The Fawn by Hayley Van Dusen (1st place Lelia S. Tupper Writing Scholarship, Alfred University

The lawn had just been freshly mowed, and the scent of grass was wafting in on a light summer breeze through the screen door. The girls were out playing in the sprinkler in their pink bathing suits, and Caroline and I kept an eye on their flying, giggling figures out in the sun as we made a quick lunch.
“Honey,” Caroline soothed, spreading mayonnaise on wheat bread, “don’t stress about the Mrs. McGregor situation. It’s just a temporary rut in the road that you have to be patient about. She’ll come around.”
“I know that, I do,” I sighed, “it’s just that I wish she wasn’t such a pain. Her obsession with gas prices is almost disconcerting. I don’t want an old hippy writing about how the world is going down the tubes for our newspaper! That’s not what we need right now. We need positive articles leading up to the huge Halloween Haunt Fundraiser event that we’re organizing and maybe even an actual article about the presidential election that everyone at the office seems to be absolutely deaf and blind to. I don’t know how to turn people around over there.”
Caroline came around the counter and circled her arms around my waist from behind as I violently chopped some tomatoes. Her tight squeeze made my flustered thoughts evaporate, disappearing into the whirring ceiling fan.
She buried her face in the valley of my neck, whispering. “Being manager is never easy, trust me. I may not be in charge of a newspaper, but I’ve definitely had my fair share of managing tough situations…” Caroline was thinking of Rachael and Mags in the backyard. “…and I’ve learned that patience brings even the most aloof of people back to earth in time. But you have to want to make it work.”
Caroline’s thick hair spilled down to the small of her back, tickling my arms. Her scent shot sparks through my bloodstream, as always. I’d never been fully able to wrap my mind around the fact that she was mine, even during the twelve years of our marriage. She had an effervescent glow about her that managed to shock me almost every time I saw her walking through the front door or sleeping beside me—Caroline was the substance of my daydreaming, my kryptonite.
She held me in the kitchen.

Excited screeches filtered in from the outdoors, and we both looked out proudly to our daughters, unashamedly joyful on the bright lawn. They were so content with each other, with the splash of cool water, with the glint of afternoon sun reflecting from their glowing faces—miniature china dolls in performance.
I chopped some more tomatoes; we were silent. The collective chatter of rustling leaves outside filled the room with mysterious conversation.
Our silent thoughts were broken by the sliding of the screen door and the pounding of small feet on tile. The damp striped towels were already obediently draped to dry on the railing. Caroline slowly loosened her embrace and kissed my shoulder before she went to help the girls dry off.
I began peeling bananas and putting bite-sized pieces into Disney Princess bowls. Rachael rounded the counter and looked up at me, a puddle of grassy water forming at her feet.
“Daddy?”
“Oh, hi sweetie,” I said absently. I had been thinking of the newspaper staff again, handling the bananas more forcefully than necessary. “How was the sprinkler with Mags?”
“It was fun,” the wispy voice floated to my ears and made Mrs. McGregor and her estranged politics float away on a cloud.
“That’s good to hear.” I dried my hands and scooped Rachael up, her damp suit soaking my shirt. I began heading around the counter to bring her upstairs.
“Do you want to get changed and have some lunch?” I smiled at her encouragingly and looked into her deep marble eyes. Something dark seemed to be swimming in them like a question, something hesitant yet longing.
She burrowed her wet, curly head onto my shoulder.
I stopped walking. “What’s wrong, Rach? Are you okay?”
There was no answer for a long moment. Streams of sprinkler water ran down my arms, tickling like spiders.
I felt the sensation of warm tears on my shoulder.
“Rachael,” I said calmly, not wanting to startle her, “is there something you want to talk about?”
“Daddy, I’m scared,” the small voice mumbled against my shoulder.
Her little body trembled with cold and tears.
“What is it you’re scared of?”
I tried to think through everything Rachael might have had exposure to recently. Titles of movies Caroline and I had watched after the girls were asleep ran across my mind, books I’d left out, computer tabs I’d left open. I couldn’t think of anything that would have frightened Rachael.
“I don’t want…I don’t want to die,” she whispered.
A rush of relief flowed through my chest. I had gone through the same phase of fearing death at her age. I tried to think of something to say to extinguish this fear I understood so well.
“Do something for me,” I said quietly. “Close your eyes.”
I felt Rachael’s damp eyelashes slide shut on my shirt sleeve.
I spoke slowly. “Imagine that you’re in a summer field with tall grass and flowers…”
“And ladybugs?”
“Yes, lots of ladybugs. Imagine the colors of the beautiful butterflies, flying all around you. There’s a fawn in the distance…”
“What’s a fawn?”
“It’s a baby deer.”
“Oh.”
Rachael was still, listening intently.
“And it looks so peaceful, alone in the field. The fawn doesn’t think about dying, even though a hunter could so easily take its life. It just accepts the life that it still has, and it knows that it still has time.”
After a moment Rachael whispered, “I want to be like the deer.”
I grinned. “I know, sweetheart, and you can be. When you think about death, just try to understand it like the fawn does.”
Rachael opened her eyes and lifted her head.
The fabric of my shirt was dark with escaped tears of fear.
She smiled.

* * *

The phone rang persistently at six thirty, during dinner. I recognized the number on the caller ID as my brother Jim and picked up. After a moment of silent listening, my fork clattered onto my plate and my face twisted. All three of my girls looked at me, concerned. Rachael’s fear had come to pass.

Caroline and I fell into bed, exhausted. I turned off the bedside lamp, and the room fell to ashes. In silence, we gazed up to the shadowy ceiling fan and rethought uttered words.
Finally, Caroline turned to me in the darkness. “What are you thinking about?”
I closed my eyes and let the cool air blow over me.
She rolled over onto me and sighed. She knew exactly what I was thinking about—my mother. But hundreds of memories of her were tearing at the walls of my mind, and my tongue felt petrified. I couldn’t talk about it, or I would break.
“Jeremy, you can’t just ignore Annie’s death. You’ve barely said a word about it since Jim called.”
“I shouldn’t have to talk about it if I don’t want to,” I said, rolling away from her. I sat on the edge of the bed, a crooked figure in the night.
“Then you’re being a coward.”
I burrowed my fingers into my hair. “I just lost someone, Caroline. Someone that I’ve taken for granted my whole life. Now she’s gone. Everything’s lost.”
“No, it’s not all lost. You still have me and Rachael and Mags. Listen to me. I know what it feels like to lose a family member. I’ve lost both of my parents, and a sister.” Her voice was quiet and firm, like ancient stone. There wasn’t a fleck of pity engrained in it. I felt defiant.
“Well this is new to me, so forgive me if I’m bitter,” I retorted. My words stung with sarcasm, and I immediately regretted them.
Caroline let them hang in the air as an example of my stubbornness.
“Okay,” I sighed, turning around to face her hard stare, “you’re right. I know you’ve been through this. But now it’s my turn, and I have to deal with it on my own.”
Caroline moved closer and leaned against me, holding my weight like a crutch.
“You’re wrong. You don’t have to be alone.”

* * *

The sound of rain pouring through the gutters came in through every window, transforming the house into a rainforest.
Caroline had insisted that I go out with her to have dinner with a friend. “It’ll lighten the mood,” she’d said. But I had refused. I had just spent the entire afternoon calling everyone in my extended family and friends, inviting them to my mother’s funeral. I told Caroline that I was too emotionally drained to put on a faux smile—she’d understood. Once she had gone, I allowed myself to sink into the self-pitying depression I’d been craving all day.

Rachael was busy playing with her unicorn Webkinz on the computer; Mags was cutting and pasting pictures of tools from a Home & Garden magazine for a collage project for school.
The raindrops on my windowpane slowly absorbed each other. They trickled down, gaining life and momentum, and then splattered at the bottom, lost causes. One after the other.
The white noise of rain sang a ghostly lullaby, its song seeping in through the cracks in the ceiling, rising from the pavement outside like mist. As I listened, alone in my studio, my eyelids were fickle—my mind slipped with them in and out of consciousness.
Lightning dashed dark images across the room. Thunder shook the shutters.
Just as the opaque objects on my desk were beginning to fade behind my eyelids, I heard slippered feet scuffing across the rug of my studio, and opened my eyes.
Mags was standing beside my chair in her fuzzy pink bathrobe, holding a pair of scissors and a magazine article. Her red hair glowed in the darkness, and her brows were creased with worry; her pursed lips like a stamp on her round face.
“Hey there,” I said, sitting up in my chair and offering my lap to her.
“Hi Daddy,” she said, her clear voice cutting through the electrified air. She sat on my lap. “The thunder made me jump, and Rachael laughed at me for getting scared. She called me a sissy.”
Mags had never been a tattletale. Ever since she could talk at the age of three, she had always told things exactly how they were with no exaggerated details. Caroline and I had always trusted her honesty.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” I asked groggily.
“No, Daddy, it’s okay. I can handle it, I just wanted you to know what happened.” Her seven-year-old voice seemed to shift into an adult tone as she said this, and I smiled at her maturity.
Mags got up from my lap. As she trotted out of the room, I caught sight of the magazine page she was holding. It had an advertisement for camping tents on it.
“Hey Mags,” I called after her. She stuck her fiery head back through the doorway. “I know what will make the thunder less scary.”
She came back in, intrigued.

The timer announced that the pizzas were ready. Mags squealed with excitement, and ran to get Rachael. They came tearing into the kitchen, yelling, “Which one’s mine? Which one’s mine?”
The pizzas were miniature-sized and individually decorated by the three of us. All of the ones that Rachael had garnished were sloppy and stuck to the pan with excess cheese. The ones Mags had done looked like the ones on Pizza Hut advertisements—we laughed and brought our plates out to the living room.
The camping tent that we had been using on annual family trips to Allegany State Park was sitting in all of its muddy glory in the middle of the living room. The soft glow of warm, sweet-smelling gingerbread candles gave the room a picturesque quality. The inside of the tent was filled with pillows from our beds and blankets from behind the couch. We nestled into our homemade haven, safe from the booming thunder outside.
As we ate I looked at my daughters sitting beside each other, giggling about stringy cheese and the absurdity of eating dinner in a tent in the living room. Their beaming faces filled the cavern my mother’s death had left behind and a burden of sorrow seemed to lift; my chest shook with laughter as dinner was reduced to a tickle war.

Caroline came home late, carrying leftovers and car keys. She gently shook me awake where I’d fallen asleep on the couch, trying to read a cut up Home & Garden.
We tiptoed upstairs together. I checked on the girls one last time, their content faces poking out above their snug comforters on the different levels of the bunk bed.
I closed their bedroom door behind me.
That night I dreamt of a younger version of my mother, the one I grew up with. She sat with Rachael, Mags and me in the tent, the smell of gingerbread and pizza in the air. She smiled at me in the dream the way she always had when I’d gotten a good grade in school or had mowed the lawn without being asked; it was a smile of all encompassing gratitude and adoration. As we exited the tent after dinner she took my hand and said, her vivid eyes staring into mine, “Thank you, Jeremy. That was a lovely last supper.”

I woke up with the dream repeating itself in my mind—the tent, my laughing girls, my mother’s wide smile and sincere thanks at the end. I turned over to ask Caroline what she thought my mother meant by “last supper”, but she wasn’t there. I sighed, realizing that it was a Monday and she was taking the kids to school already.
Seven thirty. I had to get ready for work. I wondered if I was allowed to take some time off to grieve for my mother, and then decided that sitting around the house all day was the last thing I needed; I was more likely to spiral into a deeper depression that way.
Forty-five minutes later, I shot around the house looking for my keys while trying to juggle a bowl of Lucky Charms and my suit coat. Finally, I spotted them across the room on the coffee table. As I picked them up, I noticed that they had been placed there to hold down a note. The note was written in Mags’ familiar oversized handwriting:

Dear Daddy,
Thank you for making the thunder go away last night. The pizza was good, and I wish we could have dinner in a tent every night. Rachael wants to say something…

The handwriting now abruptly changed into a messy scrawl, only legible with lots of practice.

Hi Daddy. I thought about the deer a lot yesterday and I don’t think I’m very afraid of dying anymore. I think that maybe Grandma was like the deer, and that she wasn’t afraid when she died. I forgot to tell you that earlier.

My eyes began to swell with emotion, but I reined in the urge to cry. Once again, the handwriting changed, but now it was Caroline’s fluid cursive that rolled across the notepaper.

Hi honey, we decided to leave you a note this morning to practice some writing and to help you through your first day back to work. The girls woke up this morning and wanted to wake you to say goodbye, but I told them you needed to rest. They can’t wait to see you when you get home from work.
I’ll be picking up some milk, tomatoes, and eggs today at the store—call me if you can think of anything else we might need! Have a good day at work, Jeremy. I love you.

At the bottom, crunched in the small space that was left, the girls wrote their names and Caroline drew her signature smiley face. I folded the paper up and placed it carefully in my breast pocket. I would need it to keep me company throughout the day, I was sure.
Five minutes later, strategically veering around the girls’ Disney-themed toys and the tent we had never put away, I made my way out the door and into the Honda. The drive to work was uneventful—nothing interesting on NPR, thin coffee. At the notorious five-minute red light on South Goodman, my cell phone shrieked; it was Amy, my secretary.
“Good morning, Amy,” I answered more glumly than I had intended.
“Hello, Mr. Phillips.” Her voice was hard, cold. This was always the tone of her voice when she was about to unfold something I didn’t want to hear. I prayed to God it wasn’t concerning the message I had emailed to Mrs. McGregor on Friday afternoon, denying her permission to write any more articles about gas price inflation.
“Is this about McGregor? Just tell her I’ll be there in about two minutes. I’m almost there.” I expected Amy to confirm and hang up, but she lingered for a moment. Her unusual hesitancy baffled me.
“Amy?”
Finally, her tear-choked voice came on. My heart skipped. I couldn’t recall ever having heard her cry in the eleven years I’d been working for the New York Chronicle. Her blubbering words didn’t make sense at first. I tried to sort them out, one by one, and all I got was “accident”, “kids”, “wife”…
Accident. Kids. Wife. My chest thudded, and I swerved the car to the side of the road. My forehead was beaded with sweat.
“We…” She briefly cleared her throat. “We got a call this morning from the hospital asking for you…I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”
I hung up quickly, and stared down at my phone as if it were a rabid animal that had gone for my throat.
My insides felt like they were melting, my tongue like rubber. My eyes burned under my contacts. The keys in the ignition were rocking back and forth against the plastic of the car from my sudden stop, making a sickly scraping noise.
Everything seemed so surreal; the trees outside looked distorted as if they were in a bubble. The school buses roaring past seemed muted in my ears. I was underwater, eyes open and staring, sinking into unconsciousness.
Hot tears smoldered down my face like meteors—first tears in years.

* * *

A nurse spotted me the moment I walked through the front door of the hospital. She firmly took my arm, an urgent look creasing her round face. I must have looked like I was going to collapse, because she used her wide shoulders to prop me up and practically dragged me onto the elevator with her.
She didn’t say a word. Words are useless at a certain point.
Once we’d reached the right floor, I saw an overwhelming swarm of doctors come at me from all sides and take me from the broad-shouldered nurse, speaking at me uselessly. Even if I’d had something to say, my tongue would have gotten in the way. I began to crave the silence of the elevator almost as soon as I’d left it.
I was led to a room with a thick wooden door marked Caroline Phillips. My eyes oozed helpless tears at the sight of her name written in standardized, black letters in such a cold, dead place. The doctors opened the door and helped me in.
They pulled back the curtain, and told me they’d be back soon. They offered me a chair, and told me to push the button on the wall if I needed help.
Inside my voice choked, “Don’t go! Don’t leave me here!” but my shell remained numb.
I stared at Caroline’s pale face; the dried blood around the corners of her mouth; her swollen eyelids; the oxygen tubes in her nose; the IV in her arm. I touched a matted lock of her hair. It was a dead straw color under the fluorescent lights. Her hands were stiff and cold, like dry ice. I was afraid to touch them.
The monitor’s beeping echoed in my skull, keeping me conscious—keeping my life worth living for the time being. The silence of the room sent a rush of panic through me, making my insides writhe. I hit the button on the wall over and over, until an aggravated nurse came in to see what was wrong.
“Where are Rachael and Margaret Phillips?” I croaked, carefully holding Caroline’s limp hand in both of mine.
“Oh,” the nurse said almost apologetically, knowing that they were children, “I can take you to see them right now if you like.” Her face was long and pointed, with a set of dark eyebrows accenting her fierce blue eyes.
An angel of death.
I followed her through the mysterious hallways, watching the backs of her heels. I could feel myself falling further and further into a ferocious trance that made me want to careen into outer space and vault into a black hole that would stretch me as thin as spaghetti and take me to the unknown.
I was in no state to see my daughters lying in hospital beds that were meant for the old and dying; I couldn’t stand to see their perfect faces intruded on by bruises and tubes. My breath would surely catch in my throat, my feet would hold me down like bricks on the bottom of a pool; I couldn’t go into that room.
I stopped walking and the nurse asked me if I was okay. Was I okay? Would I ever be okay? No. No, no, never.

* * *

Visiting hours were over at eight o’clock.
How could they tell me to walk away so soon? I hadn’t memorized all of the cuts that would eventually leave scars; I hadn’t counted all of the stitches that would heal if there were hope. They hadn’t given me a chance to whisper into Rachael’s ear one last time, or to twist another piece of Mags’ bright hair around my finger. I never got the chance to tell Caroline I loved her for the thousandth time that day. They closed the doors in my face, expecting me to walk away whistling.
“They’ll be here first thing in the morning,” they’d said.
I’d looked at them with a chilling glare, cursing their promises and statistics.

Jim was waiting for me outside in his truck, crying. His eyelashes were clumped together, just like they always used to be when we were boys and I’d pick on him for being younger or less muscular. I got in and slammed the door. My emotions had been molten lava all day; now they were ash and rock, the crumbling remains of the man I’d been that morning.
Jim put his right arm around me and pulled me into a hug that forced every molecule of breath out of my lungs. He didn’t let me out of his cemented hold for a very long time. It was what I needed, but it still wasn’t nearly enough. Both of our faces were sticky with the dried tears.
“I came as soon as I heard. Those damn doctors didn’t even contact me until just a few hours ago.” I waved away his excuses, forgiving his absence; we were silent during the drive to his apartment on the west side of the city.
I dozed as Jim drove, and my dream from the night before materialized again. The tent, the pizza, the candles…my mother, my girls. “Thank you, Jeremy. That was a lovely last supper.”
I jolted awake and startled Jim.
“Last supper,” I murmured. “Last supper…”
“What do you mean, Jeremy?” Jim thought I was talking to him.
“I had a dream…Mom said “last supper”…it was a clue…my dream was warning me and I was too stupid to pay attention! I should have called Caroline to come home…it’s my fault…the dream, it explained everything. Mom explained everything…she was trying to protect them and I was too stupid…” I cried like a child. Jim pulled over. I told him to keep driving, that I would explain everything in the morning. I was too afraid to fall asleep again.
He drove on.
I thought of what the doctors and policemen had told me throughout the day as I’d gone between rooms. “The drunk driver—a man, according to witnesses—side swiped your wife’s car, hitting Rachael first, but slamming Margaret’s side of the car into another vehicle. Caroline then lost control and hit the car in front of her, shattering the windshield. The airbags activated perfectly, but just didn’t do the trick.”
Didn’t do the trick…what a thing to say to a man who’d just been told exactly how his wife and two children were jolted into a coma.
They told me statistic after statistic. Each percentage of survival pulled its noose around my neck tighter and tighter, until my eyes were bulging and my words couldn’t escape anymore.
There was a five percent chance of survival for Rachael—little innocent Rachael, afraid of dying. I could feel her big dark eyes watching me from outside of Jim’s car window, her haunting laughter dancing in my ears.
There was a fifteen percent chance for Mags, my fiery-haired, energy-filled daughter who could never tell a lie; like me in so many aspects, with her clear perspectives and broad understandings. She never cried without good reason.
Tears stung my swollen eyes for the hundredth time that day.
And Caroline, my wife—there was a twenty-five percent chance she would ever get up out of that filmy fold-up hospital bed. I knew she wouldn’t want me to feel as terrified and alone as I was feeling without her, but then again she’d promised me I wouldn’t have to be alone. She’d promised me she’d be there, but had never told me what to do when she wasn’t.


That night Jim warmed up a pot of chili. He told me he didn’t expect that I was very hungry, but to try and eat some anyway. I thanked him as sincerely as I could but couldn’t touch it. The thought of eating a meal so far away from my family didn’t seem to make any sense—all I could imagine was spooning Rachael a mouthful, or telling Mags to slow down, eating dinner wasn’t a race; telling Caroline it was delicious, that we should have chili more often. My bowl sat before me until it turned cold.
I slept on Jim’s huge bachelor sofa that night, completely unable to sleep for fear of having the same dream I’d had the night before. He had told me to call him if I needed absolutely anything; he was there for me.
It had only been the night before that I’d been sleeping beside Caroline, our breathing in sync. The girls had been safe in bed, their sleeping faces traced in moonlight—smiles pulling at their lips.
Now the stars shone in through the window, a million dashed dreams.

* * *

Rachael passed in the night, her tiny soul seeping out of her unused body and into the world that she’d never had a chance to encounter.
The monitor’s beeping had slowed, bit by bit, until there was nothing else to do but stop altogether.
Jim had been standing with me when Doctor Montgomery, the new doctor assigned to us, informed us. When he sighed and said Rachael’s name I had stopped breathing, closed my eyes, and imagined her face with every pore of my body. Parts of it were already fading away, like the shape of her nose or the location of the freckles on her cheeks; even her eyes seemed dimmer in my labored recollection of her.
They asked me if I wanted to see her. I said no, I wanted a picture.
“I’m sorry, but all we have is her body…” the worried looking doctor had said.
I’d roared in agony, tearing at my hair, shaking. Doctor Montgomery had jumped, afraid of my pain; too stupid to see that it was my pain that made me weak.

Room 646. The nameplates on the door had reduced from two to one.
Everything in the room had been diminished by half—only one bed, one chair, one vase of flowers. Rachael had been wiped away like a spill on the counter.
My hands shook as I stood in front of a dark window in the room, staring at the hard sterilized floor. My soft gray shadow wept silently for a while.
I turned to what I had left.
Mags’ body only took up a quarter of the hospital gown she was tucked into. I could see the folds of the crinkly fabric rise and fall with her slight breathing. I wanted to bring her the pink bathrobe from home that she loved so much; I wanted to hang the collage of gardening tools she had made for school over her bed. I felt the urge to make the room her own—because there was no way of knowing if she would ever walk out of it.

* * *
The deep, melancholy chords of the organ filled the cathedral and reverberated in my chest. A mountain of assorted flowers was arranged in the front of the church, their thick aroma blanketing the congregation. Jim was standing at the altar looking solemn.
“We’re all gathered here today on behalf of two deeply beloved people in our lives…”
I looked away from the tears brimming in his eyes, trying to control my own. I gazed instead at the lacquered wooden coffins before me—one large, one small.
“…selfless, beautiful people that we all wish we could have had more time with. We’re here to remember Annie and Rachael Phillips…” His voice cracked, and he was silent for a moment.
I felt Caroline squeeze my hand, and looked over to her. She was dressed in black, her slim body propped up in a wheel chair. Her eyes were squeezed shut above a white neck brace, tears mingling on the surface of her face. I held her hand powerfully, unwilling to let her go.
“I know everyone here admired Rachael’s endless fascination with life and her sweet, joyful personality. She was always the life of the party.”
A small, appreciative murmur rose from the mourners around me. Caroline cried harder.
“And I know we’ll always remember Mom’s strength and brilliance as we look back on our memories with her…and we’ll treasure the love she gave out to those in need.” Jim paused, composing himself.
“Mom, Rachael, we’re all here today to say goodbye, but as for me I know we’ll meet again. See you on the other side.”
Jim stepped away from the altar and put a rose on each of the coffins. He placed his hand on the larger one, and bowed his head for a long moment. As he took his hand away, its ghostly outline remained for an instant, then expanded and disappeared.
I stood up and walked to the podium.
As I looked out over the people that filled the pews before me, I shriveled. My words did back flips in the back of my throat—small, terrified acrobats trapped in an impossible situation. The speech I had prepared scampered away from me, out of reach. I looked down at my mother and daughter’s wooden tributes for inspiration, but found nothing—all I could think of was Mags, all alone, breathing softly in her hospital bed, unable to come even to her sister’s funeral.
As I lifted my eyes again, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A shaft of afternoon sunlight was shining through a stain-glass window, filtering its soft light into the cathedral. The window was made up of light blue and gold shards of glass, forming the striking image of an angel with long, flowing hair. With the sun behind her, she glowed like a vision. Her wings encompassed the entire window, and around her feet were various animals; one of them was a meek-looking fawn.
I cleared my throat. Everyone was looking up at me patiently.
“About four days ago, Rachael came to me and confided in me.”
I could feel the stain-glass angel’s warm eyes peering at me from above—Rachael’s eyes.
“As I was holding her, she whispered to me that she was afraid to die.” Caroline’s face twisted into a mixture of pain and surprise, and I felt my expression do the same. I focused on keeping my voice from faltering.
“I told her to do something for me. And I’m going to ask all of you to do it now.”
I reached into my pocket and traced the edges of the note that Mags, Rachael, and Caroline had left me. I had memorized Rachael’s words:
Hi Daddy. I thought about the deer a lot yesterday and I don’t think I’m very afraid of dying anymore. I think that maybe Grandma was like the deer, and that she wasn’t afraid when she died. I forgot to tell you that earlier.
As the people before me awaited their instructions, I did something I hadn’t done in years: I prayed. I prayed to the stain-glass angel that wherever Rachael and Mom were, they were listening.
“Close your eyes. Imagine that you’re in a summer field with tall grass and flowers. Imagine the colors of the beautiful butterflies, flying all around you. There’s a fawn in the distance…”

Mnemosyne and Great Chebeague Island by Zoe Johnson

Mnemosyne and Great Chebeague Island
(1st place, Friends of the Rochester Public Library Sokol Creative Writing contest)

All I can see is the red light of the clock on Sarah’s face. I try to remember some Latin.
Sum, es, est. Sumus, estis, sunt. I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, you are plural, they are. Do, das, dat, damus, datis, dant. I give, you give, he/she/it gives, we give, you give plural, they give.
When was the last time I heard Sarah say anything? Maybe two days ago. When we were driving up through Vermont. I lost track of what states we were in when we got off the thruway.
When you’re little you expect there to be big, black, solid lines that outline the states and the countries, like on maps.
I was six the first time I left Illinois. The first time I left Chicago, actually. We visited my dad’s family in Cleveland, and I remember thinking that going into Indiana and Ohio would be a big deal. Like going to a different planet. Then you find out that boundaries aren’t special, that maps can lie.
I used to look at this atlas, all of the maps, for fun. But it was kind of like when you realize, without anyone having to tell you, that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. It’s just not fun to pretend anymore.
Maybe Chemistry will be better. The periodic table of elements—Capital H is Hydrogen. Capital H lower case E is Helium. After that…Lithium? Beryllium? Capital L lower case I and then capital B lower case E, for the record. Okay, not Chemistry. I’ve never been very good at remembering Chemistry.
I never believed in Santa Claus. Just so you know. I had to tell Patsy last year, and I was completely lost. I mean, where do you begin? She’s so young and happy and genuine, and I didn’t want to be the one to shatter one of her most treasured illusions. But Mom said, “She’s old enough to see the world as it is. You know, Melanie, they say that seven is the age of reason.”
I could try to remember lyrics. Do you know who I am? Good, neither do I.
I kept the atlas in the back of my dad’s car. It was a Ford Taurus. Green. The seats were gray.
So it’s ballet and Physics. They’re the strongest.
Arabesque, plié, chassé. The speed of light in a vacuum, c, is 3x10 to the 8th power meters per second. A pas de deux is a dance for two. Newton’s First Law of Motion says that every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
The one car in the driveway, and my mom, five months pregnant, hacking up the rose bush my dad planted when Sarah was born. “For Melanie Rose, she’ll always have something that’s just hers.”
A fondue is a plié on one leg. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The cavalier is the male partner of the ballerina, who is the head female dancer in a company. Adhesion is the force of attraction between two unlike materials.
Almost eight years, and mom has traded in our Prius for a Chevy van.
“The earth will have to get over it. We need the extra space. We’re moving.”
“Now?”
“Next week.”
“Why?”
No answer.
Photons are the particle aspects of electromagnetic waves.
“Mom, why are we moving?”
A danse de caractère is a character dance, a folk dance. An example would be the Polish mazurka.
Patsy: “I liked the Prius. It was red.”
Sarah:
Mom: Patsy, the Chevy has more room for your stuff. This way we won’t need to get a U-Haul.
Patsy: But the van is ugly.
Me: Patsy, shut up.
Patsy: No! Mom, Melanie told me to shut up.
Mom: Then listen to her, Patricia!
Sarah:
The lights of the clock on Sarah’s face remind me of our neighbors across the street. They would always get home late, and the red taillights would illuminate my room bright red all over, like hell had come to earth.
It’s 2:00 for god’s sakes. I have to sleep.
I’ve never been good at sleeping. When Patsy falls asleep it’s like trying to wake up a rock. And Sarah might as well be asleep all the time, and even I forget that she’s there sometimes. I try not to, but she can take care of herself.
A wave’s trough is its lowest point, where the displacement is the most negative.
I used to sleep normally, but after dad left I sort of got paranoid that everyone else would disappear, so I would stay up all night, making sure that my mom wasn’t sneaking out, maybe taking Sarah with her. You don’t have to tell me it’s stupid, because I already know.
An arabesque is an extension of the leg at a 90 degree angle.
Four months later Patsy was born—four months to the day, but I figured mom wouldn’t appreciate my remembering—and she cried a lot, so of course I didn’t sleep well then, but by the time she stopped crying at night, I needed it to get to sleep. Figures.
A 90 degree angle is also called a right angle.
April 6. It was a Thursday.
If a triangle contains a 90 degree angle, it is called a right triangle. There are two kinds of standard right triangles, 45-45-90 and 30-60-90.
We had had a math test the week before. I got a 100. It was the first time I’d gotten anything higher than a B+ on a math test that year.
A battement is a beating action of the extended or bent leg.
Dad taught math. He went to MIT. He gave me his old sweatshirt for Christmas that year.
Enrico Cecchetti developed the Cecchetti Method of ballet. The Cecchetti Society was founded in London in 1922.
He took the sweatshirt with him.
An amorphous solid is a solid that has no long-range order or crystal structure.
A coupé is a kind of linking step, in which the “working foot” displaces the “supporting foot” in a cutting motion.
Baryons are made up of three quarks.
Jeté. Glissade. Relevé.
I sleep.
*
I am not autistic.
I’m not autistic, and I don’t have Asperger’s, and I’m not a savant. You might get that impression, from the way I talk, the way I write, how I know so much random shit, but I’m not. I just have a good memory.
And no, not a good memory like that woman, the one the researchers call A.J., who has total recall. I’m just better at remembering the things I want to remember than most people.
One of my many pathetic, post-Psychology Today attempts at self-psychoanalysis has led me to believe that the reason I’ve developed such a memory is because I want to be able to get rid of the things I don’t want to remember, to replace the things I want to ignore with new things, better things.
I’m not saying I’m right.
In fact, I’m probably wrong.
I’m, like, half a step above Drs. Laura and Phil.
But still.
I can try.
I mean, it’s not like it works.
Walt Disney has won the most Oscars overall, with 64 nominations and 26 wins. Katharine Hepburn has won the most Oscars for an actor or actress, winning four Best Actress awards.
Maybe I am a savant. That might be alright. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, if you can still talk to people.
It’s just…I’ve started noticing that other people look at things so nicely. I’ve been really into poetry for a long time, just memorizing different poems, some famous, some not. And I read all of these poems that are so beautiful—like this one I read that was about a sunset. Except it wasn’t really about a sunset, it was about the colors of the sun melting into the ocean, and how much it’s like life. Except it wasn’t really overbearing about it, like “This is about life”, you just sort of had to figure it out for yourself. And that’s just not me, but I want it to be me, you know?
See, when I look at the sun, I see the colors and think “Oh, that’s beautiful”, but I don’t focus on them. Instead, I try to remember what I know about the sun. Like, how far it takes for its light to reach the earth (8.32 minutes), or its approximate diameter (900,000 miles, 1.4 million kilometers). I tried to look at the sunset poetically last night.
It didn’t happen.
But did you know that all matter in the universe, every single little atom, was created in the Big Bang, and can never be taken away? Isn’t that beautiful?
*
Why are we in Maine? That’s an excellent question. We’ve been here for three weeks now, and I’m not sure myself.
What you know: Approximately eight years after my dad goes away, my mom trades in our Prius (red) for a Chevy van (ugly).
What I know: That, and then we drive up through the Midwest (all the while being forced to listen to John Denver and Woody Guthrie), through that tiny strip of land in Pennsylvania, along the Great Lakes, and into the middle of nowhere in Maine. Literally the middle of nowhere. We live in this log cabin—no shit, a log cabin—in the middle of a fucking clearing for god’s sakes. It’s like Little House in the Big Fucking Woods, transposed into the Atlantic Ocean.
That’s it.
Oh, you wanted more? You wanted clarity? Well, me too. Sorry.
*
My mom was a philosophy professor at Chicago. She loved it there. The college, the city, all of it. My mom’s originally from Iowa, which she says she always hated. Too small for her. She says she can’t stand the thought of the people next door knowing more about your family than you do. She has four sisters, two older, two younger. One of them, the second eldest, my Aunt Samantha, is probably my mom’s best friend.
Aunt Sam moved in with us for about five months after Patsy was born, and then again three years later, after she got divorced.
Aunt Sam was the first person in my family to meet James Santiago.
“Who’s he?” she barked.
“James.”
“Why’s he here?”
“School project.”
I didn’t like James that much at first, honestly. He wasn’t weird exactly, he just happened to fit in to a category of people that I usually despise. He’s always had these posses of annoying little girls following him around. And then we were randomly paired together to do a project on the Ming Dynasty.
I already knew a lot about the Ming Dynasty. I had gone through this phase in 4th grade where I was obsessed with ancient China and Japan, and, I dunno, I have a good memory, so even two years later, I knew more than anyone else in the class about the Dynasties (Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing).
So, I rattled off some random facts about the Ming, and then I remembered that James was supposed to be normal. And I had noticed that normal people tended not to react too well to my fact-listing habits.
“Sorry.”
But then he looked confused. Not because of the lists, but because of the apology.
“Why? That was cool. How do you know all of that?”
“Um. I read a lot about China in 4th grade.”
“Yeah, but how do you remember it?”
“I don’t know. I have a good memory.”
“Uh-huh. So, are you just into China?”
“No. I do ballet, so I’ve memorized a lot of that stuff, and Jabberwocky and different science things. And I’m trying to learn some computer things, but it’s not going well. I’m not good with technology.”
“So…why do you memorize shit like that?”
“I like to know things.”
*
So, I’m realizing that I’m not being quite fair to you, whoever it is that you are. I mean, why should I expect you to just all of a sudden understand everything?
First of all, please don’t think that I think my father was perfect, because I don’t. We weren’t actually all that close. I mean, he gave me the rose bush and the sweatshirt and the maps—yes, he gave me the maps—but he wasn’t what you would call involved. Not that I minded.
No, really—I don’t mind being alone.
You know who dad was close to? Sarah. He was always rather close to Sarah, for the first four years he was around.
I was never close to mom, either, though. I’ve always sort of thought that mom hoped Patsy would be more like her, that she would be “her” daughter. But Patsy looks like our dad.
And as for my mom, she wasn’t always this…crazy. She’s always been very normal, and stable, considering everything that’s happened. My mother is nothing if not good at bouncing back from tragedy.
That’s why this sudden transformation, this “complete 180” as James would say, is so peculiar. My mother does not just follow whatever random fantasy pops into her head. My mother is not a flake; she is not flighty or self-absorbed. She’s always saying that the common good is more important than individual fancy. She’s incredibly down-to-earth, considering that she’s a philosophy professor.
She’s Catholic. She always made us go to mass, every single Sunday, and she’s always reading these theology books. She owns four Bibles and a copy of The Catechism of the Catholic Church.
You know, I really think she believes in God.
Back when Aunt Sam lived with us, she and mom would talk about their childhood. Their mother’s older sister, their Aunt Moira, was a nun, and she helped their mom homeschool them and their sisters when they were in elementary school.
Sometimes they would let me sit with them, and sometimes Sarah would, too. Usually it was fun; it was exciting being allowed to stay up past midnight, and they would tell us all these weird stories about growing up in Iowa. Usually they were really funny, but sometimes they were…well, depressing. Sometimes things that were just a small sort of depressing, like when their dad made them drown all these kittens because they couldn’t afford to take care of them. And then there was their cousin Patricia, the one Patsy was named for, who lived with them for three months until one day she disappeared. She never came back.
Aunt Sam cried when she told us about Patricia.
Aunt Sam was always big on not crying. The first time she moved in with us, after Patsy was born, I was crying a lot, for no reason. I would just burst into tears in the middle of the grocery store or something. My mom hated it especially because people would always glare at her like she was some kind of Bad Mother because her kid was crying in the middle of the juice aisle.
So one day, Aunt Sam takes us to this science museum in Chicago, and I dunno, something about the electricity exhibit must have struck me as particularly disheartening, and I started sobbing. I mean, I swear I’d never cried so hard about so little before in my life, and I haven’t since. So anyways, I’m making this huge scene in the middle of this electricity exhibit in the middle of the Museum of Science & Industry, and then Aunt Sam grabs me by the arm and pulls me into the bathroom, Sarah trailing behind her anxiously.
“Why the hell are you crying?” she says in her weird, husky voice, kneeling down to my eye level and yanking my face towards her. “There is absolutely no reason for you to be crying.” And then I start crying even harder, because she’s scaring me, and this is Aunt Sam—I mean, I’m supposed to be her favorite.
“Shut up! Stop crying!” Aunt Sam’s screaming now, she’s freaking out and yelling at me to stop crying, to stop crying, to stop fucking crying, and then from behind her, Sarah—“Stop it!”
Aunt Sam whirls around and stares at Sarah, this pudgy little 4-year-old with tears welling up in her saucer eyes, who’s telling her to stop.
And then she does.
Oh, yeah. Sarah used to talk. That’s right, in whole sentences and everything. Actually, for awhile there she never shut up. Up until about 6th grade, she was always following me around, trying to impress me with her own newly acquired trivia. I used to put up with it, mostly because of what happened after my little meltdown.
It was in the kitchen, and Aunt Sam was making dinner. I had been trying to avoid her all day, so when I saw that she was in the kitchen I started backing out, but she saw me.
“Melanie, come here, sweetie.” She sounded really nice, which was unusual. I love Aunt Sam, but she’s not exactly warm and fuzzy. I blame the low voice. She sounds like Death.
“I’m sorry about today. I’m bad with kids, and I hate crying.”
She looked at me like she was expecting me to say something, but I had no idea where to even start. I was surprised, I guess. I wasn’t used to honesty in adults.
“Melanie, just know this—when you cry, especially about nothing, people are going to think that you’re weak, that they can manipulate you. Do you want that?” I shook my head. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I was still shocked that she was talking to me like this. Why couldn’t she have just stopped at “I’m sorry”, like any other adult I knew would have?
“Good girl.” She smiled, another rarity. I guess she saw the look on my face, because then she sort of giggled and said “You can go now.”
But then, just as I was walking out—well, more like running—she said “Oh, and Melanie?” she paused, looking for the right words. “Sarah. Take care of Sarah for me, okay?”
“Okay.”
*
So Sarah has this notebook that she’s always writing in. I looked at it one time. Okay, I know that’s wrong, but I’m not stupid, I wouldn’t have gotten caught, or said anything about what she wrote in it unless, oh, I don’t know, she was writing down the ingredients on how to make a bomb or something. But all there was was a count of how few words she was speaking. She had these goals, like, tomorrow I’ll only say ten words or something, and by the end of the week I’ll be down to seven or so.
I’m not too worried about her. I know I should be, but come on, she can take care of herself. She’s 12.
Sarah had some poetry in the notebook, too. Really, really good stuff. You know how most people, when they’re 12 they write really crappy poetry, you know, angsty, emo bullshit? Not Sarah. It’s weird, but it’s good. It’s all about paper and line drawings, and sunsets and birds and rubies and hands.
Okay, that’s a really bad description. Trust me, though. She’s good.
Sarah’s 5th birthday. Not quite a year after dad’s gone. She invites everyone in her class, including this one girl, Tanya Bailey. And I swear, the first thing she—Tanya—says as soon as her parents are gone, and when my mom’s inside is, “What happened to your dad?”, but in this really snotty voice, like you know she knows what happened already, she just wants everyone else to know it, too.
“Business.” Sarah says, which is obviously bullshit, and not very good bullshit, either, because Tanya’s mom worked in the math department with my dad, so yeah right, a professor’s out on business for almost a year, not to mention Dr. Bailey’s probably been talking about it ad nauseam since our dad left. But what could she do? She was 5. You’re not supposed to be able to lie well in kindergarten.
“Yeah, right. My mom says that he’s a lazy piece of shit. He abandoned you. He doesn’t care about you, or your family, or your stupid, fat, mother.”
And Sarah cries. Because Sarah doesn’t get mad. Sarah doesn’t hit. Sarah doesn’t stand up for herself when people try and hurt her.
None of us do.
Dad was always trying to get me to fight back. He tried to teach me how to throw a punch one time, and I got pretty good, but I’ve always been too afraid to. I mean, you hit someone, so what? How am I supposed to know what to do after we’re done with that?
*
The capital of Australia is Canberra. The capital of Russia is Moscow. The Netherlands has two capitals, technically speaking—The Hague and Amsterdam. The capital of Spain is Madrid.
Last year, when I was 15 and Sarah was 11, Sarah kept trying to learn all of this stuff about the presidents. She had the first seven and the last ten, but she sucks at memorizing. “Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson…um, um…”
In alphabetical order, the countries that make up mainland South America are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.
“Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter…”
After our dad left, Sarah didn’t want to talk about anything but that. At dinner she was always asking where daddy was, why he left, why he didn’t take her. She asked mom the last question two weeks after he left, and for mom that was it.
“Sarah, stop asking about your father! He’s gone, he’s never coming back, so just stop talking about him!”
Then Sarah started talking to me about him.
In South America, there are three mainland countries where Spanish is not one of the official languages. They are Brazil, Portuguese; Guyana, English; and Suriname, Dutch.
The presidents keep combining with the other memories. I’m 15, it’s last year.
“Melanie, who came after Jackson?”
The capital of Argentina is Buenos Aires. Bolivia has two capitals, La Paz and Sucre. The capital of Brazil is Brasilia.
Now I’m 8, dad just left.
“Melanie where did daddy go?”
The capital of Chile is Santiago. The capital of Colombia is Bogotá. The capital of Ecuador is Quito and the capital of Guyana is Georgetown.
“Melanie, who came before Hoover? Was it Coolidge?”
The capital of Paraguay is Asuncion; the capital of Peru is Lima.
“Melanie, tell me about the day he left.”
The capital of Suriname is Paramaribo.
“Melanie, when was Taft?”
The capital of Uruguay is Montevideo.
“Sarah, stop talking about dad. Nobody wants to talk about dad.”
The capital of Venezuela is Caracas.
“Sarah, stop following me everywhere! I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t care about the presidents, nobody cares, no one cares!”
*
Let me tell you the story of James Santiago.
He was born James Francis Carmichael to Amy Thompson and James’s father, whose name James knows but won’t tell me. I call him Mr. Carmichael.
Mr. Carmichael died when James was 2 months old. James says his father was a drug dealer or something else stupid and illegal, and he got shot. And that’s the only thing James will say about him.
When James was 3, Amy began dating a man named Edward Santiago, and they were married when James was 5, and Edward adopted James, and James became James Francis Santiago. Then, when James was 8, Amy died, and Edward Santiago married Mira Suarez when James was 11, the year James met me.
James and I have a lot of things in common. The most important one, though, is that we both lost someone when we were 8. Of course, my dad is still out there, I just don’t care to find him.
Apparently I would have liked Amy. James talks about her a lot, which I don’t get—everyone else I know who’s had someone die or leave avoids talking about it, but James loves it. He’s always been different.
James knows a lot of things. Like when the FBI was founded, and certain CIA mission name codes, and the former colonies of the British Empire.
Of course, that’s all stuff that I’ve taught James, so it doesn’t really count.
Things James has taught me:
1. How to play the C-scale on the trumpet.
2. The Spanish words for whore, bastard, fuck, asshole, liar, shit, and bitch, and how to say “I love you”, “what time is it?”, “what is your name?”, and “I don’t speak Spanish”.
3. Five different lines from Cymbeline (William Shakespeare).
4. Various trivia about the original Broadway cast of Rent, and all of the words to “La Vie Bohéme”.
5. The difference between Socialism and Communism.
6. How to find a horizontal asymptote algebraically.
He also tried to help me memorize Hamlet’s soliloquy with Yorick’s skull, but I’m no good at remembering whole scenes from plays.
I am in love with James Santiago.
“Triumphs for nothing and lamenting toys Is jollity for apes and grief for boys.”
James Santiago is gay.
“Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”
I am a girl.
Puta. ¿Qué hora es?
James Santiago is not physically attracted to girls.
Yo no hablo español. ¿Que es tu nombre?
James Santiago will never be in love with me.
On this night, when we celebrate the birth in that little town of Bethlehem, we raise our glass, you bet your ass, to…
I miss James Santiago.
To sodomy, it’s between God and me, to S&M…
I love Maine. I love the woods, and I love not having to do anything but sit around and think, but I hate not being near James Santiago.
To being an us for once, instead of a them…
Even if he can never love me back.
*
Two years ago, we spent the week of July 4th up in Wisconsin in this cabin our Aunt Alysha let us borrow, and I brought James along with us.
The cabin was right along Lake Michigan, and I can honestly say that it was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. In fact, since we’ve gotten to Maine, I’ve been wondering if that’s where mom got the idea, if she’s just been quietly formulating a plan to whisk us back to the woods, to recreate the beauty of our week on Lake Michigan.
We—James, Sarah and I—watched a lot of sunrises that week. It started mostly because I kept waking up at, like, 3 in the morning, because I wasn’t used to the environment yet, and I hated sitting up in the dark alone. So I would go wake up James, and when I was going into James’s room I would, of course, wake up Sarah because I would trip on or run into something, and then we would all be sitting on the front porch, talking and looking at the sun rise over the water.
James and Sarah got along really well. They’d met before, obviously, but they’d never really talked much. He would ask her about school, bonding over their mutual love of music and hatred of science. He taught her some Spanish, and she taught him how to play Claire de Lune on the keyboard she’d brought with her. Sometimes, in the evenings, we would go on these walks around the woods, and the two of them would trail behind me, whispering to one another, laughing at some inside joke.
Okay, I got jealous.
But at the same time, I felt bad. Because Sarah, even then, wasn’t talking much. She barely spoke to mom, avoided Patsy, and she’d never had friends at school, and then there was me. And I tried. I really did. But I wanted a life outside of our family. And Sarah needed one.
So it was good of James to be so nice to her, and it came at a good time.
Of course, it wasn’t his job to take care of Sarah, it was mine, so he really didn’t need to.
And after that week I stopped bringing James over to my house.
*
I kept James away from my family up until last month. My 16th birthday. It was two weeks after James had told me he was gay.
“I’m still invited to the sweet sixteen, right?” He was making fun of me, which meant two things—he’d been sure I would react the right way, and by being happy for him, I was proving him right. He loves when people prove him right, but this time he only gets half credit.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t you be?” I smiled weakly, and we went back to watching Animal Planet. I hate Animal Planet.
The party went well. It was small—my mom, Sarah, Patsy, James, and my friend Elle from ballet. I’d invited Irina, my ballet instructor, but she was visiting family in Florida.
After they sang to me, after we ate cake, after Elle went home, James and I took a walk around the block.
“Why doesn’t Sarah talk anymore?”
Oh, please, no, don’t ask that.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, when did she stop talking?”
Not that either, God, please.
“I don’t remember.”
Dammit, bad choice of words.
James laughed. “Mentirosa. You remember everything.” He’s joking, but it’s not funny, because he’s right. I am a liar. I do remember everything.
I’m quiet, and he stops laughing, because he gets it. That’s why we’re best friends.
“So, again I miss my chance to meet the infamous Irina.” Like most dance teachers, Irina’s a perfectionist. I’ve told James many stories about how she’s berated and humiliated some girls to the point of tears. Not me, though. I don’t cry in front of people, remember? It makes them think you’re weak.
Aunt Sam was actually the one who introduced me to Irina. They were roommates in college, at Columbia Chicago.
The first time she lived with us, Aunt Sam signed me up for dance lessons as an 8th birthday present.
Before my first class, she took me to meet Irina. Looking back, it was probably to prepare me, but I didn’t know that at the time.
It was weird, though—for the first time that I can remember, I was really, really looking forward to something new. Usually I dread new things; I remember crying hysterically throughout the entire first day of kindergarten. But ballet, I was sure, would be great.
Then I met Irina.
It was definitely the accent. The thick, Romanian accent that I thought was Russian until Aunt Sam corrected me.
Okay, that sounds wrong, so I’ll just say it was the accent combined with the powerful-waif dancer’s body, and an incredibly intimidating stare. I mean, who stares down an 8-year-old, especially when that 8-year-old is your best friend’s niece?
“She’s too old.”
“No, she’s not. Besides, she’s smart. She’ll learn fast.”
“Didn’t you say your sister had a 4-year-old? That’s a better age. What about her?”
“No, no, Melanie’s perfect, you’ll love her. She’s very mature, and disciplined. And she doesn’t cry.” Aunt Sam looked at me sideways and winked. I ignored the wink, and the subtle reference to my science museum crying jag. I was enjoying the praise too much to be embarrassed. This is why I’m her favorite!, I remember thinking. I’m mature. She trusts me! Sarah’s too immature for Aunt Sam. Aunt Sam loves me the most.
It’s not like I’m proud of that, or anything. I mean, I was 8. It was just how I felt, and honestly, I think that it’s still sort of true. I mean, you don’t see me completely shutting down because people stopped catering to my every fucking whim.
Okay. That’s mean.
Anyways, after I’m signed up for ballet, Irina’s still scary, but then I start getting good, and then she loves me, and then I love it, and then all of a sudden Sarah wants to do it, too. So she begs mom.
“No, sweetie. We can’t afford it.”
“But Melanie can?” And she folds her chubby little arms across her chest, and puffs out her lips, and she pouts. It doesn’t work.
“Sarah, Aunt Sam’s paying for Melanie. It was her birthday present.”
Bad idea. She starts begging Aunt Sam.
“Aunt Sam, I want to do ballet!”
“You’re too young.”
“But Melanie gets to do everything! I want to do something.” And then she pouts some more, and Aunt Sam gives me this Look, like I’m being a bad sister, like it’s my fault, so then I have to make it up to her.
“Sarah, I’ll show you what we did in class each week when I get home, okay?”
“Fine.” She’s still pouting, but Aunt Sam looks proud of me, so I don’t care.
Then, of course, Sarah lost interest after four weeks.
“I didn’t really want to do ballet.” We were both sitting at the kitchen table one morning, before we went to school. As always, she was picking at an omelet.
Mom always made her omelets, even though she never ate them, because if she didn’t get an omelet, she would cry and pout and make a huge scene. Yeah, around other people she was this nice, shy little girl who always shared her things, and never had a single mean thing to say about anyone, but at home she knew how to get what she wanted. Better than I did, at least.
“What do you mean?” I was trying to be patient. Dealing with Sarah always took a huge amount of patience when she was younger.
“I just didn’t really want to.” She was bored, she didn’t care that I had wasted a month trying to teach her basic ballet. “Sorry.” She added, quickly, like she knew she’d screwed up, but she still had that bored look on her face, she was still picking at the stupid omelet she insisted on mom making, even though she knew, she knew she wasn’t going to eat it.
I should have done something. I should have told her that she was going to learn ballet whether she liked it or not, I should have yelled at her and called mom, I should have pushed her face into the omelet she knew she wasn’t going to eat, but had demanded anyways. But I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.
*
It wasn’t Sarah’s fault. I can say that it was her fault for being a brat, for being selfish and for following me around, but it wasn’t. Because she was really a good sister most of the time, because she stood up for me in the middle of the bathroom near the electricity exhibit in the science museum, because she just wanted to talk to me about her dad.
It’s my fault. I’m the selfish brat, and I know it, and there are no useless facts that can change that.
I wanted to take care of her, and at the same time I didn’t really want her there, and I couldn’t take care of her, I shouldn’t have tried.
*
“Why’s Aunt Sam leaving?”
“Melanie, you’re not Sarah and Patsy’s mother, and neither is Aunt Sam. I’m their mother, I’m your mother, okay? I can take care of the three of you just fine.”
That’s not an answer. That’s what I thought.
“Mom, what are the ingredients in an omelet?” That’s what I said.
She turned around, her hands on her hips, wearing the blue and white gingham apron that had belonged to her great-grandmother.
“You want to learn how to make an omelet?” She didn’t believe it, I could tell.
“Yeah.”
“Melanie, you’re allergic to dairy!”
But suddenly she was suspicious—“You’re not going to make them for Sarah, right?”
“No. I’m not going to make them at all. I just want to know what the ingredients are. Could you write down the recipe for me? Like, on an index card?”
And I carried the card around with me until I’d memorized it.
*
I should call James. I’m staring at the phone, willing him to call so that I don’t have to dial the numbers.
He’s not going to call. I pick up the receiver and slowly, painfully punch in the numbers.
He picks up after the first ring.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. Do you want to know why Sarah stopped talking?” And then I tell him.
“Why did you let Sarah follow you around, then? Why’d you take care of her?”
I don’t know. I wonder. I think it’s because I wanted to do what Aunt Sam and my mom wanted at the same time. Watch out for Sarah, don’t watch out for Sarah. She’s not as strong as you, she can take care of herself. I tell James this.
He hums thoughtfully. “Maybe.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
“I miss you a lot.”
“Well, I miss you more.” Idiot.
“We sound like those couples who always go ‘I love you more’, no ‘I love you more’, and ‘No, you hang up’, ‘No you’, ‘No you’.”
He laughs. I laugh, too, but not as loud. For me it’s not as funny.
“Bye, Jamie. Love you.” Hey, it’s all platonic, right?
“Love you more.” He laughs at his own joke. He does that a lot—the less funny the louder. I smile into the phone and I can imagine him doing the same.
“Hey, before you go, I just wanted to tell you it’s not really all your fault.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. Some of it is, I guess. But there were other people, not just you.”
“Thanks. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I hang up, and I wonder if I believe him. Then I wonder if it really matters anymore whose fault it is at all.
*
I have one picture of my dad. It was taken right after Sarah was born, in the hospital, and it’s really of the four of us—dad’s holding Sarah, and I’m sitting in the bed with mom. We’re all smiling. Well, I assume that Sarah’s smiling. You can’t really see her face that well in the picture, and she’s only two days old. I’m not even sure if people smile at that age.
After dad left, I gave Sarah the picture, but two years later I stole it back. She already had every other picture of him in the house, in these two photo albums. They go back all the way to when he was a kid—there’s one of him on the first day of school, at his First Communion, as a 14-year-old groomsmen at his cousin’s wedding.
I haven’t looked at any of those pictures in years, and I know where Sarah keeps them. I saw them when I was looking for her notebook.
It’s weird. You always think you can remember so well what someone looks like until you finally look at a picture of them, and then you realize that your memory sucks, that your idea of this person was really a bizarre composite of other people you know rolled into one, with only a slight resemblance to the original person. Or maybe only one thing was off, like you kept getting their nose wrong, or the color of their eyes, and then that screws up the whole thing.
Then Sarah walks in. Fuck.
Unless that’s what I wanted?
“Just looking.” I smile. I hate when people just stare you down, waiting for you to do something even though it’s their turn to talk. It’s your move Sarah, don’t fuck it up.
It’s the glasses. She’s like a hawk. It’s that stare, she has the stare. It’s like I’m 8 again, and I’m meeting Irina for the first time.
“Okay. I get it. You’re mad at me. You don’t want to talk if no one will listen. You’re right. If no one listens, it’s a waste of air. That’s fine, whatever.” I’m nervous, I’m babbling, I’m terrible with confrontation.
“James says hi.” She’s still standing there, her arms crossed. She’s eyeing me almost suspiciously now, not sure what she should be thinking.
“Hey. You know that picture I gave you, after dad left?” She nods. That’s good. That’s really good. Lately she hasn’t even been acknowledging us.
“Remember you thought you lost it? Well, I took it. Want it back?” Nothing. “Come on, Sarah. You have to say something. You can’t do this for the rest of your life.”
“What do you do at school, anyways? You don’t answer questions, you sit in the back, you don’t have friends?”
Hmm. I have a chance. Maybe…
“Taft was President from March 4, 1909 to March 4, 1913.”
She looks at me funny, like it’s a weird thing to say. Which I guess, if she doesn’t remember, which she probably doesn’t, it probably is. But come on, it was only a year ago. I can clearly remember things from ten years ago. I think.
“What?” Okay. That’s…okay. She spoke. It’s only one word, though. Sometimes that’s what she does, says a couple words a day.
“Taft. 27th President of the United States, from 1909 to 1913.”
“What?”
“You don’t remember last year? All you ever talked about was the presidents—what order they came in, what foods they liked, their pets’ names.”
“I remember. I don’t care anymore.” Part of me hoped she cared.
“Sarah?”
“What?”
“If I talk to you, would you respond? Please?” I sound pathetic. I am pathetic.
“Um. Okay.”
She said 11 words. I hold up the photo albums.
“Want to look at these with me?”
“No. Not really.” She pauses, flicks her eyelashes.
“You can, though. If you change your mind.”
*
It’s a week before Sarah and I find ourselves in the same room, just us, again. Mom and Patsy are both…well, somewhere. Patsy’s been getting up early every morning so that she can spend as many daylight hours as possible in the woods, doing whatever it is that 8-year-olds do when there are no adults around. Mom’s been spending more and more time in the woods alone, too, actually.
Sarah’s eating Cheerios. I’m making French Toast for myself, and then I remember that no one’s been to the store in awhile. Shit. We have to talk now.
“Do we have maple syrup?”
Nothing.
“Sarah, I asked if we had maple syrup.”
“I know you heard me.”
“You said you would answer me when I spoke to you.”
“Sarah, dammit, would you answer me!”
Sarah looks up from her Cheerios, her eyes huge.
Just like the day at the museum.
We’re staring each other down, and then…then I’m crying. Crying like I haven’t cried since I was 8. Well. Not with another person in the room with me.
But why I am crying?
Why I am I crying right in front of someone?
Because Sarah doesn’t talk. Ever.
And because my mom only takes care of people when she starts to think that maybe someone else could replace her.
And because I’m afraid that we’ll never get out of Maine, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding in the middle of the woods
And because I will never love anyone the way I love James.
And because my dad left, and he didn’t say why, and he ruined everything.
And because I haven’t let myself cry before.
I go right up to Sarah, right in her face. “Talk, dammit! Why won’t you talk?”
She’s crying, too. And I think I’ve just realized—Sarah doesn’t cry either.
But now we cry.
*
MrBreakfast.com Omelet recipe, the result of 4 hours spent mindlessly searching Google for anything that popped into my head, courtesy of four cans of Mountain Dew I had when I slept over at James’s house last year:
You need 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons of water, 1 tablespoon of butter or oil, and something called an inverted pancake turner, which I’m sure we don’t have.
Beat together the eggs and the water until they’re blended. Butter the pan, and pour in the mixture.
Then, move the egg around the pan, so that all parts of the omelet are fully cooked. When the egg will not flow, you’re done.
Fill the omelet with a ½ cup of whatever mixture you want. Fold the omelet in half.
Put on a plate.
Serve.

Latent Images by Elizabeth Gombert

Latent Images
(2nd place, Friends of the Rochester Public Library Sokol Creative Writing contest)
Five years before the year of my birth the population of China exceeded 900 million. Officials watched with furrowed brows as the mass of humanity swelled—pushing out against the border lines, straining under the tight confines of city walls. As you walked through the streets you were engulfed by the roar of too many hearts beating in syncopated time, too many lungs inflating and deflating, pushing recycled air through tired lungs, too many mouths opening into ‘O’-shaped caves, working themselves to grasp nutrients from meager portions; there were simply too many people to be had. In the capitol, government officials watched in fear as the population strained like a bulging waistline. In 1979, the one child per family limit was passed. Three years later I was born.

The city is a mosaic. Like snowflakes, the people come in wide varieties, each one a gem. Skin tones range from deep midnight brown, richer than the darkest chocolate to white so pale it is almost translucent. As I walk the people change from individuals into a blur of tanning brown. In the city, my slanted eyes, yellowed skin and chic black hair do not stand out the way they do at home in Vermont- instead I melt into the city, my features camouflaged seamlessly with those around me until I am nothing but a pair of eyeballs, watching.

The little girl stands at the bus stop, her saddle shoes tied tight, the furls of her white socks ruffling over the tops of her shoes. Her straight black hair spills out of her ponytail-holders. It frames her face. The ends curl gently under, tickling her chin each time she tilts her head, to examine the sky, the dew-kissed grass, the peeling sycamore bark lying in ribbons on the sidewalk. The girl turns her head toward the hills, soft and rolling like the wrinkles of her bedspread each night before Mother bends over to kiss her goodnight and draw her hand across the blankets, leveling the plain with one broad sweep. The leaves have changed color early this year, the girl notices. Soon there will be enough leaves for jumping piles. A smile brushes across her face as she remembers her father tossing her into the pile. The joy of, if only for an instant, being able to fly.

In the dark I am a collector of images. As in memory the images slide into being, slowly, carefully, so as not to disturb the air molecules around it. If they come too fast, it causes disturbances; like tiny hurricanes they blow through in an instant, yet their scars last for years.
At night in bed I stare at the ceiling, trying to imagine China- the places I might have known, the tastes that might have danced their tango across the pebbled surface of my tongue, the smells that rip open your nostrils, forcing their way inside and down your throat were you choke on their pungency, the solidity of scent.
I imagine the thousands of workers at the Great Wall. Stones pass through callused hands, until the workers grow too weary. One among their ranks falls to the ground. His face is ashen, the color of the stone. A still settles over the workers as a young man with torn coveralls genuflects, his spine curving downward in an elegant arc, the neck of a swan, to press his ear against the laborer’s chest. He rests his head as a lover might, in the dark hours of contact when humans greet each other in that strange reality, the muddy area between sleep and consciousness. The young man’s face is still, his eyes closed, listening for the pounding of blood pushing its way forward through veins, spreading oxygen before returning to the heart. Like worshipers, blood cells will always return to the heart, a temple greater even than Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, than Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. The young man’s eyes open; they are gray and cold. He slides his weary arms underneath the collapsed laborer. The weight of the laborer is greater than any the stones the young man carried that day, yet his arms never waiver. The crowd is silent, heads turned toward the earth, a moment of peace as the young man carries the laborer toward the wall. He places the laborer down among the stones and gently arranges his limbs, arms crossed, feet together, eyes turned heavenward. The young man reaches down and slides his callused fingers over the laborer’s eyelids, drawing them closed. Without a word the young man turns and walks back to his place in line, grasps his stone block and continues; only his eyes are different than before.
Centuries later, tourists tread their expensive shoes and clean clothes across the wall. They marvel at its beauty, its grandeur, its scale. All the while beneath their feet the laborer is still sleeping, entombed by the very stone he himself placed, a digger of his own grave.

My first camera was a cheap single-use purchase from the town drugstore. My mother had dragged me along to buy shampoo and a birthday card for my Uncle Eddy and when I threw a tantrum because she would not let me have the candy bar I wanted she said she would buy me a camera instead. I wasted all of my pictures on the walk home, eagerly snapping shots of whatever caught my attention. My mother laughed when three blocks before home I ran out of pictures. I wanted to turn right around that instant and go back to the drugstore to have my pictures developed, but my mother made me wait until the next day to go back.
When at last they were developed, my excitement brimmed over, my person too small to contain the happiness. I swelled and blossomed like a ripening piece of fruit, my cheeks flushed with a new hue of liveliness. On the walk home I gave out my pictures to friends that passed by, and even strangers, wanting to share my new found joy. My mother, wise as she was, ensured that I kept a few to show my father.
I still have those pictures. They are strange indeed. A leaf on the sidewalk, a tangled kite string in a tree, a piece of gum stuck to the side of a garbage can—details that fascinated my child self for a only single moment in time, yet had lived to permeate my life almost twenty years later. My first camera taught me the importance of details. Their sharp points create wounds twice as deep as the blunt trauma of generalizations, which leaves only bruising. Details leave lasting scars, strange deformed places where the skin of memory does not heal over properly, and time collapses in upon itself.

The first time I went to the zoo, I remember the strange scent of musty fur, the pink satin of the baboon’s backside; the thin legs of the giraffe, seeming to reach as far up as the trees above my head; the ying-yang print of the panda; the hide of the dolphins, smooth like the gray marble of the counter top at home. I remember the ice cream cone my father bought me- vanilla with rainbow sprinkles and how when it fell to the sidewalk it made a jagged spot like a dying star, the sprinkles exploding off the thick cream, my father reaching down, presenting me with another ice cream. I remember the aviary- how the birds seemed to be talking to each other, laughing, how the cockatoo cried: a screech so penetrating it sent chills through my six-year-old heart and shocked the tears out of my eyes and down my cheeks. I remember the water hole where the children climbed over rocks, splashing into pools, soaking their undergarments so that when the trip ended every child’s car seat was dampened by the joy of the day. I remember the ghost my breath left on the glass as I pressed myself nearer trying to reach through my skin, to become the otter, the frog, the dolphin, the chameleon. I remember the tigers, their bright orange fur singing my eyelids, their strong jaws making me afraid to come close the cage. I remember the wolves, howling and howling at nothing, or everything, and when I was scared my mother leaning over to whisper “Listen Ellen, they’re saying hello to you.” I remember before we left, insisting on going back to say goodbye to the wolves so they would not worry that I was lost. I remember the photo booth—the fading grassland scene painted on it, the face of a monkey peaking around the corner of the booth, wide-eyed. I remember sitting in the booth on my father’s lap, my mother right beside me, smiling for the camera, her hand warm on my thigh as we waited for the “click” once, twice, three times. I remember the ride home, clutching the picture in my small hands, looking down at the three figures who stared back up at me. The faces of the man and the woman were pale, reaching back into space, their hair blonde and brown, the woman’s twisting into curls on either side of her face. The face of the child was yellow and flat, her eyes slanting upward, her nose a gently rising hill, flatter than that of the man and the woman, her hair was black and straight. I remember when I was young never finding this difference in appearance odd. To me the picture was simply mother, father, and child.

In the winter, Vermont is white; a bride walking the aisle to the altar, her beauty seems strangely holy—silent and pure. Her silence is one of submersion. It presses in on my ears as though I have just been plunged into the icy abyss of a stagnant river where the still is suffocating. My footsteps lead me through the field toward the wall of trees. Even when they have shed their leaves, the trees shroud the heart of the forest in darkness, hiding a secret from all those who do not see in the dark.
In the spring the hills will be fertile. They rise slowly and gently like the curves of a slumbering woman. I raise the camera to my face, framing the instant in my viewfinder. I pay careful attention to the edges of the image- the strip of ice gray sky in one corner, spiked tendrils of the treetops in another. Perspective is important; both the photographer and the philosopher know that the corners by which one frames an image are just as important as the center.

At the sound of a soft knock on her classroom door, the young woman looks up from her book. She picks her way through the maze of small children, tucked quietly away under soft blankets. The pretend to sleep, but the woman knows better. She has seen their eyes open wide as they stare with feverish joy at their companions, eyes alight with the wild satisfaction of rule breaking. She senses the disturbances in the air as their eyelids flutter as they hear her footsteps approach and hurriedly attempt to feign sleep.
The man at the door is the principal. He is a large man with a rotund belly straining against the buttons of his tweed overcoat. His face is rough, lined, and deeply tanned from what seems to have been many hours out in the sun without sunscreen. In one hand he grasps the fingers of a small child with surprising gentility for a man of his size and demeanor. The face of the child is flat, her nose broad, her skin yellowed like old parchment. Her hair is straight and dark, the color an odd mixture of coal and the darkest kind of chocolate. Its sheen against the florescent lighting reminds the woman of the wet centers of her husband’s irises when she looks into his face before kissing her each night. The woman has a sudden impulse to reach out and draw her fingers through the child’s hair, as though somehow it might melt away into chocolate at her touch. Through the angled slits of the child’s eyes the woman can sense fear. She reaches out to take the hand of the small child, drawing her inside and closing the door.
The child lies on a purple mat next between two young boys. She ensures that all of her feet and legs are out of sight before pulling the blanket under her chin and tucking her arms under so that only her face is visible over the edge of the blanket. She does not pretend to sleep but stares wide-eyed into space. On either side of her, the young boys are staring. They have never seen any person whose face was so peculiar as that of the new girl. The boy on the left reaches up and pulls the skin on either side of his eyes back with each of his pointer fingers so that his eyes form slanted slits like those of the young girl. The other boy smothers his laughter in the blankets and imitates his friend. The young girl does not understand what the little boys are doing.
When recess comes more of the children stare at the young girl. They reach out to touch her hair and they slant their eyes, laughing. The young woman tells them to stop, to behave themselves and to be nice to the new girl. After recess when they are back inside for classes the children slant their eyes and giggle when the teacher is not looking. The young girl does not understand. She reaches up and pulls her eyes to imitate the other boys and girls. They laugh harder; some of the children point. The teacher tells them to stop.
Late that night the young girl says goodnight to her reflection in the mirror. She reaches up to pull back the skin on either side of her eyes, but it does not make her laugh like it makes the other children laugh. That night the girl has a dream where she has brown hair and a pointed nose and her skin is the color of cream. She is just like all of the other children.

The darkroom is cool while the summer heat presses itself against the walls of the building, trying to coax its way in through the cracks, trying to perform a sort of osmosis through the solid concrete. I keep my dark room cool for preservation purposes. A refrigerator preserves food by chilling it to slow down the chemical equations that will inevitably turn the food sour. My darkroom preserves memories, images, so they too do not go sour.
The developer is my favorite part of the photographic process. The chemicals reveal the “latent” or invisible image on the exposed photo paper. In the dark our pupils expand, the blackness expanding to let in light, drawing outlines and shapes out of the darkness. The world of the photo paper is reverse. Images emerge on the paper—figures wading out of memory into solid, tangible, visible being. Out of the white shadows emerge, gray blotches that darken into figures, familiar faces, blades of grass, the rough texture of a tree. These images are fragile. Exposed too long they will only melt back into darkness, just as silently as they waded into light and the picture will become dark, an endless night framed by the edges of a photograph.

Through the slits in the banister I can see my mother reading at the kitchen table. Her hair is pulled away from her face into a french braid, revealing rich hazel eyes and thin, curling lips. I have never been told that I look like my mother.
As I descend the staircase, I listen for the familiar creek on the second to last step. My fingers trace the time-smoothed crack running down the length of the banister. My eyes trace rays of sunlight through the open window to lay in pools of the floor. The house is familiar like an old pair of pajamas.
My mother’s face turns at the sound of my heart beats closer. I can feel the blood rushing through my extremities, bringing me life, bringing me oxygen, the will to live. As I look into her face, I know that it is not her blood that gives me life. No, that gift was from another woman. This figure sitting here before me, this charlatan, has reaped the harvest of another’s pain, another’s sacrifice. Some other woman, somewhere on the other side of the globe toiled in the hot sun to sew the seeds of life, to burrow them deep into rich soil, to water them and nourish them, and now this strange woman sitting at this kitchen table has reaped a harvest that was never hers. That woman, she is not my mother.

In the city I am a lost soul. No one knows my face or my name. No one can know the thoughts that circle my head, tired runners who have no rest even in my dreams. I board the bus. My coins make hollow clinking sounds as they hit the bottom of the coin acceptor. I sit. There is a hardened piece of gum stuck to the bottom of my seat; it is smooth like a marble under my fingertips. The scent of gasoline and fast food fills the bus. I can feel the engine revving under me. Outside my window the buildings are a blur of gray. The bus loops the city once, twice, three times.
The only other people on the bus are two old men wrapped in thick winter coats. One has his head tilted back against the window, mouth open, snoring. The other is wide-eyed. He stares at the empty seat across from him, a blank stare.
We are the lost souls of the underworld. We come to this boat with our eyes blinded and coins under our tongue. Charon, the our keeper, navigates the River Styx. Again and again we are drawn through the mist, the taste of the dead pungent upon our tongues. But Charon does not dock, he does not draw up to the marshy banks of Hades doorstep, he only drives in endless circles. Not belonging to either the live world or the dead, we are lost. No one remembers us and our identities stream behind us like colorful ribbons before fading into the mist. Here we are only bodies. There is only the physical. We are only images, a photograph, no more.
After the tenth time around the city, the morning traffic clogs the street and the sky flushes pink at the arrival of the day. I pull the cord and thank the bus driver as I descend the steps to the street. His face is hard and cold as he shuts the doors behind me. I stumble out into the street.
In the early light the city is pink like the skin of a newborn child. I can hear the breathing of living souls all around me. I feel the city’s heartbeat pounding in my shoes.

My birth mother and father lived in a small rural town in China. They were not wealthy, so when my mother’s midriff began to swell like the ripening pears in spring, worry creased their brows. On the day of my birth, my parents were only expecting one child. Instead, they were gifted with two: a boy and a girl. At that time in China, it was mandated that each family have only one child. My parents, in accordance with Chinese tradition, kept the boy and set the girl away to be adopted.
Sometimes in the night I imagine my mother: how she might have stroked my thin tufts of hair and kissed my forehead, not wanting to give up her only daughter. I imagine how she might have argued with my father, telling him that they could hide the baby, keep it secretly. The government would never know. “How will we hide it when it gets older?” he would shout at her. “How?” She would turn her face away so that her husband would not be shamed by having to see his wife cry. I imagine how the next morning she might have woken to find only one child in the house and her husband gone. I imagine how she might have stared at the empty place next to her on the bed, the air particles where only a few hours before her flesh and blood had filled its place. I imagine how her grief might have streamed out of her, filling the space were the baby had been and spilling over onto the floor. When her husband returned they would not speak, but he would find his feet damp where her grief had pooled. For many years after, the woman and her husband waded through these pools, and their feet were always wet.

The streets of Chinatown stretch before me. East Broadway is alive with men and women bustling from shop to shop. Here, every face is a mirror—slanted eyes, yellowed skin. The steady rumble of the Chinese language, moving up and down the vocal chords, wafting through the scents of cooking rice and fish markets. The language is foreign on my ears yet the sounds flow through me, inspiring little shocks of recognition—somewhere in my blood, my cells remember these sounds.
A woman gestures to me and cries out from one of the stalls. She motions me over. The stench of fish runs oily streaks through the air. At night the woman will go home smelling like fish; the scent branded into her fingers, her hair is steeped in it. Later this evening when she draws her fingers through her hair, little clouds of scent bloom above her head. She speaks in rapid Chinese, assuming, perhaps by my appearance that I will understand her. My face must have betrayed my ignorance. The woman slows her speech and gestures dramatically toward a row of what appear to be eels. “Forty dollar.” She cries, jabbing the grayed flesh of one of the eels with a finger. “Forty dollar.”
I shake my head. “Thirty-five dollar,” the woman says, jabbing the eel again. I shake my head again. “Thirty-two dollar,” she cries. The woman thinks I am bargaining with her, but I do not want the eel. I do not know how to cook eel. I am repulsed by the mere scent of it. I do not know how to communicate to this woman that I have no interest in what she has to offer me.
“Thirty dollar,” she cries. I shake my head again and again. I tell her no, I do not want any, but this woman, whose words send shivers through my veins, cannot understand me. My mouth is incapable of twisting and shaping, molding the foreign words as she does. I do not know how to speak her language, a language that, had things been different, might have been mine. I feel hot tears of frustration welling up. I am a stranger to her. Here, where so many of the faces are as flat and yellow as mine, where silken hair of dark chocolate flows down from so many heads, I feel I more alien than among the pale skin and pointed noses of my Vermont home.
I am crying now and the woman is staring, the eel gray and limp in her hands. She does not understand why this young woman before her should show such vulnerability in public over the mere price of an eel.
The soft weight a hand print on my back startles me. I turn and there is a wrinkled man on the sidewalk. His eyes are warm, his hair dark. He smiles at me, his teeth crooked and slightly yellowed. “Is there a problem miss?” His words come thick, dripped in the congealed fog of his Chinese accent. However, they are English and my ears welcome the sound.
“I do not know how to cook eel,” I hear myself say. The man smiles.
“You buy it. I show you how to cook it.” He turns to the woman and says something in Chinese.
“For you,” she says, the supple skin of the edge of her eyes crinkling every so slightly, “thirty dollar.” I reach into my wallet and pull out the bills, feel the sudden weight of the eel in my hand, its stench more powerful than ever.
“Come,” says the old man. “I show you to cook eel.”

The city recedes before me. Spires on top of buildings puncture the sky. I am going home to a softer valley, to the cotton covers of my bedspread where my parents wait. My eyelids grow heavy; I let them droop. When I open my eyes, the rolling hills of Vermont will welcome me. I am home.

My hands move like ghosts in the darkness. I guide the white paper through the rust red tinge that fills the darkroom into the basin of developer. Three figures rise out of the white mist. They are standing in a small kitchen. The background is cluttered with pots, empty plates, chopsticks, a bowl of rice. A porcelain plaque painted with a dragon hangs on the wall over the woman’s shoulder—a symbol of good luck she tells me. All three figures have the same yellowed skin, the same broad nose, the same black hair. The old woman’s arm is wrapped around the young woman’s waist. Their hips touch. The old man’s hand disappears behind the young woman’s back. The photograph does not show it, but when I close my eyes I can feel the pressure of his hand rest lightly on the old woman’s arm. I can smell the scent of raw fish permeating the air around the old woman’s hair. I can taste the sting of foreign spices still on my tongue, the oily weight of my cooked thirty dollar eel moving through my digestive system.
The photograph is in the fixer solution now. The three figures are cemented into the paper for all time. They will not fade into darkness, this instant that will not retreat into swamps of memory.
When the photograph is dry I place it in my portfolio with all the other instances that have been captured by my camera lens. I turn the picture over. On the back I write:


Mother, Father, Child

* * *