PENDULUM THE LITERARY & ARTS JOURNAL OF PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY
SPRING12017
PENDULUM THE LITERARY & ARTS JOURNAL OF PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY
SPRING 2017
Editors-in-Chief Carissa Chen Joonho Jo Brandon Liu Managing Editors Willa Canfield Katie Lee Ivy Tran Writing Editors Isabella Alvarez AnnĂŠe Reach Teddy Scott Art Editor Reina Matsumoto Associates Caroline Grace Mai Hoang Jenny Yang Faculty Advisor Willie Perdomo
Featured Seniors Chris Agard Aden Choate Meghan Chou Alison Dowski Zea Eanet Audrey Hahn Jada Huang Jenny Hunt Anishta Khan Sydney Lamb Melissa Lu Kelechi Nwankwoala Nolan Peacock Hannah Piette Henrietta Reily Cover Artwork Chris Agard
dedicated to the class of 2017
Letter from the Editors Dear reader, Here at Exeter, the raindrops make us forget that it is May. Maybe this sense of false spring has made us feel like we will never have to move on. Exeter was and is a homeland for us, where learning became solace and loneliness, independence. For four years, we roughened our skins here, scars from burnout and first heartbreaks. We let our friendships germinate, our minds callus. And all the while, the world outside of Exeter recreated itself into something less than a million pieces – something we did not know how to learn or control. We grew restless. We became dependent not on the world but its idea – imagined nations, artificial intelligence, addictions, wars, and nostalgia. Throughout this year, we gathered submissions, hoping to create an issue that reflected our experiences of 2016. As we weaved together a storyline for the work we received, we discovered that the chapters of our issue also served as an embodiment of our past four years at Exeter. We began with Homeland – the cinematic fables of our childhood, the years preceding our times of Reckoning, when we were almost nameless. Now as seniors, we sing our Eulogy – clinging to what we remember of Exeter, pulling all-nighters without reason, and laughing under the May rain. This is our final issue. Thank you to the Pendulum board and Mr. Perdomo for your hours of dedication. Thank you to Exeter and the English department for teaching us the power of writing and art. And thank you to the readers – to you – for your endless support.
Sincerely, Carissa, Joonho, and Brandon
An Introduction to the 62nd Issue “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” – William Carlos Williams Fairy tales have been told for far longer than they have been written, handed down generations. Some have prehistoric roots, dating back to the Bronze Age, long before the first literary records. In Germany, fairytales are known as “Märchen,” from “Mär,” meaning “little story–” tales from long ago when the world was still magic. In days of old, Märchen began “In the old times when wishing was still effective.” Why have these stories survived for so long? As we looked through our submissions, we were struck by how mystical, magical, mythic many felt. Amaryllises blossom on stone paths, a pile of stones hums stories to the winds. Sisters dig up their own skin, demons play peekaboo inside of mothers. Cities crack, crumble, hands close around throats. Surreal. And it has been a surreal year. As our country fractures, divides, and reckons with itself, so too have we all struggled to make sense of the changing worlds and our places in it. Our submissions also speak truths, of sickness and loss and fading love, of childhood and home and passion. Real. Real. The most striking stories of reckoning come in the middle of our issue, but every page tells a story of reckoning. This has been a year of reckoning. And wishing, as we have done since the days when the world was still magic. Perhaps we have told fairytales for so long because the world we live in is still magic. Falling in love fits in the framework of fantasy, misery in mythology, loss in lore. So we give you a collection of art, of stories that tell of the real, and the surreal. And the ways in which they intersect. Now, of course, we begin our stories with, “once upon a time.” –Willa Canfield ‘18, Managing Editor
Table of Contents i. Homeland Cairngorm, Zea E.‘17 5 For Chile, Isabella A.‘19 8 Fish on a Dinner Plate, Alison D.‘17 9 Nanchang North Station, Brandon L.‘17 10 July 16, 1999, Meghan C.‘17 11 Growing Pains, Jada H.‘17 13 Rectangle, Not Square, Meghan C.‘17 15 Homeland, Zea E.‘17 18 Vivienne, Part 1, Margaret K.‘18 20 Cold Comfort, Henrietta R.‘17 22 Some Unfortunate Truths, Nolan P.‘17 25 ii. Reckoning Ritual: Creating Resources..., Kelechi N.‘17 37 Medicate, Kelechi N.‘17 38 Why I Closed My Eyes Before I Stabbed You, Kelechi N.‘17 39 Kelechi, Chris A.‘17 41 (S)He, Mai H.‘20 43 stale wounds, Meghan C.‘17 44 a blind model, Joonho J.‘17 47 Closed In, Bled Out, Jeremy X.‘19 54 Strangled, Jeremy X.‘19 55 Civilization, Carissa C.‘17 56 Untitled, Sydney L.‘17 57 A LOVE LETTER TO A BLACK GIRL, Wynter T.‘19 58 1
iii. Eulogy On Nights When I Am Michaelangelo, Aden C.‘17 61 Flightless Birds, Carissa C.‘17 63 Wonderland, Henrietta R.‘17 65 Vivienne, Part 2, Margaret K.‘18 67 What She Does Not Know Yet, Melissa L.‘17 69 Grandfather Martin is Writing a Memoir, Hannah P.‘17 72 Frida, Maya K.‘18 74 Tangled Up In Blue, Jenny H. ‘17 75 Goodnight, Little Moon, Audrey H.‘17 77 Growing Pains, Shifting Images, Anishta K.‘17 81
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i. Homeland “‘One never reaches home,’ she said. ‘But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.” –Hermann Hesse
Cairngorm Zea Eanet Once upon a time, on a green hill dotted with purple flowers several oceans away, an old man got lost. He had misplaced the way back to his house, which was made of brick and very warm and contained a wife and a son and several small grandchildren. In the meantime, hoping for recovery, he sat by the side of a winding mountain path, thin and brown with dust, and as the sun rose and set he gathered stones around him, spinning tales. On the first night of his perdition he remembered all the way back to blue short pants and the comforting bulk of his mother’s skirts, the cardinal directions of his early days. By morning, he had a little ring of flat gray stones all around him, each touching its neighbors, keeping the chill out. The next night, he built low walls out of his first love, a red-haired girl who wore thick glasses and drew pictures of rosy children in her schoolbooks. In the morning, he found himself surrounded by stones the color of her brown wool skirts and the shape of their first kiss, under an autumn maple. Then: one more stone, level with his stomach, the immaculate white of her cheeks in the ebony of that long sleek morning in the church. That night he slept, dreaming dreams of bloody coughs and children vanishing from yellowed pages. He rose before the dawn, never leaving his circle of stones, and told a story out loud to the snail approaching his fence from the outside. That day, dark, heavy military uniforms were mud, freshened with rain, holding stones together. The death of a close friend, razor burn on his chin, was a fist, so close to crashing down on the thin, wavering brown of snail shell. A fist, raining destruction, stopped with the gentle white hand of a young widow, so young, weeping over a summer grave 5
with an empty coffin and a cheap flag and flowers everywhere. Their kiss, then, a gesture, intermingled tears on two faces, was a furred green leaf, edging under the snail’s soft body, lifting it away and out onto the grassy slopes, dotted with purple flowers, quilting the hill. A postwar wedding, a sepia photo of a young soldier on a newlywed mantel, and a shy pregnancy made up that night’s stones, bluish, from the river, stretching just as high as the old man’s shoulders. From then on, the nights blurred. The grass browned, the sun died more often than it came, screaming, redly alive. The old man sank further. He saw miscarriage after miscarriage, improperly transported, tiny reddish pebbles refusing to build upon their fellows no matter the quantity of joining mud.Years of sympathetic love, and to show for them only one surviving child, a perfect spherical white stone, a tall son, alone, at eye level. His dark absence; more mud, nights of it, countless feet of mud, until the old man had to stand on his aching toes to peer out at the withering world. His mind began to fade; he made huge stones, nearly boulders, out of the marriage of a veteran son in his whiskers and spectacles, the birth of three granddaughters, their matching red braids dry grasses sprouting forlornly above his head. Then, he began to forget. He filled in the gaps where white winter sunlight still streamed with nonsense memories, random, out of chronology; the youngest granddaughter, scraping her knee, supporting a schoolboy’s love for an English teacher, gray, supporting his sister drowning, black, he’d forgotten that, supporting a dream he’d had once during wartime surgery of bees as large as fighter planes, hives of men at desks, copying orders over and over, his own birth, 6
which cracked open under his fumbling hands, exposing daggers of glistening purple crystal. As he sat there, digging and digging for amalgamation, he dreamed more and more, invented more than could be quantified, and as the light disappeared he couldn’t remember his wife’s name, he was back in short pants in the schoolroom, on the battlefield crying as he dodged bullets, sprays of blood like nosegay. In the end, the old man was invisible inside his cairn of stones. People passed, without seeing, as he dreamed and dreamed and dreamed, no longer concerned with finding his way home. Nobody ever bothered to wonder what was beneath that weathered stupa, who had built a monument so staggering with its unquestionable unbreakable senescence. Once, a brided young redhead slid by, in white, felt a sigh on her neck, and a suggestion of rosy, bloody coughs, but she shook it off and vanished over the next rise, and to this day, by the side of that mountain path that winds through sloping hills dotted with purple flowers in summer, there is a proud pile of smooth stones, hand-picked, humming stories into the wind.
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For Chile Isabella Alvarez Neruda’s sea is not made of the same water that froths around my feet. Five pale toes dig into the sand, carnal almost, and one grazes a bump. I lurch forward and grasp with childish, chubby fingers until I pry it free. It’s nothing but a broken sand dollar, stained lemon yellow. In Santiago we stumble through the streets with egg whites on our breath, and the men holding machine guns and machetes do not blink. The acrid smell of the fish market stinks up our hotel room. At night when I try to sleep I can only see the octopus staring up at me, eyes blank, legs spread open lasciviously across a bed of ice chips. Neruda’s Valparaíso is not the same city that towers behind me. The houses are dull and faded, all pastel purples and cornflower blues. When the fog rolls in, Valparaíso looks like the teeth of a six year old; lopsided, collapsing on top of itself.
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Fish on a Dinner Plate Alison Dowski
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Nanchang North Station Brandon Liu Beneath the shelter, morning dew glistens: His suitcase rests between his legs while I await the speeding silver train—it’s noon. Beyond the flat concrete, streams cut green hedges. He holds a peach, bitten in two; its pure juice sweet. He throws the core onto the street.
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July 16, 1999 Meghan Chou On the day I was born — as the candles on my brother’s cake rotted in the trash and his new toys lay forgotten: a truck under the bureau, trading cards slipped into floor vents — a plane dipped her toes into the Atlantic. She called a mayday, but smiled so pleasantly over her shoulder like my mother with her permed curls, laughing in that air-dancer manner. She waded into the waves with a pardon to the beach and a practiced flutter of her fingers: goodbye, or an invitation to join? On her body, a neat, red line — bikini bottom to match her silver tan from time spent cloud-bathing, lounging on soft grains of water vapor or the billowing tide of a passing murmuration: starling flocks swept from coast to coast.
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She unraveled exhaust, pulsated smoke into a ribbon that marked the finish line for a debonair gentleman pressed into her lap — waiting for a ray of sunlight to slice the trail like a pair of scissors, held in The Mayor’s gloved, knowing hands. She was the magic bullet, wrapped in an oceanic coffin with seaweed lining the cockpit like satin cushions. As her radio sputtered, it sent a final coordinate, navigation instructions for cotton sheets and latex hands to pilot me into a hospital bed. My mother had a body, but John John’s would not.
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Growing Pains Jada Huang When she was young, there was no right or wrong— Toy blocks and cookies, marbles, crackers, shoes, She knew no difference, and so into her Little, lively, curious open mouth They went. Quickly, she came to know taste, and Broccoli, grape medicine she wanted Nowhere near her mouth, because they made her Nose scrunch, eyes squint—they were bad to her mouth. She grew older. She watched girls put pumpkin Spice lattes and mint gums into their mouths. So she did too. And they were fine, she put Them in her mouth like the other girls. But At night, alone, she loved Lays chips and soda, Ice-cream and French fries. But she’d never tell. She didn’t need to. They all already knew. She grew older. Bottled water taught her How to drown out the hunger—the raucous sloshing Washing away protests of starvation, Again and again, sweeping the shoreline smooth. Water would fill her, inside, and she Wouldn’t show anything, outside. No one Would know. Because with water, she became Beautiful. Cleansed. His tongue, deep in her mouth Was proof. His teenage stubble felt sharp, on her tongue. She grew older. Three stalks of celery, two Teaspoons of horseradish, one teaspoon of Chopped shallots, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, Two teaspoons of salt, twelve dashes of hot Sauce, two limes, juiced, and one forty-eight ounce jar Of tomato juice. She didn’t like having it 13
On her lips, in her mouth, but it tasted just better Than vomit, and he said it would help, he Bought the tomato juice himself and brought It to her, along with the birth control. She thanked him for taking care of her. He smiled. She grew older. The tie she bought him for His birthday, the one with the little red hearts, The one that had always felt so gentle on her Skin, was tearing at the sides of her mouth. It was good at soaking up the spit, the blood, Her screams. She knew it was bad to her mouth, But they didn’t seem to think so. They just Kept feeding her placebos, she could tell— They were always too sweet atop her tongue. She grew older, by cigarettes and eyes Wide open and fingernails bitten and meals Untouched—older than age. When she got what She’d needed, she could recall no right, just Wrong. Sertraline and amitriptyline, Alprazolam and temazepam, in To her vast, broken, empty mouth they went. She grew no older.
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Rectangle, Not Square Meghan Chou “I would give almost anything to hear my father talk again, the crash and bang and stop of his language, always hurtling by. I will listen for him forever in the streets of this city.” (Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker) “Today, I’m teaching how to fold a frog,” I inform the audience. “Figuratively, at least.” Strangers surround my father in dim candlelight, listening to my poem, “Paper Dialect.” The coffeehouse open-mic night draws the usual hipster crowd for an evening of slam poetry. The semantics go over my father’s head, but he understands my sentiments through the dancing rhythms and inflections of spoken word. An afternoon at my friend’s volunteer art class for local children inspired Paper Dialect. The theme that day was origami. A little girl dragged construction paper across the carpet towards me. I promptly crinkled a frog to life.Years had passed since my father and I turned our kitchen table into a pond — tinfoil rolled into lily pads and spare napkins, taken from the restaurant my father cooked for, smoothed into frogs — but his lessons moved my fingers like a ghost. The napkins always came in the wrong shapes and sizes, so my father constantly reminded me, “Rectangle, not square.” Besides those three words, he passed along his knowledge through deft motions I mimicked: overlap, lick the crease, and tear. The damp paper would slide apart as easily as a curtain. Then I would flick the rectangular sheet into a jumping frog that came alive when we leaped our creations across the splintered table. My father immigrated from Taiwan with a single backpack too small to hold the English language. All he carried was 15
a ratty diploma, which proved useless for finding employment. Instead his fingers, nimble from working at his mother’s tailor shop, pulled him through underpaying jobs in dingy kitchens as he searched for his American Dream. His limited English, and my minimal Mandarin, forced our relationship to swerve around massive language barriers. Especially since I love to write and build characters with my keyboard, words taste bitter when I read aloud my stories to his blank nods. But as my father sits in the front row while I perform, he waits for my instructions before making his origami frog. “Slip the edge into the crease,” I say, “where our paper dialect stays tucked.” He places a triangle into a folded slot as if sliding a letter into an envelope. From the rickety, raised platform-of-a-stage, I can still hear his nails zip along the creases like skates on ice. Nostalgia creeps into my throat as the poem winds along. I reminisce about our high-five ritual — up, down, sideways — every Wednesday morning when he dropped me off at school with the voices of NPR crackling against the windshield. I recall his coarse fingers from oils burns turning the steering wheel; his toned forearms from carrying large pots handing me my backpack; his greasy hair from the graveyard shift rustling in clumps whenever he stuck his head out the window to yell goodbye. A new sadness settles at the loss of even our paper dialect. While I attend boarding school, our sacred drives from home to school, and nights making origami, have been stripped away. We do not communicate in the perfect-square relationship of parent and child who speak the same language. Instead, we must elongate the sides and fudge the lines. We 16
used to rely on actions over words, but now poetry must carry on our private language. My father laughs as I launch into the last line of my poem, a direction for the audience he knows well, “Rectangle, not square.�
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Homeland Zea Eanet Out in the forest, beyond the pines with trunks thick as a man where the squirrels hide their nectar there is a field of cornflowers. Cornflowers, blue like the tinge of ocean sweeping on the shore, in with foaming white Queen Anne’s lace, or baby’s breath. The meadow, sweet-smelling and demure in the spring morning sunshine, is the size and shape of a calloused hand palm-down flattening from above. She, all those years ago, in white gingham hemmed with dust, came here and lay and breathed out a house and a husband and babies with foaming, white, divided breath. There she was pumping milky life into each and every one of them, building up their legs from clay and their arms from firewood and their hearts from bread and honey and sending them out, glowing and musky, to colonize the earth.
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And here I am. Heart of bread and honey, arms of firewood, legs of clay, hair of cornflower and white gingham, chest empty of breath. I lie, calves cracked, elbows spilling slime mold, and pant. Queen Anne’s babies tremble their breaths; the cornflowers dry up their life-giving. The pine trees smile down at me with those heart-warmed, glowing trunks.
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Vivienne, Part 1 Margaret Kraus
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Cold Comfort Henrietta Reily “In the morning, you ain’t even had time to get cold yet.” Ma says that when you’re awake, you’re awake and you’d better take advantage of it. And you’d better not yawn because that means you were thinking about the devil all night. She’d wipe it off your face quick. The day Daddy lost his arm Jimbo and I got up like usual and wrapped each other like mummies. We build from the long johns we slept in, and put socks over socks, fleece and Fair Isle sweaters, scarves around the neck and hats yanked around our ears. We race down the cherry stairs into the light to be the first one to get the good mittens and to take the sugar cubes to put in the hot water Ma boiled. We knot our boots tight in the mud room and Daddy gulped coffee in a speckled tin mug. Jimbo and I always asked for a sip but Ma got annoyed and shushed us and we all listened for Gramdma Jill, still asleep in the haunted dining room. The old fancy dinner table was sitting in pieces by the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. Daddy chopped it up when Gramdma Jill came to stay with us after she’d gotten stuck in her house during the big Gulf flood. Her whole taxidermy shop had was gone; she’d been in there watching decades of work fill with water and spoil and she couldn’t even get out. Daddy felt so bad about her being all alone that he rented a big RV and went to pick her up himself. She rode all the way up through Georgia in that white wrought iron bedframe, in the back of the cleared out RV, yelling at him for speeding or taking the tight turns too quick. It was like she was glued to that bedframe with its chipping paint, always tucked under her quilts. It was a part of her. 22
Somehow she detached herself from her bed while we were all out working and when we got back there was always grits in the pot and sometimes a little cold bacon or fried eggs, but she’d be back in bed. I’d never seen her standing up. Grandma Jill didn’t like to talk so much anymore and Daddy says it’s because she always hated Indiana. Ma said it’s because she always hated her and Daddy gave her a mean look and we were quiet. Daddy was going out to fix the bush hog’s cutting blade. He hadn’t done it all fall so things were getting overgrown and Ma was mad about that too because we’d missed a whole month when we could have baled hay. Ma shooed us out and said to pick up all the black walnuts that we’d missed in the fall and that we couldn’t stop until we had 200. They got stinky and smell on your hands that starts out nice but turns sour. They looked like moldy black limes and by the time we had 50 we were tired and it was hard to find any more on the frozen ground out front. So I left Jimbo and I went to check on Daddy in the tractor shed. The tractor was grumbling and I could see the bush hog was propped up at an angle by some logs so Daddy could work under it changing the blade. His toes stuck out the bottom and I wiggled on them but he didn’t move. “Daddy?” He might not have heard me under there so I looked down and his shoulder was pinned under the equipment, pushed right to the ground. His eyes were closed and the tractor whirred above us and I screamed and screamed until Ma ran over and Grandma Jill came hobbling in and yanked at him together until he came out from under the bush hog. Jimbo and I spent a little bit just standing slack-jawed and 23
watching Grandma Jill’s legs move, but then our eyes turned to Daddy. His left shoulder joint had been crunched to the earth, the arm just hanging on to the body. He was passed out bad and Ma and Jimbo and I held hands and prayed in the ambulance but Grandma Jill sat across from us stiff-lipped. Ma lost it at her right there in the back of the ambulance, Daddy in between us. She was yelling over his still body, and Daddy couldn’t do nothing to quiet her. Grandma Jill was unwavering and met Ma’s hollering with her dead eyes. And eventually Ma was embarrassed and just cried and held our hands tighter. About as soon as he got into the hospital, a doctor came to the waiting room to tell us he was okay but they had amputated the arm right away. Grandma Jill asked to keep the arm so they put it in a big walk-in freezer and three days later she skinned it, and set about tanning and preserving the unmoving membrane. When it was all stuffed and painted she put it in a box under her bed because no one wanted to look at it.
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Some Unfortunate Truths About Pill Bottles and People Nolan Peacock I was diagnosed with ADHD in the fourth grade after a few days of extremely boring tests that involved arranging different colored triangles into different types of shapes and that took place in a cold room with uncomfortable chairs after school. I don’t have a very severe case—at least, not severe enough to be told about it right away. My parents didn’t put me on medication, and, in fact, didn’t even tell me I had been diagnosed, until I was in sixth grade, when the added pressure of middle school prompted a reconsideration of strategy. Beginning that fall, I took 18mg of Concerta1 XR every morning before school and downed it each day with a swig of OJ and a bite of peanut butter bagel. The extended release lasted for about eight hours, which got me nicely through the school day. The XR version had more side effects and wasn’t as effective, my doctor told me, but the alternative was two pills at 9:00am and 2:00pm, and there was simply no way I would be taking pills at school. I’d have to go to the nurse’s office every day to get it, and then people would start asking questions like, “Why do you go to the nurse so much?” or, God forbid, “Do you have to go to the nurse’s to take a pill?” I had watched my fair share of cop shows at the time, but I still wasn’t ready to stand up to that level of interrogation, so we went with the XR. After about a year of taking the medication, though, I started to hear whispers. Not about me, thankfully, but about my classmate, Forrest, who had started taking 15 or 20 extra minutes at the end of every test to finish up while the rest of us stowed our pencils and marched out. “It’s so unfair,” Abigail said to Camilla.2 25
“I know,” Camilla replied. “Like, we don’t get to keep working so why does he?” Abigail shook her head in response. “That’s so cheating.” Forrest and I happened to be pretty good friends. We both liked Halo 3, we both hated watching sports, and we both had ADHD, though he had a worse case (hence the extra time). A few weeks later I told my mom I wanted to stop taking medication. “But your grades are up,” she said desperately. “Why, what’s wrong with it?” I was prepared. I rattled off a few selections I had made from WebMD’s list of Concerta side effects. It affected my mood, my social life, my appetite, I told her. She sighed, but eventually gave in. * * * My sister Carson also takes pills. I don’t know the exact name or the exact dosage, but I know it has a “hybrid function,” treating both anxiety and depression in one convenient little gel capsule; the metaphorical “spork” medication. I can’t speak to the particular effects of her pills as I can to mine, as I don’t inhabit her body.3 But I can provide an outsider’s perspective of their results, which I will give in the form of two haikus for the sake of brevity.4 Before: After: Shaking the whole house. Hiker, biker, she’s Screaming, crying, she’s dying. on fire. No more time to cry. Nope. It’s just homework. She’s happy. Finally. There. Now you know the whole story. 26
Things were much better for her on the whole, though, once she began taking her medication, and the sister who used to rattle the walls5 and scream her throat raw from stress and panic has been replaced by a pleasant, healthier, more vibrant and passionate one; both my eardrums and I prefer the latter. Carson currently studies Food Science6 at Middlebury College, where she also plays Division III field hockey and works at an on-campus non-profit called MiddFoods. She’s quite interested in the organization, mostly due to her passion for food systems and agriculture. In what she assures my parents is an entirely modern, 21st-century way, she also dates a boy named Charlie, the head of MiddFoods and, functionally, her boss. I met him this summer when Carson brought him up to our house in Wyoming for a few days. My girlfriend and I (also there) enjoyed Charlie’s wit and his dedication to perfecting his recipe for Chicken Provençale, and left Wyoming singing his praises to my sister. Three weeks ago, Charlie arrived in Carson’s dorm room, chipper and ready to whisk her off to brunch. She smiled, probably,7 and told him she’d just be a minute before twisting a towel around her sopping hair and popping the top off of her pill bottle and tossing one into her mouth. In my imagination, Charlie’s mouth fell open and hit the floor with a whump. They broke up later that day after a long fight about what Charlie called Carson’s “mental instability.” Apparently, he had never caught on over the course of their relationship that she was taking medication for her anxiety and had now decided, from atop his unfathomably long-legged horse, that 27
she was too “crazy” for him, that she simply wasn’t up to his standard. They had been together for nearly one year. * * * My brother, father and mother take no pills. My mother dabbled with anti-anxiety medications in her troubled youth, but has since stopped swallowing the capsules every morning. My brother and father are the only two in our family never to be afflicted by—or at least, never to have been diagnosed with—a mental illness. My brother is currently spending his fall semester backpacking through the gorgeous, high alpine mountain ranges of Patagonia, subsisting on a diet of what I’m sure consists primarily of dried oats, melted snow, and the occasional M&M. We8 haven’t heard a peep from him since his departure in mid-September, and I suppose he prefers it that way. We love him and he loves us, but whenever he spends too much time with my parents, tempers begin to rise and the mood in our house becomes less “happy, healthy family” and more “E! Presents: Broken Homes.” Back when he lived at home, they argued about his college essays, about his high school party antics, about his strange ability to forget the “no girls in the house” rule. And for all their talk of ambition and motivation, my parents weren’t even a little bit impressed when his lucrative fake ID production ring came to light. Now that he’s in college, they fight about his two MIPs9, his 3.2 GPA10, and his proclivity for marijuana. In what I imagine is a frustrating turn of events for my parents, my brother has somehow been able to finagle these qualities into a semi-respectable career as a software engineer. They tell him he needs to get his life on track. I disagree. He makes thou28
sands each summer doing what he loves, and he manages to have fun doing it. More power to him, I say. * * * As a child growing up in the early 2000s era of iPads, HBO, summer blockbusters and screens, my perceptions of 21st century pill takers have been largely informed by their portrayals in media. My experience is not universal—in fact I wouldn’t even call it global—but I’d venture a guess that I’m not the only kid11 with ADHD who saw the way these characters are written (some poorly and some very well, but most into predetermined archetypes), and did what so many teachers and parents had yelled, urged and whispered at them to do: remembered. One of the first pill-popping stereotypes I remember arose from after-dinner viewings of the popular TV show House, M.D., ensconced with my father in his study on Monday nights. If you’ve never seen the show,12 the basic premise is this: a gifted doctor, Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie with an impressive American accent), with the help of his trusty team of subordinates and his unorthodox wit and methods, treats the most unusual cases that come under his hospital’s purview and occasionally butts heads with his boss, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, Head of Medicine (Lisa Edelstein). Seems harmless enough, right? Sort of. House is a talented and brilliant doctor, to be sure. But he is, by no means, a positive character. From the outset of the series, House is established as a brash and brazen cynic who is unapologetically dependent on painkillers. Thanks to botched operation on an infarction13 in his right thigh, House is virtually unable to walk, talk or think without a steady supply of Vicodin,14 shaken not-so-subtly from a rat29
tling orange bottle and swallowed, dry, by the handful. Though he dabbles in other substances (weed, cocaine, heroin on a few occasions), the show places the most emphasis on House’s dependence on pills, dedicating more than a few episodes to showing the utter mess of a human being he devolves to without the help of his painkillers. House’s character is actually one of the more nuanced pill-takers I’ve encountered, but as a—and I’m going to use some D.A.R.E. rhetoric here— young, innocent, impressionable viewer, the complexities of House’s personal struggle with addiction were lost on me. So, at the start of sixth grade, after roughly three years of Monday night episodes, I had formed a mild sort of Pavlovian response to seeing someone pop a pill into their mouth from a little orange bottle; taking pills = bad. Another example of a media-made pill taker has grown increasingly popular in the past few years as our country continues to spread Freedom™ around the globe. Seen in films like Jarhead (2005, directed by Sam Mendes), The Hurt Locker (2009, directed by Kathryn Bigelow) and the upcoming Man Down (2016, directed by Dito Montiel), this archetype is most commonly a soldier or war veteran who, after relating to a psychiatrist the gruesome details of the horrors that haunt them, refuses the offer of a folded prescription and leans back, arms crossed, against the tastefully upholstered couch. “No, Doc, uh-uh,” they might say, shaking their head, or maybe, “That ain’t me,” or even, “I’m not fucked up in the head.” Whatever their actual words, the gist of it is that when it comes to medication, they either aren’t “the type” to take it, or aren’t weak enough to need it. I remember curling up on the couch with my mom to watch The Hurt Locker right after 30
it came out on DVD15 and greatly enjoying it. I rooted for it to win “Best Picture” at the Oscars that February, only a few short months before I started sixth grade. The last example I’ll give is, for me, both the most relevant and the most impactful. In my experience, this example begins with the 2011 hit movie Limitless (directed by Neil Burger). The film’s protagonist, Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), is a struggling writer-slash-alcoholic who finds success through the discovery of “NZT-48,” a (big air quotes here) “miracle pill” that allows him to unlock the full potential of his brainpower.16 He leaves his life of drudgery behind in exchange for burgeoning wealth, power and intelligence, with only the help of a little clear pill (You might know where I’m going with this). The film, in my opinion, draws a pretty clear parallel from NZT-48 to “study drugs” like Adderall and Vyvanse. Couple this with the handful of Adderall-related TV show bits and YouTube skits17 that have cropped up over the past few years and you get a picture of the drug as a magical all-solving pill capable of driving the laziest student to an A on their midterm or keeping the most sleep-deprived programmer wired for hours. There are a dozen more characters I could pull from the depths of the media void to further illustrate my experience, but they all more or less make the same point. As a child growing up surrounded and shaped by the influence of movies and television, it was pretty clear to me that taking pills was not a good thing. I didn’t want to be an addict like House, and I certainly didn’t want Abigail to call me a cheater like Forrest,18 so I hopped online, Googled “Concerta side effects,” and that was that. 31
* * * In the experience of me, my sister, and dozens of my other friends and family members, the immediate reaction of almost anyone upon learning you take pills is to ask, “Why? What for?” For most people, answers such as, “I’ve got high blood pressure,” or, “Just some antibiotics for an ear infection,” will do just fine. “Hope it gets better,” will often be the response. The trouble comes when the answer to the question is not so simple. When it’s discovered that a bottle of pills is used not to, say, break down an excess of cholesterol, but to balance out the brain chemistry of someone suffering from bipolar disorder, the reaction is mingled fear and skepticism rather than sympathy. There is something inherent about mental illness that we as a society tend to reject in favor of other, more “normal” ailments. I personally see no logic to this; we can’t control the brains we are born with, but we can all control how much bacon we eat. So why are the consequences of the latter more acceptable? In recent years, there has been some real progress on this front. Institutions all over the country have made efforts to bolster their support of students struggling with mental health. Schools have hired counselors and formed support groups. Some companies even offer paid “mental health days” to be used in the same way as “sick days.” The Affordable Care Act19 widely expanded insurance coverage for mental health, including counseling services and depression screenings. These changes are all steps in the right direction, but if you ask me, we’re only on the first lap of the mile. The stigma that separates an antibiotic from an antidepressant, that distinguishes a 32
bout of bronchitis from a panic attack, still remain. I began taking medication again when I started 11th grade at Exeter. I had a strong community of friends around me who, I was sure, wouldn’t judge me for taking pills to combat a mental condition. I was correct, for the most part. No one laughed or called me a weirdo or brandished a cross at me while chanting scripture.20 But it was clear that they weren’t entirely comfortable with the idea, and that the presence of a tiny orange pill bottle in my desk drawer was subtly changing their perception of me. One of my dorm mates, who I thought knew me to be a pretty good guy, asked me if I planned to sell my medication to other students, because he had heard “that’s what people do.” Another wondered if he could “snag one” to help him write his paper, which was due the next day. I answered no to both questions. Carson and Charlie are currently back together, though for how long I do not know. My mother says they are “taking the long goodbye.” I called my sister a few days ago after she sent our family a picture of the two of them on a snow-dusted Vermont hike and received the news from her over the phone. She seemed genuinely pleased that things were resolved, and I wished her luck with him in the future. But after I hung up, I wondered how happy she really was. My girlfriend told me my sister will never forget what Charlie said to her, and I don’t doubt it. But how hard will she try to? How hard will she work to make sure whoever comes next never finds out about her medication? And how many other girls are out there, sharing the same experience and shame as my sister? What I don’t think we realize, and what I think we must, is that people who take pills do bad things and good 33
things, just like people who don’t. Gregory House is addicted to Vicodin and he cures hundreds of patients a year. My sister swallows her spork medication, plays Division III field hockey and won a national championship. Charlie is mentally healthy, he cooks a mean Chicken Provençale and he is still an asshole. My brother takes no pills, has a job lined up for the summer, and still has a 3.2 and a pair of MIPs. And me? I take 10mg of Focalin at 5pm, have a spot on varsity Cross Country, and I lie to my mother. There. Now you know the whole story. —————————————————————
Concerta Extended Release tablets, one of the most popular and effective ADHD medications on the market, along with Focalin, Vyvanse and, of course, Adderall. 2 This is, of course, a creative recreation. My memory isn’t that good. 3 Thank God. That would be weird. 4 I also really enjoy haiku. 5 This sounds like hyperbole, but it’s true; we lived in a 1940s home, so it wasn’t in tip-top shape, but they built ‘em pretty solid back then, so I’d say hers is an achievement. 6 Capitalized both because it’s her major and because it “is seriously a real thing, so don’t laugh about it, Nolan.” 7 I wasn’t there, but I heard a retelling of it from my mother. 8 Meaning my sister, my father, my mother, and me, and I suppose our two dogs, though the jury is still out on whether or not they can actually understand English. My dad tries to convince us that they can sometimes but last time I checked, barking at the word “Ruff ” is less an indicator of lingual capabilities and more an instinctual reaction to other dogs, a.k.a. the enemy. 9 Stands for “Minor in Possession”, otherwise known as “The Bane of Drunk Undergrads Everywhere.” Commonly handed out by once-tolerant policemen to belligerent party-goers and bar patrons. 10 For all you 11-point scalers out there, this isn’t too bad, but its not great. 1
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It’s not “so-bad-you-have-to-try” bad, but it could definitely (at least, in my parent’s opinion) use some work. 11 I say kid, but I mean boy; I’m sure you’ll notice all of these examples are men. It’s not that my childhood wasn’t influenced by female characters (Hermione and Junie B. Jones were hallmarks of my early reading career), but rather that as a male, the characters I most resonated with were, understandably, mostly men. Although, there is the problematic fact that there are simply fewer women in leading screen roles, but that’s an issue for a different time. 12 If you’ve made it this far in life without seeing a single episode, I’ll admit I’m surprised. I mean, sure, it’s not Game of Thrones, but most hotels don’t get HBO, and what else are you gonna watch at 12:45am in the Phoenix airport LaQuinta? 13 Had to look this one up; it basically means a blood clot. 14 Not exactly Advil—this stuff is for pretty serious pain and is unfortunately highly addictive; try not to have too much fun with it if you get your wisdom teeth out. 15 Those were still around in 2009, I guess. 16 This movie is another name on the pile of films that have used and abused the “10% myth” as a plot device. Cooper’s character is allowed, when using the medication, to access the “full 100%” of his brain, rather than the measly 10% that the rest of us mortals are allowed. See also: Lucy. 17 See: SiliconValley (HBO) and LifeAccordingtoJimmy (Youtube). 18 Abigail was the prettiest girl in the grade back then, and I had quite the crush on her, despite the fact that she was totally out of my league. 19 Or Obamacare, whichever you prefer. 20 If you don’t understand this reference, you should probably watch The Exorcist (1973, directed by William Friedkin). Or, you could do what I did and read the Wikipedia plot summary and tell people you’ve seen it and that, “It’s a classic, for sure.”
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ii. Reckoning “Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.” –Allen Ginsberg
Ritual: Creating Resources in Times of Dire Need Kelechi Nwankwoala my sister is dying of thirst she is always asking do you love me and we push her away saying of course we love you but damn stop asking so much and my father’s favorite response to crying is Stop crying and his backup is always go to your room I shouldn’t be surprised that she is so thirsty my sister is dying to survive she kills herself faster she digs up her black skin like soil she drinks her own blood, so much thicker than water.
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Medicate Kelechi Nwankwoala A doctor’s worse patient is himself “17 y/o male patient complains of aching bilaterally in all extremities. Traumatic etiology and patient has been Writing poetry PRN which has not been helpful. Patient has limited Range of Emotion is lacking sensitivity distally. The MRI shows scar tissue and ligament strains. Patient is swollen, arrhythmic, painfully red, tender to palpation. I’ve prescribed him some drugs: cannabis, liquor, and amphetamines lysergic acid and dimethyltryptamine, alprazolam, oxycodone, matches and kerosene. I sincerely hope he feels better.
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Why I Closed My Eyes Before I Stabbed You Kelechi Nwankwoala If someone dies in the front of you but you do not see it, who’s to say what killed them? My aversion to being involved in death stops me from killing a fly with my own hands but not from killing it minutes later with a roll of newspaper the newspaper headline reads dylan roof sentencing death penalty i remember vividly feeling numb and nauseous when i found out a young white man walked into a historical black church and shot the whole place up i did not feel numb or nauseous when i wiped the fly’s blood off the paper but every once in awhile when i kill a bug i do a small hail mary even though i stopped believing in god years ago it is a small way to destroy my guilt but i am fond of those sometimes i think my charade as an empathetic human is extremely arbitrary and can be discarded at any time i just need to sufficiently distance myself from the action meaning that i have done some horrible things and tried to destroy my guilt meaning i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry i guess this is my halfway apology and realization that i’ve been horribly indifferent to you although maybe i didn’t mean to the worst things in my life i did not mean to do i think that is true for most of us for all of us who do the things we know are deadly the things that make us feel so powerful and so wanted you could say it was the bystander effect i closed my eyes and the burden of guilt was passed on i remember youtube videos where men get robbed or stabbed in the heart in broad daylight i remember the crinkling of skulls humans bludgeoned to death while everyone looks away i remember wondering who takes those photos of starving children but does not help them but now i understand my whole life i have known people are dying but they were always dying somewhere else i have 39
been taught to look away when people die or when unpleasant things are happening i look away even when i am the reason someone is dying the newspaper asks me what is the right way to punish a murderer you remind me that cruelty is convenient and comfortable i see how easy murder can be some days like today when the memory of you becomes too much of a prison i try to free myself with apologies and the thought that the next time i am a bystander the next time i watch myself withhold love the next time i walk into a sacred place like a church or a heart the next time i yearn to emotionally bludgeon my significant other to death i will stop myself. But i didn’t last time and what has changed since then? Except you are gone.
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Kelechi Chris Agard
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(S)He Mai Hoang He turns on TV
She turns on microwave
He munches chips
She munches lips
He sinks into armchair
She starts scrubbing sink
He switches to News
She switches to table
He lets out whistle
She lets out sigh
He says, “less tax”
She says, “so what?”
He sips beer
She sips saliva
He calls her over
She calls him jerk He laughs, reminds her about the job he will get once the factories open and she remembers, but her hands still hold onto a ballot of Broken Dreams. He’s red. She’s black.
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stale wounds Meghan Chou i. Was it a mugging? I wonder. Four blocks from my mother’s suburban house lies the beginning of Ypsilanti, a mini Detroit with rentals on yellow blocks and bullet-holed windows, scenes in a funhouse mirror — I line up my face, with the Fentanyl dealer. A city for those wannabe crooks, those reject juvie kids locked up for running away. Her salon sits between Deja Vu (Hot Girls Wanted) and Ypsi’s detention center where I would compare scars across the barbed-wire fence with a guy whose mother threw him through the window. The scars were winding cherry stems on my Asian skin, but purple putty on his brown back — dancing lampreys that writhed on the iced-over Huron River, snatched from home. ii. I always suspected in her a tumor, some demon that played peekaboo, tongue screeching like rusty pickups doing donuts inches from Principal Wu’s Reserved Parking sign. My mother forgets the things I tell her, the keys, her medicine in a red dial with white letters of the week. The times I tacked 44
a letter to her light switch, saluted our family cat goodbye, and left for that park I loved — a gathering ground for the Runaways Club. Half of them ran their lives clockwise down the drain, two smoked the Encyclopedia of Plants and Household Cleaners, one has her father’s child.Yet our bloods pacts and stories of attempted parricide (once, I mixed nail polish remover into her toothpaste) sound from the mulch where we slept until hunger for home-cooked food boiled our resolve to a wispy halt. iii. I will never forget the way she held the knife to her throat and my father’s stance — crouched with arms extended like a skater bracing for a Daydream Flip. I could fit under the couch back then and there I lay, flashing bottle caps at the light my brother cradled in his palms — one wink, all clear; two winks, go now. 45
iv. The day my mother almost died, she sent a single text message: “In the ER. Bleeding uncontrollably.� And all I could think, was how?
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a blind model Joonho Jo Section I—September 2006 i come home from mackay elementary school and ask umma* what does chink mean. she sighs, and tells me not to talk back to the other boys. i ask her again, umma what does chink mean. *umma - “mom” Section II—May 1869 The transcontinental railroad—tracks that extended 1700 miles—was built in 1869. Before its completion, a trip from New York to California cost over 1000 dollars and six months. After May of 1869, it cost 150 and one week. It was this railroad that enabled the growth of westward expansion. It was this railroad that created the America of today. From California to the NewYork islands… It was also this railroad that was built by Chinese hands. West Evans, a railway contractor said that without the Chinese workers, “I do not see how we could [have completed] the [railroad.]…”1
1. without those chinks. Without those cheap, dirt-poor chinks, there is no way in hell we could have completed that railroad. Thank God for the chinks. Chen, Jack. The Chinese of America. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980. p. 74.
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Section III—October 2007 today my legs ache so i collapse onto the scuffed white paint of the school basketball court and wait, eyes shut tight, hoping that everything will mist into quiet. the silence never comes and the bickering of boys and girls in the swings crowds my ears like it always has. they are not bickering at me, i think. they hardly ever do to my face. it was usually at Garvy. yes it has to be at Garvy. if you ask me why i collapsed, i could not answer you. i would not answer you. sorry, i am just not used to it. Hyung* tells me to always say what i believe but mother and father tell me to keep quiet. do not stir. do not instigate. there will be more trouble then. just stay out of trouble. Garvy is always in trouble. i can hear Jace and Alec push him against the rope swings until the chains clatter against his brown skin. did he ask for this. did he start this. he started this. he started it all. i can hear it all from the basketball court. but i keep my mouth shut. as always. and my eyes. according to Jace and Alec, they are always shut. *hyung - “older brother” Section IV—May 1882 13 years later, the USA government prohibits Chinese immigration. The same hands that pinned down the tracks of 48
the Transcontinental Railroad are forced to let go of those of their wives and daughters and sons. Ø 1873, October 3, Los Angeles Daily Herald Location: Los Angeles, CA “In a word Chinese immigration is as fatal to the country as the leprosy which they promulgate, and the pests they breed amongst us.”1 Ø 1876, May 17, Los Angeles Daily Herald Location: Los Angeles, CA “The presence amongst us of the hordes of servile Chinese [is] inimical to our advancement as a nation.”2 Ø 2016, October 4, “Watters’ World,” Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor Location: Chinatown, NY. ”Am I supposed to bow to say hello?” i do not think so. “Do you know karate?” i do not. “Is it the year of the dragon? Rabbit?” i do not know.
1
translation: I do not want chinks near me.
Chinese Immigration,” Daily Los Angeles Herald, October 03, 1873, Vol. 1 No. 2, p.2 2
translation: I do not want chinks near me.
News of the Morning,” Los Angeles Daily Herald, May 17, 1876, Vol. 6 No. 44, p.2
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Speak! Speak! Why don’t you speak?3 i do speak. just quieter. Section V—November 2016 our nails are too short to claw, we whisper, against the leprosy that is our weathered skin. we whisper there is no control. we cannot control. maybe it is the year of the red dragon, but an Albino Beast feasting on rabid weeds ruins our baby pests, holding them in its slithering embrace, like a gun. Section VI—December 1941 when kamikaze jets crashed into hawaii on the morning of december 7, 1941, japanese americans did not celebrate. they did not celebrate because they understood not what had happened but what was going to happen. they did not celebrate because suddenly their names had been 3
translation: I still do not want chinks near me.
http://www.salon.com/2016/10/05/watch-fox-news-jesse-watters-heads-to-chinatownfor-incredibly-offensive-oreilly-factor-segment/
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translated from casey and sophia and richard to jap and jap and jap. they did not celebrate because they were forced to find new homes in old internment camps. they did not celebrate because they understood that internment was just another word for concentration. Section VII—June 1982 (In Memory of Vincent Chin) It’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work. you do not recall that the drinks from earlier were red against your yellow cheek, but now all you see is red and then black and black and black. wife, wife where are you is what you ask but she and your friends are not close because they scattered when they saw him and his bat. He is not your friend. is he. He is not like you. is he. It’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work. since when did we become such targets, since when did the weeds of racism haunt our gardens you ask but you are not answered before his fingers clasp against your cheeks and your chin falls cracked on to the pavement. how did you get here. how did we get here. how did our chins crack open onto the ground like jets. your wedding guests become funeral guests. how did we get here they ask.
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Section VIII—June 2010 when you are thirteen-years-old and your crush says that you are smart, you smile. when she tells you that you are a genius and that you should help her with her math problems, you smile. you do not ask why you. you do not ask why not Jack or Sarah or Derek who are all smarter than you. you do not ask. instead you smile, you nod, and you help her with algebra. you tell her yes, x does equal 15, y does equal 2, and it is her turn to smile. She pats your head and leaves the table. She sits with Cory at lunchtime. you sit quiet. Section IX—February 2017 when Hyung was in fifth grade, he auditioned for a chorus. He was terrific. He could sing as high as a soprano and as low as a bass. He played instruments so he understood rhythm and beats. mom taught him to sing from his stomach and not his neck so his sound was free and gorgeous. He didn’t make the chorus, unfortunately. apparently, it had turned into an all-girls choir. maybe you should’ve read the sign more carefully mom said. I did he said. I promise they said I could make the group. it didn’t say all-girls before. the 52
poster changed yesterday. They said if I was good enough I could make it. well clearly we just have to work harder next time mom said. we’ve always had to work harder. Section X—September 2016 so the chorus of termites know to infest the yellow wound of your silent Acacia, with weeds that dig further into bark than pickaxes of a railroad. yesterday you cried umma umma umma i do not want to go to his funeral, i do not want to see death, i do not want to see anything. but still you hear it all. You must, still hear the noise of pain that you think you cannot control or heal. then, You cannot wait, You must not wait since their bickering will not stop as long as you stay blind.
Photo Credits: VIII:https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2016/04/12/the-woes-of-the-model-minority-the-dual-existence-of-asian-americans-inthe-united-states/ IV:http://www.asian-nation.org/racism.shtml,https://www.change.org/p/protest-fox-news-airing-of-racist-anti-asianwatters-world-chinatown-segment IX: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/The_Great_Wall_%28film%29.png
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Closed In, Bled Out Jeremy Xu
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Strangled Jeremy Xu
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Civilization Carissa Chen After Carl Phillips there’s an art to everything. how he slumped head-first, into the bird-shaped lake and asked you to jump blind too. leaving and the scent of yellow – yellow meaning May and May, that ongoing ache – nursing lilac wine with moon river, blind, obsidian minds and an addict’s constellation he holds to your face asking you to sing, to sing. to sing. to sing. a centuries-old bell in Stratford, England rings endlessly – and it sings the same song your mother did when she was dying of thirst – do you love me? do you love me? so she said in a dream. but civilization and century-old bells are the substance of waking: of Zeus and Zelda and Xanadu and the worlds that crumble with walls. in the massacre of Nanjing my grandfather nursed a flightless bird and called it love he sang to it the same song of civilization: how they made out of shamelessness something beautiful, for as long as they could. sing, he told me. Sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing. 56
Untitled Sydney Lamb
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A LOVE LETTER TO A BLACK GIRL Wynter Tracey What is it about the way they say too black, spit you out like old chewing gum? How they find you everywhere. How they dig you out from underneath their fingernails, pick you out of their teeth like a bad memory when all they wish for is the honeyed sway of your hips, your bee-stung lips, your kinky-curly crowning glory, your skin so brown, the way you bloom and ripen richly in summer, all cocoa butter soft when all they want is your walk, your talk, the way you dance? They find you everywhere. You are too sweet for their bitter mouths, too much sugar on their tongues. They can’t shake you. They spit you out you are too black - and yet, in search of the sun, they can only find you.
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iii. Eulogy “Whoever you are, go out into the evening, leaving your room, of which you know every bit; your house is the last before the infinite, whoever you are.” –Rainer Maria Rilke
On Nights When I Am Michaelangelo Aden Choate On nights when I am Michelangelo, I buy a pack of Marlboros from the kiosk outside the liquor store. I sip espresso with a kick and smoke in the corner of a dingy café. Burning—the ash darkens and melds, dissipating in the fading fluorescence like dancing dust. Clad in a turtleneck and Italian leather shoes, I attract the attention of a woman fingering dog-eared pages, emanating virginal lust. She smiles a suggestion. Cheeks gaunt. Eyes hollow and too far apart. The type to spend early mornings awake, lamenting existence. Silence floats between her and me. Her symmetry is wrong, and under my gaze, she nervously looks away to ask for the check. I shrug on my jacket and leave a modest tip. On nights when I am Michelangelo, I am Asleep. My teeth crack and cut my bottom lip as I wander city streets—mortar and bone— sky stained and blooming red, purple, black. I stuff calloused fingers, agitated by caffeine, into charcoal-filled pockets to quit the shaking. On nights when I am Michelangelo, Store window mannequins—tempting muses—grin at the moon beneath smudged glass. Watermarked flyers litter gutters and sewer grates. I take a swig 61
from my flask. Before I’m drunk and penniless, gnawing hunger brings me to the butcher. Tired elbows rest on the watermarked counter. I get the usual: Half-pound of ham. Some cheese. A loaf of bread. On nights when I am Michelangelo, the bell announces a new customer. I don’t notice— I sketch the gentle curve of the butcher’s Forearm. His hands present a problem. I can never sculpt the wrinkles and joints and— The butcher’s wife calls out “Ciao David” but before the imminent vanishing, I glance to meet eyes of murky seawater. Sharp jawline. Softly curling hair. He smiles a suggestion. Muscle ripples in the cords of his neck. He turns to go, I hesitantly clear my throat. On nights when I am Michelangelo, in the stunned aftermath, the sweating, the yearning, David is when I begin to awake.
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Flightless Birds Carissa Chen The room was a husk. At the end of his life, the tumor in his lungs spread, atrophied the rest of his muscles so that his hands shook without control. When he could no longer speak, my grandfather began scribbling words on the white plastic table taped to his hospital bed. His fingers gripped the pen like water, his wrist slackened like a willow. He wrote with his eyes closed. When every inch of his hospital bed disappeared beneath illegible black scribbles, he wrote on a stack of napkins that stood like a tree by his bedside. I have often tried to read those napkins. At the time, they seemed so futile – what was the point if no one could read them? For every tree, there is a boy willing to axe it. For every boy sunk and bagged in the war, there is one stoning a soldier, turning to flee. My grandfather was all of these – he was the tree, the one sawing its bark, the boy sunk in the river of blood, the one who stoned a Japanese soldier for his freedom. As he lay in the white bedsheets of Nanjing’s modern hospital, writing on his stack of napkins, I could not help but wonder if nature knew concepts of justice or mercy. When I was a young girl, my grandfather would tell me a Chinese bedtime story he heard in the war. It was a simple “Russian doll” fable. There were two swans –a mother and a daughter. They paddled forward and directionless, always craning their long necks up like stalks of wheat searching for sky. One night, the daughter followed the moon down to the horizon and she bent her neck down; for the first time, she saw her reflection. In the lake’s surface mirror, she saw two swans, a mother swan and a daughter swan – herself – craning their long necks up like stalks of wheat searching for sky. The story would repeat, over and over without a beginning or end. 63
When people ask me where I’m from, I think about that story. Our lives were cycles and my mom and I were those swans. We ran forward and directionless for five years. We moved six different times and we learned how to pack our entire house in a week. Each time we moved, the story would begin again. And each time we were confronted with the ghost of our memories, we packed all our belongings into 30 big cardboard boxes in a U-Haul and the same story would begin again. I was too young then to understand why we were running like flightless birds.
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Wonderland Henrietta Reily I’m shaking in the library between enclosing stacks of books layered and trembling like the bricks of a chimney. I’m standing up but barely and I wrestle my hand and my legs and my neck to stay still. The books rumble and threaten an avalanche and when I spin around another stack has appeared behind me; they mock me with their straight edges and the pages sneer, perfect soldiers in perfect lines. Their covers and backs are made of shields of sandpaper stone and the bottom drops out from under me. I’m falling down a sheath of their rock, my shins scraping on the rugged material as it grates my skin like cheese into shreds and I want to land, on any surface—I hit the bottom where a pile of books snap my bones and my spine breaks all the way backwards, crackling into a smattered curl. I laugh and I smell the paper and the ink and those goddamn books won’t even absorb my tears. * * * That night, after picking myself up and removing the shards with a scalpel and blunt scissors I see the boy a few seats away shaking too, trembling with a wilted piece of paper in his hand—from the side his profile is that of a hawk, stern and sure and knowing, but as soon as he turns towards me it becomes a ghoul, nasty, scowling, grotesque, with melting skin and I gasp as the sharp-taloned claws grasp towards me—and he puts down the paper and a witch slides a box of tissues too hard in his direction and the cardboard carton falls into his lap and bursts into flames. A woman pulls a lemon out of her bag and rips her sharp nails through its skin, puncturing the stinging citrus and sending a spray of juice across the room; everyone shuts their eyes so hard wrinkles appear all over their faces. The boy’s mouth drops open with a hinge and he 65
picks up the glass we’ve given him and takes a gulp of gasoline. * * * Time slips around, swirling and sticky, and when I get to the beach in Hampton every little man and woman marches as though controlled by a remote, entering and exiting, propelled and ticking about, each a little clock counting down the days until the next nothing. I spread out a towel and the clouds crowd in, the wind starts to whistle, and my skin hardens into scales as I hold the lighter in my bag to start the cigarette. I blow the smoke in their direction, hoping to wake them up but the wind diffuses it and the grey ocean snarls back. Circus music plays as a too-slow tempo with all the wrong syncopation.
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Vivienne, Part 2 Margaret Kraus
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What She Does Not Know Yet Melissa Lu In a small, summer town rested on a hill by the sea, where whistles carried messages and Amaryllises blossomed from the cracks of stone paths, there was a rustic, wooden home, hidden, behind a wall of Pansies and Dogwoods, planted there, centuries ago, by the local townsmen, the founders, now forgotten by their kin. At night, the little red house is squared away by the darkness, like a mother tucking in her child after a bedtime story of a boy “who searched for his shadow” (38). There is something safe and comfortable about this blanket, touched by a mother, made impenetrable to intruders of the night. As the child of the forgotten home, Kaylie spent much of her time outside, adapting to the “habits of weather, evening stars and the sound of birds” (11). She often picnicked with her mother and father, in the embrace of “spilling flowers,” the “arms of [the] great trees” (4). She’d slip away pieces of her meal whenever she could break free of her parents’ watchful, adoring gaze, and squeeze them in her pockets to later feed the rabbits and deer. Each day, Kaylie would return home at the end of an adventure, called back by her mother’s whistle, carried to her by the wind. At the supper table, her father would lean over and take her small hands into his, where they’d almost disappear, like a dot in the sky. His hand was a map to her. Rivers and streams. Nations and desserts. They held them all. Fantastical adventures. He would smell her hands, “little stars,” and declare their “great rumours of travel” (8). “The greatest smell in the world,” he would insist (8). In the first two weeks of August, Kaylie turns 13, and her father begins to return home later and later. Eventually, they stop waiting for him, and Kaylie forgets the smell of her hands. She does not know the reason why when he laughs, the 69
crescent-shaped wrinkles of his face no longer meet with his eyes, why her mother’s hums no longer drift from the upstairs bathroom as she readies herself in the early morning. Kaylie does not ask. She always let herself wander, room to room, camphor to sycamore, day to day, past to present, present to possible. She felt restless in an answer. Instead she would walk to the sea. Since she was just a little girl, she knew how to get to the sea without anyone’s direction, as if the currents had drawn her in. As she walks now, she knows she is near from the taste of salt in the air, cold and wet against her tongue. From an oak brown bag, she pulls out a scratched, leather-bound journal, a half-finished book, stolen from an old empty pasta box in the top cupboard. In it is her father and mother, younger, more innocent, blithe and in love. She finds her spot, gated by a patch of overhanging rocks, and settles into the hot sand of the cove. She’s finished it time and time again, as much as one can finish a half-finished book, but she loves to read the gaps in its plot, “the missing chapters” (8). She’ll spend so many hours slipped into the dimension of the story that when she goes home to bed, she’ll fall asleep to the rise and fall of the ocean waves, still ringing in her ears, against the echo of her mother reading the last line of the journal, page ninety-six, “the heart is an organ of fire” (97). A flash of light across the foliage wakes her. She rises and rubs her eyes with a heaviness, caused by unremembered dreams. The moon falls on her naked shoulders, and she rubs her palms gently over her neck. She reaches through the darkness to her window, where she finds two strange men at the door. Her father invites them in, and she traces how the moon falls against their silhouettes as they enter. Her father once 70
told her when she was younger that the moon was a friend of theirs, and she could read a stranger by their movement in the moonlight. Inside now, she can hear muffled scuffling and hushed words. She lies back down on “the unmade bed,” her naked body conforming to the wrinkles of the sheets, “the noise of the trees, the breaking of moon into silver fish bouncing off the leaves of asters outside” (31). She does not know yet the dangers of “too many men in the house” (90). How a kiss can be a scar. How there is smoke after a fire. How someone can “[forget] to look at the moon” (4). She lets herself fall into sleep again, slowly, then all at once, unaware of it all. Inspired by and flushed with excerpts from The English Patient by Michael Ondaajte
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Grandfather Martin is Writing a Memoir Hannah Piette Who was the relative on Dad’s side who wanted to lose weight? She installed arm pulls on the back of the bathroom door, didn’t lose any weight, but developed huge biceps. Who was the relative with the hair on her face? Who was the pickle lady? She said, “When it is time for the pickles to be served, they will be served.” Aunt Jane burned her stomach while frying chicken without any clothes on. When Uncle Ben’s leg was cut off, the doctor said, at least he’ll be lighter to move around! Uncle Danny’s hands dragged on the ground from a spinal collapse. I don’t remember their wives. My parents called to make dinner reservations under our name, Finkelstein, but everywhere seemed to be fully booked. So they changed it to Field, and doors opened. My dad built movie theaters in small towns across Iowa and hired a pilot and a small plane to scout. He walked off the dirt landing strips rubbing his palms, anxious to convert dingy drug stores into theater lobbies. Me and dad and the whole town watched one of his theaters catch on fire and burn through the night. 72
Dad said he had a suppressed desire to kick dirt on workers in a manhole. When the stock market crashed, he bought himself an expensive new suit. He was offered a funeral business and a coffin company, but he didn’t feel they fit his personality. I watched my mother cry sitting on the edge of her pink bed in her pink bedroom after reading the news on December 7th, 1941. I chased my brother with an ax. I told myself stories to fall asleep, muttering tales of Max the Mouse and staring at the dark ceiling.
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Frida Maya Kim
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Tangled Up In Blue Jenny Hunt Her name was Blue; one eye brown, the other eye the bluish tint of a glass of skimmed milk. She was found by Mrs. Mccormick one soppy April morning roaming the perimeter of the cranberry bog off of Landing Lane. The widow took the lost dog home to a bed of her husband’s old sweaters and the baby quilt once used by her grown children. Blue was a husky breed; wild-eyed and feral in her loyalty. Mrs. Mccormick, entirely ill-equipped for such a spritely creature, took her to play in the green fields of our Massachusetts home every morning. Blue would work herself into wild knots around the leash; tying her owner up like a straitjacket from all of that pawing at the ground and chomping at the bit. “Tangled Up in Blue” my mother once whispered to me, referencing the Bob Dylan song, when we came upon them one afternoon in this crazed state. Mrs. Mccormick and Blue were as mismatched as the last pair of socks in a dresser drawer; there was nothing harmonious about the awkward pairing, nothing divine. One gripping onto the fraying leash of her life, the other just beginning to break free. Their love lied in the quiet moments we did not see, the late winter nights when Mrs. Mccormick heard the soft warm breath of something alive in her lonely clapboard house. Then Blue began to slow. We thought it was a maturation, a ceding of a beastly youth into a calmer dignity. Something about grace. Something about taming. Something about starting strong and finishing gently, my parents said. One June night, when screen doors were shut and porch-lights had begun to gather moths, Blue slid through an air duct and out the back of Mrs. Mccormick’s house. No one knows where she went first— I always imagined she took one last lap around 75
that cranberry bog. She was found the next morning by Mrs. Mccormick and a neighbor in the deep woods on our county dividing line. Lifeless at the base of an oak tree, her giant lion-like head rested on her front paws like the Sphinx. She had gone away from all of us to die. This was the summer my parents started sleeping in different beds. When they started to tuck us into bed at night, one-by-one and not together. When they stopped kissing each other on the cheek for their mistakes.Years later, I have begun to wonder where their love went to die. Did it go slinking off on a summer’s night to die a private, graceful death? Did it burn itself out from all of the chomping at the bit and the pawing at the earth? Or did it simply forget how to get back home?
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Goodnight, Little Moon Audrey Hahn The leaves were falling all the time; it was harvest season, the wind infused with fresh cinnamon buns from the oven, and women clad in tweed and sheepskin hugged their rosy daughters close before reaching up into the trees to pluck an apple. One mother, young in the course of life but at the end of her child-bearing days, for she was now 40, gripped the bars of the hospital bed and pushed. It was October 19th, 1998. Her cheeks were plump when she came bursting gently forth, a shrill cry escaping through a smile that her eyes, still closed, could not articulate. Susan had always said that if she ever had a daughter, for they had tried once already (resulting in baby Drew), that she would name her darling Audrey, after the American icon. And Audrey, with an innocent burp that only newborns could emit with such sweetness and irresistibility, instantly bent her parents to her will. She had but simple needs, being only just a few days a participant in the mess, a survivor of the complicating, demoralizing, desensitizing world, and therefore untouched by its painful pin-pricking clasp; she cried for food and for love, but not out of sadness—crying was her language! Only later in life would crying become corrupted, expressed only in the appropriate circumstances, which would present themselves in abundances to her, and very soon—but when that time came she would find no tears. She cried for only what she knew she needed: food, love, a mom and a dad—and baby Audrey need not yearn long, for she had all these things whenever she wished; her heart had justly been born at ease. Audrey began to see her world. She could have brownies for breakfast whenever her nanny was there, for both 77
Mommy and Daddy had successful jobs, and so Esther, an old, exotic woman, catered to her, always said yes to her, with so much love—a love that poured out dramatically, pitifully, and with an aching fear, thinking that she could not bear to see what might happen to this precious little moon if things fell apart. One morning, Audrey didn’t want to go to school, and so she hugged Esther with all the warmth she could emit; Esther put her back in the car. Mommy and Daddy were mad, but they understood the pull of the moon, transforming them into ocean tides, drifting with her will—and they understood that the baby girl deserved all these small pleasures while life was still normal, before the lights shut off and she stood in darkness, having to either make her own light or run in fear with her hands out in front of her, groping. Blooming jewels hung low and heavy on thick-trunked trees in the humid May of 2003. Rays of sun cowered behind the clouds, and one could taste the bitter edge of a knife in the air as one walked past the orchard, in its off-season now, barren, lifeless, decayed. Mommy crawled out of bed, taking her time out of necessity rather than leisure, as she used to Before, unhooked herself from her IV, and sank into her wheelchair, aiming for Audrey’s room. Her glittering little moon lay tucked under the sheets that needed not exist, for she was warm on her own. She reflected the sun, the sun she created for the world because she knew there was always the possibility of brightness—she saw it inside her. As long as Audrey could see that brightness, she would be warm. She did not need a blanket— Mommy’s glittering moon. She bent like a ballerina, frail and white and stiff, down, 78
down, until she reached warmth, and kissed the surface of the moon. Goodnight, little moon. She listened to the moon’s trill, sliding between fresh lips, lifting from her smooth face like mist, her vibrant, yellow, blossoming Goodnight, and prayed, as she had grown accustomed to do now, for one more night, that she might see her baby in daylight. And baby Audrey, just four years old now, who was quite intelligent already, just like her mother—which she had no way of knowing, now or After—was happy as ever, her mother’s hand running down her back, although, that was strange, for her mother’s hand was cold, her complexion unfamiliar, pale, like a ballerina. She was not sure, now that she thought about it, now that she could think about it, necessary springs and rods in her brain having developed to their full extent by now, why her mother could not take her to school in a dress that she had picked out for her, twirling her around in it, as she imagined life always would be. Baby girl, so bright in a world that already seemed dimmer every day, was quite unsure that she—and she told her dad this, with eyes wide and blank, with wonder rather than concern—that she loved Mommy anymore; If Mommy won’t take care of me, then she is not a mom to me. White rays as chilled as snow froze the woman’s slow blood in her veins, mid-flow, mid-beat, mid-blink of her eyes so that they remained closed to the rest of the room, her family, her children. Audrey aged years on that day, staring where the woman lay, lifeless, not quite understanding but already calculating—she was so bright already! Audrey, whose rays had lit up the dark world for her so bravely so that she might be happy, in spite of it all, now withered and died as 79
the brightness shrunk away, away to some cavern inside her, behind walls and locks impenetrable to conscious thought. There was no longer a possibility to her—not a single one. Thus, there was no longer any fuel for the sun that warmed the surface of the moon. Her own heart stopped with the woman’s, in order that (like a chameleon, whose skin, thankfully, adapts to surroundings—a survival tactic!) her blood would run cold, and so she froze to keep herself safe for the cold months coming. To fend for her own, Audrey, just four, and therefore not at all sure but, alas, resolute, vowed to never let her heart warm for anyone, because she saw no other way to bear the living of even one more day. Two women on that day did die, but only one of them knew why.
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Growing Pains, Shifting Images Anishta Khan Where I am from, the dust blankets the city like a protective mother bear. We can’t really see the stars because of the thick smog of rapid industrialization, but the azure of high noon or the purple-orange glow of dusk is a result of the same smog. And anyway, the deadlock traffic and weeklong wedding lights are enough to light up the city. When I leave home, and watch the dazzling, twinkling city escape below me, I get a gut-wrenching feeling of leaving the circus before the final act is over. There is always something happening in Dhaka. During wintry nights, the youth band together on street sides around compost fires, tea in hand and guitar on the go to sing freedom songs from the Liberation era. Once a year in the city’s oldest alleyways, as the monsoon season blesses the asphalt-carpeted roads with rain, the people of the city respond with the most outrageous festival of colors. The rickshaw pullers carry you home with a smile, collecting stories of Dhaka, rain or shine. Regardless of your religion, class or origin, the city welcomes you. People from all corners of Bangladesh migrate to Dhaka chasing a dream. I come from a resilient people. I come from a city that is kind, that is compassionate and hospitable even when it survives on the bare minimum. Stencil-lined buildings and drenched cars paint the stunted skyline. Here, there is just an ethereal sense of mobility. On the roads you see a billion people, specs of color, always moving. “Always moving forward” is our lasting attitude. As I grew up, spending afternoons at my parents’ architecture firm, my relationship with my city strengthened. I spent hours discussing the buildings, the landscape and the people; it has been Dhaka, a sprawling metropolis in a hungry race for development, over-polluted and overpopulated, that 81
I’ve grown up cherishing. And it’s easy to get lost in the chaos of 14.5 million people and thousands of years of history. There are loops here, and loopholes, through which one can fall into an abyss of loneliness. So my younger sister, Sehinta, and I navigated our city together. Born into an empty household of two working parents, we made the city our playground — out cycling on crooked highways with drivers cursing at us from behind, indulging in the risky business of eating greasy street food, listening to our grandmother’s stories during walks beside the riverbank, squeezing through teeming open-air supermarkets in search of 400-year-old antiques, dancing in the rain on our apartment rooftop during Kalboishakhi jhor, the Nor’wester storms. Recently I’ve been asked to recount a time when I felt happiest. Perhaps it is a child’s naivety or the nostalgia with which we visit our old memories, but I think I was my happiest when my sister was born. For an entire year before her birth, when my mother prayed, I sat beside her on the prayer mat wearing my own scarf, my eyes squinted shut and hands clasped together: “Allah, just one wish, please Allah, I eat my veggies, I read my books, I listen to Ma and am kind to strangers, just this one time, please listen to me. All I want is a playmate, a sister who will hold my hand and play Legos with me.” The day my sister was born, my grandmother dressed me in my favorite formals and pleated my hair in two. My grandparents had planned to drive me to the hospital in the evening but I was ready to go from the minute I got the news in the morning. When my mother let me hold my baby sister in my arms, a precarious decision in retrospect, my 3-year-old self made a big promise: “Allah, I will protect this little one, 82
always. She will be my best-est friend.” After all, my prayers had been fulfilled. My relationship with Sehinta grew to be the most important one in my life. Ma, during her earlier days of happy motherhood, enjoyed documenting our growth in photo albums. In one of these albums, I find a picture of me cradling my 2-year old sister, her eyes teary and her cheeks flushed, perhaps after some sort of strife with my mother. The photo is representative of our relationship — my sister has always come to me for comfort and assurance. As she grew up, my sister became the bold risk-taker in our household, the youthful energy that kept dinner parties and lazy summer afternoons interesting. It is she who blindly took my side when I argued with my parents, regardless of whether I asked her to back me up. My sister’s unabashed faith in me has been the biggest support system in my life. It has given me the confidence with which I carry myself today. And now as I look back at our days together, I wish I could have been her pillar of strength, too. Maybe if I noticed the signs, I would have seen her reaching out to me for help, some confirmation that this world isn’t that bad after all. Each time I leave home for Exeter, I feel as though I am missing out on one of the most crucial periods of Sehinta’s life — adolescence. I wonder how I can be there for my sister as she tries to navigate the confusing, distorting years of growing up and building her identity. It is difficult to be at Exeter when her world is turning upside down. When I am here with you all at school, I let the Exeter bubble engulf me. I dive into my academics and clubs, my friends here, this continuous Exeter lifestyle. I neglect my familial responsibilities and let myself 83
forget the very people who make home special. I become a passive observer of their lives from thousands of miles away. Being away from the people and place I care so deeply about is indeed difficult. In these racing times, my resilient city is struggling to breathe. As I grow older I see the cracks through which Dhaka is falling. It is getting swept up by the rest of the world’s constant desire to develop, revitalize, grow. As my city spirals out of control, I read about it through a screen, sociopolitical commentaries by other couch intellectuals on news portals and Facebook feeds. Rather ironically, I come back to my dorm after dining hall conversations about the importance of free speech and advocacy to news headlines like, “Another Atheist [Blogger] Hacked to Death by Radical Muslims in Bangladesh.” My city is trying to grow up fast and it is confused. The secular city, the safe harbor, is failing. On one side of the spectrum, imperiled bloggers are fighting the good fight for gender equality, human rights and civil liberties while radical Islamists are hunting them down, butchering activists like Qurbani cows, in the silence of the night. “Inshallah,” God willing, they say, “We will make the city pure again.” In the beginning, most people chose to ignore these premonitions. I continued to read about the government and the ruling elites turning a blind eye to a growing chaos, making empty promises like, “We will crack down on these extremists soon, Inshallah, God willing,” until the situation slipped out of their grip. On July 1st last year, when I was home for break, my neighborhood erupted with gunshots, tension and fright as young Islamists, armed with machetes, rifles and grenades, barged into a high-end café to torture and kill “disbelievers,” 84
taking 22 innocent lives, mostly foreign nationals and diplomats. These young ISIS militants were found to have been drawn from well-educated Bangladeshi elite families, radicalized by religious misinterpretations and on a “killing high” brought on by drugs that were meant to inhibit human emotions. Appalled, no one really knew what to do or what to say. A few days after the killings, as dust again settled on my city of dreams, my sister and I decided to get away from it for a while. We traveled to its outskirts, stretching our journey far enough to see buildings diminish to hay stalks and farm animals moving en masse. At the frayed split end of the day, I try to navigate through the chaos. “The city has forgotten its identity,” I tell Sehinta. “It is confused. It is hurting. And no one seems to know how to help it. How do we move forward?” Our conversation lasts for hours, jumping from one topic to the next, as I realize how much of Sehinta’s life I have to be caught up on. Something unsettling comes to my attention: My sister is deeply unhappy with herself — her performance in school, in sports, but, most importantly, her body. She has isolated herself from many of her friends, and she is lonely. Sehinta had been trying to lose weight over the past year and a half. “I’m just trying to shave off some pounds so I can be pretty,” she tells me matter-of-factly. Mind you, my sister and I picked up polar-opposite genes from the family pool. Distant relatives typically say I have my grandfather’s lean figure — tall and slim with a sharp nose. I’ve been this way all my life; there wasn’t any extra effort I needed to put into it maintaining my figure. My sister adopted my grandmother’s bulkier frame — flatter 85
feet, chubbier plump fingers, round button nose, thicker skin. Sehinta always had a deep appreciation for the food in front of her at the dinner table. She was known to eat everyone else’s leftovers. One of my cousins nicknamed her the “garbage can.” Perhaps my lack of empathy for her was the root of it all. Before I left for Exeter, Sehinta surrendered to a nonrice diet, which was a big step because rice is our staple food. Eventually she turned vegetarian and began to frequent the gym. I thought, This is good, my sister is aiming to become healthier. She had been overweight for most of her life, and our family embraced her new lifestyle choices with optimism. When she talked about BMIs and the beautiful Victoria’s Secret models she followed on Instagram, I should have reached out and asked what was going on in her head. Instead I pushed her away: “Quit it, would you? Why are you being so shallow?” I wonder where the balance is. When are we improving and when are we going too far? So far that we hurt ourselves? See, I come from the developing world, and we have this mentality to go above and beyond to prove our worth. But I wonder, to whom? My city wants to improve its image, and I understand. I promise I’m all for it. But is it trying to change too fast? In the beginning of February this year, the Boston-based Health Effects Institute released a report stating that Dhaka was the world’s second-most-polluted city, after Delhi. Its befouled air claims more than 100,000 lives every year. Seventy percent of the city’s sewage is illegally dumped into the Buriganga River that runs through my riverine land like an obedient cat. Architect Richard Rogers, in paraphrasing environmen86
talist James Lovelock, wrote, “The city is not inanimate. It is a living organism. The earth, its rocks, oceans, atmosphere and all the living things are one great organism. A coherent holistic system of life, self-regulating, self-changing.” The city is now hurting and again I am left unable to help it. The people are doing this to Dhaka. The politicians succumb to their demands for big development plans — taller skyscrapers, grander shopping plazas, coal-fired power plants — forgetting all the ways they annihilate nature and bury years of glorious history, slowly killing parts of the holistic being that is my city. Dhaka is racing to create a utopian Western city model with unsustainable capital and infrastructure projects; garment factories are collapsing and burning because of poor regulations brought about by bribes; urban renewal is evicting destitute slum dwellers. My city seems to have forgotten its morals. It is suffering from growing pains, like my sister, changing its lifestyle, forgetting its human issues before its “self-improvement.” And many civilians are unable to keep up with such rapid adjustments, feeling left behind, isolated, becoming radicalized, angry, misled. I see Dhaka in the news — youth gang violence, rape case after rape case, hate crimes motivated by religious bias sectionalizing the people of the city — and I cannot recognize it anymore. This past winter break when I went back home, I couldn’t recognize my sister. Her collarbones struck out, her face was chiseled, her cheeks were sunken. She had dwindled to half her previous weight. My mother had told me repeatedly over FaceTime how she lost 30 pounds in two and a half weeks. All she ate was broccoli and select fruits. Her dietary obsession, as Ma called it, was so bad, she said, that when 87
Sehinta discovered the potassium value of a banana, about 422 milligrams, she decided to cut that from her diet as well. I didn’t even understand what was wrong with potassium, an essential electrolyte. Was it because the salt retained water weight? Was my sister so determined to change her body image so radically that she didn’t even consider the health aspects of her decisions? When I saw her, Sehinta didn’t look healthy, and as my face contorted in a flurried mix of confusion and disappointment, she immediately recognized it. “I thought you would be impressed to see my change. I am trying so hard to improve,” she solemnly told me and walked away. My family and I spent the break preoccupied with my sister’s obsessive calorie-counting, self-imposed dietary restrictions, and continuous anxiety about “getting fat again.” After every meal, which involved her just pushing around her broccoli on her plate with a fork, uninterested, she headed straight to her room, locked her door and checked her weight, the weight machine her most reliable companion. She started panicking if she didn’t defecate at least once a day. Even a tinker of a gain sent her wailing and complaining to us, to herself. Heck, she dehydrated herself just to see the scale go down. My sister became a different person, consumed by her misconstrued goals, and I simply couldn’t reach out to her anymore. One night, just the two of us home alone, I found my sister screaming into her pillow, her crumpled bedsheets balled into her fists, her body sprawled across the bed in a flustered question mark. It was the weakest, most vulnerable moment I have witnessed in my sister’s life. Before I could ask what had happened, she asked me, “Why couldn’t I have 88
it easy like you?” Her eyes were searching for an answer that I did not have. “You don’t understand what I’ve gone through. I love you and I am grateful that you support me, but this, you don’t understand.” My sister continued, releasing years of suppressed emotions. Each instance she recounted churned the tangled knots inside me. One: “I never told you, but I stopped going to dance class because they always made fun of my deep voice, mimicking me, mocking me. I stopped going because you danced flawlessly, you picked up new steps with a snap of your fingers but it took all my willpower and energy to just keep up with you guys’ pace.” Two: “After a performance with the school dance team, my biology teacher stopped me to say — hey, you were pretty good but dance girls ought to be much thinner.” Three: “All my friends wore pretty dresses but I took up this baggy-shorts, loose-T-shirt look ’cause it went with my appearance, you know? I tried my best at humor, because that’s what was expected of the fat kid. The guys at school called me Kim Kardashian’s ugly sister because of my big butt.” Four: “The year I won my first MVP award for basketball, a cute boy from the other school came up to congratulate me. I felt giddy, to say the least. He went on to tell me that the only reason I could defend the opposition player was because I was so massive. That’s it, no mention of my agility, shots, play makes.” Five: “Every day, Coach told me to stop eating so much. Eat less, you fatty, then you will be quicker, better.” Six: “I held my head down, never said hi to anyone at the gym because I was ashamed of how I looked. I couldn’t be 89
confident in a body like that.” Seven: “I know you all never meant it with spite. But Ma always said I should be ashamed that my thighs were bigger than hers.” Eight: “Dad would shoot me a disappointed look if I served myself another chicken leg at dinner.” Nine: “And you, remember when you said I looked like a pregnant lady because I tried on a blouse a size smaller than usual? The saleswoman smirked along at your harmless joke. I didn’t shop from the women’s section for a long time because of your comment.” Ten: “Once I wrote and rewrote my suicide letter because this dumb life didn’t seem worth it.” There was nothing that I could get myself to say. My sister was talking about taking her own life at the age of 15. The room had drained of all its color. With each comment she made there was a thump-thump-thump in my head and my heart. She had to endure so much fat-shaming through the years, the humiliation and the harassment, but through our time together I had never seen her get mad, talk back, snap shut. Somehow I kept myself oblivious of my sister’s misery. I couldn’t, didn’t protect her. And to see her hurting now, both of us helpless, I doubted all the love and strength that we had built for each other for the past 15 years. In the silence, I heard her taking a deep breath, garnering all her energy to tell me, “You won’t understand because you had it easy.You were born loved, born thin, born perfect.” Three days later, when my parents realized how detrimental the situation had gotten, they finally consulted a psychiatrist. My sister’s “dietary obsession” turned into a diagnosis 90
of anorexia nervosa. The doctor essentially said that my sister has been starving herself, and at the rate at which she was reducing her weight, she could face devastating consequences, including reduced bone density, muscle loss and risk of heart failure. But even today my sister does not want to stop losing weight, she does not want to go back to being fat-shamed. In a hurry to improve herself and prove her worth, she has gotten terribly sick. “Do better, push harder, move forward” is also her lasting attitude. “Let me help you,” were the last words I spoke to my sister before leaving for Exeter, pleading to her at the airport before boarding my flight in a final attempt to fix whatever was broken. “Please let me help with whatever is bothering you.” My sister had been crying again. She told me that basketball — her ultimate sanctuary — wasn’t going well for her anymore. Coach said she was getting out of breath too quickly. She wanted to quit. “I’m too weak to play like I used to.” “Then go back to being your old self. No one needs you to go through with this weight-losing game. Do you think you are improving yourself? For who?” “No, you don’t understand. I have to go forward with this,” she tells me, her voice croaky. “I just wish you were here to help me grow. Sometimes I am so lonely in this big city, I long for our companionship. Change is scary, and confusing, and sometimes misleading without a sister around. I miss my best friend, that’s all.” As she spoke, my sister seemed to crumble into nothing. We have broken her. Our society took a little part of her every time we badgered her with another supposedly harmless joke, a passing remark. 91
Onboard, as I looked out the plane at my star-struck city receding into the darkness, I realized how I was leaving my sister and my city halfway through their troubles once again. Shouldn’t I be more responsible? * * * Something extraordinary is happening to the world as it races against time to change itself. We are all scrambling around to find a place, build an identity. We are chasing images, chasing dreams, and in our spurts of growth sometimes we are unable to keep up with the chaos. Sometimes we fall through, we hurt those we love and initiate a ripple of consequences. My sister has changed as a consequence of unattainable beauty standards we’ve imposed on ourselves, and the constant torment by society for not meeting that ridiculous mark. I am as guilty of this as you are. This tendency to isolate individuals has driven people to believe that this life is not worth living, that there is no love left for them. Only a month ago, I read in the news that one of my former classmates, a timid boy I studied with from fifth to 10th grade who was bullied on and off in school for his unsettling religious beliefs, was caught in a militant raid, that he, too, was behind the terror attack from a summer ago. This is how my city is being radicalized, how it is fighting against itself to alter its image to something it is not and perhaps can never become. I do not know how to undo any of it, how to fight it. I am lost feeling helpless, feeling as if I’ve skipped town, and run away. But this meditation, at the end of the day, is about love – about loving the people and place you care so deeply about through their good times but especially their bad ones. Because you will always be my sister who is trying so 92
hard to grow up and change.You are my city that wants to make us, your people, proud. “Look at me now,” you dream of telling us in a couple of years. “Look at how I’ve changed. I’ve grown up, all pretty. I look like those model cities, fresh air, clean waters, industrialized plants. I have it all. Do you like me now? Will you finally come back home?” But see, you have always been my city, with your corrupt politics and foreign factory contracts, dust settling from week after week of construction and reconstruction.You are my sister who taught me to love unconditionally, and I wish to see that compassion in your eyes again.You are my city even when you are governed badly, when the police go head-to-head with the people who wish to see you breathe again.You are my historic city, my dangerous city — both Mughals on horseback and schoolchildren braved your body riddled with potholes and dents.You are my sister, my very best friend, regardless of how you look, the way you dress, the person you choose to be. I would do anything to hear you laugh again. As the rain spatters on your muddy sidewalks and the stray dog whimpers to find a home, Dhaka, I pray for your well-being.You will always be my city of dreams, my safe harbor, wistfully reaching out to your harmers and healers, carelessly beating your chest with your songs of freedom and outcries of resistance. And you will forever be my sister bravely conquering each obstacle that life presents to you, leaving behind pockets of joy in the most unconventional places for me to pick up and bring right back to you. When I am with you, I am always home. I will be back, I promise. Please let me be there for you the way you have been there for me. 93