No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
The endings of the two songs reflect different directions: future and past. Paul M.’s protagonist makes another jaunty request to his partner: “Send me a postcard, drop me a line . . . .” He is planning for life in the future. But Paul S. warns: “Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you.”
The weight on Mary’s shoulders felt lighter with every passing day. Slowly but steadily, she had kept scribbling ACCOMPLISHED beside the items on her list of things to do before the year ran out. She had gone on to register with her home union which usually held meetings on first Sunday of every month. This month’s meeting, being the last one for the year, had been more of a party. She had gotten to eat some native delicacies which she had not tasted since leaving home years ago. She had even joined other members to dance to the folk music played by the cultural troupe. That moment, she had made up her mind that irrespective of where her wedding would be held, she would pay any price to have this music troupe come perform. She was sure she would out-dance Deaconess Caro (Mother of the Day) and Jacqueline (Chief Bridesmaid) and her husband (Mr. Okafor). But what she had liked the most about this month’s meeting was that a team of medical experts had been invited to talk about a number of killer diseases and the ways to prevent them. In the end of the seminar, the medical team had offered free HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis tests for members. Mary had had her blood sample taken even though she was sure that the result would come out negative. She hoped to remember to go over to their office for the result later in the day after going to see Jacqueline, who had taken ill again for the fourth time in three months.
These days, Jacqueline always complained of feeling weak, of nausea and of having joint pains. The first time, she had been treated for malaria. The second time she was treated for the malaria parasite. The third time, she had bought drugs for typhoid fever from the patent medicine store at First Corner. Her lush skin was beginning to crumple like pawpaw that was left out of the refrigerator for too long. Her colleagues had begun to comment on her alarming wanness. The pillars holding up her eyelids were beginning to droop giving her a pair of lazier eyes than she found attractive. It didn’t help that she had cut her alcohol and cigarette consumption. It didn’t also seem to help that she had started consuming large quantities of fruits and vegetable which Mary had recommended. Her pants still sagged, even though she was almost done swallowing a whole sachet of Super Appetite drugs. She preferred to believe this sickness was caused by the change of weather since, after all, she had always suffered a bout of fever whenever the weather was switching between harmattan and the heat season. Sometimes her throat felt so dry she would imagine it as a sun-baked wall. She would drink and drink from the bottle of water she now kept by her bedside and still feel so dry. She grew alarmed whenever she coughed because her chest would ache and make a creaking sound like a car engine that had not been oiled for a long time. It didn’t help that she had taken to swallowing spoonful of palm oil which she expected to course down her throat, lubricating every cog and joints as engine oil did to machines.
Martina was most certain that Jacqueline had caught one of those numerous toilet infections, recalling her own past experience some time ago during which she had lost a great deal of weight and had suffered acute abdominal pains. She referred Jacqueline to the herbal medicine shop at Kakuri Market where she had bought a plastic bottle of dry roots and herbs into which she poured 35cl of gin and left for a day or two until it turned to an oxblood tincture.
“I only drank from it for one week and bounced back to life,” Martina swore the other day as she came to check on the bedridden Jacqueline, who shortly after went to the market for two of such bottles which she had been using for weeks now and had not felt any better.
Mary visited Eva’s House only because Jacqueline was too weak to meet her at First Corner or to even step out of the bed and meet her outside the brothel. On the day Mary moved out of Eva’s House, she had sworn never to set foot inside the place again, nor to even come anywhere close to it. But there was no way she couldn’t come to see her friend who had been instrumental to her coming to Kaduna in the first place. Mary chose to come straight from school because it would be difficult to do so once she got home. Her evenings were always choked with work at her beauty shop, with studies and with church activities. She had expanded her beauty shop to include facial makeup services and was even considering hiring an extra hand to replace the incompetent and unserious hairstylist she had been enduring for some time now. As she walked down the narrow passageway towards the hostel area, she came under fits of claustrophobia and dizziness to the point that she had to keep to the wall for support. She was struggling to stay strong, to not break out in a shriek, to not yield to the weight and just slump to the ground. That night of the rape and robbery came back to her as clear as day and drenched her to the marrows in dread and in pain. The hysterical cries of the ladies and the wicked laughter of the criminals echoed in her head. The thick fog of that night’s terror choked her. But just before she would faint, she reached Jacqueline’s room and slid in.
Now, it felt as if the days she had lived here had been in another lifetime. Besides, Okafor had warned her not to come around here anymore. She just hoped that he didn’t get to hear that she had visited here today.
“Have you even gone for testing?” Mary asked for the eleventh time while Jacqueline just shrugged or sighed. “You have to go for testing,” she added. The sight of the once bubbly Jacqueline just lying on the bed fondling with a Twenty Naira note which she rolled and unrolled, looking so tired and old, shook Mary. She just hoped it would not turn out to be what she was thinking.
“The truth is I’m broke,” Jacqueline finally whistled. “I’ve not been working like before. Clients no longer turn up as before. I think the place is falling apart now that Mr. Okafor is more concerned with his programme at the university. I think he’s even considering closing up this place. Mary, I’m tired. That’s the truth. For the first time since I left home and came to Kaduna, I just feel I want to go home.” She began to blink rapidly in an effort to conceal the tears that had gathered in her eyes, but that only seemed to force out the tears which then trickled down her right cheek. And once the tears started rolling out, she didn’t make any effort to wipe them off.
“You’re right,” Mary nodded wearing a false smile. “We’ll have to go home. Every one of us. Sooner or later.”
Mary couldn’t say if her own growing homesickness was a good omen. She was more disturbed by her recurring dream of being rowed in an ancient canoe down a misty ravine while her friends and family members stood by the bank with teary eyes to wave her goodbye. She didn’t know what to make of these dreams, and was too frightened to share them with anybody, not even with Jacqueline, her closest friend.
Somebody knocked on the door and stepped in. She was a newer arrival whom Mary had not seen before. It happened that she was the present occupant of Mary’s lodge. She had come to help Jacqueline buy call credit for the phone call the latter had in mind to make. When Mary asked her if the JESUS’ BABY graffiti was still on the ceiling, she laughed and said yes.
“How do you cope with it?”
“I try not to look at it when I have a man on top of me,” she chuckled.
“Why not just scrub it off?”
“I like it being there, somehow. I know it’s a weird thing to say, under the circumstances, but I feel protected knowing that it’s there. It’s reassuring to think of myself as a JESUS’ BABY.”
Mary nodded. She understood what that meant. Now she began to suspect it might have been one of the reasons why she couldn’t erase it in her own time.
Somehow, it seemed odd to Mary that young girls still ran to brothels to prostitute themselves. Now it fascinated her to the point of unbelief why a teenage girl would rather not do anything else than go into fulltime harlotry. This new girl’s childish tone and the cackle that interspersed her sentences convinced Mary that she could be fifteen or sixteen years of age, even though she looked older. For a minute, she almost put on society’s judgmental goggles. She almost began to look at this girl as one of those corrupt, accursed souls that defied all parents’ efforts at making them turn out better. But she remembered her own case and thought that this girl had possibly also been pushed to this place by her parents’ or guardians’ actions and inactions. This was all the more reason why she ought to have started the advocacy campaign she had always had in mind but had lacked the will to follow through. She couldn’t imagine how many teenage girls she could have saved from ending up as sex workers if she had started the program, creating a platform where parents and teenage girls could learn how to understand each other and avoid actions capable of getting either party frustrated.
“Jackie,” Mary cleared her throat after the other girl had left. “I wish you would start counting down to leaving this place, to leaving this life. You need to view it from the outside even for just one day. If you did you would not wish to return to it even if a gun was placed to your head. I know, it’s not easy. But it is possible. It is doable. Take me for example. Take Auntie Caro for example. She had been in it long before either of us joined in. Yet she was able to step out and start with a clean slate. Running into her whether in the market or in the street, seeing how respectable she now looks and lives, no one would ever guess that she used to be a prostitute.”
Mary now followed Deaconess Caro to church regularly. She hoped to become a Sunday School teacher someday just like her, whom she had made her surrogate mother. She visited the deaconess during weekends and helped her out with domestic chores. Rumour had it that Deaconess Caro’s son ‘liked’ her but Mary didn’t like to talk about it.
“As soon as you get well”, she said to Jacqueline as she dropped a wad of money on the bed beside her arm, “you must follow me to church. Note that I said ‘must’. This is not one of those polite invitations that you would wave off. This is an order.”
“Okay,” Jacqueline smiled. “I hear. I will. I promise.”
When Jacqueline expressed desire for a bath but complained of being too weak to draw a bucket of water from the well, Mary offered to help her with that.
As the police ambulance crawling down from First Corner made to pull over right in front of Eva’s House, the small crowd that had gathered there made space for it. The veranda was packed with the sex workers and patrons of the brothel. Although the entire area had been on blackout since the previous day, Eva’s House had kept its generator running, lighting up its premises, ensuring that they had chilled drinks and could air the Champions’ League matches all of which attracted people the same way light would draw moths.
The windiness of the night and the blackened sky through which lightning flickered now and then suggested it might rain tonight. The ladies on the veranda were too distraught to even think of working tonight. Some of them were already shivering due to the cold but were too frightened to retire into their rooms or to just go in and put on more protective clothing. Rather, they had all run out here and clung together like a pack of haunted rats.
Once the driver of the ambulance turned off the ignition, Okafor climbed down the veranda to greet the men who were just stepping out of the van.
“Are you Mr. Okafor?” asked the one with a thick moustache on a fat face and a bulgy belly that was threatening to burst the buttons of his shirt.
“Was it you that placed the call?”
“That’s right,” he nodded, offering his right hand. “That’s right, I’m Mr. Okafor. Please, come in.” He led them into the saloon to his favourite corner and signaled the barmaid to come find out what each of them would like to have.
Many people had offered to go into the well and bring out the body for a fee but Okafor had refused because he knew the law and the standard procedure of doing things. Rather, he had phoned the police station.
“This guy here will need a place to change into his diving kit,” the head of the team crowed, pointing a thumb at one of them who was carrying a backpack. “Once he is ready, we should head to the well.”
Okafor led the diver to a spare room and then returned to the saloon to furnish the team with any information they might need since China-White, who was traumatized by the pale face that had stared up at her from the bottom of the well, was too wrecked to even answer a single question.
Okafor was still at home preparing to leave for Zaria as he did every Friday evening when he received the phone call informing him that a body was spotted inside the brothel well. China-White had gone to draw water from the well around noon. She had released the rope until the bucket got down to the water. It had been while she was swerving the bucket in order to get it filled with water that she noticed a black mould that looked like the bottom of a bowl. At first, she had thought that it was a drawing bucket that had slipped from some other drawer’s grip. She lifted her bucket and let it fall on top of the object which sank briefly and re-emerged, repositioned well enough for her to recognize Mary’s face. She had let go of the rope in her hand and had screamed out until everyone in the brothel came out.
The diver returned to the saloon fully dressed but for the flashlight and the pair of fins which he bore in his hands. “Good to go,” he nodded and Okafor led the way through the back of the hall towards the well. While they were tying the one end of the roll of cord to the stem of the dogoyaro tree, one of the police officers returned to the ambulance to get the body bag. Having ensured that the knot was tight, the diver threw in the roll into the well, put on the fins and lowered himself down to the water. The other officers stood close enough to the well, pointing a second flashlight into it and peering down into it. Okafor stood a few feet away from them, his arms folded across his chest. Deaconess Caro, who had just driven down from church service, stood beside Jacqueline and Okafor shedding silent tears and shaking her head.
Nothing happened for three or four minutes and then the diver yelled, “Pull!” The three officers began to pull on the rope. Okafor lent a hand. Jacqueline, who had staggered out of her room and had been sitting on a low stool beside her door all this time, struggled up and lent a hand even though the men kept telling her they got it. They pulled and pulled, and the instant Mary’s head surfaced from the well’s rim, the ladies broke into a wail. Jacqueline didn’t stop pulling until the body had been brought out completely. It was once it had been laid inside the body bag that she fell on it and gave free rein to her agony.
“My sister!” Jacqueline wailed. “My sister! Why! Oh God, why!”
The teary-eyed Okafor turned away but once Jacqueline began to rock the corpse and to bang her fist on its stiff chest, he came over and pulled her up and patted her on the back while she cried on his chest. Jacqueline would try and purge this bitterness and anger for Mary which was welling inside her heart. She would try and understand with her friend. She would try not to hate her for long. She would try and forgive her for dying. If only things happened in real life as they were shown to do in Nollywood, where the spirits of dead people appeared to loved ones in their sleep and revealed the circumstances of their death, Jacqueline was sure that Mary would have visited her and laid everything bare for her.
Jacqueline would have come to know that immediately after Mary handed her some money and said goodbye, she had almost ran out of the brothel through the narrow exit gate that opened to the street. Jacqueline would have known that just before Mary got to the gate, she had missed a step and had dug her left foot into the sewage. Hissing and cursing, she had retraced her steps back to the brothel well to draw water and wash off the stink of urine and semen which she was sure had enveloped her foot. Jacqueline would have come to know that as Mary began to draw water, her hand had jerked and the phone had fallen off from her breast pocket into the well. It had been in a bid to grab the falling phone that she lost balance and fell into the well.
Once the diver had been pulled out, the policemen made to zip up the body bag and move it to the ambulance but Auntie Caro was able to plead with Mr. Okafor who in turn was able to prevail upon the policemen to permit the ladies some seven or ten minutes to hold a brief wake and prayers for their former colleague.
“Wake up!” Jacqueline managed to cry. “Come back to me! I swear, I’ll change! I’ll repent! I’ll move out of Eva’s House this very moment! Please,” she wailed, “wake up!”
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’][/author_image] [author_info]Ekweremadu Uchenna-Franklin writes from Kaduna, Nigeria. His works have appeared in Transition Magazine, Grub Street, Coe Review, The Write Room, Saraba Magazine, Imitation Fruit Journal, Wilderness House Literary, A&U American AIDS Magazine, Kalahari Review and elsewhere.[/author_info] [/author]
My own bedroom was tucked away into the far southeast corner of our house. My walls were covered, floor to ceiling, in the remnants of a choice Mama had let me make at six—an offensive shade of yellow paint that reminded me of biting into a ripe lemon. Mama let me help her stencil in the daisy border. Every time I looked at those daisies, I could still smell the paint’s acrid fumes, could still feel the headache, the twinge in my upper arms. Blobbed and crooked, my daisies stood out from Mama’s, discombobulated flowers trying to escape an otherwise seamless border. The model from the catalogue would never paint her bedroom this color, I thought. She would certainly never choose plain old daisies.
I couldn’t hear when the front door opened and closed from my bedroom, but I always knew when Mama was in the house. Her presence was warm, like vanilla after a rainstorm, and it followed her everywhere. I always thought I was the only one who could sense it. About halfway through the catalogue, I felt it. Her heels click, click, clicked up the stairs and a glassy voice drifted in from the hallway, finding its way to my bedroom door. A soft knock and Mama’s smile peeked inside—so wide, sometimes, it shocked me.
“Hey, baby!” She flung herself across the tiny twin mattress on her stomach, feet kicking behind her in the air. The catalogue fell to the floor.
I threw my arms around her neck and stayed put for as long as I dared. When I released her, she took in my face for a long time before speaking.
“Jesus,” she said simply. Rarely did I see Mama in moments of vulnerability, her mauve-colored lips frozen in a half-smile.
“You look more like Lily every day. Do you see it?”
I knew what she meant. Our photographs, side by side, were uncanny. Same finely pointed nose, full lips, and high cheekbones. Same fine, auburn-tinted hair. And I finally knew where the wide, round shape and blue-grey color of my eyes came from. My body was fuller, of course, at twelve than Lily’s was at nine. In that way, every day, I was looking more like my mother.
“Anyway.” She waved her hand in front of her face and, like the flip of a page, the vulnerability had gone and she was my strong Mama again.
“How was swim camp this week?” She shot me a wink. “Meet any cute boys?”
My nose started to burn, that sting meant to fend off juvenile tears. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Then Mama’s ever-familiar words came back to me. Crying only shows them that they’ve gotten to you. That they’ve won.
I told Mama how August was off to a rough start. How Lucy Miller and Hope Burgress had been spending a lot of time together that summer and, according to my best friend Georgia, “had grown dangerously close.” How Lucy and Hope had giggled together over a loose sheet of paper in the back of the locker room one afternoon before swim practice. How I kept looking back at them, trying to figure out what was going on. How every time I looked back, they shushed one another and went silent, lips tight in stifled laughs.
And then, after practice, everyone rushing to their lockers, chlorine filling my nostrils and water dripping over the tiled floors, I put in the combination on my locker and yanked it open. A sheet of loose-leaf paper wrapped into a tight diamond fell to the ground. Knowing where it had come from, knowing who had drawn it, I crouched down and sat on my feet. I stared at it for a while, felt stuck in that place, chatter and screams and locker doors opening and closing around me. I unfolded it, smoothed it out.
A woman with oversized lips like a duck’s lay spread-eagle on a bed. Above the woman in curly letters were the words “You know what these are good for. Like mother, like daughter.” Underneath the bed in big block letters was the word, “Superslut.” Don’t cry, you little girl. Don’t flipping cry. I fought that familiar burning in my nose. My eyes glazed over the picture and took in every last detail.
“Mama,” I whispered in my bedroom, over and over. Her face remained neutral, and she was careful not to get too close to my body. She always knew those things, those little human things, like how the slightest touch of innocent compassion in a tender moment would only make things worse.
“Look at me, Lana. Look at my eyes and breathe.”
As I focused on her, trying to calm down, trying to think of anything but the note, my eyes lingered over her lips. Those girls were right. Our mouths really were alike. Aside from Mama’s mauve paint. I wore only Burt’s Bees chap stick. Mango.
“Alright, now come here. Come here.” Her arms opened wide and I nestled into her. The moment I smelled her sweet aerosol fumes, my tears broke their barrier, streaming down my face. I thought she’d be disappointed, thought she would remind me to be strong. But it was like she gave me permission, permission to be weak. Permission, only in front of her, to be vulnerable.
She pulled back from me and asked if I wanted to lie down. I nodded, silently, and felt my body hit the small bed, springs squeaking softly below.
“You said this was Lucy and Hope, right?”
I nodded. Mama’s eyes narrowed and she bit her bottom lip.
“Well, you know how their mothers are, anyway…” She began, but quickly seemed to lose her train of thought. She started to make these little circular patterns on my back with her hands. Pat, pat, pat. Circle, circle. Pat, pat, pat. Circle, circle. The repetition gave me something to focus on and the warmth from her hands kept me calm.
“Can I ask you something, Lana?”
I nodded, voiceless.
“Why do you think these girls played such a nasty prank on you?”
I just lay there, thinking. Not knowing what answer she was looking for, or why my friends would do this to me.
“They just don’t like me, like at all,” I choked, barely able to keep the stinging from triggering the waterworks again.
“Hmm…” Mama hummed. “And why do you think, then, that they brought me into that exceedingly clever little note of theirs?”
Pat, pat, pat. Circle, circle.
I was stumped by this question. “Maybe they don’t like you either.”
She smiled, shaking her head from side to side, her soft bangs shimmying along her forehead.
“No, sweet girl. It has nothing to do with liking either one of us. I think that they see your beautiful face, they see your good heart, they see how kind you are to them. And they think it’s not fair, it’s not fair that a girl so kind can be so beautiful. And that’s when they start to get angry. There’s no explaining it, no rhyme or reason to the thing. They’ve just grown up a little differently from you. They’ve been exposed to all of these personalities and these people who are all just like them. And then they see you, and you’re different because you don’t lose your temper like their fathers do, and you don’t yell at them like their mothers do. And you care. You wear your heart on your sleeve, sweet girl.”
Pat, pat, pat. Circle, circle.
“And besides, who knows what kind of nonsense Christi Miller spouts at home about our family. Filling their heads will all sorts of junk about…” Mama stopped herself, shook her head.
“What…” I wondered aloud, confused at what she was trying to tell me.
“Anyway,” she continued, ignoring my inquiry. “I think that’s what frightens them the most. How open, how genuine you are. Because they know they’ll never be that way. And so they turn your sweet nature into a vulnerability. And they decide to do this thing to you.”
I listened to the soothing hum of her smooth voice more than the words she spoke. It wasn’t until years later that I fully understood what she was getting at. Because at twelve, all I heard was that those girls were jealous of me because of my high cheekbones and full lips.
“So why did they bring you into it?” I asked.
She blinked, hesitated. “Because I look just like you, and remind them of you.”
“Oh.” I stared at her, understanding, but not. I wanted to smile, to show her I was all better. Instead, I breathed deeply and asked about her trip.
Mama parted her lips. “First, are you gonna be alright? Or do I need to talk have a little chat with Christi Miller about her daughter?”
I shook my head. “You know that would just make things worse, Mama.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Alright, fair enough. Though I’ll be honest, I’m dying for an opportunity to rip into that woman.”
My lips cracked into a small smile, followed by one loud snort. Mama joined in, sniggering at first, and then easing into her infectiously loud laugh, each chuckle reverberating around the daisy-bordered walls of my bedroom.
“Lana,” My name was spoken between broken laughs. “Can I…can I tell you something about my trip?”
I nodded and her eyes steadied, her laugh fainting.
“It’s a secret, though. So you can’t tell anyone, alright? It’ll just be between us.”
Her eyes grew big, desperate. Light from the setting sun streamed into the bedroom, turning her irises a translucent green. I wanted to swim in them.
“Alright, well. Your dad and I…you know I love him very much, right?”
Of course, I nodded.
And then she told me. Told me all about how her and Aunt Cathy (Mama’s best friend) had spent an entire day in the water at Santa Monica Beach. How beautiful the sun had looked setting over the ocean. You’re so deprived here, sweet girl. We’re all so deprived living here, so far from an ocean. How hot it was during the day and how quickly it cooled at night. How the clouds created this prism–purple, red, and yellow shot through like little streaks of glass that almost touched you, if you weren’t so far away. How at the end of the day they’d gathered up their things and tossed them in the car. How they’d changed out of their wet suits in the back, globbing on deodorant and makeup and slipping on gauzy dresses over their damp bodies.
How they’d strolled around the small beach town, eager to experience its night life.
How they’d wandered into a fine seafood restaurant and how there had been a wait for a table so they had taken up residence at the bar. Had ordered plates of oysters and dry, white wine. How two men, Young, my mother described them, had sat across from them at the bar. How Mama and Aunt Cathy had gotten loud, like they sometimes did when they were together. How their laughter had grown out of each other, like new buds sprouting out of the stalk of a flower.
How Mama had just been Aunt Cathy’s wingman, at first. I can see her, striding right up to those strange young men and saying “Excuse me, but do you see my friend over there? I’m afraid that she’s lost her wallet. And she’d be ever so grateful if one of you two gentlemen would buy her next drink.” I can see her lips, pressed together in a wide grin, her teeth only showing in smiles meant for people around whom she felt completely comfortable.
How they’d ended up buying Mama a drink, as well. And then another. And then another. More than three drinks in one night never boded well for my mother. I was drunk, she said. I felt lonely, she said. I’ve felt lonely, she said. He had an interesting take on life and, quite simply, it appealed to me, her eyes closed, not wanting to look at me, for me to see her in that moment.
I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know, for sure, what she was saying. She didn’t go into details. She just left it there. Left it there, until,
“Do you forgive me, Lana? Will you still be my friend?” Pause. “You look so much like her, you know. I know that I keep saying that, but you do. I just can’t get over it.”
She flashed me her teeth, that familiar smile, mauve over white. My own adolescent story seemed to mesh with her very grown-up one, the emotions meeting and mingling and molding into one. And then I felt for my mother, in that moment, I really did. And so I nodded. Over and over again, Yes, I forgive you. Yes, I’ll keep your secret.
She inhaled deeply. “Good girl.” Circle, circle, circle. Pat, Pat.
∞
I continued flipping through her Victoria’s Secret catalogue after she left my bedroom a few minutes later. I remember hoping, quite fiercely, that I might have need for these items someday. It wasn’t the models themselves in all their beauty that interested me. I wasn’t the kind to admire that rail-thin figure in models—my mother, she had curves, the kind that drove people crazy. I was much more interested in the lives that these women, or at least the women who bought these things, lived. Because, of course, I so desperately wanted to live these women’s lives. I could see them: the traveler, packing a black lace thong and matching bra into her suitcase just before flying to Spain to meet her fiancé for Christmas; the sweet housewife looking at herself in a red satin push-up in the mirror and giggling, thinking of her husband’s delight at her bold choice of lingerie; the VP at some big corporation quickly tugging on a pair of nude, low-cut bikini underwear and bright pink bra, with no time to find a proper match.
I remember sitting on my mother’s bed just before she took off for that trip to L.A. I was telling her about a funny book I’d just read, and recommended it for her trip. I unzipped the front of her suitcase to slide in the book, and noticed a deep plum lace nightie folded neatly inside. The Christmas catalogue had a similar one on page 26, which is why I mention it at all.
Christina Holt grew up in the Midwest and graduated from Western Illinois University in 2010 with a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. After living in Chicago for 5 years where she worked in publishing, Christina decided to pursue her MFA in Creative Writing at Western Washington University. [
Winter 2000
Maria leaned over our first-grade lunch table, her brown bob swinging. She wanted my last Cheeto, which I considered my end-meal treat. It had extra-large bumps, on which clung an ample dusting of cheese powder. It glowed fluorescent orange in the plastic baggie, taunting me. I practiced discipline, spooning applesauce until it was gone, before I would let myself eat it. My mom set rigorous rules for meals, one being that we needed to finish each meal’s designated fruits or vegetables before we ate a treat.
“You bookworm,” she said, which was not untrue. I read books by the dozen. “You freak.”
Maria often continued to test meaner and meaner words during the occasional cafeteria altercations. With a thrust of her skinny arm, she snatched the Cheeto with one hand and slammed down on my rising hand with her other.
“Faggot,” Maria said, settling on one.
She crammed the Cheeto into her mouth and crunched down on the fake-cheesy puff. I saw her glaring brown eyes think while I remained silent, lamenting my missing dessert. The slur wasn’t right. That awful word was what people called the drag queens I loved to watch in Milwaukee’s PrideFest performances every summer. My mom and her best friend Anna did not find drag shows an inappropriate place for a six-year-old. The queens showered me with glitter and complimented my shoes; I adored them. In return, as instructed by my mother, I told them how fabulous they looked and swayed my hips and arms to their singing.
“No, you’re a bastard,” Maria said, decided. “You don’t even know your dad. Little bastard.”
That night over dinner—dry supermarket special chicken breast with steamed broccoli—my mom asked how my lunch was and whether I’d finished my applesauce. I responded in the affirmative and then peered at her. My eyes must have filled with tears.
“What happened?” my mother asked. “Petra, what happened? Did you have a temper tantrum again?”
My kicking match with a wall was the talk of our tiny Catholic school a few months back. Both of my maternal grandparents died of smoking-related cancer shortly before I started first grade. One after the other, years of nicotine tar and cigarette smoke ravaged my grandparents’ white blood cells, leaving the Wolskis down a matriarch and patriarch. My mom and I did not adjust well to the loss. I remember only books—my social anesthetic—and blind fury from this time; the sadness couldn’t catch up with our anger at their sudden absences.
I toyed with my broccoli. “Don’t play with your food,” she said reflexively.
“Am I a…bastard?” I said, unsure if saying the bad word aloud would wreak punishment.
“What?” she said, surprised. “Not in the bad way, no, you’re not a bastard. That word means someone born to a mom who isn’t married. But it’s a terrible way to say it. I hope I never catch you saying that word.”
“A girl at school today called me that, and I didn’t know what it meant.”
My mother’s mouth contorted into an angry prune.
“Well, that girl’s a little snot. Who was it? I’m calling her mother,” she said, hazel eyes flaring the fiery temper I inherited from her.
“No, Mom. It’s okay.” I explained I didn’t care to lose any more lunchtime snacks over a tattletale phone call home to Maria’s mother.
“But, why don’t I know my dad?” I said. “Why isn’t he here?”
“Because he didn’t want to be involved,” Bettina said. “He’s not grown up enough to be a dad. Now, eat your dinner and do your homework.”
I obeyed.
I knew then why the nuns at school narrowed their eyes at my mom every time she came to teacher conferences late or couldn’t chaperone daytime field trips. I’m a “bastard”, I thought, but I’ll do everything I can to not be one. As soon as I’m old enough, I thought while sucking moisture out of the cheap broccoli florets, I’ll find him and figure out why I’m so weird, why I use such big words, and why he didn’t want me.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’][/author_image] [author_info] E.P. Floyd is currently an Assistant Editor of Flash Prose for Lunch Ticket and an MFA candidate in fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her writing is published or forthcoming in Reservoir Journal, Eunoia Review, BusinessWeek, the Isthmus and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Her background is in creative nonfiction; E.P. Floyd graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and English literature. She is at work on a novel and short story collection, and lives in rural Wisconsin. You can find her online at epfloyd.com. [/author_info] [/author]
It was my daughter’s idea for us to get married in her backyard. Leah had it all planned before asking us if it was something we might consider. I could tell by the way her eyes shone bright green with purpose. Already a caterer had been lined up and the menu planned. All we had to say was yes, and Leah would handle the rest.
Henry dreamt about Mad Men, and he had become a writer for the show and sat around and watched his words come out of the actor’s mouths. The one Tylenol PM he had taken before bed made his dreams more intense, but he couldn’t tell if it was the drugs talking or something trapped in his brain.