Journal Issue #2 Journal Issue #2

Featuring the work of. . . Norm, Alive and Well Andrew Ramirez, Page 7

You Remember Everything That Happened The Juggler Tyra Lynn, Page 11 Cheryl Klein, Page 18

Love, Dove Love Will Make You Naked Eva Huang, Page 26 Jervey Tervalon, Page 30

Street Trash Belize Celeste Gonzales, Page 42 Miranda Morgan, Page 48

Roadkill N.W.A: A Hard Act to Follow Lainnie Capouya, Page 50 Jonathan Gold, Page 54

Son2Mother The Thing on Treufel’s Arm Kevin Powell, Page 62 Andrew Nicholls, Page 65

(willamena, she ain’t trippin’. . .) Essay for My Son Tim Stiles, Page 72 Robert Schilling Schick, Page 74

Limited Reproduction Permission

The publisher grants the educator, not-for-profit, or any other person or organization who views the Literature for Life Issue 2 Journal, individual Stories and Poems, or Curriculum for the purposes of teaching the stories the right to print, copy or share material for use in his or her own classroom (or other educational setting) with other teachers and students. Credit for the stories and curriculum must be acknowledged as from: Literature for Life, a program of the Light Bringer Project. Unauthorized reproduction or sharing of any portion of the content of the Literature for Life Issue 2 Journal or Curriculum constitutes copyright infringement and is a violation of federal law.

Issue #2 Team

Founding Editor: Managing Editor: Jervey Tervalon Rosalind Helfand

Copy and Production Director: Copyeditor: Heather Dever Robert Blaisdell

Designers: Design Editor: Al-Insan Lashley, Graeme Fordyce Jinghuan Liu Tervalon

Organizing Team

Founding Editor: Managing Editor: Jervey Tervalon Rosalind Helfand

President of Light Bringer Project: Lead Project Coordinator: Thomas Coston Hannah Fielstra

Educational Outreach Lead: Curriculum Developer: Mike Sonksen Yasmin Dunn

Curriculum Writers

Yasmin Dunn Rosalind Helfand

Kevin Stricke Jinghuan Liu Tervalon

Jervey Tervalon Mike Sonksen

Submissions

To submit work follow the guidelines at literatureforlife.net.

Contact Information

Featuring the work of. . .

Authors

Lainnie Capouya

Lainnie Capouya is the mother of two teenagers. She grew up on a plantation in Central Louisiana. Having the opportunity to rear them in Southern California, they inspire her to write about her childhood in rural Louisiana in the 1960’s. Her novel “Road Kill” is a work in progress. She earned her B.S. in Early Childhood Education at Louisiana State University.

Jonathan Gold

Jonathan Gold is a food critic who currently writes for the Los Angeles Times and used to write for LA Weekly and Gourmet. In 2007 he became the first food critic to win the Pulitzer Prize. He is also a regular on KCRW’s Good Food radio program. Gold often chooses small, ethnic restaurants for his reviews, although he covers all types of cuisine. His articles have been collected in the book, Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles. Gold started out at the LA Weekly in 1982 as a proofreader while he was studying art and music at UCLA, and by the mid1980s became one of the paper’s most popular writers. He was music editor for the Weekly in the 1980s, and held a number of other positions with the paper.

Celeste Gonzalez

Celeste Gonzalez is an LA based writer/editor and sometimes model. Her work appears in high profile magazines and literary journals. After recently being diagnosed with cancer, she decided to document her journey with a blog entitled, “The Literary Pinup”. When not blogging about her cancer treatment in five inch heels or writing poetry and spills her hazelnut coffee, she can be found wandering the streets of L.A. Fashion District or perusing local vintage shops.

Eva Huang

Eva Huang grew up in the Bay Area. She attended the University of Southern California, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. She lives in California.

Cheryl Klein

Cheryl Klein is the author of the novel Lilac Mines (Manic D Press) and the story collection The Commuters (City Works Press). She received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and her fiction and essays have appeared in The Normal School, Mutha Magazine, and New California Writing 2011, among other publications. Her work has been recognized by the Center for Cultural Innovation and the MacDowell Colony.

Tyra Lyn

Tyra Lyn likes to write family historybased short stories and fantasy superhero novels. She lives in Goleta, California with no dogs and no cats. JournalJournal Issue Issue #2 #2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

Miranda Morgan Miranda Morgan is a fourth year at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a literature and creative and two fulllength original screenplays. Her work has appeared in Mission and State, an Investigative MFA program in creative nonfiction.

Andrew Nicholls Andrew Nicholls grew up in England and Canada. With his longtime writing partner Darrell Vickers he has written for performers including Mickey Rooney, George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield and Johnny Carson. Since 1976, he has created or staffed over 100 TV shows and pilots, including two dozen animated series in the U.S. and abroad. Nicholls’ fiction and humor has appeared in Black Clock, McSweeney’s online, the L.A. Review Of Books, Kugelmass and The Santa Monica Review.

Kevin Powell Kevin Powell (born April 24, 1966) is an American political activist, poet, writer, and entrepreneur. Powell is also an activist who speaks against violence against girls and women, appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show in March 2009.

Andrew Ramirez Andrew Ramirez, a writer from El Paso, Texas, is an LA transplant. His fiction and poems have most recently appeared in Slake and if&when. These days he is at work on an erotic retelling of the Alamo, coming soon to a rejection stack near you.

Robert Schilling Schick In early 2008, Rob Schick experienced the traumatic birth and subsequent death of his son Silas. This event forever altered his outlook on life, yet gave him a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Rob is a marine ecologist, and lives in Scotland with his wife and daughter.

Tim Stiles Tim Stiles lives and works in SFBay Area. His poems and short stories have appeared in literary magazines throughout the United States and Great Britain. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from San Francisco State University.

Jervey Tervalon Jervey Tervalon, MFA, is the awardwinning, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of five books including Understanding This, a novel based on his experiences teaching at Locke High School in Los Angeles, for which he won the Quality Paper Book Club’s New Voice’s Award. His newest novel, Monster’s Chef, was published by HarperCollins in June 2014. He was the Remsen Bird Writer in Residence at Occidental College and now is an associate professor at National University and a Lecturer at the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He’s lectured with USC and Occidental College. He is also an awardwinning poet, screenwriter, dramatist, and the Founder and Editor of Literature for Life. Jervey was born in New Orleans and raised in Los Angeles. He received his MFA from UC Irvine and studied with Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s Ark. JournalJournal IssueIssue #2#2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

Illustrators

Jessica Chrysler Born in Inglewood, California, Jessica Chrysler grew up in and around the west side of Los Angeles. Her childhood consisted of softball tournaments, coloring books, and raising litters of kittens. A passion for storytelling has led her to illustrate several children’s books, including Cody the Coyote and the soon to be released A Word to Rhyme with Orange. She is an active member of the local artist community and volunteers her time to help others learn about art.

Patrick Farley Patrick Sean Farley is a graphic designer and illustrator based in the San Francisco Bay Area, best known for his webcomics anthology Electric Sheep Comix.

Scott Gandell Scott Gandell is a professional illustrator, printmaker, and an entrepreneur. He is a past President of The Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles, and is an alumnus of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Scott’s work has been published in magazines, newspapers, and books. His work has also been exhibited in galleries in the U.S. and Canada and has been acquired by clients and collectors worldwide.

Allison Strauss Allison Strauss grew up among writers, and is particularly fond of projects that meld poetry and prose with visual art. Allison thanks the Ryman Arts Foundation, Ragan Art Academy, The Armory Center for the Arts, Peter Fetterman Gallery and the Pasadena Waldorf School for nourishing her as a young artist. She went on to earn her degree in art from Colorado College where she drew cartoons for the school paper. Since returning to her native Los Angeles, Allison has enjoyed seasonal positions with Hill Nadell Literary Agency, Los Angeles Review of Books, Slake and Vroman’s Bookstore. She’s usually carrying either a sketchbook or a novel.

J. Michael Walker An exhibiting artist since 1984, J. Michael Walker has participated in more than 100 exhibitions; received a dozen grants, fellowships and residencies; and enjoyed solo shows at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard; el Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares, Mexico City; the National Museum of Catholic Art and History, East Harlem, New York City; and the Arkansas Arts Center; among others. As a writer, J Michael is authorillustrator of All the Saints of the City of the Angels: Seeking the Soul of L.A. on Its Streets (Heyday 2008), which was awarded Art Book of the Year and Best Nonfiction on the Pacific West; and is coeditor of Waiting for Foreign: LA Writers on (and in) Guadalajara (Peregrino Press 2010).

Leora Wien Leora Wien is a native Angeleno, artist and literacy learning specialist. Her practice includes mixed media art objects, zines and written essays, and collaborative performance. Her work has been featured at the Echo Curio (LA), Actors Art Theater (LA), and 59 Rivoli (Paris). She most recently collaborated with Alexandra Grant and hundreds of artists to create Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest, installed at 18th Street Arts in Santa Monica and Mains D’Oeuvres, Paris. She has taught at LACMA and 59 Rivoli, and produced innovative programming for LACMA’s Institute for Art & Cultures. Her new zine, “Double You~Double Vie”, explores the fluid associations of the traveler. JournalJournalJournal Issue IssueIssue #2 #2#2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

Norm, Alive and Well

Written By - Andrew Ramirez Illustrated By - Scott Gandell

He walked all the way home like that, the full three miles back from The Lucky Pub, with a knife hanging out of his eye. It didn’t hurt, not even itched, and without reference of a mirror Norm strutted like he was tiptop. It was night out, he was full of beer, and of course he had tunnel vision.

At the house he politely knocked before entering the bathroom where his wife, Billie, was up to her neck in bubbles.

“Norm I’m in here,” she said.

“I can see that,” he said. “I just wanna wash my face.”

Billie’s voice plummeted. “What is THAT?”

It was the first time Norm had been confronted with his new reflection. In the fog of bathroom heat was the full shape of the wound—a sliver of red on either end of the wood-handled object responsible. He felt the chill of terror; then pride. He recalled how he’d been in a fight with Sal Vate—they all called him Sally—and the tumble of fists that segued into the floor getting jerked out from under him, the ceiling suddenly becoming a surface not too unreasonable a place to walk on.

Then one big memory blank. Why they even got to fighting in the first place, Norm couldn’t tell you. This he’d attributed to having too much to drink.

Norm inspected the damage head on, then sideways. “Well that explains it,” Norm said. “Would you look at that.”

Billie shrieked. “Don’t touch it!”

“I’m not,” Norm said. “I just wanna see how good it’s in there.”

Before bed Norm took great caution to ensure he’d sleep the whole night through on his back. He bunched up extra pillows on both sides of him to keep from rolling, even laid out a towel under his head in case this thing ever decided to bleed—which up to this point had somehow withheld all blood. When Billie saw just what his

plan was, she barked, “Oh sure just take all the pillows for yourself.”

I guess no one ought to suffer in this matter, Norm thought, so he opened the closet and removed the folded spare blanket and went off to the couch.

His dreams only slightly varied that night. And in the morning he was unsure if this was due to the knife or the sofa he’d slept on. He’d woken freezing cold, dripping sweat, the spare blanket kicked off and both his arms hugged tight to his chest.

After breakfast, Norm made up his mind over his second cup of coffee. He decided to call in sick. Billie didn’t have to report to the restaurant till late that afternoon, but she took the day off too. Given the tightness of their funds, and the stillness of their lives, they decided it was paramount to figure this whole matter out in no hasty fashion.

“And you’re sure your head doesn’t hurt,” Billie said. She was consulting the yellowy pages of Schluts and Hansard Medical Reference, the tome she’d picked up at the library.

“Not any more than it usually does,” Norm said.

“Can you see?”

“Out the eye that doesn’t have anything in it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Ask me how many fingers you’re holding up or something.”

“No. I don’t believe you that it doesn’t hurt.”

“I already told you it doesn’t hurt any more than usual.”

“What’s usual?”

“A headache that comes and goes.”

“And your head hurts just as regular as always?” Billie said. She knew how Norm liked to play the tough guy.

“I think I’m ready for an aspirin,” Norm said. “But I’m always ready for an aspirin this time of day.”

But the one helpful fact Norm and Billie managed to glean from the Schluts and Hansard Medical Reference had to do with sleep. It was a bad idea for someone with a head injury partake in the act.

“But it’s not a head injury,” Norm protested. “It’s an eye injury.”

Billie spent a good chunk of the afternoon reading aloud from the book to Norm. She was telling him how with even just the slightest bump on their head men closed their eyes for two seconds too long and were forever shut in a coma. Norm sat politely across the breakfast table, nodding. But her words had long ceased registering.

Instead he was hung up on that dream of his. What had made it so unusual was the way in which the entire dream, like never before, had played out in reverse. For Norm, dreams were reliable, as assured a thing as rocks dropping off a ledge. Into the still air of a linear downward path his subconscious would plunge, and in the morning he would wake knowing the exact place he’d arrived from; as simple as looking up. But last night Norm had dreamt he was climbing out of a well only to discover he’d been climbing deeper into it all along. And just before he woke up shivering in his own sweat, he commenced falling upwards, unable to comprehend the most basic aspects of life.

“I better make some more coffee,” Billie said. “You look sleepy.”

“No I’m fine.”

“Don’t play the tough guy. I saw you yawn.”

“It wasn’t a yawn,” Norm said.

And it really wasn’t. Norm had, a little earlier, discovered every time he opened his mouth to its widest he could actually feel the knife lodged there. And the more he did it the more he realized he was actually capable of moving the blade just a fraction of a millimeter’s distance from the inside. Not in an entirely painful way either. In fact, Norm had taken to doing that every now and again at a rate of which the frequency wasn’t diminishing. No one told him men were capable of scratching behind their eye, or maybe it was at the front of the brain.

“If you’re not yawning what are you doing?”

“I guess you’d have to have a knife in your eye to understand.”

“Stop it!” Billie said.

“I’m not yawning. You know, I feel more awake every time I do it.”

“Where are you going?”

Norm threw open the door. Their heater was out and the chill in the air warmed him. The noise of traffic— they lived ground level in an apartment on a busy street—blustered through. In his nostrils was the thick smell of fuel, sweeter than rosemary. The blare of Billie’s screaming swam in the air and it was December and Norm was forty-seven. He felt his whole life before him like a knobby frozen creek melting in the sun.

“You’ll get sick!” Billie was yelling, the brick of Schluts and Hansard pinning her to the sofa. “You’re not wearing any shoes for chrissake!”

“I think I’ll surprise the guys at work,” Norm said. “They’ll go bananas.”

“If you walk out that door,” Billie said. And then: “Norm, sweetheart, you’re bleeding.”

“Tell me you love me. Isn’t it beautiful outside?”

“Are you serious?”

“Stay right there. I’ll be back with champagne.”

The next morning they found him covered in birds, the cause of death, of course, obvious to everyone.

You Remember Everything That Happened

Written By - Tyra Lyn Illustrated By - Scott Gandell

He always comes back home with his arms full of beautiful things. He brings toys–figurines of American heroes with names you can’t pronounce, tiny plastic parachutes looped with white strings that you spend hours untangling, slingshots that your children use to shoot pebbles at trees and fences and each other until one of them cries and you have to go outside and separate them. He brings back his rations, the food packed into those uniform green cans. Chicken soup, bread, Coca Cola, Oreos. The children open them up and eat whatever’s inside, shoving the best pieces in front of the baby’s face for a bewildered, toothless smile.

He brings home a television once, black and white pictures with raspy gargle voices for sounds. It’s twelve inches tall and weighs more than you toddler, but this is 1966. No one in Vietnam has televisions. Not in a hamlet this small. This is why all of your neighbors and friends invent excuses to come over and watch or gawk at the screen from outside when they pass by. The children love the attention, and so does your husband. He always liked to be the one who had more than everyone else.

Helen, he says as the kids fight amongst themselves over who gets the extra parachute. And you come to him, because that was what you always do. Then he brings out the things he bought for you: ropes of pearls in every color you can imagine, cold green jade bangles that you can barely squeeze your hand into, shining gold earrings studded with diamonds that you know you won’t be wearing out of the house often. You’ll still have some of them when your oldest grandchild gets out of prison. You’ll carry them through forty-five years and twelve thousand miles and a war.

You love him. You always will. In fifty years, you’ll keep a postcard from him in your purse, and sometimes you’ll take it out for your granddaughters to coo over. He was a very handsome man, you’ll say, and they’ll nod and scrutinize the picture.

You like to think that you don’t love him any less because he has a second wife. *** This is a common practice in Vietnam at the time, especially for wealthy war generals. It’s just as common for the wives to share a house in addition to a husband.

You’re his first wife, but your marriage wasn’t arranged. He came to your house and spoke with your parents before approaching you, even though you had more suitors than you could count. People might not know it by

looking at you now, but you were very beautiful, maybe even the most beautiful girl in your village. But he was the smartest, the most handsome, the most successful. You told your parents, He’s the one I’m going to marry. And you did.

He sleeps in late on Saturday afternoons. You always wake up early to get started on the chores. Cooking for a full house isn’t easy. Cleaning for a full house is even harder.

Once, you were sweeping the front porch when he got up. Helen, he called, nestled among the thick blankets that he liked. But the door was closed behind you. You didn’t hear.

He only ever calls once. You’re supposed to be within earshot of his bedroom whenever he’s asleep so that when he calls for you, you could come running. But that day–you don’t even remember when it was, only that the sun blazed hot against the back of your neck as you brushed the dust away—you weren’t, and that was the day you learned what happened when you made him run.

What kind of man are you trying to get, he’d said, still clad in his loose pajama pants and stabbing a long finger into your chest. It took everything you had, but you managed not to let out a sound. Standing out in the front instead of obeying me. Trying to find a new husband?

And you ducked your head and said, No, I’m sorry that I didn’t hear you. Please forgive me.

And he said, Let’s hope, for your sake, that it doesn’t happen again.

Sometimes, when it’s dark and you’re lying in bed alone, you can’t help but think that your failure to do what he expects of you is why he had taken up with another woman. Maybe you aren’t good enough. But half a century later, you’ll know that it wasn’t because of anything you did or didn’t to do. That was just the way things were. *** And this is where it should have ended.

Where is she? His voice rings loud through the pop and sizzle of fatty pork on the stove. He wears his uniform, the heavy green coat with the patches and badges telling everyone of all the accolades and awards that he earned. Beads of sweat trail down that smooth brow. Tell her to come out.

Who? you say, pressing down on a browned chunk of meat. You’re making braised pork with eggs and coconut, your son’s favorite.

Your daughter . He says it like it is obvious. The expectation when you live with people like him is that you will somehow know exactly what they want.

Why? You don’t remind him that she’s his daughter, too.

Just answer me. Then he shoves past you and into the hallway, calling for your oldest daughter the way he does when he’s angry: short and harsh, with the ends of the words bitten off and ground between his teeth. His boots track dirt onto the floor that you just cleaned.

And she, the other wife, stands in front of her rooms, leaning against the doorframe. She isn’t very much 12 JournalJournal IssueIssue #2#2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

younger than you, but she is beautiful, too. Sometimes it isn’t hard to see why your husband married her. He always got the best.

Her lips curve into the slightest of smiles. When she looks at you, she isn’t wicked or gleeful or smug. Her face is carefully blank, her big eyes sharing no thoughts.

Later, your husband will tell you that his other wife had seen your daughter take a pearl necklace from her room. You still don’t know if the wife was lying or if your daughter really had stolen from her stepmother. You don’t think that she wouldn’t have done any such thing, but when you look at your daughter in fifty years–drunk half of her waking hours, too poor to own a car, married to a man sentenced to four lifetimes in prison—you might think otherwise.

Your daughter and your husband’s second wife don’t get along. You suppose someone would think that you would be fighting with the other woman for your husband’s attention, but it’s really your oldest daughter who competes with her. If you were to be quite honest with yourself, you’d say that it’s often a relief to have someone else to share the burden of being married to your husband.

But that doesn’t make you like her any more.

You walk into the kitchen. He stands in the middle of the room, right between the table and the counter, his eyes narrowed into slits. The kids scattered when they heard the anger in his voice and it now it’s just the two of you in here, with the other wife still watching from the doorway to her room. She lets her satisfaction show on her pretty face.

When you tell your grandson about this fifty years later, you try to make him understand that it was a different time. A different place where there were no rules about beating your children. Your neighbors wouldn’t have called the police if they heard the sounds of a switch or a broom handle or a palm striking flesh for hours. They wouldn’t have come to see if anyone was hurt if they heard a little girl wailing until dawn. That wouldn’t have happened, anyways. Your kids knew that crying out only made it worse.

His face is purple with his rage. You are rich. He prefers to imagine himself able to buy anything his family could ever want or ever need, so there is no reason why your daughter should steal anything. It’s an insult to his pride, and there’s no worse crime in his eyes.

Where is she? He leans forward on the table, pushing his face an inch from yours. Flecks of foamy spittle land on the front of your tunic, right on the painted lily that made you pick this tunic in the first place. Behind his back, the corners of the other wife’s red mouth twist into the barest hint of a smirk. Her fingers dance around her collar and when she moves her hand, you see the dim sheen of a string of pearls.

You don’t remember doing what you did next, but you remember it happening before your eyes. Your fingers curling around the handle of your second-favorite knife, a sharp silver thing with a twelve-inch blade. Lifting that knife from its spot on the counter. Feeling its weight, cool and comfortable, in your hand. Sinking the blade deep into the old, soft wood of the kitchen table, not three inches from where his wrist meets his hand.

You’ve ruined that knife and burned the meat, but you don’t care. He stares right at you, the whites of his eyes visible all around irises. There’s a spot of lipstick missing from the middle of the other wife’s mouth.

“If you kill my daughter,” you say, your voice steady and sure, “I will kill your mistress.”

He never hits your daughter again. *

You remember everything that happened. Everything. It was a beautiful day to die—not too hot and not too cold, with the sun blazing bright over the base. The air was clear of dust and you could smell flowers and fried pork and shrimp paste and gunpowder. Your hair was clean and your uniform new and your belly full of the finest fried fish that Hanoi had to offer. In your pocket were two rings for your wives and a chocolate bar for your littlest son. The smile on your face was bright and yes, it was a beautiful day to die indeed.

The first time they try to kill you is a birthday. Not your birthday, but one of your second-in-commands’. You never really liked bars that much, but that’s because you knew them too well. You grew up with cigarette butts and fast women and cheap drinks, and it’s not a place you like to be. But your brigadier general chooses it, so you say okay and you get the first round of drinks, too. Nam gets the next, and Duong gets the one after that, and continues until almost all of them are plastered.

“Hey. Hey. No, give that back!” Nam’s words run together like his tongue is two sizes too big for his mouth. His hand swipes at the air four inches to the left of the beer can Kiet had taken away from him, causing him to lurch to the side. You duck under his arm and sling it over your shoulder to keep him steady. “Hey. Hey!”

Kiet comes to Nam’s other side. You’ve only had a beer and a half so you’re more than okay, and Kiet’s always been able to hold his liquor better than any of your other men. Together, the two of you drag the listless Nam to the front door.The rest of your men are probably out by the car, waiting in varying stages of inebriation, and you’d like to get them home as soon as you can. You’re only ten feet away outside when Nam begins to jerk around. You all know what this means, and Kiet produces an empty pitcher from somewhere and shoves it under Nam’s face.

It seems like years before Nam’s retching turns into dry heaves, and then groans, and then words. “I’m ready to go,” he says, his voice clearer than it had been before. He pulls himself to his feet and can almost walk on his own.

“I’m going to take this to the kitchen,” says Kiet, holding the pitcher gingerly by the handle. While Nam gargles from a glass of water someone had left on a table, you watch Duong weave around drunk men and chairs too far from their tables.

When he disappears around a corner, you hear an explosion from the direction of the parking lot.

You don’t even think. You just run through the people running slower than you. The cool night air does nothing for the pulse pounding too wild and too hard in your neck. You almost feel like throwing up.

You don’t say “excuse me,” as you push past the crowd toward the rising smoke. You don’t know what you’re looking for when your push past the crowd–maybe a dismembered arm, maybe a head. Maybe Duong, maybe Hai. But you don’t see anything like that, just the melted, twisted pieces of metal that used to be your car and the three parked next to it.

You just stare at the rubble.

“Major General!” It’s the voice of Duong, and it comes from right by the door. You look over and it’s your men, all of them except for Nam. They’ve got cigarettes in their hands smoke coming out of their mouths. You and Kiet walk over to them. Your legs are a little bit weak. When they offer you a cigarette, you take it with hands that tremble, but they’re all too drunk to notice.

Obviously, you can’t drive any of them home.

In the end, the police tell you that someone did die in that explosion–a doctor, a man who treated soldiers of both sides without discrimination, a man who happened to park his car right next to yours. You nod, and go home. You stopped grieving for innocent men a long time ago.

You’re asleep with your second wife when the next time they try to kill you. It’s one o’clock in the morning and too hot under the blankets, but you curl around her anyways because you miss women and you miss her and your other wife doesn’t want you in her bed. She sleeps like a starfish, her arms and legs splayed all over the bed, and you have to crawl into the largest space you can find and slowly move her limbs around until there’s room for you to slide in beside her. This time, the noise is a thump. It’s only the slightest of thumps, but you’ve always been a light sleeper. You sit up in bed, peering into the silvery darkness, but there’s nothing. And then– there it is, another thump. It’s above you somewhere. The roof.

Footsteps now, but you recognize the light, even pace from down the hall. The footsteps grow louder until your son’s silhouette appears in the doorway, where he hesitates. “Father?”

You love your son more than you love either of your wives. He’s going to be a great man; you know it already. You can already see yourself in him–the furrow of his brow, the lightness of his sleep, the pronunciation of his words. He’s only fourteen years old, but as the oldest son in a house where the father is often away, he’s had to grow up far too quickly. But this is life, and that’s how things work.

“Yes, Tuan?”

He clears his throat, but his voice still gives an unseemly crack on the first word. “Father, someone is on the roof.”

Through your determined fear, you still feel pride. “I heard,” you say. “I know. Go back to your room.”

For a second, you have the most irrational worry that he’ll disobey, that he’ll say, “No,” but this is your son. You raised him. He doesn’t disobey you.

Tuan gives you a curt nod, and he’s about to turn around, but then—there, another noise.

Footsteps, and your head snaps toward the source. But again, the sound is both all wrong and all right: little feet slapping against the plastic tiles.

Your daughter’s tiny face appears in the doorway. “Daddy, I heard a noise.”

You don’t have to tell Tuan what to do. He picks up his half-sister and carries her away, his pace quick. “Here, let your big brother tell you a story,” he says. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl named An Ha.” His voice 15 JournalJournal Issue Issue #2 #2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

disappears into the darkness as he walks down the hall. Then a door opens and shuts, and you can’t hear him anymore.

The next noise to come is so soft that if you weren’t a military man in a situation like this, you would have dismissed it as the creaking of the night. But you scan the darkness as you climb out of bed, slowly, careful to keep from waking your wife, and reach into the box near the side of your bed. Your gun warms quickly in your hand as you move, silent, through your house. When you pass your daughter’s room, you hear the crackling of your son’s voice and the high, happy giggle of a happy little girl. Tuan pauses his storytelling as you pass the door, and then continues as you move on. As you creep past your first wife’s bedroom and into the living room, you hear another noise.

Then, two yards away, you see the cat.

It’s a pretty little cat: sleek and grayish, with black spots on it. This isn’t the kind of cat that roams the base, and it’s too neat—fur too smooth, feet too clean. Not a wild cat, and your family doesn’t leave windows and doors open anymore. It’s a scouting cat.

It’s a practical thing to do, when you think about it. Much more practical than just sending in a man with a gun and heavy footsteps. Send a cat instead, and if it comes back alive, your victim is either unaware, or an idiot. You shoot it. Then, for good measure, you stick your arm up in the unlit fireplace and fire two shots up the chimney, too. The shells of your bullets clatter to the sooty stone of the bottom of the fireplace. There’s a scuffling on the roof, the sliding of feet on the shingles, a shout, and then nothing.

You carry the cat out to the garbage. The next day, you show Tuan how to shoot a gun.

The third time is entirely your fault. After they blew up your car at the bar, you hired an armed guard. He is a cheerful guy, despite the war. You doubt he is older than twenty-two, but he works harder than most people you know.

“My daughter has a presentation at her school today,” he says, grinning. One of his canines is missing, but that’s not too uncommon in Vietnam.

You guide the car down a narrow road as he talks. His chatter is pleasant, rather than irritating. He speaks of his children, two little girls born within a year of each other, and his wife, who he is completely enamored with. It’s hard to concentrate on what he’s saying because this is an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar town, but you do your best.

He sits in the back seat, directly behind you. Next to you is your lieutenant general, who raises a brow at you whenever your armed guard talks. It’s not usual for someone of such a low rank to chatter in front of high- ranking officers, but since you don’t mind and the lieutenant general trusts you, he doesn’t say anything. Your brigadier general sits behind him, staring silently out the window. Surely all of this wife-talk is getting him down, even though it was months since his ran away. Kiet sits in the middle, reading a letter. His lips move as he reads.

You manage to find a parking space right outside the restaurant. It’s not usually crowded here, even though

it is the best restaurant in town, according to your armed guard. He knows all of the restaurants in this town, because—

“Chien,” you say, turning to him as you put your car in parking mode. “How far do you live from here?”

“Fifteen minutes walking,” he says.

You wait until everyone’s out of the car before you speak again. “Go home,” you say, and you can’t help but smile. “Go watch your daughter’s presentation.”

The pockmarks on his face disappear into the folds of his happiness. He’s been stationed at your base for over a year, and probably hasn’t seen his family in months.

He stutters over his gratitude, but you just say, “Go! Be back in three hours.”

He walks away from the restaurant before breaking into a run.

Your lieutenant general just chuckles at you. The brigadier general smiles, just a little bit. Kiet folds up the letter. The four of you cross the street and head into the restaurant, leaving your car alone in the parking lot.

That was your first mistake. The lunch is good as Chien said it would be. You eat a meal that’s known as Beef Served Seven Ways, and it’s as expensive as it sounds: beef salad, beef with shrimp crackers, beef in vinegar fondue, three types of grilled beef wraps, and beef porridge with fried fish. It’s wedding fare, probably not what people would consider appropriate in the lean times of war, but you don’t do this often.

You think of your family as the shrimp crackers shatter between your teeth. What are they doing now? Are they safe?

They’re safer than you are. Later, you’ll learn that as your fourth course comes from the kitchen, greasy fingers are slipping a rubber band around a bomb. You’re not an expert on explosives, but this one is the kind that requires pressure to keep from detonating, which the rubber band is meant to provide. As it sits in the gasoline tank of a car, the rubber band contracts until it can no longer keep from breaking.

Something about starting the car triggers the incendiary mechanism, and that means death.

You’re not thinking about any of this as you enjoy your porridge, or as you pay for the meal, or as you pull a toothpick from the dispenser and stick it in your mouth. Your colleagues thank you and you say, “No problem,” and the four of you squint as you bring yourselves back into the sunlight and get into the car. It’s not too hot and not too cold, and the air smells of flowers and fried pork and shrimp paste and gunpowder.

You start the engine. The car explodes, and you die.

The Juggler

Written By - Cheryl Klein Illustrated By - Scott Gandell

Every night, Amalia Reyna prayed to Saint Julian to make her reborn. As whom or what, she didn’t know, so that was part of her prayer: Dear Saint Julian in Heaven, make me . . . . Then her thoughts would trail off.

She’d found the candle at the corner store one day when they were out of Virgenes de Guadalupe. She lived in a group home called Julian House, on Julian Avenue, so he was an inherently intriguing saint, even if he lacked La Virgen’s style. He was ghost-pale, like they all were, with a cape and tights and a sword. He wore a pinkish sarong over his tights, and his free hand perched on his hip in a way that made him look kind of gay. When Amalia turned the candle around, she read that he was the patron saint of circus workers, clowns, boatmen, innkeepers, wandering musicians, murderers, travelers, shepherds, childless people, pilgrims, jugglers, and hospitallers. She didn’t know what a hospitaller was, but she decided that Julian would be her patron saint too, since he seemed rather inclusive.

For the past few nights, her prayer had been more specific than usual: Dear Saint Julian in Heaven, help me juggle really good so I can join that circus next door and get outta here. She remembered the carnival that had blossomed in an empty lot one night last summer, a place of ringing bells and flashing lights and hot sugary smells. Her now-ex-boyfriend Jesús had won her a giant octopus stuffed with something that crinkled when she hugged it. Then he’d won a teddy bear holding a heart and given it to another girl, so she’d had to kick that girl’s ass.

In early spring, the circus lady had moved into the top half of the house next door. She wasn’t the first white person to live on Julian Avenue or even the second. Julian Avenue was one and a half miles from Amalia’s mother’s house, but there were no white people on Avenue 43. The circus lady was as pale as Saint Julian, with big tetas and hair a bright, unnatural red that Amalia would love to try herself. Right now Amalia had fried burgundy waves.

The circus lady had been hanging by her knees from the railing of her front balcony when Amalia had gotten home from school Monday afternoon. It had been a long, traffic-stunted cab ride from Hancock Park, the driver complaining the whole way that DCFS didn’t pay him enough to drive her ass to a special school every day through this hell—she damn well better be doing all her homework. In fact, Amalia was.

The circus lady dismounted and watched them from her balcony. Amalia watched her from the oil-stained driveway of the group home. The circus lady bounded down the steps like the boldest of the feral cats that hung around Julian House.

“Do you live there?” The circus lady pointed to the big, Victorian house. It was painted the same yellow-green as the hills that cradled Highland Park. There was a half-dead vegetable garden and a basketball hoop. It was pretty if you didn’t look too closely. If you did, it was institutional.

“Yeah.” “What is it, exactly? I’ve been wondering. I’m Ginger, by the way.”

“It’s a group home. For, like, kids who parents treat them bad or who on probation. Nice to meet you, Ginger. My name is Amalia.” She wasn’t afraid of adults. They usually liked her.

“Pretty name.” Ginger seemed unfazed by the group-home thing. That was good. Amalia didn’t like to be treated like an orphan. “Hang on, I want to give you something.”

She scaled the stairs to her house again, then returned with a bright pink flier. Amalia waited. She knew Mary Jo, the house manager, would be watching from the window by now, wondering what sort of trouble Amalia was getting into.

“I direct this grassroots political circus troupe that focuses on community engagement,” she explained. “We just moved to L.A., and we’re having auditions.”

Amalia took the flyer and read out loud: “‘Do you juggle like a’ . . . what this word?”

“Jezebel. She’s sort of a slut from the Bible. But it doesn’t really mean anything in this context. I just liked the sound of it.”

Amalia liked that Ginger had said slut in front of her, but had not called her one. “Whadchu want me to do with this?” she asked.

“Just put it up in the . . . group home. If you’re allowed to—I mean, maybe there are rules about posting stuff, like at Starbucks. And audition if you want to. We want to get some young people involved. Do you have any performance background?”

Get some young people involved. Now she sounded like the woman who’d given Amalia’s class a free tour of the opera, or the guy from Heal the Bay who’d seemed convinced that picking up trash on the beach would make them feel better about themselves. But Ginger was wearing leggings and a tank top the color of the flier. She had big white sunglasses on top her traffic cone hair, and she’d said slut. She might be different.

And so Amalia had begun to imagine herself in a circus. Something lithe and free. A creature who traveled from ocean to ocean instead of from Julian Avenue to Avenue 43. These reveries were always sneaking up on her. Her English teacher called it daydreaming, but Amalia was looking for a key to her fate, and the process was as lovely and mystical as a math problem. She was getting a B- in English and an A in Algebra 2. If rebirth were around the corner, the present lost its power.

“Yeah,” she told Ginger. “I juggle a little bit.”

That was Monday. She’d had five days to learn to juggle. Apples, oranges, a nubby hacky sack stolen from her hippie housemate. A counselor at the day program had helped. She could now reliably keep three balls (or whatever) in the air, but she knew four would be better. She wished she could at least toss them higher—the third was never thrown so much as passed from right hand to left, like some quick, illegal exchange.

“Whadchu think?” she asked Nicky, who had been her roommate for eight of the nine months she’d lived at Julian House. Decades, in group-home time.

“It’s cool, but I’d want to be the lady on the horse. With, like, the little outfit?” Nicky sat cross-legged on her twin bed, her big stomach resting on her thighs. She was wearing a T-shirt with the word Princess stretched tight across her chest.

“Nicky. Where I’ma get a horse? Mary Jo only let me take this apple ’cause it bruised and nasty. And no offense or nothing, but you ride a horse, he be like, Ow, my back! My back!” She limped around the room to illustrate her point. Nicky giggled amiably.

It was Saturday morning. They’d finished their chores just before it had gotten hot, spraying all the scratched moldings and furniture with so much Pledge you’d think they were taggers. Sometimes Amalia wished Julian House didn’t look quite so much like her mom’s place: polished and poor. She craved the kind of clutter you could hide treasure in.

She was already dressed for the audition in her favorite cargo sweats, new Pumas from the Garment District, and a tank top that she hoped looked kind of like Ginger’s but not in an obvious way. She’d painted long black lines on her upper eyelids, which made her eyes even more feline. Her Avenues homies, the ones she was trying to stay away from now that she went to a special school and got good grades, had always called her Cat Eyes. Her eyes were light brown, flecked with green and gold, and they turned up at the corners. They were her best feature, not just because they made even her science teacher nervous and deferential, but because, when she looked in the mirror, they promised her that she was not of this world.

Mary Jo knocked hard on the door frame. It was stupid, because the door was always open. House rules. But the staff was full of fake gestures of respect.

“Amalia. Your social worker’s here. Come on down.” “It’s Saturday,” Amalia protested.

“So? Maybe he has class during the week, I don’t know.” Mary Jo had a deep voice from years of smoking, although she’d quit. She wore her jeans low and her hair in cornrows. Everyone said she was a dyke, except for those who were positive she was hooking up with the guy who delivered crates of yellow cheese and soft white bread.

“I have an audition in twenty minutes!” said Amalia.

“Well, your audition will have to wait, Ms. So-and-So.” Mary Jo had a profound lack of curiosity about the girls, but ultimately, she seemed to know everything already.

A white guy Amalia had never seen before was waiting for her in Mary Jo’s office. “What happen to Kara?” Amalia asked. “She had to go back to school in Massachusetts. I’m Michael.” “You my new social worker? You look like the Jonas Brothers.”

“All of them?” He raised his eyebrows and smiled a Jonas Brothers smile. “Yeah.”

It might be fun to have a cute social worker. Amalia juggled people too: mother, siblings, social worker, psychologist, psychiatrist, wrap-around, house manager, housemates, teachers, classmates, and, though she kept trying to give them up, her Avenues homies. She had a different costume for each, a different endearing and genuine attitude. She gave herself fully, searching for how each might save her.

Michael opened a leather folder that contained a yellow notepad and a printout of her files, or at least an excerpt. It would take a lot of paper to print all 15 years of her life.

“So, let’s see, you’ve been visiting your mother every other weekend for the past . . . six months, it looks like. How’s that going?”

“It’s good.”

“You and your mom are getting along?”

“Yeah, we try and respect each other. She know not to lay hands on me no more, and I don’t lay hands on her neither.”

“Good, good.” He would stay here, in Mary Jo’s swiveling office chair, until he had proof he was doing a good job. Amalia could feel him wanting this from her, and because it was what she was good at—feeling the magnetism of want and responding—she gave it to him.

“And her boyfriend? He don’t come around no more either. She kick him out.”

“Right, I was going to ask you about that. About Eddy Beltrán. The man you attacked after he . . .”

Amalia knew he was only pretending to search the files for what El Cabrón had done. “After he keep on raping me.” She’d learned to say the words with chin up, eyes straight ahead. She could look straight through El Cabrón, and she could look through social workers too. “I stab him with a knife. Just in the leg, he ain’t hurt too bad. I know violence is not the answer. That what my therapist say. It probably say all that in those papers.”

“It does,” said Michael, “but I want to hear it from you too. Did your mother tell you that she actually filed a restraining order against Mr. Beltrán?”

The last time Amalia had been home, she’d babysat her little brother and sister so her mom could see a new guy, someone she’d met at the laundromat. She’d assured Amalia this one was nice, not like El Cabrón, but Amalia had hidden her older brother’s knife beneath her pillow just in case. Nothing had happened. She’d stayed awake watching TV, listening to her sister’s heavy breath beside her, and sliding the knife across her inner thigh. She still had a tic-tac-toe board of thin red lines beneath her sweats.

“Um, yeah, I think she told me that.” “That’s great news,” said Michael. “Do you know why?” Amalia shook her head. “It’s great news because—I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but your mom has completed her parenting classes, and the home visits are going well, and you’ve been doing well in school and not getting in trouble. You have a court date scheduled for September 19. If things keep going the way they’ve been going, the judge might say you can go home.”

This was the part where she was supposed to squeal like a fool, maybe dance around the office, maybe even hug him. What she was thinking was, September a long way away. She might be with the circus in New York or Paris by then. Her mom might be back with El Cabrón or married to the laundromat guy. Four months. She’d had her whole relationship with Jesús in that length of time. Her heart was thrown in the air like an apple, then dropped with a fleshy thud.

“It will be your choice, of course,” said Michael, as if things often were.

“Thank you,” said Amalia. She squinted at the clock in the corner of Mary Jo’s computer monitor behind Michael’s head. “I don’t wanna be rude or nothing, but are we all done? I was gonna take my community pass at 11.”

The audition had already started when she arrived. A handwritten sign directed her to the backyard. Rows of folding chairs were set up on the cement patio, turning the grass into a stage. A skinny black girl with two long, messy braids beckoned Amalia over to a table with a clipboard on it. The day was hot, and beads of sweat formed between Amalia’s hand and the pen. In large round letters, she filled in the blanks, and only later did she wish she had a cell phone. She’d listed Mary Jo’s office number, which always went to voicemail or one of the assistant house managers, some of whom only pretended to write down messages. But unlike when teachers or cops called, this time Amalia wanted to be reachable.

She sat cross-legged in a folding chair and watched her competition perform. They all seemed to be visiting Highland Park from another world. They had green and purple hair. They carried hula hoops and sticks they set on fire. They wore fluttery rags that made Amalia think of fairytales. In the margins of the yard, they unfolded their long limbs like exotic insects, stretching legs above their heads, bending themselves backward into U shapes.

They were almost all white, and they were all older than Amalia. It was chin up, eyes forward time.

“Amalia Reyna, you’re next.” Ginger gave her a hey, neighbor grin that made her chest feel warm.

Amalia looked at the rows of fairytale faces. She wished she had something real to juggle. Already a guy had juggled bowling pins, each cartwheeling in the air before he caught it effortlessly. He’d taken a bow, holding three pins in each hand like a bouquet.

“Um, I’ma juggle also,” she told her audience. They all saw she was a kid and nodded encouragingly.

Chin up. Eyes on her apple, her orange, Lisbette’s hacky sack. Soon they were looping from hand to hand in steady rhythm. This, she told Saint Julian, whom she rarely prayed to during the day, this what I’m talking about.

She wanted to want to go home. But at her mother’s house there was no room to want things. True, her mom and siblings were her people in a way that Mary Jo and Nicky would never be. But at home she had to watch her back, and Lauren’s and Johnnie’s too. Every time she did homework, she had to explain to her homies why she couldn’t kick it with them, explain to her mom why she couldn’t help her sell soup on the corner. At Julian House, she had the luxury of groaning loudly with the other girls when the house managers made them sit down and do homework for an hour and a half before TV time.

The apple, the orange, the hacky sack.

She didn’t know how to catch everything in a lovely bouquet. She’d never stopped juggling by choice, only as a result of failure. Maybe if she stood here long enough, she’d learn. Saint Julian would help her, seeing what she was meant to be. Had she been juggling for minutes? Hours?

But it wasn’t Saint Julian who intervened, it was Webb Wellington, though she wouldn’t learn his name until later.

When she first saw him, he wasn’t so much a him as an it, a creature from a late-night movie in a baseball cap. Every inch of his skin was cracked. Hard white plates broken up by red crevices. His skin reminded her of stretches of the desert she’d passed through a long time ago, bouncing on her mom’s sweaty back. As he approached the sign-in table, she realized that her love of zombies did not extend to real life. The apple, the orange, and the hacky sack fell to the ground.

Everyone was as distracted as she was, but Ginger managed to thank her for her performance. The seat Amalia returned to was only two chairs away from the one the zombie had chosen, and those two had mysteriously cleared out, giving her an unobstructed view.

In Oaxaca City, where Amalia had spent the first six years of her life, there had been a boy whose arm and neck had been burned, along with a half-moon of his face. He had begged outside the basilica, his good brown eye following Amalia and other children close to his age. The eye seemed to ask why their fate was to hold their parents’ hands and shop at the zócalo and light candles inside the church, and his was to be here in the hot sun like the fire that had burned him.

Ginger called Webb Wellington to the grass stage, and it was only then that Amalia noticed he was carrying a guitar.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said in a perfectly normal voice. “I drove up from San Diego. Traffic was awful. Anyway, I’m the freak you guys were looking for in your ad, I hope. I’m going to sing a couple of songs I wrote.”

His guitar squeaked as he tuned it. Then he began singing, in a better than normal voice, a song about being in love with a girl at his office. In America, zombies worked in offices. It was pretty good, Amalia decided, like a song that would play on that station her English teacher listened to.

The rest of the performers were studying Webb the way the girls at Julian House scrutinized newcomers, making guesses about his life, trying to figure out if he would be a threat to them. A few people had very determined smiles on their faces.

Ginger, though, was leaning against the side of the house, one leg folded beneath her like a flamingo. She wore a polka dot sundress and a half-smile. When she flipped her hair from one muscular shoulder to the other, Amalia recognized the gesture, the pose. It was how she’d waited for Jesús outside his apartment building, arranging herself so that she’d be the first thing he saw when he returned from whatever Avenues mission he was on that night.

Ginger liked Webb, Amalia realized. Or at least she wasn’t scared of him. Maybe the circus was a place where you didn’t have to be just one thing. Saint Julian would watch over all the selves she juggled, and maybe Ginger would look at her as something other than a stack of records in a manila folder, and maybe Webb would be the freak so she wouldn’t have to.

Webb was the last person to audition, which was good, because who could have followed him? Ginger thanked everyone for their time and said she would call about callbacks.

“I keep forgetting this is L.A. You guys know the drill.”

The crowd thinned, but Amalia hung around because she had 39 minutes left before she had to be back at the group home, and she didn’t have any money, so she couldn’t buy anything at the store or even take the Gold Line anywhere.

Ginger said, “Amalia, hey, great job today. How long have you been juggling?” “Almost a week now.”

“Seriously? You learned all that in a week?” Adults were always surprised that she was good at things. But the truth was, she was good at lots of things: math, poetry, card games, making quesadillas, navigating bus schedules, breaking up fights, starting fights.

“I could get better,” Amalia said. “That guy with the bowling pins was really good. But he probably been doing that since he was my age.”

“You might be right. Some of these people are self-taught, but a ton of them took lessons at all kinds of expensive places. It takes a lot of training to look bohemian.”

“What’s pojimian?” “Like being a free spirit, sort of. Doing your own thing.”

“Oh. I’m pretty pojimian then. I always be getting in trouble for doing my own thing,” Amalia laughed.

Ginger nibbled on the tip of an orange fingernail, considering something. “Amalia, would you like to be our circus troupe’s intern? Would the group home allow you to do something like that?”

“Whadchu mean, be a intern?” On TV, interns were young, pretty doctors, but that didn’t make any sense in this context.

“Help out with different things, just odds and ends. And study what we do here. Like an apprenticeship. You’d be in the shows too, I just don’t know in what capacity yet.”

Amalia knew this meant her juggling act had not been as impressive as she’d hoped. But it also meant more

community passes. (She was already imagining herself repeating Ginger’s words to Mary Jo: like a aprenta ship.) It meant backbends and bowling pins. It meant a whole new vocabulary that would make her mysterious and interesting to the other girls. It might mean Saturdays spent neither at the group home nor at her mother’s house but among lemon trees and dancers. And might and maybe were enough.

“Hell, yeah,” she told Ginger. Then, in what she imagined was a more professional voice, one suited to a young doctor, she said, “Thank you very much for the opportunity.”

Love, Dove

Written By - Eva Huang Illustrated By - Leora Wien

Dove walks into Paradise Palms, balancing a five-pound box of chocolates along with a king-sized Twix bar and a jar of red licorice. She drops the box of chocolates off at the front desk, telling Lara the receptionist that they’re for anyone who stops by, and continues walking until she reaches Room 1176. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, telling herself it won’t be like the last Sunday, Dove pastes a smile on her face.

The fragile husk of a woman, almost comically doll-sized in the massive bed, cap of gray-white hair serving to emphasize her facial features—wide eyes, a button of a nose, and a pointy chin—stares at her. “Who are you?” she imperiously demands. She sounds like an empress: haughty, untouchable, and at the top of the world.

“I’m Dove. I come visit you sometimes.” It’s the easiest way to start, something she learned from trial after trial.

“Well. I suppose I could entertain a visitor.” Marguerite nods at the girl shortly. Her bones ache, she’s thirsty, and she’s been lying alone for hours. Moreover, she can’t reach the glass of water on her nightstand. She eyes it meaningfully.

Dove sets down the candy and hands the glass of water to Marguerite carefully. She sips and hands it back, hands shaking a bit. Dove doesn’t remark on it, but her heart breaks a little bit more. These visits sometimes lead to her weeping quietly in her car as she drives away. Today feels like one of those days. But she puts the glass of water back and smiles. “So, how are you doing today?”

“As well as can be expected. I’m 89 years old, you know,” Marguerite declares proudly.

“Wow,” Dove nods, trying to seem impressed. Actually, Marguerite is 83. Every time Dove comes, she can’t help thinking optimistically before opening the door that surely this time will be better. Surely this time Marguerite will remember more. Maybe Dove’s just seen The Notebook far too many times, but she can’t believe that Marguerite won’t have magic moments, at least one: one moment when she’s fully aware of herself, when she remembers, remembers at last everything she’s lived through, the people who love her. One moment, is that so much to ask for?

Every single time, within the first five minutes Dove’s optimism deflates, like a balloon popped by a cruel child with a bobby pin. Only there is no one to blame, which makes it even harder. Nothing to do but keep her head up, try her best even though her best will be all but meaningless by tomorrow.

“I don’t want to talk about myself, though. So, Dove, do you have a young man?” Marguerite’s eyes brighten in anticipation. She doesn’t remember her name sometimes, doesn’t remember where she is. She might not remember Dove tomorrow, let alone this conversation, but she always asks about love—love and relationships—without fail.

Dove hesitates, not knowing how to reply. She and Tyler have been seeing each other for a few months, but their relationship hasn’t been established. She likes him, sure, and she thinks he likes her, too, but the words boyfriend and girlfriend (as well as relationship) haven’t been mentioned, at least not yet. “Not exactly,” she hedges. Same answer as last time, and the time before that.

“Why not? You’re a pretty girl.”

Dove laughs, half-amused, half-exasperated. Marguerite tells her this every time she doesn’t recognize her. “Thank you.”

Marguerite shrugs expansively. “Don’t thank me. I’m only telling the truth. You are a pretty girl. There are lots of pretty girls. One day you’ll all wake up, and you won’t be. But you’re not thinking of that yet. I was the same way. I was beautiful back in my day. See that picture?”

She points to the largest, most prominent of the group of framed pictures on her bureau. It’s a beautiful young woman in a red dress laughing, eyes brightly bold. “That’s me.”

“You were stunning. Who’s that?” Dove should know better, but points to a picture of a toddler in a white dress, flashing a dimpled grin, holding on to a younger Marguerite’s hand.

“That’s . . . that’s . . .” She falters but recovers momentarily, “My niece, Mimi.”

Her two nieces are named Amanda and Iris. She’s grasping at straws, plucking names out of fragmented memories.

“Oh? She’s adorable. How old is she now?” Dove feels cruel—maybe she’s the cruel child popping her own balloon—and guilt pricks her conscience, but she can’t help herself and continues the charade, wanting to poke and prod and see exactly what her grandmother remembers of her.

“Twenty-five. She’s married to a doctor,” Marguerite adds. She doesn’t know why she says these things, things that might be truth or lies or maybe some mixture of both, like so much of life. But when the world is ever- shifting, when memories are hazy on good days and completely gone on bad days, she lets whatever tumbles out of her mouth out instead of holding it close.

Dove is actually 27 and far from marriage to anyone, let alone a doctor. She wonders if she would find any patterns in Marguerite’s words if she wrote down everything Marguerite said on these Sunday visits, wonders if there’s rhyme or reason or any sense in it. She points to another picture, a graduation picture. A young woman with earnest eyes in a cap and gown—the toddler grown up—smiling hopefully, dimples showing. “And that?”

“My granddaughter, Robin. She teaches the third grade.” Words. They are just words. Truth or lies, maybe it 27 JournalJournal Issue Issue #2 #2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

doesn’t matter so much. Maybe in the end everything gets mixed up. They are only words that are said, and she has to say something, doesn’t she? She wants to be sure again, certain of something. She misses that, so much. She is tired, so tired of searching for answers when she doesn’t even know the right questions. She thinks maybe she used to be a woman who was sure of herself, sure of her life. And so she says things in this way, even though she is uncertain. Uncertain words said in a sure manner, but who is she fooling?

Dove’s mother, Viola, teaches fifth grade. And Dove does have a cousin named Robin, though she’s a financial analyst at Washington Mutual. Jealousy stabs her. Why does Marguerite remember Robin and not her?

“And the happy couple?” Dove gestures to the wedding picture next to that one, a bride and a groom slicing cake.

“My nephew and his wife, Neil and Marcy, on their wedding day.”

It’s actually Dove’s Uncle Kenneth and Aunt Joan, but Dove merely nods. Suddenly sick of this twisted little imaginary-family game, Dove offers, “It’s such a lovely day out. Would you like me to wheel you out to the garden?”

Marguerite acquiesces, and Dove helps her into the nearby wheelchair, tucking an afghan onto her lap. They reach the garden a few minutes later, and Dove breathes in a lungful of air, her first deep breath in the half hour or so she’s been here. The garden, although not exactly pristine with its cracked fountain and scraggly rows of flowers along a lawn with a few brown patches, is the one place in the entire nursing home she feels remotely at rest. Paradise Palms indeed. She wonders if anyone else shares her sentiment.

Maybe the person who named the place just had a sick sense of humor? No, that would be too callous, too vicious. Maybe whoever named the place just wanted to escape to a sunny beach in southern California or Florida, and this was as close as it got. If she could name a nursing home, what would she name it? She’s not sure, but the name certainly wouldn’t involve gardens or paradise. There are enough liars in this world, enough lies. Poor lost souls here, poor lost souls everywhere.

Dove pushes the anti-lock brake on the wheelchair and seats herself at the edge of the fountain, tilting her face up to the sun and enjoying the warmth. Marguerite murmurs, almost to herself, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done . . .”

“Who wrote that?” Dove inquires. This is more the grandmother, the beloved grandmother, she remembers from childhood, who recited poetry from memory in the garden she took such pride in. She would be so critical of the garden here, insistent on helping to change it. She would have wanted roses.

“Do you know, I can’t recall,” Marguerite replies, bemused. She doesn’t know where that came from, it just came out like everything else she says these days, but sometimes true words spill forth, too. True words. She might not know herself or anyone or anything else these days, but sometimes she reaches these moments, true moments, moments when she feels like she’s attained some state of grace. Moments when she isn’t fretful and tired anymore, moments when everything else recedes but truth and sunshine.

“Would you like me to read to you? I brought a book of poetry.” Keats, whom Marguerite had loved. She had always told Dove that she’d known she would marry Dove’s Grandfather Henry the moment he recited Keats to

her—Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art . . ..

Marguerite nods, and Dove reads for a half-hour or so, losing herself into the poetry. When she looks up, having just finished one of her personal favorites, “When I have fears that I may cease to be,” she finds Marguerite fast asleep. But there is fitful sleep and restful sleep, and this sleep looks restful. Or she hopes, anyway. She always hopes. Dove closes the book and wheels Marguerite smoothly back to her room, managing to tuck her back into bed without waking her. Maybe it’s not one of those cry-in-the-car days after all: no rhyme or reason to it, any of it, but she’s just grateful it was a fairly good day. Grateful that there were no tears, no tantrums this time. No need to call a nurse.

She leaves the Twix bar and the glass of water within easy reach on the bureau next to the bed, scrawls on a Post-it, “Happy Valentine’s Day. Love, Dove,” sticks it onto the Twix, and gathers her things to go.

Love Will Make You Naked

Written By - Jervey Tervalon Illustrated By - Jessica Chrysler

What could he do about it? Shit like this happened, and all you could do was deal with it. Who would have thought she’d do him like that. Sometimes you get gotted, got gotted or getted, whatever. What could he do but walk home; rushing wouldn’t change anything, except draw attention, and he was drawing enough attention. As least he had turned off of Crenshaw Blvd, he had sense enough to do that, though that didn’t make up for how he got caught slipping. What could he do now but keep walking and hope the police wouldn’t roll up. If they did, they’d for sure take him to juvy. Yeah, they’d take him to Juvenile, maybe the psych unit, and then his daddy would have to come and get him and do his usual bullshit. “Officer, it’s hard when you got a son like him. He does things, and the boy gets into trouble. It’s a strain and chore to keep him on the right path.”

Yes, Daddy had talked him out of lots of trouble. He had yet to do time for stealing hubcaps, breaking windows, and the occasional purse snatch. Seems like the police wanted to believe Daddy. Though Daddy looked crazy, sporting a gray pompadour but always in his work clothes, people liked him because he was sincere even when he was drunk or lying so obviously that anybody should have been able to tell. People just liked his father. Googie didn’t have that kind of talent, especially with the police. The police straight hated him, and that was on a good day.

His feet burned a little on the sidewalk, and when it got bad he’d walk on somebody’s lawn. So far he saw a couple kids playing in the street, and they couldn’t believe what they were seeing and just pointed. A couple of cars swerved looking back at him. But mostly it seemed almost normal to be walking down the street butt- naked. Maybe it was because it was warm, people thought he was walking around in little trunks, or maybe they just didn’t want to see him. How many more blocks, six? He had already walked twenty. He had caught the bus to her house, but he couldn’t catch the bus home with no money—and nothing on, not even drawers.

“You want to swim?” she asked him two hours ago.

It was hot, and she was a Catholic school girl. They weren’t the ones who got you into trouble, or at least that’s what he thought until about an hour or so ago and he learned otherwise. This one was fine, light-skinned with good hair, a nice shape, talked like she was raised right. Girls like that weren’t gonna dog you or at least he had been told that.

But what she did to him . . . damn. Shit was scandalous. “Googie, I want to be with you, but I’m shy. Take your clothes off first, please?”

It seemed reasonable. Why should she be lying? Wasn’t he up in her house, smoking out with her, even getting to squeeze a tit here and there, and then she just about purred when he showed her his ounce. It took him washing cars and cutting lawns and running errands for two months to afford that ounce. Figure that if he rolled it up into skinny joints, he’d be able to make a gang of money. And he was sure that if he shared the good weed with her he’d be hitting that good. That was his plan and he chewed it over again as he got undressed in the rec room that overlooked the pool. He followed her outside, with his hands in front of him to hide his erection, not even bothering to notice that she was dressed in that cute-ass Catholic school uniform while he was there standing bare-assed in the middle of the afternoon by the pool. He wanted to hop in ’cause he was starting to feel embarrassed, but he didn’t want to miss watching her undress. He’d been living for that. He should have thought that was something up when her eyes bulged and she twisted her head about like she didn’t know what direction to look in. Then she stopped and looked at him with horror in her eyes.

“My daddy’s home!” she said, and opened the sliding doors and disappeared into the house.

Googie knew her father by reputation only, and he was happy for that. The rumor was that he used to be a Marine back in the day and that he didn’t take any shit and gave it in buckets to anybody stupid enough to get near his daughter. Feeling suicidally stupid, Googie continued to stand there, wondering what to do, wanting his hard-earned ounce back more than anything. Finally, she stuck her head out of the sliding doors again.

“Go!” “What about my ounce, my clothes!”

“Get out of here!” she shouted, and then from behind her a shadow appeared towering above her.

He heard her: “Daddy, there’s a naked boy in the backyard, and he won’t leave!”

When her daddy didn’t come rushing out to beat him, Googie figured he was going for his gun. That’s when he ran for his life, and kept running, and that that was twenty-one blocks ago. Now he was getting close to home, and he hadn’t had any more trouble, just troubling thoughts that she had set him up, had beat him out of his net worth, one ounce of high-grade weed—actually it was rag weed, but he didn’t know the difference. Yeah, she set his punk ass up. He smelled something acrid, and he looked to the east, and he could see white smoke billowing high in the distance. Maybe the police were seeing about the smoke coming from the Eastside. Those fools over there were always messing with the police, setting fires and shit. That’s all he could hope for, getting home without getting busted.

Hell, yeah.

Then he saw the police roll around the corner. That hadn’t yet scoped him, so he dropped behind a car. Oh, yeah. Busted, they saw him, no fuckin’ way they wouldn’t have.

Run!

The police car roared in reverse, and Googie ran to the backyard of the nearest house. The gate was open, and he exploded through it as he heard car doors slam and the sound of footsteps. When he got truly scared Googie could get his big ass to moving, and he was hauling it big-time. But he didn’t see the dog, and the dog saw him: a muscular pit bull, sleeping in the shade, it woke and charged Googie just as he desperately threw himself at a six-foot-high cinderblock wall.

At that moment Googie thought he could get himself over, but scaling a wall when you’re naked and hanging out all over the place is delicate work. With the dog chomping at him and the police rushing the yard, he got one leg up on the wall and hurt himself in an intimate way that he couldn’t bring himself to think about. All he could do was straddle the wall and moan while the dog barked madly below. The police shouted, and Googie turned to look at them, but he was in so much blinding pain that he lowered his head onto the wall and moaned. He didn’t care if they arrested him or not if they could help him down without causing his nuts to fall off.

The tall white police turned to the shorter black one and pointed in Googie’s direction. “You get off of that wall and bring your ass over here.”

Googie could barely hear them over the pit bull’s manic barking. The dog had yet to see the police, but they saw him and neither made a move to step into the yard. The black police started to laugh.

“He’s yours,” he said to his partner. The white police shook his head. “You shoot the dog, or am I supposed to do it?” “Call animal control.”

“Yeah, right, we’re off shift in three hours, and that’s about the time it’ll take them to get out here.”

They both shrugged and stood there, guns in hand, looking very unsure of what to do next.

“Jesus, I don’t want a fat, naked kid in the backseat funking up the car. You know he’s going to throw up all over it, that’s a given,” the black police said.

Both police shook their heads.

“Let him go. It’s not worth the trouble, not with the rioting on Central, idiots setting fires.”

“Yo, Riles, what are you trying to do, turn over a new leaf?” “Jesus will do that for you.” “Seriously, you found religion?” “Sinners do change.”

The black police grinned, “Yeah, they do, into preachers who drive Benzs.” The white police looked away from the black one and sighed.

The sudden calm enabled Googie to finally catch his breath. The worst had passed, and he realized he could move and that his jewels were firmly in place. The pit bull had stopped leaping at him, and the police stood frozen like they were taking a break. He thought about leaping off the wall and running for it. Lifting himself up into a sitting position he considered his options: he thought about running, and he thought about getting

shot in the back, butt-naked and all, and then getting mauled by a crazy pit bull. That’s the kind of shit that would end up on YouTube. He signaled to the police that he was coming down. They waved him off.

“Go! Keep going, go the other way. Don’t let us see you high on the streets running around naked again, or we will arrest your fat ass,” the black police said.

Googie didn’t know what to make of it, the police giving him a break without his daddy talking for him. Usually they hated his guts—he looked like he wanted to get arrested, one of them boys who stays in trouble.

“Giving you one chance to get your ass out of here,” the black police said.

“Listen to him!” the white one said. Googie realized he had no choice. They were serious. He swung his weight around so that his leg could clear the wall and when he did he lost his balance.

He fell forward, but twisting like a huge salmon hurling itself upstream, he lurched backward, flipping, legs overhead, and hit the ground so hard he bounced. Gasping to get his wind about him, even with his eyes closed he saw stars spinning brightly and pleasantly above him.

***

Limping around the corner, too sore to do more than put one foot before the other, Googie needed help to make it home. Actually he was around the corner from his house, but if his mother saw him naked and scratched up like he was, she’d probably send him, as she had been promising to do, to live with his uncle in Fresno. He’d rather run away than that, living on some hot-ass farm, feeding sheep or whatever he was supposed to do. He didn’t even like his Uncle Neal, the one uncle out of four who didn’t drink or smoke or have cable. He wasn’t gonna live like that.

Jervey would help him; he would give him some clothes. Jervey was stout, though not as portly as him, and Jervey wore a smaller size than he was sporting these days, but he had to have something that could fit. Usually Jervey would be sitting on his porch reading comics or some thick-ass book, but not today. Nobody was on his porch. Googie positioned himself at the side of house so that he’d be semi-concealed as he waited for Jervey.

The door opened! Googie’s heart leaped and he called for him from his hiding space.

“Hey, man! I need some clothes!”

“What? Is that you, Googie?”

His heart sunk. It was Mrs. Michaels, Jervey’s red-faced mama who was often trying to get her son to do housework.

“Yeah, I was seeing if Jervey was around.” “Yeah, he is. He’s getting some mirlitons for me. Go help him pick them.” “I’ll help him, but could you ask him to come out here for a minute?”

Mrs. Michaels didn’t take a step into the house. She just shouted “Jervey!” so long and loud that it hurt Googie’s

ears.

Jervey came outside quickly looking angry and confused. “What, Mama?” “Don’t you what me. You know I don’t play that.” Jervey shrugged. “Okay, Mama.”

“Your friend wants you.” She pointed in the direction of the hedges at the side of the yard.

“Where?” Jervey asked.

“He’s your friend, you find him.”

Mrs. Michaels returned to the house.

Jervey stepped off the porch craning his head around.

“Googie? You hiding or something?”

Googie poked his head out from the hedge. Jervey could see that he was shirtless.

“What’s up with you? You’ve been smoking?”

“Naw, man. I don’t have no clothes.”

Jervey laughed, “That’s some shit.”

“I ain’t lying. It’s true.”

“How you lose your clothes?”

“Over some bitch. Could you please get me some clothes before your crazy-ass brothers come home?”

“Stop lying.”

“Lying about what?” “You were sitting in that little wading pool you got. You know you still do that shit.” “I ain’t lying.” “Then step out here.”

“Fuck it then,” Googie said, and stepped out from behind the hedge with his hand in front of his crotch. Jervey laughed and pointed at him, but Googie knew that was going to happen, and he really didn’t care as long as he got some clothes.

From across the street, the preternaturally nosy Miss Thelma shouted, “Oh, my God! The Villabino boy is walking around naked!”

Miss Thelma’s earthshaking voice was the loudest of a neighborhood of loud voices, sonic torture, piercing and inescapable. Googie nervously eyed the fireplug-shaped old lady with big hair who lived to shout at kids from her porch.

“What is wrong with you? Are you crazy?” Jervey whispered now that he knew Miss Thelma was watching. She had ultra hearing too.

“I told you!” “Shit! I’ll get you something.” Jervey disappeared into the house.

Googie sighed. Soon this shit would be over, and he’d be laughing about it and plotting revenge on the Catholic school girl, but that reverie didn’t last—Miss Thelma was heading across the street to him. Stunned to see her so near, and off of the stronghold of her porch—she never left that porch—all he could do was cover himself with his hands and look toward the sunset as though it was beautiful or profound, when it was just another half-assed sunset.

“Are you on drugs?!” Googie wouldn’t look at her more out of fear than modesty.

“I’m gonna call the police on you! You ain’t gonna be walking around corrupting the neighborhood with your nakedness!”

Googie opened his mouth to say something, but he thought about it, and there wasn’t nothing to say, plus, she wasn’t above smacking somebody. That would be some shit, butt-naked wrestling with an evil, crazy, old lady.

“Don’t think I don’t know it was you and that Michaels boy who put that torpedo down my mail slot!”

Googie shook his head. That was years ago when they were little kids, and it wasn’t a torpedo that they put down her mail box, it was a dead alligator, a little one they had found strung from a streetlight one foggy night. For whatever reason they had decided it would be a good idea to put it down the mail slot and ring the bell.

“You know you boys almost killed me! I grabbed my heart and fell over from finding that torpedo in my living room. What you boys being so heartless for?”

Googie sighed. She had told this to them so many times that he could barely stand to listen to it, and being naked while she told him again made it even weirder. He always wanted to say, It wasn’t a torpedo! It was a dead baby alligator. I don’t even know what a torpedo is!

“You better be glad I didn’t call the police on you about that torpedo. Your parents don’t know how to raise you boys. You two could have gone to jail, and let me tell you, you don’t want to go to jail.”

At that very moment, with Miss Thelma still yelling at him, he sort of wished the police had taken him to jail. The relief he felt when he heard the door open and Jervey calling for him was so strong that he couldn’t help grinning.

“I got to go,” Googie said, but he meant that it was time for Miss Thelma to go. He wasn’t going anywhere, otherwise Mrs. Michaels might see him naked, or somebody else in the neighborhood. He didn’t really care if strangers saw him naked—he just didn’t want people he knew to see him naked—that kind of shit was embarrassing.

Miss Thelma finally turned away, and slowly started making her way across the street.

“You watch yourself, Googie, because I’m watching you,” Miss Thelma said ominously over her shoulder. “Don’t think you gonna be getting away with acting like a pervert. I’ll get you arrested. I swear I will, or I’ll toss hot oil where you don’t want to get hot oil tossed.”

Jervey finally appeared with a handful of clothes.

“What took you so long?! You left me with that lunatic, talking all crazy to me.”

“Sorry, man. I saw her out of the window, but you know I can’t be around that woman. She scares the shit out of me.”

“You! What about me? She’s always bringing up the alligator,” Googie said, while examining the clothes Jervey had brought.

“Yeah, it was your idea to put it down her mail slot.”

“You didn’t stop me,” Googie said. “What’s this, a dress?”

“It’s a muumuu. It’s my mama’s.”

Googie looked at Jervey a long time.

“That ain’t all you got?”

Jervey laughed and came out from behind his back with a pair of overalls.

“This ain’t no time for joking. You don’t know what kind of shit I went through today.”

“Who’s the freak who stole your clothes?”

“The Catholic school girl.”

“The Catholic school girl? Damn, I thought she was a virgin.”

“I think she set me up. Got my weed.”

“Your good weed? That ses?”

“Yeah, and her dad came home just as we were going to skinny-dip in the pool.”

Jervey snorted, “Not that fool, the Marine?”

“Yeah, that’s why I bailed. It was either naked or dead, so I went naked.”

Googie fastened the buttons of the overalls; they were about a size too tight, but he could still fit himself in them, though they strained at the seams.

“So your weed is gone, and your clothes.” “I’d like to get my beanie back.” “The rhinestone one?” 36 JournalJournal IssueIssue #2#2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

“Yep.”

“Damn, you got worked.”

Googie stepped to the sidewalk and gave Jervey a bump.

“Thanks for the clothes. I’m gonna go home and eat and plot how I’m gonna get that bitch back. Start some rumors about her ass.”

“Forget that. You supposed to help me get those mirlitons.”

Googie shook his head. “You ain’t gonna hold me to that. Shit, you see how fucked up I am.”

“I gotta get up on the roof. Least you could do is hold the ladder.”

Every now and then Mrs. Michaels craved mirlitons, pear-shaped vegetables that grew on a vine that covered the garage near the end of the alley. Picking them wasn’t something Jervey liked to do—Googie flat-out refused to do it—but New Orleans called to their parents, and they sooner or later gave in. When the mirlitons got big they developed spikes, and when they dried out they were straight dangerous, and for a while they were popular to throw at unsuspecting poot butts. Really, that shit was devastating: if you got hit flush in the back, you’d bleed like you had been hit by the wrong end of a pincushion. The mirliton was a vicious, dangerous vegetable, but good to eat, if you knew how to cook it. Mrs. Michaels would boil them until they were soft, spoon the meat out of the skin, mix it with ham, onions, and garlic. Then she’d stuff it back into the skins, put breadcrumbs on them, and bake them. It was rare treat, but nobody liked to be crawling around on a broken-down garage roof, scaring away rats and messing with the thorn-covered vine that you had to wrestle with to get the mirlitons.

Googie helped Jervey carry the ladder down the alley to the garage. The basehead who lived in that part of the alley had finally bailed after someone stole his funky-ass shopping cart crammed with all kinds of junk. It was sad about him; he was somebody’s big brother who lost it and turned into somebody who just hung out around trashcans, living like a dog.

“Put it here,” Jervey said. Jervey was pretty cautious, so cautious that he had never gotten arrested or shot at, happy being a poot butt; he lived to stay out of trouble. Googie, though, thought he needed to give that shit up.

“If you put the ladder there, how you supposed to get the good mirlitons?”

Jervey looked to the where the roof of the garage was sagging most and shook his head. He patted the ladder that was secure against the solid wall encircling Mr. Jackson’s yard. He really knew how to build a wall.

“So, you want me to put the ladder against the garage where it looks like the whole roof is gonna cave in?”

“Jervey, you got to stop all your tripping. Stop worrying about shit.”

Googie pushed Jervey aside and started up the ladder just where he thought it should be. Googie had grace about him, though he was fat. He swung up onto the roof and laughed at Jervey.

“It’s a great-ass view up here!” he said, his arms akimbo, looking dashing and rotund. “Just throw the mirlitons down,” Jervey said. “I’m waiting for the rats to go. I think they like eating this shit.”

Googie expertly walked on the sections of the roof that still had a little structural integrity and reached down and twisted the mirlitons off the vine. He flung one down, and Jervey tried to catch it in the paper bag. Once he got it going he started flinging them, and Jervey chased after them like a happy dog chasing tennis balls.

“Hey, they got them dried, deadly ones, the ones with spines.” Onla, another friend of Jervey’s, appeared from around the corner.

Googie and Onla had some kind of enmity going on from elementary school, something to do with who stole whose bike.

“What you fools doing?” “Picking mirlitons.” Onla shrugged. “You like eating that shit?” “It’s good.” “You New Orleans niggas will eat anything.”

“I don’t eat nutria. I don’t eat headcheese. You eat chitterlings. Why you eat something that stinks like shit?” Jervey said. It wasn’t a new conversation: New Orleans vs. anywhere else in the south.

“You know what you doing?” Onla shouted up to Googie. “Yeah, I know what I’m doing. Why the fuck you think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

Onla sneered, “You walking around a broken-down roof, and your fat ass is gonna fall through.”

“Don’t worry about my ass. Worry about your own skinny ass.” “What I got to worry about, you the one up on the roof?”

“If I hit you upside the head with one of these hard-ass mirlitons with spikes coming out of it maybe you’d have something to worry about.”

“Give it a shot, fat boy!”

Of all the things you could call Googie, he didn’t take offense except for fat boy. Fat boy would make him nut up. Googie’s eyes burned, and he had a good arm, and so did Onla. Jervey could see the madness getting ready to start.

“Hey, if you fools are gonna start shit I’m going home.” “I ain’t started shit. That’s fat boy up there, starting shit.”

A mirliton flashed out of the sky, a green meteorite that struck Onla flush in the back. Onla screamed in pain.

“That’s your ass, fat boy!”

It was only because they had all grown up together and that they had been throwing things at each other’s heads

for years that Onla or Googie didn’t rush home looking for a gun under the bed or in a closet. No, they had always settled shit this way, old-fashioned, before old-school, with rocks upside the head.

Parents and responsible people would be worried about somebody losing an eye or getting knocked unconscious; that never happened, but Jervey had seen what did happen on more than a few occasions. Sooner or later one of them would take one to the nuts, and that would end the skirmish as the vanquished would lie writhing while the victor sauntered home. In this case it was Onla who got lucky. While dodging lethal vegetables, he found a loquat, not even a big one, and on the run, flung it at Googie. Googie didn’t even bother to duck; he had the high ground and the deadly ammunition. He gloated. The loquat hit Googie square in the nuts, and he dropped like a dead man. Onla and Jervey looked at each other.

“You killed him,” Jervey said to Onla with horror, and Onla nodded gravely.

“He shouldn’t have been fucking with me,” he said, and with a nod and thump of his fist over his heart, he took off.

His ass is fat, Jervey thought as he scaled the ladder. Maybe he died of a heart attack. But to his relief there was Googie, writhing and moaning.

“You ain’t dying.”

“Nigga, you don’t know.”

“I ain’t your nigga, and you’re not going to die.”

“I’m gonna kill Onla. Hitting me like that, I’m gonna kill his ass.”

“You’re the one who hit him first.”

“He knew. Nobody’s calls me fat boy. I don’t play that shit, not anymore.”

“People used to call you fat boy, and you didn’t nut up.”

“That was then. If you want respect, you got to demand it.”

“Where you get that shit?”

“Your mama told me.”

Jervey flashed a look at Googie, and Googie shrugged.

“She told the both of us last week. You don’t remember? After we got jacked on Jefferson, and you lost your bus money, then she said we had to demand respect.”

“Oh, yeah, demand respect and get shot in the head.”

Googie stood up with help from Jervey, and he looked around, surveying the scene and the precariousness of the

busted-up roof.

“Could have been worse, I could have fallen through and broke my neck.” Jervey nodded as he cautiously picked his way to the ladder. “Hey, don’t bail. Look at that,” Googie said.

From the roof of the ruined garage they could see a gigantic SUV pull up in front of Miss Thelma’s house. Two young women worked their way down from the cab, and one of them, the darker one, held a baby, a big one, a blond baby.

“They look good,” Googie said.

“Yeah, you would never think that Miss Thelma had any relatives who’d actually visit her.”

“Yeah, that bitch stinks.”

“How you know she stinks?”

“You ever smelled her? She stinks.”

“I don’t be sniffing her ass.”

The young women lingered on the porch, waiting for the door to open. Usually, Miss Thelma was at the door— somehow she had cut out.

“Both them freaks be fine,” Googie said. “Which one you want?”

“The black chick is banging. Look at that body: long legs, high ass, pretty face. Shit, I’m sprung.”

“She’s got a white baby.” “So, what are you saying?” “Where she’d find herself a white baby? They don’t grow on trees.” Googie looked Jervey up and down. “You think that fine-ass bitch is a kidnapper?”

Jervey shrugged, “I ain’t saying shit. Maybe she’s a nanny.” “What’s a nanny?” “Somebody who watches rich people’s kids.” “So, you saying?”

“Shit. I ain’t saying shit.”

Jervey shot his eyes at Googie knowing what was going to come next—something Googie-crazy, like sometimes he would do with his hair: big-ass purple curlers, or press it out like his daddy, or even Jheri-curl it up like nobody be doing.

“We should roll over there and mack to them hoes.” “I got a girlfriend.” “Skinny-ass Doris?” “I like them like that.”

“See, you’re going to college, so you don’t need to take risks. You deep into the future, but a nigga like me, I gotta live for the moment.”

Jervey nodded awkwardly and headed for the ladder. “What are you gonna do? Go over and there and introduce

yourself?” “Hell, yeah. I don’t even have a choice.” “I suppose you know what you doing.” “Know what I’m doing? I don’t care what I’m doing, I’m just gonna do it.”

Jervey nodded. Though he thought he should do better, he admired Googie. No matter how crazy Googie’s shit sounded, no matter how messed up he managed to make his own life, he just thought about how he was gonna fuck up next. He deliberated, sweated details, even reflected about what his actions might be, even took responsibility for the resulting disaster caused by his actions, and still he persisted . . . in fucking up.

“Don’t you think you might want to wait a minute before you go barging over there? They might have business with that woman. You’re not going to make much of an impression if that’s what you planning on doing.”

Googie grinned. “Today has been fucked. I got beat out of an ounce of ses. I was forced to walk twenty-six blocks butt-naked. I got chased by a pit bull and the police, got knocked out cold, and got hit in the nuts with a loquat, but I’m not gonna let that stop me from checking out these fine-ass freaks in my neighborhood.”

Googie slid his bulk down that ladder, barefoot and shirtless, resembling more than anything a roguish, fat hillbilly. Jervey watched him stroll around the corner and approach the door of Miss Thelma. What the fuck could he say to her? Miss Thelma hated Googie’s guts; she hated everybody. She was just one hateful bitch, but Googie was at the door, doing what he needed to do. He knocked, and a minute later Miss Thelma appeared. The woman shrieked so loud you’d think he’d bail, run for his life. Even Googie, with his pathological optimism, must have realized it wasn’t a good idea for him to be on her porch; he tried backing away, but not before Miss Thelma burst out of the house with broom in hand, and with a super-kendo move, broke it over his head. Hope and Maria rushed outside and restrained her, and after they calmed Miss Thelma, Hope, while holding Chauncey to her chest, knelt down to where Googie lay on the lawn, disoriented, blood trickling down his face.

From across the way, on top of the garage, Jervey nodded in admiration. Googie was true to himself, fucking up big-time, without a doubt.

Street Trash

Written By - Celeste Gonzales Illustrated By - Allison Strauss

Street Trash The girls from Kauffman . . . Watch ’em grow Into teenage moms onto adult brides Babies adorning immature hips hungry toddlers chasing the tamale man pushing the shopping cart calling him “Papi” I ain’t dropping anchor here

Vegas Locked and confined in a cheap room in Vegas a hooker offered me her silver stilettos to dance she said “click your heels and you’ll be home again, there never was a thing such as ruby slippers” I’m still not home, not inside your arms The windows only open halfway and I can’t breathe I can’t hear the lights or feel the coins off winning slot machines I only see Elvis marrying off girls daring to be women and men singing for a lost dream on the porn-paved sidewalk where the tourists flip their nickels at fancy hotel water fountains

There’s no one knocking at my door not even the maid with clean towels no one offering to turn the bed down since I sleep alone with the telephone book at my side in order to feel something, some name next to me

Xander Tough guy, don’t get angry

Great walls, dead ends It’s getting expensive I know it’s all being told to you Xander, disconnected I still got connections if you still want it, if you can’t get off it

Esther Growing up doesn’t stop at scraped knees and tangled braids Everyone knows what they will never say Bruises on your breasts spit on your lips that isn’t yours even that shade of red won’t dissolve the taste

Diner Talk You hide your face in crowded places hoping you’ll blend in Turning into someone you never wanted to be Dried up from ambition sitting at the table unable to hold a conversation when all you want is to say just one word

Happiness My waistline took a long break so I don’t weigh 120 pounds or am a size 4 I eat donuts Boston cream pies without regret in each bite If you want to find me, I’ll be standing in the buffet line for seconds

Mari I’m told many stories about your wild ways but all I want is to take your knife because I miss you and they’re not just words when you’re slamming doors and downing Jack Daniels On that October night You locked yourself in the bathroom threw away the key waiting for me, demanding love You were 14 years old carrying secrets going full speed into a premature O.D. Adrenaline shots right through the heart Unhinge your jaw it’s only a side effect

In the Lion’s Den Ocean blue dress ripped to shreds Everyone took their piece Little Miss Borderline I’ve been crawling down these melting walls full speed without the help of medication walking fine lines everyday Borderline for the rest of my life Dragged in, pulled out, beaten through I’ll take you down I’ve been battling my psychosis before I’m pawned away looking for the needle to patch it together but you can still see the stitches and I can’t show you where the soul itches I only know it’s there detaching me from my own reflection

You Yeah, I saw you lay down when the sun sets and not get up for days I’d make you swallow pearls just to let you know you’re beautiful I remember you were going through some shit 44 JournalJournal IssueIssue #2#2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

and you didn’t know you could fix that yourself when the ribs have been kicked in and the boots stomping on your neck Yeah, I tasted those nights with you all jacked up on the drugs and the men and the booze and the cries but you ain’t thirteen no more You rolled yourself down through the marrow I heard your prayers too well your pain won’t mean shit to the whole world when they got a 9–5 and deadlines and all you want is someone to appreciate your rhymes You got to nail it on or so they say believe me, girl, you ain’t alone You’ll still rise up and not for me or for him I know your strength

Rare Jewel Promises, promises we all done it before I once knew a man who promised me a pegasus Oh . . . and I’m still waiting I once promised a man change and when I came up short many a times He took his vows and said, “Hey, it’s been nice but I’m done” and I wonder if I can send poetic signals from here but I just might set fire to this city Couldn’t ride out the mood swings through the invaders and the traders along with the pirates and the lovers through all the years leaving the mermaid stranded and the almost woman abandoned Oh and he let me go . . .

The Apartment The apartment is so much bigger since you’re not around I count the hangers where your clothes used to be And I took all your favorite posters down The locks won’t change and you can keep your keys You might come back for your Elvis-style microphone 45 JournalJournal Issue Issue #2 #2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

And maybe for me but I know it’s for the money you loaned me There’s no need to remind me and throw your stones About ignoring the issues since you went along with me It’s bad enough that being lonely isn’t the same as being alone We haven’t spoken intimately since the surgery Unable to conceive the words we break into screaming matches Kicking holes into the walls of the unfinished nursery Winding up with tears and flesh full of scratches You would reluctantly head for the door Before I’d take your Jack Daniels and smash it I’ve cleaned the broken glass from the floor and plastered all the walls myself But we can’t fix ourselves anymore

Tales of a Prostitute Times were different back then Virgin maidens were raped by all the gentlemen It was hard to escape the life of a forced bride Lucy, I’ll testify I never wanted this I’ll never tell my kids I cry of shame at night of believing a man being taken and sold to a high class brothel the beatings of my pimp couldn’t say where I lived I was fifteen years old You helped me cross over where my sin can dry up in Californian sun Lucy, you see my face worn down from all disgrace

Sandee Marie We were delinquent youths tumbling down Hunt Avenue and I’m here now knocking down your door asking you if you wanna come out some more and escape the city of South Gate I never liked being contained I’m sorry, Sandee Marie, where could you be? 46 JournalJournal IssueIssue #2#2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

The advantage you took of me though you said it’s something we could mend you’re not bringing me down again I protected you while you were breaking me I let seven years wash you away Who the fuck is protecting you now? And I still wanna knock you down for treating me the way you did

Pink Tea Here are the women with their lit cigarettes and double-edged words on hand Roaring glories when they bring you down a socialite’s delight when they get their hooks in Do you wanna go home now? Do you recognize what the mirror’s telling you? You’re not high-end couture even with chiffon scarves and delicate lace You’re just a girl from the streets drinking your denial

Incomplete If you need me Me, Sylvia, and William will be hanging out inside of Picasso’s blue period and hold hands while doing psychotherapy Sylvia says she’s just depressed I signed up with Billy as a binge drinker Who loves incomplete women anyway?

Amsterdam The Venice of the North Jump off the water taxi and walk through the Red Light District smoking marijuana cigarettes unrestricted Lost the hotel key and my meal ticket Haven’t planned far enough to give a damn Too distracted by the bridges that don’t burn when I cross them Someone will speak my language but I don’t know if they’ll understand me I’ll just bum a cigarette Pretend I’m not a tourist

Belize

Written By - Miranda Morgan Illustrated By - Jessica Chrysler

My father picked Belize.

The decision was his because he was the one paying for the trip. My father has a romance with Latin America, an idealized view of any country or region with Spanish influence. He used to be a diplomat in Quito, but that was a long time ago. That’s when the love affair began. I’ve seen pictures of him from his time in the Foreign Service. He has hair down to his shoulders, and his eyes look more blue than grey. He was stationed in Ecuador and became fluent in Spanish, boasting that many locals were so impressed with his accent and proficiency that they asked if he was born there.

“No, no,” he would reply.

“Born in North Carolina, attended the University of Virginia.”

My mother also studied at the University of Virginia, but their paths didn’t cross there. They met years later in Manhattan when my mother’s favorite color was black and my dad had already been married once.

It had been years since my father was able to use his Spanish, so he decided on Belize for spring break. My mother was an insomniac then and filled her sleepless nights with Yahoo Answers, strong coffee, and images of vacation destinations. She agreed because she was already well-versed on the Belizean lifestyle, thanks to askjeeves.com. My sister was too young to have a say, and I didn’t want to go to Belize because I thought I was in love and that if I was apart from him for more than a day, I would probably waste away.

The hotel where we stayed was accessible only by boat. We flew into Belmopan and ate tapas at a restaurant without doors. We waited there for a ferry that would take us to the island hotel, and my father conversed with the bartender, moving his hands and rolling his Rs with more vehemence than I had ever heard. I stared at him, his elbows across the bar made of bamboo and palm, and didn’t know my father. He laughed, and I realized that I had forgotten the sound of it.

It was in Belize that I got the most severe sunburn I can remember. My mother shoved a bottle of SPF 75 at me, and I refused to put it on, saying that I was so white, I was almost translucent, and if I didn’t come back home with a decent tan this trip would be a complete waste. So I laid out unprotected, wearing a white bikini that my mother said was too tiny, defiantly sipping a virgin piña colada, becoming the color of uncooked salmon. My forehead got the worst of it. It blistered and was so painful that I was forced to remain expressionless for the next few days. I hid under an oversized, yellow, striped umbrella for the remainder of the trip and watched my father become of the sea. He walked into the water before the sun reached its peak and didn’t emerge until

it was almost too dark. He put my sister on his shoulders, just like he used to do with me before I grew up and before he turned inside himself.

My father took pity on me that night because of my raw forehead and allowed me to use his cell phone to call Belize home.

“Only five minutes though. It’s ridiculously expensive.”

I walked away from my family, to the wharf that was farther down the beach, and called my boyfriend.

It was then that I found out he had gotten into college while I was away, that the college wasn’t near me at all, that the college was Emory, and that was in Atlanta, Atlanta was in Georgia; that we were breakable.

My five minutes was up, but I wasn’t done talking. My father started to walk toward me, yelling to hang up the phone. I wasn’t ready to give up, not yet, and I started to run. I ran down the wharf, the phone clutched to my ear, wanting to hear that it didn’t matter that he was going to college in Atlanta, that it didn’t matter that I was still in high school, that we weren’t like those other couples that broke up when college rolled around. We were different, right?

My father started to run when I started to sprint, screaming that this phone call was going to cost him a fortune and that I better hang up right now, young lady, or else.

I reached the end of the wharf. There was only ocean in front of me. My father wrenched the phone away, disconnecting the call, ignoring my wails, tears, curses.

“We are in Belize for god’s sakes. Look out at the ocean, listen to the language, be here.”

My father was trying to connect, to share with me the love that he had for Central America. He was hoping that his first love would also be mine.

My father let me drive a golf cart the last day in Belize. My mother was terrified and braced herself against the thin body of the cart, holding her breath every time I made a turn. My father didn’t say a word. He didn’t raise his voice when I almost rear-ended the cart of a street vendor who was selling watermelon juice out of glass jars; he didn’t yell and grab the wheel away when I took a wrong turn and became stuck at a dead end, sandwiched between two houses with mud walls. He looked at me and nodded his head forward.

“You can figure it out. You’ll be just fine.” And I was.

That night, we went back to the restaurant without doors, and I stood next to my father at the bar. I couldn’t follow the Spanish he was speaking with the bartender—I was taking French at the time—but I wanted to stand next to him.

I haven’t seen him in a while. That was the last vacation my family went on. My father ran out of money and didn’t know how to get it back. My mother is an insomniac again. My sister doesn’t remember Belize. I tell her stories to remind her. I tell her of the man who spoke with his hands, who taught me how to navigate out of a dead end, who became the ocean, who put her on his shoulders so she could be closer to the stars.

Roadkill

Written By - Miranda Morgan Illustrated By - Allison Strauss

“Hold it still,” Hank said. “It can’t hurt you.”

“It’s still warm.” I grimaced and struggled to hold it down as its heavily clawed feet continued to twitch at random. A bead of sweat trickled down my nose and dropped onto its fuzzy belly.

“That’s because it is a hundred degrees already today,” he grunted.

I watched Hank maneuver a slipknot around its stubby scaled neck. Its soft nose and pink paper-thin tongue hung from its mouth between pointless teeth.

“What are you going to do with it?” asked Alice. “You’ll see,” winked Hank.

I climbed out of the ditch and up to the river road to survey the scene of the collision. The black asphalt covering the river road bubbled and oozed in the intense heat. It cracked and popped, sticking like a candied apple beneath my new black and white Converse track shoes. I was surprised by how little blood there was, after having seen how far it had flown on impact into the ditch on the other side of the river road. The frantic squeal of the car’s brakes, the silver smoke from the burning rubber of the tires, and the excitement of the fishtail swerve all seemed to happen in slow motion. The car’s ambitious recovery left us stunned as it righted itself and then drove carefully and quietly away. The three of us had been lined up on top of the levee ready for another race. We had spent the morning sliding down the thick dewy carpet of crimson clover, aboard waxed cardboard boxes that we had rescued from Miss Josephine’s Grocery’s trash burn pile.

From the top of the levee, we could see far and wide. Immediately before us sat our family’s notorious Victorian Plantation home, where our grandmother lived. Concealed behind four grand live oaks and overgrown hedges, it was nestled deep within the most abrupt curve in the Atchafalaya River Road. Behind the Big House, pear and pecan trees stood in neat rows. Soon we would take out our pecan pickers and fill sacks and sacks of pecans for extra money to buy our school clothes. This year we wouldn’t need so many. Hank and I would be entering fourth and third grade at a private school, an hour away, where we would be required to wear uniforms.

Grandpa’s old cabin was situated to the far right in the backyard. A boot-worn pathway led to the barn where we kept Pete, our Appaloosa. From the top of the levee, we could see him grazing. White with dark brown spots, he looked like an overgrown Dalmatian. The barn, flanked by cotton fields as far as we could see to the left and to the right, stretched all the way back to the wooded area. Tucked within the tree line was Daddy’s hunting lodge 50 JournalJournal IssueIssue #2#2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

where he entertained. He sang, playing banjo, guitar, and bass, rehearsing all night with his band. And when in season, he hosted hunts for deer, duck, and rabbit.

All that broke the monotony of the planted green rows of cotton, their bolls soon to burst, were a few old wooden outbuildings of varying functions, a row of homes that were once slave houses, and a quarter-mile- long dirt road that led to the little brick house where the three of us lived with Momma and Daddy. The levee protected our plantation from the tumultuous flood-prone Atchafalaya River behind us. To the right and to the left, the river road spooned with the levee, together snaking like the river. Deep drainage ditches lined both sides of the river road. Following it to the left it brought you five miles into town, and following it to the right, to nowhere in particular.

“That’s good and tight. Alice, you go up on top of the levee. You’ll be our lookout,” ordered Hank.

“If it is no one we know, give us two thumbs up,” I added.

Facing her, Hank and I crouched deep in the ditch, in the apex of the curve in the road, our fresh armadillo poised and ready on the opposite side of the road. We listened from behind a massive, tangled blackberry bush for the murmur of an oncoming vehicle. We waited and watched for our sister’s signal. It was a go. Just as the vehicle entered our curve, Hank began pulling the rope madly, dragging the corpse toward us across the road. A white Dodge Charger filthy with red dirt splatters entered the blind curve. Its driver slammed down hard on its brakes, skidding to avoid collision.

We fought back fits of laughter and the urge to relieve our bladders as we watched the car expertly avoid impact. The car came to a stop. We rolled onto our backs flattening ourselves against the steep pitch of the ditch, pinching our noses and holding our breath to avoid giggling. We remained there frozen, red-faced and tearstained, not daring to wave away the smoke that hung in the air, listening carefully. The car door never opened. All we could hear was “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” blasting on their radio. Then we heard the car right itself and continue on out of sight. We let loose righteous laughs, caught our breath, and rubbed away our fitful tears.

“Dang! That dude was moving. Look at the marks he left. Six more inches and that would have been all she wrote!” Hank repositioned the roadkill for another pass. “My turn,” I said, grabbing the baling twine. “This time, let’s not give them much warning. Don’t pull until I say so,” said Hank.

“I know what to do.” I held my breath and felt my heart knocking in my chest. Squatting, I leaned into the incline of the ditch. My two bare knees planted, the twine in two hands ready to yank. We stared up at Alice waiting for the go-ahead.

“OK, pull!”

I yanked with all of my might. It was heavier than I thought it would be, and the twine burned a groove where my pinky met my palm. I dragged the armadillo into the lane of the oncoming truck. It slammed on its brakes, swerved, and careened out of control, flying down into the ditch opposite us.

“Run!” I screamed, laughing. Dropping the rope, I turned and ran in the opposite direction. Alice watched as we disappeared into the thick hedging of Grandma’s U-shaped driveway. The rusted-out blue pickup took a moment

to gather itself. It began spinning its tires creating deep ruts. We could hear it spin forward, then furiously grinding its gears in reverse, spinning backward. Finally, it rocked its way out of the ruts and found its way up and out of the ditch, back down the river road. Smoke and diesel fumes hung in the air. We were relieved to see that its driver didn’t bother to get out to inspect the carcass and find its lifeless remains tethered to our rope.

“Did you see that?” Hank howled.

“Look at the skid mark that car left!” I giggled, wiping my tears on my sleeve. We were gasping, hysterical with laughter. The kind of laughter that takes off on its own. The hold-you-down-and-tickle-you kind of laughter.

Alice loped down the levee from her lookout. “My turn!” Alice demanded. “Let me pull that armanilla across next!”

“You’re too young. You’ll never be able to pull it across fast enough,” said Hank. “I’ll help you.”

“I non’t need your help—I’ll be seven in April.” We both looked at her. Our little sister could be more irritating than a hangnail. Her hair had just begun to grow back. It was now an inch long and stood up like a flattop, but we would never be so cruel as to remind her of that. Not after all she had been through. Since her surgery, she still spoke with a pinched nasally tone. She couldn’t yet sound out her Ds. After eight months, she had managed to leave the hospital alive. Momma and Daddy stuck it out by her side and brought her home. The only things she had to part with were her hair, half her cerebellum, and the hearing in her left ear. Her malignant tumor had been merciful.

We walked over to the armadillo to find that it had been decapitated by that last jolt. “Somebony help me tie the rope on again,” she pleaded, picking up the rope.

I searched until I found the head and pushed it into the pocket of my shorts for later inspection. It hung down encapsulated like a white mouse below the fray of my cutoff jeans.

“Hold it up by the tail,” Hank instructed. “Use two hands—it’s heavy.”

Alice held the headless creature up by its tail, while Hank struggled to arrange the slipknot around its belly and under its arms. She widened her legs and teetered around to avoid the blood that had begun to trickle from its neck.

“Set it down and tie a noose. It’s easier,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “You need me to show you how?” “Why don’t you just go up and be the lookout. I got this.”

“Suit yourself. You always take the long way home. Besides, we’re all gonna burn in hell for this,” I winced, choking back another hysterical giggle fit. I tilted my head and widened my eyes to listen for an oncoming car before crossing the road. They watched me move through the cutgrass and cattails growing in the ditch on the opposite side of the road to climb up the levee to the lookout point.

With the roadkill in place, they waited until they heard the vehicle approach. Hank and Alice stared up at me intently for my signal. I squinted, trying to identify the driver of the noisy lumbering tractor pulling a rickety cotton trailer. Catching their eye, I nodded giving the thumbs up. Alice squared her shoulders like a deep-sea

fisherman and positioned herself to begin the pull. Just as the tractor entered the curve, the roadkill slowly began its journey across the curve in the road. The tractor driver adjusted his cap and stood up to catch a closer glimpse. He attempted to brake, but it was too late. The tractor stayed its course, and without a swerve, its large grooved tire popped that armadillo like a ketchup packet, splattering Hank and Alice with blood and guts. The group of crows lining the telephone wire scattered noisily.

That’s when my eye caught another vehicle approaching. My father’s silver Ford pickup, glinting in the sun, turned out from our farm road and headed in our direction.

“Holy shit,” I said to myself and began jumping and screaming “Duck, duck!” But they couldn’t hear me. Disgusted by their circumstance, they flapped their arms, trying to wipe away the remains. Daddy first noticed me atop the levee, jumping and waving my arms. He slowed approaching the curve and followed my concern to find the other two covered in muck, frigid with horror. His fierce, red brake lights bounced angrily as he skidded abruptly into our driveway. He jumped out of his truck not bothering to close his door. Hank and Alice knew not to run. They stood there forlorn, scanning the top of the levee for me. I had crouched down for just enough time to regain my composure, realizing that there was simply no way out of this mess. We were busted. I began my descent toward the ruckus.

“Goddamned sons a bitches,” he yelled. “Why am I looking at a goddamned flattened armadillo tied to a rope? I don’t know why I’m finding it hard to believe that y’all would think to do something like this. What in the hell is wrong with y’all?” He took off his cap and swatted his leg with it. “I ought to take off my belt and beat your damned asses for doing something so goddamned stupid!” Daddy stood shaking his head observing several sets of black tire skids. He squinted at one in particular, the one that marked the road and continued down toward the deep ruts in the ditch. “You could have killed someone.”

“Yes, sir,” Alice said, a bit too loud.

I let out a snort. He glared at me until I straightened myself out and looked down at my feet. Noticing the blood that had leaked in the pocket in my shorts, I covered the stain with my right hand.

“Now go get a shovel and bury this poor son of a bitch somewhere the dogs won’t dig it up! Then get yourselves home and wash that shit off of your sorry asses!”

“Yes, sir,” we said in unison.

He replaced his cap on his head, still shaking it from side to side. Reaching into his shirt pocket he lit a cigarette, exhaling through his nose. He spat an imaginary piece of tobacco on the ground, then turned and got back in his truck and drove off. “You go get the shovel,” Hank growled at me. “We’re gonna go get cleaned up.”

I choked down another giggle and followed them home dragging what little was left of that armadillo behind me.

N.W.A: A Hard Act to Follow Hip-hop and Hype from the Streets of Compton (reprint of May 5, 1989, L.A. Weekly cover story)

Written By - Jonathan Gold Illustrated By - Patrick Sean Farley

August ’88: Eazy E props his Air Jordans up on a desk, stares at the ceiling, and leaves the room whenever the beeper on his belt goes off, which is often. He answers most of the reporter’s questions with a noncommittal mmmmm; he could as well be talking to a parole officer as a writer from the slicks. Eazy’s group N.W.A— Niggas With Attitude—has just finished mixing down “Gangsta Gangsta,” a breathtakingly violent, vulgar gangster-rap jam that is their first single in more than a year. In the office of the record company president, Dre, the producer, slaps in a tape; it’s the first time anybody has heard the song outside the studio. Ice Cube’s angry voice cuts through the room over a funky Steve Arrington guitar riff: “ . . . Out the door, but we don’t quit./Ren said, ‘Let’s start some shit.’/I got a shotgun, and here’s the plot:/Takin’ niggas out with a flurry of buckshot . . ..”

Fifteen sets of jaws go slack, including their manager’s, their publicist’s, and the president’s. Fifteen sets of eyes stare at the carpet, the ceiling, the California Raisins gold records on the walls, anywhere but the cassette deck. The white people look shocked, the black people embarrassed. A drive-time jock rubs his temple hard. One promotion guy cackles in the corner, muttering, “I love to work dirty records. I love to work dirty records.” Eazy smirks. The hooks are tight, the rhymes are tough, the rapping right on key—it’s a perfect hardcore rap track . . . and unthinkable.

February ’89: On the morning his solo record was certified gold, Eazy E stood blinking in the well-kept backyard of his mother’s house in Compton, 15 minutes south of downtown. He is tiny, his neat Jheri curls just so beneath a black Raiders cap, the gold chain around his neck thick as his frail wrists. He slouched, eyes puffy, as if his body couldn’t believe it wasn’t still in bed. He and his friends in N.W.A had hung out at a Bobby Brown gig, holding court, until late. Two days earlier they had hosted a segment of Yo! MTV Raps (though MTV would refuse to play their video); later that afternoon they will be interviewed by Word Up!, a black-teen pinup magazine; the next day they will fly to New York for something called the Urban Teen Awards.

Eazy, who signs checks as Eric Wright, is sole owner of Ruthless Records, an independent hip-hop production company that releases music through Atlantic, Elektra/Asylum and Priority, a compilation label run by a former K-tel executive who had never before dealt with an act, unless you count the California Raisins. The Ruthless touch, the raw, danceable Compton street sound, is hot, and each of the label’s three Dre-produced rap albums—by Eazy, N.W.A and J.J. Fad—is certified gold, well on its way to platinum. This spring there’ll be

three more, plus an unexpurgated N.W.A video album and, for squeamish retailers (and the armed services), a self-censored version of Straight Outta Compton minus “Fuck tha Police,” half the violence and all the cuss words. (The censored version of Eazy-Duz-It reportedly accounts for close to 200,000 of the roughly 900,000 copies sold.) The final figure hasn’t been released yet, but Ruthless is rumored to have shopped around the Dr. Dre–produced album by rapper D.O.C. for a cool million, and Sylvia Rhone of Atlantic A&R snapped it up. When this summer’s projected tour with Ice-T fell through last week, Eazy arranged a 60-city Compton Posse tour himself, with N.W.A headlining over MC Hammer and Too Short.

Each of the five members of N.W.A writes songs for each of the Ruthless albums, whether dance, rap or squishy soul. Each member of N.W.A—young Compton men who all grew up in the same couple of blocks— will probably earn in the six figures this year. Eazy’s manager, Jerry Heller, who was instrumental in breaking Elton John and Pink Floyd, supposes $75 million in retail sales for Ruthless next year might be about right, and thinks Eazy might be the most important black-music entrepreneur since Motown’s

Berry Gordy.

“I’ve been in the music business 30 years,” Heller says. “Eazy is the most Machiavellian guy I’ve ever met. He instinctively knows about power and how to control people. The couple of times I’ve gone against him, I’ve been wrong. And his musical instincts are infallible. In a few years, Ruthless could be as big as A&M.”

Today, N.W.A is being photographed. “If this is going to be on the cover, we should find us an alley or something,” Eazy says. “Man, if we get us in an alley for this picture, niggas gonna know we drove to an alley in a Benz,” Ice Cube says. “Let’s do it right here in the backyard.”

They pose, first by the stagnant green water of a fountain, then near some steps, assuming a formation familiar from every published photo of the band.

“What, no AK?” somebody asks. Eazy looks disappointed. “Shit, man, this is my mother’s house. All that stuff is at my place.” He straightens from his crouch and goes inside. A minute later he reappears with a heavy-canvas duffel bag and empties weaponry onto the grass like a Little League coach pouring out bats and balls—9- millimeter repeating pistols and 12-gauge shotguns and a couple of small-bore rifles and a .38 and a mean- looking sawed-off, clips, sights, scopes and boxes of ammunition, an arsenal bigger than Sergeant Samuel K. Doe needed to overthrow Liberia. But no AKs. Not at Mom’s house.

N.W.A swarms over the guns: “Give me the revolver, man . . .. Put in the gunpowder, boom. Give me the scope, man . . .. No, man, that’s a BB gun, ain’t nothing in that one . . .. That one is an ugly motherfucker right here, man, you got to hide that, yeah . . .. John F. Kennedy. John Fuckin’ Kennedy—that scope is def.”

Click.

“You look like an orange, like something up at the range . . .. Those scopes with the little red dot is hard . . .. What’s that got? . . . One of those Public Enemy things in there, the crosshairs . . . Give me the nine, off with this motherfucker . . . What you mean, man, that’s a magnum, that shit look kind of crazy . . . I be like comin’ from the hidden, still be comin’, pop you off right in the ditch . . .. Pow! This shit is kickin’. Roll over and die, motherfucker.”

Click. Click-click. Click. Click.

“Hey, Eazy, your momma give you this Daisy-ass shit? . . . I can really shoot you, right? . . . Crispus Attucks . . . No, man, never hold it where you can only see the scope — that’s a long-ass shotgun. Get it right, soldier. I want your ass . . . I need that ass . . . I want your radio. Ten guns, sheriff guns, chrome guns, shotguns, old black movies . . . You see the smoke and the bullet.”

Click. Click-click. Click. (The photographer shoots back.) “Public Enemy uses plastic guns, you know,” Ice Cube says.

Public Enemy is hard. Too Short is hard. Eric B. and Rakim are hard: raw, noisy, uncommercial. Hard beats are what you hear pounding from Oldsmobiles, boomboxes, skateparks and hardly ever from the radio; spare, percussive backing tracks composed with cheap-sounding drum machines and short snatches bitten from old soul singles.

L.L. Cool J used to be hard until he recorded a love song, which no self-respecting rapper will ever let him forget. Run-DMC were hard until they jammed with Aerosmith. KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions, whose first album included an ode to his 9mm repeater pistol, wanted to stay hard so bad that he posed with an Uzi on the cover of his last album—an album whose hit single was “Stop the Violence.” The brutal calculus of hardness forgives lapses in taste, but never in form. “There’s a principle involved,” Ice Cube says. “The Weekly wouldn’t run a picture of a baby getting its head cut off; N.W.A wouldn’t do a pop song.”

Hardness arose as a rap aesthetic at about the same time much of the music became essentially suburban. While artists from Harlem and the Bronx were still producing good-time party jams, middle-class kids from Queens and Long Island began to form the contemporary image of the rapper as an articulate gangster with a chip on his shoulder, a young black man hard by choice. (Every rapper suburban middle-class Def Jam mogul Rick Rubin ever had a hand in producing is hard: Run, L.L., PE, Slick Rick, even the Beastie Boys.) Hard rap, like punk, brought together a self-selected community of kids by becoming an image of what their parents feared most.

L.A. hip-hop had been the Next Big Thing for years, but the proto-hi-energy sound—bass-heavy, fast tempo, ticky-ticky-ticky synthesizer clicks, heavy breathing and moans straight out of the Barry White songbook— was the opposite of hard. It meant more for the flygirl in the disco than the homeboy on the street corner. Ice-T, a Crenshaw High grad who still billed himself as a transported New Yorker in the mid-’80s, was the first to realize that if pretend gangsters went over so well, a niche existed for the sort of real gangster he’d been in his early teens. He performed with one fist wrapped around an Uzi, released a 12-inch (“Killers”) he knew was too hard for the radio, and spent a lot of time getting his picture taken near picturesque, graffiti-spattered walls in South-Central L.A.

If Ice-T’s pose was a little calculated, his approach to rhyme closer to pastiche than innovation, he still developed a national reputation as the hardest rapper in the business. He moved hundreds of thousands of records while such overhyped local electro-hoppers as the Dream Team and the World Class Wrecking Kru floundered. The members of Uncle Jam’s Army, who had regularly thrown hip-hop parties at venues as large as the Sports Arena, had long since dispersed. Gangster style quickly replaced slick surface as the hallmark of the L.A. sound. And as Ice-T grew avuncular with age, up came younger, harder and more street-wise rappers

to nudge him to the side of the stage: Tone-Loc (whose hardness didn’t last all that long); King T and DJ Pooh; and especially Easy E and N.W.A, who came across as active gangsters, not world-weary alumni.

In ’86 Ice Cube, then a 16-year-old neighbor and follower of the Wrecking Kru, wrote a cussword-packed song for HBO, a long-forgotten New York rap posse, who rejected it as too West Coast. Dre, the Kru’s DJ, along with his aide-de-camp Yella, convinced his neighbor Eazy to try the rhyme. E put on a pair of dark shades, ejected his friends from the studio, and rapped for the first time. Later, he sunk a few thousand dollars into getting the 12-inch record pressed and released.

Depending on who you talk to and when, the seed money may or may not have come from illicit drug profits. Last August, Eazy asked me where I thought he got it. Last week, Dre refused to comment. Ren said, “Eazy had a cousin that was runnin’ everything around here, man, and when his cousin got killed, he was left with all these responsibilities of the street. So many people was getting killed, I guess he realized he had to get out. He invested his money, you know, in the record business. Like he says, that’s no myth.” Eazy silenced him with a glance.

“I know the drug thing sounds glamorous, but I wish they wouldn’t keep saying that,” Jerry Heller says later. “It wasn’t all that much money. And IRS guys will read this thing, too.”

“Boyz-N-the-Hood,” five and a half minutes of cheerful vignettes from the short, happy life of a ghetto hoodlum, became the cornerstone of the California street sound, one of the first West Coast rap records rooted as much in the hardcore New York break style as in Kraftwerk. Eazy’s rapping is a drawling blend of Woody Woodpecker and the vicious, whiskey smooth tenor of Rakim: a superb character voice. The song was considerably slower than the party jams put out by local groups like the Kru and the Dream Team, and the production was knowingly raw—you can pick out Dre’s tinkly two-note keyboard riff and exuberantly tinny beatbox coming from a car radio two blocks away. A lot of people hated the record, because while the urban- gangster life had been romanticized since Capone, nobody had ever made it sound quite so much fun before.

“It is fun,” Eazy says.

N.W.A got an opening slot on the West Coast dates of the Salt-N-Pepa tour in the fall of ’87. KDAY, the local hip-hop station, put “Boyz-N-the-Hood” into rotation before the L.A. date, and the record was requested often enough to jump to No. 1 on their playlist for almost a month. Ice Cube wrote two more: “8 Ball,” a paean to his beloved Olde English 800 malt liquor, and a sneering cautionary tale called “Dopeman,” both of which were released as the first double-sided N.W.A single. (Basically, an Eazy E song ambles, while an N.W.A song cranks: the performers, producers, writers and sidemen are identical.) That 12-inch also sold well.

Macola Records, the distributor, collected 10 or so random Dre-produced sides and packaged them as an unauthorized bootleg N.W.A LP, N.W.A and the Posse, that stayed on the Billboard black album charts for the better part of a year. (N.W.A refuses to discuss this album; more than the money, the dated hi-energy cuts, many of which Eazy originally declined to release, embarrass them.) Macola settled with Ruthless out of court for legal fees and damages but, according to band members, still pays the installments with rubber checks. (“They ganked us, man, straight fucked us with no grease,” Eazy says.) After this, Ice Cube left the group for a year to study mechanical drafting.

Early last year, adjunct N.W.A member Arabian Prince produced a novelty single for some hangers-on, J.J. Fad, as a side project: “Supersonic.” The single sold half a million copies on Dream Team Records. Every record company in the world was after the album. Eazy leveraged J.J. Fad away, licensed them to Atco, and had Dre produce the album, which also went gold, for the aptly named Ruthless Records. “It’s what we call a ghetto LBO,” N.W.A publicist Pat Charbonnet says. “Eazy’s the Gordon Gekko of Compton.”

Arabian left the group. The Priority pickup deal was signed, and Eazy recruited an old friend, Ren, to write three songs—“Radio,” “Eazy-Duz-It,” and a brilliantly funny bank-heist fantasy called “Ruthless Villain”—for a single. Covering his bets, Eazy hired KDAY DJ Greg Mack to do an intro to “Radio” a la Parliament-Funkadelic, and signed KDAY morning-jock Russ Parr’s comedy-rap act Bobby Jimmy & the Critters to Ruthless/Priority. (No ulterior motive is implied here, but the move probably didn’t hurt the record’s chances for a decent rotation.) The “Radio” 12-inch sold 140-odd thousand copies. Ren joined N.W.A, wrote much of Eazy’s album and, when Ice Cube returned last September, helped to write Straight Outta Compton.

Eazy Duz It went platinum, but was largely unremarked upon. N.W.A coined the phrase “reality rap,” which guilty white liberals find a convenient term when explaining why they like the album so much. Word of the N.W.A album was picked up by CNN and the city desk of the Herald—more as a news story (“L.A. Gangs Speak”) than as an entertainment story—and suddenly Eazy and the gang were promoted from amusing hoodlums to spokesmen for a generation. The L.A. Times found them progressive and put them on the cover of Sunday Calendar.

There were two triumphant sold-out shows at the Celebrity Theater in March; although they were sloppy, N.W.A outperformed Ice-T for the first time. The audience knew the words to the songs well enough to rap along. During “Dopeman,” Ice Cube brought a cute white girl on stage from the front row. A few seconds into the song, while band members humped against her, 2,000 people merrily pointed and chanted, “She might be your wife and it might make you sick/To come home and see her mouth on the dopeman’s dick.” Later, the mob shouted “F-Fuck the Police!” in unison. Ten minutes later, a melee broke out on center stage and the cops were called in even as Eazy strutted among the turmoil, grinning, finishing out the set. There were stabbings that night.

Most rapping used to promote the rapper’s indomitability, his invincibility: “I create; I am.” When Public Enemy has Chuck D in a prison cell, it is only so that he can break out; when an L.L. Cool J rhyme includes a policeman, he is only there for L.L. to outwit. A rapper, whose implicit statement is always “You want to be like me,” is a role model whether he sets out to be one or not. If nobody wanted to be like him, nobody would buy the record.

Many whites and blacks find N.W.A frightening; mainstream black leaders hate them because of their distorted image of the black community. They celebrate the gangster life and reinforce racist iconography. Yet if you get past the language and violence—a line like “Fuck you, bitch” serves the same purpose here it does in an Eddie Murphy routine—you’re struck by the powerlessness the first-person lyrics project: “I can fuck you up; I am.”

When a policeman appears in an N.W.A song, he’s got Ren face-down on the pavement in front of his friends. In the course of an N.W.A song, crimes are punished, women are faithless, and somebody else’s 58 JournalJournal IssueIssue #2#2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

stupidity inevitably leads to retribution, which leads straight to jail for keeps. N.W.A choose not to live out the omnipotence that rap is all about . . . their most controversial song, “Fuck tha Police,” is the ultimate expression of hip-hop weakness in the face of police power, the sort of snarling anti-cop rant left unsaid until the black-and-white is around the corner and safely out of earshot. “Fuck tha Police” isn’t a metaphor for anything.

N.W.A call themselves “street reporters,” another phrase parroted by journalists. “We don’t tell no fiction,” Ice Cube says, “so N.W.A can’t get any harder unless the streets get harder, know what I’m saying? If somebody blows up a house and we see it, we’ll tell you about it.

“If we were all for gangs, we’d be going, ‘Yo, go out and Crip.’ We’re just telling them what the gangbanger shit is like. And what would happen. At the end of the song, you might end up in jail or dead. If you get away every time, you’d be a super hero.”

“We’d look stupid trying to be political,” Ren adds. “The street’s political enough. We’d lose all our fans. I don’t really know about Mandela and Malcolm X and people like that. It would be like Public Enemy rapping about 8 Ball. You’ve got to stay what you are from the jump.”

“Straight Outta Compton,” the title track from N.W.A’s first album, is violent even before anyone says a word, a strong backbeat overlaid by a nervous repeating snare fill that palpitates like coffee jitters, like a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, like an itchy trigger finger. The beat is scary all by itself in this song—too intimidating to dance to, really—not an in-your-face sort of deal like Public Enemy or Big Daddy Kane, but somehow ruthless, quietly intense. Under this, a single quarter note repeats, plucked on an electric guitar, and a thick, long tone—roughly sampled tenor saxophones, it sounds like—is deliberately underblown and brought up to a sour, wavering pitch, as if on a tape machine low on batteries. The sound fabric breathes, creepily alive. Faint cries can be heard in the background on the offbeats of three and four, as on Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two,” although they seem less cries of passion here than distant cries for help. An AK- 47 shudders and, horrified, you can sense the beauty in the sound.

The rhymes on the album are clean, aggressive and profane—tropes on the word “motherfucker” and riffs riding on hopped-up 12-guage adrenalin. Alone among rap crews, N.W.A has four equal rappers, each with a characteristic voice and a distinct writing style. Ice Cube is an angry young man with a dusky tenor flexible as a viola, an intelligent but damaged hothead likely to go off randomly; Ren is the deep-voiced enforcer, loyal, violent and thorough; Eazy is laid-back and vicious, in control, funny as hell; Dre is clever, forceful yet tentative.

The vibe, when it’s not hardcore pissed-off, is easy, merry, casual, fun, as if the guys were just cutting loose in the studio in front of a live mike, the sort of carefully scripted heavy-bottom street-corner jive Parliament- Funkadelic did so well in the ’70s. (Songs are punctuated with staticky comments from the engineer’s booth, the thwee of rewinding tape, expressions of pleasure at the unexpected in-studio appearance of Eazy-E—on Eazy’s own record. It sounds like a bunch of guys sitting around listening to a record, not making one.) A song might take its form from a call-in radio show or an interview with a probation officer.

There are precedents for this sort of thing—Starsky and Hutch, Iceberg Slim’s novels Pimp and Trick Baby, Leroy and Skillet, over-the-top blaxploitation pictures like The Mack and Dolomite—although nobody ever assumed that Redd Foxx or Rudy Ray Moore had any moral authority over the nation’s youth. Take out the 59 JournalJournal Issue Issue #2 #2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

cussing and it turns out the gangster crime-spree narrative of “Gangsta Gangsta” is nothing the network censors would blue-pencil from an average episode of Wiseguy. The lyrics of Satan-metal bands like Slayer are unquestionably more violent.

N.W.A’s canny self-identification as a ruthless Compton street gang, though, is close enough to blur the knife’s edge between streetwise fantasy and funky cold experience. Excruciatingly detailed accounts of a burglary, a liquor store holdup, a bank robbery or a drive-by shooting make equally uncomfortable both the people who think N.W.A might not be fronting and the people who’re sure that they are.

A prominent Crip hung up on a journalist friend when she asked him about N.W.A; he thought they were just talkers (giving gangbanging a bad name, perhaps). A local rap promoter who’s been active in L.A. hip-hop as long as it’s existed swears N.W.A are currently active gangsters, gun-crazy, slinging ’caine. (He’s almost certainly wrong, by the way.) To celebrate the Eazy E and N.W.A albums last fall, Priority threw a pre-release bash at the World, a not-very-swanky disco in the Beverly Center. The doorman, thinking N.W.A were a bunch of thugs, refused to let them into the club for their own party. Eazy, at least a foot shorter than the doorman, threw a punch. N.W.A never made it inside.

N.W.A themselves, although they insist they know gangbangers but are not themselves gangbangers, are remarkably cagy about all sorts of basic facts: age, school, girlfriends, where they live, what they did before N.W.A.

It says something about who they are that what they’re trying to hide could either be criminal records or solid B averages and high-school diplomas. “You’re not bringing up our skeletons,” Eazy says, cocking a finger. “That’s dead.”

March ’89: The day MTV banned their “Straight Outta Compton” video, N.W.A is hanging out at the Torrance recording studio that’s the seat of the Ruthless empire. They are all surly—they were counting on the video, a brutal verite gang-sweep scenario directed by Australian Rupert Wainwright, to put them over the way that Tone-Loc’s did—and upset about a Compton flare-up between the Piru Bloods and the Atlantic Drive Crips: They’ve lost friends over the weekend. Concert-volume beatbox riffs whump from specially built 18-inch playback woofers in the engineers’ booth where Dre is recording the B-side for the next single, a stripped- down jam called “Give It to Dre.” He hunches over a record on a turntable like a studio guitarist over his ax and grimly scratches in the break time and again over the beat. “Give it to Dre . . .. G-G-Give it to Dre. G-Give it to Dre and the boy is done.” He makes a mistake and Yella rewinds the tape. “Fuck the image!” somebody yells from the next room.

A slight blonde from PBS takes notes for a possible five-minute segment on the band; Ice Cube, Eazy and Ren sprawl over easy chairs in the lobby, zombielike, doing phone interview after phone interview. “Kids want to hear about reality,” Ice Cube says again and again. “White kids don’t live in the ghetto, but they want to know what’s going on.” Ren cuts in on cue: “If you’re watching the news and Tritia Toyota says three people got killed in McDonald’s, it’s not like she’s telling you to kill them—she’s just telling you what happened.” Ice Cube stands up, stretches: “But y’all have mwa-ral authawrity,” he says, imitating the last interviewer. “If they don’t buy our records, fuck that shit.”

He pulls a scrawled-on sheet of three-ring paper out of his pocket and walks into the studio. Yella rolls the tape, and Ice Cube starts to rap. His staccato drawl is devastating, playful, spontaneous yet on; he knows exactly which syllables to punch and which to roll; he’s comfortable and in control, although he seems to have written the rhyme only minutes before. It’s like hearing Clifford Jordan try out a new standard on tenor. It’s clear that Ice Cube would be a star rapper with any producer in the country.

In the waiting room, Ren finishes up another interview and starts talking to his buddy Laylaw about Compton. Laylaw has heard this story many times:

“I lost a lot of friends to gangbanging, man. When you been kickin’ it with somebody, and you hear they dead, you think like, ‘That was my homeboy, that was stupid.’ The night I got shot, I was in front of a friend’s house just kickin’ it. You know, we wasn’t doin’ nothing. It was one of my buddies, though, who was into gangbanging; he was into it. The Crips were over here, right? And the Pirus were over from across the boulevard; I guess they came and spotted his car, which was parked where all of us were at, like, 2 in the morning. My friend says, ‘Come on, man, let’s go watch some movies.’ All of us walking in the house, they just start blat-blat-blat-blat—shooting and shit—and I got hit. And you know, after I get shot I was like ‘Man, damn what they shoot me for? I didn’t do nothing.’ It’s all because my friend go around shooting people. I got his bullet, man, because a bullet don’t have a name on the motherfucker. Since then I haven’t wanted to be around my friend too much anymore.

“But when we put this shit out on video and on records, ain’t nobody want to see this shit. The video ain’t half of a half of what go on for real. It’s just a little sweep, no guns. MTV’s into all that crazy devil-worshipping shit . . .. To me there’s more violence on a motherfucking cartoon than in our music. Little kid see a cartoon character with a gun, he going to want to carry a gun, right? GI Joe, all that shit. But they aren’t even playing our video on the MTV rap show.”

Son2Mother

Written By - Kevin Powell Illustrated By - J. Michael Walker

Mother, have I told you That you are the first woman I ever fell in love with, that what I’ve always wanted in life is to hear You say you love me, too? That is why, ma, it has taken Me so long to write this poem. For how could I, a Grown man, put words to paper If I am that little boy Cowering beneath the power of That slap, the swing of that belt, Or the slash and burn of that switch You used to beat me into fear and submission? I constantly cringe, ma, When I think of that oft-repeated chorus you sung As a fusillade of blows walloped my skeleton body: Are you gonna be good? Are you gonna be good? Sometimes when I call you these days, mother, I just don’t know what to say, thus I fall silent, Even when you ask “How are you doing?” I want to give you real talk, Tell you that I am still that stunted only child Traumatized by the violence of your voice; That I am still that shorty too terrified to fall Asleep for fear of your pouncing on me The moment I shut my eyes— And you did, mother, again and again, Until I could no longer sleep peacefully As a child, and I have never actually had Many tranquil nights of sleep since. I lay awake sometimes, as an adult, Thinking someone is going to get me, Going to strike me, going to kill me Because of those heart-racing hours

Of darkness far far ago. And I remember that time I ran under Our bed, and in your titanic rage You tore the entire bed apart, The frame falling on one of my legs, And there I was, stuck, mother, And you ripped into me anyhow. And oh how I howled for mercy. But there was none, mother. Yet there was that chorus: Are you gonna be good? Are you gonna be good? And I really did not know, mother, what being good meant. Nor what you wanted me to be. Because one day I thought you loved me And the next day I thought you hated me. And I did not know back in the day, ma, That you had been assaulted and abused The same way, by my granddaddy, Your father, a 19th century son of ex-slaves who would break you and your Three sisters and brother down with mule whips, With soda bottles, with his gnarled hands— That he was an embittered mister, That you were the child who became Most like your father. Do you not Recall that past, mother? I am saying you once chided me, After you learned I had struck someone as an adult, To keep my hands to myself, and I wanted to say But, ma, why didn’t you keep your hands to yourself? Why didn’t you command your hands, your arms, To hug me, instead of urging them to damage me? And that is what I previously was, ma: damaged Goods that liked living on the other side of midnight. That is why, mother, there was no sleep for me till Brooklyn, Because I needed to escape the concrete box Needed to escape the mental terrorism Needed to escape you and that Paranoid schizophrenic existence.

I am not crazy, ma. I know Our destinies were frozen in those days When we shared That bed and room together, Because we were too poor To afford a full apartment. To those days, mother, when I Thought

you were the bravest Human being on earth as you Fought super-sized black rats with Your broomstick, or effortlessly Shooed the army of roaches away From our dinner table— Maybe, ma, I have not been Able to write this poem Because I can envision you as a Young mother, the one who suitcased Her dreams when you left South Carolina, when you moved, first, to Miami To create a new life for yourself, to flee The world that murdered your Grandfather, a local cook, by stuffing food in his mouth, Then baptizing him in cracker water and proclaiming It was an accident. It was the world that knocked On your grandmother’s door and told Her she had to give up 397 of those 400 acres Of land called the Powell Property— One penny for each acre of land— And what your grandmother was left with Was a jar of soil called Shoe Hill, The contaminated hill where you were born, ma: That world never bothered to change the Name from the Powell Property. And there you Were, at age eight, sunrising with the moldy men And the wash-and-wear women As God’s yawn and morning stretch Tickled the rooster’s neck, Waking you good colored folks to toil on that Powell Property— To pick cotton for White folks as if being Cheap and exploited labor was your American birthright. And you were angry bye and bye, mother. You would get so angry, Aunt Birdie told me One time, that sweat droplets would form on your nose, Your brow would curl up, and the world and

Anyone in it would become your Empty lard can to kick back and forth up the road a piece. Ah, ma, but you were such a pretty little Black Girl—I have the picture right here this minute, Of you at 12 or 13, tender and dark ebony skin A beautiful yet temperamental and unloved Black girl Told that you were ugly, that you had ugly hair, That you would never be anything other than The help and wooden steps for someone else’s climb— But you were persistent, ma, and mad determined To make something of yourself. And Jersey City Welcomed you as it welcomed each of The lost-found children of the Old South Welcomed y’all country cousins to Number runners slumlords Pimps drug dealers bad credit Huge debts and would-be Prophets who called themselves storefront preachers And there you were, mother, within a year, With my father— Was he your first love, ma, did he mop The Carolina clay from your feet? Did he sprinkle sweet tea and lemon on your belly? Did he ever really make love to you, mother? Or was he more like that plantation robot Who was built to mate then make a quick Dash to the next slave quarters? What I do know, mother, is that you went to the hospital Alone, to spread your legs for A doctor whose plasma face you do not remember To push forth a seed you had attempted To destroy twice because you feared his Birth would mean the death of you.

But there I was, ma, in your arms Screaming lunging fleeing And you were so tremendously ashamed To be an unwed mother that you did Not tell Grandma Lottie for five years, Until that day we showed up In your hometown of Ridgeland, South Carolina. But what a mother you were: You taught me to talk Taught me to know my name Taught me to count to read to think To aspire to be something. You, my grade-school educated mother, Gave me my swagger— Told me I was going to be a lawyer or a doctor, Told me I was going to do big things, That I was going to have a better life Than this welfare this food stamp this government cheese Had pre-ordained for us. And we prayed, mother, yes lawd we prayed— To that God in the sky, to the White Jesus on our wall, To the minister with the good hair and the tailored suits, To the minister with the gift To chalk on busted souls and spit game in foreign tongues— And back then, ma, I did not understand the talking in tongues The need to pin pieces of prayer cloth on our attire The going to church twice a week The desperation to phone prayer hotlines when there was trouble. But what you were doing, ma, Was stapling our paper lives together as best you could Making a way out of no way Especially after my father announced, When I was eight, That he would not give “a near nickel” to us again. And he never did, mother, never— And I sometimes wonder if that is when The attacks got worse because you were So viciously wounded By my father’s ignorance and brutality

That that ignorance and brutality Was transferred to me As you would say, in one breath, Don’t be like your father

And in another You just like your no-good daddy And, yes, I am crying this second, mother, As I write this poem Because I see you today: A retired Black woman with a limp, a bad leg, Shuffling up and down three flights of stairs. Too headstrong to allow me to move You from that heat-less apartment, Life reduced to trips to the grocery store A bus ride to the mall A sacred pilgrimage to the laundry room And the daily ritual of judge shows, Oprah, and the local news. And, mother, you remain without the love you forever Crave, and you forever speak of getting married one day. And you are so very worn out from Fifty-four years of back breaking work— But this I know now: Your life was sacrificed so that I could have one, ma. So I write this poem, son to mother, to say I love you Even if you refuse to accept my words Because you are too afraid to defeat the devil And bury the past with our ancestors once and for all. I write this poem To say I forgive you for everything, mother— For the poverty for the violence for the hunger For the loneliness for the fear For the days when I blamed you for my absent father For the days when I wanted to run away For those days when I really did run away— I forgive you, ma, for those days you cursed And belittled me, for those days when you said I was never gonna make it. Oh, yes, ma, I do forgive, I forgive you for The beatings, I do, dear mother, I do—

Because if it were not for all of who you are All of where you come from All of what you created for me I would not be alive today.

For below the bloody scar tissues of your fire and fury And aggravations and self-imposed house arrest Is a woman who defied the mythmakers Turned her nose up at the doomsayers—

Is someone who fought landlords And crooked police officers and Social workers and school systems and Deadbeat men who wanted to live off of Her; and from the tar and feathered remains Of lives noosed from the very beginning,

We have survived, and here we are, mother: You have never said you love me But I know every time I come home And you’ve made potato salad and stringbeans, Every year you’ve mailed me a birthday card Or asked if you should buy me pajamas for Christmas, I know that you are,

In your own wildly unpredictable way, The greatest love I’ve ever had in my life—

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

The Thing on Treufel’s Arm

Written By - Andrew Nicholls Illustrated By - Allison Strauss

“Hey Cooter, look what got ahold of me!” Treufel hollered as the boat pulled in. I grabbed the hank of yellow rope where Janie threw it and tied it off. Some kind of crab it looked like, attached to his arm—squat, orangey- brown, with nubs around the pale edges of the shell like the ones that hurt your palm when you crack a leg for the meat.

I asked him, “What is it?” but he just shook it in my face, making boogety noises. Treufel was your basic idiot— untucked, overlarge shirt in a picnic-tablecloth pattern with the pocket torn off, hair out in every direction, voracious lop-toothed grin. He looked like a cartoonist’s idea of ruffian. We were stuck with him for two more days.

On weekends our family existed in a paint-by-numbers world of blue lake and sky, orange lifejackets, and the red and white of fishing floats. At the cottage it was popcorn for dinner, a battery-powered radio that picked up one AM station, and the complex deterioration of shoes and shirts Mom wouldn’t let us wear at home. Dad hadn’t come this trip; he had accounting to do. If he’d come, he said, he’d just fish, his taxes would go to hell, and we’d all end up in jail. It was Mom and me, Janie and Treufel, plus our little brother Beck and Treufel’s sister Anastasia, who had her brother’s raggedy-doll looks and bad teeth but none of his aimless energy. Treufel was Janie’s boyfriend, and in our family if anyone wanted to bring someone else on the picnic or car trip, the attitude our dad encouraged was, the more the merrier. The more the uglier, he’d joke with me or Beck when we asked to come along on a run to the marina to fetch bait or supplies.

The body of the thing was curved, the size of an adult’s hand, hanging on Treufel’s wrist by some kind of grippers at its front end. I first thought it was plastic, or else why would he cruise into shore with this jokey thing on his arm, whipping it around and laughing? But when he knock-knocked its shell with the hook remover, a couple of multi-jointed extremities unfolded and wheeled slowly about like the legs of a dreaming cat. Cycling in the air like it didn’t have a care or a hurry in the world because it had ahold of Treufel.

They’d left after breakfast. I stayed behind, read Popular Mechanics, and worked on my arm muscles. If you’re fishing and want to come back early, but the others don’t, that’s your tough luck. They could be out six hours, ten, fourteen—fishermen lose track of time. I’ll cast a lure off a dock, but I get hungry. I like to pace, pee, swing my arms. Also, I’m not fond of the nose-pinch waft of live bait, or the ick of a bass left under a fiberglass seat for five hours, drying out so the slippery shine it came out of the water wearing turns to sad, yellow glue.

I’d checked with the binoculars around noon and seen them heading in. Mom kept the big Bushnells to watch for Dad, see if he was moving out there beside the island. If he changed places a lot, rowed along parallel to the rippling tips of the pines, that meant nothing was biting and he wouldn’t stay out long. Whereas sometimes he’d bob in the same spot eight hours and still come home with nothing. He didn’t take the radio or a sandwich, all he did was fish. Mom would sit on the deck and smoke with the binoculars on her lap. I don’t know which of them was more patient.

Treufel jumped out and sprawled flat on the dock so the crab thing, except for being locked on his bony arm, was standing free on the grey planks, or could have if it wanted. I helped build that dock when I was ten—the nails with heads canted like ingrown toenails were mine. “Look,” he said. “Lookit that. I give him a chance to walk away, and he doesn’t! He’s just hanging on like he loves me. Cooter, what do you think of that?”

Beck, who was twelve, jumped excitedly out of the boat, and said, “Cameron, it won’t let go! It’s been on there nearly an hour!” I took a closer look. Besides the waving insectile legs it had twin pincers coming out underneath I guess the head. They’d claimed a good-sized piece of the thin edge of his wrist. Pincers or not, it looked to me like Treufel could have pulled it off if he wanted. But then he wouldn’t get to whoop and holler and shake it in everyone’s face. I thought that someone must have bought it for dinner, but couldn’t bring themselves to boil it, so they tossed it in the lake to fend for its mean self.

I asked, “How’d it get on there?”

Beck said, “He was trawling his arm through the water out by the island and bam!” Treufel hoisted it in the air, cackling, and teased one of its back legs. Anastasia stepped out of the boat, rejecting my offer of a hand. She always looked shivery-nervous as though we’d kidnapped her. I didn’t understand why she’d come.

Treufel ran hooting and yowling up to the cottage to show his prize to our mom. I thought, Well, that’ll endear him. Our patchy grass had the fireworks smell of gopher bombs, incendiary tubes you lit and stuffed down their holes to drive them from your lawn over to the neighbors’. Anastasia plodded up the long green rectangle after him, shedding her life vest. I felt sorry for Treufel’s sister, freckled and compliant, with three older delinquent brothers and an outsized name she showed little sign of having the spirit to grow into.

It was Dominion Day. The night before, Beck, Janie, and Treufel had gone out in the boat after dark and waved lit sparklers at us, tracing shapes in the mirrored blackness, circles becoming eights where they touched the lake. Beck asked me afterwards to guess what shape he’d made. I said a drunken snake. He yipped a laugh, his blond hair bobbing, and said that’s for sure what he’d draw next time. There were real snakes at the cottage, which our mother felt she was courageous for never mentioning.

Beck unloaded the tackle, all the rods snagged on each other. He told me that other than the crab they didn’t hook anything all morning; it was pretty boring. Janie whipped her long hair back over her shoulder and said if that was the case next time he didn’t have to come. “Nasty-stasia doesn’t have to come either,” he sulked.

Treufel’s little sister was a year older than Beck and got off on the wrong foot the first time they met by saying she hated the television show on his T-shirt. He’d worn it since almost to falling apart. He said if Anastasia drowned at the cottage he’d be sure to bury her in it. “You’re not funny,” Janie told him, which was wrong, Beck often was.

The dock still held a wet blot in the shape of the thing. I tapped it with my foot. “Doesn’t it hurt him?” Janie shrugged. Treufel was only Janie’s second boyfriend; she was still getting the hang of it, accommodating the behavior of someone with whom she had nothing in common except they went to the same school and both disliked authority. With Janie this was a less diffuse complaint. She didn’t like being told to clean her room and go to bed; whereas Treufel would gladly burn down the town and take pictures.

Beck suggested, “Maybe we can cook that thing for dinner,” hoping we wouldn’t. I said, “If Treufel’ll let go of it. If not, we’ll have to cook him along with it.”

Janie gave me one of her scowls. “He isn’t holding onto it,” she said. “It’s holding onto him.” I noticed she wasn’t chasing up after him.

Her inaugural boyfriend, Warren Kinnecky, had been the son of my Driver’s Ed instructor. Warren had a hearing deficiency and wore a device that his Baptist parents wouldn’t let him grow his hair long enough to cover. He was funny, alert, very aware of himself; my parents liked him. Janie had sat with Mom and me playing Scrabble one night when Dad and Warren hadn’t come in off the lake, and she asked, “Mom, you think Warren and I’ll get married?” She was sweet that day, droopy and forlorn. She was calculating the time she’d spent alone with her first boyfriend, then adding up the long one-on-one hours our dad had logged with him out in the boat, spraying Deep Woods Off on their necks and ankles, and feeling peevish and out of sorts at the imbalance.

“Oh, I expect not,” Mom told her. “I had three boyfriends—well, they called themselves that—before your father.” I was two years older than Janie, but I’d never had a girlfriend and knew not to comment.

I could see Janie adding it up: three boyfriends, then fourth boyfriend = husband. “So what am I doing it for?” she asked. “If he’s not the one? If I’ve got three more to go?” Beck and I laughed until she stared us down. “Nobody’s talking to you,” she said.

“You’re fifteen.” Mom was careful not to say only. She reached with a cupped hand and touched the bright dot of stone in Janie’s ear. Our mom was raised Doukhobor, a spacey offshoot of a hell-with-everything sect from Russia, and she didn’t have pierced ears. She’d broken with her (nutty, now long-lost) parents at twenty-two, but everything modern that she went along with still seemed like a measured, faintly grudging acceptance of the freedom and options of modern kids, all the stuff she’d longed for as a girl Janie’s age, cooled by an unwillingness to cast the earliest and most vivid part of her own life completely to the wind. She caught Beck and Dad one day singing “Douk, Douk, Douk, Douk-ho-bor” to the tune of “Duke of Earl,” and told them that would be quite enough of that. Her grandparents had paraded naked through Saskatchewan in the winter of 1903 to protest compulsory education, but she didn’t want their memory, the abstract idea of a fierce heritage, impugned. Even if the grandparents had rejected everything conventional all in a lump and gone bearshit crazy out on the dry, unproductive prairie.

“You’re with Warren because you like him,” she said. “Everything will fall into place, don’t you worry.”

Janie looked unconsoled. Once, in an argument with our mom outside a dress shop, she’d yelled, “You’re Amish, don’t tell me about the real world!”

Now here was Janie a year later with Eric Treufel, who had a pair of older brothers my mom knew too well 67 JournalJournal Issue Issue #2 #2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

from working part-time in the office of the high school where they were often in for making trouble. One of them, Greg Treufel, had been arrested once for marijuana and once for joyriding in a stolen tow-truck. Marlon Treufel, twenty-two, was worse—square-faced and dangerous. He’d gone west, and stories filtered back about him being an “accomplice” in unsavory doings involving an older man and a girl, all three of them hunted across the border down into Washington State.

“Eric is not his brothers,” Janie told Mom when they argued about her and her boyfriend planning a cross- Canada trip once they turned seventeen. “Eric is Eric!” Janie had been a clingy mama’s girl till her mid-teens, sitting between Mom’s knees after dinner, letting Mom braid her hair as they watched television, but now all the fabled mother-daughter confrontation stuff was coming out. Dad didn’t like Eric either, but could at least make a silly thunderous noise every now and then, pull a face, or talk sports to keep things light.

With Dad not here it fell on Mom, and she was having a hard time striking the balance of hospitality vs. enforcement of household rules. Janie couldn’t help testing Mom’s opposition, pushing it like a sore tooth.

She asked when we got to the cottage why I couldn’t call Eric by his first name. I said if he could call me Cooter, which he’d picked up was Beck’s baby name for me, then I could call him Treufel. The first time he came for dinner, he challenged Beck on what kind of name Beck was, and my dad had told him it was Viking for man who lives near a stream. “Man who pisses in stream,” Treufel called Beck after that, laughing his reckless head off.

I tried to picture what he and Janie talked about when they were alone. I’d heard Dad one night in the kitchen discussing the necessity of talking to Janie about protection, and Mom saying, “Oh dear God forbid.”

Before dinner, as the sun buried itself in the pines out on the island, Treufel sat at the folding table staring at the thing, rapping its mottled tangerine shell with the Scrabble scoring pencil. The crab hadn’t let go—who knows what it thought it’d caught hold of out there. It had tiny eyes like baby mushroom caps, on white stalks you saw if you bent and looked under its shell, which you did with the risk that Treufel would lurch it at you. My mom had examined his arm and said the red indentations looked “nasty,” which only made him cackle. She mentioned infection. We had a First Aid kit with a snakebite poison sucker bulb and razor blade that I longed to use on him. She offered to help him try and get the crab off, but he yanked his arm away.

The cottage’s square main room was dark-wood-paneled, decorated with yard-sale art, and lightly messy in a way we weren’t allowed to be at home. Electric baseboard heaters slowly reshaped the small plastic toys Beck had dropped behind them when he was little. We kept a coat hanger behind the cheap beige drapes expressly for their removal. When we cleaned up Sunday nights, Dad would take one look around before we left and pronounce, “Good enough!” My parents bought the cottage for $8,500 in 1968 with money willed to my mother from an aunt out on the prairies who’d never forgotten her. It was on Indian land—the purchase was technically a 75-year lease. She also bought a pearl brooch and a snow blower.

Mr. Seaton called, “Knock knock,” through the screen door. Beck must have blabbed something out by the property line. Mr. Seaton was retired from running two bowling alleys, looked like a tall Mr. Magoo, and lived at the lake year-round, his cottage having been winterized. We had to drain the pipes in ours, flush the toilet with antifreeze, and close the place up each November. “What’ve you got there, son?”

Janie introduced them. I was under the tall, swoopy reading lamp in the corner with a penknife, trying to carve 68 JournalJournal IssueIssue #2#2 ©2014 by Literature for Life, a program of Light Bringer Project. All rights reserved.

connected links from a single strip of cherry wood the way Dad had shown me.

“It’s a devil crab from hell!” Treufel shouted, shaking it in Mr. Seaton’s face, affecting a deranged Irish accent. “It’s got its fangs in me arrm, and Oi’m gonna have to have me hand amper-tated!” He had no sense that you didn’t talk to a 70-year-old stranger the same way you do to your girlfriend’s brothers.

Mr. Seaton sat on the corner of a chair, took a pair of drugstore glasses from his shirt pocket, and examined the crab. It tucked in its slow, prospecting legs. “Looks pretty healthy,” Mr. Seaton said. Treufel did a high-pitched snickering sound and made it laugh like a drugstore puppet.

Beck brought an aluminum pie pan of water from the kitchen and set it on the table. “Maybe if you put its back legs in water,” he said, “it’ll feel the water, think it’s the lake and try to escape, but it’ll be in the pan of water!” Treufel bent down and lapped from the pan like a dog. I looked at Janie. Her face was stolidly blank. Anastasia looked at the pictures in a National Geographic. Our mother made herself busy in the kitchen.

“Tell you what,” Mr. Seaton said, “I’ve been up here twenty years and I’ve never seen anything like that. You might want to take it to Elizabeth Fournier around the curve; she used to teach biology.” I could have told him that was the last thing Treufel would want, to have the dangerous wild beast eating his arm downgraded to a comprehensible marine anomaly. He pried one of the thing’s back legs out from under the shell and made it bark like a dog in Beck’s face. Beck gamely stood his ground, smiling with squinted eyes as though this was great fun. Janie didn’t say anything. Mr. Seaton said he’d probably seen all he could, and he’d let himself out. My mom latched the door. Bugs were already harassing the yellow porch light.

Janie asked, “You want to play Scrabble, or Mouse Trap?” Treufel barked the crab at her. “You can’t go to bed tonight with that thing on your arm,” she said, one hand on her hip. For all her attempted teenaged wildness, like hooking Eric in the first place, she had our mother’s respect for order. Treufel lifted the crab to his face and mimed snoring on it like a pillow. I silently wished the thing would grab his nose.

“Okay, Scrabble, then,” she announced, curving the board into a V and sliding the tiles from the last game into the old red handbag we used as a shakeup. The way she did it, her long hair angling over her yellow tie-dyed shirt, she was purposeful and pretty, a Wyeth painting. He didn’t deserve her. Treufel leaned the crab over the bag and tried to make it pick out a tile like it was a pair of chopsticks. He made the high-pitched sound of his crab-alien beast, “Nrreee-eeee!”

“Stop that, Eric!” Janie clamped the bag shut. “Nrrreee-RUFF!” Now apparently it was half-crab, half-dog.

“Stop it! You’re not being funny!” Treufel rose from his chair and began menacing her with the thing. I whittled my chain. The best way to start a screaming fight in our house was for Beck or me to interfere with whatever our sister was trying to do.

Janie gathered her calm, unfolded the board, and placed it in the middle of the checkered red oilskin. “I say we’re going to put the crab aside for now and play a nice game of Scrabble.” I wondered how disputes of this sort were settled in the Treufel household. Probably with shouts and a clip across the ear.

Treufel stood the crab in the middle of the board. Janie’s slim arms dropped to her sides in frustration. My guess was, Eric Treufel had never seen a Scrabble board, wouldn’t even know how to play. Janie should have showed

him without implying she was teaching him something. “If you corner something wild,” my dad told me when I took our cottage trash to the dump, “you make it more dangerous.” Scrawny brown bears foraged among the torn plastic bags and burning paper, addicted to our Wheaties and frozen waffles. “You have to step wide around a dumb thing,” he said, “leave it a chance to escape with its dignity.”

Treufel slid the crab around the board like a bumper-car, making tire-screeching noises in the corners. Anastasia bent over her magazine in the shadows. I wanted to take her by the hand and say, Save your babysitting money, seriously. Get out as soon as you can, run—my mom can tell you how. At that moment, with our dad not here, with Beck in his Banana Splits shirt staring wide-eyed between Janie and her boyfriend to see if he should laugh, I felt the close balance of power that permitted bullying, the lack of a firm hand that already suggested how this would end.

As her boyfriend made up new crab noises, Janie gave up trying to be practical, held the shakeup bag to her chest, and keened like a child, “Mo-om!”

Our mother walked over from the sink, wiping her hands on her apron. “Come on, Eric, we’ve had enough of this, it’s time to clear the table for dinner.” She held out her hand like a teacher demanding a kid’s chewing gum. Treufel leaned back a second, like even he knew when enough was enough. Then he gave his head a defiant roll and snapped the crab right in her face. Mom’s eyebrows came down, and her eyes went to small black dots.

Janie gasped, the only unfeigned gasp I believe I’d ever heard.

“The human mother!” Treufel growled, waving the thing’s claws at her. He still didn’t get it. I took in a breath and held it. Anastasia touched her hands to the sides of her face.

Mom grabbed the shell. “Don’t!” he yelled in a surprisingly adult voice, the playfulness gone. He bounced up into a boxing stance. For a moment they stood toe to toe. Then he took her wrist and pulled her hip-first into the folding table, which rocked onto two legs, nearly pulling my mother over, and spilling Beck’s pan of water across the floor.

Janie looked between the two of them, boyfriend and disapproving mother, trying to decide where lay the larger grief. This was the boy she’d spent a good part of her energy for the last month defending. My mother ran both hands down her threadbare apron and looked Treufel in the eye as he repeated his stupid crab sound. “Eric Treufel, you’re a willful creature,” she said, out of breath for such a brief confrontation. “And you’re all set to follow your brothers, both of whom are low-life scum.”

I’d never heard such harsh words from her. Her anger was clumsy, unpracticed. I thought he might sneer at her softness, at her clear underestimation of his devil-may-care resolve. But the laugh fell from Eric’s face like ice shucking off frozen shrimp. His arm went weak and the crab fell on the floor. I could see the welt where it pinched him, or where he’d been pinching it to himself. He sat at the Scrabble table and began to cry, his face and the red weal hidden inside folded arms. His sister went into the bathroom, bent forward, her wild hair curtaining her face. Janie settled next to me on the couch, lips drawn back, blue eyes staring like she was sitting in the recovery chair outside the nurse’s office. I had the crazy idea she might try to grab my whittling knife. I closed the blade into the fake stag-horn handle.

The crab ambled across the floor in no particular direction. Beck looked between the spilled water pan and our mom, who went back to scrubbing yesterday’s spaghetti off the aluminum strainer.

After a minute, Eric banged to his feet, grabbed his jacket from beside the door, and stormed out into the dark. A moth bumbled in. Mom lay the strainer over the wooden drying rack I’d made in shop and went into her bedroom. After a while, she came out wearing her coat, said, “All right, pack it up,” and we began the drill of gathering our stuff. We could hear Anastasia in the bathroom blowing her nose.

There were no streetlights on the road for the last seven or eight miles to the cottage, just the round red reflectors on the snow-height marker poles, blinking as we passed.

Eventually our headlights picked up Treufel in his jeans jacket with his thumb up. When he saw it was us, he dropped his arm and resumed walking. Anastasia pretended to be asleep on the lay-down seat. Janie lowered her window and leaned out into the cold air. “Come on, Eric, it’s fifty-five miles!”

“Only fifty now,” he huffed, overestimating his reach as usual. “Tell your bitch mom us scum are tough.” Mom’s face hardened and she stepped on the gas.

“Mom!” Janie pleaded. We flew down the road another two hundred yards then lurch-stopped.

Our mother looked up at the ceiling, shaking her head. She put the car in Park. Treufel trudged past, face down, his breath surrounding his head. In the back seat I looked supportively at Janie, who rubbed her palm from her lip upward to her nose. She’d had a rotten weekend, and the next few days at school weren’t going to be much fun.

That was when Beck twisted around in the front seat, clasped his hands together, elbows high and out, feigning a bright cheeriness, and said, “So! Only two more of these and you’ll be getting married I guess!”

Janie’s mouth dropped. Beck held his goofy posture, but his eyes betrayed quick, terrified uncertainty. I reached out to put a hand on Janie’s arm, to say, Hey, he’s twelve; don’t let’s make it worse. But to my surprise she laughed. At first a hapless blurt mixed with tears, then she was laughing at the fact she was laughing, and unable to stop. Beck and I started too, then even our mom. Poor skinny Anastasia was making noises underneath her coat. “Don’t! Stop,” Janie cried, “I’m gonna pee!” and we laughed even harder.

“Oh boy,” Beck said, straining for breath, “I sure wish that crab was here to see this!” He’d taken the thing down to the dock and lowered it carefully into its familiar dark. Our mom’s shoulders shook. With one hand over her mouth she gave tiny no-no’s of her head, like, This is awful. This isn’t how you’re supposed to run a family.

We couldn’t see Treufel any more. I knew there was no way we could force him into the car. Mom wiped her eyes with both palms from the middle of her nose out to the sides, and said, “Okay now. Quiet down, all of you. Not a word about this, do you hear me? Not a single word from anybody. Get it all out of your system now.” She took a long breath, blew her own laughter out like a candle, fixed on a serious face the same way she’d probably tried in a tall mirror before walking out forever on her first family, and put the car in gear.

(willamena, she ain’t trippin’. . .)

Written By - Tim Stiles Illustrated By - Scott Gandell

(willamena, she ain’t trippin’ . . .)

I never liked them mexicans no way. always up at all hours, playing that off-beat shitty mexican taquería tuba music. johnny law asked me did I hear something. yeah, I heard something. I hear everything. I live right above them loud-ass, fifteen-people-in-a-three-bedroom-condo-who-the-hell-knows-who-really-lives-there- lo ud-ass-coming-and-going-at-all-hours muthafuckas. one of their damn-ass, come-and-go freaky tweaking friends got up in their door and shot the one teenage chola chick that is always on the phone, crying about, qué es eso? michael, dónde estás? why you doing this to me? why you cussing me? you can’t even come see your baby. qué es eso? you no kinda man, michael: this was all freaking night every freaking night. and then her two cholo vato brothers choked the fuck out of his tweaking ass. that’s what happened. you don’t need to dress the shit up with any kind of investigation. if you have muthafuckas coming and going at all hours like your house is a bus station, shit like that is gonna happen. this ain’t tragedy. tragedy happens when you don’t expect the shit. all us neighbors knew something like this was gonna happen around here one day. johnny five-o didn’t like that answer, so he had me talk to detective johnny five-o law. he said, I’m detective harris . . . and before he could finish I said, AND?? . . . pttch, that’s what I laced him with. AND?? . . . like what does him being detective harris got to do with him being in my way? what’s he gonna do? matter of fact, I said, move your black and white piece of shit out my driveway, I got somewhere to go . . .

( . . . and willamena just got that new car, too) so now I gotta wonder if there’s a payback. I didn’t never know who was who anyway, and now I’ma have to be extra-vigilant and shit. touch my new altima. please. please: let a muthafucka touch my shit.

I don’t care if they even just breathe on it wrong, I’ma start right in if they do. you can’t let them get a dang inch. you know, them vato chumps was down there working on their hooptie rides whenever my carport was empty, like when I was at work, and the fumes, the fumes: I had to tell the oldest vasquez-or-whatever-his- name-was boy that they couldn’t work on no cars in my carport, their carport, or any other carport that sent them damn toxic fumes up into my apartment to stay. he was alright about me telling him that, though. he was always the one with the most sense, probably because he was always looking out, watching the sight lines for the next meth-head coming up on a bicycle to get his medicine. somebody has to run the operation. that’s why I didn’t trip when I heard he rose up and choked that michael muthafucka to death. he wasn’t gonna just sit there and be shot, too. he got a free kill. a get-out-of-the-gas-chamber-for-free card. if a muthafucka comes up in your house and blows your sister’s face off, you can kill him frank nitti, and ain’t nothing gonna happen to you. the grim is with the ten-year-old that helped him do it. how are you gonna be in the fifth grade and go back to school after you helped choke and beat to death the man who shot your sister’s face off? here’s what a little vato did on his christmas vacation. here’s what a little vato lost on his christmas vacation. this is what a little vato lost, and here’s why a little vato ain’t never gonna be the same.

(willamena softens her stance

. . .just a little) well yeah, I feel bad for that baby. mostly because there ain’t no women left in that house. that mexican girl and her vato brothers didn’t have no mother living with them any time I was ever living over top of them. now that the girl is dead, the only female in the house is the baby. she’s gonna grow up rough and wrong. I remember we had this same issue happen when I was little where my mama’s half-brother was beating his wife, and that woman up and left his ass with they seven-year-old daughter to raise all by himself. and he couldn’t handle shit about raising no girl, so we had my cousin come stay with us, and she had absolutely no home training. she ate dirty, talked dirty, pissed messy, and stayed dirty. and ain’t no whippin’s mama gave her ever took hold. mama finally had to take her to an orphanage, ring the bell, and leave her on the front step with a note that said, my family dead, pinned to her shirt. that’s what that baby got in front of her. no women in the house to make her act right. who gonna do it? them little killer drug-dealer uncles? her broke-down grandfather? he got a house full of people running his house like they own it, and he don’t know two-thirds of them. I seen that plump red cross worker lady standing around looking like she wanna keep that baby for herself. all old-and-never-had-no-man-looking. probably thinking about how she is gonna get away with keeping that child. she probably thinks like I think like everybody thinks: them damn vatos don’t want no baby around that ain’t nobody taking care of. it’s a messed-up situation. hey, don’t look at me. I’m just saying what it is, just saying what it will be.

Essay for My Son

Written By - Robert Schilling Schick Illustrated By - Allison Strauss

Here’s what happened. I’m telling you now—up front—to get it out of the way. It’s easier for me that way. That way you won’t wonder, what’s this story about? So you don’t wonder, losing what? Losing who? So you don’t wonder, what you are waiting for? ’Cause if it isn’t good, then you’ll kick yourself—right? You’ll wish you’d gone on to some other (better) story. There’s no trick here. There’s no bait and switch. There’s no made-up story I’ll have to live down on Oprah. If only there was.

So here’s what happened. My son Silas died in my arms when he was just two days old. Two days. Two fucking days. He died because my wife almost died when she was pregnant with him. He died because he wasn’t born with enough blood in his system. He died because my wife had a ruptured aneurysm that no one knew about until it was too late. Too late for him, and almost (and I mean we’re talking entire-blood-supply almost, most of it on the operating-room floor instead of inside my wife or my son) too late for her as well. It was almost too late for her because her blood was leaking out of her circulatory system, and no one knew. That is, life was draining out of both of them, and no one had any idea. You could feel it going wrong, in that panicked feeling you sometimes get in dreams—like where you want to run away, but you can’t get your legs to move more than a teensy slow bit at a time. And so there I was, in a sterile “meeting” room set aside for us. Set aside for us to attend to our son’s death. Who ever has to schedule their child’s death? There I was in this room in the ICU, with my lifeless son growing cold in my hands, and my wife—my son’s mother—just days from losing her entire blood supply, there with me, but in pain. Just days away from a second surgery to retrieve a sponge they’d left inside her—she’d bled so much and so fast they’d packed her full of 81 sponges to stop the flow of blood, yet somehow only remembered to count to 80. So there’s my wife in pain, not just psychological pain (of which, [much] more later), but physical pain too. Her legs so bloated that she could barely stand to even sit upright and watch her son die. It pains her now to remember she had to ask to go back to her room because she couldn’t sit any longer. The only thing making sitting possible was a steady IV drip of Dilaudid.

Dilaudid? Isn’t that what Burroughs waxed poetic about in Drugstore Cowboy? This, my friend, will earn you an indulgence? My friend, where’s my indulgence? After living through this, I’m convinced I’m owed one— maybe more than one.

So there I am with my son dying in my arms. Dying? Can we really even call it that? I

mean, he was brain-dead from almost minute one. I watched the ultrasound, the diagnostic test that precipitated the chain of events. I watched him barely move over the course of 30 agonizing minutes—the only thing you could really see was his little, tiny heart struggling to keep going. I watched and wished that with each thump of the ultrasound wand on my wife’s swollen stomach and with each additional bit of orange juice she drank, that he’d perk up, that he’d wake up, that the resident wouldn’t turn and walk quickly out of the room without saying anything to us. (Anything? At all? Not even to say, Well, here’s the deal. No! They didn’t know the fucking deal—that’s the worst part. No one knew. I think back over and over, Where could this have gone right if only we’d made a different choice?, but it’s a rathole that never ends the way I want it to).

I watched that whole procedure with some hope that this nightmare would soon come to a normal end. That it would end, and I wouldn’t be the person sobbing openly in the lobby of the ICU, so far beyond caring what passersby thought. (This is me—someone perpetually frightened to show my true self, to give others a glimpse, to be caught exposed. This is me now, riven with grief. This is me laid bare, realizing that here is my baby boy, he who is of me, he who is adorable and beautiful and almost perfect, here is my baby boy who won’t get a chance to live.) That the nightmare would end, and I wouldn’t be the one holding my son—my son—watching the neonatologist as he confirms with a nod of his head that my son is dead. That I wouldn’t be the one people would console and say kind things to, like Well, it’s better this way, than at an older age. (And by the way, that is total bullshit; and unless it’s happened to you, you have no idea [and I pray it hasn’t happened to you]; and if it hasn’t happened to you, at least say something useful. Or if you don’t know what to say and are totally freaked out by it, just say something kind. To be human is to live and die, to experience life and death. You will know death in your life—I can promise you that—and when you do, even if it’s expected and somehow easier, you’ll wish for people to say something kind.) That the nightmare would end, and I wouldn’t be the one who caused my normally stoic 92-year-old grandmother—my grandmother who at last count has outlived two husbands, three siblings, two parents, and now one great-grandchild—to break down in tears at her great- grandson’s funeral. That I wouldn’t be that guy, the guy whose story is crushing to hear. That I wouldn’t be the guy with a secret that I’m always calculating about. Do I tell you, and risk freaking you out or making you run away? Or do I not tell you, and by hiding, continue to freak me out? Do I smile and nod when you say, Is this your only child? Do I prevaricate when you say, Only child? Why, you really should have more than one. You really should give her a little brother or sister to play with.

What do I say when you ask?

This loss is tattooed on my soul—it is indelibly part of who I am. But if I can’t tell you, if you won’t even listen, then what will you really know about who I am?