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 [img_assist|nid=914|title=Untitled by Nicole Koenitzer © 2006|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=120]Boarding to Siyang is called. It’s early morning, and the bus station is filled. I have to push through the crowd to reach the doorway where my bus is waiting. Everyone is carrying red plastic bags filled with food to give— fruit, peanuts, seeds. I am carrying my own plastic bag containing ten oranges and ten bananas. A middle-aged Chinese woman stressed the importance of bringing ten of each kind of fruit. I left ten pears at home, but the bag is still heavy. I hear a few passengers say, laowai, foreigner, as I walk down the aisle to my seat.

Four hours later, we pull into the bus station at Siyang.. This place is much smaller than Zhenjiang , where I have been living — more north and colder. Through the bus window I see my student smiling at me, and I wave. It’s the Spring Festival Holiday, the celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, and he has invited me to visit him. He and his father have come to receive me. His father has a wide smile and a cowlick in the back of his hair. My student walks ahead purposefully when I mention I need to buy a return ticket at the station. We stand in line, and he takes out a pink 100 yuan bill.

"I can pay," I weakly insist.

"Ivy, I’ll pay. Let me show you around."

That’s my student, Changjiang. His name means " Long River ” and refers to the Yangtze, the longest river in China . Changjiang will be seventeen next month. He’s tall and thin. He has wispy, wavy hair that falls into his face and an easy laugh. When he looks at me, his eyebrows arch over his glasses, and he grins.

To go to their house, we ride in a “bread car,” a small van. There are other passengers in the bread car, and we fly along the road together. The driver stops every so often and calls out for more passengers. More people get on with their bags of fruit.

The lane to their house is muddy—the van cannot go on that. It’s made of dirt, and has brick houses on either side. As we walk, I see bales of hay, goats, some cows, chickens, and a donkey. The mud clings to my sneakers. Changjiang has my book-bag on his shoulders, and his father carries the fruit. When we arrive at his house, his mother and grandmother come to the doorway and together we go to the concrete courtyard. His grandmother is stooped over, wears a blue apron.
"She can’t understand putong hua (standard Mandarin) so maybe you can’t speak to her," Chanjiang says.

I can’t tell if his grandmother can really see me. During my visit, she wanders in and out of rooms, putting a handful of candies next to us on the sofa, leaning over the table and tapping her foot, or standing behind her grandsons examining them,

"My grandmother often does things with no result,” Changjiang says.

We come to a room with a wooden table, a TV set, a DVD player and a sofa. Here we will spend most of our time. The ceiling is very high, and the walls have posters on them— famous Chinese TV and movie stars, blue and green tinted landscapes. There are two rooms off to either side, the room they all will sleep in, and the room I will sleep in, alone. It is cold outside, and the door to the courtyard remains open all day. We see our breath as we watch DVD’s putting our feet under a blanket as our toes slowly freeze.

We leave the room for meals. For dinner, we eat-corn porridge, bread and vegetables; for breakfast, dumplings and glutinous sweet dough balls in soup. We eat crabs, turtle, pork and vegetables for lunch. After meals we take in a mouthful of warm water from a shared cup, swish it around our mouths and spit it into the dirt off the courtyard.

If I rest for a few seconds between bites of food, his mother points to a bowl with her chopstick. "Ivy, chi, chi.”

"You can eat as you like," Changjiang says.

The first night, his mother introduces me to my room. There are two plastic basins on the floor filled with warm water and two towels. "This one is for washing your pigu (butt) and this one, your feet.” She leaves. I don’t touch the pigu basin, but I halfheartedly rub the other towel over my feet. She comes back, knows I haven’t washed properly. She kneels down, holds my feet, and washes them thoroughly rubbing between my toes.

The bed is covered with a thick blanket. When I wake up, I am warm. My head is entirely covered by the blanket and my coat, and a second blanket covers my feet. I don’t remember wrapping myself so warmly.

"Ivy?" It’s Changjiang, outside the door.

"Yes?" I say.

"Wake up,” he says.

It snows today. We pass the day watching TV or movies. Neighbors come by. The grandmother gives them handfuls of watermelon seeds. An old man in a Russian fur hat visits, sits on the narrow wooden bench by the doorway, and the grandmother sits next to him. The light falls on the creases in their faces. I want to take a picture of them, but I don’t. A young girl also visits. She leans against Changjiang, crowding him on a narrow bench. She brings a long, new firecracker into the house. He pulls it from her and throws it into the yard. The snow is coming down quickly. I laugh in surprise.

"Why did you do that?” I hit him lightly, and he laughs too. We light firecrackers on New Year’s Eve. We watch from the doorway as the father lights them in the yard and runs off. We watch them burn down and throw off light, banging the air, until one goes off improperly, and the sound is unbelievable. "Tai jinjang, too intense,” Changjiang says.

The next night, he borrows a pad and pen from his father. We talk about words in Chinese and English, draw crude pictures to show each other our meaning. Soon the page is covered with random drawings and words at all angles. "Art" his brother says His father tells a story, and Changjiang translates. "When I was young, the other children in my neighborhood wanted to steal some money. I just stood next to them and watched. I was afraid someone would say I was guilty too."

Changjiang looks at me and laughs. "Oh, that’s it." he says.

"I thought there was more."

Later I eat lunch with an all-male party—three young cousins, their father, Changjiang, his father and brother. They all have shots of baijiu, clear rice wine. I alone have grape wine. Everyone toasts each other. I am toasted several times and drink the weak wine. Changjiang sits beside me, worriedly telling me I only have to drink a little, only have to just touch my lips to the glass. He has had several shots of baijiu.. He is ripping small holes in the plastic table covering. After awhile he asks me if I’m full. I nod, and he tells me I can just have a seat on the sofa. The men stay at the table toasting each other, so I get a book to read. Later, he asks to see the book, holds it in his hands, and asks me what happens in the stories I read. He sits next to me on the couch and carefully reads each word aloud on the book jacket. Floating with the baijiu, he steadies himself by following the words with his finger. I get my camera and hold it up to the table scene. He takes it, frames his father in the camera screen and waits for him to laugh.

The day before I leave, I make a fortune-telling game out of a square piece of paper. I must think of several “fortunes” to hide under the folds. One that I write is, “You will marry someone ten years older or younger than yourself.” And I write nine more fortunes. When I am done, I tell Changjiang to pick a number. He chooses the marriage fortune. I wrote it as a silly joke, but when I read it out to him, we just look at each other. I am twenty-six years old. I put the paper down. Later, I see his grandmother crumple it in confusion and sweep it into the trash.

That night, Changjiang, his brother, and I watch "Total Recall". The room is dark, and their parents have gone to bed. When the movie is over, I go outside to brush my teeth and to use the outhouse. I am amazed at the stars, which are plentiful and twinkling. Changjiang and his brother come outside to look at them with me. We stand next to each other.

“I’ve never seen stars so clearly,” I say.

After I say that, Changjiang and I look at each other.
"Maybe you can take a picture,” his brother says. I get my camera, hold the screen up to the sky, but all I see is black. We also look at the airplanes. They are coming from different directions, their lights flashing.

"You can wave to me when I leave for America . Maybe you even saw me when I came to China ,” I say. I wonder if that could happen.

The next day, I walk with the brothers on the road to the main street. Their father stays behind but shouts several times with reminders. Tell Ivy to send a message when she returns, things like that. We walk awhile without speaking.

"Maybe we should talk," Changjiang says.

I tell him that sometimes "Silence is golden" like in a movie theater. He tells me this is also a saying in Chinese. When we get to the road, he tells his brother to go back home, and the two of us board a mini-bus. When we have to move over to make room for another man, my arm lands on Changjiang’s arm. For the rest of the ride, we don’t move, and we hardly talk. I experience something that I have experienced before, but rarely—I can actually feel heat along the entire right side of my body—from him. I don’t know if I’m imagining the heat.

“Are you okay?” he asks me.

The Siyang bus station has an extremely dirty bathroom. No one closes the doors to the toilets, and the toilets don’t flush. I squat down, face a child opposite me. Both of our doors are open. When I exit the bathroom, an attendant comes over, tells me the bus to Zhenjiang is boarding early. My student comes on the bus to wait with me. People rush to fill in the seats before the early departure. Chianjiang and I wait together in silence. Ivy Goldstein was born and raised in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia. Three years ago she moved to China to teach, and is now living in Beijing, working and studying Chinese. She fondly misses her hometown.

It’s a chilly day, but despite the cold, a guy stands at the intersection where drivers wait for the light. He’s selling bouquets of long-stemmed red roses, the kind men who forget may seriously need. The kind my aunt sent for my father’s funeral because, as she wrote, “red roses are for someone you love.”

We’re high-tech: industrial robots, space travel to the moon, mobile phones with multiple ring tones. But toddlers— drawn to deep yellow fuzz— still pick dandelions to give to their moms. Teen-aged girls still want corsages. So do golden-anniversary grandmas. Adults go to parties and visit sick friends, their hands filled with gifts of blossoms. From bassinette to coffin, flowers mark our keenest moments.

I’m five years old. Mom sends me outdoors to play on a sunny spring day. I look up at a flowering quince, taller than I am, covered with blossoms and bees. Sweet scent, sound of humming, salmon-pink cups dotted with yellow inside. I’m transfixed, filled with wonder. The moment is the first of many.

We move to a different house. I take myself out to play. Again it is spring, and in the back yard, an apple tree. Climbing up, I’m surrounded by white and pink petals, sweet aroma, the sound of humming. I sit on a branch, lean on another.

Winter. I arrive home frazzled by high school final exams. Outside the dining room window, icicles lie shattered on the hard frozen crust. Inside, on a glass shelf, an African violet has burst into color. Velvet plush – really purple. I go to find cookies.

A spring, many springs; a summer, many summers. Lavender lilacs in a round blue glass bowl. Phlox perfume at dusk. Mock orange blowing into my parents’ bedroom windows. Sweet peas twining up chicken wire. Pinned to a prom dress, gardenias. A bright tangle of cheeky petunias in a white rowboat, a shore-town name painted on the stern.

I’m a waitress one summer. On the Vermont lake, white water lilies with long rubbery stems. I’ve been studying Taoism, the human spirit a lotus, rooted in muck but rising through water to open pure ivory petals. From a rowboat, I pick a bouquet for a widow, vacationing solo. Placed on her table, the lilies close quickly.

In a fourth-floor walkup in New York, I don’t like being so far removed from the ground. My boyfriend builds me window boxes for my tarred terrace. I manage to grow enough mint for one julep, after I’ve washed off the fly ash. I understand the cartoon of the New York couple eating supper on their balcony. The husband is inside on the phone. His wife calls, “Hurry up, Harry. Your soup’s getting dirty.”

The boyfriend transforms to husband. I make wedding corsages with roses from my father’s garden, red for my mother, white for my husband’s mother. From a field by a river where my family took Sunday afternoon walks, my sister and I pick masses of Joe Pye weed and Queen Anne’s lace to decorate my parents’ front porch.

We rent and garden. Dig sod and change a corner of a field into a garden. Move on, leaving gardens behind. My husband wants to buy a handyman’s special. I’m not so sure but finally agree because the backyard has a trellis of red, pink, white, and yellow climbing roses.

Children stand transfixed in the garden as I stood transfixed in my father’s garden where rain formed diamonds in the cruxes of lupine leaves. The children suck sweet drops from the honeysuckle, hide in the tall leafy rhubarb, bite into tomatoes.

Fall changes to winter. Lush rhubarb turns to slime. Raspberry canes go brittle and brown. Where day lilies tilted in orange profusion, dead oak leaves rot. Under snow, the raised vegetable beds look like graves.

The mailman plops seed catalogues on the front hallway carpet. I order a crepe myrtle.

The season’s wheel turns, the life cycle spirals.

A grandparent’s ashes to scatter on thyme, iris, roses. A grandchild looking up at a sunlit crepe myrtle.

[img_assist|nid=4314|title=Basketball Hoop by Clara Pfefferkorn © 2005|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=101]Your life is going to change – how many times was that prediction offered in one form or another during my wife’s pregnancy? Mothers often spoke with a bliss-touched smile; fathers, with a smirk that was both sardonic and conspiratorial, and a distinct, cross-gendered handful uttered the words with an unblinking intensity that rattled me more than any of the bloody videos we watched in our childbirth classes.

In the months before my son’s arrival, my focus turned inward to the lightless, floating world where he spent his days. I say ‘inward’ in the truest sense, for I felt as if my wife’s watermelon belly had become an extension of my own body. Amazing, our doctor’s visits, the underwater slurp-slurp of our child’s buried heart, the ultrasound’s cloudy visions, the brief glimpses of his face, fingers and toes, then deeper, into his bones, his air-awaiting lungs, more. . . . My wife and I adjusted our diet, took long, twilight walks, our pace slowing as summer eased into fall. We developed rituals—the Sunday Polaroids we shot to document her budding growth, the jokes about turning the photos into a flipbook, and the nightly conversations with my son as I placed my lips to the curved, taut dome of her belly and spoke words of encouragement and love, hope and strength. Everything’s okay, baby. Everything’s okay.

He was placed in my arms in the delivery room, cleansed and swaddled, his skin the pink of well-chewed bubble gum. He looks wonderful, the doctor said, grinning from behind her mask. I gazed upon him, this solid, warm mass, his birthing cries short-lived and a single, curious finger worming its way out of the blanket, and when I began to speak, his unseeing eyes fluttered open, and I wanted to believe he recognized my voice, the words incomprehensible but the sound a welcoming bridge to this bustling, confusing world. Don’t be scared, little man.

The next forty hours passed in a blur of interrupted sleep, doctors’ consultations, orderlies bringing cafeteria trays, nurses jotting their notes. I took walks to stretch my legs, aimless wanderings that usually ended with my standing outside the nursery’s long window. Fourteen had been delivered on the same day, a near-record that had the nurses counting back nine months and dubbing the batch “Super Bowl Babies.” There was always a handful of infants in that room of blazing white lights and pinging machines, each wearing a beige knit cap topped with a Halloween-colored pom-pom, and when the door swung open, out poured the chorus of their collective breathing, a hum moist and tenacious and unlike any I’d ever heard before.

Back in our room, the muted TV heralded the arrest of the beltway snipers – a man and a boy, their smiling pictures leaving the rest of us to consider again the always incongruous face of evil. In between pokings and tests, our boy was wheeled into our room, his sleeping form nestled in a glass-sided shoebox, his high-pitched rasping already unique to my ear, a singular, unmistakable note I swore I’d be able to discern from the others.

Late October, and the rain fell long and steady, and the chilled gray crouched outside the concourse’s floor-to-ceiling windows. The weight of my son’s carrier threw an unexpected hitch in my stride, and my wife rolled alongside us in a hospital-mandated wheelchair. The nurse who pushed her told us the latest on the beltway snipers, the hard news of their capture giving way to speculating psychologists and retired attorneys, the case’s undertones of seduction and brainwashing and cold malevolence oozing to the surface. I looked down at my sleeping son. How sad, the ease with which some of us lose our way; how sad, the fate of the oblivious victim, the lightning-strike violence of this world. Past us filed the sick and those who loved them, the workaday faces of the nurses and cafeteria workers and the maintenance men, and I smiled at them all, suddenly seeing them not as strangers, but as bundles once placed in their parents’ arms, innocent and blank and incredibly fragile, and for a brief moment, I wanted to embrace them all and whisper in each ear the prettiest lie—Everything was going to be okay.Curt Smith has published two collections of short-short stories and one novel, and has a new novel out next spring. His fiction and essays have appeared in over thirty-five journals including American Literary Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, CutBank, Passages North, West Branch and many others.  His work has been nominated for a number of Pushcarts and named to the Distinguished Stories List of both the Best American Short Stories and The Best American Mystery Stories.

Larger-than-life beauty shops may occupy the Hollywood set, but in South Philadelphia , it’s all about getting real. And there’s no better place to get real than in the beauty shop mirror.

I came hair-first into the world some thirty-five years ago, with a full head of dark locks. Today, my brown waves are corkscrewed by a permanent, a fact I only reveal after someone says, “You must love having naturally curly hair.” To which I reply, modestly running a hand through my curls, “Actually, I love having a dad who is a hairdresser.” Inevitably, the commentator’s eyes widen, “Does he do your hair?” I reply, “Naturally!”

I spend my share of time at my father’s salon, or “the shop,” as it’s known in my family. In 1968, my father started his business, which bears the eponymous name of Louis’ Hairstyling. It’s in the heart of South Philadelphia , the terrain of strong women with smoky voices who know the importance of raising good kids, rolling great meatballs, and visiting the hairdresser weekly for style and gossip.

Among my father’s clients, it is these tough-and-tender women that I remember seeing in his styling chair through the years. They pinched my cheeks when I was small and watched me grow up. Today, when I visit the shop, I’m still Daddy’s little girl. “Is this the older one, Lou?” asks a woman wearing a pink housedress, as my father wraps her hair around pinker curlers. “Yes, I am,” I pipe up as I pull off my coat. “She got big, Lou,” says the lady in the housedress, peering at my reflection in the shop’s wall-length mirror. “How old is she now?” “Almost thirty-five,” I answer. “I remember you when you were this high,” she says, lowering one pink-nailed hand to a foot from the ground. She smiles, and so do I.

With her dyed-brown hair rolled up, she soon is flipping through Woman’s Day while the dryer’s plastic dome hums above her. I settle into a vinyl waiting chair and watch my father at work on his next customer.

Like an artist at the easel, he stands behind one of his two brown styling chairs, a black rattail comb jutting from the front left pocket of his jeans. He slips out the comb and lifts his scissors, arms akimbo. In the chair is a woman in her early fifties with short hair the color of cotton. She holds her reading glasses in her right hand as my father snips and trims. Looking into the mirrored wall, she talks to my father’s reflection of her husband, her children, an upcoming party, a neighbor who just passed away. My father nods distracted assent, still snipping, her hair falling like white rain at his feet. Just when it seems he cannot possibly be listening, he looks at her in the mirror and jumps back two steps to ask about the party, to comment on the neighbor, and to laugh as he tells a story about the woman’s husband and children. I shake my head in wonder.

My father picks up a tube-shaped brush with bristles all around. He twirls the snow-white hair around the brush, securing a tight, wavy style with a hairdryer. He hoists a can of hairspray and briefly encircles the client in a foggy aura. The client raises a small purple mirror and spins around in the chair to assess the back of her hairstyle, while my father whisks excess hair from her neck with the soft, baby-powdered bristles of a wooden shaving brush. “Thanks, Lou,” she says, and moves to the phone to call her husband to pick her up.

Next to me in the waiting chairs are two women, about sixty-five and forty-five, passing the time swapping stories and recipes. “I can’t wait to get home to have my string bean and potato salad,” says the older, lightly grey-haired woman. The younger one, running a brush through her coarse brown hair, lets out a “Mmmmm. . . .” “And I made some sausage last night that was delicious,” the older woman continues. “I’ll just cut it up and throw it in! What a dinner.”

My father waves me into the styling chair. He disappears briefly into the shop’s wood-paneled back room, where high shelves hold bottles of hair dye and other potions. He emerges with the frothy solution for my permanent. I watch in the mirror as he twists my hair into permanent rods, orange and blue and yellow. I notice that his moustache is graying to match his salt-and-pepper hair, which is receding to a Caesar-like crown. His brown eyes are intense as he goes about his work, but when I talk—of my job, my son, our family—he pauses, a sheaf of hair between his fingers. He catches my eyes in the mirror and listens intently.

Another customer—hair dyed black, shaded eyeglasses defining her face—watches my father’s reflection as he rolls my hair into a colorful mountain of plastic rods. “Is this the nurse?” she asks my father. “Jennifer’s the writer,” my father says. “My younger daughter is the nurse.” He glances up into the mirror, flashing a quick smile at the waiting customer, who says, “You must be very proud of them.” “You bet I am!” my father replies. “I’m proud of both my girls.” Now his smile is reflected at me.

Along the length of the wooden countertop among the thick-bristled brushes and slim bottles of hair gel, stand photos of my sister and me in our pre-pubescent bob cuts, curls teased big during our teens, and finally our bridal upsweeps.

On my wedding day, my father had sculpted my hair into an intricate bun that

nestled inside the beaded crown of my bridal veil. Many of my father’s customers were at the church. They didn’t comment on my gown, but said instead, “Lou, I love her hair!” I realized then that this is how my father’s love for his family shines through. His decades of wash-and-sets and cuts-and-color gave me a happy and secure childhood and the college education he never had, setting me on my life’s path. Now, although I am an adult and on my own, my father is still caring for me with the intimate art of hairstyling.

An hour later, my hair has sprung dutifully into its curls. I kiss my father on the cheek and pull on my coat, brushing stray hairs from my collar. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him, reflected in the wall-length mirror, watching me as I go out his shop door.

Jennifer Baldino Bonett lives, writes, and has her hair styled in South Philadelphia.

It was Friday afternoon. We had been throwing around the Frisbee, but the collars of our Oxford-cloth shirts were already sweat-soaked, and we were tired of feeling out of shape. We lay on the back of Jon’s Toyota Corolla in our cheap aviators as the sun slowly started to go down on another day in Northern Virginia. It was September of my senior year and I tasted real freedom. I was seventeen and for the first time in my adult life I was almost content.

“It’ll be fall soon,” I said, putting my hands behind my head.

“Yeah, soon it’ll be too cold for Frisbee.”

“It’s never too cold for Frisbee…remember: we’re hardcore, man.” We had once played a three-hour game in the pouring forty-degree rain.

“All right, man, all right.”

So like I said it was Friday and tonight was a home football game. Friday night football at PVI (that’s Paul VI Catholic High School) was a weekly ritual like going to church or calling long-distance family. Everybody went. Even if you hated football you went to the game.

“Graham’s gonna get the kegs, right?”

Our friend, whose Dad owned a catering business, had gotten us two kegs of root beer for before and during the game.

“He’ll bring it, and Gary’ll bring the grill.”

“Cool, cool. Is Emily coming?”

Emily was Jon’s first long-term girlfriend. Good for him.

“She’ll be here,” he said with the assurance of a guy who’s made it through a six-month relationship and has had an easy time of it.

“I guarantee it,” I drawled out in an imitation hillbilly voice. This wasn’t the Deep South, but we were below the Mason-Dixon Line—so let’s just say I had some material to work with.

“Yassum,” Jon replied. “But I don’t think she’ll be here for the rally.”

The PVI Rally in the Alley was pre-game entertainment—chock full of free food, live bands, and moon bounces—strictly for the underclassmen. I mean, since we built our new gym (a financial disaster equivalent to the Big Dig, though on a smaller scale) it wasn’t even in an alley anymore. It was where the freshman football players wandered aimlessly after practice in their jerseys and the sophomores—too cool for school, too young to drive—stood in their huddled groups, never moving. We—the seniors and a few juniors—were in the back parking lot far away from the festivities having our own party.

Soon the grill was fired up, and we had burgers going, the kegs were tapped and the good times were rolling. I had the Stones’ Sticky Fingers playing on the stereo squeezed in between two solid blocks of Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney. Being a Bostonian by birth, I could never understand the strictly Southern phenomenon of listening to country music and actually enjoying it. I mean, I love my Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, and have a soft spot for Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, but I got limits, especially when it comes to women. Seemingly normal, smart, good-looking girls with no outstanding flaws to speak of getting the hots for tools with cowboy hats, over-enlarged belt buckles and plastic smiles—I couldn’t feature it. So, for the moment, things were going great. Once the sun went down, we made our way to the stands staking out seats on the far right of the stands while two willing juniors lugged the kegs behind us.

Friday night football games were for letting off steam, and the best way to do that was to hurl insults at the opposing teams and their fans. On our side, the fans filled all three sections of our gargantuan stands, thirty-six rows deep. As if that wasn’t enough, we had a huge pep band numbering about sixty members, buffalo drums and all. Add that to a stunningly acrobatic cheerleading squad, a drill team with a glittery halftime show, and section-long banners proclaiming glory and victory for the Panthers and doom and defeat for our opponents. We were a force to be reckoned with—and that was off the field.

The key to proper heckling was simple: Never Back Down. The scoreboard doesn’t matter, the threats of ejection from the tired, over-worked referees—notice the ironic likeness of referee jerseys to old-school prison uniforms—don’t matter. As long as they were on the field and there was time left, heckle away.

We were winning badly so we must have been playing Ireton—there are only two schools PVI was guaranteed to beat: Ireton and the School for the Blind. So our attitude was lax, we had done so many keg-stands that they were kicked before halftime. Everyone was still fuming off the caffeine rush and feelin’ fine. Little did we know it was all about to flame up again when a certain someone left the crowd and went into the announcer’s booth.

Mike Shosta, a senior hated by our class as much for his high GPA as for his Gonzo-like nose and penchant for being an asshole, began commenting on the game in the middle of third quarter. Not only did the kid have a voice to match his nose, but, as I said, and this bears repeating, he wasn’t really well liked. So we did the natural thing and began booing and throwing things at the announcer’s booth.

“BOO!”

“SHOSTA SUCKS!”

“SHOSTA SUCKS MORE THAN IRETON!”

“I’M GONNA EAT YOUR DOG FOR DINNER!”

The people had spoken. Anytime Shosta spoke into the mic, even if it was something positive, he was repaid with scorn and withering profanity against him, his life, his family and oddly enough his dog (did he have a dog? None of us knew).

 

Finally, the kid had enough. He tramped out of the announcer’s booth like a spoiled brat who didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas and jumped down into the stands, pushing aside freshman and wimpy upperclassmen as he went.

 

“Who was saying shit?” he demanded with a flustered tone in his voice and an angry gleam in his eye. “Who was it? Who was he?”

 

The fatal flaw with Sherlock Shosta and his detective work was simply the fact that over forty people were booing him. To seek out one guy would be stupid—the person next to him would be just as guilty. So here was Shosta, searching for answers in all the wrong places at the wrong time.

 

I said it!”

“You’re terrible!”

“Man, you suck!”

“I SAID IT, ASSHOLE!”

 

I sort of knew the kid who stood out among the confessors. He had these wild, sky-blue Irish eyes that could pierce your soul, and a head of massive, brown curly hair that hung all over like a horribly distorted, brunette Raggedy Andy. He was one of Jon’s friends, I think.

 

“So you’re the one who wants to party?” Shosta asked him, sizing up his opponent.

“Yeah, what it’s to ya, fucko?”

“I’ll show ya what it’s to— ”

It is strange when violence breaks out. Nobody knows who fired the first shot at Lexington and Concord, or who threw the bomb at the Haymarket riot, but we all know the consequences. I don’t know who pushed who, but with a flash of steel everything went too fast. Maybe it was because football is such a slow game, but it seemed to come out of nowhere like a summer thunderstorm and all you can do is run for shelter. Seeing a knife is pretty freaky, you really don’t see it, you just see the streaking of the blade through the air as it’s drawn back behind him like a steel-gray brushstroke against the background of a night sky. Suddenly, twenty voices at once:

 

“Whoa! WHOA!”

“HEY! HEY MAN!”

“JESUS CHRIST!”

“Don’t fuck with me!”

“Just go, man! Just go back to the booth!”

“Oh! Oh man!”

“Now he sees it! Now he’s scared!”

“Don’t m-mess with my friend, man!” Jon stammered. “Du-dude, put the piece away!”

 

A sea had parted around the two combatants and jumped into it to hold the people back. At first it was like being in a real sea, disorienting as the bubbles fly around your face and your eyes adjust to the stinging salt water. For the first time I realized how cold the night was—fall was coming sooner than I thought—and zipped my coat all the way up. I scratched my forehead—it was itchy as hell, I was sweating—under my Adidas beanie and slowly pushed and finally guided Shosta back to the announcer’s booth. Jon was already gone with Raggedy Andy; I lost him when I jumped in.

 

“He wasn’t really gonna do it…he wouldn’t have. I’ve seen him before, man, I’ve seen him. He wouldn’t have done it…I know it, he couldn’t…he wouldn’t…” Shosta kept repeating this to me or himself, or anyone who would listen over and over.

 

I remember just saying “Okay, man, okay. Just get in the booth, man.” We were both saying a lot and nothing to each other, having a sort of two-way monologue. I guess we were both a little spooked and dealing with it in the same way. It was the first time I really empathized with the kid. Reaching the booth, I guess I was still talking to him; he turned to me and said:

 

“Fuck you, Brennan,” and slammed the door. So much for empathy.

 

Flare-ups happen all the time. “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt” and for a lot of people who were there it was just that. Shosta got shown up. Now I don’t want to make a big something out of a little nothing, but knives are scary things. If we hadn’t followed our instincts and gotten the hell out of there, who knows what would have happened? I guess when it happened everything we knew—or what we thought we knew—was thrown into the air, and when it all came crashing down it did not quite fit the same way. The rest of the season kind of went out like a wet fart, sort of “blah” like when all the water has run out of the tub.

 

So: you move on.

Patrick Brennan was born in Beverly, Massachusetts on November 3, 1985. He currently lives in Northern Virginia and is majoring in History at Saint Joseph’s University. He wants to be either a film director or a rock singer.

My size defines me. My circle of friends consists of the New Yorker, the Chemist, the Chesty One, the Red Head….and me, the Little One. For a long time I searched for a bigger, better way to describe myself. When I least expected it, I found the answer. Ironically, size had EVERYTHING to do with it.

My freshman roommate at Saint Joe’s was a transfer student named Michelle. I knew instantly she was an athlete. She wore mesh shorts and Adidas sandals to every class, and she owned the largest collection of t-shirts I’d ever seen.

“Coach told us to bring short people to practice tomorrow, you interested?” she asked, taking a big gulp of Gatorade. “They need coxswains.” The next day I dug out a pair of sweat shorts, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and rode with Michelle to the Schuylkill River. The red athletic van was crowded and I was busy wondering exactly what coxswains do.

Every afternoon we gathered on the dirty, unsteady wooden docks of Crescent Boat Club. I was probably the most incompetent coxswain in the river’s history. I had more than one close encounter with the ropes that separated the boathouse from a waterfall. I hit floating tree limbs, smacked buoys, docked on sandbars, and on what seemed like the worst morning of my life, I tore off a foot of our bow when I collided with a pair of silver haired veteran rowers, out for their 6 a.m. swing.

I had been publicly scolded by every coach on the river, most often my own, Walt Young, a former men’s coach who didn’t have much sensitivity for female emotions. He was in my face repeatedly, telling me that I had spelled my name across the entire river with the curves of my poorly steered course. He told me to “Speak louder, take control of my rowers, and for God’s sake, have some confidence!”

 

Still, I kept coming back for more.

 

In October, our new coach, Gerry, posted the line-ups for the Head of the Charles, one of the biggest regattas in fall rowing. I would be steering the varsity lightweight eight along the toughest course I had raced on yet.

In the weeks before the race, I studied the Charles River like an aspiring lawyer studies for the bar exam. I memorized every mile mark, measured every angle, and noted the warnings of every coxswain who was kind enough to post their experiences on the Internet.

The bus left for Boston at 4 a.m. on October 23rd. On the way up I-95 I reread my note cards and called the race over and over in my mind. Upon arriving, we took a short practice row. I shoved my cards in my pocket and led my boat out into the great unknown. We paddled slowly alongside the Boston University boathouse and Riverside club. I named each landmark for the rowers as if I was their personal tour guide. I told them where I would be steering hard with the rudder and which arch of the Western Avenue Bridge we would row under. I was really thinking out loud for my own benefit, but my preparedness seemed to calm their nerves.

 

Halfway through our row we saw lightning and we were forced to turn towards the docks and call it a day. We quickly gathered our backpacks and sprinted back to the Newton Marriot for hot showers and a pasta dinner. I slept less than an hour that night.

The race was behind schedule, which meant there was time for me to worry. Were the girls warmed up enough? Had we tightened every rigger and oarlock? What would happen if I collided with another boat on this terrifyingly narrow course? I checked my pocket to make sure I had my cards and looked around at the other crews. There were women from Canada and Russia, former Olympians and Ivy Leaguers, and us—nine no-names from that Jesuit school in Philadelphia.

With the wave of a flag we were off, building up speed as we raced upstream. I could tell within the first forty strokes that the girls were on that day. The click of their oars turning together rang in my ears and the boat seemed to glide on top of the water.

I turned wide to port halfway between Magazine Beach and Riverside Club as my cards directed me. With that, we were passing two eights, one on either side. I began calling out the seat numbers as we rowed through both crews. “Bow Ball,” I shouted as we broke open. I could feel the girls intensity increase when they realized their accomplishment.

We were flying. With each boat we passed, the strength of the boat increased. We approached the Weeks Footbridge locked tightly between two other crews, all three coxswains fighting for a lane beneath the narrow opening.

Oars clanged as I had feared, but instead of slowing us down, it infuriated my crew and we soared through the arch, leaving the other two boats behind us, in a tangled mess.

Coach was waiting as I docked my boat. He stuck his hand out for me to shake, but then changed his mind and pulled me in for a hug.

“You steered an amazing course,” he said. “A course like that can win a race for a crew.” I was beaming with pride as we put the boat away and headed back to the bus.

From that day on, I had a different feeling at the starting line of a race. Of course, I would be nervous, but confidently nervous. I excitedly awaited the sound of the starting gun, the intensity of the first strokes and the rush of adrenaline that carried my boat across the finish line. I’d even go as far as to say that I, the Little One, the Coxswain, stood tall from that day forward.

A 2001 Saint Joe’s graduate, Melissa Doyle is a Public Relations Account Executive with Tierney Communications. Currently Melissa is working on her Masters in Writing and Publishing at Rosemont College. When she is not writing, Melissa enjoys reading, trips to the beach and Phillies baseball.

Harry is home now. He slipped in on a perfect spring afternoon while hundreds of thin yellow ribbons fluttered like tinsel on the Japanese maple. He didn’t want any fuss, so he and his family spent the rest of the day quietly at home.

He is twenty years old and he has killed since I saw him last. On Christmas morning, he returned Iraqi fire to save his own life and continue with the job he was sent to do.

When I learned that Harry had shipped out to Iraq last year, I set out an American flag and wrapped a yellow ribbon around my poplar tree. I am not given to public acts of patriotism. I’ve always considered the ribbon thing a little hokey. Harry’s going changed that. Sure, I didn’t enlist and I didn’t demonstrate about the war. I continued my life and my work as a psychologist in personal safety and freedom here. But I woke up. The spin and political posturing that obscure the realities of war faded.

Thirty years ago, those distractions had shielded me from the Vietnam War. I was able, then, to know and at the same time not know about napalm and daily death tolls and my contemporaries who came home broken or not at all. I voted on election days and did nothing else but complain and resent the government. I played the part of not playing a part.

War is horrible and magnificent in its ability to engage and alter human consciousness. In psychology, we call such forces of nature archetypes and they are impulses that emerge from the deepest levels of our humanity. In the grip of an archetype, we feel possessed. Rationality yields. We fall in love, explode into rage, and descend into depression; we’re blinded by lust, mesmerized by religious zeal, driven to preserve life or destroy it.

War is like that; it sweeps us away. War triggers the most destructive and the most tender moments in a country’s life. We’re all drawn in, one way or the other.

When Harry shipped out, I experienced urgent feelings of empathy and solidarity. I didn’t intend to tie a ribbon around the tree. It was a blind reflexive gesture in the way that machine gun fire at close range is reflexive. I found myself doing it. I began thinking not about whether this war is right or wrong but simply about war and my place in it. And I identified venues for my involvement.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t really know Harry. We keep to ourselves in our neighborhood in a friendly sort of way. That young man and I lead such different lives, we’d never had reason to converse. He drives a Mustang, I drive a Volvo. He goes out after ten at night when I am anticipating a good book and an easing into sleep. He plays music on his car radio I know nothing about. None of that mattered. I got in the habit of holding my breath when morning radio reported the news from Iraq. I don’t know how the family stood the steady news of casualties and deaths.

The Sunday afternoon of his homecoming was soft and breezy, warm and grateful, the way an afternoon in early spring can be: triumphant, full of birdsong and the motion of yellow ribbons.

I tried to keep at the project I’d been working on but I felt agitated and distracted, not exactly excited but moved and drawn. I realized I had to do something. I wanted to say, "Welcome home,” to offer a gift that would help draw him back from the war.

I found myself stepping into the garden where the first wave of daffodils nodded. I cut a fat bunch, tied the moist green stems in streaming yellow ribbon and walked down the street to my neighbor’s house. I rang the bell and waited. When the door opened, there was Harry, still in uniform. He was finishing a conversation with someone inside and was in the process of turning toward me so I had a few seconds to take him in before our eyes met.

His drab green fatigues collided with the afternoon and gave the impression that he was sealed off. His form looked almost hazy, indistinct. He began to focus on me with a slow and deliberate gaze. I could see him in the process of coming home, cautiously, layer by layer, shedding the dust and dryness and danger.

I handed him the bouquet of yellow daffodils.

"I’ll bet you haven’t seen anything like these for a while," I said.

He looked down at them.

"No,” he said. “You’re right. I haven’t."

There was a beat of silence. I said something inane about how glad we all were that he had gotten home in one piece.

"Me too," he said.

Another beat of silence.

He looked intently into the creamy yellow flowers and then back to me.

"Thank you for this."

“You’re more than welcome.”

I turned and started for home. War, as they say, is fought “on the ground,” in the moment. Its violence and terror concentrate in war zones but its energy and effects exist everywhere. In budding gardens and chilly subways, in precisely appointed corporate offices and in the lives of returning soldiers. To pretend it isn’t happening or that it is contained far away is a fool’s game.

During periods when this archetypal force has been loosed in the world, I have hidden behind ideology or simply tried to ignore it. Now, being on the ground with it, in my own small ways, disturbs me but also enlivens me.Emma Mellon grew up in Southwest Philadelphia near Cobbs Creek Park though she was not allowed to play in the park unsupervised. She graduated from Temple University, moved to Washington DC to teach Language Arts in a private school and then returned and earned a PhD at Temple. She is a licensed psychologist in private practice and an author of non-fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in The Inquirer and The Daily News. Her essay, “Christmas with TwylaRose” will appear in the forthcoming Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Dogs available in October 2004.