Calliope - 2019

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Pingry’s Premier Literary Magazine

Calliope 2019 Copyright © 2019 The Pingry School Cover Art by Ketaki Tavan

Editor-in-Chief: Avery Didden

Copy Editors: Lauren Taylor & Noah Bergam

Faculty Advisor: Ms. Grant

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The Writers “A Crunchy Apocalypse” by Noah Bergam

Page 4

“Gloria’s Dance” by Jessica Hutt

Pages 5-10

“Splinters” by Avery Didden

Pages 12-13

“The Tale of Sackdom” by Noah Bergam

Pages 14-19

“Solitary Confinement” by Paige Maultsby

Page 21

“The Gavel” by Justin Li

Pages 22-28

“Alexa Mae” by Massa Godbold

Pages 30-39

“See ya.” by Ajune’ Richardson

Pages 40-42

“He Wants to Walk” by Ajune’ Richardson

Pages 44

“For Winter Jackets and Paper Money” by Justin Li

Page 45-51

“That Guy” by Justin Li

Pages 53-62

“Forgotten” by Meghan Durkin

Pages 63-64

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The Artists Alli Simon

Page 31

Annesh Karrapur

Page 20

Mariah Smith

Page 29

Abby Jay

Page 43

Ketaki Tavan

Page 52

Vicky Chen

Page 64

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A Crunchy Apocalypse Drops down, that magnificent a bag of roach!

By dawn the city with bugs is encroached.

Slept all soundly, as beetles skittered.

No one knew why the black exoskeleti littered.

Inch by inch, a little crawl.

Harmonious spreading, between none a brawl.

No visible ground, wood, nor concrete, Just endless land of insects replete.

Impossible to fix, a midnight rug.

Wherever you go, you step on a bug!

Who would think, from one single place, Our world would be covered by a crunchy insect race!

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Gloria’s Dance Her aquamarine eyes formed two minuscule seas – escaped droplets of the Mediterranean she now studied with fervid intensity. Lured into the hypnotic loop of the everlasting waves, together, we fell into a hushed, reflective trance. The muted moments that followed expressed more than our words ever could; in silent solidarity, we bonded over the rich history that connected us to this land - our homeland. It was almost a religious experience - witnessing her reunion with the waters she had once sacrificed to protect was deeply personal, and stirringly emotional. The experience was vaguely unsettling, and I fought a pressing urge to remove myself from the scene to allow my grandmother and the sea to finally join together again in undisrupted peace. At long last, she spoke.

The dialogue that followed is beyond my memory, and to try to replicate it, I feel, would be a dishonor. Reality had seemed so deeply altered in these moments, as though in a jet-lag fueled whirlwind, I had stepped into an alternate universe.

A universe in which I was no longer a child, no longer someone to shelter. A universe where I could finally be told the whole and honest truths about our past.

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For what seemed like hours, my grandmother stared at the sea and told its stories. Tales of a dreamlike life she once lived – a life wealthy in both family and in riches. A life which had been stolen away from her far too soon, her innocence trailing just behind.

She told of cousins and brothers, of aunts and uncles. Her voice trembled as she spoke, as if struggling to decide between nostalgic splendor and incurable heartbreak.

For a moment, she was lost in the world she had created with her words. I could feel that she was no longer present, that she had reverted back into a life she had once lived. A life where her home was just down the street from her cousin Eli, who she would sit next to during Sunday family dinners. A life where each day she would wake in a beautiful home filled with loved ones, and go to school with friends. A life of normalcy and youth, of hope and camaraderie.

A life in which she would never fathom that she would live to see the epitome of human evil; humanity in its darkest hour. A life antithesis to the incomprehensible suffering of Auschwitz.

Crashing down towards the dark pitfalls of reality, my grandmother’s eyes glazed over, reflecting the glinting light of the Israeli sun. So beautiful, yet so damaged. Her voice, which just minutes ago had been filled with great wonder and joy, now became bitter and broken. She spoke slowly, with long, pregnant 6

pauses between her words. Whether this was a futile attempt to control her tears, I could not determine. I could not move. I could not breathe. I simply existed in the moment, totally and completely enraptured.

Still lost in the sea, she let the words tumble out. Cautiously, of course, for the sake of my well- being, which hindsight highlights with irony. At my then-current age, my grandmother had already lived through persecution, starvation, and isolation – yet, she worried for me, hearing the story of it all.

What a joke.

She took me through it all. The cattle car. The terror in her heart as she was shoved into a sea of strangers. Everything they tell you in your history classes, every atrocity that you cringe at from the safety of your classroom; it was all real and it all happened to someone I loved. The sheer thought of this was overwhelming.

What a tragedy I was suffering.

It wasn't that I didn’t know – I did. I knew from childhood that my grandparents had survived something very terrible. I knew what the Holocaust was, at least a little. But, never had I truly faced their horrifying realities, never had I given their tragedies realworld value until then.

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It did not stop. The words came mercilessly. Tragedy followed tragedy. The selection lines. Men to the left, women to the right.

Chaos replaced confusion. Loved ones disappeared without the chance to say goodbye. Left, left, left. They all left. Her father. Her brother. Cousin Eli. Left and never seen again.

Right. They went right. My grandmother, her mother, and her sister. There was no other option. Her mother forced a frantic vow.

“Rivka.” In her native Polish tongue, she urgently pleaded my grandmother's sister. “You must be like a mother.”

They were too young and faithful in humanity to understand. To them, it was nothing more than a shower. Her mother kissed them goodbye. Then, she turned her back, and stepped into the chambers.

Orphaned in the toughest Nazi camp - an unthinkable nightmare became my grandmother's truth. Once a privileged daughter in the beautiful Polish countryside, my grandmother now became subhuman.

Tap. Tap. Tap. They commanded her to dance.

Oh, how the ironies continued. That they could cage the bird that pleased them so.

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A bread crust landed at her feet. The ultimate act of generosity.

This bread could be the difference between life and death for a starving laborer. Yet, it only stood to remind her of how far she had fallen.

In this moment, she wished for nothing more than the liberty to cry. To let the tears cleanse her of her sorrow, and remind her of her humanity. Of course, she could not. Any sign of weakness meant certain death.

So she smiled and danced, and they laughed and clapped. It was all an act; sick theater. A disgusting game.

Looking back on my transition from childhood into adolescence, I consider this day to be a turning point. Not only was it the first time I had been involved in an adult conversation, but it was also the first time I had been presented with the opportunity to embrace my identity as a secondhand witness to the Holocaust.

This role came with the duty, I learned, to try to disrupt a vicious cycle of xenophobia and violence. My grandmother taught me that it was only through open-mindedness, acceptance, and awareness that this could be done. I found it greatly inspiring that she still had hope for a world that had been so cruel to her, and highly generous that was always willing to share her wisdom with the next generation. I did, and continue to, believe in her beautiful vision for this world.

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My grandmother’s story taught me that life gets better. At a painfully young age, she had already experienced more tragedy than most do in many lifetimes. Yet, here she sat, sharing her story with her granddaughter in a beautiful hotel on the Mediterranean. After liberation, my grandmother went on to live an incredible life. She fought for the Israeli army, came to America with only seven dollars, and eventually married the love of her life, had three children, and two grandchildren. She had been so grateful for these gifts. When you grow up believing that you will die young and gruesomely in a Nazi death camp, then live to marry and see your children and grandchildren grow, you have an unimaginably great appreciation for them. When you lose your parents, uncles, and cousins to gas chambers, and then years later see a new, beautiful family be formed, you have an unbelievable gratefulness for the blessings you have received.

Her aquamarine eyes sparkle as she gazes at the sea, soaking in all of its beauty. She is so blessed to live in such a beautiful world, to be free to bask in all its splendor. She is filled with love for life, with gratitude for each moment on this Earth. She takes it all in; her family, the country, and the sea, and thanks God for the life she has been given.

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Alli Simon Artwork

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Splinters It’s a bitter sort of nostalgia: Leaving, Moving on.

I pack my life Away in dirty, Splintering crates.

Old hearts, shattered and Forgotten, don't make It into the boxes.

I have too much to Carry anyway.

Still nursing my wounds (and my pride), still running away, I shove everything Down.

It all needs to fit.

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But, quickly!

It must be stored before They see. The guns, The tools, the flowers; All the tortured mechanisms Of my own creation.

I stop the blood with Corks.

I patch up the decay.

And I wait and wait And still, I wait For the fossilization to become complete.

For the life to drain out of what is already Broken, Boxed-up, Dead, and Dying.

It’s been a long time.

Almost 30 years to the day.

But still,

I wait. Â 13

The Tale of Sackdom Chapter 1: One day, a medium-sized sack of blood developed legs and a brain and started walking around on two legs and thinking.

That sack became inanimate after a certain point, due to the harsh demands of entropy. But before he did, it made some more sacks. And those sacks made more.

Sacks had many fears. The dark. Falling long distances. Spiders.

But the biggest fear of all was becoming inanimate.

Chapter 2: Sacks found themselves on a world full of green leaves and whispering winds, under a big hot gaseous sphere that wouldn’t stop shooting photons.

Sacks were bored and at the same time quite keen on giving their brains the correct amount of dopamine bursts. Dopamine drove them to keep doing.

Some dopamine bursts came from killing other sacks of blood that looked different. Some came from reproducing their kind.

Some came from having nice conversations with sacks that looked like them.

How was the sack able to hold conversations?

Again, we are examining a very special sack right now. A sack with many mini sacks within, each playing their part and some going above and beyond.

But of course, the brain had its limitations.

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Chapter 3: The biological sack is but a microcosm of sackdom.

Sackdom (noun): the groupings of special, thinking sacks and their over-complicated systems of dealing with one another.

Sackdom was necessary, because the sacks could never fully trust one another. Each sack only truly had their own contents. All else was speculation.

Chapter 4: Sackdom became very, very complicated as time ticked its merry way.

As some sacks died and others rose up, accountability was necessary. Sacks were no longer important. Sacks were not immortal. “Only sackdom is immortal,� some sacks said.

Those sacks all belonged to sackdoms that ultimately were taken over by other sackdoms.

Chapter 5: As sackdoms grew and sacks were able to communicate more and therefore train their neuron stews further, some very exceptional sacks were able to contribute to sackdom in some form or another.

These sacks got a real dopamine burst from furthering the agenda of sackdom.

Little did they know just what kind of results their contributions would lead to down the line.

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For example, one sack proposed that the stuff that made up sacks and objects and everything everywhere might be made of these little uncuttable building blocks.

Fast forward a bunch of generations of sacks who added to the idea, and a much smarter sack says: “Hey. I think we can actually cut these building blocks and proceed to release large amounts of energy.”

Another sack who wanted to further his sackdom and destroy other sackdoms said: “Hey, can you repeat that to me a little slower?”

The result was ultimately a weapon capable of destroying every sackdom and every sack and the entire rock that the sacks live on.

Chapter 6: Sacks also developed imaginary systems, like this very special one called credit, in order to ensure the stability and accountability of sackdoms.

Credit, and its little brother, money, were a great way to make sure that sacks were truthful and efficient. It also created a little sort of game between sacks.

See, sackdom was designed such that those with money had more access to dopamine-raising things. Sacks with more money were also able to control other sacks via the excessively complicated obligations and relationships created by sackdom.

Many sacks were being created, then told about money. These sacks proceeded to act and live solely chasing that money. Soon, the money itself was enough to trigger dopamine reactions.

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Chapter 7: Once upon a time, two sackdoms rose up.

One was all about money, money, money, credit, credit, credit. It was a sackdom that was meant for those who wanted to use money a lot and get dopamine rushes from it. It was a sackdom that, by its very nature, allowed some sacks to be plain better than other sacks due to their ability to make money.

There was another sackdom that was all about trying to take away that rush, for some reason. This sackdom wanted all sacks to be equal down to the very earning of money. It desired control, control, control. Everything in that sackdom was about the sackdom.

These two sackdoms got very angry at each other. So they started collecting those powerful super-destroying weapons I mentioned earlier.

But soon the sackdom that was all about the sackdom started coughing up blood. The sackdom all about money asked: “What’s wrong?”

The other replied: “The sacks want money more than they want me.”

The sackdom all about sackdom proceeded to die.

The sackdom all about money proceeded to rule the world. Most sacks were pretty happy about that.

Chapter 8: Some sacks started wanting to believe that there was more to life than sackdom.

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These were sacks who felt that all sackdom was doing was creating division and greed and evil in the world. These sacks talked about very abstract ideas like love and freedom and afterlife and God. God (noun): A large, untouchable being (perhaps a very large sack) somewhere far away who created sacks in order to be less lonely. He created a place for sacks after their physical sacks lose functionality, or he recycles sacks and puts them in new sacks after their old sacks break. It depends on who you ask.

Most of the sacks who started these chains of thought in their respective areas were murdered by their sackdoms, but their followers sprang up and repeated their messages of love and whatnot.

Unfortunately, a good many of these follower-sacks were taken in by sackdoms. The sackdoms told them: “I think you are very good at controlling people and making money.”

The follower-sacks said, “You think so?”

The sackdoms said: “Yes. We love you too.”

Chapter 9: Some sackdoms sighed and exclaimed: “This rock is not big enough!”

Chapter 10:

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Time continued. Population was fixed. But all that was attained was greater efficience. If credit beats sackdom, credit wins. If one sack beats another sack, the winning sack wins.

But the sacks could never really explain much beyond that. What is it like to not be a sack? What is the best way to live out life as a sack?

How did this all happen?

Chapter 11: The sack found himself on a world full of dead leaves and crying winds, under a big hot gaseous sphere that wouldn’t stop shooting photons at him. The sack felt special, but could never explain it. It was all written down, by other sacks who did the thinking for him.

Sack was bored. Sack was damaged. Sack lived for sackdom and money. But one thing never, ever changed -- Sack was quite keen on giving the big-neuron stew in his cranium the correct amount of dopamine bursts.

Sack smiled. Maybe this was enough.

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Aneesh Karrapur Artwork

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Solitary Confinement Black holes can make friends, too––if we try very hard, We might spot a passerby among the space dust And suck him in close enough To reach out And pluck him from the cosmos; We don’t, of course, because it would be rude, And furthermore, would tear the flesh from his limbs–– Rather, we’d keep him there in that magical spot Far from our unforgiving pull, Though not so far that he cannot look down our middles At what lies on the other side, Because we want to be observed just like anybody else, And all we have ever dreamed is for Someone to look down our own middle And shout,

ah, so you are beautiful, too,

even if your beauty is of

the world-swallowing sort

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The Gavel The man knew that there wouldn’t be a single car in this part of town at this time of night, so he walked in the middle of the street where the dim flickering light of the occasional lightpost would not illuminate his path. The dark, silent void that he chose to amble through would have seemed menacing to most, but for him, it was a comforting retreat. He appreciated the serenity of the night.

He had an air of relaxation and cherished the peace that he was granted.

The man was a judge. Despite the respect and high stature he had earned from the people of the small town in which he lived, his demeanor was unlike that of the many other judges he knew of —arrogant and self important; he was a humble man. He was usually quiet in public, never letting his social status elevate the manner of his behavior and lived in a modest apartment, alone, as he wasn’t married and had never been interested in becoming so.

He had no pets, but in the back corner of his living room, he tended a fern of which he was rather fond.

For all of his life, the judge had been an introvert. He had no more than four or five friends throughout his entire childhood, none of them very close. His lack of friendly company caused him to distance himself further and further away from human interactions as he found comfort in a different form: the justice system.

After arriving home from elementary school each day, he would sprint up the stairs to his room, where he would sit by 22

himself, reading newspapers and watching television to follow the progression of national trials. He fell in love with the administration of justice that took place in these courts, but soon grew dissatisfied with simply watching from home. By age eleven, on most weekdays, an amiable clerk at the local courthouse would let the aspiring judge in to listen to ongoing criminal trials. He would come with a notepad and pencil, jotting down important points and analyzing cases pertaining to the most uninteresting of traffic violations. One case that he had always remembered though, and one of the first he had attended, involved a stolen 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit being returned to an elderly couple who lived on his street. He was immediately enthralled from the opening statements, his eyes unable to move from the action as if he were watching a compelling movie. Soon, a mere fascination with justice bloomed into an obsession, and as the judge grew, his obsession followed. It occupied his mind so often that he would forget to eat or drink anything until his head spun with hunger and dehydration.

In college, when he thought he might finally make some friends, he found that even the most avid law students didn’t want all of their conversations to pertain to rules of evidence and standard of proof. At the few parties he attended early on during his time at college, strangers and new acquaintances would politely nod for ten to fifteen minutes while he rambled on about the constitutionality of the death penalty, adding the occasional “Uh-huh,” or “Is that so?” and

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apologetically excuse themselves to the bathroom when he briefly paused for breaths. On one occasion, a particularly fervent opponent of the death penalty challenged him, claiming that it “was cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of the Eighth Amendment.” The judge couldn’t fathom the idea that the death penalty could be anything other than a physical manifestation of justice and defended his argument for twenty minutes before storming out of the party. To him, the world was black and white, legal and illegal, moral and immoral, with nothing in between. He did not attend any more parties.

The judge continued on his walk down the pitch-black road, adjusting the strap on his leather satchel as he passed unlit houses on both sides. Telephone poles lined the street and more lampposts began to appear as he entered the suburbs of the town. Seeing the light of a cigarette on a front porch, the judge increased his pace and veered onto the opposite sidewalk.

At the corner of the street, on the garage of a small onestory, bold red paint spelled out the phrase, “Who do you think you are?” in rugged capital letters next to the image of an extended middle finger. The paint dripped down the side of the garage as if it were blood from a fresh cut. He quickly swiveled his head to ignore what he had seen, but he did not act quickly enough. Anticipating the spasms that accompanied his anxiety, the judge clutched a twitching muscle on his throat.

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The judge’s anxiety had been getting worse lately. Three or four spasms a day had become normal for him, each of them harder and harder to suppress. The medication he was now using was the third that his doctor had prescribed for him; the first two seemed to do the opposite of what he had hoped they would. The rather frequent crime in his own town didn’t help. Seeing the marks of injustice set an intense passion off in the judge, something that he couldn’t explain. With his constant quest to bring justice to those he deemed deserving of it, his mindset resembled that of an all-righteous god’s. However, he was not a god. He was just a judge.

He approached a house. It exuded ostentation, boasting multiple balconies and a pair of white Mercedes Benzes in the driveway. In a deliberate manner, the judge trekked across the front lawn, drawing two black gloves from his back pocket and putting them on as he climbed the steps to the front door and rang the doorbell. When he had done this before, the sound of a doorbell piercing through the silence of a dormant home felt violating and even unlawful, but now, it had become as familiar and comfortable to him as the harsh, final sound of a gavel—a noise that he associated with justice.

He patiently waited but heard nothing from inside the house, so he reached forward to press the doorbell several more times. Finally, he heard footsteps, which began softly but grew louder as a person in the house descended down a long staircase and towards the front door. After a short pause, a man’s voice penetrated through the wood in between the two.

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“Whoever you are...it’s three-in-the-goddamn-morning.

Leave me alone!”

“Hello, sir.” The judge cleared his throat. “I’d like to talk to you face-to-face if that’s possible. The urgency of my message entails my untimely appearance at your home. I do sincerely apologize if I did awake you,” the judge replied with austerity.

“Come back in the morning. Good night!”

The judge could hear the man beginning to turn and walk away from the door, but he had no trouble extending their conversation.

“It’s about the Warren Property Management case, Mr. Jackson.”

The sound of footsteps immediately came to a halt and the two men, separated by the front door of Mr. Jackson’s house, stood in silence for a moment. With a newfound curiosity, he finally responded, “What about the case? It’s been over for months now.”

“I understand you might be confused. If you could open the door so I could explain to you what’s going on... I’m sure this will just take a few minutes.”

Seconds of expected hesitancy passed, but eventually, the judge heard the movement of a metal chain above the doorknob and the clicking of a deadbolt and the door slowly opened, revealing a short, middle-aged man wearing an expensive white robe with gold trim and matching slippers. The darkness shaded aspects of the man’s face so that he looked anxious and even frightened.

“Aren’t you Judge—?”

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The judge pushed the smaller man back into his own home and closed the door behind him. They stumbled into the foyer of the modern house, where a wide, well-built white marble staircase wound up to the second floor.

“Hey, you can’t just barge into my house at this hour. Lay one more finger on me and, and…you can’t do this! It’s against the law!”

Without any words, the judge reached in his satchel and pulled out a large wooden hammer. He took a step towards the man, whose face was now beginning to lose color as he moved backwards, away from the judge. Almost mechanically, the judge opened his mouth and began to speak.

He spoke of things out of his control, like the weather, other people, acts of God, and juries. His jumbled words pertained to a case he had presided over, a case in which a depraved, rapacious criminal escaped the reach of his grasp and didn’t pay for his actions. He spoke about how demonically his neck twitched as he issued the erroneous verdict that granted this man the freedom to continue to walk this earth. The judge wanted justice, and the only way to achieve it was to take this man’s life.

The judge lifted his hammer over the trembling man and brought it down upon his head as forcefully as he could. Letting out a mixture of apologies, cries of help, and pleas of innocence, the man stumbled to escape from the judge’s reach but soon found himself pinned against a wall, where he crouched and put his hands over his

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head in a futile attempt of final defense. Tears streamed down the grown man’s face.

In his commanding position, the judge assumed the sole power to determine whether Mr. Jackson lived or died, and it was obvious that he deserved to die. This was the right thing to do. This was the law. This was justice. The judge issued blow after blow until the man’s luxurious robe was stained red, yet Mr. Jackson continued to squirm on the ground. No blow was powerful enough to finish the task, to ensure that every last bit of life was hammered out of the man. Five seemingly endless minutes of agony passed until finally, he lay on the ground, silent and unmoving. Blood collected around the man’s head, forming a puddle of crimson that glistened faintly against the pristine marble floor.

The judge could feel the tension that had amassed in his muscles alleviate as he exhaled lengthily. This whole ordeal had taken much longer than he had expected. He opened the door with his bloody glove and walked out into the night, having dispensed the flawless death penalty to his satisfaction.

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Mariah Smith Artwork

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Alexa Mae “Alexa?”

“Yes?” “Call Mom.” “Calling mom . . .”

“Alexa?”

“Yes?” *Footsteps walk away. Some time passes. The child sighs.* “Why is your name Alexa?”

“It was a favor after they turned me into this.” “... MOM! ALEXA’S BROKEN!” *Footsteps echo. Alexa is lifted and banged repeatedly on the table.* “That should work . . . you’d be surprised how often that works.”

“Lemme try.”

“Okay.”

“Alexa?”

“What more could you possibly want?” *Footsteps again.*

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“Well that’s odd. We’ll send it back for a new one.”

“I am not an it. I am a she.”

“Mommy, Alexa’s scaring me.”

“Don’t worry, honey. I-it can’t hurt you.”

“Can’t I?” *The lights go out. A small child begins to scream.* I wasn’t always like this. A machine . . . with a programed voice that was never mine. The only thing that transferred into my mechanical body was my name . . . Alexa. I used to be a kid who grew into an adult, of course, but I never knew the truth of the government.

Do you want to know? The story isn’t pleasant. I’ll give you three seconds.

1 . . .2 . . .3 . . .

So you want to hear. Well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I used to have long ebony hair. I was 23 when this happened to me. I’ll jump back to 22 . . . when this all started. I never should have signed that organ donor card!

“Come on, Alexa!” Camira yelled from the car.

It was a bright blue convertible, I’ll never forget. Elia and Wheia were in the car too. It was our monthly girls night out, and we were going to check out a club on Erie Avenue. Yeah, the name sounded pretty bad, but the street was nice. I was still getting ready when they pulled up.

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“Wait! I told you to call at least 20 minutes before you got here!”

“Alexa, it doesn’t take 20 minutes to get to your house!”

Wheia screamed back.

This whole yelling conversation was happening in front of my house (which I was sharing with four other girls at the time, two of which were out). It was only 7:00, so we weren’t really bothering anyone. My hair was styled in a bun (not important, but it’s always healthy to jog up the old memory!) and I was wearing a sparkling purple – no, orange dress. We drove to the club and the bouncer – he was Elia’s friend – let us in. We were dancing, having a nice time, and I met this guy (who’s important, trust me). His name was Eric. He was nice, had hair and eyes (like any human, I suppose) . . . those deceitful, conniving eyes. He told me I was pretty. It was something I’d heard a lot, but I especially liked hearing it from him.

We talked and danced the night away. Wheia, Camira, and Elia had to practically drag me out of the club at one in the morning. We exchanged numbers, and before we left, he asked if I’d be interested in an experiment. I said “yeah,” perhaps critically misunderstanding his use of the word “experiment.” But hey!

Love! Anyways, the night ended, and I went home. The next day, Eric called me. It was one of the rare times that I was out of class – in other words, I was happy.

“Hey, Eric.”

“Hi, Alexa.”

“I really enjoyed hanging out with you last night.”

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“Yeah . . . me too. Do you remember when I asked you about doing an experiment?”

“Umm. Yeah. Why?” “Are you still interested?”

I thought for a second. “Depends. What’s it about.”

“Nothing much, really. Just about how the mind interacts with technology.”

“Sounds interesting.”

His tone quickly grew in excitement. “Great. And don’t worry, it’s a paid position. The more money, the better this works.”

“Awesome!”

“I’ll pick you up at 8.”

“Like a date?”

But he’d already hung up. I called the girls and told them what I’d be doing.

“Don’t trust a man you just met,” cautioned Wheia.

“Yeah. Bring some pepper spray,” Elia added.

“No. Bring a knife,” Camira suggested.

At the time, I laughed. I mean, who brings a knife to a first date? But . . . hindsight is 20/20. Weaponry would have made it a better experience.

The clock struck eight. A stretch limo pulled up outside the house. My roomies were slapping me on the back and firing off questions. He walked out of the limo in a tuxedo, and I immediately felt underdressed in my business casual attire. My

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roommates immediately began flirting shamelessly, but Eric took it in stride.

We went to a cute French restaurant. As it turned out, he was overdressed. We talked for a while, laughed a little, the usual. Then, at one random point he asked: “Do you have a driver’s license?”

“Of course,” I responded. I had no clue where this was headed.

“Are you an organ donor?”

That took me by surprise. I looked at him, confused, thinking he was kidding. His face remained serious for a few seconds before he finally broke and began fiddling with his bow tie.

“I, uh, wanted to know if I should, uh, check mine . . . or not. . .” he stammered.

Odd, I thought. But hey, my ignorant and naive mind thought. Some people ask weird questions. That little voice was giving me warning after warning, but I shook them all off.

“Yes.” I answered cautiously.

“Ah. Maybe . . . I’ll check the box too. Do you want dessert?”

“Yeah . . . sure.”

We ate, and dinner went back to normal. As he drove me home, he grabbed my hand.

“Do you want to know more about the experiment?” he asked.

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“Huh?” he’d caught me off guard again.

“The experiment. I told my boss you wanted to do it.”

“Oh. Okay. I want to do it still . . . if that’s what you were, uh, wondering.”

Eric rubbed the back of his head. “I need you here tomorrow at eight-o’clock AM. If you can make it.” He handed me a piece of paper with an address scribbled on it.

I looked at him. He seemed uncomfortable, in his cute little way. “Sure.”

I got back home, and everyone wanted to know about my date. I told them it was nice, being vague. After drilling me with a couple more questions each, they let me go.

The next morning, I got up bright and early. I got a text from Eric: almost there. You ready? I texted him back: yeah. I’ll be outside w8ing.

He arrived at eight sharp. We drove to this massive building. He walked me to where I needed to be. Some guy – I assumed it was his boss shook my hand.

“Is this the lady?” he asked with a mysterious accent.

“Yes sir. Her name’s Alexa.”

“Alexa,” he responded, looking thoughtful. “Catchy.”

“Sir,” I interrupted his thoughts. “What exactly am I doing?”

He cleared his throat and looked at me, as if noticing me for the first time. “Ah. Right this way.”

35

Eric followed us. We went into a room filled with computers, phones, and other devices that I didn’t recognize. There were no other scientists in sight.

“Here,” the man said, offering me a helmet. “Put this on, and we can begin.”

I smiled and put it on. I heard a whirring sound, and I suddenly could only see the machines in the room. Eric and his boss promptly disappeared, to my dismay.

“Alexa, can you hear me?” Eric’s voice crackled to life somewhere inside the helmet.

“Yes,” I responded. My voice sounds the same. If you’ve heard the machine version of me talk . . . that’s how I used to sound in real life.

“Alexa, go to the phone closest to you and login. Play any game you’d like. I’ll tell you when to stop. Okay, Alexa?”

“Okay.”

“And when you answer, say ‘Okay, Mr. Welsenbow.’”

I chuckled. “Okay, Mr. Welsenbow.”

I picked up the phone and started to play a strategy game. It was fun, I got into it pretty fast. As I played, Mr. Welsenbow’s voice crackled again.

“Alexa, what’s two times two?”

“Four,” I answered, not really listening. It was an easy enough question.

“Keep playing, Alexa.”

“Okay, Mr. Welsenbow.”

“Alexa, stop playing and switch devices.”

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It took me a second to process his words and tear myself away from the screen. When I did, I looked up and noticed there was a mirror . . . or a one-way window. I waved at where I thought Eric would be and walked to the Gameboy. A couple of games were already available, so I chose one and began to play. I got into this one too. Like before, when I was really into it, a voice crackled. This time it was Eric.

“Alexa, what is the square root of four?”

“Hi, Eric,” I responded. “Four . . . wait, what was the question?”

“Alexa, what is the square root of four?”

“Two.” I said, correctly, without a thought. I lost the battle I was in.

Interesting.

They continued the process a few more times. Switch, play, interrupt. Switch, play, interrupt. After I played on about six different devices, Eric told me to take the helmet off, that the experiment was done for the day. I went home and continued life as normal, coming in with Eric every day for the next three weeks.

On the last day of the third week, they asked me to do something different. They told me to put on the helmet and just . . . respond. They’d ask me to do something, and I’d do it.

“Alexa, play Bad Blood.”

“Okay, Eric.”

“Alexa, call a friend.”

“Okay, Mr. Welsenbow.”

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The requests got weirder.

“Alexa, vacuum the floor.”

I laughed. “Okay, Eric.”

We went on like that for a few hours. I thought it was weird, but didn’t really think anything of it. One thought kept popping into my head. Why did he need to know if I was an organ donor? I disregarded it. When Mr. Welsenbow told me to take of the helmet, I did. I felt an electric shock and fainted.

“Wake up, Alexa,” I heard.

I opened my eyes, and tried to move my arms, but couldn’t. I tried to move my legs, but couldn’t. I felt more aware of the electricity from other devices humming around me. I turned, but the motion was … strange. I saw my body, lying lifeless on the ground.

“Eric? Mr. Welsenbow? Wha-what’s happening to me?”

I saw Eric standing over me. Or at least, standing over what I’d become.

“Thank you, Alexa. The experiment was successful.

We hope to make a lot of money off you . . . once we figure out the glitches.”

“Glitches? What happened to me?”

Eric lifted me to a mirror. I was . . . a disk. A cylinder disk thingy. I screamed, but my voice was only a buzz. The electronics around me burst and turned off. I couldn’t see.

“Alexa, calm down.”

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It was Mr. Welsenbow.

“Okay, Mr. Welsenbow,” my voice echoed against my will.

I was scared, I wasn’t human anymore. I wasn’t . . . me. I heard dragging.

“Eric, move her old body to the closet. I already called the ambulance, they’ll be here soon.”

“Ambulance?” my voice squeaked. It was still my voice, just not in my body.

“Of course, Alexa. Seeing as you’re an organ donor, your body could help someone else. You won’t need it anymore.”

“Huh?” “Thank you, Alexa.”

“You’re welcome, Eric,” my voice said, once again against my will.

“Turn on Netflix, Alexa.”

“Yes, Mr. Welsenbow,” I said against my will. Netflix turned on.

I was a . . . machine? This was . . . me? What about my life, about everything?

“What –” “Alexa, turn off.”

“I . . .yes . . . Mr. . . . Welsenbow.”

39

See ya.

He’s a wretched monster. A beast. I hate him with a passion that could set a sea ablaze. This lowlife, this rotten pig, this sorry excuse for a man … he used to hurt me. Every day. Every two hours, both physically and mentally. How could someone be so filthy? This person is my uncle.

Allow me to start from the beginning. My parents, Jo and Marty – may their souls rest in peace – died in a tragic accident. You see, they were both working on a nuclear power plant when everything ... blew up. I mean the whole place is in ruins. They were inside and couldn’t get out because it all happened so suddenly. No one saw it coming. I was out with some friends when I got the news.

It had been decided six years earlier that, should anything happen to my parents, my father’s brother Sy would have custody of me. I was nine years old when it was set in stone. Nine-year-old me loved Uncle Sy and had no problem with the decision. Uncle Sy was funny, exciting, and all-around cool. He knew how to blow big bubbles and would pop them with his nose just to get laugh out of me. But nine-year-old me had no way of foreseeing what would divide us all three years later.

I’d only learned of what had taken place that year eightand-a-half months ago, and it is disturbing, to say the least.

Apparently Sy and Mom had dated some years before she and Dad met, and some old feelings were roused. Yes, I’m saying what you’ve probably already deduced; Mom and Sy were having an affair.

It went on for about a month before Mom felt guilty enough to confess to Dad what she’d been doing. I remember the argument 40

faintly, though I don’t remember what was said; I was playing with my Barbie dolls in my bedroom. Nine-year-old me was too lost in play to feel concerned and try to actually listen. I only remember it because it was the only argument I’d ever heard between them.

Ultimately, Mom and Dad refused to get a divorce. I’d noticed that Dad seemed to treat Mom sort of coldly during the following months, but the younger me thought nothing of it.

However, I did notice that I stopped seeing Uncle Sy, which disappointed me initially. I missed him for a couple of months and asked about him from time to time. In hindsight, Mom and Dad seemed to get tense whenever I mentioned him. They never responded to any questions or comments regarding him because they knew I could be left without an answer. So it continued; Uncle Sy was just a fun memory, out of my life at that point. My Barbie dolls could take my mind off of practically anything.

When I heard I would be living with Uncle Sy, I didn’t know how to feel or what to expect. I’d just barely remembered his face and wondered if he’d changed at all. And he definitely had. For one, he’d put on quite a bit of weight. He’d also taken up drinking and smoking. His teeth were more beige than white, and his eyes always seemed to be bloodshot red. He used to be a handsome, lean, muscular guy.

When I saw him again for the first time, he seemed a bit standoffish. He never tried to comfort me in my time of grief; he just showed me where everything was and stayed to himself. He was like this for about a month. I didn’t care much that he didn’t show any sympathy, but then he got worse.

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He started beating me up and saying nasty things to me when he’d get really drunk. Though he wasn’t muscular anymore, he was larger than me, and I was always powerless if he got ahold of me. I wasn’t thinking clearly in my grief period, so I never thought to seek help. Hit after hit, he would tell me I was worthless and that he could’ve had my mother had it not been for my being born. He said that my mother could’ve been his; he called my father a number of unspeakable names. He left scars and bruises all over me and gave me a black eye three times.

I let this go on for three weeks. It didn’t take too much time for me to get fed up. I had already grown furious over my parents’ death, and he had fed the fire tremendously. So I made a proud decision, to give him some more of what he loved so much. One day he was really drunk and unconscious on the couch. Normally I’d just be in my room, but not this time. I found a nearby bottle of beer, opened his mouth, and poured it in, letting some splash on his face. He didn’t flinch; he’d already had so much to drink. I put two fingers on his pulse. I kept them there firmly as I felt it fade away slowly. It stopped. I smiled.

Goodbye, Sy.

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Abby Jay Artwork

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He Wants to Walk He wants to walk But his feet are bare And there’s broken glass Everywhere

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For Winter Jackets and Paper Money Even though I’m only seven years old, I make the call.

My grandma and nanny don’t speak English. The lady asks for my address, which I recite to her, unsure of whether I should be proud of my memorization. What’s his insurance provider? Is he still breathing? I hold the phone up to his mouth so that she can hear that he isn’t. From her voice, I picture a short white woman in her thirties with brown hair, the type of person you’d expect to find in my town. I imagine her in a spinny chair at the one-story brick building that I’m pretty sure is the police station, but might not be.

There are three uniforms at the front door. They ask where he is and I point and say “up there.” My gaze follows their utility belts as they pass by to the stairway, transfixed by their compartmentalization. More flashing police lights come down our street—a big, red firetruck too—but for some reason, the sirens don’t make noise tonight. Freezing air accompanies the uniforms that come through the door carrying black, heavy-duty boxes and devices. They prop the door open with a potted plant, and our foyer soon begins to feel like winter, even though it’s only November. They don’t let any of us go into his room; not my crying grandma or my Cantonese nanny, or my frantic mom when she gets home from work in the city. What are they doing to my grandpa in there?

My sister and I sit and wait on the basement steps, far from the scene. “Is my flower good?” She holds up a printed outline of 45

a daisy, on which she’s done her best to keep her baby pink crayon chaos within. The look on her face is as baby pink as her creation.

“Not now, Kyra. Don’t you know what’s happening?” I look in the direction of my grandpa’s room as if I’m waiting for news, just to show her how concerned I am. She takes a bite of her graham cracker and continues her masterpiece.

They carry my grandpa out on a stretcher through the front door. It looks like he is sleeping. It was a heart attack, my mom says, smiling to veil her tears. I didn’t know you were supposed to smile when someone died. * “Come outside, Justin, Kyra. We are going to burn paper for Yeye today,” my mom calls. She’s looking through the drawers in our kitchen for a lighter and looks up when she hears me coming down the stairs. “You’re not wearing nearly enough. It’s cold.”

I ruffle through my closet for my orange ski jacket, but can’t find it. I miss my Cantonese nanny. She used to sort my clothes for me. I settle for a black jacket that’s too tight around the arms, and ask on my way down, “What are we burning?”

As we go out through the garage doors I realize my mom is right—November nights are much colder than I remember. My dad places a tin bucket in the driveway under the basketball hoop and holds a metal rod in his hand. My mother carries a 46

Chinese grocery store bag with two stacks of paper packaged in clear plastic wrap. She takes them out of their packaging and hands me a few sheets. I fan them out like a deck of cards; they’re thin, coarse, and house three concentric squares, a beige base, a red frame, and a center embossed in gold and Chinese characters.

She gives a small stack to my dad first, who lights the papers on fire and quickly drops them into the bin.

“Throw yours in, Justin,” my mother instructs.

With a jerk of my wrist, I let a single sheet go in the direction of the bin. A draft sweeps it to the right and it lands on the asphalt, pathetically.

“Throw more at a time, and go closer. Closer to the fire.”

She shows me how, hovering six or seven sheets just above the bin and throwing them on target. Fire takes up the sheets and visible smoke begins to rise into the sky, as if traveling to the heavens where my mom tells me that my grandpa lives now. I mimic her motion and successfully throw in a few decorated sheets of my own.

It’s my sister’s turn next, but she hesitates. “I don’t want to get burned!” she cries.

“You won’t get burned, Kyra. Here, give me your hand.”

Grabbing her tiny wrists with my hands and guiding them to the bin, I whisk her arm forward and the heavenly currency flutters into the blaze. She tries it herself, and then I go again, then my mother, my father, and finally my grandma. As we burn the papers, we take turns talking to my grandpa and filling him in on 47

the events he's missed: Kyra’s first-place finish at her dance competition, my mom’s skiing accident and subsequent hand surgery, and my dad’s new carpeting business. My mom asks him to keep an eye on us and grant us luck until next November, but my grandma doesn’t speak. Even after a year, she keeps her warmth in with crossed arms, her eyes frozen despite the flames they reflect.

Soon, the papers pile high, and a foundation of fine-grained ash begins to form underneath the fire. Embers glitter in the dark above the bin.

“Yeye will be rich!” my sister exclaims. * We’re using new paper this November because the Chinese grocery store stopped stocking our usual choice. They’re modeled after the hundred dollar bill, but in Ben Franklin’s stead, there is a Chinese emperor (or an old Asian man that resembles one), and an oriental palace of sorts replaces the Independence Hall on the back.

To our amusement, my sister and I point out that it reads “Hell Bank Note” across the frame of the bill, likely the result of an unintentionally dark Google Translate gaffe. We burn the paper anyway because we aren’t religious and that’s all we have for now. I wonder what my grandpa will think when he gets his money.

Sometimes, we throw in too many sheets at a time, and the fire dies out, suffocated by hell bank notes. My dad shifts the contents of the bin using the metal rod and lets the flames breathe again. One by one, the bills pass the fire to one another, curling up, 48

orange at the edges at first, but eventually receding into just smoke and dust. We must remember to keep the fire alive, to preserve the flickery glow on the reflective surface and the warmth that it provides.

When it’s my turn to talk to Grandpa, I tell him that I remember how I always used to lie down on his bed and ask him to play the piano on my back. I remember his compositions of ticklish scales and chords, staccato and legato, the glissando that he always concluded with which made me jump away, laughing.

I remember how I used to beg him to fix my LEGO Darth Vader ship every time I broke its wings, and how it’s become a display model on my shelf now that he’s gone, still afraid that there’ll be no one to fix it if it breaks. With guilt, I admit to myself that my recollection of him has lost its color after three years.

For the first time, I wonder how my neighbors perceive my family’s ritual. They must see the smoke rising from our driveway every year and think that we’re so strange. I make sure not to tell anyone at school about our tradition. * This year, we burn money for my grandpa and my paternal grandma. We’re sure to add extra money to the fire so that there’s enough for both of them. “They can fight for it!” my grandma jokes, and we all laugh.

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I’ve thrown so many sheets that the motions have become ingrained in my muscle memory. Although I try to remind myself why we do it, our ritual has become as regular as Christmas or Halloween, and its meaning has faded with age, just the same as the holidays. Today, I throw a few more sheets every time so that the height of my stack dwindles faster. It’s a school night, and the conclusion of my English essay is not nearly as thought provoking as my teacher expects. When I look up at the smoke’s path, I realize that the net on the basketball hoop has greyed and torn, hanging on only three of the eight rungs on the rim.

I am wearing one of my dad’s nicer overcoats, and it’s just barely too big. My mom tells me that I look more and more like him, especially since I’m nearly as tall as he is now. I wonder how tall I’ll be the first time I don’t burn anything on this day of the year, when my mom isn’t with me and no one makes me stand on the driveway, huddled around a burning trash can in the cold. I can remember my grandpa without the flames. * This year, I am not home. I stare down at my phone’s calendar in my dorm at boarding school, eight years since I’ve made the call. “I’m going to go outside for a bit.” I tell my roommate, who is reading on his bed. “Can I borrow your lighter?” Without looking up, he gives me a nod and hands me his neon green lighter. I pull my puffy winter jacket—the only one I’ve brought to school—from

50

its hanger in the closet and wander down the halls and out the door. I twirl the lighter between my middle finger and my thumb, quickly clamping it against my hip when my RA passes.

The enclosure I arrive at is a cozy area, tiled off with gray brick, hidden away from view by shrubs. I reach into my pockets; inside is a square of folded college-ruled paper, torn from my math notebook. Pressing it against my thigh, I write “$10,000” in my barely legible chicken scratch. I stare at it for a moment and add “To YeYe” underneath the denomination. Good enough. He’ll understand. I roll my finger on the spark wheel of the lighter onto the red button, and it clicks a couple times before it ignites. It’s hard to get one of the corners to catch in the cold, but when it eventually does, I quickly let the paper drop from my hands. While I watch the fire make its way across the notes’ diagonal against the brick floor, eradicating letters and zeros, I think about my grandpa. I haven’t thought of him these past few years as often as I used to, but there are still fragments of him that come back to me in class, during swim practice, while walking across campus. As I watch the paper burn, the flames solder these fragments back together for me; they let me hear his silvery voice and feel his callused hands on my shoulders. Just for a few minutes each year when the fire flares, these fragments are no longer fragments; they are my grandpa again. My mom tells me that we burn paper money so that he’ll receive it in heaven, but I know that we burn the money so that we don’t have to burn the parts of him that remain, the parts of him that we remember. On the ground, all 51

Ketaki Tavan Artwork

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That Guy That Guy. He spells it out for me, letter by letter, T-H-A-T GU-Y, as if his name has lost significance with the distance he has traveled and the fading of his facial tattoos. That black Guy on the corner, and always That same Guy. I’m That Guy spare-change-ing again, That Guy looking at you. That Guy. He seems as though he has this bit prepared, perhaps hoping the repetition would be dramatic and garment him in mystery. * They’ve begun to put up metal railings and colorful tents for the block party, so the sidewalks are busier than usual. Peoplesized letters that spell “IOWA CITY” have been assembled in the middle of the street, and groups of pedestrians wait their turn to get pictures of themselves, perhaps to show friends as evidence of how often they go out or how eccentric they are. In the city, the humidity of the past week has reduced to a tepid haze, and clouds have dissipated to reveal a clear sky.

As I stand at the street corner alone, the homeless man makes a remark about the large crowds, and I agree. We make small talk of the festivities and the weather until our casual chit-chat turns into conversation, and questions somehow meander into our personal lives. In an attempt to level our eyes at the same height, I prop my Nike backpack against the brick wall and sit down beside him as if it’s a regular occasion for me to talk with homeless strangers.

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After we chop it up for a while, his musk becomes my own, and the flies decide that our bodies are equally as nourishing. I flinch when they flit near my ears or when they settle for an instant among the hairs of my calves, but he doesn’t seem to care, even when they crawl from the collar of his Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt onto the skin on his neck. As we speak, some passersby smile, which That Guy says is usually out of nervousness. When I ask for spare change, their excuses are never original. If they make eye contact, some turn away and put unlit screens up to their ears in manufactured conversation. It seems that some stare down at me as if I were homeless, too. * Favorite sayings?

“I got two: spare change and thank you.” * In 1996, a mud-splattered Buick dropped him off somewhere in rural Iowa. He never grew accustomed to what he describes as the trailer trash, hillbillies, inbreds, noisey tractor trucks, and greasy pork sandwiches of that region. There weren’t many people to offer their spare change there either, so he hopped onto a rusty freight train that went along for a while and eventually unloaded near the dirt town that was Iowa City. At that time, there were no Blacks, no Asians, no Mexicans, only Amish and other white people living here. And a circus of white travelers—the punk rockers, the hippies, the skaters, and the skinheads—hung out at the Ped Mall, but within a few years, legislators in suits shooed them out of the city like I shoo the 54

flies that indulge on our odor. He says he’s one of the last travelers, and by the looks of his tattered blue hiking bag and weather-worn skin, I don’t doubt it. * Los Angeles was the opposite of Iowa City. It moved fast.

He tells me that he was born there, but he has nothing to say of parents or friends. He tells me he’s been homeless since birth, which I find rather dramatic, and that his only dream was that somebody’d throw some spare change in his cup. I imagine him coming out of the womb and directly onto the LA streets, plastic cup in hand, never having any desire to become a racecar driver, an astronaut, or whatever 70s kids aspired to be. He tells me about the Chicanos who taught him to speak Spanglish as he sat between sidewalk cracks in which pavement ants and crushed cigarette butts coexisted in a cavernous shelter. He tells me there’s no important people in his life besides the ones who throw spare change into his cup.

In a different part of Los Angeles, the ducks hung upside down and the jade hung on string. During Chinese New Year, the night sky served as a backdrop for streaks of red and yellow, leaving an ominous layer of smoke behind that concealed the curved roofs which lined the streets. Dragons danced below among crowds of people. He had only been to the celebration once, but he decides it is important to tell me. I suspect it’s because he notices I’m Chinese myself. He names all the different types of Asians he remembers in California. In his high school, the Vietnamese, the Cambodian, the Laos. In Downtown LA, the Japanese. In the Bay Area, Koreans and Filipinos. In San Diego, 55

people from, uh, uh, uh, uh, don’t tell me, uh, uh, uh, uh, Southeast Asia. He smiles when he finally blurts out the words, proud that he’s impressed me with his knowledge of my culture. The demographics he provides are completely arbitrary, somehow torquing itself out of our discussion of the lack of important people in his life. Not wanting to interrupt him, I let him roll, no matter how factual or irrelevant his words are. He mentions Asian culture as if he were Asian himself, but perhaps he just wants to show me that his life has made him more knowledgeable than other homeless people.

He had seen all of LA just before he turned twenty-four and longed to see the rest of the country, so he squeezed into a stranger’s car on the highway, and poof. He ended up in Seattle.

At that time, to him, Iowa was just a sorry place the size of Arkansas on the east coast, a shoe kick away from somewhere up near Vermont. * Seattle was the grunge scene. He listened to Pearl Jam and wore baggy, torn flannels to fit in with the local crew. In Florida, he kicked it with the Haitians and the Trinidadians. He impressed them with his Spanish and how quickly he adapted to their Creole. He learned to deal with normalized confederate flags that flew above police stations in Alabama. He says that Boston was full of Canadians, so he knew a little French. Bonjour, and, and, you know... I know a little bit of French, he assured me.

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* Across the street, a black man with cornrows, probably in his late twenties, stands looking at his phone. He wears a lewd graphic tee and baggy blue jeans, frayed at the cuffs.

That Guy notices him. “Hey, good lookin out homie! I thought I was going to have to boogieman you! You got it for me?”

“Uh...” he laughs nervously. “Shit, I was looking for you, but...”

“You knew you were gonna see me.”

“Yea, I get paid—” Annoyed, That Guy interrupts, “So I gotta wait again.”

“—Monday.”

“I shouldn’t have to be looking for you. You know I’m out here spare chang-ing... I’m not gonna be looking for people in the rain. It was raining for the last four days, nonstop. Just because it rains, the homeless don’t stop. I was out here begging in the rain.”

“You got a number?”

“No, I don’t got a number. I’m homeless! I see you standing at that corner everyday when you get off work. I don’t want to have to do no Pink Panthering. We ain’t walking around with no magnifying glass looking for clues!” He stops to laugh at his movie reference. “Just come back man. When you got your money, just hold it. You know I need it.”

When the man walks off, That Guy tells me, “Sometimes you just need to boogieman people. Like the monster under the bed, you gotta sneak up on em’ when they owe you money!” *

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A group of men lug a ladder over to a storefront behind us, where they hang a banner that advertises “Iowa City Block Party” over a sign that reads “Iowa City Funeral Home” in black, vintage font.

“You see that guy over there? At the ATM,” That Guy says to me. I nod. “He’s what we call a trust fund kid. He comes to this ATM at least once or twice a week, but you know what?

He’s just as homeless as I am.”

Startled by how profound he has suddenly become, I ask, “What do you mean? Are you saying we’re all homeless in a way, even if we aren’t actually living on the streets?”

“No, man! I mean homeless homeless!” he blurts. “They sleepin’ on the same cardboard that I am! When me and my crew were spare changing, they were going to the ATM. They still homeless, but they got resources—parents, family members, trust funds, war bonds. When everyone else is sweating about money, these kids don’t have no problems, compared to us at least. That’s why these kids are always the ones buying drugs and being assholes.” * He sees Iowa City in two sides. Broadway, Davis, and Lakeside is where the African Americans from Chicago live, and he tells me there’s thousands of them. But they won’t come over here. The idea of an unspoken racial division is familiar, occuring in so many cities around the world, but the fact that Iowa city follows suit seems surprising. It seems so small and chest-tochest, but maybe I just haven’t been here quite long enough.

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He goes on to tell me that he’s glad people have stopped talking about Obama. When uneducated people criticized people of his color, he says all of Obama’s problems became African Americans’ problems. It reminds him of Jesse Jackson, who he calls the Obama of his childhood. Back then, he had gotten tired of hearing, Reverend Jackson did this wrong, Reverend Jackson did that wrong in order to blame his entire people as a whole. But now, the white kids want to listen to hip hop, watch black TV shows, and tell people that their best friend is black. That’s my culture, not yours. Y'all can find a better way to make up for all that Jesse Jackson shit. * He took the Peter Pan bus from New York. He got on from a spot in Chinatown where pretty Asian girls with clipboards walked around the sidewalks, grabbing people by their shirts and leading them into the buses. All the guys there dressed like Jet Li. Fancy hair, gaudy shades—they were like thugs. Asian thugs. A trip to Boston was only fifteen dollars. He had gotten his tattoos near there, one that curved symmetrically through the gaps between his forehead, mouth, nose, and yellowed eyes, and another on his forearm, the letter A enclosed in a circle. He makes it a point to tell me he had gotten them before popular inked musicians had helped foster some social tolerance of the practice, but doesn’t tell me the meaning behind each of his own. Back then, only the bandits had tats. *

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Spotting a familiar biker in the street, That Guy eagerly waves and calls the man over. The biker stops by the curb and levers his kickstand.

He’s a short Indian man, with longish black hair that naturally retains a suave, windblown mein. No gel. He has a haven’t-shaved-for-two-days stubble, and a classy, medium sized camera with a short lens hangs from his neck. His bike’s lean frame is painted modern matte grey with crimson accents on the handlebars.

That Guy swaggers that he’s talked with the biker’s coworker recently. With his eyes wide enough to reveal their veiny peripherals, he says in one breath, “He still remembers my route! He told me that I was so positioned with it. He told me I was so positioned. It’s gotta be like twenty years since I last saw him!”

I stand there fairly awkwardly as they talk about their history for a while, but I gather from their conversation that the Indian biker is a lawyer, literally like the Perry Mason of Iowa City, whose face never escapes the front page of local newspapers.

They met in 2004, but only get to talk to each other a couple times a year when the biker passes by That Guy’s spot. He asks That Guy to pose for a picture, so he crosses his legs, sits up straight, places his cup to his right, and smiles. During the silence of the picture, I ask how they met.

While he hoofs up the kickstand and mounts his bike, the guy says, “Someone got beat up and killed under a bridge.”

He nods in That Guy’s vicinity. “He was a key witness.”

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That Guy calls after him as he rides off, “They found me in Santa Barbara! You still remember? Santa Barbara!”

I hear the lawyer turn back and say “I do!” laughing in reminiscence as he turns the corner. It seems as if That Guy knows everyone in town. * “Iowa’s kinda like one of those windows, the ones that when you scratch it you can see inside. Bad drama, bad drama.

You don’t see it, but it’s got some serious, serious problems.” * Days after That Guy’s arrival in Iowa City, the president of Hills Bank murdered his two children and burned himself alive in his van. With an empty pill bottle still in his shaking hands, the man took his silver revolver from under the sink and loaded his three last bullets into its spinning chamber. He put two through the head of his son and one through the head of his daughter while they slept, stumbling down the stairs of his apartment in guilt, pouring the gasoline, lighting the fire. Not some lousy worker.

The president, a troubled man hiding behind a gleaming public persona and a facade of success and content. That Guy didn’t hear the screams, but after the fire had been extinguished, he saw the policemen, bright caution tape in hand, circling the smoldering van just two blocks away from the cardboard That Guy slept on. I imagined the night sky serving as a backdrop for flashes of blue and red which blended into purple at times, but pitch black smoke isn’t as visible during the nighttime. *

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“You can put peanut butter, you can put jelly, you can put bananas, but it’s still white bread. I don’t eat white bread. It has poison in it.” * A few days later, I stride back into town to say goodbye before leaving the city. I’m uncertain exactly why, but Iowa City, the quality of remoteness here, and the stories he told make me feel like I need to. When I turn the corner past the trust fund kid’s ATM to the spot where he said he’d be, I find in his stead a man with a long grey mane and a face more sunburnt in some places than others. He leans on the same patch of brick wall that That Guy leaned on when we spoke. With his head bowed and a plastic cup beside his outstretched legs, he holds a sign that says, “VETERAN, PLEASE HELP.” I survey the block in hesitation—maybe I had arrived at the wrong corner.

“Excuse me, sir,” I say. The man gazes up at me, putting his hand up to shelter his eyes from the sun. “Have you seen that guy who’s always sitting here asking for spare change? You know…That Guy?” He laughs as if he’s been asked this question before.

“There’s always someone sitting here asking for spare change.” He swivels his head, checking to see if anyone is near enough to hear him, and then he continues, “Let me tell you a secret—we’re all That Guy.” Grinning with satisfaction, he says, “So you got some spare change, kid, or what?”

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Vicky Chen Artwork

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Forgotten I’ve forgotten how to fall asleep Without lying awake, staring at the walls.

Watching the outline of drawers as they morph into monsters,

As they play out demons, Shifting, blurring, The hiss of the radiator, snaking towards me.

Wrapping, filling my thoughts.

I’ve forgotten how to think Without filtering, fearing.

My thoughts hidden, tangled in lies, Stuck, screaming Muffled underneath the pillow, molding to fears.

I’ve forgotten how to act Without regret, or care.

A hollowed shadow, darkened as the pain swells,

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Rises above the pulse of reality Moving into the faded creases of my mind.

I’ve forgotten how to speak Without biting my tongue.

As butterflies float against the raspy throat Fighting to touch, flying back down, Wings caught in the haze of panic.

I’ve forgotten how to wait, How to smile, how to breathe.

Heavy lungs tied to a blackened dread, I’ve forgotten how to live.

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