The Woven Tale Press Vol. II #3

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VOL II ISSUE #3

The Woven Tale Press

(c) copyright 2013

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Sandra Tyler Author of Blue Glass, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and After Lydia, both published by Harcourt Brace; awarded BA from Amherst College and MFA in writing from Columbia University; professor of creative writing on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including at Columbia University, (NY), Wesleyan University (CT), and Manhattanvill College, (NY); served as assistant editor at Ploughshares and The Paris Review literary magazines, and production freelancer for Glamour, Self, and Vogue magazines; freelance editor; Stony Brook University’s national annual fiction contest judge; a 2013 BlogHer.com Voices of the Year. http://www.awriterweavesatale.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Michael Dickel, Ph.D. A poet, fiction writer, essayist, photographer and digital artist, Dr. Dickel holds degrees in psychology, creative writing, and English literature. He has taught college, university writing and literature courses for nearly 25 years; served as the director of the Student Writing Center at the University of Minnesota and the Macalester Academic Excellence Center at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN). He co-edited Voices Israel Volume 36 (2010). His work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art books, and online for over 20 years, including in:THIS Literary Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Cartier Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Sketchbook, Emerging Visions Visionary Art eZine, and Poetry Midwest. His latest book of poems is Midwest / Mid-East: March 2012 Poetry Tour. http://michaeldickel.info Kelly Garriott Waite Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Science Monitor, Thunderbird Stories Project, Volume One, Valley Living, The Center for a New American Dream and in the on-line magazine, Tales From a Small Planet. Her fiction has been published in The Rose and Thorn Journal (Memory, Misplaced), in Front Row Lit (The Fullness of the Moon) and in Idea Gems Magazine (No Map and No Directions). Her works in progress have been included in the Third Sunday Blog Carnival: The Contours of a Man’s Heart and Wheezy Hart. She is the author of Downriver and The Loneliness Stories, both available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. http://writinginthemarginsburstingattheseams.blogspot.com

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Dyane Forde Author of forthcoming Rise of the Papilion Trilogy: The Purple Morrow (Book 1) http://droppedpebbles.wordpress.com Shanan Hailsip Business and fiction writer. http://www.theprocrastiwriter.com Adrienne Kerman Freelance writer and editor, her essays have appeared in multiple magazines, as well as in The Boston Globe and Washington Post. She has authored a weekly parenting column, MomsTalk, for the Boston area AOL/Patch sites. http://mintsinmymotherspurse.blogspot.com Lisa A. Kramer, Ph.D Freelance writer, editor, theatre director, and arts educator. She has published non-fiction articles in theater journals, as well articles aimed at young people for Listen Magazine. Her fiction is included in Theme-Thology: Invasion published by HDWPBooks. com. She is the director of a writers’ workshop From Stage to Page: Using Creative Dramatics to Inspire Writing. http://www.lisaakramer.com LeoNard Thompson Has published opinion editorials, weekly columns and essays, and interviewed performers, practitioners, writers, politicians and personalities. http://leeyonard.com Lynn Wohlers Awarded BFA from School of Visual Arts, NY, NY; writer for Daily Post’s Photography 101 series. lynn-wohlers.artistwebsites.com, Bluebrightly. WordPress.com

Our staff is an eclectic mix of writers and editors with keen eyes for the striking. So beware – they may be culling your own site for those gems deserving to be unearthed and spotlit in The Woven Tale Press.

Editor’s Note: The Woven Tale Press is a monthly culling of the creative web, exhibiting the artful and innovative.

So enjoy here an eclectic mix of the literary, visual arts, photography, humorous, and offbeat.

All contributors are credited by their interactive URLs; click on the URLs to go to their blogs or websites.

To submit to the magazine go to: thewoventalepress.net

New! If you see a “Featured!” button, click on it to read a contributor’s feature on our website

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Abstract Macro Photography

We live much of our lives “on the surface� of both experience and interpretation. How often do we turn our cheek from what appears ugly or unrefined? From the rusted trash can to the crumbling stone wall, can we find beauty in decay and decomposition? My goal is not to present a subject on the surface of what it is, but to unveil the heart of its transformations; to invoke the viewer to contemplate the possibilities for metamorphosis and beauty.

The use of a macro lens for your DSLR is essential for the capturing of othewise imperceptible details. I then open those images in Photoshop, to crop and adjust the color and contrast to reveal their inner story. Patterns begin to emerge and I begin to construct collages from a series that may overlap, mirror, or repeat. The end result is an image in which the original subject is not readily recognizable, but rather, a painting of some mysterious alchemy that invites the viewer into contemplation. —Leila A. Fortier

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Genesis

Euphoria

Iluminite 2

Jupiter

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Carrara

Maya

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http://srobert941.wordpress.com

The Life Givers

Planchette met the old man down by the landing at dawn. It was cold and there was a mist on the lake. The water lay calm like a sheet of metal.

“Get in the boat,” he said. “Sit midship, child, between the oars. I’ll load the tool chest.”

“But I’ve never rowed before, sir.”

“You’ll row today, child, and the next, and the day after. The fourth day, I’ll row so your hands can heal. From the fifth day on, you will row.”

The old man followed her into the boat and set the tool chest between his boots. He sat at the prow, looking into Planchette’s eyes.

“What’s your name, child?”

“Planchette, sir.”

“How old?”

“Ten, sir.”

“Man your oars. Put them in the water. Good. Now take a heading to the middle of the lake.”

Planchette found the oars unwieldy.

“Take an even stroke,” he said. “Not too deep, not too shallow. That’s it. That’s very good.”

The boat glided easily along.

“Your left is port,” he said. “Your right is starboard. Pull on the port, push on starboard to bear to port. Do the opposite to bear to starboard. Don’t mind the . . .”

The old man paused. His eyes closed and his hand went to his chest. He sighed and his body slumped. Planchette watched him, curious, a bit frightened. He recovered and

took a breath. “. . . the mist,” he continued. “Don’t mind the mist. It’ll go with the sunrise. We’ll see the floaters easy enough.”

Planchette rowed on and on, pulling the weight of the boat with little aching arms and shoulders.

“There’s one,” he said. “Pull alongside. Easy as you go, child. Ah, that’s good. Ship your oars, child. Always ship your oars aft. We don’t want water in the tool chest.”

He gave Planchette the net. “Come up under him and let him drip. We want him dry. Put this on your lap and dry him with it. Now, heave him aboard. Dry him thorough and turn him over. What do you see?”

“There’s a red line running its length, sir.”

“That’s fore and aft, child.”

“It’s glowing, sir.”

“Ah, so it is. Run your finger along that line. It’ll open up.”

Planchette ran a finger along the glowing line and the fish opened.

“Do you see the little blue box?” he said.

Planchette was breathless. “Yes.” “Take it out. What do you read on it?”

“It says ‘C dash One’.”

“Good. Take it out. Take a C dash One from the tool chest and snap it in.”

Planchette replaced the old C dash one and felt the fish stir in her lap. It closed automatically. She felt it humming.

“Now lower him over the side, gently, now.”

The fish wriggled and lunged deep into the water.

“Good,” the old man said. “Get under way, child. We’ve a full day ahead.”

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After a full day of C dash Ones, and C dash Twos and Threes, and several Tens, the tool chest was near empty.

“Take us in,” the old man said. “Our day is done.”

Planchette rowed back to the landing with little trouble. The oars were heavy now, and tiresome. The boat moved easily to the landing. Planchette pulled on the starboard oar and held fast on the port oar. The boat bumped against the stanchion.

The old man heaved the tool chest onto the dock and slumped back onto his seat.

“Oh, blast!” he said. His voice weakened to a whisper. “Quickly, child. Unbutton my shirt.”

Again, he slumped in his seat. His face went pale.

Planchette unbuttoned the old man’s shirt. She saw a glowing red line down his stomach. It opened easily like the fish.

“Hurry, child! It’s a C dash One Hundred! I keep one in the tool chest! Lively, child! Make the change!”

“Oh, sir!”

“No tears, child. Move!”

In seconds, the old man was sitting up straight. His color had returned.

“There, now. There’s an old Seaman back at you,” he whispered.

They made the boast fast to the dock, and the old man carried the tool chest to the boathouse. “Well done today, Planchette. You did well. Be here at dawn and we’ll have another day. Good evening, Planchette. And not a word.”

“Good evening, sir. Not a word, I swear.”

Planchette’s mother was smiling at the door. “How was your day, dear?”

“It was good, Mum. I rowed.”

“That’s wonderful, love. Have your soup. There’s fresh bread for you.”

Planchette finished her soup. It felt warm and comforting.

“Your father came by with a C dash One Hundred for you. It’s a mystery you’ve lasted this long. We’ll put it in before you go in the morning. Now go to bed, little love, and pleasant dreams.

“Good night, Mum.” “Good night, little love.”

http://jacobsurland.smugmug.com

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http://jacobsurland.smugmug.com

Realism Digital Art

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Curly Tree In The Sunset

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Dreamy Stones in the Water On the beach at Kulhuse, Denmark, I took the camera, put on the Lee Big Stopper and did a long exposure.

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Tower Bridge and City Hall Under the Stars London City Hall with the London Tower Bridge just after midnight.

The Millennium Wheel In Fiery Sky On great warm summer night I went down to the Millennium Wheel in London, to get some close-ups.

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This is an HDR photo of London Tower Bridge combined with a long exposure.

Brugge Canal 11

Dramatic sky above a canal in the capital of Chocolate, as Bruge in Belgium is called.

Not So Hidden Passage For this photo, I used a wide angled lens.

It was shot from the backside of the National Museum in Denmark.

Armageddon Sunset Roskilde Fiord revisited, to try out my brand new Sigma 12-24mm full frame lens.

Old Houses in New Port One of Copenhagen’s major sites, called Nyhavn wich means New Harbor. Just before sunrise, before the neon lights are shut off.

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http://elainelk-tealeaves.blogspot.com

Have We Met Before?

My husband and I are visiting my mother at her assisted living facility, sitting at the dinner table while she’s finishing her meal. She’s a very slow eater and is usually the last person left in the dining room. Today a new resident (of a couple of weeks) wanders over and sits down in a chair next to our table. She is, sadly, where my mother was two years ago in her dementia.

“I don’t know where I am,” she keeps saying, near tears. “I don’t know how I got here.”

I’ve seen the CNAs talking to her, trying to reassure her, but in dementia there’s no reassurance. You forget what someone told you just a minute ago, but the fear stays with you.

To distract her, my husband starts a conversation, asking her questions about her family. She says she was born in Brooklyn. My ears twitch. So was my father! So was my husband! When she graduated from high school she went to work as a secretary at an insurance company. “Which one?” I ask.

“Equitable Life,” she answers.

Now I sit up straight in my chair. “My mother worked at the Equitable! In Manhattan?”

“Yes,” she replies. “Right across the street from Penn Station.”

That’s the one!

I turn eagerly to my mother, who’s still eating and can’t hear our conversation. I touch her arm. “This lady worked at the Equitable,” I say, pointing at Fran (I know pointing isn’t polite, but it’s less rude in my view than shouting, “the lady over there, across the table from us.”).

My mom’s alert now; she remembers that part of her life. “Really? What year?”

I relay the question. But Fran can’t remember. Her recollections are a little vague. All she says is, “I started before the war and worked there all during the war.”

The same years my mother was there. I try to tell my mom this, though her hearing is so

bad that I need to speak in short sentences and repeat everything. But she says, “Ask her what department, what floor. I was on the fourth floor.”

Fran can’t remember. She goes on, talking about how much fun the girls there had.

Mom around 1958

How they would go out at lunch and shop at Macy’s and Gimbel’s. My mother did the same. Fran asks what department my mother worked in.

Mom remembers this as well. “Claims,” she says.

“Oh, Claims was a good department. You had to have a brain to work there.”

I relay this to my mother. She pulls herself up in that self-mocking way she has. “Well, of course,” she says.

Now I’m wondering if they might possibly have known each other. I know the names of my mother’s closest friends who’d worked there: Myra, Mickey. She never mentioned a Fran, but that doesn’t mean they might not have been acquainted.

But my mother’s and Fran’s name don’t ring a bell with either of them. “There

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were about a thousand people working there,” my mother says.

Their stories have other things in common. My mother was born in Manhattan, my father in Brooklyn; they later both moved to Queens Village in Queens, where they met.

Fran’s family moved to another part of Queens. She lived in Levittown after her marriage, my parents in Hempstead, Long Island.

They both rode the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan for work. Now they’re both in New England.

But after that, their stories diverge quite a bit. Fran is much younger than my mother; she started working there later. She found the war years a little dull because “there were no guys around. They were all at the war.”

My mother was married in 1935, before the war. Fran married her boyfriend after he returned, she says. But she has her dates somewhat confused, saying she was married in 1942, which was during the war, not after.

My parents moved to Chicago in the late 1940s, where my brother and I were born. Fran raised her family in Levittown and later moved to Massachusetts; my parents moved to Rhode Island.

I’m feeling electric but at the same time frustrated. My husband and I are acting like interpreters, repeating everything each woman says to the other as though they were speaking foreign languages. If only these two could really hold a conversation. They might discover much more in common. I know my mother would love to reminisce about Long Island and about her work.

But my mother can’t hear, neither of them can remember, and their dementia makes it difficult to follow conversations. I wish so fervently that my mom could make a friend there, but I’m afraid she’s beyond the friend-making stage. It would be so good for Fran,

too. As I observe the people there, I see some who are isolated within themselves, nonverbal. Others talk to each other and often seem to be “hanging out” together. Yet none of them ever calls anyone else by name, and conversations don’t sound as if they come from a background of knowledge about each other.

Now the tantalizing question remains: Did my mother and Fran actually know each other seventy years ago? Did they know some of the same people?

Neither we nor they will ever know. They each have their memories, but they’re separate

Intimacy in the Memory Care Unit Love and intimacy are vitally important to everyone, including people with dementia. One of the cruelest aspects of this disease is that it makes intimacy and loving relationships nearly impossible. Even if the affected person is still able to remember his or her closest family members, the possibility of forming new relationships is almost completely denied to them by their loss of short-term memory. How can a person make a friend if she doesn’t remember the other person’s name or even that they met before?

A memory care unit in an assisted living facility is a small, closed place. Residents spend their entire day within it. The unit my mother is in has a central area with a living room and two separate dining and activity areas. The residents’ apartments are arrayed around this area. This is where they live: eat, play games, and socialize. There’s also a small enclosed garden area for the nice weather. With somewhere between twenty and thirty residents, people have a lot of contact with each other. Yet I don’t believe I’ve ever heard any resident call another by name.

There are what pass for groups, or pairs. We often see the same people talking together or having supper at the same table. But the conversations are quite limited and often seem to consist of repeated comments.

But the human heart still needs to connect.

Marie and Raymond After my mother first moved in to the MCU, I visited her nearly every day, and I became aware of a man and a woman residents who appeared to be a “couple.” Marie and Raymond were in the early stages of dementia. They could speak well and hold conversations. They intrigued me. At first I wondered if they were married, and if so, whether they had a room together in the MCU. Then I heard Raymond refer to her as “my future wife.”

I thought this was enchanting. Would there really be a wedding? They were inseparable.

They sat on the couch together, at the supper table together. They would walk in the garden, go on group outings together. Sometimes you would surprise them embracing in another room or in the hallway. She called him “darling.”

Then one day I noticed that Raymond wasn’t there. Days passed and he didn’t return. I asked a CNA, and she said he’d moved to another place. We had a speaking acquaintance, so when I saw Marie in the garden, I asked about him; she said, “Yes, that was a blow. I thought we had something going, but I guess not.” I felt bad for her, and wondered whether maybe Raymond’s family hadn’t approved of their relationship.

Shortly afterward, though, Marie struck up a “friendship” with another man there. That is, she began “hanging around” him, sitting with him, laying her head on his shoulder as they sat on the couch. Yet he remained much less responsive than Raymond had been – and less aware of what was going on. He seemed only to tolerate her. One day I greeted her while she was sitting with this man, and she said to me, “Have you met my husband?”

So what did it mean? I found myself rethinking the relationship she and Raymond had had, and wondering just how real it had been. Had they really known each other in the way real friends and intimate partners did? Had they been able to share parts of their lives with each other? Or had it just been an attraction that was forgotten once they were separated? Probably it doesn’t really matter – they had had each other for a while, had maybe the only form of intimacy that they were capable of, and maybe it was enough for them. I hope so.

Agnes and Bob They actually are a married couple. Both have fairly severe dementia, are nearly nonverbal, and seem largely unaware of their surroundings. But they have an instinctive feel for each other. Bob knows when Agnes isn’t near him and gets upset.

I didn’t know they were married for a long time. They don’t share a room, and for quite a while they didn’t even sit at the same table for meals. Why this was, I don’t know. But one day walking by their rooms I noticed that they had the same last name, and that was my only clue. Then I remembered that they always sat side by side on one of the couches. And at Thanksgiving their two daughters came into the unit. It hits me hard to try to imagine how it must be for their children: to have both your parents suffering from dementia at the same time. The sense of loss I feel is doubled in their case.

One day, a number of people came to visit them; the group was leaving shortly after my husband and I arrived, and we noticed they had instruments. Someone mentioned how much fun they had singing. Bob has a beautiful voice; maybe he once sang in a choir or even professionally. Perhaps Agnes did, too. And in some way they were still able to

share that with their family.

Minnie Minnie is another resident with fairly advanced dementia. She doesn’t speak more than a few words every now and then. But she has her own little family of baby dolls. She used to carry only one, but the number has expanded, and last week she had an armful of four. She sits with them in a chair, holding, rocking, kissing them. She brings one or two to the dinner table. She tries to feed them. The CNAs have learned to gently take them from her so that she won’t be too distracted to eat. “The baby needs to eat, too,” they’ll say. “I’m going to take her and feed her.” That makes Minnie happy. She has found her own way to love in the MCU.

Wall Shadows

http://joanreesearts.blogspot.com 18

http://katybrandes.wordpress.com

Out to Dry

An old, threadbare dress hung in tatters above her on the clothesline. It would take no time to dry in the fierce wind atop the hill where they lived. The biting breeze blew through the fabric of her coat and nipped the bare skin of her neck. Elizabeth thought of the tough luck she accepted marrying a Johnson and moving where the elements so mercilessly wore upon their lives. Her soul suffered the same treatment as the clothing on the wire stretched there between two posts.

She could remember winters when frozen diapers on the line would snap in two. With no money for essentials, there had been certainly none for extravagances like a clothes dryer. They were lucky to have laundry detergent and soap for bathing. Elizabeth’s red hands were worn raw from hanging wet garments and linens in frigid temperatures.

Drips of water almost froze before touching the ground.

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Elizabeth’s time outdoors was a respite from the chaos inside the house, as her toil was never-ending. Getting pregnant the first time seemed to lock in her fate as a homemaker, and submission to her overbearing husband brought along three more little ones thereafter. Those children were her heart. She loved the little buggers, but wanted more out of life than making supper and cleaning up after other people. At least a little break in the day-in-day-out chores to which she seemed destined.

One of her boys, who suffered a broken neck from an ATV accident with a neighbor, would spend his adulthood on disability, while the other two stayed close to home, working minimum-wage jobs as did their daddy. She marveled at more privileged women, their big cars and nice clothes. A front-loading washing machine. Elizabeth lived out her dreams vicariously through others.

She wanted more for her daughter, and stashed away a little cash each time the pittance of grocery money was doled out by her husband. Emma would go to college if it took everything her mother could scrounge for her to do so. Either that or just to get her the hell out of here. Emma’s mother would see to it that she escaped subsistence on this godforsaken hill.

When Emma became a boy-crazy teenager, Elizabeth took the first chance they had to go to the free clinic for birth control. Elizabeth threatened the girl within an inch of her life not to settle for any of those juvenile delinquents who caught her eye at school. They would only lead Emma to a life like her own.

Elizabeth had no concept of feminism or equality for women. She could only mull over the unrelenting disappointment at how things had turned out for herself. Directing her daughter away from a similar life seemed the only rational thing to do.

The woman pulled her knit cap down further over her ears and commenced whistling a tune to take her away for the moment. She pinched another wooden clothespin with stiff fingers whose sore knuckles didn’t want to work anymore, and pinioned another pair of blue jeans to the wire running vertically above her head. The gnarly appendage was hard to recognize as her own when she stuck it through a hole in the knee of the Levi’s.

A gaping chasm pulsated inside her much like that worn out place in the denim.

Elizabeth Johnson hung up the last pair of socks, pulled her coat collar tighter to keep the cold wind from traveling down her back, and turned toward the house to go inside.

She used the blue-and-white ticking of the clothespin bag to wipe away an ice-cold tear running down her cheek.

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The Twilight Zone (Or a Tale of Weirdness)

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I met another writer the other evening.

He was a generally affable chap, if somewhat over-fond of the sound of his own voice.

Fair enough though, I’m sure most of us are prone to waxing lyrical about our literary endeavours after a glass or two of falling-down juice.

For around half an hour, we had a pleasant (if rather one-sided) and wide-ranging conversation in which we most eruditely expounded upon the great literary topics of our enlightened age.

The obligatory and ubiquitous themes of: “Whither traditional publishing in the age of the ‘indie’ self-publisher?”, “Is a professional editor a necessity?” and “Don’t get me started on Fifty Shades of Mummy-Porn Tosh” were debated, discussed and deliberated.

Then it got weird.

No, that doesn’t quite do it justice.

Then it got WEIRD. That’s better. Add your own wavery elongated vowels in the middle and it’ll be even closer to the mark.

I chanced to ask the chap’s opinion on eReaders versus lovely papery ink-smelling books with pictures on the front. As usual, I prefaced the question with the fact that, until someone creates an eReader that smells like a book, I’m sticking with books. Nothing against eReaders, you understand, just a personal preference.

In the space of a nano-second, the affable would-be author standing before me transmogrified into a wild-eyed, slavering beast, his unruly hair billowing manically like the unfurled sails of a galleon in a typhoon. He stared at me in horror, as if I had somehow 21

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metamorphosed, Gregor Samsa-like, into a six-foot beetle with the sole intention of devouring his children.

“You cannot,” he bellowed, saliva whirling globbily across the room with the force of his insanity, “be a writer today unless you read on an eReader!!”

I understood the individual words, the syntax and the grammar, but combined in that particular order, they made as much sense as if he had claimed: ”You cannot ride a zebra unless you have a goldfish bowl.”

Mopping myself down with a handkerchief, I attempted to clarify matters. Did he perhaps mean that it is imperative that one releases an eBook version? That I would agree with.

Could it be that he was alluding to the necessity of understanding how to technically format a novel for the medium? Again, total agreement on my part.

But no, dear readers, far from it. Once more he raved, equally forcefully and with added twitching.

“You cannot be a writer if you do not read on an eReader!!” His hands furled into fists of rage and a vein in his forehead began to throb in a most alarming manner.

At this point I remembered an entirely fictitious train I was about to miss, made my excuses and left, using the same trying-not-to-run motion employed by anyone walking down a dark alley in the early hours telling themselves that werewolves don’t actually exist.

Is it just me?

As far as I’m concerned, it’s the words that matter. The medium of delivery is secondary, surely? Write them on paper, project them on the wall, scratch them in sand or train starlings to arrange themselves in formation across an azure sky.

The words we use and the world, the emotions, the truths they conjure up in a reader’s imagination is the first, the only, the be-all-and-end-all to a writer’s purpose. To subjugate that to the vehicle used to impart the words is, I would contend, a heinous triumph of form over content.

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http://joan-reese.artistwebsites.com

Joan Reese – Paintings

Blue Dream Chinese Black Ink and Watercolor on Rice Paper

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Autumn Breeze Painting Ceramic Glazes on Porcelain Tiles and Fired in a Klln

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Above the Clouds Painting Ceramic Glazes on Porcelain Tiles and Fired in a Kiln

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Autumn Wind Painting Ceramic Glazes on Porcelain Tiles and Fired in a Kiln

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http://aussalorens.com

My Very Own Zombie Apocalypse

Last summer I found myself in a redneck bar in a tiny town a couple of hours outside the city. I’d never experienced anything remotely honky-tonk, so I found the entire concept alluring. When I walked in, everyone turned to stare at me; I was clearly an outsider amongst these people who spent every night on the same old barstools, watching the same old TV. I sat down and ordered a drink. The man next to me finally asked the question on everyone’s mind.

“What brings you ‘round here?”

I took a sip of my beer and opted for the truth. “I’m trying to figure out where a man is buried.”

Several heads turned in my direction.

“You mean like a dead man?”

I nodded. “It’s for work.”

“Where in the hell do you work?”

“A psychiatric hospital.”

People began looking at each other in mild confusion.

“You mean like an insane asylum? You a doctor?”

“Oh, God no.”

“What’d you go to school for then?”

“African-American Studies.”

“You mean like Black folk?”

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“Yep.” A woman with a slick ponytail and a leather vest muttered into her glass of beer.

“Well I’ll be damned.”

It may have seemed like a smattering of unrelated and ridiculous information, but it was all bound together in a lofty pursuit—one that was a matter of dignity.

When I’d first interviewed for my job, I’d been told to feel privileged for making it to the third round because everyone else had master’s degrees or were licensed social workers. That did not make me feel privileged.

The final interview was with the Executive Director and seemed like more of an An illegible gravestone experiment in surviving his very skilled awkward pauses. When he finally spoke, it was not to question me on my management savvy or Excel skills, but to lament the fact that he had a committee of people who were unable to solve the mystery of an old cemetery that had been discovered on the hospital grounds. Over 600 people had been buried there in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but 100 of the graves were missing or illegible and no one could determine who was buried where.

My experience on this subject was limited to the childhood burials of a couple dozen rodents, reptiles, cats, and dogs. Still, I’d worked on the psych ward for a year, and it bothered me that the people in our care had been denied their right to a respectful burial place. It was a matter of dignity and I told him so.

A week later he called and offered me the job. He’d later confess that it was the comment on dignity that had made me qualified.

I had no idea what an executive project manager/historical archivist/PR person was supposed to do, so I quickly absorbed the cemetery project as my own. I walked every 28

inch of it, drawing diagrams and making lists. I’d sit at the coffeehouse for hours, cursing aloud and trying to determine any sort of pattern that would aid in identifying the 100 unknown graves.

It didn’t make any chronological sense—horizontally or vertically. The graves seemed to have been laid nonsensically; 1896 was next to 1884 next to 1889 then another 1896 and a random 1892. There was no way to predict which of the 100 unassigned names fit into the 100 unknown graves.

Until I realized that my random-ass bachelor’s degree wasn’t for naught – I scanned through the microfilmed charts of the patients and pulled out their race and religion. Plugging this into the data, a pattern emerged. Those bastards had gone to great lengths to maintain a very segregated cemetery, keeping black, white, and Jewish people far from each other.

The missing 100 people fell into place like a jigsaw puzzle.

I printed my map and walked the cemetery, standing over each grave and reading the name aloud to ensure it matched my list. When I’d made it to the last name, I was almost afraid to say it aloud, lest the earth begin to shake and the graves open and the people come crawling out of the ground like my very own zombie apocalypse.

Old invoices from the grave diggers

When it all matched up, I got to work on ordering 600 brand new granite headstones.

There was only one problem remaining—several people were documented as being exhumed, and their headstones had been removed accordingly. Except for this one guy—Micah Rosenthal. The records showed he’d been exhumed, but he still had a gravemarker.

Was he, or wasn’t he? I couldn’t run the risk of not marking his final resting place if he were still there, but I also couldn’t handle the error of marking an empty grave. It was a mystery and I don’t believe in leaving those unsolved.

Though I eventually found where he’d been reburied, it wasn’t until after I’d stalked his entire line of descendants, tromped through numerous small town cemeteries, poured over the records in four City Halls and terrified the regulars at a honky tonk bar in the 29

boondocks.

A few of my colleagues remained skeptical—they said I couldn’t really know where the people were buried, that it was an educated guess at best.

I don’t believe in educated guesses. I believe in solving mysteries, and my burial pattern could not be denied.

My moment of vindication came when we were laying the new headstones and began to hit the missing headstones with our shovels. The headstones had sunk deep into the ground and when they were uncovered, I had the smug satisfaction of seeing the name of the person I’d sworn was buried there.

After this, I earned street cred as a bona fide expert on finding dead peo- A sunken headstone ple. I was like the Haley Joel Osment of the mental health field.

While this might seem like the kind of project you only encounter once, I have now set my sights on locating a mass grave that is also rumored to be on our property. According to newspaper reports from the late 1800s, 39 psychiatric patients died of tuberculosis in the span of 10 days, and were buried in a single unmarked grave without a funeral service or so much as a record to document their location.

I’ve read the charts of each of these 39 people. I’ve seen their family letters, gone over the psych evaluations, and studied the telegrams sent to notify their next of kin when they’d died. They were mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, husbands and wives and for one reason or another they’d ended up in our care and never left. It horrifies me to think that they are now forgotten, that their names aren’t written anywhere but in a notebook that sits on the corner of my desk, next to my voodoo doll.

The following week, the fruits of my harassment came to pass and a team of archeologists visited the hospital to discuss plans for using ground penetrating radar to find the mass grave. People keep telling me it’s a long shot, but I’ve been spending a fair amount of time at that same coffee shop, pouring over old maps, cursing in frustration, and developing theories. I might not be able to make up for the darkness of the past, but I will find them and I will honor their lives, and they will be remembered. It’s a matter of dignity.

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Dead-End

Tuesday dawns, muggy and warm. It’s six am and practically night for someone like me who is habitually nocturnal. My hands are unusually stiff and my blue-green eyes are partially open below the intimidating fluorescent ceiling. My bleached blonde curls, done at Sally’s four days ago (she did a great job, btw), hang in the perfect shape of S. I squint as a clean, mint breath swims over my nose. His name tag reads Dave and he looks like Dave. The pathologist, I mean. I liked him the moment he walked in with an old radio dialed to my favorite jazz station and looked at me, like I was there, as a person and not just a body.

The lukewarm, smooth voice of Ella Fitzgerald waltzes into the room, and I can feel my eyelids moving, but in reality, they stay frozen. I stretch my hands, puff my chest and swirl around like a ballerina while he pushes his fingers into the latex, puts on his glasses and buttons up his starched lab coat.

It is a little after seven when he pulls his gear away and looks outside. From here, he looks tall, but he isn’t; he is erect and lean. In the distance, two crows on the power line scratch each other, and a black cloud with a small pocket of light hurries towards the building. You can see roadways are still slick from last night’s storm, with an occasional rainbow dappling over the heap of leaves on the other side of the road. That is where they found me with a needle stuck in my arm and most of my clothes missing.

I only remember this new guy, Jack or Billy or whatever that bastard’s name was, pulling me away from the dancing crowd. Most of ‘em were high; most wasted like me. I resisted but he pulled me out anyway, and insisted on trying a weed. Then all went dark.

I know what you are thinking – why do kids like you not leave? Why don’t you start over?

Make something of yourself? And that makes me mad. Really mad. Because you don’t have a fuckin’ clue, you don’t understand what is like to be kicked around and abused.

All I have encountered in my life is endless pain, indignity and betrayal. I never mattered; I was not in the head count and I knew the day I went missing, I’d stay missing because no one would look for me, no one would want me back. It wasn’t one wrong turn or a couple, I took – it was just about every bloody turn that was available; it was just about every alternative I thought of. It was a black hole, no matter how many times I escaped – I was brought back, kicked in and forgotten.

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Dave turns around too soon and stares at me for a moment. I am still dead and cold, but there is something about his gaze. Deep and mystified like the first hole of sunlight that drilled into the darkest sky. I want to hold that light in the palm of my hand and feel its warmth – a). It’s fuckin’ cold in here b). It’s unusual and makes me feel that I am more than what I think, even now.

He puts on his glasses and moves the light over with a tiny click. I notice his pierced ears. Like two crazy moments in his otherwise plain appearance. It makes me grin for the first time since I died. I like him more.

A steel tray with autopsy spoon and finger stretchers wait for their turn, as his rubber-clad fingers carefully examine my punctured wrists, my needle-struck arms, my feet and legs.

He raises the sheet over the parts of my body that he does not need to see. I am impressed but uncomfortable. I am hoping he will screw up. I am hoping he will lay a hand somewhere he isn’t supposed to. I am hoping he won’t let down my experience because that is what people do when they have absolute freedom – they screw up. My sheet stays where it is and he continues to probe and inspect, taking notes.

Outside a pair of daffodils sways, inching its hue up into the benign sky. I see myself at the table, and I look like a different person. A different face, a different body. Someone who failed but someone who tried. I cannot measure which is greater , the failures or the resistance to ‘em. It is a face that once belonged to me and it is beautiful, more so than I had thought. Much more.

I fold myself, walk across the room and watch him work. Precise and decent. Effortless.

I have never seen anyone like him, so sure of his presence that he does not care. A bubble rises in my chest, carrying his face and settling into a quiet crevice of my broken, blue heart.

It is time for him to leave, but I want him to stay. He reaches the door and turns around and I can tell – he is sorry for me, sorry that I had to die so early. I smile back, part affirmation and part realization that the only thing eternal about our mortality is the ability to feel, to love and the willingness to remember.

I want to stretch out my hand and say, “Hi, I am Natalie, eighteen years old, found dead almost two days ago. And I like you. Will you remember me?”

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