X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

FOREVER by Jennifer London

December 30, 2019 · Fiction

Clara sat on the edge of the tub, smoothing the hem of her dress compulsively. Forever was an awfully long time, she thought. Forever was endless, sprawling, impossible. It was unnatural and unlikely.

But maybe. Perhaps. Forever could be parties and dinners and clinking wine glasses. It could be laughter and snuggles and warm touches in the dark.

For a moment the murmur of voices outside the bathroom door didn’t sound quite so ominous.

But a memory came to her, as sudden and sharp as a slap in the face: her mother and father shouting at each other, a spray of blood on the linoleum floor, the underside of the kitchen table as she shrank into herself to try to disappear.

No. She knew what forever really was. It was bonnets, bassinets, bibs. It was secrets festering in the empty spaces. It was the best years of her life wrapped up in glittering white fabric for other people to write on, twisting and distorting her scenes into acts of look-how-happy-we-are, a parade of we and us and ours.

“Clara?” her grandmother called. “Clara, sweetheart, is everything all right? The ceremony’s about to begin.”

She suddenly couldn’t remember the name of the man perched alongside her on the tiered cake. She remembered his smile, a tender hand running through her hair. But then her father's face swam before her, his lips drawn back in a snarl. You think he'll still want you when he finds out what you really are?

Her breath came in short, quick bursts; her hands shook. Her dress was stifling. With a sharp tug she undid the satin ties going down her back, slipped out of her sparkling straitjacket, and crawled into the empty tub.

Her heels clanked against the porcelain. The tub was icy on her back, a sharp reminder that this was not a nightmare she could wake up from. She hugged her knees to her chest and admired her perfectly manicured toes in their strappy white prisons.

“Clara.” This time it was her father, his voice tight and menacing. “Clara, if you’re not out here in five minutes, so help me, I’ll drag you out myself.” He didn’t need to say and make you regret it.

The only response that came from her mouth was a kind of wail, a sound at once foreign and honest. A tear slid down her face, dragging a clump of mascara with it.

The voices outside seemed to be getting louder, a cacophony of hellos and how-do-you-dos and long-time-no-sees.

You'll screw this up, just like you screw up everything else.

She tried to force herself to get dressed and go back out there to play her part. Her makeup was already on, her costume was waiting for her on the floor, the audience outside was clamoring for the show to start. She mustn’t let them down. So what if some vacuous great aunt had congratulated her on finding "a man just like your father"?

She licked her lips. The tang of salt on her tongue was comforting, its bitterness a truth to hold onto.

Nobody wants damaged goods.

She watched the shadows moving under the door and felt like she might burst with her hatred, her anger at their inconstancy, the way the light played with the dark as if they were lovers, brazen and unafraid. She leaned her head back against the tile wall, and a ripple of cold raced down her neck and her shoulders until it reached her fingertips.

“Clara.” Her father again. Shadows filled the line under the door, driving away the light, and she could almost feel her father’s hot breath on her face, his hands moving between her legs. “Are you coming?”

The roar in her ears was deafening.

She plugged the drain, turned the faucet on, and watched the tub fill with hot water around her. Forever didn't have to be frightening. She closed her eyes. Forever could be the warmth that suffused her limbs as the water rose, the sudden hush as she slid down to plunge her head under the surface. Forever could be quiet and peaceful. Safe.

Forever could be her escape.

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SOMEPLACE ELSE by Emma Stough

December 28, 2019 · Fiction

I am here now. Wide unexplained sky. How did I get here? Wait. Let’s stop. No, let’s start.

We are here now. Again, I think.

Purple wallpaper. My family huddled around the TV watching Seinfeld re-runs. I am squeezed between Aggressive Older Brother and Sensitive Younger Brother—I am boiling with discontent.

My family huddles like this for decades. The living room stays the same: plush green sofa (embedded with chips and cat hairs, is the cat still alive?) and purple wallpaper. Purple like the dregs of the bitter plum tea. Purple like the dying breath of stormy sunset. Purple like purple knows best.

Dark walls shelter my family forever. Safe.

I go to school because someone has to learn something. My best subject is shapes. I fall in love with shapes and refuse to let them out of my sight. I am put into an independent study because that’s how good I am. My mentor is a bristly old man called Stanley. Our relationship is loving because he trusts me and I am eager to be trusted. When I struggle or get angry he tells me to close my eyes and picture the most comforting thing I can imagine:

Purple wallpaper: Mom, Dad, Aggressive Older Brother, Sensitive Younger Brother, cat. Popcorn and silly TV glow splashed over our faces. We are full of understanding and empathy. We’ve been watching people playact for years. We pretend.

I get so good at shapes that they recommend me for a special program upstate. I pack all my belongings: secondhand copy of The Road, silverware, patchwork quilt that someone else’s grandmother made. When I am ready to leave, I find my family where I left them. Wrapped so lovingly in purple wallpaper. Safe together.

Goodbye, I tell them. I love you very much.

On the TV someone says, I didn’t think this was a serious relationship, you know. I didn’t think this would last.

What amount of distance is too much between who you used to be and who you will become?

In my special shapes program, I meet people that have never seen purple wallpaper. They are from faraway states and countries with long histories. They have beautiful faces and stories filled with grief. I want to hold them and listen to their breathing. They politely laugh at how serious I am.

I enter a strange shape of my own: lonely, discontent. I take up water aerobics and befriend women that have lost husbands and brothers to wars. I float in the water on my back, tracing the shape of the white-rafted ceiling, static rows of rectangular light. It makes me feel better to think the ceiling is likely never to fall into the water.

I call my family and Sensitive Younger Brother talks to me for hours and hours about the shows I’ve missed. He says, We noticed you left because your shape is missing from between our bodies. Where did you go?

I trace the cord of the phone between my fingers. It spirals boldly. This is a message.

I live in an apartment on the top floor, the fifth floor. It is small but sufficient, teeming with ferns and ill-matched patterns. Sometimes when the elevator is broken, I pause in the stairwell to think about what kinds of shapes might be waiting for me elsewhere. I start wearing mostly black and grey because I think that is the person I want to be.

There is a girl in my classes with lilac hair. Hints of purple wallpaper. She shows me new shapes; Honeysuckle-filled vase on bedside table, imprint of each head on each pillow, what saddened pit my heart becomes when I cry. Hold me carefully, she warns. I’m about to fall apart.

You have to be romantic to think that here will lead to anywhere else.

One day I graduate with accolades and handshakes from those who taught me. I feel incredibly brave. My family sends a card and apologizes that they couldn’t make it: The new season of their favorite cooking competition show aired, and they didn’t want to miss it. I write back a long letter full of new shapes and include a purple leaf I saved especially for them.

My lavender girl takes me to a fancy restaurant and asks if I plan to stay or go. I ask her if she would pose the same question to a river. She says if you feel like water then let me drink you in so you can hold up the shape of me. I ask her how she feels about cooking competition shows.

When I return to the purple wallpaper not much has changed—is there one less brother? The TV light has aged my parents beyond their years. They held me as a child and reach their hands out to me, draw me back into the glow. This is my heart, I say, and they look up at my purple-haired heart. They think she is another TV she is so beautiful. They are confused; is she pretending? They begin to feel unsafe. They begin to question. I try to reassure them. I point to all the reassuring, familiar shapes around us: circle lightbulb, rectangle picture frame, diamond clock, star lampshade, zigzag carpet, octagonal shelf, square TV. Square TV. Square TV.

It’s okay to look at something else, I tell them. I am whispering from my throat. It burns, suddenly raw. My family is scared of me. The purple wallpaper dims. Who is retreating from whom?

We leave that place. I find the shape of the sky—wide, changing, indefinable—reassuring. Like a warm wool coat. Wrap it around me.

My lover calls to me and says some things are mean to be held at a distance. Keep the purple, leave the rest. I guess that’s where we started. And where are we now?

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GIRLS OF THE ARBORETUM by Brianne M. Kohl

December 27, 2019 · Fiction

The girls of the arboretum are just girls. Nothing more, nothing less. They do not speak to one another. Why would they? The wind blows through their branches. Everything that must be said has already been said. The world is over four billion years old.

When no one is watching, the girls pluck spider webs from each other’s hair and stretch the silk across the grass, blade to blade. They spend hours measuring the spiral burrs of a pine cone. In moonlight, they find constellations within the veins of Maple leaves. The girls of the arboretum have not yet discovered the stars.

The horticulturalist is a kind old man with creaky knees and eyes that water. At night he needs an oxygen mask to sleep. The girls would be baffled by the need if they could see. Sometimes, he leaves the girls presents of honey and bread, fruit and soda pop. He snips their branches, kisses their knuckles with his shears. The girls of the arboretum would forgive him anything.

His apprentice, a handsome young man, does the heavy lifting. He plants, prunes, sprays, waters and weeds. He digs holes and forces roots down. He sees the apprentice trying to root a branch and places a hand on the apprentice’s shoulder.

Not like that, the horticulturalist says, like this, and splits the band of bark between two girdling cuts on the branch. Never cut into the wood. They feel it.

The apprentice takes a deep breath in through his nose. He’s sick of the horticulturalist warning him to stay away from the girls.

They are beautiful, the old man says. But consider the Foxglove. Lily of the Valley. Consider Delphiniums. All lovely, all deadly.

The apprentice complains to coworkers that the horticulturalist must go. He is too old. He speaks of plants like a lover. He loves the trees too much.

Trees are just trees, he says. Even when they are clothed as girls. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The apprentice thinks the girls are wild like a rabbit is wild, like a heartbeat or a sagging Willow. He is right. The horticulturalist thinks the girls are wild like a storm is wild, like a cancer or a redwood. He is right.

The girls of the arboretum make a game out of everything. They stand at pond’s edge, peek over hedgerows, run through open woodland. Tools go missing only to be found hidden deep in the briars or in the hollows of dead trees.

The girls braid their hair beneath the honey locusts and eat ripe watermelon, seeds, rinds and all. They kiss one another with mouths full of melon. They know the apprentice watches them.

The girls feel his gaze like the silk of the webworm. He defoliates them with his eyes. When he approaches, the girls become deer, tip top white tails, thin legs. They fall to all fours and scatter. The apprentice laughs and a dozen black eyes turn to stare at him.

The apprentice is not afraid. After all, what is frightening about a tree or a deer or a girl? But the horticulturalist is aghast. Never laugh at the girls. Offer them sweets if you have wronged them. Leave them be.

But, as he works, the apprentice imagines tying the girls of the arboretum down, forcing their roots into place. When they steal his trench spade, he spends the afternoon hunting it and pictures burning the girls, blighting them, cutting them down. If they were gone, the horticulturalist would go too. It’s all he thinks about anymore. It spurs him to action.

It’s so simple, the apprentice rationalizes. You cannot allow disease to take hold in the forest. It will spread, root to root. The girls are a disease. Nothing more, nothing less.

The horticulturalist watches his apprentice walk down the path to the tree line, ax in hand. The old man rushes to his office and grabs a basket. He fills it with whatever he can find in the kitchen: apples, green grapes, a half-eaten chocolate bar. As he runs down the path, he scoops up acorns and adds them to the basket.

It is too late. The girls are naked, their skin full of splinters and barbs. They have hearts of ash, black poplar and oak. The apprentice stands before them, jaw tight. He grips the ax with a righteous fist.

The horticulturalist loves the girls of the arboretum, he would do anything for them. He always keeps his tools sharp; he never prunes in the fall. He watches carefully for pests. But the girls are wild like a rain drop is wild. Rain drops build and build. They become a swollen river. Water will not be denied.

When the screaming starts, the horticulturalist drops the basket, spilling his offerings across the bed of pine needles and crisp leaves. He walks away slowly. He does not to worry for the girls. They have called the apprentice to them. The girls of the arboretum never summon what they cannot banish.

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THE SWADDLE by Janelle Bassett

December 26, 2019 · Fiction

I am at the sink, rinsing a food processor blade, when I hear the cry of a tiny baby. Carrot bits go down the drain, easy, but the insistent wailing isn’t going anywhere. I assume the sound is some sort of inner-ear repercussion from the electronic-tornado buzzing of the food processor, yet the sound continues even after I open my mouth wide to pop my ears. A baby is definitely crying and it’s an I’ve-been-left-alone-which-I-am-not-built-for cry.

I look up and think back, “Didn’t my babies grow past the baby stage?”

I consult the refrigerator where, sure enough, their recent school pictures confirm that my children are old enough to wear collars, sit upright, have teeth growing from their gums, and act natural when exposed to sudden flashes of unnatural light.

Have the neighbors left their baby outside? I don’t judge other parents (except constantly, inside my head) but I might have to call someone if the Rheingold’s have forced that baby to do yard work.

I walk to the other side of the kitchen to get a clear view of their backyard. No baby. Just an upside-down bucket. I don’t think the Rheingolds would leave their baby outside under a bucket—they put an awful lot of effort into their Christmas decorations.

I swear the crying must be coming from my own yard. It’s that close—I feel a certain duty. I dry my hands and head out the back door.

The baby isn’t even hiding, it’s on top of the picnic table. The baby would make a terrible picnic host— swaddled arms cannot scoop, serve, fetch or pour. All those tears would water down the potato salad. I say “shhh” to my incessant inner chatter and to the swaddled baby crying atop my backyard picnic table.

I realize the baby is translucent and that this means that I am having some sort of breakdown. An auditory hallucination led me toward a visual hallucination. I don’t like where this is heading. If this baby has a smell I am really in some trouble, mentally. I bend down and sniff. When my face is so-close the crying stops, or the hallucination mutes. The scent: a mix of blood, leather, and that smell the furnace makes the first time it kicks on for the season.

The baby and I stare at each other. It looks up at me with such love and acceptance that I feel rather guilty for looking back down with eyes that make accusations like, “You are not real. This is not happening. You are alarming evidence of my deteriorating mental health. You look a great deal like my father-in-law.”

The crying resumes. I’ve broken whatever promises I made with the earlier proximity of my face. I pick up the baby because it seems healthy to follow your instincts even as you’re falling apart. As soon as my hands touch the baby its skin and blanket become as solid and opaque as everything else in my backyard. Now the table-baby and the heartleaf brunnera are on an equal footing.

It stops screaming and I know it is my baby because I hear a voice in my head saying, “I am your baby.”

“You can talk? That doesn’t make any sense!” We both laugh at that, my laugh emitting out into the grass, the baby’s giggling between my ears.

“If we are touching you will know what I’m saying. I am the baby you are too selfish to have.”

I turn the baby over to see if it has a tag or a tether and also to punish it for calling me selfish.

I use my maternal-wisdom voice to say, “It’s not selfish to know your limits.”

“Okay Mommy, I am the baby you are too limited to have.”

My other children are also smart asses. My other children have also had my number from day one. I kiss the baby’s forehead and ask how it ended up on the picnic table even though I’d diligently prevented its existence.

“The short answer is that I wanted you that badly. I wanted you enough to manifest on my own, all while knowing you don’t want me.”

Look baby, this is exactly the kind of hungry need I was avoiding when I decided not to have you. “Do you have a name?”

“Lou.”

“Do you have a gender?”

“Why? Would you have me if I came with a certain gender?”

“No.”

“If you want to know my gender you’ll have to birth me and then keep me alive me long enough for me to know myself.”

“That’s a lot to ask.”

“Admit it, you think of me just as much as I think of you.”

I stick my face into Lou’s neck. “Of course I do. I am a walking hormone swamp. But it would be irresponsible to bring you here now. The planet is dying.”

“I’d love to witness a thing like that. What a gift you could give me: consciousness with which to view the great collapse.”

I cup Lou’s cheek. “If I had you, there would be fewer resources for your siblings: parental attention, money, hot water. It wouldn’t be fair to them. They got here first.”

“I’ll have you know they pushed and shoved to get to the front of the line. They maimed and belittled!”

“I’m sorry, Lou. Are you cold? Do you want to go inside?”

“Inside your womb?”

“No, dear. Inside the house.”

Lou cries a bit, setback, and then says, “I will love you completely despite your many faults. I’ll never ask for anything. I’ll wear hand-me-downs and eat table scraps. If you don’t like the name Lou I’d happily be called after one of your great-grandparents or the offspring of a bottom-tier celebrity. You don’t even have to look me in the eye! I just want to hold a bug in my hand and taste vanilla bean.”

“Oh Lou,” I say. “If you promised to never come out—a permanent pregnancy, an ongoing residency—then I’d do it. I think I could carry you as long as you were forced to go where I wanted.”

“Is that your best offer?”

“Yes. I’m not proud of it.”

“That helps.”

Someone nearby starts a lawn mower and I instinctively pull Lou into my breasts. “How do I put you in there?”

“Wait! Are you sure this is your best offer? I will wear any Halloween costume you choose and let you take as many photos as you’d like. I’ll pose without any regard for my own self respect. I could even carry a small broom and dustpan and sweep up all my own footprints and crumbs. And… I don’t mean to brag, but I will be your favorite. Hands down, your favorite. A joy. A delight. A human stocking stuffer.”

“You sound like the perfect constant presence, Lou—a right-nice inborn companion.” I squeeze so tight and push so hard that if Lou’s body were real it would be in great pain. But instead of being injured, Lou is being absorbed.

Lou quickly says, “You could be more generous. You could challenge yourself and then grow from it” before being fully smooshed into my body.

Lou is gone from my arms. I remember the stew I was making before being summoned outside. Lou says, “Can I have stew?” from within and I sigh so heavily I wonder if Lou could’ve been dislodged.

Before going inside, I place my hand on my belly and we settle our terms. Lou will remain quiet inside me—observing, recording—until we are in bed, alone, the siblings asleep nearby. At that point of the day I’ll be available for questions—we will engage, we will process and if Lou wants to jump and flail I’ll put my hand on the site of that jumping.

I go in and Lou goes quiet. I finish stew preparations, wipe the counter, and send my closest friend a text that says, “I hope menopause comes for me soon because every month my PMS gets deeper and stranger.”

I walk to the bus stop and retrieve my children. I greet them and in response they hand me their belongings so they can run ahead, unburdened.

I can feel Lou wanting to ask for a backpack.

At dinner my partner asks, “Since when do you put ketchup on cornbread? Don’t you hate ketchup?” I couldn’t tell him, “Lou wants it. Lou needs it. Lou is ecstatic about experiencing ketchup.”

After reading my children a chapter from a book about a family of bickering yet relatable armadillos I say goodnight, kiss their necks and try not to picture them forcefully kicking, slapping, or shoving Lou away from the front of the line.

Downstairs, my partner and I read and hold each other’s feet. Then he’s shaking my foot, waking me, telling me to go to bed.

I’ve barely laid down before Lou asks, “What did that tweet mean… about how people who are reluctant to pee in the shower probably have sad inhibited sex?”

“You can see out of my eyes?”

“Of course.”

“This is not how a pregnancy works, Lou. You’re supposed to be captivated and fulfilled by the sound of my heartbeat.”

“We both know this is a special pregnancy. Get up. Let’s go outside and lick the grass! I want to taste grass immediately.”

“No, it’s time to go to sleep. These are the rhythms of a day. Let’s talk about the sunset.”

“What was that feeling we had when we closed the door to my siblings’ room? I didn’t like it.”

“That was relief and regret and longing and tenderness.”

“What was that sensation whipping us as we rolled in the trash bin?”

“That was wind.”

“Why did you scrape the dinner plates into the trash?”

“That was waste.”

“Can we lick the grass now? I’m awake to it all. I’m not a bit tired.”

“No, Lou. I am going to fall asleep.” I put my hand on my lower abdomen. “I can touch your dance first, if you’d like.”

“The grass the grass the grass.”

“I said no and I meant it.”

Lou adds movement to the chant—pendulum elbows poke and stretch my skin to the beat of “grass grass grass.”

I roll onto my stomach, pressing my weight into the bed, trying to end this day.

“You push me and yet I can… feel myself growing. My intestines just developed a new capacity. My forearm can nearly flex. I think the spurts come when you deny me the experiences I need, Mommy. If you don’t respond to my impulses I’ll become a head to push. Life is insistent, Mommy. I’m a steamroller, Mommy. It’s all chemical, Mommy. My growth is your growth is all toward the end, Mommy. The grass grass grass. My lightening could be your strike, mommy. I could. Let me! Let me. And when I’m all said and done we can call it your decision.”

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FISH GHOST by Kevin Richard White

December 23, 2019 · Fiction

My sister spoke of a fish ghost that occupies a nearby river. She raised her voice as if her sentences had a weight. But in reality, she's timid.

"It has bones and fins," she said, "but it is poor at cutting through the water."

"Amanda," I said as she swayed, a wind tearing through my hoodie that she always wore.

“Something like an urban monster.” Her eyes widened.

“Legend, you mean.”

“Whatever.”

It’s possible she’s correct. There’s always been rumblings from neighbors and lifers that there’s a creature existing in our milieu. Cameras mysteriously break when one gets close to it and they say that we get more snow because of it. All sorts of things like that. I’m a skeptical one, but I take facts over hushed whispers nine times out of ten.

“So is it a fish or a ghost?”

“It’s both,” she said.

“How can it be?”

“I don’t know. Because it can be.”

Amanda loves a good fantasy, though, so I let her tell me this as we let the night pass on our grandfather’s porch, counting little stars and corn stalks with cold fingers. Even though she’s dressed warm, she’s still stricken with chills, and I go to give her my flannel as well. For once I’m not drinking, but she’s having her share and mine too. The dead soldiers clink like perfect wind chimes. There’s nothing else to do but drink and talk of a better life. It’s more fun than you think.

“Maybe it’s time to go to bed,” I told her. Because I knew where this was going. She was going to tell me the history. She was going to tell me how it was born and how it became so ugly. How it was a metaphor for us, or something we were supposed to be—how WE have bones and fins too and are poor at cutting through the water. It was going to take up hours I didn’t have.

“No,” she said quietly. “No,” she said again after a time.

She was beginning to enter a haze. She’s been through some trauma and when she gets fixated, I know it’s better to leave her alone for a while. I knew she was warm and she had one beer left, so I wished her goodnight. It was important she had some time to sort this out.

After I shut the door, I heard her say, “A mystery. A mystery.”

She never came to bed that night. A police officer found her hours later, in the river, only wearing my flannel, with a net she stole from the neighbor’s yard. She had been saying different names out loud, but there weren’t of anyone we knew. No charges were pressed, so I went and picked her up just as the sun was rising.

“You don’t even fish, Amanda,” I said.

“You’re missing the point.”

“You said it was a ghost. Not even a real fish.”

“You’re missing the POINT,” she said as she punched my passenger side mirror. It hung by a thin cable and clunked against the door every time I sped up. So I crawled as the sticky morning air refused to let up.

“Then what is the point?”

She swallowed a few times. She fiddled with the broken radio and drank from a coffee that I accidentally left behind from the day before. She gurgled it and spat it out the window. I just kept driving because I wasn’t sure what else to do with my hands or body, and I knew she was preparing to let loose with some kind of storm. I kept straight on the highway until she unbuckled and told me to pull over.

I did so and parked at this abandoned farm that’s been empty ever since we were born. Ghosts, too, or just smarter people than us. Amanda punched the dirt and rocks until her hands bled. I couldn’t stop her, she didn’t want to be stopped. People who have been hurt and want to hurt don’t want to be told no. They want to continue until they are out of words and out of energy. Our point as those who are not hurt need to just shut the fuck up. It’s important to know us. Even if it’s about a fish ghost or not. Even if it’s about something that’s not even there. And if it was, who was I to tell her no? She was better than me. Stronger than me. Not my place to tell her anything different.

She held up a clump of dirt and left it sift through a trembling hand. “You know it’s there, right? You have to know.”

“Yes,” I said.

“We’re going to go back tonight.”

“No problem.”

“Bring your shotgun,” she said.

“Sure, I said.”

She picked up a rock and began to throw it at me, but stopped herself.

“The shotgun,” she said again, harder.

“I’ll bring it.”

She nodded and smiled. “We have work to do,” she said.

I picked her up off the ground and told her everything was alright. I put her back in the car. She needed to get some rest.

“You’re the best brother in the world,” she said as we began to drive off.

I nodded. Even with her eyes closed, I knew she saw it. Or maybe she was imagining something in the water below me, as she stared at it, hungry, wanting to defeat it, wanting to defeat whatever story she didn’t want to hear anymore. I’ve been there. I had bad ones, too.

But hers is one that needs to be stopped. Hers is the one that remains. Even if it’s not important to real to anyone else. It’s hers that needs to be heard.

I gripped the wheel. I felt something was chasing me.

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LITTLE DISTRACTIONS by Sherry Morris

December 22, 2019 · Fiction

Maybe because I’m bored, I agree to see Barry’s fish tank. I’d just returned from three months in Europe where travelling with a circus through France or catching live octopus to grill for lunch while house-sitting on a Spanish island was just how some weeks played out.

I was back in Waynesville now, broke, regretting I’d come back too late to start the autumn term at the state university. The main attraction in Waynesville was the Walmart Super Center, which had never been that super. My dad knew somebody who knew somebody who could get me on at the cake-mix factory. It was the best menial pay going—a solid $5 an hour. It sounded easier than waitressing, and McDonalds was for teenagers. Assembly work would be dull, but I’d had my adventure. I’d do a bit of time then move on. Maybe find a little distraction or two to pass that time. There’d be no harm in that.

We go for breakfast first. It’s like going to dinner since me and Barry work the graveyard shift, eleven to seven. The days are shorter now, and as we leave the factory, there’s a hint of light in the sky. I feel my exhaustion fade as I step into the freshness of early-morning air. Barry says being awake before the birds makes him feel wise. We’ll eat in our uniform whites but remove our hairnets and dust off the fine white powder that covers us as best we can.

For the first three months I work the gentle macaroni line with mothers of classmates who puff up proud talking about their children and grandchildren as Kraft boxes and cheese packets trundled along. I join in, talking maybe a bit too loud about the French hairdresser boyfriend I’d had and tales of circus life where the troupe’s trumpeter lost his tongue by standing too close to a monkey. Then I get moved upstairs to a fast line.

I find myself standing elbow-to-elbow with sturdy stone-faced women who look like they’ve worked assembly lines for centuries—even the ones only a few years older than me. Their eyes and faces seem dead, but their hands are so alive. I’m transfixed by the way they flit like birds as we stuff plastic pouches of cake mix, muffin mix, and brownie mix into cardboard boxes that race by. All the women snap-to when the shouty little foreman appears. I keep my head down and hands moving, but he always stops near me. He stares at my hands, then shakes his head. I try and stuff like the others, but I miss boxes, a lot of boxes, making the women swoop in to stuff them. Sometimes I miss so many boxes the shouty little foreman stops the line during the three-hour run. If too many boxes are missed, we lose our fifteen-minute break.

Breaks are crucial. That’s when everyone flies off to pee, then smoke, flocking back together to chatter. But I don’t smoke and try not to drink anything before a shift. I stand apart and pretend not to notice how they tilt their heads or point their chins in my direction, stare at me with tough-guy eyes. I listen to them squawk about drunken honky-tonk escapades and how they lost their bras in barroom brawls. They’d probably roll their eyes hearing about all-night Italian beach raves and sunbathing topless. Doubt they’d care about cocktail recipes unless I left out the fruit. But it doesn’t matter—I’m here for only eight more months. So what if they don’t invite me to their lunch table or show me pictures of their babies and toddlers, friends’ bachelorette parties or pets.

A book is my lunch company, and I do my best to ignore the cackles that carry as they gossip, discuss TV shows I don’t watch, and grouch they’ll be stuck at home this weekend as they can’t ditch their kids with their parents. Sometimes a single shift feels like eight months.

At least Big Bertha tolerates me, giving me technique tips and stuffing most of my missed boxes without comment. But it’s hard working next to her. She smells bad and sucks soft caramels non-stop, popping them into her mouth even while working the line. Her teeth are grey stubs swimming in gooey muck, making her words stick and slur into a pool of mumble. When I look at her mouth, I feel sick.

At some point I notice Barry, the foreman of the pancake line. See how he laughs and jokes with his ladies throughout their shift, giving them little lingering pats on their backs or their arms or hips to celebrate the fact they have the most productive line. And he notices me, coming over one lunchtime to sit down and chat. We discover he went to school with my older cousins, and he asks me about the book I’m reading. Before long, I’m tell him my plans for college. How I’m living at home and working here because I’m going away next fall. He nods and tells me about the philosophy books he’s reading, how he’s always been interested in enlightenment. Adds he has a fish tank I really should see sometime.

We go to a family-run bakery for breakfast. We don’t want anything from a box. The smell of fresh bread, donuts, and coffee surrounds us and reminds me of my grandma’s kitchen. Breakfast with Barry is good. Even great. He’s funny, got things to say. He thinks it’s super I’m working to finance my studies. Says education is important, the key to enlightenment. In a lower voice he says he’ll try to get me on his line, but it’s complicated. It feels like Barry could be a friend, an ally, a mentor. That makes me smile, go a bit fluttery. There’s a white smudge on his cheek I hope he doesn’t wipe away. Barry tells me he once had an offer to go to college.

“But I got side-tracked. Don’t get side-tracked,” he says, shaking a finger at me.

Then he goes quiet and stares at his donut. Starts telling me about his ex-wife, how he’s on decent terms with her now. Has weekends with the kids sorted. Working different shifts helps. He perks back up after a bit. He wants to show me his trailer and some new furniture he’s bought.

“And the fish tank,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, the fish tank. And maybe we’ll watch a movie.”

But there’s no fish tank and the sofa sags in the middle. I can’t see a single book anywhere. I perch on one end of the sofa and watch as Barry makes us drinks even though it’s only 9 a.m. He says his Bloody Mary is a killer. I shake my head, but he hands me a glass anyway. He goes off to change and comes back wearing jeans and a red plaid shirt. He’s put on cologne, too. A lot. Something that smells like kerosene. The smudge has disappeared, and I hardly recognize him now. He says I can change if I want, but I haven’t brought any other clothes. I say I need to go, that I have to take my mom to her doctor’s appointment. Barry punches a button on the remote and the TV pops on.

“But we were gonna watch a movie,” he says. His voice has risen to an unmistakable whine. “I’ve got one I think you’ll like.”

And before I can say anything else, he presses another button for the VCR and a porno begins to play.

Barry’s got one of those old box TVs with photos of his kids on top. Two big 8x10 prints from a studio, with the kids dressed up in front of a bland blue backdrop. His boy is maybe four with a wide smile, cute and blond. His red cowboy boots are planted firmly, and his hat sits at a jaunty angle as he takes aim at the camera with a toy gun. In the other photo is his girl. She’s a little older, another blonde, with pink bows and matching Mary Janes. She’s perched on the edge of her chair, ready to bolt, with a ragdoll she holds tight. Her head is cocked, like she’s listening, her little face full of doubt. Maybe she’s been promised a fish tank too.

I concentrate on the photos, ignore the tangle of limbs and sounds coming from the TV. Barry’s advice floats back to me. I see how it happened. The repercussions that followed. How it could happen again. I take a deep breath.

“Nice kids,” I say.

Go on about how sweet they look, how I bet they enjoy spending time with their dad. That he must be super proud of them. I keep talking ‘til he switches off the TV.

“Well,” I say, standing up. “It’s been enlightening.” Then I go.

On the way home, I stop at Walmart. I’ve heard Vicks VapoRub under the nose works wonders. Peruse the hard candy aisle and buy a bag of sugar-free peppermints. I’ll tell Bertha they’re a thank you, that they were out of soft caramels. I grab a few of those glossy TV rag-mags I’ve only ever sniffed at. Tell myself to consider it research. That I should apply myself, make friends with the line. Maybe even offer to babysit. Enlightenment is everywhere. So are harmful little distractions.

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IN A SMALL TOWN (CALLED AMERICA) by Christian Fennell

December 21, 2019 · Fiction

It’s getting worse, and Jake finished his beer, and together they listened to the rain on the tin roof of the drive-shed; the receptiveness of its falling; the comfort within its echoing.

Things are lookin up, said Jake.

Damn straight, said Jared.

I mean, now that things are great again, things are lookin up, and Jake stood and walked to the fridge and grabbed two more beers. He passed one to Jared and sat back down on the block of cracked white oak. He took a sip and looked at Jared. I went and saw the doc.

Oh?

Said I’m shooting blanks.

Shit, Jake, I’m sorry to hear that. Have ya told Sugar?

Last night.

How’d that go?

‘Bout as good as you’d think. Ya know how much she wants kids. Not that I don’t—I mean, you got your two and they’re doin okay, right?

Right.

Thing is, I don’t wanna adopt some stranger’s baby and say it’s mine. Sugar don’t neither. We could get her artificially knocked up, but—.

What?

Jake shrugged and took another sip.

They got DNA.

I know they got DNA, but nothins perfect, and it might work out you’re paying for somethin a little less than what you’d hoped for, ya know what I mean?

I guess.

And then you’re just fucked.

So, what’ya thinkin?

I want you to do it.

You what?

You heard me.

Are you askin me to fuck Sugar?

Yup.

Really?

Yup.

Have you lost your goddamn mind?

Jake lifted his John Deere ball cap, scratched the top of his balding head, and said, nope.

Does Sugar know?

We talked about it.

You talked about it?

Yup.

And what’ya think, Alice is gonna be okay with me walkin next door and havin a go with Sugar? ‘Cause I got news for ya, she won’t be.

She don’t gotta know.

What’ya mean she don’t gotta know? How the hell is she not gonna know?

Cause we ain’t gonna tell her, that’s how.

For fuck sake, this is nuts, I can’t fuck Sugar.

What’ya mean you can’t fuck Sugar? She looks good still. Hell, she’s a lot better lookin than that girl you were fuckin back in high school.

She wasn’t that bad.

The hell she wasn’t.

C’mon, Jake, get serious, you don’t mean this shit?

I’m as serious as the day is long, little brother, hell, it won’t take more than a time or two—didn’t ya always tell me all you had to do to knock up Alice was to hang your pants on the bed post?

I know, but, still—

At least this way the kid’ll be a Burleson. Jake finished his beer and threw the empty at the garbage can. Besides, ya don’t gotta worry bout thing. We’ll just get up a little early, you walk to my place, and I’ll come here. After you’re done, you come back here like nothing ever happened, and I’ll head back to my place. Jake stood. Do me a favor and just think about it. He walked to the door and looked back. Oh, and by the way, Sugar says she’ll be droppin eggs in the next day or two.

She’ll be what?

That’s what she said.

You talked about it?

Yup, we talked about it. Later.

Yeah, said Jared. Fuck me.

Jake opened the door and walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. How’d it go?

Standing at the workbench cleaning an engine part Jared looked back.

Ya got it done, right?

Yeah, I got it done, but I had to turn her around.

What? Why? She looks good still.

No, I mean, to do it, ya know.

I guess, and Jake tipped back his beer.

Maybe cause she’s your wife, or somethin like that, what’ya think?

How long ya been married?

Eleven years.

Do ya love her still?

What? Yeah, I suppose so. How the hell should I know?

It’s hard to know, ain’t it?

Yeah, it’s not easy.

Ya think she still loves you?

Of course she does. Why wouldn’t she?

I didn’t say she didn’t. What about Sugar?

What about her?

Think she still loves me?

Hell, I don’t know. Why?

It’s just something ya wonder about, that’s all. It’s not like it’s not possible. It happens all the time.

I guess.

Do ya think it matters?

What?

Love.

I don’t know—for fuck sake, Jake.

Jake tossed his empty at the garbage can. I think it does. He walked to the door and looked back. We’d best try again tomorrow, well things are still going good that way.

Yeah, sure.

Later.

Yeah, said Jared, later.

Sugar walked out the door, her flip-flops smacking her heels, her white short dress tight all the way down.

She crossed the adjoining properties and reached the gravel driveway. She looked away, somewhere, and took a drag of her cigarette. She tossed it to the gravel, toed it out, and opened the drive-shed door.

Her eyes adjusting to the dim light she walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. She looked at the calendar hanging on the wall, some girl with less than little on draped over the hood of a shiny red car. They make good money, ya know. She opened the beer and looked back at the poster. A blonde, like her. It's not just the money, it's the connections. Ya know that, right?

She walked to the workbench and pulled herself onto a high metal stool. She crossed her legs, her one foot bouncing—a nervous energy of how she was hinged, much like this place itself. I suppose ya talked about it?

Not much we did, no.

She took a sip of beer and leaned back, her thin milky-white forearms resting on the workbench, her dress high up on her long legs, and she tilted her head, the thickness of her blonde hair falling to one side and catching the light, just right, and she knew it, and did so without having to. What’d he say? She looked at her chipped red nail polish.

He wanted to know if it went okay.

And?

And what?

What’ya say?

Not much.

Not much?

No. Can we not talk about this?

Why don’t ya wanna talk about it?

What’s the point?

The point? She uncrossed her legs and re-crossed them the other way, her foot starting to bounce. Why’s it gotta be so hot in here? What’s wrong with that damn fan? She leaned forward. The point is, we need to figure this out, and right this minute we do.

Jared grabbed a rag and began to wipe his hands. What’s with you?

Did ya not hear us late night? I’d be surprised if ya didn’t.

A little, I did. What was up? He walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer.

I told him, I ain’t no puppy-mill slut, and I ain’t sleeping with you no more.

Jarred stopped. You’re what?

What?

They looked at one another.

You ain’t sleeping with me no more?

Of course, I am, I just ain’t doin it for him no more.

That makes no sense.

Are you dumb? There’s a world of difference between my wanting to sleep with you and him wanting me to. And I can tell you this much, we had better figure this out, and I mean now.

Jared leaned against the bench and sipped his beer. How long we been together?

I don’t know, a couple of years, I guess. Why?

In all that time we been doin it, were ya never worried about getting pregnant? Or were ya just hoping ya would and say it was Jake’s?

Ya don’t get it, do you? All this damn talk of babies, I can hardly take it.

What’ya mean?

She put her beer down and got and began to pace in her flip-flops. It’s the last thing I’m ever gonna do, do understand that?

What?

This world is a hard world, Jared Burleson, and it gets no easier being woman, that’s for damn sure. She picked up her beer and took a sip. And if you think I’m gonna get dropped down another rung or two by having either yours or your brother’s damn babies, ya gotta another thing comin. Besides, it plays absolute havoc with your body, destroys it completely. She looked at Jared. Is that what you want?

Hold on, are you telling me all this time you’ve been on birth control?

That is correct, smart boy, yes I have.

And all this time Jake thought you were trying to get pregnant?

Correct.

And then it turns out, he’s sterile? What would ya have done if he hadn’t been?

I don’t know. I’d of figured somethin out.

And now he’s got me doin ya to get ya pregnant even though I already am and you’re on birth control?

She pulled herself back up onto the stool. As it turns out, yes. She took a sip of beer.

Jared pushed off the workbench and stood in front of Sugar, his hands reaching past her to the workbench. You’re something, Sugar. I don’t know what, but you’re definitely somethin.

The small fan in the window began to rattle and it blew warm sticky air.

Sweat from his forehead dropped to her thigh.

She looked at her leg, at the drop, and she put her finger to it, and it ran like a tear.

She felt the smooth touch of her dress, moving up, and she pushed herself forward on the stool, just a little, just enough, a lazy southern cat stretching its underbelly to the warming sun.

Sugar.

I know, baby, and she put her arms around his neck. She looked out the small window. At the scrubby land. At the coming heat. A small bird came to the window. Maybe a starling? She didn't know. She did once, when she was just a little girl.

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PROBLEM CHILD by Ellen Huang

December 20, 2019 · Fiction

Ariel often got in trouble for trying to escape. That was how he saw it, anyway. He spent much of his time enigmatically testing the limits of his body, such as a current frustrating inability to become liquid. "If cats can do it, why can't I?" he'd grumble. He'd try to vanish into the air but trip over balls of yarn left around the house. He was losing the skill of leaving his body. He was losing memory of transcendent experience fast.

They considered him distracted. His eyes were often elsewhere, in a different time and place, some good old days no one here would understand. Coma, lucid dreaming, and Peter Pan Syndrome were offensive nonsense words to him. He'd stew in the shadows at the staircase, grumbling at this illusion of these mere mortal adults being his senior.

Sometimes, he'd spin around fervently, in delusional attempts to become a tornado, feet flying. Then he'd get scolded as if he had spun the entire room around him. No one cared that it was the small bed that spiraled into his way first. All that mattered was he had knocked into it, making little Fey cry again.

He didn't know why Fey made such a racket. She wasn't a baby. In fact, she was rather a bit of a prodigy as far as creatives went. At only four, she was making pretty little cats out of fabric, quite possibly on the verge of giving them life in the future.

Ariel also got in trouble for telling Fey what the wind said on stormy nights. He told of how he had been a force of nature in a previous life, and thus once able to become the wind. Now, he could only interpret what ghosts on the breeze were saying, and embellish as he saw fit.

If he was feeling especially irritated about serving his sentence in this mortal shell, he would tell Fey the howling wind was saying very gruesome things. Four-year-old Fey had to hear that the wind was saying it'd rip out her hair and grind her teeth into bread for elementals in the afterlife. Or that the wind was getting angrier for missing one if its favorite gods (as Ariel often bragged he was), and the wind was going to vengefully destroy the villages while dumping Fey in a giant mixing bowl.

One night, Fey accidentally stepped on his cloak and choked him. Ariel wasn't used to such things as he expected to poof into air if anything got him. The wind was mild that night but angry Ariel was still able to scare the girl by saying: "The wind is saying it'll wait until you sleep first. Then it's going to wrap you up and throw you far away, to get caught on a telephone pole. And then the telephone pole will unravel your innards. And then, when it's had its fun, the wind will empty out your head like a melon."

"Noooo!" cried Fey, holding the button-eyed patchwork cat she had.

But then Ariel jolted when he actually did hear the wind speaking.

It was howling louder outside, but nothing in the house seemed to be disturbed. Ariel's eyes felt like they were going to pop out, but now that he was a mortal they remained secure.

"Ariel," boomed a voice in the wind. "Why are you tormenting your sister?"

"She's not my sister!" Ariel huffed, hands over his ears. "I'm not meant to be a babysitter. When will you let me go?"

"Ariel, you fell out of your own accord. Do not blame the child."

Ariel groaned. "I am a DRAGON. I am an ELEMENT. I am the SLEEPING GIANT BENEATH THE SEAS. And in this life, if you insist...I am a BOY. I don't settle for tea parties with lost girls!"

Then the wind got into his head, where he could not escape. "You are still made by something and will fall by something. Take the chance to become something more than a fool."

Suddenly, Ariel began to tremble. The wind had never gotten into his head before, commanding silence in the unsettled storm in his head. A whirlwind of suppressed thoughts, perhaps hundreds of years old, suddenly ceased. There was only the voice, a whisper in a closed, empty room. "Don't bother Fey again."

So for the rest of that night, Ariel did whatever Fey asked. He baked the cookies, set up the tea parties, flattered her eleventh thrown-together-and-not-yet-live cats. He let her try his black cape and he resisted all urge to tighten it until she squeaked, for fear the wind's voice would shut off all sweet room tone, all white noise, all other dreams. He gritted his teeth and held himself together while Fey drew on his face and braided his short flame of hair. He resisted all desire to burst the tiara into flames. It was surprisingly easy.

He caught a glint in the little girl's bright green eyes, a concentration of power the neighbors feared. People around here had fearful tales about black girls with green eyes, as if she were some possessed gris-gris doll and not a little girl at all. Yet the voice told him such tales only planted forces of hatred in this world. The voice told him within her was the tested, resilient, blinding power of good, that many would not understand. They would be responsible for not provoking each other. This practice of shaping life in the moment and being slow to anger, this gradual cultivating like waiting for yeast to rise in the blip of mortal life—that was where the wind was present. Ariel was going to have to understand that. He had never noticed Fey's irises, gleaming with other lives, too. He let goosebumps crawl on his bare white arms for the first time in ages.

"Your Papa sure loves you, I'll give you that," he muttered as the girl finally went to sleep with a smile on her face.

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“WHAT? NO.” by Scott Bryan

December 19, 2019 · Fiction

One time, at least, an elephant ate a bat.

It wasn’t a mistake, either. Nothing is.

It wasn’t like the bat was flying around, all willy-nilly, and the elephant was yawning, as pachyderms have a tendency to do, and the bat just, like, zigged when it should have zagged, and instead of a mouthful of cud or hay or greens, delivered by way of a droopy, rough, wet schnoz, the poor elephant unintentionally brought down their ill-equipped herbivore's chompers (humiliated and hiding behind the impressive tusks of fortune which had been bestowed by whatever glue-sniffing god to whom elephants pray [Do you think elephants pray to Ganesha? No. That doesn’t seem right. I guess most people would assert that elephants don’t pray at all. Then most people would put their hands on their hips and authoritatively nod their head, proud of their superiority over such a staggering creature]. Crap, what was I saying? Oh yeah, the elephant didn’t accidentally clamp down) on the soft, light, furry flesh of the bat.

Nope. That’s not what happened at all.

“Grandpa, did you mean the elephant’s presence was staggering? Or that the elephant was staggering around?”

What? No.

What I meant was, the bat was in no danger whatsoever. This wasn’t normal, predictable, or fair. The elephant swung their mouth wide and lifted their girth away from the ground like a monkey lifting its paws off the earth for the first time, quite a feat for such a colossally distributed animal.

“Does ‘colossally distributed’ mean there are a lot of elephants, created by a god to which they do not (or can not or choose not to) pray? Or does it mean elephants are big and have a strange center of gravity?”

What? NO.

Turns out, all of this was happening just as the hipster hangout across the way was closing down.

“For the day, or, like, going out of business?”

What? No.

They just finished the weekly open mic night, for Pete’s sake. The place was hopping! All the residents of the town had gathered to partake in some spoken-word by candlelight.

A young person recited a piece of epic power and profundity, and the audience, dressed in slacks and pressed shirts and beatnik scarfs and glasses, who pretended to give their friends bored, disinterested eye rolls while whispering critical comments under their breath, were actually riveted, so enthralled with the young sycophant's performance they quietly snapped their fingers in time with their own heartbeats.

The background repeated like a cheaply made cartoon, the same doors passed multiple times. They elephant chomped down only a short time after the emotional monologue crescendoed to an ovation-inspiring conclusion.

Do you get the point o’ this whole endeavor, youngin?

“I think so. You’re saying if we are inactive, we will never see the possibilities for improvement or adventure. Whether the elephant chomps down on the bat or the audience sits in silence or erupts in applause, whether or not the meaning of the action has been revealed, it’s our recognition of the importance of the moment which really counts, and we have no foresight as to where our actions will take us.”

What? No. I nearly impressed a member of the homecoming court at that open mic.

The point is: The performer was me!

As the two of us were trying to leave together, arm in arm, probably headed to a night of fumbling adolescent copulation, we witnessed a broken-winged bat tumbling down the throat of a full-grown elephant. That wrinkly grey mess was savage. We shrieked in horror, we covered our eyes. Our buzzing energy was flattened like the earth under the elephant’s dusty feet!

Talk about a mood-killer.

I never saw that person again. They found their own ride home, never returned my calls. I assume they forever associated me with the ugly incident.

“I feel bad for them.”

What? Who cares about them! They went on to marry a circus clown and I ended up entering into a partnership with the person who, upon coupling with me, brought about the birth of one of your parents!

“You mean you got with Grandma? That’s good, right?”

Who? What? No. What makes you assume I’m the male? Grandpa is my name, not my title. Grandpa Chris Demonkovich. Would-Be Poet, Slinger of Yarn, Ivory Poacher.

“So you’re a lady?”

Don’t make assumptions is all I’m saying. Here’s my point, young whippersnapper:

I killed the elephant, opened his stomach, set that bat free on the same night I recited my poem. I’m a good person! But, for some reason, that night set off a chain reaction which led directly to this moment, and I’m none too happy about it! God, inasmuch as I have any concept of them, is punishing me, obviously. My life has been a steady downhill slide away from art and music and beauty and toward violence and disappointment and you! Every moment is worse than the last, this one included.

“What?”

No! You’re awful, grandchild. Just awful. I look at you and all I see is the result of my misfortune.

Aside from the overwhelming monetary wealth I’ve amassed thanks to my unnatural ability to visit my neverending revenge on anarchistic elephants, I’m a pretty unhappy person. But I’ve never written another poem.

“Well, maybe I’ll be able to carry your legacy. You know, appreciate life more than you were able to. Perhaps I’ll become a patron of the arts when I’m spending all your money, your ill-gotten ivory gains, after you are dead!”

Lord, I hope so.

“What? No.”

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WOODED LOTS by Amanda Baldeneaux

December 18, 2019 · Fiction

Bess’s grandmother leans a sharp elbow into the worn armrest of her recliner, her chin pointed away from the kitchen chair where Bess sits, signing the contract for Ray, the homecare aid. Her grandmother has lived in the cottage at the nursing home for five years. The cottage lets retirees live independently but connected to the lodge and the cafeteria and the dorms where the older, less-resourceful people live. She doesn’t want to go there.

Outside the cottage, a small slab of patio is littered with sunflower seed shells. Petals of white azalea blossoms, knocked free by the recent rains, cover the concrete like wet sheets fallen from laundry lines. Bess tells her grandmother what time to expect Ray in the morning.

“Who is Ray?” her grandmother pulls the oak lever to recline her feet. Outside, squirrels busy themselves at the bird feeder. The feeder was there when her grandmother moved in, installed by a resident long moved into the lodge or gone. The squirrels split dry corn kernels open with sharp teeth. Birds, perched in the trees, wait their turn at what the squirrels discard into the pine straw beneath.

Bess folds the contract back into the white envelope delivered by Ray. Over lunch, it rained so hard she thought they’d all wash away—the nursing home built in the 1960s. The bird feeder. The battered foxgloves grown in the courtyard garden outside the cafeteria, where Bess wheels her grandmother back and forth to meals twice a day from the nursing home’s hospital wing. This is her grandmother’s first time back in the cottage since the pneumonia set in. Without oxygen, her memory worsened. Bess worries about bringing her back to live here alone. If Ray will be enough. If a biblical flood could wash everything into mud tomorrow.

Today, while the residents ate potato salad and white rolls, tornado warnings flashed on television. Her grandmother ignored them, asking Bess who is Ray over and over.

“Ray will dispense your medicine and wash your clothes twice a week.”

“I don’t need Ray.” But could Bess stay a week longer? Could her son come? Could Bess’s mother?

Two blue jays land on the feeder, the only birds big enough to bully the squirrels. Their feathers are dark, almost black save for the shock of blue striping their tails. Her grandmother used to get cardinals. Robins. Sparrows and blue birds. Warblers. She’d been gone a month in the hospital wing and without seed at the feeder, the birds didn’t come. They’d forgotten about the bird feeder until Bess filled it again, today. The jays are bulky and knock the seeds off the ledge where they will furrow down into the wet soil beneath the pine straw of the forested floor.

Her grandmother chose this cottage because of the forest out back. It rises over a slope off the patio and disappears back into thickets and trees. A resident, long ago, planted iris bulbs along the perimeter, domesticating it. If one doesn’t push through the oak saplings and daffodil shoots and ivy they’d never know that a few hundred yards back runs a fence along the property line, keeping the forest divided, the residents contained. Bears can’t wander across. No deer. Since arriving, Bess has seen box turtles. King snakes. Feral cats and toads that leaped at Bess’s feet when she took a load of her grandmother’s wash from the laundry room after dark. Her grandmother doesn’t want to leave these things to go live in the lodge, away from the woods with views only of mowed courtyards and fountains and pansies and hedges. They have wasp problems, over there. Not enough predators. Bess picked a ladybug off the concrete yesterday and placed it on the stem of a pansy, hoping to save it from wasps. Hoping for aphids. Hoping the red bead of an insect wouldn’t bite her for the effort.

Her grandmother tells Bess she’s come home today. Bess reminds her, “Tomorrow.” Her grandmother nods her head, oh yes. Bess tells her again that Ray is coming to help her. She asks who Ray is, says she doesn’t need help to take her medication. She doesn’t want a man to help wash her clothes. She doesn’t want a stranger inside of her home.

Bess wheels her grandmother outside the cottage, back to the hospital wing. The rubber wheels of the chair and the soles of Bess’s shoes crunch the small shells of garden snails out to eat begonias after the rain. She avoids the worms, stranded on the sidewalk to escape their drowning. Along the cottage’s sidewall, yellow and white honeysuckle flowers line branches like molars on a jaw line.

Bess’s grandmother grew up in a wooded town on an old train stop two hours south of here. She had a sleeping porch for hot nights and pecan trees in the backyard. When Bess was little, she picked wild strawberries in the yard. Her grandmother had a birdfeeder there, too. Cardinals. Bobwhites whistling as they stalked the grass. Spiders hiding under the screened-in, stilted porch.

After her grandfather died, the porch began to lean away from the house and deeper into the dirt, the rusted nails lengthening into sunlight again, millimeter by millimeter. Her grandmother didn’t bother to fix the porch, just continued to let it pull free from the house and sink into the yard.

Her grandmother is prying loose, too. She leans further from the tethers of what she once knew: the names of birds. Bess’s name, exchanged for her mother’s, long dead. She is leaning, popping nails out of the house of her life and sinking into the suctioning soil of age. Into the pine brush. Into the soft mud of a forest that is shrinking, shrinking from shortened fencing, all that was wild left locked out on the opposite side.

x-r-a-y magazine

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