Winter 2006

One Night at the Border by Alina Reyes

We have reached the edge. Holding on to the railing of the Santa Fe Bridge, I can see the Rio Bravo's dirty water running, and then I feel the electric current again. I face red painted nails I do not recognize, and I tell myself this is not me. I’m not an immigrant, not a worker in the maquila, I am not a family member of any of the murdered woman, nor an inhabitant of this border city. And yet, hips sheathed in black silk, red lips and high heels, I walk into the Juárez night like a fish in water.

In Noche y Día we drink cold beer for 12 pesos while other women strip instead of me. One shows signs of a recent birth. On the way to the toilet is the small space that plays the role as the dressing room. I play the role of another, just like the girls who get drunk before returning home and becoming housewives until the next night. I try to interview them in vain; the conversation moves away from the formal rules of journalism when I ask for a sip of their beer. Literally and metaphorically, this trip has destroyed any remnants of journalistic discourse. I can talk only about the night and day, like the name of this decadent place where we see a solitary man enjoy the show from the front row, as a lover would wait for his girlfriend.

Because of these women I had to rip up newspapers and cut out the only coherent words: one more body, double life, unidentified, her clothes. A text defines performance art as tending to critically examine seductive techniques, creating desperate spectators in the process. Somehow, this is what we do when we enter the night. I walk along López Mateos Avenue in a ripped dress, leaving an ephemeral imprint only documented by Toño Juárez's camera. Like an obscene soundtrack, male voices from passing cars stay registered in our mind. Here, violence is not seen, but felt. One can also sense it in some of the rules put in place by the state government; a veiled curfew, an obligatory invitation to leave early and not see what might happen later. Liquor stores close at 9pm, and bars at 2am. The Juárez night ends early, and nobody seems to like the idea. Or at least this is what our hosts think, as they discuss where to continue the party in a corner. Tired, I am that person who reminds them there is no place to go. People start to come home, streets begin to empty, and gringos go back to El Paso; we can see them at the bridge marked by a cross full of nails. There is one nail for each murder victim in the last ten years, inhabitants explain; more than three hundred. There is not a trace remaining of the four and a half thousand women missing. Beyond this cross death is not a word that is pronounced, but the fear is felt.

Suddenly they appear in the middle of day. A black rose of mourning in Mrs. Norma Andrade's door; the mangled body of her daughter appeared three years ago. A barren field. And then another. Kilometers of desert. Night erases the marks left by the day, but reveals the unseen. The range of possibilities that the border opens up is unexpected. In Bajarí men undress for a mixed audience, mostly gay. They display their curves and muscles and dance to the rhythm of music, allowing the spectators to touch and kiss their dicks. Men and women grab your waist and ass without asking for permission. Repeatedly. One grabs my left breast and I respond with a slap, forgetting what a blow could mean in this city. The guy begs my pardon, saying what he really wanted is the ass of another man, and reaches towards the one next to me. Someone offers their seat to rescue me. I become a spectator, a fish in a fishbowl.

With a choice the dancers, supposedly gay, prefer straight girls as partners. Overly daring dances that not anyone could follow. The artist Lorena Orozco improvises a routine in which she moves from being the dominated to the dominator. She ends her piece bending the stripper at the waist and slamming his ass with her hip, throwing him far from the stage. Other women get sat on by men. I observe, seated at the table. My game is one of exposing artifice. That's why I cut up my dress and my lingerie, and give away squares of black silk that at least one man keeps in a box. But memories of the Juárez night don't fit in any box.

In the Hospital of the Family I met some of the girls that work at night. Later I visited two of them at Virginia's, another club, along with the sociologist Jorge Balderas. The air was thick enough to cut with a knife. The waiter took us to a table, almost by force, to ask us in a too loud voice what we wanted. Then they escorted us to the door when we decided not to drink. The girls weren't allowed to speak, and saying that I worked for a newspaper only worsened the situation. At the exit Jorge and the waiter argued over who was the first president of Mexico. My friend answered, Moctezuma, and now the waiter yelled, indignant at the response. He insisted that he--could-re-spond-to-what-ever-we-wan-ted-to-know. The waiter didn't understand that this was impossible; I wanted to know what it is like to be a woman in Ciudad Juárez, and I didn't want a man's answer. We fled.

My question remained up in the air without an answer, and I had to bite my tongue. Jorge had spent two years interviewing women workers in the maquila. Many of them had immigrated from their hometowns to gather up the scraps of the American Dream, which was reaching to this side of the border. They entered the workforce in jobs putting together the smaller pieces for larger machinery for transnational corporations. Leaving their small towns where they grew up was if they had been advanced three decades. They liberated themselves; they no longer had to ask for permission from anyone and they didn't even need a man to form a family. These accomplishments and the regression signified by the appearance of a new term, feminicidio, seemed to be two faces of the same coin. Someone was throwing that coin into the air to decide the fate of the Juárez women. Authorities and mass media took advantage of the deaths to invite the survivors to close doors, mouths, necklines and legs, for their own safety.

We found the rest of our friends at The Open, a more relaxed environment with liter beers and pool tables. We left when they started sweeping up and turning off the lights. Day was taking over the night and trying to wipe away the traces of havoc. Insomniac eyes were impossible to hide.

Even so, most people woke early to travel to the desert, to burn the soles of their feet, climbing on sandy dunes.

On the way back, one of the last activities was a tour. The voice of a professor of the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez told us motel stories and the intensity of his sex life when he worked at the maquila. He avoided referring to six crosses on the side of the road, but talked about the jonkes (junkyards) and the house of famous Mexican singer Juan Gabriel on our way. When the bus stopped at Bar Noa Noa, which had recently burned down in a fire, he didn't tell us the story.

In relation with the first night's outing, El Segundo Piso seemed inoffensive; individualist, tranquil, modern and unreal. The Nomo's had a good vibe, and you can talk calmly with strangers, plus we could count on the hospitality of the owners. The real Juárez night seemed to be somewhere else.

We participated in a performance art festival, but the most intense and upsetting interventions happen crossing the limits of the night. We lose ourselves in city lights seen from a precipice that Jorge took us to, in the streets that we videotape from the window of his car. In drug dealer hangouts and on the banks of the river right on the border. In all those hotels whose thresholds we don't cross. In my hand holding the bridge railing and in those women who I am not.

About the Author

Alina Reyes, freelance writer and journalist born in Chile. She has spent the last three years living between Santiago, Mexico City and New York, and also writing her first book, a travel journal about these adventures.

Weak and Mild by Jennifer Ginter-Lyght

She’s nearly done,
gained seven more feathers
and she’s eager to run.
Beyond this girl named Petite Belief.
engaged with illiterate dolls
in the dim closet.
Feeling incomplete
from oversized costumes that loiter.
She clutches her red and reliable knapsack
and makes her way to the heavy door.
Weak and mild from surviving here too long.

She forces it as far open as she may
and it lets her go.
She doesn’t belong
behind this disguised door.
Now into the light.
She abandoned the costumes and dolls
without a need for them anymore.
She’ll enter a new world
exposed and alone
prepared
to handle, to know
her own skin
and the Eagle within.

About the Author

Jennifer Ginter-Lyght is a hobby writer. She began writing in her early adolescence focusing largely on topics of violence, war, feminism, religion and love. Her work is on display at Posie.com and Poewar.com.

Professionally, Jennifer spent several years in sales and marketing before abandoning the long hours and constant travel. She now works in government administration. She and her husband live in rural Wisconsin and are expecting their first child in 2006.

Testimony: Former Nigerian Slave by Ivy Alvarez

I was my mistress’s slave
- -that way my identity flew:
this breath in my chest
would knock the canvas edge
of the tent that shades
my mistress’s skin from the thin
burn of sun
as my own skin
browned

Again, she would say, and with my hands
I unstoppered the holes of pegs
- -those rough mouths filled with sand
as I swung the tent on its axis
my heels pivoting
to keep myself still

The heat was a brand
I spoke slave words with a slave tongue

but now my mistress is gone

What is this bed that is my own?
That cups my back with something like love?
Or this long, free swallow of milk
like wind at a feather’s edge?

My hands must touch a mirage
—the mirage touches me back

About the author

Ivy Alvarez is the author of Mortal (Red Morning Press, 2006). Her poetry appears in journals and anthologies in Australia, Canada, England, the Philippines, Republic of Ireland, Russia, Scotland, USA, Wales and online.

Durga Pujo by Sarmista Das

Soon, it will be Durga Pujo and I will go to the Hindu Temple. My mother and I will go alone because we do not have anyone else to go with us. And because if we do not go, people will talk.

I spent all last night bickering with ma, she insisted I go shopping the next morning for a new dress or dress-pant.

“Ma,” I said, “I don’t want to go, I have plenty of things to wear right here, at home.”

As I rummaged through the depths of my closet, I concluded that the spangled, neon-coloured ghagras, salwars, saris, and lahengas are too retro-Bollywood for me. And dress-pant too sterile for such a festive imported celebration as Durga Pujo, even if we are in this cold country, Canada.

Four hours later, and with a heap of clothes so high piled atop my floor we could clothe a small army of Bollywood fashionistas, we found the perfect outfit.

“Oho! This is it! Bery cute, na?” my mother interjected. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a lanky, awkward seventeen-year-old in a strikingly uncommon ensemble. I straightened my frame and squinted.

“Yes ma, I like it. I feel comfortable.”

“Sunita, it’s your phone! ” my mother yelled from the main floor.

“Who is it? ” I hollered from upstairs.

“Who else?? Durga herself.” I rushed to the basement to receive the call, far away from earshot.

“I don’t understand why you girls have to be so hush-hush secretive on the phone” I heard my mother mutter to herself in exasperation. I took a few moments to collect myself and catch my breath before speaking into the receiver.

“Hey, what did you do, run a marathon or something? I can hear you breathing on the other end.”

“Oh, no Durga, I was just running downst— ”

“Yeah, yeah, let”s get down to business.” Durga’s voice sharpened.

“Sorry” I mumbled.

“What will you wear.” Durga’s serious voice commanded through the phone. I wondered why she did not even bother to form her interrogation into a question, what allowed her to skip the fluff and get to the heart of the matter.

“The ghagra skirt I wore two years ago at Priyobroto’s wedding and the fancy tank top I bought the last time we went shopping at Holt’s.”

“You are not really going wearing that.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Can you even imagine what the aunties and uncles will say about all that skin? I mean, it is okay to wear that kind of stuff at school or at the mall, but not anywhere near the aunties and uncles! They’d have coronary infarctions just looking at your bare shoulders! ”

“But I just spent hours trying to find something,” I stammered. I did not know what else to say. A rush of disappointment flooded my chest. Sensing my distress, Durga eased out of her business mode.

“Look, Sunita,” Durga sighed, “I guess it’s not so bad. I mean, doesn’t Helen wear a bikini in Sholay? Besides, all the aunties show more rolls of flesh through the slits of their saris than that Poppin’ Fresh.” At this, we both fall into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

And so ends my telephone conversation with Durga, a person not to be confused with Durga, mother goddess of power. Durga is not like me, and she is also like me. Like me, she is not well received by the aunties and uncles, maybe because, unlike me, she is not a real Indian. Her mother is a Canadian, and we of the community do not trust Canadians, even if we ourselves were born and raised in Canada. The reason, I think, they do not like me is because I do not have pueshkar gaier-rong, or clean skin. This is because God has chosen to burden me with extra melanin. Also, maybe they do not like me because I refuse, as they expect of a girl with such repulsive colour, to ‘corrupt’ their precious sons, who, no matter how dark, are always the reapers of endless praise.

It is now Saturday and I am wearing that nice ensemble my mother and I created. I just entered the Temple and am taking off my shoes. One of the auntie’s children, I cannot tell if boy or girl, looks at me. He/she looks at me as if he/she doesn’t know whether to laugh, to smile, or to stick out a rude tongue. He/she tugs at his/her ma’s sari, as if he/she needed her opinion in order to calculate his/her gesture.

“Oh Nimu, it is only Sunita. Maybe you cannot recognize Sunita in her new dress. So pretty, ha, na? Is that what people are wearing these days? All those new filmis , you can never tell if those actresses are wearing proper Indian clothes or bra-tops. Does your mother approve of such clothing that is so risquŽ? Hai, what does it matter, it is so… ” She stops. She smiles.

Ifind Durga and we are in the handicap washroom stall together. She is helping me fix the string on my ghagra skirt. I do not understand why, even with all this button and zipper technology, Indian tailors refuse to use anything but drawstring. We pretend to take extra time in the stall until the bathroom traffic subsides. It will be empty, I’m sure, as soon as the prayer starts. Until then, Durga and I look at each other nervously because even though we have known each other since she moved to Montreal two years ago, and we have been so close, we have never touched. Not even a hug or a handshake. And so it is very awkward, you see, to engage in such intimate activity, and even more awkward to feel her skin brush in strange, unaccustomed jerks against mine.

Finally the ladies and their finicky babies have left and Durga begins to talk. “Did you see the way Bhashkar was ogling you? It’s as if he doesn’t know the answer to ‘Choli ke Peeche kya hai? “

“What a filmi song:a big bosomed auntie blaring ‘what’s under my shirt.’ It’s completely ridiculous how raunchy those stupid films are, these flicks they’ve been playing for us since we were too young to say ‘Amitabh.’ And when we bring 㣌 Days and 40 Nights’ home, our parents lock up the VCRs and complain about how filthy these engriji movies are? ” I scowl after making this last point, considering Durga’s observation with immense distaste.

I did not wish to talk about Bhashkar. He is not the type of person I find even remotely amiable. He is the type of person who calls himself ‘Bash’, ‘The Bashster’ and even ‘Bash-man.’ This is when he is among friends or at school, or talking about how he ‘bashed some ho.’ And he is the type that, when he is with the aunties and uncles, is pristinely and adorably known as ‘Bubu.’

“I hate these fucking pujos, they get me so anxious. Ah shit, I forgot my cigarettes in my purse, which, of course, I left in the car.”

“Durga, you are not going to smoke in front of the community? “

“You know, you really shouldn’t bite your nails like that. I’m sure old Bubu would like the feeling of a woman claw at his backside, if you know what I mean. And no, I’m not going to smoke in full view of the aunties and uncles. I’m going to smoke inside. This stall. With you.” Durga’s mane shakes as she tosses her head back, and we roar with laughter, and I laugh more because she is so brave and crazy I want to sweep her into my arms. But she goes out the door.

“What are you doing in here? You better get out before somebody finds you.” The smell of sweat laced with smoke fills the washroom stall as I struggle for air. I try to breathe, to say something further, to yell ‘Get away! ’ but my voice stumbles over the growing lump in my throat.

“Shh, relax, I just came in to see how you’re doing. Don’t worry, Sunita, I’ve got it covered. Everyone’s busy stuffing their faces with Prasad.” Bhashkar blew up his cheeks with air and moved his jaw as if he were a gluttonous, overfed ox as he squeezed himself into the stall.

“Hey come on, it’s me. It’s Bubu, it’s Bash, talk to me.” My head pounds. I cannot get myself to look up. My eyes rest at my feet. “Hey man, why you look like that? ”

“Like what? ” I manage to mutter.

“Like you’ve never been alone with a guy before.” And now he is touching my face and holding my shoulders and pushing me pushing me further into the stall and I can smell all his sweat. His hands move from my shoulders all the way down, and I notice he avoids the drawstring. He is holding my neck with one hand and with the other he is unzipping his pants. But before he can finish taking the thing out, there is a mess; He has come. And then he goes, rushing out of the stall, slamming it so I cannot see his crimson red face or his gland shriveling in his hands. “You say anything and I’ll fuck you up,” is what he says, but by this time I am on the floor and ready to keel into the toilet bowl.

“Yo Raj, I’m telling you, Indian sluts here are the shit. They don’t know if they’re brown or white, and theyÕ’ll fuck just about anything. I mean, did you see Sunita? That chick is so fuckin’ confused. What a coconut . All brown on the outside, white on the inside, and oh so fuckin’ sweet when you crack her open. No joke, she put out faster than that halfie Durga.”

I hear all this, just outside the washroom door and immediately identify who Bhashkar’s audience consists of from the varied pitch of guffaws: Raju/ ‘Raj’, Potol/ ‘Busy P’, and Ishi/ ‘Funk Master I’ —Bhashkar’s most willing and gullible devotees. I muster enough courage to peek through the washroom door, and see Bhashkar. I can tell he has been watching the ajar door with great interest, as Bhashkar catches me peeking at him. Despite my sheer look of terror, Bhashkar continues to gaze at me with a look of sly defeat. Luckily, his devotees do not notice this exchange, and head toward the exit with packs of cigarettes visible in their hands. As soon as they leave, I rush out and head straight to the pujo room.

In the prayer room, there is Durga, the icon. I wonder where Durga, my friend, has gone, what in the world is taking her so long, and also what was it Bhashkar had said about a ‘halfie Durga? ’ At the back of the room, I can vaguely see Nimu, the sexless matriarch’s minion, sitting idly. I turn my head and look about me with only my eyes, my head averted to the front of the room. Legions of bodies sit by the statue of Durga, a horizon of fabric and flesh teeming with spite and love and devotion and fear. Though the room is by no means spacious, not a singe body touches another, ominously respecting the inches of distance in between.

Durga sits atop her lion, her menacing red grin overpowering the feline’s fang-toothed snarl. She is ferocious, wild, unruly, faultless, and utterly beautific. In her ten arms, she holds weapons of such cruel capacities, and it is only now that I take note of what she holds, what items she grasps onto to capture such a look of fierce divinity. Shiva’s trident, Vishnu’s discus, Varma’s conch, Agni’s flaming dart, Vaya’s bow, Surya’s quiver and arrow, Yama’s iron sword, Indra’s thunderbolt, Vishwakarma’s axe and her indestructible garland of lotuses seem to writhe in the hands of the goddess. At the base of her towering frame and at the blade edge of her blood-stained sword lies the livid and thrashing body of the buffalo-demon Mahishasura, his once insolent eyes now pleading with shallow tears; his once fearless body convulsing, diminishing like the last embers of a dying flame.

Why, after all these years, had I not seen this? Why, after so many years, did I fail to realize the sheer significance of DurgaÕs fate? Why did I fail to recognize the vitality of these sacred objects, and how could I fail to realize the source of her glorious ferocity? The questions race through my mind in an unending spiral.

Suddenly, the drifting smoke of incense accosts my nostrils, stinging the back of my throat. The heat of the room burns past the hairs on my arm, penetrates through the sheet of stale sweat and skin, and sends my flesh and bones into torrential shivers. The thick, heavy sound of the conch pushes deep into my brain as the nasal mantra of the priest begins. The pulsating music of the dhak accompanies, resonates through the room, and my head is light from the dizzying effect. I attempt to open my eyes, but they fill with brackish liquid and all I can see is undulating smoke and indistinct haze. Through the layers of thick cloud, I see Durga’s three eyes, which glare with such intensity that they burn right into the depths of my skull. I am frantic, hysterical, and wild because I can now grasp what the blessed Durga sees, and it is this: the world tainted by demi-gods, surly tongues, and men devoid of fear.

Everything moves in slow motion before me. In my mind, the present becomes the past and the past becomes a blur, and I can no longer tell if bodies are before me, or meaningless shapes and colours. My head spins as I turn around to find the shadow of Bhashkar lurking beyond the room.

Just when I think I am falling, just when I feel my knees buckle and my head swoon, I feel a hand pull me up through the waves of smoky sound, pulls me right through this moment of ethereal enlightenment. It is Durga, smelling of freshly burnt cigarettes, who takes my hand and leads me past the shocked eyes of the aunties and uncles, who guides me, feral and untamed, through the door.

About the Author

Sarmista Das identifies herself as a “postcolonial feminist.” Fluent in English, Bengali and French, she is currently working towards her MA in Literature at McMaster University in Montreal, Canada. This is her second appearance in Her Circle Ezine.

Argentina by Isabelle Ghaneh

The mothers of the disappeared live in shadows
They can’t see their stubby swollen fingers in the mirror anymore
They can’t eat or drink or wash themselves
Without seeing ashes sprouting out of their eyes mouths armpits
They are cattle grazing on sawdust
Once again, they look outside in the fields
Waiting for the local trash collector
To serve them up some dinner
Borges knows what its like to talk to yourself
Sitting on a public bench by the river
By the river I lay down and wept
Or so the psalmist said
But he never sat down and chatted for awhile
Maybe he should have
I wonder if the mothers of the disappeared are still standing there
After all this time
Have they ever collected the bright bones of their children
Or have they all been given to the dogs
So they have something to nibble on
Late at night
Julio Cortazar I love you
And Ernesto Sabato and Jorge Luis Borges
You come to me always
And lead the way
Out of the labyrinth
Or at least if that’s saying too much
You let me know
I am not the only one
Resting there
God bless the mothers of the disappeared
No one else does
So maybe He will
It’s about time
If you ask me

About the Author

Isabelle Ghaneh has been published in various literary venues, including Coal City Review, Pennine Ink and Dimsum Literary Journal.

Poisonous Fruit by Erin Harte

Outside there are berries and shadows and strangers. Once when Meredith walked out the door, she heard screaming and crying from the broken window above her head in the neighboring brick building. She paused, uncomfortably eavesdropping. But what was she supposed to do, she wondered. Was it really her business? Tonight, there’s no screaming, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to feel. She’s numb, the way she likes to be when she leaves someone, someplace. Of course there are all those berries and that odd boysenberry bush. Meredith hates those berries, the way they squish under her feet, leaving permanent purple reminders of this night that she will try to forget over and over again.

Shayegan will stick with her like a long fleshy scar. Meredith used to dream that he would shrink during the night, his arms slowly loosening their grip on her until he was gone. She would search for him, tearing the sheets off the bed, panicking that he had left forever. She always found him in her reflection in the mirror, trapped on her hip in a Shayegan-shaped scar, ensnared on her skin forever. In the morning, she would touch her hip where the scar had been, then reach out for Shayegan. He often slept curled up in the pillows against the wall. She would place her palm in the center of his back, then trace her fingers over his freckles and moles, the parts that made him particular, that made him hers.

Meredith’s foot squishes a berry, creating a purple hydroplane underneath her slick soles. “Damn berries,” she says, after regaining her balance. She used to wonder what a pie made of all the berries on the sidewalk would taste like, even offering to make it for Shayegan. “You’d eat it if you loved me,” she said.

“They’re probably poisonous, Mer.” Shayegan never seemed to slip on the sidewalk the way she did. His legs were long and heavy. Each step he took rooted him, somehow.

“They’re not poisonous, for chrissake. They’re boysenberries. You can eat those.” Meredith remembered the boysenberry bush in the backyard that was the entrance to the fort she had made with her brothers. Where, on the weekends, they used to escape from their parents fights, where they had their own private kingdom.

“I still wouldn’t eat your pie made of sidewalk berries,” Shayegan said firmly, turning toward her after unlocking the front door of their apartment building.

“You don’t love me.Ó” Meredith pouted, following three or four stairs behind him.

“I don’t,“ he said at their apartment door, sticking the key into the lock, then turning abruptly, the keys jingle-jangling in the stale air of the apartment stairwell. “Let’s not play this game right now.”

“I knew it,” she said, then reached around his waist, unlocked the door and slinked into the apartment, still riding on her boysenberry slide.

Now, Meredith’s feet crunch the gravel in the parking lot. Thank god those fucking berries aren’t mixed into the rocks. Then she turns around, walks back to the sidewalk and puts her cigarette out on a juicy berry. The berry rolls to the edge of the cement where Meredith leaves it oozing and bleeding over the edge into the gravel.

“I’m a goddamned fertility goddess. Yes, again. I don’t know how it happened this time, you know, how these things go. No, no, of course not. What? Well, maybe you should leave for a while. We’ve got to get the hell out of our lives anyway. Oh, hey, I’ll call you back later, Mer. I’ve got to run. Love you. Bye.”

Tova hung up the black receiver of the payphone and leaned against the wood paneled wall, next to the men’s bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror on the opposite wall, noticing the bags under her eyes and the pallor of her skin. She smoothed her long straight hair with both hands, then slid her right hand into the pocket of her dirty black waitress apron where she kept her cigarettes. She lit the match with one hand, the way Pablo had taught her to do last year the weekend they drove the coast and got high and slept in his car and never got around to getting anywhere. Inhale, exhale is supposed to be so damn easy, Tova thought.

She’d wanted to keep the last one. She really had—the baby, not the boyfriend. In fact, at the time she wasn’t even sure it was Mike’s; she’d already met Pablo then, but it was probably Mike’s. He was shit anyway. She was only really scared once with him, scared enough to leave and hide and cry a bit when she finally got to Meredith. She had deserved that baby, deserved something good from that man.

Of course now there’s this, Tova thought, stomping the butt of her cigarette into the dirty wooden floor with the soles of her red tennis shoes. There’s this and I’ve got to go back to it and smile and pretend there’s nothing growing inside, nothing bothering me, nothing more that I want. I’m not resigning myself to this place.

At the upstairs bar she slithered up behind Jack, her boss, slid her hands into the right pocket of his jeans until she felt him respond, saw him smile. “I’m leaving,” she hissed into his ear. “Fuck this place.”

She untied her apron and threw it onto the beer cooler. She slipped out the door knowing the other waitresses already hated her, knowing it was time to do something.

Tova went straight to Meredith’s apartment. Shayegan was home, like always, and Meredith wasn’t. Unfuckingbelievable.

“You okay, Tova? ”

Meredith was really lucky with this one, Tova thought, looking through the long tufts of hair to his eyes. I hope she knows its good here, I hope she knows this is the kind you stick around for.

“No, I’m not. I’m not okay at all.”

And this is what she thought to herself again later when she climbed on to the cement railing over the river.

Shayegan is playing the mahogany upright piano he bought when he was sixteen, the year his father died. It was a pain in the ass to move. Especially painful now, when there’s not much time to play. When you’ve got to pay the bills. He hasn’t been playing at all lately, anyway. But she’s gone, he let her go, and maybe now there will be time for the other stuff. Another piece of the carved wooden vine on the face of the piano falls off while Shayegan plays. It’s been falling off slowly since before he bought it, leaving a viney shadow of unfinished wood.

The knock on the door startles him, because Meredith is gone and he’s thinking about music.

“Yeah,” he says.

“It’s me.” Tova’s voice.

Shayegan opens the door with his left hand propping his right on the doorframe. Tova walks under his arm and down the wood floor of the hall. She’s frowning and walking through every room in the apartment.

“She’s not here. You okay, Tova? ” Shayegan closes the door and walks to the kitchen, feeling the cool of the tile on the bottoms of his feet.

“No, I’m not. I’m not okay at all.”

“Do you want a beer? ” Shayegan asks from the kitchen, already opening one for Tova. She looks bad, he thinks, though in all honesty, he doesn’t want to hear what she has to say.

“Yeah. Is she coming back soon? ”

“Don’t think so. Here.” Shayegan hands her a green glass bottle.

“Where is she? ”

“DonÕ’t know.” Don’t care right now, Shayegan thinks, then drinks.

“What the hell good are you? ” Tova falls onto the couch, sinks, looks sick.

“Do you mind if I sit here for a while? I’m trying to make a decision.”

“Go right ahead. Want to talk about it? ”

“Nope.”

“Great.” Shayegan is relieved. He knows he’s not very good at this stuff. That’s probably what got Meredith so upset in the first place, but he can’t really help it and doesn’t feel like changing. Shayegan thinks about how his dad was the same way: distant, then dead. He decides to play while Tova is on the couch thinking. After all, she’s just trying to make a decision about something.

He smiles when she sits on the bench next to him. She looks little and sad, like his niece did the last time he visited his sister. It’s been too long since he’s been there, he thinks. These are things he feels bad about. Not Meredith. He was tired of her anyway, things were static, they didn’t laugh enough, he felt suffocated. He was glad she left. Or mostly glad.

“Sing something,” Tova asks. When Shayegan begins to sing, she touches him. He lets her. This is not cheating, he thinks. It’s not cheating because Meredith is gone and I don’t love anyone. I’m glad she’s gone, he thinks again.

Tova climbs into his lap. Shayegan has always wondered how it would feel to fuck Tova. Their sex is loud; the piano plays a Dada symphony.

Later, her tongue flicks into his ear. “Don’t tell,” she whispers. Her breath is warm and hot. She still looks sad when she leaves. I don’t understand women, Shayegan thinks, then opens another beer and bangs out a song on the piano for Meredith.

Meredith stirs her coffee with the tiny red straw until it turns light brown. She’s waiting for Tova’s shift to end, but she can’t wait in the bar because she hates it there, the way it makes her feel grimy and dark and angry. How can Tova spend so much time there, Meredith wonders.

She’d gone to the bar with Shayegan after they’d first met and Pablo had come too to see Tova. Shayegan liked Pablo instantly; Meredith could hear it in his laugh. Pablo had sat in the red booth next to Meredith. He had his hand on her right thigh the whole night, which she didn’t really mind because they had slept together before Tova had left Mike. She’d felt guilty about fucking him, but they had been drinking too much and swore they’d never mention it again anyway. Of course, she’d liked sitting there between Shayegan and Pablo, even though she felt a little jealous of how much they liked each other.

Meredith finishes only half of her coffee. The coffee makes her stomach hurt, churning her insides. Shayegan does the same thing to her when they fight and no one’s done that since that summer when her parents kept fight and fighting. One Saturday her mom was vacuuming and they were fighting and Meredith sat on the blue woven rug in her bedroom, clutching her stomach thinking, if they don’t stop I’m going to throw up. And then it stopped. Her mom walked out the door, slamming it, the vacuum still running in the living room, trying to suck the dust out of the carpet, then the tension out of the air. Meredith had gone to the balcony and called, but her mom drove away anyway, like she hadn’t even noticed Meredith on the porch. She threw up three times that afternoon.

Now I’ve walked out too, Meredith thinks. But it’s better, this way. Better than fighting. Better than him leaving me.

She signals the waitress and asks for her check. She’s been here for three hours, reading and staring at the pale green tiles on the wall. It feels longer than that, but maybe it’s just because of the fighting and the leaving and now the waiting.

In the doorway of the bar, Meredith scans the room but can’t see Tova. Her eyes land instead on Jack, the bartender, who smiles and shakes his head as he walks the length of the bar toward her.

“She left a few hours ago, kid,” he says and winks.

“Where did she go?”

“Who the hell knows. You know how she gets sometimes.”

“Thanks.”

In the car, Meredith rolls down the window and turns up the volume on the radio. Some sort of metal song is playing and it hurts, but that’s the way she wants to feel right now. She’d better get it out now. Tova’s upset even though she sounded okay on the phone. They’ll both feel better later, Meredith is sure of this.

The bridge is her favorite stretch of road toward Tova’s apartment. She and Tova used to go running on summer afternoons when they lived together. By the time they circled back to the bridge, the sun was always hanging above the river in that clichŽ happy way that always made Meredith that things might work here, they just might work.

Approaching the crest of the bridge at night is different. It didn’t feel like hers in the same way it used to. The headlights of Meredith’s car shine briefly on the cement railing and that’s when Meredith sees somebody dive, a swan dive right off the edge of the bridge.

Holy shit, she thinks. Slams on the breaks. Calls the police.

When she gets off the bus, Tova wants cigarettes or pills or anything that will take the edge of her walk home. She sits on the cement bench on the corner of the bridge and dumps out the contents of her pink corduroy bag beside her. There’s no one around and she doesn’t care if they do see anyway. She finds some pills and rolls them around in the palm of her hand, examining the blue and the orange and the white thinking, it’s a cocktail party in my hand. These goddamn little pills are the most vibrant thing around.

Tova wants to feel something. She tried earlier to see if the sex would outweigh this feeling that’s been sitting on her chest for a while. How long has it been like this, she wonders but can’t concentrate long enough to remember.

I don’t even feel bad for fucking him, she thinks. I want remorse or pain or pleasure. I want to feel good or bad or anything. Tova puts her hand on her stomach thinking of the miscarriage and the abortions and this little bit of stuff that’s inside that’s suppose to turn into life and how she really doesn’t care if Pablo did leave with that little blond bitch yesterday afternoon. Except that’s not true. Because this hurts and now I’ve got to go home to that empty apartment where I’m just going to feel more of nothing.

Tova slings her bag over her shoulder and walks over the bridge toward her apartment. She’s half tempted to walk in the middle of the road, to get hit by a car. No, that’s not the way I’d want to go, she thinks. I’d want exhilaration before I croaked, in that last little minute. I’d want to jump off a building or this bridge and feel some excitement. That would be the way to do it.

At the crest of the bridge, Tova drops her bag and climbs up onto the cement railing. I just want to see what it would look like from here. I just want to see.

She stands with her legs shoulder length apart, arms spread wide. She closes her eyes and breathes before she looks down at the water. I wonder what it would be like, how it would feel. I wonder if I’d know at the bottom that I’d done it at all. Oh boy, Tova. You are not okay at all.

Tova thinks about her grandfather teaching her to dive at the pool behind his house. They drank lemonade and ate chocolate chip cookies and he told jokes that made her laugh. I took a wrong turn somewhere. It used to feel good. I used to be good.

She thinks about her grandfather again, remembering the way her feet were supposed to be together on the edge of the diving board. He’s says her name with a heavy Russian accent that she wishes she could wrap herself in like a blanket. He tells her to bend her knees and to do it the way he taught her.

“That’s my girl, Tova. That’s my girl,” her grandfather says as Tova swan dives into the pool, sunshine warming the bottoms of her feet as she floats down, down, down.

Shayegan is angry when he hears Meredith’s voice on the other end of the phone. I don’t want to fight anymore tonight, he thinks. I’m tired. I don’t need this. I don’t need her.

“I need help.” She never asks for help. Never after they’ve been fighting. But this is the game she plays, Shayegan thinks. She’s trying to get me to feel bad for her so I’ll tell her I love her and to come home. To promise that I’m not going to leave her. I don’t like the games, he thinks.

“Shayegan, please.” Meredith’s voice quivers and cracks. She is crying.

There are voices and sounds in the background Shayegan can’t quite place, sirens or something. He thought she was going to say I need you, but she didn’t and he doesn’t know if that is good or bad.

He recognizes the quiver from his mother’s voice the day his father died. “What’s wrong?” Shayegan knows it’s bad. He knows it’s very bad.

“I was a minute too late. I can’t do this. I can’t. I need help. You’re all I’ve got.”

“What’s wrong? Where are you?” Shayegan is pacing in front of the couch, rubbing his beard. The wooden floorboards creak under his feet.

At the bridge, Shayegan sees an ambulance and police cars. He can’t find Meredith in the mess of people walking up the hill from the river and by the side of the road. He sees her car, but can’t construct an accident from the scene. Something is very wrong, he thinks, because he can’t grasp onto any of the details.

Meredith is shaking and crying when he takes her in his arms. This is the feeling he hates: the fear, the love, the needing of another person. He hates it because it’s coming from his stomach, radiating through him like a knife slicing each of his veins from the inside.

Shayegan remembers when his mother called and he felt this for the first time. He collapsed on the floor when she told him. The car and the hospital and the old woman who didn’t even know she had taken Shayegan’s father from him without asking.

“Meredith, what’s happened?” He cannot bear her tears.

“Tova. She jumped. I didn’t know it was her. I was a minute too late and she was jumping and I didn’t even know it was her. They found her bag, the pink one I gave her last summer and I recognized it with the patches.” Meredith screams and Shayegan winces.

They stand on the bridge where she had been, holding each other, aching.

Meredith is asleep when they pull into the parking lot of their apartment. Her head is leaning on the glass. Shayegan leans his head against the back of his seat. He stares out the window at the brick wall of their building.

“Mer, we’re home.” Shayegan touches her arm softly. “Mer, wake up.”

Shayegan opens the door, unbuckles her and takes her in his arms. She snuggles against his green sweater, her forehead crinkled. She’s dreaming about an operation that’s going to leave a long purple scar on her stomach. The gravel crunches as he walks. On the sidewalk, Shayegan crushes purple berries under his feet.

About the Author

Erin Harte is a passionate southern feminist and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. When she’s not hitting the streets of New York City in search of the perfect shot of espresso, Erin passes her time working in product development and acquisition for a children’s publishing house.

Second Chance by Sandra E. McBride

Elsa blew a cloud of steam away from the cracked Christmas mug and sat it on the cluttered table. Her slippers rasped on the cold linoleum as she shuffled across the kitchen to get a jug of milk out of the refrigerator. Through the frost patterns on the window she watched the snow blowing across the stubbled field behind the house. Only a few hardy starlings fluttered around her feeder, and she hadn’t seen any deer in three days.

“Too cold for them, too cold for me,” she muttered aloud as she poured a stream of milk into her coffee.

Wrapping her old woolen robe tightly around her, she pushed aside a pile of drawings and put the jug on the table. She sat by the window and peered into the whiteness that swirled outside. Elsa shuddered as she sipped the hot, bitter coffee.

Ross would be along soon, in spite of the bad roads, she knew, and her comfortable routine, her solitary life, would change forever. Ross, good-hearted soul that he was, had offered to go to the airport in Burlington to pick up Benjamin, knowing that her old pickup truck barely ran and had no heater.

“You can’t go fetch a seven-year-old kid in that old rattletrap, Elsa,” he had admonished her when she told him that Benjamin would be arriving on an 11 a. m. flight. “I’ll go myself, and that’ll give you time to clean this place up.”

Ross was never openly critical of her lax housekeeping, but he gave her a subtle nudge now and then. She looked around. She had been so busy working on the rough sketches for her new picture book that she hadn’t swept the floor in two days. The laundry was piled in an untidy heap on top of the washing machine, and her unopened mail was scattered across the dining room table. Unopened because the first letter she had seen two days ago when she returned from the post office in town was the one from Roslyn telling her that Benjamin would be on this morning’s plane.

Elsa swallowed the last of her coffee and stood up. The first thing she had to do was feed the sheep. She would fill the woodbox, too, otherwise Ross would feel the need to do it for her when he came. Ross was a good man, a kind neighbor, but Elsa hated to be beholden to anyone.

She climbed the worn, uncarpeted stairs to her bedroom. As she entered the room, her eyes fell on John’s picture smiling at her from the top of her bureau. John. Her tall, slender, blond, blue-eyed, much-too-serious son. The son she raised, but barely knew. Father of Benjamin, the grandson that she did not know at all.

Her easel and all her art supplies were crammed into the corner by the window. At least she had found time to remove them from John’s bedroom so Benjamin could have it. She’d arrange them in some sort of order after she got the sheep fed and the woodbox filled. She tossed off her robe and pulled on her quilted flannel shirt and threadbare chino pants, then made her way downstairs again. She slipped into her sherpa-lined denim coat, wool ski cap, heavy work boots and mittens, and stepped out into the bitter cold morning. The snow bit at her face as she trudged through the drifts to the sheep shed.

How John had hated the sheep. She wondered if Benjamin would hate them, too. “Dumbest animals God ever put on earth,” John would mutter when she sent him out to take care of them.

John hadn’t liked much of anything about Vermont. She wasn’t surprised when he enlisted in the Navy on his eighteenth birthday and left. She’d never been much of a mother to him. John was the biggest mistake of her life, and she’d never been able to hide it from him.

He’d been a good enough boy. It was just that she was an artist, a single parent and sole provider, and she didn’t have time to fuss with little things like other mothers did. She had deadlines to meet, work that required total concentration. If she was to survive and grow artistically, she had to make sacrifices. She had realized, too late of course, that it was John that she had sacrificed.

He got stationed in San Diego, and wrote to his mother extolling the virtues of the warm, sunny climate. Then after not hearing from him for two years, she got a letter from Hawaii, enclosing a picture of himself and his bride, Roslyn. The girl, clad in a skimpy bikini, smiled coyly, her arms and one leg wrapped around John’s lanky body. Elsa couldn’t help feeling that the woman in the picture was taunting her.

She pulled open the door of the sheep shed, and stepped into the pungent-smelling interior. Sheltered from the wind, her breath shrouded her head in a white cloud. She pulled two bales of hay from the pile, cut the strings with her pocket knife, and tossed the bunches of fragrant dried clover into the rack. Jostling and bleating, a dozen plump, woolly sheep attacked the forage. Snow clung to their curly backs and crusted their eyelashes.

“Sheep-eyes” was the derisive nickname she had given her daughter-in-law on the rare occasions she spoke of her. Five months after the wedding picture arrived had come another showing Roslyn grinning triumphantly over a prune-faced, squinting infant. Even after giving birth, Roslyn was picture perfect—mascara, blush, lip rouge, and a lacy negligee. God, Elsa hoped that vamp made John happy.

She left the shed. Snow sifted down into her boots as she struggled through the drifts. When she reached the back porch, she cupped her hands over her eyes and watched the snowplow rumble past, its flashing yellow lights blinking dimly through the white haze. With the roads cleared, Ross would have no problem bringing Benjamin to her.

The fragrant, earthy smell of the firewood she piled in her arms made her think of spring. She used to like Vermont winters. Now they seemed just another unwelcome burden. Like John was, she caught herself thinking.

When John was born, she had considered giving him up for adoption. She was unmarried, unemployed and just barely scraping by illustrating books for a Boston publisher and writing an occasional children’s book herself. She had not loved John’s father. They had a brief, passionate affair and then he was gone, leaving her to her solitary existence. She hadn’t even realized that a child was on the way until three months later.

The grinding, endless pain she endured pushing her unwilling son into the world reinforced Elsa’s belief that motherhood was not for her. Yet something in that wrinkled little face had touched her heart, and she refused to sign the adoption papers. She brought him home to the two-room flat she lived in then, and spent all the years since then proving she was right in the first place.

Her biggest success as an author-illustrator, a book entitled “Child of the Forest,” had bought her this farm when John was seven. It was a run down fixerupper on a remote dirt road, for sale to cover back taxes. It was the perfect, secluded place to set up her easel and work on her painting and sketching. It was her dream, her sanctuary. She ignored John’s loneliness.

She gave John a pair of lambs as an Easter present when he was eight. He did not like the lambs at all, but Elsa did. She learned all she could about sheep from Ross, who owned the farm down the road. He taught Elsa how to care for them and how to shear them. She spun the wool into yarn, and dyed it with rich, earthy colors. The profits from her next book, “Lambs in Heaven,” enabled her to buy a loom, and she spent hours weaving beautiful woolen coverlets which she sold on commission at a local craft shop. They got by. Life wasn’t easy, but they did get by.

When John joined the Navy and went away, she was secretly glad; his presence always reminded her of her inadequacies as a mother. John was not at all rebellious, he was just silent. When he kissed her good-bye and walked out the door, his worldly possessions crammed into one duffel bag, she knew she’d never see him again.

Elsa piled the firewood in the box beside the stove and pulled off her gloves, hat and coat. She soaked a rag with soapy water from the sink and scrubbed the counter top. That done, she went into the dining room and glanced up at the clock over the mantel. It was nearly two o’clock. Ross should arrive any minute.

She scooped up the pile of mail from the dining room table and tossed it into the wastebasket. It was all bills and flyers anyway, she told herself. Her creditors would send new ones next month, and by then she’d have a check for the illustrations she had mailed to the publisher last Monday.

A gust of wind rattled the windows. Even with the fire crackling in the pot-bellied stove, the house was cold. Would Roslyn have had sense enough to buy Benjamin warm clothing before she packed him off to New England? Elsa was angry with herself for not doing more to prepare for Benjamin’s arrival. A cold pang of regret stopped her in her tracks as she recalled that she had not prepared for John’s arrival twenty-seven years ago, either.

She dragged the cumbersome old Hoover out of the closet, plugged it into the wall socket, and vacuumed the worn brown carpet. As she pushed the machine past the buffet, she looked sideways into the mirror that hung above it. She stared at the graying, unkempt woman gazing back at her. Wisps of hair stuck up all over her head. She was still wearing her flannel shirt and chinos. She looked more like a lumberjack than somebody’s grandmother.

“My God, woman,” she groaned, “you’ll scare the poor child half to death.”

Elsa shoved the vacuum cleaner back into the closet, and walked quickly to the front door. She scraped frost off the glass with her fingernails and peered through the opening. The road was deserted. No sign of them yet. Perhaps if she hurried, she’d have time for a quick shower and a change of clothes before they arrived.

Elsa turned her face up to the prickly spray of water and slathered on strawberry-scented shampoo. Steam filled the bathroom. She closed her eyes and let the water stream down her face and body. Nervous tension drained from her, and she was filled with a sense of anticipation. Having Benjamin living with her might not be so bad. Maybe she could talk Ross into driving them both to the mall and she could help Benjamin select a winter coat and mittens, sweat pants, and warm pajamas. They could stop at the grocery, and she would buy cereal and juice and cookies that he liked.

Elsa toweled herself dry, and ran a comb through her hair. How, she wondered, could a mother just abandon her child, sending him off to live with a total stranger? Her anger dissolved into gut-wrenching guilt as she studied her own blue-eyed, sad-faced countenance in the steamy mirror.

“It’s not that much different than what I did to John,” she whispered, tears clouding her vision. “I abandoned him to himself. I was here with him, but I wasn’t here for him. Roslyn has at least had the decency to send her son to someone she believes will love him. I didn’t even do that for John.”

Elsa pulled on navy corduroy slacks and a white fisherman’s knit sweater. She wiped the steam off the mirror with the wet towel and then tossed the towel into her clawfoot tub. She’d find time to do the laundry later.

The door to John’s room was ajar. She stepped inside and looked around. With her easel and paint supplies removed, it was spare and lifeless. She had done little with the room in the nine years since her son had left. It still had the same faded floral wallpaper, brown and green checkered linoleum and small student desk in the corner. She had long since taken down the window shade and frayed lace curtain so she could get the best light possible for her painting. The view from the window was of the sheep shed and pasture. John grew up gazing out at the sheep he hated.

The brown iron bed was covered with a faded green chenille spread. Elsa felt a wave of despair as she studied the room with a critical eye. How drab and uninviting it would seem to a frightened seven-year-old. She knew that Ross’s grandson had a New England Patriots comforter on his bed; she was with Ross when he bought it for the boy. Maybe she could buy one like it for her own grandson, and matching curtains and a rug. If she could make the room cheery, he might be able to accept being sent here to live with a grandmother he’d never met.

She always sent gifts to Benjamin on Christmas and his birthday. They were never acknowledged. She had no idea what the child liked or didn’t like. Was he like John? Would he be passive and silent as his father had been? In the few pictures of the boy her son had sent her, she saw a resemblance to John. But the eyes, “sheep eyes,” were Roslyn’s.

The first Elsa knew that John had left his wife and son was when she opened the letter from Roslyn two days ago. She hadn’t heard a word from John since last year’s Christmas card, postmarked Juneau, Alaska. She assumed he was there on a job, but Roslyn’s letter, short and filled with anger, set that straight. John abandoned them, went to Alaska with an anthroplogy student he met, and had not been heard from in more than a year. Roslyn filed for divorce, met a “nice, wealthy car salesman” who disliked kids, and decided rather than give up her “one chance for true love,” she was sending Benjamin to New England to live with his grandmother. If Elsa had any problem with that, she was to locate John and work it out with him. Roslyn was relinquishing all custodial rights to the boy.

The crunch of truck tires in the snow startled her. She descended the narrow stairs, slipped her feet into her town boots, and stepped out onto the front porch. Ross was opening the door on the passenger side of his Ford club cab truck. He reached in and pulled out a large duffel bag. Elsa recognized it as the same khaki bag that John carried down the driveway nine years ago when he left home for the last time. Her heart began pounding, and her knees felt shaky.

“Come on, Tiger,” she heard Ross say, “your grandma is waiting for you.”

Two sneakered feet slipped down from the truck and disappeared into the snow. Ross held out his hand, and small, thin fingers twined around it. The boy stepped around the open door of the truck and looked anxiously toward the weathered farmhouse, and the weathered woman who stood waiting for him. Elsa choked back a sob. He was small for seven. His wispy blond hair blew on the frigid arctic wind that howled all around them. He looked so much like John. He was dressed in jeans and a navy blue nylon windbreaker, much too light for the sub-zero wind chill.

Elsa made her way through the uneven snowdrifts. She leaned down and wrapped the child in her embrace. His thin body shivered with cold and, she imagined, the reality of abandonment.

“Tell me, Benjamin,” she said in a husky voice, “Do you like the New England Patriots?”

He looked up at her, his big, dark eyes solemn. “No,” he answered. “I like the San Diego Chargers.”

“Ross,” Elsa said, not taking her eyes off the child’s serious face, “Do they sell Charger comforters and curtains and jackets here in Vermont?”

Ross laughed. “There’s a sporting goods store in Burlington that sells every pro team in the country.”

“Good. My grandson and I need a ride to Burlington. Will you take us?”

About the Author

Sandra E. McBride is a native and lifelong resident of the Mechanicville, New York area. She currently resides in a two century old farmhouse with her husband, Tom, her cat Phoebe, and at least one resident ghost.

Mother of six and grandmother of sixteen, recently retired, she is the author of a poetry collection entitled “Mist Upon the Pond.” Her writing has appeared in five anthologies by June Cotner, as well as in NEWN, Once Upon a Time, Mail Call Journal, Magic Lark Journal, and online at historyonline.net. She has won numerous awards for her writing, both poetry and short fiction, for children as well as adults.

Tattered Clothes by Syeda Z. Hamdani

I see her on my wide-screen tv,
see the story through her bloodshot eyes:
“The thick needle pokes my thumb,
red droplets trickle away
I tear my tattered shawl and wrap the thin strip on my thumb
Whack! Whack!
I grab my head and see a wrinkled hand lift away the leather sandal,
leaving bumps
that swell as big as oranges
“Hurry, finish this dress, or no lentils for you today,”
she croaks, making a shaky fist,
And limps outside, coughing
I put by head against the tent,
but find no support
the red ants climb on my frozen toes
I can not hold back any more—
Burning tears fall on my mud-stained dress,
my only dress
Outside, Thunder roars its mighty laugh
I hear
Men speaking French, Turkish, English
They lift debris with Japanese cranes
“Shabaash, good,” says a breaded man
Little girls wait, clutching handmade rag dolls
Like them, I have no where to go
My husband, my sar taj is gone
My little prince and princess breathe no more
The Big Rumble came
Made me collapse and drop the ripe mangoes in my hand
I ran, fell, ran some more towards home
Ignoring voices that said, “Stay away”
The ground cracked into a million pieces,
I stopped
I saw nothing but
my mud-brick home flattened like a sand dune
I dug away the dirt with my shaky hands
Hoping, praying through tiny tears
to see hearts beating
But I found none,
Except a gray-haired woman’s heart pumping
At the hospital, I gave her my bed
Now I drink water that gives me stomach aches,
Yet she has clean water
I eat mushy lentils,
she takes the chicken
I sleep, shivering, on the dirt floor,
she has a snug sleeping bag
I remember the stench
Of bodies decaying,
She adorns her eyes with surma
and clutches a few rupees
“If only you know reading and writing,
you be a nurse or doctor,
make money”
Yes, if I had money
I could drink the liquid of hope
feed myself dignity,
wear clothes of honor,
and sleep in peace
Instead, I have sneers from this lady,
my mother-in-law,
who says I am her curse
“My son should be here, not you,
Does she know I wish so too?”
I turn off the tv,
look at my heated home,
the family portrait with six smiling faces
the velour dresses,
the canopy beds
I pull out the dollar bills set aside for Eid
And put them in an envelope with an international stamp
For my new friend

About the Author

Syeda is a freelancer, writing on a variety of topics, including science and health, as well as creative nonfiction. She is also a proofreader and copy editor.

The Birth by Christine Emmert

I came out of a cauldron
before the fire settled
and walked across the flames
into the landscape made for me.

They found my marks and accepted me,
arms open,
into their honeyed coven.

The bees swarmed me.
The branches of the trees bowed to shade me.
When they asked who made me
I answered that I made myself

Out of what chaos provided.

I snatched here and there
for the pulse of the dying planet,
the breath of the solar wind,
the dark matter made light by my own desire

to be born
into a life of problems and rewards.

The wolf suckled me.
The owl watched over me.
The toad sat upon my infant chest, delighting me.

And I never knew,
Until the first child I ran to touch,
Threw a stone at my head,
That the world did not accept

A self-made maiden.

About the Author

Christine Emmert has lived a long life, enjoying careers as an actress, writer, and educator. Her novel, ISMENE, was released in December, and she has been published in three countries as a playwright. Living with her husband, Richard, in the woodlands of Pennsylvania, she is concerned with all those tempests that shake our world. She can be seen soon in THE JUDAS KISS, a production of Invictus Films.

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