Catharsis

I lost my grandfather three months ago. Thirteen years after my grandmother. Now that they are gone I feel like a big part of my childhood is lost forever.

People ask me if I was close to him. I don’t know what to say. In the last few years, I didn’t see him everyday, and when I did, I didn’t know what to talk to him about. But he was my grandfather, and now my mother is an orphan.

I walked into his room and everything was still the same: his bed, his glasses on the side table, the two paintings of Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Krishna, side by side above the bed. He was there too, his body wrapped up in a white sheet like an Egyptian mummy. From the moment I saw him like that I knew I would never be able to let go of that image.

The next day we took him to the cremation ground. Before leaving, each of the family members had to walk around his body, his face now uncovered, and put flowers on his feet as our last offering to him.

The blazing fire of the cremation pyre is a scene I have seen a thousand times in movies and on bad soap operas. It never really struck me as anything out of the ordinary. It was just another custom, just something that had to be done. Standing a few feet away from the burning body of my grandfather, I could not fully comprehend that it was him in there. It was just like one of those fires on the TV screen. I saw everything that was happening, all the rituals; I held my crying mother, but I could not cry.

With that fire we are supposed to let his soul go on and find peace, but all I could think of was the past.

When my grandmother died suddenly, the entire family was shaken up. Even then, I could not cry at all, maybe because I was still too young to have a clear concept of death. Looking back, I think it was also because I was watching my mother completely fall apart and I had no room for my own emotions. For months she would get up in the middle of the night and go to an empty room, so as not to disturb my father, and cry. She still doesn’t know I could hear her.

She also doesn’t know I found her note.

Once when she was out of town, my father asked me to take out some money from my mother’s drawer because he always forgot where she hid her keys. Next to the money I found a piece of paper with her handwriting. She had written a goodbye letter addressed to my brother and me. Not only did the letter shock me because it sounded like she was going to die soon, she had also written she loved us in it. For the longest time, my mother had been unable to say that to us in words. She couldn’t tell us she loved us. It was simply implied and we were supposed to pick up on it on our own. I put the letter back in its place and never mentioned it to anyone. Some months later it was gone.

To this day, I don’t know if it was some sort of suicide note or just her way of trying to be prepared in case she died unexpectedly, like her mother.

Maybe finding her letter is the reason why I often write letters to people even when I know I will never send them. The way my mother could never say, “I love you” to her children, I am unable to say so many things to people around me. I just write to them, without them knowing it.

I tear up handwritten letters. I spend weeks carefully editing emails and then delete them permanently. Some things I have buried, some I’ve even burned because I don’t know how to say them.

I don’t know how to say:

“I’m tired of looking after you, look after me for a change.” Or

“You let a perfectly good friendship end because of one fight. And I hate knowing how little I matter to you because I still miss you.” Or

“That joke you made four years ago still hurts me even though you think I’ve completely forgotten about it.” Or

“I moved to the other end of the world to get away from you.”

Sometimes, I even write notes to myself:

“When you leave, don’t look back.”

                                                                                             ***

In the days after the cremation, relatives and friends visited my Uncle’s house to convey their condolences to the family. One of my mother’s cousins started talking about the journey of the soul after the death of the body. She talked about reincarnation; she talked about how my grandfather could feel us mourning. I knew she had lost her young son some years back and all I could hear in everything she was saying was her inability to accept the permanence of her loss. She had found every way possible to convince herself that her son was not really gone but continued to exist in some form, in some world or the other.

While some of the family members found comfort in her ideas, I was able to understand the real motive behind the funerary customs we had just gone through. They were not for the peace of the departed but for the living. Every step was supposed to bring us closer to acknowledging the loss and letting go. The fire, the immersion of the ashes into the Ganges, the giving away of all the belongings, it is all so that we have nothing left to hold on to.

It’s like the letters that I write. I burn them because I no longer want to feel the feelings that I write about. A cremation, followed by a mourning and then, hopefully, a move forward.

Written by: Vrinda Agrawal
Photograph by: Sydney Singhass

Too Far from the Water

It makes it more difficult, Mica tells me, if you transition into a human family that's too far from the water.

"In a land family," she says, “you'll have turmoil."

"Like the waves?"

"No. Like a world with no waves."

I can't imagine a world with no waves. The pulse of them is all I've ever known. They set our days here. The waves rising and falling tell us when to swim beyond the ocean shelf and when to go closer to the shore to feed on smaller fish.

"You'll get lucky," says Mica. "I have a feeling you'll be born to fishermen."

I know it isn't good to spend too much time speculating, but I hope she's right. I swim behind her as we head towards the reef. The sun cuts through the water and flashes against her scales, which shine silver.

***

On the day Mica is caught, I swim to the sandy bottom and bury myself in silt, like I've seen the crabs do. Lin finds me and tells me I should celebrate. That Mica’s been eaten by now, and soon will be born as a human.

"How can they eat her, knowing they used to be animals themselves?"

"Why do you eat smaller fish?" Lin asks. "You help them continue on their path. Besides, humans lose all memory of their past once they're born in their final form."

I stay on the bottom awhile longer, then rejoin the others as they swim towards the shallows.

***

When the net dips down, I try to lock eyes with the fisherman. Remember who you were, I want to say, but my lips move in strange patterns in the air. My gills burn like the time I was tangled in a jellyfish tentacle.

As the fisherman moves the net into his boat, I can hear the muted sounds of my friends below, still in the water.

They wish me luck. Then, they are gone. All I hear are the waves.

***

The waves change. They usually woosh at a regular rate, but today, they're faster. I can feel a deep thrumming of noise. Until today, the noise has been soothing, sometimes seeming to speak directly to me--but now it's loud and angry. The walls of the chamber where I've been floating expand and press in around me.

When I emerge, my gills burn again, but in a new way. I try to protest in my old language, like in the fisherman's net. But now, the noise comes from me. I am wrapped in a new net, this one warm and soft. I am wiped clean. My scales are gone--in their place, brown skin.

I look up into human eyes for the first time since the fisherman's, and at once, I forget the waves. I am born.

***

“Don’t you go near that pool!”

I am four. It is hot. So hot, my feet burn on the concrete that surrounds the swimming pool. We’re on a roof deck, and Mom is talking to Jay and Shelby. No one is swimming in the perfect, turquoise water. Women and men lie on chairs all around us. Some reading, some drinking. Some sleeping. I don’t know why you’d want to nap when you could have a pool all to yourself.

Mom is helping Shelby get drinks out of the cooler. I sneak closer to the pool. I can just set my foot on the top of the water. Just enough to cool off the burn from the concrete. Ahhh.

I lose my balance.

I’m part of the water, now, bobbing up and down. Mom and Shelby and Jay are still by the cooler. I can see them as if through a sheer, sparkling curtain. No one is coming. I close my eyes, and when I open them, I see darkness creeping in.

And then, Mom’s in the pool, pulling me out, still wearing her long dress with the pink flowers on it. She’s crying. I’m crying.

On the pool deck, she spanks me, then squeezes me so tight I think I’ll black out again. She spanks me again, then kisses the top of my head.

“What did I tell you about the water? You are not a fish,” she wails.

***

“What’s your sign?” Michelle wants to know.

“What?”

“Your sign. Your astrological sign?”

She has a thick purple book on her desk. The pages are rimmed all the way around in silver, so when she closes the book, they shine.

I don’t want to admit I don’t know what she’s talking about. All morning, Michelle and her friends have huddled around that book. I didn’t expect to be included. Mom’s grand idea to move to the suburbs has left me the new kid in the middle of the school year. These kids ride horses and wear name brand clothes. The girls all have miniature leather backpacks that they’ve stuffed with glittery lip gloss and scented lotion. Mom bought me my backpack at Wal*Mart three years ago, and it’s falling apart. I don’t wear makeup. But now Michelle is talking to me. She wants to share the contents of her magical book with me.

“Helloooo? You in there, new kid? What’s your sign?”

“I can’t remember,” I say. “I knew one time, but now I forget.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“March 1st.”

“You’re a Pisces,” she says.

***

When Mom gets out of rehab for the second time, she takes me on a trip to the beach.

“You hate the ocean,” I say, when she calls me at college to propose the plan.

“I never did enough for you when you were little,” she said. “It can be a fresh start.”

I’m not sure I believe in fresh starts, especially from Mom. For her, it’s always more about disconnection from the old. “What’s past is past,” she’s fond of saying. And when the new is an escape rather than a decision, I can’t trust it to last.

“It’s nice here,” she says. The water is clear and calm. Bluer than I remember. But what memory do I have to go on?

“Did we come here when I was a kid?” I ask her.

“I don’t think so. You never liked the water.”

“That’s not true,” I say.

“Well, we just didn’t. We went to the mountains, though. Remember camping?”

“Uh huh.”

Mom’s taken her sandals off, and she cries out when she steps on something sharp.

“It’s just a shell,” I say, bending to pick it up. It’s shimmery, like mercury.

“Why does it look like that?”

“I think it’s called mica,” I say, unsure how I know this.

“Whatever,” she says.

I put the shell in my pocket, knowing I will have to make my own home.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Vrinda Agrawal

Salt on the Rim

Continued from Tequila Sunrise. 

“You need to get out of bed,” Lori throws a granola bar by her feet, “and you need to eat something.”

“What’s the point?” Whitney says. Her voice is rough. When she rubs her eyes it feels like sandpaper. She wants to cry, but the tears won’t come.

There aren’t any left.

Lori sits, crossing her legs. Whitney feels like she is being inspected, surveyed. Lori’s round face registers worry and fear.

Whitney has only seen Lori embrace her mother and ex-boyfriend. She loathes physical contact, flinches when someone touches her, and makes it a point to distance herself in crowds. When Lori clasps Whitney’s thin, clammy hand, it is a precious gift: a reminder that love and compassion still exist.

After Whitney showers, she discovers Lori still in their dorm room. She flips through Wired, looking disinterested and bored.

“I’m taking you to breakfast. We don’t have to talk about anything, but I think you might want to,” Lori says without looking up, “and I’m here to listen to anything you want to tell me.”

Whitney nods and offers a half-smile. Lori is missing her favorite class right now, something about theoretical math where boys made bedroom eyes at her until they found out she was their intellectual superior. Such a turn-off.

Clad in black American Apparel leggings and an oversized hoodie, legs jittering under the table because she is so nervous (and maybe because of the strong coffee), Whitney spills everything. She picks at her veggie omelet, but devours half of the pancakes they’re sharing. Their favorite diner is deserted because it’s a Tuesday morning, and Whitney feels safe to tell the story.

“She said she isn’t sure she wants to be in a relationship anymore,” Whitney begins, “and I was so floored by it. Who says that?”

“It’s bullshit,” Lori agrees, taking a swig of coffee.

“It is bullshit. One day you love me, and the next you want to go out and fuck without a care?”

Lori chokes on her coffee, the laugh bubbling over the cup in the form of hot caffeine-laced spit. Whitney begins to giggle, and when the waitress comes over to refill their mugs she eyes the two of them and hands them some extra napkins without a word. Lori mops up the spill on her side and Whitney dabs at the droplets that made it to her part of the booth.

For almost two minutes, she does not think about her now ex-girlfriend.

That afternoon, Lori insists that she cleanse herself of the last relationship.

“Destroy any trace of her,” Lori says. She swears it helps, and holds out a trash bag.

It’s easier than Whitney thought it would be. Most of it is in her top desk drawer: pictures and ticket stubs, miscellaneous mementos of blossoming love. Whitney throws them all away, but not the lesson: love grows, and sometimes dies.

Her hand lingers against the last item: a white envelope. She opens it and sees the dried remnants of flowers, color fading to sepia tones like an old photograph.

“Is that ‒ money?” Lori asks. There are crisp bills in the envelope, too.

“Three hundred bucks,” Whitney sighs.

“I didn’t think she was that, erm, financially well-off?” Lori tries her best to not sound judgmental or bitchy. “Did she give you three hundred dollars?”

“It’s mine,” Whitney looks away. “These are the flowers she gave me on our six-month anniversary. I saved up enough cash so she could come with us for spring break. It was gonna be a surprise.

“Do you think ‒ maybe if she knew ‒ ”

“No,” Lori’s voice is firm and a shade angry. “No, absolutely not. You do not need to pay someone to be your girlfriend. Not a girl who once referred to you as ‘her little Mulan,’ which is easily one of the most racist things I’ve ever heard. Not a girl who can’t see how wonderful you are, who doesn’t love you or even like you enough to know she wants to be with you. She is a stupid, ignorant twat who will only weigh you down.”

Whitney picks the flowers out of the envelope and throws them in the bag.

Lori insists Whitney spend the money on herself. A treat. A new beginning. Anything that could be construed as absolute self-indulgence. Whitney considers getting another tattoo, but doesn’t feel like exposing herself to unnecessary pain. She keeps the money tucked away until she can decide.

The day before their flight, she realizes what she wants.

She sits down and places the envelope on the counter. The mirror reflects a maudlin girl with a silver glitter headband, flakes of which have fallen onto her long, shiny black hair like twinkling stars.

“That’s three hundred dollars. Give me whatever you’d like.”

The stylist nods. He asks a few questions about her typical style and daily routine. Since Whitney’s doing research over the summer, she doesn’t need something that can transition to what the stylist sarcastically calls the “corporate cut.”

“Too many econ majors come in here,” he moans, “‘Oh, give me something really edgy ‒ like bangs, but really subtle bangs.’”

“What are subtle bangs?” Whitney asks.

“Face-framing layers,” the stylist responds.

The cut he gives her isn’t subtle. It is edgy ‒ a short, choppy thing that strays into rebel territory when he colors it a bold lipstick red.

“I can’t get over it,” Lori gushes. They’re catching dinner before the flight, perched at the bar at the airport Chili’s.

“Ladies?” The bartender places two napkins in front of them.

“Chips and salsa,” Lori chirps.

“Two margaritas, on the rocks, salt on the rim,” Whitney catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and grins.

Written by: Erin Justice

Photograph by: Vrinda Agrawal

Owned

“I’m not trying to go over to Bruce’s tonight,” I told him.

“You’ll go if I say you go. And I say you go. The girls can wait. They won’t run out of vodkatinis or shit. You go to Bruce’s first.”

“I don’t like his friends.”

“They won’t mess with you. Just drop the stuff and leave. Turn around, I’ll zip your dress.”

He pulled the zipper up my spine. I adjusted my boobs and pulled down my hem.

“You owe me, honey,” I said, stepping into my gold heels.

He caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned my face towards his.

“Not quite, baby. I own you.”

                                                                                               ***

A cloud is nothing solid—you can walk right through it. On ground, we call it fog. But it's solid enough to stop you from seeing where you're going. It's solid enough to cast a shadow.

On the stand, I said I was in a cloud. I said my thoughts were soft—that the world had a film over it. That nothing felt real. My car’s AC had been broken for months.

“Maybe it was the heat,” I said.

“And what did Officer Cortano say when he pulled you over?”

“He said—I was speeding. He asked for my registration—I think. His voice was quiet.”

“Because of the cloud?” asked the prosecutor, rolling her eyes.

“Because of the cloud.”

“And then what happened?”

“I—that’s where it gets really fuzzy.”

“How convenient.”

They wheeled in one of those boxy tube TVs from the 90’s and rolled the tape.

Here comes the cloud: that tape, low quality, but clear enough, recording through the window of Cortano’s car parked behind mine. I’m nothing but a dark shape in my car, then an arm, holding out my documents. There’s Cortano, walking back towards the camera. He’s opening the car door; running my license. There’s Cortano walking back to my car. Me getting out. Him pointing to the curb where he wants me to sit. Me sitting as he goes through my car, as he finds my purse. Me standing when he finds what’s in it—the corner-cut sandwich baggies of meth, which he lays out across the hood of my car in a circle, like a fairy ring. His lips are moving, but the tape doesn’t have sound.

The shadow: There’s me, still standing behind Cortano. I’m reaching down and removing my gold stiletto. I’m swinging my arm. The stiletto makes contact with Cortano’s neck. There’s blood. We’re both on the ground, him fumbling for his gun, for anything. My arm, still swinging, again and again. Me, standing, reaching for the keys on the hood of my car. Launching myself behind the wheel. Tearing away.

The prosecutor let the tape run—Cortano’s still down, not moving. For awhile, that’s it. Then a second set of lights flash across his limp body as backup arrives on the scene.

The prosecutor stopped the tape.

“No further questions.”

My lawyer called expert witnesses, defined my behavior as “a dissociative state” caused by flashbacks to my abusive childhood with my father, who beat me. Who did all sorts of awful things she can’t even summon in court, because I can’t put them into words.

But the shadow has no sympathy.

                                                                                               ***

Bruce opened the door before I could knock.

“Well, look who it is!”

“I’m not coming in,” I said, reaching in my bag.

His hand latched over my wrist.

“Not on my front step. It’s still light.” His lip buckled in contempt. He yanked me inside. “Give the boys what they want. I gotta take a leak,” he said, and headed for the back of the house.

His friends were sitting around the table, halfway to loaded.

“You wanna give me some of what you got?” one said. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, making him look like a sick demon.

“You got the money?” I asked. I tried to duplicate Bruce’s snarl. “I’m here for your delivery. That’s it.”

“Hey mama, we don’t have to be that way,” he crooned, rising from his chair and snaking toward me. “Can’t buy love, right?”

He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me against him and cupping my ass.

I twisted my face away from his, seeing one of Bruce’s other boys fumbling with his belt buckle.

I shoved him away and ran for my car.

The cloud started rolling in as I punched the gas pedal. Just go, get away. They’re all too high to follow. I rolled up my windows and locked the doors when I cleared the block, just in case, even though it was a million degrees with the humidity trapped inside.

Then I saw the blue lights behind me.

I’m saved. I’m—still carrying. I yanked at the top of my dress and twisted my hair to the side. I slowed my breathing, trying to embody the classy girl headed out for a night on the town with her girlfriends. I prepped myself for the doe eyes, for the speech about being sorry for speeding. They don’t search you for a speeding ticket.

Then I saw him in my rearview mirror. He’d changed into his uniform. I didn’t know he was working tonight.

“What did I say to do?” he said, hitting each word slowly, as if speaking to a child.

“What are you doing? Bruce’s friend—he—”

“We’re going to play this by the books. You’re going to hand me your license and registration now. And give me the keys.”

“Honey, what are you doing?” I whispered again, my breath catching. I passed him my paperwork and turned off the car.

“I think you need to be reminded who’s in charge,” he said. “You’re done.”

As he walked back to his car and ran my license, going through the motions, I couldn’t see where this was going. Where I was going.

                                                                                               ***

We get an hour a day in the yard, which is really more of a dog run. Just dry dirt and a narrow rectangle of fence. We’re not allowed to talk, but I don’t mind. What’s there to say? Who would believe me? I’m just a meth head who paralyzed a cop.

In here, we all wear soft, criminal-orange clogs as light as styrofoam. They’re not gold stilettos, but at least they’re free. I’m free. No one owns me now but the state, and they barely know my name. Overhead, the sky is blue and completely clear.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Vrinda Agrawal

The Living Dead

Beth slammed the bathroom door and thrust her shoulder against the worn sheet of wood. She suctioned her ear to the textured surface and listened for footsteps climbing the stairs. Tears cascaded down her cheeks as water droplets trickled out of the faucet; the one she always forgot to have fixed.

She pressed her back against the door and slid to the ground, watching a bead of moisture lose its grip on the steel spout as she made her way to the floor. The water droplet splattered against the porcelain bowl just before she reached the molded tiles. She snapped out of her hypnosis once she heard sluggish steps scaling the hallway staircase.

Beth covered her ears with her hands and squeezed so tightly, a puff of air ruffled the graying hair covering the back of her neck. Tears rained on her lap as she rocked and hummed, trying to drown out the nearing groans reverberating through the door.

A knock from outside sent chills down Beth’s spine, turning her hums into howls and her rhythmic swaying into violent thrashing. She writhed about until the back of her head collided with the metal knob beside her, leaving a speck of blood clinging to the vertical lock as her limp body slid to the floor.

                                                                                             ***

“What’s wrong with her?” Chris asked as his mom disappeared at the top of the staircase.

“Gee, I don’t know, Chris,” answered Robyn. “Maybe it has something to do with two strangers showing up on her doorstep, insisting they’re her children?”

“We ARE her children.”

“Not in her mind, we aren’t.”

Robyn opened the screen door for Chris and followed him into the foyer.

“But I spoke to her on the phone just last week,” Chris said as they ascended the stairs. “I told her we were coming by today.”

“And I’ve been trying to tell you for months now that she has dementia, but you seem to forget that pretty easily.”

“You don’t know it’s dementia.”

“You’re right, she’s probably just trippin’ balls.”

“Is that some symptom you’re studying? I don’t know what that means?”

“What, there wasn’t a lot of acid dropping going on at divinity school?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“There probably wasn’t much laughter either.”

Chris ended the conversation with a scoff as they reached the top of the stairs.

“Christ, is she humming?” Robyn asked.

“Mom?” Chris said, tapping the door with his knuckles.

“Mom, open up,” Robyn said, followed by a firm strike with the side of her fist.

Chris cupped his hand between the door and his ear and listened for a response. Their eyes widened once they heard the crashing of bone against brass.

“MOM,” Chris yelled, jiggling the handle. “Shoot! It’s locked.”

“Shit,” Robyn muttered as she rifled through her hair for a bobby pin. “Didn’t I tell you this would happen?”

“This isn’t the time for I-told-you-so’s.”

“Only God can judge you, right?”

“Condescending remarks aren’t going to unlock this door.”

Robyn rolled her eyes and removed a pin from her bun. Her brown hair unfurled over her shoulders as she straightened the curved piece of metal and slid it into the narrow hole in the center of the knob. She fidgeted the instrument with surgical precision until the latch clicked.

“God dammit,” Robyn grumbled.

“What? it sounded like it worked.”

“I know, but the door won’t move. She must be leaning on it.”

“Here.”

Chris pushed Robyn aside and rested his shoulder against the door. He pushed off the ground with his leg until a tiny opening started to form.

“FUCK,” Chris shouted. “Call 9-1-1!”

“You said ‘fuck?’” Robyn noted.

She glimpsed through the opening while taking her phone out of her pocket. She spotted the top of her mom’s head lying in a puddle of blood on the bathroom floor.

“FUCK!”

                                                                                             ***

“Good, she’s awake,” Dr. Bachman noted.

“It’s Alzheimer’s, isn’t it?” asked Robyn.

“I’m afraid so,” he replied.

“Happy?” Chris asked.

“Yes, Chris, I’m fucking ecstatic.”

She looked down at her mom to see how she was taking the news. Beth was wearing the same bewildered expression she wore when she answered the door.

“Mrs. Carlisle,” Dr. Bachman interrupted. “According to the brain scans and what your children have told me, it appears you have Stage 4 Alzheimer’s.”

“How many stages are there?” Chris asked.

“Seven,” Robyn answered.

“I was asking the doctor.”

“Which one?”

“You’re not a doctor yet. You’re still in school.”

“I’m in my residency, dick. That means I have an MD.”

Once Robyn stopped talking she could hear her mother sobbing.

“Will you two please step outside for a moment,” Dr. Bachman interjected.

Robyn stormed out of the room without saying another word. Chris gave his mom a kiss on the forehead and followed his sister’s lead.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Robyn continued as soon as her brother appeared in the hallway.

“What?”

“Her lucidity.”

“How can you be so cold about this?”

“Because I know how Alzheimer’s works, Chris. Back in med school we used to call it the Zombie Disease. It could take months or even years, but one of these days, mom will be nothing more than an animated corpse.”

“And then what, we shoot her in the head?”

“No. We take her off medical support and let nature run its course.”

“If we’re not doing everything in our power to save her, we’re killing her.”

“And if we let her become a bed-wetting, pants-shitting, incoherent shell of herself, we’re killing every laugh, every smile and every wonderful moment we’ve ever shared with her. MEMORIES are life after death, Chris; not some fucking gated community in the clouds where she and your dad will reunite and live happily ever after.”

“I don’t appreciate you belittling my life’s work.”

“Yeah? Well now you know how mom feels.”

Robyn’s wall of words broke like a dam holding back a flood of tears. She turned towards the window and stared at her mother until she became blurred beyond recognition.

Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Vrinda Agrawal