WHEREABOUTS: Stepping Out of Place

These essays are on the move. To rum distilleries, ox carts, war zones, falafel stands, and daydreams where we meet versions of ourselves. The writers of this collection stand as capable and intrepid "purveyors of the connections the rest of us don't see." They are also connoisseurs of longing, adventure, and openness. Most marvelous is that whether the authors hold crowbars, bouzoukis, or babies, the complex truths of their essays give sturdy shelter to the many foreign selves we harbor.

— Jennifer Boyden, author of The Mouths of Grazing Things and The Declarable Future

We think of travel and life abroad as pivoting on geographic place, but it's shaped just as much by the minds and bodies we bring with us. The voices in Whereabouts offer a completely fresh approach to travel and life "out of place." Compellingly narrative and, at times, dazzlingly lyrical, we hear and feel the uncensored inside stories — both cerebral and sensual — of people settling in or on the move all over our bright world.

— Henry Hughes, Harvard Review

The stories in Whereabouts transport readers to some of the most farreaching spots on the planet to explore the deepest regions of the traveler's psyche. Each tale in this brilliantly curated collection deals not only with places and the people that make them, but also with the transformative aspects of travel, inspiring us to take our own daring first steps into the unexplored.

— Margot Bigg, author of Moon Living Abroad in India and Moon Taj Mahal, Delhi, and Jaipur

The stories in Whereabouts offer a broad collective understanding of the world we are currently living in. Expertly woven together by editor Brandi Dawn Henderson, the tales in turn instruct and entertain, explore and tap into the readers' emotions, revealing that sometimes it's not the land we are in that is foreign, so much as ourselves. With clarity, a keen eye, and at times a sharp wit, the authors collected here teach us that the best physical journeys are accompanied by equally extensive mental and emotional ones. In reading this collection, you can explore the world without having to leave the comfort of your couch. But by the time you reach the last page, you'll be itching to get off the cushions and book yourself a ticket to anywhere.

— Colin D. Halloran, author of Shortly Thereafter

The collected essays of Whereabouts capture the traveler's paradox: a fascination with the ephemeral sense of the exotic versus the desire to belong, or at the least make peace with one's role as outlier. Whether sitting in the hut of a Nepalese wise man or navigating the American Thanksgiving dinner table, these writers marvel at the unique and esoteric while teasing out those universal threads--loneliness, love, friendship--that tie us together. And they do so with humor, wit, and a gentle self reflection that brings it all home. A joy to read.

— Joanne Cavanaugh Simpson, author Literature on Deadline and lecturer in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University

Whereabouts takes you from the well-heeled in St. Petersburg to a nude beach in Croatia, from tony Martha's Vinyard to grungy Trenton. Still, the gifted writers in this surprising and beautifully crafted anthology are less preoccupied with where we travel than why we travel — an inquiry that gently permeates the essays here. This intimate look at the wanderlust in all of us turns on the question of what strangers — and strange lands--tell us about ourselves. Revelations abound in this wide-ranging and engrossing journey across continents.

— Karen Houppert, author of Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People's Justice

WHEREABOUTS Stepping Out of Place

WHEREABOUTS Stepping Out of Place An Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine Anthology

Edited by Brandi Dawn Henderson

NEW YORK

www.2leafpress.org

P.O. Box 4378 Grand Central Station New York, New York 10163-4378 editor@2leafpress.org www.2leafpress.org 2LEAF PRESS is an imprint of the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS), a NY-based nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes multicultural literature and literacy. www.theiaas.org Copyright Š 2013 by Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine Cover Design & Photo: Copyright Š 2011 Brandi Dawn Henderson Book design and layout: Gabrielle David Library of Congress Control Number: PENDING. GOVT SHUT DOWN ISBN-13: 978-0988476363 (Paperback) ISBN-10: 0988476363 (Paperback) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Published in the United States of America First Edition | First Printing 2LEAF PRESS books are available for sale on most online retailers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. Books are also available to the trade through distributors Ingram, Baker & Taylor and Small Press Distribution (SPD) at http: / / www.spdbooks.org. For more information, contact info@2leafpress.org..

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise without the prior permission of the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS).

Gabrielle David wishes to thank Angela Sternreich for insisting that we publish Whereabouts, and Adam Wier for proofing asnd editing this wonderful volume of work. Love to the Godmothers.

To Susanna Wickes, my saheliji and hero.

And, to the late Dudley Clendinen, who said I could.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................... VII INTRODUCTION ........................................................................ 1 VICKI VALOSIK If You Invite An International Student Home For Thanksgiving ...................................... 5 HAMZA SYED First Time Home .............................................................. 8 FAYE RIVKIN Beauty .......................................................................... 12 DANIEL GABRIEL The Dust Of The Roads Behind Us: A Hitchhiking Couple Looks Back ................................... 17 ROBERT HIRSCHFIELD Night Train To Calcutta .................................................. 29 KATE GRAY State Of Mind ............................................................... 32 MURIELLE GANDRE Outside The Candy Box ................................................. 36 COLLEEN MACDONALD Blue .............................................................................. 38 AN OUTSIDE IN LITERARY & TRAVEL MAGAZINE ANTHOLOGY

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SUSANNA WICKES In The Mountains Above The Rain .................................. 41 HOLLY MORSE-ELLINGTON Cultivating A Taste Of The Northeast Kingdom ....................................................... 44 MARK RIGNEY In the Lands of Nationalists ........................................... 49 ELISE HAHL Sisters ........................................................................... 58 SHENAN PRESTWICH Dreamers ..................................................................... 64 MICHELE MCFARLAND His Name Was Sawyer .................................................. 67 SOO KIM Sulu Burunji .................................................................. 71 ROSA LIA London Fog .................................................................. 74 ALLEN MCKENZIE Cherry Tree ................................................................... 76 KHADIJA EJAZ The Old Woman From Lebanon ..................................... 79 PAULA CRUICKSHANK A Coal Miner's Daughter ............................................... 82 ADRIAN MANGIUCA Patty ............................................................................. 89 MIRIAM VASWANI Whisky In The Jar .......................................................... 92

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CHARLOTTE SAFAVI Making Tracks In Southern France ................................. 95 ERIC G. MÜLLER A Walk Through Snow and Time .................................. 100 STEVE LYDA Shadow Of The Levee ................................................. 103 DARIO DIBATTISTA Heavy Metal In Trenton ............................................... 107 TARA CAIMI Without Words ............................................................ 113 ERIN GROVER Kali Baba ................................................................... 117 RHEA KENNEDY Tequila After Sunrise ................................................... 120 WILONA KARIMABADI From India with Fond Regards ..................................... 123 REBECCA ROTERT-SHAW Proteus On The Vasa ................................................... 126 MELISSA WILEY Lapland ...................................................................... 131 ANDREW HAMILTON The Windows Of Paris ................................................. 138 ANGELA MAGNAN Beware The Fruitcake and Caution Tape ...................................................... 141 CHRIS TARRY How To Get Back To The John Muir Trail ..................................................... 147

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JEN CULLERTON JOHNSON Families On The Fringe: Complexities Of The Ie ............................................... 153 JAY DURET In Bogota .................................................................... 162 C.B. HEINEMANN Freiburgitis ................................................................. 167 CORINNA COOK Autumn's Daisy Bell .................................................... 177 CONTRIBUTOR BIOS .............................................................. 186 ABOUT THE EDITOR ............................................................... 193

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

AM SO GRATEFUL TO each of the contributors to this collection; together, I hope we have taught someone out there what it might be like to be in another place, another head, or in a different pair of shoes. I know you've each taught me more than I can fathom.

I

To my ever-supportive family, thank you. Mom, I'm sorry if I gave you an ulcer the year I lived in Delhi and rode motorcycles without a helmet. Dad, I was able to do this because of you. Scott and Steph, Grandma(s): Thank you for believing in me. To my million nieces and nephews: kisses.

To Susanna, my sidekick on the other side on the world, who moved to Inner Mongolia to write about it and found more, I'm so proud of you.

I am grateful to the AAP Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University for the wonderful education and community I gained there, and to Gabrielle David at 2Leaf Press for her passion for and dedication to the written word.

To the Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine editorial team, Miriam Vaswani, Vicki Valosik, Kelly Ann Jacobson, and Ope Olem'degun: Thank you for your consistent effort and passion.

To Heather, Addy, Sandra, Jess, James, Stephanie, Lisa, Clare, Anuradha, and Riko: Thank you for being around, even when I wasn't. You are good, good people.

To Shenan, for spending hours focusing on syntax with me, and for enjoying it, you are wonderful.

To Allen, Faye, and Paula, who provided excellent feedback and editorial advice, I bow to you.

To Vishwa, thank you for the push to take the first step out of place.

To Pawan, for being my brother, guide, and guru: dhanyavad.

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To India.

And, finally, to Nathan, who showed me what it feels like to step into place.

All essays originally appeared in the online publication Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine (www.outsideinmagazine.com): "If You Invite an International Student Home for Thanksgiving"

by Vicki Valosik: Issue Nine "First Time Home" by Hamza Syed: Issue Fourteen "Beauty" by Faye Rivkin: Issue Six "The Dust of the Roads Behind Us: A Hitchhiking Couple Looks Back" by Daniel Gabriel: Issue Fourteen "Night Train to Calcutta" by Robert Hirschfield: Issue Fourteen "State of Mind" by Kate Gray: Issue Fourteen "Outside the Candy Box" by Murielle Gandre: Issue One "Blue" by Colleen MacDonald: Issue Six "In the Mountains Above the Rain" by Susanna Wickes: Issue Fourteen "Cultivating a Taste of the Northeast Kingdom" by Holly Morse Ellington: Issue Twelve "In the Lands of Nationalists" by Mark Rigney: Issue Fourteen "Sisters" by Elise Hahl: Issue Five "Dreamers" by Shenan Prestwich: Issue Thirteen "His Name Was Sawyer" by Michele McFarland: Issue Five "Sulu Burunji" by Soo Kim: Issue Four "London Fog" by Rosa Lia: Issue Four "Cherry Tree" by Allen McKenzie: Issue Four "The Old Woman from Lebanon" by Khadija Ejaz: Issue Four "A Coal Miner's Granddaughter" by Paula Cruickshank: Issue Seven

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"Patty" by Adrian Mangiuca: Issue Thirteen "Whisky in the Jar" by Miriam Vaswani: Issue Five "Making Tracks in Southern France" by Charlotte Safavi: Issue Three "A Walk Through Snow and Time" by Eric G. Müller: Issue Twelve "Shadow of the Levee" by Steve Lyda: Issue Twelve "Heavy Metal in Trenton" by Dario DiBattista: Issue Seven "Without Words" by Tara Caimi: Issue Twelve "Kali Baba" by Erin Grover: Issue Seven "Tequila After Sunrise" by Rhea Kennedy: Issue Seven "From India With Fond Regards" by Wilona Karimabadi: Issue Six "Proteus on the Vasa" by Rebecca Rotert-Shaw: Issue Ten "Lapland" by Melisa Wiley: Issue Ten "The Windows of Paris" by Andrew Hamilton: Issue Ten "Beware the Fruitcake and Caution Tape" by Angela Magnan: Issue Ten "How to Get Back to the John Muir Trail" by Chris Tarry: Issue Eleven "Families on the Fringe: Complexities of the Ie" by Jenn Cullteron Johnson: Issue Eleven "In Bogota" by Jay Duret: Issue Eleven "Freiburgitis" by C.B. Heinemann: Issue Twelve "Autumn's Daisy Bell" by Corinna Cook: Issue Eleven 

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INTRODUCTION

N THE NOT-SO-DISTANT PAST, I lived in India and spent beautiful, horrible, dusty, and glittering days with my Scottish best friend, Susanna. We did everything "the checklist" said we were to do in order to fit in, but no matter what we tried, we remained, clearly, outsiders.

Susanna and I had spent seven years in India between the two of us; she spoke Hindi fluently, and I did my best; each of us dated Indian boys and helped their mothers and aunties in the kitchens; we touched the feet of our elders and could mix up a cup of ginger chai to rival the best chaiwallahs in the country. But, no matter how many sequin-covered saris we dressed ourselves in, she never became not-Scottish nor I not-American. We were forever firengis.

One hot Delhi day, we sat sipping coffee, lamenting our outsider status, and wondering aloud if it was possible to become an insider in any culture that is not one's own, or if, at some fundamental level, there exists some kind of invisible cultural fence to keep people, despite their best efforts, from achieving sameness when attempting to cross such a wide global chasm.

Since we had the afternoon free, we did something that was relatively effortless at the time, though it seems exhausting and complicated to me now: We found and hired a professional camera man and headed to Delhi's most diverse neighborhood, Pahar Ganj. We chose this popular backpacker neighborhood because we figured we'd find the greatest amount of travelers, as well as local people, to interview; but, if we're to be completely honest, we also chose it because we knew we'd find some total nutjobs that would make our film more interesting. We ran after every insanely dressed hippie we could find, thinking we could get some entertaining footage; we also interviewed locals, foreign businessmen, the young as well as the elderly, and one man who chugged an entire bottle of whiskey for the camera.

We asked each person what he or she thought it took to become an insider in a new culture, if it was even possible, and we made an interesting short film out of the answers we received. But what we really learned from the experience is that there were no "total nutjobs" there to interview. Each person had a story, a desire to speak, a hope to be heard. Everyone came

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from somewhere, and carried on his or her shoulders a sincerity that could not be mocked. Susanna and I sat on the metro on the way home, after dozens of interviews, and marveled at the experiences that had been shared with us; we had spoken to people who had been humble, confident, funny, disappointed, elated, shocked, desirous, drunk; most of all, though, we had spoken to people who were true. We knew then that we wanted to create a platform for people from around the world to share these stories with one another, and with us.

The concept of truth, as we are well aware, is a funny business, and one that has created conflict for as long as truth has been around. This collection, story by story, contains truth. The content from one writer to the next may or may not contradict the information that comes before or after, but it contains the true experience of each contributor and how he or she has found the world to be from here to there (or there to here). That is what I seek to share with you in these pages. What does it mean to enter a new place? What kind of worlds exist to others that we, ourselves, do not experience? What do we share? How does place and/or circumstance affect who and how we are? How does where we come from affect where we end up? What lies undiscovered just around the corner from where we've always been? Who are the people who sit on the airplanes that roam overhead, and what happens when they step off into new lands? Why does anyone take the first step to anywhere he or she doesn't "belong?" I hope you are reading because you have some kind of curiosity about people, like Susanna and I did (and do), and that you will gain some cross-cultural, or inter-cultural, understandings after reading the stories shared within.

In early 2011, we began Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine and have had the honor of sharing the experiences of people from all around the world.

In these pages, you will find the truth of some of our favorite global storytellers. In our online journal at www.outsideinmagazine.com, you can find a wonderful collection of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, microjourneys, and photo essays related to the theme of travel and journeying, edited by a worldly team I am truly grateful for: Vicki Valosik, Kelly Ann Jacobson, Ope Olem'degun, and Miriam Vaswani. ď ś — Brandi Dawn Henderson Editor Alaska, USA 2013

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WHEREABOUTS: STEPPING OUT OF PLACE

VICKI VALOSIK

If You Invite An International Student Home For Thanksgiving F, BY CHANCE, YOU ARE PLANNING TO INVITE an international student to your home for the holidays, allow me to warn you. Your invitation, offered in the name of cross-cultural solidarity and holiday cheer to some upstanding young man or woman with a charming accent and in need of a home-cooked meal, could lead to an unprecedented chain of events, after which you may never be the same.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: Your car might break down at 11 pm on I-65 somewhere between campus and your parents' house, stranding you and the international student at a gas station. You may pass the time playing frisbee and learning Arabic greetings in the deserted parking lot as you wait for the tow truck and your mom and dad to arrive.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: You might learn on the drive that he single-handedly found families to host all the other international students in need of a place to stay over the holiday weekend so that he could be the only one accompanying you. "You'll love Miami," the international student may have told the music major from Myanmar who has always wanted to go to Nashville, where your family just happens to live.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving:

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Your family may take him along on their day-before-Thanksgiving tradition of pancakes and hash browns at Shoney's, and your dad may try to convince the international student (and almost succeed) that if they sing "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof, the breakfast bar is free.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: He may kneel when he meets your grandmother who has Alzheimers and never made it far from Alabama. The international student may take her hand in his and tell her he is from Damascus, "like in the Bible," which may prompt one of the few smiles she will give all year. You may not realize he is watching as you paint her fingernails to the marching band sounds of the Macy's parade and your mom shuffling casserole dishes from the oven to the table, but the international student may tell you years later that was the moment he fell in love.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: He may ask to come back at Christmas, and you may prepare a basket for the guest room with cookies and hotel shampoos, causing your mom to say, "You really like this boy." You may deny it, but then return to campus after New Years and tell your roommate over a box of Fudge Stripes you think this international student could be the one.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: The international student may become your best friend despite the language barriers. He may laugh at your southern accent, and you may tease him for confusing his "B"s and "P"s but secretly love the way he calls the bug in your dorm a "cookaroche."

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: He may ring the doorbell at your student apartment then run away to watch you find the giant jar of olives he left. The international student may introduce you to Arabic coffee and teach you to crack pumpkin seeds with your teeth, and you may say they go better with iced tea. Your pants may shrink a size or two as you realize the heartfelt tenacity of Middle Eastern hospitality and the futility of resisting appetizers and desserts.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: You may take a bike ride a year later, just weeks before graduation, and stop to rest under a gazebo, where the international student may pull a nursing textbook from his backpack and say he wants to show you something to help your irritable bowel syndrome. You may turn to the suggested chapter and find a hole carved in the pages, hiding a ring box. You may remember how the international student said on your second date that you are like a wild bird that should never be caged, and you may say yes, despite your fears.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: You may be surprised, both good and bad, by the reaction of others. A customer at the coffee shop where you work may say that the international student is marrying you for the green card and another may ask if you've seen Not Without My Daughter and warn you've no idea what you're getting into.

Your boss, though, may hire the international student, paying him a fair wage to make cappuccinos despite his lack of a work visa.

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WHEREABOUTS: STEPPING OUT OF PLACE

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: Your mom, who has grown to like this international student but worries, may ask, "Wouldn't life be easier with a boy from up the street?" You may think of the boy from up the street who buried your My Little Ponies in the mud and say, "not really."

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: The international student may not tell you his mother makes an international call every day begging him not to marry this American. He may not tell you until after you've flown across the world to meet his family and won their hearts honestly. Even then, you may suspect it was really your orange polkadot pajamas that charmed your future mother-in-law, but you'll take it.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: You may have a wedding in his country and another in yours, arriving at the former with a horse and drummers and departing the latter in a VW van.

You may still laugh years later at how he balked in Birmingham at throwing the garter from your thigh to a pack of unwed men, or how you were up til dawn in a Damascus hotel room dismantling the zealous work of the hairdresser while the international student plucked fake lashes from your khol-lined lids.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: Your family gatherings may become much more entertaining. The international student may make your mom spew her drink when he misses the subtle difference between devil and deviled and asks her to pass the Satan eggs.

She may make it her personal duty to remedy his dislike of ham, but she'll still add a turkey to the table each Christmas especially for him.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: The years may fly by and you may forget what it was like to not be subject to "random" security checks or the worry that comes with having family far away in a place of unrest. The sharp edges of your cultures may wound each other unintentionally and at times take you by surprise. But you will not forget, even as the years fly by, that the harmony is richer because of the struggles and because that faraway place is now a part of you too. You will learn together which of the sharp edges deserve to be blunted and which ones to keep as they are...but to handle with care.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: You may watch his mother and yours, who don't speak each other's languages, laugh as they sled down a hill holding on to one another, and you will know that some things are stronger than cultures or words.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving: It may, of course, lead to nothing at all. It may simply mean another place setting at the table, another slice cut from the pumpkin pie, another friendly face in the shuffle of passing plates and giving thanks.

But the thing is, you never know.ď ś

VICKI VALOSIK

7

KATE GRAY

State Of Mind HEN I THINK OF KENYA, I play a silent movie, slow frames of the boy running from the naked woman. Maybe seven years old, shaved bald like all Luo children, his eyebrows raised high into his forehead, his mouth open so far I saw the bright semicircle of his teeth, the boy was trying to get out of his skin. His body twisted, legs turned forward to run as fast as they could, but his torso turned back so he could look behind, his arms paddling the air. He tripped on the legs of other people running away, grownups pushing the grownups ahead of them, some grownups smiling, some children with eyes like the boy's, and he fell, and she was coming, this naked woman.

The out-of-body boy, the people running, our car driving toward the people, we were behind the woman and her naked body, her movement making the crowd run, the dust of so many feet on the dirt road, the dry-grass smell, always the bitter scent of burning hardwoods and charcoal, the cooking and heat, and as we passed the running and shoving, the woman's jangling breasts, her gray hair matted, the spear she rattled were flashes out the window of our car. Everything about this woman shook, her lips, her hair, her raised fists. And just as we passed, she yelled something and trotted toward the crowd.

It was market night, the one night a week when people brought their millet or papaya or bananas or charcoal or t-shirts donated by well-meaning Americans, all goods to sell in tin kiosks or plywood shacks or on bicycles, on tarps, on the ground. This town was near Kisii, in the Nyanza province with the high-

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est HIV/AIDS infection rate in Kenya. In every town we sped through, there was the lineup of general store, church, HIV/AIDS clinic, and coffin maker.

No one else in the car saw what I saw.

We were making a ten-hour roundtrip to deliver children to a special boarding school for kids with HIV. We were on the way home when I saw the boy. I remember his face.

And I remember parts of the woman, the naked woman we saw from behind. Her skin was smooth from her shoulders to her calves, except for patches of light flakes. Around her waist there was a thin belt, something woven or leather, with a feather dangling on her right side. The feather was a few inches long, and another one, the same type, hung from her spear which she held in her right hand. As we passed, I could have sworn she yelled, "Bugga-buggabugga," like a Bugs Bunny episode from the 1940s, "All This and Rabbit Stew," a real woman acting out the quintessential racist stereotype from Hollywood, in my head, half mocking the idea of an African native, half mocking the idea of crazy, and half crazy itself. In other words, there was much more than her sheer nakedness scaring the boy, much more shaping my memory of that moment.

The next day at the Dominican mission in Kisumu, where I volunteered for a few weeks, I asked a young Kenyan woman, Mary Juma, to explain. With her eyes looking down, she said, "She was mad," as quietly as she might have said, "She has AIDS." Kenyans don't acknowledge mental illness. They believe birth defects and mental illness and twin babies are retribution for bad deeds.

The woman, naked and running to the market, was probably kicked out of her family who believed she had "wronged God" and brought bad luck to the family. Millions of Kenyans living with mental illness are abandoned or locked up by loved ones. The mentally ill have no place to go.

In 1982 in New York City, with its mobs of people shoving and packing the streets, I saw a place for the mentally ill to go. My cousin in her late twenties had recently tried to burn the alligators swimming out of her apartment curtains, and her psychotic break revealed her schizophrenia and ended her career in journalism. At the time, wards were "open," meaning all levels of mentally-ill patients were housed and treated together. When I arrived at the hospital, I asked the large woman drinking coffee at the front desk for my cousin, and she said, "Fifth floor."

The elevator was the size of a small closet and smelled like worn socks.

The door had a porthole in it, and when I arrived at the fifth floor, all I could see was mauve. There was no desk to check, no one to check with, so I wandered down the hall. I passed patients ranting at doorjambs, and old men shuffled in plaid pajamas. One young woman with hair, slick and sweaty, pointed at me and said, "I know you know. I know you. You know I know." And I nodded, and she pointed.

At the end of the next hall, a young woman rocked herself as she sat in a large window frame. Her long hair was hanging in her face, and her hospital gown was light yellow, stained, and hanging open except where the belt was KATE GRAY

33

tied in a loose bow. She had blue slippers, and she was turned to the window, talking to the face that looked back at her in the glass.

"Excuse me," I said, "I'm looking for my cousin." My voice sounded high and young.

The girl in the window turned to me, and her face was sand trying hard to become glass.

"Kate?" she said. Tears spilled down her face, and she jumped to her feet, grabbed the robe, pulled it around her, and ran away from me. "Oh, oh," she said, "I didn't know. I'll be right back," and she disappeared down the hall. I stood where she left me, and ten minutes later, after patients had wheeled and sauntered and shuffled by, someone with a name badge came to tell me that my cousin, Emma, would see me in a few minutes, that it was hard, she was surprised to see me, surprises were not good for someone in her state of mind.

And in a few minutes, I entered her room and sat on the hospital bed, the hard mattress and stiff white sheets, the light blue blanket, the walls mauve, the linoleum dull. There was nothing else in the room, no wall-hangings, no curtains, no mirrors. But my cousin, her hair pulled back, her thick glasses magnifying her eyes, was my cousin again. Her voice had inflection that matched hand gestures. When she said, "Therapy's a gas, a total gas. I get to talk about myself all day long," she clapped her hands and laughed her deep, scruffy laugh, her voice a lot like Anne Sexton's, loving everything about smoking.

My cousin still smokes. Thirty years later she lives independently and talks on the phone to family every day, many times a day. We talk every few weeks. She teaches Spanish classes for mentally-ill people, she writes and edits a newsletter for people transitioning out of mental institutions, she walks three miles a day, and she tells me, "My life just gets better and better." Sure, she's tried suicide twice, lots of medication, and goes in for electric shock therapy (ECT) every other month, but her illness does not scare her or others, especially not her family.

My father's mental illness was entirely different, and instead of hallucinations and inflicting pain on himself, he smelled weakness in others and preyed on it. His rage was unpredictable and savage. As adults, my siblings have admitted that as children at night, we hovered, full-bladdered, behind our bedroom doors, listening for our father before opening the door to run as quickly and quietly as possible to the bathroom. If he heard us, he grabbed us, or worse.

What if we had turned our father out? What if we had a belief system that said that he had wronged God and his illness was retribution, and we did not owe him anything? The thought of my father's flabby white butt, a spear in his hand with a feather matching the feather tied to a string around his waist, my father running naked toward a village, his white belly and breasts and flaccid penis jiggling, his bald head and enormous hands and the gap in his smile from a tooth knocked out in a fight. The idea comes closer to a Bugs Bunny cartoon, half funny, half hysterical, than what I actually saw. Maybe that's why the image sticks: it's half horror, half absurd.

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And if my father had been turned out of our house, if our town had cast out my father, as he should have been cast out, he might not have shattered my mother like quicksilver, he might not have wound my oldest brother like the inside of a golf ball, or sucked the core out of my other brother, or beaten down my sister so that she ate and ate to weigh so much that no one would ever pick her up off her feet again. And maybe he wouldn't have ruined every naptime and the rest of my sleep.

If my father had been turned out, I might have been that little boy, had a crowd to run into, a way to be with other people when fright and flight took me out of my body. Instead, my father's illness was undiagnosed, kept indoors, and he moved quietly at night, and grabbed each one of us kids when we opened our doors, and he hunted us during the day, our rank scent.

It's easier in an instant to judge what you see outside a speeding vehicle, in a culture that is represented to your culture through racist cartoons. When I think about that boy running out of his body, I taste sulfur in my mouth. His fear is something bigger than seeing a naked woman, something insidious and social, like stigma. When I remember him, I am that boy. When I remember the scream I didn't hear coming out of his mouth, I fill his throat with my voice, and sound the alarm I never used. ď ś

KATE GRAY

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ELISE HAHL

Sisters DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING DANGEROUS about this man. "May I speak with you two?" he asked as he wobbled to a stop on his bike. He looked first to Sister Fernandes and then to me, from my black missionary nametag down to my sandals.

"Yes," I said, and he stepped off his bike onto the dirt road. I extended my hand to shake his. In my seven months of experience, a person who would approach a pair of female Mormon missionaries of his own volition was probably a teenage boy on a dare, an old drunk, a Jehovah's Witness, or, every so often, somebody who actually wanted to learn more about our beliefs. We didn't always know which person we were dealing with at first. I hardly noticed the way this particular man slurred his words together, because everybody in this town seemed to run their words together in a slow, backwater drawl. We were in a tiny Brazilian town called Itacoatiara (Ee-tah-QUOTCH-ee-ah-rah), where the nearest major city was a four-hour bus ride through the Amazon rainforest. Even the locals called this place "the end of the universe." Here, where the phones and faucets stopped working for a few hours each day, there was never much of a reason to talk fast.

The man inched toward me and started to speak, making broad gesticulations in the air. I didn't want to back away because I thought I'd offend him when the situation was probably harmless. It was still light outside, and people were bustling all around us. But when the man looked away for a second, Sister Fernandes extended her arm and forced me behind her. She narrowed her eyes at me and then turned to him.

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"We'll talk to you another time when we don't have an appointment to go to," she told him. "Thanks." And then she nudged me into rush-hour traffic, where the interiores — country dwellers — walked along the main dirt road, heading home after a long day of selling fish or eggs. The occasional policeman on a motorbike buzzed by us.

"What was that about?" I asked.

"Don't be stupid."

"You overreacted," I said "You need to back away when men get close. You never do that!"

A low blow, if I had ever heard one. "You think I wanted his attention?" I said. "I was trying to be polite. He said he wanted to talk to us."

"You really are foolish, but at least you can always depend on me to protect you from danger."

Nice, I thought. I'm working with the pink Power Ranger. Sister Fernandes was five inches shorter and about fifteen pounds lighter than me. She was a fiery redhead from southern Brazil who had some training in jiu-jitsu, which somehow empowered her to treat me as a protectorate, someone to keep safe in Itacoatiara, a known hotbed of kite flying. We did attract a lot of attention there because of our pale skin and lighter-than-normal hair, but I was sure nothing would happen. Not there. I knew better than to frustrate Sister Fernandes by laughing, so I nodded gravely and made fun of her in my journal that night instead.

I did a lot to disappoint Sister Fernandes, or SF as I referred to her in that journal. We had first met at a conference for all the missionaries in the area.

She and her missionary companion at the time, the person she had been assigned to work with, had parked themselves in different corners of the room, both crying. I was concentrating on the food from the buffet table when she approached me. "Will you go with me to speak to Presidente?" she asked.

I nodded and left my plate behind. We walked into another room to speak with our mission's president, the one who organized and counseled all the missionaries. As soon as we reached him, she began complaining about her companion and crying even more. Companion fatigue was a hazard for missionaries, since we had to work and live with the same person for as much as six months in a row. We were assigned companions; we didn't choose them and only under special circumstances were we able to leave their sight. Still, the mission president didn't entertain SF's complaint for very long.

I left the conversation wondering how often she vented to him like that.

She left the conversation believing that I was delicate and sweet. And from then on, unbeknownst to me, she began praying that one day we might be assigned to work together. Her prayer was answered a few months later when she and I were sent together on a long, bumpy bus ride through the jungle to a town I couldn't pronounce. She learned quickly that I wasn't quite what she had ordered. Just a few weeks after we started working together, she cornered me: "You look like my little sister," she said, "and I thought you were going to be tender and vulnerable, like her." Her brown eyes narrowed. "But you're not ELISE HAHL

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like my sister," she said. "You are dura." She meant I was hard, stubborn, or thick skulled.

She had a point. As a junior companion who was supposed to follow her lead, I was far too opinionated. I'd say something like, "I don't think we should spend a lot of time making treats at a church member's house today. We should be finding people who want to hear the missionary lessons instead."

And she'd say, "But these people invited us. They want our support. Where is your heart?"

And then I'd say, "It's a waste of time. We should be out knocking doors, at the very least."

And then she'd say, "That never works, Sister Babbel. None of your plans do. If you had my experience, you would understand."

"Can't we at least try?"

"Thanks for the advice, senior." (This meant that I was being insubordinate.)

Sister Fernandes loved to clean the house on our one day off in the week.

All day. Everywhere. She emulated her mother, who taught her from a young age to keep a spanking clean home. I emulated my mother, too, but she was never one to scrub out the freezer on a weekly basis.

"How about if you clean the bathroom today, Sister Babbel?" she'd ask me the morning of our day off. I never wanted to leave my letter writing, but I knew I had to help, so I'd go and scrub the floor tiles for half an hour until everything looked clean. SF, inevitably, would come inspect. "Did you really clean this for half an hour? There are soap scum spots on this floor." I looked a little closer at the floor. Yes, those did look like spots. "Don't you know anything?" she'd say. "You're supposed to wipe the floor this way!"

Later, she wrote a letter to my mother and told her that I needed some work, but that she was going to teach me how to clean better to prepare me for my future family. I was furious. My mother's reply read, "Thank you for helping our daughter," she wrote. "She is so messy!"

I was able to come to terms with that mother of mine on my official Mother's Day phone call, a highly anticipated treat for us missionaries, because we were allowed to call our families only twice a year. Sister Fernandes could hardly wait to speak to her mother either. We walked into the local Mormon Church building after everyone had left, and I was able to sit in a small, boxlike office by myself as I caught up with my family over the phone. I swiveled back and forth in the chair as I learned about my little brother's latest mile time and my little sister's eye surgery. I was really just thrilled to be in a different room from Sister Fernandes for once. Everyone seemed proud of me. There was no conflict, no tension in my stomach. After ninety minutes, I hung up the phone, satisfied.

SF took my spot in the swivel chair after I hung up and called home collect, just as I had. She was the only Mormon in her family, and her mother hardly ever wrote letters or emails. From what SF said, her family strongly disapproved of her mission, but still I thought they'd be happy to connect with her. She admired her mother so much. I sat on the floor outside the office to read while she began her phone conversation. From there, I could hear Sister

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Fernandes' muffled Portuguese, the pitch of her voice rising higher and higher.

Her voice started to quaver. After less than twenty minutes, she hung up and turned the light off in the office. I followed her out of the church building, dying to know what had happened during her phone call. What could have gone wrong? Had she told her mother what a bad companion I was? When we opened the door to our house, she collapsed on the floor and wept.

After a few unsure moments, I knelt down and put my hand on her back.

She turned around to look at me, tears running down her face. "My mother yelled at me," she said, "because I called collect."

The next free day we had, Sister Fernandes spent the entire morning and afternoon throwing insult after insult at me. I couldn't do anything right, my parents were misguided, she couldn't wait to be transferred away from me.

Over and over. I didn't like feeling attacked, so I tried to ignore her. At the end of the day, she confronted me in our dining room in a cold, calm voice: "You may be wondering why I've been treating you this way today," she said. Why, yes I was. "I've actually been testing you."

"What?" I asked.

"I wanted to know if you really cared about me. That's why I tested you," she said.

I couldn't believe this. What was going on? Was this a normal missionary thing in the Amazon? Like Survivor? I was suddenly curious to know how I scored.

"Sister Babbel, you failed. It's clear that you don't really care about me." I didn't know what to say. I was afraid she was right.

About a week later, as we walked out of the house for our morning appointments, Sister Fernandes told me about a dream she'd had: "We were walking outside and a man came up to us. He wanted to kill you, but you had no idea. You were acting really ditzy, so it was up to me to save you." We both laughed. Even in her dreams, she was trying to protect me from bad guys.

It was nice to forget the way we had treated each other before and feel like friends, at least for a minute.

My voice grew hoarse that day because of a cold. I seemed to get them all the time, even in the summer, from shaking too many hands. By sunset, Sister Fernandes was doing all the talking herself, because when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. She probably loved that.

We visited a family who wanted to learn more about our faith that evening, and I tried to stay engaged, even though I couldn't do much more than nod and smile. When the visit was over, we walked away on a dirt road, with a thick wall of forest on the left side and a few crossroads on the right. At half past eight, it was too dark to see the strings of green and gold decorations that appeared here and there along the road in celebration of the ongoing World Cup. They were nothing but jagged outlines. As usual, no buses, trains, or planes made any distant noise. The lights from the high school fell far us behind as we walked, and our road grew darker.

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We made our way down the deserted road for a minute or two, and then we heard someone on a bicycle come up from behind us. He passed us and then circled around to a stop. "Can I talk to you?" he asked us. SF hardly looked up before she said yes. He stepped off his bike and asked her to hold it for him. SF let him place the handlebars in her palms and looked away for a second, as if she were bored. Another weird street conversation, she was probably thinking. Where did these people come from? The man, now free from his bike, started to inch toward me. It had been too dark to see him clearly when he first approached us, but as he drew nearer I could see something wrapped around his face — something that looked like a black t-shirt. The only features I could make out were his two bloodshot eyes, illuminated by the distant lights of the high school. He came closer and closer toward me, his eyes never leaving mine. I didn't extend my hand for a handshake as I usually did. I stepped back as he stepped toward me. Something was wrong. Something was off. I tried to think of how to get out of the situation.

Without saying a word, the man pulled something shiny out of his pocket in a slow, stealthy motion. Even though my voice had been gone all day, I screamed — I screamed so loud that I hardly knew it was my voice. He said nothing, but he faced me, holding the knife in his right hand and pushing it closer and closer until it was nearly touching the fabric of my dress. I felt as if I were watching a movie. I couldn't move.

Without a word, Sister Fernandes shoved the bike toward our attacker.

She grabbed my hand, and suddenly my legs moved again. We turned and ran away from him. When I finally had the courage to look back, I saw him in the exact same spot, watching us run.

We ran left onto a street with a few well-lit homes and pounded on a door, both of us shaking. I didn't even stop to think that two Mormon missionaries banging on a door in the dark could be a counterproductive way to find help.

But a kindly middle-aged couple let us into their home. They allowed us to recover from the shock, use their phone, and they even made some herbal tea for us. We were able to wait there, at turns calm, at turns crying, while we waited for a man from our church to walk us back to our home. We couldn't identify our attacker at the police station the next day, but I can still picture his silhouette on the street, a t-shirt covering most of his face and his hands gripping the bike.

Sister Fernandes and I were promptly transferred out of the area, which was deemed too dangerous for female missionaries. We were reassigned to an area in probably the safest place in all of Brazil, a suburb straight out of Leave It to Beaver, with paved streets, fenced yards, and lots of streetlights.

We worked there for two months and then we were sent to different areas and companions. Sister Fernandes left for home shortly afterwards, having completed her eighteen months of missionary service, and I didn't expect to ever see her again.

Nearly two years later, I had gone home, graduated from college, married, and returned to Brazil with my husband. We had both found jobs that allowed

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us to work in São Paulo — a move that would allow me to use my Portuguese.

While we were there, we decided one evening to visit the Mormon temple in the western part of the city. We were sitting on a bench in the chapel in the middle of the temple, whispering to each other, when I noticed a familiar redhead sitting behind me. I don't know whose jaw dropped lower, hers or mine.

We embraced. A group from Sister Fernandes' congregation had travelled hundreds of miles to São Paulo, and she would be there all weekend. We could hardly keep our voices to whispers, as we were supposed to do in the temple.

We made plans to do things that we could never do on our mission — mall cruising and lunch at a restaurant.

The next day, I picked up Sister Fernandes in our car and we drove down Avenida Faria Lima toward the swanky mall. She had married, too, and we chatted about her husband and family. She seemed serene in a way that she hadn't been on the mission. It seemed so natural that she was sitting in the passenger seat and talking to me like a real friend. For the very first time, I was able to see clearly what she had done for me. I owed my life to her. She was the one person on my eighteen-month mission who wasn't afraid to tell me I needed work, the only one who could name all my weaknesses and faults but who still wanted to protect me — a little bit like a sister.

"Are you trying to kill us?" she cried as I cut in front of the car in the other lane. It was a little trick I had learned while driving in São Paulo. "In the United States, don't they make you take a driving test before you get your license?" she asked.

Exactly like a sister. 

ELISE HAHL

63

ROSA LIA

London Fog GUIDE HER THROUGH THE CENTRE OF THE CITY but feel like she's missing the heart of it.

I'm showing her Covent Garden, but it's morning, it's quiet, there's no one there. She can't see what it's like when the food stalls are out, when it's too busy to move, when a band is playing, when it's dark and a guitarist sings an old song you've heard in other cities, when you find a quiet corner to sit with a friend.

What do I show her? How do I bring her in?

This is Borough Market. This is the Thames. This is St. Paul's.

But the city moves through these places. It is its own cathedral, its own river, its own market where people wander through flavours to choose the right one, for that moment.

What are your impressions? I ask.

It's really international. People are well dressed. It's cold. But I came here to see you as much as to see the city.

And that's when I understand that she's already inside the city, because she's inside me. Every part of this city has a link somewhere else. The Roman buildings, the American coffee shops...the river that runs to the sea.

She might not see all the bars where I've shared drinks with friends, all the art on the walls, the food in the restaurants, the people on the streets, the north the south the east the west in night in day in spring in summer and winter and autumn in rain and snow and sun and when you're tired and when

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you're bursting with energy, when you can't stop smiling, when you cry in front of strangers, when you need somewhere safe.

She won't depend on it. She won't learn who she is in it. She won't put her roots in it.

She won't see it all. I won't see it all. You can't see it all. Even the smallest places are too big to capture every detail. It all becomes lost in the fog.

Then, as I pass other people passing through, I realise that half of the city is on the outside, looking in. Part of the city is those people. Part of the heart, the core, the inside, is the movement, the change, the breath of the outside. ď ś

ROSA LIA

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RHEA KENNEDY

Tequila After Sunrise HE NOTE AT OUR GREEK LODGINGS was written in red Sharpie on the back of a steno pad. "Miriam Wellcome," it began. "Something happened and I am out of apartments." The writer instructed us to go around to the front to number five.

How could they be out of apartments? We wondered. Miriam had reserved accommodations for three at the Chios Panorama Studios and Apartments more than a month before. It was part of our fervent anticipation of a trip from Washington, D.C. to a friend's wedding on an Aegean island. Had a Greek celebrity swooped into this tiny city and snatched our accommodations right out from under us? Would we be stuck sleeping, eating, and primping in a broom closet?

Our confusion only deepened when we reached number five. There, we found not a hotel office or a proprietor but a perfect, empty studio. It had the kitchenette promised in the website, a key in the door, and an impossibly clear view of the Aegean all the way to the coast of Turkey. The three of us opened our backpacks and hung up our party dresses. If this was what we got when all of the apartments ran out, we could have done a lot worse.

By the next day, we knew we were wrong. Konstantinos Travlos, shaved head shining and earring glinting, clinched it. The owner of the Panorama and author of the "wellcome" note, Konstantinos worked out of an office the size of a tool shed. Once I sat down among the frame packs, crabbing crates, a scruffy golden lab, and a dorm room-style mini fridge, he

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explained that he simply had to be away (out) from the Chios Panorama when we arrived. The note was to explain his inability to present his sardonic smile in person.

We were wrong indeed. Not just for misreading the note, but because we had violated the most important rule of travel: Expand your perception.

As someone who teaches writing to American Sign Language users from around the country, I should have known better. Entering liminal linguistic space requires dropping firm notions of words and phrases. ASL varies so much by region and individual backgrounds that one person's word for "cheat" is another's sign for "punish." And no matter where you go, the flourish of a hand with three fingers extended can depict a whole road trip.

I retain this soft consciousness sometimes, like the moment on a bus near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico when I heard something clank. I looked up. A woman a few seats ahead of me unleashed a lightning-fast stream of Spanish, directing her eyes right at me and then down under my seat. I gathered that she had lost some change, and it was rolling my way. Only after I had started rooting around below my seat did I realize that I hadn't understood a word she said. The message lay in the clinking of the coins followed by the woman's caliber of urgency, her gaze, the tone of her voice.

I had seen just the opposite in action when we stayed in Istanbul just days before the Panorama incident. At a booth in the city's famous Spice Bazaar, a shop owner explained that, in addition to everyone in his employ being able to chat with Americans and Brits, he had a guy for Russians, another for Germans, and he himself could converse and bargain as if he were born in Tokyo.

The vendor puffed out his chest and introduced each staff member by his languages as if calling forth the Captain Planet team.

Then I saw it in action. Customers came in, murmured a few words to one another, and immediately the appropriate guy was on them, chattering away in their native tongue. Instead of looking up to find the face of the Turk who could talk like a St. Petersburgian, they kept their heads down. "I'll give you twenty for it," they would mutter. The familiar words snapped them into logical mode, and they stayed there.

Every time I travel, I see some reminder that letting go of language lights up parts of my control board that otherwise would remain dark. I unfurl my understanding and melt my expectations.

Then, inevitably, I find myself staring at the ground and quibbling over a hand-painted Ottoman-style bowl. Back home, I agonize once again over the opening in an email or a single phrase in an article.

A week after our comeuppance at the Chios Panorama, I would make a routine visit to the Gallaudet bookstore run by a staff that is all deaf. I would see a familiar flinch out of the corner of my eye, and take notice. A woman flailed non-ASL gestures at the cashier as she overenunciated her spoken request. Here was another traveler trying to communicate. I did not stop or try to step in, but I dropped a passing prayer that she would ease up and let communication flow.

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On the last mid-morning of my visit to Chios, I went to see Konstantinos to reserve a taxi to the ferry port. I had dined and danced the night away at the wedding, drinking more ouzo and white wine than I could begin to quantify, and didn't get to sleep until the sun unraveled an orange ribbon at the edge of our ocean view.

A mop in one hand, Konstantinos waved from the door of one of the apartments. I had picked up enough Greek to notice that he used the familiar "ya su" now, rather than the formal greeting. I followed him into the packed office, grateful to be out of the sun that was a bit too much after the night I'd had, and found a seat. Then I explained that I could use his help with calling a cab for a few hours hence.

Konstantinos picked up the phone, then paused, hand poised to dial but not dialing. "Would you like something to drink?" he asked. He put down the phone, opened the fridge, and pulled out a square bottle with a narrow neck.

From my place on the narrow couch a foot from his desk, I quickly recognized the Jose Cuervo label. Konstantinos tilted the half cup of golden liquid until it slid from one side to the other, frozen to the consistency of honey.

Though my stomach was asking for breakfast and my common sense told me that Cuervo might not be the best of friends with the liqueur and wine, I accepted.

"Good. So do you see how it is very, uh...what is the word?"

"Thick?" I offered. "Or," I added, "you could say 'viscous.'"

Konstantinos nodded, not even attempting to pronounce the alien term.

Then he poured us each about a finger full in water glasses and explained that another guest had showed him how to really enjoy tequila. Freezing it was just the first step. "Then when you drink, don't drink all at once," he advised. "Drink it slowly. You will taste sweet and lemon and a little spicy. Hold it in the back of your... what do you call it?"

"Palate?" I ventured.

"Yes, sure. Your palate," Konstantinos said.

I shrugged and took the glass, and inhaled the scent of bitter citrus and metal. The sun shone at full force now as it warmed the quiet grounds of the Panorama and the carless street and the sea to its midday August peak. I remember a feeling of comfort on the couch, which held a perfect space below for a napping dog. Konstantinos and I toasted, sipped, and sat there for a moment, letting the drink rest in our mouths. ď ś

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JEN CULLERTON JOHNSON

Families On The Fringe: Complexities Of The Ie HEN LATE JULY ARRIVES WITH A HEAT WAVE and nearly constant blue skies, every man, woman and child in Asahi Mura heads down to the seashore. Waiting for them, open for business, are the local branch members of the yakuza, what is sometimes referred to in the Western media as the "Japanese mafia." In Tokyo and other large cities, the yakuza does, I suppose, carry itself with something like the wise-guy swagger and intimidation of American gangsters. Here in Asahi Mura, where the local yakuza run the yakisoba houses, beer gardens and raft rental stands, they have more the look of small time wannabes or gangster pledges having to go through a not-so-trying hazing ritual in an idyllic seaside resort. The lowest yakuza on the totem pole seem to be the guys pushing kakikori carts, selling shaved-ice with flavored syrup like snowcones sold at baseball games back in the States.

I would not have noticed the yakuza presence if it were not for the music that they play over the loudspeakers by the coast. It is only about a twenty minute bike ride from our apartment to the beach. I head that way for a little fresh air during the week when the beaches are not so crowded. One day, as I approach the beachfront buildings which house changing rooms, lifeguard offices, and green tea vending machines, I almost fall off my bike when I hear some Japanese punk start to blare out from the speakers. I wouldn't be opposed to it at any time or in every situation, but in this dreamy setting, I feel

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like an angst-ridden teenager has cranked up some Twisted Sister while his parents stand and contemplate the Grand Canyon.

Looking around, I see that the music is grating on the nerves of the other weekday afternoon beachgoers as well. Sitting on a bench near the path I am biking along, an obasan — grandmother — cringes, and a shufu — housewife — grits her teeth in even more disguised annoyance.

"Every summer they come," says the obasan, dressed for sun protection in long pants, a long sleeve shirt, and a wide brimmed hat.

"It would be all right if they could play more relaxing music," the shufu mumbles and then stands, rolling up her pants legs and going to retrieve a child who has wandered past ankle high water. When she comes back, she looks over the beach and sits down. From inside the small office that controls the beachfront audio system, designed for the serious job of announcing tsunami warnings, two young guys emerge wearing tank-tops that reveal some impressive shoulder tattoos. As the word yakuza flashes in my mind and my jaw hangs open in fascination, the edges of the shufu's lips curl up in a grimace that could be mistaken for a reaction to a bad smell.

"They are all over," she continues, and if it were not for her child floating out farther into the deep, I might have heard more.

Nevertheless, I wonder how much more she would have been willing to say. This is Japan after all, and discontent tends to be subtle. Complaints are highly coded in a way that I am still new at unraveling. Direct criticism seems to embarrass people on both the giving and receiving end. Moreover, coming from Chicago and having a perception of criminal organizations shaped by oceans of movie representations of the Godfather Parts I, II, and III, and few drops of personal experience, I think that people are always tight-lipped about gangsters. Now that I know where to find an outpost of the Japanese secret society, one of my guide books says "always" stays hidden to foreigners — and in my little out-of-the-way town of coastal Japan no less, I know I will be back to investigate.

On my next bike ride, I notice that, besides the music, what really gets the sunbathers' dander up are the announcements that interrupt the dreadful music. The yakuza guys love to get on the horn, and for the more seriousminded Japanese "civilians" at the beach, for whom community responsibility is a paramount value, hearing the municipal loudspeakers used for juvenile ball-breaking is like nails on a chalkboard. On a Wednesday afternoon, for example, the loudspeaker squeals with the announcement: "Hiko-san, get up here, and fix the toilet."

While pretending not to, everyone on the beach scans the area to find the negligent toilet cleaner. He turns out to be the guy floating ten meters out in the surf on a pink raft with his girlfriend, who is now laughing her head off.

Hiko jumps quickly off the raft, landing his girlfriend in the water, and runs up to the pavilion. The girlfriend has stopped laughing now and takes the raft back to the rental station. By the time she has settled down with a towel to lay on the beach, Hiko returns to find her in a less jovial mood. Until the an-

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nouncement comes, "Hiko-san, you forgot to wash under your fingernails! Return for proper hygiene."

On the weekends when there are more people around, there is tighter control and a lot less tomfoolery. The hotels around the beach place a subtle pressure on these hooligans. The yakuza may rule the summer weekdays, but summer weekends are when the hotels net their gains in a region where winter tourism at the inland mountains dominates. These eight weeks of sandy beaches and sunny skies keep hotels, like Dream Hotel and Senami Spa, afloat before the snow renders their guest rooms vacant. To sweeten the attraction for the yakuza staff, some hotels offer free, private onsens, or thermal baths, since the yakuza's tattoos prohibit them from entering most communal baths. Some struggling hotels go so far as offering blocks of rooms to yakuza bosses to then dole out to younger apprentices who will then work the menial summer jobs. In exchange, the resort owners want a little light music on weekends, soft, genki melodies like the ones the families hum.

A regular beachgoer or hotel owner never talks to or argues with the yakuza, even the minor ding-a-lings who rule the loud speakers and the food court.

Understanding this severe ostracization of the yakuza, at first, is the key that I am missing in trying to understand how the Japanese deal with their criminal class. The unwillingness to talk to, or even openly look at the yakuza, is not so much a product of intimidation and fear, as I initially expect it to be. Maybe these scare tactics play a part of bullying with some of the big shots in Tokyo, but with these scrawny noodle sellers, flip-flop purveyors and provincial DJs, intimidation isn't their strong suit. People avert their eyes not in the hopes that they will go unnoticed and not be singled out for confrontation by the yakuza; rather, they look away in order to stress the alienation of those who flaunt Japan's generally rigidly observed social conventions. "Regular" families accept that these two-bit gangsters are part of the scenery, like broken glass in a parking lot; they simply choose to ignore them.

Although the respectable Japanese public is estranged from the yakuza, the yakuza plays an important role in the nation's wider society. The NHK, national news station, and Asahi Shimbun newspaper are always reporting some money laundering scheme or sweetheart real estate deal betraying nefarious connections between government, corporations, and yakuza. While it is not the bozo on the loudspeaker at the beach masterminding these transactions, the presence of young cut-ups does explain something about society's ambivalence toward the yakuza.

In Japan, the juvenile justice system is a fraction of that which exists in the U.S., and in the absence of large juvenile halls, the yakuza are seen to fulfill an important function. Let the adult gangsters deal with the juvenile troublemakers. If these punks are going to do nothing productive, at least let them learn some manners from a segment of the older generation no matter how corrupt, even if they are slicing off fingers Omerta style. Thus, the deal seems to be that the yakuza get a certain amount of space to train their lieutenants, with the caveat that summer weekends at the beach, when families want to JEN CULLERTON JOHNSON

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float on neon colored rafts, eat yakisoba and down ice-cold Asahi Super Dry beers, are inviolable.

Still, every time I come to the beach, just for fun I try my best to pick out the shot-callers. At first, my task seems simple enough. Working from what I remember of the Michael Douglas movie Black Rain, which finds two New York cops going to Tokyo to battle the yakuza, and from renting old Japanese detective movies at the Jusco, I think I should spot the real McCoy decked out in a black zoot suit. His body should be inked in tattoos, one of his fingers sliced off for disappointing the boss, and he should grunt instead of talk. He will have slicked back hair, a stare that is mean as hell, and of course be handy with a tantĹ?, the sharp dagger, which yakuza are known to brandish.

Disappointingly, my stereotype is not very much in evidence at the beach.

Of course, I realize that I would never troll northern New Jersey looking for the Sopranos cast or expect to find John Wayne-style cowboys populating the plains. Still, now that I realize that there are yakuza in these hills, I want them to be a little more stylized than these yo-yos with peroxide blonde mullets or mohawks and sometimes severe acne.

However, in my quest to spot the yakuza, instead I get a front row seat to observe the normal Japanese families that their recruits are cast out from.

Until the U.S. occupation of Japan at the end of World War II, Japanese law did not recognize individuals as individuals, but rather as members of a hierarchical family unit, called an Ie. In theory, the Ie consists of all family members harmoniously fulfilling their duties. The ojiisan, grandfather (or eldest male at least), carts the umbrellas, the towels, and the coolers. The obaasaan, grandmother (or ranking female), carries the picnic baskets, and the two kodomos or children drag all beach junk that they sell in a store along the promenade.

These Japanese families enjoy regimented days at the beach, arriving early and staying for several hours, but never the whole day, unlike yakuza teenagers who have shirked family responsibility and, therefore, enjoy greater freedom — but at a price.

So when I meet the first bona fide yakuza, I don't see it coming. In fact, seeing is part of the problem. I don't see the cigarette he throws on the sidewalk, and he doesn't see me coming until I step on it with my bare foot and shout.

"Jesus Christ," I bellow and hop on one foot. "What the..." My face contorts in pain. My eyes bulge. My tongue lags.

The man who threw the cigarette at first does nothing but watch me. His brows knot together with worry, but then he must realize my burn is nothing serious and starts to laugh. I guess he is laughing at my oversized gestures, ones I have done before to teach second graders fear, shock, and pain. His laugh grows and becomes so loud that I stop jumping and begin to laugh myself. The situation isn't funny, and my foot still hurts, but, either way, both of us are laughing together now. This is no "normal" Japanese family man, I realize. A regular Japanese would be bowing and suimemasen-ing profusely. A "normal" Japanese person would not laugh until tears stream out of his eyes.

Maybe he is yakuza, I think.

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My first clue comes when he shows me where I can ice my burn behind his yakisoba hut. Handing me a bucket of ice he says, "You're not the first gaijin I've met." He has known many, and many of them have been women, he tells me with a grin, checking out my bathing suit. But I am not his type, and we both know it. I've got a body that has not quite bounced back after a baby.

Plus, I wear no ankle bracelets, and I'm married. To him I am a curiosity, a diversion of the day, an eigo no sensei, an English teacher. For me, talking with him might prove my guidebook wrong. Plus, I fantasize for a moment, it never hurts to have a yakuza to call upon if needed, no matter if he is just a yakisoba grill master pretending to be in the big time.

"Call me Mister Red," he says over his shoulder and brings me inside his place of operation. He uses the English translation for his name.

Mister Red starts to grill another batch of yakisoba. When it is ready, he hands me a bowl free of charge, then serves two families who have plunked themselves down in his flimsy beach shack-restaurant. The restaurant is like Mister Red, seasonal and well worn. His fellow workers and he have made the place unique with an open view of the sea but protected from the wind and shaded from the sun. The noodle hut can fit a few large families or several intimate couples. Customers must remove the sand before they come inside, a task Mister Red has made possible by setting up a water hose by the entrance. On the floor, to my surprise, are tatame mats. Everything looks legit, despite the beach being the fourth wall and Mister Red running it.

"How did you get that name, Mister Red?" I ask him, then suck up some of the noodles he serves me. They taste delicious with just the right amount of soy sauce seasoning and grilling, tender green peppers mixed with onions and sliced carrots and a few morsels of meat.

"Long story," he says and nods his head in the direction of the families eating. "I'll tell you later."

"Hey Mister Red, when do you close down?" I ask, also glancing at the families around us. He gets the message.

"We close at sunset. You'll hear us on the loud speaker," he says, grinning a little.

Getting to know Mister Red during the daytime when all these restaurantgoers are famished from the sun and the water is not going to work. Mister Red is all business, and his customers are all eyes. I notice they slurp their noodles quickly, then when they ask for more and the second plate comes, they watch for the clue that Mister Red might be yakuza: his tattoos. Ornate and plentiful, they peek out from his white long sleeved shirt he has buttoned half way up. Although I cannot get a full glimpse of them, I can make out dolphins leaping through waves, a sea lion nuzzling her calf, and waves crashing into rocks. On his right arm are kanji characters I do not recognize. Near his neck is a mountain and sakura. Tattoos are considered a sign of the yakuza, and from the number of tattoos on Mister Red, it is clear he does not mind the association. He only goes through the motions of hiding his tattoos, wearing clothes that could conceal them if they were stiffly worn as they might be at JEN CULLERTON JOHNSON

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a more formal restaurant. He knows that his customers are eager to catch a glimpse of this taboo artwork, and he is clearly not embarrassed by it. I would be proud of it, too. Mister Red looks like a hipster tourism brochure — not Shinto temple, but a more modern emblem of the country.

"See you at sunset then," I say and get up and walk over to my shoes.

Leaving the beach, I see families float in the water and laze under umbrellas. In the distance, I can make out the edges of Sado island, an island that hundreds of years ago the government used as a penitentiary during Samurai times, but now has a whole village of fishermen watching cable television on squid boats. When I turn away from the sea, the mountains loom in the background. I can make out the town's radio tower next to the old ruins of Asahi Mura Castle.

Before I get on my bike, I look back at Mister Red. Another cigarette dangles out of his mouth, and he is flipping more yakisoba. Within minutes, a whole new herd of hungry people has crammed into a low table. What makes Mister Red so interesting, I think, is how he seems to straddle two worlds, the old and the new. He lives on the outskirts of Japanese society, accepted but shunned.

Exactly how he lives, I am unsure; maybe the noodle job is a front, like some of the Chicago mobsters I have read about back home who work day jobs in delis or bakeries. Pedaling back to my apartment, the sea breeze hits my face.

I inhale and think, tonight when the loudspeakers shut down, I'll know.

Later that night, in the beach parking lot there are a hardly any automobiles, except a tiny K-car and one of the especially small Japanese minivans.

On the promenade, a few store lights flicker. When I look at the beach, a distant bonfire glows, and a few kids spin lighted sparklers around in the dark.

Out on the sea, the squid boats shine bright lights over the waters. Asahi Mura Beach is mostly deserted.

I walk over to Mister Red's yakisoba hut, which is boarded up with the signs and umbrellas taken inside. Only the glow and hum of the vending machine flash alive. Then out of the shadows as in the B-grade, Japanese detective movies I've been watching, Mister Red appears, the glow from his cigarette appearing before the outline of his face. In his hand, he holds an Asahi Super Dry beer. After some small talk, Mister Red and I take a seat on a stone bench in front of the sea. He dives right into a conversation I never dreamed I would have with a Japanese person, let alone a man with yakuza connections, responsible for crimes as big as my imagination and as small as the burn blister on my foot.

"There are so many types of people in Japan," he begins and twists his hands together, as if wringing out a wet towel. "All of us fit together and stand on this land. Some of us know each other, and some of us don't," Mister Red says.

The white long-sleeved shirt he wore during the day that covered up some of his tattoos is off. In its place he wears a jogging suit jacket and a pair of clean shorts. From the faint light of the lamppost, I see his eyes are bloodshot after a hard day's work.

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"Where are you then?" I ask and take a swig of the beer he has offered me, a large can of Asahi Super Dry. "Where do you stand?"

All joking aside, I see he wants to get into a serious conversation with me, and I don't know why. I guess that maybe, deep down, he is like all Japanese and wants to show the good side of his country. Perhaps it is because I am an English teacher, and he wants to practice conversation skills with me. Then, I realize that we are similar at least in one respect: We are both outsiders to the mainstream Ie-centered Japanese culture that surrounds us. He may not have a lot of people to actually speak with him much. I decide to stay with the frank conversation. Maybe we will learn from each other. Who knows — maybe this exchange will help us later.

"What's your background?" I ask offering him cigarette.

He takes the cigarette and smells the tobacco.

"American?"

I nod my head. He lights the cigarette and lets it hang from his lower lip.

Then he takes a long drag. I can see his face working out an answer suitable for gaijin to understand.

"Background means background. It means doing work to keep order. Not like the cops but different. You know set up in a place, work it, and leave.

Background means moving places. It means, I don't know," he says and lets out a sigh.

"Do you like your work?" I ask, lighting up a cigarette for myself. I think maybe the questions are too personal and may overstep, but I'd like to get some juicy information. Mister Red does not seem to mind. He seems like this is his chance to share with a stranger he will never see again, though it is difficult for him to pull his answers together in a conversation of blended English and Japanese.

"Loved it at first. Who wouldn't? I was kid who ran wild. Got some structure. Got to play. Got to see something besides Kobe."

"Asoka, ne? — No regrets?" I ask and try to cajole Mister Red into revealing some adventure.

"Well, things change," he says and then blows a smoke ring.

"Wow, what kind of change?" I ask shifting my weight on the stone bench, so I can see him clearly. For a few seconds I imagine Mister Red's change had to do with him being a head honcho in the yakuza. A rising star wheeling and dealing with other gangsters and gamblers, he got caught up in the mix, hit a bad turn, and was punished by being sent to grill up yakisoba and be a camp counselor for young yakuza in an out of the way beach town, all his glamour and guns stripped away to barbeque tongs and flip-flops.

Instead he says, "I had a kid. She's twelve years old. She's going to be in high school soon, and, well, you know how it is."

I cough beer out of my nose. Fatherhood changed this wannabe thug? No deals in the back alley, just late night diapers! I couldn't have asked for a better cliché if I wanted one. "Wow. Really? Honto ne?"

"Honto ne. My daughter set me straight. You know how it is with kids. They don't care about what you give them, just that you're there. Do you have any kids?"

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"Yeah, I've got a toddler son who is learning Japanese words faster than English ones."

He nods. "They're smart, aren't they?"

"Real cute," I say thinking of how to swing this back to his fatherhood moment. "Do you take care of your daughter?"

"No. My mother raises her since her mom's gone. Took off and followed the white line, ne," he says and makes a snorting nose.

"Natsui-chan is all mine," he continues. "Most of the time she lives with my mother. At least in the summer she can come down for a week to be at the beach with me and her grandmother. The Sea Dream Hotel gives us a deal, so we all stay there. It would be hard if I raised her, but I guess you have already figured that one since you live here. You know how it is for people like us."

I do know how it is for children who have marginalized parents, like Fernando and me. Children do suffer because Japanese society shuns their moms and dads and, in doing so, separates the children, too. Some of the parents I know work at jobs "normal" Japanese refuse. Take for instance, Otaki-chan's father. He is a Nikkei, a Japanese citizen who was born and raised in the largest Japanese ex-pat community in the world, in Brazil, but returned to Japan for economic reasons. He works at the bon-bon factory, the only place that would hire him when he came back. They gave him the night shift, too.

There are the Philippine women Marta and Lucia, students with me in our Japanese language class. They are here on work visas and run roadside snack shops by the highway, a job most Japanese believe is synonymous with prostitution. Now before me is a small-time, noodle grilling yakuza father. Each parent, including me, is an example of an outsider. In a way, we all live on the fringes, the margins of life eking by with our limited roles and our limited interactions with the rest of the population. They teeter on both sides, no side totally accepting them as their own. As for me, I am just an outsider looking in for a few years.

Still, I know how Mister Red feels when he says people here are group people, and those outside of the group are lost. In a way, I know what it is like to be shunned by the Japanese. I've experienced the sting of isolation. Sometimes at the beach mothers pull their children away from my son. Once at a public pool, I slid down a slide with my son in my lap and when we reached, the bottom, all of the families vanished for another pool. Knowing I am always on the outside is lonely. It feels like I am under a microscope, trapped between two slides. Yet, I can't imagine being Japanese and rejected by my own people and what it does to a person to be constantly ignored.

"This work is seasonal," he says, interrupting my train of thought. "In a month I will be down south in Kyushu, doing something else. Natsui-chan will go back to my mother in Kobe. There is where Natsui-chan can grow. Ever been there? Before the earthquake, it was beautiful. It is where I'd like to settle down, but settling down is difficult."

On the water the bright lights twinkle from the squid boasts. A few teenagers drift by us, arms and hands linked together.

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"What do you know about home-stays outside Japan?" Mister Red says, breaking the silence between us.

"A good exchange. You get a glimpse of a different culture. I don't know. It depends on which country your daughter chooses for her home visit," I offer.

"I want my kid on one of those when she is older. English can get her a good job, right?" he asks me. His voice is void of the tough guy Mister Red routine. He is just a father, and like all fathers he wants the best for his child, better than what he has for himself.

"Yeah, sure," I say. "She can begin in a few years. I think they start as young as 16. If you give me your address in Kobe, I can send you information.

Does it matter which country?" I ask.

"America," he says then stretches his arm above his head and yawns.

"Really? Not British?"

"Yankee doodle dandy American. You're more open than the others," he says.

"Not sure about that one, Mister Red," I say thinking of all the groups who are excluded and marginalized in the United States.

"Arrigato gozaimasu," he says with new formality and pulls a wallet out of his pocket to remove a meshi, a business card. Then he writes his address and adds his mother's name.

"Here is the address," he says, and he stands up and bows. Our conversation has ended.

"Wait," I say, "you never told me why they call you Mister Red." But he doesn't seem ready to tell me the story. Maybe being called Mister Red became part of the attitude, the mask he reveals to the public, not this private side he showed me. Mister Red is not who he really is and whatever the real story is that gave him the name no longer matters.

"Just send the stuff if you remember," he mumbles and gives another quick bow and disappears into the night. ď ś

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CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

Tara Caimi is an independent writer and editor based in central Pennsylvania.

She holds an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University, and her work has been published in journals and magazines including the Writer's Chronicle and Fire & Knives. Excerpts from her full-length memoir, Mush: The Scenic Detour of A Life, have also been published in The MacGuffin and Oh Comely magazine.

Corinna Cook holds a B.A. from Pomona College and an M.A. in Northern Studies from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her nonfiction appears in Flyway and is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review.

Paula Cruickshank, a former White House correspondent, covered domestic policy issues during six Administrations beginning with President Jimmy Carter. She is currently a graduate student (MA in Writing) at Johns Hopkins University.

Dario DiBattista, a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University MA in Writing Program and a writer, has been featured in The Washingtonian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Connecticut Review, and many other publications. Additionally, he's been profiled in The New York Times and other places and has been a commentator for National Public Radio. His editing projects include 20 Something Magazine, O-Dark-Thirty, and jmww. He lives in Towson, Maryland, and teaches as an instructor for the Veterans Writing Project and as an adjunct professor for the Community College of Baltimore County.

Jay Duret is a San Francisco writer who blogs at www.jayduret.com. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in many online and print journals, including Blue Lake Review, Gargoyle, Stone Path Review, the Citron Review, Gambling the Aisle, Cigale Literary Magazine, Fiction Vortex and Work Literary Magazine.

Jay recently completed a novel, Nine Digits, about a dysfunctional family selected to compete on a reality television program for which the prize is $100 million. He is currently at work on a book about eavesdropping in San Francisco.

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Khadija Ejaz is an internationally published and translated poet and the author of several books. In 2012, she founded an online creative magazine called The Exhibitionist (http://thexzbt.com). Khadija was born in India and raised in Oman, but she spent most of her adult life in the US and Canada.

Her educational background is in information technology, and she has also worked in broadcast journalism at New Delhi Television in India. In her spare time, Khadija dabbles in photography and filmmaking. To learn more about Khadija, visit her website at http://khadijaejaz.netfirms.com.

Daniel Gabriel's published work includes a novel, Twice a False Messiah (Florida Academic Press), a short story collection, Tales From The Tinker's Dam (Whistling Shade Press), and over 200 stories and articles. He is also a lifelong vagabond traveler who has taken camelback, tramp freighter and third class trains through 100 different countries. He holds an M.A. in Cross-Cultural Studies and is currently statewide Director of Arts Programming for COMPAS. Murielle Gandre has lived in London and St Petersburg, and is (for now) in Paris.

Trained in film production, design and scenic painting, she spent the last ten years being a jack of all trades with variously successful results but no regrets whatsoever. She has now narrowed down her range of activities to travel writing and decorative painting. She enjoys cafĂŠs with outdoors tables, figure skating, the smell of jet fuel in the morning, and blogs at http://theeasternblog.wordpress.com.

Kate Gray has taught at Clackamas Community College for 20 years, tending to her students' stories. Her first full-length book of poems, Another Sunset We Survive, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 2007 and followed chapbooks, Bone-Knowing (2006), winner of the Gertrude Press Poetry Prize and Where She Goes (2000), winner of the Blue Light Chapbook Prize. Kate's novel, Skin Drag, is an attempt to look at bullying without blinking and will be published by Forest Avenue Press in 2014.

Erin Grover specializes in sharing the voices and events of social movements through writing, film and photography. She is an established speaker as a voice for peace and an inspiration for others to dare to face their fears by saying yes to their destinies. She blogs at www.blog.eringrover.com, Elise (Babbel) Hahl was an editor and contributor to a compilation of essays called Choosing Motherhood (Cedar Fort, 2013). She has published in Education Next magazine and recorded her work on "The World in Words" podcast.

Elise currently lives with her husband and four children in Pennsylvania.

Andrew Hamilton grew up on a farm in southern Scotland, and has lived in various towns and cities in the UK. After working as a journalist for several years, he moved to Paris, France, where he now teaches English. He writes both fiction and non-fiction.

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C.B. Heinemann has been performing, recording and touring with Irish music groups for nearly twenty years. His Celtic rock band, Dogs Among the Bushes, was the first American Celtic group to tour in the former East Germany and Czechoslovakia after the fall of communism. A graduate of the University of Maryland, C.B. has written three novels, and his short stories have appeared in Storyteller, One Million Stories, Whistling Fire, Danse Macabre, Fate, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Cool Traveler, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Car & Travel, and Big World Travel.

Robert Hirschfield is a New York freelance travel writer whose work appears in India Abroad, Matador, The Jerusalem Report, and other publications.

Jen Cullerton Johnson lives and teaches in Chicago. She has published fiction and creative nonfiction in literary journals and magazines. Her books include Seeds of Change (Lee & Low 2010), Kiss Me Goodnight (Syren 2004) and a forthcoming textbook called Green Literacy: Fueling the Conversation Between Young People and the Environment. She holds a MFA in Non-Fiction, and an MEd in Curriculum and Development.

Wilona Karimabadi is thrilled to finally have kids old enough to handle international travel without diaper bags. She writes from Ellicott City, Maryland.

Rhea Yablon Kennedy is a Washington, D.C.-based writer and teacher who has eaten and drank her way through 17 countries and flubbed conversations in each of them. Her writing on travel and food has appeared in both regional and national publications, including The Washington Post, Grist, and Edible Chesapeake Magazine.

Soo Kim lives in New York City. She is a word stylist and grammarian extraordinaire, applying her chops as a verbal strategist for a global branding agency.

She holds an MA in Fiction from Johns Hopkins University and tweets @skimma.

Rosa Lia is a follower of the slow travel movement. She's interested in ethical and sustainable travel, both towards cultures and landscapes. Rosa fell in love all three times she went to Mexico, has been to six of the continents, crossed the Atlantic and lived in North Carolina, Nicaragua, London, and Bristol. She has studied travel writing with the London School of Journalism as well as taken writing and photography courses with MatadorU. In October 2013 she will be going to Israel for a year to volunteer through the European Voluntary Service. She blogs at http://throughthewardrobe-rosa.blogspot.co.uk.

Steve Lyda is a retired State of Alabama forester who now resides in western Nebraska, enjoying hunting, fishing, and horses in the Midwest. His work, "Black ducks," was published in Waterfowler Magazine, and he has recently finished a series of short stories ranging from turkey hunting to trout fishing.

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Colleen MacDonald is attracted to the hidden, derelict and marginalized.

With a desire for adrenaline rushes and a love of heights, Colleen has photographed everything from abandoned highrises in Detroit to Particle Colliders in Russia. With an eye for portraits, a belief that everyone has a story, and a love of drains, she has been wandering through foreign countries since 2007.

Accused of being a spy, a prostitute, and a missionary, having repelled down elevator shafts, been caught up in political protests and nearly arrested, she has developed a fearless approach to photography, seeking out the moments both violent and peaceful that give life meaning. http://www.mcmacdonald.net Angela Magnan relocated from Vermont to Maryland to complete the M.A. in Writing program at The Johns Hopkins University. She completed her degree in 2010, after which she collected writing material while serving visitors at a museum in Washington, D.C. She will be collecting more writing material, much of it in Latin, in a temporary position at the National Arboretum until November 2013.

Adrian Mangiuca lives in Washington D.C. and sits outside on sunny days. He enjoys travel, the company of friends, and no more than two cigarettes a week.

Michele McFarland is a freelance writer and masters degree candidate. Her work has appeared in Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, Baltimore Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer and other venues. She lives in Maryland with her family where she spends an extraordinary amount of time in traffic.

Allen McKenzie (aka Gypsysattva) is a doctor of law and author of four novels.

Samples of his work can be found at http://gypsysattva.wordpress.com.

Holly Morse-Ellington teaches in the Reading and World Languages Department at the Community College of Baltimore County. Holly worked as a staff writer for Baltimore Fishbowl and has also published her nonfiction in Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine; Smile; Hon; You're in Baltimore; Urbanite; The Washington Times and The Journal of Homeland Security. She was a storyteller for The Stoop Storytelling Series, a live show at Baltimore's Centerstage. To read Holly's essays, visit www.hollyneat.com.

Eric G. M端ller is a musician, teacher and writer living in upstate New York. He has written two novels, Rites of Rock (Adonis Press, 2005) and Meet Me at the Met (Plain View Press, 2010), as well as a collection of poetry, Coffee on the Piano for You (Adonis Press, 2008). Articles, short stories and poetry have appeared in many journals and magazines. http://www.ericgmuller.com/ Shenan Prestwich is a Washington, DC-area poet, cognitive researcher, overconfident dancer, and general hobby collector. She's been living by Robert Hunter's edict that "once in awhile you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right" ever since she heard it in a Grateful Dead song

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long ago, enjoys compulsively kicking over every stone in her path, and uses poems to process most of what she sees, the rest is taken care of in the form of epic playlists. Her work has been seen in a diverse spread of publications including Slow Trains, PigeonBike, Lines + Stars, Dirtflask, Dr. Hurley's Snake Oil Cure, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Camel Saloon, Lip, Seltzer, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, The Baltimore Review, and Apeiron Review. In addition to her literary interests, she enjoys old cameras, strong scotch, long drives, loud bluegrass, excessive hospitality, good people, and bad karaoke. You can follow her pursuit of all these things (and more!) over at http://shenanprestwich.com.

Mark Rigney is the author of numerous plays, including Ten Red Kings and Acts of God (both from Playscripts, Inc.), as well as Bears, winner of the 2012 Panowski Playwriting Competition (during its off Broadway run, Theatre Mania called Bears "the best play of the year"). His short fiction appears in Witness, Ascent, Black Gate, The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review, The Long Story, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and Black Static, among many others. "The Skates," a comic (and ghostly) novella, is now available as an ebook from Samhain Publishing. In non-fiction, Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical (Gallaudet University Press) remains happily in print one decade on. Two collections of his stories are available through Amazon, Flights of Fantasy and Reality Checks. His website is www.markrigney.net.

Faye Rivkin lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband Marcos and their dog, George. Two words she never expect to write for a client in her role as a freelance writer: "public urination"! She wonders what other unique phrases she'll get paid to use next, since she can't quit just yet to travel around the world and gather material for some sort of travel book, or one about her family history.

Rebecca Rotert-Shaw received her MA from Hollins College in Virginia where she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets prize. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Santa Clara Review, America Magazine, Hospital Drive Journal of Literature and Humanities, Temenos Journal and Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine. Her novel will be published by William Morrow in Summer 2014. She lives in Omaha, NE. Charlotte Safavi is a freelance writer. Her work has been featured in many publications including The Economist, The Washington Post Magazine, House Beautiful, Country Home, Victorian Homes, The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, and Better Homes and Gardens. Though born in London, England, and educated at Oxford University, Charlotte is of Iranian heritage. She resides in the Washington D.C. area with her husband and son.

Hamza Syed is a Bostonian Muslim and Pakistani-American writer, traveler, and overall curious observer. He has a B.A. in International Relations from Boston University where his education ended so his learning could begin. This

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is one of his attempts in putting his observations into writing and his first publication.

Chris Tarry is a four-time Juno Award winning musician (the Canadian Grammy) and a writer. His collection of short fiction, How To Carry Bigfoot Home, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in early 2015. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Michelle and daughter Chloe. For more, visit his website at http://christarrywriting.com.

Vicki Valosik is a freelance writer and photographer whose work has appeared in Washingtonian, Philadelphia Inquirer, GOOD, and International Educator, among others. Vicki holds a master's degree in Nonfiction Writing from Johns Hopkins University and a master's degree in Sociology from the University of South Alabama. She works at an international nonprofit in Washington D.C. by day and moonlights as a synchronized swimmer in her free time. Vicki serves as Nonfiction Editor for Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine.

Miriam Vaswani is a writer and editor, contributing to global literary journals and news publications. She has travelled widely and lived in Canada, Scotland, Russia and Germany. Miriam serves as Fiction Editor for Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine. She blogs about books, politics and global citizenship at http://miriam-littlebones.blogspot.com/ and tweets as @miriamvaswani.

Susanna Wickes is a writer/photographer/teacher from Scotland, whose impulsive decisions led her across Eastern Europe, India, Australia and — most spontaneously — Inner Mongolia. She now lives and works in this region of northern China, eats far too many noodles, and occasionally goes to the Gobi Desert to see the camels. http://lifeafterdelhi.wordpress.com Melissa Wiley is a freelance culture and food writer living in Chicago who seizes every opportunity to walk barefoot with half-painted toenails through airport security and stammer in pidgin tongues. Her writing often invokes the memory of her parents, her home on the Island of Misfit Toys, and the beauty of caterpillars. Her creative nonfiction has been published in a number of literary magazines. 

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ABOUT THE EDITOR

RANDI DAWN HENDERSON is a traveling writer, on regular journeys that prove truths to be no strangers to fictions. She's been an Indophile since 2007, and spent several years bouncing between winters in India and summers in Alaska. Some of her favorite things include puns, peaches, freckles in the shapes of things, and Susanna Wickes.

Brandi worked as a columnist for New Delhi's First City Magazine, a position in which she wrote about her experience as an American expatriate living in India's capital city. She was also a contributor to Time Out Delhi and has had work published in Mason's Road Literary Journal, JMWW, Three-Quarter Review, 20 Something Magazine, Lost Literary Magazine, Urbanite, and Dillinet Magazine. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, a journal which seeks to promote cross-cultural understandings through global storytelling, and also co-edits Prompt & Circumstance, a resource dedicated to lighting creative fires.

Brandi holds an MA in Writing (with a specialization in Creative Nonfiction) from Johns Hopkins University and teaches English Composition when she's not busy daydreaming about appositives. For more information, please visit brandidawnhenderson.com.ď ś

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