The Wilds by Brianna Bjarnson a Creative Project Submitted To

Home , Breathe Me, Cry Softly, Do You Ever Wonder, Loveship

The Wilds

Brianna Bjarnson

A creative project submitted to Sonoma State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

ENGLISH

(Creative Writing)

Committee Members

Sherril Jaffe, Chair and First Reader

Noelle Oxenhandler, Second Reader

April 01, 2016

By Brianna Bjarnson

Authorization for Reproduction of Master’s Thesis (or Project)

Permission to reproduce this thesis [project] in its entirety must be obtained from me.

Permission to reproduce parts of this thesis [project] must be obtained from me.

Date: April 01, 2016 Brianna Bjarnson______

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The Wilds

Creative project by Brianna Bjarnson

ABSTRACT

The Wilds is a multi-genre creative project containing a range of works including: varying forms of fiction (novel, short story, flash), creative nonfiction (personal essay, personal narrative), and poetry. Thematically, the pieces as a unified whole seek to explore the essence of human thought, interaction, and experience.

MA Program: English Sonoma State University Date: April 01, 2016

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Anne Goldman: You have been my mentor in teaching, in writing, and in thinking. You were the first teacher in all my years of schooling who really saw me and recognized my full potential as a writer, thinker, and human being. You were the first person in my life who ever told me I was smart, who gave me the permission to spread my wings, expand my mind, and see what happened. You introduced me to the beautiful world of poetry, and I have not been the same since. Thank you for encouraging me to pursue my master’s—something no one in my family had ever dared dream of before—and thank you for truly believing in me. I would not be here today nor accomplished all that I have, if not for you. You are the teacher who changed my life. I will always be grateful to you!

Sherril Jaffe: Thank for introducing me to the craft, the truth, and the beauty of fiction. Thank you for your sense of humor, for helping me to truly understand fiction and its role, for teaching me how to do it better, for inspiring me, for taking me under your wing, and for simply being you. I have so appreciated your caring, guidance, and support over the years. You go the extra mile for your students and I fear you ended up going several extra miles for me! Thank you so much for wholly embracing my proposal of a multi- genre thesis and for supporting my creative project. I took my very first creative writing workshop with you—and (so bittersweet for us both) my last. They were my absolute favorites. As you said: “these bonds last a lifetime!” Thank you for everything!

Noelle Oxenhandler: Thank you for your wisdom, guidance, encouragement, insights, and for providing me a safe space in which to explore a genre that at first terrified me. Thank you for allowing philosophy, history, spirituality, literature, and process to mingle comfortably while I found my voice in creative nonfiction. Thank you for your endless patience with my resistance to my own work and for helping me to understand how beautiful, wonderful, and important creative non-fiction is. And thank you especially for so casually suggesting that this very private person submit a personal essay for publication! I so cherished my chance to work closely with you. I am very grateful.

Gillian Conoley: Before working with you, I was scared to show anyone my poems; now I want to show them to the world. If graduate school consisted only of weekly, lunch- hour poetry-and-life-discussion meetings with you, I would never leave! Thank you so very much for all your thoughtful readings and your insightful (and often hilarious!) critiques and guidance. Thank you for supporting me and appreciating my work. You midwifed my poems into the world so they could finally breathe and live. You helped me to discover what my poetry is and where I want to go with it. I absolutely adored working with you and feel truly honored to have done so. Thank you!

Chingling Wo, Thank you for sharing your humble brilliance and your stories with me, for stimulating my mind and inspiring my heart. Thank you for believing in me, both as a student and a writer, and for acknowledging and promoting my creative efforts. You helped me to finally see myself as a graduate student and to finally know that I am exactly where I belong. The world is a better place for having you in it.

The Wilds is lovingly dedicated to the memories of Sachi Yoshimoto, Blake Bjarnson, Micheala Wardlow, and my grandfather, Ray Bjarnson, who passed his name down to me, who finally told me his stories during his ninety-fifth year, which would be his last.

The Wilds is also for my mother, the woman who started this whole mess: thank you for learning how to be open to me and to my stories; thank you for becoming my cheerleader, my first reader, and my eternal secret-keeper.

Table of Contents

Work Page

Untaming the Truth: A Critical Introduction to The Wilds ix In Progress (a poem) 1 This Is (a poem) 2 The Highway (a poem) 3 Yip-Howl (a poem) 4 I Read (a poem) 5 Taxes (a short, short story) 6 Not A Cryer (a poem) 11 Lost (a poem) 12 Webs (a poem) 13 Sofia’s Gift (a short story) 14 Fifty Fifty (a poem) 27 Still (a personal narrative) 28 Vulture (a poem) 35 Sunlit (a poem) 36 Paper Cut (a poem) 37 Gone (a personal essay) 38 The Fish (a poem) 46 The Girls (a short story) 47 Excerpt from The Last Daughter (a novel) 64 First (a poem) 79 Mother (a poem) 80 Speech (a poem) 81 Home (a poem) 82 Stolen (a short story) 83 Unconditional (a short story) 93 Ties (a short story) 106 Pulp and Pulse (a poem) 119

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Table of Contents

Work Page

Heat (a poem) 120 Real (a poem) 121 Next (a short story) 122 Silence (a flash story) 137 I Am That (a poem) 138 Literal (a poem) 139 One Angry Bitch (a poem) 140 A (a poem) 141 Peaches (a poem) 142 You Say (a poem) 143 Hole (a poem) 144 Patience Thins (a poem) 145 Seen (a short story) 146 The Imaginative Mind (a poem) 165 I Disagree (a poem) 166 Glovebox Notebooks (a poem) 167 Indoctrinated (a poem) 168 Night Walk (a poem) 169 No Books (a poem) 170 Animal (a personal essay) 171 Waterwash (a poem) 181 Sumac (a poem) 182 Alert (a poem) 183 The Wilds (a short story) 184 Tamed (a poem) 195 Absence (a poem) 196 Rid (a poem) 197

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Untaming the Truth: A Critical Introduction to The Wilds

I like to do things my own way. For this creative thesis, that meant accepting my identity as a multi-genre writer. I have always preferred the lesser traveled path, and my way—regardless of genre—is more often than not, dark, messy, and precarious. Hard to look at, even. The truth is rarely sweet or pretty, but I believe it deserves its moment in the spotlight. And pursuit of the truth is the very center, if not the driving goal of the works presented here. Whether fiction, personal essay, or poetry, each piece that follows offers its own exploration of what it truly means to be human.

I was a child prone to daydreaming. In fact, lost in thought was my usual state.

My constant “zoning out” was something my siblings had come to accept as part of my nature. “She’s doing it again,” they would tease and complain, waving a hand in front of my face, unable to break my vacant gaze, my eyes faraway and fixed on some other world only I could see.

In school, my inability to keep my mind in the classroom was problematic. I spent most of my time staring out the window, especially on blue-sky days. Once, during a particularly vivid daydream of ponies bouncing from cloud to cloud so invitingly that even the classroom window between us disappeared, I suddenly felt a sharp pinch on the back of my ankle. The sensation of teeth in tendon jolted me back into my body. I looked up to see my second-grade teacher rise from beneath the desk as she growled at me to get back to work. I was an unusually small and quiet child and, at only six, I was young for my grade. Terrified by this large, muumuu-wearing woman and humiliated by my entire

ix class pointing and laughing at my expense, I looked down at my desk, at the blank sheet of lined paper before me, at the sharpened number two pencil beside it, both sitting untouched. I picked up the pencil and, though I had no idea what I was supposed to write,

I pressed its sharp tip into the paper and pushed it across the page.

As a child, I was never read a bedtime story. In fact, my parents did not read to me at all. Still, we had a towering bookshelf (handmade by my father), and on it I found things to read: an oversized dictionary and dozens of religious texts lined the top three shelves; on the very bottom, sat a small collection of children’s books, which my siblings and I would look at from time to time.

One afternoon, alone in the house with the bookshelf, I found a small book I had never noticed before. It was hardbacked and probably fifty years old. I believe it was called True Tales and, as I flipped through its yellowing pages, a strange, simple, black and white sketch stopped my fingers and eyes. I could hardly identify what the picture was at first: a small, tail-finned creature with a hideous face and witch-like hair. The crudely drawn face, hardly human and almost imperceptibly feminine, held me in its eerie gaze.

I began to read the true tale that accompanied the sketch. It spoke about a group of sailors who had encountered a mermaid out in the cold depths of the sea. She—it?— was not the beautiful, seductive woman with a shiny fin I had always imagined. That haunting image—a two and a half foot long, grotesque, unintelligible monster—was what a mermaid really looked like. The tale was brief, but it never left me. For weeks, I would walk by that ceiling-high bookshelf and try to forget what I had seen and read. But the

x little book was always there, always edging its spine out somehow, always refusing to let me forget.

Once per month, I came home from school carrying armfuls of paperbacks I’d bought off the monthly Scholastic catalogue with money I’d earned pulling weeds for neighbors. The books I chose were often stories of animals—pets, really—abandoned to the elements, desperately trying to find their own way back to safety, to love. I also became obsessed with the original Babysitters Club series. That tight-knit group of girls with ordinary concerns and ordinary families captivated me. Babysitting was not the heart of the stories, it was simply the thread that tied both the club and the book series together. What really mattered was the group’s connection. They had each other and, through escaping into the books, I had those girls, too.

Still, babysitting was a big part of my life. I was always looking after my younger siblings and, outside of my own family—even at only eleven—I was a babysitter in high demand. I remember when the parents of the children in my care would go through my list of duties before they left us alone for the night: dinner, pajamas, teeth-brushed, and one to three bedtime stories. It seemed strange to me at first, the bedtime stories. I thought maybe my reading to the children was only for the special occasion of their parents being out for night. Slowly, I came to understand how this was a nightly ritual for many children; I began to see how the children expected, even craved it. I could feel storytelling’s importance in the children’s captivated expressions, in the way our bodies warmed as we sat together, reading. I recalled my third-grade afternoon story time on the big round rug and how it was the first thing in school I had ever looked forward to. So I

xi began to read to my younger siblings, most especially to my youngest sister, with whom I shared a bedroom. Every night, I chose a new children’s book from the bottom of the shelf my father had built, and I sat with her, and I read.

I am convinced that I owe my love for language to a teacher who hated children perhaps even more than she hated teaching. Ms. W was a woman who never smiled.

Every single morning of third grade, I walked into a classroom so cold, my fingers could hardly grip my pencil. But something magical happened each afternoon. After lunch recess, my classmates and I would file into the classroom, but we did not sit at our desks.

In the afternoons, we all gathered around Ms. W, who sat in her rocking chair on a round rug large enough to fit every single one of us.

During afternoon story time, we could sit wherever and however we liked on Ms.

W’s rug. Some children preferred to lie down on their backs or bellies; others sat side-by- side, holding hands. Most days, my friends and I would braid each other’s hair as we listened to the stories. During Ms. W’s story time, we could finally relax.

I listened each day, deeply captivated, as Ms. W read. She still never smiled, but there was something in her voice as she read, some kind of determined intonation that let me know the stories were important, that reading was important. I was struck by those books in a way I had never been before. My body hurt and bled and struggled along with each character; my heart rose at each adventure and triumph. I wept silently when Old

Dan and Little Ann died in Where the Red Fern Grows. I shivered along with Laura’s family as they risked a winter cross through the rough, icy river in Little House on the

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Prairie. Every day of that entire school year, Ms. W read book after book, and I could not get enough.

Soon, I wanted to invent my own adventures, to become part of the world of story making. The urge to create with pen and paper overwhelmed me. And so I began my first experiments in writing: long chapter books, carefully penciled into thin, composition notebooks. My stories were mostly tales about a girl I wished I were: a girl with fewer siblings and greater possibilities; a girl with simple concerns and a voice that was heard.

I never did anything with the books I wrote, but neither did I throw them away. In fact, after all these years, moves, and disasters—homelessness, divorce, death—I managed to hold onto some of those stories. I even kept a handful of the angst-filled poems I wrote as a teen. I still have the journals that chronicle my life from eight years old up to right now. Somehow, at a young age, I understood that writing was important, that writing was a branch extended, that writing was always a risk, and that writing— perhaps most importantly—stayed. And so I wrote.

When people ask me what I write about, I’m never quite sure what to say. I wonder how they’d respond if I turned to them and simply said, “Mostly death, rape, violence, and manipulation.” I fear how they’d look at me after that. I fear how they’d not want to read my work anymore. But then, aren’t these the topics of so many films and novels? Isn’t that hyperbolic representation of the ordinary what allows readers to feel?

To examine? While such painful issues may be floating at the surface of many of my pieces, when readers dig a bit deeper they will find what the stories, the poems, the

xiii essays are truly about. At their heart, they are about power, life, and courage. They are open questions and conversations rather than closed conclusions.

Human nature at its basest—the Id, the instinct, the truest motivation—is what interests me. I have great compassion for the human being and I also hold a deep a disdain for it. Like Jonathan Swift, I am as drawn to as I am repulsed by my fellow human. I did not read Gulliver’s Travels until I was in graduate school. When I did, I felt as though I had been waiting my whole life to hear Swift’s words. The human is a strange animal. It destroys, both itself and others. But the human is also capable of great love and beauty. And so it is my drive to simultaneously explore this destruction and discover this beauty. Even knowing that I—that no one, really—will get a definitive answer, I continue to push forward, toward sparks and shadows of understanding. And that—that precarious, viscous excavation—is what I write about.

It was not until my young adulthood that I started to become interested in exploring issues of power, truth, and courage. I think it was one book in particular that shifted something in my awareness, in my curiosity, perhaps in my soul. Charlotte

Bronte’s eerie tale, Jane Eyre, captivated me from the moment I picked it up. Witnessing the boldness of such a young woman writer of her time inspired me. I admired the way she did not shy away from the uncomfortable, from secretiveness, from the forbidden, from ruin. Jane Eyre haunted me and seeped into my bones eternally. So, it seems only fair to suggest that there may be a bit of Charlotte Bronte making herself known in my dark stories; and, if there is, I welcome it.

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More early favorites that occupy both my bookshelves and mind are such authors as Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Mary Shelley. To my mind, these writers were groundbreaking feminists, well ahead of their time: Mary Shelley, the way she upended the concept of motherhood; Thomas Hardy and his unapologetic, iron-souled female characters that seem to belong to this century instead of his; and, yes, even—perhaps especially—Jane Austen. Take Emma, for instance: a young woman who can only find her intellectual and emotional equal in an older man of great wits and genuine spirit. I think about what Austen was communicating by creating Emma. I can assure you, it was not the fickle, spoiled, superficial brat that so many read into her character. What I see is a highly intelligent, unabashedly assertive young woman who is seriously lacking in the appropriate mental and discursive stimulation her constitution requires. What I see is a young woman who did not compromise, who brought the man and the marriage into her own home on her own terms. Some may say I am a dreamer or go too far (and they might be right), but this is my Jane Austen and I claim her without reservation.

As a young woman, I discovered and cherished: Isabel Allende, for her rich, historical fiction and the way her stories open themselves to the supernatural; Amy Tan, for her focus on the mother-daughter connection and the way she so gracefully weaves separate stories into a unified whole; and Jean Auel, for brilliance in imagination and storytelling more than craft or style. More recently, I’ve fallen in love with: Walt

Whitman, for his poetics that embody both nature and man as a single force; Henry David

Thoreau and his passion for solitude and the land; Frederick Douglass, for his beautiful writing, incredible strength of will, and his dedication to human rights; Emily Dickinson, for the depths of her poetry’s simplicity and the beauty in her concision. I have been

xv delighted to discover Alice Munro and her strangely beautiful stories that turn the most ordinary of people into fascinating individuals worthy of compassion.

My taste for contemporary authors is eclectic, too, and not always sophisticated. I count Stephen King (who is, in my opinion, seriously underrated in the scholarly-literary world) among my favorite writers. Even after receiving literary awards and publishing a memoir on the craft of writing that is as fascinating and engaging as it is educational, many literary scholars turn their noses up at the mere mention of him. And here, I find myself defending yet another writer. But let us not get off track. I will say simply that

Stephen King has made a place for himself and, though he is a perhaps scandalously prolific writer, he is not one of the many throwaways that line the best-seller shelves in the bookstores today. He is one who will stay.

My references to these famous (or, perhaps infamous) writers—some who have been cold in their graves for over one-hundred years by now—are oblique and in many ways irrelevant. When contemplating the forming of my own craft, it makes more sense to me that I look to those writers who directly—and overtly—influence my work, line- by-line. These writers, professors for whom I have had the opportunity to write and to whose tastes and eccentricities I have willingly subjected myself are: Sherril Jaffe, Noelle

Oxenhandler, Gillian Conoley, and Anne Goldman. I have actively asked these vibrant, insightfully genius women writers to help me in shaping and transforming my own writing. And they have graciously done so. Most importantly, each of them was able to mold my writing without my having to compromise my own voice and vision, without straying from my purpose, and without letting go of what my work wants to be. From

xvi each of these mentors, I have gained invaluable lessons in writing and in life. Here, I will attempt to articulate—albeit in an over-simplified and crude manner—these writers’ contributions to my craft.

I have found that every writing mentor I have worked with has both an area of interest (i.e. what they look for in works they read—that special something that makes them as a reader want more) and an area of expertise (things they aim to do in their own writing, and which they expect all good writing to do). For Gillian, the poet, her interest lies in the intriguing and surprising. Sherril’s interest is always in what is true and universal in fiction. The meaningful and insightful are what capture Noelle’s interest in memoir. For Anne, the essayist, it’s what is beautiful and intellectually sophisticated that interests her. Of course, these are only my personal observations based on my interactions and work with each mentor. But these all became areas of focus for me, areas that I constantly looked to improve in my writing.

In my mentors’ critiques of my work, I benefited from their areas of expertise in writing. Gillian taught me clarity in concision and interpretive flexibility; Sherril insisted on a driving idea and thorough character development; Noelle sought (psycho)/logical connections and philosophical depth; Anne was always after elegance of style and expansiveness of ideas. From these areas of interest and expertise in each mentor, what I walked away with was this: if I can write something that makes all four of these women happy, I have done my job! That, to me, is success and so that is always my goal when I write.

I have also read the works of each of these women writers in order to see their lessons in action. And so I have seen the evidence and the payoff of their particular

xvii writing styles. Reading the published work of the writers who critique me has helped me to understand their insistence on doing things their way. I have come to admire each of them and to appreciate the opportunity to perfect my craft under their diligent, patient, and compassionate tutelage.

Many of my peers were surprised (and some even openly unsupportive) when they learned that, after focusing on fiction for so long, I’d be working on creative nonfiction with Noelle Oxenhandler. They wanted to know why I would do such a thing and a few were less than subtle about their lack of faith in my ability to write in a genre with which I had no experience. In the face of their doubts and judgments, I was reminded of how quietly, how reluctantly, and how rarely I admitted in classes that I have been writing poetry for years. This insistence that each writer can only identify with one genre weighed heavily on me until I consciously decided to cast it off, regardless of what anyone thought or said.

Noelle was, of course, delighted to see me wanting to explore creative nonfiction.

When I told her exactly why I was doing so, she understood. I simply told her: “I don’t see how I can call myself a writer or hold a master’s degree in creative writing without even studying outside of fiction!” To me, it seemed like the only logical, if not responsible, thing to do. Noelle told me that it’s important to go outside of my home genre because it provides more opportunities to get exposure on my work. She said that, as writers, we cannot rely on just the one genre. And she was right. Though I was at first exasperated at her suggestion to submit one of my personal essays for publication, I took her advice. Within a week, “Gone” was picked up by Superstition Review, a literary

xviii magazine in which I had always hoped to be published. Having only been published once before with my short story “Sophia’s Gift” in Whisperings, a little known literary magazine, my personal essay publication was a big accomplishment and helped to move me closer to my goal of success as a writer.

My writing mentors, too, actively practice working outside of their home genres.

Sherril Jaffe steps out of the novel and even beyond the short story with her books of memoir and spiritual autobiography. Anne Goldman moves beyond the personal essay and embraces both the short story and the novel. Gillian Conoley, while highly focused on poetry, has dabbled with the essay and has even done editorial writing. And when I look to the canonized writers whom I have read and been inspired by, it is difficult to find a single one of them who has not stepped outside of their home genre.

I believe it is the duty of each writer to, at the very least, explore outside their home genre. To lock oneself into a single genre would, I believe, place limits on both creativity and opportunity. While there is certainly a proclivity in each writer for a focus genre, I believe that writing strength and ability should shine throughout them all. And that, to me, is what speaks to competence and accomplishment in writing. By the time I signed up to work on my poems with Gillian Conoley, everyone, whether student or teacher, seemed much less hesitant. I still get questioned once in a while, but it is my wary critic, not me, who holds onto the notion of genre constriction, and so I have lost nothing.

In order to have the total freedom to create with abandon, I write fiction. I love (and rely on) the complete removal from the personal that it allows. I don’t typically write memoir-

xix style fiction; I rarely invent characters based on myself or real people I know. So there is a relief in knowing that no one and nothing in my stories is real. I can make a character be as awful or pathetic as I want and no one gets hurt. The feelings behind all the fictions

I write are very real, but you can hide behind fiction. And I am nothing if not a hider.

There is a truth in fiction that is pure and rare. When a story is not real, it is not owned by any one person in particular, and so it invites anyone to claim it as their own.

In fiction, the reader can fully embrace the vicarious emotional experience, they can wholly embody it—and that is certainly what I hope my readers do when encountering my stories.

When I identify myself as a multi-genre writer, I mean that I have equal footing and interest in each genre. For now at least, I am actively and simultaneously writing in all three genres and not claiming any one as my own and only. Please do not be misled by the minimal presentation of creative nonfiction pieces here, however. If you find an abundance of fiction—and even of poetry (though I have included only a fraction of my actual collection here)—it is only because I resist nonfiction the most and feel the least comfortable sharing it.

I like to challenge myself, and getting personal has always been a challenge for me. I am a profoundly private person. Sharing anything about myself, my life, and my inner thoughts is a scary venture. When I started working with Noelle, I shared my reservations with her and she let me know that creative nonfiction is not actually meant to be a “tell all” genre. Still, oftentimes when I sit down to write a nonfiction piece, I am overcome by a type of writing paralysis.

Another concern I had when I first approached creative nonfiction was the way the truth so often seems to get convoluted within the genre. Over the years, I had noticed the way memoir invented stories and changed details—facts even. This tendency to manipulate the truth struck me as lying. It was an ethical dilemma for me because I believe that a person is only as good as her word. Not only was I not interested in fabrication, one of my greatest aims in writing is to get at the truth—the whole truth. I did not want to shift facts even slightly.

With practice and several philosophical discussions with Noelle, however, I finally understood that the same features that make fiction so readable are necessary in personal narrative and essay. I learned that I could be explicit about hazy memories. For example, if I remembered four bunnies being butchered, but could not confirm that number with anyone, it was perfectly acceptable to simply say there were four bunnies.

More importantly, I realized it was not harming anyone or changing the feeling of the memory or the essence of the facts to do so. I also learned that condensing episodes, characters, and unnecessary details, is essential. Eventually, I began to see how these kinds of prioritizations and concisions are in fact actively working to get ever closer to the essential truths. Much like fiction, the important thing is to engage the reader and help them understand the world and perspective you as the writer are presenting. And so I learned to accept slight, intentional manipulations in my essays.

Still, the hesitation that had always loomed largest for me within the creative nonfiction genre was how to respect and protect the privacy others. Put more simply: I wondered how I could write about real people without upsetting them or causing them to feel used or violated or betrayed in some way.

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When I found out my personal essay “Gone” would be published, I was more than just a little conflicted. While the essay was not at heart about my friend Laura, I had used her very real, very painful experiences as a way into my topic of death and coping with loss. This was a close friend and I didn’t want to risk upsetting her. I was told Laura would probably never read it anyway, which was true. But as “Gone” sat out there on the internet for all the world to see (and was even promoted via email and social media), this betrayal nagged at me. Yes, I had changed her name and slight details so it would be hard for anyone to know it was her. The question for me was: is it wrong? It was a moral predicament and it ate at me more and more each day.

Finally, on one of our once per month “Champagne and Chocolate Night” get- togethers about which I had written in my piece, Laura told me that her aunt had just died. Then, she told me how, in response to this loss, she had finally buried her dear cat

(the very one occupying her freezer, about whom I had written). I could see how her aunt’s death and her cat’s long-awaited burial had affected her deeply and so I could hold my secret no longer. “I have a confession to make,” I said, knowing without a doubt that the right time had arrived to tell Laura, but also not knowing if my deception might rupture our friendship somehow.

Laura read my piece right then and there, right in front of me. And she wept. My friend Laura wept. This tough woman who I’ve never seen get emotional. “It so good,” she said, looking off into the rafters of her round barn. “I mean, it’s horrible and good.” I knew exactly what she meant.

To my relief, Laura wasn’t angry. She assured me that she felt in no way violated or exploited. In fact, she said the same thing had happened before. Her cousin (the

xxii daughter of the aunt who had just died) had offered her a similar confession years ago.

The cousin, too, had written about Laura and her piece had been published in Sun

Magazine. I suppose there is just something about Laura that asks, if not deserves to be told. And yet here I find myself writing about her again, wondering if it is wrong, debating about whether or not I should tell her. And I have found that question of obligation and ownership is the greatest challenge of the personal essay. There is no getting around it: creative non-fiction is personal, plain and simple. Perhaps the ethical line between exploitation and revelation lies simply in authorial intention, in the respect with which a writer presents the person as a character, and the compassion with which a writer tells their stories. Now I feel that, when it comes to the question of writing about real people and their real lives, truth and openness are always best.

Out of the three genres, I have been pleasantly surprised to find the most freedom within poetry. To me, it is the most malleable of the genres. I have come to understand that poetry can be whatever I’d like it to be. Too, I believe poems are the genre most subject to extreme makeovers in revision. Without losing its essence, a poem is able to go through a literary kind of genetic modification that leaves it unrecognizable to all but its own creator. In both fiction and non-fiction, I have seen major revisions, in my work and the work of others. Holistically, prose does not change the way poems can and do; post- revision prose is still recognizable to others. In poetry, not a single word could remain the same, and yet it would still be the same poem. There is beauty and freedom in being able to change a work so profoundly without the writer having to feel as though they have lost something. And this is something I cherish in poetry.

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Another genre characteristic that, to my thinking, sets poetry apart, is its ability— or perhaps it is more of a propensity—to cross-contaminate. I would argue, quite boldly

(albeit based only on my personal experience and observations of many poets) that the reading of poetry profoundly influences the writing of poetry more than any other genre.

So, although I have been writing poetry since I was a teenager, my poems are what have changed the most over the years—in form, style, and content. Every new poet I read inspires me to write a new kind of poem. Every poem I write allows me to try a new way of thinking. If I had to define my relationship to these three genres, I would have to put it like this: I feel compelled by fiction; I feel obligated to essay; and I feel enamored with poetry. These genres are like my children: they are each so different and they each offer something wonderful and challenging and unique; at the end of the day, I love them all equally.

I don’t consider any piece of my writing to be totally done. Once, as I walked down an echoey university hall to give a reading of my short story “Stolen,” to an upper division literature class, with each step I took, I seemed to find a word I needed to change, a phrase I felt compelled to rearrange. As I walked, looking over the piece, making marks, notes, and circles with my blue pen, I proceeded to revise a story that was already quite done.

When a piece of mine is published—as my short story “Sophia’s Gift” and my personal essay “Gone” were—I can let them go. Still, I’ll admit that I avoid reading them again because I will undoubtedly find things that need changing and be therefore left unsatisfied.

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My writing process is slow. First I think. A lot. Then I start getting flickers of ideas: sometimes an image, a character, a situation; sometimes it’s simply a phrase or a single word. There comes a point when I bring all my notes together and move to the computer. My fingers move quickly over the keyboard, but I agonize over every single word, even when working on a novel. My shortest stories you’ll find here have taken me countless hours, days, weeks, even months to complete. With every piece I write, whether it be poetry, story, or essay, I rip out my heart, I hold a scalpel to my brain, I sweat, I bleed. For me, the simple act of writing takes a lot.

Sometimes—oftentimes, in fact—there is no payoff for writing. What writers are up against is more work than an outsider could realize followed by seemingly endless rejection. When acknowledgement comes, however, all the struggle and frustration is suddenly worth it. Even without any kind of outside success, sometimes I am able to feel the elation of writing from completing a work or I can experience an all-encompassing satisfaction at having a piece turn out just the way I intended. But mostly, I write simply because I feel compelled to do so; writing is a force wanting release: my thoughts and emotions and questions demand an outlet, and so I continue, despite any agony or disappointment.

Some of the works here have been revised to the point of feeling more or less finished; some are still trying to figure out what exactly they want to be. But all of these pieces are at least a sixth draft. Writing is a process. And as the person evolves, so must the writing. Nothing is ever done.

xxv

My hope is that the multi-genre presentation here offers a showcase not only of my works, but also of my range as a writer. I present them to you the way an artist might display her work in a gallery. Perhaps she has a tightly connected series here, and a purely experimental piece over there. Perhaps she has some sculpture and some ink- stippled still-lives side-by-side. Not every piece here will suit every reader, but I offer up my very best, nonetheless. In my studies at Sonoma State, I have had the rare privilege to work with a novelist, an essayist, a memoirist, and a poet. I have sought to discover each of these forms of expression and attempt, if not master them.

Ultimately, my desire to work in all genres is not just about showcasing skill or range or even marketability. This multi-genre exploration is about seeking the truth through every possible pathway. It is about finding my own limits and defiantly pushing past them. It is about feeling the borders of my own comfort zones and deliberately stepping outside of them—and beyond. In my mind, this range is what defines a writer as brave and bold. I believe in reaching deep into the human psyche. I believe in being daring enough to say and show what everyone else might be afraid to. This is all to say: I believe in getting real, all the way down to the slippery, spongy guts and the murky, locked-away churnings of thought. It is my hope that in each of the works that follow, you will discover, if not appreciate, such bravery and boldness.

As far as organization goes, I have arranged my works intuitively. I have done this not only because it felt right, but also simply because it is mine and so I can. More than that, after skill, craft, hard work, inspiration, and painful deliberation, writing ultimately comes down to intuition. You feel it in your gut. It is a feeling I have within me; it is a sense I get from you; it is a deep, internal knowing about the human and how it

xxvi operates and what it wants. And so I trust my intuition as a writer. And so I arranged my own work as I saw fit, as I felt it would flow. And so you will read it—or not—at your own risk.

Many of these pieces are not for the faint of heart or spirit. What drives me to write is both my great disgust and passionate love for the animal we call human. In pursuit of the truth, my pieces take an angle that is at once anthropological and psychological. These pieces are painful, sometimes disturbing, often animalistic, and rarely uplifting. My greatest goal as a writer is to provoke emotion and further thinking in my readers. When I can make you feel something, when I leave you pondering, when I have complicated your world, that is when I know my efforts have not been in vain. If you are to take only one thing away from this body of work, I hope it will be this: that the human animal is a most complicated creature inside of whom the wilds will exist forever—deeply, fundamentally, and confoundingly, forever.

xxvii

Works Referenced

Allende, Isabel. Daughter of Fortune. Harper Collins Publishers. New York, NY. 1999.

Allende, Isabel. Eva Luna. Scribner. New York, NY. 2001.

Allende, Isabel. Of Love and Shadows. Dial Press Trade. New York, NY. 1984.

Allende, Isabel. The House of Spirits. Bantam Books. New York, NY. 1986.

Auel, Jean M. The Clan of the Cave Bear. Crown Publishers, Inc. New York, NY. 1980.

Auel, Jean. The Mammoth Hunters. Crown Publishers, Inc. New York, NY. 1985

Auel, Jean. The Plains of Passage. Crown Publishers, Inc. New York, NY. 1990

Auel, Jean. The Shelters of Stone. Crown Publishers, Inc. New York, NY. 1992.

Auel, Jean M. The Valley of Horses. Crown Publishers, Inc. New York, NY. 1982

Austen, Jane. Emma. Penguin Books. New York, NY. 1996.

Bjarnson, Brianna. “Gone”. Superstition Review. Issue Sixteen. Online. 2015.

Bjarnson, Brianna. “Sophia’s Gift”. Whisperings Magazine: A Literary and Visual CultureMagazine. Volume 2, Issue 3. 2013.

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Bantam Books. New York, NY. 1981.

Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Little, Brown and Company.

New York, NY. 1976.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. An American Slave.

New York: Library of America. New York, NY. 2014.

Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. Penguin Books. New York, NY. 1982.

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D’Ubervilles: A Pure Woman. The New American Library of

World Literature, Inc. New York, NY. 1964.

King, Stephen. Bag of Bones. Scribner. New York, NY. 1998.

xxviii

Works Referenced

King, Stephen. Cell. Scribner. New York, NY. 2006.

King, Stephen. Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales. Pocket Books. New York, NY.

2002.

King, Stephen. Dolores Claiborne. Viking Penguin. New York, NY. 1993.

King, Stephen. Misery. Viking Press. New York, NY. 1987.

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribner. New York, NY. 2000.

King, Stephen. The Shining. Doubleday. New York, NY.1977.

King, Stephen. The Stand. Doubleday. New York, NY. 1978.

King, Stephen. 11.22.63. Scribner. New York, NY. 2011.

Martin, Ann M. The Babysitters Club: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls. Scholastic

Paperback. New York, NY.1986.

Martin, Ann M. The Babysitters Club: Kristy’s Great Idea. Scholastic Paperback. New

York, NY. 1986.

Martin, Ann M. The Babysitters Club: Mary Ann Saves the Day. Scholastic Paperback.

New York, NY. 1987.

Martin, Ann M. The Babysitters Club: The Truth About Stacey. Scholastic Paperback.

New York, NY. 1987.

Munro, Alice. Dear Life. Vintage Books. New York, NY. 2012.

Munro, Alice. Runaway. Vintage Books. New York, NY. 2004.

Munro, Alice. Hateship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage. McClelland and Stewart

Limited.Toronto, Canada. 2001.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Pocket Books. New York, NY. 2004.

xxix

Works Referenced

Swift, Jonathon. Gulliver’s Travels. Sterling Publishing. New York, NY. 2007.

Tan, Amy. The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Random House. New York, NY. 2001.

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. G.P. Putnam’s Sons. New York, NY. 1989.

Tan, Amy. The Kitchen God’s Wife. G.P. Putnam’s Sons. New York, NY. 1991.

Tan, Amy. Saving Fish from Drowning. G.P. Putnam’s Sons. New York, NY. 2004.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and other Writings. Random House, Inc. New York, NY.

1950.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. The Portable Walt Whitman. Penguin Books. New

York, NY. 2004.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie. Harper & Brothers. New York, NY.

1935.

Wilson, Rawls. Where the Red Fern Grows. Doubleday. New York, NY. 1961.

xxx

The Wilds

In Progress

The women of my line— they each died lung-first.

—weighted with shoulds and musts burdened by the blank page—

Finally, they come to rest Resignedly upon the chest.

This Is race heart thicken liver taste kidneys

like putrid meat or pus

pee clean

pipes tubes

The Highway

That stain on the highway:

mottled colors, thick in places, spreading slowly still

was her lover their child his brother.

passerby rain time

Yip-Howl

Seven years withheld does it leave, too with dead cells? transform? “make-new” itself?

This old barn could collapse any moment and you would disappear— the only proof of you: wet places in rubble there is something in pushing up poppies at least

It’s been far too long since I saw a coyote out here.

I Read

I read a work, small yet significant “Now this is good writing” I actually said it aloud to myself alone in the room, as I was

He is young, upcoming I must read more

But

author intro says “was” past tense what the fuck

Is he?

No His photograph looks youthful looks familiar like I’ve seen him before somewhere

Then “during his lifetime” Yes

He is

And then I know before I type into the empty search box

Of course Yes, that

An incomplete knot tied irreversibly with frayed rope

I already knew.

Taxes

Leave me alone. This is what Lisa wants to say to the toothless man who won’t stop talking to her. But they’re stuck together in a long line at the local Senior Center as they wait for free tax help. Lisa, decades younger than the rest of the waiters, takes a breath, willing patience.

As the man speaks, Lisa thinks how there is a particular kind of warm, foul wind that blows from the mouths of the toothless. But it is not just this wind that unsettles her.

Lisa has always reacted to people lacking teeth as one might respond to a stranger with a rare, contagious disease: she doesn’t want to touch them; she doesn’t want them to breathe the same air; she doesn’t want them thinking the same thoughts.

Lisa tells herself she is being cruel and irrational, so she continues to face the man and the steady whistling of his breath-air falling all around her, settling into the fabric of her shirt, the threads of her hair.

Finally, allowing herself to take a step back as much as she can in the tight tax line, she clings to the possibility that her repulsion is fueled by instinct, by a deep

8 knowing that the health of a person’s teeth is intricately connected to the very flow of blood through their veins and vessels and valves. But, missing her cue, this man, grizzled and shabbily clothed, leans even closer and continues to speak.

His father died of a sudden heart attack, he tells her. His father was only thirty- six. And Lisa realizes that the toothless man has lived more than twice as long as his own father. He’s had more than twice as much life.

He is a father too, this man who won’t leave Lisa alone. Somehow, his children are the same age as hers. She hides her surprise well. But then, Lisa has always been good at hiding things like surprise and disappointment and trepidation.

Once Lisa makes it through the first line, she is placed into a new line, behind a new person, this time a woman. Though the woman’s hair is white, she wears neon-blue running shoes that look store-new, and she stands tall and straight. A high-placed piercing sparkles from the very top of her ear, catching the light as she speaks to Lisa.

The woman is quick with her eyes and her wit and Lisa gets the sense that, though this woman is twice her age, she could keep up with her in every way.

As they stand together, waiting and talking, the woman points to a flyer posted on the wall. “She used to come here every Tuesday for BINGO,” the woman tells Lisa. The flyer is a photocopied obituary of sorts; the black and white image at its center shows an old lady smiling, happy, even. “She was ninety,” the neon-shoed woman says with admiration, and Lisa realize that the lady in the photo died only days ago, that she was special to the people at the Senior Center, that ninety is all the accomplishment some people ask for in life. Ninety can be enough, Lisa thinks, wonders.

Lisa boldly—perhaps rudely—asks the woman her age. “Eighty,” the woman tells her. “No one in my family has ever made it this far,” she adds.

“You will,” Lisa says with confidence. And she means it. “You’re full of life,”

Lisa tells her. “You’re young yet.” Lisa easily imagines the woman at ninety, still in her bright running shoes and high earring, still energetic, still full of spit and fire and hutzpah.

Lisa asks the woman about her dead husband, about their marriage, about her friends. The woman tells Lisa everything and Lisa is so hungry for her words and stories that, even as she realizes she might now be the line-stander trying the woman’s patience, she accepts and does not care if she is. Lisa loves the woman. She envies her. She wants to be her. The woman makes Lisa forget that she is waiting.

When Lisa finally gets to the sitting-in-a-chair part of the waiting, she recognizes one of the volunteers working there. The volunteer, a woman, is the oldest living person of whom Lisa knows. She sees this volunteer from time to time: at community events, at the library, and here, once per year, when she comes to get free tax help at the Senior Center.

Though the volunteer is unaware of Lisa’s existence, Lisa worries over her often.

She keeps track of this woman as a way to mark time in her own life. Lisa understands how the volunteer is here today and how easily she could be gone tomorrow, so Lisa is religiously keyed in to the pallor of this woman’s skin, the crook in her back, the sincerity of her smile. Lisa monitors her.

Each time Lisa sees this old woman, she makes an invisible checkmark in her head. Still alive: check, she thinks to herself. Still here: check.

Free tax help days are always tense for Lisa because of the volunteer. Another year: check.

Whenever Lisa sees her, she can feel how her own survival is intertwined with the volunteer’s perseverance in life. If the volunteer can keep pressing forward, then Lisa can, too.

“This is your income?” the tax-help man asks. He does not seem concerned about showing his surprise, his sympathy.

“Yes,” Lisa says. She does not offer an explanation and the tax-help man does not ask for one.

“Technically, I have three jobs,” Lisa tells him.

“And you have four kids?” he says. “And you are their sole provider?”

“Yes,” Lisa says.

“I don’t know how you do it,” he says, “But I admire you.”

Lisa does not reply. And it’s not that she doesn’t appreciate his kindness, it’s just that she also does not know how she does it.

Before she leaves, Lisa sees the toothless man again. He is sitting in a chair, still waiting.

His face is deep-red, like a candy apple. He has removed both his jacket and button-up flannel shirt. While everyone else is still wearing coats, he’s down to a white undershirt.

Though he’s lived twice as long as his father ever did, Lisa wonders if he is going to have a heart attack right there, right then.

She imagines how the scene might unfold. How the man would grab his chest and fall to the linoleum floor. How the red in his cheeks would rise to a dull purple. How his eyes would strain forward as if they were trying to escape his head, his body.

Lisa imagines how she might rush over to help, how she might even cradle the man in her arms as his last strangled breath fills the horrified silence. And from across the room, as she watches his reddening face with concern, Lisa thinks how it is good that her life and her will are not entwined with his. She thinks how, even if he dies, she has to keep going. And she will.

Not a Cryer

I cried about you again last night

Maybe not you exactly

Something…

You did (not) break me.

Do you ever wonder at how people are simply wet viscous rushing refreshing constantly simply waiting…

to ash heap

Lost in the woods is nothing—

simply circles and fear and separateness

that family one foothill away from town near death

stomp hard and carry sharp rocks

*there are lions all over this mountain*

alone can never be lost

Webs

My touch brings you back to life you breathe me in taste me consume and crave me…

I smell her decaying flesh in the threads of your jacket collar feel her burrow into my veins

Sofia’s Gift

Startled by the sudden clanging of the antique grandfather clock, Sofia clutched her chest, holding her sharply caught breath safely inside. She shook her head, embarrassed at her foolish reaction to the clock’s chiming. Sitting alone in the abandoned study where her husband used to work, Sofia noted the time — three AM — and stood up, cinching the tie of her worn robe. Sofia felt a shudder come over her as she reached up and gave a gentle tug on the desk lamp’s dangling chain. There in the dark, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath before stepping out into the faint glow of the hallway’s nightlight.

Sofia had felt vulnerable since her husband’s passing last fall. Being alone in their spacious home near Bodega Bay, where they had lived for more than forty years, often felt lonely to Sofia, sometimes even frightening. Especially at night, when the coastal breeze picked up into heavy winds, she would find herself hearing things in its howls and whistles: music playing which she did not turn on, a child softly whimpering, a young woman moaning, even her late husband whispering her name. Ever since her childhood,

Sofia had always wondered at the way her imagination could get the best of her. Now though, as a woman embracing her golden years, her imagined fears seemed foolish and childish, if not a bit of a burden — especially lately.

The past few days Sofia had been unusually on edge, jumping at the slightest noise or movement in the trees outside her windows. The grass had grown completely out of control since Harold’s passing. He had always taken care of those outdoor details.

Their property was far too much for Sofia to tend to on her own. The home they had shared together, an aging, converted farmhouse, sat in the middle of a twelve-acre forest.

In it were wild flowers, grasses, and mushrooms, but mostly oak trees, all of them afflicted with Sudden Oak Disease. The bare trees’ mossy drapings gave them the appearance of old beggar women, with their branches outstretched like empty arms.

Often, when Sofia would find herself sleepless, she would sit still in front of her living room’s large picture window and watch as the ocean fog rolled up the hill with the dawn’s growing light. Those peaceful mornings brought her comfort and filled her with contentment.

Today though, hours before dawn’s breaking, as Sofia walked down her narrow hall, she couldn’t shake her uneasiness; it followed her like a heavy shadow. In the nightlight’s glow, she watched each of her slippered feet follow, one after another, in front of her.

Focusing intently on the tattered slippers, now faded to a pale pink, allowed Sofia to resist the urge to look behind her. It was better to not risk looking back and finding something frightening in her wake. Instead, she watched each foot, sure in its onward motion.

She was relieved to be suddenly distracted by the teakettle’s whistle and managed to reach it just before it escalated into a scream. As she sat down to the kitchen table with the steaming cup of tea cradled in her hands, she glanced over at the pile of newspapers and noticed the corner of a book sticking out from underneath them. She eased the corner out with the tip of her finger until she saw that it was her late husband’s notebook.

Harold had been using the notebook for the past thirty-five years. Sofia had bought it for him as a gift, back when things were still quality-made and durable. She traced her finger along its brown leather cover, stopping at the red string, which wound so many times around the small metal lash that held the notebook together. She imagined

Harold now, having made his last note in that book without realizing it. She thought of him closing it carefully and looping that red thread over and over again, sealing it. She had tried several times to begin unwinding that string but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it; to undo what Harold had done, to read whatever information he had entrusted to that book for so many years. She felt that she didn’t have the right; but more, she feared what was inside. She feared learning something new about Harold that would upset her memories of him. Sofia already knew the man he had been, how good he had been to her. She was happy with the life they had shared together. Still, that desire to know more, to possibly gain another piece of him in his absence gnawed at her.

For seven months, Sofia had resisted opening Harold’s notebook. As she held it in her hand tonight though, especially tonight when she couldn’t settle herself and nothing could warm the chill in her bones, Sofia began to think that perhaps reading Harold’s words could comfort her. Before she could change her mind, she grasped the frayed end of the scarlet string and, holding her breath, began to unwind it. As the last loop

18 slackened, the sturdy leather cover began to fall open, revealing a fan of stiff white pages.

Resting the back of the notebook in her palm, Sofia let the pages fall, one upon the other, until the front cover closed. Starting from the beginning, Sofia opened the notebook.

What she found was one simple entry on the page:

April 23, 1974

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sky with such a shade of blue as the one today has. It’s so beautiful, it’s breathtaking. I wish Sofia were here to see it with me.

Sofia had not supposed that Harold had been using this notebook as a kind of journal. She had always assumed it was for business: reminders and notes, appointments and schedules. It surprised her that he had kept a journal all these years without ever telling her. What didn’t surprise her was that he had written about her; that was Harold through and through, keeping Sofia with him in his thoughts even when they were apart.

Turning the page though, she was puzzled to find several blank sheets before the next entry. In fact, most of the pages remained blank.

As she continued to flip through the book, Sofia found that most of Harold’s entries were quiet reflections during his moments of solitude or recollections of their most special moments together as a young couple. It touched her deeply to see after all of

19 these years he could remember them so vividly and with such obvious tenderness. As

Sofia came upon Harold’s last entry, cushioned safely between several unfilled pages, she felt she was losing a part of him again. Reluctant, she read it:

January 09, 2004

Today, I couldn’t stop thinking about the weekend Sofia and I drove up the coast to that great little bed and breakfast in Mendocino for our one-year anniversary. Everything was so perfect: Absolutely exhausting ourselves with lovemaking, the breakfast in bed, laughing until we cried, hiking to the very tops of those beautiful hills together. It was all so wonderful until we headed home. Once we saw that car wreck on the side of the freeway, I knew the fun was over. We had to slow way down to drive around the wreckage. It was awful; every kind of emergency rescue service possible was there. But, Sofia said she refused to let it ruin our

“second honeymoon” and looked away from the wreckage; her smile never faded. I looked though; I couldn’t help it. I saw the two cars. They were absolutely destroyed. I saw the blood everywhere. Just everywhere. I saw the body on the stretcher and how they had already covered its face with the blanket. Sofia could see it affect me and she was mad at me for looking and ruining our perfectly good getaway. I didn’t say anything, but

I was mad at her too. She was always doing that, always refusing to see

20 what was right in front of her simply because she didn’t want to see it.

Anyway, I have been thinking about that day a lot lately.

Before she could reflect on Harold’s words, Sofia’s breath caught in her chest as the grandfather clock’s clanging started up once again. Even from down the hall in

Harold’s study, the clock’s ominous song, a low lullaby composed of only three simple tones, seemed to fill the whole house. Brought back to the moment, sitting there at her kitchen table, Sofia looked down at her still full but now cold cup of tea. With sleep eluding her still, she set the notebook down and rose to reheat the kettle.

As the gas lit the iron burner, Sofia felt an icy breeze pass behind her. Ignoring the chill steadily creeping up her core she headed back over to the table, determined to reseal Harold’s notebook. In her haste, she accidentally knocked it to the floor. Bending at the waist, all the way down to the floor with great effort, her left hand pressed into one knee to help support her weight, Sofia scooped the splayed notebook up off of the cold linoleum. Before she closed it though, she noticed something rather peculiar. Oddly, there seemed to be many more entries than she had seen when looking through it before.

Pausing to flip through the notebook once again, she found far fewer blank pages. It seemed as though there were suddenly new entries that hadn’t been there just a few minutes ago. Dismissing her confusion as the inevitable forgetfulness of an old woman,

Sofia grabbed the notebook’s string with authority and began cinching it tightly around the lash. She tossed the closed book down onto the kitchen table just as the teakettle began its rising scream.

But, when Sofia turned the gas dial off, the screaming didn’t end. It seemed to be coming from the hall but, as she approached, it receded. Realizing it was probably just the wind, Sofia turned back toward her cup of tea and, as if on cue, the winds picked up outside, escalating into howls and causing the trees outside to groan and scratch her windows with their branch tips.

Sofia, with her new cup of tea steaming between her hands, started back toward the kitchen table. As her eyes focused in front of her, she stopped short, disbelieving what she was seeing. There, on the tabletop, lay Harold’s notebook, but its red string had been unwound and the front cover lay open. Sofia raised a hand instinctively to the base of her throat, afraid to breathe. The hot tea seemed to cool in her hand as she tried to grasp what was happening. She took a cautious step forward, trying to find a logical explanation for how the notebook had come undone, but she could feel that familiar chill surrounding her, that sense that she was not alone. Not knowing what else to do, Sofia approached the notebook. Setting her full cup of tea down on the table, she picked the book up with her trembling hands and began turning the pages.

Page after page was filled with Harold’s handwriting. Sofia flipped through faster and faster, no longer finding even one page of the notebook blank. A thick haze of dread began to fill her entire being. She started to read bits and pieces of Harold’s words, racing frantically back and forth through the pages. They were words of loneliness and anguish, words of Harold taking on lovers, accusations of Sofia’s not having been there for him.

Her eyes darted up and down the pages. Equal parts of confusion and pain rose up through her core. She didn’t understand. She had never suspected that Harold would

22 betray her. She couldn’t believe, after all of the years she stood by his side he could profess loneliness. She had always been there. Always. Every step of the way she had been beside him – up until the day she had watched him die. And oh, how there had been something so strange about the way he had looked at her. She couldn’t put her finger on it but she felt certain that something not quite of this world had happened.

The day Harold’s chest began to hurt Sophia had panicked. Harold, true to his nature, had stayed calm and faced the situation head-on. While Sofia stood helpless, he had been the one to grab the phone and call the paramedics. When the ambulance arrived, Harold was lying on the couch, still clutching at his chest. The paramedics had tried, they’d given their best, but nothing could be done. One last great clench ripped through Harold’s heart and he had fallen back, his body limp and unmoving. The paramedic had pronounced him dead, but then Harold lifted his head and looked at her in such a way as she had never seen him look at her before. His eyes were wide, his jaw slack. He looked concerned, almost afraid, and his lips began to move as if he wanted to say something. But, just as quickly as he had raised his head, he was gone again.

More than the grief Sofia had felt after Harold’s body was wheeled out to the ambulance, that eerie stare had haunted her then as it did still, especially during sleepless nights like this one. She shuddered at the memory. Standing there in her kitchen with the tie of her robe coming as she held Harold’s notebook in both shaky hands, Sofia took a deep breath. Almost without her permission her fingers touched the top corner of the pages and

23 began turning to the very last page. There it was: Harold’s last entry. She saw that he had written it just days before he died:

October 11, 2009

I’ve been feeling off lately. I don’t know why. I can’t quite describe it.

Maybe this is just what it feels like to age! I can accept that I’m officially an old man now. What I’ve realized though is that even after all these years I haven’t been able to accept what happened. Sofia will always be the one true love of my life. No one ever compared to her, to what we had.

All this time I haven’t been able to let go of the connection between us.

Finally though, I feel ready. I need to let Sofia go. She’s been gone for so long, more than 30 years now. It’s time, past time. But God, she was so beautiful, so full of life, and so young. Far too young to be taken.

I loved her so much. But yes, now it’s time. I have to let her go.

The atmosphere thickened all around Sofia and seemed to be closing in on her, suffocating her. She tried to breath, to move, anything, but she could only stand there, motionless, frozen in time. From behind her, she felt a steady hand come to rest on her shoulder. She tried to scream out but not even a whisper of air would escape her throat.

Her eyes opened wider as a terror unlike anything she had ever known began to grow from the very center of her being, expanding wider and wider like black ink spreading

24 throughout her body. She so desperately wanted to escape whatever it was that was happening to her, but the hand held her firmly and she could not move. Then, Sofia heard a whisper, the same one she had thought she’d heard so many times before in the dark corners of her house. It called her name in a long and gliding sigh.

A bright burst of light seemed to flash right through Sofia’s head. The whisper began to sound like Harold’s voice. She felt a stillness overcome her as the voice beckoned to her to remember. She let the stillness consume her and released herself to the sensations overwhelming the atmosphere around her. Closing her eyes, Sofia allowed herself to remember.

Sofia saw herself, a young woman of thirty-one, so happy to be on yet another adventure with Harold. This time they had stopped off from their cross-country road trip for the day to free-climb some irresistible rocks along a desolate highway that stretched through

Idaho. They had just finished driving all through Utah, where Sofia had purchased the notebook for Harold at a quaint little bookstore. They were ready for a break from driving and needed to get their bodies moving.

Climbing that day had felt so good. The sky was a deep blue and the sun warmed

Sofia’s shoulders. There was nothing quite like the feel of those sturdy rocks beneath her hands, nothing like sweating into the open air, nothing like the natural high of making it to the very top. She loved being connected to the earth like that. Climbing that day,

Harold, being the true gentleman that he was, had let her go first. She appreciated how much he loved her adventurous spirit.

About fifty feet into their ascent, Sofia grabbed onto a rock edge that turned out to be nothing more than densely compacted dirt. As it crumbled underneath her right hand, she tried to shift her weight to the left. Instead of steadying her, it upset her center of gravity and she began falling back, so slowly at first that she was sure she could balance herself again. But, when she tried to grab solid rock all she felt were her nail-beds splitting and bending back as she scraped along the hard smooth rock. With her head and torso falling away from the rock, her legs and feet could only follow. She heard Harold calling her name and felt the terror in his voice. But Sofia was relaxed. It all seemed to happen so quickly, yet slowly at the same time. She saw Harold, brushed so closely by him. She saw the sky — that beautiful sea-sky; she saw the rocks, she thought of Harold, of home; she felt a sharp impact, a crushing confusion, a shattering that became a stillness, and then … nothing more.

Coming back to herself, to what was happening, to the thick atmosphere surrounding her and that familiar voice urging her to remember, Sofia began to focus. She tried to push it all away: the many years of silence and sleeplessness, the constant sense of confusion that nagged at her, the look on Harold’s face after he died like he hadn’t seen her in so very long. Looking around her, Sofia watched with panic as colors and shapes began to shift before her eyes. Against her will, she observed her home transform into the home of strangers. Everything was different, it was the same house, but someone has changed it, had overtaken it. A terrifying sensation of déjà vu overwhelmed Sofia as she began to feel a backward pull, gentle but insistent.

But, Sofia did not want to leave her home, she did not want to leave the life she’d had. Shaking her head with determination, Sofia forced herself to concentrate. She thought about herself, Sofia, the old woman who had lived a long happy life with a husband she adored. She thought about her home that she had loved so dearly for so long, about the view through her picture window that brought her so much peace. She thought of her kitchen — her own kitchen, with its iron topped gas stove — and of herself, Sofia, the aging woman who had lived a full life. Sofia. Herself.

The air around her began to change. Gradually, it grew thinner and lighter until her home was again as she had always known it to be. She looked over at her teapot on the stovetop. She looked at her kitchen table. She saw the stack of newspapers and her cup of tea. She looked down at her slippered feet and watched them as they moved, one after the other, until she had walked over to the table. Picking up her tea, and with the notebook still in hand, she headed toward her living room.

As Sofia settled down into the armchair before her picture window she began to relax, even as the grandfather clock began its incessant chime once again. She glanced down at Harold’s notebook and forced herself to look into it one last time. A relief began to fill her face as she flipped through each blank page. She closed the notebook, carefully winding its red thread around and around the lash until it was safely sealed again.

Reaching over, she pushed the notebook under a stack of magazines on the end table beside her, gently nudging it with her forefinger until the last corner of its brown leather cover disappeared. Turning to the large picture window, Sofia focused her eyes upon the coastal fog beginning to roll in with the breaking light up toward her house. She let out a deep breath as her face relaxed with a smile that spread all the way up to her eyes.

Fifty, Fifty

There are only four stages and you don’t get to choose which.

They are only two pounds of flesh, lumps and tissues wanting removal.

Underneath is black and rot, lymph nodes invaded, vital organs boned.

You don’t get to know why; why you? which half? stat? And you don’t know if you—you— will thrive and inspire or if you—that half— must die.

Still

It was a cold December night when I sat at the foot of my friend’s bed and watched her die. Before that, I had never imagined myself bearing witness to the cessation of a human life. I knew that being present for a person’s death happened sometimes to some people, but I did not know them; I did not want to be them. Though I disagreed with the

American fears and taboos surrounding death, I realize now that I, too, was denying mortality, hiding from it, averting my eyes from its ominous presence lurking just beneath the surface of life.

Losing someone is only in the imagination: loss is a concept to be mentally and emotionally realized and accepted over time. But watching a person die right before your eyes, especially when you are emotionally invested in that person, forces you to experience death, to truly see it, to be a part of it, to understand what it means for someone to pass away. When I witnessed my friend pass on, I saw that indeed there is no better way to describe it.

Before that night I had only witnessed new life. As a birth doula, I had accompanied many women—some friends and family; some strangers who had hired me professionally—through their journey of bringing forth life. Unlike the first hand experience of giving birth, which I have done three times, bearing witness to the birth of a baby gives you the opportunity to experience the magic of it. No matter how loud or intense or emotional a birth may get, there is always a change in the atmosphere right before the baby’s body emerges and there is always a moment of stillness and disbelief once the baby has fully abandoned the womb.

For me, this stillness has always represented a reverence for the wonder of life.

No matter how much a person might think they know, in that very moment there is such a profound sense of how little our human minds are truly able to conceptualize. As strange as it may sound, this stillness and awe were the same feelings and sensations I experienced at the death of my friend.

It was birth that first brought me and my friend together. She made custom baby carriers and I wanted one for my newborn daughter. We immediately bonded over our like- mindedness on subjects like homebirth and breastfeeding. The baby carriers she designed were colorful cloth slings that a mother could wear over one shoulder and down across her abdomen to hold her baby close. My friend was passionate about the mother-child bond. Her daughters were young teens at the time and, with my new family still growing and my having little to no contact with my own mother, she took on the role of both friend and mentor to me. Over the years, it seemed we had just about everything in

30 common, including a strong sense of health consciousness. So it shocked us both greatly when she found a lump in her breast.

Before the cancer, my friend had always exuded health. One of the first things I noticed about her when we met was her beautiful long hair and the way it shined. But by the time her cancer had metastasized and I had become one of her home hospice caretakers, she had cut it haphazardly and kept it short. Already petite when I met her, she became emaciated and her spine curved so severely that she was forced to walk hunched over. In a mere six months, she looked as if she had aged forty years. Although she was still smiling through the pain, it was clear the cancer was costing her everything.

My friend was a tough woman. She stayed positive and hopeful for her partner and two grown daughters who were also taking loving care of her. She refused to shave her head or give into pain medication until the last few weeks of her life. But, with me, she showed a hidden, more vulnerable side of herself when her family was not in the room.

We would share long moments of intense eye contact, communicating silently, saying everything that words never could. She showed me her fear, her loss of free will, her aloneness. Mostly, I would go take care of her with a calm smile on my face, but then

I would go home and curl into a ball, weeping, digging my fingers deep into the flesh of my stomach. But one morning, when her bedroom was still dim, we held each other and wept together as she called out my name over and over again like a mantra. That was all she said, but we both knew what she meant. Weeping until we were too exhausted to continue, we both fully understood and accepted that she was dying, that there was no turning back.

But the day my friend asked me if I believed in life after death, I paused. My hesitation was only momentary, but it spread out somehow, slowing and stretching time as I stopped to complete her question. Standing beside her bed, our faces were just inches apart and she was looking deeply into my eyes, waiting, expecting. At first I felt frozen by the pressure to answer, and to answer well. Then I looked inward, toward my own conflicts about what I do and do not believe.

As a child, I had believed everything my parents and their church told me, including Jesus, Santa Claus, and The Afterlife. As a teenager, I rejected it all. From then on, I began to see the world as a whole, and all religious, spiritual, and supernatural beliefs as flawed if not ignorant. But I wasn’t sure what I believed. I sometimes thought of myself as spiritual; sometimes not. I was aware that I wanted to believe there was some semblance of existence after death; I wanted to believe that the spirit—that spark that is us—lives eternally. Yet something inside told me things were not so simple, that it was likely all too good to be true. I could not get myself to accept or reject the idea of an afterlife. And in that moment, while my friend was waiting for an answer, her question haunted me.

I have always been a person who believes strongly in honesty. I almost never lie.

When I do, the lie consists of information or details I have intentionally omitted. Either because I cannot do it convincingly or because I would feel too guilty if I did, I do not tell blatant lies. But, looking into my friend’s eyes, seeing her fear at what would soon happen to her, how could I tell her the truth? How could I look at her and say, “I’m sorry, but I have no idea.” She was about to leave us: her partner, her grown daughters, her own mother, her friends, me.

In her creased brow, I could sense that, more than the uncertainty of where she was going and how, what troubled my friend was the fact that she was going alone. She was leaving behind everything she had ever known. Not only that: life had not ended well for her.

The last several months of my friend’s life, she endured physical and emotional turmoil that I cannot bring myself to imagine. I knew she needed to believe there was something greater than this life, a better place to look forward to. I pulled in close to me the part of myself that wanted to believe, that even did sometimes believe and I told her,

“Yes.” Nodding my head with assurance, I said, “I really do think so.” And so she was comforted.

Toward the end, she was unable to speak or move on her own. When her family was not in the room, stroking the too-hot skin of her arm or bristle of her shaved head, I told my friend it was okay to let go, that she could move on when she was ready and everyone would be all right. I had told her this before too, when she could still speak, and her eyes had become wide as she said, “Really?” When I nodded my head, her whole body relaxed with relief. I wanted her suffering to end so badly, and I knew the time was drawing near.

One night, driving home from work, I was suddenly filled with a sense of urgency and, not even stopping off at home, I sped to her house. Before I even parked my car, a deep wave of grief came over me. I was already sobbing when I burst through the front door and into her room. Her daughters and partner were beside her, their eyes wet. They, too, could sense it.

We gathered around her bed. Her eyes were closed and her breathing had been irregular for days. Her partner sat with his face right near hers, stroking her head. Her older daughter sat across from him, holding her mother’s hand. Her younger daughter sat near the end of the bed massaging one of her mother’s feet; and, I, massaging the other one, knelt down at the foot of the bed. We sat silently, touching and watching.

Then came a moment when my friend’s family was looking at her body, the floor, each other. They were not looking at her. I was the only one watching her face when it started, and her face was where it happened. First, I felt a change, as if the air pressure in the room had somehow been adjusted. My body began to tingle and feel light and then I saw, coming up from my friend’s face, what I can only describe as dense haze of compressed atmosphere. It was rising up from her, higher and higher. Just before it stopped, her family said, “She’s not breathing!” I nodded my head and said, “Yes, I think she’s trying to leave.“ But then we saw she was gone. Her body, once healthy and vibrant and so full of life—of her—now seemed empty. Pale, yellow, and somehow shrunken, it looked like nothing more than a discarded vessel, a barely recognizable shell of the woman my friend had once been. What struck me most was how still the body was. So quiet. It was nothing. She was gone.

Once the reality of her passing sunk in, a thundering wail rose up in the room like nothing I had ever heard before. As I watched my friend’s grown daughters screaming out “Mommy!” I realized it was the four of us screaming and wailing. We gripped at her body, telling her, begging her, “No!” But we knew it was in vain. Suddenly, I was gripped by a pain much greater than my own. I was not only losing my friend and coming

34 to terms with how short her life had been cut, I was watching two daughters lose their mother, a man lose the woman he loved.

Just as the pain became unbearable, I became aware once again of that feeling in the room, that shift in the atmosphere. I looked at all of us, surrounding my friend with warmth, love, and support. That was when I sensed the connection between birth and death, of passing into and out from life. Though they move in different directions, it is the same thin veil through which a person passes. After I went home that night, I began to understand how beautiful even death could be. I tried to make sense of how something could be both terrible and wonderful—even magical.

When I remember what I saw that night, I still don’t know what I believe.

Sometimes I tell myself I was just seeing things; other times I know I can’t deny that it happened. Now, I just accept that there may very well be a great universal mystery that is beyond our human perception and understanding.

Vulture fat black fly underbottom pressed on my window like glue won’t move

strange comfort at vultures’ peaceful share mounted together on rabbit road kill. bring my too-ripe apples I can no longer eat

but where did they put that old horse?

Sunlit

The cat is seeing ghosts again.

Last night, I dreamt of her running sunlit down a wildgrass path

She ran light like not even her younger years

heading somewhere new I realized later awake.

I consider what to do with

the body as she lies on my bed purring against my hip

Paper Cut out in flat triangular sections

And I drive to her house at 3 AM through black because I can’t take the way we are alone All pasted to our beds paralytically

And we have something to say at night Finally

And rats have teeth and necks can be crushed and we all feel it in the cat’s lonely howl

She paces my dark halls dimentia- ly

Her brain goes and so she goes

We feel the restlessness stay under the bed ankle grabber tendon slicer or Old friend.

Alone is not the end it is

Gone

My friend Laura has a six-month-old kitten in her freezer. The kitten—Oscar, was his name—has been lying dead in the deep freeze for nearly as long as he lived. For months,

I’ve gone over to Laura’s to share laughs and stories over wine and chocolate and, all the while, there lay little Oscar, just behind us, a grotesque, contorted block of kitty ice. I laughed when she told me. It was a strange, sympathetic type of laugh. “Oh!” I said.

“Why haven’t you buried him yet?” She said, matter-of-factly, that she just had not got around to it. But she did not look at me when she spoke and in her stare I could still see the pain of his loss. So I didn’t believe her.

Laura loved that cat. She had bottle-fed him as an orphaned four-week-old, rescued from the side of the road. A long-haired, orange tabby, Oscar was as cuddly as he was playful. He allowed the dog to carry him around in her mouth, he joined the kids in their wrestling and chasing games, and he nestled himself deep into the nape of Laura’s neck, settled into the webs of her hair, purring and kneading himself to sleep.

When Oscar died (hit by a car, was the consensus), Laura admitted she was grief- stricken. She cried for days. Her kids got over it quickly, but she did not. I knew that.

Still, until she told me that he currently resided among the frozen meat and vegetables and ice of her freezer, I had no idea how much Oscar’s loss was still affecting her. It suddenly dawned on me that Laura did not consciously realize the depths of her grief either.

“I still have Sadie’s ashes,” Laura said nonchalantly, detecting my not-so-well- hidden shock at her confession. “Right up there.” She pointed to the slender jar on the top of her work desk. It looked far too small and insignificant to hold an eighty-five pound

Husky. Sadie had been Laura’s very special dog (three dogs ago) who died eight years before. As I sat there, beginning to feel sober despite the wine we had drunk, I wondered, when it came to Laura’s grief, if it made a difference where her pets’ remains lay. If

Oscar were buried and decomposing in the damp soil instead of suspended agelessly in frozen time, if Sadie’s ashes were spread and joined with the dust instead of sitting motionless in Laura’s office space, would their loss be any further from her mind, her heart?

For me, the forms of those whom I have loved and buried are slowly breaking down, or they have been burned to dust and thrown to the wind. For all the ceremony and distance and disintegration, my dead may as well be resting in my home, before my eyes.

In my mind and heart, they are not buried at all.

As a child, I never actually saw death. I am told that I attended my grandmother’s funeral, but I was only three and I don’t remember. What I do remember is my grandmother’s deathbed. I recall being led down the hospital corridor and I recall how the

40 open door exposed her withering frame, her sunken face. I remember my grandmother looking at me, how the cigarette-induced emphysema had made her fifty-two years look like more like eighty-two.

I only have one other memory of my grandmother. I was knee-high and standing beside her at the kitchen table where she sat. She was sipping from a large mug of hot, black coffee. She noticed me peering up, watching her intently.

“Do you want a sip, hon?” she asked, bending down toward me, holding the warm mug out toward me. Coffee was strictly forbidden by my parents. It was of the devil and, even as young as I was, I knew that already. I could actual feel my eyes and mouth widening at the prospect. I did not say a word, but I nodded. Slowly. Hopefully. And my grandmother gave me my very first taste of coffee.

Still today, there is nothing quite so comforting and warming to me as the smell and flavor of freshly brewed coffee. That single memory of my grandmother is enough to make my final memory of her one of loss. But these two memories for me are equated with first comfort and then illness—not death.

I saw dead animals as a child, but I did not see them die. On my long walk home down quiet country roads, I saw things bloating, rotting, bursting, crawling with worms: raccoons, opossums, cats. I did not care for the putrid, acrid smell of the filthy, decomposing corpses, but it was the sights—the dislodged eye, the collapsing ribcage, the badly contorted mouth—that unsettled me.

This is what happens to animals when they die, I thought. I never related the decay, the grotesqueness of death, to humans. Not to my grandmother, whom I barely

41 remembered; not to the ashes of my two great-grandmothers (both of whom I knew and loved for twelve years) sitting in my mother’s walk-in closet, awaiting their final resting place.

Down the road from my house, there was a bull I used to go see. He was larger than life, jet black, and a truly magnificent creature. The bull lived on a few acres along with a chained-up Dalmatian, whom I used to sneak onto the property to pet and feed. One day, playing outside in my orchard, I heard a loud, reverberating gun shot. It surprised me but, after hanging in the air for a few moments, was quickly forgotten. Forgotten, that is, until later when I saw the huge black bull suspended by each ankle from a large tractor while he was sliced in two, all the way down the middle. Though I was probably only eight at the time, it seemed that butchering this great beast right out where everyone could see had robbed him of his dignity. I had never cared for those neighbors—I didn’t like the way they treated their dog (who lived his entire life ignored and chained to a metal post) or their chickens (who never got out of their dank and dirty coop) or their children (who never seemed clean or happy)—but after the public dismembering of that sleek, black, two-thousand pound beast, I hated them.

Across the street from the bull-butcher’s property one sunny afternoon, I found a gopher.

It was moving slowly over the ground and I could see it needed help. Growing up with gardens, I knew the only good gopher was a dead one. I would watch with amazement as the wild, country cats stalked the gophers with painstaking patience. They worked so slowly and carefully that their movements were almost imperceptible. I cheered right

42 along with my dad every time the cats caught their meal, leaving more lettuce, carrots, beets, and radishes for my family’s dinner. I also got excited every time my dad caught one in his traps. I’d look at the dead gophers, barely bloody, their yellow teeth bucking comically out from under their top lips and I couldn’t believe their mission in life was to destroy our vegetable gardens. One time, I sat only feet away from a young corn stalk as I watched it easily and methodically pulled down by its roots until it fully returned to the ground from which it had grown. The apparent reversal of the corn’s short life and the robbing of our future sweet corn on the cob had me fully on board with the annihilation of the gophers. Yet, when I saw the helpless gopher that day, alive and in distress, I did not hesitate to help him.

I immediately ran home and grabbed my dad’s old dirt and grease encrusted work gloves and searched for a small box. Once I had everything I needed, I rushed the half- mile back down the road to where the gopher struggled. He was still there, still out in the daylight, still moving slowly. I picked him up with my gloved hands and he did not fight.

I ran home as fast as I could without rattling him in the box too badly. When I got home,

I checked on him again. It was clear to me that he was not well, but I wanted to make him better and then keep him as a pet.

I hurried into the house to get my siblings so they could see what I had brought home. But by the time they came out and I opened the box again, he was just another dead gopher. We all looked at him, lying there, succumbed to whatever had ailed him, but only I cried. One minute he’d been alive; the next he was dead. I never saw it happen.

True, it was just a gopher—the enemy, really—but for a moment he was mine, and so I cried for him and for what I had tried and failed to do: save him.

There was a time my dad decided to get a pet rabbit. It was his idea and he did it for us kids. So we got Red and he was sweet and large and beautiful, and my dad built him a nice, big hutch. But later my dad let us get another rabbit and, soon enough, we had too many and their reproduction was unstoppable. Though my dad (in my opinion, purposely) came home empty handed from his deer hunting trips each year, my dad knew how to kill and butcher animals. He told us all that he would have to turn some of the newer rabbits into dinner to get the situation under control.

But I had made every single one of the bunnies my pets. I had named them and held them and loved them. I didn’t want to be a part of turning them into dinner.

The day to harvest the rabbits came and, at first, I avoided the back acre. I didn’t want to see the bunnies killed. I knew the method of swinging the rabbits by the ankles into a hard post so they would die immediately from the head trauma—brutal on the human end; fairly quick and painless on the rabbit end—and I didn’t want to watch.

Within minutes, I heard they had already been killed and, somehow, I found my way out there where I sat by, quietly watching my father work.

Though a part of me understood, another part of me was sad and a little angry with my father for doing it. I sat, a curious and silent observer, in the grass near the garden a few feet away from my father. He had the dead rabbits along a tall fence line, hanging by their feet and he was beginning to skin them. In their fur, I could still faintly see my pets, but beneath their skins, I could see they were also meat.

“Oh, darn,” my dad said, suddenly breaking both our silences. My dad has always been (and still is) a uniquely calm and patient person. Something as small as a quiet

“darn” with a slight undertone of frustration would be a shouting “GODDAMMIT!” from a regular person. I knew something bad had happened. “Brianna,” he said gently, “I need you to come hold this.” I got up immediately. I always have been (and still am) the first to jump in and take calm action when there’s a problem.

My dad showed me where he had, while skinning one of the rabbits, accidentally nicked the flesh over the stomach cavity. The poor dead bunny was literally spilling its guts. I have since learned that spilled guts at the wrong time or place during butchering can spoil the meat. However, at the time, all I knew was that my father said to hold it and so I did. While he finished removing the skin, using my small fingertips, I had to put counter-pressure on the intestines and other slimy internal parts that were trying to push their way out.

As I stood there, I was torn between worrying that I might mess up and ruin everything and wanting to just let go and ruin it on purpose because I hadn’t wanted the bunnies to be turned into dinner in the first place. But I held firm as the wet, spongy bits threatened to consume my whole hand, and nothing was ruined. Much like the rotting road kill, I suddenly realized that animals had guts. Lots of them. And yet I did not relate the existence of innards to my own body or to any human bodies at all.

Later that night, when we ate the rabbits for dinner, I wasn’t especially hungry and they did not taste especially good. With each bite I took, I could not help but wonder which of my pet bunnies it might be.

As an adult, I have seen death. Really seen it. From the motorcyclist on the hot asphalt of the freeway to my dear friend as I held her hand when she passed from this life to the

45 mystery beyond to the feel of my brother’s cold, unnaturally hard body as he lay dead, the hole at his temple refusing to stay hidden beneath the layers of makeup. I have smelled the repulsive decay of my own beloved cat, already dead where she hid while I hung posters that read “MISSING!” in bold letters above her photograph.

I know death now. I understand how it cannot be denied or ignored. And yet I fear it. For others more than myself; I would rather be lost than to lose. Though time passes, the sting of death does not lessen—I only learn how to better redirect my attention away from it.

When Laura opens her freezer or sits at her desk, I wonder if she is practicing how to lose? Each day, when she sees (or learns to not see) those cherished remains, does she get just a little bit better at letting go? When—if—she finally buries her sweet Oscar and spreads the ashes of her loyal Sadie, will she be done grieving? I wonder and yet I do not ask. I dare not speak of those whom I have lost. I could not bear it. For me they are simply gone. Eternally, painfully, gone. And I am still here.

The Fish

Wanting to give him plenty of swimming room I filled the bowl too high with water. The next morning I found his bowl Fishless.

After searching a bit I finally saw him down on the rug, lying still.

He looked dry. Miraculously, neither the cat nor the dog had eaten him.

I returned him to his bowl and he sank quickly, his one eye staring up at me vacantly from his side-lying position.

Then, he made a slight twitch: I watched, he slowly began to reanimate himself, his gills starting to move in and out, his tail flipping sporadically: After several minutes (and with great effort) his eye lit up.

The Girls

Angela never would have called it a cult, especially not at first. She and her sister were young—Angela seventeen and Sarah sixteen—when they first met Samuel. He was kind and charming and had a calmness about him that drew them both in like fireflies to rain, especially Angela. The girls’ father had been deeply involved in the local Christian fundamentalist community, doing outreach and leading retreats, when their mother was alive. But when the cancer grew through her lungs till she could not longer breathe, their father turned away from God. Soon, their house became squalid, and their home, cold and volatile. With only a year away from becoming an adult, Angela was anxious to create a fresh life for herself. A new friend was more than welcome; a way to break free was salvation.

Being the oldest, Angela was expected to watch over Sarah and so the girls had to be inseparable, at first by obligation, and then eventually by choice. Never having been allowed to date or have boyfriends of any kind, Angela always felt awkward and uncomfortable around boys. But Samuel was different: Although young, he was a man.

The girls had first encountered Samuel at the park. They were passing through on their way home from school and he, sandy hair pulled back into a ponytail and eyes closed behind round frames, was sitting atop a picnic table, strumming his guitar. Angela had noticed him at once, the gentle way he tapped his faded boot on the wooden bench- seat, the way his long chin was drawn up into a peaceful smile. She liked the way he looked, lost in the world of his own music.

But as Angela was admiring him, Samuel suddenly opened his eyes. She could feel her face go hot as his eyes locked with hers. Quickly averting her gaze, Angela looked down at her feet and continued walking past him.

“Hey there,” he called. His voice was relaxed and friendly.

Both girls stopped and turned back. Sarah gave him a shy smile.

“Samuel,” he said, extending his hand.

Sarah’s smile gave way to a nervous laugh and Angela, recovering from her embarrassment, took a step forward, allowing him to shake hers.

“Angela,” she said quietly, her lips pressing into each other as she smiled. “And this is my sister Sarah,” she motioned.

“You know what?” Samuel asked, still holding onto Angela’s hand, “I had a feeling I was going to make a very special connection today.”

The two sisters exchanged quizzical glances but said nothing.

Samuel laughed. “I’m serious. I just had the best feeling this morning, like something really amazing was going to happen. I came here to get some inspiration today and when I opened my eyes—well, there you were. It can’t just be a coincidence, right?”

Angela felt Samuel’s warmth seep into her hand and move slowly up her arm. She felt safe and excited all at once. He wouldn’t let go of her hand or her eyes. As he continued talking, she was surprised to find her breathing becoming increasingly shallow and she felt a heaviness filling her thighs. She didn’t resist any of the sensations Samuel had aroused in her and when the girls finally headed home, she made Sarah promise to never tell their father about Samuel. Sarah easily assented.

Casual and brief meetings in the park between the two sisters and Samuel were soon no longer enough. Angela and Sarah began cutting their last classes two days a week.

Eventually, Angela, without Sarah’s accompaniment, began skipping whole days of school altogether, even forging sick notes from her father. It was when she first went alone that Samuel had kissed her.

Usually, there in the park, Samuel and the girls would talk mostly about Samuel: his life, his passions, his hopes for the future. The girls, shy and slow to warm by nature, admired the way he so willingly revealed himself. They would stare, mesmerized, into

Samuel’s eyes as he spoke to the girls of peace and beauty and of a loving community of people—a family, as he called them, who all lived and worked together. He told them he had started building this community and how he so hoped the sisters would be able to come by and see the great things that were happening there.

He never asked the girls about themselves and Angela found it a relief. She loved listening to Samuel and could feel that he favored her in the way he stared into her eyes without hesitation. Her timid eyes would break contact, darting here and there, but his eyes, a blue so light they seemed almost transparent, always remained fixed on hers,

50 never moving. Angela enjoyed the new feelings she was experiencing. The fluttering in her stomach made her heart race with excitement and she felt a yearning growing from within her that she didn’t quite understand, but welcomed all the same. When he had kissed her that day, pulling her in close to him, she felt that yearning blossom in those places she had always tried to ignore. The swelling and moistening that urged her to recognize her awakening sexuality confused and scared her. All Angela understood with certainty was that she wanted Samuel; she needed him, to be near him, to touch him, to feel his gaze, to feel him possess her.

The day Angela agreed to go visit Samuel’s community, she had, at his urging, convinced Sarah to come along. Leaving school at lunchtime, the girls made their usual path through the park to the place where they always met Samuel. They found him sitting on the top of the picnic table, deep in meditation. Angela bit her nails anxiously and

Sarah scuffed the toes of her shoes in the dirt as they waited for him to finish. Finally,

Samuel opened his eyes with a smile. Placing his hands together, palms touching in front of his chest, he exhaled deeply and, bowing down toward the girls whispered,

“Blessings.” Angela elbowed Sarah to calm her giggling and, when Samuel stood and began walking down the park path in silence, the sisters followed him as he led them to his community.

Closing the tall creaking metal gate behind the three of them, Samuel snapped the padlock back into place and pushed its key deep into the front pocket of his jeans. He led the sisters through a densely wooded path that ended at the front door of an old house.

The house had not been kept up very well: part of a gutter hung down near the entrance

51 and one of the windows was boarded up. Samuel opened the door and, with a smile, motioned for the girls to go inside.

As Angela’s eyes adjusted to the dim candlelit room they had stepped into, she saw five young women—girls really, as most of them were teenagers like the two sisters—sitting and lying along an old couch and tattered floor rug.

“Hey, everyone,” Samuel announced. “This is Angela and her sister Sarah.” He put his arms around the sisters’ shoulders and looked over at the young women. “This is my family,” he said with an affectionate smile, “and now so are the two of you.”

A few of the girls turned their eyes toward the sisters and nodded or said “Hey.”

One of them in particular stood out to Angela. She was likely the oldest—she appeared to be in her early twenties—and everyone seemed to be focused on her. Her long dark hair lay in flowing waves around her pregnant belly. She looked up at Angela and studied her in silence for a moment. Embarrassed by the attention and unsure of how to read the young woman’s expression, Angela looked down at the floor.

“Eve,” came the woman’s voice.

Angela looked up to see the woman’s hand extended, not the way a person does to initiate a handshake but more the way a queen does to have her hand kissed. Eve, her face expressionless, continued to hold out her hand to Angela. The rest of the girls remained silent.

Not knowing what else to do, Angela stepped forward and gently grasped Eve’s hand for a moment. She gave her a shy smile before letting go. Eve’s mouth curled up at one corner as she looked back at Angela, her eyes unreadable. Turning back to the other

52 girls, Eve closed her eyes and laid her hands over her round belly. As she let out a deep sigh, the girls gathered more closely around her and placed their hands on her belly too.

“I just hope it’s right this time,” one of the youngest girls said in a voice that was barely audible.

Eve opened her eyes and shot a stern glance at the girl. “That’s enough,” she commanded.

Angela felt Samuel’s firm hand grasp her upper arm. “Let me show you where the girls sleep,” he said, pulling her away gently. She looked up at him and he smiled warmly. Relaxing to his touch, she followed, with Sarah trailing along behind them.

The three came to a large bedroom with low cots and bare mattresses clustered together over the shaggy multicolored carpet. Blankets were scattered among the beds and Angela could see only a few pillows. Looking at the sleeping arrangements made her feel sorry for Samuel and the girls who lived there. That people had to live in even more poverty than she did broke her heart and filled her with guilt. She looked up at Samuel with sympathy.

Meeting Angela’s gaze, Samuel, his eyes intensely locked on Angela’s, his voice steady, said, “Sarah, go back out to the living room with the other girls.”

As Sarah walked out with flushed cheeks and her head hanging slightly, Samuel closed the door behind her. He led Angela over to one of the mattresses and they sat down together, holding hands.

As he leaned over and began kissing her, Angela felt warm and safe. When he ran his hands over her breasts, she stiffened but didn’t stop him. She cared about Samuel and wanted him, yearned for him. She could tell he felt the same way about her. He had

53 shared so much with her, had trusted her enough to bring her here to his community, to his family, he had even said she was a part of his family.

When he ran his hand all the way up her leg and placed it between her thighs, though, she became frightened and tried to pull away. Keeping his hand in place, even pressing it more firmly against the soft warmth there, he looked at Angela sharply.

“Don’t you trust me?” he asked. “After all this time, I thought we could trust each other.”

Looking deep into her eyes, he gave her a gentle smile. “Can’t I trust you?” he asked her.

When she didn’t respond, he sighed impatiently but his tone was calm. “I love you,

Angela. I need to know that I can trust you. I thought you cared about me.”

Angela felt so confused. She was afraid to lose him, to lose his trust. But she was also afraid of what she didn’t understand, of what he seemed to require of her. She did trust him. Of course she did, and she wanted him to trust her, too. With her chin quivering, Angela cautiously nodded her head. As Samuel slowly pulled her clothes off,

Angela sat frozen on the bare mattress, squeezing her eyes shut. Once she was naked,

Samuel gently pushed against her trembling shoulders until she was lying down on her back. Keeping her eyes closed, Angela hugged her arms across her bare chest and, as her warm tears trailed down the sides of her face and pooled into the hollows of her ears, she tried to think of some other place, of some other time.

Afterwards, Angela rolled onto her side and curled herself into a ball. Samuel placed a blanket over her and kissed her on the temple. Rubbing her back, he whispered into her ear, “I’m so glad you feel the same way, Angela. I’ve decided that you and Sarah can stay here with me, with us. We’re a family now.”

After more than two months of staying at the house with Samuel, Angela was startled awake by piercing screams and shrieks coming from the living room. There were many things Angela had become accustomed to and had learned to live with in this house. She had got used to living without electricity, to sharing Samuel’s love with all of the other girls—even Sarah now, to remembering only to speak to the other girls when Samuel was present and gave his permission, to spending her days listening to Eve read Samuel’s lessons. She had become comfortable with never seeing her father and had forced herself to stop wondering whether or not he was still looking for her, of if he had ever looked for her at all. Angela had even learned to accept the lessons that she and the girls needed to learn at Samuel’s own hand. But this—she had never experienced anything in the community like the screams she was hearing now.

Fumbling over the sleeping girls in the dark, she tip-toed down the hall and peered into the living room. There in the candlelight she saw Eve, her nightgown soaked with blood and water, her legs spread apart, and her hair damp with sweat. She was lying back on the floor’s rug with towels underneath her; she was propping herself up with her elbows and her head was hanging back so that Angela could see her throat rising and falling with each breath. Eve was moaning and her thighs were trembling. Samuel, sitting down calmly between her legs, was meditating. Beside him were several towels, a flashlight, a pair of scissors, and a large bowl of water.

Angela stood in the shadow of the hall, motionless, trying to make sense of what was happening. Suddenly, Eve’s head shot up and she curled her body forward, gripping the rug beneath her. Her screams started up again and ended in a long guttural exhalation.

Samuel opened his eyes and glared at her. “For the last time, you need to keep quiet,” he said viciously. “You’re going to wake the girls! It may not be right this time, either.”

Eve started to cry. “I’m sorry, Samuel. I know. It’s just so—so hard.”

“It’s not hard, Eve, not at all. Now,” he smiled, stroking her wet hair and combing it behind her ear with his fingers, “if you don’t keep yourself quiet, I’ll keep you quiet.”

Eve nodded her head and, as her entire body began to tremble, she opened her mouth in a silent scream and brought her forearm up to her mouth, biting into it to muffle her cries.

“Here it is,” Samuel said with a hint of excitement in his voice.

Angela brought her hand over her mouth to cover her gasp as she beheld the tiny wet newborn Samuel held in his hands. The baby moved its limbs and began gurgling.

Angela had never seen a birth or even a baby so fresh from the womb. She was overwhelmed by emotion and began to cry. As a sniffle escaped her, Samuel’s eyes suddenly darted over to where she was standing in the shadow. He squinted his eyes and she tip-toed back through the darkness of the hallway and lay down on her cot. Closing her eyes, her heart racing, Angela pulled the blanket up over herself and pretended to sleep until she eventually drifted off.

The next morning, as Angela helped prepare the breakfast, the details of what she had witnessed the night before seemed like a dream to her. She so wished she could tell Sarah what she had seen and experienced, but even the sisters were not allowed to speak to one another without Samuel’s consent. Still, she felt a joy coming from within that warmed

56 her all over, and she couldn’t help but smile. She could not wait to see the other girls’ expressions when they found out the good news.

But when Samuel and Eve walked in, they were not smiling. Eve wore a long nightgown that hung over her soft, hanging belly, and the red circles around her puffy eyes stood out against her pale face. The girls turned and looked at Eve but said nothing; instead, they looked away and went about their business. All but Sarah and Angela.

Angela was confused, but knew she couldn’t ask what had happened, couldn’t ask where the baby was. With tears in her eyes, Sarah walked over to Eve and placed a comforting hand on her back.

In one quick movement, Samuel was beside Sarah, grabbing her by the back of the neck and throwing her against the kitchen wall. Crumbling to the floor, Sarah began to shudder with sobs. “Sarah! Go to the bedroom,” he commanded.

Cradling her shoulder, Sarah struggled to her feet and left the kitchen. Angela looked at the ground so Samuel wouldn’t see her starting to cry. It was still hard for her to sit by silently when he disciplined her sister.

“Look at her!” Samuel shouted, pointing at Eve. She sat at the table, looking down at her empty belly. “Yes, she has disappointed me again, disappointed us again!”

He shook his head in disgust and lowered his voice. “You have all learned the teachings,” he said, looking at each of them, one by one. “You all know the prophesy and that the man must always come first and only then can the wives follow. Eve knows this more than any of you. Remember that.”

With that, Samuel left the kitchen and headed toward the bedroom.

As the months passed, Angela’s own belly began to grow with new life. Two of the other girls had also been pregnant. One had miscarried early on and the other had gone to term but, as Eve had told the girls (for Eve was the only one permitted to speak to the girls freely), it hadn’t been right. Now Angela was the only one pregnant and Samuel had become very attentive to her. It felt good to be favored by him again and she began to feel loved and warm, like she had in the beginning with Samuel.

Eve, too, gave Angela special attention. At night, she would brush Angela’s hair, rub oils gently into her growing belly, and hold her in her arms as a mother would. This nurturing was something that Angela couldn’t remember having had the pleasure of experiencing before and she relished in it.

One night, as Angela laid her head in Eve’s lap for her hair to be brushed, Eve stopped and gently stroked the side of Angela’s face. “You know,” she said, “Samuel thinks you’re the one.”

Angela sat up and looked into Eve’s eyes, searching. “What? What do you mean?”

Eve smiled. “He said he has a feeling about you. He thinks it’s going to be right this time.”

Angela lit up. “Really? He said that?” A relief washed over her. She had been excited about her pregnancy, about having a baby with Samuel, but she had also been worried. She didn’t know what had been wrong with the other babies. She hoped so much that nothing would be wrong with this one. The more it grew inside of her, the more it kicked and stretched, the more she felt like she knew and loved it. She lay back down and

Eve continued brushing her hair.

“Eve?” she asked quietly. “Why wasn’t it right with your baby?”

Eve stopped brushing and her body stiffened. “Angela, you know we’re not supposed to talk about that,” she said sharply.

“But you said this time it could be right. Shouldn’t I know?”

“Don’t you already know, Angela?”

Angela sat up. “Well, no. Not really.”

“The teachings,” Eve said with a patient smile. She gently grasped Angela’s hands in her own. “The prophesy. The man must come first.”

“I know. I understand that. But, what was wrong with all the babies?”

“You really don’t know,” Eve said, taking Angela’s face in her hands. “Not just the father, but his son, too. Samuel is waiting for his son. Only then can all of his son’s wives follow.”

Angela felt a confusion spinning in her head. “But—“

“They were girls, Angela,” Eve said, placing a nurturing hand over her growing belly. “It has to be a son. Don’t you see?”

Angela felt her stomach drop and her throat thicken. She choked out a sob. “But your baby. It was a girl? There wasn’t anything wrong with her?”

“Everything was wrong, Angela.”

“What did he do? What did he do to your baby, Eve?” the panic in Angela’s voice began to escalate.

Eve brought a hand up to Angela’s mouth. “He’ll hear you,” she said with a stern voice. “Stop that!” Eve took a deep, patient breath. “It wasn’t my baby. And when

Samuel saw it was a girl he knew it wasn’t his, either. I know it can be hard, but we have

59 to follow the teachings. We all have to sacrifice sometimes. I’ve had to sacrifice three times,” she said, pulling Angela into her embrace. “You’re lucky. You may never have to.”

As Eve began brushing her hair again, she allowed Angela to cry softly.

Early one morning before dawn, when the skin on her belly had distended as far as it possibly could, Angela awoke to a crushing pain that consumed the entire center of her body. As she brought her hands to her belly she was frightened to feel that it was hard.

When the pain passed, her belly softened right beneath her hand. Worried, she went and woke Eve, who smiled and told her there was nothing to fear. Eve assured her that the baby was on the way.

When Angela’s labor began to intensify that afternoon, Samuel sent the girls out to the woods at the back of the property and told them to stay out there until he said otherwise. After lighting the candles in the living room, Samuel came over to where

Angela was writhing on the couch. “I know this is all new for you. I understand,” he said, gently rubbing her back. “Be brave and don’t worry; I’ll handle everything.”

Without warning, a rush of water flooded out from between Angela’s legs. She gasped and stood up, lifting her nightgown to keep it dry.

“Relax,” Samuel laughed. “This is all perfectly normal. Just wait here. I need to gather some supplies for the birth.” Looking her over he said, “It could happen pretty soon now.”

Left alone in the dim-lit living room, Angela was seized by another labor contraction. Her body crumpled to the floor and she trembled there on her hands and knees. The pain was overwhelming and she began to cry.

“Hey, stop all that fuss,” Samuel chuckled, coming back into the room.

As the contraction let up, still on her hands and knees, Angela looked over to where he was arranging the scissors, string, towels, and steaming bowl of water.

“Samuel,” she whispered, “what if— “

“Don’t say that,” he warned sharply. “Don’t say anything about that. I need to meditate before it comes.” With that, he sat in the lotus position and, closing his eyes he began breathing deeply.

The next pains that came were so strong that Angela cried out and pressed herself up into a squat. She felt that her insides would rip right out of her. Samuel opened his eyes and they widened when he looked down. “It’s coming!” he shouted as his face lit up.

“Lie on your back, it’s coming!”

“No!” she grunted. “I can’t!” she screamed again.

“Lie back!” he ordered again.

But Angela couldn’t move. She stayed upright, squatting, with her hands clutching her knees. The pain was unbelievable, but she could see a small round head emerging from between her legs and the fascination of that sight froze her in place.

“Lie on your back right now, Angela!” Samuel shouted, reeling back his fist.

But the baby’s entire body began slipping out now and he had to catch it. Angela was stunned. The baby, her baby, was perfect: the wet little tuft of hair on its head, the tiny fingers and toes, its puckered little face with eyes already wide open; when it began to

61 cry, a clear, strong cry, Angela laughed with joy. “Oh my god, Samuel! Our baby! It’s perfect.” She reached out to grab it.

“No,” Samuel said firmly, “We don’t know if it’s right yet. I need to check.”

Looking down at the baby, Angela could see Samuel’s eyes cloud over with anger. He shook his head. “This isn’t my son, Angela,” he said, admonishing her.

As he tied off the umbilical cord and reached over to grab the scissors, Angela stared down at the small helpless baby girl, her baby girl. With every spongy cut Samuel made with the scissors, Angela, too, felt more and more helpless. A painful knot began to grow inside of her. She wondered how Eve and the other girls had been able to do this?

How they could sacrifice their own flesh and blood this way? What was Samuel going to do to the baby? Her baby?

With the cord severed, Samuel set the scissors down beside him and pulled the baby to his chest. Angela began to tremble as her baby wailed in protest. “Angela, I need to go take care of this. You should rest. I’ll have Eve bring the girls in when I’m done.”

Angela tried to say something but all that came out was a sob. Samuel stood up.

Squatting there on the floor, Angela felt the knot inside of her grow to an animalistic rage. She eyed the scissors beside her and, when Samuel turned around to walk away with the baby, she picked them up. Still in a squat, she raised the scissors high above her head with both hands and, with a guttural cry, brought them down into his lower back. Samuel shouted and fell to his knees, stunned.

Rising up on shaky legs, Angela pulled her baby out of his arms just as his grasp began to weaken. Cradling the baby in her arms, she looked down at Samuel, crying.

“I’m sorry,” she pleaded. “I didn’t mean to. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do,” she sobbed. Samuel collapsed onto the floor and passed out.

“You do realize that you saved all of those girls, don’t you?” the woman asked.

Angela and the woman sat in the therapy room of the battered women’s shelter.

Looking down at her chubby two-month-old daughter nursing at her breast, Angela smiled. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m so grateful to have my baby, but I still miss him and feel so sad. I never wanted to hurt him.”

“That’s normal,” the woman reassured her. “You did what you had to do. And it’s not like you killed him. He’s where he needs to be now.” She paused. “I just wish you could accept how brave you were. You saved those girls, and a lot of future baby girls, too.”

“Maybe,” Angela said quietly. “Really though, it was Eve. She’s the one who had the key and insisted we get an ambulance for Samuel. Or Sarah. She had to go find help, all by herself.”

“Yes, it was you and Sarah.” The woman curled her fingers around her chin and leaned forward. “Angela, how have your visits with your father been lately?”

“Better, I guess. I think he’s doing better. He’s sticking to the program and everything. I think we’re both feeling better about being around each other.”

“That’s good, Angela,” she smiled. “I just want you to know how proud I am of you. I only wish you could be proud of yourself.”

“I don’t know.” Angela always felt so uncomfortable when the therapist said those kinds of things.

“Angela, you’re going to be okay, you know that? You and Sarah and Hope, you’re all going to be okay.”

Angela looked back down at her baby and stroked her suckling cheek gently. “Do you hear that, Hope?” she said, forcing a smile.

“I mean it,” the woman said, placing her hand over Angela’s.

For a moment, Angela let her eyes meet the woman’s. She wished she could understand what this woman saw in her, how this woman could have so much belief in

Angela’s future, how she could always say Angela was such a courageous young woman.

What she had been through really wasn’t such a big deal. What this woman didn’t understand was that what Angela had done, how all the girls had finally escaped, wasn’t noble or courageous at all. It was selfish. Until Hope came along, Samuel’s love had been enough. But the moment Angela laid eyes on the helpless infant she had brought into existence, she was overwhelmed with a yearning that reached deep into the very core of her. Angela had just wanted her baby; that was all; it was as simple as that. All she knew for sure now was that she had Hope and, to her, that was all that mattered.

Excerpt from The Last Daughter, a Novel

Chapter 6: Dana, 1974

Dana and her fraternal twin sister, Darla, had been born to Ruth in 1969, during

San Francisco’s rise of free love and peace marches. From the little Dana had been told,

Ruth hadn’t discovered she was pregnant until she was halfway through the pregnancy.

According to Ruth, the night the twins were born was the first time she had seen a doctor and, as Ruth put it, “If I’d gone to him a year later it would’ve been too soon,” she’d say smacking a her hand down on the table in mock anger. “That man had a real stick up his ass about me.”

Ruth had several different versions of the story she told about Dana and Darla’s entrance into the world, depending on who was listening. As a little girl, Dana’s favorite version was the one Ruth would tell to her latest batch of friends—who always looked much younger than Ruth and never seemed to stick around long—when they were up late drinking in the small living room of their apartment. That one got so many laughs, and all the listeners—even Ruth—seemed so happy hearing it that it gave Dana a warm feeling to know that her mother had been glad about the arrival of her and her sister. Usually,

65 when it was told, Darla would already be sound asleep on the carpet, her t-shirt bunched up around her and a cracker still clutched tightly in her small fist. But most of the time,

Dana could stay up until the first few adults started drifting off to sleep.

One night, when Dana was about five, Ruth’s group of friends was a bit larger than usual and it was growing late. The crowd started looking sleepy and Ruth, apparently agitated about it, started topping everyone’s drinks off and announced she had a great story to tell them. “In fact,” she said loudly, her voice hoarse, “It’s about the night these two little beauties were born,” she said, motioning to the girls. Darla was sitting with her back against a wall, rocking herself so that the back of her head was gently tapping it in a rhythmic motion. Looking at her, Dana could see her eyes getting heavy and knew she would soon be asleep.

A tall man, with curly blond hair was sitting on the floor near Dana when her mother began the story and smiled down at Dana. “Hey, Sweet, why don’t you come sit on my lap for the story,” he smiled. Dana liked the way his thin jeans suddenly rushed outwards at the bottoms, like they couldn’t get enough space for his ankles. Doing as she was told, Dana sat in his lap, feeling shy as he wrapped his arms around her tiny frame.

“Well,” Ruth started, “I was about as big as fuckin’ house with the twins,” she said, cupping her hands way out in front of her belly. “And for weeks it had been hurtin’.

I mean, I could feel things stretching and pushing, just trying to make room for those two.

One night it hurt so bad, I told my friend, Jake, he’d better take me to the bar.” Here she paused, waiting for the scattered chuckles to die out. “I had been so good, hadn’t had anything hard in months, so I figured I’d take the edge off, right?”

Dana didn’t really understand what Ruth meant when she said this, but she knew she didn’t want Ruth hurting and always felt glad to know she had found something that would help her.

“Well, wouldn’t you just know it that two drinks in my water up and decides to break all over the bar floor. I mean, I’m just standing there looking at Jake while I’ve got fuckin’ Niagra Falls flowing right out of me, you know? And Jake’s just useless. I mean, he’s doubled over, can’t even get out a word looking at the mess I’m making in there.”

Dana could see that even the men were chuckling now and she pulled her shoulders into her neck as she felt the blond man lightly stroking her hair.

“Finally, he says, ‘That’s it, Ruth, I’m getting you to the hospital.’ And he puts me in his truck and I can’t even sit down. I’m practically standing up in that truck, still leaking all over the place, cussing at him to hurry it up and quit going over bumps.

“So we finally get to the hospital and before I know it I’m stuck in a room with

Doctor Tight-Ass himself who’s frowning at me and telling me it’s too soon. ‘Maybe too soon for you!’ I told him. ‘You’re not the one that’s been carrying a couple a kids around inside you for the better part of a year. Give me something for this goddamn pain and let’s get this show on the road!,’ I told him.”

Dana startled a little when the blond man suddenly spoke. “What did he say to that?” he asked.

“Not a goddamn thing!” Ruth laughed, wiping a thumb under her eyes “Next thing I know some nurse is waking me up, telling me I gotta go all the way into the

67 nursery to see the twins because they’ve got them in these incubators and can’t take them out yet.

“I tell you what,” Ruth said, shaking her head, “I went in there and when they told me those tiny little things were my babies, I nearly slapped the nurse. Those girls couldn’t have weighed more than three pounds each. I looked at that nurse and you could tell she didn’t know what was what with me, so I just laughed and told her, I says, ‘You honestly mean to tell me that those little potatoes are what’s been given me all this trouble all along?’” Ruth stopped there, looking serious. “And what do you think she said to that?” she asked. Then before anyone could answer she burst out laughing. “Not a goddamn thing!” She said, slapping her thigh to emphasize each syllable.

And even Dana laughed a little, feeling like she got the joke. As the laughter died down, the blond man lifted Dana off of his lap and stood up.

“Well, this little girl is looking sleepy,” he said cheerily, lifting Dana up into his arms. “I’ll go put her to bed for you, Ruth.”

But Dana didn’t feel sleepy at all as he walked her back to the apartment’s bedroom. She felt a familiar clenching sensation just below her ribcage as he closed the door behind them and, although similar things had happened to her before when they were staying with Ruth’s old boyfriend, Dana never did like hearing the story about how she and Darla had been born after that night.

Though they were the same age, Dana was very much like an older sibling to her twin. Darla, though not as quiet as Dana, spoke very few words. It was not that she didn’t want to—Darla was always excitedly making noises when she wanted to say

68 something—it was that she couldn’t seem to get many words out correctly. There were also things that Darla had difficulty doing—like tying her shoes, zipping her coat, or pouring milk—which Dana always did for her. Though well meaning adults spoke slowly to Darla, Dana knew it wasn’t that Darla didn’t understand things, it was just that she couldn’t seem to get her mouth and hands to do what she wanted most of the time.

For as long as Dana could remember she had been taking care of Darla. When they were three, Ruth would leave them at home alone with only bottles of milk to drink and the television on to keep them entertained. The girls, especially Darla, would cry and

Dana would beg Ruth not to go.

Usually, Ruth would try to sneak out the door after the girls drifted off to sleep, but waking up unable to find her mother had terrified Dana so much, she started forcing herself to stay awake until Ruth fell asleep. Dana had felt that she could at least try to prevent Ruth’s leaving if she were awake. The prospect of being alone was terrifying for

Dana, especially when her sister was depending on her.

The first night Dana had kept herself awake, she was laying on the couch watching television. Darla was also lying on the couch, but she was already sleeping.

Dana had been alerted by the sound of Ruth fiddling with the apartment keys at the door.

Jerking her head up with a sharp intake of air, Dana saw her mother, her brown cloth purse already over her shoulder, slipping out through the front door. With her eyes flying open, Dana rushed over to the door in a panic and started squeezing her body through before Ruth could shut it.

Ruth looked down at Dana and let out a huff. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Dana felt hot streaks running down her face and realized she was crying. “I want to come.” Dana’s voice was barely audible.

Ruth rolled her eyes. “I already told you before, you can’t come with me.”

“Please?” Dana said, looking up at her mother. She could already feel the emptiness of the apartment pressing into her back.

Ruth sighed. “They don’t let no kids in the bar, dummy; I told you that.”

“But-“ Dana’s sniffle gave way to sobs and she clutched at her mother’s skirt.

“Hey, quit your whining,” Ruth said, ripping Dana’s hands away from her and trying to slam the door.

But Dana opened it again, trying to press her body outside to be with her mother.

“Ruth,” she shrieked, “Don’t leave! Please don’t go, Ruth!” She could hardly form the words as her body heaved with panicked cries.

Ruth shoved Dana back into the apartment and the force knocked her onto her back. “Shut up! What the hell are you doing? Trying to wake up the whole neighborhood? Then you’d really be in trouble.”

Ruth had warned Dana over and over again about the dangers of the neighbors being disturbed by her fussing. She had told her about how if Dana ever bothered them, the neighbors would be angry and call the police; and if the police came they would take

Dana away – she would never see her mother or sister again and they would have no money to get by anymore. The thought of being dragged away to some prison for children terrified Dana even more than being left at home. Like she always did when

Ruth reminded her, Dana tried to make herself stop crying, but her body fought to and she couldn’t keep quiet.

‘I have to go!” Ruth shouted in a whisper. “Now, you keep quiet and take care of your sister.”

Dana looked over at Darla, still sound asleep on the couch and felt her body tense up and her breathing slow. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to Darla. She squeezed the muscles of her face together to try to make the tears stop coming and, before she could turn back, Ruth had slammed the door and Dana could hear the sound of the key turning in the lock.

Her chest clenched and she began to cry again. “Ruth,” she sobbed. She said her mother’s name like a mantra with ever exhale. Dana knew it wouldn’t make her mother

come back, but she couldn’t stop crying it out. “Ruuuuuth. Ruuuuuth. Ruuuuuuth.”

Chapter 7

Dana was only six years old when she killed her sister, Darla. Over the years, despite all her efforts to shut out the memory of what she had done, the day her sister died still haunted Dana, and the guilt she had felt ever since refused to subside no matter how much time passed.

It was mid-September and warm. Much to the twins’ delight, Ruth had brought them along with her to visit some friends of hers up in the Palo Alto hills. The girls had never seen such large houses, each with its own perfectly groomed yard. Apparently Ruth had never been there either, because Dana could see the surprise on her face even though she kept muttering under her breath about “tight asses” and “stiffs.”

When they arrived, the woman who answered the door appeared to be very young and Dana thought she looked more like a girl than a woman, especially after she heard her speak.

“Well, hello, little ladies,” the girl woman said, bending down low so that she was at eye level with the girls. “I’m Mandy. You must be Jill’s friends.”

Darla gave her a big smile as she laughed with excitement. “Hi!” she called out, in her voice that seemed too deep for such a young child.

Mandy was obviously delighted by Darla’s greeting. “And what’s your name?” she asked her.

“Darla!” she exclaimed, not pronouncing the “r” in her name.

“Well,” Mandy said, gently pinching Darla’s chin, “I think I’ll just call you Doll, okay?” Darla laughed again.

Dana looked up at Ruth and could see her smile wearing thin. She always seemed to have more patience for people talking to Darla than she had when they spoke to Dana, but she got angry with the girls if they distracted the adults too much, like Darla was doing now.

Mandy, clearly oblivious to Ruth’s early signs of fuming, turned to Dana. “And what’s your name, pretty girl?” she asked. Her smile was so warm and beautiful to Dana, she couldn’t help smiling in return. Dana opened her mouth to answer, but Ruth cut her off before she could speak.

“Okay, girls. You’ve bothered the lady enough.” Ruth said abruptly, grabbing the twins by the hands and pulling them away from Mandy.

Mandy stood up quickly, looking stiff and, as Dana noticed her face flush slightly, she thought how much Mandy looked almost young enough to be Ruth’s daughter. But when Mandy looked back down at the girls, her furrowed brow changed into a relaxed smile and Dana felt relieved.

‘This your house?” Ruth asked incredulously, her voice hoarse. “Where’s Jill?”

“Jill’s out back.” Mandy replied quietly. “It’s my parent’s. I’m just house sitting for them,” she explained.

Ruth answered her with only a grunt and led the girls through the house. Dana couldn’t believe how spacious it was. She thought about all the people that must live there to fill it and pictured hundreds of them spreading out sleeping bags and blankets along the floors each night as they went to bed. She had never seen so many fancy things and was fascinated by the wooden floors and the way they shined. Finally, Ruth found the glass door that led to the backyard and dropped the girls’ hands as they followed her through a scatter of people to the cooler.

Pulling out a wet bottle, Ruth turned to the girls. “Now don’t cause any trouble,” she said in a voice that was low but harsh. “I swear to Jesus I’ll beat you to the moon and back if you do.” Then she looked at Dana, her eyes wide and serious. “You take care of your sister, you hear me?”

Dana nodded just before Ruth turned her back to the girls and walked away.

Grabbing Darla’s hand out of habit, Dana looked around the backyard. There were not many people but it seemed like a lot to Dana. Most of the yard was covered in cement with patio furniture randomly spread and clustered on it. There was also a small grassy area, neatly mowed. But what really drew Dana in was the pool. Outlined in what appeared to be stone, the pool as shaped like a pear, with the larger, deeper end looking a darker shade of blue than the smaller, shallow one. Dana had only ever seen a pool on television before and she had an urge to run right over to it to see if it was real or not, but she knew Ruth would not approve.

Instead, she looked around at the people, mostly women, and mostly all looking quite a bit younger than Ruth. She saw a couple squeezed together on a lawn chair, kissing and running their hands over each other’s bodies. She saw a few men, dark glass bottles in hand, flipping some kind of meat on the barbeque. She could hear Ruth already laughing and telling stories at the far end of the patio as she looked at the group of people gathered at the round patio table, arranging a white powder over its glass top.

Suddenly, Dana felt Darla trying to pull away from her. “Andy!” she cried out.

Dana looked up to see Mandy approaching them with glasses of milk. “Hi, Doll,” she said, squatting down in front of them. Darla smiled with delight. “Now, you have to tell me, what is your sister’s name?” Dana noticed that Mandy’s voice was a little slower than when she had first talked to them at the door.

“Dana!” Darla proclaimed.

Mandy smiled at Dana. “Well, Dana, I saw you looking at the pool.”

Dana immediately lowered her head in shame, guilty at being caught.

“It’s still heated, you know?” she said, winking at Dana. “Would you girls like to swim?”

Darla didn’t seem to understand what Mandy was proposing and just laughed, but

Dana’s eyes flew open in disbelief and she didn’t bother to hide her smile as she nodded her head emphatically.

“Alright,” said Mandy, standing up and taking each girl by the hand. “Let’s go ask your momma.” The hum of the different conversations seemed to grow as Mandy led the twins over to their mother.

Ruth was standing with a group of people, laughing with her head thrown back before she saw them walk up. Her face immediately went from joy to scorn as she looked at Dana. “What did I tell you? Quit bothering the lady!” Her voice was restrained but

Dana could feel Mandy’s body jolt slightly in response.

“Oh, no, they’re not bothering me at all. I just wanted to ask you if it would be okay for them to go swimming. I could watch them.”

Dana saw Ruth’s eyes moving back and forth from the milk in their hands to

Mandy’s arms around each girls’ shoulder.

“They don’t swim,” Ruth said with finality. Then, moving in close to Mandy,

Ruth set her jaw like Dana had seen her do so many times before. “And I don’t need nobody watching my kids,” she said, her voice filled with venom. Without moving away from Mandy, Ruth looked down at Dana. “Now, you go take care of your sister like I told you to – and quit bothering people.”

Dana felt her lower lip begin to quiver and she quickly grabbed Darla’s hand, taking her over to the small lawn. By the time they sat down in the soft grass, Dana was crying and she pulled her knees up into her chest, wrapping her arms around her head to hide her face. When she finally looked up, she saw Mandy – who also looked like her lip was trembling – rushing into the house. Darla was nearby, picking leaves off a bush, so

Dana lay down, pulling blades of grass and then watching them fall slowly as she held them up high and let them go into the wind.

When she finally bored of playing with the grass, Dana sat up and looked at all the adults again. Music was playing loudly now, but she could still hear their voices. The conversations had become louder and more animated and Dana had the sensation of

76 being invisible. She looked for Mandy but couldn’t find her among the people. Wishing she could go into the house and find her, Dana sighed. Mandy reminded her of her kindergarten teacher, who had always made her feel like she was safe and like she wasn’t invisible. Remembering the pool with longing, Dana turned to look at it again. As she saw Darla, kneeling down on the flat stones, reaching out for what looked like a leaf floating gently along the dark blue water Dana felt her heart contract and seem to stop beating.

Scrambling to her feet, Dana opened her mouth to scream her sister’s name, but when Darla’s outstretched body silently slipped, head first, below the surface, nothing but air escaped Dana’s throat. For a moment she froze, but after quickly pulling in a breath of air, she broke into hysterics and ran to get her mother. Dana found Ruth sitting on the floor with her back toward her, deeply engrossed in a conversation. She shook her mother’s shoulder, “Ruth,” she said, pulling her shoulder back and forth.

Ruth turned and glared at Dana. “Knock it off!” she said, irritated.

“But, Ruth!” Dana said, her panic growing with each long second that Ruth waited.

Ruth kept her back to Dana and sighed, shaking her head in disapproval.

Dana glanced at the pool again and she felt her terror becoming larger than life itself. She started to make sounds that she didn’t want to make; her body started moving in ways she didn’t tell it to move. “Ruth! It’s Darla! Ruth!” she screamed, grabbing both her mother’s shoulders.

In a split second, Ruth had turned around and sent Dana flying to the floor with the back of her wrist. “Shut up, you goddamn sass!” she hissed. Turning back to the

77 group, their wide, blood-shot eyes fixed on Ruth, she shook her head again. “Fuckin’ kids, huh?”

As Dana lay on the hard cement, the side of her face where Ruth had hit her felt like a thick balloon, but she got up and ran over to the pool. Through vision blurred by tears, she saw Darla, face-up, eyes wide open, beneath the water’s surface. Dana knew she should jump in the water and try to do something, but she didn’t know what. Darla seemed to be looking straight into Dana’s eyes as she slowly floated downward, limbs outstretched and unmoving. Watching her sink, Dana cried silently as her own body began to shake. She could feel her knees digging into the stones as they trembled and even her teeth began to chatter as she stared at her sister, helpless to do anything. She thought she saw Darla’s eyes close slightly and Dana felt like her stomach was being ripped right out of her body. Becoming vaguely aware of a growing nausea, Dana suddenly heard a familiar voice.

“Dana?” As Mandy came up behind Dana and placed a gentle hand on her back, she suddenly screamed, “Oh my god! Ruth!” she hollered, and dove into the pool fully clothed. The conversations started dying out as people began straggling over to see what had happened. Just as the music was turned off, Ruth came pushing through the crowd of people just in time to see Mandy pulling Darla’s limp body out of the water. “Call an ambulance!” Mandy screamed as she laid Darla out on the cement.

Dana, her body still acting of its own accord, walked over to where Darla lay.

Ruth, finally seeming to register what was happening, grabbed Dana by the shoulders and began shaking her violently. “What the hell did you do?” She screamed, not holding

78 anything back now. “Can’t listen to a goddamn thing I tell you!” Ruth began hitting and swiping at Dana’s face as she broke into tears.

Dana couldn’t feel anything her mother was doing to her. She had become completely numb. She was more confused by Ruth’s tears than the attack. As one of the men pulled Ruth away from her, Dana realized it was the first time she had ever seen her mother cry, and the weight of what had happened to their small family began to sink in.

As Ruth fell down to the ground and scooped Darla up into her arms, she began to scream, rocking back and forth. But her tears did not cool the fire in her eyes. Dana could feel the hatred seeping out of them as Ruth stared hard at her. “Look what you did!” she screamed. “Worthless, just like I always said. You killed her! You killed your sister,

Dana! You killed her!” Looking down at Darla’s lifeless body, Dana knew Ruth was right, and she knew there was no undoing what she had done.

First

we coffee creamed

warm because of Mother

need that and

bodies the weight of

held can’t

get enough because of

Mother

If you do it every day it gets easier? (all of it) every thing a fight

hate the “perfect mother” vanity plate in my face bragging rights mock me while I choke on her fumes stay up all night resting assured the kids will not be fine and they won’t forgive us for lesser offenses (insignificant) all is (not) lost

She bleeds everywhere unapologetically

I see red on white

—toilet, towel, tile— and let go knowing she is written.

Speech

I hate you she said

She meant something

Maybe she did.

Home sweat, muscles not enough

I want to paint these walls wash them in scarlet let go my weak and failing

I scratch bit by bit dark chips beneath my nails browned dust blown away reminders of everything of nothingness

Stolen

Holly sat at the table, her morning coffee cupped in both hands, and looked through the rising steam at her daughter. The fall sun shone through the window and made a sort of halo around the girl’s form. Thea did not even seem to notice that it had been one year to the day since it happened, and Holly wondered how it was possible for her daughter to move on so easily.

“What?” Thea asked, catching her mother’s stare. Her tone was a newer mixture of sarcasm and impatience that Holly was becoming familiar with.

“Nothing,” Holly smiled. Sometimes, looking at Thea, she would suddenly feel how very lucky she was to still have her, how it was almost as if Thea had been—as if they both had been—given a second chance at life. But at the same time, this sensation of having a daughter on borrowed or stolen time was disconcerting. Sometimes, Holly felt as if she were breaking some unspoken cosmic rule, and she feared the consequences of being found out.

Though the incident had made the front page of their small local newspaper and was at the forefront of everyone’s minds for a few weeks, soon it was forgotten; soon— even for Thea it seemed—it was as if nothing had ever happened. Holly took her to the free counseling service that had been provided, but the woman there said Thea was fine, well adjusted, recovered.

Recovered. The word had seemed so strange when the woman said it. Holly watched her mouth carefully as it formed the sound, and she could swear she felt time slowing, felt the room straining in toward her from all sides.

“Keep up, Buttercup.” That was what they used to say to each other if one of them slowed down on their walks home. Holly had started it when Thea was young. As Thea got older and eventually faster than Holly, she started saying it too. Walking side-by-side, whoever was the more energetic of the two would quicken her pace and playfully call the challenge over to the other. “Keep up, Buttercup.” It was just the two of them. It always had been.

But they did not walk home together anymore. Now they had a car. Within weeks of the incident Holly had found a way to finally get them a car. If she could help it, they would never take the bus again; more importantly, if she could help it, they would never walk home alone along a dusky path again.

The evening it happened, Holly had been tired, more so than usual. It had been one of those late October heat waves, the kind that made it feel almost as though the summer were not really over. That is, until the sun set and the chill of the moist air settled onto bare arms and necks. Then it was clear that winter would indeed come and that, soon, sweaters and scarves and gloves would be the only way to keep comfortable.

Everything had seemed typical to Holly that night; nothing was unusual or out of place. The city bus released its familiar hiss as it halted to a stop, and Holly knew the distance from its last step to the sidewalk so well that she did not even have to look down as she put out her foot. She and Thea started down the same path they had taken every evening at the same time for as long as she had worked and lived there.

Holly had no feeling of foreboding, no telling tingle up her spine, no premonitory visions or warnings as she and her daughter proceeded home that night. She, who had always prided herself on her natural power of intuition and an awareness of her surroundings, had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. She did not suspect, did not even consider the possibility that a man might be looming in the shadows, thickly camouflaged among the branches and shrubs that lined the creek. She did not imagine there could be a man, watching and waiting for just the right time to move.

Weeks, the discovery said. It had been weeks that he’d watched them, studied, waited, calculated. How long had it taken him to see that Holly was no match for him, that she was no lioness with her cub?

Only after, when Holly thought about it for a long time, did she realize that a change had come over Thea just before. It was so subtle, but it had been there, hadn’t it?

Something in her daughter’s expression, her voice, shifted somehow, as if some other part of her mind was suddenly speaking to her, demanding her attention. When it came down to it, that was the only thing Holly noticed; and she only noticed later—too late to make any kind of a difference.

It was hard to remember, exactly. Either Thea’s eyes flew open suddenly or her body jerked backward unexpectedly. Holly did not know which one came first. She felt

86 sure that she had instinctively grabbed her daughter’s arm as she jerked back. But then it seemed she had simply said Thea’s name, asked Thea’s name, really. “Thea?” And what she had meant was: Are you all right? She knew for certain, both then and now, that Thea never made a sound. From the moment her eyes widened—and even through the struggle—till the time she was safe again, Thea was deadly silent.

It was not deeply dark yet, and so Holly saw both his arms clearly. They were thick and long and strained. One was wrapped tightly around Thea’s neck, the other across her chest. He gripped Thea so tightly around her middle that, after a few days, black bruises formed along the sides of her ribs. They were almost shaped like fingers and over time they turned blue and then gray and then yellow. Even after the bruises finally disappeared, Holly still imagined them there, under the soft fabric of her daughter’s shirt.

Seeing those purposeful arms on her daughter seemed to Holly more of a frozen picture than a rapid action taking place before her. She paused at the sight (of this she was also certain). Mostly, what transfixed her so about the image was that it did not strike her as real. For a long time, it seemed, she stood still and contemplated what she was seeing, trying to make sense of the foreign arms and familiar chest and neck locked together in such an intimate way. In her mind, the image did not move, but she gradually became aware of the feel of her heart in her own chest, and she felt rather than heard its rhythmic pulsing in the base of her ears.

That was when Holly had jumped into action. As Thea’s body was wrenched away from her side, Holly’s shaking hands reached out on their own to reclaim her. She clasped her daughter’s dangling arm, but was afraid to touch the man’s. Thea’s skin was

87 warm against the cold evening air, and Holly’s hands felt sweaty and slippery as she tried to tighten her grip.

The man pulled hard, dragging Thea—and with her Holly—toward the thicker darkness of the trees that lined the creek. Holly struggled to hold on to Thea, whose body seemed as silent as her voice. But as she felt herself pulled farther and farther from safety, Holly found herself wanting to let go. She felt the man’s strength, and how it was impossible to overpower him; she felt the cold certainty of his intention, and how she could not face it. But neither could she let Thea go.

She did not want to touch him, this stranger, locked in on her daughter like a vicious dog, especially when she saw his eyes, fixed, distant. She tried to kick him but, because it was hard to see and because her legs were shaking so violently, she was afraid she might kick Thea too, and so her efforts were weak and ineffective. She felt herself tiring as the man pulled them nearer to the shades and shadows. Something deep within

Holly told her that she had to keep Thea from that darkness, that once it enveloped her daughter, it would be too late.

Holly gathered all her strength from her body, all her will and purpose from her mind, and, releasing her hold on her daughter, grabbed the man’s arm instead, gripping his flesh, allowing her nails to dig in deep, hoping to draw blood. She reached up a hand and clawed at his neck in the same way. The feel of his sweat on his skin made her stomach turn, but she persevered. All Holly could hear was the sound of her own hard breath as she fought against the man. And in that moment, what struck her most was the silence of it all. Even in the midst of such terror and chaos, she was aware of how strange it was that something so horrific could be so perfectly quiet, so seemingly peaceful. With

88 all three of their bodies intertwined in such a primal embrace, Holly thought of how disturbingly intimate their struggling together was.

The ground beneath their feet became soft and uneven as they neared the water.

Long, hanging willow branches swept across their backs and faces, and then it was dark.

Holly’s foot caught on a rock or stick and she began to fall, losing her grip on the man, only managing to brush her fingers along her daughter’s arm as she was finally pulled away completely. Her knees sank into the mulchy earth and Holly heard the slosh of feet in the filthy creek water. She thought of how Thea’s shoes would be ruined, how her socks would be soaked through and cold against her skin. “Thea!” she called out as soon as she no longer heard them in the water. It was not a request, but a command, as if Thea had better come now or she would be in trouble. But she knew they were on the other side of the creek now, where the path ran into so many backs of houses, so many streets lined with countless cars that could take Thea farther and farther away.

Holly had seen, had felt really, the man’s purpose, what he was intending to do.

She stood up, alone in the dark, and called her daughter’s name one last time. “Thea!

Now!” Holly shouted desperately. It was all she could do. She was exhausted and blinded where she stood. All she saw was a bit of light on the path from which they had come.

Holly turned toward it, considering.

She could call for help. She could run to a well-lit street and flag down a car passing by. Almost immediately after she called out, a low, baritone-deep grunt sounded through the empty night and broke into her thoughts, then the splash of creek water.

Holly strained her eyes to see through the dark. “Mommy,” Thea said, breathless. Holly

89 reached out and found her daughter with her hands. And then, though Holly could not say whether it had all lasted seconds or hours, it was finally over.

Thea had trembled and sobbed for a long time afterward. Holly held her and told her how brave she was and that now she was safe. Then, once Thea finished crying, she never mentioned what had happened again.

The man was easily found and caught. He confessed more than he had to: his attraction to Thea, the camper where he would keep her hidden; he held nothing back.

Holly and Thea never saw him again except for a mug shot to confirm his identity. In the picture, his eye, still fixed with an eerie sense of vacancy, was deeply blood shot and bruised from when Thea had stabbed it with her thumb. Thea did not have to testify or relive the experience. She seemed to move on almost immediately. She was a normal girl, leading a normal life, just as before.

In the year that had passed since it happened, every day the incident was at least in the very back of Holly’s mind; but most days it remained at the forefront. That her body or even her mind had betrayed her, Holly could accept. That she had physical limits—that there were men who by their sheer size could so easily overpower her—she could forgive.

What Holly could not tell anyone, what she could never absolve herself of, was not that she hadn’t been able to save her daughter, but that she had given in. Something inside her—whether instinct or premonition, it did not matter—knew, with a deep, awful knowing that her daughter was dead. When the gazelle is captured by the lion, secured in its deathly grip, at a certain point it stops fighting for its life; it lets go and accepts its fate.

When Holly had lost her grip on the man, on her daughter, she understood that it was over: the struggle, her hope, Thea’s life.

In that moment, Holly saw her daughter as dead, her body violated and vacant, empty of what and who she had once been. She saw Thea’s journey from the womb to the grave, from ether to ether, already completed. Holly envisioned herself as a widow of motherhood and wondered how she would bear it, how all the mothers who had known such grief before her had born it. At that moment, when Holly fell to the ground, her knees sinking into the soft earth, in her mind’s eye, she had already begun to separate herself from daughter.

These visions and the sensation of separation were so extreme, that when Thea suddenly appeared to her in the dark that night, it seemed to Holly as if her daughter had returned from the grave. When Thea had called out, “Mommy,” when Holly had reached out with her fingertips and felt the warmth of her daughter’s skin, the softness of her hair, she felt she had been given a second chance. For days, she would stare at Thea or place a hand on her shoulder, making sure she was solid, confirming that her return was real.

Some days, like today, simply sitting together at the breakfast table, Holly would still look at Thea in this way, and she would still be struck by the sensation that her daughter was there on borrowed time. It was almost as if there were two Theas. Though

Holly understood they were both one and the same, she could not forget the one who had been buried a year ago.

“Thea,” she asked, letting the steam from her coffee rise up through her nostrils.

“Yeah?” Thea’s tone was more sincere, even curious now as she looked at her mother from across the table.

“Remember that night?” Holly was not sure how much to say, to ask. Thea looked confused.

“When that man tried to take you,” Holly said.

Thea did not stop eating; her expression did not suggest any retained terror at the recollection. “Yeah?”

“How did you feel when I was trying to help you?” Holly asked, hesitating as she found the words. What she could never ask was if Thea knew how she had failed, how she had given up.

“I don’t know,” Thea said nonchalantly. “Good, I guess,” she shrugged.

“Because you knew I was there?” Holly felt her heart asserting its presence beneath the curved bones of her chest as she remembered the struggle. She had to set her coffee down.

“Well, I knew you were saving me, so I felt fine.”

The way Thea said it was so matter-of-fact that a strange wave of both relief and guilt flooded over Holly. She thought how maybe it was better that her daughter never knew. “You saved yourself,” Holly admitted.

Thea simply shrugged. But Holly knew how Thea had really saved her own life.

Thea went back to focusing on her breakfast, and for that Holly was glad. She could not bear to look into her daughter’s eyes at that moment. Holly was afraid that what

she always kept hidden there might suddenly become transparent, that she might accidentally betray the terrible truth. She was afraid that her daughter would finally know

how, in that moment just as she lost her grip, she had given over to the idea, that

92 somewhere deep in her heart, as her fingers brushed and then finally left the warmth of

Thea’s dangling arm, Holly had accepted the loss.

Unconditional

When the sheriff’s deputies showed up on Martha’s doorstep one cold and quiet morning with two warrants—one to search her house and one to arrest her adult son Robert—

Martha’s first thought was that there had been some terrible misunderstanding.

Immediately, she assumed she had heard the two men wrong. The deputies, both with close-shaved heads and tightly held mouths, produced papers for Martha, but she could not make sense of them. She could not make sense of anything. Robert, her sweet Bobby whom she had known and cared for and protected for twenty-five years was about to be taken away from her. And that was all Martha knew.

Martha had loved her son profoundly from the moment his tiny, wet-wrinkled hand grasped her outstretched finger just moments after birth. During Martha’s pregnancy, her fellow Sisters at the local protestant church would place their warm hands over her distended belly. “You’ll love this little angel more than you ever could have imagined,” they would assure her, a knowing smile on each of their faces. And they were right.

Once Robert was old enough to understand, Martha told him what it means to love a person unconditionally. “I will always love you, Bobby,” she assured him, wrapping her arms around his tiny, cherub-like form. “No matter what,” she said. “That’s the way God loves all his children, and we must follow his example.” And when Martha spoke, though Robert was too young to answer yet, she could see his wide eyes listening, taking in her words; and Martha could sense that Robert knew, without the slightest doubt, that he was loved absolutely.

Martha’s husband Dan sometimes criticized her, saying she doted on their boy too much, indulged him too readily. “Do you really want him to grow up to be just another one of those entitled, overgrown toddlers trying to pass for adults these days?” he would ask. But Dan spent most of his time at work on the line or out in his shed with a project, and Martha knew he did not understand the first thing about how to raise a child.

When Robert was a teenager, Dan and Martha let him move into the garage, which Dan had carpeted and turned into a studio, complete with a table, couch, and even a half-bath. Dan said it would be good for Robert to have some independence, but Martha knew what he meant was that it would be good for Robert to be physically separated from her. Dan wanted his son to be a real man, and that meant not being dependant on his mother. What Dan did not seem to understand was that it was their duty as parents to give their only child all the love they possibly could. There was no room for mistakes or do- over’s: Martha had already been an older mother when she delivered; Robert was all they had.

Martha loved Robert, but she could admit that the passing years had not cured him of his slovenly ways. When she could no longer stand the stale musk and food rot

95 smells making their way through the edges of Robert’s door, Martha would sneak in to clean up, usually while Robert was at the gas station where he worked. Martha changed his sheets, gathered scattered dishes and laundry, and even straightened up a bit while she was at it. She made sure to do this when Dan wasn’t around, so he wouldn’t criticize, and

Robert never once complained about it. And though she felt admittedly disquieted when she found lacey thong underwear or recordable DVDs titled “Jackie” or “Sarah” in

Bobby’s angled handwriting, Martha did not complain either.

“I’m certain there’s been some sort of mistake,” Martha finally said to the men standing in her doorway, papers in hand. Her voice sounded far away and hollow, unrecognizable to her own ears. When the deputies assured Martha there had been no mistake, she felt her body go light and tingly, as if she were floating. She heard the deputy say “suspected,” and held tight to it. “I don’t understand,” Martha said, and the strange voice that no longer belonged to her flew up above Martha till it was soft and airy, till she hardly heard herself say: “But I did everything right.”

When Martha first went to visit Robert in the county jail, she wore her best dress and held her head high. He was still awaiting trial and so she reminded the women at church that her son was innocent till proven guilty, that only God could know and judge Robert’s true heart. Though they brought foil-topped casseroles and wooden salad bowls with their names etched on the bottoms to help her and Dan through their difficult time, none of the women would come with Martha to visit her son; even her own husband, Robert’s own very flesh and blood, refused, saying he would never step foot in a prison. Martha reminded Dan it was only jail, not prison, but he wouldn’t budge. And so Martha went

96 alone, reminding herself that when she committed to raising and loving this boy, it had been a lifetime commitment; mothering was not some fancy to be taken lightly: a mother could not just throw up her hands at the first thing that went wrong or give up on her child at the slightest mistake made. She had promised herself, Robert, and God, that she would love her child no matter what, and that was exactly what Martha intended to do.

Standing in front of the towering brick building, Martha watched as the automatic doors to the reception area slid open and closed while lawyers, guards, and visitors walked in and out. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer that everything would be all right, that whatever Robert had done (if he had in fact done anything at all) would be forgiven, that he would be given a second chance to serve the lord. Only suspected, she reminded herself. When she opened her eyes, Martha felt comforted; her feet propelled her forward without any effort at all, as though she were being carried through the glass doors opening silently before her. And though the guards took away the home-baked cookies Martha had made for Robert, she smiled throughout the whole visit and assured

Robert that everything would be just fine. When the time came for Martha to leave,

Robert held her there with his tear-clouded eyes. “You’ve always been there for me,

Mom,” he said, and Martha knew it was true, and she knew it was all worth it, that her

Bobby was worth all the love she had to give.

Just weeks before Robert’s arrest, Martha and Dan had sat at their kitchen table to celebrate their son’s twenty-fourth birthday. That night, Robert had brought a girl. He never brought girls. Yes, Martha saw remnants of the young women who spent time with her son in his studio: a half-used lipstick rolled under the bed or a fine-knit cardigan strewn over the couch, forgotten; there were the unpleasant things she found, too, like the

97 used condoms or the pair of real handcuffs, their glint reflecting her furrowed brow, but

Martha knew none of that was her business, and she knew it was not her place to judge, but God’s. Besides, Robert still went to church with her occasionally and he never spoke a single harsh word. Even as a teenager, Bobby always had a kind greeting and a ready hug for Martha. While the women at church were complaining of teenage rebellion, underage drinking, and blatant disrespect, Martha was always filled with a secret pride.

Sometimes, listening to her Sisters’ woes, she would finally say, “Oh, I guess my Bobby and I haven’t quite got to that stage yet,” even though he was already eighteen, and she knew the women understood her meaning.

Annie was the name of the girl Robert had brought; Martha remembered, though she had only seen her that one time. Annie was a plain and quiet girl, certainly not one of

Robert’s promiscuous late-night visitors. Martha had never seen so much as the back of those women’s heads on their way out. They were always gone before the sun even had a chance to come up. That night, as she watched Robert blow out his cake candles, Martha wondered if Annie might be the one. If he’d brought her to meet his parents, certainly

Robert was at least serious about this girl who, even if she didn’t have much to say, looked Martha straight in the eye with an open, honest face.

But Martha never saw Annie again. And soon after Martha’s visit with Robert at the jail, the casseroles and salads and pies delivered to her front door with love, slowed and then stopped. When Robert made the front page of the local paper, Martha and Dan were removed from the church’s prayer list completely. Dan had only gone to church holidays, but now he told Martha he would never go again. “Bobby’s going to Hell in a

98 hand-basket,” he said, “and most likely, so are we for having raised him.” Though Robert had been generous enough to say “we,” Martha knew what he meant was “you.”

“He made a mistake!” Martha protested. “Bobby hasn’t even been tried yet—we don’t know how much of it is true.” But Dan would hear none of it. He turned his back and headed out to his shed as Martha, not even attempting to hide the desperation in her voice, called after her husband, “He’s not a monster, Danny!”

When Robert was eight, he fell from the backyard tree and broke his arm. Martha was in the kitchen, washing dishes when she saw him fall. As she stared out the window, Martha could hardly make sense of the blurred, falling figure till it hit the ground. One minute she was enjoying a moment of brief reverie, her hands resting in the warmth of the soapy sink before pulling the stopper; the next, she was running outside, wailing even louder than her child. “Danny!” she screamed to her husband as she ran. But when she got to

Robert, writhing and grabbing at the grotesque splinter of bone pushing through the flesh of his forearm, Martha realized Dan was at work and that she would have to deal with the bawling, broken child herself. She turned her head away from the blood beginning to ooze out of Robert’s open wound and scooped him up in her arms, her new white shirt be damned. “Everything’s going to be all right, Bobby,” she reassured him, feeling the warmth of his small body against hers. “Mommy will take care of you.”

At the hospital, Martha waited in a dark blue, scoop-bottom chair for Dan to arrive from work and for Robert to come out of surgery. While Martha sat, her mind kept returning to the awful thud her little Robert had made when he hit the pavement beneath the tree. Before surgery, the doctor said how lucky it was that Robert hadn’t hit his head

99 as well, and for that she was grateful. Martha tried to close her eyes and rest, but all she could think of was how it was her own fault Robert got hurt. She knew climbing trees was dangerous and even Dan had been after her to not let him climb the one in their yard, which had been cemented underneath. It made Robert happy to climb that tree. That was why she’d let him do it, only because she’d wanted him to be happy. Sitting there,

Martha could almost hear Dan saying how she catered to Bobby’s whims; and that was exactly what she had done, instead of protecting him, as she should have.

Martha suddenly felt a warm hand come to rest on her shoulder and she jumped slightly. She looked up, ready to hear Dan’s I-told-you-so. But it wasn’t her husband standing there: it was Janet, from church. Janet was a tall woman, lean but shapely, who did not look a day over thirty. Between her bright eyes and narrow waist, if Martha didn’t know Janet had given birth to four children (one of whom was already grown and out of the house now) she never would have believed it. “How are you?” Janet said, sitting down in the empty chair beside Martha, her hand still resting on Martha’s shoulder.

Janet’s voice was soothing as she held Martha’s gaze. Looking into Janet’s face, the juxtaposition of her eyes, strained with concern above a sympathetic smile, Martha could hold back no more. She hunched forward in her hospital chair and sobbed unabashedly before Janet. All Martha could picture was Robert lying unconscious beneath a blinding surgical lamp with a tube shoved down his throat while the doctor tried to piece the bones in his arm back together like a jigsaw puzzle.

“Oh,” Janet said dotingly, draping her long arms around Martha, “He’s going to be okay, Martha.” But Martha wasn’t so sure. When she finally stopped crying, Janet sat up straight and looked Martha in the eye again. “Now,” Janet said, all business, “We’ve

100 already started a meal train sign-up for your family. You’ll all be taken care of till things settle down.”

Despite her gratitude, Martha felt she hardly deserved this show of kindness. “I couldn’t,” Martha said, but Janet put up a finger and with a quick shake of her head said,

“Let us take care of this, Martha. Your only job now is to look after that sweet boy and get him all better, agreed?” Martha nodded and smiled despite the pang of guilt that gnawed at her as Janet spoke. She would never admit it to anyone, least of all Janet, but it was the first time Martha was certain she had failed her child.

When Robert was finally cleared to go home, Martha and Dan gathered his belongings: mostly toys and cards and flowers from the women at church. After Dan and

Robert had already left the hospital room, a nurse came in and handed Martha antibiotics and a single page of home-care instructions. “He’s such a little gentleman,” the nurse told her with an approving smile. “Perfectly behaved and so friendly—you must be proud.”

Martha was reminded of when Robert was born. The postpartum nurses had all commented on what a good baby he was, so cute and not a complainer, was what they said. They had actually wanted to hold her baby, to pass him around, even commenting on how wonderful it was Martha had chosen a classic name. She had never been prouder.

Recalling those memories filled Martha with a determination to never fail her son again.

“Thank you,” Martha said, “for everything.” Then the nurse said the exact words the postpartum nurses had uttered eight years before: “What an angel!” Martha beamed the whole way home.

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Just before his trial, Robert asked Martha to please not come. “I hate to see you like this,” he said, and though he looked tired and unkempt, Martha could see in his pleading eyes that her Bobby was genuinely concerned. “I’m fine,” Martha lied. She wore extra makeup to cover the dark circles under eyes, but was aware she still looked terrible, that she could not hide her grief.

Martha had started taking sleeping pills most nights, but even with the pills she couldn’t always get to sleep. She could not bear the thought of Robert sleeping in a cell with a single blanket and barred, shoebox-sized window. Her heart raced as she lay awake in bed each night, her eyes open unnaturally wide, as she went over every detail of

Bobby’s life and where she must have gone wrong, signs she must have missed. As her husband lay snoring beside her, Martha remembered how Robert had placed Tipper, the little beagle mix they used to have, in a packaging box and sealed it closed with tape. By the time Martha discovered the poor thing, he was almost out of air. At the time, she dismissed the incident as just one of those things kids do, that boys do, but lying there at night, she wondered. And she thought of how, when Robert was twelve or so, the next- door neighbors had stopped allowing their children to play with him; Martha never had the guts to ask why. Now she wished she had. These things ate at Martha, nibbling away like parasites at not only her hope for Robert’s future, but at everything she thought she was as a mother. Martha’s entire chest and abdomen burned most of the time, as if lava were in there, constantly boiling and churning, and when she dared look in the mirror, she could see how thin she’d become over the past weeks.

Sitting in the visiting room at the jail, Martha looked over to her son and, mustering all her positivity said, “You need someone to be there for you in court,

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Bobby.” Robert sat quietly for a moment, then a slight smile curled his lips in a way that she had never seen before, in a way that sent a chill over the nape of Martha’s neck.

“Send dad, then,” he said, leaning forward, his voice and flat and emotionless despite his grin. She knew Robert was angry with his father for cutting all contact since the arrest, but something about the emptiness in Robert’s eyes, the coldness of his thin smile when he said “dad,” made Martha’s spine shudder all the way up to her ears. She looked out the window and took a deep breath, hoping Bobby hadn’t noticed her reaction. “I won’t come, if that’s what you really want,” Martha said finally.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said, and when Martha looked back at him, she knew he was the Robert she had always known and loved and was ashamed she had ever doubted him.

“I love you,” he added before she left, and Martha cried all the way home.

“He doesn’t want me to go to his trial,” Martha told her husband.

Dan didn’t look up. He was sitting at the kitchen table, repairing his reading glasses under the bright light of a small lamp he had set up there. “Good,” was all he said.

“Good?” Martha asked. “Our son is facing time in prison, no one will even speak to me at church, and all you can say is ‘Good’?”

Dan looked up at her but did not set down the glasses or the tiny screwdriver he held in his hands. “You’re not the only one this is happening to, Martha,” he nearly shouted. “I can hardly show my face at work anymore!”

Martha knew that; of course she knew that. “He’s our son, Danny,” she pleaded.

“He needs us.” Martha could feel the tears threatening to come again and wished them away. She was too weary to even cry anymore.

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“Well, he’s no son of mine!” Dan bellowed, throwing everything down on the table and rising to his feet so hard that his chair toppled over with a crashing thud. “Wake up, Martha!”

Martha gasped as her husband grabbed a newspaper and held it up so close to her face she thought for a moment he was going to smother her with it.

“Robert raped all those women!” Dan screamed at her. He threw the newspaper at the floor in disgust.

“We don’t know for sure how far it went, Danny,” Martha said. “Annie could have been exaggerating about what she found in his room.” Martha needed Dan—needed anyone really—to care about what happened to her Robert, too.

Dan shook his head slowly and sat back down at the table. “They have the

DVD’s, Martha. They found the drugs.”

“But they were coming from the bar,” Martha protested, “those women were probably already intoxicated. You don’t know—”

Martha’s husband looked up at her then, silencing her. He looked her in the eye as if she were a child in need of his sympathy. “What’s it gonna take, Martha?” Dan said simply, knowingly, and then he turned back to his work.

Standing there, staring at the back of her husband’s head, Martha wondered what she had left, who she had left.

In a daze, she crossed the room and picked up the phone. Her fingers glided effortlessly over the buttons, the exact numbers so long-ago memorized.

“Hello?” a sweet, familiar voice answered on the other end.

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“Janet,” Martha said rather than asked. Janet’s name had escaped her throat like a breath of relief.

“Martha?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her heart just a bit lighter at hearing a dear friend’s voice, at being acknowledged.

“Martha,” Janet said, her tone instantly shifting to a low, serious pitch. “What do you want?”

“It’s still me, Janet,” Martha pleaded. “I haven’t changed.”

“Don’t ever call me again,” Janet said simply. And the way she said it—not with anger as if a friend had betrayed her, but as if Martha were nothing more than a stranger whom she had never cared about—hit Martha like a boulder to her chest. When the line went dead, Martha did not bother to hang up phone, but simply let it slip noiselessly from her limp fingers onto the floor.

Martha suddenly felt very tired, as if a thick fog had come over her and settled into her head. Her eyelids were so heavy she could hardly lift them and, as she headed down the hall toward her bedroom, her limbs felt like leaden weights that she could scarcely summon forward.

As she finally made her way to her bedroom and climbed between her smooth bed-sheets, Martha thought how her Bobby was no killer going on vicious shooting sprees, no demented molester stealing children from their bedroom windows in the night, and for that she was grateful. Martha thought how the media could turn the town against her, how her neighbors could force her out of her home, how even the church—even

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Janet—could push her out their hearts forever. But no one could take away the love she had for her Bobby, and for that, too, Martha was grateful.

“Thank you, God,” she said aloud as she felt sleep mercifully pull her under its warm cover. Martha felt the wonderful tingling of her mind drifting away from her body, of her cares drifting off along with it, and she felt as if she could sleep for weeks.

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Ties

“We need you, Dad.” That was what Edwin’s daughter had said over the phone one night.

He was sure it was just a ruse to make him feel important, to convince him he would continue to have a purpose. Edwin was facing retirement for the second time in his life, and Cheryl was trying to give him an out—or at least something to still call a job.

“FBI agent turned babysitter?” Edwin chuckled. “I don’t think so, Chers.” He hated to hear the concern in his daughter’s voice, as if she were the parent and he the child. Edwin wished it were true that she needed him—that anyone did, really.

“Former FBI,” Cheryl said, emphasizing the word former. “And that was so long ago it doesn’t even count, Dad. This is Grace we’re talking about here.” At least there was real enthusiasm in his daughter’s voice now. “You love Grace.”

It was true: Edwin adored his grandbaby. Playing Mary Poppins did not appeal to him though, especially when it was meant to console him, like allowing a child to stir the batter so they’d believe they actually made the cake. Edwin wasn’t old enough to be

107 treated like he was fragile or senile, and yet he was being pressured from all sides to retire from the real world.

“Look,” Cheryl said, “can we talk about this tomorrow?” Even over the phone he could hear her patience waning.

“Right,” Edwin said. “The party.” His chest tightened momentarily as he remembered. Grace was about to turn one and Cheryl was making a huge deal of it.

Edwin wondered if his daughter knew he hadn’t even been around for her first birthday; or worse, that he’d been doped up on the floor of an abandoned building in the city instead. Susan sure as hell knew he’d been AWOL. Susan always knew. Edwin dreaded the prospect of looking into those deep-set eyes that saw straight through him more than the forced small talk he’d surely have to endure at the party.

“Sure, hon,” Edwin said. Then he added, “Love you, Chers.”

“Love you, too, Dad,” she said.

After the connection was broken, Edwin still held the phone to his ear, listening to the silence, waiting for what, he did not know.

The community college where Edwin had taught History for the past thirty-seven years could not force him to leave, of course, but they had done everything—short of spelling it out with jet smoke in the sky—to let him know that he was no longer relevant or wanted, like an old computer three upgrades behind useful. They didn’t have to tell him he was being pushed out anyway. Edwin read the ad they put up online for new hires:

Award-winning Community College Seeks Enthusiastic, Dynamic Instructors

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Edwin knew “enthusiastic” was code for young and “dynamic” was code for the latest educational fetishes, like so-called “project-based learning” and what Edwin referred to as “cross-discipline pollination.” He hadn’t missed the “PhDs preferred” part of the posting either, nor the “Ability to engage the new generation in the learning process” requirement. Neither of which applied to him. Still, Edwin could admit to himself his age and lack of flare were not the real reason the college was giving him such a push to go. It was because of what had happened. Maybe they were right: maybe it was best Edwin left rather than continue to show his face there.

“Go enjoy your retirement,” his colleague Dean Foster from the Poli Sci Department told him the afternoon before Grace’s party. The History and Political Science departments were side-by-side and so Edwin’s closet-sized office happened to be right next-door to

Dean’s. Dean continued as he stood in Edwin’s doorway: “When I hit sixty-five, I’ll be out of here before you can say ‘To the best of my recollection.’”

With Dean’s tired Nixon jokes, Edwin guessed he’d be gone long before that. He gave Dean an obligatory smile.

“You can hang up the suit and be your own man,” Dean added. “Why the resistance?”

“I’m passionate about teaching the great minds of tomorrow?” Edwin said, one eyebrow raised, and Dean gave him a full-belly laugh.

“That must be it,” Dean said with a wink.

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But the thought of hanging up his suit—or, in Edwin’s case, his button up shirt and slacks—and being his own man unsettled him. The only time he hadn’t regularly worn his pressed and starched shirts since returning from the war was when he was sent under deep cover. And even then, despite the unkempt beard he’d grown and the street jargon he’d picked up, he certainly was not his own man. Even when he went weeks without a face-to-face with his handler, Edwin was still under strict, constant orders, and—no matter his state of mind at any given moment—he lived by them, depended on them. Besides, after all these years, he was still careful to never go out in public with so much as a five o’clock shadow and ratty t-shirt for fear of being recognized by someone from his days of living on the streets, immersing himself in the dope game.

“Enjoy your granddaughter’s party tonight,” Dean said, giving Edwin’s door frame a pat of farewell.

“Will do.” Edwin said. It was already mid-semester and he knew he had to make his decision soon. For a moment, Edwin entertained the idea of staying on at the college, sporting the jeans-and-fashion-blazer look of his younger colleagues. The thought alone made him laugh aloud into the emptiness of his dim, pillbox of an office.

Susan was the first person Edwin saw when he arrived at Cheryl and Evan’s house. She was standing in their driveway, leaning against her car, her eyes fixed intently on the phone in her hand. She had one high-heeled foot hooked behind her ankle, a habit of

Susan’s that Edwin had always found disarming. He followed the curve of Susan’s ear as she absentmindedly tucked a loose strand of silver hair behind it with her fingertips. She

110 didn’t seem to notice his approach, but suddenly looked up from her phone, right at him.

“Ed,” she said, the way a person might greet their business partner.

“Good to see you, Sue,” Edwin smiled and gave her a half-hug, from the side— the most she would allow, he was sure. “Where’s Chuck?” Edwin simply couldn’t resist.

Susan only laughed, still cordial, still holding back, still pretty after all those years. “Let’s get inside,” she said.

Watching Susan’s easy movements, her relaxed manner, reminded Edwin how much better off she was without him. He hated that he’d seen that body so tense, that face so terrified—and worse: that he’d been the cause of it.

When Edwin came home from Vietnam, he was on a high. He’d never felt such a sense of pride and brotherhood, of purpose, as he did after serving his country alongside so many brave men in the ground forces. He hadn’t been around to know or care about the draft-dodgers and anti-war demonstrations. Edwin was just grateful to put his feet down on familiar soil once again, to stop looking over his shoulder constantly or jumping at every snap of a twig. And when he came back, with not even a scratch to be found on his body, there were no protesters spitting on Edwin’s worn-in boots, screaming in his face that he was a baby killer. Those rumors were nothing more than a bunch of ridiculous media hype. No, Edwin returned to a country that, for the most part, loved and supported him. But after two tours in a row—one just before the draft, one during, both of which he volunteered for—Edwin was physically exhausted. At first, though he was energetic by day, he slept a hard, dreamless sleep each night. And in the whirlwind of starting up college to study History and falling in love with Susan, Edwin didn’t have to stop or

111 think about the things he’d seen or done back in the jungle. His commander had said it was best that way: “When you get out of this hell hole, keep busy, boys,” he warned the team before their return. “If you leave yourself even a minute to sit on your thumbs and daydream, believe you me: You. Will. Re. Gret it.” It was good advice.

The nightmares started eventually though. When Edwin and Susan married and moved into their home, things got worse. Sometimes, Edwin had dreams so vivid he would wake up yelling orders or screaming, and even when he saw Susan standing stiffly in one corner of their bedroom, her eyes huge, he could swear he was still in the jungle.

Other times, Edwin woke in the morning and, though he remembered absolutely nothing of the night before, found himself barricaded into their bedroom, the cedarwood wardrobe pressed against the window, muffling the sunlight, Susan’s huge, vanity- mirrored dresser blocking the door. When Edwin finally freed himself, Susan was asleep on the sofa. “Your eyes looked dead,” was all she would say the first time it happened.

The worst incident though, was the night Edwin suddenly realized it was Susan’s fragile neck gripped between his hands. Even in the dark, his thighs clamped down over her hips, Edwin could see Susan’s eyes, wet, bulging with fear; and when he let go, covering his face with his trembling hands, he found his skin was thickly coated, not with blood as he had thought, but with tears and sweat. “I’m pregnant,” Susan had finally choked out in a whisper, still lying beneath him. It was the last time they ever shared a bed.

When Edwin was hired on with the FBI, he made sure they didn’t find out about his sleep issues or about how jumpy he’d become during the day. Once, when Susan was trying out one of the new stovetop popcorn cookers, Edwin was in the other room, reading an issue of The Smithsonian. Before he knew what was happening, he was on the

112 carpeted floor, arms covering his ears against the pinging and popping, breathing so hard he thought he’d pass out. It was getting worse too: even things like whistles or the sound of cutlery scraping together could set his heart racing dangerously fast. On the 4th of July, he and Susan stayed inside. He lay on the couch with his head in her lap, the feel of her expanding belly pressing into his cheek strangely comforting, and she rubbed his back till all the fireworks finally ceased.

Waiting for the investigator to arrive for the home interview, Edwin turned to

Susan. “Don’t tell them about the nightmares,” he instructed her solemnly. And though she pursed her mouth in either disapproval or concern, Edwin could see she understood.

“Dad!” Cheryl shouted from across the room. There was a sea of people between them— mostly parents with babies and small children—but Edwin could see his daughter motioning him over. Susan had quickly disappeared from him the moment they entered the house, so he really had nowhere else to go. “Hi, hon,” he said, finally making his way through. “Where’s the birthday girl?”

“Evan has her,” Cheryl said, giving Edwin a big hug and a kiss on his cheek.

“Dad,” she said, looking him in the eye seriously, “Have you thought about it?”

Edwin could see his daughter was not going to easily let go of her idea. “I just don’t know that it’s a good idea, Chers,” he said. When he was honest with himself,

Edwin had to admit he was surprised she thought it was. Susan was probably too much of a saint: she’d never said a single word against Edwin to their daughter. Cheryl only saw the good in him.

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“It is,” she said, her voice and face affected with the same false sternness he’d seen in her mother when she felt playful. “I need to go back to work and I’m not willing to leave Grace alone with strangers in some shady daycare where they’ll probably slip

Nyquil into her sippie cup.”

Edwin laughed, but then the thought of Grace in the hands of strangers started to get to him. He remembered a little girl he met during his year undercover. Sylvie, her name was. Her small hands shook constantly and her speech was slow and limited. Her mother confessed to Edwin that when Sylvie was three, she found her mom’s coke all over the table and thought it was candy sticks powder. She’d never been right since. He thought of the pregnant woman, the girlfriend of the man whose trust he needed to gain, shooting up H with them. The FBI had trained Edwin to fall back and remove the needle early so he wouldn’t get a full dose. As he did, just before the spinning room was steadied with a wave of euphoria, Edwin looked at the woman, eyes rolled back, one hand on her huge belly, and thought of his infant daughter waiting for him at home.

“Dad?”

Cheryl’s voice brought Edwin back to himself, and he cleared his throat to regain his bearings.

“Where were you?” Cheryl said, not trying to hide the concern in her voice. Her eyes searched his the way a person might if they’re not sure whether someone’s awake or their eyes are just left eerily open.

“I’m gonna go get some fresh air, Chers,” he said, patting her shoulder reassuringly. “They’re sucking up all the oxygen in here.”

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When Edwin completed his deep cover assignment, the FBI first transitioned him in one of their safe houses. Looking in the clean, clear bathroom mirror there, he saw a person he hardly recognized, a man he wasn’t sure he liked. Even after he washed and shaved, trimmed and combed, he was rail thin and there was a hardness in the line of his jaw, the ridge of his brow. He wanted to go straight home, but the agency insisted on an adjustment period, where Edwin ate hearty meals each day, slept in a comfortable bed each night, and met with a substance recovery specialist for an assessment.

Back at the bureau, they put him on straight investigations: DOJ scans, credit checks, interviews for new candidate backgrounds. At home, Susan told him she’d had to live so long as if he died, and so now she felt like he was a ghost in the house. The baby girl he’d once held in his arms and watched crawl around the room only a year before, had become an ornery toddler, running all over, talking a million miles a minute, and throwing constant tantrums.

Once, he stopped Susan in the hall and held her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said, holding her there, forcing her to look at him. “I’m sorry you’ve had to do it all alone.”

Susan started to cry and Edwin touched her face, smoothed her hair behind her ear. “I love you, Sue,” he said. And she let him pull her into his chest, his arms. “God

I’ve missed you,” he said, and bending down, he kissed her, first tenderly, then with a hungry passion he’d held inside far too long.

But almost as quickly as Susan had given in to his kiss, she stopped and drew away from Edwin. “I don’t know you,” she said, shaking her head. “Not really.” She stared into Edwin’s face, searching, as if hoping to find something familiar. She started to reach out her hand but stopped with a sigh, and walked away, silent.

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When Susan finally left him, it all fell apart. Most days Edwin couldn’t come in to work, and when he did, he was unkempt and weepy.

“We’re not gonna give you your walking papers after all you’ve done for us, for your country, Ed,” his boss Frank had said, “But we simply can’t employ anyone whose had a break. It’s policy—for your protection and ours.”

Edwin didn’t respond. He was still thinking about that word: break. His body was whole, but he did feel as if something were broken inside of him.

“Take an early retirement. You’ll get a good severance. We always take care of our own.” He patted Ed on the back, as if to reassure him. “Most guys can’t stay in this game very long, Ed. That’s just how it works. You know that.”

Edwin knew. “What am I going to do?” he asked, finally looking up to face

Frank.

“I’m one step ahead of you,” Frank smiled. “I’ve got a buddy with some pull over at the community college downtown.”

Edwin was usually quick to make connections, but stared at Frank, puzzled. “I don’t follow,” he said.

“How about you finally make some use of that History degree of yours?” Frank folded his arms and beamed as if he’d hit just the jackpot. “What do you say?”

Edwin studied Frank for a moment, taking everything in. Then, for the first time in months, Edwin laughed. Full out and loud, he laughed.

There were a few old fogies still teaching at the community college. One guy, an English teacher who happened to be an actual Englishman, was about to celebrate his eightieth

116 birthday. And when Edwin was first approached about retirement, it was phrased to him as more of an option for his consideration. Somehow though, just the conversation alone had changed things for Edwin. After decades of sleeping more or less normally, the nightmares started up again. After accepting that no woman would ever replace Susan, that he would need to face there here-on-out alone, Edwin started craving companionship.

One day, he forgot to shave or tuck in his shirt for work, and for some reason—

Edwin still couldn’t explain exactly why—when one of his students asked him about the

DAV Outreach Program of 1978, he started to cry. He didn’t get misty-eyed or choked up. Edwin simply found himself bawling, suddenly and uncontrollably, like small child.

He heard himself as if the sound of sobs were coming from another person, even another room. Through his tears, Edwin could see the students staring at him, some dismayed, others outright disturbed, but he could not stop himself. He finally sat down behind his desk and dropped his head into his hands. It seemed the tears would never cease.

Eventually, all the students left and Dean Foster came in. Dean dragged a chair over and sat down quietly beside Edwin till the crying seemed to settle.

“I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me,” Edwin said, once he could speak again.

“All right,” Dean said, standing up, and he gave Edwin a single, jocular pat on the back.

Edwin could picture Frank again, could practically hear his voice, saying “a break,” like Edwin was some kind of machine that had been dropped or had a malfunction. As the two men walked out silently together, Edwin was grateful Dean didn’t have much to say.

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But word got out and Edwin had to talk to the actual Dean. Everyone was supportive enough, but Edwin had received their message, loud and clear. It seemed the college didn’t want to employ a broken human being any more than the bureau had.

When Edwin went outside for air, he found Susan out there too, sitting on the step, looking at her phone again. “Chuck?” he asked, a victorious smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Susan looked up at him but did not reply. He sat down next to her. “I assume you’ve heard Chers wants me to play babysitter,” he said, figuring if anything could get Susan talking, it would be the only two things they still had in common.

“I think you should do it,” she said, matter-of-fact, with a little shrug of her shoulders.

Edwin was tempted to ask Susan how she of all people could say that. “Hmm,” was all he managed.

“What other opportunity will you have to take care of her?” she asked, suddenly serious.

“Grace?” he said, confused.

“No,” Susan laughed. “Cheryl.” She sighed and put down her phone. “You weren’t there when she was this age. It could be a chance to—I don’t know—have a bit of do-over.” She looked straight at Edwin and smiled. “You should do this for her,” she said.

Edwin couldn’t help but smile back. He was beginning to warm to the idea.

Besides, he adored that little girl.

118

“I better go back in,” Susan said, and reaching her arms up, elbows out, sweeping her hair off her neck, she gave a nice, long stretch. Edwin felt his heart swell as he watched her upturned face, eyes closed, lips smiling slightly, her soft, sensual neck extended.

Susan brought down her arms and patted Edwin’s hand instead of saying goodbye. As she stood up and walked away, he watched her go, still smiling. Edwin looked at his hands, feeling the warmth linger where she had touched him. But as he looked down at his two hands, Edwin could also still feel the length of Susan’s neck between their firm grasp, her delicate skin giving way to muscle and tendon, his thumbs pushing in at just the right places to cut the flow of air, of blood.

119

Pulp and Pulse

Nobody wants to use me. They all want something from me but even they aren’t sure exactly What.

Thrombosed, prolapsed, hyper-dilated— Does the blood run through faster or simply stagnate?

(are we?) Always (truly?) alone in the end (finally?) Together is an illusion. There is no (can’t be) “Us.”

But blood moves through as always. Veins cut paths, cross-hatched, etched through any body.

Mine feel different; I know this is so. I see yours, just beneath your skin, raised, pulsing tunnels.

Your breath is steady, but mine comes in short, sharp, hesitating sighs.

120

heat

Brain scans fastidious visual sweep broad survey of body touch with eye tactile, tracing each arch, slant, lip-swell, curl of hair against neck, ear, temple marked by glances studied meticulously etched permanently

I can appreciate beauty like all the pretty ponies I used to gaze upon and touch when I was a girl

A woman can know what she wants; her body can insist upon it: her scent her warmth her very center small as pinpoint can communicate too.

121

Real

Your footsteps fall hard and sure

Your eyes do not shift when you speak

Your glass never empties.

I do not wonder or worry I may look and be seen

There is no list of those to whom you must make amends No trail of dead and broken and half-starved bodies

I smell the clean air of you

I inhale and my breath does not catch.

122

Jane had worked as a court recorder for nearly all of her adulthood. She had sat, her hands and ears poised above her narrow stenograph, year after year, quietly recording exactly what she heard: every word, every lie, confession, pause, and gesture was pressed indelibly into the stream of court paper. Over the years, Jane learned to detach herself from the people in the courtroom and their reasons for being there. Except for her hands,

Jane’s body did not move; her face remained expressionless through even the most horrific recountings of violence done or done to. All this—the tears, the threats, the desperation—Jane allowed to flow through her with a cold, resigned acceptance. But when Lance walked into the courtroom and sat in the defendant’s chair one morning, his suit and tie crisp, his fingernails short and clean, Jane was moved.

Men had never come naturally to Jane. She’d had no brothers, no grade-school boyfriends, and even her father, when he was alive, had always seemed distant and mysterious to her. Men were a foreign element that Jane had briefly attempted to understand in her early twenties. But she’d found little heat and only a false, empty

123 connection in her late night encounters with strangers met at bars. What Jane had hoped for then was not just love, but an opportunity to navigate flesh, to learn the language of such different bodies and minds. But in those tepid embraces there was no excitement or wonder, no visceral rush, only hurry, and she soon gave up.

When she saw Lance for the first time, Jane was aware she had little time left to bear children; she didn’t want them—of that she had always been sure—but somehow it mattered all the same. That she should have a man there and know that she could if she wanted to, mattered. And Jane told herself this was why she had noticed him: Biology, curiosity, and a sturdy jaw bone.

It was true Jane stole glances at people during trials: defendants, witnesses, the families of either, shaking or sobbing in the gallery. They never noticed. In her peripheral vision, she could even note the expression on a person’s face as the bailiff forced them out (almost always the wife or girlfriend). Jane was invisible to everyone, even the judge.

It was her job to appear as if she were not there.

When Jane peered out of the corner of her eye at Lance, however, he was looking right at her, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Quickly looking away, Jane flushed at being caught, at being seen. Against her will, her fingers trembled slightly as she struck the phonetical keys. At almost three hundred words per minute, even during the most grisly of testimonies, Jane was not accustomed to anything but steady hands.

At first, like all the other cases, Jane paid little attention to the details of Lance’s case. Her purpose was only to be the conduit, to take in heard sounds and transmute them into written words. She kept her self removed from the daily stories and hurts of her workplace. She did not, would not, care.

124

Especially with Lance, because he had seen her, Jane wanted to appear even more detached than usual. But her curiosity pushed her to take in the words as they passed through her. The charges were read off in descending order from most grievous: false imprisonment, assault, carrying a concealed weapon, and making threats on another person. The words first floated and then slowly spun around in Jane’s head. Nothing shocked her anymore. She felt only a mild surprise at his calm demeanor and carefully shined shoes. Lance seemed perfectly comfortable in his clothes and his skin.

During the recess, Jane had to walk to the very back of the lot for a cigarette; it was the only place smokers were allowed. Even if she recognized a defendant or witness out there, they never recognized her. She could choose to nod and force a smile in a casual smokers’ greeting or she could choose—as she often did—to ignore them completely. Either way, it made no difference.

That day Jane was both intrigued and dismayed to find Lance there, his cigarette already half-consumed. She had not pictured him as a smoker and she especially had not pictured him out at the back lot of the courthouse, where she assumed she could have a moment to herself.

Upon her approach, Lance threw his cigarette to the ground and snubbed it out with the toe of his shined shoe. Never let a lady see you smoke? Jane wondered.

Lance eyed her with amusement. “Quite a circus in there, isn’t it?” he said.

Jane liked the sound of his voice, pleasantly rugged, and realized that it fit him perfectly. She shrugged and reached into her purse for her lighter.

125

“I’m sure you’ve heard it all before,” Lance smiled, putting his hands in his pockets. This casual gesture, and the way it caused his suit jacket to give and open slightly, relaxed Jane somehow.

She nodded noncommittally and took a drag on her cigarette. After Jane had completed her stenographer training, she was required to become a notary and take an oath with the courts. While there were no specific rules about parking lot conversations or smoker small talk, Jane had a feeling it was in bad form to fraternize with the person whose trial she was transcribing. It wasn’t that she could (or ever would) change any information, but it was a matter of ethics and maintaining an objective distance.

“I know,” Lance laughed weakly, “Everyone says they didn’t do it.” He turned to leave, his eyes betraying a sadness. Before he went, he stopped for a moment and looked over his shoulder at Jane. “The thing is, sometimes it really was all just one big misunderstanding.” And with that, Lance headed back to the courthouse.

The second day of Lance’s trial, Jane noticed a woman sitting quietly in the back row of the gallery. Her graying hair was pulled back from her pinched brow. The woman sat motionless, her hands resting in her lap, but her eyes intently followed each word that was said, every movement that was made by the lawyers and witnesses. Sometimes the woman’s gaze would rest on Lance, and Jane could not tell if she had fixed her eyes on the expanse of his shoulders, the bit of exposed skin on the back of his neck, or the neatly combed hair along the curve of his head. Jane wondered about the woman’s connection to Lance. But she noticed that the woman did not wring her hands red or place her palm

126 over her chest as if to settle her heart, and so Jane did not think her likely to be his mother.

Lance paid attention too. He was not like other defendants who sat behind the bar looking angry, fearful, or crazy. Neither was he like those who tried to impress the jury with false tears or charm. Lance sat with a quiet confidence, a humble attentiveness. At times, he appeared to be amused by certain statements made about his character or what he had done, but even then his smile was subtle, and his raised eyebrow, almost uninterpretable.

Translating so many voices into a single transcript, Jane wondered if she would ever hear Lance’s voice again. She thought it best to avoid another interaction at the back lot. Instead, during her lunch, Jane smoked along her walk to the deli across the street and ate there. She sat at one of the only two tables the deli offered. The table was small and plastic and nearly pressed into the self-serve soda fridge.

The bell on the deli door rang and Jane noted Lance’s now familiar suit and posture before she saw his face. He noticed her right away and, when he smiled, Jane knew she could not honestly say it had no effect on her.

Lance sat at the empty table to eat and Jane appreciated his discretion.

“Jane, right?” he asked.

Jane tried to hide her shock that he could know her name. She did not wear a nametag in court; the small desk where she sat did not have a sign declaring her name and position like the judges had at the bench. Then she realized: she had labeled her stenotype. Each court recorder had their own stenograph machine, which they brought to work with them. Though each was slightly unique, it had always been a habit of Jane’s to

127 take extra measures to identify what belonged to her. So Lance must have simply read and assumed. Jane relaxed, but did not answer him.

The silence sat heavily between them and Jane resisted the urge fill it. Though he sat at a separate table, Lance was still near enough to Jane that she could touch him if she reached out. She hoped he would think she simply had not heard him and move on.

“I’m sorry,” Lance said, standing up suddenly and gathering his lunch. “I really meant no harm.”

Jane felt a stirring of guilt as she watched him go. If she had learned anything over her years in the courtroom, it was that criminals don’t easily walk away when they want something. She was tempted to apologize, to call him back, to be friendly, but she drew strength from her better judgment and let him go.

During the afternoon court session, details of Lance’s charges began to emerge.

The lawyer for the District Attorney’s office called witnesses. The alleged victim’s mother claimed she had received a panicked phone call from her daughter on her third day of captivity. The responding officers who arrived to the residence after the mother’s call claimed to have found Lance eating dinner in front of the television, and the alleged victim asleep in the couple’s shared bed. The officers also stated that Lance agreed to a personal search and was found to be carrying a handgun, which he had not announced when they entered his home.

Lance’s lawyer, a man with a strenuous type of thinness that seemed to tighten his jaw, approached the cross examination with a jovial lightness. When he questioned the three witnesses, something in his lit eyes and easy manner seemed to say that they could all admit the joke now, that clearly his client was perfectly innocent. And when they

128 answered his questions, it certainly seemed to Jane his casual lack of solemnity was justified.

“Yes,” the mother admitted, “My daughter has had some problems with drug abuse.” “Yes, she has struggled with Bipolar Disorder.” “Yes, her meds have led to erratic behavior in the past.” “Yes,” Jane keyed in with a single stroke, and as she pressed the sound into her machine, the machine pressed the word into the paper.

“No,” the officers stated, “We could not find any evidence of rape.” “No, we could not find any proof that the alleged victim had been illegally imprisoned in their residence.” And finally, “Yes,” they verified, “The defendant showed us his permit and registration for the handgun.”

Jane could not help but notice Lance out of the corner of her eye. He sat, calm and patient, through it all; but every now and then his eyes would dart over to the jury box, just slightly behind her. And so Jane became aware of their presence. The jury always remained silent through every trial and so Jane was accustomed to ignoring them until they read their verdict. Now, she realized in a way she hadn’t before, just how ominous they really were. They, not the judge, sat in true judgment of the accused. They, and no one else, would decide Lance’s fate.

Jane was relieved to finally breathe in the fresh air outside once court ended for the day. But when she turned the keys in the ignition, nothing happened. There was no cranking or clicking, just silence. Jane sighed and popped the hood, though she was not sure what good it would do. As she expected, everything looked like it usually did under the hood of a car. She pulled her phone out of her purse.

129

“Hey.” She heard Lance’s familiar voice behind her and startled a bit. “Sorry to scare you,” he apologized. “Mind if I take a look?”

Jane threw up her hands. “Be my guest,” she said.

Lance peered under her hood. After a few moments of apparent internal deliberation, he turned back to Jane. “Can I be honest with you?” he asked.

“Why not?” Jane said. She was already speaking to him; she figured it was too late for any resolve on her part anyway.

“I don’t know the first thing about cars,” he admitted with a laugh.

Jane couldn’t help but laugh a little too. “Well, thanks for the help then,” she said.

“I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing,” he smiled, and Jane could almost swear he was flirting with her, just a bit.

“I have roadside service,” she said, dialing the tow company. As she waited on the phone, the sound of muffled jazz played in one ear, and Lance stood waiting too.

“Really it was just an excuse to talk to a pretty woman,” he said, when she got off the phone. “Mind if I wait with you?”

Jane wasn’t normally susceptible to flattery, but Lance was handsome, and excited her. And the joking, self-deprecating way he had said it made her want to believe he was sincere. The parking lot was full, it was light out, a mechanic was on his way.

Jane could not see the harm in it. She put her phone back into her purse and shrugged.

“Fine.”

“I’m assuming this isn’t the usual way you meet men,” Lance joked.

Jane took out a cigarette and lit it. “You can say that again.” She took a drag and pulled her jacket more tightly around her. “So, you know nothing at all about cars?”

130

“I’ve lived a charmed life,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ve never had to get my hands dirty.”

“I guess I could say the same.” Jane began to feel the cold even more as the clouds darkened and gathered. She considered going inside and watching for the tow truck through the courthouse’s large glass doors, but she did not want anyone in there to see her with Lance. A man standing out there with her, by the raised hood of her car, was easier to explain away.

“I can’t wait till this is all over,” Lance said, looking off into the distance. “Did you see the way that woman was looking at me today?”

“Which?” Jane asked, thinking of the older woman in the gallery she had seen.

“The blonde one on the jury,” he said. “I can tell she’s had it out for me from the beginning.”

Jane had not noticed her.

“I don’t blame her,” he shrugged. “She probably had a man do some terrible thing to her once and now she can’t trust any man.”

Jane considered. “Well, there are eleven other jurors, so one opinion isn’t going to decide anything.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” he said, relaxing a little. “But I don’t know. If you had seen the hatred in her eyes—I guarantee you she’ll turn them all against me.”

“Either the evidence is there or it isn’t,” Jane said plainly, throwing down her cigarette.

“You’re right,” Lance said, and a hint of his confidence resurfaced.

131

Jane knew the roadside service could take an hour to arrive, but she wasn’t sure how much more of the chilly air she could handle. Just as she started thinking of the best way to part with Lance, she felt a large wet drop of water hit the top of her head. Within seconds, the sky opened and rain began to rush down all around them as they stood there together. Jane slammed the hood closed and jumped into her car. “Get in!” she called to

Lance by accident; it had been almost instinctual, as she would do with a friend or loved one, just one person rescuing another from the cold downpour.

Lance got in the passenger side, already soaked. “Are you sure?” he said, one hand still on the door, as if he weren’t sure she really wanted him there or not.

Jane appreciated his unobtrusiveness and did not want to rescind her offer, which had really been a command anyway. Besides, Lance was the first man in years whom she had wanted to touch or know; he aroused her curiosity. And Jane felt she owed it to herself to let their interaction play out just a little longer.

“It’s fine,” Jane said.

“Can I confess something to you?” he asked.

“Go ahead.” She almost laughed at the position she had put herself in.

Lance became silent and serious for a moment before he spoke. “I’m scared,” he said quietly.

Jane could hear the emotion underneath his words, and she knew he meant it. She looked across to him and met his pained eyes, but did not know what to say.

“Jane,” he said. “I don’t know what will happen.”

As she turned toward him, Jane felt her breath go shallow in her chest and she could not control or stop it. Lance reached his hand out toward her and rested it on her

132 shoulder gently. His heat seeped into her, softening her; she felt for him and wanted him and needed him. He moved his hand up and cupped the back of her neck, smoothed the curve of her face with his thumb. Jane could not care about anything else anymore; she wanted, she needed, to be reckless. Lance did not pull her toward him; she moved forward, kissing him, tasting him, relishing in his scent, his firm body. All she was aware of outside their embrace was the rain pelting down on her car.

Suddenly, lights flashed in through the windows and Jane pulled away, recognizing the rumbling engine of the tow truck. “Oh!” she said, quickly scrambling out of the car, afraid to miss the driver. She waved her arm frantically, and the truck stopped.

“I’d better go,” Lance called over, shutting the passenger side door.

There did not seem to be any right thing to say. So Jane simply nodded and smiled her goodbye.

“Battery,” the large, friendly mechanic concluded within seconds. “You been having problems with it?”

“Not at all,” Jane said. The rain had lightened and now let up completely.

“Well this one’s toast,” he said. “But I can replace it in no time. Hang on.”

And as the mechanic walked back to his truck, Jane was still warm. Despite her damp clothing, Jane felt her face and neck burning as she stood there in the cold, thinking of Lance.

The next day in court, Jane turned her chair slightly so that she could watch for the jury woman Lance had told her about. She quickly recognized his description in juror number three. The middle-aged woman’s blond hair was pulled back tightly, her expression was

133 stern, and her presence commanding. Indeed, Jane saw that the third juror seemed decided about Lance already.

At recess though, Jane could not seem to find Lance. But she saw the third juror touching up her lipstick in the bathroom reserved for court officials and jury members.

Jane was torn. She saw an opportunity to try and help Lance, but she did not want to risk breaking the law or making trouble for herself. Still, she felt she had the chance to do the right thing. And so, taking a deep breath, Jane also reached into her purse for lipstick and stood in the mirror beside the juror.

They both smiled politely at one another. And then Jane, feeling like a bad actor, purposely dropped her lipstick into the sink, streaking it with red. She feigned exasperation and began to clean it up. The juror noticed and handed Jane some paper towels.

“Thanks,” Jane said. “It’s just one of those days.”

“Are you serving?” the juror asked.

“No,” Jane replied, unsurprised by the juror’s lack of recognition. “I work here.

Going on twenty years this month, actually. I transcribe the cases.”

The juror seemed intrigued and Jane saw how she could use her own invisibility to her advantage. “It’s hard sometimes,” Jane continued. “Seeing a person wrongly accused is unsettling.”

“Hmmm,” was the juror’s only response.

Jane finished wiping at the red streaks of lipstick in the sink. She turned the faucet on and watched the water turn pink and swirl down the drain. “I’m afraid this is going to be one of those times I go home and lose sleep.”

134

“You don’t think justice will be done?” the woman asked, seeming genuinely curious.

“If the evidence isn’t there, it isn’t there,” Jane said. “But some juries seem to forget their purpose.”

“Well,” the woman said before Jane walked through the door. “I hope you’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

In the afternoon court session, the prosecution whispered amongst themselves and

Jane could see there was some issue of concern. When the judge demanded that they proceed, the lead attorney announced that the plaintiff would not be appearing in court or giving her testimony; the attorney said she could not bring herself to do it.

Jane peered back at the jury box and caught the blond juror’s surprise as she recognized her. Jane feigned a reciprocal surprise in their brief instant of eye contact, and then the jury was excused for deliberations.

When the twelve jurors returned, Jane watched Lance carefully. For the first time, he looked nervous, straightening his tie and clearing his throat with a loose fist over his mouth. She knew that if he were found guilty she would never see him again. So Jane decided that, if Lance were found innocent, she would seek him out after the proceedings and give him, and herself, a chance to see where things might go. She glanced around the gallery and noticed the older woman sitting toward the back once again.

As the jury prepared to read their verdict, the woman’s eyes were closed, her fingers folded together under her chin, and Jane felt certain she was praying. She imagined the woman was praying for Lance, begging God to spare him. Jane’s hands

135 trembled over her stenotype as she awaited the verdict, and she found herself wanting to pray for Lance too.

And then the juror said the words: “Not guilty.”

Jane’s heart fluttered and lightened. She and Lance exchanged knowing smiles across the courtroom. He looked happy, victorious; he nodded his head almost imperceptibly at Jane, but she understood his meaning. His warmth filled her and, when everything was over, she practically burst through the front doors to find him.

But when Jane went outside, Lance was nowhere to be seen. Her heart slowed a bit as she searched but could not find him. As the moisture in the air cooled Jane’s skin, a sinking feeling began to grow in the very center of her and she realized she had no way of contacting him.

Heading to her car, trying to make sense of everything that had happened, Jane saw the woman from the back of the gallery, leaning against a car. The woman’s hand was over her heart, her head bowed, her shoulders rising and falling with sobs. Jane was drawn to the woman by both empathy and a selfish curiosity. “Can I help?” was all Jane could think to say.

The woman looked up but continued to cry. “No,” she said quietly. “No one can.”

“How do you know him?” Jane asked finally, boldly.

“My daughter,” the woman sobbed, tears staining her face. “It’s all the same.

They said she was drinking and fell.”

“Your daughter?” Jane asked.

“She was married to him.” The woman waved her hand toward the courthouse to indicate Lance. “Two years.” The woman looked off as if trying to recall.

136

“What happened?” Jane had to know.

“He was acquitted,” the woman mumbled, as if to herself. “No evidence, they said.”

“I don’t understand,” Jane said, but the sinking sensation that had started when she left the courthouse had become a deep, sickening gnawing.

“Don’t you see?” the women pled. “His lawyer had it all dismissed as evidence because he was already tried and found innocent. He’s going to do it all again.”

“Do what?” Jane asked; her need to know the truth was becoming almost unbearable.

“You should have seen her body, my girl.” The woman shook her head, and strands of her gray hair fell along her wet cheeks. “How can a person look like that after falling? No. He killed her.” She nodded to herself. “I know in my heart he did. My girl.”

Jane’s throat was so thick she couldn’t speak.

“She called me so many times, so terrified of him. And now, he got away with it again.”

Though Jane was sure the woman couldn’t possibly know her fault in it all, she felt herself accused anyway.

“He won’t stop,” the woman assured her. And as she turned to go, she paused, and steadied her gaze on Jane. “I just have to wonder,” she said, resigned, “Who will his next victim be?”

The words floated, suspended in the drizzly air, charged, hanging, grasping onto each bit of moisture that clung to Jane’s hair and skin and eyelashes.

137

Silence

“Why?” was all she said.

But as the soft flesh of her belly registered the cold tip of his knife, and as she took in the curious delight behind his eyes when his gaze followed the knife’s movements, she realized that she—that no one, really—would ever know.

138

I Am That though I resist the title on paper

She is who I am

I am the kind to be togethered side-by-sided entwined, enraptured

It is not in my constitution to be strung… “friend” cannot be found along the spines or curves of my DNA.

This is what I am Here too

Y que piensas tu de eso? Cuales palabras—cuales versos (piropos?)—me vas a decir ahora?

139

Literal

And maybe you’ll leave he said

Some things are

Sometimes things just are.

140

“One Angry Bitch”

Yes.

Each man splinters into one thousand faces and I am.

At all of them

Thank heavens for big girls gathering and spewing

*can’t even get far enough to have my heart properly broken*

We are not done here with this

Yes.

141

A windowless scarfless whitewash

compassionate disdain for persons

unnatural proclivity toward paranoia

steel-boned and booted double-tied

sexually withholdlingly deviant

loveless aphroditing fleshbleed

hidden locket overflowing

effigial

dust

142

PEACHES

“The most succulent

juicy

parts of

life.”

And all

the scents of you

I had loved.

143

You say you want to be with me forever All you’ll ever need

When I leave I don’t glance back yet I feel your eyes trace the slope of my neck and shoulder hold the sweep of my hip

But you shut your door before I am through the gate

The sharp catch and click of each closing ring forward into moonlit air and spiral down my ear canals echo, hold, whispering

and I know the closings mean something I know.

144

Hole

I need to find a way in.

There must be reciprocity equanimity of space of occupancy

Routes are never unobstructed free unowned

I need in— don’t want permission

How could I give so without the

Get?

145

Patience Thins

She walks back turned high-heeled over rain-slicked stones

Her only shelter: jacket umbrella Resolve

She leaves, bench empty, no backward glance knife-grooved cuts on canvas

in gold, red, blue

in fall

146

Seen

Vivienne Johnson’s neighbors were most undoubtedly awful. On all sides of her, there dwelled cretins: unkempt, rowdy, moronic animals, with absolutely no manners or good sense to speak of. When she moved to this neighborhood nearly fifty years ago, things were different. But then Vivienne had been young and in love, and all the houses on her block, new with fresh paint and hope. Back then, people still parked in their garages, as

God intended, and cared enough to weed and mow their lawns. Now, Vivienne could hardly bear to take her little dog Louie down the street, because his stroller never had a clear, safe path through the neighbor kids’ toys and bikes strewn about the sidewalks and driveways. Now, Vivienne and Louie usually stayed inside.

Looking out the back window of her breakfast nook, Vivienne caught a glimpse of Becca Freewater standing out in her backyard, a half-naked baby resting on her hip as she watered her barrels of herbs. Bright green basil, sage, mint, chamomile, and nettle plants grew together in wild tangles so that most of Becca’s backyard resembled a small jungle. Vivienne’s circulation was certainly not what it used to be, but Becca

147

Freewater—not Mrs. Whit, of course, for she and her husband sharing a last name would be far too easy—never failed to heat Vivienne’s blood to a fierce boil. Becca was using her filthy hose nozzle to water the herbs that she would later feed to her family or dry for so-called medicine—the very same hose nozzle that her kids drank straight from on hot days and that she left sitting in their debris-infested, germ-brewed kiddie pool. Vivienne resisted the urge to open her window and holler over to Becca that God invented watering cans for a reason.

Becca’s long, untamed hair fell around her exposed shoulder and brushed against the baby’s calm face. Above the chubby knee pressed into his mother’s hip, Vivienne could see Becca’s soft belly protruding. It was hard to tell if Becca was pregnant yet again or only looked so indefinitely after having four children in six short years. Vivienne said a silent prayer that the Whit-Freewater clan would learn some common sense and stop before they added one more dirt-encrusted mouth demanding to be fed.

Suddenly, mid-spray, Becca looked up as if sensing she was being watched, and her eyes met Vivienne’s through the clear barrier of the window. All at once, Vivienne felt exposed rather than protected, watched rather than watcher. Before she could think of how to act at being caught, she saw Becca’s eye: a large, grotesque circle of grayish- green bruising rendered Vivienne’s neighbor almost unrecognizable. Vivienne heard a gasp and realized it was her own. Becca, seemingly unfazed by neither Vivienne’s stare nor reaction, simply smiled and waved, then turned back to her watering.

Vivienne became aware of Louie’s soft rib cage pressing against her ankle and looked down at him. “Did you see that, Louie?” she asked. “Oh, my!” she said, shaking her head, her hand now on her chest. Vivienne peered out her window again, studying the

148 untarnished side of Becca’s face, and she was struck with a certainty about what must have happened. Though she normally avoided Becca and her brood at all costs,

Vivienne’s mind was already concocting schemes to talk to them. Vivienne never liked

Becca’s husband Travis, but she still found herself surprised that he could do such a thing. What struck Vivienne even more, however, was the effect the young woman’s painfully damaged eye had on her. Something about looking at the dark bruise on what she could admit was an otherwise pretty face, something about the reddened eye peering helplessly out of its center, filled Vivienne with an unease of the mind and a pinching of the heart. This sensation unsettled her, bringing her back to the afternoon she found

Louie.

Years ago, Vivienne found Louie in the parking lot of the local Senior Center. At the time, she had whittled her visits down to only a couple per month. After everything that happened with Richard, she sometimes couldn’t bear to show her face there. Still, she wasn’t going to let some man—especially not one who dressed and behaved as though he’d come straight from the Australian outback—keep her from living her life. That day, leaving a Home Crafts workshop at the center, she heard a low, howling cry so menacing it set her heart racing. Feeling brave, Vivienne looked behind the dumpster to see whether it was a child or a wild animal making such an awful sound. What she found instead was

Louie, drenched in mud and who knows what else. He had cornered a cat at least twice his size, and the cat looked angry enough to kill him with an easy slash of her splayed claws.

149

“Poor baby!” Vivienne cried, pulling Louie up into her arms. He wore no collar and looked hungry, so Vivienne took him home, cleaned him up, and fed him. She had no intention of calling the local shelter where they would surely jail Louie along with all the other miserable dogs sitting alone in puddles of their own potty and number two. Even if

Louie had an owner, which Vivienne was sure he did not, the barbarian was obviously not fit to care for such a precious little soul. And so Vivienne named him and kept him.

When she brought him with her to the Senior Center the next week, however, Louie was given a mostly cold reception.

Some of the ladies fawned over Louie’s thick gray fur and large brown eyes, despite his yipping and growling, but others turned up their overgrown noses at him and gave Vivienne the cold shoulder. The Center’s manager told Vivienne absolutely no pets were allowed and that she may not bring Louie again. Richard was the worst of them all, though. He flat out laughed at Vivienne for bringing the dog in, even for rescuing the dog in the first place. Richard, with his tight jeans, felt-fur hat, and pointed black boots to match, completely infuriated Vivienne. She could hardly believe she had once upon a time run her fingers through that short white beard or emphatically agreed that he looked younger than any of the other seniors at the Center.

Looking at Richard’s sarcastically delighted eyes as he asked her if that foul- tempered gray mop in her arms were his replacement, Vivienne shook with rage. She wished she had the guts to stab him with the fancy sign-in pen on the table beside her.

She figured right in the eye would quickly rip that smirk off his face. But since Vivienne did not believe in violence, and because she could not bear to leave poor Louie home alone, she decided to forego the free coffee, pastries, and classes from then on.

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Vivienne gently pulled Louie’s boots up over his paws and delicately snapped his jacket and collar into place. “We’re going for a little walk, Louie,” she said. But this time

Vivienne did not ready his stroller; this time, Vivienne carried Louie in her arms. She thought how, surely, at least one or two of Becca’s unruly brood would not be able to resist the pull of his big brown eyes.

Vivienne was grateful for Louie’s warmth when the chill of the afternoon wind hit her thin frame. She shivered a little as she headed down the concrete walkway that cut through her Astroturf lawn. She drew her scarf more tightly around her head and neck.

Vivienne—Louie, too, for that matter—had not been out in her front yard for far longer than she realized. For what seemed to be months, she had simply entered her car through the safety of her sealed garage and, raising the door with a quick push of the button (and not even bothering to look behind her), she would back out of her driveway and leave her street behind, deliberately ignoring the half-hearted smiles and waves of her neighbors.

Vivienne could hardly believe she was actively seeking out the very nuisances, the sources of such vexation, that she had so long sought to avoid. But the image of

Becca’s flesh, darkened and spoiled like the softened skin of an overripe fruit, haunted her. The wrongness of it drove her forward.

She saw Becca’s oldest child, a bold, chatty girl, skipping rope in the Whit-

Freewater driveway, and seized the opportunity. The girl (Vivienne could hardly remember her name—who could, with all those ridiculously cruel names Becca gave her children?) stopped jumping as Vivienne approached. Though obviously drawn to Louie, the girl seemed to hesitate, and so Vivienne forced her most welcoming smile.

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The girl, throwing her jump-rope down, stepped forward. “Can I pet your dog,

Miss Johnson?” she asked.

“It’s Mrs. Johnson,” Vivienne quickly replied.

“But you’re not married,” the girl said, matter-of-factly.

Vivienne felt her blood pressure already beginning to rise. “Well, I used to be,” she said curtly. Apparently, Becca Freewater’s daughter could also get her blood churning. Then, remembering her purpose, she asked, “And how old are you now,

Jasmine?”

“Juniper,” the girl corrected her. Then she straightened up proudly. “Six and a half.”

“My,” said Vivienne, “You’re growing so fast.” She smiled as warmly as she could. “Of course you can pet Louie.” Vivienne was no old lady, shrunken and crooked, and so she had to bend down in order for the girl to reach Louie.

“Why do you always dress up your dog?” the girl asked.

“The same reason your mother dresses you,” Vivienne said. Then she thought of how Becca’s whole family was hardly clothed most of the time.

A low growl issued from Louie and the girl drew back her hand. “Oh, Louie,”

Vivienne laughed lightheartedly, “Don’t be silly!” She looked at the girl. “He’s just a little hungry,” she explained. “Say, how would like to come feed him a treat from my kitchen?” The girl smiled and nodded emphatically. “Your mother won’t mind?”

Vivienne asked. The girl looked over her shoulder at her house and shrugged. So they walked together up Vivienne’s front path.

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“Why don’t I make you a snack?” Vivienne said after Louie performed his one and only trick of sitting for a treat.

“Sure,” the girl said with a nod and helped herself up to the stool at the kitchen counter.

Vivienne poured the girl a glass of milk and found an unopened box of cookies that had been sitting at the back of her cupboard for several years. “So, June, I was—”

Vivienne started.

“Juniper,” the girl cut in boldly.

Vivienne pursed her lips at the girl’s lack of tact, but carried on. “I was waving to your mother today and noticed her eye. The poor thing!”

Juniper sipped at her milk and stared at the cookie in her hand. “Mommy says were not supposed to have sugar,” she said.

“Well, I’m sure it’ll be okay just this once,” Vivienne winked conspiratorially from across the counter.

The girl reluctantly took a bite, chewed cautiously, then swallowed. “She says it’ll give us dietbeeties.”

“Juniper,” Vivienne said quietly, resting her elbows on the counter, “What happened to Mommy?”

“She fell,” Juniper said, now focused on finishing off her cookie.

“You saw her fall?” Vivienne asked, hoping she didn’t sound like an interrogator.

“We were asleep,” Juniper said, her voice muffled by her mouth full of chewed- up cookie.

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Vivienne was surprised she didn’t even have the urge to check Juniper on her poor manners. “Juniper,” she said, looking the girl in the eye, “Do Mommy and Daddy fight sometimes?”

Juniper nodded and Vivienne couldn’t help but note the wave of sadness that moved across her face. As Vivienne searched for what to ask next, the girl interrupted her thoughts.

“Why aren’t you married anymore, Miss Johnson?” she asked, her eyes large and sincere.

Vivienne stood up straight and cleared her throat. “Mr. Johnson died,” she said.

“When?” Juniper took one long, last swig of milk, leaving a white film around her mouth, which would surely crust over later.

“A long time ago,” Vivienne said, her mind already fixed on what she should do about Becca’s husband giving her a black eye. She wondered if she should call the police or just child services. Goodness knew children should not be in a home where their mother feeds them only bark and weeds; but they most certainly should not be there when their father uses the family as his personal punching bags.

“Is that why you’re so sad?” Juniper asked, and Vivienne looked up, taken aback by the young girl’s pointed question about her late husband. Juniper was staring at her intently, waiting for her to answer.

“I’m not sad that he died,” Vivienne replied simply, and she meant it.

When Vivienne first began frequenting the Senior Center, she had been widowed for more than two decades. She enjoyed the classes, BINGO marathons, and company it

154 offered. Richard, with his gray leather jacket and young man’s swagger, started showing up at the Center a few years later. Right away, he went around asking all the ladies to guess his age; he asked for theirs too without even the slightest bit of shame. Richard didn’t care how old they were, he flirted openly with as many ladies as he could, widowed or not, walker or not. He was a man who knew how to stir up trouble quick.

Vivienne was surprised at how good it felt when Richard started paying attention to her. She’d heard the rumors—the Center was always brimming with whispered scandals—but there was no denying he was a handsome man, and through his back jean pockets she could see how his bottom was still as firm as an overdone steak.

At the monthly seniors’ ballroom dance, Richard took Vivienne’s hand with a lively hoot and told her: “You’re all mine tonight, Miss Vivienne!” Somehow she still felt she was being untrue to her late husband and almost pulled away. But Richard’s vivacious energy was contagious, and so Vivienne let go, throwing back her head, letting him pull her into his arms. As they moved their feet in unison and pressed their hips together, Vivienne began to entertain the idea of a love life again. It seemed foolish—it had been so long, entire lifetimes ago, really—but she could see how it might be nice to have a man in her bed again, to touch his warm, bare skin with her fingertips, to be held close.

After her husband passed, Vivienne had not wanted to risk being beholden to any man ever again. But with Richard, all the rules changed.

Louie’s nightly bath was interrupted by a knock at the front door. It was already dark out, and Vivienne’s stomach clenched a little at the unfamiliar sound. She grabbed

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Louie’s towel and wrapped him up tightly, padding along the carpeted floor in her slippers.

When she opened the door, Vivienne was not completely surprised to find Becca on her front step, her baby boy secured to her body in a cloth pouch fit for a National

Geographic cover highlighting the ancient remains of early civilizations. Becca’s eye looked even worse up close. Vivienne could see now that even the bone was swollen and there was a spot on the side of her brow where the skin actually broke. “That probably needed stitches,” was all Vivienne could think to say.

She figured Becca was there because her daughter had revealed the details of their little Q and A session of that afternoon. Her hands shook a little, but her voice was steady as ever. After all, what could Becca really do about Vivienne’s prying? Over the years, she’d found that people were unwilling to get very mad at the elderly, and so she counted on Becca’s having at least some respect for those white of hair and wrinkled of skin.

Louie started to show his teeth.

“Hey,” Becca said in greeting, ignoring Vivienne’s comment about her eye. The way she dragged out the word made her sound to Vivienne like a mentally slow teenager.

Vivienne wondered if Becca’s mother ever taught her the proper, simple greeting of

“hello.” She was sure that soon enough people would be back to using primitive grunts and gestures as their only means of communication. Though it was cold and her baby was not warmly dressed, Vivienne did not invite Becca in.

“I wanted to talk to you about Juniper,” Becca said, both her voice and body relaxed as always. The baby, reaching up, wrapped his mother’s hair around his chubby

156 fist and pulled joyfully. “Gentle, Willow,” Becca said to him softly, but she made no move to untangle her hair from his tight grip.

Vivienne thought how Becca was about to accuse her of putting ideas into the girl’s head or some other such nonsense. Vivienne stood silently in her doorway and braced herself for whatever she had coming her way.

“I understand you were just being kind to Juniper, and I truly appreciate your generous heart,” Becca began, “but I need to ask you to please not give my children any refined or processed foods.”

A small wash of relief fell over Vivienne as she let out a pocket of breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“It’s just that I feel very strongly about keeping their bodies pure and healthful,”

Becca continued, “and things like sugar and bleached flour cause dis-ease in the body.”

Becca did not say disease, but dis and ease as two separate words, and Vivienne’s focus turned to the young woman’s eye again, its shining purple rawness on full display under her porch light. “What happened?” she asked, trying on Juniper’s bold and direct approach.

Becca brought her hand up to her swollen eye. “Oh,” she said, looking embarrassed.

“To your eye, dear,” Vivienne said with a knowing look. “How?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Becca laughed cautiously. “When you get as little sleep as I do, I promise you, it’s not all that surprising.”

Vivienne figured it was possible that Becca couldn’t even admit the truth to herself, and so she nodded in understanding. “I won’t give the kids any more cookies,”

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Vivienne said, acquiescing mostly just to end the interaction. Then, feeling a pang of pity for the young woman, she added, “Have a nice evening.”

As she fastened her door’s deadbolt and top latch, Vivienne decided she didn’t want to cause trouble by calling the government on the Whit-Freewaters. Instead, she decided to keep a more vigilant watch on the family and, should another bruise appear on either Becca or the children, she would call the police without hesitation, whatever the consequences.

“What did you dream of becoming when you were a girl?” Richard asked Vivienne as he lay stretched out beside her. The two of them peered into each other’s eyes on top of

Vivienne’s still-made bed. Richard was down to boxers and a T-shirt—all his own doing, of course—but he had only made it through half the buttons of Vivienne’s blouse.

Though she had been up for it, it seemed Richard had not—quite literally. And so

Vivienne feigned shyness to spare his ego, pulling her shirt back together over her chest.

She was surprised at the insistence of her own disappointment that it hadn’t happened.

But cuddling was nice, too—nicer than Vivienne could have imagined. And Richard, without his curl-brimmed hat and heeled boots, was almost a different man, too.

“I suppose I always wanted to be a nurse,” Vivienne said softly. She smiled and closed her eyes to savor the memory of the girl she once was. Even when she moved into this house with her husband so many years ago, though she knew she’d never be a nurse,

Vivienne had still been filled with hope. And love. Their first night as man and wife had been so wholly unexpected for Vivienne. She had not anticipated the warmth, the exhilaration, or her own insatiability. Freed by the knowledge that their union had been

158 eternally blessed and bound by God, Vivienne had embraced her newly-found hunger for lovemaking. But the mutual passion she had shared with her husband was short lived and so Vivienne stopped tending to their marriage and their home with the same care. Before all the flowers and ferns she’d planted in their backyard even had a chance to bloom,

Vivienne had long forgotten them.

Pulled out of her reverie by a soft rattling, Vivienne opened her eyes to see

Richard, half on and half off the bed, reaching over into his jacket pocket. Their eyes met as he quickly popped a pill into his mouth. “Forgot to take my vitamins,” Richard winked. He cleared his throat. “So, why didn’t you?” he asked.

Vivienne looked back at him blankly.

“Become a nurse,” he said.

“Oh.” She had forgotten all about that. “Because I got married. That’s just how things were. You know that.”

“Do I?” he asked, and his smile had a sly hint of suggestion in it. “Well, it’s never too late to fulfill your dreams,” he added knowingly, and Vivienne knew exactly what he was getting at.

“How old are you really?” Vivienne asked him, sitting up and running her hand down his arm.

“Well,” Richard said, his brows raised as if insulted. “If you want to know the truth,” he paused to take a deep breath, “I’ve been seventy-nine for a couple years now.”

Vivienne laughed with unrestrained delight. “You’re not all that much younger than I, after all, Mister,” she teased.

159

Richard leaned toward Vivienne and stopped her laughter with a kiss that told her he was certainly up for it now.

Vivienne pushed the grocery cart down the aisle with Louie secured into its baby seat.

She lingered in the natural foods section for a moment, entertaining the idea of storing some of the rubbish there in her cupboards, but ultimately decided she wouldn’t be caught dead purchasing some ridiculous tofu-granola-sprout cookies, sweetened with nothing but pure love. She left the aisle, surprising herself that she had even momentarily considered its contents.

As Vivienne rounded the corner, she saw the unmistakable dyed red up-do of

Frieda Singer, a regular from the Senior Center whom she hadn’t seen in years. Vivienne tried to leave before Frieda saw her, but then she heard her name being called. She turned to see Frieda, a short, fat lady with an oversized bosom, practically running in her direction. “Where on earth have you been?” Frieda was saying. At the Center, Frieda was always the one trying to get everybody to go to her church. Some did, but Vivienne knew there were only two types of people who went to church: those who had something to feel guilty about and those who had nothing better to do than gossip. Vivienne was neither one.

“They won’t let me bring Louie,” Vivienne explained, motioning to Louie who was curled in a sleepy ball on the cart’s seat. “I can’t very well leave him home unattended.”

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“Oh,” Frieda said, with the voice and accompanying dismissive hand motion to show she thought it was nonsense. “Why not let one of your neighbors keep an eye on him for you?” she suggested with a condescending smile Vivienne remembered all too well. Vivienne could never take Frieda Singer, with her heavy makeup and hair always standing so high off her forehead, very seriously.

Frieda placed her hand on Vivienne’s and it felt soft and warm. “You have no children or family,” Frieda said, her tone solemn and urging, “You need people. You’ve got to let someone help once in a while.”

The truth of Frieda’s words settled over Vivienne like an unwelcome cloud, heavy with water and static. But it was not Vivienne’s fault she had no children. She had wanted them, lots of them, in fact. She’d dreamed of how her children would have siblings and never have to be alone like she was as a child. Vivienne’s husband was the one who made sure she would never have children. Still conscious of Frieda’s soothing hand on her skin,

Vivienne was embarrassed as tears threatened to push their way forward and she cleared her throat.

Suddenly, Louie was up, stretching his teeth out toward Frieda’s hand with a vicious yip. Frieda pulled back with a gasp just in time to avoid a bite, but quickly regained her composure. “Well, we’d love to see you over there again, Vivienne,” she said, resigned. “Think it over,” she added. “You’re not getting any younger.”

At that, Vivienne straightened up to her full height and, in the youngest voice she could muster, said, “So long, Frieda.”

Frieda, probably the only lady at the Center Richard never had the opportunity to lay his hands on because her husband was never far from her, gave Vivienne a weary

161 smile and walked away. All the better, Vivienne thought, and she remembered with a raw sting how much it still hurt every time she saw Richard at the Center. One week she told him she loved him, the next week he had a new dance partner—and the next week, another. The only way she could bear to keep showing her face at the Center was knowing that she could pretend to them all that Richard hadn’t made a fool of her; but she could always tell in the twinkle of his eye, the nod of his head, that he knew the truth.

Back at home, Vivienne left Louie barking in the house while she busied herself along the fence line of her back yard. She was wearing her sun hat and gardening gloves and had pulled a few weeds to lay beside her. Vivienne peeked through the fence-holes, trying to see into the Whit-Freewater windows. Most of them were covered, not with drapes, but colorful batik cloths, some of them tied to let light into the house. In one of these was framed Travis Whit’s broad shoulders. The no good, son of a gun as standing there, drinking a beer, ruffling the top of one of the kids’ greasy heads. When Travis turned his face to the side, Vivienne could see his smiling profile, full of confidence, a man on top of the world. It made her downright sick to see him so happy and relaxed.

Becca came into view as she walked into the room, also smiling, her bruised eye looking no better than the day before. Vivienne’s heart picked up its pace, but this time out of fear instead of the usual aggravation she felt when she saw Becca. When Becca threw her arms around her husband’s neck and pulled him into a deep kiss right in front of the children, it was more than Vivienne could take.

An angry cry of disbelief escaped Vivienne’s throat and she heard it before realizing it came from her. Through the oval hole in the wooden plank, she saw the whole family stop and look out their window in response to her cry. Feeling unwell, Vivienne

162 scrambled awkwardly to her feet and quickly moved toward her house. Once safely locked inside, Vivienne found herself warm and shaking at Becca’s stupidity. That she could still love her husband after what he did to her is infuriating. Vivienne wanted to slap Becca in the face, strangle her even. Don’t you see, she would say, men are dirty, rotten, perverted animals. Don’t you understand how devastating it is to your soul to love a man who hurts you? Is it going to take him kicking in your stomach till you hemorrhage or trying to drown you in the soapy kitchen sink, your hair gripped into his clenched fist, for you to finally hate him?

Vivienne felt the soft moisture of Louie’s tongue on her arm and realized she was sitting on the dining room floor, tears making their way down to her neck. She hadn’t cried since her husband’s funeral and she remembered how strange it was that people thought she was sad. She could hear their whispers of “Oh, dear” and “Poor thing” and even “So sad.” It was true, Vivienne was crying, but she had felt no grief, only a strange, confused relief. The absurdity of their pity suddenly struck her as funny and she was thrown, without volition, into a laughing fit so severe, she had to cover her entire face with her handkerchief. Of course, everyone mistook her heaving shoulders and gasping cries for sobbing. She remembered one woman declaring, with absolute solemnity: “Such a terrible loss.”

That night, Vivienne was determined to catch Travis Whit in the act of terrorizing his family. She crept under the cover of dark to the gate that led to the Whit-Freewater backyard. She figured no one was going to arrest an old lady for trespassing, and she needed hard evidence so she could finally see that monster cuffed and locked up like the animal he was. She picked her way through the pitch black to Becca’s back porch and

163 stood outside the sliding glass door, looking for an opening in the batik draping. She heard the family inside and could see the lamp-light stealing through the white dapples of the cloth’s pattern. She couldn’t find a way to see in and so Vivienne kept moving along the glass door.

All of a sudden, there was no longer a wooden porch beneath her feet and

Vivienne was falling through the night. She shrieked as her arms flailed out to grip only cold, empty air. She came down hard onto mud and grass, sharp pains running through her wrists and one of her ankles. A porch light came on immediately, exposing her in its spotlight.

Vivienne was utterly horrified as the slider door opened and the entire Whit-

Freewater clan was suddenly staring at her, mouths agape. Filthy and humiliated, she tried to stand up, but the shooting pains in her bones kept her there.

“Miss Johnson?” came Juniper’s voice.

Vivienne wanted to hide, but instead was forced to look into each of their faces, even the baby boy on Becca’s hip. She felt ashamed when she saw the kindness, the openness, in their eyes—in Travis’s too.

“Are you okay?” Becca asked Vivienne, her voice gentle and sincere.

“Me?” Vivienne said, taken aback by the question. She looked at the door, open wide, and the family standing before her. She thought of Louie, back at home, waiting for her, and how that’s what she would have named the baby, had he lived through the hemorrhaging. Louis. Louie for short. She was reminded of the mourners’ misplaced pity at her husband’s funeral. Looking back now, she wished she had screamed out, “These

164 are tears of joy, you dimwits!” Now, she wished she had jumped up on her husband’s coffin and danced. Oh, how she would’ve loved to have see the looks on their faces!

Becca handed the baby to her husband and moved toward Vivienne, her hands outstretched, as the rest of the family looked on. The porch light seemed to grow and move, effulgent and intentional. Vivienne’s eyes fell to the face of the little girl Juniper, who did not flinch or shy away, and, taking a deep breath, Vivienne allowed herself to be seen.

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The Imaginative Mind

(or “The Curse of Prescience”)

Give me one flicker of dust I can build a shimmering empire

Leave me one lustful stare I can see us entwined, ten years past

I invent conversation, circumstance

Unreality penetrates the body skin, loins, heart, self-replicates self-embeds until the lines of what has and will and could be blur into a mottled pallet of murky color, over which a surface-wrinkled skin begins to form, the edges crusting, paint chipping slowly away

166

I Disagree

I think “and” is a beautiful word and idea.

167

Glovebox Notebooks and broken pencils

It has come to this balance between tastes and truths scatter then organize and I’ll remember what it means later

There is always time for poetry.

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Indoctrinated

want to be like birth I am simply letting poetry happen the only way can’t be forced or resisted

suspiciously eyed by old man with unkempt hair for talking to myself too loudly or violently publicly but need the sounds

struggle with boulder-roll for precarious creek-cross

(dogs have it easy—still I never fall)

some women swear they don’t feel a thing but the cow’s mid-meadow bellow lets me know I am not crazy at least not about this

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Night Walk when “trees just look like “trees” irate gaze obscured in shadow falls on (targets) holiday lights in march

STARGAZER was my best word and moment but

Dipper plays tricks (cat and mouse, really) makes me doubt my perception fall through concrete where the sidewalk ins

*and you were afraid of grates*

I need to matter words need to matter (to stay) through white noise of late cars I strain toward the quiet

I move and I move (and I move)

I right my brain.

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No Books

I am menstruating words nothing is simple this will always be messy

And to whom are you speaking?

Keep your gold star: I would rather have

(demand) immortalization.

Oh!

“Was it something I said?”

Yes.

171

Animal

When I was little, I was attacked by a pack of dogs. They surrounded me. They scratched their claws down my arms. They tore right through my jeans and tender flesh with their sharp teeth. All I could do was stand and scream as I was overcome.

People are often amazed that I could love dogs so much—to the point of preferring them above all other animals—after what happened to me. But even then, as terrifying as the attack was, I sensed that there was more to dogs than how the pack had reacted to me in that moment. I think I must have known somehow that as I grew more powerful within myself, I would no longer be in danger. I think I must have realized how, at their core, dogs are honest—incapable of lying—how dogs know only live in the moment.

Thirty years later, I still bear a scar on my leg from the attack. But the scar remained only skin-deep. In spite of the attack, I loved dogs long before I ever understood them.

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Why is it that a person’s relationship to animals—or lack thereof—says so much about the person themselves? Animals throughout time have been subjected to human thought and desire and will. Now, the spectrum of anything from the genetically modified chicken, who never experiences the simple pleasure of standing, to the vicious toy dog, carried and pampered to the point of neurosis, is so usual that it fails to inspire surprise.

When it comes to pets, judgment abounds. You will be branded by the way you feed, train, contain, maintain, and interact with the animals in your care. I, too, will judge you.

Just as you will judge me. In fact, I will even judge myself. It seems everyone is on board with demonizing the man who was fined for hoarding a thousand flea-ridden rats in his single-room Petaluma home. Most of us love to hate the dog-fighters, the horse-starvers, the cage-breeders. But what of the suburban golden retriever who is always ignored, never walked? What of the sickly reptile doomed to a small aquarium, far from his natural elements?

The human is the only animal that consistently craves personal, recreational engagement with species outside of its own. My relationship with animals has evolved throughout my lifetime, but my need for proximity to their flesh, their wonder, their beauty—even their danger—has remained constant.

I love the smell of a horse, out in the pasture, breathing the clean grass-air, sweating slightly under a subdued sun. I could bury my nose in the hair of a horse’s neck. Horse is an alive scent, an earth scent, a wild scent. And I love the feel of a horse, the velvet softness of a horse’s upper lip, the sure, solid muscles of a horse’s shoulder, the easy sways and pitches of a horse’s back beneath the saddle. I love the sound of a horse, his

173 shoed hooves tapping over compacted earth, the gentle blow of warm air through taut- flared nostrils, the soft nicker that means he is content.

When I was a girl, I used to walk down a road lined with ditches instead of sidewalks, to see the horses. I sometimes brought them worm-holed apples from my orchard floor or pulled up long handfuls of wild grass and weeds—they ate it all. And they always let me stroke and pat them. Still, I knew nothing about horses.

A childhood friend and I once asked a neighbor woman, whom we had never before met, if we could perhaps ride her horses. Surprisingly, and without question, the woman saddled up her two horses and off my friend and I went, knowing not a single thing about how to ride. The horses went where they wanted, at the pace they wanted, and they went home when they felt so inclined. My friend and I simply held on.

Knowing what I do now, I am amazed at not only the blissful ignorance we were lucky enough to have, but also our good fortune that the horses were so kind and well- behaved. That day, I had no idea what a sensitive creature it was that allowed me to sit upon its back. It would be years until I learned that some horses are curious, some have a sense of humor, and others are bitter. I had not then realized the depths of understanding and awareness that mark that ever-captivating look in a horse’s eye.

A horse is exactly what he claims to be. He is dirt and grain and power and herd and fear. A horse asks you to see him for who and what he is. A horse will run because he is prey and he is designed to do so. A horse does not want to be alone. Ever. A horse will ask you to teach him cooperation, he will ask you to guide him, and he will ask you to never, ever harm him or break his spirit. This I know about horses. And I know that a girl’s connection to horses is spiritual and sensual and precarious. But this is all I know.

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Because I have been caged—first as a child until I set myself free at sixteen, and then again as adult who took thirteen years to finally leave a cruel man—I never wanted to cage anything. Most especially not a winged thing. I have always sneered at the pathetically small pet-store enclosures for clip-winged birds. To me, a caged, flightless bird was always a violence: the ultimate symbol of a stolen freedom. When I found myself responsible for a caged bird in my own home then, I was simultaneously ashamed and intrigued.

The tiny bird was an adult parakeet that needed a home, and my youngest son begged me to take it in. She was blue, a pretty little thing. My son named the bird Lucky and we used the small cage, the low-quality seed, and the unnecessary litter that the previous owner had provided. As I do with everything, I immediately researched the parakeet: its history, behavior, habitat, and needs. What I soon discovered was that there is so much more to birds than I ever could have suspected or guessed. They are flock creatures, and therefore social, interactive, interdependent. They are tropical and therefore need warmth, humidity, and fresh greens.

Birds bond deeply and often for life. A bird will bond with you if you are all she has. Birds communicate constantly, with their eyes, their movements, and especially their sounds. You must talk to her, sing to her, play music for her, and slowly, ever so patiently, gain her trust. Without companionship and intellectual stimulation, a bird will become despondent and die. Without proper care and nutrition, a bird will die. Most captive parakeets do not live long. Even mine did not live a long life. Even when I rescued another bird to keep her company and let her fly freely in the house, her intact

175 wings pumping furiously, the bird did not last. Even when I loved her and she perched on my finger and sang to me sweetly, she could not live. And my tears, and those of my children, could not change that she never lived where and how she was meant to. Only in death, buried illegally in a patch of city dirt, beneath stones and jewels and flowers placed carefully with love, was the bird finally free.

My daughter and I discovered goats together. My farmer friend started a herd and so we went and we learned. Goats and humans have shared their history for ten thousand years.

A human hand kneading a doe udder is more ancient than the Great Pyramid. And still, my farmer friend’s goats surprised me with their openness and ready friendship. A goat, once she knows you, will smile when she sees you and hurry over to greet you. A goat will run and play with you. A goat will cuddle with you. A goat will give you her milk because she decides it’s a fair trade for the rare treat of alfalfa and oat.

The first birth my daughter ever witnessed was that of twin kids: a feisty buckling and a gentle doeling. As a child, I watched my siblings’ and cousins’ births. I also sat breathlessly as bunnies and kittens quietly entered the world. As an adult, when I worked as a birthing doula, I stood beside countless women as they gasped and sighed and grunted through the births of their own children. But, up until the twin kids, my daughter had only known birth as photographs and nature recordings. That day, she stood outside the open-doored stall, looking in as my farmer friend and I went to the doe’s side to comfort and assist her.

The doe’s guttural groans and yells were very much like those of a laboring woman. We all felt her pain and struggle and determination. And when the first wet,

176 helpless kid made his way out, surrounded by hay and the sound of his mother’s screams, we all felt that universal, humbling presence of new life. All kids are born in the caul, and we helped the doe to strip away the membrane so the amniotic waters would spill out and fresh air could sweep in. We watched as the kids went, in mere minutes, from limp, coughing fetuses to spunky baby goats, already trying to run on their bony, trembling legs. We sat in awe as these little creatures with open, trusting eyes, stood and then walked straight into our arms without fear or hesitation.

“That was amazing!” my daughter said. And it was. Goats’ intimate relationship with humans continues to amaze and surprise me. Goats are ancient. Goats are interpersonal. Goats are the essence of family.

When I was growing up, dogs came and went at my house. The problem was that they started to act like dogs. Just as the typical squeals and boundless energy so synonymous with childhood were not allowed in my home, neither were the typical dog behaviors: barking, digging, running, and defecating on the grass were unacceptable. The moment any general dogness occurred—which usually turned out to be a few short weeks—they were gone. One, however, lasted the better part of a year. He was a black cocker spaniel and I loved him more than anything in the world. When his doggy ways became disagreeable to my parents, they prepared to get rid of him. I was so distraught, I promised I would do everything for him and they would never even have to see him if that was what they wanted. I begged and wished and prayed and, to my great surprise, they said yes.

177

I kept my word. I brushed my dog’s long, curly hair each day after school. I took him for long walks along our country roads and taught him to sit and stay and catch. I carefully prepared his dinner just so—this much kibble with that much canned, all mixed together in his bowl with warm water—every night. But, two years later, my parents said they no longer wanted to pay vet bills from foxtails finding their way into his long ears.

When I came home from school one day, my dog was gone. It was the first of many blows, only the beginning of the many losses I would feel in my life.

In adulthood I have studied dogs. I have trained them. I have rescued them. I have moved from loving the idea of dogs to loving and respecting dogs themselves. My current dog, whom I adopted at six weeks from the S.P.C.A., is getting to be an old man.

He is nine, large, and brown; his chin seems to be grizzled with new white hairs each day.

I still take him up mountains with me and people often mistake him for an older puppy because he is in such great shape and so energetic. We all know the get-your-tissue dog stories—Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows come to mind—about man’s favored companion. These wonderful tales create a cultural idea, a collective consciousness, about dogs that resides only in the imaginary. But these ideas are not reality. I know the reality of dogs. Still, I know you won’t understand me when I confide to you that my dog is truly my best friend.

When my brother died, my dog lay beside me and wailed along with me. When I started secretly planning my escape from my husband, my dog knew. Though I had trained him so perfectly that he never stepped out of the house without me, when the front door opened that day I packed my bags, he bolted out and jumped into the car through an open window, afraid of being forgotten and left behind. Though he was only a

178 year old, he was determined to stay by my side no matter what. My dog has been with me through homelessness, through move-ins and move-outs, through accomplishments and deaths, through broken bones and surgeries, through my children growing from sweet toddlers to bitter teenagers, through my two years of PTSD—and the events that led up to it. He is my daily exercise companion, my home alarm system, my babysitter. He is an affectionate friend who is always there for me with nothing but love and forgiveness. He is a being who looks at me every day with such adoration and devotion that I know just how crucial my responsibility to him is.

But then, this is a story that has been told again and again, isn’t it? Dogs are known for their great hearts. Perhaps our love for dogs is selfish and self-reflective, but the dog certainly does not judge us for it. Dogs are adventure and pack and loyalty and respect. A dog who respects you will give his life for you without hesitation. Dogs know how to sacrifice. Dogs know how to let go. Dogs are pure love.

I have had more pets than I can count: snails, chickens, rabbits, fish, crabs. When my children were small we got stick insects from a friend and even adopted a large snake.

When I was partnered but childless, I had cats and treated them like babies. I went through a time of being a vegetarian. I’ve had moments when I wanted to adopt every animal in a shelter and moments when I wished I had no pets at all. I have volunteered at shelters and rescued feral cats; I have had animals put to sleep. The archetypal crazy cat lady—single, childless, and living alone with—is a friend of mine. And though I know that her forcing humanness on her cats is hurting no one, I still can’t let go of my judgment and discomfort over it. I can’t seem to stop writing people off immediately

179 when I find out they don’t like animals. If I find out you’re a dog person, I will consciously take more time to get to know you, to find the good in you. On the other hand, if you treat your dog like a person, I will not love you or your dog. He will have become too crazy to love and it is your fault.

Some people see their pet animals as toys or accessories or weapons. And some people, people like me, simply want to trek through the beauty of nature, breathe the fresh air, and enjoy the feel of dirt on their shoes and sweat on their skin—all with a faithful friend at their side.

I once came face-to-face with a coyote. I was on a solo hike—my most usual kind of hike—and he, I suppose, had tracked prey far from the heart of the forest thickets. We both stood fixed, staring at each other with wide eyes. At first, I thought he was an oddly tall fox because of his red, bushy tail and his legs, long and thin like two pairs of stilts. I could see the wild in his eyes and I was certain that he had never encountered a human before. Because I understand canine behavior and body language so well, I knew that he was much more unsure about our meeting than I. We both stayed frozen, simply looking into each other’s eyes for what felt like minutes.

When I realized that other hikers could happen along and report his presence too close to a hiking trail, I broke the spell and moved. He moved in response, cautiously at first, and then he trotted back into the woods until he disappeared. I have seen plenty of deer, raccoons, even skunks. I’ve seen plenty of every kind of animal behind bars and fences, too. My encounter with a wild coyote was different. I could feel the power of his wildness, his autonomy, his natural lack of tameness. I could feel myself drawn to him. It

180 was an innate urge to understand and connect with him. I imagine this pull must have been what our earliest ancestors felt when they first placed a rope around a young goat’s neck; the same desire they must have felt when they first threw a meaty bone to a lone wolf.

181

Waterwash

Don’t over-think forward-think

mud was a mess

equal parts paste and slime

*your shoes won’t ruin*

Even dogs don’t come this side

the waterwash

right-handed left-footed

Write it down before you forget

182

Sumac

There were men all over that mountain today each one a father or son figure

and poison sumac sitting in wait on fallen sticks rainfresh and oiled, not yet showing

wanting touch innate urge to spread and seep into my pores

But nothing can tear me from this mountain is mine.

183

Alert like those keepers with their wilds sweet and fattened a woman must always remember the animal she feeds and loves should not unguard herself can never turn her back.

184

The Wilds

Jonah stomped hard on his emergency brake until he heard the clicks of its cranking run out. The rocky Idaho hill he had parked on was precarious, but it hid his truck well enough under the partial shade of a Bull pine. He always went off road as far out as he possibly could. A lifetime of experience had taught him the right way to get the really big game. It was also a good way to avoid having to pay the heavy tag fees that the amateur tourist hunting parties had hiked up over the years. Out here, there wouldn’t be another hunter for at least thirty miles around. Out here, with nothing but the wide blue sky and the low rush of the Snake River in the distance, a man could breathe.

The sun was still making its way over the mountains and came through the windshield at an angle that forced him to squint and turn away. Next to him, his dog, a flop-eared hound and lab mix, stretched and yawned, her tail gently banging against the passenger door as she looked up at him. Jonah couldn’t help but smile when she looked at him like that. She wasn’t really much of a help to him out there, but she was good company, almost the only company he could stand most of the time. Even as a child,

185

Jonah had found solace in the woods behind his house. Though young, his solitude there was the only safety and freedom he had.

The cold morning wind rushed into the truck cab as his door fell open, and the smell of pine and dry earth felt like coming home. He threw a bottle of water and a few sandwiches from the cooler into his backpack and grabbed his rifle. “Alright, Lolly,” he said, slamming the tailgate shut. “Let’s go.”

Lolly trotted along beside him, her nose already busy at work in the dirt. It was a stupid name for a dog, he knew. Sometimes he hated saying it. Trish had named her when she was a pup and it was too late to change it now. It was too late for a lot of things. As

Jonah headed up toward the denser patch of forest, the mountainside steepened and he pushed his legs harder into the rough earth until his muscles burned.

Trish had gone hunting with him once. She was curious, she said, and wanted to see for herself what exactly he did when he disappeared into the woods for days or even weeks at a time. “You really are one of those mountain men— wild,” she said, looking at him sidewise, a smile playing at the corner of her lips. Back then she had seemed to like his quiet, the things he didn’t say. That first night, they set up a small tent on a windy hill and a sudden thunderstorm had given way to a downpour. Beneath the rushing floods of rain against the canvas roof, she told him, her breath warm on his ear, how she felt safe with him. “Tell me how I make you feel,” she whispered, insisted. He felt the soft curve of her back as he pulled her to him, breathed in the scent of her neck and hair and mouth, and, for the first time, he was glad to not be alone.

A broken tree branch trailing a loose tuft of grayish-brown fur came into view and

Jonah knew it was high up enough that it had to be an elk. He could track anything for

186 miles, could tell how close it might be by how fresh the scat was, knew just when to hold back and when to be ready. This elk was heading across the Idaho border into Montana.

Jonah had crossed over the boundary before without a permit and didn’t hesitate to do it again. Fines and the arbitrary state lines that men drew had never concerned him. He understood that nature’s laws easily took precedence over any that man could invent.

He knelt into the damp earth, finding just three hoof prints, the third of which showed him the elk was taking a new direction. The imprints in the forest floor also showed him this elk was most likely a young bull: the prints were on the smaller side and there were no tracks of an offspring to be found. The elk couldn’t be far but Jonah’s work was still only beginning. Depending on other factors like terrain, weather, and if another predator was stalking the prey too, it could take days of tracking the animal before he had it clear in his sights. He had buddies who went on hunting trips but hardly ever downed game. They had no patience for the process, no reverence for the animal. They often clipped prey only enough to wound the animal as it made its escape. For those kinds of men, hunting was nothing more than a game, a way to stand tall and beat upon their hollow chests; to Jonah, it was sustenance and self-reliance and more: a perfect synthesis of God and nature, the spiritual and the tangible. Jonah could not imagine living any other way.

Jonah was not one to romanticize the realities of the wild or the hunt either. When he made a kill, he felt only a humble gratitude for the animal. Still, he didn’t pretend that a part of him had to see the prey as nothing but meat once he started gutting and halving it, his fist clenched tight around the handle of his thick, serrated hunting knife, pulling and sawing through hide and flesh and tendon.

187

The weekend Trish came with him, Jonah took down his biggest elk ever. The animal had already stopped breathing by the time they made their way over to where it lay.

Surveying their surroundings, Jonah could see there was no way he’d be able to get his truck close enough; he’d have to quarter the animal and haul the pieces in. Trish watched silently as he stood with one foot on either side of the elk’s neck, knife in hand. The head was so heavy, he had to use real effort to raise and hold it up enough to make the small slit on the side of its throat where it could bleed out. To preserve the meat, he would have to make especially quick work of it, and so he did.

He had thought Trish might want to help, but she kept a distance, her eyes fixed on the dark blood thickly pooling around the elk’s neck. Jonah sliced the animal’s belly open with care and let its contents ooze out. Trish groaned, finally distracted from the blood seeping into the leaves and dirt.

“You okay?” he asked, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand to look up at her.

The pungent odor of healthy entrails wafted up around them and she brought a hand to her face like a hospital mask. “Yeah, sorry,” she said, turning away.

Jonah shrugged and went back to work, but every time he looked over his shoulder at Trish, she was standing in the same place, concentrating on the dark, wet stain in the earth, and when she looked at him again, there was something behind her eyes that had not been there before.

188

The sun had been full overhead for some time when Jonah finally reached a plateau on the mountainside; despite the cold bite of the air, a thin mist of sweat covered his forehead and temples. He whistled over to Lolly, who had obviously picked up on another scent entirely. She ran over to him panting, her tongue hanging far out of her mouth; but he could see in the way she raised her brow at him, she was still full of energy. He shared his water with her and found some shade where he could eat and relax for a short while. If he didn’t get close enough in the next couple of hours, he would need to find a place to set up camp for the night. It was no big deal to pick up another trail again early the next morning. As long as something else didn’t get to the elk in the middle of the night, it would be too busy feeding to go very far in the dark.

When Trish got pregnant, she started worrying more about his taking off and being out of reach so frequently. Painting in her studio at home, she had always been content. But now that she was no longer alone in her body, she seemed unsettled without his presence. “I need you here now,” she would tell Jonah, her face calm, but her voice betraying an urgent plea. “It’s not just you anymore.” Before that, not even his work held him back from leaving when he needed to. The different jobs he had, doing woodworking on homes and businesses, lasted only days or weeks at a time. It was easy for him to have time to go as he pleased. When she placed his palm across the new, slight roundness of her belly, he felt drawn toward it and as though he were being pulled away from it all at the same time.

She was right that some men got lost or injured in the woods; some even died.

Jonah knew how a turn of weather or something as seemingly simple as crossing a body of water could kill a man. He was knowledgeable about the woods and how to stay safe,

189 but he also knew how there always remained an unknown factor, and no man could honestly claim to be totally free of being subject to it.

Once, Jonah had been hunting late into the night, later than he usually did. As he moved through the black wilderness before him, he was unable to shake the feeling that he was being followed. Jonah had never been afraid of the dark or of being out alone in the forest with nothing between him and the vast night sky but skin and clothes. Besides, he always had his rifle at the ready. But a deep, cold fear crept into him that night. Even as he finally tried to sleep, a sickening tingle settled down into the very marrow of his neck and spine. The next morning, tracing his steps back to his truck, he saw the wide, sure footprints of a mountain lion just behind his own: the lion had been silently stalking him for miles throughout the dark night. Though he hadn’t told anyone, after that Jonah was shaken enough to stay away from the woods for almost three months.

Jonah, with Lolly close at his heels, followed the shaded mountainside ridge until he could see where the game had begun moving down to the ravine below. Through the thick stands, he could see how the ravine gave way to a lush valley where the elk was sure to end up grazing for the night. Making his way down the steep and rocky terrain, he grabbed sturdy branches for support. But when the thickets opened up, he had nothing to hold onto and the ground was dryer, with tiny rocks crumbling and sliding beneath his boots. Lolly made her way down quickly and easily, and was out of his line of vision within seconds. He could see that he was going to have to sit down to avoid falling and, unstrapping his rifle from his back, he held it sideways across his torso and slowly slid down the mountainside, a cloud of reddish-brown dust rising up around him as he went.

190

By the time Jonah reached the ravine, Lolly was nowhere to be found. He whistled but she did not come. Rifle in hand, he began searching the area for any sign of where she could have gone. He climbed up onto the highest rock and scanned the landscape for her familiar form. She had never disappeared before, and a dread he hadn’t expected began to creep into his stomach and thicken in his throat, causing him to swallow hard. He called out to her but was answered only by the steady rush of wind through the trees.

Climbing back down, Jonah decided to begin moving along the outskirts of the woods, since Lolly had surely disappeared into one of the stands. He thought perhaps he could find a sign of where she had entered and follow her trail from there.

He had hardly started along the forest edge when a loud yelp sounded in the distance. The reverberating noise was unmistakably his own dog crying out. Releasing the rifle’s safety, he ran in the general direction from where the sound had issued. Each impact of his boots hitting the hard ground pounded into his head, radiating out to his pulsing temples. Out of the corner of his eye, he finally caught a slight movement in the needled branches of a fallen fir.

As he got closer, the commotion intensified and, above muffled snarls and yips, he heard Lolly cry out again. His lungs constricted against the cold air being forced into them and he had no choice but to stop running. He was too out of breath to whistle.

Instead, he shouted Lolly’s name, commanding her to come to him. Falling to his knees,

Jonah readied his rifle, and aimed at the center of the struggle.

Focusing on his target calmed his breathing. “Come on, girl,” he urged her under his breath. Within moments, Lolly emerged from the thicket with what looked like

191 another large dog at her heels. Jonah braced himself and pulled the trigger. The realization it was a wolf didn’t fully hit him till he heard the echoing blast and saw the gray body fall.

Lolly stumbled toward him with a slight limp and he picked up his pace to get a better look at the downed wolf. When he reached the body, a wave of nausea came over him as he saw her teats: she was still nursing. She had young somewhere nearby, young that needed protection and nourishment, young who were depending on her.

When it came to the harsh realities of nature, Jonah had never been soft or sentimental. Animals were animals; they lived and they died. But something about this wolf now lying limp and lifeless made him sick: her tongue hanging out, her body motionless, her thick fur saturated with fresh blood. Jonah had to look away.

Jonah used to lie awake in bed and watch Trish as she slept. Lying by his side every night, her chest softly rising and falling, he felt in so many ways like she was what he had been waiting for his whole life. That night he had slid his hand along the sheets toward her like so many other nights, reaching for her, needing her. But the sheets were damp, and her underwear, soaked through.

He turned the small bed lamp on and saw the blood, fresh and dark on his fingertips. “Trish,” he said, shaking her gently, trying to wake her without alarming her.

Trish stretched her arms above her head and smiled up at him. “What?” she asked, still not quite awake. But Jonah could not speak; he could not say out loud how it was already over before it really had a chance to begin. Trish’s smile slowly fell when she

192 saw the blood, and as she looked into his face, tears slipped over the rims of her eyes, and he knew she understood.

That night, he held her tightly against him until the sun rose. But soon the house became smaller as Trish’s pain filled it; like thick clouds, her grief closed in on him from every corner, and he could no longer breathe. Not knowing what to say or do, he found he could not stay. He needed to be some place where things made sense. For as long as he could remember, all he’d really had was himself, and the wilds were the only place he could go to truly feel safe and whole.

Jonah felt the familiar pressure of Lolly leaning into his leg and looked down at her, suddenly aware that he hadn’t even assessed her injuries. While he looked her over she wagged her tail as if nothing had happened. One of her hind legs was bloodied and she was favoring it, but nothing seemed to be broken or too damaged. Jonah took one last look at the wolf. A single fly lit on her stilled muzzle and, though Jonah wanted to leave, he found he couldn’t.

A sudden snap of a branch echoed out of the dead fir branches from where Lolly had just run, bringing Jonah back to himself. It could be anything, he knew, but he needed to believe it was one of the wolf’s young. He needed to be able to see it, to know that it was big enough and strong enough to survive on its own. Something — some force or urgency within him — which he could not wholly rationalize, compelled him forward.

Still carrying his rifle with both hands, Jonah moved quietly into the stand of trees. The trunks were densely packed together and it was difficult for him to see very far ahead. He heard another branch snap and moved toward the sound. The trees’ fallen

193 needles made the forest floor soft and accommodating beneath his boots, and he knew he had the advantage of a silent approach. Squinting his eyes, Jonah could just make out a form crouching in the brambles alongside a large, scarred tree. Clutching his gun, suddenly aware of his breath, Jonah stood still, unsure.

Then, wanting to get a better look, he took a few more small steps forward. The animal moved slightly, and he noticed it was covered in something that didn’t seem to be fur. The way it had moved hadn’t seemed natural either. His heart beat a little faster; his palms slid on sweat around the rifle. Whatever was in the brambles was unlike any other animal he had seen out there before. But that need to see, to know, continued to propel him.

After a few more cautious steps, a low growl began to rise from the brambles where the animal was crouched. It was dim under the shade of the trees, but Jonah could see the animal’s head, covered in what looked like a mass of matted hair; and then he saw the eyes, forward-facing, taking him in.

Taking in the thin, huddled form, Jonah tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Under all the mud and debris that covered it, he could swear he saw skin; beneath the lips pulled back into a snarl, a row of fine, straight teeth. On its face, below its eyes, wet drops streaked thin lines, washing away the dirt: Tears. Jonah dropped his rifle and it fell silently to the earth.

Though he fell to his knees, Jonah continued to lock eyes with this being, this small, naked child he had discovered. The child’s palms pressed heavily into the earth, its toes flexed and ready beneath the ankles. He remembered the wolf lying dead in the dirt,

194 her milk drying up. Jonah felt his eyes moisten and flow over as the filthy, emaciated child trembled and growled before him.

195

Tamed

I rush in devour scraps you’ve tossed to the dirt

I follow cautiously head low ears back

I wait outside

I curl around my own body in the grass

196

Absence

Cold seeps through my bones all to their Marrow

My blood has not yet thickened enough to warm

surface

core

the in-betweens

tremble

jaggedly

without.

197

Rid

I carried you up the mountain

Unlike those children in the woods I made sure you could not leave a trail

When I found the place I ripped you out All of you and us

-touch-look-taste-hope-

I buried you inside the bare overlook tree

You didn’t say a word— though when I turned my back and ran I felt you stay.

198

FIN