Prism Winter 06.indd - Memorial Union

Fiction • noun • a story, often told as fact,
that is actually untrue. As children, we
are told that a ction, a lie, is forbidden.
Sarah Burghauser • MA English
Christy Casebeer • Applied Visual Arts
Erica Dorondo • Applied Visual Arts
K. Shawn Edgar • Liberal Studies
Michael Faris • MFA Writing
Jennifer Hubbard • Zoology
Jonathan Latour • Fisheries and Wildlife Science
Paige Lowe • Applied Visual Arts
Erin Mc Whorter • Art
Kendra Meshnik • Sociology
Matthew Mock • Art
Contributors
Jennifer Bishop • English
Winter 2006
Anne Normandin • Liberal studies
Brian Page • Applied Visual Arts
Daniel Rawson • Art
Chia Hui Shen • Art
Christie VanLaningham • History
Rachel Warkentin • Applied Visual Arts
Untitled • Erin McWhorter • Intaglio Print
40 • Prism
Editor-in-Chief
Travis Gilmour
Poetry Editor
Jerry Brunoe
Art Editor
Elizabeth Lamb
Layout Editor
Christie VanLaningham
Editorial Collective
Jerry Brunoe
Daniel Cullen
Travis Gilmour
Elizabeth Lamb
Christie VanLaningham
Copyright Prism Magazine, Winter 2006, Volume 42 Number 2
Oregon State University
Printed by Cascade Printing, Corvallis Oregon
Prism is published three times annually under the authority of Oregon State University
and the Student Media Committee policies for students, faculty and staff of the
Associated Students of Oregon State University. Prism always accepts submissions
of literary or artistic nature from students enrolled at Oregon State University.
Submissions should be sent to:
Prism Magazine
118 Memorial Union East
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
541.737.2253
www.oregonstate.edu/prismmagazine
Table of Contents
Covers
Title Page
4
5
6
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
18
19
20
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
40
Back Cover
Back Cover
Quito Bullght ∙ Daniel Rawson ∙ Photography
Untitled ∙ Erin McWhorter ∙ Itaglio Print
Wait ∙ Paige Lowe ∙ Photograph
Old Shoes ∙ Anne Normandin ∙ Poetry
F Words ∙ Michael Faris ∙ Poetry
Too Early ∙ Erica Dorondo ∙ Fresco
Petting Petite ∙ Sarah Burghauser ∙ Poetry
Slouch ∙ Stephen J. Summers ∙ Poetry
Untitled ∙ Chia Hui Shen ∙ Drawing
Untitled ∙ Brian Page ∙ Photograph
Grandpa ∙ Kendra Meshnik ∙ Poetry
Milk Man ∙ Jennifer Hubbard ∙ Poetry
Letter to Natalie ∙ Sarah Burghauser ∙ Poetry
Underwater ∙ Christy Casebeer ∙ Photograph
Is There a Doctor in the House? ∙ Eric Steen ∙ Performance
Untitled ∙ Jennifer Hubbard ∙ Poetry
Seaweed ∙ Matthew Mock ∙ Photograph
Literate Insect ∙ Luke Wenker ∙ Photograph
A Better View of the World... ∙ Jonathan LaTour ∙ Poetry
Color Collage ∙ Jennifer Hubbard ∙ Poetry
Irish Castle ∙ Daniel Rawson ∙ Photography
I’ll Have Another ∙ Jennifer Bishop ∙ Poetry
Cease ∙ Paige Lowe ∙ Photography
Stub Toed Feet ∙ K. Shawn Edgar∙ Poetry
Little Scotts ∙ Rachel Warkentin ∙ Encaustic ∙ Fall 2005 Editor’s Pick
False Negative ∙ Christie VanLaningham ∙ Prose
Contributors
I the Nose Nettella ∙ Erica Dorondo ∙ Encaustic
F Words (excerpt) ∙ Michael Faris ∙ Poetry
My soles worn
through slowly shaved
drag of heel and ball.
Thinner from years
traveling. Bustle,
shuffle. Climb,
descent downward
to dust:
my blanket
in this forgotten
dark place no one sees
me in my row
my box cast aside useless
Old Shoes
Anne Normandin
old broken strings
hold together hope
to drudge somewhere again.
Wait • Paige Lowe • Photograph
4 • Prism
Prism • 5
F Words
Michael Faris
Farm • noun • 1. the sod tread upon by the Faris clan; where the soil consumes a person or
rejects a person; the salinity in ones soul must be precise enough for the soil to not spurn
his advances; 2. a state of rural isolation; 3. We are made of dust, we shall return to dust;
4. an Iowan soil as black as ointment
Face • noun • what one hides when he is ashamed; what one saves when one recants; what
one shows to make appearances, a façade, a mask to be shown to those who don’t truly
know you
Fasces • noun • the bludgeon that Roman troops carried around with them to protect
whomever they served. In general, a Roman aristocrat could order his guard to beat
someone to death with a fasces for any reason whatsoever. The modern equivalent is the
baseball bat, the paddle, the gun. The sentence “Matthew Shepherd was bludgeoned to
death in rural Wyoming” could easily read, “Matthew Shepherd was fascesed to death in
rural Wyoming.”
Fact • noun • something that we are told is true; a stable happenstance that is not fiction;
a definition; e.g., boys are not attracted to boys
Fascism • noun, derived from Fasces • an extreme nationalism marked by state supported
monopolies and totalitarian government
Fag • verb • Britishism • to tire out, to run out of energy; e.g., I am fagged.
Fascist • noun • a person who ascribes to Fascism; an insult used to describe someone
with whom one does not agree, akin to, yet converse to, Commie
Façade • noun • the front of a building, sometimes fake
alternatively, noun • Britishism • 1. a cigarette; 2. a schoolboy who does menial chores or
duties for older schoolboys, e.g., I am a fag.
Faggot • noun • a skinny twig meant for kindling, for burning, for dwindling to ashes
Fairy • noun • a boy who prances like a girl; a dandy; a boy with wings
Fake • adjective • not real; surreal; implanted in the mind; e.g., said with a limp wrist, “That
girl’s boobs are so fake!”
Famine • noun • 1. a lack of foodstuffs, usually caused by a drought, that leads many people
to starvation, e.g., The Irish emigrated to America to escape the potato famine; 2. a sense
of loss in the heart that leads one to know something is missing, e.g., Due to the famine,
Michael set out to leave the sod behind.
Faris • noun • 1. the clan of farmers located in rural southwest Iowa whose roots stem
back to the Scots-Irish, a group known for their love of potatoes and kilts. Despite the
clan’s previous adoration of the wooly skirt, no Faris man has been seen in a skirt since
coming to America; that would make him a fairy; 2. my last name
Father • noun • the patriarch, the farmer, the forbidder, the barer of fasces (shovels, rakes,
hoes, tractors), the total, the governor
Fear • noun • avoidance of something because of possible or foreseeable pain; When I told
a friend I was from a small town, she told me I must have felt safe there – I only scoffed
in reply.
Feel • verb • to have emotions about something, generally discouraged by the father, if not
forbidden; past tense = felt
Feminize • verb • to make something like a woman, as in, Why would you feminize yourself
by wearing fingernail polish like that?
Fence • noun • 1. a boundary 2. the barb wire held up by posts to separate fields
Ferocious • adjective • vicious, venomous, marked with fierceness; e.g., the taunts in the
hallways at school could be ferocious
Fertile • adjective • to have potential to bare young; for soil, to have potential to grow crops,
to be rich and black as ointment
6 • Prism
Prism • 7
Fiction • noun • a story, often told as fact, that is actually untrue. As children, we are told
that a fiction, a lie, is forbidden.
Forbid • verb • to ban something, e.g., your love is forbidden; it is forbidden for man to lie
with man.
Field • noun • I imagine myself lying in the pastures, alone, staring up at the sky, the rural
night devoid of polluting city lights, and it’s only me and the starry sky, and the cows reminding me there is work to be done
Foresee • verb • to predict, to know well in advance that something might occur; to see
signs that your son is feminizing himself and fear he’s a fag
Fig • noun • The fruit that many believe was actually forbidden by God in the Garden of Eden.
The apple fiction was actually conceived and perpetuated by Milton in Paradise Lost.
Forlorn
Fight • verb • what two forces do when at odds
Fox • noun • when I was growing up, a family of foxes would move around the farm, chased
from one makeshift nest to another, driven away by my father, a patriarch driving away a
family led by a vixen
File • verb • to fall into line, to be predisposed to orderliness, to be straight
Free
Finger • verb • used in conjunction with “to give [one] the,” as in, He gave him the finger;
see Fuck (expletive)
Friend • variable • what is a friend exactly? Is he or she someone who provides warmth,
love, encouragement, support, affirmation, just another foodstuff to provide me nourishment?
Fingernail Polish • noun • what girls wear to make their fingers as pretty as their eyes; a
common color is fuchsia, a shade of red; usage: “No son of mine is going to be seen with
fingernail polish on.”
Fist • noun • the sign of revolution, a raised fist, raised to fight against the patriarch
Fix • verb • 1. to find a way to solve a problem 2. to castrate, as in, when on the farm, dad
would fix the dog so that it wouldn’t go and impregnate some fertile bitches, and we would
fix the calves so that, emasculated, they would grow up with tender meat
Flee • verb • to run away from a problem; to move two thousand miles from a problem
Fly • noun • an insect, a pest, something in the ointment
Foodstuff • noun • what one needs for nourishment, generally for the soul, such as warmth,
love, encouragement, support, affirmation
Front • noun • 1. face 2. the place in a battle where two forces meet
Fruit • noun • the product of our labor; we are told to go forth and multiply
Fuchsia • adjective • Linguists say boys use less color terms than girls do, in general. That
means that in describing something, a boy will say it is red, but a girl might reply that it is
maroon, mauve, scarlet, crimson, cherry, or fuchsia
Fuchsia • noun • a flower; e.g., Only a faggot would know that fuchsia is a flower.
Fuck • verb • to copulate, as in, He doesn’t want to know whom I’ve fucked.
Fuck • expletive • as in, I don’t give a fuck
Foot • noun • you know what they say about the size of a man’s foot? Growing up, my feet
outgrew me; I was a clown, all colored in pinks and blues and fuchsias and reds, with huge
feet weighing me to the soil
8 • Prism
Prism • 9
She offered
me a spot
on her bed
and he sprung to rub
his prickly tongue
in my palm.
Then we moved
to the floor
experimented
with different
music.
Sitting cross-legged
my knee grazed
her thigh. I shifted
wrapped my leg
around her waist
while Mon Petite,
in his sneaky flounce
shifted from my hand
to hers.
Too Early • Erica Dorondo • Fresco
Petting Petite
Sarah Burghauser
10 • Prism
Prism • 11
It rode a wind in from Chicago train
Yards, blown along, and wearied with each gust
And sodden with sweat, bitten back by rain
It shrinks and wanders, in the silent dust.
Heelprints faded away to nothing much,
Any more than a shadow dead-cast from
The meat-man stall, where coral fingers touch
A brick of life, with fingers just as numb.
It draws a smiling crowd too light to tell
That taken apart they too would clasp dirt
In clay-dammed headbands, and they so might smell
Sweet as the mud and be as hard to hurt.
Hunched and sloped over, ready to defer
An hundred times over, ‘G’day t’you, sir.’
Slouch
Stephen J. Summers
Untitled • Chia Hui Shen • Drawing
12 • Prism
Prism • 13
Prot-O-Balm and Dropsytone Dehyrdant
souring the odor
of roses and lillies.
Canned hymns oozed
out of speakers in the ceiling.
My stomach curdled as my lips
met his ashen forehead, stiff and cold.
Manure on his boots, tractor
grease on tattered blue overalls
and green mouthwash.
Rich, playful notes bounce
off of his accordian and
My stomach hurt from laughing
at his smart-aleck dinner jokes.
Grandpa
Kendra Meshnik
Untitled • Brian Page • Photograph
14 • Prism
Prism • 15
Shuffling soiled rubber boots
sprayed with cold mist
yellow pint sized next to Goliath’s.
never done, lists awaited us
never ending. Wake with dawn, milk
feed bottle make cheese calves heifers
springers breeding, a cow down
with milk fever. Harm had her sixth
calf...scrape corrals sanitize
milkers udders, strip teats of stagnant
milk. Breakfast- eggs, milk, sausage,
canned peaches, cottage cheese. Fix
fence prune apple walnut
plum cherry maple trees weed
garden change irriagation pipes
cut green chops feed cut
rake bale haul stack hay, young
strong backs bucking it up, green
scratchy chlorophyll smell
collect warm milk, add rennet, cut
with curder, drain rinse repeat add
to cheese molds press with stacked
high 5 gallon plastic buckets filled
with water. In walk-in cooler
16 • Prism
poly-coat vinegar mold
red wax label stack for delivery
man, milk man, father business
man. Five o’clock- corral cows
call them in by name, let down
grain, let down milk. Wipe wash
dry stained-out apply milker
massage out, remove, iodine
bag balm, release her from stall
Repeat. never stop, don’t rest
work heals, throw-up in the ditch
continue. Done at 9, trudge back
to house, my turn up, tomorrow
it’s my sister’s and his
again
repeat.
Milk Man
Jennifer Hubbard
Prism • 17
Letter to Natalie
Sarah Burghauser
Language is a sixth sense
written in red ink –
with flowers tucked
between the paper creases.
I have been composing
these letters for weeks.
Here on the east coast
winter remains
with a firm surface
but silently
buckles
under scattered budding bushes
and blooming crocuses.
Pickwick bulbs bloom in drifts –
their six oval fingers
forming a hand, cup-shaped
flower on a short
fleshy stalk. The last one to open
gestures with her mouth
mimicking Spring
tasting her purple petals
with yellow centered tongue.
Underwater • Christy Casebeer • Photograph
18 • Prism
Prism • 19
Is There a Doctor in the House? • Eric Steen • Performance
Photo credit: Felicia Phillips
Artist’s Description:
These images are from a performance I did in February entitled “Is there a doctor in
the house?” In this piece I explored a hospital situation that I was involved in: I had a lifethreatening stomach problem but the doctor’s didn’t know what was wrong, so they ran a
lot of tests and experiments. In the background of the piece I ran a video installment of a
patient sitting in a hospital room. She is conversing with the doctor who, without listening,
prescribes absurd medications for all her various problems. While this was playing, I had
dressed up as a doctor. I sat on the ground pouring smelly and disturbing items out of red
containers and mixed them together. I then poured the prescriptions into viles. There will
be more performances to come, through which I will continue to explore this experience.
20 • Prism
Prism • 21
Crunchy diamond grass ‘neath
blackened tread stripped soles
deeming death to young shoots
stretching for February mustard
sun ‘tween foggy boughts
purple yellow crocus beds
next to snow drop monk
figures bowing heads
to pray for gray cascades
from crisp moist air.
Seaweed • Matthew Mock • Photograph
Untitled
Jennifer Hubbard
22 • Prism
Prism • 23
Jonathan LaTour
Natural History
There once was a bug in Kilkenny
Who possessed disproportions a-plen’’y
For his legs were quite small
While his head, not at all,
And he often tripped o’er his antennae.
Now, nearby, a spider called Hannity
Kept an aspect of drunken insanity
For he’d roost in the dregs
Of the famed Irish kegs,
And his webs often read with profanity.
Human Nature
Literate Insect • Luke Wenker • Photograph
24 • Prism
A fellow rude, brash and impulsive
Finds a break in routine quite repulsive,
So he’s called an aggressive,
Oppressive, possessive,
Repressive obsessive-compulsive.
World Through Limerick
A Better View of the
Prism • 25
Soul cycling kinetic crunch
of damp licked lips
snagging in pensive teeth
wistful mind illusions
and pink sunlight
through magnolia blossoms
a neutral warm cloud
gauzy blue spring day
And the world stares dumb
at contrasting thumb color palates
as if paint doesn’t blend
Mendel’s sweet peas never hybrid
and friends never kiss.
Irish Castle • Daniel Rawson • Photograph
Color Collage
Jennifer Hubbard
26 • Prism
Prism • 27
I’ll have another
Jennifer Bishop
Teetering precariously between half loaded
and fairly trashed
I’m the girl that emerges from heavy doors in brick
Squinting, nearly scowling at
The light.
Digesting Shelley. I’ll wander and want to tell you
About the second generation of Romantic Poets.
Truly getting Coleridge.
Longing for Twain
And wishing that all the things that are
On their way would just
Get here.
Cease • Paige Lowe • Photograph
28 • Prism
Prism • 29
Black eyes make him weep
Tongue to teeth he seeps
Black eyes make him weak
Tongue tip to teeth blade deep
Black eyes and bruised thighs
Tongue man likes white trailer, stub toed feet
White trailer girl, she makes him weak
She mows dead grass in bare stub toed feet
He watches from a lawn chair, drinking sweet tea
She shows him bruised thighs and black eyes
Tongue to teeth he seeps
Black eyes and bruised thighs
Tongue tip to teeth blade deep
Stub Toed Feet
K. Shawn Edgar
Little Scotts • Rachel Warkentin • Encaustic
Winter 2006 Editor’s Pick
30 • Prism
Prism • 31
False Negative
Christie VanLaningham
So she wasn’t pregnant. The faint symbol on the end of the plastic strip she held
between thumb and forefinger told her that much. Whatever it was that indicated not pregnant
- two circles or three lines or a plus or minus sign or something else – whatever it was made it
clear that pregnancy was not the problem. Gloria had no trouble deciphering these symbols; she
had taken a pregnancy test every day since two Fridays ago, when Donnie hadn’t pulled out in
time, then pretended that he forgot. Donnie often lied about forgetting, but he kept remembering
her address at the end of every week. She sighed through her nose and threw the strip into the
dented trashcan along with the crumpled box she had slipped under her smock on the way to
the restroom, covering both with a few lengths of brown paper from the hand towel dispenser.
She flushed the toilet she knew her boss could hear from the back room, and walked out without
washing her hands.
Beppi, who watched the counter when she had to do her business, was leaning over
fat elbows and staring into a dirty magazine. The blackness of his oily hair disappeared at the
crown into an iridescent halo, which flickered a few times with the bare bulb above him before
he noticed her and raised his head. He straightened up, not bothering to put the magazine back
into the rack behind the counter. The smell of gasoline and his greasy scalp made her stomach
turn, the could-be morning sickness fading into less-complicated disgust. He filled up the narrow
opening of the cashier stand, rubbing against her as she squeezed past him, and exhaling loudly
into her left ear. He smelled like foreign food, goat meat or grape leaves or whatever it was that
he ate, left uncovered overnight.
“Excuse me,” she enunciated crisply into his chest as she passed, sitting down hard on
the stool behind the deli case that held the corndogs she had fried that morning. Beppi pulled
a hand-rolled cigarette from behind a large red ear and placed it on his protruding lower lip,
working his tongue around the delicate shaft. She imagined the slick film of his dirty scalp on
the clean white paper, and her womb clenched. Then, three things happened at almost the
same moment. The chirping indicator bell announced the presence of a car at pump #1. Their
boss, Mr. Gripper, emerged from his office at a near run, a videocassette clutched in one hairyknuckled hand. And Gloria vomited into Beppi’s leather sandals. Beppi said something filthy, and
even though she couldn’t understand the words, she nodded in agreement.
She refused to go home at first. Remembering it was Thursday only made her more
eager to stay. But Mr. Gripper insisted, edging away from her and directing her loudly to get
32 • Prism
her things and leave – after she had cleaned up the mess, of course. The videotape he had been
clutching lay on the counter next to the Lotto machine, forgotten, and even though she knew
the surveillance system in the station hadn’t worked in years, seeing the tape quieted Gloria.
She didn’t remind him of it before pushing out of the double glass doors, a plastic bag full of
cigarettes, canned dog food and a few bottles of Seven-Up in tow. The unexpected break in her
routine discomfited her almost as much as the nausea and she stood for a moment on the black
asphalt of the station lot, feeling aimless. Monday was Shop N’Kart, Tuesday was Whirl-O-Mat,
Wednesday was the Motor-Vu drive-in, or if it were raining, Clementine’s. On Thursdays she
washed her mother’s hair. Thursday was her least favorite day, after Friday. Donnie came on
Friday, and he stayed until the whole cycle began again.
A wind-blown sunlight warmed the skin exposed by the part in her hair as she began
the mile-long walk home. It was a white heat that cut through the constant layer of low-hanging
clouds, slashed unpredictably by sticky showers that blew in from the coast. Even in the middle
of summer, the huge tree stands that made up the coniferous wilderness boxing in the town ate
up most of the hottest sun, leaving only puffs of heat that radiated from the forest’s glut, smelling
of burned bark and steaming rocks. The whiteness was blinding, and Gloria sometimes closed
her eyes against it and walked the path from memory, always surprised when she drifted off the
sidewalk flanking the five-lane freeway that looked to her to be as straight as a closet rod.
The highway had split the town down the middle, as if those responsible for building it had been
unwilling to compromise the perfect straightness of the road by veering a half a mile to either
side. As it was, the weathered structures nearest the road had taken on a ravaged, hunkereddown look, having been reduced to a pit stop that passers-through made for gas and directions.
The dwindling population moved through town with down-cast eyes, further humiliated by the
scores of parka-clad men and women who bought diet sodas and bottled water from Gloria
while their shiny cars were fueled, describing the place as quaint before bending over racks of
brochures for the mountain resorts the highway led to. Gloria tried to remember to hate these
people as she walked home, watching their cars speed past, as was her timber town duty.
If it hadn’t been for the waves of traffic, she would have heard the house long before she
saw it. She had always lived a stone’s throw from the main road, and was rarely more then a
few blocks from its incessant whir, which, as she got closer, was stippled with the screeching,
shouting, barking, and TV noise that streamed from the place she had been born. The house
was at the end of a gravel lane jutting off of the stretch of highway that snaked up and over the
looming Cascade Range. Two stories, buttressed by a long front porch, the house was in a
state of disrepair that was trivialized by the nearby trailers of the less fortunate. The porch was
lined with debris – broken furniture and TV trays bearing wooden crates, rusted birdcages, a
Prism • 33
50-gallon fish tank (empty) full of bulging trash bags, stacks of faded newspaper, and cardboard
boxes full of glass canning jars that had never been used. An exercise bike, decades old, stood in
the middle of the square yard of dirt below the porch steps, kept company by beer bottles and a
paper fried chicken bucket full of cigarette butts. The windows were spanned with discarded bed
sheets and lopsided vertical blinds, one window showing a bright skin of tin foil that blotted out
the temperamental sunbursts so that Gloria’s oldest brother could get enough sleep when he
could pick up a spare graveyard shift at the pulp mill.
Two cars were parked near the open garage, serving as donors for the car that ran,
which was parked under the 80 foot cedar tree that hung over the house and yard. Gloria was
tempted to crawl into one of the dormant heaps, the Chevy maybe, to watch the clouds blow by
through the open back window. There was enough sun to warm the interior, and as she walked
by she caught the pungent odor of mildewed vinyl and carpet that hadn’t been dry in years. She
had a memory of driving with her father in that car, before he took a weekend trip to Walla Walla
and never came back. She remembered his flabby lips pursed into a Sunday drive whistle, which
made her think of Beppi’s lips on the cigarette, and her gorge began to rise. She quickened her
pace toward the front door.
The house teemed with living things; one German Shepherd, two mutts, six cats, a batch
of kittens too feral to count, four parrots and eight parakeets caged in by a room-wide corridor
of chicken wire, a rabbit, four unkind brothers and one obese mother. The ammonium reek of
waste blended with a nutty tang of animal feed and fell out through the open doorway as she
approached. Bird seed, dry cat food, small clumps of sod and animal dander littered the swollen
floor boards of the entry way. Gloria entered quietly, careful to lift up on the handle of the screen
door slightly to avoid its characteristic screech. She heard the hum of the television coming from
the bedroom her mother shared with most of the cats, covered occasionally by the high pitched
chirrups of the parakeets, and the sleepy squawking of larger birds.
She took the cigarettes out of the plastic bag she carried, walked toward the back of the
house, and tapped lightly with an index finger on the half open door of her mother’s room.
“Who’s that?” her mother said, turning her neck as far as possible toward the door at her back.
She sat in a groaning recliner with her thick ankles resting on the chair’s padded foot rest, bare
toes pointed toward a television that sat on a dresser near a queen-sized bed. Getting her body
up and out of the chair once a day to feed the animals left her exhausted.
“Just me, mamma.” Gloria dropped the cigarettes into her mother’s massive lap. “We
were all out of the 100’s – regulars will have to do.”
“Ah, shit,” she said dispassionately, bringing down a meaty fist onto the fraying arm of the
chair with a dull thud, and then turning back to the television. A large black cat, disturbed by the
34 • Prism
sudden motion, jumped from the chair and out an open window. “What are you doing home?”
“Gripper sent me home sick,” Gloria said, and waited half a beat, but turned to leave
when her mother’s face remained slack, panting.
Her room was upstairs at the end of a hall cluttered with the discarded possessions of
her brothers. She kicked past piles of dirty laundry, stacks of car and motorcycle magazines,
and sporting equipment in varying states of disrepair to look in on Rebel, the fourteen-yearold German Shepherd that lived in the bottom half of the doorless linen closet in the upstairs
bathroom. The old dog was blind and toothless, eating the wet food she set out for him from a
plastic dish near his head. He was the only animal in the house that Gloria paid any attention to,
having not been born with the family’s pet fixation. Rebel, after years of abuse that left him too
frail for rough play, had been abandoned. When Gloria took care of him – laid out his food and
water, helped him out to the yard, cleaned up his messes – it was not compassion that drove
her, but an unwillingness to see the dog’s death unburden them. She could hear the thump
of Rebel’s tail pounding against the adjacent wall of her room as she stripped off her uniform
smock and pulled a thin fold of bills and some change from a tight denim pocket. She had
managed almost eight dollars. Not bad considering she hadn’t finished her shift.
She had become more daring in the last month as she came closer to her goal, the
prospect of departure becoming more real. Added to the five dollars she had overcharged the
driver of a beige Suburban that morning, there were nearly three dollars in quarters and dimes
she had gradually fished from the till – an amount she knew Mr. Gripper normally dismissed as
math error when he did the books. She flipped the lock on her flimsy bedroom door, standing
still for a moment to ensure there was no chance of interruption. She thought it likely that the
boys still slept, it being just after noon, but kept an ear trained in the direction of the hall and their
rooms beyond.
Gloria walked to the end of her twin-sized bed and gently pulled the frame a few feet
away from the wall. Kneeling on the hard wood at the foot, she lifted a chunk of the pine tongueand-groove flooring that had, a moment before, been covered by one leg of the metal bed. She
pulled a crumpled grocery sack out from the exposed hole and into her lap. Adding the bills to
the thinnest of several stacks, she snapped the rubber band that secured it with a satisfying pop,
and dumped the change into a half-full cellophane baggie.
It had taken her four years. Four years of pocketing coins and the occasional dollar bill
until her technique improved and her knowledge of the station’s bookkeeping system emboldened
her. She tried to siphon as much has possible from her minimum wage salary, but the weekly
grocery bills, the responsibility for which had been assigned as her share of the family’s
expenses, almost always left little or nothing remaining. She had stumbled upon another avenue
Prism • 35
of income when she inadvertently overcharged a woman ten dollars on a full tank of gas pumped
into a European convertible. The woman had handed over the cash methodically, distracted by
the brochure for a snow mobile park fifty miles up the highway. Gloria learned to recognize the
unconcerned, meandering path of the easiest marks, rarely needing to correct herself when she
noticed a customer’s puzzled look as she announced the total.
As her courage grew, so did the amount written in pencil on the outside of the grocery
sack, the tally marked in long narrow columns up and down in several rows. At the bottom, near
the flat paper base of the bag $800 was written in blocky print and circled with a red felt pen.
She had carefully estimated the cost. $800 would buy the bus tickets she would need to get to
the east side of the mountains and into the desert, would pay for an introductory course at the
“Casino Career Institute,” which the brochure promised would guarantee her a position at any
number of nearby high-class gaming facilities, would mean escape from Beppi, forgetful Donnie,
the falling-down house, the reek of fried food and animal shit. She counted the money again and
figured it would take only a few more shifts to collect the rest of what she needed to reach the
goal. Maybe less if the opportunity arose. She could be gone in a week. Only one more Friday
with Donnie. Only one more night holding her mother’s head under the kitchen tap.
•••
When Gloria arrived at Poor Richard’s Gas n’Go the next morning, there was no Beppi
sitting on an upside-down bucket near the front doors. His ratty ten-speed wasn’t locked to the
propane tank, and the water in the squeegee reservoir was dirty and sudsless. Mr. Gripper was
behind the counter when she walked into the store, hands palm down on the glass case that held
the scratch-it tickets. Gloria mumbled a terse greeting, and walked around the counter to the
pegs near the restroom where she hung her coat.
“I’m going to need you to put in some extra hours this week,” he said, looking askance at
Gloria as she straightened her name badge and approached the counter.
“Why’s that?” she asked, trying to sound indifferent as a small burst of anxiety bloomed
under her chin and heated her neck and face.
“Turns out that lazy Slav was nicking the till. A few bucks here and there, nothing serious,
but it added up.” Mr. Gripper sucked his teeth authoritatively. “I brought out that videotape
yesterday, thinking I’d get a confession out of him.” He cocked an eyebrow at his own cleverness,
and shrugged before going on. “He denied it of course, but it don’t matter. It’s plain he had it in
him.” He began to work his arms through a spare attendant’s shirt, and moved aside so Gloria
could take her place behind the counter.
She felt her face pale, and said weakly, “I always thought there was something about
him,” through stiff lips. She was doing the math in her head, realizing she wouldn’t be able to
36 • Prism
take anything that day – maybe not for a long time.
“Anyhow, I’m going to work the pumps until I find somebody for the morning shift. If you
know of anyone…” His words were swallowed by the sound of a car pulling up to pump #4 and the
corresponding bell. He pushed open the glass doors and headed toward a snow-white sedan.
Her stomach churned, making her hands shake as she pulled the frozen corndogs from
the chest freezer and set the temperature on the deep fryer that sat against one wall. She
took a quick inventory of the valuables that might be found in the house as she handled the cold
sticks and placed them, dog down, into the warming oil. Nothing. And any cash her brothers
had at hand was guarded with militant efficiency. She pulled the golden fried tubes from the
boiling oil with a slender pair of unwashed tongs, dropping them into red checked paper baskets
and shoving them into the heated case near the cash register. Her stomach heaved again, and
she thought about taking a pregnancy test. It was written clearly on the side of the box, false
negatives occur if the test is taken too early, if the instructions are not followed precisely, or if the
sample is contaminated.
Gloria had forgotten it was Friday, and after clocking out had almost left the store before
Mr. Gripper could hand her the small envelope of cash that made up her weekly salary. Her
plastic bag seemed heavier then usual as she began the walk home through a fine mist, the slim
cardboard box she had taken and added to the cigarettes, dog food and soda weighing on her
mind. She had been nauseous all day, her belly curdled with anticipation, her breasts heavy and
tender with expectancy.
•••
She sat on the floor beside the bed and counted again. With this week’s pay, she was
only a few dollars short of the amount she needed. That meant she would have to leave before
Monday, when she would be expected to go to the Shop N’Kart and buy groceries. She pulled a
bus schedule from the bottom of the paper bag, and squinted into the complicated timetables.
She froze when Rebel’s tail began thumping on the wall, almost a sure indication that there was
someone in the hall. Keeping herself absolutely still, she listened hard toward the door, and
thought she heard a barely audible creak on the floorboards outside her room. She threw the
stacks of money that had been lying between her saddle-stretched legs into the bag, wincing at
the noise caused by her haste. She had barely shoved the bag into the hole, fit the wooden slat
into the grooves, and pushed the bedstead to its former position along the wall before she heard
knuckles on her door, and a familiar voice. He was early.
“Glory? Girl, you in there?” Donnie said. His voice was friendly, making her wary. Donnie
was rarely in a good mood for the first few hours of his Friday arrivals, worn out by a week spent
holding the Caution and Slow and Stop signs for a road construction crew that traveled the
Prism • 37
length of the nearby highway. He caught a ride back to town most weekends, spent a few hours
in Gloria’s bed, and the rest of his time (along with his paycheck) drinking in the garage with her
brothers. The first few times he had knocked on her door, she had been dazzled by his tanned
forearms and the cleft of his unshaven chin. The cigarettes they shared in her crowded bed
tasted like hope. Even when she realized he didn’t love her, when he rose immediately after their
coupling to wipe himself and pull on his dusty jeans, she clung stubbornly to the image of a little
house, miles off the highway and so quiet it made her ears ring. When she worked up the nerve
to describe it to him, he had buttoned up his jeans and said, “whoa, whoa, whoa.”
“Jesus Christ, Glory, open up,” Donnie said, the predictable edge creeping back into his
voice before she could manage to flip the lock. He pushed through the doorway and into the
room, looking quickly around before managing a perfunctory smile and pulling her into a onearmed embrace, the free hand pulling at his button-fly. They staggered together in an awkward
undressing dance for a few moments, until Donnie’s jeans were puddled around his work boots
and he pushed her toward the bed. Gloria had tried to deny him before, but found the few
minutes of jerky intercourse more tolerable than his stung pride. It wasn’t so bad, she thought,
knowing it would be the last time.
They sat down on the patched quilt covering the bed and she moved to pull off her blouse
as he leaned over and began to untie the laces of his boots. The neck hole of her shirt caught on
her chin, so she didn’t see when he spotted the plastic sack she had brought from the station on
the floor near the nightstand, dragging it toward him and pulling out a bottle of soda. She heard
the rasping of the sack, and the soft sound of something tumbling onto the floor. Panic made the
tangle of fabric around her head harder to manage. Before she could free herself, the sound of
his sudden stillness told her he had found the pregnancy test.
“What the fuck is this?” he said, holding the test inches from her face when she had
finally managed to uncover it.
“Donnie,” she began, trying to snatch the narrow box from his dirty-nailed fingers, the
shirt still encircling her neck like a too-thick polyester noose.
“What’s goin’ on here, Gloria?” he said, his eyes raking over her ridiculous appearance
and making her flush unattractively.
“You’re the one who won’t wear a rubber,” she said, determining front from back and
pulling the shirt over her shoulders once more.
“I thought you were on the pill,” he said, pushing an end of the box into her soft gut.
“You know I can’t afford it. I told you the first time we…” her voice trailed off as she tried
to decide whether to say fucked, or made love, and before she could finish he slapped her hard
across the face, ending the sentence. She didn’t say anything else, but sat with her head turned
38 • Prism
away from Donnie, covering with her hand the blazing cheek he had struck.
“So, you haven’t taken it yet?” he asked.
“Does it look like I’ve taken it?” she said evenly. She felt him bristle, and kept her face
turned away. “No,” she said. She heard him rip open the box, throwing the container to the bare
boards of her floor. He picked up her free hand and pressed the insubstantial strip of white
plastic into it.
•••
She sat on the closed lid of the toilet for a long time. The sweet stink of pot smoke
seeped under the bathroom door. She could hear Donnie’s body shift on the narrow bed where
he was taking long drags on a joint. The sound blended with the downstairs cacophony of
animals and brothers and mother, and she thought she might be sick again. Rebel snuffled
in her direction from his closet, blind eyes rolling around in their sockets. She bent over and
reached a hand toward his salt and pepper muzzle. His tongue felt coarse on her fingers, and
she noticed his water bowl was empty. When she turned on the tap to fill it, she heard a muffled
sound of impatient inquiry coming from her bedroom, and shouted, “it takes a minute,” before
setting the full bowl in front of the dog.
She sat down on the floor near his head, running a heavy hand down the path that began
between his limp ears and ended at his wrinkled black nose. Rebel sighed through it as he lapped,
closing his opalescent eyes and making Gloria feel merciful. She raised her head toward the
edge of the crooked sink where she thought the symbols on the test were probably beginning to
show up in the small plastic window.
She stroked Rebel’s head slowly, making his head dip closer toward the water when her
hand reached his nose. She wondered how it would be for him, when whatever would happen
happened. When there wouldn’t be anyone left in the house who would notice his bowl was
empty. And they wouldn’t notice, she knew that; not until his rotting corpse could no longer be
ignored. His tail thumped softly, languidly, deep in the closet’s interior. It had never been a safe
bet, she thought. Rebel’s nose, wet. And now Beppi, fired, suspecting her with his strangesounding words and never finding a job – not in this town. Rebel’s nose making plopping bubble
sounds under the water. Her father, in Walla Walla, whistling probably, having no trouble finding
his way home. The water just deep enough to cover Rebel’s wide stupid smile. Donnie coughing,
coughing, coughing. And one more tail thump, so soft – only she could hear it. It sounded
grateful, she thought.
Prism • 39