Spring 2006

Enamorada :: from Conversations with the Virgin by Cheryl Hicks

Lady of Long Silence and Restraint,
these flailing words are predetermined
to become more active than sound,
for I have found myself again
longing for a sacred heart.

Hot and cold all at once,
my fogged eyes
have been ignored again
by the spirits of the dead,
and my prayers sound
as though I am spitting
bitter fairy tales
in a foreign language.

Abandoned by my mother tongue,
unspoken laws cause me to alter
my discreet black street clothes
for attire perhaps more expressive
as I seek a temporary reprieve.

But real-life stories
confuse the heart,
and I want to give up this place today,
to ride off into crimson brilliance
looking for the ideal metaphor,
like someone to come home to
every night.

About the Author

Cheryl Hicks has published prose works in The First Line and Southern Hum, and her poetryhas been featured in Urban Spaghetti, Blue Fifth Review, Heliotrope, Makar, Snakeskin, Organic Soup and 103: The Journal of the Image Warehouse. She was a featured poet at C/Oasis, and is the recipient of the Paddock Poetry Award. “Enamorada” is from a series titled “Conversations with the Virgin,” in which Hicks explores the mystical feminine as well as her personal desire for ritual.

Mourning Run by Dawn Delvecchio

I live in a thatched bungalow by the sea. Palm trees reach skyward at my doorstep and a small cove of salty Andaman waters laps the beachside below. To the west rise a series of limestone rocks, some four to five hundred meters from the thick green jungle below. It is quiet here, but for the many long tail boats plying the waters. In the morning before the dawn, I set out for a run. The light of the sun has yet to send its rays peeking through my walls’ many openings as I dress and stretch my muscles.

Out on the dirt road I begin with a slow trot through the plantation of rubber trees that borders this property. Men and women labor among their tall, thin trunks, shaded by the canopy of leaves that begins seven to 10 feet above. These rubber workers carve long channels around each tree, leading to small, half-coconut shells tied securely at waist height to its trunk. This organic cup collects the milky sap as it wends its way down along the spiraling path to sit and harden in the day’s heat.

Rubber trees: tall and white barked with narrow trunks and oval shaped, shiny green leaves, pointed at the tips. Rubber trees: wars have been fought over the potential profit that trade in this resource promises. How many have died for this: row upon row of silent standing, milk-white bleeding trees?

The smell of the dripping, drying sap is sour and distinctive as I jog along, waking my mind and body while the sun climbs slowly into a new day. I run through the trees and out to the road which grades gently upward toward the next town. Here are palm plantations where yet another crop is grown for its precious inner vitality: palm oil. So different than their rubber cousins, the palm sits squat and wide, creating deep shade beneath its densely packed branches.

I run as the sun rises and the heat warms my back. Running is the time in my day when I am alone with my thoughts, my breath and the silence of the trees. Here the trees—whether rubber, palm or otherwise—are broadly green in leaf and often pale on branch and trunk. Smooth-barked and sweating from the moisture of the tropics, they are nothing like those trees among which I once ran.

I am learning to settle into this warm, wet land, and to understand the different rhythms of life among this greenery. For many years I ran through the trees of high chaparral desert in the American southwest, where the rising, lean shapes of the noble coconut palm are replaced by the gnarled, broad mass of the Ponderosa pine. Where the rich green foliage of the jungle must be cut back frequently here, there lie lands of dry scrub oak and brown grasses, the waxy blue/green of the squat Juniper and the bristly needles and rough dry bark of the pinion.

The sun is strong in the mountains of New Mexico. Rather than the sour smell of bleeding rubber, my runs in those days took me past the sweet aromas of pine needles baking slowly in the sun of any season. Those years in the desert were defined by a lifestyle of professional athleticism. They were years when my every day was filled with the physical activities of a trained fighter. As time passed and I grew weary of such a rigorous regime, I sought ways in which I could live and exercise in manners befitting my age and changing temperament. I felt dried out, exhausted, burned by the heat of the sun at high altitudes. I felt my roots could no longer reach, like a juniper in drought, deep enough to quench my thirst for new lands. I felt like a raisin long forgotten in the bottom of its little red box: hard as a rock, wrinkled, and black as only a raisin could be.

I had to leave. And leave I did.

There are many reasons why I wanted to, and eventually succeeded in leaving the mountain lands of America: a broken marriage, a grown child, and a sense of unquenchable curiosity. I couldn’t breathe the way I once had, the crisp air of a winter morning’s run, nor the sweet strong smell of the pines’ slow bake.

Drought continues in much of the southwest. Rivers have turned to creeks, long-running creeks have dried to trickles and spring-fed streams are disappearing at an alarming rate. I watched as the creek on my own land, once filled and surrounded with life, dried up almost completely last summer. Mud flats stretched out where once kingfishers dove and splashed to catch and feed on crawdads as big as my hand. Birds that had come to nest in abundance each spring grew few and far between. Pinions died by the hundreds, leaving broad sweeps of brown across mountainside and valley. Like a growing stain the color of rust, the patches of the dead grew as spring passed to the dry heat of summer and summer turned again to autumn tide.

I was dry, too. Dried out like my beloved landscape from a life no longer resonant, a climate no longer moist enough for my aging skin.

I had to leave. And leave I did.

Here along the Andaman Sea life is quite different. I run, as I did then, but with the mellow pace so typical of a tropical life. Sprints and monitored heart rates, cross-training and other “athletic disciplines” seem superfluous to the basic pleasure of a morning run-awaking with the sun. Now I worry less about body fat composition and more about the importance of a good endorphin high. I am busy now with the activities of speaking another language rather than managing full body fitness, a business or an exhausted relationship.

But my morning runs are bittersweet, for there is not a way that I can tell, to expatriate and be free of a sense of exile. There is not a way that I can see, to leave even an unhappy marriage and not mourn the sweet memories of the better times just the same.

I miss the baking pines. Even if the trees smelled of roses rather than this sour scent of old milk, I would miss the pines. The one can not replace the other. I miss my valley where horses ran free and grazed on the tender grasses at creek’s edge. I miss the beaver family and their efforts to maintain a home as the waters of their abode decreased daily. I miss collecting rose hips in winter and the pungent, crisp flavor of green onions in the summer. I miss the curve of the mountains rising to the north and the way they changed texture and depth at sunrise and sunset each day.

I miss the call of the coyote at night and the way we would call back, encouraging our dogs to howl. I miss the infrequent but always welcomed elk that wandered through the valley in search of better graze and the Great Horned owl roosting in the cottonwoods above the old shack.

I miss so much of my life in the Southwest, but there I was no longer content. I wanted to know the sour smells of the bleeding rubber tree and the sounds of the sea at my door. I wanted to hear geckoes laughing in the dark of night and the many voices of Asians speaking other tongues. I wanted a warm winter and a cold shower, spicy food, smiling faces, and palm trees in the breeze.

I needed to leave and leave I did. What I didn’t and couldn’t realize in my long years of yearning for this Asian wander is that it too, comes at a price. The price for me is the way I remember the sweetness of the American wilderness and a deep sense of home.

But I still run in the mornings, and the natural beauty of this land can hold its own against anywhere. It is not my home. Perhaps it never will be, but it is beautiful just the same. And there are birds and lizards, snakes and hawks and kingfishers and falcons, scurrying rodents and fish aplenty. I have left my lands for other shores, now it is up to me to delight in each moment here as once I did back home.

About the Author

Dawn Delvecchio resides on the island of Phuket in Thailand, where she is the Associate Editor for Asia-Pacific Tropical Homes magazine. As a freelance writer she has published articles on Southeast Asian travel, culture and history, spa reviews, and other topics. She likes to read, do yoga, watch birds, swim and dance.

Red Carpet by Laura Vladimirova

Cold,
kisses on dove arms,
skinny like the eyes of a starved dancer.
1989, flashbulbs bursting,
sharp shards of lightning.

Red Russian carpet lined the graceless walk.

Closed my eyes,
whispered the image of my father.

Thin wispy lids,
shaken by shrieks of neighbor’s sobs.

Crying for the left behind aged parents,
barking cocker spaniels,
carpeted walls,
Grandfather Christmas.

I learned to ride a bike in an Italian shtetl,
baked fresh bread with my light mother,
remembered the taste when I smelled it outside of a Brooklyn bakery.

We painted the door memory,
murdering the present.

Fear not streets paved with parked Pontiacs,
but dirt roads will always look better in the morning.

About the Author

Laura Vladimirova was born in the slums of Kiev, Ukraine. Looking to escape religious persecution and their overall poverty, her family gathered their rubles and headed to Brooklyn, NY, where Laura still resides. She has been writing poetry since she first learned how to speak and write in English.

Coming Home by Nevada N. Scheffler

Summer’s long days were sleeping earlier. Dad and I sat on the brick railing around Grandma’s porch. He was eating an ice cream sandwich and smelled like a mixture of red dirt and diesel. A soft thud, thud from my sneakers hitting the bricks repeatedly echoed the drone of the oilrig that pumped tirelessly behind the barns. I felt like I needed to say something to break the silence, but Dad didn’t seem to mind the stillness of the farm. The eerie quiet of the middle of nowhere made my mind jangle like rusty keys for broken lock:nothing to turn but never still.

“It’s too quiet here for you, Nora.”

Daddy’s gaze never left the horizon, but he knew I was listening. When my father spoke, you couldn’t help but listen. It happened so seldom that every booming word sounded like the voice of a nameless god.

Five years have passed since that waning summer night. I hadn’t been back. Not until now. As I passed the school where I was slated to teach the fall after my college graduation, my face warmed with a rush of blood. I tried to push the thoughts about how I abandoned my classroom less than an hour before teaching my first class to the back of my mind. A lot had happened since then.

When I pulled up outside my grandparents’ large brick house ten minutes later, the day I left started to fade like a long lost memory. Large, paned windows stared down at me with dark eyes, and the home’s outline glowed with the setting Oklahoma sun. No one was home.

Stepping out of my car, I ran my hands over my torso and hips, smoothing the travel wrinkles out of my tailored button-up shirt. Little clouds swirled around my feet, dusting my black riding boots and faded jeans. My hands instinctively found the correct key while my feet walked up the porch’s four cement steps to the front door. The storm door creaked a familiar welcome, and I inserted the heavy bronze key into the lock. But instead of swinging open expectantly, the door refused to budge. I jiggled the key back and forth and sighed. My keys no longer worked. Leaving them dangling from the door, I let the screen slam shut and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket.

After three rings, the phone was answered with my mother’s inquisitive “Hello?”

“Mom?”

“Nora!” I could hear the smile of relief in her voice. “Where are you?”

“At Grandma’s. My key doesn’t…”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. The old locks were sticking, so we changed them.”

A pause settled on the line. I felt a knot of emotion rising up my throat. It had been a long time since I was home.

I swallowed the tears and smiled. “I’ll be home in a few minutes. I just want to walk out and give Red a scratch on the ears.” My mother was silent for a moment. I understood. Red wasn’t there to scratch on the ears. “Or… I’ll just come home now. Where am I staying tonight?”

“With your sister at Grandma’s house. The house is full here. Or it will be later tonight. It’s empty right now.”

“The quiet before the storm.”

I glanced towards the sky, which was clear and darkening to a deep indigo. Though it was December, I didn’t even feel the need for the wool coat laying across my front passenger’s seat. I said, “See you in a few,” and hung up the phone. Standing there in the quiet, the lulling sound of an oilrig echoed between the old farm buildings. It was more muted than I remembered and coming from the southeast. It wasn’t the same one that was here when I left.

I thought about driving to my parents’ house, but it was just a walk down the rutted makeshift road between the wheat field and the hay row. I could see the orange light illuminating the night sky about a half-mile away. Grabbing my coat and wallet, I struck out into the night. The gate rested cockeyed on deep pits and ridges one of the pickups had left as it ventured out to feed the cattle. I stepped around the holes carefully and shimmied through the narrow opening in the gate. It was darker than I had realized. I turned back, second-guessing my decision to walk home, before realizing I had done this a million times as a child.

The night enveloped me like a homemade quilt. It was familiar. It smelled like my childhood. With all immediate light gone, I began to really notice the things I forgot about this place. A sky speckled with a million stars until it changed from black to a muted blue-grey. Thick heads of cattle lowed softly and snuffled as they settled in to wait for daylight. My ears perked at the yip-yip-yip echoing amongst the grassy knolls and barren ravines. A lonely howl from one coyote incited a symphony. Tiny hairs on the back of my arms stood on end and my flesh became stippled with goose bumps. I remembered walking this road with my dad, taking half-dozen steps for every one of his long strides. I didn’t want to be left in the dark, not with so many hungry, gaunt coyotes just waiting for easy prey. Dad said they were more afraid of me than I was of them, but that was hard to believe as a seven-year-old. My quick steps faltered, sending me tumbling to the hard ground, whimpering. Dad stopped, scooped me up, and gave me a piggyback ride the rest of the way home as he sang “Swing Low” in his rich baritone. Now, I hummed a few bars to myself, calming my nerves as I picked up my pace.

I was within a hundred yards of the gate to my parents’ property when I saw a darting canine coming toward me, full speed. My heart leapt into my throat before I realized it was just Bug, the collie. She danced around me, circling and barking until I stopped to pet her head. The sound of a door caused me to look up, and I could see my mother standing in the doorway, just a silhouette in the bright light emanating from inside.

Standing from a crouch, I waved, letting her know it was me. She raised her arm in welcome and walked outside to pull her delicates off of the clothesline.

By the time I got to the front gate, Mom had gone inside and was sitting in her recliner. Dad’s oversized chair sat empty, but it didn’t seem odd, as he rarely got home before nine or ten at night and it was barely seven-thirty.

Settling into his recliner, I thought about the last time I was home. Fresh out of college. Fresh out of ideas. For years I struggled to get beyond the stereotypes I ran into when people found out I grew up on a farm, and I couldn’t imagine surrendering myself to those labels like they were my fate. Just when I thought I had beat them, when I thought all of my fellow collegiate friends saw me as a determined Liberal Arts woman, I realized that roots aren’t that easy to cut off. Even if I could live without them, others couldn’t see me being able to. As I sat there, silently watching TV with my mom, I wondered how I had lived without them so long. While this place felt tight at twenty-three, it was welcoming and safe at twenty-eight. I looked over at my mom and smiled. She smiled back, her eyes weary. A couple months before, my sister had sent me a picture of the entire family. I had been surprised to see how old my parents looked and how big my nieces and nephews had become. Dozens of framed pictures littered the top of the piano, chronicling the years I was absent. One snapshot I had sent of me at the top of a peak in Vancouver was framed by gold filigree along with the rest. It was taken more than two years before.

Mom excused herself to the other room to finish laundry and make the beds. I offered to help, but she just shook her head and told me to rest. My sister was coming soon to pick me up after she returned from town. So, I went out on the front porch and curled up in the old porch swing. I rocked back and forth and let my mind drift back to the last time I left home. The road had calmed me, miles slipping like silk beneath the wheels. Classical music barely audible on the radio and tilled ground flanking either side of steamy asphalt. I drove with no intention to drive: away from the little town that I grew up in, away from my new job, but without anyplace else to go. One by one, I could feel The Fates snipping the strands that shaped the safety net they wove for me within my loving family, in this small town. One by one, the fence posts disappeared until they became a haze of brown flying by on either side.

The wind pushed past the dry honeysuckle vines and curled around my shoulders and arms. I hugged myself, staring absently into the dark. A low rumble of my sister’s pickup and the crunch of gravel broke me from my reverie. Mom poked her head out the door. “You want to eat before you go back over there?”

I shook my head and stood. “No, Liz will have something. Besides, I’m not hungry.”

Mom shivered and retreated to the warmth of the indoors. Stretching, my arms above my head, I watched my sister check two sleepy children in the backseat before closing the door quietly and walking up the front path. I waved one hand lazily while I finished my stretch.

Liz walked up the steps and poked me in the ribs. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“How was the trip?”

“Not bad. Long.” Liz sat down on the swing and rocked gently. I leaned down to touch my toes. The ride had left my joints stiff and sore. “Could have been worse,” I grunted as I placed my hands flat upon the cement porch.

“Yeah.” Liz paused, allowing the coyote howls and wind to dominate the conversation for a moment. “So, how far is it?”

“About ten hours.” Blood rushed from my head as I sat up. A wave of vertigo flooded my senses, causing me to stumble backwards into an empty terra cotta pot. It scooted back with a grainy clang and tottered for a second before finding a new resting place.

“Watch it.”

“Shut up.” I moved to the swing and sat down by my older sister. We pushed the floor beneath us. Swinging silently in the winter night. Two nearly identical faces. Two pairs of shoes, one pair scuffed sneakers and one square-toed black boots. “So, how’s life?”

“Good,” she replied. “We need to go soon… before the kids wake up.”

I nodded and stood. “Just let me go see if Mom needs anything before we go.” I could see in the front window from where I was standing. Mom was carrying a stack of fresh towels in from the utility room. I tapped on the window, causing her to look up, and mouthed “Want me to help?“ Shifting the towels to one arm, she motioned for me to go on. “I guess not.”

Liz stood and sauntered down the stairs ahead of me. “C’mon, Nor.”

I walked down the steps and around the side of the house. “I’ll open the gate so we can just drive through the pasture,” I threw over my shoulder.

“OK.”

The heavy truck door opened and shut, the engine roared to life and lights turned on. The gate was heavier than I remembered. My progress was slow. Within moments, the headlights of Liz’s truck flooded the ground around me and she tapped the horn twice. She leaned out the window as I put my weight into dragging the gate over the dusty ground. “Hurry up, wimp.” I paused my efforts long enough to flip her the bird, then resumed opening the gate. Once I got it open, Liz waved for me to get in the truck.

“What about the gate?” I hollered over the engine.

“Forget it! We’ll get it tomorrow!” As I climbed up into the truck, Liz explained. “No cattle out on the road. We don’t have all night.”

“Hey, that gate is big.” I examined the lines of ruddy rust on my palms and dusted them off on my jeans.

“No bigger than it was last time you saw it,” she retorted, giving me a lopsided grin and wink. “I think you’re just getting soft not living on the farm.”

“Well…” We both chuckled as we bumped over the rough dirt path. At the other end, Liz jumped out and ably dragged the other gate open. I slid over and drove through the opening she’d created. Pulling up to the porch, I shut off the engine. My niece and nephew slept in the back, the youngest snoring softly from his car seat. The oldest sleepily sat up, a red mark from where she had been leaning on the door branding her cheek.

“Hey,” I whispered.

“Mommy?”

“No… hey, we’re home.”

“Mommy?” she whimpered. I could tell she was about to start crying, so I hopped out of the truck. Liz opened the door just in time to hug her sleepy, sniffling six-year-old, Emma. The girl rubbed her eyes and looked at me before looking up at Liz.

“This is your Aunt Nora, sweetie.”

The girl’s pigtails were coming unbraided and her wide eyes signaled her confusion. “You remember Aunt Nora. We talk on the phone with her sometimes?” She blinked, eyes brimming with tears, and buried her face in Liz’s sweatshirt. Liz scooped the girl up and shoved the door shut with her hip. “Nora, can you get Eddie?”

I walked around to the other side and lifted the sleeping infant from the car seat. His little face immediately nuzzled into my neck and his snores resumed. I could feel the vibrations of his breath on my shoulder. Mimicking Liz, I pushed my hip into the door. It swung slowly, barely latching. Liz was standing at the front door. My keys still hung from the doorknob.

“These yours?” she inquired, nodding down at the keys.

“Yeah.” I leaned back into the pickup door a little harder, forcing it the rest of the way shut. “I forgot them earlier.” I walked up the steps and pulled them from the lock, freeing the way for the proper keys.

Once we had the kids in bed, Liz and I made Irish coffee and lit the fireplace. The clock in the hallway chimed nine o’clock. “Wow, that clock still works?”

“Now it does,” Liz responded as she threw a couple pinecones into the crackling hearth. “We had to get it fixed last year. Just stopped running one day. Can you believe it has been in this house since Daddy was a kid?”

I shook my head in disbelief and sipped my drink.

“So, how long are you staying?” Now she curled up in Grandma’s old recliner, tucking her feet under her and wrapping her hands around the blue–speckled mug. Her eyes I could feel searching my expression. And I stared into the flames, unsure how to answer.

I shrugged. I sighed. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“It has been five years, Nora. You didn’t even take anything with you.”

“Speaking of… are my clothes still here? And my stuff?” I sunk down further into the couch and returned her gaze, locking eyes with her for the first time that night.

“Yeah. They’re in the attic. I just threw them all in some of my empty moving boxes once I moved in here. I can’t believe you didn’t even come back for Grandma’s funeral.”

“I was in Vancouver, Liz. I didn’t even know when the funeral was until the day before.”

“Nevermind.” She sighed. “Forget it. I know you were far away. Everyone just really missed you. I mean, the way you just left like that. No word. No call. No nothing. Mom was in a panic. God, I still remember Daddy calling me and I could hear Mom crying in the background…” She trailed off, absently sipping the coffee.

“Sorry,” I offered. Truly I was, for that moment, at least. Then, I wasn’t. For the first time, I had felt truly free. Recklessly, I had ripped the ties that bound my entire life. Where I went, no one had known me. No one had been able to label me as anything but what I presented to them. My life had been whirlwind after I made the fateful decision to leave the high school teaching job I had accepted. I had moved for no reason other than to escape what I feared to be my predestined life. Further and further north over the first two years, finally landing in Vancouver for a while before moving back down the Rockies to Colorado for work. I had written home, telling of my triumphs and failures. I had even sent home extravagant gifts when my job afforded me a raise. But as far as anyone in my everyday life knew, I had no family-only a miasma of friends scattered about the world. I had not even dated after I realized that no one would ever compare to my father.

“Nor?”

I snapped back to the present. “Oh… sorry, I was in my own world.”

“No doubt,” Liz muttered. “Anyhow, I was just saying that all of that is behind us. I… I mean, I just got to deal with all of it when you left. I think everyone was half scared IÕd take off too.”

It was almost too much to listen to how my actions had affected those I loved. And how they eventually just picked up the pieces and made it fine without me. I had missed so much. Grandma’s death. Eddie’s birth. So much. After a few months, life went back to normal. At first, I’d receive emails and phone calls from Liz or Mom, letting me know what was going on with the family. But then it was like they forgot to tell me. For me, it became easier and easier to forget I had a family. A couple times a year, I would open a card with a photograph or newspaper clipping to remind me of my old life, but soon it just felt like I was watching someone else’s family from afar.

“Maybe I’ll stay for awhile. I have some vacation days. I could call in.” My sister smiled. She looked relieved. “That would be nice, Nora. I know Mom would be happy.” Liz stood. “And on that note, I’m going to bed. Danny will be in later tonight, in case you hear the door open after you go to sleep.”

I nodded and gave her a little wave. Sleep sounded nice.

The next morning, I awoke in a panic. My eyes were open, but all I could see was white. I thrashed about, half-thinking I was blind. Rolling to my stomach, I was faced with the horrid visual realization that there were camouflage sheets on the bed, and I wasn’t, in fact, blind at all. I laughed bemusedly, and sat up on the bed. The smells of bacon and homemade biscuits wafted down the hall and into my room.

Stumbling down the hall in my flannel pants and tee shirt, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and tried to ignore the hunger. Danny stood at the stove, frying bacon, while Liz spooned baby cereal into Eddie’s little pursed mouth.

“Morning,” I croaked, and moved to pour myself a cup of coffee.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Danny chirped.

“How did you sleep?” Liz inquired.

“Like I was dead,” I sighed.

The three of us looked at each other, unsure how to respond to my comment. Danny pushed a plate with crisp bacon, a buttered slab of bread, and scrambled eggs into my free hand. I stared down into the steam and shuffled over to the table. “Milk?” he asked, raising a gallon sitting on the countertop.

“Nah, I’m okay with coffee for now.”

Liz pushed the salt and pepper down the table to me and smiled. “So you slept soundly at least.”

“Yeah.” I nodded as I peppered my eggs and took a bite.

The toaster oven dinged behind me, causing me to jump. It was Liz’s toast. She wiped Eddie’s mouth and removed the thick slice of bread from the toaster to a plate. Danny slid two eggs over easy onto the toast and dropped a couple pieces of bacon on the side. Just like Dad. Liz leaned up and kissed Danny’s cheek. “Thanks, honey.”

Breakfast was sprinkled with light conversation about the weather, the teams and the family with a bit of salty talk about the community thrown in for good measure. Turns out I was the only person from my senior class to not marry yet, and would soon be the only one without children. The valedictorian had finally married last spring and had a baby on the way. Danny cleared the table as we talked. Liz cleaned up Eddie, and served Emma a plate when she came in the kitchen about a half-hour later. It was nearly ten a.m. before we left the kitchen.

Liz looked at the clock. “We need to go soon. We’re supposed to be there by noon for lunch.” We all dispersed, rushing to get showers and get ready before Mom had a chance to call and tease us with her normal “Lazy bums!” tirade.

Standing at the dressing table in the spare bedroom, I twisted my hair up into a knot and pinned it into place. It was hard to believe, looking at my reflection, that I was the same girl who had left this place five years prior. Dad had been the only one who really understood that I couldn’t stay. Though Liz felt she’d had to deal with everything by herself, it was Dad who kept Mom from hunting me down and bringing me home that autumn. My tailored, pinstriped suit fell gracefully against my body. I couldn’t help but feel overdressed. No one would have on anything this expensive.

“Knock knock.”

I jumped at Liz’s voice.

“Sorry.”

I smiled. “No worries.” She had on a simple dress that she’d probably gotten on clearance. It looked nice, but reaffirmed my suspicion that this suit was going to stand out like a sore thumb. “You look nice.” So much for blending in back home like I did in my everyday life.

“It’s noon. We’re late.”

“Oh.” I picked up my purse and brushed a stray hair out of my eyes. “Ready.”

“The kids and Danny are already in the truck. You want to ride in the front?”

“Nah, I’ll ride with the kids.”

The fellowship hall of the community church was abustle. The last time I had been inside here was for Dad’s sixtieth birthday party the summer before I left. I remembered my dad smiling politely at well wishers and chatting with other aging farmers about weather and the price of wheat. I had tried to stay out of everyone’s way, but I think I got more attention than Dad that day. Everyone wanted to congratulate me on my graduation, and by the end of the evening, I had a stack of presents from neighbors and family.

Now, everyone looked at me, shocked at my change.

I felt caught in a whirlwind of hugs and old stories, droning voices, hushed whispers and laughter. I was back in a small town. It had always moved so slowly while I was growing up, but that afternoon it felt like I spent the entire time catching up to them. Finally, everything ended.

It was nice outside for mid December. The air was still and cool without biting your nose and cheeks. I stood under the oak tree outside of the church watching two men do their work. Liz walked outside and gave me a “hang in there” smile. I reached for her hand and tears started streaming down our cheeks. Neither of us said anything for the longest time.

We just stood there watching the two men. One turned to us and asked, “Do you ladies want any of these flowers?” He walked over and handed us two yellow roses and several wheat stalks. I slipped my arm around Liz’s waist. As the mahogany casket began lowering, Liz trembled. I turned her away and began walking towards the front gate where the community huddled close, weaving a tight circle around our mother.

Standing on the outside, we observed the true family that had rooted us to this town. We heard their laughter and we shed their tears. It had been nearly two thousand days since I had stood here, and though I had never missed the home I’d left, now I didn’t know if I ever wanted to leave again.

About the Author

Nevada N. Scheffler, a graduate from Oklahoma State University’s English program, is no stranger to being the proverbial tumbleweed in the wind. After graduating college, she moved to the desert to teach ninth grade Humanities for a year before resigning to follow her life-long dream of writing full-time. Nevada has lived in Michigan for the past two years, and is working as a digital advertising copywriter to support her relentless writing habit.

The Seeds by Felicia Sanzary Chernesky

like blood like ink

when bit are bitter-

what did you expect?

tethered wife, you spend

half the cold year

below. reluctant sightseer, you

can’t be held accountable

who cannot be held.

hush your pink mouth—

wait for singing blossoms

About the Author

Felicia Sanzari Chernesky lives in Somerset County, New Jersey, with her husband and their four children. She is a freelance instructor, writer, and editor whose articles and poetry have appeared in a variety of print and online publications, most currently saucyvox.com and the Edison Literary Review (forthcoming). A former managing editor of the scholarly quarterly Academic Questions, Ms. Chernesky holds a degree in American poetry from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently working on a collection of poems entitled Paprika Road.

Communidade by Melissa Lambert

Dr. Seuss may have been a frequent visitor to Nhangau. These marshes are filled with impossible plants and fantastical creatures: ghostly fluorescent trees with fat purple trunks, foot-long striped lizards, perfect lily pads and swaying cattails, pale blue flowers that stand straight out of calm clear ponds, huge intimidating birds with long colorful beaks. Patches of bright green vegetation punctuate the tall undulating grasses, like sudden islands, covered with splayings and climbings and collapsings. Some trees are short and humorous, others shaped like vast dinosaurs, and some have improbably tall trunks that draw your eyes up, up, up, until you are face to face with the Divine. Out among the marshes sit slender white birds. They glide through the grasses like vague phantoms, and then, wings whispering, they slip into the sky and take flight, and are lost in clouds made of their same color.

Nhangau is a small community on the outskirts of Beira, Mozambique. I am here to witness the christening of a new development program, sponsored by a local non-governmental organization, in this poverty-stricken bairro. With some work and luck and blessing, these families will be divided into groups to help each other solve their problems. Where the problem can not be solved without some extra resources, the NGO plans to provide those resources. The idea is better homes, more balanced nutrition, less sickness, more income, more family unity, a clearer sense of community. A quick glance around the village, and it is immediately apparent why these goals are so important. Some of the houses, built out of sticks and mud, are caving in on themselves.

A crowd of people is waiting for us, although we are late. They are almost all women whose ages elude me. In a country where the average life expectancy is 34 years, age can be deceptive. Mothers look like grandmothers; grandmothers like great-grandmothers. There are very few great-grandmothers. From time to time, the youngest mothers look like children themselves. Four-year-old children have infants tied to their backs with long bright pieces of cloth, something that I have yet to learn how to do.

The women seat themselves in the dirt, in this patch of emptiness that is apparently the village square. The few men are standing behind them in a broken concrete structure that was perhaps intended, at one point, to be a house. The NGO’s staff members stand and begin to explain what this new program will do. A girl in the front row is breast-feeding her baby. Another woman is looking out into the marshes. One young woman in the front row is listening with rapt attention, and her face is like something beautiful under a full moon.

At the end of the presentation, the floor is opened for questions and comments. There is a pause where heat and silence hang in the air like fat dragonflies, and finally a woman stands.

I am old. I am a widow. I am poor, she says. And, thus introduced, she begins to tell her story, because it is her own.

One by one the women stand and introduce themselves. One by one they open their mouths and tell stories of poverty, of death, of hunger. So many men are dead, from AIDS or the civil war that raged through Mozambique until 1992. Many of them are caring for children who are not technically theirs but were orphaned by the ravages of AIDS, this disease that is changing Africa, and the planet, forever.

I care for two grandchildren. My husband was killed by bandits thirteen years ago. I have five children of my own, and since my brother died, I have four more. I have a fish-selling business, no husband, and three children to look after. I walked five kilometers to be here. In my village, I have no house.

I am shocked at how many husbands are dead. I feel tired just thinking about how much work these women do. They have no running water or electricity, no telephones, no grocery stores, and no money. And yet, they are not asking for any of those things. After they tell their stories, they invariably offer ideas for personal solutions. One woman would like two goats, to start a little family of milk-producing goats. Another says she would like to breed chickens and sell them. A third woman says if she could get some seeds, she could plant her garden. She smiles when she says this. I look into her face and imagine her, up to her elbows in dark dirt, seeds splayed across her skirt, throwing back her head and laughing.

So tell me, what would you do? Imagine yourself living in an African village near the sea, surrounded by marshlands and rice fields. Your husband is dead, and you are caring for nine children. You did not go to school, so you never learned to read. All around you, people are dying of a mysterious and brutal disease that is sometimes attributed to black magic. How will you eat? Will you plant a garden or fish or hunt for lizards in the tall grass? Who will take care of the harvests, if you can arrange a garden? Who will clean the house, and cook the food over the open flame? How will you keep the fire going? Who will walk a mile every morning to fetch clean water? How will you earn money to buy clothing and other things that can not be hunted down with a spear? How will you pay for your children’s school uniforms and pencils so that they can study? What will you do when your children get sick? Or when you get sick? Who will build the latrine? Who will repair the house when the sticks begin to break apart? What if you have AIDS, too? What if your children have also contracted this death sentence? If you are sick, how will you find the strength to cook and clean and weed and breastfeed?

Even in a home with a man and a woman, the average African woman does an overwhelming amount of work. According to one United Nations publication, women do 95 percent of the domestic work, as well as up to three-quarters of agricultural work, in rural regions of Africa. Their workdays begin before the sun rises, and continue long after the moon has crept out of hiding. Despite the continuing stereotype that a woman’s place is in the home, rural women do far more than keep house. They plant, plough, care for livestock or small animals, harvest crops, weed, ho, process and store crops, sell or trade food items, carry heavy containers of water on their heads, find fuel, and forage for food. Additionally, rural African women often create other small money-making endeavors, such as making soap, weaving, or selling handicrafts.

Often, a woman does all these things with a baby tied to her back, and perhaps one more resting like a quiet bean in her womb.

And when the husband has disappeared, there is even more work for the women. Sometimes the children have to stay home from school to help cook and plant and care for babies. These children will also grow up without learning how to read.

As they tell their stories, the women are often speaking in Sena, a local tribal language that I don’t speak yet, but one Portuguese word keeps appearing: Comunidade. A sentence jumbled with words that I can’t quite make out and then an unexpected moment of clarity, sparkling and pleasantly warm, like a firefly: Comunidade. Comunidade. Community.

One of the workers translates the Sena dialogue into Portuguese for me. Portuguese is the national language of Mozambique, but few people in the villages feel comfortable speaking it. Mozambicans speak a flurry of regional dialects, and I am limited to Portuguese. I ask my translator if there is a word for “community” in Sena. He seems unsure, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. The women are talking about something shining and crucial; language becomes quickly irrelevant.

It seems that progress is being made. Or maybe, in a case like this, it is something more akin to returning to the roots.

At the end of each telling, we clap, together, for the woman who has so courageously opened her mouth and poured herself out in waves. It feels like a group therapy session, or Alcoholics Anonymous, with this rhythmic clapping and choral speaking.

Finally there is a break in the stories. For many seconds, no one stands up. Someone asks, Is there a man who would like to comment?

Nhamala, comes the unhesitating response. The word is almost sung by this impromptu choir of ten women’s voices, vibrating with different tones, harmonious even without a melody.

Nhamala. It is finished.

And so it finishes with the stories of so many women, and no men.

It is time now to make the groups, no small task in an unhurried culture such as this one, in a place that refuses to be rushed. I am on the outskirts watching as the groups are assembled, when a young man in a rusty-looking wheelchair approaches me and asks me what is going on. His legs are spindly, his feet useless, his eyes like two bright stars. I try not to stare, although the temptation alone embarrasses me. Staring is a reflex that is scolded out of us as children but never completely disappears, no matter how many times we are faced with differences. We talk for a moment, small talk, harmless talk, and suddenly he stops and fixes his eyes on mine.

I am full of suffering, he says. I have no family.

I realize, with a start, how much easier it is to hear stories that represent lives from across a courtyard, and to clap with the crowd at the end of their courageous tellings, without looking directly into any eyes. I send the young man a look that I hope he understands is reaching and compassionate, but I can not bring myself to respond.

They have asked me to write down names of group members, and I have agreed. Now I am sitting in a chair, the center in a flowering of clear faces, regretting my willingness. Some of the Portuguese-derived names are simple, to my relief; others sound like they are made up entirely of consonants, or clicks, or a river flowing over stones. A bird could tap out these names with her beak better than I can write them. I have a feeling they will re-take the names after I am done.

By the time I have filled a page with misspelled names, the crowd has dispersed and I am left with a collection of children sitting behind me and on the sides. I turn to one and ask him his name, and he jumps with a start, stumbles backward and trips over the dozens of bare feet extended around him. I laugh, which startles all the children closest to me, so that they trip and stumble in a kind of childlike panic until some are on the ground and others are holding themselves up with their little fingers. I have caused a stampede, which makes me laugh even more, and then the kids join in. Some of them giggle, some whoop, some dance with their knees knocking and legs flailing in every direction.

In the distance, the marshes are barely visible over the tops of several crisp thatched roofs. The sky, though, is always visible. I know Texans are proud of their vast skies; they should pay Dr. Seuss a visit in Nhangau. The sky here is the ceiling of the whole world. The sky here is a blanket woven of dreams and drumbeats, spread with a kind of careful abandon over the tops of tall eternity-bound trees. The long brown grasses brush the clouds, and sway, and seem to dance to the distant rhythm of the breeze. As I watch that place where vegetation meets sky, where earth meets heaven, a white bird emerges like a ghost from the grasses, and seems to float. It catches the wind, like a slip of paper or something made of hope, and rises, and rises.

We are leaving, and the young man in the wheelchair makes his way toward me. I shake his hand and tell him goodbye, then unexpectedly he declares again the same words as before, this time more resolutely: I am full of suffering.

Since we are human, we tell our stories. We tell them sometimes loud and angry, thunder laid down across our eyelids. We tell them sometimes soft and pensive, and the whole universe echoes in the ear of the listener. Since we are human, we tell our stories to anyone who will listen, and sometimes we are asking for help, but more often we are just asking for a heart to open up to us, and want us to come inside.

I am full of suffering, he said, twice.

How much easier it is to hear these words from across a courtyard, when a whole community shares the burden together. How much easier, then, to hear them from across an ocean; with so much sky and distance between, such a burden seems very small, like something an ant could carry on its back.

About the Author

Melissa Lambert works full-time with a child abuse prevention and treatment facility. In her spare time she writes and translates. Spare summers tend to lead back to her college roots in international development work and academic research. This particular essay was born last summer in Mozambique. Her work may also be found in Cezanne’s Carrot, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Right Hand Pointing and Inscape.

The Quest for Jessamine by Eileen Tabios

Stone
The Question is: With what Question do you sculpt the answer:“I write because I cannot paint.”She asks while what she is really considering is: As women lift their veils to reveal kohl-rimmed eyes in Afghanistan, is it the white-petalled jasmine whose sweet, haunting scent you and I now share?

Teacher
What moves the moon to sunder itself? Perhaps the long-haired woman with jade eyes perpetually swooning behind a curtain of lace? She was “licked into being” by men whose unshaven faces she wishes to memorize. But can’t. Still, are memory’s flaws so tragic, I think. She shares a fate with clouds. She sees what is not there: how color bravely dilutes itself: how color paled like a river from a motivation unrelated to compromise.

Touch
Or was it that one hot day? When the sun liquefied into a molten light. We were wading through a river. An eagle loosened a feather. I wore a red silk sari in preparation for Kama Sutra. The water was cool against our ankles. Velvet air scarfed around bared napes. Where the river bended, I knew you would take me away from water. You wanted to be the one to teach me how: within fever, dancers hurl their bodies fearlessly courting the fall. Within fever, there exists no compromise.

Blue Spirit
I admit to many fears, despite the usual impassivity of my face. Lemonade makes me weep—lemonade is a compromise. Once, I sat on a wooden boat watching pilgrims swallow the Ganges. The eyes of the teeming multitudes were all brown, like mine. But it is preferable to recollect their eyes as ebony. Brown maintains no opposite. Unlike black, whose marks always engender consciousness. Say, a story about Idealism that would not exist if it did not unfold through ink mimicking crows feet skimming across a page.

Hut
You live somewhere along my spine. I have begun integral yoga to squeeze you more efficiently from my bone marrow. I fail to see why I should always be waiting for you to reply. Something besides light exists beyond the horizon— something waiting to ravish my avid eyes. Foolish girl, she is suddenly reminded by a raven’s wing floating past the windowpane. Once, his fingers had forked through her hair before he clenched their jasmine scent with his fist. He hooded his dark eyes as he growled, “Always wear your hair loose. Don’t ever compromise.”

Poem to Delacroix
You don’t need to wear saffron robes to believe: gold is consciousness. Not a symbol for. Is the embodiment. Thus, the photographer finds it impossible to capture the alchemical surface of a painting without also portraying his reflection. (Is that the scent of jasmine you and I suddenly share as the storms linger outside?) Had the photographer manipulated the image to delete the shadowy sign of his presence, he would have compromised purity into a false definition of encaustic. While at it, consider the black curve. It can be a perfect circle if you open. If you transgress. If you open. If you

The Cathedral of Silence
If you become the brushstroke instead of looking at the brushstroke, the photographer thinks as he edges over to the other panel, what would vision reveal? I know the virgin who photographed this painting is in the audience today. So I want to tell you, the circle is the edge of my skirt flaring as I twirl. I sculpted my skirt from velvet stained the color of fertile moonstones. If I ever give birth to a girl, I shall name her Jade. Second name: Angelika, the angel who plummeted towards wet jagged boulders in order to own her vision. In the beginning was the Word, Angelika whispered. She taught me with the sweetest of smiles, Sometimes, Compromise unfolds the enlightened path towards a particular fragrance we can recover from memory.

Figure of Eight
Is it the scent of jessamine you and I now share? Once, a silver-haired painter whispered across cyberspace, “I could just rise at dawn one morning, and wearing my Philippine robe walk down to Mother Pacific, pick a few pearls from Botticelli’s unveiled nymph, blow them across to your throat, into your thorax, you who already wear them as breasts and watch the clouds roll into paintings beyond the painter’s brush. Simply licked into being with the morning breeze as our birthless gaze touches the temple of light inside the conch.”

Argent
If the answer is “I write because I cannot paint,” this is not the question to which it replied: As women begin to reveal their eyes in Kabul, is it the yellow-petalled jessamine whose haunting you and I now share? Breathe In/Breathe Out. As if Jackson never suffered. As if blasphemy is impossible. As if you lacked cruelty when you sculpted violets above my wrists. As if I have always wanted to be enslaved by the sun. As if I hold the potential for poems keening to irradiate the sky. As if, as if sunlit cobalt, not storms, linger outside.

About the Author

Eileen Tabios has written 10 books of poetry, as well as a collection of art essays and a book of short stories. She has edited and co-edited five books of poetry, fiction and essays. In 2005, she released the multi-genre collection I Take Thee, English, For My Beloved (Marsh Hawk Press, New YorkБ, which features poems, an experimental novel, an art monograph, a play, and poetics prose. In 2006, she releases a new poetry collection, The Secret Lives of Punctuations, Vol. I (xPressed, Espoo.) She writes the poetics blog ,The Chatelaine’s Poetics, while steering Meritage Press. She is the Poet Laureate for Dutch Henry Winery in St. Helena, CA where, as a budding vintner, she is arduously and long-sufferingly researching the poetry of wine.

Dona Nobis Pacim by Beate Sigriddaughter

“May I go out to play in the ruins?”

More often than not the answer was yes.

I had my favorite spots. A small square of ground wall still standing felt like a house of my own. Another place I loved was the remains of an abandoned garden. Grass and small flowering weeds split through the seams of patterned stones that no longer lay flat and groomed, but buckled up through the hungry force of neglect. A ways down the path was the enchanted core of the garden. There, among shrubs and dandelions trying to take over, huge red petals unfolded into lily-like stars. Nobody would take the time to come with me to tell me their name. I knew irises, though, and the blue layers of larkspur. There was a pear tree, and right behind it a bush of bleeding hearts.

Everything looked normal to me, just the way it was supposed to be. Everything was also astonishing. There was glitter in every stone. Chestnut blossom petals fell like snow on the crumbling walls of a schoolyard when the March wind blew.

Once, for two or three months, the ruins were declared off limits. Two boys had found an object in a hole, which, upon adult examination, turned out to be an unexploded bomb. But how long could you keep a city’s children from playing? After a while the rules were relaxed again, so long as we promised we would stay away from anything unusual in the ruins. Not that we knew exactly how to identify unusual. The entire world was, after all, still extraordinary.

My family, refugees from Eastern Germany, moved to Nuremberg in 1955, when I was four. There were plenty of ruins left to play in for years to come.

Thinking of my dead sister Karin was as normal as it was to play in ruins. Karin had died from war before I was born.

I soon came up with a make-shift legend for myself. I was the consolation prize to my family for my older sister’s death. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been born at all. She died at three months of age during the hurried train trip our mother took with the original three children to escape the Russians.

I was glad they escaped. When the Russians reached Berlin, they did terrible things, especially to women, though for a long time I didn’t know what. Unnamed terror always looms especially large. But the price for safety was my sister. It put me under a great deal of pressure to become the best possible daughter. I tried hard, for I knew that my sister had been very much wanted, and would have probably very much wanted to live. Instead, she was erased by war.

Sometimes my mother still cried, long after I was born in 1951, which was already six years after Karin had died.

I was happy to be alive in such an exciting world, except for the few awkward thoughts. Was it perhaps my fault that my sister had died? So that I could get my chance at life? And if so, what would be the price I would have to pay for my chance?

Karin ended up in a mass grave. “Like Mozart?” I once asked. But, no, his had been a pauper’s grave. Karin’s was a normal war grave, dug in a nearby graveyard after a bomb attack on their train, which happened right around the time Karin died.

My mother wanted Karin’s name to be placed next to hers on her grave stone when she died. This was eventually done.

My mother took on a job working from home, gluing emblems on the front of military hats, yellow and red circle dots on a black diamond background. I liked the sweet smell of the glue. The work didn’t seem too difficult, though it was too hard for me. While my mother worked, we listened to music on the radio together. My mother loved Edith Piaf.

I was confused. I thought the message was that military things, especially German military things, were bad and to be avoided at all cost. Still, I did realize that my family needed the money. My father worked hard, but somehow didn’t make enough.

What I remember from the real war days was by proxy only. Still, when my brother Harald speaks of memories, they feel like my own. They came to be part of me somehow.

Boarding the train to flee was one of his first memories in life. He saw a large billboard with an advertisement for wool. “Must have made a big impression on me,” he said. I can see that. It was February, probably freezing.

During the bomb attack on their train, our mother made him and the younger brother lie face down on the floor of their compartment. “The light was blinding. There were feathers everywhere,” he said. Our mother had covered them with the feather beds she had brought with her.

Harald also stood with his fists pressed over his ears when the Germans blew up a bridge to slow down the advance of the Americans. He pressed until it hurt. If he didn’t, he was told, his ear drums might burst. He didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded horrible.

When the Americans did come, jogging across a field, our mother stuck a bed sheet in the two boys’ hands.

“Wave them. Hold them up,” she cried nervously.

I’ve often tried to imagine her heart. Nobody would hurt children with white sheets in their hands, would they? But of course they would. German men had done so. Other men in other wars had done so, and would mostly likely do so over and over again.

It so happened these particular Americans honored the gesture of surrender.

My mother always spoke highly of the Americans to whom they surrendered, whereas the thought of Russians made her shudder. And it is true, there were no reports of mass rapes by Americans. Just a photo of Patton proudly pissing into the Rhine river.

My family and I lived in the city and didn’t own a car. The City Park was within walking distance, as were the castle, my school, and the central market place.

On Sundays we often took a family trip into the great outdoors, a typical German Sunday afternoon pastime. We would board a tram, change at the railroad station, and proceed to the zoo or to a place called Zeppelinwiese. From there, we could take long walks, sometimes through fields where one old shepherd, dressed in a long dark cloak, still herded his sheep. At other times we climbed to the top of an imposing stone edifice. It looked like a Greek monument.

“No, Roman. It was modeled after monuments in Rome,” my brother Uwe explained. I was proud of him for knowing such things.

Sometimes car race practices took place and we watched from one of the many steps leading up to the top of the monument. However, for the races themselves, one had to pay admission, and we usually only went when things were free. After all, we all agreed that we had all the benefits of noise and excitement during the practice runs.

Grass grew out from between the stones, here, too, and I was especially enchanted with some huge stone bowls at the top of the monument. My father explained that torch bearers would run up there to light huge fires in the night.

“Can we come watch that one night?” I asked. It sounded beautiful.

“No,” he said. “One doesn’t do that anymore.”

Once, years later, my whole family did go there one night to hear Billy Graham and his translators, and to sing rousing songs in praise of God. The nearby Coliseum featured fabulous acoustics and I got to participate in a special church choir practice there once.

When I was eleven years old, I learned that these imposing monuments had been Hitler’s parade grounds. I felt betrayed. Something in my psyche shifted and became dull and withdrawn. How could they have let me enjoy the sun and the grasses among the stones of something evil?

Of course, had they told me anything while I had still played there, chasing yellow brimstone butterflies, I wouldn’t have understood, wouldn’t have known yet what Hitler was. And still I felt that all my games had been wrong and could now not be un-played.

I felt a pain that I thought could never be spoken, explained, or healed. I didn’t want to bring up a subject that might hurt my parents, especially my mother, as I feared it would. So I grew from a sunny chaser of butterflies into a shy, sad, troubled teenager.

I tried to be unobtrusive, or better yet, to disappear. I studied in different countries. I even tried to run away from home once. By the time I was twenty, I had left Germany for good. None of that helped a great deal. I was still who I was.

One day, while I was standing in line to donate blood, someone asked me, because of my married last name, Goldman, and my accent, if I was from Israel. I felt like someone had given me a badge of honor. But of course that didn’t change my reality either.

I did, in the long run, reduce my German accent to mostly “hard to tell where it’s from.”

I never asked my father what his rank was in Nazi Germany, or if he had killed anyone. Not asking, I could carry on with my hope that he had not.

When he, or anyone else, talked about military ranks, in Germany, in the United States, or anywhere at all, I always drew a blank. I declared that this sort of thing only confused me, that I could never sort it out—what stripes meant, and who was above whom in the grand scheme of things. I couldn’t keep it straight. More likely, though, I simply didn’t want to know.

My great mentor in life, Lem Goldman, was also for a long time my father-in-law. Sometimes he told the story of how he signed up for the military, having to lie about his age—he was too young—for the express purpose of going to Europe to kill Germans. He was sent to the Pacific instead. I never dared ask him if he had ever killed, either.

Sometimes I would look into the eyes of strange men I met and wonder silently if they had ever killed anyone when it was prescribed, allowed, legitimized. In actuality, I never had the nerve to ask anyone, and was never quite clear if this was for my own sake or for theirs.

I loved Lem’s stunningly beautiful and piercing eyes. His features made him look like a stereotype patriarchal god, strong nose, strong bones, thick graying hair. He played pranks on Jehovah’s witnesses, whom he disliked, by telling them, “I am Jehovah.”

He loved telling stories to children, whom he liked very much. He often took days off from work to visit schools in his town. His specialty was telling stories in the voice of Cookie Monster. Once, close to Christmas, I went with him. The children, seated in a half circle around us, drew closer around him by the minute, as though drawn by an invisible magnet. I taught them how to hum “Oh Tannenbaum” in German.

Lem told me how full of hatred he had been, and then “along came a Beate.” When he died, the organist at the funeral played, among the traditional hymns, the theme song from Sesame Street. I wished I could have reached for him there and then and asked him, “Would you come out and play with me in the ruins?” Had he been able to, he probably would have replied, “And shall I bring Karin with me?”

Lem’s son, Chris, some years ago received a peace award. Lem would have liked that.

I always thought how lucky I was to have escaped the reality of war in my life, until one day I realized that I hadn’t escaped at all. War is in my genes, in my memory, and in my sadness. Children of war and of warriors are never born in innocence. We are born with the legacy of bloodshed in every breath we take, with guilt and shame mixed in our blood, and endless cries for mercy and for peace, heard and unheard, in our genes.

Sometimes I stop in a mall, in the post office, in the park, in a playground, in streets where grass grows through the cracks of cement, just to look at the busy faces around me of so many children of war, busy with the beauty of their lives.

Dona Nobis Pacem. Give us peace.

About the Author

Beate Sigriddaughter was born and raised in Germany. She came to the United States in her teens and graduated from Georgetown University. She now divides her time between Denver and Vancouver. She has published a book of poems, as well as short fiction, poetry and essays in a variety of literary and trade magazines and ezines. Two of her stories published in Moondance in 2004 received nominations for a Pushcart Prize. Recently she has completed a pro-peace novel, entitled “Parcival,” which looks at women’s experiences in and around war. Further information is available online at www.sigriddaughter.com.

Lady Brave by Swahdi R.T.

A cracked ceramic cup
of quickly cooling coffee
on a dirty, tiled tabletop
in need of a good wipe
sat next to a small purse
— 20 dollars and a pamphlet—
of one who sat alone,
in this grim, low-budget shop,

as outside, the rain kept coming,
like the waves of vague depression,
sliding down the windows
as if desperate to get in;
And she sat there, frail woman,
‘midst bits of ripped up kleenex
with her head held in one hand
and an ache that would not leave.

She was not so much a woman
as a girl too quickly growing,
with a youthful face,
weary and weathered down by tears.
No place to go, no money,
no love but that she had,
and a burden, far too heavy,
no girl should have to hold.

And she seemed alone, but wasn’t,
for the test showed positive,
and inside her, every second,
a little life evolved.
With a jackass of a father,
and no knowledge of the strength
his mother dear kept hidden,
the little life grew on.

So she sighed and sipped her coffee
from the cracked, ceramic cup,
and stood up with a deep breath
and fire in her eyes.
And she left the shop a fighter,
a survivor,
Lady Brave!
Abandoned, but a woman
with an unborn, baby child.

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