Accolades: 2019 SFCC Katie Besser Writing Awards

ACCOLADES 2019 SFCC

KATE BESSER WRITING AWA R D S

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6401 Richards Ave. Santa Fe, NM 87508 505-428-1000 www.sfcc.edu

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Table of Contents Poetry Winner Olivia Parent ...........................................................................Supersedure Runner-Up Sakara Griffin ................................................. To All My Strong Women Caitlin Scott.................................................................................. Hurricos

Creative Nonfiction Winner Pat Hastings ............................................................................ A Long Life Runner-Up Nancy Wilson ................................................................ Robert Gonzales Honorable Mention Sarah Rebecca ..........................................................The Slightest Breeze

Fiction Winner Gerard Martinez .........What Happened to Amalia on Her Beautiful, Glorious Wedding Day? Runner-Up Pat Hastings .................................................................................. Fireman Honorable Mention Tintawi Kaigziabiher ............................................................The Proposal

Personal Essay Winner Jamie Farrow .........................................................The Beauty of Science Runner-Up Marguerite Kearns........................ Two Sides of the Storytelling River Honorable Mention Marylou Butler .............................................Sisterly Love: A Backstory

Academic Essay Winner Tintawi Kaigziabiher ................. The Expression of Bridges and Gates in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative Runner-Up Jamie Farrow ........................................................Conferring on Quanta

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Instructor-Nominated Winner Carla Nagler ...................................... The Father of the Neutron Bomb Runner-Up Pamela Salcido .........................Gender and Race Beneath the Surface Honorable Mention Kiara McCully ................................................ Trapped Under a Shadow

Cover Photograph David Maidenberg

The Santa Fe Community College Kate Besser Writing Awards are given out annually with sponsorship from by Student Activities, the School of Liberal Arts, and the SFCC Foundation. In 2017, the awards were renamed the Kate Besser Writing Awards in recognition of long-time SFCC benefactor Bruce Besser’s endowment of the prizes in memory of his late wife Kate and her love of literature and creative writing. All students enrolled in at least three credits in either the Fall or Spring semesters are eligible. Interested students submitted their work, which was then judged by a group of judges selected from the staff at SFCC. The places were determined on the basis of the judges’ rankings. In addition to being published in Accolades, the authors were invited to give a public reading at the SFCC Kate Besser Writing Awards Celebration. Winners and Runners-up also received monetary prizes.

The Writing Awards exist to celebrate the diverse voices of SFCC students and to recognize the already-present talent of these still-developing writers. This recognition also provides encouragement to the writers to continue their pursuit of original written expression.

The Winner and Runners-Up in each category are also eligible for the Richard Bradford Memorial Creative Writing Scholarship.

The Awards are directed by Emily Stern. The following people were essential to making The 2019 SFCC Kate Besser Writing Awards and Celebration happen: Kate McCahill, Kelly Smith, Deborah Boldt, Jennifer Bleyle, Laura Mulry, Dorothy Piriz, Ken McPherson, Meghan McGarrity, Tina LaCaze, Christopher J Johnson, Bernadette Jacobs, Craig McAdams and Meow Wolf, Danial Kilpatrick, all the instructors who encouraged their students to enter, and all the students who entered but did not receive an award.

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Poetry Winner Olivia Parent

Supersedure an exploration of fertile bees ferment the hymns until you can no longer feel mead will bitter the curvature of your lip kiss me like it’s your last meal you always said I was your Achilles heel my pollinated body like an abandoned ship ferment the hymns until you can no longer feel fragrant hate and solicited nectar will not heal the yearning in your fingertips kiss me like it’s your last meal our hive is no longer unyielding material your mind, gauzy and thick, begins to slip ferment the hymns until you can no longer feel promises along your neck that you can’t conceal honey will go rancid along your spine like a snake whip kiss me like it’s your last meal the brittle comb of loss was surreal melting in your mouth like our waxy kinship ferment the hymns until you can no longer feel kiss me like it’s your last meal Supersedure | noun | 1758 su·per·se·dure Definition of Supersedure : the act or process of superseding especially: the replacement of an old or inferior queen bee by a young or superior queen “On Cliches: The Supersedure of meaning by function in modernity.”

— Amistad y relaciones de pareja entre miembros de las capas medias en California

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Poetry Runner-Up Sakara Griffin

To All My Strong Women One We always talk about those who have a fire burning within them. But we rarely talk about the ones who let that fire consume them.

That day it happened I could’ve seen a whole city trying to save her, but to no avail with a tainted grip I saw her wipe out every one of them.

And yet here I stand a sole survivor of what people are afraid to see live on, as I hide your ashes…

They are ignorant to what parts of you I always kept inside of me.

Two I am impulsive like you, I carry pistols in my pockets ready to fire in my passionate defenses And my weakness is? I hold onto romantic notions, that need to be let go…

Born from a woman with a strong soul and a complicated heart I carry a piece of your enlightened flame within me I hideaway its roar with thick blankets frustrated with the wild madness you passed onto me, because like you I’m not able to control it.

The only difference between me and you, mom, is that I’m better at hiding it.

Three I could let you press your warm lips and lies against my broken heart expecting your hot lust to sooth my cramped up heart. But all I’m left with is burns that run so deep that they relight fiery swamps within my veins.

I want to be rid of you.

I want our memories to be poured out of me, seeping from my eyes, fingertips and lips.

Four I bought a red hoodie.

And I regret it.

Just within a couple paces, I’m branded a criminal not because of the hood, but the deep and dark skin masked under it.

The deep and dark skin that he thought like all the rest would try and pull some ruthless deep and dark tricks.

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Poetry Honorable Mention Caitlin Scott

Hurricos I’m always chasing the dehumanizing wind, Craving its whispers as it glides into my ears.

It caresses me tenderly, desperately, My cheeks, my lips, my eyes, I hum with such sensation.

It hunts me through my wilderness, Metaphoric and poetic.

It swaddles me like a cosmic storm, Diluted in my thoughts.

My mind is tranquil as it lingers, As the wind calls to me, It calls to me.

Creative Nonfiction Winner Pat Hastings

A Long Life Thank you. My unrehearsed speech came easily when I was leaving her, perhaps for the last time. Thank you for enriching my life so much. I love you and I’ll never forget you.

Silence.

Then from her wheelchair, right side paralyzed from stroke, Pat’s first and only words spoken in the time I was with her: You’re welcome.

Half-smile.

My namesake, my mother’s oldest sister. Only living sibling of the four.

“I can’t tell you what to expect,” the doctor tells Pat’s daughter.

“We’ve never had a 102-year-old who survived a stroke.”

St. John’s Residential Community. It could be worse, I think. Assisted living. Pat now in hospice there. It doesn’t smell that bad. The people seem nice.

Resident of the Month proclaims the homemade poster over her 5

bed, her life reduced to a small collage.

With its scrawls and cut-outs, reminding me of a ransom letter.

Place of birth… Education… Adult roles (“Homemaking, volunteering, traveling, writing, meeting new people…)

Reminding me of a wanted poster: at its center a photo of Pat in her 60s looking down at me.

Wanted: Dead or Alive.

I think to myself, Both really.

I visit during Music Hour. Pat’s already arrived. Under her a large cloth so attendants can lift her into bed. The legs that ran childhood fields, did yoga, walked the hills of California -- now useless, stilled.

A circle of old faces, some vacant. Upbeat young guitarist in the center singing You are My Sunshine. A few heads nodding. The two who can clap can’t find the beat. Staff and family members look grateful, encouraging. I sit next to Pat, sometimes holding her hand. The sound of one hand clapping.

Pat became zen-like in her 90s. She only has the present moment. Where do all the memories go? Do they hang on the box alder tree branches outside her window at St. John’s?

And what of the future? Does she realize this is her future, only more so – more frailty, more applesauce, more now?

Pat bound for college. Pat bound for San Francisco from upstate New York, fresh-faced. Pat bound for Europe to research her book.

Now: wheelchair bound.

I see her at her 100th birthday party cum family reunion. She is in her wheelchair with a special attendant for the occasion. Going to the restroom has become an ordeal.

Four generations litter the lodge in honor of Pat. Bach, Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Bad Bad Leroy Brown played on pianos and sung by soloists, trios and quintets – various combinations of the extended clan. A family of talent, a family of hams (not always the same family members).

For Pat’s sake, we also sing Home On The Range and Happy Birthday.

A slide show.

Pat and my mother, 1924.

Pat on a Cornell quad, a jaunty winter cap on her head and a merry look on her face.

Pat driving West.

Pat with her great-grandchildren.

Her attendant rolls her into the backroom where the slide show is playing. What can Pat even see of these photos? What can she think of them?

This day her hair, not yet completely white, has been washed and brushed. It shines. Her cheekbones stand out despite her weight gain. Her posture is erect.

Pat looks around, looks game, looks, as always, pleasant. I think, 6

She has no idea who we are or why she’s here. But I do not know this for sure.

To speak with Pat. I lean down and put my lips to her ear. I catch a waft of blossoms from the open door across the room. Can she smell their fragrance?

I choose not to speak of the apple blossoms.

But what to say to Pat about the now that is her life? Flummoxed, I comment on an outing I know she took last week.

Her eyes are milky but look at me directly. She smiles.

I must have had a wonderful time, she says.

When she traveled, she wrote haiku to capture the experience.

When she visited my mother who was dying: Fully dressed, in the dark She sits, eyes closed, fighting pain.

“Good morning!” she lilts.

Positivity is a genetic trait on the Prescott side. She’s always so pleasant, the staff and Pat’s family visitors say.

Life-long, passionate conservationist. Staunch Democrat.

Played fierce tennis, doubles, with husband Ralph. Until 1982 when he died of a heart attack on the court.

Said of this husband she married right after college. I worried he wasn’t enough fun.

Years later, Ralph now long-dead, she added, He wasn’t.

In the 1950s when her middle child was diagnosed with schizophrenia, the prevailing notion among the psychiatric community was It is the Mother’s Fault. Dozens of family therapy sessions braved/suffered through, trying to get her beautiful son well.

The oriental rug now in my Santa Fe living room, the carpet where Pat and her siblings would march smartly around its pattern while their mother played the piano. Family entertainment, 1920s style.

Although we were a generation apart, I know Pat’s childhood intimately. It was my own. She grew up across the lawn from where I did.

(My mother moved across the street to live her adult life, not across the Mississippi and the Sierras.)

Growing up in the same small upstate New York town as my brothers and I, Pat and her siblings did all the things we did as kids.

Sugaring off (eating with a spoon from a large pan of fresh snow covered in hot maple syrup.)

Autumn bonfires on East First Street.

Hide and seek.

Red rover.

Ice-skating on Burdoch’s pond (I used Pat’s skates til I was 12 and got brand-new white figure skates).

The Rocks: arduously riding our bikes uphill for miles 7

for a picnic, then, stomachs-full, flying down down, back into the town, never having to pedal once until we got to Newt Wheeler’s Drugstore in Lacona!

My third grade teacher, Edna Edgett, would sometimes call me

by Pat’s name by mistake: Patty Prescott. Years before she’d taught my aunt and all the Prescott siblings.

Time must have blurred for her when generations appeared and vanished and appeared again in neat rows behind little wooden desks, the smell of chalk and snow boots mingling in her nostrils.

“We loved our mother and our father,” the sisters all agreed. “We never wanted to rebel. We wanted to be just like them. We wanted to be admired by them.” This didn’t help things when their own children, teens in the 1960s, had sex outside of marriage, divorced, did drugs, and argued with their parents about the Vietnam War. These therapy places open and close like flowers in the night, Pat wrote to my mother in 1975. My mom turned to her older when troubled by my choice to go to Berkeley to enter into “alternative” psychotherapy.

When I came out to my mother in my 20s, it was Pat my mother spoke with about it. What did she say? I asked Pat years later. She wondered if she might be a lesbian too, Pat said. I was too stunned to know what else to ask.

Age 101. The Scrabble board comes out at St. John’s Residential Community. Pat still plays Scrabble with her daughter and son-in-law, lifting tiles from her tray and placing them carefully on the board.

Cat, run, said.

She adds up her own scores.

A year later, post-stroke: Bingo.

Twenty-five. Two-five. Twenty-five, St. John’s director of recreational programming sings out. For residents without family members visiting, aides hover, helping mark the bingo cards.

Her daughter and I flank Pat, who holds a thick, black Magic Marker in her left hand. Without guidance, she carefully marks an X on her card’s large 25 square.

Damn, she still knows her numbers.

When the winners are awarded Hershey chocolates, I eat Pat’s.

Her diet is all liquid since her stroke.

Her first job in San Francisco after college. I did cooking demonstrations in the basement floor at the downtown Macy’s in Union Square. The goal was for me to use all their latest kitchen appliances. I’d always try the recipe on Ralph the night before. I had to keep a step ahead.

I see her flying around the cramped Macy’s pseudo-kitchen, 8

smiling, making eye contact with customers as taught to do. Like Julia Child: chatter, smiles, charisma. And her “Oops, I’ll just pick that up off the floor.”

At 67, long a widow, she falls in love again. I watch in awe as she simmers with awakened sexuality. Part of me stands back, amazed, as she shyly describes the first night she and her new husband made love, “His wife had been alcoholic and sick for a long time. I wouldn’t sleep with him ‘til she had died. But that first night, up in the Gold Country…” Her eyes danced, looking not at me but back at that time.

He died within ten years of cancer.

After Pat’s memory had gone, (gone where? where did it go?), her youngest sister Barb, now in her 90s too, would visit her.

Once a month Barb had a driver bring her from her own assisted living apartment in San Mateo to Pat’s assisted living room in Davis.

They would just sit and hold hands, Pat’s daughter told me.

The dead: Father. Mother. First husband. Sister. Second husband.

Friends. Brother. Last sister. Grandson.

She goes on.

Pat’s discovery in 1982: Maria Sibylla Merian, a German-born naturalist and artist living and working in the seventeenth century. Pat enthralled with the talented, adventurous scientist who journeyed around the world to observe and draw flowers and insects firsthand. Researched Sibylla’s life, recreated her travels, learned German in order to translate her works accurately.

This author, Patricia Kleps-Hok has certainly done her subject justice…Her writing style is extremely readable and she weaves a fascinating story.

From an Amazon review of Pat’s book, Search for Sibylla: The 17th Century’s Woman of Today.

The haiku she wrote after saying goodbye to my mother for the last time: Waking in the dark, She rises, calls up softly, “It’s time to go, Pat.”

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Creative Nonfiction Runner-Up Nancy Wilson

Robert Gonzales I cannot get you out of my head, Robert Gonzales. Not since seeing your name on the white card next to the blue ribbon. Robert, it read. Not Roberta. Robert.

Ah, Robert, it was breathtaking! Tiny, even white stitches, delicate as snowflakes, forming layers of crocheted triangles cascading in soft, fluffy billows down Barbie’s back. Even for a plastic doll with limited powers of imagination, this was the stuff of dreams, Robert, the wedding dress of all wedding dresses. Topping it off, you crowned the bride with a tiara of crocheted flowers encircling her perfectly shaped head. Not particularly a fan of Ms. Barbie, I nevertheless stood there, transfixed by this frothy confection of a garment.

I can’t help it, Robert, I’m sorry, but here’s the story that plays in my head. You, getting up at 5 a.m. to go work out at the gym, where you grunt and sweat to heavy metal as you lift, well, heavy metal. Quick shower, then you race back home, where you drink six raw eggs from a green plastic tumbler and call it breakfast. You grab your jacket and jump in your Ford 250 pickup to weave impatiently through rush hour traffic on your way to the stiflingly hot auto body shop, where you spend the next eight hours welding together pieces of heavy metal, before getting back in your truck to poke through more clogged traffic. You return home to gulp down a microwaved frozen dinner designed and marketed for husky guys like you, and then finally—at last—you open the bedroom closet, where you reach up for the basket holding yarn and hooks and your current project.

You stop by the fridge and pull out a cold one, grab the remote on your way to the couch, find an NFL game on the sports channel, pop the top on your Coors, and settle in for a delicious evening of uninterrupted crocheting.

I know I’m nosy, Robert, but I just have so many questions. Like, how old were you when you crocheted your first little granny square, and was it your little granny that taught you? Did the white triangle waterfall of a Barbie doll wedding dress come to you in a radiant vision, or did you find the design in a back issue of Crochet World? And do you always work in solitude, Robert? Or do you have a circle of fellow crafters, and, if I may be so bold, who all belongs to that group? Other welders like you?

Truckers, perhaps, or oil riggers? Coal miners? Cattle ranchers?

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Well, Robert, I admit my little scenario of a typical day in your life may bear no resemblance whatever to reality. So, let me just leave it at this: one day as I happened to be strolling through the Home Arts exhibit at the New Mexico State Fair, I stopped to admire an astonishing piece of handiwork with your name next to it. That one moment made my world just a little more free and full of possibility. And for that I thank you, Robert Gonzales. You are quite the guy.

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Creative Nonfiction Honorable Mention Sarah Rebecca

The Slightest Breeze Cottonwood trees are indigenous to Kansas and tend to grow near rivers and creeks. Their leaves are like sails that flutter at the slightest breeze.

Being home in Kansas after 36 years made me feel as though I somehow failed. I have learned to appreciate its natural beauty, but its tranquility doesn’t capture my attention, and never did. Even as a four-year-old, in 1964, I knew instinctively that Hays, Kansas would not be able to contain me. My biggest influence at that age was my mother.

My now self-titled anarchist, exhibitionist, and more recently defined conspiracy theorist tendencies reminded me of her mark on my life, and how the neighbors also saw her in the 1960s. My mother’s favorite books, the plots of which I wasn’t completely cognizant of at the time, with titles like Valley of the Dolls and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, made a provocative display on her coffee table. Their titles engendered wonderment in my four-year-old mind.

Her yoga exercises, performed in the backyard, naked, were also warnings that our house was off-limits to conservative Kansans.

My mother’s preoccupation with our education alienated us from neighborhood children. Needless to say, her influence dominated my formative years.

One can’t sue one’s mother posthumously. However, there is no need for that. Instead, I happily take comfort in the knowledge of modern protection for minors these days against being forced to play outside. We were not allowed that luxury. We were exiled from the great indoors during the hot windy Kansas summers. Outside, where we were unwillingly assigned to play, with very little if any shade to cool our feet from asphalt parking lots and sidewalks, we marched to the municipal pool barefoot trying to avoid shards of glass, stickers and thorns. We gravitated to any body of water. I cherish the memories of those hot summer days. I reveled in the independence of venturing across town without adult supervision, diving into the unknown I craved. Every time I look down at my over-exposed, sun-dried hands, I think of my mother.

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Coming back home, it’s the cottonwoods that greet me first: their leaves flapping in the wind are a soundbite from the sixties.

Now, as I look up to reaffirm the source of this familiar noise, sometimes with the help of a strong Kansas wind, reminiscent of the swirling sea, I’m not feeling comfort. Nor am I reminded of my son Tom and his grave in the old Greenwood Cemetery in Tennessee. We chose that spot for several reasons: first, it was near a huge cottonwood tree.

Cottonwoods are rather unusual in Tennessee, unlike Kansas, where they abound. So during the years since Tom’s death, when we’d go to Greenwood to visit, or just sit in quiet shock at the absence of a young man of twenty-two, my daughter Ysabel and I made up stories after the fact and thought about some of his ashes contributing to the life of this hundred-year-old cottonwood root system. We’d look up at the flapping leaves and hear Thomas laughing with us. It reminded us that life is everywhere, and Tom is still able to cheer us up somehow.

Not today. Today I’m looking up into the branches of several large cottonwoods near the river Kaw in Lawrence, Kansas, and yes, they are laughing, but it feels more like they are mocking me.

I called a therapist today.

Not just anyone like I usually do, going through the phonebook, choosing a name that has some story I can attach to it, conjuring up a more interesting person, someone that I’d like to know or maybe knew once. Today the therapist I called was a friend from my past. I thought if he knew me from before, he could recommend someone I don’t have to apologize to for my current lifestyle: somebody already broken in.

I just want to jump on the train, chat awhile, be told I’m doing fine, and get back to the stew I’m cooking. As far as I can tell it smells good, and I’m just about ready to eat.

Is this what the end is like? They, they always say, “He was happiest just before he blew his brains out.” Or, “She seemed so docile.

How could she have driven that car into the lake?” I better not read this entry to the neighbors. I’ve seen what happens when you are involuntarily committed.

Thank goodness for that breeze. It made my heart flutter in a good way.

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Fiction Winner Gerard Martinez

What Happened to Amalia on Her Beautiful and Glorious Wedding Day A Northern New Mexican Fable

As tradition holds, the first Saturday following the Summer Solstice is the day eighteen-year-old Amalia Emilia Romero de Lucero is getting married. A dream of hers as far as she can remember when she would sneak away wedding cake toppers from family wedding cutting ceremonies and take them home to play with like little beloved darling dolls. She would also get the discarded flawed pairs her uncle Teodoro, a baker, would on occasion give her. Now, today, Amalia is filled with mixed feelings because she is not marrying the man of her dreams. Who does anyway? But, nonetheless, it will still be a dreamlike wedding as the families have so painstakingly planned out on this beautiful and glorious summer day and her wedding cake will indeed have its own formal wearing toppers.

On a perfectly warm, partly cloudy late autumn Saturday, twelve-year-old Amalia and her family are picking piĂąon peacefully on the serene rolling hills in the northwest region of the county. The family members are paired up, but Amalia eventually finds herself separated from her younger brother. Dark storm clouds appear overhead. Feeling disoriented with low rolling thunder in the distance, Amalia starts to panic and briskly heads in a northerly direction confused and opposite from her family, deeper and deeper into the woods until she comes upon a rocky clearing, stumbles and falls causing her burlap bag of piĂąon to completely spill out stirring a coiled sleeping rattlesnake that rears its triangular grey head then bites her deeply on her right calf. She lets out a high pitched scream and looks down to her pants and sees the bite mark, fabric rips with blotchy blood stains, as the snake slithers away on the dry rocky ground to a hole in a large pile of shrub nearby. Dizzily she tries to get up to gain balance but tumbles and falls hard on a sharp rock with the top of her left shin and hears a crack. Amalia is in so much pain. She shakes and passes out as sprinkling rain starts to fall.

Amalia awakes with heavy eyes, a fiery and swollen body, some wet towel or rag on her forehead and slowly gazes around trying to see through a smoke filled space with log and mud walls. She can make out a 14

couple of kerosene lamps and a shadowy figure in front of a wood burning stove and the low humming of a familiar melody. The air swirls with the aromas of sage, cedar, osha, echinacea, garlic and other familiar and not so familiar scents. She hears a goat bleating from beyond the walls. Maybe outside. Amalia can feel a throbbing in her lower right leg but very little pain. She tries to look down at her leg and can see some sort of crude compress wrapped around small planks before the room smokes and, humming, spins around in her head until there is darkness.

Finally, she awakens with a lot more alertness and looks up to a dark, lovely, light green-eyed woman with long dark hair smiling down at her while whisper humming a song. A slightly familiar looking boy is helping the woman. Was that boy from her dreams or a watery image of someone nursing her the past few nights? Amalia is shivering, trembling and her teeth are slightly rattling. The woman puts a thick blanket on her and pats the sweat off of Amalia’s face. “Sh, sh, sh, Amalia. You’re feeling better my cousin. You’re feeling better.”

“Who- where- am I? And how do you know my name?”

“You’re in my cottage. I am Margarita Josefina Chavez.

Your cousin.”

“The curandera?”

“Oh, so you’ve heard of me. That’s good.”

“Yes. But-“ “Sh. Rest up my young one. You’re finally gaining your strength.”

“But- how long have I been here?”

“A little more than a week.” The boy hands Margarita a steaming cup of odd smelling tea.

“What?! A week?!”

“Sh- sh. Drink this” “How did I get here? Do my parents know I’m here? Where are they? Mamá! Papá!”

“Calm down, my cousin. Rest up a little more.”

“I want my parents-“ Amelia tries to get up only to feel 15

overwhelmed and she passes out.

When Amalia comes to she is a little more coherent feeling little throbbing with less pain in her right leg. Margarita is preparing something at the stove and countertop. “Margarita?”

“Yes, my child.”

“I shouldn’t have panicked- I made a mistake. And now my leg will never be the same again. It will look ugly and I’ll have a limp and everyone will tease me and-” “We will always make mistakes and fall in life, my young one.

It’s up to us to choose how we respond, recover and reconcile from those incidents. Do you, Amalia, want to sulk and become a victim or fight through and learn from this? As for the snake? There will always be snakes. Are they showing us a sign for the good, or ready to bite us?

Recognize where the safeties and dangers are and who you can really trust in life, my youthful cousin.”

“Okay, my cousin. I understand, I think. But where are my parents?”

“They have been summoned and I believe they’re on their way.

I sent Diego to contact them. It was difficult to get to them your first few days here due to the heavy rains flooding out the roads. I made some atole, special broth and tea for you. Eat and drink because you need your strength.”

Amalia takes a sip of the tea. “Diego?”

“The boy that’s been helping you recover. He found you and brought you here. Diego says he knows you from school. He stays mostly with me because his father is very mean to him- lost his leg in the war and then his wife died in a car wreck. He’s not a happy man, cousin.”

“Oh yes, I know him. We talk a lot and his dad does hit him a lot.

But, Diego’s very nice to me.”

“That’s because he likes you.”

“I guess so.”

“And you? Do you like him?”

Amalia blushes and shrugs her shoulders. “I really want to go home.”

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“You will. Your parents will be here soon, cousin. In the meantime I suggest you rest up.”

“I can’t believe I got lost, Margarita. That never has happened to me before.”

“When you are out in the woods or wilderness and feel you are lost try to remain calm, figure out your directions and head downslope or down river. Always remember this.”

Amalia’s parents arrive the next day as Margarita and Diego bid her farewell. He gives her a bouquet of wildflowers and blooming herbs.

Amalia is enamored by their beauty and fragrance.

Family and friends from near and far away are gathering at the ranch of her paternal grandparents for the outdoor mass and reception.

Weeks of preparation from grandmas, aunties, moms and cousins has gone into pretty much every detail that can be thought of and afforded for this wedding. Amalia’s dress is the very same dress her paternal grandmother, originally from the Jicarilla Apache Tribe, wore on her wedding day. Hemmed and refurbished, Amalia, is in the ranch guesthouse where she and her bridesmaids are making the final preparations. She looks into the mirror and sees herself in the lovely dainty and simple heirloom dress looking like the picturesque brides on the wedding cake toppers of her childhood. The bouquet, filled with daffodils, daisies, magenta, and purple lilacs and herbal blooms from the ranch gardens, is getting tied together with tan twine and streaming red and yellow ribbons. Amalia spins around in front of the mirror as the bridesmaids and her mother are in delighted awe.

“Oh how lovely you look, my daughter!”

“Thank you, Mamá. This is turning out so lovely. But-!”

“My daughter, this day is a God send. So beautiful and glorious!

No buts.”

Amalia excuses the bridesmaids and waits until they are out of the room. “Why can’t I be marrying Diego? Papá never liked him and now I have to marry someone only you and Papá prefer. Not my heart!

And why does my father deny who he really is? Why so shameful?”

“My child, your father has always kept his Apache and French heritage from his true self, from us. He was raised Catholic and 17

Spanish — that’s all he knows and he wants only what’s best for you. Yes, he has forbidden you to marry Diego. I know you do not understand now, but Ricardo will be a good husband.”

“He won’t! Diego and I have always loved each other and know we are meant for each other. Margarita will attest to that.”

“Keep her out of this, my daughter. She is only a distant relative and doesn’t know the ways of love for our family.”

“I wish I could just run far, far away from here and be me, truly in love and free! Better yet, I wish I had wings to soar away!”

“My daughter, this is the right thing to do. This arrangement is tradition.” Amalia weeps and her mother tries to console her then lets the bridesmaids back into the room to finish getting ready.

Uncle Teodoro has kept the three tier cake a secret and is excited to show Amalia the finished product at the reception. The bottom tier is colored with red icing, the second yellow and the top orange with blue, green and white icing. He said it was going to reflect her fiery, creative, imaginative spirit with fairies, birds, clouds and adventurous made up creatures she drew from the stories she wrote as a child. Amalia always dreamed she would travel far and wide someday with a loving husband and family and comeback home every now and then and tell stories of where the travels lead them.

However, today there is a problem with the cake. Teodoro’s order of new wedding cake toppers did not arrive in the mail on time and he’s embarrassed to let Amalia know. Perhaps she will be so impressed with the cake and carefully thought out decorations to where it won’t really matter.

Amalia’s parents eventually let her spend a couple of weeks with Margarita Josefina Chavez every summer in her small cottage bordering the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. Margarita teaches Amalia and Diego traditional and medicinal herbal remedies, potions and healing rituals and how to gather the ingredients in the woods, mountains and meadows.

Amalia and Diego acquire strong feelings for each other but face her father’s denunciation. Amalia’s father has ostracized Diego because he is Apache and not part of the family’s heritage. Regardless, the romantic couple make a loving pact to someday be together. Forever. Then one night over tea, Amalia showed Margarita a pocketful of wedding cake toppers and her dream of someday having the loveliest of all the family 18

weddings and how she and Diego will be just like the toppers. Margarita reads Amalia’s tea leaves and warns, “Be careful of what you wish for.”

“What do you mean, cousin?”

“Weddings are a ceremony before God, the spirits, ancestors, earth, and family to profess love- true love- and the transformation of two lives into one. Sometimes so called family traditions put up barriers they think are best.”

“But-” “Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong. It’s not about what others say or portray what it should be. It’s about the life, the love, you and your spouse live it to be. The beliefs are well-intended.

Either way, the road you’ll journey together will never be straight. There will always be twists, turns, impediments, hard times, good times, sorrowful times, and happy times. Hopefully you make do, survive, and persevere. That, that is what all parents hope for their children.”

“You make it sound like I have no choice.”

“Through it all it will be wonderful.”

“And magical?” will be.”

“Hopefully,” she looks at the leaves again. “Yes. Yes, I believe it

Minutes before the ceremony begins Amalia looks out the window and spots uncle Teodoro. She calls to him and he tries to ignore her.

“Uncle.” He keeps walking, “Psst. Uncle Teodoro!” He knows he cannot avoid the inevitable.

“Um, hello, my niece. Are you excited?”

“Come here.” He reluctantly goes to the window.

“Tell me about the cake.”

“Oh, honey, it’s a surprise. I cannot tell you too much about it now. But I will unveil it at the reception.”

“Is it beautiful?”

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“The best I have ever made, like you have never seen.”

“Is it delicious?”

“The tastiest! And the icing is my own very special recipe with real fruit.” Teodora waves goodbye and tries to walk away.

“Oh yummy! And the toppers. Tell me about the toppers.”

“Well-” “Are they like the old ones?”

“Uh-“ He stops his marching away.

“The new ones you liked and ordered?”

“My niece, it’s difficult for me to tell you this but-” “Tell me what? Is there something wrong?”

“Well. The cake will not have toppers.”

“What? Uncle Teodoro! Tell me you’re joking!”

“No, my child. This is no joke.”

“What?!”

“They didn’t arrive in the mail on time.”

“No!” “But, I called and they said they shipped a week ago but they never got here.”

“Uncle Teodoro!”

“My child, I’m so sor-” “Nooo!!!” She screams even louder causing many to look in the direction of Teodoro at the window.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, everyone. It’s okay. I think the bride may have just seen a mouse.” Teodoro briskly strolls from the scene towards the other guests.

Margarita catches the latter half of their conversation and is concerned for Amalia. She goes to the wedding cake, takes a small twig 20

of salt cedar from her leather pouch, breaks it in half and places the little sticks next to each other where the toppers would be and whispers a short melodic prayer.

Almost her entire life, Amalia dreamed for the perfect wedding and posing for a perfect wedding photograph that will be passed on for generations just like the perfect wedding cake toppers on a perfect three tier wedding cake. She is distraught. She won’t be marrying Diego. She won’t have dreamy wedding toppers. This is turning out to be a not so beautiful and glorious wedding day. An ominous breeze enters the room and surrounds and permeates Amalia and she disappears.

The wedding ceremony begins with the bridesmaids and groomsmen graciously marching into place under the large willow tree on the big lawn of the ranch. The accordion, guitars and violin continue to play Valse de los Novios as Ricardo marches down the aisle and the guests await the arrival of Amalia. A couple of minutes pass and there is stirring amongst the guests and the priest stands awkwardly with an uncomfortable Ricardo in front of the makeshift altar and the musicians are looking at each other not knowing what to do but to keep playing. Amalia’s mother gets up, grabs the maid of honor and they briskly walk over to the room and continually knock on the door but there is no answer. They open it up and do not see Amalia or the bouquet.

The mother returns to the gathering and tells them all that Amalia is gone. The guests are shocked and a low rumble of rumors begin. Ricardo is stunned and has a deep hollow feeling inside and rushes off to the room where Amalia was preparing herself. Both sets of parents show up and start fighting and passing blame onto one another. They all eventually leave to the reception area to face humiliation before the guests.

Amalia enters the room and begins to sing a song with a slight dance movement. Diego, a saddened guest, comes to Margarita.

“Margarita, where is Amalia? I’m worried for her. I feel her heart in so much pain, but I don’t know where she is, how to reach her or what to do.”

“Her heart is waiting for you, Diego.”

“But her father denies me. He denies his own blood. He denies his daughter’s heart!”

“Sit here, my son. Close your eyes and focus on Amalia. Bring 21

your heart to hers and you will find her. I am sure of this.”

She sits him on a chair, lights a small twine bundled sage stick and smudges him, then places the sage in his hands and walks out.

The same ominous wind enters the room and consumes Diego.

He then disappears.

At the reception area the guests grumble and help themselves to food and drink. Amalia’s and Ricardo’s parents continue to argue and fight with and amongst each other and everything is now a shameful mess on this beautiful and glorious day. Amalia’s father starts to shout at the wedding guests about their innuendos and suspicions and hollers at them to get out. He ravages through the reception area takes the wedding cake, yells and tosses it over a steep ledge with a spectacular view and it falls down to the arroyo below as Teodoro pleads with him to not destroy his masterpiece and in mid-flight notices there are now toppers on the wedding cake and they resemble Amalia and Diego. Did Amalia put one of her own toppers on the cake? He bewilderedly looks over the edge at the toppers in the convoluted confectionary carnage. He is puzzled. Margarita also looks down at the arroyo bottom and sees the toppers now hugging each other. Teodoro tearfully looks over to Margarita, “But my cake!”

“I guess it’s meant to be after all.” She shrugs at him and walks away.

The partly cloudy skies have now turned to a sky filled with storm clouds and they angrily roil in the near distance as the guests furiously disperse. The heavens burst open and weep over what started out as a perfect wedding day. The storm quickly moves in heavily and pelts down hail and hard rain and the arroyo floods as the wedding cake topper couple grabs on to a dried juniper branch and then hold on to each other as they wash away downstream. Amalia’s and Diego’s lives are now one and must survive this treacherous deluge.

They drift through the night and voyage from one gushing arroyo to the next larger one then into an overflowing creek to a stream into a river where early the next morning they swirl in a pool and get swallowed by a very large rainbow trout that begins to choke on their plastic bodies, suffocates and washes up on the bank where a big calico house cat starts to eat the fish and swallows the dolls in the process and runs off when in the evening it tries to cough the topper couple out of its stomach like a giant fur ball only to be attacked and eaten by a coyote that travels off into the night to sleep in a den and awakes the next day to roam the llano and 22

eventually is hunted down by trackers who kill the coyote, skin it to turn the pelt in for bounty money and leave the carcass which gets pecked at by small birds and rodents and the very next day a male and female raven lunge down to take part in the feast and peck out the topper couple. They bite the couple in half as they swallow the groom and the bride. The spirit and souls of the ravens are suddenly transformed into those of Amalia and Diego. They look at each other and realize that finally they can completely love and be with each other and truly feel united as one.

“Alas, Amalia, my love, we are together for eternity.”

“Diego, from this journey we are now stronger and know that we can endure anything-” “Together.”

“Yes, my love. Together. Forever.”

The newlyweds spread their wings and leap into flight as the sun warms and glistens the black feathers against the bright azure sky lifting them up in a circular motion to a higher altitude where they can see below and beyond the erratic arroyos, crooked creeks, meandering streams, vibrant valleys and their families’ hearty homes, fluid farmlands, verdant pastures and fertile fields past the majestic purple mountains where the newlyweds profess devotion, adoration and vows through sensual, rhythmic, passionate strokes like two lovers beautifully entwined in an intuitive and effortless choreography that is endless and boundless in an undefinable amorous love. The couple decides to fly off to the north to pay a visit to Margarita. They hover over the rustic cabin and she looks up from her garden to see them, waves and dances for them. Amalia and Diego swoop down a little closer and bid farewell to the woman who knew all along about their true love for each. They then embark off to destinations mysterious and afar.

23

Fiction Runner-Up Pat Hastings

Fireman He takes off his gloves and fumbles in the pocket of his bulky plaid jacket, feeling for the long barbeque lighter. His fingers bump up against the matches he’s brought as backup. His hands are shaking a little, but he feels a familiar joy.

The night is moonless. He checks the sky for Orion, his touchstone. He remembers when his father first pointed it out to him.

What was he: five? six?

He inhales the tang of the hay from the barn’s loft. So sweet, but with a bite too.

Running his hand over the weathered wood siding of the barn, he knows there will be no need for gasoline tonight. This old building will go up like a Roman candle.

He smiles, remembering how Shep died last week. The Sniders are dog-less. Good timing. This is my night, he thinks.

He slides the barn door open. When it starts to squeak, he slips a small can of oil from his pocket. The farmhouse sits just across the yard.

No lights are on, but he doesn’t want to risk the noise. It doesn’t take much for him to oil the hinges.

Inside the barn he moves quickly to the two horses, speaking to them in a low, soothing tone. The smell of straw and manure consumes him. He swings open the stalls and slaps the mares on their rumps.

Snorting, the horses trot briskly through the barn door and are gone.

He climbs the ladder until he’s arm’s length from the loft.

He sparks the lighter and touches it to the nearest mound of hay. The immediate flare-up startles him, and he nearly steps backward into nothingness. He steadies himself, moving quickly down the rungs. He crosses the dusty floor of the barn, like a cat, he thinks. His heart is banging. He glances down, for a moment thinking he’ll see its thump through his jacket.

The rush of energy is already making him light-headed. He can hear the crackle of fire behind him. He has to smile.

He watches from a quarter mile away. Smoke begins to stream from the roof. He whispers aloud, “I did that.” The flames cut through the 24

roof. The smell of smoke is intoxicating. His penis swells. He is all-powerful, alive, high. As high as the hunter Orion. ** The boy is still awake when he hears the piercing moan of the town fire whistle cut through the night. He savors the warmth of his bed.

He knows he’ll be tired later. As usual, his father will demand to know if he’s done his homework and then hassle him about his grades. Same old same old. He’s sick of it. He’s fourteen: who has time for homework? There are so many chores to be done on this goddamn farm. And the boy has other interests, too. His father would never understand. Just because he was in the war, his father thinks discipline is everything. But it’s 1956 now.

The war was ages ago. His father ought to just get on with it and cut him some slack once in awhile.

Ah, but his father won’t have time to bug him this morning. He’ll be rushing to get to the fire station.

The boy looks at the clock: 1:15 a.m. He hears his parents below, moving around the kitchen. The fire whistle has them all up. Maybe his mother will cook him breakfast after his father has left for the station.

Besides, he wants to watch his father’s exit. He loves seeing the flurry of activity, just as he loves the quietness after his father has gone.

Sliding out of bed, the boy fumbles for his moccasins and pulls his wool overcoat over his pajama top. His father doesn’t let them turn on the heat until eight a.m., so they’re frozen every night.

The boy comes down the creaky, wooden stairs from his attic bedroom. His mother is pouring coffee into a thermos, his father fumbling with the toaster.

“This is the fifth time this month you’ve been called out in the middle of the night, Jake,” she says. His mother spits out the words.

“I hope this doesn’t affect your real job. We do need mon...” She stops mid-sentence as she notices their son at the base of the stairway.

“Your father is going out again. Duty calls.” She’s trying to sound light, but there’s an edge. This isn’t the first time his parents have argued about his father volunteering as deputy chief of the Sandy Springs Fire Department.

His father grins. The son is reminded of their cat, Bootsy, after she’s caught a mouse.

“You know there aren’t enough guys, Donna, and I’m still young.”

He pauses. “It feels good to help out. It’s a lot better than sitting behind that bulldozer every day.”

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His father carefully pokes a knife into the toaster, pulls out some bread, and crams it into his mouth. He grabs the thermos. Heading to the front door, Jake playfully salutes his wife and winks at his son. The son is stone-faced. Then his father is gone. ** The firehouse always looks like an anthill, Jake thinks.

Men are running from their lockers, their clumsy coats and overalls dragging behind. But they’ve already placed their fire hats, their badges of honor, carefully on their heads.

One guy starts up the Monster, as everybody calls the long, red fire engine that dominates the garage. It took a lot of earnest testimony to convince the town council that such a big soaker was necessary.

Another man scrambles up into the cramped back cabin where he’ll steer the Monster’s rear end through the streets of Sandy Springs.

The father feels a tinge of envy. It’s so fun to handle that thing. But Jake dashes back to his car. His friend, William, the fire chief, is already in the passenger seat.

William says, “Can I catch a ride? I walked over tonight.”

“Sure,” the father says. He’s glad the fire chief is going to ride with him. It’ll give them a little time to talk.

Ten or more cars are surging from the parking lot. The father wheels around his Ford to join the line, drumming his fingers on the icy steering wheel.

William says, “It’s always a trade-off, isn’t it. Such a rush. I love this part, I’ve got to admit.”

“Yeah,” says the father, “but it gets to be quite a lot with this arson thing going on.” William doesn’t comment. “I wonder if they’ll ever catch him,” the father muses.

William shrugs his shoulders and looks out the window. The town is already giving way to fields of frozen, broken cornstalks. Leaves wave stiffly in the breeze that is starting to come up.

For the rest of the five miles to the Snider place, the friends talk about the work ahead. Sparks have blown onto the roof of the house, and the back bedroom is already starting to smolder. They need a plan. ** 26

At six a.m., the fire out, his father has returned, tired, dirty, with an air of satisfaction. The boy and his father are sitting wordlessly at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper and eating breakfast — the boy his second. There’s a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” his mother sings out from the living room. She likes having both her men home, her son thinks. He hears the front door open and the murmur of greetings.

“It’s William,” the mother announces to the kitchen. “He wants to talk with you.”

Father and son exchange a quick glance, as if unsure for a moment whom the fire chief is here to see. His father puts down his coffee cup, shoots another look at the son, and rises from the table. The sports section of the Watertown Times floats to the floor. The plate of eggs will get cold and congeal.

His mother hurries past, heading up the stairs to check on the status of her son’s room. Thursdays are her cleaning day.

The boy stealthily crosses the kitchen and stands erect, out of sight in the doorway between kitchen and living room. He carefully peeks around the corner.

The men are sitting stiffly, facing each other, the fire chief on the only hard-backed chair and his father on the sofa. The huge couch, dull gray with a few grease stains on its arms and back, seems to make his father look smaller, almost shrunken.

William is saying, “I’m sorry, Jake. Somebody saw your truck on that back road to the Snider’s. I thought your boy had taken it, just ‘cause it seems like something boys his age might do.”

His father’s eyes widen and his body stiffens.

The boy inhales sharply, but the men in the living room don’t seem to hear him. The boy can’t feel his arms, his feet, his lips.

Nor can he hear what the men say next. His ears are filled with the roar of blood pumping through his body.

Just as suddenly he begins to hear words once more. They seem to be drifting now inside his head, making his brain ache.

William is still talking, “But somebody else saw you getting out of the truck here at your place in the middle of the night.”

His father’s jaw goes slack.

“It’s over, Jake,” the fire chief says.”

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The men are quiet. They sit and look at each other. The boy is trying to control his breathing. It’s coming in sharp, fast rasps, hurting his chest.

His father speaks. “I just love it so goddamn much,” he says.

His voice sounds choked. “It kind of got out of hand, I know. But the first couple of burns didn’t hurt anybody. They were just firetraps anyway, waiting to go up.”

Then his father and William are up and moving toward the front door. The boy backs further into the kitchen. He wishes his mother would come down from his room. He wants her to hold him.

William says, “I’m not going to say anything to anybody. You make up some excuse why you’ve got to quit – Donna is sick of you being out at night or something. We’ll leave it at that.

“But you’ll need to figure out what to say to Donna and your boy.

And you know how this town works – the truth’ll get around one way or another. It’s not going to be easy on you, or on them. You may want to think about moving on.“ William hesitates at the doorway. He looks at the father. “I’m counting on you not to do it anymore. And don’t be showing your face when we’re out fighting a fire either. Just stay away.”

The son slides quickly back to the kitchen table, picks up the newspaper from the floor, and pretends to read. There is no other sound.

He gets up carefully and slips to the kitchen window, pulling back the bright calico curtain.

His father is standing on the porch, crying mutely, his body shaking and jerking in a way his son has never seen. As the boy watches, his father, face wet with tears, looks up at the sky.

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Fiction Honorable Mention Tintawi Kaigziabiher

The Proposal The sun isn’t hiding in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Half-dressed kids dance in front of the fire hydrant, soothing their sweaty skin in the cool water, blasting out. Zola, Kilimanjaro’s god sister sits outside in their godmother’s fenced garden, plucking feathers from a limp chicken.

Nandi stands in the shadow of the doorway catching a breeze before heading back to the kitchen sink. There is a lot of food that still needs to be cooked and plenty of clean up and altar preparations to make everything just right for the drumming tomorrow. It’s Friday and no one is idle. The home is bustling with preliminary ceremonies and cleaning.

The sewing machine hums in the background, as the seamstress puts the finishing touches on the initiates extravagant gown. Priests laden with brilliant glass beads move hurriedly from room to room as Nandi compiles a list of everything that needs to be done. Iya Ife, is stitching the last few, minuscule glass beads onto the initiate’s crown. She pretends not to be exhausted in their presence, but Nandi knows that her Iya desires rest.

Kilimanjaro walks out of the Orisha room and hurries over to Nandi who is washing several large steel pots. He places a bucket on the floor next to where she is standing, and playfully grabs her around the waist, her back melting into his broad chest. Just a touch from him gives her tingly feelings all over. His presence strengthens her and the white V-neck showing off his rich chocolate masculinity excites her, though she tries to play it cool.

Intoxicated by the scent of patchouli mixed with her perspiration, he imagines her caramel legs peeking out from under the bubble bath he will run for her later. Then they’ll run down to The Butta’ Cup Lounge for coconut crusted salmon on a bed of rainbow chard as local’s strum inspiration on their cello’s. “Chill, Kil, stay present,” he tells himself as he suddenly recalls his reason for rushing up to Nandi.

“Can we talk,” he says?

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She dries her hands on a towel slung over her shoulder then grabs a biscuit from the oven, taking a large bite.

“Want some,” she asks? As he shakes his head no, she stuffs the rest of the warm bread into the large pocket of her yellow gingham apron.

“Come with me,” he says leading her into the den. It is the only quiet place in the busy home. A magnificent silhouette of a peacock hangs low against the brick wall. Flower petals are all over the floor. In the corner a worn-in brown leather couch beckons them to rest their tired legs. Nandi props her feet up on Kilimanjaro’s lap, wiggling her freshly painted gold toe nails on his jeans.

“Ok. What’s up,” she says, brushing crumbs off the corner of her mouth?

“You all serious.”

“Relax honey, everything is cool…Oshun just spoke in my reading… she said to… stop playin’ and be clear about what you want, to avoid misunderstandings.”

“And,” Nandi says? Her eyes wide.

“Do you love me Nandi?”

“Of course, I love you Bea,” she says with a puzzled look.

“Do you want to have my babies?”

“What? Stop playin’.”

“Dang girl, come on, I wouldn’t play around with that. Seriously, do you want to have a family with me?”

“Bea… shoot Bea… I… I… I wasn’t expecting that question.” Nandi’s mind was spinning in a thousand different directions… her heart was thumping so loudly she wondered if he could hear it.

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“Well?” he asked persistently.

“Bea, truth is I been wanting to make a baby with you for a minute now.”

“Then will you be my wife too?” he blurts out, surprising himself.

“Oh shoot… shoot… is that why you were trippin’ in the elevator yesterday, about the art festival… and the numbers I get from brothers.

You want to make sure everybody knows I am your Queen!”

“Oh Bea,” says Nandi.

The room begins to fade away. Nandi lays back into the calm of the couch, at first just mesmerized, then she falls into a deep trance, right at that very moment, on the ground floor of the Brooklyn brownstone…

Zola right outside, still plucking chicken feathers, as nosy neighbors glance over their garden walls. She forgot about the wood plank floor, strewn with flower petals, and the dumbwaiter stacked with the dishes she was supposed to be drying. The chicken carcasses patiently awaited her oil massage and seasoning. But Nandi was somewhere else…She was gone, and when she thought she was back in her body she found herself suddenly surrounded by women, all of them dressed in white with corals, shells, and glittery glass beads. They danced around her at the edge of a stream… one of the women carried a large basket, she walked up to Nandi singing in a language that pulled at the strings of Nandi’s memory. Her distant memories. She knew the words but could not speak them. The woman, now in front of her, was beautiful. She was the most radiant woman Nandi had ever seen. Her skin was like honey with a tan, her shoulders broad but not intimidating, voluptuous hips, and her thick earth brown hair was pinned up in two curly puffs that looked like they were fighting against being contained. At the end of her song, she put the basket full of the unknown in Nandi’s hands… she walked back to the circle and the women all jumped in the stream and disappeared. Nandi grabbed the muslin fabric off the basket and uncovered a pile of gold coins, shells, and yellow fabric… she wondered what it all meant and where had the singing woman come from? Where did she go?

Kilimanjaro realized that although Nandi lay next to him, she was not there. “Nandi! Nandi!” Kilimanjaro called out to her, but there was no response. Gently shaking her he continued to call out her name 31

worriedly. Minutes later he was still calling to her.

Nandi heard someone saying her name, the voice was faint, but constant. A voice she knew well! She opened her eyes just as he wrapped his vanilla, musky arms around her shoulders. She was back. Her man still there. “You ok,” he asked. “Yeah, Bea. I just felt tired all of a sudden.

I was dreaming.” Remembering his shocking round of questioning gradually brought her back to where they were sitting on the couch. Her eyes were busy, fixed on him. She had so much she wanted to say but it was stuck. Kilimanjaro ran his hands through the thick curls sitting atop her head and he tried to read her. But before he gave her the space to answer his questions, his heart pushed him to speak.

“I am not perfect Nandi. I don’t have to tell you that. I’m a man, working on and through what I gotta work on and through. I’m a man that wants to be with you always. I don’t want to say goodbye to you at night… watch you walk away to your apartment. I want us to be together, I want a family. I want to see you every morning, kiss your head, smell the lavender as the scent rolls off your neck. I want to wipe away your tears and kiss your smile. I want to grab hold of the tomorrow I have already seen in my visions. I watch you, how you move in the world, how you move with me (smiling seductively), how you won’t let me get away with even a hint of jealousy. I love that you are fierce and can take a joke. I need you.”

Nandi, still in a bit of a daze, pulls him to her, gently kisses his lips and whispers softly, “You had me at, do you want to have my babies?”

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Personal Essay Winner Jamie Farrow

The Beauty of Science There is a unique beauty about the universe found through knowing the physical laws which govern it. These laws can be proved through mathematics and, for the most part, remain eternal. Although ultimate knowledge may elude us; the consistency of mechanics perseveres, the constancy of the universe yet continues. Observing patterns and relationships has fascinated humans since the beginning of our existence. This innate curiosity has led us to a deeper understanding of how the cosmos works, as well as our own microcosms. Through theorizing, empirical investigation, and mathematical proof — laws and constants can be derived. A scientific theory or law must fulfill basic criteria: it must be hypothesized, experimentally tested, falsifiable, repeatable, and imply some sort of causality. This method allows us to understand the clockwork of the matter and motion surrounding us, giving rise to our experience. Although the physical sciences are known for technicality and rigor, there is a romantic aspect which comes with its aesthetic appreciation. The tenant of repeatability is, for me, a supremely beautiful concept. The most pedantic explanation of this is that when something is tested under exact experimental conditions, if the same method of investigation is used, the same causality will ensue, regardless of time. It may not seem so interesting at first, but when one realizes another implication of this — that this replicability stands for any observer.

This leaves me in awe.

It has always concerned me that all humans conceive reality differently. Every human has a unique brain; a unique structure of sensing. The idea that someone will look at the same exact thing as me, but experience it differently frightens me. The diversity of subjective experience is something many have tried to understand. Psychologists use archetypes, artists try to convey themselves through expression, and the physical sciences attempt to reduce our condition and functioning to materialism. I find the physical approach to be most enlightening; not just in analyzing our own inner workings, but also that which is outside of us. I take solace in knowing that there are universal physical laws — independent of experience — constituting everyone’s reality.

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Everyone operates under these laws the same. One might consider laws, geometry, and mathematics to be universal truths. This universality is basic to science, and it unites us as humans.

I have only recently adopted this outlook. My personal experience with the sciences, and the educational system for that matter, has been a turbulent one. I was raised under an anti-intellectual roof. I was told that many educators were undercover soviets out to indoctrinate students into the liberal agenda: an attempt to destroy religion, capitalism, and the “American Family”. Scientists were the epitome of Red. My freshman year, at a private Christian high school in the South, my biology teacher preached to us for two lectures that Darwin was a heathen. Climate denial was ingrained in me. Environmentalists existed solely to burden corporations. Anything that contradicted my fundamentalism and nationalism was a manufactured lie. I was taught to only trust the divine. I grew up believing that deception surrounded me — naturally I became distrustful of all institutions. Ironically, it was this distrust that eventually led me to realize that all perspectives and beliefs are fueled by paradigmatic dogma, even my own. This severe skepticism dampened my education in some respects, but inquisitiveness persevered in me like a child’s, informing me of my own extremism. The idea that I had been raised a conspiracy theorist burgeoned. I decided to seek personal authenticity away from the influences of my upbringing. I began exploring interests independent of school; reading whatever caught my interest, neglecting my schoolwork.

My self-education brought me down a path I would have never considered before. My curiosity brought me to wonder how the God I believed in could somehow pause all of the motions of the universe to divinely intervene. I argued against myself by reasoning that He could deterministically plan to intervene, validating His omniscience. What effect would this have on free will? Is it fair to judge one’s faith and morals if individual circumstances inhibit finding the “right belief.” Arguments spun through my head; I tried to find my center. My skepticism led me to lose faith and I collapsed into an existential crisis. I struggled to find a way to understand the meaning of existence without a Creator. I was suddenly aware of chaos without meaning. Where could I find order? I became very depressed and dropped out of school. I was so overcome with angst; all I could wish was to escape my new self. I had become one who had bitten into the forbidden fruit. Knowledge felt like a burden. I wanted to find something independent of myself to escape suffering. I began surrounding myself with philosophy since I had nothing else to 34

do. I wanted to understand what makes up experience. I wanted to find something outside of myself. I wanted to find reality.

So, I’d listen to philosophical round tables. Philosophers would debate their ontologies and metaphysics, and I would tilt my head back and sigh—I see merit in anyone’s arguments. Then one day, I heard a mathematician explaining Mathematical Platonism. He believed that geometric forms and math are abstract and exist independently of experience. This idea struck me. Here was something universal. I was also influenced by Spinozism. The pantheistic aspect affected me ephemerally; I soon became agnostic. However, I was absorbed by his related idea of “Infinite Substance”. I considered the entirety of the universe for the first time since I was a child. I wanted to understand it. I had finally found something both outside of myself, but that also included me. I became a part of something much larger. For once in my life, I realized that I was not unique in the experience of living; even if my experience was unique.

It changed me. Everyone’s experience is determined by physical impulses traveling through unique structures of our brains. A nascent physicalism flourished in me-- Of course it should make sense that everything should be described through materialism! What else could there be? My suffering seemed both trivial and explainable — I soon forgot about it.

I took these commitments, along with my newly formed naturalism, seriously. I still feared chaos. I decided if there is a way to find structure it must be through the laws of nature. If I could predict a system, and it unfolded as I would expect, there would be order. This settled my angst and I felt at rest.

It has been just a little over two years since I went through my metamorphosis. I’ve become exactly who I started out thinking was the evil in society. I currently dream of becoming an academic; joining the exact institution I was raised to hate. Going from being completely egocentric to exploring myself as a microcosm, I have found myself interested in the inanimate and universal. I am constantly stirred by physicalism: the unification between sensation and stimuli; the causality between action and reaction; the way an abstract model can describe physical laws and interactions that give rise to phenomena.

I am still very much a skeptic. As much as I appreciate the method and explanatory powers of science; I know that it does not explain everything. We are, certainly for now — and possibly ultimately — limited in approaching absolute knowledge. There is always more to be known; always more to be learned; and like the universe, always room to grow into. This drives my current outlook and shapes who I am. I’m no longer 35

overwhelmed by chasing after meaning. I have allowed myself to become completely inundated by the beauty surrounding me; exploring nature physically and abstractly. Independence, skepticism, and inquisitiveness have all lead me to evolve into the person I am today — and I can’t imagine anything more powerful. Being open to new ideas and alternative perspectives makes for a wider outlook, allowing you to observe differently than before. In order to expand as an individual one must be influenced by an impetus, an external force, can be found through new experience.

This impulse guides us through paths yet to be discovered. We have control over what we surround and stimulate ourselves with. The cognizance of the ability to exercise this control is liberating, and I believe it to be a realization essential to human progress by leading to authentic living. I have found balance through seeking order in disorder; I am guided by the knowledge and laws behind me, and I look forward to the unknowns and uncertainty ahead of me.

Personal Essay Runner-Up Marguerite Kearns

Two Sides of the Storytelling River “This storytelling project with my father might last indefinitely,” I thought, and I preferred to assign it a beginning, middle, and end. The chasm between Dad and me reminded me of a trapeze performance on a high wire over an enormous river, like the Niagara separating New York State from Canada. I was on the Canadian bank and Dad waved at me from the banks of the US. Our decision to share stories as father and daughter represented a remarkable accomplishment.

Storytelling, however, ended up as more complicated than I could have ever imagined.

I pictured the two of us, like The Flying Wallendas, the daredevil circus act of performers who didn’t use a safety net. Dad and I exchanged tales while on our toes, we traveled across a tight wire stretching across the Niagara River. I held my breath and my father must have also. I didn’t realize Dad had started toward Canada, while I forged toward the US, both of us balancing on the same high wire.

It wouldn’t have been easy to tell Dad what happened to me in Woodstock, where I lived for 20 years, and why I moved to Santa Fe. I hoped to change this by storytelling and planned to remember my early 36

adulthood, but not necessarily share all of it with Dad. At best, I’d be selective. On the high wire, I could lose everything by staking my credibility on my father listening to and accepting an account of me being his daughter without judgment.

During breaks, I stood on a chair to reach the top shelf of the cabinet in the kitchen where I found my mother had stored rose-fringed dishes used by my great grandmother, May Begley Buckman. I recognized them, although I doubted that my father did. Among the small collection was my maternal grandfather Wilmer’s shaving mug with a broken handle and a package of stale biscuits. I looked them over but didn’t bring them down from the shelf.

Dad, while waiting for me on the couch, would become restless if I didn’t return right away with an afternoon snack of almond butter on toast. I glanced down at my right knee before steeping back down onto the floor from the chair.

The scar on my right knee from falling on the sidewalk as a child when we lived on Gallagher Road near Norristown, Pennsylvania still served as a reminder of another of my parents’ arguments. I’d split my knee open after falling, and my father refused to call the doctor so I could have the knee stitched.

“She’ll get over it by herself,” he told my mother, another instance of the power plays between my parents.

My mother may have had strong opinions, but my father attempted to be the man of the house. He didn’t win every round with my mother. The scar on my knee was one reason a distance developed between my father and me over the decades. I remembered the day of my sidewalk fall, just as I’d never forget when I signed up with the high school librarian to reserve my school’s only copy of George Orwell’s 1984.

The novel about Big Brother took on importance when I was thirteen. It was a hit with the students in my class at the Quaker high school I attended. We lined up to put our names on the reserve card at the school library and waited our turn to open the first page and disappear into Orwell’s classic tale.

Few books back then featured sex scenes. Orwell let loose when describing protagonist Winston Smith’s clandestine love affair with Julia. I 37

suspect that’s a major reason why so many teenagers signed reserve cards for 1984 so they could read the juicy parts.

The possibility that such a world like 1984 might come to pass was upsetting. I suspected for years that surveillance and technology had been taking over the planet. I didn’t want to believe it. And most of all, I seldom talked about it.

The world in which my father grew up was much smaller than the global village in which we live now. Storytelling was natural for him — the entertainment backbone of his life. Dad could describe neighborhoods, streets, fill me in on who lived where and for how long.

He highlighted people, their characters, how they looked. He didn’t call himself a storyteller. That’s just the way he was.

If Dad were here today, we’d be clipping newspapers with articles about Big Brother and technology gone wild. “Isn’t this awful?” we’d say to each other.

And here I am, now, just like I asked my father to do—setting down in writing how he traveled west with my mom on a bus to meet and greet the Rainbow Gathering friends of my baby brother Tom, who wasn’t a baby any longer. Tom was the youngest of my parents’ five children. I was the oldest.

When I first heard about Big Brother watching Dad, I held my breath so I wouldn’t laugh out loud. The idea of any federal government agency being interested in my father was, frankly, ridiculous. My father didn’t know the difference between a Black Panther and a Gray Panther. I listened to Dad at first with my tongue simultaneously in both cheeks.

I remember the weekend my parents drove up to where I was living in Woodstock, New York. That’s when I heard the Big Brother story during its first round in the telling—a condensed version anyway. The entire tale was repeated to me in four-part harmony in 1998 after my mom died. In my mind I gave it an award as one of my father’s classic whoppers.

But he insisted: “There’s more to this than you can possibly imagine.”

It took years for the pieces to fall into place about the significance of storytelling in my father’s generation. It was a survival skill, especially in the era before radio when close observations of the world were important socially. The family storyteller took center stage as an entertainer and the passing on of family tradition.

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My father told us children tales at bedtime when we were young.

He didn’t join us sitting in front of a black and white TV. When he told stories, a wave of inspired energy came over him, some part of him missing otherwise. It was as if he entered another dimension when telling a tale, and probably he did.

I didn’t realize that television would undermine my father’s storytelling ability during my lifetime. TV became the national storyteller, and it took center stage during my childhood even if I didn’t watch a television set for the first time until the age of ten. Fewer people noticed my father’s talent. He was a shy guy anyway, and television was flashy and sophisticated. Dad represented the grassroots.

“Hollywood—pay attention,” I said to myself silently—a joke I didn’t share with my father.

Only years later in 1998, when Dad and I spent weekends together, did my understanding of storytelling and its importance in his life fall into place.

“Dad. I’m in my chair and have my notebook open,” I said after settling down, next to where he positioned himself. He took a bathroom break and left behind a skeletal impression of himself on the living room couch cushions as I popped an audiotape of Frank Sinatra singing “Chicago — my kind of town” into the player.

My father didn’t particularly like Frank Sinatra, but the singer’s voice had been the pop background soundtrack for millions in his generation.

Big Brother wasn’t about to make an appearance in the story yet.

My parents had to reach Chicago on the Greyhound bus first.

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Personal Essay Honorable Mention Marylou Butler

Sisterly Love: A Backstory We grew up in the City of Brotherly Love. Somehow sisterly love eluded us. We shared a room and a double bed with a too-soft mattress for twenty-one years until my sister, Mariah married. Each year I visited her, Mariah looked unhappier than the previous. Eventually, she and her husband stopped speaking to each other. The morning after her 60th birthday, Mariah woke up and knew her forty-year marriage was over. My sister learned the art of shunning as a way of coping with the breakdown in any communication. Now she and I have a hard time finding common ground for conversation. We prefer long stretches of silence rather than face our differences.

Mariah and I could not be more different. She is a thinker; I am a feeler. She hates my emotional responses. I can’t stand her cold indifference. She remained in the East; I moved West. I imagine she felt abandoned though she never said so. She had two children; I had none.

As a teacher, I had hundreds, just none of my own.

My sister worked her way up in the corporate world of “Big Pharma.” I taught in the nonprofit world of higher education, eventually becoming president of a small college. I thought she sold out to the for-profit world. She thought I threw away my career when I left an Ivy League university for a little-known school in the Southwest.

I recall isolated acts of kindness we offered each other. As Mother lay dying, we held vigil at the hospital. I comforted my sister, both of us overcome with grief at the realization that Mother’s death was imminent.

She accepted my physical embrace. At Dad’s funeral years later, she invited me to take a few moments alone with his coffin as she escorted family and friends into a separate reception room. I am grateful for that private moment.

Mariah and I speak different languages. She is interested in allopathic medicine, the Presbyterian Church, and needlepoint. I am interested in transformational education, New Thought spirituality and Buddhism, and progressive politics. We are lucky if we can chat for fifteen minutes on the phone without dropping into awkward silence.

I: How are you, Mariah?

She: Good 40

I: How is the family?

She: Everybody is good.

I: How was your Thanksgiving holiday?

She: Good. Lots of people there.

I: (silent) She: How are you and your partner?

I: We are good.

She: Any travel plans?

I: Not yet.

She: (silent) Last February, I traveled to Florida to visit Mariah for a few days.

I wanted to celebrate her 75th birthday, away from the rest of the family in Philadelphia. I hoped we might be able to have a sisterly connection in a relaxed environment. She was vacationing there for two months with a friend from her Bridge group. The closer I was to going, the more reluctant I became. What makes me think anything will be different?, I wondered as I packed a small bag with summer clothes — T-shirts, capris, and a bathing suit. Nothing fancy, just my L.L. Bean and Lands’ End basics along with simple pearl earrings and slightly worn sandals. My casual style of dress, chosen for comfort and walkability, rarely generates a compliment from my sister.

Mariah dresses up for most occasions, usually with gold jewelry adorning her neck, hands, and wrists. She always looks elegant, though I rarely tell her that. No doubt she will be wearing the three-diamond ring that Mother left behind. The plan was to break up the ring and give one diamond to each of Mother’s three daughters. With our oldest sister, Jennie, dead of cirrhosis of the liver and my escape to the West, Mariah kept the ring so she could pass it on to her daughter. I’m ok with that. I don’t have daughters expecting something from me.

During our Florida days together, I felt split between two realities. On the surface, I was warm and friendly, upbeat and generous.

Inside, I was exhausted by the effort it took to connect. When I landed in Ft. Myers, she was at the airport to fetch me. Mariah remained behind the wheel while her friend, Jessica, walked toward me with a huge grin, 41

offering a hug. She declared, “I have heard all about you, Louisa.”

I smiled, not wanting to know what she meant. I could only imagine the possibilities: that I left the family years ago after Mother died; divorced; chose a nontraditional partnership; became a hippie for a while, then a feminist. I sensed I was not going to have the chance to get to know my sister’s friend on my own terms nor vice versa. Jessica and I forged a connection that took us by surprise, given lifestyle and political differences. My sister watched silently as her friend and I found common ground with ease and comfort.

As the three days wore on, the distance between Mariah and me deepened rather than lessened. At her birthday dinner, she and Jessica chatted about their grandchildren, a troubled Bridge group friend, their senior living community. I did my best not to withdraw, to remain present and interested in the conversation, even though I don’t have grandchildren, play Bridge, or live in an over-55 community. Eventually, Jessica included me in their exchanges and the situation eased. I did what I do best, asked lots of questions and listened with interest.

During a day at the beach, Jessica and I walked along the shoreline for two hours while my sister sat on the sand and read. She seemed increasingly uncomfortable with the growing bond between Jessica and myself, gradually shutting me out. I could feel myself withdrawing from her. The tension erupted back at the condo over happy hour. Jessica asked about our childhood together and Mariah erupted, “Well, I was the middle sister of three, and you were the spoiled baby of the family who could do no wrong. You got away with murder while Jennie and I had to tow the line.”

“That’s not what I remember,” I replied gently. “What I recall is that strict discipline and swift punishment were applied across the board to all three of us.”

The conversation ended, Jessica jumped up to wash our wine glasses, and we headed to dinner. I felt a burning sensation in my gut which moved to my heart. It seemed like rage that deepened into sorrow.

Our differing perspectives of a shared experience deepened the chasm between my sister and myself. I suspect she feels alone in her lifelong frustration with being the middle sister. I feel reduced to someone I am not.

I had an idea in the shower the next morning. I was ruminating on a way to salvage the visit with my sister and maybe even our relationship.

It was clear from our conversations over several days that Mariah has detailed memories of our childhood in Philadelphia that I do not have.

Early mother loss left us both devastated, even bereft. Given our differing temperaments, we coped with the void in different ways. She invested in 42

marriage and family life; I divorced and escaped to the West. We both buried ourselves in our careers, avoiding unbearable grief and each other.

Stepping out of the shower, I realized I could record the family stories held by my sister.

“Why don’t I interview you about our early life together? I’ll write up your memories, add a few photos, and give copies to you and your children.” It was a last-ditch olive branch I could extend to her.

She seemed cool to the idea, always reluctant to show enthusiasm toward me. Later, however, as we dozed by the pool, she sat up with uncharacteristic responsiveness and offered, “I like the idea and am already remembering events and people to include.”

I was happy but made sure to respond in a low-key way, so as not to generate her usual contempt for my suggestions. “Good. I’ll send you some questions to guide our conversation. Then we can schedule a Facetime interview.”

The following day, Mariah and Jessica dropped me off at the airport. My sister and I exchanged a cautious hug and minimal thanks.

Waiting for my flight, I opened a text message from her, “It’s quiet around here without you.” I texted back a slightly warm, “thank you.” During my day traveling home, disappointment set in. Reluctant to feel it, I went to work on the questions for our project while pondering the basis for our inability to show love for each other.

It took me seven months to schedule our first Facetime interview for the memoir project. After our Florida visit, we dropped back into a few perfunctory text messages and phone calls: I: Take good care and say hi to the family.

She: OK. I: I’ll

be in touch about the memoir project.

She: Ok.

I: (silent)

She: (silent) My sister practices indifference toward me. I practice distance from her. We are both good at our respective strategies. So far, the Florida 43

visit has not altered that. I am curious whether the shared memoir project makes any difference; if remembering our early life together provides a bridge to greater ease between us. *** What a relief! The manuscript is in the hands of Mariah and her family. It turned out to be more labor intensive than I anticipated, and initially, disappointing. It was clear from the first of several Facetime conversations that Mariah wanted the project to be the story of her life.

My story is very different. Quickly, I shifted gears and became the interviewer and author, putting my sister’s life story on paper as creatively as I could. I inserted two dozen family photos, placed strategically to illuminate the narrative. Mariah presented it to her children and grandchildren at Christmas.

It has been an emotional roller coaster for both of us. “Every time I read what you have written, I cry,” she declared. “I think I am becoming a softie.”

“We soften with age,” I replied, gently.

I took a deep breath and kept going with the project. At times, I sank, discouraged; at others, I was annoyed. Eventually, she came through with additions, corrections, photos, and some low-key praise. “This has been fun and worthwhile,” she wrote in a text. “My friends all think what you’ve done is a good idea. I hope my kids appreciate your efforts.” I hoped she would appreciate my efforts. *** “What made you take on this project,” friends inquire.

“I’m not completely sure,” I respond honestly. “It’s been valuable to piece together our ancestry.” Inside, I understand better how it is we are so different. And, I do finally feel some compassion for how my sister has been impacted by early mother loss, buried her grief, and suffered for years in an unhappy marriage. I wonder if I was trying to make up for disengaging from my sister and her family years ago. If so, I now see the impossibility of that goal. In truth, we fail to appreciate each other in our adult years, letting distance keep us safe from our past, our differences, and disappointments. It’s easier that way.

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Academic Essay Winner Tintawi Kaigziabiher

The Expression Of Bridges And Gates In Toni Morrison’s Beloved And Frederick Douglass’ Narrative “It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass,” (Douglass 4) says Frederick Douglass. In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and in Toni Morrison’s modern take of the slave narrative, Beloved, “bridges” and “gates” alike are used as literal and metaphoric words. In both of their physical and figurative representations they aid in helping the enslaved to be aware of their plight, as well as a means of connecting them with their physical and spiritual guides, thereby awakening revelations. For Douglass, he uses the word “gate” to signify awakening to the reality of his enslavement. He also speaks of the challenge real “bridges and gates” present to his freedom when he states, “At every gate through which we were to pass, we saw a watchman — at ever ferry a guard — on every bridge a sentinel…Here were the difficulties, real or imagined — the good to be sought, and the evil to be shunned” (Douglass 50). The gates and bridges that he mentions in this passage are obstacles to his escape, but what the author is proving is that he like most humans have weaknesses. Through his words we experience his lack of confidence, his fears, his self-doubt, yet through it all he stands firm, slowly learning the value of his life. The various bridge and gate like situations, connect him with the people that will teach and aid him in becoming a great servant to his people and the cause of abolishing slavery. In the case of Douglass, an enslaved man, crossing points to the stories landmarks.

First is the horrific beating of his Aunt, upon which he understands what being a slave means (Douglass 4). The next turning point is the moment is his moving to Baltimore (Douglass 18). Through his new mistress and the reactions of her husband he realizes that literacy is the key to freedom (Douglass 20). He shocks the reader when he fights Covey back and strengthens his manhood, becoming determined to be free (43). Each of Douglass’ experiences assisted him in gaining courage, autonomy and strength. He became more powerful to himself and helpful to his spiritual community through his Sabbath school (48). Douglass’ rise to life sfree from the chains of enslavement is a testament to the power of the human spirit.

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A different approach is used in the novel Beloved where Morrison is inspired by the experience of Margaret Garner, a runaway who was convicted of infanticide in 1856. The fictional story which delves into the psyche of the child killed is quite a supernatural experience as Beloved is birthed from the dead into a pregnant woman, naked and smiling” (308).

Morrison’s “bridges” serve to carry her protagonist Sethe across the Ohio River from the painstaking torments of slavery into the hope of a better life. Additionally, Sethe’s “bridges” aid in bringing the past into her present. They also sadly connect her with her Mother who crossed over the Big Water in slave ships and those like her living in the “new” world. They also connect the living with the ancestral (the other-side).

Sethe’s daughter Beloved is also representative of all the souls lost during the Middle Passage) the author writes: Sethe went into the sea. She went there. They did not push her.

She went there. She was getting ready to smile at me and when she saw the dead people pushed into the sea she went also and left me there with no face or hers (Morrison 253).

What the novel describes gives the feeling of the living and the dead coexisting, or a bridge between the two worlds. Together the “bridges” lead to revelations which open the gates for both Frederick Douglass and Sethe to discover who they are as humans in opposition to slaves.

For Sethe it also helps her remember the horrific milk stealing and whipping that she received on the plantation. This experience links her to her mother and the scar her mother showed her one day, she now carrying her own. These crossing points allow them to recognize their state of imprisonment as well as realize the need for and the right to liberation. This is in fact like traditional gates that either allow or prevent entrance, in the case of these two books it is enslavement or the other side of the gate, an opportunity to a better quality of life.

Early in Douglass’ Narrative he tells us of the life altering moment when he crossed the threshold that introduced him to his condition as a slave. Douglass calls these situations to our attention to show the contradiction of his life and journey as a young man coming of age in slavery. On one side of the “blood-stained gate” (4) he is a poor boy living with his grandmother, doing chores that many children must do. On the other side of the gate he is a slave, destined for the worse and most brutal violations against his own flesh.

I had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation, 46

where she was put to raise the children of the younger women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of bloody scenes that often occurred on the plantation (5) In this case he uses “the blood-stained gate” to effectively describe the horror of being introduced to his rights of passage into slavery, which also leaves him yearning for a better quality of life. He includes this phrase to distinguish his humanity versus how slaves are inhumanely viewed and treated by their oppressor, in order to educate and pulling the spiritual strings of the reader.

Similarly, later in his narrative, Douglass again alerts us to the power of gates in the scene where he describes the fine tuning of his education which provided both encouragement and the opportunity for freedom.

The first step had been taken. Mistress in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell. The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. (23)

Douglass marks this scene with importance because he crossed over the “bridge” between being illiterate to literate, awakening within himself a new man. This idea, the ability to learn and keep information, directly opposed what he had been taught about himself. After all slaves were often compared to or treated like or below livestock. Similar to how animals are considered to be beneath human levels of thinking, the enslaved were deemed incapable of learning. The fact that he could now read convinced him that his life and purpose was just as valuable or more valuable than anyone who held him captive. Literacy would additionally prove the necessary ingredient in planning a successful escape, improving his ability to navigate as well as strengthening his belief in himself.

Douglass in his autobiographical writing shows us chronological crossing points that step by step lead him to his liberation. Different from Douglass, Morrison uses heavy symbolism to show the meaning behind the crossings of her fictional character, Sethe, the first of which is her journey across the Ohio River. The “bridge” we are exposed to in this 47

scene is the “flatbed Sethe crosses the Ohio River in with Stamp Paid.

Sethe recalls: “Then the man said, “Headin’ ‘cross?”

“Yes, sir,” said Sethe.

“Anybody know you coming?”

“Yes, sir.” …Contrary to what she expected they poled upriver, far away from the rowboat Amy had found. Just when she thought he was taking her back to Kentucky, he turned the flatbed and crossed the Ohio like a shot (106-107)

Though she does cross from one land mass to another, like the intention of a traditional bridge, Stamp Paid and his “flatbed” symbolize the bridge carrying her from the hell of slavery to the possibilities of a different life.

Morrison uses a person to symbolize a bridge because it was other humans responsible for bringing Africans over as cargo across the “bridge” of the Big Water at the beginning of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Sethe is a product of this original transport as, the only surviving child of her mother, the rest thrown to their deaths in the Big Water.

Crossing in this instance, just as in the previous do not lead to permanent liberation but the entering of another chapter in their lives. For Sethe’s mother it is passage into the New World and the introduction of slavery.

For Sethe it is passage across to Ohio only to be found by slave catchers acting under the Fugitive Slave Law. Stamp Paid holds Sethe’s dead baby on the other side of the Ohio River witnessing her cross over into the ancestral world, Stamp asks Paul D: “What kind of bridge?”

“Who you asking?”

“No bridges around here I don’t know about. But don’t nobody live on em. Under em neither” (Morrison 277).

Beloved refers to a “bridge” often when she speaks of how she arrived at 124 Bluestone Rd. The novel transforms this “crawling already” child, renamed Beloved after her tragic demise, along with all of those who suffered in the Middle Passage, into a physical being and 48

a force from the ancestral world. This force compels us to reach back in time to learn before attempting to move forward in our lives. From Morrison we are given a window into the life of an enslaved woman as she tries to find freedom for herself and her children. Douglass’ narrative gives us a true account of horrors of slavery as experienced by a male, Morrison on the other hand addresses how women were viewed in slavery, manipulating her characters into situations that demonstrate their crossing over from the female perspective. In a sisterly conversation Denver asks Beloved: “Tell me, how did you get here?”

“I wait; then I got on the bridge. I stay there in the dark, in the daytime, in the dark, in the daytime. It was a long time.”

“All this time you were on a bridge?”

“No. After. When I got out.”

“What did you come back for?”

Beloved Smiled. “To see her face.”

“Ma’am’s? Sethe?”

“Yes, Sethe.” (88-89)

The bridge Beloved references is symbolic of the point between the world of the living and the world of the dead. When Beloved and Denver are talking Beloved says, “there’s a lot of people down there.

Some is dead. Her description also is reminiscent of what the enslaved may have experienced as cargo on ships bound for the New World.

As there don’t exist many first-hand accounts of what it was like to be transported across the Big Water, Morrison creates this scene to give the reader a version of what it could have been like. Beloved’s descriptions are vague, lacking any convincing evidence of the place from which she came, because many generations later we can only imagine what it must have been like for our ancestors, stolen, then forced into chains, loaded like cargo onto ships set out for land, too far away from everything previously known. Beloved recalls how she lost Sethe multiple times, Beloved lost Sethe multiple times, “once under the bridge when I went in to join her and she came toward me but did not smile. She whispered 49

to me, chewed me, and swam away. Now I have found her in this house.

She smiles at me and it is my own face smiling. I will not lose her again.

She is mine” (253-255).

Morrison included the above reflection to show that Beloved has always existed. She states the above to remind us that whether it is known or unknown, there always exists a connection or “bridge” between life and death, birth and rebirth and light and darkness.

In like manner, the third “bridge” brought to the forefront in this novel is represented by the entrance to 124 that Paul D. must cross. On one side of the doorway exists the realm of the living. On the opposite side, upon entering, exists a twisted combo, some place where the paths of the living and the dead meet. It scares him, provoking a round of questions for Sethe; “You got company?” he whispered, frowning?

“Good God.” He backed out the door onto the porch, “What kind of evil you got in here?”

“It’s not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through” (10) … She was right. It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry” (11).

Sethe assures Paul that what he feels is not evil because she does view killing her daughter as wicked. She simply had no other choice to protect her from Schoolteacher and the brutality of plantation life. Sethe views death as a way to escape the horrors of what she endured at Sweet Home and sends her daughter into its arms to save her from the same pain.

Though successful at keeping her daughter from being victimized, she sent her painfully into the realm of spirit. Paul D. himself also represents a bridge. As the only other living survivor from Sweet Home, Paul D. connects Sethe’s past with her present. He aids her in gaining understanding of what drove her husband crazy and kept him from joining her in the escape. His presence also chases the spirit of Beloved out of the house and brings her back in the body of a woman. Morrison again uses people to represent connections as such is history.

We learn of our past by listening to the stories of our elders. We also create our own bridges or connections to our past to gain a deeper understanding of what our ancestors endured to gain strength for the 50

journey ahead of eradicating oppression. Both stories share the horrors of enslavement, they prove extreme levels of Post Traumatic Disorders.

In addition, we see the triumph of the human spirit over the darkness. In searching for the experiences of those who came before us, our ancestors, we uncover many stories, all of them beloved.

Works Cited Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. First Avenue Editions, 2014.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved: A Novel. New York: Plume, 1988., 1988. Plume contemporary fiction.

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Academic Essay Runner-Up Jamie Farrow

Conferring on Quanta The Solvay Conferences are the preeminent series of lectures, colloquia, and meetings on Physics and Physical Chemistry held by the International Solvay Institute. The initial conference in 1911 was the first international congregation of minds in the history of science. Specifically, the first and also the fifth conferences in 1927 were seminal in the development of quantum theory. (i) The discussions that took place at each of these events influenced the work of the luminaries responsible for the quantum revolution in the 1920s and have had a lasting effect on physics today. The conferences allowed physicists who otherwise may have been working in isolation to network and debut theories that may have gone unnoticed. The ideas and debates stimulated from these discussions facilitated the building of the framework which forever changed the course of physics and our understanding of Nature.

Belgian industrialist and philanthropist Ernest Solvay sponsored the endeavor and it was chaired by Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, famous for discoveries such as the Lorentz transformations fundamental to the development of special relativity. The impetus for the first conference was the joint opinion of both Wilhelm Nernst and Max Planck who “considered that the current problems in the theory of radiation... had become so serious that an international meeting… should be convened in order to attempt to resolve the situation.”(ii) Solvay and Lorentz then made it their goal to bring together in Brussels an international congress of the leading physicists of the time for a week-long discussion on such problems. This was the first conference of its kind in history.

The process of radiation was just recently hypothesized in 1900

by Planck, the father of quantum theory. Based on his observations of radiating black-bodies, an idealized physical body that absorbs all electromagnetic radiation. He observed that one with a constant temperature radiates electromagnetic energy, referred to as “Planck’s Law”. He postulated that electromagnetic energy can only be emitted discreetly in quanta. It is difficult to understate the importance of his theory which revolutionized the understanding of atomic process. Discreteness implies that nature is in fact discontinuous, a fact which star52

tled physicists. This was the nescience of quantum theory which would mature in the hands of nearly every attendee of the conferences to be discussed. Planck’s theory of quanta had wide ranging effects on his colleagues. It immediately influenced Albert Einstein in his 1905 discovery of the law of the Photoelectric Effect, settling a classic debate on the nature of light. Einstein declared that light exhibits properties of both a particle and a wave, thus becoming known as the wave-particle duality, a major stepping stone towards quantum theory. It then became apparent to Planck, Nernst, Lorentz and Solvay in 1910 that the theory of radiation needed to be discussed. This led to the invitation of twenty-four eminent physicists to the first Solvay conference taking place from 29 October to 4 November 1911. Many had found it to be an informative event and as Bohr commented, “the reports and discussions…were most illuminating” (iii). However, the conference reflected the difficulties arising from a burgeoning revolution. Lindemann afterwards wrote to his father that “he discussions were most interesting but the result is that we seem to be getting deeper into the mire than ever. On every side there seem to be contradictions.” (iv) The fifth conference on Electrons and Photons convened 24-29 October 1927. Among the twenty-nine invitees, seventeen either had received, or would go on to receive a Nobel Prize. It was the first conference to discuss the quantum theory of matter as well as three newly developed lines of research into quantum theory: de Broglie’s pilot-wave theory, Bohr and Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics, and Schrödinger’s wave mechanics. The new theories1 were directly influenced by Einstein’s wave-particle duality of light, and its recent extension to electrons in the quantum theory of matter developed by Louis de Broglie in his 1924 Ph.D. thesis. Now the duality included not only light but matter as well, another central component of quantum theory. This is the era where physics departed from classical mechanics. Einstein explains this in his Evolution of Physics: “Quantum physics abandons individual laws of elementary particles and states directly the statistical laws governing aggregations. It is impossible, on the basis of quantum physics, to describe positions and velocities of an elementary particle or to predict its future path as in classical physics.” (v) Various interpretations on this statistical character had been brewing, the culmination of which took place at this conference. These consisted of different mathematical formalisms and ontologies. Schrödinger mathematically described how a quantum state, 1

It should be noted that referring to Bohr-Heisenberg and the pilot-wave as theories is a misnomer. They are solely interpretations and do not qualify as theory.

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a wave function, evolves through time through the Schrödinger Equation.

The other two theories utilized his equation in their interpretations of what mechanism leads to the probabilities of locating the potential positions of particles, and what causes their paths of arrival. The most widely accepted then and today is the Copenhagen Interpretation devised

by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Max Born around 1925. Contending this was de Broglie’s pilot-wave theory published a few months prior and débuting at the conference. Both agreed on certain aspects and even matched empirically, but diverged in their descriptions of how the probabilities arise. Bohr, Heisenberg and Born, inspired by instrumentalism2, interpreted only the mathematics modeling phenomena, pure statistics, and denied the ability to describe its actual behavior. The future position of a particle, and therefore the path it takes, is inherently indeterminate until observed. Nature was not determined like the classical physicists and even Einstein had hoped for. The role the wave function played to them was out of mathematical utility, an instrument. Contrarily, de Broglie held on to realism; he viewed the wave function as an entity.

To him there was only a mere appearance of randomness in finding the particle and its path. Despite the fact that both interpretations result in the same statistical predictions, de Broglie’s was so unpopular that he was persuaded to abandon it. It wasn’t until its 1952 resurrection by David Bohm that it started to gain traction in the community. Had de Broglie not presented and defended his theory at the conference, it may have been forgotten. As if these disagreements weren’t enough, the very definition of the wave function was called into question. The sparring that took place on all of these topics birthed invaluable arguments, perhaps the most notable of which are the famed Bohr-Einstein debates which would continue on for years to come. All of these interpretational issues are yet to be resolved, but the initial discourse began at this meeting.

The conference was fondly looked upon by its attendees with Born even describing it as “the most stimulating scientific meeting [he had] ever taken part in.” (ii) However, many left with differing perspectives on what had actually been achieved. At the end of the conference, Paul Ehrenfest humorously compared the complications the physicists faced in understanding each other’s jargon to the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel in Genesis (vi). This analogy implies that there were difficulties in communication; clarifying the varying languages used to 2

Instrumentalism is a school of thought influenced by the reigning logical positivism of the early twentieth century. The epistemic limits of the Copenhagen Interpretation were therefore preferred by the academics of time.

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describe new, abstract concepts was no easy task. Langevin shared a similar sentiment later writing that “the confusion of ideas [had] reached its peak.”(ii) It is clear that some felt there was still much yet to be reconciled.

However, Heisenberg, whose formulation was in the mainstream, found the conferences to have been conclusive and contrastingly wrote: “In… the development of the quantum theory, one must in particular not forget the discussions at the Solvay conference in Brussels in 1927, chaired by Lorentz.

Through the possibility of exchange… between the representatives of different lines of research, this conference has contributed extraordinarily to the clarification of the physical foundations of the quantum theory; it forms so to speak the outward completion of the quantum theory.” (ii) The history of these conferences represent the astounding beginning of humanity’s modern conception of nature. It is important to discuss the lesser known pilot-wave theory as the Copenhagen Interpretation is almost exclusively taught today, possibly due to the prevailing paradigm espoused by those modern exemplars influenced by the same dogma as Bohr. Interestingly, there has been a gradual resistance toward the Copenhagen Interpretation. In his 1969 Nobel Prize lecture, Murray Gell-Mann declared that Bohr had “brainwashed an entire generation of physicists into believing that the problem [of quantum theory] had been solved.” (vii) The flaunted epistemic limits of Bohr’s interpretation pride some physicists and dissuade others. Is Nature inherently statistical and undetermined? Einstein was troubled by this and, supposedly, famously quipped that “God does not play dice.” We do not get to decide how Nature operates. Science is no place for the metaphysical. Perhaps it is wise to stay in the mainstream and to heed the advice of Bohr, who supposedly retorted to Einstein, “Stop telling God what to do!” (ix) i “International Solvay Institutes.” Solvay Institutes. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2015. <http://www.solvayinstitutes.be/html/solvayconference.html>. ii. Bacciagaluppi, Guido, and Antony Valentini. “Quantum Theory at the Crossroads.” ArXiv 2 (2009): 7+. Quantum Theory at the Crossroads: Reconsidering the 1927 Solvay Conference. Cornell University Library, 24 Oct. 2009. Web. 25 Mar. 2015. <arXiv:quant-ph/0609184v2>. iii. Bohr, Niels. “Quantum Theory of Fields.” Niels Bohr at the Occasion of the 12th Solvay Conference in Physics, 9-14 October 1961. Proc. of the Solvay 55

Meetings and the Development of Quantum Mechanics, the Solvay Institute, Brussels, Belgium. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print. iv. Beenakker, Carlo. “Lorentz & the Solvay Conferences.” Lorentz & the Solvay Conferences. Instituut-Lorentz, n.d. Web. 25 May 2015. <https://www.lorentz. leidenuniv.nl/history/Solvay/solvay.html> v. Einstein, Albert, and Leopold Infeld. The Evolution of Physics. London: Cambridge UP, 1947. PDF. vi Genesis. KJV. Bible Hub, n.d. Web. 25 May 2015. <http://biblehub.com/genesis/11.htm>. vii Hardesty, Larry. “Fluid Mechanics Suggests Alternative to Quantum Orthodoxy.” MIT News. Massachusetts Institute for Technology, 12 Sept. 2014.

Web. 28 May 2015. <http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/fluid-systems-quantum-mechanics-0912>. ix “Einstein and Bohr.” Einstein and Bohr, Center of History of Physics , history. aip.org/exhibits/einstein/ae63.htm. American Institute of Physic

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Instructor-Nominated Winner Carla Nagler

The Father of the Neutron Bomb I remember my father telling me he was born on January 25, 1921 on a kitchen table in Brooklyn.

I remember my father telling me that when his father, Laz, was a boy growing up in London’s East End, which was where the poor Jews lived, he was once brought by his father to a synagogue in the West End, which was where the rich Jews lived.

I remember my father telling me that because Laz was so in awe of the opulence of it all, before anyone could catch him, he went running to the front.

I remember my father telling me that his father was then severely chastised and dragged away. Why? Because, as was later explained to him, only the rich were allowed at the front, only the rich were allowed to be closest to God. The poor, well, they were to remain solely in the back of the synagogue, and preferably up in the balcony.

I remember my father telling me that in the end, Laz was so outraged that he declared that if this was God, and this was the way God worked, then he wanted no part of it. He would be an atheist. And so he claimed to be for the rest of his life.

I remember my father telling me that when he was very young, his mother had begun hemorrhaging and she’d had to be taken to a hospital, and that one night while she was away, my father was awakened by the sound of someone chanting.

I remember my father telling me that when he got out of his bed and tiptoed down the hall, he found his father bent over a multitude of candles and prayer blocks, and that when my father’s father saw him, he looked ashamed and screamed violently and demanded, in Yiddish, that my father go far, far away.

I remember my father raising my brothers and me to believe that he was God, and that long before he’d married my mother, he’d had another family, the God family, where he was God and his wife was Mary and his son was Jesus and his daughter was Shmucky.

I remember my father telling me that not too long after he was born, his mother entered a writing contest sponsored by the New York World, and that the prize was a Model T Ford.

I remember my father telling me that his mother had written a story about a time she’d gone out shopping and how she’d asked her niece to look after my father, and because she was so worried about flies landing on my father, she would give her niece a penny for every fly she caught. And so her niece, being a rather shrewd and cunning little business woman, lined the window sills with honey and made herself a small fortune.

I remember my father telling me that when his mother won the Model T, his father, a carpenter, told a reporter, “Well, this proves that the pen is mightier than the saw.”

I remember my father telling me that with the Model T, his father’s dream of living in California could finally be realized and so the family moved to Los Angeles.

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I remember my father telling me that his father built them a house in Boyle Heights.

I remember my father telling me that his mother was obsessed with giving my father enemas and carrot juice.

I remember my father telling me that at one point his mother fed him so much carrot juice that his skin turned orange.

I remember my father telling me that when he was a teenager, before taking a scholarship exam in chemistry, his mother had filled him up with so much carrot juice that he defecated all over himself before he was able to finish the series of tests.

I remember my father telling me that when he was a boy, he suffered terribly from hay fever, and that he was miserable and his eyes would itch and tear, and that he felt like a leper, and that when he was misdiagnosed with trachoma and given silver nitrate eye drops, his corneas were so horribly scarred that he was blinded.

I remember my father telling me that for months after that, he was forced to remain in a darkened room in hopes that eventually his eyes would heal. They finally did, he said, but never completely.

I remember my father telling me that when he was a boy, he reveled in a vengeful fantasy that he had this power of staring an invisible and intense laser beam out through his eyes toward an enemy, and that if he were to do this, he would burn out his enemy’s eyes and brain and render them helpless. “Yes,” as he explained to me, “still alive, but helpless.”

I remember my father telling me that he invented the neutron bomb using nothing but a pencil, the back of an envelope on which he made all of his calculations, and a slide rule his father had given him for his fifteenth birthday.

I remember my father telling me that in 1943, after he got his bachelor’s degree in physics from UCLA, he enlisted in the Army.

I remember him telling me that he went first to Texas for basic training, and then on to MIT for a series of technical courses.

I remember my father telling me that throughout the first winter he was born, his father would take him outside and hold him under a running faucet of ice cold water. This was to make him tough.

I remember reading in my father’s memoirs that it was his mother, not his father, who did this to him. And I remember thinking, “What kind of person lies in their memoirs?”

I remember my father always hated the cold.

I remember my father telling me that one winter’s day when he was at MIT, he lay in his bunk trying to decide whether he should cross a school quad to go to class, freezing his ass off, or whether he should play hooky and remain in his bunk reading comic books.

I remember my father telling me that he decided to go with the comic book idea, and that as he lay in the bunk, suddenly the barracks door flew open and he was told by some man to get the hell down to some room, which, being terrified of being court martialed, he did at light speed.

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I remember my father telling me that in that room he was asked some questions about his background and then dismissed.

I remember my father telling me that not too long after that, he was on a train heading westbound, and that he and a bunch of other guys disembarked at a train station in Lamy, New Mexico, and that they then climbed into the back of a truck, and that that truck later wove through what he later found out was the town of Santa Fe, and that he looked around and decided, “Hey, this really wouldn’t be such a bad place to spend the war,” but that the truck kept going and after a little while it began winding up a treacherous, narrow dirt road on the side of mesa, a mesa that seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere.

I remember my father telling me that as that truck was winding up the side of that mesa, he and the other guys began to talk among themselves, which they’d been forbidden to do, and that they’d decided that because all of them were lowly enlisted men, and because many of them were Jewish, that they were going to be used as human guinea pigs for chemical and biological warfare experiments.

I remember my father telling me that soon after he walked through the heavily secured gates of Los Alamos, coming toward him on the street were three internationally acclaimed physicists — I think they were Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe and Niels Bohr — and he thought to himself, “What the hell is going on here?”

I remember my father telling me that the day after he arrived in Los Alamos, he went wandering through a library that was buried deep within another library and found a whole slew of documents and unpublished articles on nuclear fission.

I remember my father telling me that he thought to himself, “Well, I’ll be damned. They’re building the Bomb.”

I remember my father telling me that while at Los Alamos he worked on Fat Man, devising equations of how neutrons would behave in the Bomb.

I remember my father telling me that he’d never had any guilt or any moral qualms about having worked on the Bomb.

I remember my father telling me that a friend of his at Los Alamos, a man named Dick Feynman who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in Physics, taught him how to pick locks and break into safes.

I remember my father telling me about his closest friend at Los Alamos, a man named Ted Hall, who, at only 17 years old, had come to Los Alamos from Harvard where he’d been working on his doctorate.

I remember my father telling me that Ted refused to collect his pay on payday. That he refused to bathe. That he refused to wash his uniform. That when his uniform would rip or tear, he’d simply staple the holes together and then glisten in the sun on a sunny day.

That he sat cross-legged atop a stack of crates and chanted Buddhist incantations. That on Shabbat, he’d don a yarmulke and wander down the dead end streets, head down, deep in meditation.

I remember my father telling me that many, many years later, it was discovered that Ted was actually a Soviet spy, passing on the technical details of Fat Man, as well as ways in which to purify plutonium.

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I remember my father telling me that even though Ted was his closest friend at Los Alamos, he’d never known Ted was a spy. In fact, he’d never even have suspected.

I remember my father telling me that after Little Boy had been dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, Oppenheimer addressed the men and women of the Manhattan Project and said his only regret was that the Bomb hadn’t been developed in time to use against the Germans.

I remember my father telling me that revenge is never sweet.

I remember my father telling me that after the war, Oppenheimer said in a speech that the physicists had known sin.

I remember my father telling me that that man who’d ordered him out of the bunk at MIT had been told not to disturb anyone in class. So, if my father had braved the cold and gone to class, instead of staying in his bunk and reading comic books, then he would never have ended up at Los Alamos. And he would never have gone to work at the RAND Corporation. And he would never have met my mother, who was a mathematician at the RAND Corporation. And I would never have been born.

And I remember my father telling me that this story is the meaning of fate.

I remember my father telling me that he never felt any shame over having invented the neutron bomb.

I remember my father telling me about a time when he was out in the fields of North Korea during the Korean War and he was with two army lieutenants, one American and the other South Korean.

I remember my father telling me that when the three of them stopped for lunch, a very old North Korean man who was dressed in rags and covered in running sores, came up to my father, threw himself at my father’s feet, wrapped his arms around my father’s legs, looked up at my father and begged my father for food.

I remember my father telling me that when he took a candy bar out of his knapsack to give to the old man, the South Korean lieutenant suddenly took out a gun and threatened to shoot my father. Why? Because, as my father explained to me, that old man was the enemy, and if my father were to feed the enemy, then, by that lieutenant’s standards, my father was aiding and abetting the enemy. And, by those standards, my father deserved to die.

I remember my father spending his entire life trying to moralize war’s immorality.

I remember my father telling me that one of the things he did to work his way through college was to dig graves at Forest Lawn Cemetery.

I remember my father telling me that at the end of one summer, just before returning to school, because he’d so enjoyed digging graves, he was thinking of quitting school and turning to grave digging full time. But when he told his boss this, his boss fired him on the spot. Why? Because my father’s boss didn’t want my father to end up like him.

I remember when Nixon was in the White House, our home phone was being tapped.

Sometimes when I’d be talking with my friends, I’d hear this tap, tap, tap, click, click, click on the line.

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I remember my father telling me that Henry Kissinger hated him.

I remember when the media learned that my father was the father of the neutron bomb, he was asked by a local TV station to come down for an interview and I remember my father asking me to come along with him.

I remember on the drive back home, my father said to me that he’d felt so nervous on camera, that he’d kept shrugging one shoulder, which he’d often do when he was nervous, and that he was so embarrassed by all of this. And I remember telling him, “No Dad, you were great.” And I really thought he was. I was so proud of him.

I remember when I was a senior in high school, my father asked me, “Where would you live if you could live anywhere?” and I told him Paris.

I remember my father getting a grant where he would spend two years in Paris writing a book about the possibilities of creating a French nuclear Maginot Line.

I remember the book he wrote was called Échec à la Guerre, or Checkmate to War. And so I remember my father giving me my dream of living in Paris.

I remember, just before we moved to Paris, a friend of my father’s told him that to speak the French language, all my father needed to do was to speak English with a French accent.

I remember that soon after we’d arrived, my father went out in search of a post office, and when he’d come upon a gendarme and asked with his best French accent, “Direction post office, s’il vous plait?” the gendarme replied in perfect English, “You walk to that corner and it will be on your right.” My father was crushed.

I remember that during our time in Paris, my father learned virtually no French at all.

Except for food. He could name just about every type of food there was.

I remember that when the news broke that my father was in France, Paris Match, a French magazine, came to interview him and take a picture of him with our dog, Virgie, in his lap.

I remember that not too long after the article came out, my father was on a train with Virgie in a basket beside him. Across from them sat a man reading Paris Match.

I remember my father telling me that he saw the man look up from his magazine and then at my father, and then back down at the magazine, and then at Virgie, and then back down at the magazine.

I remember my father describing the man’s face as being rather ashen.

I remember when I was in high school, my family was featured in People magazine.

I remember when I was in high school, a Dutch television crew descended upon my family’s house because they’d wanted to record a day in my father’s life.

I remember over dinner that night, the interviewer asked me what my friends thought of my father and I told him that they thought he was a monster. And my father was outraged. “How dare they?” he demanded. And I told my father that since he had raised me to believe that on some level everyone is a monster, then weren’t my friends, 61

in fact, actually right?”

I remember my father said nothing. But sometime later, Leonid Brezhnev, the Secretary General of the Soviet Union, was interviewed by a German magazine, I think it was Der Stern, and he was asked what he thought of my father, and Brezhnev said that he was a monster, that even his daughter, namely me, had said he was a monster.

And I remember thinking that that moment, having been quoted by Leonid Brezhnev, would undoubtedly be, forever, my greatest claim to fame.

I remember my father describing to me how when he’d witnessed the atomic bomb tests, the nuclear fallout would rain down upon him like snow falling on cedars.

I remember taking my father to see the movie Repo Man, which featured, among other characters, the inventor of the neutron bomb, and he was thrilled beyond belief.

I remember my father telling me that had he not undergone years of psychoanalysis, he’d have killed himself long ago.

I remember when my father had a private audience with Pope John Paul II, and the Pope asked my father, “Mr. Cohen, I trust you are working for peace?” and my father said that yes, yes he was.

I remember my father telling me that despite the fact that he was an avowed atheist, there was something extraordinary about the Pope, as if there was a light, or an aura about him, almost something otherworldly, and that for just a moment, he believed in God. I remember when I was a little girl my father telling me that if a man should come into my bedroom in the middle of the night and try to take me away, I should kick him in the balls.

I remember having this recurring nightmare where a man would come into my bedroom and grab me and take me into the dining room where I would stand by the dining room table and look at my reflection in the glass walls of our house. And I would try desperately to scream, but nothing would ever come out.

I remember when I was a little girl and my brothers and I would be awakened by an earthquake, my father would come into our bedrooms and take us outside and we’d do the earthquake dance, which was to jump up and down and wave our arms wildly in the air, so that we would have fun, and so that we would never, ever be afraid.

I remember all my life watching my father fall into these terrible depressions.

I remember he told me that Churchill also fell into terrible depressions and that Churchill called his depressions his “black dog.”

I remember my father telling me that as Churchill came to the end of his life, he’d say to his friends, “I’m killing time until time kills me.”

I remember my father, toward the end of his life, telling me the very same thing.

I remember my father telling me that during the Great Depression, his mother forced him and his brother to sneak down to the miniature golf course in the middle of the night to steal the felt so that she could make curtains out of it.

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I remember my father telling me that his mother wanted him to be a mailman.

I remember my father telling me that he believed that throughout his life he was doing the right thing for a righteous cause.

I remember my father telling me that most of us make the decisions we make for reasons we will never truly understand.

I remember my father telling me that when he was in college he’d wanted to be a weatherman.

I remember when I was a little girl my father would come home from work and pour himself a drink, and then he would sit down in his big chair and my brothers and I would all crawl into his lap and we would watch Batman on the television together.

I remember when I was five or so, I’d follow my father around as he mowed the lawn and he’d teach me how to do algebra. But I couldn’t pronounce the word algebra correctly. I’d pronounce it alberga.

I remember when I was a little girl, sometimes I’d wake up very early and tiptoe into the study where I’d find my father lifting his dumbbells and watching Rocky and Bullwinkle on the television set.

I remember when I graduated from college, my father was so proud that I’d graduated with honors. In fact, I don’t think he’d ever been so proud of me in all my life.

I remember my father once telling me that I was the biggest loser he’d ever met because, although I was one of the most intelligent people he’d ever met, he knew I’d never do anything worthwhile.

I remember that sometimes when my father would be talking, and he was trying to make a point, he’d open his eyes very big, stare at me in the eye, and then point at me, jabbing his forefinger toward me, almost violently, even threateningly in the air.

I remember when I was three or four, my father took my brothers and me to the market and I spotted these Scooter Pies on the shelf and I begged and pleaded with my father to buy the Scooter Pies, and he did. It was something my mother would never have done.

I remember that when we got home and sat down at the picnic bench to eat our Scooter Pies, I took a bite and it was the worst thing I’d ever had. And I was so embarrassed because my father had been so kind and so wonderful to get them for me, and I had been so wrong. It was such a waste.

I remember when I was three or four I was enrolled in a study of autistic children at UCLA, and one day my father came to watch me through a two-way mirror, and he saw me sobbing, alone, in a large white room, and he demanded that I be let out immediately, and he demanded that I never return, and I never did.

I remember when I was a little girl, my father would ask me to tell him my dreams from the night before so that he could analyze them, and no matter what the dream was, he always told me that it meant I had penis envy.

I remember sometimes at the dinner table my father would become irate with one of my brothers and then tell them to stand up against a wall where he would smack their 63

backside and send them to their room, without dinner, for the night.

I remember my mother, in tears, would bring my brothers their dinner in their bedroom after the rest of us had finished.

I remember one night at the dinner table my father told me that I could have sex with anyone I like, just so long as I didn’t get pregnant.

I remember that when I did get pregnant, I fell to my knees at my father’s feet and sobbed like I had never sobbed before. And I remember my father looked down at me and demanded that I get an abortion.

I remember when I was a teenager my father wanted me to take up smoking so that I would be thinner.

I remember sometimes my father and my mother wouldn’t speak for weeks.

I remember when I moved to New York to live with a man my father despised, my father didn’t speak to me for nearly a year.

I remember when I left that man in New York, my father came to visit me and I made him eggs and toast for breakfast one morning, only I had to pan fry the toast because I didn’t have the money to buy a toaster.

I remember that when I went off to work that day, my father went off to a kitchen supply store and bought me a toaster, which I kept for years.

I remember when a man, who is now my husband, went to my father to ask for his blessing before proposing to me, my father said that he would give his blessing, however, really, my husband should reconsider. Why? Because, as my father explained to him, I had once dated a man who had been in prison.

I remember that when I was pregnant my father asked me what it was like and I told him it felt like a butterfly was flittering about inside of me.

I remember my father always called my daughter Papillon.

I remember my daughter called my father Papa.

I remember the last time I spoke with my father I was in a parking lot in Albuquerque flanked by a Staples and a Hobby Lobby. He was recovering from surgery. He told me that he loved me and that I’d been closer to him than anyone else in his life.

I remember the day my brother called to tell me that my father had died, though they didn’t know exactly when. He was 89.

I remember thinking, my mother is on a cruise somewhere in the Middle East. Why couldn’t she be there with him? They’d been married for 50 years.

I remember picking up the Wall Street Journal at the foot of our gravel driveway in Santa Fe and seeing on the front page a brief notice of my father’s death.

And I remember falling down, the little rocks embedded in my knees, crying hysterically, hardly able to catch my breath.

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I remember Clayton telling me in a Monday afternoon workshop, sometime between the hours of 2:30 and 3:45, that I had to write about my father.

And I remember, and I remember, and I remember.

And I remember thinking that if I do, it will be the most difficult piece that I will have ever written.

Ever. Ever. Ever.

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Instructor-Nominated Runner-Up Pamela Salcido

Gender and Race beneath the Surface

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Instructor-Nominated Honorable Mention Kiara McCully

Trapped Under a Shadow Weightless as the waves above, peaceful. The salt stinging the flog markings on my back. I open my eyes a slight burning, but nothing I can’t handle. Looking up, the ripples of sunlight fading past my leg twisted in rope as the shadow of the ship tapers overhead. No sense of gravity holding me down as the blue surrounds me, taking my breath away. If only I could take one more. It’s as if I’ve entered a state of limbo.

With no breath, this silence could last just a lifetime. Ever since I was a young boy life’s been loud and restless, such a relief for the silence.

I was born into a life of hard work and restless nights. Like the night I lost mother, she stole food from the house for me to eat. The memory of the shotgun that took her still echoes through my memory.

She always had to do the right thing even if it meant risking her life.

I remember her raven black hair. Her fizzy curls would often tangle in almost everything it came in contact in, so she would put it in a bun with a cloth over it.

She was kind. I wasn’t the only child mom watched over. Often other slaves would stay with us. She would tell us stories that practically told themselves. I wish I could have told them to my children as well.

She had such an active imagination. I remember one story of a man and woman who loved each other but they lived worlds apart. What did she call it? It had something to do with roses and a hill. I always wanted love like the main characters of that story. I remember the one of a son born to seven queens and had to fight for his rightful place to the throne through an evil witch. He was so brave and never backed down. I wish I could have been more like that. She was my inspiration, why I learned to read and write in my spare time. I hope someone finds my stories one day.

Pain wrenching though my chest, eyes wide open, I try to hold my breath. Bubbles forming from my exhale begin to climb to the surface.

It all starts going black. Like a puzzle it all comes to mind. Memories of my childhood, my friends who had helped me in the household and each time I lost someone and done nothing. Deb, a sweet girl a few 68

years younger than myself, I was thirteen she was eleven at the time she couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help but move her body and make strange and interesting sounds as she worked, especially when the master wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t home. I remember her voice, sweet with a slight crack here and there. She would clean up after the master and mistress and their guests on a daily. I loved joining her whenever I had a chance. Even Violet, the mistress, would join us in harmony. She lived in the household for only a few years before she passed away. She got sick; I only wish I could have given her.

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ACCOLADES 2019 SFCC

KATE BESSER WRITING AWA R D S

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6401 Richards Ave. Santa Fe, NM 87508 505-428-1000 www.sfcc.edu

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