with mucous.

“My boy,” he says, plaintive. “Why did they have to take my boy?”

Agnes knows it is not a real question. Nevertheless, she says, “I don’t know.”

After a moment, she adds, “They never would have if they had met him. No one who met Teddy could hurt him. He was such a fine little boy.”

The colonel looks to Agnes sharply and she fears she has said the wrong thing. But the colonel nods. She did not, it seems, offend him.

They sit in silence for a while. Agnes’s eyes drift to the windows above them. The sky has turned deep navy. “Look,” she says. She stands and brushes her nightdress, which is damp. “It’s getting light.”

The colonel twists his head around to look. “Aha,” he says. He heaves himself to his knees with such obvious effort that Agnes offers him her hand. It’s a gag straight out of a vaudeville comedy, but the colonel takes her hand without the slightest trace of humor. Once he is steady on his feet, he lets go.

Agnes puts her hands on the window sill and rests her head atop them. There’s a band of blue-pink light on the horizon, like spun sugar. All at once she realizes what the Statue is looking at. Her lips part with a quiet gasp. The colonel doesn’t speak, and neither does Agnes. They stand there for some time, side by side, awaiting the sun.

Abigail Mitchell is a writer and singer, or singer and writer, depending on the day. On the writing side, she is the author of stories and essays that have appeared in Sequestrum, The Waking, and elsewhere. On the singing side, she is a full-time member of the Metropolitan Opera Chorus. She combines the two halves of her artistic identity in her first novel, which is about opera singers and will hopefully be finished within the century. Find her on Twitter @singmeastory

Anna Holdház 

Lava: An Index

The Kind That Laid The Foundation 

Alma had never seen sand like this. She and Maria, who would become her best friend, dug their hands into it, damp and black. They’re barely old enough to form memories, but this would be one of the first. Their mothers had just met each other here, on this beach at the base of a cliff. 

It was the end of summer and Alma’s family packed up everything from home in California and said goodbye to the house and her mom cried the whole way to the airport and cried much more when they arrived to an unfinished house in the middle of nowhere. Not even the parrot at the guest house they had to stay in could make her happy.

For Alma it hadn’t mattered much. She and Maria picked out granules of olivine from the sand. An entire jar of it sat on Maria’s shelf in her house, almost full. She liked collecting things. They would later learn these green flecks of glass come from deep in the earth, the upper mantle, along with the lava that broke down and became the sand, the lava that made the entire giant rock they’d grow to call their home.

The first school Alma was sent to was a Baptist Kindergarten in the nearest town, population 918 and declining. The following year, she joined Maria at a local school run out of a neighborhood woman’s house, nestled at the end of a red dirt road, surrounded by brittle ʻaʻā lava. They had trails winding through the undergrowth around the towering albizia trees that engulfed the district and a goat named Popcorn. He lived in the yard and nearly got crushed when one of the fragile branches made landfall during a mild tropical storm.

They were always looking for something to do, her and Maria, who had not one house but two. Not because she was rich by any means, nobody here was rich. Her parents were divorced. Maria’s mother gave acupuncture treatments in the only extra room, so every night they unrolled a pair of sleeping bags in the living room. The first time Maria slept over at Alma's house she rolled off the bed, waking the entire house with her cries. The first time Alma slept over at Maria’s she jolted awake every minute, afraid she’d gone blind in the utter quiet and darkness. Maria didn’t use a night light the way Alma did. She didn’t leave the TV on, muttering in the corner for comfort. Nobody stayed up past midnight, drinking or arguing. Alma wasn’t sure what her own parents did. She understood, even then, that this was one of the issues. To pay for things you needed to have jobs.

Maria’s father built houses, including his own, on a different street in the same neighbourhood and over there, Maria got into melting crayons. Alma wasn’t sure when it started, only that one day the living room was cramped with towers of rippling colour, growing higher and higher. The two of them did it absently, hypnotically, while watching cartoons, holding the unwrapped crayons above the flames and dripping them on the mountains below, burying whatever they’d dripped the day before, no matter how beautiful it had been. It made them feel like miniature gods.

One day they ran out of crayons, maybe used up all the crayons on the entire island, and had to find a new way to pass the time. So they got their hands, bigger now but not by much, on any product lying around the house. Toothpaste, detergent, soda, cleaning spray, shaving cream, rubbing alcohol. They mixed them together in different cocktails and watched what happened; fizzing, popping, steaming, curdling, nothing. 

The cocktail began to eat through the styrofoam bowl they’d been using. “Shit, shit, shit, shit.” They’d learned that word recently. They put another bowl underneath but it ate through that too. “Shit.” They kept adding bowls until they could toss the whole situation into a hole in the backyard, though they couldn’t dig more than a few inches before hitting lava. 

“Do you think it’ll eat through it?” 

“I think it’ll sink to the center of the earth.”

They agreed to tell no one.

The Kind With Holes 

Aaron went to their kindergarten and was in their class in first and second and then third grade. He lived with his dad in a yurt. Two yurts, technically, he got one all to himself. In it he had a piano keyboard, a drum set, a tree house bed, a basketball hoop and a TV but the bathroom was outside. His dad repaired things for a living, was over at Alma’s house all the time, fixing things, making jokes, eating her mom’s cooking, which everybody said was the best food they’d ever eaten. Always when her dad was away. 

One day, while mowing the grass in Aaron’s backyard, a hole opened in the ground and ate the lawn mower. Aaron’s dad let go of the machine before it swallowed him too and so thankfully Aaron was not orphaned. During lava flows, sometimes the top layer cools and hardens while the rest keeps going, draining, drying, leaving behind an empty cavern. They stuck a ladder down the hole and probed its innards with flashlights. Water dripped from the ceiling, ferns grew along the ground. It smelled of sulphur and they wondered how the ferns could grow without sunlight.

Many years later, Aaron’s neighbour down the road is trimming his orange tree. He steps on a patch of soft soil. Days later, after his granddaughter starts to worry because he isn’t answering her phone calls, they find his body twenty-two feet below ground, surrounded by rotting oranges, illuminated by a shaft of light. His shears lay beside him, open and already rusting.

Once, Alma dreamt she was standing in the hole in his yard but the ladder was gone. It started raining, coming down like a waterfall through the ceiling. Ferns caressed her ankles as they drowned. ‘Just stay with us,’ they sang.

The Angry Kind 

“It’s going to eat our house.” Maria had tears in her eyes. “Pele’s angry because we poured acid into her.” Alma had to remember that she meant the goddess of fire and volcanoes, not her black cat, whose name was also Pele.

“It’s not going to eat your house. Look how far away it is.”

The smoke was on the horizon, even from Alma's house they could see it, chewing up the landscape and spitting out ash. At four in the afternoon the horizon burned a dirty orange. Maria stared in the direction of her house. She’d always been what Alma was not; blonde and healthy and happy and in control. But now it was Alma who was bold, giddy even at the possibility of destruction. She imagined Maria’s house being buried in bright crayon wax, dripping and oozing through the forest. 

“My mom said she saw Night Marchers running through our land one night, a lot of them,” Alma said, changing the subject. 

“Maybe they wanted you to leave,” said Maria. “Maybe the island wants everyone to leave.” Maybe her mom was just very drunk on boxed wine.

Three days later, the lava seeped into Maria’s backyard and they had to evacuate. But it stopped there, growing hard and smooth like thick skeins of black satin, the kind they call pahoehoe.

“I told you it wouldn’t eat your house.” 

“Do you remember where we dumped the acid?” 

“I think it was there.” 

“There?” 

“There.” 

“Where the lava stops?” 

The Kind That Boils The Sea 

“This is my mom and dad,” Alma’s mom told her. “Your grandparents from Europe. They’ll be staying with us for six months.” They stayed in the guest bedroom on the ground floor, next to the sewing corner and down the hall from the storage room. 

It wasn’t long before the volcano started spitting again. Kilauea, always gurgling away in the southeastern corner of the island, vomiting molten rock into the ocean. Her dad took them all out in the Land Rover. There had been a whole neighbourhood there once but someone had clearly pissed off Pele because in the 70’s she spewed up enough magma to bury it. There’s old news footage of it, people watching their houses burn and the roads being eaten. Some people went back, lived in trailers. That was their land. They probably couldn’t afford to move elsewhere; they definitely couldn’t sell it. 

Now it was a frozen, black crystalline sea. They drove off road over the lava, then back onto the spared pavement, then back onto the lava. Small ferns grew through the cracks. The walk to shore took an hour at least, scrambling over sharp and brittle crags, crunching and scraping. The sun set by the time everyone made it. At the sea, on a cliff’s edge, is where you can see the flow. You can get close enough to roast marshmallows and take selfies and sit, listening to the churning water and liquid earth glowing yellow and orange and red as the sky grew purple and lavender, just like the postcards.

Alma had made this walk many times, seen the lava, scrambled down the smooth rolls of glittering black folds, crunched the thin shards and sheets of rocks. She knew all the byproducts of this process; droplets of lava so small that they hardened in mid air during eruption, forming black glass chunks they call Pele’s tears, found entangled in strands of long and thin whispers of volcanic glass they call Pele’s hair. Where was safe to walk and where wasn’t. To always wear thick shoes you didn't care much about, in case you made a mistake and your soles began to melt. 

More than once she and her mom suggested they should push dad into the lava and play it off as an accident. Tourists went on boats to the flows all the time. They laughed as they said this, convinced they were just joking. The ocean water would boil, salty steam rising up the hulls, air hot with molten rock. He could’ve slipped and fallen in. Maybe not easily, but these trips often happened at night and some of the guides are just locals with decent boats. 

This was her backyard, at least close enough. But her grandparents stared as if they’d been dropped onto an alien planet, someplace in flux, turmoil and magic. They picked up pieces of the glittering rock, turned them around in their hands, held them up to the fiery light. It didn’t surprise her that they’d wanted to take a piece of it home. 

But this was forbidden. 

Alma told them not to. Her mother told them not to. 

They did not listen. 

Within a year her grandfather had died of dementia, her grandmother had lost her legs due to complications from diabetes and the family dog had been run over by a car.

The Kind That Steams 

The newest family moved to the island from somewhere in the middle of America when Alma was twelve. All three kids were homeschooled before the oldest daughter enrolled in Alma’s school and the parents invited all the other parents and kids to their new house because that’s just the kind of people they were. This house had been built in an area with lots of steam vents, the volcano exhaling from cracks in the ground. Other spots around that area had vents too, you just had to go hiking to find them, follow the steam rising from the shrub. You could bring your towel and bathing suit and sit in there, with the lava and ferns and Spanish moss. The new family built a steam room over one of the vents on their property and rumour had it all of them would sit in there naked, which even Alma thought was a little weird, but homeschool kids were different like that.

The father was a dentist by trade but he’d also gone to Harvard and wrote books about medicine and called himself a sound healer and a whistleblower. He had the aura of a man on the run. The books he’d written, big ones, were about how AIDS and Ebola were actually biological weapons made by the US government and how vaccinations caused autism. Alma knew all of them by their covers because her mom left them open all over the house, dog eared and book marked, along with another book on oxygen therapy by a different doctor. This was the key to treating cancer, her mom would say, this one she’d even underlined. 

Maybe her mom half expected all those cigarettes she smoked to catch up with her, so instead of quitting she just hunted for the cure. She had a dealer for food grade hydrogen peroxide, he lived in their neighbourhood, higher up, along a dirt road where the vegetation was thicker and greener. She brought it back to the car in big plastic jugs, usually while running other errands like filling up the propane tank or going to the trash dump. Teaspoons of it would get mixed with glasses of water, offered to Alma whenever she got sick.

Though when it was time for Alma and Maria and the new girl and all their classmates to leave the school house and enroll in the public High School, Alma’s mom still let her get the vaccinations she needed because not doing so would mean she wouldn’t be allowed to attend and they definitely didn’t have the resources or sanity for homeschooling like the new family seemed to. Besides, they’d pumped Alma full of vaccines as a baby, so even if she suspected this was the root of all her poor daughter’s problems, she figured it was too late for her anyway.

The Kind with Snow On It

Alma spent most of her first year of public High School in mourning, for her old life and for her best friend. But it was complicated by the fact that Maria wasn’t dead, in fact Alma saw her almost every day walking around the halls with her new friends. She knew now to avoid eye contact and walk the other way or duck into a bathroom, as if that would erase something painful. It was a loss that blindsided her, threw her overboard into the boiling ocean. All the life rafts melted on impact.

This was the first time she felt herself a foreigner here. The High School in her district had too much knife crime and too few arts electives to be viable, so they enrolled her out of the county. The issue was that her parents couldn’t afford the gas to drive her two hours both ways to this new school so they drove her as far as where the end of her neighbourhood met the highway, where the only public bus drove past every few hours. 

There was no bus stop, you just had to wave your arms out the car window when you saw it in the rear mirror and make a run for it. The journey took an hour. The bus was never crowded but it always had the same patrons; those too young to drive and those too old or chronically drunk or drugged to drive. She was not a part of the culture that the local kids had, she was the minority in the public school, an interloper, an accidental colonizer.

All this had been tolerable until Maria decided they would no longer be friends, no longer be talking. Alma was too weird, too shy, she couldn’t find her rhythm in this new environment, she was an embarrassment, she was holding her back. Maria said this point blank to her face and it landed like bullets. Maybe this was when she’d started wishing she lived somewhere else, truly decided how much she hated it here. The Myna birds that nested in the roof slats above the bathroom and the mites they carried that made their way down into their beds. The holes the cats left in the screen doors with their claws, locked out and too lazy to use the cat door and the mosquitos that always found their ways in, buzzing around her head at night, attacking her skin whenever she went into the yard, the grass up to her knees. 

Nothing was ever truly clean or residue free in the house, at least not for long. Nature always found a way in. It was so humid that the salt shakers had to have rice grains in them to absorb the moisture and keep the salt from congealing. Any salt granules left on the dining table at night turned liquid by morning. Any bags of chips or cookies left open turned soft within hours. She craved to paint the dark raw wood walls white with water proof paint, to seal things tighter, create distance from the outside world. 

“This is the tropics, you can’t control these things,” her father said. In truth, it’s hard to like anything when you’re sad and angry.

When she heard about the rave she was excited for the first time in a while, spent hours trying to track it down with Isaac, another school reject who’d taken her in, a boy with a family that owned restaurants across the island. The two of them crouched on the steps of some public breezeway, watching a group of maybe six or seven teenagers in baggy pants and glow sticks swaying around a boombox blasting Drum n’ Bass.  

“We found it.” 

They burst out laughing and couldn’t stop, because nothing interesting ever happened here and nothing ever would. Alma wondered if she’d ever see an actual rave, if she’d ever get far enough away to do something like that. 

It was almost 10pm by then and Alma was an hour’s drive from home. The last bus was at 7pm, her parents had likely become incapacitated by boxed wine and tequila by 8pm. So Alma slept on Isaac’s sofa and both of them were woken at sunrise because snow had fallen overnight onto the mountains, which were in reality dormant volcanoes. So much snow that his family was taking the van up, but they had to go now and did Alma want to come? 

She and Isaac followed the van in a truck he borrowed from a cousin. The drive up the mountain towards the observatory takes a few hours in clear weather. When the greenery stops and the terrain turns Martian is when the cold settles in. At first, it’s a wet and foggy kind of cold as the moisture condenses, but then it’s a clear eyed and blue skied cold. She hadn’t brought sunscreen; someone lent her a pair of sunglasses. They got breakfast at a gas station along the way. 

Snow, thick white blankets of it, covered the summit, a white mound against a wall of blue. Cars and trucks and vans pulled up, they all had the same idea. They ran up the slopes and slid back down on boogie boards. They scooped up buckets of snow and packed it into the back of the flatbed truck. Isaac drove them back down and they made a pit stop at Walmart. In the parking lot they stood together in the wavering light of the darkening sky, the shockingly damp, warm low-lying air, staring at the pile of snow, at the people with shopping carts around them.

Isaac was the first to throw a snowball. He aimed it at her but she was good at dodging flying objects at home by then, so it hit a shopping cart instead. They hit parked cars and moving cars, shoppers ran for cover. It was a race to throw it all before it melted and the evidence of this ever happening would be gone forever. She still wasn’t sure if it was just her imagination or if she really did see Maria and her mom in one of the cars that dodged their rampage.

The Alien Kind 

Three years later, she wove between those same mountains and she knew it would be the last time she saw them for a while. The Saddle Road, connecting the windward and the leeward sides of the island. She was with Isaac again, in a car, but also Maria. They’d all gotten up early that day, piled into his SUV and wound along the rope of asphalt laid between two towering mountains, watching the scenery change from wet jungle to misty ferns, to hazy volcanic rock, ranching prairies with horses and cowboys, barren valleys with cacti and dry brush and Bougainvillea and views of the blue sea and glittering pale sand. 

It took them four hours to get from one side to the other. They set up camp near the beach, a more private encampment at the end of a twenty minute walk amongst the trees, and changed into their swimsuits. The beaches on this side of the island were the ones you saw on post cards, white and glittery, turquoise water, catering to the tourist’s fever dreams of tropical escapism.

The girls tread carefully around each other, pretending to forget the two years of erased friendship. At some point, Alma had become worthy of friendship again, was somehow no longer a social reject. Not without reluctance, Alma had said Yes, okay, let’s try again. Let’s both try and be better. This was buried history to Isaac, who’d never kept up much with school happenings. Between freshman and senior year, few people seemed to have remembered that Alma and Maria knew each other, never mind that they’d had a best friendship, had been family. 

They walked in search of a path now. There was almost one around that tree, the light speckled forest floor still as ever, undisturbed by footprints. It was familiar through the slender, lanking, flesh-brown trees. They’d left the beach in search of bottled water while Isaac surfed but they’d lost the way back. Neither of them had paid enough attention on the walk over from the car the first time through, hours ago.

“How long since we left the beach?” Alma  asked, breaking the silence. Maria checked her watch.

“Forty minutes?”

“That seems too long to me. We should have seen a marker by now.”

“I don’t think so. I think we’re fine,” Maria told her. She said it so convincingly she almost believed her. Alma took out the Swiss Army knife she’d gotten when she’d been in the Girl Scouts and made a notch in one of the trees. It was almost startling to see no blood running from it, looking so much like a leg rooted in the earth. 

“Stop torturing trees.”

“I’m making sure we’re not walking in circles.”

“How can we? It’s a shoreline?”

“I’m just trying to be helpful.”

Sweat ran down both their necks, playing with their hair and swimsuits.

“You don’t trust me,” Maria said.

There was no sound but their footsteps, some sparse and rock perched, others wet and muted by mud. The exuberant flapping of bird wings in the canopy and the sky above it all, free of the tangles of nature, was still a faded blue. The sun was beginning to dip.

The shoulder strap of her canvas bag dug into her more and more every step. One leg seemed to take the trail harder than the other. She looked closely at the ground, the dead leaves and rotten fruits, the shrub and tree roots, the stagnant water. Finally, they see the beach again, the right one. Isaac took his sunglasses off when they returned, but didn’t ask them where they’d gone, just said “We need to get going soon, my mom doesn’t want me driving too late at night.”

They were in that sweet spot, that alien volcanic gulf between the two mountains where vegetation was sparse and the clouds hung low and you couldn’t even see very far even though the sun had yet to set, when the car broke down. Isaac pulled over onto the shoulder and did all manner of things one should do, like looking under the hood and checking the battery before they realised they forgot to get gas for the return trip.

As soon as the remnants of day dipped behind the shroud of mountain and cloud the temperature also dropped and wind buffeted the car. Whenever one of them stepped outside in their damp beach clothes they shivered and laughed at their own stupidity. Otherwise they would panic because the reception out here was horrible. 

Isaac could have called one of his many cousins to come and bring them a jug of gasoline, but he knew they’d never let him live it down and that it would still involve hours and hours of waiting in the cold and dark. Instead, he called a towing service and nevertheless they waited for hours and hours, listening to static and the occasional Western that lurched in from cattle country. Three cars had stopped to ask them if they needed a jump start and they had to inform all of them that no, what they needed was gas.

It was the dark of a moonless and starless and carless night when the tow truck finally arrived, like some diving vessel in the deep sea clearing through the dense water. A middle-aged white guy with a pony tail and a baseball cap, just like her dad without the beard and glasses. They filled up the tank and the SUV came back to life, but maybe too much life, because it instantly overheated. He rigged the SUV up to his own car while the three of them watched and shivered, cloaked in salty beach towels.

There was about enough space for them to all fit in the front seat of the truck beside the ponytailed man, though somehow Alma ended up being the one next to him. She wasn’t worried about him doing any funny business because he was clearly outnumbered. What she hadn’t expected was aliens. 

“My brother, he worked for the Air Force, top secret stuff,” it went. “Seen plans and blueprints for craft designs that are so advanced there’s no way they came from earth,” and so on. “Reverse engineering ‘em.”

“That’s very cool,” she said. “Crazy,” and “Wow.”

This pleased him, her interest. The conversation went on like that for two hours while Isaac and Maria murmured interest, chuckled and dosed. And when they’d finally arrived back in town and the hydraulics lowered the SUV into Isaac’s driveway for one of his relatives to pick through when the sun rose, the ponytailed man dug into a pocket of his overalls and handed her a rock. 

“Here, you keep this. It’s special, I got a few of ‘em.”

“What is it?”

“Alien rock.”

“Yeah?”

In the sodium yellow of the street light it looked like a small chunk of dusty and fine grained volcanic rock. “Where did it come from?”

“Found it in the lava fields in a crater, a whole bunch of it, like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“It came from the sky you think?”

“Where else?”

“Thanks man.”

“You kids stay safe now.”

The next day, while Isaac and Maria slept in the living room, Alma looked at the rock, holding it up to the morning light. It was something that looked like nothing else, not the pahoehoe, smooth and black or the ʻaʻā, chunky and red. Not even Pele’s tears or Pele’s hair. It was fragile and rainbow like a dusty oil slick, but when she handled it, a fine powder glittered on her fingers. 

Then she looked at her friends, still sleeping. Isaac and Maria would both be going to a local university in a month. It wasn’t so long ago that Alma had begun mourning this new loss. In a month she would be in a big city on the mainland, half an ocean away. She was the one doing the abandoning, wondering what her life would be like, if she’d make any friends, if she’d survive. A day like yesterday and today almost made her want to stay, to call the whole thing off. Almost. 

She looked at the rock. How far had it travelled to get here? Lightyears? Or had it been churned from somewhere deep beneath her feet? If it had, she would not be able to bring it with her. It was forbidden. She placed it on the table beside her sleeping friends and walked out the door.

Anna is a London based filmmaker and artist, currently working towards her masters in Visual Anthropology. From growing up in Hawai’i to settling in Europe she uses her lived experiences to tell stories. This is her first published piece of creative writing.