236 Alumni Literary Journal of the BU Creative Writing Program

Issue 3 Fall 2011

Editor Caroline Woods

Poetry Editor Bekah Stout

Contributing Faculty Robert Pinsky

Program Director Leslie Epstein

Cover Design Zachary Bos

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editors’ Note 3

Fiction: ILLEGAL DREAMS 6 J. Kevin Shushtari

Poetry: THE WANT BONE; THE WAVE; ANTIQUE 16 Robert Pinsky

Fiction: THE GIRL FROM HIGHWATER 18 Swann Li

Poetry: KRISTALLNACHT 33 Martin Edmunds

Fiction: ADMISSION 34 Kathleen Carr Foster

Poetry and Prose: THREE TRANSLATIONS 57 Ani Gjika

Poetry: TO A PHILOSOPHER 64 Zachary Bos

Fiction: A TEMPORARY FIX 65 Joseph Fazio

Poetry: TWO UNGARETTI TRANSLATIONS 69 Dan Stone

Non-fiction: ANNE SEXTON “ONE WRITES BECAUSE ONE HAS TO” 71 (EXCERPT) Mary Baures

Fiction: A RIVER CANNOT BE A RIVER 74 Shilpi Suneja

EDITORS’ NOTE

Thank you for reading Issue 3 of 236, the Alumni Literary Journal of the BU Creative Writing MFA Program. 236 is an online publication that appears twice yearly, in the fall and spring.

We publish exclusively the work of our alumni, with one faculty contributor in each issue. This fall we’re excited to include three poems by our esteemed poetry professor Robert Pinsky.

You’ll notice that many of the stories and poems in this issue already appeared in notable journals on the web and in print, and many are award-winners. We are equally excited to include first-time publications in our pages.

If you graduated from our program, we’d love to hear from you. Please see the submission guidelines on the 236 homepage, and be sure to send us your updates for the program website’s News page.

Best wishes, Caroline and Bekah

Caroline Woods (Fiction 2008), a 2011 Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, currently teaches fiction writing at Boston University and literature at the Boston Conservatory. She is also the Administrative Coordinator of Creative Writing at BU. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Slice and Lemon Magazine, and she has been awarded two Glimmer Train honorable mentions. As a teenager, she self-published a book of ghost stories, Haunted Delaware, which has been commended in The Village Voice, Writer’s Digest, Delaware Today, and the News Journal. At the University of Virginia (CLAS 2005) she was a Jefferson Scholar. She has just finished writing her first novel.

Bekah Stout (Poetry 2010) teaches poetry at Boston University, and is the director of programs for the Favorite Poem Project, a non-profit organization founded by Robert Pinsky during his tenure as Poet Laureate. She is also a reader for Slate. In 2009 she won the Poetry International Prize. To view the Favorite Poem Project website and videos, visit www.favoritepoem.org.

3 CONTRIBUTORS

Mary Baures (Poetry 1974) studied with Anne Sexton at Boston University. After graduating, she was hired by the MFA writing program at Emerson College. In 1994 she earned a doctorate in psychology. Her work as a writer taught her how psychic wounds can be metabolized through writing and other creative projects. Soon she began interviewing people who had used creativity to make positive transformations after a trauma. Her work has been published by Charles Press (Undaunted Spirits: Portraits of Recovery from Trauma), and she was co-producer of the documentary Strong at the Broken Places: Turning Trauma into Recovery. She is now a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Beverly, MA and gives shows of her watercolors and oils.

Zachary Bos (Poetry 2009) is kept busy with shoulder to wheel at Boston-based small press publisher, The Pen & Anvil Press. His current projects include translations from French of the sonnets of Pamphile Le May, and a collection of entries for The New Book of Imaginary Beings. His writing has appeared recently in Moria, Literary Imagination, and the inaugural issue of The Black Herald.

Martin Edmunds (Poetry 1984) is completing a new book of poems, Boca Negra, and working on a screen adaptation of a Calderón de la Barca play. His first book, The High Road to Taos, was chosen by Donald Hall for the National Poetry Series. He has won a Discovery/The Nation Prize, and his poems have appeared in anthologies as well as many journals and magazines, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Grand Street, The Partisan Review, and The Southwest Review, AGNI, A Public Space, and Consequence. He is poetry editor of Epiphany.

Joseph Fazio (Fiction 2006) is currently working on a novel and a collection of stories. He lives in Boston with his wife, Shivani.

Born and raised in Albania, Ani Gjika (Poetry 2010) transferred to the U.S. at 18 and began writing poetry in English shortly thereafter. At Boston University, she was the recipient of a 2010 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship and a 2010 Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize for her translations from the Albanian of Luljeta Lleshanaku’s poems. Her work has appeared in Salamander, Seneca Review, Linebreak, The Literary Bohemian, Two Lines Online and elsewhere.

Julia Gjika is a contemporary Albanian poet who has lived and written in the United States since 1996. Gjika was born in 1949 and studied finance and Albanian literature. She belongs to the first generation of Albanian women poets, having published her first book, Ditëlindje ("Birthday"), in 1971, followed by Ku Gjej Poezinë ("Where I Find Poetry") in 1978. Her other books of poetry include Muzg: Permbledhje me Poezi (“Dusk: Collected Poems”) 2008 and Ëndrra e Kthimit ("The Dream of Return"), 2010. Her work is translated from the Albanian in this issue by Ani Gjika.

Kathleen Carr Foster (Fiction 2008)’s fiction has appeared in Slice Magazine and Harper Perennial’s Fifty-Two Stories. She received a nomination for Best New American Voices, an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and the Florence Engel Randall Graduate Fiction Prize from Boston University, where she earned both the M.F.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in English Literature. She holds a B.A. from Wellesley College, where she was awarded the Johanna Mankewicz Davis Prize for Fiction. She is currently working on a novel.

Mimoza Hysa was born in Tirane, Albania, August 6th, 1967. She studied Italian from University of Tirane and Universita di Pisa (Italy). Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Albanian Literature at the Centre for Albanological Studies (QSA) Albania. Her translations into Albanian include work by Italian poets and writers like Montale, Quasimodo, Pascoli, Buzzati, Tabucchi, Mazzantini, Manfredi and others. Hysa is the author of two novels, Times of Wind (Koha e Eres, 2005), A Story Without Names (Histori Pa Emra, 2007) and a short story collection Vend/imi 1 + 10 (2008). She is the winner of several national literary prizes. Her work is translated from the Albanian in this issue by Ani Gjika.

Swann Li (Fiction 2009) writes fiction, poetry, and plays in English and Chinese. She has been published in World Journal, New Threads, Writers Talk, and CND. She loves to read English literature and world literature translated into English or Chinese.

Robert Pinsky is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Boston University. His Selected Poems was published in 2011. His recent anthology, with accompanying audio CD, is Essential Pleasures. His honors include the Harold Washington Award from the city of Chicago and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his translation The Inferno of Dante. The videos from the Favorite Poem Project, an organization that he founded during his tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate, can be viewed at www.favoritepoem.org.

J. Kevin Shushtari (Fiction 2010)’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Glimmer Train Stories, Meridian, The Iowa Review, and Glimmer Train Bulletin. His recent honors and awards include the 2010 Very Short Fiction Award from Glimmer Train, the 2011 Editor’s Prize in Fiction at Meridian, and the 2011 Forugh Farrokhzad Fellowship Award from the Vermont Studio Center. He is a practicing physician and is presently at work on his first novel, Secrets From Back Home.

Dan Stone (Poetry 2009) is spending this spring in Italy and Malta, working on a novel about the life of Caravaggio. Otherwise, he lives in Portland, Oregon, where he pays the bills by tending bar.

Shilpi Suneja (Fiction 2009) was awarded the Saul Bellow Prize at Boston University. She is currently at work on her first novel and a collection of stories.

5 ILLEGAL DREAMS

J. Kevin Shushtari (Fiction 2010)

This story was first published in Meridian (www.readmeridian.org) and won their

2011 Editor’s Prize.

You come home from school wearing a blood-red headband and a black and white scarf. Your mother takes one look and starts to cry. Baba says it's a great honor—“He’s a soldier of God now.”

You ride in a caravan of buses through the desert in a cloud of dust and diesel exhaust. At the front in Ahwaz, you outlive each fresh wave of Basij recruits. Before the attacks, Ink Eyes hands out plastic keys painted a shiny gold from a cardboard box marked Made in Taiwan. The keys to heaven, you tell the new boys. Wear them around your neck and never take them off.

Ink Eyes ropes the youngest together in groups of twenty, running the white nylon cord through their belt loops. He tosses out metal tubes of ointment. “For your eyes if you smell rotten eggs.” He’s saving the gasmasks for the real soldiers. “The tall one’s lucky,” an officer says as he collects rials from his comrades. They’re making bets on you to survive another march. Make them proud. Bring your father glory.

Ink Eyes gives blankets to the older boys. “Wrap around, lie down and roll.”

“Is it cold at the front?” asks the fat boy with the buzz cut.

Ink Eyes laughs. “Tell him, Anoush,” but you don’t. It’s better not to know. You like your blanket. It protects you from the sting of exploding sand and pebbles, and cushions you from the spent ordnance scattered on the sand, still warm despite the darkness. Yours smells musty, as if it’s been stored in a cellar far away.

Pictures of cool evenings in your grandmother’s garden in Esfahan, the Syoseh Pol

Bridge straddling the Zayandeh River, arms crossed, palms against your chest, elbows tucked into your belly. “Just like when you get shrouded,” your cousin calls as you roll, giggling, down the hill in the dark until you’re too dizzy to stand.

The fat boy stops short, sobbing, as the others tumble across the minefield and the little ones run ahead, holding hands. He screams for you as dozens of sandaled feet stampede over him. You run toward him but there’s a burst of dirt and rock. All sound ceases. The brightness illuminates the dust floating onto the blankets, heavy with the weight of corpses. Your left foot burns as if held over an open flame. Rolling, rolling until you find a chubby hand reaching for the dirty sky. You don’t know if it’s his, but you hold it anyway. Finally, you pry your fingers loose from the stiffening grip. At least his family will get the Martyr’s Loan. Five hundred thousand tumans.

Stay awake. Listen to your mother’s voice. She practices her English, reading your favorite scary stories, wrapping her soft arms around you to keep you safe. On the

Rue Morgue, the fearsome ape mangles another victim. The heart of a dead man beats wildly through the floor. The blanket holds your body parts together. Nevermore.

Nevermore.

Ink Eyes collects his winnings, but this time they take you to a tent hospital near Shush. Two Revolutionary Guards stand over the bed. A blood-ribboned bandage bobs below your left knee.

7 The short one gestures at the stump. “We’ll have to kick Sadam’s ass without this one.”

Fridays at the market, all day waiting, and when you finally reach the head of the line the shelves are almost empty. No bread, the dairy case barren. People on the sidewalk begin shouting and an old man lobs stones that bounce off the plate glass. The shopkeeper’s son turns everyone away, and there’s just enough time before curfew to run across town to buy eggs and frozen vegetables from the refrigerated truck in the alley behind the American Embassy.

Scrape yogurt from the sides of your mother’s mouth with a tiny spoon. Run her bath. Pull the bangs of her wig low to cover where her eyebrows used to be. Roll the mascara wand upward against her lashes, which turned white but never fell out.

You look pretty, Maman-Jon. She smiles and squeezes your thigh just above the prosthesis. Lie to her as Baba lies, night after night, sipping tea with gaz: all is good, the same as before the Revolution. No mention of the public hangings, the ban on alcohol, the demonstrations supporting the hostage-takers. She doesn’t know that even her hot pink robe is illegal, all bright colors condemned by the Islamic Republic, or that when the electricity goes out at night, her husband sits in the dark drinking the contraband Russian vodka he keeps in his desk.

Eight months after your return from the front, you walk into your mother’s room balancing the silver tray with her breakfast. The large windows are open, the twin minarets of the family’s mosque framed by perfect rectangles of dusty sunlight.

The humid breeze smells faintly of car exhaust as the frenzy on the street below chokes to its morning standstill. Her body lies perfectly arranged on the bed, and atop the white shroud rests the picture of you, at four, a lamb sucking on your finger. From a chair in the corner, Baba rises. He sags in your arms, his weight nearly pulling you to the floor.

The aunts and uncles arrive from Shiraz and stay until the seventh-day ceremony: red rose petals scattered on the grave. The youngest cousin shares your room. On the third night he climbs into bed with you, trembling. “I dreamt I held hands with a girl,” he whispers. “I kissed her mouth and it tasted sweet.” It’s okay, you tell him. “But Anoush-Jon!” he sobs. “My dream is illegal! I’ll be punished!” Go back to sleep. They’ll never know your dreams.

On the forty-first day, you visit the family’s favorite café, run by an elderly

Armenian couple. Large black letters on the front window: RELIGIOUS MINORITY.

The old woman bows. “We say prayers for your mother.” She serves plates of kuku sabzi, your favorite, but the aroma of egg and garlic sickens you, and you’re startled when she claps loudly. A white SUV blocks the sidewalk. Morality Squad. A teenage boy dashes to a table across the room, away from his girlfriend. Four armed

Revolutionary Guards, two men and two women, throw open the door.

One of the men points to Baba. “Red necktie! You look like an American.”

Baba tries to stand but the guard pushes him down. “My wife’s mourning period just passed. It’s bad luck to continue wearing black.”

“Take it off, you idiot!”

“Why are you wearing that T-shirt?” a female Guard asks. She’s young and pretty; a wisp of black hair escapes her hijab, falling over one eye and down her cheek.

9 You pinch the cotton and pull the shirt outward: Rolling Stones World Tour 1979.

A gift from your cousin two years ago. The guard raises his black baton. “How dare you look in the eye of a Muslim woman you don’t know.”

Baba drops to his knees. “Please, sir. He lost his leg in the Holy War.”

Get up, you tell him, ashamed that you were once a member of the Basij.

The guard strikes him across the face. “Infidels!”

You exaggerate your limp and hobble toward the guard. Your father is Sayed, a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed and a true Muslim. You point at the

Armenian couple: you’re not like them.

The guards walk out without a word. The others watch silently as the old woman glares at you and wipes the blood from your father’s face.

That night, Baba calls you into his study. Dark blood crusts his nostrils. He slices a lemon, and on a separate saucer waits a small pile of sugar. From the nearly empty bottle of vodka he pours you a shot. “Freedom offends them,” he says, raising the bottle. “To undreamed shores.” Follow his lead and dip the lemon in the sugar, suck on it, and then have your first taste: a burning, medicinal crispness on the tongue, and into your nose.

Days flatten into weeks at Immigration. Each time they ask for something different: birth certificates, proof of Muslim identity, bank statements, names and addresses of family members, payment equal to one year’s salary. But they never grant even a passport, let alone official permission to travel abroad. Over several months,

Baba sells everything. He empties the bank accounts. Be ready at a moment’s notice.

Before dawn, you board a train together, all your belongings in a heavy canvas satchel.

In Tabriz, you sleep on watermelons in the back of a truck until dark. “We must be on guard,” Baba says. “Some guides are informants and will lead us into the hands of the militia.” At the old Khatoon Bridge in Khoy, an Azerbaijani man dressed in Bedouin robes waits with three donkeys. Ten days, and he hardly speaks. From the mountain path at sunset, several soldiers man the official Endere Crossing checkpoint. On the

Iranian side, the bearded face of Ayatollah Khomeini, twenty feet high, is lit by spotlights anchored to rock ledges. You speak softly to your donkey as Baba lifts the coiled barbed wire. Its ear snags, but you keep tugging, leaving a clump of flesh dangling from the sharp metal prongs. When you’re at last on Turkish soil, the guide turns and points to a large sign on the road below: Well Come In Iran. He spits on the ground. “Imbeciles.” The snowy summit of Mount Ararat shimmers several miles to the north. “Don’t trust anyone,” the man calls back as he leads away two donkeys. Give him your donkey, you beg Baba, but he shakes his head. No crying. You’re almost seventeen. You bury your face in his neck until he pushes you gently away.

In Ankara, a few days at the Otel Konagi to rest. You wake to mosquitoes biting your left calf, but when you reach down, feel only the damp, tangled sheets. Now the last push—the bus to Esenboga Airport—where you board a flight for New York. First time on a plane, your stomach tumbles as you brace yourself during take-off, leaving behind all you know.

The INS agents don’t kick or hang you upside down or threaten your life. Two months in a juvenile detention center in Brooklyn, the African Muslims with their kufi skull- caps milling in the exercise yard. Nobody bothers you. Your bunkmate has spread the

11 word: he’s a known revolutionary, blew his leg off for Allah. But you know you’re a fake, just like the golden key you still wear around your neck. The mullah who comes on Fridays preaches jihad: all true Muslims should prepare for holy war.

The judge sits like a queen, without even a headscarf for modesty, as she explains that keeping you locked up is a burden on the American taxpayer. “He was a boy soldier,” the court-appointed attorney argues. He lifts the leg of your jeans to show her the prosthesis tucked into the high-top sneakers your mother bought long ago, the only shoes you have. The judge agrees to a three-month sentence at a state farm while the lawyer works on getting Official Refugee Status.

The pregnant cow bellows so loudly you get out of bed, buckle on your leg, and climb down the ladder to the stall. Unchained, she’s shifted her backside into the corner.

Your feet slide in the damp straw as you yank. If you wake old Edie, she might give you a demerit in her next report. No choice, so you trudge up the hill to the trailer. You’ll never get used to the cold in Elmira. Heard stories the South is warm—palm trees in

Florida—but you doubt it. Knock. Nothing. Slap the rusty metal siding, push a milk crate up to the only lighted window.

A girl! You haven’t seen a girl in months, not since Juvie, and those girls cursed and slept with the guards and had dirty hair. This one’s hair is shiny and blond, curls looped over the pillow as she lies reading. Legs long and slender emerge from a big T- shirt lettered B.U. Track & Field. What is Edie doing with a girl like this? She shifts and the white triangle of her panties shames you, a virgin, never even kissed. The cow’s moos carry up the lane. You hop off the crate and pound with a fist on the dented metal door. It finally opens and there’s the girl, pulling a fuzzy pink robe tight across her chest.

“Are you the guy from prison?”

Edie appears behind her. “Trouble?” This morning she threatened you with the cow shears—“If you don’t cut that kinky hair, I’ll shave it off myself!” Her white wig is on crooked: Edie’s lost her hair just like your mother, but swears she’s getting better.

Is even cancer easy in America?

The girl comes out and starts the pick-up. “Jennifer,” she says. “The granddaughter.”

Edie stands on the front step as you climb into the bed of the truck. “Don’t be taking nobody hostage now,” she says before slamming the door.

“What are you doing?” Jennifer yells. “Get up here with me.”

She glances sideways as the headlights sweep the narrow gravel lane. “No wonder I haven’t seen you. Nana says you don’t leave the barn after work.”

You don’t tell her that you never cross the fields unless you have to. Hate the cold, you say.

She goes straight to the tack room and returns, stripped down to her flannel shirt and overalls, carrying wide leather straps over each shoulder. Together you manage to get them around the cow. She climbs into the truck, revving until the chain is taut and you ease the cow away from the wall. Jennifer squats at its haunches and reaches inside with a bare hand, grabbing hold of a front hoof. Within minutes, the calf slides out. She wipes away the wet birth sac, her scarlet nails glistening against the white coat.

13 She winks. “We did it,” she says, even though you did nothing but stare. The newborn sucks your finger.

You don’t see her again until a week later when you’re backing the empty manure spreader into the lean-to behind the barn. She’s carrying a plaid blanket and a paper grocery bag.

“A picnic.” Red-cheeked, Jennifer looks up at the milky gray sky as freezing rain begins to fall. “In the loft.”

The bales of hay are stacked halfway to the ceiling, and you both climb to the top. Can she smell the cowplop steaming off you?

“You hurt your leg?” she asks, shaking the curls from her hat.

There is no leg.

“You mean it’s wooden?” She sets out sandwiches, potato chips, and apples.

More like metal and rubber.

“You get around pretty well, considering.”

Your mother said it shouldn’t be a handicap.

You lean back comfortably on your elbows and bite into a sandwich, studying the weave of the worn blanket. You lift a corner to your nose and breathe in the damp wool. Silence, and when she asks what’s wrong you want to tell her, but as you look into those wide blue eyes that have seen nothing bloodier than the birth of a calf, you laugh.

Blankets are warm. Good to get under. She moves closer and you realize she doesn’t think you’re strange.

“We read a story in English class about a girl with a leg like that.” You watch her polish an apple against her jeans. She crunches into it. Juicy, you say, as you reach for yours.

“There’s this bible salesman who kisses her.” She pauses. “In a hayloft.”

You sit up. And then what happens?

“The guy steals her leg.”

What kind of story is that? You stand so fast you almost fall over. You have to clean the stalls, you tell her. Thanks for the sandwich. She starts to say something but you’re down the ladder as fast as you can go, hating the thump of your prosthesis against the rungs. Let her sit in the loft and make up more stupid stories.

The fat boy leads you by the hand to the stall where the calf was born, dragging his blanket behind him. He points to the fifty-pound bags piled next to the blocks of salt lick. You empty the fertilizer into a trashcan and mix it with gasoline. Remove the lattice that covers the cinder block supports just below the girl’s window. Ease the trashcan onto its side and roll it under the trailer. Scratch a large X on the metal siding. Your mother stands in her bare feet, her bald head gleaming against the snow.

“American dreams,” she hisses.

You stump to your room, and when the girl’s light comes on, aim the .22 just below the X. Pull the trigger. The blonde hair glows like sunset against your golden key, and the long and perfect legs melt away from her body. In a field of scattered helmets and combat boots, you sit like a beggar, staring straight ahead. You see the calf on the sooty horizon as it struggles to stand, and decide not to shoot it.

15 THREE POEMS

Robert Pinsky

The Want Bone

This poem appeared in Selected Poems by Robert Pinsky.

The tongue of the waves tolled in the earth's bell. Blue rippled and soaked in the fire of blue. The dried mouthbones of a shark in the hot swale Gaped on nothing but sand on either side.

The bone tasted of nothing and smelled of nothing, A scalded toothless harp, uncrushed, unstrung. The joined arcs made the shape of birth and craving And the welded-open shape kept mouthing O.

Ossified cords held the corners together In groined spirals pleated like a summer dress. But where was the limber grin, the gash of pleasure? Infinitesimal mouths bore it away,

The beach scrubbed and etched and pickled it clean. But O I love you it sings, my little my country My food my parent my child I want you my own My flower my fin my life my lightness my O. The Wave

This poem appeared in Selected Poems by Robert Pinsky.

(Virgil, Georgics III: 237-244)

As when far off in the middle of the ocean A breast-shaped curve of wave begins to whiten And rise above the surface, then rolling on Gathers and gathers until it reaches land Huge as a mountain and crashes among the rocks With a prodigious roar, and what was deep Comes churning up from the bottom in mighty swirls Of sunken sand and living things and water—

So in the springtime every race of people And all the creatures on earth or in the water, Wild animals and flocks and all the birds In all their painted colors, all rush to charge Into the fire that burns them: love moves them all.

Antique

This poem appeared in Selected Poems by Robert Pinsky.

I drowned in the fire of having you, I burned In the river of not having you, we lived Together for hours in a house of a thousand rooms And we were parted for a thousand years. Ten minutes ago we raised our children who cover The earth and have forgotten that we existed. It was not maya, it was not a ladder to perfection, It was this cold sunlight falling on this warm earth.

When I turned you went to Hell. When your ship Fled the battle I followed you and lost the world Without regret but with stormy recriminations. Someday far down that corridor of horror the future Someone who buys this picture of you for the frame At a stall in a dwindled city will study your face And decide to harbor it for a little while longer From the waters of anonymity, the acids of breath.

17 THE GIRL FROM HIGHWATER

Swann Li (Fiction 2009)

I

In the early morning when Father Fan came home, on his back a bamboo tub of newly dug-up peanuts, muddy and wet, the rain was still falling. Shafts of water were beating on stone slabs in the yard, splashing up into hundreds of fuzzy dandelion blossoms, wetting the feathers of two black-dotted hens tied and lying on the porch, eyelids stretched thin over tiny fast-blinking eyes, as if they were thinking hard about their situation.

"What are those for?" Father Fan asked.

"For you to take to Linlin." Mother Fan, a small fifty-year-old woman wearing an old-style side-buttoned shirt and a modern short haircut, forced on her by the barber in town, was sitting on a stool, counting a stack of brand-new bills.

"I know that's what you’re thinking." Father Fan shook his head in disapproval, setting down the bamboo tub. "But, granny, use your head, what can Linlin do with them?"

"Can't she cook them for herself?"

"You think she has a kitchen? And even if she has, you expect Linlin to hold a knife to a chicken? Ever since she was five, every time I was to kill a chicken, she would grab it and run away. I had to chase her all over the village. Silly girl." Despite the criticizing tone, Father Fan smiled over the memory of his youngest daughter, grey goatee quivering in the white mist from his mouth.

"Silly girl." Mother Fan's eyes curled in a smile. "Should I cook the chickens?

You can take it in an earthen jar. She can still taste it on the same day."

"No," Father Fan said decisively. "Not fresh."

Mother Fan slipped the red rubber band from her wrist onto the wad of bills and handed them to her husband. "One hundred. Not one fen more, not one fen less."

Father Fan unbuttoned his blue shirt, put the bills in his watch pocket, and sighed. "What can she buy with one yuan nowadays?"

"You don't remember how she loved new bills? She always held on to her lucky money and couldn't stop counting them. She would never spend it."

"But she's not a little girl anymore." Father Fan sat down in his bamboo chair, wondering what his daughter would look like in city-girl clothes. After she failed the high school entrance exam, a match had been made for her at fourteen, but she ran away at fifteen. Six months later she wrote back, saying she had found a job in a performance troupe and was getting closer to her dream of becoming a famous singer.

Father Fan apologized to the young man’s family, but still felt uneasy whenever he ran into one of them in the fair. She seemed to be doing well in the city, as she sent them money for a few months. But it suddenly stopped two months ago.

"Shall we do one hundred or two hundred?" Mother Fan came in to ask.

"Mmm...two hundred."

"You can carry that many?"

"Of course I can." Father Fan looked almost angry now.

19 He smoked a pipe and walked out onto the porch. It was all ready. In a wooden crate, two hundred yellow-mud-swaddled duck eggs, Linlin's favorite food. Her parents bought these eggs from families who kept their ducks in a private pond, instead of having them waddle and swim in water fields sprayed with pesticides and fertilizers. They gathered pine branches from the mountain behind their home, burnt them, and mixed the ashes in the cleanest yellow mud, rolled the eggs in the mixture, and set them aside for one hundred days. Now they were perfect for eating: the alkali had dwindled away, the egg whites congealed and translucent, the egg yolks golden and sticky smooth. After chipping away the dried mud, Linlin could wash one egg, crack it open, peel it, and count all the pine-flowers on the egg white before nibbling and sucking on it with a silly smile.

Mother Fan laid a plastic bag holding the washed raw peanuts on the eggs, straightened up, and looked timidly at her husband.

Father Fan bent down and lifted the crate. His arms slightly trembling, he put it over a shoulder. "Soon I’ll be on the bus," he said.

His wife draped a clear plastic cloth over him before putting one on herself.

They descended the stone steps and walked into the fields.

They waited for an hour at the mouth of the village. Someone came out of the house by the road, hoe in hand, and walked past them.

"Village fellow, has Blacktwo’s bus left for the day?" Father Fan thought of offering a cigarette, but decided it was not a good idea in the rain.

"There has not been any bus since the rains came." The man shook his head.

"Look at the road." The road had turned soupy. The man left no footprints. The mud closed as soon as he pulled out his feet.

"Oh, they can't drive on this road?" Mother Fan mumbled, ashamed of her ignorance. “Shall we wait until the road dries up?” The minibus was a new business.

After being charged ten yuan each on their first ride half a year ago, the couple had been saving money by walking to town.

Father Fan thought about it but slowly shook his head. "Tomorrow is Spring

Festival."

Mother Fan nodded.

"It's just eight li to the town, isn't it?" Father Fan continued. "From there I can take a bus."

Mother Fan put a hand under the crate and lifted it slightly to test the weight.

Finally she said, "I’ll just walk with you there and come back."

They crossed the bridge and followed the road out of the village. Father Fan set his foot down carefully with every step. The rubber soles of his military-green shoes could slide easily in the mud. He walked on slowly but steadily, head tilted to one side, both hands steadying the crate on his shoulder.

Soon the rain drenched the mud on the eggs and the crate felt much heavier.

More and more often he came to a stop and caught his breath as smoothly as possible, not wanting to alarm his wife.

"You should have brought just one hundred," Mother Fan complained, "but you had to be so greedy and insisted on two hundred. Someone even told me these eggs aren’t healthy. There is something harmful inside."

21 "Harmful! Harmful!" Father Fan stood still and yelled. "Who has died from eating these eggs? Have you heard of anyone? Do you eat pesticides? Don't we use it on our crops? What do you know is harmful? Stupid woman!" His face flushed and he was sweating. He unbuttoned his shirt with one hand but then quickly rebuttoned it, worried about wetting the new bills.

Two motorcycles scuttled past them, starting and halting, making deep ruts in the road that quickly filled up.

"Is it one of those motorcycle-taxis? Give us a ride?" Mother Fan called to the drivers, sounding nervous.

"It is a motorcycle-taxi, but can’t do now, can’t do." One of the drivers shook his head. "This road."

"Why on earth did they give up on this road?" Mother Fan asked her husband.

"Not sure, some things didn't work out. It's not for us common folks to know such things," her husband said, panting, starting to walk again. Half a year ago, the villages had talked about building a paved road into the town. Village heads got together, ate and drank and sang, had some unknown disagreements, and the “paved road” was never mentioned again.

Half a li later, they stood still and looked at the long winding road ahead of them, blurred by the curtain of rain. Occasionally a young couple dressed in fashionable clothes trudged past, dragging soiled bulging suitcases filled with gifts they had brought back from cities where they worked.

"Grandpa, better stop going on this road, too twisted, too long." Mother Fan pointed to a narrow path in the fields. "We should take a shortcut."

Father Fan's chest heaved slowly up and down. He blinked weakly. They climbed down the slope and walked on the earthy bank along the river.

About two li later, Father Fan cried.

"Granny, take it off my shoulder."

Mother Fan grabbed the crate and together they eased it off his shoulder and set it on a bundle of grass.

They rested for a moment.

"Did you bring anything to eat?" Father Fan asked.

Mother Fan shook her head in guilt. "Thought you were just going to take the bus." She hesitated, then began to untie the plastic bag. "Raw peanuts can be bought in cities, too."

"But not as special as those from one's own fields." Father Fan stared at the peanuts for a minute, but finally gave in to his hunger. He cracked the shells and chewed on the juicy kernels.

"Girl did the right thing," he said. "No good being a peasant. Life too difficult."

"Girl did the right thing," Mother Fan nodded, not eating any peanuts.

Father Fan felt the sap of peanuts traveling all around in his veins. He stood up and grabbed the crate. His arms trembled in straining but he could not lift it up.

"Too old, too old." He straightened up and sighed in defeat.

Mother Fan looked at her husband’s flabby arms. He used to be so strong: a full tub of manure in each hand, he could leave their house and arrive at their land, unfairly assigned on the top of the mountain, in just five minutes. He also used to like the thing in the bottle too much. They had many fights. Sometimes Linlin was scared into crying and wouldn’t talk for days. But time had changed him: he had been drinking much less; he started playing erhu again; he was no longer mad at the village

23 head and neighbors for things big and small, as everybody was on his own now. There was no doubt that they could share some nice old years together. Her only wish was that her youngest daughter could also live close by, but she shouldn’t be too selfish; she knew what was better for the girl.

"We’ll wash the mud away, what do you think?" Mother Fan proposed, to which her husband agreed.

They lifted the crate together and tottered to the river. They each found a twig and began chipping away the mud on eggshells. After finishing that, they swished the crate in the water until all the eggs looked clean, the yellowness of the insides showing through the shells. They did not say a word, but both felt the pity that their girl could not enjoy chipping away the mud herself and feeling the sweet expectation of the delicacy inside.

They started their journey again, but it felt much longer than usual with the eggs weighing Father Fan down. Four li later, Father Fan felt his chest tightening and closing in. In panic, they removed twenty eggs and planted them by the bank for whoever lucky enough to come across them. They had to desert more eggs along the way. By the time Mother Fan helped set the crate on the luggage rack of the bus in feelings of relief and victory, there were only one hundred and fifty eggs left.

II

Fatty Wang's snack shop stood alone on the road from South Hill into the city. In twenty years the goods had changed, from the hand-made twenty-fen and thirty-fen pastries wrapped in coarse wax paper to colorful aluminum wraps of various snacks manufactured by joint enterprises: sugared black currants, cashews, pistachios; fruits and nuts growing in far regions of the world that Fatty Wang felt curious about. Just the small mundane details. Do their dogs bark the same way as Chinese dogs? What do they ask each other when they meet on the road? Instead of "Did you eat?” do they ask

"What soup did you drink?" or, what? Fatty Wang always felt frustrated about how limited his imagination was. At one time he considered moving to Canton to see more of the world outside, but had to give up his plan.

Some of the other snack shop and tea shop owners had taken their businesses to a new level: replacing bamboo chairs and stools with stainless steel chairs and leather sofas, selling fancy teas at up to three hundred yuan a cup. One cup! Fatty

Wang could make his shop into such a place, too, but why should he rob people? He often felt angry at how ridiculous things could be. And it was more ridiculous that no matter how absurd things were, it seemed no one other than himself found it ridiculous. Maybe he was just too idle. Everybody else was too busy making a living to think too much about the world.

More or less he was lucky. The shop had a steady flow of business. In the mornings the high school students rushed in to buy pancakes and boxed drinks on their way to the school. In the evenings and weekends the migrant workers came to make the place rowdy. They drank bottle after bottle of rice liquor, munched on plate after plate of cold cuts, played mahjong and cards, and shared their adventures in the city. Fatty Wang played rap music for them, adding to the happy-happy atmosphere, even though he never liked the dizzying music himself. He was an easygoing man. As soon as the workers came, he would remove the scenery calendar on top of the swimsuit calendar and let the almost-nude girls flash their smiles at these pent-up men. Across the river, the city looked steadily more and more modern; tall buildings

25 shot up every few months. Most of the migrant workers were building a great stadium nearby, designed to host the seventh Provincial Sports Meet.

Nearing the Spring Festival Eve, the place was quiet. The school was silent in the winter holiday and the workers had gone back to their homes in the countryside.

Fatty Wang read a newspaper for the time of a meal and felt sleep coming on. He took a look outside the shop, hoping to wake up in the cool wind. From around the bend in the road, he saw a slanted small figure hobbling near, a crate by his head.

He saw the person come closer and closer until he could see clearly a peasant about fifty years old.

"Ah, village fellow, where from?"

"Highwater Village, not far, a few hours by bus." The old man set the crate on the ground and wiped his eyes with a dripping sleeve. “It’s where the big floods are every year. Maybe you have heard about it?”

"Highwater Village?" Fatty Wang suddenly straightened up, eyes opening wide in radiant delight. "I'm from Highwater, too."

The old man came closer and looked carefully at Fatty Wang.

"Is it not you, Wang Wei?" he asked at last.

"It's just me, and you are..." Fatty Wang studied the man's face. "And you are?"

"See, you can't even recognize me." The old man shook his head and grinned in shame. "I'm your old friend Fan Jinjun."

"Oh, oh, oh! You, you, you!" Fatty Wang threw his fist on the old man's upper arm. "Jinjun, it's really you! Come in! Come in!"

They sat down by the table, which Fatty Wang had quickly covered with plates of fried peanuts, cold cuts, and nuts. "What are these?" the old man asked.

"Jinjun, try, you have to try. These are from foreign countries. Cashews: kidney nuts. Pistachios: cracking-smile nuts." Fatty Wang said the names carefully.

"We folks in country yards can't possibly know these things." The old man cracked a pistachio, looked carefully at the green kernel for a minute, and then put it in his mouth. He narrowed his eyes and chewed. He nodded, and then he nodded again.

"Hmm..." he said.

Fatty Wang smiled.

"You have a, you must have a...?" the old man asked.

"Yes." Fatty Wang nodded. "A son. Wife passed away a couple of years ago.

Cancer. Many more cancers these days."

"Sorry to hear that, old buddy." The old man chinked his cup of liquor to Fatty

Wang's. "She must be good and pain-free in the lunar side."

Fatty Wang nodded.

"And where is the son working?"

"The son works in Guangzhou.” Fatty Wang gulped down a mouthful of rice liquor, inhaled deeply, and closed his eyes for a few seconds. “Canton province."

"I guess he’s a government employee."

"He is." Fatty Wang slowly nodded. "He teaches in a college."

The old man clicked his tongue and shook his head in admiration. "College teacher! What an honor."

"And you have a ...?" Fatty Wang asked.

27 "Wife is at home. I’m here to visit my youngest daughter." The old man produced a slip of paper from his pocket. "But I just can't find this place. She sent us money every month, but we haven't heard from her for two months. I decided to just drop by and see if she’s all right."

Fatty Wang took the slip of paper and studied it.

"Only sixteen years old, but she sang as dulcetly as singers on the TV," the old man said. "She wants to become a famous singer." He shook his head in disbelief. "Of course a singer is nothing as dignified as a college teacher."

"That's where she works?" Fatty Wang pointed at the return address on the paper.

"That's what I guess."

"Carmen Entertainment Troupe." Fatty Wang thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. "No, not here anymore. Moved."

"Moved?" A peanut dropped right before the chopsticks reached the old man's lips. "Moved! Where? No wonder we haven't heard from her."

"Guangzhou, Canton,” Fatty Wang said. "That's what I heard. They’re doing very well over there."

"Are they coming back?"

"This I'm not sure. If they do really well, they might stay or they might come back, who knows? But I did hear that they moved."

"Oh, Guangzhou," the old man said the name carefully, looking like he was wondering what the place would look like and what his daughter would look like in it.

"The same place as your son." Fatty Wang nodded slowly, putting a piece of beef covered in chili oil in his mouth, but not chewing.

"Will he come back for the Spring Festival?"

Fatty Wang looked at the old man with unfocused eyes for a long moment and then said, "Yes, he's coming back, for the Festival. He should come back."

"Then can you do one thing for your old friend?"

"Say."

"Can you ask him to take these pine-flower duck eggs with him? Can he look for Linlin in Guangzhou and give them to her?"

"Guangzhou is a very big city. What if he can't find her?"

"If he can't find her, just enjoy them himself." The old man smiled, patting

Wang's arm.

"All right," Fatty Wang said. "Write her name down for me." He stood up, fetched a ballpoint pen from the counter and handed it to Fan.

The old man wrote down three characters carefully on the slip of paper in big bold strokes. Fatty Wang folded it and put it in his chest pocket.

"And oh, give this to her, too." The old man unbuttoned his shirt, took out the wad of bills from his watch pocket and handed them to Wang.

"Just fen bills?" Immediately Wang regretted his rudeness. “Of course, lucky money, just a sign for good fortune. But she’s not a little girl anymore, old fellow.”

The old man smiled, trying to hide his embarrassment. He chinked his cup with Wang's, downed it, and stood up. "I have to head back now. Granny is still waiting for me at home." He looked around in the shop and up and down at Wang.

29 "You, Wang Wei, you’re lucky. Carefree life. Not like us country folks." He stooped down to roll up his wet pant legs.

"Don't say. Parents have their own thinking. Can never blame them," Fatty

Wang said. "It's all good. It's all good." Thirty years before, they had both decided to run away from their home village. They planned to get on a passing truck and go as far as northwestern China, where they would try to join the army. On that fateful morning in the blue dawn when they quietly stole away to the crossroad in Yulong Town, at the last moment, Fan was caught by his mother and dragged back. Wang joined the army and came back with enough money to open a shop.

"It's all good, friend. Gua…rd your precious health." The old man, slightly drunk now, started to bow, but Fatty Wang stopped him.

After seeing his friend totter away in the rain, Fatty Wang came back into the shop, plopped down into his bamboo chair, and sat as silently as a Buddha for a long time. He took out the old man's slip of paper and wrote two characters on it.

A while later he stood up, put a lighter in his pocket, picked up the wet crate, grabbed a hoe and walked out of the back door. He followed the small trail down the slope until he came to the creek. There he dug a hole in the moist dirt and buried the crate with the brand-new bills. The turned-up black earth stared at him like a giant eye from among the rape bushes. He grabbed a few handfuls of their buds and let tiny golden petals rain on the mound until they covered it. Then he squatted below the willow tree and rested. The water was running fast and high. The green grass on the slope looked like long hair that had been combed and then smoothed with hands.

The girl from Highwater also had long black hair, shiny and smooth. With big darting eyes and a sweet high voice, she was the youngest ever of "Pleasures in the Country" in its five-year history. There was never any Carmen Entertainment Troupe in this city. She started out as a waitress but was finally talked into "real work," in which she bled each time like a virgin, and the demand for her was high. One night her boss made her receive ten guests; she passed away in the dawn. Some migrant workers lamented that they had not got a chance.

Fatty Wang dug out the piece of paper from his chest pocket, flicked the lighter and set it on fire. The flame ate down the paper; the ash flew up in the air; the black edge oozed down toward his fingers. Before it reached his hand, he laid it gently on the water and saw it carried away.

Maybe he should have told his friend the truth, and maybe the girl’s boss would have paid the old man some money to make up for his loss. But what could money do for a father? When his son's school sent him money to make up for his loss, he preferred that they had never let him know the truth. He would rather believe that his son was still working in Guangzhou, too busy to ever come home. As a young man from a small city, his son always took things too seriously. He had criticized a student's paper and the student had brought a knife into the classroom and stabbed him in the heart when he stooped down to read the page the student pointed at. Fatty Wang read many shocking events like this in newspapers but never imagined that it would happen to his own son. How can someone have no tolerance for the disagreeable at all? And why is a man willing to kill a girl for a moment’s pleasure? He tried to imagine the man’s face during the girl's last struggles, but again felt frustrated at his lack of imagination.

Fatty Wang lit a cigarette and let the blue smoke rise up into the willow, into the sky. He believed he had made the right decision. He believed the pine-flower eggs

31 and lucky money would reach the young dead in the lunar side and bring some joy to their Spring Festival. Being both descendants of the Highwater Village, at least they could find each other and not have to greet the New Year alone.

KRISTALLNACHT

Martin Edmunds (Poetry 1984)

Austria: our sugar-dusted Vienna, a Sachertort frosted with glass. Berlin, paved with brayed stars.

Blackout on die Judengasse. Dawn. The sun’s blood runs over stones.

A minyan of sorrows weeps in the willows. Murder broods under yews, the cantor’s last shekel stuck in its craw.

We lived like children. We had not known fire could melt gold or eat bone.

November. Month the raw- throated raven wholly owns.

33 ADMISSION

Kathleen Carr Foster (Fiction 2008)

This story was originally printed in Slice (www.slicemagazine.org)

“Can I get you a cup of coffee or tea?” Mrs. Hughes put her hand lightly on Chelsea’s back, just above her leather belt, and steered her through the reception area toward the office.

“Do you have hot chocolate?” Chelsea asked.

“Oh, dear. We don’t. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m okay then.”

Mrs. Hughes directed the young woman into the small room with a flourish of her hand. A broad window with a generous ledge ran the length of the outside wall. The shelf held a clear bowl containing the multicolored sea glass she had collected over many years, two spider plants with generations of offspring cascading over the rim of the plastic pot, and a photograph in a broad silver frame, depicting two adults with a child between them, standing in front of the Prado. The carpet was new, but she had layered her own antique

Persian over the stiff beige pile. Tidy stacks of folders, papers and photocopied sheets, some with their edges curling, covered the desk and nearly every other available surface.

She motioned toward the triangular grouping of spindle-backed chairs in the center of the office. Chelsea sat down, crossed her legs and then uncrossed them. Mrs.

Hughes took a seat as well and opened a manila folder on her lap. Her eyes moved rapidly from side to side, scanning the papers within. She retrieved a pen from the nearby desk.

“I’m going to take a few notes as we talk,” she said. “I hope you won’t mind. It will help me remember our conversation later.” “Okay,” Chelsea said.

“I don’t mean to bring up a difficult subject, but we typically ask both parents to be present at the interview. We hope to get to know the family as a whole. Was Amelia’s father unable to attend?”

“It’s not really a difficult subject -- for me anyway,” Chelsea said. “He’s never been a part of her life. In fact, I’m not even sure he knows she was born. What I mean is, I didn’t really know him all that well myself, so, it’s not like I would talk to him about her education. He really doesn’t have anything to do with it.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It hung below her shoulders, brown and glossy, as straight as though it had been ironed on a board. The brows above her wide blue eyes were plucked into a pencil thin line. Her features and limbs—nose, chin, forearms, wrists—were so petite that she looked like a child herself.

“All right, then,” Mrs. Hughes said. “That’s not a problem. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about Amelia? Feel free to boast, now, Chelsea. Many people feel awkward talking about how wonderful their child is but this is your opportunity to toot your own horn, so to speak.”

“Okay.” Chelsea cleared her throat. “Well, I mean, she reads articles in the newspaper, which is unusual for a five year old.”

“I would say so,” Mrs. Hughes said.

“I had to ask my boyfriend to stop bringing the Herald over because she kept asking me what different words mean, and sometimes I didn’t want to tell her about Al-

Qaeda and all that.”

“Of course not.”

35 “Have you ever heard of a child reading like that at five?” Chelsea’s fingers worked the bottom of a strand of hair. She inspected it as she talked, as though looking for split ends.

“Well, there are a few children who begin kindergarten with some reading skills, but that level of ability is unusual.”

“I had to talk to the preschool because they kept asking her to read to the other kids. My point was, once in a while is okay, but it shouldn’t be every day.”

“No.”

“It’s not like she’s on the payroll.” Chelsea smiled.

“How is she with other children?” Mrs. Hughes made notes on the paper in her folder. Many years ago she had made a chart to assist her with parent interviews. The first block was labeled “Parents’ Attitude toward Child.” In that block she wrote: Mother suggests that child reads at an adult level. Over time she had developed the ability to fill out sections of the chart while tilting the folder in such a way that the most eagle-eyed parent—David and Patricia Malone came to mind, judge and doctor, respectively—could not see what she wrote. In this case, though, there was no reason for concern. Chelsea was looking out the window, which framed a gently sloping lawn and beyond, a fenced-in playground. A thin layer of snow covered the grass. Tracks of footprints crisscrossed one another and came together in a muddy patch in front of the gate. Children were laughing and pushing one another on the colorful climbing structures, which had been purchased with the interest on the Parents’ Annual Fund.

“Isn’t it a nice playground?” prompted Mrs. Hughes. “Does Amelia enjoy playing with other children?” Chelsea transferred her gaze to Mrs. Hughes’ face. “A lot of smart kids have trouble relating to other kids, I know, but Amelia has a lot of friends. There are tons of kids in our neighborhood, and she’s always out playing in the street.”

“Your application says you live in the city.”

“That’s right. We live in South Boston. It’s not too far.”

“Oh, no. We have a lot of families from the city. In fact, we have a very organized system of carpools to help everyone get in and out.”

“Does anyone ever take the train?” Chelsea tugged at the knot in her silk scarf.

“You certainly could, but it would be a long ride in the morning—train, trolley and bus.”

“I know,” said Chelsea. “We did it today. I don’t drive, actually.”

“I can hardly blame you. Boston is a difficult place to drive in. And parking is even worse.”

“Well, it’s more that I have a clinical phobia about riding in cars. It’s called

Amaxophobia. Fear of riding in automobiles.”

“Oh my goodness. How difficult for you. Of course, the train would be fine. Or we would figure something out. Anyhow, why don’t you tell me a little bit about why you think Dighton would be a good fit for Amelia?”

During the pause that followed, Chelsea twisted a thick silver ring around her index finger. She slid it over her knuckle and back down again. The joint was raw and red, as though she repeated this motion often. She leaned toward Mrs. Hughes. “I hardly know what to do with her, if you want to know the truth,” she said. “I look around this place and it’s just beautiful. Amelia would love the art room. She draws all the time.”

Mrs. Hughes nodded slowly, her face a well-practiced mixture of interest and sympathy. “It’s a wonderful program.”

37 “I can’t believe the papers on the walls of the kindergarten room,” Chelsea continued. “There’s just so much here, woodworking, even. And I just know the kids would be better for her than the kids in our neighborhood.”

“We have a great group of families here.” In the section of her chart labeled

“Parents’ Knowledge of Dighton’s Resources and Programs” she wrote: Minimal. Mother demonstrates no specific understanding of school’s curriculum. Cannot articulate what, specifically, makes school good fit. Looking up, she adjusted her glasses and said, “Chelsea, do you have any other questions I could answer for you today?”

Chelsea took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I have one other question,” she said.

“Of course.”

“I understand there’s some financial aid available? I’m not sure—I don’t think I could handle the tuition.”

As she listened, Mrs. Hughes, with an almost imperceptible motion of her hand, made a check mark in a tiny box at the bottom of her chart. “We do have a limited amount of aid available,” she said, “and there’s a brochure included in the folder I’m going to give you on your way out.”

“Thanks.”

Mrs. Hughes stood up. She had read, years ago, in The Seven Habits of Highly

Successful People, that this was an effective way to indicate the end of a discussion. She was still surprised by how well it worked. Chelsea stood immediately and looked around for her coat.

“It’s in the rack by the entranceway, isn’t it?” Mrs. Hughes smiled gently. She handed Chelsea a folder with the school’s crest embossed on the front. “Take this home and look it over. The remaining forms are due by January 15th, so you’ve got about a week and a half.”

Chelsea clutched the folder with both hands as they walked out of the office.

“If you think of any questions,” Mrs. Hughes said, “or if there’s something you’d like me to know about Amelia that you’ve forgotten to mention, don’t hesitate to call or drop me a note.”

“Great,” Chelsea said.

“Let’s go find Amelia. Oh, here she is now.”

They walked through the sun-filled reception area where a series of brightly painted clay sculptures lined the table behind the sofa. A child ran toward them down the hall, followed by a heavyset woman with a long braid. The child wore striped tights and a denim jumper. Her brown hair was thick and curly. It had been pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, but frizzy pieces had escaped and stuck out on every side.

“Chelsea, this is Susan Talbot, our school psychologist.”

“Hello,” Chelsea said.

How did she do, Susan?” Mrs. Hughes asked.

“Just fine. She was a pleasure.” Susan smiled and looked down at the child, who grinned and shuffled her feet.

“Can we go to McDonald’s?” Amelia said.

A faint color sprang up over Chelsea’s cheekbones. “That’s not very healthy, kiddo.”

“You promised,” the child said, her dark eyes wide and her expression serious.

“What a nice treat that would be,” said Mrs. Hughes. She pulled Chelsea’s coat and gloves off the rack and handed them to her. Through the floor to ceiling windows on either side of the door, she could see a thin, fair-haired couple in matching navy blue pea coats

39 coming up the brick path. A small boy in a red hat and a brown leather jacket ran ahead of them and had almost reached the door. As she shook Chelsea’s hand, Mrs. Hughes struggled to remember their names—the Stantons, maybe? She thought she would look over their application once more before showing them in.

---

Catherine Hughes lived in a brick front Tudor-style house at the end of cul-de-sac in the rural town of Stow, forty minutes away from the Dighton School. As she pulled off the main road and onto a small lane bordered by split-rail fences and snowy fields on each side, she saw the shapes of lean horses huddled close together for warmth. They stood on fragile legs, stomping and snorting, next to a barn that looked gray in the dusk. She was conscious of the warmth of the car, the coils in the floor of the heavy sedan that heated the leather seats. For a moment, the image of a mother and child waiting for the trolley in the open-air station passed through her mind. She pushed the image aside and turned onto

Hemlock Lane, where, on a wooded lot at the very end of the road, warm light spilled from her windows and pooled on the snow-covered lawn.

“Have you heard of Amaxophobia?” Catherine asked her husband, Alan, over supper. They ate side by side at the long granite counter in the middle of the kitchen, which had a cathedral ceiling and two skylights. They had put the kitchen and family room addition on fifteen years ago. Catherine had worked with the architect for weeks, discussing the height and slope of the ceiling, its relationship to the exterior walls, and the best possible placement of the French doors that opened onto the deck.

“What’s that?” asked Alan, lifting his eyes from his plate. Unlike Catherine, who was tall, slender, and quick-motioned, Alan was a broad-shouldered, thick-necked man who ate with slow, deliberate intent and did not like to be distracted from his meal. “It’s the fear of riding in cars. I met a woman today who is unable to ride in a car.

She and her daughter have to take public transportation.”

“She can ride on a train but not in a car?” Alan poured a small amount of Cabernet into his glass.

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?” asked Catherine. “I think she can ride the bus, too.”

“Where did you encounter this person?”

“She’s applying her daughter. I interviewed her today.” Catherine salted her steak absentmindedly. “She was my first appointment, followed by the Stantons from Weston, whose son takes piano, karate, tennis, and meets with a literacy coach twice a week. He’s four and a half.”

“Sounds like it was quite a day.”

“Typical.” Catherine took a bite of her steak and wrinkled her long nose.

“You always had Sydney involved in a lot of activities,” said Alan.

“What?”

“When she was little, you took her to lessons, riding, etcetera.”

“That was it. Riding. She loved it. I didn’t push her.”

“And Girl Scouts.”

“Well, Girl Scouts hardly counts as shoving a child onto the fast track.”

“I suppose not,” said Alan.

Outside the French doors, the dusk had settled into true darkness. The bare branches of the oaks and maples creaked and shifted in the wind, and the stand of pine trees at the far edge of the lawn rustled. After they had finished eating, Alan put on his corduroy jacket and took Benny, the chocolate lab, for a walk around the yard. Catherine collected the plates and brought them over to the counter. She scraped the uneaten pieces

41 of food into the sink and loaded the dishwasher. She poured herself a second glass of wine. When Alan returned, with the cold air clinging to him, he gave the dog a biscuit and said, “I want to talk to you about something.”

She turned with the glass still at her lips.

“I think it’s time to sell the house.” He scratched Benny between the ears.

“Sell the house? You can’t be serious.”

“We don’t need to heat three empty bedrooms.”

“Where would we live?”

“What about something in the city? A condominium, something near restaurants, the theater. You’d love that.”

“I would not. It’s an apartment, with neighbors living all around you. Also, where would Sydney stay if she comes back to visit with the baby?”

“Catherine.” Alan watched her face carefully, his blue eyes squinting with concern.

“Eventually, she’s going to come to visit.” Catherine ran the water in the sink.

“I don’t think we can just put our lives on hold, waiting for that to happen.”

“Unlike you, I’m not willing to give the whole thing up for lost. I’m not going to just forget her.”

“I’m not suggesting that we forget her. I’m just trying to be practical. We could get a two-bedroom condominium, in case she has a change of heart.”

“Could we talk about this in March, after the acceptance letters go out and I’m not so busy?”

“All right,” Alan said, “in March.”

---

Dear Mrs. Hughes,

You said that I should write if I thought of anything else I wanted to say. I don’t usually do well in interviews, and even though this was an interview about Amelia, I kind of felt like I was in the hot seat! Well, now that I’m home, I thought of a few things I wish I said in your office. Amelia’s a really great kid. She’s the best. She puts up with so much. It’s almost like she’s a little grown-up. I really rely on her. My mother does too. My mother’s a bit of a shut-in, and I’m in the habit of leaving Amelia with her a lot. It gives my mom some company and it’s someone to watch Amelia when I’m out and about. My upstairs neighbors watch Amelia a lot too. Their names are Anne and

Bob MacDonald, if you need some sort of personal reference for our family. I don’t know what I’d do without them. I like to take yoga in the evenings, and my boyfriend Tom and I like to go out together when we can. Although I’m raising Amelia on my own, I’ve really taken that saying about how “it takes a village” to heart. I mean, you have to get out there and rely on other people to help.

Anyways, Amelia is very flexible and used to spending time with other people. She’s a very serious kid too, and surprises me with the things she says. She seems to remember the different apartments we’ve lived in and the people who lived with us even though she’s so young. I certainly don’t remember anything before the age of five. Of course, there wasn’t really much worth remembering!

Maybe that had something to do with it. That’s part of why I want so much more for Amelia. I really thought your school had such a positive vibe. Thanks a lot for meeting with me the other day.

Sincerely,

Chelsea Flaherty

Catherine folded the pink paper along the crease and slid it back into the matching envelope. She tossed it into the metal wastebasket next to her desk and then thought better of it. She reminded her staff frequently that all correspondence with a family, no matter how foolish, desperate, or self-important, should be placed in the file. Telephone

43 calls should be noted in the log. She retrieved the envelope, pulled open her F drawer and found the Flaherty file between Fessenden and Foley. As Catherine slipped the envelope into the front of the hanging folder, she noticed a loose-leaf sheet filled with Susan

Talbot’s tight, angular printing. Catherine pulled the file out of the drawer and spread it on top of the other folders. Susan had attached the sheet to her standard printout.

Addendum to Cognitive Profile for Amelia Flaherty

1.04.06

As indicated in the attached profile, Amelia shows a high level of cognitive ability. She completed the puzzles and matching exercises with ease. Her figure drawing is advanced; she produced a fully articulated figure with neck, ears and fingers. I do see this level of ability in, perhaps, five percent of the children I screen. However, I feel compelled to move beyond the standard metrics and note for the record that this child possesses an extraordinary level of intelligence. You might recall the poster on my wall depicting several verses of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. At one point during our session I noticed that she was looking over my shoulder. I asked her what she was looking at.

“Your poster,” she replied, “why does it say ‘Your children are not your children’?”

“Do you like my poster?” I asked.

“What does it mean?”

“It means that a child can grow up to be anyone she wants to be,” I said.

“I like that,” she said.

Of course, I was interested to see if she was truly reading the words or had simply recognized the poster from somewhere else. To my surprise, she was able to read fluently each of the books I pulled from the library shelves, even the Magic Treehouse series, targeted toward ages 9-12. In my opinion, this child’s intellectual ability and maturity (she has a certain gravitas) would be a true asset to our school. The child seems happy, healthy and well-adjusted. --ST

Catherine read the report through quickly, her eyes leaping from line to line.

When she reached the end, she went back to the beginning and read the report again slowly. She put the papers back in order, reassembled the folder, and went to the staff room to make herself a cup of tea.

---

Several weeks later, Catherine stopped at O’Neil’s Bakery on the way to work to pick up pastries for her staff, who were stretched thin reviewing applications. The bakery was located near the center of town, where two rows of shops faced one another across the main commercial thoroughfare. A foot of snow lay on the flat roofs of the stores and clung even to the shingles on the steeple of the Congregational church.

From the curved glass case she chose apple and raspberry turnovers, twisted cinnamon sticks and blueberry muffins. The teenage girl behind the counter packaged the items in a white box and fastened it with twine pulled from an overhead dispenser. A bell above the door tinkled as Catherine left the shop. Her galoshes splashed in ankle-deep puddles of watery slush as she stepped onto the sidewalk.

She had never before noticed the store next to O’Neil’s; however, the display in the front window suddenly caught her eye: a series of ivory colored dresses dotted with purple lilacs hanging in order from small to smallest. She went into the shop and wandered through the even racks, looking at tiny pairs of seersucker overalls, miniature red bowties, delicate pink dresses with ruffled sleeves, pairs of patent leather maryjanes and black and white saddle shoes. She examined polka-dot keepsake boxes, plush ducks and rabbits, and a basket filled with knit caps fashioned to look like the top of a strawberry.

45 “May I help you?”

Catherine looked up to see a red-haired, freckled young woman behind the counter. She was pregnant and wore a pale green shirt with a satin ribbon encircling her rib-cage just above her protruding belly.

“No, just browsing, thank you.”

“Shopping for someone special?” The young woman came around the side of the counter and adjusted a display of pearl bracelets beside the register.

Catherine’s heartbeat quickened. “Yes, actually,” she said, “for my daughter.”

“Your daughter?”

“Well, for my grandchild, I mean. My daughter’s child.”

“Isn’t that sweet. Boy or girl?”

Catherine hesitated, forcing her face to relax, reminding herself that that this woman did not know her. “A girl.”

“How old?”

“Sixteen months—no, eighteen. Eighteen months.”

“It does go quickly, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

“She must be adorable.”

“I haven’t seen much of her, actually. My daughter lives in Ireland.”

“So far away? Well, we’d be happy to send something.”

“I think I’ll just buy one of these hats for now.” Catherine put her bakery box on the counter and pulled one of the strawberry caps out of the basket. “Just this.”

“Do you think that will fit her? You said eighteen months.”

“I think so. Yes. I’m sure it will fit.”

--- Dear Mrs. Hughes,

I’ve thought of a few more things about Amelia. I want to be sure you have all the information you need when you’re making your decision. You must be looking at so many kids. She really has a lot of energy. She bombs around our apartment during the day, making circles around the kitchen. She has such a strong imagination. She pretends she’s walking a dog or flying a kite, dragging stuff around. My boyfriend, Benjamin, installed a little swing in her room—screwed it right into the ceiling. She loves it and can already pump on her own. It’s a good thing she has it. It’s getting harder for me to take her out to play in the park at the end of the block. I have both myrmecophobia, which is the fear of ants and traumatophobia (fear of injury), and they have been getting worse in recent weeks. Sometimes Anne and Bob, upstairs, take her, but they are going to

Florida for a month and I’m afraid she’ll be inside much of the time. Thank God, she has preschool three days a week. I don’t want her watching too much TV. I figure most of the kids at your school don’t watch a lot of TV. It’s supposed to be unhealthy. I don’t have a lot of other options, though.

So I do the best I can. Anyhow, the point of this letter is only to stress what an athletic child Amelia is. Let me know if you need any other information.

Sincerely,

Chelsea Flaherty

---

MISES HYOOS MY MOM IS RITIG A LETER AND IM RITIG 1 TOO. I LIK YUR SCOOL. I

LIK IT BETER THEN HEER. IM BRAV. UPSTARS BOB HAS A LAWD VOYS. I LIK YR

PLAYGRD WHEN I CUM THERE IL DO BLOKS AGAN. YR FREND AMELIA

---

Catherine took Susan Talbot to lunch one afternoon at the end of February. Susan had been surprised by the invitation; Catherine saw the confusion in her plump face when the woman looked up from her cluttered table. After Susan put on her galoshes and wrapped a

47 heavy shawl around her shoulders, the women walked together to Catherine’s car, talking about the drizzle, the recent staff meeting, and the middle-school boy who had written a series of hate-filled notes to himself and attempted to blame them on another child.

Susan suggested a sandwich shop not far from school. Catherine had never been to this particular deli. In fact, she had never paid any attention to it at all. It was pressed between a nail salon and a real estate office, and although the interior received very little natural light, the mural on the wall above their table depicted a pleasant country scene that, with some imagination, reminded Catherine of Umbria.

“This is such a nice idea, Catherine. I’m not sure why we’ve never done this before.” The women faced one another across a small, square table covered with a plaid oilcloth. An empty Perrier bottle held three listless gerbera daisies.

“I’ve often thought of it,” Catherine said, “but I’m usually so busy. Recently, though, I’ve been thinking that it’s important to look up from my desk once in a while.”

She decided on a tuna fish sandwich and put down her menu.

“Especially at this time of year,” Susan said, when all the applications are coming in. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Are the numbers up?”

“They’re way up, which surprised me, given the business with the head of school this fall. Once that made the papers, I thought we’d be slow.”

“But there’s no change?” Susan sipped her Diet Pepsi.

“Well, we’re up, as I said. This might be our biggest year since 1998 or 1999. I can’t recall when you started at Dighton. 2002?”

“That’s right. I was at Brearley, in New York, before that.”

“That’s a wonderful school.”

“The parents in New York are a different species altogether.”

“They aren’t always easy here, either.” “Oh, God, I’m sure they aren’t. Do you have any real horror stories?”

Catherine stirred her tea. “All the stories you might expect. Parents who offer to make big donations if we’ll accept their child; parents who insist their child reads

Shakespeare; parents who name-drop, you can imagine.” She paused. “Sometimes they write several follow-up letters.”

“What a nuisance. But doesn’t the school want wealthy families?”

“We want the ones who know better than to mention their income in the interview.”

“Do you object to a parent telling you that their child is bright?”

“Susan, the only person I listen to on the subject of a child’s intelligence is you. I look at your report and nothing else.”

Susan smiled, and her heavy face was suddenly younger and brighter. “I’m flattered.”

The waitress brought their sandwiches to the table. Catherine struggled to open the small bag of Lay’s potato chips that came with her lunch. “Speaking of your profiles,” she said.

“Yes?” The chip bag opened with a pop.

“I realize we don’t typically discuss this sort of thing until the full committee meeting, but as we’re talking—”

Susan raised one eyebrow.

“I was struck by your note about Amelia Flaherty.” Catherine chewed her sandwich slowly and looked down at her hands.

“God in heaven, that child was something else.”

“Really?” Catherine looked up.

49 “I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years of doing this. Almost eerie. Were her parents unbearable on the subject of their prodigy?”

“It’s just the mother and, oddly enough, no. Not really.”

Susan blew on the chowder in her spoon. “You’re kidding.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m a little—”

“What?”

“It’s probably nothing, but it crossed my mind that the mother was a little, I don’t know, off.”

“You mean, emotionally? That’s a shame, with such an extraordinary child.”

“Oh, who can say, in a brief visit? She was nervous. In any event, is your son happy at Yale? He’s a sophomore?”

“A junior, actually. He loves it. Wants to be a doctor. The years are flying by. But you know how that is. How’s Sydney?”

“Fine.”

“Do you hear from her often?”

“Oh, yes, at least once a week. She’s doing well, nothing new.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes.”

---

Dear Mrs. Hughes,

I’ve probably given you more information that you really wanted at this point. I just have to mention one other thing about Amelia that maybe you weren’t aware of when we visited the school.

She is a very, very ill child. She is covered with germs from head to toe. It’s a difficult situation, as you can imagine. I try to keep the house clean, and I try to keep her indoors, which I had been doing anyway on account of my various conditions, but it’s not easy. I really think your school would be good for her. I’m afraid Amelia’s condition is actually my fault. I haven’t really done the best job. That’s why I want a good education for her. I want her to have all the things I never had myself. My boyfriend, Jeremy, says that all the parents you meet want that for their children. He’s really trying to help us. He’s been great over the past few days. I hope he can provide Amelia with a stable male influence. Anyways, I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Chelsea Flaherty

---

Catherine didn’t see the package right away. She came up the steps from the garage and hung her coat in the hall closet, next to Alan’s golf bag and the snowboard Sydney had used for a season. The house smelled of garlic and the warm, sweet scent of wood burning in the fireplace. When she reached the kitchen, she saw Alan poking at something in a large frying pan. He wore white shorts and a navy blue tee-shirt, and he still had his sweatband across his forehead. He glanced up and smiled. “I got back from squash later than I expected, so I’m just starting the stir-fry.”

“It smells good. Did we get any mail?”

Alan stirred the meat with a spatula. After a long pause he said, “It’s beside the newspaper.”

She put down her keys on the Boston Globe and surveyed the stack of catalogs and envelopes. They were perched on a box wrapped in brown paper. She flipped through the pile quickly—Frontgate, LL Bean, Plow and Hearth, Herrington—and set it aside. Once the label on the small carton was visible, she recognized her own handwriting. Her careful letters, penned in black magic marker, had been crossed out line by line. In compact script

Sydney had written “Return to Sender.” Catherine ran her hands over the letters as though they were Braille.

51 “I almost threw it away,” Alan said, “so you wouldn’t have to see it.”

“It’s better that you didn’t.”

“At least you know the address was correct.”

She took a box of crackers from the cabinet. “Let’s have some of the port wine cheese before dinner.”

He turned off the gas under the stir-fry pan. “Catherine.” He touched her arm and she sank into his chest.

“I did what I thought was right,” she said. “I tried to look out for her. I shouldn’t have said anything against him but I wanted her to know what I thought. I just wanted her to go slowly before making such a big decision.” She breathed in the faint reek of perspiration on his tee-shirt.

“What did you send her?”

“A little hat for the baby.”

“She’ll come around.”

“God, what’s the use. Let’s just sell the house and move into the city.”

“She’ll come around.”

--- Dear Chelsea,

I don’t normally correspond with families personally before the Admissions Committee makes decisions, but I decided to make an exception in this case. I must say, I was alarmed by your most recent letter. I can tell that you are a very caring and devoted mother; however, from what you write it sounds as though you are really struggling with some difficult issues. I urge you to consider talking to a counselor or social worker to get some support and assistance. I really enjoyed meeting you and Amelia, and I’m sorry to think of how much you must both be suffering. I don’t want you to think that you’re the only mother who struggles. I have faced some difficult issues with my own daughter. I didn’t always agree with the choices she made and, perhaps, I was too strict, too opinionated. When she needed me most, I wasn’t there. As a result, she will no longer speak to me. She’s shut me out entirely. I’ve never even seen my granddaughter.

What I mean to say, I suppose, is that I hope you are able to look after Amelia and give her what she needs. That’s much more important that any school admission, or anything else, for that matter.

Finally, I should let you know that because of my level of concern about some of the things you mentioned in your letter, I feel obligated to notify the State Office for Children. In fact, I’m required by law to do so, as an educator. I really do want to be sure you are connected with resources that can help you. Be assured, this situation will not affect our consideration of Amelia’s candidacy for admission to Dighton. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.

Best Wishes,

Catherine Hughes

---

“Catherine, could you give us a summary of where we stand on kindergarten?” Peter

Fisher, Dean of Admissions, sat at the end of an oval table in the conference room.

Afternoon light shone through the high windows and hit the varnished surface at a slant.

Catherine flipped through a short stack of papers and removed a paper clip. “Of the twenty-four seats, fourteen are filled by siblings of students currently enrolled. We have four applicants with alumni parents; two of those are significant donors. That has to be taken into account.”

“So, six spots, realistically,” Peter said.

“That’s right.” Catherine nodded. “We’ve prepared the short list.”

53 Peter took the paper in his stubby fingers. “Jessica Winehouse, Karl Dempsey,

Preston Hunnewell, Clarence Jean-Baptiste, Amelia Flaherty, Samantha Jennings. Three and three. Is the elementary group unanimously in favor of these candidates?”

“I have a question.” Susan Talbot looked at Catherine. “Wasn’t there some concern about Amelia Flaherty’s mother?”

Catherine was startled. She hadn’t expected Susan to bring up their conversation.

“Is there?” Peter loosened his tie.

“No.” Catherine felt her forehead grow warm. “I can’t recall anything.”

“I also wonder,” Susan said, “what happened to the letters.” Her watery blue eyes blinked behind her thick glasses.

“Letters?” Peter asked.

“When I looked in the Flaherty file last week, there were several small pink envelopes inside. Yesterday, they were no longer there.”

“I wasn’t aware of any letters,” Catherine said.

Susan blinked rapidly. She pressed her lips together.

“Have any members of the committee had any contact with the Flaherty family that isn’t documented in the file?” Peter asked.

There was silence around the table. Peter cleared his throat. “Catherine?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Well,” Peter said, “putting that matter aside for a moment, we will have to turn the

Flaherty situation over to Financial Aid anyway. The forms indicate that the mother has very few resources. We’d be making a big commitment.” He ran a hand through his white hair.

“She’s worth it,” Catherine said. “Susan’s report indicates that the child is truly gifted.” “That’s certainly true,” Susan said, “but I only saw the child.” She frowned slightly and took a sip of coffee.

---

Catherine checked the address she had written on an index card and pulled the car over in front of a brown two-family. There was a hydrant next to the curb, but she turned off the engine anyway. The shades on the first floor apartment were pulled all the way down. As she stood on the front porch, Catherine could see the name Flaherty written on a piece of silver duct tape stuck to the rusty letter box. She rang the doorbell several times, listening after each ring for footsteps or voices, but she heard nothing. Finally, she rang the other doorbell. After a few seconds, heavy footfalls sounded on the stairs inside. Catherine heard the sound of a chain rattling in its catch. A man in worn dungarees opened the door. He was bald. He looked at her through narrow blue eyes and didn’t say anything.

“Hello,” Catherine said.

The man hitched up his pants.

“I’m looking for Chelsea and Amelia Flaherty. Do you know when they might be home?”

“Home?” he asked. “They’re gone. Moved out a month ago.”

“Oh, no. Did they leave a forwarding address?”

“Did they leave a forwarding address,” the man repeated softly. “No, they did not.”

“That’s such a shame,” Catherine said. She felt lightheaded. “I’m from the Dighton

School. We sent an acceptance letter for Amelia, but we haven’t heard a reply.”

The man’s expression softened. “Imagine that,” he said.

“She’s a very bright child.”

“That’s what my wife was always saying to me. My name’s Bob MacDonald.”

“Catherine Hughes.” They shook hands.

55 “Tough situation,” Bob said. “Great kid, but the mother was crazy. Looney Tunes.

She tells my wife a couple of weeks ago that someone’s going to report her to Social

Services, take her kid away.”

Catherine’s legs felt numb. “And you’ve no idea where they’ve gone?”

“Nope. Packed up a U-Haul and drove away.”

“And no way at all to reach them?”

“No way that I know. Maybe she’ll be in touch with you.”

“Believe me,” Catherine said, “nothing would make me happier.”

TWO POEMS (TRANSLATIONS)

Ani Gjika (Poetry 2010)

Memories Julia Gjika Translated from the Albanian by Ani Gjika

Memories pretend to sleep. I don't touch them, I don't stir them. If they wake up they remind me I'm a slave.

Let them lie dozing. How they quiver, how they flirt with consciousness, taunt and hurt one another, till in duel, without gloves, they turn on themselves.

57

The Red East Julia Gjika Translated from the Albanian by Ani Gjika

Apartments. Apartments of red brick or concrete. Same old style all through the East: one bedroom, one living room, one bathroom, one balcony; two bedrooms, one living room, one bathroom, one balcony; three bedrooms, one living room, one bathroom, one balcony. A family of eight or nine children, one or two elderly in-laws the mother, the father. Good God, life in communism— astir inside a chicken coop. Heartbroken the woman of the house washed and swept herself unwashed cooking in the bathroom sleeping in the kitchen the bedroom a storage she couldn't breathe in. Was this the promise, to eat with a golden spoon? The apartments had ears, wide mouths, the apartments had eyes. When you opened your mouth they could see deep

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into your intestines, your liver, your neighbors had taken inventory of all the junk in your stomach. Those apartments would sell you for two bucks.

59

WAR IN IRAN OR, IRAQ, IS IT?

Mimoza Hysa Translated from the Albanian by Ani Gjika

In our house, people beat each other up. How? Whichever way they like. At dinner, for example, when you're sitting peacefully because no one has started screaming yet, just as dad is watching world news paying no attention to what's going on in the sitting room, mom starts to wash the dishes. Unfortunately, the dishes start to rattle, the glasses especially, and the scratching, crackling and rattling continues until my father's ears get so irritated (I can't blame them) and his fist pounds the table: Enough with those dishes. I am listening. But mom is cold like a stone and doesn't care that the rest of the family is learning whatever we need to learn so she answers back: And I am washing the dishes. Here it comes. I see it in my father's eyes, filled with resentment: anger jumps from the orbits and shoots out like a knife straight into mom's back bent over the sink.

She doesn't stop…rack—crrrack washing those damned dishes. My sister keeps picking at something under the table. She and I freeze, eyes glued to mom's unconcerned back. How I wish, at that moment, to scratch that back with my nails and tell her to shut her mouth and stop moving those hands so that dad's eyes could calm down. I told you to stop doing those dishes because I'm listening to the news! Now his voice has a metallic threatening sound like the sharp blade that slices bread: grrrap. Oh, damn the news. She's gone too far now. I knew she would. But I don't understand why she has so much courage. Now dad has gotten off the couch. And the TV news screeches and floods the room without a care for us. In fact, I hear it all quite well: I hear about the

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Irani soldiers and the American ones; I hear them; I hear them very well; I also want to stand up at that moment and say: dad, you can hear the news, you watch and I will tell you what you can't hear, I'll tell you everything, I won't leave out the woman who was hung…or the boy flung out from the 10th floor, just don't get up…I'll tell you. But I don't even dare raise my eyes. I see my sister who has put her doll to sleep, naturally, because the news is on. The doll doesn't cry when the news is on. She doesn't sing either. Will you listen to me or do I have to throw this ashtray on your forehead? The voice is firing now, so loudly that it seems the soldiers from the TV have entered the house with their Kalashnikovs. Mom only manages to turn indifferently and adds: Oh, really?

Let's see how you try that. God, the woman has no brains. What should he try? War? The big war? Here? On us!? My sister has gotten out from under the table and is standing between them now. Her eyes gawking and from the tiny underwear, down her legs, what appears to be trickling…oh, this is just perfect…now she's going to get really mad…war…the war is on…where should I go? Mom, I peed…There, see what you did?

You terrified the poor girl like the devil that you are. Who are you calling a devil, you stupid whore? I'll show you the devil. And he gets up now. With the ashtray in his hand. The ashes fall on us. He's coming. And where should I go? I should get up…to stop him.

Me?! I'm afraid. The kids are here, or I would show you…luckily, they saw us. They saw us, thank god. But, sometimes, they don't see us. And that's when mom takes a slap across her face. In fact, she wants it. I don't like it that she argues back. And I know very well that that makes dad angry. But she doesn't hold back. She talks. It sounds like she's talking to no one, but she still talks. Whatever she feels like saying. Like sis.

She's just like mom that one. I tell her not to take my notebooks because she stains them. She just does anyway. And then she gets a beating. Obviously. How else do I

61

deal with it when she doesn't do what I say? Her nose keeps running and she doesn't stop crying. This is when I like her even less. She goes crying to mom. And then mom runs after me like an animal. And dad, dad's voice alone will kill you, like a knife. And the house freezes. But mom is the one who really knows how to beat you. I run around the table, but she's strong. She has a stout body and a large hand. I'm the unluckiest in the house. Because mom's hand is very heavy. And it hits you without seeing you at all. As though it's hitting the dust out of rugs. I'm ready to turn and hit her in the face.

That distorted face, those crooked lips when she hits: ugh, ugh, ugh on my back. But I don't dare. My dad would then hit me with his belt. Because you can't understand grown ups. When you don't expect it, they get together and turn on you. You're always to blame. That's why I take it and watch her with my wolf eyes. She gets even angrier.

Don't look at me with those eyes. I made you. We're slaving and dying for the two of you, goddammit. Get lost. That's what I want, to get lost. But where to? So I cover myself with a blanket in my bed until I can't breathe anymore. And I cry. I'm going to kill sis tomorrow when there's nobody home. I swear.

The next day I'm not angry anymore. And anyway, as far as the world knows, we're a very good family. Mom is a fine woman and dad is smart. When they have coffee together, they gossip about the neighbors who stab each other in the back (says mom).

They especially talk about Ms. Keti and Mr. Berti. They kiss on the stairs (adds dad) as if to show us that they love each other. I don't say anything, but in the evenings, purposely, I go to play with Besi, their son. We're the same age. In fact, I go there just for a moment, when Mr. Berti returns from work. I go out on the hallway to watch him come in and kiss Ms. Keti's hair. Besi jumps toward his father and hangs on his neck.

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I've never done that. I steal away into my sinless house and wish to some day marry a whore woman (like mom says) so I can kiss her hair, so she can kiss me. Thank god you can't read thoughts or mom would have killed me. Then dad would hit her and then sis would cry and my brain would burn and I would punch her in the face... and mom, and dad…an endless chain…

It's the news hour…and mom…again…why, god, again…is washing the dishes…I enter that damn war that doesn't end, in Iran, or Iraq and I shoot…bam…bam… bam…before the glasses begin to rattle, before the scratching of the plates and before dad can scream…I grab the Kalashnikov from the soldier in Iran or, Iraq, is it...and I empty a whole magazine on mom…on dad…on myself…and on the whole world.

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TO A PHILOSOPHER

Zachary Bos (Poetry 2009)

On my way to meet you for a celebratory drink on your birthday, when the train stops to pick up more passengers, handfuls of fiber-glass fine snow blow in through the open doors. The wind is coming toward us, perpendicular to the tracks, so when I look into the oncoming powder it seems as if the world is advancing at me: the tiny icy monads attracted by my attention, winter flies drawn to the train light, the plenum swerving along Lucretian lines toward the unknowable end their prime mover has in mind.

Every book to you is a lattice nailed lightly over the mouth of a bottomless well. You look always through the grid into the dark, promising depths, through the double grin of each pair of lunulae into the lacunae their smiles attempt to conceal. Is this how philosophers see? Points of illumination.

You feel the constant torque between the visible and the known, the true and written and spoken, every page full of blank space where asterisks glower like the lit animal eyes of constellations.

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A TEMPORARY FIX

Joseph Fazio (Fiction 2006)

This story first appeared in Kenyon Review Online in January 2011 (www.kenyonreview.org).

The service bell rang. Wesley looked up from his book and saw a silver hatchback gliding to a stop in the gas station island. Steam rose from the front of the car, and two short, shirtless men with skin the color of new motor oil got out and propped up the hood with a length of two-by-four. They spoke to one another in an unfamiliar language, their voices rising and falling. As Wesley approached, a pale woman emerged from the backseat wearing fresh red lipstick, though she had the sleepy look of someone who had just woken up. A tow-headed boy, perhaps four years old, appeared from behind her. The perimeter of the boy’s mouth was dark with grime, and he was sucking on what seemed to be a hearing aid; he had another clinging precariously to his too small ear. His eyes crossed as he looked up at Wesley.

“Is there a restroom?” the woman asked. Her voice was raspy.

Wesley pointed to the side of the station office. “Around that corner.” The boy darted towards it, and the woman followed.

The two men were still bickering. The more muscular one was about to unscrew the radiator cap, but Wesley quickly stepped in. “No, no, no—too hot!” He pulled his rag from his pocket and fanned it over the engine, and the man did the same with his T-shirt. He had a crucifix—two slashes crudely tattooed in faded blue ink—on his shoulder. His chubby friend reached into the car and retrieved a pizza box

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with which he began to fan, too, sending gusts that made the other’s dark hair wave.

The car was leaking coolant in a single, steady drip, Wesley noticed, just a pinhole somewhere. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

The woman and the boy were already inside the office. She was hovering at the counter, near the cash register. The boy sidled along the candy display, dragging a finger across the dusty wrappers, leaving a thin wet trail behind. Wesley announced himself with a cough, and the woman picked up his book, an old paperback copy of The Idiot by Dostoevsky.

She examined the cover. “Is this funny?”

He walked behind the counter and took the key from the cash register and put it in his pocket. “Depends on your mood, I guess. Do you need help with anything?”

“How much are these?” she said, holding up a bag of chocolate-chip cookies that the boy had gotten his hands on.

“One-twenty-nine.”

She put the cookies back.

The boy looked up at her and silently put his hand in his mouth. His hearing aid—the one he had been sucking on—was gone.

“It’s OK,” Wesley said, “he can have them. Everything’s stale anyway. Have some drinks, too, for you and your friends.” He wanted them all to leave, the woman, the boy, the men. “Have whatever you want.”

The woman gave the cookies to the boy. He stuffed one into his mouth and began knocking the side of his head against her thigh as he chewed. A fresh ring of chocolate and saliva glistened around his mouth. The woman managed to fit two candy bars and a bag of chips into her small denim purse. She asked Wesley his name, and

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he told her.

“I can pay you back, Wes,” she said, and pulled her earlobe; it was cleft, like a snake’s tongue. “Lock up for a few minutes and I can pay you back.”

“Let’s just call it even.”

“You got a girlfriend.”

Did he? Wesley rifled through the junk drawer below the cash register, scattering pens, pencils, matches, and rubber bands. He had gotten his girl—his first real girl—into trouble just as spring erupted, and her parents had needed to get involved because she was only seventeen, like him. He’d thought she was just waiting for things to blow over, but it was now almost August, and the few times he had been able to work up the courage to call her the phone simply rang and rang and rang.

“There,” Wesley said, and gathered up five small white packets. He explained to the woman that the pepper inside would find the radiator leak and form a seal. “It’s just a temporary fix to get you where you’re going.” He paused. “Where are you going?” He immediately regretted asking her.

“Not too far,” she said. “Just up north, I think.” After a moment she added, “To the beach.”

“Do you need help?” he said. He looked outside, at the men, then turned again to the woman. “Do you need help?”

“Not help. A favor.”

“I can’t give you money—”

“Not money.” She placed a hand on the boy’s head and stroked his hair with her thumb. “If you could—”

“I can’t do that. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

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“It won’t be long. We can be back in an hour.” She looked at him imploringly and touched his arm across the counter. “I don’t like him to be around.” She squeezed his wrist. “Please.”

Wesley pulled away from her. “One hour, then I call the cops, give them the license plate, everything.” He shut the drawer.

The radiator let out a dying sigh when he finally opened it. In went the pepper.

Then, after a few minutes, he added a mixture of coolant and water, filling the radiator and topping off the overflow reservoir. He went on hands and knees to make sure the dripping had ceased, and the boy, small enough to crouch under the car, mimicked him. Wesley stuck his tongue out, and the boy laughed. He decided he would call the cops as soon as they pulled away without the child.

As Wesley brushed himself off, the muscular man took out a twenty-dollar bill.

“Fill ‘im up,” he said.

Wesley added the money to the bankroll in his pocket and began filling the car with regular unleaded. He rested his free hand on the top of the pump and let the vibrations carry up through his teeth. He was distracted, thinking about the woman and the men and his girl, when he felt a tapping against his leg and looked down to find the boy showing him his tongue.

It was then that the car’s hood slammed violently, and Wesley turned and saw how the two-by-four was now going to be used.

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TWO UNGARETTI TRANSLATIONS

Dan Stone (Poetry 2009)

LEVANTE LEVANT

La linea The vaporous vaporosa muore line dies al lontano cerchio del cielo at the distant circle of the sky

Picchi di tacchi picchi di mani Heels clack hands clap e il clarino ghirigori striduli and the shrill arabesques of the clarinet e il mare è cenerino and the ashen sea trema dolce inquieto trembling sweet and restless come un piccione as a pigeon

A poppa emigranti siriani ballano Syrian emigrants dance at the stern

A prua un giovane è solo A young man is alone at the prow

Di sabato sera a quest’ora On Saturday evening at this hour Ebrei Jews laggiù down south portano via carry off i loro morti their dead nell’imbuto di chiocciola into the snail’s funnel tentennamenti waverings di vicoli of alleyways di lumi of lights

Confusa acqua Churning water come il chiasso di poppa che odo like the racket from the stern that I hear dentro l’ombra within the shadow del of sonno sleep

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IN MEMORIA IN MEMORIAM Locvizza il 30 settembre 1916 Locvizza, September 30, 1916

Si chiamava  His name was Moammed Sceab Mohammed Sheab

Discendente  Descendant di emiri di nomadi  of the emirs of nomads suicida  a suicide perché non aveva più  because he had lost Patria  his Fatherland

Amò la Francia  He loved France e mutò nome and changed his name

Fu Marcel  He was Marcel ma non era Francese  but he was not French e non sapeva più  and he no longer knew vivere  how to live nella tenda dei suoi  under the tent of his people dove si ascolta la cantilena  where one hears the incantations del Corano  of the Koran gustando un caffè while sipping coffee

E non sapeva  And he did not know how sciogliere  to release il canto  the song del suo abbandono of his abandonment

L’ho accompagnato  I accompanied his remains insieme alla padrona dell’albergo  with the mistress of the hotel dove abitavamo  where we lived a Parigi  in Paris dal numero 5 della rue des Carmes  from number 5 on rue des Carmes appassito vicolo in discesa a wilted alley sloping downhill

Riposa  He rests nel camposanto d’Ivry  in the graveyard of Ivry sobborgo che pare  a suburb that seems sempre  always in una giornata  on a day di una  that a wild animal decomposta fiera is decomposing

E forse io solo  And perhaps I alone so ancora  still know che visse that he lived

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ANNE SEXTON: “ONE WRITES BECAUSE ONE HAS TO”

Mary Baures (Poetry 1974)

The following is an excerpt from “Anne Sexton—Battling One’s Demons with Poetry or Using Poetry to Battle One’s Demons.”

“Art should serve as the axe for the frozen sea within us.” Kafka

I came to Boston in 1973 to study with Anne Sexton in the master’s program in creative writing at Boston University. I was fascinated by her honesty, her wise profound observations, and the way she mocked her fears with humor.

One day stands out vividly. Anne and I had just crossed Commonwealth

Avenue, and headed for the Dugout, a bar where we met after class. A young woman stepped in front of our path. She had mailed Anne some poems and wanted a reaction.

“Oh, yes,” Anne said, making her voice gentle. “There are some good lines in them, but I teach a graduate class. I don’t think you are ready for that.”

“Should I be a writer?” the woman asked.

“One does not choose to write,” Anne answered. “One writes because one has to. It is not an easy life. Look at me. I am staying in a mental hospital. I only come out to teach my class.”

Speechless, the woman stood there staring at the backs of cars, their little red lights saying, “Let me out of this lane.” Anne wished her good luck with her writing.

It was a sunny fall day and our eyes adjusted to the darkness of the bar. Two other members of the workshop waited for us at the dimly lit table. The nurse from the hospital had gone to the car, and, since she wasn’t watching, Anne borrowed a dollar for a beer since the hospital made her give up her money. Her hand fumbled over five packs of Benson and Hedges in her purse to an opened pack. She stuck the soft white stick in her mouth and leaned toward an orange flame.

“That was a marvelous poem you had today,” she raved, her blue-green eyes looking brightly across the table at the woman who had written it. After we finished talking about the poem, Anne said, “It’s a horrible place.” Everyone knew she referred to the hospital.

“At least you will get some gripping poems out of it,” another classmate said.

“No,” Anne replied her voice a bit loud. “I do not want to be known as the mad suicide poet, the live Sylvia Plath.”

Anne was an attractive Pulitzer Prize winning poet who seemed to squeeze every bit of enjoyment from life. It was sometimes hard to see how fragile she was.

She taught us about images and metaphors. They were more powerful when you found connections between unlike things—a fist and a fetus, eyelids and riding boots, a tongue and fish, flies and small black shoes, a girl curled like a snail. She showed us how to “imagemonger” by spewing out a torrent of metaphors in a process called “storming the image.” We would “unrepress” by creating an unconscious for an object, like a can of Coke. Our associations became rapid as we talked over each other

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to get our ideas out. We became raunchy and laughed wildly.

I couldn’t understand how such a fun-loving person like Anne could obsess about dying. And if she really wanted to die, why did she have so many failed attempts? Were they expressions of ambivalence? Did part of her want to die, while another part was terrified of dying?

Clearly another part wanted to live.

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A RIVER CANNOT BE A RIVER

Shilpi Suneja (Fiction 2009)

This story was first published in Meeting House (www.meetinghousemag.com) as part of their “Set in Harvard Square” contest.

Meera had called twice. Both times there was no answer. She circled around Out of Town newsstand, then crossed the street peeling off her gloves with her teeth, a mug of hot tea in one hand. She locked her bike on a parking meter and waited for her mother.

Then she saw her. She was getting off the bus, her hand clutching the railings, descending slowly, as if she were fragile, unable to keep her belly from peeking out of her cheap velvet shirt, the color of dead leaves. She was wearing a shabby blue jacket with a broken zipper, her hair untidily flaring out of a woolen face-cap, the sort that night watchmen called Bahadur wear in Indian hill stations.

“Did you call?” cried her mother’s thin voice.

Meera searched her mother’s face. She wanted to know how her interview had been at the school. Ten years in the country and she was still trying to be a teacher. “What do you think, maa?” she said instead, turning round towards Brattle Street.

“I keep the phone in my pocket. Still I don’t hear it,” replied her mother, walking double-fast to keep up. “Where should we go?”

The thought of Harvard Square had thrown a burst of optimism over the winter days that had gone by with a series of failed interviews for her mother. And yet, when the two women were face-to-face with the brightness and cheerfulness of the place, they could

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not think of a single shop to go into. So they pottered about on Brattle Street. Outside

Bertuccis, her mother hit her foot against a brick and stumbled. Meera stopped.

“We should try a smoother road.”

“No, this is fine,” she said, wiping her nose with an old Kleenex lined with lint.

Meera passed her mother the mug of tea.

“It isn’t hot anymore,” she said, taking a sip. A drop remained on her lower lip, and she wiped it with her hand.

“Where are your gloves?” asked Meera.

“I can hold the mug. That’s enough.”

Meera sighed.

It was too cold to be out, so they took a turn round the shops, which were more like museums where each item was admired from afar, as if it were in a glass case.

In Hidden Sweets Meera leaned over a decorative plate with the Harvard crest and revealed her news. “My director has offered me a teaching position,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on the gold wreath circling the crest.

“That’s—that’s good,” said her mother from behind, not taking her eyes off the bobbing-head tortoise dolls.

Meera bit her lip, regretting her own words. How could she say it so simply? Like it was the weather or news of her cousins in India? Callous!

They filed through the aisles systematically, one after another, like a couple of safety inspectors. Postcards. Check. Mugs. Check. Plastic wobbly-head dolls. Check.

Decorative plates. Check. Meera saw her mother holding a tacky greeting card, her fingers

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shaking a little. Throughout, she could fee the eyes of the pink-haired counter assistant on her.

Wanting to leave, Meera nudged her mother. Instead, she startled her and her schoolbag swung round, bringing a shot glass with red, cheerful letters crashing to the floor.

“Oh dear, I’m—oh no,” cried her mother.

The girl behind the counter leaned over and sighed.

Meera picked up a shard with the price sticker and walked up to her, followed by her mother. “I will pay,” she said, avoiding the disapproving stare from across the counter.

“Five dollars,” said the girl, with a look that seemed to be questioning their need for Harvard paraphernalia.

“Let me pay,” said her mother, grabbing Meera’s hand.

“No, maa. You don’t have a job yet.” Meera fished in her pockets for cash, but dollar-seventy was all she had. She stepped aside to let her mother pay.

They walked past the florist, past the fashionable clothing stores, past TeaLux with the shiny, bright colored kettles on the shelves. Made in Holland. Meera had found out one day with Aamir. She had lifted a yellow one in her hand, turned it upside-down, and

Aamir’s hand had been on the lid. Just like that.

“You should start your class with ice-breakers,” her mother said, looking away. “It is always better to start with ice-breakers.”

“Hmm,” said Meera. She had stopped outside the tea shop.

“We can go in if you like,” said her mother.

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“No. There is nothing I want,” she replied, resuming their walk.

Her mother sighed. “Why don’t you call him?” she said.

“He will call if he wants to.”

“As you wish.”

They took a turn on Eliot Street and found themselves in the open space in front of Peet’s café. Meera felt the chill on her fingers despite her gloves. “We can go into more shops if you are cold,” she said to her mother, blowing into her hands.

“No, let’s stay here awhile.”

“Then put your gloves on.”

Her mother obeyed.

They spread old newspapers on a bench, and sat for a while. The usual professorial crowds were missing that day—tall men and women in black coats, furry hats, plush gloves, with a glow on their faces that probably came from their affiliation to Harvard.

Meera didn’t blame them. If she or her mother had such affiliations, she too would glow crimson. Crimson, she said, crimson. It had a crispy sound, like the name of a stubborn little girl in pink ribbons. She thought she saw such a girl pass by and lifted an arm to point her out to her mother, but stopped.

At least the shops were still here, Meera thought, and their tinsel and lights, which would remain through the dreariest days of January. At least Aamir had not taken all this away. She observed her mother walk up to the street to offer ginger candy to a little child and to exchange words with his nanny.

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A car drove past splattering slush, and some of it landed on her mother’s leg.

Meera tore off a page from the newspaper and rose. The sock was soaked. Her thin ankle was wet too.

“Shall we head back? It is getting dark,” said Meera.

They walked up JFK. Outside CVS, a man in old clothes greeted them ceremoniously.

Meera handed him a dollar bill and shuffled past.

At the T-entrance her mother stopped. “I forgot to do something—I have to go to the subway.”

“You mean the T? It is call the T in Boston, maa—we don’t live in New York anymore—”

Her mother kept walking straight. Like she had a gun aimed on her back. That broke Meera’s heart.

Her mother stopped at the escalator, looked down, and it was several seconds before she stepped on. She clutched the handrails, her knuckles turning white. She headed for the ticket machines. She took off her gloves, stuffed them in her left pocket, and produced her reading glasses from the right.

Meera stepped forward. “Let me do this. What do you want?”

Her mother fished out her wallet from the school bag, Meera’s old school bag.

“It is only three days a week, for four hours.”

“What is?”

“My new job. At Dunkin Donuts. In Brookline.”

Meera’s hand froze. “You didn’t go to the school?”

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“They are not hiring anymore,” said her mother “Twenty-dollars,” she said, handing her a credit card.

Meera pulled out her own. As she completed the transaction, her mother held her palms open under the slot, as if she were standing in a temple, waiting to receive worship flowers kissed by the feet of God. But it was only the Charlie Card that would take her to a

Dunkin Donuts where she had seen a help wanted sign written in bad handwriting.

On their way back they passed the CVS. Meera saw her dollar bill lying inconspicuously by the door, far from the foot of their unofficial doorman, who had moved on to the eatery next door, retired from his duties. He shouted faint curses into the night that rose and burst like firecrackers. The noise in his head must be loud, Meera thought, and picked up her money.

“When do you start,” she said to her mother.

“Tomorrow. Seven a.m.” She sighed, then said, “I looked ten years for a teaching job in this country.”

Meera nodded silently. She walked up to the parking meter and unlocked her bike.

“You rode your bike,” said her mother. “In this weather? With a mug in one hand?” she said, squinting. Her eyes had a delirious, fearful look, like she was seeing things over which she had no control.

“I didn’t want to keep you waiting,” Meera said.

They started marching. They had marching orders. From Lieutenant Life. Twin rifles, one poised on the mother, the other on the daughter.

Outside Bombay Club, Meera stopped. “Dinner?” she said, clearing her throat.

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Her mother scrunched her shoulders.

“You have a job,” said Meera.

“You have the job,” replied her mother.

Meera swallowed. Another moment and she would kick. Kick fiercely at whatever she could find. She had the job her mother had wanted, had tried so desperately to get, but her degrees and experience from India did not translate. It was as simple as that. For

Meera, it had all come easily—as a graduate fellowship in a writing program that she had entered by telling her mother’s stories, raiding her mother’s heart to be heartfelt. She nodded slowly, and said, “Yes, I have the job.”

They crossed the street to the 7-eleven and bought hotdogs, a tea, and a pack of Twizzlers.

These they ate on their walk back home. On the bridge they stopped to observe a frozen

Charles.

“Tea is awful,” said her mother.

“It isn’t tea at all.”

Meera gulped the last drop of the bland, un-tea-like tea. She regarded the river.

The hibernating, unlovely Charles. Unable to be a river during these cold months.

It was as the poet Ghalib had said—there are times when it is not possible for a man to be human. And for a river to be a river, Meera thought. Or a teacher to be a teacher, or a writer, a writer. She steadied her bike, pulled a string of candy from the pack her mother held, and the two women started their march back home.

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