Number Twelve/2013 Number

poemmemoirstory 2013 Lavonne J. Adams J. Lavonne Alibar Lucy AllisonAnders Barefoot Bebe Bissell Skupski Michelle Erica Dawson Mary Echlin Brett Griffiths Christine Hale Hand Jessica Hanway Scott Nancy Lisa Hartz Ison Tara Jaffe Sandra Karapetkova Holly Latham Irene Lee Joni McClung Kathleen McCurtis Marlene MillsPamela Myers Mary Jane Leslie Pietrzyk Mary Elizabeth Pope Potos Andrea Reed Wendy Rosenberg Gigi Hilary Ross Elena Schneider SellersDanielle Elizabeth Wade Wedmore Suellen ..

PMSpoemmemoirstory

2013number twelve Copyright © 2013 by PMS poemmemoirstory

PMS is a journal of women’s poetry, memoir, and short fiction published once a year. Subscriptions are $10 per year, $15 for two years, or $18 for three years; sample copies are $7. Unsolicited manuscripts of up to five poems or fifteen pages of prose are welcome during our reading period (January 1 through March 30), but must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope for consideration. Manuscripts received at other times of the year will be returned unread. For submission guidelines, visit us at www.pms-journal.org, or send a SASE to the address below. All rights revert to the author upon publication. Reprints are permitted with appropriate acknowledgment. Address all correspondence to:

PMS poemmemoirstory HB 213 1530 3rd Avenue South Birmingham, AL 35294-1260

PMS poemmemoirstory is a member of the Council of Literary Maga- zines and Presses (CLMP) and the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ). Indexed by the Humanities International Index and in Feminist Periodicals: A Current Listing of Contents, PMS poemmemoirstory is distributed to the trade by Ingram Periodicals, 1226 Heil Quaker Blvd., La Vergne, TN 37086-7000. patrons

College of Arts and Sciences The University of Alabama at Birmingham

The Department of English, The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Margaret Harrill Robert Morris, M.D. C. Douglas Witherspoon, M.D. friends Sandra Agricola Andrew Glaze Will Miles Daniel Anderson Robert P. Glaze Dail W. Mullins Jr. Rebecca Bach Randa Graves Michael R. Payne George W. Bates Ron Guthrie Robert Lynn Penny Peter and Miriam Bellis Ward Haarbauer Lee and Pam Person Claude and Nancy Ted Haddin William Pogue Bennett John Haggerty Kieran Quinlan & Randy Blythe Richard Hague Mary Kaiser James Bonner Sang Y. Han Jim Reed F.M. Bradley Jeff Hansen Steven M. Rudd Mary Flowers Braswell Tina Harris Rusty Rushton Jim Braziel Jessica Heflin John Sartain Karen Brookshaw Patty Callahan Henry Janet Sharp Bert Brouwer Pamela Horn Danny Siegel Edwin L. Brown Jennifer Horne Juanita Sizemore Donna Burgess William Hutchings Martha Ann Stevenson Linda Casebeer Alicia K. Clavell Lanier Scott Isom Lou Suarez John E. Collins Joey Kennedy Susan Swagler Robert Collins Sue Kim Drucilla Tyler Catherine Danielou Marilyn Kurata Maria Vargas Jim L. Davidson Ruth and Edward Adam Vines Michael Davis Lamonte Daniel Vines Denise Duhamel Beverly Lebouef Larry Wharton Charles Faust Ada Long Elaine Whitaker Grace Finkel Susan Luther Jacqueline Wood Edward M. Friend III John C. Mayer John M. Yozzo Stewart Flynn James Mersmann Carol Prejean Zippert staff

editor-in-chief Kerry Madden assistant editors Leah Bigbee Callie Mauldin Shelly Cato Bethany Mitchell Halley Cotton Daniel Simmons Jessica Griggs Laura Simpson Mollie Hawkins Lauren Slaughter Ashley Jones Jessica Terrell Jordan A. Mann Dan Townsend business managers Heather Martin Nakia Lee administrative assistants Shelly Cato Callie Mauldin Bethany Mitchell Jessica Terrell cover design Michael J. Alfano cover photo front: Devon’s Disco Ball by Lucy Madden-Lunsford production/printing 47 Journals, LLC contents

from the Editor-in-Chief i

Callie Mauldin Interview with Allison Anders, Lucy Alibar, Sandra Jaffe, and Marlene McCurtis 1 poemmemoirstory Erica Dawson I, too, sing America. 15 Lancaster and Kerr 16 Bogart and Bergman 17 Harry and Sally 18

Lavonne J. Adams Dead Cottonwood Tree 19

Lisa Hartz Early Instruction 20

Danielle Sellers After Being Called Childish by My Lover 21 After the Engagement 22

Kathleen McClung Freefall 23 Spanish Fly 24

Michelle Skupski Bissell The Barest Rib 25

Mary Echlin Snowdrops 26

Suellen Wedmore Great White Trillium 27

Brett Griffiths Detroit Suburbs, 1976 28

Joni Lee Late Summer, Missouri 30 We Are All Drowsy 31

Andrea Potos Sleep After Travel 32

Holly Karapetkova Worry 33

Irene Latham What if the Ocean Is a Myth? 34 contents…

Jessica Hand To the Cross-Dressing Cuttlefish 36

Hilary Ross Every Man a Poppy 38 Owing to the Inestimable Age of the Universe, Calculating the Probability that You are my Father and I am Your Daughter is in itself Impossible, but a Probable Estimate would be 1/400,000,000,000,000,000 39 poemmemoirstory Elizabeth Wade Thirty-fifth 44

Pamela Mills Blood 53

Elena Schneider The Devil in the Details 58

Leslie Pietrzyk Joy to the World 66

Christine Hale Cooking Instruction 75

Wendy Reed Prologue: An Accidental Memoir 80

Bebe Barefoot Sparkle and Spin 82 poemmemoirstory Mary Jane Myers Galileo’s Finger 94

Gigi Rosenberg Say His Name 103

Nancy Scott Hanway Wake to Sleep 105

Tara Ison Andorra 113

Mary Elizabeth Pope The Club 126

contributors 133 f r o m t h e editor-in-chief

Dearest Reader, From getting “bitch-slapped by Zeus” in Bebe Barefoot’s “Sparkle and Spin” about death and an unclaimed disco ball to Tara Ison’s achingly lonely trip to the country of “Andorra” to Wendy Reed’s raw “Prologue: An Accidental Memoir” to Mary Jane Myers’ private incantation with “Galileo’s Finger,” we go on journeys from Lower Alabama to Florence, Italy, to the depths of the heart in these incandescent poems, memoirs, and stories. Like the panels of a disco ball, glinting with lights, secrets, and grief, our contributors invite us into spinning narratives with lan- guage so precise and alive that the world falls away for a little while. It’s a long journey each year to create a new issue as work arrives the old-school way in big manila envelopes. In creating each new issue of poemmemoirstory every year, we read the thousand submissions that pour in between early January and April, and it’s extraordinarily too dif- ficult to choose between so many terrific submissions. We never know what the motif will be until the thematic threads start to stitch together. And so, dear reader, welcome to PMS 12, an issue that celebrates women in stories, poetry, memoir, and now in this new issue, women filmmakers. Published in Birmingham, Alabama—home of the Sidewalk Film Festival and also home to native John Badham, director of one of the greatest disco balls of all time, Saturday Night Fever—we felt it was time to begin to ask women filmmakers and screenwriters about their journeys from page to screen. Senior fiction editor, Callie Mauldin, interviewed the following women filmmakers: Lucy Alibar, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Sandy Jaffe, Our Mockingbird, Marlene McCurtis, Wednesdays in Mississippi, and Allison Anders, Mi Vida Loca, Grace of My Heart, and Strutter. These conversations capture the visions of both young and more estab- lished voices of women making films today. From living in a bathtub in Louisiana to two local Birmingham high schools, one black and one white, coming together to put on To Kill a Mockingbird to women civil rights workers in Mississippi in the 1960s to the joy and anguish of sus- taining a life as an artist, these women filmmakers explore storytelling both on and off the grid in Hollywood. Erica Dawson’s poems about filmmaking also establish cinema as a major theme in this collection. Senior poetry editor, Shelly Cato, describes a poem as a movie still, “panning in and then back out, giving

PMS.. i the reader a closer look at what he might have missed, the editing that goes into writing, the cutting that is like (in older days) the strips of film lying on the editing (cutting) room floor. Good writing can give us not only the emotion that was present in the moment, but also a visual that we often don’t forget.” So many of our writers left us with visuals that we can’t forget in PMS 12 from Gigi Rosenberg’s heartbreaking, “Say His Name” about the loss of a child to a cheerleader’s grinding ambition in Mary Elizabeth Pope’s “The Club” to the late Pamela Mills’ story “Blood,” submitted by her friend, Maria Brandt, about killing sheep in South Africa to Elena Schneider’s playful language exploration in “Devil in the Details.” I must also offer a word of thanks and gratitude to my PMS staff this year. I could not do it without you. A huge thank you to my co-editors and student readers, who care so deeply about the quality work in PMS: Thank you Callie, Shelly, Dan, Daniel, Ashley, Halley, Jordan, Mollie, Jessica Griggs, Jessica Terrell, Laura, and Dr. Lauren Slaughter, too, who is both a sensitive and caring advisor in the final hour as we choose our selections. And to Bethany Mitchell, one of the most highly organized and dedicated interns to have crossed my path, I cannot say thank you enough. A big thank you to Cellina Miller for her time and help stuffing envelopes in our annual PMS mailing. Finally, PMS would not exist at all without the financial support of Dr. Peter Bellis, the UAB English Department, and all of the Patrons and Friends of the Creative Writing Program. A big thank you also goes to Dean Rebecca Bach for her commitment to the Creative Writing Program at UAB, along with Allison Crotwell and Jennifer Ellison. Many thanks to Dr. Cynthia Ryan, Dr. Jim Braziel, and Dr. Adam Vines, whose commitment and kindness support us every step of the way, whether it’s commandeering the table at AWP or suggesting fabulous interns to help out during the year. And thank you, Lucy Lunsford, for the cover and for trekking out in a Los Angeles heat-wave to capture a picture of an errant disco ball in Echo Park, ironically home to so many of Allison Anders’ films. PMS looks so beautiful because of the design of Russell Helms, who I have turned to again and again for advice. I would also like to give a big thanks to Linda Frost, the founding editor of PMS. Expanding Linda Frost’s vision for PMS, the last two publication par- ties have included book drives of children’s books to give to the “Aid to Inmate Mothers Story Book Project” at the Tutwiler Women’s Prison in ii PMS.. Wetumpka, Alabama. The first year we collected over thirty books for moms and kids, and last year it was up to sixty books. I’m hoping to break a hundred at our next publication party. I want to thank Larnetta Moncrief, the director, for creating this amazing program where incar- cerated mothers come together with their children to read stories. Finally, this issue is dedicated to Heather Martin and Delores Carlito, whose careful reading and terrific attention to detail have been part of the PMS legacy since its inception. Thank you, Heather and Delores, for finding so many stories for PMS for over a decade. Heather, thank you for helping us get the new issues out into the hands of readers each year. And finally, dear reader, we thank you most of all. It is through your love of stories that we are able to keep going to find new work for you to enjoy. May your own stories sparkle and shine like the bright lights of disco balls all over the world.

Sincerely,

Kerry Madden, Editor-in-Chief PMS poemmemoirstory 12

PMS.. iii

Callie Mauldin

Interview with Allison Anders, Lucy Alibar, Sandra Jaffe, and Marlene McCurtis

Q: What has been your experience as a female filmmaker? What unique challenges do you face in an industry that is famed for privileging male filmmakers?

A: Allison Anders (AA): I have never experienced any overt sexism on the set or in any other area of filmmaking. In fact it was really male producers and mentors who encouraged and supported my career when I first began making movies and have continued to support me. I think the bigger problem for women filmmakers is a percep- tion of importance. Importance means everything in Hollywood, it determines the budgets you get for your projects, it determines your own salary, it determines whether you are the first name on their tongues when producers are considering directors, and it determines if actresses are excited to work with you. It also determines—as we all just saw in the “Sight and Sound” poll of the best films ever made, with not one woman director on the final list—how valued your work is in the entire history of film. (And while I don’t know who was asked to take the poll, I wasn’t, and many women I know were not invited either, I would guess there were few women directors and producers and writers in the mix—again—the perception of importance, or lack of importance.) And yet in terms of real importance—to how movies and TV are made to this day—no one but a woman director Dorothy Arzner contributed the boom microphone which we all use in every- thing we do.

Lucy Alibar (LA): This is my first film, but I can say that the creation of this movie—from a play in Soho to a wild, sprawling script at the Sundance labs to working with the actors has been one of the great joys of my life. It’s a story about a six-year-old girl, named Hushpuppy,

PMS.. 1 and she’s brave and ferocious and can burp on command, and she turns into a hero through the course of the movie. It’s meant so much to me that people respond to a little girl as a hero.

I don’t know how well “female filmmaker” sits with me. I’m a story- teller, and there are a lot of things about my identity that go into that. I’m Southern, I’m from a deeply religious community, I’m a woman, I’m a playwright—I just call myself a storyteller and let other people say what they want.

Sandra Jaffe (SJ): When I was in my late twenties, after considering a number of options, I decided to go to graduate school in film at Boston University. At this time Boston University was more focused on documentaries than narrative films. There I produced my first documentary set in Birmingham where I was raised. That film, Jazz in the Magic City is now permanently housed in the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame where it is seen by thousands of visitors each year. After completing Jazz, I turned my focus to writing screenplays. I entered screenwriting competitions, won awards, and began to get attention for my work. I was very fortunate to have pieces optioned; however, nothing was ever made. This is not unusual given how many films actually make it to the big screen and I don’t attribute it to my being a female writer. As of yet, I have not considered producing one of my own screenplays as an independent feature because the fundraising remains a daunting task, especially in this economic climate. I have taught screenwriting at various institutions of higher learning in the Boston area and, most recently, I have been working as a writer and consultant on other people’s projects. I am in the final stages of com- pleting work on another documentary, Our Mockingbird that I have produced and directed, which will be released soon.

As far as I know, I have not had the experience of being shut out of the film industry because I am a woman. That being said, I have not spent a lot of time in LA so cannot speak firsthand about practices there. What I do know is that it is difficult for outsiders to compete in the LA market. In LA, which is a company town, people hire those they know, man or woman, and if you’re not living there you’re not in the mix. I have found that an advantage of living outside of LA is that

2 PMS.. you can have more of a real life, which in turn gives you more experi- ences to write about.

Marlene McCurtis (MM): I really can’t say I have faced many chal- lenges as a female filmmaker. I see who I am as an advantage. I think I bring a certain consciousness to my work as a woman, an African- American, a mother and a feminist. There are certain subject matters that I’m drawn to because of who I am. These factors inform what I choose to work on, whom I work for and how I approach any subject matter.

I’ve spent most of my career (and still do) working as a TV documen- tary producer, director and writer on other people’s projects. I have worked on programs for A&E, Lifetime, Discovery, PBS and other TV outlets. The biggest thing that I find is that I’m often the only African- American woman on many of these projects. This is very disappoint- ing and can be a challenge. Because of this I’ve learned to always bring my unique qualities to a project, and I have learned to work with a whole range of different people and personalities.

I’ve also been fortunate to work with some wonderful producers, including my mentor Arnold Shapiro. Arnold directed and produced the Oscar winning documentary Scared Straight. I have worked on numerous projects for him throughout my career. He is very support- ive of women in his company and has provided me with many oppor- tunities to produce and direct. He also brings a moral sensibility to his projects and how he treats individuals. This has been invaluable to me, particularly in an industry known for being insensitive and driven by the bottom line. Arnold takes a very humanistic approach to his work and towards those who work for him.

I think one of the biggest things I see in this industry is the lack of opportunity for women, particularly African-American women to tell their own stories. There certainly needs to be more African-American women producers, directors, and writers. I think our stories are pushed into the background and are often very stereotypical portray- als of who we are. It’s getting a little better, but we have a long way to go. Is there sexism in the industry, most definitely!

PMS.. 3 On this film, I’m very conscious of giving opportunity to women and to people of color. Two of our producers are women, our cinematog- rapher is a woman, and our editor is a woman. It is really rewarding to be able to be in the position to hire a diverse crew. This is a commit- ment that our producers, Cathee Weiss and Joy Silverman, and I made early in our process.

Q: Your film raises issues of social justice. How do you see this focus shaping the cultural fabric of independent cinema? (This question is for Alibar, Jaffe, and McCurtis.)

A: LA: “Beasts” is about the heroism of active compassion—the bravery in taking care of other people. I was inspired by both my parents, who are brave, compassionate, very hard working people who have this very strong moral backbone, and those are big shoes to fill. Hushpuppy is the hero I want to be.

SJ: It is great to hear stories about how filmmakers change lives. Issue oriented films allow audiences to become informed, get involved, and in effect, become part of the solution. Our Mockingbird is about how To Kill A Mockingbird still resonates in our public discourse about race, class, gender and justice. I am hoping that the film raises issues about equal justice, race and diversity, and disparities in education. Even bullying is an issue under the surface in my film, the difficulties of being an outsider or a person on the fringe. If after viewing the film people are talking to each other about these issues, I will consider it a success.

MM: I don’t think I’m lofty enough to believe this film will somehow shape the cultural fabric of independent cinema. My goals are much more modest. I do hope Wednesdays in Mississippi will first and fore- most tell the untold and underappreciated story of women’s deep and important involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Ken Burns once said that “Women’s history is starkly missing from the American nar- rative.” I would like to tear that narrative open and find a place for amazing and courageous women like Wednesdays in Mississippi co- founders Dorothy Height and Polly Cowan and the over 400 women who participated in Wednesdays in Mississippi. They are just a few of

4 PMS.. the women who were leaders and foot soldiers of the movement. I hope WIMS can inspire other filmmakers and the general audience to look deeper at our history and uncover other untold stories.

I also feel we can learn a lot from the simple concept of Wednesdays in Mississippi, which was to bring women together across lines of race, religion, geography and political opinions to sit down, listen, support and open their hearts and minds. It was through this deep listening and sharing that Dorothy Height, Polly Cowan, and many of the women involved with Wednesdays in Mississippi were able to work together to help establish the first integrated art museum in Jackson, low income home ownership programs and quality day care programs. This is something that seems to be missing from today’s political and social landscape, the ability to listen deeply, without judgment and come together to create some common ground. Part of our vision for this film is to use it as a model for what we are call- ing “Wednesdays Inspired Conversations.” The idea is to use the film as a tool to encourage interracial, interfaith and intergenerational dialogues. We plan to work closely with community organizations to develop and launch a community screening campaign and to develop a comprehensive screening toolkit and discussion guide to help facili- tate these discussions. We truly believe this is how change starts to happen.

I guess my other hope is that this film will be a part of the upcoming commemoration of Freedom Summer. In 2014, the nation will honor the courageous college students who went into Mississippi in 1964 to register African-American voters and start Freedom School. I strongly believe women like Dorothy Height, Polly Cowan and the brave women who participated in Wednesdays in Mississippi both from the north and the south should be remembered and honored, as well. Hopefully, this film will help that happen.

Q: Can you talk a bit about your process—from idea germination to fundraising to production?

A: AA: Usually a film comes from a question I want to answer—who are these people? What would happen if? Etc. The musing stage is

PMS.. 5 wonderful—you have this unformed yet perfect feeling of what the piece is and will become—possibilities are endless! But the minute you begin writing it, the world of what it can be becomes defined and therefore smaller—it can’t be everything. And then of course you can’t help but think about casting, which likely will change once you’re actually lucky enough to get to that stage. And then the least fun part is trying to get someone to finance it because you have to dissect it all into selling points, understandably—people are investing a lot of money even on the smallest budget films. They want to be sure of the risk taken.

LA: Juicy and Delicious, the play that Beasts of the Southern Wild is based on, was set in South Georgia, and Benh wanted to do the story in southern Louisiana. So we holed up in a fishing marina in Point au Chien, Louisiana, for a few months, and just did it. Nineteen hours a day, working on the scenes, the character arcs, that stunning bayou way of expression. It was every artist’s dream come true, I think, to be able to work like that, without interruptions, in this beautiful place.

SJ: I wanted to make my first film about Birmingham and I asked a childhood friend to send me articles from the news that might inspire a documentary. She sent me one about a group of black musi- cians who were trained under Fess Whatley, the printing instructor at Industrial High School, who also taught band. He was a strict dis- ciplinarian and taught his students how to read music so they could get jobs in New York as sidemen in big bands during the swing era. Many came back to Birmingham to teach music in the schools, and I thought this was an inspirational story that should be celebrated. I started writing grants and it took me five years to raise the money and complete Jazz in the Magic City. I vowed never to make another docu- mentary because the fundraising was too difficult but found myself with a case of amnesia when I decided to make Our Mockingbird. I had just completed a writing project for hire and wanted to work on something that had some personal meaning—and this was an idea I had been thinking about for a long time. My first film was 16mm and I hadn’t worked in video or digital format, so the technology advance- ments alone were pretty daunting. I found myself learning on the fly a lot of the time. When an opportunity came to film a classroom in

6 PMS.. Boston engaged in an in-depth study of the book, I decided to jump in and launch the project. From there, I started lining up interviews in Alabama and once I got my first grant, there was no turning back. Fundraising was probably the most challenging aspect of the process and waiting for funds to come through resulted in many starts and stops along the way.

MM: I have to chuckle a bit at this one, not sure if we had a process! Wednesdays in Mississippi is my first independent documentary and we have faced a lot of challenges along the way, which I will discuss in a minute. I’ve learned a lot and probably wouldn’t do it the same way next time or in that perfect world called hindsight… that said, the idea for the project came from a magazine article about the civil rights project Wednesdays in Mississippi. I was intrigued by this story of black and white, Jewish and gentile, middle-class, middle age wives and mothers heading to Mississippi in 1964 to talk with other women. These were women like me and my friends. I wanted to know more. Also, as a child of the Civil Rights Movement and a history buff, I had never heard of this story before and felt like if I didn’t know, others might not know about it. It was an unknown story and I figured no one else was making a film about this subject matter, so I decided to.

I think the other thing that drew me to this story was that it happened in Mississippi. My mother was born and raised in Mississippi in the 20s and 30s. I grew up hearing stories about Jim Crow, sharecrop- ping and the harsh treatment of my people in this state. I also saw the strength, fortitude and intelligence of my mother and her five sisters, all Mississippi bred. Mississippi was in my blood. I’m not sure if the story had been Wednesdays in Georgia, if I would have been so drawn to it. So in some ways there was this really deep personal connection to this story and this place.

In terms of challenges—we had some unique ones. The biggest one was the age of our women. Most of the women who participated in Wednesdays in Mississippi were in their 30s, 40s and 50s in the early 60s, which meant when we got started filming seven years ago, they were in their 60s 70s, 80s and a few were in their 90s. This necessi- tated us raising money quickly and shooting interviews immediately.

PMS.. 7 Also, Polly Cowan the co-founder of WIMS, died in the late 1970s. So, only co-founder Dr. Height had first-hand knowledge of the inception of WIMS.

We basically started with the oldest and most critical women to the film first. Instead of researching and developing our story, and figur- ing out who we needed to shoot and the story they would tell (we did some of this of course!), we started filming and discovering our story along the way.

The first two interviews we did were with Dr. Dorothy Height and Holly Shulman (Polly Cowan’s daughter). As we raised money, we used it to film interviews with our women. Although this wasn’t necessarily the ideal way to proceed, we are fortunate we took this approach. Three of the women, including Dr. Height, we interviewed early on have passed away. Others have gotten ill and would have not been able to be interviewed if we had waited.

The other challenge was Wednesdays in Mississippi was a secret proj- ect. The women entered Mississippi undercover and without media attention. This was done on purpose so they could meet with the Southern women without putting them in jeopardy. So there are no photos and no footage of Wednesdays in Mississippi, particularly dur- ing those first two years. We have relied heavily on the women’s own photographs, home movies from the era and stock footage to visually flesh out our story. This has been creatively challenging and we are still working on making the film visually interesting.

We are also working mothers who have our “day” jobs to deal with. This has made the process a bit longer. We have often had to put the film aside to take care of work, deal with graduations, bat mitzvahs and family crises. This certainly hasn’t been a straight through process for myself or the film’s producers.

In terms of funding, we have thrown a wide net. We have raised money through grants, individual donors and from several fundrais- ing parties.

8 PMS.. We are fiscally sponsored by “Women Make Movies.” They are the non-profit, tax-exempt umbrella organization that accepts and admin- isters contributions made to the film. This allows us to raise money under a non-profit status and for individuals this means that all dona- tions to the film are tax-deductible.

We are actively fundraising now to get monies to complete the film by 2014.

Q: What and/or who inspires you the most?

A: AA: I get inspired by everything around me—anything that causes me to think and wonder can form the basis of a film. Music especially inspires me. And then I infuse it with stuff pulled from my life—and yet—not just that. That’s the wonderful part of creativity—the stuff that comes from nowhere—from some place outside your own expe- rience—I love that. I love looking at something I wrote and thinking “Where did that come from?” And I think a bit of lying is essential for telling the truth in a film. And it’s fun in that context, too!

LA: Breece Pancake, Lucia Nevai, Kevin Wilson, Joy Williams, Lee Smith—in theatre, Annie Baker, Sibyl Kempson, Lynn Nottage. And the Russian Turkish baths. That’s my jam. That’s where Benh and I had our first meeting about adapting “Juicy” into a movie, so I always consider it the conception-place for Beasts of the Southern Wild.

SJ: People who take risks and who have passion and conviction inspire me. I remain in awe of the lawyers in my documentary and of course anyone and everyone who has fought for equal rights from John Lewis to Lilly Ledbetter. I’m also inspired by anyone who overcomes obsta- cles and the teachers and mentors who inspire them. And, as a writer and filmmaker, I am inspired by a good story well told. That’s what makes great filmmaking.

MM: So much inspires me. First and foremost, I’m a storyteller. I was a reader, a writer and a lover of words before I even thought about making documentary films. I was lucky enough to be raised when there was an explosion of African American writers. I grew

PMS.. 9 up reading and loving writers like Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange. I discovered and fell in love with James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer. And of course, there was Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwen Brooks and Maya Angelou, and the list goes on. These writers spoke about my life and the people I knew. They gave me permission to dream and they let me know it was possible to tell my stories and that these stories were rich, complex and full of beauty. These writers gave me a voice.

I’m also inspired by my family: my husband and my two wonderful sons, my mother, my aunts who grew up in an era where they had to fight so hard to achieve; they inspire me to keep going on.

Our women also inspire me. It’s been such a wonderful journey mak- ing this film and being in the presence of the Wednesday’s Women. They are still dynamic, intelligent, committed, and extremely passion- ate about social justice. They are ageless, full of beauty and amazing role models. They have embraced me, Cathee and Joy. We are truly standing on our sister’s shoulders as we make this film.

Q: And finally, is there any advice that you’d offer to aspiring female filmmakers?

A: AA: Yes—always be ready with your next project before releasing a film. You really have to seize the moment and get on the train when it’s your turn and ride it as long as you can!

LA: Do what you love. Do it because you love it. Do it with all the love in you.

SJ: My advice to aspiring female filmmakers is to learn a specific skill that will get you work in the field. Editing is a great skill to have and apprenticing with a seasoned editor is an excellent way to learn. Having a foot in the door is always an advantage and making con- nections with all kinds of people will prove helpful down the road. Personally, I found it difficult to juggle the responsibilities of parent- hood with the full-time demands of being a filmmaker. It’s a lot easier

10 PMS.. when you have a flexible lifestyle to meet the demands of filmmaking on any front. That, in my experience, is more of what being a female has meant in the context of filmmaking than overcoming the obstacles of a male dominated industry. Working on any kind of film consumes all your personal resources and then some—that’s what makes it excit- ing. But it is very difficult to allocate those resources to a film proj- ect when you have kids who need you to be available for them first. Alternatively, have a family when you’re young, then go off and make films when you have done some real living and have significant stories to tell.

MM: I’m still learning myself each and every day. I guess my humble advice would be to not be afraid to stumble and make mistakes. Filmmaking is a team sport. Surround yourself with skilled and com- passionate people. Don’t be afraid to listen and learn, but also, stay true to yourself… Listen to your heart and know you have something important to say. And have fun!

PMS.. 11 poemmemoirstory

Erica Dawson

I, too, sing America. —Langston Hughes

I have a Mary Surratt-filled fantasy With wood gallows but with no whips or chains— Only makeshift handcuffs. Despite the three Hanging, doomed men, there is no time—for pains,

Panging, are absent as her well-known last Sentence of Please, don’t let me fall. I thought Hanging would be a death something like classed- Up auto-asphyxiation: favor, fought

For, failing; naked corpse and public crowd, Tickets, courtyard, and such. Enraptured, I Keep dreaming like our shackled heads hang, bowed And lady-like, to sing a lullaby

Like mothers, hers muted when one man veils Her black veil with the white bag. One steep Step to the drop, she falls and snaps and wails Sighs, bones cracking. Then, when she falls asleep,

I sleep deeply: her cradlesong is her neck’s Buckshots. Her head droops like a pheasant’s. Smoke- like dust, like ash, puffs up and bottlenecks. When I’m awake, I feel she felt her choke.

PMS.. 15 Erica Dawson

Lancaster and Kerr

Burt Lancaster can’t touch your swag, boy. You Know I can take on Deborah Kerr from here To Clearwater, drink four mojitos, screw You in the sand, and kick more ass. Their dear

Romance can’t see our Technicolor blue OPENs, our Red Stripes, or our GOs in green. Three clear Dimensions sans 3-D, I rendezvous My mouth against your neck and gank your ear.

The silver screen’s silver because it’s toned With silver paint. The pictures move when we Delude movement, pictures not worth the bone

In mollusk backs, even their sharp skulls honed On the jagged spines that edge a sanded tree. We don’t need sound effects to hear me moan.

16 PMS.. Erica Dawson

Bogart and Bergman

Atlantic Ocean currents keep it cool But never cold enough to snuff your smokes In Casablanca. Bogie’s one damn fool, Leaving Ingrid; but, when your Marlboro yokes

Your lips, like Bogie’s Chesterfields, he’s just A fucking momo who’s about to fade To black. I’ve got you freeze-framed. Not one gust Of busted wind can creep or blush your shade.

Is this the moment when we should’ve had Paris? Tampa’s not Paris, sure; but, the Sun- Trust roof shines in a lightning bolt more bad- ass than a hundred Venice moons. Bolts run Over a gale, beat it, rain, make it wet. The time goes by slow-danced, sped up, reset.

PMS.. 17 Erica Dawson

Harry and Sally

I’ve never had to fake it in a diner. We’re not road-tripping from Chicago to New York. Perhaps, if we, say, had Rob Reiner Directing us, we’d have, say, one or two

Billy and Meg moments of laugh/love shit. We don’t need timing, as both you and I Can shut the fuck up. We don’t need a hit Script (dialogue plus wit). Listen. My,

Our sulking dead air doesn’t need to peg Down answers. Lovers? Friends? Lovers who break A friendship? Friends who fall in love? We had

Sex. We had something else. All out unclad Or fully dressed, we hush and only take A breath if we’re down on our knees to beg.

18 PMS.. Lavonne J. Adams

Dead Cottonwood Tree

after Georgia O’Keefe, 1943

Doused in early morning light, what remains of this cottonwood seems more regal than its lime-green counterpart, as if death has stripped it bare of pretension. This is nature sculpted by the unfathomable, a scene hovering somewhere between summer and fall, the sagebrush blooming in buttery yellow clusters. It will be hours before arid heat scours the siltstone, months before clouds drop their cold tongues of snow, years before this tree will weather away. A broken branch weighs less than bone, the wood surprisingly porous, yet the trunk has the splendor of uncarved marble, the solitary bough like an arm angled upward where a hawk or a falcon might land.

PMS.. 19 Lisa Hartz

Early Instruction

after Still Life, Henri Fantin-Latour, 1866

Consider the tender flesh of the orange, this orange, the one he’s split open to please you— releasing its lush, percussive scent. Remember what came before the threaded membrane burst, when to imagine tasting the ruptured interior of an orange in midwinter was its own seduction. Even the flowers. Even the teacup, the closed book.

All else still, complicit in this unlacing.

20 PMS.. Danielle Sellers

After Being Called Childish by My Lover

I’ve found my way back to the island again. This block smells of fish. Over there, laundry, frangipani.

The emptiness of the cemetery: a white ibis pecks silk flowers, its bill a sharp retort. My lover is keeping his wife.

Last night I got drunk on Mexican beer. At the bar, he pretended not to see me. His hands loose on her waist.

PMS.. 21 Danielle Sellers

After the Engagement

The day after he proposed on the pinnacle of Jungfrau, I made some comment about the war and he threatened to smash the cuckoo clock we’d bought to celebrate our separate ideas of a shared life. I went up to our bright room in the Hôtel de Beaux Rêves. But he kept on: “It’s a mistake to get married, the way we argue.” I slipped off the ring. Outside, the swift river whistled, ice through a vein.

22 PMS.. Kathleen McClung

Freefall

We’re falling in your dream. No parachutes. You shout into the roar to hold your hands. Our clasping slows and comforts us. We’re mute as we descend, released of fear. We land unbruised, a field in bloom, but obstacles crop up, decisions must be made—your dream veers off, away from lupine, grass grown tall, birdsong. I think I’ll stay. This meadow seems too lush to leave just yet, too shimmering. I want to know our cushion well, adorn my wrists with flecks of dew, revere hawk wings at home in sky we hurtled through. Don’t mourn. While you resolve dream puzzles on your own, I’ll linger, praising earth and where we’ve flown.

PMS.. 23 Kathleen McClung

Spanish Fly

Dream people, faceless, give you Spanish fly, fine, ancient powder loosening your tongue, a truth serum you freely choose. And I delight in all I hear you say: bold, strong, unminced, uncautious paragraphs of love alive and rooted thirty years despite long silence, distance, paths elsewhere—enough to end most bonds and dull most appetites of once-impassioned youth. Yet here you speak and I believe within this dreamspun room of mine. We’re bound by thread that does not break, just hides from daylight logic, I assume. Beetles’ dust tricks the innocent to bed, but we, old sleepers, taste new bliss instead.

24 PMS.. Michelle Skupski Bissell

The Barest Rib

This is how we celebrate: grill in the driveway chalked with cannons and flags, a circle of men watching meat, big feet covering the A, leaving only US in fading red. There’s still an erection at the center of our country, a stone monument constantly screwing the sky, the sky filled with fireworks and a once-distant moon, men walking all over her now. We don’t know what we want, freedom or its opposite, another daughter at home on her back, stretching herself thin, fitting fingers flat between her ribs. She likes the way bone matches bone, not worried about the sins of flesh, that tender casing on any other animal men kill for.

PMS.. 25 Mary Echlin

Snowdrops

Buried to their knees in windblown leaves like a covey of nuns huddling across winter’s piazza, the green shoots shine under shy white cowls.

26 PMS.. Suellen Wedmore

Great White Trillium

—Trillium grandiflorium

Winter-weary, I suppose, & scornful of that ancient & ill-advised pomegranate compromise, (Persephone, come home!) I struggle upward & with a silent nod of my three- pointed star, embrace April;

Call me wakerobin, wood lily: I understand you humans in mid- summer when, a tired traveler like yourself, I proffer sweet- crusted seed to hungry ants who portage a morsel of myself into tomorrow’s meadow.

PMS.. 27 Brett Griffiths

Detroit Suburbs, 1976

You might have missed them, the mothers, heads bowed like wilted flowers, fingers diligent as grubs in the dirt. Their bonnets in all sizes, matching polyester shorts and last year’s golf shoes, but I remember that species: crouched on haunches in the yard, a spate of mud on one brow or another, calling our names like water fowl across the imaginary division of yards. Handfuls of thistles in their calico-print fingers, their megaphone voices keeping time, their eyes watching, just as they’d warned us, invisibly from the backs of their heads.

This was the last horizon of automobile nirvana, thirty-nine miles northwest of Detroit, before barn country to the west, after the trailer parks to the south, and the factories clamoring north, gasping for air. At 4:30, they’d amble toward their houses, head-first, synchronized, wash the garden spades— but not too well—place them on their varnished decks, haul first-crop tomatoes and cucs inside for dinner, material nostalgia, hunt and gather. The men rode home in pre-rusted carpools, smelled of aftershave and grease and gin. To us they were almost indiscernible, the smells of men, strong and talkative, thumbing their glasses, stroking their chins, telling stories— shadow-boxing The Man late into the night.

28 PMS.. Our town might have been Mattel stock if not for the obvious lack of pink— terracotta and blacktop relieved the gardens and the perfection. Skipper, Fluff, and Ginger were nobody’s children, or everybody’s, gathered in the cul-de-sacs of rocks and clover, hopscotch stones in their hands, playing in the confines of imagination: one fence, one tree and a single basketball hoop—enough for playing horse and house, enough for planning our escapes.

How perfectly everything grew then, each house framed by the car that dreamed it. How perfectly those men mowed the yards on Sunday afternoons. How perfectly our mothers stirred the gin, dropped the olive, dangled their communal fingers into the glass pitcher and sucked.

PMS.. 29 Joni Lee

Late Summer, Missouri

Blotted with blue veins, Grandma’s arms prop her head up at the oak table. Grandpa plays “Amazing Grace” in his underwear, his hands slender as wire, his back curved over the piano. His voice often breaks as he fingers the keys like a worn-down love, summer heat swallowing every shadow in the room. She can’t see his damp lashes, but she feels the way sunlight glides like geese from the kitchen she’s known for years. Through nights of making love on that floor, wood slats cold on her shoulder blades. Through three babies, the days of canning peaches and killing wasps. She longs for when they used to go dancing, for a new purple dress and running water. Grandpa’s anger collided with the tractor, an empty table, his son’s cheek. He and the boys hauled hay, planted corn and beans, slaughtered pigs. If it dies, toss it in the ditch with the broken dishes, keep moving. Get the hell out of the cattle pond, you can play after dinner. She never cried in the garden. Dirt still caked under nails, that man is mostly gone now. Grandma hums along to his song. Her cloudy eyes labor to make out what’s beyond the yard.

30 PMS.. Joni Lee

We Are All Drowsy

It’s difficult to sleep when desks keep bumping into my dreams. How long before students’ voices stop bouncing off my forehead? Their worries settle inside my neck, asking What’s another verb for need? How do I explain, I’ll give it back eventually? When I don’t have the answers,

I spend the night in my car and stare out the sunroof at the moon. It tells me to sleep more and worry less about whether the engine will fail or if my students will catch fire. To pay closer attention to how grass pushes its head out our fence, and maple leaves refuse to fall, despite winter saying yes. Traffic cascades into manholes in my dreams while sparrows ruffle their bellies in street dust. We are all drowsy with evening and too much flight.

PMS.. 31 Andrea Potos

Sleep After Travel descends like the path we took on Oia, the sinuous wide- spaced stones that made a stairwell to the caldera edge, the taverna that was ours for hours, bread sopped in oil, octopus and olives, tiny goblets of raki, the Greek sun slicing the water, tipping our world to dark.

32 PMS.. Holly Karapetkova

Worry

If you’ve left the baby alone in her crib, then the shower sounds like a baby screaming the hair drier sounds like a baby screaming, the blender, the neighbor’s mower, the crickets rubbing their little legs, and you’re running back to the bedroom soaking wet, you’re running back to the bedroom soap still on your back, you’re running back to the bedroom tomatoes dripping from your fingers, knife forgotten in your grasp, mower stalled on a rain ditch, the crickets singing so quietly you can hear her breathe.

PMS.. 33 Irene Latham

What if the Ocean Is a Myth?

Not water, but splotch of ink, plop of candlewax staining parchment, or sour splash of ale?

No ships, then. No tides, no jellyfish nor unforgiving waterspouts.

I could reach you with boots, blister by blister. I could toss weighty spyscope, smash message-tucked bottle. Would your skin lose its scent of salt, your eyes their color seafoam? Would the oat- crowned dunes topple to fields of not-regret, not-longing, not-remembrance? Look: banyans perch

34 PMS.. on steep cliff-face, their limbs wind-torn, entwined— let this be our map.

PMS.. 35 Jessica Hand

To the Cross-Dressing Cuttlefish

When you are hungry, your skin dazzles your prey. Pincers lay limp for your chromatophore display. That gigantic brain sasses up your neurons so you can flash, can color-wheel your way past any defense. Teach my skin to stun to disarm.

Voyeuristic divers wait for coastal waters to heat up, witness you raise two tentacles like an evangelical ready to be ravished by God. Such a small male your path to the female barred.

You’re not having it. With your sperm-packet sealed, it’s time to deliver. You hide your male arms, color your skin. If you were human, we would kick you out of school, we would pray for you, fists and belts against skin. Color-pattern of inherited fear. Oh, most intelligent of most intelligent of invertebrates, teach us to anoint our desires in the presence of enemies the way you coyly swim past other males making eyes at you, the w’s of their pupils beginning to spell the word want, the way you let the biggest male

36 PMS.. think he has scored twice as you slide behind him. Like a preacher high on the body of Christ, ready to commune you push your packet into the pouch behind the female’s mouth, where other males have already left packets, each hoping to be the chosen one.

Once she sorts through the few sperm-packets she allowed, she will usually choose yours to merge with the eggs into newly-hatched hunger. Teach us to see what she sees.

PMS.. 37 Hilary Ross

Every Man a Poppy

Back-broke, slapped with blood and mud-heavy, Soldiers die. Or worse, live.

Fingers raking at gnarled brows, Their own ruinous ruminations murmur, Mimicking a grim physician’s diagnostic mantra.

From sheets of ash and desolate shadows Spring stark vestiges Of glacial swamps, shining deer-eyed skulls And bloats of mustard gas, That ebb and billow over twitching boys Whose fathers now farm alone. Who, when they wander homeward, wrinkling train tickets in withered fingers, Find that the shrapnel has followed them back. Who, when they wake in the hour of moaning willows and wind-tossed moths, Wrestle with sweating, wheezing ghosts. Who whip their heads when the whistling of missiles Streaks through the kitchen, And who, struck straight through the wits with the sharp chatter of Bustling heels on cobblestone, the snapping spasm of a clock finger, Shuddering ever onward—

But the poppies like polyps still slink skyward, Elevating enervated veterans, Inveterate survivors, Who will perhaps one day Survive again.

38 PMS.. Hilary Ross

Owing to the Inestimable Age of the Universe, Calculating the Probability that You are my Father and I am Your Daughter is in itself Impossible, but a Probable Estimate would be 1/400,000,000,000,000,000*

Orion Arm, 13.7 billion years post-bang, East Cascades, Far West side of Ex-Pangaea, At the end of the street that you carried our dog down When she died on the walk home, There you teeter. Dusting crumbs of microwave potpie off your Bugs Bunny tie, You peruse some periodical textbook illustrating how Corporations fork out fortunes to gain favorable research results—

I’m tired of you living in an empty house.

Hair lightning-struck into a bristling cliché, Grey like the buildup on your undusted windows, You pat your mop down with square palms and broad fingers usually seen On the outstretched oil-on-canvas hands of a hokey Aryan Jesus. The same hands you gave me, The same squirming, mangled strand of micro-Tetragrammaton, Deoxyribonucleic-big-nose-ptosis-loud-mouth-egg-head.… Sometimes, alleles are best kept to oneself, you know.

You should at least visit.

But sometimes I think Maybe the neurological nano-electric twitch that makes you sway suddenly, Knock-kneed, for minutes, gaping skyward, Is the same twitch that propels you

PMS.. 39 Into the minds of every disease we have uncovered and then smothered, Into the road of our encephalic lineage and The fantastic realization that our tiny sparks of consciousness are nothing But the unbroken progenitive line of Every Ancestor We’ve ever had. Either there or straight into the insane asylum.

Really, just come home already.

*This is simply accounting for the evidence amassed suggesting the chances that two particular reproductive cells of two particular members of the human race will meet and survive gestation and birth, and this probability excludes the role of time and the age of the universe. To illustrate further, I have drawn a to-scale graph of the likelihood and extent of our time spent together. As the lifespan of the universe liberally assumed at 1034 years†, and our interactions are limited to 50 years, this is roughly comparable to the distance between either end of the Milky Way and the radius of a Hydrogen atom.

†Adhering to Big Freeze theory and disregarding the length of approach to potential dynamic equilibrium

40 PMS.. ‡ If to scale, the depiction of the Hydrogen radius would be the size of a neutrino, a particle so small it can easily pass through the earth without interacting with any of its atoms.

PMS.. 41 poemmemoirstory Elizabeth Wade

Thirty-fifth

The summer I was sixteen, I volunteered as a candy striper at a local hospital. We had to wear aprons—not the traditional red and white pat- tern, suggesting something sweet—no, nothing so lovely as that. Our aprons were white with olive drab stripes and featured a stiff Red Cross badge sewn onto the front pocket. The pocket covered my breasts, which I was still growing into, and created a look my friends and I referred to as “the uni-boob.” Under my apron, I wore regulation attire: a solid-colored T-shirt, khaki shorts, white Keds. I looked, and felt, pathetic. I worked as a candy striper several days a week, always in mornings, maybe three or four hours per shift. I think I did it to satisfy some vague idea about service and college applications. I think I did it to get out of my mother’s house, to have a reason to leave that she couldn’t contest. The idea of the program was to expose precocious teens to a range of hospital experiences, rotating them weekly so that they got an idea of the intricate steps it takes to keep populations well. They promised to send us on morning rounds with doctors, to shifts in the cafeteria, to work as docents in the gift shop. I never made it that far. I did go on rounds once, though I don’t remember much about them—what my doctor’s specialty was or exactly what I was to be doing to assist him. Here’s what I do remember: we were on one of the higher floors of the hospital, in what must have been the geriatric ward. Patients milled about in a lounge of sorts—reading, watching television, playing cards or board games. There was a woman seated by the window. Her grey hair was long and loose and surprising to me, because all the elderly women I knew wore their hair short or up in a bun. The doctor approached the old woman. He asked questions she left unanswered. He chattered like a dental hygienist, like a person who knew he must carry the conversation. The woman looked out the window. The doctor took measurements and readings. He listened to her heart through her hospital gown then handed the earpiece of his stethoscope to me. You can hear her heart murmur, he said. Listen for the whoosh- ing. It shouldn’t sound that way. I listened. I heard the whooshing. The woman, unspeaking, looked out the window a while longer. 44 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

After that, I asked to be assigned to bookkeeping. No one else liked that rotation—the hours spent filing documents in a windowless room— but it suited me. The woman in charge of the department sat at a desk at the doorway. We were the only people there. Once I entered the rows of files, she could not see me. She favored classic rock—different from the country ballads of my childhood or the saccharine pop songs my friends and I embraced. Now, nearly twenty years later, whenever I hear “Feel Like Making Love,” I sing loudly, remembering the rows of files, the sound of hearts not beating the way they should. We were instructed not to read the documents we filed, on account of laws protecting patient privacy, but I ignored that directive. The woman in charge had never had a regular volunteer, so she lacked a sense of standard filing efficiency. To her, even slow help was better than the norm. So I’d settle into the back row—it covered patients whose last names began with the letters t-z, I think—sit on the stool intended to help me reach the upper shelves, and start skimming, remembering to get up and take something to the other filing sections every now and then, to make it look like I was in constant motion. I rarely understood what I was reading, of course, but I started to recognize patterns. I grew fluent in the language of radiology, how doc- tors would sit in dark rooms and translate pictures into words, how those words got interpreted as diseases, then recommendations and treatments. Sometimes I risked looking at the film itself, opening the brown folder to see if I could identify the things described—the spot on the lung, the tumor in the thyroid. Mostly, though, I looked at the words, learned the generic conventions. Here is what we see. Here is how big it is. Here are the conditions it suggests. I don’t remember when I first came across the file of a person I knew, but it wasn’t on my first few shifts. The patient was the father of one of my classmates, and I knew without reading what the papers would say: he was dead. I knew the story—the heart attack on his daily jog, his son out of town but collected by family friends sent via private jet to break the news and bring him home. I remembered attending the visitation with my parents, how the dead man’s wife sat in a chair by the door, weeping. I remember seeing the boy I loved, a friend of the dead man’s son. I remember not speaking to him. Everyone in town knew about the classmate with the dead father. He was a prodigy at his chosen hobby, nationally acclaimed, full of promise. Here is what my friends and I knew about him: a year or two earlier, he’d asked out one of my acquaintances. She left the theater to get popcorn or PMS.. 45 Wade check her lipstick or some such thing. When she returned, the classmate picked up her hand, then moved it to his penis, which he had exposed in her absence. Now this seems less remarkable. But then, to us sheltered suburban girls, it was salacious and steamy. We avoided the boy, but we still talked about him. That was the summer that I drove my car into a tree. I never actually lied about what happened, but I used true statements to construct a fic- tional narrative. I had learned this skill from my mother, who practiced it often. I remember her writing excuses for absences, joking, It’s not lying to say you were sick yesterday—after all, you’re sick of algebra, right? But it was often more insidious than that. It wasn’t lying so much as mislead- ing, controlling the amount of information revealed, choosing the story you wanted to tell, facts be—well, not disregarded exactly, but distorted, damned. Actually, I didn’t plan to cover up the wrecked car, though I did hope to put off the confrontation as long as possible. I got home after dark, and Mother didn’t notice the dent. The next morning, I drove to the hospital before Mother awoke, and when she finally saw the damage, she assumed it had happened in the crowded hospital parking lot. The boy I loved had already helped me pull the traces of bark from my headlight, so there was no evidence to contradict mother’s interpretation. Someone’s hit your car! she exclaimed. I ran to the window, saying only Oh no! At the end of that summer, we suddenly moved deeper south to a place where my new school was still under a federal court order mandat- ing desegregation. It was 1993, nearly four decades post-Brown v. Board. A few years later, my sister drove that same car into something—another car, perhaps, or a post; I forget what exactly. Scared of mother’s reac- tion, she invented a story of a fight in the school parking lot. There were baseball bats. It was whites versus blacks. The car was in the way. She was lucky she hadn’t been hurt. I don’t remember there being much discus- sion of the incident. Years later, after my sister and I had both married, we were sitting around my parents’ kitchen table when these incidents came up. My sis- ter confessed her fabrication, treating it as an anecdote or amusement. They turned to me. Surely no one really hit you at the hospital, they said. You’re not going to get in trouble now. I remembered the night of the accident—the man, the tears, the winding driveway, how I didn’t know where to go so I called the boy I loved. He hugged me, silently, for a long

46 PMS.. poemmemoirstory time. I can’t remember if I told him the whole story or not. But I haven’t told my family, and I suspect I never will. It didn’t work out, of course. The classmate with the dead father suf- fered a talent-claiming, career-ending tragedy—the sort of thing he now devotes his life to preventing. When I moved, the boy I loved stayed put. We exchanged visits. Once we stood in someone else’s driveway, and he kissed me on the forehead. Later, we met in phone booths and strange towns and buildings on the campus of a college I didn’t attend. We wrote letters, and I scoured his words for clues. Neither of us was brave enough to name our condition. One morning, I drove away and waited for him to follow. He never did. This happens. Years pass. I turn thirty, and my mother throws me a surprise party. She asks my boyfriend who my friends are so she’ll know who to invite. My friends receive invitations and, knowing I dislike surprises, imme- diately warn me. My mother buys decorations—plates and napkins and balloons, all proclaiming me Over the hill. At the party, my mother tells me my life is now over. My friends and I exchange glances. We exchange stories of legends—Derrida came to this town once. He ate at Red Lobster. Dad chimes in with his own version. Yes, I knew Coach Bryant. Mother hovers like Cassandra, crying over, over, over. In time, the boyfriend becomes the husband. We get degrees, a dog, a headboard for our bed. We get a house, then another. We are packing for the move when he turns suddenly grumpy, then complains of his chest. I remember the files, the signs. A doctor listens to his symptoms, takes his medical history, says That’ll buy you an EKG every time. Nurses wheel a machine into the room. I think about history, how we are cattycorner from the room where I had my first IV, how this same doctor once told my father to get rid of that damn pony before it kills her. The tests are negative. We return home, move, keep moving. We set goals—do more, be more, live more, love more. Eat someplace stunning. Leave the country each year. On our last trip abroad, I tore a muscle but kept going, convinced that a long soak in the tub, chased with several ibuprofen, would keep me sound. I showed my husband my favorite sights—the place where the people were martyred, the paint- ing of the man being blinded, the painting of a crucifixion. We walked through a chapel built of bones, and when I could not limp far enough to reach the restaurant we’d chosen, we pretended that the café before us was somehow beautiful, too.

PMS.. 47 Wade

About that chapel: room of skulls, altar of pelvic bones, crosses fash- ioned of variously sized tibias. My husband did not recognize all the pieces, could not translate them to their place on his body. Recalling the cats I dissected in comparative anatomy, I touched his shoulder, his chest, his hip. Here, I said. Here. We marveled. We gaped. Several monks remained intact, their skeletons draped in traditional robes. Apparently this was an honor, not to be dismembered, to be allowed to stay whole. Here is what I learned: if you detach a pair of ribs from the sternum, you can fashion them into the shape of a heart. Then came the year when I grew old: my father didn’t die, but we thought he would. My brother hadn’t yet died, but we feared he would. I didn’t foresee my hometown’s destruction, how it would be blown away by a tornado. But I will say this: my father and I took a step in the hospi- tal hallway, then another, then another, trying to reach the window with a view of the football stadium, trying to teach him to walk again. The orderly told us where to get dad’s prescription, naming not the drugstore but the business the drugstore had once been. Suddenly, I saw that we all were relics, that it was all slipping away. Dad mastered walking, but the rest disintegrated. Within nine months, my brother was dead, and our hometown was destroyed. My friends who came to the town as adults used to laugh at us locals and our practice of giving directions that hinged on outdated landmarks. My husband, a transplant himself, concurred: Why say ‘the street where Mary Winston used to live’ when you could just say ‘Alaca Place’? But in that year, my dark year, everything hinged on memory: the place where my brother once was. After the storm, my friends learned it, too, the power of the place that used to hold something. A friend tells me that thirty is the new fifty. He’s right—as a culture we’re arriving later to marriage and parenthood and retirement, all our markers sliding back on the scale. I advise my students to take a year off before graduate school, to travel, to explore. There’s time, I say, acting as if I know anything about anything. But my friend is wrong, too. The life expectancy of newborn females in America is around eighty years. I don’t mind aging, but I mind the way we speak of it, how we pretend middle age starts around sixty. There is time, yes. But it’s finite. (Over, over. I worry that I am becoming my mother.) I was born at an inopportune time. Dad coached college tennis, and my birthday coincided with the major fall tournament. He tried to make

48 PMS.. poemmemoirstory it up to me—trips out for pizza the week before he left town, long- distance phone calls—but it never really helped. Mom sometimes tried too, saying We’ll celebrate on a different day, but eventually we dropped the pretense. But once, the tournament was in the next state over, and Dad had a well-timed break. He arrived home just in time for dessert and presents, then immediately drove several hours back to his team. It’s the only childhood birthday gift I remember. By the time I was eighteen, most of the pretenses were gone. Though my parents remained married, most family events were fragmented, and they often gave us gifts separately. That year for my birthday, Mom told me she had something special just from her. The ring was lovely—a light blue emerald cut stone. It would have been fine if she had simply given me the gift, but instead, she tried to explain it. It’s your birthstone, she told me. But it wasn’t. I knew that as a November baby, my birthstone was topaz, which is orange. When I objected, Mom said Yes. But I didn’t like that one, so I got you this instead. I’d felt like mother’s attention for my thirtieth birthday was too much, but the next year, she went the opposite direction. About ten days earlier, my younger brother had been hit by a drunk driver. He was out of the hospital before my birthday, but he was still recovering from significant injuries—including a broken neck. I didn’t mind that mother forgot— certainly we were all focused on my brother. But it took three or four days before she finally called, and that frustrated me. When I recounted the story to friends, they nodded—many of them had experienced some- thing similar. Apparently this, too, happens. Perhaps as a way to make amends, when Mom gave me my gifts that year, she also included one “from” my brother, signed in her version of his handwriting. At that time, my brother couldn’t walk or drive, and Mother couldn’t maneuver his wheelchair. I knew he hadn’t purchased it. The next Christmas, he gave me an extra gift to make up for the missed birthday. I mentioned the earlier present, but he shook his head. That wasn’t from me. It was a common exchange—we often consulted each other to ask if we could trust the things we’d been told, to see if the facts added up to truth or construction. The year my brother actually forgot my birthday, I wasn’t surprised. Although he’d spent several years recovering physically from the wreck, the psychological toll of catastrophic injury, combined with an unhealthy relationship, had consumed him. For weeks my father, sister, and I had

PMS.. 49 Wade spoken of little but my brother—his institutionalization, his illnesses, his chance of recovery. About a month later, my brother remembered. I was standing at my kitchen bookshelf, phone at my ear, when he apologized. I said It’s okay. I forgive you. We laughed and joked. It felt almost normal. Three days later, he was dead. After he died, I collected some mementos from his house—photog- raphy books I’d sent so he could see places I traveled, postcards, letters. I found the last birthday card I’d ever sent him. Here’s hoping this is the best year yet! I’d written. It wasn’t, of course, though in some ways the year after his death was worse. Grief made me an extrovert, so I found a new volunteer job, this time choosing one that connects me with people. The work requires a confidentiality agreement, but I can say this: we’re required to track how many visitors we talk to each day. In a three-hour shift, I average about 400. In hindsight, that’s probably where I caught the infection. According to medical websites, it commonly occurs in schools or prisons—confined spaces with large groups of people. When I initially got sick, all I knew was that something was wrong. My husband and I embarked with the dog on our nightly walk, but two blocks out, I had to stop to catch my breath. I told my doctor I thought it was a chest cold, something that must be going around. He stepped out to look at the test results, then returned to the room. We’ve called the ER to let them know you’re on your way, he said. The nurses didn’t explain much. We need an EKG. You probably need IV antibiotics. We’re going to start you on oxygen. They’re sending you for a CT scan. We have to look at your pulmonary artery. They did not explain causes or suspicions, whys or wherefores. It took them two pokes of the needle to start my IV. They connected me to machines they did not name. I looked around, trying to understand what was happening. I saw a heart monitor and started to cry, remembering how, when my brother died, I watched a machine like it. My brother’s heart rate fell, kept falling. There in the ER, mine catapulted up. Throughout it all, I protested. I think it’s just a cold. I’m not that old. I work out. When we were alone in the room, my husband asked Are you okay? meaning Are you scared? I said yes, meaning no. I said This isn’t how the story goes. My parents will not bury two children. I joked with the technician performing my CT scan. I held my breath on command, tried

50 PMS.. poemmemoirstory to count the metal pieces whirring around my body, smiled at the purple Pegasus sticker on the machine. Back in the room, I sat with my hus- band. Somewhere nearby, doctors sat in darkness and studied my films, traced my arteries, mapped my heart. And in the end, my self-diagnosis was right, sort of. My heart was, as I’d later read on the CT report, unremarkable. My lungs were infected, but the artery attached to them remained clot-free. The doctor pre- scribed antibiotics and bronchodilators, explained how to treat walking pneumonia, told me to rest and drink lots of fluids. He said The results are what we wanted. He said There’s a thing called a mycoplasma, but I won’t bore you with the science. He said Your heart is a normal size, and though I knew this was positive in physiological terms, it made me sad. I vowed again to live better, love bigger. I had planned carefully for my thirty-fifth birthday, the first without my brother. My husband and I would travel back to my hometown for a concert. I’d celebrate with live music, the taste of whiskey, and an enthu- siasm that belied my years. I might be nearing middle age, I thought, but I didn’t have to act like it. The ER visit made me wonder if I should be more cautious, shelter my lungs, avoid overexertion in smoke-filled places. I considered an alternative: buying a real topaz—an orange one to offset my mother’s blue stone. It would be a sedate act, but still a small rebellion. The day approached. I vacillated. A few days after the ER visit, I came across the test results doctors sent home with me just in case. Before filing them away, I reviewed them. The radiologist summarized my insides in three sentences, just a few words to show the next doctor what he’d seen. The chest X-ray, though, was all visual, captured on CD. Here is what I learned from it: breasts show up on X-rays. Here is what else I learned from it: the heart is not where you think it is. It is lower, more central. My husband walked by, caught his breath, said I recognize that. It’s you. It’s lovely. Then he didn’t say anything for a very long time. Soon after that night, I rested my head on my husband’s chest. In our years together, I’ve learned to anticipate the quirks of his heartbeat—the pause that scares me and the eventual return. The sound arose where I expected, in the place his hand rests as he sings the National Anthem, several hand-lengths above the spot I pretend to punch when I feel affec- tionate. But something felt off. I kissed my way down his chest,

PMS.. 51 Wade finding the spot where I now knew his heart really was, trying out the site’s potential as a pillow. I couldn’t hear his heart, but I trusted its pumping. My cheek didn’t really fit. I left it there anyway. I’ve finished my antibiotics, and my birthday trip is a few days away. I still haven’t decided how I’ll celebrate. Before the trip, I’ll return to my volunteer job. If my shift is typical, I’ll direct people to the restrooms and remind them of closing time. I’ll talk to schoolchildren about the idea of adaptation, how a body adjusts to the things around it. If the kids are young, they will touch me—tapping my arm to get my attention, grab- bing my hand to lead me to something interesting, leaning against me as I speak. If I sit down, several of them will leap toward my lap, trusting that I will catch them. So far, I always have.

52 PMS.. Pamela Mills

Blood

“Blood” is an excerpt from the late Pamela Mills’ memoir Kamastone: One African Woman’s Search for Her Ancestors. Before dying of cancer in 2004, Pam requested that Maria Brandt use her personal journal to write the memoir’s introduction and then seek its posthumous publication.

Blood At ten o’ clock I walk through the last layer of mist to the mission house. A young woman stands before the door, her wet hands held up and away, so I let her in and follow the solid columns of the red unwalled verandah round to the back of the house. Down a path past a garage and some outhouses are two camps: in the left, two pink pigs and a big black sow with her six piglets; in the right, nine ewes. On the open grass between the two, a group of men and young boys are slaughtering some sheep. They have just begun. Two sheep lie collapsed on their sides with bright red bibs. A spade still lies by a pile of red soil where a hole has been dug to catch the blood which already laps at the lip of an oily trough. I have missed the kill, the moment of death. The men go to the pen to catch the next two. The sheep huddle closely, each movement synchronized to prevent separation. They make no sound. Only their hooves thump in their quiet struggle to escape. Quickly the young men pin them, embrace them tightly, wrapping des- perate hands in their wool. They drag them like that to the red hole, make them lie down on their left sides at the edge. They must smell the blood, the raw flesh of their fellows, but they lie there without sound or struggle, quite quiet, waiting patiently for the knife. They seem to accept death. For the first time I understand what it means to lead a sheep to slaughter. Then a man hefts his knife and stabs deep into the woolly neck and rips forward to the front of the throat, while a hand gently cups the

PMS.. 53 Mills nose. A gob of blood instantly spills out, and the men move to position the throat over the hole. He pulls the head back and saws the windpipe. A bloody tangle of flesh spews blood in thin arterial spurts and girls and boys dance to escape the spray. The esophagus glistens whitely. The sheep gurgles for breath. The men step back. For a moment the animal lies still, then suddenly the legs begin to jerk out its life. Now it is the men’s turn to wait. They cannot cut the body, the spasms are so strong. They stand about quietly, hands hanging by their sides, looking down at their work patiently, wait- ing. Death imposes a propriety. It takes strength and effort to slaughter, and runnels of sweat course down the men’s faces. The eye of the sheep does not seem to change in death. It does not glaze or become blank. It does not show absence. Only once, when an enlarged pupil caught the light at a certain angle, did it glint a light iridescent turquoise in an olive brown ring, unexpected and alien. A dull kick yields no response. Hands tighten around handles and the cutting begins. A team of three men and three boys works on each sheep. A slit which connects with a transverse slash to open the breast and belly is made down the inside of each leg to above the joint. Slowly the skin is picked back from the flesh. When a good beginning has been made, the men stick their balled fists into the opening and punch down while pulling the wool hard away, and the skin peels smoothly. Eventually, the carcass comes loose. They sever the head. The men hold the legs up and open so they don’t drag in the dirt. The naked belly rolls loosely. They make an incision in the breast, stab the blade deep where the ribs meet and prize them open, slit the belly. The organs slosh easily over each other in this boat of bones. They interrupt their cutting only to strop their blunt blades on other blades or on stones. The stomach, a blowzy lavender balloon, they remove first, and the boys bear it off to clean out its grass. Heart, lungs, and liver get flung in a basin. The two emptied coats lie open on the ground to receive parts of the entrails. Links of small intestine wind into another basin. They pull the long tube of large intestine through the anal cavity, squeezing out its contents. Finally, they rip through the perineum and open the pelvis. The empty frame they turn over the hole to allow the trapped blood and bits of fat to trickle out before pinning it on the fence. Bare, headless bodies ride the barbed wire, dripping blood like some macabre nursery frieze. A young woman encourages me to touch these

54 PMS.. poemmemoirstory peeled pearls, the shucked flesh full of sheen. They are still warm, so recently stripped of their shells which, smeared and bloody, lie bare side up, abandoned. “They’re not good to eat like this. They must stand all day before they can be cooked.” Flies buzz around the blood. It lies like molasses on the ground and does not seep into the soil. A tan bitch with black markings round the ears and eyes slinks along the fence, darting in to snatch a scrap of fat and wolf it down. “Voetsek!” shouts a man as she grows too bold, waving her off. The pink pig sprawls in the dust, while the piglets scuffle round a tractor tyre trough, scratching themselves; only the black sow shows interest, snorting along the fence and sniffing the air. As the slaughter continues, the basins fill to the brim and are borne off to the kitchen to be emptied. Boys dodge back and forth, bloody with their work. They are excited, hungry for their reward, and they begin to build a fire of crumpled newspaper and mimosa twigs to roast the duo- denum and a pocket of stomach, which they sprinkle with a few drops of bile. They like the bitterness. Women begin to bundle the skins and col- lect the heads—their wool will be singed off and the scoured yellow skin then scrubbed with Sunlight soap and cooked and eaten with the eyes. There is no waste. Among the slaughterers, there is one who stands out, who knows most surely how and where to cut. In the middle of ripping open a belly, he pauses, straightens to rest a moment, and smiles broadly at me: “I think I must find you a husband here, one of my sons, and you must stay here at Kamastone forever, and live with us!” “I don’t think my husband would think much of that idea,” I reply. “You’ve got no rings!” “We never got around to it.” “No, man, a married woman must have an engagement and wedding ring. Leave your boyfriend in America, and marry one of my sons.” We start to laugh, and he comes over to chat. He is a farmer. When he discovers my family name, his eyes widen. “My father knew them well!” he exclaims. “Cecil used to come here often. My father could tell you a lot about them, but unfortunately he’s dead.” At the end, he goes to each carcass and breaks off the feet at the joint. Boys pile the amputations to take to the kitchen. The kitchen is a slop of entrails. A warm buzz of women crowds round an aluminium-topped table in a festival of raw flesh. A girl nibbles

PMS.. 55 Mills on a piece of fatty duodenum, as two women empty the small intestines, squeezing with the right hand and pleating the folds of skin and sinew with the left. The farther the grass is from the large intestine, the less solid, until a fetid khaki liquid splashes out. Streamers of concentric cir- cles are sliced open and more solid tubes pressed out. Warm pasture and sour flesh commingle and rise in waves in a slick stench of death. The farmer enters the kitchen. “You should hear what these women are saying. They are saying you need to find a husband,” he teases, roar- ing with laughter. The women snigger and shoot each other looks. As I leave, the minibuses are starting to arrive.

“Koleka didn’t think you were coming,” my uncle says as if it were too much to admit he missed me. “I said, ‘Well it’s a half day.’” “I’ve been watching the slaughtering.” “You’re a bloodthirsty thing.” He smiles wolfishly. “What do you want to watch that for? “Do you see what they did to my window? Look here.” He shows me a broken pane and the bottom strut of the bars that has been bent out of line. “I had to fix that this morning, a terrible mess. Don’t touch it it’s wet.” A fresh patch of concrete imprisons the ends of the bars. “They didn’t quite manage to pry it loose but they had a damn good try. More effort than it was worth.” Koleka is going through a checklist of things my uncle has packed for the weekend. “I don’t care what you forget as long as you remember your pills,” she declares. “Don’t you want to visit me over there?” he asks slyly, jerking his head in the direction of the graveyard. “I didn’t take my pills last night. That’s why I feel so much better!” His eyes glint, but she doesn’t rise to the chal- lenge.

I went home and wept. Why did I stop to see the slaughter? To watch eleven animals muti- lated into meat? Yes, I had misconceptions: 1. I expected them to bleat at the entry of the blade. 2. I thought “slit” meant a smooth slide through skin, superficial real- ly, but enough to let out the blood.

56 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

3. I imagined such a significant act demanded a more considerable weapon than a penknife. This was not string or fruit. 4. The shock of that first gush of blood never lessened. I know we did it for the meat. We should have been justified; but this was no hunt with the victim full of fright (although they had once felt fear) or run down with exhaustion. It seemed unnatural. Other animals squeal or bellow. Why did they stay silent? I could have stood it better had they cried out. But once they had been wrestled to the ground, smoothed on their sides, each quieted, as if they had suddenly entered the storm’s eye and all was calm within, all rage without. From peaceful orb they looked out steadfastly on our struggle to kill them. They had mastery of us with our puny knives and bloodied hands; even as we ripped out their throats, they remained inviolate. Such acts should have defiled their innocence. They defiled us instead. And here is the mystery: by what contract of surrender did they offer themselves up? Willingly they participated in their own deaths as if they knew some- thing we didn’t: it was their sacrifice, not ours; and in silence I cried out for us as we bled on the altar of their bare bodies.

PMS.. 57 Elena Schneider

The Devil in the Details

The Night It Happened “I’m going to start at the beginning.” “Alright.” It was December. (That’s how it starts.) And we were going to go to my older sister’s debut performance in a community theater production of “The Worst Christmas Pageant Ever.” Caroline was putting on her stage make-up upstairs. (That’s how it was supposed to happen.) In the winter, your senses stand out brighter, carved out of the cold air and the darkness. At nine, I was munching carrot sticks. My legs swung beneath me, not reaching the floor. The frying pan was crackling with dinner. The phone rang, and my mother disappeared into the dining room. (It begins.) “No, I answered the phone.” My father—no, my dad, but really my Papa—uncrosses his legs and leans toward me, cutting into my narrative. I said, “weren’t you still at the office? I don’t remember you being home?” “No, I was home.” Nearly twelve years later, when Papa relived the call my mom had answered, it comes out in a rush. “Dr. O’Brian tells me, I’ve gotten the results back, and they aren’t good and you’re going to have to come in and I said to him, alright, I’m really sorry to hear that and I can come in tomorrow, or maybe I even said I’d come in Monday and he said, no, you don’t understand, you’ve got to come in now to the hospital, and I said, what, no, I can’t come in, I’m going to my daughter’s play, and he said, no, you absolutely must come in right now. This is life- threatening.” My mom remembers it differently. She remembers speaking with Dr. O’Brian first, saying the same things as my dad, but for her, the conver- sation ended more harshly. “He has to go into the hospital right away because otherwise he will die.” While my mom drove my dad to Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, a small college town in the rolling hills of North Carolina, our neighbors 58 PMS.. poemmemoirstory drove my older sister, Laurian, and myself to the theater. We settled into our creaking seats without them. “No, Mama went to the play, too.” “She did?” “Yes, I insisted that she go to the play, and so she dropped me off at the hospital and then joined you guys a little late.” There’s something about sickness and sadness that encourages forget- fulness. It was a night I will always remember, but I will always remem- ber only scraps of it, an act of unintentional self-preservation. But that’s not always the way. In fact, grief rarely meets one-size-fits- all requirements. Kevin Short remembers everything. “It was the end of my eighth-grade year.” (That’s how it starts.) Kevin, a twenty-year-old junior at Northwestern University, told me in the dingy basement of his off-campus house in Evanston. A washing machine coughs in the corner. “You know, just had like dinner with my brother and my dad’s par- ents. We made tacos, and we were just chilling. It was a normal meal.” (That’s how it was supposed to happen.) “Later in the evening, my parents came back and dropped a bomb- shell—my mom had stage four breast cancer.” (It begins.) Kevin Short is anything but short—a description he’s probably laughed off since he hit his teenage growth spurt. He is more than six feet tall, a jumble of legs and elbows. But when he talks about his mom’s cancer, it is as if his body folds itself in half, drawing down into smaller and smaller pieces. “There was a lot of confusion, like most diseases cause,” he said. “There are so many complexities, biologically and emotionally, to sort through for an adult, much less a kid.” How it starts is usually a short story. An event, punctuated with miss- ing details and exact, burned-in images. The rest of the story is long and serpentine and smudged.

What Is It? The following weeks and months were marked by peaks and valleys for the Short family, much like many other prolonged illnesses. From 2005 to 2008, cancer dictated the mood. “There were stunning defeats and the most glorious victories,” he said. “It wasn’t all doom and gloom because my mom was making some remarkable breakthroughs.” Throughout these battles, Kathryn, or Kathy PMS.. 59 Schneider as she was known to her family and friends, stayed firmly optimistic, a celebrity at the chemo treatment center, at group therapy, and at home. Kathy seemed to emulate the sun. “She was a central hub, and the three of us—my brother, my father, and myself—rotated around her,” Kevin said quietly. When Adam Yalowitz, a slightly disheveled 22-year-old union orga- nizer in Chicago, was asked to describe his mother, he borrowed the same language. “She was just an incredibly loving person,” Adam said over the noise of a Vietnamese restaurant off the Argyle L stop. “Loving is an adjective, but it was the little things she did, the verbs, that made my family’s life really amazing, like walking us to the school bus every morning, the bor- ing stuff.” When Adam was fourteen, his mother, Diane, a one-time senior edi- tor of The Washingtonian, started getting a lot of headaches. (That’s how it starts.) “I remember getting home after school, and no one was home. I kept calling my parents to see if I could hang out with my friends.” (That’s how it was supposed to happen.) “My brother and I went to a doctor’s office, and we were sitting in the waiting room. I knew my mom was inside, then my dad came out. I don’t remember who even told us. My mom was sitting on the table. She was trying to keep it together for me and my brother.” (It begins.) That day, the doctors had found a tumor in Diane’s brain. “She had a biopsy, and she started having seizures,” Adam said. “When you remove brain tissue in an intrusive surgery, it’s really trau- matizing for the body, and after that, my mom was never the same. Over night, she went from being an incredibly smart, articulate person to a person who was never always there.” Biologically and chronologically, parents are your beginning. On every birthday, my parents retell the story that it was my father’s eyes that I first saw when I opened mine. As I grew, they held up my entire uni- verse, shouldering the weight with Atlas. My Papa, known as Professor Dick Schneider to the rest of the world, believes in all that is passionate and poetic and illuminating. Both his office at Wake Forest Law School and his study at home are stuffed, exploding with books. When I was in middle school, I was sometimes

60 PMS.. poemmemoirstory embarrassed to invite friends over for the first time because it meant I had to explain the tottering piles and double-stacked bookcases. Why couldn’t he fish like every other dad? Caroline put it best: “Our father is endlessly interesting.” By extension, he taught his three daughters to endlessly question and to endlessly live in awe. He has a lion’s heart. So, it is ironic that it is his heart that betrays his spirit. The irony goes by another name—arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia. As the doctors explained it to me four months ago, the last time Papa was in the hospital, it is a slow deterioration of the heart tis- sue. As the heart tissue dies, it is replaced by fatty tissue, causing the heart to beat irregularly, called ventricular tachycardia. His heart is a broken record—skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, sk-ip, sk-ip, skip, skip, ski-p. A groove, a canyon, a chasm, where all the lost, good rhythms echo indefinitely—Beat, beat, Beat, beat, Beat, beat, Beat, beat. Over the course of twelve years, he has been hospitalized seven times, usually for no less than ten days. His only treatments have been medica- tion and radio-frequency ablation, a surgical procedure that burns away the bad cells that are causing the irregular beats. After five ablations, only one has been counted a success. “At first the doctors said it was ‘fixable,’” Mama said, sitting at our kitchen table, wrapped in her Mother Earth tones sweater. “We pinned our hopes on that. It only hit me later how devastatingly serious this really was.” Within those first few months, Papa’s illness had transformed from curable to chronic, transitory to permanent. As I heard Kevin and Adam plot the points and events of their mothers’ illnesses, I found and culti- vated a distance between myself and them. Selfishly, I thought, Papa is chronic, they were terminal.

Three Daughters I am the youngest of three. And each third has her own slice of coping pie. Laurian has denial. Caroline has religion. I have tears. Now, Laurian is twenty-five and a successful labor and delivery nurse in Winston-Salem. When we talked, she was still shining from her wed- ding dress shopping glow. But within 10 minutes, she had gone quiet,

PMS.. 61 Schneider an incredibly rare occurrence for her. She couldn’t talk about Papa any more. Even at twenty-five, I can still catch flashes of a girl half her age inside. “In my mind, he was fine,” she said, almost jokingly. Laurian, for all her humor and joy, rarely expresses her fears or feelings. “If I didn’t go visit, it wasn’t real.” It was easy for her to pretend because Laurian often did refuse to see Papa in the hospital. For both Caroline and myself, it meant that Laurian didn’t love him enough. At twelve and nine, denial had yet to mark our lives. For Caroline, that anger became resigned resentment. Laurian was the oldest, but in her denial, she handed over her duties to the middle sister—a role Caroline willingly, tenderly filled. “You definitely cried a lot and I knew I couldn’t lose it like that.” “Because I was losing it.” “Yeah, and you were younger. I had to keep a lid on things, I needed to be calm for you.” To be a rock herself, Caroline found her own foundation in God. “That’s what turned things around for me that year,” she said. Above her bed, an icon of a haloed Jesus Christ hangs, floating above her head as she spoke. “I found that it was a way of focusing, something solid to hold on to, something to protect me.” I cried. You see, I was already a sensitive kid with a lot of feelings with a loud enough voice to articulate them. But rather than bringing me ignorance or peace, it made me feel even weaker. My tears demanded that my father, my mother, my sisters and strangers, comfort me. I had set a precedent that I could not take care of myself. When I was sixteen, Papa and I got to spend three weeks together in London—he was teaching, I was vacationing. For one weekend, we took a train up to Scotland. Along the way, I read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking for a summer school assignment. The teacher probably assigned it without thinking a student may have had personal experience with the subject matter. In the book, Didion describes the experience of her husband’s heart attack and death. As green hill after green hill sped past, I would periodically close my book, lean sideways, and make absolutely certain that my napping dad was still breathing—in, out, in, out, in, out. I wiped tears away. His chest rose and fell, only slightly larger after surgeons had implanted a

62 PMS.. poemmemoirstory defibrillator in his heart to shock it into submission if he went into severe V-tach, five years after his first trip to the hospital. As passengers board- ed, I tried to guess if any of them were doctors. Instead, one offered me a handkerchief.

The Day It Happened Again When I was younger, my parents seemed to live apart from me, on another continent that battled more frequent and more damaging storms. Although I could sometimes see their mouths moving, the semantics were lost on me. “When you’re a child, the world does look very different, and you shouldn’t know a lot of what’s going on all the time.” “I’m not a child now, please tell me what happened.” Mama chooses her words carefully. When she finds a dress she likes, she waits weeks and weeks before she can cut the tags off, just in case. Mama is not impulsive—probably a result of her Catholic and military upbringing. She is patient, discerning, and wise. “One time, he couldn’t seem to get out of V-tach,” Mama said, with her knees leaning against the kitchen table and her arms crossing her stomach. “He had been at it since 5 a.m., and even the top doctors couldn’t seem to get him out of it. They had been trying everything, and he was getting weaker and weaker, and he was so gray. By then, it was 2:30 in the afternoon, and I had to pick you up from school. I called a family friend to come get you, but while they were on the phone, Papa pulled out of it.” Mama came to get me anyway. I had no idea. As she spoke, I could feel my throat pinch and my eyes start to ache. Adam was not as lucky as me. He is also the youngest child, but a youngest child who saw his mother become a crumpled body lying on the floor after she had fallen on the way to the bathroom in their house. He didn’t float above his mother’s illness but lived it with her. “It’s the difference between when you see an ambulance driving past you and hearing it come toward you,” Adam said, who was fifteen at the time. “The ambulance was racing toward our house, getting louder and louder, and then the firemen racing up the stairs and bringing her down again on a stretcher.” As he spoke, I felt the same visceral pain as when I heard my mom tell stories of small tragedies I never knew. Pain passed from one side of the table to the other, then back again.

PMS.. 63 Schneider

“An old friend once told me, ‘I’ve been on both sides, the patient and the caretaker, and I can assure you, it’s worse being the caretaker.’” Mama sighed deeply, and her entire body exhaled. “When you’re looking into a void, you don’t want to be the one left behind.”

The Fight As Kevin describes his mother’s physical downturn, his sentences start to get longer. He adds more and’s and takes deeper breaths. He is a bird, circling the inevitable. I find myself hoping against fact that the story will turn out differently. “The last few nights, she wasn’t able to speak much. She lay in this bed, and my dad, my brother, and myself just on different edges, sleeping around her. It’s kind of a crazy image to come back to.” Kevin stopped here. He had come to the pass. By going forward, it was like he was los- ing his mother in front of me, all over again. “She had extremely labored breathing, hard as fuck to fall asleep to, but we weren’t going anywhere...then, one night, ‘round three in the morning, that labored breathing stopped.” Kathy passed away on July 7, 2009. Two months later, Kevin left for college. “I have great communication with my dad and my brother, but they’re not sharers,” Kevin said. “It’s not like you share the mundane details of your life, and they find it fascinating. I know I’d have been on the phone with my mom bragging about every little thing during Wildcat Welcome. That loss just continues. There is no end to it.” Adam also lost his mother. She died on a Wednesday night in August. “We were all there in her room,” Adam leaned back in his chair, dis- tancing himself from the sound of his own words. “We were waiting, that was the worst part. She was off her medication, so we all knew she would die soon. When she did, I went to my room and cried.” I started to fight back not just tears, but an overwhelming guilt. I was making them relive their lowest moments. But Kevin, a guide to the other side of things, rejected the idea. “I crave the chance to revisit it. Remembering those conversations, those mental images, that only appre- ciate in value over time. You cling on to as many of those as possible.” Sickness rips open ordinary life. A single cancer cell, a single missed heartbeat can bring down the being that brought a child to life. But for me, and for my family, this is not how the story ends.

64 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

The Question Are you afraid to die? I had written the question in my notebook. It stared at me with its blunt insensitivity and its violent question mark. But I wanted to know its answer. My curiosity, tempered with dread and fear, burned. In college, Caroline was an art history major specializing in medieval art. In most compositions, she told me, artists included a skull and cross- bones. It’s called memento mori in Latin, translated as “remember your mortality.” For a kid with a sick parent, reality demands a memento mori. Within every frame, life’s frailty and brevity and injustice are present. “Fairness has nothing to do with the way life works out. The question is how do you live the life that is given to you and what you make of it. You can either live in paralyzing fear or in hope. We have to live in joy.” My father waited expectantly for the next question. And just as sud- denly, imagining a world without Papa did not seem necessary. As the daughter of a father, I suppose there are some things I will never know about him. When Papa hugged me after our talk, he said something I have heard him repeat many times. It has yet to lose its fatherly, reassuring power. “Everything will be ok, in one way or the other.” There are devils to be found in the details, in the odds, in the prognosis. I have my father’s eyes. I have my father’s cheeks. If I have my father’s heart, I count myself blessed.

PMS.. 65 Leslie Pietrzyk

Joy to the World

It’s mid-December, a morning of doing errands, a day like any other day, except that everything is going remarkably well: I find a great parking spot. The post office isn’t crowded when I arrive to mail my packages, though the man behind the counter tells me there’s been a line all morn- ing, “until right about now.” Find another great parking spot. Stumble across the perfect Christmas gift for my hard-to-buy-for friend at a local- ly-owned boutique. And so on. Last stop, the grocery store, where my luck continues, and the guy working produce locates in the back the last bag of parsnips in the build- ing. Parsnips are a key ingredient in the velvety-lush root vegetable soup I want to make for dinner tonight. “Bet you’ve never seen anyone get so excited about parsnips,” I joke to him, and he laughs pleasantly. So things are moving along, and I’ve committed to a check-out aisle, unloading my cart onto the conveyer belt, doing my usual tidy job of it: heavy stuff up front; frozen foods, meat, and milk grouped together; pro- duce in one section, poisonous cleaners in another; fragile things at the end. I’m daydreaming about the array of Christmas cookies on the covers of the food magazines, so I don’t notice the person in line ahead of me until she snaps, “I told you I can’t lift more than five pounds! Those bags are too heavy!” She’s an older, stocky woman with short, frosty blonde hair and a worn, beige, padded coat that’s hanging open, unzipped. She glares at the cashier, an African-American woman who might be called “big-boned” or maybe just “big”; she’s imposing. I don’t recognize the cashier; this grocery store chain has been going through round after round of upheav- als in management and union talks, so there are a lot of new cashiers, as well as new arrangements for getting the groceries checked out and paid for as quickly as possible. Now there are often dedicated baggers, and today there’s a fortyish Latina woman with her hair yanked into a severe ponytail standing at the end of the lane, stuffing products into a tattered brown paper bag imprinted with the name of another grocery store.

66 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

The cashier says, “Excuse me?” I have the sense that she, too, day- dreams in the grocery store, flashing products across the scanner as she thinks about saxophones or new curtains or Christmas cookies, the register’s ding-ding a distant annoyance. She holds a small carton of Egg Beaters in one hand and does not ding it through. The customer points at the bagger, who is still working on that single, teeteringly-full bag. Her voice sounds desperate, shrill, a tone I try to avoid: “I told you not to put more than five pounds in those bags, and that sugar alone is five pounds.” True. I’m doing my holiday baking this week, and in the baking aisle, I had grabbed a bag of sugar for my cart: five pounds. Flour: also five pounds. The bagger piles a few more items into the paper bag, and when there’s nothing else to add, she looks up expectantly. Clearly, she doesn’t understand why there’s a hold-up; clearly, she wants to squeeze just one or two more things in that crammed bag. “Calm down,” the cashier says to the customer. (Funny how that phrase actually never calms anyone down.) “You should have told us what you wanted,” and she passes more things over the register scanner— Egg Beaters, ding; baby carrots, ding—and the supply line to the bagger is resumed, and the bagger seems pleased to return to loading up the paper bag. Ding, ding. “I did tell you!” the customer says. “I told you, and then I told her,” and she jabs her finger again at the bagger. “She doesn’t understand anything,” the cashier says, which comes off as horribly dismissive and perhaps even mean, but which apparently is true as the bagger doesn’t flinch. Even she can work no more miracles, and she pushes aside the overstuffed paper bag and unfolds another of the customer’s paper bags, which she starts loading up. “That’s why I told you,” and the finger jab swings over to the cashier, which I’m pretty sure will not be a big hit. The customer is practically shouting, and she and the cashier escalate into one of those unwinnable battles: “I don’t like your attitude—you’re the one with the attitude.” Though the cashier repeats several times, “I’m trying to help you,” it’s clear that she actually isn’t or she would stop the fighting and let the customer speak instead of ruthlessly dinging the groceries through. Yet when she says to the customer, “What do you want? We’ll do what you want,” the customer doesn’t say, I want you to take the things out of my

PMS.. 67 Pietrzyk recycled stuffed-to-the-gills paper bag and distribute them into ten other bags even if that seems like a waste of bags and even if that makes more work for you, a long sentence, yes, but one which might clear up the situ- ation instantly. Instead, in a voice brimming with the devil’s rage, the customer final- ly says, “I have breast cancer, and I just had surgery, so I can’t lift more than five pounds.” Ding. And the cashier repeats, “Tell me what you want us to do.” Ding. Ding. There’s a glimmer of a pause in the argument, and I’m not sure what will happen next. I’m committed to this check-out line, with all my gro- ceries stretching the length of the conveyer now. What am I supposed to do? The bagger shuffles something at the bottom of the bag, perhaps jos- tling for more room or maybe making sure the English muffins won’t get squashed, then reaches for another bag and keeps packing. Then the customer shouts, “Cancel my order!” at the exact moment the cashier rings up the last item—Ivory soap. There are about a dozen things collected at the end of the lane that the bagger is stuffing into this last bag. Meanwhile, a woman has wheeled her cart behind me, and I suggest that she’ll probably be better off in another line; “she just ‘canceled’ her order,” I say, “so who knows what that means?” We roll our eyes at each other because it’s clear that we’re both so very perfect; we’re the type of women who keep lists and tick off chores in an organized, methodical way. If someone needs a tissue or an Advil, we could quickly pull one out of out purses. We remember to use the half-off coupons magneted to our refrigerators and always have enough quarters for the meter. We’re prob- ably both winding down our successful and full morning of errands, with the grocery store being our last stop. We don’t plan delays, so the woman takes my advice and scoots over to another line. “Cancel it!” the customer shouts. “I’m leaving, so cancel everything. Just give me back my bags.” Customers get a five cent credit for every bag they bring in themselves, so she wants to take home her tattered paper bags to reuse them. Or maybe she wants to buy herself some time. She pushes her cart forward a couple of feet, as if to indicate, I mean business, but I’m betting that she needs these groceries; there’s a fair amount of stuff here, not just a head of lettuce or a package of cheese slices that one could leave behind and make do without. I would find it difficult to walk

68 PMS.. poemmemoirstory away from an hour’s worth of shopping simply to make a point. Driving down the road to another grocery store for another whole sixty minutes of shopping for exactly the same items would not be on my to-do list; and I would need the groceries I had planned to buy. What would I eat for dinner? Nevertheless, “Cancel it!” she shouts again. Unfortunately, the bagger has now packed up every last thing. She seems proud of her accomplishment: a hundred and twenty dollars worth of groceries wedged into four bags, all that time trolling aisle after aisle, comparing prices, reading labels, dodging other people’s carts, poking through produce and packages of chicken…reduced into four bags. Part of me admires this efficiency and skill, even as I myself groan when I have to haul in heavy, overly-packed bags from my driveway to my house. Just because something can fit doesn’t mean it should. Just because it’s only packing a grocery bag, doesn’t mean there isn’t a certain art to it. “Take it all out,” the cashier orders. “The lady cancelled her groceries,” and she starts yanking things from one of the bags, dropping them into a basket that’s usually set aside for the stuff that people change their minds about at the last minute (“Those capers cost how much! I don’t want them.”). But the cashier is rattled, and almost immediately, she’s simply tearing her way through the bags, leaving the customer’s baby carrots and Egg Beaters strewn on the counter at the end of the lane; the bagger watches for a moment, then joins in as if this is perfectly normal—as if this is some kind of fun new party game—and now she’s pulling stuff out of the bag faster than the cashier is. The customer is crying, not all-out sobs, but more than a trickling tear. She wipes her cheek and says, “First my husband died, and now I have breast cancer and no one’s helping me, and this is all just crappy. I can’t carry these things. I can’t lift more than five pounds.” “Pray about it,” the cashier says. “That’s all you can do: pray, and you’ll be fine.” She punches a few buttons on the register: maybe cancel- ling an order is no more than doing that; why wouldn’t cancelling be as efficiently designed as everything else here? I had imagined having to de- scan each item one by one; I had imagined having to load my stuff back into my cart and head to another line. But no, this will be fast and easy. For the first time, the customer looks directly at me—I have a quick glimpse of bright blue eyes before—I’m ashamed to say—I look away. All I want is to pay for my groceries, I tell myself, to make my root vegetable

PMS.. 69 Pietrzyk soup drizzled with truffle oil. (Another element of the perfect day of errands: the gourmet store had a test tube size of truffle oil for only $5.95 so I didn’t have to buy the full size bottle for $26.95.) So the customer is not speaking to anyone in particular when she says, “I hate the world that gave me breast cancer, the world that does these terrible things.” I should note here—or somewhere—that my first husband died sud- denly when I was thirty-five, and when I went into the grocery store for the first time after his death, I stood crying in the cereal aisle, clinging to the handle of my cart, realizing that I no longer had to remember to buy cornflakes for him. I have definitely hated the world, too. I have hated innocent men and women going about their normal, daily business while less than a millimeter under the surface, I writhed in pain; I have hated well-meaning people who spouted their tired bromides as if sharing with me some great secret only they could impart: “it’s all God’s plan,” or, “time will heal everything,” or, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stron- ger.” I understand that, yes, sometimes there is nothing we can say except this: the world is crap; it’s just all crap. And I also understand that not many people will want to hear this— or think about it—or believe it, because to do so will smack them up against the fact that the world is random and that what we deserve and what we get have little to do with anything. This woman at the grocery store is only saying what’s ultimately true, though we may not want to— or be able to—hear it. A shift happens as I’m thinking about these things, and suddenly the cashier is saying, “We can rebag for you. We can make the bags lighter. All you have to do is say so.” The customer’s entire cart-worth of groceries is now unloaded and scattered loose on the counter; her own paper bags have been folded and returned to the cart so she can use them again. “Now you’re listening to me,” the customer says. “Thank you.” She sniffles, pulls a crumpled tissue from her coat pocket and wipes her nose. “You still want to cancel your order?” The cashier’s hand hovers over the buttons on the register. Someone else might not have asked, someone else might have been happy to hustle this customer out the door to prove a point. The question is a moment of sweetness. “No,” she says. “You’re listening to me now.” She tugs her cart back to its proper slot near the register, and the cashier and the bagger start repacking everything they’ve just unpacked, slipping one or two items

70 PMS.. poemmemoirstory into each plastic bag. It seems that the customer has accumulated a pile of at least thirty bags now. She reminds them in a shaky voice: “I can’t lift more than five pounds.” One bag of sugar. One bag of flour. I suspect my own purse weighs more than five pounds. She’s crying harder, the crumpled tissue is a damp, shredded wad; the cashier is sniffling and swiping her own cheeks; the bagger keeps her head down as she races through the groceries in this revamped style: one item equals one bag. I wonder what she’s thinking about all this bagging and unbagging and rebagging, or if she wants only to do her job and get through the day. “Want a tissue?” the cashier asks, offering the Kleenex box to the customer. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just didn’t understand.” “I’m sorry, too,” the customer says, tugging out a new tissue. “I shouldn’t be so angry at you.” “Do you want to hug?” the cashier asks, then immediately answers her own question: “We need to hug.” But first, it’s time for logistics. Cards are swiped, receipts are signed, and the last of the many bags is piled into the cart. The customer is about to walk away to the glass exit doors, but the cashier says it again: “We need to hug,” and she leans slightly, expecting to embrace over the conveyor belt. The customer pauses, her face tight and strained and teary, and I’m wondering if she’s thinking, as I am, that a hug may be a bigger bromide than the previous directive to pray, but then she speaks in a low voice as if making a confession: “I can’t lift my arm. It’s still sore from surgery,” so the cashier pushes around to stand next to her and gently embraces her, handling her as if she’s about to break. “I’m sorry,” they murmur to each other, and then we watch the customer walk to the automatic doors, which slide open for her, and she wheels her cart through and heads to the parking lot. My turn. “That was traumatic,” I say as the cashier resumes her post at the register. That doesn’t need to be said, but I need to say something. Too late, I realize that I should have said something to the customer, not the cashier; I should have said, “Ma’am, if you wait for me, I’ll load your stuff into your car.” But I didn’t think to say that, so I state the obvious: “That was traumatic.” My own bromide—understated observation, going for a wry chuckle from my audience, finding a safe distance away from what has just happened.

PMS.. 71 Pietrzyk

The cashier is very fast with my groceries, whisking them through the scanner with rapid-fire dinging; she’s not daydreaming now, and neither am I. She’s still sniffling. The bagger takes my recyclable mesh bags and starts loading the hell out of the first one—flour, sugar, a four-pack of fire-starter sticks—Hercules would struggle to lift this bag—but I look away and let her do her thing. Now—now!—a manager shows up and tells the cashier she’s allowed to go on an early break, and the cashier races off, clutching her tissue, wiping her cheeks, shaking her head from side to side. The manager couldn’t be more cheerful, as if she wants to be the new poster girl for sunny and perky. “How are you today?” she asks me, then ten seconds after I tell her that I’m fine, she asks again, “How are you today?” So I try out my line one more time: “That was traumatic for every- one,” and she agrees. “You need a tissue, too?” she asks, not joking. “Almost, but not quite.” I’m not joking either. The bagger keeps shoving things into this single bag—non-chlorine bleach, cans of tuna, a bottle of sparkling water—so finally I really, really have to say, kindly, “That’s enough stuff in there, I think,” and I shake my head and point to the pile of other bags, so she reaches for one. The manager turns around and stares at the bagger. “Stop filling those bags too much,” she barks. “People got to carry them.” She pauses importantly, letting her statements sink in. Then she returns to scanning through my items. This is the easy lesson. This is what we can all learn and how we can change. Here, here is a goal we can accomplish and a result we can achieve: we can make sure that less stuff is crammed into grocery bags.

Outside, I run into the customer as she’s dutifully returning her shop- ping cart to the corral. “Are you feeling better?” I ask, touching her arm, knowing she isn’t, but also knowing this is the only thing a stranger can ask. She’s still crying, and my question makes her choke back a little hic- cup of a sob. Her eyes are very, very clear blue and wide: china doll eyes, kitten eyes. She seems much more fragile with these eyes than if they were brown or black or green. “Oh, thank you for asking,” she says. I tell her that my husband died, and I’m waiting for the usual reac- tion—you’re so young—but grief is like a dream, interesting only when it’s our own, and my hand on her arm is all the encouragement she needs,

72 PMS.. poemmemoirstory because she jumps in with, “It’s all so hard, just these simple things like groceries. I’m bald, so to go out I’ve got to put on my wig”—which makes her cry harder; I tell her she looks fabulous, though now that she men- tions it, her hair does look artificial, something I hadn’t noticed before when I was avoiding looking at her—“and drive out here, and driv- ing!”—an angry dramatic gesture—“if I take one pill, the doctor says I’m not supposed to drive, but if I don’t take it, I feel awful. And then of course it’s the holidays”—and here I see that she’s wearing an inexpensive sweatshirt embroidered with the words “Joy to the World,” the type of sweatshirt one might buy at Walmart or Sears, and I picture her rooting around a dresser drawer, looking for her special holiday sweatshirt so she can pretend she feels festive while she does her grocery shopping, and I have to look back at her eyes and stop thinking about the sweatshirt or I’ll start to bawl—“and I wanted to pick out some Christmas cards for my special people”—and the only way to keep the tears back is to murmur every useless bromide I know: You look fabulous, it’s so hard to do these things alone, you’re doing a great job, the holidays can be so difficult. She’s very polite about my clichés: “Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to me. Thank you for asking about me. I have to go in tomorrow, and they’re removing more tissue.” I could try to imagine how frightened she must be, but, frankly, I don’t want to. I’m embarrassed—though glad—that my clichés are com- forting, are enough for this waning moment as we stand together at the cart corral of a suburban Virginia grocery store under chilly sunlight and a clear sky. But there should be more. I want to take her home with me and cook up a pot of my root vegetable soup especially for her, drizzling the truffle oil just so in a pretty zigzag; I want to carry a bowl of soup to her while she reclines in bed with NPR interview shows softly burbling in the background. I want to be the kind of person who says, “We need to hug,” and also, I want to be the kind of person who lets herself be hugged by strangers. I want to believe in “Joy to the World.” But she scares me. “Surgery tomorrow! No wonder you’re so stressed out,” I say, though “stressed out” is a phrase I use to describe how I feel about a trip through rush hour traffic or having to wait in line at the bank behind someone with a zippered plastic pouch making a commercial deposit. I continue with my litany of clichés that don’t seem substantial enough for a woman with breast cancer telling me that “the world is a pile of shit…excuse my language,” but finally she has said everything she

PMS.. 73 Pietrzyk needs to say, and she concludes with another very polite, “Thank you so much for listening to me.” A cliché lobbed back at me. Or maybe not. She’s stopped crying, and I want so desperately to believe that this little bit I’ve done, this bare minimum of kindness, has helped her. We part ways—I touch her arm again, but we don’t hug—and I walk to my own car, unload my bags, wheel my cart back to the corral. Think about my soup. Think about a phone call I have to make at 2:30. Think that I’ll never see this woman again. Though, actually, I do catch one final glimpse of her: She’s driving a non-descript white car that needs to be washed, careening too fast through the parking lot to the exit, sucking hard on a cigarette. Even from where I stand, and even though I’ve never been a smoker, I sense through the layers of car windows and the increasing distance between us, the immense relief of that single, glowing cigarette, that distilled moment of escape.

74 PMS.. Christine Hale

Cooking Instruction

My mother preferred to cook alone. She pretty much had to; to have any- one near her was intolerable. Other people in the kitchen was one thing on a long list of things that made her “nermy,” a word she made up and the whole family adopted to label and downplay her condition. Exactly what that condition was, nobody specified. The time was the fifties and early sixties; back then, no one diagnosed or treated mental illness in ordinary middle-class families. My two older sisters and I, and my father anytime he had to be home, did everything we could to avoid making Mother nermy. The sound and even the shape of the word—an unset- tling morph from “nervous” toward the vast, vague territory of female emotionality—suggested what could be experienced but never explained. That she suffered from depression, at the very least, my sisters and I agree about this now. But what plagued us then, whatever the cause, were her outbursts of blind, blazing rage. She was an excellent cook of old-fashioned Southern foods. Biscuits, yeast rolls, and breads; cakes and pies of every kind; roasts and pot roasts, any kind; fried chicken, of course, and gravy (white, brown, or red). Salted, greasy, cooked-down vegetables (oh, those delectable salt- pork green beans); jellies, jams, and pickles; and stewed apples, peeled and simmered to nearsauce, melting chunks of fruit caramelized in their own juice. Very few of the dishes she cooked can I replicate. She said, when complimented on her skills, that she learned them at her grand- mother’s side, cooking three meals a day during many happy summers she spent on the farm. Nermy-ness, however, meant my mother never passed those lessons on to me. In the last months before I married at sev- enteen to escape her, she tried, briefly and frantically, to tell me how to make things, then resolved her failure by copying out on 3 x 5 cards, in her harsh, hurried handwriting, recipes for the dishes I liked best. I still have a number of those cards pasted into a looseleaf binder retained from my young married days, but they’re of little use. Some are ingredients-only, with no instructions for mixing and no times and temperatures for cooking. Some recipes clearly are missing one

PMS.. 75 Hale or more ingredients, or mention “salt,” for instance, with no quantity given. What’s not written down was so much a part of her head that she couldn’t see that I might not know what to do with what she did give me. One recipe she passed on to me I can reliably replicate, because I did get a very memorable lesson at a young age. “Fudge squares” was her name for a cake brownie not at all fudge-like but very popular with the family. I loved all things chocolate and sweet, and on some seminal “good day” I prevailed on her to let me help mix up a batch of fudge squares. First, the greasing and flouring of the pan, always the same pan, a square 8 x 8 baking dish of thin dark metal. Greasing was done with a smear of solid Crisco shortening finger-dipped from the gallon can under the sink; flour got sprinkled on from the blue bowl balanced among the mul- tiple opened paper sacks mounded in the pull-out bin at one end of the sink counter. Lesson 1, problem 1: I must achieve perfect, even coverage with the Crisco because otherwise the brownies would stick. Flouring made the grease visible, so no mistake could ever be hidden. For reasons I don’t understand even now, one cannot patch up a botched grease-and- flour job. I’ve tried. Naked streaks can be touched up with more Crisco but the flour won’t adhere in the requisite even, translucent dust; it clots. Maybe my mother did the greasing the day I baked with her. I don’t remember that problem happening that day. The second step in mak- ing fudge squares involved a danger she supervised closely. Three tablespoons of Crisco shortening, measured by approximate scoop of a serving utensil, not the biggest sister from a ring of measuring spoons, were placed in a brown china bowl amid worry on my part and hers as to whether the white lumps were too big or too small. Two squares of astonishingly bitter (I tasted it, although she warned me not to) baking chocolate were unwrapped and added to the bowl, which went into the pre-heating oven (350 degrees) to melt. The burning-hot bowl had to be removed and then held with a slippery, square oven pad during the mix- ing in of the next ingredient, a cup of sugar. To this grainy goo one added a quarter cup of milk that did not want to dissolve into all that grease and so had to be stirred and stirred and stirred. An egg went in, but not too soon, or the heat retained in the melted chocolate would slightly cook the white, leaving disgusting strings in the finished cake. A little bit of vanilla followed, releasing its pleasing sweet-medicinal-candy smell. Then another stage of trial: the dry ingredients. A cup of flour sifted with baking powder and salt (the rasp of metal on metal; the off-putting,

76 PMS.. poemmemoirstory rust-spotted screen; the round green wooden knob I pinched between thumb and forefinger to turn the crank) landed in a dry cone atop the now-gelatinous chocolate-eggy liquid that immediately set to stiffening. I stirred and stirred, warm-but-cooling bowl in the crook of my left arm, my right forearm straining. Next came the pouring out and the scraping into the greased and floured pan. It was in this step, that demonstration day, that I failed. I held a spoon, not a rubber spatula. The bowl was slippery with smears of batter and the Crisco still on my fingers. I scooted the spoon edge around the inside of the bowl again and again the way my mother showed me, trying to remove all the batter, but finding always a streak left behind. Thinner on every round, yes, but persisting. I set the bowl down. Told her I was done. Her banked rage snapped; I will never know why. Incompetent lazy wasteful idiot. Throwing batter away! The bowl must be scraped completely clean. My tears poured in proportion to the ferocity of her condemnation. I was afraid of her. I knew it wasn’t fair to be yelled at like that for such a small and honest mistake but I knew, too, that she was right. I hardly ever did anything right, except in the class- room, where A’s came too easily to count. I did not make brownies in her presence again. But I did make fudge, in her kitchen and in her presence, many times. I made fudge for her, a ritual act of paying attention with a tangible— sweet and chocolate-y—outcome. At first, she made the fudge. An inveterate reader of McCall’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Good Housekeeping, she tore recipes from their spines, especially the ones advertising new, modern, miracle, processed food products. Sometime in my early adolescence, the marketing of Kraft Marshmallow Cream provided her with a recipe centered on that whipped confection that smoothed, sweetened, and stiffened fudge reli- ably and simply: No-Fail Fudge. Five minutes of boiling only, with no imperative, always chancy, for achieving the precise high temperature that solidified candy. She stopped making the old-fashioned, from- scratch, candy-thermometer form of fudge promulgated by the Joy of Cooking, which I’d never much liked since I found it grainy and too darkly chocolate. Anyone ever offered this new fudge “chunked” it—her made-up word for eating hand-over-fist too much of something sweet. She made it for me especially, as a peace offering after raging, or as a gift and

PMS.. 77 Hale commemoration for a birthday or an award at school. Then I learned to make it, probably for a Girl Scout meeting or a sleepover, on my own. Simple. Just follow the directions. A day came, somewhere in my young adulthood, when she asked me to help her by doing the stirring. Through the minutes of coming to a boil and then for five more at the rolling boil, the heavy syrupy mix of sugar, butter, and evaporated milk had to be stirred non-stop to avoid its scorching, and after that came the strenu- ous beating in of the marshmallow cream. All that made her wrists—one of them snapped in a fight with my father—ache. To be asked to help in her kitchen made me breathless with surprise; I did as she asked with no comment. After that, I always stirred the fudge, whether it was she or I who ini- tiated the project, and later, when I’d been gone from home for twenty years, carrying the fudge skill with me to appease college munchies and complement other people’s parties and confect an easy, pleasing Christmas present for my children’s teachers and the neighbors, I made a point to cook it for her on each of my infrequent visits home. I made fudge in my mother’s kitchen because it was something to do together when my young children and her agoraphobia housebound us, but also because I felt obliged—she’d have left the house despite herself to buy the ingredients in anticipation of my coming. I went on stirring and beating and pouring out steaming molten fudge to solidify on a cookie sheet when she’d become toothless and so crippled with arthritis she could barely stand at the stove long enough to heat soup and had ordered my father to the store for ingredients—send- ing her, once or twice, like old times, into a rage when he bought the wrong brand or wrong size of marshmallow cream or evaporated milk. In those years of final days, the awful dragging end of our association, when she sometimes stank mildly because bathing had become an ordeal of not-falling, when I came every six months religiously and knew she lived visit-to-visit, when I worried my father would kill her and himself, and suspected she subsisted between-times on the Reese’s peanut butter cups and chewing gum whose wrappers mounded up by her recliner in front of the television, I drove my father’s clunker, a Chevy Malibu wagon twenty years old, to the Food Lion in a moribund strip mall in the town I grew up in and they’d never left, to buy chocolate chips and marshmal- low fluff. I boiled and stirred fudge in the dusty, moldy, grease-caked kitchen on the old stove with only one eye that heated fully, while she

78 PMS.. poemmemoirstory perched on a wooden stool behind me, watching, waiting, savoring the comfort of someone cooking, in her kitchen, for her.

Now that she’s been dead more than a decade I almost never make fudge. All those years of “chunking” so many sugary baked goods and candies made me pre-diabetic; I’ve stopped cooking sweets so I won’t eat them. Plus, all that stirring causes my wrists to ache, and sometimes my elbows, too. If I do cook fudge, it’s only at Christmas. I eat one piece and give the rest away to happy friends and grateful neighbors. But No-Fail Fudge lives on in my cells. Years pass without fudge, but the recipe stays with me. I never have to look it up. My daughter and occasionally my son call me from college and graduate school with the need to make fudge for some friend’s special day, and without fail I recite the ingredients, the amounts, and the cooking process from memory—never forgetting to underline the effort and the reward of stir- ring patiently, and long enough.

PMS.. 79 Wendy Reed

Prologue: An Accidental Memoir

Reed and I were headed south to the dentist’s office on the Interstate. It was his first appointment ever and he was excited about being a “big boy.” We weren’t late. We had time to spare. I put my windshield wipers on intermittent then checked and merged into the right lane. That’s when the back of our Montero veered left and I turned into the direction of the swerve. My tires were floating and started sliding side- ways. With a whirring sound, I was moving faster. It’s odd to realize your car is out of control. Even though the median was across four lanes, on the other side of the freeway, I was suddenly there, in it. Mud was flying everywhere; my car was moving, but I couldn’t be sure if it was in circles or what. Then things slowed. I remember thinking I can’t believe I’ve gone across the freeway in morning traffic and not been hit. I remember thinking that I would have to tell my husband about the mud—he would not be happy. I’d get it washed before he saw it. I reached back to touch Reed in his car seat when I heard a sound like something exploding. Motion began again. We were spinning. I tried to see where, but I couldn’t find anything to focus on. Then we were still again. Maybe I tried to think. I do not remember unbuckling or getting out of my car. No one saw me get out of the car, so it is possible that I climbed over the seat to get to my son, but it seems I would remember doing such an unusual thing. I saw the red lever to unbuckle his car seat. My eyes were scanning him from head to toe and over and over I said, “You’re all right. It’s all right. We’re all right.” Reed wasn’t crying but something in my manner or my words must have scared him because before he was out of the car seat, he started. Someone, a man or a woman, asked if we were okay. I think I said yes. It was several yards from the median to the shoulder, but I don’t remember walking there. Cars were lined up as far as I could see. I knew those people would be late for work all because of me. I’m sorry, I thought. I was so very

80 PMS.. poemmemoirstory sorry. That’s when I saw my Montero. The frame was broken in half, the passenger side caved completely in. No glass was left in the windows, and a tire lay several feet away. I must have hit something. Another car. Somebody else’s car. And then I saw the other car. The somebody’s car. “Are they OK?” I asked, and I know I said it out loud because a nice lady with blonde hair looked at me. “They’re just having a hard time getting her out,” a voice behind me explained. Someone was stroking my hair. “Ma’am, which hospital do you want to be taken to?” A paramedic waited for my answer. By reflex, I guess, I’d managed to run down the check list I used to teach CPR. I mentally ran it again. Reed was crying; I heard him. If he was crying, then he was breathing. If he was breathing, then he was fine. “We’re fine, just fine, thanks. See. Look. We’re fine.” The air hung thick with humidity. But I could see through it. Lights. Red. Flashing. The lights of emergency vehicles, fire trucks, an ambu- lance. I could see them loading a bundle of white sheets onto a stretcher. A her, they had said. The bundle was a her.

PMS.. 81 Bebe Barefoot

Sparkle and Spin

When you talk to a person for the last time, you usually don’t know or even think it will be the last time, and that’s probably especially true if that person is trying to sell you a disco ball. The last time I heard Dr. Elizabeth Meese’s voice, that’s what she was trying to do. Now, it says far more about me than about her that, of all the people she knew, I was the one most likely to want to buy it. And she was right. If it had worked in any room in my house without looking awkward, I would absolutely own it. Elizabeth was my teacher…my dissertation director…my friend…and not necessarily in that order. She was a brilliant scholar, staunch feminist, trailblazing gender theorist, and one of the most sincere and dedicated student advocates I have ever known. And the proud owner of a disco ball. That she was trying to unload. On me. At the time, I didn’t think much of the missed disco ball opportunity. I did think about Elizabeth during the years afterward, but I honestly didn’t give the dancing mirrored orb a second thought until I learned she had died. Then I thought of it constantly, every single time I thought of her, which was every day. I remembered it with immense sadness and regret, and I chastised myself for not prolonging the conversation, or at least taking it to another level because in my grief, all I could focus on was that my last words to her were “Thanks, but no thanks.” So I did what I always do to make sense of things. I intellectualized. I tried to make analogies. I happened to be re-reading Hugo Ball’s “Dada Manifesto,” when one part of it stopped me short: “step…outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness.” The original context refers to the “WORD”—the word “Dada” itself, on one level, or maybe just “word” as in “logos” as in power structure, and on another level, it refers to what the word “Dada” represents: what is and what is not, and nothing and everything, simultaneously. Of course, the word Dada did and does have literal definitions and translations, but for Ball and his cohorts it basically represented both everything and nothing. A good way to think of it is as sort of the black hole of words. I started to focus on the vibrant, free

82 PMS.. poemmemoirstory spirit of the Dada movement—the breaking free of stagnation and limita- tions, whether imposed by yourself or your culture. I think THAT quota- tion captures it as well as anything else in the manifesto. And then something unexpected and beautiful happened. I saw Elizabeth’s disco ball as a parting gift or coded message—certainly a metaphor—that she handed over to me. Because you see, a disco ball is nothing but a chandelier that stepped outside its self-evident limitedness, got over itself and joined the circus. “Joining the circus” is a metaphor and a clichéd one at that. On one level it means running away from responsibility and reality. It means not taking yourself or even life too seriously. But on another level, I think it can mean respecting and embracing and even nurturing not just what or who you think you are, but what or who you think you are NOT because that is usually a very real part of you and another possibility. And to not just stop at accepting or embracing or at least considering what you are NOT at any given time, but to go further and see that what you are NOT isn’t a spectacle to be gawked at like it’s a side-show freak, or something shameful to be shunned with averted eyes, but is in fact a mirror that reveals your multifaceted possibilities. I’m not advocating anarchy or “turning on and dropping out” in the sense that “running away and joining the circus” might imply. This is about the boxes we build around ourselves to the point that we cannot see a distinction between those limits AND our very selves. You see…the “circus” is in the eye of the beholder. My throwaway conversation with Elizabeth became so infused with meaning for me that it became a sort of visual poetry and triggered “emotion recollected in tranquility” to quote William Wordsworth. Who, by the way, is one of my least favorite poets—in fact I can’t stand his work and even have my own special name for his magnum opus, The Prelude. I call it The Quaalude. But his famous line about poetry really works in this case. So even here I’m stepping away from my beloved Hugo Ball and embracing that freak show William Wordsworth! Now might be a good time for me to share something I’ve borrowed from yet another writer. His name is Austin Kleon. He says that all advice is autobiographical and that when people give it to you, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. I love that and agree with him com- pletely. So…what I’m saying here is really me writing not to you at all but to a previous version of myself. I’d like to alter this slightly—put my own twist on it, which is what you do when you steal like an artist—and tell

PMS.. 83 Barefoot you that this is me talking to several previous versions of myself who are in turn talking to the me who wrote this essay. Like a mosaic or a web of the self. Or a multifaceted disco ball. And if, in the process, you also get something out of this conversation among me, myself and I—if you see a little of yourself or take something away from it—well, then, that’s all the better. Sometimes we step outside the parrotry of our self-evident limited- ness because we want to see what’s on the other side. It isn’t that we’re unhappy. We’re just restless and curious. And sometimes we do it NOT because we necessarily want to see what’s on the other side, but because our limitedness can no longer contain us. The parrotry becomes cacoph- ony, and it’s stifling and finally intolerable. And sometimes we THINK we have stepped outside the parrotry of our self-evident limitedness once and for all but have in reality just created another box, maybe a cooler, more colorful, interesting box…but a box is a box. And then a wake-up call comes from nowhere and hits us on the head. Sometimes it’s a polite little tap: “Excuse me, but you have about you the stench of self-evident limitedness. Please step outside.” And sometimes it’s a sledgehammer. “Hey!!! You REEK!! GO NOW!!!!!” The latter happened to me nine years ago. It was Father’s Day 2003, just over a week after I had successfully defended my doctoral dissertation. I was feeling quite smug and pleased with myself. “Look how far you’ve come,” I said to me. I was driving back from visiting my family in southeastern Alabama, chugging along Highway 231 in my little yellow Beetle, listening to Jerry Lee Lewis and BAM—I was struck by lightning. This is not a metaphor. I was literally struck by lightning. Just like that, it happened. Imagine the loudest thun- derclap you’ve ever heard, an inch or two from your head. And then a blinding light surrounded the car. Here’s what went through my mind in what could have only been a few seconds, in this exact order: “Holy shit.” “Somebody shot me.” “That’s the flash you see when you die.” “Thank god I finished my dissertation.” Fifteen minutes later, a hysterical but really sweet and very pregnant woman drove me to a telephone, and the first person I called was my Daddy. Not my Dad. Not my father. My Daddy. Or as we say where I’m from: my Deddy. When you’re a Southern girl, and have just been struck by lightning, you forget every feminist or other theory you’ve ever read,

84 PMS.. poemmemoirstory embraced, or nurtured, you forget that you’re middle-aged, and you call your Daddy. And then I called the insurance company—which, by the way, is everybody’s Daddy and not in a good way. I called the insurance company because I wasn’t sure if I needed an accident report. Because it was Sunday, I got a person reading from a script. I tried explaining what happened, but I kept getting questions like “Did you collide with the object or did the object collide with you?” So after a few attempts, I said, “You are not listening to me. I collided with ZEUS. Do I need an accident report?” In case you’re wondering, you don’t need an accident report when you collide with Zeus/Thor/Nut/Yahweh—feel free to insert your own weath- er or sky deity. Accident reports are there to help decide whose insurance pays for the damage. You know, which Daddy foots the bill. Zeus/Thor/ Nut/Yahweh does not have insurance. You’re on your own. The car was totaled. And I now have superpowers. It affected me so profoundly that I had an existential crisis. But not for the reason you might think. It didn’t bother me too much to get thumped on the head by Zeus/Thor/Nut/Yahweh. I had been expect- ing that most of my life. Have I mentioned I was raised in a Pentecostal church? What sent me spinning, aside from facing the fact that we really don’t have control over anything and it can all be over in a split second while you’re minding your own business listening to Jerry Lee Lewis (“Great Balls of Fire,” I kid you not), what hit me hardest was realizing that I truly thought I was dying—going into the light—and all I could think of was my dissertation. “Thank god I finished my dissertation” were my last words to ME!!! That, dear reader, is self-evident limitedness. And then I got this bright idea for most of that summer that I would build a little cabin on my Daddy’s property and raise peacocks. I am not making that up. I leveled out and went on with my life, but in a totally different way. This was not a conscious thing. I didn’t make a list but simply followed my heart. I did things that I had sworn I would never do. I joined circus after circus: bought a convertible bought a sewing machine started reading Southern writers started reading mythology again created a class based on Jungian theory got married

PMS.. 85 Barefoot

Now I know these appear to be random and the last one is a huge, important life choice that makes the others seem trivial and out of place. But they all have a place in this personal essay about embracing what you think you’re not because it might very well help you become what you really have been all along. But first you need some background information. I was born in 1961 and grew up in LA and DC: LA: Lower Alabama DC: Dale County It’s in the boondocks of southeastern Alabama, in what was then a beautiful little farming town called Ariton, where there were millions of peanuts, about 800 people, and probably as many cows. It is no longer so beautiful—there’s now a Dollar General Store in Ariton and lots of other corporate stuff and much of the farmland has been developed. I think there are possibly fewer people and not as many cows. To give you some perspective, there were 29 students in my graduating class. I loved writing and filled notebook after notebook with girlish, flow- ery poems that were sort of like some twisted South Alabama Emily Dickinson—you might call it Ellie May Dickinson. I wrote dreadful sto- ries, and I wrote a play when I was nine years old. Even then I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know it. It didn’t occur to me that you could actually do that as a profession, and there was really no one around to tell me in a way that I would comprehend. It was just something I did because I loved books and words and also—I realize now—because I was absolutely surrounded by amazing storytellers. My Daddy in particular. But back then I didn’t know. I just scribbled. I DID realize that a college education would be a ticket. To where or what I didn’t know, but I had a vague notion that I needed to try. School—higher education—was my circus. I’m a first generation college graduate. If it had not been for dedicated teachers, I would have probably gone through life thinking the ACT was a government agency and the SAT was an abbreviation for the day before the Sabbath. I think the driving force behind my pursuing the ACT and the SAT— what they stood for and the doors they opened—was that I wanted O-U- T. I wanted to step outside the parrotry of my self-evident limitedness, though at the time I just called it “getting the hell out of Dodge.” And get the hell out I did. I didn’t look back for two decades. I WENT back and visited, but I did not LOOK back because that would mean facing what I had been, which of course meant facing who I was. And I spent a good

86 PMS.. poemmemoirstory portion of my early adulthood pretending that was not the case. I wasn’t ashamed, but I was certainly in denial. I didn’t do anything atrocious like make up stories about my background. I just didn’t talk about it. I had not merely stepped outside my self-evident limitedness. I had buried it. What I had not been became who I was, and who I had been, well, that was the sideshow in my newly found circus. A grotesquerie that I gazed upon with averted eyes. I jumped from circus to circus and had great adventures. I eventu- ally joined the circus that was mid- and late-1980s corporate America. A big-haired, shoulder-padded extravaganza. It was about as far from LA and DC as I could imagine, though in truth it was just an hour and half north. But that was in many ways a lifetime from Dodge. Even during that time, which I think of as The Drone Age, I skirted around my passions. My heart’s desires. My first “real” corporate job, with Sylvan Learning Corporation, placed me in the margins of teaching, for example. During the Drone Age, I was also on the periphery of my other pas- sions—words and writing—but it was confined to the lucrative field known broadly as “corporate communications.” In my case it meant writ- ing and editing manuals, newsletters, speeches, and such. In a real sense even the passion I grasped blindly—language—was so confined by the parrotry of corporate limitedness that I didn’t realize I was holding on to what I had both been and could be. I was not completely miserable dur- ing the Drone Age—anything but. I did some cool things and met some interesting people, but that kind of life can be stifling. “Limitedness” does not begin to describe it. I broke free, entered graduate school, and joined the academic circus to pursue a life of the mind. That is actually what I said in my application essay for a doctoral program in English. The “ life of the mind” part, not the “circus” part. They let me in anyway. By the time Zeus bitch-slapped me, I thought no more stepping out- side would be necessary. It was all mapped out. And then came those sad, pathetic last words to myself. My limitedness wasn’t just imaginary protective boundaries drawn around my “evolved” self. My limitedness was eight and a half inches wide, eleven inches tall and maybe two inches deep. My self-evident limitedness was a manuscript box. Now back to that list of things I’d never do. Some of it happened immediately, and some took place over a year or two afterward, and I don’t want to imply that I haven’t had a number of “moments” since the lightning strike. One very long moment, in fact, that gave me

PMS.. 87 Barefoot horrifying Drone Age flashbacks. Here, though, I’m focusing on what matters instead of “all that clutter,” to quote my wise husband. The first thing I did was buy a convertible. I needed a car. I could have bought any car, but I bought a convertible. This is perfectly under- standable after a startling event. Lots of people do it to alleviate the trau- ma of middle-age, so I think being struck by lightning would justify the indulgence. Or what my previous self would have called a “bimbo” pur- chase. Before Zeus, I’d have been concerned about the image I projected because, after all, I had become a serious scholar. But when Zeus reaches down and gives you a twirl, you stop caring what people think. Here’s why I did it: I remembered that way back in Dodge I ran around shoeless from March until November. Besides reading and writ- ing like Ellie Mae Dickinson, my favorite thing to do was ride horses and motorcycles. I had not thought of it in two decades. Do you know the best thing about riding a horse or a motorcycle? Feeling the wind in your hair and on your face, and looking up and there being nothing between you and the sun but that pesky old atmosphere. So a convertible replaced the totaled lightning bug, but only because there was no place to hitch a horse outside my apartment. I wanted to feel the wind in my hair and on my face, and look up and see the sun, because I realized with incredible clarity: that was the Dodge I escaped. I made another, less obtrusive purchase, and certainly less expen- sive. I bought a sewing machine. Why was this significant? Because I remembered that way back in Dodge, my mother and my grandmother sewed most of my clothes, sometimes out of economic necessity, but also because I was too skinny to find clothes in stores. It was easier to make things than it was to alter them. And they would try to teach me to sew, and I would refuse to learn. I hated my homemade clothes. The four most dreaded words I could hear when we did go shopping were not “You can’t have that,” but “I can make that!” Never mind that these dresses, blouses, capes, coats, and even purses and hats had unbeliev- able texture and detail and finish that would rival that of couture houses. My mother and grandmother were and still are what most people would call textile or fiber artists. They have skill and talent that I can only hope to achieve with years of practice. If you were to ask either of them, she would just say, “Well, I sew.” For them, there is no separation of art and life. It took me half a lifetime to appreciate it. That was the Dodge that I escaped. I started reading Southern writers. With just a few exceptions during graduate school, I had ignored Miss Eudora, Miss Flannery, and Carson 88 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

McCullers. Not that I didn’t appreciate their craft, but I looked on them with averted eyes. It’s no coincidence that these are the three authors whose work I picked up and started devouring after my sledgehammer moment. Three Southern women who put their circuses right out there on the front porch for the world to see—to borrow and butcher a line from Flannery. I started to see incredible similarities between the stories they told and the reality of my childhood and adolescence. Not just the content, but the voices. I no longer looked with averted eyes but faced them head-on with a newly found pride. I started writing down things that I had never told anyone. Fantastical stories my great-aunt made up to amuse the children and that my Daddy re-told to his own kids. Bizarre, Rossetti-like goblin tales that another equally bizarre great-aunt sent in letters to my grandmother, who would read them to me. And my own stories, long buried. To my astonishment, the voice that flowed from my pen was none other than my Daddy’s. My personal literary his- tory rivals any MFA workshop or maybe even any program. Back then, I called it sitting around the dinner table. Or as we said down there, the supper table. That was the Dodge I escaped. I started reading mythology again, and this is significant for two reasons. You see, way back in Dodge, I was first in line when the Bookmobile came around. I had a card for the Dale County Public Library thirteen miles away, and at school I looked forward to library days the same way I looked forward to weekends. My favorite books were on mythology. I did continue to nurture that love through the Drone Age, and my master’s thesis was a feminist archetypal analysis. When I entered the doctoral program, though, I found out that Jungian criticism was not simply passé but actually flew in the face of the post-structural theory I was expected to embrace. So I stepped outside my mythological, Jungian limitedness and shelved all that “myth shit,” to quote one delightful scholar. I read the right books and wrote the right seminar papers and completed a hip and happening hybrid “creative” dissertation that “did theory” like nobody’s business. You know, that box I told you about. Post-Zeus, you know what happened. Between Flannery and Eudora and Carson, I don’t have to tell you what other books I read. Dirty books! All of Joseph Campbell’s work. Books by William Doty. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Annis V. Pratt. Merlin Stone. I left them on the coffee table for the world to see because I didn’t care who or what anyone thought I was or wasn’t. If necessary, I reasoned, I could always claim Zeus made me do it, and it would be true. As a direct result of re-embracing my PMS.. 89 Barefoot beloved mythology, I created a women’s empowerment course: “Medusa, Mom and Blanche DuBois: Witches and Bitches in Myth, Literature and Popular Culture.” It was the first course I ever developed from both my head and my heart. I made it not only because I loved all that “myth shit” and wanted to pass that love on to others, but also because way back in Dodge, I spent the first ten years of my life as the only girl in a family full of boys and men and never once felt disempowered. Why? Because I was in a line of women’s wisdom, strength, and perseverance that started with my great-grandmother, Ollie Vantney Sutton. On the surface, those women would appear to many to be the antithesis of feminism. Au con- traire. Strong and determined doesn’t begin to tell you. If you were ever to find your way down there and suggest to one of them that she might be oppressed, well, you’d get a really nice meal. Maybe some cornbread and collards and certainly some sweet tea. She would sit at the table while you stuffed yourself, and she would listen politely. And then she would pat you on the head, and say “Bless your heart.” Then she would send you on your way and go about the business of life as an art form. You wouldn’t know what had hit you ‘til months or maybe years later. Did these women get labeled? Sometimes. Strong, determined women have endured unfair labels for millennia—the whole point of that “scan- dalous” course. Did they let that stop them from passing their wisdom on to me? Not a chance. That was the Dodge I escaped. And now to the last thing I did that I said I would never do. I got married. Way back in Dodge, I saw marriage as either/or. I could either stay and get married, or I could leave and not. In my Dodge City head, marriage was something you did INSTEAD OF…instead of school, instead of career. It became your career, and a perfectly acceptable one if you were part of a long line of strong, wise women. But for me, there was no M – R – S in O – U – T. As I moved into the Drone Age and then the doctoral program, my attitude became more complex and intricately connected to burying what I thought I no longer was. I reasoned that any potential partner who “got” what I had become would never understand what I had been. What I thought I was not. And that was important to me in a twisted way, because even though I was in denial, I was intensely protective. If you loved me, you had to love my loved ones. Any potential partner who “got” what I was no longer, would never, ever accept or even understand the me I had become. So I reasoned. I met my husband just before Zeus came knocking. I was the geek reading the New Yorker in his sports bar, so we both stepped outside

90 PMS.. poemmemoirstory our self-evident limitedness. And then I learned that way back in Dodge, while I sat in my fourth, fifth, and sixth grade classrooms, he had been one county over in LA, sitting in his tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade classrooms. The man I married grew up 20 miles from Dodge. We didn’t meet until 2003, after each of us had lived several lifetimes. What does all of this have to do with a disco ball? Why do I think that a disco ball is a chandelier that stepped outside its self-evident limit- edness, got over itself and joined the circus? Let’s take a look at the disco ball. Consider the disco ball. Both the chandelier and the disco ball provide light, but there’s an important difference. The chandelier plugs into a power source. It doesn’t make its own light. It is a channel through which light is dispersed. It’s quite beautiful, glimmering from the ceiling, perhaps presiding over a cocktail party where people come and go, talking of Michaelangelo and measuring their lives in coffee spoons. It’s just right. Tasteful and sparkly, but not “too.” Just what you’d expect. Everything a light source is sup- posed to be. But without power from outside itself, it goes dark. Someone or something else has the control switch. A disco ball isn’t plugged into anything. It makes its own light, and it does it by reflecting other light directed towards it. It, in turn, reflects this light in all directions. A disco ball produces a complex display. Imagine what it would be like to have a roomful of disco balls, bounc- ing light off each other, each creating more and endless illuminations and possibilities. Imagine what it would be like to have a world full of disco balls. The surface has hundreds of facets, each about the same shape and size, and each one mirrored. So thousands of little pieces come together to make a rotating faceted complexity that flashes light beams onto every- thing around it—even people if they stand still long enough. But a really good disco ball makes people want to dance—makes them want to sparkle and spin. All these little facets make up its “self”—each separate but con- nected and equal in size and importance. They make the light, and if you look into that “self,” you see your own self as a complex display of pieces. And a disco ball is like a crystal ball, too, so by seeing yourself in sparkly pieces, you see your potential. Your possibilities. And it’s a sphere. A sphere is a round body whose surface is at all points equidistant from the center. A sphere is the environment within which a person or a thing exists.

PMS.. 91 Barefoot

And, to ancient astronomers and philosophers, the spheres represent- ed the very harmony of the universe. A disco ball is you. And you. And you. And you. And you. And you. And it’s me. And here, I have shown you just a few of my hundreds of facets, both what I am now, am not, was, was not, will be, or can be. The girl on horseback is right next to the woman who zips around in a topless, horseless carriage. The girl in the homemade dress holds hands with the woman who struggles patiently with textile arts and obsessively collects intricately detailed vintage clothing, hats, and purses. The girl at the supper table sits just above the middle-aged novice writer with nothing going for her but a built-in Southern voice and a desire to pass those stories on. The girl at her Granny Sutton’s knee learning strength and dignity and, yes, feminism from someone who never heard of Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem or Germaine Greer is right next to the woman who combined her expertise with her heart and made a course so she could pass wisdom, strength, and dignity on to others. And the girl who thought marriage was either/or is next to the woman who married the guy from one county over. He likes that she makes collards and cornbread without recipes, but he loves her stories and tells her every day to sit down and write. And he made sure she has a room of her own to do it in. Both the girl who escaped Dodge and this woman who writes mar- vels at how fortunate she is. Her sincere hope is that you will look at this display and see yourself. Both what you were, are, and will be, in all of its complexity, and that beneath your surface, you will have a center that keeps you balanced as you cast your light on everyone around you. Remember all that you are and all that you think you are not represent your possibilities, and that you can help others see theirs. Remember that the most important last words of all will be those that you say to yourself.

92 PMS.. poemmemoirstory Mary Jane Myers

Galileo’s Finger

On a gray November morning in 1979, Louise Stark, a plump American woman in her late thirties, stood shivering in a gallery in a museum in Florence, Italy. In her hands she clutched a decades-old Baedeker guide she had bought in a used bookstore in Chicago and a leather notebook with a Bic ballpoint pen clasped to the cover. Her frizzy auburn hair glis- tened with water droplets. A large wool paisley scarf was draped around her shoulders. She had found the rusticated stone Romanesque building only by meandering around for almost an hour near the Palazzo Uffizi, up one narrow vicolo and down another. Morning mist had turned to a light rain. In a cloakroom near the entrance, an old woman dressed in black hunched down behind a marble counter. The poor dear, Louise thought, as she handed over a 5,000 lira bill, and waved away the proffer of change. The woman smiled, revealing toothless gums, took Louise’s damp umbrella and raincoat and placed them somewhere below the counter. She mumbled “grazie, grazie” and waved Louise inside, toward the gloom of the vestibule. Louise trudged up a staircase of endless stone steps, to the primo piano, all the while puzzling over the word “primo.” After all, it was really the second floor, and from the street it appeared at least four stories high. She walked into a room to the right of the landing. She propped her leather saddlebag against the wall, removed from it the Baedeker guide and the notebook and pen, and began to circle the room, studying the objects on display. A curious glass egg attracted her attention. The egg was mounted on an alabaster base. Around its middle was a ring of gold filigree that covered a hinge so that the top and bottom must pull apart like a clamshell. The base was inscribed with rhymed verses in praise of Galileo Galilei. At first she thought that a centuries-old fetus rested inside the glass egg. Was the great man also an anatomist? She studied a faded label, and translated the Italian as best she could. The object was Galileo’s right middle finger bone. His bones had been

94 PMS.. poemmemoirstory exhumed and reburied inside an elaborate monument at the Church of Santa Croce in 1737, almost one hundred years after his death. A certain Signor Gori, overcome with admiration for his hero, had detached the finger bone and placed it in this ciborium to be venerated generation to generation. And then, fifty years ago, the Italian authorities had moved the ciborium to its present resting place in this room. *** Galileo’s Finger rested in the glass egg and dreamed of the years of glory. It had released cannonballs from the top of the campanile in the Square of Miracles in Pisa while the crowds buzzed with excitement seven sto- ries below. It had manipulated the lens into the telescope that first mag- nified the moons of Jupiter. It had gestured to the Inquisition judges as the scholar defended his theories. The Finger had long imagined release from Its glass casket, and ecstatic reunion with the spirit of Its master. But It had no opportunity to escape. Most guidebooks did not even see fit to mention the museum. An occasional solitary tourist drifted through the musty rooms, respect- ful but bewildered by the jumble of astrolabes and lodestones. Only a half dozen visitors in the last ten years had caught sight of the Finger. Invariably the traveler would gasp, and whistle in fascination or disgust. The Finger determined with all the strength of its mindforce that the next pilgrim who lingered near the glass must, and would, be the vehicle of Its rescue. And now, sixteen months later, Louise had appeared. * She screwed up her face, concentrating on the object, trying to under- stand. “Unbelievable,” she said. She had grown accustomed to the bones of saints set in jeweled reli- quaries in the treasuries of the churches. The closer to Rome the bigger the bones. But the preservation of Galileo’s Finger seemed a singular paradox, since his heresies had so disturbed the Church. Was the father of modern science now regarded as a saint with his finger on display for the faithful to worship? She stared at the Finger. In these last three weeks, a kind of trav- eler’s fatigue had set in. She could no longer focus on the history of the city-states, on the names of the churches or the painters of the frescoes. The historical epochs were a muddle. Why had the Guelphs battled the

PMS.. 95 Myers

Guibellines, and by how many centuries had the Etruscans antedated the Romans? She could not remember. In her exhausted trance, it seemed to her that the Finger began to communicate. It did not speak out loud. All was silent save for the met- ronomic ticking of a humidity control device. But she distinctly heard Its urgent message. “Luisa, belissima Inglese, you are a lovely American girl. You have a romanzo with the language and culture of Italia, with the soil of our fathers and the rose garlands of our mothers.” The baritone voice spoke in English with the aristocratic intonation of Profesore Cosimo Ficino. Last January, she had braved the sub-zero temperature to hear him lecture on ‘The Harmony of the Spheres in Botticelli’s Goddesses’ at the Art Institute of Chicago. “Do not be alarmed. Per favore, pick up this glass prison and rescue me. I wish to be buried in the soil near Arcetri where my blind master lived out his melancholic final days. I desire to decompose naturally and return to the earth. I do not want to be forever on exhibit in this orb, rev- erenced by my countrymen and mocked by foreigners.” Louise was by now tapping one short pink manicured fingernail on the notebook and fidgeting with the pen. She studied her own middle finger and wondered if some zealous Italian priest or government func- tionary might sever it. No, because she was an obscure American parale- gal with neither saintly nor scientific predilections or accomplishments. The voice of the Finger unnerved her. The rules of host country protocol had been breached broadside. A frugal traveler in possession of a blank journal and delusions of poetic talent relished the thousand discomforts that became the stuff of novels: maddening slow rides in bare third class railway cars; flea-infested beds in pensiones with Cararra marble floors; swarms of gypsy children in the Rome train terminal; the gelatinous eyes of a grilled fish on a dinner plate in Venice. But even the most intrepid tourist never expected to be accosted by a finger of a his- torical figure dead almost four centuries. She stared at the Finger for several more seconds, and then she pan- icked. She did not dare address It directly, but turned her head and spoke as if to a companion. “I seem to be losing my mind. I must go back. It’s stifling in here.” She grabbed the leather saddlebag and bolted toward the door, bang- ing her hip against a shelf and knocking over a set of brass compasses.

96 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

They clattered with an eerie tempo, faster, faster, dancing a tarantella until they fell silent, abruptly, as a bone-weary peasant might have faint- ed in an Apulian village. The room was again quiet. The Finger now cajoled and commanded. “Belissima, my gorgeous Madonna, my pet, you must, you will pick up the glass. It will separate easily from the alabaster stand. Do not be disheartened. The task is elementary. Place the glass in your pouch, and walk past the entrance portal to the street. I will instruct you further. I will reward you with the wealthy lover of your fantasies.” Louise shuddered. She glanced around, and peeked into the room beyond. Not a soul in sight, nor any sound of footsteps or voices. She snatched at the glass egg. It toppled off its alabaster base into her hands as if it had never been attached, and she almost dropped it. The glass was not heavy, and felt like the tiny bowl she owned as a girl, in which so many goldfish had perished from overfeeding. She wrapped it in her scarf and placed it inside the saddlebag. She ran out into the corridor, bounded down the stairs and sprinted pell-mell into the street. The light rain had intensified into a steady drizzle. After a few moments her leather shoes were soaked with water. Only now did she recall that her raincoat and umbrella were inside the museum. She made an abrupt about face, almost falling as she slipped on the cobblestones. Her heart pounded as she re-entered the massive bronze front door and scuttled into the cloakroom. She set the saddlebag on the floor. It seemed an eternity while she negotiated with the old woman. Her scant Italian failed her. She gesticulated with hand motions of pointing to sky and opening and closing. The woman scowled as she reached under the marble counter and produced the raincoat and umbrella. Louise fum- bled with the sleeves of the raincoat as she jerked it over her body. She picked up the saddlebag and punched at the latch of the umbrella. As the aluminum ribs lurched and the mauve nylon canopy expanded she was already out the door, sloshing through deep puddles. The street widened into a piazza. A tavolda calda was directly oppo- site. She stamped her shoes and shook out the umbrella as she entered. The place was empty, save for a young girl with black eyes who stood behind the bar. Louise pointed to a glinting copper Cimbale espresso machine that covered half the wall. The girl approached the maws of the machine that whirred and shot thick black espresso into a white ceramic cup. She placed the cup on the counter. Louise stirred six lumps of sugar

PMS.. 97 Myers into the coffee. As she gulped down the hot sweet nectar she coughed, deep in her chest. I must be catching a cold. But I simply can’t allow myself to be sick. I’m so far from home, and I have to figure out what to do with this dreadful thing. She pointed yet again to the machine. Cradling a second cup of espresso in her hand, she walked over to a small table in a far corner of the cafe. She placed the saddlebag on the table, and sat down, feeling for the glass egg nestled in the scarf. Her heart fluttered. What a nightmare. I simply must get out of this strange land and back home before I go out of my mind. I’ll go to the Alitalia office at once. It will cost me an arm and a leg to change my flight. Geez, I’m up to my eyeballs in body parts. What should I do? Maybe I should return it. I feel so guilty. I’ve never even stolen a stick of chewing gum. But I can’t go back to that ghastly room or I might get arrested for shoplifting or stealing national treasures or God knows what else, and what if they throw me into the dun- geons at Castel Saint Angelo, like Cavaradossi, and they executed him by firing squad after he kissed Tosca goodbye, and he sang about her sweet hands, still alive, but then soon enough she leaped over the walls, only, oh dear, that’s not a good example because it’s only an opera and not real life. Louise slammed both fists on the table and moaned. Yet again, came the coaxing voice of Galileo’s Finger as from a cavern deep inside the earth, although It was only just inside the saddlebag. “Belissima Luisa, do not despair, you are my sweet angel and you have almost completed your dangerous mission.” Louise nibbled on her lower lip. She shouted at the bag. “Leave me alone, you monster. You’re hideous.” She glanced toward the espresso machine to see if the barista girl was watching. But the girl had disap- peared somewhere. “Do not be frightened, cara Luisa. You have undertaken this quest for the love of the unsurpassed culture of my beloved country. I know it is difficult for you and I have reconsidered. It is impossible for you to locate Arcetri because you dare not attempt a single syllable of conversational Italian although you have studied our excellent Dante so diligently while across the ocean.” Louise frowned. “Now you’re insulting me. But you can’t talk to any living Italians, either. I’m sure they would make fun of you.”

98 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

“Ah, I treasure you, principessa, and I do honor to your singular American work ethics.” “I can’t believe I’m even talking to you. You’re only a stupid severed dead Finger.” “A h , my lovely one, listen to reason. It is an incontrovertible fact that you have no access to a motorcar, and even had you such access, our haphazard traffic petrifies you. I would rest contented if you would board the autobus to Fiesole and bury me in the hallowed ground of the Teatro Romano. My master often ambled there on spring afternoons, where he meditated and dreamed and changed the course of history.” “No, no. I won’t go to Fiesole.” “Cara Luisa, Fiesole is a gorgeous tourist attraction with a five star view much admired in your Guide Baedeker.” “Forget it, you hideous creature, I won’t go back to Fiesole. Never, never. That’s final.” “Melancholy remembrance of a prior visitation?” said the Finger. “How did you guess? I walked there one Easter morning many years ago when I dreamed of becoming an art history professor before I mar- ried Andrew and he made me so miserable and nobody ever helped me and thank God he died or so help me I would’ve murdered him.” Louise’s eyes were now filling with tears. She looked up. The girl again stood behind the counter, staring at her. Louise smiled, and pointed at her cup, as a sign to pour another. The girl shrugged and prepared another espresso in a clean cup. She placed the cup on the counter. Louise arose and retrieved it. She sat back down at the table with her back to the girl. Again the patrician voice, seductive, demanding. “Listen to me, my precious girl. A wealthy man will desire you. You will live in a granite townhouse on North Dearborn, just as you always have fantasized.” Louise visualized the cramped apartment in the decaying west side Chicago neighborhood in which she hunkered down alone in life. It was startling that this Finger knew her secrets, those desires so near her heart that she never told anyone. “How dare you pry into my private thoughts?” “My cherished contessa, you must trust me that your dreams will manifest.” “You’re ridiculous. Stuff like that only happens in romance novels.”

PMS.. 99 Myers

“Ah, but your so-called reality is but a miasma, a collective hallucina- tion. Have confidence in me, belissima. I will protect you. I will shower you with gold florins and the love of a generous patron.” Louise contemplated the Botticelli Venus smiling from a poster hang- ing askew on the wall. “That’s a joke. I’ll never find anybody. I’ll never be happy, never, ever. I’m resigned to it. Why am I even talking to you?” “Darling Luisa, I adore you and had my master Galileo known you he would have suffered madly for you, with inexpressible and unrequited love-longings, even as the divine Dante idolized his inamorata Beatrice. I am requesting only the most infinitesimal of favors. I promise, if you transport me to the Teatro, and bury me, I swear to you, by the holy pig- ment formulas of the incomparable Raphael, fortune will shower her blessings and you will be deliriously rich and happy.” Louise scrutinized the serene poster Venus. Annoying, how blondely complacent these Renaissance females seemed. The Finger argued a per- suasive case. After all, the severing and display of fingers was not right, and when in Rome, one ought not necessarily to do as the Romans do if it involved say, throwing perfectly respectable people to lions. This was an almost identical situation. But this was all nonsense. She must be coming down with a fever. She opened the flap of the bag and whispered into the opening. “Stop it, please. Leave me alone. Please, please go away.” “Ah, belissima, your mellifluous voice is enchanting. Do I sense your acquiescence? You will be rewarded, I promise you. Now, I will guide you to the autobus. You will experience a pleasant ride, ascending through fertile hills to the splendidissimo Teatro.” Of course it would be lovely to see Fiesole once again. She had been meaning to go back. Besides, what if the Finger really had the magical powers which It claimed? And so, she picked up the saddlebag, left a 5,000 lira bill on the counter (that poor girl works so hard, and that machine looks impossible), trudged to the Piazza Maria Novella, and boarded the autobus. She was the only passenger. Stepping to the back, she set the saddlebag down on the seat beside her. The bus lumbered five miles, up and up into the Fiesole hills, and stopped in the Piazza Mino, the main square, where she disembarked. The rain had cleared, and the façade of the cathedral gleamed in the sunlight.

100 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

She walked toward the Teatro on the hillside behind the cathedral. Near the entrance a group of twenty Germans stood silent, listening to the precise gutturals of their guide, a sturdy woman with clipped gray hair. Louise skirted them and clambered down a side aisle. In ancient times, the hoi palloi had sat rapt with attention on these stone seats. At the bottom of the forum she crossed the expanse of the stage. She strolled into a grove of evergreens that encircled its perimeter. She removed the glass egg from the saddlebag. Scooping up the damp mud she dug a hole six inches deep. The earth smelled of clay and moss. Thus had the earth smelled to the actors as they waited for their cues, their faces covered with the frowning mask of tragedy or the laughing mask of comedy. She pried open the hinge on the glass egg and tugged the Finger free from a dab of plaster. She laid the Finger in the tiny grave, and covered It with mud and evergreen needles. Rest in peace, oh Finger. And what had Galileo said under his breath to the Inquisition judges? “Eppur si muove! But the earth moves anyway!” And yet it seemed to her that at that moment the earth stood still. She placed the glass egg back in the saddlebag. She climbed up an aisle of the theatre, and returned to the Piazza Mina, where she sat for an hour, breathing in the cool clear air. Sunlight played on the orange tile roofs of the villas and the hills studded with dark green cypresses rising from the silvery green mantle of olive groves. Ah, yes, she saw as for the first time, the landscape that the Renaissance artists saw, as they painted the loggias in which their serene Madonnas sat, and in the far perspec- tive, the lines clear and true to the vanishing point in the upper quartile of the canvas, these hills, these trees, this light. She was famished after her great odyssey. Her chest seemed con- gested, and every few minutes she coughed. She felt an impulse to spend money, to rebel against the cruel strictures of her budget. She splurged on a hearty meal in a trattoria in the piazza. Each table was set with a white damask cloth and miniature pink roses in a majolica vase. She ate a dish of grilled chicken and truffles recommended by the waiter, and dipped crusty fresh baked bread in virgin olive oil. The waiter brought a bottle of Chianti with a black rooster label (the genuine thing). She drank the red wine, and its warmth settled at the level of her chest, soothing the cough.

PMS.. 101 Myers

*** Five years later, on a Sunday morning in May, Louise reclined in a cobalt blue silk dressing gown on a flowered chintz sofa near the bay window of a townhouse on the Gold Coast of Chicago. She had shed thirty pounds and metamorphosed into a blonde. Her attorney husband Steven sat in a brown leather armchair. He was sipping coffee from a Lenox porcelain cup and reading The New York Times. On the polished walnut table next to him she had placed a green faience platter piled high with cantaloupe slices, croissants, scones, clot- ted cream and raspberry jam. He rustled the pages of the Times. “Sweetheart, look at this.” He pointed to a small item on page eighteen and handed over the newspaper. The headline read:

Galileo’s Finger Last Catalogued in 1950 Disappears from Museum Authorities Baffled Official Heads Roll

“They apparently don’t know how long it’s been gone. Didn’t you see it on a trip to Florence, before we met?” Louise smiled her practiced Botticelli smile. “Why, yes, I did. I’m sure I’ve told you the story before, darling, how I arrived back at O’Hare and collapsed with a 102 degree fever. A severe case of pneumonia. How silly of me to go traipsing about in the rain. But those were my salad days. It cost me two months’ salary to go even in the off season.” “It’s odd that they simply lost track of it.” “Of course that’s Italy’s greatest charm. The Italians focus on beauty, on pleasure. But they have no patience for cataloging things. How many treasures disappear only to surface hundreds of years later?” She glanced over at the mahogany cabinet. A collection of Murano glass refracted the rays of the sun and cast rainbow fragments on the ceiling. The centerpiece was a glass egg encircled with gold filigree. She got up from the couch, sashayed over to her husband, and caressed his gray hair. “Would you like more coffee, dear?” she asked.

102 PMS.. Gigi Rosenberg

Say His Name

When I meet somebody and they ask that innocent question, “Do you have children?” I never know what to say. How can I not mention Ben? But then if I do, I’m trapped in a long story of what happened and maybe that’s not where either of us wants the conversation to go. But to not mention Ben, to say, “I have a daughter Jill who’s twenty- one and in college,” feels like more than a lie; it feels like I’m ignoring the biggest thing that ever happened to me… losing Ben. So, I take it case by case. Sometimes I say, “Yes, I have a boy and a girl” and change the sub- ject; other times, depending, I say, “I have a daughter who’s twenty-one and a son who died when he was eighteen.” There’s always the follow-up question hanging in the air, even if they don’t ask me: How did he die? I say: “His heart stopped. We don’t know why.” I don’t have a great answer. “His heart went into arrhythmia and they couldn’t stop it.” Then there’s that silence. That hole where maybe we both feel the big empti- ness, how fragile the whole thing is. Then, the hole closes up, although it never fully closed for me after Ben died. That’s why I want to say his name, to honor him and the person who asked the question. I don’t want his name in that big hole. I knew growing up that I would have a son named Ben, Benjamin. I knew in elementary school. I remember sitting at my kitchen table, my mother spreading peanut butter on toast for a peanut butter and bacon sandwich. I was in third grade and I said to her: “When I grow up I’m going to have a son named Ben.” “What if you have a girl?” “No, no. I’m going to have a son named Ben.” I loved the name because it was so big and short at the same time. It’s such an honest name: Ben. That’s exactly what Ben was. No pretense. When he was a little boy he loved to sing, do anything musical. When he talked, he was shy, but when he sang, he sang loud. At his first swim- ming lesson when the teacher had the kids sing the “Motor Boat Song” I could hear him belting it out clear across the pool.

PMS.. 103 Rosenberg

Sometimes, a friend will say: “I don’t want to remind you of sad things but I heard this new band and I thought of Ben. I knew he would have loved their music.” You’re not reminding me, I tell her. You’re help- ing me feel normal. At Christmas at our house, Ben loved lights. From the time he could point at them, he wanted the house lit up. As he grew older, he decorated the whole outside of the house with little white lights—each year add- ing more. That last Christmas before he died, he was up on the roof for hours. I looked up at him from the driveway, my arms folded against myself. He had no hat, no gloves, that head of curly brown hair blow- ing every which way and he was smiling. I yelled: “It looks great. But it’s enough! Get down. Put on a hat.” “When I’m done, Mom. Don’t worry. I’ve been rock climbing. I’ve done things a thousand times more dangerous than this.” Like that was supposed to make me feel better. That last Christmas, the house was ablaze, every window outlined. It was shockingly beautiful. That first fall after he died, we went away for Thanksgiving. I couldn’t stand the thought of being home without him. I’ll never forget driving home that Sunday night. My husband Bruce, Jill and I had fallen into a silence perhaps bracing ourselves for the return home. We turned the corner onto our street and as we drove down our hill, I saw in the dis- tance this glow like a house on fire. We edged closer and I realized it was our house so bright, then brighter and then, there it was: every window circled. My best friend Marnie had come over with her husband Rick and strung the lights. Some people might think “how cruel.” But no, it was the biggest gift—to have the whole house lit up again. To be remem- bered. To have him be remembered. Sometimes I think people don’t talk about Ben because they don’t want to hurt me. They don’t want to make me cry. I learned something about tears: they come, buckets of them, and then they stop. I carry tis- sues, I don’t wear mascara, I take the tears with me. They’re what I can keep. The missing him is what keeps me close to him. Say his name. Ben. Sing his name. Ben. Light up the house with the letters B-E-N. That’s what I want. Ben, my Ben, Benjamin.

104 PMS.. Nancy Scott Hanway

Wake to Sleep

My husband taught me how to sleep. He was an intolerant man, and he couldn’t bear how I tossed and turned the minute we switched off the light. Just a few years into our marriage, he began to hiss at me every time I moved even a muscle in bed, complaining that I was destroying his life as an artist. Those were the exact words he used, without any irony at all: “Just like all the women in my life, you are destroying my life as an artist.” He then reviewed the list of females who had damaged him: his mother, his seventh grade art teacher, his gallery rep, and an ex-girl- friend who said as a parting shot that his work lacked cultural urgency. I can’t say that I took his rant very seriously. He had an opening in two months, and he needed sleep to fuel his painting, which was almost athletic in scope: great washes of color across enormous (and expensive) canvases that occupied most of our apartment. We only had room for a small foam couch, a black-and-white TV we bought at a yard sale as a retro gesture, and a lumpy futon. The rest of the space—including the actual bedroom—was occupied by paintings, cups of blue-brown water, brushes, and medieval art books opened to gold triptychs. For months we had been sitting on the couch to eat dinner, the few times that we didn’t go to the noodle place on the corner where the sweet Thai owners always asked when we were going to have children. I knew Greg needed me to sleep, so I tried. I willed my body to stay still, relaxing each muscle in its turn. But whenever I lay down, I became harsh and coiled, a kinked twist of rope. Strange and unverifiable worries overcame me. I worried about turning thirty. About whether breathing cadmium fumes from Titanium White caused cancer. If my older sister had really meant it when she said that Greg was incapable of real kind- ness. Or I worried about money, which was an actual problem because Greg had given up his part-time job programming political robo-calls in order to prepare for his exhibition, and we were living off my waitressing job and the credit cards. Most often, I thought about how, before we were married, Greg had said, “I know that we will always make it, because you’re so willing to

PMS.. 105 Hanway sacrifice for me.” This is why I didn’t want to have children yet, although I hadn’t told him. Whenever I thought about the future, it made me afraid: I married an artist to have a more satisfying life, but I worried I would end up exactly like my friend Martha—a potter married to a com- modities analyst. Spencer always arrived home exhausted and then drank hard lemonade all evening, slumped on the leather couch in the den, kids racing around him, just waiting for Martha to get them to bed. “That’s not fair,” I always told Martha. “You work, too.” And she agreed that it wasn’t fair. And that she fought with Spencer. And that she withheld sex, but not out of anger, but because she was so desperately tired at night that the gropings of her half-drunk man couldn’t rouse her. So when Greg made that comment about sacrifice—which we always called The Comment because of the huge fight that ensued—I became horribly scared. I would make sacrifices. He would expect them. I would make more sacrifices, he would expect more, and at the end of our lives, looking back, our marriage would seem like a long nap on the couch before bed. Greg saw our future as a falling-down ranch house, somewhere cheap farther south, our little kids with halos of dark curls, wearing mis- matched socks and bright-colored overalls. He would paint, occasion- ally winning a fellowship to keep him going. I would make just enough money—working as a secretary or a teacher’s aide—to pay our tiny mort- gage. About The Comment, Greg had eventually claimed that he was kid- ding. “Not in a ha-ha way, but in an oh-that’s-the-way-people-are way.” “What people?” “Other people. Like Martha. Or your sister. The super moms of the w or l d .” “Great,” I said. “So you really do want me to be a super mom?” “I’m saying the opposite,” he said. “Jesus, you have no sense of humor. Maybe if you got more sleep you would be funnier.” *** When I was cast as the lead in a children’s theatre production of Sleeping Beauty, Greg laughed meanly—and longer than I thought necessary. “What is this, typecasting?” I was honest in the audition. When Steve, the director, asked me if I knew how to sleep, I confessed that I was an insomniac.

106 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

“Perfect,” he said. “I’ll teach you to sleep. You will know how after playing this part.” I shrugged, not really believing him. I was more worried about how much my back would hurt after lying on a plywood bench night after night during the run. I was attracted to the role because I figured I wouldn’t be needed for at least half the rehearsals. The fairies could prance around the vacant bench without me, while I worked the evening shift (the only profitable one) at the Copper Kettle. “You’re not going anywhere,” Steve said, when I mentioned that I was expected at the restaurant. “What do you think this is—some high school production?” “But I don’t have anything to do,” I objected. “I’m just lying there.” “When you’re sleeping, you’re the star of the show,” he said. “Beauty is as still and dark as death. She has to sleep in order for the world to wake into lightness and movement.” “I thought she had to get kissed by the Prince,” I said. “Tangential,” Steve said, waving his hand in the air. “The real mistake most directors make is believing that this is a story about love. It’s not. It’s a story about sleep.” I wondered if the private school that had commissioned the show understood what they had hired. Steve was a tall man with a long face and big round kitten eyes that always looked slightly alien to me. As he stared at me, I lay very still, suddenly self-conscious about my short skirt. “Blanket,” Steve called to the stage manager. They draped a soft green piece of chiffon on my legs. “Okay,” he said. “So sleep.” I closed my eyes, listening to the discussion the stage manager was having about the fairies’ wands. A cell-phone rang backstage, playing the theme from Cats. Suddenly, I became aware that Steve was looming over me. I opened my eyes. “Close ’em,” he said. “Close those lids.” I squeezed them shut obediently. “Now you have to go to sleep.” I opened my eyes again. “What do you mean?” “Sleep, slumber, the little death. I mean that you really have to fall asleep.” I was incredulous. “During the play?” “Don’t worry, we’ll wake you up. That’s the Prince’s job.”

PMS.. 107 Hanway

“Sleep is an involuntary act,” I said. “I can pretend, but I can’t just fall asleep any time I want. ” “That’s where you’re wrong. It’s what you have to do. Find that still quiet center in yourself,” he said. That was a line I would hear repeated over and over as I struggled to sleep well enough to satisfy Steve. At first it all sounded very Zen to me: this business of finding a still quiet center. So I tried yoga techniques. I relaxed every muscle in my body in its turn, feeling my legs go limp, relaxing against the plywood. I breathed into my belly, stretching my skin to its limit. I focused on the swish of chiffon, the empty wind of breath in my lungs, the sensation of heaviness as I lay on the bench. And nothing. Nothing happened. “You’re not asleep, are you?” Steve called. I was definitely not asleep. I had become hypersensitive to every noise on stage—the fairies (played by a group of fifth graders) stomped around stage, raising dust that made me cough. I had always been slightly afraid of girls that age. It was a time when they hardened into the mocking attitudes they’d maintain through high school and sometimes well into their twenties. They whispered to each other, trying to make the others jealous. They twisted away from their mothers, who dropped them off, harried and loving, wanting only a simple kiss. “If you were sleeping,” Steve called, “you wouldn’t cough.” One of the girl actors—a smart-ass ten-year-old named Olivia—said, loud enough for me to hear, “Can’t we get a decent Sleeping Beauty?” “That’s enough,” Steve said. He stopped rehearsal for fifteen minutes, during which he made me try to fall asleep in front of him. My eyes worked behind my lids, my jaw tightened, my breath turned shallow and quick. What broke me was when a couple of the kid-fairies snickered in one corner. “Sleeping Beauty can’t sleep! Sleeping Beauty can’t sleep!” When I started to cry, Steve sighed. “That’s right. You’ve pricked your finger on the poisoned spindle wheel, and you realize that the sweet old lady was actually a witch. You’re falling into darkness. You fight against it, but you have to sleep. Now it’s delicious. You can get away from everyone, all the problems of life at court, all the expectations. You need to sleep.” I sat up, throwing off the piece of fabric. “This is impossible.” Behind me, the little girls mimicked me and giggled. I turned and glared. “Shut up, you brats.” “Sleeping Beauty is all goodness,” Steve said, sadly. “And the fairies are her dear, dear friends.” He shrugged. “Calm down. We’ll try again in a few minutes.”

108 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

After he had walked away, Olivia said, “You hear that? We’re your dear, dear friends.” “Go find a spindle wheel, kid,” I said. That night after rehearsal, I knocked on Steve’s office door. “Look, I don’t think I can do what you want. You’re expecting too much.” He stared at me for a moment, as if he were communicating telepathi- cally with his home planet. “Don’t you rehearse at home?” I laughed. “Rehearse by sleeping, you mean? By myself?” “Alone, in front of friends, in public. Every minute you get, you should be trying to sleep. Ask your husband to watch you.” I confessed that my husband was frustrated by my inability to fall asleep, that lying down in front of him nearly ensured that I would stay wide awake, staring at the ceiling. “If you learn to sleep well, you won’t even notice he’s there,” Steve said. “Think of it this way. Sleep is the one truly solitary place left in the world. It’s like being adrift in space.” “You don’t understand,” I said. “Sure, I do. You hate your husband. You’re disappointed in your mar- riage. But you need to sleep in front of him.” “I don’t hate him,” I said. “Okay, so whatever. Maybe he hates you, I don’t care. That’s not my business. You just have to sleep.” When I told Greg about Steve’s plan, he approved: “He’s tough on you. That’s good—I’m not the only one.” “So you’re going to help?” I said. “You know I don’t have the time,” he said. “But you can come into my studio and sleep there.” So while Greg was painting, I stretched out on a bench near him. At first he kept talking to me as he worked, but once he became absorbed in what he was doing, I was able focus on sleep. I thought about The Comment, as I often did when I was having trouble sleeping. It looped around in my brain for hours, sometimes, as I wondered if it were true. Every time that I actually gave up something for Greg, I put an imaginary notch in memory. Another sacrifice, another point. Sometimes I gave myself two or three points, because the sacrifice was so great, like the fact that we could never have friends over because Greg’s canvases took up so much space in our apartment. Or that we could never go away on weekends because he needed to work. I calcu- lated once that I had amassed over a hundred points at least, whereas I counted only seven for him. One: He would be able to paint twenty

PMS.. 109 Hanway hours a day if he weren’t married to me. That was pathetic, but I knew he felt that way, so he earned a point. Two: He had once canceled an interview with an art publication because I had a kidney infection. And three (to be fair, I gave him five points for this): Sometimes—when he was in a tender mood—he brought me tea as I was memorizing my lines. It was always echinacea, good for the throat. In theory, I was the one who should make the biggest sacrifice because my work wasn’t as good as his. I was not as good an actor as he was a painter. We both knew that. But whenever I had those thoughts, my stomach clenched, and I had to hold my ribs because the idea actual- ly hurt physically. While everyone, at least almost everyone, in the world would give up their heart’s desire for their beloved, no one should ever be asked to do so. It’s the death of love. It eats away at you, like grape vines destroying an ancient castle wall. And it made me wonder—did Sleeping Beauty really want to wake from her delicious rest, free from the machinations of scheming courtiers and evil fairies? Maybe Steve was right—maybe her royal parents were overbearing, maybe she wanted a different life. Maybe she just wanted some time to herself. “How’re you doing?” Greg asked suddenly. “It doesn’t help if you talk to me.” “I could tell you’re not asleep,” he said. “You want me to give you a massage?” This was so unusual that I half-sat, leaning on my elbow. “Why?” “Because I want to make you feel more relaxed.” “You want sex, don’t you?” I said. “Figures.” He paused, brush in hand. “This is now considered to be an insult? A husband wanting to make love to his wife?” “I have to sleep,” I said. He shrugged, returning to his painting—an enormous modern ver- sion of the Bosch triptych, with a bold slash of Titanium White standing in for the Jesus child. It was deeply irritating to me that I could never punish Greg by withholding sex—he was always more interested in his work. After a few minutes he put down his brush. “Come on,” he said. “What if we made a baby? Think of the beautiful kids we would have. Can you think of anything better?” I thought about it. I loved babies, their dusky, medicated smell, their soft skin, the way they suddenly drooped when tired, releasing all their

110 PMS.. poemmemoirstory cares into your arms. But then I considered what happened later: deal- ing with a nasty ten-year-old who avoided contact when I bent to kiss her (this after I’ve ruined my body giving birth to her and her damned curly-haired siblings). I thought about how she would pull away from my touch, laughing with her friends about her idiot mother. “You’re getting in the way of my work,” I said. Then I added, simply out of spite, “Just like you always do.” “Don’t be pathetic,” he said. “Is it any wonder that your friends never call? They can’t stand hearing you whine.” I squeezed my eyes shut, wanting to shield myself. My entire body tightened with the effort of telling myself he was wrong, that my friends loved me, that they didn’t call because they were so frantically busy, that I didn’t call them either, because I was so frantically busy, that none of us had the time because we were all working so hard, because we never had any time. “And we need to have kids before you get too old,” he said. “You can’t justify the sacrifice for acting. It’s just not happening.” I didn’t answer. If I wanted to sleep, I couldn’t protect myself from him by fighting. First, I had to first wall myself off; then, I had to let go. I pushed against his disapproval, waiting until I stretched the feeling to its limit, until I broke through, an alien creature bursting the belly of its host. I cast myself into deep and empty space. I was drifting in darkness, alone and peaceful. There was utter black and heavy silence. Before long Greg was shaking me. “My God, you really slept,” he said. “It’s nearly dawn.” I got up, stretching, noticing that my back didn’t even hurt from the hard bench. He looked at me as if he didn’t know me. “How did you do that?” “I found my still and quiet center.” *** When I returned to rehearsal the next day, I immediately fell asleep on the plywood bench, waking only when Steve hugged me in delight, lift- ing me from the bench. I awoke to find myself in a bear hug, my cheek pressed against Steve’s chest, the center of attention, kid-fairies dancing around us singing, the other actors clapping. “Now that is sleep,” Steve said. “Real, true, and beautiful sleep.” My ability to sleep well only increased from that day on. Once the run started, the reviewers even mentioned what they believed was my uncan- ny talent of imitating true slumber. “Sleeping Beauty upstaged the fairies

PMS.. 111 Hanway simply by turning or twitching—like someone in the deepest of dreams, bothered by an outside noise. The audience feared that she might wake before the Prince arrived. The child next to me was on the edge of his seat, watching her. Occasionally, he tried to shush the other performers.” Eventually, I fell asleep the minute I lay down in bed. At first Greg was delighted and, as he always did, he gave himself the credit. “It was having to sleep in front of me that did it.” Then I began to sleep through my alarm in the morning. I lost my job at the Copper Kettle. I didn’t show up for casting calls. I didn’t care. I wanted that freedom I found only in sleep. I slept through a fire alarm in our apartment building once, and Greg had to drag me out to the street, slung over his outstretched arms, like a heroine in a horror film, captured by zombies. “You never learn what I really want,” he said, when I pro- tested that, after all, I was now sleeping extremely well. Our marriage, which had outlasted three years of my insomnia, couldn’t withstand the blast-force of my sleep. Greg moved out only a month after I began to sleep, leaving me with an empty apartment, des- perately in need of furniture. The run of Sleeping Beauty was ending at the same time: We held the cast party in my apartment, and Steve said, “Nice digs, Beauty. When you gonna buy some furniture?” Olivia’s moth- er got drunk on my famous rum punch, and spent most of the party telling Steve the story of how she got pregnant by accident, by a former lover, “but decided to keep the little bugger.” And suddenly, the very next day, I was able to sleep normally, the requisite eight hours that humans require. I no longer slept like the dead. I began to sleep from midnight until 8 a.m., occasionally waking if the cat jumped off the bed or if my downstairs neighbor slammed his door when he left for his run at dawn. I found a new restaurant job, and I began getting cast in better parts, on Steve’s recommendation that I was an actress who could do “absolutely anything.” I now have only the memory of my incredible ability to sleep. There are many times when I wish could have it back—that still, quiet moment in the center of this noisy and overly bright life. I no longer worry about the future, because I feel as if I have accomplished enough for one life- time. I have experienced the most complete, dark, and silent sleep the world has ever known. A sleep as powerful as death. A sleep more valu- able than work. A sleep that surpassed love.

112 PMS.. Tara Ison

Andorra

I love the Andorra question in Trivial Pursuit. It’s a sneaky one. It isn’t merely What is the absurdly insignificant country wedged between France and Spain? Or What minor principality is located in the Pyrenees? No, the question asks for countries beginning and ending with the letter A. And it asks for six of them. Australia, Austria, Argentina…and then, usually, there is silent pondering from my fellow players while I bide my time. Angola, sometimes, and Algeria. Arabia mentioned once, as a hopeful half-joke. I am the only one who ever knows, which is a rush. One time, it was down to the wire; all three of us—well, two teams of two, Tami and Dennis, Eileen and Phil, and me, I am always my own solo team—were crammed together in the center space, all three plastic pies wedged with plastic triangles, each of us just needing to answer one final, trivial ques- tion to win. Earlier in the evening, I’d won my blue Geography wedge with a correct answer to What country is the world’s leading producer of cork? A relief, because Geography is my worst category, always the one I want to get out of the way. And there, at the end of the game, dozens of Geography questions had come and gone, but not my beloved Andorra one. So, I gambled, chose Geography…and there it was, like an omen, a confirmation of faith. I rattled off Australia, Austria, Angola, Algeria, Argentina, paused for effect, then Oh, of course, Andorra. Not one of my dear, college-educated friends had even heard of it. Andorra, I told them. It’s right on the border between France and Spain, about half the size of Manhattan. A dive of a country, you only stop there for cheap liquor and cigarettes, it’s the Tijuana of Europe. I’m glad you learned something useful in France, Eileen said, laughing, and her husband Phil gave her a diplomatic shove. But I laughed right along: Yeah, the cultural and social implications of duty-free shopping. You ever hear from that English girl you met there? someone asked. Judith? How is she doing? She’s fine, I tell them. Just had her third kid. And the mustache guy?

PMS.. 113 Ison

Earl. Yeah, they’re who dragged me to Andorra, I said, What a sad lit- tle weekend that was. I asked if everyone wanted to play another round, but there were the usual mentions of babysitters to be relieved, early morning carpools to soccer games. Tami helped me carry dirty glasses in to the kitchen while Dennis got their coats; after the four of them left I accidentally knocked the board over and had to crawl around on my hands and knees, finding and picking up by myself all the colorful little plastic wedges.

Judith is a hearty, blooming girl with exquisite English rose skin and French far more fluent than mine; it rolls off her tongue with no regard for accent or correct verb conjugation, but it rolls. I am unwilling to commit to speaking the language—and make a mistake—and so I have merely perfected three or four sentences I can toss off with a thought- lessly bilingual air and lilting accent, which gives the French people here in Toulouse the impression that I am a young American woman working hard to learn. In the event I am shammed into silence, Judith is usually around, or Earl, to pick up the conversation, to cover for me or explain about train schedules or groceries or crucial idiosyncrasies in French law. Judith is in a special program at the Universite here, earning a cer- tificate to teach middle school French; as soon as she returns to Sussex she will marry Graham, her boyfriend of five years, and they will set up housekeeping. The extra certificate will bring in more money, and help pay off her medical bills. She shows me the tattoos: two azure dots, about three inches above each nipple, another blue dot just above her navel, another at the base of her throat. Connect the dots and they form a cross. On an X-ray they form a grid, by which to line up her nodes and keloid scars. She was diagnosed with Hodgkins at seventeen; she attacked the disease right back, with the same unabashed effort with which she speaks French. Her spleen was removed, they radiated and poisoned her to the point of constant nausea and sudden but temporary alopecia. After five years, if her lymphatic fluid runs clean and clear, the doctors will deem her safe to get pregnant and have hearty, blooming children of her own. She has one year to go. Meanwhile, she is the picture of health. She skies, she jogs, she races full-breathed up the four flights of her crumbling brick apartment house overlooking the river (my apartment, on the second floor of a brand-new stucco building next to a bus stop, has

114 PMS.. poemmemoirstory an elevator and a paid-for phone, compliments of my own scholar- ship sponsor), she shows up at my place once or twice a week with two bottles of wine and an appetite for pasta and pate. We invariably finish the wine, including the bottle I’d opened to cook with, and dig into my ready bottles of Courvoisier or absinthe. Judith invariably gushes, then, about Graham; he has stood by her the whole time, is waiting for her back home, patiently, and she misses him desperately. She describes their sex to me, without a single profane or vulgar word, yet it always sounds wildly athletic, sweaty, a Dafoe-ish, earthy romp. Judith shames me. She is focused and driven, holding up her end of bargains, honoring the sacrifices that sent her here. She doesn’t under- stand why I seem paralyzed by nothing; she gets after me to hike, to go to class, to do something. Earl, our other non-French friend here in Toulouse, agrees with Judith. Early in November he plans a trip for the three of us: just an overnight, the skiing’s great. An hour or so by bus. “Andorra?” asks Judith. “What the hell is that?” “It’s a little country down the road from here,” I tell them. “It’s a total pit stop.” “You’ve been?” “No, I’ve just heard.” “From whom? Who do you talk to besides us?” “It’s cheap,” says Earl. “And it’s close, and I have a coupon.” “Maybe,” I say. “It could be fun. A nice break.” “A break from what?” Judith asks me. “You sit around on your ass all d ay.” “Exactly,” Earl says. He waves a travel brochure at us, with French, Spanish, and English columns of Andorran information. “We’ll air her out. We’ll take her skiing.” He is pear-shaped and neckless and mus- tached, and so his concerned disapproval feels warm and paternal. For three years he taught high school French—his is strong on accurate tenses, with formal, textbook phrasing—before the Tallahassee school board realized he lacked certification; he is here for ten months to obtain the official paperwork. His wife Cassandra, working at a Walmart back home and studying at night to sell Florida real estate, sends care pack- ages of American munchies he shares with Judith and me. He shows us pictures of Cassandra; she is a second-generation Columbian, pretty,

PMS.. 115 Ison with outdated hair and gold cross earrings. They have been married for only six months. She is saving money for two things; she wants to come visit him in France, and she wants to have her breasts done. In one photo she is wearing a snug red sweater; she already looks to be a healthy 36B. I think they’re pretty great as is, Earl has told us, gazing at her picture. But if she wants to, you know, do it for her, well, I want her to be happy. That’s what it’s about. Don’t tell her I told you. “She’s not taking advantage of her time here,” Earl says to Judith. “She should at least be traveling.” “She should at least be doing anything. A passionate love affair with a Jacques or Pierre. It’s what I’d do if it weren’t for Graham.” “You know, Cassie’s brother Rick lives in Los Angeles,” he says to me. “He’s a terrific guy, you ought to look him up when you go back.” “You should,” says Judith. “That’d be fantastic! The four of you could be in-laws!” “Why don’t we just plan on Andorra for now?” I say. “It’s all skiing, you know. There’s nothing else to do,” Judith tells me, looking at the brochure. “She doesn’t ski,” she says to Earl. “Skiing’s dangerous,” I say. “You’re just swooshing along like that. You can’t stop, you’ve got no control—” “So, fine, she’ll shop. It’s duty-free,” he informs us. He takes the bro- chure from Judith, and reads: “’Duty-free shopping is the mainstay of the Andorran economy’.” “Well, that is nice. I like a country that’s ‘duty-free’,” I say. “Independent. Doesn’t owe anybody anything. No responsibility.” “What do they speak there?” asks Judith, ignoring me. “’The national language is Catalan, a romance language related to the Provencal groups. French and Spanish are also spoken,’” Earl reads. “I think Cassie might speak a little Catalan. I’m making reservations.” “Wait, I need to check my schedule,” I say. “This weekend might not be good.” Judith prods me. “Come on. You can’t possibly have something else on .” “I make plans, sometimes.” “You do not.” Judith is almost right. I almost never plan; it’s too complicated. After a few weeks in Toulouse I’d even stopped going to class; it didn’t mat- ter, my scholarship is more diplomatic than academic, my sponsors

116 PMS.. poemmemoirstory merely wanted three written reports during the year, assuring I’d broken no French laws, that I am projecting a friendly American spirit. I sleep late, wander the crumbling brick part of town, sit in cafes for coffees and glasses of kir, do a little grocery shopping, some laundry to rinse the Gauloise smoke from already-clean clothes. The only educational thing I do is read: I buy French translations of novels I’ve already read, to convince myself I’m learning something or making actual use of my time: L’Obscurite de Jude, Autant en Emport le Vent, Le Bell Jar. Le Choix de Sophie is a wonderful source of dirty French. Evenings I am usually alone, hoping for the phone to ring or for Judith or Earl to come by, to disapprove and shame me, to drag me out to the creperie, or for a walk, or just to use my free phone. I watch them dialing eagerly; I listen to them coo. “Well, like you said. I don’t ski. You want me to travel to another country just to buy booze and key chains?” “It’s hardly a country.” Earl laughs. “It’s trying to be a country. It’s a struggling little principality that needs our tourist francs to survive.” “So you’ll sit in the bloody lodge,” Judith says. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” “I could have other plans this weekend,” I venture. “Maybe I’m seeing Jacques and Pierre.” She snorts. “Oh, really?” “You never know. Maybe I’ve got some other commitment.” “Like hell. You’re duty-free.” Earl reserves two rooms, one for him, one for Judith and me, in Soldeu, just across the border, at the one of two lodges in town. We can split the cost of the two rooms, he tells us. And there’s even a prix-fixe menu at the restaurant. Good, cheap fondue. ““Less than 2% of Andorran land is arable; most of Andorra’s food is imported,”” I read to them scornfully from the brochure. “They don’t even have their own food?”

Cassandra gets her Christmas bonus early from Walmart, and tells Earl that she’s found a last-minute discount fare, that she’s coming to France to visit him. This weekend. When Earl tries to cancel his room at the lodge he is informed there is no refund policy. “‘The Andorran tourist trade plays a significant role in the nation’s economy,’” I tell them. “You were right, they need us.”

PMS.. 117 Ison

“We’ll go anyway,” Earl says. “You haven’t seen each other in four months. You really want to spend two precious days in Andorra with us? Just forfeit the money,” I say. “No,” he says. “I’ll surprise her. It’ll be like another honeymoon. Or any honeymoon. We couldn’t afford one, last spring. Spent it all on the wedding.” “That’s sweet,” says Judith. “I miss her so much.” His mustache quivers. “My Cassie from Tallahassee.” “He’s right, it doesn’t matter where you are, when you’re in love.” Judith says. “Graham used to bring me roses when I was in hospital, sneak a bottle of Remy in. It was so romantic. Better than our walking trip in Ireland.” I am suspicious of Judith’s sudden insipidness; she looks misty-eyed and pensive and I am not at all surprised, the following day, when Judith shows up at my door to use my phone. Now Graham, too, is coming to join us for our trip to Andorra. The lodge is quite happy to add another room to the reservation. One for Earl and Cassandra, one for Judith and Graham, and one for me, for which I will now have to pay the full rate. Fondue for five.

“‘Native Andorrans are a minority in their own country; Spanish, French, and Portuguese residents make up 70% of the population,’” I read to the table at large. “Huh,” says Earl. “Really?” says Graham. “That’s interesting,” says Cassandra. “Put that bloody brochure away,” says Judith. The rectangular tables at the lodge fondue restaurant are designed to seat even numbers of people; Judith and Graham sit facing Earl and Cassandra, while I sit at the head, like a Chairman of the Board of a struggling company. “And Andorra doesn’t even have its own head of state,” I inform them. “The President of France and the Spanish Bishop of Seo de Urgel co-run the country.” “Really?” says Graham again, politely. He has long pale hair in a ponytail, and Judith’s porcelain skin. Their children will glow like milk. “The Andorran army hasn’t fought in over 700 years,” I say. “’Its main duty is to present the Andorran flag at official ceremonies’.” I pause to drink from my mug of hot cider. 118 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

“Its main duty?” Judith says to me. “So much for your utopia.” “That’s not much of a duty. Waving a flag. Even I could handle that.” “Did I tell you guys Cassandra’s ancestors are Catalan? Catalonian. Cat…a lone?” says Earl, uncertain. “Catalan,” she says, struggling to remove her new red parka, which is snug. “Here, hon,” Earl says, helping her. “Thanks,” she says. She gives him a quick kiss, then folds her arms over her chest, self-conscious. She has surprised Earl with her brand-new breasts; they are now emphatically C+. He had surprised her with a new parka, having sold his textbooks for the extra cash (No problem, I can share with Judith), not knowing about her increase in cup size. The parka is therefore too small and they both feel guilty and terrible, like half an O. Henry story. This is our first meal all together. We arrived in Andorra at ten this morning, jolting across the border from France—no passports neces- sary, just a bored border guard waving us in—on icy roads littered with cigarette butts. The Andorran air smells of stale smoke and candy bars and gummy, peeling labels on chilled glass. The lodge is a 12-room motel boasting fire alarm instructions, a local interest pamphlet, and a faux- Swiss menu all in linguistic triplicate (French, Spanish, and English— nothing in Catalan). On arriving, there were hurried and vague com- ments about everyone meeting out front “after we get settled,” then both couples vanished. My room is a rectangular space with a narrow, ten- foot-high window at one end, just framing the edge of the motel sign. I set my bag down on one of the two queen-sized beds and contemplated the bidet, wishing I’d brought along some delicate underthings to wash. All afternoon I sat in the lodge drinking brandy and reading (Sarah et Le Lieutenant Francais), watching the bright red dot of Cassandra, fol- lowed by neutral dots of Earl, Judith, and Graham, ascend and descend a Pyreneesian slope. Strands of gluey cheese, draping from communal fondue pot to mouth, crisscross the table like wilting streamers. We are all drinking the de rigueur hot cider, which Judith has warned me, is not the same as the Martinelli sparkling apple juice I drank as a kid. “The U.S. and Andorra didn’t establish diplomatic relations until 1995. ‘The United States consulate officials now visit Andorra regularly’,” I read to them. “In order to suck up the duty-free,” says Judith. Graham chuckles, nods. PMS.. 119 Ison

“You know, this sounds stupid, but what exactly does that mean? ‘Duty-free’?” Cassandra asks. “No sales tax,” says Graham. “For non-residents,” adds Earl. “The assumption is, you’re just visit- ing, you’re making your purchases, you’re leaving. You aren’t consuming the goods in the country, so you don’t have a duty to pay a tax.” He pours another round of cider. “My only duty is to load up,” I say. “There’s a limit, though. I mean, you can’t buy yourself a thousand gallons of absinthe,” says Earl. “This place makes me sort of sad,” says Cassandra. “Like it’s lonely. It has no real identity. People just passing through, buying stuff cheap then hurrying to leave. It’s like no one wants to make a home here.” “Oh, don’t you worry, it’s a plucky little country,” I say, swallowing cider. “’Determined to maintain its independence, Andorra nevertheless struggles to define itself as a full member of the European Community’—” “Give me that,” says Earl, mock-exasperated. I wave the brochure out of his reach; he gropes for it with big brother zeal, reaching over Cassandra. “Honey,” she says, her fondue fork bobbing. “Oh, sorry,” he says, glancing at her. Chastened, I hand over the travel brochure. “Earl just wanted to edu- cate me a little,” I tell Cassandra. “I’m terrible about Geography.” Cassandra smiles briefly. “Good skiing today, wasn’t it?” says Graham. “Have you ever skied in America?” asks Cassandra. “Colorado’s great. Utah. We love to travel.” “We do too, it’s just so damn expensive. It’ll be a few years, yet, before we get there,” says Judith. “Kids, first,” says Graham. Judith kisses his cheek. “Can’t wait. The second I get the all clear….” she gives him a loving shove. “Us, too,” says Cassandra, agreeing. “As soon as Earl gets home we’ll get started.” She bumps his shoulder affectionately. “Lots of kids.” “We want three,” says Earl. “We’ll start with three, see how it goes,” says Judith.

120 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

“Thank God you guys’re gonna reproduce like that,” I say. “Lets me off the hook.” “Big families are nice,” says Cassandra. “We might even adopt some. Or take in foster kids.” “Well, say goodbye to those dreams of travel, then,” I comment. “What’s the matter with you?” Judith asks me, quietly. “We need more cider,” I announce. “Or is there a limit on that?” “Encore une carafe?” Earl asks a passing waiter. “I’d love us to buy a place in Colorado, someday,” says Cassandra. “A little town, though. Not the cities. Room for kids to run around safe.” “Good place for a family,” says Earl. “A big family,” he says, pointedly, to me. “We like living where everyone knows everyone,” Graham says. “When Judith was ill—” “Everyone in the village helped out,” says Judith. “They donated blood, cooked us meals. Like one big family.” “That’s beautiful,” says Earl. “That sense of community.” A harried waiter plunks a finger-smudged pitcher of cider on the table, cautions it’s tres tres chaud. No one reaches for it, so I go ahead and wrap my hand in a napkin, then fill my mug. I swallow, careful to mask how it’s burning my lips, my tongue, my throat. “Do you think teachers have more kids than other people?” Cassandra asks. “I mean, don’t teachers generally love kids? Earl does.” “So does Judith,” says Graham. “She’ll make a great mother.” “France and Spain pay for all the teachers here,” I say. “Half of Andorran kids go to French schools, the other half go to Spanish schools. They don’t even have their own schools.” “Really?” says Graham politely, wiping his mouth. “And there’s no colleges.” “O h .” “It is sort of like there’s no identity to this place,” I say. “It only exists through its connection to other countries, what they can get out of it. It’s totally dependent on outsiders. It is pretty sad.” No one says anything. “Don’t you think?” No one speaks, then: “I thought you admired its independence,” says Judith. “It’s duty-free-ness.”

PMS.. 121 Ison

“Yeah, well, there’s a limit, like Earl said. How much duty-free can one country take? Waving its little flag around. Desperate for tourists to come visit. At some point it’s just pathetic.” I am suddenly confused. “Or, no, like Cassandra said. It’s like a person selling herself cheap. Just for some attention. Right? Isn’t that what someone said?” Still no one speaks. They all drink more cider.

Later, before the chocolate fondue is served, Cassandra, Judith and I excuse ourselves for the women’s bathroom. The cider has gone sour in my mouth; it feels as if cheese grease is seeping through my pores. I splash water on my face, notice Cassandra glancing at herself in the mir- ror, a sideways angle, a full front. “You look great,” I tell her. “Oh, thanks.” She adjusts an earring; the little gold cross dangles. “How do you feel?” I wipe my face dry with paper towels. “Oh, fine. That was a heavy meal, but today was a good work-out, s o… .” “Hell of a good work-out,” says Judith from a toilet stall, with a hearty chuckle. “Hope Graham saved something up for tonight.” “So, are you sore?” I ask. Cassandra looks at me, puzzled. “Uh, not really….” I hear Judith cough from her stall. “And there won’t be any problem with breast feeding, right? For all those kids. A friend of mine had it done, and she was worried, but the doctor told her it’d be no problem.” A flush from Judith’s stall, then quiet. Cassandra looks at me with her mouth open, something betrayed and churning inside her, and I sud- denly realize, too late, to shut up. I turn the water back on, resquirt soap, wash my hands hurriedly, loudly. “He, uh, just mentioned it,” I say. “Just in passing.” “Uh huh.” “Just that…if it was something you wanted to do…he thought you looked great before. He loved your breasts just like they were.” I am mak- ing this much, much worse. I feel a wave of bloating from the pounds of cheese, the brandy and cider, all duty-free and sickening. Cassandra turns away from me, jaw set. Behind us, Judith emerges from the stall, approaches the sink without meeting my eyes. “When I was ill,” she says intimately to Cassandra, “I

122 PMS.. poemmemoirstory was worried about that, too. Breastfeeding, you know, but it was a differ- ent thing.” “Yeah, Earl told me.” “All that poison they were pumping into me. Would it be all right to nurse a baby, later. I was really concerned.” “Mm,” says Cassandra, empathetically. “So, what did they say?” I leave the bathroom, leave them to their sororal discussion. I think, with a little relief, that now I will never have to meet Cassandra’s brother Rick in Los Angeles.

That night, when I get into one of the two queen-size beds and snap off the light, I am jolted by the sudden reddish illumination of a ten-foot- high cross at the end of the room, glowing at me. In my cider-thickened head I realize, and panic, that I have inexplicably been chosen as a Joan or Bernadette, the Maid of Andorra, that I am being called. The cross glows, then goes dark, glows, then goes dark, like a repeated warning, a visual boom. I am straining for the voice of God, or Saint Catherine or Margaret, or someone, to tell me what I am supposed to do, to call me to my duty, to save my people, my family of fellow men, when the cross sputters—an electric flicker—and I realize it’s only the projection of the tall window’s wooden cross-frame across the room; the orange neon motel sign beams on and off, just outside, and will continue to flash the tawdry cross at me until the clammy Andorran dawn.

The next morning, hungover and crampish, we split up for shopping, crunching off across the snow in different directions—Judith and Graham, Earl and Cassie, and me—to different garish stores. We meet up for the bus at eleven, all carrying identical bags with identical bottles of brandies, Cointreaux, and absinthe, all of us at our limit. We board the bus in the same order as before—Earl and Cassandra, Judith and Graham, and me. “Well, yeah, nice place to visit, but.…” Earl says as the bus starts up. Graham chuckles along with him. Judith twists Graham’s hair into a ponytail. Cassandra looks out the window. It has started to snow, lightly; Earl wonders aloud if it will be snowing as well in Toulouse. “What are those for?” Judith asks me, noticing the cartons of ciga- rettes in my bag. “You don’t smoke.” I shrug. “They were cheap,” I say.

PMS.. 123 Ison

Because I have the empty seat, all to myself, everyone loads their breakable, clinking bags next to me; I have to hold on to them when the bus lurches across splits and slicks on the road home, to keep everyone’s duty-free purchases from falling and breaking.

I try not to pick up the phone. I can’t help it. I dial a number, lets it ring once, hang up, wait a moment. Then I dial again—it picks up on the first ring. “Allo?” “It’s me,” I say. “Can you talk?” “Yes. Marie-Ange is still at her parents, with the children.” “I’m sorry to call….” “O.K., it is all right.” “I just got back.” “And it was as I told you?” “Oh, yeah. You were right. A pit stop. A sad, sad place to be.” I pause. “Did you miss me?” “Of course,” he says. “Really?” “Did you bring me something back?” “Mm. I have something for you,” I say. Claude laughs. “And when do I get this?” “Can you come over tonight?” “I…don’t know.” “Well?” “It is snowing.” “Oh, come on.” “I should be here when they get back, mon chou.” “Just for an hour.” I humbly wait for the silent process of pros and cons, the weighing of factors. “Did you know that, in Andorra, non- citizens are allowed to own only thirty-three percent of the shares of a company? I learned that.” “C’est vrai?” “And I had a religious epiphany. Almost. I thought I had a sign. I was going to atone for all my sins, and commit myself to God. But I just had too much cider.” I stop talking and wait, listening to the silence. “Une demi-heure.”

124 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

“Bon. I’ll leave the door open downstairs.” He hangs up without saying good-bye.

On the train home from a September weekend alone in Paris, he had eyed me appraisingly, smiled, indicated with his head that I should take the empty seat across from him, facing him. I was linguistically drained from a weekend of ritually spinning my three or four perfect French sen- tences to strangers and shopkeepers; I asked him, leaning across the aisle, if he spoke English. He smiled again, nodded indulgently, and so I moved to the seat facing him. I rode the last two hours back to Toulouse back- ward, a sensation which always unnerves me, a retrogressive advance- ment. He had the strangest teeth I’d ever seen; the front upper left tooth was almost twice as wide as the right one, with a tiny gap in between. At the Toulouse station he, Claude, offered me a lift home; we stopped first, of course, at a little bar he knew, for absinthe. Later I was taken aback by his Gallic, uncircumcised penis, poking through his boxer shorts with its rawish red tip like a dog’s penis, or a Sharpie perma- nent marker. He used my phone to call his wife, ostensibly from the sta- tion at Limoges, to tell her he’d left Paris later than expected. Now, after three months, he generally speaks French to me; I almost always respond in English, still unwilling to commit, and make a mistake. He will hurry into the downstairs front door to the building I have wedged unlocked with an empty pack of Gauloises, and I will be waiting for him in a robe, fresh from a shower to rinse off the gummy smell of Andorran air. He will delight in the duty-free bottle of absinthe I bought for him, which, of course, will be kept for him here on my kitchen shelf, and the packs of cigarettes. We will drink much of the bottle, as much as we can in fifteen or twenty minutes, while chatting, trivially, in different languages, then have quick sex in my little narrow bed. I’ll use my per- fect, dirty French. He’ll leave time for a brief shower afterward, using the soap I keep here for him, the brand he informed me Marie-Ange keeps in their shower at home. He’ll kiss me good-bye hurriedly, mashing my lip against his wide upper left tooth; through the window I’ll watch him exit the front door below, dutifully hurrying home, accidentally kicking the unwedged pack of cigarettes with him out onto the sidewalk, into the gutter, into the drifting, dirty snow.

PMS.. 125 Mary Elizabeth Pope

The Club

Gladwin High School’s cheerleading coach Glory Jo Baker says she’d recognize spirit a mile off, and Glory Jo Baker would know. She used to cheer for the Detroit Lions until she broke her collarbone doing a back hand spring, so everyday at practice I jump and shout and shake those pom-poms like crazy, even though I have to work twice as hard as the thinner girls whose toe touches and pikes are always so clean. Plus there are only six open spots on the squad this year since Kaylee Ritchart and Kristin Banks are back. They’re both blonde and thin and tan year-round from lying in the beds at Malibu Sun & Nails, and sometimes Glory Jo will turn practice right over to them. She’ll say, “Show them the Victory Vault while I get myself a Diet Coke.” Then Kaylee and Kristin model it for us, and it’s like they’re not even trying but it all comes out perfect anyway. Tryouts are only a month away, so I fit in extra practice at home whenever I can. I go over the rules in the Cheerleading Handbook and rehearse each new cheer ten times at least. Sometimes I line my stuffed animals up on the couch and practice making eye contact with the crowd so I’ll get high marks on Natural Charisma, but my father always says the crowd better be off the couch by the time Peter Jennings comes on. I was really making progress too, until a few weeks ago when my grandmother Mayzee and her pomeranian Uncle Jasper moved in. Mayzee’s so confused she can’t remember anything anymore, so now we have to cut her fingernails and tuck her in to bed and walk Uncle Jasper three times a day. And every morning we have to put Mayzee’s dentures in and give her a bath and dress her, which is a lot harder than it sounds since she doesn’t recognize her clothes anymore. My mother will hold up the yellow polyester pantsuit Mayzee’s been wearing for like a million years and Mayzee will just stand there looking steamed. She’ll say, “I will not wear those old hand-me-downs.” Still, I just have to find time to get those cheers right, so I finally gave up the cello lessons Rosemary Fuller and I have been taking for years, even though I love the cello more than anything and was just getting

126 PMS.. poemmemoirstory the hang of my double stops. Rosemary has been my neighbor since age three when her family moved in across the street, and she was real disap- pointed when I told her I was quitting, but to tell you the truth, it’s kind of a relief not to have to haul my cello case to school every day. I mean, at Gladwin High School, you might as well just drag around a big flash- ing loser sign. But for some reason this never seems to bother Rosemary one bit. She just sits there with that big honking case next to her like she’s committing social suicide right there on the bus, but I guess when you have a retarded brother who takes off his bathing suit at the Gladwin Public Pool, nothing fazes you. Which is probably why Rosemary never breathed a word to anybody about the time my father and his drinking buddies stripped off their hunting suits and stood around the front yard doing turkey calls in their underwear. Trying out for cheerleading also means I don’t have time to study my Spanish verbs either, which is too bad since I really want to impress Wendell Biggs, who asked me to be his conversation partner last week. I said: “How are you?” and Wendell said: “I’m fine. And you?” And I said, “Oh, great.” But since it’s just Beginning Spanish, the only other thing we could really do was order Cokes from a fake waiter, which made it seem like we were supposed to be on some kind of date, and the only thing I could remember after that was the word for airport. I swear my brains just go to mush around that kid. Once, when I was working at Clayton’s Diner last summer, Wendell told me I was a great waitress, and all I could think to say was, “Clayton gets our cold cuts from Detroit.” But I guess Wendell didn’t care because he was there for lunch again the next day. And the next. Once he was even outside on his moped when I got off work, so he gave me a ride home, and we stood in the driveway where Wendell told me about his high-powered telescope and I told Wendell about making first chair in cello last year, and Wendell told my father how nice our lawn looked, but my father just said, “God, I am not ready for this.” It is my dream to dance with Wendell at the first school mixer, which is coming right up. I just pray he will ask me. I imagine it every time a slow song comes on the radio: he’ll put his hands around my waist and I’ll put my hands around his neck, and we’ll dance in this perfect sync where nobody steps on anybody’s toes, and in my dream the song we dance to is so long that it never stops playing.

PMS.. 127 Pope

Now, for weeks I have been begging my mother to let me tan at Malibu Sun & Nails like Kaylee and Kristin do, but my mother just says she did not give up Ernest and Julio Gallo for nine months so her daughter could look like a handbag. Still, she does take me to see her hairdresser Nadine who dyes my hair blonde and straightens it all out for me, but when she spins me around in the chair so I can get a look at myself in the mirror, my head looks kind of shrunken without all those curls. Nadine says I’ll get used to it after a few minutes, and I sort of do, once I stop expecting to see myself there. But the next day at practice, my new hairdo is a big hit with Glory Jo, who says I look exactly like Daryl Hannah, and Kaylee and Kristin even ask me to start hanging out in the girl’s bathroom with them during lunch instead of eating in the cafeteria with Rosemary. Well, we just have a ball practicing cheers in front of the mirrors and painting each other’s nails the same pink as Glory Jo’s, but what I really wish I knew is how those two go all day without eating. I mean, throwing out my peanut but- ter and jelly almost kills me, and even when the hunger pains don’t get me, I just about drown in a pool of my own guilt thinking of how tired my mother looks when she gets up early just to fix it for me. Lucky for me, Grandma Mayzee won’t eat unless we make her, so every morning we shake those cereal boxes around and make a bunch of noise about how good they all are, and all that fuss takes the focus off the fact that I just sort of stir my cereal around anymore until it’s time to get on the bus. Now, I just hate riding the bus, all those wads of chewed up gum stuck everywhere and those windows covered in dirty handprints. But at least it gives me a chance to catch up with Rosemary since I don’t really see her at school anymore. But one morning when I sit down across from her, she looks real upset. So I say, “What is it, Rosemary?” And Rosemary says, “I’m auditioning today and Nancy Biddle was supposed to be my page turner but she’s sick.” Now Rosemary and I used to make fun of Nancy Biddle, who has these giant glasses that make her eyes bug out and is so persnickety she’s like a little old lady trapped in the body of a fifteen-year-old, but ever since I’ve quit cello, Rosemary can’t stop yap- ping about Nancy’s left-hand technique. Sometimes I just want to shake her and say, “Geez, Rosemary, keep it down.” I mean, it’s one thing to still drag your cello around once you’re in high school, but it’s another to go around bragging about Nancy Biddle like that.

128 PMS.. poemmemoirstory

Then Rosemary gets this hopeful look on her face and says, “Could you stand in for her? It would only take a minute, and my mom can give you a ride home.” And because Rosemary’s voice wobbles so much, I say, “Sure, Rosemary. I’ll be there.” Well, she looks like she might cry, she’s so grateful. She says, “You are a real friend, Jenny. I just knew I could count on you.” Which only makes me feel worse about the fact that I sometimes pretend not to see her in the hallway, depending on who I’m walking with. So when the end of the day comes, I’m packing up my book bag to head for Rosemary’s audition, but the next thing I know I see Kaylee coming my way. And she lights right up when she sees me and says, “Hey Jen, want to ride over to the Wagon Wheel with me?” And just the way Haylee calls me Jen is so natural and friendly that before I even know how it’s happened, I’m flying down Mission Street in Haylee’s zippy little RX-7. And when we get to the Wagon Wheel, Rodney Stanger is waiting outside for us with Chad Harmon. Rodney is Gladwin’s star quarterback whose varsity ring Kaylee wears wrapped up in yarn so it’ll fit her tiny little hand, and Chad has these big shoulders and this jaw like Superman, and even though Rosemary says they’re both as dumb as a box of rocks, it really knocks me out just to be standing in line with them. Well, we all order sodas and grab a booth and sit around talking about Who’s the Boss? and Alf and America’s Funniest Home Videos until Kaylee tells Rodney she loves him, and Rodney says he loves her more, and Kaylee says she loves him more, and pretty soon the thrill wears off and I start feeling just awful about Rosemary. I can picture her in the band room with her cello. I can see the worry on her face as it dawns on her that I’m not coming. And suddenly my heart starts pounding and my throat gets dry and I suck down my Diet Coke so fast it gives me a head- ache. Then I realize I don’t even know how I’m going to get home, so I excuse myself and go call my mom at work from a pay phone. It takes forever for her to get there, and all I want to do is cry when she pulls up. I want to hunker down in the back of that big old Chrysler and wail. But instead she sends me in to pick up Mayzee from this wing of the Gladwin Hospital where we take her when no one’s home. Everyone else at that place is just as confused as Mayzee is, and they sit around all day while this lady reads them Nancy Drew or The Boxcar Children, or leads them in singing Christmas carols, even though it’s only September. It’s called Adult Day Care, but whenever you ask Mayzee

PMS.. 129 Pope where she spent the day she says she was at the club. “The Club,” my mother always laughs. “Like they’re playing tennis and sipping martinis all day.” But Mayzee’s so happy whenever we drop her off that she lights up like Miss America and waves at everyone, even though Melva Jenks starts cursing the minute she walks in. But it’s like Mayzee doesn’t even hear her. You’d think it was the Kennedys sitting there from the way Mayzee acts, instead of a bunch of people who can’t remember their own names watching Jeopardy and drooling into their milkshakes. I swear Mayzee’s gotten worse in just these last couple of weeks. It’s so bad that she doesn’t always recognize us anymore. She can’t even remem- ber Uncle Jasper half the time. Sometimes that little puff ball will come nosing on into the TV room while Mayzee’s watching The Price is Right and she’ll say, “What the hell is that?” And we’ll say, “Mayzee, it’s Uncle Jasper,” but she just looks at us all like we’re nuts.

Now, tryouts are only one week away when Senora Murphy hands back our first Spanish tests. And as if getting a D+ isn’t bad enough, it’s even worse with Wendell sitting behind me, holding onto his own A, asking how I did. But when I tell him, he just says I’ll do better next time and asks me to be his conversation partner anyway, so he asks me where one might buy a newspaper and I ask him where one might buy the best clams, and the whole time Wendell is looking at me in this way that makes me just float through the rest of my classes. But when I get on the bus at the end of the day I can feel Rosemary boring a hole in the back of my head just like she does everyday. And what for? She got first chair without me turning her pages anyway. Which makes me feel kind of sick if I think about it for too long. But who needs Rosemary when Kaylee and Kristin have invited me to get ready for the school mixer with them on Friday? All week I have been thinking about how great it will be to walk into that gymnasium with them. But when my mother drops me off at Kaylee’s in my best jeans and the pink sweatshirt I bought when we took our vacation to New Jersey, she and Kristin give each other these uh-oh looks and say why don’t they lend me some clothes? And I say great, since I’ve lost so much weight that none of my clothes really fit me anymore, and the next thing I know I’m wearing Kristin’s mini-skirt and this slinky black top and a pair of these strappy black heels that are a size too small. And a bunch of Kaylee’s makeup, only on me all those colors and lines seem kind of

130 PMS.. poemmemoirstory clownish and loud. But Kaylee and Kristin go on about how it brings out my features, and I’m glad they think I look so much better, only the more they say it, the more it’s like they’re saying I wasn’t okay before, and then I start to worry that I won’t be able to figure out how to put it on even after I go out and buy it all, which of course I will since Glory Jo says you cannot stop trying to improve yourself or you will never get married. Well, by the time we get to the mixer those high heels have already given me two blisters and the music hasn’t even started yet. But then the DJ plays La Bamba, and Kaylee and Kristin and I start dancing to Addicted to Love, and by the time Mony Mony comes on I’ve just about got the knack of those shoes after all. Then the DJ slows things down with Purple Rain, and all of the sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I see Wendell walking toward me. And my stomach gets all fluttery because I just know he’s going to ask me to dance. But as he gets closer, this funny thing happens: it’s like I start to see all these things about him I’ve never noticed before, like how skinny he is and the way he parts his hair down the middle and buttons his shirts all the way up. And suddenly I’m not even sure I think he’s cute. I mean, that boy wouldn’t know a football if it hit him in the head. So I just keep talking to Kaylee like I don’t even see him coming. But Kaylee says, “Hey, don’t you know him?” And I say, “Who?” And Kaylee says, “That smart kid.” Only she says it in this way that means I better think up something quick or I’m out. So I say, “He does my homework sometimes.” Which is a lie, but Kaylee and Kristen get a big laugh out of that. They say, “Oh, will he do ours too?” And just like that, I’m back in. But then I see Wendell’s face as he veers past me. He looks like the air has been sucked out of him, and he’s shrinking by the second. Then my eyes start to sting because I don’t know why I’m acting this way. I’ve never been so mean in my whole life, and before I can even think how to fix this, Chad Harmon walks up and asks me to dance. But the whole time we’re out there, Chad keeps saying how pretty I look, which for some reason really gets on my nerves. And a few days later, after I finally make the cheerleading squad and Glory Jo issues me my official Gladwin High School uniform, that kid starts following me everywhere. He asks me to go see Lethal Weapon, and to Nelson Park to feed the deer after school, and to Jon’s Drive-In for a burger and fries, and after a while I sort of get used to him. He even gives me his varsity ring one night, all silver and sparkly with a ruby in the center, and it is a real thrill to show

PMS.. 131 Pope up at school the next day and show it off to everyone. But no matter how much yarn I wrap around that thing, for some reason it just never seems to fit me quite right.

Sometime late in the season, when it’s so cold that our bare legs go numb in our uniforms, those cheers start to feel like second nature. It’s this one particular game where I realize it, when I’m standing on the sidelines doing Cardinals! Cardinals! Fight, Fight, Fight! and suddenly I don’t even have to think about it. My hands and feet and voice are so in tune with those other cheerleaders that it’s like we’re one big body out there, and I feel safe, safe, safe, like I will belong forever and nobody can kick me out. But then I notice Rosemary Fuller sitting up in the stands under a blanket with Wendell Biggs. Like they’re on a date or something. And I really can’t believe it. I can’t believe Wendell is out with Rosemary. I can’t believe Rosemary is out with anyone at all, and the worst part is how happy she looks. And I feel just awful about how much I hate them both right then, and how much I wish it was me up there with Wendell, and also how glad I am that it’s not. Then Wendell catches me watching them, and I don’t know what to do, so I try to find my parents in the crowd. When I spot them, they’re a few rows from the top with Grandma Mayzee right between them, and they wave and smile when they see me, like they’re having a great time. But Mayzee just looks miserable, like she can’t even figure out who she is anymore, and the whole time I’m out there jumping and rolling and shaking those pom-poms, I just can’t help but feel so sorry for her. I mean, it must be terrible to forget who you are, just terrible.

132 PMS.. contributors

Lavonne J. Adams is the author of Through the Glorieta Pass (Pearl Editions, 2009) and two award-winning chapbooks, In the Shadow of the Mountain and Everyday Still Life. She has published in numerous literary journals, including Prairie Schooner, Missouri Review, Cincinnati Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center; the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos; and the Harwood Museum of Art, University of New Mexico-Taos. She teaches at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Lucy Alibar is a playwright and storyteller from the Florida pan- handle. Her plays include Juicy and Delicious (Collective Unconscious/ The TANK), A Friend of Dorothy (Best Play Finalist, Montreal Fringe), Lightning/Picnic, Mommy Says I’m Pretty on the Insides, and Christmas and Jubilee Behold the Meteor Shower. Her work has been produced and developed at the Sundance Institute, Joe’s Pub, Williamstown Theatre Festival, HERE Arts Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Dixon Place, New Georges, HERE Arts Center, Edinburgh Fringe, the Avignon Festival, and the Cherry Lane Theatre. Lucy is a member of EST/Youngblood, Jose Rivera’s Writing Group, and founder of the New Georges Writer/Director lab. She is a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow, two-time finalist for the Heideman Award at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, and winner of Young Playwrights, Inc.

Allison Anders is a Los Angeles-based independent filmmaker. In 1995 she was the recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant” and in 2002 she won a George Foster Peabody Award for distinguished achievement and meri- torious service for her semi-autobiographical film Things Behind the Sun. From the release of her acclaimed first feature, Border Radio (1989; co- written and co-directed with Kurt Voss) through the recent critical and popular success of Things Behind the Sun, Anders has established a body of work that is innovative in its visual and sound style and marked by ensemble acting and strong women characters. Her films as writer-direc- tor also include Gas Food Lodging (1992), Mi Vida Loca (1993), Grace of My Heart (1996), and Sugar Town (1999; co-directed with Kurt Voss). Anders’ films have premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival

PMS.. 133 and at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, and retrospectives of her work have been held in Thessaloniki, Greece; Sheffield, England; and at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic. Her most recent film, Strutter, premiered at the Munich Film Festival.

Bebe Barefoot is a freelance writer, gardener, and seamstress. She lives in Tuscaloosa and teaches at the University of Alabama.

Michelle Skupski Bissell holds an MFA in creative writing from the NEOMFA. Currently, she is a stay-at-home mother of two young sons, so she spends most of her days with 12-piece puzzles, 2% milk, and Elmo. She continues to read and write for pleasure and sanity.

Erica Dawson loves reading, writing, and teaching poetry. Waywiser Press published her Anthony Hecht Prize-winning collection, Big-Eyed Afraid, in 2007. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Harvard Review, and other publications.

Mary Echlin has a master’s degree in English and has taught at the high school and college level for about three decades. The last two decades have been spent teaching and administrating at Kimberton Waldorf School, an independent school in Pennsylvania. Originally from California, she has lived in Chester County, Pennsylvania, since 1991. Nature is one of her main inspirations; living on French Creek—a pro- tected watershed—allows her to see many different kinds of wildlife. In addition to the silence and solitude that nurture her writing, she enjoys perennial gardening, traveling, and exploring universal spirituality.

Brett Griffiths is a poet and non-fiction writer, who alternates living between Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Munich, Germany, with her hus- band and their son. She is currently completing a PhD in English and Education at the University of Michigan. She earned her MFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, in 2002. She is just returning to focus on her writing after taking a long hiatus to focus on academic and family life. Her earlier work has appeared in The Ohio State University’s The Journal and in Wicked Alice.

Christine Hale’s prose has appeared in Arts & Letters, Saw Palm, Apalachee Review, and The Sun. Her debut novel Basil’s Dream

134 PMS.. (Livingston Press 2009) received honorable mention in the 2010 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. A fellow of MacDowell, Ucross, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ms. Hale been a finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers and the Rona Jaffee Foundation Writers’ Award. She teaches in the Antioch University-Los Angeles Low-Residency MFA Program as well as the Great Smokies Writing Program in Asheville, North Carolina. She has just completed a memoir, In Your Line of Sight, and is at work on a new novel, both set in southern Appalachia where she and her parents grew up.

Jessica D. Hand is published in The Minnesota Review, The Cortland Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly, among others. She received her BAs in Creative Writing and in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Georgia State University, where she is currently pursuing her PhD. Jessica won first place in the Agnes Scott Poetry Competition in 2011, judged by Arda Collins, and in 2008, judged by Martín Espada.

Nancy Scott Hanway is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Originally from New York, she has lived in France and Argentina. She is now Director of Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. Her work has appeared or is forth- coming in The Florida Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Willow Review, Washington Square, Portland Review, Southern Humanities Review, Pearl, Main Street Rag, and Apalachee Review. She blogs about books and wine (mostly Malbecs) at Word Vine (wordvine.org).

Lisa Hartz is director of the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Xanadu, The Dos Passos Review, The GW Review, and other publications. “Early Instruction” is part of a collection exploring the lives and work of pho- tographers and painters.

Tara Ison is the author of the novels A Child out of Alcatraz, The List, Rockaway, and the forthcoming short story collection Ball.

Sandra Jaffe is a screenwriter, filmmaker and script consultant who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and attended the same high schools

PMS.. 135 featured in her documentary, Our Mockingbird. She has won a Writer’s Guild of America, East, Foundation Fellowship, a Massachusetts Artists Finalist Fellowship and the Massachusetts Film Office Screenwriting Contest. Her documentary short, Jazz In The Magic City, aired on the Discovery Channel, Alabama Public Television, and is permanently installed at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame and is viewed by over 10,000 people a year. For ten years she taught screenwriting at institutions in the Boston area including Harvard Extension, Harvard Summer School, and Emerson College. Her play Waiting was a finalist in Perishable Theatre’s eleventh annual Woman’s Playwriting Festival and her ten-minute play Leftovers premiered at The Fourth Annual Boston Theater Marathon. She has been hired to write feature length screenplays—both narrative and documentary. Most recently she has produced and directed Our Mockingbird, a feature documentary about the influence of To Kill A Mockingbird, which premiered as a work in progress at the 50th anni- versary celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird in Monroeville, Alabama, in 2010 and was invited to Independent Film Week in New York City. Our Mockingbird will be released in 2012.

Holly Karapetkova’s poetry, prose, and translations from the Bulgarian have appeared in Mid-American Review, Waccamaw, 32 Poems, and many others. Her first book is Words We Might One Day Say from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She teaches at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia.

Irene Latham is a poet and novelist who lives and writes in Birmingham, Alabama. Her latest volume of poems The Color of Lost Rooms (Blue Rooster Press) won the Writer’s Digest 19th Annual Book Prize for Poetry. Her debut collection of poems What Came Before (Negative Capability Press) earned a 2008 Independent Publisher’s Award and was named Alabama State Poetry Society’s Book of the Year. She currently serves as poetry editor for Birmingham Arts Journal.

Joni Lee’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Juked, H_NGM_N, and Permafrost. She lives and teaches in St. Louis, Missouri.

Kathleen McClung lives in San Francisco and teaches at Skyline College and the Writing Salon. Her work appears in a variety of publications,

136 PMS.. including Bloodroot, Tule Review, Poetry Now, Unsplendid, Poets 11, Song of the San Joaquin, Spirituality & Health, and A Bird Black as the Sun: California Poets on Crows and Ravens. Winner of the 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award, she is also the winner of the 2012 National Poetry Competition sponsored by the Cultural Center of Cape Cod and the win- ner of the formal verse category of the 2011 Poets & Patrons Chicagoland Contest. Her sonnets received honorable mentions in the rhyming poem category of the 2011 Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. She serves as judge of the sonnet category of the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition and reviewer for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.

Marlene McCurtis conceived the idea of turning the “Wednesdays” story into a documentary after reading an article about the project in the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine. She has over 20 years of documentary pro- duction experience. She worked as a producer/writer at Arnold Shapiro Productions for 10 years. There she produced several documentaries including the award winning film Hidden Victims: Children of Domestic Violence. Recently, she has directed for the Discovery Channel’s docu- mentary series Adoption Stories, for the Peabody Awarding–winning PBS educational show A Place of Our Own/Los Ninos en Su Casa, the National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer, and the new A&E series Beyond Scared Straight. On a more personal level, her family roots are in Mississippi.

Pamela Mills (1956–2004) grew up in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. After majoring in English and drama at the University of Cape Town, she acquired her first professional job as stage manager and actress at South Africa’s first non-racial theater, The Space Theatre, which was co-founded by Athol Fugard. Her first play, A Matter of Time or The Wondrous Adventures of Starklith and Maccoboy Mole, was produced by the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. In 1988 she moved to Boston to teach ESL through drama. Scene of Shipwreck, her next play, received readings at the Playwrights’ Platform and the Women’s Project, and was produced by the Raven Theatre in Chicago. Ms. Mills has had several monologues published by Heinemann, Smith & Kraus, and Meriwether, and has been a finalist for the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. In 1999 Anna Deavere Smith used Ms. Mills’ “bucket boy” story in Common Infractions, Gross Injustices, which was performed at the American

PMS.. 137 Repertory Theater as part of Ms. Smith’s Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue. Later, Pam completed her MFA in directing at Boston University, where she directed Night Sky, People are Living There, The Lady from the Sea, and Sinan Ünel’s new play, Single Lives, at the Boston Playwrights Theatre, and Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest at the Huntington Theatre’s black box. Since receiving her MFA, Ms. Mills began working with the Gypsy Mamas, an experimental theatre company in Boston, who are hoping to produce Ms. Mills’ most recent play, Song of the Tired Traveler. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Pam returned to her home in South Africa in August 2004 to die.

Mary Jane Myers holds degrees from Pennsylvania State University and University of Southern California Law School. She lives in Los Angeles.

Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of two novels, Pears on a Willow Tree and A Year and a Day. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including The Sun, The Washington Post Magazine, The Iowa Review, Shenandoah, and The Gettysburg Review. She blogs at www. WorkInProgressInProgress.com.

Mary Elizabeth Pope’s short stories and essays have appeared in Florida Review, Bellingham Review, Passages North, Ascent, Sycamore Review, Fugue, Upstreet, Crab Creek Review, Ampersand Review, Descant, and Dos Passos Review, as well as the anthologies The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction (Pearson) and Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan (Michigan State University Press). She is an asso- ciate professor of English and Creative Writing at Emmanuel College in Boston.

Andrea Potos is the author of four poetry collections, including Yaya’s Cloth (Iris Press, 2007) and We Lit the Lamps Ourselves, just published from Salmon Poetry in Ireland. Her work also appears in many jour- nals and anthologies, including Poetry East, Wisconsin Review, Women’s Review of Books, Southern Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Beloved on the Earth (Holy Cow! Press), Claiming the Spirit Within (Beacon Press), and A Fierce Brightness (Calyx Books). She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her family.

138 PMS.. Wendy Reed has won two Emmys for public television production and writing. She has received fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Seaside Institute and co-edited All Out of Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality and Circling Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality. “Prologue” is forthcoming in An Accidental Memoir: How I Killed Someone and Other Mostly Accurate Stories with NewSouth Press. She’s grateful to be included again in PMS, one of her favorite lit maga- zine and best publications ever.

Gigi Rosenberg has been published by Seal Press, The Oregonian, Jewish Review, and Parenting, performed at Seattle’s On the Boards, and broad- cast on Oregon Public Radio. Her book, The Artist’s Guide to Grant Writing (Watson-Guptil, 2010), is in its second printing. For the latest, visit gigirosenberg.com.

Hilary Ross is an undergraduate student at University of Oregon, with a major in physics and a minor in creative writing. The most practical thing she’s learned in college is that Cheetos are highly flammable. She lives in Eugene with her cat, Jean-Claude, who is not named after Jean- Claude Van Damme.

Elena Schneider is a senior studying journalism at Northwestern University. Her work has also been published in Construction Magazine, Business Insider, The Hill, Medill News Service and The Winston-Salem Journal. The North Carolina native hopes to pursue political reporting after graduation.

Danielle Sellers is originally from Key West, Florida. She has an MA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from the University of Mississippi where she held the Grisham Poetry Fellowship. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Subtropics, Smartish Pace, Cimarron Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. Her book, Bone Key Elegies, was published in 2009 by Main Street Rag. Last summer, she was awarded a Walter E. Dakin Poetry fellowship to attend the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She’s editor of The Country Dog Review and teaches at the University of Mississippi.

PMS.. 139 Elizabeth Wade holds degrees from Davidson College and the University of Alabama. Her poetry and prose have appeared in such journals as Kenyon Review Online, The Oxford American, and The Rumpus. She cur- rently teaches literature and writing courses at the University of Mary Washington.

Suellen Wedmore is Poet Laureate emerita for the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts. She retired from working as a speech and language therapist to enter the MFA program in poetry at New England College, graduating in 2004. Her chapbook Deployed won first place in the Grayson Books annual contest, and her chapbook On Marriage and Other Parallel Universes was published by Finishing Line Press. She has been awarded first place in the Writer’s Digest rhyming poetry contest and was an international winner in the 2006 Atlanta Review poetry con- test. She was a winner in the Obama New Millennium competition and recently two of her poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

140 PMS..