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table of contents The Wallace Prize is the most prestigious independently awarded undergraduate writing prize for fiction and nonfiction at Yale. The Wallace Prize is awarded annually in memory of Peter J. Wallace ’64, a former member of the Yale Daily News editorial board.

The winning submissions in each category are published in this issue of the Yale Daily News Magazine.

Judges are professionals drawn from the fields of academia and journalism, and have no connection to the News.

Honorable Mentions ‘A TALE OF TWO TRAILS’

by Sarah Maslin ’14

4 THE LONELY HEARTS CLUB

First-Place Nonfiction by Sophia Nguyen ’14

10 TO THE NORTH

Second-Place Nonfiction by Juliana Hanle ’13

‘LOCKED DOORS’

by Andrew Bezek ’13

16

‘STRAPPED INTO FREEFALL’

by Tao Tao Holmes ’14

BY THE GRACE OF BAILEY, THERE GO I Third-Place Nonfiction by Christopher Peak ’13

25 DAILY NEWS

MAGAZINE Executive Editor Daniel Bethencourt

Design Staff Jennifer Lu

Managing Editor Madeline Buxton

Photography Editor Sarah Eckinger

Senior Editors Edmund Downie Amelia Urry

Copy Editor Stephanie Heung

Associate Editors Eric Boodman Elaina Plott Joy Shan Design Editors Ryan Healey Rebecca Sylvers

Editor in Chief Tapley Stephenson Publisher Gabriel Botelho

Cover photo by Emilie Foyer

WHERE THERE IS EVERYTHING First-Place Fiction by Zoe Greenberg ’14

30 TO EACH HIS OWN ODYSSEY

Second-Place Fiction by Serena Candelaria ’14 yaledailynews.com/magazine | Yale Daily News Magazine | 3

first-place nonfiction by

The

Sophia Nguyen â&#x20AC;&#x2122;14 with photography by Allie Krause

Lonely Hearts Club

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he debutante to my right insists that I take her second Arby’s chicken patty. “You look hungry,” she says before bustling off to the bathroom, from which she will emerge in a blond wig and long white dress, its square neckline just low enough that she must continually tug it up with one demurely-gloved hand. As I peel the foil away from the limply steaming bun, a Roman noblewoman swathed in a scarlet and violet toga swans her way over and re-seats herself to my right, delicately watching the rest of the table pick at their plates of pale meat in mystery sauce.

Across the room, a pirate wearing clicking armfuls of bracelets extends a rusty sword to a woman decked out in brass aviator goggles. The aviatrix begins to twirl the weapon, testing its weight and balance.

“Is it real?” someone asks, with understandable trepidation.

“It’s as dull as all get-out, but it’s real,” the aviatrix confirms, handing it back.

“I got it from the wall of my husband’s mancave,” the pirate explains.

It’s lunch break at the Connecticut chapter of the Romance Writers of America, where today members participate in a craft exercise called “Speed Date Your Character.” Each author introduces herself as a character from her work, and the rest of the table asks her five minutes of questions, helping her to get acquainted with her own creation. Some of them may be in costume, but many of them also carry business cards. Never for a second doubt that they are dressed for work.

My emailed invitation to the meeting encouraged me to join the game. Though I don’t go for a wardrobe change, I feel like some cartoon version of myself: petite and sweet and maybe a little smarmy, dressed in feminine headband and Ivy League penny loafers — the girl reporter, writing down everything as if I’ve never heard it before. I introduce myself as the model student on a class assignment, in-character as a stranger to the publishing industry.

The story really begins in a literary agency in Manhattan, in the fifteenth-floor office where I was sealed off from the worst of the humidity.

There I spent hours grimly slicing the mail open with a paper knife, most of it from hopeful authors seeking representation. The manila poured in from all fifty states and several foreign countries, from college kids and retirees, from veterans, aspiring actors, prison inmates, anyone with a narrative to hawk. I was their first, and often only, reader.

The poet Paul Valery called literature a delirious profession, trading on the hot air currency of reputation, and that summer I came to believe him. No matter how many presaged the doom of publishing, the temperature continued to ratchet up; I encountered a whole other species of fever, the kind that causes hallucinations. Writers continued to pound down the gates of all the usual gatekeepers. Their delirium arrived in envelopesized increments, overstuffed and covered with postage, delivered daily to the office doorstep to await my scalpel, my reads, my reply.

Because we were an agency specializing in women’s fiction, a lot of mail came from a very particular breed of dreamer, the sort selling instant chemistry, long odds and a happy ending.

People say that all romance novels seem the same to them, and in a way, that sameness first presents itself in the submission letters. These achieved a consistent level of crisp professionalism of which the other hopefuls could barely dream. Generally, the letters from romance novelists were concise and polished: letting us know the word count up front, hitting us with the selling points, never getting too mired in plot details. They were stunning. They passed smoothly from my hands to those of my supervisor, and then to the agents above. For all its reputation for froth and nonsense, romance is the calling for the largest and most organized association of professional fiction writers in the world, Romance Writers of America (RWA). And on the second Saturday of each month, in the Emerald II room of the North Haven Holiday Inn, one of their most active chapters meets up to teach each other the tricks of the trade.

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n 1980, the national organization of Romance Writers of America (RWA) was founded by a group of thirty-seven disgruntled but determined writers in a Houston suburb. Frustrated by the lack of opportunity for career advancement, they convened their first conference, inviting editors from New York to talk about how to break into the publishing industry. They expected 150 attendees; they got over 600. No fewer than sixtyfive manuscripts were sold.

Today, RWA has 145 local and online chapters across the United States, Canada, and Australia. It is the central nervous system of the genre with by far the biggest market share in the book business — romance garnered $1.36 billion in revenue in 2011, nearly twice the $715 million generated by the next most popular genre, Religious/Inspirational.

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But what Werner says next threatens to hurl me into an abyssal darkness from which there is no return: ‘You are not a writer because no one is reading you.’

The RWA national conference each July draws over 2,100 industry professionals, who gather for three days of frenzied interaction in the form of signings, pitch meetings and cocktail parties. For the working writer, RWA nationals also offers over 100 workshops sorted into categories of CRAFT (“Seven Steps to Sizzling Sexual Tension”), CAREER (“Integrated Marketing Plans for Writers”), RESEARCH (“No More Secret Babies: A History of Contraception”), and WRITER’S LIFE (“But Can I Still Feed My Kids? Or, When Can I Quit the Day Job?”).

More astonishing are the myriad local ways that RWA pulls aspirants away from their lonely, surreptitious toil. They emerge from behind laptop screens, from within office cubicles and idling minivans parked outside of soccer practice, drawn almost magnetically to an accessible, legible membership structure. To become a General Member, you tick the box attesting that you are over eighteen years of age and seriously pursuing a career in romance fiction.

Then you mail in a check for $120 dollars (including $95 in dues, a $25 processing fee, and a subscription to Romance Writers’ Report, their trade mag). The next step up is the PRO Community of Practice, open to anyone who’s finished her manuscript and submitted it to a professional agent or publishing house.

Next is the Published Authors Network (PAN), open to anyone who has made at least $1,000 on at least one sale of fiction.

The uppermost echelons are the RWA Honor Roll, for those who’ve appeared on the best-seller lists, and the Hall of Fame, for those who have won multiple RITA awards, RWA’s highest honor.

Affirmations accumulate.

Membership benefits include access 6 | Vol. XL, No. 6 | Wallace Prize 2013

to online forums and classes, eligibility for writing contests, even a discounted health insurance plan. Even more attractive is the promised access to all the secret wisdom a wannabe writer could ever want, like trend data, quick tips, editing services charging by the page, some deeply-buried cipher which might help her decode this inscrutable industry. But RWA’s greatest gift is more abstract: empowerment through professionalization. It infects members with a bewildering can-do spirit, instilling an absolute conviction that any deficiency can be compensated for and every obstacle overcome with just a workshop and the willingness to try. RWA sets an encouraginglylow barrier to entry, deep in the pits of creative purgatory, then provides secure, well-defined rungs defined by small accomplishments — submissions, agent contracts, awards — leading right up to the light of day, to publication, to paradise, to the writing life.

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he women (and three men) of CTRWA do not have time for shyness. They say yes of course you sit with us sweetie, and resume their shop talk. I clutch my Styrofoam cup of hotel coffee. The woman pulling out the chair beside her is Stacy Werner, wary and wiry, a contemporary romance writer who is nobody’s fool. Werner speaks a fast and aggressive clip; later, I find out that by day, she’s a lawyer for the city of New Haven. She assures me that “this” — she gestures towards where the costumed writers are posing for a group photo — is not what a typical meeting looks like. She swears they’re not crazy.

Werner asks me what brings me here, and I explain to her about my writing

class.

“No offense to your alma mater — or to mine,” she says preemptively, “but creative writing classes aren’t doing shit. All of those free-writing exercises, they’re nice in academic circles, but school is useless for teaching you how to write a book.”

Werner majored in literature at Binghamton University, and after graduation, was disappointed by how poorly her lessons mapped onto the real world of publishing. CTRWA taught her more than any of her college courses ever did, starting with how to write a first chapter, and a first sentence. Then the group taught her about subgenres and how to choose hers. When she did, they gave her reading recommendations of authors she might like. They did not allow her to flounder. She was willing to work hard.

“This is homework,” says Werner.

“Are you serious, or are you not serious?

You can’t go in without knowing the rules.”

How much is college these days, she asks. And how much is the cost of RWA national, and the local chapter — ninety bucks, plus the thirty-five? That’s chump change. Do Yale professors even read our newspapers, our stories?

The world is different now. She loved Charles Dickens in college, but even the writer who could successfully emulate Dickens wouldn’t make it today.

Ditto for Joyce, whom she hated. She swears that no Joyce would ever get published today. She doesn’t care what I’ve heard: literary fiction is dead, it’s a small market, and there’s no money in it. My attention wanders, because haven’t we all heard this before? And haven’t we each resolved that it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, make a difference to real writers, because what matters is the work, and that it’s out there? And aren’t these amazing times to be read in? But what Werner says next threatens to hurl me into an abyssal darkness from which there is no return: “You are not a writer because no one is reading you.”

The other writers, wrapping up a

nonfiction debate over the royalties offered by an indie e-book contract versus one with a Big Six publisher, ask what we’ve been talking about.

“Miss Smarty Pants is writing an article about us,” Werner introduces me, not un-fondly.

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Business is over, and now comes time for Member News. Standing up, one member announces that after nine months in publishing purgatory, she has officially sold her novel to Hachette, and, fingers crossed, it might turn into a three-book deal: “This means a new car!” Now she’s on the hunt for an agent, but since she’s successfully fenced a manuscript on her own, I suspect she won’t have too hard a time. Bob Bonitz, retired psychotherapist and grandfather of twelve, tells the group that A Little Bit of Baby, sequel to his debut novel, A Little Bit of Blackmail, has been released on Amazon. Someone else has decided to change over to writing Westerns, and fashioned a newer, folksier penname for the job: Jessie Hayworth. Each triumph gets a small burst of applause.

Chianese takes her turn last. “I got my first win in a contest!” But before the congratulations get a chance to swoop around the room, she rattles on, “And just to keep my feet firmly on the ground — I got an agent reject three days later!” Her fist punches the air, her smile widens and trembles. “Woo-hoo!”

Murmurs percolate through the awkward silence. Frantically, I think back to my summer — didn’t I get a couple of envelopes from a woman named Gail, in Connecticut? The agency maintains their own collection of old letters, but I cringe at the thought of making some other intern comb through the fat accordion file just to assuage my sudden guilt. It might not have been this particular Gail, but it was some Gail, somewhere. And if the intern hadn’t been me, it would’ve been someone else — someone else writing NO on the manila envelope, sending off the form reply, keeping the paper moving.

“Jeez … ” someone shakes her head, “This business.”

t eleven o’clock, Vice President Gail Chianese calls the meeting to order so that the members can go over some business. Earlier in the morning, I’d helped her set up, distributing name tags for the speeddating, and she told me that she’s nailed down a system for submitting her inspirational Christian romances to agents: she mails one out, marks the date on the calendar, then goes to work on the next book. She files, but will never re-read, the replies sent back to her in the thin envelopes.

“Every now and then you think, why am I doing this?” she sighed.

But now, up at the podium, Chianese is sunny. She explains that the group’s president, Jennifer Fusco, is away giving a lecture on marketing techniques at the mystery writing convention up in Boston. Kristan Higgins — “our patron goddess,” Chianese twinkles — is also otherwise engaged, addressing another romance writing group in New Hampshire. She sends her love.

The vice president reminds everyone that the December meeting will be the end-of-year holiday party, to be held at the Mill on the River Restaurant in South Windsor. This will be the occasion of their awards ceremony, honoring the worst prose they’ve written that year. Winners get a good stiff drink, on the group. Submissions are looking a little thin in the categories of Dirtiest Sentence, Most Deliberately Horrible Sentence, Most Technically Difficult Sex Scene, and Best Euphemism for “Junk.”

“It’s fun! We like to end the year on a light note and make fun of ourselves,” ennifer Iszkiewicz hasn’t dressed she says, adding gaily, “We’re not all F. up for the speed-dating, but she Scott Fitzgeralds!” As people laugh and does wear a pendant in the shape someone calls out, “Hear, hear,” Werner of a bright red chili pepper, dangling just mutters in my ear, “There’s a good line above her décolletage. She introduces for you.” us to the twenty-something protagonist

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of her erotic novel, Jessica. Jessica is a social worker affianced to an older man, a successful lawyer named Daniel. For some convoluted reason I don’t quite catch, Jessica is sleeping with Daniel’s archenemy, Mitchell.

“They’ve turned me into a bad, bad girl,” Jessica sighs, giving into a coy grin that makes me think back to sophomore English — didn’t Chaucer say something once about women with gap teeth?

— and her voice slides upwards into a drawl of a higher register. She bats her eyelashes, making the rest of the table grin. “I love Daniel, but what Mitchell and I have is totally ... glandular.”

“Ooh, that doesn’t sound too healthy,” the member next to me enthuses.

Then the group fires off a volley of questions. What’s Daniel like? How did you meet him? Do you love him? Who’s better in bed? What toys do you use? Do you like anal?

“There are children at the table!” A woman named P.J. Sharon exclaims, mock-scandalized. Heat creeps up my neck. She goes on to say, “I’m only sixteen,” and I realize that it isn’t Sharon talking, but Lily Carmichael, the protagonist of her young adult novel.

Sharon is still in-character, and I am so totally out of my league.

Then Iszkiewicz laughs, dispelling Jessica’s sugar-baby phone sex voice.

“I’m sorry!” she says, sounding not at all sorry, “All of my dirtiest lines are from this manuscript!”

“That’s all right,” a maternal woman dressed in a floral prairie dress responds, “I made Tracy say the word ‘cock’ five times in a row last month.”

“How did she react?!”

“Oh, I mean, she couldn’t stop laughing, and she went bright red,” the woman says peaceably, “But she did it.”

This is Jamie Schmidt, mother, technical writer, soon-to-be-published novelist, and the president-elect for the upcoming year. When I call later to ask her about her goals for her administration, Schmidt replies, “I want everyone in the chapter to have PRO status.”

On my end of the line, I gape. She

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wanted everyone to have written a novel by next year?

“Oh, yes. Only about fifty out of our hundred members haven’t yet. I want to find out what’s stopping them.” Schmidt continues breezily, “The only thing stopping me was that I never thought I had enough time.”

Now that she knows better, Schmidt says, she has sixteen novels going. I grope for a response. How is this possible? Does she do National Novel Writing Month?

“Oh, I do NaNoWriMo every month.

I started in 2004.”

I’m sorry?

“I write 50,000 words a month,” she clarifies.

Every month.

“Every month.”

Twelve months, 50,000 words each, and romance is short, so — nearly eight novels a year. Didn’t she get writer’s block?

“No, not really.”

My laugh must have acquired a slight manic edge, because Schmidt adds kindly, “You know, I might be writing 50,000 words of absolute garbage. But,” and her tone seems admonishing, “they 8 | Vol. XL, No. 6 | Wallace Prize 2013

say you can’t edit a blank page.”

After her online writing circle disbanded a year and a half ago, Schmidt found herself in need of new support structures. When she walked into her first CTRWA meeting, she felt immediately that she had found “her people,” and a more senior member took an interest in her work.

“She loved it. She became my Yoda,” Schmidt recalled. Schmidt’s Yoda introduced her to her agency, which eventually led to a three-book deal with Entangled, a major e-books publisher.

Schmidt’s Yoda was Kristan Higgins, the chapter’s patron goddess.

buoyant, poised to laugh. It glows warm with the deep serenity of the improbably successful.

Kristan Higgins gives a great interview.

She is gracious and self-deprecating.

With nary a pause or hitch, she serves up line after shining line about how much she loves her job, about how well publishing has treated her. She confides that she has found it harder to write now, under contract, than when she was just starting out. She argues that the surge in the genre’s popularity has proven that the critics had underestimated how much people need comfort food in their lives. She feeds me a few “universal truths”: it’s very difficult to write a book. ristan Higgins, New York Times/ Writing a story requires a commitment USA Today best-selling romance to breaking your own heart. author, writer of “down-toDespite her position as CTRWA’s earth romantic comedies,” two-time patron goddess, Higgins did not rise RITA award winner and self-described from among their ranks. Rather, she “Grande Dame” of the CTRWA, is joined the group already a successful stunningly easy to reach. She answers novelist — she and her first book debuted all her fan mail, physical and electronic. at the 2007 national convention. Others She tweets back. Over the phone, it’s lose years to their efforts, joining the immediately apparent just what it is organization for structure and guidance. about her that keeps readers coming What Higgins sought was community, a back for more, at the rate of two novels band of comrades who would make the a year. Higgins’ voice is smooth and labor of writing a little less lonely. Today,

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nonfiction some of them are her closest friends.

She calls her attitude towards romance writers at large “stupid but cheerful.”

“If there’s unpleasantness or gossip, I try to avoid it. That way I can cling to my illusions,” Higgins says blithely, hastening to add, “But I don’t think they’re illusions! We’re all in the same boat. That’s what I really, truly believe — that’s why I’m so happy to help other writers if I can.”

It was in that spirit that Higgins threw herself into the organization, which at the time was nearly defunct.

When she joined, the chapter had only twelve members, six of whom were on the board. Higgins determined that the group needed to be a little less of a lunch club and a little more focused on improving its members’ writing. She started the mentorship program, which paired older members with newer ones to offer them guidance. She led a critique group, where she encouraged writers to complete their manuscripts and helped them craft query letters with concise taglines and loglines. Today, CTRWA boasts over 100 members. When I spoke to her in November, she said that within the last year alone, five of them have gone PAN. When it comes time for me to ask Higgins about how she came to be a writer, I do, and she doesn’t miss a beat.

“Well, here is the story,” she says easily, “My number one goal in life was to be a mommy, and to be a good one.”

When her second child turned three, the public relations firm where Higgins had worked before becoming a mother asked her if she wanted to return. Reluctant to do so, Higgins asked herself what kind of job would bring in the income of a part-time position while allowing her to stay home. This was when she decided to become a novelist.

“Ignorance was my bliss,” she acknowledges.

Higgins assigned herself a deadline: by the time her son entered the first grade, in three years’ time, she would either sell a novel or go back to work.

Each day, she set aside one or two hours to write her story, about a Cape Cod

doctor with a cute cottage and a cute “She knows what she wants to do. She puppy, on the hunt for a cute man to wants to write. She just doesn’t know match. (Every Higgins heroine has real how she’s going to get there” — and I estate, Rover, and eventually, Rugged n’ felt like I’d been let off some invisible Handsome, an unstoppable triumvirate hook, one that I myself had nailed to my of wish fulfillment.) inside walls.

“One of things that was helpful, was It’s the simplest, purest expression that I didn’t know about conventional of my status: “She wants to write. She wisdom,” Higgins says, “The market just doesn’t know how she’s going to get was going vampire, historical vampire. there.” But to say it aloud is to officially Regencies were huge. I was writing a enter into the delirium, at which point contemporary romance in a small town. you only have two options: to throw Those things were considered the kiss yourself upon the mercy of others, of death.” whose perceptions will measure the Within a year, she had finished her progress of your rudderless life — or to manuscript, signed with an agent, and turn inward, dismissing any standard sold her novel to Harlequin, where she’s of success or failure but your own; you been writing ever since. Title: Fools Rush choose self-possession and feed your In. fever privately.

Suddenly she asks me, “So, what are Before I left the meeting, the outgoing your aspirations?” director of publicity, a large, jovial man I feel cornered. I stammer a little. I named Gerard Chartier, asked me, “So, admit that I haven’t written a short story have we convinced you to give up your since freshman year. I don’t pursue journalism career and start writing fiction without a class and its attendant romance instead?” deadlines and grades, the expectations They’re real seducers, these romance of my professors and peers. Nonfiction writers. They find 50,000 words a month sets out a clear and defined task. The in themselves, and never complain essential facts demand to be told. With about not having enough hours in the fiction, everything is blank, a sheer rock day, even with part and full-time jobs, face. Does she know what I mean? even with kids to drive around or put “Uh-huh.” to bed. They write furiously, furtively.

Higgins recommends me three They write at a volume seeming to romance writers she thinks I’d like: defy any metrics of quality you might Eloisa James, Lauren Willig, and Julia try to collar them with. It’s the kind of Quinn, Ivy Leaguers all. Before hanging productive creativity that says, what do up, she wishes me good luck with my you mean get there, sweetie? I’m going, career, and with my class.

I’m going, I’m already gone.

And on the second Saturday of every ne night after dinner, visiting month, they meet at a budget hotel to relatives asked me the casually talk shop with each other, meeting in bone-chilling question that the spirit of solidarity, and of enterprise. haunts every college student: what This is not a game to them, or a silly are your plans for the future? In my costume that can be shed. What’s a girl ears, this line of inquiry is never idle. It reporter to say? They are committed. seems tinged with suspicion: of my big- They will do what it takes. They will box education, my half-hearted summer inhabit the very skins of their stories. internships, my seemingly-desultory Theirs are dreams with determination progress towards a degree in English, a and direction. They have properly language I’ve read since age four. I made ordered their affairs of the heart. small pained sounds and wilted. Oh, you know. I was keeping my options open.

Man, this economy, am I right? Then my mother interceded, matter-of-factly:

O

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TO THE NORTH Second-Place Nonfiction

Story and Photography by Juliana Hanle ’13

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slak Henrick’s life embodies an old story. A young man follows a small reindeer herd, watching over them through mountain passes and screefields. Sometimes he travels with little more than salt, coffee, a pot and a knife. If he could, he would spend all his life on the trail of the deer. But, with the coming of new industry to the Arctic, his animals will starve, and Aslak is not a rich man. He needs to find a new way to live. He will work for the oil companies.

“We’re herding reindeer right now — did you know that?” Aslak smiled over at me from the driver’s seat of his van.

We’re on an unpaved road that coils up a mountain in Norway’s Arctic crest, one of his reindeer’s favored reaches here in their summer range in the municipality of Kvalsund, Finnmark County. The land is bare here, and the sky close.

Little grows taller than a man. A matter of steps can put you on the wrong side of a ridge and lose you in the rockfields — unless you know this land as Aslak and 10| Vol. XL, No. 6 | Wallace Prize 2013

his reindeer do.

From these heights, we can see tens of kilometers inland, out to sea, and across the fjord. To the south, the land varies as if it were the surface of a rocky ocean. Few trails order its topography.

Along the coast to the north, the valleys between mountains dip in half-pipes.

Like hollows left by a boot in wet soil, the valleys suggest that something massive once passed here. The mountain peaks dwarf the tankers, filled with liquefied natural gas and red as mountain berries, that pass beneath them.

But Aslak began to frown. He could not see any of his reindeer. He spotted an eagle and slowed, ducking his head for a better view upslope, to catch the silhouette of an antler. Large birds of prey are one of the reindeer’s few natural predators. But starvation and the summer cold could kill larger numbers of the animals. As the climate changes and the mining and oil extraction industries divvy up their ranges, the

reindeer of Kvalsund become more vulnerable. The village is becoming ground zero for the development of all of Arctic Norway’s mineral-rich land.

Northward development may challenge more than just a reindeer-herding crisis.

The movement of Norway’s oil industry north may put out thousands of smallscale fishermen and hundreds of villages that still face the sea, living off the Arctic cod and salmon that spawn in the nation’s protective fjords.

Kvalsund lies at an epicenter of mining, oil, and natural gas development.

Within the next few years the village council hopes to open a new oil terminal, open up copper mining (where now only gravel has been mined), and install more than 100 wind turbines to supply energy to the industrial infrastructure.

Thirty kilometers to the north, in the town of Hammerfest, natural gas from a well drilled into the ocean floor 170 kilometers out in the Barents Sea makes landfall in a five-year-old facility. It is the

nonfiction largest industrial project in Northern Norway to date, exemplifying both the future successes and failures of further Arctic development. As the village just south of the world’s self-proclaimed “northern-most town,” Kvalsund sits nearly on top of Norway’s crown, lying about halfway along the nation’s Arctic coastline. Government-issued charts of the Barents Sea, the Arctic waters that lie between the peak of Norway and the North Pole, and of the inland mountains, are run through with small grids. The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy is distributing the Northern licensing blocks at increasingly rapid rates to mining and fossil fuel extraction companies. This summer the Ministry announced that eighty-six offshore hydrocarbon leases would go to auction, seventy-two of which lie in the Barents Sea. Environmental organizations including governmental research and regulatory bodies denounced the sale of these blocks. The Norwegian Institute for Marine Research made their own announcement: seventy-four of these blocks of sea space should not be opened, they said, due to the potential environmental risk to the Arctic environment.

There is significant noise, both in Norway and internationally, about the potential environmental effects of oil spills in the High North. The following is true: the operational mechanisms of identifying, accessing, and cleaning up Arctic oil spills are currently technologically and infrastructurally beyond any nation. A dramatic increase in the fleets of icebreakers of nations and serious research and development could resolve some of those operational problems within the decade. But the math on how to fix — or even see — a spill on high, wind-ripped seas when the ocean lies in perpetual darkness (as it does annually for several months during the winter) may be irresolvable for some time. Should a spill or other damaging event take place coastally among the few fjords known to host the spawning of the Atlantic’s salmon and Arctic Cod, the world’s dwindling

fisheries may suffer another serious loss. The effect of pollution on the Arctic ecosystems further north, which are commonly thought of as unusually vulnerable, is unknown, largely because these ecosystems are only beginning to receive large amounts of funding for study. Norway’s scientists are at the forefront of this work.

When the electricity lines to fuel Kvalsund’s growing mining industry are installed, and waste from Hammerfest’s natural gas processing facility fills the mountain that Aslak and I stood on, Aslak’s reindeer will be without a range.

These installations, while geographically small, will cut the reindeer off from the last of what were originally four distinct calving lands on this edge of the Barents Sea. “They will go to the mountains, where it is calm but cold and snowy.

The calves will freeze to death,” Aslak said. They will not be able access grazing grounds. Food is not easy to find. Metals and hydrocarbons, Aslak pointed out, cannot be eaten.

In Kvalsund light, heat, and food are all relatively limited commodities. For two months of the year, Finnmark County sees no sun. The Gulf Stream warms the land enough to grow low alpine shrubs and mosses, lichens and grasses, and a few dwarf trees, all of which provide for the reindeer. In a land where the wind feels stronger than the sun and shelter is hard to come by, the reindeer have supported men for millennia.

Today’s Arctic is a place of paradox.

Seas warmed by the combustion of fossil fuels retain less ice, enabling the further extraction of more fossil fuels (within the next few years Norway is planning exploration of waters previously ice-covered). The summer of 2012 marked the lowest amount of Arctic ice ever recorded, at twenty-four percent coverage. In Norway, this paradox is matched by another: the nation passed its peak oil extraction a decade ago, but a final industry and government push north for its remaining reserves may end the harvest of both reindeer and fish. If nonrenewable resources are prioritized

over renewable ones, then the nation also prioritizes the next three decades over all future years. Norway’s oil industry embodies a third paradox: prooil corporations and politicians speak the language of fairy tales, promising a happy ending, while quietly discarding any “ever after.”

Traditional Norwegian folk tales are dark. Aslak could be the protagonist of one of those eventyrs, which combine adventure and fairy tale. Many of the tales start with a poor child who has lost his home and any food. Often, it is the wind that carries him away. Norway’s own very-self conscious fairy tale, which began in 1968 with the discovery of oil in the North Sea, is ending. Aslak’s begins.

This winter he leaves Finnmark, training to fly the helicopters that carry the oil companies’ employees in and out of their bases. He will go seeking his fortune.

O

nce upon a time, a poor ash boy, Halvor, possessing no food and no skills, took passage as a sailor.

The wind carried his ship to a strange island, rich with wheat fields and fine with smooth roads. Halvor went ashore and freed a princess. Before he began ruling the island of Soria Moria, the ash lad decided to return home, just once. But when Halvor returned to his home village, he betrayed his betrothed.

He was banished, expelled from Soria Moria, and tormented by the memory of the golden island.

Perhaps every child in Norway knows the ash lad’s story. They know also that the golden island of Soria Moria represents greatest happiness, and it is an island of well-being.

Norway’s national Soria Moria also lay offshore. With the discovery in 1968 of vast oil and natural gas reserves, suddenly the nation began its journey to becoming one of the wealthiest in the world. In Norway, the last four decades are commonly referred to as an oil fairy tale. The national oil company, Statoil, give their wells names like “Snow White,” which feeds into the facility at Hammerfest. In 2010, oil and natural gas supplied one-fifth of Norway’s gross

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nonfiction domestic product and one-quarter of the state’s revenues. Money from oil exports funds the nation’s comprehensive welfare and also enables the high salaries and low unemployment of Norway’s 5 million citizens.

After almost half a century of extraction, Norway’s most accessible reserves of oil and gas have been tapped.

The nation will not run out of energy — hydropower from infrastructure installed in the early ’60s supplies nearly all of Norway — but a decrease in oil exports will have serious economic ramifications.

In this context, Arctic melting could

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not come at a better time for Norway.

Most of the nation’s untapped oil and natural gas reserves lie north of the Arctic Circle, and energy officials are particularly interested in what lies closest to the hem of the North Pole’s sheet ice.

Norway’s current coalition government officially prioritized the development of the nation’s High North in the Soria Moria Declaration of 2005, reached in an agreement in an Oslo conference center named after the island. Since then, Norway has become a global leader both in governance in the High North and in Arctic research and development.

Two weeks before my own arrival in the

High North, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar visited the small city of Tromso about 300 kilometers southwest of Kvalsund, which is home to the new Secretariat of the Arctic Council. During his stay, Salazar announced the United States’ plan for the development of our American Arctic territory. This same summer, Norwegian research teams began to map the geology of the ocean floor hundreds of kilometers north. If Soria Moria could be found once more in the Arctic, Norway would be saved.

At least, that is what state and industry representatives agreed to tell the Norwegian people, Berit Kristoffersen, sociologist at the University of Tromso, has argued. Beginning in the early 2000s, parliamentary representatives and industry employees coordinated national and commercial interests through formal forums closed to the public.

These include Konkraft, an organization established in 2000 to build joint strategies between the government and the oil industry. The group specifically focused on securing funding for Arctic development, a high-risk investment.

Konkraft exemplified a single principle produced by living for decades in an oil fairy tale.

“What is good for the oil industry is good for Norway,” government and industry officials have agreed.

A combination of fear of an economic downturn and international competition drives Norway’s development north.

Some politicians argue that Norway must establish itself in the Barents before other nations, most particularly Russia, in order to set the best possible standards for both the environment and safety. “Drilling for the environment,” they say, though some sociologists call the argument instead “environmental cooptation.”

Researchers like Kristoffersen are beginning to wonder: “Is the Barents even prospective?” Sheering the land’s rock faces and installing facilities both as massive and technologically complex, and therefore vulnerable, as the processing plant at Hammerfest

nonfiction — whose construction and operation have both been plagued by setbacks and malfunctions — requires enormous investment.

When Snow White’s processing facility began operation in 2007, the project was to be both showcase and test-case of development in the High North. However, the operation is not yet solvent and sometimes stops production. For more than half of July, the facility shut down and toxic benzine was released into the air of Hammerfest.

When the operation first opened, some days residents woke up to find cars and houses powdered black with discharge from the smokestacks.

Could more facilities based on this model, like the one discussed for Kvalsund, be lucrative — or safe?

There is geopolitical power in having outposts of technology that rest on the Arctic waters like outfitters at the base of a mountain. The development of Norway’s High North may more closely resemble the construction of a steppingstone than an investment in resources immediately available. Which leads to another question — is it worth doing?

In a campaign to fight the oil industry’s development of the High North, a youth environmental organization printed signs that played on the ending of a traditional Norwegian fairy tale. “Snip snap snute,” they read, in the way all eventyrs end, “now the oil adventure is finished.”

A

slak slipped his van into park and, leaving the driver’s door hanging, hurried to punch in the combination at the gate to the mining road. We were halfway up the mountain where he hoped to find his reindeer.

It’s wonderful, Aslak said, unbuckling his seatbelt, that the reindeer herders and the miners can coordinate the use of this road, despite a strong dislike for each other’s work. But Aslak fumbled at the lock. It had been changed, and now required a key.

The gravel mining operation lay near the mountain’s base, in grey buildings planted like boulders. For an hour, we

drove back and forth between offices, a warehouse, and hills of gravel that grew below pebble-sorting rotator belts.

None of the employees seemed to know where the key was at first, but we finally claimed it from an office in the nearly empty warehouse and proceeded uphill.

The summit of the mountain was depressed into a blasted rock basin. The pit, which Aslak and I paced out to about 100 square meters in area, held sludge in a cake roughly a meter thick. The natural gas processing facility had begun depositing waste in it. Aslak frowned as he examined the gray cavity. He said he worried that a reindeer might fall in.

Aslak’s steeped-tea colored skin and hair, signs of his Sami heritage, set him apart in much of Norway. Thirtytwo years old and raised on the trail with his parents and four brothers as they followed their reindeer, Aslak is a member of the first generation to legally herd the animals, to know no other life before governmental regulation of their animals, to feel their ranges diminish for the sake of industry, and to know no other magic than that which oil brought to Norway.

His home is hundreds of miles long.

About halfway between the winter and the summer lands of Aslak’s reindeer, between the burial ground of Aslak’s grandmother and grandfather lies a dark inland lake, stretched in a north-south running valley. There he finds good fishing. It is quiet. Of all the dramatic scenes along the annual migration, which occupies about half his year, Aslak loves this small dell best.

This year, when it came time for Aslak to follow the deer north to the summer land, tracks stacked confusingly upon each other in only a thin skin of snow.

Where rock lay bare, Aslak had no prints to follow. The deer pushed hard, rushing north towards vegetation and the warm Arctic breeze. Aslak’s father, his father’s brothers, and his father’s father could have read the wind and weather and known how best to follow the herd, to act as disciple to both elements and animals. With sorrow, Aslak said that he never learned the old expertise. New

technology like snowmobiles outdated the old ways. And that knowledge would be useful in this period of erratic weather, of snowless winters where there used to be two meters of precipitation, and of wet, sunless summers. But Aslak has decided that he may not ever need those skills again, not when working for an oil company. He will not be in Finnmark this winter to follow the reindeer tracks back to Kvalsund.

In July, when we met, his animals were patchy, tufted like half-picked cotton burrs. I had seen one with half a rack of antlers, raising a single parenthetical to the sky. In the summer, they surround Hammerfest. Yearlings cross the road between Hammerfest and Kvalsund in perfect step with their mothers. The reindeer range across roads and property lines but avoid all humans and large structures, such as wind turbines.

In 1978 Norway began licensing its reindeer herders. As Aslak explained to me, the new state-authorized system of owning the herds led to fewer individuals owning larger herds. Many were shut out of the system, and largerscale herders managed their flocks from afar by farming out the actual work. The herds grew too large while the reindeer began to starve from overpopulation.

Yet, Aslak added, the reindeer herders with large herds have no incentive to reduce the size of their herds, and those with smaller herds could not continue to support their work if they had fewer animals. He and his brothers share a smaller herd. He likened the reindeer situation to the tensions between developed and developing nations as they negotiate who reduces carbon emissions.

He had decided, “If we can solve the reindeer-reducing problem, then we can solve climate change.” But fixing problems can mean challenging the status quo — or abandoning a problem utterly.

The state, Aslak realized, was driving his family out of business. With a potential client list of more than a thousand names long, Aslak prepared to

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nonfiction launch his own reindeer meat business — and was shut down before the first sale. “‘You have to be solution-oriented,’ that’s what they say about reindeer herders. You have to cooperate with mining companies, not work against them.” He is not angry; Aslak only explains his life. “We will have nothing if we cooperate.”

He already anticipates having nothing. This winter Aslak will fly fifty degrees south and half the world over to spend a year on hot tarmac, training as a helicopter pilot in the U.S.’s southernmost state. Aslak hopes these months of training will prepare him to taxi oil industry employees between bases. He will cut himself off from the reindeer as surely as the corporations cut them off from their calving grounds.

Of reindeer herding in Kvalsund, Aslak said, “There is not an ending.” He meant that there is not a good ending.

T

he wind is powerful in the High North, blunting trees and clearing roads, as it is in the region’s stories.

The tales descend from an old, preChristian folk culture. They are governed by an inevitable and unpredictable fate.

This fate, the wyrd, is as uncontrollable and far-reaching as the Northern winds.

Above the Arctic Circle, the sky seems to thicken like rising smoke.

Grey clouds curl around the banks of the seaward mountains, snugging over green curves. Ranges of suspended moisture stretch for tens of kilometers. The clouds build themselves up and then fly apart, responding to pressures tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of kilometers away.

On July 1, 350 kilometers southwest of Hammerfest, that wind threw summer rain against a marching band’s instruments. “Start spreading the news,” they played. “I’m leaving today.

I want to be a part of it, New York ...”

Andenes, home to fewer than 3,000 people, lies at the northern nose of the Vesteralen island chain just north of the Arctic Circle. A small fishing village, it resembles hundreds of communities along Norway’s northern coast. After 14| Vol. XL, No. 6 | Wallace Prize 2013

the band tucked away their instruments, the mayor officially opened the national tourist road that the players had come to celebrate. A ribbon fell to the gravel, backlit by light reflecting off the sea.

Norway’s new coastal national tourist route draws a line from the south to the north. Presumably, tourism will bring Andenes revenue. Likewise, oil and mining development appeal to northern politicians because they promise southern money. Many proponents of oil and mining in the High North argue that development will be the yoke that pulls Norway’s Arctic into the 21st century, into a global, and globalized, world. Sissel Branaa, a member of a local anti-oil activist organization, held an umbrella over us both and muttered to me that the mayor didn’t understand.

The oil activity that he supported would drive away fish, the resource that feeds the community.

Andenes was my first stop along the northern tour of youth activist group Natur og Ungdom (Nature and Youth).

For three weeks they travelled Norway’s southern Arctic coastline, speaking with local fishermen, leaders of fishing unions, and town mayors. Many politicians, they told me, wanted to capitalize on any economic boom. Many fishermen, they added, accepted development of their waters by the oil industry as inevitable.

The young leaders of Natur og Ungdom were trying to convince the islanders to speak out against the oil industry.

After the ceremony, about ten boats entered the harbor breakwater and motored up to the town pier. A few hulls of blonde wood glowed in the strange light, but most were of solid metal painted red or black. The fishermen, still capped in foul weather gear, slipped the double noose that hung from a crane over plastic trays of fish, each about a half meter long, hoisting them up into the processing factory.

Yngver Larsen’s boat was one of the last to enter. If the national political conflict over the oil drilling rights off the Lofoten, Vesteralen, and Senja islands is the “Battle of the North” that it is sometimes called, then Yngver is a

captain in that battle.

The son and grandson of fishermen, Yngver grew up around the wharf, and began fishing twenty-four years ago.

He is Andenes’ fishing union leader, and the local leader of Folkeaksjonen (roughly translated as “people-action”) the grassroots group organized to fight drilling off of Andenes and the island chains it punctuates.

Fishermen like Yngver oppose the drilling for more than fear of oil spills in cod-spawning grounds: drilling activity requires seismic imaging of the ocean floor, which scares away the fish.

Perhaps only fish have surpassed reindeers’ importance to the history of Northern Norway. While in recent decades the catches of smallscale fishermen have suffered due to increasing international competition and technological innovation, fishing is still the primary function of villages on the region’s islands, fjords, and coastline. If their waters are drilled, the fishermen, I was told, will find themselves returning to harbor with empty boats. Yngver will be displaced as surely as Aslak will be, and as the ash lad was.

The environmental coalition of Folkeaksjonen, Natur og Ungdom, and Friends of the Earth Norway credits itself with halting the development of the islands in 2010. But now the islands are back up for licensing. When Kristoffersen and I spoke, she suggested that it would be a losing battle against the oil companies.

After dinner (reindeer stew and cod soup) and drinks with Yngver, the leaders of Natur og Ungdom and I walked back to the hotel. At midnight, the sky looked the same as it had that morning at the road-opening ceremony, grey like brushed steel. We turned onto the cobble-lined main street. A block ahead, a moose calf ran across the blacktop and froze by a granite flowerpot, head leveled in our direction, northward.

The length of its neck and antlers were both small, and chest to point was much shorter than the length of its legs, which were splayed, ending at hooves as large as one of the paving stones. Then the calf

nonfiction alit again, his legs extending out front and behind his body, almost doubling his length. He was running east to west from the seawall a block over. He didn’t have very far to run before he hit the sea again.

W

hen Soria Moria appears on the seaward horizon, the ash lad takes to his boat and rows without ceasing. His muscles ache until he cannot feel them, his skin tightens and dries under salt and sun.

He cannot close his mouth, nor lick his lips. He shivers without cease. And the light remains, a low, horizontal sheen, like the crack under a door that never draws closer. “He pulled harder on the oars. Up the billow, into the trough … onward … farther onward … nearer and nearer the beautiful castle west in the sea … the castle which lay in the twist of gold ... But the Billow rolled so chill … ” So Norwegian-American author Ole Rolvaag wrote in his 1933 novel The Boat of Longing. In the summer, the ash lad sees all blue, pale as a rag. In winter, the darkness may sometimes fall away, in glowing green trails across the sky. Even more rarely, the lowest stretch of sky may glow red, as it has over Kvalsund when the Hammerfest gas flare burned.

Aslak is not the ash lad. He is a man who has tried to support his home, to build a business from the ground up, who enjoys the company of a well-trained dog as well as an online social network. Nor is Yngver. But the men share a story with the ash lad; they share a rowboat.

When Aslak leaves Finnmark, he takes to the sea. He may row after the golden island for a very long time.

There is not likely to be much oil in the North.

I

n the 19th-century version of Soria Moria, Halvor finds his way back to the golden island. The west wind, a crone, and twenty-league boots help him back. Perhaps that fortunate ending justifies a sort of national hope, a cultural conviction that perseverance and magic can win back any island of well-being. But a fairy tale cannot justify

constructing a trail of wells out to the pole, fording north until the boats float atop the Russian flag planted in the soil of the North Pole.

In October, Statoil, which operates the Hammerfest facility, cancelled plans to expand Snow White’s processing plant. As Reuters reported, the known reserves of natural gas are not large enough. Instead, they may construct a 1,000-kilometer pipeline, which would contribute little to Finnmark’s economy.

However, the gas reserves are also not large enough even for a pipeline, according to an analyst with Arctic Securities. At this point Statoil seems to be betting on expectations. Statoil focuses new effort on diversifying, contracting out technology and consulting to other oil giants including Britain’s ExxonMobile and Russia’s Rosneft. The Arctic and its promised wealth looks smaller by the month.

Echoing Kristofferson, I ask, what if the

Arctic is empty?

The North will surely be developed — nationalist agendas should account for that — but perhaps for no gain.

Even if the highest hopes of oil drilling advocates are fulfilled, the wells would only last for a few decades. Norway and any other Arctic-reliant nations will be adrift. As will Aslak.

Though Norway’s oil and gas fields are drying up, Aslak and his countrymen — as well as our own — still look to them for some trail to the golden island, a replacement for the life they ended.

But Aslak has felt the earth changing for decades. He knows that, like the old weather, oil will not last forever. Neither will the fish or the reindeer.

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BY THE GRACE OF BAILEY, THERE GO I THIRD-PLACE NONFICTION

BY CHRISTOPHER PEAK ’13 PHOTOGRAPHY BY JENNIFER LU ILLUSTRATIONS BY KAREN TIAN The sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, even them I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. – Isaiah 56:6-7

T

he racket came to me exquisitely on the wind as a chill hit the September air. On the median between Elm and Broadway in downtown New Haven, a band of men gyrated brass instruments in the dusk: trombones alternated with a sousaphone, cymbals clashed, black bodies jerked in time with the raps of the snare drum, and customers shopping at Urban Outfitters and J. Crew emerged to listen and sway. I listened as the band played two numbers. As they packed their things, I asked a man who they were. My name is Norman M. Smith, he said to me, and we are the Kings of Harmony. He urged me to listen again at a church service on Dixwell, a poor neighborhood in New Haven adjacent to Yale’s campus. Intrigued and eager to hear their tunes again, I took his suggestion later that week.

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Surrounded by parking lots, the United House of Prayer for All People of the Church on the Rock of the Apostolic Faith sits unassumingly between gabled, brick walls. Rising on its façade are two blue crosses flanking a central white one.

Though I had arrived on time, the glass doors of the church were darkened and locked. I spotted a well-dressed family entering through a side staircase and nervously followed them under the church to a basement room lined with wooden pews. At the front of the room hung four portraits: three photographs of dark-skinned men in robes and a painting of a black Jesus. Below the pictures, wrapped in thick protective plastic, sat a golden chair. A handful of people milled about the small room. I must have been early.

As more families trickled in, the

assistant pastor explained he would be leading the ceremony since the pastor was ministering across the South. He opened with a call for testimonials.

Besides the elderly, nearly everyone lined up to speak. Some told of their gratitude for life’s small blessings, most mentioned difficult economic circumstances, and everyone voiced praise for “Daddy.” One woman said her car had broken down, and she didn’t have the money to repair it. When her son offered to drive her to church that evening, she politely refused.

The audience shouted in agreement as she described walking alone down the dangerous streets of Dixwell, confident that Daddy would protect her on the journey to the House of Prayer.

When the testimonials neared their end, the members of the Kings of Harmony entered, instruments in hand, and filled the folding chairs at the front of the room. A stout woman in faintly glimmering heels unhooked the microphone from its stand and sang.

Her voice, though homely and without accompaniment, struck me with the

nonfiction sincerity of its plea for Daddy’s saving grace. The worshippers around me rose.

The singer’s face contorted with the struggle to hit the high notes, or perhaps in accord with the emotion of the lyrics.

Moments later, tears flew from her eyes, the trombone joined her blues, and then there was the snare drum to steady us.

I should have looked away. Everyone but me was standing. The rest of the band surged forth as she broke into sobs and guttural exclamations. Her ecstasy charged the basement, and soon most of the congregation danced into the aisles, shouting strange words. As the faithful began convulsing, parishioners kindly removed glasses from their faces and shepherded them towards open spaces. I tried to focus on the band, but the sight of those possessed captured my attention.

I closed my eyes to better listen to the bright sound of the trumpets. A woman behind me whispered, as if directly into my ear, “Thank you, Lord, thank you ... ” The band faded out and there was only the sound of sniffles and muffled whimpers. Tissues emerged from purses, some people left with eyes red from weeping, more came and took their seats.

Two more believers delivered songs to the congregation, and each time a similar frenzy ensued. There was no sermon, only music and a collection.

I ambled home in a state of exhilaration, humming meaningless imitations of the band’s brass motifs. The rapture of that worship was unlike the ordered rituals of the Catholic masses that I had attended with my family every Sunday at 7:45 a.m., often carrying the crucifix during the processional as the lead altar boy. I had fallen away from Christianity since coming to Yale: my belief in God seemed to have little to do with daily life. Knowing whether a deity resided in heaven seemed as important as knowing the exact number of stars in the night sky. But the intensity of that basement room was vividly real and seemingly obtainable. In the next weeks, I went back to many ceremonies at the United House of Prayer. Each time I attempted to reach the emotional heights of those

around me, or as the devotees say, to “climb the Holy Mountain.” Each time I left questioning my impotence: what beliefs did these people have that 13 years of Catholic school had not taught me?

How could they express their devotion outwardly with such ease while I could only stand and watch? How had they come to know God so personally that He inhabited their bodies?

After attending more meetings, I discovered at least one belief that prevented me from full conversion. I was taken aback when I discovered the “Sweet Daddy” of their songs actually referred to the church’s leader, Bishop C.M. Bailey.

The songs that I assumed were dedicated to God the Father, as many a Roman Catholic mass had ingrained in me, were actually prayers to some man preaching in the South. My first service at the House of Prayer had been a perfect expression of the conversion I wanted: all spirit and music with no minister to indoctrinate me. I was in an unusual position for a catechumen: I felt no desire to sing praise for Bishop Bailey, but I envied the worshippers who did. Their adoration for Bailey intrigued me further.

In my conversations with parishioners, I learned that the church’s largest event, the annual Holy Convocation, was scheduled to take place in October in Charlotte, N.C. There would be speakers, they said, and the church’s best bands, and, to top it all off, a visit from Sweet Daddy Bailey.

Rarely in my life have I experienced a passion so unabashedly that it consumed me, but the members of the United House of Prayer experienced such ecstasy on a regular basis. I wanted to be shaken, like them, with feelings so strong I could do nothing but express them in mystic tongue. Maybe the music, with its sweet, Southern soul, or this charismatic leader “Daddy” could lend some of that intensity. I booked myself a ticket to Charlotte.

D

addy Grace, the founder of the United House of Prayer, was born as Marcelino Manuel da Graça

in approximately 1880 on Brava, the southernmost of 21 islands that make up the Cape Verdean archipelago near northwestern Africa. Brava is a volcano whose sheer cliffs tower more than half a mile above the swirling Atlantic.

Though the majority of the islands were considered unlivable, the Portuguese had claimed them as colonies in the 15th century and used them as an outpost in the slave trade for those buyers unwilling to travel to the African continent. The slave traders “domesticated” the islanders by introducing them to Portuguese and Catholicism, before selling them at an increased price. By the end of the 19th century, Brava was largely uninhabited as most residents who had gained their freedom chose to immigrate to the United States.

In May 1902, the de Graça family arrived in New Bedford, Mass., a booming port town and destination for most Cape Verdeans. When Marcelino de Graça was 28, he married a 17-year-old and together they had two children, but after three years of marriage, they divorced.

He Americanized his name and began referring to himself as Charles Grace.

In 1919, Grace settled into his lifelong career by founding the United House of Prayer in nearby West Wareham, Mass.

Unlike most religions, which are formed by splitting from another church, Grace’s was entirely new. He attracted converts by making the church constantly available, holding services every day of the week. The town’s police department received numerous complaints from neighbors who decried the loud services that dragged into the night, sometimes as late as daybreak.

Grace maintained that God communicated the United House of Prayer theology to him particularly for the benefit of African Americans: he was sent to relieve their oppression and secondclass status in America, yet he often referred to them as “you poor colored people.” In 1926, Grace traveled south on a missionary tour to spread his faith.

He brought a company of followers to publicize his arrival: traveling musicians

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nonfiction journeyed ahead to generate interest; a crowd of ardent believers ensured each tent meeting appeared full; special guests like Nora “the midget evangelist” were spectacles in themselves; and elders used a loudspeaker to call out from a car plastered with advertisements, “Daddy Grace is in town. Come one and all, and listen to the man of God.” Journalists were invited to services, and if they failed to attend, Grace bought ads in the local newspaper that resembled factual articles.

It was during this time that Grace picked up the moniker of “Daddy.” Stepping into the tents, Grace asked, “Are you glad to see me, children? … Ain’t you all got a nice daddy?”

Aside from its charismatic leader, the rest of the church’s theology was less well-defined — “If we are directed to sing, we sing; if we are given the inspiration to testify, we testify; and if we are called upon to exhort, we exhort,” Grace said — but the church shared many beliefs with Pentecostal churches emerging at the time. Above all, the religion prized glossolalia, the ability to speak in tongues. The power was seen as a direct sign of salvation. Yet while other Pentecostal sects preached that deliverance could be achieved in a single moment of true belief, Grace taught that unity with the Holy Spirit could only be

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achieved over time and that there lurked an ever-present danger of sin. And unlike other groups who actively evangelized, Grace discouraged his members from interacting with those outside his church.

Grace did set out clear procedures for each church to follow. Each newly furbished church was fitted with pews facing a raised platform, known as the “Holy Mountain,” which was accessible only to the church leaders. (Churchgoers say of the altar’s name, “Holy men don’t pray in pulpits. Holy men pray in the mountains.”) The week’s services followed an order still in place today, including Pastor’s Night to raise funds for the preacher’s salary on Tuesday, Home Builders Night to raise funds for construction of new churches nationwide on Wednesday, and an intense prayer service called the Flood Gate Meeting on Saturday. Members were expected to attend every day unless incapacitated: “If you lose your leg, come limping,” Grace wrote in a June 1955 letter. A hierarchy of elders handpicked by Grace governed each congregation, and in turn, each church was divided into multiple clubs known as “auxiliaries.” Each auxiliary’s primary purpose was fundraising, and the clubs competed against each other in their collections. But each auxiliary was also assigned unique duties: Grace

Soldiers, for example, were charged with escorting Daddy whenever he visited town, and the young virgins of Grace Maids acted as his personal assistants on the Holy Mountain.

Perhaps most important of the church’s many clubs were the “shout bands,” the dozen or so men who punctuated each service with their music.

Grace urged churches to form shout bands to fulfill the Bible’s final psalm, which exhorts worshippers to praise God with lively music. While other black churches focused on vocal talent, the House of Prayer’s unique sound centered on the trombone and other brass, an emphasis that derives from the story of the Israelites destruction of the walls of Jericho with their horns. Music was a key attraction at the new church and often prompted people into ecstasy with more ease and power than the words of any preacher. One early trumpeter in the church said, “The people came to hear the band as much as they came to hear [Grace] talk.” Much as the Kings of Harmony had entranced me, the music “captured their minds,” the player said, and never let them go.

Though Grace was able to attract scores of converts on the 1926 tour, his expedition had its share of troubles.

Grace found himself in a conflict with J.W. Manns, a rival Seventh-Day Adventist preacher in Savannah, that led to a brief arrest for libel and disorderly conduct. In a vitriolic editorial, Manns exposed Grace’s persona as a lie: He was from Brava, not Jerusalem, and he was a divorced father, not the virgin he claimed to be. After a week, Grace departed for Charlotte, where he was eagerly welcomed. But in Seversville, N.C., a man drowned during a mass baptism.

Grace recounted that he twice tried to save the man but was unable to pull him from the water. After Grace abandoned the body and swam to shore, he saw that many were still waiting to be saved and he continued with the baptism. Shortly after, he fled to New Bedford. Later in life he said of the incident, “I think it was good for the man. It was a beautiful way

nonfiction to die, don’t you think so?”

I

arrived in Charlotte for the climax of the 86th Annual Holy Convocation, an event that spans August through October when the bishop visits his largest congregations. The occasion is described in a set of instructions God presented to Moses after the Israelites fled from their bondage in Egypt. Members of each sponsoring church largely fund the event by paying a required convocation fee, in addition to their usual tithe.

At eight o’clock on Saturday evening, when the service was set to begin, the Charlotte Mother House was filled to the brim. Every inch of wall space was occupied, and people stood two abreast in the aisles. The stained-glass windows did not glow, as they looked out only to corridors built around the sanctuary, not the outside. At the front of the church was the altar known as the Holy Mountain. Below huge chandeliers and a mosaic of diamond-shaped mirrors sat Daddy Bailey on a large white throne.

He leaned back with his bearded chin jutting towards the ceiling. On either side of him, two young women in white waved feathered flabella imprinted with a black cross. Two ladies in shimmering dresses and ornate hats sat a step down to his right, each being cooled by her own attendant maid. These women were the bishops’ wives: one was First Lady Wilhemina Bailey and the other was Saint Lady D. Madison, the former first lady. The room was dripping with sweat as I stood there overlooking the congregation. I realized I was the only white male amidst the dark-skinned

audience.

“How you doin’, sir?” a woman interrupted my bewilderment. “You’re gonna need to go all the way through.”

I shuffled through the crowd and found a foot or two of open wall space behind the church’s left pews.

“Daddy’s Program,” as the schedule called it, began shortly. “Tonight, we are in the presence of a king, a king who need no introduction on tonight,” a young girl boomed into the microphone. “But since I have been blessed with this mah-velous opportunity, truly it is an honor. Truly he is a keeper and a savior of many souls in a man today.” The crowds roared. “We welcome you, Precious Daddy Bailey.”

The girl continued: “And to those who have travelled near and far” — that must be me, I thought — “we’re not gonna tell you to sit back, relax, and enjoy. Oh no! We want you to get on the end of your see-eats, roll up your slee-eeves, get into it with us. And again I say welcome, welcome, welcome! Now precious Daddy Bailey, I believe I said a couple of years ago that Daddy McCullough said, if you want to go to heaven, come to Charlotte.

Now Precious Daddy Bailey, you’re in Charlotte, you’re in the Queen City, so let’s go to heaven. Is anybody ready to go to heaven out there? Y’all gotta be sure.”

A soloist backed by a choir sang while dozens of spangled children entered through side doors and danced a routine in the central aisle. The song ended sweetly and the young dancers dispersed to sit with their parents. The music was good, but the service seemed tamer than what I had witnessed in New Haven. The preachers spoke passionately, harping on the need to give God everything, but no one was speaking in tongues or throttling on the floor, and everyone seemed to be dressed in more expensive clothes.

The final performance of “Daddy’s Program” was an instructional skit.

“Mmm-hmm-mmm,” an older woman walked to the middle of the church. She put her hand on her granddaughter’s head. “Lord, your momma let you go to the House of Prayer lookin’ like that? Looking like it’s Halloween.” The

audience hooted and hollered while the child’s mother attempted to defend herself. “Let me tell you something,” the old lady continued accusatorially.

“There are some things you need to get straightened out in your heart. You need to get that man out yo’ home.” The congregation oohed its delight. (“Tell the truth,” a woman shouted and leaped out of her seat. “Tell the truth!”) “You need to get it together,” the grandmother scathed. “Basically, I am telling you, you need to get yo’ house in order,” and she burst into song. The song detailed the consequences of being unprepared for Jesus’ imminent arrival. By the end of the song, the daughter was convinced. She walked over to the man, conveniently a player in the band both in real life and in the skit, and told him, “We have been living in sin and living a lie. You gotta go tonight.” The audience banged on the pews and clapped as she sang of her choice of the Lord.

Finally, the songs and skits had finished and the shout bands — the Clouds of Heaven, the Sounds of Zion, and the Grace Emmanuel Band — readied themselves to play. The next preacher kicked up a speech: “The Scripture tells us in Matthew, the fifteenth chapter, the eighth verse, ‘This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouths, and honoreth me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,’” he quoted without notes. “I wonder right now if God could crack open the sky” — the keyboardist hammered a few notes — “and if he could let our former leaders look down from heaven, what would Daddy Grace say right now?”

The preacher looked up to the roof, and then he glanced back to Bailey’s throne. “And I wonder if somebody know about this? When the dead in Christ shall rise? There’s gon’ be a trumpet that sounds,” he continued, facing the congregation. “Any believers know when that trumpet sounds, that you gon’ make it into heaven? See tonight we ask the question, ‘Is anybody ready for heaven?’”

— a single deep note rang out from a trombone — “You just can’t say that

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nonfiction

you’re ready! How many of you know that your actions need to speak LOUDER than your words? Now I wonder right now, I wonder right now, if we could just listen for a moment” — and there was the trombone, longer this time, infusing the sanctuary — “See somebody know that heaven is close by!” the preacher yelled from deep inside. “Somebody know they need to get closer to God! They know all they got to do is REPENT!” he yelped.

The music, the long-awaited music, poured onto us. The brass was a prophet.

Lacking words, its message could not be denied; delivering all the soul of New Orleans, it could only sweep you away.

When that trumpet sounded, it offered a glimpse of heaven. Or something like it.

My heart jumped as those angelic tones flew from the trumpets. “You don’t have to wait on NO revival to get saved! You don’t have to wait on NO preacher to get you up tonight! All that you have to know is that you can give God everything! All you have to do is tell God, ‘I’m ready!’ Are you ready to make heaven your home?”

The preacher shouted until it seemed his throat would rupture, “ARE YOU READY TO SHOW GOD SOME SIGNS? ARE YOU READY TO SHOW GOD SOME SIGNS? CAN ANYBODY SHOW GOD SOME SIGNS?” Those ahead of me caught the faith and threw their bodies about as if they were on fire. Everyone sobbed and 20 | Vol. XL, No. 6 | Wallace Prize 2013

wailed as they jumped and danced, and the voice of the Holy Spirit drew itself achingly from their tongues. And the band played on all the while, louder and louder over the foreign voices.

I can’t remember how the song ended; I can’t remember how the people settled back to their seats. How does one douse that fire, sever that power? But the song did end, and the people did sit, and the pastor from Baltimore started up the collection, and I left my spot on the wall to get some water, to escape the sweltering heat of that place.

W

hen I reentered the Charlotte Motherhouse, nearly an hour of collections had passed.

Bailey had collected a new briefcase and a vacation package from two large North Carolina churches. An elder declared, “And now we have come to the very best part of this service, for the next voice will be that of our very own, sweet, sweet, Precious Daddy Bailey.” Daddy’s maids took him by his arms and helped him from his throne. The king waddled to the pulpit. He asked the audience to clap for God, then for Jesus, then for the Holy Spirit, for the House of Prayer, for Grace, and for the bishops who succeeded him.

“Listen, because words are important,” Bailey began his sermon. “They reach back through time, and they bring us forward. It reminds us where we come

from, and it even tells us which way we’re going.” With a deep voice, he told the congregation that if they followed him, they would have a place in heaven, but he cautioned, “If you’re going to follow someone, make sure it’s the right one.” God had always provided a way for his people to achieve salvation through his prophets, but mankind often refused to listen. Those who were here since Daddy Grace’s day seem to have forgotten the teachings, he said. “But I’m here to remind you,” Bailey preached. “It isn’t about saying you love me, it’s about doing what I say.” He turned to Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John, “If ye love me, keep my commands, and I will pray to the Father and He shall give you another comforter that he may abide with you forever.” The assembly cheered, knowing the great comforter stood before them.

Bailey turned to the Old Testament story of Noah to demonstrate the consequences of rejecting God’s servant.

Bailey sang, “It’s gonna rain, it’s gonna rain,” to the congregation’s glee. He asked the preachers for a specific verse, but they fell silent. “Where your Bibles?

Y’all forget what Daddy McCullough told y’all? He told you always bring your Bibles. Y’all forgot, didn’t you?” Bailey hurled at the elders. “Return!” Then he brought the church to the story of Moses leading the Israelites through the desert.

“They started to do the things that were displeasing in the eyes of God,” Bailey warned. “The earth opened up and swallowed them. Some serpents came up out of the wilderness and destroyed them. Some choked on the meat they were eating because they wouldn’t even thank God and appreciate him.” Daddy’s point was clear: follow God’s servant, or else. God threw even the disobedient angels down from heaven. What could we expect?

He returned to the comforter, the one man in whom God placed his spirit. “God has one man, and the rest are followers,” Bailey continued. “That man’s job is to save as many as he can, and turn them from darkness to the marvelous light.”

Even through old age, God stands beside

nonfiction his appointed, until he dies and God’s spirit finds another body. “How did we get Daddy Grace, how did we get Daddy Madison, how did we get Daddy McCullough? And how did you get me?” he smiled. “I’m not here of my own.”

Bailey said he trusted we would follow him. “When Jesus opens the door, the gate, and lets you in, it’s going to be because you’re following his servant in the gate.” The church shouted at their luck to be in the presence of a savior. The music started up again slowly and Bailey drew to a close with an admonition, “Thank him for his goodness. Thank him for his blessing. Glorify him. Give him a holler of praise. Thank him and thank him some more. Know that he’s God. Beside him there is none other. Do what he said, and everything will work out for good,” he ended. “Praise him, praise him, praise him.”

Whether the command was to praise God or praise Bailey was unclear, but the churchgoers did not seem to care.

They had descended once more into their ecstasies. Those who did not have the Spirit in them pushed towards the center aisle to give Daddy a dollar bill as he processed out, hoping they could buy a blessing. Bailey’s girls led him back to the Holy Mountain where he watched the whirling sea of his followers dance to the music. He put up his hands and directed the music’s beat.

I rushed outside, hoping to catch Bishop Bailey for a moment at the front of the church. Outside, like a hint of Noah’s deluge, a rain had fallen, and a slight drizzle still pattered. The mothers beside me whispered to their children, “You wanna see Daddy Bailey?” The front doors opened and Bailey’s attendants opened umbrellas as he lumbered down the steps. Security guards restrained us as the bishop and his lady entered the first in a line of cars. A vehicle from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Sheriff ’s Department turned on its sirens, and the convoy of black cars drove out of sight.

I still had tomorrow to ask Daddy my questions.

I phoned a cab to return to my motel.

While I waited, I talked to a local minister.

He said he was born in New Bedford, but had moved south. He said he liked it better: they got to see Daddy more often.

I wanted to know whether he had ever met Bailey. He said Bailey had touched his head when he was anointed into Bailey’s first class of preachers after becoming bishop, but he had never spoken to him.

“You enjoyed the service?” he asked me. I told him I had. “Well, come back and see us tomorrow for the baptism,” he said. “Wear some white pants and a white shirt.”

I

n the years following his first southern tour, Grace propagated his gospel across the country. The House of Prayer, Grace constantly reminded his followers, was prophesied in Isaiah: “Mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.” Membership in the church was the sole path to salvation; any nonbelievers, who Grace referred to as “beasts,” were doomed to hell.

Grace explained his prominence in the new religion by saying that God sent a prophet for each era in history: he was only the latest in a line that began with Noah and Moses. The bishop touted his family name as a fulfillment of biblical prophecies, taking each mention of “grace,” such as “For it is by grace you have been saved” in Ephesians 2:8, as a reference to himself. These teachings toed the line between Grace as a holy man and as God himself. “Grace has given God a vacation, and since God is on vacation, don’t worry Him,” Arthur Huff Fauset quoted Grace as saying in his 1940s study of black churches in Philadelphia, Black Gods of the Urban Metropolis. “If you sin against God, Grace can save you, but if you sin against Grace, God cannot save you.”

In March 1934, Grace came under scrutiny when a young woman, Minnie Lee Campbell, accused him of attempted rape. Campbell said she was driving with Grace from New York to Philadelphia in mid-October 1932 when he threw her on the car’s floor and pulled up her dress. The two did not have sex on that

occasion, but she reported other times when he pursued her, such as a night in Washington, D.C., when Grace allegedly told her, “I want you to come up to my room, and I mean come up. I am going to leave the door unlocked, and come up.” Campbell said the two engaged in intercourse, and she returned to her own bed just before dawn. Nine months later, she delivered a son. Grace was never tried for rape, but a jury convicted him on a federal charge of bringing a woman across state lines for sexual purposes.

Grace fashioned his conviction into a narrative of martyrdom that paralleled Jesus’ crucifixion. “Only the court of the Almighty is the one which can pass judgment,” Grace said in a sermon in Norfolk, Va. “Conviction is not guilt.

Christ was convicted but was he guilty?”

While a few turned away from Grace, the vast majority rallied to his side, perhaps seeing their own persecution in the pre-civil rights era in Grace’s narrative.

A few days after his Norfolk sermon, on Easter Sunday, 10,000 gathered for a parade celebrating the bishop in Newport News. Church members had had their beliefs tested, and as a result, they only strengthened their dedication to their Daddy, embracing their martyred leader.

But the trial also prompted Grace to reconsider the role of his church. Taking his conviction as a symbol of the African American struggle, Grace embarked on a venture to provide services to poor black communities. In 1949, Grace invested in a series of apartment buildings in Virginia to provide better housing for African Americans. (Presumably, the monthly income from rent must have also satisfied Grace’s entrepreneurial impulses.) He often sent pictures of his real estate holdings to be hung on sanctuary walls.

One churchgoer from Columbia, S.C., said the photos comforted her, knowing the buildings “belong to Sweet Daddy and his children.” By 1958, Grace told a reporter he had 41 houses, including a mansion in New Bedford, a riverfront apartment building in Harlem, and a model castle in Bridgeport.

In January 1960, Sweet Daddy

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nonfiction Grace died in an 85-room mansion in Los Angeles. A Portuguese-speaking immigrant from a volcanic island near Africa, Grace had come to America and created a religion out of nothing. From its humble origins in makeshift tents, he forged a theology that expanded to more than 100 places of worship. Disdainful of money in his early teachings, Grace flaunted his wealth later in life, flashing heavy rings and expensive suits as he visited his dozens of properties across the country. His followers, sometimes estimated to number in the millions, revered him as the last prophet. Was this black preacher God made flesh again, founding the true church in the Promised Land? Or was he an incarnation of the American Dream in the land of promise?

Now with 137 congregations in 28 states, the church has been carried on by three successors, Madison, McCullough, and Bailey, who each assumed the dual titles of Bishop and Daddy when his predecessor died. Each was elected by church elders, a strange notion considering the near-divinity each later preached. Bailey received an unprecedented 91 percent of the votes. When I attempted to learn more about Bailey’s past, I was unable to find information. James Weaving, head of the records division for the CharlotteMecklenburg police, said he was unable to find a date of birth. Stranger still, there is no record of Bailey’s first name: C. M. replicates the church’s founder, Charles Manuel Grace, but Bailey is otherwise anonymous.

As the church nears its centennial in 2019, Bishop Bailey is calling for followers to “return,” a phrase he says God presented to him in a vision. “Whereas, our fore parents sacrificed with their nickels and pennies; and more recent generations have been blessed to have greater resources and make even larger sacrifices, look at the strength and power of the House of Prayer, today,” a recent article in Bailey Magazine rhapsodized.

“In this ‘Year of the Sacrifice,’ the United House of Prayer, under the visionary leadership of Precious Daddy Bailey, 22 | Vol. XL, No. 6 | Wallace Prize 2013

shines as a bright light in this troubled world.”

S

unday morning shone bright. I fidgeted with the buttons on my white shirt and threw on a pair of black pants — where does one even buy white pants? — hoping no one would care. Arriving at the church, I followed the black-and-white blur to a parking lot behind the sanctuary. Most of the women had shower caps or plastic shopping bags tied around their hair. Two tankers from the Charlotte Fire Department were parked at either end of the lot.

From a wooden gazebo a man halfsang, half-spoke a story from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, in which an angel told Philip to travel from Jerusalem to Gaza. On the road Phillip met an Ethiopian eunuch who was reading from a verse from the Book of Isaiah: “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” Philip asked the foreigner if he understood what he was reading, and the eunuch shook his head no. After Philip explained the Gospel, the black man asked to be baptized. The preacher buzzed from on high: “When you think about those who have left us, all those who have gone onto glory since last year, I ask you this question, ‘Who among you can not afford to give God everything?’” The preacher finished with the simple sentence, plain as the morning, “God has provided all of the help that we need in Precious Daddy Bailey.”

“You’ve heard the preacher, brother preacher,” Sweet Daddy Bailey took over.

“Now what hinders you? You shouldn’t be lacking understanding.” The crowd craned their necks to see Daddy speak, to be closer to the water. “I am the servant of the God of the House of Prayer! And I want you to get in the water. And be clean. If the water run out, I know God will give us more. Because I’ve got a work to do. So many need the water.” Then he commanded, “Bow in prayer. In the name of God Almighty, in the name of his precious Son our Lord Jesus Christ, in the name of the Holy Ghost, I baptize thee!

Let Jordan roll! Don’t wait for the water to come to you, come unto the water.

Come on and get in the water!”

The fire hoses spurted out a jet, high into the sky, and it rained down on us.

Three shout bands commenced playing.

Daddy Bailey directed the hoses to the dry areas, aiming to hit everyone with at least a drop. The crowd swam in the river and found faith in the deep, they came up gasping for breath and chanted praise in the ancient words of the Ghost and knew they were living in the last days. I pulled my raincoat over me, not ready to play the eunuch in this story: this truly was a church like none other.

After being hosed for close to ten minutes, I was drenched. Most people departed to change into dry clothes, but I hung back to talk with people. A short, elderly white woman, wearing a knitted sweater over a white dress, stared at me from a distance before she called, “Brother, how are you?” Truthfully I was chilly, but I told her I was just fine.

She said her name was St. Paylor and clapped my arm. “You don’t have the Holy Ghost yet?” she asked, shaking her fist. “No,” I said honestly this time.

She slit her eyes: “Seek for it. Make up your mind and give your heart, mind, and soul to God. Heart is soul, soul is mind. Same thing, same thing.” I told her I had traveled to Charlotte in an attempt to understand that personal connection with God. “Give it to God, get around the Holy Mountain, get up there on your knees, lay down, roll, whatever it takes.

I’m serious, I’m serious,” she instructed.

“And call Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. And ask God that the Holy Ghost give you the mighty burning fire, the mighty burning fire. You’ve got to have the fire.” I asked her how long it took for her to get the Spirit. She chuckled and said two weeks. She had joined the church in Greensboro 23 years ago and then moved to Charlotte. Suddenly she grabbed my hand in hers. “You belong here. You’re supposed to be in the House of Prayer. That’s that. You know this is not a regular church. You have seen that already. This is God’s heaven on earth.

nonfiction Don’t take those words lightly now.” I told her I could not agree more: I had seen signs in the believers’ ecstasies, and I did not know what to make of them.

Paylor introduced me to a friend, Missionary Marquina Miles, who was born in New Haven and had also moved to Charlotte, where her husband lived.

“Don’t he look like a band boy?” Paylor asked Miles. “He do, he do.” “And then an elder?” “On top of it,” Miles said. Paylor laughed and grabbed me again, “I put it on you, brother. I expect you to live to it.”

I asked them what it was like to receive the Holy Ghost: “Seems like I could just feel the water cleanse me. It was cold,” Paylor said. “Well, my knees was hurting,” Miles interrupted. “So it just went down and then it went down. And I kept drinking the water.” She laughed at herself, but Paylor said she had done the same thing. “At the end I was wiping it off and just putting it in my mouth.”

“I think I have another tongue,” Miles joked. “That’s probably why I drink so much.”

Paylor took her glossolalia as a sign that the end times were fast approaching.

As evil increased, so too would miracles.

“The Bible says the saints shall judge the world,” St. Paylor said. “The true saints, not just ones holding the title.” “We ain’t gonna hold our peace,” Miles echoed.

Paylor continued, “And it’s gonna come that time again. It’s gonna come again. Get righteous now. It’s coming again. Daddy McCullough told us, ‘Remember all the Bible you can remember, because there will come a time when you won’t even be allowed to have a Bible.’ And Daddy Grace said, ‘The time will come when blood will be running down the streets and you’ll have to walk through the blood to get to the House of Prayer.’ Wooh my God!” she cried out. “We’re on the edge of those evil days. Hey! Hallelujah!” and then she lapsed into tongues.

Miles gripped Paylor as she said to me, “See, some people like you, you chose to get in. That means your heart was ready to receive.” Paylor had recovered and eyed me, “If you are here and we see what we see in you, you are chosen. You

cannot turn back, you have to stay with it.” Miles spoke again, “You understand.

You got the Holy Ghost, huh?” and then she flinched and shouted. I explained to her that I was still looking for it. “You got some understanding here. I don’t know.”

The women wished me blessings and left to claim blessed water bottles from the fire truck. I was confused by what Miles had said, and I felt uneasy that they had read so deeply into my desires. By coming down to Charlotte, had I taken a step that many people never reached? Did I have enough understanding? Or, was it possible I had too much? I stood alone in the parking lot, wet with baptismal water, and doubted whether I wanted to be chosen.

S

unday night began much like the night before. There were lively songs by the area’s choirs and the children danced again in their uniforms.

Bailey’s Queens were still bedazzled in their tiaras, and Bailey’s Nurses still roamed about in their caps, as if searching for someone to heal. Somehow the church was even more packed, with members of the city council, local judges, and representatives from the NAACP in attendance as Daddy’s guests. “I’m here all the time, not just at election time,” one female elected official said. “Power to the people.” The audience’s favorite, Gary Henderson, an attorney for Mecklenburg County Child Support Enforcement, received a standing ovation.

I felt different after participating in the baptism, more like a participant than an observer. I murmured my approval and was quick to dance when the music started. Other churchgoers seemed to sense a change in me, too. As I was walked in, a woman named Marilyn

Williams asked me if I had a seat, and when I shook my head, she invited me to sit with her family. Yet I was still far from receiving the Holy Ghost. I closed my eyes and danced as the shout bands played, but nothing came over me.

For the first time, I joined in “Daddy’s March” during the collection as the believers parade through the church in half-step waving a donation above our heads. Uniformed cadets direct the path and keep the rhythm. After the male elders and then all adults had marched, I went forward with the young people, my $2 love gift in hand. At the front of the church, we all threw our dollars onto a large table. No one acknowledged the donation, but a hand quickly snatched it up and added it to the growing pile. I walked back to my seat with Williams, and she explained the last group to line up was Daddy’s Club, whose members had paid $2,000 in a year towards the general fund known as the “Resurrection Program.” I asked if those who paid had to pay each year. Williams said they were expected to do so, but there was no strict requirement for membership besides the initial fee.

After the long collection, Daddy delivered his sermon with grace. He preached of the miracles to come: just as God had parted the Red Sea through the servant Moses, those who believed would soon do greater works, but those who antagonized the faithful would be destroyed like the Egyptian oppressors.

“We have much to do, and only a short time to do it,” Bailey concluded.

The Convocation drew to a close with a song, “Dad is my everything.” Everyone clapped as Bailey wagged his finger at us.

“He’s my joy in sorrow, he’s my hope for tomorrow. He’s my shelter in the time of storm. Dad is, Dad is my everything.” As I muttered along, I didn’t fully believe the lyrics, but I had come to understand their attraction. The rest of the congregation shared my desire for a personal savior, but they had found an easy answer in their sweet, sweet Daddy, a comforter who answered their prayers and theirs alone. The United House of Prayer could

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nonfiction never be for all people: the members needed to believe they were a select group that had been privileged with the Holy Ghost, with salvation. It was a strange and wonderful ideal: unlike my Catholic upbringing that glorified the dying Jesus of the crucifix, this congregation worshipped an empty cross. The church operated as if Jesus died and rose from death, but as if he had never ascended into heaven, as if he walks still among them — indeed, is one of them — healing and saving the afflicted across America.

I wished to devote myself to this new American prophet, but following Daddy unquestioningly would not lead to the redemption I sought, a salvation from my own doubts and shortcomings in this life.

A man tapped me on the shoulder.

“Were you taking pictures?” he demanded. “You can’t take that. You got it in there? You can’t take no pictures.”

He took my phone from me. Another man asked, “You didn’t take no video, did you?” “You need to come with me,” the first man said and led me to the back of the church. He told the other man to stay close behind me. “Everyone keep a low profile,” he muttered. My heart pounded as he led me to the slick lip of the sidewalk. The first man told the other to get his supervisor, Brian Steele. “You thinking about joining?” he asked. I told him that I had been attending services in New Haven and that I didn’t know the rules of the church. “There’s some things we just don’t do,” he said. He pulled out his cellphone to call Steele. While he talked, I quickly started to delete the pictures. “Don’t delete ‘em,” he said when he saw what I was doing. “What were you taking pictures of, Daddy with the money or something?” I answered honestly that I only took pictures of the band playing after the bishop had already left. When Steele arrived, he told me that he could not confiscate my phone but asked that I delete the pictures. I decided to cooperate and deleted all the pictures I had taken inside the church. What I thought I knew crumbled in an instant, as two men escorted me out of the House of Prayer and stifled my own act of witnessing. I 24 | Vol. XL, No. 6 | Wallace Prize 2013

was not meant to comprehend anything more.

I

n New Haven, the United House of Prayer owns at least six buildings, valued by independent assessors at over $4 million. Most of the buildings are located on Dixwell Avenue and owned by either the House of Prayer or the Bishop McCullough Trust. The apartments of McCullough Court, a block behind Payne Whitney Gymnasium, are brick homes clustered around a central parking lot.

With benches and green shrubs, a sign at the corner calls it the “Garden of Eden.”

One resident I spoke to said he thought the place was spacious and affordable. He added that he had been attending services at the United House of Prayer across the street since he was born. Maybe Grace’s original intention to aid poor black communities was being realized in Bailey’s recent acquisitions. I walked further down Dixwell to a commercial building the church owns. Under a sign that says “Solution Convenience, LLC: Body and Soul” is a convenience store.

An older man watched a TV from a seat beside the counter. I asked the younger man at the register about their landlord, the church. He said it was affordable.

The old man turned his head to me.

His eyes were faded and yellowing. The young man hesitated and said nothing more. Though it seems like the church returns some of its wealth to the donors through housing and scholarships, I still felt uncomfortable with Daddy and the money. I was yet unsure whether the United House of Prayer was a wealthy religion or a religion of wealth.

As the tithes and the love gifts, the convocation fees and Daddy’s Club memberships flood the national headquarters, “God’s White House,” Sweet Daddy Bailey expands his empire.

As of May this year, Washington, D.C., is witnessing the construction of at least seven new apartment buildings. North Carolina already boasts more than 30 churches, but a zoning permit was recently approved for a new housing development known as Bailey Gardens.

According to his annual publication The Truth and Facts of the United House of Prayer, Bailey bought a stucco home “completely renovated with central heating and air conditioning” in Los Angeles in January, and in April, he made a surprise visit to a two-story home with views of the ocean in San Francisco, since he “was so determined to purchase this property.”

I had come to Charlotte in hopes of meeting this inspired leader, of catching a glimpse of faith beyond this world. I believed I had seen its power in a basement on Dixwell, and I wished I could access it as simply as one answers a knock on the door. Do I believe in God, maker of heaven and earth? In Jesus Christ, His only son, who was crucified to redeem my sins? Do I believe in a water baptism to purge me of my evil? Will I kneel down before the comforter, who has dried the eyes of millions in misery with his promise of a world beyond the moon?

Must I be born again and consumed in the fire of the Holy Ghost? That faith is like the words of strangers speaking in a room above my own.

The anonymous figure of Daddy, worshipped as divine, is largely inaccessible. Only one person I met in Charlotte had ever had a conversation with him. The mystery surrounding the bishop is particularly strange since the church’s theology centers on his presence. Perhaps it is only the promise that compels the believers, or it is the visions and dreams that at least a dozen described to me or wrote in the pages of Bailey Magazine. The golden throne in New Haven is still wrapped in plastic, awaiting its fattened king. Bishop Bailey is unlikely to visit the small congregation, but his faithful will still pray and wait, wail and pay in the hopes that one day the great things promised to them will finally be delivered. All the while, the prophet smiles at his worldly paradise, and profits.

fiction

Where There is EVERYTHING FIRST-PLACE FICTION

BY ZOE GREENBERG ’14 ILLUSTRATIONS BY TAO TAO HOLMES

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he trouble with birth control,” Carmen says, “is that people use it and then pee out hormones that get stuck in our tap water.”

We are sitting in the back of an assembly for the tenth grade about drunk driving. There are these graphic pictures on the projector screen at the front — a kid looking dazed, with a bleeding gash between his eye and his lip; an arm bent out of position, so you can see the bone sticking out of the skin. I’m writing my name on the scratched-up wooden desk connected to my seat.

“That’s not the only problem, either,” she says, “Because if you’re the one taking it, the hormones are in your body even more than they’re in the tap water.”

“I feel like there’s all this bullshit about it but I know a bunch of people on it and it’s not a big deal,” I say, going

over the grooves I’ve made in the desk stuff but she gets concerned if I actually with a black pen. Actually I know one do. Carmen stole some condoms from person on it, my sister Margaret; I her older brother and was going to split only know because she left an empty them with me anyway. “Plus you have circular case next to the bathroom sink to take the pill every single day. I feel when she went back to college. But she like if you miss a day you’re twice as does practically nothing risky so I’m likely to get pregnant. Because your sure it’s fine. body is so used to being on the pill, and “I’m not saying don’t have sex,” she it’s like aching to have a baby.” says, “but I know the doctors don’t tell “That’s stupid,” I say, trying to you everything about birth control. remember the three-hour sex-ed That’s just a fact.” I’m not on the pill, workshop we had at the beginning of because I know my mom would get that the year. Carmen’s mom is Catholic and tight, anxious look if I even brought it constantly feeding her bullshit, though up. She always tells me to ask her about Carmen’s worked it all out in her mind yaledailynews.com/magazine | Yale Daily News Magazine | 25

fiction so she can still have sex.

“Well, just for me, personally, I’d rather not even risk it with all those hormones.”

“You know when they say don’t risk it, they mean don’t have sex,” I tell her.

My birth mother didn’t take a pill on any day of the week, but she fell in love fast. I can’t blame her for that, really. She met someone who made her feel that flash of panicked sweetness that starts right below your heart and spreads upwards. She found him, near a cathedral in a plaza in Guatemala City, sitting with her sister. My mom, my adopted mom, from Baltimore, said family structures were changing in Guatemala at that time, the parents thought the kids would stay forever in their villages and take care of them as they got older, just like what had happened for hundreds of years. But the kids wanted to move away to the cities and leave their villages behind.

“When is this going to be over?”

Carmen asks, pushing her legs into the chair in front of her. Mrs. Krev hears us talking and comes to stand behind us.

“It’s only 3:15,” I tell her.

“Maria,” Mrs. Krev says from behind, putting her hand on my shoulder. I scoot forward in the chair so she can’t touch me anymore.

“My sister’s coming home this weekend.”

“I love your sister,” Carmen says, whispering now.

“Whatever,” I say, and Mrs. Krev bends down next to my face.

“Maria, please stop talking.” She looks me in the eye before standing up and heading towards the back wall. I put my arm on the chair’s splintered wooden armrest and, leaning my head against the palm of my hand, I shut my eyes.

My mother and her sister, sitting on a bench laughing and talking about a future that stretched out easily and endlessly before them. She met him then, a tall, dark-skinned man with ruffled black hair who said, Mamita, and qué linda, and at a certain point, 26 | Vol. XL, No. 6 | Wallace Prize 2013

her sister left to go home. She talked with him all through the night, in the plaza; the city lights went on and the sky went black, and all around bits of music escaping from the clubs on Balcarce. They had everything in common! They loved the city, the way the skyline looked at dusk, they both sang; they were so glad to find each other, finally.

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fter school Carmen and I go to the mall and find a guy in a gray workman’s shirt to buy us cigarettes. He looks like he might ask what’s in it for him but Carmen folds her arms and looks away as if she doesn’t care whether he does it or not, so he just takes our money and buys us the cigarettes. When he brings them over, we don’t even really say thank you, we just nod our heads and walk in the opposite direction.

“Guys are creeps,” she says, and I agree. After we smoke a cigarette each, we try on jeans in the same dressing room in Guess.

“I hate my ass,” Carmen says, turning her back to the mirror and looking at herself from behind.

“I know about ten boys who like it,” I tell her. She shakes her head, though she likes it when I say encouraging things like this to her. On our way out I slip a tube of Clinique pink lipstick into my backpack; on the bus home I show it to Carmen and we laugh.

It didn’t take long. He bought her breakfast in the morning and then went off to work. He was respectful, and she was not that kind of girl, but it was love. She couldn’t help it. They met up one night, and went dancing. The bass pounding in a hot, pressing room, and her back against his chest; his hands on her hips and then moving downwards to her thighs, muscular through her thin cotton skirt. They went back to the place she was sharing with her sister, and they kissed. Then on the patio behind the house, bare on the red, chipping stone, they made me, in a fit of passion; so happy and breathless

in the enveloping breeze they could not imagine my life unspooling before them, within them.

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erek invites Carmen and me to his house on Saturday night when his parents aren’t home.

He tells us his dad left Coronas in the fridge and will never know if we drink some; plus he has a bottle of vodka under his bed, and we could have some fun. I got in trouble at school so I’m not supposed to go out but I say I have a project to do for history class, with Laura. Carmen and I sneak through the woods, trying not to get our bare legs scraped up by the plants that web our path.

“Do you think he wants to fuck?”

Carmen asks me. I tell her, if he wants to fuck, it’s probably not you he wants to do it with, because I can’t say encouraging things to her all the time.

She rolls her eyes and says, he wanted me before. I shrug.

My mother in Guatemala City had an idea that something was different.

She missed her period month after month, and then she started vomiting every morning. She felt her breasts swell and her stomach harden. She was nervous, to tell my father, who still took her out on weekends to dance.

But he was a good man, raised well, and when she told him about the baby, he was happy. He put his hands on her stomach and whispered something in her ear, though I can’t pin down exactly what it might have been. She was already thinking about names for me. I would kick inside her womb and she would say “Shh, Antoinetta,” and I would kick again, and she would say, “Bueno, María.”

At one point we take a wrong turn and the wind starts whistling too loudly in the dark, heavy trees above us.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Carmen asks. She looks at me sort of shivering. I put my hands on her shoulders and tell her not to freak out, I have a good sense of direction, and within five minutes we’re found again.

fiction Then my father’s father died and he had to move back to the country to take care of the rest of his family. He said he would come back, but how much can you expect from someone, even someone who loves you eternally, unceasingly? My mother had to stay in the city, to study, and she was too sad to think of more names. She would rub her stomach as she walked by the cathedral at night where they had met.

It was in that moment she realized that she could not take care of a baby, being so young, and barely able to take care of herself. It was mostly because she was so young. They were poor but not the kind of poor you see in documentaries, with flies on tortillas and distended stomachs and infected feet.

Derek also invited his friend Tyler, who opens the door for us when we arrive. He’s shorter than Derek and has a blondish-brown crew cut, the kind you can get at the Hair Cuttery for fifteen dollars.

“Hellooo ladies,” he says, and gestures to the room behind him.

Derek is sitting next to a table with two empty beer bottles on it, sipping a third.

Carmen sits next to him; soon they are “That’s so exciting!” my mom says, making out sprawling across the couch, too loudly for the restaurant, and puts his hands on her butt. Tyler looks at me, her hand on top of Margaret’s on the sitting a little distance from him, and Formica countertop. “We should tell asks if I want to go upstairs to watch your grandmother.”

TV. Sure, I say, and upstairs I let him “Would you be interested in going kiss me, as if I hadn’t known that’s why out to Colorado for a bit this summer?” he wanted to go in the first place. His my mom asks, turning to face me in the tongue and his lips are too wet, but his booth. hands search my body as if he knows “Not really,” I say. “Seeing as I already what he’s doing. Outside on the road I told you I wanted to stay here for the can hear a car horn honking, insistent, summer and work.” and I kiss Tyler harder. I could want “It’s hard for fifteen-year-olds to find him. work,” my mom says, and Margaret keeps eating her stupid carefully cut ince Margaret’s home for the beans. weekend, we go out for Chinese “You’re always welcome to visit me,” food on Sunday night. she says.

“I’m thinking this summer I’m going “Yeah thanks but I can’t make it,” I to do research in Colorado,” Margaret say and I play with the black ribbon says. She cuts a soy-sauced string bean bracelet on my wrist. into four parts and puts one into her I have one picture of my birth mouth. My sister is incredibly beautiful mother that the adoption agency gave and incredibly boring. our family. It’s tacked to the bulletin

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board above my bed; in it, my mother is staring at the photographer solemnly, like women do in old portraits, her tight black curls plaited behind her head. On the back it says, “1993, Camila Ramos.”

My mom and I used to talk about my adoption, when she tucked me into bed in Baltimore. She would say, you’re so lucky, you have two mothers who love you very much, and I would ask her everything I could think of. How did you find me? Did you meet her?

Where was my father? What did the baby home look like? Did you already know what my name would be? She would try to answer the best she could, but she would always end up saying, we don’t have very much information, not enough to track her down. I know only three facts of my own mother: her name, her photograph, and my body.

She went to the adoption agency when she was eight or nine months pregnant, and told them, I want a better

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fiction life for my baby. I’ll give you my baby, and you’ll make sure she has a good life.

That’s what I want.

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n Monday night I’m watching America’s Next Top Model in the living room and my mom walks in the front door, her face very tight.

“Maria, will you turn off the TV?” “I’m watching something,” I say, and don’t turn to look at her, though I think I know what’s coming.

“Did you say goodbye to your sister?” she asks, like we are very casual here in the living room. “Please turn off the TV,” she says again, when I don’t answer. “And please answer when I speak to you.”

“I did answer you,” I say and switch off the TV as slowly as I can. My mom pulls up a chair and sits down across from me. “I spoke with Laura’s mother today, who said she did not see you this weekend.” I look up at her, finally, and she’s staring at me, straining to be light. She has an idea that parenting is an endless negotiation, that raising a daughter is like growing a company, a process of strategizing, presenting, convincing. “Where were you on Saturday night?”

“With Laura,” I say.

“Maria, where were you?” Her voice is not loud exactly. I try to act how Carmen acted at the mall with the man who bought us the cigarettes, but I can’t pull it off.

“I was at Derek’s.”

My mom has the same look she had when Margaret and I got lice and she couldn’t get rid of it for three months.

“But you told me you had work to do,” she says, like if she reminds me of this central fact, my story will go back to what she wants it to be. “I thought you said you had a project to do with Laura, history or something … ” “But I didn’t really.” My mother sits and looks at me. After a long pause she says, “I like honesty.”

“OK.” Sometimes these conversations can go very fast.

“Do you realize this is a bigger deal front of the room. than you just telling me a story and “No,” I say. He turns to finish writing going out to do whatever you want?” I an equation on the board and I can see stay quiet so she can tell me how it’s a the chalky lines from the blackboard bigger deal. across the back of his shirt.

“The thing I care about most is your “It might be good but it might be safety, and if you tell me you’re at awkward,” Carmen says to me. “Should Laura’s and then end up at a random I tell him about Derek?” boy’s house, and I have no idea where “Probably not.” I complete a series you are — what if something had of boxes and mark my initials in them. happened to you? What if you had been “I think definitely not. He would hurt and I had no way of finding you?” freak out and tell my mom.”

“I don’t know.”

“I was talking to Margaret about how hen my mom gets home it really seemed like you were getting from work she knocks on my on top of your schoolwork, working on bedroom door and comes in. a Saturday night. Now, thinking back, I’m lying on my bed, listening to music.

I had no idea where you were. That’s She’s carrying my adoption folder in really scary Maria.” A pause. “Do you her hand. understand why that’s scary for me?”

“I’ve been thinking, all day, about our “Yes.” conversation from yesterday,” she says, “I can’t help feeling like you actually sitting next to me on my bed. “I thought have no understanding of why that’s maybe you were acting out because you scary for me. We need to talk about it want to be treated more like a grownmore because…” but her voice fades out. up.” She has theories upon theories. “Of I tried to learn Spanish once, to fulfill course, Maria, acting like a grown-up my language requirement at school. I comes with responsibilities as well as practiced by myself but when we had benefits. We will be discussing that.” graded Spanish conversations in class She pauses. “But I thought maybe, I could barely speak at all. Once I was before we figure all the responsibilities holding a textbook and I looked down out, you’d like to have your adoption at my hands and realized I had no folder.” She looks at me and I can words for the object I was carrying. I see she is not certain about this could begin sentences but I had to stop idea. She’s holding the manila folder when I reached the central idea, so I tightly in her hands, and her back is would say “We have to go to the ….” and straight even though she’s sinking then wait with the other students for into the mattress with me. “It’s a lot something to happen. of bureaucratic information, and you don’t need to read it all, but I thought n math class Carmen and I sit in the it might be nice for you to have it, just back and play the box game in her you know, in your room.” I’d seen the notebook while Mr. Randolph talks folder before. We used to go through it about limits. when I was younger; I would ask her “My mom wants me to start going what time I was born, and we’d open to Confession every week,” Carmen the adoption folder, like some sort whispers as she connects two dots on of glass ball, to find the answers. We the notepad. usually wouldn’t find exactly what we “Why?” were looking for, but something else, “She thinks it would be good for me.” less vital, something that could stand “Maybe it would be good for you.” in for what I wanted. “Some of the “Maria and Carmen, do you have information in there contradicts each something you’d like to share with the other; it’s written by judges and social class?” Mr. Randolph asks from the workers, a lot of different people, and

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fiction no one really knew all the facts, I think.”

She hands me the folder, which says “Maria’s Adoption, 1993”, in thick black marker on the front.

“OK,” I say, taking the folder. It’s heavy and I’m not sure what to do with it. For a moment I wonder how there could be so much more information to add to the life I already live.

The folder is filled with paperwork related to the adoption, copies of our birth certificates and passports, a social worker’s evaluation of the adoptive home. I look through great paperclipped stacks, and I read most of it — a description of the baby home; my age and weight when I was adopted; a letter from the agent in Guatemala.

After a few hours, I find a section labeled “Birth Mother.” There is a copy of the photograph I have on my bulletin board, and then a description of Camila Ramos. It is not very long and contains a paragraph called “Reasons for Adoption.” She cannot take care of a baby, it says. She got pregnant through her line of work.

How could being a student in a city get you pregnant? I think, and then, maybe she wasn’t only a student, but also had other work, and then, how could any line of work get you pregnant? Then I watch, as if from above, the whole story, my whole story, collapse: the man in the plaza, falling in love, dancing, the baby names, being too young, handing me over, the way I read her face in the photograph; all the details, the cotton skirt, the patio, the weightless poverty, I watch it all explode, inside my mind, dust and rubble and burning, charred bits overtaking me until everything is consumed in a cloud and I can’t think of anything at all. I’m left sitting on my bed, holding the endless papers in my hands, exhausted.

mom either. I go to the computer lab at slums where her family lived, maybe, school and sit in the back of a crowded and she split the money she made with room, up against the wall where no one the brothel owner and brought the rest can see my screen. I search my name back home. She got pregnant, of course, online, and Camila Ramos, and I get six by one of the men, a tall one, maybe, million, two hundred ninety thousand with white skin and curly black hair. useless pages. I search “Adoption in She started vomiting every morning Guatemala” and article after article and she felt her breasts swell and then comes up. I learn, then, everything she was terrified. Maybe she was at I can. At the beginning of 2008, the home, in the slum, and one of the baby country stopped allowing international brokers came by, looking for pregnant adoption because there was too much girls just like her. And he promised to corruption. There were reports of pay for her medical bills and give her kidnappings, briberies, baby snatchers some money, too, right there, if she just hunting the countryside. In the years agreed to give him the baby she was before the ban, almost one in every going to have. It’ll be good for everyone, hundred children in Guatemala was he might have said. There are so many getting adopted — babies plucked out rich people in the United States who of their country and dropped in a new are desperate for babies. Or maybe one. I read an article where the reporter she went to the adoption agency and interviewed a Guatemalan adoption said, please, take my baby, I want her agent before 2008. Is there corruption? to have a good life and I can’t provide it. he asked, and the woman said, we’re Or maybe she left her baby for the day doing the right thing. The mothers with her cousin and her cousin sold the giving up babies can’t take care of them. baby to one of the agencies and took Which would a child prefer, to grow up the money. Or maybe she left the baby in misery or to go to the United States, on a stoop because she couldn’t feed it, where there is everything? or maybe her mother said, you have to give the baby away, or maybe she was yler asks me to go to the movies too young and didn’t know what to do with him, and I go before my at all. mom gets back from work on a Tuesday night. I invite Carmen but hen we get to the theater, she says she isn’t trying to cock block Tyler parks his car in a dark anyone. In the car on the way to the corner of the lot and we make theater Tyler reaches over and puts his out for two hours. His hands run up hand on my knee. and down my thighs and the windows “You into horror movies?” he asks. start to steam from the inside out.

“Sure,” I say.

“You’re great,” he says, and I say “Lots of girls aren’t into getting thanks. Then I open the door to get scared.” some air and stand alone in the hot, “They don’t really scare me.” He pressing night. leans over at the red light to kiss me and move his hand up my thigh.

Title and interior quote taken from “So why did I never meet you before “Guatemala System is Scrutinized as Saturday?” he asks. I look out the Americans Rush In to Adopt,” The New window at the stores passing; we drive York Times, 11/5/2006 told Carmen, once, what I thought by a new McDonald’s and a half-full about my mother in Guatemala, and parking lot. she laughed at me a little bit, and said “I’ve been around,” I say. “Where it sounded unlikely but who knows, were you?” really? I don’t want to tell her what I My birth mother worked in found out and I don’t want to tell my Guatemala City, near the cardboard

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To Each His Own Odyssey Second-Place Fiction

By Serena Candelaria ’14 Illustrations by Madeleine Witt

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liver is going to be a paleontologist one day, but Mrs. D. doesn’t believe it. Oliver talks to her about the dinosaur fossils that are still being discovered all over the world by scientists who spend their days with their boots in the dirt and heads bent over clumps of sand as they try to excavate, as they try to figure out which species came to be first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and on to infinity. Oliver is waiting for his chance to tell Mrs. D. about trace fossils and maybe about the differences between archaeology and paleontology. He thinks that probably, she will be pleased with all that he has learned from two hours of watching The Discovery Channel when he could have been playing Donkey Kong. Instead, she is just concerned.

Mrs. D. takes a few steps back the way she usually does before she tells Oliver to go off and play with the other kids. Oliver gets jittery in his knees and bouncy in his stomach. He twiddles his fingers, and then suddenly, he has an idea. “Your hair is like a snow-capped mountain,” he tells her, “only white at its very peak.” He is about to tell her about this documentary he didn’t finish watching about men who climb mountains all around the world, and he wonders if she will smile and call him 30 | Vol. XL, No. 6 | Wallace Prize 2013

sweet, but instead, her eyes open wide like she has just spotted a fly on the wall that she would like to swat, and she tells him that is no way to talk to a lady. She’ll be sending a note home to his mother again today.

“Dear Mrs. Kelly, Your son has trouble initiating polite and coherent conversations.

At the Ross School, we strive to foster a warm and nurturing environment for all students, especially children in the lower school. As a teacher, I can only do so much to promote positive social development— the rest of the job must be done in the home. I ask that you and your husband work with Oliver on conducting himself appropriately when he interacts with others.”

Mrs. D. tells Oliver not to read the note. It’s for his mother. No one else. He puts it in his backpack and doesn’t even try to open it during the day, although he is very curious. He wonders if she has heard when the other kids call him “freak,” and “dinosaur nerd,” and “wussy,” and if she has, he wonders if she has sent notes back to their parents too.

If only the note were addressed to Dad, tonight would be much simpler.

Dad comes to pick Oliver up in his old white car with the red interior. The windows are down, the busted muffler is rumbling as the Dirt Mobile fumbles along, and on the radio, “How to

Disappear Completely” is playing. Dad understands the importance of setting aside a few minutes to unwind.

With the wind blowing through his partially gray hair, Dad asks, “How was your day, Champ?”

“I got a note from Mrs. D.” “I thought we had a talk about this just last week.”

“I know, Dad. I’m sorry.”

“What’s eating her this time?”

“I wanted to let her know that the white part of her hair is beautiful, like snow on top of a mountain.”

“Mrs. D? You wanted to call her beautiful?” They both laugh with ugly mouths wide open because Mrs. D. is old and chubby. She walks like a penguin in her skin-colored pantyhose and everyone knows that she is the meanest teacher in the second grade, maybe even in the entire school.

“There were only a few minutes of recess left, and I didn’t have time to find anyone to play with, and none of the kids in my class like to talk about documentaries or dinosaurs, or to me

fiction unless they’re laughing. I couldn’t think of anything to say so I … ” “Oli, if you don’t know the right thing to say to a woman — take my word on this — you should compliment her on her purse or on her shoes. Maybe when you’re older, you can start complimenting smiles.”

“Dad, will you tell Mom that I didn’t mean to say anything bad?”

“I wasn’t planning to rat on you, pal.”

“But Mrs. D. wrote the note to her, not even you.”

Dad shakes his head and keeps his eyes on the road, mainly straight ahead.

He isn’t trying to weave in and out of the cars as much as he usually would, but even now, he is making a giant zigzag path homeward.

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oday, Dad isn’t swerving as much as he usually does, but he is pulled over anyway, in part because he was speeding, in part because he still drives the Dirt Mobile even though he is almost two decades removed from his twenties, and in part because he has become something of a mythic giant among the local highway patrol who know that he always breaks between one and seven driving laws, but are rarely able to catch him in the act.

“Good day, Oliver,” Officer Sherman pauses to adjust his belt, “Good day, Mr. Kelly.”

“Afternoon, Sherman. What can I do for you today, sir?” the words come out almost sing-songy through Dad’s big white teeth.

“Do you have any idea how fast you were going?”

“Can’t say that I do. I figure you’re about to clue me in.”

“97 miles an hour. Did you feel that, son?” Officer Sherman says to Oliver, even though Oliver is not his son.

Oliver says nothing and starts to hum a little to himself. He imagines this as one of the natural obstacles that arise on a journey homeward. He waits for his father to take care of it, to talk his way out of it like he always does, to put to practice the magical powers he has as

driver of the Dirt Mobile.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you know, Sue has been out of sorts about the whole mess lately, and I wanted to be back in time to get dinner ready and record the episode of Oprah for her. We don’t have very much time.”

Officer Sherman sucks his teeth and says, “You’ve got to be careful, Fred. I don’t make the laws. The laws aren’t just about me. They’re about everyone.

They’re about the kids. You’re doing almost 100 miles an hour, and Oli is sitting here singing to himself like he’s scared or doesn’t understand a damned thing.”

“I’m sorry, really I am. It won’t happen again.”

Officer Sherman nods his head and steps away. Oliver and Dad start to disappear completely.

Dad says, “Go west young man. Go west.”

“At least stay in until the end of May. I’ve already paid the full $15,000 for the year, and I’d like to think we’re all getting our money’s worth.”

“Geez, Dad. Who ever asked you to put me in a fucking private school?”

“What is with your ’tude?” Dad asks.

Mom says it’s hard to take him seriously when he still talks the way he did in college.

Rachel races upstairs. She doesn’t even say hi to Oliver, which he thinks might not be too bad, because at least she didn’t call him a dinosaur freak. With his hand on Oli’s shoulder, Dad says, “Don’t ever turn thirteen on me, Champ.”

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inner isn’t cooked and Oprah hasn’t been recorded. Probably this is what “easy does it” was supposed to mean.

Mom gets back from work, and brings Belinda with her; Mom picks her up from nursery school where she or the next few minutes, they go spends her days coloring, learning letters on driving in silence, but as they of the alphabet, and napping. Belinda is get closer to the house, Dad says, the youngest of the Kelly children, and “Champ, this is going to be our little the only one who isn’t getting herself secret. I won’t tell on you; you won’t into trouble yet. There are three Kelly tell on me.” children, but Mom likes to say that she “Dad, you already said you wouldn’t is raising four. She doesn’t think Dad tell on me. You said you’d never rat on counts as a grown-up. Probably no one me.” thinks that Dad counts as a grown-up.

“I’m counting on you not to rat on me Mom looks tired, like someone who either. Us buddies have to stick together.” has just come back from lecturing sleepy Dad parks the Dirt Mobile in front twenty-year-olds on books of the Odyssey of the house. He checks the mailbox to it seems they haven’t read, which Mom find that the mail has already been taken tells us, they claim is because they’re inside. burned out. Mom takes Belinda’s hair “Are you really recording Oprah? Since out of its high ponytail, and as she runs when does Mom watch Oprah? Since her fingers through Belinda’s hair, she when does she let you cook dinner?” says, “I wish my students knew that “Easy does it, Champ,” Dad says, which there is always work, and as you get is not even a real answer. They enter the older, the way work is to be handled house and are greeted by Rachel, Oli’s becomes decidedly unclear.” Belinda older sister who, as of recently, is blonde, keeps her head tilted back. Her eyes are and as of very recently, the possessor of closed, and she is smiling widely as the a pierced nose.

Cheshire Cat. When Mom is done, she “That’s a good look for you, Scout,” purrs and says, “I’m pretty. I’m pretty.

Dad says. No one can tell if he is joking. I’m pretty,” until Dad says, “Yes, you are, Rachel gets huffy and says, “They kiddo. But don’t forget, you’ve got to be said I can’t go back to school until I take smart too.” it out. So I’m not going back to school.”

Rachel is still in her room. She

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fiction doesn’t bother to come downstairs to say hello. She never does these days.

Oliver is stretched out on the couch and watching television. A seven-year-old recovering from a hard day at school.

Can you imagine? Sue Kelly wastes no time putting the men of the house in their place.

“Fred, how much work did you get done on your haunts of New England piece?”

“I’m working on it, babe.”

“You always say you’re ‘working’ on it.”

“That’s because I always am.”

“It’s a wonder they keep you on their payroll. That’s the Needham paper for you.”

Oliver wonders if this would be a good time to step in, to hand Mom the note so that she will stop bugging Dad and so that he can get his punishment over with. Before he does, Mom moves on to him. She’s always just a step ahead.

“What is he doing right now?” Mom asks Dad, but she’s looking at Oliver.

“He’s just watching some cartoons, Sue.” “Mom, I’m only watching Arthur.”

The loveable aardvark is in his jillionth season of re-runs on PBS, but Oliver is much too young to realize this.

“He worships before the altar of television,” Mom says. She spends far too much time thinking in terms of her ancient Greeks and their gods.

“I got a note from Mrs. D. today,” Oliver says.

“Again? Are you kidding me? If I have to read another note by that woman telling me how to raise my son … What the hell did you do this time?”

Oliver hands her the note. She reads it.

“This woman is writing about ‘promoting positive social development.’

Oliver, what the hell?” Oliver can tell by the sound of Mom’s voice that this is going to be just like the fish-flushing incident; she will be very mad, and it might even take three or four whole days for her to forgive him.

“I told her I want to be a paleontologist.

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I was telling her about all the cool fossils, ight couldn’t come any slower just like they showed on The Discovery than it does. The process of Channel, and then I could tell she was waiting is as painful as trying to getting bored, just like you taught me to count up to one hundred fireflies in midperceive, so I changed the topic. And I August, and realizing that although it is told her that her hair was beautiful, just very possible, it will not be easy. Oliver like snow on a mountain, and all of a thinks of carefree summers spent on the sudden, her eyes got big like I was a fly cape when Mom is less stressed because she wanted to smash, and that was it. she is not grading mountain-high stacks She wrote this note and told me to give of poorly cited papers by undergrads, it to you. She said I couldn’t read it, so I and Dad is less stressed because Mom didn’t even peek.” is not getting on his case. But summer Mom gets quiet and walks away, is too far away, and it’s been so long which she does when she wants to keep since Mom reached out for a lightning herself from saying anything too mean. bug dying on the pool’s chlorinated Dad has already explained to Oliver surface to begin its funeral ritual: “Your that Mom is one of those people who light will never shine again, but you will sometimes needs to do this, because she always be a lightning bug.” The summer is prone to saying things that are too is too far away, and even when it is here, hurtful to be fixed by saying sorry. it is much too temporary.

Despite the October chill, the house he Kellys eat dinner separately that feels stuffy. Stuffy, as Oliver has decided, night, which is Chinese takeout with the tightness that comes when too because Fred is not eager to start many adults are living under the same another fight over his ever inadequate roof. As he’s learned by watching The macaroni and cheese dish served with Maury Show, which Mom hates, when frankfurters on the side, nor is he stupid there are two men living in the same enough to ask Sue if she plans to cook. house, there can never be peace, and Rachel says she isn’t hungry. She Dad was the one who was bringing in doesn’t plan to leave her room. Sue takes a salary. Besides, with Rachel and her the wonton soup to the kitchen, where piercing, Mom and her nagging, Dad she decides she will eat her meal in peace and his Dirt Mobile, and Oliver and his with Belinda. She will tell her stories as impolite conversations, it’s a wonder the they drink broth in spoonfuls; she will place hadn’t exploded weeks ago. wipe Belinda’s face with her napkin if Dad starts his mad typing after dinner, there is a spill. Fred and Oliver are left and gives his fingers and his mind a rest to dip their egg rolls in sweet sauce from when it’s time to put Belinda to sleep. He their comfy spaces on the couch in front reads her a bedtime story and in no time, of the television. she’s completely out. Oliver doubts she “This is the life, Champ,” Dad says. even waited to hear the ending, but Dad That his happiest moment of the day is doesn’t seem to mind much; no one ever sitting before the television is not very seems to mind the things Belinda does promising. much because she is four, which, as “Dad, are you going to work on your Rachel says, means that no one expects story tonight?” her to know better. Leaving Belinda in “Oh no. Not you too!” her room to spend the night, Dad goes “Sorry, Dad.” back to his room, and within the next “Geez, Oli. Don’t apologize. I’ll get ten minutes, he’s off to bed himself, and around to the article. I always do. I don’t his snoring can be heard from down the need you to worry about that.” hall.

In his head, Oliver begins to plan an Mom goes to bed about a half hour adventure for the next morning. after Dad, but she gets up now and then to pee, which is very annoying, but not

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fiction her fault because she has an overactive bladder, which Dad explained the time they drove to Florida and had to stop every thirty minutes. All this happens as expected.

Rachel, however, presents an unexpected obstacle. She is not even trying to fall asleep. At midnight, the light in her room is still on, and Oliver can hear that she is talking to someone on the phone, probably Esther, because that is just about her only friend.

Most of Rachel’s sentences begin with “It’s just that,” or “I feel that.” She says that she cannot look in the mirror without feeling a sad hatred that makes her want to break it. Aunt Nelly says it sounds like Rachel’s come straight from the Valley, which Oliver thought was an insult until his parents started laughing, which is when he realized it was probably one of those jokes he wouldn’t understand until he was older.

Oliver waits outside Rachel’s room for about an hour. Then, at last, comes the long-awaited click of the phone going back into its receiver. Rachel is silent and the room is dark. A few muffled sniffles followed, and then Rachel begins to cry loudly. Oliver knows he can’t go in, but he wished that he could sit on her floor with his arms wrapped around his knees while he told her that everything would be fine, and maybe she would laugh at him or call him crazy, but he wouldn’t even mind. But he can’t ruin the plan this way, so he doesn’t. He stays outside until the last sniffle comes, and then goes about his business, finding a flashlight and batteries, getting his beach pail and shovel and a blanket, putting away snacks, and some money, all to be stowed away in his little red backpack.

When all of this is ready, Oliver goes to his bed, maybe for the last time, and gets the few hours of rest he will need to prepare for his big day.

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n the morning, Oliver gets up even before the sun and slips a note under Rachel’s door that says: I want to let you know that I think you are almost beautiful —O, because he knows that this is a thing

she worries about a lot. if he did, he is sure that she would say, Oliver slings his backpack over his “Take breaths between your sentences, shoulder, and then he’s off. It’s a lazy Oliver. You need to slow down every Saturday, or at least it should be. All and now and then.” Mom is not very Saturdays are lazy, but children do not positive about anything. In fact, the first always know this. Oliver certainly does time Oliver told her that he wanted to not know this. He is ready for his long be a paleontologist, she said, “Honey, journey west, which is the direction he that’s not a real job,” but in his defense, will have to travel for a very long time in Dad said, “Sue, you have to let the kid order to reach Utah, which is the state dream,” which also didn’t sound all too that has the only museum in the entire promising. world that presents the entire history Oliver doesn’t want to call Dad his of all known species of dinosaurs. He favorite parent, but he’s definitely the has not told Mom about this idea, but nicer one. Around Dad, Oliver can say yaledailynews.com/magazine | Yale Daily News Magazine | 33

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that the D in Mrs. D. must stand for devil, and Dad will laugh and not chastise him, even though he will say, “You can say that around me, but don’t repeat it at school.” Dad is cool like that. Dad also has some funny sayings of his own, like “Go west young man,” which Dad explained is an old American saying that had to do with the expanding nation, although he uses it when traffic is bad and he decides to shift over to the lane all the way to the left, even though it’s probably almost definitely illegal.

As he leaves the house and walks towards the Needham Bridge, Oliver repeats, “Go west young man. Go west.”

He is taking a piece of Dad with him as he makes his way out into the world.

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or someone who is on a journey, it is important to know how to accept help from the right strangers. Or at least, that is what Oliver thinks he has learned from Mom’s stories about Odysseus’ journey. When you are traveling for a very long time, you will come in contact with many new people and places, and some will be very bad, and some might be surprisingly good, but the one thing you can be sure of is that the encounters will be interesting.

A man is running shirtless with the first rays of the morning sun warming

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his body and illuminating his face. Oliver looks at the man’s fancy green sneakers and the way he’s heaving in and out as he struggles to move his body forward on the street. The man runs past Oliver with his eyes almost closed, as if he is in too much pain to open them. This is Oliver’s first stranger, and he knows he will get nothing from this interaction.

This will not be a good surprise, nor will it be a bad one. Perhaps the greatest surprise of all is that most encounters change nothing. Oliver finds this with the bikers he passes too, and with the woman who walks her dog down the street in a bathrobe, pajama pants, and slippers. She looks like a mother. She wears her hair up with a clip. Not even she stops Oliver to ask where he is going.

It seems she doesn’t really see him.

ever present need to find a place to unwind.

On this morning, sleepy as all the others, dream-like as any Saturday, Oliver walks on the walking side of Needham Bridge, and clenches his fist as he makes his way to the bench, and then he sees a wondrous thing. A woman with long white hair is standing on the bridge’s railing. She keeps her arms stretched out; her hands are firmly clasped around the suspension cables.

The water, 300 feet below, is cool, steeltinged blue, and through the splashing music of its waves, it is singing. The woman looks like she is dancing with a scarf hanging loosely around her neck, and two different dresses on at the same time, like she couldn’t decide between them.

Oliver walks up to the woman and nother surprise, Oliver finds, is asks, “What are you doing, ma’am?” that being perceived as invisible She looks at him and takes a deep can be exhausting, or perhaps, at breath. She says softly, “I’m testing the this point, it is just the walking. He takes bridge, son.” She comes down, one deep breaths in and out of his mouth, careful step at a time, hands becoming like he did after he swam an entire lap unclenched as she steps down, and in the big hotel pool without lifting his walks over to the bench. She is a stranger, head once. He will be at the Needham but not a dangerous one.

Bridge soon, and on the side built for “My name’s not ‘Son.’ It’s Oliver.” walkers, there is a big bench where he “Nice to meet you, Oliver. You look will be able to stretch out and take a nap very tired.” She sits down. under the sun.

“I’ve been walking for a long time.”

Like a child under trance, Oliver sits t’s still a lazy Saturday, and although down. the sun is out, most people are “Me too,” she says. She pauses a still sleeping in their beds, or lying moment and asks, “What are you doing motionless and wake-dreaming under here all by yourself?” covers, or sipping coffee in sweats or “I’m going to the dinosaur museum pajamas. The Needham Bridge, nearly in Utah.” empty, looks infinite. Needham is a “That’s a long way from Massachusetts. sleepy town in Massachusetts, perhaps Do your parents know?” the sleepiest in all of New England, and “I can’t tell them.” its boundaries are rarely crossed. There “They’re probably expecting you are dreams enough for almost everyone home soon. You should go back. I bet within, and so the families do not travel they miss you. ” unless it’s a holiday or time for summer “I can’t go home. I can’t stay there vacation, and the college students stay anymore.” on their campus and experiment with “Is it really so terrible?” powder and liquid magic of their own “I can’t stay at home anymore.” Oliver between lectures and readings, and the has found that when you are very young children grow up with an incredible and do not answer a question, people inclination towards reclining, and an sometimes assume you have not yet

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fiction learned how.

“What made you decide to come here?”

“The bench.”

Oliver and the woman sit silently for a moment. Feeling hungry, Oliver pulls a tin of cookies out from his backpack. He takes one and extends the open can to the woman. She picks a chocolate chip cookie, and after the first bite, she says “thanks.”

“Do you come here a lot?” Oliver asks the woman.

“Yes,” she says.

“Why do you come?”

“It’s just about the only place where I can think.” She’s looking straight ahead, at the gray ocean water or at the sky. It’s impossible to tell which. Both start so close and extend so very far out into nowhere, far out into everywhere even.

“William always used to say this was a beautiful bridge. The most beautiful damned sleeping bridge he’d ever seen.”

She nods her head like she’s agreeing with someone, even though she is the one who has just spoken. Perhaps she is agreeing with William, as if his words must be affirmed again and again and again, as if repeating his words is not enough affirmation in itself.

Oliver doesn’t know who William is, but he decides it’s probably best not to ask; something about the woman’s gaze suggests that her William is also beautiful and sleeping. “You haven’t told me your name,” Oliver points out to her.

“Rose,” she says.

Oliver jumps back a little. She’s Rose.

Of course she’s Rose. He should have known. He’s heard about her before, the old woman who goes to the park at night and sings to herself on the swing while crying. He’s heard that she walks around wearing things you’d expect to see at the circus, but on her, for some reason, the layering of dresses seems lovely. Still, he knows better than to call her attention to these matters. He’s learned something from Mrs. Devil after all. Oliver pulls himself together and says, “It’s good to meet you, Rose.”

“Nice to meet you, Oliver.” Nice to

meet you, Oliver. Again and again and again. People always tell Oliver that it’s nice to meet him, people who smile at first, and then, within a few days, show that they do not want to be his friend.

Oliver puts a hand on his stomach.

Mom has told him not to do this, but she’s not around, so he does it anyway.

He rubs his stomach which is rumbling already as if it anticipates the hunger that the journey ahead has in store.

Rose doesn’t wait to offer Oliver real food. She asks, “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

“No, but you don’t have to…”

“I want to. Listen, I’ll have to take you home soon, but not right away. For now we can go to my house and I’ll make you pancakes and for a few hours, we can talk about whatever. Does that sound good?”

“I have to learn to be on my own,” Oliver says.

“Sweetie, no one should have to learn to be alone.”

Oliver stands and follows Rose’s lead.

She is just as unusual as they say, more like a character from under the rabbit hole than anyone he had ever met in his entire life.

“I have to warn you: it’s a long walk,” Rose says.

“That’s okay.”

Go west young man. Go west.

“I got married. My husband and I moved into our own house. We had children of our own. I was the one they meant when they said ‘Mommy.’ That’s how I knew I had grown up.”

Oliver and Rose were walking through the house quickly. For an old woman, Rose is very fast. Oliver thinks she has to be about the same age as his grandma, but when Rose walks, well, when she walks, if you are looking from behind and mistake her white hair for platinum, you would think that she is very young, because she does not wobble, not even a little bit, and her back is perfectly straight, and her waist is as small as a child’s.

“How many kids do you have?” Oliver asks.

“I had two. A boy who couldn’t get enough of books and a girl who couldn’t get enough of boys. That was a long time ago. They’re both over forty now. We don’t see each other very much.”

“How often is not very much?”

“Christmas. Thanksgiving sometimes.

But they don’t come to visit me. They come to practice remembering, and to give their children things to remember.”

Rose says this last bit with her head to the side, but not in Oliver’s direction. It is as if she is speaking to someone who is not there.

Oliver says, “I see,” although he is not sure that he does. ose’s house is not much like the They pass by the kitchen on their other houses in Needham. Hers way up, and Rose asks Oliver if he’d like has a front porch painted pink and anything to drink before she shows him more wind chimes and birdhouses than the rest of the house. Water? Milk? Tea? Oliver has ever seen in one place. It’s a He tells her he’ll be fine, and thanks her big and funny house, something like a very much. He can wait for the meal she life-sized version of Belinda’s dollhouse. will soon prepare. Paleontologists have It seems like it has been decorated by a to be good at waiting. gnome who thinks himself to be a secret Rose leads Oliver to the room that prince. used to belong to her son. He’s never When they step inside, Rose says, cleared out his old stuff, she tells him, “I’ve lived in this town my entire adult which is a good thing probably, because life.” The walls are decorated with pages it’s never easy to step into an empty of letters. room, an empty room that seems like it “How did you figure out that you were belongs to no one, but might be occupied an adult?” Oliver asks her. His aunt has by ghosts. Ghosts of New England, as a theory that we are always children to Oliver is all too aware from his father’s some extent. latest project, are all too common, even

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fiction though they are not frequently discussed.

Even though he’s never cleared out his stuff, Bill’s old room seems to have little other than books in it, although there are plenty of these. There are novels, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and books of poetry. “But they’re all books of poetry, in some sense,” Oliver’s older cousin had said when he was trying to teach him about all the different types of books that exist.

For now, Oliver is thankful that they will not be staying in Bill’s room for too long, even though the space in the room

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is not so much that it is frightening.

Oliver needs to leave this room because it reminds him of where he is expected to be, and he worries that Belinda will not remember him, and that Mom and Dad will not realize he has made his very own grown-up choice, and that Rachel will continue to cry herself to sleep and that no one will know. Most of all, he is worried that the journey ahead will be even longer than he thought, and as he knows from Mom’s stories, the journey back is never easy, and by the time the protagonist returns, it is usually too late.

liver. Ohhh-li-ver,” Rose says, as she tries to break the child from his trance.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I’m going to fix us some pancakes.

How would you like that?”

“With chocolate chips?”

“Have you ever tried them with chocolate chips and bananas?”

“That sounds great.”

“My kids used to love banana and chocolate chip pancakes,” Rose says, and looking off to her side again, she adds in, as if these are half-forgotten words to an old song, “It’s probably the one thing we’d all agree I did right.”

“Do you really think you were a bad parent?”

“I wasn’t the best.”

“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Oliver, I am only being honest.”

Rose sings to herself, and for a moment, she holds up the spatula like it’s a microphone.

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he pancakes come out looking picture-perfect. Rose serves them on city-themed plates. The theme to Oliver’s plate is London. There is a sad Big Ben on it, perhaps a very lonely Big Ben who is tired of people staring. Rose explains, “From behind Big Ben, the London Eye is watching.” For Rose, it’s Paris. The Eiffel Tower has a moustache and beret. She says, “The Eiffel Tower is guarding an entire city of people eating baguettes and fromage, people living in pretty apartments au bord de la Seine.

See, I remember things every now and then.” She is quite proud of herself for not forgetting these few words of French that she learned from a novel she read long ago.

“Now you’ll let me know if you don’t like these pancakes, or if you think you’d prefer them without the bananas, because then I’ll know for next time, and we’ll both enjoy them that much more.

Understood?” Rose asks like she doesn’t realize this is it. There will not be a next time.

“They’re yummy just like this.”

“I’m glad.”

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fiction Rose and Oliver stop talking for a few minutes, probably because, with the pancakes in front of them, it is hard to think of anything but the melted chocolate chips and sweet slices of banana, and how warm it is in their mouths. Oliver concentrates on how perfect it feels when he washes the food down with milk.

Rose’s eyes look glazed over and dreamy. She takes slow sips from her mug, a mug that is filled with tea, warm with milk, honey, and cinnamon. When she’s done, her eyes open wide like she has just woken up.

“Oliver, what do you dream about?”

“I dream of Mom, Dad, and Belinda, never my older sister, Mrs. D, the kids in my class, cars, movies, and falling down the stairs in my house.”

I dream of my parents, too. Sometimes, I am old in my dreams, the way I am now, and my parents are still young and bright. I dreamt of my husband only once, a very long time ago, before we were even married.”

“Is that how you knew that you loved him?”

“Oh no, I knew that long before. The dream didn’t teach me how I felt about him, but how I would feel about myself after he was gone.”

“What happened in the dream?”

“We were skating on the frozen pond, just the two of us, the way we always did when we were children. And then the ice started to break. It started out with a single crack just in the center, and William told me to get off. He was going to follow right behind me. I was almost at the edge when the ice broke beneath William’s feet, when he fell right in, and I had no choice but to leave him, because the ice was breaking into so many little pieces that I didn’t stand a chance.”

“He died in your dream?”

“He did. I woke up crying so much anyone who saw would have thought it had all been real. And then I knew that life without him would be devastating, that I could never be happy again without him.”

“You’ve never been happy without

him?”

“It doesn’t feel the same.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. But Oliver, I think we’ve had enough sad talk for one morning. What would you like to do today?”

“We can go to the beach.”

“Silly, it’s not warm enough.”

“Can you take me to see the dinosaur fossils?”

“I can take you to the zoo.”

“Agent Kelly, our mission is to rescue Buzz, the world’s most intelligent living mammal. This mammal is the closest living relative of the now extinct dinosaurs. It was genetically engineered to run faster than any member of its species, to live longer than any mammal before it, to survive temperatures below absolute zero and well above the boiling point. Last week, enemy forces broke into the lab and took Buzz with them.”

Rose has no trouble starting them off on their game of pretend. ose has an electric blue car with “Those bastards,” Oliver says. pictures of her grandchildren “Agent Kelly, watch your language. Do taped along the dashboard and I make myself clear?” to the ceiling. She and Oliver listen to “Yes, ma’am,” Oliver says. the radio and she sings along every now Rose corrects Oliver, “That’s Agent and then, getting all the words right each Howard to you.” time she does.

“Yes, Agent Howard.”

Oliver looks at Rose and says, “I want “Good.” Rose gives a half-smile. to be a paleontologist.”

“Agent Howard, what do we know She keeps her eyes on the road, hands about these enemy forces?” positioned carefully on the steering “We believe that Zitron is behind this. wheel, and says, “It’s good to have a plan Zitron started in the late 1990s as a group for the future, Oliver, but sometimes, for people with bad memory. It was a it’s best not to plan out the future too support group at first, but then Nate carefully. That way, you keep yourself Banks stepped forward as the leader, open to possibilities, and possibility is a and decided to rebel against the federal beautiful thing.” government and its spending,” Rose says.

“Are you just saying that so I will “So they targeted the oldest project on change my mind about wanting to Earth?” Oliver asks. become a paleontologist?” Oliver asks.

“Among others, but the dinosaur He knows that when adults talk about project seemed to become a target the future being open-ended, what they because dinosaurs had exceptional often have in mind is another question memories, and because members of that many of them ask next: “Don’t you Zitron were angry that the government want to be a doctor or a lawyer instead?” began to genetically engineer these Rose laughs and shakes her head. “No, super dinosaurs before looking for a way I just want you to realize that you’re to treat bad memories in humans.” young, and that you still have so much “We have a mission and a motive time to decide, and even when you’re and a target. Now all we need to do is older, you don’t really have to decide on save the mammal.” It’s only a game, but anything permanently. You can always Oliver feels so determined. change.”

“Exactly,” Rose says.

Oliver has an idea. “Today is a good “Agent Howard, we’re going to have to day for change,” he tells Rose, and then choose special codenames so we seem he tells her his idea, which is that they just like everyone else. No one can know can play a very long game of pretend, that we’re here on a mission.” a game that only ends when someone “We’ll go around as grandmother and makes the mistake of using the other grandson.” person’s real name or saying something “Perfect.” out of character.

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t the zoo there are peacocks and flamingos, leopards, eagles, armadillos, reindeer and snakes, ladybugs and sheep, but there isn’t a dinosaur-like mammal in sight. Agent Howard and Agent Kelly separate for a little while. She sits on the bench and Agent Kelly goes to feed the goats to blend in with the other kids.

Two girls in matching dresses reach out their hands to feed the goat. They reach out their arms and say “Here, goat” as they force their hands under the animal’s mouth.

“Maybe the goat has had enough to eat,” Oliver says to the girls.

“Oh yeah, and who are you?” the older one asks.

“I’m Oliver Mitch Kelly,” he says.

“Oh, I’ve heard about you. You’re the dinosaur freak,” the younger girl says.

“I am not a freak.”

“Are too. Everyone is always talking about you, freckle face, and how you don’t have any friends.”

“I have friends,” Oliver shouts. He knows he needs to race right out of there. There is a heaviness that comes into his stomach, and he feels like he is about to puke. He can’t cry in front of the girls. He needs to find Rose. He needs to tell her: Agent Howard, we have reason to believe the enemy forces are on the run. We must get in the car and go back to the headquarters to adjust the plan immediately.

He makes his way to the benches and starts calling out “Grandma!” hoping that Rose will not take too long to leave with him. He worries that she has forgotten their civilian identities, or that she didn’t see enough of her own grandchildren to feel comfortable responding to “Grandma” just yet. He tries desperately.

“Rose, Agent Howard, Grandma! Can you hear me?” With that last call, he lost the game. He doesn’t care. Oliver screams until he begins to cry wildly. He doubles over and falls to his knees. He is right on the ground, weeping like a big baby. “Rose, Agent Howard, Grandma!”

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ose carries Oliver off to the car, and she says they can talk for as long as he needs. She puts the key in the ignition.

“Please, don’t take me back. I can’t do anything right at home. Don’t take me back. I want to stay with my grandma for a while.”

“Tell me why you’re afraid of going home.” For the first time since they’ve met, Rose has made a demand.

But Oliver believes that Rose will not turn him in. She is on his side. He knows she is. She is Agent Howard. She is Grandma. She is the world’s best cook.

She is not a traitor. Oliver knows that she would never rat on him.

“Kids make fun of me because I am short and because of my freckles, and they say that I am a dinosaur freak.

Sometimes my big sister Rachel calls me a dinosaur freak, and she says that she is embarrassed, and that hurts so much, I wish she would just punch me instead of saying things like that, because even when she says sorry and I try to accept her apology, I can’t because I can’t forget the thing, so I can’t really stop being upset.”

“No need to rush. Take deep breaths.

Tell me anything you need to. I’ll drive in circles for a while,” Rose says.

“Belinda is my younger sister. She’s never said anything that’s bothered me for more than a couple of minutes, but I think this is because she is only four, and Mom says she is just figuring out how to express herself. But she gets away with so many things that I don’t, like not writing thank-you notes, and pointing at things she likes at stores and saying, ‘Daddy, I want.’ And Mom always takes her side when we fight, which she did especially and maybe too much after the fish-flushing incident, even though she and Dad were both on my side when Belinda took a big bite into my stomach and some blood gushed out.”

“A fish-flushing incident?” Rose asks.

“I took Belinda’s goldfish that she got at a fair and flushed it down the toilet before it was even dead, because that’s where fish go when they die. For them,

that’s heaven. But Mom got really mad and called me Oliver Mitch Kelly, which she only does when I’m about to get in big trouble.”

“You realize that wasn’t very nice?”

Rose puts it like a question, but it’s clear she isn’t asking.

“I know, I know. But I like Belinda a lot. She’s got this thing called ‘spunk’ that makes everyone like her, and the way her ponytail is always right on top of her head makes me giggle every time.”

“And your parents?”

“Dad says that Mom is lost in her own odyssey, which is the name of the book she never stops talking about. I heard Dad tell her once that she talks to her kids like we’re students in her ancient civilizations class, but we’re not even in college yet. She said she’s sorry she doesn’t speak to her family condescendingly.”

“What do you wish you could change, Oliver?”

“I wish the other kids would talk to me, and I wish Mom would never call me Oliver Mitch Kelly, and I wish I didn’t say the wrong things, and I wish Belinda wouldn’t bite me and would just grow up already but would keep her ponytail and her spunk anyway, and I wish Rachel didn’t hate me, and I wish she didn’t cry herself to sleep, and I wish Mom and Dad were always as happy as they are when the lightning bugs are out.”

“Never stop wishing. It’s time I take you home.”

“Don’t!”

“Oliver, it’s time. Where do you live?”

“I won’t tell you.”

“Oliver!”

“Why won’t you keep me around anymore?”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. You can’t stay with me. Besides, I might stay in Needham much longer. There’s another place I need to see, which is why it’s better for you to go home. Would you tell me where you live?”

“I live past the college and the playground. My house is on the street where all the trees have red leaves this

fiction month.” a story of the Cyclops and sirens and “Past John’s antique shop? Actually, warfare, and he thinks that in his own do you have an address? You know, the way, he has had a similar journey. With one your parents give to people who the straps of his backpack hanging over need to send them mail?” both his shoulders, Oliver must put in “1718 Madeline Court.” more effort than usual to ensure that his movements are steady. He has had t’s evening by the time they get to a long trip; he has carried a heavy load, Oliver’s neighborhood. If only it were and when he finally reaches his house, a few hours later, Oliver would point with a tentative finger going forward, he out Orion’s Belt. He would tell Rose the stands still in front of the purple door story of the three stars that represent and rings the bell. the belt of a powerful hunter who was He waits for Mom or Dad or maybe sent to the heavens to look down on us even Rachel, but the person who opens after he was killed by Artemis’ bow. He the door is his aunt Nelly, and she does gets the feeling he will never tell her this not raise her voice to ask where he’s story. been or to say they’ve all been looking When Oliver gets back, he will have a for him for hours. She takes him in her lot of questions to answer, and now, he arms and squeezes him so tightly he is is thinking of all the things he tried and afraid that his bones will snap or that failed to escape. He thinks of the goldfish he will lose his lunch on the tiled floor. he flushed when it was still alive, of the Belinda slithers toward Oliver on the way he is invisible unless he is doing a floor; she is pretending to be a snake. bad thing, and of the fact that even his Flashing her tiny white teeth she says, compliments make people upset. He “I bite you for being bad. You can’t play thinks about going west young man, and hide-and-seek so long.” resting after school, and worshiping at Aunt Nelly goes into the kitchen and the altar of the television, which is his picks up the phone. She dials someone’s favorite god he thinks. He thinks of number and begins to cry. With long Rachel and her nose and her sniffles, and pauses between her words, she says, the note he left her. He thinks of the D in “He’s back, Sue. Oliver is here.” Oliver Mrs. D. that stands for devil, but only in feels as if he has stepped into the home the house. He thinks of the articles Dad of another family where nothing that he is always writing, of his frantic typing, does is wrong. “They’ll be home soon of the way he cannot steer the wheel of with graham crackers and chocolate bars the Dirt Mobile without breaking all the and marshmallows for s’mores,” Aunt rules.

Nelly reports.

They get to Madeline Court, and They all walk into the living room Oliver says, “This is it. I live at the end together and Aunt Nelly nudges Oliver of this block.” on the shoulder. She asks, “Are you all “I’ll leave you here,” Rose says, “but right?” and he looks at her and says, “I’m first, tell me one thing: they’re not bad tired. I walked for a very long time.” parents, are they?”

Belinda asks, “Oli, do you have any “They’re not bad, but they’re not ouchies?” the best,” Oliver says. He unfastens “No, Belinda,” he says, “nothing hurts.” his seatbelt, opens the door, and says, But all he can think of as he knows “Goodbye, Grandma.” that Mom and Dad and Rachel must Rose says, “Goodbye, Oliver.” They be making their way back is that Rose will keep each other’s secrets. might still be waiting in her electric blue Oliver walks down the block to his car at the end of the street, singing along house. He thinks of Odysseus, who was to songs on the radio at all the right away from home for so many years, moments, or perhaps she had already and after his journey, came back with made her way back to the bridge.

I

The rumbling of the Dirt Mobile puts an end to Oliver’s train of thought.

Dad parks the Dirt Mobile in the driveway and uses his key to unlock the front door. Rachel comes in and tosses her denim jacket on the floor. She runs to the living room to see Oliver and says, “God, twerp. What the hell did you do that for?” She rubs her fingers through his hair and slaps him on his arm.

Belinda comes to tug Rachel’s arm and says, “That’s not very nice.” She starts to bite Rachel’s index finger, but Rachel says, “Bad girl, no. Don’t do that. Oliver did a very bad thing today. He had us all freaking out.”

Dad says, “Easy does it, Scout,” and then he walks up to Oliver and kisses him on the forehead. He says, “You had us all scared shitless, Champ.”

Oliver says, “I’m sorry.”

Mom bends down and rests her head on Oliver’s shoulder. She begins to cry and shouts, “Don’t you ever do this to me again,” and then she holds him tightly.

Belinda says, “I’m here too. I’m here.

I’m here. Look at me. I didn’t hide today.”

Dad says, “I know you’re here. I won’t forget.”

Oliver looks at Mom and asks, “You brought home the marshmallows, right?”

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