Journal7 by Thread Literary Inquiry

2013 Selected and edited by: Kevin Potter Ariel Nagy Vicki Entreken Janelle Allen

Advised by: Ira Sukrungruang Cover Photo by: Jimmy McNulty Design & Layout by: Janelle Allen

Sponsored by: USF Student Government USF College of Arts & Sciences USF Council of Undergraduate Research

thread Literary Inquiry is an undergraduate literary journal staffed by student editors. We strive to publish the best undergraduate writing that the University of South Florida has to offer. Submissions are accepted from all genres within these categories: short fiction, nonfiction, essay, literary criticism, poetry, and screenplays.

Contents Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note

About a Boy by Daniel Merced

Like, Naturally Selected by Georgia Jackson

Fruition Rebecca Barton

The Deep Jimmy McNulty

Anxiety and Alienation in the Modern Bildungsroman: A Freudian Analysis of Oryx and Crake and Invisible Man Cory Engle

Eating Out Paige Lewis

Carly Parker Brittni Sutter

What Does the Death of God Mean for Nietzsche? Joshua Pettit

The Elephant and the Dove Sarah Beagan

Sad Spanish Kid With Broken English Who Is Afraid of Everything Xavier Vega

Contents 61 66

Editor’s Note

The Machine Mary Bless

“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of

Conspicuous Consumption Ryin Cornett

the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

So Late Thir Happie Seat William Willis

Alcohol and Ectoplasm Chelsea Locke

Sunday Paige Lewis

Visiting the Grave Samantha Eppes

only enterprise that has since become an exceptional annual publication.

104

Thunderbird Anthony Saint

106

Persian Boy by Jack Davani

108

Titty Bars and Ghormeh Sabzi by Jack Davani

~Steven Pressfield

In 2007, thread forged the way for the undergraduate writers of

University of South Florida to share their writing. thread was an online-

This year, thread asked authors to submit writing for a new category, essays, along with short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, literary criticism, and screenplays. The response was a considerable number of remarkable artistic and academic works. Volume 7 proves that the publication of

thread is still an essential component of USF’s creative community.

Vicki, Kevin, Ariel, and I are proud to present thread Volume 7, a stunning collection of creative and academic writing.

~Janelle

ABOUT A BOY Daniel Merced

I. Do you remember the time I ripped one of you open when I fell over the barb wire fence, and you bled, and needed four stitches, back when stitches were pieces of thread, and not invisible or biodegradable, and you were sewn shut by the smiling doctor who gave you a red sucker afterwards to hold for me to lick? Do you remember when the callus first appeared while practicing cursive on the word dog? Do you remember rubbing that red, Oklahoman dust off Geronimo’s headstone that me and Paul found after biking up a forgotten mountainside on a cracked and cold October morning? Do you remember dropping the TV remote and flexing while a Korean research team (in subtitles) explained that longer penises were found in men whose ring fingers were longer than their indexes? Do you remember when you touched a steel knot or staple or some such craziness deep inside of a girl, and how shocked I was to feel that cold foreign thing in that warm familiar there, how I couldn’t control the sudden wave of disgust and betrayal that swept through me from your moist tips, how I nearly recalled you from your probing but then just kept the pace rhythmic and unworried, how I tried to ignore that metallic evidence that was likely patching up a botched baby drop, how I wondered just how deep had I gone? Do you remember the slipping of the wedding band off right before you met those mangled fallopians? Do you remember using your nails to pick out bits of DNA before feeling the band slip back on again? Do you remember how I said that would be the last time? Do you remember the first time I said it would be the last time? II. “So Mom is moving to Puerto Rico, and I’m staying with you?” 6

III. God liberated me once: “You spread her and feel that you own her if only for this moment. Wipe the slime that dangles from lips to lips along her quivering belly and place an ear between those dual mounds of fat. Listen beyond the sticky biology, beyond the perspiring, expiring flesh. Do you here it?” Here what? “The earth is warming and cooling and you think you are the cause, that you can melt caps of ice older than mankind, peel away layers of ozone like that bikini top, evaporate fisheries, aviaries, and colonies of bacteria (yet still unable to crack the code of the common cold.) Can you please unfail to sea?” Sea what? “The universe shivers and shakes and winks and waits for you to continue molesting and murdering each other. You are but a grain of pollen blown deep into the cracked bark of a willow. You violently make and demake, from loins and silos, mostly each other. That is all. And once your musty corruption has dribbled out of Mandy or Mindy, extinguish the lamp that floods the bed with truth. Cover your sweat and sins in soiled sheets and get uncomfortable under your comforter. Shut out the radio, magnetic, and electronic waves of false-somethings and in the darkness you will see.” See? “That you are barely and only.” ? “Hear the thud of life outside that fogged three-paned glass. Feel the wind sprinkle dirt against your deadbolt… and then breathe. It is what you do, increte and excrete, carbon and oxygen. And dream, constantly in motion even when unconscious. Accept that you are the crushed ant that twitches in your giant’s shadow, that you are merely life, hydrogens 7

dancing and sexing, and there is nothing to fear as the bonds are merely handcuffs. They will loosen and tighten eternally, they will build and collapse like whispering sand dunes, and you will always be forming and dying, breathing and moaning, laughing and blinking, and truly, utterly, completely, wholly, holy nothing.” IV. Dad’s cologne was this rich blend of gasoline and Marlboros. It was the unleaded that always excited me. It meant summer road trips in December. It meant pickups from Sheridan Elementary and letting me steer the wheel. It meant when I asked how the car knew which blinking arrow to blink when he wanted to go right or to my other right, and he said the car was sometimes psychic. He’d lean against the pump and I’d plant a smiling face right at the intersection of nozzle and Taurus and I’d breathe deeply in and slowly out, and he’d watch as life and fume collided and swirled and baked and disappeared under the hot gaze of the afternoon Son. V. The First Ten 1. The middle school dropout who fled Puerto Rico because her boyfriend tried to stab her. 2. The friend of that dropout who she thought I’d be into so we drove across Alligator Alley (or attempted to when the Corolla overheated, and I had her stand by side of the road so that the interstate breeze could play with her mid-thigh mini, and not thirty seconds later some Mexican kicked into the median in his two-toned Chevy, picked us up, and dropped us off two hours later at a Fort Myers trailer park where the friend was waiting.) 3. The dropout’s brother’s ex-girlfriend that looked as horselike as she was whorse-like. 8

4. The dropout’s brother’s next girlfriend who hid in the trunk of the repaired Corolla while the dropout drove us to the Executive Palace Hotel, a flophouse that charged per hour per couple and would have cost us $10 more had they seen the third teenager, so we left her curled up with the spare tire while checking in. 5. The white Italian in the McMansion who rebelled against her racist grandparents by inviting me for linguine and a dip in her pool. 6. The bony, Spanish chick at the party who walked into the bathroom while I was sitting on the toilet rolling a joint. I told her I needed a minute. She told me she needed to piss. I picked up my baggie and sat on the tub. She pulled down her panties and sat on the toilet. 7. The chubby one, with frizzy hair and frizzier skin, who was suitably sweet and I only call(ed) when suitably hammered. 8. The Catholic college girl with a Jewish nose I met during last call and left the bar with thirteen minutes later. Don’t remember her name but did get it on video. 9. The mother of three kids from two guys neither of which was me. 10. The flamenco dancer who passed out drunk on the bed before we got started, who I then stripped and lingered over, whose parted lips I contemplated while finishing off the Kettle One, who I thought about raping but then just jerked off on top of, who when she called the next day and asked how she ended up naked and sticky, I tell that I’m shocked she can’t remember because we had such an amazing time, the best of my life even, so I fleshed out all the incredible details, the rooms and positions and hours we tore through, the moaning and scratch marks on my chest that I scratched onto my chest as I talked, and who was so mad she drank so much because it sounded like she had such an incred9

ible time, that she invited me back over the next night and passed out drunk again.

Like, Naturally Selected Georgia Jackson The year is 1975, the place is California and the language is Valleyspeak. Comprising of words such as “tubular” and “gnarly,” Valleyspeak most famously – or infamously – popularized use of the word “like” as a spacefiller used in daily conversation. Commercialized by the 1983 movie “Valley Girls,” Valleyspeak has since infiltrated this use of ‘like’ into the vocabularies of many, much to the annoyance of the elder generations from which it so ironically originated. Since its humble beginnings, like has gained multiple meanings and uses outside of its intended job description, leading to its impressive durability. It has been approximately thirty-seven years since the inception of like as we know it. The typical user of Valleyspeak still causes pain to the ears of those who engage in conversation with said Valley Girl/Guy and eavesdroppers alike; and the formally simple word ‘like’ has far surpassed the days of simile-making. But let’s make one anyway. Trends are like genes. Throughout the evolution of life, genes are randomly mutated in order to generate a pool of variable traits. These randomly mutated genes are then naturally selected based on how well they fit the environment (Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky and Jackson). Similarly, throughout the development of culture, trends randomly come in and out of fashion with the best fit lasting the longest until something “harder, better, faster, stronger” comes along to take its place (Daft Punk). However, despite this, many still believe that like is mere child’s play, reserved for the uneducated or young. Emerson faculty member, Ted Gup, makes his contempt for the word known in a recent Chronicle article entitled “Diss ‘Like’,” by stating, “No word has less meaning or says as much about what has become of education.” Furthermore, Gup explains that as a college professor he has even gone so far as to humiliate students in class “to the point of paralysis” through holding up a large sign reading “LIKE” whenever the word is uttered as a way of conditioning them to abandon the over-used crutch (Gup). Gup’s solution for getting rid of like in his classroom may be a reasonable response to his pet peeve, but is it really just humiliation?

Following the gene analogy, Gup’s interference with the growing like trend could be categorized as divine intervention. This does not mean the elder, more experienced generations should never advise the younger. The advice of parents and teachers is often welcomed and quite useful when it comes to kids making bad decisions, but this just isn’t, like, one of them. And ignoring the fact that English-speakers are notorious for intervening with those less established, do we really need another Trail of, like, Tearing-up students? Gup’s take on the argument, which has been ever-persistent since the early 70s, merely revives the war on like to a zombie-like-(There! Another use of the word.) state of undead-ness. His points spring from nothing more than a personal gripe with like. And as psychologist, Steven Pinker points out, “Language mavens commonly confuse their own peeves with a worsening of the language” (Pinker). While well-written, Professor Gup’s stance is seemingly backed up by nothing more than a personal annoyance with the word. Nevertheless, a dynamic discussion was sparked by Gup’s article through readers’ comments in the Chronicle forum. Many attacked Gup on the technical level, taking his dislike of like as a cue to critique the man’s own use of certain English phrases. Chronicle user, Diggitt McLaughlin’s wrote in his post, “I say, take any prof anywhere ever who uses phrases like ‘As is well known’ and shoot them all on sight,” while others approached the argument head-on. One user even cited the quarterly journal, American Speech, which addressed the like debate in its 2007 Winter issue, validating like’s existence through its many new meanings. Among these new meanings is the ability to paraphrase a recent event, soften a phrase and create a more ubiquitous statement. For example, “So then, she was like, I can’t believe it. And I was like, believe it. And then she was like, no way. And I was like, fffyeah.” This illustration of paraphrasing with like comes from blogger, Jesse Kavaldo’s upload, “The Meaning of Like,” an article which presents alternative connotations and uses. In the event of softening an expression, like may be used to distinguish between phrases such as, “I’m like depressed,” versus, “I’m depressed.” In these cases, the addition of like lets the listener know that the speaker isn’t actually clinically depressed, but instead perhaps just feeling down momentarily. As for ubiquifying (Is that a word? No? Well, maybe it will become one) statements, author James Simon Kunen hit the nail on the head in his 1968 account, The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary, in explaining, “We youths say like

all the time because we mistrust reality. It takes a certain commitment to say something is. Inserting like gives you a bit more running room” (Kunen 86). It was American composer, John Cage, who so brilliantly said “I don’t understand why people are afraid of new ideas. I am afraid of the old ones.” Without change, progress cannot be made and without progress, life remains undefined. The trend of like in the English language should be permitted to play out as so many other modifications have been allowed to. The origins of the English alphabet itself can be traced back to Egyptian Hieroglyphs, meaning that if the Egyptian symbols hadn’t undergone serious changes, the alphabet we know today would not exist. So, when talking about actual words themselves, naturally variations come in and out of play as trends change and culture progresses. In the end, the fact that simple words such as like have the potential to grow and even flourish shows that life touches on all aspects of, well, life and is even reminiscent of the romanticized American Dream which was defined by James T. Adams as, “[A] life, better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” (214). This is the basic dynamic of life that defines everything and it isn’t something even an Emerson College professor with a Chronicle account can put a stop to.

Works Cited Adams, James Truslow. The Epic of America. 1931. Print. Bauer, Susan Wise. “Chapter 7: Firsts.” The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 50. Print. D’Arcy, Alexandra. “Like and Language Ideology: Disentangling Fact From Fiction.” American Speech. Duke University Press, Winter 2007. Print. Gup, Ted. “The Chronicle Review.” Diss ‘Like’ The Chronicle Review, 8 Jan. 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2012. Kavaldo, Jesse. “The Meaning of Like.” Web log post. Hourman. Wordpress, 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2012. Kostelanetz, Richard. Conversing with Cage. New York: Limelight Editions, 1988. Print. Kunen, James Simon. The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College

Revolutionary. New York: Random House, 1968. Print. Momem-Christo, Guy-Manuel De, and Thomas Bangalter. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. Daft Punk. Daft Life, 2001. MP3. Pinker, Steven. “If I Ruled the World: Steven Pinker.” Editorial. Prospect. 19 Oct. 2011. Web. 6 Apr. 2012. Urry, Lisa A., Michael L. Cain, Steven A. Wasserman, Peter V. Minorsky, and Robert B. Jackson. “Chapter 1: Evolution.” Campbell Biology. By Jane B. Reece. Ninth ed. Boston: Pierson Learning Solutions, 2011. 51-54. Print. Valley Girl. Dir. Martha Coolidge. By Wayne Crawford, Andrew J. Lane, Frederick Elmes, and Eva Gordos. Prod. Wayne Crawford, Andrew J. Lane, and Mary Delia Javier. Perf. Nicolas Cage, Michael Bowen, E. G. Daily, and Deborah Foreman. Atlantic Releasing Corp., 1983. DVD.

Fruition Rebecca Barton It begins bare, but big— too big, in fact. Emaciated, misshapen, grotesque, Not enough muscle to stand on its own. Hidden away from all in a corner Until it receives the attention it needs To grow: stronger, fuller, fitter. And then—

It uncurls. One finger, then one limb at A time. The muscles fill out; sinews grow. Rising, able now to stand on its own. It grows stronger, but not bigger—clearer. The awkward body making sense now And finally, it is ready. To be Spit out on a tongue, and then, to the world.

The Deep Jimmy McNulty

Staring out into that deep, blue abyss I wonder if that’s all there is. The unseen current is much like the air: it pushes us apart, pulls us together, and keeps us in place. And it seems as if this is all a simultaneous occurrence. We watch the inferior creatures float before us. They wander in and out of our view, existing, then ceasing to. These inferior creatures are more in control of their destiny than we are. Yet inferiority is only a word. It’s only an opinion, much like good and evil or right and wrong. We search for purpose in life, yet these creatures are content with following the ocean’s path for them. These creatures have purpose; they are fully content and complete. If only we knew what our purpose was. But that’s one of the only certainties of life, I suppose, that you’ll never be certain of anything. Except that you will eventually perish. You can never be more certain of that. Life will bring you down one way or the other. Michael Crichton says, “I am certain there is too much certainty in this world.” Joan and I stare out of the glass as we used to stare at the sky: In the quiet darkness. Alone, but not alone. Unseen, but seen. Together, yet not together. We don’t know how long it’ll be before we’re forced to look away. Oscar Wilde says, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” We even stare at the bleeding stars, which glow ever brighter as the untouchable disasters in our lives only become worse. We hope there is deeper meaning and purpose in these. Our hope trickles away as something else replaces it.

We’re in what they call a research submersible; we’re dangling on a cable which is being supported by a diving control vessel. We’re in a barrel at the end of a string. A very long, pressured string. “Experiencing some technical difficulties” would be a gross understatement; there must be a problem up above. Sadly, the phrase “What goes up must come down” doesn’t work in reverse. Joan is cradled in my arms, worried and scared. I’m not sure if I can console her. I fear her fear. Mark Twain says, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” Yet I find it difficult to feel courageous. Joan speaks to me; it’s difficult to hear her over the noise of the silence and the beating of our hearts. “Do you think we play any part in our destiny?” William Shakespeare says, “All the World’s a stage.” “I hope so. But either way, it doesn’t matter.” “Why’s that?” Isaac Singer says, “We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.” “Because it doesn’t feel like destiny. It feels like I’m making up my own decisions, so who’s to say I’m not?” Jeremy Bentham says, “Stretching his hand out to catch the stars, he forgets the flowers at his feet.” You tend to wonder about these things at this stage in life; in the end. I place my fingers against the small glass window to my left. I seem to be too far away from the glass, but my breath carries and condensates against it. I see the fish swim past outside the glass. I wonder if they yearn to walk as we yearn to swim, or fly. I wonder if the nature of all things or only human nature forces us to want more. Charles Dickens says, “Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve con-

quered human nature.”

Ben Jonson says, “Curiosity killed the cat.”

But we can’t; we’re the most imperfect creatures alive, the most undeserving of life when faced with the rest of creation.

Friedrich Nietzsche says, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

There was an unnerving quiet, and suddenly, we’re together again. She looks up into my eyes. I stare into her glossy brown pupils. Liquid swells up in them, and our sub takes on water. “Did you see it?” “Yes.” “What was it?” “I don’t know.” There is a storm up above, yet we’re at peace down here. Everything’s at peace down here. The submersible shakes. What begins to replace our hope isn’t fear, but water. It trickles down the window from a crack near the edge and joins a greater collection at the bottom. As long as the cable is attached, we still have hope. Some hope is irreplaceable- even by water. Heraclitus says, “You could not step twice into the same river; for the waters are ever flowing on to you.” These waters flow together. They are at peace. They don’t have to fight for it. Yet we do. “I’m glad I’m with you now.” “So am I.” I push the hair out of her eyes and kiss her forehead. In the end, all that matters is who you spent your life with. We’re lying against the left side of the submersible. There are two facesized portholes to the right and left of me, and one larger one to the front. I look out the window to my left to search for the mystery above us.

I give up searching and rest my head to face the main glass. Joan is still cradled in my arms. She seems to slip into her own little world. Hopefully, she’s at peace there. I, however, can only think of the inevitable. Whether the air or the water will be swallowed first, it’s hard to tell. There is a sudden jerk, and the line breaks. Every thread that holds us to something has to break eventually. The submersible spins, and twists, and rolls as Joan drifts out of my grasp. We’re in a barrel going over the Niagara Falls. We’re in a trash can rolling down the hill. We’re mints, in your pants pocket as you jog. The larger window faces towards the surface and explains to us what went wrong. The curiosity that killed the cat. The bleeding stars. The ever flowing river. The stage. The appetite. The certainty. The fear. What appears to be the sun shines ever brighter as it pierces through the water and shows us all that stands between us and the surface. The storm has cleared. We see it all. Hovering above us, in place, it tore through the cable. It cut our life line. We see it. Elizabeth Bowen says, “Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.” We tumble down the rabbit hole, looking for the rabbit. Our capsule drowns in the sea like a pill falling off a countertop. And when the pill hits the jagged ground, it’s fractured. Maybe it isn’t the force of Joan’s head slamming against the glass that breaks it open. Water gushes in.

I don’t know who says, “If we don’t face our fears, we’ll drown in them.” One of the smaller windows is facing the surface as I push my face against it and stare out. The creatures of the deep move above us, and a colossal yellow eye stares back. Magnificent. Even now, as the cold lick of death brushes against my neck, my final breath lingers against the glass as all my fears swim away.

Anxiety and Alienation in the Modern Bildungsroman: A Freudian Analysis of Oryx and Crake and Invisible Man Cory Engle

During the beginning of the 20th century, the classical “bildungsroman” was undergoing revision. As Jesse Matz notes about the modernist writers’ inversion of the genre, their characters began to grow increasingly “from conformity to rebellion,” ending “not in happy oneness with society at large but in intense and often destructive rejections of it” (48). This twist on the classic “coming of age” story was largely in response to turn-of-the-twentieth century concerns about changes in society. New technology, urbanization, as well as the revolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud, bred a new level of anxiety in modern authors that manifested in their protagonists’ newfound feelings of alienation. Aside from various discussions of the history and influence of the modern novel, Freud’s ideas themselves have been extensively applied to the study of modernist and postmodernist writing. However, what might be examined further is how the alienation of the modern bildungsroman protagonist can be viewed in Freudian terms. For example, the novels Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, and Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, both depict protagonists who grow alienated from society, but who also combat sexual anxieties. This essay will therefore attempt to expand the discussion of psychology and the bildungsroman, by arguing that both Jimmy and Invisible Man are characterized by unconscious Freudian sexual anxieties that lead to their ultimate alienation from society. This becomes clear when one considers their misogynistic attitudes towards women, the contents of their dreams, and

the misdirection of their libidinal energies towards destructive ends. Jimmy and Invisible Man’s sexual anxieties often manifest in misogyny, as illustrated by their attitudes about women. Jimmy, for instance, manipulates them emotionally for sex, looking for women with “intriguing vulnerabilities” that he can fool into thinking he loves them (Atwood 191). Emotional relationships are little more than a game for Jimmy, the word “love” only “a tool, a wedge, a key to open women;” all he wants from them is sex, an addiction he says he would not give up even if it killed him (114, 272). Similarly, Invisible Man is misogynistic, but does not express it through sexual manipulation. His sexism is subtler, but still present in his statements such as, “why did they have to mix their women into everything,” and “confusing the class struggle with the ass struggle” (Ellison 418). These statements are misogynistic because they depict women as objects, but also hypocritical considering Invisible Man’s own “mixing” of Sybil into his business later in the novel. Despite condemning white men for using females as tools for manipulation, this is precisely what he does by getting her drunk and fishing for information about her husband. Additionally, Invisible Man feels he has “been made the butt of an outrageous joke” when Brother Jack reassigns him to the “Woman Question” (Ellison 407); he acts as if women’s politics are lesser than men’s. Thus, he seems to care as little for their social wellbeing as Jimmy cares for them emotionally, and this misogynistic attitude is evidence of their unconscious sexual anxieties. Jimmy’s sexist behavior towards women results from an unresolved Oedipal complex with his mother, Sharon. The Oedipus complex is Freud’s idea that “all male children deal with aggression toward their fathers and dream of making love to their mothers at some point in their development” (Blackmon 1323), and if unresolved, this can lead to misogyny (Bullough). One cause of Oedipal fixation is a lack of maternal affection (Cowan 249), which makes sense considering Sharon abandons Jimmy at a young age. Indeed, Jimmy rarely has a close relationship with his mother, though he frequently “wanted to make her laugh – to make her happy, as he had seemed to remember her being once” (Atwood 31). Atwood further emphasizes Jimmy’s preference for Sharon by giving her a first name in the novel – unlike Jimmy’s father – and in fact, Jimmy feels, “as if his father were auditioning for the role of Dad, but without much hope” (52). Also interestingly, Jimmy exhibits the Oedipal tendency to date older women who resemble his mother,

such as his girlfriend Amanda. For example, she is described as “ten years older than she made out,” pictured “staring into space” as Sharon does while smoking cigarettes (245); thus, in a classic illustration of the Oedipus complex, Jimmy seeks to replace his mother with a sexual substitute. This anxiety plagues him throughout the novel, causing his sexist attitudes towards women. Invisible Man’s misogyny, however, results from the interaction between the “id” and “superego” of his unconscious. As theorized by Freud, these drives oppose one another, the id trying to fulfill one’s desires while the superego attempts to inhibit their fulfillment according to the rules, mores, and taboos instilled in it by society (Hedgespeth 665-666). The problem for Invisible Man, however, is that his superego is informed by “white” society – a culture by which he is condemned and marginalized as racial “other.” Therefore, as a more literal equivalent of W.E.B. Du Bois’s “doubleconsciousness,” Invisible Man suffers from a mind that is split: an id that is in constant rebuke from a racist superego.1 This is the reason for Invisible Man’s misogynistic attitude, as his sexual drives are suppressed by his superego’s restrictions on having relations with white women. Therefore, rather than confronting this anxiety, he responds by using “reaction formation” and converting his sexual desire into disdain.2 The first stirrings of this conflict appear when Invisible Man sees the naked woman at the battle royal; while his arousal for her is an understandable reaction, his statement that he also wants “to murder her” is atypically violent (Ellison 19). But more compellingly, the only time he actually sleeps with a woman he is intoxicated, and he claims, “the conflict between the ideological and the biological, duty and desire, had become too subtly confused (italics mine)” (416). Thus, Invisible Man makes an explicit reference to the id/superego conflict. By lamenting about the struggle between ideals and instincts – between the “class struggle” and the “ass struggle” – he makes a clear allusion to his unconscious, Freudian anxieties

1 W.E.B. Du Bois coined the term “double-consciousness,” to denote the tendency for African Americans to see themselves through the condemning eyes of white culture. However, his emphasis was more pointedly sociological than psychological (12). 2 “Reaction formation is used when a person deals with anxietyladen feelings by repressing those feelings and consciously emphasizing the opposite… For example, an individual may display exaggerated love and affection to conceal feelings of intense hatred or dislike” (Hedgespeth). 23

(418). It is because of this internal conflict that he is disdainful towards women, and why his later interaction with Sybil is both deceitful and sexually humiliating. One advantage to studying Oryx and Crake and Invisible Man as post-Freudian bildungsromans is that dreams offer significant insight into the protagonists’ development. This is because Freud’s theories about the unconscious have affected subsequent analyses of literary dreams, but more importantly the authors’ intentions in crafting them. For example, the text states explicitly that “Crake hadn’t been able to eliminate dreams” in the Crakers, emphasizing their indispensability (Atwood 352). This compels the reader to examine Jimmy’s dreams, and Jimmy’s ironic statement, “I am not my childhood” suggests that they may have Freudian significance (68). Critics have also noted the significance of dreaming in Ellison’s novel, Robert E. Abrams stating, “dreams, drug-induced nightmares, and other hallucinatory states of consciousness become Ellison’s ‘province’ as he explores human personality and imagination in depth” (592).3 Thus, dreams can be equally as important as waking actions for illuminating aspects of the protagonist’s coming-of-age. For Jimmy and Invisible Man, their dreams emphasize the extent to which they struggle with Freudian sexual anxieties. Imagery and symbolism in Jimmy’s dreams, for instance, support the claim that he has an Oedipal conflict; his mother is always absent in them, which indicates his obsession with her disappearance and lack of maternal affection. Furthermore, Atwood uses color to associate Sharon with Oryx, their “magenta” bathrobe and “pink” ribbon figuring heavily in Jimmy’s dreams and memories. For example, Sharon’s “bathrobe was magenta, a colour that still makes him anxious when he sees it (italics mine),” and in Jimmy’s dream, “her dressing gown is hanging, magenta, empty, frightening” (Atwood 31, 277). These passages, particularly the symbolism of Sharon’s “empty” clothing, indicate Jimmy’s desire to replace her with a maternal substitute. This is even more significant considering his dream of Oryx “floating on her back in a swimming pool,” which is “painted a vibrant pink,” and mentions of her “pink hair ribbon” four times in the novel (43). Oryx’s ribbon is described separately

3 Abrams, commenting more specifically on Freud and Ellison: “Ellison, influenced by Freud, hypothesizes that ‘the distorted images that appear in dreams... quiver in the... mind’ at least with ‘hidden... significance,’ like ‘muggers haunting a lonely hall’” (593). 24

as: a prop “on the sex-kiddie sites;” “coiled up and pinned loosely;” “hung down her back;” and “pink as ever” (Atwood 90, 319, 329, 335). Atwood clearly uses these details on purpose, and likely in order to associate Jimmy’s affections for Sharon and Oryx. Furthermore, the symbolism of the color pink suggests a sexual aspect to these relationships. Just as Jimmy’s dreams show that he is fixated on his mother, Invisible Man has dreams indicating he is aware of his subjugation by white society. His commitment to Booker T. Washington’s cooperative ideology merely distracts him from this fact, which he acknowledges unconsciously from the start of the novel. To illustrate this, consider the dream Invisible Man has after his speech at the battle royal: he is at a “circus” with his grandfather, opening an endless series of letters that conclude with, “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running;” the letters are contained in the briefcase he is awarded after his fight, and his grandfather also says of them, “them’s years” (Ellison 33). Admittedly, the ambiguity of this passage might indicate that Ellison intends for it to be indecipherable. At least one critic has noted the ambiguous role of Invisible Man’s grandfather in the dream, a reasonable observation considering the cryptic nature of his statements.4 However, close examination of the imagery and symbolism in this dream indicates that Invisible Man is aware of his internalization of white ideals. This is the purpose of the “briefcase” symbol, which appears in the dream to represent his expected conformity to the ideals of white, middle-class America. This symbol is ironic because in Invisible Man’s conscious, waking state, he equates his briefcase with success: it is his “prized” briefcase that he carries “with confidence” (327, 168). Unconsciously, however, its contents consist symbolically of wasted “years” and documents that keep him forever “running” (33). Furthermore, a dream that appears at the end of the novel further reinforces that Invisible Man is aware of his sexual anxieties. This is the passage wherein Brother Jack, Norton, and others castrate him, taking the “two bloody blobs and [casting] them over the bridge” (569). The symbolism in this dream should seem obvious, the removal of his genitals representing sexual disempowerment and emasculation. Although this can be interpreted in purely sexual terms, Robert E. Abrams argues that it is also symbolic of Invisible Man’s anxieties about identity (597). In any case, these anxieties stem from his domination by white culture, although he fails to

4 Robert E. Abrams notes that Invisible Man’s dreams “are generally presided over by the taunting figure of his grandfather, whose surreal ruses mock and confound earnest reason” (600-601). 25

realize this consciously throughout most of the novel. As it is clear that Jimmy and Invisible Man suffer from unconscious sexual anxieties, one should realize how this contributes to their alienation from society. Essentially, this turmoil occurs because both protagonists direct their libidinal energies into destructive outlets, a phenomenon Freud explored by theorizing a number of “defense mechanisms” (Hedgespeth 553). Rather than using internalizing defense mechanisms such as “denial” or “repression,” however, both characters redirect their energies onto external targets, and the consequences that follow lead indirectly to their alienation (553). Jimmy redirects his libidinal energy by using a defense mechanism called “displacement,” which is defined as “redirecting unacceptable sexual and aggressive impulses to a substitute target that is much less threatening” (Hedgespeth 553). Jimmy displaces his sexual desire for his mother onto Oryx, because she provides him with unconditional affection he does not receive from his mother or his other sexual partners. Because of Jimmy’s obsession with her, he alienates himself by promising to watch over the Crakers even after most other humans have died (Atwood 344). As evidence for this displacement, consider the climax of the novel in terms of Oryx replacing Jimmy’s mother: Jimmy shoots and kills Crake, symbolically acting as the “son” figure who kills the mother’s sexual partner (329). Therefore, with Crake’s paternal position effectively usurped, Jimmy is able to wander the posthuman world as a surrogate “father” to the Crakers and partner to Oryx. It is important to note, lastly, that Jimmy’s post-apocalyptic alienation is not simply an inevitable result of Crake’s destruction of humanity. Contrarily, Jimmy notes that he has frequent thoughts of killing himself as this is occurring, but cannot help considering “the disappointment of Oryx: But Jimmy! Why do you give up? You have a job to do! You promised, remember?” (344). Thus, stated explicitly, Jimmy’s displaced affection for Oryx results in his decision to live on after others have died. Similar to displacement is Invisible Man’s ultimately destructive “sublimation” of his sexual energy, which he uses in addition to reaction formation. Sublimation occurs when a person “redirect desires, thoughts, or feelings into creative channels” (Hedgespeth 553), and for Invisible Man, this means channeling these feelings into political action. What eventually follows is that he becomes disillusioned – confronted with the futility of his efforts

with the Brotherhood and elsewhere, he becomes physically and spiritually alienated, represented by his falling into a manhole at the novel’s end. One first finds evidence of this sublimation in the battle royal scene, when after his experience with the dancing woman, Invisible Man is obsessed with delivering his speech at all costs (Ellison 29). Ellison also uses a number of images in this scene to associate sex with race politics, as in the woman’s stereotypically “blonde” hair and “cool blue” eyes, and the “small American flag” tattooed just above her thighs (19). From these images, one might interpret the dancing woman to be a satirical representation of Invisible Man’s quest for a successful life in America. In other words, he is aroused by something unattainable to him, as white men both clamor to claim it for themselves and humiliate him in the process. Other critics have also noted the association between sex and politics in the novel. Douglas Steward discusses the novel’s “political forms of speech that are articulated in phallic terms” (522), and Edith Schor contends, “social taboo is operating to keep [Invisible Man] in his place… he is the one who feels that his success depends on denying his virility” (82).5 Although Schor does not specifically discuss psychology in her argument, Freudians would certainly discuss “social taboo” and “virility” as functions of the superego and the id. Following from this, one can see that Invisible Man sublimates his “virility” into political action; and although he has a drunken lapse of judgment with the white woman from the political rally, he is plagued by guilt, and is careful to keep his sexual distance from Sybil later in the novel. Thus, were it not for Invisible Man’s sublimation of his sexual energies into political action, he might have assimilated into mainstream society. But through his endless pursuit of racial activism in the novel, he learns the uncomfortable fact of his “invisibility” and social isolation. Ultimately, both Jimmy and Invisible Man end up on the fringes of society. This is typical of the modern bildungsroman, but in the case of these two protagonists is caused by unconscious sexual anxieties originating in their childhoods. Freudian theory lends credibility to this idea, explaining how the characters cope with their issues: they employ defense mechanisms, thereby directing their libidinal energies onto external targets. Furthermore, it is

5 The main thrust of Steward’s argument is that Invisible Man “fails to acquire the sorts of instrumentalities of power associated with directly political forms of speech that are articulated in phallic terms.” Steward also finds Freudian themes in Invisible Man, but discusses them primarily in terms of Freud’s work, Totem and Taboo (522). 27

interesting to study the two novels as post-Freudian works, as Freud’s theories influenced the ways that modern authors write about dreams. Atwood makes it clear that Jimmy’s dreams have underlying significance – as critics have also noted about Invisible Man – and as these novels are bildungsromans, dreaming sheds light on the unconscious anxieties that lead to both protagonists’ exclusion from society. Freudian and post-Freudian theory can be applied to the modern bildungsroman in creative ways. Subsequent studies of these two novels might explore the topic of “identity,” for instance, or any number of ideas that were not discussed in detail by Freud per se.6 It remains to be seen what knowledge might be gained from viewing the coming-of-age novel through fresh psychoanalytic perspectives.

Works Cited Abrams, Robert E. “The Ambiguities of Dreaming in Ellison’s Invisible Man.” American Literature 49.4 (1978): 592-603. JSTOR. Web. 26 Nov. 2012. Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake: A Novel. New York: Anchor, 2004. Print. Blackmon, Virginiae. “Oedipus Complex.” Salem Health: Psychology & Mental Health. Ed. Nancy A. Piotrowski. Vol. 3. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2010. 1322-1323. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 26 Nov. 2012.

Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Rockville, MD: Arc Manor, 2008. Google Books. Web. 6 Dec. 2012. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage International, 1995. Print. “Erikson, Erik.” The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology. Ed. Bonnie Strickland. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 224-226. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 7 Dec. 2012. Hedgespeth, Joanne. “Defense Mechanisms.” Salem Health: Psychology & Mental Health. Ed. Nancy A. Piotrowski. Vol. 2. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2010. 552-554. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 4 Dec. 2012. --- “Ego, Superego, and Id.” Salem Health: Psychology & Mental Health. Ed. Nancy A. Piotrowski. Vol. 2. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2010. 664666. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 26 Nov. 2012. Matz, Jesse. The Modern Novel: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. Print. Schor, Edith. “The Novel: Revolt and After.” Visible Ellison: A Study of Ralph Ellison’s Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993. 77-106. Print. Steward, Douglas. “The Illusions of Phallic Agency: Invisible Man, Totem and Taboo, and the Santa Claus Surprise.” Callaloo 26.2 (2003): 522-35. JSTOR. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.

Bullough, Vern L. “Misogynist, Misogyny.” Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1994. 396. Google Books. Web. 6 Dec. 2012. Cowan, Edwina A. “The Phenomenon of Mother Fixation as an Expression of the Child’s Doubt of the Parent’s Affection.” Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 41 (1938): 249-52. JSTOR. Web. 26 Nov. 2012.

6 Although Freud is well known for his “stages of psychosexual development,” it was Erik Erikson who applied Freud’s ideas extensively to the study of identity formation (Erikson). 28

Eating Out

Carly Parker

Paige Lewis

Brittni Sutter

I’m tired of having waiters place the check on your side of the tablecloth, only turning to ask me if I’d like more water.

So tonight I will reach over our plates, letting my blouse soak in the Sriracha sauce, and slide my card into the black leather bill holder.

If you suck anxiously at the celery strings caught in your teeth and reject my offer or if the waiter sees my name on the card and still hands you the receipt, I will not leave with you. I will not leave a tip.

I wake up every morning at six o’clock. Six o’clock sharp. I make a two minute trip to the loo, and then I walk down seventeen steps, hopping over the eighteenth step on account of the creak in the upper left hand corner. I enter the kitchen, open the ice box, and toast a crumpet. Every Sunday afternoon at two thirty, I bake seven crumpets, each formed into perfect circles with a diameter of fifteen point two four centimeters. After the bread is crisp, I spread a thin layer of blackberry jam. I never use any other flavor especially raspberry. The color of raspberry jam reminds Carly Parker of the blood her family has shed over the years. If Carly Parker doesn’t eat raspberry jam, then I will not eat raspberry jam. I know everything there is to know about Carly Parker. She has three older brothers Michael, Todd, and Rupert, and two younger sisters, Lucy and Cassie. Her favorite animal is a horse, especially white ones with specks of brown near the eyes. But she downright refuses to ride one. Carly believes that horses should run freely and being saddled destroys their soul. She kissed her first boyfriend, James Smith, on her fifteenth birthday, but they broke up after he was drafted into the war and presumed dead in battle. Carly is dating Peter McCord now, but it won’t last. I just know that James is out there alive. I can feel it in every fiber of my being. He is making his way back to his beloved right this minute, planning on winning her hand. But Peter won’t give up so easily. Oh no. He has loved Carly from the moment he saved her from drowning in the river and Peter will not sacrifice their love so easily. This love triangle has been going on for years and I just can’t take it anymore! From an outsider’s point of view, I must seem like a stalker. A complete and utter wanker. I assure you this is not the case. I have been reading the Carly Parker book series by Harvey Lee Daniel for fifteen years, four months, and twenty two days. I am Carly’s number one fan and have devoted my life into recreating hers. Two days after turning eighteen, I left my parents’ home in the States, took out my trust fund, and purchased an acre of land

in the countryside outside of London. I couldn’t have found a more perfect farmhouse to replicate the Parker family home. The layout was nearly identical. There’s even an oval window above the kitchen sink overlooking a pond filled with small fishes and speckled toads. Just like Carly’s. And just like Carly I never swim in it. We never learned how. Not only does my house look like Carly’s, but I have taken measures to replicate Carly’s appearance. I was born with ginger hair and pale brown eyes, but that simply won’t do. Carly has bright blue eyes and golden blonde hair. I wear contacts to correct my eyes’ mutation and every third Thursday evening at seven o’clock I touch up my now blonde roots as well as cut the tips of my hair. Carly’s locks just barely graze the tops of her shoulder blades and she would consider it ghastly if it surpassed them. Besides those obvious flaws, God has granted me the gift of genetic resemblance to Carly Parker. We have heart-shaped faces, thin eyebrows, and a moon-shaped birthmark on our right hands. I was just born to be Carly Parker. Today is a special day. It is so special, in fact, that I am willing to break from my daily routine sent to me from Carly Parker herself. Today is the night that the eighth Carly Parker novel is to be released and there’s going to be a midnight release party at the bookstore in town. I have been pining for it for the last four years. I just can’t believe that this day is finally here! I always read exactly twenty five pages of a Carly Parker novel before going to bed, but for the last thirty days I have extended the amount of reading to an extra eighty four pages a night. It has thrown my schedule off a bit which has been quite a nuisance, but I need to make sure I have every single page memorized before purchasing the new book. Carly expects nothing less from me. It is eight thirteen when I leave my farmhouse. The party doesn’t start until eleven o’clock, but I like to be the first to arrive. I’m always the first person in town to receive the newest Carly Parker novel. Heaven forbid some Carly Parker wannabe take away my honor. My birthright. I lock the door with my silver key and twist the knob three times just to be sure. The closest bookstore from here is exactly eight point four kilometers. I don’t own a car since they didn’t exist during Carly’s time period, so I walk. I grab the seventh Carly Parker novel out of my leather satchel. There are exactly five hundred and eighty two pages left and fifteen hours and forty seven minutes until the release of the eight novel. Plenty of time left. I grab the book with both

hands and begin to read. I don’t pay attention to what’s going on around me or where I’m walking. I know Carly will protect me and guide us to where we need to go. I arrive at the bookstore two hours and nineteen minutes later. The town of Livingston is small and there isn’t much of anything. There are three grocery stores, two banks, four gas stations, and six restaurants. But there is only one bookstore. Only one place to buy a Carly Parker novel. I sit beside the entrance. It is much too early for me to sit inside. The owner, Mr. Bates, would have gladly welcomed me in. He’s kind, elderly man who goes absolutely bonkers when he spots me sitting on the sidewalk all by myself with nothing but a book to keep me company. Eight years ago, I asked Mr. Bates if he could give me the newest Carly Parker book a few hours early, then I wouldn’t have to sit on his sidewalk by myself. He just smiled and told me, “I would if I could, but the publishers would have a cow.” Ever since, I have refused to let him bother me with his idle, useless chit chat. I would much rather read my book. Carly never disappoints me. The hours tick by. I hardly notice though, until the sun disappears into the earth and I am no longer able to make out the words without squinting my eyes. The darkness frustrates me. I have one hundred and six pages left to go and the sun won’t cooperate with me. I can feel a scream coming out of my throat, demanding to be released. But I try to calm myself. I take a deep breath in and out. There now. I just get so angry sometimes, but I have gotten better at controlling my temper. That’s what Carly would want for me. I slip into the shop. Hopefully Mr. Bates won’t be too much of a bother. The air conditioner is cranked a little too low for my preference, but when others start arriving I’m sure it will be downright boiling. I take a seat in my favorite red leather chair. A round, mahogany coffee table is in front of the seat and is supposed to be shared with another chair and loveseat. The seating arrangement is faced around a fake fireplace with the aisles of books behind them. When I was a child, I used to run through the aisles of Barnes & Noble, arms outstretched feeling the squishy spines of each and every novel. I would peel one off the shelf, open it up, and take a long whiff from top to bottom. There is no sweeter scent than a freshly opened novel. That’s how I came across Carly. I came into the book shop on a rainy Tuesday. My parents were arguing again and the screams were painful to my sensitive ears. I can just hear

the sound of my father’s belt cracking against flesh. My mother’s howling. The smell of burnt hair. I came to the book shop for comfort. Safety. I just happened to be running through aisle sixteen when Carly’s book caught my eye. It was love at first sniff. I haven’t read any other novel ever since. But I must stop myself. Those remaining pages aren’t going to read themselves. I open my novel to page seven hundred and fourteen. I’m just finishing up the third paragraph when Mr. Bates interrupts me. His wrinkled hand touches my shoulder. He smells of candle wax and lilac air freshener. I try my best not to cringe (Carly is allergic to lilacs) and give him my best fake smile. His saggy face looks delighted by my appearance in his shop. Even his thin, grey mustache rises with his smile. He gives the usual how you been, I haven’t seen you in a while, blah blah blah. I inform him that I must finish reading before the party tonight. He tells me that the party isn’t for several hours and haven’t I read that book a thousand times by now. Yada yada yada. After fifteen minutes another customer enters the shop. Thank the Lord. Mr. Bates hands me a slip of paper with the number one on it and leaves to attend to new arrival. Where was I now? Oh, yes fourth paragraph. The hours tick by and before I know it eleven o’clock has come by. I have finished just in time, no thanks to some people. Mr. Bates has put out a large table filled with various caffeine-filled beverages and finger foods. There are small sandwiches, pretzels, cheese and crackers, and vegetables with dip. It looks appetizing and my stomach is rumbling a bit, but I must resist the temptation. Those foods are not part of the Carly Parker diet plan and I must stick to it. I’ve worked too hard to achieve Carly’s figure. Besides, heaven knows who touched the food. It’s repulsive just thinking whose saliva, bacteria, and fecal matter residue could have possibly been there first. But that doesn’t stop a few other girls from sampling the goodies. Three of them seem to be friends. The first two are wearing Team James shirts and seem positively jubilant. I despise the third girl though. I’ve never met her, but she is wearing a recreation of Carly’s emerald girl dress on the cover of the third novel. And it’s all wrong! The flower on the apron is stitched too close to the center and is tilted to the right. The golden colored buttons are shaped like circles rather than ovals. And don’t get me started on the ruffled sleeves. The outfit is utterly repulsive. Every cell in my body is urging me to rip it off her pudgy frame. Burn it. Tear it to shreds. The execution style

doesn’t matter. All that matters is destroying the travesty that is this impersonation. Breathe in. Breathe out. This isn’t a big deal. All that matters is that your dress is perfect. Who cares that she destroyed the most beautiful dress any human mind could dream up? This is her fashion crisis to settle, not yours. But as I look around I see more Carly Parker fashion mishaps. There’s one girl wearing a Carly Parker wig and I can still see her hideous caramel hair underneath. There are wrong colored bracelets. Misplaced moon birthmarks. Glasses on a perfect-visioned Carly. Unbowtied aprons. Mismatching hair ribbons. Loose threads. I need my book. I need to get out of here now. It’s just my luck because the clock has just struck midnight and Mr. Bates has just called the number one. I make my way through the Carly destroyers, pushing them out of my way and taking pride in their dirty looks. I reach the counter and hand the paper over to Mr. Bates. “That’ll be twenty nine fifty,” he says. I open my satchel and grab my wallet. I thrust three ten pound notes into his hand and tell him to keep the change. I grab the book. Mr. Bates knows me well enough to forget the bag. The feel of plastic aggravates my skin. I hug it into my chest and dig my nails into the book jacket. Not a single Carly impersonator will touch my baby. No finger will grace this book cover, these pages, but me. No one. I walk out the doors and begin to run home. I am able to cut the traveling time in half, but I am out of breath by the time I reach the farmhouse. There is a stitch in my left side and sweat is dripping from every orifice of my body. But I have her. Carly is home. I pour myself a glass of water from the ice box and head up to my room. I settle myself down into my bed and open the novel. There are eight hundred and seventeen pages. I estimate that it’ll take me sixteen hours and ten minutes to read. I will not eat or sleep during this process. By the time I’m finished, I will have been up for over twenty four hours. But I don’t feel the least bit sleepy. I feel invigorated and full of adrenaline. I could run eight point four kilometers once more, but I will only use my energy for reading. Carly is demanding all my attention. Calling my name. “Carly,” she says. “Read me Carly.” Oh I will. And I will enjoy every minute of it. I open to the first page and run my nose down the spine. It smells like home.

*** What the fuck? This isn’t possible. No, no, no. That son of a bitch did not just do that. Carly is dead. Dead for Christ sake. She can’t be dead. She is Carly fucking Parker. I rip off the book jacket. Maybe there is something that’ll explain this. What? Eighth and final novel in the Carly Parker series? No! Since when was the eighth novel the last? I thought it was just a rumor. Tabloid trash to fool the ignorant. How could he? That bastard killed Carly. Just shot her down as she was about to reunite with the love of her life. Murdered as if she was nothing but a fictional character. As if she wasn’t beloved by millions, no billions, of people around the world. Well since he killed Carly, there is only one thing left to do. Harvey Lee Daniel resides in the penthouse on 1632 Bishops Avenue in East Finchley, London. He’s been living there for the past six months ever since his separation from his wife of seventeen years. I’ve been tracking Harvey since I was sixteen. I used to use a private investigator, but he wouldn’t go in deep enough. He said stalking someone to the point I wanted was “illegal”. How else was I going to find out everything there is to know about Carly? Books can only tell you so much. I know everything Harvey has done, where he’s gone, who he’s talked to. Once I almost followed him to his African Safari vacation. Completely accidental of course. I couldn’t tell you how often passerbyers have caught me digging in his trash, craving to find a bit more of Carly. I go back into town and take the next bus to London.

sweet. I plunge it again and twist to the right. A crimson gush expels from his neck. I plunge it again. And again. And again. I move toward his chest. His stomach. His arms. His face. “You killed Carly,” I scream. “You killed me Harvey. You kill me, I kill you.” He keeps gasping, begging for mercy. I laugh. He tells me I’ll go to jail. I tell him he’s delusional. I’m the victim. He tries to reach for my arm, but he is weak and I just shove him down. He showed no mercy to Carly. He deserves every ounce of pain. Let him suffer for his sins. Go to hell Harvey. I spit in his face and cut off his dick. My fingers are partially stuck together. Everywhere I look is red. Harvey is red. The sheets are red. The knife. The bedpost. The wall. Me. The blood is climbing up my arm and touches the bottom of my sleeves. I can feel drops of it on my face and in my hair. The taste of iron on my teeth. My hand is glued to the knife. So I don’t stop. I don’t care. I just stab. *** It’s been three days. I’m standing in aisle twenty three at Mr. Bates’. My fingers brush against a violet spine. I open to the halfway point and sniff.

It’s nearly four in the morning by the time I arrive at his penthouse door. The bus dropped me off in Central London. I walked the rest of the way to the building and snuck in as the doorman left for his break. I reach under the welcome mat and my fingers meet cold metal. I slip the key into the doorknob. I pay no heed to the environment around me. I could make my way around his apartment with my eyes closed. I know his mansion in Liverpool much better though. I walk into the kitchen and open the silverware drawer. This butcher knife will work quite nicely. His bedroom is straight ahead and the door is wide open as if inviting me to step over the threshold. His snoring is rhythmic. A gruff snort followed by a high whistle. I stand by his head and breathe harshly onto his face. I want him awake. I want him to see. His eyes open slowly unaware of what is about to happen. I plunge the knife into his throat. He makes a reflexive gagging sound as if choking on a

What Does the Death of God Mean for Nietzsche? Joshua Pettit For thousands of years, mankind imprisoned itself beneath an artificial sky, the limits of which painted in their minds a false horizon, a real horizon. Men saw before them an end and a destination, a godhead at which the sky met the earth and the divine touched reality. Are our absolutes, our morals and truths, not, after all, the caress of that indescribable, eternal and unchanging divinity upon the rock and flesh of our world, just as the horizon is the touch of sky upon the earth? You see, God should have died with the Greeks. Yet, God lingered on for millennia in the gaps and black areas of our understanding, casting light where nothing could yet be lit by the human intellect. Truly, the gods of the primitive past must have been a splendorous sight to behold! Since the time of the Enlightenment, we have pushed God back, lighting our own lanterns where those of God once stood and attacking with vehement ferocity the One we claimed to love and serve. With telescopes we have blasted holes in the Heavens and shot God down from his throne; with microscopes we have looked deeply into His mechanisms of creation – and found merely randomness; with our reason we have refined our intellectual sensitivity, and now the crude faith demanded by the world religions leaves us nauseous. Yes, God is dead, and “[we] have killed him – you and I” [1]. Indeed, we have “wiped away the entire horizon,” [1] we are plunging continually and without direction, and we must light our lanterns to ward off the darkness; and what a great victory we have achieved! For centuries, we unknowingly have had God on the run. With every bit of knowledge we have won, another tower of God’s light has fallen and another province of Providence has been conquered. And this is why we light our lanterns in the morning! When the King’s head sits triumphantly atop the tip of a spear, another ruler must be chosen – another has been chosen, for we are now all the kings and queens of this world. Indeed, with the passing of this

great event, the universe has been made a democracy! “’But how did we do this?’” the madman shouts. “’Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?’” [1]. Is this not the great liberation? Indeed, in casting off this petty illusion, this artificial illumination which has for so long smothered our own brilliance, we have become the architects, artists, molders - the creators - of our own dreams and passions. We have taken from God that which was always our own; we have taken back our humanity. For, in God, we were made inhuman, mere followers of a tyrannical Will, and our passions were replaced by absolutes and frowned upon as filthy, unworthy of our Divine Nature. So we have fought God back with science, and his residual illumination still darkens our intellect in only the remotest depths of our most abstract concepts, in the ‘mind-body’ connection and other dark holes of human understanding; and, at this very moment, the armaments of science amass outside the gates. What is most spectacular about this great event, this murder of all murders, is that the killers are still convinced of their innocence. It is as if the wisest servants of a castle built a cannon that would better serve their lord – and then, in testing its efficacy, fired it upon their lord as he returned from battle and have yet to hear the dreadful news! With science, the followers of God sought to better understand His genius, to praise Him for His intricate work, and now science has dealt the death blow. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but, as it turns out, it deserves more credit than that! Even so, there are many who have seen the shadow of God’s death fall across the earth, and some have fallen upon their knees weeping of the loss, while others have taken to the streets in celebration, shouting, “The king is dead, the king is dead!” After all, is this not the echo heard down through the annals of history, that the king is dead? And is it not one of resounding joy? In fact, the shadow is now visible from the deepest valleys, and those posted at the top of the mountains have come down, torches alight; it is only the mass of people, who go about day after day with a mad rush in their step and their eyes aimed at their shoes, that has not yet noticed the shadow spreading over river and field, town and city, and over all the earth. Then there are those who have witnessed the divine decomposition and who refuse to meet eye to eye with its consequence, nervously glancing this way and that when their fellows speak of the great liberation. These people suggest that we hold to the absolutes and to the things-in-themselves after their divine foundation has crumbled to dust; only now, instead of blindly

spewing forth talk of God’s Will, they exhibit an equally disgusting display of indulgence when they forcefully assert the doctrine of “just is.” “In what do you ground your moral judgments; how is it that lying is ‘wrong?’” asks the discerning skeptic. “Don’t you see,” the opposition responds, “it just is!” The real article of faith has remained staunch against the onslaught of science; only now the excuse has been removed, for it is in human nature to seek stability and to cling to what is familiar. This is the reason why people posit “the last, the thinnest, the emptiest concept[s]” as first - as ens realissimum [2]. It is innately within humans that the thinnest and emptiest concepts, those which enjoy the most deficient worldly support, are the most satisfying. All things observable to our senses are in motion and transition and, for that reason, are tricksters and web-spinners that beguile us with their charm before fading from our perception. They are quite frightening! But the ethereal concepts of the imagination may be fashioned into any form one pleases, and so we make them into our eternal crutches and stabilizers. Few people who are willing to turn away from God are as eager to turn away from the service God provides, the security of absolutes. Their response is the terrified behavior of an animal that, for all its life, has known nothing but the cage into which it was born and now is presented with an open gate, so it naturally shrinks back to its familiar habitat and back to the thoroughly trodden circles of its existence. Already I foresee the moralists, those builders of straw men and destroyers of skyscrapers, swooping down to preserve their mummies, holding back their petrified ideals from the harsh air and scorching light of modern criticism. “You act as if, in rejecting God and Truth, you have achieved some sort of freedom or originality, but don’t you see that every concoction you may create in your minds is merely a synthesis of your past experiences; you are just as much followers as we are!” they cry. Certainly I have no mind to argue against the sensibilities of David Hume in this case, but this objection hardly does justice to the grandeur of the event at hand. Under the law of God, we are given a portrait of the right way, the good way, the divine way of living life, and we are expected to o our best to reproduce it. When the godless make their lives into art, they certainly do draw from the influences of their society and upbringing, coloring the lines with the very same colors as innumerable artists of their time, but the final product, the blending of the colors and pattern of the lines, is entirely their own. Is there any fool on this earth foolish enough to suggest that we appreciate the Mona Lisa by placing it beneath a microscope and examining the interactions of the tiniest particles?

“What trickery! We can observe no differences between the atoms of the Mona Lisa and those of a child’s scrawling. All this time we have been deceived into thinking it a masterpiece!” Art critics have enough sense to see the folly in this, but you critics of freedom and spirit deplore my originality because I use colors. Now, there is one absolute concept that has lived beyond the time of its Maker (excuse the capital), sustaining itself in the minds of even the brightest scholars and scientists, and that seems to dodge every fatal thrust and slip free of every noose. It is the idea of Truth. But, “[who] is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants ‘truth’?” [3] If nearly all humans, from philosophers and scientists to farmers and painters, desire truth, as they say, then there is an inexplicable lack of effort directed toward the possession of this thing-in-itself. When one sets before oneself some grand mission, such as discovering the most beautiful painting ever created, one does not accept the very first painting, or the second, or third, or one-hundredth as the most beautiful, no matter how stunning it may be. This impassioned individual is certain that there is always another more breathtaking, and he dares not rest until he has at least been to every famous museum and rich home where great works of art reside. And this is only the case with what is generally admitted as merely a subjective, transient concept: beauty. How is it, then, that, in the search for Truth, people are so often immediately satisfied? The Christians, who become convinced of their faith in the ultimate Truth, shut their ears to the claims of all dissenters and close their eyes to the world, this fallen idol of fleshly desires. At the slightest provocation, they leap upon the back of their savior – the light, the way, and the Truth – digging in their claws, and they’ll be damned if they let go. This is the behavior of a person who seeks not Truth, but rather certainty; but what is the search for Truth except a desperate grab at a perceived certainty – at security? Would a truly curious person not despise the acquisition of an absolute as the end of passion and the beginning of the pointless slog to the grave? (If anyone would like to search more deeply into these questions, I would refer them to a preacher, a man who looks down upon all sorts of jokes and pleasures with distaste; in short, I would refer them to a man awaiting death). The problem arises when people yearn for knowing rather than for knowledge. When a person knows something in the absolute sense, they are asserting that no amount of evidence could convince them to the contrary; flat-earth believers, creationists (especially of the ‘young earth’ variety), and

all manner of conspiracy-claimers are some examples of very certain knowers, and it is here that we may find some insight into the curious persistence of absolutes in the minds of men. Imagine a Christian that knows absolutely the existence of God as Truth and who is asked to explain the well-known conundrum of free will in regards to Christianity. Legitimate free will seems to discredit either God’s plan or His omnipotence, and predestination seems to discredit the ‘decision for Christ’ and to make a murderous madman of God. The response: “God, in His omnipotent glory, can make all things True, even paradoxes!” It is the same with knowers of conspiracies who, in the face of contrary evidence, expand the conspiracy until the entire world has plotted to make the event possible. It is simply in the nature of absolutes (absolute knowing, in this case) to be infallible. Not only is God lingering after his death, but Aristotle seems to have a ghost of his own, as well! One who seeks knowledge, and who does not hold such esteem for his own reason that he comes to call it Truth, is overjoyed by the prospect of a new worldview to try on over his perceptions and reasoning; for him, knowledge need not be sullied by truth or untruth and ought to enrich, rather than enslave. So, absolute notions of reality have been revealed as crutches onto which people grasp as desperately as a drowning man does to a life supporter. I hardly think it coincidental that arguably the world’s most successful religion was founded by a man who sold himself as a light in the darkness, a rock on which to cling against the crashing of the waves. Are we not, after all, constantly sinking, plunging into the depths, smiling at the last rays of sunlight before blackness engulfs us? Truth, then, has become untruth – but wait! If this is the case, then we have brought ourselves back to the question of “what is truth?” because, if there exists untruth, then there certainly must exist truth. But how could truth be born from untruth (that the Truth is there is no Truth)? “or selfless deeds out of selfishness? or the pure and sunlike gaze of the sage out of lust?” [3] . This question has moved ahead of itself; it is only in accepting the truth or untruth of a proposition or concept that one may assert an opposite or a contradiction. However, without first asserting truth values to things, how could one possibly arrive at the concept of Truth, for it must be assumed first? It is true that the brick is red because it is red, and it is untrue that the brick is blue because the brick is red; but the Truth is true because –? Thus, “[it] has not even occurred to the most cautious [of metaphysicians] that one might have a doubt right here at the threshold where it was surely most necessary...”

. For absolute Truth to be true, there must first be a concept of truth, but, if Truth is the Truth, then by what concept might one make such a judgment? Why should truth be good and worth striving for, but not so for untruth? This belief in Truth is the faith of the modern scientist. We may suggest a truth and believe in it, imagine the ego, sameness, and the unconditional, and accept the “constant falsification of the world by means of numbers,” because, without these concepts, “man could not live” [3]. Humans recognize themselves as being identical to fellow members of the species and identify with them, and societies vehemently believe in true equality among people – these are useful, perhaps even vital, concepts for the evolution of man, but are they true or not? They are one or the other only if we persist in asking such silly questions. One may be inclined to offer the better question, “Why bother going through all this if we’re not getting closer to some goal or purpose in life? If there is no point, then what’s the point?” Firstly, I would like the questioner in question to kindly stop probing my words for moral support, for it would be greatly disheartening if a new absolute way of existing was born from these pages. Indeed, the art of blowing up lifeless concepts with an air of superiority was mastered by Kant to such an extent that I could scarcely make a dent in his iron legacy, even if I so desired. Therefore, I will offer only more questions to you seekers of hope and meaning, and perhaps, an interpretation. I am sure you have heard the parable which tells the tale of the demon who steals into men’s thoughts during their loneliest loneliness and says to them: “’This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself ’” [1]. Would the most glorious response to this realization not be one of exaltation and joy – that the experience of life, from the heights of its grandest cathedrals to the depths of its dirtiest slums, undoubtedly warrants innumerable repetitions? Would this not be the ultimate expression of ‘carpe diem,’ of total satisfaction? This eternal recurrence has been called the ‘greatest weight,’ an idea possessing such power that it could crush the spirit of a man – but what a sick and impoverished spirit that must be! Healthy spirits could only grow stronger under this weight, for it is the weight of their own freedom. Man has been forced down a narrow path; sure of its goodness, he has kept his eyes firmly [3]

set on this path, too terrified to look around lest he stumble onto a path to destruction; knowing his destination, man has continually walked a Bridge of Sighs, placing one foot before the other and seeing only one destination in the distance. The eternal recurrence is the death of the destinations. Could one possibly feel anything but liberation following the realization that the horizon is not eternally beyond reach due to man’s failure, but because it was all along a false limitation?

Works Cited 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1974. 181+. Print. 2. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Twilight of the Idols.” The Portable Nietzsche. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, 1976. 482. Print. 3. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Beyond Good and Evil.” Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Modern Library, 2000. 199-202. Print.

The Elephant and the Dove Sarah Beagan

The elephant and the dove wake up together and discuss their plans for the day over cups of café con leche, not steaming but warm to the touch, and tortillas brimming with chorizo and eggs. A dusty Mexican morning settles over the house as the dove braids her hair in the typical Tehuana fashion, twisting ribbons through the tendrils, wings coming to a rest on the top of her head as she pins in the ornamental flowers. She will spend her afternoon exploring the mercado, choosing the ripest mangos and avocados with the expertise of a farmer’s daughter, squeezing the fruit, distrusting vendors who seem too eager to be rid of their harvest. Feathers embrace tusks and trunk, a final teasing peck and the dove takes flight. The elephant watches from the courtyard. He tries not to think how it must feel to ride along the breath of a cool breeze, to push toward the sun as the poor Greek did, whose wings were not those of doves but of wax. The elephant wonders if it is his fear of falling that keeps his feet so firmly planted to the ground.

Sad Spanish Kid With Broken English Who Is Afraid of Everything Xavier Vega

When I was little I made my Ma mad. Real mad.

So mad she wanted to smack the Black out of me; but I wasn’t that Black, I was just Brown. If she slapped the Brown out of me I’d be White. If I were White I could go to one of those good schools with better food at lunch. If I could go to a school with better food at lunch I could get into college. If I went to college I could get a good job, some money, a house, a car, health insurance; everything I always wanted.

oily, muddy-brown man stood over me, kicking the hardest. A beer belly hung out his flannel shirt, and he wore a bandanna around his neck, with a hat and some stained faded jeans. His mouth was wide, it was like every time he spoke, his lips begged to scream, “No.” He was loud. He didn’t yell, but everything he said was fast and sharp, like a slap to the face. I think he hated everyone and everything. He probably wanted to be left alone in a cold quiet cave but never got the chance.

“Get up off of the floor! Why don’t you use your head, Stupid?”

That was when he noticed twenty other kids were kicking me too.

“Stop hitting your brother, Stupids!”

I got up while the man gathered the rest of his kids.

“Hurry up, Stupid, or we leave you here for cucuy!”

“What’s a cucuy?” I asked.

I made my Ma mad and I wanted to make her madder. I wanted to have money so I could buy candy, toys, ice cream, cigarettes, lottery tickets, a doo-rag, pictures of the ladies with no clothes; everything behind the glass in the corner store. Everything I could see but never touch. Everything I could never have.

“Cucuy is the monster who comes and eats you if you don’t sleep at night when Pa tells you to go to sleep,” said one of the kids.

Ma said if I didn’t stop making her so mad, she would smack me Mexican instead. I didn’t know what a Mexican was, so I kept trying to make her mad. I made her so mad that she raised her hand up high like she wanted to answer a question at school. She started shaking. Her eyes scrunched down to her nose while her teeth clenched and grinded; her arm swung down fast like a golf club.

I don’t remember anything after that. ***

I woke up in the middle of a street to a family kicking me. An angry,

“Who’s Pa?”

“Pa’s our Pa!” said another kid.

“Where’s Ma?”

“She’s having another kid. You remember when Saturday and Sunday were born a while back?” “No.”

“Member? You ‘member! It was three days ago fool!”

“Who are you?”

“It’s me, Thursday, Stupid!” said a fat kid.

“Why do they call you Thursday?”

“We started running out of names because January through Septem-

ber are all in jail, October through December left for Michigan to work in the summer, Monday joined South Side, Tuesday joined North Side and Wednesday joined East Side. That means I have to join West Side.”

“Why do you have so many gangs?”

“That’s not a lot, you should see the apartment next door!”

“I don’t live in an apartment.”

“Yes we do! Shut up before Pa hits you with his cintaron!”

“What’s a cintaron?”

“It’s a belt, Stupid! Do you want him to hit your culo?”

“What’s a culo?

“It’s your butt, Stupid,” shouted Pa, “Now shut up, both of you Stupids! I don’t want to even hear you breathe.” fat.

Me and Thursday held our breath for a long time, but Thursday was

Real fat.

Fat like one of those fat people who got to use the special chairs at the dollar store. Fat like the purple girl in Willy Wonka, the one that had really tiny hands and a big, blubbery, blueberry body. His fat was like a bunch of bubbles that grew and grew but never popped, it was like his shirt was painted on. Thursday was so fat that he couldn’t hold his breath. He had to breathe, and when he did, Pa snapped Thursday’s arm with his belt, and the fat jiggled like a wobbly saw.

Thursday was crying when Pa looked down on me.

“Which one are you, what’s your name?”

“It’s-”

“Shut up, Stupid, you don’t know your name. Turn around.”

He put his hand on my head and turned me sideways. He snatched at the tag on the back of my shirt. “Friday. Take this dollar and get me a cigarette from that Chinito store over there. I want my change and my receipt! Every penny I don’t get back is three days you don’t get no food or no tortillas!” ***

I later found out that Friday was only one of my names.

Mexicans have really big families, really small cars, really dirty houses, really clean hats, really low patience and really long names. When I got into the store I looked at the tag on my shirt with my name on it. The name on the tag was Friday-Aguilar-Alvarez-Chavez-DiazPerez-Perales-Dominguez-Rodriguez-Gonzales-Guittierez-Gomez-FloresSanchez-Nunez-Juarez-Jimenez-Cortez-Morales-Mendez-MartinezMenendez-Ramirez-Martín-Cruz-De la Cruz-Vera Cruz-Santa Cruz- Tom Cruise-Lopez-Hernandez-Vasquez-Velasquez-Torres-Cervantes-Castro-Garcia-Reynoso-Barrientos-Barrera-Eduardo-Miro-Jarrito-Tranquillo-TaquitoTrevino-Delgado-Desperado-Hiraldo-Hidalgo-Gordito-Lima-Limon-LeonLemon-Calderon-Cabron-Univision-Estrada- Ibarra-Iglesia-Palacios-JesusSevilla-Salvador-Silvia-Silva-Castillo-Soto-Mendoza-Medina-Alfaro-AlfredoVargas-Vega-Vincente-Cardinas-Santana-Salgado-Santos-Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Santa Claus-Reyes-Ruiz-De la Hoya-Torrido-Trejo-Perro-Torro-ZorroTobogan-Valeria-Villa-Zapato-Ortiz-Gamora-Godzilla-The Thirteenth. What I couldn’t understand was how someone could fit all that on a tiny tag. *** After I gave Pa the cigarette with his change and a receipt, he asked if I thanked the Chinito. I said yes. He smacked my arm with his belt and said I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, especially Chinitos. Chinitos were Chinese people and Pa said Chinese people were sneaky. I tried telling Pa that the man was Korean, but then he hit me again and told me to get in the car.

We walked over to a rusty old Honda Civic. I had to sit in the trunk with Monday through Thursday. We sat on top of bags of cement; the car was a low-rider and the bumper scraped against the street, shooting sparks against the concrete. The wind was blowing hard, knocking the trunk door up and down, bobbing our heads behind us. The yellow traffic lines below us zigzagged like a snake because Pa drove really bad and really fast. Monday wore Blue, Tuesday wore Red, and Wednesday wore black. All three were pointing their knives at each other, but Thursday didn’t have a knife; he wore a white wife-beater and some mesh shorts.

Monday kept making fun of him for not being in a gang.

Thursday shot back at Monday, making fun of his tattoos. Monday was seven years old, but only had three tear drop tattoos under his eyes. That meant he only managed to kill three people in his life. Even Wednesday, the retarded kid who repeated everything everyone said like a parrot, had more tear drops then Monday. “Stupid, you ain’t even in a gang,” yelled Monday, “At least I got teardrops, you haven’t done nothing. South Side, fool!”

“Pa! Pa! Pa! We’re telling Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Paaaaaa!!”

Pa slammed on the brakes and the five of us flew out the trunk like a slingshot. Pa sped off and covered us in dust. We’d just been dropped off at school. *** When I was in the Kindergarten class there was a special Dinosaur book I read before the bell rang. Stegosaurs’ were my favorite Dinosaur and I liked that Stegosaurs were supposed to be colored green. I liked green because it reminded me of the Green Power Ranger. He started off evil, fought against all the other Power Rangers, then turned good and joined them. I thought I was like the Green Ranger because I was different but had to join other people. I really wanted to read about the Stegosaurs because they had fins; fins just like the Green Dragon-Zoid robot that the Green Ranger had. Green like the Stegosaurs. During reading time a boy named Norman ran to the bookshelf and stole my Dinosaur book. Norman had a big dumb smile on his face, and I got angry because Norman couldn’t read yet; he didn’t know his ABCs, he didn’t know any math and he couldn’t eat food with his mouth closed. He laughed and ran like he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong.

“South Side! South Side!” shouted Wednesday.

“Stupid, I’m in South Side, you’re North Side!”

“North Side! North Side!”

Side.”

“No, I’m in North Side!” said Tuesday, “Wednesday you’re in East

“East Side! East Side!”

“Fuck East Side!” “Ooh, you said the F-Word!”

“I’m telling Pa!”

“Why are you reading? Are you trying to be White, Stupid?” Monday asked.

“We’re telling Pa!”

Norman had gone over to his little yellow chair and was about to sit down when I pulled the chair away from under him. He crashed into the ground like a moron. Norman cried. Like a bitch. Tears drip-drip-dripped onto his cheeks, and then slid down his chin, the way toilet water floods onto the floor when you mess with the handle. I snatched my Dinosaur book from him, took his chair away, then skip-skip-skipped to my lou, over to the other side of the room. I sat down in Normans little yellow chair and read all about my favorite green Stegosaurs.

“White! White!” Wednesday yelled.

“I like Stegosaurs,” I said.

“Dinosaurs are stupid,” Monday pulled out his knife and I got scared.

“Stupid! Stupid!” Wednesday yelled into Monday’s ear.

Monday got mad and shoved Wednesday, “You’re a stupid fucker, Stupid!”

Monday still had his knife out and Wednesday shouted back.

“Stupid fucker! Stupid fucker!”

“Shut up, Wednesday!”

Monday stabbed Wednesday four times in the stomach, than Wednesday stabbed himself eight more times, yelling to himself, “Shut up Wednesday! Shut up Wednesday!”

“Okay, break it up,” said the teacher. ***

After Wednesday put a band-aid on, we got to play outside. There was a basketball court surrounded by fences but only one ball. All the other kids were awful; they held the ball over their heads with their elbows stuck out, throwing it like a soccer ball.

“If you’re a Latino but have some Black in you, that means you’re Puerto Rican, not Mexican.”

“I’m not Puerto Rican, I’m-”

“Shut up, Stupid, you don’t know what you are. You’re good at basketball, that means you have to be Puerto Rican. Everybody knows that Puerto Ricans are good at basketball, Dominicans are good at baseball and Mexicans are good at soccer.”

“And Cubans can’t play anything, they only make sandwiches!”

“I want a sandwich!” ***

Everyone said that from now on I was Puerto Rican. Especially Kenneth Logan. He was bigger than everyone else, except for Benito Ramirez, the fattest kid in class. Benito was even fatter than Thursday. While we were outside, Kenneth Logan started picking on me. He slammed me to the ground and pounded my head like a bongo drum. Kenneth played pee-wee football and was good at tackling. I thought how it wasn’t fair that Kenneth can fight better. His parents can send him to football and he can learn to fight and tackle. Nothing like that ever happens to me.

I went for a shot and made it.

“Hey, Friday made it!” one kid said.

“How’d he make it?” another shouted.

“He’s cheating!”

“How’d you make it?”

I told Benito he was a fatty-fat-fat-fat; that’s a person so fat that their fat had fat. Benito started chasing me around the playground but fatty-fat couldn’t catch me. I stopped running and said to Benito-

“He did say he was Black!”

“You can’t catch me!”

“He looks Mexican.”

“Shut up!”

“Maybe he’s Black on the inside.”

“You know why you’re so fat? Because you stopped running after me

I ran away when Benito Ramirez, the fattest kid in class, tried to make fun of me now that I’d gotten shown up.

so soon!”

someone to be so quiet.

“Shut up!”

“I’ll shut up when you stop being fat!”

The principal said, “Maybe if we test his intelligence we can put him in the proper environment. One that will fit his needs.”

“Shut up!”

“Stop copying me! SHUT UP!”

***

“I’ll shut up and stop making fun of you if you go and jump on Kenneth Logan.” When Kenneth Logan was standing still, Benito ran up to him as fast as he could, his tiny legs moving like matchsticks, and belly-flopped Kenneth Logan in the back. I don’t know how Kenneth Logan couldn’t feel the earthquake coming, but it worked and people were scared to pick on me after that. *** I hated everyone being scared of me. I was just Friday the Thirteenth now. Mess with him and bad things would happen. Nobody talk to him. Don’t be his friend and don’t pick on him. Just pretend he isn’t there. If he’s walking towards you, get out of the way and don’t look him in the eye. Look away and run. It’s lonely being the bully. It’s lonely being weak, but it’s lonely being strong too. It’s lonely not being one of the Stupid’s like everyone else. It’s lonely knowing that people think only one thing about you and nothing else. *** “I take care of my kids, I raised him right, I remember when he was born-ed and I know he didn’t do it,” Pa said. The Principal had called him to his office after everything that happened with Kenneth Logan. The teachers noticed that I didn’t talk to anyone and they thought I was stupid; they tried to get someone who spoke Spanish to put me in the other classes. The slow class. They said it wasn’t normal for

“Fine, do it, I gotta get back to work.”

“Gifted.” “What?”

“Your son, uh, Friday?”

“Yeah, Friday, sure.”

“He’s gifted. We want to enroll him in the gifted program.”

“Do I have to pay anything?”

“No, having a minority in the program will-”

“Do I gotta sign anything?”

“No.”

“Do I gotta come back?”

“No.”

“Do I have to do anything else?”

“No.”

“Okay, do whatever you want, I gotta get back to work.” ***

There was nothing but White people in the smart classes. I knew something was fishy because White people and smart people aren’t the same thing. I know White people are the only people who shoot themselves in the head and try to die, then mess up and get put in the crazy hospital.

Blacks don’t shoot themselves, Mexicans don’t shoot themselves, and neither do Puerto Ricans. I don’t know which one I am anymore, but I just know I’m not White. I know by the way nobody liked me in there. Everything scared me, but only at first. When I saw how everyone just wanted to laugh at me it made me angry. So angry I wanted to hit them and kick them and step on them until they were bruised and Black all over. Then they would have to be poor and go to bad schools with nasty lunches. They’d be stuck like that forever and have to go get a job at McDonalds and have ugly White people yell at them. *** In class one day, there was a math question that nobody could solve. All the other kids had their elbows on their desks and their mouths were finally shut tight; their lips were tucked into their faces, but most importantly they weren’t happy any more. They weren’t smiling. I decided to show the White people I was better than them. I walked up to the whiteboard and solved it. As soon as I finished the White kids started banging their fists against their desks, like I beat them in their favorite game.

“He’s not White, how can he be good at math?”

“He cheated!”

“That Puerto Rican cheated!”

“No, he’s a Mexican, that Mexican cheated, stupid!”

“He’s Black, Black people are cheaters! They’re tricksters, that’s what my daddy said!” “No, he’s Asian,” the teacher said, “Asians have a culture of discipline. They take education very seriously are very good at math. Just look at him,” the teacher pointed at me and everyone stared, “his skin is paler than Black people, but his eyes look different. His hair isn’t like Black people hair, but it isn’t like ours. Yet he’s smart, so he’s Asian. He has to be.” ***

I went over to the Chinito store after school because I wanted to talk to him. He was nice earlier when I thanked him for Pa’s cigarette, the only nice person I’d met in a long time. When I walked in he smiled and started speaking something funny. His voice was high pitched and his words spit out quick like bullets. I couldn’t understand his language.

“I don’t speak Korean.”

“You no speak Korean?”

“No.”

“Then why you look like Asian?”

“I’m not Asian.”

“What are you?” ***

The Chinito told me to get out of his store and he ran at me with a broom. I felt sorry for myself because nobody liked me. I wanted to die. I started crying and crying, thinking about how to kill myself. The tears started dripping like Norman from school who stole my Stegosaurs book. Why does everyone hate me? What did I ever do to them? The more I cried and felt sorry for myself, the colder I got. The colder I got, the more I hated everything. The more I hated everything, the uglier I felt. I started running. I ran and ran until I got tired. I stopped and looked at myself in the window of a diner.

I was White. ***

I walked into the diner and told the waitress that I was lost and couldn’t find my family. She smiled at me, but her face was scary. Her head tilted like her ear was listening to her shoulder, and her teeth were too big. They looked plastic, like she took pictures of good smiles out of magazines and

movies and mimicked the mouths. Her boss came out and let me sit in a table while he called the police. Everyone was nice to me, asking if I was okay and if they could do anything to help. They didn’t ask when the teachers let Wednesday get stabbed. They let Kenneth Logan pick on me, they let the White kids pick on me, they called me Asian, they kept trying to put me in different classes, they asked me questions, they let me get stuffed into a trunk with four other kids and they kept telling me who I was supposed to be.

Now they were acting nice to me because I looked like one of them.

The waitress came back with a plate of food.

“Until we can get you in the right hands, we decided to get you something to eat. Here’s some broccoli, some corn-beef-hash, zucchini, macaroni and cheese, crackers, tuna casserole, grilled cheese, chicken noodle soup, potato salad, banana bread, an English muffin, some Panini and a big glass of grape juice!” It was awful. There was no flavor and I threw up because everything was so disgusting and dry. I was in the bathroom for ten minutes and the waitress stood outside the toilet and asked if I was okay. That’s when the police came and took me to see a doctor. *** I was okay, my insides just didn’t like what they tried to feed me. After seeing a doctor with a stethoscope, they took me to see a different doctor, one in a suit. He had a funny room full of toys and chairs, and he walked around everywhere with a notepad of paper.

He asked me weird questions.

“Do you remember your parents? Did anyone ever try to touch you in the wrong spots? Do you feel angry? Do you feel sad? Why did you run away?”

“He shows signs of paranoia, delusion, obsessive behavior, anti-social behavior, compulsive lying and the inability to accept responsibility for his actions. What you have here is a child who blames everything on invisible boogiemen and refuses to comply with social norms. He’s a troublemaker, officer.” *** People won’t stop calling me names. They won’t stop saying things about me. They won’t stop telling me who I am, what I do, what I’m supposed to be, what’s wrong with me and what will happen to me. I don’t like it. I’m not what anyone thinks I am. I want to show them. I want them to see that they were wrong. I want to make them look Stupid. ***

“Have you seen a small White boy around here, young man?”

“No.”

“Well, what are you doing by yourself in a Police Station?”

“My Ma’s in the bathroom. I can’t go in there, so I have to wait until she comes out.” “I don’t think having a boy out here by himself is a good idea, why don’t-”

“Is that the White boy over there?”

“Where?” ***

I told him the truth, but he didn’t believe me.

Everyone is searching for a missing White boy. Some are looking for a smart Asian boy or a Sad Spanish kid with broken English who is afraid of everything. One sad Ma is looking for a missing Black boy who just wanted toys.

When we were finished, I heard him talk to a police officer.

Nobody is searching for me. Nobody really wants me.

They’ll say the same thing on the news they always do. They’re expecting one type of person who fits their pictures perfectly; only one familiar story. Anything else confuses them. They won’t see me coming because they won’t be looking for me. When they see me they won’t know what I am, and they’ll think I’m Stupid. They’ll think that they can hurt me or push me aside like I’m nothing. People are the same. All of them. Their money, their schools, their cars, their health insurance, their short names, big houses, ugly skin and nasty food don’t make them better than anyone else, but they like to pretend they do. Everyone thinks that they’re smarter or better than everyone else.

But they’re all just Stupid.

Having a long name is like drowning in mud while the sun beats you and shouts with angry words. You melt and become part of the mud, and no matter how hard you fight or run, you drown in it and go crazy.

You get Stupid.

The Machine Mary Bless “In the Penal Colony,” by Franz Kafka, was written in 1914 and published in 1919. Revolving around an island wherein an absurd semblance of a justice system dwells at the center of order and chaos, the story is oddly prophetic of the Holocaust and Nazi regime. In a very complex way, too, the story transcends time through deep theological inquiries, investigations of the psychology behind group think, and the age old conflict between ethnicities. The factor which communes these broad topics remains inscription and scripture, the foundations of ideology and society. Kafka uses several literary techniques to reflect upon these themes and reveals a modernist attitude toward the human condition at the time and to come. The human species is united in the opportunity to experience the body and the mind, but civilization has a way of setting societal ambitions beyond obstacles of corporeal variances. “In the Penal Colony” has many religious references, but bears a message for the secular world concerning indoctrination. This message is especially important considering that the anti-Semitic climate which Europe would soon view as acceptable. The Germans were indoctrinated with a hateful, vengeful spirit against the Jews and during Hitler’s reign, institutionalized discrimination against them, disallowing Jews any political or judicial power to fight such conditions. The Machine functions as the most telling metaphors for examining Kafka’s strong convictions against losing sight of the value of human life. This message in the face of a modern world filled with frightening machines and weapons makes this piece by Kafka particularly modernist. The Machine operates in the story as punishment for all crimes and was supposed to inform them of their offenses. The Officer reigns over this court of meaningless offenses met with meaningless consequences. He choses inscriptions depending on the crime, but admittedly such engravings are neither intended to rehabilitate the prisoner (who dies as a result anyway) nor instruct spectators who are unable to read the inscriptions. Still, the Officer insists the Traveler has “seen how difficult it is to decipher the script with one’s eyes” and agrees “our man deciphers it with his wounds” (Kafka 11). The machine is said to case the prisoner to become enlightened, but only torture occurs. This description of 61

the penal colony’s futile judicial procedures exemplifies a Modernist theme of powerlessness in the modern world, wherein citizens are pawns relying on machines or the owners thereof. Modernist writers were concerned with the fragmenting and displacing of people in the modern world of technology and war. The rise of automatic weaponry and advanced war vehicles was frightening and fascinating, and the prevalent role of the machine speaks to that atmosphere of apprehension. Towards the end of the story, the Machine almost seems to have a mind of its own as it spits out wheels continuously, piercing the officer’s body, rather than completely rather than inscribing him at the normal pace. This malfunction magnifies modernist writers’ fear of deadly inventions, the symbols of mankind’s desire for ultimate protection against enemies, and the subsequent backfiring upon man. Flawed dependence on mechanized weaponry as a tool of justice ironically conveys humans as their own worst enemies, rather than other countries or peoples. “In the Penal Colony” has several prophetic elements of the Holocaust. For example, the Machine’s inscription of crime into the skin regardless of guilt or circumstance parallels the Nazis using ethnic identity, particularly Jewish heritage, to mark crimes for which ethnic individuals must pay. Jews during the Holocaust were forced to wear the yellow star of David somewhere on their clothing to identify themselves to others, providing a tangible identifier instead of skin color or physical features. The process of inscribing on the body is a metaphor for society’s role in prescribing traits and judgements to individual identities, inherited physical distinctions. Skin, hair and eye color as well as biological sex are inscriptions a human is born with, offering symbols by which a community measures its investment in an individual. The yellow stars represent one way in which Nazis were able to tell them apart and, eventually, close them off in ghettos and send them to concentration camps. The bodily inscriptions made by the machine in the penal colony may serve as a prophetic metaphor for the yellow stars made by Nazis, both instrumental to denote individuals’ “crimes” to their community. Just as guilt was assumed in the penal colony for sake of an accusation, guilt was assumed of all Jews because the nazis had propagandized Jewish wealth as destructive to the country’s economy. Another aspect of anti-semitic propaganda occurred at the time Kafka wrote this story, since some German scientists supported the notion that the Aryan race was purest and best, Nazis acknowledged antisemitism as scientifi-

cally sound. The penetration of the prisoner with script provides an interesting physical analogy for the sort of indoctrination practiced in the Judeo-Christian tradition. As prothetic as the story is, Kafka also draws on old models of torture and religious discrimination. Kafka channeled one figure who particularly exemplifies the consequences thereof: Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew. The very line “Honor thy superiors” carved in the condemned man serves as summary of the first five of the ten commandments. Christians often wear cross necklaces or other such physical markers to display a similar set of beliefs. Kafka emphasizes that regardless of the colonists’ beliefs, they are subject to judgement by this external force, government. Jesus’ crucifixion included receiving lashes and the cross on which he would be hanged - undoubtably a torturous death. Jesus hanged for six hours before resigning to death; during that time, when Jesus asked for water, a sponge of vinegar was inserted into his mouth by his tormentors. The master lashes the condemned man as soon as he is caught asleep; then he is brought in chains to the death panel and made to put the revolting felt mouthpiece in his mouth. The condemned man is supposed to give up and become enlightened around the sixth hour. The Prisoner and Jesus also share in the experience of inscription. The scroll hanging over Jesus’ head mockingly appoints him “King of the Jews,” while the condemned man gets an order needled into his skin. Neither character seems criminal or worthy of his sentence, yet society demands reparations for any threats to order and hierarchy. The judges sign the social contract with blood in accordance with traditions, which become ritualized, repeated and, occasionally, the content of scripture. The Officer’s highest concern is honoring the Old Commandant and upholding tradition. The Officer guards the old commandant’s notes and treasures them over everything else, even though they are too incoherent and scrambled to be appreciated by even the explorer. The symbolic function of the Machine also serves as an adequate analogy to compare the functions of the nazi regime as well, since Hitler, like Old Commandant, used the nazis as a tool to torture innocent people. In the penal colony, the new regime is distinguished from the old regime, lead by the Old Commandant, who encouraged use of the Machine for executions and praised the pageantry of the affairs, when allegedly, “it was impossible to grant all the requests people made to be allowed to watch from up close” (Kafka 15). Once the New Commandant is in power, no one shows up for the executions. Kafka

skillfully makes it unclear whether the people show support based on wanting to please the commandant, or whether they honestly support execution by the Machine. This question of a nation and its regime undergoing brainwashing by a leader versus knowingly rejecting humaneness for the sake of saving one’s own skin, literally in the case of the penal colony, poses a troublesome question for the reader. The same vexing question surfaces during the Nuremberg Trials, especially as most Nazi officials swore during the trial that they were following orders. The famous Milgram experiments, conducted at Yale University in the 1960s show an interesting response to this issue of following orders. In the experiment, individuals were meant to believe they were the “teacher” in a memory test, which required them to administer an electric shock to the “student,” played by an actor in another room. The most famous first experiment yielded the horrifying results that more people would repeatedly shock another innocent person than would not (Milgram). However, Stanley Milgram wrote four prods for the conductor of the experiment to tell the teacher, the first three being strong suggestions and the final one being an order, “You have no other choice, you must continue” (Haslam). Every teacher that began seriously questioning raising the voltage when they could hear the student was experiencing intense pain or had even ceased making noise at all, possibly dead, was given the final prod if the first three did not convince them (Haslam). Every teacher refused the final prod, explaining that they in fact did have a choice (Haslam). This lesser known statistic about the experiment makes a compelling case against the nazi officials who claimed they did evil because they were following orders. This information also relates to the penal colony citizens who probably only supported the backwards justice system to save their own lives. Of course, in the Milgram experiments, the teachers did not endure the threat of death for discontinuing the experiment, like Nazi officials and constituents of the penal colony did, but the fundamental knowledge of their part in an evil scheme must have existed in some form. At the very least, the nazis and penal colony citizens allowed themselves to be brainwashed by a menacing tyrant, rather than rebelling against evil and advocating for humanity. The main character followed in the penal colony, the Explorer, demonstrates the results of the Milgram experiments in his interactions with the Officer. The Officer begins by softly suggesting to save the Machine and the judicial system of the penal colony, and the Explorer claims he does not have the influence necessary to enact any sort of procedure in the colony, an excuse

he clings to as the Officer’s pleas grow desperate. The Officer then persists a long time, coming up with and explaining a plan, which is almost as outrageous as the judicial system, he believes will work and finally saying to the Explorer, “That’s my plan; do you want to help me to carry it out? But, of course, you want to. More than that - you have to” (Kafka 19). Once commanded, the Explorer outrightly refuses and expresses his opposition to the procedure, just as the teachers in the Milgram experiments had. In a way, Kafka’s character, the Explorer, is more realistically paralleled with the results of the Milgram experiment. It is fascinating and exceedingly misfortunate that “In the Penal Colony” prophecies, in a way, elements such as group thought, propaganda and the lack of individual strength, which helped the Nazis come into power and allow the Holocaust to occur. Works Cited Haslam, Alex, and Benjamin Walker. “The Bad Show.” Interview by Jad and Robert Krulwich. Audio blog post. Radiolab.org. NPR New York Public Radio WNYC, 9 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://www.radiolab. org/2012/jan/09/>. Kafka, Franz. “The Penal Colony.” 1914. PDF file. <http://www.craigcarey. net/fall2012/files/2012/06/Kafka-PenalColony.pdf> Milgram, Stanley. “The Perils of Disobedience.” Harper’s Magazine (1973): 62-77. Web. 24 Apr. 2012.

Conspicuous Consumption

The want to build machines instead of brains. The American Dream is my ball and chain.

Ryin Cornett Oppress me with your instilled greed. Paper coming from trees. The very thing that sustains life, becoming the money that ruins it.

We aim for peace. But those same shots, turn us to pieces.

We learn how to live by staring at a box. Different channels channeling our childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thoughts.

The answers come from textbooks, altered, to make our fathers sound like genuine men.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m starving for truth, but the only nutrition I can afford is the farthest thing from it.

So Late Thir Happie Seat William Willis

All across the country, people are preparing for the end times. Millions of skeptics are choosing to be unprepared, facing certain doom, while those with shelters are being ripped apart by those without. When the United Countries carry out their attack soon it’s imperative that you be among the few who took this matter seriously and plan accordingly. Tune in tomorrow morning at 11 when survivalist Jack “Fallout” Parker offers his advice on protecting yourself from violent intruders with ordinary household items, until then, stay safe, friends. (static)

* The auctioneer took to the stage, and grabbed the walnut colored gavel off of the podium. “The auction will now continue at item #245: a complete, first edition copy of The Birds of America by John James Audubon. We will start the bid for this rare piece at one hundred thousand…”

“What are we going to tell her?”

“We’re not telling her anything. If she ever asks, we’ll just tell her that we’ll be at the firm for the entire day.”

“Are you sure? Shouldn’t we at least tell her—”

“NO, Judy!” Mr. Douglas escorted his wife out of earshot near Sotheby’s main entrance. “You’ve got to hold it together; it won’t do any good to worry about her. She’s an adult now, it’s her own responsibility.” Mr. Douglas kept a firm grip on his wife. “There’s only room for two, and it’s just you and me.” Mrs. Douglas tried to keep from crying, but the first of several clear drops slid down her puffy face. She wiped them, accidently smearing her anti-wrinkling makeup.

“B-but she’s m-m-my little—”

“Then it’s either you or her.”

Mrs. Douglas stopped. Her eyes dried like the Aral Sea and her thin red lips quivered. She nodded weakly, letting him know she’d behave from now on. “Good…come on, they’re about to auction our item. Frankly, if our item doesn’t sell that well, I don’t think I can afford harboring you. The fucking world is having us resort to pawning our treasures for what? Toilet paper and gas masks? They’re laughing at us, Judy. And all the while they’ve got their boots in our faces.” Mr. Douglas sighed, shaking his head. “Not a word to Samantha or else—” “Jer?” A weak voice filled the void between Mr. and Mrs. Douglas. They turned their heads to a young woman who entered through the heavy glass doors. She was noticeably out of place, carrying a recycled tote bag and wearing a yellow sundress and flip flops. Mr. Douglas’ face fell. “Jer, I need your help, please, you’ve got to help me.” She sounded desperate. “Who is she?” Mrs. Douglas asked sternly. Some of the attendants that were carrying glasses of champagne and finger foods looked over at their direction, attracting more and more attention from the buyers and sellers. “Who is she, Jerry?” Mr. Douglas didn’t answer. “How do you know my husband?”

“Jer, I need your help…I—”

“I DON’T KNOW YOU!” Mr. Douglas turned to his wife. His face was turning red. “I don’t know her, hone—”

“You’re lying,” the stranger interjected.

“Mom, Dad.” Samantha Douglas broke through the crowd and joined her mother, glaring at the blond woman in front of them. The auction came to a standstill because of the commotion by the main entrance. Security officers around the auctioneer made their way to the Douglases, passing by the workers sitting at a long table, who took bids over the phone. They were left with a frenzy of confused international buyers on the line, asking where the bid stands. “Everything has stopped due to an unforeseen circumstance, but not to

worry, the bidding will resume shortly.”

“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to step outside.”

Mr. Douglas stepped in front of security, feeling that this was his fight. “Leave, you—”

“Jer, please…I’m pregnant…I-I don’t have anyone else to turn to.”

“If you enjoy your miserable life,” Mr. Douglas said slowly through his clenched teeth, “then I suggest you leave at once, you parasitic leech.” Still angry, Mrs. Douglas threw out one final statement while cuddling her daughter. “Go die in the streets with the other rats, you—BITCH!” Silence blanketed the auction house as if the handspun Navajo blanket that was being bidded on was tossed over everyone. The patrons behind the Douglas family looked at the young woman and then at the security guards, waiting to see who would be the first to act. Given the opportunity to react to what just transpired, several found it impossible to stop grinning or bursting into fits of giggles. But after witnessing this private spectacle, the waiters and waitresses that had grouped in a corner, still with large trays resting against a hip and a hand, were actually feeling sympathy for the young woman. She had her right hand down inside her tote bag the entire time.

“How much longer is it to the general store?” asked Early’s brother, Al, over Johnny Rebel. “Bud, it ain’t that far now.” The truck engine revved vehemently as they traveled down a dirt path adjacent to Interstate 85. The rebel flag emblazoned on the tailgate overshadowed the white bumper sticker below it that said: If you can’t read this then get outta my country. They drove over a patch of mud, sending some of it out from under the large wheels into the air, coating the tires and the dangly chrome truck nuts. “Sonovabitch.” Early accidently spilled his beer down his shirt. “Hey, can you grab the rag from the glove box?” Al opened it and was relieved he didn’t instinctively shove his hand deep inside for that rag. Several rusted knives, some with crusted bloodstains on them filled the glove compartment. Early reached across Al and grabbed the red faded cloth himself. “Why do you have so many knives?” “For huntin’, sorta like the huntin’ you did back in Iraq.” Al looked away from the dirt path over to his older brother. “I didn’t “hunt” anyone. I was a medic, and I rarely used my—” “Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.”

Finally, she answered Mr. and Mrs. Douglas, “I do…I will.”

The blast that followed had everyone cowering. *

Now the more he’d scratch, the more he’d sweat and I’m here to say he was-a-chokin’ me to death— Early turned up the volume and then started hitting the steering wheel like a drum, singing along to his mix tape. So we loaded up, I just couldn’t go on and I coughed and I gagged, all the way home—“Homeeeee, yes sir.” He took a swig of beer and continued singing.

Al thought the rest of the ride was going to be in awkward silence when Early suddenly threw out his empty beer bottle and grabbed another from a cooler close by. “Do…do you need help?” “Nah, I got it.” Early grabbed onto the wheel and cooler, but his eyes were fixed on the Budweiser behind the passenger seat. Al reached over and helped steer until Early could get back in his seat. “Uhh…It’s great that you want to help me during these troubling times.” “It’s no sweat. Family sticks together.”

“Yeah.” Al had a question on his mind since reconnecting with his older brother. “So, what have you been doing since—” “You left?” Early asked. Al rolled his eyes. He had wanted to explain to his brother why he had left home, but Early answered swiftly, “I spent most of my time here, out in the swamp. Out here at home.” “Mmhmm,” replied Al, feeling that his hope to reconnect was going to be difficult. “So you married now?” Early gave Al a confused look, which made Al nervous, since Early took his eyes off the road. “Y-yeah. Jeez. I got married ten months ago. Her name is Jessica, and I met her in Iraq. She’s now working in logistics. Yeah. Oh! I also told her to meet us at the old family home, and that we’d be back from—” “Is she fine?” Al was taken aback by that question, but Early announced, “Oh, we’re here...WHOO!” The truck came to an abrupt stop; Al was thrown forward before snapping back against his headrest. They arrived at a store with advertisements and sale promotions covering the windows. There was one other car parked outside in the tiny parking lot. The beaten tire and peeling red paint sat in the heat, as its owner was inside taking inventory. The store was situated far away from town, at the edge where trees and a single dirt road was all that was left to guide a person. “Early, I got it.” Al reached into his pocket for his wallet.

“No, no. I got it. Save your money.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, if you want, you can buy me lunch. I’m fuckin’ starving.”

“Sure.”

“Cracker Barrel?”

Al broke into a smile. “Ok.” He took off his seatbelt, but remained inside. “Thanks bro.”

“No sweat.”

Early got out of his truck and before entering the store, pulled down the hatchback and grabbed a bat from the bed. Al sat in his seat, spinning the wedding band around his finger, thinking about Jessica and if holding out with Early was in her best interest.

Ding Dong

“Sorry, we’re closed!” bellowed the owner.

Early strolled towards the back room, while eyeing the beer and junk food displayed on large wooden crates and black metal racks. “Hey!” The owner grew frustrated, knowing that the individual hadn’t left, “I said we’re—” A minute passed and Early returned with his pockets filled with cash, arms lugging cases of beer, and mouth clenched on a package of beef jerky. He tossed the blood stained bat out from his left armpit and back into the truck bed. The rattling grabbed Al’s attention and he got out to help. “Wait. All you got was beer and beef jerky?” “Yeah, don’t worry. I got “food” at the fort. Plus we can hunt and fish—we’ll be doin’ fine. Don’t—worry.” “Ok.” “Well?” “Well, what?” “You gonna share that fine bitch with family?” “What?” Al was mortified. “You never answered back in the truck.” “No.” He glared at his brother. “It’s going to be lonely out at the fort. And after all, I’m sharing my fort and supplies with you and your bitch. Fair is fair.” The serious tone in his voice made Al nervous for Jessica’s safety and wellbeing.

“She’s my wife,” Al struggled, “and if you lay a hand on her—” “What about my middle leg?” Early laughed. “You son of a bitch.” Al lunged at Early, knocking him onto the ground where they wrestled. Al had Early in a chokehold, but Early broke from it. He then had Early under him, but Early again broke from Al by grabbing some sand and dirt off the ground and throwing it into Al’s eyes. With Al off of him, Early got on top of Al and started bashing his head on the ground.

“No!”

Benjamin didn’t answer, he let Nathan open the bag and find out on his own.

“Never!” With one final blow, Al stopped writhing. Early got off and climbed back into his truck. The engine kicked back to life, and a plume of black smoke blew out of the exhaust pipe. Early drove down the beaten path, back to his fort by the swamps. He turned his Johnny Rebel back on, and sipped his Budweiser as Al and the general store faded in his rear-view mirror. Some niggers never die; they just smell that way… * Benjamin approached the tall, yellow pine fence that separated him from his neighbor, who was halfway up his lawn, carrying in the groceries. Nathan and Bebe had lived in the neighborhood longer than Benjamin and his wife, Celia. Benjamin and Celia had two boys, Oliver and Orlando, while Nathan and Bebe were very lucky to have Katie a few years ago. Most of the neighbors on the block weren’t comfortable interacting with one another, but Benjamin and Nathan’s family have been close for the last five years they’d known each other. “Hey Nathan, can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure.” Nathan walked over to Benjamin, who rested against the 6 foot tall fence; his black hair was the only part visible. “What is it, Ben?”

Benjamin reached over the fence and handed Nathan a small black bag. Nathan placed down his brown paper grocery bags and grabbed the bag from Benjamin.

“Say she’s mine!”

“Say it!”

“Nathan, when the time comes…and a man has to look after his family…he needs to be prepared for the worst.” Benjamin noticed Nathan’s clueless expression and realized he needed to be less vague with his speech. “Look… this whole problem isn’t going to go away. And the shit is about to hit the fan very soon. So for your family’s best interest, you should be prepared.”

“What’s inside it?”

Nathan’s eyes opened wide. “What?!”

“Shhh! Hey, all I’m saying is that it’s better to put people out of their misery than to have them dragged down the same godforsaken road. I don’t know what they will hit us with. Could be ballistic missiles, could be germs, I don’t know. They could choose to invade and if that happens, they’d rape Bebe and Celia ‘til they get bored of them and slit their throats, and Katie and the boys are worthless. If they choose not to torture them for fun, they might use them as slaves for the rest of their lives. Can you imagine the abuse Katie would take? Nathan, the threat has been growing for years. It’s serious, and it’s inevitable that it will fucking hurt. Look where we are, man. MacDill isn’t that far away. We’re in the fucking line-of-sight.”

“There’s still a chance, there’s an envoy in Switzerland.”

“For God’s sake, we’re at DEFCON 1, Nathan. One minute to midnight. Face reality, don’t negotiate with it.” “You never know.”

“Good luck, Nathan…God Bless.”

Nathan didn’t respond, but he shook the hand that was thrown over the fence before grabbing up his groceries and heading inside with the black bag hidden on his person.

Bebe sat in the kitchen, swirling a spoon in her cup of French vanilla coffee, while reading Lynne Barrett’s Magpies. Little Katie was in the living room, coloring her Disney Princess coloring book when Nathan entered. He brought the groceries into the kitchen, and when his wife offered to help, he declined. “No, it’s ok. You read your book.” She returned to her book, and Nathan placed everything in its proper place. He walked into the living room where Katie was and watched her color. She colored outside of the lines, but she was happily rubbing the crayons raw. She noticed him.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said with a bit of spit falling out of her mouth.

“Hi, angel.” His voice was melancholic. He approached the television and turned it on. “A last ditch effort to curb the climactic tension—” Nathan switched the television to the DVD player. “Do you want to watch SpongeBob?” “Uh-huh,” nodded Katie. She stopped coloring, and closed her book but laid her crayons out around her. Nathan opened up a DVD of SpongeBob SquarePants, but trembled as he took out the disc and put it into the DVD player. It slid around before Nathan could hold it together, and let it fit properly.

“You want to watch with me?”

“Sure, honey.”

He sat next to her on the couch, and to pass the time until they reached the menu screen, Katie uttered gleefully, “I like Patrick.” Benjamin paced around the kitchen, carrying a half empty bottle of beer as his family sat around the television in the living room. Celia was engrossed in Karen Russell’s Swamplandia!; hogging a loveseat all to herself, while Oliver and Orlando were on the carpet, watching Cartoon Network and

drinking cherry juice from plastic blue cups.

“Is this the episode when Flapjack meets Tee Hee Tummy Tums?”

“No.” Orlando focused his eyes on the blank wall trying to remember. “It’s the episode when K’nuckles is the mayor of Stormalong…I think.” Ben placed the cool beer bottle on his forehead. He had stopped pacing around the kitchen and was leaning against the refrigerator. The tilting chunk of metal squeaked on its stubby legs. “I can do this,” he moaned quietly to himself, “the time is now.” He left the kitchen and headed to his bedroom, but was quickly stopped by Orlando. “Dad, the remote’s dead.”

Benjamin felt numb staring at Orlando’s face.

“Dad, are you ok?” asked Orlando, avoiding eye contact.

“What?” Benjamin snapped out of his daze, “Yeah, yeah there are some batteries in the kitchen.” Ben entered the kitchen again, pulling out a drawer and taking out a pack of AA’s from a bundle of coupons. “How many do you need?” Orlando answered after a few moments staring at the fridge thinking about it, “Two…I think.” Ben grabbed two and walked back over to the living room. He changed the batteries himself, before giving it back to his son. “Does it work now?” asked Oliver, who also tried to shield from view the fact that he spilled some of his juice by sitting right on top of the mess. Ben kept the remote, flipping through the channels to demonstrate that it now works. “Rachel Ray…Biker guys…don’t know…Mythbusters…” He flipped one more time. “News, here you go.”

Ben gave the remote to Orlando, and continued his trek towards the

bedroom. I can do this. I’m a man.

manatees.

He ran out of the hallway, and blew open the front door with the side of his body. The grass was wet since it rained that morning, but he didn’t lose his footing running as hard as he could. He ran around his lawn to the front of his neighbors. “Nathan!” He reached their mailbox. It resembled a foam manatee holding out the mailbox; Katie loved it. Oh God. Benjamin then made it halfway up the lawn. The oak door that was bouncing in his eyes wasn’t that far away. A faint shot rang out. No!

“We interrupt this program for some breaking news.”

Ben stopped in the hallway. The bright lights from Celia’s remodeled fixtures cast against the glass in the picture frames made it unbearable for him to go through with his plan. He felt that the photos were judging him. What are you doing? He stared at his bedroom door at the end of the hall. The door was opened and there was his bed, his work desk. The gun safe was in the closet. He could see himself standing at the foot of his closet in a couple of steps; the oak door eager to be thrown open. He raised his foot. Stop. “We go live to Bob Orman in Geneva with a special report on the Vice President’s meeting with the United Countries.” “Thank you, Don. I’m standing here in the Palace of Nations where after a tense showdown between The United Countries, comprised of seven powerful nations, and the United States, lasting for three days has finally ended. A peace deal has been reached between…” Peace deal? “…Vice President Rosalind Birchwood and the United Countries. More on the meeting in a couple of moments. I want to get Mr. Hibachi on here to discuss some of the key points of the peace deal that was accomplished only moments ago. Now, Mr. Hibachi, you were present during the talks, where did Rosalind Birchwood stand on the issue of…” “YES!” Celia jumped out of her seat, ripping pages out of Swamplandia! and tossing it all in the air. They fell to the ground in slow loop-theloops and aerobatic twirls around Celia who danced and had her eight and five year olds join her. The mess on the floor didn’t matter anymore.

Benjamin’s heart pounded against his chest. His breathing struggled to a stop. He gutted it out across the yard. No! No! No! Nooo! His mind yelled. He couldn’t speak. Spit was coming out of the corners of his mouth. He finally reached the house and had his hands over the knob when a second shot was made. He didn’t let go, but he didn’t turn the knob either. He wasn’t sure what to do. Benjamin stood at the door in his wet socks, trying to cover the “welcome” written in the fuzzy mat below his feet. He didn’t make a sound. He let the sweat fall down from his hair and mix with the tears around his eyes, gripping hard onto the brass knob and staring blankly at the front door, letting it all collect at the sides of his mouth, and drop on the exposed welcome mat between his feet. He waited…and waited. His eyes closed shut and his forehead rested uncomfortably against the knocker. Come on. Then a final shot. Benjamin let go of the knob and returned home to his oblivious wife and boys, who were already celebrating the first of many restful days ahead of them.

Ben tried to process everything in the middle of the hallway. The LED lights shined against pictures of Oliver and Orlando enjoying their time at Chuck E. Cheese’s, Disney World, and at the beach. An older, grainy photo of Celia and Ben while they were dating caught his attention. Fourth of July weekend…one year anniversary…fireworks…the beach… first time we saw manatees and dolphins…Katie loves manatees…Katie—loves—

Alcohol and Ectoplasm Chelsea Locke

There’s a certain appeal to the drunken haze at the bottom of a sixpack; an even greater appeal attaches itself to the soft bruise colored oblivion nestled deep in a bottle of Jack. Or rum. Tonight it’s rum. But before then, before that lovely haze filters out the edges of consciousness into the spinning vortex of sleep—before then, the ghosts come. They touch her shoulders, lift her hair gently with their ectoplasmic fingers and whisper in her ear. Their touch feels like ashes. Their breath smells like rotting rose buds left on gravestones after a rainstorm. Not all together unpleasant, Amy thinks. She brings her glass to her lips and swallows the last of her drink. It tastes cheap, like bottom shelf rum and the off brand cola. The sticky sweetness lingers on her tongue and oozes down her throat like molasses. She lets her head rest against the back of her chair, lets her eyes lull to half-moons of contentment.

Rosalie. Amy shakes her head and tries to dislodge some of the cobwebs put up by Rosalie’s pale spider-hands as she makes her way back to her desk chair. Her desk is by the kitchen. She spins to look at the time on the microwave, but the blurriness at the edge of her vision makes her squint. She rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. Did I fall asleep? Rain begins to hit the window. Big, plump sounding raindrops carry the smell of wet earth between the cracks in the wooden pane and into the apartment. After a moment, the smell of roses and cinnamon churns the air. It hasn’t rained in twenty-two days—not since the day at the hospital. Not since… Amy waves her hand in front of her face to put some breathing room between her and her ghosts before leaning forward to dig through the wreck on her desk for her glasses. She pushes at a stack of papers, nudges a pint glass; the glass tips, falls and shatters on the scarred hardwood floor. The crash echoes through the apartment, bounces through the empty corners and scares the dust bunnies.

Thin ghost-fingers run down her neck, stronger than the others, but she hardly notices. They touch her cheek, slip up her nose and spin her thoughts with tiny spider hands; pale, delicate hands with blue vein lace visible below the skin. They lead her up towards a set of storm gray eyes framed in thick black lashes that match the volumes of hair spilling over the ghost’s shoulders and into her face. The ghost’s nose is slightly upturned at the end, her cheekbones are high, and her mouth is a wide gash of red lipstick.

In the half-light, the glass slivers look like stars glistening against wood-knot constellations. Amy stares down at them for a full minute before letting a convictionless curse fall to join them.

Rosalie…

“You’d like it more.” Rosalie’s voice comes from behind her, full volume and lush. The other ghosts are gone; Rosalie is the only one determined enough to stay. She smells like cinnamon gum and rose oil, she smells like she always did when she was alive.

Amy sits up too quickly. The small amount of light in the room makes her wince. She walks over to the window and pushes at the curtains until she can see the dark outlines of buildings slightly shorter than the one she lives in. They stretch out towards the city, shining several miles away like a twinkling beacon of estranged hope. She believed in that hope once. Before…

“If you press your hand into them you’ll have stars in your palm,” Rosalie’s voice says inside her skull.

Amy snorts. “You’d like that,” she mumbles aloud.

Amy lets out a sigh that seems to pull all the strength from her body and plops her head down on the only clean spot on her desk. “Why can’t you

just leave me alone?” The edge of the desk bites into her forehead. “I miss you.” She sets her hand on the back of Amy’s skull, soothes her unruly hair with phantom fingers and Amy shivers at her touch. Amy sighs, rolls her head to the side and gazes up at Rosalie. Her heart twitches, a lump forms in her throat, and the backs of her eyes sting with unshed tears. “What do I feel like?” Rosalie asks her. She tilts her head to the side like an inquisitive child and strokes her hair again; presses down through the static singe of her cropped dyed locks and caresses her cranium, runs the wisp of her index finger along her lambdoid suture. Amy shudders, squeezes her eyes shut. “You feel like straight menthol dropped onto my skin,” she says and pulls away, “or like dry ice in a cut.” *** 03.13.2010 Amy walked into the hospital with her head down, rainwater still dripping from her hair. To her left, a nurse stepped out from behind the big receptionist’s desk to ask her name and who she was here to see. Amy’s voice shook when she spoke, suppressed sobs clinging to her molars. She saw the nurse’s eyes soften before she followed her to the end of the short hallway. Amy bit the inside of her cheek. The room smelled of bleach and vomit. When the nurse pulled the curtain closed and stepped out, a hush fell on Amy’s shoulders. It made the steady beeping of the heart monitor too loud. She wanted to rip it off the wall and hurl it out the window. She wanted to scream. The starchy hospital blanket twitched. Amy stepped up to the bed and took the hand wrapped mostly in gauze; the fingers gave a gentle pressure as they tried to wrap themselves around hers. A metallic, faintly rotten, smell slipped up her nostrils. That was when she noticed the blood caked under Rosalie’s nails, the brown-red flakes peeking out from under the bandages starting at her wrists, wrapping up her arms and waving over most of her body.

She looked like a moth wrapped in its cocoon, or a spider’s meal trapped in webbing. There was a faint rustling further up in the bed: the sound of a head turning to the side—like when they were kids and they’d lie on the Sunday paper to make silly putty comics. Amy squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to look up. She started to cry. Rosalie groaned. What was left of her eyebrows were knitted together as she tried to focus through the morphine-haze on Amy. Her eyes looked like London fog over water, her pupils only small pinpricks in the distance. “It’s okay,” Amy told her, “I’m here now. Everything will be okay. Don’t try to talk. I’m here. It’ll be okay.” Amy watched her eyes relax at the sound of her voice, saw the tension in her body leek into the hospital bed to mingle with the small bright-red smudges slowly oozing from some of the bandages covering her body. She reached up to brush one of the few remaining wisps of Rosalie’s hair which had escaped from the gauze wrapped around her head when she’d turned. It felt like charred silk. She watched her eyes close. If she could have seen her mouth, she could have seen what was left of her raw, cracked, lips try to smile. The nurse quietly peeked around the curtain and motioned for Amy to follow her out into the hallway. Amy whispered she’d be right back, but the steady rise and fall of the blanket told her Rosalie had already fallen asleep. “She’s exhausted,” the nurse said in a hushed tone when they were both in the hallway and tried her luck at a sympathetic smile. “She refused to let herself sleep until you got here.” “I got here as soon as I could…My phone was off. I was in a meeting and…” She began, but the nurse gave her a look that said she understood, things like this were no one’s fault. Amy shifted from one foot to the other, guilt seeping up from the linoleum and eating through the bottoms of her shoes. If she stood still for too long the souls would melt to the tile floor. The nurse was young. She was taller than Amy by a good couple of inches, she may have been as tall as 5’8”, but was plagued by the apologetic stoop most tall people develop. She was pretty. Her blonde hair was pulled

back in a messy pony tail and her nose was small, her eyes expertly lined with kohl, but she had on those thick-rimmed hipster glasses Amy had seen the kids who hung around Starbucks wear. Rosalie would have made a comment about them; something about how terrible current fashion was to make a pretty girl want to hide her eyes behind something so ugly. Amy simply wanted to rip those glasses off the nurse’s nose and stomp on them. “… critical condition. There is still a chance of internal bleeding—” Amy shook her head. “I’m sorry, what?” “When she came in she was in critical condition. It’s a miracle she made it here at all, to be honest. I saw the pictures of the cars. But just because she is relatively stable now doesn’t mean everything’s 100%. With as much as she was knocked around, there is still a chance of internal bleeding and most of her skin is the same as an open wound from the burns. We’re going to have to monitor her for infection, but this is the best hospital this side of the country for skin graphing so—” She was cut off by a loud beeping from Rosalie’s room. Her eyes got wide before she turned and ran back inside. Amy’s mouth hung open. She heard people running down the hall and saw three other nurses turning the corner, running towards her; towards Rosalie. Amy burst through the curtain before she realized she’d moved. She ran to the opposite side of the bed from the nurse and took Rosalie’s hand. Her fingers were cold. The beeping was deafening. It was like different pitched fire alarms were going off in Amy’s brain. Rosalie’s face was pale and her eyes were closed with the barest slivers, like crescent moons, peeking out from singed black lashes. She began to rub Rosalie’s hand to try to warm it up. “Rosalie? LiLi? LiLi, it’s me. Open your eyes, LiLi. It’s Amy. LiLi, it’s Amy. I’m here. Open your eyes. Please, open your eyes!” Tears made her hands slick as she tried to make Rosalie’s hand warm; rubbing it, then holding it between the two of hers like she did the winter of their third anniversary, spent in Central Park under the millions of Christmas lights, crunching through the snow. “LiLi, open your eyes!”

*** 04.05.2010 “Aaaamy. AmyAmyAmy. Ammmmy, open your eyes. Amy, sweetheart, wake up.” Amy’s eyelids peel apart. Rosalie comes into focus slowly, her ebony hair falling softly over her shoulders, her fingertips reaching towards Amy’s cheek— No. Rosalie is dead. Dead and burnt to pale gray ash and bone splinters. Bone that looked like charred flecks of kindling the night after a bonfire rose into any of the crisp October nights spent huddled together under the stars. Bone that now floats off the shores of Saint Augustine. Amy presses her fingers to her temples, trying to dislodge the memories. She can hear Rosalie’s voice, her laugh, see her smile twinkling in her eyes… Rosalie pointing at Amy with her fork, a chunk of cheesecake speared in its teeth; her hand covering her mouth, her eyes teasing. Rosalie skipping playfully down the crumbling cobblestones of King Street; her hand extended for Amy, calling for her to hurry. Rosalie pressed against the coral composite walls of the Spanish fort, fingers tangled in Amy’s hair, pulling her closer; her mouth—hotter than the hottest of Florida summers. Rosalie covered in a sheet, hospital nurse scratching down the time of death. “Amy…. I’m so lonely…” The apartment smells like roses and cinnamon.

“Me too,” Amy whispers to the dawn peeking over the windowsill. Amy leans over the edge of the bathtub, fiddles with the knobs until

Sunday

she hears the ancient pipes groan, heavy with water. She lets it wash over her hand until it reaches a lovely temperature of scald before stripping naked and stepping into the tub. She turns her back to the showerhead, presses one hand flat against the wall to remind herself to stay upright and closes her eyes. Red blossoms spread over the skin of her back and creep around to her chest where the water hits her. She can’t feel it—her insides are cold.

Paige Lewis

She opens her eyes when she feels pressure, slow and firmer than the constant streaks of water, run down her cheek. Rosalie’s body is distorted through the water droplets clinging to Amy’s eyelashes. She blinks and Rosalie is gone— no —she is laying in the bottom of the tub, skin black and peeling, pink muscle oozing clear fluid. What looks like chunks of burnt bread from the bottom of the toaster float towards the drain, clogging it. A clump of her black hair wraps around Amy’s ankle. She rolls her eyes up to Amy and stretches back what is left of her lips from teeth that seem impossibly white, like a shark’s. The skin splits in the corners of her mouth and blood leeks down her chin.

I spend my Sunday being wrong

Amy screams and takes a step backwards. Her foot slips out from under her. The back of her skull crunches when hits the tub’s spout.

as long as I place my offering

Limp on the bottom of the tub, head wound seeping, Amy’s eyes flutter. She feels Rosalie wrap her peeling fingers around hers before losing consciousness. Rosalie hums to herself and rubs her ectoplasmic thumb over Amy’s paling knuckles. The dull red water in the tub rises and washes over the side, spreading over the linoleum like diluted sangria. When Amy finally leaves her body, Rosalie is waiting.

in a church with broken windows. Multicolored martyrs are no match for bored teenagers

with bricks. Father John promises that I will be cured

into the crackling collection basket. I leave

the mesh confessional and walk toward the dim backroom to whisper my Hail Marys but the votive candles are busy helping women with fault

I’ve missed you so much… line faces. Their synthetic diamonds launch new constellations onto the walls. They don’t make space for me to enter so I watch, holding my penance,

as they ask the clotting wax to bring back the dead pets and milk-box children.

Visiting the Grave By Samantha Eppes

When Sarah told me my grandmother had the only pink gravestone in the cemetery, I’d pictured a pale rosy stone like the piece of quartz Sarah sent me from Arizona. But it turned out to be a dark, reddish pink. It sat under a poplar in the far corner of the cemetery. Sarah had gotten a little carried away with the flowers on the plot, I thought. My mother had never been known for her subtlety. Three different kinds of peach-colored flowers grew so tall that they obscured the stone’s front. When I brushed the roses away and saw her name printed across the top, Bernice Elizabeth Knite, I realized all at once that she was dead. I’d known it was coming months beforehand, when they stopped her treatment, but now it seemed real, and final. In our last conversation, over the phone, she could barely utter a word without gasping, but she still tried. I winced at the rattling of her lungs as they struggled to open for air. Her voice sounded submerged, all sense garbled. I tried to talk so she wouldn’t have to. “I won the scholarship,” I said. Something that sounded like “yay,” followed by a violent attack of coughing. Sarah’s voice came on the phone. “Give her a minute, hon.” I sat on my bed in silence, unable to think of anything to say to her as I listened to Bernice hacking in the background. Then she was back on the phone. “Sorry, dear,” each word followed by a gasp. “It’s fine,” I said, trying to keep a tremor out of my voice. “I wanted you to be the first to know.”

Another hacking cough, then a thready string of incomprehensible sounds. “I’m sorry?” She tried to repeat herself. “Yeah…” I said, hoping that was an appropriate response. She struggled on for another minute. Then she said something that sounded like “let you go.” “Get some rest,” I told her. “I love you.” “I love you too.” It took her a long time to get the words out. When Sarah called a couple days later I knew it was over. But it still felt like a dream, surreal and blurred. * Now, three years later, I’d had plenty of time to accept it, but between not attending the funeral and never seeing the grave, Bernice’s death seemed abstract. When Sarah sent me packages of Bernice’s belongings, I repacked them and put them away out of sight. I didn’t want to touch them. It felt like I was contaminating her essence. The only thing I kept out was her silver necklace with the hummingbird pendant. When I wear it, I think of it as Bernice’s necklace, not mine. When she came over to our house for the first time, the necklace was the first thing I noticed. I was eleven. I’d met her when I was younger but she traveled a lot, “studying bugs,” as Sarah put it, and my parents rarely took me to visit her. When she knocked, my father didn’t move from the dining room table where he sat with his journals spread out, tapping his pencil obsessively against the pages. Bernice’s hair was sugary white and hung to her elbows, the unruly locks straining free from the large pink butterfly clip that vainly tried to pin them back from her face. She wore a floor-length, fluttery dress of pale pink, with long trumpet sleeves and a massive olive green satchel slung over her shoulder.

She smiled pleasantly at me. “Miss Mallory, I presume?” I nodded shyly at this formality. “Is your daddy home?” I nodded again and motioned her into the house. My father glanced up as she floated into the dining room. “What do you want?” he said. Bernice gazed at him for a moment before turning to look at me. “You like hummingbirds, Little Miss?” I nodded again, wishing I could think of something to say, but I’d gotten out of the habit of speaking since Sarah had left. “How about you go mix me up a cup of sugar water, and I show you how to set up a hummingbird feeder?” she said. “Then you can watch them buzz around your yard.” I knew she was trying to send me on an errand to get me out of the room. I nodded again and slipped out to the kitchen, but I hid just inside so I could hear the conversation. “Well?” my father said. “Henry, I’m sorry about Sarah,” Bernice said. He snorted. “Are you now?” “I don’t condone her decision.” “I know she talked to you about it. Long before she told me.” “I’m not here to argue. I just wanted you to know that I’m here if you need any help with Mallory.” “I don’t need your help.” “I raised a child by myself, Henry, I know how tough it is. I know you’re still grieving, but think about how all this is affecting her—” “Mallory’s fine,” he said. “She doesn’t even know what’s hap-

pened.” “She knows. Children are perceptive. Thought maybe I could take her off your hands now and then so you can take the time you need to heal.” There was a long silence. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Bernice,” he said at last. Bernice and I set up the hummingbird feeder together. She gathered up her satchel and told me she’d be back to visit next week. My father looked at me coldly when I came back inside. “You got any questions about your mama?” he asked. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I just wanted him to be happy again. He’d barely spoken to me since she left and I missed his attention. He tapped his pencil a little faster against the pages of his open journal and narrowed his eyes, as though responding to an accusation. “You know it’s not your fault she left?” “I didn’t think it was,” I said. “Your mama was in love with another man. She lied to both of us. I was an idiot not to realize, but loving someone makes you stupid. You remember that, you hear me? Everybody lies, and most couples get divorced, so there’s nothing wrong with us.” I nodded, and filed that information away for later. * In the months following Bernice’s visit I listened to my father complaining about Sarah. I listened when he called her a lying slut. I listened when he went through his journals to chart the exact dates she’d spent the night with her new man, John O’Neal. I listened when he said marriage was a sham, and he wished he’d never married my mother. I listened when he told me I would grow up to be just like her, or maybe just like him, either the betrayer or the betrayed.

Eventually, the weight of his rage began to crush me. I would flee the dining room in tears and hide in my room. I dreaded coming home from school. His venting seemed to become an addiction, like the journals. Bernice’s visits were my only relief. I could sit in the yard with her and watch the hummingbirds dart around the birdfeeder, their jewel-bright wings flashing in the sun. While she was in the house, my father wouldn’t speak. One day she came by while I was still crying. Without thinking, I had mentioned marriage to my father, fantasizing about my future husband, who would be a gourmet chef and fix me marvelous dishes every night. “You want to get married?” my father asked, looking at me with disgust. “Well, someday,” I said, instantly realizing my mistake. “Marriage is a social convention, not a necessity. I don’t want you thinking you’ll live happily ever after just because you get married.” “No, I—” “Most marriages end in divorce. People aren’t meant to be monogamous. Let’s say you marry a chef. He has to work long hours at night. He spends more time at work than with you, and eventually he’s meeting his needs with someone who works in his kitchen.” “Maybe it wouldn’t happen that way.” My voice sounded suddenly very small. He glanced at me and laughed humorlessly. “You think you’re so special? You’re too young to understand, but I need to prepare you for the real world. I thought loving your mama was enough to solve anything, but I was wrong. What makes you think you’ll be any happier?” I started to cry and told him I was sorry. I felt like a wrung sponge, too weary to even leave the room. It occurred to me then that he would never get any better. I wished for the first time that my mother had taken me with her when she left. She hadn’t even said goodbye; I

just came home from school one day and she was gone, headed out west with John O’Neal. I’d thought at the time my father had forced her to leave me behind. When she came in, Bernice took one look at my face and then glared over my head at my father. “I’d like to borrow Mallory for the afternoon, if it’s all right with you,” she said. “She has homework to do,” he said. “No,” I said, not looking at him, “I finished it.” He grunted. “Have her back by dinnertime then.” As we drove away from the house, my nose was still running. I pressed it against the back of my hand and sniffed thickly. “You want to talk about it, Little Miss?” she asked, handing me some tissues. I blew my nose. It took me a long time to work up the nerve to ask what I wanted to know. “Do you think Mama’s a bad person?” I said, finally. “No, honey. You’re mama’s a good person who made a bad choice.” “Daddy says I’m gonna be like her when I grow up.” Bernice was silent for a moment. “Sometimes people do things they’re not ready for, Little Miss. You came from two parents who weren’t ready to have a baby, and they don’t always remember their responsibility to you. But that’s not your fault. When you grow up, you can decide who you’re gonna be like. You understand?” I blew my nose again. “One day your mama’s gonna realize her biggest mistake was leaving you. But it might take her a long time. Just like it’s gonna take your Daddy awhile to realize he’s wrong to say those things to you. You tell me if he does it again, okay?” I nodded.

She drove me to a flea market and we browsed around the stalls. “Better prices, better craftsmanship,” Bernice told me. She bought Christmas decorations for her house and a little glass hummingbird ornament for me. We talked about school and she offered to help me with anything related to biology, insects in particular. On the way home we stopped for ice cream. “Life’s short,” she said, handing me a large chocolate and strawberry cone, “Eat dessert first.” I tried to eat quickly as we sat in the ice cream parlor, thinking she must have more important things to do, but when I asked about it, she shook her head. “Relax, dear,” she said as she leaned back in her chair, replacing her hair in the butterfly clip. “It’s a good day.” I was sorry to go home. * Bernice called the house the next day and I heard my father arguing with her on the phone. I snuck upstairs and quietly picked up the receiver. “…you can’t keep taking out your anger on her,” Bernice was saying. “I don’t need advice from you on how to raise my child!” I eased the phone back onto its hook, worried they would hear me breathing. Later, my father stormed into my room. He asked if I thought he was a bad father, reminding me that it was Sarah who’d abandoned me and left him to pick up the pieces. I decided never to tell Bernice anything else that my father said to me. * As I got older, my visits to her house became more frequent.

She took me on day trips during the weekends and let me spend the night with her when I got my period. Around the time I was thirteen she stopped calling me “Little Miss.” I never told her because I thought it would sound childish, but I missed it. It was something unique to us; no one else had ever called me anything like it, and it made me feel special. When we went on road trips, she rolled down the car windows and cranked up the stereo. The Rolling Stones blasted in our ears as our hair blew wildly around our faces. She called us the Zanzibanian Wild Women and said that we were on the prowl for men. Once, we spotted a car full of army guys looking very neat in their fatigues. Bernice honked the horn as we passed them and we blew them kisses. I felt grown up and daring. My father withdrew. He started seeing a therapist and burned his journals. I wanted to believe that this meant he was getting better, but I was still afraid to speak to him. He seemed to have lost interest in me. I wondered if he was angry at me for turning to Bernice. Sometimes when I came home after a day with her, my father would glance up from the sofa with hollow eyes, watching me silently as the smile faded from my face. He never asked what I had done while I was out. I wondered if he used to look at my mother that way. For my sixteenth birthday, Bernice took me dress shopping for prom. For once she didn’t insist on the flea market and agreed to visit the little outlet mall twenty minutes away. She let me try on even the most expensive dresses, though I knew she couldn’t afford them. A couple girls from my class waved at me from across the shop, looking envious as Bernice swept me into the fitting rooms with another half dozen dresses draped over one arm. I felt like a princess as I spun before the mirror in gown after gown. We picked out a lavender one, with silky fabric and a floor-length hem. “So who’s your lucky date?” she asked as we headed to the shoe store. “It’s not really a date,” I said, “Just a guy I’m friends with. Neither of us can get a real date, but if we act like we’re together, then no

one makes fun of us.” “You make it sound so sad,” she said. “No, we have fun together. It’s just not romantic, is all.” “Would you like it to be?” “I don’t think so. I don’t think I want to date anyone.” “How come?” She opened the car’s trunk and laid my dress carefully inside before locking it up again. “I just… I’m really focused on school right now. Gotta think about college and stuff.” “Is that all?” I felt her looking at me, but I kept my eyes focused straight ahead. “I’m afraid to start dating,” I said, lowering my voice as though a passerby might hear me and post flyers around my school. “Honey, why? You’re pretty enough to have to beat them away with a stick.” So I told her what my father had said about love, about my chances for happiness. Bernice was quiet for a moment. Then she put her hand on my shoulder. “I don’t ever want to hear you repeating things he’s said like that,” she told me, “All relationships end, honey, if not in separation then in death. The point isn’t to make it last forever. You enjoy what you have while you have it. I lost Joe when I was twentyfour. Doesn’t mean I regret marrying him.” “I know, but… but Daddy’s not getting any better.” “Your daddy is stuck in his pain. He’s spending all his time thinking about the past instead of moving forward. You don’t have to be like him. If you’re afraid of pain you’ll never get anywhere in life. And some things are worth getting your heart broken.” * In my senior year, doctors found a large tumor growing on Bernice’s liver. She opted for surgery to cut off the cancerous portion. My mother flew back east to stay with Bernice while she had the operation.

It was strange seeing Sarah after six years. I had received the occasional postcard from her travels. She would write that she loved me and hoped I was doing well in school. I didn’t write back because I never knew where she was headed next, but I suspected Bernice kept her updated on my life. “Honey Bear!” she said when I came over to Bernice’s house. “You’ve gotten so tall! Bernice told me you were a knock-out.” She looked different than I remembered, younger, with long, sun-bleached hair and clothes revealing a lot of tanned skin, but she also looked happier. She hugged me, but I stiffened a little in her arms. She released me with an awkward smile and retreated to her seat in an ancient orange armchair. I sat across the living room from her next to Bernice. “They think enough of my liver is viable that they can remove the cancer,” she explained, “But I won’t be able to drink my chocolate martinis any more. Took me a long time to decide if twenty more years were worth that kind of sacrifice.” “Mom,” Sarah said. “You’re right, I shouldn’t say that—Mallory,” she looked at me solemnly, “Cancer is dangerous and you shouldn’t try it until you’re ready to handle it responsibly.” I giggled a little. Sarah shook her head and sighed. “I told Sarah to bring some onions to the surgeon and ask him if he’d like some onions with my liver,” Bernice said. “I’m not going to do that,” Sarah said. “How can you laugh about this?” “Honey, when something like cancer comes along, you can either cry or laugh about it. I’m choosing to laugh.”

On the day of Bernice’s surgery I drove to the hospital after school. Sarah was sitting in one of the chairs by her bed, but Bernice was asleep. She looked much older without her usual pink attire; the white sheets and hospital gown made her look small and washed out. “The doctor says the surgery went well,” Sarah whispered to me, gesturing me to sit next to her. “How was school today?” I glanced at her. She was smiling, but her eyes looked nervous, as though she were attending a job interview. “You don’t have to act like you’re interested in me,” I said. “Cut me some slack, Honey Bear. I know things are a little awkward between us, but I don’t want to pass up an opportunity to get to know you. You’ve grown so much.” “If you wanted to know me, you could have visited. Or called, even.” “I know, I just—I wasn’t sure how your daddy would handle it. Bernice told me how angry he was with me, and…” “Why did you leave me with him?” I asked. Her mouth opened slightly and she stared at me a moment before answering. “I thought it would be best for you. For both of you. I mean, I didn’t want to pull you out of school, take you away from all your friends. You were happy here. And, I thought if your daddy lost both of us, it would be too much for him.” “He didn’t care that I was here, he only cared that you weren’t.” The small wrinkle between her eyebrows deepened. “Don’t say that, Mallory. Your daddy loves you very much.” I shook my head. “He barely even speaks to me anymore.” She glanced at Bernice as though hoping for assistance, but she was still asleep. “I didn’t know how bad it would get, Honey Bear. He was so good with you when you were little. You adored him. I thought he would be better for you than I could be.”

“Bernice is the only parent I’ve had the past six years,” I said.

me. “Shhh. It’s gonna be okay, honey.”

“Don’t pretend it was for my benefit,” I said, “You didn’t want to take me with you.” She bit her lip. “It wasn’t because I didn’t love you.”

I felt ashamed for breaking down. Bernice was dying; she shouldn’t have to comfort me. I resolved that I would do everything I could to make her remaining time happy. I stopped saying goodbye to her when we parted. Instead, I told her. “See you soon.” We discussed the migratory patterns of Monarch Butterflies, or the books I’d been assigned in my literature class. I even pretended to get along with Sarah and my father.

She looked like a little girl trying to talk her way out of punishment. I gazed at her, fully aware for the first time that she was only eighteen years older than me. She’d been my age when she got pregnant. I imagined my own belly swollen with new life—a human being that would emerge and become my responsibility. The thought terrified me. I settled back in my seat and watched Bernice sleep. Sarah dug into her purse for some tissues and blew her nose.

We sat in her yard at dusk, watching the first fireflies emerge. It was light enough that we could still see their delicate bodies hovering in the blue air. When one flew close by, we stretched out our hands to try and catch it, closing a fist around its body and watching its yellow bulb glow through the gaps in our fingers. Bernice opened her fist and let the bug crawl across her palm and over her fingers until it took flight once more.

“Well—well was that so terrible? You’re happy, you’re smart, you’re ready to start your own life. Would you really have been happier if I’d uprooted you, made you travel around with me and John?”

* Later, scans revealed that the cancer had spread to Bernice’s lungs. She started chemo that summer. The first time I saw her without her hair, her head wrapped in a bright pink scarf, she looked shrunken, like a tiny, lost alien. I tried not to stare so she wouldn’t feel ashamed. But then she smiled, the wrinkles around her eyes springing to life, and didn’t seem so different after all. * One day Sarah arrived to pick me up after school. Her mascara was runny and I felt like my body compressed as I looked at her. “Bernice needs to talk to you, Honey Bear,” she said, “She got some bad news from the doctor.” Bernice’s cancer was worse, taking over her lungs and what little remained of her liver. “It’s just not going away, dear.” She sat next to me on the couch and put her hand on top of mine. “And I’m sick of the chemo. I want to live what’s left of my life while I still have the energy.” “You can’t just give up,” I said, my voice cracking. She hugged

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“There’s a place in Tennessee,” she told me, “where the fireflies light up all together, so you see these bright flashes of gold from hundreds at once. I always wanted to go there. Maybe you’ll get the chance someday.” “It sounds amazing,” I said. “I’m sorry I won’t know you when you get older. I just want you to know that I’ve loved every minute of my time with you. You make me very proud.” I swallowed. I wanted to tell her how much she meant to me, how much I loved her for being my parent, how I couldn’t imagine life without her. “When I’m gone,” she said, “promise me you’ll live the hell out of life.” “I will,” I said. “I’m not afraid.” There was so much else to say, but somehow I felt that if I said it now, that would signal the end of our time together. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

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“I love you,” I said.

ing back to my car.

She put her hand over mine. “I love you too.”

Today I unpacked the box of her things. The olive green satchel, the butterfly clip, the antique silver mirror and matching brush. Pictures of her when she was young, and pictures of the two of us together. A journal with a bubblegum-pink cover, from when she was a teenager. The narrow, loopy handwriting on the inside cover read, “Live a Life Worth Writing.”

* Now, at her grave, I tried to organize all those things I’d wanted to say. I didn’t believe in communication with the dead. But at this moment, I desperately wanted her to be there. I needed her to hear everything I should have said when she was alive. I cleared the fallen leaves and grit off her stone, noting the words Sarah had engraved, peeking between the rosebuds. “Beloved by All. Off in Neverland.” Sarah had sent me pictures of butterflies being released at the funeral, and a stained glass butterfly hung from a curled metal rod next to the grave. I regretted now not going to the funeral. But then I remembered something Bernice had said to me before she died. Honey, I wouldn’t be caught dead at a funeral. I flattened my palm against the tomb stone. All those words I’d been meaning to say sounded empty. I whispered, “I’m graduating in December. I’m applying for a bunch of internships, and three of my professors offered to write me letters of recommendation. My father’s going to attend my graduation. He actually said he was proud of me.” A whippoorwill sang in the tree overhead. “I met someone. His name is James. He’s studying to be an engineer. ”We’ve been dating for almost a year now. I’m really happy with him.” This felt stupid. Bernice wasn’t waiting at her grave for me to visit. She already knew all of this, and all the things I’d never told her, because what remained of her was part of me. I felt a cool autumn breeze stir and the stained glass butterfly rotated gently on the fishing line from which it hung. It turned to face me. I decided to take that as a sign. I kissed my fingertips and ran them over the carved angel in the upper right corner of the stone before head-

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Thunderbird Anthony Saint My dad’s ’79 Thunderbird rumbled through the neighborhood on our way to elementary school. The engine made the dashboard shake so much that dust floated off of it. I sat between him and my sister; the undersides of my legs were itchy from the yellow cushion poking out from tears in the dry, wrinkled leather seat. The radio was fuzzy, not so bad that you couldn’t hear anything, but bad enough that it sounded like an old juke box. Dad had the radio dial on 101.5—the oldies channel then. The windows were down since the car had no AC and “Gimme Shelter” by the Stones was on. People on the sidewalk gave us some funny looks. Dad stared right back through his sunglasses, his arm hanging out the window, a Winston Ultra between his fingers. I remember a time he and I were coming home from the dog track. Suddenly, when a song by a guy named George Thorogood came on, my dad took his hands off the wheel and started playing the air guitar. He bit down on his lip and wiggled his fingers through the air. All that and he managed to keep hold of a cigarette in his hand as the pick. I asked him why the Thorogood guy liked to sing about bourbon so much. It cheers him up when he’s got the blues, he said. We were half way to school when the music stopped and the engine coughed. Dad tossed his cigarette out the window and said some words I’d never heard before. He swerved the car side to side—trying to splash gas into the carburetor. The T-bird shut off and slowed to stop. Fan-fucking-tastic, Dad said and shifted to neutral. He told my older sister to take the wheel and keep it straight. I wanted to steer the car too, but each time I grabbed the wheel my sister shoved me off. I climbed through the window and told my dad I could help him push. No, he said. I opened the door and before I could step out the car stopped. Dad pointed right at me. Back in the car! I plopped down and folded my arms. He wouldn’t let me help and my sister was a jerk. Just because I was a kid, that didn’t mean I couldn’t do something to help. I remember how sharp my dad’s eyes were

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that day. His pupils were narrowed on me. The irises weren’t blue, but they seemed like solid ice. His eyes were the onslaught of a terror one would feel only in the apprehension of some horrifying beast staring them down. His vision pierced me. When I turned back to see him push the two- ton thunderbird into motion, his strength was something I could not begin to measure. Sweat rolled into his eyes, making him squint. The wrinkles by his eyes tightened so much that his skin, which was brown from years in the sun, looked as if it was made of bark. The veins that ran down his forearms bulged with the sentience of every pound of the car and every pound of my sister and me. I looked into the side mirror. I could see his face within me—his high cheek bones and the brow that always seemed furrowed. And my eyes were cold with fear as his were with fierceness. I can’t remember when we got to school or what the neighborhood looked like then. There might have been graffiti on the buildings surrounding us, or vicious sets of eyes on us. I can’t remember any of that. But the image of my dad forcing the car into motion with the power of a giant stays with me. And now, so many years later, my father’s strength, the same image that made me feel so afraid, makes me feel safe.

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Persian Boy Jack Davani Clean the stove with rags on Monday and make sure you don’t wash your hands; Men don’t wash their hands. On Tuesday, weed the front garden with your hands and embrace the dirt lodged between your fingernails—it’s manly to have dirt there. Don’t wash your hands too often—men must have calloused hands so that women know the worth of their man. On Wednesday, don’t cry, don’t complain, just do for your family like your father does. Remember to cut the steaks from the loin, clean them, separate the silver skin from the tissue, and put the steaks in individually sealed bags in the freezer for next week. Women don’t do blood; only once a month and in private. On Thursday, kill the rooster that has been giving the neighbors trouble every morning at 4 o’clock. You must do it with a sharp knife so it’s quick—drain the blood and cover it up in the dirt. This is the Islamic way. Have a pot, an acceptable pot, of almost boiling water so it’s easy to pluck the feathers that cling to the skin like the very hurt that sticks to a wound. Take out the intestines and gizzard—keep the heart and the liver to fry in lamb fat, hot in the pan. Cut the feet off and keep them for soup. If you fed the chickens right like your father would, that rooster should be plenty fat so you could save some of it for the pan. That fat will render down in the pan to be used for all things—especially flavorful with spring peas. On Friday, do your duty as a man and take out the garbage. Women must not be seen outdoors taking out the garbage for that is a man’s job. What would the neighbors think of you if you let your poor mother take out the garbage for you? And always remember to wash your own clothes unless you want to wash mine, damn it. This is how you wash your clothes—wipe detergent on the stains and don’t fill up the machine too heavily or it’ll break like last time when you were a bad boy who didn’t listen to his tired mother who has to teach you how to do these things because your father won’t. Clean your room and don’t make me tell you twice to do the same thing. On Saturdays, you cook the spaghetti sauce this way, you must first start with a little chicken stock and some onions, then put in the fresh garlic, the basil and oregano, only ONE bay leaf, and then let the water in the stock evaporate out. Get a nice can of those san marzano whole

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tomatoes and put them in the blender. Add them to the pot with tomato paste and some more water. Add sugar to taste for it is very important that the sauce is not bitter. Do you really want to be the type of man who makes bitter tomato sauce for his family? Cook the pasta in a pot of water with some oil and a bit of salt but not too much because I know how heavy your hand is with the salt. When it’s all done and if you followed all my directions exactly it’ll taste OK but not exactly like mine because I have many, many more years on you, but it’s very, very important that you must never ask a woman her age. Don’t do it unless you want to be a thoughtless man like your father. On Sundays. sweep the porch and the whole house but it’s a woman’s job to sweep the house; it’s because I’m so, so tired and you must be the man of the house and help your poor mother with arthritis in her joints. You’ve seen your father’s knees—destroyed kneecaps that bend out to the side like a broken tree limb. You must sweep the house with his knees in your heart. Doing for your family makes you a man. Sacrifice makes you into a good, good boy. You want to be a good boy? Yes, a good boy... Water all the orange trees, the pomegranate trees, the rosemary bush, the basil and the onions in the garden, the grapes, the hibiscus, the peach tree, and when you’re done bring in some nice peaches for your mother. But Ma, all these peaches are on the ground. You’re so young. Feel them first with your thumb and if they are too soft—leave them. This is common sense. When you’re done with all that, and I mean all of that, don’t forget to always do your homework and become a doctor so your family will never have to starve or struggle; but Mama, I want to be a writer. Ha! You can write when you’re a doctor making tons and tons of money. God knows I don’t want to hear about this writing business anymore. You can write on your prescription pads and write checks so your poor, poor mother will finally get the nice house on the beach that she has been waiting for. This family finally has enough money to put one child through college, and Boy, you’re the youngin’ with that Brain, that ol’ golden ticket of yours. Be a good boy; make us proud and do what you’re told.

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Titty Bars and Ghormeh Sabzi Jack Davani I There is a cure for the rain; Persians get drunk and call each other on the phone and talk about their disappointed parents. I used to think that once one hit fifty—I mean really to hit fifty, to smash the number in the mouth and spit in the sky—that one would get over what fathers and mothers think. I used to think that once one has a job, their own place, a place adorned with goods that define who they are, that one would be ok—I mean really ok, a state of being that transcends the obsessive, overtly self conscious thought patterns that plague how a person feels at age 20, or rather, how I feel at the moment. There are uncovered leftovers in the refrigerator. It’s perfuming the whole of the inside so that everything else, the soft butter, the hard potato, the mysterious turnip, is now seasoned by the spice of turmeric, the kiss of lamb, and the stench of onion. I take the ghormeh sabzi out. My father never covers anything. Let all of the food join in marriage, I bet that’s what he thinks, the chef that he is. He’s out—probably just to drive around the neighborhood and smoke, blowing puffs out his window into the great Florida breeze, trying to rid himself of the clinging aroma of burnt cheap tobacco. My father covers up his habits. My father always wanted me to be a doctor. I think all Persian parents want their children to be doctors. So embedded in their DNA is the drive to force their children to become a doctor that it has become comical among circles of Persian-Americans like myself. Sometimes we sit in circles and joke about how all our parents think about is bragging to relatives that their child is an M.D. I think of myself in a white coat and my father’s smile, my heart crushing—I hate white. The phone rings. If she doesn’t know the number, she doesn’t answer the phone. My mother never covers anything, always vocal about how she works, how she works, and how she works. She is unhappy with her life and is convinced she does it all—the slave. Ever convinced she serves and gets nothing, she lies on a bed in the dark. In a fetal position with her dog, she does not live, she

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exists. Soap operas reverberate her master bedroom, her cave. She refuses to answer the phone; she works too hard. I used to think that adults were successful, that they understood the works of the world so that they could dance in the fluidity of it all. Now all I understand is that adults want the world to stay the same or reverse. My problem is that I am never the five year old I was, not at twenty. I take some food out from the refrigerator. I take a bite out of the ghormeh sabzi and the flavors glide across my tongue and tumble down my esophagus. The phone rings again. II Caller ID: Bahman B , Las Vegas. I pick up the phone hear a man’s laughter and glass clinking. Behind this noise there is more; a television sprays sound, muffling his voice. “Hello.” “Salam, Feridoon, toh chetoree?” “Nah, baba, this is Farhad. My father is out.” “Ahh, Farhad. Hamesheh khobeh?” “Bale, everything is good. How are you?” “Where is your father?” “Out.” “Ah. Oh yes, I am good.” “Ah.” “So, when do you coming in Las Vegas?” “Maybe one day after I graduate.” “Oh, my friend, you would love it here. The women, they walk down the street with the good ca-lothes and the big titties and is ah, very good.” “Uh, huh...” “When you come to Las Vegas, I take you to titty bar. We go to titty bar. You will like, yes?” “Uh, Amu, maybe.” “Listen, Farhad. Where is your father? I want to be speaking with him.” “He’s not here. He’s out.” “Where did he go?” “I don’t know.” “Ah. Well listen, Farhad...if my parents ever should be calling you, you don’t tell them I am taxi driver. Very important. They think I

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am doctor.” “Why would they...” “They might call. Very be careful.” “I’ll be careful,” I swallow a lump of ghormeh sabzi. The rice and clumps of fish stew sticks to the back of my throat. “How’s school?” “You know, studying to be a doctor,” I lie. “Ah, very good. You make your father proud.” “Well, Amu, I’ll let my father know you called, ok?” “Why, do you not wanting to talk to me?” “No, I always love talking to you. How’s Las Vegas?” “I am taxi driver for prostitutes and gamblings. They come into taxi and talk too much. I drive a lot of sia zangi around to titty bar. They no good. They try to steal. I drive, they run. Once I hit one with taxi after because he was thief. Real assholes.” “Wow, was he hurt?” “He better have been hurt. I drove him for one hour and he runs out without pay. What motherfucker cocksucker.” “Yeah, he was really bad. You should’ve called the police.” “Eh, fuck police. They hate Persians. Think I am terrorist. Every time I go to airport they check my asshole. Queers. I said to them, ‘if you like checking my asshole, you should pay like homosexual.’ Then they harass me and say I have no place in America. Fuckers, you know? But I laugh.” I had to laugh. “So what are you doing right now, Farhad?” “I’m eating ghormeh sabzi, Amu,” I take another swallow. “Very good, Farhad. Who made it?” “My father.” “Oh good, let me talk to him.” “Amu, he’s not here. He’s out.” “Ah, I see. Farhad, Farhad, listen: I want you to come to Las Vegas. We go to nice titty bars. The American women here suck your dick good, yeah? They love it.” “Uh, huh.” “They love it. You go with me, yes? Don’t tell father.” “Maybe, Amu.”

“Bale, Amu.” “Good. Going to get Persian wife to cook for you, yes?” “Maybe.” “Why maybe?” “Concentrating on school.” “Once you get doctorate you get lots of girls—American girls. You give them what they need, they like it.” “Ok, Amu.” “Then you go to Iran, be doctor, and get Persian wife, yes?” “Bale, Amu. But listen...” “Listen...that’s a good American word. They don’t use it, always talking–jib jib jibba.” “Mmmhmm.” “You know, Farhad, one time in taxi, woman come into taxi and tell me she was prostitute. But she was very big and fat. You know what I told her?” “What did you tell her?” “I said you must not get a lot of money, bitch,” he laughs so loud I lower the volume on the phone. “Ok, Amu, I must be going.” “Why? I haven’t even talked to you father yet.” “He’s not here.” “Why not?” “I don’t know. I got to go, Amu. Khodahafez.” “Khodahafez, Farhad. Don’t forget if my parents call... I am doctor.” III There is a cure for shame; Persians leave buckets out in the rain to capture droplets for fish stew. I used to think I knew what it meant to be American, to be western, to sing in the rain, to want to date Ginger Rogers. In my veins there is a proud ancestry, there are grandmothers knitting blanket, and students who never failed to become doctors—those proud sons and even prouder fathers, and there is me, a twenty year old mess of a man trying to figure out what it means to be Persian. Yes, there is Bahman, failed doctor and expert drunk who swallows his life in a glass. I take another spoonful of the ghormeh sabzi. Spices tingle my throat. I think about white coats and proud faces. I walk to my room and I pull out a bottle and start to drink.

“You like girls, yes?”

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