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her eyes were scrunched like they hurt. “When will you stop?” I asked again. “Until,” she said. “Until when?” “Until I feel safe.” When she unscrunched her eyes, tears ran down her face. I tried to wipe them, but she gently pushed my hands away. “I shouldn’t sew at night,” she said. “Ruk, go to bed.” I fell asleep, and when I woke in the morning, my mother was still sewing. The outside of a piece is important, but equally as important is the inside. The underside of a garment should always have finished seams. Finished seams look polished and neat, and they prevent unraveling or shredding, which can show through to the front. One night Bopal found me surfing lollipop sites like some women surf for shoes. I would add them to my cart and then close the window down to avoid the temptation of buying any. I tried to
click away, but he had seen. After that Bopal used to randomly leave lollipops underneath my pillow, calling himself the “fairy popmother.” (“I know, the pun isn’t exactly right,” he’d tease.) The first time he left me a lollipop that was olive green with a bit of red in the middle. “Like your mother’s sewing machine,” he said. When we first started dating, he had asked for pictures of my mother, but my mother didn’t allow anyone to take pictures of her. I had showed him a photo of the machine instead. The second time he left an even larger lollipop shaped like mouse ears. In the middle it said, “You’re sweet.” He nibbled on my ear while I unwrapped it and took a lick. “You can eat it all,” he said when I put it away for later. It was hard to be angry. But when they kept coming, one every day, I told him to stop. “Please, Bopal, I don’t want any more. If I wanted them, I would buy them
San Francisco 1978-81 By Irene Fick
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Adrift in my twenties, I dropped anchor at a jelly bean house perched high on a slope, stroked by fog, straddling salty bay bridges. Stripped to my senses, I strolled into North Beach cafés to hear Puccini crooned by paunchy old men in spaghetti-stained aprons, sipped Pinot on bare-bodied beaches, spent soulful afternoons caressing Irish coffee at the Buena Vista, flushed nights at fern bars downing drinks under fuzzy lights. I plunged on two wheels through the Presidio, sucked in the sea mist, gazed into open-air bars jammed with wiry, wired men’s men. I clung to the margins of cable cars, leaned into the sultry curves of fabled streets. The City was on edge, caught between the disco beat, and the hushed unease of a deadly new virus. Yet, I lingered, hoping to land on solid ground. Irene Fick’s nonfiction has been published in newspapers and magazines in Chicago, San Francisco, Tampa, and Philadelphia. Her poetry has been published in The Broadkill Review; Third Wednesday; No Place Like Here: An Anthology of Southern Delaware Poetry & Prose; and Adanna, a Journal for Women, About Women (forthcoming). She lives in Lewes, Delaware.
myself.” “You wouldn’t.” “Yes, I would.” “Ruk, you’re being neanic.” “What does that mean?” “You’re being childish.” “I’m not.” “Tell me really why you want me to stop. Speak your mind.” “I’m afraid.” “Of?” “Too much happiness.” Bopal laughed. “There’s no such thing. Happiness is not like energy; it can be created. It’s limitless.” “How do you know?” “Because I’ve never had an unhappy day in my life.” “But the day I met you.” “I wasn’t unhappy, Ruk. It was an epiphany.” I didn’t agree with him. I also didn’t tell him what I really believed—that happiness was like water. There was only a certain amount of it to go around, and if you used too much there wouldn’t be any left for later, even for your own children. And that disappointment, hurt, and betrayal were all distractions to happiness, which weren’t always bad because that meant you didn’t use too much happiness too early on. After our discussion, Bopal stopped putting the lollipops under my pillow every day. He did so randomly, sometimes once a week, sometimes more than that. But he always remembered, and though I threw them in the trash without him knowing, I appreciated them.
After five years of Chris’s infidelity, Sarah determined our arrangement wasn’t working and that we should split. “You don’t love each other anymore. Divorce. That’s what Jane’s parents did.” Jane was her best friend and classmate in first grade. Sarah had the keen insight that many children had, yet she had something a little extra—the emotional
