VOLUME VII | SUMMER 2022 | WITNESS | A national magazine of literary arts, faith, and culture
SUMMER 2022 | BELMONT STORY REVIEW 3 FOREWORD 5 POETRY 8 Blue Delphinium 9 Cello Song FICTION 10 Access Control POETRY 30 My Father’s Engagement Toast 32 Since You’ve Been Away 34 Walking with Mama FICTION 36 The Forgotten POETRY 49 Triple Amputee Boogie Woogie NONFICTION 50 Syrian Women POETRY 65 Sweaters Over Saris FICTION 66 The Whitest White Shirt CONTRIBUTORS 80 EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR Sara Wigal CO-MANAGING EDITORS Tiffany Alexander Laura Huie COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR SUBMISSIONS COORDINATOR Audrey Harper Olivia Walker ART DIRECTORS SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS COPY EDITORS Kendall Miller Lauren Campbell Rhena Curran Claire Gurley Ruthie Helfer Kailee Lingelbach Kylie Frye Renée Dusseau Phoebe Bloomfield Sarah MaddieLawsonGrimes POETRY EDITORS PUBLICISTS Sophie Slusher Megan Rolapp Maddy Hicks Matti Churakos Josie MargotMontrosePierson Anja Reese FORMER MANAGING EDITOR Richard Sowienski Email: belmontstoryreview@gmail.com © 2022 Copyright Belmont University [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]
Mindfulness is a personal interest of mine that I have brought into my classrooms this year both anecdotally and through some formal research endeavors. Mindfulness can help its practitioners to release ideas and habits that aren’t supporting good health in a variety of ways. When practicing mindfulness, we simultaneously observe our experiences and live them, which makes it easier to deconstruct our own behavior. We uncover a difference between our thoughts and ourselves, making the passage of time and that which fills it up impersonal, and therefore easier to either accept or shed. In other words, we can change.
[ FOREWORD ]
It is a risky system, but so far failproof. There is magic in the way writers and our tastes communicate with one another in the aether, resulting in a splendid and unique volume of work with thematic content different from issues before. As we read through our finalized submissions this spring, we noticed that many of them dealt with characters observing their worlds. This looking was active, and not mere bystanding. A deep presence of sympathy and awareness seemed to permeate.
IInstead, after we’ve completed our reading period for the year and settled on the pieces we wish to publish, I decide with the managing editors what theme has presented itself to us in the new crop of writing.
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Mindfulness is a type of metacognition that allows us to understand this moment is only now, and the next moment will pass just as quickly. In doing so, we can separate how we feel about our experiences from the experiences themselves. When we do this, we can decide if we want to keep feeling those things, or not. Mindfulness can help us be both the active agent in and the observer of our lives. Depending on what moment we are in and whether we judge it a joyful or sorrowful experience; for t may bear reminding readers that at Belmont Story Review, we do not put out a call for submissions with a specific theme in mind.
The prose pieces in this volume all present ways that wrongdoing and our personal responsibilities interact. In Syrian Women, the author lives side-by-side with the pain and the joy of the women she works with—she is an invited outsider. In Access Control, the speaker stumbles upon an act of workplace misogyny through observational AI technology, and the inappropriate way her company handles the event. The Forgotten is a shining example of intersectional feminism—a Mexican-American woman becomes obsessed with the epidemic disappearance of Native American women in her town. She holds a vigil to make sure the missing are not forgotten. Finally, in The Whitest White Shirt, we the readers play witness to a loving sacrifice while our protagonist wrestles with his personal responsibility for accepting this act and what that means for the woman he loves.
Every prose piece and poem in this seventh volume of Belmont Story Review, Witness, finds its writers encountering their worlds through various acts of witnessing. To witness is more than bystanding or observing. A legal witness does not just recount facts they have learned but shares their personal connection, memory, or expertise on the subject at hand. Witnessing is intimate. Writers are witnesses to the Inworld.this volume you will find three mourning poems blessing the memories of those lost (Since You’ve Been Away, Walking with Mama, My Father’s Engagement Toast). Two poems reveal inanimate witnesses to the characters’ lives (Sweaters over Saris, Cello Song). Triple Amputee Boogie Woogie calls on the reader to witness the devastation of veteran sacrifice. In Blue Delphinium, the speaker realizes that their observation of a flower is a mindful celebration, an intimate witnessing of the passage of time.
Happy reading, Sara Wigal Editor example, we may appreciate or bemoan the fleeting nature of today. An afternoon in your garden feels shorter than the same amount of time spent in Writerstraffic.frame the stories of our lives—the narratives they create can shift our understanding and our interpretation of our experiences, much like how mindfulness functions. The lens of the speaker can change our opinions about ideas or historical events, about how we feel, and about how we know others. We have a natural distance between the story and ourselves, which supports deep thinking. But writers are active viewers and communicators, not simple voyeurs recording their plots or personal experiences.
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With your reading of this journal, you bear witness with us, the staff of Belmont Story Review, to a wonderful semester of student editor and faculty collaboration. Together we stand as witnesses to the publishing success of the ten contributors.
Cello Song By: Ben Macnair It is silent, to begin with, drowned out by a loud man, in a louder suit, selling religion. Soon those notes are heard, the melisma of conversation, mixes with Bach, older, familiar sounds playing alongside judgemental words from older books. I would rather listen to the Cello, than the white noise of quotes from someone selling something that causes so much dissonance. For a moment, I know how the Cello feels, ignored for so long, overlooked by louder, flashier noises, and I know why the cellist plays, she wants to remind someone, somewhere, that the world is still a beautiful place. ] Blue Delphinium
[ POETRY
By: Michael S. Glaser Reading in my chair by the window I notice from the corner of my eye, a small petal drop from the stem of a blue delphinium to the table where it lies in a shimmering pool of light that tells me I have just witnessed a singular moment of letting go, a reminder that every moment is like this particular moment — this petal that had never dropped anywhere before and never will again.
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[ POETRY ]
T read the screenshot on her iPhone in the other. His back was bowed over as though in deep study. He raised his eyebrows. She watched as he read the screenshot a second time. The arch of his back grew deeper. He shook his head like a disappointed father. Finally, Obi looked up. “Well,” he said, then cleared his throat. “This is...deeply disturbing.”
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Tessa, whose shoulders had been tensed in anticipation of his response, felt herself relax. In her eleven months working at Bastion, she had essa watched Obi Adeyemi absentmindedly rub his temple with one hand as he Control Mackenzie Lane face search … find me a dirty little slut lol dude you better hope her bf never sees this you better hope your wife never sees this secret’s safe here fellas
Access
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Tessa hesitated, embarrassed by the juvenile nature of the channel’s moniker, even though she hadn’t been responsible for coming up with it. “RawObiDogs.”letout a long exhale and shook his head. “So you saw the name and decided to check out what was being said in the channel.”
ued. “Since I’m a super admin, I’m also able to see private channels, and I honestly would have ignored this one if it weren’t for the name.”
Bastion sold their cameras to schools, federal contractors, manufacturers, malls, and any kind of business or organization that needed security, which was everyone. After raising $200 million in funding for their Series C, they had since expanded to access-control systems, fire alarms, and carbon monoxide monitors. Their end goal was to encompass the entire security infrastructure of a building, starting with the one they currently occupied. Their mission statement: To make the world a safer place. “I appreciate you coming to me about this,” said Obi. “Have you told anyone else?” never come to Obi with a problem before. Obi was the VP of People Oper ations, which tech start-ups in Silicon Valley had determined was a more approachable way of saying Human Resources. Tessa’s conversations with Obi had always been casual. Though he was her boss’s boss, about one leapfrog away from the C-Suite, he always made time for their biweekly one-on-ones, which would involve strolling to the boba tea place around the corner followed by some friendly conversation about their personal lives. “Yeah. I thought so too.” Obi slid her phone back to her across the conference room table. “Thank you for showing this to me. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for you to see your coworkers saying such … graphic things about the women at this company.”
“Like I said, I wouldn’t have checked it out if it weren’t for the name, since it’s private,” said Tessa, wondering if she had made a mistake by coming to Obi. Maybe the worse offense was entering a private channel without permission, not the content of what was inside. “I saw the thumb nail from our security camera footage, the one you see in my screenshot, of Maeve. And all the things the guys were saying underneath. And I scrolled up a little more. I saw there were more thumbnails of other women at this company. More comments from the guys. Sometimes they even drew on them.” Tessa suddenly felt very warm underneath the bright, filtered light of the conference room. She wanted to remove her sweater, but the sub ject matter of the conversation compelled her to keep it on. “I know there’s a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment at Bastion. And since the guys were using our product to take the pictures, it just felt . . . like some thing I should bring to your attention.” Surveillance cameras were Bastion’s flagship product. They were highly intuitive, technically remarkable instruments. By simply uploading a pho tograph of a person’s face into the Face Search function, you could pull up all instances in which that person had been detected in-frame. The camer as picked up clothing and color and even temperature. All of this informa tion was stored in the cloud, accessible to anyone who had the password.
Tessa nodded. “Let’s start from the beginning.” Obi turned on his digital notepad and scrolled to a fresh page. “How did you come across this Chatter channel?” Chatter was Bastion’s internal instant messaging system. All employ ees had the ability to create “channels,” which were dedicated spaces for groups of people to discuss specific projects or topics. They could make these channels public for anyone to join, or they could restrict them to a select group of employees. “I was asked to go through all the public channels and bucket them into different topics,” Tessa explained. “So, put all the channels having to do with personal interests like hiking or dogs into a Personal Inter ests bucket. Or any channels having to do with location like East Bayers or South Bayers into a Locations bucket. The thought was that it might be nice for new hires to have a map of what channels already existed instead of having to scroll through all of them.”
It was Tessa’s boss, the culture director of Bastion, who had assigned this project to her. An eastern European woman with a no-fucks-given attitude, she had been dubbed the “office mom,” supplying her progeny with a never-ending assortment of organic snacks, ethically sourced cof fee, kombucha, and beer. If a sales manager wanted a speaker system in the restrooms, she procured it. If a software engineer wanted beanbags in the wellness center, she called up her furniture dealer and had bean bags shaped like anime characters delivered the next day. She was one of the earlier employees of Bastion, poached from the company that had acquired the CEO’s last startup for a cool $800 million. “So that’s what I was doing when I found the channel,” Tessa contin
“What was the name?” Obi grimaced, as though bracing himself against a heavy object being lobbed toward his head.
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As part of her role, Tessa had been tasked with planning company par ties, perhaps because her restaurant background suggested she might be skilled at acquiring good food and alcoholic beverages. It wasn’t difficult to please the employees of Bastion. For weekly happy hours, she filled massive YETI coolers with ice, IPAs, and hard seltzers, and replenished Restoration Hardware bar carts with expensive brands of whiskey and te quila. For the Series C celebration, she cleaned out Costco of their Veuve Clicquot, and when the CEO requested a twelve-liter bottle of Dom Péri gnon, she called every liquor store in the Bay Area until she located one at a warehouse in San Leandro. It weighed as much as a small child and Tessa shook her head. “You’re the first person.” “Great . . . great.” Obi folded his hands together. “Let’s keep it that way for now until I get a response from leadership. Could you shoot me over that“Sure,”screenshot?”saidTessa, turning on her phone. “Do you want me to email it to you?”“No, no.” There was a flicker of nervousness in Obi’s eyes. “If you could text it to me, that would be great.” Obi planted his hands on the table and stood up, signaling to Tessa that the meeting was over. It had lasted less than ten minutes. “Thank you, Tessa. I’ll circle back soon with next steps.”
actress, whose affinity for whippits left the floor littered with canisters, the younger and better-looking women getting the parts she wanted. Her Instagram news feed was an endless barrage of former classmates living out more sumptuous and successful lives than her own. Lavish European vacations. Engagement rings swollen with diamonds. Coachella. She was twenty-nine years old and felt as though she was approaching the preci pice of thirty with great haste and great disappointment.
It wasn’t like this when she worked in restaurants. There wasn’t a ze ro-tolerance policy. There wasn’t an employee handbook. There wasn’t an HR department or People Operations or whatever you call a designat ed group of people who are supposed to keep employees safe from one another. There wasn’t so much flagrant spending, so much extravagant wealth masquerading as innovation, as making the world better, safer, easier, faster. There was no culture. Restaurant culture was culture. That is, it moved at breakneck speed in a way that there was no time to absorb whatever abuse, verbal or otherwise, had been hurled at you. It was a ca maraderie shared among the servers, who would get hammered together at the nearest dive bar after a double shift.
It was an endless carousel of new faces, new orders to fill, new spe cials to memorize. It was male customers flirting with her, drunk on cheap wine, and her having to pretend to be nice to them so they would leave her a good tip. It was mothers and fathers pelting her with insults for bringing out an undercooked steak. No wonder she’s just a waitress. It was all very blatant, the bad things she saw people do, the bad things she saw in people. If someone from a tech startup worked at a place like a restaurant, they would likely describe the culture as toxic. But that’s just how it was. There was no recourse. You lived with it or you left. That was why she couldn’t believe her good fortune when she land ed the job at Bastion. For seven years she had been living in Los Ange les doing the starving-artist thing. She wanted to be an actress, but she mostly waited tables, occasionally landing a bit part in a commercial or student film. As she neared the end of her twenties, Tessa was beginning to wonder if any of it was worth it: the grueling double shifts, the student loans she would never pay off, the room she shared with another aspiring
So when her mother crawled into bed one February evening and couldn’t get herself back out again, Tessa felt a new calling had been de cided for her. What that calling was exactly, she wasn’t sure, but it would have to entail a steady paycheck that could support two people living in Berkeley, California, the location of her mother’s two-bedroom apart ment. Tessa would learn very quickly that getting a job was going to be challenging in an area where full-time positions were plentiful for only a select Java-literate few. She had been interviewing for four months at any company in the Bay Area that would give her unconventional résumé a passing glance when Bastion offered her a position as their office manag er. They told her that they saw something in her. Creativity. Resilience. The ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment. Tessa accepted the job on the spot, eyes watering at the salary, which was more than twice the yearly amount she made as a server. Over the last eleven months, Tessa had enjoyed working at Bastion. She felt appreciated and well paid and a part of something bigger than herself. When the company raised their Series C and was awarded a $2.3 billion valuation, she rode high on the fumes of unicorn cachet. She had a stake in the company after all. A whole one hundred shares. We’re all going to be millionaires, the sales director told her during her interview. Bastion is a rocket ship.
was a former sales rep who worked at Bastion before Tessa’s time. He was not well liked for whatever reason, and after he quit, it became a tradi tion at company parties to print out photos of his face and tape them to Popsicle sticks, which the sales guys would parade around while chanting
The sales director, with his meticulously botoxed face that exuded at once trustworthiness and boyish charm, clapped Tessa on the shoulder and asked her how her day was going. He placed a bowl of something pre made and keto on the counter. There was a frenetic energy about him, a jitteriness masked by well-rehearsed confidence.
“That’s awesome.” Tessa felt like a gauge was closing around her heart. She wondered if the sales director knew what she had seen. What he had written. What she had reported. “Can’t believe end of quarter is in just a few Shedays.”saw his eyes flick over to the microwave. A software engineer had been reheating a carton of bone broth for the last three minutes, and it was finally unoccupied. “Always sneaks up on you, huh?” The sales direc tor gave her a grin so white she bet it sparkled in the dark. “This team is unstoppable though. I have a good feeling about this quarter. I think we’re going to break some records.” took up the entirety of her Honda Civic’s back seat. But Tessa’s magnum opus had to be the multi-day off-site she organized in Las Vegas, a rager disguised as a corporate retreat that culminated in a champagne-soaked rave at one of Vegas’s hottest night clubs and racked up a $100,000 bill. Tessa stood at her desk, unable to concentrate after her meeting with Obi. As she color-coded emails instead of answering them, chalking the day up to being a wash, a sales rep with sleepy eyes approached her to let her know that the Nespresso machine wasn’t working. Tessa followed him into the kitchen where he explained, in a sheepish tone, how coffee wasn’t pouring into his mug after he pressed the brew button. After a few min utes of inspecting the errant appliance, Tessa discovered the issue: he had forgotten to insert the Nespresso pod. The rep rubbed the back of his neck and apologized to her profusely. It had been a long day for him, he explained. It was a quarter till noon. “Nice one, 4 a.m.!”
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A group of sales reps standing nearby broke out into laughter. One of them, a big red-headed guy who wore a class ring, gave him a hardy clap on theTheback.young rep had been dubbed the nickname “4 a.m.” due to his pen chant for being the first employee to arrive at the office every day. Each morning, his arrival was pulled from the main entrance’s security footage and posted to the public-sales channel on Chatter. It was met with digi tal applause, emojis of clanking pints of beer, and frat chants of “4 a.m., 4 a.m., 4 a.m.” He had become less of a human employee and more of a morning ritual at a certain point. Wiping down oat milk that had been spilled on the countertop, Tessa reminded herself that she really did enjoy her time at Bastion. Enough so that she dismissed the less palatable aspects of the company culture. Culture. It’s not like she was blind to it. After all, she was the most sober person at every company party. She saw the white powder being passed around in plain sight of the C-Suite. She saw the CEO and founder goad ing on the raucousness like the conductors of an orchestra gone wild, fat tening up their moneymakers with alcohol and vice and everything nice. She saw that the women, who encompassed less than 15 percent of the sales team, were all white, thin, young, pretty, and childless. It was at the company barbecue, hosted in the backyard of the founder’s giant hacienda-style house, where she saw her first “Krug-ing.” Michael Krug
secret’s safe here fellas
“Oh, it’s going well. How about yourself?” She lied to him with a smile. “Can’t complain, can’t complain,” he said, pupils fully dilated. “Have some monster deals to close before the end of the quarter. Just gotta grease ’em a little more.”
“MI-CHAEL KRUG! MI-CHAEL KRUG!” On one of those photos of Michael Krug, someone had smeared vermillion all over his face like offensive war paint or a bloody gash. It was like a scene from Lord of the Flies come to life. Except instead of a deserted island, the boys were stranded in a gated neighborhood in Palo Alto. Tessa saw all of this, but had convinced herself these were merely foi bles in an otherwise cushy situation. After all, she was finally paying off her student loans and credit card debt. She had added her mother to her company-sponsored health insurance plan. This health insurance was paying for her mother’s therapy, which in turn was helping her mother come back to herself. She even had some disposable income that she was putting toward a summer vacation to Greece. Life was good. Bastion was good to her. If it got a little bro-y, so be it. She had handled far worse when she worked in restaurants. At least there hadn’t been any victims.
A loud thunk of hard plastic against steel.
“Yeah, but you have kids, dude. I’m not ready for that suburban family life shit yet.” The image of North Face Vest’s cotton candy-haired children filled He patted her on the back like a golden retriever and moved himself and his keto bowl over to the vacant microwave. Tessa couldn’t help catch ing a glimpse of his thick platinum wedding band, shimmering under the bright kitchen lights. She remembered when two months ago she had de livered a bottle of Dom to his desk, courtesy of the CEO and founder, after he returned from his honeymoon in Maui. face search... find me a dirty little slut
A siren wailed distantly a few blocks down the street, and the three of them stood together in politely awkward silence, waiting for it to pass. As the ambulance approached, its banshee song ringing in her ears, Tessa barely noticed that someone was screaming in tandem just behind her.
“You okay, Tessa?”
Two sales guys from Bastion strode up next to her, one wearing a white Nike baseball cap embroidered with the company’s curvy navy-blue “B” logo in place of the swoop and the other wearing a fleece North Face vest with the “B” sewn over his heart. The musk of their expensive amber cologne and aftershave cut through the noxious odors of bodily fluids, the sweat and shit and pee. lol dude you better hope her bf never sees this Not sure whose eyes to meet, Tessa tried to muster her cheerful dis
position. Being nice to a person you hate is a skill after all, one she had mastered as a server. Even when a customer was a giant asshole, spitting insults at her for delivering the wrong drink, she still managed to put a smile on her face.
The air moved to her right.
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Tessa nodded and said thank you, though she didn’t know why she was thanking“Crazyhim.fucker,” said North Face Vest, rolling his eyes. “They really need to start shipping these meth heads back to Reno.” “Dude, I can’t believe I pay four thousand a month for a one bedroom to live in this shit hole,” said Nike Hat.
North Face Vest grinned. “That’s why you’ve gotta move to South Bay, buddy. It’s cheaper, cleaner, and you don’t have to worry about these homeless fucks breaking into your car.”
Tessa had brought chicken salad from home, but the thought of eating lunch at her desk no longer appealed to her. Fresh air sounded nice. She had been feeling a little warm after all. So through the white space-age hallway lined with Bastion security cameras, down the elevator that de scended from the twentieth floor so fast she could feel her ears pop, out the silver-plated revolving door, and into the streets of San Francisco’s heart she went. Tessa began heading toward the boba place she frequented with Obi. As she waited at the corner of Kearney and Sutter for a walk signal, she noticed in her peripheral vision a homeless man lying motionless on the pigeon shit-spattered sidewalk. His head, matted with wild, grease-caked hair, was pressed face-first into the pavement, and his arms were stretched out before him as though in prayer or prostration. The air around him was stale and stunk of urine. Next to him, a small, ancient-looking radio played ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” in sharp, tinny notes. If it weren’t for his long and intermittent spells of animalistic moaning, Tessa would have wondered if the man was dead. She wondered what she would do if he was. Call the SFPD? A nonprofit dedicated to the plight of San Francisco’s homeless? “Hey, Tessa, what’s up?”
“This city is eating me alive! This city is eating me alive! This city—” He turned around, his animal-scared eyes locking with Tessa’s. Tessa froze, her amygdala empty of primal instinct. Her legs locked into place, ready to run or accept punishment. It wasn’t until one of the sales guys, North Face Vest, wrapped a protective arm around her and nudged her toward the crosswalk that the feeling returned to her legs again.
Tessa’s breath caught in her throat. She watched the homeless man, who just seconds before had been sprawled almost-dead on the sidewalk, lift a bright yellow street cone over his head and throw it a second time against the side of the ambulance with adrenaline-induced force. The driver of the ambulance shouted at him and drove off as the homeless man again picked up the street cone, lifted it over his head, and threw it in the absconding ambulance’s direction, just nicking the bumper. He wailed in desperate and winding words as ABBA sang in mirthful harmony about dancing and jiving and having the time of your life.
Bastion is the fastest-growing enterprise security company in Silicon Val ley with over— We’re pleased to offer you a 10 percent discount if you purchase with us in the next—Hopon a one-on-one demo with you to— Hello? Hello? As she and her boss approached Whale, the largest conference room on the sales floor, Tessa became very aware of the blood flowing through her veins, the rapid pump-pump-pump against the inside of her chest. She knew who she would be facing in the meeting before she even stood
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The founder looked at ease, unruffled, so in control of it all. Tessa wasn’t sure she had ever seen him exhibit anything less than a calm com posure, despite the fact that he had the most stake out of everyone in Bastion. He had chosen not to take a position at the company, preferring instead to assume the role of board member and chairman, even though he was present at the office every day and was on almost every interview panel. He was older—which, in Silicon Valley terms, meant he was in his forties—but he was one of the tech industry’s biggest Power players, hav ing made his first millions at twenty-two years old when his information security startup was acquired by a software company with a household name. He later founded an identity and access management company that resulted in one of the most lucrative mergers in Silicon Valley history. Bastion was his newest project, and it was no secret he was gunning for an IPO. The founder had been the CEO’s mentor at Stanford, and the running joke was that he was the true CEO. The sales reps idolized him like a god or a rock star, this man so pale and white-blonde you couldn’t tell where his hair ended and his skin began, whose nasal voice and bad style suggested he would have been the center of their ridicule had they been peers at university instead of his money-making minions. Obi cleared his throat. “We want to thank you for bringing the private Chatter channel to our attention, Tessa. We also want to assure you that we do not condone the language or content that was used in that chan nel, and we take employee misconduct very seriously.” He glanced over to Tessa’s mind. She remembered them blowing bubbles at the company barbecue, five-year-old twins in matching gingham dresses. They’re daddy’s girls. They love their daddy. It was such a beautiful summer day. you better hope your wife never sees this When Tessa returned to Bastion’s office, milky, sugary drink in hand, she found her boss waiting for her at her desk. Her facial expression was inscrutable, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. Tessa, who thought she was quite good at reading people, still hadn’t managed to figure this woman out in almost a year. “Tessa, you’re needed in Whale,” her boss said in greeting. With her vaguely menacing eastern European lilt, Tessa could picture this woman commanding a boardroom just as easily as slipping polonium into her enemy’s tea. “Oh, okay,” Tessa said, flustered. “Should I bring my laptop?” “No. Just yourself.” Her dark eyes flicked down to the cloudy milk tea clutched in Tessa’s hand. “That looks yummy.”
They walked next to each other down the river of linoleum floor be tween the standing desks, where sales reps pitched and pleaded with prospects and customers who hadn’t quite returned yet. There was always a heated, kinetic frenzy about those last few days of the quarter, during which reps became viscerally aware of how reduced they were to their numerical value. They fed off each other’s primordial energy, that need to survive, that need to win, that need to be the very best of the best. Like a symphony of over-confident wind instruments, their interchangeable lines, a pitch repeated so many times a day it had been burned into the inside of their skulls, produced a manic cadence.
outside the frosted glass doors. Why did she feel like she was in trouble? She reminded the anxious voices in her head that she hadn’t done anything wrong. If anything, she had done something helpful. She had helped root out something unsafe, the very antithesis of the company’s missionSittingstatement.attheconference room table and facing her as she entered was the CEO, the founder, and Obi. Tessa’s boss closed the door behind them and stationed herself behind the three men, leaning against the wall. Tessa knew instinctively that her place was at the seat across from them, at the dead center of their sharp-eyed gazes. She felt herself shaking ever so slightly as she lowered herself into the chair. The men half-smiled as they greeted“Wouldher.you like me to go ahead and start?” Obi asked, looking to the CEO and the founder. “Please do,” said the founder, his icy blue stare fixed on Tessa.
Tessa’s boss stared right at her, dark and unblinking. “No, I wouldn’t say so. Just guys being guys. Being stupid.”
The CEO and founder looked at her expectantly, their hands folded to gether, their faces twisted in openness and understanding. Behind them, her boss peered at her with her same dark, inscrutable expression, her
“A learning opportunity?” Tessa repeated this softly, dazed. “There will be disciplinary action,” the CEO interjected, in the assur ing tone one might use for an agitated horse. He had a slight accent, some kind of European, maybe Austrian, and mirrored the bravado of his men tor. “Like Obi said, Tessa, we took a long time discussing this situation. And we decided that significantly reducing the perpetrators’ stock options is a punishment equivalent to the offense committed.”
“Thank you, Obi,” the founder cut in, still looking and half-smiling at Tessa. He picked up a dry-erase marker in front of him. “Now, Tessa, look. What those guys said in that Chatter channel doesn’t make us proud. We’re just as upset as you are about it; I can guarantee that. These guys—” he made a long and languid motion with the marker in the general di rection of where the sales team sat—“they’re young. They’re immature. They still think they’re in the locker room. They see a pretty coworker and they’re just going to do what guys do. They’re going to talk about her. Is it juvenile? Sure. Totally. But it happens all the time, and no one gets hurt.” He shrugged his shoulders. He could have just as easily been discussing his lunch at the new Korean-Mexican fusion pop-up around the corner or the latest Malcolm Gladwell book. “Now, what they shouldn’t be doing,” the founder continued, a sub tle hardening in his voice, “is using the company’s product and internal messaging system to talk about her.” He stabbed the marker in the air to punctuate his words. “It puts everything we’ve built, everything that you and me and all of us have worked so hard for, in jeopardy. It’s stupid, to put it bluntly. I know we can all agree on that. But—” he spread his arms wide, the marker still clutched between his middle and forefinger. “That just means it’s a learning opportunity.”
The founder looked at Tessa and gestured to her boss as though to say See? She gets it. The CEO watched the exchange silently, a student taking mentalWasnotes.itjust Tessa, or were the lights above getting brighter, hotter? “So, Tessa, I’m super glad we’re all in agreement about what the next step looks like,” said the founder, tapping his closed fist against the pol the men seated next to him. Tessa couldn’t help noticing his eyes looked more tired, less shiny than when she had spoken with him that morning. “After taking considerable time to review and discuss the screenshots you showed me earlier today, we believe we’ve figured out a solution that will satisfy everyone involved.”
lips pressed together in anticipation for what could only be, what should only be, Tessa’s unabashed agreement. Tessa looked to Obi who wouldn’t look at her. His eyes were fixed on the dry-erase marker the founder had placed back on the table. “How does that sound to you, Tessa?” the founder leaned back in his chair. “I guess . . . I guess maybe I’m a little confused.” “Confused?” the founder blinked. “Isn’t what they did . . . I mean . . . it’s sexual harassment . . . which is a fireable offense. At least that’s what the employee handbook . . . says.” Tes sa knew how nervous she sounded, looked. She wished so badly she could be a stronger person, someone who could pound on the table and say, “No, no, no. That won’t do. That won’t do at all.”
The founder leaned forward, looking at Tessa like some sweet, dumb thing. “Of course, we have a no-tolerance policy for sexual harassment. We vehemently condemn it. But Tessa, do you really think what you saw in that channel qualifies as sexual harassment? As we all see it, sexual harassment entails someone experiencing the harassment. As in, there’s a very clear victim. We have a case here where a bunch of guys, who we can all agree weren’t exactly acting their age, were talking about their female colleagues in a private forum and using some pretty colorful language to describe them. But they weren’t saying these things to their female col leagues. And that’s the key difference here. They could have said these things to each other at a bar across the street or on a call in the privacy of their own homes. We’re not dealing with sexual harassment here. We’re dealing with inappropriate use of company equipment. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
There was something about the word “satisfy” that sat uncomfortably with her, like when something invisible and feathery brushes against the inside of your throat but isn’t strong enough to induce a cough.
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Tessa bit her lip. “Um—” “What do you think? Do you think it’s sexual harassment?” the founder addressed this question to Tessa’s boss, who had been ever so silent this whole time. Tessa wondered why she was even there.
The founder and CEO exited the conference room. Her boss trailed after them. She gave Tessa a cool smile and a nod. “Congratulations,” she said, before shutting the door behind her. It was just Tessa and Obi left, just as they had been at the start of the day when Tessa thought she was doing something good and right. She fingered the edge of the document, unsure where to even begin or what questions she needed to ask.
Tessa looked up at Obi, surprised. He had never been candid with her before. Everything he said to her was always perfectly packaged and me ticulous. Even when discussing their personal lives, he was very purpose ful with his words, as though verbally cleaning up any breadcrumbs that might attract unwanted guests. “I told them I thought they should all be terminated immediately for sexual harassment.” He could barely look at Tessa, so he looked just be yond her shoulder instead. “Unfortunately, they didn’t agree with my as sessment of the situation.” She watched his hands clench and unclench. “These guys are . . . they’re early employees, you know? You’ve got man agers, a director, all internally promoted, all some of the strongest players on the team.” As if on cue, a rock song blared from outside, which was followed by raucous cheers. It was a tradition for this song to play any time someone closed a deal that was over $50,000. The cheering and music culminat ed in the bang of a gong, whose heavy clang reverberated through the closed“We’redoors.really cutting it close this quarter,” he said, as the cheers died down. “Pipeline is lower than it’s been in company history. They thought terminating those guys . . . that it wouldn’t just lower morale, it might ished sheen of the conference room table, a custom piece shipped from Italy that cost nearly half of Tessa’s salary. “Obi, why don’t you tell Tessa what to expect from here?” At the sound of his name, Obi’s reverie was broken. He was momen tarily flustered, defeated-looking, the countenance of a person who has accepted that no matter how fast they run through the airport, they’re going to miss their flight. Slowly, he reached down to the backpack beside him and pulled out a manila folder. From this, he extracted a one-page document. He slid this across the table to Tessa. It was a contract, that much was clear. In big block letters at the top were written the words Bastion Non-Disparagement & Non-Disclosure Agreement, and below that, several short clauses in tightly packed ser ifed font that contained legal jargon like “tortious interference” and “no cooperation.” Other parts of the agreement didn’t exactly take a lawyer to interpret. Employee agrees to maintain in complete confidence the existence of this agreement . . . Employee agrees to refrain from any disparagement, def amation, libel, or slander . . . But it was the condition at the end, just above the space for her signature, that made Tessa’s eyes widen. “Tessa, you’ve been a very valuable employee here at Bastion,” said the CEO, assuming based on her reaction that she had gotten to the end. “We want you to know how much we appreciate everything you’ve done for this company. Now I know you’re coming up on your first year here. We all spoke about it—” he motioned to the founder, Obi, and her boss, “and we would like to offer you a promotion and a compensation adjustment. As you can see, you’ll be receiving a title bump to facilities manager, a signif icant raise in salary, and some additional shares, which, as you know, are going to be worth quite a lot in the near future.”
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Not missing a beat, the founder clapped his hands. “Great idea.” He stood up. “Tessa, let us know if you have any questions while you think it over. We’re really excited to see you grow here at Bastion.”
Tessa stared down at the 8.5 x 11 paper, its black-on-white text begin ning to swim before her eyes until the words were no longer words, but
The CEO stood next to him. “Thank you for coming to us with this, Tessa. We appreciate your commitment to Bastion’s success.”
lines scratched into other lines. Something primitive. Her mouth was dry. She felt “Anydizzy.questions? Need a pen?” Obi’s“I—I—”voice, resonant and measured, cut in. “Why don’t we give Tessa the rest of the day to think about it?”
“This isn’t what I would have wanted to happen.”
What they were offering Tessa wasn’t just a promotion and raise. It was financial security. Comfort. She could pay off all her debt, visit friends who had moved very far away, and order more than an appetizer and the house wine at a nice restaurant. She could send her mother to a nice re habilitation clinic, one with guided meditation practice and cucumber water and horse therapy. It was so much money. Too much money. That was the “Thepoint.agreement is really just a formality,” said the founder, shrugging his shoulders. “Pretty boilerplate stuff.”
Settling into the aged leather seats with their lattes, Tessa’s treat, they made polite and surface-level conversation, the type in which two people who are friendly but would never actually be friends outside of work toss tried-and-true topics back and forth to one another. Work. Pets. Weekend plans. Tessa and Maeve had never met one-on-one before, their previous interactions mostly brief and bubbly and in groups of other people. So it didn’t surprise Tessa, who was still working up the nerve to tell Maeve the real reason why she wanted to meet with her, that Maeve beat her to it. “So, you know I adore you, Tess,” said Maeve, brushing a strand of blonde balayage behind one ear. “But was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
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Tessa swallowed. That same tightening in her chest she had been feel ing on and off all day had returned. It was now or never. She opened the screenshot on her phone and handed it to Maeve, whose eyes widened as she registered the text and images before her. Tessa explained to Maeve, quickly and breathlessly, how she had come upon the Chatter channel. She impact the company making quota for the next few quarters. Of course, I don’t agree with them on this. The risk of the press getting ahold of this story would be way more devastating to the company than losing a few good sales guys.”
Tessa watched three little dots appear below her Chatter message, in dicating the person on the other side was typing. yeah! just finishing something up. meet you out front in 10?
“Hey, thanks for waiting!” Maeve strode up to Tessa, smiling. She was wearing a puffer vest and a beanie embroidered with the Bastion “B.”
Tessa hugged her arms around herself as she waited outside the en trance of Bastion’s building. As was typical of this particular San Francisco microclimate, it had gotten about ten degrees cooler in the last hour, and the subtle breeze had picked up to a full-blown wind. The sky had become a canopy of opaque gray mist.
These bursts of sound once gave her unbridled energy. Excitement. Pride. They made her see a future that was golden and glowy at the edges. Now, these sounds made her feel something else entirely. “Did you tell them that?” Obi lowered his gaze to the table. “I explained the risks. They had al ready convinced themselves this wasn’t a case of sexual harassment.”
“No worries,” said Tessa, smiling back. She hoped she exuded something akin to confidence and control, even though inside her heart wasTheyracing.walked to a local café a few blocks from the Bastion office, upon Tessa’s suggestion that they try their signature cardamom latte. But the real reason she wanted to go there was because Bastion employees rarely traveled that far for coffee, especially when they had an endless supply of it in their own kitchen. There was also a secluded, cozy little nook in the back where the indie music was just soft enough to facilitate an easy conversation and just loud enough to muffle their voices from prying ears.
Why didn’t you try harder? You’re the VP of People Operations, goddamn it! Tessa wanted to scream. As though he could hear what she was thinking, Obi looked at her. Really looked at her. And Tessa understood without him having to say it. During one of their one-on-ones, Obi had mentioned to Tessa that he was in the country on an H-1B visa. Tessa later looked up what this meant and understood it as a program that only allowed him to work in America as long as Bastion needed him. He was originally from Nigeria. His wife was still waiting for her work permit after thirteen months. Their two kids were enrolled in Redwood City’s public school system. “It’s a generous NDA,” Obi said, glancing at the paper in front of Tessa. “But at the end of the day, it’s your choice. Your ability to speak freely. I wouldn’t fault you for not signing it . . . but I wouldn’t judge you for signing it either.”Tessa was still staring at the agreement after Obi left the conference room. Cheers and music and celebratory screams broke out again from the outside. These bursts of sound once gave her unbridled energy. Ex citement. Pride. They made her see a future that was golden and glowy at the edges. Now, these sounds made her feel something else entirely. Something had broken. And in those swirling blocks of words before her, she saw a future she wasn’t sure she wanted anymore. hey are you free to grab a coffee?
“Actually, Mom, I have some really good news,” said Tessa, as she swiped herself into the building. “I just got a promotion.” told Maeve that other women were mentioned in the channel, but it had been deleted sometime after she reported it to Obi that morning. She apol ogized to Maeve for having to tell her like this, that she would understand if she was upset or angry, but that she would never be able to forgive herself if she didn’t at least warn her about what the guys who she worked with were doing, saying about her. Tessa told Maeve she would follow her lead. If Maeve wanted to see these guys get fired, she would fight with her to make sure that happened. If Maeve wanted to leak it to the press, she would blow the whistle with her. Tessa sat back, exhausted and word-spent. All the while, Maeve had been staring at the phone screen. Her green eyes were squinted and her lips were screwed to one side, as though she was trying to decipher IKEA furniture instructions. When Tessa had fin ished speaking, she looked up and handed Tessa her phone back. “Wow. Thanks for showing this to me, Tess,” she said, giving her a smile that masked a feeling somewhere between pity and embarrassment. “But . . . I actually already saw it.” Tessa felt the floor drop out from beneath her. “You did?”
Of course she did. Maeve nodded, berry-plum-colored lips pressed together. She ex plained to Tessa how she had been called into a meeting just before lunch with the founder, the CEO, and Obi. They showed her the screenshot and assured her they were taking it very seriously. We decided significantly re ducing the perpetrators’ stock options is a punishment equivalent to the of fense committed. They told Maeve that they saw how hard she had been working, that she had only been at the company for eight months, but she had really gone above and beyond. They said she was on track to make sales manager by the end of her first year, and yes she may only be two years out of school, but she very clearly had exhibited her potential to lead a team. If she could just sign above the dotted line, they would make sure she was well compensated for her commitment to Bastion’s success. Maeve shrugged her shoulders. “How could I say no to that?”
Tessa didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. “It’s really not that bad, what those guys did,” said Maeve, taking a sip of her latte. “Like, it’s obviously gross, and they shouldn’t have been using Bastion cameras, but they’ve definitely learned their lesson now.” Tessa nodded. “Yeah. I hope so.”
“They definitely have.” Maeve placed a hand on Tessa’s arm. Her smile was all radiance and pearly veneers. “This company is a rocket ship, Tess.
Tessa pulled out her Bastion key card from her wallet as she ap proached the main entrance. Suspended above the doorway, a little whitedomed camera peeked out at her, recording her visage, her body heat, and the colors of her clothing. She stared back into the black, glassy gaze of its aperture. She wondered how many times she had passed by this camera, how many images of herself it had processed and filed away into the cloud. Or somewhere else. She wondered if it even mattered.
“Is everything okay, sweetie?” Her mom’s voice was medicated but lu cid. At this time of day six months ago, she would have been fast asleep in bed with the curtains drawn. Tessa told her mom that everything was okay. It had been busy at work, and she was taking a coffee break. She wanted to see how her day was going, even though she knew, just like all other days, that her mom hadn’t left the house. That if she had moved her self from her bedroom to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, it would have been a remarkable feat.
Safe. Watched over. “Are you sure you’re okay, Tess? You sound a little sad.”
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We’re gonna be so rich.” Soon afterward, Maeve left, apologetic and latte half-finished, to get back to work. Tessa finished her drink very slowly, one tiny sip at a time, staring at a large ruby ficus protruding from a terra cotta planter, as though willing it to catch on fire and speak to her. After exiting the café, she called her mom, who answered after the third ring.
As Tessa rounded the corner where the homeless man had been sta tioned earlier, she saw only a filthy sleeping bag and a crushed box of fast food, slimy with a dark brown substance, remained. God, she thought to herself as her mother told her about the new Netflix show she had bingewatched that day. Where is his family? Tessa broke her gaze away from the mess on the sidewalk, which had already attracted a hoard of pigeons. This city is eating me alive. This city is eating me alive. She continued on, switch ing her cell phone from one ear to the other. Bastion’s office building came into view, a monolith whose infrastructure the CEO and founder were planning on replacing with all Bastion security products as part of their deal with the landlord. Surveillance cameras. Access control. Fire alarms. Sensors. Sprinkler systems. All communicating together on a single pane of glass. It would be a physical testament to the power of their all-in-one security solution. A preview of what the world could look like if all build ings were secured with Bastion’s technology. They would be protected.
I picture him smiling down at his words, already imagining a rapt audience with glasses raised to the glowing, humbled futurewasnewlyweds.neverspoken, never spoken.
I still picture a forgotten fruit platter browning on our caterer’s prep table, bottles of champagne removed from thawing ice baths to drip, to sweat, to remain unpopped.
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My EngagementFather’s
Toast By: James Swansbrough was six words long: Artistic MagicalComfortingExcitementSupportLove was written on an index card, scrawled in his professorial font; a derivative cursive shorthand I once thought famous men used. was printed in our wedding program. We felt the three talking points said everything his speech would have, had he lived to deliver it. was only six words long because his heart collapsed him on the morning of our engagement party before he was able to deliver the tribute.was found a week after he’d died. Of course we’d canceled the party immediately. Spent the night in the hospital, & the next ten days until the neurologist convinced mom to withdraw life support. [ POETRY ]
In my womb I have another baby, your birthmonth is marked with busy, and still you never show. I think about coming looking for you. You were a good child; you ought to come when called.
Since You’ve
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The ICU swaddlers snap-riddled for shot-access, pin-pricked with blood, the closet of clothes I washed and folded for when you came home I boxed up for the basement labeled Never.
Been Away By: Renee Emerson I moved your crib, broke it down like a ribcage. A desk there now, a laptop, papers, all good sleepers, through the night more often than me. I sent the hospital the ng tubes twisted up, marked for measure, the hypafix tape I cut into heart shapes to keep the tube to your cheek, the doctor’s stethoscope I pressed to your chest each feeding to hear the soft gasp of air in your stomach telling me placement was safe. The professional scale, an altar I laid you on each day. The feeding pump, its Eeyore song a cry you couldn’t make for yourself, for food you couldn’t swallow. But the syringes used until the numbers wore off, the medications given out in droplet doses, the specialists numbers, direct lines— all trash. [ POETRY ]
Stringing beans, putting up pears-figs-muscadines, shaping garfish croquettes—comme ça la bas, my hands are mama’s hands—sure, competent, efficient, moving without thought.
.
III
.
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Changing and scrubbing, real diapers, the real skin of suckling babies, tucking them in with “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...” feeling her there, we turn to receive our blessing: chers petits, mes enfants
So, Mama comes to me through the patina of my days: In my dark nights she swims in the too still backwater bayous, cut by sheaths of silver moonlight; her body brushes mine like a silent fish and is gone, but in the susurrating stillness, I hear prends courage ma chère, je t’aime
Walking with Mama By: Cordelia Hanemann I Mama comes in the hint of gardenia by the front porch steps, in the distant call of cow-crane, crash of thunder, splatter of rain, sting of mosquitoes, cacophony of cicadas. She speaks through pungent pine, through steam rising after a late summer shower: ça va chèrie? I feel her power and her ephemerality. If I speak, I speak to empty air —greeted by the mocking rush of silence— yet.... II Weeding rows of Floralou and Creole, okra, cayenne, and sweet corn: “Let it ripen on the stalk; wait ‘til the silks turn un peu plus noir; check for corn worm; don’t let the okra get trop grand,” I feel the fan of her large hat swat at cabbage moths; Making gumbo—over a ripening roux, I do hear the whisper: laisse-la, slow heat, darker, darker..., c’est si bon; stirrings of gooey okra, diced Spanish onions, sweet green bells, garlic, minced and scattered, hang about my shoulders, heavy in the kitchen; [ POETRY ]
omehow, I always end up at the construction site where they found the girl’s body.
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[ FICTION
S Forgotten Meghan Beaudry
It’s only five blocks from my apartment—a distance I used to be able to run without breaking a sweat. I watch from inside the café across the street—a dump of a place with greasy counters that serves weak-ass bilge water with coffee ]
The
I rarely left my apartment before this week, with its broken TV and dishes crusting over in the sink. But since I read the news article, some thing outside seems to pull me, dry heat and all. I throw on some sweatpants and a shirt that sort of passes for clean. I go to the convenience store for cigarettes first, even though it zaps my ener gy to walk outside in the heat. At first, the construction workers eyed me with suspicion, but they’ve grown used to me.
“Probably a reservation girl,” the nurse says.
BODY DISCOVERED DURING CONSTRUCTION OF NEW OFFICE BUILDING.
The nurse takes a seat on the black stool in front of the computer. “Smoker?” Her fingers hover above the keys. “Yes.” There’s no point in lying when I smell like a fucking ashtray. I’d bought my first pack the week I’d lost my cross country scholarship. It’s been a pack a week ever since.
July 21, 2018—Construction workers have discovered decades-old hu man remains while laying the foundation for a new office building downtown on the corner of Main Street and Jana Road. Believed to be a woman in her early twenties who died sometime between 1990 and 1994, the body has yet to be identified. Forensic experts have identified the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head. The Winslow Police Department is treating this as a cold case. Pain shoots through my arms all the way to my fingertips, pulsing along to my heartbeat. It used to freak me out, especially if the pain was in my legs. When the pain happens when I’m driving, I imagine losing control of my car, watching from outside my body as it careens off the road and over a cliff. A fitting tribute to the year I’m having. After an hour, I stand up to leave. Another doctor’s appointment. A different doctor this time. The usual dread pools in my stomach. I head to my car, stopping to glance across the street. At the construc tion site, there are no crosses like you see when someone is killed by a drunk driver. No crowds. No grieving family. Just police tape wrapped around some wires. And everyone going on about their lives as if she never mattered. My car shudders to a stop near a squat, brown building. The parking lot stretches in front of me, the heat tricking my eyes into seeing puddles that aren’t really there. “It’s a dry heat,” people like to say around here, as if that makes it any easier to tolerate. By the time I reach the door, my left foot is dragging and tremors rocket through my arms. I sign in, then balance the clipboard full of new patient papers in my lap. After more than ten new appointments with different doctors, the forms all look the same. Like there’s a website floating around in the ether where doctors download these twenty-page packets, then cackle, pow er-drunk, as they picture sick and exhausted patients answering the same questions over and over.
Glossy magazines are strewn over every tabletop in the waiting room.
Kidney disease? No. Family history of glaucoma? No. Headaches? Yes. Muscle weakness? Yes. Fatigue? Holy shit yes. I turn in the clipboard, then return to my seat.
“I’m Mexican,” I correct her. “No, her,” she gestures toward the article I’d forgotten I was holding. “From the reservation down the road. They go missing all the time.” She says it as casually as if she’s remarking on the weather. “The doctor will be in soon,” she adds before walking out the door. grounds in the bottom of the cup. Camila, the barista scribbles on the out side of my cup without me having to tell her. I keep the news article in my pocket. It’s squeezed between a column on suburban expansion and an ad for Rudy’s Fried Chicken. The dead girl didn’t even make the front page. I read it again.
The nurse raises an eyebrow as I walk toward her, my leg still dragging slightly. She’s middle aged, a bit thick around the middle. Once through the door, she motions toward the scale.
All several years out of date, all full of bullshit about what famous person is screwing what other famous person or asinine advice about painting your cabinets white for that farmhouse aesthetic. I pull the news article out of my pocket
Once inside the exam room, I sit on the table covered in crinkly paper.
I step on and look away. People seem to think you lose weight when you’re sick, but that’s crap. Instead, your body expands like a bloated bug, as if it’s not taking up enough of your attention already. The muscles I used to have started dissolving under my skin in the months after I quit the team.
I“Camilaagain.Rodriguez?”jumpatthesoundof my name.
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I groan as I lurch forward, my head full of cotton. “She’s going places, and she’s going there fast,” Mama used to beam with pride. I liked the wind in my hair, the lightness of my body as I zipped past. As if I was flying. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also like the attention winning earned me— the announcements of my times at school assemblies or the calls from collegeWhenrecruiters.Ileftfor college out of state on a running scholarship, the whole neighborhood threw me a party in the park. Papa took off work at the construction site, something he never does. Mama picked up a tres leches cake half the size of a picnic table. “La correcaminasd angry, then distant.
I think I know where this is going. “I’m not depressed. There’s some thing physically wrong with me.” “I see this all the time with college kids who come in here. Depression can often trick us into thinking there really is something physically wrong with us. It’s normal to experience fatigue, loss of appetite—”
“It says you’re not in school anymore.” I say nothing. “So why are you here?” he asks.
.
When I went on medical leave, he walked past as I cleaned out my lock er—as if I were already a ghost. The school contacted me to rescind my scholarship the following month. Six months later and I’m still here, living on the last of the student loan I took out for living expenses.
That girl who loved to run, who was good at it? The correcaminas? I may see traces of her when I look in the mirror: the curve of her cheek, her dark hair and thick eyebrows. But she’s gone, and I don’t know if she’ll ever come back.
I take a deep breath. “Headaches, brain fog. Lots of hair loss. God-aw ful fatigue every day. Sometimes in the heat my arms shake and my feet feel weird. My old doctor tested for Lyme and it was positive, so he put me on antibiotics. Things got better for a while, and then I got sick again. He won’t prescribe more, even though they helped me.”
Dr. Stentson nodded. “So you’ve also been tested for . . . ?”
“Hypothyroidism, lupus, MS, rhabdo . . . oh, and pregnancy.”
I stand up. Dr. Stentson blinks in surprise, as if he’s just now seeing me. “Thank you for your time,” I say. Then I open the door and walk out. Instead of driving straight back to my apartment, I take the long route through town. I park next to the construction site, my car dwarfed by a
Dr. Stentson sets the chart aside. He rubs his temples as if he’s tired. “You live away from home and your family, right?”
Dr. Stentson enters a moment later. After a perfunctory nod, he takes a seat on the stool and squints at my chart. “It looks like you’ve been to quite a few doctors lately,” he says, a hint of skepticism in his voice. I’m glad that for once the brain fog has cleared, allowing me to sum mon the level of sarcasm this situation requires. “Yes. I come to doctors because I, a broke college student, have time and money to spend.”
Sickness sloshes in my gut. I heave, and chunks of last night’s dinner splash into the toilet. Two-day-old pizza. I stopped following my nutri tion plan when I stopped being able to run. You don’t put premium gas in a lemon.
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nearby bulldozer. I prop the seat back and just sit, trying to take my mind off yet another indifferent face above the stethoscope. Another lost girl no one gives a shit about. B The next morning is a bitch. I stumble out of bed, nauseous as hell. Flashes of last night’s dreams jostle around in my mind. My legs, pump ing as they carried me effortlessly down the trail, until the trail morphed into the neighborhood I grew up in. The bodega on the corner, Mr. Ramos leaning out to yell, “Vamos, correcaminas!” Roadrunner. That’s what the whole neighborhood called me, not to mention all my tías and tíos
B With the café’s free Wi-Fi, I search for news on the murdered girl, which leads to missing-person sites. I find myself writing a list of missing native women on a scrap of paper. I keep track of them the way I used to keep a ledger of my symptoms. Dates and times on the left, hair loss or fa tigue or facial paralysis on the right. I’d show it to doctors until I realized it only solidified their belief that I wasn’t actually sick—just crazy.
I fold the paper with the names carefully and tuck it in my wallet next to the newspaper article. Their names are written down. The women who once were remembered, even though that will never be enough.
Kelli Keifer—last seen leaving her best friend’s house after a sleepover Melissa Charging Crow—pregnant mother of two, vanished on her way home from work Anita Thick Horse—straight A student whose body was found in a ditch the month before her high school graduation Sarah Bluejay—nine years old; loved Nancy Drew, according to her mother Anna Rodriguez—failed to come home after her first semester of college Amber Watt—found strangled in a field a mile from her house two weeks before her twenty-first birthday
Nicole Wagon—thirty-four-year-old who loved horseback riding Fawna Smith—grandmother of five, pillar of her community By 2016, the National Crime Information Center had reported 5,712 cases of missing or murdered native women. As I scrolled through web sites after a Google search, I wondered why these missing women aren’t all over the news, even though I think I already know the answer. Their faces aren’t plastered on billboards across the country. There’s no me dia frenzy like there is for missing blond-haired white girls. Thousands of women, violently ripped from the Earth without anyone caring.
I think of the nurse at Dr. Stentson’s office. Probably a reservation girl. They go missing all the time. A parade of faces drifts through my mind. All the doctors who decided it was easier to tell me I was depressed than it was to just run some damn tests. I see this all the time with college kids who come in here . . . When you’re a brown girl, you learn that “all the time” is code for, “no one cares you’re dying.”
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B Just as I’m leaving the café, Mama calls, as if I’d sent her a message in my dream last night. When I first got sick, Mama called every day. My Tía Sofia prayed to the Jesus and Mary printed on her prayer candles. My second cousin texted me every week with a new panacea, usually involving gag-worthy dirt-flavored tea. They made so many sacrifices, my parents. Papa spent six or seven days a week working in construction, carrying bags of cement or rebar on his back like an ant. I got into St. Anne’s Catholic School when I was twelve with a scholarship—but only a partial one. Mama started cleaning houses on the weekends after her shift at the restaurant ended. Cracks sprouted on her hands from the harsh chemicals, as if she was an old marble statue that had begun to crumble. When I saw her knuckles bleeding after she washed the dishes one night, I stared at her as tears filled my eyes. Mama just shrugged. “It’s what you do for your children,” she said with a smile that smoothed the wrinkles on her face. My first day at St. Anne’s, I skipped to the cafeteria after math class with my new plaid skirt swishing against my legs. My stomach growled. Mama had packed me my favorite homemade Menudo in my Sailor Moon thermos. I sat in the middle of one of the long tables, inhaling the scent of garlic and onion and savory pork. That first spoonful sent a wave of warmth into my stomach. It wasn’t until a few bites later that I noticed the Mysilence.entire class of fifteen girls gaped at me. Their lunches rested in neat rows on the table in front of them, like the cookie-cutter houses with white picket fences in the part of town where Mama cleaned. Baggies of grapes or baby carrots. Chocolate chip cookies. Perfectly cut crustless sandwich es with white, white bread. One of the girls made a gagging sound, and the others dissolved into giggles. A wave of heat traveled from my forehead to my stomach. After that I begged my mother for Wonder Bread and Kraft cheese at the grocery store. At school, I learned to flatten my vowels and squeeze my voice into a tone that felt unnatural until it didn’t. It was the first of many tiny deaths, as if pieces of myself were slowly disappearing. My phone buzzes again in my hand, jerking my attention away from St. That girl who loved to run, who was good at it? The correcaminas? I may see traces of her when I look in the mirror: the curve of her cheek, her dark hair and thick eyebrows. But she’s gone, and I don’t know if she’ll ever come back.
In my head, she has a name and a face. She has thick, dark hair and soulful brown eyes. I call her Robin because I hope her soul is free, flying over the place she once called home. Before I leave the reservation, I stop by a convenience store for smokes. A bulletin board plastered with faces stares back at me from beside the register. The photos are grainy, printed off of Facebook or from phones. Most of them are women. Under each is a name, a phone number, a plea for help.Myhand shakes as I hand a fistful of change to the cashier. She’s my age. Long black hair, dark skin. “Take care,” I say as she passes me a carton of Marlboros. Her eyes meet mine. We both know it’s more than just a saying. B I wonder if Robin could sense the attack coming. A body knows in stinctively when it is dying. When I first got sick, I could feel my body shut ting down. Once I didn’t eat for a day and a half because my legs locked and I couldn’t make it to the dining hall. The fucking dining hall, a five-minute walk away. I gave away most of my clothes. I wrote down my computer and bank passwords in a sealed envelope for my family. After months of crushing fatigue, struggling to walk, struggling to think, I slowly realized I wasn’t going to die. At least not right away. The human body could, shock ingly, shuffle through life in a suspended state of dying for years at a time. We all expect the world to stop for our death, or almost death, because our own world is stopping. As the lone brown girl on scholarship at a pri marily white Catholic school growing up, I expected even less. I expected the doctors to run tests when I asked them to. To listen to my pain. To do their fucking jobs. I expected my teammates to commiserate, not slink away like I was contagious. I expected my coach to see me as an actual person. What is it about me that’s not worth saving?
I grieved for the girl I once was.
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My heart not actually stopping didn’t mean a part of me didn’t die, and it didn’t mean I didn’t grieve. I grieved every practice I missed because my legs refused to cooperate. I grieved every time my mind went blank when I used to know the answers.
I try to push the grief to the back of my mind, the way a child hides a mess under a blanket. But every time I take a peek under that blanket, the pain feels like it will rip me apart like a paper doll. Anne’s. When Mama and Papa started to worry about me, I downplayed my symptoms over the phone, downplayed the amount of doctors I’ve been to. They still don’t know I lost my scholarship. The phone vibrates, insistent. I swipe to decline the call. I don’t want my family to know their correcaminas had turned out to be nothing more than a common pigeon.
B By 7:00 p.m. I’m wiped out. A year ago, I could go for an eight-mile run in the morning, attend a couple classes, then work out with my team in the afternoon. Now, I’m exhausted after waking up at 1:00 p.m., driving to the coffee shop and then back to my apartment. The beeping of the oven shat ters the silence. The usual crusty dishes cover every inch of the counter, their stench like rotten fruit in the back of my throat. It’s a bad brain fog day, and I don’t even remember turning the oven on, let alone what’s in there. Without thinking, I jerk the oven open and reach inside, then yank my arm out when heat sears my fingers. The pizza tumbles to the kitchen floor, sauce side down of course. Forgot the oven mitt. Typical. I run my blistered fingers under cold tap water, ignoring my growling stomach. “If you’re that dumb, you don’t deserve to eat,” I mutter to my self. With the brain fog filling my head, I probably shouldn’t be using the oven at all. I imagine leaving for the café then returning to find my apart ment engulfed in flames. The second-hand table with the coffee rings: gone. The cracked TV that replaces any image left of center with lines in primary colors: gone. The old running shoes under the bed next to the new ones: gone. For a moment, I feel light, as if destroying this disaster of an apartment would destroy the person I’d become. Then reality cuts through the brain fog. Even if the world burned down around me, I’d still be stuck in this useless body that can’t run. B I skip the construction site and drive by the reservation the next day. It doesn’t look that much different than the neighborhood I grew up in. Squat houses with ill-fitting roofs that look like a gust of wind could turn them into debris. A dirt path winds through the houses. A log cabin, maybe some kind of meeting house, sits in the center of town. You wouldn’t know it was a reservation except for the few tepees set up for show on public lawns and the little shops selling turquoise and silver jewelry. Maybe she walked down this trail. Maybe she ate at this café.
This place is a fucking mess. No one deserves to have to live like this.
The following night, I dig my dusty running shoes out from under my bed. Once they’re on my feet, I feel a rush of my old energy, although I’m smart enough by now to know it won’t last. I drive to the one bodega in town, where I pick up a pack of matches and a candle with the Virgen de Guadalupe printed on the glass. Then I head to the construction site.
The officer frowned. A flicker of understanding crossed his face. “Oh, yeah. I think I remember now. It’s a cold case. Not exactly top priority.”
The local police precinct looks like an overturned cardboard box. Squat. Unimaginative. Brown. I step inside and shiver at the blast of icecold air-conditioning. Why is it in the South that you most need a jacket when it’s hot outside? The man in uniform behind the front desk glances up at me but says nothing. “Hi,” I say, throwing together a story on the fly. “I’m a reporter with the University Gazette. I’m working on an article about the girl whose body was found at the construction site.” The officer looks at me like I just sprouted a second head. “Who?” “Rob—I mean, the girl whose body was found. You know, on the corner of Jana and Main where they’re building a new strip mall.”
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All the time. I don’t remember the precinct door shutting behind me or the rush of hot air. I don’t remember slamming the door of my car behind me. When I come back to my body, I’m in my piece-of-crap car pounding the steering wheel with my fists, sobbing until my body shakes with hiccups. B I wake up the next afternoon with a buzzing in the top of my head. At first I think it’s another stupid symptom. It takes me a moment to recog nize it for what it truly is: rage. I stalk to the kitchen, my footsteps pound ing on the floorboards. I punch the button on the cheap coffee machine I picked up from Goodwill, waiting impatiently for the brown liquid to trickle into my mug. I survey my apartment. Dirty dishes jockey for space on the kitchen counter. Pieces of food coat the inside of the sink. Piles of mail and newspapers obscure every inch of the card table. The outline of the couch peeks out from under months of dirty clothes.
B Maybe it’s a stupid idea. Probably no one will care. Still, I spend all day making flyers on my laptop. I print them at the college library with my old student ID, which still works—unlike the rest of me. 8:00 p.m. at the construction site on Main Street and Jana Road, the last line reads. I drive around town, fighting fatigue to post them on as many light poles and store windows as I can, until entire streets are plastered with papers screaming about Robin, the girl who was forgotten. B
When I think of Robin and the other girls, I know it’s not only my pain under that blanket. B
The vigil doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes. I wonder if anyone will show. I lower myself to the ground near where Robin was found. The ground, scorching during the day, is cool to the touch. I scoop up a handful of dirt, letting it sift through my fingers and fall back to the earth. I flick my lighter, then carefully ignite the candle. The flickering flames illuminate the ground. The correcaminas? She’s gone, maybe for good. I don’t know if I’ll ever again feel the wind in my hair as I sprint toward a finish line. I don’t know if I’ll ever again roll out of bed refreshed after a good night’s sleep, then move effortlessly through my day. I do know the pain will never truly go away. Over time, grief hardens like the bark of a tree, leaving scars in the rings that last forever. “I see you,” I whisper to Robin, because I want her to know this. That she mattered, that whoever she was, good or bad, she was a person. Be cause having your pain acknowledged by others is a panacea every forgot ten human deserves.
I grab a trash bag from under the sink. I stuff the old junk mail into it, then empty the trash cans. I rinse out the sink, then start washing dishes. Even though I know I’m going to pay for it tomorrow with increased fa tigue and stiff joints, I don’t stop until the counters are free of crumbs and the floor is clean in a way even Mama would approve.
A wave of energy shoots through me like electricity. “Why not?” I snap, louder than I mean to. The officer shrugs, ignoring my tone. “We have to focus on the crime that’s happening now. It’s unfortunate, but people disappear all the time.”
By: Roy Bentley A gal in a blue ballgown greets you. Someone who reminds you of the dead woman whose window you knocked on once— so that’s what it’s like to be the one-legged Angel of Wariness. The angel in question isn’t shivering from the cold or an injury, but she is shivering. And she’s who you would want to meet if the first half of your life is over, the second screaming Go for it.
Someone has called out for a Boogie Woogie. Something fast. Consider the ask a sky turned the color of blackberries before a tempest. A house band launches into a song called Snatch. And your heart is watching her shining eyes like you watch a lake’s tranquil surface any afternoon in Ohio in summer. Your heart may have to double in size to accommodate her.
[ POETRY ]
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Triple BoogieAmputeeWoogie
So, sure, you ask her to dance. How could you know both arms are prosthetic replicas the VA coughed up after Afghanistan?
Heather M. Surls H
SyrianWomen
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for our errand to the aid office—head and shoulders swathed in a flowered scarf, pajamas stretched over her pregnant belly—and before we go, she says we must drink coffee. As she fills our cups from the long-handled coffee pot, I notice how pale her skin is, how her lips are dry and cracked from the perpetual congestion that comes with her pregnancies. We sit cross-legged on the carpet, the room around us quiet as her toddler sleeps nearby and sunlight stains the curtains brighter and brighter washes of yellow. “You were very sick, right?” she asks me, bringing up an old conver sation. “Tell me what was wrong.”
[ NONFICTION ]
Over the rim of my coffee cup, I meet Hiba’s iba sets a tray between us, then eases herself to the floor. She’s only half-ready
When I knit, I forget Arabic and focus on the language of stitches and rows in my hands. I try to pray, stitching images and stories into my work as if in doing so, I might redeem the pain of the world.
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If I don’t want to write, I knit like a fiend. This way, I can forget every thing—talk of bombs and strange trauma-induced illnesses, the feel of a thin cushion on the floor beneath me, the thought of someone who didn’t serve tea because she couldn’t afford to buy tea. When I knit, I forget Ar abic and focus on the language of stitches and rows in my hands. I try to pray, stitching images and stories into my work as if in doing so, I might redeem the pain of the world.
“I haven’t even started to tell you what I’ve seen,” I reply. “Foreigners are so sensitive,” she continues. “We even have a saying about it: ‘If a foreigner gets spanked, he goes to the corner and cries, but if an Arab gets spanked, he hits his mama back.’”
“No, not yet,” she says. “We might wait until school is finished.”
“Tell me what happened,” Hiba said. What happened is difficult to con dense, hard to explain to someone from a culture less familiar than mine with psychological terms and diagnoses. If my Arabic feels weak or I don’t want to be vulnerable, I simply say I am very ill. Sometimes, mostly to Westerners, I say I have PTSD, mixed with burnout and compassion fa tigue. Sometimes I list the flood of symptoms I experienced: depression, insomnia, flashbacks, adrenal fatigue, panic attacks, and a high startle re sponse.The basic facts are these: I’ve spent several years volunteering as a so cial worker among refugees—first with Burmese in the Chicago suburbs, then with Syrians and Iraqis in Amman, Jordan. I’ve been entangled in the world’s largest refugee crisis post-WWII since before people started calling it that. I have burned out more than once, and even though I’ve re covered, I regularly find myself slipping into the fatigue that comes from being spread among too many needy people. Maybe Hiba is right. Foreigners are sensitive—at least I am. Why I keep doing this, why I chose this job, sometimes I don’t know. B Rana comes from the countryside east of Damascus. Her voice lilts upward at the end of her sentences, like actresses in Syrian sitcoms. She smiles easily but often covers her mouth, conscious of the decay eroding her top “Haveteeth.you decided yet if you’re going to return?” I ask one day.
When I finish my story, Hiba says, “You’ve hardly seen anything.”
“You have to move through the pain,” a therapist once told me. I’ve never forgotten her words, but applying them is tricky. If I have energy, I write more details: what apartments looked like, what we talked about, bits of families’ stories.
disarming stare. Her irises are so dark you can’t tell them from her pu pils, and her short eyelashes do nothing to detract from her gaze. She stares this way at anyone, male or female, demanding answers. I’ve known her long enough that I answer freely, summarizing my year-long mental health battle and mentioning a few of its causes.
For months, Rana and her husband have been talking about returning to Syria. Her parents never left, and his went back recently. The situation is stable in Damascus now, they say: schools and shops and hospitals are open. Because Rana’s husband is too old to be required by the army and because her son is only four, they can entertain the option of return. Many families can’t; they fear the regime will forcibly conscript husbands and sons of military age, and everyone knows that means possible disappear ance, imprisonment, torture, or death. Rana converses openly, surrounded by her brood of children. Here in
Hiba is from Homs, a city decimated during the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. She saw people die in front of her and escaped under the Assad regime’s shelling. I have experienced trauma vicariously, but my friend has faced terror and displacement firsthand, in ways I probably never“Learnwill. from us,” Hiba says. “We have seen all these things, and we are still smiling.” B When I come home from visiting refugees, I sit on my comfy, Ameri can-style couch in my living room that could house a Syrian family. I brew a cup of anise tea (they say it quiets the nerves) and open my journal. I force myself to write the names of the individuals I met and where they were from. Sometimes, I’m unable to do anything more, I feel so tired.
Partly, her husband is to blame. I’ve never met him, but I know he does not let Rana leave the apartment without him, except to visit one or two neighbors (women he has approved for her). She can’t go to the market by herself or out for a walk. One time, she told me she hadn’t left the apart ment for a month. She sets her phone on a windowsill in the sitting room, trying to catch a better signal. I ask her, “But is he good to you at home?” “Yes,” she says. “This is just the way our men are.”
Jordan, life is not easy, she explains. They get a little aid from the UN or from a charity here and there. Her husband, who was a farmer in Syria, works as a tailor now, thanks to the Jordanian government’s decision to grant work permits to Syrians. But they don’t have enough money to treat her thyroid problem, which continually swells her neck. They can’t afford to buy prenatal vitamins, though she’s pregnant with their seventh child. “At least in Syria we wouldn’t have to pay rent,” she tells me. Often Rana texts me with questions, floundering as she tries to care for her family’s needs. “Do you know of a dentist?” “Can you help me sell my refrigerator?” “I have a request.” “Do you know anyone who could do nate clothes for the baby?” I open her messages with deep breaths, my stomach sinking. Over and over, I’m shocked by how unconnected she is, by how little she knows of the world.
B Culturally speaking, “taking a walk” is not a common activity in Am man, especially for a woman alone. When I first moved here, I tried to follow local ideas of what a woman should be, so I only walked by myself if I had a Sincedestination.myrecovery from PTSD though, I take walks. “Exercise is the best medicine for anxiety,” doctors and counselors all say, so I put in my headphones and zigzag my neighborhood’s parallel streets, sweating be neath layers of clothes. When I walk, I try to escape relentless, looping thought patterns and pay attention to details around me. I pause at forsythia cascading over someone’s wall or an explosion of bougainvillea that literally forces me off the sidewalk. In an alley, I notice trees thick with green lemons and oranges. Depending on the season, I pick my way around olives smashed on the sidewalk, or figs, or a stone fruit Jordanians call “the most delicious in the world.”
More than once this year, I’ve copied words from the prophet Zepha niah in my journal. “Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak. The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.” I read these words and tell my heart to be still, even though every household I visit leaves its mark on me. I remind myself that God is present. I remind my self that I’m not the savior. I walk and repeat Zephaniah’s words, trying to believe them. I press my headphones in and let my music exegete the world. B Like Hiba, Muna is from Homs, formerly the third-largest city in Syria, after Damascus and Aleppo. The first time I meet her, she is pregnant, full term, with a baby without a brain. A doctor friend of mine had visited Mu na’s husband but didn’t get to examine her because she stayed in the bed room, sequestered from the eyes of nonrelative men. This time he brought me with him to investigate.
Muna sits in her bed under a blanket, her tiny body wrapped in a flowered robe. Her dark hair, dyed bleach blonde, is tied back with an
Near the traffic circle around which my neighborhood orbits, I glimpse the eastern half of the city, stone buildings stacked on hills for miles. With a population of around four million, Amman is at least 50 percent immi grants, foreign workers, and refugees: Palestinians, Iraqis, Sudanese, Syr ians, Yemenis, Egyptians. When I think about my childhood in a rural Cal ifornia community where everyone was white and no one seemed poor, it’s a wonder I’m here. And yet I can trace how this happened because of another basic fact: I still believe what I learned growing up.
I’m very much a product of my generation’s evangelicalism: first, a twenty-something who threw myself into social justice causes and radical Christian living, now, a thirty-something who physically and psychologi cally suffered the consequences of unsustainable living yet still smolders with the philosophies that drove me to burnout. I know viscerally that so cial justice cannot save the world, but sometimes I still scramble around trying to find solutions to everyone’s problems.
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Though I’ve faced evil and injustice in disadvantaged communities, I still believe God is present and working around me. I believe God loves the widow, the orphan, and the alien among us, that He longs to see them treated with justice and mercy. I live compelled by His love but regularly confronted by my limitations and my inability to love as He does.
While I’m inundated with Syrian families, a movie comes out called A Pri vate War. It tells the story of Marie Colvin, an American journalist who worked as a war reporter for Britain’s Sunday Times and died on the job in Homs in 2012. I do not watch the film (it’s PG-13 and I’m too sensitive), but I read the Vanity Fair article that inspired the movie. I find in Colvin, who also had PTSD, someone who speaks my language. “I would like to have a saner life,” she told someone shortly before her death. “I just don’t know how.”
A few days later, after delivering her son, Muna texts me. I just wanted to tell you That I delivered and the baby died This is what our Lord wrote for me When was he born? I reply. He was born on Saturday Did you see him? Did you hold him or no? Yes, we brought him with us from the hospital And brought him to the house And he died with us But he didn’t nurse from me How many hours did he live? Did you give him a name? 15 hours Yes, we named him But he came deformed But his face was so, so beautiful Our Lord made him so beautiful God have mercy on him Muna’s Palestinian neighbors donate space in their family plot for the baby’s burial, but Muna and her husband must rely on donations to cover the hospital delivery expenses. When I tell an Arab coworker about Muna’s situation, he gives me a tidy solution: “You should have prayed for healing.”
enormous ruffled scrunchie. I sit on the bed with her, making small talk. I learn she studied French in university before they fled Syria. She and her parents spent a couple of months in the Azraq camp in eastern Jordan, where she met her husband while working for the same NGO. I ask about the baby. She tells me they didn’t discover its deformity until a prenatal check at seven months. He moves some, she says, but they aren’t normal movements, more like shudders. She feels scared of what ever is to come. I lay my hand on her belly and pray for her peace.
B A close friend recently made this observation about me: “It’s like you continually have people in front of your eyes. Like they never leave your consciousness.” My friend is a task-oriented person, motivated by lists and efficiency and accomplishment. He has the skill of ignoring text mes sages and forgetting people if he’s in a busy season at work.
If he could look in my head, my friend would see that my brain func tions like a projector reel. Each refugee woman I know is contained on a tiny square of film in a white cardboard frame. These women project on my mind’s eye continually; I tick through faces all day. I haven’t checked on her in a few weeks. I wonder how her family is handling the weather. I should visit her. I hope she doesn’t feel forgotten. Once I send a text or make a visit, I feel the pressure lessen as that woman’s slide moves out of sight. But she’s never discarded; her picture just moves to the back of the wheel. Sometimes I wish I could throw slides away. I want empty slots in my projector so my chest will not feel crushed. I want to forget Tamara, an artist whose husband abandoned her with six children, the youngest men tally disabled as a result of the bombing they experienced in Syria. I want to discard Maryam, who has to send her fifteen-year-old son to work in a factory because her husband had a heart attack and can’t work anymore, and Ibtisam, whose husband went ahead of her to Germany, leaving her to wait here with two small kids.
I don’t know how either: don’t know how to forget, how to slow down, how to cease my striving and rest from my obsessive care for others. I don’t know how, but I’m desperate to learn before another mental health crisis derails me.
So when I read these words from the prophet Isaiah, I draw near to listen. “In repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and trust is your strength.”
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Isaiah knew I would resist him. You would have none of it, he bluntly rebukes from the page. And though his accusation couldn’t be more apt, I walk away feeling ashamed, exposed. I feel like he’s pulled a knife on me. B Abeer is from Derra, the southwestern province of Syria where the revolution began in 2011. I first met her on a winter afternoon when my ear was not yet tuned to the Syrian dialects. I kept my coat on, and we sat next to each other in the light from the open front door, eating clementines and drinking tea so sweet it made my teeth hurt.
Some of this pressure is statistical. So few Westerners can speak Ara bic. Even fewer actually live near refugees, and even fewer are women who can access the lives of Syrian women, often cloistered by a segregated so ciety. Statistically, I’m compelled to go to the front lines. Something Marie Colvin said of war reporters rings true: We must go in and bear witness to what we see. This idea of bearing witness hooks me. Who will tell these women’s stories if I don’t? Who will visit them if I don’t? Who will tell them they are
Repentance: turning from one path to walk in another. Rest and qui etness: the cessation of activity. Trust: the humble acknowledgment that I am small and inconsequential. But Isaiah, I ask, how can I repent when I’m addicted to the adrenaline highs produced by operating in a second language? How can I still the frenetic pace at which I initiate, reach out, and check in on people? How can I trust when, really, I want to be someone useful and important and known?
I don’t see Abeer again until nine months later, a gap for which I fre quently feel guilty. I find the family’s new apartment at the end of a few narrow alleyways. After we settle on the floor cushions in her living room, I ask why they moved. They moved a month or two before, she says, because her elementary school-aged son, Ziad, had been violently assaulted by two teenagers. Ziad had gone missing for hours, only to return with Abeer’s husband in the middle of the night. My eyes don’t leave Abeer as she speaks. A pigeon-gray headscarf frames her fine-lined face. She controls her voice well but stares at me with shock, still not digesting what has happened. As news of the assault spread throughout their extended family, people speculated and gossiped, blaming what happened on Abeer. “This is not your fault,” I counter. “This is not your fault.”
In the days that follow, I sort through memories, trying to place Ziad’s assault on the scale of awful stories I’ve heard. It ranks very high. I review the story’s key verbs—words I learned in Arabic class and hoped never to use, words I told Abeer I would not share with anyone. I become Abeer in her pain, raw and numb. I’ve experienced this be fore, empathizing to the point where I have a hard time distinguishing my inner life from someone else’s. I become blind to goodness or hope in my own circumstances as I live the other’s reality. This innate, deep capacity for empathy has damaged me before, so I know that healing will require me to disengage for a time, to separate myself from Abeer so I can become myselfUnfortunately,again. applying this knowledge is tricky. B Since visiting Abeer, I’ve had insomnia most nights. Sometimes I wake up in a panic from a stressful dream. I’m wandering alleyways in east Am man, trying to find a refugee family’s apartment. I’m with Abeer and Ziad, trying to find something, trying to get somewhere. I see faces shrouded in black niqabs
.
The psychiatrist tells me I’m too responsible. He circles a word on a graph in his file, a word that’s soaring above the baseline. Responsibility. Then he draws a line from that word to one that’s plunged beneath the line. Self-care. We talk about medication, whether I should go back on an antidepressant. We resolve to wait a little longer, to first try counseling and a break from refugee work. In this season, I consider Hiba’s words to me: Foreigners are so sensi tive. And without minimizing her situation and experiences, I reject her statement, at least for myself. I imagine how light I would feel if I were her, if the only expectations I had for myself were to care for my children, cook a good meal every day, keep my house clean and laundry washed, make my husbandWhenhappy.Hibaused the word sensitive, she may have meant emotionally aware, but I’m guessing she meant weak. And though I do cry at others’ pain and grieve the wrongs of the world, I rebuff this idea. Rather, I would describe myself as overly burdened, carrying the stories of many, many people. Like it or not, I bear responsibility for others, feeling compelled to respond to their needs even when they are not mine to bear.
loved and not forgotten? Who will encourage and honor them with pres ence? I know what Isaiah told me—I should be quiet and wait for God to act. But when I don’t see Him responding, I wonder who will bring justice if I don’t jump in headfirst and get something done. God sightings are so few that faith in His engagement and justice feels untenable. Sometimes I feel foolish to believe; sometimes I feel like I’m walking on a spider’s web of convictions that could dissolve at any time.
Sometimes I wonder if I’d still be in this work if I were not a person of faith, though my beliefs don’t necessarily make my job easier. Even as I choose faith—hoping in what I cannot see—I don’t often feel more stable as a result. God sightings are so few that faith in His engagement and jus tice feels untenable. Sometimes I feel foolish to believe; sometimes I feel like I’m walking on a spider’s web of convictions that could dissolve at any time.“Fear not,” Zephaniah reminds me, “the LORD is among you; He is mighty to save.” I tell women this—that they are not forsaken by God—and they nod their heads in agreement. We kneel and lift our hands in suppli cation. “Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim,” I murmur. “In the name of God, the most gracious, the merciful.” We pray for the war to end, for healing and provision for their families. We say amin and pass our hands over our faces. And we wait, some of us believing, and some of us unsure that God can heal or save, or that He will. B This whole building—four floors loosely connected by blood and mar riage—comes from Raqqa Province, the area where ISIS made their capi tal in Syria. When my doctor friend and I visit, representatives from each household filter down, bringing medical concerns. One of the men needs a cortisone shot in his knee. The toddler has sores on his scalp. Someone dumps a plastic bag of medications and reports at my friend’s feet. Rawan, the wife in this ground-floor apartment, welcomes everyone into the living room. A framed picture of the shehadeh in sequins hangs on the sponge-painted wall: I confess there is no god but God, and Mohammad is the prophet of God. Rawan is obviously in charge here—the sheika of the house, we joke— with a loud voice, flashing smile, and easy laugh. Nadeema, much quieter than her cousin, sits next to me wearing the brown and white polyester pull-over hijab she wore last time. I ask how she is doing. “Alhamdulillah. Thanks be to God.”
I ask, what is her news? “Alhamdulillah.” I ask, how is her baby? “Nizil,” she says. He fell. Nadeema doesn’t cry, but her eyes, set in a dark, wide face, get wet. She was six-months pregnant; this is her tenth miscarriage in a row. She says she’s weary from the loss of blood, says the room looks dim. I say, “God have mercy on him,” which I’m sure is not what you say for an unborn fe tus, but I don’t know what else to say. I grab her hand and think about how I put my palm on her belly two weeks ago and prayed for that child. What does it mean that I’ve prayed for two unborn babies this year and they’ve bothPartdied?of me wants to sit in her grief, but from our corner Nadeema and I are drawn into the jovial atmosphere of the room. The doctor prepares to give her husband the injection—all the guys are teasing, cajoling him to be brave. The kids run in and out—there are multiple close calls with the open-flame kerosene heater where Rawan is brewing tea. She throws witty comments across the room, putting everyone in an uproar. My senses are cranked up to 110 percent. Moments like these keep me in this work: sitting knee-to-knee with people who have suffered and are still laughing. As I get over-caffeinated from coffee followed by tea, I feel intensely the common grace of being human together. Though bogged down by rent payments and unemployment, chronic illness, and lack of sleep, we don’t discuss our problems. We simply exist together and thank God we are alive.
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Ghada is from Quneitra, a governorate tucked in Syria’s southwestern corner, near Lebanon and the Golan Heights. She and her family fled to Jordan in 2014. She’s here today with her two-year-old daughter, whom she brings to me when she wakes.
the shock has worn off of a prophet reading my thoughts across millennia, I return to Isaiah, ready to listen again. This time He speaks a soothing promise: “Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore He will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him!”
The minute I take Amal, I know I will love this child and be depleted by her; I know compassion will require my all. Ghada tells me she can’t swallow regular food and can barely drink milk. Her arms and legs have no muscle tone; they feel like the limbs of a newborn or a starving child, all bones. From birth they could tell something was wrong with her, Ghada continues, but this is the first time they’ve had the opportunity to come to the hospital. The doctors aren’t sure if her brain condition will allow the heart surgery or if it will be too dangerous.
Aftercommunity.atime,when
After more than an hour, Hiba returns, and we chat while she pumps a bottle of milk to take to Yazin in the ICU. She’s cheerful and energetic as she tells me she slept well last night and took two naps yesterday. Her mood makes me self-conscious and slightly annoyed; she isn’t feeling the sober emotions I expect from a mom with a newborn in heart surgery. Is she just not capable of these? Has her past calloused her so much that she’s incapable of complex emotion? Or is her trust in God bigger than mine?We make our way downstairs, passing through the double doors lead ing to intensive care. In a glass-walled room, we stand near Yazin, who’s propped up in a full-sized bed. Machines beep around him. A plastic oxy gen tube comes out of his nose, and nurses have prepared an IV site on his one-month-old wrist. He is naked, except for a blanket around his waist and“He’slegs. cold,” Hiba exclaims after she leans in to kiss his fingers. I stand back, letting my friend absorb her son’s condition. I know I won’t last much longer here, though Hiba’s just returned. I know that with her characteristic force and energy, she’ll urge me to stay, but I can al ready imagine collapsing in the back seat of a taxi and zoning out.
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“I mean my friend,” I reply, “whose baby had surgery.” “She’ll be back soon,” she tells me. “You can sit down.”
Here’s the comfort I seek—that a God of justice loves me and longs for me, though I’m at once feeble and rebellious, though I stand condemned by my exhausted efforts to please people and my thirst to find value and identity in serving others.
When Hiba turns around, her eyes are full of tears. Something blinks inside me—I feel surprise, maybe, or wonder. An unexpected crack has opened in my friend, and she is choosing to let me look deep inside of her.
The darkness outside Rawan’s open window hums with the sunset call to prayer and the twittering of her husband’s pet finches and canaries. Perhaps healing comes through moments like these when we’re sitting in the flow of time, waiting, surrendered to the hard facts of life, yet choosing to enjoy
I go to the hospital to sit with my friend. When I open the door to their room, a woman I don’t know glances up from the couch. “As-salaamu alei kum,” I say. “Aleikum as-salaam,” she replies. I step in and peek behind the gray curtains surrounding Yazin and Hiba’s bed. “I’m looking for a Syrian woman,” I explain.
Isaiah’s vision crystalizes before me: God in heaven and me on earth, Him waiting for me to wait for Him. God desiring to pour mercy on me, if I’d just sit still for a minute. And the question arises: If I do get down to waiting, how will I experience this blessing? Can I trust God to act in His timing, rather than attempting to dispense my cheap mercies ahead of Him like I’m in some cosmic race? Am I ready to take that risk? B When Hiba delivers her baby, a son, I visit her and hold him for two hours. Yazin has his mama’s eyes. He’s bundled in blankets like a marsh mallow, but when Hiba touches his nose, she says he’s cold. We cocoon his head deeper in the blankets before drinking cinnamon and turmeric tea with walnuts and coconut floating on top. At his two-week checkup, Hiba and her husband learn that Yazin has a heart problem. At a specialty hospital, they discover his aorta is pinched and narrow, like a kinked hose—a rare condition requiring surgery. When he is thirty-three days old, Yazin fasts for hours before his operation.
The woman on the couch looks up from her phone. “I’m Syrian,” she says, staring at me with light eyes.
On the shelves of the wooden cabinet
Turning them into loose dresses and gowns Abiding by the grided patterns and tracery
My mother piled her small stack of saris
By: Samina Hadi-Tabassum
When the children grew older She went to work in the nearby factory
Part of me wants to respond perversely, to tell her, “I told you so. I told you this would be hard.” Part of me wants to hold this over her—the day she couldn’t hold it together, the day she cried. Instead, I open my arms and embrace her, scraping up what little mer cy I can find.
When we first arrived in America
With lock and key They were simple cotton ones With bright borders and wide pleats But over time became emblazoned With sequins, beads, and gilded lace
One cabinet became two and three As trips back to India gifted more Not just for summer soirees in suburbia
Sweaters Over Saris
Are nested in our childhood memories Of an Indian woman determined to unspool herself
Replacing her saris with jeans and shirts And gray smocks with lined pockets
[ POETRY ]
She wore them in winter under L.L. Bean sweaters
These magical robes of my mother
Fearless in color and style
Then the grandchildren came to visit and play So she cut up her saris into large swaths
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Few men spat at my feet shouting obscenities
B CampbellAlexaPhoto: WhitestTheWhiteShirtRahul Mitra
took everything. I walked naked to the bore pump at the edge of the trash heap with a beaten-up oil can leaching out rainbows onto the surface of the water. I rubbed my skin with a broken brick, now an irregular spheroid after days of abrasion.
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I doused my body with water and dried in the sun and then strode back to my shack. Some women shook their heads in disgust.
I pretended not to hear. I turned the corner of the dirt path and saw her—that girl, gripping the iron bars of the window of the worn-down asbestos-roof house like a prisoner pining for freedom. Her eyes, large, bore right through me. Her face, light, smooth and rounded, framed by eing poor, I could not afford shame. All I had was plenty of pride. It cost nothing but
I studied with a vengeance and worked part-time in the same cigarette factory, where my girl’s father died, to supplement my mother’s meager pay. I packed cigarettes as they rolled off the machines—ten in each pack— and stacked them for the supervisor to record the number of boxes to pay me at the end of my shift. I stopped by my girl’s house on my way back. She came out with a goofy grin on her face. I handed her a box of sweets. She then leaned into my chest and sniffed and said, “I love the smell of ciga rettes on you.” B The day we graduated from high school, I checked our final exam re sults. My girl was at the top. I gave her a congratulatory card along with a purple kurta, white pajamas, and a white chunni. She took them, ran into her house, and came out wearing my gifts. I couldn’t stop staring at her. She glowed—more than her usual.
One day, my girl handed me a necklace I thought was made of irregu larly shaped pebbles. “These are bones,” she said.
I was nineteen at that time. She was still five days younger than me. And we started going to the same college.
BELMONT STORY REVIEW | SUMMER 202268 SUMMER 2022 | BELMONT STORY REVIEW 69 black hair, didn’t turn away. She smiled and followed me with her eyes until I went by the hill of garbage. I was ten then. That girl—my girl—was five days younger than me. I washed myself at the bore pump for two more years. As I said, I felt no shame. Maybe she felt a bit of guilt, being a few rungs above me in that basti by the trash heap that attempted daily to swallow us into its quagmire of bleakness.ThedayI was twelve, just as my mother was about to go to clean dish es at the priest Shastri’s house, my girl came to my shack. She clutched my hand and without any words dragged me, without my shirt, with her. She didn’t let go of my hand, guiding me through gullies crammed with shacks and single-story homes. I followed her. Partly curious. Partly excit ed. I would have walked with her until we ran out of earth. But our journey came to an end. I suspiciously gazed at the board on top of a wrought iron gate, in the middle of a row of stores. I couldn’t make out the letters. How could I have? I couldn’t read at that time. She pulled me through the gate and said, “You have to learn. Otherwise, what will you do with that brain of yours?”That’s how my girl made me start school. B One day, she brought me a shirt. Freshly ironed. Neatly folded. A white shirt. Brilliantly white. The whitest white. With a subtle tinge of robin blue shining in the bright sun. It was so white, it concealed my dark skin and nipples. It had a high collar. Short sleeves. With no piping anywhere. But tons gleamed like pearls. “It was my father’s. He never wore it,” she said, and unfurled the shirt with a flourish—waved it in the air with a snap— and undid the buttons and held it behind me. I dipped my hands into the sleeves. She draped the shirt over my shoulders and walked around me. She teased the buttons through the holes with her delicate fingers, starting from my chest, and left the top one off. She put her hand over my chest and said, “You are a beautiful man.” I was fifteen then. She was still five days younger than me. B Often, she came to my shack with a blue bar of Rin soap and a load of clothes. We washed for an hour (my white shirt included) and talked about things we dared not to in the presence of our mothers. “My father died in an accident at the cigarette factory. Slipped and fell into one of those roll ing machines. He couldn’t have lived long,” she said. “When I was eight, he started to cough blood and smelled foul.” I wished my father was dead in place of hers. My mother spotted him in the market one day. He looked familiar, although I had not seen him until then. He wobbled toward us, shouting her name. She went stiff. Gripped my hand. And ran, pulling me with her. I asked her several times. About him. She didn’t speak. Later, as we slept on the dirt floor, I heard her cry. I put my hand around and felt the welts on her back—melted and re-formed into scales. And let her cry.
I examined it again. “Did you know that several thousands of aborigines killed by King Vi jay Raj’s dynasty were buried under this trash heap? This place was once called Nakara, misspelled for Naraka, which means hell. My mother said your mother was one of those aborigines. Most of them, you know, now make a living working as domestic help.”
She carefully avoided the word servant and the other words like un touchables, street dogs, and sewer pigs. Priest Shastri, in whose house my mother cleaned dishes, washed clothes, and cleaned toilets, had once
I entered the conference room. It seemed cavernous and cold. An old er woman wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a green sari sat in a brown leather chair at a large oval wooden table in the center with two men in pressed white clothes flanking her. She waved me to a chair and picked up my application and flipped through it and passed it to the man on her left. “Who is your father? Where does he work?” She asked. I told her I only had my mother and was an aborigine. And that my mother was a servant. “Why do you want to go to America?” she asked. I froze. I couldn’t recollect my girl’s warnings. I said I wanted to take my mother away from the trash heap and that shit of a basti. The woman didn’t show any reaction. She stared at me briefly. “You graduated with honors? Okay, then. We will contact you if you get the scholarship.”
I leafed through them. Educational scholarship application form to the Nakara Mining Company Trust. I gave them back to her. “Don’t be silly, you idiot,” she said. “I am also applying. We will go away to Amerika.”Shefilled in the forms for both of us and dragged me to the NMC Trust office, just past our college, in the State Bank building. A confused-looking clerk with graying hair dressed in a black Nehru collar shirt, white pajamas, and chewing paan, put his pen down, gazed at us briefly, and motioned for us to step forward. Without any words, he grabbed our applications, threw them onto a pile on his desk without looking at them, and waved us away. “Results in two weeks and then the interview,” he emphasized as we approached the exit. I worked until late at the cigarette factory the day the results for the scholarship interview came out. I stopped by my girl’s house later. She came out running with a grin. “We both are short-listed,” she said. B On the interview day, she went ahead of me into the NMC Trust office conference room behind the clerk’s desk. I sat nervously in a teak chair. She came out almost an hour later with a smile and said, “It was easy. They could ask you why you want to go to Amerika. Don’t say you want to get out of this shit. Tell them you want to study to become someone important and come back to help others.”
I was worried. Unlike me, my girl had spent a lot of time in the inter view. I was sure they didn’t like my answers. As I exited confused, the clerk shouted, “Thirty days. For the final results.”Theday the final results came out, once again, I was at the cigarette factory. By the time I walked back to my shack, at about 10:00 p.m., my girl was waiting for me. She had this unusual expression on her face. Not her typical goofy grin. It was as if she was trying to conceal something from me. She walked up to me. And put her hand on my shoulder. I knew I didn’t get the “What’sscholarship.withthat horrible expression on your face, you idiot! You made it! You are going to Amerika,” she shouted.
B Three days later, she handed me a sheaf of papers. “Fill these in, and then we will go and submit.”
Many years later, all I remembered was her excitement and my sad ness. And that moment. We parted. B That’s how I ended up in New York City. Dr. Wells, an aging man with blonde hair, my advisor at the NYU Business School, laughed when I said I had not seen any city so full of life and so full of skyscrapers. I found a room in Harlem on top of a laundromat. It was more than I ever had. But I missed the dirt floor of my shack and the stink of the trash heap. “Move out of there. It is not safe,” my advisor said and looked at me oddly when I replied that most of the people around me were friendly and as darkskinned as me. I made a few friends during the first semester. Every day, I wrote to my girl on tracing papers to save postage and mailed a collection of letters to her at the end of the week. Even in those letters, I couldn’t tell her anything
BELMONT STORY REVIEW | SUMMER 202270 SUMMER 2022 | BELMONT STORY REVIEW 71 said, “You are a mongrel. An untouchable street dog. Why are you going to school? A dirty pig like you doesn’t have the brains to learn.” I was enraged. But what could I have done? Until my girl told me, “You could be better than everyone else. All you have to do is study hard and go away as far as you can from this shit. Maybe to Amerika.”
I was shocked. Before I could ask her if she also got it, she said, “They gave out only one scholarship this year. You go to Amerika and become someone and come back for me.”
For the first time, I understood the meaning of the word: unsettling (ən-ˈset-liŋ) –like a mass of colloidal thoughts suspended in the depths of my mind. I planned to go back home to see my girl as soon as I graduated, but I got a job at an investment banking firm. It took me two years before I could go home. I rushed to my basti in an auto rickshaw as soon as I landed. I expected my girl to run out of her house with a goofy smile. No one around seemed to know where she was. I went to the YMCA and got a bed for two weeks. As I wandered the streets over the next ten days, I realized my city had taken my girl away from me. B I went back to Amerika and immersed myself in work. The internet had just entered society. Amerika’s military had just entered Iraq. And big tech companies had just started. And I began to play with other people’s money. I hit a streak of gains and made my clients wealthy, and in the pro cess I received a substantial amount of money in commissions. I bought an apartment in Midtown, one with a concierge, a gym, and a rooftop pool. I was consumed by pain that I could not heal with any number of distrac tions. It started with alcohol. Then drugs and music. And finally, women— all the things my money made it easy to get. That money I didn’t have when I needed it for my mother. I began to hate money. This time, I understood the meaning of the word: despair (di-ˈ sper) – like the wound throbbing in my brain that no medicine could heal.
“Get me a digital watch and a Walkman,” his letter continued. The last sen tence was, “Send me a thousand rupees by money order.”
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more than describing the snow on the NYU grounds or the tourist places in the city. And I asked if she had applied again for the NMC Trust scholarship. At first, her letters were full of questions. I read them over many times. And I smiled at her rebukes in response to my excitement of going to a bar with my classmates. “Don’t waste your time. I hope you are not doing anything stupid.” Followed by, “Your mother is doing well. I read her the letter you wrote.” About two years after, close to my graduation, I received a telegram my girl sent. “YOUR MOTHER ILL. COME HOME,” it read. I rushed home on Pan Am with a ticket my advisor bought. B I went to the NMC Hospital. The main hall was crowded and chaotic. I pushed my way to the front desk. The nurse took a while to find where my mother was. I went into a hall, lit with harsh fluorescent lights, reek ing of phenol, and stuffed with over a hundred beds. My mother lay on an iron bed covered in a grubby white sheet, with oxygen tubes in her nose. A young doctor with a severe expression and wearing a starched white coat stopped by. “Your mother has serious heart problems,” he said. “She shouldn’t have been working so hard. We have treated her as best as we could. It is now all up to God.” I wanted to ask him if God was a better doctor. I regretted going to Amerika and leaving my mother all by herself. She woke up on the fifth day. Her face was gaunt. Her eyes lacked the usual spark. “You came back,” she managed to say and clutched my hand before she closed her eyes. On the sixth day, about 3:00 a.m., she passed away, taking a part of me with her. My girl wept for me as well. A few days after the cremation, she came to my shack. “Why are you still here? Go and complete your degree, you idiot,” she said. I asked her again if she had applied for the NMC Trust scholarship. She didn’t answer. I told her that I’d come back for her. She didn’t smile. I was twenty-four, and she still was five days younger than me. B I wrote my girl several letters, starting from the day I returned to NYC. Her replies became less frequent. Until one day, they stopped. I continued to write and mail them to her. A letter came back. “Addressee not found. Return to the sender.” I wrote a letter to Rao, the ration shop owner, four houses down from her house, inquiring about her. B “She and her mother have left,” the shop owner replied on the postcard.
I told him. I told him everything about my life over all his beers. He heard without interrupting. “You lost, boy. You lost. Bad,” he said. “This ain’t the place to find nothin’. This here is the colon of America. Nothin’
“You ain’t gonna know when it is the right time to shine. Thank you, God bless you,” he said, taking the twenty-dollar bill I gave him. He was about to leave and turned back. “Want to join me for dinner?” We went to the Star of China, took out chicken lo mein, ate under a streetlight around the corner, and drank gas station beer in tall bottles in paper bags. “Why you so sad, man?” he asked, lighting a cigarette. I told him about my life. He looked at me for a moment and shook his head. “You need to find yourself, man. Go down the Mississippi. At least that’s where all the blues musicians go.”
I turned to see a man, as dark as me, older than me, sitting in a beat en-up wooden chair by a shack, holding a beer can, and gazing at me with his sharp eyes. I walked up to him. He was tall and full of muscles. His skin glistened in the evening sun. His goatee was all salt and pepper. He wore the whitest white shirt I had seen in a while and a pair of worn blue jeans and dirty canvas shoes. He pointed to another chair, fished out a beer can from a carton at his feet, and threw it to me. I caught it and popped it open. Froth hissed out like a baby cobra. I sat in the chair and sipped the tepid beer. “Whatduyu looking for?”
I took the briefcase and left. B I rented a Buick Regal and started driving south on I-81. As per Blakey’s suggestion, I followed the Mississippi River down south. I went past cities and towns, stopping for gas, cigarettes, and occasional meals in fast-food joints. Driving with no place to go to was comfortably numbing. I listened to the radio. Music on FM segued into hate speeches on AM. Gun rights, politics, abortion, racism, religious sermons, saving people from other countries, from their governments by bombing them. I slept in my car at truck stops. Politely refused a few pimps with their women in tow and bought from the dealers with their stash in their pockets. My beard had grown from a night shadow to a raggedy nest hanging down to my collar. My clothes were crumpled and sweaty. I wasn’t sure how long I drove and how far. The blacktop road became a dirt road with no traffic until the freeway ended. I went further, following the river. And then even that dirt road ended. I stopped the car and got out. It felt somehow familiar. I was in the middle of shacks—not houses—shacks like the one I had lived in. The air smelled like month-old trash. “Whatduyu want?”
“You never can be not prepared,” he said, noticing me looking at his clothes.
B On my thirtieth birthday, I woke up with an intense feeling of empti ness. From that day on, my life took a downward spiral. Instead of going to work, I walked on the streets. Bumping into people and hearing them curse me. Bathing, eating, and grooming became irregular. I listened to Blakey’s sad tunes and drank with him until daybreak. One day, I woke up with a somewhat clear head and a vague sense of purpose. I went to my bank on Fifth Avenue. The teller, a thirty-something-year-old man with neatly groomed hair and a flashy smile, looked suspiciously at my messy face and torn jeans and worn T-shirt when I told him that I wanted to withdraw all my money. He checked my driver’s license and handed it back and then brought up my account on his IBM screen. “But sir,” he said, “you want to withdraw it all? I will have to talk to the manager.”
I said I didn’t know. And asked him what that place was. “Heaven’s Crossing,” he said. “Hell. It is. Really. Whodyu’d be?”
He left and came back a few minutes later with an elderly, balding man in a pinstripe suit. The manager smiled at me. “I am Mr. Baker,” he said. “John said you wanted to withdraw all your money from your account. Is there a problem, sir? If there is an emergency, our bank can work with you. It is a substantial amount. We cannot give it out in one lump sum.” I insisted that it was my money and I could take it all if I wanted to. It went on like that for another fifteen minutes. The manager made a few calls while I sat in his office. After about two hours, the teller got my money in a briefcase. “It is exactly $999,007 in one-hundred-dollar bills and seven ones, loose, and not in stacks just as you asked, and seventy-three cents, sir.”
That’s when I met Lionel Blakey. I heard him first, blowing out the sad dest sounds on his sax. For months, he played in the same spot on the side of myOnebuilding.day,Iwent down and joined the group of his audience and stayed long after they left. Blakey did not stop until his lungs could not pump anymore. He was about sixty, thin, with graying hair and sharp features, elegantly dressed in a black tuxedo and a hat as if he was at a concert hall.
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B Two weeks later, I sold my apartment and flew back to Nakara. I met Rao, the ration shop owner, and asked him where my girl was. He looked at me for a moment, smoothing his slick hair. “You never sent me the digital watch and the Walkman and the thousand rupees,” he said. I said I would give him 5,000 rupees. “I want 10,000,” he said. “And that is cheap.”
I handed him the money. He smiled as he pocketed it. “Try the ITC hotel.”
We reminisced as if nothing had happened since we last met, until it got dark and the bar closed. I entered my room, switched on the lights, and stood awkwardly in the middle. She sat on the bed. City lights twinkled in her eyes. Her skin glowed like chai with just the right amount of milk in it. Her black hair cascaded on the white linens. Her red chiffon sari slipped off her chest. I continued to look into her eyes. “I now go by the name Kanya.” The name meant “virgin.” I looked at her. Kanya was a dream stretched out on my hotel bed. “You could have had me any way you wanted,” she said, break ing my thoughts. I suppressed my quick retort. All I wanted to find out was how my girl turned into Kanya. Instead, I asked her what she did for a living.“Iam an interior decorator. I find my clients mostly by referrals.” She smiled. “The rich like to hang out in star hotels like this. Casual drinks al ways help to seal deals.” She wet her lips with her tongue. “You never told me how you felt about me.” There was a hint of anxiety in her voice.
BELMONT STORY REVIEW | SUMMER 202276 SUMMER 2022 | BELMONT STORY REVIEW 77 but shit here. You work in the big city. You make a lot of money. But you ain’t happy. You know why? You ain’t nothin’ but a slave. Jus’ like my folk and yours from what you tellin’. Your money ain’t gonna give you peace. Your mama worked jus’ like my mama, as a slave. Your money didn’t help your mama. And your girl,” he paused. “You know nothin’ of her. Maybe she a slave too. Somewhere. That’s your problem, boy. You lookin’ in the wrong place for her. Go back. Find your girl.”
B The front desk staff at the ITC hotel looked at me weirdly when I asked them for my girl. I went to the bar by the pool and ordered a pint of King fisher—minimum required to sit there. I sipped the beer sitting under a colorful umbrella on the hotel deck hoping Rao’s information was right as I observed the crowd. I took the last sip and turned to my left and jolted up. I saw my girl walk on water. So it seemed, from my angle, in front of the ho tel pool. She appeared taller in her high heels. Her hair was immaculately styled. She moved with a swagger—her breasts and hips dancing. I stopped her before she went into the pub. It took a moment for her to recognize me. She broke into a smile. She smelled faintly of a flower I couldn’t identify.
I didn’t know what to say. As I looked at that man, I understood the word: enlightenment (in- ˈ lī-tᵊ n-mənt)like a match struck in my mind. I suddenly saw that man who sat under the bodhi tree centuries ago, but he was sitting across from me in a rickety chair. I got up and stepped to my car. I took out the briefcase from the back seat, from between the fastfood wrappers, and walked back to him. I placed it at his feet. And opened it. He looked at the loose hundred-dollar bills. “Wassthis?”
I said I hated that money. And that he could have all of it. Nearly a mil lion dollars. Make some use of it. He remained quiet for a few moments, cleared his throat, and spat to the side. “I don’t want your money,” he said. “Whydontyu give it to som munelse? I donneed charity.” I could see his pride. The more he refused, the more I wanted him to take it. “Easy money is cursed,” he said. I remembered my mother’s face just before she died. I despised that money in front of me. We both sat there looking at the open briefcase. The sun started to dip. The wind picked up and soon turned intense, making random dust vortexes. Empty beer cans rattled and flew away. A plume of dust grew into a cloud. I heard a fluttering sound. An eddy of the wind picked up the hundred-dollar bills with it. A few initially. They floated in the air, shining against the dusty cloud. And then the wind grabbed them. They rose into the air like a misshaped cone and expanded. We both watched them soar into the sky and fall into the Mississippi and drift away down the river like a crumpled blanket. I watched until most of them were gone. I picked up the rest from the ground and threw them into the river, along with my briefcase. I nodded to the man, got into my car, and drove back.
I felt everything I had earned had no meaning. I had stolen her life. I told her that. She smiled. Wistfully. I gave her the rest of the money I had. She refused. I asked her to come with me to America. She smiled again. Sadly. She interlaced her fingers with mine. “You go back, you fool.”
“After you left, I worked at an insurance company. Then my mother fell ill. I didn’t have any money for her treatment. One of the managers at work gave me a loan. He said I didn’t have to repay. He said he only wanted my company. After a year, I left him and the job. My mother’s condition wors ened. I couldn’t find a job with enough pay to cover her medical bills. Then I had to take out loans and repay with my body. But my mother is still bed ridden.” She stared into my eyes and held my hand tightly. “Do you hate what I have done to your girl now?” We stood like that for a while. Then I asked her why she didn’t apply again to get a scholarship to Amerika or contact me. She let go of my hand and moved away. I said I came to take her to Amerika with me. She looked at me. “There was a time I could have gone to America,” she said. “I had a scholarship.” I was stunned. “It was I who got the scholarship when we both applied. I convinced the NMC Trust officers to give it to you. You needed it more than I did. I thought I could apply again. But that was the last year they gave out the scholarships.”
Her words echoed a pang in my heart. I told her she was more than anyone or anything in my life. She smiled. Wistfully. And got up and walked onto the balcony. I followed her. The room was filled with the blaring of cars, chanting on the loudspeakers from the nearby temple, and techno music from the pub below. We both gazed at the city lights. She pointed her finger to the south. “There,” she said. “That’s where that trash heap is. It seems to be following me no matter how hard I try to get away from it. I can smell it. I can feel it. I miss it sometimes. When I think of you.” I didn’t say anything. I felt everything I had earned had no meaning. I had stolen her life. I told her that. She smiled. Wistfully. I gave her the rest of the money I had. She refused. I asked her to come with me to America. She smiled again. Sadly. She interlaced her fingers with mine.
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With that, she left. B The next day, I found out where she lived and went to her. But as I expect ed, there was no way to dissuade her once she made up her mind. I roamed the streets aimlessly with only one thought: I had robbed my girl’s life. This time I understood the word: shame (ˈ shām) – like a mix of misery and guilt. I ended up at the trash heap by sunset—sweaty and tired. It wasn’t quite the place of solace I expected. It only reminded me of the first time I saw her. And her smile and her touch. I stopped by the bore pump, where it had all begun. I took off my shirt and pumped water onto my head. I heard footsteps over the din of the traffic and turned. In the twilight, I saw my girl. She was standing there with a white shirt in her hand.
Page Mackenzie10 Lane is a program manager in the tech industry. Born in Boston, she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University. She currently lives and writes in San Francisco.
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POETRY Page 49 Roy Bentley is the author of Walking with Eve in the Loved City, chosen by Billy Collins as finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize; Starlight Taxi, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize; The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana, chosen by John Gallaher as winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize; as well as My Mother’s Red Ford: New & Selected Poems 1986 – 2020 published by Lost Horse Press. Poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, New Ohio Review, and Prairie Schooner among others. His latest is Beautiful Plenty (Main Street Rag, 2021). Page Renee32Emerson is a homeschooling mom of seven, and the author of Church Ladies (forthcoming from Fernwood Press, 2022), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press, 2016), and Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing, 2014). Her poetry has been published in Cumberland River Review, Windhover, and Poetry South. She adjunct teaches online for Indiana Wesleyan University, and blogs about poetry, grief, and motherhood at www.reneeemerson.com.
FICTION Page Meghan36 Beaudry began writing as part of her rehabilitation from brain trauma in 2014 and simply never stopped. Her work has been published in Hippocampus, Ravishly, TODAY, Al Jazeera, and the Huffington Post. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017. In 2020, she was selected as winner of the Pen 2 Paper Creative Writing Contest in fiction. Meghan blogs for Lupus.net.
NONFICTION Page Heather50 M. Surls’s nonfiction has appeared in places like Catamaran, RiverTeeth, The Other Journal, Cordella, and Nowhere. She is assistant editor at Anthrow Circus, a mixed media site exploring culture and society through the lens of place. She lives in Amman, Jordan, with her husband and two sons, and is working on a book of literary nonfiction about the Middle East. www.heathersurls.com.
Page Michael8 S. Glaser served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004–2009. He is a Professor Emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a recipient of the Homer Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Columbia Merit Award for service to poetry, and Loyola College’s Andrew White Medal for his dedication to sustaining the poetic tradition. He has edited three anthologies of poetry, co-edited the Complete Poems of Lucille Clifton for BOA Editions, and published several award winning volumes of his own work, most recently Threshold of Light with Bright Hill Publishing (2019). More at www.michaelsglaser.com.
[ CONTRIBUTORS ]
Page Rahul66Mitra is a writer, artist, and scientist, born in Hyderabad, India. His stories have been published in literary journals—Gowanus, Tell Tales Anthology (UK), and Zone 3 Literary Journal. An excerpt, “River of Immortality (Or How I met my colonizers),” from his unpublished second novel of Nakara quartet has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His scientific papers on cancer therapeutics development have been published in Nature, Cell Discovery, EBioMedicine, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, etc. His artwork is in 50 private collections and has been shown in several galleries and museums across the world. He is currently working on his novel, Sons of Nakara, part of the Nakara quartet.
Page Cordelia34 Hanemann is currently a practicing writer and artist in Raleigh, NC. A former nun from Most Holy Sacrament Convent and a retired professor of English, she has published in numerous journals including Atlanta Review, Connecticut River Review, Southwestern Review, and California Review; anthologies, The Poet Magazine’s new anthology, Friends and Friendship and forthcoming, Adversity, Heron Clan and Kakalak and in her own chapbook, Through a Glass Darkly. Her poems have won awards and been nominated for Pushcarts. Recently the featured poet for Negative Capability Press and The Alexandria Quarterly, she is now working on a first novel, about her roots in Cajun Louisiana.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Avery Kiker Maloney is a multidisciplinary creative based in Chicago, IL. She applies her love of storytelling to her writing and design work to explore the world and people around her. To learn more, visit www.averymaloney.com.
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Hadi-Tabassum was born in Hyderabad, India and immigrated to Chicago with her family in the early 1970s. Her first book of poems, Muslim Melancholia (2017), was published by Red Mountain Press. She has published poems in the Journal of Postcolonial Literature, Papercuts, The Waggle, Indian Review, Mosaic, Main Street Rag, Pilgrimage, riksha, Clockhouse, The Canopy Review, Tin House, and Souvenir. Her poems were performed on stage in 2017 as a part of the Kundiman Foundation and Emotive Fruition event focusing on Asian American poetry. She also publishes short stories: “Maqbool” was published in New Orleans Review in June 2018 and was a chapter in the New Moons Anthology edited by Kazam Ali; “Lateef” was published in Another Chicago Magazine; “Khalid” was published in Louisville Review; and “Sajid” won the distinguished award in the Best American Short Story Collection 2021 and was originally published in Chicago Quarterly Review.
Page James30Swansbrough runs a restaurant repair company in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His work has appeared in Free State Review, Cagibi, Freshwater Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Watershed Review, and others. He was named Honorable Mention for the 2019 Yeats Poetry Award by the WB Yeats Society of New York. He lives with his wife and daughters in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, where they tend an organic rainbow glitter farm.
Page 9 Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet, produced playwright, journalist, and musician from Staffordshire in the West Midlands. Follow him on Twitter @benmacnair.
FROM THE ARTIST: We witness the world in countless ways. Through our own lived experiences, stories told by our loved ones, the pages of our favorite books. And, over the years, we’ve gained new lenses through which to view things—conversations over text and video calls, a constant stream of updates from our social networks, news sources that are updating real-time in the palm of our hand. These things increase our field of vision in some ways, but they can also distract us from the things taking place where we are. In a time where it feels like the whole world is at our fingertips—in sight but out of reach—do you want to witness it from afar or bear witness to the part of it that’s right in front of you?