SUMMONS by Jess Smith
I used to call boys
after my parents
passed out,
my lethal friend Meredith
daring me
to phone Patrick or Michael
and ask what they were wearing.
One boy, Joey,
played piano
for me, for hours,
while I lay with the phone tucked
like a pillow
against my red-hot ear.
I called my mother from college
nightly to try and detect
how drunk she might be,
whether or not she loved me
more from longing.
One blizzard, she let me
watch When a Stranger Calls, the sick
moment when the police at last
call Carol Kane back,
cry the call is coming
from inside the house.
Ted Kennedy called
Mary Jo Kopechne
baby and sugar lips, likely
the same names he used
on his wife because
bad love is always
lazy. That night,
the police stayed
uncalled. I’ve called
the police
twice: once when I saw
a drunk I thought was dead
on 14th Street, once from the floor
of a seaside B&B
after you’d held your boot
so hard against my throat the tread
left behind its diamonds. The cops
could’ve dusted my neck
like dirt. When you
called me from
the seaside jail, you said baby
they’re recording us
which I much later understood
as a plea
not to incriminate you further.
I can’t remember
what I did say
instead, I can’t remember
how I responded
when either dispatcher
asked flatly what
is your emergency. On TV,
in these recordings,
the caller is always
upset. When Watson
answered the first phone call,
Bell didn’t celebrate,
instead he beckoned
his friend, said come here I need you.
- Published in Issue 13, Uncategorized
THINGS THAT FOLD by Karisma Price
~after Jamaal May
My father’s voice after the cancer
has spread. A flip phone. A flag.
George Bush’s hands, as he pauses
his vacation briefly for thoughts and prayers.
My body next to the potted plant
after my father throws the wooden chair.
A cheaply made chair. A small stack
of clothes. A birthday card.
Milvirtha Hendricks under the American
flag 5 days after Hurricane Katrina.
Her face from the crease
made in her
obituary photo as we use
the newspaper to eat crawfish.
The wrinkles in her forehead.
Floodwater passing
through a broken levee.
My uncle’s hands
retaping the attic windows
after the flood water rises.
My cousins sleeping
in the attic because
no neighbor has a rescue boat.
Black people in distress.
They lay prostrate and call it
prayer. The blankets on my cousins’
shoulders days later, when rescued.
The National Guard’s smile as he carries
the neighbor’s dog from the flooded
living room. The dog’s body around
his neck,
an upside down flag.
- Published in Issue 13, Uncategorized
THREE POEMS by Jessica Hincapie
ON THE ONE HAND, IN THE OTHER
Sometimes when you are born from an abundance of love
you, yourself, do not know the proper ways in which to love.
Your house guests are always at odds with your house ghosts.
The stairwell constantly littered with tin cans and lynched cats.
Obvious death threats, but from the guests or the ghosts
you have yet to determine. Soon the people in your life
will become too real to write about. Making poetry a suitable
space only for your strangers. The woman at the cemetery
missed by seconds, whose lipstick kisses are still fresh
on the marble stone next to your grandfather’s. The girl
met in group therapy whose dealer, named Temple, blesses every
batch of shrooms he sells. You’ve folded these phantoms into
talismans, time and time again. Still, each year presents itself
like a small tight coin. A fountain of fish you’ve mistaken for silver.
Here is the beautiful lie: there is nothing ugly about surviving.
This life will ask you more than once to make the choice
between starfish or worm. One animal growing
back what was lost, the other learning to live without.
NATURAL DISASTER
Seconds before the storm, and all
that’s left outside are the horses
tied to their posts. When the floods
recede will we line up the dead
in neat rows, the way we did
in Ypres? The last children
are leaving their homes now.
Soon only loose fur, aglets without
laces, shores of nothing more
than the dismantled spines
of jellyfish. Riddance swelling
among the barren fruit flies, their
kingdom of peels and pits.
The girls will swat, no use. Pierce
their tongues instead. Their fathers
well toward retiring now, if only
those jack asses in office. It is
now legal to hunt boar by hot air
balloon so it should reason we too
were once abused animals
scratching at doors while
water rose over us. Haven’t
we all hid from the rainbow
giant in the sky who wants us
dead by rifle. Who’s to say
any one of us hasn’t already died,
isn’t right now covered
by white linens, puddles of Stallions
with the whole weight of ourselves
piled atop our own limbs, leaving
cracks in the metal soles. It is natural
for disasters to beget more disaster.
If you haven’t already, set fire
to something while it’s raining.
The juxtaposition will feel
like an orgasm followed by a small
god, as you watch the flames meet
each drop. Not sure, when you inhale
if you are breathing in smoke or steam.
SANS DARK
True, it’s always difficult to have a body. But think of all
the nice things we can wear. That yeast can develop
in the mouth, is no reason to stop inching ourselves
away from death. Toward fancy tailored suits. Mints
on the pillow. No need to be anything but, the comedian
at the fashion show, if you can’t say anything nice, say
“I’m not convinced you exist. But there’s a lovely
fragrance in the air.” So what you can’t give blood
because of mad cow, you don’t even have it. Just exposed
once. The mad came close, you took a tennis racket
to its face. Country-club-finest. How about a real world
example of pain that doesn’t belong to you? How about
the depth of a lake unmoved by the presence of stones? Ample
evidence suggests that nothing sans dark can do
good. Gandhi would sleep naked side by side his niece.
A test of temptation. He never was, tempted.
You wonder about the girl. Was she able to sleep any
of those nights? All your bruises happen without you noticing.
If your spouse kills you, do the caretakers know better
than to bury you in your wedding ring? This doesn’t apply
to your bruises specifically, but you feel it should still be asked.
Back in the body, they are cleaning the church bells.
How else to sound the angels, how else to prepare fear
for a feast? Chiffon on every guest, iced over every cake.
More than once, your throat has become a funhouse
tunnel where the ground stays still but the walls spin
and spin. This too will pass. You wonder about the girl.
Never mind the girl. She doesn’t belong to you.
- Published in Issue 13, Uncategorized
THREE POEMS by Alyssa Beckitt
ME TOO
I’ve crawled in the deep
grooves of man’s thumbprint –
My crescent roll smile peaking
up over their canyon begging
to be devoured. Be nice
Mama said, be welcoming –
His hand up my skirt,
he wore me
like a secret trophy
behind the glass case
of his pupils. I scrape
my remains into a velvet abyss
of another plane to exist,
to hide from how he grabbed me
too, how men imprint on all of us
invisible ink –
A finger here, a thumb between
our lips, whole hands
over our whole face. Pull out
the black light and watch
our bodies glow. We are the sea
of fireflies you ignore by day
but when we float in the heavy night air
you grab your mason jar, scoop up our light,
close the lid, and screw it on tight.
ON BEING EMPTY
I am a cicada husk clinging
crisp & dry & stuck
in his bed,
his heaving chest
on my back –
A silhouette of a body
with meat inside. My pumping
pulse must find a new skin to reside
in. Between finger and thumb
I am weightless. I am the lack
of friction found in still legs,
void of desire I crumble
in his palm, my chirp in the night
chorus is over,
the song of my limbs
a cadence for the coming light –
I am the moment you miss
when you blink. I am silent.
I watch him escape.
TAKEN
No can’t you hear
Me No
I can hear your brothers in the hall
tennis shoes on linoleum
your tongue a pillow
Suffocating me now
No I was waiting the water
stain on your ceiling is a
mushroom cloud I dive in to
and you’re out of me and pulling my straps
up after you tell me
I can go now
bare feet on linoleum
- Published in Issue 13, Uncategorized
LAUGHTER IS CLOSE by David Rivard
Laughter is close, even if it’s
just the schadenfreude
of middle-school girls,
their juicy, eye-rolling, malicious
glee flying
down the street (like a tiny pink slug
in a pigeon’s beak), hotting up
the air—why pretend
you can’t hear? Laughter,
the only eternity
that’s real. Laughter
and its toothy
lift off, even
when toxic. “Save me”
is what’s written
on the faces of so many
passing strangers,
“save me” & “fuck you.”
So the ancient Tibetan masters
teach, focused as they are
both by the attar of sage burning
and the wailing of toddlers
by a septic tank—
a thousand years dead,
these teachers,
but still dreaming
they’re fast asleep
in their boyhood beds.
- Published in Issue 13, Uncategorized
AMERICAN LOVE SONG: OMAHA NEBRASKA by Brionne Janae
~for Will Brown
because you were beautiful and black with lips like pin cushions
and just as soft because you were made to be pierced
to be torn apart to be a mooring for desire and how else
could I touch you could I unwrap your figure pull the meat
from parchment how else could I devour
christ how could I help but love and want you
want you begging at my feet want you bound splayed for pleasure
who wouldn’t want to pleasure you and if not pleasure
then provoke and if not provoke then to watch you writhe
watch you dance at the stake my wanton messiah my sweet
and tender love how could I look on the curve of your neck
the muscles’ ripple the veins’ throb beneath the skin
without itching for the noose and because I wanted
to be near you and the world demanded I give in return
and because I couldn’t give you joy and it’d hurt too much to give you peace
and because all I had for you was a wound a love mark dark
as the valleys of the moon and because who wouldn’t give anything
to be near you to watch the sweat gather and glisten like diamonds
to study the pink of your gums as you cry out for mercy
to watch you swell and open to bathe in the heat radiating from your bones
like the halo of a long suffering saint how could I not breathe
you in your flesh fast becoming incense becoming a thick holy smoke
how could I not pass across your form almost daring
to lean down to kiss
- Published in Issue 13, Uncategorized
TWO POEMS by Kerrin McCadden
HOMING
The sky is at the feeder again.
I mean the indigo bunting
with no bearings for home.
A man pulls into the driveway
after work—crunching stones,
hallooing up the stairs—
wanting to know about my day.
All the days are wranglers,
I say. I am not able to cite
my sources, but I make a list.
A woman at lunch said we do not
plan to live two hundred years,
and so I think to tell him
—well, I do not plan to live
two hundred years! In my hands,
pillowcases I bought, embroidery
floss. Everywhere I go I think
about what is impossible.
Can homing pigeons carry
their nth letter and still get lost?
My job is to build a home,
I tell this man I have already built
a home with. My job is to do
something with my hands.
LATE WINTER
In a handful of seasons,
water and cold dirt
- Published in Issue 13, Uncategorized
TWO POEMS by Kyle Dargan
BEAUTY
Miss Iraq, the first crowned
in forty years of foreign meddling,
means it when she wishes for world peace—
her cousins’ deaths
both tallied by sectarian violence in her
war-quilted, war-torn nation.
She is aware
the pageantry— pinup smiles and stiff,
cupped hands (their rotational gesture)
—will not beckon peace. Salvation
may have functioned
such ways in old, dog-eared eras. There’s evidence:
all our parched frescos or pocked statues
depicting one or another stoic god,
its crimped hand raised,
signaling for peace like a captain calling a play.
Run peace, they might have said,
or run samsara or run godhead
if peace is too transparent a trick
name for an offensive set. In Saddam City,
today, broken men train to play
the beautiful game, to execute levity
with their feet. Under Hussein’s boot,
losses on the pitch often translated
into torture—forty degrees Celsius
sessions training to kick molded concrete
futbols or hours
spent begging deliverance from within
an iron maiden’s spiked void. Those years
we call “the dark era”—when Saddam’s son,
Mr. Uday, was the face
of Iraq’s Olympic committee,
before he would become the ace of hearts
in the most-wanted card decks
coalition troops carried in their fatigues.
“Clearly recognisable” —how the Guardian
would describe Uday
Hussein in U.S.-released glamour shots—
“despite having a thick beard
and a wound that had destroyed
part of his nose and upper lip.”
On this side
of that suffering, five years since
Iraqi Freedom’s end,
Ms. Qasim will wear the red,
green and black sash,
and the U-23 team will play
for Olympic glory, despite the death
threats that may bloom into dying.
Authority’s lens abhors
beauty—its saturation in this world,
its disregard for the vacuums
men slaughter each other to create.
THE ECONOMY OF SWALLOWED KNIVES
I warn an auditorium full of children,
Do not try this at home. Then I begin
ingesting skewers. Unintentionally,
I enlist their youthful volition
into the war against waiting to grow up.
On the drive home, they pelt their parents
with salvos of Can I and Please, while fathers
being fathers, retort, When you’re grown,
paying your own bills for your own roof,
you’ll be free to live as foolhardily as your heart
desires. There: the moment of escalation—
suddenly their every waking hour becomes
a struggle to buy back their right to self-
destruction. Lemonade stands and lawn
mowing. Frozen meat pucks flipped
under sallowed arches, endless refolding
of denim. The children sprout acne and fuzz
as their piggy banks pudge. Their minds
have long since forgotten the death-defying
blade sleight that followed my disclaimer
years ago.
They are teenagers. Everywhere
something else shouts This could kill you,
and, achingly, they answer Yes. They can
taste it: tattoos, cigarettes and sex—
any form of flirting with mortality.
Beneath youth’s aegis, they believe
themselves mighty, no matter how poor,
but soon enough they are adults renting
efficiencies and driving jalopies—stretching
dimes for the privilege of being grown.
See how this economy needed no help
in tailoring their malaise. What next?
Heat assignments for the middle-class
scramble to obfuscate death.
Then kids of their own. Then the rest.
- Published in Issue 12, Poetry, Uncategorized
LEFTOVERS by Leslie Pietrzyk
My English teacher said yesterday there’s no gift that doesn’t come with chains. No one was listening because she’s always spouting stupid crap but she, right at that exact second, started giving me her sharp-eye and I wrote it down and she smiled this tight way that prickled me. I think she knows who my father is, how he’s exactly the third most powerful man in Washington, not according to anyone but according to the Constitution.
Now I type what she said into the phone, curious to see who said it before her, because maybe that will be worth knowing. “Gifts with” I type, which fills in to “gifts with whips” and there’s S&M and porn and if only I could text to someone who’d laugh. I want someone listed under “favorite,” someone a favorite for real.
The water’s off and steam fogs half the mirror so I don’t see my face, which is like victory because here’s the reason my bathroom’s the best room: it’s the Snapchat of the house, like, go here and poof, vaporize.
Obviously I get my teacher meant “metaphorical” chains so I type those words into Google. My dad who pays for it all meaning everything– bills, credit cards, groceries, birthday gifts–meaning he gets to escape living here with me—that man, he hates Siri, so even she’s not hanging around on the phone he bought me for my last birthday. What comes up for “metaphorical chains” is a gob of college papers for sale that sound extraordinarily stupid and boring and what, like are little kids somewhere going, “When I grow up, I wanna write papers that lazy college drunks buy for fifty bucks.”
I never find what I want on this stupid phone.
The mirror’s all the way fogged up now, top to bottom, and a wet haze bulks the air, and the counter’s slick with condensation. More science happening here than any class. I trace my one finger on the misty-white mirror glass, I write letters like I’m a kid, I print: HELP ME. I look hard enough and spot the identical ghost words already up there in the mirror, leftovers from before, a message right where my face should be.
- Published in Issue 12, Uncategorized
FRANCIE AND SAMANTHA by Janice Obuchowski
In her early 20s, she left the Midwest for Los Angeles, thereby startling her parents, who’d assumed that once her schooling was over she’d settle into her adult life as a schoolteacher in Indiana, find a husband, and raise some children.
But her time at the University of Michigan had broadened her sense of life’s potential. She’d met people from all over the country. Her roommate, for one, hailed from exotic Long Island. Francie had dark hair and a strong accent. She came to college knowing everything—Samantha realized on the spot—she herself wanted to know. How do you look good in tight jeans? How do you wear dark lipstick? How do you talk to guys in bars and not seem shy? How do you drink but not get drunk?
Francie made Samantha a pet project without making her a pet. Lazing on her bed before they went out, she’d offer advice: tight jeans, yes—especially with Samantha’s slender figure—but stand up straight and wear a heel. Samantha was too fair for dark lipstick, but creamy apricots on her eyelids and cheeks would bring out what Francie called her “corn coloring.” Blonde hair, milky skin, small pink lips. Later, while holding gin and tonics, there was more to discuss. The trick with drinking was to sip slowly but always have the straw near your lips so you appeared to be drinking more. The trick with men was for them to see the straw near your lips. “Suggestive,” Francie said, “without being crude.”
Francie had lots of tricks for persuading men, but here’s where Sam stalled, grew shy. She settled for a farm boy from northern Michigan, and while Lester was sweet, he was also shy and overly deferential. Samantha felt they were little more than companions given that their main activities were studying and watching movies. Sex was tepid and slow to happen and she thought how people made such fuss over nothing. But Francie, who remained her roommate all four years, had an array of men who came into her bedroom and Samantha could hear them together, dark and rugged and filled with sweat, which was nothing she could fully imagine.
Francie’s breakups were also tumultuous affairs. Sam would return to their apartment to find Francie prone on the living room couch, staring at the ceiling with red puffy eyes. Cyrus Bailey had made out with Sarah Park at the homecoming tailgate. George Atkinson had forgotten her birthday and, when told he had, had shrugged and suggested he buy her a make-up beer. Sam would bring Francie popsicles or ice-cream bars as she recounted her woes—something sweet and cool to temper all that heat.
Lester proposed right before graduation. He and Sam were on the couch, a bowl of popcorn between them. She was highlighting important passages in her child psychology textbook when Lester got up only to drop to one knee, his brow sweating as he held out the open ring box. She was so surprised she kicked out her leg, knocking the bowl of popcorn off the couch, where it landed a flutter of salted kernels all over the rug.
“Lester!” He still held out the ring beseechingly, but now surrounded by popcorn, he’d turned a mottled red. “Lester!” She began laughing, unable to stop, and pointed at the popcorn.
“Will you marry me?” His knee had begun to tremble.
“Less, I don’t think this is right for us. We’re so young, and we have our entire lives ahead—”
“OK.” He stood, shutting the ring box with a velvet-lined thump, shoving it in his pocket. Walking backwards, he crushed popcorn kernels with his shoes. “Alright.”
Hearing about this, Francie laughed until she cried. “Oh, thank God! Sam, dear heart, I’ve always said that boy is all wrong for you.” She started giggling afresh. “I love that you spilled the popcorn.”
Samantha had mainly felt shame: to have been so long with someone she didn’t love.
Graduation came. Francie decided to move to Los Angeles to try her hand at screenwriting. Samantha moved back home. She was still in shock from her breakup, and returning from whence she came was her parents’ hope anyway, so nothing felt out of place.
Her hometown in southern Indiana had a population of 10,000. She got a job at her old elementary school, moving into a small apartment a few miles from her parents. Every Sunday night she had dinner with them and they gave her good-hearted grief about breaking up with Lester (she never told anyone but Francie about the proposal) and said it was time she found herself a robust Indiana farmer.
Teaching 6th graders is only so preoccupying when you feel trapped in your own life. The cornfields—which she’d always thought of as luxuriating in the wind, rippling in raw, pleasurable ways—now seemed tedious.
She wrote to Francie, saying she was bored. Francie sent her a postcard of the Hollywood sign, white in muted green hills: “Come out here! There are pink buildings and movie stars and lots and lots of ocean!”
An October afternoon Sam emerged from school, walking across the parking lot. Wind cast maple leaves along the asphalt, twisting them into small, fitful tornadoes. Her life would contain only churlish 11-year olds, dead leaves, leaden skies, and unrelenting cornfields. But there was time yet for something fresh. She was just 23. That night she called Francie, asking her if she wanted a roommate.
Francie was delighted. Sam’s parents were horrified. “L.A.?” they asked as if she’d announced a new life of hedonism and crime.
“Yes,” she said at the dinner table. Heavily vexed, they passed the bread basket.
Her certainty her decision was correct collapsed almost as fast as it had erected itself. She watched patches of green and brown land grow fainter and fainter. There went her life, which she’d abandoned for no good reason.
The drive from LAX: the neon, the bright store fronts, the pollution-suffused night sky. Francie was driving them to Santa Monica, where she lived. Where Sam would live now, too.
Francie announced that she’d found a job as a marketing assistant at company in Venice, and that she’d finagled Sam a position. “How’d you manage that?” Sam asked. By then, they were in the tiny apartment, a celebratory bottle of wine before them on the coffee table. Marketing. She’d been thinking of getting a job as a teacher, of course.
“I’m sleeping with the boss.” Francie clinked her glass with Sam’s. “Cheers.”
The sky was hot blue, and the streets had palms. Some neighborhoods were spacious, composed: mansions pale cream and white. Smog hung like dirty wool in the sky. On certain blocks the store windows had iron bars over them. On others, stores with two-story high windows shimmered as they displayed crocodile purses and fabulous dresses, sequins and silk. There were gangs; there was Rodeo Drive.
They worked a little ways from the ocean—close to the Santa Monica Pier, with its Ferris wheel and seedy carnival vibe—in an industrial office all shades of steel and slate. She sat in a cubicle, dreaming up marketing schemes. After work, they went as an office to dimly lit places with polished floors and sipped drinks mixed with egg whites and basil and peach. People displayed a glamour borne of correct clothes and constant nonchalance. If Samantha hadn’t had Francie to act as cultural ambassador, she might have turned around and gone right back to Indiana.
One day a few months in, Francie said, “We don’t even have a Lester for you.” She was still thickly involved in her affair—the boss, it turned out, was married—and unfazed by its intimations of despair. “It’s not like Joe is really married,” had been her explanation. “He’s on the cusp of getting a divorce. And he’s only 33.”
There is a wife, Samantha wanted to say. She exists. And why be part of something that could crush another? But during the week, Joe was professional. And on weekends, he’d come over and look at Francie with such happy eager eyes. Sometimes they’d head to the Santa Monica farmers’ market and return with bags of carrots, baskets of cherry tomatoes, small bundles of dill and thyme. Or, they’d sit listening to music, Francie’s head against Joe’s shoulder. Perhaps, Sam thought, there was love between them. And maybe that justified it. Of course, Francie knew when he’d arrive—he claimed he was playing golf these weekend mornings—but never how long he’d stay. It was just temporary, she told Sam—just until Joe got things sorted out.
Perhaps having to let his life—and its dicey parameters—dictate hers was wearing on her. It might explain her newly fierce need to find Sam a boyfriend.
“Let’s ask out Chris,” Francie said. “For you.”
“I’m not ready,” Sam said.
Francie threw a pillow at her. “Enough. Lester was the biggest nobody ever. I’ll make sure Chris is sitting next to you when we get drinks on Friday.”
In Samantha’s defense: most of her energy had been spent acclimating to this sprawled metropolis frenzied with freeways. Once, trying to get across the city to a restaurant in Los Feliz, she missed her exit, and when she finally did pull off, ending up in some shady section of downtown, near Union Station, where yellow billboards offered the services of bonds bailsmen, she shook with frustration. She wanted to be where a Main Street was at the center of things, where roads only fattened to two lanes. Where cornfields—forget tedium—signified the ease of open space. Where the sky was not hazy with dirt.
That which also took getting used to: urbanity and beauty. One Sunday afternoon Francie took Samantha the Getty, and she decided that if the universe had conceived of itself in miniature it would’ve orchestrated itself thus: high on a hill, with tangles of fuchsia bougainvillea surrounding white marble. Gardens with lily ponds, slim green disks and liquid white blossoms.
If she had a lot to contend with, it was for her own betterment, and she had Francie to thank for that. So when Friday came, she sat near Chris, smiling and letting her eyes linger on his. Even though he came from foggy San Francisco, he had a beach bum’s tawny coloring—dark blonde hair, gold skin. He wore tortoise-shell glasses and seemed, for all he talked about being a double major at Berkeley in political science and math—quiet. She told him about studying child psychology, her childhood in Indiana, and felt he perceived her shyness not as naivety, but as a slow approach to knowing another. Oh, she liked him! What luck that Francie, in her schemings, had decided upon a delightful man.
Francie, pretending to flirt with an accountant, glanced over—no knowingness, no winks. She’d not botch it by being obvious. Moreover, all-around neutrality was required: Joe’s wife, who rarely showed up these Friday evenings, was tonight exercising her right to be beautiful and charming by her husband’s side. Silver chopsticks pinning back her hair glinted as she leaned forward to listen to a VP regaling her with some raucous story. She struck Samantha as regal. Joe didn’t display eager affection toward her as he did Francie, but his arm around her was proprietary: she was his. Or they were each other’s.
The accountant started twirling his hands as if mimicking a helicopter and Francie clapped a hand over her mouth, giggling. The VP lifted his beer in toast, Joe and his wife clinking glasses with him. Did she wonder at her husband’s continual absences? Joe ignored Francie, who ignored him in return. And Sam displayed a boldness not her own but appropriated on orders from her college roommate. Around them, shining glasses, flushed cheeks, erupting laughter: a moment suffused with charm and deceit. Perhaps this, then, was the origin of sophistication: you learned to be good at being false.
As the evening waned, Chris asked Sam if she’d like to get drinks at some point, and she said she’d love to. Already she realized longing was rising diffuse and heady in her.
After waving goodnight to the crowd outside the bar, she and Francie walked back to Francie’s car. “You were right,” Samantha said as they passed a food truck scenting the air with the sweetness of frying peppers. “About Chris. I like him, Francie. We’re going to go get drinks next week.”
“That’s great.” But she walked hunched. They turned the corner for the parking garage, taking the elevator up.
“You’re upset his wife was there?”
“His wife is pregnant, three months along.” The elevator doors opened, and they walked to the car, Sam waiting for the outburst sure to come.
As Francie fed a ticket into a yellow machine, she said, “she ordered a glass of wine, but didn’t touch it. Very savvy of her, calling less attention to herself than if she’d not ordered a drink. He told me after work they’re going to announce it soon and felt I had a right to know.”
“That’s bullshit. Didn’t you have a right to know three months ago?”
“I have no rights. I’m just the young thing he’s having an affair with.”
Sam was sure, as they pulled into their apartment complex and went upstairs, that Francie would cry. But she just went to her room, Sam following and lingering in her doorframe.
“Let me go get some ice cream.”
Francie shook her head. “He betrayed her, now he’s betrayed me. I was wrong to get involved with him. With so much wrongness?” She shrugged, hanging her coat in her closet. She came to Samantha, running her hand down her arm as if Samantha were the one needing comfort, then closed her door.
Samantha and Chris went to the Hollywood Bowl to see a concert and be among thousands. Marvelous to be in such a crowd. And afterwards, she’d gone to his place. Marvelous, then, it was just them.
“Details!” Francie demanded later that evening. It was midnight and Francie lounged on the couch in a pink bathrobe, her toenails gleaming a fresh crimson. She did not appear to have been crying. For over a week now, Samantha had been waiting for that fitful burst of catharsis that would let her friend begin fresh.
Sam felt the nervousness that comes from watching someone close be inscrutable. Plus, to proclaim happiness in front of someone so bruised was bad form. Chris and she had sat on his couch holding tumblers of gin and tonics neither of them drank. Dim lamplight made the glasses shine, the tonic fizzing and bright, the lime wedges at the rim brightly acidic. Beyond the lamplight, Chris’ apartment dissolved into dark, a thick languor, and finally he put down his drink and put out his hand. She leaned in, his cologne smelling of forests. A slow kiss, which was like melting. Not wanting to trivialize it, she answered, “It was the best.”
“Bah.” Francie pretended to wave her away. “You and your circumspection. It’s all on your face, anyway.”
“We’re going to see each other again after I get back.” Sam’s father’s birthday was the following week, and he’d requested his daughter come home for a few days.
“Off to the land of milk and honey,” Francie said. “You shouldn’t leave me alone to my own devices.”
Sam sat next to her on the couch, lay her head against her friend’s shoulder. “In no time,” she said, “you’ll be out there again breaking hearts.”
In the airport, she ran into her parents’ hugs. But on the drive home the landscape seemed blurred. Seeing the muted blue sky marbled with clouds made her consider the dirty cerulean shimmer of LA at noon. Returning to her family’s elm-lined street, the old gray branches towering above rooftops, intricately sagging arms just budded with green, she thought of the jasmine in her new neighborhood, waxy dark bushes thick with white flowers that opened at night, perfuming the streets.
Her parents ushered her into the kitchen, and they shared molasses cookies her mother had made that morning. They brimmed with questions, which she answered carefully. Verboten to discuss Venice as a pastel circus steeped in patchouli and grit, sometimes even crime. She’d seen along the backs of buildings seedy, huddled men in thin windbreakers, which she later asked her colleagues about. Drug deals, they told her, glad to be matter-of-fact to her scandalized. She also diminished the existence of pretensions: art galleries hanging splattered canvases, overpriced eateries dousing everything with truffle oil. The same went with her job: she liked working on projects, she told them—being among people her own age or older was a pleasure. She didn’t speak of Joe because she wasn’t sure she could keep judgment out of her voice. All these semi-narrations, these just-about truths: lately, she’d been thinking of this kind of obfuscation as adult, the correct means of handling the world.
But given that her new life bewildered them, they were looking for more than a superficial understanding of it. They even took what was for them a bold step: gentle criticism. Her father broke his cookie into careful bits, already regretful over what he was about to say: they were concerned she’d forsaken teaching.
Oh, no, she didn’t think she had; she was just exploring something new. “I have time,” she told them, “to figure it out.” Her mother pursed her lips.
“I’ve just been on a wonderful date.” Samantha realized she was trying to reassure them. People their age didn’t flit about the country, they didn’t test out careers, they didn’t break up with their college sweethearts. She told them about Chris’ double major at Berkeley, his good looks, his quiet charm, and less cookies got crumbled.
The week passed pleasantly. She went shopping with her mother, saying hello to everyone they met at the grocery store, nodding while they exclaimed, “California!” She helped her mother prepare her father’s enormous birthday meal—turnips and roasted squash, a baked ham—and to finish a three-tired chocolate cake with white icing. She also fantasized about the things she and Chris would do together once she returned. He’d mentioned being a soccer fan and she thought they could go to a Galaxy game together. She wanted to suggest a sushi place off LaBrea that was delicious and cheap. She imagined if that kiss had gone further and then further still, and something brewed in her, steeping like tea, turning her warm and dark. Also, she worried about Francie, who’d been quiet over email, not keeping up with her usual bright patter.
When Francie picked her up, this time—while not jolted by cityscape, not shocked by back-lit palm fronds and midnight traffic—she still felt home’s pull. The delicate Indiana spring, the dissolving pockets of snow, the front-yard daffodils just emerging made Los Angeles a phantom of itself. Change was not some clean sweep. Even when you wanted it, it left you muddled.
“Time with the old folks was wholesome and good?” Francie asked.
“It was.” Sam sighed, watching traffic hurtle past in the gray dark, finding some elation in the speed and clamor. “We ate molasses cookies. How was your week?”
“Fine.”
“Downtime was good?”
“Everything is fine. I’ve gotten my mind off Joe, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“There’s no need to be defensive,” Sam said. “I’m just concerned.”
Samantha, tired and not wanting to push Francie’s bad mood any further, pretended to doze the rest of the way.
The week began as a mildly jet-lagged blur, as if she were watching everything through glass. Joe maintained equanimity. Francie was cheerful with everyone. Chris was timid around her—smiling when she came past but looking at her with disengaged eyes. She had to quell the impulse to step backwards. That kiss? The smell of limes? But maybe he was just establishing a proper work dynamic. Not wanting to seem overly concerned, she decided not to bring up their next date until Friday after work, when everyone would congregate for drinks.
She wished she could ask Francie for advice—but to burden her friend with relationship anxiety would be selfish. Plus, Francie continued to be surly. The last few nights they’d watched movies together in silence, after which Francie would retreat to her room. Was this how Francie’s unhappiness manifested if left to fester? Samantha felt punished.
Everything funneled down to Friday night. She’d ask out Chris, reestablishing what they’d begun. And she’d coax Francie into doing something fun—maybe a return trip to the Getty—which would help resurrect their natural dynamic.
Returning from the bar with her gin and tonic—a symbolic nod, she hoped, to them both—she sat at the long table’s end, taking a small sip through her straw, which she then let linger too long near her lips to see if Francie would laugh. Francie sat to her right, Chris to her left. Each talked to the person one over from them. The accountant was at Francie’s side again, and she indulged him with her laughter. The receptionist sat near Chris, a thin redhead with a diamond nose stud, the tattoo of an owl on her wrist that she was explaining she’d got done at Sunset Strip Tattoos in Hollywood. Samantha wished that Chris didn’t lean in to her as she talked.
She sipped her drink—faster than she should’ve, unhappy to be so close to the glamorous fray and yet not part of it. She ran her finger along her glass’ rim. “How’d you choose that tattoo parlor?” she asked and both Chris and the receptionist raised their heads in her direction. She’d heard her mother in the question: slightly off topic, a few steps behind.
“Well, it’s famous,” she said.
“Sure,” Samantha said, not knowing that.
But at least Chris looked her way. She smiled and he smiled back—but the wrong kind of smile, without promise. And then he said, “Hey, Francie.” She looked over. “Would you pass me that napkin?”
Francie reached for the cocktail napkin and handing it to him—just for an instant—she screwed up her face, her lips tight, her eyes scrunched. Go away, that assembly of features said. Sam didn’t understand—the asking for the napkin, the exasperation—and then she did. She looked down, not wanting to stare at them so unabashedly, and saw under the table Chris’ foot rubbing the back of Francie’s calf, slow and languorous.
Her stomach dropped, her neck went cold. She’d been crushingly naïve.
“What’s wrong?” Francie said.
“Nothing.” She looked up, studying the ceiling.
“You sure?” The audacity of her concern. All eyes on her now.
“Excuse me,” Samantha said, getting up. She’d gotten to the small hallway, about to go into the bathroom, when Francie, who’d followed, put a hand on her shoulder. No fortitude at all in her. All she could think was how she wanted to go home.
“You slept with him.” She turned, feeling ridiculous and awful and so angry.
“So?” Francie’s face was stony.
“So? How could you, Francie?”
“It just happened.” A woman gave them a sidelong look and slipped into the bathroom.
“It did not! You went after him. And you knew I liked him!”
“I do not,” Francie said, flush to her cheeks, “know what the fuck I did that was so wrong. You went on one date with him, Sam. You weren’t exactly married.”
As if water were rising around her, a viscous cold swell. “Like that even matters to you!” Now she was crying, never the one to give in to histrionics.
Francie actually reached out and pulled Sam’s hair. “Stop it! Don’t you dare criticize me. You sit and wait for happiness to come to you. You liked him so much? Bullshit. You went out with him because I told you to. You joined this firm because I told you to. You came out here because I told you to.”
Sam was passive, yes—she wanted to lie on the floor right now, her hands over her ears. Water sucking her under and she wanted to go down. Still.
“Your self-absorption makes you cruel.”
“Fuck you! Grow up! Just go on some more dates and you’ll see this isn’t a big deal.”
Samantha walked away, Francie did not follow.
“You wish you were more like me!” Francie cried after her. “You always have!”
Chris was watching for them to come back, apprehension on his face. As she approached, he broke off the conversation he’d resumed with the receptionist.
“You can have her,” she whispered, tears at the bridge of her nose as she gathered her stuff. She couldn’t maintain any equilibrium, and everyone looking at her—Samantha that soft failure of a girl, that rube, that silly thing. The one who makes public scenes when everyone else stays cool.
Outside, the palms were fringed shadows, streetlights cast the sidewalks a dirty halogen orange. Everywhere storefront neon, the stink of grease. Couples passed her, teenagers in low jeans—a man in rags, who grinned, his teeth straight, beautiful. “Konnichiwa,” he called and gave a guttural laugh. A few pigeons pecked at a discarded hamburger bun, a muddled green shimmer to their extending necks. She could not think to go right or left, and then realized there were no cabs—never cabs in L.A. unless you called one ahead.
Sam scanned her phone for the names of taxi services. She should’ve known Francie would’ve done this. She’d seen this from her for years, she’d just never been a player in the scenes. A pigeon blinked its moist dull eyes her way, then fluttered into the street. She was who she was, too, she thought. But she didn’t know where that left her, or where she would go.
- Published in Issue 12, Uncategorized
JACONITA by Dylan Brie Ducey
Posey woke me up that first morning in Jaconita. She stood next to the bed in her underpants, clutching her princess nightgown in one hand and her Mother Goose blanket in the other.
“Mommy. It’s hot.”
I reached out and touched her round face. Warm. Too warm? I couldn’t think. We’d gotten in late last night and I was sleepy.
I looked around at the pink walls, the ceiling fan whirring overhead, the French doors that opened out onto a patio. On the wall hung a print of Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Oriental Poppies,” their petals red and orange, their centers deep purple. There was an O’Keeffe museum in Santa Fe and I wanted to go. I’d never been to New Mexico before and I wanted to see a kiva, I wanted to see everything.
“Where are Daddy and your sister?”
“Fleur is eating. Daddy is outside. Grandpa is grumpy. Grandpa got mad because I don’t have any clothes on.”
I felt a familiar thrum of anxiety. Fly eleven hundred miles to Albuquerque, rent a car, and drive an hour and a half in the pitch dark down unpaved roads, so that the child’s grandfather can get mad at her.
“Grandpa gets mad for no reason,” I told Posey. “You stay away from him, okay?” I got out of bed and she toddled after me into the bathroom, dragging her blanket. I was going to launch into an explanation of why Grandpa was so fucked-up, but thought better of it. She was only four.
When we came out of the bathroom there was Bernard in jeans and a black t-shirt. He was tossing the pillows off the bed. One by one they sailed and hit the floor with a thump.
“I lost my hat,” said Bernard. He reached under the covers and felt around for a moment, exclaiming “Aha” as he produced the offending red knit hat. Then with an air of triumph he placed the hat on his bald head.
This spectacle was for Posey’s amusement but she only gazed listlessly at the floor. Bernard looked at me for explanation.
“Fever,” I said. We had been married for six years and had mastered the shorthand required to deal with frequent child situations.
Bernard went to find the thermometer while I sat in a wing chair next to the French doors. I beckoned to Posey and she wilted into my lap. I thought I would melt from the heat of her. Her brown hair was damp. Her entire body was hot to the touch, as though the fever would consume her from the inside out.
Bernard knelt next to Posey and turned on the thermometer. He brought it to her ear, and in a moment we peered at the screen. It read 103.5.
I thought I must have read the numbers wrong. We had only just gotten to Jaconita. How could she be sick already?
“Well, look at that,” said Bernard. “You have a fever, little girl.” His voice was deep and soothing. It was a good voice for a father. You didn’t want the father of your child running around yelling hysterically when she had a fever. You wanted him calm, decisive.
I remembered something the pediatrician had told me. “Bernard, the fever is too high. Just Tylenol won’t bring it down. We have to give her Motrin, too.”
Bernard nodded. He disappeared into the bathroom and fumbled among the luggage. I sat there looking out the French doors and just then I saw Bernard’s father walk by. He was looking at the ground and muttering to himself. He had done the same thing at our own house in California just a few months ago: He paced up and down the sidewalk, around the backyard and the side yard. Sometimes he walked around the block, picking up trash off the street. He collected cans and bottles for recycling, too. He’d take a garbage bag with him, and only come back to the house when the bag was full. When he had amassed several of these bags he would drive to the giant recycling center in west Oakland and stand in line with the homeless and dispossessed, getting cash for his bottles and cans. I imagined that the other people in line looked more or less like him– unkempt, clothing dirty, shoes worn down at the sole – although his situation was completely different from theirs: He had a full bank account, investments, a paid-off house, and a veteran’s pension. I knew he found those dispossessed people contemptible, yet he was willing to stand among them for an hour or two. And when he came back to our house he would comment, pleased, that he’d made $50, sometimes as much as $75. He had been a child during the Great Depression, something that a person never got over.
I did not mind these excursions of his – I myself was better off when he stayed outside. Inside my house, he hovered, he micromanaged. When I left the refrigerator door open for ten seconds he ordered me to close it. “You’re wasting energy!” When I used a can opener, he told me I was doing it all wrong. When I dialed the telephone he demanded to know whether the call was local or long distance. And was I was dialing direct, or using a long-distance code? “Use my phone!” he yelled. “It’s cheaper!” Nothing escaped his notice. He behaved this way with everyone in the family, and they all tolerated it. I was the only one who resisted.
While Posey languished in my lap, I smoothed her damp hair off her forehead. From inside the bathroom I heard the sound of zippers, the rustling of plastic bags. When we traveled with the children, Bernard enthusiastically packed bottles of children’s cough syrup, antihistamines, fever reducers, wet wipes, Band-Aids in all shapes and sizes. He was the original Boy Scout, I would tease, and he would reply: “Eagle Scout, thank you very much.” I didn’t tease him now, though. I was glad we didn’t have to drive to Santa Fe hunting for a pharmacy.
Bernard emerged, shaking a plastic bottle. He poured a teaspoon of orange liquid into the plastic dosing cup. Posey watched suspiciously and then she arched her back and twisted away from me.
“No, Mommy!” she wailed. “I don’t like it!”
I held her tightly. “I know, sugar,” I murmured. “But the medicine will make the hot feeling go away. Now be a good girl and drink it.”
Posey gave me an evil look. Then she sighed. She took the cup and drank it down, wincing theatrically.
Outside, Bernard’s father stalked past the French doors. He appeared to be going in circles. In the stifling dry wind, around and around he walked.
In the kitchen, Bernard’s niece opened the refrigerator.
“Ooh,” she said. “Cookie dough.”
Maya was eighteen years old, and six months pregnant. She ate constantly. She was not married, and this was a scandal in the little world of the family. To the grandparents, what she had done was unthinkable. Hazel had told us that the baby’s father was from Mississippi. “We’ve never met him,” Hazel whispered. Then she added gleefully, “And I don’t think we ever will!”
Maya had flown to New Mexico alone; her father would arrive tomorrow. She was staying in a separate wing of this huge, rented house. It was so huge that we could all stay here for a week and tolerate each other. That was the idea, anyway. The adobe villa went on and on, with its sprawling courtyards, its five bedrooms and bathrooms, its two living rooms, its vast dining room whose table seated twenty. It was absurd.
Maya took the roll of cookie dough out of the refrigerator and slit the package open with a knife. She sliced off a hunk and took a big bite. Then she looked sheepish.
“Oh god, I’m so rude. Would you like some?” She held the roll out to me and Bernard.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“I’m good,” said Bernard. “But you enjoy that.”
Bernard’s father came into the kitchen as we were talking. A former Green Beret, his shoulders were broad, his arms huge. He saw Maya and recoiled visibly. Then he saw what she was doing and his eyes widened behind his thick glasses.
“Maya!” he sputtered. “Your grandmother bought the cookie dough for the children. The little children. You are not a child!” He waved his finger in the direction of her swollen belly. “You’re, you’re…Oh, crap.” He turned and rushed from the room.
Maya shrugged. “My mom says that grandpa is like really messed up because in the old-timey days his family didn’t have any money. You know, like he buys stale bread and stuff and his shoes are all old and gross?”
There were so many possible responses to this that I found myself unable to choose one. Also, I was wondering where Bernard’s father had gone. Maybe he’d resumed his patrolling of the perimeter of the house. Still, I reasoned, he would not have heard what Maya said even if he had been nearby, because he was quite deaf. He had to turn up his hearing aids or he missed the gist of most conversations.
“Maya,” Bernard said. “You’re eating for two so don’t worry. I’ll run to the store and replace that….what is it? Cookie dough?”
“Aww,” Maya cooed. “Thanks, Uncle Bernard! You’re so cool. I wish my dad were as cool as you. But that ship has sailed, right? Ha, ha. The cool ship.”
Hazel came into the kitchen then. She was a round woman in blue polyester, and it was she who had organized this family vacation, including the extravagant villa. She was determined to bring the family together.
Hazel eyed the open roll of cookie dough but, thankfully, ignored it.
“Well, I think your father is cool, Maya.”
Maya nodded. “You’re sweet, Grandma.”
Hazel turned to me then. “Baby Fleur is outside playing. Where is Posey?” Her tone was vaguely reproachful.
“She’s sleeping, Hazel. She has a fever.”
“Well bless her heart, isn’t that a shame.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bernard’s father hovering near the doorway.
Hazel changed the subject now. “Whose turn is it to make dinner?” she asked brightly. “I’m not going to do it. I’m on vacation!”
Bernard’s father spoke from the doorway. “You’re always on vacation,” he scoffed. “You haven’t worked in twenty years.”
Hazel put on her most unnatural smile and I could see that she was gritting her teeth.
“We’ll make dinner,” offered Bernard. He was the peacemaker. I was just about to object when he pulled me aside.
“I’ll do everything,” he murmured. “Don’t worry. You just take care of Posey.”
Bernard and I retreated to our bedroom to check on Posey. She would awaken soon because the fever reducers were about to wear off. I lay on the bed, speculating about how much sicker she was going to get, and whether her sister would catch it, too. I mentioned this to Bernard.
“I think Posey has altitude sickness,” he said.
“Altitude what?”
“I looked it up. Jaconita is at 5,728 feet. She is having a reaction to the elevation. It’s very common.”
“Our vacation is making her sick.”
Bernard snorted. “Yeah. But it’s not contagious. If Fleur was going to get it, it would have happened already.”
I made Bernard open his laptop and show me that altitude sickness was a real thing. Then we discussed calling a doctor, and we decided we probably didn’t need to do that as long as we could keep the fever down. We watched Posey sleeping. She lay peacefully on her back, looking beatific. She was always perfectly still when she slept, waking in the exact same position in which she fell asleep.
Bernard nudged me. “Listen,” he whispered. “I was thinking of going to the big flea market tomorrow. Saturday. It’s only on the weekend.” He watched me uncertainly. I would be the one to stay home with Posey. It went without saying.
“Okay,” I said. “You get tomorrow.”
Bernard looked surprised. Had I really folded so quickly? He looked at me cannily. He had made a selfish demand, and I had met it. Now the next move was mine.
“I want to go to the O’Keefe Museum.”
“Of course,” he said. “We could even go together. On Sunday.”
“If you can get Hazel to watch the children.”
“Done.” Another marital negotiation, concluded.
The doorknob turned and Fleur appeared, holding her stuffed otter. She was two years old.
“Posey is sleeping,” I whispered. “Close the door, baby.”
Fleur closed the door with exaggerated care. “Shhhhh, Mama,” she admonished.
Bernard opened one eye. “My mom might go to the flea market, too. And Maya.”
They would all go, then. And we did not talk about it, but it was understood that Bernard’s father would stay, too. He hated outings.
That evening Bernard made spaghetti. Hazel sat outside under an umbrella and read a romance novel. Maya watched a movie in the other wing of the house. Posey lay curled up in an armchair, watching cartoons. She was fully medicated, with only a slight fever, but she was too tired to run around. Meanwhile Fleur raced around the house and the outdoors, as healthy as ever.
I was applying a cold washcloth to Posey’s forehead when I heard Bernard’s father yelling at Fleur.
“Calm down! Go do something productive! Read a book! Goddamn kids are out of control.”
Furious, I dropped the washcloth and headed to the living room. Bernard emerged from the kitchen, holding a wooden spoon. He saw the tension on my face and the forward motion of my body and he raised one hand to stop me. “I’ll handle it,” he said. A moment later I heard him admonishing his father. “She’s two years old, Dad. She can’t read.”
“She’s hyperactive!”
“She is not hyperactive. She’s a toddler, and you can’t treat her that way. If I catch you doing that again, I’ll take my family and leave.”
While I was standing there listening, Fleur came flying into the room. She flung her arms around my legs, sobbing. I knelt and she buried her face in my neck. There was no end to the misery Bernard’s father could inflict. We had paid for our own airline tickets and rental car so that he could have the luxury of bullying his grandchild.
I remembered then something that had happened three years earlier, in Texas. Posey was fifteen months old. It was the day before Christmas and I’d just learned that I was pregnant. I told Bernard, but no one else. I didn’t know how I would handle another baby so soon. I felt overwhelmed. The five of us – Hazel, Bernard, Posey, my father-in-law, and I – were walking on a small pier, on a lake. The pier had no railings. Posey and I were holding hands, and she let go so that she could look at some ducks. She ran ahead of me toward the water. When my father-in-law saw that I did not restrain her, or even tell her to come back, he just about blew a gasket. “What is she doing?” he hissed loudly at Hazel. “She’s a terrible mother! The baby is going to drown!” But I knew my child. Posey wasn’t the type to run into traffic, or into a lake. She just wanted to look at the ducks. My father-in-law’s fury compounded upon itself as he waited for me to collar my daughter, to scream at her. Instead I approached her quietly and listened while she told me about the ducks. Inside I was seething. My father-in-law’s criticism was aimed at me alone. How dare he, I thought. He cannot tell me how to raise my child. But it was more than that. I had the awful realization that soon my child would be his target, too. My children, rather, for by this time next year I would be a mother of two. I took Posey and rushed back to the car.
Now here we were in Jaconita and my father-in-law had proved me right. Even baby Fleur had to watch out for him.
Before bed that night, Bernard took a Valium. “Really” he said, “there is not enough Valium on earth for this vacation.” Then he fell asleep and snored loudly all night. I lay awake worrying about the girls. I heard Posey moan in her sleep and I rocketed out of bed and laid a hand on her forehead. But the fever was lower and she was deeply asleep. Then I checked on Fleur. In the dark I had trouble finding her forehead because her feet were on the pillow.
By morning I was exhausted. I felt as though I hadn’t slept at all. Everything seemed fuzzy and hazy. Bernard gave Posey some Motrin, and he took both girls out to the kitchen for breakfast. Then everyone ran around getting ready to leave for the flea market, while I made a cup of coffee.
“It’s a bummer that you can’t come,” offered Maya.
“I know,” I said. “It’s killing me, actually.”
“A mother’s work is never done, Maya,” said Hazel pointedly, as if hoping to give Maya a glimpse of her own future. But Maya seemed not to hear. She was searching the refrigerator for cookie dough. Hazel put on her most disapproving look, her lips pursed, her brow furrowed, but the girl didn’t even notice.
Hazel tried again. “Maya, a young woman in your condition shouldn’t–”
Maya rolled her eyes. “Grandma. It’s a craving, okay?”
Posey came in, crying about why couldn’t she go to the flea market, too. Then she pitched a fit right there on the kitchen floor.
“I don’t want to stay home!” she shrieked. “I hate fevers! Fevers are mean!”
Bernard kissed me goodbye. “Take a nap,” he said. “Posey can watch a movie. And remember, we’ll go to the museum tomorrow.”
Everyone filed out to the car and I stood there watching, wishing I could go. Still, I had a plan for Posey that would get us both out of the house, if only briefly. How could a house that large make me feel so claustrophobic? I could hardly stand it.
Back in the kitchen I sat on the tile floor next to Posey. Her blanket was draped over her head. She was so small that I could see only her toes sticking out.
“Funny thing,” I said. “Did you know there is a swimming pool here?” I spoke casually, as though it were nothing.
Posey lifted up the blanket, revealing her tear-streaked face.
The pool was fifty yards from the villa, down a dirt road. It was near the safety of the house, but far away enough to qualify as an outing. Outside it was hot and windy but I didn’t care. I’d been stuck inside that dark room for two days. Posey was glad to be outside, too. She walked along the dirt road in her red swimsuit and sneakers, pointing at trees and the wide blue sky.
The pool was encircled by a low iron fence, with a gate. There was a sign that said “No Trespassers” in large red letters. Posey pointed at it, wondering, but I told her, as temporary denizens of the villa we were allowed to use the pool. Inside the gate we found pretty yellow flowers growing like weeds, pushing up through the cracks in the concrete. Paper flowers, Bernard had told me, native to New Mexico. They thrived under dry, harsh conditions.
The pool was small, not large enough for a real swim, but still we had it all to ourselves – we had seen no other people since the family had left. Leaves floated on the water, which we quickly discovered was very cold. The cold was made worse by the stiff wind. Still, Posey wanted to get in the pool and I let her. This was our paltry vacation, such as it was. Soon enough her fever would go back up, if this really was altitude sickness, and in five more days it would be back to preschool for her and Fleur, back to work for me and for Bernard. So I sat at the edge of the pool and watched Posey splashing. I tried to be optimistic. It was just as well that I had not gone to the flea market; I did not have to deal with the family and I had my daughter to myself. I shut my eyes against the sun and the wind, thinking of real vacations on tropical beaches. I imagined that I was reading a magazine and drinking a glass of white wine. I tried to relax.
Half an hour later we walked back to the house. Posey was happy now, but also wet and tired. She spotted a hill of red ants and screamed. She was sure that the ants were going to chase her so she ran, kicking up a huge cloud of dust. Then she tripped on her shoelace and fell into the dirt, weeping. I carried her the rest of the way to the house.
The house was silent and there was no sign of Bernard’s father. I kicked off my shoes and the tiles felt cool under my feet. In the bathroom I stripped off Posey’s dirty swimsuit and felt her forehead. It was a little warm, but I looked at the clock and knew I couldn’t give her Motrin yet. I had to wait another two hours. I ran a bath and Posey climbed in obediently and sat perfectly still while I washed her hair.
“I’m tired, Mommy.”
“Me too, baby doll. Let’s take a rest.”
When Posey was all combed and dried I dressed her in a clean t-shirt and underwear. We sank onto the huge bed and I watched her fall asleep. I felt exhausted. I closed my eyes.
I awakened suddenly to a high-pitched cry. Posey was not in the bed, but her t-shirt was there. I grabbed it; it felt damp. Her fever must have shot up while I was asleep. I stumbled out of the bedroom in a panic, thinking she must have done something to anger her grandfather.
I found Posey in the living room with the vaulted ceiling. She was wandering around the large room in her underwear, mumbling, her face flushed. My father-in-law followed close behind, wringing his hands.
“There’s something wrong with her!” he cried.
I rushed forward, gathering up Posey’s hot body. Jesus, she was hot. How could one small body contain so much heat and not burst into flames?
“We’re in the world,” she said. “Mommy, we’re in the world.”
I knew right away that medication wouldn’t bring down the fever fast enough. I rocked her gently, trying to think what to do. Then my eyes fell on my father-in-law, who was pacing anxiously.
Bernard had said for years that the only way to deal with his father was to give him a task. “He’s a military man,” Bernard would remind me. “He’s a soldier. He needs to be told what to do.”
“It’s the fever,” I told my father-in-law. “You’re going to help me. I want you to run a cold bath.”
He stared at me, uncomprehending. “What?”
It took me a moment to realize that he had turned down his hearing aids. The old man could not hear me. He lived among people, but could not stand to listen to their stupid talk. I pointed at my ear. “Your hearing aids,” I growled. I watched him comply clumsily and I hated him then. I hated his bullying ways and his obstinacy and I didn’t care if he knew it.
I repeated my instructions about the bath. I spoke clearly and loudly but he hesitated, looking helpless and afraid. I had an overwhelming urge to slap him. I didn’t have time for this. There was no time. “Go!” I shouted. “Now!”
He rushed away, startled into action. I looked down at Posey, lying inert in my arms. Her face was pink with fever. She gazed through me.
“Mommy, I see birds flying, little paper birds.”
“Birds,” I echoed. I carried her back through the dining room, feeling as though I was watching this scene from above. Like it was someone else’s life, but it wasn’t. It was my life. I’ll bring down the fever, I told myself. She’ll be fine.
I had never felt such fear.
First I retrieved the thermometer from the bedroom. In the bathroom the water was running in the tub – my father-in-law had done that much, at least. He stood there awkwardly and watched while I set Posey down and took her temperature. For once he did not instruct me or berate me.
The little screen read 104. I felt my stomach drop and a hollowness in my chest. I showed the thermometer to my father-in-law. “That’s pretty high,” he said.
“I need all the ice from the freezer. In a bowl. Find a big bowl.”
He left the bathroom and I pulled off Posey’s underpants and lifted her into the bathtub, my hands on her burning hot skin.
“I want you to sit down now, baby,” I murmured.
Posey looked down at the water doubtfully.
“The water is going to cool you off. You feel hot, don’t you?”
“I’m tired, Mommy.”
“I know, baby. But Mommy needs you to sit down.” I summoned all of my will. Get her to sit down first. Get her to sit down first. Jesus, if you bring the fever down I won’t complain ever again, I will be everlastingly patient with my children and my family.
Posey sighed. Then she held out a hand to me. I took it, and she eased herself into the water.
“Good girl. I want you to lie down now. Your body needs that cold water.”
Posey did not resist. She lay down and leaned against the end of the bathtub.
I turned off the tap and my father-in-law appeared, carrying a stainless steel mixing bowl. He looked at me expectantly. I had to tell him to do every little thing, he could figure out none of it for himself.
“Put the all the ice in the bath,” I said. “I’m going to find the medicine. But you have to stay here. Do you understand? Do not leave her.”
I was only going into the next room, but I was worried about how clueless he was.
“If you leave her, I’ll kill you. Do you understand? None of your theatrics now. ”
He nodded obediently, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
I stood up and backed toward the doorway.
In the bedroom I threw open the curtains and light flooded the room. She’ll be fine, I told myself. I just have to find the medicine.
The Tylenol was on a bedside table, but the bottle of Motrin had gotten knocked off and was under the bed, along with the plastic dosing cup. I couldn’t reach the cup, and had to go around to the other side of the bed. I’ll give her Motrin first, I told myself as I felt around in the darkness. Finally my fingers closed around the sticky cup.
Back inside the bathroom, Posey lay in several inches of water, ice cubes floating all around her. My father-in-law knelt next to the bathtub, watching her dutifully.
I took the bottle of Motrin and shook it hard and poured it into the plastic cup. My fingers trembled so much I almost couldn’t hold it. I wished that I had had the sense to call a doctor yesterday, when it first occurred to me. Now it was Saturday and I was stuck here with a sick child and a crazy old man and there was no one to give me sound advice.
I got down on my knees and my father-in-law moved over to make room for me. I felt no rancor toward him. As big a man as he was, he seemed so small now.
Posey lay in the water, her brown hair floating, her body perfectly still except for the slight rise and fall of her chest. I put my hands under her armpits and slid her up to a sitting position.
She gazed over my shoulder. “There are birds flying in this room, Mommy. The birds don’t have feathers. The birds are saying lie down, lie down in water. Yellow birds.”
My throat constricted and I thought I would cry. I swallowed hard. “I see the birds, too, sugar. Yellow birds.” I brought the cup to her lips. “Drink this.”
She tipped her head back and drank. I allowed myself a moment to feel relieved. Posey looked at her grandfather then, as if just noticing him. She smiled her most disarming smile and she seemed luminous, a creature from another world.
The old man gazed at her in wonderment, as if he had never seen his granddaughter before, as if she were an angel complete with wings and a halo. The mixing bowl sat on the floor, empty. I would give Posey some Tylenol in a few minutes, then take the bowl back to the kitchen. I would check to see that my father-in-law had refilled the ice cube trays and put them back in the freezer. I would sit here until the fever went down.
- Published in home, Issue 12, Uncategorized
JELLYFISH by Shenandoah Sowash
All afternoon
we’ve been coring apples
with the conviction of inmates.
A train sings somewhere close,
steps off the tracks & lands
in my palm. The apples spill
like people out of taxis – red-faced
& round. My hand is too small
to hold you. Or the train.
We’re fragile as jellyfish,
as little boys who mock
the creatures in their glass tanks.
Today the apples are animal hearts
& we carve them.
Your hands are sticky.
Your hands touch my face.
Your hands threaten to destroy
an adequate day & make it
transcendent. The sky seeps with light.
I’ve been here before, but before
it was dark & here we are,
stung
in the morning.
- Published in Issue 12, Poetry, Uncategorized