Impermanence.

Her name escapes me now, but her face was unforgettable. The woman—I will call her Sarah—had half-inch fake eyelashes, sparkly pink lips, and her forehead, cheeks, and chin were plumped and plastered unnaturally smooth across the broad bones of her face. She had long inky black hair pulled up in a bright scrunchy, and her voice, simultaneously booming and breathless, could be heard in the furthest garden behind the meditation hall whilst Sarah was still inside the communal dining area.

She looked much younger than her age—fifty-five! she bellowed gleefully to everyone she spoke to within minutes of the introduction. Sarah beamed, and although the skin on her powdered face didn’t move much when she smiled, her eyes twinkled with childish delight. You couldn’t help but smile with her.

She was a refreshing eccentric, amongst the quiet crowd of introspective acolytes. We were a pretty mild mixed-bag of a retreat crowd: we were accountants, lawyers, or something in IT. There were a few yoga teachers and a handful younger, more overtly alternate-types, adorned in cheesecloth skirts and crop-top bodices and tattoos of Sanskrit symbols.

Most of us wore shy, thoughtful smiles that did not reveal our teeth, as we milled about the orientation hall. We were contemplating the days ahead, and what we’d just signed ourselves up for: ten days of no speaking, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, no exercise, and sitting Vipassana practice in the meditation hall for around ten hours a day, starting at 4:00 a.m.

If Sarah was nervous, she didn’t show it. She wore a fluorescent Hawaiian jumpsuit, very short, and she appeared to be fizzing with excitement. Within half an hour she’d bounced through the shy fidgety crowd and introduced herself to everyone, leaving laughter, furrowed eyebrows, and darting glances in her wake. Sarah, as everyone soon heard, was anartiste, an actress.  She’d played minor roles in a few minor movies, and received some minor awards—here, right here, see? And look—she swiped—here was another photo of her at the award ceremony, and here—look! look!– another one, in a different dress. She had a beautiful daughter who was twenty, who was an actress also—see? Sarah’s day job was proprietor and clinician of a Botox clinic. COME! She grasped the arm of her startled interlocutor. Oh, you really must come, come and stay in her home! She would cook for you! She would give you Botox treatment, no charge, not for such a friend as you. She beamed with the earnest warmth of a doting aunt and the appraising eye of a fond expert. She could also do something with your hair and make-up, too, she added warmly. Sarah did not seem particularly nonplussed by the fact that none of the other women, from the strait-laced accountants to the cheesecloth-bodiced seekers, appeared to be wearing, or exhibiting any interest in, makeup. Nor did she seem to notice the startled quality of the stuttered thanks and smiling murmurs of Oh, Uh, Maybe. She just bounced off to the next person and repeated her kind offers of hospitality and free Botox. She was a fountain of beneficent enthusiasm.

That first evening, when the retreat coordinators reviewed the schedule and reminded us all of the 4 a.m. start, Sarah gasped loudly and sat bolt upright. Her shock was not affected; it seems she genuinely hadn’t thought to check the program of this funny place, before signing up. This amazed me. It filled me with something like awe, given the hours I’d spent scowling cynically at my laptop, making absolutely certain this wasn’t some kind of weird, woowoo cult that would make me wear flowers in my hair or flop around on the floor to the beat of amateur bongo drums. I’d vetted the philosophy and reputation of the practice and the facility for weeks before deciding. Sarah, it seemed, had just rocked up. 

She was there at 3:55 the next morning, pacing silently in the cold and dark in front of the meditation hall. She was there, on her cushion, every single morning, by 4:00.  She was there even on mornings when a good deal of the surrounding cushions were empty; when sleep had won out against the bristling self-serious determination of many of her more somber retreat companions.

Sarah never spoke a word in the meditation hall. She belched. She belched noisily, pleasantly, and un-self-consciously. She was several cushion places and one row behind me, and I could hear her exhale contentedly after each burp. I bit my cheeks, trying not to laugh.

Like all of us, Sarah shuffled. We could all hear our companions’ shuffling, in the sitting hall; the quick shift of a painful knee, the discreet stretch of an ankle on fire, or the muffled re-fluffing of cushions. We all experimented with the cushions in those first few days, apparently reasoning that if we got the configuration just right, we’d be able to avoid the pain of sitting motionless for hours at a time. We took another, and yet another, cushion from the rack before each sitting. We built clever cushion ziggurats to perch on, certain we could avoid discomfort if only we kept experimenting. After a few days, most of us finally realised the futility of this; and that there was a path through the pain, to the other side of it, that was far more interesting than our squirmy, fruitless attempts to avoid it. But Sarah didn’t bother with cushion configurations for a straight-back sitting posture. By the end of the first morning, she chose a back-support chair, oblivious to the nonsensical imaginary stigma of weakness the rest of us had subconsciously assigned to that humiliating crutch, as we eyed it ruefully beside the cushion rack. 

The days passed. Soon, we shuffled less. Then, we barely noticed even the silence of the still, quiet crowd, as all of us individually sank deeper into the fascinating experience that is an intensive Vipassana retreat. 

~ 

On the tenth day, the final morning session came to a close, and several dozen pairs of eyes opened slowly and serenely inside the hall. I’m certain I wasn’t the only one who felt I’d just barely scratched the surface. I spoke to several people later who agreed that by the end of Day One, they were mortified by the torturous stretch of time ahead; and by the end of Day Nine, they desperately wanted to stay another week. It’s difficult to describe the tangible quality of the joy and tranquillity the teacher guides you into over those ten silent days, and difficult to explain what you learn about your own mind and body. It was utterly unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and as a sat there in the hall, my eyes slowly becoming accustomed to the light again, I felt semi-intoxicated. The breakfast bell sounded, peaceful faces smiled all around, arms stretched, and necks slowly craned. From the row behind came a loud, blunt, holler:

“SO! Uh . . . can we talk yet?” 

We were indeed permitted to talk in those last few hours, and the atmosphere that day was one of surreal communal elation. Strangers wandered over to a random table; the seated company warmly welcomed them; everyone inquired with warm interest as to who their companions were, what in their lives had brought them to this place, how they felt now that it was over, what they hoped to carry away from such an intense experience. Our faces glowed and our eyes shone, giddy and brimming with metta.

Sarah, too, was thrilled to be able to commune verbally again, although she didn’t seem much interesting in discussing the previous days. Within a few minutes, her conversation had returned to the appearance of the other female attendees, to enthusiastic invitations to come and stay at her house and get free Botox, to commentary on more photographs of her in evening dress at the award ceremony. She darted and flitted around, but now lingered—I noticed—a little more closely to those who seemed more kindly disposed to her. Some people were finding it difficult to hide an awkward desire to—kindly, smilingly—put some distance between themselves and Sarah.

Her conversation was mostly cheerful and bubbly, but some of it was genuinely disconcerting. She held her phone aloft for the benefit of the others at thetable—wanna see a picture of my BOYFRIEND? Haha! Just kidding. Oh my god, oh my god. She swiped, and a ridiculously tense-looking muscular young man appeared in a variety of selfie poses. Sarah dissolved into raucous giggles. My boyfriend! My boyfriend! 

Some people pressed their lips into a gentle smile, gave her a warm nod, then turned back to their conversation. Others made a cheerful rejoinder, patted her shoulder, then edged away. One or two of the younger ones simply stared at her, genuinely amazed. And it was a little surreal. Sarah was, it must be said, a fifty-five-year-old woman whose conversation skills in many ways had not developed beyond those of an adolescent. She squealed and clutched your arm, giggling over the kind of things very young girls giggled over. Her seeming indifference to the profoundly intense experience she’d just undergone was absolutely bizarre. Seated amongst a cluster of women talking intensely about their sittings in the hall, I heard Sarah blurt out unselfconsciously that she’d mainly come to lose weight. A stunned silence followed. Oh, sure! she beamed. Locked into a rigid retreat schedule where you weren’t allowed off the grounds, and only served two vegetarian meals a day—what better way to shed a few pounds? Sarah was perfectly serious. The group dissolved in kindly, stupefied laughter. Really? Oh yeah, she shrugged. Sarah had never missed a sitting; she’d practiced all those long, long hours, felt her spine and all her joints burn and ache with pain, listened to the madman ravings of her mind, and passed through to the other side of the gruelling experience, just like the rest of us. And all to lose a few pounds. I watched one young woman—dressed in a scarlet satin number reminiscent in design of Princess Jasmine’s outfit in Disney’s Aladdin, and covered in Buddha-themed tattoos—as her jaw dropped open.

Soon Sarah was enthusiastically soliciting numbers for a WhatsApp group: so that everyone could stay in touch! All friends together. Given that we were all, essentially, strangers and had only really spoken to each for the last hour or so, she was met with more surprise than enthusiasm. Some people froze, when she handed them her phone to enter their contact details. Others, after only an imperceptible pause, shared their contact, thanking her warmly for considering them. Some stuttered apologies: they didn’t have WhatsApp . . . no, nor email either, they were not really email people. I watched people tactfully duck and dart around the dining room to avoid her.

It was the group photo that Sarah insistently arranged, on the stairs in front of the meditation hall, that proved the final straw. Ok! she boomed to the tightly packed group. Now, everyone, smile for the camera! She handed her phone to the server, then bolted back to the front row and spread out peace sign fingers wide beneath a cheesy grin. Again, again, another photo! The young woman in the Princess Jasmine suit with the buddha tattoos groaned audibly. 

Ok, ok, one more! Sarah shouted up at us.

Now:

Everyone say:

ANI-CHE!

The Jasmine-suit woman hissed loud enough for the whole company to hear: this is embarrassing.

And I completely fell apart.

I never got a copy of that photo. The truth is—and I am not proud of this—that I was one of those that smiled and stammered something about not actually possessing any contact details, the automatic reaction of most introverts, when a stranger solicits phone numbers. So, I never made it into the WhatsApp group. But I’m pretty sure I know what the photo looks like. It looks like a group of people pressed tight into a stairwell, wearing facial expressions ranging from tranquil to perplexed to baffled and dread-filled. I’m pretty sure the Jasmine-suit woman is clenching her teeth. I recall a handful of kindly quiet older ladies whom I’m certain are wearing warm, loving smiles. One or two of them had even agreeably murmured the sansrkit word ‘Anicca!’ (pronounced ani-che), upon Sarah’s insistence that we all shout it, as if there were nothing odd about randomly substituting the Buddhist term for impermanence, for “CHEEEESE!”. And then there’s me, about row five, my cheeks pink and my mouth idiotically agape. I was shaking with laughter.

I couldn’t stop laughing. Sarah made such perfect fools of us all. We’d all just spent ten days in a state of deep concentration, practicing how to notice and transcend reactions of aversion. And the instant I came out of my bliss trance, here was Sarah, squealing about Botox and fad diets, thrusting grotesque amateur muscle-man photos in my face. The departure of bliss like water down a plug hole, and the resurgence of aversion was so strong I could feel it prickle up my whole body, albeit mingled with a kind of bovine, bleating denial of my own urge to run away from her.

The last day in particular had focussed on metta meditation practice, on cultivating loving-kindness and compassion for all beings. I had stumbled out of the hall feeling such abundant, overwhelming loving-kindness; for my silent companions, for that big yellow spider near the gate so beautiful it brought a tear to your eye, for the swaying bamboo overhead, for All Beings, Everywhere. And after two minutes of being cornered by Sarah, listening to her giggle and shriek about sexting with her make-believe boyfriends, I found that my cheeks were beginning to stiffen and twitch. Sarah simply refused to fit the noble, beautiful, tranquil mold into which I had mentally squished All Beings, Everywhere, in order to love them.

She revealed me—all of us—as so laughable in our earnestness, so adorable in our newfound contemplative gravity. Sarah was so kind, so generous, a woman whose frailties were no different than the rest of ours, and yet who was—in a way—so much more transparent about them. Sarah, it seemed reasonable to conclude, was one of those women who had never, her whole life, been given any respect or any regard, save in relation to how she looked. It was painful to picture her as a little girl, staring wide-eyed all around her, searching for a role model; someone to teach her how to be kind to herself, how to value herself, how to connect with others in a meaningful way. Beneath her raucous overtures was a real longing, the same longing as all of us felt, to connect; please, come to my house. Please, let me call you. I’ll give you things for free. I will feed you. 

There are a great many stories in various spiritual traditions about the importance of showing compassion and loving-kindness to all kinds of supposed undesirables: to beggars in the marketplace, to whom you should give your cloak; to adulterers and thieves, the outcast and condemned; to the poor, the incarcerated, the proud, the cruel, and the wicked, for they know not what they do. It seems to me this list of potential compassion targets is some pretty elementary stuff. In my experience, it’s far more difficult to feel loving-kindness for the average stranger loudly crunching an apple in confined public transport space than it is to give alms to the poor and embrace the pitiful and outcast. It’s easier to love the downtrodden than the noisy and flamboyant aspiring pop culture icon. Sarah was not an outcast of the world, she was everything the world had told her to be: an Instagram starlet, a woman so desperate to avoid aging she had devoted her career to artificially forestalling it, a noisy, bubbly, wealthy, body weight-obsessed, Pretty Girl, earnestly enacting a role that masked all the deeper and more vulnerable parts of herself.   

Ajahn Chah says: Anything which is troubling you, anything which is irritating you: that is your teacher. Sarah was my teacher. She made me see, for a fleeting instant when that ‘ani-che!’ photograph snapped, all of us within each other, all our states of being morphing and sliding in and out of one another. The vision wasn’t beatific, but it was rather beautiful, in a hilarious kind of way. A lovely human collage of fused-together impermanence. The stricken-faced girl with the spiritual tattoos and the Princess Jasmine outfit: that was me. I hid it better, but there I was, deep inside my innermost thoughts and feelings, cringing and groaning and deeply embarrassed to be posing for the cheesy ‘peace fingers’ retreat photo. The kindly older women who smiled for the camera so as not to hurt Sarah’s feelings, that was me too, in a way; deep, deep down, there was still a part of me able to choose kindness and compassion, despite the bleating protest of my pompous spiritual dignity. And Sarah, the odd one amongst us all, who showered generosity so profusely, whose desire for connection manifested so desperately, who wore her insecurities and misguided longings on her sleeve—that was me, too, although I wore my afflictions on a far less prominent place than my sleeve. That was all of us. People whose lives are all hunky-dory, A-Ok don’t bother signing up for an experience like that.

I’ve forgotten a lot of the recorded teachings from those ten days. I can’t remember much beyond the gist of the teacher’s evening talks. I did not march forth from the retreat and commence a stringent, unshakeable daily two-hour practice at home. I still find time on the cushion every day, sometimes for five minutes sometimes for thirty, sometimes in a state of deep tranquillity, sometimes as skittish and neurotic as a short-changed squirrel. But I’ve never forgotten Sarah, or whatever her name was (I’d know, if was in the WhatsApp group). I’ve never forgotten that mirror she held up to my face, captured in a photograph I’ll probably never see. I’ve never forgotten her inadvertent admonition to remember my own state of being, and the state of all things: all things sacred, and all things silly.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 1. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Care Bear for Sale

I’m about to be mugged over a fucking Care Bear. Togetherness Bear. Don’t ask how it came to be in my possession. Okay, fine, go ahead. I opened my front door one morning, and it was sitting there. I’m not lying. There was a box and I opened it and there he was.

I hear you say, “That’s a bit unusual, mate.”

Well, yeah, I guess it is. But unusual has this way of happening to me. Like the time I opened my door to find detectives standing there. I would have preferred the Care Bear, especially as the house was surrounded by armed police officers. 

Two words for you: past occupants. The detectives mumbled apologies and left, but this Care Bear has stayed.

The first time I was mugged it was over a pair of drumsticks. I thought the man running toward me in the flannelette shirt was going for a late-night jog—until he stopped and began throwing punches. The second time I was mugged, it was over a traffic cone. This will be the first time I’ve been mugged for a Care Bear.

Why am I so certain I will be mugged for the Bear?

It started two days ago, with someone who shares the name of a Bronte novel.  She came at me within seconds of creating the listing. 

“I really, really want this,” she said. “When can I get it?”

“How does tomorrow sound?”

And so, while I sit waiting, I browse her profile and notice something.

Care Bears. Everywhere.

Buying, selling, it doesn’t matter. She needs Care Bears like a junkie needs their next fix. 

“I’m really sick,” she tells me, and I think to myself, in the head?

“I can’t make it today,” she continues. “I’m pregnant.”

I say congratulations, and tell her it’s okay, and that in the meantime, other people are longing for this Care Bear, and she understands this, because at this moment she wants nothing else more than said Bear.

“Can you please hold it for me?” she asks, and for a second, I think she wants me to embrace the chap; to cuddle him, and let it know that a new owner will be with it soon. But then I snap out of this Care Bear daze of insanity.

“Yes, of course,” I reply. “Same time?”

“Yes!” she says. “I want him so much.”

So, here I am on this couch, rocking back and forth while reading a news headline:

MAN BEATEN BY THUGS POSING AS BUYERS FOR HIS IPHONE.

“This isn’t an iPhone,” I reassure myself.  But thoughts of rooms filled with Care Bears, like those on her profile, start to infiltrate logic, and I resign myself to fate.

MAN STABBED FOR CARE BEAR.

I can see the headline now. I ponder my final words. 

“Shhh!” I whisper to the empty house. I hear a car pull up outside. I run to the toilet window, because it’s inconspicuous, and no one will expect anyone to peer at them through there.

But shit. She has already escaped my vision, she’s already at the door. This is it.

I pick up the box, the same one that appeared on my doorstep on that sunny morning in November. My dog stares directly at me.

“Really?” she says. “You could be making something of your life.”

I shrug my shoulders. The Care Bear is life.

I turn the door handle and there she is. Dripping wet, curly red hair and barefoot, as if she has taken part in a triathlon to get here. I look around, expecting to see a bike and other competitors, before remembering that I’m about to be mugged.

She stares at the ground, unable to make eye contact, waving cash in the air.

“I’m here for the Care Bear,” she says, breathing heavily, eyes fixated on my feet.

“Here it is,” I say, presenting her with the Bear. 

This is when it will happen; the shanking. The box arrives in her hands and I reach for the money. The knife will pierce my skin any minute. I’ll fall to the ground, arms outstretched, clasping for the Care Bear that caused this, reaching for the remnants of my life.

But it never comes. The money lands in my hand.

“Merry Christmas,” I say, relief washing over me like the waves that clearly drenched her hair.

“You too!” she replies, skipping away with the Bear, back towards a car that still has the engine running, driver in place for a quick getaway.

She clearly forgot the knife. I look at my dog, and she wags her tail.

The Care Bear is responsible for my next two dinners. As I sit chewing my food, gratitude hits me. I’m grateful I wasn’t shanked over a Care Bear and grateful for the food on my plate.

I still think of him whenever I open my front door. Maybe one day there will be another box. Maybe not. But I will always remember the day he arrived on my doorstep and the day he left, via a barefoot girl with dripping wet hair, heavy breathing, who was maybe pregnant, and who may or may not have forgot to bring a knife to our Craigslist sale.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 1. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

The Skeletons Wash Their Hands Before Supper

When I was seven and you were five, you moved into my bedroom. They needed your room for the new baby. I don’t remember having any feelings about it—you spent all your time with me anyways. There was plenty of room for both of us.

We wanted bunk beds, but that option was never on the table. So, we slid your twin bed down the green carpet of the hallway and into the far corner of my bedroom. Now, it was our room.

Before you moved in, I made a twelve-foot-long clover chain and hung it from the ceiling beside my bed. We wove your Barrel-O-Monkeys into it and draped our new creation around the window frame like a strange, gaudy necklace. Your porcelain birthday dolls joined mine on the highest shelf, the first five of my brunettes now standing beside blonde twin sisters. Our closet was crammed with all the toys: my Easy Bake Oven and art supplies got cozy with your Lincoln Logs and doll clothes. Your Barney comforter clashed severely with the rainbow bedding I’d picked a couple of years earlier, but we didn’t mind conflating the two. Dad installed the folding bed rail you insisted on keeping for the safety of your dolls. Every night, you raised the rail to secure them in your bed while I rolled my eyes behind my chapter book.

The foot of my bed was in the doorway. On your first night, you told me that was good because I was stronger and could fight off robbers. Although I insisted that I wasn’t worried, I secretly checked the window locks behind my headboard every night.

Until the baby was born, we received excellent turn-down service from Mom and Dad. After my shower and your bath, we would read books in bed until one of them came to give us little glasses of water and turn off the lights. Then they would sit on the floor for a few minutes and offer prayers, stories, or songs.

We liked Dad’s nights the best because he told us “little boy stories” from his childhood. Our favorite was the one where he knocked out six baby teeth on a rock by jumping out of a backyard swing. We also loved the one where two of his permanent teeth got knocked out in a college basketball game. Mom really tried. But her “little girl stories” frankly weren’t very interesting—her childhood illnesses and hospital stays were no match for all of Dad’s missing teeth—so instead, we asked her to sing. Her repertoire was limited to “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music, various hymns, and the handful of 1970s pop songs she had performed to with her high school dance team. Her singing voice, high-pitched and whispery, became increasingly shrill as she began to doze off. To relieve her of her duties, we would pretend to fall asleep. After she left the room, you would give me an encore, mimicking Mom’s feathery voice with an eerie precision that caused us both to erupt into giggles.

At some point after you moved in, we begged for a pair of giant pillows at the Family Dollar, just so we could have one matching item on our beds. Constructed of hot pink velvet, the pillows were a little longer than our twin beds were wide. As needed, they could transform into lightsabers or prevent our baby brother from rolling too far across the room. On the days our parents fought, they were the doors to the secret hideout under our desk. We would spread out my sleeping bag on the floor, tuck our favorite Beanie Babies into our laps, and prop up the pillows in front of the desk so no one could see in or out. You always brought a doll or two, and my job was to procure entertainment. I’d read you stories, or we’d make friendship bracelets.

When the fighting got really bad, we ducked into our closet, which was split in half by a plywood divider wall. We had to squeeze into my side because your side was genuinely spooky. For starters, there was a small, flimsy door that led down into the crawl space. (I opened it once.) Next to the door was a defunct water faucet. It didn’t turn on and didn’t have any purpose as far as we knew. Weird stuff aside, your half of the closet was full of our shoes and mine had the toy shelves. While we waited for things to blow over, we’d slide the slatted doors shut and scarf down dry packets of Easy Bake Oven mix.

After the baby came and our parents were too tired to fight all the time, I convinced you that skeletons lived under that closet. I’m not sure if I actually wanted to scare you or if I just found the story entertaining. Every night when we turned out our light, the skeletons would wake up. They would use their bony fingers to raise the latch and climb through the panel. Then they would turn on the faucet so they could wash their hands before supper. They feasted on anything they could find as they lurked in the recesses of the closet: Barbie shoes, dried-up markers, Lite Brite pegs. To wash it all down, they took swigs out of the paint can left over from the previous year’s nursery remodel. You were petrified. If I really wanted to play it up, I’d tap my fingernails on the wall by my bed and tell you a bony hand was on the loose and headed in your direction.

For practical purposes, we did have our own sides of the room. My side had stacks of chapter books and yours had under-bed bins brimming with baby doll clothes. We didn’t have room for a dresser, but there was a desk between the beds that doubled as a nightstand. When your baby dolls inevitably tumbled from your bed and started crawling toward mine, I unrolled a line of white masking tape down the middle of the floor.

At night, the sides melted away. You always wanted to talk. Or sing the alphabet. Or play games, like Twenty Questions or “Invisible I Spy,” in which one of us described an item like an animal on our wallpaper or a dress in our closet while the other guessed what the item was. Sometimes, we both masturbated and raced to see who could “get to the good part” first. Do you remember the night when Dad walked in on us? He made us stop but didn’t explain what we were doing or why he didn’t want us to do it. After that, we just made sure to be quieter. It distracted us from the robbers and the skeletons. And the demons.

The demons existed exclusively in your reality. They were the shadowy creatures that lived under your bed and possessed the power to pull you down into hell by the ankles. You often woke up needing to pee but were too scared to get up. Since I didn’t believe in the demons, we eventually worked out that we could use my ankles as bait while you made your escape. I didn’t mind protecting you. But some nights, I just wanted to read chapter books by the light of my glow- in-the-dark watch, so I would shine my watch at the floor to deactivate the demons and light your path. Other nights, I would remind you about the skeletons under the closet and tell you they might find their way into your bed if you didn’t shut up.

Every Saturday, we stripped our beds and washed the sheets. Your bed had an extra knit blanket and a waterproof mattress protector—for nights when the demons won. These were items I had never noticed when you had your own room. But the moment you moved in, making our shared world feel fair became essential. I grabbed the purple-and-blue Afghan throw from the living room sofa and an extra fitted sheet from the bathroom linen closet and called it good. I never told you, but I would continue making my bed with two layers of fitted sheets every week until you outgrew the need for a mattress protector. It took two years.

~

When I was twenty-eight and you were twenty-six, you withdrew from my life. Your husband and baby needed you. You still don’t know how I feel about it because your new brand of religion shields you from people like me. You’re convinced there isn’t room for both of us.

According to the Apostle Paul, you and I can no longer share a table. For five years, my wife and I spent holidays, vacations, and late nights on the phone with you. So, when we came to town for Grandma’s funeral that November weekend, we were happy to make room in our plans for a last-minute coffee with you and your husband.

Minutes before our departing flight, your husband opened his Bible app and scrolled to 1 Corinthians. While you nodded and stared at your hands, he explained that “we may no longer have fellowship.” That while the two of you would still be able to accept our generosity, you could no longer extend invitations. You chimed in, half-whispering that you needed to roll out this white line to secure your own family’s salvation. That your theology severely clashed with my rainbow flag, and you didn’t want anyone accidentally conflating the two.

On the plane, your words hung heavily, choking me like a too-tight necklace.

Birthdays come and go. My wife and I buy your kids all the toys: Lincoln Logs, a sandbox, really good books. It’s not their fault that you’re like this. We live in the same town as you now, so we stop by your porch with your children’s birthday gifts. We’re not allowed inside the door.

You don’t need me to protect you from robbers anymore—your husband’s bedside gun collection is more than sufficient for that. But what happens on the nights when your demons show up? I have always worried for you. Every Saturday, I still strip my bed and wash the sheets. I am guessing you do too.

If only you didn’t have to believe in so many kinds of demons. Maybe someday the sides will melt away and you will want to talk. For now, we will continue forcing smiles from across the room at holiday parties while uncles and grandparents play Twenty Questions or I Spy with our kids. I am the skeleton in your closet. Only, my hands will never be clean enough to join you for supper.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 1. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Nostos

Birds circle:
rich entertainment
and in the middle of it
nature not quite dead.
The sun’s blade makes
one last stab
across my back.

I am leaving you,
October of my grieving—
your gray head
your orange skirt flouncing
round your ankles.
I drive east in low gear
along the unmuscled arm of Ohio
heading toward November.

And as the sun falls behind me
trees huddle to mask
disaster. Darkness, unwelcome
takes over the sky.
I thank the stars for making
a colander of night.

I look up and ahead
through heaven’s perforation.
The landscape shrivels past—
I am Orpheus in a dress
and Eurydice blind.
I drive under an overpass.
Lights strain, headlights on the bridge
gleam like the eye
in the head of an oracle.

Elegy as a Writing Instructor in State Prison

2022 Chapbook Prize Finalist

I want to know the god these men know,

pounded to life on the chapel piano.

I want to disguise myself in desert air

and follow the hymn between each keyhole.

There’s a rebirth I’m missing as I exit

the guard kiosk & accelerate. I want to know

yearnings on the yards too violent to walk,

the single ember in a cell of one

who still believes in the god I want to know.

Mardi Gras

“Mardi Gras… Isn’t that the most euphonious appellation?” I closed my eyes and pronounced each syllable slowly, showing off my English and French skill to my brother, Kevin.

My initiation into the amalgam of cultures of America.

“Mm,” from the other end of the line. That’s it? Just an “Mm”? But I’m not done yet…

I continued, “It’s an ancient holiday, preceded by Lundi Gras the Monday before. Fattened ox, boeuf gras, to indulge in before fasting. You know, a religious holiday. Celebrated in Rome and Venice in medieval Europe…”

Quiet.

His vague grin when he categorized my comments as rubbish flickered.

I was about to tell him that my apartment is a short distance from Elysian Fields, the site of Blanche DuBois’s tragic end in A Streetcar Named Desire, but then I remembered he had forbidden me to watch A Streetcar Named Desire at the Art Theater in Taipei.

I stopped talking and jotted down the arrival time of his flight from Los Angeles. After hanging up the phone, I drove down to Woolworths on Canal Street to get new sheets, pillows, and a blanket for the Murphy bed in my one-bedroom efficiency for his stay.

I couldn’t believe Kevin was taking off from work to visit me.

Growing up in Taiwan, I had been invisible to Kevin, the golden boy, the favorite son. I carried our lunch pails to and from school. He walked in strides ahead of me, his tall figure and handsome long face leading us into each school day. On the days we had sports, he had the first bowl of noodle soup. While I waited for the maid to fix a second one, he slurped next to my rumbling stomach. When he went off to college in America, we were uncommunicative till it was my turn for college at Tulane. Three weeks after my arrival in New Orleans, he announced he was coming to visit me.

I was elated. Eighteen long years waiting for his attention.

My studio apartment sat on top of a three-car garage at the back of a mansion on Magazine Street. My wealthy landlady, Adelaide, lived alone in the mansion with her maid.

Weeks before the holiday, pounding drumbeats and the winding Jazzy pitch of trumpets filled the air. Adelaide had party after party in her mansion. Universities closed on Mardi Gras as nobody bothered to attend class.

New Orleans’s antiquated cobblestone streets and wrought-iron-fenced balconies stuffed with crowds from all over the world. The hordes wandering up and down the lanes, some with open drinks, some already inebriated. The French Quarter jam packed; the early spring air stunk of urine, alcohol, and Cajun spices. Bodies covered in flashy costumes, faces behind mysterious masks. Heads adorned with jeweled crown pieces, turbans with feathers. Massive flamboyant floats, ensembles of dancers, color guards, and drum bands sashayed on main avenues. City crippled for days.

On the sidewalk of Canal Street, Kevin and I caught purple and gold strands of beads, chased after pink plastic cups with prints of Zulu King.

I should at least be grateful for Kevin buying us fancy dinners: Cajun Barbecue shrimps, crab etouffee, Andouille sausages with red beans and rice. On Mardi Gras day, Kevin slept till noon, went out by himself after lunch. I didn’t see him till the wee hours of the next morning, reeking of spirits and cigarette smoke. He was not in the state to receive ashes on Ash Wednesday, so I drove myself to church.

He had left my car with an empty gas tank. I wanted to say something to him, but he was asleep from his liquor induced stupor.

“A wild horse” my mother calls him, while I am “a gentle bunny rabbit.”

After I dropped him off at the airport, I didn’t hear from him. No thank you note. No inquiries about my school. Not even a Christmas card. A silent year. Until the next Mardi Gras. Yet I believed, or chose to believe, that Kevin wanted to see me at least once a year, and what better days than Mardi Gras to get us out of gloomy winters?

Years of life flew by in between many Mardi Gras. I graduated, worked, and married. My husband, Emilio, and I bought a large old house in the Garden District of New Orleans. In my starry-eyed view, a neighborhood close to the famed universities of Tulane and Loyola was a superb area to raise a family.

Big house, New Orleans, Mardi Gras. Kevin and his wife, Carrie, and his son, Joshua, came every Mardi Gras. Emilio and I became a popular couple. One year, Carrie invited her families to our house for the occasion. Suddenly, twenty some guests crammed our house, some we barely knew. They didn’t mind sleeping, or passing out, on the carpet, on the hallway, on the kitchen floor. At the end of the visit, they expressed gratitude exuberantly for a wonderful Mardi Gras holiday. Congratulated us on our good fortune living in a lovely historical home.

“Love you. Thank you for such a great time.”

“Oh, yes, love you. You are such a kind and gracious hostess. And you have a beautiful house.”

“Bye, love you, see you next Mardi Gras.” Joshua covered my face with smacking kisses.

They always said “love you” when they left. Love you, love you, love you, until the words sounded hollow.

For nearly fifteen years I had let myself believe that Mardi Gras was a sign of the real relationship between Kevin and me. A new milestone, a new tradition for our fledging families in America.

We enjoyed our new home. Our popularity fed our vanity.

Then we moved to the slow-paced, friendly, green foothills.

Greenville, South Carolina.

Our new house clutches the Enoree riverbank like a mollusk. The back yard slopes down to the winding waterway, tall trees overlooking the murmuring rock-strewn stream. I was planning to walk along the river path with Kevin’s family and share the view from my second-floor veranda with them. Kevin loves to eat. We could enjoy South Carolina Barbecue, Frogmore stew, corn bread, and collard greens.

The week before Mardi Gras, I stuffed the guest bathroom with toilet papers and towels, blew up air mattresses in the bonus room and packed the fridge, cleaned the house. Joshua adores chocolate milk, so I bought a large jug of Hershey’s chocolate syrup and a bag of marshmallows.

No phone call came to announce the arrival time.

Mardi Gras arrived, but Kevin never did.

Our neighbor, Brenda, invited us to watch a Mardi Gras parade in Greenville downtown Main Street.

On that Mardi Gras, the sky was cloudy and grim, a biting drizzle. Gray.

We stood on the sidewalk with an umbrella gifted by Greenville News. The parade was a relatively short entourage started with a big red fire truck, a high-flying American flag. Two white-haired gentlemen wearing Clemson baseball caps maneuvered two green and yellow John Deere tractors after the siren blaring fire truck. Behind the three vehicles, a band of children scrambled with American flags in their hands. It was a different parade from the ones in New Orleans and a different Mardi Gras celebration. Patriotic. Sober.

“No wonder Joshua didn’t come.” Zoe, my eleven-year-old, pouting. I was daunted by her brutal honesty.

Joshua. Rotund arms and legs, always with a good-natured smile.

I bite my lower lip, uncertain what to say.

“Let’s clear up the bonus room. Help me fold the air mattresses.” I held Zoe’s hand and lead her upstairs.

…better divert her attention… The move from New Orleans was tough on her.

“Uncle Kevin is bad.” Zoe said.

…Had I made it worse? Why clearing an unused bonus room now?...

“He is not bad. He is just inconsiderate. You don’t want to be like him.”

Yeah, Kevin could have called, saved me all the preparations. I was also wounded by missing a visit from his family. Worst, I had naively planned to take everyone to get ashes, hoping that we be reminded of our mortality and come to treasure what we have. But this inkling, like a premonition, was always at the back of my mind: Kevin and his family only wanted to be in the crescent city during carnivals. I was the convenience.

“That parade downtown was fun, wasn’t it?”

“Yea, it was ok. That boy gave me an American flag.”

“Oh, yeah, where is it?”

“Here, I’m going to put it in my room.”

I vacuumed the bonus room alone, sucked up all the dust. A family relationship is not like a business contract that you can terminate with a hasty signature. It’s not like Kevin had died, but it felt like it. Or I wished he had died. It would have been easier.

“Zoe, do you want some chocolate milk? The new chocolate syrup is in the pantry.”

“Yeah!!” Zoe skipped downstairs. Forgot about Joshua. Left me holding the old grudge.

“Let’s take a walk on the river path when you are done with your milk.”

We went out from the back porch. The earth was damp and the grass tender. Late afternoon sun peeked out, orange hue reflected on the soothing ripples around the glossy pebbles.

“I’m going to run. Do you want to run too? Mom?” Zoe had put on her tennis shoes.

“No, I can’t. I am just going to amble behind you, slowly.” I wiped her chocolate milk mustache, slightly relieved.

“We should go out for pizza; I don’t have energy left to prepare dinner.” I shouted to Zoe.

“That’s great, Mom.” As she ran, her voice became distant, wavering.

I meandered down the river path.

As I strolled, the illumination of the auburn sun, and the darkness of shade, alternated under the canopy of tree branches. I felt myself seeping gradually back into my own identity. Formed a new awareness. Finally, lost in the lulling whispers of the water, couldn’t even conjure up the image of Kevin, Carrie, or Joshua.