creativejenn's stories

Rokeby Venus

2005-04-26T07:54:00.000-04:00

The city of London was ripe with the smells of change and growth in 1914. The chimney smoke that epitomized the city in the 19th century lifted slowly, bringing London into the 20th century poised to be the center of everything. Thought still considered ‘dark’ in terms of dirt, mud and soot, the city seemed to be rising above the image even if the actuality of it never really left. The ways of the past were gone – London was experiencing a renaissance. No longer an industrial city, London’s main industry was that of clothing. ‘”Sweaters”, workers subcontracted out and working from home, were often used in this industry. Many men, women and children sat in the small, dank spaces of their hovels in the seedier ends of the town, sewing buttons onto uniforms for the ‘bobbies’ who continually watched over the city. The probably glanced out, squint-eyed from the detail work of sewing, at the progress of the world going on outside of their dirt smudged windows and wondered if they’d ever see a part of it.
Railways popped up, as did art museums and theaters. Luxury hotels and departments stores began to form a new skyline. London’s 7 million residents probably left their homes everyday with their senses accosted by the commotion of construction and innovation going on in the city. Tens of thousands of these Londoners were only recently made so. Czechoslovakia, Italy, Germany, and most recently, Ireland born bounded out of boats, trains and carriages to see with fresh eyes this city of the verge, and in the midst, of greatness. London smelled of progress, from the sting of fresh lumber and petrol from the newly licensed motor taxis, to the explosion of flower markets. Everything smelled like change but London had a good way of hanging on to its interesting past while looking toward the future.
All over the world, progress was king. Grand Central Station had just been opened and dubbed the largest train station in the world. Einstein’s theory of relativity was on the lips of every scientist and Alfred Wegner just put forth his ideas on continental drift, baffling some and just plain amusing others. Radio programming was increasingly popular and began to change the ways that families spent their time together. Moms, Dads, sisters, brothers and family pets would wrap themselves around the radio in anticipation of the days’ news, sports and information that only the newspaper had given them in years previous. It was a time of new ideas and change, 1914 saw the first blood transfusion and the publishing of a book by H.G. Wells that not many read, and if they did they probably didn’t grasp it, called The World Set Free.
Though for many in London life, and the world as they knew it, was far from free. The expanses of the city, as much as fifteen miles in all directions from the center at Charing Cross, were not enough space for everyone to have their own piece. For many, London was ‘a microcosm of what the British Empire itself should and could be’.
Women from all walks of life saw this change daily and wanted a piece of it for themselves. They, too, wanted to rise up from the ashes of the old London. These women lived in a world where they were not heard with the same equality as men. They lived in a world of society pages and sewing circles. In Chicago’s first primary of that same year, 50,000 women were there and rather than being able to vote, people voted on them: “some of the gowns were voted perfectly stunning”. They had not yet sealed their right to vote along with men in elections and had been trying for a almost two decades to achieve their goal. Millicet Fawcetts founded the National Union of Women’s Suffrage in 1897 and her progress, though peaceful and based on patience and logical arguments, was very slow. On of her converts from the Labour Representation Committee, Emmeline Pankhurst, believed so strongly in the rights for women that she was not willing to wait quietly, patiently and, some would say, logically, for the vote for women to happen. She wanted it much sooner that that.
These women became better known as the Suffragettes – known is an understatement almost – notorious would be a better fit. The crashing of window panes falling to the streets of London, the crackle of fires in politicians’ houses and shouts from hired boats on the Thames bouncing off of the wall of Parliament were all Suffragete sponsored. What began as a peaceful protest with Millicet Fawcetts and what started out as peaceful with Emmeline Pankhurst ended up violent and labeled a ‘terrorist’ organization by the government. They led women into a sort of battle, among these women was Mary Richardson.
Many of the suffragettes tried very hard to uphold both of their ‘lives’ – the role of the suffragette and of the wife, mother, citizen. While they marched down the streets of London in their long, shapeless dresses and their booted feet scraped softly on the pavement, their faces, drawn, tired but proud, begged for attention and understanding. Others took a route more violent.
On the Eastern end of London, perhaps right down the block from where a “sweater” would sew buttons and peer out the window at that close yet unattainable progress that the town was making, the movement of the suffragettes found it’s home. Meetings were held in the neighborhoods of Bow, Poplar and Bromley and processions began or ended in the East End’s Victoria Park. Sylvia Pankhurst, the leader of the East London Federation of the Women’s Social and Political Union and Emeline Pankhurst’s daughter, said that “the creation of a woman’s movement in that great abyss of poverty would be a call and a rallying cry to the rise of similar movements in all parts of the country”. Whether it started other movements or not, it found a home in the same place that Jack the Ripper, the Tower of London and the Cockney culture that everyone associates with stories like Oliver Twist.
On a Tuesday morning in early March of 1914, about a year after the East End became the home base for the suffragist movement, a group of East Enders, “sweaters” as they were usually so inelegantly called, probably thought it a perfect day to see the London that was not allowed to them on any other day of the week. Because of the pittance that was bestowed upon them by their sewing of buttons and patches like drones, they could not afford to see the wonders of the London National Gallery without it being a ‘free day’. This day was and they saw their chance. They would see more than they ever thought possible.
Victoria Park would have been a perfect the meeting spot for the motorbus to pick them up. The women, scrubbed to a shine for their trip downtown, in their Sunday best with gloves worn to thread bare at the fingers, hats sporting specifically placed flowers to hide stains and shoes shining as hard as they could. They would wait patiently for the haze of petrol to surround them, scoop them up and take them down Grove Road and through the innards of London. Before they’d get through the outreaches of the city, they’d bump and churn along Whitechapel Road’s fish markets, to Aldgate, through Cheapside, which really explains itself in the name, and around the south of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The London streets could easily devour a bus full of tourists and citizens alike with the traffic circles and name changing roads grasping toward their destination. Ludgate Hill would turn into Fleet Street then into the Strand, their petrol driven chariot would safely deposit them at the Charing Cross and see them depart, straightening their hats and smoothing their hair as the stepped off of the bus and straight into the history of London. The group would walk north up near the Charing Cross and up around the back of the National Gallery of London, likely mix with others walking toward the same destination, possibly smile at women dressed much like them and walking briskly, looking ahead with purpose. In a few short steps, the mixture would find themselves in the middle of Trafalgar Square.

Recycled cannons from the French fleet of the Napoleonic wars watch over Trafalgar Square in the stately form of lions. They rest, paws forward, mouths ajar and eyes alert atop granite slabs as tall as a man, watching the people of the square mill about. If they were alive they would probably flick their tails at the hundreds of pigeons flitting around and squawking over the birdseed sold in the square. In recent decades, the lions have been a source of challenge for school-aged children of London. Urban myth states that the lions were specifically constructed to climb and many have tried to do so. However, most have been unsuccessful and in later decades, it would be found that an approximated 2% have left with a lifelong negative impact to their personal life called the ‘Lion Climb Effect’. There may have been children skipping school on that Tuesday morning trying to achieve this very task. Protected against the cold chill of March, their utilitarian grey wool coats would have shined the four lions to a blinding bronze in the light of the morning. Never mind that the young climbers were only as big as the lion’s head to begin with, it probably just looked like a good climb rather than a chance to break a bone or two.
These bronze jungle cats rest on the four corners of the statue of Admiral Horatio Nelson, who fell at the battle of Trafalgar, which was the battle that sealed the victory against Napoleon. After his death, he was preserved in a barrel of brandy for his safe shipment back to London. Upon the return of the body to London, it was found that half of the brandy in the barrel holding his body had been drank. It is supposed that the crew used tiny straws to extract the liquor and from this came the slang term for illicit drinking: “tapping the Admiral”. In spite of this urban legend, his status in the history of the United Kingdom is obvious. He is vaulted above Trafalgar Square on a 186-foot tall granite column. His sword, held in his left hand, has its tip planted into the granite ground and his right hand is flat against his stomach. He alone oversees all that happens from his perch, facing south, toward the Palace of Westminster. Unless of course, there is a political protest and someone pierces the sanctity of his stately stature, which a base jumper did in 2003 to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
The most bustling and historical roads of the city are under the great Admiral’s gaze. The bustle results in acrid smells of motor cars and dust, which settle in every crevice of one’s face and hair on one’s head, lasting long enough to smell it before drifting off to sleep at night. Flowing in front of him and away to south is Whitehall, the road named after the Palace of Whitehall that burned down in 1698. To his left, the famed Strand, which follows the curve of the River Thames. On the right of his body, the future site of the Canada House. But what was going on behind his back, next to Charing Cross Road, was highly more important on that day.
Tourists from the farthest reaches, recently immigrated citizens, “sweaters” from the East End, flowercart pushers, taxicab and bus drivers, shopkeepers from the new luxury department stores. All manner of people gathered outside the Gallery and around the square. The mixture of London accents, foreign accents, political talk, chit chat and childish banter from the adventure seekers near the lions must have been deafening, confusing and interesting. Maybe the visitors watched the children scaling the lions or feeding the hundreds of pigeons with seed, could be that they people watched or watched their pocket watches anxiously until the front entrance of the National Gallery opened sharply at ten o’clock to display to the world it’s national treasures.
With the admiral’s back to them and the mid-morning sun on their right shoulders, they walked past the line of trees shouldering the square and into the cool, dark, quiet spaces of the museum on what seemed to be an ordinary day. This was no ordinary Tuesday, no ordinary March 10th and it would certainly be no ordinary year. March 10th goes down in history as a day for change. The end of the first Punic Wars happened on this day in 241 BC. Charles I dissolved Parliament in 1629 starting the Eleven Years Tyranny, the Louisiana Purchase was signed in1804, and Alexander Graham Bell made his first successful phone call in 1876. March 10th has also had it’s bad times as well, Osama Bin Laden was born on that day in 1957, as was James Earl Ray who assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King (one could also note that he plead for his life at his trial and failed, on his forty first birthday). But on this day, like many March 10ths before it, there was an aura of desperation, possibly of anxiety but a definite need to change was felt by some on that day.
What none of the visitors to the square expected was to see an attempt to make the same type of massive change to the world. This event would shock the world but would quickly be buried - the chapter of this story in the history of the world closed before it barely started. The story of Mary Richardson and the Rokeby Venus fell under the feet of soldiers scurrying off to war and became, as Mary Richardson said of women saints forgotten, ‘strangely unremembered and neglected’. This story was drowned out by the news that the heir to a throne was assassinated by a student and started a reaction that was dubbed ‘The War To End All Wars’. But before that, this happened.
The crowd filed into the spaces of the London National Gallery on Tuesday, March 10, 1914 and likely started the din of sound in a museum: the zipping sound of cloth against cloth as too many try to angle themselves close to a painting, the echo of a slight cough and the short whispers emitted from mouths as people read placards, sometimes unbeknownst to themselves, aloud. Shuffling amongst the crowd of tourists and residents who were taking their chance to see some of the western world’s most prized pieces of art, a small woman scanned her surroundings very carefully. A few hours earlier that morning she had begun to notice that she felt that she was ‘a stranger and apart from everyone else’ and was likely feeling the same as she watched people wander. This unassuming woman blended with the crowd for over two hours, circulating throughout the worlds created on bits of canvas. Being a slight woman gave her the advantage of being able to almost disappear in the crowds of others.
She was not the type of woman that drew attention, from her appearance, at least. Her face was drawn and came to almost a point at the end of her chin. She’d always been a slight woman but her days of being forcefed in prison, which would push anyone to their physical and mental limits, brought gauntness to her body. She was average looking in comparison to everyone around her in every other respect however. She did not quite tower over all with her 5’ 5” height and her brown haired, brown-eyed features certainly would have blended with the throng of museumgoers clad in their early spring attire, which was well suited for the cool weather of the season. It is almost certain that no one in that building saw her as a threat of any kind and likely that no one glanced twice at her at all.
Mary Richardson’s group and her cause quickly became the biggest threat to the British Empire. These women looking for the vote were the first people in the UK, if not the world, to be spied on by photograph. A Scotland Yard detective requested something unusual to aid his investigations and after his request was passed up, reviewed and approved, Scotland Yard acquired a Ross Telecentric camera lens, which cost the taxpayer £7 6s and 11d. The suffragettes became wise to the ways of the paparazzi-esque police and tried in many ways to avoid the camera lens or distort their faces so they would not be recognized in the developed results. Any pictures that were taken of the suffragettes were either from a vantage too far away to identify or bore the split second reaction from the woman to change her appearance (quick movements in the early 1900s would easily ruin a photo).
This very well-known in act but not in appearance woman, circled from room to room until she ended up in Room 17 in front of the Rokeby Venus. The frail, bird like Mary Richardson, self-described at that point in her life as a ‘walking corpse’ must have been such a contrast to the milk-white skinned, sensual woman sprawled on the wall of the museum. The ‘unremarkable’ woman stood studying the fair skinned woman who had been deemed ‘remarkable’ by the world of art, history – the world in general. The pride of a nation hung in front of her. A woman, who was not even real, lazed before her as if she knew that she’d been said to hold “all the beauty of this world”. The Venus started at her own reflection with her back to the world. Her revolutionary pose, having her back to the world, made her mysterious to many. She was the first high profile purchase by the National Art Collections Fund. Not only did the monetary value of the Venus hurt Mary Richardson but also the idea that she, a painting, was revered so highly while an actual human was treated so basely and inhumanely.
The nightmares that she had experienced in prison just a short time ago did not keep her from contemplating her next act of retaliation. She probably did not think of the yard long tube that had previously been run thorough her nasal passage, down her throat and into her stomach while staring at the painting, but it can be assumed that she knew that she would have to encounter that situation again. This was her chance to make an impact, to literally break the silence, both of the din of the museum and the silence had been pushed upon them because of their sex.
We will never truly know what was in her mind that day, all we can do is assume. But we do know what she did before she left Room 17 of the London National Gallery. She knew that she had to “draw a parallel” between the public indifference of the slow destruction of Emmeline Pankhurst, who was currently in prison, and the destruction of a financially valuable object. She knew that she would gather attention to the plight of her fellow suffragettes by economics. She was nervous, though, about the task appointed to her. She pulled out a sketchbook and tried to draw to seem like an interested visitor. Not being able to reproduce on paper what she saw as ‘an almond-eyed madonna’, she continued to stare and became calmed by the smile of the Venus. She found the guards to be too close, too watchful for her taste therefore she continued her ambulation throughout the gallery looking at landscapes and portraits.
To her, the beauty and perfection of this ‘national treasure’ was an atrocity and an outrage when compared to the idea that real, living women were being treated so inhumanely. She slowly made her way back toward the painting, knowing that she had to complete her job. People milled around her on that Tuesday morning in March while she stood in front of the pale woman forever immortalized by Velazquez. In her lifetime, she was known for being very contradictory regarding the beginnings of her political views. Her influences were based on Oliver Cromwell, Cristabel and Emily Pankhurst, her grandparents and sometimes Henry III. But on that day in March, she did know where she stood. Between the moment she gazed up at the reflected face of the Venus and the point when she was being dragged out of a room filled with broken glass and confusion, she gathered the courage somehow to make a statement and create a ‘memorial of women’s determination to be free’.
“Free from what?” some might ask. For most women in the world today, there is not much that they are not free to do.

Every newspaper surface the next day would be inked with news of the attack on the Rokeby Venus. Still warm from the press, the newspapers would be taken to the far reaches of cities all over the world with headlines screaming that the “Suffragetes have injured the whole world”. Others would say that Mary Richardson was not, in fact, Mary Richardson but the wife of a London police officer. Hotel owners would worry that the attack would hurt tourism in London and that the city would just become a ‘stepping-off place for Paris’. It easily became the big news that everyone had an opinion about.
Those on their way to work in New York City would pick up the paper, flip a coin to the vendor and crackle open the news. They would read of Mary Richardson, Emeline Pankhurst and the other suffragettes. They might be sitting on the ferry from Long Island to the Island of Manhattan, on long benches, a line of newspapers with the same title and a few heads poking out of the top would be the scene. As the water broke around the ship and the ferry closed in on Manhattan, they’d learn of the ‘national treasure’ of a painting that had been bruised, as if it were human, by a slight woman with an ax and a thirst for equality.
Some would be shocked by the actions of Mary Richardson and some would deem her a hero of her era but those that thought her hero probably did not speak very loudly. Messages in the style section of the newspaper would talk of the incident, calling it ‘as intelligent a means of attracting attention as going over Niagara Falls in an open boat’ and proclaiming that it is a ‘style’ problem and that Best & Co. was the exact place to fix it. Right next to the listing for suit sales, new spring blouses and an advanced Easter showing of fashion this outcry was nestled. A perfect place for all society women of the correct stature and decorum to see it so that they may think that if they shopped at Best & Co. they will avoid such indiscretions as Mary Richardson. Yes, they’d nod their perfectly coiffed heads while sipping their morning coffee, it must’ve been her lack of spring wardrobe that drove her to such madness.
The angelic white of the painting was broken slashes in the canvas. The Venus suffered seven cuts. Her shoulders and back bear the marks of a woman quickly and angrily trying to make a point – the cuts were clean, sharp. But one ragged bruise would prove the most difficult to repair. Immediately after the attack on the painting, she was taken down by three guards amongst the shards of broken glass and guidebooks used as weapons against her. Onlookers could do nothing but stand aghast at the happenings in front of them. The jumble of bodies somehow made its way to a stopping point, a calming point. She was not one to hang her head as she was escorted briskly out of the museum, into police transport, and straight to Bow Street police court in East End. It is possible that her ‘home court advantage’ helped her remain vigilant in the face of the police, or the fact that she’d already been before a magistrate ten times since the year began. While London’s museums were being shut down until further notice and paintings were being taken from the wall of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Mary Richardson was being sentenced.
On what we would, in modern days, call a ‘technicality’, the damage to the work of art would result in a 6 month prison term. The New York Times would incorrectly dub her ‘May Richardson’ and state that under the Act of 1861, ‘to destroy of damage books, works of art, &c. in public museums’ was punishable by six months in prison. However, ‘malicious damage to real or personal property exceeding £5…is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment not exceeding two years.’ It is safe to say that there were many gut reactions to this information and it varied depending on whose side one was on. The London National Gallery paid $225,000 for the Venus, which is much, much more, even with the conversion rate, than £5.

She walked past the two stone griffins at Holloway Prison the next day. Her head held high meant she probably did not see the inscription on the foundation stone, which read “May God preserve the City of London and make this place a terror to evil doers”.

Five Stories I Will Never Write

2004-11-22T17:47:00.000-05:00

The assignment:
The writing assignment is short; two pages on this topic: "Five Stories I Will Never Write." You may treat this however you like, the more creative the better.

The response:

The tinkle of ice into a glass roused Elizabeth from her drunken haze. She awkwardly went from her slouch position at the table to a prim and proper position that Mom would be so proud of, save the extreme intoxication, of course.
Elizabeth and Jenn sat at in the high bar seats, letting their feet dangle and kick in a strange, uncontrollable reflex way. They both had a collection of martini glasses to show for their night out. Circles of the glass bases lay all over the table because drinking them got increasingly more and more difficult as the night went on; sometimes there was a martini glass faux pas when one of them would tip it like a normal glass while it was still relatively full and end up with a few escaped drops running down the side, snaking down the stem of the glass and then pooling around the base.
Jenn held her latest martini with two hands as she heard Elizabeth talk of what she could not stand about writers.

“Ya’ know what really bothers me about writers is when the start writing books that totally undermine their talent. Like the whole chick lit movement, though I’d really love to publish a book would I want it to be something that will get laughed at in some circles as not ‘real’ literature?” The two hands of Jenn’s put down the martini glass with a little more force than the brain wanted, resulting in a slight lurch of clear liquid to escape the glass.

“I don’t know…that’s a hard question.” She put her mouth in a very exaggerated pout, as she looked very serious, like she was trying to solve a calculus problem.

“I think”, she went on after a few seconds, “that you should just write what you want and not worry about what other people think” She nodded her head with a snap for emphasis.

“Well, what type of stuff would you never write? I know you want to write a book but what would you never, well, lower yourself to?”

“Hmmm….I would never write about..uh..about my family, or at least not to be published. I don’t want my family to sue me. That would really be uncomfortable at Christmas.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to write about my family, either. I wouldn’t want to write a trashy romance story with strange adjectives describing body parts. If I wrote it, I’d want it to be good, more story-like, not just Ed the plumber shows up at someone’s house and they immediately start having sex. Has to have a plot and character development. One should understand the inner workings behind Ed the plumber.”

“I would never want to write about stuff like that unless it was totally classy, too. Why shouldn’t erotic literature be classy? Ya know what I could never write?” she pointed her finger at Elizabeth, “A children’s book. I don’t’ know kids at all and am always making an ass of myself in front of them because I either treat them younger than they are or way too old. I mean, how old is eight, really? What do they like?”

“Lady, I don’t know – I like kids but I couldn’t write a children’s book, either. Kids freak me out” Jenn nodded slowly in agreement.

“Horror – like Stephen King? I could never do that – I’d scare myself to death every time I sat down to write. And what scare me doesn’t even phase most people so I’m sure that the book would suck.” The waitress walked by while Jenn said this and Elizabeth motioned for another round, circling her index finger in the air.

“Science fiction, definitely would not be able to come up with names for all of the planets and stuff.” Elizabeth played with her straight fiery hair as she looked contemplative about names of far off places.

“I would be scared to write a historical fiction book, you know one that requires tons of research? I’d be so scared that someone would see holes all in it and proclaim my idiocy to the world on the internet.”

“Yeah,” Elizabeth exhaled, “that would not be fun to be proclaimed a dumbass in front of the whole world”

“But it is so hard coming up with ideas for stories, ‘ya know? I mean, sometimes it feels like everything has already been said.” Jenn swirled her olive laden toothpick around in her drink.

“Why do we even try or bother to write?”

“Because it is just what we do.” Elizabeth said as if it were an epiphany, gesturing with her hands to drive the point home “it is what helps us figure life out.”

“I guess so – that was really awesome what you said. Huh. You totally made a flowery, happy ending there. I feel all warm and fuzzy now.”

“Uh, babe – I think that’s partly the six martinis.”

“Uh, yeah..probably that, too.”

From the Annals of Bingo Hall - Jesse Rhodes

2004-11-10T07:35:00.000-05:00

By the time I arrived at my post, Sunday night Bingo was in full swing. Descending the stairs that led into the church basement, I was met by an ominous nicotine haze, momentarily obscuring my view of the octogenarian dive. The hall was a concrete slab surrounded by drywall which was originally painted white, but over time had acquired the charming patina of a smoker’s lung. At one end stood a simple concrete stage where the Bingo machine sat, dutifully attended by a man in a black suit with lapels to match his ego. Opposite the caller was the sales booth where I had been volunteering for the past few months, dealing concessions and game cards for the eager old women who swore they felt good fortune running through their forms, though they were probably mistaking it for arthritis. Sandwiched between these two entities that would decide the fate of these women through pure happenstance were row after row of long folding tables faced in imitation wood. The luminous panels overhead flickered, embracing the whole scene in intimate electric candlelight.

            At seven the women had begun herding themselves into the basement, casually chatting about this, that and the homily from 8:30 mass. They’d clutch their tote bags which housed an arsenal of felt-tipped Bingo markers while lining up in front of the sales counter to buy an evening’s supply of game cards, sinking more into their gambling habit than what they’d stuff in greeting cards to the grandkids in the course of a year. Each lady, armed, locked and loaded, would then find her sweet spot around one of the tables. The friendly chitchat would end and deftly segue into silent détente. Each one would lay her tableau of Bingo cards, markers, packs of cigarettes and ashtray, fully prepared for a night of frenzied smoking on top of a heated game. Well, everyone except the handful of people who sat at the one table with the “No Smoking” sign prominently displayed. Like that was going to do them any good. They’d simply be in for a night of heated Bingo and second hand carcinogens. But just the same the same group would come and put up with the smoke in hopes of winning one of the hefty monetary prizes. Now granted, I wasn’t there to see these pre-game rituals that particular evening, but that’s how they would go every week, like clockwork.

            I was there in time to catch the second game of the evening. Most of the women were playing multiple cards at once, hoping to better their chances of winning something. The man in black who I never cared to know called a number. There immediately followed the sound of hundreds of felt tipped pens attacking the Bingo cards, leaving behind bleeding, colored dots. Silence. Attentive ears listened for the next number. It came, and so did another barrage of blunt stabbing noises. They all tried to look casual, sitting back in their chairs as opposed to leaning over their precious game cards. But the cigarettes, all held by twitching fingers over the cheap metal ash trays, gave them away. Bingo would be everything to me too if all I had to do was putter around the house and put up with my spouse 24-7, if I was too old to really go anywhere and have only to read the paper and wait for someone to think to call. It was slow to play and boring as hell to watch, but for them I guess it was a different breed of monotony to break up their week.

            At last someone cried out. The Bingo caller descended from his perch and came over to her to check her card. It was a winner. A muffled chorus of, “Oh, shit,” flitted about the room as the lucky lady grinned with pride as if she’d been waiting a lifetime for those fleeting moments of notoriety as foretold by Warhol. Her name was taken down so that she could collect her prize money once Bingo had ended for the night, and without additional fanfare, the next round was began. Everyone, including the one time victor, collected their losing cards, riddled with red bullet holes, deposited them in the brown paper bags and brought out a new batch to play again. And thus the circle of competitive Bingo continued.

            I rested my hand on the ledge of my sales stand, eyes watering for the smoke, throat like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together, ears burning for the man in the black suit who called each number with the loathsome gusto of a TV game show host.

            “Gettin’ tired up there?” came a voice from a man I’d never met; he was a new volunteer and had opened the stand for me that evening. He was stuck working the kitchen, micro waving and deep frying a smorgasbord of greasy pre-packaged snack foods. If the cigarette smoke didn’t almost kill you, the concessions would. Didn’t catch his name. Figured I’d learn it if he kept showing up.

            “No, I’m fine.”

            Every once in a while I’d sell a couple of sodas, a hamburger, fries and then watch the anonymous patron return to her seat where she’d ceremoniously snarf down her snacks, tossing the refuse into one of the dozens of paper bags strategically placed around the hall for that purpose.

            Instant Bingo was also a hot seller; it worked like any other scratch card where you knew in a minute if you made a bad investment. Every week I’d have the same old woman come up and place a couple bills on the counter and I’d give her a scratch card. She’d stand there, expressionless, eyes cast downward so she could fully concentrate on rubbing a quarter against paper. If she didn’t win with the first batch of cards she bought (and she never did) she’d buy some more, play again, and be forced to admit defeat. This would go on for a while, and then she’d suddenly just walk away grumbling about how everything was rigged to take advantage of the elderly. Yeah, well, it wasn’t like she was the only one who wanted to be known for winning something off a scratch card. Why she didn’t stick to regular Bingo I’ll never know. That was the game where you’d always see someone’s prune fingers fly through the air proclaiming their accomplishment in a game of chance.

            It was well into the evening when another elderly body came traipsing into the hall with the aid of a cane. Strange for someone to enter the basement so late in the game! Both my eyes and those of the police officer in the corner, the same one who always oversaw these sporting events, watched her cross the floor. Her horn-rimmed glasses prominently sat on her wrinkled face, and surely her vision was failing, for what must have looked to be a mauve dress to her was flaming red in the eyes of the young. As she walked by her perfume viciously attacked the cigarette smoke, assaulting my nose with another intolerable odor. Her hair coiffed with hairspray sat atop her head as a steely work of sculpture, refusing to give sway to anything. She walked up one aisle to where (I assumed) she usually sat, only to find another woman in her sweet spot. I couldn’t hear the words exchanged, but noted the newcomer tapping her cane on the leg of a folding chair and the venomous glare that darted from her eyes and into her opponent. The seated defender with white hair and floral dress said something to assert her position. I’ll always wonder what came before

            “Spineless bitch!” came blasting out of the newcomer’s mouth which was met by the rising of the white haired lady who screamed, “Toothless whore!” into her oppressor’s face. It would have come to blows if the police officer roused himself and separated the two women. He escorted them back to where I was, far enough from the crowds to give them each a firm reprimand.

            “What the hell’s wrong with you two?” he asked, obviously surprised that he had to be saying this to people old enough to be his grandmother.

            “I’ve had that same seat in this Bingo hall for fifteen years!”

            “Seating is on a first come first served basis, ma’am. There were plenty of other seats for you to take.”

            “I don’t care. She only did it to annoy me!”

            “I don’t even know you!” the white haired woman piped up. As the bickering escalated once more, the officer shouted loud enough for the whole room to hear.

            “Both of you, out! You’re no longer welcome!” This promptly shut them both up. How miserable they looked as they were banished and led away from their Garden of Eden! Their former fellow inhabitants all briefly turned to each other, mumbling over the altercation, snickering all the while. And how would those two women be remembered in the morning and every day afterward? Not fondly, especially after the return of the police officer, who turned in the women’s names on a note card to the Bingo caller. The piece of paper was secreted inside his black jacket and the games continued as if nothing strange had come to pass. Later those names would be posted in the hall, assuring that the infamous pair would never be allowed the luxury of Sunday night gaming.

            My eyes resumed a careless scanning of the room, eventually falling on of one of the women at the “No Smoking” table. She was one of those bonafide blue-haired ladies, whose clean white curls were encircled by a halo of ethereal blue. Really, I was only fascinated by the glow of her tresses but I began to stare at her longer than I should have. She noticed me and took my awkward gape as a social invitation. She stopped in the middle of a game to walk over to my booth, her white Keds squeaking all the way across the floor.

            “I’ve been seeing you around here a fair bit. Do you like working Bingo?” she began in that soft, sweet grandmotherly voice that lulled most but put me on edge. It was amazing seeing her eyes light up like a pinball machine at the thought of finding receptive ears, as if Bingo were her only hope for social interaction. Chances are it probably was.

            “It’s volunteer work, so no, not particularly.”

            “Oh,” was her confused reply.

            “The guy that normally works here broke his leg. He’s a friend of parents and they kindly offered my services for me. I guess I don’t really mind working here as long as it’s temporary, and it’s kinda nice knowing you’re needed. It’s only one night a week, and with only school in the morning, it’s not like I’m pressed for time doing this.” My flippant spiel bred an awkward silence, during which she gently rubbed her arms that were already nestled in a bulky purple sweater, like she was trying to keep warm. She eventually broke the ice.

            “You know, I have a grandson who’s about your age,” a statement which was followed by her thin lips curling into an optimistic smile, framing her dentures in red. Internally moaning, I knew where this would lead. It would go from anecdotes about piano lessons and college to marriage and how he moved out of state and never calls. I just stood there and listened and didn’t contribute anything more to the conversation when her lips stopped moving, except,

            “Would you like anything?” She took the hint. And a raspberry Shasta for 75 cents. The pinball eyes darkened and she returned to her seat. From that point on I watched her out of the corner of my eye, nursing the soda can, fingers with the yellowed nails dejectedly working its little metal tab back and forth until it broke off. “Bingo!” someone in the crowd shouted, and once again some anonymous patron received her fifteen seconds of fame.

            I just didn’t want to know about the grandkids that didn’t give a damn, the husband that followed suit, or how nothing worked like it did when she was younger. It was bad enough gouging their pockets every week so that they could have a few hours of amusement; I didn’t need the “Queen for a Day” sob story to ice the cake. I was happy as the nameless fly on the wall, observing but never getting involved. And usually, no one remembers the fly on the wall. But would that one woman go home to her husband this evening and mention the rude boy at the concession stand?

            It was about eleven o’clock when the last patrons filed out. The glib chatter that ushered these women in was replaced by doleful silence to lead them out. The handful of winners approached the stage and prizes were unceremoniously doled out. Pleased they’d won money along with one night where they could tell their husbands something new, the women left. The bingo caller clad in black stared after them, smiling, knowing they’d always come back to hear his hopeful alphanumeric siren’s song. The new guy volunteering with me cleaned out the deep fryer, washed up the last few dishes and we exchanged polite nods as he made his way out.

            Soon I was alone with neat heaps of garbage to take care of. Black plastic bag in hand, I began making my rounds up and down the aisles, emptying the ash trays and ephemeral brown paper trash cans. It was funny looking at the garbage, seeing how some people would fold their food wrappers, the little notes they would scribble in the margins of their game cards in fingerprint-like scrawl, the one hundred and one different brands of cigarettes massaged by over-painted lips. They were all actions I noticed from my booth, and I remembered the faces of people and where they sat, and it felt strange piecing together a little bit of who they were by looking at waste.

            And to look at all those used game cards, crumpled, folded over, stabbed a few extra times with a marker in a fit of aggravation! It was a horrible piece of knowledge going into that basement that a select few would achieve something great while the vast majority, eluding notability, would slip off into the night, only to take form once again next Sunday night.

            I folded up the chairs and stored them away, even the one so desperately coveted but a few hours ago. I immediately recognized it in its relation to the rest of the room’s furniture, but once placed among its identical brethren, I quickly forgot its identity. With that taken care of, I sponged down the tables and swept the floor, erasing all memory of the people who once inhabited the now cavernous hall.

            I hauled my garbage bags stuffed to the seems with generic pieces of personal ephemera up the stairs and out to the giant green dumpster that sat in the dark church parking lot. I’d been around virtually the same group of people for four hours once a week for the past several months, and it never occurred to me to pick up any of their names. I mean, why get attached when all you do is help them throw away the happiest part of their week?

copyright Jesse Rhodes, 2004.

no title yet

2004-11-04T13:39:00.000-05:00

“There is always one person who sees her first, it is never more than one. The person waits up all day to be the first to spot her and is the hero of the ship after. It is like she picks one person on the ship to see her”, Joe explained to a few of the children one afternoon. The sun shone down on their heads, lighting up their hair as they sat on the wooden planks of the deck. It had become a small tradition for the children to join him while he worked. It always seemed that the children of each journey would question him first about all that they were seeing. There was so much to take in and so few people who would answer their questions. He never figured out why, maybe he looked friendlier than the other deckhands. He had to admit that most of them looked pretty scary to him with their scraggly beards and dark hair and eyes, he couldn’t imagine what they’d be to a child of five or six. He told them stories, taught them about the ship and sometimes made things up when he had nothing left to say. They had always met him with many questions, quizzical looks and a thirst to understand. . After a few moments to digest what they had just heard, like baby birds they hurriedly circled around him, chirping for more.

“When will we get there?”

“What does it look like?”

“What is it for?”

“Why is it there?”

Joe tried to answer all of their questions with a straight face; their little voices were so serious that it made it difficult. Sometimes the children amazed him with how smart they were and sometimes they were just exasperating. Most of the time he couldn’t figure between the two how he felt.

The creaking mass of wood moved through the sea, breaking the water at its front and leaving it folded it in creases of blue and white in the back. The quiet of the passengers in the steerage compartment was usually broken every few minutes by the sounds of a deep raspy cough from one of the unlucky ones to have caught something or the cry of a baby. Rachel wished she could cry like that but she knew she had to be stronger than that because she wasn’t a baby anymore. The rest of the passengers remained mostly quiet, relying on their will to get them through the journey rather than conversation. To some, it seemed like talking might just bring out their fears.
The damp smell from the sea air, mixed with the smell of sickness and unwashed people permeated everything on the ship. It was a sour, dirty smell that she would never forget but hoped to as soon as they arrived. It made her intake her breath without wanting to sometimes and made her head hurt most of the time. Even when Rachel went above deck to smell the fresh air, the scent followed her. Unless the boat was moving really fast, it felt like a cloud of stench surrounded them all.

“Mr. Joe told me that only one person sees her first and she picks who. Papa – is that true?” her eyes shone at the thought of this new place. She bounced slightly while seated on the bunk next to her father’s, causing a puff of dust and a few squeaks from the bed to be emitted. Mrs. Riley in the bunk next to their’s looked over at Rachel’s father and smiled, then went back to sewing.
“And the cities are huge and beautiful and….” Rachel’s’ hands moved up into the air, trying to help him understand how big the cities actually were. Mike put his big, wrinkly hands out in front of him, gesturing for her to calm down.

“Slow down. A lot of things there are different and better. But don’t get too excited, we still have a few days to go before we get there.” Though his face was tired and thin, his eyes smiled at her. Like bright blue lights on a wrinkled wool blanket. His face hardly ever gave way to smiles after Momma died, but he still smiled at her
“I wish Momma could be here,” she said as her voice cracked just a little and her chin dropped to her chest. Her voice followed and became hard to understand.
“I miss her” was the whisper that Mike barely caught. Her hands began to pick at the fuzz on the blanket she was sitting on.
“I know” he reached around her, pulling her close and kissed the top of her head, “I do too, but her spirit is here with us.” He tried to lift his voice a little at the end, to be reassuring. She pulled away slightly, shaking her head and looked up at him as if she had a question but didn’t say anything. Her eyes began to swim in tears that she didn’t seem to want to let fall.
“What are you thinking about?” He looked down at her small face surrounded by dark brown hair.
“Well…how can she be if there is no room for her?” She gestured to the hundred or so people in the ship’s steerage, all packed into like animals, not humans and a round tear rolled down her face.
“Well,” Mike thought for a second, “she can fold up really, really small so she will be able to go with us anywhere.” Rachel smiled, sniffed and seemed to accept that as a good enough answer for her.
“But why can’t I see her? Doesn’t it hurt to be folded up like that?”
Her father inhaled quickly and his throat let out a small cry, he then laughed immediately after it. Soft laughter, a sad laugh, like the laugh wasn’t sure quite what to do with itself or hadn’t been used for quite a while.
“No sweet girl, it doesn’t hurt her. If you ever want to take her with you, just say her name, hold out your palm and she’ll land there.”
The small bunk creaked as she moved toward him and hugged him, trying to wrap her arms around his body and make her hands meet on the other side of him. She buried her face in his sweater. It smelled salty and old; it had been worn many times but was still stiff and scratchy on her face.

Her mother was the first person to tell her stories about it. She always wondered what it would be like to be the first one to see it and ever since Mr. Joe had told them all about how she picked a person to see her first, she promised herself that she would be the one. She thought it would make her Momma proud if she saw it first. She’d spent the entire morning out on the deck of the ship, with almost all of the children on the boat. A crowd of parents and other adults had formed behind them and the low murmur of their voices became a quiet roar in her head. The smell of the saltwater was refreshing after being in the steerage all night, the breeze hit her face and she inhaled it. The smell of so many in a small space made her shiver a little. She wondered if this new place would have more room than where they were and if it would smell better.
She flung her arms out and looked at the huge, wide ocean. It didn’t seem fair that the ocean was so big and they had so little room. It seemed like there was enough space for everybody on this ocean. She could feel the people behind her get quieter, moving their heads forward from their bodies, craning their necks and squinting their eyes at the horizon. Everyone wanted to be the first one. Everyone wanted to be the hero of the day, the one who first felt their heartbeat race as they got to tell everyone else that they were almost there. She thought it strange how the sound of silence wasn’t silence at all. All of their breaths were controlled, as if breathing too loudly or forcibly would push them away from their goal.
She saw through the mist a tall black speck on the water and felt her heart jump into her mouth, choking her. She blinked a few times just to be sure. It was like music in her head, the sound of the ship moving closer to her. The water lapped up against the boat the same as it did when they’d left home, she thought it would have sounded different on the other side of the ocean. They’d come so far and yet it seemed that there was a lifetime to go. Her heart beat so fast that she could barely speak.
“I see it! I see it!”
She heard herself yell while her arm stretched out past the rail of the ship and over the cold choppiness of the bay. Her brown hair strayed from her ponytail, surrounding her head like a feathery halo. As she strained to see more, she tried to lift herself up onto the rail with both hands and started kicking her feet to propel her to a better vantage point. She felt invincible because she was the first one to see her. Her papa reached out and pulled her off of the rail and hoisted her up into his arms as the crowd began to cheer and yell.
“You are safer here,” he said in her ear as he looked out to the figure, still just a tall black column in the mist. Rachel clapped her hands so hard that her arms hurt and yelled so much that voice grew scratchy. The crowd continued to cheer as the figure became clearer in the morning mist. Rachel,, still in her father’s arms, turned around and looked over his should to see everyone. Most of the women and even some of the men were crying.
“Why is everyone crying, Papa?”
“Because they are happy – aren’t you happy?”
“Yes, but aren’t you only supposed to cry when you are sad?”
“No, some people are just so happy, so excited that they cry. Those are happy tears, not sad ones”

The crowd was still cheering itself hoarse while the lady on the water moved closer to them, became a light shade of green and then; finally, as they pulled into the harbor waters, she smiled down upon them. Welcoming them. As the workers put the anchor in the water, the ship’s horn blasted a few times, cutting thorough the mist, but it could barely be heard it over the yells, whistles and cries of the passengers.
“Why is she green, Papa?”
“Is she sick – was she on a boat to get here”
“No, she is green because that is the color they wanted her to be”
She couldn’t understand why anyone would want anyone else to be green. She had seen a lot of green looking people on the ship and they did not look as nice as she did. Rachel imagined how pretty she must be when she wasn’t green.

“Where are they going, Papa?” she pointed at a group of people on a boat, being rowed toward the city. It looked like the boat would run right into the city, full of buildings and people. The people could just walk right off of the boat and onto paved streets and new lives.
“They are passengers who are ready to go to the city, we still have to get on that boat and check in at that building over there” he pointed to ferry and then a large building on the island.
“Why?”
“They have different tickets than we do, that is just the way it all works” he shook his head slightly as he put his hand on the top of her head.
“Now, if we need to get separated I want you to go with Jimmy’s mother, Mrs. Riley and I’ll find you after everything is figured out. I already told her that you would. Understand?” He pointed to a Mrs. Riley’s blonde head shuffling along with her two boys.
“Yes, Papa” The ferry slowly pulled up and let across a plank of wood, reaching to their boat. The ferry looked so sad next to the big ship that they were leaving. For a moment, she felt sad for the big ship. It had done a good job of getting them there and now they were leaving it.

Rachel tried to lean on the railing to watch the people move across. She could feel her heart beating as they walked closer and closer to the plank and when they finally reached it she hesitated.
“Go on, Rachel – it’s our turn”
“I want to say good-bye to the big boat”
“Well, say good-bye then.”
“Good-bye big boat!” Rachel said as she turned and waved at the smelly, dark place that had been her home for the past few weeks. She saw a few of the crewmembers wave at her behind the crowd.
“Bye, Mr. Joe! Did you see? I saw her first?” She jumped slightly as she pointed toward the statue. Joe lifted his hand and nodded, yes he did see it. Smiling broadly, showing all of the teeth that she had at the moment, she looked up at her father.
“Let’s go” he took her hand and walked her across. The waves lapped up against both boats and she looked down to see the dark blue water of the bay, still trying to see if it looked different, and then soon after saw more planks but to a different boat. Rachel could barely breathe; they were all packed in so tight. The smell was so bad that she began to breathe through her mouth.
“Papa, I want to take a bath when we get there”
A few other passengers laughed softly and she tried to turn around to see who they were while she heard others say, “oh, that sounds nice” and “I don’t remember what it is like to smell good”.
They stepped off of the boat, her body felt different, electrified by the feelings of everyone else. Dizzily, she walked on the pathway holding her papa’s pinky finger. The grass was so green, so perfect that it didn’t look real. Seagulls cawed above all of their heads. She decided a while ago that she didn’t like them. They began showing up on the boat the day before and weren’t friendly. They didn’t sound like very nice birds either but she thought that today of all days, they should be happy.

They were shuffled into the building and again packed in very tightly. Rachel’s father picked her up and walked her slowly up the stairs, moving at the pace of the people all around them. From his shoulders, she could see dark coats and hats, all inching up the stairs toward two open doors. She looked to her right and saw some mean looking men with papers staring at all of them.
“Papa, why are they staring at us” she pointed at the men. The men looked right at her and one of them almost smiled through the wrinkles on his face.
“They want to make sure we are all healthy”
“Oh…are you healthy Papa?”
“Oh, I think I am,” he laughed as he swung left and right, spinning her back and forth on his shoulders, “Would I do that if I wasn’t healthy?”
Her giggles shot through the air and sounded foreign in the somber structure. A few people looked up to see where it was coming from.
“Do that again!”
“Maybe later, OK? We’re almost to the top of the stairs”.
Rachel floated up the rest of the stairs and into a large hall. It was the biggest place that Rachel had ever seen. It was miraculous that so many people could fit into one space. Their voices bounced off of the walls and traveled up to the ceiling that, to her, seemed like it went all the way to heaven. It was loud but the kind of noise that she’d been waiting to hear for a long time, even though she didn’t know she was waiting for it.
The wood floor gave off a scraping sound when the scuffed and tattered shoes of the people the moved along it’s planks. She could see small flashes of dirty yellow wood floor for just a second before it was filled up by another person again. It seemed like there was too much to take in, some even stopped short when they walked into the hall, amazed at this new place that they’d arrived at. She saw the look on their faces and wondered if she had the same look on her face. She saw a few other children on their father’s shoulders and waved to them. Some of the children looked very different to her, one had very small eyes but he smiled with a row of little white teeth, more than she had, so she decided that he was alright.
Rachel held her on to the top of her father’s head, her hand splayed through his thick, dirty brown hair making it stand up in clumps where her fingers gapped. The ceiling was taller than the sky, it seemed. The sea of utilitarian scratchy wool hindered her sight of anything else, but the ceiling was enough to hold her attention forever. The wooden lines moved all around their heads to make the ceiling. Rachel took her hands off of her fathers head and tried to mimic the ceiling beams with her fingers, putting her palms together and clasping her fingers to the other hand.
“Papa, it looks like the ceiling is about to pray”
Her father looked up at the ceiling and she showed him her clasp hands.
“See? The ceiling is happy we are here and is being thankful”

A man next to her looked up at her and smiled, she didn’t remember seeing this man on the boat. He looked a little darker than she, but looked just as confused. His eyes looked nice, though.
“Hello” she said and waved at him. The man looked at her apologetically and shook his head. Rachel stared at him, her eyes huge. Rachel leaned around and scrunched down onto her father’s shoulder, “Papa, why didn’t he talk to me?” A pair of blue eyes met her own and she heard, “Because he doesn’t speak our language”. He turned his head back to the front of the room and the inched forward along the floor. Confused, she looked at the man again, searching for an answer.
“Why not?” She heard a small exhale escape from him and could see his upside down smile from her view, the type of smile that is suppressing a laugh.
“Because in different countries people learn different languages, not everyone can speak English”. Her mouth formed an ‘O’ as her brow furrowed, trying to understand how that could happen.
The wool blanket of people moved closer to the front of the hall, where there were tables lined with people on the other side. People like them would walk up to the tables and talk to the other people. The table people would shuffle a bunch of papers around and look up at them. The table people did not look like very happy or nice people.
“What are those people doing, Papa?” she pointed to the table people with all of the papers. She felt her father raise up on his feet a little to see what she was talking about and she, in turn, raised up a little higher.
“They are making sure of our names and who we are so they can let us into America”
She looked at their blank stares, their expressionless, immovable faces. They still didn’t see to be happy. She didn’t see any teeth from smiles, just blackness when the opened their mouths.
“Are those Americans?”
“Yes, I guess so, those are Americans” She felt her father change his weight to his other foot and her body shifted slightly as well, making her not quite horizontal with the room. She looked down at her father’s head, put her hands in his hair and lay her head down on them, with her face looking out ahead.
“Do all Americans look that mean? They look mean” She continued to look at them, trying to find happiness in them. She thought that this place would make anyone happy. She wondered if they had ever cried happy tears.
“No, I don’t think so. They are just very busy people”
“Oh…are people nice in America, then?”
“We will see when we get there but I am sure that they are”
“When will we get there?”, she pointed ahead at the table people, “Is America past those people Papa?”
“Yes, sweet girl, America is right past those people” He cleared his throat and moved ahead a few steps more.

Letters from the Lost

2004-10-13T07:45:00.000-04:00

Ed, with shaking hands, tore through the envelope that simply read “when I start to forget my family”. He had promised her in the beginning that he would wait to open each letter until it applied. She had left him many letters just like this one. Some of them were just notes to remind him that she loved him, like the letter called “the first time I yell at you for no reason”. Others were written with anguish like “when I have to have help getting dressed”. There was always an element of love and hope to her letters, and this one was no exception. Like the stages of the disease itself, the letters got harder to read over the years. The very fact that she was so organized about her disease made Ed smile sadly. So like her to do something like that. He sighed. He missed his wife.

The letter, dated June 1997, begged Ed, in immaculate handwriting, to understand what she did not want to happen to her. ‘You’ve always been there for me, please be there for me one last time. This is the greatest thing that you can do for me so please Ed, I don’t want to deteriorate into nothing. I want to remembered for how I was before. Please don’t let my children see me forget them.’

Ed sat in front of the desk, with the letter gently clutched in his hand as the sun and shadows moved across the floor, up onto the wall and then faded away. He stood up from the chair slowly, and stared out of the picture window into the snow that lit up the world with an icy blue pallor. He was so still that he could feel his heartbeat moving his body slightly. “What am I going to do?” he said to the dark.

He roused to the sounds of pots and pans banging around in the kitchen. He pulled his hand out from under the down comforter and felt a chill prickle hit his skin. Fumbling for his glasses, he squinted to look at the digital clock. The red lines became clear when his glasses were clumsily placed on his face. It was a little past 3AM. Ed heaved himself out of bed, putting his feet in his slippers and grabbed his robe. He wondered why it was so cold in the house. “Good Lord” his teeth chattered out as he made his way out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

He found Kate in the kitchen with all of the windows open, the smell of burnt bacon accosted his nostrils as he moved closer to her. “Kay, what are you doing, honey?” Kate turned around with a huge smile on her face. “Good morning, dear. Why aren’t you dressed yet? You’ll be late for work! I was making lunches for you and Joe and forgot about the bacon. I know you like it crispy so extra crispy shouldn’t bother you too much.” Her short silver hair fell into her face a little as she spoke. She did not brush it away as Ed had seen her do what must’ve been a thousand time. Lift hand, move hair with a flick of the wrist and a slight shake of the head, hair falls back in face and hand tucks behind ear. She had never liked her hair in her face but never let if grow long enough where it would, by the weight of it, stay out of her face. He missed the little things about his wife like that. The things that both intrigued and half-annoyed him. She looked at him, waiting, like a child looking for recognition of a good deed.

His body become heavy and his shoulders drop as he struggled to speak, “Kay, I don’t work anymore, sweetie. Remember? My retirement party? And Joe has moved out, gone to college, gotten married.” Ed nodded and turned his head to the side, as his wife’s look, so happy, froze on her face. “Yes you do work, and Joe is right upstairs. He should be up, too. Why don’t you go wake him up for me while I get breakfast on the table?” Kate’s head nodded. She turned back around and began putting charred bacon onto plates. Thick black charcoal lines began to form across the gleaming white of the plates. It made Ed think of old movie where prisoners in jails wore the white and black stripes. Black stripes on white. It was like she was telling Ed that she was imprisoned in a body that wouldn’t listen, in a mind that didn’t understand. At least, he hoped that she was still in there somewhere.

He grabbed his wife’s frail arms and gently turned her around. He smiled down at her and said, “Honey, you’ve been working so hard lately. Why don’t you go back upstairs to bed and I’ll get Joe off to school. Huh? You deserve it.” Kate gave an uncertain look up at him as he embraced her and put his chin on top of her head. He could feel a tear move down his face and into her silvery hair. “Well, alright. Are you sure?”

“Of course, sweetheart. Go back up to bed.” Kate nodded her head and circled around him. Ed could hear her feet on the stairs and then down the hall. As the sound of her shuffling feet disappeared, Ed walked toward the window and pulled it shut.

A few days later, Ed was still thinking constantly about the last letter that Kate had written to him. The thought never really left him. The part-time nurse arrived that morning so that Ed could go grocery shopping and pick up Kate’s medication. Kate began to cry as Ed left because she didn’t want to be left with a stranger, an imposter. Ed didn’t have the heart to correct her, to tell her that it was the same Jessica had been her nurse for the past seven years. He just told her to go in the house and get to know this new young lady, maybe they’d have tea together. Kate’s eyes lit up at the sound of ‘tea’. She had been talking about her teaset she had gotten from Santa Claus for the past week or two and how she’d been waiting for a reason to use it. Jessica looked at Kate and smiled, saying she would really love some tea and conversation. Jessica reached up and moved the hair out of Kate’s eyes as they turned to go inside.

He wandered around the grocery store looking for strawberries. Kate had begun to like them recently, even though she had hated them ever since Ed had known her. Amongst he orange, yellow and green of the produce section, Ed felt lost. His body was so tired that every movement fed leaden, overheated and strained. He could feel the heat of his eyes as they blearily looked for the deep red of strawberries as he sipped on a cup of coffee from the bakery section. The smell of coffee had always been one of his favorite things until recently. “I guess we are both changing in some way” Ed said to the pears as he wheeled by them. Ed almost ran into a man with his shopping cart when he spotted a bright flash of red on a display a few feet away.

It was Dr. Lee, Kate’s doctor for the past few years. Dr. Lee’s face contorted into a mass of wrinkles after he turned to see Ed behind him. He studied Ed’s appearance while voicing a hello. Ed croaked back a greeting and could smell coffee in the words ‘Hi, Dr. Lee’. “You aren’t looking too good Ed – how is everything? How’s Kate?” Dr. Lee leaned his head to one side like a parent talking to a child and then continued, “you both should make it in to the office to consider the next steps in Kate’s treatment. I know you want to, but you just can’t do it all on your own”.

He did not like the sound of that, though he knew that is what Dr. Lee would say. He also knew the doctor was right but tried to rationalize otherwise, “I want her to stay at home with me, that is where she is comfortable. She still knows who I am and I don’t want her in some home where she will wake up alone and scared”, his voice cracked a little as he went on, “it’s just not fair to her”. Dr. Lee’s head straightened back to a more upright position. He apparently realized that he wasn’t talking to a five year old. “Well, Ed, it is up to you but I don’t know how much more of it you can take, the stress, the lack of sleep. I’m concerned about your health, too. Just think about it. Give me a call and we’ll just talk about it, ok?” Dr. Lee nodded encouragingly and then wheeled off toward the bakery. Ed exhaled a coffee laden breath and shuddered at the smell.

He checked the locks to all of the doors and windows before he went up to bed. The newscaster softly stated in the background that the temperature would be getting below zero tonight so he checked the thermostat as well before turning off the TV and heading to bed. Ed thought about the letter and turned around on the stairs. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep, he was just fooling himself. He went back down the stairs, put on his coat and boots and went out the front door into the snow.

Following his breath, he walked straight into the night. His boots disappeared into the show as he passed the tree that he and Kate had planted when Joe was born, and the other trees they’d planted when their grandchildren were born. Ed stopped in between the trees called Jamie and Nicolaus and fell straight back. Ed lyed there, his arms and legs starfished out to the world, looking up into the black star freckled sky. He wondered if Jamie and Nicolaus would ever really remember Kate. They were too young maybe.

He knew that he’d always love Kate, but she had died a long time ago. She was just a shell of the Kate that he’d loved for over fifty years, since high school. Her eyes didn’t hold the same luster that they used to. Her voice no longer had that lilt. She was running on memories now, nothing of the past few years really existed for her. If it did, the memory was wrung out, dryed out and misshapen, like a wet towel twisted around and around at both ends until it is wrinkled, stiff and harsh feeling. Her request was not a simple one but one that she wanted. That was the important thing. She wanted it. Kate. The Kate that he knew wrote that. The Kate that would nag him relentlessly about biting his nails or loosing his shoes. The Kate that would put a towel in the dryer to warm it up while he was in the shower. The Kate that used to know what he was thinking. Now she doesn’t even know what she is thinking anymore.

He pulled himself up to a sitting position in the snow, his legs stretched out in front of him. His breath looked like it could freeze and crash to the ground. He heaved his way upward and crunched back to the house. The wind picked up a little bit and shook the naked tree limbs of the birch trees. Their white fingers clicked a little as Ed looked at them waving slightly. He always felt like winter nights held time, made it freeze, as a person inhaled the sharp air just a little deeper. He inhaled, expanded his lungs so that his chest strained his down coat and then turned as he exhaled and opened the front door.

Quietly he slipped off his coat and hung it on the peg near the door. He put his hands on his face, covering his eyes with his palms. He scratched his head and listened to the sound of it in the still house. His eyes stung, and he could feel the heat on the skin under his eyes. He could feel the wrinkles there that he hadn’t had before. He hadn’t slept hardly at all since she had begun to wake up the in the early morning. Dr. Lee was right, he should take her to a place where she can get constant care.

He walked into the living room and past the desk, where her last letter still sat and the many others, both opened and unopened, sat in the desk drawer. She hadn’t left many more to open, one in fact. This one scared Ed the most because it didn’t have a title. Maybe it was up to him to open it when he was ready or maybe after she was gone. He couldn’t decide what to do with it. He relished her letters because they were the last remnants of his wife but hated them because of the same reason. Ed looked at the clock on the mantle, a gift for their thirtieth wedding anniversary from Joe. He couldn’t quite tell what time it was but he was guessing around eleven at night. She should be waking up in a few hours.

Ed sat down at the desk and read the letter one more time. Ed lifted his head from his wife’s words to him, moved the chair back from the desk and stood up. He’d been sitting for a while so the head rush hit him pretty quickly. There were little flashes of light in front of his eyes as he waited for it all to pass. He heard a creaking on the stairs and a shuffle. Kate must have woken up already.

Shaking his head, he tried to get the flashes to subside. “Who are you?” he heard Kate’s voice ask. She sounded very close but he still couldn’t see very well. “It’s me, Kay, it’s Ed,” he shook his head again to clear it. “I don’t know you – get out of my house!” Kate hissed. The flashes of light cleared and looked around, trying to see where she was, “Kay, it’s me Ed – your husband.” Ed heard a whoosh of breath behind him as he was hit in the head.

Kate was found the next morning a few hundred yards down the street. She was curled in the fetal position beside a snowbank. The police and paramedics circled around her body as Ed lay beside her, touching her face, moving her hair away from her eyes. He’d woken up after the sun had come up, to find Kate gone. He frantically called the police, searched the house, called the neighbors and began walking the neighborhood to find her. The police showed up a few minutes after Ed had found her. They knew immediately what had happened and tried give Ed a little time with her.
As the a police officer touched his arm and helped him rise, Ed moved as if attached to Kate by an invisible force. He just whispered to the paramedic who was leaning toward her, “make sure her hair isn’t in her face, she always hated that”. His tired eyes teared up as he was lead away.

Ed read the final words of his wife after the funeral. He couldn’t bring himself to open the letter before then. He was scared, even though he no longer had anything to be scared of except being alone. But that was a big word, alone. The blankness of the envelope held his attention for hours before he opened it. He filled the whiteness with his own title, countless words flashed before his eyes as he tried to place a name on what would be his wife’s final words to him. He looked up from the desk and saw the sun, shining and melting the snow. He didn’t understand how the sun could shine. It was like some cruel joke, that spring had come. The cold of winter subsided quickly after Kate had been found, like winter had done the job it was set out to do or Kate’s spirit no longer needed the assistance of winter. Ed liked to think it was the latter. He always thought she liked control and order and the idea that she had made winter hold out for her, to help her, made him smile. At least it is a good story to tell the grandkids when they asked about her. A lighthearted spin at least. All that they will probably know of her will come from the mouths of others. A good way to start a family myth.

He sighed and opened the letter. The sound of ripping paper echoed off the walls, it seemed. Silence was the hardest part for him.

Ed,

By now you’ve either not been able to keep your promise to save all the letters until it was time to read them, or I’m gone. If I’m still around and you are reading this, well, shame on you. You always hate it when I nag so consider this my last time to nag you. Could you not follow directions just once?! If I’m already gone then I’m glad you are reading these in the order I intended. Please also disregard the nagging if you followed the rules and kept the letters in the order that I gave them to you.. You know me, I like order. If you didn’t keep these in order and/or read them early, then I’ll have to haunt you, maybe constantly move your shoes so you spend hours finding them. Something. I might do that anyway just to let you know I’m around and to keep you on your toes.

I know that I will miss you when I’m gone but I’m sure that I will miss you long before my body gives out. I hope that you don’t hate me for what I asked of you. I don’t know if you actually did go through with it or not but either way, I know it was a terrible thing to ask someone to do. As much as I would like to say that I would have wanted you to help me end my life before it gets really bad, I hope that I somehow help out myself in that regard. I would feel terrible, wherever I may end up, knowing that I had put you through something so trying.

I know that you’ve probably been through enough already with me and I hate that I put you through it. I hope I wasn’t too much of a pain in the ass. If I was, then we can talk about it when we see each other again. Until then, I’ll be around you all the time, quietly in the background. I told you when I first met you that you are a prince, a saint among men and I meant it. I’m sorry that I couldn’t be with you for my last years. I already miss you, Eddie. But I’ll see you soon

Love,

Kay

He let the tears fall down his face. So like her to make light of her death, so like her to nag him until the end. He looked up at the sun and was still sad, still angry that the world didn’t notice at all that such a wonderful person had left it. He still didn’t understand how the world hadn’t stopped yet. He wondered what he would do next. He nodded slightly and smiled, pushed back the chair and went to find his shoes. Maybe she had already moved them.

The Strip

2004-09-09T08:48:00.000-04:00

*little exercise where we had to introduce ourselves in class with a few 'fake facts' mixed in. These facts were to be put into a story/biography, thus, the entry *

People often coin the phrase, ‘hooker with the heart of gold’ when they think of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman with the big teeth and hair with a rich boyfriend to climb up the fire escape and rescue her. Some people also mix up ‘hooker’ and ‘stripper’ though they are two vastly different things. I often am solicited for prostitution because of this confusion, which is something I find neither funny nor charming, as people are wont to think they are when they ask such things. Either way, I’m often asked if that is how I want my ‘career’ to end up: with a ‘prince charming’. It is always phrased as a ‘career’, never ‘job’, like I went into the guidance counselor one day and she told me that’s what I’d be perfect for and I whole-heartedly agreed and set out on my way to make it so. I don’t have a master plan to find that Sugar Daddy who will keep me lodged, fed and in good implants. And I’m not the hardworking single mom who is trying to get through school while feeding three small children. I’m somewhere in between.

Having gone to a Catholic high school, my life after graduation has mostly consisted of trying to find my own way in life. Rather just going with the persona that was pushed upon me so hard for most of my life, but mostly the last four years of high school, I made a pact with myself that I would attempt to find my place in the world.
I decided, first and foremost, that I would let my heart lead me to a place where I felt like I could make a difference. This momentous decision was made outside of the local burger joint two days before graduation. Being barely 18 and not real clear, apparently, on the idea of ‘let my heart lead me’ or ‘make a difference’, I ended up in Las Vegas, thinking I’d go work somewhere until I could save up enough money to do something else.

Extremely proud of getting there on my own and setting myself up at the Best Western, I dressed and went out. I hit the strip in what I considered very ‘Las Vegas’ type clothing, some sequins, lots of makeup and skin. I was in heaven, I never got to dress like this at home and I had planned on my clean scrubbed image getting me a job at a bar or restaurant. Apparently, those on the strip had a different view of my image. Reaching out my hand to receive a flier from someone with a nice smile, I was immediately inundated by colorful fliers for strip clubs. A rather wrinkly and toothless old man walked up a few moments later and asked me as he wiped his brow, looked me up and down and smiled, if I’d be willing to work at a local club. His telling eyebrow raise was what made me think differently of the word ‘work’.

A few days later, the phrase Las Vegas Strip had a whole new meaning to me. Lack of jobs in the bars for people with no experience gave me the only option, which you can see here before you today. Thankfully, my expedition to the Congo in my Junior year of high school left me in pretty good shape, what with the half-starvation and all that I experience for the two week trip. So, I was set to strip on the Strip.

My first day on the job I met Summer, who is kind of the owner of the club but also subs as a mother to the girls at times. She sat me down and told me her story: how she started, where she’d been in the world and what brought her to Las Vegas. It was all very interesting but I couldn’t help but notice there was something so different about her attitude, very calm and serene. I asked her about it and she told me about Buddhism, which was something that she was studying and though she had been to about twelve different colleges and changed her major many times, she was close to finishing her degree in Religious Studies. I listened to what she had to say and thought about it for quite a while. A few months later, after having heard just about everything that Summer knew on Buddhism, I decided to visit the local temple in Vegas.

At that point, I had hit my Buddhist/Hippie phase of my life, which I also call my late teens/early 20s. All of my dance routines were based on something surrounding the religion or the culture. It was my own special way of incorporating something that was important to me into my work and making it more interesting for me. I personally did not believe it to be at all unfitting or sacrilegious in any way. After spending a few years really, really into the Buddhist religion, I decided to save my money and go to India. While I was telling one of my customers, Ian, about my idea he became very intrigued about my aspirations and asked me out to dinner.

A few months after that, Ian and I got married. Since he was very adventurous, we decided to have a wedding ceremony while skydiving with the flying Elvises. It is Vegas so every event has to have at least one Elvis apparently. Ian is originally from England and was over in America as a foreign exchange student at UCLA. He and his friends drove to Las Vegas for the weekend to celebrate their finals being over and graduation upon them and the rest is, as they say history.

I moved to England with Ian, where we spent the summer in Cambridge with his family before we moved into London where I got a job as a publisher for a magazine. The magazine is centered around short stories, poetry and the biographies of people whose lives have lead them to interesting and inspiring places. It is wonderful to see the people that I interview everyday and know that my life, too, had started out so differently than where I am now. And at the risk of sounding like an after-school special, it has made the person that I am and I can now say that I have found my place in the world.

Ransom Me

2004-09-09T08:42:00.000-04:00

In response to this I wrote what my Ransom Me would do.....

Lured out of my body, my Ransom Me would walk down the street with a look of recklessness that might unleash at any moment. She might walk right out of my body with pink hair, a couple of tattoos and a piercing or two. She would lilt through busy streets and crowds of people seeming like she’d just taken over the world. Her form of mischief might be enhanced when she walks into the nearest bar and buys drinks for everyone inside, then closes it down with the few hard-core local partiers. Ransom Me would skip class to sit outside with the smokers, listening to their rants about how the Dupont family make friends with some ‘higher ups’ in the government and THAT is why pot is illegal. (Because hemp was used to make carpet, too and the Duponts wanted to corner the market)

Eternally looking and feeling18 (and a size 3), my Ransom Me would be, but with enough fake IDs to still be able to go anywhere she wanted and the attitude to get in even if she didn’t have ‘em. Subsisting mainly on chocolate, fried food, cheap beer, caffeine and pot, she would somehow garner energy through that diet that could keep her up for a day or two if the surrounding were interesting enough. Will she come back? Yeah, when she gets tired of the partying life. I’ve seen it happen before and pretty soon she’ll come crawling back to stability, a checking account not in the red and food that you don’t order from the drivers seat of a car. She’ll miss me because me is where she really wants to be. Sometimes she just forgets that. She is just 18 after all.

Tropical Shock

2004-07-28T20:42:00.000-04:00

Walking off of the plane and into the airport we could hear it. Something…loud, different. What was that? White, bright, clean walls greeted us and the sounds of women singing bounced off of these walls and hit us at every angle. The piercing sound of a choir of women singing “come to Jamaica” got steadily louder as we approached the baggage claim. They stood, a sea of blue fabric and pure, accented voices, serenading us. I smiled at them as we walked by, walking toward the light of the door.

The light of the sun was so bright I could feel my skin prickling with warmth. The heat was so intense that I couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t a thick humidity of Washington, DC, but there was something so thick about the heat. I felt my sinuses dry up as I blinked to keep my contacts from drying up and falling out at random.

Just before we climbed into the van, we were offered Red Stripe beer. I gladly partook of the Red Stripe. It stung like a swarm of bees down my dry throat as I took my seat in the van. The van began to move through the country-side. Flashes of greens, blues, red and oranges passed by like a tropical Tilt-A-Whirl.

A few hours later, we climbed out of the van, legs shaking from the hundred or so near death-experiences on the bumpy, windy roads from the airport. The structure directly in front of us welcomed us in, smiling as us with its huge open doors. Flickers of torchlight led us to the entrance and like moths to a flame, we walked toward it entranced. Scents of tropical flowers and Blue mountain coffee tickled our noses as we entered, each smell battling for the most attention. Black and dark blue surroundings melted away as we walked into the room, where three or so stories of soft yellow, orange, fuchsia greeted us. The colors were so bright my eyes felt almost like they would sunburn and peel in the next second. I began blinking furiously, trying to understand it all. The tile floor felt was pleasantly solid under our feet, no jerking or bumping, which would have been a welcome enough feeling. But the thick, warm air lulled us into a half-sleep as we blearily walked to the check-in desk in the center of the wall on the left. The soothing voices of those at work in the resort made me want to close my eyes but the bright colors of the room demanded that they stay open to take it all in.

In between two palm trees stretching proudly up to the ceiling like skyscrapers, the desk was bathed in a soft light and adorned with a mass of orchids, ginger and hibiscus. We were immediately told to have a seat and a hand pointed us in the direction of the overstuffed, loudly colored couches. Obediently, we turned around and walked to the center of the room where our sandaled feet met a plush rug. and then a few seconds later moving around the table in the middle of the sitting area, our bodies sunk into the furniture. I aimlessly petted the soft material of the couch, drunk with exhaustion and the amount of things to look at. I took a deep breath and listened to the ocean crashing on the beach just outside of the open doors. There were open doors everywhere, so many that I wondered how the building had any means of support. I then noticed the four columns hidden quietly among the massive plants, each column an equal distance away from the sitting area, forming a square and vertical lines of leaves around us.

A patio glinted to my left; its cobalt tiles shimmering in the firelight from the torches that stood to light the paths around the resort. It looked like water, forming waves that were crashing toward the lobby silently. The open doors to the patio had a small wall in between them. It did not seem like there was a corner in the wall next to the doors. I was almost like the walls and doors snaked around to a small bar, which was to the right of the front desk if you were to stand there and wait to be checked in. I could see a few green and blue lit tree branches through the doors near the bar area and was intrigued from my spot but I wasn’t about to move. I did muster energy from somewhere to turn around, throw my arm over the back of the couch, and see what was behind me. A staircase rolled down to our level, like a giant unfurled cloud waiting to carry us up to the next level of the building. The tiles subtlety shining, like little lightening bolts, sounded off with subdued thunder as people lazily moved up and down them. I didn’t seem like anyone here walked, it’s more like the floated everywhere. I looked up to the second floor, above the front desk and saw people floating in and out of what must have been a restaurant. The restaurant’s collection of French doors sheltered the diners from the rest of the lobby but still gave all parties a glimpse in or out.

I looked to the left and to the right of the French doors and noticed that the walls were painted with murals of flowers, winding around each side of the wall and meeting again above the staircase directly behind me. The flowers seemed to hug the wall, as if it needed something to hold it together. My eye was led to the ceiling where chandeliers hung at intervals; their wrought iron palm leaves suspending orbs of alabaster to light the lobby. Staring at the large orbs floating above my head like fireflies, I felt the scenes around me pull inward, forming almost a hazy appearance on anything that I wasn’t directly looking at. I heard a small click in front of me and I turned my head, slowly letting the haze of my peripherial vision clear, to find small china coffee cups in front of me on the glass table that I somehow managed to wander around before I sat down. The cups were framed by an arrangement of flowers in the middle of the table and again another battle of fragrances began. My hand reached out without my brain’s consent and carefully picked up a saucer with a cup of coffee planted upon it.

depends on who is doing the telling

2004-05-21T07:24:00.000-04:00

RUBY’S STORY
She had just about enough of him. Ever since they had been married his attitude toward her and the rest of the world had drastically changed. Instead of whispering words of love in her ear, he screamed words of contempt and hatred in her face as he beat her. As hard as she tried to do everything perfectly to not cause any problems, he always found something to blame her for and, she was tired of it.

As Ruby stood in the barn, pitchfork in hand, spreading a blanket of straw on the dirt floor, she wondered what she could do to get out of this life that she had. If she ran away, where would she go? She had no money to speak of since he spent it all on liquor and no real education, she had never needed an education before, but now she wished she had gotten one.

Ruby walked into the feed stall and grabbed a metal bucket. She began to fill it with the sweet smelling molasses and grain mixture and wondered if there was more to life than what she had. She looked at her hands, dirty and calloused, not the hands that she had had a year ago. Would her life be better if she tried to get out of her marriage? She hauled the bucket over to a stall and looked at the poor creature inside of it. She poured out the horses’ share of the grain and whispered to her. The mare had gotten in a fight with another horse and ended up getting kicked in the eye. Now her stall had to be dark all of the time and she needed tranquilizers twice a day to dull the pain. Ruby didn’t understand how an animal could go through that type of pain. She turned and walked back to the feed stall and found the horse tranquilizer, entered the stall of the horse and put the pill into the back of the horse’s mouth. After she swallowed it, Ruby looked at the horse, poor thing, it would take a little while for the medicine to circulate through her system. Ruby put the bottle in her pocket and went on about her chores, daydreaming what it would be like to have new clothes, since she hadn’t had anything new in a long time.

As she was making dinner that night, she went into the bathroom to wash up. She washed her face and her hands and smoothed her dress out, when she noticed a bulge in her skirt pocket; she reached in and found the horse tranquilizers. Ruby took them out and looked at them for a few moments, she then opened the medicine cabinet and placed them on the shelf next to the shaving cream, toothbrushes and her husband’s pill for his back spasms.

At that moment, she heard the slap of the screen door and the bellow of her husband’s voice shaking the very walls of the house. Ruby walked out of the bathroom and into the living room to greet him and was greeted by the back of his hand.

An hour later, Ruby ran from the small house into the dark night. She thundered down the porch steps and across the sun scorched grass. Her soiled dress flapped around her legs as she leapt barefoot over the rocks and shrubs that hugged the front yard. As her feet hit the pavement of the highway she slowed a little, the soles of her feet not used to the hard surface. As she jogged to her brother’s house, the pounding of the pavement matched the throbbing of her head. Blood was trickling from her nose and she began to feel a bruise well upon her cheek. Her lungs burning with fury and fear, she continued on at her pace, though she knew he would not follow her. Sobs racked her body as she tore across the south Texas landscape.

As she came upon her brother’s house a dog barked dutifully but noticed who the visitor was and went back to his station on the porch. The boards under her feet creaked as she shifted back and forth in front of the door. She inhaled slightly and knocked. Heavy footsteps were heard approaching closer and closer to the door. The cicadas were screeching into the summer night.

The porch light flicked on to illuminate the thin woman, her sunken face and the tear tracks drawn on her dirt-smudged face. She hung her head and waited. Her brother opened the front door and gasped at the sight of her. The screen door shut with a slap as she began to sob and speak a stream of unintelligible words. She felt herself being led across the room and her body sunk into a couch. She felt his warm hands on her knees as he knelt in front of her.

“Calm down, sister. Shhhh. Calm down. What happened?” her brother asked. He looked at the crown of her tiny head, her wavy hair hanging down grazing her lap and saw tears splashing on the tiny hands that were wringing themselves. A ragged breath came out of her and she began to speak, “He…came home drunk and angry…told me I was a terrible wife…started beating me.” Stuffy from crying, her nose squeaked a little as she inhaled deeply. She heard a teakettle whistling loudly in the kitchen. Her sister-in-law, Kay, came into the room with a worried look and a warm, damp towel and began to wipe the tears and blood from her face. Like a child, she let her do it.

Wayne put his large, calloused hand on his little sister’s back and rubbed softly. He looked at his wife, who was kneeling in front of the couch, holding the chin of her sister-in-law as she wiped the unending flow of tears from her face. Kay looked at Wayne and nodded slightly. The large man quickly and quietly grazed the top of his sisters’ head with his hand and rested it on the back of her little skull. He looked her in the eyes and said, “you stay here with Kay and the kids tonight – everything will be better in the morning.”

“But what if he comes looking for me?” she sniffed. “Don’t worry, sister, he won’t – get some rest” as he rose from the couch. Kay nodded in agreement and moved off of the couch to give Ruby room to stretch out as Wayne spoke, “Kay, will you look after Ruby – I’m gonna’ go talk to some folks in town and see what can be done about this”.

WAYNE’S STORY

Wayne walked to the front door and was greeted by the sight of his little sister, on the verge of hysteria, bleeding and filthy. Her face, glowing under the porch light, looked like that of an animal whose spirit had been broken, there was no light in her eyes. Wayne led her into the house and sat her on the couch as she began to tell him the story of what happened.

A few minutes later, Wayne walked out the front door and into the darkness. He got his keys out of his pocket and opened the creaky truck door. Wayne pumped the gas and turned the key, the truck whined and came rumbling to life. Wayne started out of the windshield at his home, ablaze with light. He shook his head slightly, inhaled a ragged breath and put his hands on the steering wheel. “Worthless son of a bitch” Wayne said to the night as his hands formed sweaty fists wound around the cool metal of the steering wheel, then shifted into gear and started down the dirt driveway.

Wayne arrived at the local police station; he walked in the door and was greeted by an officer that he had gone to school with. Not wanting to be rude but wanting to keep from talking to him all night, Wayne acknowledged him and asked about his family. “Good to hear” Wayne said in reply automatically. “Is Kenneth here?” he inquired, as he tried to peek around the corner into the hallway.

“Yep, he’s in his office. Everything alright?”

“Just need some advice, that’s all” Wayne responded. He nodded his head in good-bye and walked into the Sheriff’s office. Wayne and Kenneth had been friends since grade school and before Kenneth had become an officer, they often caused a lot of fun but harmless trouble around the small town. Kenneth looked up from his paperwork; one look at Wayne’s face was all it took for him to understand that something was seriously wrong. “What’s happened, Wayne?” Wayne closed the door quickly and sat down in the chair across from his friend. Wayne took a deep breath and began.

A few minutes later, Kenneth and Wayne broke the lull of the quiet police station as they burst out of the office door. Kenneth, walking briskly but still in control, put on his hat and checked his gun and with a flailing glance told the nearest officer and was going down to the café for a quick bite and would be back. The thick night air was a welcome feeling to both men as they quietly got in their vehicles and drove to the home of Louis and Ruby. When they pulled up into the gravel driveway, Kenneth first and then Wayne, they slowly rolled to a stop and killed their engines. The house was shrouded in the thick summer air, which made Wayne’s shirt stick to him as he crept toward it. Kenneth motioned to Wayne to follow behind him. The front door was wide open, welcoming them.

As Wayne walked up the front steps, Kenneth opened the screen door and looked around and said, “Police. Mr. Baker? Sheriff’s office here to talk to you”. Kenneth looked at Wayne and said, “stay behind me”. Kenneth’s feet fell thickly on the wood floor of the front room as the acid smell of whiskey hit him. He pulled his gun out of its holster and moved toward the kitchen. From the hallway, Kenneth could see the mess that lay in the kitchen. Remnants of what was the kitchen table lay broken in half on the floor, along with the bottle of whiskey that was wafting through the night air. It looked as if Louis had either picked up or shoved his wife and the table had broken her fall. Kenneth whistled slightly and turned his head to the side to look at Wayne, “Ruby is okay, right? Looks like she went through a lot.” Wayne replied, “She’s always been a tough girl. She will be fine after some rest.”

Kenneth moved closer to the doorway of the kitchen and stopped abruptly. Wayne almost ran into his back. Wayne peered around Kenneth’s body to see Louis lying on the floor next to the table, obviously unconscious. Kenneth stepped over the cast iron frying pan that lay at Louis’ feet and approached him. He put his fingers on Louis’ neck to check for a pulse. Wayne walked up next to Louis’ body and waited. Kenneth looked up at Wayne and then focused on the broken table behind him. Kenneth and Wayne locked eyes as Wayne said, “well?”.

KAY’S STORY

Kay heard the truck outside startup and pull away. She sighed nervously and decided to get Ruby up to bed. “Ruby, honey, let’s get you up to bed so you can get some real rest.” After tucking Ruby into the small spare room, Kay walked down the stairs quietly and to the hall closet. She reached in and pulled out the shotgun, just in case. Kay stood in the middle of the living room with no idea what to do. She crossed her arms in front of herself as the second hand of the clock on the mantle filled the room with it’s cadence. Kay inhaled and walked to the front door, stood for a moment looking at herself in the mirror next to it and then quietly opened the door and slipped into the darkness.

Kay walked through the grass to keep from making too much noise. Her shoes crunched on the scorched grass as she made her way to the road. On the pavement of the highway, she began to jog, the sound of the mantle clock keeping her pace as she made her way down to the Baker house. Kay hit her stride and felt her legs become longer, her body grow stronger as she ran down the road. The house glowed in the summer night; it’s white paint like a sad ghost resting in a little valley, under a tree. Kay turned off of the road and ran up the driveway, not caring about the scuffling that the gravel was making under her feet. She got up to the front porch steps and took them up, her feet barely touching the wooden planks. The front door was wide open, revealing a dark interior, save a beaming light from the back of the house. Kay opened the screen door and let it shut with a snap. “I knew you’d come back, you worthless bitch!” came a growl from the kitchen. Kay heightened herself as she stood in front of the door and haughtily walked through the front room into the back of the house. She heard a chair scrape the kitchen floor and the thick pound of feet moving toward her.

The smell of whiskey hit her right before he did. The smell of dirt and sweat brushed across her face at the same moment the back of his hand did. Kay fell to the ground, clutching her cheek as Louis’ drunken statement echoed in her ears “what are you doing here?” Kay screamed in both terror and rage as she reared up and charged him, driving her shoulder into his midsection. Louis’ massive frame tottered backward and fell into the kitchen table, sending the whiskey bottle crashing to the ground as the table broke under his weight. Kay ran over to the stove and heaved the cast iron skillet in the air, like an Olympiad she swung in a circle and hit Louis square in the back of the head as he righted himself. His form collapsed again but remained still, next to the broken table. Kay dropped the pan. She looked at Louis for a moment then turned on her heel and walked out of the kitchen, through the screen door and down the steps back onto the crunchy grass. She wiped the sweat off of her face with her hand and as she brushed her hair back behind her ear, she touched the side of her face. The heat of her hand seeped into her throbbing cheek as she began to walk home.

Kay sat in the darkness of the living room, once again listening to the mantle clock tick away the moments when she heard a truck pull up the driveway slowly, sneaking onto the property with no headlights on. Kay stood up slowly so as to not have the floor creak. In the darkness of the house she focused on the front door and waited, shotgun aimed. “I guess Louis didn’t get the message the first time”, Kay whispered into her shoulder as she looked down the site of the gun. The ticking clock became slower and slower in her ears and the screen door creaked open and then the front door opened with the aid of a key. The large shadow of a man entered the house and the clock didn’t get a chance to tick again in silence.

“STOP” Kay said with as much strength as she could muster, though the word came out in a wavery little voice instead of the big powerful one the owner had planned upon. Kay then cocked the shotgun to let him know that she was serious. “Kay?” Wayne’s voice said in a loud whisper as he flicked the switch to the light. “Wayne?” Kay gasped as her eyes adjusted to the light, and her pulse calmed, “why are you sneaking into the house?” she whispered. She uncocked the gun and lowered it.

“I didn’t want to wake Ruby or the kids – I knew you’d be awake but I didn’t think I’d be greeted with a gun. Didn’t you hear the key in the door?”, he asked. Kay’s face crinkled in a look of exhaustion, “I did but Ruby has a key at her house, too. I thought you might be Louis trying to sneak in.” Wayne looked at his feet and then at his wife, muttering, “I’m sorry, Kay – I didn’t think of that”.

She put the gun down and sat on the couch, exhaling loudly. “Well, you just about scared the living hell out of me – don’t ever do that again!” Kay looked at Wayne’s face and saw that he understood and quickly changed the subject, “What did Kenneth say to do? What happened?”. Wayne heaved a large sigh and his body seemed to shrink a little. He then looked at her more closely. “What happened to your face, Kay?” Kay shrugged and cleared her throat, grappling for something to say, “Oh, I was coming down the staircase after I put Ruby to bed and tripped over your shoes.” She shook her head at him as his concerned look turned to an apologetic one. “What happened with Louis?” Kay asked again. Kenneth began his recollection of the events that night. “I walked into Kenneth’s office and told him what happened. We went out to the house together, because I wouldn’t go without him, but when we got there Louis was...gone.”

Kay looked at Wayne in shock and felt her pulse quicken. “What do you mean, gone?” Kay asked. Wayne raised his head, his weary eyes fixing on hers and said, “He won’t be hurting Ruby anymore – he’s gone. Let’s get some sleep.” Wayne reached for Kay’s hand and pulled her off of the couch. Kay continued, “but how is he dead? How…how did he die?”. Wayne turned to her, put his hands on her shoulders and said, “well, Ruby threw a skillet at him before leaving the house – and it is a good thing that she defended herself because she could have been seriously hurt, or worse. Ruby’ll have to go into town in the morning after the police go over the scene”, Kay looked at Wayne, very stricken and concerned, “but she’ll be fine, honey – it was self-defense – they’ll just wanna ask her a few questions.”. At that Wayne turned around and went up the stairs. Kay followed, her mind racing.

THE TOWN”S STORY
A closed casket funeral was held with only Ruby, Kay and Wayne in attendance while most of the town stood outside of the cemetery gates and waited for something to happen. They waited quietly and patiently to see some kind of emotion from Wayne or Ruby, or even Kay, anything to suggest innocence or guilt. But when they saw Ruby bow her head in grief and begin to cry they knew that Louis Baker had died not at the hand of his wife or his wife’s family. Wayne and Kay held their heads up high, being so strong for little Ruby. The townfolk then felt ashamed for intruding upon the life of this poor woman as she grieved for her husband, and bowed their heads in prayer and shame. A breeze picked up as the casket was lowered into the ground and the pretty young widow, who had somehow scraped up enough money to buy new clothes to be presentable while saying goodbye to her husband, was lead away by her family.

THE END OF THE STORY
The three of them stood over the open grave, in front of the casket, smelling the mixture of hot air, freshly broken dirt and flowers. Ruby looked down at her hands, which were pristinely clasped in front of her, enveloped in white gloves and then past her hands to her shiny black shoes winking at her in the sun. She heard a rustling outside of the gate of the cemetery and noticed what seemed like the entire town was watching them. Ruby looked up through her eyelashes as she raised her handkerchief to her eyes to wipe the sweat gathering beneath them. At that moment, the men outside of the gate took of their hats as the women bowed their heads.

The casket lay on planks, ready to be lowered into the ground. As the preacher said his final words, Ruby laid a yellow rose onto the casket and backed away. The workers pulled the planks out from under the casket and then used the ropes that were supporting it to slowly lower it into the ground. Ruby bowed her head again as she thought about that night and, after he came home and took a few swings at her, he went into the bathroom and took his medication. Only he was too drunk to notice that he took the wrong pills. And he didn’t seem to mind the new tangy flavor of gravy as Ruby pushed more and more of it on him at dinner. Though she still couldn’t remember throwing the frying pan at him in the end, she did get a few hits in as he was screaming at her. Then she ran away, scared of what she’d done and scared of what might happen if it didn’t work, but it obviously did. Ruby shook her head and focused once again on her shoes.

Kay and Wayne, holding hands, stood beside Ruby with their heads high. Kay inhaled, thinking about the night that she killed Louis. Wayne stood solemnly, the picture of a respectful brother honoring the dead but saw the image of Louis’ final breaths as he and Kenneth stood over him as they talked about the weather and their past antics. And when the casket had been lowered into the ground, Kay and Wayne each walked on a side of Ruby, helping her through the cemetery.