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VOL II ISSUE #5
The Woven Tale Press
(c) copyright 2013
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Sandra Tyler Author of Blue Glass, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and After Lydia, both published by Harcourt Brace; awarded BA from Amherst College and MFA in writing from Columbia University; professor of creative writing on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including at Columbia University, (NY), Wesleyan University (CT), and Manhattanvill College, (NY); served as assistant editor at Ploughshares and The Paris Review literary magazines, and production freelancer for Glamour, Self, and Vogue magazines; freelance editor; Stony Brook University’s national annual fiction contest judge; a 2013 BlogHer.com Voices of the Year. http://www.awriterweavesatale.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Michael Dickel, Ph.D. A poet, fiction writer, essayist, photographer and digital artist, Dr. Dickel holds degrees in psychology, creative writing, and English literature. He has taught college, university writing and literature courses for nearly 25 years; served as the director of the Student Writing Center at the University of Minnesota and the Macalester Academic Excellence Center at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN). He co-edited Voices Israel Volume 36 (2010). His work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art books, and online for over 20 years, including in:THIS Literary Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Cartier Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Sketchbook, Emerging Visions Visionary Art eZine, and Poetry Midwest. His latest book of poems is Midwest / Mid-East: March 2012 Poetry Tour. http://michaeldickel.info Kelly Garriott Waite Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Science Monitor, Thunderbird Stories Project, Volume One, Valley Living, The Center for a New American Dream and in the on-line magazine, Tales From a Small Planet. Her fiction has been published in The Rose and Thorn Journal (Memory, Misplaced), in Front Row Lit (The Fullness of the Moon) and in Idea Gems Magazine (No Map and No Directions). Her works in progress have been included in the Third Sunday Blog Carnival: The Contours of a Man’s Heart and Wheezy Hart. She is the author of Downriver and The Loneliness Stories, both available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. http://writinginthemarginsburstingattheseams.blogspot.com
ASSISTANT EDITORS: Dyane Forde Author of forthcoming Rise of the Papilion Trilogy: The Purple Morrow (Book 1) http://droppedpebbles.wordpress.com Adrienne Kerman Freelance writer and editor, her essays have appeared in multiple magazines, as well as in The Boston Globe and Washington Post. She has authored a weekly parenting column, MomsTalk, for the Boston area AOL/Patch sites. http://mintsinmymotherspurse.blogspot.com Lisa A. Kramer, Ph.D Freelance writer, editor, theatre director, and arts educator. She has published non-fiction articles in theater journals, as well articles aimed at young people for Listen Magazine. Her fiction is included in Theme-Thology: Invasion published by HDWPBooks.com. She is the director of a writers’ workshop From Stage to Page: Using Creative Dramatics to Inspire Writing. http://www.lisaakramer.com LeoNard Thompson Has published opinion editorials, weekly columns and essays, and interviewed performers, practitioners, writers, politicians and personalities. http://leeyonard.com Lynn Wohlers Awarded BFA from School of Visual Arts, NY, NY; writer for Daily Post’s Photography 101 series. lynn-wohlers.artistwebsites.com, Bluebrightly. WordPress.com
http://www.katherinemann.net I begin each piece with a stain of color, the product of chance evaporation of ink and water from the paper as it lies on the floor of the studio. From this shape, I nourish the landscape of each painting, coaxing from this organic foundation the development of diverse, decorative forms: braids of hair, details from Beijing opera costuming, lattice-work, sequined patterns. Although founded in adornment, these elements are repeated until they too appear organic, even cancerous. They at once highlight and suffocate the underlying ink stained foundation.
Buffet Sumi Ink and Woodcut 1
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http://finewrites.blogspot.com/p/main-page.html The wounded bakkie limped along–its gait lame, the rear wheels out of step with the front, the chassis’s spine twisted from an earlier clash. Its flanks were claw-marked from many close calls, and the once bright-blue upper panels were bleached bone-white from the relentless South African sun. With its best years behind, the pickup’s outer skin now shed great swaths of paint, unveiling crusts of dried-blood rust beneath.
Chapter One From
The Zebra Affair
Like a tormented animal, the bakkie found itself uncertain and fearful among the powerful and swift herd approaching its prey. As the herd probed for weakness, a Mercedes, menacing and large, worked in concert with an Alfa Romeo. The Italian sports car dashed across the pickup’s front quarter panel. The larger car rode aggressively on the bakkie’s rear bumper held in place by two wire hangers, in hopes of forcing a fatal error. The weathered tarpaulin covering the rear quarters flapped a teasing tail in the wind. The driver, Stanwell Marunda, shot a glance over his shoulder, his heart pounding. He turned again, clutching the cracked steering wheel. His eyes stung as sweat sluiced into them, the sweltering midday sun unrelenting. Then, inexplicably, the marauders gave up interest and sped off. Stanwell squinted through the grimy windshield. Another street sign and still he was lost. Frustration grew on his dark, clammy face as he traversed the idyllic playground of the “mink and manure” set. He didn’t belong here, but he had a job to do. It wouldn’t do to disappoint the Big Baas (the Big Boss). The Big Baas headed a consortium, the first organization granted a license to manufacture television sets. In the flatbed of the wayward truck sat the first dozen TVs produced in the country. These twenty-seven-inch tellies were destined for the homes of lobbyists responsible for persuading the authorities “to come out of the dark ages.” But television still had powerful enemies. It wouldn’t do to flaunt these new machines at this critical moment—hence the secrecy of the driver’s mission. To the north of the gold fields surrounding Johannesburg sat the “richest square mile in all of Africa,” Sandton. Formerly a suburb of Jo’burg, Sandton successfully had divorced itself from the golden city and become a municipality in its own right. Now free 7of spreading urban blight, the affluent white community of Sandton safely prospered
in its posh enclave. The color of the driver’s skin disqualified him from living in Sandton (even in the unlikely event that he could afford to). The place Stanwell called home was bleak and dangerous. It was a bastard—an unloved city within a city. Institutionally named South Western Townships, better known as Soweto, this long-ostracized “black suburb” of Johannesburg was a soulless ghetto. Row upon row of decaying shacks marked the featureless landscape. The flotsam and jetsam of lost lives—carcasses of spent tires, broken glass bottles, rusted oil cans, and dank corrugated cardboard boxes—littered the uneven roads and unkempt alleys. A sulfurous gray cloud from wood-fired stoves, and gas fumes smothered Soweto, where one-and-a-half million souls were deprived of the most basic amenities of electricity and indoor plumbing. Stanwell’s own home was a makeshift shanty, cobbled together from corrugated zinc panels, discarded shipping pallets, and tin signs – a large rust-scabbed sign advertising KOO apricot jam served as the focal point of the structure. Crudely mortared cinder blocks strengthened the corners, and a patchwork of sheeted canvas and plastic, pegged down with bricks and twine, buttressed the leaking roof. As for the windows, they were glassless; ripped burlap sacks lent scant protection from the elements and nosey neighbors. Soweto’s deprivations made Stanwell‘s expedition to Sandton all the more disorienting; the beaten-up pickup wasn’t his. It belonged to a coworker at the company warehouse. Normally he got around by “green mamba,” the puce-green painted buses reserved only for blacks. These unkempt monsters were unsafe and unreliable. Suffocating diesel fumes, numerous breakdowns, frequent crashes, and inexplicable delays were cause for concern, but the tsotsis gangsters were the greatest threat. They preyed on hardworking commuters, men and women – Stanwell was terrified each payday. These hoodlums had no compunction about murdering a victim over a meager twenty-rand pay packet. Their killing method was both quiet and bloodless, like the strike of a serpent’s fang; a sharpened bicycle spoke was shunted between the victim’s ribs. With the threat of imminent death, it’s no wonder these segregated buses were nicknamed after the deadliest venomous African snake, the nine-foot mamba.
“Eish,” Stanwell muttered in frustration. “Where am I?” Frozen by indecision, he slowed to a crawl. An irritated driver behind him blared his horn. Stanwell quickly accelerated. The house he was looking for was lost behind the high walls and gates protecting the massive homes of the well-heeled neighborhood. Here, the homes were personal monuments to the affluent and playground to their architects. The more modest structure of the indigenous rondavel was used in Sandton as a toolshed or child’s playhouse—in the countryside and game parks, the humble rondavel was a staple, with its distinctive conical-shaped straw-thatched roof, rustic stone wall, and organic floor (sometimes crafted from cow dung). For Stanwell, owning a humble rondavel would’ve been splendid. Now desperate, Stanwell reached into the glovebox hoping to find a map, rummaging below the dashboard. Big mistake! With eyes off the road, Stanwell collided with a delivery van parked by the side of the road. The impact was sudden, sharp, and shocking. He was propelled forward into the steering wheel. Stanwell’s face and head shattered the windshield. A bright yellow-white flash seared Stanwell’s vision, then darkness. He forced open his eyes even though they hurt. Specifically his eyelids; it was as if heated needles had pierced them. His lap came into view. In the folds of his gray work trousers fragments of shattered glass glittered. Though dazed, he noted the brilliance of the dangerous shards as they sparkled in the midmorning sun like diamonds. Blood dripped onto his lap, wound its way over and between the glass shards before seeping through his pants staining the vinyl seat. Panic set in. He had to get out. Now!
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Safety Deposit
I placed something valuable somewhere hidden. They didn’t know what happened to you. Everyone speculated about where you’d gone, wide-eyed and wildly wrong. As if acknowledging the most likely truth would allow something irrevocably dark into their own lives, god forbid. I was the least likely to say it, yet I did say it: You were gone. Chances were for good. You burned bright yet short, which is better than some long-lived nobody never even sputtering into life at all. You were somebody. Somebody. Your dreams were concrete. You adhered to the well-trodden trails while attending countless wild auditions. You were a marriage of pragmatism and fancy. Possessing neither, truth be told, I envied both. Hell, probably I envied you. Publicly (and far worse, privately) I cried as much over this as over your absence. None of which anyone knew. Observe that bank of trees, that near-vertical forest, bearing its weight of snow with nary a complaint. It is the triumph of the mindless collective. But also, one has to admit, deeply, deeply beautiful. Heavy limbs so darkly green they may as well be black, straining and actually prevailing against the heavy onslaught of white, as if the history of the races of our world were being mockingly re-enacted with alternate outcomes through this silent, neutral Canadian landscape. In this aquarium of traffic – blue-green bleeding into blue-violet – everyone feels the need to flick on headlights. Especially here, right here in this place, the exact location in which you stepped from your Subaru Forester, apparently for a bathroom break beneath the gathering imposition of pine and fir and spruce and cedar, as the daylight failed to the sound of a seething creek, only for you to disappear forever, my love, my enemy, my perplexing friend. Your ticking station wagon abandoned on the shoulder, shut down, cooling fast, the last CD in the changer an ABBA mix. I can almost hear the shush-shush of tires as they passed, taut-faced drivers all wary of twilight ungulates, kids asleep or grumpy-sly in backseats, nobody paying any meaningful attention as the vengeful shadow pulled up behind, biding his quiet time until your hip-hugging pants were lowered mid-thigh…and you squatted quickly and neatly, desiring a quick release in the cold, never suspecting that a quick release could mean 11
something else entirely, while the avenger fell upon you–crushing, final. Your still-warm body was dispatched (the wrench) and collected (the flinch) and deposited far, far way, somewhere, I don’t ever want to say where (the stench), and perhaps we’ll recite Donne or Auden and play “Dancing Queen” at your memorial amid a galaxy of white lilies while I alone recall those laden branches – the burden of life beneath wet relentless weather, a quick shudder while the ghost vacates – and smile a little self-mockingly at one small victory however fucking tawdry, and goddamn it all to hell ,I so ache with missing you, girl.
Soccer fans have a saying: “It only takes a second to score a goal.” But that has its flipside. Sometimes the moments that end up changing our lives, utterly refashioning them and not always for the better, occur within a heartbeat of time. We might only recognize them in hindsight. I realize I am becoming addicted to flash fiction, which is another level of irony given the latest one I which I titled “Addiction.” Why? I wonder. I think it’s partially the brevity, the minimal time commitment in a crowded, busy world filled with deadlines. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever get to my abandoned novel, and even traditional short stories are becoming increasingly daunting in terms of time, but flash fiction? Surprisingly, you can say a hell of a lot when everything’s pared down to a moment, whether it be a moment of comedy, a moment of fear, a moment of transcendence, a moment of horror, a moment of pure loss. This short piece is a nod to noir, with its femme fatale and smoky barroom setting, but it’s also a moment. A moment in which....Okay, that’s enough. I shouldn’t need to explain it. Plus, it doesn’t even matter what I think. I hope someone gets something out of this. I very much enjoyed writing it, how it emerged like slow ribbons of smoke from a cigarette held between slender fingers: 13
Addiction
The bar is dark in daylight. What paltry light there is moves sluggish, thwarted by dust motes and smoke. “I can’t help it if I have an addictive personality.” Liv leans forward and presses one slender finger into my sternum. “And you don’t exactly help, my lover, my partner, my significant other.” “How so?” “Indulgences. Temptations. Urges.” I have no idea what she’s talking about, so I decide to enjoy the view down the front of her shirt. Significant other. Ha. She’s being an asshole, albeit a flirtatious one. I don’t believe in addictive personalities. I believe only in strength or weakness. I smirk at her. She raises one perfect eyebrow, a brunette Lana Turner. Like she knows what I’m thinking, like she knows this postman will not only ring twice, he’ll keep on ringing until somebody damn well answers. “I can quit them all, you know.” I can feel my smirk stretching my face. “Fuck you,” she says, as if she’s telling me about the weather. Her face is placid as Arctic ice. All of a sudden I’m scared. She’s out of her chair and at the door before I can think. Confused, I look down at the table. “Wait! You forgot your cig—”
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Posters for Children’
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’s School Musicals
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FBI Documents and My Mafia Memoir Basing at least part of my childhood memoir on FBI documents has created an interesting challenge for me as an adult writer. Sure, a large portion of my material is drawn from childhood memories. However, given my father’s organized-crime connections and my presence on several occasions when the FBI raided our home, it’s been fascinating to place these memories within a context that’s established by federal files and to use those memos –in some instances, surveillance notes– to fill in what I don’t remember or never witnessed in the first place. It’s also been informative to compare my parents’ stories with those documents and to see how their facts can vary. Frustrating, however, has been my inability ot make the comparisons I’d like to because either those documents are so heavily redacted, or the material remains classified and outside the scope of material released by the Freedom of Information Act I had filed. For example, when I submitted the paperwork requesting my dad’s FBI file, I was told more than 1,700 pages were available–. only about 400 pages were ever released to me. The chapter below draws on several sources: newspaper clippings from the 1970s, FBI documents, family stories, personal memories, Dick Thornburgh’s autobiography Where the Evidence Leads, and family photographs. Most of what I’ve written about are events I did not witness myself. For example, I was not present when Dick Thornburgh approached my parents on the street in downtown Pittsburgh, a story shared in the opening part of this chapter. The chapter describes an FBI raid on November 21,1970. That day more than 100 federal agents raided 22 locations across Pennsylvania, places that were associated with illegal gambling operations. During the raid at the home of “Bobby I,” the primary target of federal agents, my father was locked in a secret room with Bobby. Simultaneously, another search warrant was executed at my parents’ house. As an eight year old, I was home during that raid and witnessed some of what happened. However, I will cover those events in a separate chapter. The Mafia Verses the Big, Bad Wolf (Chapter 9 of Odds: A Childhood Gambled on God and the Mob) “Bobby I,” the bookie boss was in my parents’ wedding party. At that time, however, my 19
“Bobby I,” the bookie boss (5th from the right) was in my parents’ wedding party. At that time, however, my mother knew nothing about my father’s organized-crime activity or the role Bobby would play in our family’s future.
mother knew nothing about my father’s organized crime connections or the role Bobby would play in our family’s future. So, here’s what happened on a summer night sometime during the ‘70s: Daddy has taken my mother to see Hello Dolly in downtown Pittsburgh. My parents have just exited the theater, Daddy dashing in his cotton Brooks Brothers suit and striped silk tie, my mother wearing a quilted Dior jump suit, sleeveless in pink and teal, a matching fuchsia feather boa, and strappy silver sandals whose high heels clatter on the sidewalk. Barely a block down Penn Avenue, my Dad opens the passenger door of his dark green Sedan d’ Ville, its newly-waxed finish reflecting his face in the overhead street light. My mother slips past him, a scent of Channel lingering as she settles into the leather seat, a beaded hand-bag in her lap. But just as Daddy rounds the rear bumper, nearing one of those oversized pot holes plaguing Pittsburgh during that decade, Dick Thornburgh 20
approaches, sauntering down the sidewalk from the south on Sixth Street, waving his pudgy finger and warning my dad, “I’m gonna get you, Tyce McCullough.” “Sure, Dick,” Daddy responds, sliding into the driver’s seat and saluting the then attorney general for Western Pennsylvania, who sports a big grin and arrogant attitude, huffing and puffing the threat of federal prosecution, the big, bad wolf on a Pittsburgh street determined to blow our house in—and in some cases, doing so quite literally—sending FBI agents to break down our steel-reinforced, never-secure-enough front door. It’s true that Thornburg goes on to become Pennsylvania governor and then attorney general for both presidents Regan and Bush Senior, but back then he was public enemy number one, at least in my mind, as an eight year old, chronically ill-equipped to distinguish the good guys from the bad. Still, Thornburgh, as Nixon’s senior law-enforcement officer for western PA, takes it upon himself to fight organized crime in the state, especially once he discovers that Mafia bosses are paying local law enforcement officials four to six million dollars annually to turn their backs on organized crime. The big, bad wolf doesn’t like this. He’s outraged. He huffs.
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“I” family garage door and driveway. The secret room was just to the left, inside the garage door.
Then, Thornburg discovers illegal gambling is funding those payoffs, becoming what he calls the Mafia’s “cash register.” He doesn’t like that either. He puffs. Specifically tragic for my family is this: The biggest numbers operation in the state, the one Thornburgh sets his sights on, is run by my father’s boss. In fact, when on November 21, 1970, 100 federal agents raid 22 locations across the state, my dad is the only one locked in a room with the man many called “Bobby I,” the primary target of FBI investigators. Talk about wrong-time-wrong-place. Here’s how it happened: It’s 12:25 pm on a cold, rainy Saturday before Thanksgiving, when four federal agents jump from an unmarked sedan at 315 Thompson Run Road, in Ross Township, a sleepy suburb just north of Pittsburgh. The house, raised on small hill, slightly above the street looks like the Brady Bunch abode, brick with clean modern lines and a double wide, wood front door. When over-coated agents knock, Dee “I” answers, outfitted in a ruffled pilgrim apron, and begins screaming as soon as Special Agent Scarborough flashes his badge.
FBI evidence: contents of garbage disposal. Printing is clearly that of my father.
“Bobby, Bobby, it’s the police!” She proceeds to hyperventilate, while, at the same time, blocking the officers’ access to the basement with her body. Bleached blonde, helmet hair and holiday baking notwithstanding, Dee swings a plastic spatula at a second agent who dares to push her aside so that two others can rush down the stairs. The family’s white toy poodle nips at the heels of the officer removing Mrs. “I,” as cookie crumbs from her Tupperware weapon of mass destruction cover his overcoat in a dander of the maniacal, Betty Crocker variety. While that second officer reads Dee her rights, a third proceeds up the steps through the kitchen to the pool room, where the smell of chlorine overtakes the aroma of fresh-baked cookies cooling on the counter. In the meantime, Special Agent Scarborough and his partner follow the sound of paper shredding, football blaring and phones ringing through the basement rec room and into the garage. There behind a peg board hung with garden tools, Daddy and “Bobby I” lob 22
whispered warnings at one another, stopping periodically to answer one of three phones, announcing only, “The police are here,” before hanging up and continuing to destroy as much paper as possible. “So there’s a room back there?” Scarborough asks. “How the fuck do you get in there?” “Must be a door hidden behind them tools.”
FBI diagram of “I” family garage
Scarborough and partner rip the peg board from the wall to reveal a wrought-iron door bolted to the cement floor and ceiling rafters. Meanwhile, the bookies locked in the threeby-eight foot cement room are stuffing bets down an industrial garbage disposal. The sound of running water then accompanies the pulsing and grinding of paper.
Blunt force alone fails to budge the door. They finally get it open with tools found in the garage, only to discover yet another door, this one constructed of steel. “Shit, what’s up with this!” Scarborough curses. Our friendly federal agents may feel frustrated at this point but Bobby panics, knowing there is now only a single barricade between them and the looming law of the land. “Look on the bright side,” Daddy offers.“It’s taking them so long to get in here, they might as well walk around this place for seven days like they’re the Jews circling Jericho. Maybe then the walls’ll come crashing down on their own.” He can’t help but mock the biblical scale of this ineptitude. 23
The garbage disposal clogs, and Bobby brilliantly offers, “Let’s burn the shit.” So my father turns off the faucet feeding the disposal, tosses the remaining papers into the sink. He lights a match to the pile, the entire time, singing to himself a song we kids had learned in Sunday school, “And the walls came tumbling down.” “God damn it, Tyce. You’re gonna asphyxiate us before the feds even have a chance to stash our asses in the slammer,” Bobby bullies from the far corner. Daddy climbs over him to turn on a fan, high on the wall to pull the smoke from the enclosed space. It doesn’t work. Daddy climbs down. “Don’t tell me you didn’t test the thing—wise guy. We’re gonna be toast here in a matter of minutes. Literally.” So knowing their jig is up, Bobby pulls the key from his pants pocket and unlocks the door—Opening it to the big, bad wolf, huffing and puffing, and fueling the flames. But, what’s ironic to me now, more than 40 years later, is knowing that those papers— burnt, shredded, or otherwise—didn’t mean much in the end. At least not as much as wiretaps would have, especially considering the nearly concurrent illegal wiretapping the Nixon administration carried out on the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Office Complex. It’s no wonder to me now that as a child I confused the criminals and their less-than-virtuous counterparts running the government. If the very administration indicting my dad was legally using wiretaps to accomplish that, while simultaneously using them illegally to win reelection, how could I, as an eight or ten year old, stand a chance of discriminating between right and wrong? Who was the enemy, my dad taking illegal bets or the president of the United States, happy to hedge his own, unwilling to leave his reelection fate in the hands of American voters? Would the real criminal please stand up?
Featur
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Escaping Rooster
In the children’s area of the Jerusalem Zoo, goats and roosters run loose. Other animals are kept in pens, but both the goats and roosters can escape into the pens. I was taking photos, and in one shot, a rooster crowing from a post took off just as the shutter clicked. The resulting fuzzy partial image of the rooster as it was escaping the frame, inspired me to play with software to create a digital painting from the photo:
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Dreams unfold while language glimpses
Patterns foregrounded on wall or floor suggest a pattern unfolding our lives. It is all illusion, a dance of light and absence窶馬o thing. Only dreams unfold while language glimpses fleetingly without sounding.
The deep wall of nothing I once knew so well
Waiting for a window to open to green slanted evening light, I remember briefly the deep wall of nothing I once knew so well.
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There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. —Leonard Cohen
Under the rusting courtyard door, once painted Tzfat blue, blinding light spills just before the sun goes down. Long evening rays will soon turn the world red.
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Coming unhinged but not unglued
Coming unhinged, but not unglued, blue rolls to rust, rust to bright nothing of photons reflecting, the outer light breaking through to the wall-guarded courtyard of rock, plaster, and plants. http://michaeldickel.info
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Monkey’s Wedding
I snapped a shot of a monkey’s wedding yesterday. The couple were spending their honeymoon at the Pacific Edge Hotel, downtown Laguna Beach where my friend Laural’s son got married last month. Okay, I’m messing with you.The shot I captured was in my front yard: a “real” monkey’s wedding, Southern California-style–when the sun comes out while it’s raining. In other words, a sunshower. Umshado wezinkawu, the Zulus call it, “a wedding for monkeys.” It is also the name of my first, as yet unpublished young-adult paranormal novel. In it, Elizabeth and Tururu, her constant companion, are on their way to buy sweets at Mr. van Zyl’s shop in the middle of the veld when it starts raining. Here’s an excerpt from Tururu’s point-of-view:
“Oh, honestly, Turu, don’t be stupid, of course they don’t really get married. How on earth can monkeys get married? They’re animals, silly. It’s supposed to be a time of magic, when something’s about to happen. You’re supposed to make a wish.” She closed her eyes. He glanced around wondering how long before Karari caught up with him. He shivered. She opened one eye. “Well? Come on, close your eyes and make a wish. Something you want to happen, you know. Well, like for me, I could wish that I never have to go to boarding school, or in your case, you could wish that your dad wouldn’t be so horrible to you.” She waited. “So, are you going to make a wish, or not?”
“It’s when the sun comes out while it’s raining,” Elizabeth said, turning to face him. “Somewhere out there, a monkey’s getting married. You see, they wait for the sun to shine through the rain and that’s when they get married.” Wiping rain from his eyes, Tururu squinted at her. Monkeys? There weren’t any monkeys around here. “You know?” she said, a mischievous expression spreading across her face. “Married. Like when white people get all dressed up with big flowy dresses and suits and funny hats, and there’s confetti and lovely big cakes with marzipan and white icing and everything.” Tururu shook his head and wiped the rain from his eyes. What was she going on about? 29
Back to my shot yesterday. Look closely –you can see the raindrops.
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Companion Why are we allowed joy only to be denied it later by sorrow? Must the light’s companion inevitably be the dark? I wonder about this, a conundrum on a continual loop, as I wait, sitting on a hard plastic chair in an unheated hospital emergency unit. It is the night before Christmas Eve. My mother is down a corridor, around a corner. I can’t see her but I can hear her intermittent wails of confusion as they escape the draped bed to which she is tied. A small woman of seventy-three, tied onto a gurney for her own safety. It is a thought, a sight, which horrifies me, yet I have given my permission. In my mother’s absence of mind, I have become her guardian. No one explained the details of this change of role. I must feel the walls as I go. When I was fourteen, I competed in an aquatic competition at the local pool. I wasn’t the strongest of swimmers but, unafraid of heights, I dove rather well. A gold ribbon waved to me, until my mother arrived, saw me standing almost twenty-five feet high in the air, and thought I was trying to kill myself. That was the first time I heard her scream. Perhaps it was the first time I heard her scream in front of others. I don’t remember anymore. A nurse strides around the corner and along the corridor, stopping at the entrance to scan the disheveled visitors. Who among us seems the likeliest candidate to be the son of a crazy woman? She picks me out of the crowd immediately. I want to ask her what she sees, what gives me away, but I don’t think she will understand my question. I follow the nurse’s tight wave of direction and go to where my mother now sleeps, sedated. Taking my place at the side of the bed, I sit in another hard plastic chair, hold her tethered hand, and await the light that must follow the dark.
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