THE
WELLESLEY REVIEW
a literature & arts magazine spring 2013 / issue no. 10
CONTENTS
5
poetry
DINNER CONVERSATIONS
Yan Lin ’09
6
art
GHOST
Gabrielle Kwon ’15
THE HOME ON HESTER STREET
Ali Lanier ’15
7 prose 13
art
AFTERMATH
Jayne Yan ’16
14
poetry
JULIA
Ruth Li ’13
15
art
WHITE SHADOWS
Alice Liang ’16
16
poetry
SHIPWRECK II / NAUFRAGIO, PARTE II
Laura Mayron ’16
20
art
UNTITLED SCENES
Lucy V. Cleland ’13
22
prose
IT ALL GOES HAND IN HAND
Leah C. Abrams ’16
25
art
PROFESSOR BUNNY HARVEY Christine Oh ’13
26
poetry
TELEPHONE PICTIONARY AT BRETT’S APARTMENT IN SANTA CRUZ
Inci Antrek ’10
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28
poetry
MODELS FROM THE STUDIO
Claire Benson ’15
DINNER CONVERSATIONS
30
poetry
IMPOSSIBLE AT THIS AGE
Inci Antrek ’10
YAN LIN ’09
31
art
IDENTITY
32
poetry
I HAD GYPSY HAIR
34
art
FOCUS
30 poetry
I LOOK INTO MY GLASS, TRANSLATED
Christine Oh ’13 Jeni Prater ’14 Gabrielle Kwon ’15 Jiaqi Fan ’14 Annie Liu ’15 Sofi Zhang ’15
38
prose
PAIR
Wenbo Bai ’16
39
art
NO LIGHT
Sofi Zhang ’15
40
poetry
YUNNAN, III
42
art
CONSCIENCE
Scarlett Kao ’16
43
prose
SKELETON DRUNK
Erika Turner ’13
46
art
UNTITLED
Xinhong Qiu ’14
Yan Li ’09
The trick, I laugh up at him, is to be sincere and remember what you didn’t forget the way I do with memories, reframing again, again; refining raw emotion (grief, anger shame, always shame) to palatability, adding witty garnish for imagined readers: see what I love of food is how men armed with knives create works of art of such staggering loveliness —we forget about the animal, the violence of meat.
COVER ART: “Virmond” – Sahitya Raja ’15 POETRY
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THE HOME ON HESTER STREET ALI LANIER ’15
S
GHOST
ART
GABRIELLE KWON ’15
hops closed their doors before sunset. Many more people chose to jam the streets with automobiles rather than walk. June only realized the change when she considered why she and Lara never walked to the cinema anymore, or why she and Nick never went out to toxic little cafés in the evenings. This was why: the public warnings on the radio; the unpredictable eruptions of riots; New York’s slower, careful pace, as if a sudden step out of line might ignite the destructive blast of a mob. In mid-February, an explosion of violent protests, smashing glass and scattered pamphlets in downtown’s shopping district. Windows were shattered, stores were looted, a fire was started but flared into smoldering smoke. The road smelled like acrid, ugly burning for days afterward. The streets were deserted of pedestrians, and the automobiles rolled noisily over the litter of Chaos as Virtue pamphlets that lay on the pavement like road-kill. The Chaos as Virtue pamphlets had given the mobs a new name that rolled off tongues so habitually that it was shortened to a brief, exquisite, hated “C.A.V.” Their leader was named, for no reason anybody could explain, the Orchestra Man, a catchy but useless invention of a journalist. On Hester Street, at number 174, there was an abandoned restaurant and set of apartments with a bright red door, where a group of run-away children lived. Their numbers had swelled in recent weeks. There were now several dozen children. Some were
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very young, four or five. The older ones were verging on seventeen or eighteen. The children themselves remained wary half strangers to one another, but they all knew Lara. Lara had begun the Home, and she kept the ledgers and organized the supplies, a pale, chain-smoking seventeen-year-old guardian who took up residence in the restaurant proper itself. She was always sickly, and sometimes her fevers were serious, but she was reliably cheerful, sharp, and lovely. For June, fourteen and inflicted with cabin fever from these long hours she and the others now spent in the Home, Lara was a sudden big sister. Lara was far closer to her now than June’s blood brother, her twin David, who had run away with her to the Home. David has spent these last few months as June’s mute, miserable shadow; he locked himself up with notebooks and sticks of charcoal and sketched the days away, smudging the pages and his clothes with dark streaks. “I don’t understand,” said Lara over her black coffee on one of the last snowy afternoons, “why they don’t take these anti-Peacer riots through Peacer neighborhoods. I mean, I don’t want them to actually come through here. I’m just wondering why they don’t.” The Peacers were an extreme type of pacifist; they called themselves Young Souls. They were mostly farmers who had transplanted themselves from the Mid-West to occupy the Lower East Side about fifteen years before after the prohibitive Quota Measures effectively ended immigration. “Because,” Nick said, on the point of going out to work, “nobody’s telling the C.A.V. where to go. And they aren’t bright enough to go trampling around the population they oppose. Besides I think it isn’t really exclusively an anti-Peacer campaign anymore. It’s more of an anti-society campaign.”
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Nick was Lara’s age, a little older than June, and he brought in a good portion of the Home’s financial means working as a runner for the city’s thriving crime families. “You mean they’re anarchists?” “No—no. You know how you hear about all these dangerous anarchists on the radio who can’t stand government?” “I can’t stand government,” huffed Lara cheerily. “The whole idea—behind anarchism, I mean—is that the society would still work, it would run itself. Something would still function. That isn’t the goal with the C.A.V. They think the natural state of humanity is to be in conflict, right? That trying to be good or polite or civilized is unnatural? So that isn’t anarchism. I don’t know what it is, actually.” June was sitting with Lara on the bench at one of the restaurant tables, and Nick was halfway to the door. The newly repaired window, which had had a brick through it in a recent riot, was glossy with wet paint. “The radio’s saying,” Lara quipped, “that almost a sixth of New York’s up and gone. Just left the city—but that might be counting all the people who have up and left to sign up with the C.A.V.” But Nick only rolled a cigarette and puffed a contemptuous plume of smoke. “Well, maybe eventually they’ll send the Army up here. Maybe the governor’ll figure out these idiots are going to keep it up till they see that somebody actually means to stop them.” “New York doesn’t have a standing army,” said June, with the register of Children balanced against the edge of the table, pen pausing above the page. She had been helping Lara with the figures. Lara snapped around to look at her. “What’d you mean? Of course it does.”
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“No, the governor got rid of it right after he got sworn in. It was half the reason he got elected. He said the population wouldn’t have to worry about paying to maintain a huge standing army after a decade of peace—” “You’re joking.” But Lara didn’t sound as if she meant it. “Honey, this is why I hate politics. You think they can run themselves and you don’t have to worry over them, and you turn your back, and the whole political body decides it’s had enough for the day.” “That’s why this apathy’s such a problem—” “Oh, don’t talk to me about apathy. Apathy isn’t the problem—it’s this partly caring and partly not caring that’s New York’s problem. Enough people don’t care that somebody like the Orchestra Man can take the wheel when nobody’s interested enough to notice. You get a few intensely interested people in the middle of a couple million who don’t think it’s any of their business, and you get the C.A.V.” Lara finished by tapping a long fingernail on the register book on June’s lap. “Do you know why our numbers are going up and up and up? It’s because the parents are running to the C.A.V. and the kids are running to us. Do you see, June? We’ve got a duty to be apathetic. We start fostering opinions, and this whole place shakes apart. We’re in the Peacer Quarter, dear. We do maintain some absence of conflict, for health’s sake.” She gave her ad hoc little sister a smile before the chill in her words could sink in. It was impossible to dislike Lara. Impossible to be despondent when she was there. “Listen, love, I’m late,” said Nick with a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Actually,” Lara purred, “you’re leaving early. No card game tonight?” “No. I’ll be in around three. Unless somebody decides it’s a good night for a riot—then I guess I’ll come running home earlier.”
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“Well,” said his Lara, “have a nice time. Collect all that protection money.” The door shut behind him, and the girls were alone with Lara’s sharp coffee smell and dwindling cigarette. Lara’s lips stained her delicate cigarette holder red with economy lipstick. “I think I’ve finished,” said June, pushing the open notebook onto the tabletop with the inky pen. “How many do we have?” “Fifty-two.” Lara’s breath hissed out, thick with too-sweet tobacco. “Not too many.” June silently blessed her lovely, sickly sister and the winter chill crushing in around them. They both clung to the danger and the devotion and the jokes, all mingling with the dread of loss. The movements of Lara’s hands were so slow and tremulous, a fierce, seeping weakness eating almost visibly through the tiny veins. But Lara stood up and held out one of those unsteady hands for June. “Let’s go out,” she said. It was difficult to believe that she was not whole and bright and unbroken. June wondered how she could have considered her lost. “Where?” “Let’s get Dave and go to the nickelodeon. Has he ever been to a movie?” But she didn’t want an answer. June knew the rhythm of Lara’s half-conversations, the sensations that passed in place of words, tangled in possibilities like a piece of modern art. June stood up with her, and they locked arms to walk out into the chilly evening. Lara’s heels clicked crisply on the pavement. The frosty almost-night was private and quiet, hushed by the fear of a riot. Lara didn’t pause at the red door for David. The Peacers’ streets were deserted. They were making their afternoon visits
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indoors. The thin gold of the winter sun caught the muddy snow and reflected from it. The light made the empty evening street feel cleaner, safer, beautiful. The girls moved through the sunset, dark bobbed hair and worn, shared clothes creating rough approximations of sisters, both slim and pale from self-rationing and and days spent inside the Home. June had been wearing a coat in the unheated restaurant, a pretty robin’s-egg blue one of Lara’s, but Lara only had a light, pastel sweater, tucked around bare shoulders, and they were walking close together for the warmth. Wordlessness between them was a language without the added, mangling weight of translation. There was a soft, tired euphoria behind this evening, the hot, boundless sensation of being alive and unrestricted and together, the Lost Girls to Peter Pan’s Lost Boys, ageless and static. Yet they were still, inexplicably, falling closer and closer to adulthood. It would all change. The years were growing shorter and shorter and the world was moving faster and faster, and in a few years they would be women, the two of them, outsiders to the Home’s refugees. Lara tilted her chin up, watching the fire escapes pass by overhead. Everyone’s lives were moving differently because of the C.A.V., and the city’s pressurized tension and anger. Falling toward adulthood might not mean the same thing anymore. For all the city’s weariness and anxiety, all its barred doors, it was full of ways that were suddenly open.
JAYNE YAN ’16
PROSE
AFTERMATH
ART
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JULIA
A lyric poem: Jean Rhys’ After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie RUTH LI ’13
In that faded Paris hotel graced by dark-hued peonies Poised atop narrow alley ways she sits, clouded by her mask and Staring at the wall yet mirrors upon mirrors Reflect, distort, augment lurch her into vertigo – A woman is painting her while she is looking at a painting And re-telling her life story thinking what it is to represent a representation – Struggling to unravel the stages of reality She refuses to glance at the painting on the wall – that woman that is Herself, but not herself – There is little to discern on that pallid face – that fixed stare, unmoved Unremitting, nothing to suggest the fiery phoenix beneath, Waiting to emerge from the ashes – a new being Apart from the soulless wanderer of the surface
ALICE LIANG ’16
POETRY
WHITE SHADOWS
ART
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SHIPWRECK II
(an homage to F.G. Lorca and M.R.) LAURA MAYRON ’16
Your lost words are like shipwrecks in the deep that, miraculously are still illuminated from within their lights on in dark waters. You make me dive so deep to find them into uncertainty and loss one mile down As I question if I’ve lost you forever running out of air and wishing that I’d kept every devilish laugh and smile, every teasing sigh, kept and counted every time you called me Laurita away from the tides.
POETRY
What if one day I forget how to swim and those lights go out in the deep fairy tale extinguished and only the wreckage of your loss remains and leaves me that green girl on a railing, dreaming of the sea? When you read me that poem you couldn’t have fathomed the leagues it would lead me, little green me, fragile treasure hunter, down to find you again, to rediscover words I’d forgotten you’d spoken still shining on underneath the waves, one last shipwreck.
POETRY
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NAUFRAGIO, PARTE II (un homenaje a F.G. Lorca y M.R.) Tus palabras perdidas son cómo unos naufragios en las profundidades del mar, que, cómo un milagro se iluminan todavía desde dentro con sus luces encendidas en oscuras aguas. Me haces zambullirme tanto para encontrarlos sumergiéndome hasta una milla en la incertidumbre y la pérdida. Pregunto si te he perdido para siempre, quedando sin aire y siempre esperando que hubiera retenido cada risa y sonrisa diabólica, cada pitorreo suspiro, retenido y contado cada vez que me llamaste Laurita y que los había tiraran desde la marea.
POETRY
¿Y que pasa si algún día olvido lo que es nadar y estas luces se apaguen en las profundidades del mar? ¿Si van extinguiendo la fantasía, y sólo pertenece las ruinas de su extravió que me deja cómo la mujer verde esperando en la baranda, soñando de la mar? Cuándo me leíste este poema nunca habría entendido cuantos leguas me causaría viajar. La chiquita verde, una cazadora de tesoros perdidos, ya al punto de quebrar, buscando en los fondos para encontrarte otra vez, para redescubrir las palabras que me dijiste, todavía brillando abajo de las aguas, el último naufragio.
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These photos are digitally super-imposed in order to render the same effect as my original installation. For the installation, I printed each scene digitally on clear mylar, attached to large plexiglass tiles. When displayed on a light box, the illuminated tiles can be moved, varied, and layered, leading to many more combinations between studio and environment than can be illustrated in print.
LUCY V. CLELAND ’13
ART
UNTITLED SCENES
ART
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IT ALL GOES HAND IN HAND LEAH C. ABRAMS ’16
I
’m on my gap year in Paris. La Ville de l’Amour. The two names seem to belong to one another: Paris, the City of Love. I don’t know how the city and the phrase became connected and I’ve often wondered if, back in the days prior to Facebook, Skype, email, Kindles, publishing houses, and printing presses, there was a story of love that lived through whispers. A story that has always linked the tangible city and that intangible, elusive emotion. Down the cobblestone pathways walk couples hand in hand. Young couples sit at cafés, cigarettes in hand, while old men in tweed coats slowly shuffle down Boulevard Saint-Germain with their wives shuffling beside them. Young guys walk protectively with their arms around their petites amies, and young girls giggle and chit-chat about guys they met at a party, at a dance club, or at school. Being a tourist with nothing to do but follow a primal instinct of wanderlust, I pass by most of these conversations and view most of these sights. Waiting in line for L’Opéra National de Paris during a light sprinkle, I can’t help but notice these couples walking by or waiting in line right next to me. It’s as if a boyfriend-girlfriend, boyfriendboyfriend, girlfriend-girlfriend epidemic is spreading throughout the streets of Paris. If I had to guess at the origin of this phenomenon I would probably say that the pigeons brought it with them; they’ve been everywhere. L’Opéra is amazing. It’s one of those buildings that seems like a thousand-piece puzzle that’s already been completed. I can see the ephemeral creatures of the 1800s gliding down the stairs, elegant
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dresses slipping across the stone. In the next room I imagine a MarieAntoinette kind of crowd, commenting on pastries and trying to snobbishly ignore, but clandestinely glance at, the beautifully painted walls. This place would be frozen in time if it weren’t woken from age-old reveries by the flash of cameras and the accidental collisions of peace-sign-posing tourists. Still, it’s interesting how a place this old and historic can live in an age as new and progressive as ours. I think that’s a lot like Paris though. Visitors can tour the streets of Paris via Segway, the Apple store is housed in an old building near the Opéra and Galeries Lafayette, a more extravagant and expensive version of Bloomingdales. This is my third time visiting the Galeries Lafayette (potentially fourth because the first time I went to Paris I was three and all I can remember is the sound of carousels and the bread that towered over me). It isn’t until this trip though that I realize the grandiose-ness of the place. When I step through the doors I feel as if I have entered an international market. I can hear Chinese, Japanese, English, French, English accents flowing together. “A perfume for the pretty lady?” “This dress came in just yesterday!” “Please go to the end of the line in order to go to the Chanel store. We only let in ten persons at a single time.” An atrium rises to a domed ceiling hundreds of feet above my head. I can see the forms of people on the balconies, sitting at cafés, and looking up at the stained-glass ceiling, admiring the view. Tourists and locals browse the Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Diane Von Furstenberg stalls. Women draw out designer portefeuilles and take out crisp hundred euro bills, green Pont de Neuilly, and hologram strip which smile happily back at the customers. The light from the stained glass sprinkles down, making each expensive item even
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more irresistible. In a place like Galeries Lafayette, “want” turns into “need” turns into “MUST HAVE!” It’s a dangerous place. On the third floor of Lafayette I get lost and, in the action of getting lost, find a small exhibition about Salvador Dalí. The thing was, though, it was about Dalí and Gala. Gala was Dalí’s wife. When she met him, she was already married with a child. Dalí instantly fell in love with her despite his never having previously shown an interest in women, relationships, or even romance for that matter. They married and lived their lives together in the Parisian lap of luxury where they reigned as the king and queen of fashion, art, and all things cultural. They were the early- and mid1900s version of Brangelina, the love-children of the media. Yet, Gala wasn’t content. From her and Dalí’s letters, which were on display at the small exhibit, it seems as though Gala was always reaching for some level of emotional fulfillment, but if asked, I had the sense that she would not have been able to define it. As she grew older, she became more withdrawn and relocated to a house in the country that Dalí bought for her. She became increasingly senile, and, when she died, Dalí plunged into depression. That’s where the exhibit ends their story: all that remains are the dregs. I take the escalator down to the second floor and sit at one of the cafés. I watch as people mill about the center perfume area, spritzing and spraying scents every which way. I see many different kinds of loves: the temporary love of teenagers, the love of shopping and souvenirs, and the love shuffling old couples, hobbling side by side. It all goes hand in hand. I am in Paris, voilà. CHRISTINE OH ’13
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PROFESSOR BUNNY HARVEY
ART
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TELEPHONE PICTIONARY AT BRETT’S APARTMENT IN SANTA CRUZ INCI ANTREK ’10
Scorpion pussy! That was a cute bug with a gaping vagina not at all like the scorpion attacking a cat, which was a bear two turns ago. The transformation was negligible, relatively speaking. And as we sat Japanese style on the carpet, chalices of pinot noir, crackers topped with pear marmalade and rosemary, I thought of more rapid, significant mutations
What does it even matter, when it’s what someone else wants you to mean? Interpretation reflects character which is why we always end up with pornography. Whatever you meant is slashed from your original sentence, and when turn after turn we remove the undesirable, all that’s left is raw sex, sketches of mangled stick figures. All that’s left is me on the bed, thinking that at least in the last hour, there was no talking, nothing misunderstood.
like your words revised after my expression like my expression revised after your words like my words screaming after you fumble to revise again and again and everyone laughing around the table screaming That’s not what I meant!
POETRY
POETRY
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MODELS FROM THE STUDIO CLAIRE BENSON ’15
Being naked is better than being clothed, And there’s no point to being clothed When we’re naked around each other, anyway. As if the conversation is naked, migrating From my mouth in through your ears, Exiting through your nose when you breathe Out to give me another taste. Not erotic, although how could it be When we’re just big toes and ankles? It’s not erotic When there’s nothing sexy to see. My fat talks to your fat, and naked minds meet. Desnudo, we’re just two pairs of nipples That are staring eye-to-eye. There are two models here, and I am On the blue sheet (you’re on the orange) And we contrast and connect nicely According to the color wheel. What if we were clothed around each other? What if we never made it to the naked phase Of a conversation? I could tell, because You’d solidify and validate your thoughts By looking at me, maybe you’d get a nod, or two, Their reactions were robotic, and I’m sitting there,
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Nakedly, so do you see that I couldn’t understand? I wasn’t feeling the technology, or the window That was at times two-sided, and at other times, not. I was thinking about how you told me to appreciate An orange. A fruit that better be damn good After you go through the fingernail-encrusting effort Of stripping it of its peel. There was a point when I decided that everything was symbolic; I’m naked, so I deserve to be selfish, too. It was so naked, my silence against yours, That their belly-buttons touched. I remember when we were in the San Francisco Art Museum I didn’t get the art there, there’s something about me being naked Around art that makes everything un-click. I can’t remember if I shared your chair, Or if we just sat next to each other, but either one Is fine, because you let me taste your bitter-sweet espresso shot. I also don’t remember if you offered me a bite Of your half chocolate Half-naked macaroon, or if, perhaps, I just invited myself to taste it, but that would be ok, too. You clothed me in some of you, and I remember It smelling delicious and artificial. You held my ear as we walked up the curving, German staircase. You sat there, and neither of us spoke As we let the naked silence simmer between us.
POETRY
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IMPOSSIBLE AT THIS AGE INCI ANTREK ’10
Ça veut dire que t’es nul au foot! Small blond boy in Messi’s jersey, flawless French on the Marmara shore. Not at all like my year in Aix when I came back and clammed up. “A whole YEAR?” Uh-huh. He huffs his bony shoulders and kicks the soccer ball toward his incompetent teammate. I am at the Caddebostan promenade, in the mauve gauze of evening. (in Turkish, to his father): ”Do we really have to go home?” There is nothing left for me, nothing. I plan for my children. I will give birth in all countries at once. CHRISTINE OH ’13
POETRY
IDENTITY
ART
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I HAD GYPSY HAIR JENI PRATER ’14
that felt more at home in the Cherokee wind than in my mother’s unrelenting brush. Yielding straight those ornery waves she would say, filterless, You remind me too much of your father. He grew up in beige – From the summer’s dead grass that seemed to blend into the few houses that interrupted those empty fields to some forgotten girl’s initials carved into the neck of his spruce wood guitar.
But when I got older, and she got older, too, she would only ramble on about why he left. That man would play with fire, from his damn filterless Luckies to the way he would chase after senseless dreams and short skirts. Your daddy’s a rambler, baby, and you’ll spend the rest of your days running after him. But she must have known – I’m not a thing like her.
When I was small, Mama would tell me the story of how they met. He sang “Whenever You Come Around” in my ear, and we danced until last call. Old southern charm in neon lights, she would say – smoky, reckless, he was. He swept me off my feet before I even knew I could fall.
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GABRIELLE KWON ’15
ART
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FOCUS
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自鉴
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I LOOK INTO MY GLASS
哈代
THOMAS HARDY, ORIGINAL
端详镜中的自己 无奈逝去的容颜 我说, 愿仰神的恩赐 我曾澎湃的心早已悄然归田
I look into my glass, And view my wasting skin, And says: “Would God it come to pass, My heart had shrunk as thin!”
那时，我痛苦不能， 当我叹人情淡薄， 唯有孤寂伴随我的余生 从此便永远缄默 但是时光，折磨我的心灵， 一半偷去，另一半守候。 黄昏战栗这脆弱的神经 ， 夜潮悸动，直到午后。
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For then, I, undistrest By hearts grown cold to me, Could lonely wait my endless rest With equanimity. But Time, to make me grieve Part steals, lets part abide; And shake this fragile frame at eve With throbbings of noontide.
Trans. by Wellesley in Translation Jiaqi Fan ’14 Annie Liu ’15 Sofi Zhang ’15
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POETRY
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PAIR WENBO BAI ’16
I
t’s half-past two, the awkward time stragglers finally return to their offices after a long lunch. I’m sitting outside a coffee shop, and nearly all the people I see walking along the narrow streets are carrying briefcases or backpacks and walking with a purpose towards the bustling intersection. There’s also a hunched-backed elderly man in his late sixties, I’m presuming, walking his equally old beagle. Who knows how long they’ve had each other. Then the dog stops walking (and so does the man), quivers for a moment, then squats down and leaves a brown heap in the middle of the sidewalk. The edges of my mouth involuntarily slide downwards as the dog straightens up. But the old man doesn’t seem to mind. With one hand still on the leash, he uses his other hand to take a crumpled plastic bag out of his pocket. He bends his knees and for one ridiculous moment I thought he was going to leave another mess on the ground, but then in one deft scoop he picks up the excrement and ties the bag shut. His dog watches his every move with an absurd seriousness, his ears and tail motionless. The man stands up, his face violently flushed with the effort, but he is smiling as takes the bag and leash in one hand. He looks at his dog and brings an index finger to his lips before they continue to walk, as if they had planned everything. The dog sniffs fondly at his shoes before walking on. I bring my eyes back and catch the eye of the waiter who’s refilling my coffee (he’s been watching too), and we both look away. SOFI ZHANG ’15 PROSE
NO LIGHT ART
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YUNNAN, III YAN LI ’09
A stone pavilion. A golden plum. You. Outside, rain. Sheets of it drawn straight down. A pebble placed at the sill would be halved wet and dry, cleanly as if a painter had delineated its halves.
The rain is not easing. Solid women huddle near their wares. Somewhere a man shouts to his herd, urgency blurred by rain— Jia! Jia! You imagine them flowing down the cliffs pinto, piebald, and roan.
Beyond, the mountains. Always, the mountains in their near-blue verdancy, irreplicable
You have never been here before. You remember.
sense of being, saturated
A low bell is ringing. The mountains swallow its resonance and bear it to earth. Brilliant: the plum, the sun, you hold in your mouth.
like pu-erh tea brewed from a brick consummate; how could you imagine it brewed another way? These days, it is becoming more difficult and less important to remember if you remember or were told what to remember: the years accumulating like sediment terrascape memory. Moss. Larch. Dwarf pines.
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THE WELLESLEY REVIEW
ISSUE NO. 10
SPRING 2013
43
SKELETON DRUNK ERIKA TURNER ’13
T
wo weeks before his twelfth birthday in the winter of 1969, Raymond Malloy discovered The Jackson Five. For the next several months, he stood before the black and white outline of the Jackson brothers on his family’s 25-inch television screen, adjusting the antenna every now and then when the screen went out and perfecting even the most complex turns. He stopped letting his mother trim his head on Sunday afternoons until her clippers turned to a pick and his hair began to grow into a thick black afro, just like the brothers on TV. His father would complain that Ray was getting too caught up in idolatry – “That boy is gonna lose his soul to that kind of music,” he would say – but his mother would gently massage oil into his hair and give an encouraging smile every time he begged to show her his latest dance moves after dinner. She couldn’t do much else for her boys, she didn’t think. She fed them and washed their clothes and loved them the best she could, surely. But her heart was tired and her body weak. She had stopped sighing as the clump of fine black hair in her comb grew thicker and thicker. She simply wore her hair up and tried not to touch it at all, lest it fall out altogether. Her honey brown eyes had begun to sink into her yellow brown skin and her joints had begun to stiffen. Black women never aged, people liked to say. But she had barely touched thirty and could already feel the deep cut of time as her youth bled away, hacked off by the pleading hands of children and the calloused grip of a man’s love. CONSCIENCE
ART
SCARLETT KAO ’16
PROSE
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THE WELLESLEY REVIEW
Though he could not articulate it, Raymond understood his mother’s weariness; he felt it each time his father lumbered through their home and raised his heavy fists. Yet he could not fathom her escape nor ever did he wish for it, understanding, as a child might, the need for both his mother’s love and his father’s strength. Instead, Raymond stayed up each night and listened through the crack in the door, breathing in the tension just beyond his room and hoping some part of himself could extend as a shield between them. By now, he could memorize his father’s footsteps. He knew how many steps it took the man to reach the other side of the room, his enormity crushing the air beneath his feet as he took in huge gasps of breath, black nose flaring, steady and full of quiet rage. In three long strides, his father would reach his mother and she would fall before he reached her, her back pressed into the corner of the wall and her hands over her face. Raymond waited until he heard the familiar sound of his mother’s voice pleading like a gentle rainfall, pooling at the bottom of his stomach. He could see his mother’s frail body shaking, the pink rollers beneath their black silk cap acting as a helmet as his father showered her with blow after blow. He closed the door to his room and slipped back into bed with his younger brother, pretending not to feel the warm liquid that spread over the sheets or the rattle of the little boy’s body as he muffled his sobs. If their Daddy found out he wet the bed again, they’d both get the whip – Marcus for being a sissy and Raymond because he was there. So he pushed himself as far from his brother as he could and settled into darkness. The next day, Ray burst into his mother’s kitchen to show her his first passing mark in school. She had promised him that if he scored well on his tests, she’d pool together some money to get him a purple cowboy hat, like the one Michael wore on The Ed Sullivan show earlier in the year. He strutted through the house the way his father
PROSE
ISSUE NO. 10
SPRING 2013
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did after a heavy bout of drinking, shoulders back and eyebrows high, sporting a creased, pleased smile that slid into a deep frown when he could not find his mother. He had never come home to a motherless house before. She was always in the kitchen, getting supper ready for when their father came home. “Marcus!” Ray stalked into his room to find his brother on the floor, his hands behind his neck as the record player spun steadily. “Where’s Ma?” he asked. “She ain’t back yet?” his brother looked at him in surprise. “Nah. Where’d she go?” “I don’t know. She wan’t here when I got home either.” Raymond felt a lump sink from his throat and dig into the bones of his pelvis. His nose flared as he turned on his heel, taking long strides from the living room back to the kitchen. He slammed his grade sheet onto the counter and dug his palms into the ceramic tiles. He’d just wait. That’s all. She was just out, running errands or something. Ma would be home soon. She knew better than to make his father wait. When he came home, they stared at each other - Ray from the kitchen and his father from the doorway, his hand still lingering on the knob as he slowly, hesitantly clicked the door shut. His brother’s music slid through the house, mocking its emptiness. They waited. Raymond waited until the day his father died. Then, he packed his bags and moved across the country to a large, sleepless city. He had 50 dollars, a watch, and two bottles of whiskey – Jack Daniels, in loving memory of his father.
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UNTITLED
ART
THE WELLESLEY REVIEW
XINHONG QIU ’14
the
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wellesley review
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Jaya Stenquist ’13, Cicia Lee ’14 POETRY BOARD Emma Maynard ’13, Ava Bramson ’14, Emilie Menzel ’14, Claire Benson ’15, Emily Frisella ’16, Mariya Getsova ’15, Laura Mayron ’16 PROSE BOARD Anna Morton ’13, Erin Yeagle ’13, Sydney Butler ’15, Ali Lanier ’15, Celina Reynes ’16, Ruby Smith ’16, Victoria Yu ’16 ART & LAYOUT BOARD Julia Orlov ’13, Priyanka Shahane ’13, Lilly Gorman ’15, Jaymee Sheng ’16, Julia Um ’16
FOUNDING EDITOR: Sumita Chakraborty
The Wellesley Review is a bi-annual literature and arts magazine that features the work of Wellesley students, faculty, and alumnae. Find us online at thewellesleyreview.org.