The Madison Review Spring 2023

THE MADISON REVIEW

We would like to thank Ron Kuka for his continued time, patience, and support.

Funding for this issue was provided by the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Creative Writing Fund through the UW Foundation.

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Copyright © 2023 by The Madison Review

the madison review

University of Wisconsin

Department of English

6193 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park Street Madison, WI 53706

POETRY

Editors

Aidan Aragon

Madeline Mitchell

Staff

Alex Vakar

Esmeralda Rios

Esti Goldstein

Ev Poehlman

Jordyn Ginestra

Matthew Rivard

Sarah Kirsch

FICTION

Editors

Kora Quinn

Anna Watters

Associate Editors

Eleanor Bangs

Nadia Tijan

Sam Downey

Staff

Ava McNarney

Jackson Baldus

Lyn Golat

Morgan McCormack

LAYOUT

Kora Quinn

Natalie Koepp

Sophia Halverson

Editors’ Note

Dear Reader,

The Madison Review is proud to present our Spring 2023 print issue. This issue features captivating and distinct works of fiction, poetry, and visual art, including the winners of our Phyllis Smart-Young Prize in Poetry and our Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction. We have had the pleasure of reading and curating pieces that are tender and close, often handling themes of family, loss, and the many ways love is expressed and shaped between different types of relationships. We want to thank our contributors who have given us the honor and trust of reading their work, and giving it a home in The Madison Review.

This issue would not be possible without the incredible work and dedication of our staff, as well as our program advisor, Ron Kuka. Thank you for your unyielding support, encouragement, and patience. We would also like to thank the UW–Madison English department and the Program in Creative Writing.

And it goes without saying, we are grateful to you, reader, for your support of The Madison Review. We hope you feel as moved by the work in this issue as we were.

Warmly,

The Editors

Landscape of a Table Maggie Yang

Habit in each stroke, snapped into frame where light hits and brushes fray. Cradled

by its wrinkles, a tapestry woven from its flesh pulsates with colors, sweet

as rotten fruits, fly wings & temporary skins nuzzling with insects.

Oils writhing in a forgone feast, the display feigned with same hands, same cloth, same bowl, same easel.

Corroding into the background as the ceramic bowl reflects the remains fabric swallowing chipped faces, concealed behind another.

The palette dimming as color erodes & no one recognizes the names anymore, strangers to the mouth. Different lifelines

smothered. Grapes polishing each other as the pear ripens with anticipation. The clock

beginning to melt the wall, table legs thinning. This spectacle is propped so that its view is the back of the canvas.

Multiplying, the oranges roll off the wooden surface.

Exocarps Maggie Yang

I’m sorry I was looking at the catalog and not the fruit shelf. For forgetting to buy ginseng, herbs, and fuji apples. And the list of other items I cannot pronounce. The paper bleeds images I’ve never seen before because the last time I came here colors still had names. When the Pocky was on a shelf I couldn’t reach, so I dreamt their colors in my sleep. Of devouring the package itself, something other than the yellow floor smeared with fish grease. Where mother and I would always sample the Japanese chocolates costing $1 per pound, except we pretended that 2 pieces weighed 0 pounds, not 0.3 not 30 cents. Subconsciously, I learned to write everything down because your tongue houses an apparatus I cannot name. The green grocery bags have two letters and one symbol I recognize. The smiling baozi. The rest unpeeled. The nutritional values and tags labeled with a language knifed in a nother skin. The floors are stained with images I see on the shelves, except brighter than I envisioned because the fluorescent light flickers different faces onto them.

Retrieving Maggie Yang

My uneven pulse beats into the ground as I bury this plot of ginseng. I flatten my palm on the dirt, color replenishing the creases. 奶奶 unfurling another stained napkin filled with seeds & old roots, preserved from translation, unscathed by the makeshift shovels & collected rainwater. Unbaptized by this garden, I follow her voice, an instruction manual of nourishments, lullabies to an unborn child.

奶奶 asks me if I still recognize my Chinese name & I smother it with a murmur, my lips barely touching. She takes a piece from the broken trellis & instructs me to write it.

I drag strokes of the first character into the unyielding ground until it turns into my English name. I see no difference. Everything in this garden refuses to be ruined, the language of excavating recipes & artifacts already chewed & spit out. She writes in fragments of chronology, because she used to be able to draw uniform lines before dust piled over countless surfaces & the yard became the size of her village, before cement poured over the grass, before snow shielded old mittens in storage, before the yarn began stubbornly clinging to the snowflakes. Even when the clock runs out of battery & their hands become houses only twice a day, her palms will still smell of yesterday’s garden —the coarse dirt & untuned erhu from next door only uprooted.

The Chittlin’ Test: Question 1

Keenan Norris

Content Warning: Racial slurs

Question 1. A “handkerchief head” is:

(a) a cool cat, (b) a porter, (c) an Uncle Tom

It wasn’t the phrase “handkerchief head” itself that was so bad. If the first time I had heard those two words bonneting around each other it had been at play with the pastor’s one-eyed dog Hooch, or off frogging with my brothers, or even picking cotton in the fields, I might have thought it simply described the little towel that we boys and our father carried around in their front chest pockets to dab the sweat off their foreheads, or the bigger kerchief that momma and country ladies generally tied around their hair to keep from looking a mess as they worked. There was a D and an E on the test, but I knew from where and how I had heard that term, “handkerchief head,” that the answer had to be C because when the downtown Fresno boys yelled it at us as we motored slowly into town Sundays, our rented hauling truck weighted with cotton and beets and grapes, they also said things like “Y’all go and beg a little money out that cracker—good luck with that!” and “Boy, you see how the white man got our people working like it’s still slavery and we stay with our hand out, cotton stem bristles and all!”

I remember my sister Opal straightening her back, holding herself proper as the best manners. No handkerchief round her head. She wasn’t about to be caught dead looking like momma did half the time, nappy-haired and handkerchief-headed, lookin like she just arrived off the slave ship. No, Opal kept a hot comb in her hair like her life depended on it, which it might have, given how she held herself so very straight when we went into town, straighter even than the hot combed hair on her head. Then there was the way Esteban would go from happily naming the Thunderbirds and Cadillacs by make, year and model, talking big talk about how he would have him one of them one day soon nuff, to narrowing his eyes and going quiet, just staring at them boys. It wasn’t just a fine car that he wanted, it was something deeper, to quiet those boys the way they could quiet him. I remember the twins Rio and Elephant, getting quiet, too, and looking

with longing, lustful eyes at the street boys in their spotless Sunday’s best, rings and Jesus pieces gleaming in the sun, their hair processed into wavier curls than the women of our family, them boys pimping their hustler airs up and down the sidewalk. I remember how we all picked at the lint in our hair, the dirt on our shirts, how we suddenly knew in a way no white man could make us feel, how poor we were.

I couldn’t decide who I hated more, those black boys who we had to watch strut up and down the street, or the the white men who worked the weigh machines. Those men rarely raised their heads to acknowledge our arrival, never said boo to us as they felt along our bushels for the rocks daddy had hid so deep in the middle of the sacking that they never could find a thing but soft cotton and hard beets. I remember how they would mutter about us being cheating niggers as they placed our produce on the scales. We must’ve been some smart niggers because we never were held to account for the rocks in our sacks. I remember how that alone wasn’t good enough for daddy: Nobody had to tell him he was smarter than a weigh man. “Them scales show low. E’rybody knows that. Nerve of that peckerwood. If he keep on with that ‘nigger’ nonsense, the first rock he gon’ find be the one upside his doggone head.”

“Hush up, Mr. Louis. Don’t be talkin like that in front of your family. That big talk ain’t helping nobody no kinda way,” she would say, shifting in her seat.

Then daddy would start to breathe heavy like an old man and while his lips would keep moving and with them, I assume, his words kept on coming, the level of his voice would drop below the clack-clacking of the truck engine. I would strain to hear to what else he was still saying, but his Oklahoma drawl could fall like a shot bird in those moments, diving below the chatter of my brothers and the turbulence of the tires.

We came to the weigh station. The weigh man who met us sported big ol sweat stains underneath both armpits and tears in his jeans. He long-stared past us as we unloaded our produce into wheelbarrows. Small as I was, I was already a good climber so I could shimmy faster sthan anyone into the truck bed and commence to push the sacks down towards daddy and my brothers for them to haul. Because I was so small, I always had to get a good grip of each heavy sack and throw my whole weight behind it just to move that sucker a few inches. But not this time. Either I had grown up and got a whole lot stronger, or daddy had forgot to hide a single stone in the sacks.

“Alright now,” the weigh man said as we finished with the un -

loading. Then he commenced to push one of the wheelbarrows into the storehouse where the scales were kept. My father followed him, pushing a second wheelbarrow. Momma gestured for Esteban and the twins to get to pushing too. Then she leaned up against the truck and I went and leaned against her. Meanwhile, Opal paced back and forth practicing her posture. Somehow, she was a full head taller than momma. A model for sure, my father always said. I predict it, he’d say, the first Black woman to model the cover of a big magazine. Which one? We wanted to know, since he had a crystal ball and all. Don’t matter, he’d hoot, because they’ll all want her!

Now I shuddered when I heard his voice, loud and full of anger, the same voice that sometimes rose outta him when he drank too much. The weigh man’s pitch rose, too, and then they were like birds chasing each other, twisting upward in wheeling anger. Esteban and the twins came back from round the corner with their wheelbarrows still weighted with our produce. Then my father and the weigh man appeared as well, my father with his fully loaded wheelbarrow.

“You four-flushin sonofabitch,” my father yelled. “You know damn well I’m entitled to see that scale.”

“Company policy!” the weigh man rejoindered.

“Policy my dang foot! How do I even know if y’all’s scale is right?” daddy demanded. Momma slid herself out of my grasp and made her way over to him. She placed a hand on his shoulder and I could see her raising herself up onto her toes to whisper in his ear. She took her hand from his shoulder and patted his pocket, reaching into it and pulling him back by its fabric.

“If you don’t wanna abide the new policy,” the weigh man said, “that’s on you, son. It’s not for me to tell you to act responsibly and put food on your family’s table.” His glazed over eyes scanned us children one at a time. I could tell he was counting us. “That’s a lotta mouths to feed, Jack.”

“You mind your own damn family,” my father grated back. “You know that scale don’t say what you want it to, so you shortin me—Jack.”

“My name is Purvis Dolittle. Thank you in advance.”

“But you never asked for mines.” Our father looked at us, almost as if he were counting us just as the weigh man had a moment before. “Scatter the cotton,” he said in a low voice, his eyes steady upon us.

We just stared back at him. I caught myself looking to the weigh man as well. I noticed the revolver holstered at his hip. Then I looked to momma. She still had her hand in daddy’s pocket, trying her best to pull him away. But he was not about to be moved an inch.

“Y’all heard me!” his voice rose again. “Scatter the damn cotton!!” I was the first to move. Against momma’s urgings, I had chewed my nails down to the nibblins, fine little razors which now I used to dig under the tight knot that held together one bushel of cotton. It came loose and then the cotton scattered, spilling into Esteban’s wheelbarrow and flying loose through the air like white butterflies. Then my brothers followed me, loosing the other bushels. The cotton came free from a thousand cocoons and flew before us. The white-feathered falling. It came down on our heads and prettied our clothes, adorning us all lovely.

“Smash the grapes!” my father ordered. And we did that as well. Opal joined us, taking her bare feet—she had not intended to leave the safety of the truck, she had not troubled to bring shoes—and breaking down the bundles, stamping them out where we dropped them. I remember lifting my knees high and the rush of broken membrane, the vintage trampled into mud underneath my feet.

The ride home was silent. Esteban whispered the names of the cars that sped past us under his breath, mumbling low like our crazed father. My sister was as silent as ever while the twins were as silent as never —those two were forever pinching and punching each other, chattering nonsense back and forth. But not this time. They stayed mute.

Meanwhile, momma rode in the back next to me. I could feel her body rigid. Somethin was building inside her, that was for sure. But it didn’t come out, not then. It stayed shut up, like a lotta things did, the whole way home.

I imagined momma taking control, wrestling the steering wheel away from our father and driving us far, far from the fields to a different destination, a different life entirely. But this wasn’t a comic book or some fairytale type Hollywood story so she just sat there still as summer air. I thought how if I was ever gonna get out this life, I would have to take the wheel and do the driving myself.

That night, momma went to the storehouse out back for lard and flour and collards and eggs. Saturday nights we grubbed good, feasting on the food we bought in town. But this time there was no money from the weigh man so the food we ate that night was pale and stale, tougher than it was tender.

“Why’d you make us do that?” Rio finally dropped his fork and questioned our father while the rest of us kept our heads down and chewed away. It was the question we all wanted to ask, but were afraid to because our father was not too shy about bust -

ing out his belt and making it hard for us to sit comfortable for a day or two. But Rio, whose Indian blood showed in his cheekbones and complexion, had a certain boldness, maybe even craziness about him that the rest of us didn’t. I glanced up from my food at him and could see the questioning anger in his eyes.

“It’s a matter of principle and justice,” our father answered him. “As a man, ain’t nothin else you can stand on. It’s things like this y’all need to learn.” He looked from Rio to Elephant to me to Esteban. And I wondered why this lesson went exclusively for us boys if it was so important. I looked to our sister, who had barely picked at her food, like usual, her eyes and soul somewhere else. “Now finish eatin your food. Your momma worked hard to make it.”

Plain too hungry not to eat, didn’t matter if the food was stiff as a corpse in its coffin, the rest of us scraped our plates clean. We were gonna grub no matter what. By the last bites, the dish actually began to taste pretty good and when it was done, I only wanted more.

But there was no more. I discovered a deeper hunger stashed in my stomach, a sharp wanting thing that ran from my gut up to my throat and then knocked at my teeth to be let out. I realized that that hunger wasn’t food hunger but curiosity. Rio had asked our father why he had had us scatter the cotton and smash the grapes but the way he asked it, that question of his wasn’t much of a question and what was knocking at his teeth wasn’t curiosity but anger. I looked to my brother and I could see the anger in him, the way he held hisself so hard and tight, like he wanted to fight. The rest of them, Esteban and the others, didn’t look quite like that. Their bodies had all fallen slack and spent, the way they got after a hard day in the fields except that today we hadn’t picked a single grape, hadn’t cut one stalk of cotton.

As for the woman of the house, she pushed up from her chair and began to gather the dishes. “Livre, Rio, Elephant, y’all help me with this here,” she said, beckoning us to work.”

We did as we were told, coming behind her to pick up the things she could not carry. I could tell she was biding her time, waiting like a cat on the prowl for a moment alone with her husband when she could pounce and give him what for about putting what he called principle but that she would probably call pride over our well-being.

It was only after all us children had gone to bed that the argument began. Momma’s voice started hitting high notes and our father’s words followed her, not far behind. He didn’t have to take

her shit! Well, he might not have to, but what he needed to do was to take care of his family and taking care of his family was not arguing with someone who might run tell the boss man that the Louises is unruly niggers. And how would he feel, Mr. Louis, father of five, if he got threw off this land on account of a tiff with that low-bottom cracker and then couldn’t no longer feed his family? Too-prideful niggers always stickin they chests out, talkin big and this and that and then they end up with nothin to show for it but they pride in they hands. Woman, if you would let me speak. You’ve spoke enough.

It went on like this, both of them speaking their minds and maybe out their minds, too.

“I knew they was gon’ start fussin soon as they thought we was sleep!” Rio hissed in the dark. Me, him and Elephant shared a room.

“Shut up and go to bed,” Elephant whispered back from the top bunk of their bed.

I wanted both of them to be quiet so I could hear the quarrel. A door slammed and I heard the clump, clump of their feet in the grass out back of the house. I strained my ears to hear them.

“Now I cain’t hear what they sayin,” Rio complained.

“Maybe if you were quiet, you could,” I shot back.

Knock, knock, knock. Esteban’s knuckles rapped against our bedroom wall. It was his way of telling us to stop fussin and fall asleep. Fall the fuck asleep, he’d probably say if our parents were outta earshot. Sometimes, if we didn’t pay him mind, he would come in and whoop one of us. Esteban was sixteen, tall, with baseball mitts for hands. I wasn’t trying to receive one of his full-grown whoopings, let alone graduate up a degree to our father’s belt.

I hushed up and so did Rio, who huffed a little and then turned his face towards the wall and went quiet. We heard the back door to the house close and then the silence of momma’s light-footedness followed, the absence of sound, the conclusion of argument. When I closed my eyes and concentrated real hard, I could still hear our father’s heavier steps outside. I heard him huff a little and spit out his tobacco and go rattling in his tin for more. I heard him grunt and thud down into a chair in the yard and commence to loudly hum somethin churchy to hisself. Esteban sighed and then I heard his head knock against the wooden wall of his room, once, twice, enough to know that he was asleep. I heard Rio’s light unconscious breath and Elephant kicking at his sheets in a running dream and I heard momma finally shut her bedroom door by

herself and I knew everyone was in for the night except for our father and me. I opened my eyes. The full moon’s radiance lit the window like a door opening onto the day and I looked out beyond my bedroom at the houses and the road and the fields beyond.

In summer, we usually kept the windows open, but on account of the issue between our father and the rest of us, we had forgot to open the window before bed. I got up and went to the window. I heard Elephant stir and then I saw his dark form, round as a beach ball, turn over in bed. I opened the window, taking it by the sill and inching it up silent as I knew how which was not very silent because that house was older than the dirt and everything from the floorboards to the windowsills would wanna talk to you when you touched it.

“What’s that?” Elephant grumbled, now half-awake again. I didn’t answer him. I let the little bit of night wind that there was float over us. I breathed in the scents of the land, which was mainly manure, but truth be told, we were more used to that smell than we were our own sweat. I cast one last look at the sleeping shadows of my brothers, then I hoisted myself up onto the windowsill and slid out the window, trying not to rustle even one blade of grass as I dropped to the ground outside.

The only times I could remember being awake and outside of the house at such an hour were when Rio and Elephant were born and when Esteban cut his big toe with an axe and the pain wouldn’t go away so he started hollerin, which woke us all. I remember we had to go down the road at that sleeping hour and wake up old Ms. Telley who the old folks claimed was a conjure healer. I remember the moon above us, dark and small, clouded and lonesome. Telley held a candle in one hand and welcomed us into her home with the other. I remember her sitting us down in rusted back metal folding chairs in her kitchen and I remember watching her take a small jar marked “kerosene” from out a cupboard and proceed to pour its amber liquid onto my brother’s sliced toe. That was the end of his hollerin.

I waded into the dark. I was looking for my father, who I knew had not come inside. I looked in back of the house but did not see him. Then I looked out to the fields and he wasn’t there either. Then I turned to the store house’s open door and I knew where he must be.

As I approached, I could hear the sound of my footsteps and I could hear the crickets singing away and that was about it. No noise came from the storehouse, nor from anything else at that

hour. Once I made my way to the door, though, his voice resonated deep as a tremor of the earth. “Livre, what you doin up?”

There was no electricity in the store house. We would take candles out there at night to see our way around and sometimes grown folks would light their way by their cigarettes. But my father was using neither of those things. The store house was completely dark. But his voice was unmistakable in its rumble.

I entered cautiously. “I came to see you,” I replied, my voice quivering for a second.

“Why you sound so shook, boy?” he asked, turning a little to his left, as he often did, resting half his gaze on me, the other eye looking somewhere else. He was standing between the table where we sorted the things that we would store and those items that we would cook with. Behind him were the storage shelves. “Speak up,” he chided. And when I didn’t, he unbladed his body and rared back on his heels and threw back his arms and laughed. I heard the knock-knock of liquid sloshing in the jug that tossed back and forth in his left hand. Someone, probably momma, had slapped a piece of tape across the jug and wrote “Corn Whisky.”

I smelled the alcohol in his laughter. I wasn’t of the mind that everybody else seemed to be that he was crazy, that every mumbling word he let pass beneath his breath was confirmation of his lost mind, but I knew that his mind was liable to change when he got to drinking and I knew that I didn’t like that about him. I began to regret coming to the store house to look for him. “Why you out here in the dead of night, boy?” he questioned me through the last of his laughter. His gaze fell still upon me. “You’s worried I’s bout to runaway?”

Yes, I wanted to say. Yes, I am. But I couldn’t say that. I was too afraid to say that. So I just stared at him in the darkness of the store house. Folks say our people, daddy, momma and all us children, are the complexion of dusk as the sun goes down, which I think must true. We all have that medium shade to us. But now the sun had been down for many hours and the store house cast my father blacker than a thousand midnights.

“Only chil’en run away, Livre. I ain’t no child.”

It was probably a mistake coming to the store house in the night when daddy was in his jug, but here I was. I might as well say what I had come to ask. I spoke the words that had been knocking

against my teeth all night. “Why did you have us smash the grapes, scatter the cotton?”

“Boy, you want that lyin ol peckerwood to have, now, what you call that? Precedent. You want him to have precedent on us from here on out?”

I didn’t know precedent from the president, but I knew a peckerwood from a good-hearted white man easy enough and the weigh man was definitely a peckwerwood.

“You really want to know why I told y’all to do that?” he asked, eyeing me closely now.

I nodded again. “I tore the first bushel,” I reminded him.

He nodded and placed his jug on top of the cutting board that sat on the table that stood between us. He was leaning against a high shelf loaded with preserves, dried fruit mostly, as well as jars of lard and molasses and corn oil. He studied me a little longer, then he nodded again as if to say “Ok, I can tell you ain’t just in yo feelings about it but wanna know somethin” and he turned his eyes upward to a spot above the shelf where the wooden boards of the shed parted more noticeably than I had ever noticed. They came open at the intersection of four planks of wood in a hollow circle. My eyes followed his, roving into the hollow. Through it, the moon shone so brightly, brighter than any moon I had ever seen, so that I almost imagined it was somehow a different moon than I had ever seen.

“Ain’t that somethin?” my father said. “I comes out here nights, Livre,” he went on “and I look through that there and the moon always be lookin a certain way, and I thinks about the now and the past, the souls come and gone, and about our future, too.”

I looked back at him and nodded. I believe I understood even though I can’t explain what all of a sudden I understood anymore than I can talk to you in Greek. It was more of a feeling than a thought, I suppose.

“Now back to bed with you,” he said. He swigged on the jug again and I did as I was told, heading back to the house. I heard his footsteps following behind.

I climbed through the back window and closed it behind me. Rio and Elephant were fast asleep and did not stir. I dropped into sudden sleep as soon as I lay down. In the morning, the sun was hot as a skillet. Sweat fell from my forehead and salted my eyes. I followed my sister’s vague form through flowing tears down a grape row that shimmered out of all solidness. She was taller and more beautiful than ever, a goddess whose strides were bigger than mine would ever be, and it was all I could do just to keep up with her. She worked

magically fast, separating each grape from the vine like someone who had been developing this fine-fingered skill all her life, which she had.

Through my tiredness and tears and whatnot, I imagined that the whole row and all the rows were just one endlessly threaded grape vine that Opal was working away at a little at a time. I imagined the grape vine trailing behind her like the train of a wedding dress. It trailed past me as well and past momma and daddy and my siblings who worked the row behind us and wrapped round us, leading back to Opal at the head of the family, our one and only union.

Opal wore a torn old white dress two sizes too big for her slenderness. I saw the dress more than I saw her as it flowed upon her. She passed the grapes behind her onto the paper sheets, which I kept steady, balancing them and the grapes upon them. I didn’t hold the grapes and I didn’t hold the papers. I held the wooden rack on which it all rested, the whole production. When the vine was picked clean enough for Opal to walk forward, I would take the papers with the grapes upon them off the rack and place them on the ground to raisin in the sun. Then I would hurry behind my sister and keep working.

Sweat stained my eyes, but I still stared ahead at Opal and at the row before us, stretching on forever. I knew by the baby fat filling in my cheeks that I couldn’t be more than six years old, which was very young even for the fields. I was a soft boy back then, even though I knew the fields would eventually melt me as thin as Opal, as hard as Esteban, as angry as our father. But for now in the grape row I was just a child.

The vine twisted on. In the sweat and shimmer, there was only one row and that row was a thousand rows in itself. I saw in the wooden rack where Esteban had jaggedly etched his name with our father’s switchblade, and where Opal had neatly stenciled hers. I saw my birth date recorded and the birth dates of the twins behind me and other dates, too, past and future, and I wondered who had written all this because the writing was too neatly etched to be Esteban’s but it was clear that a switchblade had been used upon the wood and every man I knew had a blade because every man had brought one back from the war and not a single woman had one because there was no reason for them to, so it couldn’t be momma who had written it either, which left only our father, who seemed to care more about his pride and his whiskey and whatever the thieving peckerwoods were up to than he did about any of us.

Down the endless row, I saw the sun, bright as hellfire, ablaze with the brilliant heat of a billion skillets set upon a single stove burner. It was not a hundred million miles away from earth, the sun was three

inches from my eyes and it was sending me into a state I had never imagined even existed. My sister melted before me, taken under by the fine sand and the folds of her dress, which became a floating gown, a womanless wedding train walking before me. The great single grape vine encircled me, climbing my legs, circling my stomach and chest, piercing and claiming me in its confinement. The grapes turned hard and black and stacked ten feet tall, one row, one raisin pile. And then I was climbing and climbing from one hard black foothold to the next until I reached the top of the pile and I could see it all and it was true, there was not just our endless passage, but many millions of rows to walk and vines to cut and there were so many grapes and so much cotton and so many children. And I could not tell one child from the next, my siblings from the rest, for we were all the many shades of a setting sun. Only I looked to the sky and the sun only shone brighter and brighter until I could see no more.

The Letter I’ll Read Out Loud in a Hallmark Movie Scene

Amy S. Lerman

FADE IN:

INT. NYC LOFT APARTMENT – DAY

Sunlight illuminates a sleek modern living room, as a well-dressed, 40-ishyear-old WOMAN smiles and waves goodbye to her Zoom colleagues. Removing her headphones, she turns to a silver-framed photo on the edge of her desk, presses it to her chest, and stares out a neighboring window.

WOMAN

I’m not sure I could have had you. Literally, I mean. I thought I was pregnant once when my face started flushing—I looked like I’d been cast as “sunburned character” in a B-movie— but the ER doc announced negative test results while I pictured, on the shower curtain divider’s other side, a patient unfolding a medical gown, beeping monitors punctuating your vacuity.

She pulls the frame from her chest, outlines a shape in the photo, her face bathed in in the early afternoon light.

WOMAN

I’ve always known what you looked like— every recessive gene spiting mine, your father’s dark eyes and curls—and how your voice would register soft, low, even after the adenoidal removal, mint chocolate chip pints stocking stainless, a freezer not too big to recess the ranch home’s sparkling kitchen in a state we would never live.

A bell-collared, ginger cat rubs against the woman’s right ankle. She sets

the frame back down, bends to stroke the cat’s head, her eyes drifting upward though not sharply focused.

WOMAN

In photos, you have mostly looked around 8, hair loosing a side braid, back to stomach we would be posed, my arms crossed under your chin, I have promised not to pull too hard, even when we have reenacted you are a beige pillow and I am lying down.

WOMAN circles a dark hair behind her right ear, reaches for coffee mug, and takes a long sip before setting cup down on the metal desk.

WOMAN

I have saved what you call my “hippie wedding dress,” and maybe you’ll decide against that sprawling, milky, train, or a cathedral veil, I’m pretty sure I could persuade you to carrot cake and craft beer for the reception, as I have drawn you in, well, over, us, your father and me in our wedding album, just don’t have a cash bar, please—you won’t want our great uncles to embarrass.

Stretching her arms high above her head, so her fingers crisscross WOMAN rounds and cracks her back, her eyes drawn again to, then fixed on the picture frame.

WOMAN

I apologize for not fighting more, for not feeling incomplete without you, rising cartoon bubbles carrying the decades of “But you would make such a good mother” comments, any armchair psychologist could conject how losing a partner would repercuss my procreant years, the cliché here proves true--formless, mute, you are better without me, unstifled, restless like the butterfly

cheek kiss I could never tickle on school nights, outside crickets welcoming the night.

The Marimba ringtone is heard from WOMAN’s cellphone, interrupting daydream sequence. She looks at the caller id, clears her throat, and enframed in yellow rays, proceeds to answer.

FADE OUT.

In the Nursery

Raiya Lewis

We’re painting over your nursery today. Rolling patches of cream puff over Chantilly lace, your entire existence swept away in a cloud of pale pink. We wanted to know the sex this time, or at least he did. He wants to feel her, name her, know her. He wants to pretend she is kicking at the curves in his belly and leeching off the sugared rot in his bloodstream. He didn’t get that with you, always figured he’d make up the lost time. At soccer games and piano recitals, braiding ribbons through fine strands of hair and giving you knowing looks when I hide the Halloween candy or turn the TV off. Enough, I’d tell you both, the cartoon voices hurt my head I’d say, clawing at my temples and squeezing my sockets. And then you’d tell me that everything hurts my head. And he wouldn’t say anything, because he never does. You’d share that look—the kind of look only fathers and daughters share, the kind of look mothers are never let in on.

I carry the physical scars. Stitches where they should never be, now a tendril of tissue. A lasting reminder that you have ruined me, in more ways than one. I still feel it when I pee. I still feel it when he fucks me. I count the bars on your crib until he’s done. 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . all the way to 12, again and again until the pain becomes just another number divisible by 2. I wanted the crib out of our room, but with the new baby coming it just doesn’t make sense. I carry the physical scars, but he is the disfigured one. He loved you, not the way I did. His love was real, so tangible it could grow in our garden or take out a mortgage.

I wanted him to take that love and slip it down my throat with two of his fingers, but he repackaged it into a brand-new box with glossy paper and spiraling carnation ribbon. You should be mad too you know—that ribbon was supposed to tie up your hair, keep the curls out of your eyes for all those games you’ll never play.

You know how I know that box isn’t for me? The way he holds me at night. His arms are wrapped around me, but he is not holding me. He is holding her . He is feeling for her movements, butterfly kicks against my swollen stomach. He wants to know she is still in there. He never asks if I am still in here. I am a carrier, not a person.

I think I tucked myself away inside boxes of wooden puzzles and

finger sized socks. I go up in the attic to find myself but return empty handed. Perhaps he found it first, mindlessly tossing me into our ever-growing Goodwill pile atop my size zero jeans, his jockey jacket, and the atrocious monogramed towel set his mother gave us for our anniversary. He told me he’d drop it off, but that was months ago. I don’t have the energy to remind him, and he doesn’t have the energy to care. So we don’t say anything, and everything remains the same.

Last night we got into an argument. It wasn’t my intention. I found an old poem he wrote me in the attic. I read it to him, to remind him of how he used to feel. Of how he still could feel, if he tried.

I want to pluck out your bones like the strings on a guitar. String up your phalanges and palatines and wear them on a silver chain. I want to wear a crown of your metatarsals and play melodies with your femurs. Do you love me like that? Do you need me like that?

I want to consume you I want to wear you I want to eat you I want to be you I want to own you I want to hurt you I want to hold you I want to give you something you can never give me back.

I am sick and I want you to catch it. I want you to catch it so I can give it all back to you. Cut wounds in my flesh and let you suckle stolen blood back into your body. Take your bones from under my bed and arrange back your skeleton. Place together the pieces and teach you to walk again.

I want to nourish you I want to nurse you I want to soothe you I want to cure you I want to cleanse you I want to restore you I want to heal you I want to give you something you can never give me back.

Then you will love me like that. Then you will need me like that.

I ask him why he doesn’t love me like this anymore. I want him to feel the anguish again. I want him to need me so bad he has to fight urges not to devour my sleeping body in the middle of the night.

“You only ever feel that way in your twenties,” he tells me, and “Feelings like that aren’t meant to last.” But I know that’s not true because it’s how he feels about her now. You should be angry too, he used to feel that way about you.

He says I’m being ridiculous, that I’m acting like a child. Isn’t that what he wants? I can’t figure him out anymore. Now we are just two bodies, separated by thick casings of skin, tied together by normal

things like vows and bills. He goes out for a drive. The minute the door slams I want him back.

I sit in your room, her room now, and cry big rain puddle tears. I gasp in the paint toxins, and secretly hope they make their way down to her. I made a mistake. With you I made a mistake. Can you forgive me? Later I reread the poem and realize, in the end he got what he wanted—he gave me something I can never give back.

I pour myself a glass of red. Then another. She sleeps. You slept. You were such a peaceful sleeper I hardly knew the difference. The way you’d nestle in the softest corners of your blanket, tug the ears of that powder blue bunny up to your round little cheeks. How were we to know? I was so exhausted I considered your lack of cries a blessing and fell back asleep. And I slept and slept and slept. He was off at work, oblivious to the horrors stirring in his own home. I didn’t tell him until he came home that night. Didn’t want to ruin his day, those two big meetings he had.

I was the one who had to find you, had to hold my fingers up to the pulse in your neck. Had to pull open your lids and gaze into empty eyes. Had to desperately administer CPR as if you hadn’t been gone for hours. I touched your little blue body one last time, tucked you back in, turned on the white noise machine, and dimmed the lights. I tapped the mobile into motion, prompting all of Noah’s animals to prance above your corpse. Then I went downstairs, made lasagna for dinner and a three-tier chocolate cake topped with raspberries and fresh cream. I sat at my side of the table, and I waited to hear his car pull into the driveway.

But I didn’t just wait until he got home, I waited until he asked. I waited as he told me about his day. That the meetings went well, they wanted to invest. That he hadn’t had time to swing by his favorite lunch spot, so he was extra hungry for dinner. His coworker Carl was scared to propose, he helped coax him through those fears. I didn’t say anything, just smiled. It wasn’t until dessert that he asked about us. “But enough about me” he prefaced the question, as though he hadn’t spent 45 minutes on him, as though he actually cared. “How are you and baby?”

“Why don’t you go check on her?”

I’m not proud of what I did. I just wanted it not to be real so bad. I wanted him to find you in the crib and rock you awake. I wanted his touch to warm your frozen body, his voice to stir you from your slumber—just like how he did for me. But that’s never how it goes. I sat there with my untouched lasagna, counting his steps up the stairs. Hearing the creak of our bedroom door. I could feel my

heartbeat radiate out of every pore in my body, a thick glaze spill over my eyes. My lungs deflating, but not refilling, air caught in my closing throat. There was a pause, a long pause, and then I knew. I thought maybe it would bring us closer, but I know he resents me. You ruined everything. I want to forgive you, but I’m not sure I can.

I wake up in the nursery and you wake with me. Your presence is so palpable. You are lingering in the corners, watching me, reminding me. The bottle of merlot has spilled all over her fluffy cloud carpet. Fresh blood, the sacrifice of a first born. A stain that will never come out. I’ll have to toss it. He is waiting for me downstairs, ready to strike, “You’re trying to kill our baby.” I deny it, of course, tell him I’d never do such a thing, tell him I love him, tell him I love her even more—because that’s how I’m supposed to feel. But in my head, I know he is right. I think of all those prenatal vitamins stashed inside a box of maternity pads. The pregnancy yoga classes I’ve been “going to” on Fridays.

He tells me he’s gotten rid of all the alcohol in the house. What a waste. The fancy chardonnay we were saving until after she arrived, down the drain. But I tell him I love him, I tell him I messed up, the stress is getting to me. I tell him all the right things and he lets me go. It’s Friday and I have a vinyasa to do.

I go to the grocery store. It’s one of the only places I can find a sliver of peace. When I was little my mom used to bring me on her shopping trips. She’d let me lie at the bottom of the cart, watching shoppers from the shin down. One time the motion lulled me to sleep and when I woke up in a maze of discarded shopping carts, she was gone. I waited with the manager, who made me a PB&J with wonder bread and let me watch cartoons in the breakroom.

I recognized her sound first, the squeaking of dollar store flip flops on tile. She apologized profusely to the manager—not for her actions, but for mine. She told the lady how sorry she was to burden her with me, and even slipped her a five for the trouble. Then she picked me up, pocketed a sucker on her way out, and whispered in my ear, “See baby? Mommy always comes back.” And even now, how could I be angry at her? Because that’s more than I could say I did for you. I am not my mother, I am worse. I still remember how that lollipop tasted, the cherry making my spit sweet and thick, dulling the ache in my throat as she buckled me into the front seat.

Lately, every time I leave the house, I find myself fantasizing about

other men. That anyone but him is the father. I hold eye contact with the balding man I pass on the sidewalk, brush my hand against the waiter’s when I pass back the pen, flash dazzling smiles to the husbands in the clinic waiting room. It’s not about desire, it’s about what’s growing inside me. A little piece of him is in there, stealing my energy, growing strong as I grow frail, soaking up my nutrients and leaving me with nothing but brittle bones. Each passing day brings me closer to the moment she arrives and laps up any drops of love he had left for me.

So, I tuck myself away into a reality unlike my own. I imagine him rocking her, teaching her to swim, waving her goodbye on the bus, raising her as his own. Only to watch her grow into unrecognizable features, the truth unfolding over time. He’d never get those years back. The connection decaying unbeknownst to him, a bad cavity building in the back of his mouth.

I get milk, eggs, and a 12-pack for his Sunday game—he didn’t ask, I just know. The cashier ogles my swollen stomach, my shirt riding up above my belly button. “You must be so excited!”

“Not really,” I hope this will bring the conversation to an end. It does not.

“I remember how nervous I was too. Trust me, once you hold your baby for the first time all those fears will go away. I’m jealous of you. I’ve had four and I’d still do anything to go back to the newborn stage.”

“You can have her,” I offer. She laughs a little, putting my purchases into the plastic bag. “No seriously, take her,” I maintain sharp eye contact, my face expressionless. She grows visibly uncomfortable, averting her gaze as she hands me my receipt. I snatch the bag up and book it to the exit, calling her a bitch under my breath. I know she hasn’t done anything wrong, but it still makes me feel better.

When I arrive home, I am assaulted with bad news. He tells me he no longer can trust me with our baby, my behaviors are not safe for either of us. He’s worried and he doesn’t know what else to do. Then he says every eight-month pregnant person’s worst nightmare, “I called my mom to come help out.” I feel my breakfast fester in my stomach, sour my esophagus, but stop short at the back of my throat. At this point it will be a miracle if I don’t kill myself before she gets here.

“Thanks. I could use the extra help.”

Jean arrives the next day, wheeling behind her a suitcase the color of amoxicillin. She reeks of grapefruit and jasmine, the same perfume she’s gifted me twice since we first met. Our embrace is stiff, a

dreaded formality we’ve mutually agreed to suffer through for all these years. I am an obstacle in her way to get to him. She holds his head in her palms and runs her thumbs around the hills and hollows of his face. I hate watching this little ritual they have. It makes me sick. And he still calls her mommy, which irks me beyond belief. Sometimes I think she’s fucked him up even more than I have.

She’s still cradling him when she announces, “This is a broken home. But I’m here to fix it.”

She makes us dinner, but its dry chicken seasoned with only salt, so I feign nausea and watch with satisfaction as he’s forced to clean his plate. “Only boys who eat all their dinner get dessert,” she scolds. I gag. He stares down at his plate, embarrassed for me to see him treated this way. He’s even more embarrassed to be putting up with it. Jean leaves to grab dessert.

He turns to me, “I was thinking Mackenzie for the baby.”

“Cute.”

I hate it. It’s the same name as the girl who bullied me for four years straight on the gymnastics team. He must have forgotten.

“I was thinking another M name, you know, for her.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Jean returns from the kitchen carrying a tray of hot blueberry muffins. “That’s a beautiful way to honor her. I just hope you keep your promise of giving her my middle name.” When was this promise made? It’s like my mom doesn’t even exist. Not that I want to name her after my mom, but still.

“Of course,” He gives me a look but I’m not sure how to interpret it. Is he being apologetic? Trying to tell me we’ll talk about it later? He grabs a muffin from the plate, cutting it into quarters with the side of his fork. I go to grab one too, but Jean slaps my hand away.

“What did I say? You only get dessert if you finish dinner.”

I am livid. I feel my cheeks flush, word vomit bubbling up, “If only dinner had been edible.”

“Babe—” he starts, trying to passively intervene.

“I don’t need commentary from the president of the clean plate club. Eat your muffin you little bitch and maybe if you’re a good boy you can wash it down with some of your mommy’s milk f—”

Jean interjects, addressing him first, “It’s fine honey. It’s the hormones—we shouldn’t take it personally.” Then she puts her

hand on my shoulder, I flinch, “You should go up and get some rest.” I hate her so much more for taking my side. I want her to get angry, to tell me how she really feels about me. But she doesn’t, so I sulk upstairs and put myself to bed.

I am in the nursery stringing up paper cranes on fishing line when Jean comes into the room. He has meetings all day and I feel vulnerable alone with her in the house. He told me this morning I need to apologize.

“Hey, I’m sorry about last night. This pregnancy has really been getting to me.”

“So I’ve heard,” she says, picking up a square of origami paper and folding it into a lotus flower.

“I’m grateful you’re here,” I lie, “we can really use the help right now.”

“Well, what my son told me was quite concerning. I didn’t feel I had much of a choice.” She picks up another piece of paper, this one a silver threaded blue patterned with fat orange koi, “I can’t have you killing another one of my grandchildren.” She tells me this almost offhandedly, as though she has not just accused me of murder. “If I feel you are posing a risk to this new baby, I will not hesitate to do everything in my power to make sure you are not in her life,” she finishes folding the paper into a crane and adds it to the pile on the dresser.

“Excuse me?” I am trying to keep my composure, but I overshoot the cut of the threading hole and clip a crane’s wing. She looks down at the severed bird with distain.

“I don’t know what happened, but do I know that one day I had a perfectly healthy granddaughter, and the next I was watching her coffin be lowered into the ground.”

“They said it was SIDS. There was nothing we could have done,” I say flatly.

“Well I hope we don’t lose this one to SIDS too.”

“You and me both,” I don’t know what else to say. I want to repair things with him and having another fight with his mother won’t help the matter. I stand up and hold the crane garland over the crib, wondering how much more my cramping hands can take. She wordlessly takes in the room, opening drawers to touch little striped sweaters and paisley pants. She stops at your blue bunny, picking it up off the dresser. I wonder if she’ll say something. She knows it was with you that day. Is it morbid we’re keeping it for the new baby? Jean doesn’t mention it and moves to the doorway. I think she’s going

to leave, but she pauses, picking at the new coat of paint with claw -like nails.

“You’ve done a good job with the nursery.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s so . . . thrifty.”

“Thanks,” I don’t know what else to say. I want her to leave, but she sticks around like a stubborn splinter.

“You know some women aren’t meant to be mothers,” she says in that same calm and leveled voice. I observe as she zones in on the paint slivers captured under her pinky nail. “I never got that from you—the maternal instinct. Not that it’s a bad thing, I admire the passion you had for your career. All I’ve ever been able to do is pop out babies,” she laughs a little, mocking herself, as though she isn’t proud of this. She’s diverted attention to her garish locket, propping it up in the dimple of her chin and dragging it back and forth along the chain, “That’s why I love him the way I do. I know you judge me for it, I’m not stupid. He is my everything, my whole world. Even now, even now that he’s grown big and tall and probably replaced me with you,” she laughs a little, but in sad empty sort of way. “Even now that he has a baby of his own, I still love him just as strong as I did the very first day I held him. I don’t think you know what that feels like. That type of love that can only be felt by a mother for her baby—I mean clearly you never felt that from your mother. They say that type of stuff is genetic, I read about it in Psychology Today .”

I am speechless. The origami garland has been discarded into a heap on the floor along with my ability to string together words. The worst part is I know she’s right. It’s not in my DNA to feel that sort of love. My mom left me stranded in a grocery store for hours without realizing, and now I will do the same to my own daughter. Jean leaves the room before I can respond.

I hear her call back to me from down the hall, “Anyways, I think it’s why I never liked you much.”

In the morning he brings me a mug of lukewarm rooibos and a handful of supplements, watching intently as I swallow each one. He must be starting to catch on. When I finish, I turn to him, opening my mouth wide and sticking out my tongue.

“You don’t have to do that. I trust that you swallowed.”

I pull the covers up over my head, I’m not in the mood.

He tries again, “I know my mom said some things to you . . . I get she can be a lot sometimes, but she just wants what’s best for all of us.”

“For all of us?” I peek my eyes out from under the blankets.

“Look, obviously nobody wants for this baby to grow up without you.”

“Really? It seems like that’s exactly what your mom wants.”

“Well it’s not, and it’s not what I want either.”

I grow silent. A dark cloud has settled over the two of us. I make a show of putting the tea on my bedside table. I am rejecting his gesture of kindness. His eyes track the motion.

After a pause, he tries again, “Look I know how hard it was for you to grow up without a mothe—”

“I had a mother,” I snap. “You’ve met my mother.”

“I know, I just don’t want her growing up like you did.” I want to ask him what’s wrong with how I grew up, but I get his point. He has a point. “I want her to love you. I want her to be able to actually talk to you. I can’t do all that princess shit and periods and boys and stuff.”

“You’re going to have to learn.”

“I can’t do this without you. Our girl comes from a long line of headstrong women, there’s no way in hell I’m raising that little psycho alone.”

He wants me to laugh, so I do. I’m pretty sure he ripped those lines straight off some 2014 pseudo-intellectual internet take, but I’ll let it slide. All I really care about is that he can’t do this without me. I soften my body one vertebrae at a time, let his arms melt around me.

There’s a long pause before he talks again, “I know things are different now, but different isn’t bad. We were kids far longer than we should have been, the way we acted and the things we said. Losing her made me grow up. I don’t love you any less, I just love you different.”

“You’re the only person to ever love me. You taught me love.”

More silence, and then, “Do you ever think I taught you wrong?”

I stare at his hands until they blur. I’m going to end up miserable. I think I’ve always known that, ever since I was little. At least this way I am miserable and loved. That’s more than young me could ever imagine. “I think you taught me the best you knew how.”

I can feel him processing my answer and calculating a response, my perfect robot husband, “One thing hasn’t changed; I still need you.”

And just like that, he is human again. He needs me. He needs me . He needs me he needs me he needs me. I repeat it over and over in my head until it turns to mush and ‘needs’ bleeds out into the others. I repeat it until the words begin to spot with brown like a bad banana. He. Needs. Me.

I turn over, finally we are face to face, “Okay. If you really need me.”

I spend my final week of pregnancy sipping icy pink lemonade and watching my neighbors from the front porch swing. I wear wide brimmed hats and pretend to be someone I’m not. I give myself gloopy mani-pedis with polish I’ve kept since college—colors named key lime and polka dot bikini, colors that remind me of growing up in the Panhandle. The kind of shades my mom would paint our nails out on the tattered screen porch. Colors like the times she’d let me play hooky from school and we’d watch TV for hours and drink mountain dew, hers spiked with vodka and mine with spirulina around the rim.

Lately, I’ve become obsessed with observing the women in the neighborhood, cherry-picking a new mom for her. There’s the bleach blonde who sprints down the block at exactly 8:06 AM everyday but Tuesday. The woman with a clan of yorkies and hair that reminds me of distant planets and gumball machines. Lastly, there’s the mom who wheels her three young kids around in a worn red wagon. I watch each one intently, tracking their behaviors, their routines. I imagine the way these women would react finding a newborn wailing at the front door. I write stories in my head about the type of girl she’d grow up to be under their roofs, an athlete, an artist, a sister, a snob. Even the worst outcomes seem better than anything I have to offer.

I’ve been writing poetry too. To help me process my feelings before she gets here.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star Pack your bags and go real far Want to give you to a stranger Should have used a coat hanger

Unlike him, poetry has never really been my thing. I take the scraps of paper I write them on and fold them into the tiniest paper cranes. My hands have become so trained the instinct to fold is automatic. I line these special cranes, full of poems for her, along the dresser. I drink so much lemonade that week the skin above my top lip becomes stained flamingo pink.

The nurses ask about the stain as I wait in the hospital room. All my first photos with her are ruined thanks to my drinking (lemonade) habit.

I tear back open the rip you left me with one year ago. The doctors’ joke that at least I’m not getting any new scars. I wonder if they know. I don’t cry when they hand her to me. I feel empty, like someone has stolen my skeleton as I sleep and left me just a blob of unstructured flesh and muscle.

Leading up to the birth I imagined her coming out deformed, all the mistakes I made throughout the pregnancy on display. But she’s healthy. She’s perfect. She looks like him. They share the same pointy nose, the same dark eyes. I gaze into them trying to find familiarity, but she’s nothing like me, she’s nothing like you. She reaches her tiny fingers out to grab my pinky, but I pull my hand away.

We go with the name he chose. I don’t even bother offering an alternative. We are discharged within a day. The doctors bypass all the new parent information they threw at us last time. I’m sure it’s all over my charts, but nobody mentions that we were here not so long along. We are new parents, but this is not our first.

I think things can be normal if I just go through the motions of normal. In some ways, I am right. I nurse and sleep, and wake, and cry, and cook, and clean, and rock, and sing. He does the same. We survive. He writes me new poems now. I throw mine away. We are better. I pretend we are better. And so we are.

Sometimes, as I am lulling her to sleep, I feel your ghost in the nursery. I can’t tell, but I think you might be angry. Your energy collects in dark corners, it wraps around her things, it snakes through the bars of the crib. I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that you may never forgive me, and I may never forgive you. We will just have to co-exist—four souls under the same roof.

On days when there’s something extra in the air, a chill that follows me inside or a fog that collects around my form, I feel your ghost in the nursery. But now I just close the door and turn off the lights.

THIS ENDLESS CIRUIT, PONY

Nancy Meyer

empties my mind like a chamber pot, splinters my thoughts: fireworks, LSD.

Your rump grows dusty, the sheen goes off. Cockleburs thatch your sweeping tail. Still, your sharp eyes pin me.

Still, my calves root to the sod. Your hoofbeats pound rings around my heart. The sound

imprints my captivity. What do you want from me? Those golden balls of shit bake in the sun.

I’ve lost track, centuries or yesterday. You’re stuck too, if you refuse to kick up your dainty heels, and leave.

Your circling taunts. Am I the one who refuses to unhitch myself? let go my place in the center, fear

a wildness of hoots in the night, dances I don’t know, words that leap my bounds. Not my rules, my gods.

Pony darling, sweet-eared friend, I need you at my side. Three more circles, then let’s go.

You slow a tad, I’ll speed up. No path, no map, I test the ground, first footfall into the half-light.

Hannah R. L. Hawkins

When choosing a name for a child, one thing not often taken into consideration is how that name might sound shouted out over the vast, empty desert of southern Arizona. It’s too horrific a thing to contemplate, but Emily Underwood might have done a lot of things differently if she’d known.

Hannah , cried out in guttural desperation is not like Hannah , whispered to a growing belly. There’s something about the way it ends—the silent “h,” the echoed palindrome, like a boomerang returning. Emily, upon hearing her own voice whipping back to her, knew it meant no one was on the other side of the desert to hear it.

Hannah went missing between 1:44 and 1:58 AM from a rest stop off of Interstate 10. Locals and volunteers from neighboring states had gathered by the dozens at dawn to be given instructions on how they might most efficiently search for the little girl. Coordinators drew up a grid of the surrounding area and divided everyone out evenly into groups. Peter and Emily Underwood, Hannah’s parents, spent half of the first day being interviewed by police.

Peter had parked at the rest stop and left his sleeping wife and daughter in the car to use the restroom. There was a curious blue ink mark under his eye that he spent too long washing away in the mirror of the men’s room before making his way back to the car and finding the left rear door ajar. Emily was sound asleep in the passenger seat, her headphones secured and her mouth hanging slightly open. Peter yanked the headphones from his wife’s ears and took her by the shoulders, shaking her to his level. And then, Peter told the officers between hiccups and ragged breaths, they realized Hannah was missing, and that they couldn’t find her on their own.

Throughout telling the story, Peter sobbed violently and struggled to catch his breath. Emily didn’t cry, and her breathing was steady as she eyed each of the approaching volunteers from a distance, challenging them. Both reactions were, apparently, totally normal in situations like theirs. They were both of them wrecked, broken. They blamed each other and they blamed themselves. Every question felt as though it took them backwards, while Hannah got further away.

“Where were you headed?”

Peter’s mother had suggested a road trip across the country, and they’d left only the day before. The trip was an effort to spend more time together as a family and save the Underwoods’ marriage. Emily added that final detail, and felt Peter’s eyes on her when she did. Neither of them had said it aloud in so many words before.

“Why did you stop?”

Peter needed to use the restroom.

“Why stop at this rest stop?”

Peter needed to use the restroom, and it was the first place he came across.

“Was Hannah upset?”

No, she’d been sleeping.

“Were the two of you fighting?”

Not just then.

“Had you been fighting at all during the day? Maybe Hannah was scared?”

Not that day, and couldn’t they be released to go and find their missing daughter?

“What did Hannah say when you pulled off at the rest stop?”

Nothing, she’d been sleeping. Could they go now?

“Mrs. Underwood, can you confirm this?”

Emily couldn’t confirm, as she’d been sleeping as well.

“What clothing was Hannah wearing?”

On and on it went until Emily pointed out, in as steady a voice as she could muster, that the two of them weren’t going anywhere and would be available in their assigned grid section for questions should the officers come up with anything of importance to ask. The Underwoods were then permitted to go and find their grid section leader to aid in the search for their child, but not before being advised that the first 24 hours were absolutely crucial in cases like theirs. If Hannah had been kidnapped, this would be even more true. Emily shook her head at this, knowing that placing blame on a stranger would only be a further waste of time and energy. She walked away from her husband and the officers and went to find her grid leader.

Go ahead and lock me up , Emily thought to herself, knowing full well that out of the two of them, she was the one acting strangely. Peter broke down in a crisis, so one of them had to keep their head on straight. Emily looked down at her phone and found the photo album, opening it directly to the last picture taken. It was of Hannah sitting in her car seat and beaming a full gap-toothed smile. It had been taken the day before, on the first day of their road trip. One of the officers had asked

Emily to share the photo with him right away so that he might distribute it to the volunteers, but she couldn’t understand how it would help.

“What will you compare it to? A cactus? A lizard? There’s nothing else in this place but sand and rocks and snakes.” And Hannah. And perhaps whatever monster had her now. But the monster, living thing or not, wouldn’t resemble her daughter.

Peter had taken the phone from his wife and handed it to the officer, placing a hand on Emily’s shoulder and leaving it until the officer gave the phone back. Emily wanted to shove her husband’s hand away. She knew her protests against police procedure were unhelpful, but she didn’t care what imaginary lines she crossed in the pursuit of locating her daughter. This wasn’t a sandbox. This was the whole wide world and everything in it. Until Hannah was in her arms, as far as Emily was concerned, they could all go to hell. Including her husband. Maybe he’d find Hannah there, held captive by a monster.

Hannah stood in the doorway of her apartment, thoroughly exhausted from driving all night. The sun was peeking up over her building and she was fishing around in her pockets for her keys. They came up, along with two pieces of gum and an unwrapped pregnancy test. She stared at the test as if she’d forgotten why she had it, but put it back where she found it before she could decide otherwise.

Once safely inside her apartment, Hannah emptied her pockets again and set the test on the countertop. She got the kettle boiling to make tea and listened to it whistle, guzzling down glass after glass of cold water. She couldn’t get enough, she was absolutely parched. It was an odd feeling, living out her normal routines after such an ordeal. But what was perhaps the strangest part was the pregnancy test sitting there on the counter. Bright pink and white, daring her. Hannah downed a fifth glass of water and realized she’d been working towards taking the test inadvertently. She had to go now, so she might as well take the thing with her and get it over with.

Three minutes. She’d heard from friends in college that they were the longest three minutes imaginable. They were, and they weren’t. She wasn’t sure which answer she was avoiding, which answer would allow her to breathe normally again. Either was hard, true and final. She thought about Mark, whether she’d have to ask him to come home from his year abroad. They’d agreed to break up, after all. She decided she couldn’t ask him to do that, and she didn’t even have anything to tell him, at least not for another minute and a half.

As it turned out, it only took another fifteen seconds to see what she was afraid of and what she hoped for. A complicated lead-up to a very simple fact.

She didn’t call Mark. She had something like nine months to make that decision. *

Do you celebrate a missing daughter’s birthday? Or do you put it to the side as yet another thing you might make up for once she’s safe again? Emily had promised Hannah a mermaid Barbie when she was falling asleep on New Year’s Eve the year before, but there had been no time to shop for one. Today was Hannah’s sixth birthday, and she was still missing. Emily was a terrible mother.

It was day two of the search, and Peter Underwood was explaining to his wife, again, the mentality used by the search party coordinators.

“Hannah is only five—”

“Six,” Emily corrected him. Peter stopped, remembering, and needed a moment before speaking again.

“Hannah is only six . And she can’t have gotten any further away than this area of land we’re searching.” He pointed at the map and traced a perfect circle over the paper, around the tiny makeshift home base marked with an X. Emily couldn’t understand why they were keeping the X at the same spot every day and working their way out from there, only to return at nightfall and start again in the morning. They had searched that same ground for a day and a half, and nothing. No plastic barrettes, no stray sandal, no twisting strands of auburn hair, no pools of blood. Just piles of shifting sand reminding Emily that time was moving whether she had Hannah or not. Somewhere out there, her little girl was either growing up without her or would never grow another inch.

The officers informed Peter and Emily that morning that the first 48 hours were absolutely crucial when it came to finding a missing child. Hannah was out of her “zone of safety,” as the officers called it, being so far from home. Desert conditions were extremely hazardous, they pointed out, and Emily stared at Peter who would not meet her gaze. One of them was always staring, the other avoiding, as if direct eye contact would burn up what little resolve they had left. This was their way.

During water and meal breaks throughout the day, Emily often caught herself watching the prettiest volunteer in their grid section, a young woman with braids down to the middle of her back and a smile too genuine to be appropriate. The volunteer yelled out Hannah’s name during the search at a pitch that made Emi -

ly’s ear drums throb. By two o’clock, Emily could no longer take it. She switched to a new grid section right away. It was better, and it was worse. Emily hated the pretty, smiley volunteer. She envied the distance between her and real tragedy. Emily was stuck in the middle of one, struggling to move in any direction at all. No end in sight.

There was a volunteer in her new grid section whose twin brother, Anthony, went missing on a hike through the very same desert thirteen years ago. Anthony was found two days later, dehydrated but otherwise unharmed. This felt like a good omen, and Emily started to think that Jerry, the twin who was never lost, was good luck. She walked alongside him as they moved up and down dunes and boulders, feeling their hearts leap just a little at the sight of a new rock formation, only to have them come crashing down again once they reached the other side. Emily preferred Jerry’s company to her husband and the pretty volunteer, and started to believe that the two of them might have enough luck to find Hannah.

Jerry told her a couple of fruitless hours later that Anthony had died in a car wreck two years ago. Emily felt betrayed, but she couldn’t be the mother who kept switching grid sections instead of finding her lost child. She spent the rest of the day searching on her own—no time for making new friends. After all, her child was missing. She didn’t have to explain her icy demeanor to anyone. She didn’t like any of them, anyhow. Everyone felt all at once to her like they weren’t trying hard enough, and that they were trying much harder than she was. No one was thinking logically, except for Emily.

The bath water was too hot. Hannah drained it, cursing the wasted bubbles and bath salts all the way down the drain. She turned on the tap again, felt for just warm enough, and watched the water level rise again. She skipped the soothing, lavender products altogether this time. Suddenly, anything other than pure, clean, lukewarm water felt wrong. She stared down at her five-month bump and ran a hand over her naked skin. Twenty one weeks of doubt, excitement, terror and better decision making. Baby books, birthing videos and turning down invitations to go out with the girls. She’d finished school and landed a remote accounting job. She could support herself and the bump.

Hannah turned off the tap and stepped into the water, sinking until she hit porcelain. She missed the burn of hot water, the satisfaction of feeling her body adjust to the heat. Her belly was an island in the middle of the tub, and Hannah thought about the vacations they would take

together, mother and daughter-outside-of-the-bump. A beach somewhere, where sand meant ocean—not just hot, dry nothing. There were dangers in the ocean, too, she remembered, and lay a warm wash cloth over her island. Pirates, storms and sea monsters. Goose bumps jumped up and down her exposed arms and she dropped them into the bath to warm them.

On the edge of the tub her phone vibrated, interrupting the spa music she’d put on.

It was Mark calling. It was early December, and he was home from his semester abroad. They’d promised each other a holiday meet-up to see if they still wanted to belong together. He was a good man, smart and responsible. Hannah had thought about asking him to stay together while he was away, but she had been wary of long distance relationships, especially one as young as theirs. They’d only been together six months. She didn’t want to hold him back from the possibilities he might find elsewhere, and she didn’t have any idea what her own future held, either. She certainly hadn’t expected this.

The vibrating ended and started up again almost immediately. Hannah ducked her mouth below the water and blew bubbles up to the surface. Her ears, half submerged, felt the rumble of the vibrations even more deeply. She didn’t want them to stop, but they did. Mark was too sensible to call more than twice.

Hannah hadn’t told him about the bump yet. Five months, the size of a banana. It would be hard to hide behind a lumpy sweater and a cup of decaf. Still, she reminded herself as she heard the final buzz of a voicemail notification, she couldn’t avoid him forever. She sunk her head below the surface of the water, submerging all of herself but the island. Maybe when the bump was cabbage-sized.

Hannah always had trouble saying her “r”s. There were a remarkable number of words in their new reality that she would butcher in pronunciation. Morning. Memory. Retracing. Strangers. Rest stop. Volunteers. Murder.

Emily would never dream of teaching her that last one. She liked “muhduh” better, anyway. It would sound the same as when she said “mother.” Anyway, it didn’t apply yet. And, Emily pushed herself further in her reasoning—it never would. Emily was forgetting what her daughter’s voice sounded like, but she could remember her crying for her muhduh.

On day three, authorities informed Emily and Peter Underwood of the importance of the first 72 hours in the case of a missing child. Emily

clung to the explanation as desperately as she tried to prevent the words from entering her mind, a battle she’d been fighting since her daughter’s disappearance first became a police matter. It was strange to want to know everything about something you couldn’t bare to listen to.

After 72 hours, the officers said, the integrity of evidence would most likely be compromised. Furthermore, if this was a child abduction—something Emily had been thus far successful at ruling out in her mind—Hannah was unlikely to have survived past the first 24 hours. Finally, three days without food or water might already have made the child too weak to avoid predation, or caused her to fall victim to the elements. They wrapped this final point by assuring the Underwoods that they were still determined to find Hannah, and Emily realized that the officers were talking about a body.

If Peter understood this, he didn’t show it. He nodded along with the explanation and thanked them before heading out to his grid section. Emily watched him approach the pretty volunteer from the first day and saw them acknowledge each other before heading out in the same God forsaken direction they took every day.

Emily hesitated for only a second before following them and catching up with her husband, pulling him away from the volunteer.

“This is not helping. You are not helping,” she hissed at him, glaring at the pretty volunteer until she took the hint and kept walking. Peter looked at her in sad surprise.

“I’m searching for Hannah. That’s all I care about.”

“Really? And what’s this one’s name?” Emily hated the heat that was rising in her cheeks, hated that anything could take up space in her mind outside of the soul-crushing truth that her baby girl was somewhere out in that desert, still lost. But she had to deal with everything that made it harder for her to breathe, and this was one of those things. Peter’s eyes were closed and he was rubbing his temples. Emily thought she might hit him if he started to cry again.

“I can’t do this right now, Em,” he said to her, avoiding her gaze and raising his head to look out over the horizon.

“Well I need to do this. I can’t think about her out there all alone. Especially not while you carry on with this bullshit right in front of me.”

“So, what? You think I’m sleeping with a volunteer? You think I’m waking up in the middle of the night after you’ve fallen asleep,

finding her tent, screwing her, and then getting back into bed with you to sleep for a couple more hours until I have to wake up again and search for our daughter?”

“Don’t do that,” Emily said, spitting with anger now.

“Don’t do what? Be logical? Show you how crazy you sound? I’m not having this conversation. You’re out of your mind. I need to find Hannah—”

“What, and I don’t? I can’t believe you’d suggest—”

“Well, what the fuck are we doing right now? Right now , Emily? What is this about? Please,” Peter was trying and failing to keep shis voice down, “what do you want from me?”

“I want you to find our daughter. I want you to look for her on your own. I want you to find somewhere we haven’t searched yet. And I want you to have not slept with that lawyer.”

Emily hadn’t meant to voice her final want, not today. She could see the desperation in her husband’s eyes, and felt the struggle happening inside his body. She was right, he was to be blamed for that part, at least. But it all felt so terribly small, their little domestic in the four square feet of desert they took up together. Emily wanted to pull the words that didn’t matter back inside herself, to have not followed her husband and the pretty volunteer out to their grid section. She stepped backwards, and Peter reached out to grab her arm.

“I’m sorry, Emily. I’m sorry, I know I can never apologize enough. But just now, I can’t talk about this. I have to find our girl. Let me find Hannah, and then I promise I’ll make everything okay again.”

Emily felt her husband already pulling away from her to go and do what he was begging to, but the anger that had been boiling away for months since she found the hotel bill in the center console of the Audi wouldn’t let her.

“I never wanted this, Pete. Any of it.”

“Emily, please don’t.”

“I never wanted kids. It’s too much. Having a child . . . it’s like cutting open your chest, splitting your heart in half and giving one piece to the world for safe keeping. Everything that breathes smells the blood and comes running.”

Peter looked at his wife and she registered his eyes passing through her. She had broken one of their remaining bonds, possibly forever. He

turned back to follow the volunteers, leaving her behind. Emily was hit with a wave of nausea, and she bent over, getting sick all over the desert floor.

Mark and Hannah met for coffee in Phoenix where he was getting settled after his time abroad. He was a true gentleman and didn’t acknowledge the bump until Hannah did, but his frequent glances to her mid-section gave him away.

“She’s yours,” Hannah said, smiling slightly and watching him for a reaction.

“She’s a she?”

“She is.”

“How long have you . . . well, how far along?”

“Almost six months now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” And she was sorry. Mark seemed to struggle with this, fiddling with the buttons on his jacket. After a while, he simply nodded and reached across the table to place a hand on Hannah’s stomach. They sat this way for a while, one of them waiting for the other to say something and the other trying to decide what to say.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better than I did in the beginning,” Hannah said, laughing at the memory. It felt very distant, as if she already knew she’d never be alone again.

“Does she have a name yet?” Mark asked, patting the bump before pulling his hand away. This was something he would do many times over the final month of the pregnancy, assuring their daughter and her mother that he wasn’t going anywhere, not really.

“I was thinking about Kim,” Hannah said, and it was the first time she’d said the name aloud.

“I like it,” he said, meeting her gaze, and Hannah decided she did too.

“I’m a little scared,” Hannah said. Mark nodded again, clearly unsure of how to respond. Hannah thought back to the nights they’d shared together, one of them having changed their world forever, and wished she could change so many things while changing nothing. Mark’s furrowed brow suggested he felt the same. It was a while before he spoke again.

“I could be scared with you,” Mark said, and it was a question. Hannah was grateful for Mark’s simplicity, for his ability to push past any extra emotion that might delay a happy reconciliation, whether she deserved one or not. He was the better person.

“Only if you want,” she answered.

Outside, the desert lined the horizon and Hannah felt the heat of the sun through the café windows. The world lay out there, vast and terrible. Hannah’s world was safe inside of her for now, and she wasn’t sure how best to protect it. Letting Mark in to help felt like a step in the right direction. * * *

Hannah Underwood’s body was found in the crevice of a mass of boulders at approximately 10:15 in the morning on the fourth day of the search. The medical examiner’s theory was that she had wandered away from the family vehicle on her own and gotten lost in the desert, eventually succumbing to dehydration and sun exposure. He explained to the Underwoods after they identified their daughter that it appeared Hannah had wedged herself into the crevice, likely in attempt to hide and wait for someone to find her, and had grown too weak to crawl back out again.

Volunteers stopped by their tent in the hours that followed the discovery of Hannah’s body to pay their respects. The volunteers allowed themselves reprieve in the knowledge that at least the couple wouldn’t spend forever not knowing what happened to their daughter, whether she was out in the world and hurting. It was a small comfort, and one that Emily realized more quickly than her husband did. They held each other, and the tears finally came for her. The ice that had been wedged between them thawed and broke away, making room for comfort. It was harrowing and numbing, but the worst was over. Hannah had taken the pain and wreckage of their past with her, a guilt-ridden healing that they would struggle to make sense of for years to come.

In the days that followed, some of the volunteers returned home while the majority stayed behind to take part in a candlelight vigil by the edge of town, with the desert as a backdrop. The disappearance and tragic end to the story of Hannah Underwood was widespread in the media, and people came from all over to light a candle in her memory. Peter’s mother and Emily’s father were all the family the couple had in the world, and both traveled to be there for the scattering of Hannah’s ashes in the desert that claimed her life. It was a choice that some people found strange, while others couldn’t imagine anything else. There were layers to the decision—ones that the Underwoods would never be asked to put to reason.

Five days after Hannah’s body was discovered, Peter and Emily were preparing to return home to California. Emily had been waing

up nauseas in the mornings and wanted to go to town to buy something to soothe her stomach before they left. The pretty volunteer was walking to her car and offered to give Emily a ride into the town. They were the first words spoken between the two women, and Emily gratefully accepted. The truth was she didn’t have any venom left for the woman. She had very little of anything left at all, except for the possibility of a growing impossibility. She wasn’t sure yet.

The pharmacy in town was tiny, and at first Emily Underwood feared she wouldn’t find what she was looking for. The pretty volunteer had mercifully gone off to another aisle in search of her own things, and Emily found herself alone in the aisle labeled FAMILY PLANNING . There was only one option, and Emily pulled the last box from the shelf, rushing to the check out counter before the volunteer could see what she was buying.

Thankfully, the woman behind the counter moved quickly and wasn’t friendly or interested enough to make conversation. Emily practically sprinted outside after making her purchase, with the box in hand. She ripped open the cardboard unceremoniously to pull out the two pregnancy tests and shove them in her jacket pocket. She had just tossed the box into the trash when the pretty volunteer followed her outside.

“Are you okay, Mrs. Underwood?” The volunteer grimaced at her own stupidity, and Emily Underwood herself wondered if she’d ever be okay again.

“Yes, sure. I’m fine.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” The woman surveyed her lone, bagless figure and Emily chided herself for forgetting to purchase a decoy.

“No, but it’s alright. Let’s go back.”

“Are you sure? We can check up the road—”

“I want to go back.”

The pretty volunteer nodded and walked to the other side of the car, unlocking the doors to let Emily in. They drove the first five minutes in silence, more tears rolling down Emily’s cheeks. They had hardly stopped once they started.

“I’m so sorry, Emily.” It was the first time in days someone had used her first name other than her husband, and Emily softened at the sound of it. It was such a human thing to hear your name after so many days without.

“Thank you,” she said. The words sounded funny. Emily had used them so many times over the past several days. What did they

mean? I appreciate you being sorry? Blessings to you for acknowledging and reminding me of my pain? Emily wasn’t sure. But she used them because she didn’t want to think anymore about it. The volunteer didn’t speak again and after another ten minutes of silence over the soft static of the broken car radio, Emily realized something.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it, “but I don’t think I ever got your name.”

The pretty volunteer bit the inside of her cheek and Emily recognized the familiar scrunch of her nose beneath her sunglasses, the kind that meant she was fighting back tears.

“Don’t be sorry,” the volunteer said, her voice hoarse and unsteady. The air in the car was thick with pain, and Emily could think of only one way to pierce it.

“I think I might be pregnant,” Emily said after a moment, pulling the tests out of her pocket and brandishing them in the air. She hadn’t been sure what her own reaction would be when she said the words aloud, and an unexpected warmth swelled inside of her. For the first time in weeks, she let herself smile a little. These were good feelings.

The pretty volunteer nodded at the secret, appreciating Emily’s honesty. It felt like her turn next.

“I think I might be, too,” she said.

Emily looked at the pretty volunteer and thought only for a second before taking one of the plastic test sticks and dropping it into her new friend’s vest pocket. If the volunteer noticed, she didn’t say anything. Emily saw her nose scrunch up in emotion again, however, and turned back to look out the window at the purple sky over the retreating town. The space they occupied felt intensely private, but much more bearable when shared.

Back at the makeshift home base, Peter Underwood greeted his wife by pulling her into an embrace that felt more real than anything they’d shared in years. Emily melted into him and a couple more tears squeezed their way out. The pretty volunteer watched the couple and tried to visualize the complication that was the life they were leaving behind and the one they had in front of them. It felt untouchable and miraculous.

The volunteer walked back to her car and felt for the plastic in her vest pocket. Night was falling, and the wind was fast—all at once heavy and gone. She might have collapsed under the weight of it, or else been blown away up and over the horizon were it not for Emily Underwood’s unexpected touch on her shoulder.

“What’s your name?” Emily asked, looking into the woman’s eyes.

The volunteer recognized something like permission, and gave the name she’d spoken, whispered, screamed and prayed hundreds of times by now.

“Hannah.”

Hannah stood by the kitchen window watching her daughter play on the brand new swing-set in the backyard. Kimmie climbed the rope ladder and swung from the monkey bars without fear of the gaping space between herself and the ground. Mark was in the garden somewhere planting rose bushes and keeping an eye on their daughter, but Hannah had yet to truly trust anyone’s surveillance more than she did her own. When Kimmie went down the slide, Hannah heard Mark whistle and shout something that made the little girl giggle and race back to the ladder.

Beyond their backyard, and miles past the other houses, Hannah could make out the shadowy formations of the Sonoran Desert. She clicked her tongue and dropped the sponge she was using to clean dishes into the soapy water of the kitchen sink. They were still so close.

Later that evening, Hannah struggled with the same images that held her captive on so many sleepless nights since the search for the missing girl. Her little body, lifeless and pale, huddled between the massive rocks in the desert like she was praying to be saved from howling monsters. Hannah and the other volunteers who found the body having to radio their grid leader to come quickly and bring the police. The four volunteers it took to hold Peter Underwood back so that he wouldn’t contaminate the scene. Watching the other volunteers come running as if they would collectively be able to breathe life back into the child. Backing away from the scene to get out of everyone’s way and tripping over her own feet, every human error serving as a reminder that she was separate from what she’d seen in the rocks, that both things could exist simultaneously.

Hannah would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling of her bedroom, trying to keep the images at bay long enough for sleep to come. Sometimes she would not succeed until the sun crept through the blinds in the morning, but those nights were growing fewer and further between as time went on.

Hannah got up the next morning after one of the worst nights of sleep she’d had in months, and made her way to the front door, broom in hand. At night, the wind coming off of the desert was often so wild that it would deposit a small pile of sand on their doorstep. Hannah

would always sweep it away before her morning coffee, before letting the dog out. The desert was getting closer, stretching out long, hot fingers to wrap themselves around her neck. Hannah dreaded telling Mark that she might want to move again.

He already had an hour long commute, and that had been such a battle. Kimmie was seven and had lived in three different homes already. Hannah knew structure was lacking in their lives. Kimmie was often confusing their new home for the old one, and would wake up in the middle of the night in tears, unsure where she was and wanting her mother.

Hannah leaned the broom against the wall in the entryway and went to rouse the dog from the mud room. There were still boxes there that she had yet to unpack, or perhaps they were the first to be ready for their next move. The dog was still snoozing, so Hannah made her way to Kimmie’s bedroom and pushed the door open. Kimmie was dozing comfortably, breathing softly beneath her comforter. Hannah could have watched her sleep for hours but didn’t want to wake her, not yet. Mark was gone, halfway through his commute by now.

Hannah walked out the back door and approached the swing-set, intending to retrieve the pair of shoes Kimmie had left outside the night before. As she did, the sand box caught her eye and she saw the castle Mark and Kimmie had built together before dinner. It was intricate for the pair, three towers and a moat still damp with hose water. A single rose bud was shoved into the center of the castle grounds like a magnificent magenta tree. Hannah took a seat on one of the swings and watched the shadows move around the castle as the sun came up.

The dog barked from inside and Hannah jumped up, dropping her daughter’s shoe on the tallest tower as she did. She bent and picked it up from the collapsed sand before heading inside, giving herself permission to come back and fix the tower later.

weather report for later tonight when everyone else has fallen asleep

Danielle Gennaro

Sometimes when the fog quietly closes its mouth around the whole city and relief knocks you over like how sometimes the nicest thing you can do is look

in the mirror

and tell them you can’t stand them anymore— and sometimes after the dense air blocked that sunset but you were glad on the off-chance it was a boring one because a lot of that has been

going around—

and sometimes when you drop your coffee into the subway grates or he tells you he just wants to be friends and you hold tight the comfort of not having to see something right in front of you— a diffuse universe makes

shadow puppets the shape of being forgotten—

you transform into a species that can feel in your fingertips when your heart is going to break or the rain is going to start— that looms in the goneness of staying awake longer than anything else knows how—

surviving is coated in mist

A Burnt Child Dreads the Fire Bess Henshaw

There were three things in the coal mine: coal, soot, and death.

After spending a day out with her grandpa at the hem of Kaymoor’s only mine, Odette wondered if soot was all she was made of. It was underneath her nails and in between her molars and stuck to her scalp, fleshy and sunburnt.

There was one road that took them from the center of Kaymoor to the outskirts of the mine, and when her grandpa sailed over the potholes in his pickup, dust rose from the top of his dashboard and spread out over Odette like a swarm of locusts.

He spit out of the open window. Wet, syrupy, the color of the oil he used to stop their radiator from whistling at night. Black lung is what he called it. Most of the men who worked in the mine had black lungs. Lottie O’Rourke’s uncle died from black lungs. She told all the kids in her sixth-grade class that when he tried to breathe he just sputtered and crackled like tennis shoes on pea gravel.

“Quit your worrying. It don’t mean nothin’,” her grandpa said. Odette looked back to the road.

Every house in Kaymoor was the same. The same timber from the same trees in the same forest. Odette’s grandpa told her Kaymoor started out that way when families made their way westward, and the state erected sixty-seven bone-white wooden houses with a front porch and a privy outback. In the morning light they, too, looked as though there was a sheen of coal dust melting into the decaying wooden boards and broken window frames.

He cranked the steering wheel with his good hand and parked his car in front of the Go-Mart, which was less than a gas station and more of a shack with a two gasoline pumps, but close enough to the mine that it garnered enough business to stay around.

On Sundays, when the rest of their town was seated at the pews of the Protestant Congregation, Odette found comfort in the bed of her grandfather’s truck. There was a calmness when everyone in town was away, tucked inside of their church.

“No one else goes to work on Sundays,” Odette would say.

“We all work on Sunday. Most of ‘em just don’t start ‘till the afternoon.”

“I don’t work on Sundays.”

“You doesn’t work at all.”

His wrinkles were shadowed in coal dust, contouring the sharpened edges of his face. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket

“Want one?” He grinned, extending the smoke to her hands.

“Yeah,” Odette tried to grab the cigarette before he slid it back into the carton with a flick of his fingers. “Hey!”

“You’re too young for that. Your gramma would kick my ass to the curb if I gave you a smoke.”

Odette’s toes grazed the gravel, scuffing the white ends of her sneakers. When she was a little girl, they would sit here, Odette bouncing on his leg as he sipped his cup of coffee mixed with gin, soaking up the weening seconds of morning sun before he’d descend into the coalfield.

On his good days, Odette was allowed to come to the mines and watch the men work. She’d wander between the front office and the railroads, where the younger boys moved the coal from the minecart to the boxcars that sent culm to the cities Odette had never heard of. Sometimes, if no one was watching, she’d linger by the lift that served as the entrance to the mine, watching as the dumbwaiter descended hundreds of feet into the earth.

When she closed her eyes, she heard the dragging of axes and the halting of mine hutches. But above all of that, above the scraping and the chafing and the grating, was a bird.

It warbled in the morning, and chirped from inside a small, thin framed cage that sat on top of a workman’s bench, waiting for the rest of the men to arrive and bring her into the mine alongside them.

That next Sunday, Odette watched the bird beside her grandpa, the bed of his truck rumbling with the running of the hoppers.

“What do you do with it?”

Her grandpa took a sip of his coffee. “The bird? Ever heard of canaries in the coal mine? Little birds like that are more sensitive to all the gas. If it dies when we’re down there, we know we need to come back up. It’s a superstition, mostly. Lotta places don’t use ‘em anymore.”

“So you just keep her in the cage, and then she dies?”

“We sure as hell don’t try to kill her,” he said, and coughed into his closed fist.

It was four more weeks until Odette convinced her grandpa to take her back to the mine for an afternoon. She sat on the gravel, tracing her finger through the dirt. She stared at the little, yellow canary perched on its roost, lilting into the forests of dogwoods and red pines and tall cypresses that found home in the Black Mountains.

Sweat collected on the pads of her fingers as she fiddled with the latch of the canary cage. Odette opened the door and moved to the side.

“Come on,” she said. The bird flapped its wings once, then twice, then for a third time, but stayed put. It twittered. Odette put her face up to the canary, squishing her cheeks against the wires. “Come on, go.”

It took a few more seconds of goading before the bird hopped down from the perch, sat at the foot of the cage, and then flew into the woods without a noise.

There were nights when Willie Gibson was in Odette’s bedroom. He stood at the foot of her bed, unmoving, with the moonlight from the open window flooding his figure. And when Odette saw him, she smelled him. Her bedroom filled with the incense of burnt flesh, coppery and metallic and earthy.

Odette woke up cold. The wind whistled through the cracks in the wood, creeping under her blanket and into her bones. She woke up looking Willie in the eyes.

She retched onto her hardwood floor and wiped the bile off her lips with her bedsheets.

Some nights it wasn’t just Willie. It was her grandpa, too, and the names and faces of men she didn’t know.

The two-bedroom house shook with the passing of the train. When she was younger, Odette slept through the rumble of her home, like it was a gentle hand rocking a bassinette. Now, it woke her.

The alarm clock on her bedside table glowed green in the darkness. She sighed, throwing her legs over the side of the bed and sitting up. She kept a cold cup of water on her nightstand for moments like these. She held the cup between her hands, feeling the coolness of the glass radiate from her palms to the tips of her fingers.

Willie never talked to her. It was because he was dead, Odette told herself, not because he hated her. And he might have hated her, too, for killing him, but the only reason he didn’t talk to her is because ghosts don’t talk.

He was still just a boy, wearing charred trousers and the same button -up shorts as the other pre-pubescent boys who worked the mines the second they finished eighth grade.

She vomited again.

The GoMart was the only place in Kaymoor that sold the Sunday newspaper. Odette leaned against the front counter, one hand on a Diet Coke, holding the rolled up Kaymoor Times as she swatted for the

flies that landed on the lottery tickets in front of her. The Diet Coke began to sweat and she set it down. Four flies landed around the rim; Odette let them rest. She didn’t blame them.

“Sorry for keeping you waitin’,”

Randy hobbled in through the screen door behind the counter and took a seat in front of the register.

“Just the Coke and paper?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Odette slid her items forward and handed him a five-dollar bill. Randy opened the newspaper, probably for the first time since Odette bought one last month and perused the front page.

“Fifteen years, eh?”

Odette swallowed the little saliva she had in her mouth and nodded.

“Feels like yesterday, doesn’t it? I remember your grandpa. He paid for my drinks a Bingos more times than I can count.”

“You can keep the change,” Odette said as she grabbed the can off the countertop.

“You don’t want this?” He held up the newspaper, but Odette was already out the door.

In her car, she held the Diet Coke to the back of her neck as she waited for the A/C to hum. The condensation dripped down her neck to her spine until it mixed with the cotton of her dress and came entangled with her own sweat.

The drive back home took her past the mine. She could have gone the long way, out through the farmland, to avoid it, but she didn’t.

It was new, in most ways, but when Odette saw the same beige -painted gate that led to the front office, she heard the creaking of the mining carts on the railroads, it all felt the same. Church wasn’t out yet, and the yard was empty.

They use alarms now, for the gasses and minerals. The bird was archaic, that’s what they wrote in the newspaper. Most mining shafts have been using new technology for years. The canary was regalia.

But that bird would have saved them that day. They told Odette it wasn’t her fault, but she knew what they said behind closed doors. She heard the hush of whispers when she walked into a room, and the upswing of voices that followed her exit.

When the news came in that the Kaymoor Mine had exploded, everyone asked how and not why . The ‘how’ was easy; some girl let the bird fly off into the woods and twenty-six men died. Boys, too, but they called them all men.

The ‘why’ was more complicated. Why does anyone die, let alone

one-fourth of the men in their entire town? If Kaymoor wasn’t God-fearing before the explosion, it was after. It happened because they didn’t pray enough, it happened because all these men were working on a Sunday, it happened because some little girl was raised poorly and did something bad, it happened because they deserved it.

Next to Willie Gibson was a little girl. Her hair was in pigtails held together by mismatched pink and yellow hair ties. She was small next to Willie, and younger than Odette.

She thought of her grandmother’s wails when Odette came home from school that day; her body crumpled to the kitchen floor, clutching the tassels of the threadbare rug and pounding her fists into the cold tile in a swell of grief until her knuckles bled.

The guilt manifested itself in different ways. A few weeks after the explosion, Odette cut her hair altogether. She took the garden shears her grandma used to trim the creeping thistle that migrated from the soil into their front yard every spring. By the time her grandmother found her, Odette would have been better off bald.

Odette stood in front of the mirror. The shears were next to the sink, a big, porcelain tub, the one her grandpa bathed her in when she was a baby, now covered in clumped curls. Behind her, Odette’s grandmother wavered, not looking at her, or at the hair swirling down the drain, but at her own reflection. She grabbed the shears and put them back in the shed without a word.

Look at me . Odette thought. Look at me .

Her grandmother never really looked at her again.

There was a before and an after and everything in between had been eclipsed and thrown away. Whatever was left of the girl who let the canary out of the cage had dissolved to soot and settled in between the cracks in the pavement and materialized in front of Odette’s bed.

The room was cold and the glass of water between her hands was colder. A flame from the candle on her windowsill swayed between the lace curtains.

Odette pushed herself up with her elbows and crawled towards the end of the bed until she was sitting with her feet tracing the lines in the floorboards. She didn’t remember looking like this; so inexperienced and juvenile and naive. I should have stayed this way .

“It’s okay,” Odette told her. The apparition stood, unwavering.

Odette crawled towards the end of the bed until she was sitting with her feet tracing the lines in the floorboards.

Odette reached her hand out and gently tucked a strand of hair behind the girl’s ear, letting her fingers fall across her cheek, cold to the touch. Odette shivered and cradled her own hand close to her chest.

The girl’s mouth began to move, wretched gasps of air with no words coming out. Her lips moved up and down and outwards, pulling the skin around her eyes towards her chin. Parts of her eyelid began to drip down her face, melted skin splattering onto her grandmother’s old floorboard. Then her nose, and then the flesh of her lips separated from her face until she was a mangled amalgamation of what a little girl was supposed to look like.

Odette closed her eyes. She was in the back of the pickup truck with her grandfather, weightlessness rising to her throat as the wheels disconnected from the gravel and sailed over the hills on the way out of town. She saw her grandma, the one who sewed up her ripped school dresses and bandaged her bloodied knees.

Odette could hear the little girl now. Look at me . She was saying. A wave of understanding washed over her, Look at me look at me look at me look at me.

Odette watched her burn.

Contributors

Maggie Yang is a writer and artist from British Columbia, Canada. Her poetry has been recognized by the Poetry Society , The League of Canadian Poets , and appears or is forthcoming in Ghost City Review , Split Rock Review , Eastern Iowa Review , among others. Her art appears in The Adroit Journal .

Keenan Norris ’s latest novel is The Confession of Copeland Cane , the winner of the 2022 Northern California Book Award. His essays have garnered the 2021–22 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award and 2021 Folio Award. In 2023, he published the biblio-memoir Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings . “The Chittlin’ Test: Question 1” is part of a novel-in-progress.

Amy S. Lerman lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert and is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris , won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest, and her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Midway Journal , Broad River Review , Radar Poetry , Rattle , Slippery Elm , and other publications.

Raiya Lewis is a University of Wisconsin–Madison student from Madison, Wisconsin. She is graduating in the spring of 2023 with degrees in English and Psychology, and hopes to continue to pursue writing in some capacity post-college.

Nancy Meyer (she/her) is a Pushcart nominee, avid cyclist, and community activist from the unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands of San Francisco. Meyer is published in many journals, including: Laurel Review, Sugar House Review, Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Caesura, Nebraska Poetry Society Open Contest, Book of Matches, Gyroscope , and Halfway Down the Stairs . In eight anthologies, including by Tupelo Press, Open Hands ; by Ageless Authors, Dang I Wish I Hadn’t Done That; and by Wising Up Press, Crossing Class . She is the recipient of a Hedgebrook Residency.

R. L. Hawkins is an MFA candidate at Butler University in Indianapolis, studying fiction. Her work appears in the Midway Journal and IU East Tributaries . She lives in Carmel, Indiana with her husband, Kyle, and their dogs, Winston and Rooney.

Danielle Gennaro earned an MFA from Manhattanville College and has studied at the University of Wales with the Dylan Thomas International Summer School. She has previously been published in Oberon Poetry Magazine , Wizards in Space Literary Magazine , Pittsburgh Poetry Journal , Toho Journal Online , The Raw Art Review , Silver Rose Magazine , and Lotus-eater Magazine .

Bess Henshaw is a senior at the University of Wisconsin–Madison studying English Creative Writing and Leadership. Bess was previously published in last year’s version of The Madison Review . She has previously been awarded the Charles M. Hart Writer of Promise Award, runner up in the Therese Muller Fiction Prize, and is a recipient of the George B. Hill Poetry Prize. When she isn’t reading or writing, Bess spends her time outdoors in the Northwoods of Wisconsin hiking, canoeing, and relaxing.

Katie Watters is from rural Wisconsin and spent more time outdoors than in during her childhood. She feels that her youth spent in nature influenced her perspective and changed the way she looks at the ordinary in life. Her art reflects the mundane in the world, with an added dash of color and the surreal. Watters believes people take so much in life for granted and when they just take a moment to look a little closer they can see that even the most mundane parts of life are vibrant and beautiful.

Maggie Yang

Keenan Norris

Amy Lerman

Raiya Lewis

Nancy Meyer

R. L. Hawkins

Danielle Gennaro

Bess Henshaw

Katie Watters