Progenitor 2010 - Arapahoe Community College

Progenitor 2010
Art & Literary Magazine
Volume XLVI
Arapahoe Community College
Littleton, Colorado
Staff & Acknowledgments
Progenitor Staff
Editor
Assistant Editor
Assistant Editor
Literary Director
Literary Assistant
Art Director
Managing Editor
Graphic Designer
Advisor
Cheryl Leung
Anthony Cox
Hayden Raven Hathaway
Dee Duerksen
Haley Livermore
Matt Fjelsted
Jeremy Livermore
Mary Heinritz
Chris Ransick
Acknowledgments
Smoke Art
Graphic Design
Art & Design Assistance
Advertising
ACC Writers Studio
Nick Burrusch
Aileen Gaumond
Thomas Lin
Kasha Michalska
Romancing the Bean
Starbucks
Arapahoe Avenue
Dr. Kathryn Winograd
Many thanks also to all those who submitted their stories, poetry and art to the 2010 Progenitor.
i
Contents: Art
Clare
1
Joan Lee
A Night in Venice
6
R. J. Mariano
The Chef
9
Joan Lee
Leaving Hope
21
Jonathan Reyes
They Live
25
Addie Johnson
Athena
30
Cilla Englert
Doumo
35
R. J. Mariano
Nude
41
Joan Lee
Composition N1
46
Olga Esquibel
Reclining Model Jen
57
Bob Barr
Contemplator
60
Joan Lee
Sun Over Kansas
63
Aileen Gaumond
Contents: Literature
Jack’s Dad
2
Peppered Molasses
12
Ellen Schroeder Mackey
Inner Light
13
Linda Lay
Pessimism & Optimism
16
Leah Hill
Uninvited Guests
17
Courtney James
Fried
24
Ellen Schroeder Mackey
Going to Seed
26
Ginny Hoyle
Pigeon Toes
27
Margie Warsavage
Murdering the Innocents
32
Sophia Baldwin
Ninety-eight Degrees
33
Lynn Wagner
Immortality
37
Rachelle Hubbell
After the Bullet Rain
38
Chadijah Siregar
Ronald L. Lloyd
Sandbox Dreams
49
Evan Salvador
The Last Shot
52
Rowena Alegría
iv
“Dad! Hey, Dad! Dad? You in there?. . .Dad?”
I could hear Jack hollering at the kitchen door.
He was coming by to check up on me. I’d had
chemo the day before, and Christ, talk about
the cure being worse than the cause, the cancer.
He had driven me through chilly fall rain over
to Des Moines for my third session, and hung
around until I told him to get the hell out of
there since there wasn’t anything he could do
while I was hooked up to the dripping poison.
That’s really what it is, you know. Poison. It’s
supposed to kill the cancer cells, or at least slow
them down. Unfortunately, it does bad things to
everything else, too.
I debated whether to bother with the whole
damn thing. I’m over seventy and pretty near
useless anyway. Finally, I went to the doc, who
comes to North Fork on Tuesday, to get some
pills for what I thought was just one of those flus
that comes in from Asia with the birds. So he says
he wants me to have some tests. That is always a
bad sign. I have never needed to go to a doctor,
except when I broke something on the job, or got
cut bad enough to need stitches.
Jack had come back smelling a little beery after
the four hours I was connected to the poison
machine. We had made the forty-mile drive
back to North Fork mostly in silence. We each
smoked a couple of cigarettes. Another couple of
smokes weren’t going to make any difference to
my health. The damage had been done already.
Jack had given them up a few times, but usually
Facing Page:
got back into the habit after one of his divorces.
He dropped me off at the house, wanting to
know if I wanted to go down to the Corner Tap
or Dusty’s Café for some supper, instead. “No
thanks, son,” I’d answered. “I think my own
company is all I can stand tonight.”
I was lying on the linoleum floor in the bathroom, had been since about 3:00 a.m. It was
daylight by then, just what time, I wasn’t sure.
I’d had to pee. I made my way into the bathroom
and just fainted dead away, like a woman, right
in the middle of relieving myself. I must have
slid down around the stool in a heap, in about
half the puddle that hadn’t made it where it was
supposed to go. When I woke up, I couldn’t
move much, except to shiver. I had not been like
this on a bathroom floor since I was a kid, after
too much beer. I tried to get up, but I was just
too damn weak. I was about to get part of that
old, pink, chenille rug pulled over me, and then I
must have passed out again.
Ronald L. Lloyd
Jack’s Dad
I lost the wife, Marylou, about five years ago. She
was lucky, like in Kenny Roger’s The Gambler
song, “the best that you can hope for is to die
in your sleep.” She had an aneurism that just
decided to pop during the night.
I’d got up to get ready to go to work—I was
about ready to retire—and after I shaved, I went
back in to say goodbye, and she hadn’t moved.
I just sat there with her for a while and cried.
There wasn’t much use to be in a hurry to call for
the Emergency Medical Technicians.
Clare by Joan Lee
Ink Wash
18” x 24”
2
Jack’s Dad
She was already cool to the touch. She had been
a good old girl. We had never had much, but we
got along pretty well, once we learned to tolerate
those little things in each other that weren’t likely
to change.
I had always wanted to farm, as dumb as that
may seem. There was just something about hitching up a tractor to a plow or disk, tearing up the
ground, and then getting something to grow. So,
after I got back from Korea and we got married, I
worked around as a hired man for different farmers for a while. Finally, I rented the old Wilson
place north of North Fork. There was a forty
with a decent shallow well, a run-down house,
and equally run-down barn and out-buildings.
None had seen paint in some time. The farm
had a lay-down eighty-acre piece which was all
tillable, although Old Man Wilson had farmed
the crap out of it before he quit, just wore it out.
I borrowed $2,500 from Myron at the North
Fork State Bank, bought a used Farmall “H” tractor and a three-bottom plow, found a disk and
a harrow at a farm sale that winter, and I was in
business.
Well, you know how it is. I was bull-headed.
I kept struggling along, trying to guess when
to buy a few head of feeder calves to feed corn
to, or breed some old sows, thinking the hog
market would be good next year, and driving the
township gravel truck to tide me over until I sold
something. I would hope it would rain because it
was too dry, or wouldn’t rain if there was hay on
the ground, or wouldn’t hail because I couldn’t
afford the insurance that year.
We had our first son, Bob, in ’55, and Jack in
’57. Marylou had “female problems,” so after
Jack was born, the doc said she couldn’t have
3
any more kids and that was that, as far as family
was concerned. That was all right, I guess. We
couldn’t have afforded any more, anyway.
Marylou waited tables at Dusty’s Café on Main
Street, and that helped a lot. We hung in there
on the farm until ’67. The Wilson kids, who had
inherited the place and had moved away to bigger
and better things in the city, finally decided to
sell the land out from under us. But, it was their
land. They could do as they pleased with it, and
we couldn’t afford it.
We had a farm sale for the equipment and the
assorted junk we had accumulated over the
years. It was a miserable January day with the
machinery all lined up in the barnyard, and tools
and junk on hayracks as usual. All the neighbors
stood around in their earflap caps, shitty coveralls, and insulated boots, smoking cigarettes
and pipes of Velvet, nodding their heads when
they wanted to bid on something. The wind
was blowing out of the north about fifteen miles
an hour, so most folks stayed in the corner of
the machine shed. The Ladies Aid Society from
our church had set up a lunch stand there with
sloppy joes, home-made pie, and coffee for sale.
It was a tough day. Regardless of all the forces out
there beyond our control, I still felt like a huge
failure. I think the boys, being twelve and fourteen, could sense how Marylou and I felt.
We had to find a place to live. There was this
little house on the east edge of North Fork along
the old highway. It was one of those tiny, cheap
prefab deals popular after the war in the ’40s,
ordered through the lumberyard and shipped out
in pieces. It was just a matter of digging a hole,
slapping in a cement block foundation wall, and
nailing the walls together. We had enough cash
Jack’s Dad
after selling the farm implements for a little down
payment. I talked to Myron down at the bank,
who appreciated the fact that I always paid back
my operating loans during the ten years of farming. I had a line on a couple of jobs, one of which
came together.
Shortly, we were the proud owners of a house in
town and the mortgage that comes along with it.
It had two bedrooms the size of closets in new
houses nowadays, a living room with space for a
small dining table in one end, and a kitchen. It
did have running water, with a toilet and shower
in the basement, which was better than the places
either Marylou or I had lived in as kids. A few
years ago, we popped a little addition out the
back for a real bathroom and a laundry room. We
were used to small, so we didn’t make those very
big either.
I was hoping Jack would get his butt in the house
pretty quick. I was getting stiff as a corpse, and
even though I was probably going to be one soon
enough, I wanted to get warmed up again first.
Things were kind of blurry. I tried to holler back
at Jack, but I couldn’t. I could move one arm a
little, but that was all. I had quit shivering, and
finally figured out I’d had a stroke, on top of the
cancer.
“Jesus, Dad! What’s wrong?”
I would have responded if I’d been able, but Jack
had finally found me. The tricky part was getting
my useless legs pushed out of the way of the door
in that damned puny bathroom, and then him
squeezing through the door without stepping on
me. I raised the one arm that worked a little, but
it fell back behind me on the wad of bathrobe
and chenille rug.
He finally got in, and lifted me to a sitting position, propped against the wall like a doll. I had
got down to about 135 pounds, which isn’t much
for 5’10”, so it wasn’t too tough. I hadn’t realized
it before, but my bowels must have relaxed, too,
and I had messed myself besides having lain in a
pool of urine for about five hours.
“Dad, talk to me. What happened?” He squinted
at me like he was nearsighted, but didn’t comment about the smell that must have been a little
repulsive.
I tried to say that it didn’t much matter what
happened, but all I could feel was my lower lip
sort of twitching and pulling sideways to the left,
and some drool slipping out and down my chin.
“We got to get you out of here. I’ll get you to the
bed and call the ambulance.”
That made sense to me, although I couldn’t say
so. Jack was still pretty strong for someone near
fifty, having not backed up from the trough
much lately, and not having a physical job. He
reached under my armpits and pulled me up on
the stool. He kicked the door all the way open
and dragged me like a sack into the bedroom.
It was closer to each other than we had been in
years. He let me down gently onto the bed and
threw some covers over me.
“I’ll be right back.” We only had one phone, and
it was in the kitchen. I could hear the clack of the
phone buttons being pushed.
“Margie, it’s Jack. My dad’s had a spell. I need
the ambulance out here at his place.” There were
a few seconds of silence, then, “You’ve got to be
kidding!”
4
Jack’s Dad
A few more seconds of silence, and then the crash
of the receiver. I’ve always been impressed with
the durability of phones. They hold up better
than a ball­-peen hammer.
“There’s been a wreck down on the interstate,
and they’re already hauling a guy to Des Moines.”
I figured he would come up with a plan. I wasn’t
in any pain; I just couldn’t move anything except
my left arm a little, and the left side of my face
could grimace. At least, that’s the way it felt.
“You just hang on. I’ll have to haul you to the
hospital myself.” He stormed out of the room,
down the hall, and out the kitchen door. I could
hear the screen door slap shut.
Jack had a big old rusted-out boat of a Mercury
that I could hear him cranking up. The muffler
was shot, so I could tell that he was pulling it up
on the grass, close to the door.
The spring on the screen door screeched, and
Jack came huffing into the bedroom. He made
a mummy out of me with the bedclothes and
hoisted me up on his shoulder. Somehow, he
got me down the hall and through the kitchen
without banging my head against the wall. The
old Merc had bucket seats, and he had reclined
the passenger side partway.
“I’m going to throw you in up here with me, so I
can keep an eye on you.”
Yesterday’s rain had turned to snow overnight. A
couple of inches had accumulated. It was of the
fine sand variety, stinging any bare skin exposed
to the north wind.
He slipped the transmission into reverse and spun
back off the snow-covered grass onto the gravel,
pulled it down into drive, and commenced to dig
5
a couple of holes in the driveway before pulling
onto the old highway heading west into town. He
had driven like that ever since he was fourteen.
I could just see the naked tree limbs in the front
yards of the mix of houses along Main Street, and
then the tops of the commercial buildings as we
got downtown. We flew by the feed store, Dusty’s
Café, the long-closed dime store, and I could just
see the top of the bank building, now renovated
into the Corner Tap. If anybody was looking, I
expect they wondered what the hell Jack was up
to, doing forty-five down Main in the snow, with
a mummy in the front seat.
“Screw it,” Jack hissed.
I could see the bright, red lens of the old‑
fashioned overhead traffic light flash by as we
took a hard left through the town’s main intersection. We were subject to a fifty-dollar fine already,
I thought, as the left corner of my mouth moved
up slightly, trying to smile. Jack had not bothered
about cinching me in with a seatbelt. There was
nothing I could do to keep from pitching over
against the door as we slid into the turn. I rolled
back abruptly as we headed south. The old fourbarrel carburetor moaned, sucking air as Jack
tromped the accelerator.
“Dad, remember that day when old Dewey had
me and Billy Anderson pulled over here for dragging from the stoplight after school?”
I remembered. Dewey was about sixty at the
time, and kind of an oversized Barney Fife. The
high school, an old brick pile situated just north
of the intersection, closed not long after Jack
graduated. Dewey usually parked along a side
street where he was visible in his cherry-top black
sedan. That day, he was just coming into position
A Night in Venice
R. J. Mariano
Digital Photograph
6
Jack’s Dad
as the light changed. Neither Jack nor Billy could
see him, so they peeled out side by side on the
green light, heading south out of town. Jack told
me Dewey didn’t even have time to stop. He just
turned south after them and lit up his cherries.
I happened to be coming north from my shift at
Magic Plastics on down along I-80, just as he got
them shut down. Jack wanted to disappear, but
I just drove by, smiled, and waved. It looked like
Dewey had things under control. Like I said, Jack
had driven that way forever. That episode cost
him fifty bucks, and he'd regularly contributed to
city, county, and state coffers ever since.
Two minutes later, we were at the interstate.
I couldn’t see out well enough to tell how many
cars were at the Antique Mall, formerly the
Magic Plastics building. Both Jack and I had
worked there when it was a going concern.
“I wonder how that old sonofabitch, Wendell, is
doing,” Jack muttered.
I supposed he was doing all right. Wendell
had started Magic Plastics with some inheritance money, and built it into a good business.
Eventually, he and his secretary had run off to
one of those resort places in Mexico, after he
had secretly sold the business. The new owners
couldn’t make it go, and it folded in a couple
of years. A bunch of us were left without work.
Wendell is probably down there sitting on a
beach sipping margaritas. I didn’t feel as strongly
as Jack about old Wendell. There were times
when I had wished I had the money and guts
to run away to Mexico. Or even that much
imagination.
Jack slowed down the Mercury enough to make
the entrance ramp onto eastbound I-80, and
then he tromped it again as he hunched up over
the steering wheel. We fishtailed a bit, but he
7
Jack’s Dad
straightened it out. It is a good thing for Jack that
your smelling sense kind of shuts down if the
source of the odor doesn’t go away. I imagined
the car smelled like the county nursing home,
where I did not intend to go. But then, I realized
if I didn’t get unparalyzed, I might not have anything to say about it.
Jack pushed the heater control to the max position, and turned the fan on high. I couldn’t feel
it, except on the left side of my face.
“Have you talked to Bob this week?” He looked
over at me, and then must have realized there
would be no response. Or maybe he thought it
was like keeping someone from going into shock:
you keep talking to them and trying to get them
to respond and stay awake. That was from the
first- aid classes we had taken while at Magic
Plastics. I tried to say something, but just drooled
a bit more.
I suppose my state of being was a little like
when people talk about near-death experiences.
You’re up there, looking down at what's going on
around you. What I saw was this fifty-year-old
guy going to seed, hauling his old man to the
hospital, wondering if the old fart was going to
make it. And I wondered, if I didn’t, would he
pull off at the next exit and just sit there for a
while, like I did when his mother died?
Bob was an escapee, I guess you’d say. He had
gotten out of North Fork. You never know why
some people succeed, whether it’s a teacher or
preacher, or just how things around them affect
them somehow. Maybe Jack didn’t get too far
because Bob was a tough act to follow. Bob was
Mr. Straight Arrow, a star in all the sports they
had at North Fork High: football, basketball,
and track. He was also the salutatorian of his
class. He got a scholarship to Dubuque, where
he played some sports, got good grades, and
decided to continue at the seminary after he
got his bachelor’s degree. Lord knows, we didn’t
have any money to help him. Marylou probably encouraged him more than I did. We never
liked anybody being uppity, which, to me, meant
being a working stiff was good enough as long as
you were honest and worked hard. But, I guess
Marylou thought that as long as you didn’t forget
where you came from, getting ahead a little was
okay, too.
We were slipping a little going up the hills in
the snow. It was one of those trips where your
rear end puckers up. But I couldn’t even tell if I
was puckered. I was afraid Jack would need the
hospital, too, if the car swapped ends, slid down
one of those steep embankments, and rolled over.
The Department of Transportation trucks had
been out. You could see the little snow windrows
on the edge of the highway, but the snow was
staying ahead of them. I could just see out across
the rolling, terraced corn fields about a quartermile. I always marveled at the money it must
have cost to move all that dirt for the terraces
so the good soil wouldn’t wash down the creek.
When I farmed, you just worried about the rows
looking real straight, regardless whether they
went straight up and down the hills.
“I saw Kelly at the Corner Tap yesterday after we
got back. She said Annie and Marty, a boy Annie
met at school, are going to have a kid.”
Kelly was Jack’s first wife, his high school
sweetheart. He got her pregnant, of course. He
could always manage to do that. Annie was their
daughter’s daughter, our great-granddaughter,
eighteen years old, I think she is. I wanted to tell
him they were too young. But I’m sure he knew
that by now. Kelly and Jack’s marriage had not
8
The Chef
Joan Lee
Pastel
18" x 24"
9
Jack’s Dad
lasted more than a couple of years. They had to
get married that summer after high school. Their
little girl came along in January.
Kelly had gotten fat while she was pregnant and
stayed that way like many women do. Jack just
wasn’t ready to be tied down. His mom and
I tried to get him to hang in there with Kelly
and the girl, who they named Lorna, but that
wasn’t enough. You think you’ve raised a kid
to be responsible, but with Jack, it didn’t take
soon enough. It looked to be something that got
passed down, no matter what you did.
Kelly finally got fed up with Jack being out hootowling every night and got a lawyer. Kelly was
a tough woman. Whenever Jack was behind on
child support, she would go down to the Corner
Tap with Lorna in her arms and confront him
right in the tavern in front of God and everybody
and chew him out royally. He would then cough
up the money he owed her.
“Annie and Marty are living together in Ames.
He’s a sophomore at ISU, and Annie just started
last fall.”
I flat couldn’t believe little Annie was pregnant.
This was going to make four generations of
too-early babies. I wondered if they would get
married. Regardless, it meant I would be a greatgreat-grandfather. At least I wouldn’t have to
worry about being in one of those five-generation
group pictures you see in the local papers. I knew
I probably wasn’t lasting another nine-months.
That situation was interesting enough, but to me
it meant the great-great grand-person was really
old, and too many people had gotten married
way too soon.
I must have gone unconscious for a while. Then,
I heard through the rumble of the Mercury’s
muffler and the fog in my brain, “I really miss
Mom, you know. I never knew anybody who
worked harder than she did.”
He was right about that, for sure. I always
worked at my job hard enough, but when I got
off, I liked to have a beer and take it easy. She had
always had one full-time job and something else
going besides. She had a garden every summer.
She canned and froze vegetables from the garden,
along with fruit from the trees that she made me
plant right after we moved into the little house
on the edge of town. I’d spade up the garden plot
for her, but after struggling and not making it
farming after years of trying, I just couldn’t get
into being a garden-and-yard man.
She put up a sign along the road in front of the
house to sell the extras. Not just a white board
with “Corn” or “Beans” slapped on with a twoinch brush, but she went down to the hardware
store (we still had one then) and bought a stencil
set and lettered up a real nice sign. Then, one
spring she got me to build a fancy vegetable stand
right by the driveway. When she had to go into
work at Dusty’s Café for the supper shift, she
would leave out the produce and a gallon pickle
jar with a slot cut in the top for money. The
honor system. You sure as hell couldn’t do that
nowadays; the meth heads would scrape out every
last penny. Part of the time, I would be working
second shift at Magic Plastics, or just having a
cold one down at the Corner Tap.
“I know I disappointed you and Mom. I know
I should have kept my pecker in my pants and
gone on to school,” Jack said as he looked toward
me again.
10
Jack’s Dad
We had to be getting close to Des Moines, but I
couldn’t read the signs. The wind had picked up
again and plastered the signs with snow. We had
never talked much, me and Jack. To me, it was
all right if he just got a job, got married, and
raised a family. He thought he and I didn’t say
much to each other. Hell, my old man did most
of his talking to us kids with the back of his
hand, or with his belt.
Finally, the snow let up a little, and I could see
some of the high-rise apartments and office
buildings off to the south of the highway. I could
see we were passing under I-35, which comes
up from Kansas City and joins I-80 on the west
side of town. The snow was swirling up under
the concrete of the overpass. There’s an off-ramp
from I-35 for those wanting to head east into
downtown Des Moines.
“I know I should have stayed married. I just
diddled around and got by, and stayed in North
Fork. I know you told folks I didn’t have any
ambition like Bob had.” Yes, he should have
stayed married, but it was fine if he stayed in
North Fork.
“Oh, shit! What is that idiot trying to do?”
There had been work at Magic Plastics, and
elsewhere, when they shut down, if you could
stand a cut in pay. No, I don’t think I ever said
he didn’t have as much ambition as Bob. I think
he just built it up in his own mind when I would
say something positive about Bob. I had realized
pretty early that Bob was Bob, and Jack was Jack.
We were going through a hilly stretch. Jack
had tucked in behind a Walmart semi; I could
barely see the top of the W. It was batting right
along, and Jack must have decided he would let
the Wally driver run into whatever was in front
hiding in the snow, which was getting heavier. I
could hear and then see another semi coming up
alongside us. We rolled and slid along like that
for a while. I was never comfortable being boxed
in like we were.
11
I couldn’t see the car coming on the ramp from
the south. But I did feel and hear the sickening
bump of two cars in the same space at the same
time. In my mummy wrap, I rolled toward the
door and banged my head on the window. I felt
the Mercury start to spin around like a slowmotion carnival ride. Jack was furiously cussing
and working the steering wheel, but we were
out of control. We slid off into the slight ditch
beyond the entrance ramp and on across the
lumpy, snow-covered grass.
As we came to a stop, we were all jumbled up
with Jack falling over me. The car was still
upright. He grabbed the steering wheel and
pulled himself back into his seat.
“Dad! Dad! Are you alright? Dad! I love you!”
I could just barely feel the tear sliding down my
left cheek.
She beat molasses spiked with pepper dust
And cracked the eggs against the smooth glass bowl.
A biting, ruthless line of Pfeffernuesse
The nut-brown discs lay splayed on spicy souls.
She rolled exotic anise, star-infused
White licorice pillows stamped with square reliefs.
Smart Springerle, brick-baked, soon stand accused
Tooth-breaker, hard on hard, each bird and leaf.
He tapped the granite cookie on the plate.
"Why's everything you bake so hard and dry?"
He gnawed the concrete-cornered sweet, his fate.
"My mother used to make these tenderly."
"As soft and bland as applesauce, what pap!
No spine," she crunched as eyes of ginger snapped.
Ellen Schroeder Mackey
Peppered Molasses
12
Linda Lay
Inner Light
When darkness tries to overwhelm my soul
As gray of skies prevents the yellow sun,
I find a way to make the scattered whole
By giving in to laughter and some fun.
I cannot change the dreary light of day,
Or make the seasons bend to my command,
But in my mind I choose to make a way
To work with mental powers or with hand.
’Tis much more pleasant to give rise to hope
Than let the fickle sun decide for me.
Besides, it gives a broader, vaster scope
And opens varied opportunity.
While snow or rain may dim the sun’s fine power,
I live in light each minute and each hour.
13
Optimism
Selfless love exists
It’s stupid for anyone to think that
They are all on their own
Everyone will feel that
We look out for one another
One can never claim that
Death by suicide will be normal
In the future
I will love, and be loved
I cannot imagine that
Thirty years from now only lust, not love, will exist
Sociologists say that
This is a selfish society
But this hasn’t been what I’ve experienced
People have said that they love you
Ever since childhood
Allow me to elaborate
Love
Is what you find when you expect
Solitude
I am right, because
Pessimists know that
They don’t matter
In the future, I’ll tell people that
“You can never belong”
Is a lie, and
“You are never alone”
You may not have realized this, however
You may not have realized this, however
“You are never alone”
Is a lie, and
“You can never belong”
In the future, I’ll tell people that
They don’t matter
Pessimists know that
I am right, because
Solitude
Is what you find when you expect
Love
Allow me to elaborate
Ever since childhood
People have said that they love you
But this hasn’t been what I’ve experienced
This is a selfish society
Sociologists say that
Thirty years from now only lust, not love, will exist
I cannot imagine that
I will love, and be loved
In the future
Death by suicide will be normal
One can never claim that
We look out for one another
Everyone will feel that
They are all on their own
It’s stupid for anyone to think that
Selfish love exists
&
Leah Hill
Pessimism
16
Courtney James
Uninvited Guests
“Sounds like she was a prissy-foot, doesn’t it?”
the woman whispered in a conspiratorial tone to
Mildred.
She leaned over and whispered in the other
woman’s ear. “Fine, you got me. I have no idea
who this woman is; how did you guess?”
Mildred’s eyes widened slightly and she looked at
the woman next to her in the pew. “Well, I don’t
think they are exactly doing Vivian justice, is that
what you mean?”
“Ha!” The woman let out a little spurt of
triumph that was a touch too loud for her surroundings. She looked around to make sure
that she had not attracted anyone’s notice, then
turned back to Mildred and hissed, “Because this
is the third one of these things that I’ve seen you
at, that’s why, and there isn’t a connection among
any of these dead people that I can think of. And
it’s not exactly like they’ve all been on the same
side of town or anything.”
The woman frowned and leaned away from
Mildred slightly, as if she was far-sighted
and trying to bring her into focus. “I would
have sworn. . .” she leaned in closer, her gaudy
red lipstick and painted-on eyebrows causing
Mildred’s stomach to shift slightly. “You didn’t
know her either, did you?”
“Of course I knew her!” Mildred retorted, fidgeting uncomfortably. “Why else would you come
to one of these things?”
“Well, I didn’t know her. I just like memorial services, that’s all. I come to them all the time. You
just don't look like you belong here either. Sorry.”
She turned away from Mildred huffily.
Their mutual silence resumed as a mousey little
man of about forty took the pulpit for the next
eulogy. Mildred was feeling increasingly ashamed
of herself. She took a breath as though she were
about to speak, but then thought better of it.
“Well, I’m not sure what more I can add about
Vivian,” the little man was saying, “Everyone else
has pretty much summed it up. Vivian had a lot
of influence in all of our lives, and it will be interesting to see how we, er…get along without her.
So, without further ado, I’ll let Father Marcus
lead the closing prayer.”
As he fled the pulpit, Mildred was compelled by
a spurt of honesty that she would instantly regret.
17
Mildred sat back and looked straight ahead of
her, aghast. Ever since she’d adopted this hobby,
she’d been careful not to be found out. It not
only infuriated her that she had been discovered
by someone who was doing the same thing, it
infuriated her that anyone else was doing it at all.
She glanced at her companion a time or two
before she finally responded a little nastily, “What
do you think you are doing, taking advantage of
these grieving people’s hospitality?”
The woman let out a shriek of indignation,
causing a bald man in front of them to turn
around. Mildred quickly shoved her hanky in the
woman’s face and murmured reassuringly to the
man, “I think I’d better take her out of here for a
few minutes, it’s just too much, poor thing.” She
took the woman who, by this time, was sobbing a
little too obligingly, by the arm and firmly led her
out of the church.
As soon as the door shut behind them, the
woman pocketed the handkerchief. “Now if
that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black! Taking
advantage of their hospitality, indeed. Hmph.”
Uninvited Guests
She turned towards the sidewalk and gestured.
“It’s such a lovely day, shall we go have some
lemonade? I saw an adorable little café just down
the street. By the way, what’s your name? I’m
Frances.” She thrust out her hand with something of the air of a little puppy-dog that was just
dying for attention—albeit a pudgy, middle-aged
puppy-dog with painted-on eyebrows.
Mildred drew back almost involuntarily, clutching her purse to her chest to avoid shaking the
woman’s hand. Mildred couldn’t think how to
extricate herself from this situation. “No!” she
finally exclaimed.
“What?”
“Everything!” Mildred gestured expansively.
“I don’t want to tell you my name, I don’t have to
have lemonade with you, and I don’t want to see
you ever again, do you understand?”
Frances looked at her in shock, her painted
eyebrows raised high. After a moment, she said,
“Good grief!” and stalked off, clutching her large
white purse.
Mildred reached home in a state of excitability.
It wounded her pride that anyone beside herself
should make a hobby out of attending memorial
services. It was a sophisticated hobby. Not just
anybody would appreciate, or even understand,
such a hobby. To find someone with such bad
taste stealing in on her pastime was distasteful
and offensive, in the extreme. Not to mention
the fact that Frances had unsettled her enough to
make her lose her cool, something that Mildred
was careful not to do too often.
As she parked her green Buick in her driveway
and pushed the car door open, she already had
determined to put the incident out of her mind.
It was the only thing she could do. After all,
perhaps she had misunderstood the woman.
Maybe she didn’t attend memorials as a hobby,
maybe she had known all the people at whose
memorials she had seen Mildred.
But it was doubtful she would have thought much
more about Frances, even if she'd wanted to. As
soon as she walked in the house, she could see the
red light flashing on her answering machine. She
hit the play button and went to hang up her coat.
Immediately, she was confronted by her sisterin-law’s hysterical voice saying that something
had happened to Richard, Mildred’s brother. It
sounded like he’d had a heart attack.
Almost two weeks later, Mildred was in a funeral
home, standing at the front of the room, just off
to the side from the table that held a portrait of
her brother and the urn that contained his ashes.
She felt faintly nauseous from the scent of too
many cut flowers, or maybe from listening to
the condolences of well-wishers as she held her
place in the reception line. She pulled her mind
back to the person that was speaking to her, the
woman who had lived across the street from her
brother.
“He was washing his car, you know,” the neighbor was saying. “When he first fell, I thought
maybe he had slipped in the soap or something,
though I did think he kind of acted funny just
before that. Then I realized he was clutching his
chest, and my word, I was just scared out of my
wits. I never saw anybody have a heart attack
before, and I wasn’t sure if I should go over there
to him or call 911. I just didn’t know what to do!
Finally, Stanley came in the room and said—”
Not really wanting to hear this again, Mildred
looked past the neighbor’s shoulder and saw a
flash of garish red hair. She had noticed it earlier,
too, but hadn’t had time to make the connection.
18
Uninvited Guests
Now, however, she could see this woman was
definitely past middle age, but unlike Mildred’s
closely trimmed layers, this woman sported a
stiff, overblown perm. The woman turned her
face toward Mildred, affording a glimpse of her
unmistakably gaudy lipstick.
Mildred drew herself up visibly and turned her
attention back to the annoying neighbor. “Yes,
my dear, I’m sure you did the very best you could
for him. The doctors say it wouldn’t have made
any difference; it was just his time. I’m afraid
you’ll have to excuse me now, I see that someone
in the back needs my attention. Be sure to get
some of those éclairs before you go.”
She hurried back to the table where she had
spotted the interloper, and advanced upon her.
Almost as soon as Mildred had identified her,
Frances had also recognized Mildred and realized
that she had made a big mistake. By the time
Mildred reached Frances, she was actively participating in a conversation with Mildred’s cousins
about colonoscopy experiences.
Mildred smiled appropriately as she gently
slithered into the group. She took Frances’ arm
and sweetly said to the group at large, “You’ll
have to excuse us for a moment,” as she led her
out into the hall.
“Listen, I don’t know whether you were aware
that I was involved with this service or not, but
it doesn’t matter. You need to leave right now,”
Mildred said as she propelled Frances down the
hall toward the exit.
“I don’t see why,” was the response.
“Because I know what you are doing here and I
don’t like it. I don’t want you here gawking at my
family and friends. You have to go.”
19
Uninvited Guests
“I was getting on quite well with your family and
friends back there, and I think you’ll have a lot
more questions to answer if you kick me out of
here than you would if I stayed.”
you don’t come back in. Come back in for a few
minutes, but as soon as you can slip out without
attracting attention, please do so. And wipe that
ridiculous lipstick off your face.”
“I don’t believe that,” Mildred said slowly, mentally evaluating what the chances were of this
gaudy woman fitting in with her acquaintances.
They were frighteningly good, she decided.
She started to walk away, but turned back as a
new thought struck her. “Just in case anyone asks
me about you, what name are you using today?”
“And besides that, missy, I’d like to know why
you think you get to be so high and mighty with
me. I’ll wager you’ve done the very same thing
more times than you can count. If it’s good
enough for you to do to somebody else, then it’s
good enough to be done to you, as well. Not that
I’m quite sure what it’s doing to you, anyway.
It’s not exactly like I’m a young bimbo swooping
in to give your brother’s wife a scare. I’m just a
harmless, bored old lady like your—”
Mildred’s indignation, which had been mounting with each word Frances uttered, reached its
peak and her hand flew up and struck the woman
across her face, smearing the tacky lipstick
up above one side of her mouth. Mildred was
instantly horrified at her own actions and started
to raise her hand to her own mouth. Just in time,
she noticed the woman’s smeared lipstick, and
awkwardly lowered her hand to her side, where
she kept it held out slightly so that it wouldn’t
touch her dress. She didn’t know what to say after
that. She was too ashamed of herself to continue
to be rude, but it was impossible to apologize.
Frances just gave her a deep, throaty chuckle,
which unsettled Mildred even more. “I’m sorry,”
Frances said, “Perhaps I was a little too rude there,
given the circumstances, but the truth hurts.”
“I shouldn’t have struck you,” Mildred managed
stiffly, “and I suppose people will think it odd if
“My name is Frances.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Yes, that’s my real name,” she said, mocking
Mildred’s disdain. “You use a fake one at funerals,
then? I’ve always found that honesty is the best
policy.” Frances sniffed with exaggerated dignity.
Her appalling makeup kept her from achieving
quite the desired affect.
“Hmph!” Mildred stalked back into the room
where the service was being held. She paused
inside the door at a table of hors d’oeuvres and
picked up a napkin to wipe the lipstick off her
hand. It made a stain that, with her present guilty
conscience, reminded her of blood. She tried to
wad the napkin so that it wouldn’t show in the
trash can, and headed back up to the front of the
room to stand beside her sister-in-law with an
appropriately wan expression pasted on her face.
Her mind wandered back to Frances as she stood
and talked to people, comforting those who had
come to comfort her, as she had always thought
of the ritual. Somehow, this service seemed to
have less meaning and necessity than it had when
she’d watched other people’s services. It wasn’t as
though she hadn’t been an active participant in
one before; she’d buried enough family members
and friends for this to be as routine an event as
it ever could be. Maybe that’s why she had such
a curious detachment and interest in attending
other people’s services in the past few years.
20
Leaving Hope
21
Leaving Hope
Jonathan Reyes
Oil on Panel
47-3/4" x 23-3/4"
22
Uninvited Guests
But today was different. She couldn’t help
thinking about how that boorish Frances was
part of this gathering, not only observing and
deriving entertainment from noticing the trends
of human behavior, her family’s behavior, but
also mingling and getting along famously with
said family. To have a perfect stranger blend in,
and become a vibrant part of an event like this,
made her realize how pointless the rhythms and
rituals of memorials can be. Certainly, they could
bring comfort to those left behind, but like any
ceremony, they could also seem like a formula to
be worked through, solely for the point of showing your work on a piece of paper. They had to
be conducted simply to prove that you cared, but
even if you didn’t, even if you were an interloper
like Frances was today, no one would ever know
the difference.
Part of her already knew that, and probably that
was one of the reasons why she had enjoyed
going to services as a disinterested spectator. But
Mildred didn’t go out of her way to make a big
hit with the attendees of these events. Discretion,
she felt, was the best approach. She would say a
few words here and there to other guests, offer
an assumed name, and whenever she was asked
vaguely explain that she had known the deceased
“here and there, over the years.” It gave her great
delight to see how easily this explanation was
swallowed, and how little anyone suspected she
was an interloper.
But here was Frances, going out of her way to be
friendly and interact with the family, and what
difference did it make? None. She wasn’t disrupting the gathering any more than Mildred herself
had, dozens of time in the past. Neither was she
making the memorial any more or less meaningful for anyone involved. This was what Mildred
found so disillusioning.
23
After the majority of people had paid their
respects and taken time for a bite to eat, Mildred
saw Frances take leave of the cousins and exit.
She heaved a sigh of relief, and then unaccountably felt guilty for it.
A while later, all the guests had gone, and only
Mildred and a couple of others remained to pack
up the flowers and articles that they had brought
for the service.
Just as Mildred was about to leave, Frances crept
back in and accosted her. “I’m sorry that I upset
you today. I really didn’t know it was a relative of
yours. I just want you to know that.” She stopped
shyly and fiddled with the handles of the large
purse that was hanging from her hands.
“I don’t know if this is the right thing to say or
not, but there’s a funeral for a rich old lady over
in Cherry Creek next Friday. In that part of
town, I’d expect they’d spare no expense. If you
want to, maybe we could drive over together.”
Mildred half opened her mouth to say something
scathing, but stayed frozen for a moment. “No,
I don’t think…I think maybe I’ve had enough of
funerals for a while,” she finished honestly.
Frances nodded. She started to turn away, but
then stopped and said, “You don’t want to meet
up for coffee sometime, do you?”
Mildred automatically started to compose a
refusal in her head, but instead of uttering it, she
found herself saying, “Yes, I guess I could. That
might be nice.” She smiled.
This is what comes of doing rage
By the book.
Bathroom tiles, flecked
With raw yellow slime.
The faucet dripping ooze.
It had been a self-help book
Of course.
Coping with Anger
Or some such name.
Its author advised brightly,
“A dozen raw eggs can do the trick.
Shatter all your hurts,
Release frustration
The bathtub cleans up quick.”
Ellen Schroeder Mackey
Fried
The first egg she called Betrayal
Hurled it in the drain.
It fractured then, and splattered
A crunchy eggshell rain.
The second she dubbed Injustice
Flung it toward the spout
Slick mucus—blast!—exploded
The devil to clean out.
Two eggs in pieces.
Her rage still whole.
And now a crispy, gooey bath to clean.
She sighed, placed the remaining
Eggs gently in their pods
She wadded up the paper towels
Wiped gold stalactites from the ceiling
Peeled lacquered shell from Italian tile
Pulled bits and pieces with tiny tweezers
From the drain’s whirling pool.
24
They Live
Addie Johnson
Chalk Pastel
18” x 12”
25
Asters and mint go brazenly to seed
under another opaque white sky.
The day is like a cup. I turn it over in my hands.
It is smooth and round, full of nothing at all.
From the window, I see my childhood playing
under the broad reach of a maple, lining up dolls for tea.
Ginny Hoyle
Going to Seed
My adolescent self watches, shrugs, leaves for the beach.
The young woman I was walks into the yard,
baby on her hip. She sits down with the tea and the dolls
and her child becomes a woman, too.
They look at me and wait
but I have little to say. I remember a rough draft
of a bold plan, the arc of possibility I threw carelessly
across my shoulders on cool nights, the taste
of ambition like buttered toast, but that is all.
Across a gulf of unwritten years, the women watch
and wait. The day is like a cup.
I run a fingertip around its rim and lean
into silence. The air is full of seeds.
1st Place Co-Winner Poetry
2009 Writers Studio Literary Contest
26
Margie Warsavage
Pigeon Toes
My father was average height. His hair was brown
and thinning, though he was still in his early
thirties. His eyes were large and dark brown with
thick eyelashes. His eyes were his best feature. I
was his only child, a girl, and a small girl, at that.
I was fair, like my mother. My hair was thin,
nearly white, and stringy. It wouldn’t hold a curl.
My feet turned inward. I understood I had a
condition called pigeon toes.
The two of us walked the streets of an old Denver
neighborhood most evenings. The neighbors, sitting on their porches, knew us and waved hello.
They smiled at the little twist step my father and
I made every so often. They thought it was a
game. They didn’t know my young father was on
a mission.
Our neighborhood wasn’t much, just a few old
houses with a church on one corner and a small
grocery store on the other. But in those days, I
thought it was fine. Just two blocks away, there
was a kind of Main Street that provided for
our shopping. There were several stores on that
street, but the one I liked best was the Rexall
Drugstore. At night, its neon sign cast its glow on
an old man and his tamale wagon. We sometimes
bought six tamales for our dinner and when the
man lifted the lid and reached in with his tongs,
the evening air was filled with steam and the
smell of meat and spices. The old man wrapped
our tamales in paper and put them in a sack.
Often, my dad carried his tamales in one arm
and me in the other. I was still pretty young and,
though I managed to walk the two blocks to the
drugstore, sometimes my legs got tired walking
home. Dad decided it was because of my pigeon
toes. That’s when he devised our little game. As
we walked, he would sometimes call out, “Ready?
Turn your foot out, step!” I would throw my foot
to the side and step down. Sometimes he called
27
it for the left foot, sometimes for the right. At
first, he didn’t call it often, and I would walk in
anticipation of the call. He did the steps with me.
As my legs got stronger, he’d call out a number. If
he said “three” we did three with each foot. As I
got older and stronger our number increased. We
sometimes went half a block before he’d make the
call, and then we might do eight or ten. To me, it
was a game. To him, it was a way to straighten his
child’s feet.
Often, on nights we didn’t walk, we sang
together. My father played the guitar and had
a small repertoire of old Jimmie Rodgers’ train
songs. He taught several of them to me. “Peach
Pickin’ Time in Georgia” was my favorite.
“When it’s peach pickin’ time in Georgia
Apple pickin’ time in Tennessee
Cotton pickin’ time in Mississippi
It’s gal pickin’ time for me.”
Dad always pointed at me when we got to that
last line. It was during this singing when he
decided I had a sense of rhythm. My feet might
not work right, but my hands did. That’s when
he taught me a little hand jive. We did it to the
rhyme of Peas Porridge Hot, but we substituted
the old cowboy verse his father had taught him.
“Bacon in the pan,
Coffee in the pot,
Get up now, boys,
And eat it while it’s hot.”
We started out slowly, and got faster with each
repetition until it felt as if our hands were flying.
We considered the song and the rhyme our act,
and performed it for my mother and any relatives who would be our audience. When they
applauded, I made sure my feet were straight and
bowed.
Pigeon Toes
In those days, The Denver Post was an evening
newspaper and most people had it delivered to
their homes. In my family, it was different. My
dad extended our walks by several blocks to
downtown Denver, where he bought his copy
from the newsboy, Johnny. Johnny hollered out
the headlines as he passed out the newspapers
and pocketed his coins.
This sounds like a page out of Norman
Rockwell’s America, but it was far from it. This
was the early 1940s, the years of World War II,
and the headlines that Johnny called out spoke of
battles, bombings, and death.
The newsboy’s voice was deep and gravelly, and
I could hear it as we approached his stand on
the corner of 16th and Curtis Streets, in front
of Neisner’s five-and-dime. There was a streetcar stop nearby and many people hurried from
the buildings and rushed to catch the streetcar.
Dad and I walked those streets year round, but I
especially liked the wintry evenings when people
buttoned up their coats and held out their gloved
hands to give their coins to the newsboy. Not
many people spoke to the newsboy—he was too
busy calling out headlines to respond anyway—
but my father always did. “Hi there, Johnny.”
“Evening, Johnny.” “Thank you, now.”
I was small—probably six or seven years old—
and to me, the whole place was bustling with
shoppers and working people carrying bags and
purses, jostling Dad and me as they rushed in
every direction with their newspapers.
Johnny kept a large rock on top of his stack of
newspapers. He wore a canvas apron with pockets
in the front where he dropped his coins. Mostly,
he kept busy waving a newspaper, calling out,
28
Pigeon Toes
“Read all about it!” Then he would hand over
a paper, drop the coin in his apron pocket, pull
another paper from the stack, and slam down the
rock. It was a routine I admired.
One cold, misty night, which will always stand
out in my memory, he nodded and smiled briefly
as my father said, “Evening, Johnny,” and, I
noticed, gave him some extra coins. Johnny’s
head was as large as my father’s, but his hair was
black and curly, and tended to fall around his
face. He had whiskers on his face. He lifted his
rock with a small hand. As he turned back to his
stack of newspapers that night, he was eye level
with me. He looked right at me, and I started to
smile and be friendly like my dad. But Johnny’s
brief gaze was not inviting. Rather, I felt warned
off. Perhaps there had been other children who
had made hurtful comments.
My dad squeezed my hand. “Want to look in
the windows?” It was holiday time. There were
decorations on the street lamps and colored lights
and toys in Neisners’ windows.
As we stood there, looking in the windows,
Johnny’s deep voice rang out again. “Read all
about it!”
“Daddy,” I said, “Johnny is different.”
“He is,” Dad said. “Johnny is a dwarf. He’s a
grown man. He just never got very big. He sells
the newspapers to earn his living.” We turned
then, and walked away from the bustling crowd.
As always, I counted the traffic lights as we
walked home. I breathed deeply as we passed the
tobacco shop. Maybe the door would open and I
would smell the pipe tobacco and cigar smoke. I
jumped over all the sidewalk cracks—didn’t want
to break my mother’s back. That night, back in
our warm house, my father drank his last cup of
coffee of the day as he read his newspaper. He
passed me the funnies and, as I stretched out on
the floor, I wondered what Johnny went home to.
*
*
*
Once a month, we extended our evening walk
beyond Johnny and his newspaper stand to the
big, dark house where we visited our landlord
and paid our rent. There must have been ten
stone steps leading up to the front door, and I
walked them with dread. I knew that as soon
as we rang the doorbell, we would hear the low
growl of the big, black dog that waited on the
other side of the door. Child that I was, I thought
he should have been called Blackie. But no, his
name was Anthracite, after some kind of coal.
Our landlord had a secretary named Audrey. She
was a tall lady who lived in the house and seemed
to do everything, because our landlord was old
and sat in a wheelchair. Audrey opened the door
and held Anthracite by his collar. She said it was
very nice to see us, and I believed her, because she
seemed lonely. It was always the same. Audrey
and Anthracite led us down a dimly lit hall and
into the room where our landlord sat behind a
large desk.
Facing Page:
Athena by Cilla Englert
Ink on Paper
8-½” x 11”
29
Pigeon Toes
The only light came from a desk lamp with a
green glass shade. The rest of the room was taken
up with shelves full of books and big, overstuffed
chairs. We stood while my father paid our rent.
He took the bills from his wallet, not leaving
many, and handed them to the old man, who
reached out with a hand so thin and curled,
it made me think of a bird’s foot. Anthracite
dropped noisily to the floor beside the desk and
Audrey began writing a receipt in a big book.
The landlord didn’t seem interested in Dad’s
money. He dropped it on the desk, then he
motioned for me to come closer. He always did
this. He patted my head and smiled. My dad had
told me our landlord didn’t get much company
and, like most older people, he enjoyed seeing
little children.
“Audrey,” the old man said, “see if you can find a
cookie for our little friend.”
And so, Audrey went to the kitchen and brought
out yet another pair of dried-out Fig Newtons on
a napkin. Dad helped me scoot into one of the
scratchy mohair chairs, and he got comfortable
in the other. He acted like we had all the time in
the world. I nibbled at a Fig Newton and heard
my dad ask the old man how he had been feeling.
This opened up the familiar conversation where
we heard about doctor’s visits and old medicine
that wasn’t working, and new medicine that
might help, and hot water bottles and soup. My
father listened, just as interested as he could be.
Eventually he got up and tucked the old man’s
31
blanket around his legs. He gave Anthracite a
good patting and said how lucky the old man
was to have such a great dog. Then, he reminded
the man how nicely Audrey kept his house. I
remember one night while all this was going on,
I realized that my father had put a nearly empty
wallet back in his pocket and the landlord had a
stack of money on his desk, yet my father was the
one who smiled.
We walked home by way of Johnny’s corner,
where Dad bought his newspaper, then on to our
own neighborhood and the Rexall Drugstore.
We always stopped in on our rent-paying night.
I had my choice of a chocolate bar. I spent a
long time deciding, then I always chose a Baby
Ruth. If Dad had enough money left, he might
buy my mother a small trinket. Once, he bought
her a bar of pink soap shaped like a rose, which
I thought was truly elegant. If he didn’t have
enough for something special, he would buy her
a chocolate bar too. We each got a treat of some
kind.
The two blocks home were easy for me then.
But still, I anticipated my father’s call. He
could say five, ten, or fifteen. Any number, it
wouldn’t matter. I was ready.
1st Place Nonfiction 2009 Writers Studio Literary Contest
Oh slender body, with
abdomen attached to stinging mouth,
what are you doing, clinging
to the brick of my garage?
Is it because your children are behind
that brick? The brick I pushed
back in place to crush your children?
Go away! Go away!
I feel no pity for your hovering
parental suffering. I will spray you with
wasp poison, until you die.
I fear you. I have felt your sting,
swelled and choked on your venom.
You will not raise another wasp family
behind the garage brick.
Away with you!
You may drink the nectar from my roses.
I will caulk the brick’s seams and bury
your children in a garage mausoleum.
Sophia Baldwin
Murdering the Innocents
32
Lynn Wagner
Ninety-eight Degrees
My tongue an iris bent low to your body
stem whitening in the crease.
To be broken like that, having
green bleed away so that by June
the flower’s gone, succumb
to summer heat, long-sleeved
leaves no longer praising. You roll
to your side of the bed.
Noon. So hot I put on
jazz. Holiday singing Summertime
and the living is—but it’s
nowhere near easy. Listen,
the mourning doves outside my window
each day repeat their blues,
a low breathing: in /
out / in. Then out, out, out. They know
that death sits with them, there
on the telephone wire.
I reach for your hand and admire the way
your thumb covers my knuckles,
pulling me along. The world
is too much with us, baby, late and soon—that’s
the way you sing it when you bend down
close to me. Abandoned
this body would dissolve in water in less than
a decade, half that if it were summer
all the time. I can’t save myself
33
Ninety-eight Degrees
in the dark boat of your love. If it were dusk
there’d be some relief from this heat. I’m waiting
for the rinse of afterglow
t o soothe the sky. For songbirds
to finally tuck closed beaks
beneath their wings. You don’t believe
the branches move at all in this haze
but I tell you they do. I tell you
the wires will soon send signals into
separate houses and each television’s
wide box of moving blue, in time,
will kiss to a single white star
and with a hum and a crinkle go out. I’m waiting
for that. Not the darkness but the hum.
When I called out God, it was
a different kind of prayer. When I said go,
I meant take me. Summer
has settled into this city, two
tiger lilies grow near the wall. The smaller one
tipped up to a satellite dish, or maybe
it’s the moon. While
the head of the other bows a little lower.
1st Place Co-Winner Poetry
2009 Writers Studio Literary Contest
Following Pages:
Doumo by R. J. Mariano
Digital Photograph
34
Rachelle Hubbell
Immortality
A man once wept bitterly, openly
before me and I felt pity then
for both of us.
I wanted all the noise to stop because I knew
how happy a stone felt
deep in the ground during a quiet rain—
Nothing but the gentle thud about and the cool earth below.
Surely on each corpse’s face there is a smile.
On that intimately familiar face, now estranged
entirely because of the line formed across the lips—
the effigy in life unknown.
A smile in the face not meant for carnal awareness, a smile
for someone we do not know or understand.
Beyond the mirror of the world, we are hypnotized by
the image of ourselves, a beautiful form
without a face.
37
Another body was found again at dawn in the
traditional market, right when the sellers were
about to open their kiosks. Nobody noticed it
at first, because it was wrapped in a gunnysack,
leaning against an acacia tree at the market’s
entrance. When the farmers’ trucks came to
deliver their goods, one of the traders kicked
the sack aside to place his own goods under the
tree, and it caused the bloody body parts to spill
out onto the ground. As was becoming more
and more common, it was mutilated beyond
recognition.
Leila found out the whole story later that day.
But early that morning, she was awakened from
her sleep because of the myriad of people in
the market screaming, crying and calling out
Allahu Akbar—God is Greater—to express their
astonishment. She immediately jumped out of
her bed and ran to the window to look out at
the scandalized bazaar. Her bedroom was on
the second floor of a rented house next to the
traditional market, so she got a good view of the
western side.
The dim light of the sun’s first rays had yet to
break the remainder of the night. Traders had
hung oil lamps on poles in front of makeshift
tarpaulin kiosks, and yellow specks from the
sputtering oil flickered like thousands of fireflies.
Under the diffused glow of lights, Leila saw
people running around erratically. All sense of
decorum was gone. Women shamelessly rolled up
their long skirts, baring their feet, so they could
run faster. Men were puking in every corner.
Leila shuddered, leaning against the window sill,
horrified. She knew there must have been another
murder, but she didn’t know what to do other
than prostrate herself on the floor and pray that
all of the terrors would end, that she’d get out of
this damned place as soon as possible.
She didn’t understand. Weren’t all the killings
supposed to have ended by now? Hadn’t Suharto,
the Indonesian dictator for thirty-two years,
been toppled already by the students’ movement?
Hadn’t Habibie, Suharto’s successor, announced
that he’d ended the military operation in Aceh?
That was why Leila hadn't rejected her employer’s decision last year to transfer her to the bank’s
small-town branch in the Aceh province. She had
thought it would already be safe to live and work
in this province. Since she had been promoted to
a supervisor at the branch bank, she didn’t want
to lose the opportunity. Now, it looked like she’d
probably made the wrong decision.
Chadijah Siregar
After the Bullet Rain
Leila cast her gaze around her small, drab
bedroom. The chipped wall seemed to leer at
her in a frightening grin. The smell of the dank
air rising from the damp mattress and the old
furniture became stronger than ever. When she
had moved out to the province about a year ago,
it seemed like a good idea to rent the cheap,
dreary house which sat next to the market. But
now, she regretted the decision, because it seemed
like the Indonesian military also thought it was
a fabulous idea to throw the people they had just
tortured and mutilated into the market square.
She wished it was Friday, when she could just
pack up her bag and take off to Medan, the
capital city of the neighboring province, where
her parents and fiancé lived, where the curse of
the black gold didn’t attract monsters and petrify
the people.
She burst into tears. Leila had never thought that
she might lose her career. She had always wanted
to be someone on her own, despite the protests
from her fiancé, Ary, who insisted that they get
married soon and she become a good housewife.
38
After the Bullet Rain
Ary might be right after all, that her place was
probably just at home. She hated the idea. But if
ambition made her end up in a place like this, it
might’ve been better for her to just give it up.
Leila grabbed her cell phone and dialed Ary’s
number. Ary answered the call on the twelfth
ring. His nasal voice sounded a bit upset when he
said, “Yes, hello!”
“Print the wedding invitations,” croaked Leila.
“What?” Ary cried out in surprise.
“Print the wedding invitations. I don’t care about
the date. Just let me know soon so that I can
hand in my two-week notice.” She finished her
sentence in almost one breath. Her heart raced.
“I just want to get out of this damn place as soon
as possible.”
There was silence at the other end of the phone.
When he finally spoke, Ary sounded confused,
“Are you alright?”
No, I’m not, Leila thought. She wanted to scream
it out, to tell Ary about her fears, but she didn’t
know where to start. She didn’t want to hear him
say “I told you so” in the condescending tone
that she hated so much.
But then again, she never felt really comfortable
talking about her feelings with Ary. When she
started seeing him four years ago, his pompous
manner was compensated by his ardor and affection for her, which made her feel flattered. But
when the thrill was over, it was already too late
to break up with him. Their families knew each
other well. They were the ones who forced Ary
and Leila to get engaged when she was about to
move to Aceh.
39
After the Bullet Rain
“I’m okay,” said Leila weakly at last. “I just, it’s
just, print the invitations, okay?”
She ended the conversation. The sound of the
people screaming outside had also faded away.
She knew the merchants had probably gone home
in the vague hope that their walls would provide
enough protection against the monsters out there.
As if it would stop the military from tormenting
the people. Leila had heard the soldiers didn’t
even hesitate to kill a heavily pregnant woman
some time ago, before the eyes of every Tiro villager. It was because the soldiers accused the poor
woman’s husband of being one of the Free Aceh
Movement’s soldiers, the local rebel group.
Leila shivered again. She couldn’t imagine going
out of the house today, but she knew she had to.
She had to go to work. Moreover, she had to let
Hendi know about her abrupt decision.
Poor Hendi, she thought sadly. But then again,
it was she who would probably suffer more from
the decision.
Hopelessly, she closed her eyes, wrapped her arms
around her knees and rocked her body from side
to side while reciting some verses of the Koran to
ease her mind. She wished she could set aside the
thoughts of all the tragedies around her and their
implications in her own life, a stranger in the
Acehnese land. She just wished that this time, she
had made the right decision.
*
*
*
Hendi looked into Leila’s eyes in astonishment.
“You’re kidding me!” he cried.
“No, I’m not,” said Leila weakly. “We’re finished.
I’ve decided to marry Ary.”
Hendi went silent as he contemplated the girl’s
face, recalling how they had met almost a year
ago in a party conducted by ExxonMobil, his
employer. Leila attended as the representative of her bank, and she immediately caught
Hendi’s attention. She was not very beautiful,
but captivating with her graceful gestures. Even
Hendi was surprised when he found himself
begging Leila to go out with him two weeks later.
He couldn’t even tell himself to give up when
Leila told him about being engaged.
It took four months for Hendi to persuade and
convince Leila that it was okay to still open her
eyes to another possibility before she got married,
before she sealed her fate to one man forever.
Perhaps it would’ve been better if he had just
looked for another girl who was more available.
Or more beautiful. He knew he himself was not
handsome. His eyes stood too close together, his
teeth had nicotine stains, and his lips were too
wide. But, certainly he had dated prettier girls
before, and he knew he could still attract another
one. At least someone who was not engaged to
another man.
But he cared for Leila. He liked to watch how
those big, black, dreamy eyes changed their
expression so quickly, from fierce to melancholic,
then to pensive, the most beautiful and engaging
kaleidoscope Hendi had ever seen. He loved to
listen to her sharp voice and her bright laughter.
He loved to hear of her dreams and her passion,
her fear and her anger.
He thought he would have more time to win her
heart completely. He had been so certain that
he could secure his place beside her forever if he
were given a bit of time. But now, all of a sudden,
he’d lost his chances.
40
Nude
Joan Lee
Pen and Ink
23-¾” x 17-¾”
41
After the Bullet Rain
“Are you sure you want to marry this guy? I
thought you weren’t so sure. I thought you didn’t
really feel comfortable with him,” said Hendi.
Leila’s lips trembled. Tears welled up in her eyes.
Hendi saw some of his colleagues, who were
also having their lunch at the Minang restaurant
across their office compound, cast their curious
glances at them, but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t
have cared even if the building suddenly fell
apart. He couldn’t even imagine what his life
would be like, now that the girl in front of him
had refused to have him in her life.
Finally, Leila found her voice. “I just want to feel
secure, Hendi. I won’t find it here. I don’t want to
live in this place.”
“You’re just shocked, and I can understand that,”
said Hendi softly, voice trembling. He was hanging on a very thin thread of hope that the girl
would change her heart because of whatever he
said. “I would’ve been shocked, too, if I woke up
to that kind of scene. But you can’t make these
decisions when you’re in shock.”
Leila looked out the window beside their table.
The street outside was dusty. Coconut trees grew
densely in the vicinity, their wide, needle-like
leaves rustling and dancing in the hot tropical wind. A high barbed-wire fence demarcated
the green area where the restaurant stood, with
the modern industrialized area on the other
side, where concrete form stood upon another
concrete form, completely concealing the soil.
Soldiers in green uniforms stood guard against
the fence, watching their surroundings with
observant eyes, holding up big, black machine
guns proudly. Giant, silver oil tanks rose in the
background; huge ExxonMobil signs brazenly
crowned some of the tanks.
“You are part of the problem,” said Leila
suddenly.
“What do you mean?” asked Hendi.
“You work there. You work for the oil company.
All of this wouldn’t have happened if only they
hadn’t found oil in this country,” retorted Leila.
“I work for a living. Is that wrong?”
Leila didn’t reply. She just wiped away her tears
in silence. Hendi held her hands, saying softly, “I
will respect every decision you make, but please
don’t judge me for what I do. I work hard for a
living, and I don’t hurt other people. Don’t cast
blame on everything I do just because you want
to feel better about yourself.”
Tears streamed heavily down Leila’s cheeks. “I’m
sorry,” she said. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She got
up from her seat and crossed the table to hold
Hendi briefly. ”Goodbye.”
She walked out of the restaurant, leaving Hendi
still trying to absorb what had happened and deal
with his shock and sadness.
*
*
*
The world seemed to have shrunk all of a sudden,
leaving less room to move in, and less air to
breathe. Hendi’s head was in turmoil the whole
day. Everything passed by vaguely, as if in a
dream. He didn’t even know how he’d arrived at
the field adjacent to the yard of a small mosque.
Hundreds of people flocked into the field, facing
an elevated podium where an old man, with both
beard and fez as white as his cotton tunic, was
giving a passionate sermon. Born in a Javanese
household, Hendi couldn’t understand a word
the old man was saying in the Acehnese language.
42
After the Bullet Rain
However, Hendi stood silently in his spot and let
his mind wander to the crescent moon that hung
low in the bright night sky.
He missed Leila so much. This was the kind of
thing they could laugh at together; how stupid it
was to attend a sermon you didn’t understand. At
once, he felt a fervent urge to talk with Leila, but
he knew he couldn’t. He was certain she wouldn’t
talk to him. Besides, the mass around him might
get upset because of his rudeness. Everybody
knew the Acehnese could become ferocious when
they were passionate about something, and one
of those things was religious sermons like this.
But Hendi couldn’t hold back his urge to have
some kind of contact with Leila, to hold on to
the vague feeling that he still had her in his life.
He took his cell phone from his pocket and sent
a text message to her.
Leila didn’t reply. It was something Hendi had
expected, but it still disappointed him.
Fifteen minutes later, the sermon ended. The
crowd moved slowly to the street. A lot of them
chatted cheerfully with each other as they walked
back to their homes. Hendi solemnly observed
his surroundings and childishly wished he had
someone to talk to.
Suddenly, a group of people at the far end of the
street cried out in pain. Others instantly ran forward to find out what had happened, and Hendi
was swept along by the crowd.
The crowd arrived at a military compound that
was enclosed by a high concrete wall, like a fort.
Dozens of soldiers where positioned in sentry
boxes perched atop points of the wall. The
soldiers grinned at the crowd and threw cobblestones as big as mangoes at them. Hendi saw
dozens of people fall to the ground and writhe in
pain, clutching at parts of their bleeding bodies.
43
At once, the curious crowd had turned into a
panicked mass. The horde ran frantically to get
away from the compound. Countless people
got shoved and stepped on, but nobody cared.
Everybody was just trying to survive.
A moment later, the situation became worse as
a series of shots erupted into the atmosphere
already suffocated with screams and cries. The
stinging smell of gunpowder mingled with the
choking dust rising up from the ground as the
frightened mass exploded in panic.
Hendi stared around the military compound. He
couldn’t believe the soldiers would be so brazen as
to shoot at the people.
They weren’t. The soldiers hadn't directed their
guns at the crowd. They had pointed their guns
to the sky, but the effect was even more terrifying.
The bullets fell from the sky like rain, hitting the
people randomly without their being able to predict where the bullets fell from. Dozens of people
suddenly fell down around Hendi, motionless,
eyes wide open, displaying their last horror.
Hendi kept calling out “Allahu Akbar,” expecting
that he’d meet the same fate at any moment, that
it would be the end of his life. Some men near
him also seemed to have surrendered to their fate.
They, too, called out for God.
Hendi saw the old man who had given the
sermon struggling to drag the bodies to the street
side, to save them from the stomping feet of the
panicked mass. He was crying, and looked fragile,
but also focused on what he was doing. Hendi’s
heart leaped, and he started to copy the old man,
to move the dead bodies aside.
The old man turned his head, trying to smile
at Hendi despite his tears and trembling lips.
After the Bullet Rain
“Thank you,” he said sincerely between his heavy
breathing.
“You’re welcome,” said Hendi, trying to smile
back at the old man too, but somehow, his lips
seemed to have forgotten how to smile.
Just then, a bullet fell from the sky and penetrated the old man’s head. A piercing crack broke
into the already strident air as his skull ruptured.
Blood gushed out from the exposed brain as he
fell down silently, a frozen smile still etched on
his creased face.
Hendi wailed, and lurched forward to catch the
old man’s body, forgetting about his own security.
Distraught, he wrapped his arms around the old
man as if he were his own father. When Hendi
dragged the old man aside, he felt as if his own
soul had flown away.
*
*
*
Leila hadn’t expected Ary to come. But here he
was, at the threshold of the front door of her
rented house, smiling radiantly with a bouquet of
flowers in his hand.
“I was surprised this morning, but it was a
wonderful surprise,” he said, thrusting the flowers
into Leila’s hands.
Leila only smiled weakly. She didn’t know what
to say. She didn’t even know whether she should
invite him to come inside. The night had become
old. The neighbors could report her to the community leader for inviting a man who was not her
husband into her house.
“Um, thank you. I really appreciate this,” said
Leila awkwardly. “However, I don’t know how to
say this, but, where will you stay tonight?”
44
After the Bullet Rain
“What do you mean? Can’t I stay here?” Ary
burst out. His face clearly showed signs that he
was getting upset.
“You look pale,” said Ary. “We’d probably
better get you into the house, rather than staying
exposed out here.”
“No,” said Leila. “This is Aceh, you know. Not
Medan. The neighborhood could evict me
from this house if they aren’t pleased with my
conduct.”
“No, no, no, no!” said Leila immediately, sensing
the neighbors’ curious glances at her. “You have to
go now. It’s late already. Just go back to Medan.”
“Bullshit!” burst Ary. “You’ve paid your rent
already, haven’t you? So it is none of their business what you do in your own home.”
“I told you, this is Aceh, not Medan,” said Leila
desperately. She didn’t know how else she could
make Ary understand the situation. She remembered Hendi’s text message a few minutes ago.
Suddenly, she missed him very much.
Out of the blue, a series of shots from afar reverberated through the air. Leila jumped. The doors
of the neighbors’ houses were thrown open as the
men rushed out of the houses to find out what
was going on.
Leila ran across her front yard and out the gate to
gather with the neighbors on the street side. She
could hear Ary’s footsteps behind following her.
“What happened?” asked one of the neighbors.
“I don’t know,” said Leila.
They waited together in silence, trying to guess
where the sounds of the gunfire had come from.
“I think it came from the mosque,” said another
neighbor.
“No! No! It didn’t!” said Leila fervently. But her
heart palpitated at once. Her knees felt weak. Her
mind flew to Hendi’s text message, telling her
how stupid he was to attend a sermon he didn’t
understand. The message had felt bittersweet, but
funny at the time. Now, it only felt terrifying.
45
At that moment, a group of men and women
appeared from every corner of the neighborhood.
They were crying out and running frantically.
“What’s going on?” asked the neighbors.
“They shot the people! They shot the people who
attended the sermon at the mosque!” cried the
oncoming crowd.
“No!” cried Leila in one long breath. Suddenly,
her knees gave way. She dropped to the ground
and wept.
“Leila, what’s wrong? Are you alright?” asked Ary.
Leila couldn’t answer him. She watched the
streets where people kept appearing with blood
tracks all over their bodies. “Oh, masya Allah! So
many died! So many died!” they cried.
Leila couldn’t help but hope that she would still
see Hendi one last time. She wanted to call out
his name. She wanted to say how sorry she was,
and how she had made the wrong decision once
more. Now that she’d probably never see him
again, she knew how much he meant to her, how
much she loved him.
As if answering her wish, Hendi appeared a
moment later, running from a corner to approach
Leila’s house. He was soaked in blood, but Leila
didn’t care. She got up from the ground and
dashed forward to wrap her arms around the
man. She could feel Ary’s eyes following her, his
mouth agape, but she didn’t care. She held Hendi
and poured her eyes out on his chest.
Composition N1
Olga Esquibel
Mixed Media
30” x 21-¼ “
46
After the Bullet Rain
“I’m sorry. Perhaps I should’ve gone back to my
own house,” murmured Hendi, his eyes glancing
to Ary, who was still frozen. “I just…I could only
think of you after what happened at the mosque.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m so glad I could still see
you,” whispered Leila back. “I thought they
might’ve killed you. I thought you’d died. God,
I’m so sorry. I couldn’t stop cursing myself.” Leila
paused, trying to control her emotion. “Now I
know. I love you more than I thought I did,”
Leila could hear Ary gasp and the neighbors gossip in murmurs. She was surprised to find that it
didn’t matter at all.
A moment later, Leila turned around to face Ary
who stared at her, wide-eyed. “I’m sorry,” she
said. “I admit, I have been cruel to you. I have
been unfaithful. I have been seeing this man for
several months, and I’m in love with him.”
Leila touched Ary’s shoulder briefly. She took off
the ring on her ring finger and handed it to Ary.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Suddenly, Ary dashed forward and launched
himself at Hendi, attacking him ferociously with
his fists. The neighbors immediately gathered
themselves around Ary to pull him back. Some
neighbors dragged Hendi to hide him in their
house, while another neighbor shoved Leila into
her own home.
It took hours for Ary to calm down. After throwing stones at Leila’s house until after midnight,
he finally took off and left the neighborhood, still
crying.
The neighbors warned them to wait until the sun
had fully risen for their journey back to Medan.
47
After the Bullet Rain
But, people in love are impatient. At dawn, after
the congregational prayer at a neighbor’s house,
Leila and Hendi got into Leila’s car and headed
to Medan. They wanted to tell Leila’s parents
as soon as possible about their relationship,
before Ary and his family ran amok with that
information.
A group of men jumped out of the trees onto
the street, several feet in front of the car. They
wore loose, grey tunics and pants, and blocked
the road like a group of elephants. Some of them
pointed huge machetes that looked more like
swords in Leila’s eyes. The ones at the forefront
aimed rifles at the car.
“Don’t take off your head cover even for a
moment,” said one of the neighbors. “We don’t
know where the rebels are these days. Rumor
has it that they often stop passing cars to ask for
donations. But they are merciless to any woman
who doesn’t wear her head cover. I heard they
won’t hesitate to slay a woman if they don’t like
her attire, either.” He scoffed, then added ironically, “Maybe they’ve learned how to be merciless
from the military.”
Leila quickly coiled her pashmina around her
head, but it was too late. She caught some of the
rebels’ eyes watching her movement. The rebels
who had seen her adjust her pashmina rushed to
the car. The rest followed them at once. The men
ferociously knocked on the car’s closed windows.
Leila smiled. “Yes, I will remember,” she said
heartily. “Thank you very much.”
Leila could feel the blood leaving her face. But
Hendi looked more resolute than her as he took
her right hand into his, and squeezed it lovingly.
Her heart felt light in her chest. She couldn’t
stop smiling. She knew she had made the right
decision this time. She noted Hendi couldn’t stop
smiling either.
“Open! Show your marriage certificate! Explain
why your woman doesn’t wear her head cover
appropriately!” they shouted.
“We’ll face this together,” he said.
Hendi opened the car door.
The car went down a road that crossed the small
city. The sky was just starting to get brighter
when they arrived at a nowhere land where dense
trees lined the road.
Leila reached into the back seat to get a small bag
containing their breakfast boxes and a thermos of
coffee. Her head cover caught on the back of her
seat. The intricately woven pashmina slithered
down her hair and hung loosely around her neck.
Just then, Hendi suddenly braked his car, causing
Leila to bounce fiercely in her seat. “The Free
Aceh Movement!” he gasped.
48
Evan Salvador
Sandbox Dreams
Marching through the hallways
In our single-file lines
Aloof from the real world
Or maybe just simplified
Awaiting our outside freedom
Inhaling our insufficient meal
The occasional humorous fart
Or a nasal regurgitation of milk
Creating our own fantasies
Imagination robust and believable
The splintered wood chips
Might actually be molten lava
Misbehaving and trouble-making
Punished into silence
Time to reflect on your wrong-doings
Or moments to search for boogers
Snippets of colored parchment
Immersed in globs of glue
Smeared on hands and clothing
Or even consumed by the curious
Our worries are of vegetables
Our fears are basement beasts
Looking forward to ridiculous cartoons
Avoiding the noises in the closet
Instant satisfaction or disappointment
Amusement so easy to come by
When lollipops and band-aids
Turn tears to smiles
Everything is fascinating
Everything is unknown
The simplest of moments
Marching through the hallways
49
Modesta Sanchez woke with an ache in her bladder and a cramp in her toe. The bathroom drip,
drip, drip—just ten feet down the hall—seemed
at once near and Antarctic. She opened her eyes
and looked right out of her room, willing herself
to roll off the bed, sit up, grip the headboard she
and Philbert had bought on time so long ago,
and steady herself on the walker. If the oxygen
was untangled, she could go the twenty or so
steps, work out the cramp and relieve herself in
peace.
Modesta peered sideways down the hall. The
olive-colored carpet looked pretty good considering how long it had been since a shampooing,
and she could almost see her photo gallery,
the gold-plated 8x10s of the kids, from First
Communion to cap and gown. For Carlos at
least. A GED for Tina, once she left that sonamabiche. Only Carlos had a real wedding. Well, at
least there was a church. Even if it didn’t last. But
he’d made Modesta take down the photo. Then
the grand babies, whom she probably loved more
than her kids, though one caused just as much
heartache as her mother. Modesta couldn’t recall
a picture of her great-granddaughter but swore
they’d given her one. She distinctly remembered
taking down a picture of herself from so long ago
she didn’t even recognize that woman anymore
and sliding another image into the frame. She
thought it had been the baby. When she was feeling better she’d check.
When she was better, she often passed the time
admiring her gallery of the people she lived for.
She studied each face, mining her memory for
that moment of the past. Her favorite was the
family portrait taken at Momma and Daddy’s
fiftieth wedding anniversary party. The photographer had somehow squeezed in the whole familia:
Momma and Daddy, their nine grown children
plus their spouses and kids. They all looked
young, handsome and happy, even from so far
away. Their kids were still school age. Her sister
still on her first husband. Modesta’s hair still as
black as Momma liked her coffee, and without
any help from Miss Clairol.
How Modesta missed Momma and Daddy. All
those years at the bakery seemed like someone
else’s life, but the ones at the tamaleda—Daddy
cleaning ojas, Momma spreading masa, their
eldest daughter scooping on red chile—had
given Modie a reason for being, even if the only
one getting rich was her brother. She didn’t give
a damn about the money. She’d give up every
nickel to hear Daddy’s old Pontiac pull into the
parking lot again, no matter how many spaces it
took, to sit on the stoop outside the kitchen during a smoke break with Momma and watch the
girl dress the mannequins in the window at Janet
Lee’s Near New.
Rowena Alegría
The Last Shot
Modesta heard Philbert shuffle into the kitchen
to make coffee. She knew it was harder for him.
Not because he was sicker but because she had
always been the strong one. When he’d been laid
off, years ago now, she’d worked extra hours at
the bakery, sometimes four in the morning till six
or eight at night. No matter when she returned,
Philbert would usually be waiting for her, sitting
at the kitchen table with a can of his best friend,
Miller, and a pile of cigarette butts. On late
nights he was starving and she’d fry potatoes and
pork chops and warm up the leftover green chile
before she even peeled off her dusty uniform.
Philbert had aged twenty years when he’d fallen
off that ladder and broken his leg, probably
because he couldn’t fish and hunt anymore.
When had that been? Only a couple of years,
maybe, though it seemed like more. She had
52
The Last Shot
watched him shrivel up in that hospital bed and
wondered if he would die. She thought that only
happened to old people with broken hips. And
she’d never thought of her husband as old.
But Philbert had been sick a long time, completely helpless for months. Modesta sacrificed
everything for his care, all the while worrying
about the tamale shop, long without Momma
and Daddy and suddenly without her, too. She
never stopped fretting that the kids would burn
the lard and flour and make the whole crew puke
with the stink. She kept promising her brother
she’d be back, though she’d begun to wear oxygen
by then. She was sick, all right, but not from any
ailment of her own.
Modesta spent all day fetching cans of Squirt,
changing the TV, opening and closing curtains,
and, during the worst of it, when the cast came
all the way up to his nalgas, having to help him
onto the potty chair and then wipe. They didn’t
look at each other afterward, and she was glad.
Philbert didn’t want to take the antibiotics.
He wanted a Miller’s. He was sick of soup and
couldn’t she make enchiladas instead? Damn that
doctor and his bland diet. Should he starve to
death? And when could he have another pain pill?
She thought she’d kill Philbert before he got well.
Then he found her when she collapsed.
Modesta thought it was just a little cough. The
doctor said bronchial pneumonia could have been
the death of her, that she was lucky to go home.
How happy she’d been to see her room again, to
sleep in her old bed. But if she had known how
much time she’d spend there, she would have
brightened the walls, hung something besides the
tearful picture of Christ and the silver crucifix,
53
and bought a new mattress, the firmest one they
had, so she could roll over and not up the hill
and out of the sleepy valley. Philbert had slept
on the couch since his accident anyway and was
happy there with the big TV. She didn’t mind the
small screen, so long as it had cable.
And she didn’t mind his coffee. He wasn’t always
careful to place the filter, so she fished out black
specks before she drank. But at least he’d learned
to make it. Better than live without it. She could
hear him still, banging around in the kitchen,
and she waited for the gurgle of the coffee pot.
The blast shook her off her pillow.
“Philbert?” she called, already reaching for the
phone.
“It’s okay, Modie,” he said, his voice too small to
be reassuring. “Goodbye.”
The sound of the second shot caromed through
her body. “Philbert?” she called. “Philbert!” she
shouted, her hand trembling so she could hardly
dial 911. “There’s been an accident,” she said,
forcing her words past the blockage in her throat,
the tightness in her ribs. “I can’t get out of bed.”
Modesta called her grandson next. Program and
1, just like he’d shown her. “Mijo?” she said, her
voice quavering.
“Grandma, what’s wrong?”
“Your grandpa. . .” The words crumbled in the air.
“I’ll be right there.”
She listened to the dial tone to avoid the silence,
then dropped the receiver. “Philbert!” she
screamed.
The Last Shot
Modesta looked down the hallway, strained her
eyes to see past the walls, around the corner. She
pulled off the blankets. Looked down the hall
again. “Philbert!”
A distant cry paralyzed her. Laying perfectly still,
she heard it grow louder, whining with each turn.
She looked down at her chest, for the thumping of her heart, and realized she battled to draw
breath. The oxygen tube had shifted, twisted off
her ears and away from her nose. She reached
up for the prongs that were supposed to sit on
her upper lip and found skimpy, messy curls and
flaccid skin, a cheekbone once high and proud
and now a knob in her face. When had she
grown so thin? Like Momma. Just like Momma.
A bag of bones.
Modesta wanted to call out again but could not.
She finally righted the oxygen and lay waiting
for it to fill what small segment of her lungs still
functioned. The howl of the siren grew louder.
Her heart puttered in her chest. They’ll be here
any second, she whispered to herself and her
parts, pulling up the blankets again. Everything
will be okay. Then she gasped, small but sharp.
What if they couldn’t get in? Philbert had
installed so many locks on the front door—
a dead bolt, a chain, a bar—an ax might be the
only way past. And who could afford a new door?
Modesta looked again down the hallway. If the
bathroom lay at the end of the earth, the front
door lodged on the moon. The knock hammered
home her uselessness.
The firefighters pounded. They shouted. Modesta
tried to reply. She heard boots tromp past her
window and up the driveway toward the back.
The screen door to the covered patio squeaked
then crashed against the wooden frame. The
knock on the back door was quick, perfunctory,
and then a strong voice filled the kitchen: “Fire
department.”
Philbert had left the back door open! A shocked
Modesta cried, “Help him!” She was sure the
fireman wouldn’t hear but both startled and
immeasurably relieved when dark blue pant legs
appeared in the hallway. She heard other footsteps and the murmur of male voices but they
seemed so far away. Her fireman spoke softly,
took her pulse, and checked her oxygen.
“A little poke,” he said, pushing a needle into her
arm. He wasn’t Spanish, but he had kind, brown
eyes. “Just breathe,” he said.
Modesta tried to push the morning out of her
mind, attempted to roll it back to her first
thought of the day. Her face flushed and she
squeezed her eyes tight when she realized there
was no longer any pressure on her bladder. She
drew the blankets up to her neck with her free
hand, vowing not to let the fireman pull them
down.
With her eyes closed, the sounds from the other
room amplified. The men spoke quietly, and
though she told herself she didn’t want to hear,
she strained to make out the words. “Is he okay?”
she asked.
The fireman patted her hand. “Worry about you
right now,” he said.
Modesta forced back tears and extracted her
hand. She never worried about herself. And how
could she not worry about Philbert right now?
What a ridiculous thing to say. At the sound of a
louder voice, urgent and demanding, they both
turned.
54
The Last Shot
“My grandson,” Modesta said, already reaching
for him.
The fireman nodded and left the room. He
returned with Amory, who fell to his knees and
cried beside his grandmother’s bed. She ran her
fingers through his dark curls.
Amory was her daughter’s only son, from her first
marriage to that hard drinking, heroin shooting,
good for nothing hippy son of a bitch. It was his
fault her daughter ever did any of those things,
his fault Amory was born a firecracker, shooting
off in every which direction, fast and furious and
out of control. His mother was too young, too
spaced out to handle him. Funny how things
worked out.
Modesta’s first husband had been killed in Korea,
before he ever held their son. Maybe Philbert
hadn’t liked the boy because he wasn’t his. It was
a different time. Then she gave Philbert only a
daughter. He spoiled her rotten, didn’t even allow
spanking, and never said he wanted a boy.
But Amory was the son Philbert never had, the
one he taught to tie a leader, to cast away from
the trees, to clean a rifle and track elk. As difficult
as the boy had been—they’d had no choice but
to swat his bottom occasionally—it had always
seemed easier just to love him. Maybe the pressure was less because he wasn’t truly theirs. Or
maybe they were making amends for her son.
And thank God for that. Because who was there
when Philbert and Modesta needed to stop the
toilet running or to keep the dryer drying? He
kept Philbert company, even if they only watched
the Broncos on TV and drank beer. Amory made
a good red chile, too—not as good as hers, of
course—but he kept her from starving altogether.
55
The Last Shot
Who knew he’d turn out to be such a good
boy? No. A good man. Modesta’s hand rose
and fell with his sobs, which hurt her deeper
than the arthritis. “Ya, ya, ya,” she said. Enough
already.“You’ll give yourself a headache. He’ll be
okay.”
What did the fireman say? Amory smoothed back
his grandmother’s bangs and kissed her forehead.
The fireman swapped out her tubes for a mask.
When another fireman appeared, pushing a gurney, Modesta protested. Amory would take care
of her. He’d clean up the mess. But they lifted her
so quickly that maybe nobody noticed.
They whisked her through the hallway, her
photos a blur. They raced through the kitchen,
too, giving her no chance to check on her husband, and out the back door. She couldn’t speak
through the stupid mask. The early morning sun
burned her eyes. She opened them again when
she felt the wheels collapse beneath her. “What
the hell are you doing?” she asked. Her firefighter
patted her hand and left. Damn him.
Why did they whisper? Aii! She hated IVs. Her
whole arm would bruise. And the bright lights.
She couldn’t lift her eyelids. The siren’s cry slowly
faded away.
Carlos’s raspy voice woke Modesta from a deep
sleep. She didn’t need her glasses to spot him,
standing by the window, nearly a head taller than
everyone else.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
Despite his long legs, Carlos was the last one to
reach her bedside. “How’re you feeling?” he asked.
“Fine,” Modesta lied. She felt heavy and sticky,
her body and brain so gooped up that nothing
moved right. “What are you doing here?” she
asked again.
Carlos looked down, his lower lip pulling his
mustache over his upper teeth. He covered her
hand with his. “I’ve come to take you home with
me,” he said.
Modesta caught her breath. She looked around
the hospital room. Tina took her other hand.
Amory bit his lip. “What did you say?” Modesta
asked her son.
“I said I’m gonna take you home with me.”
“Home where?”
“My home.”
“In the desert?”
“Tucson, Modie.”
Modesta looked at Amory, whose gaze fell, and
then at Tina. “What about your dad?”
“Momma,” Tina said, squeezing her mother’s
fingers. “Daddy’s gone.”
“Gone where?” Modesta demanded. “What the
hell are you talking about?” Her kids looked at
each other like they’d broken one of Momma’s
santos and couldn’t come up with a good
lie.“Where’s Philbert?” she demanded.
Tina held tight her mother’s hand. “He’s dead,
Momma,” she said. “He shot himself.”
“No,” Modesta whispered, as it all came rushing back. She jumped at the memory of the
sound, sickened by the image that came to mind:
Philbert, her Philbert, with his shotgun in his
mouth, pulling the trigger. “No!” she cried.
56
Reclining Model Jen
Bob Barr
Charcoal on Parchment
22-½” x 15-½”
57
The Last Shot
Modesta dug her head into the pillow, begging
her mind to stop, but the scene kept replaying
until she thought she would vomit. The kids tried
to comfort her, she heard their murmurs beyond
the blast. And when the nurse came Modesta
asked her to please help Philbert. “Please,” she
said.
In her dreams, Modesta saw Philbert, young
and good-looking, his dark curls slicked back,
his uniform perfectly creased, his chocolate eyes
melting her. Oh, he was such a fabulous dancer!
How happy she was when he reached for her. Her
skirt swished on the turns and when her smile
met his, he pulled her close enough to smell his
Aqua Velva. She felt girlish and gorgeous and
free, forgetting for the moment that her husband
would never return, that she had a son to raise
alone, and that she had cursed God when the sun
returned that morning.
When the song ended, Philbert grasped her hand,
walked off the linoleum dance floor, past the
tables and chairs, the clinking bottles, glowing
cigarettes and drunken giggles. He didn’t say
a word, but Modesta followed, out the double
doors and right into their kitchen. His shotgun
sat on the table. The blast woke Modesta.
Modesta looked around the darkened hospital
room. Carlos slept on a chair, poor thing. He’d
get a stiff neck. A line of light leaked around the
door, letting in more silence.
Modesta woke her son. “There were two shots,”
she said. “I heard two shots.”
“It doesn’t matter, Modie.”
“Why two? Did he miss?”
Carlos shrugged.
58
The Last Shot
“He missed?”
“Who knows?” Carlos said. “Maybe he was just
getting his courage up.”
“I want to go home,” Modesta said. “I want to
see Philbert.”
“He’s not there.”
“Then take me where he is. Then take me home.”
“You can’t see him, Modie,” Carlos said. “There’s
nothing left to see. You can say goodbye to him
at the funeral home later. Or at the rosary.”
“Then we can go home?”
“We’ll go home to Tucson in a week or two.
Once we get the house packed and cleaned and
ready for sale.”
“You’re selling my house?”
“Modie,” Carlos said. “Remember I told you I
was taking you home with me? You can’t stay in
that big house by yourself. Who would take care
of you?”
“Who took care of me before?”
Carlos stroked his mustache with a finger and
thumb. She was surprised to see spots on his
hands. “What difference does it make?” he asked.
“Amory could do it.”
“He has to work.”
“Tina doesn’t work.”
“Tina also can’t keep a roof over her head.”
“She could move in with me.”
59
Carlos smiled, one corner of his mouth higher,
his eyebrows raised. “How long do you think
that would last? What was it the last time? Three
weeks? A month?”
Modesta stared at her son and wondered if the
dim light was fooling her old eyes. The shadows
hid her boy from her, carving a new man from
familiar flesh and bone. Where was the miniature
of the young man she’d loved?
Carlos was decades older than his father ever
lived to be. His eyelids had begun to droop and
white hairs sprung from his eyebrows and salted
his mustache. She wondered if his father would
ever have looked like this. It was like running
into a familiar stranger at the Kmart, smiling
and nodding and then puzzling the day through
about who the hell that was.
Had it been so long since she’d seen him last?
He’d come for Christmas. Wait. No. They’d come
on vacation and then spent most of it in a tent or
some nonsense. But wasn’t that years ago?
“Steph and I are gonna take care of you now,”
Carlos said. “But we can’t do it from Tucson, and
we’re not moving back here.”
“But I’ve never lived anywhere but here.”
“You’ll like Tucson,” Carlos said.
“I like Denver,” Modesta said.
Modesta had been to Amory’s home only once,
when he first moved in. The emphysema was
already a hassle then, but she’d insisted he needed
her help to clean so he would take her and
Philbert over. The tiny bungalow, on a small lot
with a sour cherry tree in the front yard, wasn’t
too far from her house. Amory talked of his plans
Contemplator
Joan Lee
Watercolor
16” x 23”
60
The Last Shot
to replace his avocado-colored appliances and
pink toilet, maybe tear up the carpet and refinish
the floors. She teased that the timing was good
since he didn’t have any furniture to move out of
the way.
With nothing else to do, Modesta slept. Once
she woke to the sound of rustling and discovered
her great-granddaughter digging through the toys
and tossing them onto the floor. “What are you
doing, mija?” Modesta asked.
He had already set up the stereo and put on Perry
Como for his grandpa. The cable guy was coming
Monday. They ordered pizza and Amory made a
table and chairs out of boxes. Then he pulled his
only real chair—Philbert’s old recliner—into the
kitchen so Modesta could talk to him while he
scrubbed the fridge. She offered to tackle the sink.
The little girl toddled over to the bed and tried to
pull off the blankets. “Mine,” she said. “Mine,”
she screamed again and again as Amory carted
her out.
“This is the only sponge I’ve got,” Amory said,
closing the cabinet when she swore she saw some
there. He found a screwdriver for Philbert so he
could “fix” things.
This time, when they arrived from the hospital,
Amory’s place was not quite so empty, and
they had a hell of a time fitting her wheelchair
through. She didn’t even recognize the ridiculous
room he put her in: a stripe of flowered wallpaper wound all the way around, with matching
bedspread and curtains. The floral stripe lined the
sheets and pillowcases, too. Butterflies hung on
the walls.
“The baby stays here a lot,” Amory explained.
It took Modesta a moment to understand that he
meant her great-granddaughter.
The room was barely big enough for a twin bed,
a toy box and a nightstand, where Carlos stacked
Modesta’s medicine vials and a giant water bottle
with a straw that all the kids scolded her for not
drinking. Heavy to hold and impossible to suck,
they said she was just being difficult. “You have
to drink your water, Momma,” they scolded. Like
they had ever drank their milk or ate their broccoli. They could have at least brought her TV.
61
Modesta traced the vine from one end of the
wallpaper border to the other. In two spots, it
didn’t quite line up, and the stem just vanished.
It was no reason to get angry, but she did anyway.
She refused to answer when Carlos called her
Modie, though he had called her nothing else
for at least thirty years. She snapped at Amory
when he came to check her water and make
her take another fistful of tablets. And when
Tina inquired about the proceeds of the house,
Modesta said, “I’m dropping every dollar into a
slot machine, one at a time.”
“You’re just talking crazy, Momma,” Tina said.
You’d never do it.”
“As soon as Amory can take me to Vegas,”
Modesta said, glaring at her daughter until she
left her alone.
Modesta wished all of them would just let her
be. She needed sleep, her body begged for rest,
pulling on her eyelids, weighing down her limbs.
But sleep came with dreams and Modesta fought
it until her body fought back.
The pains began on her left side and spread up
and down until she looked to see who was stabbing her. She didn’t complain but accidentally let
out a cry that betrayed her.
The Last Shot
“No more hospitals,” she said. “No more
medicine.”
The doctor said, “Shingles.”
The chain link fence did little to separate the
funeral home—a flat-roofed building with neat
bushes—from an abandoned Kmart. Carlos
drove his rented compact up to the ramp on the
west side. He left Modesta in the car, with the
air-conditioning on frigid, while he retrieved the
wheelchair and oxygen tank from the trunk.
Modesta’s children had been at the home all day,
welcoming guests and sitting with Philbert. She
had passed the time in Amory’s flowered room,
tortured by the pain and fever of her own body,
by a useless bladder and by horrific dreams—
sometimes Philbert shot her with that first bullet,
the practice one, the one they said took a chunk
out of the ceiling above the refrigerator.
As each one took a break from the visitation to
care for her, she begged them to take her to the
funeral home. “Wait till the rosary, Momma,”
they’d said. Damn them.
Carlos opened the door. “Let me help you out,
Modie,” he said, reaching into the car, his gentle
fingers like paring knives.
“What time is it?” Modesta asked.
“About 5:30.”
“But it’s not even dark.”
“For the rosary?”
“Why?”
“Rosaries should be at night.”
“Who said? Watch your leg.”
“And they should be at a church. This isn’t a
church.”
“Modie. We’re lucky Uncle’s a deacon or no one
would even be saying a rosary.”
Amory kissed his grandmother and carried her
oxygen tank. Tina kissed her then rattled on
about the unbearable heat. It wouldn’t be so bad
if you lost a few pounds, Modesta thought as
Carlos wheeled her into the home.
The entrance hall, bright with light pouring in
large windows, their heavy wine-colored drapes
not drawn, was as cold as the walk-in freezer
at the tamale shop. Modesta caught a chill the
moment they entered, though she wore a sweater
and thick knee-high stockings. A hunched old
man in a charcoal-colored suit greeted Carlos by
name and handed both him and his mother a
small card. Philbert Sanchez, the cover said, over
a wavy American flag. Modesta didn’t open it.
She didn’t even turn it over. But she gripped it so
tightly it curved around her thumb.
She heard Amory whisper to Tina. “Should we let
her sit over here for now, Mom?”
“It’s July.”
“She’s supposed to greet everybody out here
afterward.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until dark?”
“But Grandpa’s in there.”
“For what?”
“And where else would he be, Amory? Fishing?”
62
Sun Over Kansas
Aileen Gaumond
Digital Photograph
63
The Last Shot
The casket stood at the front of the chapel,
draped in an American flag. Beside it, on a spindly table surrounded by foiled baskets of mums,
sat Modesta’s one big, framed photo of her husband, which was probably forty years old. Carlos
wheeled his mother to the first pew on the right,
not ten feet away. “You okay, Modie?”
“Don’t call me that,” she said. “I’m your mother.
Did you take that picture off my wall?”
“We needed something since we couldn’t open
the casket.”
“That’s mine, you know.”
“I know.”
“I want it back.”
“You’ll get it back.”
“Did you take any of the others?”
“We just needed that one, Modie.”
Despite the pain the motion caused her, Modesta
grabbed her son’s hand. Since that very first time
he’d addressed her by her given name—strutting
into her kitchen waving his new driver’s license
and the keys to Daddy’s sputtering Mercury,
which he’d bought for fifty bucks—the question
had nagged her. “Why?” she asked.
“Why what?”
She looked into her son’s face, searching for the
baby she’d once loved so much and finding a man
she hardly knew. It was too much. “Don’t call
me that,” she said, wishing she’d said it long ago.
“I’m still your mother. And those are my pictures.
You can have them all when I’m dead, but I’m
not dead yet.”
Wiggling her cold toes, Modesta wished for a
blanket. She looked at the photo of Philbert, how
he used to be—handsome and smug—and was
surprised at just how long it had been since she’d
last seen that man, that smirk. How long had he
been gone? She couldn’t recall that either.
Her eyes were drawn to the red, white and blue.
Philbert lay under there. What was left of him.
Her Philbert. Her husband. Forty-seven years
together boiled down to this. The son of a bitch.
In all those years, they’d been apart only when
he’d gone hunting or fishing, or while she worked
or visited her sister in Texas. Oh, they’d fought,
too. Damn had they fought! He’d pushed her
around some when they were young, and drunk,
and she’d thrown him out two or three times.
He’d taken a girlfriend once, too. A fling. An
extended fling. But that was it. Forty-seven years
minus a few weeks.
Had they been happy? Long ago, perhaps. She
couldn’t remember. But would he have done
this if they had? And what kind of life were they
living, anyway? Seldom seeing anyone other than
Amory, and a daughter and granddaughter who
came when they needed money. They didn’t really
have much to say to each other. But forty-seven
years, after all, was a long time. They’d said pretty
much everything at some point.
Modesta knew Philbert like she knew how to
breathe. She knew the sound of his truck from
a block away, his limp in the driveway and the
smell of his skin when he drank rum instead of
Miller’s. Modesta knew Philbert’s disappointments and desires before he did. Or so she had
believed. His suicide had been his first surprise in
years. And suddenly everything was suspect.
64
The Last Shot
Modesta stared at the stripes. How neatly the
red and white were stitched together, and what
a pretty contrast between. If she felt better,
she’d get up and touch the cloth. The material
looked thick and fine. So warm. But her subtlest
movement triggered pain, sharp, mean, and
unforgiving.
So Modesta sat, listening as people filed into the
pews. Her siblings hugged her and it hurt. Her
daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter, as alike as those stacking dolls, took seats in
the pew beside her. She turned to ask about the
baby’s picture and noticed their dresses, sleeveless and colorful and bright. But before Modesta
could criticize she realized she wasn’t wearing
black either. Nor was Carlos, nor Amory. Nor
anyone else. And they weren’t crying. Modesta
heard laughter and chatter instead of weeping.
Her own eyes remained dry. She peered again at
the stripes then looked away.
Modesta searched the chapel for sorrow. Philbert’s
brother held his wife’s hand and stared straight
ahead, but he smiled when a cousin patted him
on the back and asked, “How’s it going comp’?”
Their own compadre, Tina’s godfather, grinned
and waved at friends and family he probably
hadn’t seen since the last funeral as he made his
way to the front pew. He stopped smiling as
he bowed and made the sign of the cross, as he
kissed Modesta’s cheek and said, “I’m sorry,” but
not two minutes later she heard him chuckle.
She thought she heard a woman’s sob, but it, too,
turned out to be laughter.
Modesta’s granddaughter answered her cell phone
and tried to keep her daughter from crawling under the pew. Their giggles embarrassed
Modesta. The baby didn’t know, but what excuse
65
The Last Shot
did her mother have for showing so little respect
to her grandfather? He was dead for chrissakes.
Didn’t anybody care?
Maybe Modesta’s tears would help them realize.
She looked again at the casket. Philbert. Her
Philbert. The one who. . .Modesta searched her
memory for special times, scoured her heart for
tender feelings. Philbert had inspired plenty of
things in her. Perhaps tenderness wasn’t one of
them.
Surely she missed him. Not quite like she missed
Momma and Daddy. But that was different. And
thank God it didn’t feel like it had when her
first husband died—like a January wind swirling
through her chest. Their son was just sitting up at
the time, and Modesta couldn’t look at him, the
spitting image of his father, without collapsing
to her knees from the weight of the sorrow. She’d
wanted to kill herself, would have maybe if not
for the boy, whom she maybe never loved quite
the same way again.
Then Philbert had come along. And she was
saved. But without her son—who chose to grow
up with Modie’s little brothers and sisters rather
than move in with her and her new husband.
She pictured Carlos suddenly, all curls and
chubby cheeks, clinging to Momma and crying, “Mommy! Mommy!” She remembered his
dimpled fingers reaching as she got into Philbert’s
car. “Mommy,” he cried. “Mommy!”
Philbert pulled away. “Look at that,” he
said.“He’s already calling her Mommy.”
She recalled the words as his first slap but
couldn’t remember how long it had taken her to
believe them.
As Modesta’s brother asked them all to pray,
Amory reached for his grandmother’s hand.
He didn’t seem to notice how cold it was, and
Modesta tried not to shiver.
“Take me outside,” she said.
“But Grandma, we’re starting.”
“I’m not starting,” she said. “It’s too cold in here.”
Her brother spoke into the microphone, “Hail
Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee.”
Around her their relatives replied, “Blessed art
Thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of
Thy womb, Jesus.”
Again and again they spoke the words. Modesta
wondered if anybody heard them. She didn’t
want to. So she sang. “Don’t sit under the apple
tree with anyone else but me, anyone else but me,
anyone else but me.”
Amory shushed her gently, and when she kept
singing, put his finger to his lips.
“I used to sing that song to you when you were
a colicky baby,” she said. “Until we were both
hoarse and you collapsed right here in a precious lump.” She patted her chest. “Do you
remember?”
“I don’t remember, Grandma,” he whispered.
“But we should probably talk about it later,
okay?”
“There is no later, Carlos,” she said.
1st Place Fiction
2009 Writers Studio Literary Contest
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