Spring 2023
NOTE M. M. DE VOE
STORIES TRANSPORT YOU
SHORT STORIES ESSAYS INTERVIEWS ART & PHOTOGRAPHY FROM EMERGING WRITERS AND ARTISTS
“Home is a place, but I now carry it inside. It is mobile and fluid. It is Joy and Pain.” A Place Called Home - Jennifer Probst
LITRO MAGAZINE • NOTES FROM A READER • 1 Online Edition
Cover by Mario Loprete
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Contents Issue 184 Spring 2023
Notes from a Reader
1
Editor’s Letter
3
Contributors
5
M. M. De Voe, Pen Parentis
Eric Akoto
Free Range Bunny McFadden
Black Excellence
ESSAY
7
FICTION
9
ESSAY
13
ESSAY
16
ART
20
Vanessa Walters
A Person of Two Places Ann Brashares
A Placed Called Home Jennifer Probst
“in cemento veritas”
Mario Loprete
Contents Issue 184 Spring 2023
A Covid Road Trip
PHOTO ESSAY
24
FICTION
25
FLASH
28
29
Sarah Kohrs
PHOTO ESSAY
Forever Sweet Sweet
FICTION
32
FICTION
40
CARTOON
48
ESSAY
49
Shelbey Leco
My Polar Summer, an Essay by Agatha Lin Harold Taw
I Was an Osaka Neighborhood Dan Spencer
There and Back Again
Susanna Horng
Place Ami Rao Khanna
Next Up from Wii Fit Emily Flake
Fear and Loathing and Feistiness in Writing about Sex Catherine McNamara
NOTES FROM A READER
A word from M. M. DE VOE, FOUNDER of PEN PARENTIS The word is parenting—and as an intransitive verb, it was first coined in 1959. Until the 1960s, you might be the parent of someone, but you did not “parent” them. One of the first blogs about “parenting” began in April 2002 when a single mom, Melinda Roberts, launched TheMommyBlog.com. Author Ayelet Waldman soon took mommy-blogs to the next level with a controversial blog (launched in 2004 and deleted in 2005) called “Bad Mother” which used the lens of parenthood (and her excellent writing skills) to boldly discuss everything from gay rights to abortion. The first popular dad-blog, “Modern Day Dad,” was launched by Chris Ford in February 2005, and by the time my second child was born in October 2006, there were more than 50 million blogs on the internet. Once that child was two, mommy bloggers had crested six figures. In 2009, the New York Times launched Motherlode and The Today Show began to publish Today Moms. Is it any wonder that people pressured me, a woman with an MFA from Columbia in creative writing, to start to write a blog? But I was a private person and wanted to give my kids privacy too—I had no desire to put my personal choices about parenting up for public debate on the internet. I felt that there had to be people out there still writing novels as a career— who had kids—and only by connecting to those people could I break through the noise of the blogosphere. A good friend and I launched a reading series in the Wall Street area to do just that: we presented the diversity of successful writers who happened to have kids. Pen Parentis was soon launched. Writers came together monthly in a convivial library bar in Lower Manhattan, where readings were followed by intimate Q&As, frequently on the subject of guilt, and finding time, energy, and privacy to be creative.
LITRO MAGAZINE • NOTES FROM A READER • 1
Our mission? To help each other stay on creative track after having kids. We already had awards or MFAs and/ or novels-in-progress and we just needed a little inspiration and guidance from other writers who had kids (and Pulitzer Prizes) to forge ahead and finish our projects. It turns out that writing after having kids isn’t impossible. It’s hard, yes, but not impossible. And things that are hard are frequently things that are very worthwhile in the long run. Something about balance Parenting and writing are not pitted against each other on a balance. None of us have scales of justice to measure any one part of our lives against another. The finite resources of our time, energy, and money must be divided amongst all the tasks and responsibilities, joys and needs of our lives—and if you picture the balance more like an art mobile, you’ll begin to see the true task of resource management. Each thing you want to do—whether writing, picking kids up from school, balancing your books, making a sandwich, designing a deck for a presentation, going to the gym—is a shape on your mobile. Some are small and fit easily into the day. Some are huge and when you add them it seems impossible that you can add anything else of any size. But to be sure: no matter what you add to the mobile of your day, it will disrupt everything else—of course it will! At Pen Parentis we say that having kids is just adding another shape to the gorgeous mobile of your life. You don’t remove writing when you add a child (or four), you just have to shift things around to make sure there are still resources remaining to devote to your writing career. Why the negative stereotype? Parenthood is an easy target, a low-hanging fruit, probably because it is so common for people to stop creative actions after they have kids. Who still plays the musical instrument
NOTE M. M. DE VOE
they learned in middle school? Many people think of creative writing as a pleasant, idle activity, a dream. The writers who join Pen Parentis value their writing more than just a hobby. They are aiming for publication, or at the very least, for a professional level of written work. If you lose your literary circle because you’ve just had a third child and moved to the suburbs, that is not parenthood affecting your career: it is real estate, economics, the lack of affordable child care… Many larger issues—economics, inequality, gender roles, racial and religious discrimination—frequently get lumped into “having kids” because once you are responsible for an entire family, these issues bubble to the surface, while a solo traveler can sometimes evade them by simply pulling up roots and moving elsewhere. Which brings me to the subject of PLACE. Parenthood should not affect the way people see you, any more than discovering that your favorite author is also a sister, or a spouse. Being a parent is simply a family relationship with attendant responsibilities. It doesn’t affect your talent. I hope this PLACE issue allows you to consider your own home situation in a new way—and connects you to a broader sense of community as you travel through each page, physically as well as in your imagination. And finally, Pen Parentis sends deepest gratitude to all the writers who sent in work to shape this PLACE issue. We value the time and effort it takes to create something new when you have a busy family and hope that you will always find a home for your writing. We also thank Eric Akoto, the marvelous Editor-in-Chief of Litro, as well as the entire Litro team for all their hard work on this gorgeous issue.
LITRO MAGAZINE • NOTES FROM A READER • 2
EDITOR'S LETTER ON THE COVER Mario Loprete, based in Italy, has hundreds of international exhibitions to his credit and has been published in over 450 international journals, including the journal of Harvard University.
Editor-in-Chief & Art Director Eric Akoto eric.akoto@litrousa.com Managing Editor Oindrila Gupta oindrila.gupta@litrousa.com Associate Designer Ana Stavarache Masterclasses Manager Farhana Khalique Editorial Fellow Zadie Loft Assistant Online Editor online@litrousa.com Advertising sales@litrousa.com General Inquiries info@litrousa.com Subscription Inquiries subscriptions@litrousa.com All other inquiries info@litrousa.com Published by, Litro Media Inc Address 33 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003 USA © Litro Magazine 2023 Distributors:
As early as July 2020, Forbes magazine had noted that the pandemic was causing a massive urban exodus across the United States. So where did everybody go? Clearly, the claustrophobia of apartmentdwelling (exacerbated by COVID-19 quarantines and the mysteries of contagion) had hit a tipping point that had led artists of all stripes to migrate Eric Akoto out of the cities. But where did they end up next and what are they doing now? Did poets with freshly made country addresses rediscover the pleasures of pastoral verse? Were novelists— freed from the scrutiny of the corporate panopticon—suddenly emboldened to pen workplace romans à clef? Did essayists suddenly find themselves waxing philosophical about homelife, suburbia or—somewhat unexpectedly— parenthood? What are the collective reactions of these relocated lives and their rebooted careers even as the virus rages on? For our PLACE issue, we at Litro were very much interested in hearing from those among you who made the jump from New York to New Hampshire, from San Francisco to St. Helena, and from Houston to the hinterlands. How had your recent relocation reoriented your writerly practice? What did creatives with children or parents to take care of envision or obsess about at their iMacs and PCs? When did the whereabouts—be it urban, suburban or (especially) rural—come into play when you put pen to paper. Whether your current abode was a remodel project or a prefab inheritance, a tiny home or a tony townhouse, we wanted to hear from you—particularly as it regards your
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LITRO MAGAZINE • EDITOR'S LETTER • 3
EDITOR'S LETTER ERIC AKOTO
immediate surroundings. Mind you, we were also interested in stories from those who stayed behind in the city as it’s a new world for all of us. You showed us what life looked like after lockdown. Litro’s PLACE issue promises to put new names on the map, alongside famous authors and emerging writers. In support of our friends at Pen Parentis, we particularly encouraged writers who are raising or caring for kids to submit their experiences of place. We have our city dwellers: Brooklyn-based Vanessa Walters, New Yorker Ann Brashares, and San Franciscan Bunny McFadden. For our rural artists, we have Jennifer Probst in the picturesque Hudson Valley and Sarah E N Kohrs in scenic Shenandoah Valley. We also went global with Italian native Mario Loprete and Calcutta-born Ami Rao Khanna who has lived just about everywhere. All of them parents, guardians, or nannies, finding place for their creativity. Each story, artwork and essay gives voice and eyes to place in all its meanings: global, cerebral, domestic. Enjoy.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
LITRO MAGAZINE • EDITOR'S LETTER • 4
CONTRIBUTORS
BUNNY MCFADDEN (she/they) is a Chicana mother who tinkers with words for a living. Bunny’s work has been published by Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fodor’s, and others.
JENNIFER PROBST is a NYT, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 50 books in contemporary romance fiction. She loves hearing from readers.
LITRO MAGAZINE • CONTRIBUTORS • 5
VANESSA WALTERS is the debut author of THE NIGERWIFE: A NOVEL, published by Atria Books (Simon & Schuster), May 2023. She is originally from the UK and lives in New York.
MARIO LOPRETE, based in Italy, has hundreds of international exhibitions to his credit and has been published in over 450 international journals, including the journal of Harvard University.
ANN BRASHARES is the #1 NYT bestselling author of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, The Here and Now, and My Name Is Memory. She lives in New York with her family.
SHELBEY LECO is a mixed media collage artist & fiction writer who studied at the University of New Orleans to acquire her bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in Urban Society.
CONTRIBUTORS
HAROLD TAW’s debut novel was Adventures of the Karaoke King. His writing has been featured on NPR, in a New York Times bestselling anthology, and in The Seattle Times.
SUSANNA HORNG (she/her) is a Clinical Professor at New York University in Liberal Studies. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Bennington Review, Global City Review, La Libreta, and Minerva Rising.
LITRO MAGAZINE • CONTRIBUTORS • 6
DAN SPENCER lives by the sea with his wife and daughters. His writing appears in places like Popshot, Stand, The Scotsman, Gutter and The Letter’s Page.
AMI RAO KHANNA is an award-winning British-American writer who was born in Calcutta. She is the co-writer of a Sunday Times bestselling memoir and the author of three novels.
SARAH E N KOHRS an artist and writer, with over 100 journal publications of her poetry and photography, is the 2022 Kingdoms in the Wild poetry award recipient for her chapbook, Chameleon Sky.
EMILY SUZANNE FLAKE is an American cartoonist and illustrator. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time and many other publications.
FREE RANGE BUNNY MCFADDEN In Zürich, you can leave your eggs on the counter. They do not spoil because they’re still varnished with some waxy protective coat. It’s wet in our apartment. Our coughs are like thick bath towels we can’t wring out. The drips from the crank-open windows dot my chilled skin, leaving punctuation marks on the rough concrete floor. The fog sits like a mother hen on the house and I shiver in paranoia. When I brought my eldest child home from the hospital in Albuquerque, I used to stick my finger under her nose. Sometimes I’d lick my finger first like a hot air balloon pilot might check the direction of the wind, just to make sure she was breathing. It was bizarre, but I couldn’t stop. I counted my pats on her delicate birdbone back. One hard, two soft, one hard. A tessellation of burping that never resulted in the soft, satisfying belches I was told to expect. Only long spit up stains that looked like white ghouls on the shoulders of every shirt in the house. The OCD fact sheet they handed me in my postpartum visit LITRO MAGAZINE • ESSAY • 7
says that in severe cases, a mother might withdraw. I spent hours ruminating on that pamphlet, studying it like an advanced recipe on coddled eggs. She might stop caring for her baby. She might be so afraid of dropping this thing she spent years trying for, this subject of so many doctors’ visits and dreams and wishing spells, like a lucky penny slipping out of your pocket, that she won’t carry it anymore.
washed my hands a pathologically sensible amount of times. I deviated from the baby’s routine. The delirium of motherhood had settled and I no longer imagined her immediate death when I cooked an omelet. I even started brewing another baby. My husband graduated. We felt secure, ready for adventure. We traveled by train from Paris. The air smelled crackling clean. The pencil soot on my writing hand left toeless baby footprints on my journal where We’re taught to carry eggs I promised to record what it was like gently. They might crack. Our to raise my sweet toddler abroad. We pregnancies are filled with horrifying arrived in Zürich March 2, 2020 for statistics and strange advice. Brutal my husband’s postdoc. realities are mixed with old wives’ tales. The miscarriages I’ve suffered Each of those first few can all be pinned to lifting my arms days startled me awake. I’d lay above my head, to telling my mother discombobulated, feeling the yolk I was pregnant before the customary in my belly stir and the toddler next 12 weeks, to stepping over a rope that to me turn, and remember that I tied down a tarp we’d tied down to was a mother. Once, I saw a baby protect our garden seedlings from bird on the sidewalk shivering and the April hail. Wrong seedlings to squawking for a mother that never look out for. We’re taught to carry returned. I didn’t know you’re not eggs gently, but what about once the supposed to touch them, that if you egg is hatched? Is it normal to gather move them they won’t be found, the bright pieces of shell on your their scent will change, their mother tongue like communion wafers? will blindly swoop above searching and never find them again. In stages, I was better. I
ESSAY BUNNY MCFADDEN
What was once odd, bizarre, humiliating for me became common practice for other expats, my in-laws, the strangers on the news: Did you wash your grocery bags? Did you scour your hands? Did you sanitize your packages? Did you scrub your vegetables? Even the freezer bags or cans? Did you?
from the grandparents. There are homemade cookies, but the tin has been pried opened by Customs. I toss them before my toddler can see. I sanitize the baby’s bottles with boiling water and sterilize the pacifiers that fall on our floor.
“We’re taught to No playgrounds. Far too contaminated. The bottom of the carry eggs gently, slide has precisely the same amount but what about of bacteria— The baby swing has once the egg is 52,000 times what a home toilet seat— My daughter has a stunted hatched? Is it childhood. That window when I was recovered and the world was normal to gather safe is now closed tight, lest the soft wind carry filth and doom into the the bright pieces nursery. of shell on your No public transit. But I tongue like comneed to give birth again. At the hospital, do I risk the elevator, a munion wafers?”
dirt of my homeland. Some pregnant and nursing women crawl on the ground and eat the soil, hungry for iron. I beg to return. After some time, the fever passes and we do. I have to hold back from throwing myself on the carpet at the George Bush airport and kissing the filthy ground.
In the States, a bird builds a nest in our new backyard and I watch the mother nervous and tentative to leave for food. I cheer her on quietly. It doesn’t always end like this. It is sometimes total devastation, a dirty wildfire that doesn’t play by the rules, that leaves nothing but heavy ash on the window blinds and grief hiding in the cleaning cupboard. People with OCD are ten times more likely to end their lives. Like the tessellated rhythm that guided my pats and shushes, my postpartum OCD might come back with menopause. The hormonal shift is out there lurking tiny tin coffin with stale air? If I like a bird in a filthy cage, waiting. catch it now, I’ll pass it to the new A neighbor tells me she I hope I am ready, but I dare not baby, and then he will move out of mops her floors each day. The whole prepare. my womb and into his own tiny house. The thought consumes me. coffin. Stairs instead? They wind me My hands grow raw once more. in my double mask in the July heat. I imagine myself tripping down the I reach out to the women stairs in cinematic stills. There’s the who have had children in the rail. Do I risk it? As I fill out the same batches as me. At first they mental decision matrix, I hear it. recommend cleaning supplies; Don’t you? Don’t you hear that man’s after they realize I’m a particular phlegm ebbing and flowing as he kind of mess, they gently steer our climbs the stairs? conversations toward help. I’ve scrubbed so hard I’m transparent. No mail. Let it sit three days They see through. to be sure nothing lurks on the licked seal or the handwritten apartment A common cold does it. In number. I am far from my family. It feverish paranoia, convinced we have takes a month to get a care package the coronavirus. I long for dirt. The LITRO MAGAZINE • ESSAY • 8
BLACK EXCELLENCE VANESSA WALTERS
“Who would you say is the most eternally beautiful woman in the world?” Shayla asked Dom over Angie’s reheated crepes. “You obviously,” Dom said with a sly look at Adam, who just frowned and focussed on pouring chocolate sauce on his crepe. Shayla giggled. “Not me. Come on, this is for a piece I’m writing for Style Sister.” Dom wiped his brow in mock relief. “Oh, okay, I’d say Shailene Woodley,” “Too young, her looks will probably fade.” “Kim Kardashian then.” “Please, let’s be more original.” Kim was perfect, but that was too easy.
his pant pockets. “Good choice. She shoulder. “Do good at school.” always has been and will be stunning. “Bye, Daddy,” said Adam, Even if she was a hundred, I still not looking up. would.” Dom crossed the open plan Shayla reached out to slap kitchen and parlor to the entryway, him. Dom sprinted out of the way pulling on his blazer and stepping and laughed. Then he returned and into his loafers. The vestibule door grabbed Shayla in a bear hug as she clanged shut after him. Shayla heard jokingly tried to hit him. him call out to one of the neighbors. “Come on, you know no She fancied she heard his strident one’s more beautiful to me than footsteps along the pavement you. My perfect wife. Mother to my heading to the subway. perfect son. Queen of our perfect She gathered the breakfast house.” Finally, Shayla succumbed things and stacked them around the to his kisses. They were as hot and sink. It was Angie’s day off. Today urgent as they had always been, able they had to fend for themselves. to transport her to another place, making her weak and grateful, so “Are we ready to go?” grateful for this life. Dom gagged “Yeah.” Adam slid off the afterward, though, and wiped his chair. Shayla brushed the crumbs mouth with his hand. off his sweater and wiped his mouth “Yeuch! Lipgloss before with a napkin. No child of hers would breakfast?” go to school covered in crumbs.
“Halle Berry?” He checked his watch. “I don’t really have time Shayla smiled sheepishly. for this!” She wore it all the time now, to keep “Salma Hayek?” Shayla her lips moist and plump. suggested. Dom considered it and “I’m sure you’ll knock it out nod-shrugged. He stood up from of the park. You always do. Adam, the table, put his phone and wallet in have a great day.” He patted his son’s LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 9
He put his blazer on and slipped into his shoes as his father had done. As Shayla clipped on her fanny pack, popped her lipgloss in it, and found her phone, Adam presented her with a sheet of paper.
FICTION VANESSA WALTERS
“I need you to sign my Shayla in hers. Turning things over, homework?” he said. she now recalled that Adam had been fussy over his grades for a while, Shayla took the paper. It stressed about his homework, upset looked like math. Fractions. Fifthover any fair criticism from keeping grade stuff, but it might as well be his room tidy, to turning down the astrophysics to her now. Adam’s television. handwriting was neat for his age, almost elegant. The calligraphy In the last Parent Teacher practice had been good for him. Conference, his grade teacher, Paul, Nothing outside of the lines, with the said that Adam was a perfectionist working out in tidy rows. and needed to relax more over his grades. She and Dom had laughed The grade wasn’t good. It about it. “We are a kind of perfect was a 2. A 2, she dimly remembered, family, though,” Dom had joked with meant “could be better.” Adam’s Paul. “They’re always telling the black grades were usually all 4s. He worked kids to slow down when they know hard and had always been clever like damn well black kids need to be his daddy. twice as good,” Dom had complained She glanced at Adam. He afterward. “It’s a type of racism I’ve had to deal with all my life.” She’d had looked crestfallen. About to cry. to talk him down from shooting off a “Don’t feel bad. A 2 is fine,” terse email to the principal educating she said, not really sure. her about the history of low academic “No, it’s not,” Adam retorted. expectations of black boys in schools and colleges. Shayla only now registered Dom was an over-achiever how morose he’d been all morning. who had made his way to the Ivy “You’ll get a better grade in the next League from the worst school in assignment,” she said. East New York. His father had kept “Can you just sign it?” he him up late at night doing extra pleaded, presenting the pen. homework from a young age, often She signed the math sheet to beating him with a leather belt if show his teacher she had seen it and he came home with poor grades or followed him to the front door. Why reports. His father had grown up in was it such a big deal. It was just one a time during the crack epidemic, assignment. 1, 2, 3—who cared? But watching drugs and violent crime she knew Dom might not see it that devastate his black neighborhood, black men flushed into the prison way. system and their ambitions thwarted at every level of society. He’d worked as porter most of his life, opening the They walked the four blocks to the door for rich white folks, and he’d school in silence, Adam in his head, wanted his son to avoid a similar fate. LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 10
Between his father and the world, there was nothing the Pauls of this world could tell Dom. He’d gone into banking from Wharton, and the rest was bougie black history. They had met on a yacht at an afterparty for some rapper. Even though they were very different people, they had seen the same things in each other, a taste for nice things, bon-vivants with high standards for themselves who followed the rules of life—dressed up and showed out. She became a sought-after influencer—with his financial backing, of course. Not quite Kim Kardashian, but her followers were in the hundreds of thousands. Dom was a trading superstar at a hedge fund. They had made it with surprising ease in a country where statistically at least, their prospects were limited. Adam went to an excellent private school. He seemed popular judging by the number of playdates he was invited to. He was happy. The teachers loved him—didn’t they? Except for Paul—saying he needed to relax. Honestly, some people couldn’t let you be great. They were always—always looking for the flaw. Shayla’s nose wrinkled as she reentered the house. She usually loved coming home, but more so on the days Angie visited when everything was polished and dusted and back in its rightful place when it was perfect. She was so used to having a housekeeper. It made life so much easier. Now, her stomach lurched at the faint trash scent, and she sighed
FICTION VANESSA WALTERS at Dom’s discarded slippers by the shoe cabinet and the gadgets on the sofa. In the kitchen, the detritus from breakfast awaited her. And even when she had tidied up, it still wouldn’t look professional—she was too busy to throw herself into housework between her articles and social media account. She picked up the slippers and put them back in the cabinet. Threw the gadgets into the expensive looking cedar wood coffee table they had found at Crate and Barrel that concealed a charging gadget can. Then, she flopped down on the sofa. Why was Adam so bothered by a bad grade? It wasn’t even a bad grade. An hour on the Peloton couldn’t shake it—the feeling she was missing something. Adam had everything anyone could want. They lived in a cavernous Brooklyn brownstone— he had practically a whole floor to himself—with beautifully scooped interiors, they’d removed a lot of walls, so the light flooded in. A Kehinde Wiley, acquired before the Obama fame, took up half the wall space in the living room. And the furniture was hand-picked from design magazines. He’d all the attention, all the toys, traveled the world, everything organic, she’d made sure, down to his cotton socks. He’d always seemed robust, never pining for anything, but now, this chink in his armor, where did it come from? When did he decide he wasn’t enough? Dom was a stickler LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 11
for academics, but there had been nothing to stickle. Adam had hit the ground running from pre-school. His grades were perfect. All the teachers said so. He was perfect. Shayla took her laptop to the kitchen. She sat down on the banquette seats of the kitchen table—she’d always wanted banquette seating. She liked the way it made a room look more together. She flipped open the computer and googled world’s most beautiful woman.
“‘God don’t like ugly,’ Gran always said. And what Uncle Stanley did was ugly. Made her feel ugly.” The usual suspects flashed up, including the ones Dom had mentioned. Salma Hayek was gorgeous. Still gorgeous. A little fat now, though—especially around the jaw. Getting jowly. No way to hide it. What about Naomi Campbell? She was over fifty and fabulous. But it was all filters, though, wasn’t it? If you looked closely, you could see the hairline was gone, the poor woman was bald, and her skin was thickening. She decided ultimately to go with Naomi though. She was the most perfect. Her body as toned and smooth as in her twenties. She wrote
all this in a quick five-hundred-word article, ending with a cautionary quote on beauty from Anatole France. If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it will lead. Now that was done, Shayla checked her Instagram account. Her followers had loved her most recent post, standing in front of the Kehinde Wiley. She often took photos in front of the Kehinde Wiley. People loved what he represented. A new idea of Black beauty, Black excellence, Black luxury. Love comments.
it,
gushed
the
You are flawless! Just Perfect! Now she needed to get ready for pick up. She left the laptop, went to the entryway mirror, reapplied lip gloss, and smoothed her hair. She examined herself for wrinkles and cringed, noticing another grey hair in her eyebrow. She made a mental note to go and get some botox in the next few days, just in case. Makeup and nice clothes were one thing, but there was no substitute for botox and fillers. Not too much, just a dam to hold back the aging flood. What was it that Mom liked to say? Always look your best. Grandma said much the same. Dress how you want to be addressed was her phrase. Before feminism. Before MeToo. Growing up, they always made sure her clothes and hair
FICTION VANESSA WALTERS were perfect. They instilled good grooming habits into her. “Before you come downstairs, make sure you’ve washed your face and brushed your teeth,” they would remind her. “Always wear your matching dressing gown and slippers.” The pink velour, she remembers it well. They took her to the nail salon with them and the hair stylist to get her hair straightened for special occasions. As soon as she hit sixteen, it was permed. Now she also had long hair extensions to offset the damage from the back-to-back chemical treatments. And Shayla remembered that even when she looked the part, she had to behave very prim and proper, sit still on the sofa with her legs together, and not climb all over the furniture because Uncle Stanley wouldn’t like it. And Uncle Stanley paid all their bills, so they had to keep him happy. Everyone was always on their best behavior for Uncle Stanley. Even when he wasn’t around, they had to keep practicing. Not a hair out of place because Uncle Stanley wouldn’t like it. Shayla could feel herself getting upset, irrationally, of course. It was all so long ago. Uncle Stanley had passed away years ago. He was no longer a cloud over her, a reminder that none of them were enough without his approval. And without him, they were nothing and nowhere, a single mom and her illegitimate daughter thrown to the wind.
mirrored makeup cabinet. “Mommy, why do you wear makeup all the time?” Adam used to ask her. “Why do you wear such high heels? Why are you crying?” That day it was because her hair wasn’t right. They were late for a function, and the style she wanted wasn’t working. It just didn’t look right, and she had burst into tears. Another time he’d caught her throwing up. She’d just had a heavy meal. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips, mom would say. She was so used to purging she hadn’t really thought about it. She thought she’d closed the door. She hadn’t seen him standing behind her while she stuck her finger down her throat and purged. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, open-mouthed. He wouldn’t remember something like that, would he?
2.50pm
Shayla stood in line at the school gates, watching the other children stream past to their waiting parents, remembering what it had been like when Adam was just in kindergarten, emerging from the playground proudly cradling his little arts and craft that she had oohed and ahhed over before quickly hiding them in the spare room, his “art gallery” Thinking about it made because his garish papier-mâchés Shayla feel panicky. She added some and legos didn’t match anything in blusher, strip lashes, brushed out the living room, because she needed her hair, and used the tongues to everything in their lives to be perfect. curl the ends. She found a dress to Adam looked tired. That wear, simple white with guipure lace wasn’t unusual. They worked the panels, something Dom would like. kiddos hard at this school, one of the Uncle Stanley hadn’t been proclaimed “little ivies” of New York nice. She’d tried to tell Mom and City. But he was pleased to see her. Gran, but they didn’t want to listen. He smiled, and she kissed him and Everything he’d done got shoved back stroked his hair. down inside her and covered over “Hey, my love,” she said. with pretty bows and silk dresses. “How was your day?” But perhaps it was for the best. “God don’t like ugly,” Gran always said. And what Uncle Stanley did was ugly. Made her feel ugly.
Only the makeup, the She just needed a little foundation, the concealer, the lip eyebrow gel. Shayla opened her gloss, the eyebrow pencils, and the LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 12
fake lashes made the memory of it go away. And Dom would never need to see it, her ugly, to know about Uncle Stanley. They had an ugly past, but now they were beautiful. Like artworks, they had intentionally painted themselves as they wished to be seen.
A PERSON OF TWO PLACES ANN BRASHARES For me, writing has been a process of migrating, reluctantly, from one place to another, from a place at my desk to a place in my mind. Life is never more vivid than at the beginning of a new book. I don’t mean the book, I mean everything else. My mild-mannered desk is suddenly full of traps and riches. A few piles of bills. A few piles of books. The internet, of course. The calendar is riveting. I want to go on all the school field trips, find fancy recipes for dinner and cook them, read books, watch TV shows. I want to travel! To so many places! I read all the travel articles in a magazine I’ve never heard of. Even boring things, riders to insurance contracts, are less boring than my book. Even frustrating things, updating my website, are less frustrating than my book. Pairing all the random numbers to names in my phone? That’s a job for now. I stare at my computer screen. The problem is not that my screen is blank, which it is, but that it’s a wall. Not a canvas, a wall. It takes all my might not to click the browser icon and open the escape hatch. I make more coffee. I clean my desk. I berate
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myself. Why can’t I work? Because I should call my mom. Because I only have two hours until school pick up. It’s really noisy on my street. The UPS guy just dropped off a package. I forgot to order vacuum bags. I need time. I need quiet. I need boredom. I need no temptations. I need the sofa to look less soft. All I can think of are the wonderful things I’ll do once this deadline is met and this book is behind me. So there, getting rejected a hundred times a day, lowlier even than the Con Ed bill, is my poor book. The wall where my book needs to be. At the beginning the book just hasn’t got anything going for it. It’s a defenseless idea, a few abstract strangers, and some kind of plot I don’t yet believe in. It offers no place to climb into, no comforts or seductions to make me want to. It’s a flat and colorless wall of a computer screen. Which is why I resist it so much at the beginning. My book can’t compete with the place I live, my home, with the people I love who need me. To have any hope of progress, I need external restrictions. I need to lessen the joys of the outer
world—to even things up a bit. No food, no phone, no internet, no noise, no rushing. I will be distracted by the tiniest thing. I need silence, I need boredom, I need a stretch of at least three hours. It’s no mystery why I’ve written the first half of nearly every one of my books in the quietest, most restrictive room of a library. Only total sensory deprivation will make the outside world more boring than my book. If reality is dismal enough, I may start building an alternative. Slowly, I do, I start. Usually because I have to: my deadline looms, and I can’t repay the advance money because I spent it. I can pretend to be as evolved as I like, but fear and poverty remain my strongest motivators. And so, grudgingly and abjectly, I begin to make a place behind the wall. I transfer the color and force of life into my story, from my outer world to my inner one. I make a space to move around, to meet people, to discover their frailties, to fall in love with them, to get them to fall in love with each other. And bit by bit, building with words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, I enlarge and enhance the space, and bit by bit I’m ready to make a home in it. I kick away from the wall. That’s
ESSAY ANN BRASHARES
one thing walls are good for.
crises, who, like my children, came kindergarten switching classrooms out of me but seek to wrest their mid-day was a trial. I tend to be 100 Once I’ve built the space for independence from me. percent where I am and 0 percent a story, the real world starts to fade. where I am not. Moving between I start to tune it out. I go through In the end, it’s hard to make two states is the problem. I resist motions of parenting and cooking, the transition back from inner world change. It’s likely the reason I am not but the truth is, I’m mostly thinking to outer. I submit the book to my and probably never will be a napper about my book. My senses fade in editor and I should be jubilant. I and why I make a bad long-distance proportion to the sensory richness finished (for now)! I might even get friend. I’m okay with discipline, poor growing inside my story. I want to paid! I can do all those delightful with moderation. listen to the people in my book and things I yearned to do when the I want the real world to just stop and deadline was staring me down. But And yet, I am a person of leave me alone for a while. One night two places. I grew up a joint-custody I dreamt I was in jail, and it was a kid. I had two houses, two bikes, two “And bit by bit, good dream. bedrooms (both pink). Thoughts come to me in pairs. I buy two of building with You invest your time in everything at the grocery store. Did what interests you, that’s true, but words, sentencI lose the knack of duality? Did I ever I’ve found the converse to be more have it? es, paragraphs, powerful: you become interested scenes, I enlarge when you invest the time. When I imagine life at the other end of the spectrum, I and enhance the consider the work habits of Anthony space, and bit by Trollope. According to legend, he In the final chapters of my book, lifted his pen at 5:30am on the dot bit I’m ready to the phone is ringing, the emails are and put it down at 8:30am on the dot piling up, the dog is whining, it’s time make a home in it.” regardless of his place in the story. If to make dinner, but I can’t look away he finished a book (and most of his from my computer screen. Next day there’s a teacher conference, a dentist I don’t. I can’t even remember what books are long) before 8:30am, he appointment, school pick up. I carry they were. My book is my place now, pulled out a blank sheet of paper and my computer around with me. I’ve I belong with my characters. The started a new one. (I’m not totally tried to type while I’m walking. I go nights after I turn in my manuscript, sure where I got that last part—it’s probably wrong.) Trollope made epic back inside my story for however I stay up working on it. novels out of “trivial actions, tiny long I have, wherever I am. At a table It gets lonely. I lose traction disputes.” His people are bureaucrats, in a crowded café, on a bench in the park, on the bus. But I’m not even in with the world, and that’s unnerving, clerks and clerics. He dramatized any of those places, they’ve become especially when you have real committee meetings, compromises, vague and faded. The wall gave way people depending on you. It’s not and incremental reform. He worked to rooms, a field, a forge, a car. Inside sustainable. I start to feel a mix for the post office, for God’s sake. I these places are people who count on between Descartes and Harold and bet he was a good napper. I say this in part to be admiring, but you can me, people with whom I am in deep the Purple Crayon. tell I’m being kind of judgy and conversation, who need to be guided I think I’ve always lacked patronizing. And as I detail my own or thwarted, who are heading to agility in transitions. Even in wretched habits, there’s an arrogance LITRO MAGAZINE • ESSAY • 14
ESSAY ANN BRASHARES to self-effacement. And a bid for control. I want to be pre-emptive with my flaws. Like I’m trying to beat you to them, to control the narrative. And are they flaws? Aren’t I kind of celebrating them, in a cheap, humbly-braggy way? When Covid struck in 2020, we moved our family out of the city and up to the country for a few months. We brought my 90-year-old father-in-law with us, because he couldn’t get the care he needed at home. I felt grateful on all counts that we could do that. What a strange time it was. We played board games in the middle of the day. (You try teaching Settlers of Catan to a 90-year-old. Then add the Explorers and Pirates expansion pack.) I struggled to pretend to my 3rd grader that remote school required seven hours of his day. (It didn’t; I gave up.) My underage daughter made elaborate cocktails in the evening. My father-in-law got joyfully “blotto” and sang Lead Belly songs at the dinner table. We really let things go.
counselor of compromise. But he was also a master of the transition, of those tender points between reality and imagination. And he was a world-inventor if ever there was one. As Adam Gopnik writes in his wonderful New Yorker essay from 2015, “For Trollope, the human hum of gossip and backbiting in Barsetshire is not simply a silliness to be mocked. It is the sound of power, safely diffused into many hands and mouths.” And moreover: “Societies that have eliminated politics and gossip usually run instead on blood and betrayal.” Trollope was the ultimate in agility. There’s that old modernist equation, which tells us that extremes are required for real immersion. Like method acting, you stay in it at whatever cost. And the cost is the point, the cost is the glory. That’s what good writing is supposed to cost.
I suspect it’s not. You can be fully immersed and write nothing of value. You can write your way to One thing I did not do was write any stories. Our revelation between making tuna sandwiches and picking senses respond to difference. It’s the downside of comfort, pills off your sweater. And probably most of the work habit, familiarity. Too much sameness and your senses happens somewhere, unpredictably, in between. kind of check out. Your memory is lulled, time passes And what now? Have I learned anything? Well, without notice. You can’t smell your house, for example, yes and no. The world won’t stand still long enough for unless there’s something unexpected in the air, like smoke me to leave it. It never did, truthfully, and it never will. from a fire. Those first Covid months were a scary time So, I find I’m staying closer to the ground these days. I’ve in the world, low on comfort, but it was incredibly vivid. taken on neither deadline nor advance. I wrote a sequel Like a house with a fire in it, I couldn’t ignore the smell. to an old book, venturing into a place I’d already made. Between worrying, cooking, cleaning, drinking, game I’ve undertaken a project with a co-writer—my brother. playing, screen-school proctoring, trying to give my That’s another kind of hedge, I guess, a way to smooth father-in-law the right number and kind of pills, I didn’t the seams between the out-loud of the real world and the have the hours to devote to writing and I didn’t have the isolation of an imaginary one. I’m thinking about short ideas. I had no mental constructions to compete with stories for the first time. I wrote an essay. (See?) Shorter reality, and I lacked the controlled environment in which journeys, closer to home. I’m trying to get a little better to start making any. Reality was so squirrelly at that time at the back and forth, working while not abandoning my I found I couldn’t take my eye off it long enough to read a home and my obligations. That’s a lot more sustainable novel let alone write one. in the long term. I hope to become a better napper and a But you can’t live on high alert forever. And a better friend. diet of memes, cocktails, and mid-day board games isn’t Life is about compromises. That clanged off my satisfying long term. I missed writing. I wished I were ear like a tire iron when I was young. Now it just sounds agile. quietly true. Back to Trollope for a minute. Yes, he was habitbound. He was a champion of incremental progress, a LITRO MAGAZINE • ESSAY • 15
A PLACE CALLED HOME JENNIFER PROBST
As a writer, I learned early on there was no one place to call home. Creativity bubbled inside my veins and pushed out in a need to express endless words; words that needed to be captured on paper; words to make sense of my emotions; words to help envision how I viewed the world and fit in. These words drove me to search for a place to write. At twelve years old, my place was the end of my family’s dining room table. I sat at a rich mahogany table covered in cheap plastic. My mother had learned this trick from my Italian grandmother, who swore it was the only way to protect the integrity of the wood. My grandmother did this with all of her furniture. I still remember my thighs sticking to the thick material, crinkling noisily each time I shifted position.
Ploded Star; Sarah Kohrs Photography 2023
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My chair was part of the matching set, with a curved, spindled back and a paisley cushion on the seat. The window was behind me. A centerpiece of dried flowers sat in front, scenting the air with eucalyptus. The floors were old and creaky; voices echoed endlessly from the attached kitchen, so I wore headphones and blasted an endless stream of music to protect my precious bubble of story. I wrote longhand, with a black Bic pen, in a spiral notebook, then graduated to a Brother typewriter. I wrote two books there. In my mid-teens, I moved to my room and created a corner office space. This time, I faced the window. I watched cars pull in and out of our driveway
ESSAY JENNIFER PROBST while my father sat in a metal folding chair, chain smoking cigarettes as he contemplated the small grassy lawn that was his domain. My desk was pine and wobbled when I pounded the keys too hard. The walls were pale yellow with random, splattered bug stains. I’d taped my first official rejection letter to the wall I faced daily, so when I looked up from my work, I’d be reminded that my story had been rejected. It was my proof that I was a real writer. I read it every day and tried harder. I wrote three books at that desk.
screamed and played behind me.
After years of writing and rejection, my work was published. The book that garnered endless no’s suddenly rocketed to stardom and went viral. People read it on trains and subways, bookstores stocked it on shelves, and Target dedicated a display to shoppers. It hit the USA Today list. Then it sat on the New York Times bestseller list for twentysix weeks.
But what I remember the most about that house was more than my work. Within those five rooms I spent my days with my husband, our two rescue dogs and two toddlers. There was nowhere else to go; nowhere to escape. So, we leaned in to the chaos of working full time jobs and changing endless diapers and hearing Barney and SpongeBob and Mickey Mouse on repeat and Life changed. confronting the stress of bills with a We built the house of our totality of vision and commitment dreams. Tucked on a dead-end road, that made all the difference. We were surrounded by acres of woods behind Home morphed into immersed in our world—the good, and to the side for dedicated privacy, apartments shared with girlfriends; the bad, and the ugly. my kids had neighborhood friends a fancy condo with a temporary One afternoon, I attended a to ride bikes and gather at the bus fiancée, and finally with my husband children’s birthday party. The house stop with. The mighty Shawangunk in our first house—a small brick was an elegant black and white mountains shimmered in the ranch. I converted the spare room colonial with gently sloping hills and distance. Thickets of trees offered into an office and spent seven years the mother was dressed in a bright shade and breath. The outdoor deck at my new desk—this one a giant yellow maxi dress that flowed over seduced me into long hours with my Walmart special in blanched beige her willowy body. She exuded an Mac, the chatter of birds new music fake wood. I faced yet another wall— effortless grace even with her three to my ears, the blue water from the this one painted a bright, creative small kids, who were also perfectly inground pool shimmering in the orange. The one window to my left dressed, while I could barely seem sunlight. My office boasted double leaked air. I was cold in the winters to get my teeth and hair brushed windows that looked onto acres of and hot in the summer. I bought a in the morning. Envy nipped, but sloping green grass and colorful real chair that was well cushioned the wise voice inside reminded me flowers bursting in bloom. My desk with back support and spun around if I wanted that life, I’d have to take was a deep onyx, gleaming with high when I got bored. it all—including the hidden parts polish, the massive surface holding I spent hours in that room, inside the glamour I knew nothing a giant screen, printer with scanner, first working on my Master’s degree about; those fragments that no one endless knick-knacks, and fancy in English literature, then writing talks about on social media or smart planners. Wall sized bookshelves short stories and mommy blogs in cocktail lunches, and I realized I were behind me, crammed with my my quest to connect with readers wouldn’t trade for anything. I owned foreign translations, paperbacks, and get published. I sensed home my broken parts. It was mine—in and audios. A framed New York was a place I could write, and it was all its imperfections—and I left that Times Bestseller list to my right a moving target—from a busy coffee afternoon with a lightness that told reminded me of success. Place was shop, a picnic table in the sun during me I was learning how to navigate suddenly one of my dreams from my given lunch hour, or trapped in a place in a different way. From the years ago, from that girl who wrote laundry room while my toddler boys heart, rather than the head. at her dining room table. Place was LITRO MAGAZINE • ESSAY • 17
ESSAY JENNIFER PROBST suddenly a new type of prison with a pressure to create bigger and better. Writing became a job. My office was both a haven and hell. I struggled to assimilate amidst the sudden privacy, with my closed door and professional shelves and gorgeous view. I had arrived.
walls next to my dying father. It became the memories and the honor of watching him slip away, while I held the space beside him. To be surrounded by family who came together and grieved and loved and felt the collateral beauty of a life passing on.
The boys grew. My dogs When I returned from the passed and we adopted two new funeral, I went back to work. I had a rescues. I wrote endless books. Then, deadline. My office was the only place one day, my father called. He was in I could be in, but the words had dried bed, writhing in pain. He’d beaten cancer five years ago, so when we “I began to found out it was kidney stones, it was match the outpure relief. Looking back, I knew the truth. So did he. We just didn’t want ward quiet with to face it. my inside, findFurther tests showed the cancer had returned, but this time, there would be no fighting back. The poison had sunk into his bones and lungs and burrowed too deep. My brother and I took him home and brought in Hospice. For ten days, my place was in his room, sitting next to a hospital bed. We talked about movies and books and the New York Mets. We hosted visitors and laughed about old times. We watched Game of Thrones into the night. I learned how to change his sheets and take him to the bathroom. His body broke down by the hour. My world flipped when I became the caretaker, and needed to change his diaper; to feed him each mouthful of food; to guide the water to his lips as he took his numerous pain pills. Place became those four LITRO MAGAZINE • ESSAY • 18
person. Eventually, I got back to work, finding my footing tentatively in story, lacking in confidence, more of a student than professional. Writing became an act of faith—if I showed up, eventually the story would be found. I gritted my teeth and showed up. I kept my part of the bargain.
Place slowly began to expand. I found home not only in my office, but my trips to author signings around the world. I met and signed books for readers and mingled with authors on whirlwind trips squeezed into long weekends. We shared secrets of how to launch successful Facebook ads, score a saleable cover, and break down the mysterious algorithms of Amazon. I drank champagne while ing some of the gazing at the blazing lights of the Eiffel breath and space tower; visited the drizzly highlands of Scotland where Braveheart was and reconnecfilmed, and feasted on poutine— salty fries smothered in gravy—in tion I’d given Montreal. I rode a mechanical bull away. ” in Austin, drank Moscow Mules on a rooftop in Nashville, and went up and got stuck somewhere the ziplining in Colorado between Muse couldn’t reach. Days passed, workshops and reader signings. in front of my computer, facing a The world was my place. white screen that used to scream of Until it was not. possibilities but now only reflected despair. I had nothing to give. Covid created a hard pivot. Suddenly, travel was shut down, and I pushed out my deadlines my sacred home space was shared and sunk into my grief. For three with two teen boys and my husband. months, home was the cocoa brown Suddenly, there were no other places recliner chair in the living room under to go, including school, and I found an oversized Christmas blanket. myself turning inward, going deep, Grief became a physical ache in my and finding peace within, surrounded body that I had to honor, accept, and by family. My house was my world allow to change me. It took time. It now. I created in a bubble of safety, took all the strength I had to let go of removed from the everyday demands deadlines and expectations and plans. of grocery shopping, school trips, I came out the other side a different
ESSAY JENNIFER PROBST orthodontist appointments, and track meets. I embraced the isolation. I sunk deep into my story, began exercising, and played board games with my kids every night. Place was once again my four walls, tucked safely inside, while the world burned down around us. I found solace in the quiet and sought out a daily mediation practice. I began to match the outward quiet with my inside, finding some of the breath and space and reconnection I’d given away.
As the years pass, I realize home is more than a place. From family, to writing, to my children… Chasing nature, chasing fortune, chasing endless summers, chasing dreams, all of it becomes a glorious, spinning, colorful whirl in my mind, but settles quietly, softly, like the gentle rush of breath as it leaves the lungs.
Home is a place, but I now carry it inside. It is mobile and fluid. It is joy and pain. Place is a great gift Slowly, the world opened back up, and I struggled that will keep teaching me lessons and bestow shocking for balance. I began to resent being places other than beauty, but most of all, place gives the most precious my home. I felt awkward seeing people and making thing of all. conversation. I’d lost my ability to be fake or skim the Stories. All places contain a story, as unique as surface of polite society. I became a mess of emotions as each of us. I was forced to leave my cocoon and go back to what was supposed to be normal. I wandered about my new life, I have more paths to explore. More books to feeling less soulful, but not knowing how to gain back the write. More places to discover. peace I’d won during lockdown. I was forever changed. Until I return back home. My place became rocky and uneven. I desperately sought new footing. How do I balance the endless demands against the craving for solitude? How do I interact with others in my new skin? How do I learn to say no? I compromised. I found a place in both worlds, but I was less sure now, especially in my writing. I craved to write something new and break out of my successful branding that had become a prison. And as much as I loved the place I’d grown up in, my soul became restless. I dreamed of the beach. My vision turned from majestic mountains, icy winters, and farmland to ocean waves and sand. After the long COVID lockdown, I felt ready to turn my next dream into a reality, and invest in a small beach house in my favorite place. Cape May, New Jersey. Hop on the Garden State Parkway and pass all the Jersey shore points. When the highway ends at Exit 0, this beach town gem shines, offering brightly colored Victorian inns and gorgeous beaches. We found a small cottage in robin egg blue a few blocks from the bay. The salt water healed us all, and I wrote new stories in my second home, spending precious sunsets on a blanket, raising my wine glass to the dying light of another day.
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ESSAY JENNIFER PROBST
MARIO LOPRETE
"in cemento veritas" I live in a world that I shape to my liking. I do this through virtual, pictorial, and sculptural movements, transferring my experiences and photographing reality through my mind’s filters. This new series of concrete sculptures has been giving me more personal and professional satisfaction recently. The reinforced cement, concrete, was created two thousand years ago by the Romans. It tells a millennia-old story, one full of amphitheaters, bridges and roads that have conquered the ancient and modern world. Now, concrete is a synonym of modernity. Everywhere you go, you find a concrete wall: there’s the modern man in there. From Sydney to Vancouver, Oslo to Pretoria, this reinforced cement is present, and it is this presence which supports writers and enables them to express themselves . • 20 LETTER • 1 LITRO MAGAZINE • ART EDITORS
untitled concrete sculpture
untitled concrete sculpture
42cm x 45cm x 10 cm 2016
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ART MARIO LOPRETE old lady 54x37 cm
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ART MARIO LOPRETE old lady
30cm x 30cm
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COVID ROAD TRIP SHELBEY LECO Growing up in Southeast Louisiana, outside of New Orleans, Shelbey was always inspired by nature and art. She was raised among a lineage of natural storytellers on both sides of her family. As a young adult, Shelbey explored this through storytelling ethnography. In 2020, she decided to embark on a road trip—camera in hand, face mask over mouth and nose. After months of just one small and claustrophobic place, Shelbey captured the vibrancy that a plethora of places can bring when no one place is home.
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MY POLAR SUMMER AN ESSAY BY AGATHA LIN HAROLD TAW No offense, Ms. Sharma, but I hate writing essays about what I did during the summer. It’s hard enough being a new girl in a new school in a new country, but I’m doing it during my last year of middle school. Eighth grade was supposed to be my “glide” year. As the big kids on campus, we were going to plan school dances and put our friends on the cover of the yearbook, all before grades start to matter for real in high school. But here, no one knows me, and I have to keep smiling so no one thinks I’m a depressed emo girl. Okay, sorry for dumping on you. From the ten minutes I’ve known you, you seem really kind and understanding, and not just because you’re so pretty. Usually, I don’t have much to say about summer and will embellish whatever comes to mind. Like I’ll say I learned how to code computer games and went to a horseback riding camp when what I really did was play Roblox and ride a pony at the state fair. The weird thing is that this summer was actually exciting. But I wish it had been boring. What happened is what
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drove us out of Seattle to settle here in Port Hardy, which, no offense, is not exactly a big city and has really bad Asian food.
were propped up perfectly on his snout. So, I didn’t scream. I was more like, “Dad, what the F? Mom’s going to kill you for wrecking the sofa!”
Can you keep a secret, Ms. Sharma? If you can’t, just rip up this essay right now. Still reading? Okay. What happened is my dad turned into a polar bear.
You might be thinking, “What’s the big deal? Most kids would love to have a dad who’s a polar bear.” But it’s not that simple. I mean, it’s not like some Disney Channel movie, where you leap onto the polar bear’s back and go riding through town while everyone applauds. In real life, a polar bear can’t walk outside without attracting police helicopters. (I know this from experience.)
I’m totally not making this up. One moment, he was human dad, and the next he was polar bear dad. I was right there when it happened but didn’t notice at first because, don’t judge, I was right in the middle of leveling up on a game that was going to award me this really rare cat. So, I heard his clothing rip and the sofa collapse, but was too focused on my game to notice whether his limbs and body stretched out like PlayDoh, or just “pop!” he became a bear. Anyway, the thing is, I knew it was Dad and not a polar bear who’d eaten Dad because he was still wearing his glasses. A strange but true fact is that even though his body became ginormous and hairy, his head was about the same size, at least as far as fitting glasses is concerned. They
Worse, there are good reasons why polar bears live alone in the wide-open, frozen tundra. Up close and inside the house, polar bears smell super-bad. And it’s not straight-up B.O., which is bad enough. It’s full-on animal stench plus fish breath. Dad as a human snored; Dad as a polar bear snores so loud it feels like your teeth are shaking loose from your head. Having a polar bear dad is really stressful. I don’t mean to sound petty. Mom always says we have first-
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world problems. I mean, Malala got shot in the head just for trying to go to school. But that doesn’t change that Dad totally wrecked our summer… Or at least Mom’s and my summer, because my brother was like, “Whatever,” and never helped sweep up his shedding fur, feed him frozen fish, or carry out trash bags full of poop because Dad is too big and heavy to sit on the toilet. Mom has been totally cool, even sleeping in the same room as Dad the polar bear with a white-noise machine going full blast. But polar bears can’t drive you to dance class, or your brother to soccer practice; polar bears can’t cook dinner or make the bed; polar bears can’t change light bulbs or fix a dripping faucet. I know why Mom kept blowing up at us over the summer. She suddenly became the sole breadwinner and had to call Dad’s work to say he had checked into a drug rehab center in the Californian desert. Dad was bummed about becoming a polar bear, but compared with what Mom had to go through, he had it easy. Why was it so hard for him to stay out-of-sight? Mom installed air conditioning downstairs, had blocks of ice and fish delivered daily. She even set up her iPad so that Dad could tap flashcards with his nose when he wanted to communicate with us. But late at night, Dad paced back and forth like he was locked up in prison. He would nudge aside the curtains and look out at the moon, whining as if he was the loneliest creature in the world, even though all of us were right there in the house. LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 26
So don’t tell my mom, but I was the one who let him out. It was nearly midnight, everyone else was asleep, but I couldn’t sleep with all of Dad’s groaning, sighing, and pacing. I made him promise not to leave the yard, so it’s not really my fault he didn’t listen, is it? Our house was two blocks away from the ferry terminal so as soon he was out the front door, he was off like a bolt, leaping our fence and loping down to the beach. By the time I made it to the waterfront he was swimming out into Puget Sound. By the lights on the ferry dock, I could make out the wedge of his head above water, an arrow heading seaward, growing smaller and smaller. And no matter how furious at him I felt, I got scared that maybe he was swimming away from us forever. So, I was relieved when he returned, carrying something heavy in his jaws. Relieved until he hurled a dead seal at my feet and began devouring its intestines right in front of me as if he was gorging himself at an all-you-can-eat buffet. I can still see the seal’s vacant, liquid-black eyes staring at me in an accusatory “I can’t believe I’m dead” way. But I didn’t have time to let that register because some nosy person on the dock was using his phone to live stream the whole thing. People yelled at me to run away because Dad’s fur was covered in blood and they thought I was next (as if a polar bear would bother with a scrawny thirteen-yearold after eating a whole seal). And then came the propeller roar of a helicopter, and we had to hide in the
ravine. By the time we slunk back home, it was nearly three a.m. My mom and brother slept through the whole thing, which if you know them, isn’t as surprising as it sounds. But they couldn’t ignore those annoying emergency alerts that pop up on your phone even when you’ve turned off notifications. “Danger: polar bear loose in the neighborhood. Stay indoors until further notice.” Heavily armed, heavily armored police officers came pounding on doors and peering in windows. My brother was annoying and unhelpful. “We should just put him down. Dad wouldn’t want to keep living as a polar bear,” he said, as if Dad weren’t sitting right there in the room with us, looking as guilty and sad as a fully satiated polar bear can possibly look. I wish Dad would have swiped him with a paw. Not to kill him, just to remind him he was being a jerk. That’s when I said, “Mom, why don’t we give him to the zoo? They can take care of Dad better than we can.” I mean, we were all thinking it. I just happened to be the first one to say it out loud. And it wasn’t like Dad disagreed. He just sat there and covered his glasses with his paws. We made up a story about finding him in our refrigerated basement. And we tried to make him look less threatening by dressing him in a sweater vest and a straw hat. But the zookeepers still tranquilized him and dragged him into a windowless
FICTION HAROLD TAW van. I can’t get that image out of my mind: his head wanted to continue to play club soccer. This way we can bouncing down the front steps. still visit Dad every weekend, and he’s got a lot more space to swim and hunt. We’re thinking of applying for Objectively it’s way better for a fully grown polar Canadian citizenship. Mom says it depends on the next bear to live in a zoo than in an air-conditioned basement. U.S. election and whether The Handmaid’s Tale starts Dad’s enclosure was huge. He had his own swimming happening in real life. For my part, I’m getting used to pool that came right up to the viewing glass so you could things, even if Canadian food is a little bland. Poutine’s see him swim underwater. He had a huge, concrete play okay, but it gives me a stomach-ache. yard littered with tractor tires, rubber balls, and big tug ropes. And he even had this cool-looking, fake igloo So that was my summer. It was kind of made out of light-blue plastic to shelter him from the interesting, I guess. But I’m hoping next summer will be rain. But all he did was lie down on his stomach and less eventful. And Ms. Sharma… Please don’t make me stare out into the distance. read this essay in front of the class. I’m trying to fit in. One time, a little brat with popsicle juice running down his chin said, “That bear must be retarded.” And I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Shut up. He’s near-sighted and they took away his glasses.” Sometimes my brother isn’t as useless as he acts. He’s the one who came up with the escape plan, and it had to do with a documentary he saw at Pacific Science Center about spirit bears in Northwest British Columbia. Spirit bears are apparently related to black bears but have white fur, so if you squint, they look like mini polar bears. We showed up early on a school day at Dad’s enclosure so no one else would be around. Then my brother set up a FaceTime call with naturalists from the Kitasoo/ Xai’xais First Nation, who had a few questions for us and for Dad before agreeing to help us. We sent them hair and blood samples; they forged a birth certificate and medical records that showed Dad was a spirit bear afflicted with giantism (which is what wrestler Andre the Giant from The Princess Bride had). Zoos are super sensitive about their history of going on safaris, killing animal parents, and stealing animal babies. So even if they were convinced Dad was actually a polar bear, they felt huge pressure from protestors to send Dad back to re-join the spirit bears in his adopted, ancestral home in the Great Bear Rainforest. That’s how we wound up in Port Hardy. It’s a few hours away from Dad, but Mom needed reliable internet service and to be near an airport, and my brother
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—Agatha Lin
I WAS AN OSAKA NEIGHBORHOOD IN 1854 DAN SPENCER
After a scale model of late Edo-period Osaka at the Museum of History, Osaka
I was the boy in the morning, losing his parasol. I was the parasol, caught by a breeze. I was the breeze. At the corner, I was a shelf of bonsai trees in miniature, one after another. I was a cat, walking along the edge of a narrow canal which ran behind square, wooden houses. And I was the cat on the fence of a garden housing mossy stones (me), a stone lantern (me) and a pine tree. I was the pine tree. I was every pine needle in the breeze. I was the breeze. I was the whole neighborhood. I was side streets meeting the main drag. I was shopfronts, my day’s business underway. I was invitations inside. The deliverymen and tradesmen and salesmen were me. I was seeking transactions agreeable to all. Asleep on a roof at noon, I LITRO MAGAZINE • FLASH • 28
was a third cat. I was the 1,000 tiles of the roof. I was the 100 roofs of the neighborhood. All along a ledge, I was a number of sparrows. On my drying platform, I hung laundry. I was cotton drying in the sun. I was this warmth. In my yard, I walked to the rice barrel. I was the rice barrel. Lid weighted with a stone. I was the stone. I was this weight. I was 1,000,000,000 grains of rice. I was the rat going after the rice. I was a fourth cat going after the rat. In pursuit. Pursued. Across town, I was a horse tied by my reins to a post. I was the sleeping dog in the shadow of the hot afternoon. I was the tortoise balanced incongruously atop a stubby, upright stick, slowed further. On the porch of an open room, I was a client, on my belly,
and I applied the needles. Each infinitesimal, invisible needle was me. I was the gossip of the evening. I was a scattering of lily pads like fingerprints. Cross-legged, I spoke to a cross-legged audience of nine. Paper lanterns lit themselves: I was these. I was this night-time scene—audience and speaker. I was all ears. I was 100 toes. I was sandals ranked at the entranceway. I retained the warmth of their hot feet. I was this warmth. I was this charged stillness. I was 1,000 gestures and movements. I was living moment to moment. I couldn’t last. I was unfurnished. I was without bed or chair. I was out of sorts. I wasn’t myself, for a while. I was a thin home of sliding partitions.
SARAH KOHRS
THERE AND BACK AGAIN
Inside Out
Photograph
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Factory
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Pinyon
Photograph
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Steamy Bowl
Photograph
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FOREVER SWEET SWEET SUSANNA HORNG
Iris waited at the edge of the Changhua bus station and scanned the narrow street for the bus that would take her and her father north, along the west side of the island to the Taipei airport. She fanned her black cotton sweater. What had worked so well in the air-conditioned offices in New York City felt clammy in Taiwan’s humidity. Although her father could afford a taxi for the twohour trip, he had insisted on taking the bus. “Why show off?” he had said: this from a man who sported a gold Rolex and drove a red Mercedes convertible in the rural Virginia town where he toiled as the lone surgeon. But Iris couldn’t complain, since her father had paid for her trip. She was an aspiring photographer and writer who temped for a living. Vacations were rare. Normally, she was reluctant to let her parents pay her way or take money from them, for doing so would make her complicit in the life they wanted for her: doctor or doctor’s wife. But her principles made her doubt herself and the choices she made. So, when LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 32
her mother suggested the weeklong Taiwan trip, Iris accepted, rationalizing that she had never been to a Taiwanese wedding. She could reconnect with her father’s family who all lived in Taiwan, and who she’d only visited a few times. But perhaps most importantly, she’d represent her Cantonese mother to her Taiwanese relatives. Waiting for the airport bus, Iris photographed the Changhua scenes around her. Five-story walk-ups stacked side-by-side, lining the street as far as she could see. Bicycles and mopeds darting like mosquitoes among the cars on the road. Leathery workers in yellowed t-shirts and frayed work pants carrying bags of concrete and tiles into a raw storefront across the street. Grandmothers, wearing mandarin-collared tunics over loose drawstring pants, shuffled from the cài sì chăng with fresh vegetables and fish for dinner. Blue and white uniformed school children flooded the sidewalk. Iris pictured writing
a lyric essay to accompany these images. Pumped by her creativity, Iris shifted her lens to her family. Her father was posing for pictures with his sisters, Big Auntie Dà Gū and Little Auntie Xiăo Gū, their Chinese monikers based on birth order in relation to her father, the sun, and, coincidentally, their physical size. Her favorite cousin and newlywed Jiĕ Jiĕ stood off to the side alone. The uncles and Jiĕ Jiĕ’s new husband counted, “yì, èr, sān,” before snapping photos of her father and aunts. They stood stiffly in a row, no smiles as was the Chinese custom, hands at their sides, in front of an inky Mercedes. The swanky import belonged to Jiĕ Jiĕ’s husband of two days, who had followed the Taiwanese tradition of ferrying her from her parents’ apartment to his parents’ apartment for the marriage tea ceremony. Iris’ aunties praised the sedan. Iris could count on one hand the number of times she
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had visited the island that her maternal Cantonese wài pói still called Formosa: once when she was three, next at fourteen, then at age twenty-two, and now that she was thirty. What little she knew about her father’s family, who all lived in Taiwan, and the Taiwanese culture, she had gleaned from photos and these brief trips. And only now that she was an adult, she regretted her lack of curiosity about her father and his culture. When she was growing up, her father returned solo to his homeland every year, but rarely shared any stories about his past. Before his parents died, he went home alone every Chinese New Year. After they passed away, he returned every year to pay his respects during Chīng Míng Jié, the Day of the Dead. Iris’s mother who had grown up in Canton, China, then Hong Kong, then Metairie, Louisiana, had only made the journey to Taiwan twice for show. The shame of having four daughters and no sons kept her mother from crossing the Pacific. She was calculating and only interested in her financial foothold. Her mother ran her father’s medical practice with an iron fist, leveraged their equity, and invested in real estate. She slept alone in a king-sized bed in the master bedroom after banishing her cheating, abusive husband to the basement bedroom. After her parents’ countless explosive fights while she was growing up, Iris had asked her mother why she didn’t divorce her father. Her mother reasoned, “Why walk away with half?”
called for her to join the group. After more photos, her father, Jiĕ Jiĕ and husband, and uncles wandered to the other side of the Mercedes. Iris found herself pinched between her aunts. Recognizing her face in Big Auntie Dà Gū’s, she shuddered. Little Auntie Xiăo Gū handed Iris snapshots of Jiĕ Jiĕ at the wedding banquet. In one photo, Jiĕ Jiĕ wore a red satin chí páo hand-embroidered with dragons and phoenixes in gold thread. The dress showcased her slim hourglass figure. In contrast, Iris looked chunky and squat in a black shift dress. Iris saw that she had no waist and looked like a rotten potato. She knew that she would never look svelte or chic in a chí páo thanks to her diet of American favorites like chicken-fried steak, mac and cheese, biscuits and sausage gravy.
Her cousin’s long elegant fingers, thin wrists, and slender neck bore a bride’s war chest of 24k gold rings, bracelets, and necklaces. Hung from heavy gold chains were imperial jade pendants, translucent emerald green, hand-carved into a butterfly, a peach, and several pì. Imperial jade was the most precious wedding gift. Only brides from or marrying into prosperous families wore multiple pieces at their wedding banquets. Iris knew that there would be no imperial jade in her future; her boyfriend Jules came from a modest family who lived paycheck to paycheck. It made Iris sad that her Cantonese wài pói had gifted the family jade to her “Lái, lái, lái,” Iris’s father uncle’s wife. And because her uncle
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and his wife only had boys, her wài pói’s jade would end up around the fingers, wrists, or necks of strangers. It made her angry that her wài pói hadn’t gifted her mother any jade because the family disapproved of her parents’ marriage. They had wanted her mother to marry a man from their village in Canton, not an outsider from Taiwan. In the wedding photo, Jiĕ Jiĕ’s hair was elaborately styled. Curls pinned and tumbled down to her neck. Her face was lacquered with foundation paler than her throat, rouged dramatically, with double sets of eyelashes and ruby lips. Iris thought Jiĕ Jiĕ looked artificial, melodramatic, like a Chinese opera singer. “It’s your turn to marry,” Little Auntie Xiăo Gū said in Mandarin, “Your father says your boyfriend is poor. He’s found you another.” Iris tried to translate “money doesn’t buy happiness,” but her sixyear-old vocabulary failed her. She understood more Mandarin than she could speak, a side effect of being American-born-Chinese. Iris wiped the perspiration from her face, faked a smile, and replied, “hăo le.” She didn’t know how to explain that she didn’t want to get married. Marriage embittered her mother and she did not want that fate. “Marry a doctor and you will live a comfortable life. Like your mother. Like Jiĕ Jiĕ,” Big Auntie Dà Gū said and handed Iris a photo of her and her father standing beside the groom.
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Iris couldn’t explain how It was true that Iris was sour her family’s life was, despite supporting Jules while he finished her parents’ achieving the American his screenplay, which he hoped to dream. direct. He had been the breadwinner the previous year while she finished Iris studied the photo. It an ethnographic essay on female helped her see what she never noticed street vendors in Chinatown, and in real life. Her father’s moon face, now it was her turn to provide. flushed from one sip of beer. His hair “That’s what modern couples do,” she thinning despite his self-prescribed had explained to her father over the Rogaine treatments. His glasses the phone. same gold aviator frames he had worn since she was a kid. Except for “I can take care of myself,” a few smile lines here and there, his Iris replied. face was still boyish and appealing. Little Auntie Xiăo Gū said Handsome even. To the community, something to Big Auntie Dà Gū in he was a prosperous surgeon who, Taiwanese, their mother tongue. with his faithful wife by his side, had She recognized the harsh tones built a successful practice in a rural from her father’s infrequent phone Virginia town two hours west of calls with his family in Taiwan and Washington, D. C., where they had his medical school classmates who lived for nearly three decades. To Iris, had immigrated to America, but she he was a cipher who missed piano couldn’t understand it. recitals, band concerts, science fairs, and graduations; whose beeper cut Stupid girl, Iris imagined short screenings at the local drive- Little Auntie Xiăo Gū said. in or movie theater and nights at Big Auntie Dà Gū replied the county fair; who always bumped in Taiwanese and Iris filled in the her off the phone for a call from the hospital. But despite all of this, she dialogue, Too old, too fat, no rich man still wanted his love and approval. will marry that! Iris examined the groom’s face: Her Aunties’ cackled. Iris broad nose, flat cheeks, wide set eyes, tried to quiet her thoughts, but silkworm eyebrows, porcupine hair. reddened nevertheless. She reminded She tried to find what her father saw herself she was smart, funny, pretty in Jiĕ Jiĕ’s husband. enough, and still young enough to “Good luck face,” her father find another partner if Jules didn’t had toasted the newlyweds during succeed. the wedding banquet, “Rich man’s “Wait too long, you will run face.” out of options,” Little Auntie Xiăo “Your boyfriend is from a Gū said in Mandarin. She smoothed poor family,” Little Auntie Xiăo Gū her hair and admired a snapshot of herself as the glamorous mother of said, “He cannot take care of you.” LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 34
the bride. Jiĕ Jiĕ approached and pulled Iris aside. “A gift,” Jiĕ Jiĕ said in English. Jiĕ Jiĕ opened her purse and pulled a gold and jade necklace from a satin pouch. She fastened the S clasp around Iris’s neck. Iris gasped and fingered the cool jade pendant: an emerald butterfly. Iris knew she should give the necklace back, that’s what her mother would have made her do. But Iris wanted the necklace, oh how she loved jewelry. She dialed down the volume of her mother’s nagging voice in her head and dialed up her cousin’s storytelling in front of her. In labored English, Jiĕ Jiĕ recounted the legend of the Butterfly Lovers: Liáng Shān bó yū Zhù Yīng tái. Long ago, in the late Tang Dynasty, when girls were not permitted to study in school, the ninth daughter of a rich man, Zhù convinced her father to let her disguise herself as a man to go study in the capital city. During the journey, Zhù met a male scholar named Liáng, who was also on his way to the same school. Zhù and Liáng traveled together, became close, and came to think of themselves as brothers. Zhù, who was disguised as a man, fell in love with Liáng, but Liáng could only see Zhù as a brother. Later, a letter from Zhù’s father arrived with news that he was very sick, and that she was needed at home. Zhù was a dutiful daughter and could not refuse her father’s request, since he let her go to school.
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Zhù was sad to leave Liáng. Before she left school, Zhù made Liáng promise that he would come visit her home. A while after Zhù was gone, Liáng missed his brother so much and left school to travel to Zhù’s family home. When Liáng arrived at Zhù’s home, he discovered she was female and fell in love with her too. Liáng begged Zhù’s father to let him marry her, but Zhù’s father had already arranged for her to be married into a rich family, equal to their station. So Liáng, who was from a modest family, took a job as a county clerk to be near Zhù. Soon after, Liáng died from grief. On Zhù’s wedding day, as she was ferried to her intended husband’s house, a strong wind stopped her from passing Liáng’s grave. Zhù paused and went to Liáng’s grave to pay her respects. At Liáng’s grave, Zhù mourned. She prayed to the heavens to be reunited with her true love. Suddenly, thunder roared and lightning cracked open Liáng’s grave. Zhù jumped in and died. Then a butterfly flew out of the grave. The locals say the butterfly is Zhù and Liáng joined together forever. “A gift for when you get married,” Jiĕ Jiĕ said. “To inspire you.” Iris panicked. How could she convey her feelings in Mandarin when she could barely articulate them in English? Jiĕ Jiĕ asked in Mandarin, “Xi huān ma?” Speechless, Iris grabbed Jiĕ Jiĕ in a clumsy embrace and clung too tightly. But her cousin pulled away, the Taiwanese weren’t comfortable with LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 35
such displays of affection.
her father to the front door. Cool, dry air spilled out of the bus and mixed with In Taiwanese, Little Auntie the diesel fumes. Their voices cawing, Xiăo Gū’s shrill voice assaulted. To her father and relatives intoned their which Jiĕ Jiĕ replied in calm, soothing good-byes. tones. Iris rubbed the jade butterfly. It was already emerald green, but if she Big Auntie Dà Gū handed Iris wore it daily, the color would become bags of food and said, “Chīng Míng Jié, even brighter as her Cantonese wài pói your mother should come home too.” would say. “Hăo le,” Iris replied. Iris had met Jules working at But Iris knew that her mother Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers on the would never come back to Taiwan. Upper West Side. He was finishing his And she could see that her Aunties MFA in screenwriting at Columbia knew this too. They all pretended to and she was a freelance photographer, save face. who mostly took photos of newborns and pets, and took writing classes Little Auntie Xiăo Gū thrust through Gotham Writers Workshop. another packet of photos into Iris’s They both worked part-time for the hand. money and the discount. Jules was half “For your mother,” she said and Chinese, half French Canadian and pushed Iris on the bus, “to remember.” had grown up near Montreal. He was tall, and slender, and had a face like Her mother would flip through a Modigliani painting. She loved his the photos, curious to see how the inface the moment she saw him. It was laws had aged, then forget the envelope narrow and angular and if they ever in a junk drawer. Iris decided not to had a child, his willowy genes would pass the photos on to her mother. She even out her moon pie genes. A few would keep them for herself instead months after they met, they moved into and turn them into an essay or short a studio together to share expenses. story. Iris wanted to keep the necklace. She knew her mother would say wáng bā dàn for accepting such an extravagant gift, but she would stomach her mother’s judgement later. Little Auntie Xiăo Gū lunged for the necklace but Big Auntie Dà Gū pulled her back and tried to calm her down. The airport bus lurched into the station.
Iris and her father sat together in the middle of the sparsely filled bus. Iris looked out the window and studied Jiĕ Jiĕ ‘s husband helping Little Auntie Xiăo Gū into the front seat of the Mercedes. Big Auntie Dà Gū, Big Uncle and Little Uncle climbed into the back seat. Standing alone beside the sedan, Jiĕ Jiĕ adjusted her silk blouse and Jiĕ Jiĕ ’s husband grabbed the skirt, matching hat, and sunglasses, suitcases and limped towards the belly and started walking. Iris imagined that of the bus. Her Aunties swept her and Jiĕ Jiĕ would soon tire of lunches with
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wives, shopping, dinner parties, and stave off boredom by teaching piano. Though she was a concert pianist with a national reputation, Jiĕ Jiĕ had accepted the matchmaker’s proposal for fear that at age thirty-six, her time was running out. The bus rolled away from the curb. Iris waved, but no one noticed.
distended.”
the open road. Pedestrians walked on the dirt shoulder of the highway. The “That’s what happens when bus plowed past green soybean fields. you stuff yourself like a pig,” Iris said. “Just say no.” Iris selected a pork bun, peeled the wax paper liner off the bottom, “Bad manners to refuse food.” and took a generous bite. The savory Her father grabbed the soymilk barbecued pork and the creamy sweet and slurped it down with big, happy bread spread across her tongue. Her father inhaled his food with quick gulps. breaths. His jaws ripped the meat “For Chinese,” he continued, from the bun. As a child, she had “food equals love.” loved watching the way he attacked his Iris patted his bulging stomach food at the dinner table. Hearing the and teased, “Feels like you’ve had too soothing sounds that only he made. It was his only unguarded moment. much love.”
The bus jerked along narrow streets lined with food carts. From the window, Iris photographed customers eating quick, cheap lunches. The dumplings, stir-frys, noodles, and lotus wrappers full of sweet rice made her hungry. A woman on a moped zipped “Got to exercise,” he said and alongside the bus. Like a surgeon, she wore a mask over her nose and mouth. swung his arms like a jogger. “You and She wore no helmet. The back of her Jules exercise?” pleather jacket read in English: Forever “We have sex.” Iris said. “Some Sweet Sweet. people call that exercise.” While her father flipped Iris thought she sounded like through the wedding banquet photos, her mother and immediately regretted Iris opened the bags of food. Inside the rancor. Her father ignored her were baked barbecue-pork buns, comment just as he ignored her fresh soy milk, steamed lotus seed mother. Their weeklong trip would end buns, and branches of lychee, all her soon and she had yet to truly connect favorites. It surprised her that her with him. aunts remembered what she liked Normally in their household, to eat after so much time and so few only her mother talked about sex, visits. She spread a napkin across her father’s lap and placed buns on top. Her and only within the context of her father returned the photographs to her father’s affairs. Since age seven, Iris had and opened a drink. Soy milk shot out been the container for her mother’s of the straw and splashed the seat in despair and bitterness over her father’s front of him. Iris took the drink from affairs. It was hard for Iris to separate her feelings for her father from her him and wiped up the mess. mother’s narrative. She needed to hear Her father thrust his his side of the story. But how to draw midsection forward and massaged it him out. with sausage-like fingers. The bus cleared the city and “Ate too much last night,” picked up speed. Sidewalks gave way to he said and laughed. “Abdomen LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 36
“Why did you marry Ma?” Iris asked, hoping her father would open up. “She was real nice.” “You knocked her up.” Iris was twelve when she calculated it out for the first time; women carried babies for nine months in the womb she had read from Dr. Spock’s paperback in her mother’s nightstand. Her parents were married in November, she was born the following May… And so she counted backwards. “Your father told me to have the abortion,” her mother had replied when Iris asked. “Why are you still married?” Iris asked her father. Again, he ignored her and countered, “Your mother says you won’t marry Jules.” “Why ruin things?” Iris replied. “If things don’t work out, I’ll move on. What’s mine is mine; what’s
FICTION SUSANNA HORNG his is his. 50-50. No lawyers. No fights about money.”
prized a photo of the two infants. Their parents hoped that they would marry “Nothing bad will happen,” one day. “Good girl, do not marry him she continued, her voice stubbornly until he has secure job, makes more optimistic, “Jules will succeed, trust “I’m happy with Jules,” Iris said. money.” me.” The word “happy” sounded hollow. She didn’t know if she was happy, but “Our relationship is not about “Private school, piano lessons, she was too stubborn to admit it. money.” braces, summer camps, tutoring, college: just to be a temporary “We’re artists,” she tried again, “Of course, not about money. secretary,” he said. “living together works.” He has none. You have none. You live in one room apartment smaller than Her father had no faith in The last time she had seen this bus. You cannot raise children anything but science. Jules’s first movie Philbert, they were fourteen. It there.” would be “astonishing,” his professors was at the annual medical school had said while he was in film school. reunion their fathers’ classmates held Iris didn’t know if she could Indie producers flirted, but wouldn’t in northern New Jersey. He was a mother a child while struggling to be a commit. His agent couldn’t land him better tennis player than she was and photographer and writer. She had gone any gigs. He couldn’t even get work as slaughtered her on the court. That against her parents’ wishes by majoring a production assistant. The abandoned night, while the other kids watched in English, moving to New York City screenplays and storyboards around The Sound of Music on TV, he kissed and living with an aspiring filmmaker. their studio apartment teemed with her in the bathroom. He tasted like She cultivated her own life, and yet, roaches. She told herself that even the grass jelly. His tongue felt like a slug in still craved their love and approval. most gifted artists languish in obscurity her mouth. In her head, she hummed She grabbed a lychee, peeled for years. Her parents had conditioned along with the Von Trapp kids: me, a name I call myself / fa, a long, long off the pebbly skin, and popped the her for success not failure. way to run. He mistook her stillness for juicy translucent fruit into her mouth. Iris surveyed the other encouragement and pressed the knot The succulent flesh exploded. Juice passengers on the bus. An old man in his shorts into her. A sharp knock sprayed from her lips. Rotating the sat a few seats in front of her reading on the bathroom door saved her. The slick, brown seed with her tongue, she the newspaper. A couple, two rows following years, she made sure writing snapped off the meat, then spit the seed behind and across the aisle, napped. camp conflicted with the reunions. into the plastic bag. She peeled another An American dressed in army fatigues and handed it to her father. He bit sat alone in the back. He was snapping “You are thirty, life not stable,” into the lychee and drops of the sweet pictures of the countryside. her father said. He peeled another clear juice dribbled onto his shirt. Iris lychee. “Time to plan for future.” moistened a napkin with her tongue “I spoke with Philbert’s and dabbed the spots. daddy at our medical class reunion Outside the bus, paddies lined last month,” her father said. “Philbert the highway. Bare-chested workers “You do not have health would like to see you.” in rolled-up pants and triangular insurance,” he continued. “New bamboo hats crouched and weeded the York City doctors will let you die in Philbert had been born a rows of short grassy plants. Their feet emergency room with no insurance.” few months earlier than she had at disappeared into the shallow water. the same Manhattan hospital. They Iris forced a laugh. “If we’re had been playmates until her parents Iris scribbled a note to follow lucky, we’ll die on the way, then we moved to Virginia when she was three. up with the literary journals where she won’t have to pay for the ambulance.” Her mother said that Philbert’s mother had sent her ethnography. LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 37
Her father was silent.
FICTION SUSANNA HORNG “Jules will make his movie; “It reeks! I can smell it from I’ll publish some photos, some essays, here.” maybe even stories.” “Malpractice law,” her father Her father spit a lychee seed said. He methodically peeled another into the bag. lychee nut. “Big money, comfortable life. You can marry whoever you want.” “Stop dreaming,” he said. “No one cares about Chinese women.” Iris closed her eyes. She didn’t want to go back to school, but in the Breathe deeply, slowly, her CBT dead of night, as Jules slept beside her, therapist would say, count backwards she worried. If she couldn’t make it as from 100 to 1. Her father knew nothing an artist, life as a secretary would be about art, literature, or culture, she unbearable. reminded herself. No one loved her as much as Jules did. Jules brought her flowers every Friday. He cooked When Iris woke, about an hour had dinner for her most nights and washed passed. She felt groggy and unmoored. the dishes too. He bought Havarti with Outside the window, fields had dill, tapenade, and a crusty baguette yielded to tile houses and high-rise from Fairway’s every Saturday, which apartments. A billboard read Sing Sing they ate in bed while reading The New Karaoke. A helmetless man riding a York Times’ Sunday paper on Saturday motorcycle beside them blew his nose nights. Iris fingered the necklace. In with his bare hand. He checked the the air-conditioned bus, the icy jade traffic over his left shoulder, then shot butterfly felt like a stethoscope. past the bus. Soon, the bus pulled into “Plain people must work the airport. The passengers rose and harder,” her father said. “You should hobbled toward the door, stretching have gone to medical school.” and dislodging wedgies. Iris snapped, “I flunked Her father struggled onto the organic chemistry three times.” sidewalk with their heavy suitcases. Iris steadied the metal luggage cart and “Not too late, family practice helped her father push the bags on top. will still take you for residency. Not as Winded, he rested his stomach against much money as surgery, but you can the cart. Iris grabbed their carry-ons as still have good life.” her father wheeled the cart inside the “Can we please change the airport. His metal belt-buckle, a bald eagle in flight, clanged against the cart subject?” handle. They circled the check-in area “Law school?” her father said. in search of a bathroom. While her “Faster, only three years, no residency.” father waited, Iris ran inside, squatted, “How much longer to the and relieved herself in the tiled hole in the ground. No matter how hard she airport?” Iris asked. “I have to pee.” tried to aim, she always splashed her “Bathroom in back.” ankles and shoes. LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 38
After check-in, Iris and her father perused the made-for-tourist merchandise at the duty-free shop. They browsed through coral flowers, carved wooden animals, landscapes made from butterfly wings, electric hair brushes, and wooden ear scratchers. Suddenly, she realized all the trinkets her father had brought home from his many trips and given to her throughout the years, were from airport gift shops. She wasn’t special, just an afterthought. Her father picked up a laughing golden Buddha. “Rub his belly for prosperity,” her father said and held out the statue to Iris. She glanced at Buddha’s mountain-like tummy and compared it to her father’s. “No thanks.” “I buy for your mother,” her father said and massaged Buddha’s belly. “Bring her good luck.” “She’s a Christian,” Iris said. “She wouldn’t want a Buddha.” sisters.”
“Okay, I buy for you and your “We’d prefer t-shirts.”
But her father wasn’t listening. He grabbed five Buddhas and got in line to pay. Iris worried at the jade butterfly. She tried to analyze Jiĕ Jiĕ’s telling of the Butterfly Lovers legend. Had Jiĕ Jiĕ given up on true love to marry into a wealthy family? In the end, even though Jiĕ Jiĕ had had success as an artist, she was still the dutiful daughter
FICTION SUSANNA HORNG who followed her parents’ wishes and the restaurant wall with flashing eyes, earned their approval. a golden double happiness character for good luck. Dressed in periwinkle dresses, her sisters Rose, Violet, and Iris and her father boarded the plane Daisy would trail the couple with for San Francisco and found their row Jules’ cousins, from table to table to in the back. Iris stored their carry-on greet their guests and accept their bags in the overhead compartment toasts. Iris would introduce Jules to and offered her father the aisle seat. her relatives as the award-winning He cocooned himself with thin airline director/screenwriter he had become. blankets and flat pillows. Iris arranged The jealous daughters of her father’s her notebook, pencil case, CDs, medical school classmates would Walkman, and the wedding banquet whisper to her: “What a catch.” photos in the seat pocket in front of “Philbert will give you easy her. The afternoon sun warmed her life,” her father continued, “You can be face. photographer, be a writer. Stay home. The landscape tilted as the Hire nanny for kids. Have fun, relax, be plane entered the sky. Soon, the ground happy.” disappeared and the plane straightened Iris imagined her and Jules above the clouds, flying into the inliving in a brownstone on Nora between. Ephron’s Upper West Side, decorated “Philbert finished residency,” with street finds. A darkroom in the her father said. “He is cardiologist at bathroom, a desk in the bedroom where she would write. best hospital in Philadelphia.” Iris struggled to loosen her seat belt. She reached for the wedding pictures and flipped through them. She stopped at a snapshot of Jiĕ Jiĕ and her husband accepting hóng bāo, a red envelope full of cash. Iris imagined herself and Jules accepting hóng bāo. The burgundy velvet chí páo she’d wear with a corset after a starvation diet. Jules in a tuxedo, his black hair longish, slicked back with Brylcreem, styled like Chow Yun Fat in A Better Tomorrow. Him calming her down. Making her laugh. Whispering jokes in her ear about her mother’s makeup—too pale for her tanned face— her father popping out of his suit. The tacky golden dragon and phoenix on LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 39
that more than anything. How to prove her worth? She reached for Philbert’s phone number. “I suppose dinner can’t hurt,” Iris said and rationalized she hadn’t betrayed Jules yet. She shoved the slip of paper deep into her pocket. “It wouldn’t be a date,” she said and stuttered, “Just dinner with an old friend.” “Yes, yes, dinner with old friend,” he replied, “Good girl.” He patted her hand. Was that her reward as the dutiful daughter? Could she survive the cost of her father’s love? Could she survive the cost of Jules’s love? True love might be enough in legends, fairy tales, movies and stories, but in real life? Nah, the cynic in her thought.
Iris flipped through the wedding banquet photos. Steamed fish for riches. Noodles for a long life. Lotus seed soup for many sons. Gold. Jade. “Philbert will be in New York Mothers. Fathers. Aunties. Uncles. City for medical convention,” her Cousins. Kids. A bride. A groom. A father said. He grinned, giddy as a toast. A kiss. schoolboy. “Let him take you out for fancy dinner.” Iris put her headphones over her ears and pretended to turn He pulled a handwritten slip of on her music. Her father took his paper out of his wallet and offered it up Walkman out of his bag and put on his to her: Philbert’s phone number. headphones. He shuffled through a bag Iris studied her father’s face, of medical tapes, selected one, and put so boyish, so happy, like the Daddy it in the Walkman. A monotone man she remembered when she was six, droned above the plane engines. Her before his affairs, before her parents’ father leaned back and closed his eyes. fights, before the domestic violence. His breathing became steady and deep. Coming home at a reasonable hour and Soft snores rose and fell. Iris thought swinging her high in the air. Asking she saw a smile on his face. her about her school day. To be seen and adored—loved even. Iris wanted
PLACE AMI RAO KHANNA
In the long summer holidays, the “My mother,” the boy replied, boy would accompany his mother to turning his chin diagonally to the work. right, where his mother sat by the window next to a blonde lady. They woke early on these days, too early even for the sun. But “Oh, your mother. Well, they needed to be on the bus at five- which airline does your mother work thirty, his mother’s shift at Heathrow for?” started at six. “She cleans the toilets,” the It was early enough that on boy replied. “So, I guess that would be most days they would find seats next all the airlines.” to each other. But sometimes, when After that, the badge-boy the bus was fuller than normal, his didn’t try to talk to him for the rest of mother would whisper to him to sit the journey. One time, when they went down quickly wherever he could find over a particularly bumpy bump, the a seat. This had happened just a few rainwater from his raincoat dripped days ago, and he found himself next onto the boy’s knee. The boy wiped it to another Indian boy, around his age, off with his hand. The other boy saw maybe slightly older, or maybe he him do that but made no effort to was just very tall. This other boy was shift in or to adjust his raincoat. sitting next to the window, dressed in a black raincoat that was dripping The rain, like silver dust flying water everywhere. The boy squeezed against the glare of the headlights. in next to him. Above them, a massive Outside, the sky was midnight Boeing 747 had just taken off. blue and the rain was falling sideways. * “Which airline does your father work for?” the other boy said The boy, nearly eight now, was small pleasantly. He had at least ten BA for his age, he looked younger, six or badges pinned on to his raincoat seven. He had been born, his mother leaving no doubt as to which airline told him, with a headful of beautiful dark curls, which had grown even his own father worked for. more dark and even more beautiful LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 40
with time. He had very big dark eyes, the kind you would expect to find on cartoon babies and a smile which made his teachers forgive him for almost anything. He lived with his mother and grandmother in a little flat on top of an Indian supermarket. This had its advantages. Anytime they were short on bread or bananas, he only had to pop down the stairs and then up again with whatever his mother needed. Sometimes, late at night when he lay down on his mattress to sleep, he would hear scurrying noises like little feet running around. Then, his grandmother who slept on a bed in the same tiny room would begin snoring again and drown it out. This was the main reason he didn’t mind her snoring so much. Also, it was a way of knowing she was still alive. But then, because they lived directly on the flight path, a plane might fly overhead and drown out his grandmother’s snoring. He came to think of it as a kind of hierarchy of noises, each one louder than the other, and on most nights wondering which one would come next was the way in which he entered his sleep. His grandmother was his
FICTION AMI RAO KHANNA father’s mother. Nobody knew how old she was, but she was very old. She wore her woolly white hair in a single plait that dangled like a donkey’s tail all the way down the curvature of her spine. Her eyes stayed closed most of the time even when she was awake and the skin from her cheeks hung limp and loose. She had pink gums and no teeth. Sometimes when he looked at her carefully, the boy would think there was hardly any human left in her anymore.
“Children are guilty of this. The inability to understand nuance.”
English, being much freer and more comfortable in her native tongue, which he referred to as their “home language.” He learnt English at school, and spoke it with the fluency of a native speaker, but his mother had been forced to leave school when she was only eleven and her vocabulary was limited to a set of fixed words and phrases, mostly those that she used frequently in her job.
up extra after them, and worst of all, more often than not they didn’t even acknowledge her existence, finding it easier to pretend like she wasn’t there at all. It was astonishing, she claimed, how they would look through her, like she was part of the wall or the door.
“I don’t want money from them,” she said, “but it would be nice just to get a little smile. It makes me very said because you see, they are “Good morning Madam,” she our people.” would say, or “Good afternoon, good “What makes them our evening.” people?” the boy had questioned, and “Hello.” his mother had laughed.
“Such a complicated question for such a little boy! Run along now, “Wait, one minute please, I go do what you love to do best, go clean for you.” watch the planes!” “Full,” accompanied by an * apologetic smile, when all the cubicles Toilet cleaning is shift work. were full. Nose up, tail down, wings out. His mother worked the early shift. “Now free,” bobbing her head So, he presses his face against Sometimes she would work just one the glass and watches the planes take shift in the morning and be home and beaming. off. in time for lunch. Sometimes she * worked two shifts and left in the Silver birds crossing blue evenings around four. When he The Americans, he learned, were the skies. accompanied her on these double- best tippers. It is his absolute favourite shift days, they carried a packed The Europeans also mostly thing to do. lunch in two steel boxes, always the tipped, his mother explained, because same lunch—flat bread layered with someone had once told her that in * fresh butter and stuffed with mashed their own countries, you had to pay to potatoes that they would eat with His father died when he was four. use the toilets, even in public places their hands, along with a spicy pickle like parks and train stations. But, she The house had smelled of made with raw mangoes in chilli said, they often left the toilets dirty, incense for a month. and oil. Occasionally after lunch, he with toilet paper strewn everywhere. would ask his mother if he could get This much he remembered; a chocolate bar from the vending British people didn’t tip but at the rest of that dying-part was woven machine, but usually he felt guilty least they left the toilets clean. together so tightly, he could no longer even asking because of the money tell how much was memory, how The Indians, according to his thing. much imagination. mother, were the worst of the lot. They His mother spoke very little never tipped, she always had to clean LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 41
“Thank you.”
FICTION AMI RAO KHANNA He remembers his father though, his alive-father, and his father’s alive-love of him, that alivepart is seared into his mind and will remain even if everything else fades away. Such a big, strapping man, his father, full of life and vigour, as fierce in his love as in his wrath. He had worked on a building site, leaving very early in the morning, before the boy woke, and coming home very late at night, but when their paths crossed, her remembered his father would laugh and pick him up in his strong arms, effortlessly as if he was as light as a feather, up, up, all the way above his head, and then bring him down again. “Big boy, big boy,” he would say in his booming voice. “Big boy, big boy,” all the way up; “big boy, big boy,” all the way down. Then he would do the same thing with his mother—she was so small—carry her all the way up and bring her all the way down, only this time saying, “big girl, big girl,” and all the while his mother would cover her mouth and giggle and say, “stop it, stop it, what will people say?” Then one day his father went to work, and never came back. At the usual time that his father returned from work, a man who was not his father had come to the door and asked to see his mother. They had spoken in hushed tones on the tiny kitchen table. Standing outside, the boy could hear the words the man was speaking, words like “safety standards, union, worker safety, negligence, insurance, compensation,” but he could not understand any of it. His mother wasn’t speaking at all, but he could hear her crying. Every now and then, LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 42
the cry would become suddenly loud and piercing like a shriek, and every time this happened, the boy remembered feeling sensationally afraid. When the man left, his mother had called him into the kitchen and explained that his father had been killed in an accident involving a crane at the construction site. Then she hugged his little body and told him not to cry, and he didn’t, but only because she was crying herself while
“How certain things can move around freely, belonging one moment to one person and another moment to someone else.” she was telling him not to and it felt wrong to him, in those circumstances, to rebel. After that, she never once cried in front of him, but he knew that after he went to bed every night, she sat down on the kitchen floor and cried for hours. Once when he had come into the kitchen to get himself a glass of water, she started as if she had seen a ghost, but then quickly wiped her eyes and started to sing. She had a high, delicate voice, like a clarinet, and he wanted to float right into it. He had gone and sat next to her with his head on her broken-hearted lap and
he must have fallen asleep at some point because he does not remember going back to the bedroom, but the next morning, when he woke up, he woke up on his own mattress on the floor. His grandmother did not cry over her son’s death, at least not in the boy’s presence, but she stopped speaking altogether. The only word that came out of her mouth over and over again, several times a day, every day, for a whole year, was “adbhut,” which the boy understood meant strange or fantastical in their home language. He also understood, although not in these terms, that her meaning was existential, that in relation to herself, the chronology of her son’s death was peculiar. She would whisper it with her eyes closed, her thin, frail body, rocking forwards and back like it was possessed by something supernatural and hearing that word made the boy’s heart beat very fast and made him not want to look at her at all. And then when a year passed, she stopped saying that too. After his father died, his mother started taking him with her to the airport during the holidays. She never so much as said it, but he knew it was—at least in part— because she did not completely trust his grandmother not to do something totally crazy and she did not want him around when she did it. * Milan Athens Vienna Lisbon Nairobi New Delhi New York Rome
FICTION AMI RAO KHANNA Paris Tokyo San Diego Toronto
By his second set of Christmas holidays, there were very few places Las Vegas Lahore Moscow Madrid left that he did not know the exact location of. Name a city and he would show you—in an instant—its precise Over time, the boy became coordinates on the earth. somewhat of an expert cartographer. Once he had asked his mother In the beginning, he would how he could get to Marrakech. look at the names of all these “That’s an odd choice,” destinations on the plasma screen and ask his mother where each place his mother had said, raising her eyebrows, “why Marrakech?” was. “How would I know,” his mother would say, her hands on her hips, “all these faraway places, how would I know where they are? Look on the map!” When he went back to school a few weeks later, he asked one of his teachers if he could please borrow a map and she had given one to him, “it’s yours,” she had said, “you can keep it!” And so, during the next set of school holidays, he carried that paper map—carefully folded into a little square—in his pocket every day. He would read the names of cities on the screen, then try to locate them on his map. Sometimes it took a very long time, because he didn’t know which countries they belonged to, so he would have to search the whole world to find them. Some of the places he found were so far away, all the way across the sea. Sometimes, he would put his finger on this faraway place, then connect it back to England, mapping the route with his index finger, imagining if that was the route the pilot would pick, how fast he would go, how long it would take…
LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 43
bobbled her head from side to side, like a dancer. “You too will get English passport, do you know you can travel the whole world on an English passport!” asked.
“But when, mama?” the boy
“When our compensation comes through for your father, I will get one made for you,” she said, “I “I like the way it sounds,” promise,” and just like that, in slipped he said, “it sounds like somewhere I the silent sorrow, sideways and under want to go.” her eyes, and he did not have the heart to press further. “Well,” she said, “first you will need a passport and then you will * need a ticket.” The other day he watches the sky do “What is a passport?” the boy a number. asked. What a thunderstorm! “It is a small book,” she Flights delayed here, there explained, “it comes from the and everywhere. So much hue and so government of your country and it much cry; no one stops to watch the allows you to travel to other countries. sky. Wait,” she said, “let me show you.” It’s pure performance. She rummaged through a drawer filled with all kinds of Flash! goes the lightning. paperwork involving the dying-part Boom! Bang! goes the thunder. of his father and produced a small The wind is high and the rectangular booklet in burgundy leather with gold lions and a unicorn. planes trying to land are pulled this way and that. “I have a passport, look,” she Amazing grace! Amazing said, handing it to him to examine. gravity! “When your father married me and sent for me from India, my parents Michael Jackson doing the had one made for me, an Indian moonwalk. passport, then when I came here, * your father had to give that away to get me this English one. I was only Sometimes, people left things seventeen.” behind at the boarding gates. Mostly Then she made big eyes and newspapers and food receipts, but
FICTION AMI RAO KHANNA sometimes, other stuff too, books, sunglasses, umbrellas that they had forgotten in their hurry. When the boy found these things, he would take them down to Prince in Lost & Found and Prince would take them from him and give him a big, hearty clap on the back in return. Prince was twenty-five years old and had come all the way from Accra—the boy knew exactly where that was— just to work in Lost & Found. One time, someone had left a whole bag of sweets on one of the chairs at the gate. When the boy had taken the bag to Prince, he had winked at him and said, “Why you giving me this, big man, it’s yours!” “But…” the boy said, “it’s not mine, it was left on a chair.” Prince looked at him with true admiration at the same time as he waved his wrist like he was swatting a fly, the combination of gestures instantly dismissing the boy’s concerns as a kind of commendable nonsense. “Too good, too good. So honest. Jesus also was honest. But nah! He leave it, so he don’t want it.” The boy wanted to say something then, about how that might not exactly be right, because the person may have only forgotten to take it, which didn’t mean they didn’t want it… But then Prince said, “I’m talking about rules. Important things. With sunglasses, be different. But foodstuffs? You gimme that, amma bin it. This is how it is.”
LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 44
He
shrugged,
grinning
with the yellow hair!” Gesturing and hugely. pointing down the long corridor. “Oh God, she left this in the toilet. “Don’t worry, be happy,” he Passport! On top of loo roll holder.” added as a cheerful final thought. Following her gaze, he saw The boy finished the entire what his mother saw: the blonde girl bag in a single sitting, and then had walking away from them with huge a tummy ache which lasted the whole headphones on her head, wheeling a night, all the way until the next small bright red suitcase. morning. “Run, run, you have to give * it back to her. Without it she will “Escuze! Escuze!” His mother’s voice, not be able to board the plane!” She was frantic, wringing her hands, as very loud, very agitated. if somehow she would be personally He had been doing maths responsible if such a thing were to problems on a chair by one of the transpire. boarding gates. “You understand?” she said, He looked up. nodding her own head very fast, up He noticed that everyone and down, up and down. around him was staring and the boy “Yes mama.” felt an acute sting of embarrassment. “Go!” She was standing in the middle of the corridor, arms extended out, holding The boy turned away, started something in her hands. She seemed down the corridor. extremely distressed, her face full of anxiety. She called after him: “If you can’t find her, if she gets lost in the She noticed him then, crowd, you must go to the information looking at her, just as everyone else desk. Give it to the man there.” was too. Still walking, the boy swung “Come here,” she said in her his head around and nodded. home language, “Fast, fast!” “Hand it in, tell them the lady The boy left all his things left it in toilet!” where they were and went up to her. The boy could see her in the “Mama?” he said. distance, the person in question, the She handed him the thing person stupid enough to do such a she’d been holding. It was familiar to thing because only the free can afford him, burgundy and gold, that book of to be so careless with freedom. dreams. All around him, people “That lady, see that lady moved like chaotic cars on highways,
FICTION AMI RAO KHANNA each one heading for a destination then starts to laugh, and the yellowthat only they knew. He weaved in and haired woman laughs too. out between them. Keeping her in his There is something line of sight. Buck in the middle, easy complicated about this, about the target for a hunter. sound of that laughter, loud and loose, To his right lay the long line but he cannot pinpoint exactly what. of the boarding gates with their rows It makes him want to push her, very of chairs, all upholstered in blue, hard, from the back so that she falls to every chair full, bodies spilling over, the floor and her luggage splays open, some even sitting on the floor, leaning clothes everywhere. He hates himself against walls, so many people just for thinking such vicious thoughts waiting to escape this great island. and tries, like a good person, to push Beyond the last row of chairs at the them away. end, a wall of windows, beyond the A final glance above his right windows, the planes, parked, being shoulder. He cannot see the plane attended to by teams of humans, anymore, only sky. cleaned and stocked and readied to fly, and then in the far distance, the Somewhere inside his brain, narrow strip of runway. something wheezes heavily then cuts out like an electrical failure. There was a plane on it now, Inside his shoes, he can feel his the boy could see it, it had just begun toes tingling as if he has stepped, its taxi down the runway, picking up barefoot, on something very speed, picking up power. He followed hot. After that, numbness. Nothing. its path in his peripheral vision, its A nothingness. Disconnected from steadily quickening pace, framed by his body, disassociated from his the windows—a series of moving senses, an alienation that is new and images like an old-fashioned motion disconcerting. Around him, the world picture. Behind him at first, then feels unreal, blurry, like everything is side-by-side, then easily, effortlessly blanketed in a translucent fog. His ahead. In his mind, he could hear the own body is weightless, like things are roar of the engines, full throttle, the floating around inside him, dancing syncopated thump of the wheels. to a melody he has not heard before. This thought strikes him But there is something dangerous in freshly, that he knows what it sounds that music, some disguised ugliness like, even though he will never know hidden inside its beauty. The beat what it feels like. changes, the floor bends. Another step could trip him up. His one foot * or both his feet or his whole self. He has nearly caught up with So, he stops, dead in his the woman now, she is busy in tracks. conversation with another woman. This second woman has brown hair In his mind, he knows what cut like a boy. She says something and he has to do. It is not hard. He has LITRO MAGAZINE • FICTION • 45
already done the hard bit, he has run all the way down the corridor as fast as he could and he has found the woman. There she is, right there, close enough that he can reach out and touch her. All he needs to do now is to tap her on her shoulder and hold out her passport. She would be delighted, she would squeal with joy, she would thank him profusely, and then she would take her passport and get on her plane with the woman with the short hair and she would fly away. And he? He would turn around and run down that same corridor all the way back to the Ladies toilet, where his mother would be standing, waiting for him to return. Simple. Only, it’s not. In a parallel version of events, the boy slips the thin booklet into the front pocket of his shorts. It slides in easily, like it belongs there, in that space. He turns around, away from the woman. * Everyone said London was sad and grey and that’s why so many Londoners were also sad and grey. But whatever anyone said about London, the boy knew that London made electrifying skies. He had seen them all. All of London’s skies. He had seen it starlit and starless, hazy and bright, low and high, dark and light. He had seen it turn every colour of the rainbow and sometimes, unseen and unnoticed, more than one at the same time.
FICTION AMI RAO KHANNA He had seen it go cloudless and blue, more blue than the blue of the sea. He had seen it go heavy and overcast, a dazzling dome of silver foil. He had seen it when it was just about to storm, shrouded in iridescent green, unreal, like the underbelly of a peacock. He had seen it when the sun shone and it looked white, like nothing. He had seen it when it was dark and angry, spitting hailstones of fury. And he had seen it—as it had just now—go scarlet so it made the inky black tarmac glow like fire. * Buenos Aires, Jakarta, Lagos, Riyadh Atlanta, Frankfurt, Sydney, Busan Boston, Naples, Istanbul, Khartoum San Francisco, San Diego, San Antonio, Santa Fe He starts to walk back. Like a baby walking for the first time, slow and unsteady, in a constant state of topple. Little by little, normal movement returns. He goes faster, walking briskly, then quickens to a sprint, feeling the object rub against his leg, front ways, then edgeways and into a beat of time. He is wholly aware that only the thin cotton lining of his shorts separates it from his skin. It fills him with the deep pleasure of illicit intimacy. *
Only thirty-one.
Children are guilty of this. The inability to understand nuance. Her hair was turning grey and How certain things can move around there were worry lines deep-creasing freely, belonging one moment to her forehead and on the sides of her one person and another moment to beautiful dancing eyes. someone else. But now, he would change all Money. Sweets. Umbrellas. that. He could change all that. He had the power to change all that; he could And how other things cannot. not bring back his alive-father, but he Fingerprints. Passports. could still change things for her in a Destinies. way that was meaningful, that could have lasting consequences for her * happiness. She was standing outside the door For so many months now, he of the Ladies toilet in her steel grey had watched those planes from afar, uniform, the look of distress still on wondered what it would feel like to her face. “Did you find her?” she said, be inside one, and now—finally—he in their home language. would know. They would go away! She The boy nodded wordlessly. had said so herself, that an English passport allowed you to travel all the “Did you give it to her?” she world! They would pick a place from asked anxiously. the plasma screen and they would “Yes.” pack a bag and go away, as if they too were people who mattered, as if there Her face broke out into a was nothing inferior about them. smile. He felt himself startled by For the boy, the possibilities ahead seemed so big and so overwhelming, they felt palpable, like they were happening right then, in that moment. He could feel everything. Climbing into the plane, sitting on their own two seats, flying! High, high in the sky! High above the trees and even the clouds, looking down at the city, leaving it behind, the city and all its little houses, its roads and its cars and the Indian supermarket and its rats and all their worries.
the essential loveliness of her face. He marvelled at that, at how a smile could change someone’s whole face like that. “Good boy!” she said in English, “Good boy!” Then she hugged him to her body, holding him so close that he could almost feel their hearts touch, his little one and her big one from which his had come.
“I am proud of you,” she said, “really!” He touched his shorts to She looked so old. She was so make sure it was still there, that he Impulsively, she reached into young. was not dreaming… her pocket and handed him a few His mother.
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FICTION AMI RAO KHANNA coins.
it took him some time to realise that Here, the boy made a small the small scared child looking back at sound. It didn’t take much. When you “Go, go to the vending him, was him. But then he made his have so little, it doesn’t take much. machine and buy yourself some selection, inputting the code onto the chocolate, Kit Kat? Or Fruit and Nut?” The boy felt the ceiling soar keypad, dropping the coins into the above him, the ground give way slot, carefully, one by one. The boy shook his head. underfoot, the burst of sweetness The machine did nothing. on his tongue, so concentrated, so “Don’t be silly. Don’t worry intense, the sensation so extreme about the money. The Miami flight He banged on the glass with and so beautiful and so substantially will land now, in two hours, we will his fist. wrong that he began to cry. make it all back.” Still nothing. But still, he didn’t move. It was his cue to turn around, She took his small hand then confess all, ask for forgiveness, return and pressed the coins into it. “Go on,” what was not his to take. she said, “it will make me glad.” But he didn’t. The boy found himself stuck. He could neither stand there nor He banged the thing again walk away. In the pocket of his shorts as hard as he could and reflected he felt the dull stolen weight of their like that, it seemed almost as if he freedom. was punching himself. This time, the machine responded with a * dull whirring sound. Internally, something heaved; externally, he Florence Mumbai Lima Bangkok watched the coils turn, release the Johannesburg New Orleans Cairo item he had chosen and slowly, as if Berlin with some mighty reluctance, spit it out. Barcelona Casablanca Rio Biarritz The boy bent down to retrieve the slim, rectangular bar of Fruit and (Which one will it be?) Nut. He unwrapped it slowly, feeling the pleasing sense of anticipation * from the crackle of the foil, that sharp, And now that he was in front of the distinctive snap. machine, he found himself staring at He put a single square into it at length not because he could not his mouth. decide what he wanted but because Singapore Amsterdam Houston LA
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Next up from Wii Fit; Emily Flake Comic
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FEAR AND LOATHING AND FEISTINESS IN WRITING ABOUT SEX CATHERINE MCNAMARA In Henry Miller’s great post-coital love letter to Anaïs Nin he said it all. Don’t expect me to be sane anymore. Don’t let’s be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes—you can’t dispute it. I came away with pieces of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming, in an ocean of blood, your Andalusian blood, distilled and poisonous. Miller may not be a fashionable figure to cite these days—nor his famously bigamous lover—but in the 1940s he wrote with a sexual candour that would liberate writers to come, and one may choose to admire the undeniable life force flooding through his words, a current of trembling copulation and obsession and mutual satisfaction. Or not. One may argue that the male gaze is paramount in Miller’s opus, as he was a ballsy North American given to descriptive c***-swinging, and his racial language reflected heavy prejudices of the day. And that Anaïs Nin’s diaries and fiction, insightful and voracious, depicting womanhood with its panoply of sensations and sensual will, have also been described as narcissistic and self-indulged. LITRO MAGAZINE • ESSAY • 49
So, what might we learn from these twin icons? And how might their work be viewed in the realm of expressing sensuality today?
was intimately savage, dripping with allegory and erotica, boldly unharnessing words to describe passion. Products of their generation, they were not the first, but both gave Let’s talk about context. Does English-language literature a jolt in it matter? Does it matter that Miller the arm. was a penniless guy in Paris with an inflated view of his writing? Or that, As a young Paris-obsessed at 30, Nin felt compelled to seduce writer I devoured texts from Simone de the father who had abandoned her Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gertrude family, and at 60, believing she had Stein, Miller and Nin, Edmund not achieved the recognition she White, James Baldwin, Kathy Acker, deserved, self-published reprints of fascinated by language and story, her early books? Were their efforts but also by love and sex, breaking any less arduous than our own? Both traditional rules and living the full of these writers lived pre-computers, scope of the body. I very determinedly pre-information-overload, pre- set out to Paris where I lived three MeToo. One might ask, are we even heady years au pairing in the prethe same creatures in passion, in love, trendy 11th arrondisement, in a cul de on the page? sac of horny creatives, a magical bookfilled apartment where broken plates In these of times of literary became mosaics on the kitchen walls, upheaval, of reassessing the texts of where I learnt to shoplift because our literary elders and seeking out my employers were all but squatters, voices that have been overlooked, where tiny mice sometimes ran over it can be complex to isolate what my feet. I joined in, feeling mild shock is rewarding and instructive in upon discovering one of my lovers technique, material and story-telling. was older than my father, though to And yet, in their fiction Miller and this day I feel that story was a tender Nin paved the way for a forensic and pathway into early womanhood, after physical examination of sex, swinging which I felt stronger and more real to doors wide and using language that
ESSAY CATHERINE MCNAMARA myself. Of course, if my own daughter the page, as those who came before were to engage in such a story, I would us? think it was a dirty affair. So, reader, Back to writing about sex. was it? The trouble with writing about I’m not sure what the answer sensuality today is that we are being is, coming from a whirlwind of prodded from all directions. At our experiences, many of them a reaction center, we face our context, our degree to a confined suburban upbringing of self-knowledge, our pudeur or our in Sydney, kicked off by tragedy, courage, the long cord of lived and and an obsession with getting out inherited experience that weaves of oneself. I chose not to struggle through us. Are we female, male, against the existential corner where I neither-and-both, feminine, boyish, found myself, but instead decided to outward, inward, comfortable, travel to the source. Paris. Philosophy. ostracized, attractive, self-odious? Independence. L’éducation How to comprehend our own sexual sentimentale. Womanhood. It was complexities before they inevitably an age-old choice concerning which seep into the characters we wish to battles to fight, because the war against convey? How not to get it wrong? existence—having seen the death of a Must we confine ourselves to what we child—I knew I had already lost. know? Or as Aminatta Forna suggests, “write what we wish to know”? The young writer is hungry for experience and material, and often Maria Popova in The Margilian lives far too vividly in one’s head. This observes, Every generation believes that is not an advocation for brakeless it must battle unprecedented pressures exploitation of others, but more of of conformity; that it must fight harder an enquiry. Where do stories come than any previous generation to protect from? Today, we live in an era of truth that secret knowledge from which our and revelation where information integrity of selfhood springs. is corralled, immediate, amplified, This checks out. Example: induced, extreme, hurtful; where there those of us who went through is little room for the quiet equilibrium experiences of sexual harassment/ of intimacy, the hands-on loved-up violence in the 80s and 90s listen to human and humane dialogue that our feisty daughters who often have leads to interior, acquired power. more courage than we ever did—with Once again, one might ask, are we the admiration, and incredulity. With no same creatures in passion, in love, on system to defend us, and a tendency CATHERINE MCNAMARA is Litro’s Flash Fiction Editor.
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to self-blame, our acts of survival require understanding too. Brave are the older women who unearth grievances from their youth, and fight for justice. Many of us remember dirty hands and unwanted kisses with the shame of not-resisting, of letting guys getting away with it. And the sense of degradation that took root. But I digress. This is only to say that we are steeped with different life stories, and our reactions to these pervade our work, and that now we are scrutinizing authors we once adored, who we once believed represented us, and there are many, many questions in the air. One of the objectives in the Litro Masterclass series is to help writers explore their individual rapport with story, language and purpose, no matter what form or material. We want to hear how you think, how you view our world, how you build your content. Our key interest is understanding your capabilities and objectives, and how these might be shaped into works that are as polished and resonant as possible, and as close to submissionreadiness as can be. If some of the above questions interest you, or you have a wish to push your work further, sign up to work with our group of curious, committed Masterclass tutors: we are keen to help you thrive.
Flash Fiction Course April 22nd - May 18th, 2023 Sensuality in the Short Story October 28th - November 18th