The Good Stuff

At 10:05 every morning, the sixth graders at Fellowship Academy of Christ took a fifteen-minute break. They were too old for recess, for dangling from their growing limbs on jungle gyms and for getting sweaty playing tag. The sixth graders had more serious matters to attend to, like gossip and trading gel pens and playing the card game “Bullshit” around the corner of the building, well out of the teacher’s earshot. Andi had just broken into the card circle, and was gaining some street cred with her Bullshit skills. So this week, break was more crucial than ever.

The sixth grade card sharks were upping their stakes. It was Halloween, and Mallory was going to teach them how to play poker.

“Bring your candy stash tomorrow,” she ordered. “Everything you’ve got. We’re going big.”

The girls all nodded. They’d wanted to try poker for a while, but gambling, like smoking, taking the Lord’s name in vain, and boy-girl relations, was prohibited at Fellowship Academy of Christ. Halloween and the ruse of “trading candy” was to be their ticket.

Andi had a lot of problems. Namely, her off-brand wardrobe had gained her only probationary admission to the card circle. Outside of break, most of the girls ignored her. She hadn’t been invited to anyone’s slumber party yet, and sometimes Mallory made fun of her hair. So even more pressing was the matter of Halloween—of getting hold of the candy she’d need for the ante.

“Halloween is the devil’s night,” Andi’s mom said that afternoon. “I don’t want you and your sisters out there while spirits and sinners and drunk teenagers run wild. It’s not safe, and it’s not godly.”

“But what about the church party?” Andi pleaded. “Can we at least go to that?”

“I don’t agree with churches offering some kind of consolation prize for Halloween. They’re still celebrating a night that belongs to Satan, and we’re not having any part of it,” her mother said. “I don’t know why you’re worked up all of a sudden. We’ve never done Halloween. We’re not going to start now.”

Andi stomped up to her room to sulk. She took out her Teen Bible and scanned the index for Halloween. Nothing.

I bet Jesus never said one word about Halloween, Andi muttered under her breath. She rushed through her math homework and did a half-ass job on the dinner dishes in protest. When trick-or-treaters rang the bell, despite Andi’s mom turning off all the lights downstairs, Andi looked down on them from her bedroom window. They didn’t look so satanic to her. Just happy.

The next morning, Kim from next door picked her up for Wednesday morning prayer breakfast. Kim was a junior. She had wide-set eyes and a voice like a Disney princess. She was devout, and Andi’s mom thought she was a very good role model, so she’d talked her into this carpool arrangement. Kim was a vegetarian, but the last prayer breakfast of the month featured chicken biscuits from Chick-fil-A. Kim wanted to stop off at Pop’s Korner Mart to buy a few bananas.

“Why don’t you just eat the biscuit part?” Andi asked Kim as they climbed out of her rusty old Volvo.

“It still tastes like meat,” Kim said. “I think they just take the chicken out and re-wrap the biscuit. I can pray better if I just have fruit,” she chirped.

Andi wandered through the aisles while Kim puzzled over produce. Pop’s Korner Mart was a weird hybrid of a place—like if you meshed a general store with a gas station. Andi’s dad liked to remind his daughters that Pop’s had been open when he was a boy; that he had even known Pop himself back in the day. He couldn’t go to Pop’s without grumbling that any day now the new Wal-Mart would force gems like Pop’s to close.

Today, Andi agreed that Pop’s was better than Wal-Mart because the candy aisle was a treasure trove of poker ammunition. Candy cigarettes, cinnamon jawbreakers, and ginger zingers were the good stuff, worth way more than a whole palm full of candy corn or powdery Smarties. She felt around in the pocket of her skirt. A washed gum wrapper and some lint, but no money. Andi never had any money.

“Allowance?” her father had scoffed the one time she brought up the subject. “I pay for your food and put a roof over your head! Why should I pay you just for being alive?”

A thought flashed through Andi’s mind. She could take what she needed. The Bible said steal from the rich and give to the poor, right? And Pop’s Korner Mart was obviously rich if it was as old as her dad.

Andi slid her hand into a bin of licorice. With one eye on the front of the store, she slid five licorice sticks up the sleeve of her sweater.

That was easy, she thought. And she didn’t look any different than she had a few seconds before. She moved on to the Lindor truffles, slipping a few into each pocket. She partially unzipped her backpack and lingered for a second in front of each candy bin, grabbing a few pieces, then easing them through the opening in the zipper.

“Hey!”

Andi gulped, releasing a handful of mini Mars bars back into their basket.

“You ready to go?”

It was just Kim, clutching her paper bag of bananas.

“Yeah,” Andi said. “I was just…thinking about getting some gum.”

“Oh, I have some in the car,” Kim said.

Back in the Volvo, Kim sang along to the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack. Andi sat very still so she wouldn’t crinkle from all the truffles in her pockets. All through prayer breakfast, she hugged her backpack to her chest, afraid someone might go through it and know what she’d done.

At break, the sixth grade girls sat Indian-style on the pavement and dumped their loot into their laps.

“Wow,” Mallory said, eyeing Andi’s haul. “You must have gone to the rich neighborhoods. Hey, you should come to our slumber party this weekend.”

Thank you, God, Andi thought, lifting her eyes toward heaven.

“Sure,” she said. “Now deal me in.”

Photo by: Emily Blincoe
Written by: Dot Dannenberg

Empty

Leigh and Tara sit on a white seersucker blanket with rainbow stripes spread across the lawn of their Aunt Mary’s backyard. Leigh wrinkles her nose to push up the bridge of her thick, black-framed glasses as she chews on the last blackberry and leans back on her hands. She wears a black Macgregor hoodie and cut off shorts, the lining of her pockets peeking out across her thighs. Tara pulls her dress over bent knees and wraps her arms around her legs, glancing at her toenails and wondering if she should paint them gray. The wind rustles the canopy of leaves above, casting shadows that sway back and forth like seaweed underwater.

“Are you okay?” Leigh typically asks Tara once a week, often prompted by a sobering Facebook status or blog post.

Tara is both appreciative and annoyed by the inquiry, not understanding why something must be wrong in order to inspire serious reflection and discussion.

“Oh yea! Why?” She sounds overly chipper.

“I dunno.”

Leigh tugs at a few strands of denim. Just five feet and four inches, her long limbs and narrow face suggest a much taller frame than her sister. Tara is the same height, but her legs are thicker and her torso shorter. Even next to each other, she seems closer to the ground than her younger sister.

“Remember when you asked me if I had an eating disorder? We were on the swings and you were upset when I threw up after lunch.”

Leigh doesn’t say anything, but looks up at Tara and meets her gaze. Her posture straightens, conveying that she’s listening.

“It’s not that I think I’m fat. And I don’t count calories,” Tara continues. “I’m really not even aware that I’ve gone for a while without eating. I just get so hung up on my thoughts that I forget I need fuel to sustain them.”

She picks at the corner of a toenail, annoyed at its length.

“So, what about throwing up?” 

Leigh remembers listening to her sister regurgitate a super expensive meal and feeling confident that her concerns about Tara’s weight were officially justified.

“I make myself vomit when something doesn’t feel right, like if I eat too much or I feel like my stomach can’t digest whatever’s in there.”

Tara’s face feels really hot, not because she’s lying, but because she feels scrutinized.

“It’s not punishment. I promise. I do it because I feel like my body needs me to do it.”

A dove coos from a powerline, a sound Tara and Leigh always mistook for an owl until today, looking up and noticing the tail feathers press down as the soft murmurs tumble out.

With a sharp intake of breath, Leigh sings, “Ooookaaay-eee,” to signal her surrender.

This is a significant difference between them; Leigh has no problem dropping a discussion if it’s causing more harm than good. Tara, on the other hand, is mildly confrontational and likes to get to the root of a problem, even if it means stalking the opposite party and hounding her with questions until she’s reduced to tears. A couple years ago when the sisters were still in high school, Leigh walked in on Tara standing in the living room gaping with confusion just as their mother was slamming her bedroom door and weeping hysterically within.

“What the hell happened?” 

Leigh dropped her purse to the floor and threw her keys on a side table as she slipped off her Birkenstocks.

Tara turned to look at her and shook her head. 

“I don’t understand why Mom gets so upset when I want to talk to her about something serious. She gets all defensive and says her blood pressure is too high and she can’t listen to me anymore. How are we supposed to work on things if she can’t even talk about them?” 

She slumped onto the sofa, propped an elbow up on the armrest and cupped her cheek in one hand.

Leigh walked to the fireplace and sat on the cold stone hearth, sneering at her older sister. 

“There’s a huge difference between having a conversation and being interrogated, Tara. You’re really stubborn and don’t let up until you get answers.”

“Well, I didn’t get any answers outta Mom. She’s in there crying and I feel like a shithead. Why should I feel bad for wanting to know the truth?” 

Tara sat erect, her hands flat on top of her thighs, staring directly into Leigh’s eyes.

“Tara, you’re immune to pain or something and as much as you preach practicing empathy, you pretty much have none. You’re a bully. You want people to be able to process stuff the way you do and honestly a lot of us can’t because we’re too busy just trying to get through our own crap. Not everyone spends all friggin’ day trying to figure out the meaning of life.” 

She leaned back against the masonry, palms together between her thighs, eyes heavy with exasperation.

“Why doesn’t anyone give a damn?” Tara asked.

Leigh closed her eyes, careful not to sound pissed after forming her reply. 

“We do, Tara. The truth is, you’re the one who doesn’t give a damn about anything other than what you think is important. And while you spend all your time looking down on other people and accusing them of living shallow lives, you end up alone. Are your deep thoughts worth it?”

Leigh never found out what Tara was hounding their mother about. As she sits on the blanket across from her now, she notices the perpetual furrow between her sister’s brows and that her shoulders are rounded forward as if she might cry, but Tara’s face is blank and her gaze without purpose.

“Is it worth being sad all the time?”

Tara looks up, blinks. 

“What?”

“All that thinking and not eating. All your truth-seeking and isolation. Is it worth it?”

Tara’s eyes close as tears stream down her cheeks and drip onto the dress stretched over her knees.

“No.”

Photograph by: Whitney Ott
Written by: Natasha Akery

Wheel

Shooting Big Sneak, he hit a hung-up sycamore that bounced the kayak toward an undercut rock. He turned just as the shoulder of fall-line granite thumped him in the temple. There was no blackout, no ringing bell in his brain – just a dull pain, skull against rock, followed by a faint buzzing like a sweat bee against a nylon tent wall. He righted himself, shaking it off, glad he’d had the spray skirt on.

At first he thought the weather had turned – the sky glowering down to the dull, horizon-wide mica-shine that meant storm. Then he saw that his bright boat (Tequila Sunrise, the sticker had said) had lost color. The river, too, was black as burned oil, the foam on the standing waves as dull and lightless as mortar mix. He was as absent of color as his granddad’s ancient television. Dashing his face with the inky river didn’t help. He closed his eyes, opened them, rubbed them. The world stayed the same flat monochrome.

What could he do but paddle through? He tried, but in grayscale the river’s eddyline disappeared: the current grounded and spun him. The dimness felt malevolent. As he passed under the first of two bridges, the span against the flat chalk sky was a long, black shadow, an underbelly alive with the chittering of bats he could perceive only as a faint, teeming seethe. He knew they must be bank swallows, not bats, but couldn’t convince himself. He saw what he saw. When two dozen swarmed from their unseen mud nests above him it was all he could do not to panic. Against a glaring patch of sky the veering wings appeared and disappeared like ghosts.

Just past the second bridge, at the take-out, he pulled the spray skirt and saw his legs, gray as a dead man’s, the hair stark as black wire. The pallid sand of the shallows made a soft sucking sound against his keel. Again he shut his eyes. He beached, got out. He slung his head side-to-side, up and down, went to his knees like a Muslim pray-er, forehead to the damp riverbank. Nothing worked. He thought of whacking himself with the paddle.

Is you hurt?

The voice came out of the yawning darkness under the end of the bridge.

Who’s there?

Nobody. Just me fishing.

Hey.

Hey. You eyes – they failing on you?

I hit my head.

You not seeing me?

You’re under the bridge. I can’t see anything under there.

A shadow moved against shadow, its edges indistinct until a pair of black rubber boots became clear, stepping down the sapped granite rip-rap that shelved down from the bridge. First he saw the knee-high boots, then knees and thighs, carrying wide, round hips. A woman. A stick or cane helped hold her up.

You seeing me now?

I see most of you. Not your face.

She came further until she stood ten feet away.

This close as I’m coming, mister.

That’s fine. I see you, ma’am. Her eyes were black as two cliff-face caves.

What ail you?

I can’t see right. Everything is black and white.

Everthing is. Sure enough.

Now that he’d said it he realized there was no white, only the bleached gray of dry bone.

Everything’s shadows. No color.

How long?

Two hours, maybe. Seems like forever.

What you hit?

A rock. In that rapid below the old ferry.

You laid down yet?

No ma’am.

You lay down, then. Lay down with that same rock as your pillow.

It was in a rapid.

Then find one like it.

What good would that do?

Rock took your sight. Rock can turn it back.

I thought of hitting myself already, if that’s what you mean.

I said what I mean. You lay down.

So he did. He was on his knees still, a flat slab of granite within reach of his head. He stretched out, putting his temple to the stone, freckled and shot with graininess – dark and light specks and every colorless gradation between from pencil lead to pen ink. Charcoal, soot, ash-tipped reed -- every medium hands had ever scribbled in. He rested his head on the hardness.

The woman’s face above him was a black hole against the sky. For the first time he feared something other than this dead world he had crossed into. He closed his eyes.

In the dream his stone pillow was brought to him on a wooden paddle. It was rounder – almost spherical, the size of a large orange – but it was his pillow. The surface, too, was like an orange’s, minutely pebbled, glossy. He lay still looking at it, his eye entering the crevices of its roundness until a translucent leathery wing was spread over his sight. He blinked. The stone had become an orange, halved -- a ruby wheel, white-spoked, its colors muted but there. His waking heart lurched at the redness and accelerated, as if a lost heat had rekindled his blood.

When he woke, a weight held his eyes shut – the woman’s warm hand, rough with dirt, smelling of snuff, earthworms, Jergen’s hand lotion. Her long middle finger spanned his eyes, her other fingers his brow and upper cheeks. The calloused ridge of her palm draped his temple, as soft on that side of his head as the rock was hard on the other.

You keep them eyes shut, she said.

She drew her hand away. He heard riprap shift as she withdrew up the bank – heard her call from under the bridge Look now. Look at old muddy first.

He cracked open his eyes. He saw first the river -- clod-colored, flowing under a still, dim reflection of the sky -- then the gray-mottled sycamore trunks of the far side, then the brown-shot, green-and-yellow spatter of their leaves. Beyond, the blue sky.

Thank you, he said, to the clouds, the trees, the water, the woman. He was too glad to cry.

Photograph by: Whitney Ott
Written by: Gordon Johnston

A Singular Purpose

“What is this?” Heidi held up the wooden object, perplexed.

Jackson peered at the object from behind the refrigerator door where he was grabbing fresh oranges. “A muddler,” he replied.

“What’s it for?” Heidi moved to the living room couch, it’s back facing the kitchen, and turned her body to watch him.

“You’ll see.”

Jackson set the oranges down on the kitchen counter and began shaving strips of rind off the fruit. He looked up from his task, pleased that he had finally invited her back to his apartment.

Heidi ran her hand along the stiff threads of the fabric couch, fingering a loose strand along its edge. She admired Jackson from where she sat, aware that his charm was in-part due to his playacting of good company, as one would for a casual date. She glanced about her surroundings, inhabiting the role of detective, pretending that she could deduce Jackson’s true character and personality by the contents of his apartment. Jackson’s bookshelf, replete with literary novels, must have meant that he was an intellectual. His television was set askew of the couch, so his free time was not spent lazing about. Rather, the wear on his running shoes and the ragged gym bag by the front door must’ve meant that Jackson lived dynamically, in constant motion. She already knew that he was handsome and well-dressed, so she convinced herself that he was exactly what she was looking for in a partner.

Jackson glanced up occasionally from his makeshift cocktail bar, a tray on his kitchen counter, and watched as Heidi scanned his apartment, quietly hoping that he had not left anything out that would undermine her perception of him.

“What are you making?” Heidi asked.

“Old Fashioneds,” Jackson replied, still working the orange.

“What’s in that?”

“Whiskey, bitters, maraschino cherries, and orange peel.”

“So what’s the muddler for?”

Jackson laughed, “You sure do ask a lot of questions.” He began crushing the maraschinos in a glass tumbler. “This is what a muddler is for,” he said.

“That’s all? Why can’t you just use a spoon?”

Jackson paused and thought for a moment, “Well, you probably could. This exists for just one reason, not that it makes it any less important, but it means it must do that one thing particularly well. And this,” he held up the muddler red with juice and the pulverized bits of cherries, “exists to muddle.”

Decades later, after Heidi had settled down with Dr. Anson Maguire, a podiatrist from Westchester, and after she had reared their two children, Alex and Morgan, when all she had left to do was reflect on her life, she remembered with surprising ease that first date with Jackson and the conversation about the muddler. She remembered the unnatural heat of that Indian summer and the oyster bar he had taken her to in the East Village. She remembered the briny shellfish and glasses upon glasses of white wine they had enjoyed together on the narrow outdoor portico. She remembered how lightheaded she felt, either from the wine or from the date, as they made their way to his apartment, hands clasped tightly together. She remembered the bright sunlight of the early evening hour and the way it had illuminated the entirety of Jackson’s studio apartment, its windows facing due west, directly in the path of the setting sun. Heidi smiled in her waning years, bemused by the fact she was able to recall such unremarkable details of that relationship, though she could recall little else about it. She thought it curious how complete that memory was, and how much she truly loved Jackson during their brief affair.

Jackson handed Heidi one of the glass tumblers, moist with condensation. He held his own tumbler close to his face and inhaled deeply before taking a measured sip. Heidi observed him from the corner of her eye and followed suit, unaccustomed to drinking with someone who appeared so self-assured in his ability to do so. Jackson later confessed he had been terrified that she would not find him interesting and had been deliberate in his every action. He had been so preoccupied with impressing her, exerting so much energy in being impressive, that he had not realized how little they had in common.

“You know, this isn’t bad. I don’t usually prefer whiskey cocktails.”

“Why didn’t you stop me when I told you what was in these?” Jackson shook his glass lightly, the ice clinking against the inside surface.

“I don’t know, I guess I wanted to try something new.” Heidi smiled as she said this.

“I’ve got a bottle of gin. If you’d like, I can make you something else.”

“No, honestly, it’s wonderful.” It would be the only time Heidi enjoyed a whiskey cocktail.

“Why is it they call them that?” Heidi asked. “Old Fashioneds, why are they called that?”

“There was a period of time where it became unfashionable to order the drink, so it was ‘old fashioned’ to do so.”

“How can something so simple fall out of favor?”

“The tenor of human fancies is a fickle thing.”

“So what were they called before?”

“Hm?”

“Old Fashioneds, before they became old fashioned.”

“That’s a good question. I have no idea.”

There was a break in their conversation and it was silent for a moment inside Jackson’s apartment. His wall clock was broken, the second hand shifted back-and-forth perpetually on the fiftieth second.

“Jackson, do you like me?” The dark liquor had emboldened Heidi.

Jackson was slightly taken aback by the bluntness of the question, but answered truthfully, “Of course.” He took advantage of the moment and leaned in for a kiss. Jackson wasn’t sure if Heidi was the one. What he did know was that, at that moment, she was all he wanted.

They went to bed together that night. When Jackson woke the next morning, Heidi’s scent lingered on his bed, though she had not, and the glass tumblers he had set on the nightstand were gone.

Photograph by: Whitney Ott
Written by: James Mo

Leftovers

He bought the chicken to make Kathy happy. It would be like before. He’d make his special sauce from ketchup and brown sugar. It could be the two of them together, watching the game. Or Bill and Meg could come over. But when he got home from the store, Kath was mad again, scrubbing the bathroom floor with her little frayed toothbrush.

“It never comes clean,” Kath muttered, her teeth clenched.

Jerry put the chicken in a bowl in the back of the refrigerator. He could tell Kath had done a sweep of the kitchen again. His eggs were gone; so was the seaweed salad he’d meant to have for lunch one day this week.

Jerry trudged to the basement. He could hear Kath opening and slamming the metal doors of the dryer. Best to keep out of her way.

The game. He dug the remote out of his recliner. There were Frito’s around here somewhere, he knew. He found them. He chewed. Stale, but good. The crunching echoed in his ear, drowning out the commentators on TV, drowning out Kath’s movements upstairs. Jerry reached over for the stuffed Tasmanian devil toy he had picked up at a yard sale a few months ago.  Its crazy eyes looked past him. Its tongue lolled in its fanged mouth. Jerry tugged at the tuft of fuzz on Taz’s head. The day he’d brought it home Kath yelled at him, like she always did, about junk. But this one wasn’t junk. He would save it for when Brice and Caroline brought the baby over. He’d give it to the baby. It was perfect for the baby.

Brice and Caroline never came over anymore. Kath would plead on the phone.

“I’m working on cleaning the place up—the baby will be safe,” she would say.

Brice always had an excuse. A work thing. Caroline’s allergies. All the dust, you know; it’s not you; it’s the cat you used to have. Caroline can’t handle any residual cat dander. And the baby was showing symptoms of the same allergies.

Kath would wail at Jerry.

“Don’t you care that you never get to see your own grandson?”

Jerry did care. That’s why he’d buy things, just in case. This week at the Salvation Army on MLK Jr. Drive he’d found a whole box of those little baby sleepers, the tags still on.

“Brice’s baby—he’ll love these,” Jerry had said. “Keep his feet warm at night, see? I used to have ones like this when I was a kid. Red, though. With grippers on the bottom so you don’t slip?”

“The baby’s a boy, Jerry,” Kath said. “These are pink. And they’re too small. Six months? The baby will be a year old soon. Take them back.”

“Salvation Army doesn’t do returns,” Jerry said. “We should save them. Brice and Caroline might have another baby. Maybe a girl.”

Jerry finished the Fritos. He tucked the bag down into the crevices of the recliner. He was still hungry. There was that chicken upstairs. But maybe he would surprise Kath with dinner tomorrow. She would come home from work and he would have it all ready, served up on those new plates he had picked up from where the people on Firth Street got evicted. Perfectly good plates. The blue willow kind, each one a different picture. His favorite was the one with an old house on it, trees, children dancing in a meadow.  In an upstairs window, a ghost. It only had three little chips. Still perfectly good. He would have to remember where he stashed those plates. Not in the kitchen. No room. Maybe in the den, in one of the crates. Maybe there.

Upstairs, the screen door slammed.

“Kath?” Jerry called.

No answer. She must be going out. Going to the store for something. He turned the TV down, strained to listen for the sound of the truck tires crunching on the gravel driveway.

The screen door slammed again. He heard Kath stomping through the house, rustling things.

“Kath?” Jerry called again. “You’re not moving stuff around up there, are you? I need to know where everything is.”

Kathy appeared at the top of the stairs.

“I’m out, Jerry,” she said.

“Out of what?” Jerry said.

“Out. I’m gone. I’m going. I didn’t touch any of your stuff. I just got my clothes and some of the things from the bathroom. Nothing of yours. I’m going to Meg’s tonight. Don’t try to talk me out of it, because this is too much. I’ve decided.”

“What are you saying?”

“You can have the house. I don’t want it.”

“What about the truck? Are you taking the truck?”

“I’m not. Meg’s coming to get me. She’ll be here any minute.”

“How are you going to get to work without the truck?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Kath said. “I need you to let me be for awhile.”

“If that’s what you want. Is that what you want?”

A car horn sounded outside, two sharp honks.

“That’ll be Meg,” Kathy said. She shut the door to the basement, leaving Jerry alone. He was still clutching the Tasmanian devil. It had a little rip under its arm. The polyester stuffing was starting to escape. He pushed it back in. It was still a good toy. He’d bought it for the baby. The baby would still like it.

When the city officials came with the citation stating that the house violated city ordinances, Jerry vowed to be cooperative. He would accept help. He would downsize.  He let them take the crates from the den. The baby clothes. The mountain of books he’d purchased from the friends of the library sale.

The cleaners and organizers were shocked when Jerry wouldn’t let them in the kitchen. They found him clutching a metal bowl of putrid chicken legs, long rotten.

“At least let me keep the bones,” Jerry said, his face ironed of any feeling. “They were for my wife.”

Photograph by: Whitney Ott
Written by: Dot Dannenberg

safe place

Brit sits on the carpet in the living room, an elbow propped up on the glass coffee table and its corresponding hand cupping her forehead, pushing back her sandy blonde hair. The fingers of her other hand trace the fingerprints streaked across the glass. They remind her of the sticky hands of small children who scream and whine until they get what they want from tired parents. She wastes time and avoids packing up to visit her mother who lives four hours away, her mother who never visits, but always calls. The relationship is strange, as if Brit’s mother never quite understood her role as a parent, but ascertained that food and unwelcome criticism were part of it.

A basket of laundry. An oversized purse. Cell phone charger. Brit slides into the driver’s seat of her old black Jeep and dreads the price tag her gas tank will yield in the hours to come. Making eye contact with herself in the rearview mirror, she pulls back her hair into a loose bun and slides on her sunglasses before cutting on the engine and pulling out of her apartment complex onto the highway. She didn’t eat breakfast and she didn’t call work to say she would be gone for a few days. Brit busses tables at a fancy restaurant downtown and lives mostly off of tips and leftovers. Her father calls every once in a while to ask if she needs money, but she always says no and he always sends a check.

Driving always makes Brit so sleepy. She prepared a high energy playlist for this, but it only seems to lull her faster. The only remedies are impromptu phone calls to various people that she really doesn’t want to talk to, but knows that conversation will keep her from falling asleep at the wheel. One of her friends, Rachel, likes to complain about her boyfriend and say that he doesn’t understand her needs. She talks about how he doesn’t fulfill her emotionally and she kind of wonders if being a lesbian is the answer. Brit says, “Why not give it a shot? You might find your soulmate.” Rachel chastises her with, “Unh! Brit! Like, I’m not that serious about it. God, you sound like you’ve done that. You’re probably gay.” Brit is suddenly wondering why she called, why she gets coffee with this chick once a week, and why she hasn’t hung up yet.

The only redeeming aspect of the drive to her mother’s house is the landscape. Right now it is autumn and the grasses are gold, the trees touting red, yellow, and orange leaves. The lyrics to “Fields of Gold” by Sting are coursing through her mind as she smiles to herself, leaning forward and setting her chin at noon on the steering wheel. Miles of road roll beneath her, making her eyelids flutter every so often. She remembers the long drives of childhood when she would sleep in the backseat with her sister as her father listened to Madonna’s newest cassette. Dreamily, she would say to him, “Hey Dad, I know all the words. Do you want to hear me sing them?” He says yes and she sings until she drifts away once more.

Brit turns onto the long dirt driveway that leads up to the house settled on a vast plain. The Jeep takes the bumps and gravel in stride as it approaches the ranch style home with blue shutters and a large live oak that sprawls its canopy above the roof. There’s a garden in the back, rich with lettuce, mint, and zucchini sure to be on the table this evening. The kitchen window is open and Brit can see her mother standing at the sink, probably washing dishes or fresh produce. Her mother looks up, smiles, and disappears to come to the front door.

They don’t hug or kiss. They probably don’t even say hello. Brit’s mother immediately grabs the laundry basket in the backseat as Brit collects some trash and her purse from the passenger’s side. She slides her sunglasses on top of her head and follows her mother into the house where it smells like rest. Brit takes off her shoes and makes a beeline for the sunroom where her favorite futon is already prepared for her arrival: a blanket, a pillow, and her childhood teddy bear. Her mother starts the first load of laundry and says, “You always forget to empty the pockets.” Brit replies, “I know.”

“Come to the kitchen,” her mother says. Brit complies and sits down on the floor with her back against the refrigerator door. Her mother peels carrots and asks her to fill her in on what’s been going on. Brit talks a little bit about the guy she’s been hanging out with who is really sweet and plays baseball.

“It’s nothing serious, but I like him. He opens doors for me and stuff.”

“That’s good,” says her mother before interjecting, “But don’t get serious so fast. You’ll scare him away.”

“Okay, Mom,” Brit replies as she stands up and makes her way over to the kitchen table.

A blueberry pie sits in the middle and all she wants to do is stick each of her fingertips into the spaces between the braids. She begins to pick at the edges of the crust and slip the tiny pieces between her lips, nibbling as she contemplates the strange coexistence of love and hate for one’s parents. Brit considers the dread she felt as she sat on her living room floor, anticipating her mother’s supreme dissatisfaction with the world, which is constant like the invisible sound of a television that is turned on and muted. What upsets Brit most is that she is also dissatisfied. Try as she might to meet society’s norms and fit in with others her age, she wants nothing more than to disappear as her mother has into the countryside. She wants to turn off her phone and never have to answer again. 






Photograph by: Whitney Ott
Written by: Natasha Akery