Thoroughfare Johns Hopkins University Spring 2018
Thoroughfare Johns Hopkins University Literary Arts Magazine Spring 2018
Trying to Be Herd by Grace Lee
Contents Cover Art: Adrift Grace Lee Trying to be Herd Grace Lee “To The First Generation” Sashinya DeSilva Arrival Mary
Jessie Kanacharoen Emery Buckner-Wolfson
This Unfading Chill Alexandra Houck Summer Camp Rudy Malcom Blue
Emery Buckner-Wolfson
Aileen Zhou Jessie Kanacharoen The Ginko Tree Rudy Malcom Venomous Cloud Grace Lee Ghana
Emery Buckner-Wolfson
Snow White Nikki Garcia Mirror
Jessie Kanacharoen
Monet, Reproduction Amanda Rose Kaufman Escape Attempt #7 Grace Lee Commute Sashinya DeSilva Wisps
Grace Lee
“To the First Generation”
*based on the prose poem “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid
by Sashinya DeSilva Learning your mother tongue would be nice, but don’t feel too bad if you don’t; buy all the American clothes, even if your mother says they don’t match your skin tone; don’t bring your classmates home- they won’t understand the food or the paintings; go early to all of your school friends’ parties, which is to say, go on time; go to the Sri Lankan parties on time, which is to say, three hours late; if they ask if you’re from India, tell them the truth; if they still don’t understand how such a small island can be its own country, tell them that Sri Lanka to India is like Puerto Rico to America- even though it’s not at all; always follow your mother’s advice, unless you are positive that, because she wasn’t born here, she is wrong; call all adult relatives, family friends, parents of friends, parents of acquaintances and, especially, strangers at the temple Aunty and Uncle; do not repeat this practice with the Americans-after all, you’ll never really be part of their family; it’s rude to let teachers struggle with your name; give them your patriotic nickname and tell them to ignore the one on the attendance sheet; secretly admit to your mother that you want to be a doctor, as if you hadn’t heard your parents’ late night conversations because you shouldn’t have because you were sleeping; secretly admit to your English teacher that you want to be a writer, as if you hadn’t heard your parents’ late night conversations because you shouldn’t have because you were sleeping; if, because you are a Buddhist, they ask you whether Buddha is a god, be polite and say no; if, because you are a Buddhist, they ask you if nirvana is really a drug, don’t be so polite; during Fourth of July, try to forget that your table is probably the only one with roti, dal, and fish rolls; do your homework as if your life depended on it; if you finish your homework, do extra work because if your mother walks in the room and asks how you are spending your time, your life depends on it; remember
that there will always be a cousin or a sister or a family friend who is simply better than you and don’t feel too bad; but feel bad enough to work harder; these are the classes you must take to satisfy your parents; these are the classes you must take so you can skip all of the dances- none of those dresses ever matched you anyway; these are the white clothes you must wear to temple; these are the foods to avoid--all the good ones-- to not stain the white clothes; this is how you must meditate before you say the gathas; this is how you think only of your own troubles as you say the gathas; this is how you pretend you aren’t only thinking of your own troubles as you say the gathas; remind yourself to put on cream before you leave the house- no one likes ash if there isn’t a fire; go to school friends’ houses with the unintentional purpose of picking up their habits; laugh with your friends’ parents but be prepared to bash them when you are in your friends’ rooms; call your mother Mom or Mommy or even Mother when talking to her on the phone in school; call your mother Amma at home because it’s the only title you’ve ever known; do not forget that being called exotic is not the same thing as being called pretty; can I still be pretty here?; always remember that being pretty isn’t a matter of where you are, but what you think when you look into the mirror alone; laugh with your Sri Lankan cousins at the Americans; laugh with your American friends at the Sri Lankans because guilt tastes better the second time around; be able to distinguish between us and them- you don’t want to be caught on the wrong side.
Arrival by Jessie Kanacharoen
Mary by Emery Buckner-Wolfson
This Unfading Chill by Alexandra Houck
When she woke up his side of the bed was cold. Vera reached out to touch the empty, her hand escaping from the mound of covers and searching for even a trace of the faded warmth. It was raining outside, the drops striking the roof in the steady, rhythmic pace. It sounded like the shower was running. She glanced toward the bathroom door; it was closed. Slowly, she got out of bed. Every morning she followed the same routine: she got dressed, did her make-up and hair in the hall bathroom, and then made breakfast. She started the coffee first, setting two mugs out on the countertop before taking two eggs out of the refrigerator. There was comfort in the routine; she could go about it with a blank mind, keeping her thoughts safely at bay. She didn’t have to worry about how each day was different until she stepped outside the apartment and faced reality. Breakfast was, like every morning, eaten in a rush and she only had just enough time to pour coffee into the two mugs before she had to grab hers and hurry out the door. “I left coffee for you on the counter!” she called over her shoulder as she hurried out of the apartment. Rushing also prevented her thoughts from drifting. The world shifted at work. With multiple new exhibits opening in the coming months, the museum provided many distractions that Vera was more than happy to dedicate all her thoughts to. She had worked at the American Museum of National History long enough to have developed a nearly foolproof method of making certain new exhibits were planned to perfection. Sitting at her desk, she sent out emails, made phones calls, looked over notes from the previous day, and fixed any errors that might have arisen. It would have been an easy routine to lose herself in.
Her coworkers, however, would not stop shooting her worried or pitying glanced when they thought she wasn’t looking or checking up on her under the guise of making small talk. Today it was Maria Wentworth who approached her with a small smile and a basket of homemade muffins. “I thought it would help lift your spirits,” she said. It was the most common excuse. Vera pressed her lips together into a thin smile and accepted the gift as she always did. Maria lingered a few moments more, talking about everything but the questions all of Vera’s coworkers danced around, before she returned to her desk. Vera knew they all meant well, but she wished they could see how their actions called attention to the missing piece of her routine. A heavy sigh fell from her lips as she turned her attention back to her work, absentmindedly playing with the wedding ring on her finger as she read her emails. She chose to walk the few blocks home that evening since getting a cab in the rain was near impossible. Under the safety of her umbrella, she stepped inside the apartment relatively dry. “I’m home! You won’t believe this one guy I had to deal with on the phone. He-” Her usual retelling of her day skidded to a halt when she saw the object on the countertop. The coffee mug stood right where she had left it. Untouched. Her bag slipped out of her hand, but Vera hardly noticed. Her chest felt tight and the weight of sorrow she had spent the day ignoring crashed down on her shoulders. Even though she wasn’t wet, she felt a chill rush over her body. She reached up toward her collarbone where her fingers found the thin chain. The dog tags shouldn’t feel as heavy as they did, but sometimes it felt like solid balls of metal were attached to the chain instead of the thin tags. However, it was the wedding band that felt like it was burning her skin. Vera squeezed her eyes shut and forced out a breath as her fingers traced over the elevated text on the tags. It took a few moments of forced breaths before she was able to move again. She headed right to the counter, dumped the mug out into the sink, and then opened the fridge, pulling out the familiar bottle. She could almost hear his disapproval in her head, but a few sips was the only thing that would temporarily take her mind off the fact that she’d soon have to fall asleep in a bed that would never be warm again.
Summer Camp by Rudy Malcom
On Mondays, we ate crumbling challah our teacher brought from temple. Its taste echoed like ancient ink through the hut, transcendental. Her hair was dyed like ember chiggers; it glowed a copper red below the light that oozed down through the glassy roof. You’ll read your nature poems after walking,” she said. “Let’s embark!” We ambled down the muddy trails and followed our dear maverick. Our pencils cut like quilled machetes. We searched for sylvan muses and flipped through the trees’ feathered pages; the branches harbored messages. I found a spider’s woven palace, a sound and meaning podium on each abandoned gossamer. I’d written my first poem.
Blue
by Emery Buckner-Wolfson
Aileen Zhou
by Jessie Kanacharoen
The Ginkgo Tree by Rudy Malcom The sky is drooped over the cobblestone, as chalky white as rotten apple flesh. Inside this alley stands one ginkgo tree, a living sallow fossil shaking leaves to passersby—city dwellers move through, suit jacket linings gilded with stained sweat. Misshapen maidenhair fruits on the branch, reeking putrid, teeter to concrete ground. I watch men nonetheless consume the fruits, reminding me of roasted suckling pigs. Then the model enters. I photograph this woman for the men, salivating like tar that flows out of melting cameras. She’s strutting, cigarette held loosely by one hollow hand. Ashen vapors linger in her place. Porcelain leaves for teeth show signs of autumn, eroding potholes beneath two withered lips, miming ancient flowers. With every step, haggard, she trembles more: her black stilettos furnish fawn-like legs. And into mildewed ginkgo fruits she falls, dropping down like skylines of enamel.
Venomous Cloud by Grace Lee
Evolution
Ghana by Emery Buckner-Wolfson
Snow White by Nikki Garcia I’m on my way to see a girl, she’s some streets down, the sum of which I don’t know. Her lips, stained red, stain cigarettes, their butts, and my lips, red. I’ve known her for some time, when I go to her, she rhymes with the words of the poets who visit her at night. The red doesn’t come from lipstick, from a bullet shaped tube. she brought an apple to her mouth stained Red Ingrid Marie, by you. She brought it to her lips, inhaled its hue, shook her head, handed it back to you. Your intentions were Red Devil, she noticed right away. She told me this fairytale on a cold and sunny day. Like her. Cold like snowflakes that vary in shape and temperature, all of them are freezing, none like her. Sunny like hot waves, reflecting her elusive image, rippling and splashing to hold her attention for a minute. Her intentions aren’t marred by the blood on her lips, on her teeth, on the warmth of her cheeks. she told me, she told you, she loves you
like a wave that comes back to a shore that pushes her away. You responded with a fruit, “it’s forbidden”, you made clear. She frowned at tainted words, she did not want to hear. I know that taste, I said, with a crinkle in my brow. I know the bitter taste of sour grapes that I have found. And I found that they’re not sour to the people who can reach through the branches and the leaves that live just underneath. I’m on my way to see a girl whose lips are cherry red to prevent the Snow White thoughts freezing heartbreak in her head.
Mirror
by Jessie Kanachoren
Monet, Reproduction by Amanda Rose Kaufman
Escape Attempt #7 by Grace Lee
Commute
By Sashinya DeSilva He walked into the subway as he did every weekday morning. He patiently waited for those who were on the subway to get off and then calmly strode in and checked for available seating. If a seat was open, which there usually was that early in the morning, he would sit down but then make sure there weren’t any pregnant women or old men or disabled people who needed the seat more than he did. If everyone around him was perfectly capable of standing on their own, he would relax, put in his headphones, and zone out until he got to work. He liked to think of himself as chivalrous in some small way, him potentially giving up his seat on the subway, one of those good habits that people like himself didn’t ever really need to be taught. He felt the best about himself in his early morning commutes and was about to put his headphones in when a young woman walked in. His palms were instantly soaked with sweat at the recognition of her: wild, dark hair he had gotten lost in and eyes so pretty they had seduced him without makeup. He thanked God for the miracle of her not seeing him. She was standing, fingers barely grazing the silver pole, with her back towards him. She quietly chatted with an elderly woman who was seated right next to her. If he turned his head, he may have been able to hear her voice again but every muscle in his body was tensed as if that would make him invisible. “I’m Sara, no H,” she had said in a very different voice, he imagined, than the one she was using with her elderly companion. “Michael. I’m Michael, with all the usual letters.” He had smiled his drunk smile and was now cringing as he remembered how stupid he looked when he was drunk. Sara with no H wasn’t drunk at all, he remembered, and that was very important to him. She wasn’t at all and when he bought her first drink of the night, she had glanced down at his wedding ring as if she’d known it was there all along. When she held his hand, she had twisted the ring around his finger, a move that should have made him feel guilty but only made him harder. He was drunk and she wasn’t and she had ordered the cab to take them back to her place. These were facts he pounded into his own brain, and he knew that if anyone tapped him on the shoulder, they would come spraying out of his mouth, a strange sort of mantra for the whole subway compartment to hear.
As he pounded those important details of that night into himself, other facts arose: his wife, their children, and his love for their life. He had never been the sort of person who was afraid of commitment. When he had said yes to marriage and to children and to a job that made him leave his house at 5 in the morning, he had truly meant it and still did not regret it, so much so that he even amazed himself. On the night that he met Sara with no H, he was not upset at Natalie or irritated with his children or even angry about being passed over for promotion. He thought of Natalie in the same way he thought of their home. They had history together, supporting each other, improving on each other, raising their children in the most loving environment. Perhaps, that wasn’t the most romantic way to think of the woman he had been with since college. But still, he did not hate her in the way some of his colleagues hated their wives. He never complained about dry spells (she had created an amazing calendar system in which they would have sex at least once a week), and he didn’t ever call her a bitch or fat or wish she were dead, all real sentiments expressed by his friends during their lunch break. Even if Natalie did gain weight or stopped having sex with him, he didn’t think himself capable of hating her. She was the woman who had made him a husband and a father, titles he wore with pride on the pictures on his desk and on cheesy mugs and even on Facebook. The subway reached another stop, and Sara with no H still had not gotten off. As other people in the subway compartment had started to pile out, she grabbed a seat next to the elderly woman, totally engrossed in their conversation. What they could possibly have in common totally mystified him. With his fists clenched and his eyes glued to the floor, he remembered her apartment. They were kissing by the time they had reached her door, him clumsily shoving his tongue wherever it would fit, her graciously accepting all of it. She had put her hand on his chest to stop him for a moment while she opened up her door. As soon as he passed through that doorway, he knew they would be having sex. In the haziness of that night, he remembered that thought being so clear it was as if it had its own sound. The thought had no guilt or pleasure attached to it but bore the singular certainty that it was true.
She had a tattoo on her right shoulder. On the subway, underneath her shirt and her black blazer, it was there, he was sure of it. It wasn’t a picture of anything but was instead a set of words. He remembered the font was simple and black. He remembered asking her about it. “Wow. That’s so cool. That thing, on your shoulder. What does it mean?” She had answered him in between kissing his neck, but he could not shake the drunken fuzziness from those moments and remember her answer or even what the tattoo said. He did not think about his wife until it was over, until he was putting his clothes and shoes back on to leave her place. He thought of his wife fast asleep, having put the kids to bed because it was her night, with the TV still on. He fell asleep about an hour after she did and was always the one who would turn it off. He wondered if she had called him. He did not check his phone and lied to Sara with no H, telling her that it had died and if she wouldn’t mind calling a cab for him, please. She did this without any follow up questions. They waited for the cab in silence, and he was able to capture some details of her apartment while he sobered up. Her place was surprisingly clean. No dirty clothes were strewn about as he had expected. She was apparently the type of person who could put clothes that needed to be washed directly in the hamper with no lag period. There were no stains of any kind on her couch or kitchen counter or on the floor. He asked her how often she cleaned her apartment. Very often, she said. I clean when I’m nervous, she added. He told her that he knew someone like that. Of course, that someone was Natalie and he was glad she hadn’t asked him to elaborate. On her fridge, she had pinned up to-do lists, but his tired, still somewhat drunk mind skipped over all the words and went straight to the pictures. The largest one was of her hugging another attractive, older woman who must have been her mother. They were both dressed well, with the older woman in a slightly more conservative outfit. There was also a postcard that he distinctly remembered: Missing the sunshine yet? Move back here, it’s so beautiful. We miss you. -Sandra and Evan. She told him Sandra was her little sister and Evan was her husband. She said they lived in San Francisco and had two dogs and were the happiest people she had ever met. She didn’t say any of it with resentment but instead seemed to glow when she spoke about them. Just then, the gravity of the situation was beginning to hit him and he wasn’t
drunk smiling anymore. She quickly noticed this and shut up about her sister’s perfect marriage. The cab will be here any minute now, she said after a long stretch of silence. Right, yeah, okay. The words fumbled out of his mouth as if he were still drunk. As the cab arrived, some part of him was still desperately searching for some flaw, some damage that would explain why this woman would knowingly sleep with a married man. He knew he would find it if he had more time to search the apartment, to scour it for the secrets that Sara with no H had tried to hide behind good cleaning habits and a happy family. He had first searched for any obvious signs of addiction. Perhaps she was on drugs and had such a high tolerance that she could fake being sober. He’d seen that sort of behavior lots of times on documentaries he watched before falling asleep. Right after sex, he had used her bathroom and had gone through her medicine cabinet. There were no large amounts of pain medications or suspicious bags of substances. He then thought that it wasn’t an addiction but another sort of mental illness, some horrific monster inside of her that caused her to self-destruct and go to a bar and have sex with a married man she had never met. It was going to be something he had heard of: depression, bipolar disorder, maybe even schizophrenia. The pill bottle, he imagined, would list whatever mental illness she had right on its label. When she was in the bathroom, he stuck his head under the bed and quietly ransacked through her drawers and her nightstand but only came up with a slightly full bottle of aspirin. Another possibility he had considered, no matter how much it made his stomach turn to even have the thought, was that she had been sexually abused or had her innocence ripped from her at an early age. From the pictures he had seen on her fridge and around her apartment, she had been a beautiful little girl who had developed somewhat early. Perhaps when she was only in her school years, men from the streets had voiced what they could do to her, had grabbed at her even when she looked terrified, had just wanted to take whatever piece of her they wanted at the moment. He had seen this sort of behavior also, not just on TV, but in his regular life. While he never defended anyone, he would like to think that if he ever saw anything extreme, he would beat the criminal down and save the girl from any pain or trauma. While the signs of sexual abuse would be much less obvious, he still combed through her phone conversations (she did not password lock it for some reason) and checked her Google calendar but there were no therapy appointments or doctors on speed dial on her phone or any mention of those sorts of issues.
Had he found anything, any addiction or mental illness or sexual abuse or even an abnormal amount of male numbers in her contacts, he would have known exactly what to say. He would first confront her about it calmly, holding up whatever convincing piece of evidence he had found. She would be furious, her pretty eyes glowing like balls of black fire, and deny it, asking how he even got those things. How dare you snoop in my own home, she would yell. He would let her have her little tantrum until the shouting turned to crying as it inevitably would. The sobs would break through, her body heaving with sorrow she only now fully felt, her covering her face so that all he saw was a pair of hands surrounded by her wild hair. He would take her in his arms the way he held his children when they cried after a well-deserved time-out or spanking. In his arms, without any words from his end, she would grieve until she fell asleep, her broken body and heart grateful for the rest. After all, deep wounds cannot be treated properly if they are being constantly exposed to the environment and shuttled around to bars and married men, and he would be giving her that cessation she had deeply needed. As the subway neared his stop, his breath got shorter and shorter, his palms so sweaty that he didn’t even bother wiping them on his pants. He realized that if she did not get off at this stop, he would have to pass her. The elderly woman had left and she was now seated on the seat right next to the door, staring at her phone. Why would she even be here? On this early in the morning, on this particular route? His mind was running fast, the way it did when he had a fever or when his wife had confronted him the next morning after the night with Sara with no H. His mind was running fast and whatever was the first thing he thought of was a thing that had to be true. Sara with no H had followed him back to his house and then on his walk to the subway station. She was going to point at him, say there’s the married man who seduced me, twisting the story for those in the subway compartment to hear. She would humiliate him in the one place he most acted on his chivalry, where he received grateful smiles from pregnant women and old men and disabled people and was their hero even if only for a moment. No, no, no, he would shout in protest as the faces around him became judgmental. She’s not saying what really happened, she’s lying, she’s a liar. She seduced me! She likes sleeping with married
men because she’s an alcoholic. She slept with me because she has depression and bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. She took me to her place and fucked me because she hates men and the way they had wanted to fuck her all her life. He would say all those things because they would all be true and no one could tell him any different. When the subway reached his stop, Sara with no H got up and stood in front of the doorway to get off. He allowed a few other people to get by him so that by the time he got off the subway, there was more than enough distance between them. Sara with no H in the sunlight looked different than she had in the bar or at her apartment or even in his periphery vision in the dim light of the subway. She walked confidently, her clothes attractive but professional, her tan skin almost golden, and her heels clacking on the sidewalk in a this-is- who-I- am-deal- with-it strut. She used her work ID to swipe into his workplace, and he wondered what branch of their very large company she worked for. He stood there, numb and frozen, as she clacked into their workplace, men and women rushing around him to get to their jobs on time. He felt his world cracking, parts of the sky and the sidewalk opening up, cracks that were supposed to be in Sara with no H but they had somehow surfaced around him. They hurt him, these cracks. He walked into work as he did every weekday morning. It was the world around him that had fallen to its knees.
Wisps by Grace Lee
Masthead Editors-in-Chief Alyssa Mefford Thaara Shankar Prose Editor Alex Houck Layout Editors Omolara Uthman Emery Buckner-Wolfson Art Editor Victoria Yeh Treasurer Saena Sadiq Marketing Director Christine Song
Special thanks to the members of our poetry, prose, and art committees!
Spring 2018