Hamilton Stone Review #24
Nonfiction

Reamy Jansen, Nonfiction Editor

 

 

 

Oden Oak

Vinh

 

"Bonjours, Vinh, Ça va avec toi aujourd'hui?"

"Oui, merci, Monsieur Chêne, Qu'est-ce que vous allez faire ce matin?"

"Tu sais bien que je dois enseigner l'anglais à Tan San Nhut comme toujours. "

"Ah, bien sûr, Monsieur, Donc à plus tard. "

Vinh was one of the Vietnamese girls who worked the front desk at the Dong Kahn Hotel, the billet for many GI's in Saigon. Even in 1969 most of the better educated Vietnamese were fluent in French, a carryover from the days when Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia comprised French Indo China. Businesses and schools were still conducted in French. The week before when I had heard Vinh chatting with a colleague in French, I spoke to her haltingly, searching my memory for vocabulary and verb tenses. Our acquaintanceship had begun.

The following morning after our usual salutations, Vinh asked me in English if I would like to go to a party on Saturday. I hesitated before answering, flattered by the invitation and puzzled because nice Vietnamese girls didn't go out with GI's. That particular dating scene was the exclusive domain of working girls. After answering enthusiastically, “Yes,” she wrote down the address, saying she would meet me there at 8 p.m.

Saturday finally arrived. My roomie, Bill Pettie, had left earlier to go drinking which suited me fine because I didn't want to explain why I was wearing my dress blues instead of the everyday jungle fatigues. I almost made it downstairs and out the door without attracting attention, when a voice behind me bellowed, “Hey, Oakie, what the fuck? You meeting Nguyen Kao Key?” Without stopping, I muttered, “Can't talk now, I'm late. ”

Finally on the street, I flagged down a taxi, jumped in, gave the papasahn the address, and off we headed downtown toward the Saigon River.

During the twenty minute taxi ride to our downtown destination, I speculated as to the experience that awaited, especially how I would be received by a segment of society beyond the ken of the military. Contact with locals was confined to the bar and prostitute scene. I recalled on a couple of occasions seeing well-dressed Caucasian males walking briskly along streets, then suddenly ducking into doorways. Their presence was incongruous to the setting of squaltor and destitution. I specifically recalled two such men conversing quietly, seemingly oblivious to the bustle, human and machine, teeming along Tran Hung Dao.

My reflections soon ended as we arrived at the address. I paid the papasahn, walked up to the door and knocked. Inside I could hear low voices speaking French and Vietnamese, but no English. I sighed as the door opened. There stood Vinh smiling.

"Bonsoir Monsieur, bienvenue! Entrez!"

"Merci, Vinh, enchanté d'être ici. "

I entered into a profusion of lights and smells. Candles stood everywhere, different shapes and sizes, on tables, sills, and walls. At the far end of this elongated room, a picture window extended its breadth, revealed a profusion of flowers, dotting a well-manicured lawn. Electric lights mounted outside penetrated all the way down to the river. Before the window a long table covered with an array of foods stimulated visually and olfactorily.

"Venez avec moi. "

I followed Vinh to an attractive, French-looking woman, ostensibly the hostess. A conversation began in French, but shifted quickly to English, whish she spoke flawlessly, if with a slight accent.

The rest of the evening, I spent exciting my taste buds with the bounty of foods. Though I was the only American and the only one in uniform, I felt mostly at ease. Blending in somewhat was a marked contrast to the usual gawking endured from indigenous Vietnamese.

At 10 PM, I sought out the hostess to express appreciation for a wonderful evening, but could find Vinh nowhere to say good-bye.

The next day, coming downstairs to go to work, I noticed Vinh was not at her usual post. I asked her whereabouts and the replacement girl said she was off that day. I thanked her and caught the bus to Tan Son Nhut. I never saw Vinh again.

 

 

 

 

Liya Li

Paper Money

My father was transferred to Kaiyuan County Mental Hospital in December 1966. Now it was much harder to see him because of the distance and complications of the trip. Mother would get up at 4:30 AM to catch the six o'clock train to get to Kaiyuan by 9:00 AM. After that, she had to take a local bus to the hospital. “The trip is too exhausting,” she explained to me when I asked why I couldn't go to see father with her. “Besides, money is tight right now. ” Our whole family of five lived on her 52 Yuan (about $8.00) each month. The New Revolutionary Committee had severed father's pay after his arrest. To save bus fare, mother rode her bike to the train station against the razor-sharp wind that's so typical of Northeast China, but her visits panned out like clockwork for mother knew she was his only hope and reason for cooperating with the doctors. Then unexpectedly in April, 1967, both her trips to Kaiyuan and our life came to a screeching halt. We didn't see any signs of trouble sneaking up to mother, but someone did send us a warning the night before her arrest.

It was around 9:00 o'clock, the night of April 7, 1967. Mother and didi (little brother) were already asleep. Laolao (Grandma) and I were just about to turn in for the night when we heard three loud raps on the front door, one heavy with two locks and iron bars on the inside. “Who is it?” I mustered enough courage and yelled. No answer. I shouted my inquiry again. Silence reigned. Laolao motioned me to open it. With my heart in my throat, I pulled the door just to a crack and peered into the pitch-dark hallway outside. No one was there. Quickly, I shut the door, securing both locks. Then I saw a piece of yellow paper lying on the concrete floor. I had never seen this type of paper before. About “5 x 8”, it felt rough and stiff; the dirty yellow color giving off an ominous look. When I brought it to Laolao, she gave out a muffled cry, her eyes glazed with horror. She snatched it from my hand and tore it into shreds. “Don't tell your mother. Do you hear me?” “What is it? Laolao,” I whispered, my heart pounding. “The Death Demon is coming to strike us, “she cried, her trembling lips so pale that I felt all her blood had been drained by this yellow monster. I quickly understood why no one was there when I had opened the door. A phantom had delivered a piece of paper money meant for the Yin World, the world of the dead. Most families perform the ritual of burning paper money in front of the graves of loved ones on April 5, Qing Ming, the day to remember the dead. I had only heard about the ritual but had never experienced it, but just staring at the yellow shreds sent chills down my spine. “What evil is slouching into our already shattered life?” I didn't dare to probe Laolao any further.

Laolao barely slept that night. She perched her bony upper torso on a pillow and was breathing hard. Endless worries and fears had exacerbated her chronic bronchitis. When I finally drifted into dream land, nightmares invaded. A ferocious tiger was pouncing on me. When morning came, we didn't mention the incident to mother; by 6:45, she left for work on her bike as usual, leaving Laolao and me, two startled rabbits, watching for signs of danger. The whole day we prayed for mother's safe return, but what we didn't know was that the paper money had fulfilled its prophecy. Mother would not come home that night.

My mother's work place didn't have a name or an address. It was called the #109 factory. I was just five years old the first time I stepped into this tightly-guarded world of mystery. Barbed wires stood on the shoulders of the walls surrounding the entire factory. Factory employees, mostly men, had to show their IDs to the security police at the main entrance, but once we got in, another guard appeared inside a small office. Mother was the factory director, Old Wei's assistant. A revolutionary hero, Old Wei lost one arm during the Anti-Japanese War. Although illiterate, his seniority in the Communist Party gave him a swagger that few of his subordinates dared to challenge. Perhaps mother was the only one who dared. Her job was to write Old Wei's propaganda speeches and reports. She was his pen for hire, so to speak, but she refused, nevertheless, to subject her writing to his dictatorship. In spite of his occasional volcanic eruptions at her rebellion, he liked her, a woman who magically made his ideas dance on paper. Mother was also in charge of the factory's library, my favorite place. It wasn't until many years later did I realize that #109 factory was a secret lab for military research.

When the red tide of the Cultural Revolution swept the nation, #109 factory was not spared. My mother's boss, Old Wei, was removed from his post, but mother remained as his ghost writer at the order of the new regime that took over the administration. Instead of writing his propaganda speeches, she now composed his self-criticisms and confessions of the so-called crimes he committed against the Communist Party and Chairman Mao. Poor Old Wei, who often broke down in the middle of a self-criticism session, couldn't understand what he did wrong for serving the people wholeheartedly and for being a loyal Communist Party member all those years. To help him pass the tormenting self-criticism sessions, mother often burnt the night oil, fabricating twenty to thirty-page confessions on Old Wei's behalf. “You have to learn to bullshit when you have nothing to confess,” mother told Laolao, who would scold her for making such a politically dangerous, snide remark in front of me. Laolao would warn me never to repeat to anyone what I had heard at home. “You don't want to get your mama in trouble,” she cautioned. However, keeping my lips sealed to the outside world wouldn't have saved her. A sword was already dangling over her head. When the paper money was delivered to our door, her fate was sealed.

In one of the confessions she composed for Old Wei, mother wrote, “I sincerely beg the people's forgiveness for the crimes I have committed against our great party and our beloved leader, Chairman Mao. I deserve to be qian dao wan gua, cut into thousands of pieces, to show my remorse. Long live the Community Party; Long live Chairman Mao. ” In the rush to wrap up the self-criticism by 2:00 in the morning, mother wrote “Down with Chairman Mao. ” This unfortunate bi wu, unintentional misplacement of words, was used as evidence against her. Arrested by the Red Guards, she became a Counter Revolutionary overnight.

 

 

 

 

Pamela Floyd

Children in Pink and Blue: Impressionist, 1944

 

When my mother was thirteen, her father, “handsome Jack” Leslie, lost his job in the Quincy granite quarries. He took his wife and child with him to make a fresh start in Northern Vermont, but he couldn't keep a job there either. Within a year he left for California, and when the divorce settlement papers arrived in the mail, my grandmother found she had to supplement her custom dressmaking income by working weekdays at Singer Sewing in downtown Barre. But she was so thoroughly steeped in the gospels of hard work and cheerful service to others that she thrived in Vermont. She made new friends and took her energetic daughter, stunningly dressed, to parties and picnics. Occasionally letters came, addressed to my mother, from Jack Leslie: he had remarried, he was in Hollywood, he had entered a touring bicycle race, he had a new job as Bette Davis' chauffeur. My mother missed her dynamic parent, and recalled fondly how he called her “boy”, took her golfing, taught her to drive and even knocked out her front tooth during an impromptu boxing lesson. She read about the “true lives” of movie stars in warm, sunny Hollywood, and her mother's efforts to make her happy seemed inadequate.

When my mother married and became pregnant, her restlessness was channeled into desire for a child. But she miscarried. The following year she miscarried again. Then she nearly died delivering a boy, but he would not breathe. She wrote sentimental Victorian poetry about her baby, and then, more characteristically, she studied obstetrics and raised money to buy a respirator for the local hospital. Within a year she gave birth to a perfect baby and named her Leslie. Four years later I was born, and my mother was troubled once more. There was a problem with my eyes, a severe congenital myopia. My mother was emotionally paralyzed by this latest misfortune; she could think of nothing she could do about it. As if in a film, she saw the child grown into a blind, groping young woman, and she knew she could not bear to watch. The wisdom of the time was, as much as possible, to disregard handicaps, and she knew she could not hide her distress.

I became my grandmother's baby, and my mother kept watch over Leslie, who began to have asthma attacks which worsened in my mother's absence.

Years later, my mother never could believe me when I told her that my vision was only occasionally of much consequence to me, but that the schism between the teams of Leslie and herself and my grandmother and me was upsetting. My mother and grandmother were loving toward both children, but Leslie and I grew more and more resentful of one another. A portrait of the two of us, painted in 1944, already reflects our standoff. I am the rosy, fat cheeked four-year-old in the right foreground looking straight ahead--solid, contemplative. At some distance behind me and to the left is my eight- year-old sister in blue, with a suggestion of blue shadows on her cheeks. Her head is turned to her right, and her eyes roll slightly in that direction.

I remember the artist and sitting afternoons in a billowy upholstered armchair set incongruously on the dining room table. It was hard to hold still; I was for the most part a happy, active child with never enough time to do all the things I wanted to do. A week earlier my mother had commissioned the portrait. It was a spring Sunday and I was annoyed to learn from the dinner conversation that I would have to get dressed up again that day. The first dressing, for church, was over, but now I had to endure a re-dressing and be carried off to an Impressionist's house. I had no idea what an Impressionist might be, but the prospect sounded worse than an afternoon of antiquing. We finished our pot roast, and at dessert, my sister thought of a new torment for me. Nana had made my favorite, devil's food cake with frosting made of thick slabs of chocolate fudge. I gobbled mine, fudge first, while Leslie neatly flipped her cake and slowly ate small bits from the bottom. My mother, father and grandmother left the table and I sat watching Leslie. No seconds were allowed, but clearly she wasn't going to finish. “I'll let you have the cake I don't eat,” she whispered, and I felt a warm glow of sisterly collusion. When the dishes were done and my father was ready to read us the funny papers, Leslie and I were still at the table, but all of Leslie's fudge frosting was intact. “I can't eat any more” she said wearily, and I snatched for the plate. “Oh, no”, she said, “I only said I'd give you the leftover cake part. I might want the frosting later. I'll put it in the refrigerator. ” “I'll eat it anyway,” I said, starting to cry. “Mother!” Leslie said. Mother put the frosting on the soffit where there was no hope of climbing to it. There was no time for the funny papers either; we had to get dressed. My body felt hot and tight, my tears gave way to involuntary howls, and I dropped to my back on the kitchen floor, kicking the cabinets as hard as I could. “Remember, you said you'd pour cold water on her,” my sister suggested. My mother was reluctant, but pressed for time. With the sanction of Good Housekeeping's latest remedy for tantrums, she filled our depression glass creamer with cold water and trickled it onto my face. I was shocked by this assault, but I couldn't let my sister and mother think they could get away with it. I kicked and howled more vigorously, pretending not to notice the cold that was seeping into my shirt and along the back of my neck. My sister was relishing my embarrassment, and my mother was now feeling remorseful, pleading “If you act like this you could hurt your eyes. With such a terrible temper, no one will like you. ” That final warning was sobering. Already my sister hated me and recently a girl my age I met at a playground had bitten my hand so hard it bled. I got up off the floor with as much dignity as I could and said, defiantly, “I like myself. ” My mother and Leslie laughed, but in the living room my father rattled his newspaper, a gesture I knew meant solidarity with me.

I was considering other strategies to avoid being dressed, hiding or being “poky”, when my grandmother came downstairs, wearing her hat and smelling pleasantly of Ipana. Reading my mood, she explained to me that the Impressionist we were going to visit was a “lady” painter. We would see her studio and watch her paint. I could perhaps learn more about painting horses and dogs, my favorite pastime. My father was reading the funny papers alone as I went upstairs to join the women of the house. My mother brushed each of Leslie's brown curls around her index finger and helped her into her blue organdy dress trimmed with latticed lace threaded with black velvet ribbon. My grandmother brushed my blonde curls and, after a struggle, pulled my head and two arms out of the pink organdy dress that matched my sister's. Then it was the socks and the shoes and the coats and the gloves and into the Roadmaster, my grandmother and I, as always in the back seat. The alpha pair sat up front.

We drove my mother's preferred route downtown, through Barre's small, tranquil  business district, and onto the Montpelier road. My mother and Leslie were talking quietly; it must be Hollywood again, I thought. Their heads were close together, they who so often reminded me that in public I should not put my face within inches of people or objects. It was better, they agreed, for me to act like a lady, to pretend I could see normally. In a tangle of ironies, my sister kept close watch over me, ready to intervene if I used my eyes in a peculiar way. Unaccountably, almost everyone failed to realize that I was quite the opposite of a voyeur. My habit of close scrutiny merely allowed me to piece together some sense of what others could see at a glance. Fortunately for me, they also failed to appreciate my real talent: I was a formidable eavesdropper.

“If we can get your father to agree,” my mother was saying, “we may go to California to visit your grandfather this winter. He has real oranges growing on a tree and it's always warm in Hollywood. The climate would help your asthma. ” “ And we should send another letter to Joan Leslie,” she continued. It's terrible a woman like that wouldn't take the time to answer a child, but she's busy making pictures and maybe she didn't get her mail. I'll have Mr. Milne make up another print of your ‘sooo sleepy' picture and I'll type a note telling her what you've been through with your asthma. You'll only have to print the part about how your name is Leslie Joan...”

“Stop!” I yelled. “Horses! We have to pat the horses. ” My sister groaned. “Pamela, those aren't horses; they're cows. ” “Can we pat the cows?” I asked as a face saving device. It was too late now anyway; we were past them. My sister looked over the seatback, and I knew she was wrinkling her nose. “Pamela, people don't pet cows. That's peculiar. You don't want to smell like a cow when you go to an impressionist's house for tea. ” She used her grown up voice that exasperated me because she thought she was speaking for Mother, too. “Never you mind,” said Nana to me, “We'll look for horses to pat on the way home. ”

“Oh no”, my mother said in the voice that made my heart thump, and she braked so sharply that Nana put her arm out in front of me and Mother put her arm out in front of Leslie. What is it?: I asked. “ A poky old tractor with a hay wagon. The road is so full of potholes I'll never be able to pass it here, “ said my mother, making her nervous noise, a series of tremulous hums, like a sputtering motor. She signaled to the farmer by nosing the car into the passing lane, accelerating and braking several times, but he gave no sign of seeing or hearing anything. As we settled to a crawl, my mother's confidence diminished with her driving speed. “I hope this isn't going to be a wild goose chase,” she said. “I haven't met Mrs. Kane, but she's a highly respected artist. She sounded a little snooty on the phone, and she said she couldn't commit to anything for several weeks. I think we're going to be late!” my mother said, but just then the hay wagon turned off, and we surged forward. My mother braked hard for a turn onto a narrow dirt road that clung to the steep side of a ridge. It was heavily washboarded, topped by a scattering of small, rounded stones that sent the Buick skittering at crazy angles. My mother's confidence returned. Alternating between spurts of acceleration and sharp braking, she pulled up at Katherine Kane's door---on time.

Katherine Kane's barn studio was a single large room, its windows extended from floor to gable, yielding an extravagance of light unmatched even in public buildings in Barre. The artist spoke in a low, relaxed voice and shook hands with each of us. We were standing in her work area where she had set up her easels and arranged her canvases, paint and brushes. “May we look at your Impressionist paintings?,” asked Leslie, and everyone moved toward a light washed wall of shapes and colors that turned out to be unframed canvases. Drawn by the intoxicating smell of shellac, I doubled  back to get a close look at the artist's work area, so different from our kitchen table and my little watercolor set with its single brush. Twenty or thirty huge, long wooden brushes of varying sizes were gathered in a saltware crock, the hairs of each blunt end in perfect alignment. I had tested the tautness of a blank stretched canvas and begun to scrutinize the tubes of oil paint when my mother exclaimed, “Oh what a lovely dog, and my interest in our visit turned to excitement. My mother and I shared a passion for dogs, and she had taught me how to behave with them and how to recognize the breeds she knew. We could not have a dog because of Leslie's asthma, but there were two dogs in my life. Every week I visited a Boston Terrier, bringing a clothes pin for him to chew. I loved the elderly Howards and their Toby, with his wiggles and snorts and bulging eye. Then there was Skinny, an obese mongrel, who came to our back door frequently for hand-outs. But Skinny was a disappointment, apparently suffering from a food addiction that left him indifferent to my affection. Now, here, moving toward us, his long furnishings seeming to float in the light, was a magnificent setter, an English setter! The dog came to me, and as if in a dream, I held out my hands slowly and quietly for him to sniff. His eyes were almost at the same level as mine, but I avoided staring into them. I passed one hand under the soft, loose skin of his freckled muzzle and scratched the underside of his neck, then his breastbone. He folded his ears back with pleasure and they hung like soft long feathers.

“Come over here” directed my grandmother, “It's a picture of Mrs. Kane and Monet. I didn't have to ask Mrs. Kane the name of her dog; there he was, his ears folded back, his head resting on the arm of a chair, a mass of freckles within splotches. The painting was tall, and I had to fill in the upper part of it with the help of my imagination. The Mrs. Kane of the picture and the woman I had seen and heard told me her face would be serious but not sad, and that she would be calmly looking down at the dog. “Are you nearsighted?” I asked Mrs. Kane. “No, why do you ask?”  “I'm nearsighted and your painting is blurry, like the way nearsighted people see. ” “ Ah,” said Mrs.Kane. “Then if you get close to things they're not blurry?” “Really close,” I said. Leslie made a grab for my hand, but I put it in my pocket and moved closer to Monet. Mrs. Kane lifted the picture and set it on the floor against the wall. “Look close and tell me what you see. “ she said. “There's a creamy white background and all kinds of specks and spots, all kinds of sizes and shapes. Monet's real spots are colored like caramels, but in the painting they are lots of colors, some darker some lighter. When you move away, all the paint comes together and makes a blurry picture. Why do you paint blurry pictures when you don't have to ? Mrs. Kane thought a moment and said, “ I like the softness of them and I like to have people look at them and put pieces of things they've seen into them in their minds. Every time they look at them they'll think of new things. That is one of the good things about Impressionism. ” “Is Monet an impressionist dog?” I asked. “ In every way,” said Mrs. Kane. “ I think all three of us are Impressionists. ” I could tell Mrs. Kane liked me even though she didn't touch my curls or ask me lots of questions in a loud voice.

The women in my mother's group had been teenagers and young adults during the ‘20's. Unlike the laconic farm people who came into town on Friday nights, these young marrieds of Vermont's twin cities had worn short dresses and cloche hats, danced the Charleston at the Elks Club and driven off in clamorous groups for some mild deviltry under the influence of bathtub gin. Perhaps that is why, even after they were preoccupied with child raising and homemaking, they felt the need to keep conversation moving relentlessly as long as they had breath. But there were times when even my mother lost patience with her friend Ethel after their phone conversations proved impossible to end. My mother would whisper to me, “Ring the doorbell. ” I liked Ethel, and I didn't like the deception, but until I learned to stay away when Ethel was on the phone, I had to comply. “There's someone at the door; I have to run,” my mother would say. The strategy wouldn't work, though, when Ethel came to our door. Her Airedale, waiting in the car, had learned to climb into the driver's seat and blow the car horn. Ethel would stop her conversation long enough to call out, “Susie, I'll be right there”. Susie would wait a few minutes, and the cycle would repeat itself several times. No one, apparently, thought it unusual that even a dog living with Ethel would devise some way of interrupting her.

Mrs. Kane invited us to sit down for tea, and without the cover of interrupted conversations and outbursts of laughter I was used to hearing from my mother's friends, I felt a little uneasy. I might be forced to eat something I didn't like and everyone would be watching me. With very few words, Mrs. Kane poured tea for my mother and grandmother and lemonade for Leslie and me. Without comment, she put out a plate of cookies. I could tell my mother was nervous. Mrs. Kane didn't ask who had made our beautiful dresses or ask how long it took to make our curls the way most people did. It didn't seem the right time to mention that Leslie resembled a young Shirley Temple, even to the dimples, but with blue eyes. My mother was having more trouble holding still than I was. “I think Leslie is just the right age for a portrait,” she said, breaking the silence.

“She's old enough so we'll recognize her as she gets older, but she's not at the awkward stage yet. ” The cookies looked suspicious; they might have figs in them. I took a chance that no one would notice, and sniffed at a cookie. Then I held it up to one eye to see if there were any seeds. There were soft short fibers of golden brown and some shiny bits with duller, blue-brown filmy patches that were the outside skin. Dates, my favorite! “Leslie is delicate,” my mother was saying. “ She has had several asthma attacks over the winter, but the fresh air has brought her color back. We've had her to Dr. Rackman in Boston and he thinks it's dust, so we...” “Leslie turns blue when she gets mad,” I interrupted. “And I've had a pimple on my bum for almost a thousand years, and no one has said anything about that. ” “ You're peculiar,” Leslie said resignedly, maintaining her poise. There was another short silence. “Mrs. Dean, I canl come to your house and start the portrait next week,” Mrs. Kane said suddenly. I'll do the girls together. My mother started to object, but then she stood up and said, “That will be lovely. ”

On the way home I reflected that there would always be people who wouldn't like me, but that there were people and dogs who did: Nana, Dad, Mom, all the neighbors, Toby, and now Mrs. Kane and Monet. In Montpelier, I remembered I had a score to settle with Leslie. On our last Sunday outing she had told me, just as we were approaching the iron arch bridge, that the ice dams on the Winooski were so bad we would be driving over the top of the bridge. I was terrified, knowing my mother took pride in being a fearless driver. There had been no time for reassurances until we were half way over, on the roadbed. I thought of something that would balance the ledger: singing seven verses of “Froggy Went A-Courtin'” from my Tex Ritter record. Nana joined in with her New England Conservatory trained voice, and on the refrain we laughed so much her gold tooth showed.

Oh Froggy went a courtin' anda he did ride, uh hum,
Froggy went a courin'' anda he did ride uh ha, ha ha ha,
Frog went a couritn'' anda he did ride
A sword and a pistol by his side ah hum, ho, hum. Me me chi mo, in the land of pharoah pharaoh
With a rat trap polydoodle periwinkle rattle bug a rat trap polydoodle chi  me O...

 

It was getting dark when we reached Barre, but I could tell our street was  no longer narrowed by margins of grimy, crusted ice . The sidewalks were still banked with snow at the openings to front walks and driveways, but it would soon be time for Dad to bring our bikes up from the cellar. For now, maybe he'd wake up and read us the funny papers.

 

 

 

 

 

Don Iannucci

Sweaty Girls

 

A small wisp of locks slips loose from her tightly-bound hair. It floats for a while before landing on her reddened cheek. There it sticks to the sweat rolling down her face like a vein sending nutrients to her warm body. I notice her feet. I try to memorize the pattern of her gait: left in front, toe up; right behind, toe down. Later, after my shower, I'll try to repeat this image on paper. For now she moves in rhythm to her private songs. I can stare for a while, but I don't want to frighten this bird, and yet I do. I look down, then away, then glance back. In that time she has gone to collect a sanitized towelette to wipe the treadmill free of any personal sweat.

 

Her short hair is matted to her scalp, face flush with blood, legs pounding hard in her Nikes. She is flying in a daze of blurry images too fast to record in my eye. I witness her trial with admiration, her breathing is steady, as she takes in air to fuel her stride. She is God if God is a woman. She is something worthy to worship. Her pace quickens and the machine whirls as the elevation increases. She is all determination. I want to applaud but hold back. Rivers of sweat follow the curve of her neck and pool in her already soaked tee. An ear bud pops out. She slows down to adjust her music player, slows down for a drink and slows down to wipe the sweat off of her watery brow.

 

I glance at her stats, pulse 145, RPM 58, calories burned 232, level 5. She is reading a book on her Kindle. Simple black letter on a gray background, no cover, no art, no bookmark, and no thickness to give away her book. I still want to know. She's small, five-foot nothing, petite but the years have thickened her a bit. Still she's booking. There is no direct view. I am on the elliptical next to hers. I believe she is chewing gum. Her shoes are new; the graphics are not flashy, mostly white with a line or two to break up the boredom. Her pants are familiar, black, calf length; I've seen them before. She has on a faded blue tee. It shows evidence of many years of washing. Perhaps at one point it held a more prominent place in her wardrobe. There are no earrings, no jewelry except for a sensible watch and one ring on her right hand. Yes, she's chewing gum. She pushes me to go faster. I keep an eye on her stats. RPM 62. I push to catch up, Level 2, 3, 4 can't do 5. She blows right pass me. She quietly dismounts leaving me breathing harder than I planned. As she walks back to wipe down her machine, I turn away.

 

She is more fat than figure but she dresses the part, new spandex pants and shirt, very fancy sneakers, iPod wrapped around her neck, cell phone tucked into her top just above her left breast. Her 20-ounce water bottle is unopened; she drapes a smallish pink towel over the handlebars and pulls a magazine from her gym bag, New Woman, five ways to tell if your man is cheating on you. She starts slow. She's in no rush. Goal one, get to the gym. She flips a page and changes a tune; she checks her phone, texting a friend, “@ Y C U”. She is steady, like a grand old car cruising to nowhere just out for a drive on a warm summer night. She un-caps her 20-ounce and takes a swig, feels good. I'll have another. She's checking out the young guns pushing iron in the back room. She wipes her face of imaginary sweat. The young guns are grunting hard, talking loud, forcing blood into their arms, swelling with muscle. Now she starts to sweat. She flips a page wetting the corner with a tiny amount to spit on her right index finger. She's sweeping the room. Sizing up the value of her membership fee. She pushes a few buttons, like a tired, old man it moves up, groans with the weight of the task.

 

She walks down the stairs swaddled in over- and under-coats. Fishing for a free hook, she begins her undressing. First is her father's wool overcoat left behind after he split for a younger version of her mom. Next is an oversized hoodie no doubt from a discarded boyfriend. Then a scarf tied around a neck too skinny to hold a head. She peels off a pair of sweat pants with Pink written across the ass revealing a pair of chopstick legs, one gray button-down sweater and then off with her hat. Out comes the most gorgeous brown hair wild and full of life. Out of some secret pocket she pulls out a scrungy and with great skill transforms the mane into a ponytail that every woman would kill for. She wears a red shirt under a white tee. The chopsticks are pressed into some sort of bondage pants. Puffy socks cover her ankles and a pair of red trainers complete the look. From her dad's overcoat she pulls out a paperback , thick and full, and, like her hair, it too has a scrungy. She positions herself too far away, but I can still see her in the mirrors surrounding the room. She starts to pedal but needs to adjust her seat, begins again. Not too fast, she peddles with purpose, if there is such a thing. I am glued to watching her. I try to make out the title of the book; I think it's Atlas Shrugged, which upon finishing I immediately threw in the garbage. She's oddly unsexual even though her face is angelic and her grace unmatched. She's too porcelain, too fragile, too breakable. I would be afraid to touch her.

 

She races round the gym jumping from one machine to another. Her pink face plastered with sweat. Her tee soaked in visible patterns. She is frantic to get the most out of her time. Perhaps she is in a rush. She needs her fix. She scores a stop on the treadmill. There she goes running at top speed throwing sweat off of her overheated body like rain off a speeding car. On to the stationary bike pedaling uphill for fifteen minutes passing competitors left and right. On to the elliptical trainer running backwards not caring where she is headed. It's just the speed she wants. Off to the leg press, stomach crunches and the pull-up machine leaving a trail of sweat and heat behind pushing hard on her muscles to a never-ending finish line.

 

She comes home red faced and tired, there is, though, a light in her eyes. Mommy's home. Abandoning her hiding place, my daughter rushes into the living room. Jean picks her up, kisses her on the neck and lowers her back to earth. Fresh from Zomba she gulps water and wipes her face. She is more beautiful than ever. More beautiful than after we make love, more beautiful than the day she first held Emily. Her hair is flat against her head, her clothes damp from Latin dancing. She pauses a minute, looks at me silently as if saying, “I need this”. She heads downstairs and peels off her clothes and washes the salt off her body. My daughter has been running around spinning with her stuffed bunny Coco for an hour while mommy was at Zomba. Now she waits at the top of the stairs. She wonders what we will have for dinner. She asks if we could watch TV. She wants to know where we are going tomorrow. She turns her bunny toward me, Coco asks, “When's mama coming upstairs, dada”? Soon Coco, soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reamy Jansen

My German—A Journal

Perhaps it will be easier keeping a journal on my laptop—at least, certainly this one, as I've discovered that German keyboards aren't arranged the way they are in the U.S. Z and y, for example, are switched in position, umlauts are additional keys, and the @ key involves a third command, requiring a bit of searching each time so far. I've taken to signing my e-mails reamz, as I like this particular tag, but typing is often inhibited when you try writing out, I'm prettz feed up bz this fucking kezboard. (N1)

Since my German is weak, it takes a bit of nerve to try something out. Yesterday, I girded myself to go to the Bakerei/Konditorei, which is right across the street. The baker (Bakkerin?) was behind the counter all round smiles, and we greeted each other with ”morgen,” so far so good. While a customer was being served (N2), I had a chance to look over the small store and its offerings—two local papers, including one fabulous scandal sheet, fixated currently on a popular talk show host up on cocaine charges and where part of the frisson, possibly, although I wouldn't say for sure, is that he is Jewish; eight dress patterns on a wall rack (German dress is on the order of horrific, but I'll get to that later), milk and soda in a self-serve case, and I was able to take in the labels on all the baked goods.

Now my turn, I started with, Ich spreche kein Deutsche, but then was able to point and pronounce correctly, Ein Bauerbrot (farmer or peasant bread), which I revised to Ein klein (e?) Bauerbrot, although I may have said Bauerbread—part of speaking is just blurting it out, the hell with getting it right, richtig, which I also said when she took down the bread I had indicated. Next, I tried for a bit of pastry, which was also labeled—a compound noun I pronounced rather handily. I went on to “ein Kaffee, bitte,” but fell flat with, “to go,” and it felt silly to go racing through my phrase book (“Ordering,” 194-203)), and, while cups and saucers (Die Tassen und untertassen) were in sight, paper cups weren't. Nevertheless, I took a shot at “to go,” then “take away” (Brit. ), and, last, “take out,” which was likely the Americanism that clicked. The cups were on the side; she placed one under the thin, double spouts of a gleaming, efficient machine and pressed a button that had a cup of coffee (Ein Tasse Kaffee) on it. One great cup of coffee one minute later, with that little bit of caffeine foam. The Germans know how to make coffee.

And that was it—pure pleasantness (angenehm?). I threw in “danke's” for the coffee, the two bags full, and then the correct change. She told me the price, which I sort of got (E 2,40) and I handed over a five Euro bill, this bill serving as a safe approach when one can't quite catch or translate the total that is rattled off (1 Euro=87c). Then the goodbyes. Could it have been “zum bis”? I don't think that it was aufwiedersehen, although it was most likely to have been a variant of “servus,” which in the south is used in place of the better known form of goodbye (N3). One thing that I kept looking for and couldn't quite find was evidence of a “café”—after all, there were those China cups (Hineasische Tasse), and one wasn't going far with them. There was a younger, blond woman mopping in the back, and I wasn't sure if that area led to some kind of seating. Later, on my evening walk, I checked the hours again—I had earlier seen, Uhr 6:00-12:30; now I saw 14:00-16:30. So perhaps the latter hours were for something else, something in greater accommodations.

(This morning (heute Morgen), I went in around 6:40 and the young, blond woman, das mopper Mädchen (this sort of woman is neuter, go figure), was there, but there was no mediating customer (a Ruckenfigur, we'd say in painting (Das Malen) to allow me to assemble a phrase or two. Again, ”Morgen,” but then off to the races, while I looked on uncomprehending, and it was too late to say, “Yo, I barely speak mittel-bumbling German”. Perhaps I should change that to “not much,” or even “a little” (ein Bißchen; that fender bender of a capital B is read and pronounced as a double s). And, the pastry labels were gone, but “Kaffee” I caught on the fly, and, while it was brewing, I pointed to a sweet roll—better than yesterday's—and to a Croissant, which I did in perfect French-German— downshifting the C to a K, and then I also took the local paper, ein Zeitung, she said, but I was well past muteness at this point, although, there was room for a ja, bitte. Coffee now brewed in cup, she hands me a lid, along with a saucer and spoon, to which I say, ”nein, bitte,” but she gives it to me anyway and steers me to a raised table (N4). with packets of sugar and individual containers of milk—I add two but have no sugar. It's perhaps then that I pay her, but I've been dissociating slightly during this encounter, while trying to raise the sunken wreck of my badly leaking German. It's then, on beginning to leave, that I get an “auf wiedersehen,” which I shuttle back with aplomb, hoping to compensate for all my hamstrung Deutsch and hapless gestures. I say it again, just to cover my losses, “Auf Wiedersehen. ”

Notes:

(N1) I've gone back to my big yellow pad (Der Schreibblock, I think), which I bought in the spring in the Fordham bookstore. I always write by hand and now this one is four pages away from being filled and so Heiner Reipl, my host and a fine painter, drove me to a small stationery store where I bought the Pro Terra Berufsschulblock 21, the numbers making it sound like some high end model, and German pages, by the way, are differently sized, being something like 7 3/4” X 11,” giving the written page a sort of slim elegance. The pad's cover also includes “Keine macht den Drogen” which is as likely to be as influential as Drug Free Zone outside a crack-vial littered school yard anywhere in any Americanische city. And, now that we're on the subject, 3” X 5” cards, Karteikarten, Kartei, being index card, and which I use to write down German vocabulary, verbs, and possessive pronouns, are proportioned like the Community Chest cards in Monopoly, only double the size.

(N2) Almost every place I've been in—the P.O. , the bank, photo shop, various ticket offices, and, yes, the bakery, has a strip that's part of the linoleum telling customers wait their turn: You to wait here, Wartet auf, bitte, although I can't imagine Germans crowded round a counter or cutting in line.

(N3). Some would say this expression is more Austrian than Bavarian and, traced further back, to the Latin and the Roman Empire, it states, “Your slave. ” You're better served with the friendlier, Tschus.

(N4) Germans drink their coffee where they order it, and they drink it in real cup. Coffee is sipped rather languorously and they're having none of this Double Latte, Caramel Mochiato nonsense. Coffee is not drunk on the fly, and I haven't seen a single paper cup being carried about in the streets, or in a car or office. Coffee drinking establishes a separate space, and it isn't in motion.

 

 

 

 

 

Another Morning—To the Bakery

How does the Backerin hear me when I sally forth, in my morning eagerness, with the wrong modifiers when I order, eine kleine Mandelbrod, or worse, perhaps I have said, ein klein Mandelbrod, mixing masculine and feminine (but I've said, bitte, in both cases; I know my manners). Does it sound slightly off? I sometimes display rather openly my Langenscheidt's Jiffy Phrasebook (”The Only Phrasebook You'll Need”), and she lets me bumble along. Of course, how much attention do people pay to the correct gender article? When I asked the local baron last night if the river Naab was die or der, or even das, he gave a shrug that was as good as a teenager's ”whatever,” although there was the bespoke, embroidered lederhosen providing just the right authority. And he offered me his row boat. Maybe, “whatever's” what the bakery clerk thought, too.

Today's culture headlines from Der neue Tag:”Zauberlehring von Liebe verhext”—Sorcerer's apprentice casts a spell over fans—Jansen translation, all rights reserved. ”Harry Potter in neuen Roman ”Voll in der Pubertat. ” ReiBender Abatz rund um die Welt” —Harry Potter in new novel, ”Reaching Puberty” (I know this is off). Sells like hotcakes round the world.

At the bookstore at the Bahnhof, Bucher & Presse, I tried out, "International Tribune, bitte," but they were gone, although I say ”they” advisedly as there was only one copy displayed last time—perhaps what is displayed is all there is. (Inventories in Der Supermarkt are carefully measured, too, for town marketers only shop for a day or two at a time, and they don't have SUV-sized shopping carts that can be loaded up with four, cut-up chickens and 17 cans of Pringle's, and gallons of diet soda,which they can then load into their Canyonero's. N1 ). I looked among the postcards, but Schwandorf doesn't seem to be the kind of place you send a picture of when you write home to the folks—partly because the place was bombed to a fare-thee-well due to its rail center, a huge metal muscle of steel tracks and switches, bombed so heavily, I'm surprised the River Naab wasn't blown into the skies, too. The only picture post cards were of old locomotives in Dresden (site of the Götterdamerung bombing). The rest were pictures, cartoons, and sayings, rather like the ones you can still get in Britain. I purchased ”Ich Liebe Dich” for Leslie, but I think that the line underneath might undo it, ”Sobald der zeit hast,” although it could mean, ”so long as the time lasts,” which is what I choose it to mean. However, the maker of this line is Joker. Can I have bought an ironic, post-modern card at a somewhat provincial Bavarian railroad station? So, the seriousness is ironic, then? Things can't de-centered here, like in the Yale English department? Or can they?

Time for the check. I'm sitting in the Pellegrin Café, writing the postcard to Leslie and finishing my Cappuccino. I fall flat on my face with the waitress when I say, Die Rechnung, bitte, the ”r” tripping me for the rest of the phrase. (N2) And the coffee was burned, by the way. So not all Germans make good coffee. Still, it's not the waitress's fault and I add a bit of Trinkgeld to the tip.

Notes:

N1. They mostly have sensible size cars, often considerably smaller than my compact Corolla, ones that dart about the cities like four-wheel Jet Skis, but only slightly larger seemingly than a Dell computer box. Tiny Fords, Opals, VWs and even little Beamers, pretty much rule the roads. The Germans have learned many lessons about how much better smaller is. Wir nicht!

N2. Two days later, I realized she had also asked if I had wished for a receipt, Ein Kassesetel, but I didn't understand then, so we both dropped the idea.

 

 

 

 

 

Marc Kaminsky

The Knot

 

Who's Stevie Opert? I suddenly find myself wondering. The name comes back, but not the image of the person it refers to. At 66 going on 67, who can depend on his memory? But this is a reversal of the trick that memory usually plays on me. The name minus its object of reference—this is a first. I remember standing in front of our garden apartment in Kew Garden Hills, something wonderful has happened, it's the first time I've ordered something and it's arrived in the mail, I'm in possession of the thing I want most—the Captain Video ring I saw advertised on our brand-new 7-inch TV is on my finger. And when I put its protuberant part in my mouth and blow, it lets out a high-pitched wailing whistle. In the Elijah stories my father tells me, Elijah the Prophet turns up to rescue people in need, just like Captain Video, only he's invisible and everywhere at once, on the sidewalk with me and standing beside a bare cupboard in a hovel on the other side of the ocean where he says to a poor couple he will grant them whatever they wish, in one voice they say they want food to fill their bellies, Elijah whistles and a feast is spread out before them, it's the miracle of Passover, my father tells me. Captain Video, I say, can hear this whistle wherever he is. Someone else is there, looking down at me, but every last physical trace of him has disappeared, in place of living memory is the gravesite of the mythical safety on which I read the name of the absent figure. It's Stevie Opert. But now the oblivion parts, a hand reaches out of it, and Stevie Opert says he has a better trick to show me. With that, he kneels, pulls one of the ends of his shoelace and—presto!—it comes untied, then with the fingers of both hands moving faster than the eye can see, he restores the missing knot and stands up in triumph. I'm crushed. He has just tied his shoelace! He has just tied his so-called shoelace, even though he's wearing sneakers. But there's no escaping it, no word-magic can undo his feat. I understand what he has shown me: I'm a handful of dust, a puny thing dependent on the word of grown-ups, on the promise of being rescued, the miracle that children and people in misfortune believe in. But Stevie Opert has no need of such things, he has attained mastery over the knot that makes him self-sufficient, a boy-man secure in his shoes, ready to decide between fight or flight. I try to reassure myself with a quick calculation. I'm only six, I say. That leaves me four years until I'm old as you. Stevie Opert at ten also knots his tie, he walks above me, my upstairs neighbor. Looking back, I see a boy-child on a brand-new American street talking to someone who has already taken off and is out of earshot. That boy-child can't know how anxious I am for him, or that the anxiety that visits him now will cloud the rest of his childhood and afflict his youth, or that I will hear him, sixty years later, as I take my afternoon walk through city streets which are my theater of memory. Here I stumble upon him thinking, I'm only six, that leaves me only four years to get the skill that Stevie Opert has into my fingers. Already I feel the deadline approaching

 

 

 

 

George Lies

Age of Enlightenment

 

We grew up raised Catholic but attended a public grade school and junior high school, a fact that apparently barred us from being accepted at a Catholic High School in spite of our good grades. The fact is that we neither contributed enough beyond the passing of the basket at mass services, nor did our mom endow her rent checks to the church. As kids do though, we rationalized that our years in public schools must have made us incorrigibles and not the kind sought by Catholic clerics. We didn't think we were rejected because we were plain broke although cash was an invisible saint. The years after World War II left military veterans like our Dad without a regular job.

Back then, our weekly task was to wheel our red wagon along Watson Alley to the free food distribution center (at the high school). Each week we gathered our allotment: a three-pound bag of flour, a container of dry milk, a large block of American yellow cheese. While thanked God for the Democratic political machine, I still detest coffee creamer to this day. Since we could not attend a Catholic school that offered a disciplined regimen, we recognized the benefits and drawbacks of our rejection. We didn't have to see Catholic nuns every weekday; on the other hand, we had to attend Catechism classes early on Sunday mornings, where we were immersed in a religious mystery.

On those Sunday mornings, we walked about 10 city blocks to Saint Peters Church. We often joked along the way of having to deal with the nuns and their grave meaning of life and death – and worse, purgatory. Growing up Catholic (as any parishioner knew) meant suffering through a burden of guilt although Catholicism offered an escape route. We could rid ourselves of guilt by attending Catechism lessons on Sundays and dump our sins by making a full confession on Saturdays.

For us, those days brought us to the fork in God's road—the intersection of sin and evil.

The Mother Superior (I forget her name) was feared, even by the other younger nuns. She particularly scared my brother, who daydreamed of escape from school. He tried to find the light outside those bleak windows on Sunday mornings. I imagined that he was thinking of making a movie of a pool hall shark (which he later became as a teenager). He may have been dreaming of aiming his cue stick at a billiard ball and imagining the carom from one angle into the corner hole.

Those days of formal oral instructions took place in a regular school room off a hallway that held the pungent air of incense and Frankincense, and possibly myrrh. The lessons were impressed upon us by a nun and the swift whack of her wooden ruler across our shoulders. Yet we did learn that myrrh served as the ointment for anointing the dead (which meant a lot in later years). During those Sundays, the air of incense stayed with us through the mass that came immediately after our Catechism lesson.

We endured lengthy masses but honestly the Sunday service proved to be a mystical experience and a mystery that took place in a mystical language: Latin. Typically, the priest's words seemed to stretch on and on while my brother and I looked about at the crowd of parishioners. In a Latin mass, the words sounded alien and took on a different connotation. Like hearing a foreign language, I had no idea of the meaning of words and often misunderstood because I phonetically interpreted the Latin into my own words. This occurred near the end of a mass when the priest led the final blessing.

He'd say: Dominos Obispo . . .

And I thought he said: Dominic sto o bisco . . .

The use of Latin at the mass prolonged the mystery. Those moments were like another universe, a world beyond; a realm far from our city streets, where we played war games, tag and release, buck-buck, and tag football; where we made our sins and carried our guilt until the weekend. But for years I wondered, who was this guy Dominic? Why did he steal a biscuit? Was he hungry? Did he have a red wagon to bring home free food? I imagined that Dominic was the worst of incorrigibles, one who chose the wrong turn at God's fork in the road; and worse off since he had no red wagon.

On those Sunday mornings, we found the age of enlightenment  had spread to the clouds. We were angels of course except that my brother often daydreamed (that's what a nun told my mother). I knew I would always be at the fork in the road, because I and my brother instigated interruptions during mass. We whispered loudly while we sat; we made goofy faces, we showed signs of fainting, falling on the floor). My brother was usually the culprit, of course, trying to make me laugh, crossing his eyes, pointing to a woman with a big bust. Yes, but we were angels. The spirit came forth more if we both had gone to confession on the Saturday before Sunday's mass.

Later as we came to understand, the confessional booth was the proper religious way that one could admit error and rat on your self. This was necessary to be transformed into an angel. To non-Catholics who need an explanation, the transformation took place as you entered the confessional booth and closed the door behind. It was a small dark enclave where the air was a musty sweetness. First, you knelt in front of a window and then placed your hands together in prayer. Then came a swoosh when the wooden panel slid back in front of your face and a shadow in profile appeared on the other side of the screen.

If you had practiced correctly, you say: Bless me Father, for I have sinned.

Then the interrogation began as the priest says: Go on my son, do you have anything to confess?

In the dark of the booth, there is only you and the priest and God listening. You confessed as much as you knowingly could and said things like an incorrigible might. You confessed of a fight with your brother; you confessed that you stole a comic book from a store, and you confessed that you said bad words. You got the small stuff out of the way first, and worked up to awful sins that could send you beyond the angelic incense, and into a world inhabited only by incorrigibles, and where you will meet Dominic and find the answers.

Then you admitted: I yelled at my mom and ran out of the house, slamming the door.

And the priest said: Respect your mother, my son.

You mumbled: I had bad thoughts.

He said: Try to think of good things.

Typically in a confession, you try to make a good act of contrition. The priest may seem like he was satisfied; he may not ask anything else. Don't feel lucky just yet. Like an interrogator, he knows you have more sins. He will get every last one. The priest presses you once more since he is a stand-in for God, so he bears down until you admit to an embarrassing act or behavior.

You finally say: I think of girls at night when I am going to bed.

The priest says: I understand my son–try to keep your hands above the sheets next time.

Finally, the confession is over. The priest says a few words in Latin, forgives you, and tells you to make a good act of contrition. Then he'd give you a penance. He'd tell you to say ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers. If you've been really good, you might get only five Hail Marys. If you had been as bad as Dominic who stole the biscuit, you'd really pay. Fortunately, I never had to repeat an entire rosary five times, like I imagined that Dominic the incorrigible had to do. That is two hundred and fifty prayers. Swoosh the screen closes in darkness.

After you step from the confessional, you have to do the penance right then and there. You find a place and kneel in a pew near the altar. You bless yourself, In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Given our experience and practice, we could say the Our Father in less than five seconds, and not miss a word. The Hail Mary took longer for me, since I often stumbled over the line, fruit of thy womb. A Hail Mary took a full minute.

While you are in the midst of penance, what happens? You recall a sin that you forgot to tell the priest. This may seem like a sinful predicament (lying to a priest), there is a way out. You judge the sin and rationalize that it was only a little white sin. My brother and I used the general rule for any sin: if you forgot, tell the sin the next time. Near the end of our penance, we'd say extra prayers in case of a miscount. One can never say too many prayers in church.

Then we'd walk down the aisle and out through the front doors of the church. How many times I'd open that large oak door. After confession, the sun would glow down like a theater spotlight on me. A new day: the sun always seemed to shine after we dumped sins on the priest. I'd skip down the long steps, two at a time to the street, and feel Ivory soap clean.

At the mass the next day on Sunday, we went to communion. If we had confessed our sins on Saturday (making for a full religious weekend), my brother and I would take the long walk in the middle aisle of Saint Peters Church as we moved close to the altar. The air was thicker there, the incense adding to the mystery of the transformation. We would sidle in line, our hands folded like angelic altar boys (as though we actually attended a Catholic school).

Side-by-side we would kneel on the cold slab of white marble. From the one side front of the altar came an altar boy in a white cloak. In the light, now, I recognized the altar boy. I first saw his name on the list of acceptances for school admission, next to the rejections which held our names.

His name was Dominic. He held a silver plate that floated under my chin. He smiled with a grin. The priest came up to us, said a few words and laid a wafer on my tongue. My brother rose but I waited in disbelief. I got up and followed my brother finally. .

While we were told to let the offering of bread melt in our mouths, I crunched the wafer as I shuffled back toward our pew. I watched my brother dart up the side aisle. He squirmed over to my side like an angel holding his hands in prayer, his head bowed in silence. After Sunday duty, we brought home a gift – an afterglow of myrrh and incense – for our mom.

 

 

 

 

Hannah Schor-Engel

Sex, Love, and Technology

During my freshman year of high school I discovered relationships, not that I had any clue as to what the word meant. At the time, a relationship meant being exclusive with really anyone I was physically attracted to, or anyone who wanted me. I expected said flavor of the week to soothe my fragile ego by slapping a label on my forehead declaring that I was his and his alone. I expected the physical aspect of the relationship to evolve into a deeper connection. Of course, not the soul-bearing intimacy I shared with close female friends, but still something more than just hooking up. I knew that the objective of the game I was playing was to keep the boy on his toes until he could no longer bear the anticipation and asked me to be his girlfriend. Yes, this was seriously what many of my friends and I believed. However, our selfish little hearts did not anticipate that these boys would actually have feelings of their own, which turned out to be surprisingly similar to ours. We thought these silly games would ultimately protect us from the heartache of being cheated, because the boy in question would never get sick of us.

Around the time of such schemes I met Alex. Since he was my first boyfriend I feel like I should be able to recall how we met, but for the life of me I can't seem to. Though I do remember very clearly when I first felt that fiery pang of teenage lust for him. All he had to do was grab my hand. That sent shivers down my spine. We were sitting on a table together backstage at a production of some obscure school play. We somehow managed to slowly inch ourselves closer and closer together until we were left awkwardly cuddling in the dark. He was beautiful, and still is, with his radiant smile and enticing blue eyes. It was pretty straightforward, I liked him and he liked me back. This was a new concept. I didn't yet know that relationships do not have to be complicated if both parties feel comfortable enough to share their feelings with another person, instead of plotting ways to hide those feelings from the person who most deserved to know about them, even if the reasons behind those feelings were shamelessly shallow.

During this episode I remember thinking, as a hormone-crazed teen, “God, he's hot. I want whatever this is!”--like a two-year-old who cannot articulate what she wants exactly, just that she wants something and wants it instantly. Before long I had that shiny label I so craved, but had no idea what to do with it, my work became just ensuring he kissed no one else. Even though we chose not to let it, our daily face-to-face interaction had the potential to serve as building blocks for a successful friendship, for we had access to each other which makes connecting beyond the superficial level easier, and ever more probable.

Tyler was my next, more “serious” boyfriend, whom I met over the phone and rarely ever saw before or during the relationship. He lived an hour and a half away, and went to a different school with a different circle of friends. We got in contact through my close girlfriend of the time, Cat, who had known him from middle school. One fateful night Cat and I were bored with chatting and decided to try to a three-way conversation with Tyler just to see if we could successfully make a three-way call. Since it was fun to have silly conversations about boys with an intangible boy present, we started calling him with more of our girlfriends. Within a few weeks we had established a very odd circle in which we could freely talk about whatever we wished because we had no problem expressing our thoughts to a guy we didn't know. I still developed a crush on him because he seemed to really listen, and help us work through our daily drama. He relished the attention.

When I finally met Tyler in person, I was not physically attracted to him at all. I had an idea of how I thought he would look based on his sensual voice and misleading self-description. I was expecting a more athletic person, who shared similar interests as myself, such as running. I still proceeded to develop a relationship with him because of his charismatic personality. He was fun to be around and seemed easy to talk to, at least on the surface. After only one date in the real world I was his girlfriend. Even though we talked on the phone every day for hours there was still a disconnect because we couldn't see each other in person. This arrangement also made it easy for us to omit details about ourselves that we thought the other would disapprove of, creating fictional images.

Within the first couple of weeks of dating I became aware of his various MySpace relationships with girls who he claimed to be “just friends” with. In an irrational fit of jealousy I was easily persuaded into creating a MySpace page of my own, “friending” almost all of his female friends in order to see which ones were threats to my blissfully happy relationship. I was slowly morphing into a cyber-stalker out of the distrust he went out of his way to create by using the internet as his instrument. Tyler knew how to manipulate his way into our emotions by establishing a phony friendship with everyone who was willing to talk about themselves for an hour or two. He would ask me to answer his text messages or phone calls from other girls while he was in the shower so that we all became aware of each other. For example, when these girls asked who I was I would say “I'm Tyler's girlfriend. Who else would have access to his phone while he's in the shower?” My tone, though, implied, “Who else is he sleeping with?” He was in high demand and truly could have whomever and whatever he desired. It was like magic. Everyone he talked to lost their clothes. He once told me that the virginity I clung to for dear life was just another challenge he could overcome in time. To be aware of such power at fifteen must have been exhilarating.

It was exhausting to distrust him so. Yet I stayed with him for almost two years because I was emotionally attached. In hindsight, I wish I had saved myself and let him do whatever he wished. That way I would have realized, long before I did, how bad a match we were. Neither of us understood what was going on, and we made no effort to do so. I had no clue what I wanted so I went along with his desires losing myself along the way.

Luckily two years later found myself again, and thanks to Tyler now know what I want from future boy-toys--friendship. Dating shouldn't mean automatic relationship status; it should simply mean hanging out and getting to know each other with no pressure to be exclusive. I currently have no desire to “hook-up” unless it does get serious, really serious. The mistake I've made in the past has been failing to establish an understanding friendship with clear boundaries. The term “friend” is often used loosely, to refer to any kind of relationship, platonic or not. These days a friend could mean anything from “bed buddies” to a real friend with whom you share your innermost thoughts, and everything in between; the lines are easily blurred. Boundaries are never verbalized because everyone assumes either their counterpart feels the same way, or because they are afraid of rejection and being thought of as clingy--so they never speak up. Getting to know someone also means learning to feel comfortable being oneself when with them. This is often difficult for me, and for my women friends who seem to have a harder time separating sex from emotion than most of the men we've met. Men seem to have an easier time living in the moment and just taking sex for what it is, a good time. I have tended to read emotion into a situation that may not, in reality, contain any emotion at all. I would love to just be able to have sex with whomever I pleased without feeling terrible about it in the morning. Unfortunately for me it doesn't work that way. There are always strings, even if I choose to ignore them for the night.

Here is what I hope for: a healthy friendship that is a give and take, with no one person more invested than the other. My friend and I should genuinely enjoy being around each other--without expecting us to end up in the bedroom. I hope to be able to connect with that person beyond the superficial level. This takes time; however, some people just click. Like me and my friend Seema who just meshed well, and still do. We're so different it just works. For example, she's a graceful ballerina type, while I'm an aspiring belly dancer, which still takes a fair amount of grace just a different kind. When it comes to connecting with guys, it's the same; I look for someone with a more subdued personality to balance out my extreme effervescence, but who will still be willing to get out on the dance floor and let loose, but not too loose.

I recently reconnected with Alex through Facebook in an attempt to forge a platonic friendship. In preparation for this reunion I kept warning myself to keep things controlled, I now realize that with Alex it will probably never be platonic, but I still think it's worth shooting for something in between the blurry lines of friendship. Because I still know him no better than I did when I first saw his gorgeous profile picture and pressed the friend request button trying not to hold my breath.

 

 

 

 

 

Jacqueline Doyle

Adventure

In 1975, Göttingen is like a fairy tale city with its narrow, winding, cobble-stoned streets and ancient, crooked buildings, whitewashed plaster with criss-crossing brown timbers and red tile roofs. Tourists making their way north from Frankfurt on the famed Brothers Grimm "Märchenstrasse" flock to the town center to take pictures of the statue of the Goose Girl and the medieval Rathaus. The bare-footed Gänseliesel smiles shyly, head tipped to the side, one hand resting on the goose nestling against her leg, sheltered by an arch of twining leaves and flowers. Everything in Göttingen seems miniature, quaint, picturesque. I'm impressed with the glamour of my new existence as an expatriate, with how far I've come from New Jersey. I'm invincible, I'm leading a charmed life.

I've landed an undemanding job teaching English part time at the Sprachlabor, the university language lab. My boyfriend Hartmut and I live about half an hour away, and on this particular day I've just missed the bus. I'm not really in a hurry, but there's a slight chill in the autumn air, there's no one at the bus stop, and I don't feel like waiting, so I decide to hitchhike. Twenty-two years old, long-haired, long-legged, laughing, full of energy and confidence and life, I've never had much trouble hitchhiking. I stick out my thumb.

A blue Audi immediately comes to a halt. The driver is respectable looking, a young businessman, maybe on his way home from work. He leans over the passenger seat to push open the door, waving me in. I get in the car. It's a straight shot out to Bovenden where I live.

He's talkative. He wants to practice his English, he says. His moon face shines as he asks me a lot of questions. "How long are you in Deutschland? How do you like it here? Where are you coming from in the United States?"

“I've been here almost a year. I came here for love, this German guy I met in my junior year abroad in Ireland.” I laugh, and tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. Re-cross my legs and smooth a worn spot on my faded blue jeans. “And for adventure. I just graduated from college with a B.A. in English. I want to see the world— you know, experience things, life. ”

“You study English?”

“Yeah, I'm teaching some English conversation classes here at the university. It's okay. It pays the rent.”

Gradually his questions become more personal. "So you have a boyfriend then?” He looks sideways at me, his gaze briefly lingering on my breasts. I'm sure he can see that I'm not wearing a bra under my embroidered Indian blouse. “What does he think of you hitchhiking? Do all you young girls hitchhike in America?” Actually I've never hitchhiked in America. I think of the New Jersey turnpike and can't imagine hitchhiking there. Not in Providence where I went to college, either. It would be dangerous. Germany, most of the countries in Northern Europe in fact, seem like friendly, toy countries where nothing bad can happen. I live here, but I still feel like I'm on vacation. I wish we'd get to Bovenden, though.

I cross my arms in front of my chest and edge my legs slightly toward the door.

"Do you have bad experiences hitchhiking? I hear stories. Girls must be, how you say, vorsichtig, careful. ” He makes a clicking noise with his tongue and shakes his head. “Did you read about the two girls gone missing in Kassel? College girls. It was in the Göttinger Tageblatt. Their friends said they were hitchhiking to Berlin. " He looks at me leeringly, in fact spends more time looking at me than the road. We're getting closer to the traffic light with the turnoff to Bovenden.

"Here's Bovenden. You can just drop me here," I say, my voice quavering a little. I force a pleasant smile, trying to look unconcerned.

"No, no, I take you all the way home," he says grandly, pulling a fast right.

As we sweep around the corner, I think, "At least we're on the road to Bovenden now. It's a small town with lots of houses. What could happen here?" If anything, Bovenden has impressed me as a little too safe—a little too suburban. Our landlady Frau Klein makes us scrub the front steps each week, and put white net curtains in our windows. She won't let us hang laundry on the line on Sundays. The rows of two-story houses on our cul de sac are neat and orderly, tidy and clean. I'd secretly hoped for something a little more bohemian when I moved here. Something more like my friend Brunhild's communal flat near the university, a warren of untidy, high-ceilinged rooms plastered with political posters.

On the left there's another road leading away from town, out into the country, and he suddenly veers left, tires screeching. The needle on the Audi's speedometer jumps, quivering. The scenery outside the car begins to blur.

"No, no, that's not the way. You can just let me off here. "

"Just a short detour. I make small errand, and then I drive you home," he explains. He seems preoccupied, oddly distant, and there's a thin sheen of sweat on his face.

I'm seriously scared now. Just seconds ago we were almost in the warm, inhabited comfort of Bovenden. Now empty green fields stretch in all directions. There isn't a human being in sight.

Hartmut is still at work. In fact no one knows where I am. No one will wonder where I am for several hours at least.

Hands trembling, I struggle to open the passenger door, though we must be driving seventy miles an hour: "I'll just get out here. " I'm full of adrenaline, I'm not really thinking, but I'm ready to jump. He glances over at me, raises his foot from the accelerator slightly—without actually braking—and as the door swings open, I leap out. For a long moment I feel suspended in mid air, free, before I land hard on my knees, scraping them in the gravel at the side of the road, and roll into the ditch.

My heart is thumping. I'm having trouble breathing. I'm so relieved to see the car speed away into the vast expanse of the German countryside, what had always seemed to me like a child's board game, with its green and yellow checkerboard of neatly bordered fields.

I can hardly stand up. I keep gulping for breath. My jeans and blouse are dirty and torn. The scrapes on my knees sting when I bend to brush away the dirt and sharp tiny stones. My legs are still shaking as I limp back to the road into Bovenden, and slowly climb the steep hill into town. Lights are beginning to blink on behind the closed curtains of the rows of tidy suburban houses that I pass. It's a long walk, and when I finally climb the front porch stairs and cross the front hall to the empty apartment, it's already dark and cold outside.

 

 

 

 

 

Randi Ward

John P.

West Virginia is the place I've always wanted to be able to come home to but never quite could. In November 2007, after seven years living out-of-state and abroad, I found myself back on Rural Route 1 licking my worldly wounds and confronting the clutter of my former life. The garden was overgrown, the fields were scarred with new fence lines, and I'd forgotten how dark the nights get out on Pond Creek.

Within a week, I was two hours northeast of Parkersburg sitting hunched over a table in SO.ZO Café on High Street tearing through the local newspapers in search of an apartment within walking distance of West Virginia University's downtown campus. I took Falling Run Road to the top of the hill that same day and signed a lease on the first apartment I found. I'd never been to Morgantown before, but it seemed like a flourishing town to make a fresh start in while recovering from years of turmoil and illness. I felt ready to make myself at home in my home state and invested the last of my savings into the move.

My best friend and I spent that first weekend in Morgantown sitting on the apartment floor assembling furniture with hex keys, and then I began the painstaking task of reopening those heavy, carefully sealed boxes and sorting through the contents and sentiments I'd all but abandoned. It didn't take long for me to shelve my books and reconcile most of those other amputated items to my new space, but situating myself and my emotional baggage wasn't as simple. I was struggling just to look at myself in the mirror each morning without becoming nauseous; to me, my face looked completely mutilated, and my eyes saw the world through the pleaching scars that kept hedging me into traumas I wished to move beyond. Readapting to the mercenary work ethic and breakneck pace of American life complicated matters even more.

In the midst of personal crisis, and a failing job market and economy in the hollowed out heart of Appalachia, I coped as best I could by retreating into translation work and half-heartedly refashioning vapid CVs and cover letters. I tried not to get discouraged and occasionally sought refuge sipping chai and filching Wi-Fi at SO.ZO. I soon noticed that I wasn't the only one who regularly happened into the progressive café looking for some empathy and conversation. In addition to the stressed students cramming for exams and guzzling fair-trade coffee before hurrying off to class, SO.ZO welcomed several of Morgantown's young homeless; it was there that I met the charismatically manic John P.

John P. was what he called himself, and the redemptive P. he'd adopted as his last name stood for “Phoenix”. He would often come bursting into SO.ZO, sometimes several times a day, gesticulating wildly with his nicotine-stained fingers, loudly doing one of his many self-impersonations in a punctuated, mischievously nasal tone that both playfully pronounced and parodied his intimidating capriciousness. When he showed up in the mornings, occasionally sporting bruises, scrapes, and torn clothes, he would wash up in the restroom then sit with us and launch into hypnotic rants about the turbulent nights he'd spent strung out and philosophizing over empty plastic cups in some of Morgantown's seediest corners. He'd also tell us about the purring vehicles that jerked along stalking him up and down the sour sidewalks after the joints had closed and he was alone trying to walk off the cold and find a place to squat for the night.

John P. was markedly gaunt for a man in his early twenties, and the greasy brown of his side-parted, chin-length hair made him look even paler. Behind his whiskery moustache and thin lips, he was missing a couple of his front teeth, and several prominent scars riddled his cheeks and forehead. He never talked about the old scars, but he had a veritable life history bound up in how he'd acquired each of the bulky rings (set with pieces of shell and multicolored stones) that he wore on most of his fingers; John P. also ritually carried a black-ink pen, a spiral-ring notebook full of torn, stabbed pages of drawings, and a few shatters of milky quartz that he said were crystals he used to channel the universe's energy. Many of the drawings in his notebook were fraught with disquieting shapes obsessively superimposed over one another in patterns at times indistinguishable within the violence of their dark lines.

Over the course of the seven months I lived and worked in Morgantown, I often sat admiring John P. 's art and chatting with him as he compulsively drew to the rhythms of his speech. He talked about getting his GED, and I told him that he should, that he had undeniable talents, but he would avert his eyes each time I said this, looking deeper down into the pyramided eyes of his notebook. He tenderly placed one of his crystals on the back of my hand one afternoon and said “You're a real lady. Would ya' like to have one'a my drawins?” He gave me an autographed picture of a gnarled tree whose naked branches reached upward imploringly, its roots exposed out of the ground, and its bark veined with ominous shadows. There was a cold, crescent moon in the sky, and the black hollow at the center of the tree's thick trunk appeared to be yawning ever wider.

Some days after this, while driving downtown, I saw John P. walking across from White Hall near The Den. I waved at him but he didn't see me; he was walking solemnly beside another man who was dressed entirely in black, and they weren't talking to one another. I was stopped, waiting for the light to change at the corner of Willey and High Streets, when I saw three young men bolt around the corner shouting, “There he is!” “Get'im!”. In my rear view mirror, I watched them run up behind John P. and tackle him to the ground. John P. curled up on the pavement to protect his face and head while punches, curses, and stomps rained over him; he did not fight back, and the man dressed in black stood by emotionless, unmoved to intervene or even gather up the notebook of drawings that had fallen out from under John P. 's coat and gotten kicked off the sidewalk.

By the time the light turned green, it was mostly over. The three attackers had backed off enough to allow John P. to get up, but they celebrated their humiliation of him by swooping in to give him an encore of punches in the back and head after he'd turned, retrieved his notebook, and begun to slowly walk away alongside his acquaintance in black. John P. recoiled under the impact of each blow but neglected to shield himself or even look at them, seemingly desensitized to such abuse. I lost sight of him when I turned the corner that day.

 

 

 

 

 

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