tale of the hourglass

I’m so excited and happy to have my story “Tale of the Hourglass”  included in the beautiful debut issue of Rose Red Review!

Rose Red Review is a new online journal which “seeks to publish art, photography, fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry that best reflects the magic in the every day–work that honors the past, the moment, and the uncertain future.”

Click here to read “Tale of the Hourglass” and be sure to check out all of the talented writers and artists collected in this lovely issue!

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i stand here ironing by tillie olsen

photo by Samuel Kravitt

 

I Stand Here Ironing   by Tillie Olsen

 

I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.

“I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure you can help me understand her. She’s a youngster who needs help and whom I’m deeply interested in helping.”

“Who needs help.” … Even if I came, what good would it do? You think because I am her mother I have a key or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me.

And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total? I will start and there will be an interruption and I will have to gather it all together again. Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and what cannot be helped.

She was a beautiful baby. The first and only one of our five that was beautiful at birth. You do not guess how new and uneasy her tenancy in her now-loveliness. You did not know her all those years she was thought homely, or see her poring over her baby pictures, making me tell her over and over how beautiful she had been – and would be, I would tell her – and was now, to the seeing eye. But the seeing eyes were few or nonexistent. Including mine.

I nursed her. They feel that’s important nowadays. I nursed all the children, but with her, with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood. I did like the books then said. Though her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed.

Why do I put that first? I do not even know if it matters, or if it explains anything.

She was a beautiful baby. She blew shining bubbles of sound. She loved motion, loved light, loved color and music and textures. She would lie on the floor in her blue overalls patting the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur. She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all, for I worked or looked for work and for Emily’s father, who “could no longer endure” (he wrote in his good-bye note) “sharing want with us.”

I was nineteen. It was the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression. I would start running as soon as I got off the streetcar, running up the stairs, the place smelling sour, and awake or asleep to startle awake, when she saw me she would break into a clogged weeping that could not be comforted, a weeping I can hear yet.

After a while I found a job hashing at night so I could be with her days, and it was better. But it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her.

It took a long time to raise the money for her fare back. Then she got chicken pox and I had to wait longer. When she finally came, I hardly knew her, walking quick and nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin and dressed in a shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at the pock-marks. All the baby loveliness gone.

She was two. Old enough for nursery school they said, and I did not know then what I know now – the fatigue of the long day, and the lacerations of group life in the kinds of nurseries that are only parking places for children.

Except that it would have made no difference if I had known. It was the only place there was. It was the only way we could be together, the only way I could hold a job.

And even without knowing, I knew. I knew the teacher that was evil because all these years it has curdled into my memory, the little by hunched in the corner, her rasp, “why aren’t you outside, because Alvin hits you? that’s no reason, go out, scaredy.” I knew Emily hated it even if she did not clutch and implore “don’t go Mommy” like the other children, mornings.

She always had a reason why we should stay home. Momma, you look sick. Momma, I feel sick. Momma, the teachers aren’t there today, they’re sick. Momma, we can’t go, there was a fire there last night. momma, it’s a holiday today, no school, they told me.

But never a direct protest, never rebellion. I think of our others in their three-, four-year-oldness – the explosions, the tempers, the denunciations, the demands – and I feel suddenly ill. I put the iron down. What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?

The old man living in the back once said in his gentle way: “You should smile at Emily more when you look at her.” What was in my face when I looked at her? I loved her. There were all the acts of love.

It was only with the others I remembered what he said, and it was the face of joy, and not of care or tightness or worry I turned to them – too late for Emily. She does not smile easily, let alone almost always as here brothers and sisters do. Her face is closed and sombre, but when she wants, how fluid. You must have seen it in her pantomimes, you spoke of her rare gift for comedy on the stage that rouses a laughter out of the audience so dear they applaud and applaud and do not want to let her go.

Where does it come from, that comedy? There was none of it in her when she came back to me that second time, after I had had to send her away again. She had a new daddy now to learn to love, and I think perhaps it was a better time.

Except when we left her alone nights, telling ourselves she was old enough.

“Can’t you go some other time, Mommy, like tomorrow?” she would ask. “Will it be just a little while you’ll be gone? Do you promise?”

The time we came back, the front door open, the clock on the floor in the hall. She rigid awake. “It wasn’t just a little while. I didn’t cry. Three times I called you, just three times, and then I ran downstairs to open the door so you could come faster. The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.”

She said the clock talked loud again that night I went to the hospital to have Susan. She was delirious with the fever that comes before red measles, but she was fully conscious all the week I was gone and the week after we were home when she could not come near the new baby or me.

She did not get well. She stayed skeleton thin, not wanting to eat, and night after night after night she had nightmares. She would call for me, and I would rouse from exhaustion to sleepily call back: “You’re all right, darling, go to sleep, it’s just a dream,” and if she still called, in a sterner voice, “Now go to sleep, Emily, there’s nothing to hurt you.” Twice, only twice, when I had to get up for Susan anyhow, I went in to sit with her.

Now when it is too late (as if she would let me hold and comfort her like I do the others) I get up and go to her at once at her moan or restless stirring. “Are you awake, Emily? Can I get you something?” And the answer is always the same: “No, I’m all right, go back to sleep, Mother.”

They persuaded me at the clinic to send her away to a convalescent home in the country where “she can have the kind of food and care you can’t manage for her, and you’ll be free to concentrate on the new baby.” They still send children to that place. I see pictures on the society page of sleek young women planning affairs to raise money for it, or dancing at the affairs, or decorating Easter eggs or filling Christmas stockings for the children.

They never have a picture of the children so I do not know if the girls still wear those gigantic red bows and the ravaged looks on the every other Sunday when parents can come to visit “unless otherwise notified” – as we were notified the first six weeks.

Oh it is a handsome place, green lawns and tall trees and fluted flower beds. high up on the balconies of each cottage the children stand, the girls in their red bows and white dresses, the boys in white suits and giant red ties. The parents stand below shrieking up to be heard and the children shriek down to be heard, and between them the invisible wall “Not To Be Contaminated by Parental Germs or Physical Affection.”

There was a tiny girl who always stood hand in hand with Emily. Her parents never came. One visit she was gone. “They moved her to Rose Cottage>” Emily shouted in explanation. “They don’t like you to love anybody here.”

She wrote once a week, the labored writing of a seven-year-old. “I am fine. How is the baby. If I write my leter nicly I will have a star. Love.” There never was a star. We wrote every other day, letters she could never hold or keep but only hear read – once. “We simply do not have room for children to keep any personal possessions,” they patiently explained when we pieced one Sunday’s shrieking together to plead how much it would mean to Emily, who loved so to keep things, to be allowed to keep her letters and cards.

Each visit she looked frailer. “She isn’t eating,” they told us.

(They had runny eggs for breakfast or mush with lumps, Emily said later, I’d hold in my mouth and not swallow. Nothing ever tasted good, just when they had chicken.)

It took us eight months to get her released home, and only the fact that she gained back so little of her seven lost pounds convinced the social worker.

I used to try to hold and love her after she came back, but her body would stay stiff, and after a while she’d push away. She ate little. Food sickened her, and I think much of life too. Oh she had physical lightness and brightness, twinkling by on skates, bouncing like a ball up and down up and down over the jump rope, skimming over the hill; but these were momentary.

She fretted about her appearance, thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blond replica of Shirley Tmeple. The doorbell sometimes rang for her, but no one seemed to come and play in the house or be a best friend. Maybe because we moved so much.

There was a boy she loved painfully through two school semesters. months later she told me how she had taken pennies from my purse to buy him candy. “Licorice was his favorite and I brought him some every day, but he still liked Jennifer better’n me. Why, Mommy?” The kind of question for which there is no answer.

School was a worry to her. She was not glib or quick in a world where glibness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn. To her overworked and exasperated teachers she was an overconscientious “slow learner” who kept trying to catch up and was absent entirely too often.

I let her be absent, though sometimes the illness was imaginary. How different from my now-strictness about attendance with the others. I wasn’t working. We had a new baby, I was home anyhow. Sometimes, after Susan grew old enough, I would keep her home from school, too, to have them all together.

Mostly Emily had asthma, and her breathing, harsh and labored, would fill the house with a curiously tranquil sound. I would bring the two old dresser mirrors and her boxes of collections to her bed. She would select beads and single earrings, bottle tops and shells,dried flowers and pebbles, old postcards and scraps, all sorts of oddments; then she and Susan would play Kingdom, setting up landscapes and furniture, peopling them with action.

Those were the only times of peaceful companionship between her and Susan. I have edged away from it, that poisonous feeling between them, that terrible balancing of hurt and needs I had to do between the two, and did so badly, those earlier years.

Oh there are conflicts between the others too, each one human, needing, demanding, hurting, taking – but only between Emily and Susan, no, Emily toward Susan that corroding resentment. It seems so obvious on the surface, yet it is not obvious. Susan, the second child, Susan, golden- and curly-haired and chubby, quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner Emily was not; Susan, not able to resist Emily’s precious things, losing or sometimes clumsily breaking them; Susan telling jokes and riddles to company for applause while Emily sat silent (to say to me later: that was my riddle, Mother, I told it to Susan); Susan, who for all the five years’ difference in age was just a year behind Emily in developing physically.

I am glad for that slow physical development that widened the difference between her and her contemporaries, though she suffered over it. She was too vulnerable for that terrible world of youthful competition, of preening and parading, of constant measuring of yourself against every other, of envy, “If I had that copper hair,” “If I had that skin …” She tormented herself enough about not looking like the others, there was enough of the unsureness, the having to be conscous of words before you speak, the constant caring – what are they thinking of me? without having it all magnified by the merciless physical drives.

Ronnie is calling. He is wet and I change him. It is rare there is such a cry now. That time of motherhood is almost behind me when the ear is not one’s own but must always be racked and listening for the child cry, the child call. We sit for a while and I hold him, looking out over the city spread in charcoal with its soft aisles of light. “Shoogily,” he breathes and curls closer. I carry him back to bed, asleep. Shoogily. A funny word, a family word, inherited from Emily, invented by her to say: comfort.

In this and other ways she leaves her seal, I say aloud. And startle at my saying it. What do I mean? What did I start to gather together, to try and make coherent? I was at the terrible, growing years. War years. I do not remember them well. I was working, there were four smaller ones now, there was not time for her. She had to help be a mother, and housekeeper, and shopper. She had to set her seal. Mornings of crisis and near hysteria trying to get lunches packed, hair combed, coats and shoes found, everyone to school or Child Care on time, the baby ready for transportation. And always the paper scribbled on by a smaller one, the book looked at by Susan then mislaid, the homework not done. Running out to that huge school where she was one, she was lost, she was a drop; suffering over her unpreparedness, stammering and unsure in her classes.

There was so little time left at night after the kids were bedded down. She would struggle over books, always eating (it was in those years she developed her enormous appetite that is legendary in our family) and I would be ironing, or preparing food for the next day, or writing V-mail to Bill, or tending the baby. Sometimes, to make me laugh, or out of her despair, she would imitate happenings or types at school.

I think I said once: “Why don’t you do something like this in the school amateur show?” One morning she phoned me at work, hardly understandable through the weeping: “Mother, I did it. I won, I won; they gave me first prize; they clapped and clapped and wouldn’t let me go.”

Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had been in her anonymity.

She began to be asked to perform at other high schools, even in colleges, then at city and statewide affairs. The first one we went to, I only recognized her that first moment when thin, shy, she almost drowned herself in the curtains. Then: Was this Emily? The control, the command, the convulsing and deadly clowning, the spell, then the roaring, stamping audience, unwilling to let this rare and precious laughter out of their lives.

Afterwards. You ought to do something about her with a gift like that – but without money or knowing how, what does one do? We have left it all to her, and the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as been used and growing.

She is coming. She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful step, and I know she is happy tonight. Whatever it was that occasioned your call did not happen today.

“Aren’t you ever going to finish ironing, Mother? Whistler painted his mother in a rocker. I’d have to paint mine standing over an ironing board.” This is one of her communicative nights and she tells me everything and nothing as she fixes herself a plate of food out of the icebox.

She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were you concerned? She will find her way.

She starts up the stairs to bed. “Don’t get me up with the rest in the morning.” “But I thought you were having midterms.” “Oh, those,” she comes back in, kisses me, and says quite lightly, “in a couple of years when we’ll all be atom-dead they won’t matter a bit.”

She has said it before. She believes it. But because I have been dredging the past, and all that compounds a human being is so heavy and meaningful in me, I cannot endure it tonight.

I will never total it all. I will never come in to say: She was a child seldom smiled at. Her father left me before she was a year old. I had to work her first six years when there was work, or I sent her home and to his relatives. There were years she had care she hated. She was dark and thin and foreign-looking in a world where the prestige went to blondness and curly hair and dimples; she was slow where glibness was prized. She was a child of anxious, not proud, love. We were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth. I was a young mother, I was a distracted mother. There were the other children pushing up, demanding. Her younger sister seemed all that she was not. There were years she did not let me touch her. She kept too much to herself, her life was such she had to keep too  much in herself. My wisdom came too late. She has much to her and probably little will come of it. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear.

Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloom – but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know – help make it so there is cause for her to know – that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.

*

kaleidoscope

Halfway to Long Island, Ben had a panic attack and had to pull over to the side of the road. Still clutching the damp and wrinkled directions in his hand, he decided that he was a jerk, an idiot, for thinking that they would even want to see him.

Each exit he passed was the one he was going to get off, the one that would take him as far away as possible. The sun was prismatic; it shattered the sky with kaleidoscopic color. He couldn’t see through the glare on the windshield. His head was pounding.

Taking a deep breath, he wiped his brow, then pulled back onto the parkway. It was nearing two o’clock. He knew Ari wouldn’t be home from school yet, which would give him a little time alone with Robin. He couldn’t face them both at the same time. Ben parked at least ten houses away from where Robin lived.

She had moved, Matt said, because the rent at their old place got too high. She was living in a basement apartment outside of the city with Ari. Ben knew Robin had always hated suburbia and he felt a pang of sadness as he passed houses that all looked the same, searching for the right number.

78. It was a decent, rundown house. Matt had told him to go through the side gate, which lead to the backyard. To the right was a stairwell lined with painted terra cotta pots and chimes that, moved by the sudden wind, rang in cacophony. He descended the stairs, his hand clutching the bag which held Ari’s gift. After several deep breaths, he knocked tentatively on Robin’s door.

“What does he want?” was the second thought that ran through Robin’s head. The first thought was not a thought; it was a visualization of action. She wanted to back away from the door. She wanted to run away and hide. She stayed in the hallway for a few seconds, her heart racing.

Ari looked like just like him: same nose, same eyebrows, same jut of the chin. Ben’s eyes were Ari’s eyes, pale green or blue, depending on his mood and the way his mind was turning. Ben bit his lip nervously. He was wearing an impossibly thin coat despite the March snow that still lingered in the bottom of the stairwell. She opened the door a crack and met his eyes.

“I know … it’s been a while,” he said. His hands were shaking slightly, and he attempted to put them in his pockets. The shopping bag secured around his wrist caused him to struggle to find his right pocket, until he gave up and let his arm fall by his side, still clutching the bag.

“What are you doing here?” Robin asked.

Ben opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He looked at her plaintively, unable to find the words. She closed her eyes slightly, and opened the door further for him to enter.

They moved around each other in the small space. Robin thought, how strange it was to have loved someone so fully, to have breathed that person in until he had become part of her; and then, to have him before her as a person she could not touch, a person she could no longer lay claim to.

“Would you like some coffee?” She asked.

“I would love some.”

Moments passed in uncomfortable silence. Ben looked around the kitchen, trying to find threads of their old life. His eye caught the painting above the table, “That’s new?”

Robin turned and followed his gaze to a rather small abstract painting; it was a scene of the beach, the colors muted and distant. Sometimes Robin thought she could hear the cry of seagulls, their insatiable hunger, vibrate on the surface of the canvas.

She tensed. “Oh, that. I finished that about a year ago.”

“It’s … it’s really beautiful,” Ben said. He cleared his throat. “You’ve gotten a lot better. I mean, you were always great. But it’s different …”

“Why don’t you sit down?” Robin asked.

Ben wondered which place was Ari’s. There were three chairs at the table; the thought that the third chair might belong to someone else pained him. He remained standing.

“I read your book.”

“Oh.” Ben said. “I’m almost done with my second one … that’s why I’m here. I mean, that’s why I’m here in New York.”

“I see,” Robin said, looking down at her hands. “How’s that coming?”

“Good, I guess. You know. It can be… difficult, at times.” Ben cleared his throat again. “You know how it is.”

“I don’t know if I do, Ben.” Robin said, her voice edging discomfort. The coffee pot behind her continued its persistent sound, a noise that seemed to gather volume as they avoided each others eyes.

Ben wrapped his hands around his cup. Robin imagined that if he lifted a finger, or his palm, off the cup, he would crumble. She wondered if she would try to put him back together, or if she would purse her lips and blow, as if that movement of air would push him away, scatter the past like dust.

“I can’t force a conversation with you …” Robin began.

Ben looked at the painting again. “You know I’ve been in and out of the hospital, right?”

“I’ve talked to Matt.”

“It’s the meds … They’re supposed to be making me better, more stable. But I think they’re just making me worse.” He paused then leaped ahead as if crossing a stretch as wide and deep as a fault line in the earth.

“Do you know how much I’ve missed you?”

“How could I know that, Ben? After the first time you just checked out. You left. Nothing …” Robin struggled to control herself. “Didn’t you think about Ari? Even once?”

“Of course I did.” Ben faced her. “I wanted … How could I …”

They stared at each other for a long while, frankly, viewing each other in parts that did not quite make up a whole.

Robin’s face told him about the days she had waited to hear from him, about Ari at six, seven, years he missed, years he left her to take on the responsibility by herself. Ben’s face told her about the nights he had stayed away from her, about the spiraling downs, the manic highs, the loneliness and the guilt, the bathroom mirror at 3am, all the pills.

“I brought something for him,” Ben said, motioning to the bag that he finally released and placed on the table.

After deciding to visit Robin and Ari, Ben had rationalized that he couldn’t show up empty handed. Matt told him about a store in Manhattan that was packed with curiosities and antiques, all unusual or different in some way. Ben had walked throughout the store lightly; afraid he would bump into something and knock it over.

“Can I help you, Sir?” A well-dressed saleswoman had asked, eyeing Ben as if she wasn’t quite sure he could afford most of the items in the store.

“Yes, I’m looking for a gift… for a boy, about seven years old.”

“What are some of the little boy’s interests? Science? Art? Music, perhaps?”

Ben didn’t know what Ari’s interests were, but he couldn’t say that; he barely wanted to recognize it himself. “I just want to get him something unique and beautiful … something he can hold, something to stir his imagination.”

The saleswoman had nodded and directed Ben towards the back of the shop. It was there that he noticed a kaleidoscope, tucked into a corner. Ben picked it up and looked through it. The world changed unexpectedly. It was breathtaking and filled him with a deep joy. He wanted to share that vision, that momentary enchantment.

Robin looked at the clock. Ari would be home from school soon.

“How is he?” Ben asked, averting his eyes.

“He’s okay. He’s really smart, really creative. I don’t think he has that many friends in school. But he’s relatively happy.” Robin paused. “You hurt him, Ben. He and I have a great relationship, but … I’m not his father.”

“Look at me.” Ben said, extending his hands upward. “I’m a fucking mess, Robin. It’s better that I’ve stayed away all these years.”

“Better for who?”

“For you, for Ari. I can’t be what you need.”

“What do you know about what we need? You’ve been, what, in and out of hospitals, you’ve been working on your second book. You, you, you. Do you hear yourself?” Robin felt her voice growing louder. “It’s all about you. It always was.”

Ben looked at her with relief; he would no longer have to wait for her anger, knowing it would come but not knowing when. “You’ve always been the more responsible one.”

“Because I had to be,” Robin spat at him, “Don’t you think I’ve wanted to be free of consequences, to do whatever the fuck I want, to really concentrate on my art, and not just … when I can?”

“Is that what you think I do? You have Ari, you have a life… I have nothing. Words, paper, a book. I spend half my time writing and the other half of it wanting to die. You want that? You can have it. You can have my disorder and my pills and my instability and my fucking overwhelming emptiness.”

Robin gazed into the living room, instinctively searching out the painting she had done when Ari was about five years old, around the time Ben had left. When it was finished, she had laid it against the wall to finish drying. Robin had sensed that it was a turning point in her work.

That night, when Ari had walked into the kitchen for dinner, Robin remembered turning to him, noticing his look of joy, then his hand, streaked with yellow ochre and alizarin crimson. Her heart had seemed to stop.

“You didn’t touch Mommy’s painting, did you?”

“I’m an artist, too!” Ari laughed.

Robin had raced into the living room to check the painting. The right side of the painting was blurred along the edge. Ari had taken his hand and allowed it to travel downwards in a long stroke, as if petting a sleepy cat.

Robin broke down. She literally fell to the floor in front of the painting; the strength that she had seemed to summon since Ben left was gone. She wept openly, bitterly. Ari watched, his eyes wide and scared. Robin caught his expression through her own pain, and knew that she would have to pull it together, allow the gaping wound to scar, accept that it might never heal. She needed to be stronger. For herself, for Ari.

At 3:25, the school bus arrived. Robin had told Ben it would be better for him to wait inside the apartment.

She stood on the sidewalk and waited for Ari to descend from the bus. The sun was cold brightness. Light refracted from windows and the chrome of car bumpers, throwing a dizzying spell.

Ari’s blonde head burned brightly under it; his hair was getting a little too long, and he pushed it from his eyes in order to see Robin. He ran across the street, smiling, dragging his book bag on the ground, his coat thrown open against the rough wind.

“Ari. Hold on a sec.” Robin looked at him, his face was so trusting, as open as the sky.

“What’s up?” Ari asked, furrowing his eyebrows and smiling at the break in their routine.

“Someone came over … someone we haven’t seen for a long time. Your father …”

A cloud passed across Ari’s face. Robin didn’t have time to explain any further; he took off running and didn’t slow down until he reached the gate. Robin was breathing hard when she caught up to him.

“Ari,” she said.

He avoided her eyes.

“Are you sure … I mean, it’s sudden. Are you okay with this?” Robin paused. “I can tell him to leave.”

“No,” he whispered. He didn’t move. He didn’t look at her; he stood rooted outside the gate.

“Do you want me to go in first?” Robin placed her arm protectively around his shoulders, and he nodded.

Ben was sitting in the living room, on the couch that doubled as Robin’s bed, his head in his hands. He looked up when they walked in, his face pale, so pale that Robin instantly asked, “Ben? Are you okay?”

Ari stood behind Robin, the way he used to do when he was much younger, when he was afraid of grown-ups, of strangers.

“I’m … I feel a little sick. I’ll be fine.” Ben tried to smile, but the smile came out more like a grimace.

“Ari, sit down,” Robin said, “let me get your snack.”

Ari sat at the kitchen table. His large eyes, dark and unsmiling, were focused on Ben.

“I brought something for you, Ari.” Ben said the boy’s name as if tasting a new word. “It’s right there, in that bag. You can take it out.”

Ari reached into the bag and took out a wrapped box. He opened the wrapping slowly, carefully, until he reached the plain cardboard that held his gift inside. Lifting each corner flap, he tipped the box so its contents fell into his hand. He turned the object over.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A kaleidoscope. It’s an old-fashioned one,” Ben said.

Robin set a cup of milk in front of Ari, along with some cookies on a paper napkin. “Wow, Ben, that’s really beautiful.”

The kaleidoscope was heavy. The body was constructed of solid wood, the lens was real glass. The turning chamber was an oil filled cell infused with color, containing pieces of glass, beads, wire, polymer clay and other hand made trinkets.

Ari gazed into the object, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“Well,” Robin asked, “What do you see?”

“Colors,” he said. “I see a star, full of colors and shapes. When I turn this part, the picture changes. This is really cool.”

Ari looked at Robin; he seemed slightly dazed, as if his equilibrium had been altered by the spell of the object. He held the kaleidoscope possessively in his hand and glanced at Ben.

“Thank you,” Ari said softly.

“I … I just wanted to see you for a little bit. But I have to go now.” Ben stood up.

Ari looked up at his father in disbelief.

“It will probably take me about an hour to get the car back to the city, and my flight’s at six o’clock,” Ben explained thinly.

“You’re leaving?”

Robin watched Ari’s face change. She turned towards Ben as the kaleidoscope hit him in the jaw with a smack, a thud, and then crashed to the floor. Ben instinctively put his hand to his face; his eyes filled with tears.

Ari ran out of the kitchen.

“Go.” Robin said sadly. She put her hand on his cheek and gently brushed his bruised jaw with her thumb. Ben closed his eyes. He remained still, as if her touch extended beyond his face to the entire surface of his skin, then deeper, to his heart, his soul.

As she walked down the short hallway to Ari’s room, she heard the faint click of the door closing behind him.

Robin called Ari’s name, then stood outside his door and waited. Moments passed. Each second Robin felt the distance between them growing and shaping into something real.

She thought about the kaleidoscope in her hand and wanted to cradle it in her arms, to restore it to its earlier safety, inside the box, wrapped, an unexpected gift. She called his name again.

Ari opened the door slightly, and then returned to his bed. He curled up, facing the wall. Robin entered lightly and sat on the edge. She smoothed the hair from his damp forehead and placed the kaleidoscope beside him.

“Did I break it?”

“No,” Robin said, “It’s okay.”

Ari touched the kaleidoscope gingerly and held it to his chest.

“I didn’t mean to throw it.”

“I know.” Robin lied down on the bed next to him. Side by side, they searched the cracks in the ceiling.

“Will he ever come back?”

Robin wrapped her arms around Ari and closed her eyes. She imagined Ben leaving, walking into the raw sun, the wind beating down on his shoulders, leaving, over and again, caught the cycle of eternal return.

into the woods

Into the woods – Lost Children: Hansel and Gretel revisited

Once upon a time, there lived a brother and sister; the brother was called Hansel, and the sister was called Gretel. They lived in a small cottage with their father deep in the woods. Their mother was dead, and they were very poor. Their father loved Hansel and Gretel more than anything in the world, and he longed for them to have a mother again. He, too, longed for the touch of a woman again. He remarried out of hope, lost in the ashes of despair and loneliness. But he married a cold and cruel woman. She could not find it in her heart to love Hansel and Gretel, and soon began devising ways in which to get rid of them, to send them deep into the heart of the forest, to leave them alone with lean grey wolves, to lose them so completely that they would be lost forever -

“What are you reading?”

Hannah was startled and shuddered a gasp, her eyes wide. The book on her lap trembled as she looked toward the open window, where she saw Gregory’s face, mild and curious, looking at her.

“Shh!” she said, putting a finger to her lips. She looked quickly at her closed bedroom door, then got up and went to the window.

“Gregory, do you want to get me in trouble?” she whispered.

“No.” Gregory hesitated. “I came to say hello.”

“Hello.” Hannah said, “Now, goodbye, goodnight.” She turned away from the window.

“Wait -”

Hannah closed her eyes. She liked Gregory a lot, but she knew that if her step-father caught him here, like this, in the middle of the night – she didn’t want to think of the consequences.

“What are you reading?”

“Gregory, please, you need to leave.”

“Why won’t you call me ‘Greg’? Only my grandparents and my teachers call me Gregory.”

“I like the name Gregory -” Hannah stopped, “Whatever. We can talk about this another time. You are going to get me into serious trouble. If anyone wakes up -” Tears came to Hannah’s eyes; she bit her lip.

“Hey… hey, I’m sorry. I thought you might like the surprise.”

“I don’t.”

This wasn’t going at all like Greg had planned. He thought she might find his visit romantic, or something. What did he know, he thought. He was twelve years old and in love. Was it love? If it wasn’t love, then what was that weird feeling in his stomach when he thought of Hannah, of her long golden hair, of her soft voice. The wild, sweet smelling roses in his hand were wilting, and he suddenly squeezed the bouquet so tightly that one of the thorns bit his palm and trickled blood into his hand.

“I’m sorry.” He held the flowers into the open window. “Really I am.”

“Oh.” Hannah said, surprised, looking from the roses to Gregory’s face. He was blushing deeply.

Her hand reached out to accept the gift and for a moment, she held the bouquet in both hands, bringing the flowers close to her face, brushing the petals against her lips so she could inhale their scent, before her bedroom door suddenly opened.

She froze for an instant, then quickly threw the flowers out of the window. Greg saw her eyes flash, the way he imagined a doe would look as an oncoming car advanced, stock-still with fear, unable to defend herself against the crash. Her step-father stood at the doorway.

Greg crouched low. His heart was beating so fast, so loudly inside his chest, he was sure he would be found out.

Hannah was right, he shouldn’t have come. He didn’t want to get her in trouble. He didn’t think about that. He lived with his grandparents, and they didn’t care what he did or where he went. His mother was a teenager when she had him, and she left him with his grandparents when he was born. No one knew who his father was; he was a grey shadow. And all he knew of his mother was that gave birth to him, and then she left him; his grandparents said that she was lost.

“Get away from that window.”

Hannah’s step-father staggered across the room and grabbed her arm. He smiled at her, a cold, cruel smile. Then he let go of her arm and touched her hair, letting it run through his fingers.

“You know what I want. Get into bed.” Hannah began to cry softly.

Greg heard her crying. He didn’t know what was going on. Her step-father closed the light but he didn’t leave the room. Greg was afraid to leave, he was afraid to stay. He didn’t want to make a sound.

All was silence, more silence, then silence broken by sobs. And then sounds that he wished he never heard; sounds that he never should have heard. Rose petals and thorns were scattered on the ground around him. The scent was so sweet, so sickly sweet, he felt his stomach heave, and then he ran, he ran and ran, across streets and houses and into the woods as far as he could, before the nausea overtook him and he fell to the ground, shaking and in tears.

Night passed, and Greg awoke to the dawn chorus of birds and the first weak rays of the sun. He went home.

Grandmother and Grandfather were at the kitchen table, eating breakfast. They didn’t acknowledge him. They didn’t even know he had been gone all night. He went straight to his room, and tried to go back to sleep, back to blessed unconsciousness, but he couldn’t. He tossed and turned the nightmare of the previous night still vivid in his mind. Hannah. He had to do something. He had to help her.

The next morning he went to Hannah’s. Her mother greeted him at the door. She was wearing a grey dress. She smiled.

“Yes, Hannah’s home, Gregory, come on in.”

Greg walked into the hallway and stood there awkwardly as Hannah’s mother called her name several times.

“Hi Gregory.” Hannah appeared shyly.

“Hey, want to go for a walk or hang out at the park or something?”

“Umm, I …” Hannah’s face turned red. “I can’t right now.”

Hannah’s mother turned to her. “You’ve been stuck in that room all day. Go outside. It’s summer.”

“I’m reading.”

“Go outside.” Hannah’s mom said firmly. “Take a walk with Gregory. Go to the park or something, just be home by dinner. Remember, I have an overnight shift tonight.”

Hannah looked quickly at her mother. “But I thought you said no more overnights.”

“I know, I know. But we need the money, sweetie. You won’t be alone. Your dad will be here.”

“He’s not my dad.” Hannah said, her voice edging anger.

Hannah’s mother let out a long, resigned sigh. Greg looked at the floor, his mind working. She didn’t know, he thought, her mother didn’t know.

“I’m sorry.” She said, and tried to give her a hug, but Hannah turned away.

“Let’s go Gregory.” Hannah began to walk out of the door.

“Hannah.” Her mother called after her; it was a soft cry, a plea.

The screen door slammed as Hannah left the house and Greg shifted uncomfortably in the hallway, left alone with Hannah’s mother, who seemed on the verge of tears.

“It’s okay. Her father died only a few years ago. It’s been very difficult, very hard on her – but, it’s okay, go… Thank you, Gregory, for being a friend to her. She hasn’t made many friends since we moved here.”

Greg nodded and left to find Hannah; together they walked towards the park.

They walked in silence. Every once in a while he heard Hannah sniff and saw her wipe her eyes. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to tell her the plan, but it seemed more difficult now that she was there to hear it.

“I want to help you.” Greg said.

“You can’t help me. No one can help me. I don’t even know why you are here.” Hannah began to cry even more.

“But I can help you… I want to. I like you, Hannah. I mean, I.” Greg stopped, took a deep breath, and began again.

“You should tell your mother.”

“No.”

“The way I see it is that there are two options. The first, probably the smartest, is to tell your mother.”

“No.”

“But why not?”

“I said NO.”

“But Hannah –”

“I tried already, okay! She wouldn’t listen to me. She thought I was making it up because I lost my real dad, because we moved here and I didn’t want to.” Hannah was crying, sobbing hard.

Greg watched her helplessly. He wasn’t used to girls crying like this. He wasn’t used to any of this. He wanted to kill her step-father. He wanted to kill him.

“We can go somewhere else. Just keep walking through the woods and come out somewhere new, somewhere people don’t know us. We can change our names.”

“She wouldn’t listen to me.” Hannah whispered.

“You can’t stay there. You can’t.”

“I don’t want to.”

“So that’s the second plan. We’ll run away. We’ll go somewhere else. I promise I’ll protect you. I won’t let him hurt you ever again.”

Hannah’s tears began to subside into small sobs.

“Tonight, we’ll go tonight. After your mother goes to work … I’ll meet you at the window and you can jump. Bring enough to fit into a bag. But you’ll be carrying that bag for a while so don’t make it heavy. Some clothes, some food.”

“Books?” she added.

“Yeah,” Greg said, “whatever you want. Just don’t make it heavy. We can’t take too much because we’ll be walking an awful lot.”

“Are you sure about this, Gregory?” Hannah looked at him with liquid eyes. “What if we get lost? What if we get killed in the woods?”

“I used to be Boy Scout, Hannah. I know how to survive in the woods.”

As the afternoon progressed, so did their plan. Greg had no reason to stay with his grandparents. He knew they didn’t want him around anyway. Hannah needed help. She needed him.

At home, Greg gathered everything he thought they might need. Despite telling Hannah not to make her bag heavy, he knew he was making his a little heavy. He could handle the weight. They needed cooking utensils, the camp stove, a tarp, sleeping bags, and all the dry food he could take from his grandparents’ pantry. He gathered spare rope, his Swiss army knife, matches, and a change of clothes.

What do you take, he thought, knowing you won’t ever return? There was his trophy from the years he spent playing baseball. His collection of baseball cards. His collection of comics. His old stuffed animal that he never slept with anymore, well almost never. A picture of his mother.

No, he thought. Those were child’s things. He didn’t need those things. He didn’t feel much like a child anymore. He double and triple checked his bag. When he left the house, his grandparents were watching television. He said “see you later” and there was no answer, no goodbye.

Promptly at ten o’clock, he approached Hannah’s window. He could see her pacing the room.

“I’m here.” Greg whispered.

Hannah swiftly eased her bag from under the bed. She handed it to Greg and he placed it on the ground beside him. He noted that it wasn’t too heavy. He wondered what she had brought. He watched her as she glanced at her bedroom door and then began to make her way through the window.

“I’m scared.” Hannah said, perched on the window ledge.

“I’ll catch you.”

“No, just – get out of the way. I’m going to jump.”

It wasn’t a far jump. She hit the ground with both feet and grabbed her bag.

“Okay, remember, just like we said. Don’t run. We won’t run. Just walk as normal as possible.”

Greg continued to talk in a nervous but soothing sort of way. The words filled the air between them as they walked steadily into the woods. When they reached the woods they did not even pause, they just kept walking.

“It’s so dark.” Hannah said, moving closer to Greg.

“It’s okay; I have a flashlight, let’s just get in a little further. I don’t want to attract attention with the light.”

Hannah’s eyes strained to see through the blackness. There were no shadows, no shades of grey. Greg had walked these paths so many times, he moved more by memory than anything else. Hannah tripped over some stray branches on the path and let out a cry.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so. I just can’t see anything.”

“Hold my hand … if you want to.”

Hannah reached for his hand. She held it tightly. Greg felt his heart beat wildly. They would walk a little further, and then he’d take out the flashlight. Maybe Hannah would keep holding his hand.

He knew of an old grey cabin hidden deep in the woods; that’s where they were headed. It was rumored that a witch lived there, but he knew that it was really only an abandoned shed. They would have to walk as fast and as far away as possible before Hannah’s step-father discovered that she was missing. He knew that her mother would freak out and call the police. He knew his grandparents wouldn’t notice that he was gone right away, but they would eventually.

He shifted the weight on his back and squeezed her hand. They had a dark, twisting path ahead, and a lot of ground to cover, before they got too tired, before night broke into day, before they were found, lost.

review 10/17

BBQCHICKENROBOT
17 October 2011.
Storychord’s Around The Campfire @ HousingWorks Bookstore Cafe.
Art-acoustic-events-indie

Tonight online literary/music/visual arts journal Storychord’s founder, Sarah Knowles, presented an evening of spooky stories, spookier songs and — this part’s the spookiest — S’MORES. It provided a perfect transition into the impending madness of CMJ week.First worth noting is the intimate venue, HousingWorks Bookstore Cafe in New York’s Greenwich Village. The old-timey structure boasts wrapping staircases, walls stuffed with books and a pious vibe. That last part’s likely thanks to the establishment’s charitable roots. Absolutely all proceeds generated from book, media and cafe sales go to benefit those affected by AIDS and homelessness. Now ain’t that just the coolest?

Painter Andrea Sparacio contributed the event-specific diptych featuring a toasty outdoor fire. The piece set the night’s Halloweenie mood.

Fiction writer Mile Klee went up first to bat. He recited a flowery, winding piece set in the 18th century. Klee mentioned a friend once asked if the story specifically investigated an addiction to the Internet. Giggles abounded following the quick share, but Klee never confirmed nor denied this claim.

Katie Mullins brought her ukulele and oversize Jewish harp to the stage after. She sang a four-song story following a freshly-fallen couple throughout the first three-word exchanges to the inevitably grisly camping trip to… well, the theme was spooky, right? Mullins coaxed a lavishly creeping quality from her handheld harp and married it sweetly to her Andrew Bird-challenging whistle. It was her voice that shined as the standout feature of her set, of course, though… it dripped from the raised platform one part woodland nymph battle-cry, another part flaming phoenix yodel. Each time time her mouth opened, she seemed reborn — an event mirrored through the rekindled, astutely attentive audience.

Tim Mucci uttered the most terrifying tale of the evening. He airily delivered a macabre plot twisting around a child’s early-life scaring glimpse at death during a family roadtrip. Mucci coiled the following words to cap his story off with a house full of goosebumps.

Another reader, Michelle Augello-Page, stood the stage next. Her prose morosely danced throughout a forest of deceit and infidelity. The words hung ornate, impossible to understand without its cousins. Augello-Page’s story cradled a complex beauty that perhaps would better be appreciated when printed. That doesn’t mean I don’t plan to look up just that, y’know.

A guitar and its master, Will Stratton (buddy of Sufjan Stevens, NBD…), closed the night’s curtains. Strumming his strings as if they lived on a banjo, he belted ballads of murder, hexing love and — of course — mercury poisoning. Nothing screeches scarier than abundant mounds of fresh yellowtail or cracked thermometers (guess on which he sing-song waxed). Hear his record, New Vanguard Blues, recorded in Queens just last summer via Bandcamp. He also mentioned a new full-length due in November — something worth an eye-out.

To make matters better, the show yielded a decent 100-something turn-out. Fingers crossed it raised some funds for HousingWorks’ good aims and those good aims of Storychord, too. The evening proved a fine start to a wild week, this time, in the tune of tasty twang.
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Many thanks to BBQCHICKENROBOT for this review!

fiction reading

I’ll be reading one of my stories, Dream-Lover, at this event on Monday, October 17, 2011, 7:00pm – 9:00pm @ Housing Works Bookstore Cafe.

Kick off your CMJ week and Halloween holiday with art/fiction/music journal Storychord.com. Every other Monday, Storychord.com features one story, one image, and a one-song “soundtrack”.

Musical guests WILL STRATTON and KATIE MULLINS will perform spooky sets in front of an exclusive display by artist ANDREA SPARACIO. Fiction writers MILES KLEE, TIM MUCCI, and MICHELLE AUGELLO-PAGE will read eerie tales. And last, but not least, the Cafe will serve S’MORES for full campfire effect.

FREE ADMISSION / OPEN TO ALL … and proceeds from book/cafe purchases during the event will support Housingworks’ amazing outreach & fundraising efforts for people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Check out this event listing in TimeOut NY and Flavorpill. Hope to see you there!

dream-lover

He descended every night.

Some nights, the steps were light, and he found himself in a sun dappled wood, surrounded by blue sky and bird song, the stairs nature-made from loam and rock. Other nights, the staircase was cold and dark, a spiraling descent that saw no end in the blackness below, and Paul would guide himself by feeling the damp stone walls, moving slowly, carefully, the only sounds being the echo of his footfall and his shallow breath.

He descended each and every night, and lost himself in a world of dreams, in the blissful arms of Lily, his dream-lover …

I’m so excited to be reading this story at a special event in October! More details to follow!

the alchemist’s lover

He watched me throughout, an anxious nurse, brushing jewels from my eyes, kissing life into my mouth, and dressing my skin with vines of moonflower and ivy. He loved me as night turned to morning glory light; pressed to my heart, he listened to my dreams, to my soft eager words.

* Follow the link from the picture above or click here to view Victorian Gothic’s page on moonflowers, and get an idea of some of the botanical inspiration behind this story! I’m really excited about this story and hope to see it in print soon. Wish me luck! xo

tale of the hourglass

The late sun threw jagged light across Ash’s face. She stirred slightly and felt someone next to her in bed. Fragile wisps of dyed black hair fell across broad shoulders, but his face was turned away. Ash’s gaze lingered, and she traced her finger above the intricate patterns on his back. The colours and symbols mapped pieces of his life, a journey which had only just begun.

She took a deep breath and followed the light across the room, where it settled on the top shelf of her armoire, hitting the center of the hourglass with amazing accuracy, the reddish tinted sands of time bursting as if on fire. Ash watched the hourglass intently; the bottom portion was nearly full, the top portion waning. She felt the irresistible urge to run across the room and turn the hourglass upon its head, though she knew it would not move for her…

I’m really excited about this story and recently submitted it for publication! Wish me Luck!!! xo

“the firebird’s nest” by salman rushdie

Now I am ready to tell how bodies are changed
Into different bodies.
– Ovid, The Metamorphoses

And so, “The Firebird’s Nest” by Salman Rushdie begins.

It begins with language, painting the landscape with words, allowing us to feel dry heat settling and stagnating over the barren land, and immediately connects the land to the body, defining the land in terms of gender, knowing that the body is always political.

It is a hot place, flat and sere. The rains have failed so often that now they say instead, the drought succeeded. They are plainsmen, livestock farmers, but their cattle are deserting them. The cattle, staggering, migrate south and east in search of water, and rattle as they walk. Their skulls, horned mile-posts, line the route of their vain exodus. There is water to the west, but it is salt. Soon even these marshes will have given up the ghost. Tumbleweed blows across the leached grey flats. There are cracks big enough to swallow a man.

An apt enough way for a farmer to die: to be eaten by his land.
Women do not die that way. Women catch fire, and burn.

Then Rushdie drops us into the story; we are travelling over the landscape with Mr Maharaj, a prince, and a yellow haired American woman who is presented as his bride. It is the beginnings of a fairy tale.

Here Mr Maharaj is still the prince, and she, his new princess. As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoing that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written, and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.

It is so hot. She shivers.

Rushdie draws strong connections to the body, and directs us towards the physicality of “story” as told through the body. He alludes to books, tangible words, pages and papers in which a story is written, leading us to the actual story being written, our present history, our present fairytale. “It is so hot. She shivers.”

The fairytale idea also continues when they pass a wedding party. The American imagines that “they have found this happy ending” and is surprised that the wedding is between an old man and a young virgin from a distant village. She is even more surprised at the talk of dowry, the economic exchange of brides and money, and panics as transsexual dancers and chaos surround the vehicle after recognizing her as an American.

Then the story begins to present the characters in a more complex way. The yellow haired woman is a financial advisor, a “rainmaker.” She is America, the “american dream”, an embodiment of the physical country. Mr Maharaj is India, old India struggling to survive in this modern world.

The body, once again, becomes the stage in which this plays out. And all of a sudden, the story is no longer about these two characters, but about these two countries, and ecomomic realities dictated by money, the terrible divide between the poor and the rich.

Once upon a time in ‘America’, they had shared an Indian lunch three hundred feet above street-level, at a table with a view of the vernal lushness of the park, feasting their eyes upon an opulence of vegetation which now, as she remembers it in this desiccated landscape, feels obscene. My country is just like yours, he’d said, flirting. Big, turbulent, and full of gods. We speak our kind of bad English and you speak yours. And before you became Romans, when you were just colonials, our masters were the same. You defeated them before we did. So now you have more money than we do. Otherwise, we’re the same.

The American then guesses that “he came from a place unlike anything she had ever experienced, whose languages she would struggle to master, whose codes she might never break…” She enters the crumbling palace of Mr Maharaj, and is woken in the morning by the sound of drums and dancers. The lead dancer is Miss Maharaj, Mr Maharaj’s sister. The American faces her, asking

What are you doing?
A dance against the firebird. A propitiatory dance, to ward it off.
The firebird. (She thinks of Stravinsky, of Lincoln Center.)
Miss Maharaj inclines her head. The bird which never sings, she says. Whose nest is secret; whose malevolent wings brush women’s bodies, and we burn.
But surely there is no such bird. It’s just an old wives’ tale.
Here there are no old wives’ tales. Alas, there are no old wives.

Again, the body. The dance inhabits the body and gives it power, weaving movement and intention; the dance becomes a ward and protection against the firebird; the firebird’s touch is the touch of men, the annihiliation of women. Later, Miss Maharaj tries to explain to the American:

Without noticing its beginnings, so that we did not resist until it was too late, until the new way of things was fixed, there has occured a terrible, terminal rupture between our men and women. When men say they fear the absence of rain, when women say we fear the presence of fire, this is what we mean. Something has been unleashed in us. It’s too late to tame it now.

Miss Maharaj goes on, trying to explain the meaning of the firebird in another way, a simpler way. “Once upon a time there was a great prince here…” Here, Rushdie engages fairytale again as another method of truth telling. “And the villagers said that the old prince, consumed by rage, has been transformed into a giant bird, a bird composed entirely of flames, and that was the bird that burned the princess, and returns, these days, to turn other women to ashes at their husband’s cruel command.” The American asks her if she thinks the story is true, and she responds:

Do not mistake the abnormal for the untrue. We are caught in metaphors. They transfigure us, and reveal the meaning of our lives.

And that is the crux of what I love so much about this story, that it spins and spirals and reveals itself in all of its many facets, by connecting the body to language and love and sex and enviornment and politics and economics and mythology and history.

The story expands again when the American becomes pregnant, and culminates in a confrontation with the firebird. I am not going to transcribe or summarize any further, only to say that this is an amazing piece of work, important and devastating and brilliant, and deserves to be read and shared and reflected upon.

I found this story in the anthology “Telling Tales”, edited by Nadine Gordimer, an overall excellent collection!