Goose Fiction ┃ Volume 11 (2021-2022)

Volume 11

goose An annual review of short fiction

Volume 11 Spring 2022 Produced at Victoria College in the University of Toronto

GOOSE

Masthead CO-EDITORS IN CHIEF Emily Hurmizi Allison Zhao ASSOCIATE EDITORS Areen Aftab Charlotte Chellew Syeda Hasan Phoebe Jenner Quinn Lui Anita Mazumdar-Moscato Simona Zaunius ILLUSTRATORS Karen Kan Seavey van Walsum LAYOUT EDITOR Ashley An

Cover art by Seavey van Walsum

3

Editor’s Note

To begin, we want to thank our contributors. As a small, student-led journal, we are grateful to be supported by a creative community of individuals, who are deeply engaged with the literary arts. Your ability to write fiction that immerses readers in new realities and unique perspectives is inspiring.

This issue feels particularly momentous. It is the first time we have been able to print Goose Fiction in two years. We have learnt of the importance and yet difficulty of writing fiction in the midst of tragedy, loss, and instability. However, this year’s stories provide us with a renewed hope for the future.

Their themes were diverse and evocative. They touch on subjects of family, loss, and how other people impact our lives – for better or for worse. We believe these stories will invite our readers to imagine possibilities for a world with deeper connections between people and communities, as well as one of recovery, cultural vibrancy and representation, and prosperity. Goose Fiction has observed new kinds of stories and perspectives in our submissions, and perhaps this reflects a prospective and exciting future for literature.

Finally, we would like to thank the editors, illustrators, and layout editor.

You have made this issue of Goose Fiction a reality through your continued dedication. Your energy and enthusiasm made long online meetings fulfilling, and we are always amazed by your passion for working with our contributors and their stories.

We are immensely proud to present this issue of Goose Fiction. We hope you enjoy reading it.

Emily Hurmizi and Allison Zhao Editors-in-Chief, 2021-22

4

GOOSE

Table of Contents Waves

5

Tehlan Lenius

Teeth

15

Cheryl Lee

Surely Some Revelation is at Hand

17

Amory S. Zhao

Large White Cube

29

Mailey Horner

Colour Theory

37

Mathea Treslan

Soup

41

Jingshu Helen Yao

Remains

49

Isobel R.S. Carnegie

From Behind the Congregation

53

Julliana (Yanni) Santos

Adele Chippewa’s Career as a Freelance Editor and Consultant

57

Lois Beardslee

About the Authors

68

5

LENIUS

Waves TEHLAN LENIUS

M

ei didn’t think she would ever get used to the silence. Some days, it was a welcome tranquillity. On others, it spread and settled around her, coiling like a snake waiting to strike. Stillness was suffocating to someone who grew up without its touch.

In another life, her home was drenched in the din of raging storms and blaring alarms. It didn’t matter how quiet the house was; the chaos outside always had a way of seeping in under the door. The world fell apart with a wail not a whisper, Mei learnt, long before she discovered that the sky was meant to be blue, or that the rain wasn’t supposed to burn.

Sometimes, it felt as if that chaos was still inside her, alive just under the surface. She always needed to be moving—fidgeting with this and that, tinkering with anything she could crack open. On earth, when it leaked out of her, she barely even noticed. Her loud voice and clumsy mistakes disappeared into the bustle around her, but in the black expanse of space, stillness rose around her like the sea, swallowing her whole.

Her footsteps echoed through the empty corridor, bouncing off the smooth grey walls and thick window panes. The door at the end of the hall sensed her presence as she approached, sliding open with a soft sigh to reveal a large empty room, its walls lined on either side with rows of glass domes.

Mei could only see the heads of the sleeping figures inside, the rest of their bodies disappearing into the wall. They lay in rows, like books on a shelf, stacked one chamber on top of another and stretching out along the length of the room, as far as the eye could see. It was strange to think that each one held a person—an entire life, contained within a single box. The pods were

6

GOOSE

each the size of a coffin, though they were designed to preserve life, not bury it. Still, every time Mei saw the rows of glass, she couldn’t help but feel as if it were a graveyard.

She wandered slowly, peering at the faces sleeping inside. The room was like a time capsule, standing as it always had, untouched since the last time she visited. Mei would have been concerned if it wasn’t. Things rarely moved on the ship unless she was the one who did the moving. The only other person on board was her sister, who had always lived without ever leaving a trace.

Jia was impossibly immaculate, moving through the world as though she were already a ghost. Mei could never tell where she had been, or where she was, unless her sister decided to make it known.

As if on cue, she heard a slight rustle from behind her, turning to see Jia leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed. She wore the same placid expression she always did, her black hair pulled back into a high ponytail.

A few loose strands framed her face, falling over delicate cheekbones and a sharp, expectant gaze. Jia had their mother’s eyes, as dark as the black expanse that stretched out beyond them, and just as impossible to decipher. Mei never knew what went on behind them, but for a moment, she saw a question rising to the surface. Jia let her see what neither of them had the courage to say out loud.

Do you really think he can fix this?

Mei’s gaze flickered away, lowering to the familiar face that lay in the pod before her.

“He wrote the program, Jia,” she answered carefully, hoping against hope that she sounded more confident than she felt. “It’s Kaldor’s AI. He’ll know how to patch it.” She stared at the face behind the glass, the gentle curve of his nose—the closed eyes that she knew were blue, and the mouth that she had seen pull into a smile a lifetime ago. The body lay motionless, now.

Dead—asleep, Mei corrected herself hastily.

Out of the corner of her eye, Mei watched Jia approach, showing both hands into her pockets as she came to stand beside her.

“What if he doesn’t.” Jia had a way of asking questions like they were statements, burdened with the weight of finality. It was as if the hypothetical had already happened and the answer you gave would be set in stone the moment you spoke. Mei closed her eyes, choosing her words carefully.

7

LENIUS

“That’s not our job,” she said finally, deflecting to a fact that they both knew was true. They had volunteered for this. They watched the ship. Made sure it stayed intact. She sighed, staring down through the glass at the motionless face again. If they couldn’t fix the problem, they woke someone who could. That’s how they survived. Jia knew that.

She glanced over, unease sparking inside her as she met her sister’s gaze.

There was a strange look in her eye that Mei had never seen before. Expressions passed across Jia’s face, each one more unreadable than the last. Her lips parted, the words on the tip of her tongue, but whatever they were, Mei didn’t want to hear them.

“This isn’t the end.” There was a stubbornness in Mei’s voice, steady and unflinching, filling the silence before Jia could. “We just have to wait a little longer. We have to get through this.”

Jia searched her eyes for a moment, as if she were looking for something that she didn’t expect to find. Her expression slid into a grim surrender as she came back empty-handed. Mei couldn’t help but feel that she had failed a test somehow. She wasn’t sure what, and she wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t have the energy to uproot the answer.

“I don’t want to fight,” she said softly, an edge of urgency to her voice.

Whatever happened, she couldn’t go through another confrontation again.

The two of them had exchanged more words in the past three days than they had in the last decade, arguing over ways to fix a problem outside their reach, and bickering over what the next step should be. Neither of them wanted to go through the motions again.

Jia looked away into the chamber, at the man who would be awake this time tomorrow. Her body seemed to sigh in surrender as she let whatever thought she held in her hand go free.

“Same time, then,” she said. “At the Window.”

Mei nodded once.

“See you then,” she offered, but Jia didn’t respond, her back already turned as she walked away and disappeared into the corridor without a trace.

• In space, time is a fickle thing. There is no sun to tell you when to rise,

8

GOOSE

or a distinct moment to mark the change between day and night. Within the walls of the ship, time became like beauty—held in the eye of the beholder. It barely existed beyond the loose lines that Mei and Jia had drawn together.

And yet, somehow, Mei still found a way to be late.

“Shit,” she muttered, glancing at the watch on her wrist and swiping clear the hologram that rose from the table in front of her. The digital model of the ship disappeared as she made her way out of the room and into the corridors.

She took a left. Then a right. Left again, slowing to a walk as her sister’s figure came into view. Jia sat in the middle of the hall, staring out into the stars with a glass in hand and a hairbrush at her side. One leg was stretched out, the other pulled up to her chest.

Mei couldn’t remember when they christened this particular hallway “The Window,” or why the name was so painfully uncreative, but it marked the spot where the sunrise was most visible at that time of day. Or night.

Depending on what clock you ran on. She squinted as she drew closer, rolling her eyes prematurely.

“Jia, did you—” She cut Mei off with a dismissive wave of the hand.

“Save it, I don’t wanna hear it,” Jia said, picking up a second glass from the floor and holding it out without looking up. For a moment, Mei stared in mild disbelief, eyes flickering to the open bottle of rum on the floor. She dragged one hand down her face, begrudgingly reaching for the glass.

“This wasn’t supposed to be opened until Earth was viable again.” She pointed to the planet beyond the window. “Does that look viable to you?”

“Well, you really can’t tell from this far away,” Jia deadpanned, eyes still on the Earth as she raised her cup to her lips. She glanced at Mei over the rim, raising one eyebrow as if to challenge her. “What’re you gonna do—tell Mom?” “Ha ha,” Mei mocked, shaking her head in disapproval, but accepting the glass nonetheless. What was done was done, she supposed. “Would she have approved of this?”

A distant surprise touched Jia’s features, one that was painfully familiar.

She always seemed to forget that Mei had been too young to remember their parents—that all she had were bits and pieces of memories. Not enough to

9

LENIUS

make up a person, let alone two.

Jia set down her glass as Mei took a seat, both of them shifting into position without exchanging a word. Mei crossed her legs, her sister settling in behind her.

“She would’ve,” Jia said simply. “Knowing that you can never prove me wrong, yeah. She would’ve.” A faint smile tugged at Mei’s lips as she felt the brush run through her hair, the strokes falling into a steady rhythm.

She raised her glass to her lips, just as Jia began to speak, her voice strangely delicate.

“Do you ever think about the people we left behind?” Mei stiffened, a frown flickering across her face as her sister went on. “Liang. Alison. Inaya.

Everyone.”

Mei paused to watch the rum swirl in her glass, the names bouncing in her head. A brother. An aunt. Countless friends and families—a world full of people who couldn’t be saved.

“No,” she said with a shrug, shoving the thought under the floorboards and mercilessly nailing them down, as she always did when the topic crossed her mind. “There’s no use thinking that way. We have to move forward.”

Mei tilted her head back and downed her drink with a shudder, the alcohol burning as it slid down. When she looked up again, she saw her sister watching her in the reflection of the window. There was a detached look on her face—something that fell in between sorrow and guilt, but didn’t quite touch either one.

“It’ll be okay, Jia,” Mei offered, allowing a faint but reassuring smile to tug at her lips, even though her words tasted like a lie. Six shifts had already passed—twelve people dead, waiting for the world to return. The sleep was never meant to last this long. Neither was the ship they relied on. “The Earth will heal and then we’ll go home. Not us, but someone will.”

Her sister’s gaze lowered as she returned her attention back to Mei’s hair, parting it down the middle, then dividing the half into three.

“I know,” she said quietly, sitting up on her knees and beginning to braid. She worked deftly, like she always did, fingers moving with the graceful precision of a spider as it spins its web. Mei never bothered to learn how to braid her own hair. She never saw any reason to when she could always pester Jia into doing it for her.

10

GOOSE

SEAVEY VAN WALSUM

11

LENIUS

She listened to her sister’s breathing behind her and leaned into the familiar, rhythmic tug against her hair. She pulled her knees up to her chest, a calm beginning to settle over her as she cast her attention out to the stars.

The view never ceased to amaze her. It always made her feel small, but not in a bad way. Small in a way that made her feel like she was a part of something bigger than herself.

“Do you remember what they called the Mars rover?” she asked, not noticing that she had spoken until her own voice reached her ears. She heard the light snap of the hair tie as her sister finished one braid and moved on to the next.

“What did they call it,” Jia said, indulging her sister the way she used to, back when they were children and Mei would come to her with whatever new obsession had taken her by storm.

“They called it Curiosity,” she said airily. “Another was Spirit.”

A beat of silence.

“What’s your point?” Jia prompted.

Mei shrugged. A cloudy feeling had seeped into her head, her thoughts beginning to wander. She reached out, grabbing at them before they could float away.

“I don’t know. Maybe there isn’t one.” It was odd how light she felt.

She almost smiled as she spoke, the words slipping easily from her tongue.

“I just like to think of us, hundreds of years ago, looking up into space—at this place where we couldn’t go—and deciding to send things that could. We made little metal machines and we named them Curiosity and Spirit and Opportunity…” she paused, trailing off. “Because that’s what’s important to us.”

They fell into another brief silence, Mei finding herself tethered to reality

by Jia’s hands in her hair. Each light tug brought her back, keeping her mind from wandering too far.

“Do you know what they called the last rover they sent?”

In the reflection of the glass, Jia shook her head.

“Perseverance,” Mei murmured, half to herself. “The Earth will come back. And we’ll be ready when it does. We’ll survive. We always do.”

A twinge of unease surfaced in her chest as the lightness inside her intensified, slowly at first, then all at once. She tried to sit up, her head beginning to spin.

12

GOOSE

“I feel… odd. Do you feel it too?” she asked distractedly, Jia’s hand reaching out to steady her. She glanced up, watching the lights that lined the ceiling flicker then fall dark, one by one. A strange feeling washed over her, like she was being dragged underwater. The voice of the ship rang from the loudspeaker, alive for the first time in years, but Mei couldn’t make out the words. With wide eyes, she felt a gentle touch guide her into her sister’s arms as the last of the lights shut off and left them in the long shadows cast by the glow of the window. Mei tried to speak, her unease bleeding into panic as she realised she couldn’t.

Her gaze flickered to the empty glass beside her, realisation setting in with a sickening certainty. Somewhere, distantly, fear slid like a needle under her skin.

“It’s alright, Mei,” Jia said softly, pulling her into her lap and wrapping her arms around her from behind. “It won’t hurt.”

Thoughts came and went through Mei’s head, slipping by like passing trains, too fast for her to catch. It took every scrap of focus she had just to force a single word past her lips.

“Jia…” she said quietly, a helpless plea marooned on her face.

“Don’t talk,” her sister soothed, cupping Mei’s face in one hand and gently running her thumb over her cheek. “This is the easy part.”

“Jia, please. You can’t…” Her breaths came in quicker, her heart beginning to race as she sunk deeper into the stillness trying to worm its way inside. “Kaldor… He'll know how to fix it.”

“I know,” Jia assured her, though there was nothing comforting in her voice. “That’s why I had to do this.”

She tilted her head to one side, her voice growing distant, as if she had slipped away into some great hollow place inside.

“Humans are so… self-centred,” she whispered with a maddening tranquillity. Her eyes drifted up, falling on the planet that still turned dutifully just outside the window. “This isn’t the end of the world. This is just the end of us. When the planet heals, there will be life, like there always has been.

Like there always will be.”

Her attention seemed to drift back to her sister as she met her gaze.

“Do you remember what they called the very first rover? The one before any of the others?” She must’ve seen the startled look on Mei’s face. A ghost

13

LENIUS

of a smile touched her lips. “I read too, you know,” she remarked with mock offence, but genuine affection. She glanced up at the Earth again, her gaze unfocusing.

“They called it Sojourner.” Her voice was light, as if she were already gone. Mei waded through her own mind, hands reaching for the shape of the word. She found it tucked away in a memory curled in the glow of candlelight, her finger running over smooth text.

Sojourner, it read, a temporary resident.

A people residing in a place that is not their own.

Mei’s stomach lurched.

“Jia…” she began, the words losing their way before they could find her lips. She fought to keep herself grounded, grasping for the shape of her voice, but it didn’t seem to matter. Jia didn’t notice her words at all, too caught up in her own thoughts.

“We were never meant to be here forever.” She smiled faintly as she drew herself back to her sister. “You have to understand, Mei—the people on this ship, they would’ve destroyed the Earth all over again, and then where would we be? I’m not letting this go on any longer. The only way to survive is to go back to the beginning.”

Mei swallowed as she searched Jia’s eyes. They were as dark as they had always been — as deep and bottomless as the night outside — but this time, Mei could see right through them, peering through a sliver into her sister’s thoughts. It frightened her to see the unflinching resolve that lay behind them—the surety that said there was no changing her mind. Mei didn’t realise she was crying until Jia brushed a thumb against her cheek and wiped the tears away.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said softly. “The universe just needs us somewhere else for a little while. We’ll be together soon. We’ll return to the world, like waves to the sea.”

Mei desperately clung to the words, perhaps because there was nothing else to hold onto. Jia had said them before, in distant murmurs and quiet moments, repeated like a mantra. It was something Mei had never paid much attention to, allowing her sister whatever comfort she needed for herself.

Picture a wave, Jia would say, and for a moment Mei did. It was strong and tall—real and alive. She watched it rise and fall, then crash against the

14

GOOSE

shore and disappear. It returned to sea, where it came from and where it belonged—where it was always meant to be. Mei felt the pull of the tide drag at her limbs as the water rose around her. It was so easy to relax and let the calm take over. The storm inside her stilled. Peace held her heart in its hands.

The stillness seeped inside her with a sigh, and this time, when Mei closed her eyes, she left everything behind.

15

LEE

Teeth CHERYL LEE

Y

ou might be grinding your teeth in your sleep again. You definitely did it as a kid; your brother said so. The two of you shared a room.

The sound of your teeth scraping together got on his nerves in the dead of night. He’d throw a pillow at you, tell you to quit it, and then you’d lie in the dark, awake for hours.

You know you did it as a teen; your mother noticed. She’d worry and fuss, more so when you brushed her off. She’d check on you when you were trying to sleep. She took you to the dentist, who said it was just your teeth’s way of settling in—some didn’t quite fit, so your body wore them down to size. Your mother got you braces. The metal cut into your cheeks and tongue and you wore them through high school. You didn’t smile for pictures.

You did it two years ago, according to Jen. She said it happened on nights you were tense, or angry. Nights you didn’t want to talk. You denied this—you’d always considered yourself a laid-back guy. Someone who rolled with the punches. Someone slow to anger. But your teeth gave you away, long before you saw she was right.

This time, you’re not so sure. Your teeth feel sensitive. Your jaw aches.

You wake to the faint taste of blood. There’s an edge to your smile. But you don’t know for certain. There’s no one to tell you.

16

GOOSE

KAREN KAN

17

ZHAO

Surely Some Revelation is at Hand AMORY S. ZHAO

T

he township of Wawa, Alberta boasts exactly one hundred citizens, a number that has remained largely unchanged since its establishment

by British colonists in 1921. Nestled somewhere in the Rockies, it is a town that prides itself on equilibrium, a crucial survival tactic remnant of the earlier days of settlement when supplies were scarce and roads were difficult. Now that the days of dearth have long passed, the population number is maintained as tradition. The town council recommends that anyone with plans to die should submit Form 1.21.42 at least nine months in advance for logistical purposes.

Twenty square miles of land have been wrestled from the grasp of nature so that civilization might flourish here, stretching out in the neutral-toned monotony characteristic of Wawa as if an arid desert had sprung up in the midst of pines and shrubs. Yet, the tedium is Arcadia to its residents, who revel in the well-known rhythm of town inactivity. This is the place where beige-coloured bungalows complement bleached mountain peaks, and neighbours wave at each other while watering verdant lawns blooming with perennials. This is the place where the crime rate is consistently non-existent, and the confessional remains disused, save for the occasional impure thoughts of hormone-fueled teenagers. Here is the place for khaki pants and athleisure wear. Here is the place where everyone wears a look of utmost contentment.

Here is the place where even newborns know not to disturb the peace with a first cry.

Yet, on the early morning of a rather pleasant July day, news of Polonius’ death spreads over the serene community of Wawa quietly, effectively, like

18

GOOSE

an airborne contagion. The intelligence is transmitted from one household to another in a rush of air concurrent with the vibration of the vocal cord.

Its invisible presence can be found in the occasional adjectives the ears catch between the natural lulls of town bustle. Phrases such as “a most surprising/ astonishing/unanticipated circumstance” are heard and repeated with such tedium that they are rendered void of any active surprise, astonishment, or anticipation.

It is certainly not the demise of unpleasant Polonius that inspired such an outpour of neighbourly concerns and suppositions, for he had been a sullen and forlorn man whose weekly appearance at the supermarket was the only indication of his still-animated state. No, Polonius’ death acquired its immortalization in Wawa Times as well as the all-encompassing attention of the town because the manner of his death was wholly absurd and incompatible with how the inhabitants envisioned his demise. Polonius had been the first and only immigrant of Wawa, having responded to a town-sanctioned advertisement in the Toronto Star for a single man in want of a new life, after a massive exodus of geriatrics in 1998 left them a man short of a hundred.

Since his move, there had been an implicit consensus amongst the residents concerning the probable date and events of Polonius’ death. They imagined that the recluse would probably be found with his body half-eaten by his sole companion—an old dog of equal unpleasantness—and in decay, having deteriorated uninterrupted by the rude intrusion of discovery. The inhabitants could picture the hermit submitting to death after a particularly bad fall (not unheard of in old age), an illness concealed to all or a rapid spasm with all its accompanying embarrassments.

But as Fate would have it, the hermit perished under the weight and inertia of a truck conveying the weekly replenishment of fresh food to the local store. Poor Polonius had been out to purchase his customary necessities when, crossing the road hastily upon seeing the newly delivered bread, failed to perceive an eighteen-wheeler hurtling headlong down the street. He disappeared under the vehicle with little commotion, save the mildly concerned bark of his canine companion, and lodged himself most inconveniently in the intricate grooves of the truck’s wheels.

The astonishment of the onlookers and their succeeding gratification in having the good fortune of being the chief witnesses to the only significant

19

ZHAO

event in the history of Wawa could hardly be described in words for they did not yet possess the vocabulary for an event so out of the ordinary. The news travelled through the town and gained colourings with each transmission: the truck acquired a few more parts and became a rather unbalanced beast of twenty-one wheels, while Polonius’ encounter with the said mechanical monster was dramatised with a dying fall and a rather tedious monologue.

In the end, the brutality of the hermit’s death softened the opinions of those who would have avoided the man while alive. They may even venture to pronounce him a nice man—an adjective too vague to attribute actual pleasantness but conveying a general compassion and indignation towards the reaper’s precipitous collection. The entire town is vexed by his death. It is the prevailing opinion that sullenness and elusiveness did not warrant such a condemnation. For God’s sake, he was grocery shopping! What’s to prevent any other god-fearing man or woman from being struck down in the midst of an errand? The community is beset with a vague haze of apprehension, and they search through their monotonous suburban memories for any wrongdoing that could have justified Polonius’ hapless calamity. Maybe the old man had been a murderer emeritus before settling in Wawa, having eluded the law well into his septuagenarian years. A few attention-seeking children even came forward to recount the times they saw the old recluse garden rather suspiciously. But the conjecture is eventually dismissed when the man’s tawny, yellow lawn is noted by all—definitely no illegal fertiliser under there.

The community is once again at a loss. What could justify such divine retribution? Potential crimes are discussed with untiring zeal until the town sheriff seizes this opportunity to boast his disdain for personal privacy and announces that the hermit had a spotless record save for a 20-years old parking ticket.

“Was it at least a large vehicle?”

“No,” the sheriff replies. “It was a Beetle.”

A Beetle! The bewilderment swells and thickens till the crowd is choking on the sheer absurdity of this revelation. The man was morally irreprehensible. This will not do. There must have been a reason—a purpose—a higher design. They all know that only the good die young, but the man was neither very good nor very young. There is no maxim for the death of a geriatric who triumphed over savage maladies and the dullness of retirement only to be

20

GOOSE

ground into human pâté; it seems to contradict the very laws of Nature. Yet, the idea of an absurd Nature is so preposterous that witchcraft or voodoo appears more likely. The community comes to an agreement that the unpleasant recluse must have invoked the ire of some particularly petty person and was hexed to be the target for vehicular manslaughter.

It is a time of exhilarating trepidation. Each views their neighbours with keen suspicion and does their best to ward off the wrath and gloom of the mysterious sorcerer through arts and crafts: they cleanse their homes with sage, create protection jars brimming with miscellaneous items of ominous nomenclature, and carry serrated crystals in every crevice of their body. It is not an uncommon sight, a week after Polonius’ death, to see a young woman suddenly drop down to her knees and blindly smack the ground as if in a fervid game of whack-a-mole. In fact, she is searching for the crystal that dislodged from her bra and obscured itself in the indifferent soil. The older generation, scoffing at the ridiculousness of crystal shields, monopolises the phone line with Dial-a-Devotion hotlines requiring three-digit donations.

Such is the state of heightened anxiety in Wawa from the death of a single man.

The illusion of safety provided by the cults of consumerism is irreparably shattered by another incident, which occurred exactly a month after Polonius’ death. Angie, a good-natured woman who never condescended to anger or unpleasantness, sustained devastating injuries after tripping over her husband’s ladder while he was cleaning the rain gutters. As it happens, the husband survived the ten-foot fall into some laurel hedges, but the ladder tipped over and a metal rung fell cleanly upon Angie’s neck. Unfortunately, the ladder was untrained in the art of beheading and did not have the mercy to kill her instantly. She was brought to the hospital, where she toed the line between life and death until the grief of her family and friends turned to impatience, and they finally pulled the plug on this nuisance to their brunch plans.

The absurd manner of Angie’s death unceremoniously displaces Polonius’ monopoly on headlines. Here is a woman beyond reproach and suspicion.

Here is one of their own. If Polonius’ conduct did not justify death by twenty-one wheels, Angie’s genial disposition did not warrant her Marie Antoinette reenactment. The community is dismayed by the configuration of

21

ZHAO

events. They no longer believe Polonius the victim of a petty, personal curse, but rather the unfortunate collateral of a greater spell placed upon the entire town. They imagine themselves as the target of a powerful witch but never question if they are worthy of such efforts. What would a person of supernatural abilities gain from the curse? A 20-years fixed-rate mortgage and a sensibly priced minivan covered in cereal dust?

It is with a degree of distraction and discomposure that the town folks sit in the pews for Angie’s funeral (closed-casket). Her cervical vertebrae had been completely severed during her accident, leaving her head nominally attached to the body by a thin layer of skin—a layer of skin in rapid decay, thanks to the exemplary hospitality of the Wawa County Morgue and its broken air-conditioning during one of the worst heat waves in town history.

Yet, propriety does not permit absence, for Angie had a talent of catching everyone at their worst and took it upon herself to play the nurse and counsellor. For her kindness, the inhabitants now sit silently in the cathedral and feign mournful demeanours despite the perturbation of their minds.

As the droning priest concludes his sermon with the usual prayers and consolations, a line slowly forms down the centre aisle. The residents take turns touching the side of the coffin with open palms—a local gesture of affection and farewell. Then, they weasel through the sagging side door into the cheerful cemetery, weary from their wretched duty of sympathy and glad to be touched by sunlight once again, as if the cold clamminess of the cathedral is a curse in itself.

So the line progresses noiselessly and tediously with apparent solemnity.

Then, as if sensing the crowd’s implicit desire for some form of drama, Cassie resolves to exercise her inveterate talent for wreaking havoc and garnering attention. Cassie is a wiry woman of superstitious inclinations who has taken it upon herself to follow a rigorous diet of Xanax and peyote tea since the presence of a curse is corroborated by the overzealous speculations of those who have nothing better to do than to leech onto a woman’s death as the source of transitory entertainment. The modest diet has rendered her barely standing, the natural result of a physical and spiritual detox. Thus, Cassie stumbles up the aisle, her hands firmly gripping the pews for support, until the sunlight—piercing through the stained-glass portrait of Moses and his stone tablets—launches itself into her eyes with malignancy. The glare stupe-

22

GOOSE

SEAVEY VAN WALSUM

23

ZHAO

24

GOOSE

fies the already unstable woman, who throws her arms forward in a desperate attempt at self-preservation and inadvertently transfers her weight and momentum to the unsuspecting mourner before her. Poor Mr. Browning, who is tenderly caressing the coffin of his first love and musing upon a particularly savoury memory pertaining to a similar wooden board, stumbles forth with his palms still flat against the oak panel. The coffin tips over its shaky pedestal and a hollow crack resounds through the lofty cathedral. Angie’s disembodied head emerges from its mortuary confinement, rolls across the polished marble floor, and settles before the lectern.

The chaos provoked by a mere head could rival the tumult of sacked Troy as the Grecians emerged from their hollow horse. The priest, at the sight of trouble, slinks back into the confessional, locking himself in until the Second Coming—or at least lunchtime. In the erupting clamour of the crowd, Cassie is sensible of an underlying pulse—a murmuring strain that seems to whisper of seraphim and God beyond. The celestial melody is, in fact, an auditory hallucination invoked by an unusually strong brew of peyote, but Cassie is well-versed in the practice of religious interpretations and imbues the music with a significance that best suits her personal aims. Approaching the lectern, she displaces the station of the faint-hearted holy shepherd and bids all to composure. A celestial halo rests above her hair as the garish light piercing through the stained-glass window diffuses through her cubic zirconia headband. The transcendental tableau is marvelled at by all witnesses. Here is the very image of an angel. Here is a woman who could save them from blackness and abject destruction! Angie’s head lies forgotten on the floor but seems to gaze up at this saviour in hemp.

Inebriated with the crowd’s unmitigated attention, Cassie abandons herself to the elation and impulses of the psychedelic and becomes a crude impersonation of a celestial emissary. Lifting her arms up in emphasis (her kaftan forming wings), she proclaims to have been sent by God himself. In her passion, she accidentally kicks the abandoned thurible behind her, sending up an efflorescence of hazy ashes and languorous perfume that envelops her in a nebulous cloud of luminance.

“Brother and sisters,” she announces, a ready-made televangelist, “we’re all aware that our peaceable community is under siege by a pagan anathema.

But God has not abandoned us to our lots. There is still hope of redemption.

25

ZHAO

There is still hope for joy. There is still hope for us all.” The sudden eloquence of a woman who habitually communicates in acronyms and emojis would have startled anyone except for a crowd of apathetic agnostics turned precipitous Christians. In fact, to deem them agnostic would be a misnomer; they worship at the altar of expediency alone.

“We must—” Cassie continues with self-aggrandizing emphasis, “—be reborn.”

A murmur washes through the church as the congregation attempts to decipher the oracle. What does it mean to “be reborn”? Is the town to be revirginized? But the clamour soon subsides as Cassie rambles on.

“Let us bathe in holy water. Let us cover ourselves in holy oil. Let us perform this act of penance that we may be born again, rid of our faults and sins. Let us lift up our praise towards heaven that all might hear and rejoice in the name of God. For no man alone can atone for the sins of many.”

The contradiction of Cassie’s concluding sentence to the basis of Christianity slips by unnoticed as—at that instance—the blare of trumpets ripples through the lofty cathedral. The congregation starts up in alarm as if it were the horn of Gabriel. It is, in fact, the high school marching band starting up its obnoxious parade of musically-inclined virgins for the approaching homecoming. Yet, the effect is the same, as men and women scramble out the cathedral door to spread the news of Cassie’s newfound revelation that shall prove the remedy to all their woes.

Meanwhile, in the succeeding week, Cassie is seen performing miracles all over the small town. All those blessed by her have found themselves cured of the common cold within a week of bed rest. As further proof, a crate of wine is found in the stock room where the store clerk swears a case of water once sat. An urgent exorcism is performed on a young boy who checked out a Dan Brown novel at the local library. Wawa even witnesses an act of resurrection when Narcoleptic Nancy is revived by Cassie’s anointment with holy ice water after many failed attempts to wake her.

It is with an efficacy unheard of in town governance and a crowd size foreign to Sunday mass that the prescribed ceremony is realised and attended.

The date appointed is said to be the feast day of some long-forgotten saint who cut off his own hands, feet, testicles or something of equal importance to avoid the temptations of sin. It is on this day of infamous masochism that

26

GOOSE

the town gathers on the common and surrounds the greenspace with midsize sedans.

The equipment used for the annual high school car wash is appropriated for the dispensation of holy water. A gaggle of wet, scantily dressed cheerleaders is replaced by a shivering priest, who had to be lured away from the confessional with the promise of a potluck. Now, he stands in the common, choking out blessings as the clerical collar contracts under the unrelenting spray of water and melds the purple vestment with his skin. Prompted by fear and uncertainty (although it cannot be denied that a few women and one man are motivated by the desire of seeing a wet priest), the people emerge from their beige bungalows and bathe themselves in the perpetual stream of holy water bursting from a plastic pipe. What a strange sight to see—a nude town of ninety-eight, dripping with water. One might assume that the town has been invaded by swingers or nudists but no conjecture would be more absurd than a ritual concocted in a mind deteriorated by psychedelic tea.

By noon, gallons of olive oil sizzle under the blazing sun, transported to the common by the same truck that jump-started this descent into hysteria. Damp residents place themselves in an unbroken line down the grassy field, holding plastic buckets, sand pails, ceramic bowls, and glass pitchers to receive their blessed oil by the same shivering priest, whose skin has begun to match his violet robe. Greedily, they dip fervent hands into rich oil and anoint themselves from head to toe. Mr. Browning wonders if his neighbour Joe could grease him up from behind? Of course, Joe would be very happy to help his neighbour. Could Mr. Browning also do the same for him and take care to massage the oil into the skin?

While a massage chain takes shape in the common, Cassie places herself upon a makeshift stage consisting of plywood joined together with nails. She holds a microphone in her hand, muttering incoherent utterances of angelic origin, perhaps Latin or Greek, or so the residents believed. Sadly, Cassie is barely monolingual and is simply reciting a string of Christmas carols that has lodged itself most unseasonably in her brain. At a particular swell of the song, Cassie’s voice surges through the town greenspace with apparent authority: “Up on the housetop reindeers pause.”

Unfortunately, the reindeer reference that would have revealed the hymn’s festive context is rendered inaudible as a sudden gust of wind forces

27

ZHAO

her to turn away from the microphone, dropping the stagnant reindeer from its housetop.

Believing themselves the receiver of another divine instruction, the residents scramble home in search of a ladder hidden in the depths of their garage. They dust off the rusty metal and clamber up to the roof, their oily fingers and oily feet slipping and sliding on the rungs.

Nevertheless, they reach the top, and as they stand erect upon asphalt slopes, they gaze upon the gleaming, unknown forms of their well-known friends. The holy liquids have a metamorphosing effect: next-door neighbours transmute to shiny bronze statues, ragged house-wives become Venus herself, and flabby husbands are the very portrait of Adonis. As they stare transfixed at each other’s flourishing beauty, Cassie begins another carol—made audible to all by her microphone: “Joy to the world! The Saviour reigns!

Let men their song employ While fields and flocks, rocks, hills and plains Repeat the sounding joy.”

The gravity of the occasion is cemented by the languid solemnity of Cassie’s voice. The residents join in on this hymn, repeating their joy over and over again as if to will the abstract into being. A few shy stragglers, conscious of their nakedness and discordant voice, soon disregard all care and unite their sound with those of their neighbours. Each man and woman exults in the uniformity of their action and imagines themselves as only a composite of the whole. The carol ends but the voices do not. As it often happens, there is little divide between despairing joy and exulting sorrow. The sound of elation often brings to mind contradictory scenes of sorrow and contrition.

So the hours wear sluggishly on, and Wawa is filled with the noises of human suffering. Their oiled skin sizzles under the burning sun; ruddy and sunburnt, they blister and peel without ever being touched. Their lips flake and crack, dripping blood onto bodies of bronze and marble. No voice escapes from the gaping mouths that never cease to move. The soles of their feet dance and throb above coal-hot shingles, grinding dead skin into asphalt roofs. They writhe, sway, and eventually sink onto their knees. Yet, they continue to cry, to plead, to beg, to chant, and to lament. Some slip down their roof towards something like death or oblivion but no one cares nor do they

28

GOOSE

dare stop. They are all encompassed in a singular action of humanity—of lament—of penitence—of joy.

29

HORNER

Large White Cube MAILEY HORNER

W

hen the Baroness Margarita Antonella Von Rosa III was twenty for the first time, she moved as far away from Austria as quickly as she could. She flew to Montreal with Austrian Air as the sole passenger on a nine-seat private charter jet, thinking of the steamship that had crossed the Atlantic four times a year and brought her great-aunt, the late Margarita Emilia Von Rosa I, to Montreal forty-seven years prior. She was a sight when she landed on the runway of Pierre-Trudeau International Airport—the ramp agents gawked as she stomped a pretty, buckled foot on the asphalt below and asked them what the hell they were looking at, tying her long brown hair back with a silk hair ribbon and rubbing something smudgy from her vision. She was wearing a large, mink coat because she heard Montreal was cold, even in March, and shoes with small pointed heels and large buckles. In one hand, she held a large carpet bag, and nestled in the crook of her furry elbow was a fuzzy white kitten named !?.

Margarita Antonella briefly lived in a hotel, then signed a lease for the basement space of an art gallery, the one usually reserved for special exhibits.

The gallery was low on funding that year and decided to rent the basement to a dozen artists as studios— that is, until Margarita signed the lease.

The room was quite large. If Margarita ran from one end to the other, it would take upwards of ten seconds. She did this from time to time, her long hair sweeping up behind her like streamers on bicycle handlebars. In this room, there was no art on the walls. It was a large, white cube. Offset from the middle of this cube was a twin bed with silk sheets and down-filled blankets. The cat burrowed in and out of these blankets as Margarita slept. Beside

30

GOOSE

the bed there was a small lamp and a small stack of books. A few feet from the bed was a dresser where Margarita kept all her clothing.

Why do you live like this, Marie? Isolated, with no belongings, you don’t have to live like this. You are Margarita Antonella.

I want to live like this because I am not just Margarita Antonella, I am an artist—and I am art. Look at me, I live in a big white gallery, my life is on display. I am known not for my family, but for me. I am an artist and I am hungry.

But does your family not pay for this space? For this life? You are rich and you know it, so why play the part of the starving artist, Marie?

Because I’m so good at it.

You are riddled with guilt.

And who are you to ask me these questions anyway? You’re just a cat.

When did the artist studio become the gallery? When did the artist become the art?

Shut up and let me work.

It doesn’t look like you’re working.

Shh. I’m thinking.

When Margarita Antonella was twenty-one for the first time, she began suffering from a pathological case of hermeneutic myopia. Under this condition, Margarita began to misread the things around her, reimagining the world in a way that made the cat think she was doing it deliberately.

It was not deliberate. She ate a grapefruit and saw it as something fleshy, animal, almost quivering as she peeled away its rind, its layers of pith, and its other stringy organs until only the beautiful, shiny interior was left, like the flame she saw burning within all living things. With the juice of the grapefruit still dribbling down her chin, and in a sudden state of manic, blurry, sticky-fingered inspiration, Margarita began to draw upon the white walls of her cube as if it was an endless expanse of skin. She pressed her naked body close to the wall, leaving impressions of her breasts, her breath, her downy arms, her lips. Against the hard-white confines of her bedroom, she walked the line of spatiality with her hard-white body, and eventually sat down on her mattress to admire her work. The cat asked her what she was looking at, and she gestured vaguely to the walls all around her.

My practice, she told him.

31

HORNER

KAREN KAN

She sought out a piece of paper from a drawer of her dresser and began to sketch still-lifes using the impression of her wall-bodies as a guide. When she was done, she turned her page towards the cat.

That doesn’t look like a drawing to me. You just wrote something. And I can’t even read, said the cat.

Look closer. You have to be close to the page to see; to bridge the gap between the word and the image, the visible and the articulable, the symbolic and the imaginary.

The cat did not reply, though his silence suggested to Margarita he wanted her to stop talking.

Do you want me to stop talking?

More silence.

The opaque, the illegible, that which you can half make out: such conceptions resist zero-sum metaphors and insist on a complex and uncertain relationship between seeing and reading that necessitates an attention to the aesthetic, Marie quoted, paused, and then explained: I read that somewhere, from a writer whose name I forget. My art is in

32

GOOSE

conversation with the words of this writer, whose words I eat for breakfast each morning and which I dip, as a biscuit, into my afternoon tea, who was already engaged in an exploration between the written and the visual. Ekphrasis; translation. I translate the somatic to the visual to the written, my body is my own Greek pot, my own fetishized object of desire to be translated into poetry. This ekphrastic translation is the solution to my art. It is my paroxysm—my sudden outburst, like the squeezing of a grapefruit, the palpitation of the heart, an exploding vessel of the brain. It is my condition that is indeed pathological but need not be medicalized. A way of being, creating, seeing, through translation.

Margarita closed her eyes and laid back upon her silk sheets and downy duvet, evoking the speak-through-me disposition of an oracle or a devout Evangelist experiencing sunlight on their skin after a pale, white winter. She continued: The type of ekphrasis I engage in is a failed ekphrasis, as in it relies on the untranslated and the untranslatable, the sequencing and mixing of a synesthetic visual, emotional, spatial, sensorial, and tactile somatic imprint whose written translations are blurry, myopic, and untranslatable, a failed, and simultaneously perfected ekphrasis. Perfect because it acknowledges its own ridiculous attempt to translate the untranslatable. Perfect because I know perfectly what I mean.

She opened her eyes.

I’m thinking of opening my bedroom up to the public. My first ever exhibit. What do you think about that? she said, sitting up slightly and straining her neck, looking around for the cat.

Silence.

Do you want me to stop talking?

Silence.

With her increasingly blurred vision, Margarita had not noticed the cat sulking away as she spoke, but perceived the cat’s movement across the slippery cement floor towards the heavy iron door that remained slightly ajar as a white blob floating across her cornea—a quickly passing visual intrusion that occurred upwards of ten times daily. Margarita shrugged, laid back on her silk sheets, and concentrated on remembering the name of the writer she quoted earlier to the cat. The book this quote was from sat in a stack on the floor by

33

HORNER

the side of her bed. She didn’t reach for it but moved information around in her mind, much in the same way one would sort through a stack of books on the floor beside a bed, because she didn’t trust that her eyes would be able to see the name “Brian Glavey” printed in a sans-serif font on the bottom of the cover of his book.

Margarita thought of this book at the bottom of her small stack that kept growing. She wanted to return to these books that taught her things but could not, with her blurred vision and her fear of misinterpreting and mistranslating the shapes of the letters, which would engage her in an unintentional, doubly failed, and uncontrollable ekphrasis. Instead, she thought of a novel that talked about experiencing grief as a paroxysm, compounding in waves and outbursts. She thought of being told by her mother of her paternal grandfather’s death, the death of an angel (gone in his sleep). She didn’t remember her mother’s words exactly, only that they had been at a dinner table, that it had been fall, that she had been at her friend’s house, that she had heard herself replying, with little to no expression in her voice, “That’s so sad,” as if his death didn’t involve her, as if it was only sad for other people, as if she wasn’t the one who should be sad, as if it wasn’t real. With each new wave came a new stage of grief, realization, haunting. Now, as she grieved on her bed for the bereavement of her vision, she felt a new wave of realization and haunting that underscored her art practice as being not in conversation with Brian Glavey’s failed ekphrasis, but as being solely in conversation, or worse yet, as a bland reaction to her hermeneutic myopia: it was a failed attempt to celebrate her ever-worsening condition.

Wrapping herself in her black fur coat, Margarita stood up to go outside.

It had just snowed, and everything was covered in white, a grand assumption, a sweeping statement of “hush.” Passing each of the four corners of the block, Margarita found herself in what was only a bigger, whiter cube than that of her room in the gallery basement. With her eyes sliding slightly out of focus, her hermeneutic myopia told her, whispered to her in a statement even more seductive than the “hush” of the snow, that she had never left her large white room in the basement of the art gallery. Margarita knew very well that she had left her room, but it was this sudden pang inside her accompanying the mere idea that she could enter the world outside and confuse it for the world inside that frightened her. An uncanny simulacrum: a blurring of the margins

34

GOOSE

between inside and out. Standing on the corner of Duluth and Saint-Urbain, Margarita Antonella took out a small notebook and a pen, and wrote, in beautiful cursive, her updated diagnoses. She believed she suffered from a case of somatic hermeneutic myopia. She decided that it was not her eyes, but her body, that misunderstood what was happening around her, and that mixed up spaces for other spaces, things for other things.

It was this embodied and sensorial slippage that encouraged Margarita Antonella to pack her suitcase and her cat on a train to someplace else, someplace warm, someplace without this snow that fogged and fuzzed the nerves of her body and the vessels of her brain like television static smudged around—complicated—by little fingers on a screen. When Margarita left the gallery for the train station, she stopped briefly at the unattended front desk, leaving a short cursive note: I’m done with the space downstairs. I left some things. Do with them what you will. Best Regards.

The desk attendant passed the note along to the curator, who visited the basement gallery later that week. Margarita had left her bed, unmade, and her dresser, stuffed with overflowing notes and drawings that spilled onto the floor. These two items looked disregarded, forgotten, and at the same time regal, like abandoned ecclesiastic statues, left in church basements by philistine clergies. Like two cigarettes, squished and flicked haphazardly along a white sand beach. Or like two slate gravestones, eroded with rain, water, wind, and dusted lightly with a fresh layer of snow. The heavy basement door was locked up by the curator, awaiting a future purpose that never came, for later that year the gallery closed and Marie’s live-work space, her public bedroom, became a long-forgotten capsule of the Baroness in 2015.

Margarita Antonella stepped off of the train in San Francisco, where she wandered through cheap hotels, loafed on sunny park benches, and slept on beaches. One morning, when Margarita’s body was saturated with a myopic blurriness, she awoke to the sound of waves. Resting in the valley of a sand dune, Margarita brushed the sandy particles from her lap that had functioned as a weighted blanket throughout the night. This morning was particularly bright, and when Margarita sat up, peeking her head over the edge of the dune, she saw nothing but the vast whiteness of the merging sand, lake, and sky, bleeding together into the thinnest and most indistinguishable of horizons.

35

HORNER

I’m like a broken camera, she said finally, letting in too much.

Hmm, the cat mumbled, still soaked in slumber.

She plucked the cat swiftly from the sand and left for a train to Joshua Tree National Park.

It will have trees, flowers too, probably, she explained to the cat on the way to the station. I need to get away from all this white. I came here to see birds and to lie down in grass and to read library books and to sigh perfumed, perfectly floral sighs.

On the train to Joshua Tree, Margarita saw smudges of things, traces of the world left in capsular moments on the edges of her vision. The trees and water she passed became small white scratches, smudges, frozen, collaged onto the edge-most cusps of her vision as if she were wearing eyeglasses that were dirty with fingerprints. Slowly, as she passed more trees, waves, and all-American landmarks, her peripheral vision became increasingly white.

Arriving in Joshua Tree National Park, Marie and the cat hiked, searching for a desert oasis and the prospect of wildlife, flowers, and cactus. Marie felt the ground change beneath her buckled feet and looked down to examine the small white grains. The cat lifted his paw and licked it. He licked it again, and then licked the ground.

Salt!

Margarita fell dramatically to her knees, looking at the white salt flat that expanded into an undetermined vanishing point in the distance, realizing there was no foreseeable oasis and no respite from the white. The cat licked the ground. Marie covered her eyes with her fingers and the cat said: Delicious! She uncovered them slowly, letting the white invade until the smudges on her periphery overtook her center vision and she couldn’t determine the margins of where her body began and where it ended, what was inside and what was out, her world becoming a large white cube—a large white body.

As she closed her eyelids and the whiteness shifted to darkness, she imagined the earth as her own rotating eyeball, cyclically shifting through daylight and nighttime. Marie was still, and silent, though relatively okay with this. To no one except perhaps the cat, who had sleepily retreated to Marie’s warm lap, Margarita Antonella spoke: My world is a large dark circle. I see nothing out of my periphery, nothing out of my central vision. My cat is my eyes. Together, we dance la danse

36

GOOSE

des ombres, the dance of shadows, the dance of death.

The cat purred, Margarita rubbed her eyes, and the cat asked where they would go next.

37

TRESLAN

Colour Theory MATHEA TRESLAN

I

’m standing sockfoot on smooth tile, and my pasta is going to stick to the bottom of the pot if I can’t force myself to choose a wooden spoon, right now. It’s just that one version of Sarah would choose the spoon with the round edge, and another version of Sarah would choose the slightly more contemporary option: the square-edged spoon. It is imperative that I decide which Sarah I want to be. Before I find myself scraping pasta gunk off the bottom of the pot, which would certainly not fit with either the round, or square spoon aesthetics.

My thoughts threaten to bubble over. Not only amidst the stress of waiting for the result of a pregnancy test, but always. If I squeeze my eyes shut fast I can remember the first time I ever felt the alarm lights flashing, green. "Green." No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make myself say it.

The way my mouth performed the end of the word, when my tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth, felt all wrong. Unclean. The long vowel sound reminded me of that screeching machine at the dentist. The one that turns teeth into powder. Green is a messy word, with both ends stuck like chewing gum. Not blue. Blue is a reflective pond or my favourite flavour of popsicle.

I could have said blue all day back then. Blue, blue, blue, blueberry tea. But when Miss Azimi asked me what do you get when you mix yellow and blue, in front of all my classmates with their minds working crisp and clean, I couldn’t make my mouth form the answer. Instead I said the colour of grass, of tulip stems, of Jacob’s birthday cake frosting.

I reach for the spoon with the square edge and free penne noodles from their reluctant union with the bottom of the pot. Every minuscule decision in

38

GOOSE

my life passes through a filter in order to ensure it is consistent, clean, perfect.

This version of Sarah, or that. I am a twenty-two-year-old design student and I can appreciate the unexpected things in life: a geometric wooden spoon. By choosing the more unusual spoon, I free myself from life’s actually-unexpected-consequences, like the possibility of two lines on the pregnancy test sitting in the bathroom. This is a version of myself I can accept.

I coat one chicken breast in turmeric and as I set the little glass bottle back down, I make sure that it doesn’t cover one of the etching flaws in the marble countertop. Everything in my life needs to be translucent: grime belongs in the open so that it can be removed. My sister slapped a floral case on the shattered back of her iPhone and erased the damage as far as she was concerned, which I could never do in a million years. Knowing something is messy is every bit as bad as seeing something messy, which is why I keep stirring the brown garlic sizzling at me in a mocking tone. The knowledge waiting for me in the bathroom could smear dirt all over this unblemished version of Sarah, cooking a healthy weeknight meal of high-grade digestible fuel.

Nothing about the idea of this pregnancy is clean or uncomplicated. The possibility of a human being growing inside my belly undetected feels invasive, convoluted, damning. Like one big crack covered by a flimsy piece of floral plastic. I think about babies in general and decide they fit nicely within the preordained frame of a future Sarah’s life—talc powder, an auntie smelling the top of a clean head. Twenty-nine, maybe. Agonising over the font of a baby shower invitation as a smooth masculine hand caresses my stretched stomach with the utmost care. Gently, so as not to disturb that volatile thing beneath. Yes, babies could tumble gently into my life. But this one wouldn’t be able to.

I pace towards the bathroom as if trying to protect a cake from flattening, and think about the unimportant boy whose cells could be multiplying inside me at this very moment. I close my eyes and see limbs tangled in a garden shed in July, a goodbye kiss, and photos of a Mini Cooper named after me somewhere in Germany. Perfect. At least until last week, when I tried desperately to find ancient muscles somewhere within me capable of pushing out even one drop of blood. Please God. I would have done anything to reach down and feel that rich dampness pulling me towards the earth, reminding

39

TRESLAN

me how hollow I am.

I see the lines on the tiny screen take shape in slow motion, and my eyes know before my body does. The test is positive, and I do not feel anything except the usual tightness in my chest that springs just as easily from an uncleared list of missed calls. Isn’t that messed up? How my body’s every hair raises at the thousands of impurities around me. That she is yet incapable of feeling anything real about the promise of the most significant thing that could happen to a person. I squeeze my eyelids together and try to find any stray ounce of energy worth giving away from my smooth, inexperienced bones.

• Sarah? Are you alright?

I stare at the nurse practitioner’s simple freckled face, and wonder what she thinks about perfection-obsessed twenty-two-year-olds who sometimes forget to take their OCD medication and their birth control.

Sarah, I know this may feel rushed and difficult, but there are plenty of resources that can help you make the right decision for you.

I finger the brochures in front of me and try my best to assess whether any version of Sarah I’ve ever met before would make any one of these decisions. They all feel desperately messy and, well, desperate. I’ve always believed in a woman’s right to choose, but now that I’m the woman, I find myself wishing there was one clear path forward—choices are dusty, loaded things that get lost in attics.

One of the brochures looks a little different from the others. Instead of showing one lonely woman on the front, it depicts her with two other people: a smiling, healthy-looking Indian couple. The extra woman and man on the brochure make the pregnant woman’s plight appear less desperate somehow: they infuse her predicament with some kind of hope. They long for some part of her mess.

Adoption. I turn the word over on my tongue a couple of times without letting any sound come out. The dop is nestled safely within the ah and the shon: a child cradled between the careful embrace of its parents.

I suddenly imagine myself as a great martyr, a kind of heroine. Who is

40

GOOSE

this version of Sarah? I could let my skin become stretched and bloated and scarred just to give this couple on the brochure the thing they need to make their family whole. I have the seed. The giving-away could be the perfect thing: the cleansing, the refresh button, the taking back of myself.

Sarah? Do you have any questions?

I smile and think about the fuzzy little buds on the pussy willow tree we had growing up. The stubborn ochre of the earth mixed with the rain’s soft blue. A deep and interminable green.

SEAVEY VAN WALSUM

41

YAO

Soup JINGSHU HELEN YAO

“T

hat’s not how Ma cooks it.” Momo stared at the plate of vegetable stir fry and frowned.

“I’m not Ma,” her sister, An, snapped, not looking up from her end of the table. “Quit whining and eat your dinner.”

“It tastes like boiled cardboard. So plain,” Momo continued. “Didn’t you put any oil?”

“This is how I cook it.” An finally looked up, annoyed. “Too much oil is bad for your health.”

“This is disgusting,” Momo said, pushing her bowl away.

For a few seconds, they stared at each other across the table and Momo shrank a little into her chair, expecting an outburst from An. “Fine, you don’t have to eat it.” An dropped her gaze and served herself some more vegetables.

Momo’s hands tightened around the edge of the table.

What’s that even supposed to mean? Is she angry, disappointed, or indifferent?

An chewed on the cabbage slowly. Her eyes darted between the table and the kitchen window but never landed on Momo.

“Then what do I eat?” Momo asked quietly after another minute of silence. Her eyes followed An’s motion of chewing and swallowing.

“I don’t know, figure it out yourself,” An said, still without looking at her.

“Don’t you have money?”

A sense of relief washed over Momo and she loosened her grip, but at the same time, disappointment welled from the bottom of her mind. She wanted to get a reaction from An. Not necessarily yelling and scolding, but some-

42

GOOSE

thing to show that Momo’s refusal to eat had mattered.

A month ago, Ba had brought Momo to pick up An from the airport.

The moment they locked eyes, An’s expression had visibly brightened despite the 23 hours of international travel. Then she strode toward them and pulled Momo into a tight hug.

“How you have grown!” her sister exclaimed while Momo struggled to escape the arms. She didn’t want to be cuddled in public by a stranger.

The sister in Momo’s memory was a girl who read her bedtime stories, taught her swimming, and snuck her snacks before meals behind their mother’s watchful eyes. But the girl disappeared from her life six years ago and existed only in a video call every Friday night. Momo didn’t recognize the woman who returned, the woman who looked rougher, bulkier, wearing outof-season clothing, speaking slow and firm.

“Well, several years in a foreign country, now you greet people like foreigners,” Ba said when An finally released Momo and turned to embrace him.

His hands were a little rigid around An’s shoulders.

“It’s great to be back, Ba,” An said. “Though I wish it was under better circumstances.”

Momo remembered the unpleasant smell of the closed-off plane cabin on An’s heavy coat that day, like the mixture of sweat, dull air, and greasy hair. If weariness had a smell, that was what it should be like.

An had come home because Ma was in the hospital after the surgery on her colon. Nothing too serious, but it did require a long rest to recover. This stranger broke into Momo’s life and picked up whatever Ma did and did it all wrong.

Ma washed clothes in the morning and hung them to dry during the day.

She said that sunlight was what makes the clothes clean and smell like a sunny day. An bought a dryer and dried the clothes immediately after washing to make the process more efficient.

“The heat will kill more bacteria than sunlight,” she explained. “And we don’t have to worry about damp laundry even on a cloudy day.”

Ma went to farmer’s markets and got fresh produce despite her busy schedule at work. An would haul a lot of groceries from the supermarket and stuff the fridge with food that could last for a whole week.

43

YAO

“I don’t have time for that,” she said. But her work didn’t even require her to go into the office. She simply sat at the computer, typing away all day long.

Ma braided Momo’s hair every day. An didn’t know how and Momo never mentioned it. Ma would walk Momo home from school on the days when she got off work early. An offered to pick her up as well, but though part of Momo’s mind wanted to say yes, she only shrugged and shook her head. She didn’t want to endure her classmates' curious stares or explain that she had a sister more than twice her age, and who was apparently never around.

An also always prepared bananas instead of rice cookies for snacks because “they are healthy, nutritious, and delicious,” to which both Ba and Momo scowled.

Ma cooked pork belly with honey, vinegar, and dark soy sauce. The meat shined tenderly under the kitchen light, with a satisfying savoury smell and a hint of sweetness. The meat An chose was less fatty. The chicken breast was hard to keep moist after sauteing, and the pieces laid on the plate were white and plain, unexciting.

The vegetable in An’s stir fry was crispy but still wasn’t rid of the taste of raw greens, more like a salad than a cooked meal and a bit hard to chew.

Ma used to cook them on high heat with rapeseed oil and salt. The edges of the vegetables were nicely charred and immersed the meal with a nice toasty flavor.

Ba had complained as well, but he soon left for work in Shanghai after An settled down, only returning on Sundays, leaving Momo to deal with everything alone.

“Are you going to see Ma today?” Momo asked after another few minutes of silence. She had the excuse to leave the table and she wasn’t sure why she sat still.

“Yeah, I’m bringing her dinner.” An finished her food and started to gather the plates and bowls, ignoring Momo’s untouched food.

“Food like this?” It came out as a challenge. Momo worried that she had gone too far.

An cast her another glance, her expression blank. She shrugged and walked into the kitchen with empty plates. A few seconds later, the water

44

GOOSE

started running. Momo remained at the table, massaging the bottom of her shirt.

“You can’t let a ten-year-old decide to eat whatever she wants,” Ma pointed out. She picked at the food in the container. The plainness of the hospital facilities flooded her, making her look even paler than she already was. “How many times have you done that?”

“Just this one time, Ma,” An said dismissively, though the discussion made her uneasy, the same thing she’d been feeling since her arrival a month ago. The unwillingness of her family to reconnect with her made this trip less and less enjoyable, especially the way Momo had rejected her as if An was a mere stranger. “She doesn’t seem to like anything I’ve cooked.”

“Then cook something she likes,” Ma said, setting down her chopsticks.

The tofu in the stew had broken into pieces when she was trying to pick them up, so she switched to using a spoon instead. “She likes perch soup, steamed eggplant, braised sirloin with potato—” “I tried to make them, Ma, but she said it wasn’t how you cook them,” An sighed. “Don’t you see? I am trying.”

“I know, you always try.” Ma set down the spoon. There was still half of the stew left. “The tofu could use more soy sauce.”

The subtle way of speaking was getting on her nerves. A chapter of An’s thesis was on breaking down the misperceptions and stereotypical interpretations of communication and she strictly criticized the portrait of the “hedged, indirect” communication style in East Asian culture. An’s supervisor had advised her to tone down her argument and make her statement less absolute, which An had refused. Shying away from defending her ideas could only provide a counterexample for her argument. But at this moment, An couldn’t help but reconsider Ma’s words, looking for subtext, hidden criticism, or hints of disapproval. She wished to simply ask “Do you think that I didn’t try hard enough?” or even “What do you expect me to do?” but these words sounded too defensive, likely to start an argument. Even if she could bring herself to ask, she could never know if Ma would answer frankly.

“How about yourself,” Ma added. “Did you eat and sleep enough? You look pale…”

45

YAO

The moment was broken when Momo pulled back the plastic curtain that divided the hospital room into four sections. Ma’s bed was on the east side and closest to the window. It promised some sunlight and was semi-private if the curtain were closed, which An truly appreciated. The other three beds were occupied by some extra chatty aunties who she wasn’t prepared to deal with. The first time she visited, they had overwhelmed her with questions: “What do you do for work?”

“What’s a postdoctoral researcher?”

“Do you make a lot of money?”

“Why are you doing this job if you can’t make a lot of money?”

“Why don’t you find a job in the bank?”

“Are you married?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“Do you want me to introduce you to my nephew’s friend who works at the bank?”

Since Ma had to live with these people for at least another two weeks, An tried to answer all their questions politely. It was shocking that while one couldn’t openly discuss their feelings with a family member, preying on a stranger’s life was completely acceptable.

“Aya, young people these days,” the aunties exclaimed at every answer An provided, but she couldn’t ask them to further explain the comment. That would be inappropriate.

“Mama, I brought the warm water you need for your medicine.” Momo held the water bottle with both hands and placed it on the nightstand carefully. The kid could be really sweet when she wanted to, but unfortunately not with An. If she weren’t an ocean away for all these years, An wondered to herself, would they have grown close?

“I’ve meant to ask.” One of the aunties’ sharp eyes landed on Momo.

“How come your two kids have such a large age gap? Are they from the same marriage?”

“Yeah, we are,” An replied. She could feel that even Ma had become uneasy with the questions.

46

GOOSE

“Then how come?”

“It was eh,” Ma blushed. “An accident.”

Momo turned away to face the window. She warped her tiny fingers around the edge of her shirt and rubbed it back and forth. It was a motion An had noticed a lot during the last month. Body language was a big part of human communication, though it was more private, specific to each person and always took longer for others to understand. An wished she could read her little sister’s movement and get her to open up, but they simply didn’t have enough time.

The aunties giggled. An closed off the curtain without considering if it was rude or not but the laughter still came through. Ma looked almost ashamed with embarrassment and the look she gave An suggested that the matter was not to be discussed further. Sure, it was embarrassing to have this conversation with strangers, but talking about getting knocked up at 41 with your children was even more outrageously unacceptable.

An gathered up the containers without saying anything. She glanced up at Momo from time to time, who still refused to turn back from the window.

Momo’s eyes were still a little puffy when they were heading out. An put her arm around her sister’s shoulder and partially cupped her cheek on their way out. Surprisingly Momo didn’t shrug away, though she immediately took out her phone and ducked out of sight once they were in the car.

Getting told by your mother that conceiving you was an accident wouldn’t be easy, especially for a child who was still getting used to a new caretaker.

“Listen, forget about what those women said in the hospital.” An glanced up at Momo’s still figure from the rear mirror. “Don’t let them bother you.”

“They are mean,” Momo said, still staring at her screen.

“Sure they are,” An agreed. “What Ma said, she didn’t mean...”

“They laughed at your tofu stew when you were talking with the nurses,” Momo said unexpectedly.

“What?”

“They said Mama needs something like chicken soup during recovery.”

Momo looked up from her phone. “They said tofu stew was too simple,

47

YAO

and that you don’t know how to take care of people, and that’s why you are single.”

“And, do you agree with them?” An asked uncertainly. It was one thing for the aunties to gossip but when the same words were recited by Momo, the sting felt different.

“You said that chicken soup was too oily and might overburden Ma’s digestive system,” Momo said, looking directly into An’s reflection in the rear mirror. “Tofu has protein as well and it’s not as fatty… so I guess you're right.”

An studied Momo’s expression. Even with all the attitude and defensiveness, she seemed to have paid attention to An’s words.

“So, I’m not a horrible cook?” An smiled to herself.

“Your food is just different.” Momo squeezed her nose. “I think I’m just not used to it, not yet.”

“When I live alone and cook only for myself, the objective is different,”

KAREN KAN

48

GOOSE

An explained. “I used to eat food that was easy, cheap, and sufficient. It didn’t necessarily taste good. I’m still learning to cook for someone else.”

Someone like an adolescent who needed nutrients to grow, someone like a patient whose digestive system needed care after a major operation.

Someone who not only needed the food to be palatable but also enjoyable, someone who not only needed to be fed but cared for.

“How about this, let’s stop at the farmer’s market and pick up a fresh perch and make soup for Ma?” An said, eyes on the road but feeling Momo’s gaze upon her. “But you have to help me because I forgot how Ma used to make them.”

“Okay.”

An glanced up at the rearview mirror again to find Momo smiling. She slipped her phone back into her pocket.

49

CARNEGIE

Remains ISOBEL R.S. CARNEGIE CW: Death

W

hat happens to a dead girl’s things?

The roommate wonders this. The dead girl’s dishes are still in the sink, I’ll do them when I get home! the dead girl had promised. The toaster, the ugly rosebud print mugs, they were all the dead girl’s—who inherits a dead girl’s cutlery? The roommate hadn’t even looked in the bedroom of the dead girl yet, though the door was rattling, whispering, due to a window left open. It had been an unusually warm day, the day the dead girl didn’t come home. Now the windows were thick with frost, the apartment cold enough that the roommate wore her socks and sweatpants and a sweater to bed.

Are you still a roommate if one of you is dead?

The roommate had taken to wearing two pairs of socks and gloves in the apartment. There was mold in the sink—I’ll do them when I get home!—green and fluffy, the sort that dirty faeries would nap in.

The dead girl’s bank account auto-deposited $800 to the roommate.

Why it had not been dealt with—maybe the dead girl’s parents were too deep in grief to care about the meager savings of their dead daughter—did not matter much, but the stinging notification was yet another ghost in the polar apartment.

The roommate wore her winter coat to do her course readings and turned off the heat altogether. Sometimes her lips were blue and she looked like a dead girl too; the dead girl and her roommate used to match accidentally all the time (I’m not changing! You change! Actually, this is cute, let’s just match).

The mold in the sink became its own person; the roommate accosted it for

50

GOOSE

being a freeloader.

One day, the roommate was sweating in her winter coat. Then in the sweaters and the sweatpants and the socks. The door stopped whispering in winter winds. The auto deposits stopped coming in on the first of each month. The roommate struggled with the squatter in the sink, as it was slowly overtaking the counter space too. The mold was stubborn, living and breathing and growing now that there was room without the dead girl. I won’t be doing these dishes, ever, it promised, cozying down among the plates. The roommate did her dishes in the bathroom.

A waterlogged phone call from the dead girls’ parents: We’d like to get her things, if you’re ready. The roommate glanced at the mold having a house party with cockroaches in the sink. The ugly rosebud print mugs were at the bottom—hadn’t they belonged to the dead girl’s dead grandmother? Surely the parents would want them back.

It took a bottle of bleach (bought by the dead girl when they first moved in), all the briny tears the roommate had been hoarding, and a reading of property bylaws to evict the mold. Then, in a tank top, only a little chilly, the roommate peeked around the corner of the dead girl’s room. She stepped carefully over a pile of dirty laundry and a book bent at the spine, the ending unknown, and pushed the window closed.

51

CARNEGIE

SEAVEY VAN WALSUM

52

GOOSE

KAREN KAN

53

SANTOS

From Behind the Congregation JULLIANA (YANNI) SANTOS

F

r. Isay is proud of his flowers. Jade vines, he says—the special sort.

They’re not supposed to bloom this time of year, but here they are, bright and brilliant over the church courtyard. They’re supposed to give some semblance of shade from the sun, but the painful rays slip past their slippery, smooth, bean-like petals. He says something about God’s natural beauty in all its glory. Something about being blessed and being chosen.

Something about something else. It’s too hot to really pay attention. The sermon should’ve wrapped up an hour ago, but we’re still here. I hope somebody faints. We’ve had three fainting spells all through Lent. Standing in the heat for hours, it’s bound to happen. He’s famous for his sermons, Fr. Isay.

I look around the sweltering heat of the back-church pews and I let myself drown in it, the heads of dark brown hair and the constant graceful flapping of hand-held fans. I let myself, my glazed eyes, pass over them all— every person in this crowded room—and like pins, they pop up, the ones I recognize, one by one.

There’s Jenna who works in the department store. Jenna who comes in the morning slipping on a high-heeled black shoe. They’re made to wear that, those department-store ladies, standing all day. And I know Jenna. Jenna with the callouses on her feet, Jenna with the asshole boyfriend, Jenna with her hair pinned and proper, leaving her hair pins behind on the waiting benches.

Legs, even the thighs. That’s what she has done. She always asks me to do it, no one else. They make them wear those nude-coloured stockings too, those department-store ladies with their pencil skirts above the knee. She says having hair on her legs hurts like hell after a long day standing with them pressed

54

GOOSE

down so tight. Her boyfriend says he can never stand a woman with hairy legs. She can be dumb, or smart, or rich, or poor, just not with manly legs.

Completely turns him off, he says. Asshole.

Then there’s Maria, leaning on the left pillar. Her father brings her in twice a month. He’s not beside her today. He’s up front wearing white. Twice a month, that man brings his seventeen-year-old daughter in with a hand on her shoulder, stands there, sits her down, then leaves. He tips well, at least.

Every time I have her wait while I ring her up at the counter, I see Maria try to fold into herself. Our storefront is made of floor-to-ceiling glass and I know she’s terrified that someone may see her. She doesn’t look me in the eye as she lies down but she talks. She talks as I pass a sterilized cloth down one underarm, the tufts of hair springing up at the edges. It was just last week when she told me about Fr. Isay’s jade vines. “They’re rare,” she says, “Almost extinct here in the Philippines! We’re losing them.”

I get up to take the warm wax into my gloved hands. It smells like honey and sugary things. “They’re so beautiful, Anna. We have to preserve them.

Their colour and they—they’re just so nice. I went there at night once, you know?” I did. Her friend, Joy, told me about it two days ago when she was here, in this same bed. The two of them had snuck out together late that night to see the jades before anyone else. I roll the sticky wax in my right hand, my left hand holding the soft skin of her underarm taught.

“And it was so beautiful—in the moonlight—” I put the wax down on the skin, spreading it on the hairs. In my head I imagine it sizzling, heatwave lines over churchyard concrete. “I wouldn’t have changed anything that night.

The jade vines looked so bright in the moonlight. Everything was perfect.”

I pull. No warnings. That was what we had agreed on. We never talked about it, but I know her well enough. I pull and I almost hear the searing upheaval, the hair follicles clinging on—stubborn, but I know how to make it quick. Fast. Minimise the pain.

“—And—ah—we’re so lucky that we can grow them here. I’m glad we’re keeping them—” I apply, I pull “—alive—and that she—” I reapply, I pull, “perfect—Anna.” I nod and press my palm down on the bare, smooth, reddening area. I see the bumps of blood start to form so I press down to calm the skin, soothe it all in.

Perfect, she says. Of course it was. Joy was absolutely gushing last week.

55

SANTOS

Kilig, we call that. “I love her,” she’d said, “we kissed there—right in front of the church—can you believe it?”

My eyes land back on her father, sitting straight-backed beside the altar.

He wipes a folded handkerchief across his forehead. Beside him is the lector, Natalia. Natalia with the job at that call-centre at night. Natalia with her twin toddlers in the morning. It was just four days ago when I watched her as she stuffed a towel into her mouth, bracing for pain. I applied the sugar wax between her legs and pulled, her voice wringing itself in a strangled sound against the cloth, her hands clutching the bed as if to choke it up. Then I had to do it again and again, and that bed still has a few nail marks. She had taken two painkillers prior but she has a low tolerance, Natalia. Her twins sit apart from her today. Two boys, wriggling on the front pews beside their stern grandmother’s stiff outline. I wonder what it was like, to give birth to them both. Some women cry, some women laugh. Natalia does both, in her way.

Brazilian. Jesus.

You’d think it would be odd to know what so many women look like under there. It’s nothing, really, but they can never meet my eyes in public.

It’s hard enough to get seats in this church but even then, I always aim for the back, behind them all. I close my eyes, just for a second, and the fans flap away—all those people. Bikini wax, arms, half-leg, lower lip, all the sorts.

That lady who tried to shave before coming in, that 14-year-old with those fearful eyes—of me, of the hair, of the glass, I can’t tell. So many of those types. That mother with the scar on her left thigh from when the family dog jumped too enthusiastically for the leash, that teenager with the eyebrows she just hates so much. She asks me if it’s better to just remove all of the hair and draw on better ones instead.

Sometimes, when I leave them to redress in their rooms, I look down at the amber as I hold it in my hands. The black hairs stick out, their masses moulding into it like mulch. I see their roots, those tiny bulbs, like insects crawling upwards, cockroach eyes bulging at me, preserved. I feel a phantom urge to throw up but there’s nothing wrong with hair—just the roots. They’re exposed to my vision through the wax, but it feels so unnaturally unjust to them. They’re born into the world only to drown in it, in the sugary-sweet mess of it all. They come alive, right after hearing the stifled, sudden breaths of pain—almost screams—when they’re pulled. What torture they all go

56

GOOSE

through just to be seen. I drop the wax in the bin. It splats into the waste with everyone else’s—and with it the hairs, and with it their secrets. I stop looking, suddenly aware that I am.

And Fr. Isay’s finished, finally. He sits for a moment to catch his breath.

His bushy eyebrows hunker down before he stands up and everyone follows.

I’m not really listening. I know these patterns well enough. The women come, I apply—and pull, they leave with threads against each other, I snap them up, splat them down in the bin, and the jade vines bloom, and the congregation sings.

57

BEARDSLEE

Adele Chippewa’s Career as a Freelance Editor and Consultant LOIS BEARDSLEE

J

anuary 20, 2009, Dear Suzy,

I’ve spent considerable time trying to adjust, or somehow heal, the second (unchanged) manuscript you’ve sent me for Sky Chants and Water Spirits: A Gitchee Gumee Indian Reader. But I found the comments I was writing on your pages to be increasingly angry, the further I went along. I’ve come to realise that no amount of changing a word here and there, moving a paragraph, or eliminating denigrating stereotype-laden commentaries could make this book manuscript into something I’m comfortable with as a Native American scholar and writer. This is the second time I am informing you that I do not want to lend my name or credentials to your book. Native American scholars are not children who will eventually succumb to your wishes, just because you try to wear us down by persisting, while refusing to change your narrative—even if you did include a red pencil with your manuscript this time.

I’m afraid that it’s what I perceive to be your approach that makes this work so offensive. Your title itself belies a lack of research, insight, and indigenous inclusiveness, by using outside cultural constructs to label what you wish to market as legitimate, neutral representations of our history and culture, using primitive terms like “chants” and “spirits” to describe our cultural phenomena. That includes your sloppily inaccurate, outdated English-based phonetic spelling of one of several Ojibwe names for Lake Superior, a mispronunciation moniker that has existed primarily on mom-and-pop motel signs along the lake’s south-shore tourism belt.

58

GOOSE

The content of your writing, inserted as “educational” narratives and “scholarly” footnotes, comes across as very exploitive. It’s as though you are using historic Native material gathered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, along with the work of popular contemporary Native authors, to show off your own skills as a traditionally-trained anthropologist, one who knows more about Indian people than we know about ourselves. In your footnotes, you are too eager to toss about scientific nomenclature, as though it enhances the stories, is accurate, or is even appropriate. Your work takes on the spectre of superior overseer and promulgates the denigrating attitudes of the opportunistic era in which traditional ethnological studies were carried out. These attitudes are themselves relics and the subjects of contemporary study, especially by indigenous scholars.

Even your cover letter was profoundly offensive to me—your assumption that you knew more about a particular cultural icon than I did, your implication that I could not possibly know as much about spruce or ruffed grouse as you do…to the extreme of copying pages out of a birders’ field guide and sending them to me. All this after I politely responded to your absurd imagery of Indian braves sneaking up on supposedly wiley wild grouse with bows and arrows. This assumption that I am neither as well educated nor as capable as you in regard to historic hunting methods, grouse behaviour, and undergraduate-level vertebrate biology is simply racist and inappropriate. I feel as though you have been trying to take advantage of me to lend some sort of Native authenticity to your self-publishing venture. This book doesn’t appear to be about Indians or Indian stories as much as it seems to be about you—a glorification of the years you have spent reading about Indians, nature, and anthropology. Falling in love with romantic stereotypes about indigenous people, reading about them, or observing nature from an exurban retirement residence neither makes one indigenous or an authority on a particular indigenous group.

There are no paragraphs in your manuscript acknowledging contemporary Natives and the intelligence and versatility of Native American storytellers, tradition-bearers, and scientists (including vertebrate biologists) that can cancel out the overpowering message of your work as it stands—which is that you are a great authority on all things pertaining to Great Lakes Native Americans, and that you know more about us than we do. When I first advised

59

BEARDSLEE

you to eliminate your commentaries and let the stories stand for themselves, I meant it. Your juxtapositions and selections are overpowering and sometimes trite. Your footnotes are offensive and have no place among the works of contemporary Native authors, let alone as a legitimate interpretive guide to us.

They dimunize us and our histories of survival and cultural continuity.

I don’t feel comfortable with what you are doing. I don’t find it much better than the manufacture of faux Indian stories by non-Indian authors.

Indeed, you are, through additions and juxtapositions, remanufacturing our stories into your own versions of them, replete with your own translations of meaning and insistence upon emphasis where emphasis is not necessarily appropriate. I have no desire to try to salvage what you are doing. I simply don’t condone it. You’ve had more than enough of my unpaid and underpaid time, and you’ve caused me considerable discomfort and anxiety. I hope that you have the restraint to withhold publication of this work. It will only contribute to an ongoing body of material by non-Indian authors that exploits and denigrates contemporary Native American people. As I said before, it will probably sell and probably make money, but is this how you really want to manufacture income? I don’t see serious Native American scholars giving this type of work a good review.

Sincerely, Adele Chippewa

Naaw… She’s not going to get it. I’d better keep it simple.

January 20, 2009, Dear Suzy, I tried very hard to work on your manuscript, Sky Chants and Water Spirits: A Gitchee Gumee Indian Reader, but I found myself increasingly offended by what you have done with the words of past and present Native American voices. Your selection of works, their juxtaposition, your comments, and your footnotes all diminish the voices of the speakers. You are stressing your

60

GOOSE

own conclusions instead of letting the stories speak for themselves. It’s a lot like using fragments of Indian stories to write your own fake Indian stories.

While this sells well to non-Indian readers, it is very offensive and damaging to Indian people.

I hope that you don’t publish this book. I don’t think there is anything I can do to fix it for you, and I find working on it very stressful and unpleasant.

I have several other projects I need to work on, so I won’t be putting in any more time on your manuscript.

Sincerely, Adele Chippewa

Wow, what a relief to have that over and done with. I wonder if she was going to pay me a living wage this time, or if she was going to pay me at all…

Yeah, that was a nasty experience. I bet she’s gonna publish that, too; probably find some Indian somewhere, maybe even find somebody who’s not an Indian somewhere, who’s gonna give that mess his or her blessings. Too bad the casino’s not hiring dealers right now. I need something that pays, something less denigrating, something with more dignity than being asked to add cultural credentials to something after the fact… Too bad the casino isn’t hiring housekeepers right now.

I could totally relate to cleaning toilets about now… Just not my own. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow…

61

BEARDSLEE

She Dances With the Wind

This morning she dances with the wind.

You see, two nights ago the moon had been big and round and full And now it is big and golden, off centre, lurid, tracing for a western horizon.

Two nights ago the moon had been big and round and full Like a saloon full of warm bodies, moving against each other’s shadows Silhouettes slipping against the gold, women with their long hair down, sweeping the dark backs of men and bears, fishes, turtles, and other lovers, even soft grey rabbits, Each testing the air for one another’s scent and moisture, in long dances of pursuance and avoidance Some slow and easy, tactile; they could feel each others’ sweat, each smell the others’ passion; Some jitterbugged, fast and careless, looking for limitations—their own and those of the other dancers.

For two nights the wind had slept with distant lovers in the moonlight, Caressing other hillsides, thrusting into distant valleys and long-legged bays With convoluted personalities and different customs While back home all hell broke loose, with no breeze or hint of weather And the whole neighbourhood sang and danced and partied in an unsupervised frenzie While she slept fitfully, alone, ear to the calm night And the whole neighbourhood danced past her doorway, first a silent hare followed by a wolf; Then a slow, rhythmic school of shiners pursued by lustful whitefish; Bobcats danced with herons who had ventured from their treetops.

She heard the wild-eyed crunching of bones; long, slow, satisfied slurps and soft pants and kisses.

She simply buried her toes in her blankets, waiting for daylight and slumber.

62

GOOSE

You see, two nights ago the moon had been big and round and full And now it is big and golden, off centre, lurid, tracing for a western horizon.

So this morning she dances with the wind.

There is no nearness of dawn reaching with eagerness from the east.

There’s just a slow-setting moon teasing the ripples on the lake, and the only shadows are her own.

So this morning she dances with the wind.

63

BEARDSLEE

LOIS BEARDSLEE

64

GOOSE

KAREN KAN

65

BEARDSLEE

Miinikewigiizis Blueberry Moon Sometimes in the morning When only her children were asleep Yet little birds and lizards sang Sweet wake-up calls Over the heads of dancing caribou Trailed by a chorus line of fat merganser ducks And a fireworks display of leaping minnows Followed by falcons screeching, “Encore! Encore!”

And tall pine trees slapping their thighs in delight, She snuck out back Where a wild plum tree Was flanked by the first sun-rich raspberries, Black-ripe currants, And the earliest tiny blueberries.

And in the shade of those fat plums One found the last of spring’s strawberries Right next to the first thimbleberries Above a sandy slope Full with black, black dewberries And just a handful of firm gooseberries, Just past the spot Where the black-caps were winding down From full production.

These things she would line up on the kitchen table All in a row, And then she’d sing good morning to her children Repeating the few lines she could recall From that particular morning’s chorus line.

66

GOOSE

Epanigiishimook

There are places in these basins where the lakes flow like rivers. It is hard to imagine anything bigger than these Great Lakes. But the wind is bigger than these lakes. These lakes are mere toys to this wind, mosquitoes to be tolerated, then nurtured, and occasionally swatted by this wind. Wind with personality. Wind with grace. Wind with dreams and ambitions. Wind that dances with lovers. This wind is ever-present. This wind shapes our lives. This wind carves out the sky.

She knows this wind. He is her uncle. From many generations back, of course. She could not claim to be as magnificent in her accomplishments, nor could she rightfully lay claim to so many gifts. Yet she would not dishonour him and his kind by failing to recognize her own beauty; that beauty is swathed in warm winds that she wears like scintillating nothingness and tightly stitched winter parkas. These are her obligations—clothing made of wind.

Sometimes she is unsure of how to keep and use these obligatory winds, and she stores them up in her pockets with lake-polished agates and bits of pure copper. Once she found a piece of red chert the size of her crooked little finger, flaked off so smooth and perfect that she kept running its surface over her lips, like Lady Maybelline, like alternating gusts of mist and drought.

The flake of chert, of course, had been a gift from her great uncle, in a passing effort to remind her that smoothness and hardness are as attracted by softness as red to lips and coolness to summer warmth. It was her uncle who had battered the volcanic shorelines with water and ice, sheering remnant unrelenting spurs of intrusive tenacity from long-eroded fault lines that fell away like broken clay from bronze castings under the scrutinising eye of this sculptor. It was he who tossed the ice and its liquid cousins about like raindrops and feathers to deposit the piece of chert on the small curve of sand where she found sanctuary on the shores of the lake. She was so small, that he brought her bits of beauty in even smaller tidbits—gifts that she could carry around and manipulate, heat and cool in the palms of her hands and the pockets of her parkas—cool flakes of chert that he had tossed about for generations, smoothing the knife-like edges into jewel-like smoothness, begging

67

BEARDSLEE

for more libidinous touch than the tumbling of curious and calloused fingers.

Chert begging for red lips and a quick trip across a soft cheek, then perhaps a few slow passes along that soft place where the eyelid transitions into smooth hummocks of orbit and temple, like well-worn rhyolites and fine-grained granites caressed by the curious tongue of that constant himself. This wind has had many lovers.

She stands among them, her uncle’s many lovers. She carefully distributes her weight upon the pebbles of their skeletons. These bones have been worn smooth by love and eagerness, omnipresence, clutch and release, birth and sandblasting, building up and wearing down, giving and taking away. And after the chert has become so heated, heated with her touch that its sensuality fades, she absent-mindedly opens a pocket of her parka, thinking that she will let the smooth gift cool for later. And breezes seep through the crevices and openings, through warm canyons, islands, and stone cliffs—and soft curves and breastbones—things to reach out for and caress. This wind has had many lovers.

This wind has had many lovers. This wind has many fingers. This wind stays for days, then retreats to work and play. This wind caresses. This wind is careless. This wind is forgetful. This wind hides in his own thoughts. This wind builds up. This wind takes away. This wind brings gifts to his many lovers. And she is but one. She finds neither shame nor pride in this, lifting her own fingers to the wind, securing cool tufts that she carefully tucks into the pockets of her parkas. Perhaps tomorrow she will curse him, then forgive him, toss open her parka flaps to throw him away and welcome him back again, in and out of her canyons and crevices. Welcoming coves and jutting joints of angry bone. Soft curving islands and swells of water. Soft lapping tonguelets of eagerness and curiosity. She lets the wind twist and wrap her long, dark hair, snap at it and send strands of it away to nest-building mice and songbirds he has birthed with other lovers on other shores. She finds neither shame nor pride in this, lifting her shirt to warm summer sunshine, convulsing with the smooth coolness of snow and chert on those indolent red lips of hers. She has had many lovers.

68

GOOSE

About the Authors

Lois Beardslee (Anishinaabe) is the first Native American to win a Michigan Notable Book Award, for a collection of poetry, Words like Thunder, New and Used Anishinaabe Prayers (Wayne State University Press 2020), which also won a Midwest Book Award. Other books include Lies to Live By (Michigan State University Press 2003), Rachel's Children (AltaMira 2005), Not Far Away (AltaMira 2007), and The Women's Warrior Society (University of Arizona Press 2008). Nonfiction works include "H_NGM_N: What one says, and doesn't say, to a white teacher" (Kappan Feb. 2021). Her work appears in journals and anthologies including Yellow Medicine Review, Vassar Review, Terrain, and The New York Times Magazine.

Isobel R.S. Carnegie has a Masters in literature, is a bookseller at a social justice bookstore, and a soon-to-be library science and archives management student at U of T. She was the EIC of Goose from 2018-2020 and this full circle moment is dizzyingly lovely. She writes and has published poetry and short stories, and is working on a novel about Toronto lesbians in the 1950s.

Mailey Horner is an undergraduate student in her third year at the University of Toronto, studying English, Visual Studies, and Creative Expression and Society. She writes poetry, and short stories, and has been published in various journals including The Trinity Review, Acta Victoriana, and IDIOM. She is also a practicing artist.

Cheryl Lee is an English student at the University of Toronto. She has

69

previously written and edited for Decent Exposure and Hey, Teach! Magazine.

Cheryl enjoys science fiction and horror, and she is currently watching the show Good Omens.

Tehlan Lenius is a second-year student at University of Toronto, majoring in Literature and Critical Theory with minors in English and Creative Expression and Society. They spend most of their time fantasising about their next writing project, and very little of their time actually writing it.

Julliana (Yanni) Santos is a third year undergraduate student majoring in English and Psychology. Currently, she is the Arts section editor for The Mike and an associate editor for Acta Victoriana. She writes poetry and short fiction, with a present focus on family, guilt, and consumption. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Mnerva, The Spectatorial, and the UC Review.

Mathea Treslan is from Owen Sound, Ontario. She is in her third year at Victoria College studying English Literature and International Relations, and is thrilled to share her work with you.

Jingshu Helen Yao is a creative writer based in Toronto. She studied creative writing at UofT and is pursuing a master’s in Museum Studies, specializing in personal memory and oral storytelling. Her ongoing project explores the relationship between food, language, and identity through multimedia methods.

She works as managing editor at the Hart House Review. Her short story “The River” is published in Tint Journal, “Have You Forgiven Me” in The Roadrunner Review, “Melon Face” in Block Party Magazine, and “Hair” in Rabid Oak. Amory S. Zhao is a third-year student of English and Latin at the University of Toronto. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Trinity Review, and her work can also be found in Acta Victoriana. Dedicated to her writing, she is often said to be the voice of her generation by herself and anyone willing to take a bribe.

70