Toasted Cheese Literary Journal

Est. 2001

Sneezing Coyotes by Salvatore Marici

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Garrett Ray Harriman

Sneezing Coyotes by Salvatore Marici

Reading the poems in Salvatore Marici’s bountiful new collection, Sneezing Coyotes (Ice Cube Press, 2022), means signing up to become a privileged tourist of moments, each one intimate, systemic, and wide-ranging. Page after page, I felt like I was weeks deep into a heady safari of the scenes and locales (interior and exterior) of one man’s vast, inimitable memory. But counter to the stereotype of the slovenly tourist present only for the thrills and highlights, I felt inclusive to these retellings, embraced by their density and detail. I still feel vindicated, and wiser, and optimistic of my own memories and systems of notice weeks after first reading them.

The greatest gift of these gathered works is just that: renewing faith in the processes and powers of noticing.

In Marici’s poetics, nothing is “merely” anything. Everything is brimming or in motion with the many systems composing it, leaning into it, intruding upon it, remembering it. If this sounds dry or schematic, it is anything but. If this sounds overwhelming, too complex to be intimate, or even preachy, think twice. His poems create sudden, intricate webs of cause and effect, of witnessing and remembering, that generate tableaus snatched out of time.

Take for instance a sequence of three poems, “Gringo Meets Guatemala’s,” that detail the homes and fauna of the country. The second in this series flexes the author’s horizon-wide point of view:

Every morning wives swing brooms
smack pigs’ black butts
chase them out of adobe houses
into Guatemala’s rural roads.
Red dust ankle deep.
Slick when wet.

Triangles made from scrap wood
clasp pigs’ necks. Stops snouts
from rooting fields. Front legs bump
bottom slabs, nudge them into a two-step.

Dusk, they dance over their thresholds. (32)

As varied as Marici’s subjects are, there is an equal number of unique destinations, physical and emotional, that vivify these poems with Sherlockian detail. Chicago, Cambodia, Germany, Florida, Guatemala—each new vista feels like its own world, its own condensed encyclopedia of a single person’s experience. There are often multiple shifts in location in a single three-stanza poem, as well. It’s a whirlwind sensation, these frequent shifts in geography, and constantly rewarding.

“Changed Landscape,” for instance, speaks to Marici’s spellbinding knack for rendering all places personal, history-filled, and majestic:

Rain falls
through cracks in a roof
of a barn built in early 1900’s.
Melted snow seeps,
into gray-splintered boards
once painted red
when horses, cows, and pigs
lived on an 80-acre farm
the farmer’s great grandkids sold. (61)

The occasions that connect these far-flung places range from the intimate to the morose, funerals to jungles, the work-a-day to the philosophic. Moments of activism and introspection are as common as moments of deft and lingering observation, whether countries away or in the author’s backyard garden. In every example, the place itself is described with pinpoint verisimilitude, and the processes described within them become almost tangible souvenirs. That layered, globe-spanning curation extends across the whole collection, while the abundant terrariums gathered along the way become your trusted guides.

Once at our destination, these poems ask us to care long enough to understand the processes at play in life—personal, ecological, emotional—and to think through how our actions and reflections can contribute to, or in some cases corrupt, these living landscapes. They teach and iterate on the truth that presence (no crowds required, just one or two of us proves plenty) allows our lens of witnessing to expand. We see the ecological twists of fate. We experience the customs and lives unfolding in ignorance of and response to our meddling. Nothing is hidden or spared from our inspection.

The compact composition of these memories and scenes do not feel superficial or disrespectful in their brevity, either. They are robust enough to read as true, but controlled enough in their exposure of their subjects to not be exploitative. This interplay of themes is parenthetical, repetitious and resonant; there is no waste—not a feeling, not a shoestring, not a thought. His is a brand of respectful recollection.

In “Facets of Cambodia’s Rats,” the lives and uses of this creature perfectly capture Marici’s eye for description, and even wider eye for macrocosmic implication:

Through the rural regions
brown rats bred in Tanzania
wear harnesses hooked to overhead cables
guide their two feet plus bodies
through fields landmines remain.
Twitching noses scent TNT.
Their 2.6 lbs. do not detonate. (20)

These bewitching players and outcomes are presented with calm and unromanticized clarity. They are not mugging for the poet’s memory, nor are they precious, nostalgia-buffed caricatures. I believe they are here, now, just as they were then. The author does not speak out of turn in these moments. No feelings of misgiving appear, suggesting that Marici is rendering before us anything less than the un-punched-up memory of who and what there was, what they were doing, what was felt. They do not mistake pithiness for deep knowledge, and peddle no such attitude. He doesn’t intimate; he reports.

An ironical eye is never cast upon the inequities broadcast from these storied scenes and feelings, either, just as no gavel of action falls to castigate the reader into submission of the hefty lives, systems, and lessons to be examined. Instead, these poems argue by virtue of presence that observation and memory are systems to be known and explored, and can affect change in themselves. Powerful systems. Unignorable ones. Take them lightly at any point in time, and you risk causing damage.

Stylistically, Marici’s punchy verbs and article-dropped lines cast a savory spell of immediacy and validity to the quick-to-change proceedings, as if events are happening now and the grammar need not apply. His sequences and stanzas almost always include lists of details—physical descriptions, renderings of environment—yet nothing feels static or preserved in his work. This stanza from “An Afternoon in Sticky Hanoi” proves the rule:

At an intersection, a man sits on a curb,
eyes closed; thumbs touch middle fingers.
Centimeters from his sandaled toes
scooter tires roll. Pedestrians’ legs
brush the meditating man’s knees
another sense from streets he knows
passes through his flowing mind,
exits into the universe. (21)

The light of Marici’s memory is sharp in its focus, but soft at its edges. These aren’t dead butterflies pinned to a corkboard, dusty relics of once beautiful or heartbreaking scenes exhumed from the poet’s closet for the sake of a page count. Every scene is a breathing, beating specimen both lightly and starkly depicted. They appear as unchanged things the reader is privileged to witness flutter by, including the gentle chaos their wingbeats leave in their wake.

A procedural grace unfolds over the majority of these poems. His listings evoke a meditative pulse, a ritual of “happening-upon-to-contemplation” for these pieces taken individually and as a final volume. We discover that the limitations and effects of one lifestyle beget or amend the lives, losses, and memories of others—always. “Tales from a Non-Savior” and “Caskets in Demand” showcase this interplay via an international exploration, while “Goodbye to an Unfilled Want” and “Look For a Sign, Any Sign” remind us that the intimate processes of loving and grieving are shared species-wide, regardless of our current address.

Another poetic knife honed to cunning usage is Marici’s theming. If the last stanza of a poem has a message or commentary, it never screams and gesticulates its presence: it wafts, becoming a lingering atmosphere of the steps and details just consumed. So many of these pieces fade and float into their endings, rather than conclude with some definitive image or metaphor or emotion. Yet the formula does not become stale or self-parodying. His images show the skin and scars they need to, their limitations apparent, as our own understanding and connections must be. The outcomes are imperfect, unfinished, but nothing is abandoned. I savored that feeling of examined inhalation each time these devices came to play.

Why? Because that is what being both observer and observed means. His subjects remain undefined but exhaustively explored in the instant. Things are stark and remarked, tenderly and all-encompassingly described, and then handed off to our care from what feels like a pair or warm, steady hands. We’re asked to take notice of the system we have been dropped inside of, not condemned to fix the machine or to burden the responsibility. These lines from “Selective Killings Before Winter” hold up this humbling mirror perfectly:

The rolling mower lays mats of
chopped plants. Green pigments
stain my sneakers. I hold a hatchet
before the autumn’s leafless trees,
most a few years older than saplings.
…

After winter,
no new twigs sprout
on these posts where
song birds peck burrowing insects
fly into bare crowns
sing above
networks of living systems
grown from the dead in soil. (58)

In Sneezing Coyotes, moments and the systems that create them exist in the same breath, and the memories they create are never witnessed, or remembered, alone. I hadn’t come across Marici’s poetry before tackling this review, but the breadth and generosity of his experiences, his inventive, inventorial style, and the evanescent ecological messaging of his work have left a hopeful impression on this new and eager fan. I can’t wait for his next tour to begin.

Salvatore Marici’s latest collection of poetry is Sneezing Coyotes (Ice Cube Press, 2022). He also has one chapbook and two other full poetry collections. He was the 2010 Midwest Writing Center Poet in Resident, has judged poetry contests, placed in poetry contests, teaches and attends workshops that teach the craft of poetry. His poetry has appeared in Toasted Cheese, Spillway, Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland, Of Burgers & Barrooms, a Main Street Rag anthology, Poetry Quarterly and many more. Marici served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala as a natural resources specialist and he is a civil servant retiree/agronomist. In SouthWest Florida he is learning to maneuver a 17-foot kayak. During the summer he grows garlic in Western IL. Keep up with his events on Facebook.

Garrett Ray Harriman is a writer and poet living in southwest Colorado. His work has appeared in Atlas Poetica, Toasted Cheese, Kestrel, and other publications. His poem, “Snake in the Grass,” was a semi-finalist in Naugatuck River Review’s 11th Narrative Poetry Contest guest judged by poet Lauren K. Alleyne. Twitter: @Inadversent

Where the Stork Flies by Linda C. Wisniewski

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Shelley Carpenter

Where the Stork Flies by Linda C. Wisniewski

Linda Wisniewski’s fantasy novel, Where the Stork Flies (Sand Hill Review Press, 2021) is a captivating story realistically set in the eastern United States with modern characters, yet curiously framed in a time travel mystery. A delightful blend of genres. From the first few paragraphs, Wisniewski hooks the reader as she sets up the exposition in a curious home invasion, but not a typical home invasion as one might think:

I stumbled into the kitchen that morning and found the back door standing open, letting in a few flakes of snow.

Get a grip. I slammed the door closed. A whimper came from behind me. I whirled around to see an old woman in a long brown skirt, loose white blouse, and a muslin headscarf. She stood beside my kitchen table, shivering. A scream escaped my throat and then hers, both of us yelling like a crazy banshee duet. (1)

The whole point of the first page is to tease the reader and simultaneously entice them to turn the page, which I did again and again. I felt like the ghost in the room seeing the characters and their doings laid out in beautifully descriptive writing and spot-on dialogue, which captured my attention from the gate.

Aside from her thoughtful prose, Linda Wisniewski is adept in creating small moments within the plot structure. The story is told in a linear construct and as the plot begins its ascent, she builds in strong supports of small moments that round the characters in grace and flaws. Scene after scene, Wisniewski’s characters move about freely and easily as she carefully captures their personalities and motivations in these small moment situations which culminate in rich, robust characters who are distinct. Believable. Audacious. One of my favorite scenes is when two of the characters make up a guest bed, a follow-up scene from another important moment, richly illuminating a major theme: motherhood.

I followed her down the attic stairs, went to the linen closet and brought out clean sheets for her bed.

“Pretty color.” She took them from my hands and stroked the pink and rose patterns with her finger. “Like roses men sell after Mass.”

My spine stiffened but what she said next surprised me.

“Men don’t understand what mothers go through.”

…

She sat on the bed and stroked the rose-printed quilt […] “Mothers can be very sick when expecting. Some do not want so many children. In bad harvest, they starve. There is woman in Lipinki who helps.”

…

You could have knocked me over with a feather. “Did you ever…” but I couldn’t. It was none of my business. When I took the folded sheets from her arms and went to fit them onto the mattress, she watched me for a moment and then stepped around the bed and helped me tuck them in. Then she stood facing me… (96-97)

There were many of these scenes, carefully crafted and beautiful in their simplicity. Scenes from everyday life. I re-read some, savoring those tantalizing small moments that reached out and immersed me even further. Curiously, I was reminded of the different forms of flash fiction. They were powerful vignettes giving the larger story locomotion as well as purpose.

There are three main characters: Kat, the librarian, who is the narrator; Regina, an old Polish woman from the old country who clearly drives the plot and is a real scene-stealer; and a sophisticated young translator named Aniela whose closet I would love to see. But all is not as it seems. These characters are layered in flaws, regrets, blood, and secrets that are alluded to and revealed each in its own time. The central character is the librarian, Kat, an emotionally isolated character seeking redemption.

I felt like a child myself, the little girl who hid her sorrow and loneliness behind the covers of books. The woman I was now had no such option, and truth be told, I didn’t want to hide anymore. I wanted to do something good with my life, to redeem myself and, perhaps, my mother. (114)

Kat’s journey is indeed tied to the old woman, Regina, whom Kat is curiously drawn to and genuinely wants to help. But help doesn’t come easy for Kat as she makes mistake after mistake, often complicating situations with her own problems that culminate in an unexpected turn of events. The three women characters, though very different, have one thing in common: ancestry. Wisniewski luminously weaves their backstories in Polish culture with the mysterious Black Madonna of Częstochowa at the heart of this charming fantasy novel.

Linda C. Wisniewski is a former librarian who lives in Bucks County, PA. Her work has been published in Toasted Cheese, Hippocampus, Foliate Oak, and other literary magazines. She is the author of a memoir, Off Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace With Scoliosis, Her Mother and Her Polish Heritage (Pearlsong Press, 2008). She blogs at lindawis.com. Readers can reach her at lindawis[at]lindawis.com.

Shelley Carpenter is TC’s Reviews Editor. Email: reviews[at]toasted-cheese.com

Broken Bridge

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Dead of Winter ~ Third Place
DJ Tyrer

Photo Credit: Neil Moralee/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

George blessed the storm. For most folk in Cumbria, it was a disaster, but for him and Bill it was a source of riches. The two of them sat in the cab of the rented van, wrapped up against the winter chill. Rain lashed against the windscreen, making visibility poor in the early-morning light.

The white van ploughed a furrow through the flooded lane, past the ‘Road Closed’ sign, sending waves sloshing over the hedgerows before the waters crashed back down behind them and rippled back into stillness. Overhead, the sky was a slate grey. Dark clouds glowered on the horizon, threatening worse: Most people were hoping they held snow that would fall upon the higher ground and offer the sodden county some respite, but they were hoping otherwise. The longer the rains fell, the more villages they could loot.

“Remember,” said George, glancing at Bill, “just take small things—jewellery, electronic gadgets, that sort of thing. Stuff you can hide in your clothes. If someone spots you hauling a widescreen TV down the street, they’ll know you’re up to something.”

“I ain’t stupid,” Bill replied.

George didn’t bother to correct him.

They were almost at their destination. The village had been evacuated after the bridge connecting its two halves had collapsed into the white, frothing torrent that had replaced its usually docile river.

“You sure it’s safe?” Bill asked, clutching the dashboard, as the van splashed down towards the cluster of houses, the water rising up its doors and dribbling in about their feet.

“’Course it is.” George slowed to a crawl, no longer able to discern what hazards the water might conceal.

“That’s odd,” Bill said, after a moment, pointing.

“What is?”

“The bridge.”

“What about it?” George was more concerned with keeping the van on the road.

“Look at it: it looks as if it exploded. There are chunks of it all over the shore.”

“That’s the force of the water for you,” George replied as he parked the van in a shallower area of water. “Right, let’s get out there and fill up. Come on.”

“Gah, it’s freezing,” Bill exclaimed as he climbed down into the water.

“Keep your mind on the prize.”

“Will do.”

They had to clamber over the sandbags that were piled up in the doorways of houses. While intended to keep homes dry, they had been overwhelmed by the rising waters and now served to dam the waters in. The various knickknacks and household items that made a house a home floated on the pooled waters. Even heavy pieces of furniture—tables and fallen shelving units—floated about like so much driftwood. There was a stink of sewage in the air.

They climbed the stairs. The homeowners had carried up as much as they could of value, conveniently laying the goods out for them to pick over. Finishing with them, they proceeded to grub through the bedroom drawers. Anything of worth was slipped into the many voluminous pockets of the coats they wore.

“Good haul,” George commented with a grin as they headed back down the stairs. Suddenly, he paused and put a hand on Bill’s shoulder. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“I thought I heard…”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

They were silent a moment. It was unlikely any rescue workers would be about, but it paid to be careful.

“Nah, it was probably nothing,” decided George and they continued on their way.

After a few houses, having picked them clean of trinkets of any value, the two men trudged back to the van and divested themselves of the objects stuffed into their pockets. In the back were a number of plastic bins, allowing them to sort the items by type. Then, they waded off down the street to the next set of houses.

“Hey, this one looks as if something crashed into it,” Bill said, gesturing towards one building that had been halved in size.

“Probably the water caused it to collapse,” said George as they went inside and began to look about the ruins. He sighed, annoyed. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything here. It’s too much of a wreck. Let’s move onto the next one.”

They climbed back down the piled rubble and began to splash their way along the street.

Suddenly, they were bowled over as the building just ahead of them exploded apart as if it had been struck by an artillery shell. It happened so fast, they didn’t register whether it was the blast or the wave that caught them. They plunged beneath the filthy, frigid waters. Then, they broke the surface, spluttering in terror and confusion.

“Help!” shrieked Bill. “I can’t swim!”

“Shut it, you muppet. It’s not that deep; you can stand.” George helped him to his feet, then looked about and said, “What the hell just happened?”

Bill just shook his head.

“Houses collapse inwards,” said George. “They don’t explode outwards.”

“Didn’t the news say something about the risk of a gas explosion?”

“They’ve turned it off. I doubt it’s that.”

“Then what was it?”

They were interrupted by the splash of an oar and a voice demanding, “What are you doing here? Don’t you know it’s dangerous?” A man in a kayak was paddling towards them along the flooded street.

“Just checking on our house,” George lied, easily.

“You’re not from around here,” the man countered. If he were a local, he probably knew his neighbours by sight.

“I meant our aunt’s place. She got out ahead of the flood, so we thought we’d best check how it was.”

“Really?” The man was silent for a moment, then said, “Still, whatever you’re doing here, it’s dangerous. Especially if you’re motives aren’t entirely pure.”

George ignored that last jibe and said, “Sure, I can see that: That house just collapsed.”

The kayaker laughed. “Collapsed. Yeah.”

Soaked through and feeling frozen, George found the man’s tone irked him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just that it’s dangerous here.”

“No, come on, what do you mean?”

“Just that you really ought to get out of here, assuming you want to live.”

Although Bill shifted nervously, sending ripples out across the waist-deep water, George snorted and said, “Really? Is that meant to be a threat, or are you talking about the weather, ’cause the forecast says we won’t get another band of heavy rain till this evening. Things aren’t going to get any worse.”

“Floodwaters are the least of our concern.”

“Come on,” said George, turning to go and gesturing for Bill to follow him. “Man’s a loony.”

“Evil has been set free here,” the man called after them.

“Loony.”

There was the crash of another house being torn apart.

“Best get out of here,” George muttered. “The flood must be getting worse, after all.”

Then, they stopped dead, staring in horror. Something large and black loomed into view, having just crashed through another building. Brickwork tumbled off it as if shrugged away and water ran off it in rivulets. The size of a hill, they could barely comprehend its form: it had bulk and they had the impression of numerous legs, but beyond that it might have been a shapeless mass.

Bill swore. George gave a shriek.

“What is it?” Bill demanded as they continued to stare.

“Evil,” called the man in the kayak from behind them, maintaining his distance.

The thing began to turn towards them.

“Run!” shouted George, pulling at Bill’s shoulder.

The kayaker was already paddling swiftly away. Between waist and chest deep in the water, George and Bill could barely make much speed at all.

Behind them, the enormous bulk lumbered slowly but steadily after them. They attempted to pick up speed, but fear could only achieve so much.

“This way,” called the kayaker, turning down a side street. They followed as best they could.

“What is it?” George shouted after him.

“Evil—bound here for six-hundred winters within the bridge. When the floodwaters tore the bridge away, it was freed once more. You need to leave this place, if you want to live.”

“Back to the van,” said George.

Unfortunately, their only means of escape lay past the creature that threatened them.

There were more crashes, more houses being destroyed, as it headed towards them.

Clambering over rubble, they slipped around it and, finally, returned to the van. The man in the kayak was bobbing close by.

“You should hide,” he said. “If you leave now, it will follow your van. It might come for you, anyway—evil calls for evil. But, there is a chance: my grandmother taught me the old chants that bound it. I’ll try to bind it once again, if I can. You should be able to escape then, whatever happens. If I fail, perhaps the wind will change direction and blow in some truly-icy Siberian air. Maybe that will freeze it in the waters long enough that I can find a way to deal with it, or someone else can.”

“Well, I’m not hanging around to find out,” said George, climbing into the driver’s seat. He looked at Bill who was hesitating at the passenger door. “You okay?”

“I didn’t want to come,” he replied. “I’m going to find somewhere to hide.” With all the rubble about, there were plenty of options and he quickly jogged off to secrete himself. It was a wise move.

George decided not to wait. Leave the kayaker to his crazy plan, he decided; he turned the key. The van didn’t start. He swore.

The waters shook about him and he tried again, but still there was nothing.

Then, an enormous leg like a pillar of slick, black stone came down immediately in front of the van. A moment later, its twin crashed down upon its roof. George didn’t have the opportunity to register what had happened. He was dead.

Bill trembled where he hid. He was certain it was getting colder, that winter was here with a ferocity. He wasn’t sure where the man in the kayak had gone, but he could hear him declaiming loudly somewhere within the confines of the devastated village. Bill wondered if it were possible for the man to bind the thing as he said his ancestors had. He had a horrible feeling they would all die together in this godforsaken place.

Chill winds blew in and the voice of the man rose in pitch as he cried out again and again for the thing that had escaped the bridge to obey his words. But, wondered Bill, what was there to bind it within?

Maybe, Bill thought, if it followed the man, he might have a chance to get away.

Perhaps, with the temperature dropping, they would all die here of the chill. Bill certainly felt as if he might.

It was growing nearer.

Bill made up his mind. He started to run.

He might just make it, he thought.

He heard the pillar-like legs crash down into the water just behind him, sending up a spray that fell upon him like stinging darts of rain.

He didn’t make it.

Something seized him by the waist and he felt himself being raised up into the air. For a brief moment, Bill got a clear view of the devastation wrought upon the village. His final thought was to wonder if they had deserved their fate, as the man had implied: was this all some hideous punishment? Then, he ceased to wonder: He was dead.

The rain continued to fall and, slowly, the floodwaters continued to rise, the weather indifferent to the horror it had released.

DJ Tyrer is the person behind Atlantean Publishing and has been widely published in anthologies and magazines around the world, such as Chilling Horror Short Stories (Flame Tree), All The Petty Myths (18th Wall), Steampunk Cthulhu (Chaosium), What Dwells Below (Sirens Call), The Horror Zine’s Book of Ghost Stories (Hellbound Books), and EOM: Equal Opportunity Madness (Otter Libris), and issues of Sirens Call, Hypnos, Occult Detective Magazine, parABnormal, and Weirdbook, and in addition, has a novella available in paperback and on the Kindle, The Yellow House (Dunhams Manor). Facebook. Email: djtyrer[at]hotmail.co.uk

Cutting Your Own

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Dead of Winter ~ Third Place
Bunny McFadden

Photo Credit: Robert Linsdell/Flickr (CC-by)

The red velvety rope steadied me as I trekked down the path, dragging my borrowed saw through the day-old snow. Through the perfect rows of tiny trees, I could see my children dashing. We’d never find the perfect tree in time, I worried, biting at my winter-chapped lips. And it had to be perfect this year since we’d be alone.

“Mama, that one’s so cute!” Valeria pointed excitedly at a hobbled tree, one even smaller than the rest of the miniatures. Her coat sleeve rode up on her wrist. They grew so fast. Next week marked halfway through kindergarten.

“Eww, that one’s ugly and short, just like you!” Aléjandro poked his head between the branches of the next row, his shaggy brown hair hanging over his eyes. A few sprinkles of snow began to gather on his cap.

“They’re all short, Alé!” Valeria snapped.

“Enough, I don’t want to hear it,” I could hear myself say. I sounded just like my mother. A shudder ran through me. I was beginning to think the miniature tree farm was a mistake. It sounded so picturesque when I saw the flyer sticking out of Valeria’s binder last week.

“Cut Your Own!” it read in mottled photocopied letters. A garish cartoon of an evergreen was crookedly drawn in the middle. At the bottom was an address on an unfamiliar road, but when I looked it up, it was only an hour from home.

“Let’s hurry up so we can get hot chocolate,” I called, but the kids were already past hearing distance. The rows of trees were neat, almost like desks in an empty classroom. If it weren’t for the snow that had begun to fall in earnest, I could see the end of the path and the little hut at the entrance. The conifers were just tall enough that I couldn’t see the kids, but I could hear them fighting. I stood alone in the row of miniatures.

I picked a rotten day to cut down a tree.

Last Christmas was so different. We took a plane to see Jeremy’s parents in Florida. It was the kids’ first time flying, and even on the tiny seats their little legs swung without touching the floor. I spent Christmas Day on the beach, reading for fun while the kids played with the waves. And then it was January and the bottles kept piling up and the conspiracies kept piling up and the snow kept piling up until I couldn’t take it anymore.

Substitute teachers don’t make a lot of money, and the district only paid me once a month, so when the eagle finally landed I bundled up Valeria and bribed Alé with screen time. The tree farm was in Edgewood, not too far of a drive. We didn’t really have the space for a full tree anyway, and most of our old Christmas stuff was in storage till I got the court things settled. “A mini tree will be perfect,” I kept saying to the kids. Small isn’t bad for now. Like I said about the rental. Like I said about the used car. Like I told Valeria when she complained her coat didn’t fit this morning.

Down the aisle, a hunched figure appeared. I turned my attention to the nearest pine, dabbing at the tear starting to chill my cheek. I wasn’t really in the cheerful spirit you have to be to say “Merry Christmas” without scaring someone half to death.

Each tree had a tag fluttering in the snowy wind. I reached out and turned this one over, trying to look busy. The tree was knee-high, so I had to crouch down to get a better look, leaning on the saw like a crutch. In blood red script on the tag was the word Noel. It was tied with a red thread. The name set off a dozen memories of late-night fights and printed police reports that Jeremy kept trying to get me to read. Common name, I told myself.

The stranger was beside me now, speaking. I straightened up, accidentally pulling the tag off. Embarrassed, I slipped it into my pocket.

“I said, did you find what you were looking for, mija?” the withered old lady smiled, revealing eggshell-white teeth. She gestured down at the tree from under her black wool cloak. The tree bent away in a gust of wind, brushing my leg.

“I think so,” I answered. The saw I’d borrowed from the neighbor down the hall suddenly felt heavy in my mittened hand. “Well, aren’t you going to cut it?” the crone said, almost urgently.

I bent down, reaching over the velvet ropes that separated the aisles, and put the saw to the bark, scraping it once. The sound made me wince. It hit me that I hadn’t seen my kids in a few minutes, but it would be rude to stop cutting the tree now…

“You know, I have to check with my daughter first. She’s the picky one,” I explained, setting down the handsaw against the rope. The withered woman frowned. Her black eyes narrowed at me.

“Better hurry before you get snowed in,” she warned.

I looked down at the ground. The snow at my feet was growing. She was right. I squeezed the tag in my pocket nervously.

The old lady began hobbling on stilted legs back toward the hut at the entrance. I couldn’t even see the headlights of cars on the road; the storm was getting worse. I looked down at the tree again.

“Mama!”

The shout sounded far off, muffled. I dropped the saw and spun, looking over the tops of the small trees. Something didn’t feel right. Maybe I needed something sweet; my blood sugar felt like it was dipping. “Valeria? Alé? Alejandro, you get back here right now,” I said, my voice rising. “Valeria?” These kids never listened to me.

The red velvet ropes along the aisle swung in the sharp wind. The strings of vintage Christmas bulbs above were unlit. Who puts together a Christmas tree farm and doesn’t even bother lighting the place? I ripped off my mitten and dug in my deep coat pocket for my phone or a snack, but I must have left everything in the car. Instead, I felt my fingers curl around paper. I pulled the tag out. It had gotten wet with snow; the red ink had bled and I could barely read it.

The kids were probably fed up with our adventure. The car was unlocked; they were probably in there, fighting over Alé’s phone. “He better not run out of data,” I thought to myself as the snow stung my face. This tree would have to do. I’d marked it, but I needed to do something about my blood sugar before I could finish.

It was getting darker by the minute, and they still hadn’t turned on the lights. I walked against the wind, holding the velvety ropes that separated the path from the trees. After what felt like forever, I was at the thin red door to the hut. It was the size of a garden shed; the window was on the other side, and I could see the edge of the chalkboard price sign. I knocked, mittens in hand.

“Mama,” I heard again. This time, the voice was much closer, and it was not one of mine. I could tell. Was there someone in the hut? I tried the handle; the brass was immovable but hot to the touch.

“Hello?” I shouted above the whistling wind. “Hello?”

Suddenly the door opened a crack and the crone’s black eye was there. I couldn’t see behind her; she filled the frame of the door completely. Had she grown taller?

“Have you chosen, then?” the woman asked, her wrinkled mouth almost immobile.

I nodded my head. “Do I pay first?” I asked, handing her the tag.

She snatched it from my hand, looking down at the lettering. “Yes, yes, whatever price you think is right,” she told me, her black eyes glittering. She reached inside and grabbed a ceramic piggy bank shaped like Santa. That was a little strange. I couldn’t remember the price of a tree. My brain felt sluggish. I needed to eat something, and soon. I dug out a twenty from my pocket.

“Is that enough?”

She gestured silently to the ceramic figure in her hands. Instead of the familiar suit with black and gold buttons, this Santa was wearing a red robe that draped over his face. His arms were crossed in front, the sleeves meeting at their opening, and the slot for coins was right below the tip of his pointed white beard. I folded the bill and slid it in. A dozen Christmas lights flickered on behind me, their vintage bulbs burning brightly and illuminating the woman’s face.

“Would you like to come in for a cup of cocoa,” the withered woman asked, and I could see a loneliness in her face that hadn’t been there before.

“Sure,” I said after a moment, stepping into the tiny hut. An ancient radiator was plugged into the wall, and there was no sink or microwave. Everything sat on a small green card table. In the same outlet, there was a cord that led to a single electric kettle that looked like it was straight from the eighties. The withered woman reached into a box under the little card table and set out two plain mugs. “Cold day, isn’t it,” she said. I nodded politely, rubbing my hands together. There was a metal folding chair leaning against the wall; I maneuvered over to it and pulled at its rusty hinges.

“So, where’s the husband,” the woman asked as she clattered an ancient-looking can of cocoa powder around on the card table.

“Oh, it’s just me these days,” I replied.

I lost myself in thought for a moment, remembering the way Jeremy used to fish out his marshmallows for the kids to share any time we had hot chocolate together. Before he started thinking the neighbors were kidnapping children. Before he drunkenly accused one as she dragged out her trash cans in the wee hours of the morning.

The kettle whistled and snapped me back to the little hut. I could almost feel my hands again.

“Thank you for the cocoa,” I said politely, smelling the watery mess in my mug. I took a sip and nearly choked. It was unexpectedly spicy but better than I’d expected.

“Of course. A bit of chile powder, like my mother used to use,” she said. “That’s how they would make it back in my day. A bit of chile powder. Since the Mayans, you know. That’s the secret.”

I took another sip.

“That, and the blood.”

I didn’t have a moment to react to this; someone under the table enveloped my legs and I screeched, jumping halfway out of my seat. It was Valeria. “Mom, can we go?” she said, looking up at me, her voice muffled from under the table. “I’m cold.”

“How did you even get in here? Go wait in the car,” I said. “It shouldn’t take too long. Maybe Alé will help me cut our tree.”

“No!” the woman shouted. I’d almost forgotten she was there. She hustled us out of the hut, slamming the door behind her. I hadn’t even had time to put my mittens back on. She gripped my elbow tightly, her fingers like claws locked around my flesh. “You must do it alone.” Valeria shrunk behind me, hugging my legs tight.

“Sorry, she’s a little shy around strangers,” I explained. The woman’s tone changed. She smiled down at my daughter, her white teeth glinting.

“Quiet as a Christmas tree,” she said, beaming down at Valeria.

I turned to my daughter and put my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be right there, I promise. It won’t take me long.” She pouted and silently turned toward the dark lot where our car was parked. It was annoying that I had to do it alone, but I understood. There were so many laws about child safety these days. That was something Jeremy never understood when he would go off on those long rants about stolen children. The world wasn’t like that anymore. Maybe when we were growing up, but everybody had phones these days. It was another thing we’d argued about, and he didn’t let up even after we got Alé his own cheap cell.

The snow and wind had stopped and the air was still. The sun wasn’t out anymore, but the Christmas lights illuminated the long aisles of miniature trees. I returned down the center path toward the one I’d chosen, the woman walking behind me. When we reached mine, she deftly lifted the red velvety rope to make the trunk accessible.

Even in the calm, the needles seemed to shimmy.

“What did I do with the saw?” I asked, searching around. I left it right here, but it must have gotten covered with snow. I couldn’t even see our footprints from earlier, just mine and the owner’s, stretching back to the hut at the entrance. I crouched to look under the tree and saw a puddle of something sticky.

“Mama,” someone screamed in my ear. The sound made me fall back, my unmittened palms pressing into the snow. With my head next to the tree, I could smell it now. Blood. A scream rose in my throat.

The saw mark I’d made in the little trunk was bleeding. The puddle grew, turning the snow around the tree sticky with black blood. The smell was unmistakable, even to my frozen nose.

“What the hell,” I whispered, pushing myself back into a seated position.

The woman was suddenly above me, her eyes glowing unnaturally. Her smile had turned to a strange grimace. The wind tore at her black wool coat. Through the flapping fabric, I could smell a rot that bit at my cold nose above the smell of fresh blood from the tree. The lights flickered above me.

“Don’t say that in vain,” she snapped, her eyes growing blacker. She stretched out above me, filling the sky. The scream that was lodged in my throat shook itself loose now.

The withered woman reached out her arms and I saw feathers under her coat. She was transforming in front of me, growing taller. Little black barbs ballooned under her skin, erupting into feathers that sprang out wet and reddish black. She shook in front of me, wagging the feathers and sprinkling me with her blood.

For a moment more, I was frozen in horror, trapped under the giant bird-woman.

“Mama!” I heard. Looking between the legs of the creature I saw Alé and Valeria there at the end of the aisle, screaming.

I kicked at the creature’s strange long legs, feeling guilty for a moment when I saw her falling, but it was too late. I turned and ran through the snow, away from the tree, away from the woman. The snow flurried around me, but I couldn’t stop. I yanked my children up, holding them under my arms as I skidded over the icy path to the car. Behind me, the snow flurried. A shadow lifted into the sky. The bird-woman rose into the air and flew at us with demonic speed. I reached the door of my car and threw the children in, clawing the door shut behind us. “Lock the doors!” I screeched, and my voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. We scrambled around, snapping the locks into place.

The creature slammed on our hood, dragging her claws deep into the thick metal. I fumbled in my pocket for the keys. Alé and Valeria screamed, clutching each other in the passenger seat. In front of us, the creature screeched, her beak opening to reveal an endless throat.

I made the sign of the cross and turned on the ignition. The headlights flashed on, and she was gone. A flurry of white snow passed in front of us, covering the claw marks in the hood. The engine sputtered for a moment, then whined in submission.

When we got home, the marks were gone.

We went with a plastic tree that year, in the end.

Dr. Bunny McFadden (she/they) is a Chicana mother who tinkers with words for a living. Email: bunny.the.bookworm[at]gmail.com

Rules

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Dead of Winter ~ Second Place
Gail A. Webber

Photo Credit: Adam Buzzo/Flickr (CC-by)

I looked down at my boots, trying not to shuffle while a cold wind blew between us.

My grandfather seemed like a giant standing over me, a giant who was shaking his finger at me. In his other hand, he held the rabbit that two minutes ago I was so proud to have shot. “We only hunt rabbits in winter, Narina.” He leaned closer, and though I couldn’t see him, I felt him get closer and imagined him drawing his grizzled eyebrows together. I’d seen it enough times before. “They carry a sickness in the warm months. It makes people real sick.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, registering the new rule: Wait until winter to kill rabbits. Rules had always made me feel safe, even if breaking them meant I’d get punished. But since punishments hadn’t lasted too long or hurt too much in the past, they just reminded me to be more careful. To think before I decided to do something. What scared me lately about rules was that the older I got, the worse punishments seemed to be getting for the same violations.

…like standing in the corner facing the wall for twenty-four whole hours with one of them always watching to make sure I didn’t move.

Rules. I’d learned some early: Don’t talk back. Never lie. Do your chores. Take your punishment. Others came later: Tell me if you see a strange person. Never go outside without your knife. Gut your kill in the field. Stay out the meat shed. I was eleven years old and had quite a long list to remember.

The first time Granddad gave me the rule about seeing a strange person, I was confused. From when I was really little, Gramma had read me stories about the long-ago-people in the Bible, but I’d never seen another human besides us. I thought we were the only people left, but the rule about strange people meant we weren’t. That was when I first started to wonder about other things I’d been told, whether they were true or not, but I trusted my grandparents then, and knew better than to ask for more information than they offered.

Even with my head down, I could tell Granddad was still looking at me funny. “Did you hear me, Narina?”

“Yes, sir.” I tried to be obedient—I liked how they treated me when I obeyed. But how could he expect me to obey the rule about killing rabbits when I didn’t know about it? It wasn’t fair. The whole concept of fair and not fair consequences was something I’d only recently thought up, but I knew it was right.

As for that day, I didn’t think I had done one thing wrong.

I had awakened before Gramma called me. That was unusual because I’d been having more trouble getting awake lately and Gramma said it was because I was growing up. That made no sense because Gramma and Granddad were already grown and they always got up really early.

Anyway, I’d been having a dream about running, racing a deer faster and farther than I’d ever been. When the deer jumped into a river, I followed it in, still chasing. The dizzy excited feeling the dream gave me didn’t fade like most dreams did when I sat up, and my excitement mounted as I thought about the river. I had been warned about the river.

I could go as far as I chose in three directions from our cabin. Only one direction was forbidden to me, and I was never to go that way. Not hunting, not hiking, and not for any other reason. Granddad said the river was in that direction, beyond our fields and beyond our forest, and that it was dangerous for me to even look at. He told me if I ever got lost and found myself near it, I was to close my eyes until I’d put my back to it and then hurry home as fast as I could.

I couldn’t help wondering if “beyond the river” might be where Granddad’s strange people lived, if they existed at all. I fantasized about what they might look like, made up reasons why we never tried to see them, and why I should be afraid.

But nobody said I couldn’t dream about them—a person can’t control her dreams—and maybe the dream would come back.

My insides felt all jumpy that morning. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t go slow. I needed to do something, so I got my knife from the table beside my bed, crept downstairs real quiet, and grabbed the .22 rifle by the back door. Then I ran to the place where our fields meet the woods.

After I shot a fat rabbit, I gutted it right away, just like I was supposed to, and ran back home fast. The proof was that blood was still dripping from the carcass Granddad had taken from me. I wanted to look at his face, but was afraid what I would see.

It’s not fair. I didn’t know.

I swallowed down a sigh and waited to find out what my punishment would be this time.

“So, this is the right thing done the right way.” I looked up to see him standing straight with a little smile curving his mouth. “Last week, we had our first hard frost, and this morning the ground is hard and there’s snow. Truth be told, it’s not much snow, but enough to call this winter. Well done, Narina.” Granddad always used my whole name instead of calling me Narry like Gramma did.

While I was still adjusting to the idea that everything was okay, he patted me once on my shoulder, the only way he had ever touched me. Gramma was another story. “And it’s a good shot too,” he said. “Right behind the front leg. I’ll hang it while you go help your grandmother.”

“Always hang your game for a few days” was another of his rules. He said it made the meat taste better and get tender, and we had a special outbuilding for that—the meat shed. Granddad did the butchering in there too. It seemed like it would have enough space inside to hang four gutted deer carcasses, but I didn’t know for sure. I wasn’t allowed to even look in there. “Don’t ask me why,” was another of Granddad’s rules.

He flicked his hand, the one holding the dead rabbit, and blood spattered in the snow. “Now git. You’re standing there like you been bewitched. Don’t let your grandmother do all the breakfast chores by herself.”

I ran to the cabin.

In the kitchen, I found Gramma bent over the woodstove, as tiny and neat a person as my Granddad was a huge one. She was lifting fresh cornbread from a covered pan onto a plate and didn’t look at me. “Where was you?” she asked.

“Hunting!” I leaned against the log wall and pulled off my boots. “I got a rabbit. With one shot!”

She looked at me with an odd expression and I wondered if she hadn’t quite heard me. As I was about to repeat myself, she said, “I am grateful for the food, Narry, and know your confidence comes from being well-taught and from practice. But avoid pride. No good comes of it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Gramma had rules too.

I never knew my mother. Granddad said she died, “going someplace she had no business going,” whatever that meant. It never sounded quite right to me, but the one time I’d pressed him for details, I got locked in the feed room for two days with a jar of water but no food. All I knew was my mom died and her parents—Granddad and Gramma—had raised me on their farm where they mostly followed the old ways. I learned to live that way too.

We cooked and heated with a woodstove, kept food cool in the summer in our spring house, and did without whatever we couldn’t grow, make for ourselves, or kill. Planting started in early spring with cool weather crops like kale, broccoli, and beets. The rest went in as the weather warmed, mainly from saved seed. Once some colorful little envelopes of new seed appeared along with old clothes Gramma would remake into things for the three of us. I never knew where either the seed or the clothes came from, and all Gramma would say was, “God provides.”

For seven months, there was always something growing or needing harvest, and weeds that needed pulling grew everywhere our food crops did. Whatever we didn’t eat fresh had to be “put up” for winter eating, a big job after harvest.

We kept chickens for eggs, goats for milk, and a few hogs for cleaning up scraps. Sometimes Granddad would kill a hog or a chicken if hunting was bad or if he wanted something different to eat. But most of the meat for our table was whatever he—and more recently he and I—could shoot. We ate rabbit and squirrel, venison, groundhog, and some other meat I couldn’t identify. Some creatures are hard to tell by just skinned pieces. It wasn’t an easy life. But whatever else we lacked, we always had plenty to eat.

Gramma looked me up and down. “Go change and wash up before you lay the table, Narry.” She shook her head at me and I took one step back. “You need to learn not to hug fresh kills, but that can’t be helped this time. Put your bloody clothes in the vinegar pail. We’ll launder them later.” She meant the pail on the back porch where Granddad always put his clothes after butchering.

I changed and did as I was told with the soiled clothes. When I came back to get out plates and utensils, I remembered my great shot that morning and couldn’t help smiling. Then my mind went to what Granddad was doing with my rabbit right then and a question came out all by itself.

“Why won’t Granddad let me in the meat shed?” I had never dared to ask that before. “He should know I’m not scared of dead things, and if he let me watch him butchering, I could learn. And help.”

Most of my questions didn’t make Gramma angry like they did Granddad. This time, she shrugged her shoulders while she put slices of fatback into the iron skillet and slid them around so they wouldn’t stick. “It’s his special place,” she said. “One of them, anyways. People got to have their own places.”

That made me wonder where my special place was… if I even had one. It felt like something in me moved sideways and I held my breath for a second. Finally, I asked the rest. “But why can’t he share his place with me?”

I wasn’t paying enough attention and had to skitter away at the last second before Gramma got to me. Usually, she only pinched me when I did something bad, but sometimes it felt like she did it for no reason. Either way, she pinched so hard it really hurt, and the black and purple bruises lasted for weeks. She hardly ever did it when I was little, but as I got older, I had two or three of those bruises all the time, no matter how hard I tried to follow the rules. As old as she was, she could move like a snake and she was brutal.

I kept the table between us until she went back to the bacon as if nothing had happened.

After a few minutes, she said, “Narry, sing us a song.”

We didn’t have electricity or a telephone then—I didn’t even know about those things—and we never went anywhere except hunting. The only music I had ever heard were the songs Granddad played on his mandolin, and one of my favorites was “On Springfield Mountain.” I liked the story, about a boy who got bit by a poisonous snake. A girl who tried to save him died because she had a rotten tooth and when she sucked out the poison, it got in her too.

So, I started singing that, but Gramma stopped me. “Heavens, girl! That’s a frightful song. Sing something more suited to the child you are.”

I wanted to tell her I was no child anymore, but decided that was a bad idea. So, I held my tongue and tried think of another song. “The Green Grass Grows All Around” was a silly piece Granddad taught me when I was about five, but it seemed exactly what she wanted to hear because once I got going, she bobbed her head in time.

The salty-fatty smell of bacon filled the kitchen, and the sizzling sound made it smell even better. As I was thinking about cornbread, bacon, and the eggs I knew Gramma would scramble to go with them, I heard footsteps on the front porch.

My grandmother’s head snapped up. “That ain’t your Granddad’s walk. I need to… No, you’re faster. Run out the back door and fetch him from the meat shed!”

If Gramma was right and it wasn’t Granddad, then who? While I was still wondering, a knock sounded on the door.

“Stop staring, girl! Be quick!”

“But I can’t go in…”

“Git!”

I ran out, sliding in the snow as I rounded the side of the cabin. Over my shoulder, I shot a look toward the front porch. A strange man stood there holding a little case. He wore clothes like I’d never seen, a kind of jacket that didn’t look at all warm. It matched his trousers, both blue, but not like blue jeans. Shocked to see an actual stranger, I tripped and stumbled the rest of the way to the meat shed, arriving in a rush. I hesitated only a second before I banged on the door.

“What in holy hell…” Granddad bellowed from inside and the door flew open. I got only a glance at the long stainless-steel tables inside before he gave me a hard look and slammed the door behind him.

“A man is here,” I choked out. “Gramma said come get you.”

I swear he growled and took off at a limping lope, getting up onto the porch faster than I thought he could. The strange man turned as if to say something, but Granddad didn’t give him a chance. He grabbed the man up by the shirtfront, punched him once in the face, and dragged him backwards down the porch steps toward me.

I had a million questions I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to ask.

Granddad seemed surprised to see me still standing in front of the shed and yelled for my grandmother. “Pearl! Get Narina back in the cabin and keep her there. I need to deal with this.”

I didn’t wait for Gramma to come get me, but ran inside on my own. What I found there puzzled me. Never in my life had I ever seen my grandmother shaken—not when a bear was tearing the chicken house apart, not when she shot a copperhead that had me cornered in the barn, and not when she thought a fever would take both me and Granddad. But this man… it seemed like seeing this man had made all her bones like jelly.

A couple of times while we waited, I tried to sneak a look out a window, but each time Gramma grabbed me away. I heard noise a little later—like a shout or a wail—but I figured it was one of the animals. Even back then, my mind sometimes turned one thing into another and I had learned to let strange thoughts be. Usually, they went away.

It was a long time before I heard a door slam outside. I peeked out before Gramma could tell me not to and saw Granddad padlocking the shed. There was no sign of the strange man.

Boot steps on the porch. Front door creaking open. My grandfather framed in the doorway. “I sent him on his way,” was all he said.

Gramma went to him. “A car?” I think her voice was louder than she thought it was, because I hear her clear as day. He shook his head.

“What’s a car?” I’d never heard that word before.

Both of them looked at me, but neither responded. “Then how?” Gramma asked him in a whisper, but I still heard her. “Walking the road?”

He shrugged and said, “Still so overgrown you can’t hardly find it.” Then he sat down at the table and waited for Gramma to fill his plate.

I knew what overgrown meant, like fallow fields and gardens gone to weeds, but “car” and “road” were two new words. Apparently, they had to do with the man. “What’s a car?” I asked again. “And what does ‘road’ mean?”

Nobody answered me that time either, and it was all I could do to keep from getting loud. But I knew that wouldn’t get me anything but punished and I still wouldn’t have an answer. There had to be a way to find out all the things I wanted to know. There had to be.

I buttered my cornbread and stole looks at them between bites. They both kept their eyes down, fastened on their plates until their food was gone.

I was still looking at Granddad when he cleared his throat and locked eyes with me. I jumped.

“We will speak no more of this incident. You are to forget it, Narina.”

My mind spun as all the things I thought I knew fought to rearrange themselves. I had every intention of keeping silent despite the questions tumbling over each other in my mind. But I couldn’t. “Forget it? How can I? This changes everything!”

Granddad scowled and his mouth twisted into an ugly frown. “Not one thing has changed for you.”

“But that man!” I felt like something had hold of my insides, and I didn’t care what they did to me. “They’re beyond the river, right? Those people. A lot or just a few?”

Gramma’s eyes were as big as two full moons and Granddad gripped the edge of the table. He pushed himself slowly back, his knuckles white.

I knew I had crossed some kind of line and was afraid again, not afraid enough to keep silent, but my voice came out squeaky. “What else haven’t you told me? What else have you lied about?”

Granddad lowered his chin and glared at me from under heavy eyebrows. When he finally spoke, it sounded like thunder. “Narina, stop. I mean it. Stop. We’ve kept you safe from them. From yourself. Like we tried to do for your mother. She wouldn’t listen, and look what happened to her.”

I felt my head tilt sideways like a dog hearing a strange noise. “What do you mean? You said…” Realization dawned. “You lied about that, too.”

“Bite your tongue, Narry!” Gramma snapped. “What do we have to do to make you behave? Maybe you’d listen if we put you in with the pigs. You don’t need all your toes, and you’d remember that lesson for the rest of your life!” She reached across the table for my arm, but I dodged her and jumped up, knocking my chair over backwards.

Granddad stood up too, his face red and his hands bunched into fists at his sides. I held my breath. Not once in my life had he ever struck me, but right then I thought he would. I wondered if his fists would kill me. Instead of striking out, he took a few steps back, seeming to shrink. He cracked his neck sideways and said in a low tone, “All you need to know is that the creature is gone.”

“Creature,” my grandmother repeated.

Granddad’s eyes bored into mine, now more with sadness than anger. “It’s gone. You won’t see it again.”

I opened my mouth to ask them why they called it a creature instead of what it was, a man. Then I closed my lips tight together, locking my words inside. I felt years older than when I’d shot that rabbit only hours earlier, and wondered if my questioning was a serious mistake. I was confronting the ones who had always had more power than I did, and wasn’t considering what might happen to me. I wasn’t careful…

Wait. Be silent now. Just wait.

A few days later, I woke to the smell of breakfast cooking—bacon, but not quite bacon—and Gramma calling my name. My bedroom window was foggy and wet with tiny drops on the inside. Granddad called it condensation and said it was from my warmth on the cold glass. Odd.

After dressing, I went downstairs and began to set the table without being asked. I could see that Gramma must have been up for a while because a pile of sewing lay on the side table beside her favorite chair. I didn’t understand how she could see well enough to sew by just the morning light coming in the windows, and wondered if she somehow did it by feel.

“Making something for Granddad?” I asked her.

She nodded without taking her attention from the skillet. “I was. A hunting vest, I thought. But that fabric isn’t sturdy enough for that and I may make something pretty for you instead. The fabric’s got a nice feel to it. Might be nice against your skin. God provides. Go over there and see if you like it.”

I couldn’t help smiling. It had been a while since she’d made anything for me, and I liked the idea of getting something new. But as I got close to her chair, I stopped, first puzzled and then suddenly understanding.

The fabric was blue, but not like denim, and there was enough for matching jacket and trousers, both now completely disassembled.

I went to the window and saw it had started to snow again, large flakes drifting down in the still air. My grandfather was just coming out of the meat shed, limping against the weight of the slop bucket he carried, presumably for the pigs. A couple of long bones stuck out the top. We hadn’t gotten a deer in a long while, and the bones were too long for anything else I could think of. Granddad closed the shed door, but didn’t lock it.

Even from a distance, I could see his hands and clothes were bloody, the way he always got from butchering. Head down, he headed for the hand pump where I knew he would wash himself. He did, and when he finished, he hoisted up the bucket again and disappeared behind the barn.

We had a rule about lying, but I knew they’d lied to me, and I had unanswered questions. Like how old clothes appeared again and again out of nowhere, what “creatures” Granddad hunted that had meat I couldn’t identify, and why my grandparents kept us so isolated.

I needed to know what had happened to the man whose blue clothes had become a pile of Gramma’s sewing, what bones Granddad was feeding to the hogs, and what the bacon/not bacon was that Gramma was cooking that morning. I thought all those answers, but wasn’t willing to admit to myself what I feared might be true. Not yet.

The answers were in the shed, and if I went out now, I’d have at least a few minutes before Granddad came back or Gramma came looking for me.

A few days ago, I’d felt like I didn’t care what they did to me, what the consequences for violating rules might be. Now it was time for me to act.

Without giving myself time to reconsider, I ran to the back door and pulled on my boots. Then I grabbed my coat and the .22 rifle—I might need both. I heard Gramma calling me back, but ignored her and ran all the way to the shed, my breath coming in white puffs that sent snowflakes whirling. It wouldn’t be long before Gramma came after me. Called Granddad. And I was sure that whatever happened after that wouldn’t be good, given the pile of rules I was in the process of breaking.

I yanked the open the meat shed door and looked inside.

The carcass was headless and gutted, hanging over a hole in the wood floor. It was minus one leg and a strip of belly muscle, the same place where pork bacon comes from. I recognized what—or rather who—this had been. Not a deer. On the stainless-steel table beside the carcass lay a boneless chunk of meat, rolled and tied as a roast. My throat clenched when it struck me that I might have eaten a fair amount of this kind of meat in my life.

In a rush, answers to all my questions tumbled over one another. It all made sense now. I heard Gramma’s shout to me and another to Granddad and turned to see her trying to hurry herself toward me. She wasn’t fast. Neither was Granddad. They would never catch me.

I didn’t have a chance to think about what was I going to do now that I knew the truth about life on this farm. The decision came fast and easy, and almost before I knew I had decided, I was running as fast as I could in the one direction I was never supposed to go.

I didn’t know exactly where the river was, but it had to be there or else why would Granddad make a rule about not going past it. I believed it was there. It had to be. And just like in my dream, I would jump in and cross it.

Running faster than I’d ever run, I scared up a young doe from the underbrush and we raced together, just like in my dream. When we got to the river, I knew she would jump in and I knew I would follow her. I felt dizzy with the wonder of it, and my insides vibrated with something more exciting than fear. Maybe the unknown. Maybe freedom.

On the other side of the river, I would find those other people wherever they were. After that, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to let my grandparents take me back to the farm.

I felt doubt crowding past the excited feeling. That water would be cold, winter cold, and if I made it to the other side, I’d be soaked. Maybe get sick. Maybe die from it.

“I’ll find another way over,” I told myself out loud.

Then I heard Gramma’s voice in my head. “God provides.”

Gail A. Webber is a retired science teacher who lives and writes on a small farm in Maryland. Her stories have appeared in Fiftiness, The Tower Journal, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, Persimmon Tree, and others), and in anthologies including 2016 Write Well Award, The Way You Walk Through Madness, and Writings to Stem Your Existential Dread. She has published three novels and a volume of short stories. Facebook. Email: gail_webber[at]hotmail.com

Fitting Room #3

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Dead of Winter ~ First Place
Jason Porterfield

Photo Credit: Endless Studio/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

Cashmere topcoats. Merino wool scarves. Gloves made from some kind of nanofiber so new that it hadn’t been properly named. All illuminated by a golden show window light that invited thoughts of blazing fireplaces and designer Irish setters, crystal tumblers and old Scotch.

The shop windows on Duvivier Street held wonders that Dimitri LaFitte knew were out of his grasp. Those tony things may as well have been on display in a lunar showroom as in the street-facing windows of Faberge Leaf. It was the kind of store that probably checked one’s references before admitting access.

“Don’t even think about going in that place,” His uncle Dansby had told him one long-ago December evening when he noticed the teenaged Dimitri peering in as they walked by on their way to the city’s annual tree lighting.

“They wouldn’t let you in. You don’t carry the right kind of cachet.” Dansby rubbed his thumb against his fingers, the universal sign for cash. Dimitri felt his cheeks flush at the thought of his wallet, empty in his back pocket except for a picture of his ex-girlfriend, a losing scratch-off lottery ticket he bought at a vending machine, and his learner’s permit. Why bother carrying a wallet at all?

He thought of Dansby every time he walked by the storefront. His uncle so casually dismissed the idea of going into a place that was frequented by people who made astronomical amounts of money, whose hourly earnings may well have topped what Dansby made in a month as an accountant.

Dimitri didn’t exactly promise himself that someday he would go into that store as a customer, but he never passed it without experiencing a deep yearning for the kind of life its stock of luxury goods represented and the income needed to attain them.

Yet somehow Dimitri had not risen to those economic heights when fire ravished his apartment building some fifteen years later. He had a steady job, a collection of furnishings and clothing—most of it purchased new but not at boutiques. There was a little credit card debt but not enough to make it hard to pay his bills.

The fire department’s inspection of the ruins of his former apartment building revealed multiple structural issues were to blame for the conflagration.They found evidence that the building’s owners bribed city officials for years to look the other way when safety issues with the wiring and heating systems arose. A settlement with the tenants was offered and rejected. When a jury found fault with both the building’s owners and the city, a significant sum of money was divided among the former residents and Dimitri suddenly found himself rather wealthy.

His first acts on receiving his portion of the damages awarded were to pay off his debt, buy an inexpensive condo in the same neighborhood and reinvest a sizable portion of his payment so that he could remain relatively comfortable for life.

Only then did he begin to fantasize about visiting Faberge Leaf. He visited the store’s website, a glitzy affair of high-definition images that didn’t actually feature any merchandise and certainly didn’t mention prices. Apart from a few basics, he had not replaced most of his wardrobe after the fire. The one exception he made was to pick up a nice suit, a tailored specimen from a noted label. It was expensive, but didn’t threaten to put any kind of dent in his bank account.

Dimitri took the day off for his trip downtown. His new suit, worn a time or two to break it in, was cleaned and pressed. He called Uncle Dansby before getting dressed and told him of his impending trip to Faberge Leaf.

“Oh Dimitri, don’t go to that store!” Dansby practically shouted. “Take that money and go back to the place where you bought your suit. They know you now and they treated you well. Give your money to someone who has earned it.”

“You know I’ve wanted to shop there since I was a kid,” Dimitri retorted. “Now I’m someone who can actually afford whatever it is they stock there and I’m going to go there and they are going to serve me like they would any customer.”

“Let me ask you a question.” Dansby paused for long enough that Dimitri wondered whether he was still on the phone. He was almost surprised when the older man spoke again. “Have you ever seen anyone coming out of that store looking happy that they’ve been shopping there? Or looking like they just had the time of their life? Have you?”

“Well, no.” Thinking back, Dimitri couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone coming out of the store at all. Nor could he remember ever seeing anyone go in. But who, apart from security guards, notices people going into shops?

“See? That store didn’t solve their problems or make their lives easier. It probably made them worse. Now they had a pricey jacket but none of their things matched it. They had to go back for new accessories, new shoes, new jewelry to set it off. And by the time they finished, the whole thing would be out of date by the standards of the Faberge Leaf.” Dansby practically spat the store’s name in Dimitri’s ear.

“Don’t worry, Uncle Dansby,” he said, now holding the earpiece a safe distance away. “I won’t lose my head, and I’ll be sure to give you a full report.” He hung up before the older man could say anything else and proceeded to get dressed.

Dimitri hired a car to take him downtown. It was too cold to walk. Besides, he intended to splurge and saw no reason to waste the experience by taking public transportation or a common rideshare. His charcoal-gray suit was immaculate beneath his black wool overcoat as he stepped onto the sidewalk. A storefront mirror reflected his neatly trimmed hair, the matching tie and pocket square the suit store helped him pick out, his shiny shoes and the silver glint of his wristwatch, an expensive piece he had inherited from his grandfather and kept in a safe deposit box.

He was pleased with what he saw. He strode down the sidewalk with purpose and crowds parted around him, some pedestrians even stepping into day-old banks of snow to get out of his way.

Faberge Leaf appeared uncrowded, though he could see employees inside. He made to grab the door handle and pull it toward him, but noticed the buzzer just in time to avoid the embarrassment of having the door catch in the latch. He smoothly changed the motion and pressed the buzzer with his index finger, allowing a small smile to play across this lips.

A moment later, the latch clicked and he went inside.

The store was bathed in golden light, the sort that illuminates favorite memories of family gatherings or good times spent with friends. A faint aroma of jasmine was in the air. Hidden speakers played the sound of breaking waves. He felt soothed, content.

An employee glided over. Dimitri caught the man’s glance flick up and down his body, his mind surely assessing the quality of everything from his shoes to his haircut. He gave Dimitri a warm smile.

“Welcome, Sir.” He held out his arm. “May I take your coat?”

Dimitri murmured his thanks and passed the overcoat to the employee, who promptly disappeared with it into an area behind the sales counter.

“Would Sir like a refreshment?” Another employee had popped up at his right elbow with a tray of beverages. To his surprise, the cups held cold drinks rather than the coffee or aged Scotch Dimitri expected. He chose one at random that tasted of lychees and summer afternoons. He couldn’t wait to tell Dansby about being addressed as “Sir” like a character in a 1930s British melodrama.

The employee accepted his empty cup with a nod and followed the one who had taken his jacket.

“Please, Sir, take your time with the merchandise.” Another employee had approached. “Simply come to the desk when you are ready to try something on. And do stay out of the third fitting room. It is in a ghastly state.” The man made a face. Dimitri had a hard time imagining what would cause an employee of such a fancy place to arrange his features into such a hideous mask.

“Must be a really big spider,” he thought to himself, making a mental note to investigate the third fitting room at the first opportunity.

He took his time, going over fine scarves, gloves, and shirts of such fine knit they might have been made by caterpillars. He was briefly hypnotized by a display of neckties with patterns so subtle and understated that they seemed to hold the key to infinity.

Eventually he chose another suit, a silk and poplin outfit in a subtle, blue-check pattern that would be ideal for warmer weather. He grabbed a tie and pair of shirts that would match the suit. Thinking about conditions outside, he also selected a fine scarf that could only be cashmere and an umbrella with gold embossing. Nothing was priced, but prices did not matter.

He approached the sales counter and an employee promptly appeared.

“Would Sir like to try on those items so that we can assure a proper fit?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The employee came around the counter and led him to the back. “Any of these fitting rooms should be fine, except the one on the end. Stay out of #3.”

The employee emphasized the point by scowling at the fitting room door in question. Whatever Fitting Room #3 had done to him, he wasn’t ready to forgive or forget.

“Why not use that one?” After being in the store essentially by himself for more than two hours, according to his watch, this was the first limitation anyone had placed on him.

“It’s not up to our standards,” the employee sniffed.

“So it’s closed or something.”

“No, it’s closed. It’s just not for a man of your—ah—discerning taste. Please, Sir, don’t go in there.”

Dimitri saw it, the moment the employee had sussed him out as someone who maybe had enough cash to afford to step into Faberge Leaf, but would never again have that sum. Windfall inheritances. Lucky nights at the casino. A winning lottery ticket. The employee’s eyes told him that he was still trying to sort Dimitri into one of those categories.

“Very good,” Dimitri responded, injecting as much ice into his words as possible. He strode toward Fitting Room #3.

“Sir, I must ask you to stay out of there.” The words were almost forceful.

“Thank you, but your assistance is no longer required.” Without another glance at the employee, he entered the fitting room and closed the door with a satisfying click.

There wasn’t anything special about this room, he thought. The light was subtle, designed to soften lines and flatter features and figures. Every wall was mirrored.

He took a long look at his reflection, dressed in the best suit that he had ever owned. Even in the flattering light, it looked like an off-rack discount model when compared to the items he had seen in the showroom. He looked at the blue suit he had chosen. Next to it, the one he was wearing resembled the sort of garment prisoners are given after their sentences are up. He hurried to change into the one he picked out.

He dressed with pleasure. Every piece of the suit seemed to banish a month of winter from his mind. He smelled the jasmine again. His mouth tasted lychee.

He perfected the knot in his tie and once again stepped into his shoes. A multitude of Dimitris looked back at him. He glanced at his footwear. The shoes would do, but it wouldn’t hurt to check the store for something more appropriate. At least his watch went well with the new outfit.

He moved his arms, bemusedly watching untold thousands of Dimitris do the same. Up, down, out, flapping up and down, crossing and uncrossing. He sat down and stood up, then tried walking in place. When that didn’t work, he paced the circumference of the fitting room. The other Dimitris followed. He thought about humming a John Philip Sousa march, then remembered that he was in the most exclusive store in the city.

After three of four turns around the fitting room, Dimitri decided he had seen enough. The suit would have to be modified, but not by much. The employees had implied that they could tailor items in-store, perhaps even as he waited. He could have another of those delicious lychee drinks, or perhaps ask for something hot. He was beginning to feel a chill despite the hint of jasmine in the air.

It was time to go, but he had gotten turned around in the fitting room. He scanned the walls for the door. He was beyond being amused by the other Dimitris also scanning their own mirrored walls, so he didn’t notice that some of the reflected Dimitris simply stood there, watching him.

He turned in a circle, but couldn’t spot the door. He put out his hands and felt around, but touched only cold glass. The smell of pine needles drifted in through the ventilation system. He did find the hook holding his old suit. Feeling chillier by the second, he draped the blazer over his shoulders. Under the hook he saw a small button marked “Ring For Assistance.” He pressed it and listened for a sound. He heard the tinkle of icicles hitting the ground and shattering.

“I need assistance!” he shouted, pressing the button so hard his finger ached.

“Assistance is unavailable at this time,” a chilly voice informed him.

By then his breath was fogging in the air and he was shivering. The mirrors remained unclouded. If anything, they were more clear than before. He watched one of the Dimitris shiver for a moment, then stop.

“But I’m still shivering,” he said to himself. “I’m still cold and getting colder.”

His body was shaking violently. Unable to stand any longer, he slumped to the floor. The other Dimitris remained upright. Some appeared to straighten their posture, towering and looming from his perspective. Still wearing their new blue suits, they stepped toward him, unbuttoning their jackets as they did. Some Dimitris offered him wolfish smiles full of teeth. Others were expressionless.

He heard the sound of ice shattering as they breached their barriers. The smell of freshly frozen snow was in the air as the Dimitris reached for him with their cold, cold hands.

Jason Porterfield is an award-winning journalist and author living in Chicago, Illinois. Email: jporterfield99[at]gmail.com

End of Tunnel

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Broker’s Pick
Diane Webster

Photo Credit: Carlos Sá/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

What if at the end
of the tunnel was a mirror?
Scary sight of a woman
staring back until I see
it’s me; scary anyway.

I touch myself to convince
I am real or imagined hoping
I don’t feel a real hand
at the end of reflected fingers.

But then trapped as much as
a chained door in fairy tales.
Go back? Stay here?
Unless I believe, I believe
mirror is reflection liquid,
and all I have to do is meet myself,
merge myself, come out
on the other side,
other side of the tunnel.

Diane Webster’s goal is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday life, nature or an overheard phrase and to write. Diane enjoys the challenge of transforming images into words to fit her poems. Her work has appeared in Home Planet News Online, North Dakota Quarterly, Talking River Review and other literary magazines. Email: diaweb[at]hotmail.com

Blood Always Wins

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Creative Nonfiction
Layla Sabourian

Photo Credit: Charanjit Chana/Flickr (CC-by-sa)

We all come from somewhere, and that place sets the mold of who we will be. I say “mold” because we can fill ourselves with so many things that make up who we are, but we can’t undo the product of that mold whether we like it or not.

When our daughter Delarai turned three years old, we decided to adopt a second child. Because we already had our beautiful baby girl, we—and by ‘we’ I mean myself and my husband, Antoine—were hoping for a boy. Given Antoine’s Belgian looks and my Iranian appearance, we wished for a new baby that would fit this genetic description. We wanted our new baby to look like he could have been our own. I cannot deny it; it felt incredible to look at our sweet Delarai and be able to pick out which features came from whom. It was so much fun to watch her quirks and pick which personality traits she had of his or mine. When she drew beautifully, I would say with great pride that she must have taken after my great aunt, Khaleh Mahi, artist and art teacher to no less than the Pahlavi Prince and Princesses. When she would sing, my husband would proudly say how her voice sounded like his mother when she sang to him.

Even though we were committed to adopting, I would be lying if I said we did not each feel a bit of sadness in giving up the idea of having a son that could look like us and carry on our ancestors’ heritage and legacies. Having grown up without parents myself, adopting felt like saving a child from enduring a childhood like mine. Fear also played a part in my decision. We’d gone through several painful ectopic pregnancies, and I didn’t want to risk one happening again.

“Why not have one of your own?” “Do you not want to ruin your body?” “Are you worried you’ll get a girl again?” “How will you raise a child that doesn’t look like you?” So many people asked us why we wanted to adopt a child; they wondered (among other things) why we wanted a child that did not carry our genes. An insensitive question, to say the least, filled with assumptions about our ability and even attempts to have more biological children.

The questions might have added to my sadness on the matter until I thought about our family history. Like my mother, Antoine’s mother had schizophrenia. Every family member on my dad’s side suffered from extreme anxiety. In addition to my mother’s condition, two of her siblings also suffered from severe mental health issues. Would those genes really be that much of a gift to give to our future child? No thanks. I was willing to take a risk and leap into the unknown.

Hand in hand, Antoine and I began our adoption journey. In the USA, you have several options. You can go through the public system, first fostering and then adopting, which can cause a lot of uncertainties and stress. Many people shy away from this option because they are not willing to put up with the ambiguities. The alternate domestic routes are either going through a private domestic agency or an attorney with private adoptions; these have a price tag ranging from $40,000 to $50,000. There is also the option of adopting through a foreign agency, but even if you look to adopt from an impoverished country, the bill for these services can exceed $70,000.

After much consideration, we started our journey with private agencies. What a matchmaking adventure we were rolling into! In order to compete with other parents, we were told we had to dress very nicely. Our profiles had to be super exciting. Agencies advised us to hire professional hairdressers, make-up artists, and photographers to take shots of us at our best doing various activities. It was like creating a magazine spread of our life to prove our worth as parents. Some people were on bicycles and strolling in a park, some on a yacht showing their wealth. Our neighbors even hired someone to film them doing extreme sports. We were constantly being pushed to impress birth mothers by paying for rent, offering to pick up all their hospital bills, or whatever else the agency could dream up. It felt ridiculous to me, more like an elaborate dating competition than the chance to change a life.

“Oh, make sure Antoine does most of the talking. His French accent will surely charm the birth mom over the other couples she is considering.” These were the type of suggestions thrown our way. I felt like I was partaking in some kind of couple’s swinging adventure: there was so much pressure to look better than the rest of the adoptive families, to portray the perfect family life, to hide anything and everything that would basically show we were human and anything less than a faux Facebook-perfect image.

“Are we here to help a child, or show off to a bunch of childless families how much better we could be at the superficial race? I want to help a child in need, not take away the chance from other families who desperately wanted a baby.” Spoken words of concern rushed through my conversations with my husband. “If these babies are in such high demand, then my little efforts towards improving the world could certainly come in another form.” These words came with such sadness that a glance of concern crossed Antoine’s face. For me, adopting a perfectly beautiful and healthy blue-eyed white baby just did not feel like the best I could do. At the same time, I also recognized that I lacked the courage to adopt a child with special needs. During my time at SAP, I had taken part in a meaningful project, where I had worked on a solution for families with children who had special needs. I had fully immersed myself in their lives and feared I would not be able to summon up the strength I had seen in those mothers.

Sick of the domestic adoption agencies’ games, we then tried international adoption. Bulgaria’s agency told us we could not adopt a white Bulgarian baby, but if we wanted a “gypsy” child, that would be no problem. “Gypsy,” of course, was the name colloquially, and often insultingly, given to the Roma people, a semi-nomadic ethnic group spread around Europe and the Americans, with origins in the northern Indian subcontinent. The distinct Roma culture, coupled with Roma people’s tendency to live on the outskirts of cities, has led to their facing a great deal of stigma and additional hardship due to racist discrimination. Part of this could be seen in the apparent ready availability of Roma children for adoption, who were often unfairly stereotyped as ‘conflictive’ or less intelligent than their white counterparts.

After a day of thought, I asked the question: “What shall we do?” I worried about the answer I might receive, for Antoine wanted a boy… one that would look like him. But my husband’s reply surprised me.

“Well, it will be an uphill battle, but at least we don’t have to pretend to be people we are not. I’m sick of the fake portfolios as if to be parents we have to play the part of the perfect person,” he said with frustration in his voice. “I just want to have the opportunity of being a dad to another child, and bring more joy to our home.” After this remarkable comment, Antoine and I agreed to adopt a Roma child and informed the agency. Then, we waited. We waited for two whole years before finally accepting that there was just no news coming. Deciding to reach out to our agent, we asked if she could put us in touch with other families who had successfully adopted from Bulgaria.

Her answer nearly sent me overboard. “Oh, no one has ever succeeded so far,” she stated as if our two years waiting for a child with no news or communication meant nothing at all.

“Oh, really?” I replied sharply, trying, and failing to bite my tongue. “I wish you would have told us this before taking our deposit.”

We felt ridiculous not to have checked the reputation of the agency before paying the deposit. Only then, after two years of being dragged around aimlessly, did we think of it. We had originally picked Bulgaria because we thought the child would end up looking like us. Bulgarians often look like Iranians but with more European features. It seemed we would have to start looking elsewhere.

Adoption from Iran was not an option because we would have had to move there for six months and buy a house to put in the name of the child. We could barely afford the first requirement. My husband was not Iranian, so we were not even sure if it was a legal possibility.

Next, we tried Ukraine and took a trip there. The Ukrainian agency told us that they would only let Americans adopt a child that was older than eight and had severe mental or developmental issues. Again, I was not feeling competent enough for that challenge.

With these challenges, we shifted our thoughts to adopting from the foster-to-adopt system in the USA, but many people steered us away from that option. Some claimed that the kids would arrive with all sorts of baggage, that they would be victims of abuse, negligence, and rape. People told us that getting a “messed-up” kid, as they called them, would, in turn, deeply complicate our lives and only lead to regret. It’s absolutely baffling, the number of people who warned that adoptable American children would endanger our daughter’s well-being and safety.

It felt like we had traveled the globe to fulfill our dreams of completing our family. Determined, we chose the lawyer route and sat down with our representative. He looked more like someone who wanted to sell me a used car than an adoption agent. It was such a contrast to our first adoption experience where we had to dress like a family of rich models, and now we were in front of someone who used the same oil to slick his hair into a ponytail as he did to lubricate his engine. He explained the hierarchy of adoption. If you wanted a blue-eyed, blonde-haired baby girl, you had to pay the most amount of money. He explained that the next tier was a white boy; downward from there came the Latinos, followed by African Americans and mixed races, and at the very bottom were Middle Easterners.

“It’s best to take a baby and not an older child,” he went on to say. “The older children are already damaged beyond hope.”

Is this man serious?

He continued. “You see, you don’t want to go to a state or foster care system to adopt, as most of the kids won’t be babies or white. You will want to choose a child with healthy blood. One that can easily fit in your family and surroundings. If you pick a Middle Eastern child, chances are you won’t have any positive role models around for them to look up to, and of course, there is a higher risk of them becoming violent. You choose a white baby girl with good blood, and you’re set.”

Whoa. Higher risk of becoming violent? Really?

I looked him in the eyes, wondering if he was so stupid as to not even know that Iran was part of the Middle East. My husband, knowing exactly what I was thinking, and scared I was going to interrupt the guy, held my hands firmly, telling me with his touch how sorry he was. Did the lawyer know, but simply not care?

“Yeah… thanks,” I started, “but I think we’ll go through the state after all.”

Antoine, grateful I was not going to cause a scene, as he hated conflict even more than me, helped me up and shot the smarmy lawyer with a disgusted look. What he was pitching us felt a lot like white supremacist propaganda. We left.

It was hard not to think back to myself as a child—how I wished to be adopted one day, despite constantly being told by those around me that I was “damaged goods,” and filled with dirty blood. I thought those comments only came from old-fashioned, ignorant Iranians. Yet here I was in America, in the country with the world’s best universities, hearing the same ignorant nonsense. Was it possible that people here held the same obtuse beliefs about the purity of blood? In the end, I did not want to compete with anyone else to adopt a baby that hundreds of other adoptive parents wanted; I wanted to help a child that was feeling left out and unwanted, as I had been my whole life.

Another two years passed, and we had already given up on adoption. Out of the blue, I got a call from a state-run adoption agency to see if I could take a newborn baby girl. I reminded the agent that we wanted an older boy, a child that no one wanted, and that she should give the baby girl to people who were obsessed with having a baby. There was a slight hesitation on her end.

“Layla, I really want you to have this baby.”

“Why?” I asked.

Another brief pause.

“Her… urgh… mother is mentally ill, a substance abuser, homeless. She used coke during the past nine months and drank heavily. Most folks are worried about the baby’s health and wellness, bad blood… due to the chemicals inside her system, no one is fighting to get this baby.”

She had me at “bad blood.”

“When does she need to be picked up?”

“The next twenty minutes would be ideal.”

“Give me an hour,” I replied.

Layla Sabourian is a mother, an author, and an entrepreneur with a fierce passion for inclusivity, tolerance, and empowerment from youth, and the stories she writes are an extension of that goal. She grew up in Iran and has since lived in the United States, Central America, and Europe. Email: support[at]chefkoochooloo.com

Toasting Helen

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Creative Nonfiction
Mark Liebenow

Photo Credit: William Clifford/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

Four of us slide into a booth at Ulrich’s Rebellion Room late on Friday afternoon. We haven’t been together in a while, but our friend Helen died this week. In the pall of death’s aftershock, we gather to reassure each other, make sense of what has happened, and drink.

Ulrich’s is a dark, wooden Irish pub in Peoria that serves imports and microbrews. On the walls there are posters for Guinness, Bushmills, Jamison whiskey, a framed photo of John F. Kennedy, and the front page of The Irish Times from 1916. Today is also Good Friday, the day when the hope of the first Christians died on another Friday afternoon, and Jesus’ followers scattered in fear and despair.

It’s a fitting place to remember Helen because she had Irish connections, and she’d appreciate the timeliness of dying during Holy Week when death and sorrow would soon be replaced by the rising on Easter. She liked being on time. She also liked work done right, and would tell you if you weren’t doing it the way she wanted, even at church where idealism often debates practicality to a standstill. For two years, she battled a rare blood disease, and we thought she was getting better, then pneumonia set in, and she was gone. During her last days, when doubts about heaven surfaced, she held on to her faith in faith. We raise a glass in her: Not lost, just gone on before us.

We talk about frustrations with our jobs, the paperwork that takes us away from teaching, and grouse about having to work so hard to build our programs up when we know they’ll fall apart when we leave. We do not share where our lives have broken. We do not mention the unsettling shadows that move through our hearts, nor speak of the doubts that erode the edges of our confidence. We do not push each other to say more, but we listen for the misplaced word to catch a glimpse of the turmoil underneath so we can offer encouragement. We raise a glass to each other.

We draw back, being men, having touched our emotions was enough, and go to refill our plates with happy hour’s fried finger food—mozzarella sticks, onion rings, cheese fries. Back at the table, I stare into my Smithwick Ale and wonder how I will react when I am dying. Will I have accomplished everything I set out to do? Will I be satisfied that I did enough to help others who were struggling? I started out life excited by endless possibilities, but now believe there are few truths that haven’t been compromised. Battle-weary, we limp towards death, tired of holding the status quo together, and wanting to do one last thing that is memorable.

The late afternoon sun shines through the skylight and lights up the stained-glass window hanging below it that has a cross. From an old Irish church, I guess. Light salvaged from the ruins. The only light we ever truly see comes through the darkness of our struggles.

A century ago was the Easter Rising when Catholics and Protestants, the Irish and the English, fought each other for control of Ireland. That’s what’s on the newspaper on the wall. Neither the Rising nor the crucifixion were comforting when they happened, although we romanticize them now. What we see is the nobility of a cause and ignore the sacrifice and death. We no longer feel the sear of their sorrow, or their dreams being torn apart. But there was courage and torture. There was crucifixion and execution. And there was blood in the streets and on front porches. It was moving past words flush with pride, and putting your body on the line to right a wrong as you tried to protect your people. It was standing up for honesty and freedom, and renewing the flames of hope by doing something, although even around this table we wouldn’t agree on how to wage the fight.

Battles once fought, return to be fought again. Brokered truces unravel. Each generation forgets the past, and repeats the struggles. We rearrange our memories to divide people into us and them, leaving little space in between to discuss conflicting visions and find a way through together.

Grandparents stir the embers of injustices done decades ago with nostalgia for a past that they didn’t think was so great then. Parents smudge the soot of ancient prejudices on the foreheads of their children, although they no longer remember why. We try to honor what is praiseworthy in our heritage and ignore the unsavory, but pride in our clan’s mythology is strong, and we often follow the old ways so we don’t upset the family.

In the tired faces of people hunched over at the bar, I see the need to believe that there is more than a cold beer at the end of a long week. We want to know that despite our differences, there is enough compassion in each of us to find common ground.

The Irish poet Yeats wrote of that day in Ireland and the other day that a “terrible beauty” had been born out of sacrifice and death. Heaven had its part to do, he wrote, and so do we. I raise a glass to this.

Mark Liebenow writes about nature, grief, and the wisdom of fools. The author of four books, his essays, poems, and critical reviews have been published in numerous literary journals. He has won the River Teeth Nonfiction Book Award, and the Chautauqua and Literal Latte’s essay prizes. His work has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and named a notable by Best American Essays. He studied creative nonfiction at Bradley University. Email: muirman1[at]gmail.com

My Son

Posted on March 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Fiction
Joshua Shapiro

Photo Credit: Chris Bloom/Flickr (CC-by-sa)

He poured two cups of coffee, added cream for his wife and nothing for himself, and put the cups on the table. Four places were set; before one of the empty places stood a basket filled with prescription bottles.

“Happy Sunday,” said his wife.

“Happy Sunday, hon.”

“Don’t let the bacon burn.”

“Right.” He went back to the stove and attended to the eggs and bacon. Toast popped and he buttered it and brought everything over on a large platter.

“You’re getting very good at this,” she said.

“Practice. Is my mom up yet?”

“I don’t think so. At least I didn’t hear anything.” She took from the basket five plastic bottles and arranged them by the unused plate. “You didn’t cook for Liam.”

“I will when he gets up. He seems to sleep later every week.”

“So does your mother. She’s been coming down after nine. You wouldn’t know, you’re long gone by then. How much she actually sleeps I’m not sure. This one is supposed to help.” She shook the pills in the smallest of the bottles.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For doing all you do. I know it hasn’t been easy. And if it doesn’t work—this arrangement…”

He did not finish the thought and she did not finish it for him. She looked out across the patio as a large crow chased several goldfinches from the feeder. “Damn those things,” she said. “I hate hate hate them.” Then, more evenly: “I had to clean up after her yesterday. I didn’t tell you.”

He looked at her with concern.

“She wet herself. I had to wash her—well, her everything.”

“You don’t mean…”

“Not that. Not yet.” She looked out the window and frowned. “Her pants, her underpants.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mind, really. But the more… personal stuff. That will happen sooner or later.”

With a strained smile he said, “We haven’t had to buy diapers in a long time.”

“No, we haven’t. But maybe that’s the silver lining in all this. Liam’s getting to know his grandmother.” Two crows were crowding the feeder and a third scavenged on the stones beneath. “What’s left of her, anyway.”

He nodded.

“A year ago she was sharp and funny and had more energy than me. I used to think I wouldn’t mind being like that someday, an older woman who’s still with it, still so involved in life. And then… I’m not sure what’s worse, losing your mind or knowing that you’re losing it. And she knows. That’s why she’s so anxious all the time. God, I hope the new med helps. If this keeps up I don’t know what we’ll do.”

“Yes, you do,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means what you can’t seem to bring yourself to say. You went shopping for a place that takes people in her situation and you didn’t tell me. I saw the brochure in the trash.”

“I was being proactive.”

“You’re afraid that despite our best efforts we can’t handle her here.”

“I’m afraid my best won’t be good enough.”

“No one will judge you if it’s not.”

“Why?” she cried suddenly. “I mean, why now?”

“Is that a philosophical question?”

Instead of answering she went on: “The pandemic definitely didn’t help. She was living alone, she never really worked. It was pretty much total isolation. Then there was your brother…”

“Do you think she blames herself?”

“Of course she blames herself. Don’t you?”

“Only every day,” he said. “He was my brother. But can we please not talk about that? The trigger wasn’t a pandemic and it wasn’t losing a son, as terrible as everything was this past year. It’s genetic, you know that. Let’s not add guilt to the mix.”

“She doesn’t think it’s genetic.”

“My mom actually has an opinion?”

“Of course she does. I told you, she knows what’s happening. She told me—this was a few weeks ago—that the vaccine caused her to lose her memory. She said the drug companies do it on purpose because the government tells them to.”

He rolled his eyes. “I wonder where she got that idea.”

“Yeah, I wonder.”

They had stopped eating. She put a hand on his.

He said, “Can we get back to you? Your burden.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It obviously does or you wouldn’t be complaining.”

“Was I complaining?”

He was silent for a careful moment. Then he said, “You were a being little cruel, to be honest. Usually you’re not cruel.”

She pushed her plate away. “Usually I’m not cruel. Usually I don’t have to clean up piss. Usually I don’t spend half the morning looking for a pair of reading glasses. Usually I don’t have to listen to the insanity on TV night and day.”

“What are you saying? That’s it’s time to put her in a nursing home just because she loses things and watches television? My father used to watch that stuff. It probably became a habit.”

“I’ve noticed Liam seems to have picked up the habit,” she said.

“He sits with his grandmother and they watch together. What’s he supposed to do, ask her for help with trigonometry?”

“Look who’s being cruel now. Want to know why I’m bringing this up? Because I’m concerned about our son. He’s impressionable. The other day Liam said he doesn’t believe the vaccines are safe.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him it’s a lie. I told him if you hear a lie enough you’ll start to believe it.”

“I’ll offer a more charitable interpretation. He knows grandma isn’t well so he spends time with her. He’s a gentle, caring kid.”

“Of course he is,” she said. “But isn’t Liam exactly the kind of vulnerable person they target with all this crazy… oh, good morning, Margaret.” She rose to help. “I didn’t hear you come down.”

The old woman walked with a cane. She wore a soiled sweatsuit and no makeup. Dark rings were under her eyes. With the assistance of her son she sat down at her place. She looked across the table at her daughter-in-law: Julie or Julia. A terrible thing not to be sure, and she decided she would call her nothing. This settled a small portion of her anxiety, which had collected like water in a bathtub during the night. Had she forgotten to empty the bath? Her sons were Gary and Edward.

Margaret composed herself, her features, and prepared to say good morning. It was still morning, she was certain of that. Fairly certain. The sun came in the big window in the morning and there was no sun but that might mean clouds or rain. This could be woven into her greeting. She formulated it perfectly, a hearty good day and a remark about the weather. Then she blurted: “You were talking about me!”

“We were talking about the family, Ma. You’re part of the family,” said her son. Her living son.

“Your voices were raised.” Margaret could hear her own voice being raised.

“I had too much coffee,” said Julie or Julia. “I’m afraid I’m a little excitable this morning, Margaret.”

“Good morning. It looks like rain.”

“Good morning, Ma.”

“Your father and I never raised our voices.”

“I remember it a little differently,” the son said gently.

“I don’t remember!” Margaret cried. “That’s the problem, isn’t it. Well I don’t! Why do you have to keep reminding me?”

The son looked sideways at the daughter-in-law. Margaret had learned to watch their eyes. The eyes said things that the words did not. The daughter-in-law’s words were saying something about breakfast but her eyes were saying that her mother-in-law was too much trouble. She didn’t trust that one, Julie or Julia. She had truly awful political views.

“How was your night?” asked the daughter-in-law.

“My night?”

“Did you sleep well?”

The questions! Of course she didn’t sleep well. Her knee ached terribly. Her hands also. The tingling that people used to call nerves and the doctors now call anxiety had been very bad. She mourned her lost child. These things, the pain and loss, she could talk about; the visitors, however, she had never mentioned and never would. They too came at night. Tiny ones like ants lived in the bristles of her hair brush. A fat little one sat like one of those Oriental figurines on the bedside table. A man-sized one sometimes looked in the window. She knew him, the one at the window, but she couldn’t say why. All of them were silent, they seemed to mean no harm. And they were her secret. If she told them they would put her in one of those places.

Pills of different shapes and colors were arranged on a saucer. It was her duty to swallow them but when she raised the water glass it trembled in her hand and she put it down.

“Can I help, Ma?”

“I can take a pill, Edward.”

A steaming plate was suddenly before her. She took a piece of toast and bit into the corner. She willed her hand to be steady and managed to take a blue pill. Then two white pills. She felt triumphant. “You see, Edward?”

“Ma, I’m Gary. Edward passed away.”

“I know that!” The foolishness of the living son, to think she can’t tell the difference! She laughed to make the point. Not that there was anything funny about losing a son. And how did he die, exactly? Oh, yes. It was very sad, nothing sadder, but laughter is always the best medicine. And she laughed heartily. Then she stopped herself. No, she would not be the cackling old woman her own grandmother was at the end.

She remembered visiting her Nana in that place. She remembered it perfectly. The room painted the color of a faded iris. The bed with an afghan on it that Nana had crocheted. The old woman lying beneath it, barely making a bulge. On a tray white cake with white frosting or chocolate cake with yellow frosting. Nana saved desert for her and cackled with pleasure as she watched her granddaughter eat it. Outside in the corridor a woman in a wheelchair with saliva on her chin. And which was worse, drooling or cackling?

She would excuse herself and check the bath. She could not hear it running but she felt it, the water getting higher and higher, her hand with the red capsule trembling but she brought it to her lips anyway. Now the capsule no longer between her fingers but broken on the floor, the sprinkles inside making a tiny anthill beside her chair. “Oh dear,” she said as she watched what seemed to be an ant crawl from it, then another ant and another. “Oh dear.”

“Don’t worry about it, Margaret. There’s more medicine.”

“The bath,” she said, struggling to rise.

“What about the bath, Ma?”

From outside an ugly caw caw and when she looked the hideous flapping of black wings just outside the glass. “I’m afraid… in my room… Edward.”

Their eyes made it impossible to continue. The old woman was a lunatic, the eyes said. The words would surely follow. The words she refused to hear. The waters were rising, rising. But what’s this? The large man in the window, the insects, the little Oriental fellow, all here in broad daylight! The large man sitting right here at the table! The daughter-in-law has served him breakfast. Margaret has been wondering about him, whether the man might harm her after all. But there’s nothing to fear. It is just her other son, the dead son, back for a visit.

“Ma, Julie and I have been talking,” said the living son. “We know you haven’t been entirely comfortable here. We’re not the sort of—we’re not professionals.”

She did not want to hear the words but she couldn’t help it. On and on they went.

“Julie’s been looking into a place,” said the son. “Tell Ma, Julie.”

“It’s really wonderful,” said the daughter-in-law. “It’s cheerful and clean and the people there are not only experts at what you’re dealing with, they’re super friendly…”

“It’s a terrific place, Ma,” said the son.

The word place sounded smooth and unthreatening when he pronounced it, but that was Gary. A salesman through and through. What does he sell? Oh yes, that invisible stuff that runs around inside these computers. She knew things. She felt calm and clear with her son beside her—not the salesman but the other son. Edward, no longer living but here at the table. And what was he? In the film business but it never worked out. Well, he wouldn’t be the first. Finally he’s come to his senses. The messy business with the car and the garage and the garden hose—all that is behind him. Now he will settle down. He is eating a good breakfast, his appetite is fine, toast with jam and three strips of bacon and scrambled eggs. Scrambled? He takes them fried, with the yokes up. She knows, she’s his mother for goodness’ sake!

“Is this really the best time to have this conversation?” Julie asked.

“There’s no good time, hon. You’ve been right and I’ve been oblivious. I go to work and you’re home doing the lion’s share. And she’s my mother…”

Julie took her husband’s hand tenderly. This, too, was lovely to see.

“I’m sitting right here, you know,” Margaret said to them. She took strength from Edward, eating with relish, back where he belonged.

“I know, Ma,” said Gary.

“And I do think I deserve to be consulted, don’t you?”

“Of course you do—”

“Look.” She pointed outside. The clouds were beginning to break up and the sun was shining. Small birds chirped at the feeder. “It’s going to be another lovely day. It’s Sunday, Gary, you should enjoy yourself. You work so hard, selling your software. Don’t look at me like that! I know what you do. And I’m sure the facility Julie found is lovely for what it is, but I don’t think I’m ready for that. Not yet. Goodness, I’m only seventy-five!”

The daughter-in-law looked like she was about to cry. The son, the salesman son, had gotten out of his chair to kiss his mother’s hair. She would have to make sure it was properly done from now on. She would visit the hairdresser.

“So are we all settled now?” Margaret asked reasonably. The daughter-in-law wiped the corner of her eye. The son ran his hand over his mother’s hair. Full of family feeling, she added, “And look who’s decided to join us! Good morning, Liam.”

The boy, big and pale with never-shaved stubble on his chin, finished the last of his large breakfast and said, “I’ve been sitting here for like ten minutes, Grandma.”

“Of course you have!” she said to Edward, the person who was actually sitting there. She called him Liam because they expected her to. But anyone could see that Edward was the fourth person at the table. The other son and the daughter-in-law seemed to be under the impression that the whole terrible business in the garage had been final, and she wasn’t about to argue. When people start to believe a lie it isn’t worth the trouble trying to talk them out of it.

The salesman son had sat down again. “Welcome back, Ma.”

She smiled at her son—at both her sons. “Thank you for a lovely breakfast.” Delicately, with the corner of the cloth napkin, she wiped her mouth. “Now I think I’ll go and watch the television.”

Joshua Shapiro’s short story “The Conjecture” appeared in the Spring 2022 Notre Dame Review. His story “Smart Home” won the Mississippi Review 2022 Fiction Prize and will be in their Fall issue. In previous years he has published fiction in Beloit Fiction Journal, Literary Review, G.W. Review, Straylight, Pangyrus, Phoebe, The Main Street Rag, and other places. He lives with his family near Boston, where he teaches music and does woodworking. He is an alumnus of SUNY-Albany, Harvard, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Email: ivorylit[at]yahoo.com